
During a visit to the NASA Space Centre in 1962, President Kennedy noticed a janitor carrying a broom. He interrupted his tour, walked over to the man and said: “Hi, I’m Jack Kennedy, what are you doing?” The janitor responded: “I’m helping put a man on the moon, Mr President.”
Is everyone you work with clear about what they are doing there?
Often the job description, even the key performance indicators which you will be judged by, are not the real reason you are there.
If the janitor at NASA was putting a man on the moon, not sweeping the floor, then what are you doing and how does it ladder up to the ultimate purpose of your organisation?
In any media agency the overall purpose is what?
To buy space for creative work that is made by a creative agency to appear in?
Not in my opinion, not since the end of the last century at the latest.
It is to consider the best way to communicate with people to achieve the client’s objectives. That might be buying some space, it might be making a TV show, it might be smoothing the customer journey or a driving brand love by championing women in sport.
Is the point of your job the same as the functions you perform? Unless you are a sole independent operator the chances are that you are performing those functions as part of a team which has a bigger purpose. You should be very clear as to what that is. Making profits for the company you work for, soothing your immediate boss, or helping your clients to grow?
The FT recently wrote a piece about “mattering”. Apparently it’s the new management buzzword coming your way from the lofty environs of Davos. Journalist Jemima Kelly (who is clearly irritated by this concept) writes: “supposedly, the ‘secret to management in a new hybrid-working economy’ is not honouring working hours, or making sure employees are achieving a proper work-life balance, or even just keeping in regular contact with them. No, the most crucial thing is ‘delivering and cultivating’ something known as ‘mattering’ the belief that you are important to others in your workplace”.
She goes on to say (unarguably): “The way to make someone feel that they are valued is actually to value them”.
But mattering at work does go beyond feeling valued by co- workers, or a boss. It is about whether you know that what you do matters to the overall purpose of the organisation.
Deloitte have published some new findings that substantiate the importance of ensuring that everything you do ladders up to the purpose of the organisation.
I joined the Deloitte Academy session in early March for a discussion of what they framed as “The purpose gap”. From research of over 4,000 employees they found that purpose really matters to employees, but that only half of those surveyed see the organisation’s purposed mirrored in their workplace reality. 47% said they left for purpose related reason, and only 55% see their leadership reflect the organisation’s purpose. There is a clear competitive advantage to be driven here, in terms of retaining and attracting talent.
Environmental, social and governance funds have doubled in size in the last 7 years and manage $7.7trn in assets. The Business Roundtable, a talking shop for American bosses, declared in 2019 that companies must place the interests of clients, customers and communities on an equal footing with shareholders. Buttonwood in The Economist states “at the moment this is the only rational choice.”
Over and above this, IPA Effectiveness awards case studies have shown significant gains to be had in terms of outcomes for purpose related campaigns, including SK11, Barclays and Mars.
In a high functioning team everyone knows their immediate and their ultimate purpose. Its great to be appreciated for what you do, it is even better to know that what you do matters.
Conditions for transformation
Monday, April 24th, 2023Lionel Shriver is not noted for her optimistic outlook on the world. She is an author and spokesperson, her breakthrough book was “We need to talk about Kevin”. This was a dystopian description of a mother’s journey to explain why her son killed 9 people at his high school.
Lionel was born Margaret Ann in 1957 and changed her name to Lionel when she was 15. She’s an American, but lives in Bermondsey.
I once heard her speaking about the NHS, and the dire state it finds itself in. (Not that this needs emphasising in a week of junior doctor strikes, but to quote the British Medical Association: “The NHS is experiencing some of the most severe pressures in its 70-year history. The COVID-19 pandemic is just the tip of the iceberg – the health service has been facing years of inadequate planning and chronic under-resourcing.”)
Shriver commenting on why this is difficult to fix (and bear in mind that there is no NHS in America), said: “However bad things are they can always get worse. Better the chaos you know than the chaos that you don’t know”.
This is the very opposite of the mindset that you need for transformation and change. It is why people in all kinds of sectors cling on to outdated and anachronistic practices and fail to take advantage of opportunities and grow.
The UK editor of Campaign Magazine, Maisie McCabe wrote a leader denouncing the failure of creative agencies to embrace change. She notes that this has led to a disappointing “quality of output”.
Creative agencies however are full of smart, creative people. Are they also too full of people who like control and predictability over the potential chaos of the unknown?
It might be a bit unfair to pick only on creative agencies. The tendency for managers to resist change in favour of things they know they can deal with is across our industry, across the UK as a whole (with a few and of course notable exceptions).
What proportion of leaders truly embrace change? How many of our people love the new?
Statistics state that just one in five people in general at work want to step out of their comfort zone. If the comfort zone is heritage status quo, then any business in our industry needs a much higher proportion than this.
We are in the new communications economy, where change is continuous and accelerating. If you have built a career on certainties that are now redundant its crucial to be open to new learnings.
For generations (according to a survey from Deloitte, quoted in The Economist) Americans have picked TV and film as their favourite home entertainment, those under 25 now prefer gaming. Although gaming is specially favoured by the under 25s (9 out of 10 Brits of that age game (what is the other one doing?)), two thirds of people in rich countries play, nearly half of them are women and half of the population aged 55 to 64. At Snoop’s appearance last month at the O2, the millennial woman in the row in front of me was playing a word game on her phone during the support act. On the tube home a Baby boomer woman sitting next to me was playing patience on her smart phone. Gaming is a mass medium, whether it fits with heuristics of creative and comms agency planners or not.
On Founder’s day at EssenceMediacom, Andrew Shebbeare stated: “Step change feels like an existential threat but sitting still is really the existential threat”.
We all need to embrace change and potential chaos to deliver customer value, not necessarily with advertising but with data informed comms, creative and tech fit for the new economy.
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