What We Do
A Company’s Character
Every company has regular ways of doing things – a certain way of seeing the world, a certain way of making decisions, a certain way of viewing and treating customers and employees, a certain way of thinking, a certain way of organising itself and a natural tendency to treat certain things as very important (and other things as not important at all).
We call that the company’s character.
For example, we have the charity that always treats people with compassion, the frustrating public utility that puts obstacles in the path of anyone wanting to speak to a human or the investment bank that is sleek, professional and very focused on profitability.
Each of these organisations has a different character – and one that we immediately recognise from these brief descriptions. Character is powerful, because it determines how an organisation behaves in any given situation and thus the results that it achieves.
What is the character of your organisation?
It’s not an easy question to answer, because you are so close to it. One way to begin to answer that question is to think back to the last big decision your board or management team made. What were the major considerations? What briefing papers were presented to the decision makers? Was the discussion dominated by consideration of the financial ramifications, or the impact on employees, or how it would impact your brand and public image, or something else?
Whatever the discussion focused on, those are almost certainly the things that are particularly important to your organisation. And the things that were not considered just aren’t important to your company at all – even if it says they are. That may be hard to hear if it conflicts with claims that your company lives by certain values, but the truth is that if it does not consider those things when making a major decision then it does not live by them at all.
This exercise reveals the priorities that are at the core of your company’s character. There are other elements of character too, such as corporate attitudes, embedded beliefs and corporate habits – the way that people automatically tackle routine tasks.
Your company’s character determines how it makes decisions and how it goes about doing things. It determines how the company sees its place in the world, how you take on external challenges, how you treat employees and customers and what people focus on during their day-to-day working lives. This, in turn, has a profound impact on results.
Aligning company character with strategy and mission
If you are to achieve your strategic objectives, you will need the people in your company to think and act in certain ways.
Imagine if you took the staff from a successful high end restaurant and transplanted them into a fast food outlet. Behaviours that made the high end restaurant very successful would ruin the fast food outlet. Everything they do would be wrong, from their priorities, to the way they organised the kitchen, to their marketing, to their level of customer service, to their financial management and their inventory control. The character of the organisation would be completely mismatched with what they were trying to achieve – for example, their natural instinct to focus on quality rather than on speed and efficiency.
It is much easier to achieve your company’s goals if your decision making, your organisational structure and all other elements of the way the company operates are aligned with your goal and your strategy. It makes it even easier if that alignment happens effortlessly, because it is just part of the company’s DNA to do things in that way. In other words, if working and acting in a way that is congruent with your strategy and goals is a natural expression of your company’s character.
Building the company’s character around goals and strategy also makes the company more “mission focused” and better at problem solving. When things get busy, as they inevitably will, the organisation does not fall apart because everyone knows what is important and what they need to focus on. Everyone works to the same priorities (the company’s real strategic priorities, not what is written on some motivational poster on the wall), which makes for a far more efficient machine in those “drop everything” moments.
Employee and Customer Experience
When the company’s character is aligned with its goals, the company’s behaviour becomes much more authentic – when you say something you mean it and your actions match your words. No more empty slogans, hollow promises or meaningless policies.
This authenticity is very attractive to customers. You say what you mean with confidence and conviction. Whether your focus is on customer service or on value for money or on quality, they will see that you are genuinely dedicated to delivering that.
The same is true for employees. These days people are increasingly looking to find meaning in their work and an employer who is truly authentic goes a long way towards providing that. That in turn translates into greater employee engagement, greater efficiency and higher retention rates.
Find Out More
If you would like to read about how we help to evaluate and manage a company’s character, please look at this page. To learn about us and our story, look here. To read some of the articles and posts that we have written, click here.
We hope you enjoy looking at our site and learning about Aletheian Advisors and what we do.