Ms. Kotchka, 29-year P&G veteran and wonder woman of the Consumer Packaged Goods world, discussed how her primary task at Procter & Gamble is to “build design into P&G’s DNA,” and how that has involved changing the mindset at the venerable company from one that focused on the quality of the products to packaging aesthetics as well.
“You need to fuse meaning and pleasure with function,” she stated. The article adds, “Kotchka said she is gradually succeeding across the company by transforming the culture inside P&G to understand and embrace the value of design.”
As we all know, it isn’t easy to change a culture that has long been ingrained with doing business differently. It’s interesting to note how Ms. Kotchka has been orienting the company to achieve these goals. “At P&G, we want to build design into the front end of innovation,” she told her Fuse audience. The question is, how has she gone about accomplishing this?
* Reorienting work spaces to better inspire and create a collaborative environment.
* Encouraging management executives to interface with designers while researching consumers at retail or within their home environments. Better still: by teaching senior executives to think in design terms.
Remember we discussed the need for business to integrate its left-brain analytical thinking with more right brain creative problem solving capabilities of the designer–P&G presents us with a major CPG company that is clearly investing in this new business model!
* Developing an external design board, and directing internal P&G teams to interface with the customers directly three times per year to discuss marketplace products.
* Educating designers in basic business tenets so they can talk the talk with their executive counterparts and establish credibility with them.
* Teaching design principals to cross-functional department heads–the latter are now beginning to understand the core value design brings to their products.
Ms. Kotchka ended her address by telling her audience that while P&G hasn’t gotten where it wants to go, “We are much more inclusive in how we incorporate design into business strategy, and we are bringing our multi-disciplinary functions together.”
If the goal is to be more responsive to the consumer’s needs by offering better, more desirable products, isn’t that what every business should strive to do?

Marketing, unlike a job in manufacturing, seems to be one function suitable for telework. Is this a positive or negative trend for marketers?

A recent Wall Street Journal article titled, “When Working at Home Doesn’t Work: How Companies Comfort Telecommuters,” (August 28, 2006) mentions full-time employees who work from home at least one day a month rose 30% to 9.9 million between 2004 and 2005.

While the benefits of working from home include flexible scheduling and drastically reduced commuting costs, some interviewed workers in the WSJ article complained of boredom, lack of social interaction, and the curse of decreased “visibility” among management–which in turn could affect future promotions.

In previous positions, I was a long time teleworker, having worked for two global consultancies. Many of my friends and colleagues in the corporate office were amazed a marketing professional could work remote and still get results. Other colleagues were brave enough to admit if they worked from home, they’d never get anything done.

Telework isn’t for everyone, and certainly not for every position in marketing. However, if you are considering a marketing position that includes some or 100 percent telework, I’ve found 5 strategies (there may be more) that contribute to success:

1) Stay visible. A key challenge for any teleworker is to stay on the radar screen of your fellow employees and senior managers. It’s important to attach yourself to high visibility projects whenever possible. The more you contribute to high profile work, and have your name attached to such work, the less chance you have of becoming an after thought.

2) Speak up. If your team is mostly at corporate headquarters and you are the lone ranger on the phone, it pays to be active in the conversation. Your colleagues and manager need to know you are contributing to the discussion.

3) Visit headquarters. Travel budget permitting, try and visit company headquarters every 4-6 weeks. Make the most of your time at HQ by setting up as many meetings as possible with colleagues and managers.

4) Keep distractions to a minimum. A home office should be more office than home. Having your own office where you can close the door and work is critical to success. Kids and spouses need to be respectful of noise levels and interruptions.

5) The phone is your friend. For teleworkers, it is easy to get caught up in using email as a primary communications vehicle. Use the phone to respond to requests that would require a long email response. Also use the phone to touch base weekly with your fellow colleagues and managers.

The Wall Street Journal article mentions other strategies to replace daily interactions of the office environment, including joining social and business networking groups to increase face-to-face interactions, and using instant messaging programs to facilitate near real-time conversations.

Telework can be an effective option for many marketers, and I’ve seen many more companies becoming comfortable with the idea of “virtual” employees.

Can marketing executives be successful in a telework environment? Is it possible to be promoted as a “virtual” worker? I’m interested in what you think!
tag: telecommuting