Inside the Cubicle

Why? Because it is fun

Today I won a small prize at work - part of a periodic raffle where employees put their names in a fish bowl and five entries are selected.

I strongly believe that a company should have a reason for everything it does, and sometimes making people happy is good enough justification. Sometimes it is the little things - the traditions, the quirks, the silly events - that make a big difference. And sometimes you don't have to measure the direct cost/benefits, you can see it in the smiles on employees faces and hear it in the laughter by the water cooler.

It is one of the reasons why CDW still provides donuts and bagels to employees twice a week like they did when the company was founded with only handful of workers, or why Cisco CEO John Chambers passes out ice cream and candy to employees.

Employees - and consumers - don't often talk about a company's brilliant business model, value proposition or strategic vision; that is saved for journalists and Wall Street. People talk about what is relevant and tangible to them. They talk about what they see and feel, what they hear, what they get to do and what is done to them.

Am I a hypocrite saying this after blathering on for more than a year about the importance of communications reflecting a larger purpose? I hope not. What I am trying to explain is that strategy comes to life on a micro level, and on a human level. Words like fun, compassion, inclusiveness, creativity - they don't come alive simply with memos and meetings. Don't forget the power of the little things; don't forget what is means to let people enjoy themselves.

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Technorati Tags: Cisco, CDW, employee, fun

Interactive Job Posting

As I have said before, I think the incorporating new media into recruiting efforts poses the best risk/reward situation for organizations.

That is why I thought this interactive job advertisement from the Roanoke Times was so cool (Thanks to Amy Gahran at E-Media Tidbits for the point).

The ad features Roanoke Times of multimedia editor Seth Gitner, in the digital flesh, speaking to visitors about the opportunities at the paper. The site walks you through the different features of the paper, and includes video material from current staffers.

My only complaint (and maybe I just missed it): I would have loved to see a blog as part of the ad, so Seth or other staffers could continue the conversation.

Why is this such a good idea?

- It's cool - No seriously, this is important. Traditional newspapers are struggling to attract young talented employees who see opportunities with alternative new media. This is a similar issue many companies will face.
- It is robust - How much do you really get out of an ad on Monster? This site shows off what the company has to offer in an engaging way.
- It has legs -Unlike a print ad, this has the potential to be viral (just look at this post) meaning that they are getting more out of their investment.
- Low risk - They are no giving away any trade secrets, adding to the communications noise or wasting company time. High upside, low risk.

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Technorati Tags: Roanoke, newpaper, recruitment
 

Engaging Employees with the roll of some dice

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article today on P&G's marketing of Prilosec OTC, the company's over-the-counter heartburn medication, titled "An Old Dice Game Catches On Again, Pushed by P&G; In Bunco, It Sees a Way To Pitch Heartburn Drug; Living the Joanne Lifestyle."

Who is Joanne? Joanne is the name that the P&G staff has given to a common Prilosec OTC customer - a middle-aged woman who enjoys socializing.

Now here is what sets P&G apart from other companies. They could have sat in a boardroom and speculated on how to connect with Joanne, or surveyed a bunch of women in hopes of capturing valuable data. Instead, they decided to live as Joanne, see what she sees and feel what she feels:

 

"Studying Joanne has led Prilosec OTC marketers to attend NASCAR races, camp in RVs, travel by Greyhound, listen to country music and tailgate at NFL games."

However, the most significant discovery was the relationship between the target audience and a little-known dice game Bunco.

"Acting on a tip, Ms. Niese (P&G assistant brand manager) emailed the entire Prilosec OTC division in the summer of 2005, asking whether anyone knew somebody who played bunco. A man in product development responded, reporting that his wife was an avid fan. Ms. Niese arranged to tag along to the next game."

Research bore out the fact Bunco players are ideal Prilosec customers and these women value the opinions of their fellow players. As a result, Prilosec OTC has sponsored the Bunco World Championship and several other Bunco events and online resources.

What can we take from this?

1)  Find ways for your employees  to know your customer - While this is particularly important for comms, marketing and  sales staff, it is important for everyone. You don't get to decide what your brand is and what drives trust and decision making, your consumers do. Embrace this!

