Team Briefing

Origins of Brands

Ownership and Identification

In many respects the original intent of a permanent mark to prove ownership and facilitate identification are no different today than they were in the wild west.  Consistent use of the logo and brand identity are essential ways of retaining intellectual property, goodwill, positioning in the marketplace and hence the overall value of investing in developing a recognisable brand.

More recently, these notions have been applied to what happens inside the organisation and “internal branding” has emerged as a topic of interest to those who are seeking to engage employees in their organisation.

What Is Internal Branding About?

Such is the set up in golf, only those who are PGA professionals can legitimately charge for teaching it but in Scotland where we have literally hundreds of courses, the sport is declining in many clubs when membership is used as the measure.  Most sports in Scotland can only envy the golf set up with its private members clubs, their facilities and revenue generating opportunities, and the capacity for splitting the amateur and professional set ups as they do. And at the very top of the professional playing game, there is massive wealth.  Club pros can make a decent living from being based at a club with a reasonable membership to support them through lessons and sales.  However, the job of introducing the sport and recruiting the players of tomorrow often falls to the well intentioned, enthusiastic, passionate volunteers working at the grass roots.  While you might say that some have a vested interest in recruiting new blood into their clubs, the reality is that many of the juniors will move off to higher education, or employment, many more will give up for a time and perhaps a few will remain passionate about golf and stay in it, perhaps even as members of their home club for years to come.  So there are probably other motivations at work other than recruitment or payment.

And maybe that is as it should be and the only way these things can work.  I am currently researching where people find meaning in their work.  Perhaps it is the fact that there are volunteers working as coaches that creates an authenticity to the experience for children and beginners.  They aren’t there because they are being paid – the relationship is not so much a transactional one; you pay me, I give you a lesson.  There is the possibility of a shared interest, common purpose and there is a genuine investment of time in the value of teaching and learning on both sides when money doesn’t come into it.

Our motivation or inclination to help others is a fascinating feature of being human. Whether in a charitable, voluntary or professional capacity, it is of interest to me because I think that it provides meaning in our lives.  If you would like to help me write my book on Meaning and Work. Click here to complete a very short survey.

Thanks Liz Moody

• quality
• identity
• emotional associations
• logos
• slogans
• reputation
• values
• recognition
• consistency
• mission
• unique
• luxury
• reliability
• customer experience
• aesthetics
• design
• exclusivity
• comfort
• differentiating

That’s quite a tough ask of anything.  Delivering on that agenda kind of begs the question  – are you giving and getting all that from your brand? Actually – not all brands set out to position themselves as exclusive or luxury – and many, like the low cost supermarkets and value brands have done extremely well in the recent recession.  The problems emerge when there is a mismatch of perception, the brand promise, customer or employee expectations and what the experience is – and that was what our workshop boiled down to.

In this two part series I want to talk about how we engage with brands, where they add value and importantly, how organisations can use them to engage with their customers and employees. In this first part we address some definitions and a little bit of the mechanics.

To begin with, there is nothing fluffy about the role of design, logos and the aesthetic elements of branding – far from it.  That doesn’t mean we all do this well though – here are a few tips and ideas that may help you to explore your own brand and see where there is room for improvement.

What’s in a name – or a logo?

Logos are used to identify your product, organisation, initiative or service from others.  Done well they can immediately differentiate you via the use of a mark, flag, symbol or signature that can suggest differences in quality, price point, emphasis, values and many other things – all from their appearance and design. Logos have meaning derived from the quality of the entity they symbolise, and not the other way around. Logos don’t need to literally describe all that a company is or does but their job is to make it memorable and recognisable.  It’s a bit like knowing someone’s name and using it with other people – once they have made the association between the two, simply using the name conjures up the identity of the person with out requiring any further explanation.  However, logos depend upon quite widespread exposure to create the intended association within and without the organisation.  It is familiarity that allows logos and branding to achieve its purpose. The logo is the corporate identity and brand all wrapped up into one identifiable mark. This mark is the avatar and symbol of the business as a whole.

