by Sean McCoy (@TheRealMcCoyTRM) The impact of executive leadership on the concept of internal branding is a key issue and something I commented on in one of my very first MarkLives columns, illustrating the principle with the very visible and dynamic example of Richard Branson at work on the Virgin brand and business.
Undoubtedly, it’s an essential starting point to building brand on the inside of the organisation in order to deliver consistently on its external promise.
While the role and contribution of leadership is critical, so too are the function and importance of the extended management team — and line management, very specifically. It is their responsibility in the company to operationalise the internal brand and commitment.
All too often in the corridors of business we have heard of people suggesting that they join great organisations but leave because of lousy managers. The accountability of managers to coach, mentor, guide and encourage is as critical as their responsibility to deliver or produce, but all too often this essential management skill is overlooked — either through short-term task- or performance orientation, fundamentally poor people skills or sheer incompetence, in certain cases.
The tragic legacy of Marikana, and the very many unresolved worker-to-manager issues that emanate, still sharply remind us how critical an issue this is.
Management by wandering around
In the early days of Tom Peters and his work with Robert Waterman, as they went ‘in pursuit of excellence’, one of the basic management tenets was MBWA or management by wandering around, aptly supported by the art of catching someone doing something right and telling them — the simple notion of human acknowledgement and celebration as a means of motivating and drawing the very best out of them.
This skill is practiced by many successful managers today, but arguably there is an acute shortage of it in many quarters, too, possibly through the pressures of the global economic challenge of recent years.
We are, however, missing a superb opportunity to shift this — one need only to look at a typical international engagement measure to see that the bulk of our workforce is totally disengaged or disillusioned to a large degree, and the best-case scenario registers no more that 25% of our people being actively and positively engaged — a frightening statistic when we expect to achieve competitive advantage and strive to meet the many promises our brand makes to the markets that it serves.
Accentuate the positive
Appreciative enquiry is an organisational behaviour construct that simplistically accentuates the positive in people and their behaviour. Some researchers believe that excessive focus on dysfunctions can actually cause them to become worse or fail to become better — the self-fulfilling prophecy, to an extent. In contrast, appreciative enquiry, or AI as it is referred to, argues that when all members of an organisation are motivated to understand and value the most favourable features of its culture, it can make rapid improvements.
This very issue is underpinned by the principle of building on people’s strong points and reinforcing the individual and collective successes of people in a team or business. And this is where line management comes into the picture — what an opportunity!
This inwardly focused principle has external potential, too, and lies at the heart of building a truly brand-aligned organisation.
Reinforcing desired behaviour
The Canadian police force, for example, took this internal paradigm and used it to its advantage, but went further by extending it externally to the public in an attempt to turn behaviours into a positive reinforcement rather than a punitive, negative system. In its case, ‘fines’ were issue in the form of behavioural certificates and a system that allocated positive credits to the driver, reinforcing or celebrating the correct or desired behaviour required of motorists, affecting significant change and progress in the decline of the number of motoring offences recorded in a particular jurisdiction over a sustained period of time.
This may not be a solution to our South African road behaviour dilemma and we likely need a dramatically different type of intervention, but the point is made and the idea is interesting.
It was Margaret Mead who said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Competitive advantage
As we managers and leaders aspire to building competitive advantage through our people, best we understand this and equip ourselves to better mobilise the efforts of our people.
Dr Sean McCoy, MD and founding member of HKLM, is a prominent figure in the branding arena, with his expertise centered on client service, brand strategy and business development. Sean has been chairperson for the Brand Council of South Africa since 2012. He contributes the regular “The Real McCoy” column focusing on internal branding to MarkLives.
— MarkLives’ round-up of top ad and media industry news and opinion in your mailbox every three work days. Sign up here!