CASCADE: More than a dish detergent

Ten-plus million strong in 2012, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

It’s a number relatively unaffected by the economy, but one that’s been impacted emotionally.

America’s middle managers, many argue, are the essential layer between leaders and front liners.  They create and innovate, develop talent, make decisions, ensure that tasks are complete, and, in general, do more today than ever before.

Others eschew the very name, claiming their organizations must avoid the morass of bureaucracy and embrace boss-less freedom.  Executives of that persuasion (usually leading tech start-ups) insist that the middle represents dead weight, micro-management, and other negatives.

We over-stand.  But, then, how do businesses accomplish the “what” they need to do?  And more important (to us, at least), how do they get the word to the troops about the “what” – and make sure that staff continually follows the corporate North Star?

The first answer that crops up:  Cascading, or the process of sending messages from the top to the bottom, from executives to, say, customer service executives.  Sure, it’s a tried solution.  But it doesn’t work in most cases.  Managers forget.  It’s not in their performance goals, so there’s no urgency.  The communications get re-interpreted.  Employees don’t understand – and the wherewithal to explain and elaborate isn’t readily available.  Ad nauseum.

In our opinion, it’s a lazy person’s solution.  It’s all too easy to scribble notes on a PowerPoint document and then distribute it to supervisors to reinforce the strategy, the initiatives, the goals.  Yeah, solutions aren’t plentiful; see if you agree with our takes on …

• Town Halls:  Must be reinforced.  
• Videos, audios, animation, print:  Good for a one-shot intro only (if you get that chance to make a first impression)

Which leaves us with face to face.  Yet it too needs to be repeated – and demands time and attention.  One substitute might be collaborative communities, enabling them to spread the words.  Another:  Trying to get viral with internal social media, if it’s up and running well. 

There’s no conclusion … yet.  What’s worked for you in reaching the Sandwich Population?

MAKING STORIES MATTER

Every person has a story.

So, too, every corporation.

What will make the difference, as marketers and communicators insist, is how we articulate and tell the story.

Of late, we’ve been mesmerized by Marshall Ganz, a lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a not-necessarily-well-known labor organizer, who worked for the likes of Cesar Chavez, SNCC (a Boomer alert!), behind the scenes at President Obama’s first election campaign, and other transformational initiatives.  His story point of view relies on three - and only three - elements:  the story of self (why we’re called on to do what we do), the story of us (what the organization has been called to do, a/k/a vision, mission and values), and the story of now – our challenges, our choices, and our hopes.

It’s a powerful angle, these three elements, one that many message platforms and business narratives don’t capture simply enough.  Which begs the question, or many of them:

              How often do we edit our stories – explaining how we are finding a better path?

              Are our message platforms as powerful as the real story we can tell?

Do we, can we thoroughly explain what it means to be our organization, looking to the future through our past and present lenses?

If a story is intended to help people cope with change, eliminate the FUDs (fear, uncertainties, and doubts), uncomplicate the complex, and persuade, then there’s a real mandate to objectively review our stories often.  After all, change happens both inside and outside our worlds; we need to make sense of those events and teach each other what they mean through our stories.

No question, it takes real courage to edit a decades-old narrative, refreshing it to reflect the here and now, with authenticity and candor.  The questions then lie with you, our readers:  Are you ready for that challenge?  And how difficult has that path been?

OF SELFIES ... AND MES

If the Oxford English Dictionary is already tracking a word (in its online version), then we call it a fact of life.

In August, the word “selfie” debuted in the OED, though Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia probably counts as the first perpetrator (in the early 1900s) of the “self-portrait photo, taken with a hand-held camera or smartphone.” 

It’s so popular today that Time magazine named it one of its top ten buzzwords last year.  And numbers don’t lie:  23 million photos have been uploaded on Instagram with the hashtag #selfie (versus 51 million with the hashtag #me). 

Wait:  Further proof that the millennium’s second decade is “all about me” lies in the growing numbers of self-tracking smartphone apps.  Once apps are active, users can count sleep gained, food digested, fitness goals achieved.  These seven thousand-plus devices are wearable, tote-able, and generally affixed to almost any part of the body, quantifying and qualifying how an individual’s day is going.   [Like a smartphone, but oh-so-much-more personal.]

