Do the standards represent too much Government hand-holding and nanny statism? TML allows exposure of an alternative view of the standards.

Our son is just turned two. Like most parents, we have spent the last 36 months or so wading through all manner of official – and not so official – hand-outs. They tell us, in finest detail – and mildly hectoring tone - what achievements we should be noting on a month by month basis.

Gross Motor Development. Speech. Babbling. Hand-eye co-ordination. The list is endless.

One document explains, in officialese, how important a role play has in the development of a child. Spontaneity. Fun.

It then, without the least hint of irony, suggests “fun” ways to promote child development: “draw chalk circles on the pavement, then have him jump from circle to circle”. Or: “while waiting in line at the grocery store, count how long your child can balance on one foot”.

There is an entire essay to write there. Or nothing at all. But if you have had any parenting experience over the last few years, you are probably all too aware of the debilitating effect that an excess of standards has had on the development of our children.

Standards. Targets. Aren’t you just sick of them?

So I am in two minds as I open up the latest from the Marketing and Sales Standards Setting Body. This, their presentation informs us, is part of a government funded initiative to define and inform best practice across all occupational areas. You thought marketing and sales was unique? Creative? Different?

Well think again: because now the government has determined what best practice should be.

This OUGHT to be meat and drink to me.

I suspect there are two reasons why it is not. The first is the inevitable suspicion of anything coming from government. It is one thing to talk about “best practice”. Quite another to read yet another tortuous government perspective on how we ought to be doing things. I am becoming highly allergic to the “Nanny State” and this probably colours my views more than it should.

Second is the problem of what happens when standards take over. In my professional work, I am very keen to stress standards and best practices as exemplars of what an organisation can do. They areabsolutely not an end in themselves.

Research from the crm area is starting to reveal just how disastrous it can be when that happens. When, in effect, a company becomes fixated on process, as opposed to the reason why that process was put in place. Call Centres, for instance, where service standards have been put in place to “improve customer service” are now rated as a serious impediment to service delivery. Why? Because the call centre operators have been so hypnotised by the necessity to work in a standard way that they refuse to deal with any customer that presents in any non-standard fashion.

“I’m sorry sir: I can’t do that because our process/system/computer won’t allow it” seems likely to be the epitaph for large numbers of once proud British corporations.

So it seems to me that there are two questions we should ask when considering any new standards. Especially standards that lay claim, by their pedigree, to outrank all others. The obvious question is: are they any good? The less obvious question, to which I shall return: is it really a good idea to have standards at all?

The MSSSB certainly sets its sights high. It was established by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) in September 2001 “in order to develop world-class benchmarks of best practice for the Marketing, Marketing Communications, Sales and Telesales”. A neat trick if you can pull it off.

They start by mapping the “Functional Area”. In the case of marketing, this appears to mean a long and unremarkable 133-page document that feels like it dropped through a time warp from somewhere in the late 1980’s. It is marketing – and exactly as we used to know it. For a moment, I wondered if I was back doing my diploma once more.

It is comprehensive, in an undergraduate sort of way. But can one really take seriously a document that begins by announcing – as a ‘principal finding’ that “marketing professionals have traditionally focused upon the four ‘Ps’ of ‘Product’, ‘Price’, ‘Promotion’ and ‘Place’”.

Or which makes no significant reference either to “excellence” or “crm”. It would have been cheaper – and immeasurably more up to date – had they simply gone out and purchased a current text book.

Moving rapidly on, the standards themselves appear to be little more than a series of fairly middling job specifications. For each identified function, there are Outcomes, Behaviours and Knowledge.

No doubt there will be HR departments somewhere for whom this is likely to be useful. But they will be few and far between. My own sense is that for large organisations, this is trivial – and they have already moved well beyond the standard set here. Small organisations, by contrast, will be overwhelmed by what is an essentially bureaucratic process: those that try too hard to implement it could end up doing serious damage to their market position.

Is that the problem? Well, almost. I think my real difficulty is that even though the standards begin by talking about “outcomes” these are really little more than strictures on job content. For instance, the Product Development Standard requires Managers to be able to “agree a new product strategy” and to “generate new ideas”.

But that is not a standard. Which is more important? Or does it matter if you spend your time generating ideas whilst around you the company goes bankrupt?

Because I do believe in standards.

Over the last few years, I have worked extensively with the QCi Audit model of crm. It does not cover the whole of marketing – but it is pretty extensive. It includes over 260 best practice areas and is marked by the way in which it assesses organisations according to the Reality of their marketing actions as well as Effect and Intention.

That is a useful corrective to any organisation seeking to plan its way to success: no point in just SAYING you are going to do something. You need to do it as well.

Of course, QCi’s is not the only model out there. The private sector has been working on models of marketing effectiveness and marketing excellence for the past two decades. Not all of its efforts have been in vain. Working in this field means that I regularly encounter other models of organisational effectiveness, built by consultancies such as McKinsey or Accenture; or Industry Councils, with a much more overt focus on excellence. Or doctrines, such as ‘Six Sigma’.

What is MSSSB bringing to the party that is new or inovative or world class?

The problem with their standards is that they are just that: standards, with little sense of striving; no concept of excellence; no measure of results; and no real definition of the difference between doing marketing well and poorly.

There feels to be very little here for the larger organisation; whilst there is much to hinder the smaller one. I am left puzzled as to what they are for.

But should one bother with standards at all. Given my own experience pedigree it might appear hypocritical in the extreme to suggest otherwise.

So I shall return to the beginning to emphasise what I believe to be the most relevant point here. Targets in education are useful if they help parents – and educators – apply a light hand to the tiller. “Targets” for two-year-olds are useful – so long as parents understand that they are guidelines. That what matters is the overall well-being of the child.

When standards are elevated beyond that level – to the point where they start to interfere with the rest of the child’s life and distract parents from the simple task of getting on with parenting – then they have failed. They have become an end in themselves.

In organisational terms, the moment you set a (measurable) target, behaviours will start to adapt toward achieving that target. Beware. From the instant you set out to measure what you are supposed to be managing… you begin to be managed by those measures.

It takes a great deal more than “standards” to ensure you don’t fall into that particular trap.

By John Ozimek
Editor, The Journal of Database Marketing
Email: emcity@easynet.co.uk
John Ozimek brings solutions to clients in the areas of Customer Management and Experience, both as writer and consultant. John mixes theory and practice in near equal parts. As consultant, he has recently worked on clients as diverse as Royal Mail, Nickelodeon and the AA. As writer, he edits the well-known international Journal of Database Marketing. He has contributed articles to trade magazines and national newspapers, on topics topics as diverse as marketing and data protection.

Editors note: the perspective above does not necessarily reflect that of the marketing leaders ^TM. Although the new standards are backed by the UK Government, they may not be unduly influenced by Government. This is a provocative and controversial commentary to ensure debate on the standards, contrasting with the MSSSB article from Chahid Fourali. Mr. Fourali will be given the right to reply to this article in the next issue.