You can’t message your way out of a broken business.
Stories have archetypes.
In fantasy it’s the grumpy dwarf, the snooty elf, the hard-partying hobbit.
In romance: The bad boy, the dysfunctional parent, the hard-partying hobbit (again? weird).
Your business has them too: The risk-taking CEO, the operator who pokes holes in every idea, the hard-partying hobbit (kidding this time. Maybe.)
These archetypes are frequently in conflict; dwaves and elves and boys and parents and visionaries and finance wonks all see the world a little different. In a story this makes conflict, which keeps things exciting.
In a business? You could do without it.
Probably you want your people getting along, caring for each other and all rowing in the same direction. When a leader tells me, “my team needs a unified message,” typically that’s what they mean.
They want a more unified team.
And what I want to argue in the next few minutes is that while team unity is a worthy goal, a better message doesn’t get you there.
And I should know. I’ve tried.
ALIGNMENT CAN’T BE ARBITRARY
I’m being flip with the fiction references, but in a company this pain is real.
In businesses that aren’t aligned, marketing is always blaming sales for failing to close leads – while sales blames marketing for the leads being bad. Operations grumbles at them both, meanwhile, for making promises it can’t or doesn’t want to keep.
The CFO is sick of telling everybody no (or worse, she loves it). And the CEO can only get things done by pulling rank, overruling the objections and saying “look, we’re going to try this.”
Which leads to eye-rolls when that CEO leaves the room, a half-assed effort by the team to try what they already know won’t work, and finally – big surprise! – the ho-hum result they’d already decided was a foregone conclusion.
Was the plan wrong? Or was it that your people weren’t aligned on it?
You’ll never know.
A STATEMENT WON’T ALIGN YOUR ACTIONS
For 20 years, I tried to solve alignment problems like this with a marketing message.
Marketing is the hammer companies often reach for when they see the nail of internal disagreement. “We need a unified message,” someone says, and if I’m lucky they hire me to talk with leaders and with clients and uncover afresh what makes the company special. Then we try to can that lightning in a homepage or a video or a new division name.
It sometimes kind of works – but not for why you think.
A message, like a purpose statement, tries to name why you’re important so employees and clients can align around that.
But they don’t. Shared statements don’t align us humans.
Shared experiences do.
THAT CARPET GAVE ME JESUS
I grew up in churches; I’m still there. Us Protestants love to tell you that our faith is all about the Bible – that we read the words, believe them, and that unifies us.
Dozens of distinct traditions and tens of thousands of denominations kind of complicate that narrative, though, don’t they?
We’re not sitting here in perfect clear alignment on the Bible or on any creed. We are connecting on experiences: Sunday singing, service projects, meal trains, funerals, weddings.
This is how belonging forms. It’s why the blue-haired ladies at your childhood church were stirred to frothy fervor when someone dared to suggest a different carpet color. And it’s why my formative years were filled not just with Bible reading but with Bible study – a collective gathering in which our shared documents became shared experiences as we stumbled over them together.
Our pursuit of doctrine, even of God, is shared experience. Shared experience can align us.
When I lead a company’s leadership through a “unified message” exercise, it’s much the same. The process of defining and refining messaging is an experience: People share and listen in a way they haven’t for a while. They reconnect.
If anything about a messaging exercise can unify your team, it’s this.
It’s also not enough.
WE SAY SO WE CAN BE
When I revamp a company’s message, two or ten or 20 people speak into that process. But your company might have hundreds of employees.
If you want to be on the same page, you’re talking about a cultural change – not just a marketing change.
They need to hear you say what you’re about, yes. But they also need to experience it.
This is why my clients want a unified message: Not so they can say it, but so they can do it. So that clients and employees can experience the same thing, with consistency, year after year.
To build unity, you must experience what you’re about together.
Naming what you’re about lets you be more intentional about that. But it’s not necessarily your message.
It’s upstream from there.
THINK, THEN ACT, THEN THINK AGAIN
I’m shaping Hopeless Marketing to build strategic alignment within justice-seeking businesses – through dialog.
At smaller companies, that means dialog between me and a leader or two. At larger ones, it means my joy really is facilitating your dialogue with one other.
This isn’t cuddly or peripheral; it’s about building agreement on how you will be successful so you then can do it.
Two things: How you’ll be successful, and agreement on it.
You need both.
And neither is your message. Messaging comes after, as part of the working out. Communication is an action.
If that action isn’t feeling right to you, it’s not a sign to take a different action — but a sign to stop and think. Because communication’s not the only action people in your company take. It isn’t even the biggest one.
Seeking alignment means we think together, then we act together.
Then we learn - and think - and act again.
CONFLICT IS OPPORTUNITY
It matters that you put strategy first because a message is just what you’ll say – but strategy is both what you’ll say and what you’ll do. It’s your framework for turning purpose into actions.
And those action are what build your unity long-term.
Conflict is an opportunity to build that. Different views on your team can be an advantage; disagreement wants to teach you something. The hard-partying hobbit has perspective for you.
Want help finding it? You know where to find me.
Next week: “Moana.”
