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Tag: Hiring

Challenger Brands: B2B Challengers

Posted on by Emotive Brand

Continuing the Challenge

This post is the second in our three-part series on challenger brands. You can read part one, “Challenger Brands: A Primer,” right here.

Previously, we spoke about adopting a challenger mindset. It’s one defined by ambition, agility, and a willingness to take risks. Most importantly, we noted how businesses are no longer competing against each other – they are competing against the category they are in and the expectations of what a customer experience feels like.

At a glance, these personality traits naturally lend themselves to the B2C world. Ask anyone to rattle off a few challenger brands and you’ll invariably get the same answers: Uber, Netflix, Spotify, Airbnb—and it makes sense. When you’re trying to rewire people’s preconceived notions, B2C is, by definition, the shortest path to the customer.

But it is by no means the only path. The worlds of B2B and B2B2C are being transformed by challenger brands. Just look at ZipRecruiter, Zoom, Slack, or even Salesforce. If you can’t see it on the surface, it’s most likely occurring behind the scenes in their business strategy.

B2B Challengers

Founder of 500 Startups, Dave McClure, notes that 

“The next bubble is not in tech where innovation and capital are never in short supply. Rather, the real bubble is in far-too-generous P/E multiples and valuations of global public companies, whose business models are being obliterated by startups and improved by orders of magnitude. As more Fortune 500 CEOs recognize and admit their vulnerability to disruption, expect them to hedge their own public valuations by buying the very same unicorns that keep up awake at night.”

Many legacy B2B companies end up following a similar lifecycle. They start off small and hungry, build a legacy off of their early innovations, ride the wave for as long as possible, then go out and acquire innovation when they start to stagnate. The daily churn of operating a business makes it very difficult to ignite the same innovation that got you started. So, you import. To be clear, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But it’s a strategy that ultimately puts your future in the hands of other creators.

Homegrown Innovation

Regardless of size, if B2B brands want to truly adopt a challenger mindset, they need to take active steps to continually foster their own innovation. Famously, Google has a 20% rule. Implemented by Google Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 2004, it’s designed to give employees one full day per week to work on a Google-related passion project of their choosing or creation. It’s the same strategy that created Gmail, Google Maps, Google Talk, Google News, AdSense, and many others.

The point being, words like agile and innovative don’t have to be words that are only synonymous with startups. B2B companies can instill a challenger’s sense of agility through the behaviors and culture they nurture. If you’re wondering how a B2B brand knows if it should adopt a challenger mindset, there’s a wonderful diagram created by Michael Hay, a business leader with fifteen years at IKEA, that can help. Outlining four essentials for driving a successful change of strategy, it acts as a checklist for recognizing and delivering change.

need for change

Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal

At the end of the day, there are many lessons that B2B brands can steal from the challenger world. Are you leading with a strong story that unequivocally answers the question, “Why do you do what you do?” More than meet a singular need, are you meeting the needs of today and tomorrow better than anyone else? Are you talking with lead adopters at the front of the innovation curve and making them evangelists for your brand?

Perhaps the most important lesson that B2B brands can glean is in how they hire. As Adam Morgan writes,

“Employees at challenger brands require different qualities. They need to be mission-driven. They need to know why they get out of bed and go to work every morning and they need to be passionate about the problems the company is trying to solve. Being a maverick is also of far greater importance at a challenger, the opposite of at a larger organization where dissent is considered a flaw. Employees need to ask the provocative questions and not just take risks themselves, but also to be tolerant of risks that others might take.”

To learn more about how your B2B brand can benefit from adopting a challenger mindset, contact Tracy Lloyd at [email protected].

To finish reading our three-part challenger series, check out: Part Three—Challenger Brands: Design that Disrupts

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency in Oakland, California

How to Deal with the Looming Talent Shortage

Posted on by Chris Ames

Who’s Got Talent?

How many times have we heard that robots are coming for our jobs? Whether it’s from science fiction or straight from the mouth of Elon Musk, it’s a dystopia we’ve been anticipating for quite some time. However, based on a recent study from Korn Ferry, a global organizational consulting firm, we may have been misplacing our fears on the wrong targets.

