COMMON SENSE - W2O Group

COMMON SENSE for the C-Suite

The Depressing Success Rate of Corporate Initiatives

Corporate & Strategy Volume 4 Issue 3 August 2015

COMMON SENSE VOLUME 4 ISSUE 3 2

Business history continues to teach us that a majority of organizations fail to gain the intended result from a change management or new corporate initiative. From strategy deployment, safety improvement, cost-containment, quality excellence, M&A culture assimilation, to new product commercialization, and revenue/sales growth, too often, the tendency among leaders, managers and communicators is to turn critically important initiatives into neat, cute, even trite campaigns, and then surround them with all the trappings of an event or party. Real business results are typically non-existent. Additionally, according to recent studies, majority of employees say there are significant organization-wide initiatives underway in their companies that will more than likely fail. Why is it that employees can recognize a corporate initiative that is dead on arrival while the CEO, management team, and communicators are the last to know? From a communications perspective employees attribute their “lack of buy-in” from the belief that corporate initiatives are “imposed” with little opportunity for them to engage in the effort, to contribute ideas or to provide honest, front-line feedback on what’s working and what needs to be fine-tuned. Is it any wonder that employees are so disengaged and results elusive?

..................................................The Social/Digital Impact and Opportunity to Reverse this Organizational Nightmare

Ever wonder why a new initiative, such as a product launch, a cost-cutting measure, a business strategy, an M&A integration, or even a turnaround effort didn’t succeed or even take hold as expected? Believe it or not, it probably has nothing to do with the initiative itself, but rather the way your organization chose to communicate it. Consider the plight of Company Y, a global manufacturing company, poised to introduce a line of new products – one that defines a new category between efficiency and performance - an initiative so critical to the organization’s future that senior management believed it would mean the difference between the company’s success and failure. Yet instead of providing employees with the facts, the rationale and the justification for the new product line, leadership asked its internal communications team to come up with some creative ways to introduce the new portfolio and a campaign to get employees “excited” about it.

Some 15,000 posters, screen savers and one catchy slogan, along with a website dedicated to the new product line later, the new portfolio is lagging in sales, and worse, shunned by most employees. What went wrong? Well, everything.

Welcome to the new business reality—one where business critical initiatives, whether they be a new corporate strategy or even an M&A—can succeed or fail based on whether or not the workforce is involved and engaged in the process from the outset. “The dynamic has changed,” notes one CEO. “Company leadership can no longer impose its will on employees, or believe that people will respond to changes in the organization’s direction only if they are positioned as campaigns. There has to be a real dialogue, including debate, along with context in order for people to buy-in.”

As the research shows, there are hundreds of thousands of well-intentioned initiatives that have collapsed or have never even gotten off the ground because company leaders and communicators trivialized them with slogans, big-scale launch events, and “rah rah” motivational campaigns designed to stir up employee enthusiasm and acceptance. According to one global communications expert, initiatives introduced with this kind of fanfare and no substance, are doomed to failure. “Typically what happens is that management needs to introduce a new product, service, technology

or even a new way of doing business. They go to the communications people—usually after the fact—and ask them to come up with some good ideas for launching the new initiative. Very often, communicators don’t push back, and then you’re left with ‘One Team. One Mission.’ coffee mugs and a bunch of employees scratching their heads wondering what all the fuss was about.”


Key Insights on Buidling Effective Corporate Campaigns

Make it Personal: The Power of Analytics

Any type of corporate initiative must be viewed through the employees’ eyes if it is to take hold and succeed. Employees need to be able to make the argument themselves, which means it must be personal.

For that to happen, the use of analytics to discern everything from current employee attitudes to employee behaviors in accessing information internally is critical to setting the right tone and context. Further, digital tools provide real-time feedback to decisions, eliminate hierarchy, and build shared purpose.

At W2O Group, we employ proprietary analytics to first determine an organization’s employee archetypes, which in turn, provide a composite of the workforce to build the right communications strategy, messaging, tonality, platforms, and measures to gauge progress.

It Starts With ‘Where You Are’

Often, the first “miss” in gauging the organization’s ability to accept and adopt a new initiative lies with starting the effort with where you expect the organization to land vs. where the business is now.

