This is an excellent peice by “pragmatist” who blogs at www.sdj-pragmatist.blogspot.com
” In essence, I’ve defined “facilitators” as organisations that exist to solve their own problems; and “institutions” as organisations that exist to solve their own problems at their customers‘ expense. To provide some more context, I’ve extracted the following characteristics that I believe mark an organisation as one or the other. I’m interested in any comments you have.Facilitators:
- Exist to solve customers’ problems;
- Do not presume to ‘own’ the relationship with people who use their products;
- View the world through the eyes and experiences of people who use their products;
- Are prepared to work with complimentary businesses to support their users’ end-to-end activities (including linking to material produced by others);
- Are highly adaptable and responsive to criticism;
- Allow ideas to develop from staff and users bottom-up, generating passion and connection amongst them;
- See uniqueness, change and adaptability as a source of competitive advantage;
- Interact well with users in open forums;
- Are ‘free-rider tolerant‘;
- Work to simplify their products and users’ experience;
- Seek to make the world a better place in which to live, addressing the impact of their activities on the wider world;
- See users as the controllers of their relationship.
Institutions:
- Exist to solve their own problems at the expense of ‘their customers’;
- View the world through the lens of their own products (whether goods or services);
- Resist criticism and change – believing that their own processes, judgement and publicity should prevail;
- Impose their own views on staff and ‘their’ customers, top-down;
- Run with the herd to retain competitive advantage;
- Interact poorly with users (if at all) in open forums, experiencing ‘vicious cycles’ of adverse publicity;
- Are ‘free-rider resistant‘;
- Demand that ‘their’ customers must become more capable if their products or experiences are to improve;
- Deliberately adopt complex pricing, conditions and ‘pressure’ techniques in their sales and marketing activities;
- Rely on cross-subsidies to distort the attractiveness of new products;
- Mandate the use of their own add-on services;
- Avoid addressing the impact of their activities on the wider world;
- Regard themselves as controlling the relationship with users
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