Why Mustaches are like Social Media

Imagine you inadvertently overhear a snippet of your wife’s conversation with a friend. She doesn't like your new mustache, but hasn't said anything about it because she doesn't want to hurt your feelings. But she’s eager for you to get tired of it and shave it off.

      You’ve discovered a painful little truth. You’re “just trying it out” and think it looks pretty good. But you've gained a new insight into your wife’s tastes. You’ll probably shave it tomorrow morning.

      Imagine, too, that you’re the founder and president of a thriving multi-national business. You’ve always assumed that your employees admired you and, for the most part, heeded your counsel about how things ought to be done to assure continued growth and success.

      Recently, your communications team installed a new social media app on the company’s internal network that enables employees to meet and share ideas instantly, regardless of their location or time zone. It’s an immediate hit. Employees are buzzing in the online chat room.

      The head of communications suggests you spend a little time getting familiar with it and asks you to contribute to the conversation. You’re busy and this new communications tool seems a bit frivolous. One evening at home, you have nothing else to do so you check it out.

      Amid the back-and-forth chatter about challenges and opportunities, customers, products, and competitors, however, you discover a few comments about you and your leadership team. Employees are wisecracking about your management style, your directives and your ideas.

      You get angry. The next morning, loaded for bear, you call in your communications VP to talk about it. He advises you to calm down and consider the comments as constructive criticism. He’s right. So you think of them in the same way you do your wife’s feelings about your mustache. You’ve learned something else you didn’t previously know.

      It’s a learning experience. The best organizations, after all, are learning organizations. And what this new social media experiment is doing, you realize, is allowing people to share big ideas and to learn together through means that were previously non-existent.

      People are having virtual conversations about topics that make the business better. Maybe their stray criticisms of your style are justified. Maybe you are a little stodgy in how you see things and how you operate. So your eyes are opened now.

Parallel Worlds

Speaking of having one’s eyes opened… Bob Pearson has written a marvelously insightful book called Pre-Commerce. Though I’m only halfway through it, it’s really opening my eyes about social media’s potential for business.

      The book is about the places where customers and businesses intersect, and how companies can use social media to get ahead of the curve on product development, customer service, and customer satisfaction – all toward improving their customer relationships. The first third of the book sets up the rationale and the opportunity. The rest fleshes out the how-to and follow-through.

      In that first third, I found myself substituting the word “employees” in some of the places where Pearson uses “customers.” For instance, consider the following passage:

“The only way to start rebuilding trust and brand loyalty with the Pre-Commerce customer is to become an effective peer. An effective peer is one who provides the right information at the right place and at the right time. An effective peer doesn’t look for ways to avoid blame or responsibility. He or she corrects problems swiftly and to the satisfaction of the person wronged. And an effective peer constantly works to improve the relationship. That last step, the constant work on the relationship, is the most rigorous…”

While what Pearson has written is certainly true about the relationships a company should cultivate with its customers, those of you who are, like me, students of employee communications know that the words apply equally to the relationships an organization and its managers must have with their employees, and the nature of the communication that sustains those relationships.

      I don’t mean to imply that Pre-Commerce is about employee communications, per se. In fact, it’s about transforming your business from a conventional 20^th century marketing organization into one that leverages social media to listen to, learn from and engage your customers through every stage of the transaction – all toward improved revenues, profits and long-term success.

Engaging Customers

Aside from my word substitution, the other obvious intersection here between the external and internal worlds of business is why it’s critical for employees to engage customers. As Pearson notes, “I can toss out a few examples of innovation and a theory or two, but that doesn’t do anything to change your culture. You need to get all of your 500, 5,000 or 50,000 employees focused on listening to customers more effectively.” Which can be achieved through effective use of social media.

      To come full circle, Pearson’s insights can also be applied to how we engage our employees inside the organization. Which is why the use of social media behind the firewall excites me. It can become a valuable part of a company’s internal communications dynamic.