What is identity?

In design terms, identity is all the visual devices (including logos) used within an organisation. Often, these are produced in a set of corporate guidelines or style guide, designed to ensure consistency.   The purpose of the guidelines is to ensure coherence, consistency and integrity of the brand which helps to ensure it will be recognisable.  Here are some of the things that typically are included in a style guide:

• Overview of the organisation – e.g. provide some context for users about the organisation’s mission, purpose and values
• Information about logos and use of colour, reproduction in black and white
• Font styles and sizes to be used in different situations
• Page and presentation layouts for internal and external use, on their own or in relation to others; measurements, margins and spacing
• Tone of voice
• Photographic guides
• Templates for layout demonstrating use of master artwork

Many visual devices that make up identity apart from the logo including:

• Letterheads, business cards, etc.
• Marketing communications and collateral (e.g. prospectus, annual report, brochures, web pages)
• Products & Packaging
• Uniforms / dress codes (clothing worn by employees)
• Interior & exterior signs and office design elements
• Anything visual that represents the business e.g. vans, livery flags

All of these things make up an identity and should support the brand as a whole.

So what is branding?

Much has been written on the ‘brand’ and it has become big business for ad agencies over the years who promoted it as a strategy required for success.  The brand is effectively shaped and interpreted by the perceptions of the audience and in that way it can be said that actually all organisations have a corporate image – whether deliberate, well designed, coherent, effective, value adding, accidental or not!

Designers don’t “make” brands but their work can influence the foundation of yours.

You might almost say that a brand is the ‘corporate image’ and as such everything an organisation produces, owns and does should reflect its values and aims as a whole. This notion of consistency and integrity is a core challenge and a driver of engagement with the brand.  Many well known organisations have been extremely successful in projecting and controlling their corporate image.  Widespread audience research suggests that their public perception reflects the image they are trying create and live up to.  Other disastrous examples demonstrate the importance of the brand and public perception. Witness the Gerald Ratner gaff that wiped £500m off the value of Ratners jewellers with his speech in the early nineties:

Gerald Ratner – Crap Branding?!?

The best brands succeed in creating an emotional attachment – but the emotion intended is not usually anger, disappointment or embarrassment!

In the next part we look at how branding works in relationship to engagement with customers and employees.

Liz Moody

In small owner-managed businesses and start-ups, people often don’t mind pitching in and working hard. Issues like  whose job is it to? or which customers or markets are pretty clear. As for direction -  you work hard and long hours because every new customer and product sold is a win – you’ll take them all. Successes are pretty evident, and motivating – so you can sustain long hours and crazy schedules for some time without too much structure or the need for complicated systems. Things like communication can happen pretty easily.  Over time though, the need for a little more focus and specialisation becomes sensible if not inevitable.  Why?  Because we can’t be everywhere when we need to be; we can’t be good at everything and we can’t sustain the required attention and energy for prolonged periods of time because, quite simply – organisationally it gets too complex (if that isn’t a contradiction in terms!) and we’ll never have any more than 24 hours in a day.

There comes a stage in every growing organisation’s life when managers/owners need to start putting more structure around “how we do things around here”.  Becoming more effective and more efficient – more strategic and more focussed, more systematic and more skillful at these three things

1. doing the business  – manufacturing products, delivering services, fulfilling orders
2. managing the business – managing the money in and out; understanding profitability; directing, communicating with and training staff;  premises, suppliers, partners, the taxman etc.
3. getting the business – generating leads, bids, converting leads, getting repeat business, up-selling, cross-selling and securing contracts

