ThinkingSparks

Using Twitter: 100 days likes and dislikes

Although I have had a Twitter account for quite some time, I only really started using it about 3 months ago. As it is good usance to review after 100 days I thought I'd share my thoughts on using Twitter. Not that the world is waiting for another self-proclaimed social networking guru, but I just want to share and check my thoughts with others.

I found that I see Twitter as an extension of my working environment. It is how I act in the workplace in real life. I share knowledge and go looking for new insights. If I don't understand something I'll ask. If I do not agree I'll question and be my usual critical self (it is a gift you know). I also found I do not want to be all work and no play. So I utter things I would around the water cooler or coffee vending machine. Or have the small conversations I would have with people I meet on the go, at the trainstation or in the elevator. I like those short dialogs with people. I like the feeling that just for a short time I found a kindred spirit, or gained a new insight by an unexpected view of a virtual stranger. I like meeting new people and I like feeling connected.

But just as in real life there are things I do not like or get about people on Twitter. I do not get following zillions of people. The other day I started following someone who I thought to be interesting. He has more than 300.000 followers and to give him credit, he was also following a 300.000+ people back. But I wonder how you engage with so many people. There is no way to follow so many people and have time to do anything else worthwhile in your day to day life. I ended up unfollowing the person.

Also it seems to me that a lot of people use Twitter in an oldfashioned "one-to-many communication" kind of way. They use Twitter to broadcast and send out their messages. If they are real pros about it they automate, repeat and schedule their messages. There is in principal nothing wrong with all of these things but at times I feel like I am listening to the ongoing repetitive SOS signal on the island in Lost. To me it doesn't feel very sincere and the lifecycle of these messages are very short. Eventually I end up unfollowing those kind of people because they only advertise. They aren't sharing, they aren't opening up for dialogue, they never initiate dialogue.

I mostly use Twitter to learn and share about professional topics. I tend to follow people who do the same thing. Sometimes however people do not live up to my expectations. My bad, as they are my expectations. Having said that though I just don't get the "I woke up", "I had a coffee", "I arrived at the office" kinda updates. Who cares? It boggles my mind that those people actually have followers. I must admit that in one particular case I waited around for some big revelations, but they never came. So after 10 strikes, I unfollowed.

Sometimes I find messages undecipherable. It happens with messages that have lots of @'s, #'s and http's in them. I am not sure if it is just me but I find that my brain simply rejects them. My brain will command my eyes not to read them. Someone will probably do or is doing a study into the effectiveness of the 140 character message, but I am betting that all those at-signs, hashtags and URL's in one tweet add to the ineffectiveness of messages.

All in all I really like Twitter as a tool to meet, share and engage. I try to add a bit of myself to the mix in the process. I liked doing the #FF FollowFriday recommendations. But with the brain shutdown at the sight of too many  @'s and wanting to be sincere in my recommendations I started limiting the number of #FF's. So now I #FF 4 people every friday and motivate why I think other people should follow them too. It sparks dialogue, which I enjoy.

Want to share your thoughts on Twitter?

 

 

 

What happens if a partnership network doesn't share values

The other day I wrote about how to deal with a corporate brand in a partnership network. My view on it is that shared goals are not sufficient. You also have to share values among the partners. Be it a traditional supply chain, a network, a lateral partnership or a multilevel marketing organization.

Share goals and values increase congruent and thus consistent behavior in the network. Consistent behavior is needed to build a consistent brand during all moments of truth.

I came across an intersting article in USA Today. It talks about Amway and organizations like it. The whole question of them being MLM organizations or pyramid schemes isn't my point here. The relevance of the story is that Amway claims to have a code of conduct and apparently some of their distributors do not behave according to this code. It is similar to having laws and people breaking these laws.

Codes of conduct are nice but if people do not subscribe to the values that are the foundation of this code of conduct, they will have trouble living by these rules. It shows that sharing values as well as sharing goals is important.

Read the story for yourself. It is a good illustration of what happens when you do not share values within a partnership network.

Why everyone in corporate branding should read Schein

Yesterday I wrote about the strategic character of organizational culture. Just now - by chance - I came across the following quote. As I consider myself to be a follower of Edgar Schein's thought leadership, I could kick myself for not knowing this wonderful quote.

“The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture.”

-Edgar Schein, Award Winning Author and Professor MIT Sloan School of Management

 

Schein is a real guru who has been attributed with coining the term "organizational culture". I had the honor of taking a week of classes with him in the summer of 2004 and not only is he briliant, he is also inspiring.

I can recommend all his work, but this one is especially interesting with the strategic aspect of organizational culture and a leader's responsibility for it.

I believe and know from my head to my toes that succesful organizations and thus corporate brands are rooted in a healthy organizational culture. Branding for too long has focussed solely on external communication. Promissing the moon, but not being able to deliver that said moon.

Everyone in corporate branding should familiarize itself with the insights Edgar Schein has to offer.He is the expert on organizational culture. After the week of classes I took with Edgar Schein I had the chance to talk with him briefly and tested my view on the relation between corporate brands and his theory on organizational culture, with him. He said: "That is absolutely right.", and continued to elaborate on it. I still feel like a balloon about to pop when I think about it.

