Most companies survive about 15 years, while only one in twenty thrive for 50 or more years. Those odds may be increasing now given the growing start-ups since the days of the dot-coms. Fueled by high unemployment, more entrepreneurs are launching companies, most of which will not survive even the 15 year mark.
They keys to successful innovation are telling:
A passion to make a difference, to contribute to the betterment of life, to create a positive legacy drives great innovation.
Creating a diverse, mutually supportive team whose members complement each other is important in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic marketplace. The mosaic of a complementary leadership with a strong sense of self-efficacy nurtures the ability to set strong objectives and show resiliency when it comes to solving problems.
Rewarding participation with recognition, supportive feedback and stimulating opportunities means teams are more vital, display greater self-confidence and are driven to continued innovation.
Promoting an environment of ongoing learning leads to the practice of continually challenging the status quo and an ongoing search for more effective practices.
Diversity means that the team’s different perspectives, filters, and individuals will approach problems in many very individual ways. Their diversity, personal history and interests will help spot emerging challenges and more readily help the team craft innovative solutions.
A policy of dedicating the necessary time and energy to selecting the right employees builds the base needed to foment innovation. By supporting their ongoing training and skill development, setting realistic goals, avoiding punitive reactions, delegating responsibility effectively and grooming future leadership carefully breeds long term sustainability.
Envisioning a more dynamic, creative future for the organization is fertilizer for creating alternative scenarios. Being willing to think outside the box is rewarded in these environments and that feeds the process of innovation.
Finding what works well and examining this carefully, leads a firm to build on its unique strengths rather than aim to compete with another’s assets.
Keeping the teams small and nimble means there aren’t great bureaucratic gauntlets to stymie creativity. Given the responsibility to devise new solutions, a small team will move more rapidly, streamline options and quickly be ready to test results.
Experimenting, seeking feedback, running trials in the marketplace quickly allows for course corrections. Being open to refinements, or even agreeing when necessary to start over, is key to the innovative process.
When the process of innovation has been distilled, take the solution with fresh eyes and quiz it thoroughly. Asking about what is now known, assess whether it too can be improved.
Innovation in all business is the lifeblood of sustainability.
The communications revolution of the last two decades exemplifies just how rapidly our global market is being transformed. As the world innovates, it is mirrored in communications.
Those who feel that efforts underway impede economic growth often malign sustainability, which is essential for our collective future.
The people who measure progress by quarterly returns are challenged to look at a bigger picture that can’t always be measured and quantified on a ledger sheet.
Without sustainability, wholesome business and community practices, there won’t be economic growth long term. The disparate players need to hear common messages, understanding their role, and feel empowered to join in creating a healthier, more coherent global marketplace.
The world’s population falls roughly into six categories.
The first are unaware, uneducated about the changes that are occurring in our ecosystem. They are clueless about the ramifications of certain business practices, fiscal policies and managed communications. A combination of poverty and lack of education are the main culprits in this group’s ignorance and lack of participation.
The second group claims that the end of the world is already upon us and there is nothing that can be done to change things. They subscribe to creationist thinking and see the world is a short-term proposition over which humans have no say. They are important in that they are effete, will not be part of any creative thinking that will bring greater coherence to sustainability—because it isn’t sustainable anyway—and can get in the way of those who feel the world is a vital entity that requires respect and protection. Still, they deserve to hear the same messages that aim to benefit the collective but whether they will listen is another story.
The third group is a key constituency. They are doubters. They are aware of that environmental, political and business issues exist but consider them phenomena beyond their purview and not something that should concern them. They take no personal responsibility for either the changes that are taking place or the solutions that could mitigate much of the environmental degradation and corrosive business an fiscal practices that will long affect the world.
The fourth group is fertile in that they are keen to learn more, to be involved in identifying and remedying the issues that are apparently man-influenced. They would like to live in a more sustainable, wholesome fashion but feel disempowered by large public and private sector policies that seem to keep a tight stranglehold on initiatives. The problem is that they are on the cusp. They will either give up, or they will jump with enthusiasm and work for a stronger collective future. They are a crucial group.
