Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in the UK, the last time I went out (apart from to the supermarket) was to see a venue for a Book Festival taking place in September that I’m a key interviewer for. I was actually excited at the prospect, but by the time I had got ready, got in the car, realised en route that I needed petrol, and eventually arrived… I felt quite stressed and needed five minutes to centre myself.
When I finally got out of my car and entered the venue, I found playing the ‘socially distanced game’ of not getting too close to anyone and making conversation (through a mask) really weird, to say the least.
Have the COVID-19 restrictions negatively impacted our ability be social, in-person?
While driving back, I reflected on how strange it will be for those of us returning to the office or work environment soon. Will we have lost the ability to function as per the old normal? And how will we all interact when Zoom and the virtual world has changed our communications so much? Has our ability to be social and to interact been damaged?
As human beings, wired by the primeval part of our brains (the Limbic Amygdala) for survival, we have a negativity bias that keeps us on high alert for what is wrong (or a threat) and to seek comfort in what is familiar. Over the last year we, as an adaptive species, have made the unfamiliar (lockdown and working from home for many) familiar. So now, the reverse is true, and what was once commonplace will feel strange and possibly a threat.
Of course, there may be real threats. For those frontline and essential workers who have been going to work there have been new checks and balances and rules that have been adjusted several times.
How to adapt back to life back in the office
For most of us however, the repeat warnings from our governments to stay at home seems at odds with any requirement to return to the office, so the prospect of doing so will naturally feel uncomfortable to us. Add in that familiar ‘return to the office’ dread or apprehension that we used to feel after a holiday, with the added fear over commuting, it is hardly surprising that you may be feeling anxious as you leave your bubble for what seems like the unknown.
Five ways to help you return to the office well
If you find yourself feeling stressed, then share how you are feeling with your line manager or colleagues, not least because they are probably also having such feelings themselves.
Practise getting into a good ‘return routine’ as soon as you can so that the time you have to get up, spend commuting or just being in the office are not at odds with your new body clock. This also includes getting good quality sleep and enough of it to be well rested.
Take frequent breaks during the day to walk in nature, do breathing exercises, listen to a meditative recording or just sit on a bench and enjoy your lunch. Physical exercise is a great antidote to stress so if you can, cycle or walk to work or do some physical activity that will also enrich your day.
To get yourself back into the right frame of mind for a return to work, remind yourself that you are familiar with what is expected of you in your office environment. Once there, practise being kind to yourself if it feels stressful or strange.
Do a ‘WFH Audit’ of the last few months. Ask yourself what has worked well while being away from the office. List the practices that have increased your productivity and physical and mental wellbeing. And explore how they can be transferred into the workplace.
How to strengthen your social interactions back in the office
We are tribal and connected beings and a way to punish people is to forcibly separate and isolate them such as via solitary confinement in prison. Loneliness affects your hormones, and chronic loneliness has as detrimental effect on a person as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. In many ways, this sense of connection is something the pandemic has taken away from us, and we need to find it again.
You may be thinking, well I have connected in lockdown so what is the problem? Invariably you will have connected with the people closest to you and less regularly. So even the prospect of having to be in a room with several of your peers may feel very unfamiliar and daunting.
Whatever your circumstances during the pandemic, you have likely not had the mental stimulus or repeat usage of your social skills that you were used to – and, like anything that you don’t use much, these can weaken over time.
In the case of your brain, this can lead to memory being impaired (this has been proven to be the case for people who have endured long periods of social isolation). So, just trying to remember that fact or the right way to say something while speaking to your boss may then cause you stress. A combination of feeling stressed, unfamiliar (or unprotected in primeval terms), combined with feeling a bit tired and emotional can lead to undesirable responses, such as anger or irritation or even a complete shutdown. Therefore, it is crucial that you ease yourself back in gently.
Here are a few of my tips to help:
First and foremost, be kind to yourself. Remind yourself that you will get used to this again soon. Remember how clunky it was when you learned to drive, but how it soon became second nature with practice and an unwavering faith that it would be OK.
Do what you need to feel safe, such as washing your hands well and not rushing back into having big get-togethers – even socially distanced ones – unless necessary.
Being selective about who you hang out with, perhaps at lunchtime or after work, can give you psychological comfort and feelings of safety. What is key here is balance. You don’t want to be isolating yourself, and equally you don’t want to feel unsafe or overwhelmed by being around too many people at once. Keep the new bonds you have created away from the work environment as best you can. For example, if you have been at home with the kids for months, then check in with them at regular intervals during the day when you can. Put little notes into their backpacks in the morning that they will find during the day so that they know you are thinking about them too.
When interacting with colleagues, try to avoid unnecessary stress, like frustrating conversations or debates. So it might be a good idea to steer clear of in-depth discussions around the COVID situation and the vaccines, or other contentious issues. Know your boundaries and speak up if you start to feel stretched or overwhelmed.
Close your eyes and imagine how it will feel to have the sand under your feet, wind blowing in your hair and the freedom of a beach holiday again. Or if this is not for you, then imagine the desired place you will go when restrictions truly lift. Hold onto that feeling and remember how excited you were when you landed your job originally after an application and interview process. You wanted it. You chose it. On your first day I’m sure you were nervous, and it seemed very unfamiliar. It may seem unfamiliar again but remember the good aspects and that you choose it. Perhaps new eyes and a new perspective will make it a joy again.
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Since early 2020, we’ve all experienced or witnessed considerable change in the world of work, leading many careers to take unexpected twists and turns. In some instances, this has made it harder for professionals to feel as though they can effectively plan their careers in a way that they might have done pre-pandemic.
So, today, we’re joined by Eliza Kirkby, Regional Director at Hays Australia, who’s here to share how to effectively build a career plan for the year ahead and beyond.
1. To begin with, please could you introduce yourself to our listeners?
(01:27) Absolutely. So, as well as being a mum and sitting on the board of an engineering business as a non-executive director here in Sydney, I’m also a Regional Director in the Australian Hays business. I look after a diverse group of recruitment teams, that include our HR, marketing and digital, legal, defence and life sciences teams.
I started my career at Hays as a graduate and next week, I celebrate my fifteen-year anniversary. And one of the things that has kept me in this industry all these years is certainly the impact I can have on candidates and their careers. And I will share a story with you, Jon, if you don’t mind. Just before Christmas, I got a call from a candidate who I’d placed as an assistant accountant over a decade ago and she was calling to tell me that she had just achieved her career goal of becoming a CFO or a head of finance and she wanted to thank me for supporting her all those years ago. So, very relevant to our discussion today about career planning and absolutely one of the things I love most about this industry.
Well, congratulations on 15 years with Hays. We often find that at Hays there are people who’ve been here a long time. I’ve been here eight years myself as well, and that’s such a fantastic story to share as well. It’s so good to know that you’re obviously having such positive impacts on people’s lives.
(02:55) Absolutely, and I think for so many recruiters, colleagues, and peers at Hays, it’s the same story for them. It’s the people and the careers that they’re impacting that keeps us coming back into the office day after day and really being passionate about this job.
2. So, as explained in the introduction, this podcast is about career planning. Have you followed a career plan yourself to help you get to where you are today?
(03:21) Absolutely. So, from an early time in my career at Hays, and when I say early, I’m talking within the first six months or so, I knew I wanted to be a Regional Director. So, that’s been my end goal, and I followed a people management career path to get me here.
There have been stages where I’ve been able to fast track my career plan because of high performance but if I speak candidly, there have also been times where having that career plan has helped me push through challenging and tougher times and keep focused on that end goal. I’ll add that I’m lucky to work for an organisation with what we call a meritocratic culture. So, the more you put into this job and deliver results, the faster you’re progressed and promoted. And we’ve got clearly set up career paths, which has meant that throughout my time at Hays, I’ve very much felt in control of my career plan. So, I feel that I’ve been very lucky. I think that there are many candidates that I’ve interacted with over my career that have had to play a much more proactive role in really driving that themselves.
3. Could you explain exactly what a career plan is and what the benefits are of creating one?
(04:32) Sure, so a career plan is essentially a roadmap that lays out a pathway towards your ideal career goal. That could be a particular role in the industry you’re in or even a completely new occupation and it also includes the smaller tasks and achievements along the way that are going to help you get there.
What are the benefits? By having these priorities set out, you’re more likely to work towards and achieve your goals consistently. Creating a clear career plan is also a great way to consciously think about what you want out of your professional life and that’s a question that people often miss when they don’t think about putting a career plan in place. It also means that whenever you next job hunt, you’re more likely to look for a role that is going to move you one step closer to achieving your career goal.
And I have come across this throughout my career that for some people, it’s completely overwhelming to contemplate these bigger questions of what you want out of your career but I think just taking the first steps, thinking about it, breaking it down into that larger goal and then smaller objectives that makes it more manageable and gives everyone a greater chance of succeeding.
4. What time period should a career plan cover? Should you have one for one year, five years, ten years? Should you have multiple career plans that span a certain length of time?
(06:00) That’s a great question because I genuinely believe that allocating a timeline to your plan is a big key to success. So, having that timeline is going to help motivate you and keep you accountable to your larger goals over the long term.
In general, you can break your career plan down into two phases. So, you’ve got the short-term and then the long-term. And for the short-term phase, once you’ve identified your ideal career, you should develop short-term objectives that will cover say the next three or so years. These will start you down the path towards that goal and they might cover things like the new skills you need to learn, the qualifications that could help you get there or certain experiences you need to gain. And you can think of them as ideally tasks that will set you up to be ready for your next promotion.
Then when you’ve got the long-term phase, you’re obviously looking at longer-term goals and charting a course towards that bigger future goal that covers the next five to ten years plus. And I think it’s important to acknowledge that of course things can and will most likely change over this time and the last year has proven that to us in spades. So, it’s important to be flexible and adapt your plan if and when priorities do change, to remember to check in from time to time to ensure your goal remains achievable, measure your progress, celebrate your successes and don’t be afraid to reset your objectives, both those short-term and longer-term objectives if you need to.
5. What should your first steps be if you’re writing a career plan from scratch or if you’re revisiting one that you’ve already written?
(07:49) I would recommend starting with a wide lens, so, think big to start with. Consider your skill set, your interests, your values, where you want to live, your lifestyle, and then start researching the occupations that interest you and the roles that seem like they could be a good match. So, if you start big, it ensures that you’ve explored all the possible careers of interests before selecting the one that you feel either most passionate about or most comfortable with. And it also ensures that you’re considering really what the day-to-day realities of your career choice are going to be.
If you find yourself, which isn’t uncommon, unable to select between two or more different career paths, take some time to reflect, compare the occupations, consider the qualifications, skills, typical responsibilities, the work environment, salary and work-life balance for each, and don’t forget to consider what inspires you about each option.
You can have multiple career paths. Ideally, you’ll be able to identify your best fit through doing this reflection, and once you decide which career option is the best fit for you, you can then write down your resulting career goal. From there, you’re ready to then plot your course from where you are now to this ultimate goal and you’re going to cover both those short-term and those long-term objectives that we spoke about earlier.
6. How important is it to set realistic SMART goals and objectives?
(09:26) It’s very important that you write clearly defined objectives that you can work towards. And the SMART system is really useful for this. I’m sure most are aware that SMART is an acronym and SMART goals are those that are:
Specific – So, for example, when writing goals, they should be specific and that means being as clear as you can and avoiding ambiguous statements or targets.
Measurable – that’s about making sure you can actually quantify what you want to achieve.
Achievable – being achievable is so important and keeping your goals attainable. It doesn’t mean that some of your objectives can’t be stretch goals where you really need to push yourself but don’t set yourself up to fail because that’s just going to be demotivating.
Realistic – Goals should be realistic, so, you need to be reasonable. Make sure your goals are realistic given your skill set, experience, finances, and importantly, the market conditions you’re facing, now more than ever.
Timely – And then finally, timely. So, creating timeframes to help you feel motivated to stay the course is important.
7. I’d imagine conducting an analysis of which skills are in demand is crucial when career planning. Could you give us some examples of which skills will be crucial to succeed in the future of work?
(10:56) When creating a plan, it’s important to think critically about your skillset right now and what is likely to be needed in the future. So, constant advances in technology mean that we all need to be developing our skills over time. I would prioritise staying on top of technological advances and the influence these have in your industry and building a need for professional development into your plan that aligns with that. You can do that through things like formal education, on the job experience and working with a mentor.
The skills in demand, they absolutely change over time, there’s no question about that. They vary by industry and sector at any moment in time. So, that’s one of the reasons at Hays we compile the most in-demand skills in each industry. So, you could visit our website to stay on top of these desirable skill sets as they’re evolving.
