According to ARRSEPedia, the font of all spurious knowledge for the British Army, the word gizzit derives from the traditional army habit of acquiring souvenirs whilst ’abroad’. “That’s shiny, gizzit ‘ere!” so the story goes.

For military invasion read trade show. We’ve all seen them. Roughnecks marauding from stand to stand hunting down stress balls, garish ballpoints and shiny memory sticks with sadly inadequate memories. If they get really lucky, they track down the holy grail of trade show gizzits, the mobile phone deck chair.

Note my slightly dishonest use of the third person plural here. Admit it. We’ve all done it…

My real interest in the science of gizzitology is in the internal use of corporate gifts, where they attract greater levels of variance in terms of perceived disposability and value. By value, I don’t really mean financial value, for there is none. Unless of course you count the money saved by not buying them in the first place. No folks, the true value of a gizzit is measured in emotional equity. And this is where things get tricky.

I’ve never worked anywhere where your own branded merchandise is not highly prized. It’s amazing how much emotional value there is in a baseball cap, T shirt or pack of cards dished out, preferably with no strings attached. The road to gizzit nirvana is however strewn with potholes and dangerous bends. There is a very thin line between success and failure when you play with people’s emotions.

If you get it right, nothing beats the power of a gizzit to raise spirits. If you get it wrong, damp squibs and chocolate teapots spring to mind. The challenge is to make sure that the the internal use of gizzits is appropriate, proportionate, timely, on-brand, culturally acceptable, equitable and hits the gizzit-spot (let’s call it the g-spot) of every recipient.

If they are not dished out to everybody at the same time, the ‘have nots’ can get very uppity, even if they know it is on the way. So the logistics have to be spot on. If a particular team or location is earmarked for exclusive gizzitry, those left out will be unforgiving.

Perhaps the hardest thing is getting around the “one size fits all” issue. For example, there is often a bit of a divide between what a senior director would value versus the preference of a front-line customer service representative. Another trophy for the cabinet is great if you have a trophy cabinet. Or even a desk. To someone who hot-desks every day, this is unlikely to land as well. Closely aligned to this is cultural fit. Why would you give a USB memory stick to a work force that doesn’t use computers, or a crystal paperweight to a dynamic young paperless internet company?

So my questions are thus.

• Are gizzits worth the time, effort and cost or should you consider other forms of internal recognition and celebration that are less problematic?




• What is the best gizzit ever to land on your desk?




• What is the worst, most inappropriate or lame gizzit you have ever been given?

Brand values are owned by the brand musketeers in Marketing, often with enthusiastic kettling from ludicrously expensive external consultants. Their job is to communicate to the external audience in a way that creates an expectation of a particular experience with a product or service. They are therefore likely to be aspirational and even on occasion (shock horror) a little bit contrived.  They’re there to sell. They are therefore prone to change and re-invention as new products and services are developed and existing products wither and die.

Core values on the other hand are more likely to belong in the HR stable, often with enthusiastic kettling from ludicrously expensive external consultants. They are directed at the internal audience. They serve as a set of guiding principles to employees. They are enduring truths about what is important to the people within the organisation. They are not objectives. They do not seek to change behaviour. They cannot be invented. They already exist in every organisation. You don’t create them, you uncover them. The essence of core values is that regardless of any changes in your products, services, and the world around you, they remain constant and resonate with everyone in the company.

Forget everything I just said about the above distinction because I don’t believe it really exists – and if it does at your place, sort it out now because it won’t be doing you any favours.

Brand values and core values should be the same thing. Granted, they may need dressing up in slightly different clothing, given that the external and internal audiences will be looking at them from different angles. Regardless, they should be the same thing.

Externally, customers will be looking to see what they can expect when they buy stuff from you or do business with your company. Internally, this message cannot afford to be a promise; it needs to be a deeply held and enduring truth. There has to be full alignment because any disconnect is likely to result in customer disappointment.

Core values that are not deeply held and enduring truths are empty promises.

Core values that are empty promises will not amount to engaged staff.

Brand values that are empty promises will not amount to engaged customers.

Brand values that misalign with core values will lead to internal friction and a lack of engagement with either the brand values or the direction of the company. Staff will question the development of products and services they feel are not aligned with the company’s core values. At best they will become reluctant passengers. They may still travel with you but you will lose their best work and natural advocacy. At worst they will seek every opportunity to apply the brakes.

