How To Get Leadership Excited About Employer Branding
Why is it so hard to sell executives and leader on employer branding? It saves money, builds a strong culture, attract more skills and experience faster, and has a direct impact on growing the company? You'd think they'd be frothing at the bit to invest. But they aren't.
So your job is to give them FOMO!
In this episode, Bryan and James break down the process of getting leaders and execs excited to invest in their employer brand.
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Transcript
Okay.
Speaker:So you're going to be totally shocked that Brian and I are huge fans of
Speaker:the power of employer branding.
Speaker:I know.
Speaker:Duh.
Speaker:Who's shocked?
Speaker:Stunning.
Speaker:Everybody get the defibrillators.
Speaker:What are you going to do?
Speaker:Look, it's not about when you get down to it, it's not about making your
Speaker:career site look a certain way or look cool or making your LinkedIn posts
Speaker:all standardized in a certain way.
Speaker:Employer brand is strategy at its heart.
Speaker:It is strategy, which is why we care about it so much.
Speaker:It is how you present your company.
Speaker:So that people go, Ooh, I like that.
Speaker:Oh, I want some of that, please.
Speaker:Instead of you begging at Oliver style, please, sir, can I have some
Speaker:applications because it isn't a tool you have to kind of sell it a specific way.
Speaker:It's not something you can easily tangibly see, right?
Speaker:You can't say who I'd like a, you know, you can't ask your neighbor
Speaker:for a cup of employer branding.
Speaker:It's a whole different ballgame.
Speaker:You kind of have to sell it as a strategy, which is abstract
Speaker:and fuzzy and hard to explain.
Speaker:And so selling it matters.
Speaker:So remember, our goal here is to help you get your seat at the table.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:We trying to do is help you engage and convince your boss that this stuff
Speaker:matters, that this stuff is important, even if it is hard to sometimes explain
Speaker:and define and point to and show.
Speaker:If you can get them to have them take you seriously on this subject,
Speaker:it goes a long way for having them take you seriously on other subjects.
Speaker:This is a great kind of either a canary in the coal mine or a litmus
Speaker:test or whatever you want to call it.
Speaker:This is a great opportunity for you to show how strategic your thinking is.
Speaker:That is why we're talking about how to talk to your boss about employer branding.
Speaker:What's the biggest trick to getting leadership to invest
Speaker:in your employer brand?
Speaker:And what does it have to do with vegetables?
Speaker:I guess you'll just have to keep watching.
Speaker:Welcome to the People MBA, helping talent leaders get their seat at the table.
Speaker:This episode is being brought to you by the Muse.
Speaker:You've reached the People MBA.
Speaker:We're out shopping for a new global headquarters.
Speaker:So go ahead and talk after the beep.
Speaker:Hi guys, Lucas Bosco from Team Brazil here.
Speaker:I've been wondering, how can you really get leadership excited about branding?
Speaker:You know, like fully on board with it.
Speaker:What do you think?
Speaker:I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Speaker:Thanks.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Well, this, this episode should be a special one.
Speaker:Really, James, no pressure at all.
Speaker:But, um, obviously we've both got a lot to say about this, but I'm excited
Speaker:to sort of flip the roles today.
Speaker:Me being the interviewer, you being the sort of the expert guest, actually,
Speaker:you know, if you, if you like.
Speaker:Employee branding.
Speaker:Obviously, something that you and I both care deeply about.
Speaker:And I think today's conversation highlights just how much it matters.
Speaker:Um, when we get it right, it builds trust, attracts the right talents and drives
Speaker:meaningful outcomes for organizations.
Speaker:Um, but we've both seen how easy it is to miss the mark
Speaker:and the cost can be enormous.
Speaker:So I'm excited to dive in specifically from your point of
Speaker:view to get your expertise, which I may challenge at some point.
Speaker:You know what?
Speaker:I kind
Speaker:of, I'm banking on that.
Speaker:I am.
Speaker:We like to the audience, Brian and I have kind of said, gosh, we
Speaker:agree will on a lot of stuff here.
Speaker:We're not really creating friction.
Speaker:And I knew this would be the one where they go.
Speaker:We care about it so much that we come from different perspectives.
Speaker:I guarantee there will be some maybe not shots fired, but certainly a little bit
Speaker:of disagreement, which should be fine.
Speaker:Yeah, I hope so.
Speaker:But you bring such a fresh, no nonsense perspective to
Speaker:the table on an hour audience.
Speaker:Well, yeah, there's there's that.
Speaker:And yeah, you've got so much array of different experiences and
Speaker:different organizations of different sizes and all the rest of it.
Speaker:I want to make sure that we, um, we draw that out today in the audience of T.
Speaker:A leaders.
Speaker:Walk away with some actionable insights that can hopefully
Speaker:they can use, use immediately.
Speaker:So speaking
Speaker:of actionable insights, Brian, there's a download with this
Speaker:episode because there always is.
Speaker:So this week's episode, we have the download brought to you by the muse.
Speaker:Check out people MBA to go download it.
Speaker:If you're subscribed, it's free.
Speaker:And if you're not subscribed, go subscribe.
Speaker:That's also free.
Speaker:So go check out people MBA to get the full download on how to talk to
Speaker:your boss about employer branding.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:Segway there, James.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So let's dig into the opportunities in the pitfalls of employer
Speaker:branding, um, uncover what it takes to truly succeed in the space.
Speaker:So, so we'll kick off.
Speaker:Um, before we jump directly in obvious question to start with.
Speaker:But why is it so important?
Speaker:To get this internal conversation right.
Speaker:Couple of layers to this.
Speaker:The first is it is abstract and it is complicated.
Speaker:It's not like saying I'm going to buy a CRM.
Speaker:Everybody knows what a CRM is.
Speaker:You can point to a CRM.
Speaker:You can show the volume of emails you sent and the number
Speaker:of applications you've gotten.
Speaker:It's got real obvious kind of metrics associated with it.
Speaker:It comes out of the box ready to go.
Speaker:That is an easy thing to sell.
Speaker:Selling strategy, as any consultant will tell you, It is.
Speaker:You're selling a kind of, it's hard.
Speaker:It's a, it's a, it's a mixture of selling expertise.
Speaker:It's a mixture of selling outcomes.
Speaker:It's a mixture of selling perspective.
Speaker:It is very, very messy and sloppy.
Speaker:If you walk up to your boss and say, I want to employ your brand,
Speaker:you've got a lot of problems.
Speaker:As I imagine, we'll talk about in terms of what people assume employer branding
Speaker:is and what their, the baggage they, they leaders bring along with this idea.
Speaker:About five years ago, Harvard Business Review did a, a cover
Speaker:story on employer brand, which.
Speaker:To this day, I still feel lingers and taints leadership's understanding
Speaker:of what employer brand is.
Speaker:I would, if I could go back in time and nix that article, I would, it would
Speaker:make our lives so much, so much better.
Speaker:Um, people just don't have the right sense of understanding, so you have to
Speaker:walk in With armed, not to the teeth, but certainly for the conversation.
Speaker:The conversation will be expensive, what you're asking for.
Speaker:It's going to require lots of stakeholders.
Speaker:It's going to require some level of executive buy in on some level.
Speaker:It's going to require a lot of moving pieces.
Speaker:And so you're not just asking for a tool, you plug it and play.
Speaker:You are asking the company to make change on change on change
Speaker:at a variety of different places.
Speaker:And that is not something that is easily done.
Speaker:Certainly.
Speaker:In my experience as well.
Speaker:It's a sort of delicate dance of pretending like you're not educating
Speaker:them whilst educating them.
Speaker:So that is valid.
Speaker:Yeah, you know, and you know, I think in many organizations as well.
Speaker:It's not a new tangible thing that you're bringing.
Speaker:It's It's something that has the potential to improve existing tangible things.