And I’d also recommend making sure you’re following leading organisations, that you’re following experts in your field, that you’re keeping in touch with your local Hays recruiter, that you’re doing all these things to make sure you don’t miss new trends and technologies. In Australia, we’ve got a really great tool which is It’s a skills-match online tool that the government provides, where people can go in, they enter the jobs they’ve done previously and the tool actually matches up possible roles with transferable skills for that individual. So, I would recommend looking out for similar tools in your own local markets.
And one final comment here would be that there is definitely a collection of skills that will always be sought by employers or we certainly believe this to be the case because they’re difficult to automate and they’re difficult to outsource and these are soft skills. So, you’ve probably heard this term. They include things like communication, teamwork, adaptability, creative thinking, influencing, and relationship building. So, adapting these soft skills into a career plan, I think, is an important one.
Great. thanks, Eliza. We’re recording this in early 2021. So, throughout the last year or so, one of the only certainties has been change.
8. Do you think that change has made career planning more difficult?
(13:21) Of course, I do. I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you about this topic so passionately if I didn’t but what I will agree with you on is that you can’t account for everything that could possibly change in your career. That doesn’t mean setting aside some time to put a career plan together isn’t a valuable thing to do though, and I think rather than seeing a career plan as a strict set of rules, it’s important to see it as a roadmap to help you consciously navigate your career, so to check that you’re being proactive, to check that you’re being focused on the long-term. Doing this helps you put the smaller challenges we face day to day into perspective at times. It can help you stay focused and can also help you get greater enjoyment and satisfaction from what you’re doing.
And I guess I’d also say that planning is something we’re doing in so many areas of our lives. So, just some examples: planning our work week, our personal life events, our exercise schedules, managing our households, managing our kids’ activities. There are so many places that we do planning, and I think that our careers are important, and it stands that our careers can benefit as well from this planning too even during periods of change and perhaps more importantly during periods of change.
9. And with that in mind, would you say it’s important for listeners to be open-minded and flexible when it comes to following their career paths? Is it okay if we move away from them from time to time to focus on other things perhaps?
(14:55) Absolutely, of course. And it’s totally expected and understandable that at various times people will need to do this and deviate. After all, we’ve seen in the last year things can change, and they can change rapidly. Technology and industries, they’re shifting all the time with new jobs being created to support the continuing digital revolution. You might end up staying in the area of work you’re already in or, as we’re seeing more and more commonly, you might find yourself switching careers along the way, in which case, again, your career plan is going to need to shift too but it is also okay to put a pause on things and to revisit them.
One of the evergreen skills that I talked a little bit about earlier was that adaptability piece. As we’ve seen over the last year, it’s such an asset for overcoming the challenges that can arise during your career. So, developing these soft skills to cope with that is important too. And you might find that what you want in your career is going to change over time independent of what’s happening externally in the market. And I guess the most important thing in creating a career plan is to check back in, review and adapt it.
Equally, if you’re presented with an opportunity you didn’t plan for, which interests you and it’s not in your career plan, absolutely, go for it, seize it. You’ll always learn something even if it’s that you didn’t enjoy an aspect of that piece of work. When you have opportunities that are presented that are interesting, go for it.
10. For those of our listeners who had a career plan in place but have been impacted by redundancy or change in circumstances, how would you recommend they go about resetting and reviving their plans?
(16:41) Well, this is such an important question because being made redundant can be such a huge shock. And I know for most people it’s one of the scariest challenges that they will face in their professional lives. So, it’s important to be thinking about how, if you’ve experienced this, you can find a way to move forward. And I think that there are positives that can be taken from situations people are in, so it be a chance to re-evaluate your career goals, to put an effective plan in place and really look for a suitable next career step for an individual.
In this situation, I would recommend, honestly, checking in with yourself and with your circumstances, so asking yourself things like “Do my goals still align with my desires and the reality of my workplace, industry, market or the conditions I’m in at the moment? What’s changed between the last time I wrote my plan and now?” and really importantly, “What can I actually do to lift my value to a future organisation?” This is something that’s been more important ever, particularly in the last year. We’ve experienced a tidal wave of change in so many industries.
And I just immediately think of an example here in the Australia and New Zealand business, One of our insurance clients hired hundreds of customer service staff because they needed to set up an onshore contact centre and data centre due to the pandemic and the things that were going on. And many of the staff that they hired had recently been made redundant or been stood down from the travel industry, again, due to the pandemic. And these candidates were given the opportunity to transfer existing skills and develop new skills in a completely different and new industry to them.
So, I would say to anyone in this position, be open to new possibilities. If you’re in this position currently, I think it’s worth considering whether there are other growing industries that would suit your skills and experience and where you could transfer the knowledge and the offering that you would have.
11. And on the other hand, are career plans still helpful even if you’re satisfied with your current career?
(19:06) Well, I think they certainly can still add value. I think that some job research, some conscious consideration of where you are, your achievements, the trajectory that you’re following at the moment, I think, that can still surface interesting things about your work life that you might not have thought about before. I think that having a plan that’s down in black and white on paper or on your computer can also make you feel even greater satisfaction from the career achievements that you’re achieving along the way. So, I do think that’s really an opportunity to explore the possibilities that the world of work can offer. And I think that there are benefits both when you’re sailing along as you hope to be or when your struck with challenges, change or difficulties that you are having to face.
12. And for those of our listeners who may have been working towards a promotion which has been put on hold due to the pandemic, how can a career plan help to get them back on track?
(20:05) Well, I’d firstly say don’t be discouraged and certainly people in this boat are not alone. Events of the pandemic have and are going to continue to require extraordinary ongoing action both from candidates and organisations looking to survive and to navigate their way through but I would say it doesn’t mean you won’t be able to reach your goals eventually.
So, if you’re in this situation, use this time as an opportunity to review and adjust your plan. We see a growing trend for workers to leave their organisations to achieve a promotion. And so, perhaps, you’re looking to develop in a new role externally. And if so, this is the time to assess if there are things you can do now to add to your skillset and make you more attractive to prospective employers for that promotion you’re looking for. And for this, you can find advice on how to approach your job search on our website, absolutely.
If the promotion you’re seeking is internal, I’d recommend speaking with your manager, bringing your relevant accomplishments from your career plan, other supporting evidence. If you haven’t already shared your aspirations and your goal, I think, if you can discuss a promotional timeframe that is realistic, if it’s appropriate, and obviously industries and organisations are being affected differently at the moment, but also talk about other tasks that you could take on now to help you progress and then add those into your career plan. Even if your promotion or all promotions across the organisation you work for are currently on hold, I think it’s really good advice to keep looking for opportunities to develop your skill set to move forward so that when promotions do end up back on the table, you’re at the top of the list.
13. If you’re hoping to progress in the current company that you’re in, should career planning be done on your own or should it be done in conjunction with your manager?
(22:07) This is going to depend on particular circumstances but I’d say, generally speaking, if your manager is in a position to guide you and help you progress against your goals, then it’s definitely worth asking for their input. I’d recommend maybe expressing your long-term goal and asking your manager to help you with short-term goals or even asking their opinion on how you can best work towards achieving what you’re trying to achieve.
I think you showing interest and ambition may also engage them in taking a more active approach in your development but the one thing I would say, Jon, is that if you’re thinking of changing your career, it could be the case that your manager won’t know how to help you get started or they may not want to help you get started in many instances. So, if that’s the case, I would talk to a recruiter or a trusted friend, family member, mentor, someone that’s objective and outside of your organisation, about your plans and how you’re going to go about actioning them.
14. What advice would you give to those that feel as though they’re not getting the support they need from their manager?
(23:21) That can be a tricky relationship or circumstance to find yourself and to navigate a positive outcome from. What I would start off by saying is that managers can be such a wealth of business and industry knowledge and they can really help you fast track your development. If you feel that you aren’t getting the support you need from your manager, I think it’s worthwhile having a think about the areas in which you’d like more assistance, think about how they could be helping you develop. Perhaps there’s a short-term goal you could suggest they help you work towards.
Your development isn’t in the hands of your manager. You need to be proactive and really work with them in a two-way relationship to achieve that progression and development. I think, be proactive and request a meeting with your manager where you ask them for their advice and support. There needs to be a little bit of strategic thinking done here because what you don’t want is to accuse them of mismanaging or neglecting you.
You want to make sure that you’re posing your request for more support as a win for the organisation as much as it would be a win for you. So, it’s in the organisation’s interest that you develop your skills, that you offer and give back more to your organisation, that you stay engaged, remain passionate, etc. And adding that you appreciate, value and respect their input and their opinions won’t hurt either.
We all lead busy lives or when we’re not in lockdown, we usually lead busy lives. We’re dealing with many conflicting priorities, which means we can lose focus on our career plan which we have established already.
15. What would you recommend listeners do to ensure that they feel motivated to remain on track?
(25:17) I couldn’t agree with you more, and I think this is really where that timeline that you attached to your goals can be really helpful and useful. And this is also where it’s key to set realistic goals and to check in and make sure you’re adjusting them based on what is going on. If your career plan includes several smaller, easier to achieve goals that lead you down the pathway to that overarching goal, it provides you with extra motivation to remain on track. So, that’s a good way to remain motivated is checking in with that career plan and acknowledging and celebrating those smaller achievements along the way.
I’d say, stay as positive as you can. I know everyone faces a tricky balancing acts between the competing priorities of their lives and their careers. And I think just keep checking in, adapting your plan and flexing it if you need to are really sensible things to do in this market and particularly when it can be difficult to stay motivated or remain on track.
16. How can listeners track their progress to maintain motivation? Being able to see that there are differences happening, that there is progress, obviously can give you a real boost.
(26:36) I highly recommend finding yourself someone you can work together with on your career plan, so finding yourself a mentor or a sponsor to work with you and to guide you. It could be your manager or a trusted advisor, a family friend. Set up regular meetings, perhaps monthly or quarterly, so that there’s an opportunity that you can be held accountable and hold yourself accountable to your plan and also to discuss and re-evaluate career objectives with your mentor as well.
So, I think it’s important that you’ve got those meetings or checkpoints to maintain some accountability. Also, as we’ve talked about several times, reviewing your plan. So, if you find yourself struggling to meet your goals or if you find yourself losing drive, ask yourself whether you still want the same things, are those goals that you had set reasonable considering the other commitments and priorities in your life or the market conditions you’re facing. And if not, then don’t be afraid to reset them and realign them.
Thank you so much, Eliza. I think, the past year, there’s been so many changes and it’s given people a lot of time to reflect on what they’re doing in their lives, what they want to do to make them happy, changes that they can make. So, I think this is a really, relevant topic to be discussing at the moment. And I think that’s some fantastic advice that you’ve shared with our listeners that will help ensure that they’re making progress in their careers and that they’re motivated to constantly develop them as well. So, thank you so much for sharing your insights and advice today.
17. I’ve just got one final question though before you go. If you had one piece of advice to help our listeners navigate their careers for out of the pandemic and beyond, what would that be?
(28:30) I’m going to steal a piece a quote from someone else here. A quote from Arthur Ashe, which I find incredibly motivating and so relevant in this market.
The quote that he said is “Start where you are, use what you have and do what you can.”
I’m not sure if you’ve heard that one before but I think it’s appropriate. So, in terms of starting where you are, what does that mean right now? Well, we’re experiencing an unprecedented global pandemic. So, be realistic, be fair to yourself about whatever professional circumstances you find yourself in. The careers of people in different countries, industries, professions, and organisations are being impacted in such completely different ways now that, I think, starting where you are is really important.
The next step is, use what you have. So, what are your strengths? What are your capabilities and experiences and qualifications? And what tools and resources are at your disposal to help you move forward?
And then, finally, probably most powerfully, do what you can. So, this is about taking action. Don’t make excuses, take action. And once you start taking action, it’s a game-changer because your action is either going to bring progress or it’s going to highlight areas that you still need to develop and work on. This, in turn, helps propel you forward and continue navigating your career through that career plan and that career journey.
So, I think that this advice from Arthur Ashe couldn’t be more relevant in the market that we’re experiencing right now.
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As the expectations placed on marketing departments continue to expand and evolve, marketing leaders are under tremendous scrutiny to prove the value of their organisations products and services to their customers.
1. To begin with, please could you introduce yourself to our listeners. Simon let’s begin with you.
(01:10) I’m Dr. Simon Kelly, I call myself a pracademic now, which reflects the fact I had a long commercial career mainly running marketing and in big telecom organisations. I help organisations with Stacey at Shake Marketing to develop more powerful value propositions and growth. And I’m also a lecturer at the University of York, and I’ve lectured to several universities in the UK and in the US. I’m the co-author of this book that we’re going to talk about today, Stand Out Marketing and Value-ology.
