THAT 'S' WORD

There are certain words and symbols that trigger us – and our memories.

JFK.  Mensch.  The Beatles.  Boomers.  Farmers’ markets.  [Okay, you know where we’re going …]

What comes to mind, in the last week or so, is the word “skinny,” the newly found and fawned-over marketing-ese (along with small plates and vegetable anything).  It’s being applied to cocktails, popcorn, and ice cream with aplomb; look for other iterations at your supermarket … and soon. 

Obviously, restaurants and grocers are ecstatic with the positioning:  slender beverages and foods simply encourage consumers, by their very names, to take another drink or eat another bite.  After all, low or reduced calories imply that there’s room for another.  [We have Bethenny Frankel of The Real Housewives of New York City to thank for this.]

Us?  Not so enchanted.  Those triggers we mentioned send off major alarms at the word “skinny.”   It reminds us of the emphasis placed on weight, on looks, on continual svelte-hood – especially in the ‘60s and ‘70s (yes, even when Gloria Steinem et al. were rebelling).  It gives, again, a skewed perception of ourselves, with comparisons to models, magazines, and others who seem to have no issue with eating.  Further, that low-cal shine has been justified by psychologists as “personifying food and making it more endearing … in a light-hearted manner.”

Yes, diet has a negative connotation … we’ll admit.  Which is why many of the successful weight-loss specialists have adopted healthy eating as a mantra.  Though we can’t quite get our mouths around healthy cocktails and healthy ice cream, let’s ask our marketing wizards to give slenderizing wordsmithing another try.

MUCH ADO ABOUT ... ?

Every other headline – or so it seems – bursts with the tech news of the moment: 

Big Data stalks us. 

Big Data records what I do IRL (in real life). 

Big Data is leading to personalized medicine.

Big Data will recruit me.

Most of these announcements we shrug off, saying B.D. is somewhere between hype and hyperbole, at least for the moment.  What we can’t quite swallow, though, are the digital patterns now being plumbed in what’s called workforce science. 

Proponents say that access to our e-files shows how we work and communicate …  all in efforts to build better workers, who are more innovative, more creative, more productive. 

Detractors clamor about the limits of surveillance, wanting to know what data is being collected and how it’s being used. 

What’s more, Big Blue and Deloitte, among others, are buying up firms that specialize in the algorithms of and insights into employees; the former having acquired Kenexa in 2012; the latter, Bersin in the last few months.  Even eHarmony is mating with different suitors these days, intending to enter the talent search business by revising its codes.

These trends concern us:  It’s one thing to figure out whom to hire and how to recruit through different apps and smarttech.  It’s quite another to dig into our hot buttons, through, say, the email we send and the videos we watch, to calculate motivations and measure productivity.  Companies like Evolv which advises companies on hiring and managing hourly workers through B.D. show promising results for recruiting longer-term call center employees, a notoriously difficult retention task (turnover can be up to 100 percent each year).  On the other hand, when data scientists note that call centers are our “initial focus,” inquiring minds think otherwise. 

It’s your turn, dear reader.  Shades of Big Brother or the (mostly) harmless progress of life?

OF SWISS ARMY KNIVES ... AND US

Lately, our conversations have been filled with “whys,” not statements of facts or certainties.

One reason:  (Occasionally) unharnessed curiosity, which leads us to tons of questions, zip answers.  Another, we think, is due to a recent yearning for utility, for function, for concrete actions and behaviors.  Asking why gets us, eventually, to outcomes, to the goals our clients and our companies want to achieve. 

Which, in themselves, are usually aspirational, rather than realizational.  Yet the demands placed on each of us in our worlds, from branding and change to design and communications, are almost always for useful objectives.  Like these: 

“Get more of our targets to ‘like’ us.”

               “Create apps to drive purchases.”

          “Personalize the brand-consumer conversation.”

     “We must be able to measure an increase in engagement – and retention.”

It’s the behaviors that matter today – not only the ultimate buy, but also the universe of buy-ins. 

But will out doings activate useful results?  A few decades ago, former White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater claimed, “The press briefing today I believe has lost much of its usefulness.”  [Sad:  Still true in 2013.]  How many employees understand what HR decisions, from benefits to performance, they need to make – and do so correctly, in their own interests?  Do our campaigns, internal and external, help our constituencies save time, deepen experiences, broaden connections, and/or provide more control?  Will we, in short, be measured against corporate dimensions of usefulness?

Dilbert creator Scott Adams summarizes our dilemma well:  “Be careful that what you write does not offend anybody or cause problems within the company.  The safest approach is to remove all useful information.”

THAT FUD FACTOR

Change management professionals know the acronym FUD well:  Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.

Most of us, in fact, are familiar with apprehension; it faces us almost every day.  Are we doing what’s right for our clients/employers?  How will we know this strategy-tactic-technique will succeed?  What will happen if it flops?

Lately, we’ve been hearing more of this anxiety in our conversations, subtly, quietly, in a hard-to-detect undertone.  Often, it’s a premature prelude to recommendations:  “I’ve only got a few people to implement this, so it’s gotta be simple to do.  Otherwise, we won’t do it.”  Just as frequently, it’s accompanied by budget caveats:  “We’ve got X dollars.  We need to make this count!”

It’s all fear-propelled, deep down.  That emotion could come from an unsteady economy, working in a volatile industry, personal concerns, new management, and all of the above. 

Understandable … yet disconcerting:  As professionals accustomed to the slings and arrows of continual crises, ongoing changes, and never-ending accountabilities, that fear-of-failure gene doesn’t inhabit our minds naturally.  It takes a great deal of courage to convince a CEO of the importance of a media interview, present a completely different brand strategy, champion a new campaign, and tell clients that this particular change won’t be easy.  Taking risks, in many circumstances, is embedded in how we earn our livelihoods; we prepare, we benchmark, we consult, we execute, and we measure.

Look at it from the corporate point of view:  In times calling for growth and innovation, overcautious, even negative-thinking employees become a distraction, if not detraction.  How do you shake colleagues out of the NIH* or paralyzed mindsets into taking calculated risks and, yes, managing possible failures?  Sure, upper management and executives can and should set the stage, even broadcast the “it’s okay to fail” message.  Is that enough? 

History gives us cues – in the form of Thomas Edison, Donald Trump, Richard Branson, and Michael Jordan (among hundreds of others).  It’s up to us, as brand and design and marketing and communications bearers, to translate those hints into a “let’s go for it” encouragement, every day.

*Not Invented Here