      While stimulating and increasing productive internal dialogue – irrespective of managers’ and employees’ physical location – these tools also give leaders the opportunity to eavesdrop on and participate in that internal discourse, a productive, relevant conversation that was heretofore very difficult.

      Imagine the potential, especially in the context of what Pearson writes about being an effective peer. The best managers and leaders are those that operate in the manner of a peer, speaking to employees as equals. They understand that their chief role is to help employees acquire the necessary resources to do their jobs – and then get out of the way and let them do it.

      What better way to uncover those needs, to cultivate trust and those critical internal relationships, than to engage in a robust dialogue? And when use of social media tools means that the dialogue can occur whenever and wherever you want, the possibilities for success and greatness are limitless.

Putting the Client Where He Belongs: Front and Center

From its founding, any business’ raison d’être is to provide customers with a product and/or service that improves their lives in some way. When a business consistently does that well, it succeeds and thrives – as well it should.

      Conversely, when a business loses that impetus, when its focus shifts away from its customers’ needs and, instead, concentrates on the money it makes and a desire to make more, its demise is in sight.

      Such appears to be the case with Goldman Sachs. 
      Wall Street (and beyond) is abuzz this week on the heels of a provocative March 14 New York Times Op-Ed by Greg Smith titled “Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs.”

      In it, this vice president, a 12-year veteran of the firm, explains that the company he came to know and love was a culture that “revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years.”

      Where is Goldman Sachs today, and why is this man so disillusioned that he has decided to leave? What changed? According to Smith, “The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm … you will be promoted into a position of influence.”

      He adds, “Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most money off of them.”

A Common Tale, Alas

Much the same story can likely be told of some of the big marketing and communications agencies today. A lot of the effort they expend seems to be on expanding their service offerings to their clients, not necessarily because the clients need them but because more service means higher retainer fees and greater agency profits.

      The initial assignment, however small, is seen as a foot in the door to sell ever more services that they may or may not need – like the proverbial door-to-door salesman. I know some clients will automatically push back, telling their agency to concentrate on delivering the promised service. And they’re right to do so.

      The correct way to grow an agency’s business with a client is first to deliver the service for which it has been contracted. When the delivered results meet or exceed the client’s expectations, it’s likely the firm will be invited to provide additional services.

      Of course, it’s a delicate dance because, in the course or working side-by-side in the client organization, other client challenges may become apparent, which the agency is prepared and able to address. If the agency’s honest motivation is to help the client deal with the problem rather than to “grow the business,” there’s a good chance it will be invited to do so – often without having to ask for it.

      As Smith knows, a service-oriented business should bring to bear appropriate and necessary additional services to their clients, not principally for the supplementary revenue they might afford but rather to provide those clients with complete solutions to their challenges.

      My experience has always been that when you provide great service to your clients, when you help them achieve or exceed the results they desire, they are more than happy to reward you with more opportunities, and they are pleased to know that you can make a profit. 

      On the other hand, when clients are seen first and foremost as a source of revenue and profit rather than as a firm's core driver, the clients sense it. And frankly, such a firm's ultimate demise is predictable and justly deserved.

Leading by Example

The larger question is whether the right or the wrong attitude is embedded in the culture. When leaders of the firm talk of little else but profitability and revenue streams, those on the lower rungs of the ladder correctly sense where the organization’s priorities lie and, by extension, what gets rewarded.

      Smith understands this truth: “These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, ‘How much money did we make off the client?’ It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst … doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.”

      I believe, too, that in 10 years, some of those junior analysts will be vice presidents there perpetuating its poisonous culture – that is, if Goldman Sachs is still in business.

      And that’s the question that emerges from this Op-Ed: will Goldman Sachs learn the wise and timely lesson that Mr. Smith is offering them and survive? Frankly, it’s a pretty simple warning: “I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.”

      He adds: “It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you.”

      So when a business loses touch with its culture, when its people cease following the guiding beacon that led the firm through 143 years of success, what should it do to regain its footing? Smith advises that it should “…make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist… And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm – or the trust of its clients – for very much longer.”

      Wise counsel.