So if you are in corporate branding read his work. As a matter of fact, anyone who works in organizational change or development should be familiar with Schein's views. But I'll settle for the branding folks today.

Let me know if you think of Edgar Schein's views on organizational culture.

 

Why organizational culture is not solely the domain of HR & Communication

The other day I was reading this book on the process of positioning. A very useful book from two renowned authors. There were a couple of thing in the book that I see differently though. I polled one of them via Twitter.

The authors state that "business orientation", "core competences", "vision" and, "mission" are aspects of strategic management and are usually formulated by the board of an organization. "Organizational culture", "organizational values" and, "customer values" are the domain of HR and (Internal) Communication.

The poll was on the second sentence about culture and values being the domain of HR and Communication. I didn't receive hundreds of responses, even less than ten, but they were all unanimous in disagreeing with the second sentence.

I believe that organizational culture and organizatonal and customer values are strategic too. If you want a succesful positioning and a strong brand you need consistent organizational behavior at every moment of truth. Organizational culture influences organizational behavior and vice versa.That makes it a strategic issue. One that the leader of an organization certainly holds responsibililty for.That doesn't mean that HR and Communication can contribute their expertise, but they are not solely responsible.

To me this is a clear and shut case. But that may be because I believe in culture based brands.

Do you believe in culture based brands?

How cheating students cheat everyone

Before I became an exchange student to the USA over a quarter of a century ago I was prepped. I was told about and explained American values that I would encounter and would have to adjust to. One that was profoundly hammered into my consciousness was "do not cheat at school". I had never cheated at school so I had no reason to begin now, but I was impressed by stories about American students being left alone in their classroom during an exam and not cheating. It was a matter of honor.

When I taught evening classes to adults at The Hague University I was flabbergasted when I found out that grownups cheated on papers and exams. What I found even more shocking was that they weren't kicked out onto the street. This probably has to do with the ludicrous rule that Dutch universities receive financial backing from the government based on the number of students that graduate. Quantity. Not quality.

At my university there was a formal rule that you couldn't do anything that would damage the institutes' repuation. I think it is evidence of the insight that an educational institution has many moments of truth and everyone involved is responsible to uphold the brand image.

In Dutch news over the last couple of weeks it has become apparent that at several universities students have been getting away with cheating.

I don't get cheating, because eventually you end up being caught. Maybe not by the school, but future employers and colleagues cannot rely on your knowledge and expertise. But that is not the worst of it. What does it say about your character? How many other lines are you likely to cross? How can Dutch organizations be socially responsible if they are hiring unethical cheating graduates?

This situation is bad in a lot of ways:

1. Of course not everyone cheats, but the ones that do, screw it up for all other graduates. If the news gets out that people cheated their way to graduation that piece of paper called a diploma becomes worthless. Not only for themselves but also for former, current and future students.
2. The brand of the insitution becomes weak. And as lots of regional universities have merged over the last decade or so, one brand name covers a range of programs at different locations. So the cheating may have been going on in Amsterdam at the Economics bachelor program, but everything else is infected too. So you apply for a job in Rotterdam, with a degree in Communication from Arnhem and they confuse you with the Finance cheater in Amsterdam. Tough luck!
3. Organizations will have hired the cheating graduates with questionable morality. This is not good for the morality of the organization in particular or Dutch organizations as a whole.

So what to do? A couple of things I think:

1. Become aware as a school and as a society that these practices damage your educational brands and in the end your national knowledge economy. Become aware that the quality you deliver in education results in good quality graduates. They in turn lead to a society with organizations that are able to perform and compete succesfully.
2. Parents, educators, schools and society should emphasize the positive: knowledge is power in the sense that it creates individual possibilities.
3. Honor those who do well in school. Don't scoff people for being a good student.
4. Don't keep your exams where the students or an accomplice can get to them. (I know this is basic but apparently people haven't thougt of this yet, otherwise it wouldn't have happened.)
5. Make it a rule that cheating is rewarded by being kicked out of school and not being able to apply to any other university in The Netherlands. Any cost incurred or financial backing lost by the school must be paid by the student.
6. Communicate the rule to future and current students.
7. Have students (and their parents if underage) commit to this rule when registering and enrolling. It then is a contract.
8. Live the rule. Be honest and honorable in other aspects of life too.
9. Enforce the rule if necessary.

Of course ideally, parents raise kids that aren't morally challenged. Ideally we do not need rules or laws to govern us. Ideally our moral compass would be enough. Unfortunately it isn't the case for everyone.

This is not just a Dutch problem. In the 28 years since I graduated from my American highschool, American society has shown not be immune to cheating students. Just google "cheating students" and you'll find that even in Communist China students cheat. If we should have learned one thing from the collapsing of banks and the economic crisis it is that integrity is important.

From a perspective of branding your school, your organization, your country, integrity is important. From a perspective of civil society, integrity is important too.

Am I exaggerating? I don't think so.

Are there other solutions possible? Sure! Please share them.

