Journal

A Deceptively Simple Definition of “Brand”

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:21:39 -0700

Here is my definition of “brand”: The promises you make, and how you fulfill them. Sound simple enough?

Making Promises

Here are some examples of the kinds of promises your organization makes:

• Your logo and print collateral promise an organization with the sophistication and capability to back up its commitments.
• Your automated phone message promises that every client is important with: “We value your business. Please stay on the line. Someone will be with you shortly.”
• The slick graphic that describes your service or product on your website promises consistent results to prospective clients.
• Your website’s descriptions of your organization’s focus, philosophy, and approach promise that you are differentiated from your competition in quality, capability, perspective, and depth.
• Your initial client interactions promise that your organization has the ability to communicate effectively when dealing with complex issues and potential conflicts.

If you aren’t making these kinds of promises maybe your brand is under development. Or maybe you are in the midst of a reinvention. There’s a lot of reinventing going on these days.

Fulfilling Promises

Let’s say you are already in the business of making some clear promises about your organization. The ways you begin to fulfill your promises may include things like:

• Listening carefully to your potential client’s needs.
• Making sure your capabilities and/or products match the needs of your prospective clients during your initial conversations.
• Establishing clear lines of communication between you and your client’s point person for the project.
• Defining clear expectations for service or product delivery in terms of process, timelines, and cost.
• Following up with the client to make sure that expectations have been met.

So if you are doing all this stuff, why does it sometimes seem like your team leaders are discussing two different projects instead of the one that is on the table? Why do employees sometimes neglect to follow up at critical points in a project, or misallocate resources, or propose alternatives that are out of step with what your organization is all about? Why do clients sometimes begin to feel like it is more about your process than their needs?

Promises Are Complicated

Here’s one reason why. A promise (and thus a brand) is actually a pretty complicated thing. It doesn’t (or shouldn’t) just pop off a business card, a page, a website, or out of your mouth. At least not if you want the promise to be believed. Worthy promises are generated by a process that involves at least four “-ings:”

• Believing - What are your organization’s beliefs and values (as in core values)?
• Knowing - What is it you know that is of particular value (useful) to the clients you want?
• Telling - What and how do you tell your client about who you are and what you do?
• Living - How do you go about living (i.e. delivering on) what you believe, know, and say?

Why the “-ing?” Because each is part of an ongoing process of growth and learning. If the result of this process produces promises that fit together in an understandable and seamless way we say that the brand is “authentic.” If they don’t fit together we have a range of words, such as “unsophisticated” and “bullshit artist”, to describe the result.

It’s the way your organization generates its promises that really counts. Since you will be making more than one promise, these promises must be clear and consistent. This is why I say this definition of brand is deceptively simple. It involves a thoughtful process to ensure that your promises fit together in ways that both your own people and your clients can understand. If employees and clients understand and embrace the promises on the table, they will be able to more reliably predict what kinds of behavior will be productive in the relationship. Then you will have a brand that can be trusted.

Hal Scogin

Comments or Questions?
journal@conceptualarc.com

Discovering The Story: Who controls the interview?

Tue, 9 Mar 2010 13:53:32 -0800

In-depth interviews for the purpose of bringing about some kind of organizational or personal change have their own particular needs. Let’s examine these needs by asking the question: Who controls the interview? This question has more to do with your own point of view than how an interviewee might view things. Though if you were interviewing a politician, or professional entertainer or athlete, they might very well be hyper-concerned with this question. But the reason I raise the question is that I want you to think about your own state of mind when you conduct an interview.

Well, obviously the interviewer controls the interview. Right?

You might be inclined to think that you control the interview. After all, you are the one asking the questions. And once the interview is finished you will be the one who uses the information. Maybe the information goes into a report, or gets filtered into some larger process as background. Either way, if you own the information that comes out of the interview, then you should control the interview. Right?

One approach is to be tough. Ask pointed and challenging questions. Relentlessly ferret out inconsistencies and contradictions. There are lots of popular models for this kind of questioning: cops interrogating a suspect, lawyers grilling a witness, investigative reporter finessing an informant, and so on... The goal in each of these cases is to get someone to reveal something they would rather not. With this approach you just hope the interviewee doesn’t decide to clam up.

