This blog is about the relationship between organizations and the people who work for them. And, it’s dedicated to the millions of people around the world who go to work every day wanting to do a great job.
CEO
Shining eyes
“A [symphony orchestra] conductor doesn’t make a sound. His job is to awaken the possibility in other people.”
This is what Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, says.
And, how do you know you’re doing it?
“If their eyes are shining, you know you’re doing it… It’s about how many shiny eyes are around us.”
As a leader, how many shiny eyes are around you?
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Great brands are more than marketing
Imagine you’re an Apple employee in 1997. It’s over a decade since Steve Jobs was ousted from his position as CEO. You know you’re part of a team with “good people”. But, despite strong “brand loyalty” and “millions of dollars of investment in research and development”, Apple feels like it’s “standing still” and the business you love is being described as the “failure story of wall street”. [quotes]
And, now, Jobs is back. And, he’s describing Apple’s core values: “We believe that people with passion can change the world!”
In this short video, he talks about the Apple he’s come back to, gives a primer on the power of core values to create great brands like Nike. He’s talking about marketing and introducing an ad campaign.
But, great brands, like Apple are about more than marketing! And, Jobs knew that.
Great brands capture the imagination of people inside and out and then they deliver.
What are your core values? It’s a question that has been asked before. It’s a question worth asking again.
How do you describe who you are and what you stand for? As an institution? As a CEO? As a leadership team? And, how do you translate that into an experience for employees and customers?
Thanks to Lisa Barone for the inspiration.
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Close encounters of a third kind
It’s the end of summer and the skies are filled with falling stars and comets in this part of the world. Thoughts of end of summer movies and UFO’s are somehow on my mind. So, I hope you’ll indulge me.
As I’m sure you all know [; )], close encounters with UFOs come in three kinds: sighting, physical evidence, and contact. Now, imagine the CEO [read executive leadership] as the UFO [for fun you could actually make employees the UFO and see what that looks like from an executive leadership point of view]:
Close encounters of the first kind - sighting. Pretty rare in most organizations. Employees may see or hear the CEO in big announcement ‘townhalls’ [most often online], and very occasionally as they and their entourage rush quickly through the plant, store, office, or cafeteria for a ‘meet and greet’, or “Christmas” party.
Close encounters of the second kind – physical evidence. Employees can see the effects of the CEO pretty regularly – the welcome letter in the orientation package [if you're in an organization that takes your orientation seriously you might also get a video clip welcome], the quarterly newsletter, the financial results e-mail [and 'townhall', see above], the occasional e-mail and video for a launch of a new brand [identity], introduction of a new product, divestiture, acquisition and/or change of organizational structure or leadership, and even more indirectly in policy changes, the congratulations note for years of service. Physical evidence may still be the most common kind of CEO encounter.
Close encounters of a third kind – Contact. The most direct and the rarest. This is where CEOs and employees actually connect. Human scale, face-to-face contact. Conversations about what matters most. Feedback about what’s working and not working. Personal commitments for support and action. Direct follow-up.
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Sucky values suck!
It was impossible to disagree with Robert Fritz when he said, at a training I participated in last week, that:
“Organizations are amoral in and of themselves.
It’s human beings in organizations that have values.
It’s leaders that must impose values.”
So, when I read the most recent Maritz poll results (2010, USA), I had to conclude that leaders may be imposing values, but they aren’t the ones that are being communicated by Corporate communications and HR professionals.
The survey found that “despite a slight improvement in business conditions, the American workforce remains less engaged with their employers than they did one year ago. Poor communications, lack of perceived caring, inconsistent behavior, and perceptions of favoritism were cited by respondents as the largest contributors to their lack of trust in senior leaders.” Specifically:
- Only 7% believe senior management’s actions are completely consistent with their words.
- 14 % of employees believe their company’s leaders are ethical and honest.
- Only 12 % believe their employer genuinely listens to and cares about employees.
- Only 10 % of employees trust management to make the right decision in times of uncertainty.
- About 25 % of employees distrust management more than they did the year before.