In our work, we find that it’s critical to first establish the organization’s current state including employee perceptions and beliefs. This actually forms the company’s culture. Corporate culture is an organization’s greatest asset when it comes implementing critical initiatives. From a total reorganization to putting into

practice a new business strategy, corporate initiatives can best succeed if the organization’s culture is stable, high performing and open to change. Unfortunately, dysfunctional cultures can stop any corporate initiative in its tracks. These are cultures that exhibit several of the following characteristics:

• A top-down leadership style; • Unhealthy competition between departments, turf

wars;• A sense of entitlement;• No accountability;• Low levels of employee trust; and above all:• An inability to communicate openly across the

organization

Honest discussion, including dialogue and debate between and among leadership, managers and employees is the bedrock of a healthy corporate culture and, if nurtured over time, can help an organization overcome cultural barriers. Open, honest communication can transform dysfunctional cultures into workplaces that have a bias for action, a sense of urgency and employee commitment and fortitude to see initiatives through to their successful outcomes.

Our experience has taught us that there is a direct and strong correlation between successful initiative implementation and establishing upfront the current business priorities and imperative.

This management/communication integration is critically important because, in a corporate transformation effort, for instance, communications can actually become the de facto management plan in that the need to communicate and get people engaged trumps the time it takes to pull a management or deployment plan together. In this regard, both management and communications must be tied together at the hip and work in concert throughout the change initiative process.

Change = Communication

To that end, a strong, dynamic internal communications system – integrated with leadership and management decision-making, multiple channels, content centralization, manager involvement, feedback mechanisms and a push-pull system of information exchange must be in place for change to happen.

This is the most overlooked, under-appreciated yet powerful insight for an organization going through change, transformation, renewal or some form of a corporate initiative effort.

Behind any important corporate initiative is a solid management and communications system to support it. The system is meant to support the purpose or goal of the effort. It includes the proper training efforts, the essential information infrastructure and reporting model while spelling out the specific measures to determine progress against the goal.

So often, major corporate initiatives lack this protocol and in many instances communicators fail to inquire about or question such a process opting instead to develop the tools, techniques and materials meant to communicate the program.

“Honest dicussion...is the bedrock of a healthy

corporate culture”



When brought into a planning situation regarding a corporate program, strategy or initiative, communicators can make a solid contribution or even influence important decisions by asking insightful, specific questions. So whether we’re talking about a new corporate strategy, a cost containment program, a new system or quality effort such as Six Sigma, the following questions can go a long way to ensuring that communications support and reinforce the effort:

1. What is primary reason for such an effort?2. How will the effort be led, managed, measured, rewarded?3. Who/what are the critical levers in the effort (meaning they are the difference between success and failure)?4. What do people need to know, feel and do in order to make this effort successful?5. What types of training/skills are needed?6. What actions will legitimize the effort? What may be an obstacle?7. Will this effort require significant behavior change? By whom?8. What role will management play?9. What are the milestones to indicate progress?

This management/communication integration is crit-ically important because, in a corporate transforma-tion effort, for instance, communications can actually become the de facto management plan in that the need to communicate and get people engaged trumps the time it takes to pull a management or deployment plan together. In this regard, both management and commu-nications must be tied together at the hip and work in concert throughout the change initiative process.

Slogans and Themes Obfuscate - Don’t Brand This!

Corporate slogans and other internal branding tag lines are usually developed with the intent to sharpen em-ployee focus around an internal initiative, but actually do more harm than good. They end up turning the effort into a “campaign,” becoming a punch line in employee jokes and indicators of how clueless senior

management and communicators are when it comes to reaching employees and gaining their buy-in.

Case in point: Several years ago the General Services Administration (GSA) launched their “Get It Right” initiative as a measure to ensure all field offices under-stood and enforced procurement restrictions outlined by headquarters as the field audit noted instances where some offices skirted restrictions to please customers. Aimed right at the hearts of employees, literature and training programs were developed to help employees “reaffirm GSA’s deep commitment to ensuring the prop-er use of GSA contracting vehicles and services.” Em-ployees were demoralized by the implication that they needed to relearn how to do their jobs and have to be taught about commitment to customers. Through their eyes, GSA leaders appeared blameless and employees looked incompetent. Even worse, employees believed that if GSA leadership would have paid attention to their frontline feedback, the lack of balance between pleasing customers and adhering to procurement rules could have been addressed and fixed, rather then wasting time and money on an ill-conceived corporate initiative.

