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Personal Directions
Ever feel
that things are out of balance in your life? Is your work
devouring all of your time producing dissatisfaction in both
your professional and personal growth? Are you trying to
figure out what you want out of your work and personal life
going forward?
“Today’s
demand for increased productivity and growth place more and
more pressure on individuals. Technology provides more
information for us to process at increasingly faster rates.
A common goal for many professionals, life balance, becomes
harder to achieve”, states Kevin Pallardy, partner with SSP
in St. Louis, Missouri. “People want to do their best in
all phases of their lives and they have only so much time
and energy to work with. In our coaching projects, we find
that tools such as our Q5 Framework and Personal
Directions® assessment aid individuals in understanding
and evaluating where they are directing energy, where they
want or need to direct it and how they can take positive
action to accomplish personal and professional goals.”
Developed by
the Portland, Maine-based Management Research Group (MRG),
Personal Directions® is targeted toward career and
life planning, executive development, career development,
retention and pre-retirement planning. MRG was founded in
1983 with the mission of helping organizations strategically
increase performance effectiveness through assessment-based
human resource development systems. In addition to
Personal Directions® MRG is also know for its
Leadership Effectiveness Analysis (LEA), a leadership
development tool (including a 360° component) also offered
by SSP in its coaching and development practice.
For more information about Personal
Directions® or other assessments we offer, contact Kevin
Pallardy by phone at (314) 523-2201, e-mail at
kpallardy@sspcorp.net
SSP St.
Louis is proud to announce, Kevin Pallardy, Managing
Partner, has been appointed as an International
Certified Fellow Practitioner (CFP) by the Institute for
Career Certification International (ICC).
Kevin joins a select group of only 300 career professionals
who have achieved ICC Certification. All professionals
certified by ICC meet stringent educational, professional
knowledge, skill and ethical standards.
SSP
cordially invites you to a complimentary seminar:
"Coaching for Human Resource Executives and Leaders"
An
introduction to an innovative and practical process for
HR Leaders to help individuals and executives align
performance
with organization strategy.
Where: Junior League of St. Louis
10435 Clayton Road
St. Louis, MO 63131
314-569-3117
Date: March 10, 2005
Time: 7:30 AM - 8:00 AM Continental Breakfast
8:00 AM - 10:00 AM Presentation
Presenter: Kevin Pallardy
*This program is designed for Internal Coaches, Human
Resource Executives and Corporate Leaders.
Please rsvp before March 1 , 2005, to Stella Flowers at
(314) 523-2201 or email her at: sflowers@sspcorp.net
PROGRAM OVERVIEW
Do you have what is required to point your leaders and
employees in the right direction? Now more than ever,
organizations need leaders with integrity, expertise, and
the skills to inspire as well as motivate. This session will
help you facilitate change by utilizing SSP’s proprietary
thinking model, the Q5 Framework. In today’s competitive
market, organizations are looking for new, practical ways to
support the senior team and employee success.
Using the Q5 Framework, you are able to:
• Help individuals align efforts with
organization strategy
• Provide employees with their own set of tools
to be successful in the organization
• Provide managers with a simple, yet highly
effective approach to coaching and supporting individual
employees
• Help create a partnership and open communication between
managers and employees around career and performance issues
• Serve as innovative recruitment and retention tools
Ultimately, this approach helps you improve performance, one
person at a time.
SSP is an innovative consulting firm providing value-added
services to help organizations hire, develop, retain and
transition key talent. We have offices in St. Louis, Chicago
and global partners in over 190 locations around the world.
Branding
Should you
be a brand? Over the last year, this topic has taken on new
importance as both employers and employees have found
themselves asking, “What does my company stand for? What do
I stand for? Are company values in sync with employee
values?”
Branding is
not about cute slogans, advertising or logos; instead,
branding is about perceptions and relationships.
Essentially, a brand, your personal brand, is value-driven
and is determined by what you think of yourself and more
importantly, what others think and say about you.
It’s no
secret that employees today want to stand out and be
recognized; however, a strong personal brand is not just
about standing out from the crowd. It’s what others think
and say about you that ultimately defines your “brand”.
