Bloghound

This week I sat through ten hours of sales presentations over two days. The speakers were smart, passionate and informative. But even so after a while everything started to blend together for those of us in the audience.

One speaker got everyone’s attention because he didn’t just tell and explain, he challenged assumptions. “Most people assume that the way to run a loyalty program is this…but that’s the wrong assumption.” Really? Now we’re really listening.

He also suggested, “Word of mouth marketing is not the largest driver to get new customers. But it is the most important.”

My observation is simply this: people who have a point of view and the courage to challenge assumptions get people’s attention, and often respect too.

Conferences on global warming are being held throughout the world this week, from Alaksa’s meeting among 32 mayors of U.S. cities to a conference at the UK’s University of Leicester among global scientists to Al Gore’s speech yesterday at New York Univeristy of Law.

Facing this enormously serious issue, perhaps it’s time to stop calling it “global warming” and rename the issue “global heating.” It’s a small step amid the needed significant policy and scientific actions, but heat is a much more powerful and descriptive word for the problem than “warming.”

In fact, in an interview with The New York Times last week, scientist and planetary diagnostician James Lovelock said he uses the term global heating because “warming is something that’s kind of cozy and comfortable. You think of a nice duvet on a called winter’s day. Heating is something you want to get away from.”

Over heating is serious business —whether it’s a child with a high fever, a dehydrated athlete, or a disintegrating planet.

Heating vs. warming. What a difference a word can make.

Note: Picture is the Eiger, one of my favorite hiking spots, which is shrinking due to global heating, causing tons of boulders to fall off the glacier this summer. The worst threat is that glaciers are an important source of water and as they shrink, so does the water source for crops.

It always seems ironic to me when
something new gets published that links telling the truth to being
successful. Surprise! People – that is, employees, customers, anybody
— respond really well when you tell them like it is, including the
stuff that’s not so great. They’ll work twice as hard and come up with
amazing business-growing ideas if you are real and candid and involve
them.

This month’s cover story in Inc.
magazine features an excerpt of Bo Burlingham’s new book, “Small
Giants: Companies that Choose to Be Great Instead of Big.” Too bad it
seems to be one or other.

Must it? No, but it takes a special breed of leader to adopt the
straight talk, open books, inclusive MO that inspires and motivates
employees beyond all other incentives. I know this philosophy works
from my firsthand experience years ago working for Jim Mullen, founder
of Mullen advertising (now part of communications conglomerate
Interpublic.) (I think Inc. was a Mullen client for awhile, as Jim and
Bernie Goldhirsch were close acquaintances.)

Way back in the days of acetate overheads, Jim was opening the books
and showing us what we spent on paper clips and how profit sharing –
which every employee participated in — was trending for the quarter.
We all went back to work knowing exactly what we needed to do to fix
something or create something, and we knew how we would personally
benefit. The agency was consistently and highly profitable and earned a
reputation for strong values, great work and a ferociously loyal
workforce. (His book, “The Simple Art of Greatness” — out of print but
available from Amazon — would make a good companion to “Small
Giants”.)

There’s no question, it’s harder – at least in the
beginning – to say it like it is. But the good news is, you can start
in small ways. As you look at the next speech, employee update, press
release or call center script , see if there isn’t a way to say what
you need to say with a little more candor, and like you really mean it.
Watch what happens. I’m guessing you’ll do it again. (Imagine what
might happen if our politicians started behaving this way…)

Marketing is about conversations. “So what does that mean,” people
ask me? How do you take the concept and apply it practically to
everyday marketing?

Conversations are by their nature friendly — people listening and chatting with an interest in the other person.

So
maybe one pragmatic way to reshape marketing activities and programs is
to make them friendlier. Friendly. What a small but big concept.

Here’s how various dictionaries define friendliness:

• Helpful
• Approachable and accessible
• Hospitable
• Cordial

Friendly
people and companies listen because they’re really interested in what
people have to say. They make it easy for people to chat with them.
They share what they’re hearing about new ideas, what’s happening that
might be helpful, what they’re learning. They don’t lecture or promote
but converse in the best sense of the word, which comes from Latin con
versare – to turn or dance together. They ask questions – and make it
easy for others to do the same in a welcoming kind of way. They’re not
judgmental, but offer sincere advice if a friend is doing something
dumb.

The Wikipedia says that “Value that is found in friendships is often the result of a friend demonstrating on a consistent basis:

• The tendency to do what is best for you.
• Mutual understanding
• Sympathy and empathy
• Honesty, particuarly in situations where it may difficult for others to speak the truth

What
if we reframed our marketing thinking around one simple idea: to be
more friendly? Yes, it sounds Pollyanna-ish, but many companies who get
the “marketing as conversations concept” exude friendliness. In their
people, actions, business practices, and in their style of oral and
written marketing communications.

Think about Southwest Airlines
or Virgin Atlantic (vs. the unfriendly United, American et al). Zappos
shoes vs. the big department stores. Whole Foods vs. Stop & Shop.
And all the small local businesses we’re so loyal to because of
friendliness.

It’s hard to change, but friendliness seems like an easy way to start. Thoughts?

In times of crisis, the job of leaders is to be visible — to step
up and absorb people’s fears, reassure them about what’s being done,
and put the events within a forward looking perspective. People want to
be led, especially during times of upheaval.

