What do start-ups and coffee beans have in common?

For both, the place they grow shapes who they become.

We don’t talk much about the role of place in shaping organizational identity, but the physical circumstance of where we are located as we do our work together helps to determine who we become as a company. Place shapes our character.

Terroir = Distinctiveness

For both coffee and companies, distinctive features of who they are come from the specific, physical place where they are grown. Coffee snobs, oenophiles and the French call this place terroir.  

Terroir is literally the dirt in which coffee plants are grown. The soil, the minerals, the decomposing leaves, the orientation of the sun, the slope, and the wind influence how the plants grow, which of their features mature and which do not, and ultimately how the plants perform to create a product. Two beans may be the “same” variety, but when they are grown in different dirt, in different places, how do they taste? Different. Why?

Because place matters.

Terroir matters to companies, too. Whether it’s the location of the founders’ parents’ garage or the co-working space where the team meets, the place where your company is planted influences how you feel about yourselves as a group and influences who you become.

We tend to forget the role of place, of physicality, of geographic circumstance, because so much of our work is digitized, and in that way removed from dirt, from damp, from light, and from elevation. We work internationally, across timelines, and even across language barriers, to the point where it all feels like the same black words in the same white box on the same grey-blue screen, no matter where you are.

And, when we do think about the effect of “place” on an organization’s identity or character, we think about the ways that the organization arranges their offices, or designs their new headquarters. These deliberate decisions telegraph and reinforce the ways that organizations want to shape their sense of self.

When I talk about ‘place’ though, I’m thinking not only about the ‘built environment’ – the physical locations that we rent, furnish, and decorate deliberately – but also the physical environment that is simply there. I’m thinking about the subway stations, the pavement, the streetscape, the falafel truck on the far corner, the wind, the shadows, the noise, the smell, and their effects on each other.

The other people in the place matter too — not so much as personalities, but as co-presence. 

You’re not the only entrepreneur, not the only team, walking in these shadows, feeling that dampness, stepping into this building that was a shirt factory before you planted your computers there. People in other companies near you also lose their breath climbing the stairs out of the subway, inhale the aromas of the falafel truck, and even on the hottest summer day feel braced by the cool dampness under the overpass.

Each person experiences this place in his or her own way, but nonetheless you all are responding to the physicality of that shared place.

The place tells us where we are, and our responses to it tell us who we are.

On Washington Street on a rainy day, you’re battered by the wind off the East River. Standing up to it, you feel resistant, oddly stronger, able to handle the against-the-current trajectory a start-up requires. The unevenness of the cobblestone pavement of the side street, the dips and edges in the pine planks on the workspace floor, require that you rebalance with every step. Each tiny re-positioning reminds you to adjust in real time, to be flexible, to stay steady while in motion.

Place is, quite literally, a way that we and our companies can stay grounded.

• Place gives us somewhere to feel centered, somewhere to start from, somewhere to return to.
• Physical places hold us, they are containers for our together-ness.
• Places help us mark who is ‘us’ and who is ‘not us’.
• Places each have a resonance, a unique energy that we can feel. We can tap into that energy to reinforce our own, we can tap into this energy to release ourselves from psychic constraints.
• Places have rhythms, cycles, and seasons that can help set a tempo to coordinate our work.
• Places connect us to the people who were there before us and help join us to the timeline of progress.

Of course, there are other forces shaping an organization’s character more powerfully than place. From the founders’ personality to the talents of the group to the type of business itself, there is much we can use, easily, to explain why we are who we are.

With place, though, the influence is usually sub-liminal, under our consciousness and far from our words.

Instead of being something we know, place is usually something we feel.

The ways that we stand and move in physical space and the ways we collectively respond to the physical texture around us work to connect our cognitions and our emotions. Even for people and companies that don’t want to pay attention to their place, their thoughts and feelings in the space anchor their experience of who they are.

Every organization has a certain ‘je ne sai quoi’, a uniqueness and difference that can’t be put into words.

The Etsy grown in Brooklyn’s Dumbo is different from the Etsy that would have grown in Austin’s SoCo, or that could have grown in Vancouver’s Gaslight. The difference between the three possibilities– with the same founder, the same talents, and the same business model —  finds its source in the unique place. Why? Because it is that place, with all its specific feelings, thoughts, and actions,  where the core members of the organization experience being together.

A few weeks ago I went to visit a company just blocks away from where I lived just out of college. A few decades later, the neighborhood has more upscale shops, more business activity, fewer homeless people, and no broken windows. But the place is largely the same — still damp, still metallic, still punctuated by the constant rumble of the trucks on the BQE.

Still lifted by the arch of the bridge.

Still raw, still elevating, still inspiring.

And the companies growing there? 

Rooted there, to be shaped by that very place. 

Images from Flickr:

Hit the Road  Some rights reserved by Pensiero
Dumbo Manhattan Bridge Some rights reserved by wallyg
Water under the Bridge, Some rights reservedby moriza

Every organization has a story. Any group that wants to be an important part of that organization needs to craft a place for itself in that story.

The story an organization tells itself and shares with others helps everyone make sense of who the organization is. For members, the organization’s story helps them articulate their connection to the organization, because it explains how their work contributes to who the organization is and to why it exists.