 

How to deal with the corporate brand in a partnership network

About 15 years ago my mom got a new micorowave and I got her old Sharp Microwave. After a couple of years of using it, it broke down for the first time in 20 years. So I called Sharp and asked them how to go about having this wonderful (the best microwave ever made) aparatus repaired. Turned out they had outsourced reparations of their electronics to another company. However, this "service" company was not about delivering service. Having them pick up the microwave was a challenge in itself. They didn't pick up defect electronics during the evening. They answered my question on that with: "Well little lady, we cannot start doing that, because that is what everyone then wants". Fulfilling a need that apparently everyone has, seemed pretty straightforward to me, but to them it was an alien concept.

Ever since that experience I have been wondering and thinking how you protect your brand in your supply chain of network of partner organizations you work with. As this microwave was so utterly wonderful (did I mention it was the best one ever made?) I held Sharp in high regard. Their outsourced repair partners however, totally frustrated that. Maybe it was an area that received little attention as these microwaves hardly ever broke down.

This crossed my mind when Marion de Vries posted an interesting question (Dutch) on Twitter yesterday.

How do you guard a #corporatebrand in a network marketing organization?

No employees but a collection of #personalbrands.

My answer was: shared values and a strong culture within that network. And the selection of personal brands becoming would become very important. Marion's answer was that in a network marketing organization the selection is often not on the person but on that person's ambition. And that it is the mix of people that makes it interesting. I responded by saying that other selection criteria are needed for a supply chain brand like that. Based on share values instead of shared goals.I was intrigued by this question and promissed to think and blog about it.

My first thought was about the different types of rationality of actions that Max Weber wrote about a century ago. He described actions based on values and actions based on goals. Actions based on goals, through time, lead to inconsistent behavior as goals change over time. They goals can basically change anytime a new CEO or manager arrives on the scene. Actions based on values lead to consistent behavior according to Weber. And as a corporate brand you definitely want to be consistent.

Selecting network partners on ambition, is selecting them on shared goals or dreams. This selection criterion could result in inconsistent behavior between corporate brand and partner brands. For instance, an ambition can be to become the market leader. But there are many ways to reach that goal. You can be all Dallas like JR about obtaining succes or you can be the exact opposite. Resulting in all kinds of incongruent behavior within the network. Inconsistency is the outcome and thus bad for the corporate brand.

It would be totally different if shared ambitions (goals) are fed by shared values. If the corporate brand and its partners are all JR-type entrepreneurs, you may not like them, but they are consistent. Just think about Al Qaida and all its cells. They share values. They share goals. And as a result you could say that they have a consistent corporate brand.

I am sure that there are nuances on this that are determined by criteria such as "intended duration of the partnership" and "needed expertise within the partnership". I can imagine that if the expertise you seek as a corporate brand is very unique you will compromise on values as long as the ambition is the same. This would always be an incidental short term partnership. If the expertise you seek is widely available than you do not compromise on shared values and shared ambitions. Not even if it is a short term partnership. For a long term partnership with a unique expert, you may have to position this partner as an excentric but authentic brand alongside your corporate brand. I tried to put this in a matrix:

These were my thoughts on this topic. What do you think?

 

Positioning is all about making choices

The other day I argued agains a blog post that stated that positioning is an outdated practice. This post drove a stick right through my professional heart as to me positioning is all about making necessary choices. Necessary as without clear choices there is no focus and without focus there can be no succes.

The choices are strategic choices about how you want to position you business with regarid to your organization's identity in relation to your environment: competition, market, stakeholders/customers etc. Just to name a few choices:

• Who do you want to be as an organization?
• Is that possible with regard to your abilities and organizational culture? 
• How can you distinguish yourself from your competion?
• How can you be relevant to your customers or stakeholders?
• How will you deal with developements in the market and society?
• And eventually how will those choices influence your brand positioning.

With the immense availability of different products and services (who hasn't stood in the shampoo isle at the store and hoped for less choice?) of comparable quality and price it is more important than ever to distinguish your product brands or corporate brands from those others available.If we thought the marketplace was overcrowded back when Al Ries & Jack Trout wrote their classic, it is even more the case now.

 

 

With smarter and more unpredictable customers who have the world at the social networking fingers it hasn't become any easier. The necessity to be consistent through all channels and media demands for a sharp positioning rooted in organizational culture. Especially if your organization is in the services business. And which organization isn't nowadays?

The proces of positioning is an exercise in analysis, thinking, reflection and making decisions. Of course it is hard to free up time for a good think in organizations. Being busy and x-ing of items on the to-do list seems to be valued more than shared time with the feet on the desk. But a time-out for some reflection is something that should happen frequently. A breather from doing to see if you are on track and make choices if you aren't.

It has been a long time since the days of Ries & Trout but I think that positioning as a discipline has evolved. Just as other disciplines have. Branding originally started with products. The concept is now more widely applied; from organizations to people. Strategy insights have evolved over time and so has marketing and many other disciplines. So positioning in my mind has become more interesting and more important. Also harder maybe, but definitely not obsolete.

But then I may be stuck in an era gone by. What do you think?