As the lines between 'personal' and 'professional' blend, how can your business leverage team creativity for growth..?
Eric Doyle (F.ISP)
Digital Commercial Strategist - Developing people and organisations to become leaders in their sectors - TedX Speaker - Keynote speaker, event host/compere/moderator - Artist
Our commercial worlds have changed so dramatically since the start of the digital transformation and have been accelerated by the recent pandemic and associated responses.
We meet business leader who are forging new paths, not sticking to old worn-out ways of working but looking for the new, the more efficient, the more productive ways to work in this new digital age.
We also meet business leaders who are stuck in the analogue mud. Lacking the ideas and the to adapt, progress and grow.
I’m particularly interested how the big global players are adapting.?
What are they planning and how are they thinking??
Taking that 'big learning and thinking' and diffusing it down into practical methods and applications for smaller companies is helpful for us all.
A recent article and video by Elisa Xu and Julia Hood for Business Insider this week, caught my eye.
In an interview series titled ‘Marketing leaders from Amazon, LinkedIn, Lego Group and more tell Insider what pandemic-fuelled business changes are likely to stick around’, Marketing leaders from large global organisations share insight into what parts of their business have evolved, and what parts have stayed the same through the past few years of unexpected change.
These leaders were interviewed at the 2022 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in June.
The company executives featured in the video are from Diageo, Amazon, Mastercard, LinkedIn, TikTok, Accenture, Lego Group, Deloitte, EY Americas, Lowe's Companies, and Snap.
I’ll put a link at the foot of this article ??
Cristina Diezhandino, chief marketing officer at Diageo opens with:
"I think there's been an enormous amount of learning."
"Before, we would have had grand plans that would look into the next year, or perhaps even three years. Now we are in a position of looking at the next three months, perhaps even one month or even a few days,".
The topic of the festival is Creativity, so how do we leverage creativity to enhance our businesses and why is it important to widen our view of cross team creativity as a modern business imperative?
How do small engineering companies, mid size service companies or start ups put creativity to work?
In the analogue world of the past, we tended to view creativity in business as the domain of the Marketing department.?The websites, the adverts, the shows, the marketing materials…all required solid creative brains to make them do what they were supposed to do.
Buts its all change in the digital commercial age.
Julia Goldin, Chief Product and Marketing Officer and Exective VP at Lego Group, said “we really believe creativity is an essential skill for everyone, in the world today and the world of the future.?And if you don’t believe that creativity is your job, you know, whether you work in supply chain, whether you work in shipping, logistics, we really believe that everyone has to be creative”.
It’s an interesting point that Julia makes, but putting this into practice on Social Media is another story.
In previous articles I’ve discussed how influence over broadcasting is key to progress in the strategic application of social media.?Buyers are telling us that they are more interested in your teams thought leadership content than your marketing materials and product sheets, they want to hear from the people not the brand….
People are winning the battle over the brands…
Buyers are cutting out the ‘door openers’, choosing which doors they want to open and opening themselves.
The battle lines for market share are drawn and they are online…
Buyers want thought leadership content to allow them to assess whether you really understand their issues and can solve their problems, so it makes sense to have your team dominate the thought leadership space in your sector.
But so often we see organisations stuck in a corporate rut of stiff, glossy brochureware that is blending into the mass of other stiff, glossy brochureware that is not in any way creating influence in their sectors?
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Influence comes from people connecting with people on a technical, commercial, and personal level, the means bringing personality into the picture.
Suzan Kounkel, Chief Marketing Officer at Delloite US, said:
“work is everywhere, we’re people everywhere and that mixture of what is both personal and professional has become very, very blurry.?And is that world our employees have a lot of agency and its something we have to really think about and lean into”.
A modern thinking CMO realising that the strength is with the people in the organisation, “our employees have a lot of agency and it’s something we have to really think about and lean into”.
Leaning into the army of technical and commercial influencers you have in your team.?Look outside your office or on your next team video call…your army is right there.
“But Eric, we are an (insert your specialism) company, surely this doesn’t apply to us…?”
Yes it does, if you are selling products and services to other businesses it applies to you.
