I’m fascinated by what has become the widespread abuse of the term ‘performance culture’.  For me this phrase has become inextricably linked with the drive for delivering shareholder value in quarterly increments and the “up or out” mentality which has spilled over from investment banking.

But where does this leave the zealots now that a number of the investment banking super-tankers have holed themselves on the reefs of greed, selfishness, arrogance and some fairly suspect practice? Surely it’s time for a fundamental re-think.

I would go so far as to suggest that the culture problem is a widespread issue every bit as serious as the accusations of systemic racism levelled at the police force back in the 90s. Arguably this crisis will have even more far reaching consequences.

The time has come for comprehensive internal reviews followed by an energetic re-positioning of the vision, mission and values and associated people processes within many of our leading brand names.  This should be the first step towards a re-framing of the definition of performance.

This is a complex issue but consider for a second the long established theory that an individual is at their most effective within a role some 2.5 years into the job. Or reflect on the equally established best practice that leaders should spend most of their first 100 days listening and gathering information. Contrast this with the notion of “hitting the ground running” and the obsession with quarterly shareholder reporting and year on year incremental targeting regardless of conditions. Mixed messages?

It seems a little old fashioned in these high octane times but there’s sound logic underpinning leadership best practices which call for considered, well paced decision making based upon an understanding that the decision makers will still be around when the impact of their decisions come to fruition.

Bankers, for example, used to be remunerated on the basis of loyalty bonuses and benefits packages at preferential rates.  Not so long ago, any posting on a c.v. revealing tenure in a role of under three years was viewed with suspicion.  Lift the drains on the recent recruitment drive amongst the retail banking sector and you will be greeted by whole teams made up of job-hopping former investment bankers.

Don’t get me wrong.  I very much believe in the notion of a culture of performance.  That’s why we’re all in business after all.  I just don’t believe in the notion of winning at all costs.

 Brands are built from within.  Brands are not about promises made by marketing. They’re about promises met by employees.

When staff choose industrial action; walk out; strike it signals a fundamental disconnect between your employees and your brand. Employee engagement has broken down.  It’s rebuildable, but only if everyone involved remembers that communication is more about listening than it is about pushing and managing messages.

Strikes tend to be synonymous with the public sector – like the Winter of Discontent in the 70s or miner’s strikes a decade later.  They are usually simplified in the press as clashes of intransigent polar extremes; management vs workers; greed vs survival. But they’re a lot more complicated than the caricatures of greasy pinstripes vs blue collar table bashers suggest.

Consider the Royal Mail dispute. On the face of it this can be seen as the death throes of the once irresistible force of New Labour’s spin doctors meeting the formerly immovable object of trade unionism. But talk to the ordinary postie or even customer in the street (or behind the letterbox) and this dispute is about so much more. 

It’s about a fight for identity by employees who are emotionally connected with a brand which they, and their customers, see as a national institution (see Buckingham; Brand Engagement http://www.by2w.co.uk/new.html ).

It’s about culture, “the way things get done around here” and workers resisting the march of automation which experience tells us may slash cost off the bottom line but does not guarantee better customer service or an improved quality of life (anyone remember the days of second post and trustworthy postal staff?).  In short, it’s a brand battleground that reflects a range of hot social issues topics including culture, values and identity.

As someone who specialises in helping organisations manage brands from within I’ve been called upon to help avert three high profile strikes in the last five years. Two were in the retail sector during the run up to Christmas and the most recent was a college where the staff were actively dissuading students from enrolling.

In each case the core issue wasn’t about pay and rations but fundamental communication issues like listening; consultation and disengaged staff who felt their managers were no longer connected with the values they believed their brand represented. In all three cases, catastrophe was averted through re-opening communication channels; fostering respect and active listening

People care more about the brands they work for than you may think.  Culture, the way people do things within the organisations that support those brands, is probably the most important determinant of brand performance.

It’s worth spending some time understanding the true dna of your brand. If you don’t know what brand engagement is worth, especially in these lean times, can you risk your employees deserting their posts? Or even worse, disengaged staff continuing to represent your brand?

