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  In short, HR has, in effect, been replaced by systems, standards, Helplines and KPI’s. Managerial learning and development has been re-focused on technical rather than soft skills.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?

It’s easy to dwell on examples of negative customer service. But how often do we stop and think about the people behind a positive interaction with an organisation or a brand? On the occasions when we do receive exceptional customer service, however, chances are we will have met an Engaged Employee.

Engaged Employees are:

1.     Obvious – it may be an elusive quality, difficult to describe but an engaged employee is more likely to be exhilarated by their role.  Different cultures show this in different ways but most of us can spot and will be drawn to a genuine smile and welcoming, inclusive attitude.

2.     Authentic – our recent survey of almost 4000 communicators listed “being yourself” as one of the key motivators for employees.  It also proves that employees who are themselves in the workplace are more effective. Employees who are clear enough about what their organisation stands for and are at ease with the culture are more likely to bring themselves to work and to share stories about their family lives, hobbies, likes and dislikes.

3.     Receptive – we all know that if we’re engaged, we’re far more open to opportunities to be involved with new initiatives and share new experiences.  Engaged employees listen actively and offer support and challenge, largely because they care about the outcomes.

4.     Involved - they are part of the programme not recipients of it.   They feel they can influence their personal fate through influencing the fate of the organisation. Involvement leads to a greater sense of ownership. It’s also the way most of us learn best.

5.     Proactive – engaged employees understand the goals, culture and values of the organisation so they make suggestions or take initiative, even innovate for the greater good, without being asked. Their primary focus is on adding value to the organisation rather than obsessing about what the organisation gives them.

6.     Energised – engaged employees have correspondingly high energy levels.  They do things and maintain appropriate momentum. They are the heartbeat, rather than their managers, and they set the pace.

7.     Achievers – because of enhanced levels of understanding, clear goals and boundaries, an appropriate mix of support and challenge (and in light of the characteristics above), they tend to be focused and, therefore, more productive. The things they do tend to get results.

8.     Advocates – whether at conferences or recruitment fairs even dinner parties or sitting next to you on a plane , engaged employees are proud and happy to recommend the organisation and to represent the brand. Want to know how engaged your employees are?  As a starting point, find out how many buy/use your products.

9.     Ceos - they are chief engagement officers. They inspire others by example. They are communication role models in all stakeholder engagements whether with customers, fellow employees, competitors or even shareholders.

10.  In demand - take care, engaged employees are a precious commodity. The war for talent rages irrespective of market conditions. Who and where are your ceos?  What measures are you taking to clarify your employer brand and to engage and manage your talent?

Yes, we’re in the middle of  global recession. Yes, this is an employer’s market.  But remember, your brand is the sum of your customer’s interactions with your people and in a downturn this simple truth becomes all the more salient. So what are you doing to engage your employees and are you valuing your brand engagement role models as highly as you should be?

Ian

As the Lloyds/TSB/HBOS shareholders attest, massive change is upon us.  And there’s nothing quite like the threat of change to test the metal of your leaders.  If leadership is partly about inspiring a community of individuals to undertake a collective endeavour, then stories are essential to articulate that vision. Noel Tichy in his book The Leadership Engine remarks that

“the best way to get humans to venture into unknown terrain is to make that terrain familiar and desirable by taking them there first in their imagination”

And Antoine de Saint Exupéry remarked that

“if you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea”

When a leader inspires, he or she breathes life and energy into their followers. When we reflect on the extraordinarily motivating speeches Churchill made, it’s clear that no amount of PowerPoint (had it existed) and no amount of consultancy or accountancy models would ever have had the effect of his well chosen words. And Martin Luther King had a dream, he didn’t have a change goal and wasn’t at a critical point of inflection. Or was he?

The results of a study at the London Business School show how much of the message we retain depending on the vehicle of communication.

• Statistics = 5-10%
• Statistics and Story = 25-30%
• Story = 65-70%

And the moral of this story is that if you are delivering the ‘Who we are’ (Brand Identity), ‘this is where we’re going’ (Mission/vision), and ‘this is how we’re going to get there’ (strategy)’ piece, then don’t rely too much on statistics alone to land the message.

Business, emotion and non-sensory language (or why so many business speakers are frighteningly uninspiring)

Change may be scary but there’s nothing more terrifying than uncertainty and vagueness.

