Category: Blog

I’ve been getting hot around the collar about the issue of board alignment this week, sparked in part by a masterclass with Intuitive Brands where the subject came up in the discussion.

One of the most valued elements of our programme is the process which we take a client’s board or executive team through as they co-create their Story, and aligning everyone behind it so that they are speaking with one voice.  One Story, one voice, so that the senior leaders of the business are seen to be a united, cohesive force – the ultimate champions of the Story.

It is rare  to come across a board which is aligned from the get-go.  Yet unless the board is truly aligned, you cannot hope to align the rest of the organisation behind your strategic journey.  Many of our clients say early on in our discussions that they do have an aligned board or executive team, that it’s a given, that they just need to focus on the content of the Story.  But with the pace of change dominating the business agenda it is unrealistic to expect every member of an executive team to be on the same page.  Of course they have different agendas depending on the function which they represent, but sometimes we walk into the boardroom with high expectations of a relatively smooth process and find- usually during the one-to-one interviews we conduct, that there are deep and significant gaps in consensus, especially where the personal agenda is on a different track to that of the business.  The story isn’t about wordsmithing.  It’s about an aligned, collective perspective.

The overwhelming positive outcome of our alignment sessions is that through a rigorous process, often after several iterations of the draft Story together with sensitive and expert facilitation and a deep understanding of the client’s business issues, we achieve true alignment and the client has positively enjoyed the dynamic, honest and open discussion which perhaps they couldn’t have behind closed doors (never under-estimate the value of a third-party facilitator in such matters – it’s surprisingly difficult to do this kind of work from an internal perspective).  They leave with a sense of unity, a desire to get their story out to the troops, a renewed sense of coalition and trust in each other rather than a bunch of folk who give the CEO the corporate nod but then turn in the opposite direction.  The result?  A united leadership team, ready to face the organisation with a clear sense of direction and purpose, galvanised to take their employees on the journey, hands held.

Thanks to Helen Love at Intuitive Brands for this little gem.  As I pursue my quest to de-jargonise business communications, please feel free to have a go…

“A research team proceeded towards the apex of a natural geological protuberance, the purpose of their expedition being the procurement of a sample of fluid hydride of oxygen in a large vessel, the exact size of which was unspecified.  One member of the team precipitately descended sustaining severe fractural damage to the upper cranial portion of his anatomical structure.  Subsequently, the second member of the team performed a self-rotational translation oriented in the direction taken by the first team member.”

Now, answer the following questions:

How many people in the team?

What were their names?

I enjoyed a recent presentation by Steve Martin, CEO of the steel manufacturing Clugstone Group.  He is one of the few, gutsy CEO’s prepared to be filmed ‘going undercover’ by Channel 4, in order to mix and work with employees on the front line of his steel construction company.

This kind of publicity is risky, very risky.  It takes a brave CEO to want to expose in such a public way the faults in his organisation and quite possibly in his leadership style, especially in an industry where health and safety rules and a non-conforming company can be destroyed.  Most CEO’s don’t want to appear vulnerable or lacking in knowledge.   But Steve Martin wanted to understand what employees have to go through themselves, even if it meant taking him completely out of his comfort zone from a cosy office to the blistering heat of a steel furnace or working through the night, so that he could address the weak areas and make decisions based on reality.

One of the first things that became clear through his talk was that people talked much more openly with those who weren’t dressed in suits and ties (even if they were a TV crew).  I must admire the man – they really did treat him as a true employee – not telling him where, how or when he was going each cold, dark morning which is indeed what the front line workers often have to put up with themselves.  Steve told a number of great stories to illustrate the dedication that people have on the job, such as Dick Sutton, who hadn’t had a day off sick in 30 years and had personally trained all of his team. Or Les, who cancelled his weekend plans without a bat of the eyelid in order to work through – and as a freelance contractor he wasn’t even employed by the company.

The upshot of Steve’s time out was a great deal of learning, as summarised below:

BE SEEN:  If you don’t go out and talk to the troops, the grapevine will react in a far worse way

COMMUNICATE more in a recession than you’d normally do, to give reassurance, fact and to avoid uncertainty and rumour.