What is especially disheartening is that these same leaders are reading this report and year over year seeing the same results disappointing results. What are they making of it? Do they see employee involvement in their businesses as a must have or as a nice to have? What’s keeping them up at night if it’s not this?
Sucky values suck!
Thanks to Hacking Work and Communication at work for bringing this poll to my attention.
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Making “magic in the marketplace”
Today, thanks to Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation, I came across this key note address by Bill Taylor, the founding editor of Fast Company Magazine and author of Practically Radical: Not-So-Crazy ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself.
Here’s what really caught my attention: ”You can’t build something special, compelling, distinctive in the marketplace unless you also build something special, compelling distinctive in the workplace… Strategy is your culture. Culture is your strategy. Success today is about so much more than just price, performance, features, technology, pure economic value. It’s about passion, emotion, identity, sharing your values… Real magic in the marketplace is when you make your organization more memorable to encounter.”
And that my friends can’t happen when the relationship with employees is the last thing on the C-Suite’s agenda! It can’t happen when leaders do not trust employees [though they expect employees to trust them], where leaders are not loyal to employees [though they expect loyalty from them] and where they are not proud of employees and the work they do [though they expect employees to be proud of the leadership and the organizations they work for]. Broken cultures on the inside will always show on the outside sooner or later!
Recommend you take the 20+ minutes [Bill comes in at about minute 4] to watch it. Some great stuff on bench marking too!
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Two days. Two stories.
It started at a recent lunch with a past client. She’s a senior executive who’s been around the board rooms of some of Canada’s largest and most influential companies for most of her career. We were talking about the ‘soft’ side of institutional life and the potential power there is in strengthening the employee relationship. “I agree with you”, she said. Then came the bomb… ”but unfortunately the executives I know just aren’t interested. This is simply not on the agenda in the C-Suite”.
Fast forward a few days and I’m attending an evening with Dr. Jody Heymann, Canada Research Chair in Global Health and Social Policy and head of McGill’s institute for Health and Social Policy. She and Magda Barrera co-authored the recently published book “Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder: Creating Value by Investing in Your Workforce”. After years of research their conclusions are simple – listen to employees [especially those ‘at the bottom’], treat them with respect and you will reap the rewards of higher profits. This is not necessarily new news. Nor is it a surprise. It makes sense that you treat people well and they will be more engaged and productive.
So, how do we think about this apparent discrepancy between the research results and C-suite priorities? What’s going on?
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When the dog doesn’t bark…
You may recall Sherlock Holmes in Silver Blaze where he describes how he’s able to solve the mystery as a result of “… the ”curious incident of the dog in the night-time”:
Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Holmes: “That was the curious incident.””
What does this have to do with employee communication? Well, quite a lot I think.
Today, I’ve been catching up on e-mail after over a week away and I read an interesting e-mail from a friend of mine who is serving in Afghanistan with the US Air Force. He writes thoughtful and provoking letters on a pretty regular basis and his mindful missives are always compelling. He’s definitely not what you’d imagine as your usual guy at war.
This e-mail was especially interesting because he described what happened on his base in Kabul in the hours leading up to the announcement that Bin Laden had been killed. Specifically, “…we were ready for the kick-off of the morning update meeting where everything in the AOR (Area of Responsibility) is covered – this is a computer briefing so you just log into the site and watch-listen. Briefings at this meeting are given on everything from what is being built in the AOR to the current threat level. It always starts on time, except for today. Turning on the TV to kill some time clued us into what was going on. The nation was on stand-by awaiting the President’s “Special” announcement late night in the States but early the next day here in Kabul. We could overhear people making comments about high level members receiving important calls (they didn’t mute the conference mic) – and then the media broke the story, Osama Bin Laden was dead and the U.S. was responsible.”
So, just like it was for Sherlock Holmes, these troops recognized there was a ‘curious incident’: not meeting when they’d come to expect their regular morning meeting. While communicators were busy working on positioning and timing for the announcement, the troops were already reading the signs and coming to their own, and surprisingly accurate, conclusions about what was going on. You can’t fool mother nature. And, it seems you can’t fool employees.
