According to the report, Google employees rave about the mission and culture. But they also cite the famous perks: bocce courts, a bowling alley, some 25 cafés companywide – all you can eat for free.

“Employees are never more than 150 feet away from a well-stocked pantry,” one Googler wrote.

Google, having set out to create a culture all its own, seems to embody a trend towards maximum pampering. It combines its hunt for the perfect algorithms with respect for the life rhythm of an expanding and very loyal workforce.

Others high on the list are good pamperers, too.

Take No. 3, SAS Institute. The software  consulting company – its slogan is “The Power to Know” – offers subsidized Montessori child care, unlimited sick time, free health care, intramural sports.

No. 4, Wegmans Food Markets, is a family-owned grocery chain. Its lode star is employee health. Already, 2,000 of its staff have enrolled in a free smoking-cessation program that began in 2009. This year, it opened a 24/7 health hotline.

Examples on list go on in this vein. As lists go, here the people have clearly spoken.

What do experts say about what makes for a great place to work? They seem to agree.

A cursory desk-top trawl yields some good insights as to what younger, ambitious high-flyers want. Pretty much everything, it seems.

• Flexibility –  let the employee determine when, how and where she or he works. At an AstraZeneca unit in Wilmington, Delaware, 20 of the 30 employees use tailored set-ups. At Motorola’s technology-acceleration group in Chicago, all 50 employees work flexible hours from home. And at a nutrition group of Abbott Laboratories in Columbus, Ohio, the only day everyone has to be in the office is Wednesday.
• Broader programs – paid paternity leave, and other family-friendly privileges extended beyond women to encompass men.
• The work environment – not only dressing up the office building with fitness centers and cafés, but letting people and groups personalize their open or cubicle spaces.
• Vacation time – lots of vacation, starting in year one. Xerox last year allowed workers to buy an extra vacation week through a cut in pay – 7 percent jumped at the chance.

But wait a minute.

Apart from the reference to the corporate culture at Google, the winner, there is little on the list of what makes companies great (or in the expert overview) that lies in the purview of the CCO.

Should it not worry us that not more cite a brilliantly expressed purpose of the company, a captivating narrative and progressive stakeholder engagement policies as core to being the Best  Place to Work?

No, but it should make CCOs pay attention to seemingly mundane aspects of everyday life that are so greatly valued. Why? Because they also express the culture that we have a responsibility to curate, and they demonstrate the behaviors that demonstrate and shape a company’s character.

The creature comforts, once embedded in a company’s way of life, tell us that the leadership value and respect the employees, both their immediate health and well-being and their right to a work-life balance.

And compared with the corporate cultures that pay outrageously for business performance but treat their employees like gladiators and/or cannon fodder, a company that allows  me flexible work hours away from the office and close to my aging parents behaves at a totally different level of humanity.

As evidence by the top three – Google, Boston Consulting and the SAS Institute – looking after employees well certainly doesn’t make a company a middling performer.

Moreover, since a spirit of mutual respect will underlie any culture that results in good treatment of employees, expressing the corporation’s role in society should become easier. Such companies will have an enlightened leadership imbued with societal competence.

And that helps the CCOs work-life balance – you can get ahead of the curve by being in synch with your business and societal environment.

–

By Bjorn Edlund
Chairman Europe, Middle East and Africa, Edelman
Retd EVP Communications, Royal Dutch Shell plc

Such things as awareness, recognition, likeability and other objectives that make most marketers’ mouths water are far higher on the ORIGINAL FB than on its new cousin.  To which I respond, “And, this matters because?”

It goes without saying that chief marketing officers (CMO’s) and their C-Suite siblings, chief communications officers (CCOs) are absolutely enamored by data. So, when they hear a new shiny object, such as FB Timeline, is underperforming, they freak out.

That’s understandable since the average CMO’s tenure makes that of a May Fly seem Methuselah-like in comparison. It also makes sense in light of the recent findings of an IBM Global Consulting survey of 1,700 chief marketing officers. According to IBM, the average CMO’s number one pain point is too MUCH data. So, while they love statistics, trends and reports, marketers also hate them. Sounds like many marriages, no?

Whether it’s Facebook Timeline, a 30-second spot or, in the CCO’s case, a survey of 800 consumers, I believe CMO’s and CCO’s are TOO reliant on data. Quantitative data, that is.

