The Engaging Brand

6 Steps of Engagement

In a coaching seminar last week I was asked how you engage people - so I created this Bob-o-graphic to help explain

E = Energise through objectives. Ask does the personal objective give the person a sense of passion or motivation for what they are trying to achieve? Are you going through the business process of setting a goal or is it tailored to energising them as a key person in your team?

N= Numbers do make objectives measurable. But don't sell out and make the objective one that is easy to measure. Anything can be measured if you want to enough. Often people give such a subjective goal as improving a relationship with another function, if it is that important remember this can be measured and must be measured.

G= Goals. An objective can take a while to achieve - that's good it is stretching and should push the person mentally. But along the way you need regular sessions - fortnightly at the most monthly on how they are doing, set them little goals at these sessions to achieve by the next session, which will take them closer to their ultimate objective.

A= Accountability. The person must understand and subscribe to that they are accountable for delivering this objective. You are their to coach but it is their business objective. Ask the right questions for them to find the right answers to the how....

G=Growth. Often we like to be liked but people need to be engaged so make it stretching no matter what others managers do! You will earn their respect and as they develop and gain success for their achievements they will value the need for stretching objectives and include an element of personal growth and development so that they can see the benefit to them not just the busienss.

E=Explain. Critical! The objectives should explain how they can create value, how their role  will help the company vision. They need to feel valuable and the need to belong needs to be addressed when making personal goals. Explain how the personal objective links to yours and links to the business growth. 

To engage is to recognise the most human needs. To engage is to be as clear and as specific as possible. To engage is to speak to the person not the role. To engage is to see it as a continuous process not a one off event.....because to engage is to understand that your role is to foster their talent on a daily basis not to merely tick off an action on today's to do list.

What is the Business Case for Employee Recognition

This week's Engaging Brand podcast is all about employee engagement with the wonderful Stan Phelps. Prior to the show what I wanted to do was to explain why employee recognition and why engagement is so important.

As a Chartered Accountant by trade, I understand the importance of the business case and here is a little graphic that I have put together from the data analysis within What's Your Green Goldfish?

Hope this helps, ahead of the podcast interview with Stan, to put into a return from investment context so that you can understand the business case for putting into action a plan for employee recognition.

Listen to the podcast to find out more!

 

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What is the definition of empowerment

Empowerment and delegation are often confused within the business world. Giving  someone a task and trusting in the talent at your disposal are two different things....There are times when delegation is required, there are times when empowerment is a necessity. 

Empowerment is not about the loss of control, it is about gaining control through the loyalty of employee engagement. The irony is that by empowering you gain more time and with good time management you gain control of your business through better strategic management. 

For me delegation is about a specific task or duty.

For me empowerment is about trust in the talent of those around you to think, to innovate, to react to what the market requires.

Empowerment is not abdication, empowerment is not replacing leadership...far from it....empowerment is recognising that in a networked economy and that leadership is about powering the engine not driving the car yourself!

For empowerment to work, you need to have

1. The right talent....with an emphasis on attitude, values, cultural fit rather than skill that should be a given.
2. The right communication...with an emphasis on emotional engagement....it is not enough to explain the what....you must engage through the why and the how.
3. The right vision...not in terms of fixed never changing but in clarity of where you are going with the flexibility of how you will get there.
4. The right recognition...with an emphasis on a culture that looks for why you can do something, not why you can't...with an emphasis on seeing what has gone right rather than just what went wrong....with an emphasis on recognising people who respond to the empowerment not just in doing the right things, but in the right way.

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Is Your Business in Cruise Control?

A huge business opportunity exists in moving from cruise control to turbo action...

I am one of those people who don't use cruise control in my car...not because I don't trust it...but because I don't want to be a lazy driver. I want to have to think.....I like to keep my brain active.

Business plans are set at the beginning of the year and too often the year splits into the "Don't worry we can catch up the numbers" and "Yikes what price promotions can we offer to hit our numbers".

When starting a business you can't afford to be in cruise control, you need to be going through the gears. Each day is about how to grow your business.

A new business has to think about what to offer, how to reach customers, how to make their money go further.....but why should that slow when you become successful?

Cruise control breeds lazy thinking.....innovation becomes line extensions not new products, customer experience becomes offering a better price rather than offering greater value, people management becomes pay rises rather than employee engagement. I am not saying that people are not busy...but are they busy on the right things?

