Reshaping organisations to fit reality

LONDON – I’ve had several intriguing conversations recently with fellow CommScrummer Dan Gray as well as some high-profile people in the innovation and sustainability areas. Adam Hibbert and I also traded comments on a recent CommScrum post.

The gist of it has been that the reason we form companies/organisations is that putting different skills together is theoretically a better way to do things thatn operating independently.  This idea is so core to commerce that Adam Smith’s quote about the division of labour in pin manufacturing adorns the £20 note.

But a lot of us are beginning to believe that organisational silos – with deep irony – are presenting a robust challenge to this whole assumption.  Insourcing, outsouring, rightsourcing - the pendulum is always swinging back and forth as businesses struggle to get the mix right.  But at the same time they don’t ever actually challenge their own fundamental structures.  Some companies (GORE TEX, Patagonia and doubtless others) have started thinking differently with some success.

Elizabeth Ross Kantor (see blog comment here) has a new book out, which I haven’t bought or read (ahem) but it has been summarised as follows:

1. An enterprise has to be defined in terms of how it serves society; it must integrate all employees and stakeholders around this purpose.

2. Innovation is both the way you make money and how you serve society. The more you innovate to solve social problems, the more profitable and sustainable you will be. This is your innovation advantage.

3. The ecosystem around a company is key to its success. This is what Kanter calls the partnership advantage. No company can succeed without being part of a network of other companies and organizations.

4. The last point, according to Kanter, is,  in fact, the first one: It’s about people. A key dimension of the social and business changes we see today concerns the value shift.

So the question is – can a different organisational structure be developed?  One where juvenile turf protection (by not so juvenile 40-something Directors seeking to fatten their positions, not to mention pensions) is minimised and a more stakeholder-centred, issue-centred, and dare I say sustainability-centred model is at play?  One where Brand won’t “block” a Human Resource initiative on the principle that they “own” brand?

While I have a deep belief that we need to solve the world’s sustainability issues at a very deep and human level, I also am pragmatic enough (or maybe read too much John Locke) to believe that appealing to people’s better nature won’t do it, particularly when trying to influence those with influence – e.g. CEOs and political leaders etc.  Given the choice between saving a hummingbird species or pocketing an extra £1 million I wouldn’t bank on the humming bird, I am saddened to say.  But at the same time, “good” sustainability thinking – that is, seeing sustainability as far more than just “green” stuff, and seeing it as a way to eliminate waste in the system (from supply chain to environmental impact to carbon footprint to talent), is all about plain good business.

Perhaps this would be a good session to consider for CommScrum’s live event planned for January 2011.  If so, dibs.

Busy week in media coverage of the “people agenda”…

First up, Personnel Today on a PWC (see their re-brand by the way?) report saying employee turnover costs the UK economy £42 Billion per year.

Marketing Week on aforementioned pwc rebrand.  My comments below: 

PWC REBRAND

Marketing Week raises the issue of “building the brand from the inside out” in the context of PwC’s re-brand as if it is a startlingly new idea, and that PwC doesn’t seem to have learned from it’s MONDAY: experience – only offering employees a “sneak peak” at the new brand, rather than a more thorough and comprehensive employee brand engagement effort.

Scratch beneath the surface, though, and there is always more to these things than meets the eye.  It’s interesting to note that MONDAY:, for all the flak it took, was arguably a stroke of genius.  It would have been the first time one of the Big 5 (now big 4) had put something thicker than a cigarette paper between itself and its competitors.  It stood out – and while any laughed, well … people also laughed at some other brands when they came out, too.  “Orange is a Lemon” said the FT headline after that brand launch.  Amazon, Penguin, Google.  Silly names!  All the brand and marketing literati laughed and scoffed and threw rocks (while actually making more noise for the new brands). When the laughter died out, brand equity was firmly established, thank you very much.  If not for market conditions that made selling to IBM more profitable to the partners than an IPO, MONDAY: would be with us.  And I suspect they’d be every bit as successful, too.

More concerning of course is the “sneak peak”.  But trust me, these things are more challenging to manage than it might seem to a Marketing Week pundit in an ivory tower – more than “sneak peak” with 150,000 global employees is likely to spell L-E-A-K. 

One can only hope that employees, partners, clients and key stakeholders were thoroughly engaged in the process that helped the brand agency arrive at the new positioning, promise and identity.   The biggest bet will be – have they gone far enough?  Given my experience with professional services firms, the final result will be a pale, watered down shade of what was a powerful idea at its core.  Partnerships, let alone those in professional services in accountancy, tax, finance and advisory, are notoriously difficult to rebrand for precisely this reason.

 If PwC are smart, they’ll spend the next 3, 6, 12 months ensuring that every employee, from client-facing to back office support functions, has the opportunity to get their hands on the brand, talk about it, engage in action planning around what they’re going to do, or do differently, as a result of the rebrand.  Will it lead to changes in the way talent is sourced, recruited, hired, on-boarded? Changes to performance planning, competency frameworks, reward and recognition?   That’s when a re-brand actually becomes “inside out” instead of “lipstick on a gorilla.”

 It will be interesting to see what changes – if anything.

What are the real trends in employee communication?

Big title.  Small post. Probably repetitive.  Potentially more for me than for you. Notes, as a blog posting.  You be the judge.

1.  Internal/external blurring and associated challenges to organisational functions and traditional segmentation & channel management.

2. Consolidation and blurring (see1) of functional roles vis a vis strategy, values, operational efficiency, organisational change, employee brand engagement, HR.

3. Dawning realisation that real time conversations are trumping traditional internal (and external) communication approaches.

4. Sea change in “audience” expectations of, consumption patterns, and ability to produce/share media.

Impact?

1.  Speed.  It all has to happen faster now in order to work.

2. Seamlessness.  It has to be more than “cross-functional shared ownership” although that’s a start.  The traditional organisational model is no longer appropriate for our times.

3. Interactivity.  Both generational theory and technology, as well as engagement practice, amply demonstrate that interactive dialogue must improve.  A divide is forming between communicating information and communicating.

4.  Ownership.  “Ownership” of (a) external audiences; (b) internal audiences; and (c) “communication” is a fallacy and interferes with (1)(2) and (3) .

The value of good copywriting

SAS is honoured to work with Tim Rich on a number of projects each year. 

Tim blogs about the recent Dyson Ball advertisement from The Guardian.  It is not only insightful, incisive, inspiring but I laughed out loud several times.  Honestly, the ad in question is like a parody of bad writing in advertising.  The grammar isn’t even correct, much less the content making any sense.

This is why I seldom allow myself the vanity of writing copy for projects these days.  I’m a trained journalist, a published author and I do a bit of my own copy here and there, so I consider myself to be a good writer – but it isn’t my profession.  Some communicators get the two mixed up.  And perhaps some marketing types and engineers if this ad it to be believed.

Be sure to read the comments too.

Fun event last night…. and Accenture tweets people agenda intent

SAS ran an enjoyable session last night (see here) where we also experienced the largest yet critical mass from CommScrum with Dan Gray, Kevin Keohane, Indranath Neogy and Adam Hibbert actually occupying the same space at the same time.  Entertaining, enlightening, thanks Adam for the chips…

Meanwhile, Accenture puts some cards on the table showing that management consultancies continue their relentless process-driven advance into the people functions.

One slide that says it all

ISTANBUL - My presentation to a global FMCG conference on internal communications went pretty well.  This slide (my 2 point summary) pretty much says it all.

1 of 2 summary slides

Lying liars and the lies they tell

Rant begin.

Look, we all may tell iddy biddy white lies once in a while, and hey in advertising and marketing we all know not to believe everything (or is it anything?) you read, but there is a recruitment ad company that claims to be ”the first organisation in our sector to create a dedicated consultancy team focused on employer branding and engagement …” which is patently a load of horseshit. 

Oh, the audacity.  “We really are the experts in this field.” they go on to say.  Oh, REALLY? 

Desperate times call for desperate measures I guess.

Rant over.

Internal – external communication overlap continues apace

In the eye of a pitching hurricane at the moment.  Interesting that this aligns with a post over at IoIC (formerly CiB) where they quote a VMA study that comms has remained bullish in the recession, more or less.

