232. The Power of the Word of Mouth

Foreign.

Welcome to another episode of at the Table with Patrick Lynchione where everything we talk about is related to organizational health and the world of work. I'm Pat Lincione, your host, joined by Tracy and Beau today. How are you guys doing?

Great.

Hey, I asked again. I just did it reflexively. Cody is traveling today. Can't be on. Karen sitting next to me. Matt's here in studio producing. I'm going to ask you, Bo, what is our topic?

The power of word of mouth.

That's right. This sounds so obvious, but word of mouth is so much more powerful than any other kind of communication. And the way I like to think about this is people say what's the most powerful way to communicate messages within an organization. And for years we've been saying it's the executive team after their staff meeting, their leadership team meeting, going out within 24 hours and telling their direct reports what they talked about and telling those direct reports to go tell their direct reports. And whether you have a 50 person company or a 50,000 person company, it's still the best way to communicate. And that's what we want to talk about today is why word of mouth, in this era of communication tools and everything else, word of mouth is still so powerful, both internal and external. And we just kind of want to explore that today and help companies and leaders take advantage of that.

So when you say it, you're right. It does seem like an obvious topic. But then I'm sitting here thinking, why is that, why is it that when I've been on the receiving end of that at a leader, when I there was another leadership team and they would have a meeting and somebody would pop by my office and tell me something, why is it that that goes so much further than the email or the memo or the announcement?

I think it's, I think it comes down to some very specific things. Like it's sincerity. It's like when a person is telling you something and you're looking them in the eye, whether it's on zoom or in person or. And you're hearing their tone of voice, there's just, you get a sense of whether they actually believe what they're saying. And you can say, hey, wait, I don't understand, what do you mean by that? Or did you think that was a good idea? So there's just something about the realness, the humanity of hearing someone say something and knowing that they actually mean it and knowing that they're not editing it and producing it for a desired effect.

It's a little bit like I love watching movie trailers, but every movie trailer is great, right? Every single trailer you've seen there, they can take the funniest parts of a movie and make it look great. But we were talking about this before we hit record that it's when one person says, oh, that was a great movie, and then two people say it was a great movie, I'm way more likely to see it than any movie trailer is likely to move me. Because it's a person, not a professional, not a graphic designer, not somebody stitching it all together to make it sound great. It's just Pat telling me, go see this movie. I liked it. You'll like it.

And it's so funny because movies can spend $100 million on advertising and after you've talked to three people who said it was bad, you're not going to go see it. And then another movie you might not have heard of, and two people come to the office go, oh, I love that. You're like, I'm going to go watch that. And you just can't buy good word of mouth, which is why companies need to. And that's, that's for marketing purposes, which, which I love to talk about that too. But within a company, there's just no substitute for a human being telling you something from their heart in real time and letting you hear it and react to it in that moment. That's why the best orientation program and video and all that isn't the same as a bunch of new hires getting in a room and listening to the CEO or the executives talk about why they're passionate about the company and answering their questions.

You know the word I'm thinking about as you described, that is relief. Because people are kind of sitting on the edge of their chair wondering, is the leadership team going to talk about this? Is the CEO going to make a decision? Do they even know this is happening? And so we had a moment in the last couple of weeks. We were on an all hands meeting and something came up and I could tell it was going to bother one of my teammates. So just quick called them and said, hey, let me just give you two more sentences of context about what you just heard. And they were like, oh, thank goodness. Thank you for calling and telling me. Because it communicates a, like, I care about you enough to have told you. And a sense of they just needed a little bit more context. Maybe that couldn't have come across again in an announcement or in an email. It creates stability, doesn't it?

Yeah. And authenticity, which I think those go together because you need that.

Can you guys talk about the volume and the frequency of communication? Because I think that factors in as well. I think people have to hear things over and over and over again from different sources. So how does that play in.

