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Engagement

Do You See the Suggestion Box as Half-Empty or Half-Full?

Here’s an interesting situation. An organization put in a suggestion box at the request of its employees. Within a week, there were over 135 suggestions in the box. But the company has only 36 employees!

If you view the contents as half-full, you might think, “Wow, what a great response!” If you tend toward the half-empty perspective, you might think, “Uh oh, there’s a lot of pent-up frustration among the staff.”

Despite my usually optimistic approach, I share the latter thinking in this case. It’s because I heard about this from one of the employees who told me that the suggestion box was one of management’s responses to high turnover and low morale.

Regardless of what one thinks about the suggestion box, I just hope this organization’s management takes it seriously and uses it as just one (but not the only) tool to listen to employees.

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Engagement

Search Committees Need a Clue

A friend who works in a university told me about her school’s search for a new administrative department head. In passing she said she was surprised that the search committee hadn’t bothered to include input from the department’s current staff.

Perhaps the search committee wanted to change that department’s culture by bringing in a new leader, and they didn’t think it worthwhile to hear what the staff had to say? That was my initial (and feeble) attempt to explain their rationale. But it’s still no reason to overlook the people who have a major stake in the search’s outcome – after all, they’re the ones who have to live with the new boss.

Don’t Mind Us, We Just Work Here

The more my friend and I discussed this, the more upset we got … especially since we also recalled similar instances from our experience in nonprofit and corporate organizations. In many cases it seemed the search committees showed a blatant disregard and disrespect for the staff. Their message was loud & clear: “Why should we bother with the employees’ two cents when they’re not in positions of authority to determine who their boss should be?”

I’m not saying the staff should make the hiring decision. But they should be given the opportunity to offer feedback on the nature of their work and the type of person who might best lead their department.

I just don’t understand why the folks most invested in the department – those closest to the work – are the least likely to be asked for their input. Go figure …

Categories
Engagement

Mooses, Puzzlers & Peeves

If you’re looking for a great idea on how to get top management (and staff) to address tough issues, check out the Gap’s “Moose Sessions” described in a recent Melcrum blog post.

It reminded me of a facilitation exercise called “Puzzlers & Peeves” that, with management’s support, you can do with small groups of employees or in staff meetings. Here’s how it works:

  1. Ask the group to quickly identify what they think are the 4-5 biggest challenges facing the company (the “puzzlers”).
  2. Repeat the process with what they think are the 4-5 most irksome or irritating aspects of the company’s operations (the “peeves”).
  3. Combine the two lists and select the top 3-4 items that need to be addressed. (In my experience, at this point it’s best to acknowledge everyone’s limited time & resources and that it’s unrealistic to attempt the entire list. So the group will need to get consensus on which items they most want to tackle.)
  4. Follow up with an action plan for each and go at ‘em.

It’s a great way to focus staff on dealing with the issues and can be effective in turning gripe sessions into positive action.

Categories
Marketing

Educating Non-marketers about Marketing: Tell, Don’t Sell

Jill Stover, who has a great blog on Library Marketing: Thinking Outside the Book, wrote an interesting post about convincing librarians that marketing is not fluff. She suggests a marketing-as-teaching metaphor to help her colleagues better understand marketing’s merits: “What we’re actually doing as we market library services is teaching our patrons about what we have to offer, why it’s valuable, and how to take advantage of it.”

Great idea, Jill. As marketers we need to do a better job of de-mystifying marketing by educating our non-marketing colleagues on what marketing really does and how it helps our organizations reach out to really serve customers. This means being open and inclusive in our marketing efforts. (For more ideas here, check out one of my earlier posts on Marketing Marketing.)

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Engagement Marketing

Marketing: Not an Insular Job

Don Schultz’s May 15, 2007 column in Marketing News focuses on marketers’ new job description. As our field continues to evolve in a fast-changing economy, we need to better:

  • Understand our markets, including finding the best ways to segment and/or aggregate markets
  • Develop and deliver customer-focused brand value propositions
  • Monitor our effectiveness in actually delivering on the brand promise.

Inherent in our ability to deliver the brand promise is the need to get buy-in and support from everyone in the organization that impacts brand value. Don clarifies: “… marketing is something the organization does, not what the marketing department does.”