Crafting a place in the organization’s story can be harder than it seems.  Especially in consumer-facing companies, groups that are not visible to consumers often fall outside of the story. Departments like Accounting, IT, HR, Facilities Management, et. al., are rarely part of the organization’s brand, and they are often distant from the core promise of who the organization is, what it does, and why.

 [When I worked in the manufacturing and sales divisions of a consumer products company, folks in both divisions felt like under-appreciated step-children. If you didn't work in marketing you weren't a full-fledged member of the organization, because only marketing was featured in the organization's story. ]

So how does a part of the organization that might not be seen as central to the organization’s purpose make itself part of the organization’s story?

The Software Engineering group at Etsy has what looks to be an effective way of connecting themselves to their company story. Their example shows how some clever and authentic self-description can knit a traditionally ‘backstage’ group into the main fabric of the organization’s identity.

Etsy’s Company Story

Etsy’s company story revolves around artisans, makers, crafters, and the community these artisans create with each other and with their customers. At Etsy¹:

Our mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.

A company story about a marketplace for handmade and unique objects doesn’t seem like a story where software engineers could be lead characters.  Conventionally (meaning, outside Silicon Valley and Alley), software engineers work in the background, off to the side, in cost centers that support but don’t create the organization’s identity.

But at Etsy, engineers have cast themselves as craftspeople – as people who make a living making things — just like everyone else in the Etsy community. With their Code as Craft initiative, Etsy’s engineers have designed their group as a central, direct, and explicit contributor to Etsy’s mission and Etsy’s overall success.

The Code as Craft Initiative at Etsy

Back in June of 2010, the Etsy tech group launched a blog “Code as Craft” to focus and share their conversation about how the engineering group sees itself and how it fits with the larger Etsy community.  In the inaugural blog post, Etsy CTO (now CEO) Chad Dickerson explained:

At Etsy, our mission is to enable people to make a living making things. The engineers who make Etsy make our living making something we love: software. We think of our code as craft — hence the name of the blog.

It sounds a bit over-reaching, until you realize that the Esty Engineers’ Code as Craft initiative based in something real.

Genuine, not fake.  The language of “Code as Craft” captures and highlights something that is already true, indigenous and authentic about software engineering. Just as light is both wave and particle, software design is both mechanical and organic.

The “Code as Craft” movement /meme has been around since the dawn of computing. While mathematical rigor, linearity, discipline, and a mechanistic orientation might characterize how outsiders see software engineering, engineers themselves see this and more. They see themselves as artisans exercising skill, judgment, taste and creativity.

The computer technology folks aren’t over-reaching posers for calling themselves craftspeople. Their sense of themselves as crafters and their work as craft is real, rooted in years of professional self-description. The Code as Craft language may be strategic, but it is also a very simple act of engineers’ highlighting the part of their work that they choose to identify with most. In the Etsy environment, engineers are artisans whose work is simultaneously functional and beautiful.

Chosen, Not Imposed.   Etsy’s software engineers chose the language of craft themselves. The language wasn’t imposed on them by someone else in the organization trying to fit them into a tidy little box.

You might think it’s just a nice coincidence that software engineering would have words like ‘art’, ‘craft’, and ‘beauty’ in its toolbox of self-description, and that software engineers would be critical for enabling Etsy’s code- and data-heavy business model. But while there many organizations like Etsy that couldn’t exist without a cadre of software engineers, for these same companies words like ‘art’, ‘craft’ and ‘beauty’ are irrelevant to the company story.

For Engineers at Etsy, describing themselves as crafters isn’t a coincidence, but a leadership choice.

Craft Connects Coders to Etsy’s Other Crafters

At Etsy, engineers striving for improved run times and multi-layer design compliance can use the same words — craft, crafting, craftsperson — to describe their work as do the artisans making sweet mouse pincushions.

The shared vocabulary literally helps them communicate across differences that in other organizations could be barriers.  Moreover, shared language helps vendors, marketers and engineers see each other and recognize what each group is contributing, because they can use criteria that everyone understands.

Whether rendered in colors, textures or command lines, skill and beauty can be recognized by any craftsperson.

By connecting their discipline and their department to Etsy’s core story about “making things”, the Code as Craft initiative presents engineers as central and  relevant contributors to Etsy’s purpose. As a result, engineers can be recognized, affirmed and appreciated by other members of the Etsy’ community, who share the values and skills as craftspeople, albeit in different media.

Craft Connects Coders to Etsy’s External Role and Image

Engineers’ link to the company story is also useful outside the organization. Because they are crafters, Etsy engineers can represent Etsy and its company story to outsiders, not just other crafters but also the start-up community and the software engineering community.

For years, Etsy’s Community & Education group has been hosting regular after-hours Craft Nights at the Etsy Labs. Artisans come to learn and and share techniques for making products. With the advent of the Code as Craft initiative, Etsy’s engineering community has begun hosting occasional “Code as Craft” nights at Etsy Labs, where members of the tech community can come to learn and share techniques for running websites.  (Even better, the engineering group holds these events in a room lined with bins of sewing machines and fabric scraps, and feels perfectly at home.)

