Group Think is Deadly; Group Execution is Imperative

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Great business leaders drive a culture where “groupthink” is unacceptable, whereas “group execution” is mandatory. While these attributes may seem conflicting, they are the core of a successful business culture.

“Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome… This causes the group to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation.” (Source)

When groupthink is spelled out as the definition above, most would say they do not want their organization to run that way. But how many companies truly have a culture that is specifically built to operate to oppose groupthink?

Terms like diversity and inclusion get much attention these days. Most often, these terms are used to address variations of people as it relates to gender, race, ethnicity, sexual preference, religion, age, etc. Make no mistake. Giving ALL people an equal chance, independent of their characteristics, is the foundation of integrity. But diversity and inclusion get much more lip service than execution. It is also important to think about diversity with regards to how one processes challenges and dives into critical thinking. This is ingredient for increasing the probability of business success.

When people hire for their organization, how often does “affinity bias” guide decisions? “Affinity bias — having a more favorable opinion of someone like us — is one of the most common” biases that impacts your professional decisions, especially hiring. My point here is that it is far too often that hiring managers define “good fit” as deciding on individuals that are common to them. And if you believe that companies’ business success is directly related to molding a culture where groupthink is discouraged, then diversity and inclusion are imperative from both a physical and mental being perspective. (If you want more information on “How to Reduce Personal Bias When Hiring,” see the cited Harvard Business Review article).

On the flip side, group execution is imperative. If you want to win the race, everyone on the team needs to be rowing in meticulous synchronicity. Once business decisions are made, everyone on the team needs to buy into the execution plan, no matter whose suggestions or strategies have been determined to implement. Without a cohesive group execution business success is near impossible.

Successful business demands a culture where groupthink is avoided like the plague and group execution is rallied with passion and motivation.

Make it happen!

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Positive Leadership Yields Winning Business Results

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How do you feel? Really, how do you feel? The past couple of years has really paid its toll on many people’s mental well being. It is time to move forward to a better quality of life. And that is much easier said than done. How does one dig themself out of negativity? Answer: with help. And YOU are the help that other people need. 

“Researchers and leaders have looked for the secret to successful leadership for centuries … The one thing that supersedes all these factors is positive relational energy: the energy exchanged between people that helps uplift, enthuse, and renew them.” (Source)

It is up to YOU to make people feel better – uplift them, enthuse them, and renew them. Interested in doing so?

You can, and should be the one. Whether that is for your own personal success or truly wanting to help others, it is in your best interest to push and sell positivity. From my perspective, it is all about “motivation” as opposed to “fear.” Untap your team. Make each individual reach their potential. Encourage collaboration and unify.

I have worked in many different environments, for many different bosses. I have had ones that have been great motivators via positive energy, encouraging challenges, and efforts to get the most out of me. I have also worked for bosses that were brutal and worked to instill fear as part of their management style. A couple even to the point of emotional abuse. When I look back on my career, I can say unequivocally that my greatest professional successes have come from environments that were motivational.  A large and growing body of research on positive organizational psychology demonstrates that a cut-throat environment is harmful to productivity over time. It adds that a positive environment will lead to dramatic benefits for employers, employees, and the bottom line as stated in the article in Harvard Business Review, “Proof That Positive Work Cultures Are More Productive.”

I will take this theme of “positivity” one step further as it relates to business. Your brand presence and marketing needs to be positive and uplifting. You need to instill promise, hope, and inspiration to your target audience. Just about everyone has had some degree of mental setback in the past couple of years and they need to be uplifted. A great example of this approach to marketing is an advertisement Google ran at the end of 2021 shown here:

It is time for business leaders to take part in shaping the future of society, communities, and individuals. Businesses have a great degree of impact on all these groups. And whether you truly care about your customers/clients or solely your revenue/profit, there are strong reasons to promote positivity in your professional life. It is time!

Make it happen! 

The Rubber Band Effect – The Art of Marketing Success in a Corporate World

I recently read an article on Ryan Reynolds and his marketing approach to Aviation Gin. The article is a good read, but has an implicit key takeaway worth highlighting.

Accolades for Reynolds 

“Reynolds is the creative dynamo behind some of the most amusing, sardonic and memorable ads of the past couple of years.” – He is a natural. 

Reynolds has one Advantage

“Not having to deal with bureaucracy, hierarchy and corporate bloat, he said, gives him a competitive edge.”

This is a luxury that most of us in marketing positions do not have. No matter how stellar of a marketer one is, there is always an executive or client that challenges them and they will have to answer to (not necessarily a bad scenario).