2) Take a comprehensive approach to customer/market research and let it inform communications - This is a beautiful example of blending quantitative data on market demographics with qualitative, experiential data from customers. Companies rarely invest in this level of research and it makes initiatives more targeted and effective (actually often reducing costs).

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Technorati Tags: Prilosec, Bunco, P&G, research

Why Google is Number One

It came as no big shock that Google was named No. 1 on Fortune's 100 Best Places to Work list this year. The lavish perks, stock options and free-flowing culture are all well documented; however, there is a method to the apparent madness.

7 ways that Google has become an employer-of-choice and succeeded financially (and 3 challenges they face going forward):

1. Practical experimentation is encouraged - Engineers are given 20 percent of their time to pursue projects they are personally interested in. Several company products including Google News and Adsense have come from this. Note that is only engineers, the employees most likely to develop innovative offerings, and the most valuable talent to attract, that are given this privilege.
2. A higher purpose - At Google, the mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." That means that the job is never done, there is always more information to gather and ways to make it easier to find. That could mean cataloging every book in the world, developing a better blog search tool, or making it easier for individuals to create Web sites - all of which Google is working on. This ambitious and aspirational mission ensures that employees will always be driven to accomplish more and see the company as able to play in different spaces. Google is not a search company - They are an advertising agency, a media provider, a publisher, a finance company, a social networker. They are whatever they want and need to be. This also means, with an array of integrated products, they can go after any market and any competitor they choose.     
3. The leaders have control - When Google went public, there was fear that the pressures of shareholders would force the company to abandon much of its unique culture. However, Google's founders - Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page - retained voting control over the company and vowed to adopt a long-term approach to business strategy saying in the IPO letter, "A management team distracted by a series of short-term targets is as pointless as a dieter stepping on a scale every half hour." The result is that Google can take more chances than peers and bet on potentially huge payoffs down the road. It also means that they do not have to deal with calls from activist shareholders to trim overhead and administrative costs associated with employee benefits.
4. Culture is designed to increase discretionary effort - Why provide food, laundry services, doctors and entertainment on-site? Why provide free wi-fi-enabled shuttles to work? Why let people wear what they want? Because when you make "work" a desirable place to be, it is more likely that people will want to be there - and it is no surprise that Googlers willingly work late into the night on projects.
5. Employees reap the rewards of success - Yes, Google pays competitive wages for computer engineers, but it is the stock options that really matter. For those who have been in the company and whose options are vested or near-vested, this means a lot of new multi-millionaires. However, new employees will benefit rom Google's innovative new stock-option plan that potentially increases the value of options for people who missed out on the initial boom.
6. Good ideas win - Google employees are smart - the luxury of being the best is you get to pick the best - and come up with a lot of ideas. If an employee can come up with a sound business case for an idea, whether it is related to his      specific project or not, it will be heard. Executives hold office-hours where employees can make their case for a project, and if they are convincing, resources will be given to develop the idea. One of Google vice-president Marissa Mayer's "Nine Notions of Innovation" is "don't politic, use data."
7. Get the best and the brightest, and keep them - Over the past few years, Google has used its leadership position and reputation for allowing creative freedom to attract some of the legendary minds in the field of computer engineering - including former employees of Amazon, Microsoft, Cisco and several top academics. The company, which has always had a low turnover rate, around 5 percent, is now focusing on retaining high-value employees.

So is Google the perfect organization? Well, there are a few things that they have to be careful of...

1. Balancing business and pleasure - Giving freedom to engineers is a great way to attract talent and spur innovation, but it can't come at a sacrifice to the core business strategy - which is what brings in revenue. There must be a functional balance between what employees want to do and what needs to be done. While Google's willingness to launch beta versions of new products at an alarming pace excites engineers, they need to focus on seeing the larger business implications and the risk to the brand.
2. Managing growth - Google was built on a collegiate model that encourages camaraderie and independent thinking. That is easy when there are only a couple hundred of you, but harder when you are 10,000 strong and growing - in size and location. With growth, comes a need for management, which means bureaucracy, and that flies in the face of the Google culture. Much of the company's success has been based on the fact that they have been more flexible and forward-thinking than its competitors (think Microsoft and Yahoo). Google knows there is power in small teams.
3. Too tied to founders - We have seen it with Nike, H-P, Home Depot and Apple (for a time) - companies that are driven by charismatic individuals with strong personalities often struggle when those people step down. Brin and Page are only in their 30s but who knows what will happen if they get bored, decide to retire to a private island in Tahiti or move on to another start-up. They, in a large part embdy the Google story and culture, and their absence would be a huge loss.

