Ideabook: How to build and amplify values to achieve commercial objectives

Created by Onefish Twofish for Buinsess Leaders, HR, Customer Services Directors and Organisational Development Directors

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The Onefish Twofish Employee Heart-Mind Machine

Employee communication is where the rubber hits the road. It’s what turns a plan or a good idea into a business outcome, co-delivered by every single employee you have.

The Onefish Twofish Employee Heart/Mind Machine is used in 12 major brands to achieve commercial outcomes through comms.

Most big companies have well-established values. If these values represent ‘how we behave at our best’ then there is usually a big opportunity to bring them into sharper focus.

Specifically, if values pervaded every team, decision and customer interaction, you could expect an increase in sales, loyalty, innovation, cost savings etc.

What happens?Average spend

Cost of customer acquisition

Net Promoter Score

Employee productivity

Unwanted leavers

Market winning products

Fixed cost based

loyaltylearning

qualit

y

innovation

savings

collaboration

The value chain : start with the commercialswhat are you trying to achieve?

Customers respond by being more

loyal, spending more,

recommending more

Innovation is fostered, efficiency

improves, cost savings are

made

Average spend

Cost of customer acquisition

Net Promoter Score

Employee productivity

Unwanted leavers

Market winning products

Fixed cost based

Employees understand the

‘value the values’

They increasingly work and

challenge in line with the values

Customers expectations

and needs are better met

Internal relationships

strength with a common

language and focus

Employees enjoy a more

rewarding role and a more consistent

culture

Employees give discretionary effort and are more likely

to stay

Question 1:

Values for What?

Values that made us

successful in the past

The values that will

make us successful

in the future

The values we aspire to

right now

THE PAST the present THE FUTURE

Question 2: How will you systematically amplify?

Concept: the values matrix

child

adult

parent

child

adult

parent

Concept: transactional analysis for comms

Parent - child:Content not

context, restricting information,

telling, stick, spinning difficult

info, jargon, power struggle.

Outcome: Compliance

Adult - adult:Context not content, sharing neutral facts, dialogue, trusting the detail to the employee, carrot.Outcome: responsibility

These examples are for illustration only

– they don’t reflect any real PepsiCo

statistics

Concept: knowing where values are expressed?

• How and what information is shared and how it’s framed

• How we interact with customers

• How we our manager interacts with us

• How we treat people in our team

• How we treat people in other teams

• What promises / expectations are met, and which are not

• What we challenge, what we walk past

• How decisions are made

• What decisions are made

• The level of risk the company takes

• Whether we collaborate, mandate or just operate

• The pace at which things are done (micro and macro)

• What is given priority/airtime (and what isn’t)

• What is recognised and rewarded

• How we choose and work with suppliers

• What we put extra effort into and what we ‘tick the box of’ or even cut corners

• What we see around us in the workplace

• Who we hire and how

Values audit

What’s going on? Where are the opportunities for improvement?

1

Step One: a values audit.Purpose: what action is going to have the greatest impact?

• How well are values understood?• Are your values fit for the future?• Do negative values pervade?• What’s the crossover between

personal and company values• How do values break down across

different employee groups?• Which employee experiences are

values roadblocks?

<idiot>

I get it!!

I don’t

Step two: cross business values workshopstalking time, frank discussion and debate…Result: values in action – examples and ‘how’

Negative Values in action Positive

Ok done that, now what?

How can we create change?

3. Make values the easy roadCreate congruence between what the business says, does and

rewards

Get some key people to very explicitly and visibly live it

Change what managers do – measure for outcomes

2. Give values energyCreate visibility and energy

Make it inspiring but face valid

Engender personal responsibility – it’s not ok to walk past

1. Give values meaningTie to an intent

Win people over, don’t push or pull

Paint a picture, bring good to life

Create ownership – heart of the business, don’t point at it from the top

Give values meaning

Make it worth getting out of bed for

1

The ‘cover the logo’ test – an early test of our approach

When we started working with PizzaExpress back in 2008, we knew we had come across a quite remarkable business.

