RIGHT TO REPLY: John Ozimek offered a different perspective to that of all the other authors participating in last month’s edition of The Marketing Leaders on the implementation of the new marketing and sales standards, says Chahid Fourali who thinks that Ozimek argues against the very existence of the standards. (See the original article here)

The debates on the value of the Marketing and Sales Standards Setting Body (MSSSB)’s standards continues…but why?

Most of the authors in last month’s edition of TML had a closer understanding of the standards since most of them had contributed to their design. John Ozimek appears to argue against the existence of standards in general and the marketing and sales standards in particular. As a first reaction one wonders if this is an alternative perspective based on evidence and rational reasoning.

Fourali: The overlooked matters

However on closer scrutiny, he seems to overlook several blatantly obvious anomalies as follows:

1. The article appears to argue that being creative negates the need for learning systematically the key dimensions of a profession. In the light of this logic, one could argue argue that because painting and music are creative areas, there should not be professional expectations about skills and knowledge?

2. He implies that the ‘best practice’/standards are “another tortuous government perspective on how we ought to be doing things”. This is a misrepresentation as although the Government recognised the standards setting body, it did not impose any procedure or view. Stakeholders were free to choose procedures and skills that are important to focus on.

3. He argues that standards “are absolutely not an end in themselves”. This is obvious. Is this argument to mean that we should reject standards on this basis? In other words do we stop using knifes because they are misused at times? Of course, standards, like anything else, can be misused. It is important to remind users about how they can benefit companies if used properly. ‘Purpose’ is key to this process. In fact the standards setting procedure is based on functional analysis which starts with focusing on the key purpose of every profession and what needs to be done to serve that purpose.

4. John argues that we should ask an ‘obvious question’ in the form of ‘are the standards any good?”. Again he seems not to have really got to understand the process of developing them. Indeed from day one, this was one of the key questions that helped produce the raison d’etre’ of the standards. We are continuously asking this question as our aim is to support the practitioners. In other words: how can we find out how useful the standards are from the stories of those who tried them? Actually this is the subject of a project to start soon.

5 John argues that the standards represent “…marketing – and exactly as we used to know it”. It would have been even more surprising to him if the standards presented us with a view totally different from what is known about marketing. He also argues that there was not enough use of the word ‘Excellence’. Excellence can be seen as another word for ‘world-class practice’ although ‘excellence’ is, in many ways, ‘in the mind of the beholder’. It also depends on training and assessment as well as grading. The standards show the benchmark but how to get a trainee there will still require a lot of work.

6. He argues that for large organisations the standards are trivial, for small ones, they promote “an essentially bureaucratic process”. Doesn’t he know that employers (large and small) are the very people that are demanding the standards? These arguments also reflect old stories applied to the like of BSI standards, which themselves have moved on since the old days. In any case who could argue that BSI standards are useless when they seem to be multiplying despite various earlier arguments?

7. The author does not present his evidence and offers only conjectures. He does not seem to be aware that more than 115 reasons were provided for the development of standards of best practice. These arguments were not only provided for marketing and sales but for over a hundred occupational areas.

8. His position seems to vacillate between ‘I do not like standards’ and ‘I have a different view about what standards should be’. If the later then we are happy to hear his views and contrast them with the advice we received from other practitioners and if there is an opportunity for improvement then we will improve them. We do not claim that they are perfect as we expect to be revising them continuously to improve them.

9. After spending most of his article arguing for ‘why standards are no good’. He suddenly offers the QCi Audit model of CRM as a “useful corrective to any organisation seeking to plan its way to success”. Well well… this is a very interesting volte-face given his earlier views against standards. Well does he believe in standards or does he not?

10. He adds “: no point in just SAYING you are going to do something. You need to do it as well”. The structure of the marketing and sales standards reflect just that since the outcomes ‘reflect what you are going to do’ and the remaining part shows ‘how you intend to do it’.

11. He argues for the QCi model because he thinks it is good. In the early stages of development of the marketing and sales standards, the consultants referred to several models of best practice used by several very successful global organisations. If he is happy with the QCi model, good luck to him. We would rather learn and distil the wisdom of several organisations to ensure the outcome is more robust and comprehensive. Part of being ‘comprehensive’ includes covering all contexts of practitioners. QCi may not reflect all contexts.

Overall John states the obvious when he warns people about the misuse of standards. However this is no reason for dropping them altogether. He may be clear about his ‘creative’ or QCi benchmarks but a lot of employers, employees, students, teachers, politicians, educationists etc need to know ‘what tested good is like’. Are we going to listen to the majority and help develop the workforce of this nation and make it more competitive or are we going to decide on the views of an isolated voice that bases its views on conjectures? Given that he seems, after all, to like one ‘type of standards’ it would have been more productive for him to produce them and argue for them and then let others decide whether they could offer any improvement on what we have. At least our view is not an entranched position built on conjectures. Rather we are happy to improve our advice based on rational arguments backed on evidence.

By Dr Chahid Fourali,
Head of MSSSB

Email: chahidfourali@cim.co.uk
Web: http://www.msssb.org