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.
Authenticity
The power of small gestures
It’s a crazy thing, but people are more motivated by small gestures of recognition than you think. And, I’m talking really small gestures. Saying thanks. A quick e-mail. A phone call. A gift card from Tim Horton’s [well in Canada anyway].
People like to be recognized for the work they do. Especially when they know the hurdles have been huge and the work is good.
I’ve been reminded of this on two big projects this week.
The first is a major internal announcement. The team has been working straight through the past two weeks and overnight last night. It’s been complex and extremely challenging even as these kinds of projects go. The frequent thanks and recognition from the senior leader has built incredible energy even when by all rights the team should be flagging.
The second is a web redesign project for a not for profit. This morning I got two e-mails from volunteers wondering why they hadn’t had a single thanks for the work they’d done. Turns out the thank you was in the mail, but demonstrates another point about small gestures. Timing matters. The closer they are to the work that’s being recognized the better.
Lesson for today: Small gestures of recognition given immediately and often are incredibly powerful motivators.
Question for the day: When’s the last time you said thanks for a job well done?
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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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Employee orientation. The essentials.
New employee orientation begins way before you think it does. It starts when an employee makes first contact with your organization. That could have been years ago if they use your product or service or if you’re a major brand with lots of advertising dollars. Or it could have been the job ad on Workopolis or Monster. Or it could have been at a booth at a job fair. It most certainly isn’t at that “onboarding” event you asked them to attend 2 months after they started working for you.
Orienting employees has more to do with introducing employees to your culture: “The way we do things around here” and the brand experience than it does all the rules and regs that are the usual focus of employee orientations.
Nordstrom’s employee handbook may do this better than anything I’ve ever seen. It’s certainly the shortest. Here it is in its entirety.
Welcome to Nordstrom
We’re glad to have you with our Company. Our number one goal is to provide outstanding customer service. Set both your personal and professional goals high. We have great confidence in your ability to achieve them.
Nordstrom Rules: Rule #1: Use best judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules.
Please feel free to ask your department manager, store manager, or division general manager any question at any time.
What do you think? Does this say more about their culture than a full-day briefing and a 300-page orientation binder?
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Great idea # 2 – Netflix on building a great culture
An occasional post on a really great idea for internal communications – simple and high impact.
““I will not lie, not cheat, not steal,
nor tolerate those who do.”
All of us are responsible for value consistency.”
What a simple and obvious way to ensure that values are valued. And that behaviours reflect values. Well, it may be obvious, but how many organizations do you know where employees are really responsible for ensuring values consistency?
Netflix CEO Reed Hasting’s “Reference Guide on our Freedom & Responsibility Culture” presents their current best thinking about maximizing Netflix likelihood of continuous success.
I’m a little behind in seeing this. But thanks my good friend Christine Pietschmann I did.
This deck is one of the best things to cross my desk in a long time. It’s well worth the time it takes to flip through the 128 slides. It’s clear. It’s concise. It describes the kind of culture Netflix is building and practically what that means for employees and managers on a day-to-day basis.
It describes in a comprehensive way ‘how we do things around here’, why, and what that means for you – if you are already an employee or if you’re considering joining Netflix. And it has clear implications for you if you are an investor or a customer or potential customer. No ambiguity. No gray zone. No corporate jargon. No acronyms.
Well done Netflix! You’ve set the bar very high indeed.
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“Be honest”
When people say ‘be honest’ in an organizational setting I think they really mean ‘tell the truth’. As an individual telling the ‘truth’ is easy.
You know what you know. You know what you don’t know.
You know how you feel. You know how you don’t feel.
You know what you’re going to do. You know what you’re not going to do.
Institutionally, it’s a lot harder. As an institution you may or may not know. I’m not saying impossible to know. I’m saying it’s harder.
Understanding and being mindful of the difference is key to great institutional communications.
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It’s got to be a two-way street
My last post made me think about the way that trust, loyalty and pride work. We act as if they flow one-way. But they simply don’t. If trust, loyalty and pride aren’t reciprocated, it’s pretty hard to imagine how they can even exist.
Does your organization trust employees? If it does, how is that trust expressed?
Is your organization loyal to employees? Is it proud of employees and the work they do? If it is how is that loyalty and pride expressed?
Do your managers trust employees? If they do, how is that trust expressed?
Are your managers loyal to employees? Are they proud of employees and the work they do? If they are how do they express their loyalty and pride?
If not, how can we possibly expect employees to trust our organizations or management? How can we expect employees to be loyal to our organizations or management? How can we expect employees to be proud of the organizations and the people they work for?
So, where does that leave us? If we want employee trust, loyalty and pride then we’re going to have to change.
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A dirty little secret
I watched a talk by Diane E. Ragsdale, who was then at the Andrew Mellon Foundation. She was talking about Surviving Culture Change in the Arts. Somewhere about half way through this great talk she referred to the ‘depth of loyalty and the quality of engagement’. Now she was talking about external stakeholders. But it got me thinking.
It’s an interesting thing, but we don’t hear very much about employee loyalty. We hear about building trust, employee engagement. And very occasionally about encouraging employee pride: pride in their work and their organizations.
When it comes to loyalty, the focus tends to be on customers. Why is that? Is it because we think that since we pay the employee that they are loyal? Or that since the job market is tight employees are loyal.
I find it a funny thing. Loyalty is something so tied to trust and pride and engagement and it’s virtually absent from the general discussion.
I think it may reveal something that makes me pretty uncomfortable. And that is that even with all the talk of humanizing organizations and the workplace there’s a dirty little secret. Underneath all this nice talk about building relationships there’s an assumption about employees. And that is that it’s really all about the transaction. We can buy loyalty. Or we get “loyalty” because employees have limited choices.