2. And Stacey, how about you? Could you tell our listeners a little bit about your background and your current role?
(01:54) Yes, absolutely. Well, firstly, thanks Megan, for having us here today. Simon and I always love the opportunity to talk about marketing leadership. I’m Stacey Danheiser, based in the United States. I’m the founder of Shake Marketing Group, which, as Simon mentioned, is a B2B marketing consultancy where we help organisations with customer research, value propositions and marketing strategy. I’m also the co-author of two marketing books along with Simon, and before starting Shake, I have a long history of working in Fortune 500 companies across various corporate marketing leadership roles.
3. Now, you both recently released your new book, Stand Out Marketing. Could you tell us a little bit more about this and the research you conducted around it?
(02:37) Yes, well, Stand Out Marketing was born from some initial research that we started to conduct across three different industries. We looked at the telecom data centre in UK university industries to understand how they’re communicating to their potential customers and clients.
And what we found was that really, everybody is saying the same thing. And so, we started to dig into why that was happening and part of the research that we conducted to learn about that was dozens of one-on-one interviews with marketing sales and business leaders across the UK and the US. We led a global survey with over fifty respondents, the case studies, as I mentioned, and then we also have our own first-hand corporate experience in working with over two dozen clients.
4. Now, in your book, you mentioned the phrase ‘copycat marketing’, and the fact that we are ‘swimming in a sea of sameness’. Please can you explain to our listeners what this is and what it means for marketing leaders?
(03:41) Yes, so, as I mentioned, this is based on the research that we did into the three industries. And we did a scrape of websites and Twitter feeds of the top thirty companies in each of those industries.
We found that most companies were using the exact same words, the same “why us” story, the same benefits statements. We saw an overuse of generic business terms, like the word “services,” “solutions,” “business,” and a lot of phrases that start with “we” and “our” instead of being about the customer.
We also found that B2B companies rarely use proof points that are meaningful to the customer. So, for example, there’s a lot of promises to help businesses grow or transform their business but when you ask how, the answer is always something like, “buy my product or service.” So, these are lofty and empty claims as what they’re saying and the bridge from here, how you get a customer from here and where they currently are to where they really want to be, is very weak. So, when every company sounds the same, customers end up really confused about what makes each one different. And so, we call this ‘swimming in the sea of sameness’.
5. How do you think leaders can identify if their organisation is one of those that’s ‘stuck in the sea of sameness’?
(04:57) Yes, so we have various exercises and assessments in our book, but there’s a few things that I would encourage people to look at. And that would be:
Do you really understand your customer’s business problems and the problems that your organisation solves?
Are you presenting value in a way that resonates with the customer?
Does your “why us” story involve the customer or is it all about you, your number of years of experience, your products, and your superior customer service?
And then one that I found a lot of marketers are doing is constantly looking at their competitors and copying, frankly, the websites, social media content and feeds of their top competitors. So, one thing to look at here would be, is your website structured the same? Is the content you’re producing the same? Are the benefits that you’re promising the same? And even looking at colour palettes, logos, and the way that information is presented can be all incredibly confusing if it looks the same as your competitors.
6. Turning to you Simon, the skills and competencies of marketing teams will help businesses emerge from ‘the sea of sameness’ and become more customer centric. So, what are the key competencies that organisations need to begin developing in their employees?
(06:18) Yes, it’s a great question. Before I dive into that, I think it’s probably important to say what we see as a competency.
A competency, we think, is the combination of the knowledge, skills and the behaviours added together to be successful in your role. Now, for example, if you look at chapter four in the book, which is about what are the key roles for marketing and sales. When we interviewed leaders across the world about this, lots of people said, maybe not surprisingly, that the most important role for marketing is brand management. So that’s a key job to be done by marketing: differentiating the brand in a meaningful way to customers. As Stacey said, what do you need to know to be able to do that effectively? What do you need to be good at? And how do you need to behave to develop and mobilise a brand within your company and crucially, in the market?
So, if you were a brand manager, adding that together gives you an equation for what the competencies are that you need. Now, at the top level for marketing and salespeople, five competencies came out of our research and taken together, the initials spell the word VALUE:
V is for visionary, which is about foreseeing potential changes in a broader business environment.
A is for activator. That’s about getting buy-in to initiatives to help drive growth in the business.
L is for learner, which is to learn from changes in the environment, changes in what your customers value, changes in what sets you apart from competitors.
U is for usefulness, which is differentiated in a way that’s relevant, practical, and resonates with customers.
E is for evaluator. This is about evaluating, not just the ongoing success of marketing and sales campaigns, but at the front-end evaluating potential opportunities to decide whether your organisation should pursue these opportunities or not.
7. I’d like to look firstly at the visionary element, which as you mentioned, is about looking ahead at the broader environment to develop new ways of doing business. How important is it for marketing leaders to develop a vision for change to continually adapt to external influences?
(08:38) Well, it’s extremely important. At any one time, there are lots of things going on: happening now, coming up on the near horizon or that you could foresee in the far distance. Let’s just look at what’s happened recently.
In the US, there’s a new president who on his first day, brought America back into the Paris Global Climate Agreement. Reflecting on that, that could be a move towards a much more unified global trading environment rather than the one that existed before.
In Europe, there’s Brexit with the UK withdrawing from the European Union. And of course, this year we’ve seen the dramatic effects of COVID-19 sweeping the world, which has affected us all in many ways from changing shopping habits, meaning that we’re always in Zoom meetings, putting a focus on mental awareness because of the effects it has on people and dramatically affecting organisational performance in different ways.
Now, you think if you were the CEO of Pfizer now versus being the CEO of British Airways, you’re in an entirely different position. So, when we think of what’s happening on the technology front, it’s just eyewatering. It’s difficult to believe that the first iPhone was only launched in 2007, and the last time I looked, there were 3.5 billion globally.
And what’s happening or coming up on the horizon. We’ve seen 3-D printing, we’ve got robotics, AI and all these things have impacted customer behaviour and competitive behaviour. So, for example, we’ve seen the rise of Airbnb and Uber and Lyft, which are organisations that don’t own any assets but have developed offerings by effective uses of these new technologies. So, taken together, you’ve got to understand how this will impact your customer, how your own company will be affected by these things and how it will affect your industry.
In the words of Wayne Gretzky, who was a famous Canadian ice hockey player, you need to be able to do this in order to skate to where the puck is going and not where it’s been, to try to predict what’s going to happen into the future and then to portray that to your customer. Now, people disregard the use of that analogy that Wayne Gretzky’s saying and say, “Oh, well, you’ve got to have a certain amount of talent because Wayne Gretzky was the greatest ice hockey player ever to walk the planet”. But I think that’s why it’s relevant in what we’re talking about in this book. You must have a level of competence that you need to be able to develop to be an effective visionary.
I think that’s a great analogy, thank you and probably the first time that Wayne Gretzky has been referenced on our podcast.
8. Now, how would you recommend marketing leaders encourage idea sharing from their teams to build a collaborative vision of the future?
(11:42) I think ideas are great but informed ideas are even better. And so, I think there’s a point that needs to be made before idea sharing takes place. The first one will be read and take reference points wisely. So, don’t just start with an inside out viewpoint, which is what really shackles lots of companies. They’re always having meetings, which start by their own perspective. Now, look from outside in, think about the customer world, take reference points from industry experts and commentators, look at other disciplines, other industries; get people going on to Ted Talks or listening to Hays podcasts.
Don’t be myopic. I mean, at the very heart of marketing is that famous article by Ted Levitt, Marketing Myopia, which bemoans the decline of the rail industry of the US because they didn’t foresee the rise of short-haul flights because they’re focused on their own industry.
So, don’t be myopic. Look more widely than your usual reference points and then at that point, draw people into what the Americans call brown bag sessions, which were effectively bringing your own lunch, sitting around a table and encouraging people to bring new things in. But don’t let those things be about, “let’s have a meeting about how to do effective copywriting” – you can do that in a different way. Have them about these new perspectives and then you could work with people like us to do things like scenario planning, to think about what potential combination of things can happen.
And then having considered all that, if you’ve then got to sort of Zoom in and predict, okay, after we’ve taken this eagle eye 2000-foot-view, what could happen? What would we place bets on what is likely to happen? Because that is, if you like the end of the vision building, you’ve got to develop and take to your customer for insights.
9. Following on from that, I’d like to talk about the second element, activator, which to remind our listeners of what you said earlier is all about being the force that successfully drives the team to growth. How can marketing leaders effectively get buy-in to initiatives and activate these visions that we just discussed?
(14:06) If you’re a marketing leader, I think firstly, you’ve got to create the environment and that’s by focusing and prioritising. So, coming out of this visionary phase and thinking what are the things that you believe to be important to drive as change initiatives and ongoing programs in your organisation and set clear priorities.
And then to lead, train, coach and appraise people on your team along the main sort of facets to this advocacy, activate your competency that we talk about. The first one is this thing called a balanced advocate, which is if you’re a leader, you should know, not only what is good for the customer, but what is good for your own company. In the book, we have a simple Venn diagram, which shows an overlap between what’s good for the company, what’s good for the customer, and in between that is your sweet spot where you can do things that are good for both you and the customer.
So, when you’re then trying to mobilise things inside your organisation when you’re trying to get a good feel for what is important to customers, you need to be able to listen emphatically, not just listen in order to reply; to really listen to what concerns people. And above all, if you’re leading a marketing organisation, you must make sure that your team understand that they must be able to negotiate.
And don’t get sensitive about if you take an idea forward and some senior leader or the salespeople need to change it, because they’ve got some view about how it could be more effective. You must negotiate, and you must be tenacious because to get an idea over the line, you’ve got to keep going and going. And if then it’s approved, all the time there’s another new initiative coming in that field, which might be from HR or from IT that you’re competing with, you’ve got to keep driving people to remember that you’re running this important initiative. They are some of the main things I would recommend.
10. Now we just discussed what marketing leaders need, but what can marketing leaders do to drive their teams to push for change themselves? And what do you think are the benefits of doing that?
(16:29) I think leaders themselves must be more self-aware and reflect on what they’ve got in their team and what type of capabilities they must have to effectively activate and mobilise. So, get the team to consider:
Are you a balanced advocate?
Do you know how this company makes money?
Can you therefore develop business cases, which are compelling because it can move us forward in the marketplace that they can be profitable for this company?
Do you go into situations with what we call “fully baked answers,” where you think this is what the thing needs to look like? Or are you prepared to negotiate, and do you have the skill to negotiate?
Do you understand what motivates the sales force?
Do you understand what motivates one of your senior executives so that you can get buy-in and they can develop programs that everybody’s prepared to take forward together?
They’re really the sort of things that need to be done and to courage, coach, advise your team and be there by the side of them to help drive change if need be. And if they need you to call on a senior leader in a business from another function to get something moving, then you should do that.
11. Thank you, Simon. And now, Stacey, looking at the third competency mentioned, which was learner, so learning new skills or ways of doing business. Why is it so important for marketing leaders to encourage their team members to upskill particularly in this increasingly hybrid and remote working world of work?
(18:06) Yes, well 2020 perfectly sums up the reason why being a learner is so important. Marketers started off last year with one set of plans and strategies, and then six weeks into the year, everything changed from switching to online events from in-person events. And suddenly there was this massive need to immediately learn new technologies.
Companies that had strong learners were able to quickly understand that business and customer expectations had changed, and they were able to adapt. We say that being a learner is about having a mindset of curiosity. So, it’s somebody that’s open to new ideas, can be a critical thinker and somebody that’s deliberate and self-directed rather than waiting for someone to tell them what to learn.
12. How can marketing leaders support their teams in upskilling and what are the benefits of that?
(18:56) Yes, well, I think the first thing is encouraging the team to take ownership of their own learning. So, one thing that we were surprised when we talked to marketing leaders is that most of the organisations said that they did have a budget for learning and development. That would be to send the team members to seminars or workshops or trade industry events, but that people are rarely taking advantage of these.
And so first and foremost, it would be to get the team to come up with their own plan for learning and that understanding this is completely within their own skillset to do. Secondly, we outlined five key areas in our book that we think all marketers really should understand. There are specific questions that we outlined so I’ll just briefly go through these:
The first is the market. How well does your team understand what’s happening in the market? As Simon mentioned, all the things that is required to be a visionary, somebody that can look at trends and really understand what’s happening.