Their position as crafters helps the Etsy Engineers become both like other crafters in the Etsy community, and distinct from other software engineers in the tech start-up community. Etsy’s crafty coders become “optimally distinctive” — the same and special, at once.

Enabling, Engaging and Contributing as Crafters

The Code as Craft initiative is a way of embedding the professional brand within the organization’s brand to the benefit of both — like employee branding from the inside out.

What I like the most about the Code as Craft initiative at Etsy is the way that it invites engineers to contribute — from their uniqueness  — at their highest level. Code as Craft recognizes a specific part of a software engineer’s (potential) professional identity — the skilled craftsperson.  It engages that identity by inviting engineers to speak in the craftsperson’s vernacular, allowing them to communicate more easily within the Etsy crafting community. It puts their work right at the heart of the organization’s purpose — making a living making things — and aligns them with Etsy’s goals.

When we can craft our place in the organization’s story, we can create an authentic connection to who the organization is, what it does, and why that matters. That connection makes our work relevant and imbues our contributions with meaning.

See also:
How Social Media Create Organizational Meaning
Be Your Own Hashtag
The “New” Crisis of Meaning?
Authentic Student Entrepreneurs: Embedding Personal, Product and Organizational Brand

Images:
Mouse with felt ears, from July 2011 Craft Lab, by thelongthread.com
I Love Etsy from amazingminiatures.com  

¹ It turns out that identifying Etsy’s current mission statement is harder than you’d think. More on that in a future post.

Here’s a quick response to today’s New York Times article by Emily Weinstein, All That Authenticity May Be Getting Old, about the flood of ‘authentic’, handmade and one-of-a-kind-ish items on the home decor marketplace. The article dances on the line between criticizing mass marketers for faking authenticity, and reminding readers that our desire for ‘authentic’ will never go away.

The article is interesting, for sure, and worth a read. But it is also worth some reflection.

What’s missing from this article, and from so many critiques of the explosion in the marketplace for handmade home decor, jewelry, cards, clothing, and more, is a deep understanding of what is actually going on between the artisans who make and sell these products, and the customers who covet, buy, and use them.

This dynamic is the genius that propels businesses like Etsy and the larger crafting movement.

When we make and buy handmade, hand-selected, and artisanal items, we are exchanging:

Recognition, Affirmation, and Connection

Recognition

Recognition comes from both the buyer and the seller having their aesthetic– their taste, their values — expressed in a visible place. For some of us, the first time we saw someone else design their own decal for their laptop was on Etsy. The first time we saw someone else make a bike basket out of a lunchbox was on Etsy. The first time we saw someone else make an apron out of their great aunts’ embroidered handkerchiefs was on Etsy.

All of a sudden, it seemed, one could actually see other people who shared your unique tastes. And, instead of that being disappointing (e.g., I’m no longer unique)  it was heartening — Somebody else gets it! Somebody else recognizes this! Your taste can be discovered, and enjoyed.

Affirmation

Affirmation comes from being told “I see you“. “I see you.”

Affirmation comes when you see a cool tech-dude with a wool iPad sleeve, and you say “Etsy?” and he grins. Somebody else has seen your aesthetic– whether a buyer or a seller– and said “I like that. I agree with that. I think that’s beautiful. I’ll pay money for that.”

Because what that all says is — “Your aesthetic is valuable to me, mine is valuable to you”.

You know that feeling when you find a blog written about exactly that topic that bugs you, with great and useful perspective? That’s what Etsy is like… Blogging is for people to share words, Etsy is for people to share beauty.

Connection

Connection. With these aesthetic exchanges, we create communities of shared beauty, shared vision, and shared self-expression.

Hey, I know I’m not the only Etsy buyer who sends little notes to the sellers I buy from saying “I just put that wreath up in my office. I totally love it. I might not ever give it to my sister as planned. Will you make some bigger ones in the future?” I also know I’m not the only person who feels connected looking at other people’s Pinterest pages.

Not only do we connect through the purchase, and through feedback , but we connect through vendor/artist communities. Group after group after group of people with shared aesthetic interests support each other — Yes, there is indeed a Steampunk Catlovers Quilting Group. You can join it. You can be part of that community.

Recognition, Affirmation, and Connection

In a consumerist culture, we are well-trained to seek out opportunities for recognition, affirmation and connection through purchases. Much of the time, though, we have a hard time imagining that there is another person on the other end of the purchase — a creator who is making something not (only) because it is commercial, but (also) because it expresses who they are.

On Etsy, at the Bust Holiday Craftacular, at any Maker Faire, and at the farmer’s market, we get to experience something closer to a social exchange, something closer to a human exchange, something more than a commercial exchange.

Our sense of beauty, our style, and our sense of self can be seen and celebrated, and we can gather with our own kind.

That’s not a fad. That’s a timeless social exchange that we value.  And that’s what’s going on in this commerce of Authenticity.

Images: Fall Wreath from ItzFitz
iPad sleeve, wool herringbone tweed
Steampunk Hat for Cats

Technology has a way of sucking the humanity right out of us.

