Your most important organizational asset…

innovation

Your company’s most important asset….

Google “your company’s most important asset” and you will find a preponderance of articles, posts, and books with answers such as:

  • Your employees (who hasn’t read that in the CEO’s letter to the shareholders?)
  • Your intellectual capital (alternatively referred to as your intellectual property)
  • Your reputation (within the community of whom? Employees? Investors? Consumers? All three?)
  • Your brands, your brand promise(s), your brand messaging… (to some “it’s all about the brand”)
  • Something termed “Tribal Knowledge”  (this one sounds way too trendy…I’m thinking someone got carried away with the cave writings of Seth Godin)

It is very hard to argue with any of these (I could probably take the one who preaches on “tribal knowledge” to the mat). But while employees are key, they can be replaced, and often times upgraded to meet a fast moving marketplace. Intellectual capital or intellectual property is a rapidly depreciating asset at best. Your reputation, when taken across multiple stakeholder groups, is such a big one to tackle that it seems akin to solving world hunger by “feeding everyone”.

In my humble opinion, it is your organizational culture that is your most valuable, irreplaceable asset. It is what tempers the beast of change, feeds the marketplace what your customers are demanding (even when they don’t realize that they are), and what makes the whole “branding thing” possible. I suspect that your organizational culture is also important across all your tribe, whoever they are…

The care and feeding of your company culture is the most important role an executive leader plays. A culture doesn’t begin or end with one person, but if that individual is the Chief Executive Officer, she or he can most assuredly define, declare, displace or derail it. It takes a compelling effort, sustained and reinforced at all levels of the organization, to raise the cultural values across diverse social, generational, and geographic audiences. It also takes time to build…less time to destroy, but a long time to become a viable corporate life force.

A strong, positive culture demands the best of those who are tasked with putting values into action, and to create a favorable environment in which they can take root and grow. Values are not just words to those who truly grasp the potential they hold for building a common cause among all associates. It is far easier to be cynical these days than it ever has been in the history of commerce. It is hard enough to gain buy-in to traditional beliefs, even as simple as, “do unto others…”

Your company culture has no chance to exist without clearly demonstrated beliefs, put in practice, and hiding in plain sight at every opportunity. Failing to reinforce the values, letting moments of truth slip by with no recognition of an associate caught in the act of doing something positive, will create an unnecessarily perilous future for the culture you wish to instill. Communicating, demonstrating, reinforcing, articulating, recognizing, celebrating, commiserating…these are all terribly important to nurturing the culture of your firm.

What is the most important asset of your company? I would say it is the one thing that your company cannot exist without, and cannot be replaced if it’s lost, damaged or stolen. When you look around your company, whether you have fifteen or fifteen thousand associates, consider what is being done to create and support a culture that values each individual in accordance with a consistently defined purpose, vision and set of principles. If you find a more valuable asset than that, I would love to hear about it.

A collaborative model for employee engagement initiatives…

employee-engagement1

One of the most talked-about challenges in business today centers on more fully engaging your employees. We have discussed this need on ideationz a number of times, and from a variety of perspectives. From increasing key productivity metrics, to reducing unwanted terminations, to improving the customer experience, to building a more nimble, innovative organization, there are myriad ways to measure the benefits of an engaged workforce.

Recently, I authored a White Paper, “A model for collaborative design, definition and implementation of an effective initiative to drive and sustain employee engagement.” That’s a long title! But there are a number of key factors that must be addressed, including:

  • Where do I start the process?
  • How will I set benchmarks for the current situation?
  • What are the “New Rules” of engagement?
  • How do I approach the definition and design process?
  • What are the most important variables that  make up an effective plan?
  • What about implementation? How do I approach that?
  • Where should I measure the effort and how?

You will find all these questions discussed in the White Paper. Would you like to receive a copy? Simple enough. Please just complete the form below and I will send you a .pdf. All I ask is that should you desire to republish it, that you ask for my permission and acknowledge the origin of the piece.

In 2013, virtually all of the biggest marketing and organizational challenges we face tie back, on some level, to the willingness and ability of our employees to create and deliver new value in the marketplace, and innovation within our firm. Failing that, it will be awfully hard to maximize our potential, and, in some cases, even assure the sustainability of the company over the long-term.

I hope to hear from you, and look forward to hearing your thoughts on the subject!

Always, never and the 99% rule…

Miscommunication

Not sure what is expected of you? Receiving mixed signals as to what to do next? By my estimate roughly 99% of all of these are the result of one simple fact: We are really not that great at communicating expectations.

How about if we make a simple New Year Resolution that we all can live with? One that will eliminate 99% of our mutual frustrations, disagreements, and disappointments? It’s really quite simple.  If we resolve to both listen better, and express ourselves with greater clarity, the vast majority of problems we deal with can be eliminated. Imagine how wonderful our lives will be…

I don’t have to go into when, how or why these disconnects occur. They just do. We either don’t say what we mean or we don’t listen carefully enough to what we are told so that we can understand what the other person really means. The result is painfully obvious. And completely avoidable.

One idea to think about is to maintain an “Always / Never” list. It is a simple list of all those things that we need to either always or never do. That will knock off at least half of our frustrating experiences right there. Everyone has certain inviolable patterns. Whether we are talking about your customers, your boss, your spouse, your family, your friends or acquaintances, we know that there are certain, specific, words, acts or perceptions that will bring functional communications to an end.

For example, ask yourself: “What are the things that my customer always expects of me? Alternatively, what are the things that my customer never wants to see or hear from me? If you get these right, you are already ahead of the game.

If you are in business, you need to pay close attention to the “Always/Never” list of your best customers. You’d be crazy not to. Same is true for those people in your life who you interact with most frequently. This approach will take care of all the black and white issues. But since most of life is neither black nor white, you need to focus on what you say, and how you say it, if you want to take care of all the other chances for miscommunication.

Too often we say what we think the other person wants to hear, or we tell them exactly what they don’t want to hear in order to serve our own agenda. In either case, we are not necessarily communicating what is real, or what is true, or what needs to be said. If we don’t understand or if we don’t listen carefully, we will readily miss or misinterpret what others tell us. My advice: Don’t count on the other person to be a particularly concise or accurate communicator. Instead, make it a point to really listen, and then help them to find the real message. Sometimes it can take some digging or prodding. But in the end, it can save you a lot of heartbreak or confusion.

Effective communication is becoming a lost art. Text messaging, email, voicemail, headline news, and the all the rest of the ways we collapse what we take in, makes for plenty of chances to say or hear the “wrong thing”. The results range from mildly annoying to catastrophic. Step up to the situation, grab the proverbial “thistle” and say what you mean…make it more difficult for the other party to misinterpret you.

Simple enough, right? Let’s give it a go. It can’t  possibly hurt. And who knows, the angst you save just may be your own.