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Engagement

I just wanted to hear your voice

As an update on e-mail & communication effectiveness, Brad Bellaver steered to me a post on the Collaboration Loop that cites research reinforcing the selective use of e-mail based on message content.

I was just talking with a colleague about traditional vs. contemporary forms of communication.  She told me she’s been trying to get her 18 year old son to practice communication beyond IM – actually writing complete words & sentences (with correct spelling, too!).  We joked about this being a generational thing, especially for some of us “Boomers” who prefer more traditional means of communication.

I’m definitely one of those.  Emoticons aside, sometimes I really want to hear vocal tone & inflection … to be able to listen to what someone is saying with and through their words.

From a sociological perspective, it’ll be interesting to see what happens as communications technology continues to evolve.

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Engagement Marketing Training & Development

Mission Statements – One More Thing

Here’s a postscript to my recent series on Memorable & Meaningful Mission Statements – it’s a great example of how one organization is making its mission truly viable.

To enable its employees & staff to more effectively keep up with the growth of medical technology & research, along with changes and challenges to the healthcare industry, the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Hospital System created its Center for Learning & Innovation.

Touted as “one of healthcare’s first corporate universities,” the Center was designed to instill & reinforce a “sense of shared mission” for all employees and “be a transformative culture changing force” within the organization.

What’s most impressive is all course content is directly linked to the Health System’s mission, vision, and strategic plan.

You can learn more about the Center (as I did) from the Leader to Leader Institute.

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Engagement Marketing

Memorable & Meaningful Mission Statements – Part 3

Here’s the last post in my series about making mission statements both memorable & meaningful.  The final challenge is: does your mission statement really differentiate your organization?

I’ve seen too many instances where you could easily substitute the name of a competitor in another organization’s mission statement.  It’s not unusual to find a lot of “me-too” or similar sounding missions for organizations in the same industry.

This was the situation for one of my nonprofit clients, and here’s how we handled it.

While its organizational charter was somewhat unique, the group’s services overlapped with several other nonprofits.  The result was its members, donors, and even board members all had trouble explaining how the organization was different from others in the market.

What’s Your Score?

To illustrate the problem, I developed a “Mission Matching Quiz” for the board’s executive committee retreat.  After a web search turned up hundreds of nonprofits offering similar education, research & support services, I selected 10-12 organizations (many fairly well known) and listed them on a sheet of paper with their mission statements in random order.  The exec committee was asked to match each organization with its mission.

No one scored 100% on this quiz or even came close … ditto for the rest of the board members and staff.  But everyone was astounded by this demonstration in which almost every organization’s mission read & sounded the same!  No wonder they were challenged in distinguishing their own organization.

As a result, the group clarified its mission to highlight and better articulate its differentiation.  Board leadership continues to refine the mission as needed.

Maintaining & Changing Your Mission

A mission statement is dynamic.  As the market changes, as your competition changes, and as your organization evolves in response, you’ll need to update your mission.  This is why Peter Drucker encouraged organizations to revisit their mission statements every three years.

When is the last time your organization reviewed its mission?  And how memorable & meaningful is it?

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Memorable & Meaningful Mission Statements – Part 2

Building on last week’s post about making mission statements memorable, I’ve seen too many organizations fall victim to the “Field of Dreams” approach to mission statements – if you post it, they (staff) will follow.

Awareness is only half the battle

Developing and disseminating the mission is not enough.  While mission statements may be beautifully crafted, they may not be easy to relate to.  For example, what does it mean to you (as an employee) to work for an outfit whose mission is to:

  • exceed the expectations of customers, partners, and fellow employees?  Or,
  • achieve superior financial results for stockholders?  Or,
  • create quality solutions and services that foster innovation, creativity and production for global customers and partners?

These are adapted from real companies.  I didn’t make them up, honest!

Meaningful mission statements

The problem is most statements couldn’t pass the that’s-nice-but-what-does-it-really-mean? test.  To be meaningful, a mission statement needs to be translated into specific, even measurable behaviors.

One way to accomplish this is to complete the following sentence:

Our mission is [insert your firm’s mission statement], which means [fill-in with the appropriate behaviors, based on internal and/or external standards of performance].

Translating the mission this way may not be easy, but it is a worthwhile exercise.  And depending on your organization, one size may not fit all.  Various departments or units within the company may have different translations or may need to develop their own mission statements based on the corporate or institutional mission.

Don’t get lost in translation

Regardless of how you do it (via the translation exercise above or some other way), the point is: Will employees know what is expected of them in helping the organization fulfill its mission?

Employees will know what the mission statement really means when they can answer that question.

But wait, there’s even more to make a mission statement memorable and meaningful.  I’ll cover this in my next post.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Memorable & Meaningful Mission Statements – Part 1

I have a client who’s frustrated with his organization’s mission statement.  Stepping back to observe it somewhat objectively, he finds it’s neither memorable nor meaningful.

Both elements are critical.  And to give them justice, I’ll focus on the “memorable” aspect now with follow up posts on making a mission statement “meaningful.”

The essence of a mission statement is to briefly articulate your organization’s purpose & reason for being. Its role, according to respected leader Frances Hesselbein, is to help inspire, direct, and mobilize employees.  But how can it do any of these if your people don’t know what the mission is?

That’s why a mission statement has to be memorable.  And brevity helps.  (Most of us can’t remember the Gettysburg address from grade school.  So how are we going to be able to remember a three-page mission statement?)

Halt!  Who Goes There?

The best way to reinforce a mission statement’s brevity comes from this anecdote shared by consultant/facilitator Tony Nash.  He cites Laurie Beth Jones‘ book The Path in which she tells a story she learned from her uncle who served in WWII – an unidentified soldier who appeared suddenly in the dark and could not state his mission was automatically shot.