Whichever way you cut it, customer disappointment is inevitable.

If your brand values are driven by the success of a single product, they will have a shelf life limited to the success of that product. If your brand values are driven by your core values they will have longevity and a dramatic impact on your future product development pipeline and organisational growth.

Take a few minutes to listen to what Steve Jobs had to say on the value of values way back in 1997.

He knew the score.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Policies can empower. They can liberate. They can enrich. And they can make you feel a whole lot better. That’s because they tend to provide clarity around what is acceptable and what isn’t. This clarity removes doubt and fear that can otherwise stifle an individual’s personal and professional development as well as cripple the organisations they work for, by blocking innovation and collaboration, and encouraging risk aversion, inertia and even withdrawal.

To be effective a policy has to make sense and land well with the intended audience. The ‘what’s in it for me’ question must be addressed right up front. “Failure to comply with this policy could lead to disciplinary action, including dismissal” just doesn’t cut the mustard.

That’s a bit like telling people they are lucky to have a job when they submit an idea to improve the conditions they work in.

With words like ‘compliance’, ‘discipline’, ‘conflict’, ‘declaration’, ‘grievance’, ‘enforcement’, ‘monitoring’ and ‘unauthorised’, the language around policies is littered with negativity.

I promise you there’s at least a glimmer of positivity in every policy and a shed load in most, so stop focussing on the doom and gloom and bring out the positives. Demonstrate how the policy will liberate you to get out there and sell more stuff, build better products, provide even better support to your customers and even maybe encourage you to evangelise about the great company you work for.

Given that most policies fly out of Legal, Finance, Internal Audit and HR it may be too much to expect the language within to ensure a smooth landing with the intended audience. This is where Internal Communications should take over the controls, ease back on the throttle, and bring the plane in safely.

The next question is do they really have to be so damned prescriptive?

Marketing, Public Affairs and PR may well get all the money, resources and glory.  Am I bothered? Not a jot, because I get the quiet satisfaction of knowing that what Internal Communications is doing is more challenging, more complex and every bit as important.

Internal Communications has unique challenges that external facing teams don’t have to contend with, and this fact alone makes the job such a blast.

Perhaps the biggest of these challenges is securing the enduring commitment of the senior leadership team. I say enduring because that is the key difference between external and internal communications. External communications only really needs the commitment of the senior leaders at certain points in the supply chain; budget approval, communications plan sign-off, cooperation at media training time & rehearsals, and then sticking to the script when let out in public. The rest of the time they can generally leave things in the very capable hands of the Corporate Communications team and not give a second thought to what they’re up to.

Internal Communications however needs the commitment of the senior leadership team all of the time – and I mean all of the time.

From the minute they walk in the door to the minute they clock out 13 hours later, day-in, day-out, they need to be acutely aware of the influence they have on their people. One unguarded moment; one throwaway comment on a conference call; one ill-considered line in an email; that’s all it takes to expose a potentially critical lack of alignment with company’s strategy and values, or with the rest of one’s peers on the senior leadership team.

More than anything, leaders need to live and breathe the company strategy and values through their actions,behaviours and words. Their job is to bring to bring this stuff to life internally and to empower and energise their people to follow the company’s strategic intent.

Just one loose cannon could lead to entire divisions working against each other and pulling in the wrong direction.

Internal Communications is there to facilitate and support organisational alignment – and without leadership alignment the odds are stacked against you. That’s why I believe that the single most important part of our job is to facilitate and support leadership alignment.

It’s a bit harder and infinitely more interesting than simply managing intranet content and spraying corporate messages around with the Internal Communications scattergun.

There’s no other word quite like it for sucking the positivity out of a room. No other word comes close to plucking defeat from the jaws of victory.

Just when you think you’ve cracked it, out pops the ‘b’ word and everything unravels. I’d love to help you but… I think it’s a cracking idea but… It’s one of the best meals I’ve ever had but…

Think about it. What does “but” actually do?

I’ll tell you what it does – it effectively puts a line through the words that immediately precede it, rendering them a pointless waste of time. 

The dictionary says that “but” is a conjunction used to indicate contrast. That’s far too generous.  Contrast is good – it provides clarity and makes things sharper and more visible. I think we need a new definition.

but [buht; unstressed buht]
A word used to dilute the power of the words that precede it.

