Category: All about Authenticity
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Want Authenticity? Design Homophobia Out of the Organization
The System isn’t working at Omnicom. Omnicom says “we are committed to ensuring that we use our position to promote socially responsible policies and practices. Yet, Omnicom’s agency, Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO (AMV/BBDO) , creates advertising that is anti-gay. Because Omnicom is not addressing the contradiction between who it says it is as an organization…
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Homophobia and (In)Authenticity at Omnicom: What can a leader do?
I am struggling to understand the pattern of reactions to a recent critique of an organization’s authenticity. Bob Garfield, writing in Monday’s (7/21) Advertising Age, has an Open Letter to Omnicom President-CEO John Wren, asking Wren to look at the contradiction between Omnicom’s public Statement on Corporate Responsibility and the homophobia represented in three recent…
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“Loving” my Authentic CSA? Good to know I’m not crazy….or alone!
Every now and then, when I think about what thinking about Authenticity does to me, I start to wonder if I’m crazy. Does anyone else get excited by “Girlcotts”, corporate shills, rice pudding, or bad branding plays? Well, here’s some perspective on my recent post, re: ‘Loving my CSA‘: Data point: When I googled the…
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Authentic Organizations communicate in their own special way(s)
Yesterday a reader left us an intriguing comment on a post I wrote months ago, about a conflict at the New York Junior League. [The post was one of my first efforts, and is so poorly formatted that I’m embarrassed to have you go look at it, but…] Liz wrote about how, at the NYJL,…
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Authentic or Not?: A Men’s Organization with a woman member
Recently, I told you about an organizational situation that raises some interesting questions about whether the organization is being authentic. The organization, a Men’s Chorus, has up to 249 male members and 1 woman member, my neighbor Joan Garry. I proposed that this organization is either very special or very inauthentic” how else could the…
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Authentic Food Organizations: Why I love my CSA
Spring is here, and I’m in love again… with my CSA. CSA as in “cyber-spouse avatar”? No, CSA as in Community Supported Agriculture. It’s a group of us — 55 families, Farmer John (that’s John, below), the five or so employees of John’s Starbrite Farm, and 20 weeks of organic produce. [Quick introduction: Community Supported…
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Authentic Organizational Partnerships: Organizational Brands, Names, the Columbus Children’s Hospital, and the Abercrombie & Fitch Trauma Center
+ = ??? In an earlier post, I mentioned that authentic organizations might find it hard to find appropriate partner organizations, because the qualities of the company you keep are often inferred to be the qualities of your organization itself. And now, in the news , is a great example of this very problem: The…
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5 (More) Reasons Why Being Authentic Can Be Bad for Your Organization
Being authentic limits who your organization can attract as partners. Not every organization wants to do business with an organization that’s authentic, because authentic organizations can be demanding partners. Authentic organizations need partners who will support the organization’s dedication to authenticity, who will appreciate why the organization dedicates its resources to sustaining authenticity, and who…
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5 Reasons Why Being Authentic Can Be Bad For Your Organization
Being authentic requires constant vigilance. Authentic organizations need constantly to monitor the relationship between their identity, their image, and their actions. Ideally, the organization wants to catch (and fix) any misalignments before others notice, because these misalignments can easily be interpreted as signs that the organization isn’t authentic or isn’t intending to remain authentic. This…
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Can an employee be “too authentic”?
“The guy was too authentic to do his job!” The employee in question worked for an organization that created “lifestyle” products for the action sports market. He worked as an editor and was responsible for updating the organization’s website every morning. The organization positioned itself as having authentic insight into the action sports community, because…