Hedgehog cake
For: Jenny McCarthy

Woolloomooloo!

Upon asking Miss McCarthy what cake she would like, it started out with ‘Oh I’m easy. Just a simple chocolate cake, please…’ followed by an in-depth cake conversation, ending with her favourite children’s cake – the hedgehog cake. Little did she know I would actually make it! It really was fun. Decorating, cutting it into shape and layering it with fur-like icing. Cake bliss if you ask me.

The good: if you haven’t already guessed, I’m quite proud of this little number, and what a beauty this hedgehog was! With its sparkly silver eyes… pink and chocolate glitter coat… and chocolate coated spikes… well you get the point!

The bad: This hedgehog was layered, with icing in between. When the cake came out of the oven however, I was a little silly and didn’t wait until it had cooled down – resulting in the middle icing mostly disappear into the cake! Whoopsy daisies!

Delicious? What’s that saying they have in fashion? No pain no gain? Well I suppose we can apply that here. This cake was all about looks, and when you want to look good – much like 6 inch heels – you need to compromise on comfort (or in our case, taste). So although it tasted pretty good, this hedgehog was definitely more a looker!

Lando x

Like all siblings, my sister and I punctuated our otherwise happy childhood with regular bouts of fisticuffs. My sister, being taller, would deliver devastating noogies; I’d reply with a no less vicious Chinese burns. Fish fingers were the most common culprit. Y’see we’d developed a bizarre competitiveness that meant at every opportunity, we’d gleefully whip out our Barbie rulers and scrutinise the exact proportions of whatever was put in front of us. Bits of toast, fairy cakes, even the unsuspecting yolk of a poached egg. Potential minefields, all of ‘em.

And so to a similar – though less violent – dedication to measurement; Melcrum’s Employee Engagement conference. Taking place in London’s Bloomsbury Hotel (not the other Bloomsbury Hotel a few doors down, as a few perplexed late-comers found), the two-day event rumbled through the questions keeping IC folk awake at night. Is social media a fad? (A: Hell, no) Is there really any substitute for our people having a regular chinwag with their line managers? (A: Not really). Can we really do more with less? (A: You betcha – but only if you’re smart, set the appropriate expectations of what you’ll get, and work with an exceptional agency).

And with each presentation came the inevitable question: “did you measure it?” For it seems that engagement, a previously nebulous ‘nice to have’, has been replaced by science. As I sat through slide after slide of decimal percentile increases, ratios and indexes it was clear that meaty metrics are so hot right now. Keynote presenter Mothercare had the daddy of metrics – a 28% growth in international revenue, attributed in large part to its creation of a company culture, or DNA, modeled on the best people in its business. (‘Attributed in large part’ sounds suspiciously like ‘Possibly was related but we don’t really know despite all the numbers on this here PowerPoint presentation’. Cynical Ed – see this and this.)

Other presenters from the likes of Mars, London Overground Rail Operations and Coca Cola Enterprises also showed the link between the work of their IC teams and improved employee engagement. Here, success was defined by improved EOS scores, rather than demonstrating a direct correlation to bottom line profit. But for the audience – and presumably, the bosses of those organisations – this was proof enough.

Of course, in the current climate IC folk are feeling the pressure to demonstrate the value engagement activities (and they themselves) bring to their organisation. But be weary of overkill. I lost count of the number of people who mentioned they were doing yet another survey on what their people were going to do differently, better, or more of as a result of this and that communication. “I’m not sure what more we can ask of them,” one bemused lady from a high street retailer told me over a muffin. “Isn’t it enough that they’re doing a good job?”

Here, incidentally, are some pictures of WMW’s Victorian sweetshop, where IC folk would gather in droves during mid afternoon coffee to repair their waning energy levels from all that brain action. Eclairs and Sherbet Lemons went down a treat – thanks to everyone who visited. If you’re wondering why our Lord and Master is sat at the counter, it’s because the stand has since been relocated to WMW Towers and Richard has taken it upon himself to become a latter day Willy Wonka.

