Go on – hug a cynic!

I’m sure we’re all familiar with the usual “employer brand”-style communication campaigns. You know, the glossy brochures filled with beautiful people decked in power suits, killer smiles and emasculating handshakes? Or the so-called “champions” plucked from the ranks of the unwashed and the obscure as apparent beacons of the corporate values and virtues paraded at awards ceremonies, on “star of the week boards” or launches.

I’m a little ashamed to say that in the past, I’ve occasionally been complicit by commissioning “fairytale” imagery and copy or adopting a “no negatives” approach to recruiting internal facilitators which belied the workaday reality of the people whom the initiative was meant to represent.

Marketing certainly has its virtues. But internal audiences are much more demanding than customers. They expect authenticity from their representatives and gritty realism from their representations. And it’s a tad short-sighted to recruit employees on the back of false and empty promises. They’re unlikely to recover from the cold dose of reality that meets their idealism once they’re through the revolving HQ doors.

One of my “eureka” moments on the long and winding road through corporate change and development is that the power to be engaging, more often than not, comes with a dose of skepticism; a maverick edge, a darker side or even a little vulnerability.

Consider the enticing power of the rebel; the hooded renegade; the Everyman who represents the rank and file. Or reflect on the beguiling charm of the flawed hero or the beauty with the scar!

I was interested to read a McKinsey article suggesting that 2/3rds of major change programmes fail because of the failure to target true leaders and positive change role models. Well, as shocking as that statistic is for the big battalion consultancies, I know from current and past experience that the first line management community is absolutely key; the senior leaders must walk the talk but just as importantly, the sometimes cynical but usually authentic informal leaders have a very powerful influence over their peers. But it’s impossible to spot them unless you’re prepared to take a people-centred and mentoring-focused approach to change and live the values from the diagnostic through to evaluation stages.

In my experience, it is far more effective to connect to employees via the sincere medium of true representatives who not only reflect a personalised take on the corporate values, behaviours and culture but who are brave and honest enough to give a warts and all representation of what it’s really like to work there. That’s why I favour the use of the People Panel; the facilitator with less polish but bags of character; or the informal editors of the grapevine whenever I’m called upon to help facilitate change.

So go on! Be brave and embrace your cynics. After all, tough times call for thinking differently and when was the last time you saw one of the “fragrant T&T “crew leading an innovative and even revolutionary charge?

For more information on mentoring programmes for the leadership community drop us a line.

Are the BA heritage advertisements really more relevant to their employees?

British branding establishment figure, Wally Ollins claims in a Marketing Week article that “It’s too late for BA ‘To fly. To serve’ when you’re in a tailspin”, criticising their latest, timeline-based advertising campaign.

Wally alleges that: “The problem for BA and, for that matter, most European and all American airlines is that they have become cold, mechanistic and absolutely uninterested in their passengers.” Fairly punchy stuff on the one hand.

Yet on the other he states that “The advertising campaign is brilliant clever and original, and fine for internal morale but leave us passengers out of it. Don’t talk about service. Do it.”

“Fine for internal morale….leave us passengers out….”!?

I’m afraid this is the perpetual minefield for the external-facing brand fraternity which includes Wally, namely the persistent notion that employee engagement with brand is somehow consigned to morale building, push communication or internal advertising.

Speaking from the standpoints of passenger, engagement and change consultant with intimate knowledge of BA and as a brand specialist, I have to admit to finding his comments puzzling.

Firstly, I agree  that the advertisement is clever. I know from past and current experience that brands with a legacy have a potent opportunity to provide a sense of stability in troubled times. Wherever possible, especially during mergers and acquisitions or periods of major change I urge my clients to embrace and respect the history of the brands involved. People retreat to the comfort of the known during troubled times, the village and the homely embrace of trusted values and associations. Consumers and employees alike are comforted by heritage and “stickability”and seek out islands of stability when the cold winds of economic misfortune blow. Brands with a rich heritage like BA, should be valuing and re-communicating that heritage. After all, Virgin recently did the same regardless of the fact that their roots extend only as far as the 80s. And is it a coincidence that the tv series Pan Am, about a long-lost and much lamented brand, has become a hit now?

