insight 

I had two discussions yesterday which, on reflection, illustrated the difficulties of labelling organisations and the consequences of the labels that are attached to organisations. By labelling I mean the way in which people categorise or describe an organisation. Often we seem to seek a single term for describing an organisation and I think this is too limiting.

The first discussion was part of an interview with a journalist new to the industry. Describing Nominet as a not-for-profit, in that we are prevented from distributing any profits we make, didn’t capture the full picture at all. A consequence of this label is that some think we should not make any profits at all. We’ve been a commercial company right from the very start, but probably not many people would give us this label and some think that this means we should introduce differential pricing. We are also a membership organisation and a consequence of this label is that some think we should do things purely in the interests of our members, rather than all stakeholders. We’re also labelled as a service organisation and a global internet industry organisation. Its actually quite difficult to categorise Nominet with a single label. If we do so, we miss the complexity as well as many of the issues and opportunities but also people come away with expectations linked solely with that label.

The second discussion was as a Board member of another not-for-profit organisation late yesterday evening. The introduction of benchmarking was viewed as too commercial for a not-for-profit by some, with a consequence that we might miss areas for improvement. The organisation is also a charity, with a consequence that some people think we should spend our income differently.

Thankfully, common sense prevailed when benchmarking was re-labelled as a standard management tool, a single label which made it much more acceptable :o)