It is a delicate balance for marketers to deliver a) strategy and plans that they know will drive success and b) strategy and plans that they know will appeal to governing stakeholders. The first step is to understand your “management’s” biases as compared to your perspective of the prudent and successful marketing game plan. As a general rule, the correct approach is the intersection of the two as shown in this venn diagram:

But here is the catch. If you continue to provide marketing strategy and plans that just adhere to stakeholder bias, can your subject-matter-expertise be leveraged to drive innovation and greater success for the brand? I would argue the answer is no. And my suggested answer should be considered by the stakeholder as well – because, in fact, they also want supreme success for their brand.

Thus, I introduce the rubber band effect. As a marketer, you should try to “stretch” your stakeholders’ perspective, but to a limited amount such that you do not lose their respect and trust. A rubber band has a degree of elasticity and if stretched too far it snaps. Same is true in appealing to executives. You cannot push too far that you make them snap and lose your respect and trust.

Now, I will flip to the other side as well. Executives cannot handcuff their teams if they truly want innovation and growth. True leaders embrace ideas and perspective beyond their own knowledge, experience, and viewpoint. They too need to stretch their perspective rubber band and comfort level.

In summary, the rubber band effect is all about stretching your modus operandi a bit beyond given rules and subjectivity. How can anyone in any facet of life have progress if we do not stretch “what is” to “what could be?”

Is Passion Always a Good Thing?

Passion – it could be a most positive factor in the workplace, BUT it could also be extremely detrimental.

Passion – “intense, driving, or overmastering feeling or conviction.” (Source).

Passion might be the most overused and misleading word to describes one’s professional mentality.  Heck, I often describe myself as passionate, especially as I just went through a number of job interviews.

But I also want you to beware of passion.  The type of passion that comes from a self-absorbed individual that is passionate about themselves. Passionate for their own advancement and individual goals.  And this type of person can be found at every level in organizations.

So if we review the definition of passion above, I think the words “intense” and “driving” require further examination.  When we look at the passion of a person in a professional setting, are we talking about a myopic individual that is close-minded and has an inability to a) take input and get insights for all people, and b) focuses on their own success and not the successes of the people they work with.

If you really want to add a key player to your team, find someone with passion. But most importantly find a person with the passion to make others around him or her wildly successful.  This is key to developing a winning team.  A championship team that drives strong profitable growth.

You might ask, how do I find passionate employees but at the same time know they are passionate team players as opposed to solo artists.  I suggest you go through this line of questioning with them and ask:

1. Are you passionate?
2. What are you passionate about?
3. Oh, and by the way, what does passion mean to you?

 

The first question is really a throwaway question and a setup. Would anyone actually answer that they are not passionate?  The second question forces the individual to be subjective in their vision of passion.  You get to find out areas of the individual’s passion and the magnitude of their passion in the fields they state.  But the third question is the most important one.  It feels like a casual off the cuff question to the recipient.  But their answer is most telling.  When they define passion, how self-focused is their answer versus team-focused?

I always believed I was a passionate person.  But I have reassessed what passion really means as a result of various individuals I have worked for and with.  I do believe that people automatically think passion in the workplace is a most positive attribute.  But at the same time, it can be truly harmful.  Make sure you understand the differences and build an awesome team.

10 Attributes of Leaders and Leadership

1. Leaders drive the success of others around them as opposed to focusing on their own success. ~ Steve Goldner

 

2. The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership. ~ Harvey S. Firestone

 

3. A boss has the title, leaders have the people. ~ Simon Sinek

 

4. Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work. ~ Seth Godin

 

5. A leader is someone that people want to follow. ~ Steve Goldner

 

6. Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. ~ George Patton

 

7. Leadership is not just about giving energy… it’s unleashing other people’s energy. ~ Paul Polman

 

8. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. ~ Peter F. Drucker

 

9. Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better. ~ Bill Bradley

 

10. Leaders provide the calm in the midst of a storm. ~ Steve Goldner

 

 

How You Can Soar

For the past couple of months I have struggled. I often get this way from the greyness brought on by the months of January and February. Lack of Vitamin D naturally produced by the body from the sun.

This seasonal effect has been punctuated by true disdain for the political environment in the US at the moment. Can you really build a strong brand that Americans favorably respond to without any substance?

My biorhythms have also been unbalanced due a tragic event in my community that had no direct bearing on me, but has profoundly shaken me.

Yes. As humans we get down. Even the spirited “life coaches,” motivators, and spiritual leaders have their periods of lows.

But I have found there are three attributes that pick us up and provide positive substance and in our life.

