The Dangers of Branding Leaders (and Roy Keane)

Julie Hodges and myself are in the middle of writing an article on leadership branding, so I was intrigued by a recent post on the Australian HR online magazine (5th December, 2008, HR Daily), which appeared with the headline ‘Strong CEO brand improves candidate attraction and retention’
Citing a study by Minolta in Australia, ' Richard Branson (Virgin), Bill Gates (Microsoft) and Steve Jobs (Apple) are the business leaders Australian workers are most inspired by. Westpac CEO Gail Kelly was the only Australian CEO to make the top five list. Workers were also asked to identify which of the world's biggest companies they would most like to work for. Google topped the list, followed by Microsoft, Virgin, IBM and Apple. Locally based banks Macquarie ANZ, Westpac, followed by BHP Billiton, a mining company, ranked sixth, eighth, ninth and tenth respectively.

This headlining of leaders is further testament to the notion of ‘celebrity firms’ being tied up with celebrity leaders. Violina Rindova, and her colleagues in a 2006 article in the Academy of Management Review entitled ‘Celebrity Firms: The Social Construction of Market Popularity’ argued that a celebrity firm is developed from the media’s search for organizations that symbolize important changes in society by taking bold or unusual actions and which attempt to create distinctive identities. These firms are natural targets for ‘dramatized realities’ created by the business press. Google is one such firm that has become one of the most widely discussed success stories in the business press; also Apple whose products define the industry standard.

Most of the business press coverage focuses on the founders. For example, Google is often reported by referring to Larry Page and Sergey Brin. An Economist article of January 2006 portrays Page as the ‘visionary geek-in-chief', pronouncing at software conferences on the range of new products that will help Google achieve its ambition to ‘organize all the world’s information’. The storyline portrays the firm’s celebrity through Page’s missionary fanaticism, claiming that visitors to Google feel they are in the company of religious zealots rather than ordinary employees. Much the same story could have been written for Apple in the 1980s and, to a lesser extent, for Virgin over the last decade or so.

Though employees and the business press may feel the need to put leaders on a pedestal because of their requirements to find simple solutions to the complex problems of explaining why firms (and football teams!) are successful, are there dangers in doing so, and in having a corporate brand so closely linked to celebrity leaders?

My answer is yes. Much of the academic evidence points out that senior leaders don’t have a major impact on organizational performance. For example, Jeff Pfeffer and Robert Sutton claim that the hard evidence shows the impact of leadership on performance are modest under most conditions, strong under a few conditions, and absent in others. ‘Studies from leaders from large samples of CEOs…, university presidents to managers of colleges and professional sports teams show that organizational performance is determined largely by factors that no individual - including a leader - can control’ (‘Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense’ p.192) Like a number of writers in this field, they also point to the dark side of leadership – narcissism, ruthlessness, group think and risky decision-making by people believing themselves to be all powerful. So, is it better to have leadership brands that are less reliant on powerful individuals and more on distributed leadership throughout the organization, i.e. build organization systems and brands where the actions of powerful and skilled individuals matter least. And should leaders act more wisely by knowing when to get out of the way so others can make contributions?

My own football team, Sunderland, provides a dramatic recent example of the problems of celebrity and wise leadership. Roy Keane, its talismanic manager, was over-loaded expectations by success-starved supporters seeking ‘instant pudding’ and a sports press always on the lookout for celebrity stories. Keane acted wisely by resigning when there were no calls for him to do so. He rightly expressed his self-doubt that no sane person could live up to such expectations (and implicit leadership theory –see earlier post) and resigned in as low key a manner as he could. Good for him and a lesson to other leaders (and firms seeking to brand themselves on the basis of individual leaders).

Some Good E-mail Advice

There are somethings you should never put in an e-mail. Death by Email gives us a list. Some samples:

Is this actually legal?
We're going to do this differently than normal.

All of us HR types need to be aware of these things.

Relocated and Laid Off

I was recently relocated across the country for a position at a better company (leaving behind a good paying, secure job that my heart was no longer in). I was worried about the immediate future of the company (lots of merger/buyout talks) and said I didn't know if I could take the position because I was upside down on my house and would take a big hit selling. The HR person told me that my contract spelled out the severance package if the company was bought out and that there would be no layoffs for at least the next 6 months. I figured that 6 months would allow me to cover the hit on my house if I got laid off and give me enough time to prove my skill set. However, after 3 months, they announced layoffs and I was let go. Is there recourse that I can do other than accept the severance package (much smaller than if the company got bought) and be upset?

