Involvism – Method 4: Cohesion
This is the 4th method of Involvism. The entire series published to date can be found by clicking here.
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Mantra
The cohesive link of beliefs, values, approaches and strategy across all company activity is an fundamental component of enabling value, efficiency, productivity, profitability and scale. Activity in the public facing part of organisations must match the mindset and methodology of internal structures. Conversely, there must be the same cohesion between the way of working and the approach to citizens. Only when all parts of an organisation are working cohesively can real benefit be gained.
Key Actions
1. Formalise key values, offerings and ethos into a clear, understandable core direction and proposition
2. Familiarise all sectors of an organisation in the above direction and proposition, encouraging belief and inheritance of core
3. Focus especially on the silos that act without link to the core – adding flexibility and agility to their operations
4. Follow the guidance of citizens in adjusting the core direction and proposition – become jointly accountable with them in enabling a cohesive approach
Involvist Viewpoint
It is very common to see an organisation with a public facing approach that has little or no relation to internal belief.
In the days of broadcast control, it was very difficult for citizens to:
a) Identify delta between what was said and what was done or,
b) Transmit such identification to others
Until we were well connected in the developed world, the above points enabled companies to operate with two dissimilar approaches. Few people would realise and even less would talk about it.
Now though, we have an increased ability to discover how companies are run and cross-match that with the outward approach in public. Be it through easy access to public records, employee blogs or facebook pages – it’s not hard to construct a fairly accurate account of what is really going on within an organisation. A company whose outbound message is one of ‘freedom’ yet runs its business in a dictatorial way, is more easily found out and the ’story’ to citizens doesn’t really add up.
Involvism suggests that the model of disconnect isn’t optimum in the world we now live in. What is called for in the 4th method is cohesion between what is said and what is done.
Unfortunately for companies who have never needed to worry about this, the implementation of cohesion requires significantly broad activity across an entire organisation – so much so that this Involvism method may well look like science fiction. Nevertheless, to operate in the most valuable, efficient, productive, profitable and scalable way, cohesion is a mandatory method – regardless of required upheaval.
The key to understanding cohesion is to start with seeking clarity.
Clarity breeds understanding of what business you are actually in, what value you really bring, and what opportunities are concretely there.
Many companies have numerous departments, divisions or data centres who have little if anything to do with one another. Many companies contain other companies with subset P&Ls which are managed by people who, understandably, have little care for wether another company’s profit is healthy or not.
This environment makes it difficult for a cohesive system to be in place as priorities are not linked together.
We see companies who have great strap-lines and soundbites – maybe even throw in a unified colour scheme – but are fighting for different corners and have little or no understanding what it is they are really doing that is of value.
It is of paramount importance that once clarity and understanding is achieved, the sectors within an organisation need to be totally familiar and believing in the core approaches and values set out.
It is unlikely that the way of working can remain unchanged if the current way doesn’t fit squarely within the core belief. This is especially common in disparate parts of an organisation that is on linked in a tertiary way to the main business. However, these are often the parts that have the most negative effect when acting independently to the core approach as everything is as strong as its weakest link.
Even when there is cohesion within an organisation and its outbound communication, the final element is to enable input and guidance from citizens. Then, we would see truly cohesive outbound and inbound behaviour that is monumentally hard to compete with and replicate.
Cohesion is not the easiest of things to implement – however, the world is too fast and too connected to seriously consider an approach that is in any way disjointed. Become a cohesive energy and you will be monumentally empowered to enable value, efficiency, productivity, profitability and scale.
