Martin Hayward, the former head of the Henley Centre has an article in this month’s edition of Management Today (“I showed them the future and they ignored it”). Sorry the article is not available online.
As the name suggests it is about why companies have the knowledge, often acquired at great cost, about the mega trends affecting the world of marketing then doing nothing about them. The examples he gives range from the “obesity problem”, to the mounting piles of national and personal debt and the issues of an aging population.
Martin reckons there are three reasons why companies keep being told and then ignoring future trends. From my experience of talking to companies about the ‘age thing’ I totally agree with his conclusions.
Structural
The way some companies are structured means they cannot respond to change. The top of the organisation is aware of the issues and wants to do something about them but has no mechanisms to communicate or the necessary power to make the rest of the organisation follow.
Ineptitudinal (I love this word)
I will use his words to describe this group “many organisation and individuals betray a worrying inability to compute and distil the implications of the trends that are presented to them". I have met a few of them.
Cynical
Again I will use his words “in an environment where marketing directors are said to enjoy an average tenure of only 18 months and the average employee in the UK has been eight different jobs by age of 32, who cares about the long term!"
He is absolutely right. I just hope more senior managers get the message. Dick Stroud: www.20plus30.com
No comments:
Post a Comment