My P&G Story #15: How to inspire without a big budget

My P&G Story #15: How to inspire without a big budget

Desi Jagger's Blog

My P&G Story #15: How to inspire without a big budget

I was briefing the creative agencies on our latest Herbal Essences campaign – ‘tame the wild’. How could I inspire them without a big budget?

 

The P&G office, as bright and spacious as it was, wasn’t exactly ‘wild’. Agency briefs usually looked like this: a room so small that people’s elbows were touching and bags were stuffed under the table; a long powerpoint presentation with at least 20 slides borrowed from the previous long powerpoint presentation; an attempt to uplift the mood and get the creative juices flowing 3 hours later just as a colleague is knocking on the door and reminding us to vacate the room because they have it booked.

I got bored just thinking about starting to plan another one of these briefing sessions. I fantasized about doing something big and exciting like taking the team on safari (to tame their wild, unruly hair, like in the TV ad). As you can imagine, such extravaganza was not included in the budget and I wanted to stay friends with the finance manager. It is always a good idea to be friends with the finance manager.

 

Since I couldn’t take my team on safari (but I would encourage you to do it if you get the chance), I brought the safari to the office. I booked the most spacious room in the building. I dressed it up like the African savannah, with shrubs and reds and yellows. Drum beats played in the background. The team wowed as they walked through the door. We sat on big cushions on the floor, around a ‘campfire’. The brief still contained the required information like pack size and product benefit but I weaved these details into a story, like the ones you tell around campfires. It was colorful. It was interactive. No one wanted to leave the room.

The team’s excitement translated into tangible results. The local marketing plan they proposed was wildly creative. There were elements we had never done before, like festivals and beauty trucks. We had a lot of fun whilst driving the business.

– – –

 Reflecting back on this experience, it strikes me how quickly we grow out of child play and banish imagination to the unprofessional, not-results-focused-enough corner. We think that because we’re in a big, serious company, we need to act all big and serious to get stuff done. We mask the childish spirit with percentages and suits and complicated words. But I believe that, deep inside, this spirit remains and it takes any opportunity to manifest itself. Like when big and serious people unexpectedly walk into a makeshift African savannah in the middle of the office.

 

Get unstuck by flipping the situation. If you can’t take your team on safari, bring the safari to them.

 

Want to do something creative but don’t have the money? Coaching challenges your assumptions and helps you identify opportunities you never even considered. Begin by booking your free consultation now.

 

 

My P&G Story #14: How I made stewardship sexy

My P&G Story #14: How I made stewardship sexy

Desi Jagger's Blog

My P&G Story #14: How I made stewardship sexy

“I have an ‘opportunity’ for you,” said Jim, my manager.

Translation: I have a horrible project that no one else wants to do and I’m going to speak in a high-pitched, excited voice in order to make you think you’re the luckiest person in the company who has been chosen to do it.

This was early on in my career so I was genuinely excited and curious. I am genuinely excited and curious about most things in life, but this was coming from my manager so it had to be big.

“We need someone to lead the stewardship team, to teach marketers how to plan and balance their budgets. It’s a big responsibility – it can save the company millions of dollars – and you have the right skills for it.”

 

He was asking me to be the Budget Police. No marketer likes the Budget Police. I would spend the rest of my P&G career having lunch alone, staring out of the cafeteria window to avoid angry glances from colleagues passing by.

I protested but Jim was insistent and he was my manager. I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t up for a challenge but I also didn’t want to be stuck with a tedious project. I offered a deal:

 

“I will take the stewardship project only if I can think of a way to make it fun.”

 

Jim agreed and I began my assessment. I gathered the facts:

  • Each brand manager had to spend their brand budget within +/-0.5%
  • This seemed like an insignificant margin but it added up to millions of dollars
  • For the past three years, the marketing spend had come significantly under or over budget; both were equally bad because what the company needed was stability

Like a true marketer, I asked myself why? What was holding these intelligent, hard-working people back? To get a deeper understanding, I held focus groups. The methodology was very robust and included corridor chats and eavesdropping on people’s rants about stewardship.

The insights I uncovered:

  • Marketers were afraid of looking at their budgets because what if they found a big mess or mistake?
  • They didn’t know where to start with managing the budgets because there were so many rules and they were bombarded with things to do
  • They felt stewardship was an ungrateful job because they only ever got punished for doing badly but never rewarded for doing well

As a result, they were putting off proper budget work for months… sometimes until the end of the fiscal year when it was too late. I say proper because the company had multiple budget reviews but these focused on the topline and marketers were trusted to do the more detailed and dirty work in their own time.

