The Executive Realm
Often, business and psychology are viewed as different and distinct ideas, but we believe business is driven almost exclusively by the psychology of people. Breaking the barrier into a new realm where the strategic business lens is focused on the behavior of your team, your customers, and your competitors can open a world of possibilities for growth. Join two Business Psychologists, from very different backgrounds, explore the complex intersection of business strategy and clinical psychology in today's rapidly-changing business world. Welcome to the Executive Realm with Dr. D and Dr. K.
The Executive Realm
Inward vs. Outward Organizational Focus: Competition, Purpose, and Commitment
We discuss inward versus outward organizational focus, the risks when an organization becomes too focused on events and circumstances happening within your own organization and lose focus on the outward-facing mission and the external threats facing every organization.
Hello, and welcome to the realm. I'm Dr. D, I bring the strategy
Dr. K:and I'm Dr. K, I bring the psychology. We are business psychologists and your guides to the executive realm where we bring strategy and psychology together,
Dr. D.:so you can bring your best to your C-suite, your teams and your customers. Today we're talking about inward versus outward organizational focus the risks when an organization becomes too focused inward on events and circumstances happening within your own walls and lose focus on the outward facing mission and external threats every organization faces. So let's get to work. I am not a big sports fan, but you are, might be the biggest sports fan. I know actually, a great place to start is what happens when a team becomes preoccupied with the dynamics within the team and kind of loses focus of their core mission.
Dr. K:My first thought comes to the movie with Keanu Reeves, which I cannot think of the name right now. And they didn't get along when they came together, they didn't get along at first. So they weren't able to have a block or they weren't able to catch a pass, or they were running into each other. When they finally created a sense of a team when they work together when they trusted each other. That's when the game changed. Yes, I understand it's a movie, but it is a pretty good general concept to look at.
Dr. D.:So, you took something very different away from "The Matrix" than I did.
Dr. K:Yeah, you know, you're just got to look at you know, you got to look at it from different avenues, there are different avenues. But when a team, you know, when they start focusing on, I don't like this person, or they're not working as hard. That is where the mindset goes, it is not looking for the productivity that we're trying to put out, it's not looking at the product that's trying to be put out, it is all about what is happening within. And one of the biggest problems with that is that we lose focus, the competition level, this can be business or sports tends to decline. And then everything that you are there to do, whether it's in a sports team, or a business kind of goes to the wayside.
Dr. D.:In sports, people often talk about rebuilding years for a team when they're bringing in a lot of new people. And it's used as an excuse as to why a team might not perform as well. But the reality is an organization is bringing in new people all the time every year is rebuilding your every years of building, you're in an organization, you can't use that as an excuse as to why your company's not performing. You have to be able to bring your team together, keep your team aligned and stay focused on whatever that mission is that your organization is trying to achieve. And when I think about it, there are really three levels of focus there is the organizational focus, is your culture inwardly focused on team dynamics and competitive things happening with from team to team? Or is it outwardly focused on the bigger picture, your competitors, your those external threats that are coming from your competitors, your mission, the community that you're trying to serve? The next level down? Is your team level of focus? Are they focused on things happening within their team? Are they really focused on the widget that they're trying to produce within their team that fits into the larger organization? Or do they understand how their team affects the upstream and downstream business processes within their organization? And even more importantly, does the team understand how they're differentiating from the competition or how they are supporting and serving that community, the customers that you serve? At the most personal level is the individual level of focus, doing a day to day job connect what they're doing to the broader value that the organization brings? Can they see see how they are serving their customer? At the end of the day, whether that's internal or even more importantly, the customer who is purchasing from your company?
Dr. K:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the definite, there are three levels, you know, that you brought up, and then there's little, you know, little, being able to find ways as the leader as well as an individual to frame it so that each individual and team can better or see their part that they are playing, combining the internal and the external. So the internal would be like, Okay, I see my part. And then the external is paid. This is what we did for our customers, or this is what we did for the community or the organization.