The second is customers. So really, what does your team understand about who the ideal customer is, what the customer’s top needs and pain points are, what they’re trying to gain or achieve in their business and why specifically do they work with your company.
The third is competitors. So, we mentioned that a lot of marketers are looking at other people’s websites and copying and pasting what’s being said there, but there’s a little bit more to it than on the competitive landscape. You have your direct competitors and then you have the indirect competitors that are how people spending their time and resources. So, getting a full broad picture for how your company fits into that competitive landscape.
The fourth area is your company and the product and services that you offer. So, we found, and this is a common complaint amongst the C-level team that marketing does not really understand the business. They don’t really understand how their activity fits into overarching business goals. There are profitability questions: Which products and services are the most profitable? What’s the mission of the company? Why are they even in business?
So, all of these are broad level questions that really need to be understood at that company level. And then, finally, is their specific role. So, what skills are needed to be done within their specific job? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Where do they need to improve within their current job and how can they grow and elevate their career from there? So, that’s the five key areas we would say that those are good reflection questions to implement within the team.
And then there’s a culture piece to this as well, which is a culture of learning. And that has to do with, firstly making sure that people understand why things are being done. We find that a lot of marketers are executing programs not fully understanding the big picture and maybe just taking things at a surface level. So, for example, one of the famous sayings is, “why are we losing business?” Oh, it’s all about our price because our price is too high. And so, then everybody goes to immediately start fixing the pricing, but there could be more to it about the value understanding what customers are trying to achieve and digging deeper. Maybe the answer is not just the prices are too high but that we need to explain it better to customers what they’re getting for their money.
And then one of the key pitfalls to learning that we frequently hear from marketers is that they just don’t have time. So, they’re too busy executing and they’re not making the time to learn. So, the best organisations encourage learning and aren’t worried when people are taking time to sit and think and reflect on what they’ve learned. They use that as very productive time versus just the standard sort of definition of productivity in the amount of volume and output that that person is doing.
And then lastly, I would say it’s around encouraging the team to experiment. One of the leaders we spoke to called this Fearless Experimentation, and this is encouraging people to try new things and not just have to follow the herd, where we end up copying and pasting old business playbooks that aren’t really aligned with the changing customer needs.
13. Now, it’s becoming more important than ever for organisations to be able to articulate the usefulness that they can provide to customers, which is the fourth competency you picked out. What role do marketing leaders have in this process? Does it start with the product or service offering?
(23:29) Yes, so first we define usefulness as the ability to connect the dots from what your company does to how it solves a customer problem. So, this really includes everything from products and services to the sales approach, even marketing content, programs, and customer service. So, really everything that a company is offering should be useful to their end customers.
We have a little usefulness triangle in our book that we described and there are really three elements to being useful.
The first is about knowledge and skills. So B2B buyers want to work with sellers that really understand their business. So it starts with spending the time, again, going back to the learning component, really understanding what customers need, what they want, what’s going to fit into their business and how you can help them achieve their goals?
The second is what we call preparation. So, this is being proactive, ready, and willing to help. This is putting yourself in the customer’s shoes and realising that there really is no one size fits all. This is the element of how much time you are spending here to develop new things versus being reactive and waiting for somebody to come to you and ask you for something.
And then the third is timing. So, 90% of buyers are open to engaging with salespeople earlier in the process. So, it’s a matter of getting in there early. And there’s a stat that says 35-50% of sales goes to the vendor that responds first. So, these are having systems and processes in place that help accelerate the timing, especially if a customer needs something, they don’t want to sit around for four months waiting for you guys to come up with it. So, the timing aspect is important here. The question becomes well, who owns this, who owns becoming whether something is useful to the business. And marketing absolutely has a key role in understanding and presenting data back to the business that reflects what the customer sentiment is.
So, every department is impacted here from the product team coming up with product roadmaps, to the sales team and how they’re presenting this information. So, marketing really has a hand in driving that and making sure that there is discipline around implementing things that are going to be useful.
14. Now, keeping on this theme of usefulness, how can marketing leaders make sure that their teams have their finger on the pulse of the customer to appeal to their requirements?
(26:03) Yes, so, the first I would say is having a budget for some customer research. One of the things that continues to be shocking when we work with clients is that many of the marketing teams especially, do not have a budget to talk to customers and cannot remember the last time they did any customer research.
What does that mean? That means they rely on their sales team or their customer service team or data that they’re collecting about website visitors, or email open rates and making decisions on that versus talking one to one with customers to really understand at a deeper level what their business problems are, what’s changed and how that might fit into their world.
And then it goes back to the theme that we were talking about earlier, around making time to learn and it’s the same thing here. There must be time spent on reading and digesting all this information and making sense of it so that the business can use the information to make decisions. I mean, we are all overwhelmed with big data. The challenge becomes how are people acting on it? We have no shortage of information. It’s a matter of getting the teams together and talking through what this really means for our business.
15. Can you share any examples of organisations that have, or are currently proving their unique value well, particularly during this uncertain time?
(27:23) Yes, well 2020 was an exciting year for this competency to see how businesses emerged. There are a ton of B2C examples that we saw, especially during the early days of COVID. So, think of the distilleries that started making hand sanitizer or the large clothing retailers that started making face masks.
On the B2B side, we’ve seen a lot of technologies and even specific marketing and sales content aimed at helping people be more productive working from home. And I think what we’re seeing now, now that people have been stuck at home, one of the trends is how do you get people to unplug since we’re all connected what seems like 24 hours a day. So, you’re starting to see more research and reports and tools that help you block certain things. I mean, there are apps where you can close down and put limits on social media, as well as just mental health in general, making sure that you’re taking breaks, going for a walk and getting unplugged so that you can avoid the burnout, which is happening to so many people right now.
16. Thank you, Stacey. Turning back to you, Simon. The final key competency that organisations need to be developing in their employees is evaluator. Could you tell us a little bit more about what this means and why it’s so important to organisations?
(28:52) Well, first of all, before I get into what we believe is the competency for this, let me just talk about the difference between this skill to be able to do this in the competency.
So, firstly, you need to have people who can measure. Stacey mentioned some digital type measurements like click-through rates or likes, which can move you down a line of chasing vanity metrics. So, you must have people who have the skill to be able to do the measurement and connect the dots to the end about how it’s affecting revenue overall, or sales growth. But over and above that, you have to be able to have people who can evaluate new opportunities to decide which to take forward or not; whether to stop initiatives, change initiatives or just keep going with something that you’re moving forward with.
And if you go and do that well, you either burn a lot of cash and calories focusing on the wrong things, or you can miss out on big opportunities. And so, in our book, the overall competency we think is much more in keeping with what is not just a numeric thing, but a human and very political thing because most of our senior leaders that we spoke to around the world in sales and marketing were bringing the idea to the table, which we’ve all experienced.
It’s okay, say now you have to measure a new mover after evaluate, but people don’t like having their ideas thrown under the bus in front of other people and people don’t like to see their pet projects killed even if the numbers suggest that they do need to be. And so, to be a good evaluator, you must be able to in the end, say, this has worked, we should keep doing it. I’ve looked at the business case for this and it is going to be worth us doing as an organisation because it brings value to us and the customer.
Then there are some key things that you must be as a human being. And the first one is that you have to be somebody the organisation believes has integrity, that you are prepared to measure things and be objective and you can go to the evaluator as a person who you could trust will not follow somebody’s unpolitical agenda, that will measure correctly and accurately whether the thing’s been successful or not in the face of some political pressure. And they must be able to be this balanced advocate, which we talked about before on one of the other competencies. You have to be able to know how it’s affected customer value, not whether the thing turned up on time and whether the service was all right but if you promise that customer that the thing you sold them would help them be more productive, could you actually measure that and has it actually moved the needle in your own organisation?
And so, therefore, this person has to have a lot of political-ness and persuasion skills because there’s one thing measuring as I said, and then the other thing is turning around and saying to a senior executive, “I don’t think it’s a good idea to carry on with your pet project because the numbers don’t stack up.” So, if you’re a marketing leader, I think you have to understand there’s evaluation and the need to be able to do the evaluation numerically and objectively but that you’re taking the outcome of those decisions into a political environment. So, you need people who can handle that.
17. And what can marketing leaders do to help their teams effectively balance what’s good for the plus customer with return on investment for the business?
(32:32) Well, I think this is a key thing had we mentioned this balanced advocacy more than a couple of times now. And one senior leader in particular, I won’t reveal because the research that we did was anonymous and that’s how it should be, but got really catatonic with anger about how they believe that marketers don’t often understand in the round what’s actually good for the business, how the business actually makes money. And so, they’ll talk about marketing campaigns in isolation without really joining the dots.
So, I think the marketing leader has to make sure that they know and their team know how the business makes money and what the mechanics are there, and how the thing that you’re proposing is going to influence that.
18. To change direction slightly, Simon, I want to ask you how marketing leaders can role model the five competencies that we’ve discussed in this podcast?
Now many people said, “One of the things that’s constraining me doing visionary or being a better learner is having time”. So if you’re a marketing leader, you’ve got to set the agenda, set the environment to allow people time and, as I said earlier, to clearly encourage prioritisation and focus on not the volume of factory output mentality.
Once you’ve created that environment, I think if you’re a leader, you need to always look at yourself first and think, well, where am I in these competencies in the context of my own organisation and customers? Is it important for me to have as an individual and where is it okay to hire in? And then to put these competencies on the agenda with your team and to, as Stacey said earlier, understand how the competencies are spread around the team and to hire and develop to fill those gaps.
So, for a leader, I think reflect it on yourself: do I take all the other perspectives? Do I do that as a leader? Do I bring new perspectives into the discussion? For example, all these other industries or competitors are doing this or this other organisation has taken a completely different stance in the marketplace, or an external observer is saying that we’re not doing very well in this particular area, despite what we may think ourselves from an activation standpoint. I think as I said earlier, you’ve got to discuss and develop people around their ability to mobilise ideas in the organisation and to take part in that mobilisation when it helps.
And on the learner side, do you bring things to the team that helps with their learning? Do you create that environment? And do you, is all about something we’ve talked about a couple of times, do you encourage and reward targeted quality versus quantity? I mean, I can’t let this be finished without reminding myself that I worked in one organisation where the marketing organisation wasn’t very well perceived by the salespeople. And adjoined to the conference thing, the marketing leader says, “Oh, we need to bring in every sort of piece of brochureware that we’ve done for sales and customers”. And it’s an enormous table, it must’ve been ten foot by twenty foot. It was absolutely creaking with all this sort of brochureware that had been produced and yet the marketing team in question was poorly perceived because it was just responding to volume.
So, all of which weren’t useful to the salespeople really, and weren’t useful to the customer. So, encouraging and rewarding targeted quality versus quantitative for the sake of it is important role modelling of the usefulness. And then the E, try to demonstrate objectivity and balanced advocacy in front of the team, help them understand what that is. And to be honest, to kill your own pet projects. If you’ve got an idea or you wanted something to move forward and you can see that that’s not working, be brave enough in front of your own team and the rest of the leadership in the organisation to demonstrate that you’re killing that because it’s not worked.
19. Excellent. And I think there’s a lot of room there for our listeners to think about and to digest. Stacey, you’ve touched on this briefly, but do you think that the need for these competencies and marketing teams have increased since the COVID-19 pandemic began and will this importance continue to increase in the new era of work?
(37:42) Yes, well, absolutely. I think, everything that we’ve talked about here really has been amplified because of COVID. Now we talked about how everything just changed so suddenly, and we’ve seen a need for everything that we talked about.
So, continuing to have your eye on the horizon, or what we say was a visionary; activating new ideas and programs and the ability to get buy into those; constantly learning about the customer and the changing landscape; and then creating useful products, content programs, and evaluating what’s working, especially considering all this online shift versus in-person tactics. I think what to do about that is really evaluating job descriptions. So, we often joke about some of the marketing job descriptions that we see, which are looking for unicorns. There are pages of responsibilities that this person is responsible for, and we think this framework of the five competencies that we outlined will not go out of style. It’s what marketing leaders should be looking for as none of us can predict what new technologies, businesses, or even approaches that are going to emerge from this, the events over the past 12 months.
And if you bring employees in with these specific competencies, it shouldn’t really matter about their industry experience, which we see as sort of a constant requirement on job descriptions, but in fact can be a benefit in an asset because they can bring a new perspective to what your team is missing because they came from a different industry.