In a sweeping country-by-country analysis, the biggest issue isn’t that robots are stealing all the jobs – it’s that there simply aren’t enough human beings to take them. According to the study, by 2030 there will be a global human talent shortage of more than 85 million people. For scale, that’s roughly equivalent to the population of Germany. Left unchecked, in 2030 that talent shortage could result in $8.5 trillion in unrealized annual revenues.

Talent Crunch

So, how did we get here and what can we do about it? For starters, many of these problems stem from simple demography. Japan and many European nations, for instance, are continuing a decade long decline in birth rates. For countries with the deadly combination of low unemployment and a booming manufacturing sector – the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and many others – labor shortages are accelerating automation and increased use of robotics “not to replace people, but because there aren’t enough of them to fill the factories,” the report says.

In the United States, the graying population is a major contributor to the talent shortage, with some 10,000 baby boomers reaching retirement age every day for the next 19 years. Even last year, U.S. job vacancies hit a record 6 million per month. The fact is, younger generations will not have had the time or training required to take many of the high-skilled jobs left behind.

“As with many economies, the onus falls on companies to train workers, and also to encourage governments to rethink education programs to generate the talent pipelines the industry will require,” says Werner Penk, President of Korn Ferry’s Global Technology Market practice.

Follow the Leader

The impact of the talent crunch is so significant that the continued predominance of sector powerhouses is in question. For instance, the United States is the undisputed leader in tech, but the talent shortage could erode that lead fast. In tech alone, the US could lose out on $162 billion worth of revenues annually unless it finds more high-tech workers. When you look at India, which is projected to have a surplus of more than 1 million high-skilled tech workers by 2030, it’s not difficult to imagine them as the next tech leader.

“As a result,” the report says, “organizations may be prompted to relocate their headquarters and operational centers to places where the talent supply is more plentiful. Governments will be forced to invest in improving their people’s skills to avert corporate flight and to defend their nations’ income and status.”

Be a Life-Long Learner

The savviest organizations are taking on the onus of training talent themselves, increasing their hiring of people straight out of school, says Jean-Marc Laouchez, president of the Korn Ferry Institute. These firms are also trying to instill a culture of continuous learning and training. “Constant learning – driven by both workers and organizations – will be central to the future of work, extending far beyond the traditional definition of learning and development,” he says.

Though we love to blame robots, the truth is that global growth, demographic trends, under-skilled workforces, and tightening immigration policies are much more sinister culprits. There isn’t one solution to this alarming trend, but there are a series of insights and implications we can use to inform how we attract and retain top talent.

Insights

  • Demand will be biggest for highly educated professionals, technicians, and managers. Professionals will be in particularly high demand in the trade, transportation, and communications industries in developing nations.
  • In the next two decades, demand for professionals in manufacturing will peak at more than 10 percent in developing countries, exceeding 4 percent across all countries sampled.
  • Healthcare research and development alone will generate enormous demand for skilled labor worldwide.
  • Employees without critical knowledge and technical skills will be left behind.

Implications

  • On the business side, introduce strategic workforce planning to address imbalances between labor supply and demand.
  • On the government side, easing migration will attract the right talent globally.
  • On a personal level, increase your chances at long-term employability by advancing technological literacy and cross-cultural learning skills.
  • For HR managers and recruiters, develop a talent “trellis” by focusing on horizontal and vertical career and education paths.
  • Management should be willing to ditch the 9-to-5 and encourage contract, freelance, and virtual mobility to access required skills easily.
  • Hiring teams need to continue their diversification and equality efforts by tapping women, people of color, folks from the LGBTQIA community, older professionals, and immigrants.

To learn more about how your brand can prepare for the looming talent shortage, contact Founding Partner Tracy Lloyd at [email protected].

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design firm in San Francisco.