Usually, we have a preference for one or at most two of these three areas and for many founders they love #1.  Getting the business suits some of us too – we can get immediate feedback for what we do in terms of orders, sales or wins – and that is gratifying.  It is in #2 that most small or new businesses fall down, in my opinion. It is harder to see the results of doing these things in terms that immediately hit the bottom line – and yet they can and they do.  I think the trouble with the activities in these roles is that you often cannot appreciate their value until they are not done – or not done well.  For example – if you don’t make your tax returns, you’ll still have to pay them and may well have a late payment penalty slapped on top.  If you don’t communicate effectively with customers and staff, you are relying on them to know what to do, when and how and this may not coincide with what you know is needed. Pretty soon you are going to have to resolve problems like duplicated effort, service failures, misdirections, rework – for the lack of clear instructions, or procedures.  You get the picture.

A long while ago now I was fortunate to meet a guy who introduced me to the work and philosophy of Ernesto Sirolli.  You can listen to what he has to say here:

Ernesto Sirolli Talks

I immediately was struck by the good sense of this charismatic Italian economic development specialist whose life work has been reviving communities, rejuvenating small business and leveraging networks and connections.  In many ways he was an inspiration for the direction I wanted to take Neontics in.  He understands that for many business owners and leaders, it is difficult to ask for help, that the help given is often not what they really need, and that changing how we work is hard.  It means giving up things we like do for things we sometimes must do.  It means entrusting things precious to us (our ideas, customers) and private to us (our fears, dreams and frailties).

Neontics can work with you in any one of these three areas of running a successful organisation to support individuals and teams who want to improve their business results.   Imagine what you can do with passionate people on your side, pulling in the same direction, achieving your and their goals.  And think about where you are now? Where is the gap?  Contact us to help you close the gap.

The manager’s own insecurity can prevent them from letting go. Perhaps if one is new to a role, or has been given extra responsibilities there is a tendency to feel the need to demonstrate that everything is under control. This can result in micro-managing and some managers never move beyond this. Managers with a tendency to micro-manage employees can eventually perpetuate this situation because, over time, staff become conditioned to relinquish responsibility to their manager. In another blog I discussed how staff adapt to patterns of behaviour they observe in their boss.  This downward cycle of behaviour makes line reports increasing less accountable and in turn managers respond by feeling that they simply cannot then delegate with confidence.

Promoting accountability for their own performance amongst employees and encouraging achievement requires active, constant action by managers. The manager as coach is a very current concept and this style of management encourages involvement of staff in setting their own goals and objectives and so in turn increases ownership. This is especially so where employees have freedom to decide how they will achieve these – i.e. designing a strategy for accomplishing the task or project in hand.

As a coach manager therefore, the role includes sharing information on, for example, how the company is performing, what is happening in the wider operating environment, and from where opportunities and challenges arise so that employees’ awareness is raised, the boundaries are clear and the specific feedback helps them frame their plans and execution of their work. Providing such clarity and the freedom to generate new ideas and solutions helps support engagement AND ensures better alignment of effort. For managers the process of sharing and exchanging ideas also provides invaluable insight into how staff think, the information they draw upon, their values and how they relate to others and the organisation itself. By providing direction but not answers, employees’ confidence in their own knowledge, skills, experience and ability to take decisions grows.

The trade off between delegation as opposed to taking more and more on oneself is one between a perceived, if not real, increased risk of failure and this assumes a manager has greater competence, knowledge and experience.  This is not only unlikely but also undesirable.  The ability to take risks without punishment or blame is a critically important factor in engagement and in particular encouraging employees to willingly step up to the mark. It requires a culture supportive to recognise and accept that often from failure and criticism, we learn almost as much, if not more, than from our successes.

Through taking responsibility employees feel more valued and engaged with the business – they have more of a stake in it. Better engagement tends to reduce turnover and increase motivation. More ownership and focused effort on specific goals means managers are freed up to deal with the key results that they are employed to achieve. With everyone focused on the right level of activity and performance, better, more consistent business results – or in short a higher level of performance, is achieved.

