Values-Not Just for the Office Wall Plaque Review

Having finally gotten the book published, my next focus was on the book launch.  It was last Thursday, 26th April 2012, and went phenomenally well.  Don’t have the video yet but will post a blog on it once I have it.  In the meantime, this blog is going to focus on the review Richard Curran gave on Sunday, 29th April 2012, in his Inquisitor column in the Sunday Business Post.  Here it is in full:

“Once somebody starts talking about values, you invariably feel like there is a sermon coming.  Once someone talks about corporate values, you expect a speech from somebody at the Wall Street tent village protest.  But a new book by Irial O’Farrell, called Values:Not Just for the Office Wall Plaque, is taking a very different approach. 

The book examines the role of values in a corporation, and how having consistency in what the company does and says is vitally important.  For example, the author does not get into what a company’s values should be, but gets right under the bonnet of examining the impact of saying one thing and doing another.  Some companies actually believe they stand for one thing, but in fact they don’t at all. 

A good example of how to get this right is a company like Ryanair.  It is tremendously successful, but it does not go around preaching about the environment, incredible customer service, and a caring-sharing approach.  The values it appears to espouse are punctuality and value for money.  It says that if you want to travel our way with our rules, we’ll get you there cheaply, safely and on time. 

Other companies which try to espouse public values they think people will want often fall short.  According to O’Farrell, contradictions like that can lead to conflicts between the company management, staff and the customers.  Ryanair may not espouse the greatest set of values imaginable, but it does what it says on the tin, so people don’t mind.  They know what they are signing up for. 

O’Farrell avoids preachy stuff about what a company’s values should be and instead looks at how best to identify values, communicate them inside and outside the organisation, and actually deliver on them.”

Thanks for the review, Richard, much appreciated.

Creating Company Culture

How is “Culture” created within organisations? Well, if we start from the bottom and work our way up, staff look to their bosses and replicate what they see and what they specifically replicate are the “behaviours” that they see, the “how” things are done. This works its way up the food chain and what companies end up with is a company of people behaving in similar ways to the people at the top which, in turn, becomes the “unspoken rules about how we do things around here”, otherwise known as “the culture”. This is great if you’re at the top. You don’t have to figure out the culture, because everyone is going to copy you so your way becomes the culture…or do you? Many executives aren’t aware of either their own behaviours or that their behaviour has a huge impact on the company’s culture. They often don’t get the connection between, for example, the company always being in “fire-fighting” mode and the fact that they never take a step back and look at problems before diving in. So, many of the organisational challenges that companies face are often generated by the company’s culture. So, should executives/small business owners be more aware of their organisation’s culture and their own impact on it? Well, if the culture isn’t causing any negative impacts on the company’s ability to successfully deliver its objectives, I’d like to know the name of the company so that I can invest in it. If the culture is causing unnecessary problems which is impeding the company from being as successful as it could be, then increasing the Executive Team’s individual and collective self-awareness could be the best investment the organisation ever made. What do you think contributes to “company culture”?

The Starting Point of Leadership

Leadership, or the lack thereof, has been receiving a lot of attention over the past year but, let’s face it, it’s a fairly woolly topic.  There’s as many definitions of Leadership as there are people.  Personally, I define leadership as the ability to look forward and clearly see the future you want for your organisation, to communicate this throughout the organisation and to enable people to achieve it.

Of course, notwithstanding differences of opinion, the definition is the easiest part.  How does one actually develop themselves sufficiently to become a Leader?  With a lot of hard work – but, in the meantime, here are three key elements that good leaders develop over time:

Self-Awareness: A good leader has a very honest understanding and appreciation of who they are and what makes them tick.  They are  relatively consistent in both their behaviour and their message and are seldom swayed by the current breeze blowing e.g., they don’t keep changing their minds or take the most expedient route (because it’s easy).

Excellent Communication: Communication is made up of 3 main elements – listening, body language and asking questions.  As the saying goes, a good leader will listen and speak in the same proportion as their mouth and ears i.e., listen twice as much as they speak.  For most people, listening was not a God-given gift so, start practicing your listening skills today.

Combining Self-Awareness and Communication, another aspect of communication is the old chestnut – Actions Speak Louder than Words.  A good leader really understands that people will place way, way, way more emphasis on their actions than what they actually say.  So many Managers seem to think it’s enough to say the words and that people will accept them.  People don’t, they look for the credibility that comes with matching the actions to the words.

Take Time to Reflect: If you’re going to have a vision of the future, it makes sense that you take some time out of the day-to-day and consider what you’re trying to do.  This is not a particularly easy thing to do.  Most people are so busy with the every-day that they don’t have  time to consider the need to step back, let alone do it.

