How and why Stellar® is the Identity tool of choice for brands, consultancies and agencies

The leadership challenge: managing identity to create differentiated value

A customer never buys a car, a carpet or a carrot – they buy meaningful value, the satisfaction of desire. This is fundamental to what your busienss or organisation is. (Even government and non-profit organisations provide value; everything here is equally relevant to them.) Unless you differentiate this value, your company only provides commodities, however sophisticated the technology. That is why small cars globally sell on a 1-2% margin. And without shared identity and common purpose that integrates with and supports this identity and value, your company is an inefficient muddle of ideas and actions, however intelligent the people.

In his seminal book, Management, Drucker proposed that the first duty of senior management is to answer the question: what is our company and what should it be?  An answer thatcan only be answered by understanding what you mean to customers (and other stakeholders to some extent). This meaning is the essence of your value.

Everything we know about brands, positioning, strategy, alignment and organisational development confirms this. Experience also confirms Drucker’s dictum that structure and plans follow strategy, while strategy flows from identity.

Just as great sporting contests are won by mental performance, not just technical skills, so business performance depends on the clarity, coherence and power of the ideas that leaders use to create alignment and momentum, clarity and direction.

This is also why these are the intangible assets that matter most to businesses. Brand and positioning, unique competence and knowledge, vision and shared purpose, solution designs and business model are the motor units of business performance and are typically much more valuable than tangible assets. They are also assets that need more understanding and care and are more difficult to manage than the tangible ones.

How is identity structured and managed?

The challenge begins with questions: what do we need to know about our business? What are the interlocking elements of identity? How are they geared and interrelated? And how do we manage them as an integrated strategic tool? 

These are not a trivial questions. Indeed, until now there is almost no good answer. Consider the variety of strategic concepts or design tools, each of which is also an intangible asset: purpose, positioning, competence, vision, balanced scorecard, brand… etc. Are these all just a random collection – or a hierarchy – how are they ordered and related?  Which are essential?

Do business leaders pick and choose the ones they like – the entrepreneur, numbers fan, brand marketer, culture hero, and so on each making their own choices?

Leaders need a practical model to steer the company with. Stellar® provides this.

Stellar architecture

The Stellar architecture has now been tested and applied large and small companies across many categories and evaluated by a large group of international consultants.

Technically Stellar is a meta-model or whole system architecture consisting of 12 strategic design tools in a co-ordinated framework: meaning that it organises all the key design tools of strategic identity and organisational alignment.

What you get is 12 interacting insights that steer the business or organisation.

These 12 form a whole, real and coherent circle. Each step in the circle is a progression from and towards the last point! Thus the connection of insight to insight becomes a powerul way to develop strategy, plan action and assess performance.

Stellar thus becomes a powerful leadership tool to get the whole organisation focused together on the successful creation of value

Tesco and Waitrose examples

Applications

• Develop stronger strategy and interlocking business initiatives across the functions
• Ensure more effective governance
• Understand adjacencies: is this the right company to buy, the right product do develop, the right partner/supplier/distributor to work with? How are our brands interrelated?
• Ensure managers and staff are clearer and more empowered; develop a Stellar 'bible' for the organisation
• Understand competitive postioning and unique value; develop more powerful insights, differentiated value propositions, potent and consistent customer messaging
• Ensure integrated communication across all customer contact points
• Design and manage more effective products, more significant induction programmes
• Understand the real and unique KPIs of the business with a dynamic and integrated scorecard

How we develop Stellar Signatures

A Stellar Signature is the organisational identity profile defined by the 12 co-ordinates of Stellar, with some other features like key connections. There are two inter-related ways to develop this, and both are usually used:

1. By research and deep analysis, refining insights from phenomena and data
2. Through workshops that guide directors and managers to discover, combine and share knowledge to arrive at meaningful insights

Development history

Stellar was developed in a collaboration between the Centre for Integrated Marketing, Stepping Stones and Corpus Angeli. The two principal developers were Professor Angus Jenkinson and Richard Leachman, a brilliant analyst and architect. From early 2005 Drs Kathelijne Drenth of The Twelve network joined the team. The copyright in Stellar and trademark is invested in Stellar Ltd, which is co-owned by the lead developers.

The search for perfection began with exactly the kinds of questions listed above, with a thorough trawl of other people's good ideas, testing against real situations and detailed work with dozens of experienced consultants and leaders. Stellar has been used with giants and two-person companies, commercial organisations and cities, in workshops and behind the scenes research and analysis.

Becoming a Stellar organisation

We can undertake a Stellar project for or with you.

Alternatively you may wish to become a licensed user of Stellar for your own internal or external consultancy or agency services. Organisations are invited to use Stellar subject to good practice and reasonable understanding. If you are interested contact the Stellar principals for further information at info@stellar.com.