Happy chocolate-covered strawberry Sunday friends.
Straddling the space between Marketing and Culture I’m always intrigued by how often the “L” word comes up in the lexicon and the aspiration of people in both those fields.
Marketers want consumers to love their products. The folks at Saatchi have gone as far as creating a well-known book called “lovemarks” which delves into how brands can create that connection with consumers and prospects.
We draw inferences from metrics like “Most Loved Brands 2020” to show that it is possible to fall madly in love with a sneaker, a dating app or a non-alcoholic beer that tastes just like the real thing.
Culture and HR folks aspire to a similar aspiration or objective where hyper-talented people are so drawn to the mission, purpose and vision of an organization that they’re prepared to endure long commutes, mediocre pay and the opportunity to rub shoulders and Slack channels with other equally enamoured colleagues who just “love” what Startup ABC is doing.
We point to upticks in Employee Engagement scores and glowing anecdotes from the “Best Places To Work” awards as signs that we’ve achieved this organizational Nirvana where mind, body and soul are perfectly aligned with the financial imperatives of our shareholders.
As the pandemic has driven up (legitimate) concerns and anxiety around human connection, and the load-bearing weight of the fine sinews that connect us to our family, friends and co-workers, it isn’t surprising that wanting to have our organization or our products be a place where “love” can be found, or flourish, makes perfect sense.
If it weren’t complete nonsense.
Loving a brand or loving an organization is an intellectual abstraction that just doesn’t hold water. As Scott Galloway points out regularly – and he’s a Marketing Professor at NYU for God’s sakes – a brand is a mental construct and it certainly won’t look after you when you get old or when you get cold.
Now, before you reach for your pitchfork and join the teeming masses gathering at my front door, I readily acknowledge that there are people who genuinely “love” certain brands and many who would say they “love” their organization. Instagram is full of folks with Nike swooshes tattooed on their bodies. And having meant numerous folks at organizations like Southwest Airlines, for example, there is little doubt the passion and commitment of those people for that incredible organization is unsurpassed.
However, it’s the addition of idealistic pre-qualifiers like fun, happy and energetic to the term culture that hides the singular focus of why investing time and effort on your culture is so important and often misdirected.
Your objective shouldn’t be to create some magical “happy place” but to create an environment where your desired business strategy has more than a snowball’s chance in hell of being executed efficiently, effectively and with the least amount of chaos and confusion. And, having achieved that, if there are rousing choruses of singing co-workers and high-fives then that is a great additional outcome. I’d debate whether the high-performing cultures of Netflix, Walt Disney or Amazon (an earlier post here) are places where conga-lines form on Fridays but there’s no debate those are cultures that have accelerated the execution, and success, of each company’s strategy. That’s the critical point!
Having a happy culture can’t be your objective. That’s as foolish as making profit an objective. If you’re really smart, really focused and really committed profit – and even happiness – will be an outcome.
Smart. Focused. Committed.
Celebrated culture consultant Stan Slap is unequivocal on this point.
Your primary objective should be creating a committed culture.
A culture where your managers, your employees and even your customers are prepared to invest their full energies, talents and creativity to the success of your organization. Where they’ll commit their emotional well-being to play their part in delivering what the organization deems critical to execute. That emotional well-being is an order of commitment far above their intellectual and financial well-being which, I dare hope, your organization has made some concerted effort to achieve for them already.
Commitment.
Not a word to throw around lightly in any relationship.
But something that’s only achieved when it comes from both parties. When both parties can see that the efforts being made are genuine, that actions we see echo the words we hear or read, that those efforts come from a place of respect (even affection) and come from wanting nothing but good fortune and success for the other.
That’s how commitment is formed.
And it’s that commitment that will ensure the success of your culture. Your brand. And your organization.
That’s the commitment I hope you’re committed to building. Today. Tomorrow and into the future.
I wish that with all my heart.
