Tag: communications

Stepping Up or Standing Down

The first thing to say is that I am not Cristiano Ronaldo.  One of us has better cheek bones than Joni Mitchell, appreciates ice baths more than Wim Hof and turned footballing talent into greatness through application and willpower.  The other writes the viewfromabridge.org blog.

As Ronaldo stepped up to take the first penalty in the shoot-out against Slovenia he encapsulated all the best things about leadership, taking responsibility and nerve.  Having had a penalty saved in the course of the game and shed tears just a few minutes before the shoot out, it may have included an element of egotism but it certainly showed self-belief.  It also reminded me of an important professional lessons from my early career.

Three Strikes

I was in month one at ASDA as a Public Relations Officer and finding life hard.  It felt a million miles away from my first job as Press Officer at Tesco where I had established a network and a successful start to my career.  It was my first time living a long way from family or friends and I had no track record of delivery in the new company.

The buyers were a hard-edged, hard-nosed, hard driven group who bargained for every advantage in a company that based its ASDA Price brand on being low-cost.  Both grocery buying and fresh food buying were led by Liverpudlians1 who took no nonsense and no prisoners from either suppliers or new arrivals from the south.  For those familiar with the Liverpool teams over the years it was more Tommy Smith (the “Anfield Iron”) and Ron Yeats (“the Colossus”) than Virgil Van Dijk and Harvey Elliott. 

Being invited to a fresh food buyer meeting to be briefed on an innovation felt like a good moment to assert my skills and dispense my wisdom on all things media related.  The meeting began and was straight down to business with the announcement that ASDA had worked with suppliers and was launching new cheese packaging that was colour-graded and numbered to show strength of flavour from mild to strong.  All eyes turned to me as I was asked about the coverage would be possible when it was launched.

Mistake one was to believe that this was the moment for a treatise on the way the media worked.  Mistake two was to think that cheese grading was not important news and that a competitor might have already beaten us to a similar scheme.  Mistake three was to verbalize those thoughts.  We all know that three strikes and you’re out.

As I finished my lengthy and patronising explanation of why this was not national news all heads pivoted to the Associate Director at the head of the table for the judgement and sentence.  It was brief and dismissive, “I’ll talk to Iain Tweedie in the morning.”  Iain was my boss, who had all the edginess and steel of an ex-Manchester Evening News reporter alongside the smarts to go on to build a global career in a major bank.

My mouth was flapping as I tried to find a way back but I was cut off as the meeting moved on to the next business.  For another hour I was trapped in the room with nobody looking at me let alone commiserating.  As I prepared my resignation letter that night, I was consumed by my failure to perform well, a sense of public humiliation and the belief that there was no hope of redemption.  I may not be Ronaldo but seeing his despair brought it all back.

Stepping Up

Iain Tweedie arrived early but I had been in the office an hour rehearsing my resignation speech and had already handed the letter over and begun explaining when the phone rang.  It was the Associate Director and I hear Iain’s calm tones as he responded, “Well Alan’s here and has been thinking about it overnight.  He’s on his way over with his ideas.” He put the phone down and gave me a one-minute briefing that stayed with me all my life:

  • Explain that you realise you hadn’t taken time to express your recognition of the work people had put into the grading scheme but that you’ve been thinking about ways of getting publicity.
  • Talk about some very big ideas – projecting the ASDA logo on the moon, floating a barge with a huge cheese on it down the Thames past the Houses of Parliament – and say anything is possible if there is sufficient budget and you want to be on the front pages of the national papers.
  • Then shut up, listen to what the Associate Director says and respond with enthusiasm.

The pep talk was a masterclass in accepting responsibility for your actions, showing appreciation for the client and the brief, demonstrating your creativity and ambition while recognizing budgetary constraints, then showing respect for feedback.  He gave me his absolute backing and confidence but left no doubt that it was my personal responsibility to have the conversation. Duly fortified and directed I walked on slightly wobbly legs down the corridor to the Associate Director’s office.

I don’t remember too much of the discussion but I certainly made good on accepting that I hadn’t done very well in the meeting and borrowed the barge idea before closing my mouth and really concentrating.  He said, “All I was really wanting was to get something in the The Grocer for the team and the suppliers”.  For readers unfamiliar with the UK retail scene, The Grocer, is a major trade magazine that would be more than happy to take an ASDA article with quotes from a senior director announcing an innovative cheese grading scheme.

I realised that I had just been given a brief that clarified the audience and the objective. Had I taken the time to ask questions about these vital aspects of communication in the meeting I wouldn’t have had a night of torment. The PR lesson was to start by understanding the job to be done2. Five minutes later I left the office to continue what turned into a successful six years at ASDA and even got invited back a second time as part of the team rebuilding the company after near bankruptcy. 