Yeah, we talk about that repetitive communication. That research has literally shown that people need to hear something seven times before they believe it to be true in an organizational context. And honestly, 30 years ago, it was six times. I think it's. People have gotten more cynical, and it's about actually having a message reinforced by different people in different settings in different ways that is consistent. And there's no way to manufacture that. I mean, and that's not to say there's no purpose in marketing, but that. But marketing is just to put an idea out there. And then you say, does this jive with my reality based on what people are telling me? And so there's no substitute for that. But I want to go back, Tracy, to something we've been talking about for literally 30 years around here. And that is the best way. Companies are always saying we need to improve communication. And that's the third discipline of a healthy organization. You know, it's get it. Make the executive team cohesive and then get really clear and get the executive team aligned and then over communicate. And everybody's like, how do we do that? How do we do that? And everybody wants to go out and say videos and the intranet and all these other things. And we've been talking about that because even calling it the intranet sounds old. But what we've always said is this. If you did none of that, but after every meeting, you had your leadership team go and sit down with their people for 15 minutes and say, okay, we just had a meeting. Here's what we talked about. Here's what's important. Here's what we want you to know about. Do you have any questions? Do you believe me? Do you know that I'm serious about this now? I want you to go out and do that in 24 hours with your team. I've seen companies with multiple thousands of employees spread around the globe, getting more alignment, clarity by doing that than all the most sophisticated technology tools. Because there's just something so powerful about hearing it from someone's mouth.

But my guess is that if you're listening to this, most listeners would say, oh, yeah, my leader doesn't do that, or our leadership team doesn't do that. Why don't they? What is the thing inside of us that resists doing that simple thing?

Well, you just hit the nail on the head. I think it's because it's so simple. We, we can't believe it's powerful. I mean, like every parent, every parent wants their kids to feel loved. And then if you said, but here's the few things you have to do to make them feel loved, they're like, oh, come on, that can't be that simple. It's like, yeah, it's simple. It's like, go hug them once a week, grab them and hug them. Tell them something that you're delighted about them for, you know, and explain to them why you're disciplining them. When you're doing that, if you do those three things every week, week in and week out, over time, your child will feel loved. And people are like, oh, come on, it has to be harder than that. So I think it's this, this what we've always said is like trying to find complex solutions to problems that are really about simple but difficult things. And constant word of mouth communication from the top is so powerful and yet it's free. And it's, it's just about discipline. And people are like, come on, it can't really be that everyone would do it if that's how it worked.

Pat, you always say, tell true rumors. That's the best way to spread the word. Tell true rumors and it'll spread like wildfire.

Karen just wrote that down on the piece of paper next to me here. Yes. Like if people came to me and they said, how can we make sure that everybody in the organization knows something? It's like, well, just go tell them and then tell them not to tell anybody because it's a secret and the people will spread that like wildfire, you know. But the idea there is, that's always been the most powerful way to get communication disseminated. Because when you see it in an advertisement or in a video that's produced, or even an email, when the CEO sends out an email or the manager of the department, you're like, well, he or she was thinking about that and editing that before they sent it out. So there's just something about raw, live person to person communication where it's exponentially more effective and yet it is still so underutilized.

So how do we navigate this dynamic is you have conversations as a leadership team or a management team, and then you decide, okay, at the end of that conversation, here's what we're going to say and here's what we're going to not say. And so you go disseminate the part that you were going to say, but you can't always give all the details behind that. Right. There's part of it that was supposed to stay in that room. There's part of it maybe that impacted personnel. So is that part of the reason we don't share some of the information is because we're afraid we might get questioned about all the information? Or how do you handle that when somebody starts asking questions that you actually can't respond to because of, again, confidentiality or it's not appropriate to be able to give all the information?

Yeah, I think that's a great point. And it's a really bad excuse. It's like, because 10% of the time I'm not allowed to communicate something I know I won't communicate 90% of the time to avoid that. Where it's much better to be able to say, hey, I just told you a bunch of stuff. They ask a question, you go, oh, I'm not allowed to say anything about that yet. You can understand that, right? Because we have to be confidential. But. So I can't talk about that. But I can talk about all the other stuff and just understand there's a really good reason for that. And you know, people will, will hear that. It's kind of like when people say, well, I don't want to go over the top with my kids and tell them I love them too much. And it's like, yeah, that would be a really high class problem. And yet there's so many parents who will say, oh, that's, it's trite and it doesn't mean anything. And it's like, you know, better to err on the side of over communicating genuinely than worrying about the 10%, the problem that might come up.

There's, of course, there's like the strategic reason to do this, which is, hey, you're going to be keeping people in line and in sync and they're going to be informed and things will be faster. There's also a little bit of a selfish reason why, which is they are actually gonna trust the leadership team more. When you communicate like this, there's always a they. And it's always so easy in any organization to blame the they. The easiest person to blame in any company is the boss. And you will take away people's excuses to blame you because you've been over communicating, you've been telling people and they will hear, oh my goodness, they're talking about the most important things and letting me in on that information. Pat and Tracy, you've both said this, that people feel valued based on when they receive information. And so maybe we should talk a little bit about the speed that you're talking about to literally go from your meeting to then go walk the halls and communicate to your team. Talk about that. Talk about the, like, the importance of speed.

Yeah. I mean, because information gets old pretty quickly, and if you're not communicating something, the vacuum will get filled by the negative. So it's like you have a big meeting every. Everybody in your office knows the executive team is having a meeting. They hear nothing for three days. What people do to fill that vacuum is assume, well, if they're not telling us anything, it must be because there's something bad going on. And so by not being quick, you're allowing that the, The. The. The untruth of the vacuum to create itself. And that's just a crazy thing. And too often what people do is they go, well, we have to craft the message to make sure we're on the same page. What we've always done is at the end of a staff meeting with the executive team, the leadership team, we'll say, take five minutes to agree on what you just agreed to. And somebody goes to the board and goes, okay, we agreed on this, right? And everybody goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, we agreed on this and this. And then they'll put one up there. And people go, oh, no, I don't think we agreed on that. Oh, okay, I'm glad we took that five minutes to clarify. All you need to do is get generally on the same page and then go out and communicate. And by the way, when you go communicate it, if people are confused, the first time you do that, you get back to the executive team and go, hey, I think this is confusing. You know right away what's not working and what is working. But when you leave a meeting and you craft an email or you don't say anything or you try to be too formal, you're probably increasing the likelihood that people will be confused.

Well, I think, Pat, it's really important. The point you made about getting clear on what you communicate. We can't underestimate that. And we know this from our previous employer. You and I worked together at a technology firm years ago, and we saw this happen time and time again in meetings. In fact, you've got a couple of really fun stories from that experience.

Yeah, I remember one of those stories was a company was struggling with their revenue, and so they came out and they said, hey, we have to stop flying first class. We're going to cut back on our travel. Budgets, everybody's back to regular travel. And then right after that, somebody got on a plane and there was two people sitting in first class. And they're like, what didn't that. And they're like, no, that didn't apply to us. And so often it's those kind of things. Like, are we really clear before we leave this room, we're going to go out and communicate that are we serious about this and are we going to make sure we had another one? Which was like a hiring freeze. A company said, we're going to do a hiring freeze. And they went out and they sent an email out to everybody in the company. And then a day later, the sales department said, well, we're still hiring because that doesn't apply to sales. And it's just like, if you don't get clear on what you're communicating, make sure you're aligned. No amount of word of mouth communication, in fact, then it will just exacerbate it, but at least you'll figure it out fast.

The other thing that I think happens when we go and do this is I actually remember it better because there can be quite a bit of time that happens between meetings. And even if you took good notes, you finish a meeting sometimes and you're like, okay, we decided this. And then you come back and a week or sometimes two weeks later you're like, now what did we decide again? But it actually begins to live in me more when I walk out of this hallway and go and tell Alan, hey, here's what we just decided. And call Ashley and say, here's what we just decided and talked about that it becomes more real for me too.

Yeah. You know, one of the other big things that happens when we, when we leave a meeting, even if we do word of mouth communication, but if we're not aligned, what happens is the head of sales goes out and says something that's sales relevant. The head of marketing goes out and says something that's marketing relevant. The head of engineering goes out and says something that's engineering relevant. And then people hear it and they go, are these people working together? It's really important that the leadership team sits down and says, what are we going to say to everyone? We need to use our own words and we need to make it real for them. But let's make sure we're communicating the same message and not creating the sense that we're working in silos, because that happens all too often. Now, what does this have to do with marketing? I'm feeling like the word marketing is getting less and less meaningful in society because there's so much of. Feels like we're filtering more and more of it out. I know when I read articles and there's a commercial almost always in there, I don't even look at them anymore. And so what. What is happening? I think the only thing that we're going to come back to is how do we make sure that our customers are doing our marketing for us? You know, and I. And. And some of the best companies in the world don't have a lot of marketing. You know, one of my favorite companies is In N Out Burger. And they just. You don't see commercials. You know what else they don't even have? You can't even get them through doordash. But it's people that say, I love when I go there. And last week we talked about this coffee company called Dutch Bros. It's wonderful. It's all about the people that go there and the people that work there love to tell other people about that. And I even think when we think about things going on in the world, when you look around the world and you say, gosh, I think this is a problem in the world, in society, what should I do? Should I donate to something or should I, you know, go online? So often it's just tell the people around you that you feel strongly about something and if you can influence through word of mouth, a few people around you, that is going to make an impact. And so often we're looking to influence others without actually having to open our mouth and talk and answer questions. And I think this is in a marketing technology society. We've stopped talking to one another about what's going on around us and tried to rely on other methods that ultimately don't satisfy. I think so word of mouth.

