ThinkingSparks

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?

 

I disagree with the claim that positioning is an outdated concept

No "normal blogpost today. Instead my response to Brand Consultant Asia's blogpost that states that positioning is not a valid concept in this day an age.

I think the concept of positioning still holds true even though the world has changed greatly over the last 40 years. There are still competitors, there are still customers. Customers have changed and markets have too. That doesn't make the concept of positioning obsolete. It makes it harder and more necessary than ever.

In my response I tell it like I see it (which after moderation can hopefully can also be read below the original blogpost; January 31, 8.42 PM):

 

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This is an interesting read but I one that I disagree with wholehartedly. I address each reason you presented below:

Ad 1)

You state chat a model that was developed for the US mass market in the seventies is not applicable to other countries or through time. Why does a market have to be similar in order for a model to work? All markets have the same elements (competitors, customers, manufacturers etc.) don't they. If you extend your statement to other theories it is the same as saying that economic theories cannot be applied in Malaysia because they were thought up by Americans or English in another era. This reasoning in my opinion is flawed.

 

Ad 2)

Bad claims or outrageous claims developed by agencies for the clients doesn't mean that the concept of positioning is no good. It means that agencies did poor work.

 

Ad 3)

I am not sure what you mean by your statement that positioning is only suitable for mass markets. As long as there is competition and there are customers you can use the concept. Even if there is no competition you can still position your company or your brand.

 

Ad 4)

Mission and vision, values, BHAG's; there are tons of stuff in business that are immeasurable. Or they are measurable but aren't measured. Does that mean that the concept doesn't hold? I don't think so.

 

Ad 5)

Wikipedia is no official standard. It could be my opinion or yours; whoever comes last. So dimissing positioning because you do not like the definition in Wikipedia is a sophism. Skipping that and going back to Ries & Trout, the wrote a book on bottom-up marketing and always had the consumer/customer/prospects in mind.

 

Ad 6)

You state positioning is one way communication. The company is telling the customer how the products are positioned. I think that you are confusing claims with positioning again. I hope companies would be smarter than to communicate their positioning to their target audience. Who cares?

 

Ad 7)

To me positioning is both competition and consumer/customer driven. That is the way I work and I know that others do too. And Ries & Trout say the following: "To find a tactic that will work, you have to leave your ivory tower and go down to the front where the marketing battle is being fought. Where is the front? In the minds of your customers and prospects".

 

Ad 8)

Of course the world has changed significantly over the last 40 years but that doesn't mean that theories and models aren't true or usable anymore?

 

Ad 9)

You state that positioning uses mass market channels. To me positioning is a strategic concept and not equal to marketing communication. So what you really seem to be saying here is that mass market channels aren't of this day and age. I agree with you there, but it has nothing to do with the concept of positioning.

 

Ad 10)

Advertising can cost a lot of money. You are equaling positioning and advertising. Positioning is a strategic concept and Advertising is a possible form of execution of the strategic positioning for a company or a product.

 

Ad 11)

Of course tennis rackets have changed throughout the years because of the possibilities technology offer, but since 1873 tennis has been played with a racket. The concept of the tool is still the same. People still play tennis with a racket. If I apply this analogy it would mean that the  theory of positioning can be innovated and developed throughout the years, and still be a tool to be used.

 

You state some undeniable facts. Markets and consumers have changed. Communication channels are of another era. But your arguments for positioning being outdated and unusable are - in my opinion - flawed and have not convinced me. I also miss an alternative. It would be great positioning for your agency: The brand agency with the alternative to positioning!

Consistency beats authenticity

Two days ago I shared the questions I had on consistency vs. authenticity when it comes to branding.

What is more important when building a brand? Consistency or authenticity? Or is authenticity an easy - and only? - route to consistency? Is it the need for consistency that drives the quest for authenticity? And does social networking make it easier to build a brand or harder because of more touchpoints and moments of truth?

