Greentarget

Special Situations

by

In part two of their conversation, host Aaron Schoenherr and Tanarra Schneider, Managing Director of Leadership & Culture at Accenture, discuss corporate America’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. They cover why diversity and inclusion initiatives are felt before they’re measured, and the challenges leaders face in backing up their organization’s point of view with meaningful action.

Tanarra Schneider

Episode Highlights:

1:27 – Aaron and Tanarra discuss affinity groups and who in an organization should have a seat at the table

3:50 – Tanarra provides advice on preparing C-suite executives for difficult conversations and why they should show up as a person, not an executive

7:17 – Aaron and Tanarra exchange thoughts on irrational reactions and the links between fear and violent reactions

11:43 – Tanarra explains how diversity, equity, and inclusion is felt before it is measured

15:30 – Aaron and Tanarra discuss why organizations cannot authentically express authority on social justice initiatives without action to back them up

16:52 – Tanarra encourages organizations to say they’re still learning and explains why they should join the conversation, not the news cycle

19:07 – Tanarra reveals who she views as an authority

by

A year after George Floyd’s murder, companies across America are still struggling with their place in the country’s racial reckoning. Many quickly released statements on diversity, equity, and inclusion – but they need to back up their words with actions. They need to go beyond the performative.

In the first of two episodes, Authority Figures host Aaron Schoenherr and Tanarra Schneider, Managing Director of Leadership & Culture at Accenture, discuss how organizations can – and should – go beyond the performative from an internal and external standpoint. Effective communication on these issues is about embracing vulnerability – and elevating diverse voices within organizations.

Tanarra Schneider

Episode Highlights:

1:48 – Tanarra discusses her background and advocating for her new role as Managing Director of Leadership & Culture at Accenture

4:53 – Tanarra explains how she keeps fear at bay and embraces discomfort

7:57 – Aaron and Tanarra discuss vulnerability in leadership

10:32 – Tanarra shares the common struggles among leaders who don’t know how to get vulnerable

14:10 – Aaron and Tanarra discuss going beyond the performative as companies look to communicate effectively as a result of the racial reckoning

20:00 – Tanarra shares her experience working within organizations as a female leader of color and encouraging them to go beyond the performative 

22:20– Tanarra makes the case for why organizations need to put people in leadership who fundamentally understand the needs of the different groups they represent

by

Should we put out a statement? Apply this decision tree and find out 

We saw it last year in the wake of George Floyd’s killing. We saw it again after the storming of the U.S. Capitol in January, and again amid the Georgia voting-rights outcry. We’re seeing it now in the wake of the guilty verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin.

It’s getting harder and harder for business leaders to remain silent or neutral when events trigger an emotional public response. But while speaking publicly on these issues will always carry risks, the outcome also presents an opportunity – if not an obligation – to communicate.

In these moments, being able to draw on well-defined organizational values – what you stand for, and how you demonstrate and encourage behavior that lives up to it – should make the process easier, the reception less controversial and the potential for blowback less likely. But not all organizations’ values are apparent enough to make this communication easier. Some aren’t apparent at all.

If your organization falls into either of the latter two categories, our counsel is to get busy defining your values, in writing, now. Whatever happened in Georgia, or the Chauvin trial, it’s clear this won’t be the last time you’ll need something to guide you in addressing sensitive social moments. It may not be the last time this month.

But in the meantime, we’re also here to tell you that, no matter where you are in defining your values, you can get to a sensible decision if you think it through.

Applying a decision tree

Imagine for a moment the decision tree you might apply to the Chauvin scenario. 

  • Will members of your constituency be impacted by this event? Very likely, given the impact and meaning of the event to Black and brown communities who are disproportionate victims of police violence; that said, in this and other scenarios, it may depend on how you define your constituency: Is it your employees? Your clients? The communities you work in and serve? All or some of the above?
  • Will you feel pressure from employees, clients, vendors or activists/other parties to take a position? This depends on your proximity to the event, but organizations of all types are experiencing this pressure more and more. If you’ve come this far and expect pressure to respond, then this is a no-brainer. You need to prepare a statement. 

But hold on. The decision tree doesn’t end there. Consider this:

  • Is this issue divisive, and/or is your statement likely to cause disagreement or division within your constituency? Put differently, will your constituency agree in its interpretation of the outcome as clearly right or clearly wrong? In the best of circumstances, unanimity is rare in a pluralistic society. It certainly seems impossible within our current hyperpartisan pluralism. So, the answer is likely a yes.

So do you prepare a statement? The decision is no longer quite so clear, complicated by the high likelihood that while you may satisfy one segment of your audience, you risk alienating another or creating divisions among segments – between say, those employees who would defund the police and others who support Blue Lives Matter.   