Based on this story, she cites the following criteria for a good mission statement:

  • no more than one sentence long
  • easily understood by a 12 year old
  • recitable at gunpoint.

Now there’s a formula for a memorable mission statement!

In my next post I’ll talk about making mission statements meaningful, so stay tuned …

Categories
Customer service Marketing

To Be Like Everyone Else, Press 1

In last week’s post, I talked about the quality of an organization’s employees as a critical differentiator.

It reminded me that sometimes it’s the little things that make a difference.

Case-in-point: I recently conducted a nonprofit marketing workshop for social service agencies.  Professionals in this sector face a growing glut of competition for resources (.e.g., clients. donors, volunteers, etc.) from other nonprofits.  They also have to compete for consumer awareness & attention from non-profits as well as for-profit firms.

So, how does your organization differentiate itself?

When I asked this question in the workshop, one attendee responded with the following anecdote.  He heard from a representative of a grant-making foundation who complimented his agency on having real people answer the phone instead of using automated voice mail.  Seems the foundation staff is finding this a point of differentiation among the social service agencies and other nonprofits they deal with.

Why sometimes you need to sweat the small stuff.

As Prophet’s Scott Davis so aptly put it in the title of his recent MarketingProfs.com article: “You’re Only as Strong as Your Weakest Brand Touchpoint.”

Categories
Customer service Engagement Marketing

The Secret to Differentiation in a Me-Too World

In a recent “Marketing Minute” segment on Trish Lambert’s Internet radio show, Real People, Really Leading, Trish talked about the challenges of maintaining a USP (unique selling proposition) in a world of basic sameness.

She is so right on.  In today’s highly commoditized world, you can stand out with the latest, greatest new product or service … for a while anyway, until someone else comes along with something better.

Putting the “People” in USP

It’s an organization’s people who make the brand’s USP really unique. Competitors can match your product, price, promotion, even place … but the one thing competitors absolutely cannot copy is the relationship your people have with your customers.

That’s the real point of differentiation.

Maybe we ought to change USP to stand for:

  • Unique & Stellar People, or
  • Uniquely Superb People, or
  • Uniquely Successful People … you get the idea.

Considering the quality of your people, would your competitors be able to stand up to your USP?

Note: You can hear Trish’s “Marketing Minute” on her radio show broadcast on Thursday afternoons (5 PM EST/2 PM PST) or listen to the archived shows found in the Content Library section.  And if you want to hear my interview on internal marketing (Marketing from the Inside Out), scroll down the content library for the March 16, 2006 show.

Categories
Engagement

Work-Life in the Future: A New Vision

For an interesting look into how we might work in the future, check out the results of Career Innovation’s “Redesigning Work” survey.  I recently read a preview of their final report Manifesto for the New Agile Workplace.  (You can order a free copy of the executive summary in PDF format.)

Here are some highlights of their research into the work world of the future:

  • Work will be redefined by behavior and outcomes rather than tasks.  (This reinforces the need to hire by attitude first, specific skills second.)
  • Work will also be re-defined by project or customer requirements instead of the basic 35-40 hours work week.
  • A better work-life balance can be achieved when work commitments are better matched with life-phases.  For example, workers taking career breaks in their 40’s (when family and/or personal growth needs are great) and resuming work in their 60’s (so they can continue to work rather than retire).

This projected new world addresses current high levels of employee dissatisfaction with:

  • their ability to achieve work-life balance
  • their sense of achievement from work, and
  • the way their skills are being use … to name just a few pinch points.

I can empathize with the frustration found in the study — it’s one of the reasons I chose to become self-employed 18 years ago.  It’s also why I seem to be more satisfied with work than a lot of folks I know.

But for today’s workers, especially the younger ones, Career Innovation’s Manifesto offers an interesting & hopeful peek into a future work life.

Categories
Engagement

Follow Up on E-mail’s Impact on Workplace Relationships

I heard from several folks in response to my request for formal research on e-mail’s impact in the workplace.

A special thanks to Vanderbilt professor David Owens and Brad Bellaver for sharing several academic research papers involving the use of electronic media.  Brad also recommended Melcrum Publishing as a resource.

From management’s perspective, e-mail is still an evolving medium – especially relative to the traditional communications media many of us grew up with – and we’re still learning as we go.

But as my friend Chris Bonney put it, using e-mail as a substitute for personal interaction – particularly when distance or expediency is not an issue – seems to be “a recipe for lousy morale and lost opportunity.”

Too bad there are managers out there who don’t know how else to cook.

Categories
Engagement

The Lost Art of Conversation?

In last week’s post I asked for help in finding published research on e-mail’s impact on workplace relationships.

Still thinking about it, I recall a time several years ago when web viruses started making their rounds and IT departments were temporarily shutting down company e-mail to deal with the problem.  One of my colleagues called to alert me that she was unable to send an e-mail she’d promised.

I’ll never forget her comment about the situation, despite its temporary inconvenience: “You know what’s really amazing?  People in my office are actually talking to one another!”

Where did all the real conversations go?

I think I found an answer in a recent Fast Company interview with Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert:

“Even in the office, there’s a growing preference to communicate solely by email so you can ignore all human contact …I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met recently who state, outright, that they don’t like people.  They love technology … And now technology actually gives them the option of avoiding all human contact.”

Scary, isn’t it?

My own preference is for face-to-face communication (assuming geography/proximity isn’t an issue), followed by voice-to-voice, and then e-mail (for convenience and/or distance).  And I’ll admit there are a few people I only want to communicate with through e-mail rather than in-person.

Still it frightens me to think that, sooner than later, conversation might truly be a “lost” art.