Category: Brand

What We Are Not

History

In my penultimate role for BT I set up the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy and team for the Wholesale division. It was great fun and we had a lot of success engaging customers, colleagues and suppliers in finding better ways of serving each other and working together. After I left BT to set up What Goes Around I offered CSR consulting and research as one of our services. I’ve been trading for very nearly four years now and in that time I have researched and written one CSR report for a client, and that was back in 2011.

Now

The focus at What Goes Around is currently all about enabling companies to be more effective through improving communication, collaboration and creativity. My experience in the field of CSR and sustainability is no longer current, clients don’t think ‘We must get Doug in for advice on our CSR strategy’, and CSR no longer fits closely enough with the work I love doing.

Stop

So as of today, I no longer do CSR consulting and research. Over the summer months I’ll be thinking even more carefully about what I am not, so that in turn, you will more clearly see what I am. I am on a journey, this step will take a few more weeks to finish thinking through, and it’s something I’m very excited about. As things become even clearer, I hope it excites you too.

Thanks

There is another, perhaps even more important reason why this change is necessary. Once clients engage and then work with me I typically get lovely, helpful feedback on my approach and the outcomes of our collective endeavours, but at the same time, I know that people are sometimes confused about what I offer, and how I can be of use to them. As Neil Morrison elegantly put it to me, ‘Your conversion rate is great, but you simply don’t get enough enquiries’. Rob Jones has made similar observations, and they’re both right, and the situation is not good enough. It’s not good enough for our customers, or for me.

As well as acknowledging Neil and Rob’s help – I also want to give a hat tip to Ian Pettigrew And Ed Percival. Ian and Ed have been generous with their time on a few occasions recently, offering time to think and useful advice around clarity and purpose.

Question

So my question to you today (and whether you are the head of a department, a front line employee, a board director, a small business owner or any point in between, it makes no difference), is this. What do you offer that nobody wants? Find it, and stop it so that you can free up time for something more effective, more productive and more enjoyable instead.

Pay Day

Do you work for a living? If you answered yes to that question, then typically at the end of the month, the money comes in – pay in exchange for your labours for the past few weeks. And all too often your finances are planned so that within the next day or two, most of your major monthly bills are settled. So how would it work for you if your pay were a few days late? How about a few weeks, or even months? Do you think your suppliers, the phone company, the mortgage company etc would be OK just to wait for your pay to come along before you settled with them each month? I doubt it. While we’re on the subject, how about the relationship between you and your employer? How might that be affected if the money you are due to receive in exchange for your labours just didn’t show up? I’m guessing that would suck. Badly.

Yet this kind of thing goes on between companies all the time, and often late payment just seems to be accepted as ‘the norm’. Chasing late payments is inefficient, it wastes time on all sides. It’s bad for your (the late payer’s) reputation, and in particular when it’s a bigger company holding out on a smaller company, it’s just plain wrong. By way of an example, I wonder how Sainsbury’s would feel if you the shopper decided to wait almost three months before paying for your goods? Sounds remarkably like shoplifting to me, but in this Daily Telegraph article you can read about how Sainsbury’s has changed its payment terms so that suppliers now have to wait 75 days before their invoices are settled.

Typically at What Goes Around we pay our suppliers immediately on receipt of the invoice although recently we forgot to pay one of our suppliers and they chased us up a month later. I was embarrassed about the situation, albeit this was a very rare occurrence – it is not the way we want to do business. As an employee you expect to get paid on time, and I think it should be the same for a company too.

Many companies talk a lot about ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ (CSR). Many see it as a competitive differentiator, as a way to engage employees, and as a way to show off their sustainability credentials. Often, a key part of the CSR plan will include some kind of supply chain audit, so that as far as possible, the company can be assured that its suppliers are reputable. Sainsbury’s say that by 2020 ‘our suppliers will also be leaders in meeting or exceeding our social and environmental standards’. I’m using Sainsbury as an example, but this could apply equally well to a large number of other household brands too, and as far as I know, these companies don’t currently include their own payment terms in such a policy. I think they should. I think swift, prompt payment of suppliers should be an integral part of every CSR plan.

The UK Government has its own ‘red tape‘ challenge which is supposed to remove unnecessary bureaucracy in order to make lives easier, and they’ve also recently set up a taskforce to help identify how EU regulation holds back growth. I’d suggest our government could look a lot closer to home in the first instance and apply pressure in order to improve payment terms. If money makes the world go round, then get it moving faster please.