The fifth group is the activists. They make all manner of effort, both by personal lifestyle, by speaking out, by being part of strategic initiatives to bring about solutions to environmental issues and to create greater sustainability for communities and businesses. Given how vast—and closed—man global networks are, it can seem insurmountable for a lonely voice to make a difference. Their passion and determination need to be channeled to shift the inertia that has taken over in so many sectors.
There is a sixth, very small and very special group. They are policy makers, heads of state, key technocrats, elite thinkers who command respect for having proven themselves to be working for a higher good than just their own. Together they can influence the fate of the world in a dramatic way.
All communications need to take these six groups into consideration. They can be sliced and diced in a lot of ways; they are the energy that will promote, destabilize or ignore the way the future will unfold.
Increasingly, globotext services are focused on supporting global organizations who are developing and communicating their commitments to stakeholders and communities where they operate.
The Amsterdam-based Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has spearheaded the Sustainability Reporting Framework that is increasingly used around the world to assess corporate responsibility. The Framework enables organizations to measure and report their economic, environmental, social and governance performance – the four key areas of sustainability.
The Reporting Framework – which includes the Reporting Guidelines, Sector Guidelines and other resources - enables greater organizational transparency about economic, environmental, social and governance performance. This transparency and accountability builds stakeholders’ trust in organizations, and can lead to many other benefits. Thousands of organizations, of all sizes and sectors, use GRI’s Framework in order to understand and communicate their sustainability performance. In 2011, GRI expanded its scope to include guidance for reporting on human rights, local community impacts, and gender.
GRI’s Secretariat is headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The Secretariat acts as a hub, coordinating the activity of GRI’s many network partners. GRI has regional offices in Australia, Brazil, China, India and the USA. Its global network includes more than 600 Organizational Stakeholders – core supporters – and some 30,000 people representing different sectors and constituencies.
Performance Indicators are organized into three major and four sub-categories: Economic, Environment and Social. The Social category is broken down further by Labor, Human Rights, Society and Product Responsibility.
The GRI’s methodology allows for a practical approach to assessing corporate performance in an area that has often been touted as being a feel-good public relations effort, sometimes born of controversy with labor unions, communities fighting new investments and environmental misdeeds. Spurred by the United Nations Global Compact unglobalcompact.org/ which aims to harmonize the strategies and operations of companies’ performance areas of anti-corruption, the environment, labor and human rights.
The US is in a pickle. It’s global image has been tarnished by poor economic performance, being seen as a global warrior, a dramatic and growing disparity between its “haves” and “have-nots” as well as renewed isolationist thinking that is being highlighted in the 2012 elections.
Most recently, the Pew Research Center found that much of the world sees the U.S. in jeopardy of loosing its hegemonic leadership to China.
In 15 of the 22 nations where Pew conducted polls to assess the U.S. image, its superpower status is being challenged. The perception is that China will or already has replaced the U.S. as the world’s leading superpower. Particularly prevalent in Western Europe, 72% of those polled in France, 67% in Spain, 65% in Britain and 61% in Germany see the US as falling behind China.
The U.S. has outsourced so much of its manufacturing that it can no longer meet its internal demands for products. And the odds of that manufacturing returning to the U.S. are at best, remote. Rebuilding plants, relocating operations from abroad and re-training personnel are all but impossible.
The U.S. has allowed its infrastructure to waste away and cannot meet the demands of a growing manufacturing sector.
It has created highly stratified tiers of consumers: high end (who buy luxury and state-of-the-art products in boutiques and luxury outlets) and the bottom of the pyramid who rely on Wal-Mart and big box stores for products that are built to a different—much lower—standard.
The U.S. has been cultivating predatory financial practices that eviscerate its people’s economic wellbeing in order to reward its very wealthy. Its educational system is consistently being vandalized with lower and lower standards, poor teacher salaries, layoffs, and a society that does not value is only hope of a brighter future, it’s children.
All of these decreased standards that are increasingly becoming institutionalized, are giving Europe and much of the rest of the world the perception that the U.S. has abrogated its global leadership role.
If the U.S. wants to counter the image of a rapidly falling superpower, it will need to reassess its core values, improve standards for its marginalized poor and crumbling middle class and it will need to then convey this to its own constituency and the world at large.
And this has to be done before it doesn’t have the inner strength to meet the demands of regaining lost ground.