All in all, yes, I think these are going to continue to be extremely important because we’ve heard an alarming stat recently that said 83% of marketers are burnt out right now. And that went up 10% after the pandemic, so it’s really important not to just keep piling on more volume of activity, as Simon mentioned, but about developing smarter strategies with your marketing approach and clearing out the things that aren’t working, even if everyone else in your industry is jumping on the bandwagon. So, we see a lot of companies that are constantly chasing the shiny object, Clubhouse being the new social media platform to be the latest that everybody feels like they need to go rush into. So, it’s just being mindful and careful that you don’t get caught up in that cycle.
20. Thank you very much, Stacey. Now, I’d like to end this podcast with a question that we ask all our guests. Stacey, what do you think are the three qualities that make a good leader and, crucially, do you think these qualities have changed because of the pandemic?
(40:15) I’m not going to use all our competencies that we laid out here, but one of the first qualities I think that makes a strong leader is somebody that has vision. Somebody that can set a strategy and direction and provide clarity for where they want the business to go. Because it’s about getting people to buy-in to that vision and getting your team to see the broader picture.
The second, I would say, is somebody with courage. It’s having the quality to be bold, to be creative and the willingness to try new things.
And then lastly, just my overall ongoing quality that I think is important just in humans, in general, is communication and the ability to keep everybody informed, to maintain that alignment and to be constantly aware. As I mentioned, of the stat eight out of 10 marketers are burnt out right now, what conversations are you having with your team to help make sure that that isn’t everybody on your team? So, my personal philosophy is I think these are, these have always been important qualities. I don’t think the pandemic has necessarily changed these. I think it’s just, as I mentioned, amplified the need for people to develop these even stronger.
21. And finally, the same question to you, Simon. What do you think are the three qualities that make a good leader, and do you think these qualities have changed since the beginning of the pandemic?
(41:40) It’s a great question and as ever because you’ve asked me second, Stacey’s nicked all the good ones! So, building on what she said, I have vision on my list of three, and that’s really important, but I think that preceding the vision as a marketing leader, you have to demonstrate that you have the ability to bring an outside-in focus to always be concerned about the customer’s world, how the things that are happening around the customer’s world and then around your own environment could change things.
And then use that to help develop the vision and then to lead the change coming out of that vision. So that, two, leading the change from the vision and developing it from an outside-in perspective.
And then I think you’ve got to be able to finally, because you can tell, I like sporting analogies, bring in stuff from outside elsewhere we’ve talked about a lot is crucial. So, cricket in the UK, in England, the fielding got a lot better because people who coach cricket teams realise that people who play baseball field a lot more athletically than in cricket. So, it took a lot of learning from baseball. And I’ve just read that today, the coach of Leicester City Football team extended an invite to the new coach of Leicester Tigers Rugby Team so that they can share ideas on leadership. And I think, that’s both of those examples, the baseball meets cricket and the football meets rugby. In this country is good examples of what leaders should do, bringing thinking in from elsewhere.
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In this ever-changing world of work, the competencies marketeers need to succeed, and ultimately stand out are changing. So today, we’re joined by Stacey Danheiser and Dr. Simon Kelly, principals of Shake Marketing Group and co-authors of the books Value-ology and Stand Out Marketing. They are here today to share how marketeers can elevate their careers by developing five key competencies.
To purchase their book ‘Stand-out Marketing’, please click here and use code STANDOUTMK20 for 20% off
1. So, to begin with, please could you introduce yourselves to our listeners. Simon, we’ll begin with you.
(01:02) Yes, my name’s Simon Kelly. I call myself a pracademic because I’ve had a long career in telecoms and IT, running marketing as a B2B marketing director. And I’ve also worked at various universities, currently at York University, and working with Stacey at Shake Marketing Group to help organisations stand out in marketing.
2. And Stacey, how about you? Could you let us know a little bit about your background and your current role?
(01:33) Hi, I’m Stacey Danheiser, I’m based in the United States and I’m the founder of Shake Marketing Group. As Simon mentioned, we work with B2B organisations to help them with customer research, value proposition development and marketing strategy. I’m the co-author of the two marketing books that you mentioned, along with Simon, and prior to starting Shake Marketing, I also worked in various corporate marketing leadership roles for about 14 years for several Fortune 500 companies.
3. As you said, you’ve both recently released your new book called ‘Stand Out Marketing’. Could you tell us a little bit more about the book and the research that you’ve conducted around the topic?
(02:13) So, Stand Out Marketing is a book that we wrote for both leaders and individual contributors to help answer the question; “Do I and our team have the competencies to help my company stand out?”.
It was really born out of the research that we did into three different industries: the telecoms industry, data centre and UK universities. And after we scraped the websites and Twitter feeds of the top thirty companies within each of these industries, we discovered that everyone is telling a similar story. They’re all using the same words, descriptions, jargon, and “why us” story.
So, we were curious about why this was happening, and we embarked on some more research where we conducted dozens of one-on-one interviews with marketing, sales and business leaders across the UK and US. We also led a global survey with over fifty respondents and we’ve also had our own first-hand corporate experience in over two dozen client projects.
4. And in your book, you mentioned the fact that marketing is ‘swimming in a sea of sameness’ and you gave some examples there such as using the same jargon. I imagine this makes it difficult for organisations to stand out from their competitors. Could you explain the concept in more detail?
(03:25) So, as I mentioned, this was really based on the research that we did into those three industries. The ‘sea of sameness’ is referring to the fact that every company within these industries sound the same.
What we found is that generic business terms are really overused. Words like services, solutions, business, were the most frequently used words that popped up and most phrases, we also found, start with “we” and “our” instead of being about the customer. So, benefit statements that we’ve been in business for a hundred years, we have 24/7 support, comments like that don’t really take it to the next level to explain why a customer should care about that.
And then we also found that proof points are rarely used that are meaningful to the customer. So, for example, there are a lot of promises to help businesses grow or transform. But when you ask how, the answer is always something about purchasing the product or service. So, these are lofty and empty claims or what we say the bridge from how to get a customer from where they are to where they want to be is weak.
5. Thanks Stacey. There are probably some marketeers listening to this who realise that they are guilty of some of those things. And standing out from the crowd is key to marketing, so in the context of your book, could you please talk us through why that is essential?
(04:44) So crucially, when every company sounds the same, basically it leaves customers completely confused about what makes each one different. So, customers end up completely overwhelmed and they just end up making a choice that is usually the cheapest even if that means that it’s not the best option for their situation.
When we asked why this is happening, people listed many reasons, but there’s one that really interested us and that was pure laziness. So, many marketers are really just skipping crucial steps to understand the customer, digging in, doing research and uncovering insights and also doing the true deep soul-searching work of figuring out the essence of what makes their organisation different. And they’re just instead copying what their competitors are doing.
So, after all, it’s easy to go to a competitor’s website, read their “why us” statement and then slightly rewrite it for your own website. But this really comes across as inauthentic. It lacks the depth that we talked about earlier and does not fully mobilise or excite the organisation to deliver on their promise to customers.
Thanks Stacey, that was a great explanation. You can really understand why that sea of sameness exists when everybody’s copying one another, essentially.
6. And Simon, we’re here today to discuss how marketing can stand out from the crowd by developing five key competencies. So, which competencies do you think marketeers of today are lacking when it comes to standing out from the crowd that you’ve mentioned?
(06:20) Yes, no problem. Before I get into that, maybe I can talk about what we see as a competency because it’s quite a contested word. So, we think it’s the knowledge, the skills and the behaviours all put together that you need to be successful in your role. For example, our interviewees said that the most important role of marketing was brand management, which is not a surprise. So, that’s a job to be done by marketing, which is about differentiating the brand in a meaningful way to customers. What do you need to know? What do you need to be good at? And how do you need to behave to develop and mobilise a brand within your company and, crucially, in the markets? That’s what we mean by competencies; What do you need to know? What do you need to be able to be good at to mobilise people?
So, from our research, the five competencies that came out, together, spell the word VALUE.
V is for visionary, which is about foreseeing potential changes in the broader business environment in the market.
A is for activator, which is about getting buy-in to initiatives and to get the business driving forward for growth.
L is for learner, which is about learning from changes in the environment and what your customers’ value and in what sets you apart from competitors.
U is for usefulness, which is differentiating a way that’s relevant, practical, and resonates with customers.
E is for evaluator. This is to evaluate the ongoing success of marketing and sales campaigns and, at the front-end, to evaluate ideas that might be brought forward to see if they’re worth moving forward by the business.
7. Thanks Simon, and we’ll go through each of those elements starting with visionary. What does it mean for marketeers and how can they demonstrate this competency effectively?
(08:14) Well, okay. The first one, to stand out as a visionary, marketeers have got to demonstrate that like an eagle they can soar to 10,000 feet and zoom out to see the big picture, before zooming in on the things that could have the most impact, both for the customer and their own organisation.
So, at any one time, there are lots of things going on, coming up on the near horizon or in the far distance. And if we look at what’s happening lately, it’s really dizzying. In the US, there’s a new president who, on his first day, brought America back into the Paris Global Climate Agreement. In Europe, there’s Brexit for the UK withdrawal from the European Union. And of course, COVID has dramatically swept the world and affected us all in many ways; changes in online shopping, too many zoom meetings, moving towards a situation where mental health awareness is on the agenda. And if we compare the fortunes of different chief executives, for example, Pfizer versus British Airways, we’ll see that these things have had a dramatically different effect on different organisations.
And when we think about what’s happening on the technology front, it’s just eye-watering. The first iPhone was launched in 2007, and the last time I looked there were three and a half billion globally. And coming up on the horizon and starting to embed itself in organisations, we’ve got 3D printing, robotics, artificial intelligence, and all these things have impacted on customer behaviour and uncompetitive behaviour.
So, I suppose the two big examples are Airbnb and Uber, and then more lately, Lyft, who have massively impacted industries and don’t even have any of the assets that those industries are famous for. So, taken together, a marketeer must know how all this stuff will impact their customer, their own company, and their industry.
So, if you prefer a sporting analogy, I’ll use the famous and greatest ice hockey player ever, Wayne Gretzky, the Canadian guy, as an example. He says that you must skate to where the puck is going, not where it’s been. So, you’ve got to join all that stuff together and say, “Okay, what’s going to happen and how can we predict that?” Marketeers need to get better at that.
8. Thanks very much, Simon. And talking about the acceleration of technology and being a disruptor, how can marketeers generate creative and innovative ideas that can help their organisations to move forward, or stand out? Do you have any tips?
(10:56) I think they’ve got to read in tech reference points more widely than they would traditionally do. So, look outside your own industry, profession and at other disciplines. I mentioned before, when I’ve been asked these questions, that sport’s quite a good example because they seem to be quite good at sharing between disciplines. For example, in this country, Leicester Tigers’ new coach, Steve Borthwick, he’s meeting with the Leicester soccer or football manager, Brendan Rogers to share experience. So, marketeers should do that and listen to industry experts, dive into stuff that industry experts like and get on to Ted Talks.
When you think about, one of the great academic gods of marketing which is Ted Levitt, I would say, don’t be myopic. Don’t be near-sighted. And then, get together with people, have what the Americans call “brown bag lunch sessions” where you get together and talk about things that are happening and how that might impact on people. And then come up with creative solutions from that. So, you must develop this wider understanding and appreciation to come up with those creative ideas. And so you could work with people like us, if you want to think that through, to do brainstorming about where the future might lead you and to predict about what this combination of potential things can do for you, because in the end, as a marketeer, your job is not just to do all that broad visioning. You’ve got to be able to zoom in on the thing that could be good for your company and for you, the thing that might move the needle for the customer and make your organisation money.
9. So, following on from that, if we could look at the second competency which is activator, that’s about, bringing those ideas to life and activating them. How can marketeers go about getting their ideas heard by their managers to progress or to execute in a vision for change?
(13:04) Again, it might be worth just talking about what makes an activator. Firstly, you must be able to be what we call a “balanced advocate.” So, you’ve heard me say a couple of times already, you’ve got to understand what’s going to work for both your customers and for your company; how well your company is going to make more money, how your organisation is judged on being successful. And you’ve got to be able to listen, but not just listening in order to reply, to really listen emphatically to understand what people are telling you, to understand what’s affecting customers, what might be affecting other people in your organisation. And crucially, you’ve got to be able to understand that you need to negotiate; that not everything that you take forward as an idea should be what we call “fully baked”, because other people are going to have taken on the idea, and from their experience may give you tips to make it better.
And then you must be tenacious, more than anything else, because not all great ideas get taken up the first time. There are apocryphal stories about Dyson and how many times he (James Dyson) got rejected for, now, his revolutionary vacuum cleaners. And then when he moved towards execution, he claims to have had 5,000 prototypes before he found one that worked.