Looking back, I smile grimly at the overreaction of writing a resignation letter for something so minor but understand the lack of maturity and experience at play.  Nobody held the incident against me and I learnt that from time to time almost everybody has been in a similar situation. Most of all I learnt that even after something feels like a disaster it is rarely game over unless you decide it is. 

All That Matters

So, there you have it.  People talk about getting back on the horse after being thrown or that “it’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up”3.  My own favourite aphorism is – all that matters is what you do next – whether it is following success or failure.

Cristiano took a deep breath and placed the ball perfectly into the corner of the net as the first step in Portugal winning the penalty shoot-out.  We will all remember him making a clutch play when he was mentally and physically exhausted. Bom trabalho, Cristiano, but good luck to England in Sunday’s European Championship final.

NOTES

  1. Len McCormick (who went on to become Deputy Chairman at Batley’s cash and carry) led grocery buying, the foundation of ASDA’s price leadership, and David Robinson led fresh food buying at the time.  It’s a long time ago but my best recollection is that they both hailed from Liverpool – if anybody knows better I’m happy to correct the record.
  2. Clayton Christensen’s “theory of jobs to be done” is one of the great, all purpose ideas that every communicator should know. It works as much for internal communications and meetings as for product development and branding. It’s also great for helping put a perspective on personal choices.
  3. There are several versions of this saying but the version quoted here is attributed to Vince Lombardi, head coach & general manager of the Green Bay Packers from 1959-1967.  He is also credited with saying “Fatigue makes cowards of us all” which, in the context of a penalty taken at the end of 120 minutes play, suggests the extent of Ronaldo’s self-discipline and will.

The Name of The Game

A minute is a very long time.  In the silence of the interview room with a vice chancellor and five unfriendly faces looking at me it was getting longer by the second.  What had seemed a good idea in planning was losing credibility faster than a Liz Truss/Kwasi Kwarteng mini-budget.  My nerve broke…

Interviews share some of the characteristics of democracy in that they are the very worst form of selecting a new employee apart from “all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”  Much like an election, they can be a lottery where the politics on the other side of the table matter much more than the candidate’s capabilities.  I succeeded at each of the first three interviews in my career but had a hit rate well under 20% after that.

I should probably have been better as a candidate because I’ve spent plenty of time as a hiring manager and chairing interview panels.  But over the years the process seemed to become increasingly focused on ticking compliance boxes rather than having a decent conversation with someone about their fitness for the role.  Most interviews are so dull they are instantly forgettable but there are a few examples where I’ve overextended my hand in trying to liven them up.

Silence Is Golden2

The silence in the interview room and my loss of nerve came during a two-minute slot where I was invited to give an overview on my suitability for a role as the university’s head of communications.  I had decided to sit totally still and wordless for the first minute.  It was intended to be a precursor to explaining that this symbolised an institution that had communicated nothing of importance for months.

My inspiration was a tale from the advertising world when Allen Brady and Marsh tendered for the British Rail contract in 1977. The client team, led by then BR chairman, Sir Peter Parker, arrived at ABM’s reception for the presentation to be met by a bored receptionist and were made to sit in a waiting room where the tables were festooned with used coffee cups and cigarette butts.  They were about to walk out when agency director Peter Marsh and his team appeared.

Marsh said, “What I’ve been trying to demonstrate to you in these surroundings and the indifference of our receptionist there, is the experience your customers have of you, British Rail, every day. And it’s my job and intention to show you how we will overcome that problem. Shall we go and have lunch…”  Totally brilliant in terms of concept, timing and nerve.

Among the problems with my own attempt at performance art was that I had forgotten to set my watch, the evident hostility of the panel at this unexpected silence got to me and we certainly weren’t going for a slap-up lunch afterwards.  As the tension in the room grew I decided to speak up well before the end of the minute but fluffed the explanation, so they only heard me telling them what a terrible job they were doing.  Totally my fault for bungled execution and the interview spiralled downwards from there, but as the vice-chancellor didn’t last much longer in his job it was probably a narrow escape.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond3

A later outing was with a well-ranked university where my research had revealed that the VC was a world specialist in materials with interests including alloys and crystallography.  With this insight, I decided to base my vision for communicating the strengths of the university by using the metaphor of it being an undiscovered diamond.  As I concluded my description the vice chancellor, who was chairing the panel, told me he was an expert on the subject.  I said, “I know,” which were the last words from my lips for several minutes. 