Like author,
Karl Speak says in the article Human Resources: The
Inside Brand Manager, while recruitment and employee
retention programs are valuable, “the brand on the outside
is only as strong as the brand on the inside.”
Human Resources: The Inside Brand Manager
Human
resources executives have a new leadership role in
developing brand loyalty with customers. The brand on the
outside (with customers) is only as strong as the brand on
the inside (of the organization). This is the new mantra of
the most marketing-savvy executives. The foundation for
this new belief is based on two pillars: sustainable growth
requires customers that admire the company’s products and
value system and employees are the first important link in
the brand-building effort.
These
“new-school” business leaders are all proclaiming the
virtues of building their brands from the inside-out. In
fact, some of these avante garde CEO’s are proclaiming that
if a strong brand exists on the inside of the organization,
the outside brand with customers will take care of itself!
Many human resources executives are now being enlisted to
become an important member of the organization’s marketing
team. Management gurus are talking about the human
resources executive as the “chief inside marketing officer”
or “inside branding manager”.
Why Brand, Why Now?
Let’s start
out on the same page about brand. Brand is not a logo,
slogan, advertising campaign or a product name. Brand is a
relationship-a very special relationship with special
qualities. Strong brands are trusted, admired and rewarded
with loyalty. Products can be strong brands. Companies can
be strong brands. People can be strong brands.
For
businesses, brand management is the discipline of creating,
managing and fostering customer relationships. It is not
advertising and logos. It is not a marketing strategy that
requires large marketing budgets. It is not just for
packaged goods. Brand management is the creation of a
special customer relationship that is based upon an
organization’s unique strengths. It doesn’t matter what you
sell, what you do, or who you are. It doesn’t matter how
big or small or young or old your organization is. It
doesn’t matter if you sell products for a profit or offer
services as a non-profit. Brand is not a specialty
management discipline. What does matter is that every
company relies on strong customer relationships and their
reputation to grow faster than their competitors. And
brands are relationships.
Companies
with strong brands win more often than their competitors.
Brand’s popularity has reached mass-market status as a
business management topic. The status of brand is not
likely to fade away for some time, if ever. There are two
reasons for this staying power: one is cultural and the
other is based on proven business rationale. We can thank
the proliferation of the MBA degree over the past twenty
years for the popularity of brand in the business culture.
It’s cool to work for a company that has a strong brand,
either consumer or industrial.
This “MBA
cool factor” does have a strong and proven business
rationale. Brands are real and so are the benefits
businesses derive from having a strong brand. Managing a
brand has become the new discipline for managing and growing
customer relationships. This new approach to customer
relationships is firmly rooted in common sense.
After all,
the additional transactions that result in growth can be
generated far more efficiently from existing relationships
than from non-existent-at-the-moment variety. On-going
relationships have equity and value. Being the brand of
choice has far-reaching advantages and built in potential.
Consumers often become so loyal to a brand-they come to
value their relationship with an organization so much-that
they’re willing to pay a premium price for it. Knowingly.
Although
brand management is not a new topic, two things make it
different today and going forward. Companies of all types
and sizes are embracing brand-it’s not a niche strategy and
the experts have discovered that building brands is no
longer solely a marketing activity. The human resources
executive is now being asked to become a partner in the
brand-building process. Remember, the brand on the outside
is only as strong as the brand on the inside.
Connecting the Outside and the Inside Brand
Brand
management viewed in its newer, broader context boils down
to two organizational competencies. One is effective brand
management by the marketing communications and marketing
management departments, also referred to as keeping the
brand. Think of this as managing the outside brand. The
other is a company focus on aligning and motivating the
organization to embrace a set of beliefs that support the
values of the brand. This is known as managing the inside
brand. It demands commitment and a diligent effort from the
whole organization.
Managing the
inside brand takes brand management beyond its traditional
realm of corporate identity, product design, and
communicating a singular, poignant brand voice. Simply
stated, managing the inside brand engages the entire
organization in the brand-building process. It’s about
adding a new dimension to brand building-creating brand
loyalty inside the organization. Brand enthusiasts
throughout the organization become the strongest advocates
for upholding the brand’s values, thereby extending the
power of the organization’s brand stewardship efforts. An
organization that is engaged and passionate about its brand
creates brand-building resources made more potent through
its collective power. Managing the inside brand is the
result of infusing the organization with a rich
understanding of the brand’s values and encouraging
behaviors that are consistent with the brand’s values.