Consider how we describe, design and deploy ‘enterprise 2.0′ and work system technologies in our organizations:

– When we talk about technology systems, we talk about machines, platforms, inputs and outputs.  We forget about values, emotion, flourishing, meaning and purpose.

– When we design technology systems, we think about control, architecture, scripts, modularity, and proxies. We forget about comfort, warmth, touch, and beauty.

– When we use technology, we automate, codify, record and retrieve. We forget about expressing, feeling, creating, and giving.

Too many work technologies are systems of extraction.

We keep upgrading to technology systems that extract more work from us, while giving back less and less to us.

So who can blame us if we’re not all enthusiastic about Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business initiatives? Once the shine wears off the new tools, we’re left wondering — What’s in this for me? What’s in this for you? What’s in this for us?

You’ve heard me say before that the Enterprise 2.0- digital- social- business- system- industry-complex seems to be running on the wrong rails. Too many technology products are designed, positioned, and ‘sold’ to us as ways to streamline and enhance collective tasks so that we improve bottom line business results.

There’s nothing wrong with that goal, except that it’s so narrow, so limiting, and so shareholder-centered. It’s just not about being human.

We need to talk about how digital social media enterprise business systems can help us, the users, be more of who we are individually and together.

We need to figure out how to transform these systems of extraction these digital-social-media-enterprise-business systems into systems of engagement. We need to build technology systems that help us to be more fully social human as we work together.

5 Needs for Full, Social, Human-ness

When we human people work with other human people, there are five human needs that have to be met in order for us to be our full social selves.

These are our needs for:

1. Identity
2. Voice
3. Agency
4. Community
5. Purpose

Currently, in too many organizations, we are controlled, constrained, muted, forbidden, or discouraged from being fully human, because the work systems  make it hard for us to meet these 5 needs.

However, as work systems for enterprise coordination, knowledge management, work process flow, and customer relationship management become more social, they are also creating new opportunities for us to be more human while we work together.

5 Ways That Systems of Engagement Bring Out Our Full Social Selves

1. Systems of Engagement Enable Identity

We humans want to be who we are. We want to bring our full selves to work and into our interactions with colleagues, while we are are making and doing things. When we are able to be who we are in specific, descriptive, textured, multiple ways, we can be ‘more fully there’ at work.

Systems of engagement let us define who we are, help us be seen for who we are, and help us be known for who we are allow us to contribute our full selves. They help us connect who we are, what we have to offer, and what needs to be done, helping us find and create personal meaning.

2. Systems of Engagement Foster Voice

Voice is our ability to say in our own way what we think needs to be said and to be heard when we say it. Voice is the full expression of who we are, what we think, and how we feel. When we have voice, we are able to offer ideas, share insights, and offer feedback.

Systems of engagement create ways for us to speak, to spread our words, to be heard by others, and to be listened to by others. They allow us to use our voice to collaborate and to contribute.

3. Systems of Engagement Activate Agency

Agency is our ability to act, to get things done, and to cause things to happen. Agency is our ability to make choices and to enact those choices. When we have agency we are makers, doers, creators, innovators. We get stuff done.

Systems of engagement create opportunities for agency because they give us more places in which we can act. Systems of engagement also give us the autonomy, responsibility and accountability that agency requires. We are able to decide, to engage, and to act.

4. Systems of Engagement Cohere Communities

Communities are our connections with other people — not just dyadic connections, but also networked connections. We yearn to be connected with people who know us, who like us, and who need us. When we have  a community, we have a slew of direct and indirect relationships in which we can be supportive, helpful, and influential. We matter to others.

Systems of engagement help us find the people we need and who need us. These systems help us create and sustain connections through which we and others form collectives, collectives that have capability beyond the sum of members’ individual ability.

5. Systems of Engagement Catalyze Purpose

Purpose is our reason for being. Purpose is the cause outside ourselves that focuses our contributions to our community. When we have a purpose we can have commitment, vision, motivation, collaboration, and accomplishment. Our (work) lives have meaning.

Systems of engagement help us channel our attention and our efforts towards our purpose. They link us and our work to important tasks, and link our individual work to the work of others. They accumulate, organize, synthesize, and amplify our individual and collective efforts to help us achieve our purpose.

Identity, Voice, Agency, Community, and Purpose are not focus of social media technologies in organizations, but they should be.

Systems of engagement can certainly help us meet business needs. And they can do so much more. Systems of engagement can help us transform how we work together, by enabling identity, fostering voice, activating agency, cohering communities and catalyzing purpose so that we meet our human needs as much if not more than business needs.

We don’t need “social business” technology to suck less of the humanity out of us.

We need technology-enabled social systems that invite us to engage our full selves in our work together.

We need systems of engagement.

How do we create systems of engagement that bring out our full selves?
See my related post: How to Design Social Business Systems For Engaged, Social Organizations

See also:

Social Organizations Care About Personal Development by Jamie Notter, SocialFish

How Social Media Create Organizational Meaning
Your Authentic Social Network: The Identity Graph
Make Distinctiveness Matter by Linking It To Organizational Purpose
Images from Flickr:
Blue from bartb_pt
Machine à répandre la chimie… from ‘ m x b c h r
Blue Network from ringwell

In a social organization, the design of digital social tools like intranets should reflect the organizational features that define the organization. These design features, no matter how subtle, can ‘auto-communicate’ and make salient the characteristics that matter most, and help organizations stay authentic.