Speaker:So, um, getting it right obviously determines the value and the career
Speaker:trajectory of the person positioning it actually, because if you're not
Speaker:taking seriously and it's not seen, and it's not positioned strategically.
Speaker:You know, it's a fork in the road that you don't want to get wrong.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Um, yeah.
Speaker:So, so what is the price
Speaker:tag?
Speaker:There's a price tag.
Speaker:And if you get saddled with, Oh, wow, we spent thousands of dollars
Speaker:and this thing went nowhere.
Speaker:That's on your hip.
Speaker:You will be carrying that like an albatross around your
Speaker:neck for the next year or two.
Speaker:So you can't afford to mess that up.
Speaker:Is that the biggest danger
Speaker:when you're talking about brand to leadership?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:There's so many dangers involved.
Speaker:There's so many pitfalls.
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:Yeah, I look just a quick list.
Speaker:Leadership decides that employer brand equals leadership, personal
Speaker:brand and just decides it's whatever makes the leadership look good.
Speaker:I've seen that a lot.
Speaker:I've seen it where, uh, Um, too many cooks in the, in the kitchen
Speaker:and everything gets so watered down that you kind of go, why bother?
Speaker:Why did we even spend this kind of money to become a brand that says nothing?
Speaker:Uh, I've seen it where it does fail because it's improperly
Speaker:executed and activated and it's a good, I always joke, it's a really
Speaker:expensive deck that can collect dust.
Speaker:It really is.
Speaker:And it, all too often, that's exactly what happens.
Speaker:There's so many ways to kind of get this wrong.
Speaker:And in the end, as the, yeah.
Speaker:Talent acquisition leader who is bringing this idea to the table.
Speaker:You are placing a bet within the company that we should invest in this thing.
Speaker:And the outcome rides on you.
Speaker:Just like if a sales person, a sales leader said, Hey, we
Speaker:should invest in X, Y, and Z.
Speaker:And it doesn't work out.
Speaker:That lands on the sales leader.
Speaker:And if you look at failed products, you can see the project, product
Speaker:manager, and the executives who kind of champion those projects.
Speaker:There's a wake of bodies in bad products, kind of, you know, failing to launch.
Speaker:So it is dangerous.
Speaker:I mean, that makes me think of, um, you know, I've seen a number of times, very
Speaker:successful, effective ways of positioning employer brand to get initial buy in and
Speaker:sign off that actually don't pay dividends at the end, like positioning it wrong.
Speaker:Um, it's effectively getting the budget.
Speaker:You need to do the work.
Speaker:But at the end, you haven't got the buy in and the understanding and the right
Speaker:expectations such that the leadership has the patience to see momentum build
Speaker:over time and so on and so forth.
Speaker:So how do you balance the effectiveness of getting initial buy in, but also
Speaker:setting expectations appropriately such that you've got the continued buy in and
Speaker:patience to let the employer brand grow?
Speaker:sustainably make a difference over time.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And that is a real, real danger.
Speaker:I am, I will not name names, but I will tell stories at least twice.
Speaker:I have been hired in house full time to build an employer brand
Speaker:by the head of TA and the CEO, the CFO, the CHRO kind of sorta went.
Speaker:If you say so, like they had no buy in whatsoever, and I walked in going,
Speaker:I can't wait to do some great work, not realizing nobody wanted me there.
Speaker:I
Speaker:was a pet project of the TA leader, and everybody treated me as such.
Speaker:I couldn't get meetings, I couldn't get involvement, I couldn't get people to show
Speaker:up to the conversation, and I was doomed.
Speaker:I was doomed to failure on so many levels, and you had two and three times
Speaker:as much work to kind of get things moving.
Speaker:The way you change that conversation, the way you change this idea of,
Speaker:okay, I'll give you the initial buy in, but I will hold my skepticism.
Speaker:Until after I see it, which is kind of what we're talking about here is
Speaker:you talk about employer brand, not as a good thing, not as this idea,
Speaker:not as a deck, not as a couple.
Speaker:I always joke, most employer brands, you know, leaders think
Speaker:it's a couple of magic words.
Speaker:Hey, just say these five words and say them over and over again.
Speaker:That's our brand.
Speaker:You're like, Oh boy, what you're really doing is solving a business.
Speaker:Oh, for the love of all things, employer branding, right?
Speaker:That on the tattoo on the inside of your eyeballs, just
Speaker:it's there to solve a problem.
Speaker:And if you.
Speaker:Couch the need for employer brand as a, Hey, we need to solve this problem.
Speaker:We've tried this.
Speaker:We've tried this.
Speaker:We've tried this.
Speaker:They aren't working.
Speaker:What we need is a strategic approach to change everything in this way.
Speaker:Here are some outcomes.
Speaker:Here are some long term outcomes.
Speaker:And by the way, you'll notice I have two different sets of outcomes, not
Speaker:just long term and everybody thinks employer brand is so long term.
Speaker:It's not.
Speaker:But if you say, we're solving this problem, there will be knock on
Speaker:positive effects, but ultimately you should measure the value of
Speaker:what we're doing and the outcome of this project on this problem alone.
Speaker:Keep it focused.
Speaker:If you're trying to solve.
Speaker:You know, hey, the dozens of positive outcomes that employer
Speaker:brand will likely bring.
Speaker:There's a, there's a Russian proverb, the dog that chases two rabbits catches none.
Speaker:You have to focus on a single problem.
Speaker:It's the most important.
Speaker:It's the most expensive problem.
Speaker:Show the value.
Speaker:That makes ROI calculations so much easier down the road.
Speaker:But ultimately it's about, we're doing this not because it's idea of the month,
Speaker:or it's because it's a, it's fashionable, or because someone else said we should.
Speaker:We're doing it to solve a problem.
Speaker:Business problem, a recruiting problem, a business problem.
Speaker:And if you couch it that way, there are layers and layers of positive outcomes,
Speaker:including you look as a TA leader, like someone who is there to solve business
Speaker:problems, which is always good for you.
Speaker:That's, that is definitely always good for you, but there's, there's usually
Speaker:more than one business priority.
Speaker:So first of all, how do you choose the business priority to hang your hat on?
Speaker:And second of all, which is a little bit more nuanced, Um, in order to deliver
Speaker:that success and be true to your promise and hang everything on that, you and I
Speaker:both know that there are dependencies that require the change in attitudes,
Speaker:behavior, buy in, collaboration, all of those things of people.
Speaker:Other peers around you, sometimes more often than not, they're
Speaker:more senior than you as well.
Speaker:So, um, so, so the, the odds are stacked against you if you don't set
Speaker:this off in the, in the right way.
Speaker:So how do you make sure that those dependencies don't become major risks?
Speaker:And how do you know that you focused on the right priorities in the first place?
Speaker:Yeah, I'm going to do the first one.
Speaker:First, the priorities is tough and you need to ask.
Speaker:You can't decide what you think the most important problem is.
Speaker:Now, as someone who's bringing this to the table.
Speaker:We're presuming you understand how employer brand works.
Speaker:We're presuming you understand how employer brand can change that value.
Speaker:It's a lot to put on your shoulders.
Speaker:It's really tough to kind of be the expert in that space.
Speaker:As you're talking to the CFO everybody else in between to get them excited.
Speaker:You should be involving whoever is the expert employer branding
Speaker:in those conversations.
Speaker:You should be doing a kind of unpacking, a kind of investigation of, okay.
Speaker:Of the five.
Speaker:Positive outcomes to the company.
Speaker:This employer brand should likely bring.
Speaker:What is the most important?
Speaker:What's the value to each one?
Speaker:What is the timeline for those values?
Speaker:What is the likelihood of those things occurring is to say will
Speaker:influence that change, or this will directly make that change.
Speaker:All that stuff has to kind of go into a bigger, I won't call it a matrix.
Speaker:I won't call a spreadsheet.
Speaker:I will just simply call.