So where oh where
is France’s President Jacques Chirac this week? I don’t live in France
and I’m scared about what’s going on with the unrest and riots in the
country’s slums during the past two weeks. Imagine being a French
citizen?

Rather than going on TV or the radio to declare a
national state of emergency, Chicrac and his administrators had a
government spokesperson read a statement to journalists on Tuesday
after a Cabinet meeting. Unbelievable.

The job of
communications is an executive’s job. Just ask Rudy Giuliani, Jack
Welch, or Tony Blair. In times of crisis, communications cannot be
shunned or delegated without serious ramifications.

The medium is not the message. The deliverer is the message.

For France, this means the government may have much graver problems than any of us realize.

I was wrestling with the business talk around change, agility,
adaptability, alignment, collaborative innovation, and the increasingly
trendy “unlocking human potential.” I think I know what executives are
trying to say, but the words seem inadequate, and in some cases trite
or glib.

In my quest to understand how leaders can better use
language to lead, I found poet David Whyte, who works with
organizations around the world. And what a find David is. Instead of
talking to business audiences about change, David uses poems to bring
to life the experience of change.

I was struck by several of
David’s beliefs about leadership, and the poems he uses to invite us in
to understand those beliefs. Here are some ideas and poems that
provoked me. For more, go to David’s Web site (http://www.davidwhyte.com) and listen to one of his CD’s (I especially liked “Life at the Frontier: Leadership Through Courageous Conversations”).

Leaders’ conversations

Leaders’ conversations are not about the work; they are the
work. Leaders must help people feel as though they belong, where their
voice affects the world in which they are participating. Too many
people are isolated at work and feel unheard.

“Loaves and Fishes”

This is not
The age of information.
This is not
The age of information.

Forget the news,
And the radio,
And the blurred screen.

This is the time
Of loaves
And fishes.

People are hungry,
And one good word is bread
For a thousand.

David Whyte

More than you

Treat
the world as if it’s alive. That it is other than you, not just a
reflection of you, and not just put there to work on your behest.

Old Chinese poem:

Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.98% of everything you do and everything you say is for yourself.
And there isn’t one.

Creativity and radical attention

All
your creative powers come from your ability to pay a radical kind of
attention to what’s around you, to see what you haven’t seen before.

“Lost “

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

David Wagoner

While technology is becoming the heart of marketing and communications, conversations are the soul.
And some of the most engaging conversations are around talking about
ideas, beliefs, opinions, and points of view. Not products.

This
week I came across two examples of companies whose points of view
instantly engaged me and helped me understand what makes their
companies unique and different.

“What we maybe had
to relearn as a company is that we’re not in the transportation
business, we’re in the arts and entertainment business,” explained GM
vice chairman Bob Lutz to shareholders at a recent meeting.

GM
in the arts and entertainment business? Now, that’s interesting. I
immediately understood that Lutz is trying to take GM to a very
different place. It somewhat reassured me as a shareholder, and I’m
toying with putting my car buying plans on hold to see what GM might
come out with next year.

My favorite point-of-view this week was
from Dietsche & Dietsche Architects. While I often hear
professional services firms talk about how difficult it is to market
themselves, Chuck Dietsche’s positioning is clear and compelling,
expressed through this point-of-view:

“The first house is a dictionary. The second is a poem,” he says.

Chuck
talks about how our primary homes are about accommodation – “Where do I
park, where do I sleep?” While the second home idealizes our lives and
helps us express that to the world.

Wow, that’s interesting and compelling marketing.

I’m
off to my second home, which is more of a haiku, for summer vacation.
Some friends are thinking about building in the area. I’m going to talk
to them about Chuck Dietsche because he’s made it so easy for me to do
so.

What’s your company’s point of view?

Ever notice how successful people are masters at using metaphors?

If
marketing people want to better engage people and foster understanding,
they should use more metaphors in their communications. Metaphors help
us make sense of ideas, and think about concepts and points-of-view in
ways that language alone cannot.“Metaphor is typically viewed
as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than
thought or action,” explain George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Live By.
“For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well
without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is
pervasive in everyday life…Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of
which we think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.”

Here
are some of the metaphors I’ve heard in the past two weeks while
interviewing influential C-level executives as part of a research
project to better understand corporate change agents.

On commitment:
people need to be committed like a pig vs. a chicken. When you’re
eating bacon and eggs for breakfast you know that in respect to the
eggs the chicken was involved. But in respect to the bacon, the pig was
comitted.

On employee talent: high-performers
are like equities vs. boonds. “Equity” employees are more aggressive
and drive new ideas and growth, while “bond” employees are the steady
Eddies who make sure that the core business functions run day in and
day out. Just like a financial portfolio, you need a mix of equities
and bonds in your employees.

On being focused:
“We need an arrow, not a flying barn.” This from author and management
consultant Alan Weiss, who explains: “This metaphor creates an
immediate recognition of the need to streamline and gain aerodynamic
efficiency, which is easier to deal with than pointing out that we’re
trying to tackle too much, we have no focus, we need to set priority,
yadayadayada.”

On alternative perspectives:
change agents don’t look at whether a glass is half-full or half-empty
or even partially shattered. They look at an urn or a pitcher. In other
words, these types bring very different perspectives to business
situations.

On necessary disruption: “You can’t
make an omelet without breaking eggs.” In other words, you may have to
disrupt all kinds of people and processes within the organization to
accomplish change. Yet at the end you say, “Man that was messy, but in
the end we got it done and it was successful.”