Especially in the digital workplace, our digital tools create an important shared context that ‘defines’ the organization.

When I taught my MBA elective Leadership 2.0: Leading in a Digital Environment, I had a teaching case about an organization establishing its intranet.

The pressing question: What should the physical interface on employees’ computer screens look like?

The design challenge was to make the home page ‘work’ while helping keep the organization’s defining characteristics in the minds of the user/members.

Of course, ten years ago “intranets” were really simple affairs. In this case, we were really discussing the ‘frame’ — the sidebars, top navigation menu, and background image. (Once someone clicked into email, or to the library data base, all that was left was a half-inch frame all around.) There wasn’t much variation in functionality, just in the ways that things were presented visually.

But, even though the available options & decisions were small, these little design choices made a difference.

For example, the out-of-the-box default color scheme was light blue and navy blue. Meanwhile, the organization’s colors were green and white. The default frame had the vendor’s logo, a basic typeface, and generic names for features. In contrast, the organization had its own logo, a defined typeface for its printed visual materials, and its own names for tools and features (e.g., “MixxMail”, not “Outlook”).

Research in organizational identity, organizational symbolism, and office environments has shown that triggering a sense of specific place (e.g., this organization, this community) helps to keep the values of the organization salient while people go about their work. Wouldn’t the same triggering and salience be important as people used their computers as portals/terminals to do any variety of tasks?

With this case in mind, I was intrigued by Toby Ward’s post on Social Intranet Design.

Ward, a noted intranet expert, outlined his 7 Principles of Intranet Design: (summarized from his post)

1. Less is more.
2. An intranet is a business system, and the design should fulfill business needs (no creative whim).
3. Follow a design process that includes thorough input by management & employees
4. Soft corners
5. Soft colors
6. Employees love employee photos, not clip art.
7. White space is good.

Do these design principles help to reinforce organizational identity?

The 6th principle, ‘Use employee photos’ makes a lot of sense, since this is an easy way to break up space in an attractive way while making the intranet look like it belongs to a specific organization.

But the 2nd principle troubled me just a little bit.

‘Business-like’ design or Organization-specific design?

While I do agree that “an intranet is a business system, and the design should fulfill business needs”, I disagree with the idea that designers should dispense with creative whims. (By whims, I’m assuming ‘insights’).

There is always a way to be both ‘business-like” and creative, especially if that creativity is used to express the organization’s identity. Were I the manager overseeing the intranet design, I’d explicitly request that the intranet’s aesthetics (and functionality) reflect the identity (or corporate ‘brand) of the organization itself.

Every intranet– heck, every organizational tool — should reflect, express and reinforce the values of the organization.

Every digital tool should pass the ‘below the header’ test– if the logo or headline is taken off, users should still be able to “know” that this tools belongs to their organization, that it is ‘of’ their organization.

Otherwise, you run the risk of allowing your organization and its tools to become generic, unspecial, unspecific, less meaningful. You’re missing a chance to evoke, demonstrate and reinforce what the organization stands for .

Have you had any bad experiences with organizations trying to get too unique, or too generic, in their intranet aesthetics?

I’d love some examples either way.

See also:

Logos, Browsers, Brand Identity, and What You Value: The symbols we use to represent our tools also represent the communities that use these tools.
Social Media for Social Change — Inside the Organization?
Authentic From the Start-Up: 4 Tips from Cindy Gallop and IfWeRanTheWorld
Systems of Engagement: Technology for Social Organizations

Image: Peter Jakubik’s Oval Libertine Mirror: “The seductive motif on this mirror is prepared to adore you.”

Everyone agrees: It’s a good thing for organizations to be authentic.

Where folks disagree, though, is why organizations should be authentic.

Deep down, we know that authenticity is valuable. But when we try to talk about “why our organization should be more authentic” and convince others to pursue authenticity, our conversations can get pretty confusing.

We often aren’t clear about our logic and which one(s) we’re using. Worse, when we choose a logic that is wrong for the audience we want to convince, pursuing authenticity can actually look like a waste of the organization’s time.

There are two arguments for organizational authenticity: one based on trust, and one based on uniqueness.

Logic #1: Authenticity Leads to Trust

Authenticity is valuable because authenticity invites stakeholders’ trust.

Stakeholders feel safer trusting an authentic organization because being authentic makes an organization’s behaviors become more predictable, reliable, and more trustworthy. Thus, authenticity is valuable because it makes it possible for stakeholders to trust the organization.

Logic #2: Authenticity leads to Unique Contribution

Authenticity is valuable because organizations that act authentically create a more accurate and more abundant expression of their unique values, capabilities, and purpose.

Being authentic effects the type and quality of the products, services and experiences that an organization offers. Because acting authentically draws forward the indigenous qualities inside the organization, an authentic organization creates behaviors, products and services that are specific and unique to that organization.

What authentic organizations create, in terms of products, services and experiences, are less easy to substitute and more likely to be special. Thus, authenticity is valuable because it establishes a distinctiveness that, relative to other organizations, makes relationships with the authentic organization more significant to stakeholders.

