The feature article in the current Harvard Business Review: “The Value of Happiness – How Employee Well-Being Drives Profits,” offers a compelling argument for the bottom-line benefits of engendering happiness in the workforce. Citing research, the article states that “Happy employees produce more than unhappy ones over the long term. They routinely show up at work, they’re less likely to quit, they go above and beyond the call of duty, and they attract people who are just as committed to the job.”

Authors Gretchen Spreitzer of University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and Christine Porath of Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business contend that a happy workplace creates thriving employees: those who are “not just satisfied and productive but also engaged in creating the future—the company’s and their own.”

They identified two components of thriving – vitality: “the sense of being alive, passionate, and excited,” and learning: “the growth that comes from gaining new knowledge and skills.” They insist those two qualities must work in concert in order to be sustainable.

In summary, the authors point to four relatively simple mechanisms that any organization can put in place to create a happier workforce:

1. Providing decision-making authority: “Empowering them in this way gives them a greater sense of control, more say in how things get done, and more opportunities for learning.”
2. Sharing information: “People can contribute more effectively when they understand how their work fits with the organization’s mission and strategy.”
3. Minimizing incivility: The authors discovered that “half of employees who had experienced uncivil behavior at work intentionally decreased their efforts. More than a third deliberately decreased the quality of their work.”
4. Offering performance feedback: “Feedback creates opportunities for learning and the energy so critical for a culture of thriving.”

What I like most about this article is that it is based on research—more than 1,200 interviews—and it provides concrete steps that are needed to create a workplace of thriving colleagues. It doesn’t simply preach having game rooms, nap time and an espresso machine (not that those aren’t nice to have!), but instead talks about simple changes that are sustainable.

And yet, despite the seeming simplicity of the message, I think it’s safe to assume that most organizations fall short, for one reason or the other, to provide the kind of workplace that creates happiness and vitality. However, as long as managers believe in the value of creating a culture of happiness—both for the well being of their people and its impact on the bottom line—then putting in place the changes mentioned in the article will demonstrate to an organization’s team that it is moving in the right direction. And that alone should start putting smiles on people’s faces.

We are nearing the conclusion of a comprehensive rebranding project for APCO International, the world’s largest organization of public safety communication professionals. For the most part, it has been the model of how a major association should handle the process. The keys were the way the project was set up by APCO, the collaboration at all critical levels of the association, the leadership of a senior volunteer member who was able to spearhead the effort, and the creative process.

The set up

APCO has been in business for more than 75 years, but has not substantially updated its brand despite broadening its scope and membership considerably over that time period. Association leaders determined that refreshing the brand was needed. They assembled a meeting of engaged members, a corporate partner and senior staff which I facilitated to develop a strategy for executing the process. The full-day meeting was energetic, informative, and yielded a clear plan for moving forward.

Collaboration

Obviously, an association with 15,000 members can’t get input from everyone when refreshing its brand, but APCO did the next best thing by establishing a brand taskforce that represented a diverse group of members. The leader of the taskforce made regular presentations to several levels of the membership, including representatives of the association’s chapters, commercial members, the executive committee, and board of directors. This ensured that many voices were heard, and every opinion was seriously considered.

Senior member leadership

The real key, in my mind, was having a senior member spearhead the effort. Membership associations are operated through a rather delicate blending of staff management and volunteer oversight. In order for major decisions to be made and enacted, staff and members must work together. the taskforce leader was an evangelist for the need to refresh the brand which supported the staff’s desire, and communicated with all levels of membership as a peer, which made it clear to all that this was a collaborative effort that represented the best intentions of the association.

Creative process

The most visible component of the refreshed brand was a new logo, which Frost Miller Group designed. The taskforce gave us clear direction about the target audiences, goals of the association, and its mission and vision. From this input, we created a first round of logos that were targeted, but diverse. The logos were presented to the various levels of the membership and staff leadership and then revised and reviewed in a very orderly process. The taskforce leader spent hours on GoToMeeting presentations and personal presentations at annual meetings and board meetings. The result was a new logo that encompasses the… and will lead the association into the future.

I can’t post the logos quite yet as APCO will unveil them at their upcoming Annual Conference. Also, I am co-authoring a white paper with the COO of the association, which she will use as the basis of a presentation to other association leaders. That will be available here also, but if you want to reserve a copy, just email me at kmiller@frostmiller.com.