This is not just a perception abroad. According to the Pew survey, in 2011, 46% of respondents in the US—up from 33% in 2009—say that China will eventually overshadow the US
There is a real sense of urgency to reclaim leadership in every sector of the U.S. economy. This is not the purview of politicians alone but of every entrepreneur, educator, healthcare practitioner, scientist and student. It won’t be possible to recover lost ground once the balance of power moves from perception to measureable reality.
An image is more than veneer when it deeply touches the lives of a citizenry. And the tarnished image of the US is oxidizing rapidly.
Findings in a recent Pew Charitable Trust survey of digital communications show that texting is virtually ubiquitous once there is cell phone connectivity. Of the 21 countries that were surveyed, 75% of cell phone owners claim to text.
To be effective in the din that surrounds us, messages must be more targeted and precise. Otherwise they’ll be easily lost or ignored.
Conducted under Pew’s Global Attitudes Project in early 2011, respondents with Internet access showed that social networking websites are actively used in Israel (53%), the US (50%), Britain (43%), Russia (43%) and Spain (42%).
The phenomenon is not limited to wealthy countries. Rather, as nations prosper, Internet penetration and social networking grow at rates comparable to or higher than those of wealthy nations.
It is the well educated and young who most quickly embrace these technologies. They are also likely to use more applications on their cell phones than will older or less educated users.
Cell phone penetration is at an all-time high: Spain 96%, Jordan and Israel 95%, China 93%, Britain 89%, Germany 88%, Japan and Russia 86%, and the US and France coming it at 85%.
With people increasingly connected via digital devices, traditional analog messaging is being replaced by fast bursts of emotion, intention and objectives. The subtler aspects of longer, more detailed verbal communications are rapidly being displaced.
Crafting communications requires significant strategic thinking that goes beyond the art and science of traditional writing, editing, design and production. Attention to delivery platforms, languages, cultures and timing are just a few of the additional considerations that will permanently change the nature of communications.
Successful global organizations support the fullest possible expression of their personnel’s talents and skills. Maximizing employee’s potential is the surest way to stay ahead of the curve, promoting internal and external loyalty, increasing productivity, collaboration and improving profitability.
Being able to communicate this to employees, consumers and their communities sets companies apart from their competitors.
Considering employees as headcount instead of potential sources of innovation, dynamism, and community diminishes the options for cultivating long-term success.
Often, companies that outsource production and consider their operations mobile revenue centers, see short-term returns as their standard of achievement. It is myopic, shows poor corporate and community citizenship, and will, in the long term, diminish that company’s prosperity.
Companies that help employees with skill development, enable their staff to draw on their creative resources while promoting respect, discovery and innovation brings fresh eyes and vitality to state practices.
Shaping the organizational environment, especially in multiple cultural and socio-economic settings, demands careful strategy and meticulous, consistent tactics and communications. The matrix that is required for success is like a multi-dimensional chess game with moving variables but fundamental to the company’s mission must be its stated values.
Most companies that outsource manufacturing or service operations are predominantly numbers driven. Profitability dictates rapid operational shifts, often without regard for human capital. Companies move from country to country on a dime. Short-term returns may reflect the financial advantages.
The larger issues are the company’s long-term objectives.
NIKE is one of the most successful global brands in the marketplace today. Not only because of the consistent quality of its products, its intricate distribution system, but its ability to speak to humans, collectively and one at a time, helps people value what NIKE products bring to their lives.
The NIKE tagline “If you have a body, you are an athlete” speaks to most people’s desire to be strong, fit and agile.
Created in 1972, co-founder Bill Boweman understood the value of humans participating in sports regardless of their financial, social or geographical circumstances. This applies as well to motivated couch potatoes reaching for their NIKEs to start getting in shape.
That ability to understand the human body and desire to move and excel launched Nike on its path to becoming a global standard.
NIKE espouses a vision that easily transcends industries:
“to help NIKE, Inc. and our consumers thrive in a sustainable economy where people, profit and planet are in balance. To get there, we’re integrating sustainability principles and practices into everything we do: design; developing sustainable materials; rethinking processes; advocating for change in industry. To measure our progress, we set ambitious long-term targets and report on our performance.”
Companies seeking to thrive in a global marketplace can take pointers from the NIKE model.
NIKE sustains its vision while integrating its stakeholders in all aspects of its operations.
NIKE’s communications integrates technology, platforms, images, and words and connects humans across geographical divides.
It takes vision, it takes work and it takes great skill, but progressive global companies can benefit from carefully observing the NIKE model.
What makes a successful global brand?
Inevitably, it is clear values that can be shared across cultures, languages and when appropriate, socio-economic divides.
The companies that do this successfully can be counted on a few hands: Coca-Cola, Toyota, Nike, Sony are a few.
In this and future blogs, we’ll be examining the values that companies espouse, how they communicate their values and the successes they garner as a result.
From where we see corporate communications, clearly established, specific values that apply both internally and externally are the exception rather than the rule. In some cases the values are well articulated but address the constituents’ interests partially. They don’t necessarily include all stakeholders: employees, consumers, investors, communities where the firm does business all use different filters when receiving messages.
Coca-Cola’s success translates across languages and cultures. They aim to…refresh the world by Inspiring moments of optimism and happiness, and creating value and making a difference.
The Coca-Cola vision addresses people, their products, partners, the planet, productivity and profits.
• People: Be a great place to work where people are inspired to be the best they can be.
• Portfolio: Bring to the world a portfolio of quality beverage brands that anticipate and satisfy people’s desires and needs.
• Partners: Nurture a winning network of customers and suppliers, together we create mutual, enduring value.
• Planet: Be a responsible citizen that makes a difference by helping build and support sustainable communities.
• Profit: Maximize long-term return to shareowners while being mindful of our overall responsibilities.
• Productivity: Be a highly effective, lean and fast-moving organization.
Values are the raw material for vision, mission, productivity, prosperity and ultimately the success of companies.
As we assess corporate values and how and when they are communicated effectively, we will also draw parallels with community values and how these intersect. While we don’t advocate blind homogeneity, we do advocate more effective communications that are based on respect, understanding and transparency.
An organization espouses values by what it says, does, sells and with whom it chooses to affiliate.
Often, though, there are real disparities between the values of the CEO, the board, the management team, the staff, its clients, its communities and its messages.
When that happens, entropy grows, productivity and profitability drop, client and employee satisfaction are hurt and the future of the company starts to look pretty bleak.
For a company to work optimally, there has to be clarity about values and consensus between all stakeholders so that they can work in synchronicity. Otherwise, they are working against each other and that takes energy. Energy that could be productive if all constituents and communications were on the same page.
There is no magic bullet, perfect formula. What there is in the development of excellence in a human or a business is exquisite attention to detail. It is critical to determine what each member of the organization stands for, finds important and works towards.
Without an understanding of how each person’s energies and enthusiasm, knowledge and skills, are channeled, the outcome is murky.
A leader and his management team need to have a clear appreciation for the company’s strengths and opportunities. They need understanding, compassion and determination to work with weakness so they become opportunities to be cultivated.
Very often a CEO will be brought into an organization with wild expectations for fundamental change, ergo profits.
When that is done without a clear understanding and appreciation for the existing values of the organization, the plans and expectations of the management and board, the freshly minted CEO can hit to proverbial brick wall. His tenure will be short lived.
For a successful union between the many constituents of an organization, clarity of values is essential. The identification exercise is both necessary and preliminary. It is what is done with the knowledge gleaned that starts to forge the elements of a successful enterprise. It’s only the beginning…but an essential starting point.
A recent experiment in which a software program aggregated data on baseball event and wrote a sports story seasoned editors considered sturdier than what was written by journalists is giving us all pause.
It begs reframing the elements of good journalism, fact selection, dynamic writing skills and how humans plan to keep their jobs in light of such adept software skills.
Reported on U.S. National Public Radio (http://www.npr.org/2011/04/17/135471975/robot-journalist-out-writes-human-sports-reporter), the story has presents the next inevitable step in man vs. machine.
It makes sense that humans feel vulnerable and defensive in light of the advances of technology. We don’t, after all, want to be preempted and our existence, already tenuous by some measures, questioned further. If machines can do the job as well as or better than humans, how do humans justify their existence?
Perhaps that isn’t the right question. Any more than the outcome might be machines writing for and their copy read by machines if humans cease to be a part of the equation.