Another approach is to be empathetic. Oprah Winfrey has set the gold standard for this approach. The goal is to get the interviewee to confide something that they would usually only tell a best friend or close relative. With this approach you run the risk that the interviewee will feel that they are being emotionally manipulated. Then you may find yourself getting just the facts, which is kind of like getting a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without the jelly. You not only lose flavor, you lose substance.

You could just play it straight and conduct the interview like a dispassionate researcher. Your control is manifested by the rigid structure of your interview protocol. Boom, boom, boom...right down the list of questions. The problem with this approach is that the interviewee may not end up caring about the quality of the information and outcomes you seek, and give you less than you really need.

Does that mean the interviewee controls the interview?

Doesn’t the interviewee actually control the interview? They have the information you seek. They can choose to be cooperative or not. They can help you understand the complicated issues, or let you figure it out on your own. They can help you understand the nuance, provide the spot-on metaphor, or point you to the expert you need to consult. Or not. The fact that the interviewee has a choice about what level of cooperation they will provide demonstrates that your sense of control is an illusion.

But the problem with the idea that the interviewee is in control is that they usually have a stake in the outcome of the interview. Sometimes people are chosen at random for an interview. Usually, however, they are chosen because they will provide a point of view that is important to the organization. More often than not they need for you to hear and understand them. They need for you to do a good job of asking questions, and recording and interpreting answers.

If not the interviewer or the interviewee, then who?

The relationship between you and the interviewee controls the interview.

A productive interview requires that both people are engaged. It will take both of you to get to the bottom of things. Why? Sometimes you are looking for things that the interviewee doesn’t know they know. Perhaps they haven’t ever considered the question the way you have put it to them. Or they simply haven’t had time to put two and two together. Their job is to rummage around in their heads for facts, plumb their experience, listen to their feelings, and access their beliefs. Your job is to help them think about what they know so they can tell you the results of their thinking.

How do you create a productive interview relationship? You begin creating it from the moment of your first contact with the organization or individual with whom you are working. Maybe the support staffer you talked with to set up the interview will have an opinion about you and tell the interviewee. You can bet the interviewee will start to assess you the first time they swap emails with you, the moment they lay eyes on you, or first speak to you on the phone. You should give a lot of thought to how you want to be perceived, and then act in ways that reinforce this perception.

A great interview is the result of a partnership. Consider your first contact with the interviewee to be an invitation to this partnership. The result will be about creating something you both can own, rather than being a contest for control.

Hal Scogin

Comments or Questions?
journal@conceptualarc.com

Discovering The Story: Seven interviewing assumptions

Tue, 9 Mar 2010 13:42:48 -0800

Before any interview I always prepare a set of questions, or protocol. While a protocol helps, interviews always take unexpected turns. It is one of the things that makes interviewing fun. Instead of stumbling around subterranean passageways and buried tombs like Indiana Jones, I get invited to probe a person’s mind for treasure that will enrich the organization I am working for. It is a process I find endlessly fascinating.

One way I manage my way through a typically unpredictable interview is to rely on a set of assumptions that help guide me. These seven assumptions help provide me with the patience to let the interview unfold in its own way.

1. Everyone wants to share what they know.

People are social animals. We want to be recognized and valued for who we are and what we know. If trust has been established in the interview, then the interviewee is likely to want to share what they know. If I am truly curious about what they have to say (and I always am), I find that I always get more than expected.

1. Everyone thinks that they are in possession of important facts.

The interesting thing about a single fact is that it is like having one lego (the toy building blocks); it isn’t much use unless you have more than one. Once you have more than one you discover that they can fit together in a variety of ways. I pay attention when someone calls out something as a “fact.” And then I test it in subsequent interviews to find out if others also claim it as a fact. In most organizations disagreements seldom happen because of a misunderstanding about what the facts are. Problems (and opportunities!) usually come about when people start fitting facts together.

