Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

More information is coming out about Toyota's stunning recall that has now expanded to Europe and China. Some say that Toyota had to take action before federal regulators stepped in. Some are speculating that in their quest to big bigger they took their eye off of quality and Toyota seems to be confirming this speculation.

"Our president, Akio Toyoda, has said that expansion may have occurred to the extent where it is difficult for us to keep an eye on the ball," said Paul Nolasco, a Toyota spokesman in Tokyo. "Other executives have said that part of the troubles we are having today have been because of speedy moves in the past," he added, the Washington Post reports.

Several years ago I read a great book, Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big, by Bo Burlingham. The book profiles eight very different companies that rejected fast growth strategies. The companies are vastly different, but they all share a unwavering commitment to being the best at what they do. These small companies also have other interesting qualities in common, but I won't spoil the book for you.

I'm not saying big is bad. The Toyota recall should serve as a wake-up call to every business large and small, particularly those businesses that grew rapidly before this latest recession. Growth at the expense of quality will always come back to bite you. In the case of Toyota, it may destroy the brand. Now is a great time to reevaluate processes, quality control and your company's standards of excellence.

 

The far Left is wailing and gnashing teeth over the Supreme Court's mystifying decision equating a corporation's political free speech rights to an individual's. My friends on the Left are gnawing their fingernails over the prospect of corporations spending millions to defeat an elected official who dares to cross the corporation.

They fret that after one or two politicians are picked off by the vengeful corporation, others will fold like a cheap suit, toward the will of rapacious corporate interests.

Not so fast.

If the Supremes had issued this goofball ruling in 1975, that might have been the case. Back then, we had three networks, along with three strong local stations affiliates, and we had a local newspaper. Their advertising rates were so expensive only corporations could afford these primary ways of communicating with voters.

But today, the Internet has vaporized that barrier to the entrance of the town square. Look no farther than Obama campaign manager David Plouffe's fine book, "The Audacity to Win." In writing about the campaign's communication strategy, Plouffe rarely mentions TV advertising without also underscoring the importance of YouTube and social media to Obama's success.

Anybody with a broadband connection and something to say can generate an equal and opposite reaction to corporate expenditures attempting to take down an errant officeholder.

But more important, it's unlikely that we'll see corporations spending millions of dollars to oust offending politicians simply because the risks far outweigh the rewards. Sure, millions in TV advertising by a company could result in some feckless politician losing an election.

But let's remember - corporations never win popularity contests with voters. After the bank bailout, executive compensation and million-dollar bonuses on Wall Street, corporate America is more unpopular than ever. Let's face it - many corporations are remarkably ham-fisted when it comes to the intersection of business and politics.

In some respects, being attacked by a corporation could be the best thing that could happen to a candidate.

While watching President Obama's first State of the Union address, I found myself wondering, "What if he had tackled some easier issues earlier and gotten some small wins under his belt? Would it have made a difference if he had developed a better working relationship with Congressional Republicans before tackling the complex task of healthcare reform? Would he have had more success if he had tempered his ambitions early?"

I don't know the answers and it's easy to be the Monday Morning Quarterback on politics. But I do believe there are lessons we can learn from Obama's first year to inform how we build new client relationships. Here are four:

• Trust is earned, not assumed. I sometimes have the sense that agency people believe clients should take their advice because, well, we're the experts. That strikes me as arrogant. No matter what your agency or personal credentials are, you have to build trust in each individual client relationships. That means backing up your recommendations with facts and research. Doing what you said you would do. Assuming accountability.

• Nurture relationships. It's easy to get focused on doing the work and forget about building the relationships and processes to execute. The best way we've found to build relationships is to ask questions. Learn how your client contacts like to work. Understand their priorities. Find about their typical day. Know how they are evaluated and how the work you are doing fits into their goals. From this starting point, you can build a relationship that will sustain the rough patches.