I disagree that the BA campaign is largely irrelevant for customers and much more relevant for BA employees. Of course BA has to back up their service promise. It’s patently wrong to suggest that the advertising campaign is primarily for the benefit of BA employees, however. I’ve been vociferous in my own cries for the BA leaders to do much more than simply “show their employees the adverts” as internal engagement is a more subtle art, requiring very different approaches to convince the harshest of critics that the leaders are listening, consulting and acting to preserve an organisation and brand they hold dear. But at least they’re taking brand engagement seriously and are seemingly investing accordingly.

It’s obvious that the airline industry is in turmoil and has been for some time. Banker bashing has overtaken airline strike spotting as the business media’s favoured sport. But it wasn’t that long ago that I hosted a debate between some of the leading airline brands at Interbrand hq in which it emerged that the impact of bargain-basement airlines; short-termism and obsession with quarterly shareholder reporting had become the biggest risks to the industry.

Contrary to what Wally’s article implies, I don’t believe the blanket negative caricature of BA employees he portrays. Yes, the airline industry would benefit from a refresh, even if that has to be a brand at a time. But BA is still one of the most beloved brands of these British isles and to a large extent, the problems the BA brand faces are synonymous with the trouble brand Britain finds itself in. And we know what happens when Brits are backed into a corner.

Sure, the BA leadership could do with some help re-connecting with their stakeholders inside and out. Yes, they would do well to explore the fabulous engagement initiatives of the past. Of course they should listen with open minds to the opinions of the marcomms critics, their customers and employees. Yet they do need to be applauded for investing and taking risks at a time when most board rooms are content to hunker down and ride out the economic storm. Most of all, they’re absolutely right to look back in order to move forward.

Brand Champions – Engaging Brand Podcast

Listen to Ian’s interview with the enigmatic Anna Farmery, founder of the award-winning Engaging Brand platform, during which they discuss:

• whether you create brand champions  create a culture to foster brand champions.
• Do you treat employees as customers? Do you market to your employees? Does internal marketing work?
• The role of leadership and of management in employee engagement.
• Who are the MOST important people in any business?
• How brand champions should not be agents of PR
• How to evolve a brand champion culture
• What are the characteristics of brand champions
• Practical steps to create brand champion conditions

show-360-brand-champions.html

Employee Engagement Alphabet

A couple of years ago, Ian collaborated with David Zinger and a select international group from the Employee Engagement Network to publish a free e-book. Here’s Ian’s fun but thought-provoking take on engagement in 26 keys:

A – “Anarchy in the UK”. The Sex Pistols taught us a lesson about engagement and control that’s worth remembering as we become part of the establishment ourselves.

B – “BS Bingo”! A great way to pass the time at the next leadership conference.

C – chief engagement officers (first line managers) are the new CEOs

D –  enough engagement planning and surveying already – just DO It!

E – encourage your line managers to be the great communicators their people already know them to be.

F – Facebook will never beat Face Time but it is the organisation’s friend. So-called social media isn’t a fad, embrace it.

G – “it’s great after being out late, walking my baby back home”. Now that’s engagement!

H – Hire people who are in tune with the values of your organisation.

I – However well crafted communication should start and end with and “I” – “I see what’s in it for me”

J – Jack Johnson. He’s on message with several generations! What can we learn?

K – “knock, knock”. It’s an economic downturn. Can the leaders come out please?

L – Leaders look out of the window in the good times but in the mirror when things are going wrong.

M – Managers are an endangered species we’re not campaigning to save.

N – “Naked” (and other “power” words)

O – Ordinary is good. Take back ordinary. Let’s make authentic communication ordinary, the norm!

P – Planning is our friend. But rather like doughnuts, too much planning really slows you down.

Q – “The Queen is dead. Long Live the Queen”. Whatever you may think of them Hero Leaders come and go. Line managers last a lot longer.

R – “With great power comes great responsibility”

S – supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. You remembered it. Geddit?

T – Taste, sight, sound, smell, touch – engagement’s about appealing to the lot.

U – U2!?. More than a legendary rock band but a reminder that we’ve a great network out there and we’ve all got something to share and learn.

V – Veal! A controversial topic and a great reminder that great engagement relies on communication that is fit for audience purpose.

W – Wales. I wonder what lessons we can learn from the Welsh about postcolonial centralised communication functions?

X – The generation responsible for much of the engagement activity.

