Encyclopedia of Leadership

3.7

RAIR LOGIC: ALIGNING CUSTOMERS, STRATEGY,

CULTURE, ANDLEADERSHIP

Inspired by Norman Chorn and Ivan Nurick.

Business strategy aligns organizations with their customers and markets; aligning the organi-

zation with its business strategy starts with leadership. Leadership influences, guides, and fos-

ters people’s thinking and behavior, and over time creates the organization’s culture. Needless

to say, to succeed in the long term, an organization’s culture (“how things are done around

here”) must be fully aligned with its business strategy. This tool provides a way of checking to

ensure alignment among your organization’s leadership style, culture, business strategy, and

customer needs or markets. [☛4.5 Culture]

For the most part, customers and clients operate from

four predictable and describable sets of RAIRpreferences

(Respond, Assure, Innovate, Relate). The table presented

here outlines these preferences, and recommends the

appropriate strategy, organizational culture, and leader-

ship style for each. One or two of these preferences often

dominate customer or client demand within an industry

or market, although all four usually exist to varying

degrees in most business environments. These preferences

provide a useful way for a leader to focus business strate-

gy on the needs of customers and clients, as well as to align the organization’s culture and lead-

ership style in support of this business strategy.

Respond indicates a predominately “thinking” customer or client preference for products

and services; assurea “sensing” preference; innovatean intuitive or “intuiting” preference;

and relatea “feeling” preference. These four categories are based upon the Myers-Briggs type

indicator. [☛14.7 Personal Preferences]

SECTION 3 TOOLS FORSTRATEGICTHINKING 89

The elements of strategic

alignment

Customer

Needs

Organization Business

Culture Strategy

People

➠customer-led

demand

➠fast turnaround

➠responsiveness

➠on-time

performance

➠have products

available

➠respond promptly to

customers’ requests

➠get things done fast

➠consistency

➠reliability

➠predictability

➠efficient

administration

➠guarantees

➠dependability

➠develop accurate,

decisive, exact, and

systematic approaches

to serving customers

➠supplier leadership

➠new ways of

delivering products

or services

➠leading-edge

technology

➠creative responses

➠take calculated risks

➠develop innovative

options for

delivering products

and service

➠understanding

➠insight

➠consideration

➠empathy

➠acceptance

➠sharing

➠guidance

➠trusting

➠develop methods of:

relating

cooperating

challenging

supporting customers

Respond Assure Innovative Relate

thinking sensing intuitiung feeling

predominates predominates predominates predominates

Customer or

client needs

Appropriate

strategy