Too few CMO’s and CCO’s ever take the time to step outside their insular worlds and experience the organization from an audience member’s perspective. That’s where true insights are gleaned.

Quantifiable data from the yes and no questions of traditional market research only provide answers to the who, what, when, and where questions that companies think to ask. No doubt that is useful up to a point. But taking one-on-one quality time to observe some of the actual human beings as they receive all your marketing genius, and observing what they do, and listening to their deeper answers to the critical why and how questions, is both more efficient and more revealing than relying on quantitative data alone. This going-the-extra-mile, pro-active approach to listening to your audiences effectively opens up the windows and doors of the insular corporate world and lets in fresh air and sunshine from the outside. In the process, it provides any number of eureka moments for data-overloaded executives that they could not get at in any other way.

If a brand manager or marketer had taken the quality time to experience FB Timeline alongside some consumers –in their own spaces and in real-time, not in a focus group – and delve into the hows and whys of their actions and reactions, she probably would have known in advance that it simply didn’t stop anyone, much less improve favorability and all that other jazz.

Give me one hour (or two) to ask why and how questions of a few members of your most important audiences and I bet I’ll unearth some rich insights that all of your incredibly expensive and incredibly dense quantitative data will not. In the meantime, stay away from FB Timeline. Its time, clearly, has not come.

–

By Steve Cody
Co-founder and Managing Partner
Peppercom

During strategy reviews delivered via PowerPoint-enhanced charts, graphs and model diagrams, my colleagues often hear me say, “What do we do with this?” or the ever popular, “How does this translate into something real?” (That’s when their eyes begin to roll.)   So imagine their surprise when I started talking about a new engagement model – when my presentations morphed from single word slides to model-rich rhetoric.

But, let’s step back for a moment.  Because when I was first presented with an early glimpse of the Arthur W. Page Society’s new model of corporate communications, I wasn’t initially a believer.  It took some mileage to get there.

Here’s where the virtuous cycle began for me. It was March of last year.  We met in an early 1900s mansion where time stood still.  The estate loomed above stark countryside in a town called Esopus.  We were in New York State but I’m still not sure if I was upstate, downstate or just in a small-town state of mind.  It was a surreal setting for a meeting with other chief communication officers in what was billed as a “Thought Leadership Summit on Communication.”

We’d driven really far to talk about models.  There were no .ppt just lots of white paper used to capture random thoughts and meaningful insights.  We had great discussions about our roles, the value of corporate character, how to define corporate character, purpose-based communication, how to define a corporate purpose, the ownership of stakeholder engagement and how to collaborate with internal stakeholders to engage, not just communicate.  Heady stuff.  Meaty stuff.  And lots of ideas now captured in color on yards of white paper.  Plus, a purple booklet that summed it up: the engagement model in the making.  And, I kept thinking:  we’d driven really far to talk about models.

On the equally far drive home (funny how that works), my mind wandered to what I always ask my team. So what do we do with this?  I played it out against the backdrop of Xerox’s brand repositioning campaign.  No easy task.

Quick digression here: At Xerox, we’re going through a massive transformation. Some companies talk about transformation; we’re doing it.  About two years ago, Xerox bought Affiliated Computer Services – a company you’ve likely never heard of but one that is in your life in unexpected ways: like EZ Pass (ACS processes automated toll transactions) or insurance claims (ACS processes those too) or customer call center support for smart phones and tablets (ACS runs the call centers and Web support teams). All this ACS work – and so much more –  is now part of Xerox.  In fact, we don’t even call it ACS anymore.  It’s all Xerox.  More than half of our revenue now comes from business services.  A far cry from the document company.  But with our brand so firmly entrenched in that “synonymous with copiers” space, our repositioning is tough, takes time and (ah-ha…here’s what we do with the model) starts with belief.

Back to the road from Esopus….

Keep in mind, I’m still driving and wishing I had a voice record app to capture the random whims of my model magic.  I started reimagining our marketing and communication initiatives against the principles…

• Corporate character:  deeply embedded value system that is respected and admired.  Feel good about that one.
• A purpose-driven strategy that influences investments and sustainable success. Not as crystal clear as it could be.
• An advocacy-approach to engagement.  Segments of the cycle are always in play but are not always connected to keep the cycle virtuously moving.

