The Impact of Clear Purpose

“The primary responsibility of a leader in a purpose-based organization is to build, nurture, and sustain the core purpose of the organization… By far the number one driver shared by the masters of purpose is the desire to make a difference… Having a definitive conception of the difference you are trying to make in the lives of all your stakeholders will drive all the tough decisions that need to be made and ensure maximum alignment between all the constituents required to pull it off.”
– Roy Spence Jr.

In the years that I have worked with leaders of organizations, this is a massive chasm that separates the successful from the susceptive.  In the end, purpose is more than guiding, more than enlightening – it is foundational, the very root of enablement towards realization.  People and organizations with clear, guiding purpose find it easier, faster and more economical to marshal resources, focus on results and deliver lasting value to their stakeholders.  They find meaning in action.  They find gratification in existence.  They find greater, continuous joy in life. Period.

Posted via email from Performance. Aligned.

The Impact of Clear Purpose

“The primary responsibility of a leader in a purpose-based organization is to build, nurture, and sustain the core purpose of the organization… By far the number one driver shared by the masters of purpose is the desire to make a difference… Having a definitive conception of the difference you are trying to make in the lives of all your stakeholders will drive all the tough decisions that need to be made and ensure maximum alignment between all the constituents required to pull it off.”
– Roy Spence Jr.

In the years that I have worked with leaders of organizations, this is a massive chasm that separates the successful from the susceptive.  In the end, purpose is more than guiding, more than enlightening – it is foundational, the very root of enablement towards realization.  People and organizations with clear, guiding purpose find it easier, faster and more economical to marshal resources, focus on results and deliver lasting value to their stakeholders.  They find meaning in action.  They find gratification in existence.  They find greater, continuous joy in life. Period.

Posted via email from Performance. Aligned.

The Impact of Clear Purpose

“The primary responsibility of a leader in a purpose-based organization is to build, nurture, and sustain the core purpose of the organization… By far the number one driver shared by the masters of purpose is the desire to make a difference… Having a definitive conception of the difference you are trying to make in the lives of all your stakeholders will drive all the tough decisions that need to be made and ensure maximum alignment between all the constituents required to pull it off.”
– Roy Spence Jr.

In the years that I have worked with leaders of organizations, this is a massive chasm that separates the successful from the susceptive.  In the end, purpose is more than guiding, more than enlightening – it is foundational, the very root of enablement towards realization.  People and organizations with clear, guiding purpose find it easier, faster and more economical to marshal resources, focus on results and deliver lasting value to their stakeholders.  They find meaning in action.  They find gratification in existence.  They find greater, continuous joy in life. Period.

Posted via email from Performance. Aligned.

Loosen Up on Employee Use of Social Media at Work

via news.cnet.com

I have worked with several corporations whose fear of losing control of all communications, let alone security, has prompted them to shut down access of all social media from within the company. I can understand that. If I don’t understand something, my first inclination is to stop ‘it’ until I can make some sort of sense out of it. The question is whether or not leadership teams are just stopping it or trying to make sense of it.

While Gartner came out this fall and flat out told IT authorities that “banning access to social media is futile”, the real value is understanding how foundational social networking is to our success at work, and how social media is a critical extension of that.

“While a job may be regarded as an economic transaction, the human brain thinks of the workplace as a social system,” said Carol Rozwell (shown), a VP at Gartner. That’s because organizations ARE SOCIAL SYSTEMS. Not only will employees find a way around social media barriers at work, the reactions to such barriers could lead to an opposite and equal reaction.

The fact is that we want our people communicating. We want them active within both personal and work circles, and frankly, we hope there is sufficient overlap in both of those circles to give our people balanced living while at the same time continuing to build a positive brand for the organization (building positive perception, contributing to corporate and product success, increasing talent pipelines, etc.).

Instead of banning social media in the workplace, find someone on the leadership team with social media vision and make them the champion. If you don’t have one of those, then install one, because society is not going to do a social media u-turn and abandon it. Teach employee groups how to use it, when and where to use it, and how to integrate it into work processes. Give them encouragement and parameters to help them grow your brand, champion a winning culture and harness social media to grow the enterprise. Be transparent about your fears and passionate with your vision.

