Archive for September, 2009
Harvard Gets an “F” for an Elevator Speech
Posted by: | CommentsEven Harvard is teaching people how to develop a one-minute elevator speech. But I wouldn’t suggest you try the HBS Elevator Pitch Builder. As various words whiz by on the screen, you’re instructed to click on the ones that would help describe you. I could barely keep up, much less give any serious thought to how I wanted to position myself.
These are the words I clicked on just because I felt I had to do something: principal premier peerless leading inaugural key pioneering realistic preferred pioneering (oops, clicked that word twice) established dominant authoritative progressive. Now these words are supposed to help me develop my personal brand?
I hate the term “elevator speech.” As I’ve written before, that’s the little story about yourself that you tell someone you have trapped in an elevator. It’s supposed to be your introduction that gets them to do something wonderful for you.
The problem with the term “elevator speech” is that is trivializes an important process – learning how to position yourself to the people and companies that are important to you. So from now on in this piece we will use the term “positioning statement.” Some people call it their personal brand.
Positioning is how important internal and external audiences, including customers, prospects, community leaders and the media perceive you. Another way of understanding positioning is that it’s the words you would want other people to use in describing you.
Positioning is what sets you apart from your competition. For example, while we’re on the subject of Harvard, that school is positioned as the leading college brand.
People, like companies, have positionings, too. Individuals are often identified with pre-fixes: i.e.: Harvard MBA, Nobel Prize winner, Playmate-of-the-month, 350-hitter, salesman of the year, etc., that automatically positions them.
As you define your positioning statement, or personal brand, think of the attributes that set you apart from the competition. These can include:
- Technical expertise
- Industry specialty
- Academic credentials
- Awards and recognition
- Service to the community
Once you know your strengths and key differentiators, put them into a statement that describes you accurately, is easy to understand and answers the question of a potential listener, “What’s in it for me?”
Developing your positioning statement (remember, we no longer call it an elevator speech) takes a lot of thought and self-evaluation. It’s not something you make up by clicking on a stream of words in the HBS Elevator Pitch Builder. Let Harvard stick to developing case studies and building future corporate leaders. Each of us can develop our own personal brand without Harvard’s help, thank you.
Business Communication via the Electronic Grapevine
Posted by: | CommentsSitting at my laptop in my neighborhood Starbuck’s, I felt the tension release from my body as Firefox transported me to the Internet. I had been offline for two days. As I attended to some personal business, without my computer, I was truly feeling totally out of the loop.
This got me thinking about the thousands of corporate employees who do not have online access because of the nature of their jobs: assembly line workers, mail sorters and security guards, to name a few. Yet communication to these employees is just as essential as it is to the employees glued to their computers every day. The old-fashioned grapevine — my lips to your ear — is being supplanted by the electronic grapevine, which is as swift as the speed of the internet. More formal company communiques are also going out via the intranet.
Smart employers, of course, have always fed the informal grapevine, which reached everyone in the past. But now some employees may find themselves out of the loop, as I did, without access to a constant electronic steam of information about the company. The electronic grapevine is a great way for management to understand what employees are thinking, to uncover hidden problems and to get feedback in real time.
But what about those employees who are not online? Do they feel less connected — and committed — to the company? The challenge for management is to communicate with all employees, through new technlogies, but also using old-fashioned communication channels such as letters to employees’ homes and the low-tech bulletin board. I’d be interested in hearing from readers how their companies are reaching employees without Internet access.
Advice for Employers on Labor Day: Keep up the Employee Communications
Posted by: | CommentsLabor Day was ushered in this year with some of the glummest news. On Friday, the government said unemployment rose to 9.7 percent and nearly six million jobs have been lost in the past year. Many experts are predicting this will be a “jobless recovery.”
So what does this mean for companies and their employee communications? On the surface, it seems like not much. Plenty of fish in the sea, if you want to replace someone. But I have a different point of view – I think the unemployment ranks could be worse news for employers than their employees.
Why? Because the pool of trained and experienced workers whose skills begin to atrophy during unemployment spells bad news for employers. By keeping tight control over hiring, the pool of skilled workers at every level – from the shop floor to the executive suite will diminish as employees fall behind technically or leave their fields.
Companies will actually be competing for skilled employees and begin to poach their competitors even while the number of people seeking jobs grows larger. Smart companies will understand how important internal communications is. Instead of cutting training to rein in expenses, companies need to be investing in their employees to keep them sharp and motivated. Instead of cutting back on the “below-the-line” professionals in the Communications Department, companies should be ratcheting up their efforts in communicating with employees – through intranets, newsletters, webinars and personal get-togethers.
So the next time a competitor goes after one of your top producers, don’t give him a reason to leave. Keep up the communication, keep up the skills training, and keep up the caring.
Is Letter Writing Dead?
Posted by: | CommentsI mean the old-fashioned letter with a date, inside address, a salutation, body of the letter, closing and signature. What passes as a “business” letter in email is really nothing more than some phrases and short-cuts like BTW (by the way) TTYL (talk to you later). Emails are piling up in our mailboxes. Half of them we delete without even reading them. I wonder how much impact these emails are having and whether an honest-to-goodness formal letter might actually cut through the clutter.
Now you would think it’s easy to write a letter. I accept that the new style of writing is informal (credit the Internet) and most often your letter will be read in an email. People nowadays want to get information in short takes. So the new rules of letter writing are:
• Get to the point quickly. What is the purpose of the letter? To inform, to educate, to sell something? Tell the reader upfront. Be sure to use complete sentences that make sense – you know, the old-fashioned subject, verb, object construction still has something going for it.
• Include supporting facts if you want the reader to do something.
• Summarize the action you want to the reader to take.
• Include the timing of next steps. Are you going to do something for the reader or do you expect the reader to do something for you? By when? It takes time to write a compelling short letter. As the philosopher and writer Blaise Pascal famously said, “I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it short.”
