Examples of Pen Portraits and their use in Strategy Creation
In our article “What is a Pen Portrait?” we discussed the importance of ensuring that the facilitator has information about the people involved in the strategy development process. This means that they have some understanding of their background, beliefs and how they are likely to react to the process.
Here are some examples of real pen portraits (the names have been changed for obvious reasons) and how we used them during strategic interviews:
Example 1:
“Joe Bloggs is 42 years old and has been with the company since he left University. He is head of his department but got there trough time in the job rather than talent. He has no formal (or informal) management training.
While he is very intelligent, he can be quite immature and seems to lack confidence in interacting with people. As a result, he can be difficult to deal with and he tends to talk about people behind their back, which causes resentment and mistrust.
He has a tendency to look down on those who are not as academically qualified as him. In addition, he has a very close relationship with two people in the business and consequently, they each have influence over the other. Consequently, he is likely to play the role of expert as in relation to internal procedures.
He may also be an opinion former, at least as far as his immediate subordinates are concerned.
Finally, he can be cynical and has the potential to be disruptive or to act as a saboteur in the strategy process.”
Here, we started with easy questions based around this person’s area of expertise. This gave him time to get comfortable with me and the process and to start talking which was the biggest challenge.
By listening carefully to his answers we made sure that we asked relevant question, even if they were not relevant to the strategy development process. This gave him confidence that we were both listening to and interested in what he was saying which eased his concerns about the process. The result was that he eventually opened up and gave me some valuable insights, ideas and information about the current and future state of the business.
Given his influence over others in his team who were also involved in the process, we made sure that we interviewed him first. We did this because we knew that he would feed back his experience to the others and hopefully make them more cooperative. This worked well and the other interviews went well, albeit they we not without their challenges.
Example 2:
“Jane Doe is 32 years old and joined the company from another firm who were based in London. She is one of the more approachable people in the business but gives the impression that she sees herself as being above everyone else.
The fact that she speaks very quietly means that it can be difficult to hear what she is saying.
She knows the business very well and is quite switched on commercially and has come up with some good ideas. In addition, she is actively involved in what little marketing the company does, giving talks at various local enterprise events, etc.
However, she could be a potential saboteur is some circumstances, particularly if she were to see herself as a potential loser in the process. It is, however, unlikely that she would deliberately feed misinformation to the process.
Finally, she is very much a ‘9 to 5’ person so it would be very difficult to persuade her to attend an out of hours workshop.”
Here we made sure that we scheduled the interview mid morning so that this person had time to get settled into work while giving me enough time to speak with her before lunchtime. Knowing that she was quietly spoken meant that we were able to set the seating up in advance so that we was close enough to her to be able to hear what she was saying (without being too close!).
Given her involvement in the marketing of the business, we started with that aspect of the strategy and used her comments to move the conversation into other areas of the business. This worked well and she made a lot of good suggestions and observations about the business.