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Tag: change

Innovation – Does Your Management Style and Culture Foster or Hinder It?

Organizational culture is getting a lot of attention recently, as economic growth is tougher to come by and company profits even harder to generate. Where efficiency, productivity, and process used to get the attention of management gurus, the general impression is that those things aren’t sexy anymore, and that if you can create the “right culture” at your organization, it will be able to grow by leaps and bounds, leap tall buildings and take the market by storm, etc.

Culture’s definition is often a bit diffuse, but for the sake of argument we’ll use this: The atmospheric environment within an organization created by the Senior executive and mirrored down the ladder to the rank and file, reflective of a set of values and preferences, and a vision conferred onto individual staff interactions that bleeds into their products and services and suffuses the brand. True, that still leaves much room for interpretation, but it gives you an idea of what the majority of workers are going for.

But culture goes deeper in some cases than others. In almost all cases, it really starts at the top, with a communicated vision for what that senior executive wants that company to be, day in and day out. That vision is reflected in many aspects of daily life within the organization, from the physical plant layout, furnishings and decor, down to the paint on the walls in some cases, to the tone of the Employee Manual (or if there even IS one), memos and e-mails, the recording on the voice mail at the front desk, to how customer services treats customers, and in nearly every other aspect of life in that hive every day. What holidays they celebrate and how many, how vacation time is viewed, how the management structure is coached, trained and their performance assessed are key to defining that corporation’s culture.

But how does that culture affect the organization’s ability to innovate?

I think it has the most to do with a sense of freedom borne of respect for the employees’ ability to work together for a common goal. That ability is derived through common and communal trust and a sense of obligation to the mission and to their co-workers. If you are trusted by your peers, and managers, and you trust your subordinates and direct reports to do the best they can all the time, to strive for continual improvement, and to work as hard as necessary to adhere to the goals and needs of the company as a whole, the table has been properly set to drive innovation around the current product or service offering, as part of that constant curiosity and need to improve the status quo.

On the flip side, if management is constantly looking over the shoulder of direct reports, codifying each action and driving their efforts down a narrowly defined group of managed behaviors, that trust in and growth of their abilities doesn’t have much “elbow room” alongside the rest of the required actions, and innovation rarely occurs – they’re having too much trouble just getting through the day.

Innovation comes from many quarters and from many unexpected directions, but somewhere down the line, it really stems from the freedom to be curious, to be able to find answers to the question “What if . . .?” If the answers to that question are never sought because there’s no value to exposing the answer, innovation will have a hard time taking hold and the organization won’t be able to nurture that spark into a meaningful flame of business brilliance.

Don’t let your need for profitability smother creativity and innovation – five hours “wasted” finding out about a certain idea could be the best investment you ever make.

August 7, 2015
Rebranding Your Organization – Change Management At Its Finest

Imagine your future: Your brand identity has been in place unchanged since the organization was founded in the 50s; the marketplace has shifted; your brand characteristics are diffuse and have drifted and meandered virtually unguided for decades; your organization offers different benefits than it used to, because that’s what the membership has dictated; and the membership base has shifted away from the traditional manufacturers and service suppliers to a full range of peripheral industries around a few core large members. It’s time to rebrand! Now what?

Rebranding can offer your organization many things, almost all of them good. But to take advantage of them, you have to actively and proactively manage the change process. To do that, it all starts with research, planning, education and communication within your organization, almost all of it between your marketing department and the executive staff.

Start at the Top

Getting good data is key to making good decisions – that’s an axiom that few can argue with, but that very few organizations take to heart when making strategic decisions. Rebranding is a very strategic decision, so in order to do it with the greatest positive impact, some critical research is in order. A good, old-fashioned SWOT analysis will lead you down the right road in almost all instances if done honestly and thoroughly, with a little imagination thrown in.

Knowing your members’ needs, desires and concerns is also critical – it’s their club after all, and without them there is no need to have a brand at all! If you have a stranglehold on what role your organization plays in their personal or professional lives, you’re a good way toward the goal of crafting an effective new brand around that group of members.