In the same fashion that language and its rules are logical (sometimes) and grammarians can make sense of their rules and inconsistencies enough to set up the right algorithms, there is space for the creative, cultural, nuanced communication. That is, and will probably continue to be, out of reach of software applications for the indefinite future. (One never wants to say never given the changes in technology and human communications patterns.)
Working with languages and platforms, as globotext does, we see all manner of real and potential hurdles that face creation and adaptation of communications for multiple markets. Cultural expressions range across the spectrum. Spanish, using plenty of local color, can sound quite different in Spain, Peru, Argentina and Mexico. When talking about a universal truth or product that crosses cultural divides, it is much easier to find common descriptors. Not so with emotional writing. Slang in one country or region can differ dramatically from that of another. One only has to look at cultural and ethnic origins to trace the route that makes local idiomatic expressions so colorful.
So, while we are very enthusiastic to see Narrative Science’s experiment in sports writing, we aren’t ready to throw out the writers, editors, translators and creative sorts who give our communications such dimension and joy.
According to the US Department of Homeland Security, activists in the Middle East have been combatting government shut down of Internet with technology as simple as copper wires, tin cans and a handful of nuts and bolts.
Undaunted by the shutdowns, creative Internet users have found ways to build short-distance wireless links to pass along viral images and messaging about what is happening on the front lines in Egypt, Yemen, Libya and others.
There is a growing human cellular expectation that communications must be shared and accessible to all. A mix of traditional systems with emerging technologies will assure the message getting through. Communications are organic and somewhat seamless no matter what it takes to get word through.
When Indian and African farmers received cell phones and could find the price of their commodity on the open market, intermediaries were if not shut out, controlled. Empowered by their access to information, they were able to market their produce much more effectively.
Now, in the Middle East, access to communications technology is keeping the world apprised of uprisings, government initiatives to quell riots, and even more importantly, empowering previously submissive masses to take more control over their lives.
There is a network of portable or “backpack” FM radio stations being built for distribution in the Middle East. Though limited in range, these transmitters can serve to coordinate people and movements at moments notice. Updates can be read on-air and opposition groups can move quickly. It is always a way for civilians to stay apprised of updates in a world often made of quicksand.
The old-fashioned ham-radio is seeing a resurgence too. When I grew up in Peru, the CIA and other covert groups in our environment actively used ham-radios for coordinating their efforts. Now a NY-based group called Access is equipping ham-radio operators with special modems to convert digital computer data into analogue radio signals.
Corporate and government communications must be handled ever more masterfully now. If there is a message to be conveyed, it cannot be solely about the vested interests of the company or power base. It has to be a win-win proposition for recipients who also have access to a lot of other information and are able to informed, intelligent decisions.
The democratization of information is on an upswing and if information is managed equitably to create informed opportunities for different constituencies, it is possible that there emerge multiple points of contact where healthy dialogue can take root. Gone are the days where an elite managed communications to promote their interests and maintain their power base to the exclusion of the populace at large.
The strength of the dollar is affecting the quality of services in the US. Why?
Well, when the US was forced to outsource to other countries by its bi-partisan political leaders and corporations trying to remain profitable, they changed the landscape for the supply sector. Fine talent in the US became too expensive. The drive became to find skilled professionals abroad who could work on site or virtually at a fraction of the cost. With a stronger US dollar and weak global currencies, it was possible. Even then, at a cost to US companies and its government.
That was then, this is now. The dollar continues to weaken. Other currencies gain traction. Working in Brazilian reais or the Euro is getting very costly for dollar-pegged economies.
For a US firm to contract with foreign suppliers, gone are the days when one could find superb professionals at bargain basement prices. Now, those professionals would rather be paid in euros, pounds or reais. They do not want dollars and if they accept them, there are some who will charge a premium to receive dollars.
Outsourcing is multi-edged sword. It undermines a country’s employment base. It deflects resources that would upgrade skills and train future generations. It feeds a roaming coterie of professionals who may find work offered them one day, but if their currency gets too strong, will see the work move elsewhere.
It destabilizes economies for a long time. Lack of predictable employment means populations don’t know how to train future generations. Gone are the days when a liberal arts education guaranteed anything. The recently unemployed who have seen their work move away, are hard pressed to know what to focus on, to study, to train for, considering the volatility of employment decisions.
