When organizations are being authentic, they approach their problems by drawing on their identity.

An organization that wants to be authentic must regularly find ways to translate its beliefs about ‘who we are’ into actions that demonstrate ‘who we are’. When an organization has faith in its own identity, it will strive to demonstrate this identity in its behaviors. But if the organization’s identity claims are not reflected in its behavior, you start to wonder just how much the organization believes in these claims.

There is a fascinating situation occurring right now at Tyson Foods that really illustrates this point.  Tyson, an organization that claims to be “faith friendly ” can’t seem to connect its behavior with its self-definition.

The situation in Shelbyville

1. The Shelbyville (Tennessee) Times-Gazette ran a story (8.01.08) that made public a months’ old contract agreement where “(W)orkers at Tyson Foods’ poultry processing plant in Shelbyville will no longer have a paid day off on Labor Day, but will instead take the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr in the fall.”

2. In response to the flak generated by this article, Tyson Foods issued a press release (8.04.08) Labor Day Still Recognized at Tyson Foods; Union Contract Provision only at Shelbyville, TN Plant in which they denied responsibility for the decision and emphasized that the consequences of the decision were local and minimal. This response satisfied no one.

3. The squawking online continued, consumers threatened to boycott Tyson’s products, and Tyson’s received hundreds of e-mails from angered customers who who opposed this “accommodation to Muslims”.

4. Then, less than a week later (8.08.08), Tyson’s announced that it had reached a revised agreement, that : “for this year and this year only, employees could have both the Labor Day holiday and the Muslim holiday.”  Labor Day Reinstated as Paid Holiday at Shelbyville, TN. It looks like Tyson’s pressured the union to renegotiate the contract so that it could get out of this public-relations mess.

What’s surprising about this situation?

Tyson’s claimed identity as faith-friendly was never mentioned.

Based on what I know about Tyson’s, the only part of the story that did not surprise me was the very first step — the accommodation of their Muslim employees’ religious holiday. I thought this would be a great opportunity to write about supporting an organization’s faith friendly identity through organizational design — specifically, through labor relations practices.  As it turns out, what’s going on with Tyson’s is the opposite of what I would have expected — leading me to conclude that Tyson’s lacks faith in its identity.

How important is faith friendliness to Tyson’s organizational identity?

When I first saw this story in the New York Times  (all disclaimers apply), I was not surprised that Tyson’s had found a way for its Muslim employees to have their holy day as a vacation day.  I think of Tyson’s as a faith friendly organization, because I’m one of the 35,000 moms who requested a copy of Tyson’s Giving Thanks at Mealtime booklet of blessings, one of their public expressions of faith friendliness.

1. The company claims throughout its corporate publications that it is striving to be faith friendly.

I wondered whether I was mistaken to think of faith friendliness an important part of Tyson Foods’ identity.  When I surfed over to their corporate website, there was faith friendliness as one of the (only three) elements of Tyson’s corporate, public description of “Who we are”.

Who we are:

• We strive to be a company of diverse people
  working together to produce food.
• We strive to be honorable people.
• We strive to be a faith-friendly company.

Tyson’s corporate sustainability statement elaborates on their identity, in the discussions of the people and ethics that compose “who we are”, particularly the statement “we work hard to respect and honor traditions”.  Maybe that’s just the standard boilerplate…  but no, there’s more: Tyson’s discussion of “Who we Are” also describes the growth of their Chaplaincy program.  Chaplaincy program?

2. The company has designed a system to support its faith friendly identity.

Tyson Foods chaplaincy program employs over 125 part-time chaplains, working at Tyson’s 280+ plants and offices, including the Shelbyville plant. Nearly all the chaplains are Christians, although at one time at least one was an imam. This “unique benefit” has been in place since 2000, and has drawn the attention of organizations promoting spirituality in the workplace as well as  news organizations.

The Director of Chaplaincy Services  is even charged with the task of supporting management and advising management, “consult with senior management on matters relating to chaplaincy, religion in the workplace, ethics, etc. … and provide guidance on crisis response to management.”

Yes, but …

By establishing and growing a company wide program to support their employees with non-/multidimensional chaplains, Tyson’s seems to have designed in an organizational system to support their identity of being “faith friendly”. If you only saw the claim about striving to be faith friendly or had heard only about the chaplaincy program, you might even think that Tyson’s was on the leading edge of organizations trying to embrace the challenges of spirituality in the workplace.

But, when you read either the first press release or the second press release  you start to wonder:

Just how much faith does Tyson’s have in its faith friendly identity?