In a related bit of I/me research:  University of Texas research academicians probed the use of the word “I” versus “we.”  Surprisingly enough, professors found that those saying “I” more frequently were less powerful and less sure of themselves.  Those adopting the “we” language were higher status, preferring to look outside on the world, not inside. 

To us, selfies, self-tracking, even the “I” word could be seen as the ultimate symbols of self-absorption – among all generations, not just Millennials or Boomers.  For sure, today’s economy alone would prompt that “let’s take care of me first” feeling.  As would the boom of social “me” media, from Twitter and Facebook to Snapchat and Vine.  It’s something that we as communicators and marketers need to be more conscious of and more deliberate about … regardless of the reasons for self-focus.  After all, an inward perspective – am I genuine, am I honest? – is always a subject worth probing, with ourselves and with others.

PRETTY IS, PRETTY DOES

No, we’re not sexists or anti-feminists.  [Though we do remember all too well the slogan that prompted our headline.]

Our musings this day go to packaging, and why we pay attention to certain things, not others.  The food industry has it made:  They know, for instance, that 64 percent of U.S. consumers buy products from shelves because of packaging.  Drilling deeper, shoppers grab first by color, then by shape, followed by symbols and words.  Even more, the fascination with small versions in re-sealable bags and single-serving multipacks has proven to entice buyers who typically bag 50 items in the same number of minutes in supermarkets.

Overall, much attention is being paid to the Pretty Factor, a phenomenon attributed to Apple (among others).  All aspects of containers matter, whether that’s shape or color, graphics or labeling.

Why, then, do we as communicators, designers, and even marketers tend to ignore the look of the information we send inside and out, to staff, to consumers, to regulators and politicians?  [Omit, if you would, the annual report, the intranet, open enrollment, et al. which historically strut their stuff.]  So:  We’re talking emails, memos, reports, HR information, service and product letters, warranties … the standard stuff that usually gets slapped on a masthead and distributed.  The writing may be catchy and succinct; the message, clear and unadulterated.  Somehow you gotta know that at least 25 percent of recipients will (check one) 1) file it for e-review on a rainy day, 2) toss it in the stack of ‘to-reads’ on a desktop, 3) send it to a colleague with comments or questions, or 4) discard it altogether. 

Compellingness extends, in our opinion, to everything we produce.  Why not help way-overloaded staff who simply don’t have the time to scan their in-boxes … and label (with icons and illustrations) the nice to know, must know, must do items?  Or:  Design an instructions memo typographically, with steps laid out in bold print, no mouse type?  And:  Consider read-able alternatives to the thank you for your response consumer note – a postcard, a note card, even an animated email instead of plain-Jane look and lengthy text?

Pretty-ness, obviously, must be more than skin-deep; user experience work has taught us that much.  [As has life experience.]  What’s your take, dear reader?

WHAT OUR ORTHODONTIST TOLD US

As much as we recoil from even the thought of teeth and the dentist, one word in particular reminds us of our not-so-beloved orthodontist … and the many times we spent in his chair straightening and tightening our braces.

[By the way, our teeth remain as charmingly crooked as they did before treatment.]

The word also calls up memories of siblings playing with trains, and their continual work to keep them running on track.

If you haven’t guessed by now, the magical nine letters spell “alignment.”  And it’s a concept we’re run across way too many times.

Actually, we have no real problem with the philosophy.  In most cases, alignment is, after all, a needed activity, linking corporate goals with project and employee goals.  It started, not surprisingly, as an IT initiative in the 1990s, then gradually morphed into an effort that gets everyone, from executives to customer care reps, on the same page. 

And it does benefit the organization:  establishing trust among different functions, developing and following processes for decision-making and control, and managing risks, among other values.

What bugs us is the indiscriminate use of the term to apply to, yup, literally anything corporate that needs to be linked to a project or initiative.  There are alignment workshops galore.  Sessions to explore our innermost connections.  Consensus reports that detail who’s bought in, who hasn’t, and who’s on the fence.  It’s a lot of paper and a lot of time that could, very easily, be diagrammed and discussed in a few regular meetings and cascaded through lunch ‘n’ learns (with, of course, continual reinforcement of the agreements). 

Save us.  Please.  The alignment we’re seeking is the familiar bond between people … using simple agreements to ensure business togetherness.