WASP males don’t tend to get too many invitations to be involved in the promotion of diversity management; which is a shame really.  I’m a firm believer in the notion that the promotion of diversity should embrace the full range of stakeholders; it should truly practice inclusiveness in the way stakeholders are engaged with the philosophy or it runs the risk of being seen as a marginal activity aimed at an exclusive audience.  A “push” communication approach may be one of the reasons why the diversity flag bearers within organisations sometimes find themselves struggling for real influence at the top table.

But this thought piece isn’t to critique the notion of diversity or challenge its increasing relevance to the organisation development and employee engagement agenda. I would like to share a rare moment of Belgian enlightenment.

Picture the scene.  The wonderful and irrepressibly inspirational Myrtha Casanova of the The European Institute for Managing Diversity had enlisted my help to co-facilitate a workshop she was running with the senior executives of a global producer of cereal crops and foodstuffs.  They had been embroiled in a PR war with NGOs and pressure groups worldwide because of controversial growing techniques and what was perceived as an arrogant communication stance.

The workshops were intended to develop diversity strategies across their global businesses.  Most of their senior executives were gathered in Belgium to that end – and they weren’t very pleased about it.

It was soon clear that their beleaguered HR Director had been forced into developing a diversity strategy by the board who were in turn responding to US legislation.  The executive cadre encamped in Belgium were 90% male, mostly of Anglo Saxon origin and frankly, felt they had much more pressing priorities.  In short, the workshops quickly regressed into trench warfare.

The turning point came, however, shortly after lunch on day one when, rather than push more and more statistics, facts and process at the group, we adopted a less evangelical approach and asked them to explore their brand from the customer’s perspective. 

They had traditionally seen themselves as a business to business organisation but it took one of the more junior managers, who also happened to have the largest team and who also happened to be a woman, to point out that housewives could make or break their company.  By drawing a simple supply chain model she was able to quickly illustrate the route their product ultimately followed to market and how it was immaterial that they weren’t putting the bread on the shelves themselves. Women still make the vast majority of purchasing decisions per household and the retailers were reliant upon their suppliers to provide raw materials in tune with the ethics and values of the consumer.  An epiphany!

This simple, jaw-dropping moment proves to be a revelation for her cynical peers who had clearly spent years developing competencies and promoting values appropriate for managing their equally macho purchasing managers in the businesses they were selling to.  Suddenly the link between organisational culture and their PR problems was put into stark relief. More importantly, they realised that, without a more representative management structure they would make similar mistakes.  The business case for diversity had become clear and the rest of the session was put to productive use developing a central and local diversity policy, strategy and engagement approach which owed much to a loaf of bread!

If you want to find out more about the EIMD (a not for profit organisation founded in 1996, with headquarters in Barcelona and which operates across the European Union), take a look at their website http://www.iegd.org/englishok/who.htm

Or feel free to drop me a line and I’ll tell you more about this and similar stories.

Ian@by2w.co.uk

Legacy is a loaded term. If you’re the glass half empty type it smacks of “ old fashioned, out of date, redundant”. If you favour the glass half full approach you’ll make associations like “firm foundations; proven track record and relationship equity” when you hear this term.

As a brand and engagement specialist, I’m acutely aware that one of the strongest but often most underappreciated assets many Old World brands have is their legacy. In times of crisis and change it can be comforting to employees to know that this organisation has withstood worse in the past.

As individuals, we seem to be increasingly interested in notions of legacy, family heritage – where we come from. The Haka, the famous tribal dance of the feared New Zealand rugby team literally attempts to summon up the spirits of the ancestors of the combatants to provide strength and courage as they face a new challenge. Perhaps this was what organisations like Walmart have tried to replicate with their company songs or may explain the communal song and dance rituals at employee conferences?

Now this overt attempt to conjure up corporate spirit isn’t to everyone’s taste. It illustrates the point that employee engagement has to be fit for purpose within local employee markets. But by mentioning what some may consider to be “naff” engagement initiatives that are puzzlingly powerful mutu for others does beg the question “what are you doing to engage your employees during the downturn”?