Dr. D.:Absolutely. I've worked for some of the biggest companies in the country. And I've also worked for some really tiny startups. The difference between the two is pretty massive. When a company is starting out and starting up, there's usually a big competitor that they're trying to disrupt there is some big take down that the small company is going after, there's an externally focused motivation to deliver to their customers in a way that the big competitor can't do or the existing competitors can't So that is an externally focused organization, the challenges is as a company grows, and it has to work through those growing pains, or as it evolves to be the new biggest, the new big guy in the block, it's really easy to lose that competitive external focus. And you really start focusing on protecting and refining and doing things internally. And what ends up happening over time is an organization tends to focused internally. And then there's some disrupter who's really focused externally on taking you down and you can lose track of that there is kind of a business cycle where you do tend to become inwardly focused over time.
Dr. K:You brought up that disrupter on the outside, there's always someone that can do the research to find out what Apple's next move is or what Google's next move is.
Dr. D.:I think where organizations really fail is connecting those insights from those externally focused and those customer facing are competitive thinking parts of the organization to the broader organization, they don't necessarily tie one to the other so that the folks in accounting, see what those other parts of the organization are thinking, it really does become important, particularly as you get larger to ensure the whole organization understands where you fit in the competitive landscape, what your differentiators are as an organization and the value that you're bringing to the market, your competitors can't and who's gunning for you because it doesn't matter who you are in business. There's somebody out there trying to unseat you. And that gets to the idea of competitive nature. I think it's fair to say business people tend to be competitive by nature, if your organization doesn't have an externally focused competitor, whether that's somebody you're trying to take down or protecting yourself against those that are trying to take you down as an organization becomes more inwardly focused, people tend to find that competitor internally. So the marketing team might be competitive with the sales team, there can be these internal rivalries that develop and that's not healthy for an organization.
Dr. K:Competition within a team when it is put out there. Hey, what sales team can get to this mark first? That competition is a good competition when I played sports, and I would compete against another setter and volleyball, I had to prove that I was the better setter. So when the competition is a known competition, within a team or within an organization, I believe that that can be healthy.
Dr. D.:Your competition as a volleyball setter against another volleyball setter on your team. Yeah, that's healthy competition, healthy competition internal to the team is good, so long as it's competition that's internal, that's focused on external. So using your volleyball example, you were competing against your other friendly competition with your other volleyball setter within your team. But that was only so that you could face another team have the best person setting at the time they were playing to give yourself a competitive advantage. Now, if you and that competitive rivalry on your volleyball team lost track of that external focus, that rivalry can become toxic within your team. And you would probably lose the competitive advantage. healthy competition within a business is good, so long as it can be tied to the external focus, the competition that you're trying to achieve externally. Great. Thank you. As we talked about that difficulty of aligning a connection to an outside purpose, there are ways of doing that, whether that's using competition, leveraging your mission, but more broadly, using your mission as a means to align the organization is very important mission has come up many times in our I think it's one of the primary means of success within an organization, you have to be able to relate to your mission. Now, I was in the military, the military is a great way of supporting and clarifying and defining their mission. There are millions of people in the United States military, anybody inside the military or outside military can talk about the mission of the military without being big. It's three words, I'm protecting my country, that mission is universally understood. it aligns purpose. And if somebody is within the organization within the military and is not doing what they need, whether they're a line cook, or they're on the front lines of battle, if they're not doing their job, they're not protecting their country. And that is a very powerful, simple mission. That's easily understood by everybody inside the military and outside the military. We keep coming back to mission but that's why giving people the opportunity to connect with the mission to be able to relate to the mission that allows people to deliver a personal connection to the mission.
Dr. K:Agreed. It's it's important to know what you are you know, not to piggyback off the military, but what you're fighting for, and what you're trying to do, if your mission or your internal motivation is opposite of the mission, there's going to be some issues, not only is there just going to be issues within the team, or the organization that you're working for that that can lead to some internal struggle, that which then can lead into his possibility of leading into disengagement, or lack of focus. And then you see, you know, all of that comes into play with productivity with your own, just being able to be content at work, you know, it's trying to find that intrinsic thought process that can lead to that external motivation to get things done.
