I’d like you to imagine you are the marketing manager of a mobile communications company. You and the CEO are out of the office for a few days, and so your team have promised to keep you in touch with what they are up to while you are away.

And they do. In fact, they send you a photograph every day of what they are up to while you are away. Complete transparency, after all, is the cultural imperative du jour.

This is the photograph they send you on the first day:

Hmm. Looks quiet. Too quiet.

But fret not. There seem to be signs of life by the second morning.

Oh, and wait, there’s more.

By the fourth day the team appear to be really getting into their stride. Here they are playing poker and smoking at the CEO’s desk.

Day five sees them unwinding a little with a pyjama party and watching The Hangover. The team bonding seems to be going well.

You have clearly left the office in excellent hands. It has been time well spent.

But what’s the point?

We do a lot of workshops. We work with a lot of marketers, a lot of companies. And I can genuinely say that I have never come across as engaging an indicator of the relationship between a marketing team, and indeed as engaging an indicator of the vibrancy of a culture. I didn’t see this interchange because anyone showed it to me, I came across it because I saw the Marketing Manager laughing at her phone screen one morning before the workshop started, and asked her what she was laughing at. It was intended to be a private joke; I just overheard it.

The company is Bite Latvia, in whose company we had the considerable pleasure of spending a few days in London last week. Bite are a mobile telco, number three in the Latvian market, with a 17% share, and really picking up some consumer momentum: last year 60% of all switchers changed to Bite. They combine an offer with a very serious intent – products and services that better represent the consumers’ interests – with ideas that aim to generate attention and a smile. (When the government put up VAT recently, for instance, they sent out Vitamin C to their customers to help them brace themselves for it).

What’s the correlation between the spontaneous sending of photographs of oneself playing poker at the CEO’s desk and punching way above your weight in terms of customer growth? I’ll leave that to the stats department.

But ask yourself some relatively traditional questions, looking at this trail of communication:
i) Do this team have stimulating ideas?
ii) Do they work together well?
iii) Do they have a good relationship with their boss and their CEO?
iv) Do they feel empowered by everyone from the CEO downwards to really bring themselves, and everything they have to offer, to work?
v) Would it be rewarding – even downright fun – to work there?
vi) Will they talk to their friends positively about where they work, and the culture there?

I think it’s a pretty good KPI. And a really good KPI for certain kinds of challenger.

We have an interview with the CEO of Bite coming up on the site. That was pretty interesting, too.
Keep your eye on Bite. They’re coming through.

2 Responses to “Bite me”

1. Enabling a Challenger Culture – 3 Bits of Advice — eatbigfish says: February 7, 2012 at 6:26 pm

   [...] mentioned in Adam’s blog post yesterday , Bite have a vibrant and ideas driven company culture. Central to this culture is their [...]

2. Challenger Project: Bite Me - The Marketing Society says: February 9, 2012 at 12:39 pm

   [...] have an interview with the CEO of Bite coming up on our site. That was pretty interesting, [...]