Thus, your decision needs to run through another critical filter:

  • Is the issue aligned with your organization’s mission? If it aligns with or impacts your mission, start writing.
  • Have you made such statements in the past? Have you taken actions to back those statements up? The authenticity and credibility of any statement issued to address a fraught moment will not be judged against the values that you claim to profess but by the values you demonstrate through your actions. Values reveal themselves in observable behavior. And an organization that claims to stand for diversity and inclusion, but which has done nothing to advance diversity and inclusion, needs to think carefully about how it participates in the conversation about diversity and inclusion or risk alienating its audience.  

All that said, it is quite possible that your mission is in no way related to the circumstances of this event. Whether you’re back in no-brainer territory depends on the final branch of this decision tree:

  • Is everyone in your organization clear about what it values?
    • If yes, does the recent event offend those values? If yes again, your decision to communicate is clear.
    • If no – or you’re not sure – does it present an opportunity to affirm your organizational values? To evolve them? Or to contribute to positive change through a statement followed by a change in behavior?

The need to define your organization’s values – today

As we’ve seen, sometimes the decision gets trickier the more you think about it – especially if you started thinking about it  for the first time the night before the verdict.

Remember that any statement that is not rooted in broadly recognized organizational values will be (correctly) judged to lack authenticity and credibility. Rather than contribute to the conversation, it will add to the noise. Under these circumstances, it would be better that you say nothing. As we’ve seen, the backlash against companies that offer weak statements regarding depredations of social justice can be fierce. 

This is the world we live in: Events that trigger strong emotions on a nationwide scale are coming at us with alarming frequency, and people are looking to business executives for leadership with an intensity that may make many executives uncomfortable. Our recommendation: If you haven’t applied thoughtful energy to defining what your organization values and how you will demonstrate and encourage behavior that expresses those values, this is the time for it. It has never been more necessary. 

by

The past few months have seen communications professionals reaching for their crisis manuals over and over. Yet while these manuals may serve as constructive guideposts to start, their use is limited: how many playbooks, for instance, contain guidance on “abrupt, plague-induced lockdown” or “mass anti-racism movement and worldwide protests?”

Some fundamental crisis tenants, like communicating with empathy and transparency, apply in any scenario. But if these latest crises have shown us anything it’s that there’s no one way to plan for everything. Instead, the sudden lockdown and the pressure organizations felt to respond to last week’s events underscore why today’s communicators need an improvisational mindset.

Defining an improvisational mindset

To be clear, improvisation does not mean quickly coming out with vague platitudes and hollow statements expressly designed to meet the expectation for some sort of response. Nor does it mean – in this context, at least – moving ahead heedlessly, without any thought at all.  

Rather, an improvisational mindset encourages communicators to pivot fast to meet changing conditions, move the conversation forward, and back up words with action – the way a musician or comedian adapts to the scene or song at hand and acts in ways which progress it.

Frank Barrett, author of Yes to the Mess: Surprising Leadership Lessons From Jazz, summarizes the challenge well:

We live in a high-velocity world with so many cues and signals that don’t come to us with clear messages. We are always facing incomplete information, and yet we have to take action anyway. Improvisational mindset means you have to leap in and take action to say yes. If you’re just in a problem-solving mindset, your imagination is going to be shrunk. You have to have a mindset that says ‘yes’ to the possibility that something new and interesting and creative can emerge.

What’s more, we perceive improvisations as truly authentic not simply because they’re made up on the spot. But it’s precisely because the performers are so practiced and credible that they can improvise effectively.

In the corporate world, authenticity tends to stem from a company’s track record. Nike, for example, could quickly improvise an ad denouncing racism because it had “built equity with its inclusion of Colin Kaepernick in a 2018 ad campaign.” For many others, the better choice was to donate to relevant groups or outline steps to improve their own diversity.

Embracing “yes, and…”

The “yes, and” approach that drives improv is always useful, but especially in today’s increasingly unpredictable business environment. Fortunately, in the past few months we’ve seen our clients embrace this mindset. Here are a few examples.