Another slogan trap can occur when external branding initiatives or advertising campaigns are tweaked and unleashed inside the organization. Several years ago, a major domestic airline attempted to translate an adver-tising theme into a company-wide platform to change the corporate culture and employee behavior. The theme appeared in all communications channels and then made its way to specific training and development programs.

The goal was to convince its passengers that employees care and were trying to always do better in terms of service and capabilities. According to the airline, the training programs were part of a larger effort designed to empower all employees to do whatever it takes to provide more professional and enjoyable travel experi-ences for customers.

The result: The effort was dead on arrival. Employees felt betrayed by the company for suggesting first in their ads and then with a very public internal effort that they


were solely responsible for the problems customers faced. Additionally, since the whole concept started out as an advertising campaign it lacked the credibility and discipline of a management directive relying instead on slick tools and vehicles to convey messages and change perceptions.

The lesson: Slogans breed mistrust and ridicule. They are a sales tool and employee wariness is natural. Whether developed specifically for employees or adapt-ed from an advertising tagline, slogans are difficult to turn into viable corporate initiatives since they are not outgrowths of strategy. With no support or investment and therefore, no buy-in and credibility with employees, and worse, customers, slogans that become initiatives are only as good as the next advertising campaign.

Discover vs. Sell

What we have seen in the earlier examples is that “selling” people on anything today, particularly important changes in business direction, is next to impossible.

After decades of experiencing “the sell,” consumers and employees have developed a force field around their emotions. Breaking through is the challenge facing today’s leaders and communicators.

Given that, it’s time for communicators and managers to change the formula. A new formula is emerging, allowing consumers and employees to discover the very attributes the organization needs them to experience in order to be successful, enabling people to engage in the business: sense, feel, think, act and relate. From an internal standpoint, this is being translated in a variety of ways:

• Changing the style and tone of messages to reflect a more mature, diverse workforce;

• Making available additional information around key programs, strategies, etc., in a “pull” format so interested employees can learn more;

• Running pilot efforts to test programs, messages, systems and gain early buy-in and positive word-of-mouth;

• Including dissent in official discussions to provide a true learning opportunity; and

• Low levels of employee trust; and above all:• Ensuring proper training and system support

throughout the initiative life cycle.

Another example is a global pharmaceuticals company intent on improving its manufacturing quality through-out its network. The effort began in earnest with the requisite commitment by leadership and the hiring of an outside consultancy. But things went downhill from there. Instead of respecting the organization’s culture and probing employee understanding of quality, the powers to be decided on an internal “social media” effort built around “engaging employees in the change.” Sounds great except the organization had neither de-termined what specific change was and did not educate people around the approach.

Social channels went silent as people were confused, alienated and upset with the entire initiative.

To right this error, leadership recalibrated its approach with communications becoming a synchronized series of actions, messages, stories all based on facts sur-rounding quality in all its forms and centralized from leadership with relevance left to the local sites, func-tions, shifts, etc.


Distinguish Between the ‘Start’ Date and the ‘Completion’ Date

Most corporate initiatives are multi-year efforts since they are meant to change critical aspects of the business - core strategy, structural cost, information management, customer relationship management, product development/commercialization, marketing, etc. So why do many leaders want to expose the organization to the entire effort in one fell swoop, as if people have the interest or even the capacity to absorb it all quickly?

One of the key insights in making sure corporate initiatives have a chance to actually work is the ability to recognize that it’s a marathon not a sprint!

The Lesson: Communications must always be aligned with the actual management deployment plan of the initiative - following, leading, and reporting on milestones, successes, and learnings.

Respect the Curve

A fatal flaw many organizations and leaders make is too not respect the time people need to probe, investigate, test, and acknowledge the change being sought.

Often leaders immerse themselves in a strategy or initiative and the drop it on then rest of the organization expecting people to acknowledge it and get up to speed in days or weeks versus the time spent by the leaders to delve into, discuss, debate, research and agree on both the rationale for change and the actual initiative or strategy itself.

The lesson in change is to respect the learning curve as the initiative’s success is dependent upon employee understanding, acceptance,

and commitment to the effort.

Today’s Workforce: Public Constituencyor Captive Audience?