Speaker:You have to look at the bigger picture and say, look, There are plenty of times
Speaker:in which the problem that is easiest to solve is the way to go because
Speaker:you can create a short term win, hang your hat on that, create a toehold in
Speaker:what's going on and say, okay, and then phase two is you make this bigger win.
Speaker:And you can actually break it up into pieces so you're solving multiple
Speaker:problems, but you're doing it one at a time so that everybody feels
Speaker:like, ah, I feel happy because I know that I'm being served at some point.
Speaker:You might simply say, let's just focus on one problem, and that's the
Speaker:only problem we're going to focus on.
Speaker:But you need to hear from leaders that that's okay, that that makes
Speaker:sense, because every choice you make thrills one leader and kind
Speaker:of pisses off another one, right?
Speaker:It's, you, you're, you're, you're playing favorites.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:In terms of, in terms of kind of, You know what?
Speaker:I'm like, look, ask me questions.
Speaker:So, so I just want to jump in there because, um, you choose one metric.
Speaker:Presumably it's one that is really, really important to the
Speaker:organization and it's a priority one.
Speaker:In my experience, that's, it's, it's important and worthy and it could
Speaker:have a big impact on the organization.
Speaker:So now the stakes are high.
Speaker:You have to deliver on that.
Speaker:So that's, that's the first thing.
Speaker:But the second thing is that metric, whatever it is, It's
Speaker:usually not the metric that leadership will get excited about.
Speaker:So in my experience, you need a big, meaty, worthy, impactful goal.
Speaker:But also there needs to be a sprinkling of an ego metric as well, like a
Speaker:Glassdoor rating moving or you're going to be featured more in these
Speaker:articles and all the rest of it.
Speaker:Um, so what do you, what do you, what do you think about that?
Speaker:But you gotta keep that primary, uh, uh, metric at heart.
Speaker:You have to say, look, this is the first, and the way you, look, we've
Speaker:all seen the racy, you know, the racy kind of charts, like who's responsible,
Speaker:who's accountable, who, all that stuff.
Speaker:You can do the same thing for your metrics.
Speaker:You can say, this is the primary, you know, everything rests on this metric,
Speaker:and then you have secondary outcomes that you should also be measuring and
Speaker:should also be talking about, and some of them will go up and some of them
Speaker:will go down, and be like, okay, we are, but in the, on the mean, we are
Speaker:moving them in the right direction.
Speaker:But ultimately, you have to over index on one.
Speaker:Otherwise, you're splitting your focus and you're going to get yourself
Speaker:in trouble because in the end, a opportunity will arise that will serve
Speaker:one of the secondary outcomes and not so much serve one of the primary.
Speaker:And when you move the needle, when you change your direction,
Speaker:you're putting yourself in danger.
Speaker:You have to be purely focused on that core and say, if we do this
Speaker:right, there are positive outcomes.
Speaker:But until we solve for X, we cannot move on to Y.
Speaker:But in my experience.
Speaker:Leaders get excited and love employer brand, employer brand strategy based
Speaker:on all of the ego metrics and then they justify reinvesting based on the impact
Speaker:you've made from a business perspective.
Speaker:So I think getting that balance right and maintaining high energy.
Speaker:and buy in and ambassadorship.
Speaker:You've got to be delivering that stuff that's that's sexy and
Speaker:interesting and self serving and all, all of those, all of those.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So
Speaker:for example, let's say your business decides our most important metric that we
Speaker:need to change is our quality of talent.
Speaker:And of course, if you find a way to measure quality talent, good
Speaker:for you do that, where, you know, it is something of a Holy grail in
Speaker:terms of how to really measure that everybody does a little differently.
Speaker:But if you say, look, if we do this work, our glass door score will likely float up.
Speaker:And if that's what you sell, leadership is kind of like, hey,
Speaker:here's the cherry on top of the Sunday.
Speaker:That's fine.
Speaker:So long as you don't take away too much focus on how do we say the stuff we
Speaker:need to say that attracts the right kind of talent and pushes the wrong kind of
Speaker:talent away and say, because look, if you want to float your glass door score up,
Speaker:We all know there are some nice little tricks that will just, even without the
Speaker:employer brand, will generally float the number up a little bit, right?
Speaker:There are ways of goosing that number a bit.
Speaker:So, so long as it's not taking too much attention from what
Speaker:you're really trying to solve.
Speaker:Because ultimately, saying you went from a 3 9 to a 4 1, that's great!
Speaker:Show me the dollar value to that.
Speaker:I'll wait.
Speaker:Oh, no, you can't.
Speaker:I don't think you could.
Speaker:But if you start to show me quality of talent is changing and on a metric that
Speaker:matters, HR comes in right behind you and say, let me show you the impact to
Speaker:the business, because that's their job.
Speaker:So, you're absolutely right.
Speaker:I think we're just kind of beating a dead horse here, that it is a balancing act.
Speaker:But I tend, and maybe this is a function of me working
Speaker:primarily with smaller companies.
Speaker:I tend to focus on one metric at a time because you just can't, you
Speaker:can't solve for six things at a time.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And to put that metric in context, how important is it to
Speaker:benchmark against competitors or something tangible to demonstrate?
Speaker:Yeah, that is, that's an it depends answer.
Speaker:Every company is a little different.
Speaker:I think companies who are the most mature in understanding how people
Speaker:choose don't have to worry too much about saying we are as just as good as
Speaker:Amazon or Google or OpenAI or whatever.
Speaker:I don't think it's, I think they understand that we should stand alone.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:No one says, Oh, they don't have Coke.
Speaker:I'll just, I'll just buy Pepsi instead.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:They're the same thing almost.
Speaker:But at the end, in the end, you have a clear choice.
Speaker:It doesn't matter what Pepsi is doing.
Speaker:Coke's going to do is Coke's thing and vice versa.
Speaker:And that's a, an ecosystem where both audiences, both companies
Speaker:are, are Collecting what they need.
Speaker:They're in competition, but they've positioned themselves
Speaker:such that they really aren't.
Speaker:And that's ultimately the goal.
Speaker:For companies who aren't as mature in that thinking, where they're
Speaker:just like, we just have to beat that company, or the recruiters are so
Speaker:terrified of company X, Y, or Z, Do it.
Speaker:If that's, if that gets you the toeholds you need to get
Speaker:everybody excited, do it, right?
Speaker:Just don't, it's a game of don't over promise that we're going
Speaker:to crush that other company.
Speaker:If that's not really the goal, if you use it to kind of get
Speaker:people excited, that's fine.
Speaker:Because that's the thing about employer brand.
Speaker:It is, has so many outcomes.
Speaker:You can talk to different audiences about different parts of the beast, right?
Speaker:Different parts of the elephant.
Speaker:So you can talk to recruiters and say, look, I know Facebook
Speaker:keeps you up at night.
Speaker:I get that.
Speaker:If we implement this properly, Facebook become less of a concern for you.
Speaker:Is that what you sold the leadership?
Speaker:No, they don't care about that.
Speaker:I don't care about that at all.
Speaker:But if that's what gets leaders or gets recruiters excited, do that.
Speaker:And so there's a lot of kind of tools you can use to get those audiences.
Speaker:It's super pumped.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, and it's interesting because, you know, obviously the conversation starts
Speaker:to diverge towards, you the business case and demonstrating a return on investment.
Speaker:Now we've covered a bit of this when we talked about how to speak to a
Speaker:CFO from a numbers and a metrics perspective and all the rest of
Speaker:it.
Speaker:And all that's valid.
Speaker:You should definitely listen to that and go check that out and check the download
Speaker:out, you know, and build your own business
Speaker:case and all of that good stuff.
Speaker:But, um, when we specifically talk about employer brand strategy, I think
Speaker:it's important to really demonstrate.
Speaker:The impact.
Speaker:So not the dollar amount that's changed, but the impact of
Speaker:changing that dollar amount.