He proceeded to hold court, to a panel of ten, with a lecture on the characteristics of diamond formation, minerals, organic and inorganic compounds and alloys. Most particularly, he pronounced on why the metaphor didn’t correspond with his learned view about the diamonds.  It was probably not helpful for me to suggest he had missed the point and that popular opinions about diamonds reflected more on their value and popularly understood characteristics than their chemical composition and isometric structure.  

Everything I had heard about the institution being a tightly controlled autocracy became painfully evident as the panel took their cue from the top. The rest of the hour was a reminder that a good chair speaks last if they want to ensure they hear a diversity of views and opinions. My only consolation was thinking it’s sometimes better to crash, burn and learn than to land safely in the wrong place.

The Games People Play4

I was also particularly bad at the two days interviews which became popular with some universities.  At one south coast institution I wowed an audience of 20 on day one with a presentation on the theme of distant horizons.  I even managed to pull off a joke about the university being similar to Spock of Star Trek in having three ears – right ear, left ear and space the final frontier. 

Day two was a terrible series of dull question and answer interviews culminating in a one to one with a vice-chancellor who had some pretty fixed views about pathway operators. They were suspended several years later after, as one of several issues, commissioning seven custom-made chairs costing £95,000.  Wouldn’t have fancied managing the PR for that anyway.

But this is where the Lefty Gomez quote suggesting that it’s better to be lucky than good comes in.  For one interview, I was a last minute addition to the list of six candidates because someone dropped out late. I missed the day of campus tours because I was driving many miles to get there and secured an agreement to be the first interview of the next day.

In the car park next morning, I bumped into a suited, slightly harassed looking person who I guessed just had to be one of the other candidates.  I enquired how things were going and he told me he was just getting some handouts and overhead projector slides produced to give to the panel.  At that point I hadn’t put my suit on let alone thought about my opening statement.

Forty-five minutes later I was asked for a brief overview on how I would approach the job.  I paused for effect and looked around the nine-person panel.  “Some candidates will probably come here today with slides and handouts which suggest that they know this institution better than you do.  My view is that you are probably more expert than I will ever be in understanding the academic heart of the university but that I would add value by being the expert at communicating your work…” 

After my appointment the Registrar told me that the very next candidate after me had done just as I predicted.  I chose not to tell him the background.  Neither did I tell him that my opening statement had an even greater truth because I really didn’t know very much at all about universities or the higher education sector. 

“Get your retaliation in first,” is what Willie John McBride, captain of the famous 1974 touring Lions, told his team-mates when facing bruising encounters with the South African rugby team and it’s always seemed a worthwhile consideration.  But also, as Paul Newman says in Cool Hand Luke, “sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand.”  Either way, it was another lesson that interviews are a game where the best prepared and most knowledgeable don’t always win.

Money For Nothing5

No recounting of interviews would be complete without sharing the very best answer to an interview question that I have ever heard.  When recruiting new international officers, the favourite question was to put them in a scenario where their plane was delayed and they had landed in the early hours in a country with a reputation for kidnappings.  Their pre-booked taxi was nowhere to be seen, suspicious characters were hanging around and they found their wallet had been stolen.

Faced with this situation it was interesting to watch relatively young and inexperienced people run through their expectations, hopes and fears while repeatedly foundering on the absence of cash or credit cards.  No calls to the embassy, no hailing a taxi, not even bribing an airport employee was possible.  There was only ever one winning answer.  The mighty Pete Ryan, a top guy who not only got the job but went on to become a Head of International Recruitment, barely paused before giving the world-beating, “Well it’s no problem, like, ‘cause I always keep a fiver in my shoe.”

NOTES

  1. The lyrics of ABBA’s 1977 UK number one, Name of the Game, are worth considering in the context of interviews.
  2. The Four Seasons originally recorded Silence is Golden in 1964 but the Tremeloes’ version from 1967 topped the UK charts and reached number 11 in the Billboard Hot 100 chart, so is probably better known.
  3. Shine On You Crazy Diamond appeared on Pink Floyd’s 1975 album Wish You Were Here.  The song is dedicated to the late Syd Barrett, whose drug use and mental health problems caused him to be ejected from the band in 1968.
  4. Joe South’s 1968 Grammy Award winning song, Games People Play, is a pretty downbeat look at human character.  He went on to write Lynn Anderson’s 1970 hit, Rose Garden.
  5. Money for Nothing was released in 1985 as the second single from the Dire Strait’s album Brothers in Arms.  Sting sings background vocals and a falsetto introduction and came up with the line in the song, “I want my MTV”.  The guitar sound is, apparently, modelled on that of ZZ Top because of their popularity on early MTV.

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay