Well we had our big day! Wow. As you may have known, I was dreading
this horrid exercise. I imagined it largely as a coercive effort. Some
new management trick bought from expensive consultants to beat us into
submission using fear and anger. I could not imaging what they wanted
from us even though they sent out countless emails encouraging us,
informing us, and cajoling us.
I worked hard to figure out what they wanted from this day. Was it
some bizarre effort to create a conformist atmosphere, adopt the
company as country and family, or just a gesture to placate us by
appearing to care about our relationship with the company. What did
they want? I'm a suspicious person when dealing with non-individual
entities. People, individuals, I'm quite willing to take at face value.
But one to one changes nature when you add even one more. The texture
of the relationship changes and it changes even more dramatically when
one of the three represents not themselves but a larger non-existent
entity, like a belief system, a country, a company -- a governing
body, as it were. They enter into a relationship with you that is not
one of choice between two individuals but one that is horribly
lopsided because one individual is not individual, they are
representing a collective. The decisions of the collective, the
mysterious governing body, become the motivations of the person
standing in front of you. Even I think this sounds paranoid.
Twenty years ago, I wrote a poem that included the lines:

I don't believe in no government,
And I don't believe in no god.
I believe the way that it all comes
Down, is a fraud.
-----
I don't want to die, for god or country

Clearly this is not a new anxiety of mine.

All that said, my willingness to be curious and willing got me to work
in time for the start of the second kick-off session. We gathered,
standing (thereby indicating it was going to be a short, fast session)
in the large room used for such gathering (and sports when meetings
are not happening). The lights went down, a screen lit up, and our
CEO's voice boomed out over the loudspeaker. Our CEO is a tiny woman,
small in physical stature only, and she had cleverly started her
speech from the back of the room; while talking into a lapel mic, she
wound her way through the shuffling herd ( which cleared around her
like gazelles scenting lions) speaking.
She, and the two shills in the audience who responded to her call for
contributions of personal commitments, chatted their way through a
fast set up. We were to look for ways to enhance our interactions with
coworkers, make life better for our customers, and thereby improve the
company as a whole. On one level, I understand that if the workers in
a company are all pulling in the same direction (led either by fear or
dedication) the company, as a whole, moves in that direction. Think of
galleys, the ancient sailing vessels with their rows of vassals
pulling on their oars per the direction of the man who took his
direction from above. The sailors were volunteers and the adventure
they sought was facilitated by the need for sailors. Circular, just
like now where a company needs employees to take care of customers
(Max Barry's book Company aside) and those employees are also
customers. It's a very involved relationship one has, especially with
a large corporation.
The first third of my professional life was spent working for small
companies. Then I went out on my own and found it was still small
companies that needed my work. Now, I work for a corporation (in all
senses). It's an international corporation of mind-boggling size (at
least to me). It's employee count, excluding contractors and
consultants, and outsourced departments, is about the population of a
mid-sized city.
Once we were into our breakout sessions, I was faced with the duality
of my own sense and apprehensions about the day (and the motive of the
company). Two coworkers were bantering and one declared this day to be
a colossal waste of resources (money and time, specifically his time)
and he worried that this was how the company was spending his bonus.
The other coworker responded saying he preferred to see it as an
investment the company was making; the company thought so much about
the exercise that they were willing to spend the money. We figured,
just taking the population of the company and the amount of time taken
on this particular day alone, it was costing the company at least
$10,000,000. I think the room, by the time the 15 people had gathered,
were fairly evenly split between resentful, passive, and curious.
The facilitators were all management level employees who had received a
couple of hours of training prior to being assigned a room. The
facilitators, during their training, managed to inject changes into
the structure of the day. First, they reduced the amount of time to be
spent and they eliminated the requirement that employees attend the
session led by their direct supervisor. This changed the outcome
dramatically.
First, people were dispersed and were now working with people with
whom they did not have close working relationships. Second, the goal
changed from a commitment the team would make to a suggestion for a
project to be undertaken to achieve the goal of the day.
The goal of the day was identifying a project that could be
accomplished in a 3 month period that addressed an issue that blocked
the delivery of simplicity. That delivery may be something in-house
that prevented the delivery of product or make the work difficult to
perform. That delivery could be something about our product that made
it difficult to sell, use, or maintain.
We started with identifying some place in our own lives, outside of
work, where we had made things easier for ourselves. We went around
the room and chatted that up. Then we identified some areas on our
work life where things had been made easier (usually by another
employee, it was, at this point, shifting from what have you done for
me lately to what has someone done for you lately). Then, we sat down
with sticky notes and wrote down areas, in our work life, that
presented problems, opportunities for improvement, or created road
blocks to success. Then we worked with one other person and chose two
of the issues from our collections. The selected issues were posted on
a board and we voted on them. We selected one as the focus of our
suggestion.
The discovery and exploration phases were handled with a very six
sigma style of working. The facilitator in my group was very good at
giving us enough leeway to explore our thoughts and feelings without
devolving into a harsh complaint session.
We were all happy to leave the meeting, but we were also satisfied
with our contribution to the day. I think that is what the corporation
was looking for.

Hmm, okay, so I'm being asked to give examples of the company brand statement and it's supporting pillars as it is expressed in my life and work. Okay, first we're actually supposed to know what the brand is and what the pillars are. Now, we've been given a homework assignment.
We got the official low-down today, in the form of a six page memo. The memo outlines the various exercises we're to do on the special day. In one, I'm supposed to bring a story that describes how our brand statement is played out in my life. Life is better because I am a brand ambassador. In another, I'm supposed to talk about how the pillars and the brand show up in my work.
There's more, but I can't remember the whole six pages.
My coworkers and I have spent a number of hours flailing, railing, and wailing about this enforced voluntary activity. We've been informed that we cannot go into the exercises with snarky statements, sarcasm, or other unworthy contributions.
I told a group of folks at work that I actually felt better about the whole thing since I've spent time mulling it over in this blog.
The corporate big wigs have been evangelized. They have the spirit and it compels them to spread the good word. I must accept the corporation into my life. Once I do, I will be healed. I will grow fluffy wings and ... oh, wait, wrong story.
I do feel like I'm on one of those reality television shows. I wonder, some days, where the hidden cameras are and I try to remember, in that huge stack of papers I signed when I was hired... was one a release form?
Seriously, although I think I'm getting an idea of what the idea is, I still don't get it. I still really feel like I'm being sold something that requires faith, belief, trust. How can I trust a non-existent being? Is the corporation going beyond country to god?

All this focus on the day of exercises to explore the company's brand and how I integrate it into my life and work has gotten me thinking, a lot, about brands. When I look at an ad or a product, I look for its brand. How is the brand expressed?
And I've been doing some reading on branding to discover just what it includes.
Here's what I think so far: branding can be the logo, a phrase, or even a look that conveys some ideal that the company uses to identify itself and its products in the marketplace. With this definition, the company is attempting to connect to the consumer, to have the consumer identify with the company. There is, for example, only one brand of swimsuit I'd consider wearing. The brand is forever associated with my father, with excellence, with the push to do better each time you swim. No other brand says that to me even if the suits are otherwise indistinguishable. I can recognize the suits on swimmers. The brand is seared into my brain on more levels than I can begin to fully enumerate.
That, clearly, is what a company wants to do with a brand.
It can go against them as well; a brand can become synonymous with an event or experience that results in an intense, and equally irrational, feeling of repulsion.
It makes sense, then, that the company would want its employees to relate to the brand when the brand identifies the company. Loyalty to the company as a facet of the agreement between you and the corporation. Loyalty is an idea that has been treated, in recent times, as something quaint and antiquated; loyalty to an employer is something that went out of fashion with my father's generation. My generation is smart, mobile, and dedicated to self-promotion, self-satisfaction, and self-realization. Loyalty to the corporate employer sometimes requires actions that do nothing for me, the individual.
Corporations are having to convince employees that they belong to a community managed by mysterious powers in some remote location. Corporations are, like some countries, a collection of territories taken in acquisitions that are decided not by the employees but by the leaders. Some leaders have made their territories ripe for acquisition; others have struggled mightily, with few resources, to protect their territories. Now, the larger collective has to be converted from a disparate collection of identities into one, monolithic culture. The great melting pot theory.
How reciprocal is this loyalty? My citizenship grants me certain responsibilities and benefits. Will pledging my allegiance to the corporation bring me benefits? I wonder what they are. I get a paycheck without pledging my allegiance. I get a paycheck by doing my job. So, what will the corporation give me in return for integrating myself and pledging allegiance?
What if I branded myself? What if I had a statement that identified me? What would I want it to be? Clearly, I have a new project.

One of the concepts that is promoted at work is the idea that change must provide a return on investment. There must be an actual, measurable result that has, as a benefit, a monetary savings. I'm deep into this culture; I'm working on my Six Sigma Green Belt. I can see that the rationale is, well, rational. Don't just make change for sake of making change. At the last place I worked, they did that and we called it churn. In 18 months, I had four different managers, belonged to two different division (without changing my job), had five different directors, and three different VPs. Each time one of these changes happened, we had to go through the whole introduction, analysis, and goal setting for my work. My work didn't really change, but I had to spend an inordinate amount of time educating new bosses as to what I did and why it was worthwhile for the company to let me keep doing it.
So, the focus on evaluating processes before deciding to change them, then measuring the processes to discover where the problem actually is, and fixing that instead of flailing about changing every thing on the fly, seems good to me. But, given that, what's the problem they're trying to solve with our buy into the brand day?
How much is it costing to design and deliver this day of wooing the employee? What is supposed to happen at the end of the day? Am I supposed to fall in love with the corporation? Is this religion? A corporation is an ethereal thing, like a god or demon. Since it has no consciousness of its own, what can I fall in love with? But, people are patriotic, which is kind of like being in love with your country. A country, like a corporation, is non-corporeal. I mean they both have physical manifestations, but they aren't sentient beings, they aren't aware; they are collections of people who have come together.
So, maybe the idea is to create an agreement, a sense of connectedness, like people from the same country feel some link to everyone else who calls themselves by the same national or cultural name. When news talks about travellers, I look to see if any are my countrymen. The chances of me knowing them personally are shatteringly slim, but, I will feel more concern about a fellow countryman in danger than just another human tragedy.
Is my company trying to become a country?

My philosophy is that work is like Disney World, an approximation of real life that requires the suspension of disbelief.
Now, the corporation that employs me want me to be engaged. I'm already married, I protest.
I'm afraid, now, that I'll be encouraged to do calisthenics with my coworkers each morning (I am encouraged to perambulate the campus, they even provide three routes with distances so I can live a heart healthy life). Perhaps I will be reciting the brand pledge each morning along with the loudspeaker leader piped in over my head.
I want to buy copies of Jennifer Government for the senior management to read. Or at least suggest they get a grip.
Here's the deal: I have skills, the corporation wants them, I enjoy what I do, they need what I do; they pay me, I put up with their bizarre culture. I would do what I do for free. I love what I do. Of course if I were doing it for free, I would not show up every day and they wouldn't be able to count on shipping product on time.
As it is, the branding experience is feeling a bit odd. And frustrating. We're going to spend an entire day in workshops and group exercises, becoming engaged and committed to the brand philosophy. None of us, in my group, belief the brand philosophy. We just want to get our job done.
That's it.
We want to get our job done, and done well. We take pride in our work. We work as a team, we're comfortable with each other, we trust each other, and we can move the work along with little friction and tussle. We aren't each other's best friend and we don't want the company to try so hard to make us be its best friend. It's work, for crying out loud.