1. Gratitude – far too many people have the perception that when they are happy, they will be grateful. In actuality, it is really the opposite. In order to be happy you need to start by being grateful for what you have. If my sister could find gratitude as she was dying of cancer, so can you. Independent of your situation. We all have strong challenges in our life. We must force ourselves to focus on the beauty and not the negatives in our life and find gratitude.

2. Hope – there can be no positive evolution in one’s life without hope. While I am not a religious person, I do find that hope is definitely a spiritual element. Hope is not something physical that you can hold in your hand. Crazy as it seems, it is something you rely on. But at the same time, hope is not something that you can just wait to enter your life. You have to have both gratitude and desire in your life to allow hope to be present in your consciousness.

3. Passion – I had a weird dream last night that inspired this article. (Please understand that I often have bizarre scenarios in my dreams as you read.) In the dream, I was a director at a performance arts camp or something of that nature. In the dream, I had the power to kind of float and fly through the grounds. Picture an angel with wings if you will. At one point, things were not progressing as well as I had hoped. My ability to float about was being jeopardized. I was just hovering. Then, I sang out with complete conviction and passion and I soared. I mean I literally soared with swoops and glides as I sung with total, total passion. I put everything into singing – all my heart; all my soul. And as a result I soared throughout the grounds at great heights. This dream is in fact a metaphor for reality. If you want to soar, you must have unadulterated passion in what you do.

Deep down, I think we all want to soar. It takes hard work to soar whether our objective is capturing happiness, and/or personal or professional success. We need to evolve and transfix our mentality, perspective and point-of-view. It starts with gratitude. Work on that first. Once you can honestly say you have gratitude in your life, then work on hope. Hope gets to be very personal. Whether it is religious, spiritual, or simply a sense and strong belief in something you cannot actually control, you need to let hope be a strong manifest within your life. Lastly, once you have gratitude and hope, go after your objectives with an unrelentless passion.

I shared with you that this article was inspired by a dream I had last night. In reality, very few people get to capture their dreams. Some do. But I can unequivocally state this – If you chase your dreams with passion, you might not follow the exact path you set out to achieve. But if you have gratitude, hope, and passion chasing your dreams, you serendipitously will be taken on a path of happiness and success.

Make It Happen,
Social Steve

PS – If you are looking for a great novella about chasing your dreams and path, I highly recommend reading “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho.

The New Way of Getting People Motivated to Do What the Brand Wants

I get it – marketing is all about getting your target audience to move in a direction that is beneficial to the brand. It is a company initiative that must turn measureable results. It is a business function that must be accountable to company goals and objectives. It is not an altruistic function.

But something has dramatically changed. Your audience is skeptical of your marketing ploys. Your audience rejects your marketing push if it is interruptive and lacks relevance. Remember, your audience engages with their own network. They often market for your brand and also against your brand. Your audience’s behavior and influence of your brand success has changed, so you must change your marketing approach.

In marketing, we aim to have our audience respond to brand “call to actions.” But we can no longer go straight for desired brand outcomes. We must first build relationships, build trust, and cultivate our audience. Old school marketing communication no longer works. Marketing communications cannot push brand agenda and be a way one pushes brand content. Audiences no longer react positively to this form of brand marketing.

Look, I know I go by the pen name “Social Steve” so you would expect me to push the importance of social media, social marketing, social media marketing – call it what you want. My recommendations and actions are driven by one facet – audience behavior. Current audience behavior dictates the need for you to change your marketing approach. Not social media hype, but mainstream audience behavior.

Last week I presented to 60+ top level executives at an executive forum. I stressed the importance of their need to change their understanding and participation in social marketing. I would say my message resonated with about 1/3 of the audience. The other 2/3’s of the audience seemed very uncomfortable with my push for them to change their marketing approach given current audience behavior. Far too many seasoned professionals are stagnant in their leadership approach. The need to change makes them uncomfortable. All I can say is “shame.” If you are a leader, you must lead based upon the behavior of the audience you want to capture.

So what is the change that must occur to “Getting People Motivated to Do What the Brand Wants?” From a theoretical approach that is easy. You want to build relationships so that your target not only loves your product or service, but they love your brand as well. They love what you stand for and your commitment to customers. The hard part is the execution of this because it takes times. There is rarely love at first sight from a customer to a brand. You must earn their trust, love, and commitment to your brand.

I’ll give you an example. I currently head up audience development for a start up. I am constantly under pressure to increase the number of subscribers. I understand that is the company’s main objective. I get directions from my executive management to communicate, “respond by signing up today.” I know that I cannot ask for that call to action until I have built up some trust from the individuals I look to convert. While my management measures my success on number of sign ups, I must stay committed to building relationships with my audience. I cannot give in to the pressure of pushing for sign ups too early. That will not turn winning results. So while everyone wants results immediately, I have been cautious not to push my audience too early in the relationship. Now, four months into my stint at the start up I am seeing inertia and momentum. I am building strong relationships with the target market and our audience is responding most positively.

