Going the extra mile is seemingly missing in today’s business world; from a company’s customer support, team meetings, campaigns, and even client calls. We’ve seen examples where companies have taken that extra step to help their customers, thus creating a resounding positive word-of-mouth around that brand. So, why don’t more companies go that extra mile?
Well, this thought came full circle as I read Olivier Blanchard’s post last week about The Function of a Marketing Department. The main point revolved around the responsibility the Marketing department has in cultivating a company’s brand / message. What the lack of going that extra mile really equates to is company culture and the vision they’ve instilled internally.
Company culture is something that needs to be communicated, understood and contagious within the company …. across all departments. As I mentioned in Olivier’s post, you can have an exceptional employee that ‘gets it’, takes the reins of the brand and has the vision …. but all that goes to waste if it’s just that one exceptional person and not the entire company. So unfortunately, communicating your brand message isn’t easily achieved, as there are several roadblocks that are hit:
* The marketing department sees the brand as their territory
* Lack of leadership from the brand architect(s)
* Minimal employee buy-in (lack of morale)
* Conflicting company visions
Looks like the Marketing department has their work cut out for them, eh? First things first, we don’t own the brand …. no one person or department in the company does. What we all do own is the ability to live & breathe the brand in company meetings, training sessions and in our every day communication with our colleagues and customers. No matter who your customers talk to within the company, you should feel confident that they’re receiving the same brand message across the board. To achieve this, you have to represent the brand as a cohesive unit. How does the brand architect or marketing department do this?
* Communicate …. incorporating a culture doesn’t have to be forced. Talk with all departments and build a conversation around the company’s brand strategy and how they all have an equal stake in it.
* Involve …. Activate everyone to get them involved and build upon the culture. Find ways to innovate, make things more efficient. Getting everyone involved will help reinforce positive attitudes and show each and every person that they’re a vital part of the culture.
* Create Cohesion …. This is where the vision starts to take life. Through the communication and involvement, employees understand the vision and are able to go back to their respective departments and build upon the learned culture. Customer Service …. communicate and exude this culture with every customer you touch. Sales …. breathe the culture in your client presentations and meetings. Marketing …. execute the vision in your campaigns, the content you write and the conversations you have with your community.
Now, this is where the hard(er?) part comes in …. commitment. Now, more than ever, is this needed to uphold the culture you’ve created. It’s required, from the entire company, to stay true to the vision and to make sure that the DNA that was instilled within the company stays intact. Easier said than done but what it focuses on is leadership. A leadership team needs to be able to uphold the vision but at the same, make sure that they’re “drinking their own kool-aid” as well. This sets an example for everyone that the company truly believes in the vision and helps ensure a positive morale with employees.
The result.
As I’m sure anyone would love to receive positive word-of-mouth, building a culture that employees believe in will help create the WOM as they’ll be willing to go that extra mile by sending a thank you note to their customers, reaching out to consumers …. where they connect, or by inviting a customer to their local office for a round of Wii Tennis. Whatever it may be, the exceptional support and attentiveness, that extra mile, given to your internal and external customers will shine through, get people talking and leave a positive feeling about your company.
I could go on about company culture but what do you think? How have you instilled a positive culture within your company? What can we add to the list that helps build, or even potentially tear down, a company’s vision?
At Brainstorm we hope to engender just the sort of culture you speak to.
Be it sharing delicious accounts, conducting internal/external listening sessions and project recaps, offering our facilities to clients to work off-site or hold their soccer meetings in our conference rooms, thank you notes, flowers, or even taking in a movie over lunch – we place a premium on knowledge-sharing and connection.
Of course only my customers and colleagues can speak to the relative success of our efforts.
Nice debut article, Sonny!
-Ed
As someone in the leadership role, I completely agree. You have to be able to drink that kool-aid, before having others drink it and actually enjoy it!! This definitely makes me re-examine what I, and my peers who are in leadership roles, need to do to sustain that vision.
Very well-written article. Looking forward to future ones!
Ed,
The vision that Brainstorm has instilled nails this whole concept. One look at your guys’ about page shows that you get it and see the benefit of placing such a high premium on this type of environment and strategy.
Appreciate you sharing that example, Ed – and thank you, glad to be here!
Sonny
I read the Function of the Marketing department and found it so useful that I sent to the marketing manager of my company.
@Aman – Even for those who do it well, continually staying on top of things and re-examining leadership, as well as the vision, will help its growth. Totally on point. Appreciate the comment!
@KJ – That’s fantastic. I felt the same way when I read Olivier’s post. A big point is to followup with your manager and discuss together about things your department and company could benefit from. Thanks for the comment!
