Month: September 2010

Marketing bull

There’s nothing like a bit of marketing bullshit to invigorate your day.

You know the kind of stuff I’m on about: “I need a cradle to grave solution pronto – I want you to shoot for the moon but let’s not boil the ocean on this one amigos, we simply don’t have the bandwidth”…

I’m delighted to report that in my relatively short experience with my current employer I don’t see much of this (other than when agencies pop in to pitch for some business and the occasional chai latte).

So imagine my surprise when I received a draft communication recently from one of our own Marketing boys about a new product he wanted to let everyone know about, which contained the following line:

“…as part of our overall drive to dial up the volume button on our value pillar and to make value core to our brand this year across all channels…”

On the whole, the draft was actually a beautifully written piece and got the message across perfectly until this sliding tackle from behind left me with no choice but to reach for the yellow card.

My modest contribution to improving this line was to simplify the text by removing the offending words, leaving:

“…as part of our overall drive to make value core to our brand this year across all channels…”

Hands up anyone who thinks the volume button and value pillar will be missed?

Space invaders

We have been hijacking everyone’s Windows lock screen at work on and off for a while now. It gives us a nice instant attention grabbing opportunity to remind people of something that is going on, for example a product launch, or as in today’s instance, a donor drive for the Anthony Nolan Trust. It’s non-intrusive in that it only appears when you unlock your screen after periods of inactivity or being away from your desk, and provided you don’t overdo it, it is a nice highly visual trigger to supplement other more conventional communications channels.

And then we went one step too far. The Marketing Team decided to create a series of branded images celebrating our commercial arrangements with Manchester United and Barcelona, for whom we are the official betting partner. Within hours people were complaining about having their ‘personal space’ invaded by an image of the Red Devils. They have a point. We have a very diverse workforce; however the one thing you can say about most of our staff is that they love their sport.

OK, so we can all be proud of our official betting partner status with arguably the two biggest club sides in the world. But if you support Liverpool, Chelsea, or Manchester City do you really want to see Manchester United players staring out of your screen at you every day?

With emotions running high I took the opportunity to throw up an instant poll on our intranet and a few days later the results made very interesting reading.

“The screensaver on my work computer belongs to the company – they can put anything they like on there.”

Admittedly the Wayne Rooney reference was a bit of a gag given all of the nonsense in the tabloid press recently, but I must confess that I expected a slightly higher percentage of staff to agree with the seemingly blindingly obvious statement that the company can do what they want with everyone’s desktop given that it belongs to them.

After a couple of hundred votes, representing well over 10% of the company, nearly a third of respondents made a clear statement that the screen on their work computer belongs to them and thereby implying that we have no right to intrude upon it.

So either I try to look for ways to change this mindset, which I must confess is rather tempting, or I simply accept this as a genuine sentiment and try to make sure that future images are slightly more palatable to what clearly has the potential to be a a highly partisan crowd.

What would you do?

Ninja worrier

Emotional stress is a killer. It is a major contributor to heart disease and other life threatening illnesses. It also causes exhaustion, irritability, angry outbursts, muscular tension and poor concentration levels.

So a stressed employee is unlikely to return optimal performance right? And what is worry if it is not a manifestation of emotional stress?

I don’t worry about much. I certainly never worry about things beyond my control. I don’t tend to worry about things within my control either because I have always found that worrying about things rarely, if ever, contributes to making them better. I have always enjoyed a quiet but resolute confidence in my own ability to make the right decisions, exercise sound judgement and produce good quality work on time without the need to panic or get stressed about missing details or deadlines.

This of course does not mean that I don’t sometimes let people down. Of course I do, we all do, but the people or projects that may have to wait for something are invariably the victims of necessary prioritisation.

Over the years I have learned how my apparent state of calmness even under considerable duress (a skill I acquired during my 15 year stint with the Metropolitan Police) can infuriate people, especially worriers. I guess it’s easy for a worrier to misinterpret my own lack of worry as a lack of interest or even focus; which actually could not be further from the truth.

Years ago I worked for a very talented lady who was also a ninja worrier. She used to react to the pressures of work by winding herself up into a state of increasingly heightened emotion, which occasionally led her to explode in violent rages. And I of course made things worse by not reacting by jumping to attention and running around like a madman pretending to looked stressed.

I was a rower for many years and if rowing teaches you anything it teaches you to remain calm and to channel and control your power so that it makes a positive contribution to the smooth passage of the boat.

If you get anxious and rush in at the catch, it’s like hitting the break pedal instead of the accelerator. The whole crew suffers when you rush your stroke. They have to compensate for your action and work harder themselves. It’s all about controlled aggression.

The truth is, these days, the only thing I ever worry about is the fact that I never worry about anything.