Dialogue: A Universal Business Strategy
By Naagha Shyamala R
An anthropologist researching the customs and life of an African tribe designs a running race for the children in the tribe. It is a running race towards a basket full of candies under a tree and the winner gets the entire basket of candies. When the anthropologist signaled for the race to start, all the children held each other’s hands and ran together towards the tree and shared the candies in the basket. The anthropologist asked the children why they did what they did and they replied “Ubuntu”- which means “I am what I am because of who we all are”. It simply means that one cannot be happy when everyone else is sad. [1]
This story has often been used as an altruistic, moral story of “goodness” and “generosity”. But, the extension of it is the underlying and indisputable fact that all the children involved in the situation had a “win” by working together. As we further explore why that would be important, another age-old story of the race between the Hare and the Turtle takes the stage.
The race between the hare and the turtle, in which the turtle wins due to its consistency is just one part of the story. It extends to a second and third lap, until the hare carries the turtle on its back on land and the turtle carries the hare on its back in the river so that both could win the race.
Both these fables talk about a win-win situation, but we can also see another win, the strengthening friendship and the bond among all the stakeholders in the situation. The third win is value creation here, which is one of the principles of the Dialogic Method.
Considering an intangible factor to be a value is a contradictory opinion to the conventional and limited perspectives that equate value only to tangible and quantitative factors. But, those in the business sector, considered to be the most value-driven (monetary value) industry, would see through the tangibility which the third win transforms to. Especially, the current business scenario, where last bench friendships and brunch networkings have given rise to co-founders of successful startups, makes it challenging to refute the fact that the strengthening of relationships is a value which is the fuel to drive more value creation. But the power of co-creation largely depends on the parties’ choices to work through the situation and most importantly, work together through the situation. Bringing people with different self-interests together, especially in a value-driven (monetary value), success-driven and individual wins-driven sector requires an effective and sustainable tool such as dialogue.
But…
Why is Dialogue a smart way of doing business?
“The Power of Co-Creation” authored by Venkat Ramaswamy and Francis Gouillart[2] brings to our attention that the conventional way of enterprising, where the customers are just researched, observed, analysed, marketed and almost always kept passive is rapidly becoming obsolete now. To combat this obsolescence, enterprises are shifting from innovation “for” the customers to innovation “by” the customers through active engagements with them. And the value creation is strengthened only when the other stakeholders of the organisation such as the employees, suppliers, partners also play an active role rather than just buying into the touch points decided and designed by the managerial creamy layer.
As the transactions are moving from receiving and obliging to engaging and co-creating, Dialogue becomes crucial to start and sustain these engagements that lead to co-creation. Dialogues are not only bringing the stakeholders together, but also the ideas and information that exist with them. There are very few things more valuable for business in a data-driven world, than uncovering and processing information. The case of Starbucks overtaking Coca-Cola[3] as the most popular brand on Facebook in 2009 after creating a platform to engage with customers’ ideas, is a perfect testament to the value of dialogue and the information it brings.
KPIs- Key “Profit” Indicators
Starbucks launched a platform called “MyStarbucksIdea.com” which attracted 65,000 ideas within a year through discussions hosted by fifty active idea partners from Starbucks and who will take the ideas back to the internal team. Starbucks approved 50 distinct ideas among these and including healthy food options in the menu was a major initiative. A new range of nutritious and tasty sandwiches was just a start which moved on to removing artificial trans-fat and flavours, high-fructose corn syrup and replacing them with wholesome food options after idea-partnering with the customers. This idea incorporation resulted in some of the healthy food items rising to the top of Starbucks food sales chart within just a few weeks. The free flow of ideas and information through the engagements here, reduced the potential cost and risk involved in passive and closeted customer research while also piloting the creation of significant value, leading to top of the chart sales. This started with Starbucks CTO, Chris Bruzzo’s conviction to include the customers on the table while making product decisions and the organisation as a whole envisioned a continuous interaction and engagement with customers, customer-facing employees (referred to as “partners” and chipping into the conversation) and all the other stakeholders, leading to a sustainable value creation and brand marketing process as opposed to the traditional and orthodox ways with high transactional costs and less reliable data and information.
The value of dialogue in co-creation extends to many other giants as well and it’s not limited to intra-organisational engagements with customer engagement but inter-organisational engagements too. Nike’s idea to combine music and data after the employees and management of Nike realised that people were running with music after the launch of iPods by Apple, gave rise to the Nike+. And Nike+ is a golden-data goose born out of the partnership between the sportswear giant and the tech-giant of the world and it continues to lay golden eggs of data every time a runner wears a Nike shoe with a sensor connected to the wireless receiver on the iPod or iPhone and runs with the music. It was instant and reliable data collection not just for both Nike and Apple, but for the runners who were consuming the products of both companies. Within 3 years of this partnership, Nike’s share in the US running shoes market increased from 47% to 61% and it will continue as Nike will rapidly develop new ideas knowing the customer needs and trends directly from them and with their increasing communities, thus reducing the marketing costs and mitigating the risk of capital investment.
The Nike+ engagement platform goes beyond just collecting and recording data. It translates the information into social groups and communities for runners, where the word of mouth marketing is substantial when people come together through a common platform and their obvious choice of dialogue among them is the platform that brought them together. Further incorporating human psychology here, we are cognizant of the human need for social connections and belongingness, which only grows the community and becomes a proper and stronger (for the lack of a better word) “cult.” And the invisible thread running through it, would be “dialogue”. The evolution of this new culture through an interorganizational partnership rebuts the long-stereotyped culture of organisations pitting against each other in a business, which is conventionally a competitive environment and shows the case of dialogue actually doubling the value for both the organisations and the consumers whose returns and loyalty to these organisations will be definitive.
Dialogic Competence
The value co-creation cases of Starbucks, Nike and Apple are just a few of many examples. The potion of alchemy here is Dialogue and its elements. Several permutations and combinations of dialogic processes and engagements in other organisations have worked their own wonders and would continue to do so. This transformation is often initiated through dialogic leadership in the organisation that involves designing dialogic spaces, structures and processes to put dialogue’s fullest potential to work.
Germany’s Collective Leadership Institute has come up with a factsheet on Dialogic Competence which lists the four phases of the Dialogic Change Model[4]. The model emphasises on creating a space for the phases of enabling the voicing of all stakeholders where they are heard, a space of active listening, respecting everyone’s inputs in spite of disagreements and suspending judgements and conclusions. When these spaces are managed to navigate the engagements to enable an environment of co-creation, the ripple effect of dialogic leadership spreads through the organisation which consequently leads to revenue growth and brand standing, just like the cases of Starbucks, Nike and Apple, and more.
This ripple effect makes it difficult for the other organisations to resist the dialogic culture and risk losing the opportunity to harness the stakeholder strength into co-creation, especially when the management academia has already presented highly convincing cases.
Brand management strategies of businesses have evolved from products and services, packaging, billboard and TV ads to customer service, employee engagement, inclusion and diversity policies, ESG metric etc and these changes are required for the survival and sustainability of the organisations in today’s rapidly changing environment. As businesses move further, Dialogue could be the new universal business strategy that promises and enables co-creation which ensures the survival and sustainability of organisations in a disproportionately increasing uncertain environment.
[1] https://synergyholistichealth.com/the-story-of-ubuntu/
[2] https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/The_Power_of_Co_Creation/EyXjhU_8myIC?hl=en&gbpv=1
(Pg 7)
[3] https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/The_Power_of_Co_Creation/EyXjhU_8myIC?hl=en&gbpv=1 (Pg 23-24)
[4] https://compass-tool.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Factsheet_9_DialogicCompetence.pdf