Speaker:Do you know what I mean?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So how do you approach that?
Speaker:And how do you do that in a universal story approach?
Speaker:So the penny will drop whoever's in the room.
Speaker:There's a lot of different ways to do that.
Speaker:I tend to believe that.
Speaker:You can tell macro stories in the micro.
Speaker:And so for example, you're a biotech company and you're fighting for
Speaker:biochemists like hand or fist, like everybody else, not enough enough, you
Speaker:know, all, there's all this money flooding into the biotech space to try to hire
Speaker:all these biochemists all the time.
Speaker:How do you pick, how do you get the right ones?
Speaker:It's a fight.
Speaker:All the career sites look the same.
Speaker:All the job posting the same.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I think if you say, rather than say, here's how the industry is changing,
Speaker:that's a big macro conversation.
Speaker:It's hard as the tiny little TA leader who, you know, maybe business doesn't
Speaker:quite take as seriously as they should.
Speaker:If you simply say, here is a role that you are, that you, leader,
Speaker:are very, very concerned about.
Speaker:This is a mission critical role.
Speaker:This is the director of product management.
Speaker:This is the head of medical.
Speaker:This is, Whatever this going to change the stock price kind of higher is going to be.
Speaker:I bet you would love a Nobel quality fields, metal level
Speaker:quality candidate for this role.
Speaker:Someone you can write a press release about someone you can announce to someone
Speaker:who will have an impact, not just on the company, but on the stock price.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:We want that very much.
Speaker:Thank you for much.
Speaker:Make that happen.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:That person exists out there.
Speaker:We know their email address.
Speaker:We know where they work.
Speaker:We know where they live.
Speaker:We know everything about them.
Speaker:Until we solve for the problem that they don't know about us and don't
Speaker:understand why they should change, no amount of outreach will have them respond.
Speaker:They simply aren't interested.
Speaker:We look like everybody else, we sound like everybody else, and
Speaker:everybody is easy to ignore.
Speaker:And then the leaders go, oh, that's a problem.
Speaker:Yes, that is a problem, so thank you for noticing that.
Speaker:What we'd like to do is to plant a flag about how we're doing things.
Speaker:different what we offer, what our reward is, what our mission is, what our work
Speaker:experience, whatever that thing is, talk about it so that we can surround them
Speaker:with interesting messages so that when our recruiters say, Hey, we'd like to talk to
Speaker:you, they have positive feelings about us already, which is going to make them more
Speaker:likely to open the email, to respond to the email, to respond to the phone call.
Speaker:We can't reach the people you want to reach using the
Speaker:same tools everybody else's.
Speaker:And when you get to that line, leaders kind of have a moment and
Speaker:they kind of go, that makes sense, and that's when you have them.
Speaker:So to me, if you can say, we're solving for that problem,
Speaker:they go, that sounds great.
Speaker:But the nice part is, if you solve for that problem, you solve for
Speaker:all these other problems that are happening every single day.
Speaker:Not just once every year higher, but every single hire.
Speaker:We can reach better quality talent.
Speaker:We can close candidates faster.
Speaker:We can get more yeses.
Speaker:Whatever that is.
Speaker:Start with a plan.
Speaker:It's a really easy, tangible, obvious to see story.
Speaker:If it's someone they are actually actively hiring and they're complaining
Speaker:that we can't cocaine, it's, you're in, you are so, that is like fertile
Speaker:ground for you to have that story.
Speaker:So let's just take a beat there for a second because Um, I agree.
Speaker:That's your opportunity to be relevant and be the valuable sort
Speaker:of stakeholder, the problem solver.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Um, at that moment, do you use your 15 minutes of fame to try and
Speaker:educate them about employer brand?
Speaker:Or do you just use it to say, I need some budget to tell some stories, to make us
Speaker:more relevant, to make us more compelling, to get you what you need, and then shut up
Speaker:and wait for the budget and go and do it.
Speaker:Yeah, I think the longer you can go without ever saying the phrase
Speaker:employer brand or even worse, E.
Speaker:V.
Speaker:P.
Speaker:Just better off you are.
Speaker:You are building a talent strategy.
Speaker:You are building a narrative strategy.
Speaker:You are increasing brand recognition you were doing, and these are
Speaker:all terms that they understand.
Speaker:Leaderships get what that strategy is, what brand
Speaker:recognition is and all that stuff.
Speaker:Do they know what employer brand is?
Speaker:Maybe.
Speaker:Maybe not.
Speaker:And even if they think they do, probably wrong.
Speaker:So anything that avoids that conversation is good for you.
Speaker:I don't, besides, you're not selling a product, you're selling an outcome.
Speaker:And the outcome is, we will attract the people you actually want to hire.
Speaker:And on a certain level, you almost in the back of your head say, you
Speaker:don't actually care how I do this.
Speaker:Just give me the money to make, let me solve this problem.
Speaker:And then down the road, you get to say, this is a bit of
Speaker:an employer brand project.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So, I mean, that's interesting because actually we're trying to, We're trying to
Speaker:elevate the importance of employer brand, but what you've just said there is if you
Speaker:can get away with not bringing it up at all, you know, but if that's the case,
Speaker:we've got no chance of getting employer brand and employer brand strategy into the
Speaker:primary vernacular of business strategy.
Speaker:Yeah, I know.
Speaker:I am kind of making a short term win and a long term loss.
Speaker:I am making our jobs a little harder, but unless,
Speaker:unless.
Speaker:You deliver the value first, and then you educate them how afterwards, right.
Speaker:There it is.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:If you're enjoying this conversation, subscribe to the people NBA, either
Speaker:on YouTube or your podcast player.
Speaker:All downloads are available@peopleba.com.
Speaker:These gents are here to raise the visibility and
Speaker:value of our entire industry.
Speaker:So if you've got something out of it, tell a friend or a stranger or a
Speaker:stranger who might become a friend.
Speaker:You know, it's kind of like, remember 10, 15 years ago buying a cell phone,
Speaker:really more, you know, iPhones, right?
Speaker:Um, Ooh, our camera has X number of megapixels now.
Speaker:And most people went, I, uh, that's just gobbledygook.
Speaker:I don't understand that, but they would say more pictures, better pictures.
Speaker:And they would show you the pictures.
Speaker:You are buying better pictures.
Speaker:You didn't care that the answer was bigger sensor, more megapixels, whatever the
Speaker:hell the thing, the bed in the background.
Speaker:It's the same thing.
Speaker:You're selling the outcome.
Speaker:And then as you kind of say, Oh, I like these cameras.
Speaker:If they're excited about what those cameras can do, you can
Speaker:educate them and say, yes, it's because we have a bigger sensor.
Speaker:It has more megapixels.
Speaker:That's what I think.
Speaker:It's the same kind of idea.
Speaker:Sell the outcome and then come around the back end and say,
Speaker:Hey, it's because we did this.
Speaker:This worked.
Speaker:Now let's run it.
Speaker:Continue the investment.
Speaker:Let's continue getting buy in.
Speaker:Let's continue getting activation and all that stuff.
Speaker:It is the, it like keep using the word toehold for a reason
Speaker:because you can't sell to a company that doesn't understand it.
Speaker:All the employer brand at once, you have to sell them the pilot.
Speaker:You have to then sell them the project.
Speaker:You then have to sell them the process.
Speaker:Then you have to sell them the change in perspective.
Speaker:And now everybody, it, it, it ladders up.
Speaker:You can't start by eating the whole, whole elephant at once.
Speaker:Okay, so, I will see your answer and I will raise you this.
Speaker:Uh huh.
Speaker:I don't think leaders particularly care about talent, unless they are the award
Speaker:winning, like, famous person, you know.
Speaker:I thought
Speaker:I was gonna
Speaker:be the salty, starky, cynical one here.
Speaker:You own that!
Speaker:Ha ha ha!
