Conditional Loyalty

In a report published recently in the Harvard Business Review, Karen Fraser reveals that customer loyalty may be more tenuous than previously believed. In a study that underscores consumers’ increased concern over ethical, environmental and related issues in corporate life, up to 8% of ‘satisfied’ customers expressed dissatisfaction with the company or product, or both.

This dissonance is powerful, and therefore word-of-mouth marketing efforts could be compromised. 44% of conflicted consumers speak about their concerns with others, of which 33% negatively portrayed the company or brand.

The silver lining? Uncovering these customers among new markets and competitors is a ready-made opportunity for companies that invest enough time and consideration in evaluating the market.

Change, accelerated

The pace of change continues to astound, as can be recognized by this presentation by Scott McLeod (runtime: 6 minutes): http://www.scottmcleod.org/didyouknow.wmv

A few highlights:

• There are more honors students in India than there are students in North America.
• By 2023, today's first graders will use a computer costing less than $1000 that has more computational power than the human brain.
• China will soon become the largest English speaking country in the world.
• One out of every eight couples married last year met online.
• If MySpace were a country, it'd be the 11th most populous in the world.
• More than 3000 books are published every day.

America's misplaced sense of outrage

Excerpts from an MSNBC article (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17050378/), no comment from me is required. Though I'd love to comment, certainly, so I'll limit myself to adding emphasis, in bold:

The New York-based American Foundation for Suicide Prevention... wants GM to pull the ad from its Web site, try to get it off video-sharing Web sites such as YouTube and apologize.

The ad is the latest from the Super Bowl to come under fire. Earlier this week, a commercial for Snickers candy bars was benched after complaints that it was homophobic. And aspiring rapper Kevin Federline apologized after a restaurant trade group said it was insulted by an ad that stared him as a fast-food worker.

"I was completely outraged," said Miller... "GM is not being a responsible citizen by airing something that so closely imitates life."

Changing the Unchangeable

A fundamental resistance to change in an organization isn’t that unusual, in fact, every company of size has a number of employees who reject change as if it were central to their own job description. It’s in their DNA. In many ways, it is in the DNA in all of us.

Recently, Julie Roehm of Chrysler was hired – and more recently – fired from Wal-mart due in part – saucy allegations aside – of forcing change on an unwilling organization. Quoted in BusinessWeek, Roehm stated, “Wal-Mart, she says "would rather have had a painkiller [than] taken the vitamin of change." What has she learned? "The importance of culture. It can't be underestimated."

It seems odd to me that Ms. Roehm’s meteoric rise could have occurred without her critical understanding of this, but it happens to even the most successful executives in marketing or otherwise. Culture is not a ‘soft skill’ to be derided as a tree-hugger’s prerequisite in graduate management coursework. As Lou Gerstner Jr., the former head of IBM once stated, “Culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game.”

Here are a few rules for executives that find themselves in the same type of role that Roehm, and Gerstner before her, found themselves in: Changing an entrenched culture, particularly one set on self-destruction:

1. Get started
   Anyone who has worked with or for me for more than a few days knows my mantra – Progress over Perfection. While a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal, from Collins’ Built To Last) is a critical element of a successful change effort, any early success can do wonders for morale and the effort’s credibility. Importantly, it also limits the exposure of a certain mis-step.
   
2. Speed Trap
   At the outset, you need to gauge how quickly – or slowly, you’ll need to move. Often times this is influenced by certain outside objectives such as a turnaround effort, but it will also be determined by the ability of management to effect change on the departmental – and individual level. This doesn’t mean that change needs to be slowed – sometimes the need for change is understood by the rank and ile and if you move too slowly you could lose credibility.
   
3. Walk Softly.
   Announcing the change is coming is like using a drumline to announce the arrival of marines on the shore. Change is best accomplished not as a widely visible project but quietly integrated as a practice. Effective change is supported at the top but driven from the bottom, up. Change is difficult not only because it disrupts long-held patterns and ways of thought, but because it intimates that those patterns were, essentially, wrong. Otherwise change would not be necessary. While some would suggest that some people and companies just need a swift kick in the a*s, it isn’t as easy as all that. Telling employees that change is a’coming and they need to board the train or be run over is an unnecessary shot across the bow that will only serve to alienate the influential mid-managers a change agent needs to see the program successfully carried forward.
   
4. A Tip from Tip
   "All politics is local." That quote, from former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, can be effectively paraphrased by stating, “All Corporate Politics Are Departmental”. The relationships that matter in a change effort are the small, informal ones. As stated above, leadership support is critical but the mid-level management and other influencers are equally critical.