If Tyson’s really believed that it was faith friendly, Tyson’s would have seized this opportunity to demonstrate how much it respected the religious beliefs of all of its employees. Tyson’s would have looked for ways to demonstrate that it was working hard “to respect and honor the traditions, values and contributions” of Tyson employees.

It’s a strong signal of Tyson’s inauthenticity that Tyson’s does not seem to know how to translate faith friendliness into behaviors.  But it’s even more damning, if you will, that Tyson’s never even mentions the idea of faith friendliness in the context of this situation.

How would you expect a faith friendly organization to approach this problem?

If striving to be faith friendly is authentically part of Tyson’s organizational identity, then the concept of “faith friendliness’ — what it actually means to be faith friendly– should inspire how Tyson approaches this situation.

What might this look like?  Tyson’s could say “this issue of religious holidays for our employees is important to us as a faith-friendly organization.”  And, Tyson’s could ask itself “what might be  a faith friendly way to resolve this problem?”  But it doesn’t look as though Tyson’s did either of these things.

At the very least, I would expect an organization that claimed to be faith friendly to return to this belief and use it to help understand a crisis situation like this one. I’d expect the organization to release a statement that read something like: “As a faith-friendly organization, we recognize the importance of religion in our employees lives and we do our best to accommodate employees of any religious or spiritual persuasion in a fair way.  Therefore…”   And this is absolutely not how Tyson’s responded.

Is Tyson’s being authentic or not?  My preliminary conclusion is that either

1. Tyson’s has an extremely limited view — a parochial view, if you will — of what it means to be faith friendly,

– OR –

2. Being faith friendly really isn’t part of Tyson’s core identity.

What do you think? Weigh in by clicking the comment link (at the very bottom right of this post) and sharing your opinion.

There is obviously much more to the story, even if we confine ourselves to talking about authenticity and identity.  In my next post, we can look at some of Tyson’s specific actions and consider what the responses suggest about how Tyson’s defines what it means to be faith-friendly.

Here is Steven Greenhouse’s article… notice the additional specifics missed in the Times-Gazette report.

Technorati Tags: tyson foods,muslim,labor day,unions,

faith in the workplace,chaplaincy,diversity,core values,
authenticity,organizations,identity,image

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 and how it acts, Omnicom is not being authentic.

Last week, in an effort to challenge the homophobic advertisement, Bob Garfield’s column in Advertising Age admonished John Wren, the CEO of the Omnicom Group, by asking him to “tell his agencies how to behave.”

Most of the ensuing commentary about the offensive ad and about Garfield’s column discussed whether or not the ad was homophobic and whether or not Bob Garfield was overly sensitive, and this diverted attention from discussing how to eliminate anti-gay advertising altogether. Meanwhile, some advocacy organizations, particularly the Human Rights Campaign applied direct pressure on the client (Mars) and got the advertisement taken off the air.

Problem solved– at least this time.

But what about the next time, and the time after that? And what about action that could stop anti-gay ads from being created in the first place? A week later, and after another 230 plus comments on the issue – this time, facilitated by Chris Martin writing at The Consumerist - there is still no reflection about how to banish homophobia from the organization’s products.

The big-picture problem that created the biased ad is that the organization is acting inauthentically.

There is a gap between the organization’s claimed commitment to acting in a socially responsible way and the behavior that was socially irresponsible. By focusing on this gap between claims and actual behavior, a push for organizational authenticity could pressure the organization to change its behavior. If advocates were able to get the organization to act more authentically re: its claims, advocates could influence not only the organization’s homophobic actions, but also other actions that contradict the organization’s claim to be socially responsible.

So, let’s try a different tack on the question of eliminating homophobia. Let’s talk about designing an organization that acts authentically. …

Want Bias? Design Homophobia in.

Among the handful of absolute truths about organizations and leadership that I wanted my MBA executive students to learn, is this simple statement about an organization’s results:

Organizations are designed to get the results they get.

I have never been able to find a pithier way to state this truth. Nonetheless, I’ve always found this truth to be a useful starting place for diagnosing any kind of problem in an organization. So, let’s take this approach to considering the CEO’s role in aligning the orgnization’s products & external actions with the organization’s statement of commitments. Keep in mind that this approach works only for organizations that already claim to be against bias, because this is all about making the organization accountable for those claims.

Want to Banish Bias? Design Homophobia Out.

If an organization claims to be “committed to ensuring that we use our position to promote socially responsible policies and practices and that we make positive contributions to society across all of our operations”, then it should not be creating and selling advertising that denigrates the GLBT community. But where do we go to create change, so that the organization’s ignoble actions come closer to its lofty claims?

Let’s start with a diagnosis. Many would say that the offensive ad got through the Ad Agency because:

• - Some employees at AMV/BBDO are homophobic
• - Some employees at AMV/BBDO are unable to recognize an anti-gay sentiment
• - Some employees at AMV/BBDO are unable (or unwilling) to speak out against an anti-gay creative idea
• - Some employees at AMV/BBDO lack the power and influence to convince their peers that the ad is problematic

Any and all of these explanations could be true, and any of these issues could be addressed as a part of a program to prevent anti-gay advertising concepts. But, if you take to heart the idea that “Organizations are designed to get the results they get,” could there be something about the way the Omnicom agencies are designed that permits anti-gay advertising to be created?

If AMV/BBDO is producing some ads that are anti-gay, then something in the design of the agency is making homophobic ads possible.

Want to change the organization’s outcome? Change the organization’s systems.

The way to prevent the agency from creating anti-gay advertising to recognize that there is something about the way that the agency is organized that is creating and/or letting pass ideas that are anti-gay. The job of top management is to analyze the organization’s systems ( its routine, procedures, policies, rewards, etc.), to identify places where bias could be created and/or filtered out, and to make changes in the system.

The CEO is responsible for changing the organization’s design

But let’s be realistic— Should eliminating homophobia from an agency’s advertisements be the responsibility of John Wren, the CEO of the Omnicom Group? Mark Horn points out that Wren is merely the CEO of the agency’s holding company. There are several layers of corporate hierarchy between Wren and any of ABM/DDBO’s processes. Horn suggest that, instead of addressing Wren, perhaps it is the CEO of AMV/BBDO (Farah Ramzan Golant) who should take action here. [Mark, I’m with you on that one, as are the folks who commented on my initial post.]

The CEO should modify the systems for creating and approving ads.

The CEO should consider system changes to eliminate anti-gay and otherwise biased advertising, and system changes that will promote clever advertising that is generously humorous. Golant should modify the ways that advertisements get created and executed (e.g., adjusting the idea generation processes already in use, or adding standards and checkpoints alongside the evaluations that each idea goes through as the creative quality is vetted.)

The CEO should establish systems that will align the organization’s actions with its claims.

1. Golant should establish a system for managers and employees to compare the organization’s products with the organization’s statements of purpose and value.
2. Golant should hold herself and the agency’s employees accountable for producing ads that reflect the creative and social standards that the agency claims to hold.
3. Golant should create regular opportunities for the organization to assess, reflect on and adjust its actions so that they align with the organization’s claimed commitments.
4. Golant should establish a process whereby the agency could ask itself:
   How does the advertising we create “use our position to promote socially responsible policies and practices?”

With these changes in the design of the organization, Golant can lead AMC/DDBO towards being more authentic.

Remember, too, that the behaviors of individual employees still matter.

Arguing that the CEO should change the organization’s systems does not let employees off the hook; employees are still responsible for their own actions and for supporting the organization’s claims through their own behavior. Employees’ sensitivity to anti-gay ideas, employees’ commitment to producing bias-free advertising, and employees’ ability and willingness to speak out against an anti-gay creative concepts are very important. But the actions and commitments of individual employees are not enough to eliminate homophobia in the organization’s products.

It takes heroic effort by employees to override an organization’s systems, and no amount of hard work can consistently overcome bad design.

To overcome a system that allows homophobia in, you have to design your organization to keep bias out.

Technorati Tags: Bob Garfield, Organizational authenticity,homophobia,Snickers,Human Rights Campaign,Omnicom,Farah Golant,organizational design,leadership

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 advertisements by Omnicom Group agencies TBWA and BBDO.

Exhorts Garfield:

“Stop the dehumanizing stereotypes. Stop the jokey violence. There is no place in advertising for cruelty. Pull the campaign. Do it now. Then tell your agencies how to behave.” (emphasis mine)

Of the 73 comments (so far, at 7.24 noon) on Garfield’s Open Letter, only 4 of these comments refer to Garfield’s central critique and his actual request: that Wren should ensure that the work of the agencies he leads represents the agencies’ policy.

The vast majority of comments on the AdAge page critique Garfield’s characterization of these three adverts as homophobic, while a few support it. Garfield is told everything from that he is wrong, he doesn’t know what homophobia is, he is too sensitive, and too politically correct to the other extreme, that he is naive and that he has not gone far enough in his criticism. In general, the pattern in the blogworld is the same: mostly criticism and some small, occasionally impassioned but not completely focused support.

Some comments get close, but….

Check out how these four supportive comments get closer to the real issue, but still don’t quite make it there:

Karen McBain: ‘Using mass media to reinforce ANY negative stereotype as a means of growing market share and sales is socially irresponsible. The buck doesn’t stop with John Wren: the marketers who paid for the Dodge and Snickers work are just as much to blame.”
* Okay, the marketers need to pay attention too.

Galen Bernard: John Wren should be made aware of this spot and he should be worried. Not that some of his London based creatives are homophobes …but that they are small thinkers.
* Wren should care, but mostly because the ads are dumb.

Terry Floyd Johnson: John Wren not only needs to step in, but make a public apology for so gross of a hate commercials, attacking gays, lesbians and bisexuals.
* Wren should say he/they are sorry. (Is that enough?)

Jack Jones: The spots are only symptomatic of a bigger problem. … A commercial does not hatch in a vacuum. It’s seen and produced and commented upon by scores of people. How many individuals do you think saw this commercial during its production process without noticing the potential issues? That’s the most disturbing part of all. … There continues to be an arrogance and ignorance in our industry that no one wants to admit. Writing a letter to John Wren doesn’t begin to address the real problem.
* The whole Some people in the industry is are homophobic,racist, sexist… and Wren can’t affect that.

Notice that no one is saying:

Hey Omnicom/Wren–
Put your products where your promises are!

Maybe Garfield’s phrasing is too dramatic, maybe his rhetorical strategy of indignance pushes a few buttons. But even so, why miss the real point, that the CEO should take responsibility for keeping the organization’s behavior aligned with its statements of purpose, vision and value?

What I don’t understand about the responses to Garfield’s letter is that so few people are focused on holding Wren accountable for aligning his organization’s actions with its words. Why is this?

Striving for authenticity, for alignment between who you say you are, what you believe about yourself, and how you behave as an organization, is the responsibility of the organization’s leadership.

And responsibility for being authentic is not confined to leadership: Keeping behavior aligned with the organization’s statements of purpose, vision and value is the responsibility of every employee. The people at Omnicom know this– it’s right here in Omnicom’s Code of Conduct statement:

Our reputation depends, to a very large measure, on you taking personal responsibility for maintaining and adhering to the policies and guidelines set forth here. Your continued cooperation in this regard is appreciated.

So, what are the employees of Omnicom’s agencies saying? What do they think of this criticism of their work and their organizations? And, how is John Wren, Omnicom’s leader, planning to respond?

These are not (only) questions of political correctness and social responsibility; these are questions about whether an organization is willing to hold itself accountable for putting into practice what it says is important.

Given that it is the leader’s responsibility to make sure that the organization at least strives for authenticity, what will John Wren do?

Technorati Tags: homophobia,Omnicom,John Wren,Bob Garfield,AdAge,organizational authenticity,authenticity,leadership

Show me a liberal– heck , show me a thoughtful American– and I will show you a person who says that the name “Fox News” is an oxymoron.

With their fake name, Fox News claims that it is a news organization. Fox News works very hard to make viewers think that what they see on their Fox TV screen is “news”. Fox news pulls out all the tropes, covers all the genres, amps up all the symbolism it can to make itself look like a news organization.

As Timothy Noah writes, on Slate: “No fair-minded person actually believes that Fox News is unbiased, so pretending that it is calls for steely corporate resolve.”

But every now and then, despite the smoke and mirrors, viewers get a glimpse of the truth, of the authentic Fox News. This time it’s from an error so egregious you can’t help but wonder how the people at Fox News fool themselves.

Check out this breaking critique from mediamatters.org:

On the July 2 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends, co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade labeled New York Times reporter Jacques Steinberg and editor Steven Reddicliffe “attack dogs,” claiming that Steinberg’s June 28 article on the “ominous trend” in Fox News’ ratings was a “hit piece.” During the segment, however, Fox News featured photos of Steinberg and Reddicliffe that appeared to have been digitally altered — the journalists’ teeth had been yellowed, their facial features exaggerated, and portions of Reddicliffe’s hair moved further back on his head. Fox News gave no indication that the photos had been altered.

Zip on over to the MediaMatters site to see the before and after photographs themselves.. Or, go to xenon.arcticus.com for a detailed, full analysis of what was actually done to the original photos. Then, come back for the rest of the story…).

Why would a “news” organization broadcast photographs that are not accurate representations of the persons they are purported to depict? Why? Because this is not a news organization. These distorted photographs demonstrate that, as a ‘news” organization, Fox News is inauthentic.

Where being authentic really matters

There are two types of organizations where authenticity matters above all else:

(1) mission-based, ideological, political organizations, and

(2) news & science organizations

Mission-based, ideological, political organizations need to be authentic. They need their actions to match their beliefs because their actions must promote, advertise, and convince others of the validity of their beliefs. If the organization’s actions don’t reflect how the organization defines itself, then the organization can’t demonstrate that these beliefs matter enough to put into practice. It demonstrates that the organization lacks conviction.

News & science organizations need to be authentic so that they can sustain confidence in their conclusions. News organizations require high standards of evidence, because their main product is accurate information. We need to know that their data is solid, objective, and empirically verifiable. (How many points did the Dow dropped today? Where humans alive when dinosaurs roamed the earth?)

With other types organizations, we don’t really question whether or not their product is “true” or “accurate.” (Is a sneaker true? Is a chalupa accurate?) But with news, you’ve got to start with the facts. Because if the organization because without facts, it’s not a news organization.

Fact vs Opinion

Fox News has always sullied the line between fact and opinion In particular, it has distorted the way that facts are presented (by the way it frames a story) to lead viewers to a particular interpretation or conclusion. For example, Fox viewers are more likely than viewers of other news networks to believe - erroneously and contrary to fact - that Iraq was somehow partly responsible for 9/11. Yet, when it comes to objective truths that have little political implications — like what the people referred to in a ‘news’ story actually look like — we have at least expected Fox News to tell the truth.

Of course, I’m not the only person who believes that Fox news is a poser — an ideological organization pretending to be an objective, news organization. Here’s what media critic Eric Alterman (writing in The Nation) has to say, quite succinctly:

Fox, like the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Washington Times, is a conservative counterestablishment institution designed to ape the functions of the real thing, doing double duty by firing up the troops with custom-crafted ideological spin, “analysis” and phony scholarship while confusing the rest of the world with nonsense disguised as news.

There is a wealth of information out there about how, time and again, Fox News has somehow distorted the story so that people interpret it in a particular way.

But aren’t there are some distortions that even Fox News should avoid? Shouldn’t they avoid the distortion of the visual images used to document and illustrate a story, when these images are presented as real representations of something or someone?

[Yes, of course the choice of which images to use — even when these images are undoctored, even when ‘unshopped’ — can highlight certain interpretations of the facts.]

It’s one thing to choose an ugly photograph. It’s another to take someone’s regular publicity headshot and distort it to make that person look uglier, nastier, or somehow less attractive. Distorting someone’s head shot is very blatant, since it is so easy to show a ‘before and after’ contrast (see xenon.arcticus.com). And it seems rather meaningless, if not petty, to even bother with how the men look. Will viewers really dislike these NYT reporters more or trust their criticism of Fox even less — if the guys are kind of ugly?

Opinion vs Fact

Whether or not the photos have been distorted is not a matter of opinion. One can’t suggest that only liberals would think the photos were distorted or that only liberals would be concerned by how the NYT reporters were depicted. The reporters have been made to look less attractive and more like ‘bad guys’ to distort how viewers hear the story. There is no denying that ‘reality’ has been distorted, in a way that serves Fox News’ identity as an ideological organization and contradicts any attempts by Fox News to present itself as a news organization.

This behavior raises a new level of doubt about Fox News: If they are comfortable distorting something so easy to detect, in so bald and bold a manner, what’s going on inside their organization?

Which brings me back to the question of the people who work at Fox News…

What is the real identity of Fox News?

What do the employees of Fox News tell themselves about the organization? (Be sure, there are many (former) Fox News employees have told their truth.) If you were to ask a group of them, “Who is Fox News? What defines Fox News? What does Fox News want to be?”, what kind of organizational identity would they describe? Would they describe the organization thus:

My bet is that the identity would be more like a ‘mission-based, ideological, political organization’, and less like a ‘news & science organization’ than the name Fox News would suggest. Certainly, their actions deny any claim to being an authentic news organization.

Is this organization being authentic by giving itself
a fake name?

photofrom digitalcontnentproducer.com

There’s a funny little news tidbit in Sunday’s New York Times Business section, right below Tommy Hilfiger’s engagement announcement (as if that’s business news?). It’s a paragraph about a design & communications firm, Thornberg & Forester. Neither Thornberg nor Forester exist or ever existed as real people. Thornberg & Forester is an advertising agency with a fake name.

Is there any way that giving your organization a fake name is a good idea?

Sometimes, fake names can work.

