Company Culture & The Public Image

The recent article series that I published about Sales and the dysfunction prevalent in many sales departments got me thinking about business culture and structures.

I spent a substantial amount of time considering the threats of specialization to the health of departments within a company. Upon further reflection, I realized that the way we divide departments and the lines of communication that we establish between them have a fundamental connection to public perception.

In general, the existence of departments and the sub-divisions therein stem from a view toward efficacy and productivity. The threat there lies in the latent value-assumptions that those divisions reflect and promote. Since separations of power based on traditional corporate hierarchies are out of touch with today’s values, they can disrupt a business’s internal culture and create discrepancies between that culture and the business’s public image.

In keeping with my theme of Sales redesign, I distilled a few thoughts to start a conversation about the connections among specialization, company culture, and the public image.

The Threat of Specialization

In the two-part series on Sales redesign, I discussed the need for specialists. Historically, companies have improved productivity and quality by designing specialized positions for each necessary step in a production line. The people assigned to those specialized positions are called specialists.

The threat inherent in specialization is that each specialist operates in a vacuum. The specialist can indeed minimize error, enhance quality, and gain intimate knowledge of their step; however, these benefits are also blinders. The narrowness of focus inhibits a purview of the organization as a whole.

To ameliorate this, the company must deliberately promote awareness of the bigger picture among all of its employees.

The Artist’s Eye

Like an artist painting a picture, sometimes we have to take a step back and look at what we’ve done. The complaint that companies—especially corporate entities—are soul sucking arises in part because of a lack of perspective.

Certainly, the nature and dealings of some companies are questionable. And yet, there are some that are doing great things that few people know about, including the people in the company itself. I do not want to endorse or deride any specific companies here, but I think the point is well taken.

The Call is Coming from Inside the House

The people who spend hours, days, weeks, and months within a company will unavoidably discuss the company in public. 

Today, public take many forms. The avenues and platforms of public discourse are places where a narrative can take on a life of its own. If the company does not promote an internal narrative that conveys a broad and multi-faceted perspective of the company, then the public narrative will be even narrower. 

This internal narrative has a profound connection to the threat of specialization. If specialists feel an overarching sense of purpose, their connection to each other and to the company will grow stronger. More to the point, with this increase in connectedness, the broader perspective will naturally come into focus. 

This internal narrative will spill out into public view, shaping discourse and perceptions, and eventually, customer value and experience.

All this must start from within the company though.

As Within, So Without

In business, there are two competing structural approaches: Inside-Out and Outside-In. The Inside-Out approach places the locus of success within the company, e.g., company resources, company culture, etc. The Outside-In approach places the locus of success outside the company, e.g., customer experience, customer value, etc. Each of these approaches manifests itself in different corporate practices and corporate goals.

Inside or Outside

The Outside-In driven CEO may devote most of her time to marketing, enhancing delivery, product quality, and making every facet of the business user-friendly. 

The Inside-Out driven CEO may devote most of his time to harnessing internal resources, reducing corporate expenses, and implementing procedural overhauls. 

To me, these approaches are two sides of the same coin. In either case, choosing one over the other can put you in a precarious position because you risk ignoring a crucial human element of your company.

The Grand Canyon

Specialization alone creates distances among people, departments, and the public. By forsaking one business approach for the other you either ignore your customers or your employees. This can enlarge the distance among the people who make your company what it is. 

What’s worse, your customers can sense this because today, nothing stays private for long. 

The Same but Different

The distinctions between internal and external, private and public are blurred, if not eroded. Entities of all sorts struggle to plug up holes through which private information can escape into the public view.

To some extent, this is a good thing. Transparency is valued at all levels of complexity, from interpersonal interactions to international relations. In the context of business, rather than combat this social phenomenon, why not harness it to shape the public narrative about your company?

Bridge the Gap

When you uphold transparency, cultivate fruitful lines of communication within the company, and promote customer reciprocity, all as company values, it aligns your specialists with your public image, thereby creating a shared internal and public narrative. 

Inside the Company

When it comes to the gaps that emerge between specialists in separate departments or in the same departments but who work in virtual isolation from one another, the goal should be to create fertile lines of communication, enriched by pervasive company values, and aimed at reaping nourishment from the insights of employees and customers alike.

Outside the Company

This can be done inside of the company and it can be done outside of it too. The juncture of these two lines of communication is a bridge that connects a company to its customer by way of its specialists. By bridging this gap, you invite customers to participate in shaping the company, building loyalty, confidence, and relatability.

The Company as Human

What I envision here is not some Elysian corporate environment where the bottom-line and productivity are sidelined to hold Kumbayah circles. In fact, many companies are already instilling the values of shared learning, creative exploration, and customer feedback into their business models.

What I do envision is a corporate environment that thinks functionally and humanly about its resources and its public image. For some time now, the jury has been out on whether companies are human or non-human entities. These steps toward letting our companies be represented by our employees and letting our employees represent our companies will certainly affect the debate. 

There are tremendous benefits, both in terms of productivity and in terms of business success, to extolling the human elements in our companies. 

Conclusion

The Outside-In and Inside-out approaches create a false dichotomy. This dichotomy expands the rifts created by specialization, increasing its threats, and further disconnecting companies from their employees and their customers.

Companies that want to have greater control over their public perception should start from within, promoting company values that align themselves with employee and customer interests, so that their products can enjoy the benefits of good public will.

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