As Fortune admits every year, the Best Places to Work List is a little bit of a chicken and egg situation - are they an employer-of-choice because they are doing well financially or are they doing well financially because they are an employer-of-choice?

For Google (and many of the private companies on the list) it is somewhat of a moot point because they are insulated from short-term pressures to boost shareholder value. However, Google is a numbers-driven company - they even use algorithms in their hiring process - and it is unlikely they would dedicate resources to keep employees happy unless they had data to support the fact it was helping the business.

There is only one Google, and companies should not look to replicate their strategies. The lesson to be learned is that creating a healthy, attractive work environment for employees is an integral part of business strategy. It is not the responsibility of HR, it must start at the top and be driven throughout the company through organizational structure, benefits and compensation and most importantly, strategic communications.

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Technorati Tags: Google, Fortune, Employee, Benefits

Those must be expensive paper clips

Paul Holmes points to an article on Slate that discusses companies who are making some questionable cost-cutting moves such as forcing employees to take vacations (see today's links for more), and limiting color copies.

Then they do something clever...let readers complain about how cheap their organizations are. Most of the complaints revolved around restrictions on office supplies.

The article uses a straw man argument, pointing out how ridiculous it is that a company would restrict the use of paper clips while paying a CEO millions of dollars. Is this argument specious? Yes, but that doesn't matter to employees who are likely to be frustrated by policies that seemed aimed at making their lives more difficult while executives lounge on the company jet.

There will certainly be times when employers need to find ways to cut costs. But whether it is lay-offs or a lock down of the copier machine companies should do several things:

1. Explain why the decision is being made - give numbers when you can
2. Demonstrate how this will benefit the company and individuals - If possible, show that you exhausted other options and this is the most lesser of evils
3. Engage employees in the decision making process if possible - Try to talk to employees about what is important to them and where they think cuts could be made. The ability to demonstrate that you asked for and listened to employees' opinions will give management credibility when tough decisions must be made.

Often, the little things - free donuts, parking spaces, good coffee - matter a lot more than people think. In an age where talented employees are a valuable commodity, organizations should think twice about the cost of needless frugality.

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Technorati Tags: Slate, Holmes, Cheap, CEO

Collaborative innovation at IBM

Great article in today's Chicago Tribune about the results of IBM's InnovationJam.

What is a Jam? In essence, it is a gigantic online brainstorming session. It is a way to gather ideas from thousands of individuals (in these cases, employees) through free-flowing conversations that work toward collective goals. It is modeled after the idea of musicians participating in "jam sessions."

In 2003, IBM successfully used a Jam to reexamine the company's values.

This year's InnovationJam was the company's most ambitious ever, involving 53,000 people in 77 countries and resulted in 37,000 ideas. The jam was conducted at the urging of Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano who said: "There's no hierarchy to this kind of creative collaboration. Whether you're a senior executive, a scientist, a business consultant or even a 13-year-old child of an IBMer, everyone gets to be heard."

According to the article:
" IBM managers then used automation to winnow the 37,000 offerings down to 300 defined ideas. Finally, more than 50 employees came to IBM's Watson Research Center to work in teams for most of a week to further combine and trim ideas to around 30."

IBM has pledged $100 million to support the ideas coming out of the jam. I imagine this is a fraction of their existing  R&D budget.

This is a slightly different tactic than Kraft has taken with its approach to innovation. Kraft is using what is referred to as "open innovation," and accepting ideas from external sources through its Web site.

What does all this mean?