Dr. D.:The mission... connecting it to an external focus is really about making it personal. When I'm thinking about the value that I bring to the world, I'm spending eight hours, 10 hours a day at work, thinking about complex business issues that may or may not relate, I may not be able to connect it to my personal life, but I can certainly connect it to a way is meaningful to me. Because if I'm an accountant in an organization, and I'm helping the the company operate better, make sure that invoices are sent accurately, make sure that the payables are received so we can afford payroll, all of those things are really important, but they're there so that I can connect and make sure that my organization continues to deliver products or services to my customers to my community, because there's a person on the other side of our organization that's receiving the benefit, the value of those services. And the work that I do helps connect to the person who is benefiting on the outside and taking it back to the military. That external mission, protecting my country, there's also a personal connection. When somebody hears that I was in the military, they say thank you for your service, because they recognize a person in the military is providing a service to them beyond what they can really articulate doesn't matter what I did in the military, what's really important is that I was there to serve them. And so the personal side of a military commitment is that I can have pride because I'm serving my country, I'm doing something for the betterment of the community. And so my connection to my my time in the military was important because I learned a lot personally. And I was able to help people around me directly. But I also had a connection to a broader history, a broader community, a broader level of service beyond what I did in the in the Navy. Yeah, you were you, you were able to make it at least how I'm hearing it is that you were able to make it not just like, oh, here I am giving out to the world. Again, you made it something that was important to you. What's really important that protecting my country and serving my country. That's not by accident, that's by design, the military is organized to give you that sense of pride. It's organized and defined to give you that sense of purpose. that's by design. It is not by accident that the military is organized to do that. And it shouldn't be by accident that your organization finds its mission. And it shouldn't be by accident that your organization can help your team members to find their purpose. Excellent. So making it personal. We've talked a lot about mission and how to connect it personally. But how do you protect yourself against the external, the upstart that's coming after you? I think sports is a really good example of rivalries. I don't want to talk out of school. So Dr. K, let's talk about rivalries.
Dr. K:Rivalries have such a so many I don't even know how to say it, I guess dynamics to it because rivalries, you don't like them. You're like, Oh, no, this is not going to happen. We are going to in sports, we're going to kick their butt or maybe a business, you're like, we're going to take them down. Maybe you can use both in each one. With rivalries, it's a kind of almost like a equal competition. You know, when I think about the teams that I've, when I played sports and the teams, we knew certain teams, who were our biggest rivals were the ones that we had to work the hardest against, you know, we had the teams that were way above us and we had teams that were way below us. And we also had those teams that we knew Okay, these are the ones that we have to be and that rivalry becomes it becomes who you are always keeping your eye on that rivalry becomes Okay, we need to be we need to try to stay a step ahead. So you know, as you were talking about the strategies, you know, in sports like NFL, they will Watch, they watch plays from the other team for a week before they go, you know, four months they do this on a consistent basis. They're looking at how this person moves and who you're going to be covering and so that they could learn their moves better. And that's what rivalry does. That's what competition does. It makes you hyper focused. It may it creates a sense of, I need to know everything about them. I need to try to figure out if I can know what their next move is. We won't always be able to know what their next move is. But that's what rivalry brings into, into anything in our lives into business into personal stuff. It creates a sense of vigilance.
Dr. D.:I like the phraseology used of vigilance, I think that's really important. There can be unhealthy dynamics and rivalries. And that's, of course not what I'm suggesting would be healthy for an organization, the dynamics, the vigilance, whether that's from a competitor, your customer base, all of your team members, your employees have that level of vigilance on what's happening between you and your competition. And that has to be pervasive within an organization. It's healthy, and it keeps people thinking about the future. Absolutely.
Dr. K:So Dr. D, How can leaders prepare?
Dr. D.:It's important to look at yourself first. Make sure your mission your customers and your competitors are a regular focus in your own day to day interactions. If they're not make it part of them. Set your mission into motion. Be clear about the community you serve and how your organization delivers on your mission. Define your organizational focus and set the focus. ensure everyone in the organization knows which companies you're going after and which are coming after you. Pick your biggest competitive opportunity and create a rivalry create team alignment by having a team mission define the internal operational mission. How does your team support upstream and downstream operations and the organizational mission impact? How does the team support the customer or community that your organization serves? make it personal help team members see how their work connects to the external mission as a person doing a necessary job function helping a customer at the other end of your organization. Mission creates purpose, purpose creates engagement, engagement betters your organization. So Dr. Kay, what's on tap for next week?
Dr. K:All right, next week, we will be talking about stress and burnout, why it sneaks up on people and creates more havoc than you realize. And of course, all of you joining us in this journey to the realm of Thank you so much.
Dr. D.:I'm Dr. D.
Dr. K:And I'm Dr. K and we are looking forward to your next visit to the Executive Realm.