It comes as little surprise to me that I’ve seen a rise in the number of complaints from employees across sectors about the availability of their line managers.  There has also been a decline in face to face communication like Team Briefings and a rise in what I term e-mail management. When they can’t come up with answers to tricky issues many line managers are choosing to lie low.

In these dark days, leaders need to call upon all of their resources to speed up the recovery process. If your brand has a legacy, what initiatives are you undertaking to make the most of that heritage to provide confidence, assurance and a sense of stability?  Most importantly, how are your most important communicators, your line managers, being recognised and utilised as the eyes, ears and voice of the business?

A client, let’s call him David, works for a formerly blue chip multi-national.  Their core HR or people processes, post SAP, were re-designed by teams of Big Four consultants to maximise efficiencies and drive out non-conformances arising from human error.  In short, HR has, in effect, been replaced by systems, standards, Helplines and KPI’s. Managerial learning and development has been re-focused on technical rather than soft skills.

David, by his own admission, is a relatively old school, line and customer service focused manager. He’s a believer in sustaining relationships and in resolving interpersonal differences before they become formal issues (often over a coffee or a beer). He has worked for his company for two decades and has received awards for his work on a number of occasions.

Recently David encountered issues in his personal life which compromised his 8am - 9pm working routine.  As pressure built he started to struggle and turned to his recently appointed executive line managers for support. They responded by citing due process, changed his reporting line from 1:1 to 2:1 and offered him the option of submitting formal Grievances and visiting Occupational Health if he had a problem. They also placed this loyal middle manager on a series of Performance Contracts when they believed his standards (loosely defined) started to slip. Unlike David, they documented every conversation.

Sleepless nights led to longer hours; stress led to Psoriasis and eventually to depression and medication and now to extended absence on health grounds. He eventually submitted a grievance but the 2 and sometimes 3:1 micro management has seen the organisation close ranks and he faces the invidious choice of turning on his own company via tribunal or falling on his own sword. 

David is passionate about the organisation and his job. He has the experience and people skills which customer and staff surveys suggest are needed to help turn the organisation around. Yet David, and it turns out, many of his contemporaries, have become the victims of “due process”.

The growing number of Davids remain voiceless despite the CEO Town Halls and surveys. Yet the organisation flounders in a short-termist backlash, woeful line management skills and mismanagement freefall.

The CEO may understand the need for culture change but what’s to become of these invisible FTEs in the meantime when the HR offices are empty and the day to day processes don’t have ears?

The Renaissance of the Mighty Mutuals

There was a time, not so very long ago, when the mutual societies were seen as deeply unfashionable and treated with the same disdain as a flat cap at Royal Ascot.

Well, the day of the mutual has dawned once again.

In 19^th century England, the Industrial Revolution erupted into massive social change and, as a by-product of the rive for prosperity it threatened to tear village communities apart as generations headed into towns and cities to service heavy industry.

Building societies emerged as financial mutual help organizations for workers who had been uprooted from village communities. They offered a way for workers to pool resources and fund and build their own housing in spite of the sometimes scandalous and always difficult economic conditions of the new cities.

Mutual societies, of which the Yorkshire Building Society and Nationwide and, of course, Co-Operative Finance are examples can trace their roots back a couple of hundred years and several generations. Unlike most financial services organisations, they are run for the benefit of members rather than shareholders and take their foundation values very seriously. To this day they are one of the few types of organisation where several generations of the same family are happy to till work hand in hand.

As I very much respect this link between values, communication and brand I wrote about the YBS in Brand Engagement and will be featuring a major case study on the Co-Operative Financial Services in the sequel Brand Champions, not least because, despite these dark days, they are not only surviving but are thriving.

While their competitors resort to lawyers and due process to defend their much depleted positions from the wolf packs at the gate, which sadly includes a growing mob of disgruntled employees who are increasingly joining with shareholders baying for the blood of the board; Nationwide has announced further expansion plans, as has CFS and most mutuals are experiencing a flood of deposits and new accounts.

