April 2004

Identity - What is It?
Distribution & Service Company

Values - What’s Important to Us?
Customers ~ Purchasing Price (Suppliers) ~ Profitability ~Workforce
Beliefs – What do We Believe about What’s Important?
Need Customers to survive and prosper ~ Need to know Customers’ requirements (close relationship) ~ Need Customer loyalty ~ Need good Suppliers - competitive price and availability (close relationship) ~ Need efficiency to produce profitability - Control costs ~ Need loyal Workforce - To be fair and honest with them ~ Competent ~ Need to utilise their values to get commitment ~ Flexibility

Capabilities - What Skills & Knowledge do We Need?
Technical knowledge ~ Management Skills ~ Company knowledge ~ Knowledge of Customer Needs ~ Market (price) knowledge

Behaviour - What is it We Do/Should be Doing?
Supply products and knowledge for Customer requirements ~ Should have Customer focus – Research needed into Customer needs ~ Resource to meet Customer needs – profitability impact?

How is Our Environment?
Internal: relaxed and comfortable
External: Highly competitive ~ Increasing Disloyalty ~ Price (not Quality) driven ~ Decline in OEMs ~ Customers want more service and supplier flexibility

This was the result of a Neurological Levels-based analysis I facilitated a few years ago for the managing director and marketing manager of a small distributor of parts for industrial machinery in the Leeds area of the United Kingdom.

The colour coding is:-

• black for purely factual descriptions
• red for things seen as problematic
• blue for things they felt they were very good at
• purple for something that seemed OK but almost certainly had hidden implications

Although they seemed secure enough in their Identity - they refused several requests to reconsider their Identity statement! - clearly their Identity and the Values & Beliefs that came from the Identity were not producing the Behaviour needed to adapt to a changing world. Primarily the Company had an important Value in customer loyalty at a time when Environmental feedback told them customer disloyalty was a major increasing factor. To hold onto the Value of customer loyalty when the trend was the opposite either required a major intervention (to alter the Environment) or a change in Values (and possibly Identity) to adapt to the changed Environment.

Although I had a relatively productive relationship with this client for 2-3 years, in the end I withdrew my services because they would not tackle the Identity-Environment issue. The last I heard of them, their regional market share was plummeting and survival-as-an-issue was beginning to beckon. I sometimes wonder if the very secure internal Environment they enjoyed made them complacent about the dangers inherent in their rapidly-changing external Environment...?

A client which did respond to my appeal to tackle and reappraise the Identity issue is now one of the foremost private-public sector organisations in the Humber sub-region and is increasingly likely to influence many key decisions.

Sometimes, though, Identity and Values & Beliefs can be aligned with the Environment but it's other levels which are out of kilter.

A couple of years ago, I facilitated a Neuroligical Levels-based exercise with one of the consultancy organisations I sometimes work through. Our Identity was appropriate to our Environment and Values & Beliefs were strong; but, in analysis, we lacked some Skills & Knowledge necessary to accommodate imminent changes in our Environment; As a result, we invested in the training & development which enabled this consultancy to remain a serious contender in that field.

While it can often seem strange to the uninitiated to be introduced to the model in a organisation's boardroom, it really is one of the most potent analytical tools available to key decision-makers!