And then you must be people centric. So, to get stuff to work and to get your organisation to buy into it, you’ve got to understand the people in the organisation. What motivates your boss, what type of person they are, what’s going to excite them as a new idea and then the other executives in the organisation. And then to be able to what we call contextualised, to talk at different levels in the organisation to understand what your director is interested in, what the person who leads a sales organisation might be motivated for et cetera. So, that’s the combination of things that make up an activator and they’re the things that people need to do to be good activators.
10. And how can marketeers become more adaptable to modify their strategies accordingly?
(15:13) I think almost the answer is in the question there, because that’s the key, you got to be adaptable. I think if I observed throughout my professional career, the thing that marketeers do wrong most often is this whole thing of going in with ideas that we call “fully baked” and then not liking it if somebody has a different take on the idea or puts forward a better variation. Adapt based on what you hear being said and take away the great ideas and mould them back into your idea and come back with modifications that improve it. Now, this is not designed by committees, it’s other experts or people who have a different take, giving you a different view. So, be adaptable to that and then be adaptable to changes in the market to maybe change your idea too.
11. I guess then, a blocker to doing things differently could be, a person’s organisation being quite unwilling or resistant to change. What advice would you give to someone in that position?
(16:19) Well, I think that’s a great question because I think most marketeers underestimate the fact that at the core of it, they are change agents trying to get the organisation to move towards a different idea or towards a new market. So, you’ve got to create that compelling change case, recognise that that’s what you’re doing. You are trying to get a change in the organisation, the change in its focus. So, listen to the counterarguments and then create a sense of urgency to do that thing that you’re suggesting; if we don’t do this, then what’s going to happen? Are we going to miss out on an opportunity? Is that performance going to start to dip?
And above all, try to be more self-aware and self-reflective. It’s easy to say that an idea never got put forward because the other person was a bit stubborn, but it could be because the approach you took didn’t quite work and accepting all of that. There is a chapter in our book about culture and all this stuff takes place in different organisational cultures. And, we’ve spoken to people who are in senior positions who have left organisations because in the end, they do get a sense that there isn’t an appetite for change. And if you are somebody that likes to change and likes to see it driven, then maybe it’s not always right to be in the current organisation that you’re in. And this is part of the wider cultural fits question.
Cultural fit is extremely important and shouldn’t be undervalued. And if we move to Stacey now, we’re looking at the third competency, which is the learner.
12. Why is it so important for marketeers to upskill to keep on learning and developing, especially in this new era of work that is constantly accelerating with changes?
(18:10) Well, I think 2020 perfectly sums up the reason why being a learner is so important. So many marketers started last year with one set of plans and then six weeks into the year, everything changed. So, for example, the shift from in-person events to online events created an immediate need to learn new technologies.
Companies that had a group of strong learners were able to understand that business and customer expectations have changed, and they were able to adapt to that more quickly. Being a learner is about having a mindset of curiosity. It’s being open to new ideas, able to critically think. And I think, crucially, for this audience, it’s about being deliberate and self-directed rather than waiting for your boss or your manager to come and tell you what to go learn.
Upskilling is important, and that could be about learning a new technology, but there’s also the human side of this, which is learning about your customers, understanding what’s happening in the competitive landscape, the market; there’s many things that that does. And one client that I’m thinking of that we worked with was able to demonstrate that they had the best customer understanding. And they were suddenly invited to participate into strategic sessions in the company. So, previously they had not earned a seat at that table, but because they were the most relentless and able to understand what was happening with the customer base, they became a real source of knowledge there.
13. Thanks Stacey. I’m interested in learning about the implications of not upskilling or not continuously learning versus doing so. I imagine there’s a real risk of being left behind if you don’t carry on learning throughout your career?
(20:00) Yes, exactly. I think what we know is that the only thing that is constant is change. So, of course, the major implication for not learning is that you will not be able to adapt quickly and you may even make yourself or your job obsolete if you can’t keep up with the changing times. And I’ve seen this personally in my career that marketing leaders and individuals that couldn’t keep up with the technology, or didn’t really understand the technology and didn’t bring people onto their team that understood the technology, all of a sudden people are sitting around the table that are not marketers, and maybe they have an IT background or a product or sales background and they were able to more specifically talk about that. Eventually, those people work themselves out of that job because they couldn’t keep up with the technology and understand that.
I think about how much my role has changed, how much I’ve seen marketing change over just the past ten years and the number of different tools that we use now. Often, those tools do make your job easier and they do give you greater insights. So, I really do think it is essential because of the reasons you’ve just pointed out there as well.
14. Do you have any tips for our listeners to help them effectively upskill in a way that perhaps works for them?
(21:18) So the first, you may be wondering is what do I need to learn? We have a set of categories and questions in the book that covers five key areas.
The first is the market. What’s happening with market trends? Where is the market going in the next five years? It’s everything in that visionary category that Simon talked about.
Competitors, what’s happening with the competitive landscape. Who are the top competitors and not just direct competitors, but indirect competitors? And, of course, the number one competitor of people just getting complacent and doing nothing.
The third is understanding the company and the product or service solution. So, where’s the company headed? What are our revenue targets this year and next? What’s the mission of the company? Why are they in business? How are they measuring the value that they provide to customers? One of the number one questions that we like to challenge people with is what problem do you solve for customers? And, starting there, if you cannot answer that, that’s a great place, how well do you really understand the company and the products.
The fourth area is customers. So, who is your ideal customer? What are their top needs and pain points? What are their motivations? As I mentioned in that example, if you’re the one that knows the most about your customer base, you will be invited to participate in strategic conversations.
And then lastly is the role. So, depending on where you are, where you sit in the organisation, what are your strengths and weaknesses? What do you need to learn to improve in your current job? What’s the next job that you want to have and what do you need to learn to get to that next level? I would say I’d start there, ask yourself, where do I lack knowledge within these categories and choose one to get better at.
The second that we hear from a lot of marketers, the biggest hurdle and impediment to learning is that they just don’t have time. So, this is something that is one of those habit-building things. Set aside fifteen minutes to read and think. Don’t view this as wasted time but as valuable time to make yourself smarter. So, a lot of people feel like they must be doing and checking things off a to-do list. Well, add then, I need to read for 15 minutes or I need to watch a video for 15 minutes to make myself smarter. And replace some of that mindless Instagram or Twitter scrolling with something that’s going to help you be smarter in your job.
And then lastly, it’s about developing a sense of curiosity. So, when we were children, we asked our parents about 300 questions a day but by the time we get to middle school, we stop asking questions altogether. So, it’s going back to that childlike curiosity and a great place to start is to ask “why” questions. So, digging deeper into programs that you’re running or products that you’re selling and digging into the “why are those successful or not successful.”
And then another great one is “what if.” So, when we ask the question “what if,” our brains go into this imaginative place that leads us down a path where you could potentially come up with new ideas and innovations.
Thanks for that Stacey, some interesting points. I like the example that you gave, people stopping asking questions, as they reach school age. And I think there’s some, important questions there for our listeners to ask themselves as well.
15. As the expectations that are placed on marketing functions continue to increase in this new era of work, marketeers are understandably under a lot of pressure to prove the value of their role in order to demonstrate their usefulness, which brings us on to that term. How can they prove their usefulness effectively?
(25:01) Firstly, we define usefulness as the ability to connect the dots from what your company does to how it helps solve a customer problem. So, this includes, products, services, your sales approach, your service approach, marketing content. I mean, really everything you do should be viewed through this lens of being useful to both customers and your company.
To be useful, we developed this usefulness triangle, and there’s really three elements to that:
So, the first is knowledge. This is the skills and experience that you possess that other people would find helpful. So, it’s about mastering something; just as you would not take your car to be fixed by an untrained mechanic, it’s the same thing. Your customer wants to buy something from people that are smart and that have dedicated their business to developing something that they know that they can trust. And another thing like B2B buyers, one stat we constantly see is that they want to work with sellers that understand their business. So first, it’s just about the knowledge piece there.
Two is about preparation, which is being ready and willing to help. Again, knowing that there is really no one-size-fits-all approach, that you have to constantly be thinking about the customer and rather than trying to push out a product, maybe thinking about how to make that more useful to individual customers, especially in a B2B buying situation where you have more than one decision-maker to reach.
And then the third element is timing. So, this is the phrase “timing is everything.” And right now, 90% of B2B buyers are willing to interact with the seller early. So, it’s about getting in there to help them solve problems and eliminate problems that they might not know that they have. Another stat, about 35-50% of sales is going to the vendor that responds first to a customer inquiry. So, this timing piece is important in being useful.
One of the things that we see many marketing team’s missing right now is customer research. There’s not a big budget for this and yet companies are willing to spend millions of dollars on advertising, but not really understanding what it would take to make the advertising more effective. And so, it’s about prioritising that deep customer understanding. You cannot be useful to a customer if you don’t understand what they need, first and foremost.
Thank you, Stacey. Over the past year, all of us have worked from home for most of it, and that can probably be expected for some time to come at least. And that means that work and personal lives have become blurred as the one space, and we’ve spoken about how marketing has been under a lot of pressure.
16. How can marketeers effectively prove their value without suffering from burnout?
(28:01) Yes, this is a great question. I saw a startling stat the other day that said 83% of marketers are burnt out. That’s the most of any other profession, and it went up 10% since before the pandemic.
So, what does that mean? It means that suddenly there’s a lot of pressure being put on marketing teams to over-deliver. So, because everything went from in-person to suddenly digital interaction, that largely fell on the shoulders of marketing, to go make the website, messaging and emails better, and put together programs, webinars and podcasts to engage customers.
And so, I think from a marketing standpoint, it’s about taking a step back and putting together a strategy, making sure that you really understand what it is that you’re trying to achieve. It’s not about constantly executing the idea of the day or the flavour of the day. So, if somebody comes and knocks on your door and says, “Hey, I just got a white paper from a competitor. We need to go create a white paper”, or “Hey, so-and-so is creating a podcast, we need to go create a podcast”, It’s about, as Simon mentioned, understanding your business and what your business is trying to achieve.
And then this usefulness piece, again, going back to customers, understanding what the customers really want and need and what’s going to be the best use of your time. Do your customers even read white papers, for example, or are they more video people? Many marketers just don’t know the basic answers to some of these customer questions and so they get stuck in this cycle of just constant execution. So, it’s not about being better or faster executors or working around the clock, but about only choosing and working on those things that are going to move the needle.
Thanks Stacey, that makes perfect sense. And moving to Simon for the final key competency you mentioned in your book, which is evaluate – taking stock of what is and isn’t working, which Stacey just touched upon there.
17. How important is it for marketeers to assess and analyse whether their activity is having the desired impact?
(30:12) Well, I think Stacey teed that up fantastically because, the number one reason is if you can’t do it, you’ll end up being in the 83% that are burnt out because you’re just responding to things that sound like an activity.
As Stacey said, “Can you do this white paper because somebody else is doing one?” or, “Can we go to this event again?” et cetera. And quite often that’s because organisations have this activity illusion, which means that the more you do, they believe that more is going to happen. Now, that’s not the case because if you prioritise on the things that are really going to move the needle, then you must drop some of the things that aren’t having an impact. And you must be able to prove the case at both ends. So, you must have the skill to be able to do it and measure and evaluate.
Now, these are quite dangerous times to be a marketeer, in a way because marketeers have never had a great impression with the chief finance officer and, really, with the chief executives as well because of this whole issue of them not being able to measure the success. Now, at this moment in time, because of digital marketing, it’s much easier to measure some things. But all the things that are easy to measure, now what they call vanity metrics, so I could tell you how many likes are out of my Facebook page or the page impressions on the website or click-through rates to my website or from my website to somewhere else. But it must roll up to be about revenue and profitability or customer satisfaction. And so, it’s crucial that you can evaluate new opportunities to decide how you prioritise.
And it’s crucial to be able to say, were stopping that one cause it’s not worked, or we are going to just slightly change that because there’s one or two things that are not working, or are we just going to keep going with that cause it’s been really successful.
You can burn a lot of cash in calories focusing on the wrong things and just imagine how much of a positive impact you would have in an organisation if you had the bravery to say, “Oh, and by the way, this is one of my own initiatives, which I am prepared to change or stop because I’m not seeing the desired effects of this campaign”. So, all the above reasons are why it’s important, from burnout to enhancing reputation in the C-suite trying to be somebody that’s got integrity and credibility and organisation.
18. Thanks, Simon. And do you think that the need for these competencies in marketing has increased with the COVID-19 pandemic? And do you think the importance will continue into the new era of work?
