Successful Blog

The 10 Point Plan to Build an Internal Community of Brand Loyal Fans

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(Updated in 2020)

Community Starts at Home

During my years in publishing, I was a serial community builder. It seems that every job I took included “rebuild the department, refocus the vision” in the role. I’m fairly certain that those two challenges are what attracted me.

Even as a teenager, explaining the quest, translating the context, and helping folks bring their best to what they’re doing has been my natural response. I’ve always done that. Not that I’ve always done it well. Still the failures and successes of the past have taught me what moves people to trust in a vision and to join in to build something they couldn’t build alone.

So I was the one they hired

  • to rebuild the company and the strategy for growth six months after the company had laid off 40% of the previous employees.
  • to re-establish the department identity when it had grown too quickly and lost its role within the organizational process.
  • to build a cross functional team that could function with professional ease and confidence from a crew of new hires when the start up started growing.
  • to establish a winning brand and a high performance product / marketing team from a single product offer and a squad of contract workers
  • to lead an ad hoc SWAT team of 60 professionals to reconceive and bring to market a product in crisis (in 1/6 the time originally budgeted for development.)

Every one of those jobs was the best job of my life while I was doing it, because we built teams that made outstanding things happen. Who doesn’t want to work with people who are “in with both feet,” working at their best level, and having fun?

The 10-Point Plan to Build an Internal Community of Brand Loyal Fans

Now I’m working with two new clients that very topic close to my heart and my business. Both are asking how they might get their teams to “raise a barn” rather than “build a coliseum.” Both companies want a to build an internal community of brand evangelists the expands from team to team, from department to department that will spread from inside to outside their company’s “walls.”

We’re going to use traditional interviews, a social tool called a “histogram,” and tested, collaborative instructional design to build an internal community of brand loyal fans. Here’s a 10-Point Plan to build an internal community of brand loyal fans. It’s exciting to offer a program and a process that grew out of the of the working model we use every year at SOBCon.

  1. Articulate a clearly defined vision.
  2. Negotiate a leadership commitment to live that vision.
  3. Assess and benchmark the current status.
  4. Identify and enlist a core team of champions to lead the quest.
  5. Build a brand values baseline by gathering the values that drive the brand.
  6. Challenge the brand teams to condense and clarify the brand values baseline by talking them through with stakeholder and bring back less than 7 words.
  7. Align your brand values with your brand value proposition
  8. Engage the brand teams in identifying and collecting cultural stories, signs, and rituals that exemplify the values of the brand values baseline.
  9. Move the process outward training teams in — a leadership team that focuses on departmental quality and performance and communications through persuasion.
  10. Exhibit leadership commitment by investing regular time and resources to ongoing collaborative brand values conversations to build decision models, communication models, and performance / hiring standards that align with the brand values baseline.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about each step in the process. We will explore what each step is; why it’s important; how to put it into action; and how to know whether it’s working in the way you intended. Then we’ll talk about how to connect that internal community to the community of customers, partners, and vendors who help your business grow from outside.

Any questions?

READ the Whole 10-Point Plan Series: On the Successful Series Page.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

Uncertainty is Expensive!

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by Patty Azzarello

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uncertainty-is-expensive

Hidden Expense…

Uncertainty is a huge hidden expense in your business.

There’s the obvious expense of work not getting done — as uncertainty causes people waiting for decisions instead of working. But the more damaging and expensive side of uncertainty is the work that gets done the wrong way.

The wrong work

Unresolved strategic issues, don’t just stay in the board room until you finally get them answered.
Every unanswered strategic question leaves legions of people in your organization, less productive and more expensive than they would be with clear direction.

It’s the inconsistent work that comes from everyone taking their best guess while waiting for the strategy from above, that is expensive.

As a leader one of your biggest responsibilities is to remove uncertainty.

Strategic Chaos

What are the unresolved strategic issues in your company?  What are the decisions that are never seem to get closed?