Speaker:I, I honestly I think when all said and done, you look at a C suite, they care
Speaker:about the share price going up, right?
Speaker:Now, if that means they have to invest in the world's best talent in order
Speaker:to do that, you have my attention.
Speaker:However, if that talent, when they sit in the room with everybody else,
Speaker:can't do their job such that they beat competition, actually, it's just
Speaker:been a really expensive hire now.
Speaker:So, my thesis is this.
Speaker:They just don't care about talent.
Speaker:They care about the capability you could extract from talent, which means
Speaker:if we're really going to go there, we have to dare to be able to talk about
Speaker:an organization's culture, which leads us think they know better than anybody.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Before just the bitter, bitter cynical heart of me has to ask this question.
Speaker:This is just a tangent.
Speaker:What do you think leadership misunderstands more
Speaker:employer brand or culture?
Speaker:There's no right answer to that.
Speaker:You're not, you're not trapping me with that.
Speaker:Bad bear trap.
Speaker:No chance.
Speaker:So, but we'll call it even, but it's both pretty high, right?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Fair enough.
Speaker:No, I think you're a hundred percent right.
Speaker:I think this is where.
Speaker:And I remember six, seven, eight years ago, when you talked about employer
Speaker:brand, you were kind of talking about a veiled culture thing before culture
Speaker:really became Simon Sinek says and all the videos and all the stuff.
Speaker:And now it's buzzword testicle, right?
Speaker:It's just, it's all over the place.
Speaker:And again, nobody knows what it really is.
Speaker:I know he talks about it, defines it very well.
Speaker:I think at the time you were connecting those dots, this is your culture is
Speaker:your brand and I still see people on LinkedIn saying that and it really
Speaker:is like, I don't want to be linked in employer brand police and say, let me
Speaker:tell you the seven ways you're wrong.
Speaker:Um, but you're wrong and that's not what that is.
Speaker:I do think there's a correlation though.
Speaker:I think when I think about look and this is me opening up, you know, the
Speaker:curtains and telling how I do things when I think about employer brand, I think
Speaker:exclusively in what makes you different.
Speaker:And I say every company is a little bit different.
Speaker:Now I always get some pushback.
Speaker:No, our company is pretty boring.
Speaker:I'm like, you're every company is different.
Speaker:Otherwise it would not exist.
Speaker:Sorry, it's true and you are different either in the mission.
Speaker:You have the debt you're making the universe and that's true.
Speaker:About 10, maybe 15 percent of all companies.
Speaker:And then you're different in your work experience, which is your culture, your
Speaker:management culture, your, um, your day to day experience, how you solve problems,
Speaker:how collaborative you are, how autonomous you are, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker:But that's where culture lives.
Speaker:And if you aren't different in one of those two ways, you probably have to be
Speaker:different in your reward structure, how you pay, how you bonus, how you reward,
Speaker:you know, how you teach all that stuff.
Speaker:There is a difference for every single company, but culture is so dominant in
Speaker:that work experience space, and it's really hard because there's so much.
Speaker:People want to point to and you and you and I know this.
Speaker:You know, you ask, why do you like working here?
Speaker:Oh, I like the culture.
Speaker:I like the people, blah, blah, blah, such a bullshit answers.
Speaker:And then you try and scratch the surface and get below that.
Speaker:And they don't know what to say.
Speaker:They just feel like that's what they're supposed to say.
Speaker:When you bring the culture conversation into it, you are opening up Pandora's box.
Speaker:When you're having that conversation with leadership, not only do they not
Speaker:understand employer brand, they really don't understand culture and you're
Speaker:having to educate them on two things now.
Speaker:Neither of which they want to be educated on, frankly, and you are in for it.
Speaker:You have, this is a, this is a quagmire of epic proportions.
Speaker:So whatever you can do to avoid that, if you want to bring culture
Speaker:in and you're, you know, let's say this is a company that's invested.
Speaker:It's culturally talk about the culture.
Speaker:These places exist, those places exist, and those opportunities exist.
Speaker:But on them in general, culture is the buzzword.
Speaker:It's the poster, it's the whatever, and be careful kind
Speaker:of, you know, conflating the two.
Speaker:See?
Speaker:So in summary, you're saying don't say the words employer brand.
Speaker:Don't say the word culture, but it is important to define the story you want.
Speaker:You want to tell now, uh, without going down a rabbit hole of what a story is
Speaker:when you tell that story, there has to be a current state and there has
Speaker:to be a future state that's different.
Speaker:So what's your best advice to position the story that is relevant and valuable and
Speaker:high impact without saying employer brand and without saying culture that anybody,
Speaker:any leader gives a shit about at the end.
Speaker:That's that's that's the whole game.
Speaker:That is the whole game.
Speaker:So what I do is first off, my definition of culture is what are the behaviors
Speaker:that occur when there is neither leadership nor rule to decide otherwise.
Speaker:So how do people behave?
Speaker:What is the behaviors in the organization?
Speaker:Uh, Well, let's talk about behaviors.
Speaker:Let's not use the word culture.
Speaker:Everybody thinks they know what that is, but everybody does
Speaker:know what a behavior is, right?
Speaker:Hey, you're always on time to meetings.
Speaker:That's a behavior.
Speaker:Hey, you always, uh, leave your expense reports to the last day of the year.
Speaker:That's a behavior.
Speaker:Hey, uh, whatever it is, there's all sorts of behaviors that happen on all levels
Speaker:of all parts of the company, every team.
Speaker:If you say, look, Would this company be more valuable if
Speaker:people tended to behave like X?
Speaker:For example, they were all more autonomous.
Speaker:They felt more ownership of their choices and ownership of their job.
Speaker:Ownership of the direction.
Speaker:Ownership of their individual strategy and their outcomes.
Speaker:And a lot of leaders would say, absolutely.
Speaker:And just as many leaders would say, Oh God, no, please no.
Speaker:No, please no.
Speaker:Everybody should follow the rules.
Speaker:Everybody should do it.
Speaker:The way they're supposed to do it.
Speaker:And there's neither wrong nor right there.
Speaker:It's simply how leadership sees the strategy and how
Speaker:they execute that strategy.
Speaker:If you say, Oh, you want more autonomy.
Speaker:Well, how do you do that?
Speaker:You can't simply say, Hey, be more autonomous.
Speaker:That's not gonna work because if it did, you just said, you know, said
Speaker:it a long time ago and probably you have and it's not worked.
Speaker:What you need to do is understand that that behavior doesn't
Speaker:change with a light switch.
Speaker:It changes because you're introducing the right inputs, meaning you're
Speaker:hiring more autonomous people.
Speaker:If that is the trait that you care about, bring more in, show
Speaker:them that's what you care about.
Speaker:Reward them for those traits.
Speaker:Everybody around will see, oh wow, those people are getting promoted
Speaker:and rewarded for that trait and they will start to adjust.
Speaker:You are changing the behaviors of individuals across every
Speaker:level of the company through.
Speaker:Hiring.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I did all of that without saying culture, employer, brand.
Speaker:And because what you then say is, look right now, what you say to candidates
Speaker:isn't very specifically interesting about autonomous, your autonomy, you're
Speaker:getting people who do like autonomy and people who don't care about autonomy.
Speaker:How does that serve you?
Speaker:So if we get hyper focused on talking about why we care about
Speaker:autonomy, what autonomy looks like, how we, how we reward autonomy,
Speaker:we're going to attract those people.
Speaker:We're going to hire them people and that's how we change the
Speaker:direction of the company.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So look, we're getting right to the nub of this now.
Speaker:And, you know, this is about how to talk to leadership to
Speaker:actually resonate and be heard.
Speaker:So what I'm hearing from you is First of all, you need to be clear on what
Speaker:the business success is and what the leaders actually want, right?
Speaker:That's the got to be where you start.
Speaker:And then what we're talking about is one of the behaviors that we want
Speaker:to keep hold of, maybe dialogue.