By the time I pulled into my driveway, I had developed in my mind new creative briefs, the formation of new communication strategies, and the concepts of new organizational design.  And, because my cluttered brain tends to work like a sieve, I raced into the house to get it all down in writing.  Once in black-and-white, the ideas started taking a more permanent shape.

I started with the basics of spreading the word.  First with my senior team in marketing and communications, then with my colleagues on the Xerox executive team, then with the broader Xerox marketing community, and so it goes.   I introduced the Page Engagement Model as a way to knock-down the traditional barriers of B2B marketing and communication – and, hopefully, to re-energize our teams into experimenting more with concepts that shatter the status quo.

We’re starting to see education turn into actions.  That means stopping or reducing business as usual activities (i.e.: Do we really need a press release for THAT?  Wouldn’t our voice be more authentic by telling the back story?  Note: see how we announced news of retiring the ACS brand). As a result, we’re asking different questions in strategy review meetings.  We’re aligning ourselves more closely with customer service (since social media plays a key role in building confidence and encouraging advocacy).  We’re being more critical with our findings from market research, spending more time on meta-data analysis to mine even more actionable insights.

We’ve articulated a strong purpose that links our heritage with our future: Xerox’s technology, services and expertise simplify the way business works so the world works better. By doing so, we help our clients operate more effectively and focus more on what matters most: their real business. This new video brings it to life.

And, from there, we tell our story. Forging shared belief… one mile at a time.

–

By Christa Carone
Chief Marketing Officer
Xerox Corporation

It’s generally accepted that America’s Founding Fathers brilliantly introduced checks and balances into our system of government that have served us well over more than two centuries – preventing excesses that other systems sometimes permit and generally protecting the public interest.  We have been willing to accept a certain amount of dysfunction in the interest of stopping a single party or set of interests from moving too quickly or too far from what the public is willing to tolerate.

Recently, however, our system has bogged down into a paralyzing inability to address important issues in the public interest. In his New York Times column, Thomas Friedman explored a suggestion by Francis Fukuyama that, in order to end gridlock in Washington, institutional rules such as senatorial holds and the filibuster ought to be eliminated, and that more supercommittees (like military base closing commissions) that are supposedly insulated from political pressures be empowered to propose solutions for up-or-down votes.

I don’t want to argue that these small changes wouldn’t help a bit, but I really don’t think this idea goes to the heart of the problem, which is a lack of leadership.  There are many reasons for gridlock, including gerrymandering and media polarization, but the major problem is a lack of will to take bold steps to find solutions.

The solution to the crisis of trust in institutions is not rules changes, but enlightened leadership that seeks to align institutional decision-making with the public interest.

***
Post by Roger Bolton, President, Arthur W. Page Society

These arguments are factually faulty but, nonetheless, resonate with some who feel that the current economic system is unfair. We do everything we can to tell our story, build common ground and engage critics directly. But, let’s face it, it’s frustrating that facts sometimes matter less than volume these days.

So what then does a CCO do in a time of high reputation risk, low trust and little tolerance for nuance (besides occasionally having a good cry)? A good place to start is taking a look at Page’s New Model, particularly the part about defining, understanding and activating your “corporate character” – the unique purpose, beliefs, mission and values that are at the center of the model and your culture. At GE, we have used the external environment to discuss who we are and to connect our people to a broader mission. Ironically, I think, the volatile environment has strengthened our culture as GE people have coalesced around our challenges, re-examined our values and clarified our purpose.

Our job in communications has been to help drive this conversation and to take the culture beyond the firewall to help build a stronger belief in our company. The Page model has been a good compass throughout this process and a reminder that, while hand-to-hand fighting on things like taxes is important, we must deliver higher value to our organizations.

***

By Gary Sheffer
VP, Communications and Public Affairs
General Electric Company

A few years ago, the magazine sent the whole CSR world into fits of righteous indignation when it said corporations should eschew any ambitions for social purpose beyond a focus on decent governance, good products and services, perhaps laced with a dose of philanthropy.

Now, with essentially the same argument, The Economist’s Schumpeter column

http://www.economist.com/node/21553033  says it is wrong for companies to aim at leveraging its reputation – or even to regard reputation as a corporate asset.