  • Internal stakeholder coaching – We’re helping several clients coach their lawyers or consultants on how to leverage earned COVID-19 media coverage and content in client conversations and outreach. The thinking here is that the “last mile” of client outreach, which happens one-on-one, is most impactful – and now more than ever. They’ll have to be ready to think on their feet and lead with their humanity. If your organization’s professionals are unaccustomed to this type of touchpoint, an improvisational approach can help make them more effective in off-the-cuff situations.
  • Flash surveys – A few clients of ours quickly pivoted their quantitative research efforts to better understand emerging client needs and concerns. One law firm, for instance, launched a flash survey of its clients because they had been conducting a survey that felt suddenly, if temporarily, irrelevant. We moved fast to help them generate a new survey that yielded relevant results and insights. Ultimately, the flash survey findings grabbed media headlines in top tier HR trades and national business media.
  • Online focus groups – Similarly, we have several clients launching virtual focus groups as a way to obtain qualitative measures/feedback on various issues and offerings. These insights are critical in empathizing with particular audiences, and in avoiding tone-deaf positioning of products and services.
  • Agile content production – For another client, we developed a three-part podcast series about the impacts of COVID-19 on the energy industry. The process, which would typically take at least a month, was finished in about a week. Similarly, we improvised to quickly edit a survey report – originally fielded before the world was sheltering in place – so it could elucidate how the findings became even more relevant and useful in light of COVID-19.

It’s unlikely we would have conceived of these projects in typical times – but then, atypical times require atypical responses. As communicators, it’s our job to say “yes, and” to new situations and find creative ways to address them head on.

Return to COVID-19 Resources for Communicators

by

Leading through uncertainty demands different roles at different times

The term “thought leader” was halfway out the door before the pandemic. So devalued had it become that it was difficult to refer to someone as such without a whiff of irony.

But now, as companies big and small grapple with what to do and how to do it in the midst of a crisis of, literally, epidemic proportions, something is becoming crystal clear:: people need leaders who lead people not thoughts.

Building on conversations that began well before WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic, we’ve spent the last few weeks dialoguing with executives, thinking through challenges they are facing as they attempt to marshal their teams through what is shaping up to be one of the most arduous experiences many have faced as business leaders.

“This is perhaps the most challenging business role I have had in my lifetime,” says Lori Perella Krebs, Principal at  Ancora Investment Holdings.

“I was CEO of another company based in New York when 9/11 happened and this crisis is different.  September 11 was undoubtedly a catastrophic event and scarred many New Yorkers emotionally but we united within our industry and started rebuilding soon afterward.”

Uniting, albeit virtually, isn’t the problem now—it’s attempting to rebuild what previously existed under a “shelter in place” order during a pandemic with a recession in the offing that’s costing leaders the most sleep. 

Another problem:: no one really knows what is expected of a business leader in a calamity of this scale or complexity because those who were in charge during the last pandemic—the Spanish Influenza of 1918-1920—have long since passed.

Through formal and informal conversations, we’ve discovered that a leader must play not one but several different roles in a leadership position, if they want to inspire lieutenants to do their best work.

Individual leadership styles, as identified by Daniel Goleman, (coercive, authoritative, affiliative, etc), will certainly influence how one wears these hats; but the hats must be worn, and at different moments, to lead teams “in a calm and honest manner,” as Krebs says, through times of great uncertainty.

  • The Social Worker:: When the crisis hit, it was hard not to react in a very human way to very human concerns that were suddenly front and center. This requires patience, compassion, and plenty of empathy. As Francis of Assisi’s famous prayer goes, a leader must seek not so much to be consoled as to console. Successful crisis leaders don’t complain to their lieutenants that their feet hurt; they allow their lieutenants to complain to them about aching feet. Once the pain is acknowledged—human to human—those lieutenants will be ready to do the job. 
  • The Improvisor:: As Kelly Leonard, executive director of Learning and Applied Improvisation at Second City Works, wrote recently, “We are all working script-less. So we need to mine the toolkit of an improviser. We need to say ’yes, and’ rather than ’no’ or ’yes, but’ as a way to create an abundance of ideas and options.”  In other words, play the moment—or “scene”—that we’re in right now, not the one we wish we were in. It requires embracing the craziness and the messiness coming every which way, and thinking fast to, as Tim Gunn would say, “make it work” for you and your team.

  • The Convener:: Organizing lieutenants around the same table at the same time; having a clear agenda when you get them there; and creating the space to have courageous conversations, hard conversations.

  • The Facilitator:: Not only must a crisis leader convene, said leader must be prepared and equipped to drive those hard conversations, knowing in advance the questions to ask of those whose counsel he or she seeks; and of those who are seeking it. Also, great crisis leaders already know what they think; they’ve been training for such a moment all of their professional lives. Having the right questions is far more important than having the fast answers.
  • The Interpreter:: There’s an old joke that made the rounds during the late Cold War years:: The Russians and the Americans don’t have any issues; the problem is that interpreters hate one another. A crisis leader is sense-making on the fly, clarifying in real time to make sure other leaders aren’t talking past one another. The messages shared are in fact messages heard. 