(33:00) I would say yes, dramatically. I mean, let’s have a look at a few examples. So, when we get back to vision, the V, we’re not saying you’ve got to be, it’s always a vision for five years down the road. We’re talking about far distance and near horizon. So, this thing just came up on people quickly, and companies that displayed vision, so they converted their output from being gin distillers to providers of hand sanitisers. Or we know of an example of an event management company in Boston that used it’s QR code capability to switch from events to checking people onto construction sites for safety, and so that’s an example of vision.
From an activation standpoint, the companies we’ve just talked about could talk about how those ideas got mobilised quickly and got turned around. Now, we have spoken to other companies who said we’ve had some great ideas and our organisation was too cumbersome and got in each other’s way to move those ideas forward. So, activation has either got people ahead of that curve in this lockdown, and it’s going to help them going forward.
So, the learner, as Stacey said, has really been heightened during this pandemic. Customer habits and needs are changing, and things are rolling forward very quickly. We’ve gone from a situation where everybody had loads of Zoom meetings and thought they were great to now they’re realising it’s just terrible. People are getting tired of it; people are having mental health problems and anxiety. And just a real tactical example that, locally, I’ve noticed that all people do now is sit in the house and either work or watch films and then they go for walks in the locality. And there seems to be this trend to stop off for coffee and food stops. The local bakeries that have responded to this started to open on both days of a weekend because it’s a big money-spinner and others have not because they’ve not seen that change in behaviour.
And as far as usefulness is concerned, new problems have come to the surface and therefore you’ve got to find some new solutions. Some of which we gave as examples, either you change the offer that you make, or you change what you say because you need to resonate with a thing that’s now the issue. IBM was a great example from quite early on in the pandemic where, because of what they realised what would happen and they changed from quite a big portfolio to focus on six big things that they knew were important for customers and segmented the customers in to look at them in different ways.
Some big companies needed to be kitted out with laptops and broadband and stuff like that because they’d never worked from home. And then evaluator is heightened because you’ve got to be quick to assess what in your portfolio might not be working, what is working and to change direction quickly. So, even more than before, I would have thought.
Well, thank you very much Simon and Stacey. It’s been great to learn about your book, Stand Out Marketing. I’m sure it’s given our listeners plenty to think about as well and given them plenty to reflect on their own careers, how they operate in their roles as well and what they’re doing within their organisations. I’d like to finish on a question, and I’ll ask you both separately. We’ll start with you, Simon.
19. If you had one piece of advice to help our listeners navigate their careers through the pandemic and beyond, what would that be?
(36:57) One and a half really. I’m in the camp of don’t feel that it’s a problem if you’ve just got through this because it’s been tough, and there’s plenty of marketeers who’ve been made redundant or furloughed through this process.
So, I would say cut yourself some slack but adapt and be pragmatic and learn the things that people deem to be useful now. In this book, we don’t talk about digital a lot because we regard that as a skill that sits inside the overall competency added to behaviour knowledge, as we said. But right now, organisations are asking for people that are digital natives or have got digital expertise.
So, unashamedly as the lead writer for Marketing Week said in his column recently, you have to go to interviews developing a story about what you’ve done to be a digital native because that’s what’s important now. But nevertheless, these big competencies are the enduring things that we believe, carry or follow. But above all else, cut yourself some slack. This is a tough time, just get through it and do the best you can to be a good marketeer.
Thanks, Simon. I think that’s very important: don’t be too hard on yourself.
20. And Stacey, if I could ask the same question of you. If you had one piece of advice to help our listeners navigate their careers through the pandemic and beyond, what would that be?
(38:27) Yes, so my advice, I think building on what Simon said, it would be about mindset. And that’s really to recognise that you have the power to change and impact your own development. And this is about having the courage to take ownership of your career and not waiting or relying on your manager to prescribe a specific plan. So, it’s defining what you want and what you don’t want in your career and being bold enough to go after it. And as a starting point, we listed five competencies here today, so choose one that resonated with you the most and just commit to starting to get better at that. It’s really going to help you as a marketer, but also help define what you’re good at and where you want to take your career.
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It will come as no surprise to employers and employees alike that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the mental health and wellbeing of many employees.
But what specific challenges are employees facing, and what opportunities are there for employers who wish to support people more effectively?
We’ve gathered global and regional data in the Hays Journal Statistical Snapshot to find out.
The challenges of the pandemic have forced many businesses to adopt an innovative mindset in order to adapt to new demands in record time. And while many of us look forward to the world returning to what will be the new normal, this way of thinking is something that many organisations will want to hold on to.
The year 2020 was one of seismic change for everyone, both at home and at work. Businesses were forced to evolve and adapt rapidly in light of the COVID-19 crisis. In the year where hybrid and home working, virtual meetings, social distancing and face masks became the new normal, many organisations had to completely revamp their business models and working practices.
Innovation became a matter of survival during the COVID-19 pandemic
According to a global study of 899 C-suite executives by McKinsey, companies have accelerated by three to four years the digitisation of their customer and supply chain interactions, and of their internal operations, following the pandemic. Furthermore, the share of digital or digitally enabled products in their portfolios has progressed by seven years.
One of the most common changes for organisations around the world was needing to switch to a fully remote workforce. “Our shift, like other businesses, was very rapid,” says Peter Histon, Chief Technology Officer at life insurance firm Resolution Life Australasia. “We wanted to ensure our people could safely work at home whilst being connected to their team on a daily basis. Our people’s wellbeing is really important to us.
“We used a monthly engagement survey to ask them how they were managing, what further support they needed and if they were set up adequately with the appropriate equipment to do their job. We delivered monitors, chairs and headsets all across Australia. Each leader was empowered to make decisions that would support their team’s wellbeing and performance.”
It was a similar story at PwC UK. Laura Hinton, Chief People Officer, says that prior to COVID-19 around 10 per cent of PwC’s employees worked remotely at any one time. This switched to nearly 100 per cent almost overnight. “Of course, switching all of our 22,000 people to remote working was unexpected, but our investment in technology and embracing a culture change meant this particular adaptation was relatively smooth,” she notes.
Hinton says a decade’s worth of innovation and change took place in months and that some of the new practices, including flexible and remote working, will form the framework for businesses in the post-pandemic world.
Kathleen Jones, Chief People Officer (interim) at Rathbone Brothers, says the investment management sector has been similarly overhauled in a very short space of time. Much of this change has, Jones believes, actually been a positive thing. “Organisations like ours were worried about embracing flexible working because these businesses weren’t sure how they would manage productivity, but this has made many companies see that people can remain productive and professional while working remotely,” she says. “The pandemic has been a catalyst for a new way of thinking for us.”
How adopting an agile mindset can create opportunities for your organisation
Some organisations had to do more than move to a remote working model, and completely changed their business model to ensure they survived the effects of the pandemic. Across the globe, organisations pivoted to create products to help fight the spread of COVID-19.
Fiasco, a New Zealand-based company which usually supplies touring equipment such as protective road cases for musicians, was forced to quickly rethink its strategy when the live music industry was paused. The business considered what different products it could produce with its existing supply chain and began making home working desks and plastic screens for retailers instead.
In China, Foxconn Technology Group repurposed its production lines to make surgical masks. Meanwhile, luxury goods conglomerate LVMH began producing hand sanitiser at its Dior and Givenchy perfume sites. And in South Korea, CJ CGV, a major cinema chain, created completely contactless theatres, with robots, automated snack bars and unmanned ticketing systems.
Michel van Hove is Partner at Strategos, a US strategy and innovation consultancy founded in 1995 by Gary Hamel. He says that with mounting challenges, many businesses moved quickly to offer new or altered services or products. “There was a general sense of urgency and, in many cases, companies quickly scaled up basic infrastructure that was already in place.”
He adds that in times of difficulty there are often opportunities available to those who can see them. “Generally speaking, when constraints are applied there will always be individuals who see this as an opportunity to come up with different working practices and behaviours that help them achieve better outcomes.”
Why innovative organisations outperform their peers
While an organisational culture that promotes change and innovation can be necessary to survive economic challenges, it can also give businesses a competitive edge when things are more stable.
Boston Consulting Group’s global Most Innovative Companies Report 2020 found that 66 per cent of the 2,500 executives surveyed see innovation as a top three management priority. Yet only 45 per cent are “committed innovators” – that is, they see innovation as a top priority and back up that commitment with significant investment.
“Sceptical innovators” (30 per cent of the total) see innovation as neither a strategic priority nor a significant target of funding. And “confused innovators” (25 per cent of the total) report a mismatch between the stated strategic importance of innovation and their level of funding for it.
The research found that committed innovators are seeing the best results. Almost 60 per cent report generating a rising proportion of sales from products and services launched in the past three years, compared with only 30 per cent of the sceptics and 47 per cent of the confused.
And in Australia, a 2020 survey of 180 firms by Innovation and Science Australia found that SMEs with high growth in technology spending increased their revenue 3.5 percentage points per year faster, and employment 5.2 percentage points faster, than those with low technology spending.
How can organisations continue to prioritise innovation post-COVID-19?
With this in mind, how can businesses ensure that the innovative mindset they gained by necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic becomes a permanent part of their culture?
1. Celebrate your achievements
One way to maintain the momentum of employees’ innovation-ready mindset is to celebrate their achievements so far. Kate Cooper, Head of Research, Policy and Standards at the Institute of Leadership and Management, points out that while the long-term impact on productivity after switching to home working is still something of an unknown, employees’ willingness to make this change is something businesses should champion.
“So many people have demonstrated capabilities to learn new technologies very quickly, to find ways of collaborating with colleagues and manage performance – all virtually,” Cooper says.
This is indicative of an adaptability we will continue to need in the future, she says, not just in response to a crisis. “It could be we need to get something to market, find new suppliers or train people on a new system – whatever it is, an ability to respond quickly and effectively will deliver real competitive advantage.”
2. Continue to disrupt and question your business model
In November 2020, Resolution Life switched to a new working model called ‘enterprise agile’ to support an innovative mindset beyond the pandemic, says Histon. “This has enabled us to fundamentally shift the way we collaborate across the organisation, to transparently generate ideas, test solutions and ultimately deliver great outcomes for our customers.”
As part of this shift, the business now holds regular events called ‘ceremonies’ to provide feedback from different levels of the business.
“One of the ceremonies we’ve implemented as a part of our agile flip is the concept of a fortnightly showcase. These are open to the entire organisation and the senior leadership team (including our CEO) have a presence at each of the showcases.
“This gives our people the opportunity to hear regularly from the senior leadership team about how important innovation is and how they are embracing ‘different’.”
3. Build a culture of clear, consistent communication
Sheryl Fenney, Vice President, Global HR at Fanatics, an international sports merchandise business that works with the likes of the NFL, Manchester United and Bayern Munich, says she and her colleagues learned that building a culture of communication and strong leadership was essential when implementing quick changes to their business.
“With so much uncertainty in our lives and with our offices being across 11 countries, it was important that our global leadership team gave a strong, clear and consistent message,” she notes. “Increasing our communication, both at a global and local level, was also vital.”
They also learned that they needed to put employee welfare at the heart of business, says Fenney. “We did a lot of work making sure that we regularly communicated to our whole organisation and that our leaders showed humility, empathy and honesty when they spoke, many sharing personal stories of challenges they’ve faced,” she comments.
But while the COVID-19 crisis was very much a global issue, Fanatics had found that in previous periods of significant change within the company, different countries responded in varying ways. In the UK, for example, employees sometimes struggled to adapt. “In the UK we had found, after compiling employee feedback previously, that people were more resistant to change or saw it as a negative,” Fenney says.
To help combat this, Fanatics rolled out a number of ‘change workshops’ for UK employees, delivered by an external facilitator. “This wasn’t needed as much in other countries, such as the US, where the employee base was much more used to and excited by change,” Fenney notes.
4. Your processes must keep pace
Of course, for many businesses, following processes to ensure services or products are delivered to a set standard is as important as innovating regularly. Accordingly, van Hove warns that these should be developed with equal urgency.
“At Strategos we believe innovation can flourish by enabling creativity with robust processes,” he explains. “These are not mutually exclusive as many like to believe. Core processes and shared purpose provide overall coherence for everyone.
“If we look at our clients, 2020 was a time when prescribed ways of working (policies and procedures) were often ‘ignored’ in favour of helping colleagues and customers. Organisations need to innovate their products and services, but those same processes must apply to their working practices.”