So why doesn’t The Economist believe in the “reputation-management industry”? This is what it says:

“(Reputation management) conflates many different things—from the quality of a company’s products to its relationship with NGOs—into a single notion of ‘reputation’. It also seems to be divided between public-relations specialists (who want to put the best possible spin on the news) and corporate-social-responsibility types (who want the company to improve the world and be thanked for it).

“The second objection is that the industry depends on a naive view of the power of reputation: that companies with positive reputations will find it easier to attract customers and survive crises. It is not hard to think of counter-examples. Tobacco companies make vast profits despite their awful reputations. Everybody bashes Ryanair for its dismal service and the Daily Mail for its mean-spirited journalism. But both firms are highly successful.

“The biggest problem with the reputation industry, however, is its central conceit: that the way to deal with potential threats to your reputation is to work harder at managing your reputation.

“The opposite is more likely: the best strategy may be to think less about managing your reputation and concentrate more on producing the best products and services you can. BP’s expensive “beyond petroleum” branding campaign did nothing to deflect the jeers after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Brit Insurance’s sponsorship of England’s cricket teams has won it brownie points in the short term, but may not really be the best way to build a resilient business. Many successful companies, such as Amazon, Costco, Southwest Airlines and Zappos, have been notable for their intense focus on their core businesses, not for their fancy marketing. If you do your job well, customers will say nice things about you and your products.”

It is a seductive string of arguments. But sadly, or not so sadly perhaps, The Economist misses the point by a mile.

Current best reputation management practices actually work with a similar definition of reputation as The Economist – seeing reputation an outcome.

In fact, an aggregated outcome of

• performance (as in contribution to innovation, with products and services being fit for purpose, sound supply chain practices, technical prowess, environmental care and good financial returns)
• behavior (how brand, purpose, values and policies are lived by a corporations leaders as well as its other people)
• communications (as in how the corporation expresses its purpose and finds its narrative, and how it engages with customers and other stakeholders)

In other words, as a formula: Reputation = Performance + Behavior + Communications

What’s naïve about that? How, in this formula, can reputation not be a corporate asset, or not an outcome?

True, if we were to strive for non-authentic, pumped-up reputations with little grounding in reality (The Economist clearly believes this to be the aim of “the reputation management industry”) we would deserve to be ridiculed.

I don’t know any CCO who would suggest taking a corporation down that avenue of action, and many who have cautioned their corporate leadership against such a PR strategy.

The Economist didn’t do a very good job with this analysis, which reminds me of what a renowned expert in macroeconomics recently said to me about the magazine:

“Like many other deep experts who have spent decades in a field, I read The Economist with great admiration until it writes about my subject. Then I cringe at how superficial it really is – albeit perhaps at a higher level than most other publications,” he said.

And, one might add, show us a journalist who has worked closely with people who run corporations in their everyday life when decisions are being made, strategies created, plans carried out, performance measured and tactics adjusted. Few, I would say, or none.

So why don’t they listen to us who have accrued this experience? Perhaps because, as a professional grouping, as CCOs our reputation isn’t all that great.

Learning: we must do a better job of talking about the focus and value of our work. The Page think pieces about the Authentic Enterprise and now the New Model form a good foundation.

Or we must just shrug, and personally deploy The Economist’s 2009 advertising slogan: “Let your mind wander”.

***

By Bjorn Edlund
Chairman Europe, Middle East and Africa, Edelman
Retd EVP Communications, Royal Dutch Shell plc

The topic is transformational innovation — basically, a tough, serious commitment by corporate leadership to products and service that customers are not yet demanding.

Few executives place big bets on innovation transformation, according to Harvard Business Review authors in the May 2012 issue.  Companies studied show only about 10% of company “innovation” budgeting is in not-yet-demanded innovation, a 20% ventured on carefully chosen “adjacent” business opportunity, and a dominant 70% slid into safe changes in core business.

CEOs are edgy about the potential of transformational innovation primarily because of the hard truth that to do different things means a company has to do things differently, say the HBR authors.

While the role of corporate communication is not called out in the HBR article, it’s a no-brainer easily inferred from the companies—IBM, P&G, Samsung, Merck and GE—cited by authors Bansi Nagji and Geoff Tuff as having strategized successful corporate innovations that transformed the course of new and sustainable business.

