For how long has your company existed? 10 years? 50 years? 200 years? It is tempting to think that there is nothing to learn from the past, with most senior leaders preferring to look forward. They prefer to rewrite the company according to their vision. Sometimes, looking back can uncover embarrassing episodes. Sometimes, it leads to deeper competitive advantage. Maybe, just maybe, it is the source of your brand loyalty, both for customers and employees. After a period of disconnect with corporate norms during the pandemic, many are struggling to reconnect with their organisation. So, read on to find out how to use corporate history to create belonging and competitive advantage.
Corporate history
Chronicling your corporate history is commonplace in some of the oldest and largest institutions. Those that started life as public entities tend to have rich histories, carefully documented and stored for archive retrieval. Others have showcases or museums where you can view relics and discoveries of bygone eras. A corporate history is a record of key events during the life of the organisation that ensures continuity, enables reflection and enshrines on record.
Even a business with less than 50 years of history may possess a varied and surprising journey. For example, the business idea of an individual may now be a large publicly traded behemoth with 30,000 employees and hundreds of locations. Others may have grown via repeated acquisition and mergers and be a completely different brand to where they started out. As we also know, many organisations have elements of their past that they would like to forget, such as involvement in the slave trade or past wars. However, these journeys, events, inventions and evolutions have shaped the organisation today and guide its identity and values.
A corporate history lesson
If your organisation has a chequered past, why hide it? The truth will set you free. At the very least, it will guide the identity of the organisation and you can develop your integrity and ethics to ensure that it never happens again. If your organisation came up with a host of new inventions during the last century but has filed for very few patents since then, why is that? Perhaps, the secret to future innovation is to understand how innovation flourished in the past. That way, you can revisit your approach to innovation and create the conditions to unleash your hidden talents. Alternatively, perhaps a fast-paced and agile organisation was founded as a family business long ago that was deeply entrenched in their local community. Fast forward to today and looking back could help you to reconnect with those early values and the importance of connecting with the community.
Corporate history is often a source of pride and is the root of the corporate identity in which you work. Current employees have a responsibility to ensure the ongoing continuity and success of the business, as did their forebearers. They are custodians of a great legacy once fully understood. A greater understanding of where the organisation has come from, what it has contributed and where we are today can improve feelings of belonging and engagement. For example, when a business moves into a new territory, they often create an environment that reflects the corporate identity, maybe even supplying some corporate memorabilia to create attachment.
Company history and future competitive advantage
On reflection, what made the company great 5 years ago? What made it great 20 years ago? According to the OECD, average tenure in a job in the UK is around 9 years. It is much shorter in some private sector careers, such as software and technology at under 2 years. According to the insurer LV, they measured an average role change every 5 years. That means that very few people in an organisation hold a long-term view of the past and in many cases that fails to be captured and recorded. So, why work for a company with little documented history, a journey that nobody remembers and no significant triumphs?
For those who have taken the time and effort to chronicle corporate history, there is a rich vein of insights. How did we get here? What was the thinking behind some of the major decisions of the past? What mistakes did they make? How did we invent something that has endured for so many years? What conditions existed that took a family business up to 30,000 people? Why is our main source of revenue based on something that happened 50 years ago? All of this understanding provides insight and allows refined consideration of business strategy, investment decisions and organisational culture development. Perhaps, the glory days (perceived at least) are long behind us and we are managing a steady decline. So, what made the organisation once so great and are we entrenched in our thinking and missing opportunities to leverage our strengths, adjacent markets and track record?
Sources of competitive advantage
Here at Think Beyond, we work with senior leaders and boards to create business strategies and plans to achieve them. Whether the aspiration is to create a solution sales capability, create a fantastic employee experience or assure a digital journey, we can support. Our strategic planning framework coupled with face-to-face workshops help you to identify strategic choices and align your organisation to achieve them. Armed with research and information about the organisation, we support the underpinning of strategic aspirations with operational plans, financial plans and marketing plans. Sometimes, they include the unexpected such as leveraging your corporate history to create belonging and competitive advantage.
If you would like a no-nonsense chat about your business, call now on to speak to us. Alternatively, simply ask us to call you back or arrange a short introduction.
Finally, why not read a related article on fluid organisational design.