There are lots of organizations with fake business names, names that don’t refer to any real person or place. Often, these fake names are retail brands (e.g., Hollister, Victoria’s Secret, Gilly-Hicks). While it sometimes does bother me that these brands have fake origins, they can be effective when the names are used by the people within the organization to craft the organization’s products. The fake name is supposed to keep organization members aligned around the aspirational brand identity that the name evokes.

The name ‘Thornberg & Forester” is supposed to sound stodgy. The name follows a naming convention that, in advertising as well as other industries, is intended to establish the credibility of the organization on the basis of the reputations of the founders (e.g., Saatchi & Saatchi).

If Thornberg & Forester was trying to present itself as something it was not, by choosing a name that conjures up images of a white shoe law firm (like a Sidley & Austin), we’d think of is as a poseur. We would fault it for pretending to be something it is not– a sure definition of being inauthentic.

But Thornberg & Forester isn’t trying to fool us by presenting itself as it wishes to be seen. Instead, Thornberg & Forester present itself as being the opposite of who it wants to be.

Why the fake name?

Supposedly, the organization chose their fake name as a way to get attention for the organization (which is small and new) by helping it stand out. The firm’s founders argue that this name makes the organization distinctive.

Tim Leberecht, writing over at cnet news.com/Matter/Anti-Matter and his company’s frogblog, explains it as:

…the fake name that promises one thing and delivers another , a situationist way of manipulating the public perception.”

Leberecht applauds Thornberg & Forester for this organizational-branding strategy, concluding:

Nowadays, you must meta-tag your brand if you want to stand out from the crowd. You must generate attention by distraction. Your brand story is the story of your brand.

But does this fake name really work for Thornberg & Forester?

Beyond getting them attention (e.g., the NYT mentions, a few blog posts) what does this fake name do for them?

– The fake name demonstrates the organization’s cleverness. The name is a “joke” If you are in on the joke, Thornberg & Forester looks like & itself to be (maybe) lighthearted, playful, unconventional, and so on.

But for how long does the name get read as a joke? People get tired of hoaxes and jokes. At what point does the fake name work against them, by not supporting the identity that they really claim or want?

– The fake name might be an effective tool for sorting out potential clients. On the plus side, clients who are in on the joke might be attracted by the organization’s sense of humor. The name might help Thornberg & Forester attract clients with a soupcon of rebelliousness or a comparably lighthearted approach to parts of the business. Maybe clients who are in on the joke are more inclined to appreciate the kind of creativity that characterizes Thornberg & Forester’s work.

On the negative side, clients may approach the organization expecting the firm to be like its name… those who are attracted initially by the the surface symbolism of the firm’s name may be disappointed, if not annoyed, to be mislead in this way. As PR guru Ed Moed explains, Thornberg & Forester’s fake name is, at best, confusing.

Thornberg & Forester’s use of a fake name also raises some important authenticity questions:

1. Why didn’t the three founders use their own names? (Was “Thornberg & Forester” just a way to around fighting over who got first billing?) What’s so wrong about being Keihner, Matz, & Meredith?

2. If you listen to Thornberg & Forester, it says that the firm

… believes all projects and campaigns must start with a powerful
message coupled with the right medium to communicate it. The team
brings together innovative people who deliver bold ideas by generating
creative with a strategic backbone.

But, what exactly is the ‘powerful message’ from Thornberg & Forester that starts their relationships with potential clients? Can effective corporate communications, and relationships, start with an intentional misrepresentation?

Is this organization being authentic by giving itself a fake name?

What do you think?

Share your comments, below. And, if you enjoyed this post, use the ’share this’ link to email it to a friend.

Originally posted  June 16

Technorati Tags: brand building, image, corporate names, Thornberg & Forester, authenticity, authentic, identity

Last week’s AdAge online poll asked the simple question:

Which organization has more integrity: J&J, Google or UPS?

It seemed to me like a dumb question…

… because the voting system doesn’t let people explain their reasoning and thus you can’t really understand how voters define integrity or make their decisions. Websites have these mini-polls because the polls help to teach readers to interact with the site. Although these mini-polls can be fun, I usually find them troubling. As a trained scientist, I know all the ways in which these polls generate meaningless, ‘bad’ data…But, as an observer of organizations and authenticity, I know that this poll is hooking into something important.

I wondered why I cared…

How do I know that there is something important here? Because I thought about the question again several times even days after I clicked in my reply. I had to figure out why I’d chosen J&J as having the most integrity, above Google. And, I wanted to be know why UPS was never in the running.

Why not UPS?