INFORM WIDELY:  Get a mass of opinion and ideas.  Explain things to everybody properly.

SUITS AND TIES create barriers, especially in blue-collar environments.

REFRESH YOUR COMMUNICATIONS:  Change the way you do things to be seen and heard.  Involve people from every level in forums to discuss issues and raise action points and keep changing who these representatives are.  Explain what and why things are changing. One size does not fit all.

ASK AND CONSULT:  Act on your employee surveys and demonstrate that you have listened.

SKIP LEVEL MEETINGS:  Have meetings with your boss’s boss, to give people an opportunity to raise issues which may be held back from certain layers of management.

FIND THE RIGHT TIME to send out information and talk to people. Don’t send a letter explaining why a bonus isn’t forthcoming a week after they get their payslips!  Improving efficiency doesn’t always have the desired impact.

INVEST IN TRAINING front-line supervisors and managers.

Good for you, Steve.  I am sure your workforce has a far greater respect for you as a result of this TV programme.  This just goes to show the importance of visibility of senior leaders, and the need to hear what employees are saying from the bottom up.  Without this kind of insight every senior leadership team must be at a real disadvantage.  Come on you CEO’s, let’s see you out there!

I was touched by this poem ‘Lost Generation’ by Jonathan Reed.  It speaks of the negative, cynical viewpoint of a Gen Y individual, yet on reaching the end – and you have to follow the instructions – a message of positivity and a statement of intent shines through.

 

Lost Generation, by Jonathan Reed

I am part of a lost generation

and I refuse to believe

I can change the world

I realise this may be a shock but

“happiness comes from within”

is a lie, and

“money will make you happy”

So in 30 years I will tell my children

they are not the most important thing in my life.

My employer will know that

I have my priorities straight because

work

is more important than

family

I tell you this

Once upon a time

families stayed together

but this will not be true in my era

this is a quick fix society

Experts tell me

30 years from now I will be celebrating my 11th anniversary of my divorce

I do not concede that

I will live in a country of my own making

In the future

environmental destruction will be the norm

No longer can it be said that

my peers and I care about this earth

It will be evident that

my generation is apathetic and lethargic

It is foolish to presume that

there is hope

and

all of this will come true unless we choose to reverse it

NOW READ THIS LINE BY LINE, FROM THE BOTTOM UP…

Thanks to John Simmons, a leading writer from the writers’ group 26, who has generously contributed to our blog, referring to an interesting example of successful storytelling this month relating to the announcement that Rio de Janeiro has won the right to stage the 2016 Olympic Games – a ‘gold medal’ of prizes for the best story…

“I remember vividly where I was when I heard that London had won the 2012 Olympics. It was four years ago during a 26 Board meeting, held appropriately enough at the offices of Storytellers. As we sat talking about the next 26 event, a whoop and a cheer went up from the room next door. Then text messages started coming in. Not everyone was pleased but I have to say I was delighted. My one chance to see the Olympics in my home city.

When the dust settled a bit, people started to analyse how London had done it. The consensus was that London had told a good story, a story about the past linking to the future. It had begun to tell that through Seb Coe’s personal story of his own childhood experiences of watching the Games and being inspired to become an athlete. And this aspirational story was reinforced in every word and image that followed.

Four years on, and there are similarities between London’s story and Rio’s – even though the two cities are so different. There is the same desire to embrace optimism, with sport helping to express it, and to leave a legacy for future generations. The man behind both campaigns, Mike Lee, has been quoted in the weekend’s papers. On Saturday he said;

“Great campaigns are built on great narratives. Everything you do has to fit in with that narrative.”

Then on Sunday he wrote in the Observer:

“As the London team did, Rio had to combine the rational and the emotional, building a story that understood the context of the Olympic movement.”

When I was working for a brand consultancy we might have substituted the word ‘brand’ for ‘story’. But story seems to me much more compelling and universal. These two Olympic campaigns are good examples of storytelling for a purpose – to win.