The questions to ask is....are we in cruise control? Can we start a new business mindset to stimulate innovation? Can change our business meetings back to the kind that are less about defending your position and more about inspiring entrepreneurship?

Because if you don't when you hit the roadworks, the traffic jams...cruise control will cause you to crash...big style!

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How British Gas Played Between the Customer Service Notes

In several podcast interviews I have spoken to musicians who speak about engaging your audience not by simply playing the  notes but also by how you play between the notes.

It is a concept that really resonates with me as a business idea.

We sell, we market but to me they are the notes....what we need to do is to play between the 'business marketing notes.'

And that is where social media marketing, customer service and customer experience helps....transforms the business from a transactional process to an "experience symphony".

I had an example this morning, I was looking at my gas and water supply charges. I tried to chat online with my current supplier (Southern Electric) but couldn't as I needed Windows OS (and I am a Mac User). So I went onto the British Gas site and got frustrated as the tariff calculator kept saying that my details were not correct. I logged off from the site. 

Within 5 minutes a customer service lady named Christine phoned me back from British Gas and said "I noticed you had difficulty on our site, let me help". As we were filling in details she noticed it had been my birthday last week, she said "Is it too late to wish you a happy birthday, let's see if I can give you a late Birthday gift today".

She sorted it all out and yes, I have transferred. Why? Because they played between the notes and made me feel valued.

It wasn't the tariff, although cheaper.

It wasn't the site, it wasn't the service even remember their site didn't work either!

It was that feeling of being noticed...firstly by quickly ringing me when she could see I had left the site...and secondly, her desire to connect at a human level with the birthday wish.

Customers are not numbers, they are not transactions. They are people who need to be needed.

What Christine did, was to play between the customer service notes. No script, though clearly she was following a procedure. 

Today - with your team, your colleagues, your customers....can you find a way of playing between the tasks and connecting at the human level?

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Why Consensus Can Harm You?

There is a huge difference between meetings that nurture collective intelligence and meetings that aim to achieve consensus. 

We live and work in a networked world - a world in which the network can be as powerful as the sum of all the individual's intelligence or as diluted to a consensus intelligence which pleases no one.

Consenus is a laudable aim, however consensus means compromise...

Collective intelligence on the other hand means believing that the sum of each individual's intelligence is greater than any one individual.

I would argue that meetings that aim at building consensus are in fact creating opposition - which may be verbal or worse still felt but not expressed. In a sense the meeting is not about the decision - that has been made - it is too often about convincing the participants that they agree with the decision.

One way that I find that works quite well, is taking something existing and encouraging the table to make improvements to it.....what would the customer like to see, what would make it better etc At this stage, money is no object!

In this sense you are utilising the collective intelligence of the network....it is not about defending an idea, rather improving the status quo...and everyone has a view to express on that!

Next time you are seeking consensus...ask yourself, is this making the idea better or my life easier....because consensus may appear easier however in the long run, can undermine the success.

 

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Wisdom of Technology Entrepreneurs

I love Wired as a magazine and last month there was an article called MBA-in-a-minute. The business article looked at the graduation day wisdom of tech entrepreneurs and I wanted to share some with you

• Eric Schmidt of Google- "Entrepreneurs use technology as a tool to improve society...You are the ones who harness it's power"
• Elon Musk of Paypal - " Imagination is the limit...You are the magicians of the 21st Century; don't let anything hold you back"
• Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook - "As you lead in this new world, your strength won't come from your place on some org chart, but from building trust and earning respect"
• Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn - "..think in networks; they create a sonar map of intelligence and expertise, information and insight"
• Guy Kawasaki of Alltop - " Embrace, accept and cause change.....The ability to change your mind means that you're thinking, questioning and courageous enough to admit mistakes"
• DJ Patil of Greylock- ""Build quickly, test, fail fast and learn from that experience. ...You have to fully commit, to be comfortable failing, learning and repeating the cycle until you accomplish your goal.”

We can all be inspired by great speeches....it can be the fuel to drive through those brick walls which often face us....two things you can do this weekend

1. Why not write your own graduation speech....to inspire you
2. Why not get your team together and give them a 5 minute talk about the vision and how each one of them can bring the vision to reality?

Social Influence Scoring - Good or Bad?

I often hear people criticsing using Klout, Kred, Peer Index scores as part of the job interview process because it isn't accurate - I smile because

• Are you saying CV's themselves are totally accurate? Are you saying that they are not exaggerated, that they are not manipulated in some way?
• Are you saying that as the law stands, references are accurate and useful? They are so vague that they are almost useless.
• Are you saying that people don't choose people who will give them a good reference?

