Further demonstration that mindfulness works in the workplace

We began the year by linking to a New York Times feature on Aetna's CEO and that company's commitment to mindfulness as an optional channel for employees to pursue. We close the year with a link to this Harvard Business Review post which once again cites Aetna, but notes how other businesses are benefiting from a renewed commitment to mindfulness. We'll feature an excerpt from the article's close here which states that:

"As many organizations can attest, bringing mindfulness to the workplace has decreased people’s stress levels while improving focus and clarity, listening and decision-making skills, and overall well-being. Perhaps most importantly from a management perspective, mindfulness gives employees permission to think. Mindfulness is the essence of engagement. Being fully present — and allowing your team to be fully in the moment — will reap rewards on a personal and professional level."

We continue to realize these same rewards in our work with our clients and welcome the chance to do the same with them again in 2016. We're also happy to talk with you about how we're bringing mindfulness into an engagement, using its power to transform the work that we do together. In doing so, we're less concerned about whether or not we'll ever enter into a business relationship. Our primary concern is to make clear the benefits of mindfulness simply because we see its value each and every day. We're happy to share these insights with you so please feel free to reach out as we work our way through a New Year.

And on that note - may 2016 be both a mindful and memorable one for you and everyone you work with.

Thanks and giving

Well, we're going to add to the inevitable amount of chatter surrounding Thanksgiving as we head into the holiday weekend. But we have to write to note how very grateful we are for our clients, partners and friends who have worked with us during the past year. It has been an incredibly rewarding and gratifying experience. While we have been able to work together to produce some great work, we know that this is only the beginning of what we're all capable of.

Alluvus. Together. It's an approach that is working to inform breakthrough thinking and outcomes that are unfettered by ego and informed by a collective commitment to answering the question we're most interested in answering, "What if we could do anything?"

Thanks to everyone who has had a hand in the work and here's to more as we head into December and the holiday season... 

Who would you be and what would you do if you weren’t afraid?

Today, this David Brooks column stopped us in our tracks. A great read for anyone who, like us, is in search of passion. Here at Alluvus we often ask our prospective clients to help us determine which of these two questions they are looking to answer:

What can we get away with? or... What are we capable of?

Our commitment is to the latter question because with today's new tools and technologies, the opportunities for any organization to do big things is awesome. But too often we find that an organization lacks the passion to take advantage. So if you're stuck in a rut - enjoy the column. Put it up on your wall. And then please feel free to reach out and engage if you are like us and are looking to pursue your passion. Let's have some fun and do it together.

The Path - Level One

As we work with our clients to walk a path that works to create a marketing and communications plan, the first level we examine focuses on leadership and culture. Too often, we hear the term the "C-suite" (and we are kind of tired of the term), which we believe really is a code word that serves as an indicator as to whether or not leadership is on board and actively engaged with the effort. Leadership has to be committed if our efforts are to deliver success.

Level one is all about examining the role of leadership and their approach to leadership. For example, does leadership adhere to an adaptive or non-adaptive leadership style? Adaptive leadership is the model that we prefer because it works. If we have more of an authoritative or technical approach to leadership we will encounter challenges and we may never get to the place we want to when building a plan - asking the question of what if we could do anything?

We also discuss culture as part of level one thinking. If leadership is on board and adaptive in its approach - what's the culture like? This is really about helping us all to understand how internal communications strategies and tactics will need to be incorporated as part of the effort. Too often we see organizations looking past the team with a singular focus on external audiences. In most instances if we can get the culture aligned with and excited about the effort we can tap into a powerful built-in marketing channel - your team. They can serve as powerful evangelists and bring more power and authenticity to the effort than any amount of earned, paid or social media can.

To help understand culture, we work with our clients to consider tools like Kolbe, which are really useful in identifying the individual approach each member of the team brings to their work. This understanding often helps us to understand how the team needs information to be shared, or makes clear gaps in the team's skill set that we'll need to address. If we don't actively examine what the culture is capable of we can create a campaign that may be informed by some of the organization's most creative and motivated members - but not embraced by the rest of the team. When we introduce the campaign we'll encounter blank faces and then can find people "pushing away from the table" (aka, We don't like this.) - and that ain't good.

With that said, while leadership and culture examination is essential if we are to be successful in walking the path, we work with a number of partners where that is all that they do - leadership and culture change. We're always happy to make a connection if you think that is where your challenges lie.

What about the four Cs?

We were talking with one of our financial partners this week and she asked if any of us were familiar with "the four Cs"? Of course everyone is familiar with the four Ps, but it was the first time we had been introduced to this idea - and we think it's worth sharing.

She went on to note that the four Cs are: commitment, courage, capabilities and confidence. She had been introduced to the idea at an entrepreneurial support group and said that for too many start-ups, they focus on capabilities first - when the most important step is to simply make the commitment and then have the courage to stick with it. Of course capabilities matter (as does client service by the way), but it's that balance of commitment and courage that then leads to confidence. We like this idea a lot and have been working with our clients - especially the emerging organizations we're engaged with - to take stock of our commitment and courage. This market continues to be fickle - so boning up on what it takes to be strong in the face of adversity is a really powerful exercise. And it works even better when we commit to being courageous together.