What was needed wasn’t more budget policing but instead more budget fun. I could do fun, even if it was stewardship related, and so I jumped right in.

 

I worked with the corporate finance experts to revolutionize the way we taught stewardship to marketers. This involved some mindset changes that led to behavioral changes.

 

The opposite of scary is sexy

I transformed the tone of voice and the look and feel of all stewardship communication. Presentation cover slides became a picture of attractive celebrities discussing the importance of getting the numbers right. Email subject lines started with ‘Stewardship is Sexy…’ Curiosity engages people. The marketers were surprised by the fresh attitude to budgets and hence opened up for a dialogue on the topic. They opened the emails. They turned up to the training sessions. This alone wasn’t going to sort out the budgets, but it made stewardship more approachable and that was a great start.

 

One step at a time

I locked myself into a room with the finance team for several hours and mapped out every action that had to take place throughout the year in order to balance the budgets. We designed bite-size communication that contained just one call to action at a time. Now marketers were not only opening our emails, they were actually reading them and taking action. What we were asking them to do was the same as before, but they perceived it as simpler.

 

The reward for being a nerd doesn’t have to be nerdy

No ‘stewardship excellence’ award, even if it’s embossed with gold and presented in front of the whole company is going to appeal to a marketer. Just because people do nerdy work (budgets are considered nerdy by marketers and most humans – ask around if you don’t believe me), it doesn’t mean they want to be known for it. Our prize was a bottle of real champagne for the best results, presented only in front of peers. I’ve never had so many people coming up to me and asking ‘how can I get one too?’ Our dialogue kept going…

Side note on push backs

I don’t want to leave you with an illusion that this process was a walk in the park. There were many obstacles. My favourite one was when I got a cautionary email from the finance director stressing that stewardship was not a joke and sexy visuals and words were utterly inappropriate. I thought I might get fired. Thankfully we had some early indications that the interventions are working so they turned a blind eye on my unconventional methods.

The results

Whilst everyone didn’t get a bottle of champagne, they did a pretty good job with their budgets. The company-level marketing spend was within target for the first time in three years. This was a happy end and the beginning of a new way of teaching stewardship to marketers – unconventional but highly effective. Oh, and the best part was, I had delivered on my commitment and so I negotiated my release from this project.

  

Get unstuck by bringing fun to a serious project. Humans will resist an unconventional method but no one can deny the great results it produces.

 

Feeling drained and uninspired? Coaching helps you explore different perspectives, including how to lighten up a difficult situation. Brighten up your day by booking your free consultation now.

Looking forward to connecting,

My P&G Story #8: Now is perfect and perfect is now

My P&G Story #8: Now is perfect and perfect is now

Desi Jagger's Blog

My P&G Story #8: Now is perfect and perfect is now

Just a year after I started working at P&G, I was asked to join the team that trains the new marketers. Me? But I’m quite new and still learning myself. On the day of the training, I was really nervous. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. My colleague nudged me over to the front of the room. All eyes were on me. What could I possibly teach these new hires?

 

Quite a lot, it turned out.

 

I may have only known a little bit about marketing, but they knew even less. I delivered some of the best-scoring training and – once I managed to shake off the nerves – I had a lot of fun. This was the beginning of my people development career. Looking back now, I wonder when this beginning would have happened if I had waited for the ‘perfect’ moment to train the new hires.

 

Get unstuck by jumping straight in. You’ll never be 100% ready so what are you waiting for?

 

Are you waiting for the ‘perfect’ moment? Coaching can give you the confidence to go for the opportunity. Jump straight in by booking your free consultation now.

 

My P&G Story #6: “Your idea already exists”

My P&G Story #6: “Your idea already exists”

Desi Jagger's Blog

My P&G Story #6: “Your idea already exists”

Seeing marketers (myself included) struggle at retailer meetings sparked a brilliant idea in my mind. I would create a commercial training for brand managers to help them understand how retailers operate and how to best interact with them.

I shared my idea with a few people and they liked it. When I presented it to the commercial director, he said that Jenny, another brand manager, was already working on the same project. My idea would be a duplication of work and duplication of work, naturally, was on P&G’s blacklist.

