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Will Your Customers Define Your Brand or Will You?

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(Updated in 2020)

Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash

10-Point Plan: Build a Brand Values Baseline

Live Your Brand

Before the Internet, when we were silently niched by geographic markets the conversation with customers was one way. We wrote, televised, advertised to them. Then they read, watched, or saw our message and formed their ideas of what those messages said.

Customers decided who we are from the messages we sent.

When the Internet opened up the two-way conversation began. Now we’re finding more and better ways to listen talk, and interact with customers directly. We’re talking on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and social sites we make just for them.

Don’t miss the opportunity in how the social business web has changed brands.

This shift in the way we interact with our customers has a significant impact on the theory of how a brand is born and who determines the character of a brand. We now have a huge opportunity to demonstrate our brand values as we claim them.

We can now define our brand with much more clarity and control than before because we can include our customers as we do. In that way we have a huge opportunity to take our brands where we want them to be. Here’s how to take advantage of this new branding power …

  • Define the core values that your brand represents.
  • Communicate that set of core values — a brand values baseline — to everyone you work with and for.
  • Check every business decision against that values baseline.
  • Celebrate and reward anyone who demonstrates your brand’s values.
  • Choose evangelists who share those values and encourage them to share their ideas.

Live your values and you’ll attract the people to your brand who value what you do. Ask the people who are doing the work what would just one thing. As your heroes and champions get more interested in the values that underpin your business, so will the people who look up to them.

A single meeting with the heroes and champions who love what you do can bring out the best in your brand in less time than a whole team from a huge consulting firm.

Have you found the way to define your brand or are you letting your customers do all of that for you?

Related
To follow the entire series: Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

Be Irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

How Do You Recognize and Attract Heroes and Champions for Your Brand?

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(Updated in 2020)

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

10-Point Plan: Enlisting Heroes and Champions

Those Who Are Waiting to Lead

Finding the heroes and champions who already love what you do. It seems every time I give a presentation about growing business and social business a few CEOs and business owners find me to talk. They want to know to get started raising a barn — a vibrant internal community of fans focused on growing their business — rather than building a coliseum — a huge endeavor that employees work on for them. They want to use social tools to connect all of the people — employees, vendors, partners, and customers — who might have ideas and insights that will help their business thrive.

The first question is how to find and attract those heroes and champions.

How Does a Business Identify Heroes and Champions?

Last week, I wrote about assessing and benchmarking the community with two informal tools that allow people to offer their opinions on the state of things. The second tool, a sociogram, is often used in education settings to determine social networks and influencer hierarchies. It’s a gem of a tool for finding out who already has influence within a group.

To find the heroes and champions of the change toward a stronger community look to the sociogram to find the people who were chosen most often as

  • people others would ask to teach them something new. (training stars)
  • people others would invite to attend or a gathering of your friends. (social stars)
  • people others would ask to offer you a recommendation on the quality of their work. (leadership stars)
  • people others would ask to to do all three. (influence stars)
  • Identify and enlist a core team of champions to lead the quest.

It easy to see how these four groups, particularly the last would be the people that your team and your community look to for answers, advice, and how to evaluate and navigate change.

So it follows naturally that the people who scored highest in these groups might be the first team of heroes and champions that we bring together to talk about the brand values they believe in and those that are the new mission.

Look for the Leaders You Already Know

Attracting and enlisting these heroes can be natural and easy if we really are set on raising on barn, not building a coliseum. We lay out the vision clearly, explaining the goal and the rewards of getting to it.

We’re going to build a business that will make work easier, faster, and more meaningful for us and the people who work with us. AND We’ll do it by aligning our goals and building something that none of us could ever build alone.

Are you in? What skills do each of you bring? What are the minimum processes and rules we need to keep honest, respectful communication? What problems do you see? How might we solve them before they begin? How can we best bring this message back to the rest of the team?

Yet people can respond to a clear vision for many reasons. Some are drawn to the work. Some come for personal reasons. Some come to build something they can’t build alone. Some may come because they seek approval and attention.

Look for those who show leadership qualities of their own.

  • Competence and core values – champions who love your business understand what moves the business you’re in. They add insight into how to bring the vision to life. They have integrity, are trustworthy, and respect others. They are examples of intelligence and heart.
  • Positive energy – heroes and champions bring out the best in others. They have the energy to invest in big ideas with a spirit of inclusion, gratitude, and generosity. Curiosity fuels their solutions, inviting ideas from all sources.
  • Strength of character– leaders who can carry a vision have a strength of conviction, no matter the power of their role or position.