  • The Decision Maker:: The best decision makers know when the decision is working; and when it isn’t. As everything is in flux, the crisis leader is always prepared to rewrite the script as the last thing one wants to do is lead a team on the dread march of folly, toward a goal that is no longer relevant or plausible. 

  • The Advocate:: If you’ve hired properly, and trust those hiring decisions, then your team is the team that can win in good times…and bad. Conversely, senior leaders must know that you stand with them and for them. For this to work, you must shake off old norms that may be too restrictive and move toward a culture where lieutenants have the agency and autonomy to do what needs to be done, without seeking [repeated] direction from the crisis leader on how to solve problems they are expected to solve on their own.

  • The Innovator:: There’s a time for rewriting the old script in a fine fury of desperation, which many leaders are tasked with in the opening stages of a crisis as they scramble to adjust to new conditions and constraints, putting on hat after hat. Then there’s a time for tearing up the script, and creating a new one in an equally fine fury of innovation. Every crisis leader knows, generally, what innovation means; but the truly successful ones know what it actually is:: the systematic identification and disruption of norms that have a bearhug on just about every aspect of any business that involves people. If a leader doesn’t know their norms—how to spot them, how to dismantle them—the leader doesn’t know innovation:: How to use it and where; and how to drive it within an organization that is in the fight of its life.

Wearing each of these hats, playing the related role and, most important, knowing when to play them is one of the fundamentals of succeeding as a leader in a crisis, one who is playing the long game. 

And playing to win.

Howell J. Malham Jr. is founder and president of GreenHouse::Innovation, Greentarget’s strategic partner. He is the author of “I Have A Strategy (No You Don’t):: The Illustrated Guide to Strategy.”

Reprinted with permission from “The Eight Hats of Crisis Leadership,” by Howell J. Malham Jr., copyright 2020 by Howell J. Malham Jr.

Return to COVID-19 Resources for Communicators

by

To rise above the noise, just be quiet.

We’re all inundated with screaming headlines, relentless statistics and endless so-called thought leadership. Most of it, particularly the thought leadership, is shoved in our faces with little thought for what we need to know, what’s worrying us, or what questions we wish someone would answer.

Outside of global pandemics, we like to say that true thought leadership, the kind of content that builds authority, has four attributes: relevance, urgency, novelty and utility. But at this point we’ll assume that anything you’re publishing related to COVID-19 is relevant (the crisis effects everybody) and urgent (it’s a crisis). The insights that will rise above the noise during the crisis are the ones that are new and useful. 

Learning From Crises Past

To a degree it’s always been that way. I was a college reporter in the days and weeks after 9/11, and an editor around the 2008 financial crisis, and I still remember the urgency we all felt to go find novel stories our readers needed to hear.

Of course, we were always looking for those stories. And on an intellectual level we understood that our reporting and editorial judgment mattered. But in the wake of global calamity, with lives and livelihoods in the balance, that understanding became visceral. You could feel the weight of the crisis in the almost-desperate search for stories that nobody else had told, in the ferocity of the conversations about what our readers needed to know.  

And the only way to get at those new and useful stories was to go talk to people. And more importantly, to listen.

How to Listen Today

There are a bunch of different ways to listen, and now is a good time to employ them all. The first, most obvious and most literal is calling clients, prospects and others who’re in the audience you want to reach and just asking them what’s keeping them up at night, what questions they’re asking, what problems have them perplexed.

My guess is most practitioners are already doing that. We recently worked with an attorney to publish a smart perspective on the coming battles between businesses and their insurance companies – an article she could only write because she’d been listening to her clients.

But as valuable as that kind of listening can be, we have to tread carefully as well. We risk producing insights that are too narrow – the last person you talked to doesn’t necessarily have the same problems and questions as their peers the world over.

So it also makes sense to listen in the aggregate, using data tools to see what your audiences want to know. SEO data can help you home in on utility by telling you what questions the audience is asking. Media-research tools can show you what’s already been said, so you know where the novelty lies.

If you don’t have the tools, or don’t know how to use them, a simple Google search on the topic you want to write about can tell you how much has already been said, who’s said it and how well. If the first page of search results reveals a litany of others saying what you wanted to say, your choices are either to advance the conversation or move on and start a different one.

In the first few weeks of the COVID-19 crisis (which already feels like nine months ago), it may have made sense to just run and gun with your content, to get the insights flowing quickly, knowing your clients and prospects were desperate for information.

Now that just about everybody has done that, the flow of insights has turned into a raging, deafening river of noise. The worst thing any of us can in our communications is add to that noise.

But if we can just be still for a few moments and listen to the people we’re trying to reach, we can find out what information they need, what would help them get through this. If we can provide it, they’ll have no trouble hearing us above the noise.

Return to COVID-19 Resources for Communicators
Close
Close