Kumbaya or Competitive Advantage?

Both the Logic of Trust and the Logic of Unique Contribution make real sense, but one logic is more ‘business-like’ than the other.

To put it bluntly, the “trust” logic for authenticity has a kind of ‘Kumbaya’ feel to it, and treats authenticity as a quality that’s “nice to have” but not necessarily mission-critical.

In contrast, the logic of ‘unique contribution’ has a ‘bottom-line impact’ because authenticity is the only way to generate sustainable competitive advantage. Thus, for an organization that wants to maximize its impact and achieve its purpose, being authentic is critical to success.

Is Kumbaya or Competitive Advantage more compelling to your stakeholders?

A few weeks ago I met with some of the members of The Community Roundtable to talk with them about strategies for sustaining authenticity in their online communities. Rachel Happe started us off by asking each manager to share his or her definition of authenticity and understanding of why being authentic would be good for an organization.

To a person, the managers believed that being authentic was valuable because it leads to trust. Each of them (and each of their organizations) is striving for a more trusting and trustworthy organizational culture. The logic of uniqueness and the conversation about competitive advantage didn’t come up as readily, and I was glad to have the chance to explore the issues with this group.

Both trust and uniqueness are important arguments for organizational authenticity.

Trust is absolutely something that every organization should pursue. But trust is not the central reason for being authentic. The central reason for being authentic is to sustain our organization’s uniqueness and to put that uniqueness to work to achieve the organization’s purpose.

We need to talk more about how authenticity leads to sustainable uniqueness and why authenticity is critical to an organization’s success.

The idea that these managers were advocating for more authenticity but relying only on one logic — and the ‘kumbaya’ one at that — made me realize that we/I need to talk more about how authenticity leads to sustainable uniqueness. We need to talk more about why authentic is critical to an organization’s success.

And, it made me wonder:

• Have we been under-utilizing the logic that organizational authenticity leads to unique contributions?

• Have we been under-appreciating organizational authenticity not only as a virtue in and of itself, but as an engine for creating stakeholder value?

• Are there other reasons for pursuing organizational authenticity that we’ve also overlooked?

I’d love your thoughts.

See also:
Is Authenticity the key to being “Meaningfully Different”?
Beyond Positioning: Establishing Authentic Optimal Distinctiveness
Can an organization be too different?: The Strategic Value of Optimal Distinctiveness

Images: Vans Authentic from Flatspot FSPT and FlatspotCollections

To craft a corporate reputation that seems authentic, claims about the organization’s character must be anchored in real features of the organization.

It’s the organization’s job to demonstrate a link between reputation claims and real features, and it’s the PR professional’s job to explain a link between claims and real features.

(This post is drawn from recent conversation with students in the class, “Introduction to PR Strategies & Tactics”, part of the Integrated Marketing Communications Program at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University.)

Any PR professional knows that his or her #1 job is to craft a strong, positive reputation for the organization. A strong, positive reputation creates value for all stakeholders, including the organization, its partners, clients, investors, employees, and customers.

The challenge for Public Relations professionals seems to be all about coordinating the efforts of different influencers – all the stakeholders that make claims about an organization.

The corporate entity and its divisions, individual members, product related marketing activities, and the chatter of the larger interested community (formerly known as ‘audiences’) all have something to say about “who” the organization is. It often seems that the focus for a PR professional is to coordinate and organize all these messages from all these influencers so that the sum total conveys the desired image of the organization.

The Real Challenge of the Public Relations Professional

The real challenge of a PR professional is something different. The real challenge is literally to explain how the reputation is real.

Why? Any organization’s stakeholders all know that the PR department is out there intentionally trying to make the organization look good. Stakeholders know that the PR professional’s job is to promote desirable images of an organization. And, they know that these desirable images are not necessary real.

Thus, the more important job of a PR professional is helping to craft an organizational reputation that is real — a reputation that is coherent, coordinated, and positive, yes, and also — a reputation that directly reflects who the organization really is.

Authentic reputations come from actual organizational features.

Stakeholders need to believe that claims about the organization come not from the mind of some clever spinmeister (aka you, the PR professional), but instead from the organization itself.

So, the PR professional’s effort should focus on explaining how the organization’s reputation is anchored in the organization’s features.

To anchor a reputation claim, the PR professional need to explain and share a cause & effect relationship between the claim and its organizational source.

Cause – Effect explanations should address questions like:

When a reputation can be traced back to the organization’s actual features, stakeholders have a reason to believe that the reputation is real.

There’s a great photo in the New York Times (May 19, 2011) of a whitepaper chart created to manage the Delta-Northwest Merger’s Long and Complex Path.

The chart is full of of post-its, probably more than 200 of them. Each post-it reflects a point where the systems and processes of the organizations need to be integrated, and the assorted colors represent the type of operational system where the integration task is to be solved.

Notwithstanding the low tech-ness of their process, this post-it chart is an amazing view of what it takes to put together two very different, very distinctive companies.

One Post-It = Two Different Cultural Expressions

Each post-it note reflects not only an integration task, but a point where the cultures and identities of these two companies are made concrete. Each post-it shows a place where the culture of one organization is different from the culture of the other. To resolve each of these integration tasks, the merger team has to decide which behavior, which system and which characteristic with be chosen for the ‘new’ merged culture, and which behaviors, systems and characteristics will be rejected.

While one spokesperson notes that these amount of work to resolve these details is ‘boring’, I see it as rather fascinating. That’s because opportunities for the merger team to create a distinctive, merged organizational culture exist at each of these points. The merger team needs to chose one concrete expression over the other.

What matters is not only which behavior is chosen, but also why it is chosen, and what that behavior is supposed to express.

Take this very subtle distinction, from Jad Mouawad’s detailed article:

Delta always thought of itself as the gracious host. Hence its flight attendants poured the requested drinks.

Northwest was the practical carrier; its attendants just handed over the can.

Distinctiveness => “Signature Moves”

When I talk with organizations about how they demonstrate what makes them distinctive, I often mention the concept of a ‘signature move’.

A signature move is a behavior that demonstrates — through its particular style– a quality that is important to how the organization defines itself.

The beverage delivery gesture is a perfect example– the same task, “delivering a beverage” is performed differently. And at each organization, that slightly different performance communicates something deeper and more meaningful about who the organization really understands itself to be.

These differences in ‘who the organizations are’ reflect how the carriers hoped (at one time) to differentiate themselves from each other and create a competitive advantage in the eyes of potential customers.

In the ideal airline industry …

Ideally, some customers would prefer the gracious culture of Delta, while others would prefer the practical culture of Northwest, all because the concepts of “gracious” and “practical” were concretely expressed in authentic behaviors by the organization and its representatives.

These signature moves, demonstrated throughout the organization, construct the distinctive identity that should differentiate the firm from competitors.

In a world where airtravel customers felt that they had positive reasons to choose one airline over another, the cumulative distinctions created by these different behaviors could have created a competitive advantage for one airline over the other.

In the actual airline industry…

However, in customers’ practical experience of these airlines, the subtle differences in style and culture were overwhelmed by the profound and disappointing similarity of bad service at both airlines. Neither the graciousness of Delta nor the practicality of Northwest made enough of a difference to set either organization apart as distinctive.

Which, of course, points to the weakness of depending on distinctiveness alone to make your organization competitive or attractive.  Distinctiveness only matters if you can deliver a decent product or service. The details matter, certainly, but only once the core business is competent.

See also:
Beyond Positioning: Establishing Authentic Optimal Distinctiveness

Is Authenticity the key to being “Meaningfully Different”?

Snippet of image by Seth W. Feaster/The New York TImes, in its full glory at The New York Times.

It’s easy to see how Employer Branding is useful to HR departments and potential job applicants.

Employer Branding, the practice of marketing images of your organization as a desirable place to work towards potential job applicants, is a sensible strategy for attracting the right people onto your bus (-iness).

Employer Branding works to draw to an organization the kind of people the organization wants to hire, by making the organization look like it has specific, compelling, desirable characteristics.

Promoting an idealized or crystallized view of “what it’s like to work here”, organizations and their HR departments hope to increase applicants, reduce recruiting inefficiencies, improve yield, and keep employees longer, all because these new employees experience improved person-organization /employee-employer fit.

Sounds good for HR, sounds good for potential employees.

And, although it is designed to attract future employees, Employee Branding also has a few benefits for current employees.

3 Ways Employer Branding Can Benefit Current Employees

l. The Employer Brand may bring new insight to key managers.

An Employer Branding campaign requires someone in the organization to spend time thinking about “what it’s like to work here” from the employees’ point of view.

Taking the employees’ perspective (however briefly and instrumentally) may give managers and HR departments new insights about the everyday experiences of organization members. These new insights might inspire managers to systematize, reinforce or change the environment at work to make the environment more attractive.

2. The Employer Brand may trigger sense-making and action by current employees.

The messages of an Employee Branding campaign are seen not only by outside, potential employees but also by inside, current employees.

An Employer Branding campaign can create an opportunity for people in the organization to talk with each other about what their organization is like as an employer. Conversations about the Employer Brand might address questions like ” Is this what its like to work here?” and “How can we work together to make this environment more like that idealized picture?”

An uptick in awareness, the invitation to consider the Employer Brand, and the opportunity to talk about it together might lead employees to reinforce and/or improve the organizational environment themselves.

3. The Employer Brand can improve the contributions of new employees to the experience of current employees.

The Employer Brand can help draw the ‘right kind’ of coworkers into the organization, reinforcing the desirable elements of the work environment and helping to fulfill the promise of ‘the brand’ for current and new employees alike.

Of course, the Employer Brand can only have these positive effects if it is somewhat true and reasonably credible. An Employer Brand made up of unreal claims, however desirable these claims may be, would only create disappointment and resentment among current employees.

An Employer Branding campaign can help a current employee these three ways, as long as the current employee has a good personal fit with the desired, projected Employer Brand.

Bonus Benefit if you don’t fit

And for the employee who doesn’t fit the work context of this projected Employer Brand?

There’s still a positive influence. The Employer Branding campaign may help that current employee realize that this organization really *isn’t* a good fit, and inspire the employee to look for a different employer, an organization that has a better fit with his or her own values and needs.