Speaker:And one of the new behaviors that we want to introduce and work towards
Speaker:that you want that we want because.
Speaker:And then we need to be clear on the because what's the impact of that
Speaker:more business success like, and is it more innovation, more collaboration,
Speaker:more autonomy, more productive, like whatever it is, whatever it is, it has
Speaker:to join those dots and the destination needs to live firmly in the world
Speaker:that the leadership care about, right?
Speaker:Yeah, it's best.
Speaker:If you can, if you can make to this magic trick and Brian, I bet
Speaker:money, you have made this magic trip happened a couple times in your life.
Speaker:If you can sense what the leadership cares about the story, they tell themselves
Speaker:about how they lead, how they the vision they have for the company, the direction,
Speaker:you know, when, when, when the Zuck you.
Speaker:Meister and I will not use his full name for reasons we all understand right now.
Speaker:When the Zuckmeister says move fast and break things, he's trying to
Speaker:encourage people who are very autonomous or have high tolerances for risk.
Speaker:That is what he's saying.
Speaker:That is what he's, he's tracking because he thinks if I get more people like
Speaker:me, this company is going to get crazy and we're going to do amazing things.
Speaker:There are just as many leaders who say, if I could get more people to
Speaker:just stop being Cowboys and come in together and work together and.
Speaker:Brainstorm and collaborate really, really well.
Speaker:That is where real innovation happens and innovation is what's
Speaker:going to grow our company.
Speaker:That's a different conversation.
Speaker:Those are two very different directions.
Speaker:And if you can kind of tease out from leader how they see the company and
Speaker:the direction strategy, surf right into that wave, kind of just bring right
Speaker:in because you can say, okay, great.
Speaker:How are you going to attract those people?
Speaker:How are you going to make that real?
Speaker:Do you feel like you're as collaborative as you want to be, or is that
Speaker:you're innovative and autonomous and disruptive as you want to be?
Speaker:No, this is how we make that change.
Speaker:So, okay, well, let's go back to something that we talked about
Speaker:earlier because you said, okay.
Speaker:Just choose one metric or one priority and to be held accountable
Speaker:to at the end of that sentence.
Speaker:But the utopian destination you've just painted there isn't that.
Speaker:So yes, how do you make, how do you make that simple premise we started with?
Speaker:correlate with what you've just said there.
Speaker:What's the, what's the tangible
Speaker:line?
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Let's draw a line.
Speaker:So if you're this company on a point to this company, it's the collaborative
Speaker:company, not the disruptive company.
Speaker:For those of you who can see us on video, by the way,
Speaker:should scribe to us on YouTube.
Speaker:If you're talking about that, I smooth, smooth as silk.
Speaker:It's like I practiced it in front of a mirror.
Speaker:I did not.
Speaker:I say, let's say you're talking to this leadership leader who wants to be more
Speaker:collaborative because collaborative is how you create innovation.
Speaker:You cannot cross.
Speaker:The whole make that whole leap all at once.
Speaker:You simply can't.
Speaker:It's too big a leap and you are one person or one function.
Speaker:What?
Speaker:It's
Speaker:intangible when you try and prove a business case.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:What you're going to say is, look, here are the milestones for this idea.
Speaker:First thing we're going to do is make sure that everything we say from a recruiting
Speaker:and comms point of view reflects.
Speaker:That idea of collaboration becomes innovation.
Speaker:It's every linkedin post.
Speaker:It's every job posting.
Speaker:It's every career site.
Speaker:It's every, it's every, it's every outreach.
Speaker:It's every bit.
Speaker:I want to get social media and the cons team in to kind of buy into this idea.
Speaker:So every time they talk about something that involves employees.
Speaker:Excuse me.
Speaker:They should be referencing the idea of collaboration becomes innovation.
Speaker:If we do that, the next thing you will see is a change in
Speaker:who comes into the business.
Speaker:You will start to see anecdotally, my favorite word, my favorite word
Speaker:from hiring managers that they're getting more of these people.
Speaker:You want, they're seeing more of those candidates.
Speaker:They're hiring more of those candidates.
Speaker:Over time, as we bring those people in, you will start to feel,
Speaker:second favorite word, feel the change in how the company operates.
Speaker:You might even say, you're going to start to feel a change in culture.
Speaker:That is kind of how you parse this out and say, I know, I know.
Speaker:You
Speaker:said the C word.
Speaker:But by then they're going to get it, by then they will see the piece to it.
Speaker:That's how you kind of parse that.
Speaker:If you have a couple of other milestones you can throw in there, that's fine.
Speaker:But you have to, what I always say is when I worked at the agency and
Speaker:I ran a big team of people who was building social media for all these
Speaker:companies, the challenge was always if you're talking to target and you say,
Speaker:you should talk about these things on social media, you're getting nowhere.
Speaker:If you say, here is the next seven weeks of conversation around these three
Speaker:core ideas, suddenly you sound like you know what you're talking about.
Speaker:You're not just saying stuff willy nilly.
Speaker:You're not just asking for stuff like that person's Santa
Speaker:Claus and you want a new pony.
Speaker:You are saying, to achieve the goals you want, these are the
Speaker:steps we are going to take.
Speaker:Simply by establishing a plan and establishing a process, you
Speaker:sound so much more credible.
Speaker:If you're talking to the CEO or the CFO or whoever about how you're going to achieve
Speaker:these goals, if you say this, then this, which allows for this, which activates
Speaker:this, which empowers and engenders this, they go, Not just asking for a pony.
Speaker:Let's do they though, because in my experience, they go, right, we want
Speaker:to get from here to there first.
Speaker:We're going to do step one, step two, step three, step four.
Speaker:You never get to step five without them checking the phone and switching off.
Speaker:And you know, you talked about anecdotal this, and this is how I
Speaker:feel that couldn't be more fluffy compared to the metric business case.
Speaker:So, so that's what it comes down to James.
Speaker:It sounds like to me.
Speaker:We need to balance very hard metrics that the business cares about.
Speaker:We need to paint a very clear story of where we are now and where
Speaker:we're going towards or going to be.
Speaker:Thousand percent.
Speaker:And it needs to be a human sort of elements of fluffiness.
Speaker:But like this is all getting a little bit complicated and hard.
Speaker:This is not straightforward.
Speaker:No, it's not.
Speaker:And the other thing here is we're talking about, Going from where we are
Speaker:today to utopian or positive destination tomorrow in my experience There's one
Speaker:thing that we haven't covered here
Speaker:the risk of not doing it what a future looks like if you don't
Speaker:yes Yes, the carrot and the
Speaker:stick.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, so so there's a few moving pieces here And if we don't put them
Speaker:into the right order in the right sort of place There's a very good
Speaker:chance that we might be confusing more people than we're added value to pay.
Speaker:So what?
Speaker:How do you walk me through?
Speaker:Just be super clear how we put all of these pieces together to be more
Speaker:effective in our role as a TA leader.
Speaker:Get the budget resource and buy in for.
Speaker:What we need is the employee brand, but I'll say employer brand
Speaker:and deliver impact over time.
Speaker:And we've got the final thing I'll throw into the mix before,
Speaker:um, handing it back to you is.
Speaker:Leaders typically are impatient, so they want some sort of immediate gratification
Speaker:and they also have very short memories because they're juggling a million things.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So we can't just tell this very effective story once.
Speaker:So,
Speaker:so walk me through where you start, how you keep people engaged and
Speaker:you remind them and demonstrate.
Speaker:The impact is coming and it's coming in different ways.
Speaker:The very hard business case metric and to your point, how it feels
Speaker:anecdotally, things are changing.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So you start with that micro story.
Speaker:You want to try to attract that person.
Speaker:You want to try to hire that person.
Speaker:No amount of, Expensive ads and emails and CRMs is going to get them to you
Speaker:unless they have a reason to open the email, unless they reason to talk to
Speaker:you, then you add in that the stick.
