Productivity has usually been understood in terms of a Supply-side perspective. But the current marketplace imposes a Demand-side perspective reflecting the evaluation that consumers give the experiences of their engagement with companies.

1. The New Productivity
Preferred Presence on Demand

2. “Presence” is something that successful marketers can point at when their work has turned out well.
Presence has been a factor forever, and in recent memory we’ve routinely seen it as buzz, dot com ideas,
political capital, brand loyalty, market leadership legacy, and other flavors that represent the attribution of worth
directly to influence. The news in this is all about how fragile it has become (always with a few glaring exceptions
that become flag bearers or “true norths”).
Today, just as before, selling goods and services can become so highly specialized that there are offerings sharing
very little in their approach to getting and closing the deal. But today, there is so much information readily
available about everything, that four key things occur in the markets:
• a presumption that good enough automation already exists to address requests
• a sustained impression that scarcity is no longer an issue
• a “norm” of consumers making decisions “before the fact” of actual trial
• a greatly increased need for differentiation to be a fresh perception more than a recalled one
These things homogenize the consumer’s attitude towards encountering any additional new offers, leaving
companies with a more indistinguishable sameness of opportunity to show how their difference matters. This
development isn’t ironic or paradoxical; instead, it is exactly what competition is like when the competitors don’t
get to make the rules.
Meanwhile, the consumer’s idea of differentiation is increasingly about how the difference is specific to the
consumer.

3. Little wonder, then, that the marketing function in an organization is currently so preeminent. The consumer’s
idea of the purpose of a commercial organization is that the organization should find out what the consumer
wants and “do what it takes” to make it happen.
The company then needs the ability to show up where the consumer is, and the ability to be what the consumer
needs it to be at that encounter.
For the company, the key is to convert its presence into influence and to convert the influence into preference.
Naturally, a strategic approach by the company is to work through the rules of attraction. The problem facing all
marketing now is to dynamically discover what the rules are, from the consumer’s point of view.
In that effort:
• Proactively influencing that consumer POV is historically part of the mission and remains so, but making
significant observations about the potential for new rules is equally important.
• Meanwhile, part of the rules is still to demonstrate the value of the offer made to the consumer. The
consumer makes the decision about whether to allow the demo or to pay attention to the demo. The form of
demonstration must be appreciated, and the kind of value presented must fit into the priorities of the
consumer. Newer and broader types of demonstration are necessary.
From the demand side, the consumer’s terms of value are capability, provision and relevance. What is different
about this from the past is on the producer’s side: the heightened degree to which these are terms of
production aiming at moving targets, diverse targets, and temporary targets.

4. Just as the new normal for the consumer is an information environment that treats all products the same, yet
effectively, for making selections, producers need a production environment that treats all opportunities the
same yet effectively for achieving differentiated preference on demand.
The common word that we use to represent this “treatment” is “management”.
From that notion, some high-level “consumer engagement process” and high-level “producer engagement
process” might vaguely come to mind, but process is not the appropriate level of identification. Companies with
supply-side operational excellence will find that the semantic and cultural shift to the demand side will not be
supported adequately by repurposing or re-scoping supply-side processes.
Instead, a demand-orientated model of engagement must first provide an alignment of specified factors for
which processes subsequently become responsible. A producer model must correspond to a consumer model
and thereby generate requirements to be met subsequently at the process level.
From the demand side, the model must allow the producer to systematically address moving targets, diverse
targets, and temporary targets – all at the same time.
• Flexibility – temporary
• Versatility – diverse
• Agility – changing
This explains why resilience, acuity and quickness are essential characteristics of successful company behavior
for establishing a preferred presence. In turn, this explains the emergence and convergence of Lean, DevOps,
Agile, Brokering, and other methods as the leading practices for a demand management model.

5. A part of the critical shift from supply-based orientation to demand-based includes a shift in attention from “the
management of performance” to “the performance of management”.
In order to run with the demand-based success criteria, management must pervade engagement, and
management must generate – not frustrate – flexibility, versatility and agility. This signals that the company’s
organization for production is critical path, and the model of the organization itself must aim for addressing the
demand-based needs of “the market”. This pervasiveness is not about taking “management processes” and
injecting or stretching them across all significant seams in the organization. Instead, it is about defining
management consistently and having all processes align to the consistency.
We understand that the “company” literally exists in order to provide an organization for production. Assuring
that the company is sustained does not mean that the organization remains unchanged but instead that there is
always an opportunity to generate an appropriate organization. This makes productivity necessary as the key
supporting “internal” mechanism for refreshing available investment used in the company.
In the demand-orientation, productivity aims at preferred presence, by which the business opportunity arises
for harvesting benefit from engagement. The performance of management is about how well management
establishes sustained productivity.

6. The older supply-orientated organization had different terms of productivity and therefore pursued internal
coherence and alignment differently.
Transformation to a demand-orientated organization requires identifying, at the high (modeling) level, the
appropriate interpretation and inclusion of attributes that are success factors of value, under demand.
We have seen that the basic attributes are mainly ones that have been previously recognized, but they are to be
re-oriented and supported so that production can offer continuous new development versus demand.
Overall, the idea of how the organization needs to behave is not disconnected from its past but it is directed by a
different purpose. Along with that comes two important changes in the business model itself.
One: supply-oriented producers have believed that marketing creates consumers. But demand-oriented
producers know that consumers already exist and that marketing creates customers.
Two: supply-oriented producers relied on industriousness to construct supply, which essentially generated a
collection of valued property we can recognize as an estate. But demand-oriented producers expect that
development will create consumer behaviors, making development a leading edge of the marketing thrust to
proactively achieve influence that can become a preferred presence.

7. (ROI)
Demand-based spend: impacts as experiences
Supply-based cost:
assets as resources
(Production) Deployment of
Creative methods
Optimization of
Industrial methods
(Operation) Development of
“experiences”
Construction of
“deliverables”
(Value) capability provision relevance
capacity type timing effect
quality scope convenience context
asset function competition access
Return on Performance – Presence and the new Productivity
The market today is a market of evaluated experiences.
Presence is the engagement with the influence of the provider of the experience.
Strategic objective: make presence the preferred presence
ROI: the organizational purpose of “productivity”
• Old: property (construction of property = estate)
• New: performance (development of performance = presence)
Productivity: the application of competency to requirements, to generate a benefit
• Old: created resources from assets / If-Then logics / Departmentalization / Flexibility through matrix management
• New: creates experiences from impacts / Why-When logics / Roles / Agility through systemic morphing
Requirements of systemically versatile operation under current primacy of demand:
• Open source (due to digital, cultural, and financial environments)
• Cognitive (featuring design, intelligence, navigation, personalization)
• Systematic (for autonomy, authority, availability)
DEMAND
SUPPLY
experiences
creativity
development
attributes
resources
industry
construction
A shift in mindset from supply orientation to demand
orientation changes the points of view on productivity.
Productivity for Demand reflects how attributes
underlying impacts align to form a preferred presence.

8. ©2015 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
www.archestra.com
mryder@malcolmryder.com