Tradeshow organizers are launching events beyond their native borders to attract new exhibitors, sponsors and attendees – and it’s often a strategy that makes great sense.  While entering a new market creates new opportunities, it also creates new challenges. From a marketing standpoint, extra research is needed to make an international show successful.

Having recently helped a client promote a new tradeshow in Dubai, we learned that you can’t start planning too early. Several of the tried-and-true marketing techniques we use to promote shows in the United States (to predominantly U.S. exhibitors and attendees) don’t work in other countries.

Start with research – the backbone of any effective marketing communication campaign. We typically get much of our demographic information about potential exhibitors and attendees from three sources: the show organizer’s proprietary research –on-site interviews and post-show surveys; business information from media and financial reporting services; and government resources like the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This type of information is scarce or non-existent in certain parts of the world. Certainly, a show organizer starting a new event would not have research about a past show. Moreover, media and business records in many countries are not as reliable. And many governments are not as willing to provide resources as the U.S.

The availability of reliable research is critical to putting together an effective strategy, so you need to do much more work (and spend more time) gathering critical information. A few things that helped during our recent effort:

1.      Find an expert who knows about the region you are targeting. In the case of the Dubai conference, our client hired international tradeshow expert Cherif Moujabber, former President and CEO of IDG World Expo, and Vice President of the Asia-Pacific region for Cahners Expo Group (now Reed Exhibitions). Cherif helped the show organizer understand the unique landscape in the Middle East and provided invaluable insight about information resources.

2.      Enlist the aid of people in-country. Our client worked closely with the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Dubai Convention Bureau to learn about the key organizations and influencers in our target markets, as well as local resources.

3.      Establish partnerships with key attendee groups. In Dubai, our client worked with major government agencies that controlled the industries they were targeting. This gave them unique insights and access to prospective exhibitor and attendee groups.

All these extra efforts provided the information we needed to develop a strategy for securing exhibitors and attendees, but additional challenges and unknowns still lay ahead, most notably in the areas of list acquisition, direct mail and printing. I will focus on those issues in my next post.

We are happy to see that Trade Show News Network (TSNN) has filled the void left by the exit of Trade Show Week in ranking the largest shows in the industry. This list is a valuable gauge of the tradeshow industry's strength as well as the strength of the individual industries each show represents. To view TSNN's full list of the Top 250 Tradeshows of 2010, visit http://www.tsnn.com/datasite.

It took me 10 days but I finally put a name to my New Year’s resolution – singletasking. I Googled it and realized that I didn’t make the term up, but you don’t hear a lot of people bragging about how it’s their specialty.

Basically, it’s the opposite of multitasking. I’ve been multitasking for a long time now, and I guess I got pretty good at it. Or so I thought. What I realized was that multitasking means you are doing a lot of things at once, but not necessarily doing any one of them too well.

So I’ve resolved the following:

• To stop driving with my thumbs and eyes on the phone. That will help add life to the rims of my tires and make my drives a little less stressful (oh yeah, it’s not legal either, is it?).
• To stop reviewing emails, signing checks, looking for my car keys and thinking about my upcoming deadlines when I’m talking to someone on the phone. I sometimes find myself wondering what the heck happened over the past few minutes, and now I think I know why.
• To stop thinking about what I have to do today (and tomorrow) and what I did and didn’t do yesterday when I leave my house in the morning. That’s a great way to lock oneself out of the house without car keys (which I’ve done…recently). Instead, I think I’ll concentrate on getting my keys and getting out of the house. There’ll be time for thinking about the other stuff.
• To stop thinking about all kinds of stuff right before I try to go to sleep. I’ve figured out that there isn’t much you can do about stuff from your bed around midnight, so perhaps I’ll wait until the next day to figure out all of life’s complexities.

I could go on and on but I think you get the point. What I resolve to do is to be more focused on one thing at a time and do my best on the task at hand. Then, I’ll go to the next task.

I know that sounds annoyingly simple, but I really think it will make me better at each of the single tasks I undertake. At least I’m going to give it a shot. So if you talk to me, know that I’m paying attention. And if I write you a strategy, know that it’s the only thing I’m thinking about at the time.

I’m sure my kids will appreciate it too. Maybe now I will stop calling them by each other’s name (or maybe that’s just a factor of aging).

Happy New Year!