Recently I’ve also been writing stories for a purpose – in a different sense. I’ve been telling stories for a big financial company in another part of the world – to express the company’s purpose. The telling of factual stories led naturally to the creation of stories in many fictional genres – fantasy, fairy tale, Dan Brown, detective, chick lit and Manga. Through these stories employees, customers and visitors can enjoy, understand and relate to the organisation’s purpose. It’s all about winning minds.”

Some very clear themes and topics of concern emerged from this year’s Employee Engagement and Employer Brand conference organised by Osney Media.  It was particularly interesting to hear David Macleod and Nita Clarke, authors of the government-commissioned  Macleod Report, speak on their key findings regarding employee engagement from the extensive research conducted across numerous organisations.

The issue relating to middle management engagement and communication seems to be an area of particular concern; how to reach out and inspire this layer of the organisation to allow key messages to permeate through to the wider employee base.  It is a perennial problem….words such as ‘permafrost’, ‘marshmallow layer’ and ‘concrete sponge’ populated table discussions, with a real appetite for practical tools and methodologies to combat the issue of manager-inertia / communication skills and strategic focus, especially within the public sector.

Of course, not all managers can be tarred with the same brush, and some organisations have absolutely got it right.  Al Meyer, Internal Communications Manager at LeasePlan (UK) explained how a simple, strategic narrative of their ‘Good To Great’ journey has helped unite people behind a common purpose, with remarkable results.  LeasePlan’s Story needed to be seen as part of the fabric of people’s everyday working lives, so required constant reinforcement and communication over a period of years rather than just months as it has evolved.  LeasePlan can now boast to be an organisation which has moved from one with little trust in the senior team and low levels of strategic understanding and engagement, to one which has extremely high levels of trust in the senior management and where people understand (and regularly discuss in teams) the role and contribution they can play in the journey.  Interestingly, LeasePlan is a very data-driven organisation, so the storytelling approach they adopted has been quite a departure from their conventional methods of communication.  What is so remarkable is the fact that every manager holds a monthly Friday huddle with his/her team to discuss the priorities or behaviours that characterise the journey, supported by some creative tools that allow teams to plot their progress and link their action plans back to the Story.  Terrific.

The rules of breaking through the middle management layer are simple….but they require effort, constant focus and reinforcement and investment.  Here are my top ten tips:

Make sure managers and their teams understand the big picture, the context within which they are asked to act and behave.  Without this they are operating in a vacuum and the task lacks meaning.
Help managers to understand what the strategic messages mean to them, both personally and as a team.  Relevance and meaning will open hearts and minds.
Make sure your managers are completely clear that communications is a core competency of a good leader.  Many are promoted because they’re good at the job, not good at people management.
Give training, coaching and support to those who need it.  Lack of time is an excuse.  Lack of confidence is usually the real cause.
Give practical tools to supplement skills.  Props, structure and toolkits will help the confidence factor.  Don’t be afraid to be creative and focus on dialogue, not simply ’show and tell’
Don’t rely simply on hierarchy to get the message across.  Some managers simply won’t step up to the mark, so make full use of the natural influencers and ‘ambassadors’ in the organisation to support the reinforcement.
Make full use of your internal communications channels to reinforce messages and support manager communication, both verbally and visually.  Different ‘generations’ respond to different media, eg
social media such as Twitter and Facebook to more conventional communications tactics such as newsletters.  Use them all!
Help managers become good storytellers – it helps bring dry principles, statistics and abstract data to life.
Ensure your managers can see role-models in the senior team, so they can become good role-models themselves.
Reward and recognise good behaviours and success stories.  Carrots are more attractive than sticks!

Apologies.  It’s been a dry old month on the blog front, I know, but the new term is starting and we’re raring to go.  And what better subject to start with than the old chestnut of trust in organisations.  I’ve written about this before, but it deserves another mention as a timely report has emerged from the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) that shows that a third of our workers don’t trust their bosses, and labelling CEO’s as those who are trusted least.  Not surprisingly (and it’s not new news), line managers came off better in the trust stakes.

I heard the MD of KFC talking about this issue the other day.  His view was that CEO’s should understand what people’s jobs actually entail in order to know what to do.  Hmmm. Interesting.  I’d like to see CEO’s of large organisations fit that kind of ‘back to the shop floor’ exercise with every single job function in the organisation into his or her busy schedule.  He did, however, cite that CEO’s have two dimensions of trust:  personal integrity and an ability to do the job.  I agree with that.  Being visible, making as much contact as possible, and practising what you preach are probably the most important characteristics of a good CEO.