Yeah, I agree. I'm rarely convinced by advertising anymore. But it's amazing how if one or two people, in fact, if somebody shows me a product that they love, I'm so likely to actually go get it. I had a friend who has I love camping. We've talked about that in this podcast before. He has an espresso maker for his camper and he showed it to me once. You could have advertised at Espresso for camping a thousand times to me and I would have said it's stupid. But he showed it to me one time and I had to get it right. Isn't there something about I trusted him and I saw it once and I got it. But doesn't matter how many Google Ads I would have seen And I'm sure there's some marketer out there there who thinks that I could have been convinced eventually, but there's just something about the personal vulnerability, face to face connection.

Yeah, absolutely. Karen just wrote something down to finish this off. I think it's important. And that is we need to realize that the best marketers we have really are our employees. And is what are they telling people when they don't even know they're marketing the company? What are they saying to other people? And either they're doing a great job of promoting your organization or they are inadvertently doing a great job of discouraging it. And probably it'd be better if we took a lot of our marketing budget and worked on making our organizations healthier and listening to employees and encouraging them more because they are probably going to have more to say about the success of our organization in the market than any advertisement we run. Well, we're to the unpaid ad today, so talk about word of mouth. That's what this is all about. And you have something you're excited to share with us.

Yeah, it's so wild that this was the topic today. So a couple weeks ago, my wife and all the kids were at, you know, field day for the school and somebody had brought a bunch of water balloons. And the problem with water balloons, of course, is they get all over the field and they're impossible to fill up. And somebody years ago invented that thing where you can fill up 50 of them at once, but it's still a horrible mess to have to clean up and half of them pop. So she came home and she said she did, you know that somebody invented reusable water balloons? And I was like, that wouldn't work. I said it just like that. That won't work. And then all the kids were talking about, I have a gaggle of children and they were all talking about these amazing reusable water balloons. So I ordered some. And I am here to tell you reusable water balloons is the greatest invention of my life.

How does it work?

How? It is basically two thin pieces of rubber that are held together by magnets. So you drop them in a bucket. You drop these reusable water balloons in a bucket and then the magnets come together. It almost does it on its own. And then you can still throw them like you throw a normal water balloon. It still explodes when it hits you. You pick them up, you put them back in a bucket, reuse them again. That's a game changer. As I describe it, you think, oh, it must leak all over the place or it must really hurt when you get hit. They're perfect, so.

Wow. And it sounds like it's very fast to fill them up, too.

So, I mean, you literally the little plastic. You just rubber whatever it is, you drop it in a bucket, open it, close it in half a second, and it's full. Wow.

And then, of course. And then the key to this whole thing is your kids liked it, right?

My kid. I had three water balloon fights this weekend. I had more fun personally than I've had in a long time. Well, you're just a big kid, Bo, and I am a big kid. And it was a blast. We use a water. Water balloons. They're like two bucks each. And I think there's a bunch of companies who are. Who are riffing off this idea, but there you go. We heard about it. I didn't believe it. I saw it. And now I'm telling anybody who will listen.

I mean, how many times did you get pelted because you were standing there trying to fill it up on the end of a hose or tie it and it would blow up on you? And. Yep, this could. This could change everything.

But also, it seems related to something you said a little bit ago, that if you make a good product, people will about it. The company that's. That's making water balloons, that break is spending all their money on marketing. And this company just said, let's just make it better.

Well, you know what's funny? That's why I think Shark Tank is so interesting, because it's actually. It's a commercial. Yeah. But if it's. If it sucks, you're going to get ripped apart by these people and you're going to have to. But the fact that people are actually watching you talk about it and making a case for it, those are the best ads you could ever have because it really is as close to word of mouth as you can manufacture. So. All right. Water balloons. Summertime. Sounds great. Thanks for listening to us, everybody. Remember, word of mouth is still the most powerful form of communication. Tell your friends. Tell your friends. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next time on at the Table. God bless.