Whatever the statistics, and however long we remain in recession, my view is that we are going to see more and more people starting up businesses of their own and increasingly using their employment in large corporations only to gain experience, get training,  make contacts and accumulate funds until they can get out and do their own thing.  I think this is partly about a shift in society and partly a function of how large corporations and organisations operate now.

Review some of the literature and surveys around and they will often point to the reasons why people start their own business, besides the necessity to create income. Founders cite various reasons, amongst them:

1. To be their own boss or feel more in control of their own time now and in future
2. To take advantage of a perceived opportunity that their previous organisation cannot/won’t move quickly enough on to exploit
3. To work with people who are similarly motivated and not be held back by others who are not
4. To earn more for one’s efforts
5. To feel more valued and fulfilled
6. To do work that is more in line with their own personal values and ethos
7. To find a way to create a better lifestyle

The implication is that these things are less possible when working for a large organisation or someone else. But why?  Is it a result of what happens in large organisations – their structures, systems, the culture that exists, management style or something else?  Perhaps understanding what people seem to seek by starting out on their own holds the key to improving engagement levels.

For example, can managers delegate more authority and responsibility to increase the control employees have over their own work? Do they tackle with rigour the disengaged before they have the chance to undermine the engagement and motivation of others? Can performance be effectively recognised and rewarded?  And so on….

It’s Down To You

One beauty of working for yourself is that there is an immediacy about it – you know that whatever successes you have are down to you. You know that the decisions that need to be taken are yours to take and so on.  So perhaps rather than looking at gimmicks and initiatives around engagement, we need to start with the idea of what it is that makes work worthwhile for employees, beyond the obvious need to earn a living and for some, reducing the risk of otherwise running out of money to support the lifestyle we want.

Perhaps more consideration of the personal ambitions and expression in jobs, recognition of the social need for interaction and relationships to others and maintaining a healthy balance between life in work and life at home.  Better understanding of what work represents for employees might be the answer to not just better engagement but higher performance.

The Shrink and The Sage

Let’s start with the FT magazine article by Antonia Macaro and Julian Baggini (aka the Shrink and the Sage) who are a psychotherapist and philosopher respectively. Their article asks the question about what we can do when life loses its meaning.

The “answers”, for some lie in religion, spirituality or existentialism. The upshot is,  I guess, that rather than look for meaning outside of one’s own life, we should look at the meaning in our lives – i.e. what we can put into our lives that is meaningful. Phew – that’s a bit deep and definitely stretches my knowledge of philosophy etc.

Crossing Continents

Anyway, on to Radio 4.  “Not a lot of people know this” to paraphrase Michael Caine, if you exclude the thousands that listened to the “Crossing Continents” programme aired to describe what happens in Senegal. The population there is 90% Muslim. Amongst them there is a significant, and growing group (40%) that belong to “Mourides” , a movement that stresses the importance of a strong work ethic.

The fact that this movement is gaining stature and influence by virtue of its prevalence among the higher echelons of the country’s political positions, poses an interesting question for me. Where does engagement come from and what does this very strong and pervasive value mean for Senegal’s economy?  Can you imagine it being said that in our society everyone wants to work hard, irrespective of their occupation, in the name of some higher force or belief?  It certainly isn’t the usual sentiment of the Daily Mail and I would say that if asked many people would say they only work for “the money”. But is that really true?

In my reading of  Studs Terkel’s book, “Working – People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do” it struck me that there is something in this concept of “meaning in work” that is linked to how we, as human beings, see our performance at work vary over time.   Where there is something meaningful to achieve it makes it that much easier to get up in the morning and give one’s best. We can all point to people who hate their jobs, even when well paid.  We also probably know people that love their jobs, event when not well paid.  They could do something else, they maybe have done something else but when it comes down to it when the work loses meaning, something else in us is lost too.

Are Managers and Consultants To Blame?

