Smart Marketing -
Article Nine

Good HR will get Both Left and Right Brain Thinkers

Regular “Smart marketing” readers will know that the Customer-Centric Intelligence philosophy can and should be integrated within all parts of a company.  A truly customer-centric company incorporates customer desires and values in both operational and marketing areas, ranging from backroom supply-chain, financial and digital asset management, through to all customer touchpoints whether they be product or service.

However, one area not often considered is whether a company’s staff can effectively adopt the Customer-Centric Intelligence philosophy, or whether the philosophy will fail to ‘spark’ in the absence of true customer empathy.  For one example of a company which has this customer-focused ‘spark’,  we cite one of our clients whose senior marketing staff will sometimes spend days at a time re-examining and probing our research, often phoning the relevant researchers to discuss customer needs.  It’s no surprise that this company’s marketing staff and campaigns have won several prestigious marketing awards over the years, and enjoyed substantial growth.

This doesn’t come about by accident however, and even a company which has tried to hire the best personnel may still struggle to see the Customer-Centric Intelligence philosophy enthusiastically accepted and incorporated into all levels.

One key cause of this dilemma is the psychological make-up of most senior staff, especially in larger companies. This make-up can be conceptualized in many ways, ranging from the Hermann Brain Dominance Map through to Edward De Bono’s famous six categories.  What all these personality profiles have in common is the left brain / right brain dominance underlying it all.  For example there is the more creative, “conceptualiser” point of view, and opposite to that is the more disciplined, planning, “stable” way of thinking.

When one recognizes that most big, successful businesses, such as the banks, insurance companies and legal firms typically dominating any big-city skyline, thrive on the left-brain stable thinkers, it is no surprise that the more creative, imaginative and conceptual right-brain thinkers are sparse at the top.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with this of course - stable thinkers tend to be more logical in their approach, their needs and the way they understand things.  To get to the financial bottom-line some “stable” processes must necessarily be used: stable thinking like becoming “leaner and meaner”, and trimming out  the “creative” thinkers whose work may have intangible results and who are hard to pin down to a logical worth.  The fact that such “creative types” are estimated to comprise only around 20% of society also contributes to their scarcity at senior management levels.

As a result, most large firms tend to have more of a “stable” culture than a “creative” one.  When the time comes that creativity is truly required, then it can simply be bought in on an ad hoc basis – just witness how many creatives within the advertising industry can become “stars” and brands in their own right.  Therin lies a key problem – where creativity is boxed-off into the realm of advertising, instead of being incorporated into daily business operations as of right. 

And why do this?

The issue here is to realise that these two groups are reflective of the people both inside and outside of the office.  These two groups have different needs in business and personality.  They are appealed to and made happy by different things. If a successful Customer-Centric Intelligence approach is to be achieved, businesses need to consider the amalgamation of both these thinking and emotional types into the customer analysis, the marketing framework, the data warehouse, the logistics…all the different areas in the organisation. 

Another Synovate client has made a good start at this – a company renowned in New Zealand for innovation.  This market leader specifically seeks and hires those right-brain, creative people for certain positions; the people who can push the envelope, both because it’s their way of thinking but also because they are given license to do so.

In summary, readers must accept that the Customer-Centric Intelligence philosophy cannot just be implemented as a good idea at the weekly work-in-progress meeting.  In some cases, implementing this approach will need a long-term human resources strategy to be implemented to achieve this goal.  Job titles such as “Manager of New Ideas” and “Manager of the Future” were once the luxury of the IT industry enjoying the tech-boom – but the underlying concepts are worth considering again.