Moral of the story, it is easy to give into the objectives and KPIs (key performance indictors) of your company. But in the long run, the results will not be successful. Patience and commitment is required.

If you want to motivate your audience and drive brand objectives, understand your audience first. Play to the audience’s whims and do not be myopic to your company goals. This may sound trite, but play nice, make friends, and then ask for what you want to accomplish. Think about it.

Make It Happen,
Social Steve

Can Marketers Learn Something from The Pope?

Yes. I actually asked that question with sincerity. This might be my most bizarre blog article yet. I am not a Catholic or Christian. Heck, I am not even religious. I am a non-practicing Jew that is more spiritual than religious. And with that preamble, I have to tell you that I found some statements from The Pope this week, truly amazing.

In his weekly gathering in Rome, The Pope said that The Church need to embrace people who are divorced as well as their children. “No closed doors!” This is truly remarkable given that The Church has shunned people of divorce for centuries.

And there is a big takeaway for marketers here. Let me ask you … are there any corporate doctrines in place that make your offering closed to a segment of your potential audience. I certainly hope not. But let me take it a step further. Is there anything you are doing in your persona, messaging, or engagement that is potentially repelling people? Here I think the answer could be yes. I am not suggesting you do so on purpose, but there is likely some facet of your marketing that is turning off some.

We need to look deep and hard at the way our brand messages affect our audience. The scrutiny is well worth it as there should be “no closed doors” for our audience.

It is no secret that The Church has been losing followers in part due to their strict, nonflexible doctrine. The Pope’s message this past week says he is willing to ease The Church’s persona, messaging, and engagement with the people a bit to increase his audience. But in doing so, he did not water down his message for the core of his target audience.

This is key. When you develop your brand’s position, you need to appeal to that small group of ideal customers, but at the same time you want to attract a large enough audience to meet the required scale for business profitability. Look at the bull’s eye diagram below. The challenge is determining how far off the center circle you need to go to win the right number of customers while not watering down your position such that it is not compelling to the ideal customer.

Consider listening to the entire target audience mass. Understand what they are saying and based upon their behavior, think about tweaking your position. (This is exactly what The Pope did.) Then make sure your brand messaging resonates with the outer most segment of customers and certainly with the ideal customer as well.

I think this is what the modern day Pope accomplished with one of the most historical and oldest market segments. If he was able to stretch the doctrine of an old inflexible institution, you certainly can with your brand.

Make it Happen!
Social Steve

Great Marketers are Perpetual Students

In my career, I have been on many job interviews. There is one question that is often asked … the usually uncomfortable “What is the area that you need the most growth or development in?” I am not sure that the interviewer gets a real answer to the question, because the one being interviewed often takes the question as “What do you suck at?” No one wants to answer that in truth on an interview.

A couple of weeks ago, I was interviewing with a company and I was asked that probing question. My answer – “Everything. As a marketing executive driven to produce true product awareness, value, and advocacy, I am constantly learning. The audience behavior has changed dramatically. Technology has changed, and more than being wrapped in technology, I need to assess how audiences react and use these technologies. In order to deliver excellence, I need to be constantly growing and learning.”

Now I might be preaching to the wrong choir here. If you are reading this article, you probably have read a number of industry newsletters and blogs to keep up on marketing. But simply reading is not enough. Marketing is a contact sport. You cannot just read a playbook and go out in the marketing field and be successful. You need to practice on field and get your repetitions and experimentation in and executed. You need to really engage and see how people react.

It still astounds me that many seasoned veterans avoid perpetual growth and development. At one point in my career, I worked for a Chief Strategy Officer. She was well read and educated. But she did not participate on digital platforms she was including in clients’ strategy. How could you really get a true feel for how people participate (or don’t) if you are not active in these playing fields? Far too many senior marketing executives have lost touch with today’s audiences. These senior executives have a wealth of marketing experience that is absent from junior marketers. Especially as it relates to driving CEOs KPIs (key performance indicators). This is a skill set junior marketers do not possess yet. But at the same time, “senior” experience is wasted if it is not complimented by continuous learning AND practical participation.

