First, as we have noted, the mercenary works very well in times when fast action is imperative. A resource-rich competitor is moving in swiftly, a promising new technology is taking hold— in these kinds of urgent contingencies, there is little time for organizational debate and consensus building. The best possible decision must be made and acted upon swiftly. The people implementing the decision must act in concert. They must know what do to and by when. And they must not delay. For situations like these, there is no better cultural form than the mercenary.
The mercenary works well too when time frames are short and problems simple. In the chapter on the networked organization, we used the example of a pharmaceutical company developing a new cancer drug to make the point that the networked
culture was an apt fit for complicated business situations and complex value chains. A new cancer drug involves interaction between people from many functions and can take up to ten years. In this kind of situation, the personal relationships of sociability are the glue that holds the process together through its highs and lows.
But consider a very different scenario. Market research has shown that the same pharmaceutical company needs to sell its children's vitamins in the shape of TV characters instead of in the shape of zoo animals. The value chain is simple—market- ing-manufacturing-sales-customer—as is the problem to be solved. Call in the mercenary troops to execute and watch them win.
The mercenary culture can also be appropriate when a company's customers judge it by its numbers, pure and simple. Think of a commodity chemical company like Andy Collins's Tystar. All customers cared about was the cost of materials per metric ton. Or think of a mutual fund company such as Fidelity. Customers invest money with Fidelity funds for one reason only: their rate of return. They don't care which firm has the more friendly phone operators or the most engaging advertising. Their decision to buy is based on explicit performance results. Thus, when a company's key success factor can be expressed in numerical terms, the mercenary culture's focus and clarity about numerical targets make good competitive sense.