When the lean consultants come in, and the six sigma managers are finished with their cost-cutting exercises, when the teams have been dismantled by outsourcing parts elsewhere, and the human service elements have been replaced by automation or self service, and managers warned to guard against “job creep” to keep the wage bill down; and tasks are centralised in the centres of excellence…. and so on…..   isn’t it possible that we have also dismantled some of what it means for the employees?  Isn’t part of what engages them these same things that provide interest, fulfilment and satisfaction for many employees? The interaction, the relationships, the ability to respond and create and take ownership and responsibility etc.?   Once you go through the above, the next wave of consultants coming in are the ones telling you about how you need to engage staff!  So you need more “job enrichment”, create more social interaction, more recognition etc.   The implication and underlying assumption is that managers can manage and control this.  I disagree.

Perhaps the Shrink or the Sage will debate this further at some point – it sounds like their kind of thing after all.  I was introduced to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and many other writers on motivation, many years ago and they have stuck with me.  I often see organisations trying to manage people as though money is the main consideration.  If like the Mourides there really is a “higher purpose” available from work, then shouldn’t we understand it as it must impact on employee engagement.  Think about it!

I didn’t know Studs Terkel existed until he died in 2009. I certainly didn’t know I had so much in common with him! I have often pitied people who seem to regard work as something to get through and a necessary evil. I’m not like that.

It was actually my husband who read me an obituary of Studs’ life and work as a social historian and commentator in the USA. Terkel wrote several books, one about the Great Depression, and he closely followed the trade union movement in America. And so, when I was researching the fascinating and complex phenomenum of employee engagement, I was surprised and delighted when Studs cropped up again.

Most Of Us Spend So Much of Our Lives Working

I believe that as most of us spend so much of our lives working, we should surely be able to make what we do as fulfilling as possible. I say we, and I guess by that I mean not just the employee, but those of us who manage and run organisations that employ them. I fear that like so many other bandwagons and fads, people jump onto employee engagement as though it is something that can be controlled. It is I belive, a much more “mutual” concept than that. Like a relationship, or communication one person cannot do all it takes to make it happen!  This doesn’t seem to be recognised by many managers, and dare I say consultants operating in the field or organisation development or specifically employee engagement. Engagement isn’t something that you “do to” people.

My interest in employee engagement is from a number of perspectives – I am researching it, writing about it, consulting and coaching in it. However it has become increasingly important to me personally. What is the point of work if it doesn’t achieve anything? In performance terms that means adding value and in personal terms that means providing some kind of fulfilment. The day a job stops providing these I am out of there.

Technology Presents Massive Opportunities and Threats

Technology and the digital age presents both massive opportunities and threats and therefore a huge dilemma for many established organisations and their leaders.  On the one hand it will impact on business as usual. What will it mean for customers and existing competitors, never mind those new competitors that we cannot yet see who will be enabled by it? And then there is the issue of our own employees. Technology is a relatively new and fast (the fastest?) growing sector in its own right.  That in itself is impacting upon the ability of many sectors and established organisations to recruit the kind of people they need to stay on top. It therefore has huge implications for how we do business, and it alters the whole competitive landscape, one which is changing at an ever quickening pace.

My interest has been growing for some time but this blog was prompted by a series of timely conversations and reading Brian Solis’s blog entitled “2012: The Year for Digital Darwinism”.  Charles Darwin famously shocked the established view in 1859 by publishing “On The Origin of Species” in which he provided his theory of evolution.  He explored five themes – I paraphrase and simplify these shamelessly here to make my later points:

• probability and chance (there is no plan set in stone as to how species evolve)
• selection (strongest and fittest survive)
• adaptation (we are descended from less biologically sophisticated creatures)
• the tempo and mode of change  (i.e. the rate at which change happens and what precipitates it)
• essentialism versus nominalism (the idea of change happening at the level of a species versus individual adaptation)

The “Digital Darwinism” referred to by Solis therefore refers to the increasing rate of change being precipitated by technological advances in the context of business.