1. Everyone must work to make sense of their own experience.

People make choices about how to integrate their experience to create a knowledge base. Sometimes these choices are made consciously, especially when an experience is new and unique. When this happens the hard work of integrating experience happens up front. On the other hand, when an experience is quickly filed away, the hard work of understanding its importance, and where it belongs in relation to other experiences, may not happen until later. I have often observed interviewees begin the hard work of understanding their experience during the process of an interview. This is one reason why I have often had interviewees tell me that they learned things from their own interview. They often volunteer to extend the length of the interview if I think we need more time. They are, in fact, enjoying the time they are taking to think through their own experience.

1. Everyone has a valid perspective.

You’re thinking that not everyone can be right, aren’t you? I agree. But I didn’t say everyone was right. I said everyone has a valid perspective. A daily challenge for each person is to absorb facts and experience, and place it into some kind of context. A person’s perspective dictates how they assemble facts into a coherent whole for themselves, and represents something that is true for them in terms of how the world works. Their perspective is the foundation on which they make predictions about the future and make decisions. When I interview someone I try to get a sense of the context in which the interviewee is operating, so that I can understand what is true for them. Interviewees typically find this liberating. It isn’t often that someone takes the time to understand their perspective.

1. Everyone has feelings about their work, their organization, and their colleagues.

A person’s feelings about something can help them locate their knowledge, experience, and perspective quickly. It’s as if their feelings help them find the section in a vast library where the relevant information resides. Once you get there, you can begin to explore the facts, experience and perspectives that describe their world view. When I encounter a strong feeling in an interview I pay particular attention. It means that we have arrived at a place where careful questioning must take place. This means focusing less on the feeling, than on what created it. I have often found that an interviewee comes away from the interview with their feelings validated; that is, that they have given meaning to their feelings by attaching them to their hard won knowledge, experience and perspective.

1. Everyone has beliefs that act as the mortar between the bricks of their knowledge structure.

The most important beliefs run deep. These beliefs are usually the easiest to uncover. Then tend to pop out in clear, bold statements. “The staff understands our goals, but personalities are getting in the way.” Beliefs that are founded on misperceptions, stereotyping, limited experience, and hearsay are tougher to unearth. Most people don’t volunteer which of their more weakly held beliefs were grown in poor soil. During an interview I’m most interested in getting the best inventory I can about what people believe about the issues that are before them. Interviews are only the beginning of a more lengthy process. The real work comes later when beliefs are tested, reshaped, discarded, or created. So it is important in an interview to probe the beliefs that exist, but never to challenge their validity.

1. Behavior reveals the consistencies and contradictions in a person’s understanding of the facts, their perceptions and experience, their feelings, and their beliefs.

Behavior is where facts, experience, perspectives, feelings, and beliefs hit the street. An interview that does not probe behavior is little more than a philosophical exercise. Interesting yes, but lacking in examples of tangible application in the real world. By asking people what they did or are doing, you get the first indications about how the pieces of their own world view actually fit together. Many of my interviews have concluded with the interviewee beginning to reevaluate their thinking and actions. However, this has not and will never will be, a goal of my interviews. If such a goal were to creep into an interview it wouldn’t be long before the interviewee began to feel that they were being manipulated, and they would be correct. And that would be the end of a productive interview process.

What kinds of assumptions do you make when you are conducting an interview? Do your assumptions help you sustain your curiosity? Do they help you fill in the gaps with questions that lead to a greater understanding of the person you are talking with, or the issue you are facing?

Hal Scogin

Comments or Questions?
journal@conceptualarc.com

The Values Story: Why organizations find it difficult to express core values on their websites?

Tue, 9 Mar 2010 13:33:59 -0800

This question is one I have long found intriguing. The intriguing part is how so many organizations can sound so disconnected from, or uncommitted to, their own values. Values are a distinctly human invention, yet are often stated in a way that drains them of a sense that real people are expected to fulfill them. In part, this is because a lot of companies haven't thought about how their core values translate into what they actually do on a day-to-day basis.