Speaker:You say, look, here's our job posting.
Speaker:Here's everybody else's job postings.
Speaker:Look how much better they are.
Speaker:Look at that.
Speaker:How much better their X, Y or Z is to create the.
Speaker:Fear create that.
Speaker:Oh, shoot.
Speaker:We're falling behind.
Speaker:You don't overplay that hand.
Speaker:Do not because then you look like a fear monger and schmuck and whatever it is.
Speaker:Just give.
Speaker:It's like a pinch of salt.
Speaker:Just
Speaker:don't throw anyone else onto the bus side.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:don't do that.
Speaker:And it's not about it's because we have bad job postings
Speaker:because Bob has crappy job.
Speaker:No, don't do that.
Speaker:You just simply say, look, We've invested our time and efforts in
Speaker:other places and we are starting to fall behind relative to X, Y, Z.
Speaker:Okay, so now you've told the story and they kind of have a picture of, Oh,
Speaker:so we want to solve for that person.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Then you say, look, the way you solve for that person is to ensure that we
Speaker:are focusing everything on the following metric or the following two metrics.
Speaker:Okay, I like that.
Speaker:Some will have immediate impact.
Speaker:For example, we can very quickly, and I say very quickly, meaning a month,
Speaker:maybe two, change all of our talking points so that everything is aligned.
Speaker:And that's our kind of core milestone.
Speaker:We know everything is aligned.
Speaker:Every talking point, every social post, every whatever is saying the same stuff.
Speaker:That is base camp for what we're trying to do.
Speaker:Immediately, you will start to see positive outcomes.
Speaker:But let's not focus on that.
Speaker:What we want to focus on is up leveling the people we're trying
Speaker:to talk to and hearing from hiring managers that we are reaching and
Speaker:engaging a higher quality talent.
Speaker:So
Speaker:I want to just pause there for a second to just tell you what I've
Speaker:just had and I think is brilliant.
Speaker:So what you're saying is Anecdotally, use a specific scenario of a pain point
Speaker:where we can't find the right person in the right role and the impact, the
Speaker:negative impact that's having and use that to paint the picture of the macro
Speaker:situation the organization is in.
Speaker:I love that because it, it makes a very broad macro situation
Speaker:come to life very, very quickly.
Speaker:Yes, and it uses a human specific example that the leader
Speaker:in front of you cares about.
Speaker:Yes,
Speaker:exactly.
Speaker:It's really easy to say, and I know some people who get away with this
Speaker:and do really well to walk up to the CEO and say, do you know why
Speaker:people like to want to work here?
Speaker:And they say no.
Speaker:And you get to start that conversation.
Speaker:There's way too many CEOs who will think they know the answer and say, I was going
Speaker:to say, I've never met a CEO that says no, okay, well, it was nice to meet you here.
Speaker:I gotta go.
Speaker:Um, so you start with that story.
Speaker:You start by uncovering their pain point.
Speaker:at a human scale, human level that they can feel.
Speaker:It takes work to find that.
Speaker:I'll give you that.
Speaker:It's not easy.
Speaker:There's a reason why this, this, you don't just do this every single day.
Speaker:Once you've established that base camp, once you've established, here's the KPI
Speaker:ready to go to, you can say, look, in the future, we're going to hit these
Speaker:other KPIs that this person cares about.
Speaker:This person cares about this person cares about, but what you have to do,
Speaker:I think the biggest danger is if you show a plan that goes three years Has
Speaker:there ever been a plan that existed more than three months that actually
Speaker:landed where it was supposed to?
Speaker:I don't believe that's true.
Speaker:Uh, from the moon landing to what, I mean, it doesn't matter.
Speaker:No project has actually hit its milestones when everybody thought they would.
Speaker:If you say, it's this, then this, then this, and you say, we won't
Speaker:focus on phase two until we solve, we see X and Y and Z in phase one.
Speaker:That is how we know this is working.
Speaker:And if it doesn't work, we need to change, we should not
Speaker:invest in the rest of the stuff.
Speaker:So I tend to focus on, these are phases, and each one is contingent
Speaker:on the previous phase succeeding.
Speaker:And if it doesn't, we don't want to reinvest in something that's not working.
Speaker:That'd be stupid, and it gives us a chance to pivot.
Speaker:And you always want, look, you and I know this, you always want to leave yourself a
Speaker:little wiggle room, just a little bit of hedging room, just because shit happens.
Speaker:And we just got our explicit license there, right there.
Speaker:We just got called for explicit.
Speaker:Shit happens, and you can't Kind of mitigate all of it.
Speaker:So understand that it happens.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So I think that's a really good point.
Speaker:And I think Um, that's definitely, definitely something people
Speaker:should, should bear in mind and, and start to use straight away.
Speaker:Um, and it's interesting what you say about the, the CEO and what
Speaker:they think they know versus the reality of all the rest of it.
Speaker:However, however, um, and this, and this sort of also reminds me of the
Speaker:maturity model episode, actually.
Speaker:It's like understanding the context and situation we're in.
Speaker:So people should check that, uh, that episode out and, and use that download
Speaker:to pinpoint your exact situation.
Speaker:to, um, climatize yourself to your own surroundings.
Speaker:But something that universally always works in my experience is If you go up
Speaker:to the, the leader that we're trying to influence, whether it's the CEO or, or
Speaker:otherwise and say, Hey, I've done some research, I've spoken to some people and
Speaker:unanimously, we believe this place is special because however, nobody in the
Speaker:external audience, nobody out there knows.
Speaker:Oh, that's a great one.
Speaker:That is a great.
Speaker:Trick to play are to lean right up into their ego and then say, gosh, no
Speaker:one knows how wonderful we all are.
Speaker:And when we say we, we mean use.
Speaker:Yes, exactly.
Speaker:Therefore, what should we do about it?
Speaker:Because if people did know that one secret externally,
Speaker:What do you think would happen?
Speaker:We'd start to get great people and all the rest of it.
Speaker:The second thing is, unanimously, universally, in any boardroom, in the
Speaker:land, no senior leader likes to be told that we are currently operating
Speaker:tactically as an organization.
Speaker:So the strategic approach would be in state your plan, right?
Speaker:Have you seen, have you seen any other effective tools or mechanisms
Speaker:or positioning to really Prick the ears up of, of, of leadership.
Speaker:You know, there are a couple of tricks that you could lean on, like award season.
Speaker:And I'm, I have such mixed emotions around emotion about awards, but they can work.
Speaker:They can work.
Speaker:It does
Speaker:work.
Speaker:It does work just like the glass door rating and, you know, best places
Speaker:to work and all the rest of it, we could argue or agree vehemently.
Speaker:whether they are worth a carrot, you know, but leadership cares about them.
Speaker:Therefore,
Speaker:it's a lever.
Speaker:It's a lever to get you where you want to go.
Speaker:And I highly endorse using that as a lever.
Speaker:I do not endorse necessarily using as the, the, the, the, the baseline of your brand
Speaker:or the foundation, your brand, I can tell you 20 reasons why that's a bad idea.
Speaker:But if it's the thing, and look, here's the deal.
Speaker:We're trying to, Teach without teaching.
Speaker:It's not easy.
Speaker:And whatever trick you can, it's kind of like trying to
Speaker:get your kid to eat vegetables.
Speaker:If
Speaker:you've got to hide it in the
Speaker:muffin, if you've got a cover it in spaghetti, so whatever it takes to get
Speaker:them to eat their vegetables, do it.
Speaker:I guess there's no, there's no trick.
Speaker:That's too tricky.
Speaker:Just so long as you don't put yourself in a box where you're trapped, like
Speaker:that's as far as you can go, just make it so that they start to see.
Speaker:I know you love that one.
Speaker:And you know, I never thought of that before.
Speaker:I'm
Speaker:going to say it's the perfect analogy and it really does, it
Speaker:really does get that message out.