At an early meeting, we put forward a really great ideabook – we thought! It was full of our best ideas, moodboards, video storyboards. We hoped they’d love it.

What happened? The Marketing Director covered up the PizzaExpress logo we had carefully put on the document and said “How is this different from what you would have proposed for any other company? How is this different from Strada, from Giraffe, from Wagamamma? There are plenty of inspirational ideas here. But they’re not PizzaExpress ideas yet”.

We learnt a lesson that day. A product is easy to copy. An employee is easy to train. A BRAND is unique – its heritage, its style, its reputation, its personality. Align everything around delivering ‘your brand at its very best’ and you will see some incredible things happen.

“Start with WHYIf you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money, if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.”Simon Sinek

Big personalityWhether your personality is trusted grey hair, master craftsman or quirky innovators – amplify it

Every company has a personality. The point is… if it was a person would you want to work for him/her?

Every company here has a personality. A history. Stuff that’s unique. Stuff that’s interesting. You don’t have to be a high street chain or sell cool technology to have an engaging personality.

This is your opportunity. Find it. Play up what’s unique. Engagement… for free!

HOW?• Carve a niche that the market is craving – don’t try to be everything to everyone.• Give people confidence in it, help them become experts in it.• Find out: What do clients value?• Be a tribe. What do tribes do?

Give values energy and visibility

2

Grow your own

What it is• “That’s great – now let’s see if we can

make it even bigger and better”• Visionary – good at imagining a bigger

and better future and realising it• Creativity - “There must be a way”

“Anything is possible”• Evangelism – a passion to share the word• Value for growth – standing still is going

backwards, the only way is up

What it isn’t• Kicking back in the comfort zone• Cineworld-limiting beliefs - “The market

just isn’t there any more” “People in Wareham don’t go to the movies that much” “No one will pay that…”

• Self limiting beliefs - “I don’t think I could be any good at that”

• Complacency - “I’m experienced, I don’t need to learn anything more”

We love to create and grow, making something bigger and better than when we started. Growing our skills, our market share, an army of customer fans – Cineworld people take something good and make it great.

Make history

What it is• Bringing the true movie experience to

every every customer at every showing• Heart, soul and character in everything

we do• Valuing our roots and prizing our

heritage• Being at the forefront of innovation – the

‘new history’• A passion for film – “We love film, we love

the perks – I come here with my family on my day off”

• Valuing experience, longevity and loyalty

What it isn’t• Throwing out the old for no good reason• Being bland• A soul-less machine• Forgetting where we’ve come from• Commoditisation• Old fashioned and out of date• Irrelevant, missing the point

We’ve come a long way. Our roots are in good old-fashioned cinema and the movie experience. We’re at the heart of British cinema tradition and we continue to make history.

Communicate difficult things simply

Make high performance tangible

The critical part: show, demonstrate, clarify, discuss, explain, illustrate• Get high performers to show and tell what they do.• Ask their customers to describe what’s special and

how it feels.• Share these unique, tangible things on film, on paper,

on the ‘shop floor’ – take it out• Make it practical. Use human language. Make it fun. • Be specific. Use colourful examples. Show the impact

not just the action.• Assume everyone is there to do a fantastic job. Don’t

state the obvious…

Playing up what’s unique at Google

Revamp induction

Tell stories

Curate video from smartphones around the world…

Toolkits, templates and tone of voice

Upskill the entire business as they deliver their own part of the values plan – from day to day emails. This includes:

• Tone of voice and style guide

• Templates (not to constrain but to speed up regular, core comms)

• 1:1 support for GMs, exec team

Change the physical environment

Another way to reach people: produce a lifestyle guide that ties into your business’ personality. For PizzaExpress this was a ‘recipe book’: how to make dough balls, where the amazing secret beaches are in Italy, what’s the best wine, music, art etc for PE lovers…

These are designed to be taken home, to bridge the gap between work and passions outside of work.

