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the issue is ‘how may one conceptualise a corporate communication when every employee, every customer,….. communicatesthe corporation?’
IBM’s response could also appear somewhat naive, but it certainly is not the simple reproposition of old policies. Once, the alignement on corporate values was a consequence of control.
Today one attempts to produce control by the alignement on corporate values.
Yesterday the corporation was solid, today it is liquid.
Therefore, the issue is the form of the water.

The Brand appears to be the most immediate tool to give a form to the water.
But this could also turn into an illusion, because even the Brand in itself is no longer internally determined and defined.

It seems to me that our commnon idea (to which many references in this blog) of framing attractive relationship spaces (physical and digital) in which stakeholders discuss with the corporation and amongst themselves, is more realistic and adequate.
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Moreover, IBM of all companies learned the hard way – by sacking half of its staff who thought that they had been promised jobs for life – the true nature of the employer/employee contract. Authenticity calls for honesty which will generate more trust than make-believe and wishful thinking. The real world is not cosy; and we should treat employees like adults, rather than as manipulable pawns.

Two recent posts on my PR blog are entitled: Transparency is the new opaque?, and PR to marry and lead marketing. They are both very relevant to this discussion. Here are the links:

http://paulseaman.eu/2009/10/transparency-is-the-new-opaque/

http://paulseaman.eu/2009/11/pr-to-marry-and-lead-marketing/

Bill,
let’s investigate this organizational dna issue.
One of my italian students went to Cambridges a few years ago for a doctorate in organizational dna in the science department and came up with some very intriguing ideas which somehow related to the central theme which the US Supreme Court a few years ago decided not to decide upon for the Kaski case: i.e. do the constitutional amendments which apply to the individual also apply to organizations (private, public, social)?
Basically, the dna of an organization would appear to be very similar to to that of an individual, which would imply a very careful analysis of its components and possibly convince (next time around) the Supreme Court to make a decision.
I would be very interested in learning more about this.
Any volunteers?
If we could agree on a process, this would make things for us less haphazard don’t you think?

Mike,
I appreciate your points and rationale and, of course, my mentioning the dress code issue was only a metaphore.
Nor do I have any qualms with the concept of a Brand System: this seems to be in line with the management rigour Jon speaks about.
What instead worries me somewhat (and I have voiced this concern before on this blog http://www.prconversations.com/?p=559#more-559) is the new and intensive using of employees as corporate reputation ‘pushers’ because we are now aware that they are believed to be more credbile than the Ceo or official spokespersons.
I have this problem every day in my professional practice as my italian change management consultancy is highly involved in these issues, and some of the practices I witness resemble what we once named as ‘front organization’ exercises and today we define as astroturfing.
Where do you see the boundaries, Mike?
For example, would you agree that this task of an employee be included in a labor contract?
I would be interested in your opinion.

Darren, I don’t think we ever really controlled anything (content, tool, channel, public)but we always hyped our way through this to persuade our clients that the only difference between advertising and public relations was that the first cost more than the other, while the second was more effective and credible.
Closed door discussions go on all the time and transparency is another of the, in my view, rotten concepts or buzz words of our profession.
To me transparency in public relations is serious only if and when we say who we are, who we represent, what our objectives are and, if the norms allow us to do it, how we plan to get there.
The rest is nonsense.
Now, I know very well that many will not agree with me on this. For one, my esteemed and good friend John Paluszek, the new chair of the Global Alliance, who in a recent speech http://www.globalalliancepr.org/content/1/420/global-alliance-challenge-for-public-relations-dare-great-address-the-global-new-normal/indicates transparency as the new frontier of our profession….

How do we learn to succeed in this new reality? That’s what Jon is talking about here. And, by the way, when we talk about “looks like IBM,” we’re talking about the various visual expressions of the company that he mentions — signage, font, product design, event design, etc… not people’s appearance. Believe me, nobody’s thinking about dress codes here. Plus, as you note, this place remains a pioneer in diversity — of race, gender, sexual orientation, mode of thought, etc.

As “The Authentic Enterprise” argues, we [i.e., corporate communications, marketing, etc.] “are no longer in control.” So we have to pursue the timeless goals of business (succeeding by differentiating ourselves in a competitive market) in different ways. And we must bring to those new approaches the same thoughtfulness, intentionality and rigor that were brought to Industrial Age approaches by their best practitioners. That rigor won’t produce conformity. It will, if we do it right, produce what the speech calls “constituencies of aspiration.”

Another way to think of it is this: When Eliot Noyes was shaping design at IBM (and bringing in everyone from Charles and Ray Eames, to Eero Saarinen, to Paul Rand), he described his work not as being about rigid consistency of form, but of deeper consistency of idea. From “Powers of Ten” to the Selectric to the Paul Rand rebus to the company’s buildings to its advertising, there was an enormous variety of look and visual design. But they all “looked like IBM,” they all expressed an underlying character — an optimism about the future, a belief in science, etc. In fact, Noyes called himself not a “design director” but the “curator of corporate character.”

Bill Huey
Strategic Communications
Atlanta