Call it the wisdom of crowds approach to innovation, or crowdsourcing - whatever it is, it is just good business. The rate of innovation needed to stay competitive in the global economy is directly proportional to the rate of replication that currently exists. The idea here is that any edge will be fleeting, so innovation must be constant. The more people you can involve in a system of constructive innovation, the better your odds to produce successes more often.

What this demonstrates is that engaging employees is about far more than boosting moral and reciting the company values, it is about empowering employees to contribute to the advancement of the business.

Is there a risk here? Absolutely. With the IBM jam, 67 clients were allowed to look in on the jam, and competitors could have been looking in on certain aspects to steal or copy. For Kraft, individuals are free to take ideas elsewhere or develop them themselves.

The model here is incredibly similar to the model that I believe most public relations firms should be taking. Use whatever resources you have to aggregate information - technology, employees, etc. - and make your money by doing smarter things with that information than other people do. You will win in three ways:
- Traditional companies will not be open to new information and therefore will have a limited view of problem solving and difficulty finding innovative solutions.
- A more open process helps develop a community around the innovation process that will reduce the risks and boost the possibility of success (while minimizing resource investment.)
- Overall, an increase in information flow makes you more knowledgeable, involved and relevant in the marketplace, giving you a brand advantage.

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Technorati Tags: IBM, Kraft, Innovation

Dunn is Done, Will H-Pers follow the Hurd?

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd made a good move by distancing himself from the leak scandal involving the company's executive board. HOWEVER, that strategy was based on the idea Hurd actually was distanced from the scandal.

Sadly, for both Hurd and HP, it appears that was not the case. News has emerged that Hurd authorized the probe and received a brief on the progress (that he says that he did not read.)

Not suprisingly, the coverage of the situation has focused on the stock price of the company, which dropped five percent after news broke about Hurd's involvement. The organization has released information about its response, Hurd has hired a personal attorney and executives will have testify before Congress next week.

Hurd held a press conference for reporters and analysts, but I wonder whether the transcript was put on the company intranet and made available to employees (as opposed to the Wall Street Journal.)?

This situation is not going to go away quietly, it even has a nifty graphic associated with it.

What is Hurd saying to employees? How does he explain what he has now admitted was a breach of ethical conduct from employees? How does he regain the trust of employees after admitting that some of them were the victims of privacy violations?

We are beyond the "CEO as rockstar" era, but the chief executive is still the face and voice of an organization and no employee wants the company they work for dragged through the mud. Employees' trust in senior management is already at an all-time low, and it is no shock that trust in company leadership is a key driver of employee engagement. This isn't rocket science - people are not willing to work hard for and stick around to help people they don't trust.

Sadly, we live in era where the default assumption is that executive are less than ethical. Hurd has not only made life difficult for managers throughout H-P who now have to address worries from employees about privacy, but he also has employees across the country scrutinizing the actions of their chief executives.

There is going to be a lot of talk about this over the next few weeks - in the media, on Wall Street and most certainly in the halls of H-P. The press conference shows that they are paying attention to the media, the outreach to analysts after the dip on Thursday shows they care about investors.........

The question remains, how are they dealing with employees?

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Technorati Tags: HP, ethics, Hurd

An intern leaves a mark (and it's a black-eye)

When we think about blogging policies for employees, we generally think about guidelines for posts.

However, a recent controversey developing between A-list blogger Jeff Jarvis and a commenter points to the need for communicating policies regarding commenting.

The full story is over at Jarvis' blog, but the summary is that Jarvis has a history ofvoicing his displeasure with Dell, and someone claiming to be a Dell employee left a comment critical of Jarvis. The story takes an interesting turn when it's revealed that the IP address of the commenter, who simply left his name as Chris, did not come from Dell, but instead is from GCI Group, Dell's PR agency. (Yes, they are a competitor of Edelman).

As my boss points out, this is a big no-no, and a blatant violation of the Word-of-mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) Code of Conduct. Naill Cook of H&K also weighs in to condemn the behavior.

What can learn here?