See also:

Images:
GoodFitting When Fastened, and CloseUp Some rights reserved by Lee Turner on Flickr

What are we learning as we watch (and help) social media, consumer-outreach -style tools, make their way into the organization?  We’re learning that this phenomenon can be understood from a wide range of disparate perspectives, which don’t necessarily see eye-to-eye. At least not yet.  Still,

I’m anticipating a convergence among perspectives that will create a coherent explanation of what social media and systems of engagement can do inside organizations.

And, I’m expecting that we’ll soon be able to craft a compelling argument for being deliberate as we implement these systems, to see beyond what they do on the surface and focus instead on how they can create net positive value for members, organizations, stakeholders and communities.

Ahead, I’m expecting that the perspectives from inward-facing information management systems like:

• IT & digital systems design
• Content management,
• Work process flow
• Enterprise resource planning

Will overlap with perspectives from outward-facing interaction systems like:

• Customer relationship management
• Corporate communications
• Brand (product) management
• Customer service
• Recruiting, and

Will be enhanced by understanding what it takes to get people to involved and move them to action, drawing on insights from:

• Social entrepreneurship
• Cause marketing
• Social change

Add to these the conventional, managerialist approach of Social Business, the network & power approach of Wirearchy, and insights from the organizational change area (e.g., organizational democracy, employee engagement, and stakeholder value conversations) and you’ll see how the groundwork is being laid to use digital social tools and analog social systems to reorganize *inside* the organization.

I’m discovering colleagues, distributed across these areas, who are excited about the opportunities that social media and systems of engagement  present for social change.  And,  I’m starting to get a handle on who’s contributing what to this convergence.

As part of my effort to sketch the big picture:

Here are posts on Authentic Organizations that are working to build connections across these areas, one link at a time.

All of these systems — social media and systems of engagement — share some important value assumptions.

• Systems of Engagement: Technology for Social Organizations
• Networks and the Myth that Flatter Organizations are Better
• Networks and The Myth of Flattening Organizations

Social media & systems of engagement can be used to transform organizations- intentionally as well as unintentionally.

• Social Media for Social Change — Inside the Organization?
• When Will “Social Business” Become Social Change Business?

Social media/engagement systems create meaning and value at the individual, organizational and stakeholder system level. This meanin, and the activity that creates it work to build engagement.

• How Social Media Create Organizational Meaning
• Active Lurkers: How Idea Lovecats Demonstrate Engagement
• Authentic Student Entrepreneurs: Embedding Personal, Product and Organizational Brand
• What’s your *personal* ROI as a Brandividual?
• Insights about Authenticity from the Open Community Book Tour
• Jews and Social Media: Aligned values reinforce an Authentic strategy

Systems allow us to create & shape who we are and how we are seen, As individuals

• Your Authentic Social Network: The Identity Graph
• Be Your Own Hashtag
• Tweet Yourself Like the Person You Want to Be
• How Social Media Reveals Invisible Work

and as organizations.

• 7 Tips for Rendering Authenticity Through Social Media
• The Best PR that $1.6 Million Can’t Buy: Authenticity in Action at Zappos
• Logos, Browsers, Brand Identity, and What You Value
• Beyond an Online Dress Code: A ‘Look Code’ for Work Avatars & Employee Branding
• Representing your organization on Twitter: A Logo or a Face?

Systems allow us and others to evaluate our behavior. Who makes these evaluations, who uses them, and what priorities they reflect all matter.

• Action Branding: Using activity streams to authenticate identity claims
• Authenticity: Is there an app for that?

If your organization does or does not reflect its espoused values and character in its social media systems and outputs, stakeholders will figure it out and ask you to do better.

• 3 Reasons Why Employee Engagement is a Scam
• 7 Core Principles for Authentic Engagement
• When Brandividuals Violate Organizational Reputation
• Social Media Risks: Restoring trust when your brand mascot is a killer (whale)

The assumptions and decisions that designers – and managers- make about these systems matter more than most people think.

• Authentic Organizations communicate in their own special way(s)
• Facebook for Women vs. Facebook Designed by Feminists: Different vs. Revolutionary
• If Women Had Designed Facebook

Designers have more power than users, so you should be deliberate about the designs you create, choose and implement.

• Use Extreme Leverage 2.0 to Change The Social World
• Why Women DON’T Rule the Internet

We can be proactive in how we use these tools, so that we create the kinds of jobs and organizations that inspire us. For example,

• Work-Life Initiatives Are the Foundation of Authentic Organizations
• Social Media, False Urgency & Anywhen: Chris Brogan shows how to improve your Work-Life Fit
• Work-Life Fit is an Enterprise 2.0 Solution

It’s usually easy to use a social media/engagement system, but it’s hard to do it well.

• Misleading Image for Army: New York Times, PowerPoint and Complexity Fail
• Are Online Surveys Making Us Stupid?

Where to next?

As I look at the summary statements I’ve offered for each cluster of posts, the connections and conclusions seem more straightforward than they are “in real life”. As always, the beauty is in the details, and the power is in the implementation.

Image: “The Road Ahead” by colorbee, available as a print on Etsy!