Culture, the last advantage of the company?
A bunch of people are questioning the idea of the company as it exists today. It’s not surprising given that companies are now appearing to have failed us massively. In addition, the main advantage of companies – the ability to efficiently coordinate groups of appropriately skilled people in solving a problem – has been effectively negated by the scale and infrastructure provided by the internet. In fact, when you create a list of core attributes of companies, you quickly realise that they are almost all matched (and in some cases beaten) by the potential of self-organised groups.
They are matched in all respects except one. I think the last remaining advantage that companies have over groups of self-organised people is culture.
While it’s definitely true that self-organised groups can have a distinct culture (think WOW), I’d argue that these cultures don’t actually have the qualities that create success for the group. Typically, they are guidelines for fitting in rather than also being conditions for inspiring and cultivating innovation. The truly successful corporate cultures create a clear sense of belonging and they also create a climate where assumptions can be challenged, where individuals can grow, and where people have the freedom to fail so that real innovation can still happen.
These latter qualities aren’t typically cultivated by self-organised groups because they are far more important in creating long-term individual job satisfaction than they are in efficiently pursuing a goal or completing a task. In fact, promoting individual advancement strikes directly at the heart of the egalitarian ethic that drives a lot of collaborative efforts. Additionally, self-organised groups must stress the points of similarity between members, celebrating their differences would result in chaos.
For this reason, I think it’s no accident that the most innovative companies in the world are now held together not by a central market positioning, but instead by an internal core purpose and an incredibly strong sense of internal culture. Indeed, the stronger, more distinct the culture is, the less likely it is that a self-organised group can duplicate it.
I think this has fairly dramatic implications upon branding and brand definition. In the past, brands were built around an external promise to customers. This fact placed customer knowledge and insight at the forefront of the skills required to develop brands. However, it’s entirely possible to create an internal purpose and culture with absolutely no customer knowledge and insight. Knowing what customers think and want is far less relevant to creating culture than understanding what will motivate and inspire employees to deliver at the highest possible level. They are related skills, but they aren’t exactly the same. In fact, I’d argue that the skills that rise to the fore of creating modern brands are internal operations-focused skills (like HR) rather than external marketing-focused skills.
Finally, this is yet another assault on the traditional agency role as “steward of the brand.” I think the evidence is mounting that drastic rethinking of both the role and skills required to be a marketing partner are required. I’m not sure that any of us (including ZJ) have truly embraced the full implications of the changes that are happening.