Employer Branding Trends for 2019

Posted on by Chris Ames

Fun Work vs. Fulfilling Work

How we hire changes every year. Is there any page on a company’s website more volatile than its careers tab? At the start of the decade, it seemed like a place for plucky young startups to showcase almost everything besides what the organizations actually did. You’d have to scroll through two ping pong tables and at least one company dog before you got to any open positions. But at the end of the day, fun will only get you so far.

Why We Work

Now, the tech scene has largely outgrown its dorm room aesthetic. Prospective hires are looking for far more than bean bags and free lunches. Expectations have shifted from a place of amusement to a place of personal, professional, and emotional fulfillment. A modern company is required to have a handle on everything from 401(k)s to mental health benefits.

“The contract between the organization and the individual is beginning to change,” says Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practice at London Business School. “The old contract looked like this: ‘I work to buy stuff that makes me happy.’ The contract is negotiated by tangible assets. The new contract will be, ‘I work to make me happy.’ We have to think about work as being the thing, not the money you get from it. I don’t see many companies realizing how profound that change will be.”

How We Work

Beyond finding meaningful work, how we access that meaning is transforming as well. Eighty-two percent of people want to work from home at least once per week. In addition, it’s estimated that by 2028, 78% of employers will offer remote opportunities in some capacity.

By the numbers, you could view this mobility as chaos, but employers have a unique opportunity to rethink the way they build teams. As Rachael Klinefield says, “Rather than being wed to a finite group of employees who may or may not have the skill and passion to meet a company’s expectations, HR departments can nurture an ever-growing network of high-quality talent.”

This approach challenges the traditional hierarchical management style – and that’s a good thing. Instead, employers will shift toward relationship-oriented strategies that align with their pace, culture, and values. In this style of work, design and communication tools are absolutely essential to keep your talent network in sync, so find whatever works best for you.

Who We Work For

The idea of reputation management, perhaps something once relegated to a buzzword in the past, has never been more important in the age of purpose-driven brands. Like Yelp before them, sites like Reputation.com and Glassdoor act as gatekeepers between brands and top talent.

Recent research from Glassdoor found about half of more than 4,600 people surveyed use Glassdoor at some point during their job search, and that good ratings of a company’s compensation and benefits factor heavily in their decision about where to apply for or accept employment. If companies want to stay competitive, they have to treat their employer brand like they do their corporate brand and heavily manage its online reputation.

How We Find Talent

Just as technology is transforming the way people research brands, it’s shifting how brands research people. Modern recruiting software will continue to alter two key components of hiring: optimization and targeting. In other words, HR professionals will now use the time they once used combing through the slush pile to hone in on top talent. From beginning to end, the entire onboarding process will be streamlined, reducing the risk of a bad fit.

As technology continues to progress, companies will also take advantage of tools like machine learning and AI to build smarter chatbots. This will free up even more time for HR professionals to focus on the human aspects of hiring like relationship-building and discovering a value match.

The Future of Work

The future of work is a story that employers and employees are writing together. The role of an employer brand is ensuring that this story is as strong and harmonious as possible. Above everything else, a company is only as good as its people. Are you doing everything you can to attract and retain the right ones?

To learn about how you can turn your employer brand into a magnet for today’s top talent, contact Founding Partner Tracy Lloyd at [email protected].

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design firm in San Francisco.

What Makes a Great Strategist?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

A Team of Strategists

Lots of businesses use the title of strategist for roles within their organization. For us at Emotive Brand, we have a very clear and defined view of what makes a good brand strategist. We carefully curate our project teams of strategists with a focus on selecting the skill sets and experience that are best suited for our clients and our projects.

The Need for a Great Strategist

In today’s hyper competitive, interconnected, always shifting world, businesses need great strategists to really drive their business and brand forward.

When recruiting and hiring strategists at our agency, there are certain qualities we look for.

1.Information masters

First off, successful strategists are talented and powerful listeners. In order to get to the heart of business problems and help align leadership teams around an impactful strategy, strategists need to be great listeners and also know who to listen to. Great strategists know how to get the information they need using many different frameworks and formats from people first-hand.

