Harness the energy of your team

A lesson in in-house PR from Julie Meyer, who wrote a column in today's City AM arguing that you need a company where staff police themselves.

She starts the column with an anecdote about an incident that happened in early 2000:

"My American colleague was used to small talk with people he randomly met, and so said to the receptionist as I rolled my eyes, “So do you like working here?” with a big smile expecting some lukewarm “yes it’s a nice place” in response. Staring straight ahead, she let rip: “No, actually this place is filled with nasty people who are very unpleasant to work with, and I want to leave as soon as I find another job.”

Evangelists for your company starts from the very top but applies to everyone, even the receptionist at the bottom. If you're cleaner is treated badly, they'll speak about your company in the same way as the receptionist did, which is more than likely bad for business as Meyer explains:

"Business is spirit — it is all energy. All bad companies show their spots regardless of how much makeup the company’s directors try to put over them."

Having created the picture of a 'bad company' (I feel that she could have come up with another example rather than just using a personal anecdote and not naming the company in question) the 'great company' she uses as an example is Apple, who I recently blogged about on a similar topic:

"All great companies have a mission — without exception. Apple, the maker of the iPod, lost its way, but never lost its followers: there have always been hardcore Apple addicts. Apple’s reinvention has been a wonder of the 21st century but the mission was always there — to bring insanely great products to market. The keeper of the mission, Steve Jobs, returned and brought the energy back."

If PR practitioners want to take one point from Meyer's article on the importance of having company evangelists as vital to in-house PR, it is this:

If you want to harness the energy of your team, throw away the company handbook along with anyone who has negative energy. Agree a set of principles that you believe in, and secure the commitment of your team to those principles.

It’s a scary process but anything short of this means you spend you life policing your staff. You can only get lift-off if you have a self- and team-policing environment where people care enough about the firm to nudge and accelerate people themselves towards the common goal and common good."

Meyer goes on to argue the case for "covenants not contracts", which I feel weakens her argument slightly, so the last quote here is a useful place for this post to stop.

If you want to read the whole article, you can find it here.