I would not have accepted the job had I known that layoffs would occur this soon and I was even promised that they would not. It was just not written in my contract, just expressed verbally. Also, they paid relocation, and if I left within the first year, I had to pay back a pro-rated amount. Does that impact my at-will status since if I chose to quit willingly I would take a financial hit? They told me it had nothing to do with performance, I just knew the least about the business model itself compared to my teammates, which makes sense, because I was told to expect a 3-6 month learning curve.

Once again, I must point out that I am not a lawyer. And even if I was a lawyer (which I'm not), I don't know what state you are in. But, in my non-lawyerly way, I'd tell you to pick up the phone book (does anybody do that anymore? Okay, go to Google.) and find yourself an employment lawyer.

In some states a verbal promise is as good as a contract. (I believe, remember, not a lawyer!) Even if it's not, it would be worth it to get a lawyer's opinion on this.

I would ask for more severance. I would ask for, at minimum, what you were promised in case of a buy-out. In fact, I would ask for more because of false promises. Talk about a stupidly short-sighted company. (I know, I know, who could have predicted the sub prime mortgage market would collapse and spread into all areas of the economy? Oh, that's right, everyone with half a brain could have predicted it, except for the people who actually dealt in sub prime mortgages. Go figure.) Only in the rarest of circumstances should a company do a position elimination for someone who has only worked there for 3 months. I say, if a position needs to go, it should be the manager who was fool enough to hire someone he wouldn't have work for in 3 months.

Sorry, a bit ranty today. I don't often say this, but I honestly say you should contact a lawyer. Don't look to win the employment law lottery. It's not worth that. But a nicely worded letter or phone call from your attorney to the legal department of your company may be quite effective.

This is one of the times I say don't sign the release that is undoubtedly part of the severance offer until it's been reviewed by an attorney. Make sure that your full relocation costs are covered as well.

Good luck on the job hunt. Don't let this get you discouraged.

You Make More Money???!?!?!?!?

Two managers were socializing outside of work. Yes, alcohol was involved. Manager one said to Manager Two: Hey, I know what you make. Manager one then quoted – to the penny – what Manager Two’s salary was. Manager One said that he had seen the information in an offer letter on the HR Manager’s desk (that’s me). Manager two then said: OK, so now that you know my salary, I want to know your salary. Manager One then disclosed his salary amount.

There are obviously a couple issues here, but the plot thickens. It turns out that Manager One makes quite a bit more than Manager Two, even though their positions are somewhat equal. (There are major wage equity issues here that I am battling). Manager Two is devastated, and has done an amazing job of turning his department around and building his team. This really took the wind out of his sales.

My issue is with Manager One. While I am at fault for leaving something confidential on my desk, I have a huge issue with Manager One disclosing this. Managers are exposed to confidential, sensitive information all the time, so the expectation is that he keeps his mouth shut. This is also covered very clearly in our policies. If he disclosed this after a couple drinks, what else is he saying?

When Manager Two disclosed this to me, he stated that he was asking for advice and simply wanted to vent. As an HR professional, I am well aware that there are some topics that employees CAN NOT ask me to keep confidential, and I believe this is potentially one of them. However, since it took place outside of work, are we in a position to talk with and potentially discipline Manager One?

I'll start my reprimanding with you--bad of you to keep confidential info in a place where others could see it. But, you know that.

Then I'll reprimand the company for having pay inequities. Now, I'm somewhat of a radical when it comes to pay. Hold on to your horses, but I don't think pay should be confidential.

Let the ranting begin. Let me state my case. I've been in HR a long time and in every HR position I've ever held--including when I was a temp admin--I've had access to everyone's salary. And I mean everyone's salary. CEOs and co-workers included. It's always been part of my job. At first it's fascinating. Now? Not so much.

And that's part of why I'm opposed to secrecy. None of this would have mattered if your company was open about such things. (I know of no companies (government jobs excepted) that are open about such things--I am, as I said, an HR extremist. I wonder if that's like extreme sports: Up Next, Evil HR Lady in the Extreme Compensation Policy competition!)

But the real reason I'm opposed to secrecy is because secrecy allows pay inequities like the one you are dealing with now. Just think--if everyone's salaries were open managers would never hire people at unfair levels or offer big bumps to people they *like* but who hadn't earned the increase.

I realize there are whining problems with this and it takes a lot of guts to have people know that their co-worker with the same title makes more money than they do, but that just means that the company truly needs to pay for performance. Rational people understand that. Irrational people, you don't want working for you.

