Creating the Perfect "Brew"

I had a chance this week to spend some time with my very creative and talented sister in law. She works in the internal communications area in the adult beverages industry; they make beer, very good beer.

Her role is to assist in crafting the messages for their internal employees to understand the values and mission of the organization and how their individual and collective roles fit into it.
We were talking about the parallels between making beer and crafting a great message- it isn't just simply a recipe. All the right ingredients without that something "else" and you just have beer, not great beer. All the slogans and mission statements and team building without that something else and you have a good organization, but not a great one.

Her charter is to help her organization create extraordinary brands and she and her colleagues identified six elements that they feel are essential to accomplishing that objective. I would go further and say that like congruency and other concepts I have shared on this blog and other places these elements speak not just to beer, but have a dimension of universal application to them. These are the elements:

• A defining brand truth. Think about the concept of a defining brand truth. It articulates value statement not only to your customers, but also to your employees. It allows them to commit rather than merely comply.
• A set of in transient principles. Great brands refuse to compromise on their principles. They may change a process or a look, but they retain their essence.What they represent is foundational and consistent.
• Great brands are iconic. Think about great brands. Brands like Porsche, Mercedes, Xerox, Kleenex, McDonald's, Starbucks and others. They are a benchmark. Their "brand" is instantly recognizable.
• They create and reinforce an experience. Think about that. Great brands literally create an expectancy. You don't just go there or dine there, you experience them in a variety of ways.
• They are inspirational and aspirational. As we have talked about with the new definition of engagement a great brand creates a pride of affiliation. Employees and customers take pride in their association with the organization, they champion the product or brand. They become benchmarks.
• Great brands are enduring. They continue to deliver value to their stakeholders; shareholder, employee and community.

I am struck by the parallels between their elements and those described by BlessingWhite and others in achieving engagement. To operate consistently within the framework created by her and her colleagues is not for the faint hearted. The elements are systemic, you can't do one or two of these things you must do them all and you must do them consistently.

These elements are also built upon a foundation of relationships. They are based on interactions of people. Technology and systems will not create this alignment, they can only reinforce or erode the elements.

She is a passionate advocate for her "brand". She believes in it and works very hard to articulate the principle behind it to others. She "gets" engagement in a very visceral as well as intellectual way. She is committed rather than compliant. She also recognizes that as skilled as she is in communications that the real engagement will occur not in articulating, but rather living the brand promise. Every employee will look to their boss for consistency with these values. She is an explorer rather than a mapper!

I like their elements, I think like the five elements of moving from compliance to commitment (respect, responsibility, information, rewards and loyalty) they are clear and simple without being simplistic. They focus on relationships rather than abstracts. I especially admire their organizations commitment to crafting and communicating this message of who and how to all of their employees giving them a chance to "join up" rather than simply comply.

So I would be curious, what are the "ingredients" in your particular brew? Are you committed to creating and sustaining an extraordinary brand or content to be one of the "pack"?

Thanks for sharing with me Mel. You gave me some great insights and I am excited to see people and organizations recognizing that only through engagement will be be able to build the iconic organizations that so many of us claim to aspire to. Your "brand" is lucky to have such a passionate advocate!

A Convergence of Thought

So another interesting week. I enjoyed the desert, but I didn't go to Las Vegas. The stock market has been mostly up the last few days. Is this a trend or are we grasping at straws?
I really like the website BNET.com. It typically has great articles on it. Sometimes it is practical advice, sometimes it is just interesting insights. I enjoy the McKinsey Quarterly as well.

This week I had a chance to read two different pieces that caused me to pause and muse. The first was a piece by Jeffrey Pfeffer, the professor of management and author from Stanford University. Professor Pfeffer was lamenting and commenting on the loss of personal accountability in our culture. His point was how everyone from politicians to business leaders don't seem to accept any personal responsibility for either their actions or the impact of their action or inaction on their companies, their employees, and their shareholders. I don't think this is limited to politicians and business leaders. This may be impolitic, but right now it isn't very popular to assign any of the responsibility for the housing crisis to the consumers who purchased real estate far beyond their ability to pay for it in the hopes that "appreciation" would create enough value to protect them. I am not excusing the bankers who made the loans, I am just sharing some of the responsibility.

I kind of see the situation with AIG in a similar light. We have the CEO saying I know that we drove our business off the cliff and the taxpayers have bailed us out for billions of dollars, but we promised these executives millions of dollars in bonuses for "performance" that has nothing to do with reality or share holder value. I have to pay it out.

I hear employees,students, and regular "folks" taking the same approach. It isn't my fault.

I got to read another interesting piece with a woman who runs a philanthropic venture fund. Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO of the Acumen Fund, has a perspective I find both intriguing and inspiring. Her position is that traditional philanthropic giving can rob people of their self respect and create a kind of codependency. She actually invests philanthropic contributions in for profit businesses to create a return. She even goes further and suggests giving away services, even basic services is enabling rather than empowering. She uses the example of the slums as an experiment in capitalism. She describes the bartering and trading that goes on among even the most destitute.

Any of you that have had a chance to read my ideas on moving from compliance to commitment know that one of the key principles embedded there is the principle of respect. Respect for your self and respect for others. You need to respect yourself enough to engage and to perform the tasks of your job and your life to the best of your ability. We need to respect others enough not to make excuses for their shortfalls. We all have limitations, but there is a profound difference in recognizing that I will never play in the NBA and my expecting society to take care of me.

My friend and colleague Reut Schwartz-Hebron takes a similar approach with her model of KindExcellence. She feels and I agree that you need to create a balance of the two. They are inextricably linked.

I had a chance to work with my son on a paper discussing Aristotle's concept of moral virtues. Aristotle describes the difference between three different dimensions; faculties which he would describe as innate, emotions, which we endeavor to control, and moral states. His position is that a virtue must be a cognitive choice and it must be on a continuum. We must find the "golden mean". It must be learned and practiced.

All of these things converged for me with the concept of personal competence. They all embed rational, thoughtful behavior and personal responsibility. Aristotle went so far as to say that the pursuit of virtue is really the only thing that distinguishes us from other plants and animals. We are conscious. We make choices and we accept accountability for those choices.

Maybe I am reaching, but we seem to have entered a space where we debate whether leaders are "born" or taught. We seem to want to absolve ourselves individually and collectively for responsibility for outcomes.

Our economy is in turmoil, but maybe Pfeffer, Novogratz, and Aristotle are right. If we look to the government and/or philanthropy in its traditional form to "fix" things have we stripped ourselves of personal competence and dignity. I wonder.

A Change of Venue

I have had the opportunity to spend the majority of this week in the desert. I like the desert, I think people either like it or dislike intensely. Few are ambivalent about it.

In a strange kind of a way I see the desert as a metaphor for where we can go next with the economy. Many people think of the desert as an absolute arid wasteland with nothing to offer. I recommend to people that if they are within a hundred miles of Tucson to stop in at the Desert Sonora Museum. They call it a museum, but in some ways it is much closer to a zoo where the flora and fauna of the region are viewable in their native habitat. I can tell you that the variety of flora and fauna will astound you.

Similarly I look at places like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Palm Springs that were "carved" out of the desert. Where some saw nothing but sagebrush and cactus others saw opportunity. I am not promoting the "instant community just add water" model, but these areas until recently experienced enormous growth.

As I was reading the newspaper this morning two stories also particularly struck me. The first story was where a team of surgeons removed six major organs from a seven year old girl in order to remove a baseball sized tumor, they then replaced many of her organs. I see this as an example of American health care at its best.

The other story was about some business owners who took a stand to "pay it forward"

• A pharmacist who split $16,000 among his 24 employees. He asked each of them to donate 15% to their favorite charity and spend the rest in local businesses to stimulate the economy.
• A florist who surprises 1 to 3 random customers per week with a free bouquet to brighten their day.
• A CEO of a small business who offers each employee $2000 towards the purchase of a new car or $1000 towards the purchase of a used car. The car dealers in his community are among his customers so he is trying to help them stimulate sales.
• A city councilman in California started a prom dress drive for young women who can't afford a gown. Local businesses joined the effort donating dry cleaning and free hair styling, and the local Elks Club is collecting shoes.

What is interesting here is that in each case these are small businesses. This is an example of personal competency and responsibility. These people didn't receive a bail out. They also aren't "turtling", they decided to take a personal stand.

I have said before that maybe the current economic situation will cause us to stop, pause, and reevaluate. There is plenty of "contributory negligence" to share with how we got where we are. As you know I am a huge believer that the answer is people, and I think some of these stories make my case.

For today anyway the market is up and all the news isn't negative.