We were recently invited to offer an opinion on a number of options available to an organisation as it planned for the future. Sorry to be so cryptic but I don’t want subjectivity to get in the way of my argument. It seems that upon reaching a certain age some people loose or choose the ability to think beyond their own purlieu. It doesn’t feel right to me so I’m not going to entertain it, is their position. Logic doesn’t enter the proceedings; ad hominem argument always does. Unable or unwilling to consider any position other than their own, they usually attack the person opposing the status quo. It doesn’t feel right; if you are someone who feels you’d feel the same way. Codswallop. With the exception of psychopaths and tax inspectors everybody feels. It’s just that some of us can put our feelings aside for the greater good. Oops! I appear to have turned into an old person attacking the arguer rather than the argument. Let me try again. Many years ago I worked on the account of a national tyre and exhaust retailer. They were a big fish but were a long way behind Kwik Fit and so tasked their agency to come up with a strategy to address this. Considerable research led to the findings that people didn’t really trusts fast fit centres and what the market place really needed was someone trustworthy - like Marks and Spencer.
Now there were a couple things that didn’t sit right with me, green horn though I was. Firstly, if people genuinely didn’t trust fast fit centres how were Kwik Fit making such a success of their business? And secondly, this was around the time that Marks and Spencer was nose diving into irrelevance and major losses.
The fact that people didn’t trust fast fit centres I don’t find surprising. There are some immutable facts about visiting these places: it’s going to cost you money; the coffee is awful; the tea is not really tea; mechanics can out-sneer a teenage girl and most of us wouldn’t know if our tyres were legal or not, let alone whether our brake disks met the manufacturers recommended minimum thickness. We have no idea if we are being ripped off but we still part with our hard earned. The same way that many of us put up with a poor meal in a restaurant and complain about it in private after we’ve paid the bill in full. Being asked if we trust fast-fit centres by a clipboard wielding ‘official’ is our chance to get back at them, let them know how we really feel.
The fact that people (the account and planning directors in particular) had declared a Marks and Spencer of fast-fit centres to be the way forward was genuinely surprising. It took Marks & Sparks quite a few years to turn their fortunes. (Of course any red blooded male could have told them that having a French supermodel in her underwear appear in all of your TV ads was the way to go.) What people were really harking after was a time gone by. Marks & Spencer were no longer relevant. The buying public had gone elsewhere; maybe reluctantly, but there was no turning back. Despite what they might declare in questionnaires. And perhaps there in lies the problem: to truly glean our attitudes and feelings from a questionnaire is a costly and time consuming process. few companies have the budget and few people in the street have the inclination to be psychometrically analaysed in the interest of market research.
So how does an organisation deal with change? Undoubtedly the opinions of the ‘doesn’t feel right’ brigade are just as valid as mine. So do we just wait for them to die and then move our organisation forward? I’m not a fan of waiting for anything. I am an advocate of strong leadership. Change and be damned. Around 5% of us are totally opposed to change, 10% embrace revolutionary change, while 20% of us welcome a combination of revolution and evolution. Most of us (the remaining 65%) accept small changes as long as they are referenced to the status quo. So what does this all mean? Well you can’t please all the people all the time. In fact one of the two ‘all or nothing’ groups will always be aggrieved. So change and be damned. Of course your stakeholder base might have a higher than average number of luddites, but statistically speaking most of us are going to go with the flow as long as the flow is nice and steady. Of course once things begin to change for the better you have a frame of reference for bolder changes.
So what happened to that fast-fit company? They’ve bounced from agency to agency over the past 10 years, doubtless briefing them all that they want to be the Marks & Spencer of fast-fit. Meanwhile M&S is once again a success story so the original market research might finally prove to be correct. I await the ad with baited breath: Noemie Lenoir wiggling beneath a Ford Mondeo wearing nothing but a basque and a mechanic’s sneer. Marvelous.
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