We could easily see in the next few years that there are dramatic financial and people results between organizations that leverage social media among employees and those that do not. Or we may not. Either way, social media is not going away, and performance will be far better for those leadership teams that figure out how to harness its power and enable their organization.

Posted via web from Performance. Aligned.

A Voicemail I’ll Never Forget

Sometimes I get into a work mode where I am completely focused on churning out email responses to my workgroup, and it's usually late at night and I am just ripping through all the email that I received during the day:  read, decide on action, respond. read, decide on action, respond.  Thats when I usually send something sensitive to the wrong person (like when I hit reply instead of forward and sent it back to a key vendor, basically insulting them) or like last night, when I did one of those typos that actually works and changes the meaning of the entire message and sends one of my direct reports into a 15 minute panic state. The solution, for me as well as all of us, is to slow down, be intentional about our communication and not just haphazard, especially when we are using computer-mediated communication without all the voice tones, inflection, facial expressions and body language that help get our messages across the way we intend them.

But sometimes, even when we say the right thing, technology messes it up for us.  Like this past Thanksgiving, for instance.

You know that new technology that takes a voicemail and converts it into text in an email and sends it to your phone?  Well, my mother-in-law left a message for her son about Thanksgiving dinner, saying, "Dinner is at five, come over before whenever you want, we're going to play games and have snacks."   What ended up on his phone was, "Dinner is at five, come over before when ever you want, were going to play games and have sex."

Either way, it was a Thanksgiving to remember.

Posted via email from Peter Tennis and family:

Losing the King’s Wallet Actually MAKES Money!

via eventmarketer.com

Ever found one of the King’s Wallet’s?

Burger King and agency Legacy Marketing Partners dropped 14,000 plus wallets in Chicago, Orlando and Phoenix. Complete with the King’s driver’s license, a royal ID card, phone and email info, the wallet also contained gift cards and maps showing all the local restaurants.

That’s aligning to the performance that you desire. You create a pleasant find for someone, with money to use inside and a map to help them show up and spend it.  Why do we have to complicate things when it can be that simple?  Apparently the campaign cost around $500k, and drove quality social interaction, and of course, coupon redemption and revenue from food sales.

Not a bad day’s work for losing a wallet, even if you are a king.

Ingenious. I love it. I hope I find one.

Marketers, Stop Taking and Start Giving

Of course that’s an inflammatory headline; it’s supposed to get your attention.  Now the next thing I do is write a line or two of pain-centered content, then I begin to pull you in with my pitch.  That’s what good marketers do, right?

We send messages.  We pretend to communicate and fire away at our market with little regard to whether or not the message is received, decoded properly or feedback gathered.  In fact, in most marketing organizations I know of, the flow of thinking is: create the campaign, fire away, and start creating the next campaign (all without the concept of action-learning).  Not anymore. 

The game has changed, but we’re still playing with our old tactics and strategies, yet wondering why are not able to capture more loyal customers or survive in a struggling economy. The bottom line is that our customers come second in line to ourselves and the gap between the two gets bigger with every level of management that stands between.  The future of marketing is changing faster than marketing management is able to.

Markets are not just ‘markets’ – they are people.  People don’t want to be talked at, they want you to listen.  People crave reliable relationships, interactions that validate them as individuals of worth and value resources that enable and empower them to at least feel like they can do more, even if they don’t.  Take the example of great customer service – at its most fundamental level, focused, personal customer service raises the perception of dignity in an individual and gives them the feeling that they are ‘worth it’. For most of us, whose back is to the wall on a daily basis, a simple experience of self-worth is priceless.  Marketers forget that.  We think it’s about us.  It’s not – it’s about THEM.

With the availability and flow of information today, marketers have to realize that they can rarely control online reputation through a carefully filtered stance of message-leaking.  If an organization does not speak enough, the market will speak for them, often to the chagrin of brand managers and boards of directors.  What’s worse is that even if a company is trying to speak volumes in cyberspace, today’s social spheres quickly attribute even the smallest departure from what they feel is honesty, transparency and moral motive and then do the branding and advertising for you, in a negative light.

Marketing, branding, positioning, etc. is not what we think or say, it’s the net result of everything we do.  Don’t be afraid to invite the customer in and give them a free pass to your world, because if you don’t, they’ll happily be standing there as you sort through your own rubble.

