What is your company's DNA type?
Take the quiz to uncover whether you operate as a Mechanic (product focused), Mother (customer focused), or Missionary (vision focused) company. The results may surprise you!
Which one of these statements best describes what your company does?
Think about the achievements your company values. Which of these three important achievements do you perceive your company values most?
Which of these three styles of innovation do you believe occurs most naturally at your company?
Which of these best describes your typical pricing strategy?
You've just been given a dollar to spend on marketing. On which of the following three projects would your company be most likely to spend that dollar?
Which of these three types of people would fit in best with your company culture today?
Which of these best describes where product marketing resides within your organization today? (If you don't have a formal product marketing org, check the option for where it most likely would reside if it did exist).
For which of the following things is your company's CEO most likely to be lauded in the market?
Which of the following three project proposals would most likely be funded by your executive team at its next meeting?
How would your company's leadership team most likely confirm that a value proposition for your company is "correct"?
Which of the following three statements best describes how your company defines the word "brand"?
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Mother
You are customer focused!
Customer-oriented companies win on the basis of connection interms of both whom they serve and the experience they create. Crustomer companies measure success by retention, satisfaction, and loyalty, and everything they do-from the way they target a particular market to the way they train and compensate their employees-is motivated by customer needs and those companies' relationships with their customers. Think Amazon (Earth's most customer centric company), American Express, and Nordstrom.
Characteristics of Mother Companies:
- Focus on customers in management discussions
- Maintain an outside-in perspective on the world
- Measure success in terms of relationships, not sales alone
- Initiate tracking studies and market research to get to know their customers
- Create a customer experience that transcends product offerings
- Measure profits against customer segments
- Focus on expanding customer segments and serving needs
- Hire conceptual, personable leaders to close the gap between the C-suite and customers
- Drive marketing through brand and customer loyalty
- Motivate employees to excel at customer service
- Work to ensure that their value proposition delights cusotmers
- Test their value proposition with customers to ensure that it remains highly relevant
Reach out to learn more about the implications of being a Mother company and how to leverage your DNA to maximize your potential.
Mechanic
You are product focused!
Product-oriented companies are determined to build the best products and services and bring them to the masses before anyone else does, with success measured in terms of market dominance. Quite often, a Mechanic company's primary focus is in selling as much as possible to as many as possible, thereby achieving market supremacy. The metrics that matter are product performance, market share, category primacy, and benchmark leadership. Think Microsoft, Oracle, Meta, Walmart, and McDonalds.
Characteristics of Mechanic Companies:
- Focus on products in managmenet discussions
- Redefine "better" over and over again
- Communicate through winning lanugage
- Project absolute confidence in knowing the product's surperiority and desirability
- Productize everything and consider it a core competency
- Measure success by market share
- Look at the world in terms of winners and losers
- Promote a sales-centric culture
- Admire in-depth product/technology knowledge
- Organize business units around product lines
Reach out to learn more about the implications of being a Mechanic company and how to leverage your DNA to maximize your potential.
Missionary
You are vision focused!
Missionary companies are dedicated to changing the world and delivering groundbraking, life-altering innovation. Motivated by a clear vision and bold ideas, they measure success by changed behavior and market disruption. Unlike product focused companies that often focus on new features that deliver incremental improvements, Missionaries are innovation-driven, focused on producig change on a large scale. One great leap as opposed to dozens of small steps. What sets Missionaries apart is that at their core they exist to change human behavior. They view the product as a means of igniting change, but it's usually not the product itself that inspires Missionary teams. Think Apple (in the Steve Jobs era), Starbucks (who gave the US its first 'third place,'), and FedEx (who revolutionized logistics and shipping- something we take for granted today).
Characteristics of Missionaries
- Focus on ideas and customer behavior in managmeent discussions
- Exhibit drive to bring the world a new way of doing things
- Focus on innovation as core to their offering
- Seek to disrupt current market paradigms and business models
- Foster high-nergy environments
- Promote a risk-taking culture
- Maintain a singular vision that everyone at the company embraces
- Engender a passion in people to be part of something bigger than themselves
- Employ charismatic senior execuitves who have the capacity to influence people
- Project vision as central to the customer value proposition
- Offer a life choice to employees, who generally share their leader's passion to change the world
- Generate a cultlike reputation
Reach out to learn more about the implications of being a Missionary company and how to leverage your DNA to maximize your potential.