Cynics may claim that this simply represents a triumph of inertia over innovation and, yes, it’s true the mutuals have taken care with depositor’s money, but they have also been significant innovators in their own right. 

Did you know that there are more Co-op outlets than McDonalds stores in the UK? Were you aware that CFS was one of the most significant investors in Employer Branding and Brand Engagement across sectors and that their state of the art brand engagement experience regularly attracts international visitors desperate to transfer best practices into their own organisations?

This all goes to show that we shouldn’t blindly lust for Disney’s magic dust when seeking the employee engagement nirvana. 

The time has come to re-consider the humble mutual, organisations in the truest sense who treasure their legacy and who position their values at the very forefront of their brand. After all, what is a brand if it isn’t about keeping the promises you make to the market? What wouldn’t shareholders, both internal and external, give for that kind of authenticity right now?

 These are complex corporate times but as the finger of blame for the global economic downturn is pointed at various external stakeholders like the regulators and even the customers themselves, it’s interesting to hear the term “corporate culture” finally surfacing in banking post mortems.

The term performance culture has been increasingly abused within performance management parlance.  It has become inextricably linked with the drive for delivering shareholder value in quarterly increments and the “up or out” mentality which has spilled over from investment banking.

But now that almost every investment banking super-tanker has holed itself on the reefs of greed, selfishness, arrogance and some fairly suspect practice it’s time to reclaim the phrase. This is why leaders like RBS’s Stephen Hester are now having to open internal moratoriums in an attempt to bridge the obvious and growing employee engagement gap that has opened up within some of our high profile financial services names.

Ironically, despite this being an employer’s market, employee engagement; employer brand and corporate culture have never been so important. But it’s time for a fundamental re-think about how internal stakeholders (employees) are managed. The infrastructure underpinning many employment brands is clearly in need of a dramatic overhaul. And this is no job for the marketing function or advertising types.

Clearly characteristics like sustainability, network building and relationship development are the bedfellows of integrity, accountability, security and trust (the values, ironically, most popularly used to market the wares of financial services companies). But how can these values flourish when FS employees have seen HR functions replaced by processes and help lines; when average employee tenure (and loyalty) has fallen so dramatically and when  effective performance management and feedback loops have been replaced by grievance processes and whistle blowing – the corporate equivalent of “ratting on your colleagues”

I’m certainly not calling for a complete return to the cosy old hierarchies; glass ceilings and command and control regimes. But it’s clear that there’s going to have to be a large dose of mature, “back to the future” relationship based thinking if the nirvana of an appropriate and authentic performance culture is ever going to be achieved by arguably our most influential businesses and brands. And if the last 18 months has taught us anything it’s that none of us can afford for our financial services brands to continue to fail their employees by making promises to customers and the market that they simply can’t keep.

Ian

This piece first appeared in print Q1 2008…………….

Critics claim we’re facing an imminent recession. The signs aren’t great when the marketing advice from commentators like the Harvard Business School professor, John Quelch* is that companies should focus on family values rather than appealing to conspicuous consumption. It’s pretty unpalatable stuff to stomach for a society dominated by consumerism. But, ironically, anyone who cares about internal communication should sit up and take note.

While researching Brand Engagement and the pending sequel, Brand Champions, my aim has been to expose the obsession with the material manifestations of brand and to identify and articulate the true behavioural DNA of a brand. I know that authentic brands are more than promises made to employees and staff. They’re about promises delivered. And I know from my own experience of running businesses that there’s nothing quite like tough economic conditions to sharpen focus.

Whatever the rhetoric of the internal marketing zealots may imply and despite what manages may sometimes believe, organisations have little choice other than to rely upon their people to give something of themselves if they’re to connect with the organisation, their peers and customers alike. This is tricky to achieve at the best of times but especially elusive when economic conditions turn sour.

Having worked across sectors in the internal communication and engagement fields for nearly twenty years, it’s frustrating to hear the persistent language of alignment. The conviction that some form of corporate internal media is the way forward is depressing. It reminds me of the culture which dominated institutionalised post war media and led to the phenomenon of pirate radio which emerged as a reaction to the establishment stranglehold of state owned communication. In the UK, Radio Caroline has become the literal flagship for iconoclastic broadcasting http://www.radiocaroline.co.uk/history1.asp.