Except for those rarefied positions that seem to sustain themselves because the ongoing need for specific talents seems limitless, the province of professionals is a moving target. Even those in technology, the new gods many worship, are finding increasing volatility.
There was a time when there would be an unlimited need for engineers, physicians, pharmacists, IT innovators. Today that is highly dependent upon where they are located, what their subspecialty is and the changing tides of politically driven trade patterns.
From where we sit, we see a tier of communications professionals who are highly educated, very talented, but their know-how is being commoditized. They are being viewed more like thinking machines than sentient beings. They are asked to produce on demand, but not necessarily to be valued not only for their linguistic skills, but their anthropological savvy that allows them insights into cultural nuance that so dictates the effectiveness of communications.
For companies and governments who need to quantify value, the drive to depersonalize and commoditize services has profound ramifications. It is the human insight and sensitivity to intuit how communications that has such an impact on outcomes. Removing the human variable from the equation is like taking a multi-dimensional image and making it flat and black and white.
The role of media in global democratization
The barriers to entry have been blown away. Gone!
The turf that belonged to dictators, tyrants and ruthless rulers has been breached forever.
Empowerment in the Middle East is coming because people are speaking with each other. The veil of the unknown is being lifted with every Twitter, YouTube and web posting.
Eyes on the front lines are transmitted to the rest of the world and what might have bred fear and constriction is instead leading to proactivity and self-empowerment.
For all the philosophers and political theoreticians who have pondered through the ages how people will take their own place in their lives instead of relinquishing their power to a despotic ruler, none could have envisioned the tsunami of people power. It is stimulating, energizing and hopeful.
The world has always wasted the resources of most of its people. Unempowered, resources and skills undeveloped and underutilized, the engines of progress have not been silenced, they never had a voice.
People everywhere, but until recently mostly in less developed countries, have not had access to information and resources that would allow them to aspire and take some degree of control over their life. Subjugated by the powerful that controlled their lives, their economies, their decisions and those of their families, they were defeated before they began.
When one considers what the changes in the Middle East and Africa will do to shift global development, there is much to ponder. Now those forces of adolescent self-esteem will need to be seasoned with education, healthy nutrition, medical care, access to the arts, and a great deal of self-discipline. Unruly clamoring must be channeled into purposeful dialogue where voices are respected and heard, individuals supported as active and productive members of their communities.
The power of communications is exceedingly palpable. Now we wait to see how its brute force for change can be channeled into productive, respect for the earth, all its beings, and the process that started this revolution in evolution.
Effective communications determine success every time.
Working with large and small companies around the world, we find a dramatic difference between the ways some people communicate and others either don’t, or do so minimally.
With those who are able to communicate fluidly, to be transparent and coherent in their requests, business is conducted easily, effortlessly. Their communications—written or verbal—are methodical, complete, purposeful. They know what they want, are clear about expectations, are not afraid of establishing their needs and, consequently, usually get the results they want. Regardless of the language of business.
Others simply have difficulty communicating. The often do not respond to communiqués and when they do, they are often defensive or cryptic. They are often the people who are rushed…so rushed they don’t have time to communicate effectively. Their emails and calls are harried; they only respond when they need something or they find something does not meet their expectations. Often, we find their expectations only become clear to them when the product they receive is not quite in line with what they require. It is a doomed formula from the beginning for effective communications and relationship building.
Keys to success in the global business environment are:
Clarify to yourself what you need and when you need it.
Make sure the person with whom you are communicating understands what you are expecting…ask them to repeat back, in their own words, their understanding of deliverables.
Make sure everyone on both your teams is copied so that no one who needs to be privy to communications is left out of the loop.
Follow-up with written communications to confirm deliverables and expectations; leave nothing to guesswork.
If you are working in a language in which one of you has minimal fluency, make sure you are both clear about what is needed in their native language. Translators and interpreters are readily available to help you.
If this is a protracted project with milestones, refresh expectations each step of the way.
Reward the person who is delivering products or services for work well done. Payment is expected; praise can go a long way in creating a strong bond of trust and loyalty.
Where necessary, set up guidelines for future work: glossaries, project specifications, etc. It will fine tune the ongoing process and prevent miscommunications in the future.
After the project is completed, do a review session: what worked well, what could be improved. Get your colleague/supplier’s input on where they found problems and solutions. Be a team. Find and highlight challenges and successes together.
