CMOs, marketing directors, and marketing departments are under increasing pressure to justify their marketing activities. In an attempt to do so they have turned to the "proven" technique of ROI. While strong supporters of accountability, we are concerned that the techniques being used to justify spending (or investment as is the preferable term of use) may make things worse.

In this month's white paper, Are Your Marketing Activities Worthwhile?: Why Marketing ROI Misses the Mark, Bob Johnson, of our Massachussetts office, takes a hard look at what is being used today as Marketing ROI and why those approaches may be justifying poor investment and blocking good investment.

Years ago, Jeff Krawitz, from our New Jersey office, heard a talk by Buckminster Fuller, a famed futurist and thinker. He talked about creating changes, really big changes, in culture, society, and on global issues. Bucky implored each of us to be a change agent, to be a part of a shift rather than the status quo. He told us each to be a ‘trim tab’ to fight momentum and bureaucracy.

Consider a large ship moving through the ocean, kept on a straight course by its rudder. When the captain initiates a change in course (what we land lubbers call a ‘turn’), the rudder shifts and pushes the ship in the new direction. However, there is substantial pressure from the moving water on each side of the rudder and it requires tremendous force to actually move the rudder to turn the ship.

On the edge of the rudder is a small, moveable fin called a trim tab, the ultimate agent of change. In the normal course of events (when the ship is moving straight), the trim tab is aligned with the rudder, sliding effortlessly through the water. When a change in course is ordered, the trim tab is adjusted slightly, actually pushing the rudder to the appropriate side and causing the ship to change direction – with minimum effort. Though the captain orders the change in course, it is the trim tab that enables the ship to respond.

You are a trim tab. Whether your title is CEO or clerk, you have the capability to create change in your organization. Executive management sets the course, middle management defines the direction to get there, and the trim tabs make it happen. Don’t see any trim tabs? Without the support of the ‘individual contributors’ of an organization, the CEO can proclaim all the changes in the world – and none will happen. So, from a top down perspective, trim tabs are needed to make change happen.

Do trim tabs work from the bottom up? “I tried to change things once, but no one listened,” is a common response. In Disney’s movie Finding Nemo, the adolescent Nemo gets all the other ‘mature’ fish that are caught in the net with him to, “Swim down!! Swim down!!”, and ultimately avoid capture. Nemo, one small agent of change, became a trim tab and moved the entire school in a focused direction to create specific desired results.

One last thought about change. In the scene from Finding Nemo described above, the ship holding the fish net nearly capsized from the collective “swimming down” of the captured fish. In other words, if management ignores the voice of the trim tabs within its organization ...

We use the concept of trim tabs in many of our training programs, encouraging each trainee to use their new skills and knowledge to make a difference throughout the organization. Check our website for some of the programs that could assist your organization’s growth.