But, now to your situation (clearly, I just hijacked my own blog!). Can you "punish" manager one for something he did outside of work? Sure! Do you want to go there? No. I don't. But, what I would recommend is this:

HR: So, Manager 1, I understand you had a talk with Manager 2 about salaries. Just couldn't keep quiet about how yours is so much better, right?

Manager 1: So what? (If he's defensive, that is. If he realizes he was a drunk idiot, he'll hang his head and apologize.)

HR: Yeah, so it was a pretty stupid thing to do. I'm not sure this company can trust people who make stupid decisions, inside or outside of work.

And then I'd end the conversation. If you are respected and valued enough it will freak him out just a little bit.

As for confidentiality, you're neither a priest nor a lawyer. Some things you are required by law to act on, but stupid managers who reveal salary information is not one of them. (In my non-lawyer, non-legal advice way. Entertainment, people, this blog is pure entertainment. In fact, did I tell you my favorite joke. It goes like this: There was a snake named Nate...)

I would also bust my buns to deal with the salary inequities, starting with Manager 2. You say he's turned his group around. You better make sure he's rewarded for it, or you are going to lose him. You may already lose him. I can guarantee if I was manager 2, I would have come home and started working on my resume. I've just been told that my company doesn't value me. I'd expect the burden is on the company to prove otherwise.

Ten Ways for HR People To Gain Altitude in 2009

HR people say, "I want my seat at The Table." Others say, "I've got my seat - now what do I do with it?" They're two sides of the same coin. Which HR approaches have the greatest leverage? HR people want to be heard - so how do they do that? And once people are listening, what do they say?

Here are ten thoughts for HR types looking to gain altitude - as in the difference between the two-inches-from-the-ground, here's-the-form-you-need-to-fill-out view and the fifty-thousand-foot, let's chart a course for the company's talent management for the next five years view:

Ten Ways for HR People to Gain Altitude in 2009:

Read the right stuff.

There may be a line manager or two in your organization who's interested in the latest findings about performance management or the nifty team-building ice breaker you discovered on an HR blog. Mostly, your managers couldn't care less. To be credible as an HR person, you've got to know more about business -- your business, your industry and your competitors - than you know about HR. That means reading industry pubs and blogs, not just HR-specific media.

Learn by Interviewing.

You've got a building full of business experts at your disposal, and multiple brains stuffed full of useful information. Sharing your HR expertise isn't nearly as important as learning from the brilliant folks around you, and a great way to do that is by interviewing. If you're not interviewing at least a leader per week in your organization, you're behind the curve. How do you interview your leaders? Easy - ask each one to coffee or just schedule a meeting, notepad in hand, and start asking question. What's the biggest challenge each top leader sees on the horizon for '09? What are the acquisition-and-retention-of-talent issues on his or her mind? What organizational changes does s/he foresee for '09, and why? Don't site in your cave - get out and get into the brains of the people who run your organization.

Be a Community HR Leader.

The best HR advice I ever got came from my CEO back in 1988. He said "I want you to start an HR Council for our industry association." That group was the American Electronics Association. I said "Okay," and that was that. Soon I was organizing meetings, getting to know my peers in the industry and speaking in front of groups (horrors!). You can do it too, and you should. There will never be enough time in the day to finish all your tasks and paperwork - that's a terrible goal, anyway. Get outside your office and share ideas with your counterparts.

Ask your Clients What They Need from You.

We hate to ask our internal clients how we can do a better job, because we're afraid we may be overwhelmed with their wish-list items. That's a small problem. If we can dig into one area of common need and deliver, our credibility and our utility will soar. Create a free Zoomerang or SurveyMonkey survey for your 50 most-visited internal clients and ask them what they want from HR, and from you, in '09. Whatever action plan you put together, Item Number One is a recap of the survey results to the participants, letting them know "I heard you." That seat at the table is hiding in those data!

Build on the Business Strategy.

If you haven't read your organization's 2009 Strategic Plan yet, now is a good time to do it. If there isn't one, an HR person like you can be the catalyst for getting one written. It doesn't have to be ponderous and dense - one pithy page is perfect. Somebody in the enterprise knows the 2009 plan - you can pry it out of his or her brain and put it on paper so the rest of the squad can get on board. Your HR plan springs directly from the company strategy. An HR plan built in a vaccum is an irrelevant HR plan.

Your focus group awaits.