Kosta Mavroulakis, CEO and Founder of global innovation scouts Empact Ventures, agrees and recommends that organisations research to see if there are existing products that may support them in this endeavour, something he has witnessed organisations do throughout the pandemic. “It led them to make better use of existing off-the-shelf platforms, which better align to their existing system and processes,” he notes. “In other cases, it forced them to seek out new innovation provided by tech start-ups and scale-ups, or even to invest in creating their own.”
Renewable energy firm Bulb has taken on an additional 200 employees since the start of the Covid-19 crisis last March, and taken advantage of existing platforms to get the most from its workforce. “We use a mix of data and feedback to understand how things are working,” says Tom Fraine, Chief People Officer at Bulb. “One example is Slack – we know that this platform helps us work better remotely because our teams use it every day. If it doesn’t work, we change it.”
If businesses want to move quickly and effectively, Fraine says, they have to look closely at how their teams are using the tools and processes they have in place and change them if necessary. “We know that in order to be effective, we have to be agile in how we operate.”
Fenney, meanwhile, says that organisations can create a balance by putting equal weight on the importance of both innovation and process, even when recruiting: “Being innovative and agile is key for all roles, but it is important that we balance creativity with subject matter experts to ensure due diligence and compliance.”
5. Give your people the freedom to fail
Another key way of nurturing an innovative mindset is to ensure that reversing changes where necessary is not seen as a step back. Not every new idea will be a success, and encouraging your people to be mindful of this is important, says van Hove.
“When innovating, learning about the idea needs to come before the commercial argument. Assumptions-based testing is a great way to put ‘learning before earning’ and allows colleagues to roll back changes, reflect and reconsider ideas or correct the course if necessary.”
Resolution Life has a reflection process known as ‘retros’, where teams recap on recent changes in the business. “Every fortnight in our retros, our squads and self-managing teams reflect on what went well and what could be improved,” says Histon. “This session really highlights how we’re a learning organisation and recognise there’s always room for improvement.
“Part of the focus in the agile model is testing and learning, and the phrase we use is ‘it’s ok to fail, but let’s do it quickly’. We want to test new ideas, but we want to know if they are going to work. If not, we can try a different approach before launching to customers. This means we have to be very focused on what we are learning and be open to changing things accordingly.”
Mavroulakis, meanwhile, says there is value in communicating clearly to internal and external stakeholders, and that innovations within an organisation may roll back if they are found to be ineffective. “Organisations can adapt their online and offline communications to be clearer about the changes, and how they are subject to change, to enable them to reverse them in the future,” he says.
Ultimately, an organisation’s ability to sustain a culture of innovation at all times, not just during a pandemic, requires a deep knowledge of what allows its employees to break barriers. No two organisations will have followed the same route, and even colleagues within the same organisation will have had different experiences. It’s for this reason, van Hove says, that organisations must investigate thoroughly and gain a full overview of what has helped their people over the past year.
“It is not enough to send out questionnaires, as many organisations did during the pandemic,” he says. “They must identify and engage with individuals to understand at a deeper level what motivated them to innovate their work practices.”
This blog was originally written as part of the Hays Journal.
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The COVID-era cohort of school and university leavers are facing unique challenges entering the world of work. What role can employers play in helping the next generation take the first steps of their career journey?
One of the lasting legacies of COVID-19 will be the unprecedented experience of young people who looked for, or started, their very first job during this pandemic. The ‘lockdown generation’ of school and university leavers will enter the world of work in a very different way to those that are training or supporting them.
Graduates and school leavers face a challenging time
While the roll-out of vaccines has begun in some countries, and economies begin to recover, it remains to be seen how much of the ‘new normal’ in the world of work will become permanent. The long-term effects of the pandemic to society and the economy will only become clear in time. Until then, how can organisations ensure they’re supporting the next generation of talent, and help them to feel positive about their first step on the career ladder?
There’s no doubt the ‘lockdown generation’ is facing challenges in this area, with internship offers withdrawn and many first-time employees furloughed or made redundant. Graduate job numbers fell in 21 countries due to COVID-19, according to the 2020 global report from the Institute of Student Employers (ISE), with eight geographies, including Ireland, Hong Kong SAR and South Africa, cutting graduate jobs by 15 per cent.
And it isn’t just graduates who have been affected: the number of available apprenticeships in England in 2020 was down 46 per cent compared with the same period in 2019, says the UK Government’s Department for Education.
Furthermore, a global survey from the International Labour Organization found that one in six young people aged 18-29 (17.4 per cent) had stopped working since the beginning of the crisis. The figure climbs to 23.1 per cent when restricted to the 18-24 category alone.
Why organisations need to rebuild their onboarding processes
However, with organisations focused on battling the pandemic’s negative impact on business, why should they assign valuable resources to reach out to first-job recruits? “Taking on apprentices or graduates might not be high on some HR teams’ to-do lists,” says Stephen Isherwood, Chief Executive at the ISE. “But this could be something businesses live to regret. Employers need to think about how they will build a pipeline of talent coming through the organisation – talent they’ll need when the economy recovers.”
Besides that practical consideration, some business leaders feel they also have a social responsibility to invest in the next generation. Technology entrepreneur Daniel Cooper, based in Cambridge in the UK, has set up the Lolly Foundation to provide graduates and school leavers with free training courses. “Numerous firms already have specific pledges that go beyond profit, like commitments to reduce their carbon footprint,” he says. “It’s time to commit to a new one – hiring from the lockdown generation.”
While the most obvious way employers can help is to continue graduate and intern recruitment, apprenticeships and other training, the COVID-19 enforced working-from-home culture faced by many is a game-changer for onboarding new starters.
Many employers have been proactive in adapting to lockdown and social distancing requirements by creating virtual internships, hosting online inductions for new starters and turning previously in-person graduate training schemes into fully digital ones.
But Professor Christine Naschberger, of French business school Audencia, warns that although younger people are accustomed to online interaction, virtual onboarding still brings challenges: “It may be difficult to understand the company culture, and what the company expects from them in terms of performance and behaviour.
“Communication with their new line manager may be different because they cannot simply knock on the door if they have questions. Managers and HR professionals need to be proactive and reach out to the fresh starters to help them integrate.”
What’s more, employers will need to show compassion to the challenges this generation have faced. Being unemployed at a young age can have long-lasting “scarring effects” in terms of career paths and future earnings, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. And a UNICEF report published in December 2020 says that, for many young people, COVID-19 is “still making it more difficult to integrate into the labour market”.
Four ways you can support the next generation of talent
So, what can organisations do to support the ‘lockdown generation’, and help them to build their careers?
1. Rethink your mentoring strategy
Lauren Stiller Rikleen, President at the Rikleen Institute for Strategic Leadership, is a US-based expert on developing a multi-generational workforce. “Employers should consider thoughtfully designed programmes to assist with this generation’s adjustment to the professional world,” she says. “In particular, there will need to be a greater focus on intergenerational mentoring and support.
“Workplaces should strengthen their stress management programmes to operate at the employee, workplace and organisational levels. This could include, for example, early-career affinity groups that encourage open conversation in a supportive environment and coaching interventions to prevent minor performance challenges from having long-term implications.”
Sandy Wilkie, Co-Director at Greenhill HR, says HR teams and senior managers should be working hard to ensure new starters flourish. “It’s key to put more effort into regular and engaging conversations with new starters leading up to their start date. Ask them what and who they think they need to know and build this into a tailored onboarding or induction plan that blends face-to-face and online meetings.
“When they have joined, ask them how they feel on a regular basis and invite them to participate in daily check-ins so they feel supported and can highlight any problems they’re having.”
Wilkie agrees that intergenerational mentoring is important – and that it can benefit both mentor and mentee. “Reverse mentoring, or co-mentoring as I prefer to term it, can help a new graduate worker learn about behaviours, culture and organisational politics, while their more workplace experienced co-mentor can learn about new technologies, for example.”
And Rikleen adds “By having to cope with a change of life as they knew it, the next generation of employees may enter the workplace with a greater level of empathy and adaptability, qualities that are critical components of emotional intelligence and important to effective leadership. Employers can build on these skills by offering training programmes for young employees that will develop these leadership qualities from the outset of their careers.”
2. Find new ways to assess young talent
If an organisation decides it will take on first-job recruits, how can it spot talent among a cohort of young people who might have unconventional educational or employment track records due to the disruption of COVID-19?
Harjiv Singh is CEO of BrainGain Global, an online hub aimed at higher education students, primarily in South Asia. He says organisations can look for the alternative forms of development young candidates may have undertaken, as some may have gained transferable skills. “Organisations that are smart will look to see how individuals navigated the pandemic – despite the disruption, did they find a way to learn a new skill, make new connections or work on something pro bono in an area that they are passionate about? This shows resilience and someone who is not deterred by challenges.”
He also advises that if an organisation wants to attract young talent, it should better understand what the lockdown generation is looking for in an employer. “Young employees coming into an organisation want it to be supportive of their personal career growth and provide opportunities to learn new skills and gain experience.
“It’s also crucial to build a strong employer brand: next-generation candidates gravitate toward career opportunities that strike a strong work–life balance and offer a sense of purpose. They’re also drawn to organisations that embrace professional freedom, innovation and flexibility.”
3. Consider a ‘bumper year’ of young talent
Many organisations, such as accountancy and financial services firms, base much of their talent strategy around the progression of entry-level employees who gain qualifications on the job. These businesses now face the additional challenge of returning to a regular training cycle. So what are they doing to secure their talent pipeline?
Starting on a positive note, over half (54 per cent) of accountancy and finance employers in the UK tell us that they plan to hire new staff in 2021. This is actually a touch higher than last year (50 per cent). But while hiring remains on the agenda, there is more involved when it comes maintaining a pipeline of new talent.
Matt Rawlins, Director of accountancy and financial services training company Kaplan, expands, “In the absence of maintaining a pipeline, it’s predicted that the business will suffer in five to 10 years, due to a skills gap caused by the current talent moving up within the hierarchy, with no pool of talent to replace it,” he says. “They may also fail to demonstrate the diversity candidates and clients expect in an organisation.”
Rawlins warns that, in the longer term, this may lead to organisations needing to recruit more senior staff, increasing hiring costs and negatively affecting progression. “It’s certainly worth considering filling the gap with a bumper year of recruits or trainees,” he says. “A delay of a year won’t hugely affect a business’s talent pipeline; however, if the ‘hole’ is not plugged quickly the impact will be extrapolated.”
And once these talent gaps are filled, what can organisations do to ensure that training is adequate for these entry-level employees, even if working remotely? Simply replicating training that was once done in person online won’t be engaging for those taking part. Remote training has come a long way since its inception. There are now a huge variety of different models, tools and platforms that are worth exploring. Consider which is most straightforward for new hires or junior staff.
I would also recommend incorporating a variety of learning materials. Entry-level employees will need to absorb a lot of knowledge about the role and your organisation, so cater to all learning styles and preferences by ensuring that the delivery of the training (albeit remote) is diverse and interesting.
Finally, measure your results. Which aspects you track will depend on the goal of the training, but it will help you understand the comprehension and capabilities of your entry-level employees.
4. Explore government support
Employers don’t have to do it all on their own – they can look to government subsidies for help recruiting the next generation of talent. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority introduced a HK$10.8 million subsidy plan in 2020 to pay half the salaries of 300 university graduates hired by banks and other financial services firms in the region.
The French Government is spending €6.5 million to encourage companies to hire youngsters through financial incentives. And in China, the central government helped set up online recruitment platforms featuring job postings for graduates, while the regional government in Hubei province, the epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak, created more public sector jobs for graduates and increased funding to help SMEs hire graduates.
Meanwhile in the UK, the Government launched the Kickstart Scheme, which provides funding to employers to create job placements for 16 to 24-year-olds on Universal Credit. Looking at the impact on entry-level hiring for 2021, those industries most affected by the pandemic, including hospitality, leisure and travel, will most probably recruit less than other industries.
But across all sectors, Wilkie believes there will inevitably be a backlog of 2020 graduates who have not found an appropriate level, or any, job. “They will swell the ranks of those 2021 graduates looking for work and I expect many vacancies to be heavily over-subscribed. The economies that have been worst hit by COVID-19 – the USA and UK for instance – face far more long-term issues than the likes of New Zealand, Australia, China and Germany.” Whatever the availability of jobs in 2021 and beyond, he believes some of the pandemic-enforced changes in the way young people experience their introduction to the world of work will outlast the pandemic. “To some extent, COVID-19 has accelerated what was already happening. Face-to-face interaction isn’t going to disappear and will always be necessary, but many of the developments we’ve seen in virtual learning and recruitment are here to stay.”
This blog was originally written as part of the Hays Journal.
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