Open [Action] - Part 1 -
Company values revealed by taking action

Hello everyone. I am Hayashi, the representative of Monosus.

Last time, I talked about "opening," the central concept of Open Marketing.

When incorporating the idea of Open Marketing into your company, the first thing we want you to do is "Open Action."
I would like to talk about...

At Open Marketing, we ultimately aim to have the company's vision and philosophy seamlessly shared both inside and outside the company.
To get there, you have to go through a few processes.
I believe that the first step in this process is to "open up our own actions."

Until we reach the point of "opening up to action"

The reason why I came to the idea that "taking action" is the first step is
Actually, it was a long process for me too.

As a consultant, I have received advice from many managers and executives on their company strategies, visions, and business strategies when creating marketing plans for companies.
I also had the opportunity to hear directly about the measures being taken to put this idea into practice.

The stories of each business owner were fascinating and captivating.
Putting it into a marketing plan was very rewarding.
And it has produced many great results.
The business owners were pleased, and the site became more lively with increased inquiries and sales.

But at the same time, I felt a slight sense of unease.
The increased number of inquiries was exhausting the staff, and in rare cases, there were dissatisfied customers who said the service was not what they expected.

At the time I didn't understand why.
The number of customers is increasing, business is improving, and business owners are happy.
Despite this, there was always a sense of unease that I couldn't shake.

After many years, the true nature of that discomfort gradually became clear.

In a word,
"There is a gap between what management says and what is happening on the ground."

Even back then, I placed importance on the company's philosophy and vision,
And we reflected that very carefully in our marketing plan.
Since I started my own business, I have also been helping out as a business owner myself.
I think one aspect of this was that they had an extremely high level of understanding of what the CEOs and executives were saying.
He was also skilled at communicating this in an easy-to-understand way to people who were hearing about the company for the first time.

The CEO will talk about something very appealing, and by making it easier to understand and adding some embellishment,
The marketing initiative proved successful.
However, this also created a gap with the reality on the ground.

This is because, when you interview business managers, many of them talk about their visions and strategies in very compelling terms, but this is not what is actually happening on the ground right now.
Rather, the manager wants to achieve something in two or three years.
In many cases, people are confusing what is currently being done on the ground .

This requires the desire of the management to "have it done",
There is an expectation that "it should be possible,"
They talk as if it is happening right now, not as if they hope it will happen in a few years.

As a result, marketing plans and initiatives that reflect the management's vision will greatly raise customer expectations and bring about marketing success.
This not only affects customer expectations, but also the workplace.
Marketing initiatives that reflect the vision and strategy of management are delivered to many people through various media, and potential customers who see them will naturally have expectations about the content, so we have no choice but to do the same.
However, this is an ideal that management talks about, and not what the field can or is currently doing.
This creates a gap between what you expect and what you receive.

In other words, many of the things that managers call their visions are things they want to achieve in the future.
It's not something we can offer right now.

Having a clear and easy-to-understand vision and strategy is great for employees because it helps them know which direction to go in.
For customers, it has the aspect of making them expect something that has not yet been provided,
It also had a dangerous side.
It is also important to understand that this is having an impact on those in the field who must make this a reality.

To bridge the gap between management and the field.

In order to narrow this gap as much as possible while still carrying out effective marketing, we began by getting a detailed look at what was happening on the ground.
The problem is that there is a gap between what was expected and what was provided.
If you only express what you can offer now, there should be no problems.

However, it is impossible for us, as outsiders, to be present at all sites.
Also, our visit has some impact on the site,
They won't act as they normally would.

What we did was to ask the recipients, rather than the initiators, about what had actually happened.
In other words, we decided to interview customers who use the company's services or products about specific events that occurred.

This type of method is widely used for group interviews and user interviews, but what we focused on during the interview was not to ask about the individual's impressions, but to gather as many facts as possible about "events" that the person actually experienced.

If we look at the incident in a different light, there is the service provider that caused it.
That means there is action.
We looked at the behavior and why they did it.

Specifically, we read the results of the interviews together with people from various departments of the company and tried to understand what actions were behind the incident.
Then I asked them in detail why they took that action.

The company's values are reflected in its actions.

I discovered a lot of things through this workshop.
The most important points can be summarised in the following three points:

Today I would like to explain points 1 and 2 in more detail.

1. There is a pattern to the actions taken within a company, even in small things.

When written down, it seems so obvious that you might just skim over it, but
In fact, I think most people are aware of this, but overlook its importance.
There are patterns, for better or worse, in the behavior of people within a company.
This is because within the organization, there are certain behaviors that are considered good and certain behaviors that are considered bad.

A familiar example is that there are companies where being late is tolerated and companies where it is not.
There are companies where you greet others and companies where you don't. There are companies where you can smoke and companies where you can't.
For example, there are companies where private conversations are allowed and companies where they are not allowed.

While there may be clear rules for these actions,
There aren't many cases where everything is specified in detail by rules.
(There are some companies that have smoking bans.)

Similarly, patterns emerge in the way we provide services and carry out our work.

Of course, there are cases where it is clearly stated in the company manual or training,
As with the previous example, the percentage of things shared within a company that are not verbalized but rather non-verbally is greater.

2. Uncovering patterns in behavior reveals the values that underlie a company's thinking

As I looked more closely at the regularity of this behavior, I noticed something else.
It was the fact that the various rules of behavior had a consistency, like a single policy.
Once we realized this, we looked at each of these actions from the perspective of "why did they do it?" and asked the people who were taking those actions why they did it.

It turns out that behind that behavior lies a consistent set of values that the company holds dear.
This could also be rephrased as the company's personality or humanity.

I think this will be easier to understand if you think about it in terms of yourself.

For example, I will interview people around you and ask them for specific examples of actions you have taken.
As we watch the episode together, I will ask you why you acted the way you did.
That's when a consistent set of rules emerge.
It is your values and the personality and humanity that they reflect.

The same can be said for businesses as well.
Of course, there are differences between companies and individuals,
I suspect the same is true for many businesses.
If I have the opportunity, I would like to write in more detail about why the same thing can be said about companies and individuals.

The key here is for companies to take stock of their own actions.
It's about realizing our own true values.
This seems obvious in retrospect, but
It was something we ourselves didn't even realize.

During the workshop, we closely examine the actions that led to the incident and the reasons for them, and the company's values gradually emerge.
When you do this, the manager may suddenly start speaking.
"This is what I wanted to do. I started this company to make this happen."

Having conducted this workshop at many companies, we have become convinced that:
In most companies, the values of the management are already reflected in the workplace.
However, this was not due to the vision expressed by the management.

The truth of the matter was that this was exactly the kind of behavior that managers normally take.
What will the manager praise, what will he get angry about, and what will he say?
By repeating this process, values are slowly but surely being disseminated throughout the company.
In other words, it is the values of the company's management that govern the company's actions.

However, it is very rare for managers themselves to be able to put their values into words.
That's why, even though these are the manager's own values, when they are verbalized in the workshop, they become excited and can't help but say, "This is what I wanted to do."

By taking action, the values of the company and its management can be
It's becoming more open.

This has gotten long, so I'll end it here for today.
Next time, I will talk about the point I was not able to cover today: " 3. Customers are sensitive to and judge a company's values through their behavior ."
I would like to focus my talk on this point.

Until next time,