However, it’s important to schedule in time to reflect.  Put it in the diary, go somewhere quiet and start asking yourself questions such as “what am I (we) doing?”, “what am I (we) doing this for?”, “what do I (we) want to be doing?”, “will I (we) achieve that by what I (we) am currently doing?”

Being a leader takes a huge amount of energy and effort, and it can be a lonely place at times, but wouldn’t turning a dream into reality be worth it?  Answers on a postcard, or at least your thoughts in the comments section…

The Thing About Company Culture

I was browsing a discussion board recently and came across a discussion on company culture.  The general gist of one person’s post was that if you can’t feel and touch culture, there’s nothing you can really do about it so get over it and focus on the work. 

No prizes for figuring out that contributor’s “ideal culture” but it got me thinking.  Yes, culture is very woolly and intangible, yet, we can walk into a company and within 5 minutes, we can start to feel its culture (which may or may not match up with the nice Values statement on the wall). 

If I had to define “Culture”, I would define it as “the unspoken rules of how people do things around here”.  It is usually generated from the top down, although within a team or department, a more junior person may have a large impact on the culture (positively or negatively). 

The most concrete evidence that culture exists, though, is how a culture can change with a change in senior management.  One or two personnel changes can make a huge impact and completely change “the unspoken rules”.  I would like to say that the impact of such personnel changes on culture can be either positive or negative in equal measure but experience would indicate that negative cultural changes seem to sweep in and rapidly set up shop while positive cultural changes creep in and are mistrusted until proven.

The Apprentice …

I don’t know about you but I have to admit that I love The Apprentice.  I love the interplay between different people and I’m fascinated by how the different PMs impact the teams, positively or negatively. 

I’ve been a bit disappointed by the current Irish bunch, though.  There have been some really scary PMs – their approach very much of the “do what I say….NOW” school of management.   As I watch, cringing, what runs through my mind is “where do these people pick up that these behaviours are ok?”  Is this what they see from their managers?  Are companies ok with this?

Marketing Mania # 1 – What Exactly Is Marketing?

I became aware of Dublin City Enterprise Board (DCEB) in April 2008, while attending a course.  Through conversation, someone recommended that I check out DCEB, as they have great supports for new businesses.  As well as attending good quality, very reasonably priced training sessions, I also signed up for their mentoring programme.  This programme would asign me a mentor for 10 hours, with the aim to develop my skill gaps. 

For me, I knew my gap was Sales & Marketing.  While I could read books, I wanted to have someone available to me to answer the silly questions that arise when putting new skills into practice.  After attending an interview to determine my suitablity, I was assigned a Marketing guru, who started working with me to identify exactly what Evolution Consulting was all about, how I differed from the competition and how I was going to market the business.

The perceived wisdom is that you don’t sell features, you sell benefits.   Getting my head around the difference between “features” and “benefits” took a while.  I kept thinking I’d sorted out the nuances and then I’d promptly forget them again.  In a chat with Keith Cunningham, at the end of his seminar, he talked about how the shoe-shine boy doesn’t clean all types of shoes (that’s the feature), he gives you self-respect (the benefit); Keith himself doesn’t give 3-hour seminars covering XYZ (feature), he provides hope (benefit).  Having finally grasped the difference, its amazing how few companies actually market their benefits (more than likely, myself included).  Their literature is much more likely to list the features.

So, what exactly is marketing?  To me, marketing is the process of making people aware of your presence and what you can do for them (the benefits).  Marketing is separate to the process of selling and often preceeds it, but they are intertwined.  The message should be clear and consistent throughout, including the sales process.  The different ways of marketing is a story for another day…

Marketing Mania – Overview

While I set my business up in 2006, like many companies, I didn’t really have to do too much marketing.  Fast-forward to 2009 and its a whole different ballgame.  While previous recessions saw the marketing function being dropped like a hot cake, it appears to be holding its own this time round.  Many businesses are recognising that they need to market more than ever.  This time, though, they have many more options that cost a lot less and I’m learning all about them. 

I thought I’d run a series of linked blogs, called Marketing Mania, starting with a high-leevl overview of what I’ve learnt since immersing myself in marketing and then develop each theme into its own bloggette over the next few weeks.  

So, high-level, I’ve learnt about direct marketing (always wondered what that was), scatter-gun approach, ezines, email campagins, networking, branding, PR and advertising, profile building websites and on-line marketing.

My absolute favourite marketing term, though, is “route to market”.  I love, love, love it.  I’ve no idea what it actually means but it doesn’t matter, I just love it.  In fact, since I suspect its a buzz-word that has a very simple explanation behind it, I think I’ll set myself a little challenge – by the time I have finished my Marketing Mania series, I’ll have a definitive explanation.  It shall be my last bloggette. 

I’m off now to start my route-to-market treasure hunt…if you’d like to help me out, please feel free to post your thoughts on it.

Ciao