Wikipedia gives the following meaning of authenticity:

1. Authenticity refers to the truthfulness of origins, attributions, commitments, sincerity, devotion, and intentions.
2. Authenticity is a technical term in existentialist philosophy, and is also used in the philosophy of art and psychology. In philosophy, the conscious self is seen as coming to terms with being in a material world and with encountering external forces, pressures and influences which are very different from, and other than, itself. Authenticity is the degree to which one is true to one's own personality, spirit, or character, despite these pressures.

The only applicable definition in Merriam-Webster is the similar to the philosophical definition.

Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore in their book Authentity use the following criteria for authenticity:

1. Is the offering true to itself? This describes the relation between the organization and its output.
2. Is the offering what it says it is? This describes the relation between the organization and its customers.

Check out their Real/Fake Matrix in the vote box (right side; look for explanation)..

From a philosophical perspective it would seem that in order to be authentic one has to withstand external pressures. Keeping customers in mind, which is what most companies should do, in itself clashes with being authentic.

I like to believe that most independent artists (painters, photographers, writers, poets etc.) are authentic. They produce what they think they should without taking into account if there is a market for it. Of course if there isn't they will be the stereotype of the starving artist. With this definition it is clear that any organization with stakeholders cannot ever by authentic.

It is obvious that Pine and Gilmore adapted the meaning of authenticity to their needs by adding the second criterion. A criterion that makes sense. As an organization you want to keep your promisses. Be it your brand promiss of the promiss of quality or price, service etc. It is important because if you don't keep your promisses your customers will be gone before you know it.

I however, think that that is more a question of consistency than authenticity. Harmony of conduct or practice. In other words: practice what you preach in all those moments of truth. Of course authentic behavior leads to consistency. But the question is if there are other ways to consistency.

Being authentic in itself means nothing. Being true to one's own personality, spirit or character, means that you should be true to the good and the bad in you. But it is the bad or negative charactertraits of a person or organization that can lead to not making true on our promiss. Authenticity has a downside too. Although excentricity to an artist may be a plus.

Being authentic with flaws and excentricities gives a competitive advantage as it is hard to immitate such traits. And every organization or person even, is looking for a competitive edge. At the same time however, there are umpteen thousand books, articles, classes, workshops etc. etc. to improve and change ourselves and our organizations. Is that being true to oneself? Somehow it doesn't feel that way.

So being truly authentic in the sense of being true one's personality, spirit and character is not always desirable. It leads me to prefer the term consistency to authenticity.

Have I answered my own questions now?

1. What is more important when building a brand? Consistency or authenticity? I think we are looking for consistency and are confusing that with authenticity.
   
2. Or is authenticity an easy - and only? - route to consistency? I think authenticity is a route to consistency but it is not an easy one as the content of authenticity has many shapes and sizes. How do you control the dark side of your authenticity? Should you control the dark side of your authenticity?
   
3. Is it the need for consistency that drives the quest for authenticity? Maybe. I don't know. Maybe the term authenticity is misused and hyped. Maybe we like to believe that everything is possible and makeable; even authenticity. Which is a contradiction in itself: makeable authenticity.
   
4. And does social networking make it easier to build a brand or harder because of more touchpoints and moments of truth? Social networking may offer a whole new range of possibilities but consistency is harder when there are more touchpoints.
   

This is what I think. What do you think?

TNT's can do attitude towards social media

When working with TNT Post in 2008 en 2009 on employer branding we often talked on how to work social media. Frank van Os's tweet announced that TNT has formulated excellent guidelines for the employees. I am impressed.

What impressed me is that the guidelines are based on the values on which not only the corporate culture is based, but also the TNT brand. This organization is in so much turmoil and has so many employees that there are many moments of truth and a lot of things to say that may not be positive for the company. There is no way you can or should want to control it.

Any other good examples of such guidelines out there?

A salesman’s advice on building brands

The tension between sales and marketing is a given. The short term results vs. long term planning and goals; like a brand for instance.

A pleasant change is dr. Phil look-alike, salesman Jeffrey Gitomer who seems to know his way around brands and in the process tells advertising agencies the way it is. Short but sweet!