Inside-Out
by Drew Jones on Monday, February 1st, 2010Last week I had the good (no, ‘great’) fortune to spend a full week in New York (at New Work City) with my business partner- Justin Papps- from Sydney. Justin is the brains behind shift.101, the parent company that gave birth to Shift Workspace and other projects here in the states. Justin and I are working on a book together, and last week was a landmark week. We finally got in the same room- in the same time zone (what a trip that is!)- and got on the same page. Hard to articulate how awesome that feels. I feel smarter just having spent a week with him!
The book, tentatively titled Inside-Out: ReDesigning Your Company from the Inside-Out, applies the principles and methods of design thinking to helping companies rethink the basic elements of how they define their work, their brand, their purpose.
- What workspaces do companies present to employees?- Where
- What types of talent do they recruit and develop?- Who
- How much flexibility and discretion do they extend to employees?- How
- What are the core messages and ‘Brand’ that the company communicates to employees and customers?- Why
- What workplace policies and processes define the firm?- What
These ‘basic building blocks of the firm’ cut across the traditional silos- such as HR and Marketing- that so often separate one part of the company’s work from another. Our motivation in writing the book, and for using the template and process of design thinking to organize our thoughts, is our conviction that there is only ONE brand within a company. Most companies operate, really, as if there are two separate brands- one that is communicated with employees and one that is communicated to customers and ‘the market.’ Rarely do the internal brand and the external brands come together in a single set of values and messages. When the internal brand and the external brand are the same, you have a ‘Whole of Brand’ moment when the two brands are reconciled within a singular brand! The ‘Whole of Brand’ concept is Justin’s insight, and underscores the holistic and integrated understanding he has of Business.
Twitter ‘R Us
In the post-twitter world in which we live today, ignoring this can be risky business. Employees casually tweet out to friends and colleagues what is going in inside their company (whether it is positive or negative), and no amount of corporate spin and PR can ever get those communiques back. If double speak is outed, then the authenticity and believability of that brand are questioned. Transparency goes from being a word to being a gut check: Either you are or you are not who you say you are as a company.
The virtuous spiral of rebuilding from the inside-out runs something like this.
1. If you recruit imaginative and creative hard-workers to compliment your left-brain analytical types, you have the kernels of effective and sustainable innovation.
2. If you present inspiring and open workspace environments where colleagues can openly collaborate and communicate, then you attract people who like collaboration, sharing, and innovation.
3. If you listen closely to customers and keep their voice at the center of company branding and messaging- messaging to employees and customers- then you build an environment of transparency and consistency.
4. If you implement policies that give employees flexibility to work in ways, spaces and times where they work best, then you will get the best of their energy and their best work.
5. If work is project work set on a deadline and not ongoing ‘jobs’ where people get paid for just showing up, you create a culture and community of results and accountability and not a culture of ‘coasting.’
None of this is Easy
None of these resets- or redesigns- are easy. Any meaningful change is difficult. However, if we have learned one thing from the current recession, it is that the frameworks and common sense that got us into this pickle will not get us out of it. It is time, as we argue in the book, for new solutions to new problems.