Imagine that it's mid-December and your shiny six-point 2009 HR plan is committed to a dazzling Powerpoint presentation. Take it to the lunchroom or the breakroom and pop a squat. Chat with the first ten people who wander in, and ask them whether HR is doing what it needs to do to keep smart people in the organization for another year. But wait, you say - my obligation is to the management team, not the rank and file! Bull dooky - who keeps the organization running, after all? If your team members aren't getting what they need from you (think of timely and correct paychecks, performance review processes that work, information on pay grades etc.) their bosses won't give you the credibility time of day.

Be Specific.

"Create a winning culture for long-term competitive success via strategic use of Talent Management approaches in a multidimensional intervention matrix" is not a strategy, a tactic, a plan or even a mission, vision or coherent English sentence. It's HR gobbledygook, and it sinks our credibility like no other. In your HR planning, be specific. You're going to reduce turnover? Great - by how much? How are you going to do it? You're going to listen more closely to the needs of middle managers? Ditto - how, and to what milestone? Sales and manufacturing departments don't get to submit airy-fairy annual goals, and credible HR people don't, either.

Know Your Stuff.

I used to say to my CEO boss, "Hey! My job is harder than yours. You just have to know a bunch of business stuff. I have to know that stuff, plus all this HR junk." I was kidding. But it's true. You'd better to be up to speed on HR trivia, including changes in employment laws, how smart employers are changing their approaches to recruiting (broken) performance management (cracked) and other often-tweaked-but-seldom-improved HR processes. If you want to gain altitude in '09, you've got to come across for your organization with smart and nimble HR systems that work - not retreads of barely passable programs that you've read about in year-old HR magazines.

Be Available.

Line executives' biggest complaints re: HR people are their lack of business knowledge, their fanatical devotion to policy-making and their unavailability when they're needed. Make yourself available to people who have questions for you - the daytime hours are for people, after all. I hate to work overtime as much as anyone, but if I'm not available to business leaders during the day, I'm sunk. No one values you for your diligence in completing EEO reports; that stuff doesn't move your business forward. Get it done another way, and keep your door open for those business-slash-people problems that high-altitude HR people are experts at.

Spin It Up.

As you build your HR plan and your high-altitude 2009 persona, start a conversation about what you're up to with other HR folks. Join a discussion group like Ask Liz Ryan HR (just for HR people) or Ask Liz Ryan (25,000 businesspeople from all functions) and/or a Ning group like this one to keep your learning going throughout '09. Leave a comment below and tell us how you're planning to grow your altitude next year. Share what you've learned through a blog or via Twitter. You're not alone, thank goodness. Altitude-seeking HR people are all over, and they'd love to know you.

Follow me on Twitter: asklizryan

Employer Branding in China

On the last leg of a marathon, which has finished in Beijing. I'm the guest of a joint venture between our centre in Glasgow and a newly established, practitioner oriented research centre in Bejing. The Cente for Employer Branding and Reputation Management is a collaboration between Peking University (the number one university in China), Zhaopin.com (one of the largest recruitment consultants in China) and CCTV, which produces the 'Best Employer in China' awards. Such a coming together of big brands in China is testament to the emerging interest in this concept (somewhat similar to Australia in last blog), as was the three hundred or so HR executives, graduate students and staff who turned up to a conference on the subject where I gave the keynote speech and received a visting professorship from Peking University.


The Chinese project is being led to my long time colleague, ex-PhD student and co-author, Dr Hong Zhang, who is currently editing a book on employer branding in China, due out late next year. My impressions from meeting with colleagues are that employer branding and reputation management are concepts that will take root in this most complex of societies. There are two reasons underlying this prediction. The first is the concern with image and identity, which, according to colleagues, is a major issue with employers in China. Consulting report after consulting report lists image and reputation as major pre-occupations of Chinese CEOs. Part of this interest seems to be a result of a lack of confidence among Chinese companies, and part is due to the second reason - the talent management agenda.


Talent management - attracting, retaining, motivating and engaging people - still remains a major issue in the big cities in China, despite the downturn in economic growth (accurate statistics on this issue are not easy to come by). A recent McKinsey report on talent management in China seems to support this impression, which is also the belief of my new colleagues in the Centre. I'm based in an hotel located in a science and technology centre next to the two big universities in Beijing, which has every big technology company in the world resident on its huge science parks. These companies require talented people and the Chinese universities cannot put them out fast enough; nor can they deliver the right levels of quality to turn this country into the knowledge-based economy in aspires to. As a consequence, Chinese companies are beginning to operate in global labour markets for talent, and its shows. Compared to my first visit fifteen years ago, the number of non-Chinese working over here has grown enormously, so much so that they have begun to locate themselves in the equivalent of 'gated communities'.