• Score quick wins. Working with your client, identify early opportunities for success. Within the first 90 days generate quick wins. The wins will help establish trust and build momentum for the long march. If you haven't had any wins in 90 days, chances are the relationship is in trouble.

• Keep focused on the goal. Some would say Obama failed in communicating the big picture to the American people. That he allowed the healthcare reform debate to get into the weeds without keeping people focused on the challenge and the potential. We often face the same challenges in client relationships. We get distracted by tactics and get off course. One way we have approached this is to keep our top three goals for the client's organization front and center in all communications. We have posted it in meetings and used it at the top of recommendations and reports. Repetition helps.

The good news is most client relationships don't start with presidential-level expectations, a 24-7 news cycle or with an opposition party. Paying attention to a few basics upfront a can set the stage for a successful first year.

I wish I could mute certain conversations on Twitter and Facebook.

I am not a basketball fan. I am not a football fan. I have friends that are complaining about increase in chatter related to Apple products that is bound to continue over the next three days.

There are plenty of things I like to Tweet or write about on Facebook that I am sure no one else cares about.

I am glad I can hide certain things on Facebook - like Farmville updates or updates from certain people BUT I wish I could be a little more specific with what I want to hide. And that my hide/mute button could happen across multiple platforms.

I don't want to hide all activity from someone or unfollow them, I just want to hide the 30-40 tweets that happen during a game I care nothing about. For the Super Bowl, I want to hear the chatter about the commercials but don't care about the football insight.

Is there a service that handles this that I don't know about? You cannot rely on #hashtags. Brizzly allows you to mute all tweets from a user. I believe I can also accomplish this in TweetDeck, by creating creating a "Group" but that is not exactly what I want to do, either. If they are multitasking they might Tweet about something I care about during that time.

(For those of you reading this, I am fully aware that some people may want to mute me from time to time - or even permanently).

Any thoughts?

Can you imagine the conversation in Toyota's board room over the past few days? "Boys, we have a big problem. Now, what are we going to do?" Can you imagine the review of the data, the potential causes, the options, the implications, the risk? Surely, there were different perspectives offering a point-of-view on what to do - perhaps a naysayer, a skeptic, a customer champion, a company loyalist, the risk analysts, the financial experts and undoubtedly the lawyers.

Can you imagine the guts it took to make the final decision? To say to shareholders, dealers, customers and the world "not only are we going to recall 2.3 million vehicles, we are going to suspend selling eight other models accounting for 57 percent of our business."

We all make mistakes. And, sometimes things go wrong without anyone making a mistake. I haven't met anyone who likes to admit their mistakes. (And, if you ask my husband, he'd say the same thing about me.) Perhaps one of the hardest things to do as a leader is take accountability for the actions of others. Coaches routinely do it. Witness Roy Williams' comments in the wake of the Carolina Tar Heels basketball team's collapse at the start of the 2009-10 ACC season. When a leader takes responsibility it can take some of the pressure off the team. That applies to business as well as sports. Leaders build their teams. They are accountable for systems, process and oversight. Leaders take the compliments when their team succeed and they have to take responsibility for shortcomings.

It's one thing for a leader to admit a mistake, it's another to be accountable. Accountability doesn't mean ferreting out who's to blame, although sometimes that's a necessary part of making sure the problem doesn't happen again. Accountability means making it right. That's what Toyota is doing and that's what business has to do. Research, such as the Edelman Trust Barometer, shows consumers trust in business is down. Taking responsibility and then being accountable to customers is a necessary step in regaining consumer trust.

Customer confidence and trust is a tremendous asset to a business. Businesses invest a lot of resources in having the right products, services and talent to earn the confidence of their customers. Even with stellar products and people, problems will happen. And when they do, how the business responds to the challenge will determine whether customers will continue to trust the brand.

Many will speculate on whether Toyota is making the right call. The accelerator problem may be so widespread that the damage to their business and their brand is irreparable. But if you were in the Toyota board room faced with data showing a problem that was potentially risking millions of lives and you had a brand built on reliability, there was only one call to make.