I was disillusioned. Maybe I wasn’t such a genius after all. I worked hard to improve my idea so it would be better than Jenny’s (or rather, what I imagined her idea to be, since at this stage I didn’t know anything about it).

I had taken a tiny piece of information and created a negative story around it. Without an outlet, the story kept building up. What if her idea was genuinely better? I wanted to talk to her but what if I would give away too much of my idea and she stole it? I wondered how far ahead in the planning she was. Her name popped up in my inbox and my heartbeat rocketed – was she going to announce the launch of what I believed was my idea? In this case, she wasn’t, but what if she did tomorrow, or the following week? I couldn’t live with this anxiety.

This ignited my courage to speak with her. I showed Jenny my work and she loved it! She said she couldn’t wait to attend my commercial training and she would be delighted to help in any way she could. It turned out she was working on something totally different and there was no duplication.

Sigh of relief.

My idea was mine again. I just wished I had spent the previous two months implementing it rather than fighting imaginary battles in my mind.

 

Get unstuck by clarifying the facts. This may require having an uncomfortable conversation but it’s totally worth it.

 

What conversations are your avoiding right now? Coaching can give you the confidence to ask the right questions. Take the first step by booking your free consultation now.

Photo credit: LaVladina

Why I miss having a manager

Why I miss having a manager

Desi Jagger's Blog

Why I Miss Having a Manager

I have had a wide range of managers – from the inspiring rock star “I want to be you some day” to the demoralizing ogre “I’d rather run into the woods than to report to you”. The latter, combined with my strong value for freedom, made me ask myself:

“What if I was my own boss?”

Well, now I work as a freelance coach and trainer and I am my own boss. I can do pretty much whatever I like, whenever I like and most importantly, if I like. I get to be “right” all the time. My idea is always the one that “wins”. And that’s precisely what is so hard about being a solopreneur. Having a manager is one of the things I miss about my corporate job at P&G. Here’s why:

I miss having my thinking challenged.

At P&G, I would spend hours crafting 1-pagers (I use the official term, although we all know these were either 2 pages or font six) for my ideas. Despite the diligent details, a barrage of questions inevitably followed:

“Have you considered the latest competitor launch? Did you get input from the sales team? How about looking at this another way….?”

It’s natural to resent having to justify every point during such “interrogations”. Not to mention the ensuing load of re-work that would delay the project and slowly eat away at my passion.

Now that I am my own manager, there is no one to “interrogate” me and I actually miss it. Challenging my thinking drives me to take my ideas to the next level. It bulletproofs my plans before I spend months executing them – and in a way, saves me from avoidable disappointments. It helps me to position my ideas to appeal to a wider audience, including those who don’t share my perspective. Sure, it’s slower, but the tortoise eventually beats the hare.

I miss being forced to face reality, right now.

One of the most tedious things about working in a hierarchical organization was updating my manager about project status. No amount of creativity on my colorful scorecards could stop this from feeling like a repetition of facts that took time away from real work.

Now that I have no one to update, I also have no one to discuss my challenges with. I can choose to avoid a problem for months, reassuring myself that it’s not a priority or it’s not that bad. But this doesn’t make it disappear. Instead, I keep mulling it over and I feel guilty for doing nothing about it. In moments like this, I wish I had a manager who I had to report my challenge to. Simply vocalizing the problem gives it parameters, makes it more concrete and less scary – and the solution often flows out of this clarity.

I miss getting external recognition

 Having a manager wasn’t just about being criticized or driven to improve. It was also about being recognized for my progress. Having someone by my side meant they could appreciate my struggles and be the first to say “well done, I know that wasn’t easy”. (Of course, getting compliments from a bad manger is rare, but not as rare as compliments from a non-existent one).

Now I have no manager and no one to cheer me on. And whilst I can appreciate my own efforts, I still crave external recognition, a signal that my work is meaningful to others, not just to me.

I miss the pressure of “artificial” deadlines

It frustrated me when my manager asked for a full market analysis by tomorrow – just because he wanted to “check something” on a whim. I could not understand why my slides had to be printed two weeks before the presentation or why new TV adverts always had to start airing on the 1st of the month.

Where did these deadlines come from? And what would happen if I didn’t meet them?