It would be easy at this point to get into more mud slinging and name calling around bad payers, and if you want to, you’re welcome. What I’d really like to hear about though, is any positive experiences you are willing to share. I’ll kick off with three brands who have demonstrated the power of prompt payment to us. hibu (formerly know as Yell), National Employment Savings Trust, and Rio Tinto. If you have any other examples of prompt payment, please share them.

What Do You Do For Money Honey?

I’ve read a few things recently focusing on the subject of money and if/when it is acceptable to do work ‘for free’. Does free have any value? What does it mean in context for a paid employee versus a small business owner? What does asking for freebies and doing freebies say about your brand? I think it’s an interesting subject and I’d like to share a few perspectives with you.

Not For Profit?

Susan Avello sparked my thinking with this comment on Facebook, ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of running my business as if it’s a non-profit :)’ The resulting conversation was funny and informative. I shan’t repeat it all here but the threads ranged from ‘I got so sick of this expectation that I went back in house where at least I know I’m going to get paid’, ‘the myth of “exposure” is bogus’, ‘surround yourself with people who value what you do’, ‘swim in less crowded waters’. I hope no one in the conversation feels misrepresented but I read the general consensus as free has no value, so don’t do stuff for free. My own comment in the conversation was ‘I’m always careful of absolutes. There are occasions when I perceive value in ways other than raising an invoice…sometimes’.

Reciprocity?

A few days prior to the discussion Susan started, I was sent this email by Matt Cheuvront:

One of the best regular emails I receive comes from Ramit Sethi of iwillteachyoutoberich.com. Recently, Ramit shared some thoughts on when you should (and shouldn’t) work for free. As someone who’s been faced with many opportunities to do pro-bono work, I wanted to share his poignant thoughts on the subject:

It’s not always bad to work for free! I’ve done it many times. The key is (1) working for free strategically, and (2) always communicating why you’re doing it.

  • You work for free to build your portfolio so that when you charge, you’ll have something to show prospects. Ramit’s judgment: Good
  • You work for free because you think that later you will magically be able to charge the same client $100. Ramit’s judgment: You are dumb
  • You work for free because you know that the person has a huge network, and if you impress him, he will introduce you to all his friends. You make this explicitly clear up front. Ramit’s judgment: You are very savvy

Working for free CAN open the door to some amazing opportunities – but it can also open the floodgates to anyone and everyone coming to you looking for a handout. My rule of thumb? If I’m doing free work, there needs to be something in it for me. Whether it be recognition, experience, or personal fulfillment, I’m always asking myself if there’s a win-win.

Where do you draw the line and what factors into your decision(s) to work for free?

I’m struggling with where Ramit and Matt are coming from here. I don’t know what you think, but it strikes me they are talking less about ‘free’, more about reciprocity and being clear about that.

Big Heart Days

Then I spotted this great post by Heather Bussing titled Big Heart Days. I thoroughly recommend you read it, and I’ve taken a small excerpt to post here:

‘So I’ve learned the hard way about big heart days. If I am going to give the gift of my time, attention and skills, I have to be willing to make it a gift, and not about me. I have to decide how much time and attention I realistically have to give away. Then give it freely.’

I think Heather has it right. Her post moves us away from something free, toward gifting. Free can be dangerous as many people perceive free as something with little or no value. Here are a couple of examples to help illustrate the point.

In January 2012 I was invited to give a talk for the Central London branch of the CIPD on Smart Use of Social Media for HR. In the run up to the talk I asked how many people they anticipated would be turning up on the night. ‘We have around 100 registrations and we expect around 40 people will show up’, came the reply. The charge for attending the event? £0. The turnout was a little healthier than the estimate, but I felt this was an ineffective and potentially wasteful way to tee up a live event. And what about the people you may turn away because ‘we’re full’ only to discover you have rows of empty seats on the day. What does that say about how you value each other?

At the Facilitation Jam I helped to run in January 2013 we agreed to levy a non refundable deposit of £50 for the event, with the balance payable on the day. Everyone who paid up showed up. I took the decision to let one person pay on the day and shortly before the event – you guessed it – they cancelled!

So the next time someone asks you to give something, and you decide to do it, then give it freely, with no expectation. Otherwise it’s not a gift….is it?