OF SAGACITY -- AND LEADERSHIP WORDS

Bookstores overflow with ‘how to be a leader’ tomes, often with conflicting advice.

Never a month passes when the likes of Harvard Business Review or Fortune magazine doesn’t opine on the best ways to manage a merger or what to do during the first 90 days as an executive.

And then the consultancies go forward to conquer … (how could we forget?).

Yet there’s one recently published, probably overlooked modest collection of memos, penned by one of the original Mad Men, that we heartily promote browsing.  And remembering.

It’s Keith Reinhard’s Any Wednesday, one pagers written almost weekly to his colleagues at DDB Worldwide (now part of Omnicom Group) for some 23 years, covering not just advertising topics, but also musings around careers, communications, and the truth. 

Like this:  “Our management priorities should be … people, product, profit … in that order.”

Or acquiring new skills:  “… because the marketplace of the future will be one where advertising alone is not the answer to every client’s problem.”

And delivered with humor:  “The greatest human drive is not food, water or shelter.  It’s the obsession to edit another person’s copy.”

It’s not often (okay, almost never) that we recommend a read.  But it’s one that will net you a true ROI, in Reinhard’s words:  Relevance.  Originality.  And Impact.

PSSST ... DID YOU HEAR ... ?

In most places, the grapevine works overtime – though its practitioners might not.

It’s human nature to gossip and complain, agree most psychologists.  Yet what’s not so humane are the times that management either doesn’t know or ignores the issues.

And if frequent enough, those bitches and moans just might lead to anonymous reviews on glassdoor.com, to workplace incivility, higher absenteeism (and lower productivity), and retention issues.  Not to mention legal actions.

New software provider Memo has it solved (it thinks).  It’s designed an anonymous e-forum to vent – and yes, management reads and responds.  Major employers like Amazon and Deloitte have subscribed.  Later this year (pre-IPO), Memo will launch tools that collect data on employee sentiment, moderate comments, and engage with workers.

Which is where we, as marketers and communicators, gotta step in.  Software that interacts with employees?  Seriously.  How about leaders who share issues, validate that problems are real and that solutions are in the works? 

Today, working for companies with a purpose is more than a candidate request.  Balancing (or blending, the word we prefer) work-life demands is not just the fervent wish of millennials.  And transparency, very soon we predict, will be mandated by potential new hires.  And why not?  Those companies with the highest morale and greatest collegiality, research shows, are also those where employees can respectfully complain.

Where is your company on the kvetch scale?

SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE

With all the conversations about monetizing social media and, specifically, brand conversations, it seems like we’ve forgotten one thing:  Kickstarting the dialogues, inside.

A long-ago research study about, yes, study groups reminded us.  Decades ago, under the auspices of Harvard, it pointed out that learning was all about relationships, that is, with whom you learned, rather than how you learned.  When compared to solo students, social learning produced more engaged, better prepared, and more knowledgeable participants.

[We also remember One L, author Scott Turow’s account of his first year at Harvard Law, wherein study groups became highly politicized – and learning-challenged.]

Today’s collaboration is yesterday’s study group.  And collaboration, most CEOs admit, is the gateway to the company future; it’s all about the ability to access people and resources when needed and drive the insight and performance business must have.  Better opportunities for learning and growth, as millennials have demonstrated, will magnetize the best talent.

In turn, the role of communicators shines.  Ramping up the social network.  Forming communities of practice.  Encouraging the talk – and walking that same way.  Encouraging leaders to role-model by working together in inclusive and diverse teams and conversations and brainstorming.  And offering references and tools and relationship-building context (in tandem with HR and other functions) that propel the business forward.

Interactive.  Experiential.  Personal.  Ever-evolving.  Now that sounds like a recipe for change.

IF WE WERE KINGS/QUEENS OF THE FOREST ...

We got thinking:  What would it be like if communicators ruled the corporate world?

[AdAge started us, running a story about the marketing department changes made by Newell Rubbermaid’s fairly new, i.e., 15+ months, CMO, a market researcher by background.  To date, he’s culled staff, established outposts in Shanghai and Sao Paolo, doubled research staff and spend, and winnowed down the number of agencies … so far.]

There’s one current precedent we know:  David Novak at Yum! Brands, also a marketing guru.  And if we were to expand the question into the design arena, Apple – and design chief Jony Ive – comes to mind.  [Obviously, many executives have great quals as communicators and marketers, but not a deep backgrounding.]

Here are a few perks of being corporate kings and queens:

• ·       Embedded teams in every corner of the company, reflecting the ability of communicators to influence change inside and out
• Public relations leading the marketing function, owning social media and content and …
• Change initiatives run conjointly with HR and IT
• A larger spend, all judiciously accounted for
• A cadre of the best and brightest senior talent to tap into, from communications and research to branding and marketing
• An experimental mindset, where pilot programs could take on, say, in-depth research into the power of third-party editorial media

Phew:  There’s more.  Rather than exhaust every possibility, we’ll open it up to you:  What dreams and wishes would you have come true as CEO communicator?