“There are only six types of organisation in the world,” an ex-colleague was fond of telling me. At the time, I disagreed because I thought there were many more. Now, thirty years later, I still think he was wrong, but because I’ve come to believe there are really only two: those that makes things easy, and those that make things hard.
Irrespective of sector, geography, fame, whatever, the businesses that make things easy invariably do better. They have a clear focus on what they do, for whom, how they do it, and why. They make every interaction simpler, and therefore better; they present themselves more simply, so people “get” them more quickly; they seem to have fewer moving parts, so create cohesion rather than friction.
I saw this clearly while working with a national coach business that was trying to change both its culture and its commercial performance, committed 100% to the new vision, exceeded all performance criteria, and even had a “simple” element at the core of their strategy:
- We changed the way the business thought about itself: “From a coach business moving people, to a people business moving coaches”
- We gave everyone one single promise: “Make things easy”.
- We simplified the brand architecture: the parent brand to lead on all levels, with specific service or product descriptors where needed.
- We re-designed the customer experience and communication into a language and way that customers would use themselves.
- We aligned the reward system with the behaviours and priorities the business wanted to encourage.
Did it work? The CEO shared a seminar with me on the subject of brand driving culture change, and told the audience, “If anyone tells you that you can’t make money while you’re running a culture change programme, they’re lying. We made record profits in Year One, and are on course to beat that in Year Two.”
Looking back, I don’t think that success came from running a culture change programme. It came from making the organisation simpler. Everyone understood the same purpose. Decisions became easier. The customer experience became more consistent.
Performance, culture and reputation began reinforcing one another instead of competing with one another.
That’s what I now call organisational coherence.