Revoke golden ticket. Check.

Expect an invitation for a natter over a cuppa very soon. You really must have some of the leftover sweets. Really. We’re struggling here.

In his excellent book A Technique for Producing Ideas (45 years old but as relevant as ever), James Webb Young declared: “An idea is nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements.” But sometimes even that can be too much effort for the busy creative-about-town. So, here’s a wholesale re-post from one of my favourite blogs – The Ad Contrarian. I couldn’t have said it better myself. So, I didn’t.

The Power of Specificity

There are a lot of good Italian restaurants in my neighborhood. But I go to one regularly because I love the bread.

My favorite sneakers aren’t the ones that look the nicest or absorb shock the best. They’re the ones that are the widest.

My favorite recording isn’t of the best song I ever heard, or have best vocal I ever heard, but it does have my favorite sax solo.

The point is — like most people — when I have a preference, it is usually for a very specific reason.

And yet, throughout my career one of toughest things I have had to do is to convince my clients to be more specific.

Many have a hard time understanding that “we answer on the first ring” is a more powerful statement than “world class service.”

They don’t believe that “50 dollars off” is a stronger motivator than “we’ll make your dreams come true.”

Many have thought that the bigger and more ambiguous the promise, the bigger the payoff.

It is usually the opposite. The more specific the promise, the more believable the proposition.

This is a personal view about engagement at work. I have a vested interest in it. I employ people.

To me, it seems that engagement represents a struggle between the bosses and the bossed. The bosses, by and large, see engagement as a management tool and for good economic reasons. Between 60% and 70% of the overheads of most firms is accounted for by salary. That’s massive. That implies strongly that it doesn’t matter how good your new tooling machine or how slick your social media marketing strategy, you’re still stuck with this huge lump of cost that refuses to behave efficiently. So it makes perfect sense to try and make this 60% – 70% of mobile cost units more efficient.

There are three means for doing this: inform them clearly about what they are paid to do; equip them with the resources and technical know-how to be able to do so; and fire them up with enthusiasm so that their attitude is right. (Incidentally, I mean attitude, I don’t mean behaviour. Behavioural issues are what teachers and parents have with children. It’s a word betraying a concept that should be razed from the business lexicon; but don’t get me started on that one.)

100% of employees with the enthusiasm to do the right thing in the right way with the right tools is engagement nirvana. Here’s why it’ll never happen. From the bossed’s point of view, they don’t live at work. Their family doesn’t live at work. They don’t go on holiday at work. They don’t go to work on Christmas Day (forget the exceptions, clever clogs). We all of us have a sense of self that we develop in childhood and which, by the end if not the beginning of adolescence, is pretty much set in its way. Work is the battleground where this sense of self is tested every day.

If I grow up dreaming I’ll be a footballer and I end up a footballer it’s pretty easy to imagine I’m going to be engaged with my job. If I grow up dreaming I’ll be a footballer and I end up in IC, I’m never going to be quite so thoroughly engaged because a part of me isn’t living up to my inner narrative.

With very few exceptions (generally, those who set up their own firms or become footballers) you’re never going to find someone who is totally engaged with work unless you run a cult which I doubt you do.

My four magic tricks for getting that 60% – 70% working efficiently aka engaged are as follows:

•    Accept that you’ll never get people totally engaged. It saves so much later disappointment.

•    Take the precaution of having a great leader at the helm because people, in the main, want to be led well and will put up with more than is sensible for someone they believe in. Even better, ensure that your organisation does something which can be construed as worthwhile. But if you can only have one, have a great leader.

•    Extend to people the courtesy of dealing with them with respect, while making it clear that how they are at work merits that respect. Since you can only do this through other people, make sure your managers can manage well. If they did, you wouldn’t need an engagement strategy.

•    Stop searching for a magic answer. There isn’t one.