vision

Matt Asay on the Red Hat Mission

Matt Asay just posted about Red Hat’s new mission, which he discovered on a visit to our Westford office in one of our “bathroom briefings” (important aside: we post some internal company news right front and center in the bathroom… if you want people to read something, post it in the bathroom– not everyone reads mailing lists, but everyone pees! Remember, internal communications is a strategic role at Red Hat!).

It’s not a secret, so I don’t mind that he saw the mission or posted about it. In fact, we are pretty happy with the transparent process we employed to get it done. Those of you who have read some previous posts know how strongly I feel about having the entire company aligned on mission and vision and values– the core stuff.

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People who get it #2: Marty Neumeier

I ordered 3 copies of Marty Neumeier’s new book, The Designful Company, yesterday for the team. Will let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to read it. His two previous books, The Brand Gap and Zag, both had a profound influence on the Red Hat overall brand strategy. I especially love The Brand Gap, which David Burney first introduced to me in 2005.

I’ve probably bought 20-30 copies of The Brand Gap over the last few years, try to keep a few at my desk to hand out to any potential brand converts I meet (why do I never get the copies back?). What’s beautiful about this book is the design and content are one–the message of the book is communicated by its design and its content together. And it is short– any busy executive can read it on a plane up to NYC.

In addition to helping us articulate the overall organizational design of the Brand Communications + Design group within Red Hat, this book has given us many other good ideas to chew on over the years. Probably the most famous quote from the book is:

A brand is not what YOU say it is, it’s what THEY say it is.

which many other people have glommed onto over the last couple of years (including me).

Even if you don’t have time to check out Marty’s books, go check out his great (and beautiful) presentation that explains many of the key concepts of his thinking here.

Rethinking communications in the 21st century company

Last week a colleague told me IBM had reorganized it’s marketing and communications functions. In the new order, the entire marketing organization would report into communications. Typically it has always been the opposite, with brand groups like mine and public relations reporting into a Chief Marketing Officer. Until recently, that’s been the way it worked at Red Hat too– over the years I’ve worked for mostly VP of marketing or CMO-types (although now I work as part of a group called People & Brand, a subject I’ll save for another post).

So I spent some time thinking about what this change meant for IBM, why they were doing it, and did a little research online. In the process, I stumbled upon this report from the  Arthur W. Page Society entitled “The Authentic Enterprise.” Turns out that one of the co-chairs of the Authentic Enterprise task force was  John Iwata, the SVP of Communications for IBM. My guess is that this report, which came out in 2007, had significant impact in making the changes at IBM.

Thought I’d call out a few choice quotes from the report that I loved.

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Build a leadership culture

When we are at our best at Red Hat, we have a leadership culture instead of a management culture.

What’s the difference? My favorite example of understanding the difference is from Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink.

The story is about US General Paul Van Riper, who is trying out some military strategies to see how they will work in the field. In the book he says:

“The first thing I told my staff is that we would be in command and out of control.”

Most companies have a culture of management. The people in charge are in command and in control of everything. Managers give the orders, decide the strategy, and the workers follow the orders, implement the strategies. This is the way 90+% of businesses work and have worked for a very long time. It’s a good model for lots of businesses. Keeps things running efficiently, keeps chaos in check.

This model does not work very well in an open source world. Why? A couple of key reasons: Continue reading →

Get the organization aligned

When I first arrived at Red Hat in 1999, I have to say I didn’t get the warmest welcome in the world. After all, I’d just joined Red Hat from IBM, which many earlier Red Hat folks viewed as exactly the kind of corporate culture they were trying to escape. I think IBM is a great company, but it certainly didn’t define me either, so I was a little surprised the first time someone came up to me and said, “Don’t worry, you’ll drink the Kool-Aid soon enough.”

Now I knew where this idea came from. But I kind of thought I had already drunk the Kool-Aid– that’s why I left the security of IBM to join this crazy company after all. What I learned over the next few years is that everyone tastes the Kool-Aid a little differently. Red Hat meant very different things to different people, even if they all thought they were drinking the same Kool-Aid. I learned what I didn’t know very quickly… but I learned it on my own.

So how do you make it easier for everyone you employ to have a shared vision of what the company hopes to accomplish? How to do you ensure that everyone in the organization is aligned (and excited!) about a common cause? Continue reading →

Give me something to believe in

I’m a dreamer.

I am inspired by ideas.

In Myers-Briggs language, I am an INFP. It’s a pretty rare Myers-Briggs type, but some other famous INFPs are Shakespeare, Yeats, Helen Keller, Princess Diana, Tom Brokaw, JFK Jr., Julia Roberts, and Homer (the Greek, not the Simpson). We share a lot in common with ENFPs, the only difference being that they are extroverts (the E) vs. introverts (the I). The most famous ENFP of the moment is none other than President Barack Obama.

As it turns out even though INFPs (1%) and ENFPs (5%) together make up only a very small percentage of the general population, I’ve found in my time at Red Hat that I’ve run into more than my share of dreamers (INFP) and visionaries (ENFP). Continue reading →