The level of interpersonal
Inquiring at the level of interpersonal is to assume that we are social beings and difficulties in our relations emerge from our social style and orientation.
Inquiring into the level of interpersonal relationships.
Inquiring at the interpersonal level is rooted in the relationship between two specific people. Such an inquiry places an emphasis on understanding of organisational events by focusing on the quality and type of relationship between the two individuals - that is, their communication patterns, information flow, levels of cooperation and conflict, basis of trust – and relating styles with another. The two individuals maybe peers, subordinates, or supervisors.
The obstacles to working with the interpersonal level.
Two factors generally tend to make generating interpersonal explanations of organizational events difficult. First is our human tendency to not implicate ourselves in a difficult situation - in other words, we are likely to locate a relationship difficulty in another person and fail to take ownership for our contribution. And this very tendency acts to block analysis at this level because recognizing the interpersonal nature of a situation necessarily involves looking at both parties. Second factor that makes this level of inquiry difficult is power difference between the two individuals. And the reason is those differences have real and substantial consequences for the lower power person in the relationship. In such cases, the difficult job of formulating interpersonal explanations falls disproportionately on the one with greater power because even if the other can formulate one, they are less likely to offer it for fear of consequences.
Improving the situation by working with this level.
Examining the relationship between an individual and a specific other person opens two broad courses of action - removal of the two people involved, since this would make the problem disappear, or resolution of their difficulty through exploration of the nature of the relationship between the two. Most development programs focus on interpersonal processes and skills. Emphasis is placed on how to communicate, including listening, receiving and giving feedback.
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The power of the outsider
Robert Polet had spent most of his career at Unilever as the president of the ice cream and frozen foods division of the company prior to accepting the CEO position at Gucci. When Polet took the reins of Gucci in July 2004, the stark differences between the two industries understandably triggered much skepticism and doubt in the fashion industry and made Polet an easy target of several jokes in the media. Many executives in retail were confused with the choice; they believed that success in the fashion industry was forged by relationships. Being an unknown in the industry, Polet was severely lacking the relationships believed to be necessary for success. Analysts' positions varied - some said that bringing someone with no fashion experience was a big mistake while others pointed out that several other companies like The Limited and Abercrombie & Fitch had sought managers from outside the industry with highly successful results.
Tapping into the power of “both-brain” and focusing on the brand
Polet had been selected by a team at PPR (a French-based multinational corporation specializing in luxury goods and owner of brands Gucci, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Yves Saint Laurent, Creed and Alexander McQueen) led by its CEO Serge Weinberg, to succeed Gucci's former CEO Domenico De Sole. While the Gucci line had been successful, the nine subsidiary labels the company owned had been doing poorly and losing money. Gucci's net income in the fourth quarter of 2003, half a year prior to Polet's hiring, had been solely from its primary line and its growth was less than predicted. In October following his hiring, Polet detailed his plans for Gucci and talked about reorganizing the structure of the company, doubling its size, and increasing profit margins. He employed his hands-off management philosophies at Gucci and let the designers do their job without executive interference. He also employed some strategies more specific to the situation.
In the past, Gucci had let Tom Ford, the principal designer who turned the Gucci line around, go along with the previous CEO. Polet, however, stressed the importance of Gucci brands being the primary focus instead of the designer simply because the brand could far outlive the designer. In line with this thinking he also moved to assign a business manager and creative manager to each line under Gucci, which allowed more freedom per product line. For this reason, he replaced the CEO of the flagship brand and eliminated two of the three creative directorships attached to it. Mark Lee, who had been heading the money-losing Yves Saint Laurent brand, became the Gucci brand’s CEO. Frida Giannini, in her early thirties at the time, became its sole creative director. His new appointments were seen to be controversial. Instead innovation flourished, and the Gucci brand’s revenues grew by 46% during the four years of the partnership.
Executives at companies facing declining revenues and earnings often conclude that innovation isn’t so important after all. According to Kara Gruver, James Allen, and Darrell Rigby at Bain & Company, they do so because to them innovation isn’t integral to the workings of most organizations and therefore, the creativity that leads to game-changing ideas is missing or stifled. Yet, the fashion industry has a lot to teach us. Every season, successful fashion companies reinvent their product lines—and thus their brands—or face certain death. They manage this constant challenge by creating unusual partnerships at the top that consist of an imaginative, right-brain creative director and a commercially minded, left-brain brand CEO. Such alliances are called “both-brain” teams. Some famous examples exist outside the fashion industry: Steve Jobs and his COO at Apple, Tim Cook; the creative Bill Hewlett and the savvy David Packard; Bill Bowerman, the former track coach who developed Nike running shoes, and his business partner, Phil Knight. But fashion has gone the furthest to incorporate both-brain partnerships in its organizational model.
