Welcome to the first in a series of posts from guest bloggers. Ian Buckingham today writes about "What is an authentic business?"

For those of you who don’t know him, Ian Buckingham has almost twenty years consultancy experience in the communication, change management and organisation development fields. Formerly a partner at the Omnicom owned SDL, Ian was the founder of Interbrand Inside and currently runs The Bring Yourself 2 Work Fellowship www.by2w.co.uk. The subject of his first blog is authenticity and the following, adapted for the BLT blog, is an exclusive extract from Ian Buckingham’s book Brand Engagement – How Employees Make or Break Brands As always, please do respond with your comments and questions - Ian will be delighted to answer them

What is an ‘Authentic’ business?

When running customer service workshops with customers or staff in recent years, we’re struck by how often they talk about qualities like reliability, trustworthiness, genuineness. These are clearly the popular bulwarks of authenticity.

Anecdotal evidence aside, publications like Uncommon Practice (Pearson Education, 2002), and to a lesser extent the established Top Companies to Work For charts, highlight the qualities of companies differentiated by their ability to “deliver a great brand experience” and the buzzwords culture, values and authenticity shine through.

John Lewis is lauded for its core philosophy of “labour employing capital, not capital employing labour” and key principle “sharing of knowledge, sharing of power and then sharing profit with staff”. Their CEO and Chairman, Sir Stuart Hampson, states that “staff feel motivated, valued, they understand their relationship with customers” and this translates, quite explicitly, into a superior customer experience. How many service companies or even fellow retailers could say the same?

It helps that John Lewis has a written constitution first drawn up in 1929 and can trace their operating platform back to their original values. More important, however, is the fact that they have maintained this bond through an internal culture “refresh”, a communication and consultation process involving all of their 55,000+ employees.

The lesson here is that, if you have a legacy, use it. But it doesn’t take almost a hundred years of history to get there. Cut to the core of star brands like Virgin, Pret A Manger or even First Direct and there’s a very clear sense of core values and a passion for both employee and customer feedback.

People often confuse authenticity and morality. I’m deliberately steering clear of the ethical debate as its quite possible to be an authentic business yet ethically suspect, provided the aims, goals, values and ambitions of the business are clear to consumers and staff. It is far more common, however, to be a supposedly ethically motivated organisation yet become morally suspect as a result of the failure to understand the core culture and betraying employees and customers in the process. Authentic businesses, however, liberate consumer and employee choice and morality lies in the shallow ground between an explicit proposition and free choice, as a number of tobacco firms, for example, will assert. Authentic businesses understand themselves, are explicit about what they believe and strive to develop relationships with staff, suppliers and customers in a manner that is consistent with these beliefs.

A. They are clear about what they stand for - their core values
B. They are clear about what they will stand for - the behaviours expected of their people

The Authenticity Equation:

BRAND PROMISE minus SERVICE = BRAND AUTHENTICITY

EMPLOYER BRAND minus EMPLOYEE BRAND = EMPLOYMENT BRAND AUTHENTICITY

Why is Authenticity Important?

In this blog we’re approaching the argument from an upstream perspective. We’re tracing the source of goodwill from which customer satisfaction will ultimately flow by exploring the role of authenticity within the workplace.

Internal communication or employee engagement, has arguably become a core managerial competency area in the last decade or so. In 2005 we conducted a cross-sector survey involving around 1500 of what we call Chief Engagement Officers (people in line management roles who are responsible for engaging staff in the core goals of the business).

Our survey showed that:

- 89% believe people are more effective when they can be themselves at work
- 91% believe that they would be happier if they could be themselves at work

But only 60% believe that being themselves at work would help rather than hinder their career prospects. That’s a lot of corporate fish out of water.

If we define “being yourself” as being genuine, the link to personal authenticity is very clear. The evidence emerging from this key population is that personal authenticity is a critical motivator and ultimately believed to be a strong driver of performance and, indeed, loyalty.

What these figures also show, however, is the extent of the gap between the belief in and desire for personal authenticity and the perceived demands made by corporate culture which ultimately drives career prospects.

Even within this senior and highly informed population it’s clear that, in at least 40% of cases, the culture of the organisation is at odds, to some extent, with the true identity of its people. This impacts career development and ultimately business performance. The difference between the espoused values of the organisation, the culture in practice and the values of employees represents an authenticity gap that the customers ultimately fall through.

When we asked respondents to reflect on corporate communications and relay best practices, the results are similarly enlightening.

The traits they most admire in leaders they consider to be effective at engaging with employees include (in ranking order):

- openness
- bravery
- honesty
- charisma

Conversely, the characteristics that they see as hindering effective engagement from both a personal and corporate perspective, are prioritised as:

- one-way communication and lack of involvement
- insincerity and spin
- inaction
- failure to personalise messages to key audiences (blanket bombing)

The ongoing trend towards PR campaigns for internal audiences, one-off events and over-managed cascades are a flagrant waste of money, as any positive impact just doesn’t last. Not only is there a clear business case for truly bridging the authenticity gap but the answers are right in front of us. If only more senior communicators would do something constructive with that employee feedback.

How Can Employers Bridge the Authenticity Gap?

As with many things in life and business, back to basics is often best. We’ve found, in coaching scenarios, that this simple authenticity test helps to focus the mind when organisational life becomes complicated:

1. Why are we in business?

On the back of an envelope describe your organisation’s Vision/Mission/Statement of Purpose and four of its key goals.

2. What sort of company are we?

In five bullet points list the organisation’s core values

3. What type of people do we have?

Off the top of your head name ten senior individuals who are true role models for those values

4. What’s it like to work here?

Imagine you’re interviewing a new customer or staff member and explain how those values really relate to:

- day to day work
- your current advertising
- your internal communication (including face to face, written and electronic)
- your recruitment and performance management process

5. What’s our story?

Describe where the organisation has been, where it is, where it’s going and how you fit in

6. How are we doing?

List four ways in which staff, customers and suppliers are involved in shaping key decisions and are consulted about how things are done around here.

Having taken the test, individually or as a group, be honest about how you feel, take heart from what’s working well, be brutal about the shortcomings and set about addressing each area in turn.

Brand Engagement – How Employees Make or Break Brands is available from Palgrave Macmillan http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=281268 or direct from BY2W by emailing Ian@by2w.co.uk