I don't mean that people lie deliberately - although some do - I mean that most people sell themselves on their CV , putting a positive spin on their career achievements.

We all know that and therefore use the job interview process to probe, to question, to assess the accuracy of the profile they are portraying.

For me the CV is an insight, it is a filter to try and find the right person. We don't choose purely on what they say on the CV, we use it as an introduction.

For me when looking for marketers or indeed any job which involves social media, why not use the social influence as another input to the process? Of course it is open to manipulation, of course it isn't 100% accurate.....nothing that measures influence can be...but it can give you an insight for you to probe. 

A social influence score is not an aboslute - it is a guide not a fact.

A social influence score can be manipulated but so can everything from achievements to whom you get a reference from.

It is another tool for the leaders toolbox - and anything that acts as a conversation starter is useful!

5 Truths about Profit as a Goal

Profit is so often the number one goal in business...the measure by which people are judged but for me it must be a factor but not a goal. For me profit reflects how well you have achieved your business goals...after all it shows the value added to your products and services less what it has cost you to produce it..but here are my 10 truths about profit

1. I think it was Howard Schultz who said "profit as a singular goal is a fairly shallow aspiration and it's not enduring". True - decisions made for profit are short term and business value is created over the long term.
2. Profit is the report card on how well you have created the vision, translated it to your employees and manifested it in your products to create a unique experience for the customer. It is the snapshot report card on leadership that shows where you can do better....
3. The inputs into profit are not the raw materials ...no matter what the business...the inputs are the ideas. Ideas therefore are the precious resource that create value added not the physical material or process....they are the enablers of the idea.
4. Profit is not a sign of future strength, it is a sign of the past....future strength is determined by the talent, the ideas, the expression, the ability to make ideas become reality.
5. If profit becomes your goal then you make the wrong strategic decisions....your goal should be making decisions that make you different to the competitor, that make the customer experience more incredible, that create an emotional reason why people want to pay more for your ideas.....the profit is the by product.

We are coming up to many performance appraisals....the questions should reflect the goals...so

• Use the profit as a snapshot of how well the company has done on the above goals.
• Then focus on the creators of the profit...how people have contributed to ideas, to succession planning, to attracting talent, to making sure that great ideas don't get compromised through functional bickering!
• Encourage and promote the idea of risk and benefit...what risks have they taken, what have they learned and how has that translated into benefits for the brand.
• Use it as an opportunity to discuss and clarify how they contribute to the vision and how the vision needs people to constantly grow and feed that vision.

Do you measure your emotional capital?

All businesses need capital to turn ideas into reality. 

Successful brands understand that there are two kinds of capital and develop sources for both...

1. Financial capital
2. Emotional capital

Number (1) is a no brainer, without some access to cash or credit- be it personal or from other financial sources - then a company cannot function.

However emotional capital is so much more important and yet receives much less focus. Emotional capital relates to people who can create ideas, deliver ideas, share ideas and connect people to the value of those ideas. The ability of people to use the money invested to create great experiences for employees so that they deliver fabulous experiences for customers.

Social media can help emotional capital across all of these areas...but only, ONLY if the right people are in place to participate or drive a social business.

And I think this is where people do get confused. Leaders of emotional capital growth, don't have to be funky, creative bods who want to speak to people all of the time! Leaders of emotional capital growth just need to understand the role of people in the business process. They are people who understand

• Business is not about process, it is about people who deliver through processes. The process needs to get out of the way of the experience...the experience of delivering from idea to product inside the business and the experience of the consumer from thinking about to actually buying the product or service.
• That business is emotional and foster teams who create emotion through passion.
• That just like financial capital, emotional capital needs to be measured. You need to look at the depth of talent, what that talent needs to maintain its strength and what value that talent is producing.
• That emotion sells better than any features. Remember the quote at the end of each Engaging Brand podcast "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did BUT people will never forget how you made them feel"
• That emotional capital involves an element of risk....all investment does! You will have people and ideas that don't work out, it is about developing an emotional portolio of different talents who can come up with different ideas and who passionately believe in the emotion of the product and service.....within that portfolio, there will be winners and losers...but it isn't about playing safe after a loss, it is about ensuring the portfolio creates value.

Emotional capital is vital. It involves the ideas, the people, the experience of the company.

So question - do you understand your emotional balance sheet? Do you measure your emotional return on investment?