Just short of a year ago I stated the following in an article “The Dramatic and Fundamental Change in Marketing and What You Need to Do” …

“The Internet and digital communications allowed a shift of control of brand reputation to the consumer and purchasing business. Make no mistake. Brands can no longer make bogus claims. There is a democratized public that now plays the role of judge and jury. Technology enabled a behavioral change. Digital allows a new way for people to communicate – faster and to a larger audience.”

This technology change has fueled the greatest change in consumer (and B2B) behavior. If senior marketers are just going to leave “digital” knowledge and experience to “digital natives” there will continue to be a great hole in delivering marketing excellence that yields empirical results.

On another interview, within the past couple of weeks, I was asked if I was a strategist, or a strategist that also executes as well. I answered the latter. A successful strategist must get their fingernails dirty and get into practical execution. Top marketing strategists can deliver recommendations that yield 85% effective results at of the gates at best. They must then launch their strategy and dig into engagement and execution to see how their strategy and plan plays to the audience they look to capture. And then use empirical results to tweak the strategy and plan. People’s attitudes and behavior change quickly. You need to be active and engaging to stay on top of your target audiences’ reactions.

So I urge you, whether you are senior, junior, or somewhere in between. Metaphorically, go back to school. Get back in training. Get back into hands-on practice.

Make it Happen,
Social Steve

The Changing Style of Successful Leaders

In my career, I have seen significant change in successful leadership styles. (I’ll get to that in a bit.) The first thing I do when wanting to address “leaders” and “leadership” is to establish a base line. What is a leader? What is leadership?

Naturally, I Googled “leader” to get a definition. The first definition that came up in the search is very poor. It states, “the person who leads or commands a group, organization, or country.” That’s great, but want does in mean to lead? What is leadership?

The second source, Wikipedia, does a much better job with the definition … “Leadership has been described as a process of social influence in which a person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task. For example, some understand a leader simply as somebody whom people follow, or as somebody who guides or directs others, while others define leadership as motivating and organizing a group of people to achieve a common goal.“ This definition pretty much covers the crux of “The Changing Style of Successful Leaders.”

About 15 years ago, I was part of an elite group of professionals that were groomed as the future executives of a large corporation. The company provided special getaways and training for some select company directors. I remember a particular session where the CEO came in to do a talk on leaders. He started the session off by asking everyone in attendance for the definition of a leader. Finally he said, “A leader is someone that everyone wants to follow.” … An answer no one provided. We then talked about different leadership styles throughout history ranging from fear-induced motivation to charismatic leaders and everything in between.

Today, a successful leader does not simply have followers. They deliver successful results. Let’s name a few continuously (for the most part) successful businesses – Apple. Coca-Cola. Google. Amazon. Starbucks. Disney. Nike. Procter and Gamble. And the list can go on. There is a common thread among these companies … they have all stayed innovative in some manner throughout the years. So to deliver successful results, a leader must keep his/her company innovative.

If we go back to the Wikipedia definition for leader it says that a leader is “somebody who guides or directs others, while others define leadership as motivating and organizing a group of people to achieve a common goal.” Now I will categorically say that innovation comes from motivating and organizing people to achieve a common goal as opposed to simply guiding and directing others.

What I am saying is that innovation must be directly tied to leaders and leadership. Leaders need to produce innovation in the name of increased sales, increased profits, increased market share, introduction of a new product or service, or any other company objective. I dare say that innovation needs to be the source of every successful objective and outcome.

This past week, I read an exceptional column titled, “Nine Behaviors That Drive Innovation” by Jack Zenger. I highly recommend reading the entire article, but to summarize Jack suggests that successful leaders drive innovation as follows:

1. Leaders jointly create a vision with their colleagues.
2. They build trust.
3. Innovation champions were characterized by a willingness to constantly challenge the status quo.
4. Leaders who fostered innovation were noted for their deep expertise.
5. They set high goals.
6. Innovative leaders gravitate toward speed.
7. They crave information.
8. They excel at teamwork.
9. They value diversity and inclusion.

Thus successful leaders are not simply followed. They are collaborative team builders that leverage diversity within a group and use empirical data to make keen decisions. When I think back to a number of executives I have worked for I stop to ask myself, “How did they ever get here?” I also remember a handful that were true leaders that always challenge the status quo. They are successful because of their own desire to make positive change (innovation) and not intimidated by others. Now I am sure there will be a number of company leaders that land where they land due to politics and other obscure reasons, but true leaders are distinguished by success via the innovation they bring to fruition yielding strong business results. Thus you can be a leader no matter where you sit in the company organization chart. Work in a collaborative nature and capture the expertise and views throughout your organization. Grab different information and make decisions based upon subject matter experts in your organization. Move quickly and be prepared to deviate based upon measured results.

Make It Happen,
Social Steve