Of these four steps, the one I find clients struggle the most with is step three: innovating. This leads us nicely into the second key to staying relevant. 2. REFRAME This second strategy is about actively looking to see things from different perspectives or points of view. Albert Einstein once highlighted the importance of this, saying: “It is impossible to solve the significant problems of life by adopting the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”. I would suggest that the most valuable asset every organisation has in innovation and creativity is the set of freshest eyes on a team. Perhaps it is the young employee who has just joined the business, or someone who has come into the organisation from outside the industry. Naturally, the value of people with fresh eyes is that they don’t know how things have always been done; they have no trouble thinking outside the box because they don’t know what the box even looks like just yet! Sadly, when people with fresh eyes join an organisation, the implicit message they get is to sit in the corner, watch how things are done around here, and then once you know how things are done around here you can offer your suggestions. By this point, however, this new person no longer has fresh eyes and the opportunity has been wasted. 3. REPOSITION The final key to staying relevant as times change is to reposition your employer brand as times and needs evolve.
When I am working with clients, helping them reposition their brand, there are a series of five questions I ask: 1. How are we currently perceived? This is such an important question from an employer-branding perspective. Before you look at how you’d like to be perceived by your future workforce, you must first know how you are currently perceived. 2. What motivates or impresses our employees? What do they really want, not what you’d assume or hope they want! 3. What confuses, frustrates and disappoints them? 4. How are we a category of one? What do you do so differently that no other organisation can truly say they operate the way you do? 5. What are your employees’ unknown future needs? Put simply, what will your workforce want in five to 10 years – things they may not even know they want yet! Setting a brand or organisation up for enduring relevance involves a principle that every experienced surfer understands well. In order to catch the perfect wave, a good surfer knows the importance of keeping their eyes firmly on the horizon. While a wave is still forming a long way off in the distance, surfers know that this is the time to move – to paddle out and get in position. Move too late or not at all and you’ll simply get washed up as the wave crashes over you. In much the same way, winning the battle for relevance is about anticipating, preparing for and embracing change, no matter how uncomfortable or confronting it may be.
Shaky times: 10 endangered brands Every year, 24/7 Wall St, which provides critical online analysis and commentary for US equity investors, identifies 10 brands sold in the US that it predicts will disappear within a year’s time. Among the selection criteria are: declining sales and losses; disclosures by the parent of the brand that it might go out of business; rising costs that are unlikely to be recouped through higher prices; companies that have lost the great majority of their customers.
For 2014 this list includes:
About the author Michael McQueen is a social commentator and author of the newly launched book, ‘Winning the Battle for Relevance’, available in bookstores across Australia and at MichaelMcQueen.net
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