Gusto com Schafshügel, Gustav, Gus & Goose
This dog doesn’t care what you call him, as long as you call him for meals.
Leaders need to be more thick-skinned (or furry?) about their pet names, especially the nicknames for their companies and products.
For example, consider the furor over the G.M. memo to Chevrolet employees earlier this summer about saying “Chevrolet” instead of “Chevy” to support brand consistency. As reported by The New York Times, one of the G.M. execs wrote, “The more consistent a brand becomes, the more prominent and recognizable it is with the consumer.”
What were these execs thinking? And where have they been? You can’t dictate nicknames, off label use of products, and almost anything else in the public domain anymore—especially creations now woven into our culture.
“Once it (the car) became an American icon, America took it away from G.M.,” said 83-year-old Dick Guldstrand, a long-time racer who has been inducted into the Corvette Hall of Fame in the New York Times article. “They made it a Chevy. You’re doing a disservice to all the people by telling them not to call it a Chevy.”
If the G.M. execs are still clueless, they should familiarize themselves with the fans of TV shows, movies, comic books, and other entertainment genres who spend hours in “fanfic” –creative writing using the characters they love to develop new plots.
Within the walls of their own organization, the G.M. executives may not think they’re experiencing much textual poaching , one of the aspects of fanfic behavior. While academics have been using this term for more than 25 years now, the Internet and especially YouTube have made it so much easier for people to create and share new communities with beloved characters. In these worlds, Chevrolet, Star Wars characters, and Harry Potter are hardly commodities; they belong to all of us, however we reconstruct them.
The concept of textual poaching now extends throughout our society, including inside organizations. We’re all commenters, contributors, and creators in our new culture of sharing. And this has major implications for leaders and those who work with them.
As Charlene Li writes in her new book, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead, you have to give up control if you want to stay in command.
To be in command these days, you can’t just lean forward and act—if you expect people to follow you. Instead you first need to lean back, listen and observe. Be curious. Show humility. Acknowledge you don’t have all the answers.
Granted, it’s hard to give up control, especially for Baby Boomers and Traditionalists who used to be able to control the messages. But the genie is out of the bottle and won’t ever go back.
Instead, you need to curate conversations. Then you can lean in and guide and shape the conversations to share your point of view. At the same time, you’ve got to be sure your actions and words are consistent. For example, if you’re dissuading employees from using the word “Chevy,” you don’t want to be caught humming American Pie.
Once you gain insights, you can build relationships and trust. From there you can influence and collaborate to get things done.
Just be careful not to bark too many commands along the way. Even your dog may stop listening to you.
What’s your experience?
Well said! How many kids & parents ever refer to Legos as “Lego Blocks” or whatever it is the manufacturers demand on their packaging? I grew up playing with Legos, and my nephews and sons grew up playing with Legos. And I drove my Chevy to the store to buy ’em!