The eye of the storm – why you need research now – organisations

by | Mar 12, 2021 | Marketing communications and media, Marketing Planning, marketing research, Marketing strategy, Uncertainty, understanding organisations

A series of views – view 4, the organisation view   

Why you need to research your organisation now 

We have used the ‘perfect storm’ analogy to give context to the critical importance of organisations having current insights to create suitable strategies for the future.  As we start to see the first tentative steps out of lockdown in the UK it may feel as if we are reaching a period of calm. For some organisations, though, this might literally be the eye of the storm that continues to rage around us. The future for many remains uncertain and ensuring that we have insight into critical elements now is more important than ever to be able to successfully navigate through it.

In the first three articles we looked at what to consider in gaining current insight into our employees, customers and the markets that we operate within.

Understanding your organisation

Having understood the needs arising from research of these three elements we need to consider how well our organisation is aligned with them.

Our own research, conducted at the end of 2020, revealed that some of the key impacts of the uncertainty wrought by COVID and Brexit on organisations were seen as being:

  • Supply issues (especially initially)
  • Workplace structures
    • Employees – e.g. working from home, motivation, management, support, anxiety and retention
    • Culture – maintaining positive aspects of organisational culture in the absence of face to face contact
    • Service quality pressures
  • Cost cutting
  • Leadership style challenges

Pivoting strategies’ suitability

When we think about strategy we will often think about suitability and fit. For example:

“Does the proposed strategy fit the culture, leadership style and structure of the organisation?”

During the ‘eye of a storm’ it is well worth looking at this from another viewpoint. From a research perspective the question could be posed the other way around:

“Does the organisation fit the required strategy?”

The ‘six’ elements

What should we consider against this thinking?

There are numerous aspects of the organisation that might need to be researched.

Here are six key aspects for us to explore:

  1. Structure

An organisation chart can reveal so much about the way that an organisation works and its culture. Looking at your own structure, consider the following:

  • Is it up to date? Organisation charts are often in need of revision.
  • Does it accurately reflect the interactions that take place? For example, charts are typically in straight lines – would a 3D view be more appropriate?
  • How relevant is it to the current situation and the needs that have arisen from your previous insights (employees, customers and markets)
    • Does it suit a shift to working from home?
    • Is there still a requirement for the same premises, for example?
    • How does the structure impact on processes?
    • Is the structure relevant to the market or markets that you are in or need to be in?
  1. Leadership

How does your organisation’s leadership align with the insights gained so far?

  • What is or are the predominant style(s) of your leaders?
  • What are the gaps in leadership capabilities? For example:
    • Digital know-how
    • Innovation
    • Change
    • Communicating future direction
    • People selection and development
  1. Culture

“The way we do things around here”

What is the organisational culture? Can you define it? How would others define it?

Culture has a massive impact on the way that an organisation works.

A cultural audit is invaluable to consider where there may be issues with strategic fit. Is there any inertia evident as a result of the significant uncertainties over the past 12 months, for example?

One excellent way of doing this is to use the Cultural Web – a tool created by Johnson and Scholes.

You can find out more about how to use this here.

  1. Values

What are the values of the organisation? How do these resonate or otherwise with your employees, customers and markets?

Values are increasingly important and can have a key impact on how your brand is perceived too.

For example, think about your stance on societal issues such as diversity and equity.

  1. Processes

You may have already considered where key processes are impacting on customer experience but what about some of the less obvious ones.  There are so often things that we do that are no longer questioned.

Challenge the processes in place across the whole organisation. Which are aligned to what you have discovered so far and which are creating barriers to your future success?

Consider digital transformation, for example. To what extent has the organisation adopted digital technologies into its processes?

What about barriers to positive behaviour?

Crawford Hollingsworth wrote an article in impact magazine about auditing ‘sludge’. It is not a term that I had heard before but seems quite apt to undertaking research on the organisation now. Sludge is..

“…when consumers or businesses face high levels of friction that obstruct their efforts to achieve something that is in their best interest, or are deliberately misled or encouraged to take action that is not in their best interest.”

Crawford Hollingsworth

This is all about making behaviour easier for organisations and customers alike. You can find out more about ‘sludge’ here.

  1. Internal communications

Explore how your organisation communicates internally. There is no intent to state the obvious in terms of how important this is or to suggest that it isn’t already top of mind. Like all the above elements, the focus has shifted significantly over the past year so demands review.

Consider some of the following;

  • How have your internal communications approaches changed to recognise the shift in working patterns? Are the approaches appropriate?
  • Who is responsible for the overall management of internal communications? Is this in the right place?
  • Are you communicating a clear roadmap to employees for how and when the organisation plans to navigate out of the storm?
  • How are you getting feedback on your communications? Do you need to consider new channels?

THE BOTTOM LINE

“Fundamentally…

… is your organisation as aligned to the expectations of your employees, customers and markets as it needs to be?

What do you need to change to make your organisation the right fit for the strategies that will take it successfully out of the storm?”

If you would like someone to talk to about any of this, give me a call.

 

 

 

 

 

The perfect storm – Why you need research now – employees

by | Dec 8, 2020 | Challenges, Home working, hybrid working, Leadership, marketing research, Uncertainty, Understanding employees, Volatility

A series of ten views – view 1, employees   

Everyone has their own take on the situation that organisations are facing at the moment. As an experienced researcher, I have always seen my role as being to reflect on the data before providing insights. It seems like now, more than ever, is the right time to publish a series of thought pieces on why we need marketing research.

The perfect storm?

Recent research that we have undertaken for a client has clearly indicated that, in the UK, organisations are keenly aware that we are in the eye of two key ‘storm fronts’ currently – to use the ‘perfect storm’ analogy.