Do you remember the strapline to the ‘80’s movie ‘Alien’? ‘In space no one can hear you scream’. These few words create an image (space), a sound (screaming) and a feeling (not a very nice feeling). Compare it with ‘dedicated management capability’ or ‘randomised user-orientated response’ – These are non-sensory words, and they abound in the corporate world. Now, if you put enough of these non-sensory words together you will trip something in the listener’s brain and a film and a fog will appear before their eyes as they fall asleep or escape into daydream. These non-sensory words are the vocabulary of science, borrowed in business to give a veneer of credibility (‘it must be true, it sounds scientific’) Somehow we are not reassured by too much feeling or emotion in business. After all, the language of love, romance, of the emotional life is the language of metaphor (‘shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?…). This language excites the imagination; it creates feelings, images, sounds, smells. Remember your first kiss? The first record you bought? The smell of coffee roasting? The visual imagery of being surrounded by your loved ones? Often we believe that these feeling, these emotions, cloud and corrupt the experiment and enterprise we call business. Yet if you want to tell me about values, like trust and integrity, don’t give me the science or the text-book definition, give me the metaphor, give me comparisons to help me understand, give me examples, tell me the story.

 Getting the story straight: The Hero’s Journey

The most effective and versatile storytelling tool must be The Hero’s Journey. There is no space to do justice to it here, but by way of a simple explanation, the Hero’s Journey represents the central narrative that underlies any story of growth or change regardless of cultural origin. It is a framework which allows an organisation, team or individual to examine past and present change, both personal (largely emotional) and corporate (largely rational) and to anticipate and explore future change. Applied as a change management tool it can be a hugely effective way of making sense of  and embracing change.

But as senior leaders tumble, where will the heroes who will lead your people through these turbulent times come from?  Well, they’re all around you.  But sometimes it needs a little external facilitation and support to help you find them.

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

I really like Joss Stone. She has a voice and a style which seems to have been grafted onto her 20+ physique like a luscious young vine spliced with ancient root-stock. I’m also willing to confess that I sometimes find myself singing along to Jamie Cullum and Katie Melua, exceptionally talented artists in their own right.

But just after I’ve finally downloaded an album or two, I’ll inevitably turn on the radio and have a chance encounter with a Billie Holiday or Sarah Vaughan track and instantly regain a sense of perspective about Ms Stone and co’s sixth form soul.

Now I don’t want to sound like a grumpy old man (the benchmark age is 34 I was shocked to hear). I’m certainly not an elitist cultural snob (I used to pinch my sister’s Duran Duran records for goodness sake). But for me, you really do have to have lived a little before you can authentically transmit the ebb and flow of love and life and all the other intricacies of relationships. It’s tricky to get too excited about Joss singing about her trials and tribulations and how “you” were “holding (her) hand” when you’ve heard Ella’s version of My Funny Valentine.

This may seem like a bizarre segway but my contentious pop vs soul/blues thesis does have some resonance (honest!) when reflecting on the importance of culture development as a driver of organisation change, organisation development or brand management. Why? Because it frankly takes a mature attitude (true soul if you like), amongst the leadership team to appreciate the importance and therefore the value of culture development rather than simply paying lip service to popular culture by reframing well worn clichés.

In my experience leaders who’ve experienced the power of culture change won’t be the ones issuing popular sound-bites, or schmultzy metaphors. They most definitely won’t be promoting internal marketing to sweep up after, post rationalise or even justify change. These change veterans are the ones who will be kicking off the change process by developing a clear picture of the culture required to deliver the goals they’re sponsoring. They will also be passionate about engaging employees with the goals, the desired culture and the true change process. Furthermore they will be role modelling it not just talking about it. Why? Because they know that effective culture development is critical to achieving the bottom line benefits of their change process, it isn’t a reactive tool to be used to post rationalise the new world experienced by change survivors.

But what is culture? The BBC is currently running an irritating trailer for an arts programme (might be the Culture Show) in which Q-list celebs and plastic icons are asked to define “culture”. This rag-tag ensemble of glitterati offers a variety of answers ranging from the self-deprecating “what we always imagine others have but know that we don’t” through to the contemporary “it’s the ultimate evolution of social networking”. One uber-trendy forces us all the way down the waste pipe of taste with this downright bizarre offering “culture is the distance we consciously place between ourselves and our excrement”. I imagine FD’s worldwide will tend to agree.

Much has been made of culture in the HR management tomes. It’s a term which has shifted in emphasis from a simple descriptor to a form of evaluation. But it’s essentially a neutral word – we’re all cultured since culture, after all, is simply “the way we all do things here”. Ella does things rather differently to Joss and that suits the market but who will our grandchildren be listening to in their 40s?

Culture, for me, represents the norms, mores, written and unwritten rules that shape our interactions, whether in the everyday or workaday worlds. It’s not something elitist or rarified. It’s not exclusive but is simply the sum of all our parts, our interactions. So why is it important to business?

We’re tired of hearing the cliché that “people are our most important asset”. Well, we’re tired of it being uttered by internal marketers who we know just don’t mean it. What most of us working within the HR community know is that employees are usually the organisation’s greatest cost but without them we have no product and no customer interface, and no brand.

Food for thought? Drop us a line to explore ways to make sure your corporate culture is promoting and not stifling your brand.

Ian