Y – The generation responsible for receiving and translating much of the engagement activity. But do they speak the same language……?

Z – Zoo! Whatever formal engagement strategies there may be it’s always going to be a fantastic, colourful jungle out there with grapevines aplenty so open those cages and connect with the people

A bit of fun with an important message or two. If you would like a gratis copy of the book in all its glory, contact us.

More ceo, less CEO

Tom Peters, trans-generational management guru supreme, has been ranting increasingly vociferously on Twitter etc about the role of first-line managers . At the core of his ongoing thesis are two things:

1. An organisation is ONLY ever as good as its cache of first-line managers

2. First-line managers are a direct reflection of the cultural tone set by the senior leaders; their experience and their training and development.

I couldn’t agree more. In Brand Engagement, based on two decades of working within the engagement field, I reversed the logic of CEO as the primary communicator vociferously arguing the case for the ceo (chief engagement officer) or first-line management community.

SO, if we assume that the tales of engagement levels in the lower quartile are true (or even if we retain a healthy skepticism), isn’t it worth reflecting on how organisations are engaging their engagers? Even when budgets are too tight for scatter-gun or mass immersion approaches to engagement, doesn’t it make even more sense to awaken the sleeping giant within and focus on a relatively under-utilised legion of potential champions?

Or perhaps Tom’s wrong!

Well…I know who I believe.

If you would like a conversation about developing your line management community into mentors, champions and role models, drop us a line.

Fired Up or Fired! The engagement matrix; M&S and the engaging arts

 On the One Hand – Sustainable Business

You can’t think of your audiences in isolation any more. Well you can, but you won’t last long. Your customers are your community; your colleagues are your corporate representatives (even if you fire them like Apple); your corporate responsibility impacts on how your customers feel; your customers get served by your colleagues who have vested interest in your success and theirs. And so it goes round.

But how to make it all tie together? How to get everyone fired up and not fired? How to get each of these audiences engaged in what you do?

On the Other Hand  – Sustainable Communication                                                                                                

Unless you want to maintain the classic corporate silos, you can’t think of your separate functions acting in isolation any more. The world moves too fast to let your organisation take separate journeys, at separate times, with separate functions creating separate approaches and separate programmes.

The ‘silos’ that have built up over the years as each specialism gets more, well, specialised, are no longer adding clarity and purpose but are creating dysfunction and slowing performance. I talked about this in Managing Your Internal Customers (FT Pitman) in 1993. Nearly 20 years later the time has come to put a truly engaging strategy into action. And the driver now is not just costs, or performance (or at the time TQM) but  it is all of these combined & the economy & the increasing prospect of social discontent, & fight against corporate greed & saving the planet . There is no longer the time to change bit by bit.

We all know the C-Suite generate the Visions, Missions and Values (as words, or in their actions), communication creates and cascades the copy/content; marketing the brand and imagery while HR invents an ‘employment’ version of the brand’ (however divisive),  . But why is everyone doing this in ignorant isolation? The power of what we say, what we do and what we look like (my mantra in The Company Culture Cookbook FT Prentice Hall 2002) is that these are best done together.

Plan A – Because there is no Plan B from Marks and Spencer, our Brand Champions of 2011, and stars of our Engaging Brands Report

If there is no Plan B then everyone has to be working on Plan ! That’s where Marks and Spencer got to, in 2008. Now it’s just a way of doing business. But it took the strong will, determination and some strong words from one man, Sir Stuart Rose, then Chairman and Chief Executive, to put together a strategy, an integrated plan and execution for a new way of running the business.

Plan A was/is not a ‘side-show’, not a ‘nice to have’, not a ‘sop’ to give an appearance of doing CSR, not a bit of ‘philanthropy’ as witnessed by Mike Barry, Head of Sustainability M&S, in his TEDx talk. It was not a separate programme alongside the business, but the opposite, an engaging art, an integrated whole. That’s where the ‘one hand’ of creating a sustainable business got together with the ‘other hand’ of creating sustainable communication that would not wither on the vine.

Mark and Spencer were the only company in our study of the FTSE 100 to ‘tick every box’ in our engagement matrix. That’s why we, and the Guardian Awards amongst others, have named them our 2011 corporate Brand Champions.

*Co-authored by Ian Buckingham and Kevin Thomson.