When we speak to a Leadership team, a Technical team or HR, HSEQ, Operations or Engineering about Social Media you can almost hear the toes curl…
The average professional has been writing reports, data, calculations for the majority of their career, now we are going to train you how to put all that history, knowledge, experience, specialism and expertise and personality to work for technical and commercial advantage…
This isn’t about making you look foolish, its about allowing you to take what’s yours…. the digital share of voice and, giving your buyers what they want.
Social Selling & Influence isn’t about chasing algorithms and ‘tips n tricks’, it about fundamentally rewriting your commercial playbook, its about rewiring your commercial processes to allow you to get to the digital table and stay there.?Its about accepting things have changed and will change again.
How do we know this??
It’s what we do…across sectors and across the world.?Enabling organisations to lead the digital change in their sector. We create Technical and Commercial digital leaders.
I recently presented our programme to a management team who are in trouble. Sales pipeline is empty, order intake down, no leads or meaningful opportunities, staff leaving….losing their relevance in their sector.
I have a slide at the end which show some of the companies we work with.
The Sales Leader said, “I don’t see anyone in our sector on there, so that puts me off…”.
Doors closed and locked, opportunity missed…
The leaders quoted above are looking for the best for now and the future for their organisations. They are looking to pioneer and lead the cutting edge, they are not waiting to see what others are doing, they are carving their own path to digital dominance.
Taking this ‘big company’ thinking and do-ing and distilling into workable, practical methods for your team to leverage creativity on their terms and take all the technical and commercial benefit is key.
As the digital divide widens month on month, is your organisation pioneering and leading…. or are you waiting to see if things get better?
Live Social ‘22
Eric Doyle
Understanding a brand’s specialisms, their people and culture | UK, Ireland, Europe | MCIPR, Media Relations, Brand Personalization.
2 年Hi Eric Doyle (F.ISP), this makes so much sense now. I listened to Vince McSweeney, Chief Creative Officer at McCannWorldGroup who was at Cannes Lions Intl too and his takeaways were that it's all about the idea - human-centric ideas with meaningful human interaction and that less evident at the festival this year was the 'glassy brochureware' you refer to. If we all need to be creative, no matter our role, it can be about expressing an opinion in ways that are relatable to people who want to hear these (personal) thoughts, including the difficult stuff. Thank you, Eric, thought-provoking points as ever.
Helping SMEs and large Supply Chain Owners with a Certified Net Zero Solution
2 年An interesting article after our conversation today Tom Langley
Business Development/ Marketing/ Communication/ Manager/ COW- Connecting Our Women Founder/ Proud Mum to 6 rescue pets
2 年Ooohhh love this, Eric!
Helping you communicate on air, online, in print and in person. Because words matter. And it’s your story.
2 年I always felt the "wall" between the personal me and the professional me was artificial. Recent developments have only confirmed this Eric. In essence we are the same people at home and at work. It may not have felt this way when we "went" to work in the car, on the bus or train etc. Now we work from home the domestic version of us is felt ever more keenly in the virtual workplace. And I for one think that's a good thing - although it has its downsides too. Of course, I should add that for many, many workers who continue to go out to work (necessarily because they do physical things with their hands) this discussion will be nonsense. I used to work on building sites - still do occasionally - and the builders I know are the same on the job, down the pub or at home as far as I can tell!
Save Ferris!
2 年This is a great blog Eric, but a BIG topic...creativity. I think that "creativity" isn't just about creating artworks (let's not forget Van Gough died penniless, even though his artworks set world records today) it's about using creativity to unlock commercial benefit for yourself and your employer/business. Your success is absolutely predicated on the fact that YOU are one of the most creative people I know. Your videos (John & Jason...and now Joe (Sarah)) being a prime example - blending humour and hard-hitting business relevance, The Big Live Breakfast Burrito..! - an innovative show where people have fun and every week which showcases you and your team to a huge global audience, your talks to camera, your slideshares...and articles like this. I get really annoyed when people talk about becoming creators/creatives as if this is a walled garden that you somehow gain access to by having some magic "conversion." It isn't. This is business and ultimately the ONLY barometer for success is whether the actions you take and your creative output helps to achieve the strategic objectives - which are inevitably based around revenue, cost saving and efficiency - for your business. Everything else is just window dressing!