Leadership Weekly Digest

LWD 2010WK40 – On Culture, Brand & Branson

About ‘Leadership Weekly Digest’ (LWD): The goal of this weekly newsletter is to highlight quality articles from the past week –in a condensed format– that discuss leadership, with a focus on employee engagement. Much of the content comes from those we follow on Twitter, and members of the Employee Engagement Network.

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Brand Is Culture, Culture Is Brand by William Taylor

In July, LWD featured a debate between Fast Company’s William Taylor and Nick Corcodilos on the value of the human resources (HR) function, which then spilled over into a discussion on this blog. HR took quite a beating from Mr. Corcodilos, who indicated that HR “needs to be invented.”

Mr. Taylor’s new post may indicate a direction that this re-invention could take, which focuses on the link between brand (think of the marketing function) and culture (HR).

That’s what helps you stand out among your customers, and stand out from the crowd in a hyper-competitive marketplace. The new “power couple” inside the best companies, I concluded, was an iron-clad partnership between marketing leadership and HR leadership. Your brand is your culture, your culture is your brand.

While I dislike the choice of ‘power couple’ to make his point, as it seems to easy to substitute ‘fad’, I do like the concept of a stronger interaction between these two functions. Both (strategic) HR and Marketing specialize in human behaviour, but their focus is internal and external respectively. It is only natural that they collaborate on improving the employee-customer interaction, which so important to a strong brand.

Taylor cites one company that has actually taken the step to merge the two functions under the same executive (Corner Bank) with the following benefits:

“Our people are our best marketing tool,” [SVP HR & Marketing] Jana [Dobbs] explained. “Advertising is important, the design of the Web site is important, but if customers have a positive experience every time they come into the bank, that’s what builds our reputation.”

Taylor goes on to detail more concrete examples of the brand-culture-brand linkage at USAA, a major insurer of U.S. servicemen, veterans and their families. In this case there is an institutional focus on creating empathy for the clients so they can “learn is to empathize with and see the world through the eyes of a soldier on active duty”. This approach has contributed to USAA blowing away their competitors in customer loyalty rankings. Read Taylor’s post for more detail on USAA’s approach.

I don’t think Taylor’s intent was to promote the idea that HR and Marketing be combined, but it does make for an interesting suggestion for anyone thinking that HR may need an overhaul. I hope Mr. Corcodilos decides to weigh in!

Richard Branson: Five Questions on Business Philosophy @ Entrepreneur.com

Richard Branson says these are the questions he is asked most often in his travels. I think he is fibbing. I mean, where are goodies like “Do you actually condone sex on your airplanes?“. Well, these are the 5 he chose to answer:

What is the best advice you ever got? Answer: He actually chose two from his mom, and 1 from Freddie Laker: a) Never look back in regret, move on, b) Openly criticizing people reflects badly on your own character, and c) You’ll never have the advertising power to outsell British Airways. You are going to have to get out there and use yourself. Make a fool of yourself. Otherwise you won’t survive. [Which ones do you think were his mom? -ed.]

What is the worst advice you ever got? A: He always sought advice on important issues from multiple sources, so he felt there was no such thing as bad advice, just bad ‘angles’.

What advice would you give to young entrepreneurs on how best to start? A: “To remember that it is impossible to run a business without taking risks… You really do have to believe in what you are doing. Devote yourself to it 100 percent and be prepared to take a few hits along the way.

In your career you have had lots of successes, but you have failed in some businesses. What have you learned from those? A: “Though I believe in taking risks, I also firmly believe in “protecting the downside.” This means working out in advance all the things that could go wrong and making sure you have all those eventualities covered.”

Do you have any regrets? A: True to his answer in #1, he doesn’t like to dwell, but to move on. But if pressed, he admits that just missing out on the deal to run the UK’s national lottery, sits at the top of his business regret list.

A selection of our recent posts:

LWD 2010WK39 – Do You Prefer Your Science Hard- or Soft-boiled?

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Physics, psychology, and ‘management science’, pretty much cover the full spectrum from the ‘hard’ to the ‘soft’ sciences. Engineering usually tries to find application for the ‘hard’ sciences, but this engineer isn’t a hard-science bigot, I use what works! I mean, who can ignore a study that finds “Men without money desire heavier women than are desired by wealthy men”; someone has to find a practical application for this research! Now seriously…

The Biology of Business: Homo Administrans @ The Economist

I am not sure why The Economist doesn’t identify their authors. It may be to avoid losing their best writers to the competition, or that they want to be seen as some kind of all-knowing borg; I think it is the latter.

What hard science can be found within the often foggy field of ‘management science’? This article highlights the work of several biologists that are applying hard science to delve into things that you might care about:

If you want happier employees, you might want to start off by hiring happier people.
People with low levels of the hormone cortisol will be less interested in deferred compensation.
Oxytocin, a neurotransmitter, plays a role in building trust.
There are genetic predispositions to the fields we choose, particularly within the creative arts and physical sciences [ironically 'soft' and 'hard' -ed.]
The greater the mismatch between testosterone and status, the less effectively a group’s members co-operate.
Around 40% of the variation between people’s incomes is attributable to genetics.
The role that testosterone can play in the sales process.

Before you ask us for a blood sample kit to put this new knowledge to use, consider that this is pretty new stuff, and there are already laws that ban the use of genetic information in job recruitment. Researchers cited also admit that they are dealing in averages and trends, which is hard to apply to individuals.

I recommend this very well-researched and interesting article, which provides hope for those who want to see a more rigorous ‘hard science’ approach to topics important to managers. Thanks to Phil for passing this along.

Revenge of the Introvert by Laurie Helgoe

We often make the mistake of associating shyness with introversion. Shy extroverts exist, as do ‘outgoing’ introverts, and this article helps us better understand this dynamic. Probably my favourite part was a ‘sub-article’, that very accurately portrayed the internal monolog that occurs when you ask an introvert the apparently rhetorical question ‘How are you?’. As an ‘outgoing introvert’ I found this portrayal both accurate and funny:

Good? That’s not quite right. I really have had a pretty crummy day, but there isn’t a quick way to explain that… I hate that we so often just say ‘good’ because that’s the convention. The other person doesn’t really want to know… While the introvert is evaluating the question on at least two levels (how she is feeling and what she thinks about the question, perhaps also what this says about our society), the speaker is already moving on to sharing something about his day. [Been there! -ed.]

When physicists do hard science, their instrument of choice is the super-collider, for those studying human psychology they defer to twin studies, or more recently, the brain scan.

In our very extroversion-oriented western society, introverted behaviour is often marginalized because those behaviours get misconstrued as ’antisocial’, passive, or not ‘team-oriented’. Scans of the electrical behaviour and blood flow in the brain show increased activity in the introvert’s frontal cortex and Broca’s area. These areas are used to perform remembering, planning, decision making, problem solving, and speech production. These areas were more active in introverts than in extroverts, both during challenging cognitive tasks and at rest. Researchers observing this trend propose that introverts limit input from the environment in order to maintain an optimal level of arousal. Extraverts, on the other hand, seek out external stimulation to get their brain juices flowing. So while western society frowns on the introverts tendency to withdraw, the introvert does not do this to limit their contribution, but to increase its effectiveness; keep this in mind the next time you hold a brainstorming session.

If you are also an introvert, I recommend this article to get to know yourself better. For managers, this is a must read to understand the introverts in our midst (especially if you are an extrovert)!