At any rate, a number of organisations have approached us with very concrete “employee engagement” challenges that must culminate in external stakeholder relationship management at a number of levels.  None of this implicit, nebuolous “brand engagement” theory but real-life, tangible inside-out stuff.

Which is fantastic.  The tide has turned, or at least some pennies have dropped in some more progressive organisations that audiences are not “owned” or captively-managed by independent organisational silos.

And this is more than just “cross functional” team work – it’s actual belt and braces strategic acknowledgement of this blurring of lines. 

What’s equally exciting is the (apparent – I’ll let you know if we win) appetite for social media and employee generated content as opposed to top-down corporate BS. 

The biggest obstacle? Continues to be fear of change and fear of “loss of control”.  Which is really the loss of the illusion of control.

Wouldn’t it be nice if…

… for a test period of 3 years your CEO shifted 5% of the global advertising spend to employee communications to see if it helped improve business performance?

Would it?

Why motorcycling around corners as fast as possible in the rain makes you a safer rider

Silverstone Racecourse – United Kingdom 8 June 2010

I was pondering some CommScrum discussions recently, about competence and confidence and which is more important.   The debate is that it’s more important to have confidence than to have a list of specific communication competencies that someone, somewhere (probably running a “Black Belt” training course) has decided are what you need to do your job well.

I strongly believe that confidence, for better or for worse, trumps competence on the basis that competency can be acquired, but confidence is a less tangible attribute.

I am a motorcycling enthusiast and have completed Level 3 out of 4 levels at California Superbike School here in the UK. Yesterday morning in the Midlands at 7 a.m. I rolled up to Silverstone Circuit – a very wide, very fast Formula 1 track that will host the MotoGP in coming years.  I have to admit trepidation, since I did a track day here a couple of years ago and hit the rev limiter on my bike in 6th gear on the back straight every time.  It is a very fast, very scary track in the dry weather.

And it was dumping down rain.  The track was soaked. Motorcycles and rain are not a good combination.

As we kicked off the morning safety briefing, the lead instructor lit up and said, “Why the long faces? Training in weather like this is going to teach you more about riding than a week on a dry track.  Let’s get started…”

The school runs 5 classroom sessions for each group, each session followed by an on-track session with your instructor.  So you learn a technique, one that is completely new and untried (unlearning bad habits along the way) and then your instructor tails you and coaches you.

For example, if you want to tighten your line and you are already in the entry to your corner, changing your lean angle will reduce your grip (not the best solution) – so you learn to push your body forward and down.  This compresses the front suspension, which shortens the wheelbase of the bike.  Shorter wheelbase = tighter arc. Yes, understanding that theory is great, and rational.  Then you are expected to apply it to a 130 horsepower bike going into a series of wet corners at speeds some would call dangerous.

So I was shown a competence — “flick turn” — and how to identify how to use it.  Then I tried it out and by Jove it worked, as did the 7-8 other competencies I was trained in.  Over five track sessions I built up and combined the competencies and by the final session I was nailing my lines, apexing kerbs and driving hard out of corners.

All of this done in weather conditions that were designed to prevent me from doing this – my animal, fear-responsive brain telling me “If you try to maintain this line through this corner at this speed you are going to die.”  The new competence gave me the confidence to say back to my brain “Oh yeah? Well, watch me compress the front suspension, smarty pants.”

The scary moments – the bike wobbling at the same point in the same corner every time – got predictable, and manageable.  I knew it would destabilise at that point, and not to panic.  The rear end trying to slip under acceleration in the wet – I learned to push the outside bar to maintain my weight but reduce the lean angle and increase the contact patch that gives the tyre more grip.

Maybe that’s a long-winded way of recasting the issue.  As communicators, of course competence is important.  they are the technical building blocks we use.  Combined with experience, ideally in the worst possible situation — wet track or hostile takeover — and you learn them faster, and when to predict how they might behave.

Competence plus experience have thus built my confidence immensely.

Ah – and I can hear the voice of Mike Klein already – I had the confidence to get on a motorcycle on a grand prix circuit in the pouring down rain in the first place…