OK, so I’m moving away from the issue of trust and onto what makes a good CEO.  I have often referred back to an article from The Times written by Carol Lewis just under a year ago.  In summary, the top ten tips for becoming an effective CEO are:

1.    Want to be in that role (it’s lonely , unsociable, and hard work at the top of the tree)

2.   Put yourself about (prove yourself in a variety of roles and situations)

3    Hone your emotional intelligence (be good at reading situations and people.  Understand ideas quickly and then engage people)

4    Learn to communicate (from shareholders to workers on the shop floor)

5.   See the bigger picture (strategic ability…think ahead, think broadly about opportunities, challenges and issues)

6.   Find a mentor (be prepared to be coached)

7.   Network regularly (have a broad horizon, understand how your business is seen and what the business trends are that will affect your business.  Pick it up and bring it back to the business).

8.   Stop dithering (be decisive, make the right decisions, and informed decisions)

9.   Show passion (Don’t be boorish, bullish or domineering, but demonstrate your drive)

10.  Clean your shoes (if not, you don’t quite care enough).

Enough said.  How does your CEO score…..and do you trust him/her?

Good Lord, is this really true?  Has employee engagement come to this?  It’s enough to make anyone choke on their cornflakes as they open up their long-awaited copy of this month’s HR Magazine.  There’s one thing to have a ‘dress down’ Friday, but this really takes the biscuit…

I’m referring to the stunt pulled by ad agency Onebestway in a so-called attempt to increase employee engagement, motivation and team bonding, by asking their staff to participate in a ‘Naked Friday’.  Yes, Naked Friday.  When staff come into work with no clothes on.  At all.

I’m now imagining our own team doing the same.  No no no – let’s not go there.  You wouldn’t catch me in a million years agreeing to this.  And I think I can say the same for our the team – well with the exception perhaps of one or two.

This has to be just for publicity – I can’t think of a quicker way to break down trust, respect, engagement (hilarity maybe, engagement no) and productivity.  We’d be too busy hiding behind our desks, unwilling to make the short walk to the printer, unwilling to make any sort of hot drink, certainly unwilling to open the door to some poor courier, unwilling to have any kind of face-to-face (or cheek-to-cheek) meeting.

But well done for the cheek of it, Onebestway, even if it was just for the photo opportunity.  I bet everyone couldn’t wait for the camera to click and then they could get their clothes back on.

Now team, back to work.  Fully dressed please.

The government-commissioned MacLeod Review of Employee Engagement provides interesting reading and pulls together a myriad of statistics and case studies which all point to the consensus that engaged employees are more productive, efficient and are a major contributor to high performing businesses.

However, for HR and Communications professionals this won’t come as new news.  Personnel Today.com is just one publication which expresses the view that it has had a lukewarm reception in the HR Community, with representatives citing that the Review won’t make much impact on existing working practices and lacks practical measures which might enable businesses to improve their employee engagement efforts.

Like the CIPD, I am pleased the Review has been endorsed at such a high government level.  It bears testament what we have been advocating since we started our own business in helping provide an emotional connection to the journey the business is on.  An excerpt from the report hits the nail on the head, reinforcing the criticial need for what lies at the heart of our own company’s proposition:

“A strong narrative that provides a clear, shared vision for the organisation is at the heart of employee engagement. Employees need to understand not only the purpose of the organisation they work for but also how their individual role contributes to that purpose. As Ruth Spellman of CMI told us: “First employees need to have an understanding of the business they are in. Employers need to ensure that jobs fallen into by accident become the ‘real deal’”. Dianne Thompson, Chief Executive of Camelot said to us: “Particularly in very dif?cult economic conditions it is vitally important that leaders focus on the morale and motivation of their employees. Understanding the journey that a company is on is critical to keeping employees engaged.”

The onus now lies with businesses and public sector organisations to take the appropriate steps and dedicate adequate resources to make this happen.