Before you try to create brand evangelists why not reach out the ones you already know? As you look for the people you would call heroes and champions, you’ll find they’re connected to others who are much like themselves. Invite just a few to a meeting and begin planning a barn together.

How do you recognize the brand evangelists you already know?

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss – Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

Be Irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Jack Welch on Candor and Liz Strauss on High-Trust Culture

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Lack of Candor Is a Killer

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Right at the top of the interview with Jack Welch (former Chairman and Chief Executive of GE) at the World Business forum, he spoke about leadership in many ways. The most interesting to me was his conversation about his famous policy of “Rank and Yank.”

When Jack first took over GE in 1981, America was facing high unemployment and high inflation. GE had 178 people in strategic positions and 3 business showing losses for 20 years. Welch became known as “Neutron Jack” because of the tens of thousands of positions he cut. But that single campaign left the company and the remaining employees with a streamlined organization prepared for future growth.

Hard choices and candor were his management tools. Welch is passionate and straightforward about candor in business. “I would call lack of candor the biggest little dirty secret in business, ” Welch says in his book, Winning. It “basically blockes smart ideas, fast action, and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got. It’s a killer.” Jack’s deifnition of the difference between candor and abrasiveness is the corporate level from which the words are said. From higher up it’s candor, from lower levels it’s called abrasiveness.

I agree with Jack, nothing can break down trust (and build fear) more than lack of candor — inconsistent truth. People get fired when no one has said a word to them about their performance being less than it might be to be “great.” Then they wonder why no one told them the truth.

At GE, Jack held his managers to a policy of Rank and Yank — that every manager had to rank his or her employees and fire the bottom 10% once a year. When speaking on that at the WBF, Jack Welch seemed to have moved from firing those who might improve to retraining them. In this one minute interview, Jack explains who to keep and retrain and who to let go.

Here’s another one-minute interview with Jack on integrity, learning, and mentorship.

At the World Business Forum, Jack was clear and cogent on what makes a winning team. “You get the right players in the right positions and you will win.” Jack spoke of mentors and leaders and managing from the top, at one point delivering my favorite quote of the two-event.

“Fear as a management tool is dead.”

Jack and I are so aligned in that single statement.

How to Build a High Trust Culture

Fear cannot exist in the same space as trust. Here are a few of my best practices on how to wipe fear out of your organization. Ironically, in this grassroots social business world, developing a high trust culture a process that builds its roots from the to.

  • Leaders build a values system that resonates with everyone who helps the business thrive. This happens when leaders let go titles to be human, get their hands dirty, and invest their hearts as well as their heads outside of themselves — the higher cause of the business.
  • Incorporated core human values into your value proposition. Repeat both the same sentence every time you speak — to every audience.
  • Talk, walk, and live the truth online and offline, inside and outside the company. Trust is the hard truth spoken gently. Leaders are charged with defining the reality under which we serve the cause. Make it easy to see, hear, and understand what is valued and what is not.
  • Invite ideas and diverse thinking. Explore those ideas and thoughts that are different from our own.
  • Celebrate and reward people who live the values as well as the performance goals of the company.
  • Invite people outside the business who exemplify the same values and performance ideals to participate, engage in, learn from, and add to the culture and community you’re building.

Watching Jack it’s easy to see that the world is his natural habitat. He lives his values and feels no need to apologize for what he believes. He knows his losses, learns from them, and makes them part of his repertoire of strengths. It’s a irresistible combination of humanity and leadership.

And that sort of candor is easy to trust.

How will you contribute to building a culture of candor and trust in any business or any size?

You’ll find Jack as @Jack_Welch on Twitter — He does his own tweeting.
Read more about the World Business Forum 2010 at WBFNY.com and WBFNY-bloggershub

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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How Will You Find Out Whether Your Community Is Bored, Broken, or Inspired to Take on the World?

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(Updated in 2020)

10-POINT PLAN: Assessing and Setting a Benchmark

Finding Out Before You Start

Ever asked someone to change something she’s been doing for years? It’s not the easiest endeavor. Even when we hate what we’re doing it’s become comfortable to us. For some people in some circumstances, it might even be part of our identity. Change is heady stuff.

No matter the value of the reward. It comes with the thought, “maybe the situation I’m leaving is somehow better. I wonder …”

One way to overcome the psychology of change is to measure.

Measurement proves to the people involved that the change is providing the progress that was promised, even when the progress only feels like work.

But before we can measure progress, we have know where we are when we start.

How to Benchmark Who’s Bored, Who’s Broken and Who’s Inspired to Take on the World

It’s an art and a science to gather the people who help our businesses thrive into a true community.

A community isn’t built or befriended. It’s connected by offering and accepting.
Community is affinity, identity, and kinship that make room for ideas, thoughts, and solutions.
Wherever a community gathers, we aspire and inspire each other intentionally . . . And our words shine with authenticity.

How do we know whether any of this is truly happening? How do might we benchmark our community connections before we start moving forward?

Evaluating Individual Relationships

A few years ago, Gallup came up with the q12, a 12 question survey to measure employee engagement. Though they were intended for employees, they work well for any person, any barn raiser involved in creating a working community — employee, manager, vendor, partner, customer, friend of the business. Here they are:

  1. Do you know what is expected of you at work?
  2. Do you have the materials and equipment you need to do your work right?
  3. At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
  4. In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?
  5. Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
  6. Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
  7. At work, do your opinions seem to count?
  8. Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
  9. Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?
  10. Do you have a best friend at work?
  11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
  12. In the last year, have you had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

In the Q12 test it becomes easier to see which points of performance are being frustrated by resources and which are being frustrated by personnel issues.

Evaluating Social Relationships and Networks

When the q12 is paired with a simple informal social test called a sociogram, we can lay out an important picture. A sociogram points out channels of influence, communication, and interaction. Simple questions such as

  • Which person would you ask to teach you something new?
  • Which person would you ask to attend or a gathering of your friends?
  • Which person would you want to offer you a recommendation on the quality of your work?

Those choice that receive many choices are stars. Those who receive none are isolates. Groups who mutually choose each other have formed cliques.

Whether we’re working with few freelancers, a team, or a corporation having firm idea of where we stand before we move forward is ideal. If we find someone from outside the system — someone who looks something like me, easy to talk with and sure to keep thing confidential, we can learn by using these two two sets of questions how people feel about the community that is forming. We’ll draw an idea of how bored, broken or inspired the community might be.We’ll be well on our way to pick out the champions who can pick up the tools and begin building new things with us.

They will raise a barn, not work away as they build our coliseum.

What are you doing to find out whether your community is bored, broken, or inspired to take on the world?

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

3 Ways Leaders Demonstrate Commitment and Intentionally Build Community

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10-POINT PLAN: Negotiate a Commitment from Leadership

Inside the Business, Leaders Are the First Brand Ambassadors

You can’t move on the social web without hearing about building communities. Social media jobs are still filled with positions for community managers. It’s true that now, more than ever, having a loyal base of brand ambassadors is a key to visibility, trust, attention, reputation, position in the marketplace — all of which are critical to a solid, growing company.

The conversation and the new positions hardly mean anything if the people talking and hiring don’t deeply understand and invest in the people who are building, being, and branding that community.

It’s about people, people. Instead of thinking about the corporation as an amorphous entity, executives need to remember the individuals at the heart of every organization. Ok, so it’s not exactly an earth-shattering insight, but it’s a sign of how far we’ve drifted that people’s health, hopes, insights, and talents have come to be seen as mere grist for the grinding wheels of capitalism. –Helen Walters, It’s about People, People, Bloomsberg Business Week

On his blog, Doc Searls said this about how business is doing. It was part of an interview with Shel Israel.

In the original website version of Cluetrain, Chris Locke wrote, “we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers and our reach exceeds your grasp. deal with it.”

Recognizing a situation and dealing with it, however are two different things. The “dealing” has barely begun.

Maybe there’s a reason that the best known experts at community building seem to come from solo practices and smaller firms where those self-same experts have been both the leadership and the hands-on people doing the community building.

Because the first and possibly most critical step “dealing with it” — establishing community over transaction” is to negotiate a commitment from leadership.

3 Ways Leaders Demonstrate Commitment and Intentionally Build Community

A conversation from a time in my publishing career.

Editor: “Do you ever want to be president of the company.”
ME: “No.”
Editor: “Why not?”
ME: “Because I don’t want everyone to be discussing what mood I’m in every morning.”

Whether it’s a dynasty, a corporation, a project team, or a two-person operation, the person who controls the finances and the paychecks gets a lot of attention and approval controls. With that power of position comes the responsibility to the health and vibrancy of the organization. That responsibility cannot be delegated, because everyone looks to that position to see which behaviors are modeled, supported, and rewarded.

The emperor sets the culture.

It also makes clear sense that to inspire fans, you have to be one. Know what you love bring it with to ignite the community fire.

Build the first fire under the folks who set the culture. Their behavior will telegraph and prove whether the community you’re offering has a chance to grow and thrive.