Future Strategy

My question to business leaders is whether this seemingly inevitable trend is being a) acknowledged and b) built into the future strategy of established businesses and sectors.  New entrants to any sector can be easily seen to utilise technology to reduce their operating costs and increase their global reach making them at the same time much more profitable and “scalable”.

As an organisation design specialist with a background in marketing,  I frequently talk with business leaders about what performance really means, in the context of their business.   How do they achieve high performance through their staff?

For some performance is about growth and the ensuing strategies to achieve that (mergers, acquisitions, diversification), for another group it is “simply” about survival – so considerations around divesting, retrenching to core business activities, downsizing and outsourcing in order to be profitable and prepare for an uncertain future.  For this second group, the key to long term survival is recognising where future threats and opportunities will come from, and aligning the organisation (and hence people) to deal with these.

“…digital Darwinism threatens rigid and traditional practices everywhere. Regardless of industry, digital Darwinism is a phenomenon when technology and society evolve faster than the ability to adapt.   Indeed this is a time when organisations will invest in change to better adapt to emerging market opportunities, to more successfully engage with customers, employees and stakeholders, rethink systems and processes, and ultimately revive the company’s vision, mission and purpose. The result is an adaptive culture that signals an end to business as usual.”

 Brian Solis 20 January 2012

Wow! Did you catch that? – Essentially this short extract captures all the elements that I believe top executives should acknowledge as essential to high performance.  One aspect of an inevitable future – namely the inexorable rise in importance in technology in all our lives, will have a huge impact on organisations’ business models.  Failure to deal with this “threat” or “opportunity”, could therefore mean extinction.

Who’s Next?

In the same week we saw Kodak go to the wall, with its demise attributed to digital technology,  I was discussing the impact of legal reforms on traditional bricks and mortar based law firms.  So called “Tesco Law” is likely to lead to a number of new entrants to the UK market – Alternative Business Structures (ABS’s).  These ABS’s will be businesses owned by non lawyers with increased access to finance through the markets, to provide legal services.  Initially the commodity type aspects of law, like conveyancing and wills, seem the likely starting point as one can see these realistically being delivered through the web or phone, as customers do now with insurance products and banking.  This new breed of legal service will be able to cut their costs by employing non-lawyers, overseen by a trained legal person.  They won’t require the same large, city centre offices. They won’t necessarily offer the charge- by-the- hour services of a lawyer, they can automate and provide services 24/7 via the web and thereby increase their reach to many more customers, etc. etc.  Should the large law firms be worried? I think so. Are they? – I’m not sure.

As with any industry, well established ways of working and thinking can lead to a culture of rigidity and complacency.  I don’t only include some legal firms in this analysis; it has led to the obsolescence of many types of operation and working practices over the last thirty years and this trend will only accelerate, largely due to technology. One wonders who will be next?

This is a time for organisations to realise that remaining rigid and fixed in their current ways of working means potentially serious future threats.  Changing how organisations operate comes down to shifting the culture and this means being proactive in ensuring that leaders and employees alike, understand what the future means.

In a world where the brightest and the best were lured into the law, then financial services, by the prospect of fat salaries and large bonuses, the trends are that they are now flocking to technology firms like Amazon and Google, who are amongst the fastest growing global companies. The new language of commerce is programming languages where writing your own app, game or software programme is like writing your own ticket to success.

Determining a strategy to meet these challenges successfully (i.e. performing) means truly understanding the context and reality of what is coming.

Are your current generation of leaders up to that task?

It means checking the vision, mission and values in the light of the current reality as well as maintaining heightened awareness as to whether employees are aligned AND engaged with them.

Now is the right time to review strategies, develop and implement methods that prepare employees for the changes they will inevitably have to make. Indeed, in many organisations, staff may well be well ahead of you.  In short it is a time for engagement at all levels – with customers, stakeholders and shareholders, leaders and employees.  It is a time for alignment – internally and to the external environment.

Liz Moody