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?

The-importance-of-Company-Culture-in-the-workplace

We solve a valuable customer need and we do it better than anyone else.

We build a truly differentiated product with a great value prop.

We shake things up! Our goal is to change the world.

Think about the achievements your company values. Which of these three important achievements do you perceive your company values most?

Growth in revenue, sales, and adoption of our product.

Sparking a movement that changes people's minds or behavior.

The quality and value of our relationships with customers.

Which of these three styles of innovation do you believe occurs most naturally at your company?

Way out there: What lies beyond the horizon? What bold idea is next?

Inside-out: How can we do something better, faster, cheaper?

Outside-in: What improves the experiences or better solves the needs of a customer or group of customers?

Which of these best describes your typical pricing strategy?

Based on usage or service

Value or cost-plus

Freemium or aspirational

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?

How-to-Earn-Respect-when-Everyone-Claims-to-Be-a-Thought-Leader

A thought leadership platform

Insight into customer needs and desires

R&D on a truly amazing new product design or feature concept

Which of these three types of people would fit in best with your company culture today?

Brilliant developers, engineers, and leaders who get things done.

Empathetic servant-leaders who intimately know and understand the customers' point of view.

Big thinkers who make a 'lifestyle choice' by joining our company.

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).

Reporting to our CMO: Aligned with sales, marketing, operations, and product management

Reporting to our CTO: Aligned with product management, IT, and R&D

In the C-suite, reporting to the CEO

For which of the following things is your company's CEO most likely to be lauded in the market?

Reputation building: for service, relationships, communications, and/or customer experience

Product evolution: for business performance, technical skills, patents, IP, and/or sales achievements

Vision: for gregariousness, personality, inventiveness, pioneering, and/or giant thinking

Which of the following three project proposals would most likely be funded by your executive team at its next meeting?

A feasibility study on an exciting but theoretical concept

An end-to-end target customer experience assessment and redesign canvassing all touchpoints

An R&D project to develop a near-term to medium-term solution to a present or emerging technical problem

How would your company's leadership team most likely confirm that a value proposition for your company is "correct"?

Sales are up, and brand reputation is high. The metrics show it's working.

We simply "feel" it; customers don't know what they want until we invent it.

We tested it at our latest round of customer advisory groups, and they loved it.

Which of the following three statements best describes how your company defines the word "brand"?

The look and feel of our company: Our logo, product names, taglines, product packaging, design style, tone of voice, etc.

The sum of all the experiences a customer has with our company across every touchpoint.

The way our spirit is embodied: A challenge to the world to think differently.

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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.