When employee and customer engagement is at stake, so is business performance¹. ‘Employees must recognise themselves in the organisational purpose, asking: ‘Am I aligned with this?’ Such alignment acts as a motivational factor.’ says Dr. Isabelle Galois*.

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Research has for years failed to make practical sense of organisational identity (OI). In his thesis, followed by a full research project with Krauthammer, Dr. Pierre-Laurent Félix² bridged the gap with his ‘iDEA model’ - presented here. ‘Few theoretical models of OI really expose themselves to the test of practical business life,’ he says. ‘The iDEA model blends theory and operations. I see it as a lens to help an organisation understand its history, assess its present, and lay foundations for its future.’
 

The iDEA model – major dimensions and tensions.

‘When 2 people meet, there are 6 people present. Each as he sees himself, each as he wants to be seen, and each as he really is.’ M. De Saintamo.
OI goes to the core of what an organisation is, expressing: ‘features its members see as clearly central, whose enduring and distinctive character contributes to how they define, and identify with, the organisation.’

When it comes to an organisation’s identity, three vital facets emerge:

iD – (declared identity): Question: ‘Who do we want to be, how do we want to be perceived?’ Elements an organisation uses, in controlled ways, to present itself to its stakeholder groups. iE – (experienced identity) Question: ‘Who are we?’ Members’ collective representation of their organisation. The sum of positive and negative experience. iA – (attributed identity) Question: ‘’Who are we, in the eyes of others?’ The attributes actually ascribed to the organisation by external stakeholders.

In the life of any organisation, tensions between these facets are inevitable. And an organisation’s configuration can change over time according to the forces at play in a mechanism called ‘adaptive instability’.
The 5 main configurations are:

1. Shared	Here, what employees feel, what the organisation declares to outsiders and what they see, are aligned. Making decisions to join the organisation, stay, buy or collaborate can be straightforward. Ensuring objectivity, innovation and evolution will be more challenging. And a crisis can rock stakeholder perceptions.
2. Fragmented	The three dimensions are dispersed. The perceptions of the organisation, whether by its top management, employees, or external stakeholders, differ, making focus and decision-making problematic.
3. For itself	What this organisation says and what its employees feel are very similar. However, outsiders see something different. Such organisation needs to challenge its inside-out view and in some cases its ‘Narcissus’ syndrome. This, in order to preserve customer loyalty and talent acquisition.
4. For others	In this ‘hyper-adaptive’ example, what the organisation declares and outsiders see are consistent. Yet employees feel differently. The challenges for this case? To protect its workforce engagement and consistently deliver on its claims.
5. Isolated	Here, what employees feel about the organisation and what outsiders see are similar. However, the story told by the organisation’s leadership is different. Leadership needs to reconnect with its environment – internal and external – to protect the quality of its decision making and avoid employee and client defection.

Output

1. An identity dialogue will help you boil down your organisation’s true core indicators – its ‘traits’ or ‘essence’.
    
2. Comparing the findings of different groups (broadcasts, clients/prospects, employees) will enable you to identify the current configuration of your organisation.
    
3. Beyond the over-arching configuration of your organisation’s iDEA, an identity dialogue will reveal sub-tensions. If your organisation prides itself on innovation, is there a tension between giving people the autonomy to create, and controlling their output? Does your top management know how important these tensions are to stakeholder groups? Where to focus?
    
4. The process of an identity dialogue can engage people as they share and reflect. Dr Florence Tourancheau* comments: ‘Every team or department can ask itself what it declares its added value to be, what it feels its identity to be, and how its clients - internal or external – see it.’
    
5. With the results in hand, you can take action, asking: ‘What is at stake?’ ‘What will happen to our business performance if we do not act?’ ‘By whom should action be taken, by when?’

    

Want to start the dialogue and investigate your own OI?

Several levels of exploration are open, detailed in our full article.

¹ For more on the links between engagement and performance, read How to maintain engagement and lucidity in the storm?, D. Eppling, C. Pailhé and G. Gatbois, Krauthammer, Jan. 2010.

² Drs Félix, Galois, and Tourancheau, of the ESC Chambéry Savoie, and Krauthammer are currently using the iDEA model to explore Krauthammer’s organisational identity, in a full research project. Interested in performing a formal exercise? Please contact steffi_gande [at] krauthammer [dot] com (subject: Request%20for%20information%20about%20organisational%20identity) .