It’s my firm conviction that corporate engagement can’t be conscripted. Internal media which is out of touch with the true culture of the organisation may dominate the internal airwaves but sadly few people truly listen in.
Unfortunately, one of the side effects of tough market conditions is that the language of corporate command and control increases as does the tendency to focus on “push” communication as managers struggle to cope.

Whether we’re faced with a market downturn or not, the internal communication community has a pivotal role to play in ensuring that employees engage with the brand. Irrespective of market conditions, I would argue that clarity about brand can never be a bad thing especially if it’s based upon authentic dialogue and trust.

If you agree, try the following five tips for bridging the engagement gap:

1. Always role model an open door policy, especially in turbulent times. If in doubt, increase consultation. It’s an unfortunate fact that managers tend to adopt a “laager mentality” when faced with problems. It’s the worst thing they can do. Ignorance breeds insecurity which in turn breeds misunderstanding - the sibling of poor performance.

2. Be honest with your people and really emphasise the personal qualities needed in tough times, the type of culture that is needed to thrive in adversity. I’ve consulted in a number of downsizing situations and this is a proven way of giving people some sense of control over their fate. Regardless of the outcomes of tough trading conditions, when people come out the other side of a downturn, whether they were directly impacted or not, they are always grateful for straight, empathic but honest talking

3. Take the temperature more frequently. Measure the impact of internal communication constantly via concentrated pulse takes rather than with cumbersome, seemingly expensive surveys

4. Seek out and promote positive role models and good news stories. Whatever the conditions, they will be there.

5. Don’t underestimate the power of core values. A downturn is just the time to reflect on the reassurance of a legacy which implies that “we’ve been here before, we’ve survived and even thrived”

Quelch points out that “when economic hard times loom….we tend to retreat to our village….as uncertainty prompts us to stay at home and also stay connected with family and friends”. Clearly internal communication has a vital role to play in keeping those communities informed, in recognizing their core motivators, consulting with them and in setting the tone. But lose touch with the core audience and don’t be surprised if employees seize the airwaves themselves. Pirate radio anyone?

*Financial Times February 18, 2008

Biog

For those of you who don’t know him, Ian Buckingham is the author of Brand Engagement – How Employees Make or Break Brands http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=281268 and is currently working on the sequel Brand Champions.

We’ve reached a critical point of inflection in the war for talent and it’s now time for a paradigm shift if we’re to dominate the moral high ground”(OD Director, UK Financial Services)

I met this chap a couple of years ago – let’s call him Babel.  He proudly wore the label, Head of Organisation Development and worked for a web-based financial services firm which had a reputation for funky marketing.  He represented a truly maverick brand, much heralded for its iconoclastic , irreverent approach but which, unfortunately, also had an alternative financial performance record.  I would show you a copy of their “strategy on a single page” if I could, but suffice to say, looking at it for the first time was rather like being a Victorian explorer faced with a hieroglyphic carving.  The tablet was packed with symbols which might well have been runes and had so many mixed metaphors that it looked like it had been dipped in a vat of cliché .

 He talked proudly of their collaborations with a host of specialist management gurus – although the “tablet” did most of the speaking for him.  They had “absorbed” key thinking indiscriminately rather like a sponge absorbs liquid, and we’re attempting to align their employees behind their OD strategy.  Well they would have done if they managed to translate it for their leaders in the meantime, of course.

In fact, Babel-speak, as it came to be known, became so infamous that the employees had invented a game which they came to call BS Bingo.  An enterprising cultural guerilla had created a spreadsheet populated by the most infamous and prevalent metaphors.  On the internal communication black market, he offered a financial incentive for his contemporaries to seek out, site and mark off those metaphors appearing in officially sanctioned communication within a given period.  The first to spot and report back a “full house” of BS metaphors was awarded the BS Bingo prize.  You were at a distinct advantage if you were a middle manager and attended the Babel-sanctioned conferences and engagement events.

