March 2006

My second career job was at McKinsey & Company, a global management consultancy, where I was a communication specialist. My job was pretty much guiding our teams on how to communicate hard recommendations to clients (”lay off 4000 workers”) and helping clients figure out how to do their own communication.

About a month into my job, I was invited by a senior partner in the firm to attend a meeting. Agenda: how do we best communicate to the client that the client should buy the “Acme Company”, but not at a price over “X”.

Young tyro that I was, I gave a wordy, lengthy answer about how to do it, replete with “On the one hand, we could say this… on the other hand, we could say this…”

The glares showed it: I was suddenly radioactive.

A kind soul (she now runs global engineering firm) took me aside that day and gave me this advice: “You were all in favor of option A, but you presented option B because you thought you needed ‘balance’… and now no one believes you. And you offered no facts to back up either stance, and in our culture, facts count. Both sides can’t stand you. The only reason you won’t get fired is because you are so new.”

Tough words.

I later learned to love McKinsey precisely because outspokeness backed by facts was appreciated. I learned to feel free to speak up to senior partners, men and women with enormous business experience, when I felt I was right, and had the facts to back me. I learned to say to people who could fire me with a flick of a finger “That’s the wrong argument, and here’s why…”. As long as I had a competently constructed “why”, I was safe.
I bring this up because I read so many of the comments and posts by you Auburn students. Many are in the “on the one hand… on the other hand” vein. “John raises an important point…. but Sue’s idea is worth looking at….”

Facts are rarely presented…it’s usually “I think” or “I believe”. But since a) one can’t be of two minds and b) one must have some sort of facts to back up an opinion, these sort of posts leave me thinking the writer may not have an opinion. Or that he or she is certainly not brave enough to say what their opinion is. And do I want that sort of person to run my PR? Or be a part of my agency?

Some companies will fire you for saying what you think. Some will fire you for not saying what you think. Which would you rather work for?

Share This: email to others, bookmark to del.icio.us, etc.

Last week, I gave a presentation to our worldwide marketing department on the need for continuity in our branding. At issue, is that we have as a company developed a position statement that is centered on the value we bring to our clients. But our various product teams tend to ignore this positioning, and instead offer out to their prospects and customers entirely different messages. I contend we can afford to support only one brand, that of the company as a whole and that each product within the company should be promoted by linking to the single brand statement.

I chose to tell them a story … one of complexity.

Complexity has thwarted mankind whenever he wanted to do something big.

The pyramids of Egypt – one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – were incredibly complex and massive projects. They could not have been built without the use of one of the Seven Simple Tools – the lever. Even today, when we construct our skyscraper buildings, we use simple tools to do big things … the cranes we see hovering over construction products are built using the pulley.

Flight is another example of conquering complexity with simplicity. After many failed experiments with weird flying contraptions, Orville and Wilbur Wright applied Newton’s simple law that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. They used a propeller to force air across and under the wings of their plane and created uplift.

But building today’s commercial and military aircraft is yet again complexity at an even higher scale. How is it that Boeing can build planes that involve thousands of components and hundreds of processes? The Law of Complexity is a mathematical formula (n2 – n = R). This says that for every element in a process, we can now calculate the number of interrelationships that form up into complexity.

When there are two people talking together there is an output from one person to the other. And a reply back to the first person. That is 2 x 2 – 2.  There are 2 relationships. If three people join into conversation, we now have 3 x 3 – 3 = 6. And if there are 10 people in a conference room talking with each other the formula is 10 x 10 – 10 = 90. The number of relationships is growing geometrically; not arithmatically.

Now, rather quickly we can see what complexity is doing to our conversation, or to the production of a Boeing 777 or a can of coke. We can see rather quickly why manufacturers need software to simplify their manufacturing processes. We can see why manufacturers invest so heavily in Six Sigma to eliminate processes and waste from their production systems.

But we can also see the impact of complexity on our conversations. If our CEO were the only one telling our customers what our company brand value statement was, it would be a simple communication … he would deliver it precisely the same every time and the delivery would be clear to all. But we have 900 employees. If we all told the company’s story differently, there would be 900 x 900 – 900 different versions of the company’s story. That’s over 80,000 permutations.

It is mandatory of all of us in marketing to get our brand message right and then to do whatever possible to get everyone saying it the same way. The Law of Complexity makes it clear how damaging unclear communications can be.

 

Share This: email to others, bookmark to del.icio.us, etc.