Remembering What Marketing is All About

I hope, for most us, that we’ve known what marketing has really been about all these years.  I’ve thrown this Drucker quote around enough and still, I have found too many marketers (a general term, I know) in big corporations who are bent on the creative, promotional side, cutting off their real efforts at the launch of a campaign, like building a ship and simply pushing it out to sea, leaving it to the mercy of the wind and waves.  Marketing isn’t about design, creative, advertising, etc. Marketing IS the business, and the business must generate revenue.

“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.” – Peter Drucker

It seems that small business marketers often get it better than big business marketers.  Let’s take the typical online marketer, for instance.  In the big corporation, the online marketer is optimizing pages, tagging code and doing site research.  They are tracking visitors and clicks and collecting all sorts of information.  The small business online marketer is tracking sales.  That’s the difference.  We’ve let marketing grow to be such a creative outlet, that creative activity has become the end, and its grown and grown, spiraling away from accountability and away from tracking what matters most: sales.

Technology is changing that.  Between marketing analytics programs like Omniture and Unica, we can now entertain ourselves with all sorts of metrics, etc. And with marketing automation systems like Silverpop B2B Engage, Marketo and Eloqua, we can track activities into the funnel.  We can now, more easily than ever, measure the results of a marketing activity from launch, all the way into the funnel and win/loss.

The chasm is closing between sales and marketing.  Technology is moving us marketers closer and closer back to direct accountability for revenue generation.  The only thing holding us back is ourselves, as “marketers”. I think we ought to change the term. I think we ought to call ourselves “Revenue Generators”.

I had a good talk with a friend about some of their marketing practices at their high-end management consulting firm.  I noticed that their site, approach and positioning had changed several times over the last year, and each time it became less clear and less open.  He told me that they had let their original marketing director go last year, and that’s why it changed. When I asked why they let him go, his answer was a simple, and striking, tell-tale of the landscape that we marketers venture today:

“He didn’t tie himself to sales, so the Principals couldn’t see how all the great things he was doing was impacting the business.”

And that, is that.

Creating a Social Media Strategy: Putting the Cart Before the Horse.

Don't rush into social media just because everyone else is. Take the time to plan it out and be deliberate.

Over the past couple of years, I have been an enthusiastic follower of social media communications in organizations.  As the wave of individuals have turned to popular applications and technologies to connect individuals and groups, businesses are finding the need to create new roles of tweeters, bloggers, posters and feeders, usually in an attempt to merely follow the competition.  But which of the competition really knows what they are doing? 

Social Media as a “Me-too” Strategy

I’m a lover of strategy, and as I search for social media strategies others are using, I see it following the likes of social media adoption: an all too often knee-jerk reaction to a developing eco-sphere of burgeoning online social activity, rather than a well-developed appendix to a communications strategy.  Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s great to develop a social media strategy, but there is a danger here in the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ it is formed: Any strategy for the sake of strategy, often becomes disparate from organizational purpose and sub-optimizes the whole.  Social media, and any strategy for that matter, simply needs to align with the larger purpose and vision of the organization / individual.  And, social media, having its own strategy, may be putting the cart before the horse.

A Purpose-driven Approach to Social Media Strategy

Most organizations need to back-up and first begin with the following:

 1.) The Relationships you’re building with Stakeholders. What are those relationships now and what do they need to become? Since really all social activities (and all organizations are social structures) begin and end with relationships, its critical to take stock in and inventory relationship gaps within and without the organization.  Most companies that I have been in (a fair amount) don’t even formally acknowledge who their key stakeholders are in the first place.  Take the leadership team through the process of working out and articulating these relationships, identifying their current state and their desired state.  Now you have something to work with.

2.) What is the Best Way to Build those relationships?  This question gives everyone a guideline and handrail to hold to and keep us directed as we work through the rest of the social media strategy process. Is it through insincerity?  Is it by being guarded and defensive?  Is it through telling too much or too little? Once you’ve identified the key relationships, simply have a discussion as a team about the best way to strengthen them.  Use experience from your own life about how your relationship was strengthened with organizations you patronize. Not every relationship needs to be at the same level, but discussing what principles impact the development of those relationships will put everyone on the same philosophical page about relationship building. 