Starting with the easy question– why was UPS never in the running as having the most integrity? Well, I don’t really know much about UPS. I always wave or say hello to the UPS guys & galls who bring me my online purchases, I can laugh about their silly ‘brown’ campaign, and I’m hip to the all the jokes about why the drivers’ shorts are so cute. But that’s pretty much the sum of my experience with the organization. UPS and its reputation have never made a big impact on me. And this is despite my using UPS all the time.

Why wasn’t Google the organization with the most integrity?

After all, I *heart* Google. I use Google everything, and I Google everything. Google is a great place to work. We have friends who worked for Google. I wrote a teaching case about the meaning of Google’s IPO strategy and what it said about their organizational identity. I cut Google some slack when I read about how their huge server farms devour electricity, divert water, and extract concessions from local government. I even overlook the ways that Google contributes to censorship in China. But still, I think that Google rocks.

I also think that Google is ambitious. Google is powerful. Google is clever. And Google has avoided any large scale consumer disappointment or service failure– so far.

We can anticipate that at some point, the ambition, power, & cleverness, as well as all of Google’s multitasking, might lead Google to miss something or to make a big mistake. It will be at that point, when Google makes a mistake so big that even Google fans like me are taken aback, that we’ll see what kind of integrity Google really has.

To me, integrity is doing ‘what is right’, especially in situations where doing something wrong is easier.

Applying this definition to Google, I probably should find them to be a little empty in the integrity department because of censorship, the environment and so on. But I diminish the importance of these smaller lapses (I even think of them as “smaller”), because they pale in comparison to Google’s larger successes.

So why does J&J win for me?

J&J is a company that I know fairly well. I’ve taught management cases about them, my step-dad worked at J&J for a while, and I bought all of their baby products when my girls were small.J&J is also an organization ‘with a past’– and that past, as everyone knows, is the ‘Tylenol scandal’. To this day, even 25 years later, people hold up the example of J&J’s response as the gold standard in crisis management. But what is it that people have taken away/concluded about J&J from their handling of this event?

The cynic suggests that it’s all about “telling the story“, and that the important issue is “How will the public react?” The idealist retorts that what we really learned is that caring about customers’ health and safety, as well as the application of a clear sense of ehtics (e.g., the J&J Credo), is what really matters.

In this case, I’m inclined to side with the idealist.

After all of these years, the lesson that stayed with me was that J&J did the right thing, when it would have been so easy to do the expedient or popular thing instead.

J&J could have done many other things that weren’t wrong, necessarily, but that weren’t fully right. Because what I remember is that J&J did the right thing, they win my vote for having the most integrity.

Technorati Tags: UPS, AdAge, Johnson & Johnson, Google, integrity, organizational, authenticity

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Technorati Tags: authenticity,studying organizations,organizations,management,identity,image,leadership

Does an organization’s authenticity protect it somehow, and make it stronger? Shouldn’t it be harder to influence, harder to infiltrate, harder to damage an organization where identity, image and action support each other?

Whenever I noticed an organization differ from its industry’s norm, or noticed a subsidiary doing something completely different from its corporate owner, I imagined that these distinctive organizations stayed that way, in spite of pressures to conform or change, because they remained authentic. They remained clear about who they were, what they said they were, and acted accordingly.

VS

One such situation, which I have watched over the last 10 years now, has been the relationship between The Pleasant Company and Mattel. The Pleasant Company, maker of American Girl dolls, was acquired by Mattel in 1998. (The Pleasant Company is operated as an independent subsidiary, based in Middleton, WI.)

At the time of the acquisition, I wondered how long it would take before Mattel quashed the uniqueness of American Girl, driving out what was special and rather precious about that product and the organization that made it. I wasn’t optimistic about American Girls’ prospects… after all, Pleasant Rowland created her company, designed her dolls and created their matching historical books explicitly to counteract (and offer an alternative to) the worldview represented by Mattel’s best-selling Barbie. American Girl Dolls were even called the “Barbie backlashproduct“.

I was relieved, each time I touched base with American Girl, either by visiting the stores, reading the magazine with my girls, or looking through the catalog, to see that what made American Girls dolls so special was still intact.

Sure, there were little differences… the “dress like your doll” historical outfits were discontinued, the emphasis shifted from historical dolls to contemporary dolls, there were more movies and more products .. but none of these changes seemed to reflect a wholesale loss of authenticity. American Girl seemed to be absorbing the marketing sophistication (and a bit of the consumerism) of Mattel, but the core values about who girls should be, how girls should play, and what toys should be created for girls, still seemed to be represented in the products themselves and in the ways the products were presented. Whew.

Then they went and broke my heart, with this: (Thanks to Joe Pine for the heads up.) Yes, this is a Barbie toy, offered as an accessory to the 1970’s American Girl Doll, Julie.