Is your organization’s employee experience “cultivating true fans” and advocates? Is designed to build employee loyalty? And, if it’s not, is it because after all they get a pay cheque. Are all our good intentions built on this assumption: in the end the employee ‘relationship’ is ‘short-term’ and contractual? Not a relationship at all.
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If it wasn’t there would you miss it?
A month or so ago, a tree in Westmount Park [another gem of Frederick Olmsted’s here in Montreal] was hit by lightening. Anyone who lives in downtown Montreal knows ‘that’ tree: A beautiful gnarly hundred year old weeping willow.
It had been tipping over and held up with a metal brace for the 30+ years we’ve lived in Montreal. And, many of us felt a real sadness to hear this news. I couldn’t explain my reaction. Someone I met on the street near there recently told me she still hasn’t taken her dog back to the park since it fell so great is her sorrow. Rumours have it that the City of Westmount cut it down in the middle of the night to reduce the emotional impact. Huge pieces remain and will be made into benches for the park.
For those of you who’ve visited my home, you know that I live on the 3rd and 4th floor of a condo where “the tree” is a major feature. It’s there in different guises through our four seasons. It’s like a moving piece of art. As it has grown from a sapling to a full-fledged tree, our place has grown into a “tree-house”. And I know how bereaved I would be if anything happened to it. My emotional reaction to the City’s “trimming” it a few years ago was out of proportion to the reality.
On the weekend CBC ran a brief segment – so brief I can’t find it for you – with someone talking about our emotional connection to trees.
All of this has made me think. We can have strong emotional connections to inanimate things like trees. When we care, we care. And, sometimes it’s rational, but lots of times it just isn’t. Is there anything in your workplace that you care this much about? Are there ‘trees’ in your work life? If so what are they?
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The challenge – Change the profession!
We’ve heard it all before. The traditional approach to corporate communications – tightly “scripted messages delivered by the chief executive, first to investors, then to other opinion-formers, and only later to the mass audiences of employees and consumers“ has got to go.
And it needs to be replaced by vibrant “peer-to-peer and horizontal discussion across stakeholders. [Where] the employee is the new credible source for information about a company, giving insight from the front lines. [And], the consumer has become a co-creator, demanding transparency on decisions from sourcing to new-product positioning.” [Ref for these quotes]
And yet, even as Web and Intranet 2.0 are about to become 3.0 we’re still working through 1.0 [ok maybe 1.5]. And if you have any doubt, just pop into CommScrum to check out the animated discussion going on there over what and how our main professional association IABC is or isn’t serving the needs of our profession in this new world.
As early as 2007, Arthur W Pages’ publication, the Authentic Enterprise in 2007, presented recommendations for transforming “our profession, open[ing] up new and meaningful kinds of responsibility and learning, and creat[ing] exciting new career paths for communications professionals. If you haven’t read it, it’s a great starting point for thinking about the revolution of our profession.
And, in June, after months of online consultation, The Stockholm Accords were published. Their aim “… is to articulate and establish the role of public relations in the “communicative organization” within a fast-evolving digital and value-network society.” [I think the authors would do well to refer back to the Authentic Enterprise].
We know what we need to do, so what’s stopping us?
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On being authentic
The first time I ever heard the term authentic used in an organizational setting was only a few years ago and it might have been the last time it made any sense.
I was doing a small project for Nike’s Marketing team at their head office in Portland, Oregon. They often referred to authentic Nike. At first I thought it was some meaningless corporate jargon [there’s generally a lot of that going around at HQs wherever they are]. It took me a while, but I finally realized that for them a product was authentic Nike only if it had been designed with a world class athlete to improve their personal performance. Now, that’s authentic.
Three years ago, The Authentic Enterprise concluded that “…authenticity will be the coin of the realm for successful corporations and for those who lead them.” And, that “Communicators are uniquely positioned to become experts on the new art and science of organizational trust.” Now, I need to say up front that I generally find this whitepaper interesting and compelling. And not surprisingly I’m pretty keen about their conclusions for communicators.
The problem I have is that this paper and the discussion that has followed is based on two flawed assumptions:
- Institutions can be other than authentic
- Being authentic is always going to be good.
I don’t believe either of these assumptions are true.
First, how could an institution be anything other than authentic. They are what they are. They do what they do. Their behaviours and actions, the decisions they take or don’t take reflect their underlying beliefs and values. And, whether you like them or not they are a totally authentic.
Second, authenticity has lost its meaning. For Nike it was real and good. The challenge for many institutions today is that what is authentic is not that good. What’s real is not good. Think of British Petroleum or the Vatican. Their behaviours and actions tells us much about their authentic institution and it’s not good.
Importantly, though authentic and transparent are often talked about in the same breath, you don’t have to be transparent for anyone to get who you really are and what you stand for. Here’s an example:
A young friend of mine, a recent MBA grad, got a job offer from a fortune 100 global high-tech company early this summer. He was told that his candidacy had to go through the CEO. He stopped his job search – he’d received and accepted a formal offer [reflects his values]. It’s been weeks and still no word. This one act tells us a lot about this organization. And, perhaps more than my young friend would like to know. First, even though one of their 5 values is respect they have put a young debt-ridden new grad in this position. Second I believe my friend can be confident that control will be one of the most important underlying values – not innovation or accountability. Two other values that are listed on their site.
On being authentic. That’s easy. Now how to make institutions authentic and forces for good?
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Recent posts
- Grey zones are costing your organization big time
- Saying goodbye to jargon
- Don’t leave them laughing
- A master class with Ed Sullivan
- Innovation & collaboration: Strategic priorities or not?
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- Want to know the secret to writing a great speech?
- Connecting for big business benefits
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