Blog

Actions speak louder than words

It seems like there’s a lot of talk lately about corporate social responsibility. Companies are hiring CSR directors and launching initiatives at an ever-increasing rate. While these programs are effective at generating goodwill for a brand, sometimes the motives are questioned—people know a publicity stunt when they see it. Doing good just for credit or attention simply isn’t authentic.

From time to time, however, a company gets recognized for quietly doing what’s right. When a devastating tornado flattened Hackelburg, Alabama earlier this year, 26 people were killed. The town’s largest employer, Wrangler, lost its factory and the residents lost hope. They were worried the corporation would simply walk away from the situation like others did. Others speculated that this might be an opportunity for Wrangler to ship jobs overseas like their competitors.

But they didn’t. Instead, they announced they would rebuild and even add 50 jobs. And in the meantime, every worker has a job and benefits even though they don’t have a workplace in town anymore (some workers are bussed to an offsite temporary facility).

In the words of one employee to ABC, “Wrangler stepped up to the plate. I mean, they took care of us.”

Many corporations set forth communications objectives to increase awareness, develop goodwill or build brand equity. The bottom line, however, is that simply talking about these things will never be as beneficial as actually taking action. It’s correctly navigating a tough decision that demonstrates corporate conscience.

Actually doing things is what gets noticed. Wrangler is getting press coverage for simply doing what’s right for their people. Their loyalty to employees has helped potential customers realize the American values they talk about in their communications collateral actually mean something to the company.

Anyone know where I can buy a pair of Wranglers?

Take Customer Perception Seriously

While I was in college and before I joined Snapp Conner PR, I worked at a local Utah hospital. My coworkers were doctors, nurses, and surgical technicians who were all very good at their jobs. Every quarter we were assessed on our job performance based on what the patients thought of their experience during the procedures. These assessments were called Patient’s Perception of Quality reports or PPQs.

Each quarter during my first year and a half at the hospital our department’s PPQs would come back poor. This was odd because our department’s numerical data, that wasn’t opinion-based, was among the highest rated in the state.

Whenever we would go over the PPQs in staff meeting the entire staff would complain about outside factors that were contributing to the low results. All of the staff members felt that the quantitative data was much more important to the hospital than the qualitative data.

But was this really true from the hospital’s viewpoint? We weren’t killing anybody and people were going home in better condition from our department than other like departments in hospitals around the state. So we were doing our jobs exactly as we should have, right?

Luckily for our department we figured out that we weren’t doing everything as we were supposed to be. Our patients’ opinions of how we were doing our jobs were just as important to the hospital as how well we were actually doing our jobs. A hospital is a business after all and a business gets return customers based on their prior experiences.

Even though there were things that we couldn’t control in regards to patient perception, as a team we though of some things that we could do. We figured out that wait time was the most important thing to our patients that didn’t directly affect their health. Making an adjustment there, among other places, directly increased the ratings that we got on our PPQs.

One could easily make the argument that a person’s perception is much more important than the reality of the situation. Without getting too philosophical, the way a customer sees truth may be much more critical to the success of a business than the actual truth, especially when it come it comes to the way they are being served or treated.

As we focus on building defend-able brands, we should always put our focus on the way the customer feels and not let our pride get in the way of how well we think we are treating them.

Establishing Direction: Diverging and Adjusting

In aviation or sailing. A chart is plotted, the direction is set, and then many small adjustments are made along the journey, due to divergences from the course. External factors like wind can blow us off course for a minute, but we learn to adjust and move forward. In the stock market, the same thing happens. When an investor sees a divergence, it's a sign that there will be an adjustment in the market, so the investor uses this knowledge to adjust their portfolio accordingly.

The same thing can happen to us in our lives, our direction, and our goals. We plot a course, set goals, and define where we want to go. Somewhere down the road, we realize that we're not quite on path, so we make adjustments. Sometimes, we're blown way off course by external events. It's the realization that we're not on path that helps us get our bearings straight again. We evaluate where we are, and where we'd like to be, then make the appropriate changes. This can be big things like a lifestyle change, career change, even moving or a change of friends. It can also be a myriad of little things, like taking time to nourish the soul, creating a habit of doing one anonymous good deed per day, or keeping a gratitude list each day, to recognize the abundance in our lives.

As it states in the last stanza of Henley's poem Invictus, we are the masters of our fate, we are the captains of our souls. Where and how will we set our sails?

Letting the Power of the Idea Stand for Itself

I love college football. As practices started and I heard the news that Joe Paterno, Head Coach of the Penn State University football team was recently injured in a sideline collision with a player, I was reminded of a Sports Illustrated article I read about him before the start of last season.

“Joe Pa” as he’s called will be 85 in December and has coached at Penn State for more than 60 years. He holds the record for most football victories in college football history and doesn’t have plans to retire as long as he’s, “still making an impact.”
The article talks about arguing and how Paterno grew up in a family that argued about everything. In fact, arguing was encouraged. When I was growing up, arguing was not encouraged but I thought Joe’s explanation for arguing made sense and is something that when approached this way should be encouraged.

Paterno will often attack an assistant coach’s idea with a barrage of questions and doubts just to see if the coach’s idea will withstand the challenge. He’ll also occasionally throw an idea out that he doesn’t really believe in just to see how his assistant coach’s respond to it and if they have the strength to speak their minds.

“Why can’t we talk without calling each other names?” Joe asks. “I mean in the world. Everyone around, they scream at each other about politics or what’s happening. Why can’t someone just stand up and say ‘Why? How? When? What does it matter?’ Let the power of the idea fight for itself.”

The more I think about it the more I like what he says. If done in the right way and in the right spirit, there really isn’t anything wrong with challenging an idea, asking questions about it and arguing about it. If the idea is a good one it will survive and everybody involved will understand it better and be more committed to it. A challenge or argument shouldn’t be done as a “screw you” to a colleague you dislike but as a way to understand or strengthen the idea.

In my experience, if the concept is good, a challenge or debate about the idea can only make it better. It will either fortify the idea in the presenters mind and everybody else’s minds or it will find the weaknesses and make it stronger. Also, if others feel like they have a say in it they’re more likely to buy into and support the idea from the beginning and feel as if they have some ownership in it.