A contributing factor may be a lack of understanding about what their organizational story is all about. Because they have no narrative that expresses where they are located in the universe of human and organizational affairs, they have difficulty expressing their values. This helps explain the claim by so many that they are “passionate” about what they do, or that they will “exceed expectations.” These are nothing more than the breathless verbal equivalents of adding exclamation points at the end of every value statement. All the while meaningful articulation of tangible values goes wanting.

Core values statements fail the "street level" test when they become too lofty and breathless. That is, any statement of core values should provide solid "hooks" to which to attach clear and explicit behaviors for the values. Here are two core values from a client of mine. Can you identify any explicit behaviors that might be expected as a result of these values? (I hope so. They worked hard to add real definition to what would otherwise be abstract concepts.)

Freedom
When we give ourselves the freedom to explore broad avenues, cast the net widely, consider the creative alternative, we also give ourselves the freedom to inspire and be inspired. Because our notion of freedom is highly proactive, we embrace the freedom not to burden ourselves with stifling procedures. Consequently we have the freedom to respond to opportunity, and to be nimble and flexible in meeting our clients’ needs, solving problems, and crafting solutions. Our notion of freedom means that we have the ability to pursue a work/life balance, and ultimately to choose our own destiny.
Integrity
When we tell a client the truth as we know it, even if it risks the relationship and makes us both uncomfortable, we are depending on our honesty to help guide us to the right answers. When we provide a client the best available unbiased solution to a problem, we are adhering to our high professional standards. When we meet our commitments, we are keeping our word. Because we create projects and provide services that impact the health and well-being of others, there is no substitute for integrity.

Finally, here is the most cynical reason that values are poorly articulated. The core values as stated have the hidden (or not so hidden) goal of prescribing and/or proscribing behaviors rather than empowering people to "do the right thing" by the company and its clients. Or said another way, the company's leadership doesn’t actually trust their people to use core values as a set of guidelines for their behavior.

Identifying a set of core values is just the first step in being a values driven organization. The next step is to do some hard thinking about how these values might be expressed by behavior...in real language that people can understand. Only then will you be able to express your values throughout your web or printed content in an authentic way that resonates with employees and clients.

Hal Scogin

Comments or Questions?
journal@conceptualarc.com

Why Is Your Organization’s Story Important?

Tue, 9 Mar 2010 13:30:30 -0800

There are many reason’s your organization’s story is important to its health and well-being. Here are three that focus on the kinds of choices people make when they engage with you. Given that the world is defined by ever increasing choice, thinking about the context in which people choose is more important than ever.

A story creates a sense of place

An organization’s story helps people understand where it is located within the marketplace of services, products, and ideas. Thus, a story creates a sense of place, whether that place is found in a building on a street, or a site on the web. If a person has a sense of place they can decide what value and meaning they will attach to that place. A story that creates a sense of place helps people decide whether they want to go there, and make predictions about whether their needs will be met when they arrive.

A good story invites people to write themselves into it

A good story creates hooks on which people can hang their own experience. If I can write myself into the story, then maybe I can see how I might become part of the outcome. If I commit to the organization’s outcomes I can tap into powerful internal motivations such as pride of ownership (customers and employees); and personal needs, such as career fulfillment (employees). It is not possible to write or tell a story so completely as to cover all the details. Thus, stories depend on people calling on their own experience to fill out their understanding. That’s what makes a good story so vibrant.

A story invites interpretation and improvisation

While the theme of the story should remain consistent, the ways people experience the details are personal. So it is with the story of your organization. Each of your employees and customers will have a uniquely personal relationship to your story. If your story is clear, coherent, and compelling, the theme will resonate across these interpretations creating a sense of something shared. If your story is big enough and bold enough, it will call on people to improvise to manage their relationships when changing circumstances demand a reinterpretation of the details. And your story will move forward, adapting, changing, growing...

If you asked the people in your organization to tell a story that reveals what your organization is all about, could they do it? Would the stories that different people tell overlap in important ways? Would the stories provide important clues about how a person should behave as a member or client of your organization?

Hal Scogin

Comments or Questions?
journal@conceptualarc.com