For the past year, in preparation for my upcoming book The Integration Imperative, I've been writing about the challenges of integrating marketing and business development in professional- and B2B service firms. Not surprisingly, a firm's internal culture plays a large role in either impeding marketing and business development integration, or fostering it. Take a look at the January 2009 issue of my monthly newsletter series. It features a summary of the six main cultural challenges to optimally integrating PSF marketing and business development.
Like me, you probably have heard the theory that it's extremely difficult to change a firm's culture. But to my ears, "the way we do things here" too often sounds like a reason not make any efforts! Yes, culture change takes work, focus and energy. But it can -- and should -- be undertaken when marketplace leadership is at stake. And I don't think cultural DNA is as difficult and slow to change as many of us think.
I just read a Newsweek article about Darwin's theory of evolution that supports my point. Sharon Begley's article reviews the philosophical tussle between the Darwin theory -- that DNA sequences change extremely slowly, over multiple generations -- and the newly reconsidered theories of a biologist named Lamarck. Begley writes "[Lamarck's work] . . . suggests that evolution happens much faster than the Darwinian model implies." He posited that DNA can change from one generation to the next, based on the direct experience of the parents. Modern biologists are now finding evidence to back up Lamarck's theories. The article recounts numerous fascinating examples.
Whether you're interested in science or not, the evidence that biological DNA can flip from one generation to the next is a wonderful reminder that the experiences of one set of leaders in a professional services firm can be directly applied to the very next generation in that same professional services firm.
So much for the adage that an organization's cultural DNA takes a long time to change!
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