Creating a buzz about your products and services

Christmas is fast approaching and already at LCP we have had calls from wine sellers, chocolatiers and event companies explaining that if we don’t order their goods or services within the next few days/weeks we are not likely to get our order or service before Christmas and could miss out on these fantastic offers. Have these phone calls made us rush for our order pad and cheque book? No, and the simple reason why is that we don’t believe them.

However, there is one product that has created a buzz so I’m ready to buy now as I don’t want to miss out for Christmas. Those of you with young children may be familiar with the popularity of the Go Go Hamsters. These are electronic hamsters that drive cars, roll about in hamster balls and apparently are the must have Christmas present for 2009. I have a seven year old niece and have hunted high and low to get both a hamster and an accessory with eventual success.

So what explains my mad behaviour and the difference between the first and second example? Both are trying to create a buzz about their products but only one is working.

One factor is the simple rule of supply and demand – I know that I can buy chocolates or wine any time I want and feel I’m being unduly pressurised when I get a phone call telling me I’m going to miss out. Rather than create momentum for customers to buy the product or service it has the opposite effect of putting them off.

However, in the second example there really is (at the moment) a shortage of Go Go toys and accessories, leading to inflated prices on Amazon and Ebay and this gives me the impression that I really will miss out if I don’t buy one as soon as I see it.

Also in the first example, it is the company themselves promoting the urgency whereas in the second example the sense urgency is being driven by third parties such as resellers and potential customers. I met a mother in Toys R Us who told me accessories were in such short supply that if there was a delivery they would be sold out by the end of the day. Guess what I was there at 10am that morning!

So the moral of this story is don’t create a false sense of urgency – people are not stupid and won’t believe you. Rather get other people talking positively about your products and services – third party referrals and recommendations are they way forward.

Keeping talent when the economy recovers

Recently there has been increasing commentary about the possibility of a recovery and growth in the last quarter of 2009. Great news you may think but this has resulted in a number of articles warning companies about the importance of retaining their talented leaders.

One commentator argues that as many as 30% of staff are looking to leave their current jobs once the economy improves and an article by Michael Watkins (October 2009) states that only 10% of high potential leaders lost their jobs during the recession http://bit.ly/uJ1zI

Some enlightened companies such as Cisco are investing in their high potential leaders because they understand that high potentials need to be involved in challenging and rewarding work http://bit.ly/1D2kVQ

Investing time and resources in leadership development now could really reap rewards in the future.

Leading in Professional Service Firms

“Leadership is almost the single most important factor for any firm. Good or great leadership makes all the difference – ask any partner in a firm which is off pace and it is likely that leadership is the root cause”.


This was a comment we found posted on a blog about leaders in professional service firms (PSFs), which captures the critical nature of having the right leadership in place for success within knowledge-based industries, whether it be in accountancy, law, engineering, technologies or marketing.

Professional service firms deal in knowledge and as such, are unique, because their assets are fluid and intangible. Their business success is based on the reputation, loyalty and capability of their employees which can be removed at any moment so there is always a fine balancing act to be done between clients, associates and profits.

Over the years the challenges facing PSFs have changed. In particular, they are dealing with better informed and increasingly cost-conscious clients, a competitive recruitment market (despite the credit crunch there is still a battle between firms to employ high calibre professionals) and more complex organisational structures as a result of increasing globalisation, mergers and acquisitions.

These changes mean there is an increasing need for great leadership qualities amongst professionals. Historically, there has tended to be more of an emphasis on management rather than leadership in PSFs, such as planning and budgeting. This is not surprising given that professionals by nature tend to resist being managed and there is always the pressure on leaders in PSFs to balance their fee earning and non-fee earning activities.

David Maister, a well known guru on PSFs argues that many firms are guilty of systematic underdelegation.

My research shows that, for the typical professional service firm, the firmwide average (for underdelegation) is frequently as high as 40 or 50 percent, and sometimes more… Obviously this is not a wonderful situation.”
(Maister, D. 2003)

There are a number of factors that contribute to the reluctance of professionals to lead or be led by others.

The first is that professionals have worked hard to get their expert status through many years of education and training and this can make them disinclined to delegate to others as it is important for their careers to keep up-to-date on the latest developments in their industry sector(s.

Secondly, the complex skills and abstract knowledge possessed by professionals can make it difficult to manage their performance and often the line manager is reliant on third party feedback which makes conversations about performance difficult.

Another factor is the potential discord between professional ethics and organisational culture. Research (e.g. Shafter et al 2002), found that higher levels of conflict between professional standards and company culture led to lower levels of job satisfaction and overall commitment.

Leading professionals is not easy and although partners and senior leaders acknowledge that effective leadership is important to their overall success more needs to be done to support and develop professionals who take on leadership roles.
Here are some of the things the senior team can do to build greater leadership capability within their firms:

1. Set and communicate the direction
Senior partners can spend more time providing direction on where the firm is going and why. Professionals tend to have a high need for achievement and like to be included and involved. Senior partners can discuss and clarify any confusion between short-term objectives and longer-term strategic goals, as well as build in incentive packages that reward both.

2. Acknowledge the importance of leadership within the firm
Excellent leadership is a business priority but professionals need help to develop their leadership skills and also know that their efforts are regarded as valuable by the senior partners. Senior partners can allocate time to mentoring the next generation of leaders as well as providing stretch assignments that will help them to develop and grow.