I particularly like the way that infographics tend to be non-linear. There are no pages to turn; you just keep scrolling down the screen revealing fresh content as you go. This is a very comfortable and familiar experience for digital natives, who can take in a lot of information very quickly this way.

One of my favourite examples of a good infographic design is this one created by www.kleptocracy.us to provide a visualisation of American debt. Setting politics aside for one moment, one can’t help but admire the way the artist has illustrated the scale of an almost unimaginable quantity of dollars.

I’m actually looking closely at the art of infographic design at the moment as I’d like to use this technique to illustrate the incredible 10 year history of the company I work for, combining internal corporate milestones with external customer facing highlights.

Rather than attempting to grab people’s attention with pages and pages of traditional text, I think a good infographic could tell our amazing story in a few moments. When you are competing for peoples’ attention against the pressures their day jobs, this is an attractive option.

Another increasing trend I have noticed is that of animated infographics. This is quite a cute example that charts the history of the iPhone. I think the music helps as well.

I haven’t yet come across any public examples of infographics being used by Internal Communicators. Given the benefits I have described, surely there must be companies out there using them to help staff digest complex organisational data?

What do you think?

Anyway, that’s why I came across an astonishing example of corporate puffery this evening. You know the stuff. Bland and meaningless tosh used by corporate communicators the world over to fill a bit of space when they have nothing really to say.

Here is the offending piece, which is part of the welcome page inside the front cover, written (well, signed at least) by the airline’s Managing Director:

“With the new year fast approaching, I would like to share with you the news that throughout 2012 we will be announcing a number of new initiatives. These will ensure that we continue to making flying with us the quickest, most comfortable and best-value way to travel across Europe.”

He then moves on, swiftly changing the subject, leaving me in such a state that I felt compelled to  whip out my laptop and write my first ever airborne blog.

Quite how the intention to announce news of news next year can constitute news today is beyond me.

But what is worse – corporate puff or marketing bull?

In another interview with Erin Lieberman Moran of the Great Place To Work Institute, Mark Ragan recently asked about the role of social media today in Internal Communications. Erin’s response was that the best companies are using it to enhance and strengthen workplace relationships. She went on to say:

“In lousy workplaces, organisations are monitoring the blogs to make sure that there aren’t human resource violations. In high trust environments where leaders trust the people that work within the organisation, they are just letting those conversations continue because there is an understanding and an appreciation that by opening up those vehicles they have insight into what people are thinking and experiencing.”

My regular readers will not be surprised that I concur.

These conversations will still be happening. Employees with an axe to grind will still hold court in the coffee room or the corridor. It’s just that the leadership team won’t have the benefit of knowing about them nor the opportunity to engage with the issues.

Earlier this year, Giam Swiegers, CEO of Deloitte Australia gave a fascinating interview on the use of Yammer within his organisation. Among other things, it gives him the opportunity to personally engage with people out in the open, not only to challenge misconceptions but also to accept responsibility for organisational shortcomings and take speedy remedial action. It’s worth a watch if you are interested in this stuff.

It seems to me that this kind of leadership approach must make a positive contribution to the creation of a high trust environment in the workplace. I’d love to hear from any Deliotte people who could provide any insight into how much emotional credit Giam has managed to accumulate through his approach to Social Media.

Social Media is not everyone’s cup of tea and in my opinion it can only ever be part of a multi-channel approach to employee communications. In some respects the real value of encouraging staff to blog and contribute to cross functional discussions using tools like Yammer is as much symbolic as it is practical.

As long as they are trusted to do so without heavy policing and censorship.

“The engaged stay for what they can give. The disengaged stay for what they can get.”

I picked it up on Twitter via @adamparnes who had just blogged about his experience at a National Geographic forum he had attended which had been facilitated by Leadership Development consultants Blessing White. The trail led me to Blessing White’s 2011 Employee Engagement Report. Do yourself a favour – read it!

The concept of recognition is not new. Every study on employee engagement ever made will mention recognition as a key driver of positive behaviour. However, I haven’t seen many that focus on the value of work. Gallup touch on it in their 12 Elements of Great Management, where I recall the phrase “money without meaning is not enough compensation” however the context was more around working for a company that has a noble cause and a vision that inspires.

What I love about “The engaged stay for what they can give” is the focus on individual contribution. If you feel that your own endeavours add real value to the company and are contributing to its success your motivation levels will be sky high and you are likely to hang up pretty quickly next time that pesky recruiter calls.