3.) What Information, Exchanges, Experiences and Conversations need to take place in order for those relationships to foster? This is where you begin to design the messages or content from a high level.  Don’t wait for the moment to come later to have this discussion – get it out there on paper right now.  Let everyone look at it.  This will begin to tell you about your side of the relationship and how you can step up to the plate as individuals and as an organization.

  4.) How are we going to communicate with them to Best Facilitate it all? As you can tell, we haven’t even talked about social media at this point. This last question leaves us with the need to get clear on our communications strategy and planning ; social media, now that’s merely a channel for socializing your messages, a means for enabling your communications plan to be to actually communicate, from sending messages to receiving feedback.

Once you have a communications strategy, articulated and aligned, then you have the groundwork for clearly seeing the opportunities that social media can play in communication with your various stakeholder groups.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, what about the cool stuff – the facebook, twitter, digg, YouTube?” 

Again, don’t get caught up in the channels (or ‘means’) that the relationships (or ‘ends’) utilize.  Plan those channels just as you would any other. There is no quicker way to kill your brand than to whip out a social media strategy, open all channels of online social networking, and then find you’ve created a monster. Communications in web-based, open social circles can be like a prairie fire: a small spark can quickly rage uncontrolled, traveling faster than you can mobilize resources to contain it.  You put a message out there with one intent, and it can be quickly picked up and perceived as another, blown across a vast area, too fast for you to control it.  That said, don’t be afraid – be bold, be willing to be transparent and foster visionary leadership.

New to twitter? Good, now you know enough to kill yourself.

A long while back, my good friend took a class and earned his diving (SCUBA) certification. In his proud moment of achievement, his dad, an experienced diver, said to him, “Good. Now you know enough to kill yourself.” 

His dad knew that getting into the water and using technology to breathe in it did not make you a competent diver.  In fact, he knew that the false sense of security that most beginning divers have is what really ends up putting them in harm’s way.  I think this is where I throw the same advice for those of us hopping on Twitter (myself included).

“But wait”, you say, ”What’s the danger?”  Simply put, it’s the same risk you take on all online, social media activities: reputation and brand management.  “Well, I don’t know, it doesn’t look so bad.  All I do is tell people what I’m doing, right?  Or Maybe I think of clever, witty things to say and that’s all I need, right?” Yeah, and then all your friends think you’re even weirder than before, or worse, you damage the image of your company.

Don’t forget that when you’re blogging, tweeting, commenting or rating, you are still communicating and sending a message out to the world.  Often, in this new era of burst communication and rapid response, we’ve lowered our standards of thinking through our communications to evaluate how they might be received or what other messages we may be unintentionally sending.

If you are tweeting, chirping, burping or blogging, consider the following:

If you are an Organization: You are either well-known, or you are not.  If you are well-known, you either rise to the expectations of your audience / stakeholders, or immediately tank in their perceptions and the entire effort ends up wallowing in a reputation recovery campaign.  If you are an unknown organization (and this applies just as much to a known organization), you are potentially creating a new voice and brand extension by tweeting, and that brand best be intentional and deliberate.  Your tweets and followers will not be many at first, and quite honestly, it’s really not how many followers you have, it’s how many readers you have.  Over time, if your value prop on Twitter is planned and managed as well as your value prop of anything else in your organization, then you will be able to leverage a good following in order to meet stakeholder needs.  Be just as careful launching on Twitter as you should with any other campaign.

If you are an individual:  You’re not expected to have a ton of value on Twitter, unless you’re famous.  Let’s face it, nobody is waiting to pay for text alerts or to log on and see what ‘John or Sally Doe’ has to say. You’re an unknown entity.  You are welcome to experiment, try it out and write boring stuff.  Of course, if you are a celeb, then telling people what you had for breakfast will have them on the edge of their wanna-be seats, waiting for more. Over time, you may want to figure out how Twitter fits into your communication needs and then use it for that purpose, rather than slobber all over the twittersphere for the rest of us to sort through. But if you are known, a name, a brand, then you have some expectations to live up to.  You don’t meet them, the egg – it’s on your face.

In short, now that you are set-up with an account and have sent a few tweets, you know enough to put your brand, image, product, service, personal name out there in an uncontrolled, unmediated environment.  Reputation will be formed, and not always as intentionally as you would like.  But if you at least have a clear objective or purpose for using Twitter, then it will more likely meet your needs, and hopefully the needs of others, and bring you and your followers some value.

Chirp, chirp.