It takes much more to make a virtual, long distance relationship work effectively. Going the extra mile can make all the difference. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Listen carefully. This will help guarantee that when a connection is made in the future it will be effective and long lasting.
The last thing you want is for your global management, staff or, heaven forbid, your customers to try to second-guess what you are saying. What you mean.
The demands of multicultural communications take the need for crystal clear thinking and expressed objectives to new heights. No filling in the blanks allowed. Subtlety, innuendo, plays on words and symbolism get people into trouble far too often. Samples are legion.
While group consultation is essential to effectiveness, ultimately someone has to make a decision on how corporate messages will be conveyed. Arriving at that decision is of paramount importance.
Leaders must look to cooperative group members to gain the benefit of their input, their buy in. Doing so provides benefits: it means the creative juices flow toward a common objective; it prevents members from relinquishing responsibility for being a part of the solution; it builds buy-in so the company’s messages gain strength; it considers the multiple layers, generations, cultures, platforms and agendas that filter consumer’s perspectives. Most importantly, it supplies the decision-maker with the input needed to give the final “go” on key messaging.
Though someone must crystallize the firm’s messages, lone problem solvers will never be able to match the diversity of knowledge, the perspectives and creativity of a multi-person team that aggregates the talents, perspectives, socio-economic experiences, educational paths, generational truths and personal experiential reality. So the common maze must we walked together. The shared perspectives can then be distilled and that is when the leader takes that distillation and encapsulates his or her firm’s message.
Though one person will bear the ultimate responsibility for conveying the firm’s voice, it must be an active, participatory process.
Pre-decisional processes are key to getting to the right message and then conveying it most effectively. The leader will need to know that team members have used all their filters, insights, intelligence and skills to craft, convey and react to it.
The leader needs to be able to weigh in on the impact that the firm’s messages will have on not only short-term gains, but also long-term history. How does this position the firm a year from now, five, and ten?
This same leader must create consensus, ferret out the most effective message and then walk the solidity (not sure I like solidity here but can’t think of a better word) road of decision-making.
The forms of your communications need to fit your intended audiences: in platform, timing, language, tone, cultural and generational sensitivity, substance and with documented accuracy. What is critical is to hold on to the concept that as you write, or even speak, any and all communications you release to your customers and your stakeholders are the fabric of your legacy.
In the avalanche of material being put on the Internet, in print, audio and video through all manner of media, we forget one very key thing. It is a document. It will be archived for a very long period of time. It can be found and now and for many years to come. Search engine optimization virtually guarantees that.
What is in the material that makes up your legacy? It is the stuff of your vision, mission, philosophy, products and services. It will be around for a long, long time, emblematic of the who you are and what your firm represents.
I’m seeing companies issuing web-based corporate information with more of an emphasis on “getting” the technology than with a focus on the coherence of the message being issued. It is possible to “get” the platform, the jargon and the vibrancy of many systems for messaging. But do they convey your intended messages and your vision? They are, after all, conveying your legacy.
Some of our clients ask us to write blogs, Twitter messages or to adapt their in-house copy for different markets in a wide range of languages.
We’re watching the demand for a new breed of communications that marries social media, market-appropriate language, news, insights, forecasts and general philosophies about issues relevant to our client firms.
Relevance is driven by the need to reach investors, announce new products or services, engage customers, create and strengthen loyalty, manage a crisis, take attention away from the competition or any number of other variables.
But we also are seeing some inherent confusion in the way these communications are being crafted and delivered.
Some of the results are just barely understandable. At times it seems a 10-word message is lost in 300 words of contemporary gobbledygook. Some of these communications belie the fact that there is a coherent corporate message behind them.
The sense that I am getting is that in the rush to meet a social media agenda that some are clamoring for, the message is being missed. The packaging is there, the substance is DOA.
Traditional strategic thinking has more merit than ever: what do you have say, to whom, and when do they need to hear it? Don’t let today’s social media fad dilute your own or your company’s objectives or credibility.
At globotext, we work with many companies that have rich, dense, well-developed websites in an original language that has been crafted to serve their primary constituency.