Sometimes what we don’t do speaks more powerfully and accurately than what we do do.
My question: How can knowing this help us be better at institutional communication?
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The theory & reality of town halls
On a recent trip to Vermont Michael and I were listening to the Vermont Public Radio president on a town hall with their listeners. And I noticed something. It just didn’t work. The president listened and chatted with those that called in. The conversation seemed more like ‘she says’/’he says’ than a real conversation. And, at the end of the show the president closed nicely and I realized she hadn’t specifically responded with an action to a single listener’s feedback.
It seemed a far cry from Obama’s town halls. Or what I’ve heard from my friends who live in Vermont, a state that may have invented the town hall, about the meetings that their very small town, Newfane, runs regularly to discuss all matter of issues and opportunities facing the community. Or my recent experience attending a town hall for a “programme particulier d’urbanisme” that has the potential to change the face of downtown Montreal. These are lively discussions. Both the politicians and the electorate care about the issues being discussed. And at their best there’s clear action to be taken at the end.
And yet, the Vermont Public Radio town hall seems a familiar scenario for those of us doing internal communications. So what’s going on?
Employee town halls after all are supposed to humanize organizations. They create one of the few opportunities for interaction and discussion between our executives, managers and employees. So, why don’t they generate meaningful discussion? Why aren’t they more lively? Gosh why don’t we even get questions, unless we plant them [manipulation – for another blog] more than half the time? Why does it seem more like a shareholder meeting rather than a scrum?
Here are some thoughts:
| Political town halls | Employee town halls |
| It’s a democracy | It’s not a democracy |
| Audience has the power | Speaker has the power |
| Politicians to listen and defend their position | Executives to talk and assert their position |
| There’s something to discuss that people care and want to discuss | There may or may not be anything to discuss and employees are ‘mandated’ to participate |
| There’s an opportunity to influence decisions | Little or no real opportunity to influence; decisions have already been taken or |
Given these differences, what can we learn? Can we re-frame the Corporate town hall to achieve our goals of humanizing, engaging and creating meaningful conversations that further the business? Love to hear what you think.
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Random Posts:
Great idea # 3: Building pride – The Hudson Bay Company story
An occasional post on a really great idea for employee communications
– simple and high impact.
For those of you who don’t know, The Bay was incorporated “…by British royal charter in 1670 as The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay” making it “… the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world.” [source] I grew up knowing it as The Hudson Bay Company. Somewhere along the line it became HBC and The Bay.
And somewhere along the line the adventure was over. The Bay had become a tired and dowdy department store owned by venture capitalists. You couldn’t even find a Hudson Bay Company Point Blanket anywhere in the store.
And somewhere along the line over 70,000 employees and millions of customers had lost the spirit. Products were uninteresting. And the service was nonexistent or surly.
Enter Bonnie Brooks, Chief Adventurer (aka President and CEO), The Bay, Hudson’s Bay Company. The store, here in Montreal, looks the same from the outside. But inside there’s a lot going on and it’s all good.
In the two years since she was named, Bonnie Brooks has managed to transform this dying department store. And she’s done it by going back to basics: Building pride in the founding spirit of adventure and discovery. The things that connect the business to this incredible 400 year history that had been lost. And, she’s managed to take mostly hourly minimum-wage employees with her by building their pride – in the institution, in leadership and in the work they do for customers every day. Genius.
She’s “invited employees on a mission”. A mission to engage with the business and their customers. And they are. Their pride in the company and what they are doing is palpable.
She’s managed in a very short time to reignite pride in the institution and the heritage and tradition of the past. She’s changed the employee experience. And in doing so she’s changed the customer experience.
A simple idea. Incredibly well executed. Good for employees. Good for customers. And good for The Bay.
Congratulations Bonnie!
PS: The iconic blanket stripes are now trademark protected and you can now find the Hudson Bay Company Point blankets, pillows and other gift items that reflect the traditional bay colours and spirit in their in-store boutiques.
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