Knowing where your organization stands in the competitive spectrum in their professional lives, and what goods and services they turn to you for, puts you even further down the right road. Ask the tough questions – if you can use a rebranding to jettison unsuccessful programs because your research shows that no one uses that program or doesn’t think of you as offering that, you form a tighter brand identity, and create an opportunity to offer something similar but better later.

The last piece of research should be to hunt for similar or related brands in your own and other related industries. If the one you want to use is taken, you need to know that before you get too far down the path, to avoid infringement of trademark problems later.

Create a Plan

Rebranding is an organization-wide event and it touches everyone in the organization to one degree or another. Some elements will take longer to prepare than others, so your action priorities should be ordered upon implementation times and logistic concerns, so that all the pieces come together at a specific point in time at the end. You’ll want to launch the new brand in a short, intense period of activity, to discourage backsliding and create impact. Some groups have tried to sneak the new brand in under the radar, with no fanfare or celebration. Those types of soft launches usually take longer to enter and become retained in the public consciousness among your audience, and ultimately cost your organization time, money and credibility.

Knowing your members’ needs, desires and concerns is also

critical – it’s their club after all, and without them there is no

need to have a brand at all!

Derive a set of newly-generated brand characteristics from your member research, and task your marketing department to create a summary statement describing the new brand in those terms. Use that statement to graphically craft a representation of its meaning and create the new brand. If done properly, it will carry all the critical information and translate those characteristics into an image that communicates them clearly. Your plan should map out these steps and give a rationale for each of them that makes concrete sense to the internal audience. That plan is the basis for your communication both internally and externally.

TEST, Test, Test

Most organizations don’t get it right on the first try. And most don’t know they’ve got it wrong until it’s too late, because they don’t test. Internal and external reviews, focus groups and first-hand interviews will give you tremendous insight as to the accuracy of the image in projecting your brand’s characteristics, and will give you insight as to the level and speed of acceptance you can expect among your target audience. If you meet with resistance, or it’s not memorable or not accurate, you can waste precious resources trying to correct it later. Research is relatively cheap insurance against launching a poorly-crafted new brand. Done correctly, it can give you the confidence to launch the new brand with pride and have it met with predictable success. This type of research has some nuances to it, and many organizations don’t have the specialized knowledge and skill sets on staff to do it justice. For them it makes good financial sense to hire out to the experts for this portion. Most cities have a selection of reliable research firms that would be happy to help you launch your new brand correctly.

Communicate, Early and Often

Once you have what you feel is the definitive brand identity nailed down, a little preliminary education is in order. The mantra that good public speakers and presenters follow will work well here as well: “Tell them what you’re going to say, say it, and then tell them what you said.” That first step, the advance alert is important, so that there is some warning, and the launch isn’t completely cold. It lets the audience know that there’s a change coming and they can brace for it. It gives you a chance to set the stage, set expectations and show a little of your rationale behind the change, show the advantages it offers and show the benefits of the change in a positive light. The better you prepare the audience, the faster your adoption curve will evolve, and the higher your acceptance level will be – and that saves you time and money. The more easily they accept the new identity, the less time and money you have to spend to convince them.

“Tell them what you’re going to say, say it, and then tell them

what you said.”

Repetition and consistency are two great keys to success. The more places they audience sees that new brand, and the more consistent that presentation is, the higher your acceptance will be. The repetition is largely a budgetary issue, but operations needs to get in on the game here too. As part of your planning, you should have conducted a brand inventory, showing each and every instance where your brand appears and in what context. Pull out that inventory and review it now, so you can order the list of changes in priority order.