Developing the capability to innovate
Building a strong partnership isn’t simply a matter of throwing two individuals together, of course. “It’s truly like a marriage,” Polet had Time magazine in 2006. “It has ups and downs, and you have disagreement, [but] with a common purpose and within a common framework.” Polet may have been understating the contentiousness that often characterized such relationships. Some—like some marriages—don’t work at all. (Steve Jobs and his earlier partner at Apple, John Sculley, is one such example) Many others are punctuated by shouting matches, temporary separations, and similar signs of intense discord. Marc Jacobs sometimes infuriated Robert Duffy. The Pixar director Brad Bird and the producer John Walker were “famous for fighting openly,” Bird was quoted saying, “because he’s got to get it done and I’ve got to make it as good as it can be before it gets done.” Some of the tension between partners is productive. (“Our movies aren’t cheap, but the money gets on the screen because we’re open in our conflict,” says Bird, the Oscar-winning director of The Incredibles and Ratatouille.) And some of it is destructive, dooming the relationship. The executive who oversees a brand has to have finely honed matchmaking skills, and should also be ready to order a divorce when required.
The chances that a partnership could work can be improved by:
Defining the boundaries - Robert Polet’s arrival at Gucci Group had followed the departure of the famously successful designer-executive team of Tom Ford and Domenico De Sole. Ford had served as creative director for all the group’s brands, including Yves Saint Laurent and Bottega Veneta. According to Polet, this centralized structure had stretched Ford’s creative genius too thin. “The business model—I call it one size fits all—hasn’t worked for all the brands,” he said in 2004. “They have the same target consumer, the same retail strategy, and a central creative direction I’m not sure has worked well for all.” Polet made each brand a unit of innovation, established a creative-commercial partnership at the top of it, and asked the partners to focus on the needs of a distinct group of consumers.
Establishing roles and decision rights - Uncreative people have an annoying tendency to kill good ideas, encourage bad ones, and—if they don’t see something they like—demand multiple rounds of “improvements.” They add time, cost, and frustration to the innovation process even in a boom. In a downturn the effect is magnified. Financial analysts are sent in to prune the new-product portfolio. Charged with reducing costs, they often clumsily break up whatever partnerships exist and get rid of the creative people who were essential to them. A better approach was what Polet had called “freedom within the framework”—a well-defined division of responsibility that plays to both partners’ strengths. At Gucci the CEO and creative director of each of the group’s 10 businesses worked together to craft a sentence that captured the essence of the brand. Then each brand’s CEO established the framework within which creative decisions would be made: objectives, methods for accomplishing them, budget constraints, and so on. He or she mapped out a three-year plan showing the brand’s strategic direction and projected financial performance. If during tough times the financial resources are limited, the CEO and the creative director decide together how to deal with those constraints. Product development occured within this context. Merchandisers working under the brand’s chief executive developed market grids showing customer segments, competitive products, and price ranges. If there was an opening on the grid, it became the target for a new product: a handbag, say, for a specific niche, with a particular price point and a particular margin. Product specialists offered options for materials and manufacturing processes. The creative director then took over, with full freedom to create a product that met those specifications. If trade-offs had to be made, the creative director called the shots, so long as the specs weren’t violated. The ultimate judge of the innovation was the marketplace, not a higher-ranking individual or committee within the organization.
Fostering talent and embodying the values - The partnerships at the top of fashion companies are the most visible. But both-brain organizations like Gucci understood the importance of replicating these partnerships at all levels of the company. They hired both right-brain and left-brain people. They made sure that both types had strong mentors and career paths that suited their aspirations. They sought to extend and capitalize on individuals’ distinctive strengths rather than constantly struggling against deeply ingrained cognitive preferences. When the organizations found partnerships that worked well, they created opportunities for those people to work together as frequently as possible. The particulars, of course, would vary from one company to another. At Gucci the creative directors were responsible for hiring other creative people who, the directors believed, would live and breathe the values of a particular brand. Gucci’s human resources director, Karen Lombardo, had said she looked for competencies and personality traits that fostered teamwork. Are job candidates comfortable with ambiguity? Can they accept the fact that they don’t have control over the final product? Can they function well in an environment without detailed job descriptions? Gucci also runs a program to develop leaders on the commercial side. One of its goals is to make leaders more aware of different styles of thinking and communicating, including their own.