I didn’t miss many deadlines (yes, I was a goody two shoes), so I don’t know. But what I do know, is that without these small artificial deadlines, projects now seem eternal and it’s really hard to gauge how far along I’ve come. This can be disheartening and disorientating, and it often means they take twice as long as they should.

“Being managed” has developed a negative connotation recently, especially amongst millennials. If you need or want to be managed, then there must be something wrong with you – you are not down with the new “independent age”. I invite you to flip this perspective:

How can you leverage your manager to help you achieve things you are afraid to dream of today?

Need help with your manager? Coaching can help you rebuild and get the most out of this important relationship. To find out how, book your free consultation now.

Photo credit: Thomas Shahan

7 Things I miss about my corporate job at P&G

7 Things I miss about my corporate job at P&G

Desi Jagger's Blog

7 Things I miss about my corporate job at P&G

I didn’t leave my safe, well-paid corporate job at P&G to become an entrepreneur. I was under no illusion that it would fulfil the overhyped promises of working from a remote beach whilst sipping cocktails and meditating every morning. Instead, I left to focus full time on the work I love – training and coaching people.

It was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I haven’t once looked back.

 

Until today.

 

Today I am looking back to reflect on the big picture – because there are two sides to everything. I cherish my independence, international mobility and the lightning speed of decision making. At the same time, there are some things I miss dearly, which I used to take for granted in my corporate job:

 

1. Having someone to high-five. I was never moved by the generic “well done team award” shared by 20 other people with varying contributions to the project. What I really miss, however, are the mad high-fives when the market shares came in and we had grown versus last month. I miss the spontaneous high-fives when we finally got the TV copy approved. I miss the “thank god it’s over” high fives after a terrible senior management meeting… In fact I miss all high-fives. High-fives are the best!

 

2. Being “just” a contributor. In a large company, no matter how senior you are, you are just one cog in the machine. My projects were also many other people’s projects and sometimes it was hard to tell how meaningful our individual contributions were. It was frustrating when people didn’t share inputs on time and as a result my work was late or incomplete. Now I realize that no matter how slow and painful these large multi-functional projects can be, they are the only way to achieve something much greater than one person alone can ever dream of.

 

3. The endless back and forth. I had a brilliant idea for a new product claim and I eagerly presented it to my team for quick feedback before going live. Thirteen team discussions, four senior management debates, ten consumer theories, fifteen pages of data and six months later we agreed on the claim ‘version 56 – final – really final’. By that point I had lost all enthusiasm and would even regret making the proposal in the first place. Working by myself, I expected to be liberated from this endless back and forth. The reality is, the back and forth just relocated from a room full of colleagues to a lonely room inside my own head. And now I wish there was someone in that room who cares enough about my work to challenge it.

 

4. The team heart beat. It was the steady pulse of my team that kept me rolling on the good – and especially on the bad – days. Whenever I took my laptop home to finish a presentation late at night, I would see my teammates were also online, working late. Whilst this didn’t speed up my slides, it made me feel like I’m not alone. As a solopreneur, I have to make a bigger effort to connect with others and keep myself motivated.

 

5. The spell of the background noise. As a fresh graduate, used to studying in the dead silence of the university library, P&G’s large corporate open-plan office felt like a chaotic beehive. Every click was a distraction. Every whisper was a thought-breaker. Every rustle of a crisps packet was a wish for lunch to come sooner. Today I work in my own silent space. On a sleepy afternoon, I miss looking up from my screen, watching people get on with business and being urged back into productivity.

 

6. Saying good morning in 4 different languages, the corridor banter, the jokes shouted across cubicles, introducing myself to new people just to get a piece of their birthday cake, bonding over the inevitable breakage of the printer right before top management meetings, hiking up the stairs – where no “ground floorer” had ever ventured – to speak with the legal team face to face…I miss the small things.

 

7. Reporting to a manager. Shock Horror! How can any self-respecting, independent millennial admit to this? Follow me on LinkedIn to find out the answer in my next blog post.

 

I left my corporate job in order to focus 100% on my passion for people. And whilst I absolutely love doing just that with my coaching and training, I still miss the buzz of the office and the motivation that comes with teamwork and depending on others. I have uncovered a different side of social interaction at the workplace. Beyond the fun, it challenges me and improves me as a person. And that’s the bigger picture.

Need help seeing the bigger picture? Coaching can help you explore different perspectives and get clarity on what makes you happy. Take the first step now by booking your free consultation.