  1. COVID
  2. Brexit

The business landscape

The business environment is being shaken in numerous ways, resulting in the following:

  • Uncertainty

There is a continual lack of clarity resulting from the ongoing ‘storms’.

  • Volatility

This means that the sheer rate of change is affecting our views of the world around us. Constant change can be very unsettling for many of us. It is impacting on previous cultural and behavioural norms significantly.

Challenges

Organisations are facing major challenges including:

  • Sink, swim or surf

Of course, there will be some organisations that will benefit from these times but many others from sectors that will be obvious to most of us are still in survival mode. The impacts on financial aspects and all stakeholders, especially employees, are clear to see.

  • Cash

Tightening the purse strings is an inevitable reaction by those facing survival challenges.

  • Hybrid/home working

WFH (working from home) is on everyone’s agenda at this time. It provides opportunities and challenges in equal measure. It is important to recognise that it doesn’t suit everybody! Depending on our personality and behavioural traits, we will find this shift easy or hard to make.

  • Employees’ work/life balance

WFH has an impact on work/ life balance. Many have found the experience very positive but it remains a challenge for others too. Once the novelty has worn off, it can be hard to maintain a balance.

  • Shifts in the psychological contract

Employees are changing the way they view their relationships with employers. Redundancies, job market uncertainty and fear, both short and long term, are contributors to this.

  • Individuals’ focus on personal safety, security and survival

As a result of all of this, some individuals have been pushed into ‘survival’ mode. In terms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, if safety and physiological needs are under threat self-fulfilment is not a key priority.

  • Providing clear direction

A key challenge for leaders in organisations is the critical need to communicate a clear direction during uncertain times.  A ‘roadmap’ for the future, as one respondent to the research described it so well.

  • Changes in customer behaviour and expectations

Our customers’ perceptions and attitudes are shifting too. They were already changing but the catalysts have accelerated this by a significant factor. The move to more online discovery and purchase are obvious, but, perhaps not as immediately visible, are the changes to brand loyalty and the time being spent on exploring alternative options.

Ten thoughts on what you need to research now?

There are plenty of things keeping business leaders awake at night but the key question to answer is:

“What do I really need to know about…?”

I have arrived at ten key areas that need to be considered for exploration now:

  1. Your employees
  2. Your customers
  3. Your markets
  4. Your organisation and internal communication
  5. Your processes
  6. Your products and services
  7. Your competitors
  8. Your strategy
  9. Your marketing communications
  10. Your brand

The first two, in particular, are intended to be in priority order.

Number one must be our people. Without them as the foundation, the other areas would not be important.

Customers would come a very close second.  Without customers an organisation would cease to have a purpose.

The employee view

Back to our core question: what do we really need to know and understand about our people?

As a matter of some urgency, we need to ensure we have a clear view as to the following:

  • Satisfaction
  • Levels of engagement with the organisation
    • Do they feel they belong?
    • Do they feel part of a team?
    • Are they being effectively managed
    • Do they know how they are doing?
    • Are they looking to move to another organisation when the opportunity arises?
  • Emotional states
    • Well being
    • Mental health
    • Self esteem
    • Loneliness
    • Vulnerability
  • Physical health
  • Sense of direction – do they know what the leaders’ plans are?
  • Levels of security or insecurity
    • Financial
    • Emotional
    • Relationships
  • Extent of team working
  • Attitudes to WFH and hybrid working
    • There may be pressure on some to be positive about WFH. Will it be the new ‘normal’? Will people feel able to voice their true feelings about it?
  • Extent to which work/life balance is being realised

Why you really need to know about your employees now…

There is no time like the present to make sure that we fully understand the state of our employee base.

If you need help researching this, let’s talk.

Know your remote audience!

by | Mar 24, 2020 | Leadership, Self development, Uncategorized

Working from home – how to communicate effectively with your team – top tips

Have you ever wondered why sometimes people don’t react to what you say in the way that you would expect them to?

With the current advice being to work from home, if you can, many of us are in a work situation that is very different from anything that we are used to.

To make sure that organisations and their people remain effective it is vital that we continue to communicate as effectively as we can.

Understand behavioural styles

It is easy to assume that everyone responds in the same way to the way we communicate but they don’t. One of the key factors is our behavioural style. This has an impact on our preferred communication approach which affects how we expect others to communicate with us. This is especially important when it is a manager or team leader communicating with us in the work situation.

Be aware of body language

As managers or team leaders of remote teams, one of the key sets of non-verbal signals that we use in communication – body language – is either partly or completely removed depending on the medium we are using. So it is more important than ever that we try to get our approach right for each person we are communicating with.

What can we do?

One of the tools that is particularly useful in identifying the behavioural characteristics of individuals is the Thomas Personal Profile Analysis (PPA). This can provide an insight into your and your team’s communication preferences.

The PPA measures preferences around four core behavioural and communication styles1:

TOP TIPS:

  1. Know your behavioural style and preferences
  2. Know your team’s behavioural styles and preferences
  3. Modify your style to match theirs when you communicate with them

Dos and Don’ts for communication with individuals with each style

These are dos and don’ts for communicating with your team.  Bear in mind your own preferences will have an influence on your natural approach.

ACTIVE

PASSIVE

Next steps

If you would like to find out more about how the PPA could help you and/or your team please get in touch.

Steve Bax is an accredited practitioner for PPA (Personal Profile Analysis), HPTI (High Potential Trait Indicator), and TEIQue (Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire) assessments (Thomas International). 

With thanks to Thomas International for some of the content detail.  For more information on using the PPA to help make remote working communication successful, see the excellent blog by Jayson Darby at Thomas International here