What activity wouldn't be enhanced by bringing more focus, attentiveness and care to it?

Please go to the 0:58 mark of this "Brief but Spectacular" clip from the September 10th PBS NewsHour. That's what happens when we introduce mindfulness into each and every client that we serve. By taking time to focus and consider what we can accomplish, we elevate and enhance our work together and we really do achieve breakthrough thinking. Take some time to listen to this clip, and then if you really don't think mindfulness isn't gaining momentum, watch Bradley Cooper try and unpack it as he interviews Jon Kabat-Zinn. The book to read is "Wherever You Go There You Are."

The Path - A Preview

So is it all a bunch of spiritual mumbo jumbo? We have received some feedback that perhaps there is too much mindfulness and not enough marketing going on here. Perhaps... and that's okay. We continue to share the observation that while we can jump into the specifics of a marketing and communications challenge (e.g., objectives, success metrics, segmentation strategies and tactics), the human element - ourselves and where we are emotionally and spiritually - is equally important. The best marketing strategies often come undone when they run up against personal motivations and perspectives.

But we have a way - what we like to call the brand engagement path. And in September we will share how we use this tool to work with clients to ensure that we not only create a brand and storyline that connects with target audiences, but then work to diligently connect that storyline to the tactical plan. Working together all the way through to make clear how we move people from awareness to engagement - and it all sits on one page. So stay tuned... we will publish the first piece on this shortly.

Are we in agreement?

So here at Alluvus, we're planning junkies and always open to and in search of ideas and models that help us help our clients build meaningful and measurable marketing plans. And with the rise of today's increasingly collaborative work environment, of which organizations like Small Giants are a great example of this trend, we will take time to recognize and share resources we have come across that we think can be really useful in helping you to rethink your approach to getting alignment across your organization.

For example, the Entrepreneurial Operating System is an interesting set of resources that includes this short video we think is worth a view. All too often we engage with our clients and naively jump into working to assess the market environment to solve their problem. While we usually make great progress in arriving at a competitive assessment that helps to inform a positioning, we sometimes get blind-sided by internal audiences we work with who disagree with the priorities that we may identify. Which compels us to often ask ourselves, "What the heck is going on - didn't we agree on this already?"

This video does a nice job of noting that the issue could be that we simply lack agreement - and we think this is a valuable perspective to consider. With almost all of our clients a vision is usually in place, but internal stakeholders lack agreement on what the priorities should be, and that's when the wheels come off. Grab yourself a latte and then take 4 minutes and 42 seconds to watch this video. We're then happy to sit down and talk to you about how we can work with you to not only deliver on your marketing objectives, but do so in way that ensures we manage competing priorities and find a way to collectively agree upon how we will move forward together.

Crazy Wisdom

So we've totally violated the rules of consistent posting during the past few weeks as we have been either out at the beach or focused on the business. Sorry about that.

But we're back(ish) and we're struck by a re-read of a 2009 Shambhala Sun interview with author Tom Robbins extolling the virtues of "crazy wisdom." When asked for a definition Robbins says that "crazy wisdom is a philosophical worldview that recommends swimming against the tide, cheerfully seizing the short end of the stick, embracing insecurity, honoring paradox, courting the unexpected, celebrating the unfamiliar, shunning each and every orthodoxy, volunteering for those tasks nobody else wants or dares to do, and perhaps, above all else, breaking taboos in order to destroy their power. It's the wisdom of those who turn the tables on despair by lampooning it and who neither seek authority nor submit to it."

And when asked, what's the point of all that? Robbins says when we pursue crazy wisdom we are able to, "enlarge the soul, light up the brain, and liberate the spirit. Crazy wisdom is both transformative and transcendent." Let's do that.

What do we mean by meaningful and mindful marketing counsel?

We've been thinking about it a lot lately ourselves. For us this idea is grounded in our commitment to always talk with our clients first and at no charge with the goal being to understand two areas: 1. Where they are now and where do they want to be (aka, the challenge and opportunity), and; 2. What is their culture and day-to-day like (aka, how do we really work and what are we capable of).

The meaningful piece is linked to that first discussion point - let's understand where we are now and where we would like to be. Period. No questions asked. Let's figure out what success looks like because the obvious point is that we may encounter obstacles along the way. We'll then create a plan supported by a dashboard and be clear about what the ROI is.

The mindful piece is linked to the second discussion point - where are we in terms of our mindset and our commitment to achieve shared goals? As part of this conversation, we'll focus on the workplace culture, the personal challenges we face and all the many distractions we now have to deal with each and every minute, hour and day.

Sometimes the meaningful piece is the easiest part of the discussion, it's the cultural issues that kill us. That's when we work to bring Buddha into the workplace and commit to being mindful - working together to connect with each other and our team to figure out how we can address the emotional territory that may stand in our way. When we commit to being both meaningful (aka, ROI) and mindful (aka, human) we enter into a new kind of relationship that delivers because it's grounded in commitment and compassion.