The link between company personality and choices for future direction
‘In the end, he was successful because he was the person Greenbury wanted to succeed him. And that is his problem – he is still seen as a product of an old regime at a company that now needs radical change’ (‘Leading Marks after the sparks’, The Sunday Times, 29 August 1999).
‘But there are a set or principles by which you will do it which you must never depart from, because that’s the soul of the business . . . You have to lead by inspiration but you’ve also got to lead people with their agreement. It’s not “command and control” – “you’re in this job, so here’s your brief; do it, or you’re going to get fired”’ (Niall Fitzgerald of Unilever reported in ‘Time is running out for the clocking- in mentality’, The Times, 18 September 1999).
‘Most mergers are based on the idea of “Let’s increase revenues” . . . The nature of the problem is not so much that there’s open warfare between the two sides. It’s that the cultures don’t meld quickly enough to take advantage of the opportunities. In the meantime, the marketplace has moved on’ (Colin Price of McKinsey reported in
‘Marrying in haste’, Financial Times, 12 April 2000).
‘Strategic vision is the area that causes most tension among board members’ (Research findings of Professor Andrew Kakabadse of Cran- field University reported in ‘Weak directors costing millions’, Sunday Business, 11 June 2000).
‘When Lord Simpson describes Marconi as ‘a big start-up’, he is referring to a cultural revolution as well as a series of asset swaps. He wants employees to innovate so as to share in big future rewards, not plod unthinkingly towards next month’s pay packet . . . Rewards, and not costs, now loom large in assessing investment projects’ (‘A quest for commitment’, Financial Times, 20 June 2000).
‘The sale was a symbolic break from the culture created 78 years ago by the Digest’s founder’ (‘How Ryder ‘re-engineered’ a flagging Reader’s Digest’, Sunday Business, 6 August 2000).
‘We felt that if you could get the culture, the mentality of a small bank into a big one, then you’d have a real winner’ (John Stewart of Woolwich reported in ‘Using the Woolwich arsenal to fire Barclays’
revolution’, Sunday Business, 13 August 2000).
‘I don’t use any podiums or speeches, I just speak from the heart about the business and what I’m trying to do’ (Chris Mellor of Anglian Water reported in ‘Vision and values at the heart’, Financial Times, 24 August 2000).
‘This is an unusual culture . . . This is an empowerment culture, a customer-focused culture, a culture of equals . . . This is an unusual culture. We believe there’s nothing we can’t achieve. The confidence
Contemporary Reports 85 here is extremely high and we almost never miss a goal. We do it not by not working harder but by saying how do we do it differently.
And we have a healthy paranoia; we worry about everything’ ( John T. Chambers of Cisco Systems reported in ‘Cisco’s e-vangelist’, The Sunday Telegraph, 27 August 2000).
‘It is very important that we have a mission and value that everyone in the company buys into’ (Jac Nasser of Ford Motor Company reported in ‘Industry’s beacon begins to flicker’, Financial Times, 17 October 2000).
‘By removing so many managers, we got rid of a lot of dead wood and totally changed the culture of the company in the process’ (Sir Iain Vallance of BT reported in ‘Ringing the BT changes’, Sunday Business, 12 November 2000).
‘As soon as someone wears a tie they expect an office and as soon as you put them in an office they expect a secretary’ (Stelios Haji-Ioannou of easyJet reported in ‘A one-man brand with big plans’, Financial Times, 18 November 2000).
‘We are an engineering company: we know how to build ourselves from the inside . . . You may call me a social romantic, but I do not believe financial markets should play such a strong role’ (Heinrich von Pierer of Siemens reported in ‘A pragmatic capitalist and social romantic’, Financial Times, 27 November 2000).
‘Mr Gent is a rare personality in the bland world of telecommunica- tions. A mixture of stubbornness, charm and good timing was vital to his year of deal making: stubbornness to try what everyone else said was impossible; charm to persuade the investment community to keep on writing him blank cheques; and the timing – or luck – to buy with shares before the bubble burst and mop up the rest with cash. Much of the rest of his personality remains shrouded by the clichés that follow him everywhere’ (‘Dealmaker king facing trial by management’, Financial Times, 26 January 2001).
‘The real challenge was the different spirit of the two companies’ (A former insider comment on the merger between Hoechst and Rhone Poulenc in ‘“Project Europe” creates champion for a continent’, Financial Times, 9 February 2001).
The identity, the culture, the personality of an organization is recog- nized as a key determinant of competitive advantage. Its ability to conceive
a way forward and its ability to be different from the competition is determined by the way that the organization thinks, by its values and beliefs, by its willingness to engage with the customers in an individual- istic, innovative and novel way. This can lead to change or renewal under new leadership. This often requires change by all the members of an organization leading to potential conflict between the old and the new, and this is documented by countless explanations of change man- agement. However, the role of strategic positioning and the possible resultant confusion of identity from a customer’s point of view are often overlooked or treated as secondary to organizational or managerial interests and operational positioning.