Speaker:Like it's just, it's trying to get your leaders to eat vegetables.
Speaker:Yeah, no, I've done that all mixed it up, but it's like trying to
Speaker:get your kids to eat vegetables.
Speaker:It doesn't matter how you, you know, if there's something that
Speaker:works to do it, you're here in time.
Speaker:You are entirely right.
Speaker:It's perfect.
Speaker:Um, so, so that's got to go in the book of tricks, right?
Speaker:We've talked a lot about getting the flywheel turn and getting
Speaker:initial buy in a budget and with the business case and all the rest of it.
Speaker:What's the difference between getting buying up front and
Speaker:keeping buying throughout?
Speaker:I think this is a great way to close out this conversation because it's, it's,
Speaker:If you just get by an up front, you're going to have that feeling of, I did it.
Speaker:You know, it's going to be the Rocky on the stairs kind of moment.
Speaker:I did a fantastic every you're patting yourself in the back.
Speaker:You're popping the champagne, all that good stuff.
Speaker:Don't you want to get yourself a little candy bar, a little tiny,
Speaker:little treat to say, good job.
Speaker:You, yes, this is not champagne time because what you need to do.
Speaker:is understand that the leader said, yes, in a moment of
Speaker:excitement, you've you did your job.
Speaker:You got them to understand and eat the vegetables without knowing
Speaker:that they're eating vegetables, get them excited about the stuff
Speaker:they cared about, get them excited about how you can make that change.
Speaker:And the second you walked out the door, they forgot your name.
Speaker:They forgot your project.
Speaker:They forgot your outcomes.
Speaker:They kind of went, whatever.
Speaker:Your job from then on is to perpetually feed them updates on these, the
Speaker:positive impacts we're seeing.
Speaker:This is the, this is when you should expect the next positive outcome.
Speaker:Give them answers now and give them something to anticipate down the road.
Speaker:So long as they're.
Speaker:It's, it's, it's Alibaba in the, in the thousand thieves or a
Speaker:hundred thieves or whatever it is.
Speaker:So long as you're telling half, four, I don't know how many
Speaker:thieves, there's a lot of thieves, there's a whole lot of thieves.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But you, that idea of you telling half the story and you say, I'll finish
Speaker:the rest tomorrow so that, you know, Scheherazade couldn't get killed that day.
Speaker:You're always leading them on to anticipate the next thing.
Speaker:That's how you start to build that sense of, okay.
Speaker:This is an ongoing thing.
Speaker:I'm expecting these ideas.
Speaker:I'm expecting these changes.
Speaker:I'm expecting these outcomes.
Speaker:They'll start to talk about it with their leadership.
Speaker:You should do that with as many people as you can feed them that
Speaker:sense of this is what we're doing.
Speaker:This is what we achieved.
Speaker:This is what we're achieving next.
Speaker:If you want to close it out with if you've got Either needs you want us
Speaker:to serve, like kind of open the door to say, do you want to join the party?
Speaker:Do you want to come on in and be part of this?
Speaker:If you have hires, you're looking, you know, if you have hires, they're sitting
Speaker:on the ATS and not going anywhere.
Speaker:If you have X or Y or Z, come talk to us.
Speaker:Let's see how we can help.
Speaker:There is a process of perpetually creating allies throughout the
Speaker:process of building and activating and and using the employer brand.
Speaker:So allies is really important.
Speaker:So we talked a lot about buy in.
Speaker:Um, 20 odd years of like running a employer brand agency and sort of
Speaker:being in the boardroom and trying to, trying to get sign off and trying to
Speaker:get buy in and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker:I always, always, always knew it was going to be a green light and we got buy in and
Speaker:sign off and everybody was really excited, but I've managed to convince the people
Speaker:in front of me that it was their idea.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So my idea that I'm selling and asking for buy in, I'm going to remind you of
Speaker:the amazing insights and smart things that you said early on that led us to believe
Speaker:this and gave us the idea for that.
Speaker:And then you helped us refine this such that that's the finished
Speaker:product that you came up with.
Speaker:They're going to, how important is approaching what you're doing in
Speaker:a collaborative way and reminding leadership that of their inputs.
Speaker:Yeah, I, and in my work, I always say, If I deliver an employer brand to you
Speaker:and you go, Oh, that's a surprise.
Speaker:I have screwed up.
Speaker:Our job is not to put new outfit on you.
Speaker:Our job is to hold the mirror up and to say, you're a winter.
Speaker:You're not a summer.
Speaker:You look good in this.
Speaker:You don't look so good at this.
Speaker:So focus on this.
Speaker:It sounds simple and stupid, but that's ultimately what we're doing.
Speaker:We're trying to focus everybody's efforts around the things that
Speaker:matter and things that work.
Speaker:Getting that surprise is a bad reaction.
Speaker:It says, Oh, wow.
Speaker:I didn't expect to see that.
Speaker:And I, you have to tell people up front that, because I'm always worried, I'm
Speaker:always worried because, let's be fair, I do hype up the work, I know the value,
Speaker:I know the impact, I also know sometimes it takes a little time to see it.
Speaker:But I say, look, what I deliver will not be shocking.
Speaker:And in fact, best case scenario, you go, yeah, that sounds
Speaker:about right, that's the way.
Speaker:Don't be disappointed with that because it is the answer.
Speaker:It is alignment to what we're trying to achieve.
Speaker:Getting the CEO to then sign a big old check next to that is tough, but
Speaker:that's kind of the game you have to say.
Speaker:But once we have this sense of who we are and what makes us interesting to
Speaker:other people, we turn it on, we activate it, we execute it, yada, yada, yada.
Speaker:We get all those outcomes we want.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I think once again, we've demonstrated that this This can
Speaker:be simple, but it's not easy.
Speaker:You know, there are complexities and there are multiple Layers, depending on the size
Speaker:of your organization, depending on the culture that you're in, the stakeholders
Speaker:around you and all the rest of it.
Speaker:So I've really enjoyed this conversation, James, and we probably didn't argue quite
Speaker:as much as I was hoping we would have.
Speaker:But I tell you this, I'm really glad that we've spent some time.
Speaker:Um, and I've I've got to give got to hand this to you.
Speaker:You put most of the effort into this download that follows here.
Speaker:But in the download, it lays out a really good, robust formula
Speaker:that pretty much any leader could follow and be 80 percent there.
Speaker:And I'm hoping that the conversation we've had And the nuance of considerations will
Speaker:help people fill in, fill in the gaps.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, so folks make sure that you download that document.
Speaker:Muse.
Speaker:Um, because I really do think there's some great contextual value to be
Speaker:had there and it could just help you.
Speaker:I'd save you weeks and weeks and weeks of getting nowhere.
Speaker:I've seen it so many times.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:So thanks everybody for listening.
Speaker:If you have a question, if you have an idea, leave us a
Speaker:voicemail, go to people, NBA.
Speaker:com and leave us a voicemail.
Speaker:We actually will listen to it.
Speaker:We may actually respond on the air.
Speaker:Is that correct?
Speaker:The way we say this.
Speaker:Okay, sure.
Speaker:Why not?
Speaker:All right, Brian.
Speaker:Thanks.
Speaker:This has been a great conversation.
Speaker:I'm so glad we picked this as a topic.
Speaker:Um, it forced me to kind of think through some of the things I do naturally and
Speaker:make me kind of formalize a little bit, which is always useful to me.
Speaker:So I appreciate the topic selection and the great, great questions.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Really
Speaker:enjoyed this one.
Speaker:Until
Speaker:next
Speaker:time.
Speaker:See you.
Speaker:Are you still here?
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:Well, that's a choice.
Speaker:If you've got a thing for making questionable choices, subscribe
Speaker:to the People MBA at PeopleMBA.
Speaker:com.
Speaker:It's a whole lot better than watching the news.