Are we a product or service company? Should we do an exclusive agreement?  Should we be selling through different partners?  Should we upgrade our architecture, or build on the one we have?  Should we change our pricing for global customers or optimize regionally?

The true cost of indecision…

It’s not that strategic unanswered questions go answered that causes the problem. It’s that they get answered every day, differently, by front line employees who are making the best choices they can in the moment for how to implement their work.

A tale of 2 business units:

An interesting example of this is a company I worked with that had two business units.  At the executive level, it was a political war.

They could not commit to a decision if one or the other business unit was the primary mission of the company, or if both businesses should get equal attention and investment.

So what happened…

Hundreds of front line, individual contributors had to wonder, debate and make up their own answer to the most strategic decision in the company: What business are we in?

Yikes! A customer-facing, unsupported strategy…

A specific, downstream effect of this was that every trade show event manager had signs for both businesses in their inventory.  So they each had to decide on their own, Do we hang one sign or both?  Do we make one bigger? Put one on top? Or give them equal treatment?

They all did their best, but of course they all made different decisions.  And different local politics ensured that the company was never represented the same way twice!

Because the executives left this uncertainty, the most fundamental positioning of the company was executed differently at every event.

Failure to build value, and wasted time and money…

The company shot them selves in the foot at every event, failing to build their credibility and recognition consistently in the market.

Your job is to eliminate uncertainty, so that everyone can invest in executing in an aligned way, to build value, market confidence and brand.

This is true for every function and every team in the organization. And this has a huge ROI.  Failure has a huge expense.

How do you deal with uncertainty is in your organization?

This is at the heart of the work I do with my corporate clients.  It is so important, and profitable, to create clarity, concrete actions and motivation both at the executive level AND with all of the employees.

We all wish we got more clarity and strategic decisions from above. How do you remove uncertainty for your team?

Please leave your suggestions and experiences on this in the comment box below. It’s so important.

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at The Azzarello Group Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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Four Free Ways to Motivate People … When Money Isn’t Free

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by Patty Azzarello

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Motivation is Personal

Money is the easiest and least personal way to motivate people (if you have money). If you don’t, you need to get down to the real business of making people actually care about what they are working on.

In any economy, it’s important to focus on the non-financial motivators for three key reasons.

  1. Those are always within your control
  2. They work better than money – people work for meaning, not money
  3. Money doesn’t buy loyalty, it only rents effort

Free motivators that work wonders

1. Remove Uncertainty about the work. The biggest de-motivator you can have is when people don’t know exactly what to work on or why it matters. Make sure you keep people engaged in meaningful work, and always connect the dots of why it matters. Just because you are waiting for answers from above, don’t keep your team waiting. Never pass uncertainty downward.

2. Communicate a lot, on a regular cadence. Clear consistent communication from above is a magical motivator that so many leaders miss. You get huge points for leadership and credibility when you communicate well. People are always more motivated to work for people they know and respect, than invisible, or checked out leaders. Even if you are not checked out, if you fail to communicate regularly, you will appear to be checked out.

3. Don’t guess what people care about, ask them! Personally ask each person that works for you. You’ll be amazed at the answers, and how many things you can do without money that will make a material difference to them.

4. Say Thank You. Create a habit in your organization to recognize contributions. Don’t over complicate it with processes, nominations, reviews, and spreadsheets. Just make it clear to your staff that you want to know when anyone in your organization does something remarkable, and then have one of the executives say, “thank you”.

Want to know more?

I’ll talk more about each of these and share some great stories about what really works (and what really pisses people off) in my free webinar: Motivating Without Money, Wednesday, Aug 25.

Sign up now to learn more great motivation techniques.

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at The Azzarello Group Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

Don’t miss a great hire – be careful what you ask for

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by Patty Azzarello

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barometer

Creative Thinking vs. Job Skills

This a story I first read about 15 years ago in an airline magazine. If you google “baramoter story” you’ll find mixed opinions on the source of it, but it a great story worth sharing.

Solve this problem…

This was a science class and there was a homework problem which was the following:

If you needed to find out the height of a tall building using only a barometer, how would you do it?

The “correct” answer involved measuring the air pressure at the top of the building and on the ground, and using the difference in air pressure to calculate the height of the building.  Kids that used that approach and got the math right were marked correct and given full credit.

But there were two other answers that stood out to me, that the teacher marked wrong, with no credit.

I would have marked these correct and given these two students a job!

The first “wrong” answer:

One student said he would take the barometer to the top of the building, drop it off, count how many seconds it takes to hit the ground, and calculate the height based on the time of the fall.

This is probably at least as accurate an answer as using the air pressure based approach.

The second “wrong” answer – even better!

This student said, I would find the general manager of the building and say to him. “If you tell me how tall this building is, I will give you this barometer.”  – Fantastic!

Not only did this solution meet the requirements of solving the problem, it was likely to give a far more accurate answer than the correct answer based on air pressure!

What a shame these two students were marked wrong. These are precisely the kind of creative thinking skills that help people solve important problems when the by-the-book way does not work.

Be careful what you ask for

I have made many hiring mistakes by looking for job skills — by keeping my interview only to the spec of what needed to be done by the person in the next 6-12 months.

People would come in with very impressive experience and just the right skills to do the job that needed to be done right now.  These hires are so tempting because you can see how they will immediately take some pain away.

But, what about when the job changes?

But more often than not, when the world changes around them, they get stuck.  They don’t adapt easily.  They need to find another job that matches their skills vs. being able to step up to do the new job that needs to be done.

Hire Fast Learners

The most valuable hires are the ones that can do the job today, but also can learn and adapt. You are far more likely to hire a star if you ask questions that get at how the person thinks, and hire creative thinkers that are fast learners.

In your interview process you need to try and assess how much potential the person has to learn, and judge how fast they will grow.  People with the most room for growth and the most acceleration (smarts and ambition) are your best hires.

This approach is valuable from hiring summer interns, to top executives.  I have used it at every level, once I learned that sticking to the job spec doesn’t work very well.

Some approaches…

1. Puzzles: Actually give someone a puzzle to solve.  Some people will get annoyed and refuse to engage,  some will give up very quickly, and others will visibly start thinking and working it out.  They will tell you how they are thinking about approaching the problem.  They will ask you more questions about it. Hire the person who is doing something with the problem.

2. Stories: Ask for stories about how the world was different when they first got into a job compared to how it is now.  What did they think needed to be done?  What new ideas did they come up with?  What changes did they drive?  If they just did the job as-is for a few years, and did not grow the responsibility or usefulness of their role, they are not a top hire.

3. Actual Problems: Tell them a situation that you are facing that needs a solution.  Ask them to talk through how they would approach it.  The ones that say, I don’t know yet, I’d need to get into the job first, are not your top people.  The ones that ask a bunch more questions and say, of course I’d need to listen and learn more, but from what I know right now this is what I think… and start offering insights, have stronger creative thinking skills.

What clever interview techniques have you used to get the best hires?

Please share the great questions, puzzles, problems or other approaches you’ve used to learn more about your candidates’ creative thinking skills. I’d love to hear your ideas in the comment box.

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at The Azzarello Group Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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Aristotle Scooped My Ideas on Personal Brand

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by Patty Azzarello

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“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not
an act but a habit.” –Aristotle

Consistent Behaviors

aristotlesun

I am always talking about how Brand is about consistent behaviors.

In fact, I just was interviewed by a Forbes Magazine editor for 90 minutes on this topic. Turns
out, I was scooped by Aristotle!

As Aristotle will tell you, what I am saying about branding is not a new idea.

The Big Idea

But the big idea here for me is that we build or degrade our Personal Brand every single day — in every single conversation, meeting, email, presentation, and interaction we have with others.

You are broadcasting your Personal Brand

The behaviors people experience most consistently from you, ARE your Personal Brand.

(By the way this is true for corporate brands too. Your company’s brand is granted to your
company based on your customers’ cumulative experience with all the products, services,
processes, communications, and employees that interact with customers.)

You have a personal brand today whether you know it or not.

The question is – is it what you want it to be? And are you doing anything consistently, on
purpose, to give people any particular impression of you?

Choice #1 – Build your Personal Brand on Purpose

If you want to build your Personal Brand here are the steps.

Learn what you are known for. Get some feedback from people who know you and work
with you.

  • Decide what you want to be known for. Understand if there is a gap.
  • Define some specific behaviors that support your Brand.
  • Do them on Purpose every chance you get.

.
For example if you wanted a Brand of being…

Efficient: Don’t write long emails, ever. Do present (every time) how your solutions save time and resources along with getting the desired outcome.
.

Well Connected in your industry: Don’t take on projects alone, engage your network. Do expose the virtual team you’ve created and always include externally sourced content in your communications.
.

Cutting Through Chaos and solving complicated problems: Don’t ever participate in group email debates, offer obtuse suggestions, or let issues fester. Do offer concrete ideas and close off loose ends – every day.

Choice #2 – Leave it to chance

Why now?

If you have made it this far in your career without bothering to build your Personal Brand, why
should you worry about it now?

One hazard of leaving your Personal Brand to chance is that you remain somewhat of a blank.

Even if you are generally known as “good”, when opportunities come up, if you are not known
for anything in particular so you don’t stand out very much. You don’t stand out as much as
someone who is known for something specific.

Many people are striving for more recognition, relevance, and respect. Building your Personal
Brand is a key factor in positioning yourself to attract the respect and the rewards you deserve.

Stand out more. Be more Credible.

You become a much more credible and powerful presence in your company if everyone around
you says similar, specific things about their impression of you. Your Brand becomes significant
and believable.

Your intentions do not equal others’ perceptions

It doesn’t matter what you think or feel, or intend to do. Those things only matter to you. No one
else can see them.

Others can only experience what you DO.

Another hazard of leaving your Personal Brand to chance are that you can be giving negative
impressions that you don’t intend.

For example, I remember once when I did a 360 review, I got low scores on being a good
listener. I was totally shocked, because I always considered myself to be a great listener.

What I learned when I dug in was that the few people I listened to, indeed thought I was a good listener, but the vast majority of my organization never observed me listening.

Build your Brand with visible behaviors

So to build my Brand as a Listener, I created more opportunities to listen.

I created office hours, and breakfast and lunch meetings with groups of individuals. I created a website where people could give me feedback. I requested input every time I spoke. I told people what happened as a result of getting input.

My Brand issue was not with my listening skill or intention, it was about the accessibility and
visibility of listening opportunities. I was able to build positive brand value by creating more highly visible listening opportunities on purpose.

By investing some thought and energy in building your Personal Brand on purpose you will
increase your credibility and your value.

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at The Azzarello Group Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

I’m a proud affiliate of

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Have You Got a Change Manager?

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The Value of an Outside Observer

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A while back, I was at lunch with a consultant from a top tier strategy firm, a specialist in change management. Her company works with international mega-corporations. They investigate communication disconnects, process model breakdowns, and unproductive beliefs, habits, and behaviors. Their studies are qualitative and quantitative. Their strategic reports are solid, multi-leveled, interdepartmental, focused and team-based. It’s fascinating to hear how it works.

At the core of the process is helping corporations and individuals see themselves so that they can change to accomplish their goals. No one knows the value of an outside observer better than a world class firm in the business of doing do so.

Yet as the conversation continued, I heard the fatal flaw. The top-tier consultancy was performing a “change management” project within their own firm. No outside professionals were invited to help.

“We can do it ourselves. It’s our business,” was what she said.

I thought, I suppose every one of their clients thinks the same thing.

…

Of course, we’d never make that sort of mistake.

Have you got a change manager?
I started working with mine right after that lunch.

I make connections.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

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