Realizing the potential of high-yield, long-term transformational innovation requires getting everyone on board with top management’s belief in the prospect of payoff in unchartered territory, of investing what’s known in the discovery, the benefits of future success.

“Managers should agree on an appropriate ambition level for innovation and find common language to describe it,” the authors note, and “leaders must communicate clearly and relentlessly about innovation goals and processes.”

While CCOs are not among the curious list of those cited as having skills particularly influential in transforming innovation (“designers, cultural anthropologists, scenario planners, and analysts who are comfortable with ambiguous data”), if the company needs a culture of  doing things differently, with stakeholder support to CEO vision in bold new areas, who you gonna call?

***

By E. Bruce Harrison
Chairman, EnviroComm International

Peter Thonis, EVP & CCO for Verizon, set the bar for the event high with the keynote at the Learning Community. In his down-to-earth and authentic style, Peter shared wisdom and key learnings he has acquired over his extensive career:

• The best way to deal with a crisis is to end it! If you can reverse whatever caused the crisis, do it. It’s better to look like you backtracked and “adjusted your strategy based on input” than to “stick to your guns” and let the crisis and controversy continue. The worst crisis is one that has no definitive end – like the BP oil spill.
• Have zero tolerance for reporters who are inaccurate. “Go after these guys! If they know you won’t put up with inaccuracy, they will be more careful.”
• Change energizes us! If you don’t like change, you’re in the wrong business. We are change agents.
• Love a good crisis and love pressure! You must be able to work under pressure.
• Announce executive transitions well in advance. Make them a non-event. And be aggressive about the CEO communicating with employees, but take your time giving a new CEO exposure externally. Let her or him settle in first.

EMPLOYEES ARE KING

Both during the Learning Community session and the Seminar, the theme of the increasing importance of employees was evident:

• “We are leading change from the inside out, building our reputation from the inside out.” “Internal communication is the most important thing we do right now.” “The area where we can make a big difference fast is employee engagement.” – Kelli Parsons, Fannie Mae
• “Culture is the only competitive advantage.” – Jim Stengel, author of “Grow”
• “The character of an organization is in the employees.” “We tell the world to thrive; we have to make sure Kaiser employees are thriving too.” – Bernard Tyson, President, Kaiser Permanente
• “More companies should be focused on social media in relation to employee engagement.” – Justine Thody, Economist Intelligence Unit
• “We need to spend more on employee social media competence.” – Wendi Strong, USAA

Some companies are leading the pack in terms of social business and helping employees be positive advocates for the company externally:

• Kelly McGinnis of Dell told us about their successful Social Media University. Ten percent of the workforce has already gone through it.
• Sue Kwon of Gap Inc. shared how they are empowering employee evangelists through the use of video – “our story told by employees.” She also gave all attendees a copy of their hip employee guidelines for social media.
• Corey duBrowa of Starbucks told us they are moving towards delivering content to employees through their cell phones.

As a professional focused on employee communication and engagement, I am excited! Because employees now have the power to impact a company’s reputation in an instant, it is now an even more urgent business imperative to engage employees. Not only do engaged employees help the bottom line through improved productivity and collaboration, having engaged employees can prevent a major PR breakdown. A recent powerful example of this was the disgruntled and clearly disengaged former executive from Goldman Sachs whose Op-Ed in the NY Times knocked two billion off of the company’s market value, overnight.

What this all comes down to is the importance of integrity and authenticity in the business world. I would be remiss if I did not mention the unveiling of the new model for activating corporate character & authentic advocacy by the Arthur W. Page Society. If you haven’t read it yet, you should. The Page Society is not only adapting to the changes that transparency is forcing on the corporate world, it is leading the way and showing us how to do it right!

***

By Barbara Fagan-Smith
CEO
ROI Communication

Well, there you go again, business news reporter…

Here’s a story that made the banner position at the top of the New York Times business page quoting an investor’s view of Pepsico CEO Indra Nooyi’s management appointments, as a smart move away from the company’s “nutritional products” message.

The investor, Donald Yackman indicated that he never liked Ms. Nooyi’s conviction that the company’s future is tied to health and sustainability.  He likened it to “the tail wagging the dog.”