Two years on and Babel left to start up a consultancy, which has since sadly folded.  His former company has just been sold by its parents after years of underperformance and the OD team was severely right-sized a year ago. It didn’t have to be that way as they had some very good ideas.  Sadly, however, they were seduced by compulsive innovation, obfuscated the obvious and forgot to deliver the basics consistently well.   They lost their audience in purple prose.

As we all know, a metaphor’s a figure of speech that uses one thing to mean another and makes a comparison between the two. At their best metaphors add a powerful dimension to communication by conjuring up imagery which, in turn, evokes emotions that help with understanding, empathy and impact. So why are metaphors so abused in the internal communication market?

To find out - take a look at Ian’s chapter in Phillip Kitchen’s book  Marketing: Metaphor and Metamorphosis or drop one of us a line:  theteam@by2w.co.uk

Ian Buckingham’s blog -  celebrating the little people who really bring big brands to life.

It may be an employer’s market at the moment but only the foolhardy will fail to recognise the fact that they need to keep the eyes of their key performer’s firmly focused on the horizon! We all hate rubber necking and failing to pay due care and attention to your brand superheroes is an accident waiting to happen!

But how exactly do you consult with employees at such a sensitive time; when the risk of bursting the delicate dam of indifference with the inquisitive force of attempting to “move people on” is a very real risk?

Well, first and foremost, involvement is key to employee engagement.  Better still, actively seeking out champions and positive best practice is energising and invigorating.  An alternative is clearly needed to problem based and problem bound modes of inquisitiveness.

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is an organisation development process or philosophy that engages individuals within an organizational in its turnaround, renewal, change and focused performance.

It’s a particular way of asking questions and envisioning the future that fosters positive relationships and builds on the basic goodness in a person, a situation, or an organization. Put another way, it’s an approach that believes in the power of positive thinking and seeks to draw out the superhero in every employee rather than a self-fulfilling belief that all employees are scheming super villains.

Used effectively, it enhances an organisation’s capacity for collaboration and change.  It’s a fantastic way of signaling an energising alternative to the depressing and draining, downsizing mentality of a recession.

Appreciative Inquiry utilizes a cycle of 4 processes focusing on:

1. DISCOVER: The identification of organizational processes that work well.
2. DREAM: The envisioning of processes that would work well in the future.
3. DESIGN: Planning and prioritizing processes that would work well.
4. DESTINY (or DELIVER): The implementation (execution) of the proposed design.

Even the headings are inspirational.

The basic idea is to build organizations around what works, rather than just trying to fix what doesn’t. It is the opposite of problem solving. Instead of focusing on gaps and inadequacies to find blame and remediate skills or practices, AI focuses on how to create more of the occasional exceptional performance that is occurring (and there will be examples), regardless of conditions, because a core of strengths is aligned.

The approach acknowledges the contribution of individuals, in order to increase trust and inspire best practice. The method aims to create meaning by drawing from stories of concrete successes with the potential of becoming best practices and lends itself to cross-functional social activities. It can be enjoyable and natural to many managers, who, let’s face it, are often sociable people when they come out from behind the badge.

There are a variety of approaches to implementing Appreciative Inquiry, including mass-mobilized interviews and a large, diverse gathering called an Appreciative Inquiry Summit Both approaches involve bringing very large, diverse groups of people together to study and build upon the best in an organization or community.

The basic philosophy of AI is also found in other positively oriented approaches to individual change as well as organizational change. AI fosters positive relationships and builds on the basic goodness in a person, or a situation. The idea of building on strength, rather than just focusing on faults and weakness is a powerful idea in use in mentoring programs, and excellent performance evaluations – where superheroes come into their own.

If you’re wondering what to do with your employee survey and are a little nervous about how any internal benchmarking activity will be received; if you’ve had enough of the pessimism and would like to know more about the power of Appreciative Inquiry or just need a hand spotting those brand champions quietly battling the economic doom and gloom, get in touch. We’re happy to share ideas.

ian@by2w.co.uk