Often, when we discuss how to adapt their site to other constituencies, their first thought is that the entire site needs to be translated. The cost for this, however, can be prohibitive and so the initiative dies before it can take its first breath.
globotext’s position is always to analyze your site in light of your constituency. Who are you reaching and why and what are the messages you wish to convey? What do you intend to achieve, bottom line, with your multiple-language sites?
Are you reaching out to serve your community with health care information? If so, consider their health concerns. These can be very different amongst your various multicultural audiences. What ails them? What lifestyle issues will support their wellness and address chronic diseases?
Are you promoting economic development? If so, what key information does your audience need to make decisions on the viability of your community or enterprise for investment? Is there something on your current site that would be confusing, not address their primary issues, or would be unclear read in a different cultural light?
Is your constituency literate? Should you be translating your site or should you adapt your content to audio/video messaging to reach your audience more effectively?
It is easy to ask for and receive a translated website. By just translating your current site you are making a lot of assumptions.
You may be better served by questioning what you have to understand and learn about your audience, what you intend to accomplish by making your firm’s information available in other languages, and above all, what would you like your audience to do as a result of being exposed to your site? Starting with your ideal final outcome will make the steps you must take to arrive there more logical and manageable.
When you think of reaching new markets, think of what that will do to transform your business. Be very clear about the results you intend to achieve. Then consider the ways in which your website’s transcreation will help you achieve that objective.
Question everything! Assume nothing! And remember that it might be wiser financially and ultimately more effective to translate, or transcreate, key pieces only rather than the entire pie!
If you have or are planning global market development, become the observer and see your company from the ground up. What does your product look like to the person on the street in Hong Kong, in Budapest, in Quito, in Brisbane, in Calgary?
How does it fit into the local environment? How does it stack up in presentation, in substance to local products?
It’s worth learning how colors, shapes, symbols and words are interpreted in each market, each culture.
We just did a project for a multinational consumer products firm that uses the word “spirit” in its branding. Translated into 40+ languages, what was extraordinary was how different the word is used, translated, interpreted. It was those cultures with comparable roots that interpreted the word similarly; for others it was almost a static concept. Spirit without a sense of energy and vitality would be inconceivable for an English-language speaker. But in Slovak it was translated as “principle”.
More surprising yet was how many languages– Czech, Dutch, German, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Serbian–referred to “spirit” in English as a tag, and did not translate it since the local marketing people could not connect the meaning of “spirit” to the product.
When Coca-Cola became ubiquitous, truly the most well known product worldwide, they chose to refer to their market reach as “we are the world”. That worked; and it worked because it was an active, inclusive term that referred to their consumers around the world, not their product alone.
People consume products. The products need to land on their turf. So how do you do it?
The difference between “spirit” and “we are the world” offers a true life Petri dish.
What is your language saying about your product around the world? A survey may be in order; and then some head scratching may follow. The homework will be well worth it.
Well, for starters, it looks like the diametric opposite of BP’s management and their communications advisors.
We have tangible evidence that myopia in the face of vested interests will dig a deep hole, which you may never get out of.
Global thinking goes far beyond market share, shareholder value, quarterly returns and CEO parachutes. It is about service, legacy, honor and responsibility.
It would seem that sadly BP has managed to miss the boat on all of these.
Global thinking means that the responsible corporate citizen becomes the observer, standing outside their personal interests. Observing the consumer, the community in which one is operating and selling, and how each market is linked to the next is part of the critical thinking needed for global success.
And perhaps one needs to define success because it is always—not sometimes—about a greater return on one’s investment than a simple bottom line. It has to do with engaging a consumer with honesty, integrity and with a keen interest on supporting their wellbeing.
People everywhere are looking for the same things: a respectable way to support and keep themselves and their families safe and healthy, to express their potential, provide a legacy for the next generation, and contribute to their community.
So what does your company do to support that individual? Because while market share may be measured in quarterly returns, it is won and sustained one person at a time. If your message speaks to your consumer as though your product was made to fulfill his singular needs, you are on the right track.
Look at winning brands to see why they are in shopping baskets in more places than you could easily find on a map: Coca-Cola; Colgate; Palmolive; Revlon; Bayer. They are all doing something right and have been doing so for decades.
We have some good models to observe and while the rules for communications may be changing, the drivers behind each consumer continue being pretty much the same. Don’t let the noise of multi-platform sound bites distract you from the way you need to engage with your consumers.