Great, now you and your American Girl doll can obsess over hairstyles, and make-up, and boys.

The Barbie Beauty Center is presented to the American Girl customer as “one of the most popular gifts for girls in (Julie’s) day”. So that’s supposed to make it more authentic? Because it’s historically ‘accurate’, even though it contradicts American Girl values?

What makes the appearance of Barbie in the world of American Girl all the more surprising is that, financially speaking, American Girl is much more popular and profitable than Barbie these days. So this isn’t a situation where the more ‘valuable’ system wins– it’s more like a situation where the more ‘valuable’ system is taken advantage of. My hunch (disclaimers#1 & #3) is that the identity of Mattel is just more powerful than the identity of American Girl.

Maybe I should feel better that it’s taken 10 years for Barbie to encroach upon the world of American Girls? I just wish that the influence was in the other direction.

Technorati Tags: American girl dolls, Barbie, Mattel, authenticity, organizations, sell out,

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 phrase “love your CSA” , I got 5 hits. At least 5 other people are thinking about why you might “love your CSA”!

Conclusion: I’m not alone!

Data point: Even better, when I googled “love my CSA” I got 386 hits. There are 380+ items, representing who knows how many people, that also lapse rhapsodic about their CSAs.

Conclusion: I’m not a freak! <sigh of relief>

However, only one person admits to the frequent side effect of being part of a CSA: the so called “farmer crush”.

Doesn’t everyone fall in love with their farmer? And, if not, why not? Have you no heart/taste buds?

Tammy’s the only one being honest, but judging from the number of comments on her posts and links from Technorati, she’s on to something….. which is why, to help others, she set up her

“newly launched Farmer-Crush Eradication Program, a multi-but-less-than-twelve-step process to help you cope with the inevitable heartache brought to you by that special farmer (my note: your CSA supplier) in your life. …

Oh, of course, there are authenticity ideas in here. To wit:

1. We love to be around people who are authentic.
2. We love to be around people who help us be authentic.

Insights like these are what make my time in the PhD program worthwhile. ….

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, the most egregious element of how the President handled her concerns with the NYJL Board was that she took her campaign to outsiders.

(The President) violated one of the most sacred principles of all — she violated League trust by turning to outsiders who don’t understand the organization. That’s the true source of the problem.

A principle authentic to the NYJL has issues presented and handled internally, in a particular way. Liz reminded me of the old Org Development adage: “Meet the organization where it is.” Usually I’ve taken this to mean, ’start at the place in their understanding of change, not at yours’. But when I saw this chart I had another idea:

This chart is from a website Cooking for Engineers (thanks to Sara at 37signals.com). The chart is small, so click here to get a bigger view.)

It’s a recipe for ratatouille– but not in the traditional recipe format, such as you would seen at a website for cooks, like Take Back the Kitchen. Nope– it’s in a format specifically designed for and attractive to the organization’s members/readers: Engineers.

An Authentic Way to Communicate

This chart is a wonderful example of ‘meeting the organization where it is’ by communicating in a way that is authentic to the organization.

How is this chart an authentic way to communicate with engineers? It’s formatted in a way that visually emphasizes the steps and their order, shows how the finished product ‘accumulates’ from each step, and minimizes the number of words used to communicate what’s to be done.

This chart lays out information in a format that is easily recognized as instructions in a flow chart. And, it probably evokes a snort or chuckle from anyone who is an engineer or who works closely with engineers, because you can see in the chart ‘who’ the people are that the chart is communicating to.

The style and substance/ form and content of the chart tells you about the organization that made it, and the organization that reads it.

[ Do you know any engineers? When I worked at the Ivory Soap Plant as an organizational development specialist, my business card read”Process Engineer”. Was I an engineer? Not really, but describing my role as analogous to a type of engineer helped the Chemical, Mechanical, and Heat Transfer Engineers (aka most of the other managers) understand what I was there to do! ]

Moreover, any engineer looking at that chart can
see herself in that chart.

How is This Relevant to Authenticity?

Each organization communicates with itself and with its members. Some organizations communicate in a language that is as generic as possible, stripped of uniqueness, “all business”, no personality.

I wonder:

• Do authentic organizations communicate in a different way?
• Is it more likely that an authentic organization will be ‘creative’, take a risk, or in some other way get to the point where it uses its own unique language, in its own internally-recognizable forms?
• What would it take to get your organization to communicate something to you, in a way that is so specific to itself, that members see themselves in the communication?

What do you think? Comment, below…..