realisedevelopment.net

Just another WordPress site

The Importance of Brand

by

2012logo.jpg

I was taught that your ‘brand’ is what your customers, employees and other stakeholders think of you. And if you are wise your ‘brand investments’ ensure that their ‘experiences of you’ mean that your brand (as it exists in their collective heads) is a strong one. Whatever a brand is, it is not a logo on a piece of corporate paper.

Over time, the experiences that we have of the 2012 Olympics will get to be associated with this logo. And when we see the logo those experiences will be re-kindled. Will the experiences be positive – excellence, community, potential, sportsmanship and passion; or negative – expensive, corporate, drugs cheats, marketing, spin, consumerism and so on.

When we see a new, expensive and very public brand like this it is easy to mock. But what kind of experiences can the 2012 organisers build around the logo that will really become the brand?

What experiences for stakeholders do you create around your brand?

Working Effectively in a Performance Management Framework

by

Frontline police called on the Government to reverse the target-driven culture that has forced them to make “ludicrous” decisions such as arresting a child for throwing cream buns.

The Police Federation annual conference in Blackpool will debate whether judging officers purely on how many arrests, cautions or on-the-spot fines they can deliver is making a mockery of the criminal justice system.

A not untypical story of modern life – but are ‘targets’ really the problem?

Would dropping targets help?

Or do we choose to blame the targets – when it is really poor management in a target driven organisation that is to blame?

How can managers prevent this type of gaming the system and ensure that support progress rather than act as a catalyst to stupidity?

What would you have done as the Officer in Charge – when you saw that arrest on the record books?

What would you have done before hand to ensure that the officer would have thought twice before adding this to their ‘portfolio of success’.

Happy to put up a small prize for the most useful response!

Jigsaw Cities – a challenge to regeneration orthodoxy

by

At the book launch for Jigsaw Cities its author, Professor Anne Power and John Houghton, emphasised the importance of understanding cities as made up of a number of different jigsaw puzzle pieces with no picture on the cover to help put it all together. For physical regeneration there was discussion about renovating existing stock, using micro-spaces, and developing mixed use communities.

I find it depressing that the presumed starting point for regeneration is still physical – rather than psychological.  In my experience it is when individuals find confidence and hope that a community can start to regenerate.  It takes more than uPVC windows and doors to bring a community hope as this article by Sue Townsend so brilliantly illustrates.

Making Values Live

by

I helped to manage the production of a conference in Hull called Making Values Live – featuring the work of Mathew Smerdon and Geraldine Blake from Community Links. At the conference they provided an introduction to their report – Living Values: A report encouraging boldness in the third sector

The value-driven ethos of third-sector organisations is often cited as their distinguishing feature. But is this really the case?

The third sector has no monopoly on ‘values’. But are certain values more prevalent in the third sector than either the public or private sector? I have worked in all three sectors and from this personal experience – I doubt it.

Excellent organisations exist in all sectors. And excellent organisations always have strong values – a consistent set of values that runs through all of their work and helps to recruit, retain, and inspire talented people. The challenge is how to build an excellent passion and vision led organisation – regardless of its legal structure or the sectoral label it attracts.

The conference raised some further interesting questions – perhaps the main one for me being:

Is working explicitly with values worthwhile – or does it lead to hours of navel gazing with little real performance gain?

Can you work directly with something as abstract and ‘slippery’ as values?

How can you make the concepts involved more concrete and action oriented?

The best managers focus on working with behaviours, actions and results. Things that they can directly observe rather than infer. They then give affirmative feedback when these reinforce and express organisational values – or give adjusting feedback when they undermine them. This keeps the process of working with values very practical and action oriented.

In my experience though few managers give regular and rigorous feedback and many of those that do feel uncomfortable referring explicitly to values.