This new venture has plenty of interesting questions to ask of employer branding and talent management, and I look forward to helping them.

A Great Week with Australian HR Professionals

I've just spent a spectacularly enjoyable and informative week with more than 250 HR professionals in Australia in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney as a guest of ADCORP, one of Australia's largest marketing and communications firms. ADCORP specialises in employer branding, and during the course of interaction with their consultants and clients, it soon became apparent that they do some very good practitioner-oriented research and creative work in this field. As part of their programme to support their clients and to learn more about what academics have to say about these issues, they asked me to lead a number of sessions on employer branding and on other HR-related issues I'm currently researching, e.g. strategic leadership, Web 2.0 etc.

From these sessions, a number of items re-occurred. These are worth summarising for the people who attended because they and others may have better answers to the questions than I do.

The first is something we wrote about in 2003, when we produced the CIPD's first research report on employer branding: 'What's in a Name'? There is no doubt that, in some knowledge-based, professionally dominated, industries - healthcare, professional services, consulting engineering and education, what's in a name really matters. This was confirmed by a number of discussions, during which branding was seen to connote spin and anti-professionalism among key managers and professionals. On this issue, my argument has been for some time that the notion of reputation management is more likely to appeal to internal stakeholders in certain companies/ industries and probably more accurately reflect what the process is about - underscoring legitimacy in external and internal labour markets for good governance and leadership, ethical practices and CSR, as well as creating difference in these markets through branding.

The second notion that seemed to strike a chord was the need for HR to be the guardians of 'authenticity' in employer branding. Employer brands which aren't rooted in what really matters to employees and potential employees are unlikely to be effective. Indeed, these top-down 'designed' brands are more capable of creating cynicism through perceived attempts at 'brandwashing' and dissappointment among employees through overpromising and underdelivering. One of the lessons is that HR needs to drive employer branding to prevent it being dominated by corporate communcations and marketing, functions which often struggle with the notion of bottom-up design or co-creation.

This issue raised an important discussion around segmentation: should and can organizations tailor EVPs to segments, and on what basis should we construct segments? Among the many interesting discussions we had on this topic were ones related to how far you go with segmentation and how do you relate segments to high performance, and to what extent do you privilege the 'global' over the 'local'. A number of organizations have begun to segment their employer branding on the basis of lifestyles, but do EVPs that appeal to lifestyles produce significant benefits for organizations? Also some organizations are wrestling with the problem that idenity and employer branding are essentially local phenomena, yet organizations seek to impose and privilege the corporate brand over the local brand (perhaps reflecting the dominance of marketing and comms). Is this the right way around for employer brands in frequently culturally diverse businesses? Or should we go for the equivalent of endorsed branding strategy, which is sometimes used in customer-facing corporate branding? Again, context is all important; there is no 'one best way'.

A third issue was the role of leadership and its impact on branding. It was clear from discussions that the idea of leadership branding was seen as an integral part of employer branding. Either because leaders have an important influence on the reality of employer branding through their actions in 'walking the talk' or other wise, or because we expect them to, the reality is that leaders (and recruiters) really matter in how people externally and internally experience employer branding. So, should employer branding always incorporate leadership branding?

A fourth issue was measurement. Very little is done in this direction, though for nearly all participants measurement is an absolutely critical issue in making a business case and in evaluating effectiveness. So, we had a lot of discussion around the notion of how to measure employer brand equity through psychological contracting, surfacing images, brand awareness, and some of the more conventional recruitment and retention metrics. For employer branding to really take-off (and for HR credibility), measurement has to be a lot more effective than has hitherto been the case, even allowing for the fact that what is measurable isn't always meaningful and the value of intangible assets.

A fifth issue was the importance and use of the term, Gen Y, which is more widely discussed in Australia than it seems to be in the UK (where the demographic problem is more about managing an ageing workforce). As we have pointed out in recent publications and will do in our forthcoming report for the CIPD on Web 2.0, Gen Y is a crude term than may do more damage that good. The problem seems to be associated with the 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness', in which shorthand labelling (of often diverse groups) begins to have real consequences; the more we think of the younger age groups as Gen Y, the more we treat them uniformally as Gen Y, despite the wide variation of lifestyle and behavioural differences within this group. So, do we need to be a bit more sophisticated in our research?