Category: Uncategorized

This is a story about being heard using equipment that is specifically designed to enable people to be heard. Always good to get a slice of irony into a story.

The mic in question isn’t a Mike, Michael or Micky. It’s a microphone. To be precise it’s a brand new, BBC quality, broadcast microphone as used by all good radio stations.

And for some reason it doesn’t work properly in our new radio studio.

That may be unfair on the mic, as it is the first link in a very long chain.

The mic feeds into the desk and is mixed with the radio playout software and the signal is processed and balanced and then broadcast.

However, when we tested the new studio set up recently the mic was quiet and no amount of button twiddling would fix the problem.

At first I was told the mic was fine and we needed to sit closer to it. Then we were told to speak louder. This is not how a mic should be set up because some people are softly spoken and you need to increase the volume on the desk.

The ‘we’ here is myself and my cohost and we were struggling to get to grips with the new set up.

Things were not sounding great so we continued to complain. Eventually our hugely talented engineer arrived and agreed that the mic was quiet.

Armed with his trusty toolkit he adjusted feed controls and volume controls and eventually dismantled the mixing desk and tweaked a special control, that was specially designed for last resort tweaking.

Finally the problem was solved and the quiet mic was now loud enough. Radio happiness!

The point of the story is about being heard. It took a while for our complaint to be taken seriously and then peristence from us to solve the problem.

We could have accepted the initial feedback that the mic was fine and let it go.

We didn’t have to pursue the problem and could have left it for someone else to fix, but the risk was if it wasn’t fixed it would have made it difficult for us to broadcast.

Sometimes it takes a while to be heard in life and we can follow our instincts and keep finding our words until someone hears us and takes notice.

Business is the same and if we think about sales and problem solving work it may take several attempts before the sale is concluded, or the problem is sorted.

If you’re not being heard it’s ok to keep going until you find the words that work for you.

So, this week we don’t have to be quiet microphones. We can turn up the volume and broadcast to the world!

Next week: Being Vulnerable

If you were an Easter egg …what sort would you be? Exotic, flavoured chocolate? Or perhaps something small and cheap and popular?

If you were a car, what would you be? Maybe we are already driving the car we would be, because we have already made a choice that fits with our view on the world.

We are all our own brand.

When we visit a client, apply for a job, or deliver a piece of work, we need to make sure we are on-brand. We need to be consistent.

When I’m working with a business I often ask the senior manager to describe their brand and generally the answer I get is:

“Well here at XYZ Inc our brand is to be high quality and affordable, experts in our field, approachable, flexible in our outlook and of course we value people. We value our clients and our staff. We go the extra mile. We deliver. We are fun too and we like to think of ourselves as creative. We can provide you with a boilerplate package or a bespoke one. Did I mention we value people? We love people!”

And so on.

A brand has to be clear and concise. We can’t be everything to all people all the time and yet many businesses try to do just that and end up in a muddle.

We need to be clear on what we do and what we don’t do.

Take people, for example. My view is that often the ‘we value our people’ bit is stuck on at the end, to make sure all bases are covered. But what does it really mean? How are people valued? Do they all have equal pay structures, promotion prospects and development options?

Does the dress code discriminate against men? (Can they wear shorts in warmer weather, when ladies can wear cool Summer dresses?)

Does the big boss get the best laptop, whereas the junior who really needs it is left with a second hand low-spec unit?

A brand isn’t something we strap on before going into a sales meeting, like a knight getting ready for a joust.

We have to live our brand values and, as the word implies, make sure the brand is burned into the organisation.

So then, when we think about ourselves as a brand, what is the essence of what we do and how we do it?

Do our clothes and car and demeanour and response time to enquiries all line up to reinforce our brand?

Do our Facebook posts make us look professional, or petulant?

Could a client quote our brand values back to us?

What made me think about brand was that recently I wore a different watch to a client day. Instead of my usual Mondaine (Swiss Railway watch) I had a Casio (black plastic watch) and at the end of the session the client commented.

Whilst they were simply being polite, they did obviously feel a need to notice the change. This reminded me that my usual watch (reliable, stylish, unusual) was the essence of my brand and to change it meant projecting different values (cheap, reliable, mass produced).

I was off message and all I’d done was wear a different watch.

I like my Casio and I need to remember that my Mondaine has become part of my brand.

Tell me about your watch? (Or car, or Easter egg!)

Next week: The Quiet Mic Story