The highest time priority should be awarded to the most visible instances, the places with the highest volume and widest impact. Letterheads, envelopes, business cards, forms, newsletters and other items that number in the tens of thousands used per year, and distributed in large numbers on a regular basis should come first, as those will give you the highest penetration for the dollar. Items like shipping crate stencils, and the sign on the building can come a bit later. Fax cover sheets, e-mail signatures, and meeting signs are often overlooked initially, but those are fairly high-priority items. Brochures, membership kits and the like, while produced in high numbers, aren’t distributed in high numbers, and have relatively low impact initially. Websites, blogs etc. change instantly (virtually) and should be high on the list as they are often the destination for many of your other marketing efforts. Take the ego out of your decision-making and use impact sphere to guide your priority decisions.

Out With The Bad, In With The Good

One of the resistance points you’ll likely encounter is the so-called “waste” that goes along with a rebranding. Backsliding and phasing in the new brand as supplies run low or out will slow adoption and give mixed impressions to the audience. Make a clean break, and dump everything that carries the old brand – don’t use it. Part of your planning and communication process should have been to influence decisions by those who resupply the organization, to help minimize waste. In the long term, getting rid of the 22 leftover tradeshow tchotchkeys with the old brand on them isn’t really a waste if it prevents an diluted message from being transmitted to your audience. Dump it all!

“. . . items that number in the tens of thousands used per year,

and distributed in large numbers on a regular basis should

comefirst, as those will give you the highest penetration for the

dollar.”

Timing Is Key

The decision on the timing of the new launch will differ from group to group, but one tried-and-true solution is to use the Annual Convention or other major meeting as a platform to launch the new brand. This type of timing gives you more bang for your marketing buck, and allows you to reach a greater percentage of your intended audience at once, in a controlled environment over a limited time span. It forces you to hit deadlines, to create a definitive point of impact and allows you to create the kind of repetition and consistency required to make this effort work.

Do The Paperwork

Don’t forget to record the date of first use for your new brand, you’ll need it for your new trademark application, which of course you’ve been preparing all along the way, to protect your new brand. File the initial paperwork as soon as the first use and three subsequent public uses can be shown. Launching at the Annual Meeting makes that easy, as the initial and other uses are all virtually concurrent, and you can show the quantities distributed and the reach of the new mark very easily.

Rebranding is a challenging process, but one that can drive all sorts of positive change throughout your organization. Handled thoroughly and thoughtfully, it can pay significant benefits in both the long and short term.

October 8, 2014
Innovation – Courage or Survival Technique?

Modern corporations that want to grow and prosper must innovate to survive and differentiate themselves from the competition. Simple statement, not so simple to do.

Does your firm innovate? Are you a leader, first or second in market share in your vertical or industry? If so, you are likely an innovator in your arena. If not, you are likely a follower, and destined as such to toil away to maintain the status quo, fighting to find and keep customers, build sales, create and use buzz and maintain your brand.

Innovation comes in a variety of forms, some in internal structure, some in product, some in technique or offering. And it doesn’t have to be something complicated. Sometimes the simplest thing is innovative. Just because it hasn’t been done that way, doesn’t mean it can’t be, its just that it seems so obvious, you think someone else must have thought of it before. Not always true!

Like most things, especially marketing, it all starts with research. Figure out what others are doing, and improve upon it. Find out what the audience wants, and give it to them. Find out what causes your customer’s pain, and alleviate it.

Sometimes the research can be done within your own company. Talk to customer service, talk to reception, watch how customers react to things, listen to their grievances, hear their stories, see how they behave wit respect to your product, or organization. They can tell you things about your company you might not know . . .

Innovation can create challenges. That’s the point. You need an internal champion to shepherd the change created by the innovative approach throughout the company, to nurture it, to answer questions, to guide it’s development, to protect it from the nay-sayers. It can start at the top with a visionary leader, it needs buy-in from the top, and must have universal buy-in up and down the chain to succeed quickly and completely. Once that universal acceptance and understanding is firmly rooted, you’ll notice that champions appear, and the organization as a whole starts to embrace and live the story of the new offering – transparency becomes apparent.

Once you’ve gone through this learning curve so you know the steps to innovation, you can apply them over and over again, creating an environment of innovation, keeping your company ahead of the competition, permanently!

Innovate, differentiate, dominate! Sounds like a plan to me . . .

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June 14, 2014