Thinking about ‘The Restuarant’ again I was struck how the format reflected two polarising concepts of corporate strategy. In the programme the chef of the pair had to cook their signature dish for Raymond’s assessment. Then the front of house person had to pitch the concept of their restaurant to Raymond and his minders.
This reflects the debate between the positioning school of corporate strategy and that of core competencies. Michael Porter’s famous market positioning theories emphasise how organisations should have a clear idea of where their objectives in a market — do they go for mass market leadership or for niche differentiation. This has filtered down into companies’ much reviled mission statements and goals and, in the process, Porter’s original insight has been lost. So you have companies that come out with the absolute banal like ‘we want to serve all your leisure travel needs’ which really says nothing apart from the company is in the leisure travel market. A brilliant definition of strategy is that it’s the decision about what NOT to do — as that decision can’t be reached by meaningless platitudes. This distortion has seeped into popular culture in shows like The Apprentice, X-Factor and the Restaurant where contestants always say they just want to ‘be the best’ or ‘kick the competition’s ass’ . It’s completely stating the obvious and not what Porter’s original analysis meant — which was to emphasise the role of careful choices and decision making — such as serving a gap in the market. So the clever X-Factor contestant might rationalise that there isn’t a successful act in a particular niche. Of course, it would be pretty impossible for them to do that as they’re all picked to a stultifying unoriginal formula.
It’s all very well saying what you want to be but it’s worse than useless to believe in an ambition if you have no capability of achieving it. This is where Hamel and Prahalad’s Core Competencies come in. This theory states that organisations have inherent capabilities that cannot be easily imitated by competitors. These could be cultural, organisational, intellectual, political, managerial or directly related to the quality of the staff. The theory argues that companies often fail to realise and capitalise on their core competencies, especially if they are being crisis managed or ‘turned round’ by firefighting managers or management consultants (how often have ailing companies been completely finished off by new managements — the Royal Mail comes to mind at the moment). The same is completely true of people (and contestants in reality shows). Everyone has things they are good at and not so good at and it is absolutely futile to try and persue an ambition if you don’t have the skill to ac hive a level of competence at it (never mind to achieve exceptional talent). So if you can’t open a tin then it’s pretty unlikely you’ll end up a Michelin starred chef, however much it’s your dream and ambition.
Of course shows like the Apprentice and X-Factor have this tension between positioning (what the contestants want to be) and competencies (what they are actually able to do) at their heart. The Apprentice is also brilliant at showing the dramatic irony of when contestants don’t have the self-knowledge to realise that that they don’t have the competencies to achieve their desired positioning. Sometimes the two things co-incide well and what the value of these shows (even the X-Factor) is to show that often ‘ordinary people’ have the most extraordinary, unexploited competencies and that they have as much talent as ‘the stars’.Yet the programme makers like to concentrate on the deluded people who think their competencies match their desired positioning like the ridiculous twins from Ireland.
It’s surely no co-incidence that when our government likes to maintain the ludicrous pretence of complete equality in everything (and in the process ensure there is less real equality than ever before), particularly in the education system, that the highest viewing figures are for programmes where people are judged – almost to the point of humiliation. Like the leaderboards in these programmes, people have a deep-seated sense of status and want to gain status (by definition at the expense of others). The programmes make sop to New Labour’s pathetic ‘Every 1′s a Winner’ mentality by having audiences which jeer and boo any negative comment (not realising that positive comments need some critical comment to achieve credibility and balance). It’s the equivalent of the ambition of giving every 16 year old an A* grade in GCSEs and thinking that demonstrates the brilliance of their education system.