Partners can also ensure leadership is seen as a valuable commodity by rewarding good practice and appropriate leadership behaviours.

3. Lead by example
Partners need to act as a positive role model by demonstrating an appropriate leadership style in all aspects of their work and by showing a commitment to coaching and developing more junior associates.

Successful leaders in PSFs have to manage and lead talented professionals who do not necessarily want to be told what to do. They need to be able to inspire those they lead by articulating a compelling vision that others can buy into and they need to do this against a backdrop of increasingly demanding clients, fierce competition from other firms and ever increasing organisational complexity.

As Damien O’Brien (2009) states “Great companies will stand out from the good by their ability to attract, retain and develop key people”

How well do you communicate with your employees?

Often determining what should be communicated to employees, how often and by whom, is left to chance rather than forming part of an ongoing, strategic plan.

Successful organisations understand the importance of creating a strong internal brand and research has shown that CEOs and senior managers of high-performing companies devote personal time to internal communications.

"Top performing companies treat communication as a key business driver. They use communication to educate managers and engage employees in the business by providing line-of-sight to customers' needs and business goals". Kathryn Yates, Watson Wyatt (2008).

If you want to improve employee engagement it is important to clearly communicate your company's vision and goals in a way that they can buy into. Ultimately, this will result in improved co-operation, productivity and profit as your people will be working to the same shared vision and long-term goals.

In a study by The Work Foundation and Communicators in Business (2007), CEOs stressed the importance of internal communications, particularly when leading change initiatives. But although IC specialists agreed that CEOs understood the importance of internal communications, they reported they were not always engaged in practice.

So what can we learn from the research?

A recurring theme is the importance of the role of your line mangers in the IC process.

"Research shows that messages from leaders, and most importantly supervisors, are more important to employees than those that originate from the internal communications department". Stromberg Consulting, 2006.

Treat your managers and supervisors as a special case as they will be the ones that deliver the essence of your messages as well as the content.

Another theme is the personalisation of information and tailoring messages to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Stromberg Consulting argue that Generation Y employees demand more concise and compelling information than their predecessors. Good practice seems to advocate a mix of delivery methods from team briefings through to ezines.

In these times of turbulence, communicating the right things in the right way at the right time becomes increasingly important, are you doing it well enough?

Motivating others - what really works?

Employee engagement or how much discretionary effort someone puts into their work is big business and there are many surveys, books, feedback tools that are targeted at measuring levels of employee motivation and commitment to the organisation.

Sometimes in the HR world we can get too tied up in metrics and trying to build business cases for the company. Rather it is time we took a step back and looked at the basics of employee engagement and we think 'The Choir' series on BB2 is a great tool for doing just that.

The Choir is about a Choirmaster Gareth Malone who believes that in the UK we have lost the art of community singing and sets about putting together a community choir in South Oxhey, a deprived town near Watford.

During the series Gareth demonstrates that getting commitment and buy-in is hard graft as he constantly cajoles, reassures and pesters the choir members to turn up and take part in rehearsals.

One success is when he manages to persuade a group of fairly tough looking Oxhey men in their 20's and 30's to dress up and sing in all of the local pubs (how he managed that we're still not sure!)

There are some tear jerking moments when he takes the children's choir to join in a concert at a nearby posh private school and when the community choir perform alongside highly accomplished musicians in front of a demanding audience. (Episode3)

So how did he do it?

Our observations are:

He is highly credible and passionate about what he does and communicates this clearly to the community and choir members

He works very hard and is flexible in his approach to different people and groups - he deals very differently with the children to the adults

He is positive but also constructive with his feedback and constantly offers his support to improve

He will change his approach if something isn't working well but is still focussed on his overall objective

He enjoys seeing others achieve and reach their full potential

If Gareth was a CEO and measured his employees engagement we suspect he would score very highly!

The series can be found on BBC iplayer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008y125

Feedback on employee performance

We always like to acknowledge and share our experiences of great customer service.

Recently we have been getting an increasing number of automated nuisance calls offering us credit and when we link to an advisor to ask to be removed they immediately put the phone down. (We expect that in itself is the scam?)

So we contacted our telephone company, a subsidiary of Virgin Media, and spoke to a very helpful young man called Martin. Martin explained that we can register with the Call Prevention Registry www.callpreventionregistry.co.uk but that may not sort out our problem as we are on an automated system which just keeps dialling the numbers it already has.

He immediately offered us a free month on anonymous caller rejection (normally involves a set up fee and monthly charge) with the idea that if they can’t get through they will delete our number from their system and ‘voila’ no more calls!

We were delighted with this idea and Martin must have heard it in our tone as he asked if he could put us through to the customer feedback survey. In about five quick questions we were able to rate our satisfaction with Martin and his resolution to our problem (all excellent of course).

What a great idea to have such a simple feedback tool that employees can use to let satisfied customers give feedback on their performance – well done Virgin Media!

Social Networking

Joining the ranks of Linked In and Twitter has been a steep learning curve and it is interesting how social networking sites are used.

Recently we asked a technical question about broadband and were delighted with the thought and detail of the responses, there was a genuine wish to be helpful.

Where else but on the internet can you get a group of highly experienced and knowledgeable people to answer your question in less than a few hours for free?

Thanks guys we really appreciate it!!