Leaders, managers and communicators have tended to treat employees as a captive audience and to a lesser extent, a necessary burden. The result can often be compared to dealing with employees as children — spoon feeding them rhetoric and worse, pabulum, in the belief that they would just “eat it up.” Reality: employees are smart, knowledgeable human beings running households, raising children and actively involved in their communitiesand the world around them.

To be effective organizationally, employees must be treated as if they are a public constituency capable of opinion-shaping, decision making and ultimately, organizational success — which they are! This means providing facts, interaction, discussion, debate, dialogue and open communication. The situation at excellent organizations notwithstanding, the crux of the problem at many organizations is that neither management nor the communications function understands that today’s employees are savvy and need to be treated as mature, intelligent, capable adults. Instead of motivational speeches and parties, leaders and managers need to give employees the facts, the rationale, the objectives, goals, training and follow-up information to make change stick. Then, they need to provide encouragement, inspiration and the tools to get the job done. “Forget the rah-rah sessions,” agrees one senior communications expert. “Employees want the tools to make their jobs easier and more satisfying. Don’t trivialize important initiatives with launch parties and meaningless tchotchkes.”


Moving forward, what can today’s leaders and managers do to help prevent their initiatives from becoming empty slogans and losing credibility? The following guideposts are intended to help guide leaders as they grapple with how best to gain acceptance for their next product launch, redeployment or cost-cutting initiative.

• You cannot separate communications from management planning and decision-making. Instead of turning to the communications function when you’re ready to introduce a new initiative, involve communications people in the process from the beginning. The more they know about the initiative, the better prepared they’ll be to set clear communications objectives that are in alignment with the business initiative.

• Corporate initiatives must become the priority for all managers. If managers don’t believe in the strategy and make change a priority, no one else will. Deal with managers first, immerse them in the initiative, train them and address their concerns.

• Ignore your instincts which will tell you to adopt a “ready-fire-aim” approach.

• Education vs. promotion – any corporate initiative should be viewed through the lens of learning and development. Moving people from where they are to a new place. One that allows them to stretch, grow, and excel at higher levels. Promoting a new initiative leaves the intended audience – employees – paralyzed in terms of behavior change.

• Employees and customers must experience the change inherent in the new initiative rather than being told about it in literature, promotional materials, presentations, speeches, e-mails and other forms of one-way communications.

• To be credible, initiatives should not be translated into advertising (slogans) or in messages and information that don’t add to someone’s understanding or knowledge. In other words, don’t spend money on mugs, T-shirts and employee breakfasts. Instead, use funds to train managers

and invest in communications. As one senior communicator noted, “New initiatives fail for two reasons: One, we don’t spend enough money on training, and two, we leave employees out of the equation, presenting them with the news like it’s a done deal they need to accept.”

• Make sure you get the message right. Employees need to know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Then, they need to know how it will affect them, their group, their department, their office, etc. Always listen to their concerns, issues and requirements. What’s the timetable? What will success look like? How will each employee make a difference? Don’t do anything without understanding what employees believe about the organization and their jobs right now.

• Before you embark on a new initiative, start with where employees are, not where you’d like to take them. This accomplishes two things: firstly, it nurtures a respect that you understand the current reality; and secondly, it allows for a more realistic assessment of how the initiative evolves and adapts.

• Replicate don’t Replace. As management, you have had the opportunity to spend time and effort in devising and delving into the new initiative or program. They why in implementing the new initiative is there a belief that that such an experience can be replaced with bells and whistles, themes, and events vs. real learning? Replicate your management experience through training and communications.

• Avoid the Ready-Fire-Aim approach. Many times management talks about a new initiative instead of allowing people to discover the rationale, options, and specifics about the strategy itself, in effect the initiative’s essence, and where they fit in execution.


• When it comes to launching new initiatives, don’t copy other organizations’ success stories and expect the same results. Every organization has a unique culture and too many companies try to copy what others do and how they act, instead of how they think. Remember: You can’t benchmark “mind-set.”

• Avoid mnemonic devices designed to characterize corporate strategy and initiatives. Examples include: “The Plan” or “Focus. Invest. Act.” These tend to de-legitimize the purpose and importance of the program.

• Adopt a phase-in approach (see “The Employee Mindset” chart) that respects employee involvement and learning.