A few points to consider before you go down the path of culture creation:
1. You can’t instill a culture on an unsuspecting victim: if it doesn’t exist within the company to begin with – usually emanating from the Founder/CEO and management team – you have to hire it from outside. Then, those employees who choose to stick around realize they need to change to mirror those who are being promoted. This is how cultures get grafted onto existing companies.
2. Enforcement, either through incentives or penalties: once you’ve identified the traits you want in your culture, have brought on visible people that embody your cultural norms and have culled those who can’t adapt, you need to reward those actions (and people) who live them and penalize those actions (and people) who don’t. This usually shows up in the review process, where “cultural” scores provided by formal or informal 360 reviews put some thoroughness to the inherent squishiness of soft metrics.
3. Reinforcement: from the top down, these have to be visible every day. If they’re not – and this is why marketing may own the brand development and measurement process but can’t own the “culture” – and the senior management doesn’t embrace it, it’s gone. No one will follow you, regardless of how high you wave the flag.
Culture is a tricky one. It needs to be a natural process that is constantly touched upon and nurtured. It’s easily killed off, too.
Stephen,
Great points to add to the discussion. It’s definitely a very tricky thing to build from the ground up within a company that doesn’t have it to begin with. I’ve been in that type of setting before and forcing the issue doesn’t positively help the culture or vision.
Appreciate your thoughts!
Sonny – this is an excellent post and certainly very timely. It seems to me that ensuring that the corporate culture is woven into the fabric of everything you do is made even more critical by the difficult economic times.
For one, your employees are on edge. Now more than ever they want to feel connected to something. The only way they feel really connected to their corporate culture is if that culture is being “messaged” from the top-down. Not sure if you did it on purpose, but you did mention communication first, which I think is spot on.
Second, if your employees are antsy about the environment you can probably sure that your customers are as well. If your employees aren’t connecting to the culture, it becomes more difficult for them to portray a positive vibe for the customer, hence leading to customer dissatisfaction and ultimately a potential decrease in sales.
One last thing I was thinking about as I was reading your post…It seems to me that corporate culture is the most important piece of the puzzle. The keystone if you will. Without a strong culture, will your traditional PR, or social marketing, or even your investor relations work the way it should? Probably not.
Anyway, thanks again for the great thoughts!
Sonny, Great first post, but then again I’m not surprised given the author. I’m not sure if I’ve written, blogged or tweeted this next point but it’s this simple: Who’s more an important to an organization and its success? Customers or employees? On the surface it might seem like a simple no-brainer answer, but it’s not.
@Chuck – You’re spot on with your last assessment as the culture being the cornerstone of a company. It shines through and not just through marketing but through all of the business’ strategies. And yes, communication is definitely first for a reason – with any initiative, communicating with your colleagues or clients is vital for its success. Thanks for weighing in!
@Marc – Seems like many companies forget that everything starts from your internal customers. Great point, Marc!
Very interesting article and comments.
My company has 3 main offices – London, New York and Kiev.
When I started our Ukrainian operation 10 years ago the service culture was still very Soviet. Ask for something in a shop and they would say Da or Nyet. But nothing more than that. There was no “I’m sorry, try –” or “One moment, I’ll find out–”
You may think getting people to be pleasant or sociable is hardly going the extra mile. But in those post Perestroika days smiling on the street made you highly suspect.
Similarly, management style to motivate staff was to fine them. If a member of staff didn’t deliver – given a delivery date meant anything …. they lost a week’s pay. There was no culture of personal responsibility, let alone taking pleasure in making sure things worked on time.
Ten years on its starting to be a little different. Certainly people smile on the street, and a retail assistant will try a little harder. But going the extra mile, persistently, continuously, is not main stream culture.
In my own company I’m pleased to say we are achieving it a lot of the time.
We don’t fine people, nor do we pay bonuses.
We’re not a large company so we have regular meetings discussing projects, customers, the company finances. Skype video helps this a lot.
I think our people work so hard because profit is not our primary goal; although capitalism is alive and well our primary goal is to enjoy what we do, and become expert in it. And, a big and, we only work with clients we like and respect.
Additionally, we keep things simple. With several languages to cope with (English is as different to American as Ukrainian is to Russian) we have to; especially as our business is expert and technical (web and sofware development). So we avoid management speak and marketing speak and techno babble. Then we all have clear understanding.
Someone once said to me you need excellence to win a client, and you need to go the extra mile to keep them. I think this is true.
We work to make enough money sufficient for our corporate needs; this generally means we are not over-reliant for income from any one customer and so we’re not afraid to fire an unreasonable client.
Consequently we work in an atmosphere of openness and mutual respect. Working this way, when we need to go the extra mile it’s a given that we will …. because it is a pleasure to do so.
Cordially,
Derek Mansfield