An
interesting way to understand the role of managing the
inside brand in the overall brand management effort is by
doing a little brand arithmetic. I’ll start by defining
some terms:
WV=Working
Values
CBV=Core
Brand Values
PBV=Preferred
Brand Values
Working
values describe the cultural values in an organization that
ultimately govern its behaviors. In simple terms, working
values provide a context for the way in which employees
treat each other. A culture that values open, honest
communication will foster relationships between employees
that are based on sharing information and valuing other
people’s opinions.
Core brand
values are the values that customers, and other people
outside the organization, associate with the brand. In
essence, core brand values are the basis for a brand’s
equity.
Preferred
brand values are the values that customers would say are the
most important attributes for a brand to have in a given
category. In a nutshell, the preferred brand values
describe what it takes to create a loyal customer. The
preferred brand values describe the position of the most
valuable brand in a given category.
Here we
go-brand arithmetic:
(1)
WV=CBV
(2)
CBV=PBV
(3)
WV=PBV
Equation 1
is based upon human relations common sense. The way in
which people treat each other as fellow employees has a
direct, inevitable impact on how customers will be treated.
Said in a more colloquial fashion: You can’t fake it for
very long; true feelings will find their way to the surface.
Equation 2
is a brand management axiom. Simply stated: to create brand
loyalty, the customer must perceive (believe) that the
company (product) consistently delivers an experience that
meets their expectations or standards of excellence in that
category. Now we get to test our memory of 8th
grade algebra:
WV= CBV
CBV=PBV
WV=PBV
By
mathematically relating the first two equations, we find
that consistent brand building requires that the culture of
the organization must be aligned and support the most
important customer requirements. The organizational
development requirement in brand building is an axiom of the
new brand building formula. Brand building is everybody’s
job! A brand on the inside that is not connected to the
brand on the outside creates a big disconnect with the
customer!
Stepping Up to the Challenges of the Inside
Brand Manager
Don’t be
intimidated and don’t be too quick to rush off to look for
those old marketing textbooks. The initial interest in
inside brand building started with human resources
executives embracing the concept of employer brand. The
focus of employer brand ran the gamut of developing more
creative recruitment advertisements to a broader context of
“branding” the employment experience to become an employer
of choice to compete in the tight employment market
associated with the recent economic rally.
Employee
recruitment efforts require a certain level of representing
the company’s brand to acquire the right talent for the
organization. In fact, we know that companies with strong
outside brands are much more productive in their recruitment
efforts. At the same time, effective employee retention
requires using the organizations inside brand to breed
loyalty with employees. So certainly on an unconscious
level, brand has been an integral part of the human
resources management discipline to attract and retain
employees.
For many
organizations, the so-called inside brand management
activities surrounding recruitment, retention, or cultural
alignment programs exist at some level, but in most cases
are hit or miss and are more likely not in-sync with a
customer focus. A small number of companies have been
successful, but more likely in an unconsciously competent
manner.
Of course,
there are a very small minority of organizations that manage
an inside brand in concert with their outside brand. A
brand on the outside that is earnestly synchronized with the
brand on the inside produces perpetual energy for the
organization to grow at speeds much faster than their
competitors.
Stepping up
to the challenge of managing the inside brand requires a
conscious effort based upon clearly defined processes and a
set of “brand-management” skills. The efforts focused on
connecting the outside brand with the inside brand will have
the effect of more directly connecting the activities of the
human resources team with the bottom line. Being perceived
as providing more value to the organization means the human
resources team will develop an even stronger brand for
themselves.
Karl D.
Speak is a consultant who delivers powerful insight and
practical advice on brand management issues. Karl has
trained hundreds of marketing professionals in the
discipline of brand management in corporate training
seminars, in addition to his teaching at University of
Minnesota, College of St. Thomas and University of
Westminster.
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