On the contrary, no matter how much love and loyalty you feel towards your company, if the work you are being asked or allowed to do does not feel valuable, no amount of money, free lunches, great benefits, table football or sleeping pods will keep you there for too long. And if it does, that’s where the rot sets in.

Work must have meaning. It must have value. If the meaning and value disappears you begin to tread water. OK, you are still motivated by the rewards for doing that job and you still do your job. You even look busy a lot of the time. But the days drag on and your main focus becomes the clock on the wall. You tune out. Discretionary effort goes out of the window, and in no time your increasing disillusionment turns to bitterness and you begin to sap the energy of those around you.

It’s simple. The secret of driving employee engagement lies in matching the operational and strategic needs of the business with the individual skills, interests and aspirations of each employee so that everyone feels that the work they do has value.

This was beautifully illustrated in last week’s episode of Downton Abbey in the following exchange between Mrs Isobel Crawley and Lady Grantham:

“If I am not appreciated here I will seek some other place where I will make a difference. I mean it. I cannot operate where I am not valued. You must see that.”

Blimey – I never thought I’d end up quoting a popular period drama to make an intellectual point about employee engagement…

Freedom of the press normally applies to the freedom of the press and media to operate and report without unreasonable state interference. It’s important all right, but not for me today. My mind is weighing heavily on a different interpretation of this much used phrase.

I’m looking at the freedom of the press to ride roughshod over the principles, ethics and standards of journalism. Principles like objectivity, impartiality, fairness and accountability. Principles that every journalist should swear by, but sometimes seem to stick two fingers up at instead.

Yesterday, The Telegraph’s Business Editor Alistair Osborne posted a news story bearing the headline “Betfair a ‘shambles’ says punter who lost £16,000”. With a headline like that it was soon all over Twitter like a rash.

Before I go any further I should declare an interest here. I worked for Betfair for two and a half years up until January 2011. I left the company by choice. I am not a shareholder. Regular readers of my blog will know that I am a long standing Betfair customer and fan of the company. My experience working for Betfair served to reinforce what I have always believed. It is a great business, run my passionate and capable people, as well as a great place to work.

After reading the piece I was left with an uneasy feeling that the author has a bit of an axe to grind. Since when has a customer service issue become bona fide business news in a quality UK broadsheet?  At best it’s the kind of story that given time may possibly develop into something Anne Robinson may take up on Watchdog – but even that is unlikely as there is no question of skulduggery or deceit.

I then noticed that the author’s last two pieces on Betfair were equally critical in content and tone. I had even tweeted about one of them at the time just a few days ago, as I was disappointed to learn that Betfair had physically prevented journalists (including Alistair Osborne evidently) from entering their AGM. My feeling at the time was that adopting a bunker mentality was not sensible for a public company with nothing to hide.

Anyway, after reading the comments under Mr Osborne’s latest piece I was quite shocked at how many people were taking the opportunity to indulge in a spot of Betfair bashing. So I tried to redress the balance and point out that in my opinion the author had an axe to grind and the story was a ‘shameful’ piece of journalism.

Well the moderator was having none of it and after a short delay my comment was removed. Luckily I kept a copy. This is what I posted:

“Shameful journalism. This is not business news. This is the kind of tosh I’d expect from Anne Robinson on Watchdog, not from a business editor on the Telegraph. The author clearly has a personal agenda here. Just look at his recent pieces on Betfair. Take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror Mr Osborne. Is this how they taught you to behave in journo school?”

At the last count the article has 91 comments. Many are littered with strongly worded abuse towards the company, the industry and even the ‘victim’. Some accuse Betfair of being rigged. Others of theft. One even makes reference to the CEO’s ethnicity and jokes about his access to triad gangs to enforce gambling debts.

One wag using the name “the_judge” wrote “Jon Weedon get back in your plantpot. Betfair is a scam outfit. It took me months to get my deposits back from these crooks. I hope they go bust and your shares go down the toilet.”

My point is that my comment was not half as rude or threatening as many posts that still reside in the thread. I can only conclude that it was removed because it did not comply with the sentiment of the anti-Betfair brigade who dominate the thread and it dared to question the author’s journalistic integrity. It looks like the expedient route of censorship prevailed over freedom of speech.

It feels very much to me like double standards are at play here. How can a member of the press corp being excluded from an AGM be an outrage, when a member of the public being excluded from commenting on a poor piece of journalism is fine?

Hurrumph…