As a result, the new marketing manager’s responsibility goes beyond managing the marketing department to work “horizontally across the company to involve operations, finance, sales, HR and all the other groups that cumulatively create and provide the customer’s brand experience.”

Internal collaboration is critical to marketing’s effectiveness. If you only view it as “other duties as assigned” on a marketer’s job description, don’t bother to apply.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

To Strengthen Employee Relationships, Follow Me

Want a great way to foster mutual respect among the employees in your organization? Try this on for size.

Akron, OH-based ad agency Hitchcock Fleming & Associates (HFA) launched an “In Your Shoes Day” where employees in different departments shadowed each other to better appreciate the various jobs in the organization. After all, they depend on each in order to best serve their clients.

Julie Biddle, an Account Coordinator at HFA, told me it was an extraordinary experience. In her own words:

“For my shadow day I was in the shoes of someone in our production department.  It was eye opening to spend a day with him and to see what his job in the agency is like.  I even got to participate by doing his job for a couple hours.

Staring at the computer all day and working at making sure you notice every little detail was challenging, and I could finally see why some of the production people I work with are exhausted by the end of the day.  The next day, when I went back to being in my own shoes, I not only realized that I am definitely in the right area of work but I also gained a higher respect for the people who work in the production department.

This was definitely a worth while training experience and I praise my company for making all of us participate! “

[Thanks for sharing, Julie.]

You can find other company examples of ‘trading places’ in a previous post. It seems there’s no better way to create empathy, understanding and mutual respect among employees.

See how it fits in your organization.

Categories
Marketing

Nonprofit Marketing Book Special Offer

I shared my post about Robin Hood Marketing with its author, Katya Andresen, and she graciously offered a free copy of the book to one of my blog readers.

I’m happy to give this book to the first person who requests it by writing a comment on this post. Just be sure to include your mailing address so I can forward it to Katya. Note: I’ll omit your address before I publish your comment.

Thanks, Katya!

Categories
Engagement

Workplace Jerks

My last post shared an e-mail from a friend about a bad boss. Another associate told me about her experience with a previous employer – one manager there was so bad the staff created its own nickname for this person: TW (short for “train wreck”).

Unfortunately, workplace jerks abound. And they can be found in management as well as in the rank-and-file. A recent article in the McKinsey Quarterly on “Building the Civilized Workplace” describes the fallout from these jerks:

“Companies that put up with the jerks not only can have more difficult recruiting and retaining the best and brightest talent but are also prone to higher client churn, damaged reputations, and diminished investor confidence.”

The author of this article, Robert Sutton, has a new book out on this subject, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t.

Sounds like great reading for my friends.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

“Work continues to be quite strange”

That’s the opening line of an e-mail I received from a friend.

The message continued:

“On Friday our department went out to celebrate two colleagues’ birthdays. Management thinks that treating people poorly is completely canceled out by occasional lunches — which we each have to pay for. A half-hour before we left for the restaurant, the department head held a staff meeting. We all gathered in the conference room and she began to cry as she told us she had just figured out that she is a terrible manager and that we all hate her! This announcement was met with silent stares until the weakest among us felt compelled to say something comforting. And then we all went to lunch.”

Sometimes poor working conditions are caused by personality problems of bosses, as well as co-workers, despite a decent organizational culture.

As my friend commented about being in this Dilbert-like situation: “Retirement cannot come a moment too soon.”

Categories
Customer service Marketing

Notes from the Past – What Lee Iacocca Said

Way back in fall 1996, I heard Lee Iacocca speak at Lehigh University, which is Lee’s alma mater and mine.

I recently came across my notes from his presentation in which I highlighted this quote:

“Technology has evened quality. Hardware is all the same. The difference is how you treat customers.”

It’s a relevant reminder that still resonates today. Technology may have changed how we work in allowing us to serve customers more expediently. But this doesn’t necessarily mean we serve them any better.

The key differentiator is ensuring a positive customer experience that includes a genuine ‘high touch’ component in a ‘high tech’ world of customer service.

I wish more companies would take Lee’s message to heart. “To speak to a live person, press 10 …” just doesn’t cut it.