• Chris was likely acting on his own, without direction or approval of his company...but that makes no difference. From now on, this episode will stay on the internet to be Googled and generate discussion on the blogosphere.
• Internet does not equal anonymity. When you post something online (i.e., MySpace, facebook, blogs, etc.) work under the assumption everyone can see it and they can find out who you are
• There will likely be increasing ambiguity about about transparency and disclosure as the line between employee and consumer get blurred. What one may see as a conflict of interest, another may not even consider.(for instance, the e-mail used for this blog is jtreem@gmail.com, my personal e-mail. However, I say at the top of my blog I work for Edelman. Is this enough disclosure? After all, my blog is encouraged, but not financed by my employer. I am open to thoughts here)
• Lastly, the number of employees who have no idea what is appropriate online behavior is startling. What is even more sad is that these discussions do not seem to be occurring within agencies.

Why are engaged employees so important? Because engaged employees see the bigger picture, how they are their actions affect the business as a whole. Because employee behavior, even online and off-the-clock has real consequences.

- The credibility of rank-and-file employees is on the rise
- This generation has more loyalty to peers and less to their employer
- Individuals are consulting online sources more for important decisions

Sadly, we are likely in for a lot more of this type of behavior as individuals look to game the system.

It is critical that organizations generate discussions with employees about these issues. This stuff isn't rocket science, it is about being honest, straightforward and having something relevant to say.

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Technorati Tags: Dell, Jarvis, ethics, comments, GCI
 

Moving away from audiences and embracing communities

Jay Rosen, the brilliant NYU journalism professor, has a must-read post titled "The people formerly known as the Audience"

He sums up his thesis here: "We graduate from wanting media when we want it, to wanting it without the filler, to wanting media to be way better than it is, to publishing and broadcasting ourselves when it meets a need or sounds like fun."

Well Jay, the demise of the audience is not confined to journalism, it is pervasive in all communications.

Why is the idea of audience fading?
Because it is a construct built upon the idea that one is able to exercise control in the constuction and distribution of communications. First off, changes in technology have may that nearly impossible today. Second, now that individuals have the capability to dictate the terms in which they access and consume information, they are less inclined to let others make those decisions for them.

In short, the myth of control is slowly unraveling. This represents a tremendous opportunity for public relations practitioners to serve as facilitators and aggregators, generating healthy conversations that engage communities. That is the skill we will need to develop in order to provide the best counsel to clients.

The post reminded my of a conversation I had (via posts) with Amy Grahan  a while back about the term "target audiences"

I am on a personal crusade to get the public relations industry to move away from the term target audience and instead think about communities of interest.

Last year, while unemployed post-grad-school, I left this reponse to a post by my now boss Richard Edelman:

Mr. Edelman,

This idea of moving beyond "talking points" is a lot similar to the points you made in your July 25 post talking to David Weinberger about changing the vocabulary used in PR. I think there is a big need to move beyond "talking points" and "messaging" and towards as you say, "enabling conversations to forge relationships."

However, I think it is just as important to rethink the idea of "target audiences" in PR. This is a term borrowed from the marketing/advertising world, and is designed for a one-way linear form of communication. PR should strive to "engage communities" and facilitate discussions.

After all:

- Audiences listen, communities talk
- Audiences are passive, communities take action
- Audiences follow set rules; communities create their own rules
- Audiences are bound by time and location; communities are fluid
- Audiences listen to opinion makers, communities cultivate opinions

In the end, much of this discussion is semantics, but it is indicative of a neccessary paradigm shift among PR professionals. In a world where information is available to anyone at anytime, the role of the PR professional shifts from content provider to facilitator, aggregator and distributor.

Keep up the great work on the blog, these are very important conversations to be having. Enjoy the rest of your summer.

Sincerely,
Jeffrey Treem

Other views:
Doc Searls weighs in
Tim Porter argues that audiences are still relevant, but needs to be re-evaluated

Where is your brand built

Mike Manuel gets it right when he says:

"People don't want to engage with brands, they want to engage with the people behind the brands... The people inside a company are its brand and the people outside the company already know this"

I am right with you Mike. Real brand equity comes from an emotional connection, a relationship. We are done with gimmicks and ads. Nowadays we want a real story, we want a human connection, we want something relevant and relatable.

Brand engagement, the holy grail of marketing, begins with engaged employees.