Bridge the gap between ‘work’ and ‘me’

Get a REAL dialogue going: World Café or UnConference

• Bottom up approach to setting strategy alight

• Used everywhere from middle east peace talks to Vodafone

• Only open to managers and below• Table/café format – faciliation and

theme for each table• Good food, good coffee• Video, cartoon used to draw the

energy and ideas to the surface• Coffee tables are the drawing

board• Personally, visually and

corporately memorable• Drives real change – they’ve

already lived it

Coffee cup takeover

Film festival

The CEO with the

Values Tattoo

Voice-To-Branch

Customer Journey

Straighten the path

Take away barriers, create carrots

3

Things to align

Revamp flow of information

Launch the values (film, postcard, roadshow)

Launch employee charter

Empower sitesUpskill comms across

business

Revamp attraction, recruitment and

induction

Update Perf Mgt process

Introduce a new kind of recognition

Contribute to customer service

programme

Manager roadshows

Launch employee charter

• The employee charter is the ‘employer side of the bargain’ of the employer brand. It outlines what you will deliver for colleagues – the internal brand promise.

• It can be formal e.g. The Employee Charter which lists out a forma list of promises or very informal e.g. for Cineworld ‘What is Cinework?’ which simply brings the employer brand to life, framed from the employee perspective

• The launch is likely to be part of the values launch (it’s the other side of the psychological contract you are making as you ask employees to live the values)

Update performance mgmt

• Review and update the current competency framework, building on the existing values and:– Aligning the behaviours with the

values– Lifting the values off the page with

examples of high performance across sites and head office

• Updating the performance management process to make it as engaging and easy to deliver as possible

Empower sites to engage

• Engagement at a site level is very powerful. Without this, the risk is that sites treat business wide wide engagement as a tick box exercise or at worst bypass it entirely (particularly if it is values-based rather than operational)

• Site-centric engagement grows a life of its own, starting with inspired managers. It’s achieved through:– Manager engagement – a future vision

to work towards, plus a hard performance element

– A tribe approach – sites work to bring out what’s amazing about their team/approach/creativity/people and share this with others

– Locally focused activities e.g. employee premieres, local charity contribution

Recognition

• Create tangible ways to recognise and reward a) exceptional delivery of the customer brand and b) exceptional delivery of the values (the two are closely aligned but warrant separate recognition).

• Key rewards:– Empower local managers to organise small, regular

‘treats’ e.g. a round of starbucks coffee for a reaching a milestone

– A range of wider ranging awards for sites/managers to shoot for: best mystery shopper result, fastest growth, best customer feedback, best employee feedback, most creative premiere

Contribute to customer journey

• The customer service project will revitalise the customer journey, from end to end and the values and employer brand can play a role in inspiring this and providing the ‘how’.

• This means:– Using the values to define how to create

the high touchpoints at every stage e.g. “What would Cineworld do?”

– Communicating and inspiring the development programme associated with the customer services/customer journey refresh

Refresh flow of internal info

• Map all current flow of information, specifically:– From leaders to employees (direct,

indirect and via managers)– From employees to managers and

leaders– Between head office and sites– Across sites and business units

• Building on what’s already working, create a plan which streamlines and closes any gaps, providing the optimum flow of information

• This includes timing, format, messaging, tone/look and feel and content

• It’s more likely to be a refresh than a revamp

Things we can make happen for you

• Complete Values Audit – what’s going on right now?• Values to Real Life – interview, film, observe what high performers

actually DO• Tear Down the Barriers Programme – find and fix the barriers to living

the values (from process to how meetings are run to how quickly people walk around the office!)

• Not The Values launch – no one wants to read about ‘our new values’. They do want to see energy behind stuff that is clearly good and important. We do the values launch without the yadda-yadda.

• High performance values illustration – through film, content, show & tell and stories, we change average performers’ minds

• Recruitment and induction transformation – we transform the style and tools of getting and inducting the right people so that they

• Performance management alignment – update competencies and the whole performance process so that it is energising, values-led and performance building (not the ‘dreaded appraisal’)

• Local tribe development – get the whole company creating their own ‘team strip’ and communicating adult-to-adult and in line with the values.

Our key employee comms clients

What next?We can help you design a programme and give you lots of inspiration and cost options.

hello@onefishtwofish.co.uk