The Role of Leaders in Lighting the Fire

Whether we start a community initiative with a team, a department, a corporation, or a company of five — the role that the highest leader takes in the process will have a tangible effect on speed and depth with which a community forms. Leaders who demonstrate commitment and intentionally invest in building community offer living proof that the business believes is there for internal customers.

The people becoming a newly forming community want to know they’re investing in something real and lasting. Based on past promises and experiences, they will mete out and measure the depth of their own commitment by the commitment they see offered by loyal leadership. Leaders who show up — not to run the show — but ready to learn, participate, and work as colleagues and partners are irresistibly attractive. They add credibility, power, and meaning to the idea of community.

Leaders live values-based leadership by finding every opportunity to build a high-trust environment. Here are a few ways that leaders can help build an environment where community can take form, thrive and grow.

  1. Leaders announce their intention to participate. The most important sign that a new loyal community group relies upon is the public words and actions of the “guys” at the top. If we want loyal fans to invest in us, we have to invest in them. Leaders talk about their commitment to the community. They say it out loud and often. They also say how and why. They demonstrate that commitment by making specific promises about observable behaviors and keep them. A simple promise to refocus the role of leader to advocate for internal customers as heroes and one way of doing that is enough to start the community investing.
  2. Leaders come out of their office. An open door isn’t enough. The “open door” policy is a myth. An open door expects the less powerful to interrupt the work of leadership. Community grows where the people spend their time. Loyalty is a relationship built on communication, compassion, competency and consistency. Leaders who are committed to building a loyal community invite a two-way relationship. They demonstrate that commitment becoming friendly, familiar faces — ready to listen, help, and solve problems — in the places where people actually do the work. They see their role as service to the internal customers who help the company thrive.
  3. Leaders are learners and schedule time for it. They reach out to heroes in the business to gather ideas and information. They schedule time to learn more about what makes people good at what they do. They demonstrate their commitment by asking more questions than they have answers and by dedicating a consistent block of time on the calendar — 5 – 10 hours a month — learning from their internal customers what motivates them and how to help the community thrive.

Leaders who see the value of an internal community of loyal fans understand their role and responsibility in helping that community thrive. They make a great place to work and they let employees help define what that is. They establish systems that protect and manage the environment so that folks can work without worrying.

Leaders model and reward high-trust behaviors that bring out the best in others. They admit their own mistakes, speak with care, and share information because they value and respect the people who work with them. Even more they plan and provide opportunities every one in the community to grow, knowing that growing community members mean a growing community that thrives.

How to negotiate these points with leadership?

Be a leader and a fan yourself. Be willing to start small and prove how performance can rise when people are truly engaged in what they’re doing. And remind leadership of the 7 Reasons Why Investing in an Internal Community Makes Solid Business Sense that I wrote about last week.

What examples of great leadership promoting an internal community can you offer?

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

How Do You Influence Yourself?

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Why I Start SOBCon with the Litany Against Fear

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At SOBCon2010 this year, we had a top-notch agenda and a brilliant audience attending … and about 25 more people than before. The format was new one and the sponsors — intuit, Allstate, IZEA, and ReneNews were involved in the planning as never before. At SOBCon Colorado, we were facing an entirely new venue and most of the people attending were new to the event.

In both cases, we were set on delivering an irresistible experience that is SOBCon. Key and central to the central to the SOBCon experience is a high-trust environment. The more quickly we establish that, the more everyone would get from the entire experience. I thought about that long and hard. The question was …

How do we get an audience to let down their defenses when they’re in a room of strangers? How do we bring them into the room and let them know they don’t need a safety net? How do we establish that trust?

We do it many ways … Terry sings. I begin with the the Litany Against Fear.

Fear-Less and Influence Yourself First

In 1965, Frank Herbert wrote DUNE, the first in his acclaimed series of science fiction books. Early in the story the young, Paul Atredies was asked to hold his hand in box where he would feel excruciating nerve pain. If he removed his hand, he would die. He survived by reciting the Litany Against Fear.

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I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain –Dune, Frank Herbert, (Wikipedia)

When Paul removes his hand from the box is whole, but he is without fear … Fear- Less.

Trust cannot exist in the same space as fear.

I use the litany for many reasons.

  • to offer the idea that trust is a choice.
  • to suggest that if we can’t trust ourselves, how can we think we will trust each other?

    • and most important to influence myself …

  • to set aside my own fear publicly and be ready to trust myself.

Influence is a powerful stuff. What if we influence ourselves first?

How do you influence yourself?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

I’m a proud affiliate of

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