So, while efforts in the professional communications community to define and redefine “public relations” seem eternal (a notable, professional inside-crowd-sourcing effort now under way within PRSA), the dissing endures.

My personal pang is doubled.  Every time we in the chemical industry years ago made any progress in explaining visionary efforts to go green, our wave of public-opinion analysts poured on the kind of cold water Mr. Yackman dumped on Pepsico’s vision as unreal P.R.  They called me greenwasher.  Pang.

The other half of my pang is I was, and in my heart of heart remain, a journalist.  So I know how hard it is to resist pushing a pungent quote into the lede.  It worked!  The copy desk bought it!  A byline under the banner!

So, well, there they—antagonists and journalists—go again.

What are you gonna do?  So, tell me, what do you, fellow P.R.—I mean, communications—pros?  Curse the journalist?  Say we bring it on ourselves?  Say, one day, they will see?   And, today, explain it to the boss or client?  Proceed, Panglossian?

***

By E. Bruce Harrison
Chairman
EnviroComm International

The Arthur Page Society Future Leaders Experience gathered recently at the College of Charleston, the fourth of six sessions for the group. In the three-day meeting the group of rising communication stars considered: “Building a Strong Foundation: Values for Our Companies, Our Profession and Ourselves.”

Through a series of case studies, interaction with Page leaders and group discussion, the participants focused on the role values play in our lives as professionals, in our relationship with our companies and in carrying out our responsibilities as counselors and advocates.

Prior to the session, the participants spent time considering the values established and communicated by their organizations, as well as their personal roles in creating, shaping and sustaining these values. They also examined the professional values we maintain and how our day-to-day actions reflect these values.

In one very popular part of the session, participants were challenged by communication students at The College of Charleston to explain their own roles in developing, maintaining and communicating values. These students had researched the participants’ companies prior to the session and wanted to know more about how values figured into key business decisions. The comments by participants during and after the session reinforced the belief that values play an increasingly important role in the corporate communications practice, especially as we seek to restore trust in our organizations and the clients we serve.

When they considered what they had taken from the session the group noted that:

• We each have a personal as well as a professional responsibility for values.
• Values have to be developed and evaluated in a deliberate, purposeful way.
• Values can play a pivotal role in creating an emotional bond with other stakeholders.
• In many ways, values demonstrate the humanity of the corporation.

In reflecting on the experience, one participant noted “it was eye-opening to see the power of values in building emotion in an organization with many publics. This session was inspiring because values are often not considered as critical as other ‘business’ requirements, yet they are clearly a key issue. It was very valuable, inspiring and motivating to take this learning back to my company.”

Another said that the “session provided valuable and timely insights into the fundamental importance of values, the role of Communications in safeguarding a company’s values and serving as the corporate conscience, and the increasing dangers of straying from values in a world of transparency.”

Clearly the session provoked reactions that were not expected. As one person described it: “I went in thinking this would be a kind of a hokey cheerleading session…but I emerged feeling invigorated. I was inspired by the examples of how people and companies are living their values — this is clearly what it means to live an authentic life or run an authentic enterprise.”

Another summed it up this way, “I will apply what I learned at work and in my personal life. While my company has strong, well-understood values, it is now clear to me that we have not done enough to define what those values mean and how we live them at work and in our decision-making. My conversations with my team will change. On a personal level, I will create my own set of values and visit them periodically as some of the speakers suggested.”

Some may confuse a consideration of Values with “happy talk” but the session in Charleston was about much more than that. The group came away with a renewed appreciation of the connection between Values and Trust. They learned about organizations making very tough decisions by examining what they really believed in and acting in accordance with these beliefs. Many companies fail by focusing solely on shareholder returns at the expense of employees, customers, regulators and communities. The companies that deliver financial returns while also understanding the importance of employee satisfaction, customer loyalty and community impact tend to outperform the ones that only worry about Wall Street.

I have worked with lawyers, journalists and financial analysts my entire career and thoroughly appreciate their understandable skepticism about these concepts. That’s their job. But it doesn’t negate the fact that some companies have been very deliberate in turning well-crafted and well-managed values into sound decisions and financial success. For the Future Leaders, these concepts clearly resonated in Charleston.