• When working with management consultants, be aware of the tendency to treat the inner workings of the change initiative (Task team progress for instance) as content or fodder to be communicated to the masses. Bottom line: No one cares! People are only truly interested in how the change/initiative affects them and how they do their jobs.

• Work with strategic communications experts to select the right mix of media to get your message across. While many companies rely on their corporate intranets to post “real-time” news, others still use a mix of mediums, including newsletters and other written communications that enable them to provide specific details. Notes one communications veteran, “Newsletters, bulletin boards, face-to-face meetings—all of these are critical when you’re talking about building support, enthusiasm and acceptance among plant workers or others without access to a PC or computer terminal.”

• Work together to assess people’s reactions. Make sure whatever mediums you employ include mechanisms to solicit and evaluate feedback.

• Make employees believe it...because they wrote it. There’s no better way to encourage employees to adopt a vision or a new initiative than to have

them participate in the crafting of it. Today’s social media enables employee participation, fostering authorship and ownership.

• Remember that major initiatives should never be communicated via e-mail especially at the outset of the effort. Face-to-face is critical to building respect, rapport and encouraging involvement and improving comprehension. Indirect communication methods (e-mail, newsletters, video, broadcast) are to be used to reinforce but not substitute leadership communication.

Outcomes vs. Outputs

In the final analysis, it’s time for management and communications professionals to stop using hollow jargon and meaningless slogans to motivate employees and to influence change. Today’s employees deserve more than to be sold on a decision that management has already made—they must understand it and be involved with it. In the end, corporate initiatives mean change and successful implementation means a shift in mindset. Leaders need to take into account what employees want, need and are willing to hear. The game is all about outcomes not outputs.

While a company’s culture will determine communication techniques that work best, communicators must move videos and brochures to announce new initiatives and consider more sophisticated measures. Immersion Days that explain and break down the entire initiative or intranet sites that track progress as well as setbacks are methods that demonstrate respect for employee intelligence. Ask yourself: are you equipping your employees with the knowledge they need to make effective decisions and help the company reach its goals? Have you provided employees a venue for healthy discussion, dialogue and debate as a backdrop for the initiative, or are you just cluttering their desks, computers, bookshelves and their minds with useless information and trinkets? In the end, how you communicate with your employees is up to you, but remember, does anyone really need multiple mouse pads or a drawer full of coffee mugs?


Seeing In “Color”

Given the global business landscape today, an organization’s ability to assimilate change quickly is critical to success if not sustainability.For leaders, managers, and communicators opening one’s aperture in order to see the larger reality both as it relates to the marketplace as well as its own employees, means seeing in color rather than black and white.

Seeing in color means taking in a lot of data and processing it in a manner that connects the dots in a variety of ways. It all adds up to knowledge and commitment which can be translated into behavior and performance.

So, the next time the CEO wants to implement a new corporate initiative, be prepared to ask the following questions at the outset:

1) What are we chasing? 2) Why should people believe?3) What will success look like?4) Is this a promotional effort or an engagement effort?

The reality today for CEOs of any size organization is that time is no longer on their side. Speed and agility are keys to sustained success. Corporate initiatives are critical to moving the enterprise forward in an increasingly complex marketplace.

As such, Communications must be viewed as a strategic driver of the effort and not as a support tool to accelerate internal change. The advent of social and digital technologies are allowing leaders, managers and employees to engage in and adapt to this new environment in more collaborative and meaningful ways.

The only downside it seems is figuring out what to do with all those coffee mugs!

Corporate Initiatives Provide Different Employee Reactions...

WCG’s Corporate and Strategy Group is the organizational communications consulting practice for WCG, a leading independent, global strategic marketing, digital, and corporate communications firm. WCG is part of the W2O Group of digital communications firms.

The mission of the WCG Corporate Strategy Group is to advise and assist organizations in effectively addressing reputational risk, change management, innovation, product supremacy, and brand leadership.

The group offers distinctive expertise in culture transformation, strategy implementation, CEO transitions, leadership positioning, internal branding, M&A post-merger integration, labor-management relations, advocacy and issues management, internal communications improvement programming, investor relations, training and development, and employee worldview research/measurement through a proprietary combination of analytics, management outreach, employee engagement and strategic communications.

For more information, please contact Gary [email protected]: 347-420-0111office: 212-257-6994


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