Effective strategists understand that listening is sometimes about reading between the lines, absorbing what people say, what they don’t say, and what their body language communicates. In strategy projects, clients are often so close to the problems, they can’t really see what is happening. Through listening, strategists gain a keen understanding of a business, its current situation, where it needs to go, and why.

But great strategists don’t just listen. They are able to distill the information gathered from listening into powerful insights and ideas. It’s not just about processing information. A strategist can actually take that information and do something with it – moving it to a different, more enlightened place by reframing what was heard and delivering that back in a different and evolved way.

Great strategists have the simultaneous ability to see both the big picture and all the little details that might lead to big insights. They are able to constantly adjust and adapt to new information. The ability to balance many different inputs and ideas and then be able to make adjustments so that everything fits together is critical.

This means effective strategists consistently develop and test hypothesis. It’s all about gathering the right types of information and proving or disproving before moving on.

2. Business experts

This is two-fold. First, being a strategist requires business experience. Like many other professions, strategy is a learning process that develops when fostered. And business acumen in different industries is often what turns a good strategist into great strategist. So as people work with different clients, solve unique problems, notice patterns, develop skills, and gather information, their strategic minds become honed and they are able to understand more and more what it takes to be great.

Second, great strategists must become experts in whatever business their client is in no matter how complicated or how long it takes to reach that level of understanding.

They dig deep to understand a business at the highest level – grasping the ins and outs of product architecture, a complicated sales approach, a complex ecosystem…they have to deeply understand it all. It must be as if they’ve worked for that business and industry for years.

Great strategists also have to build confidence that they are knowledgeable and fully understand the client’s business. Once that trust is earned, client’s are able to be led to new levels of thinking.  They know that until they are confident and knowledgeable, they can’t be impactful facilitators. It’s necessary to make their clients confident that they bring an extensive mastery to the table.

3. Strategy as a journey

Great strategists always have a strategy for the strategy. They know their ideas have to be bulletproof. When creating a strategy, they are constantly challenging their own thinking. They know everyone is going to look to poke a hole in it. And if they don’t fill in the hole, someone else will.

In the end, after having heard the input of everyone from the start, deeply listening to each voice, and distilling what everyone has said, great strategists always go back and gut test. Where is the client going to get hung up? Successful strategists have strategically accounted for these places and can protect them and move the strategy forward.

4. Strategists in the world at large

Great strategists delight in the world and its interconnectivity. They draw on the cues of everything that’s happening within it. This is why the most talented strategist are often veracious readers who immerse in a wide net of areas. Curiosity is key here. And great strategists are always well-rounded, holistic thinkers.

It’s super important that strategists keep current with trends and forces – beyond just the category they are working in, but also, within the world at large. Great strategists can’t resort to old patterns of thinking or outdated models. They evolve as the world evolves and business shifts.

Successful strategy isn’t possible unless it’s up to speed and embedded in what’s contextually happening in the competitive world the strategy exists in and the larger world as well. So successful strategists can draw insights from everywhere.

5. Trusted advisors and enthusiastic coaches

One of our favorite parallels to draw at EB is between brand strategy and coaching. As such, great strategists often act as coaches. They understand that not every client is the same – some need to move fast, others prefer distance over speed. They help clients break out of outdated behaviors and practices that are holding them back, adapt to new skills, shift, increase performance, and gain competitive edge. Great strategists adapt to the objectives of the client and create a customize path to transformation.

In order to move a strategy forward, strategists have to establish trust. Oftentimes, this means going out of their way for clients and being willing to do a little something extra to show their support and dedication to the project. Empathy is also key here. Great strategists gain client’s confidence every step of the way and understand what it takes to make the client feel confident enough to bring the strategy to life.

Greatness in Action

In order to have maximum impact, a strategist has to be able to consume, assimilate, and distill lots of disparate information into clear and powerful concepts and ideas. They also have to be able to express that concept with compelling language and build a powerful case to explain, defend, and generate excitement around their strategy. This is a no small task.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy and design agency.