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Corporate Whisperers

Written by: Chala Dincoy

Article Overview: In this article, find out how a horse whisperer who gentles wild horses without breaking or hurting them can teach our business leaders how to perform better in the boardroom.

Corporate Whisperers

I think I was born a mid level manager. With the exception of my cemetery property telemarketing gigs as a student, from my first job in a developing country all the way to my current job as a Brand Manager at BIC, I’ve always been a mid-level manager.

Being a mid-level manager is akin to being the new kid in school. You want your teachers to approve of you but you also need your peers to think you’re cool. And to get in with the cool kids, you’ve got to speak their language.

Greg was a show boat of a man—he dressed to the nines and cared exceedingly about appearances. He was the operations manager for 10 years running. Being cost-conscious came naturally to Greg, and he got a lot of encouragement to exploit his instinctive tightfisted skills; senior management constantly rewarded him for pinching the pennies out of a project, even if it looked like a mad science project gone wrong. Because of this, Greg was often at odds with the marketing department over the issue of packaging costs.

Ironically, Greg’s pride and joy was his luxury car, everyone knew how it made him feel like he’d finally arrived. His silver cufflinks flashed and winked at me as we sat talking about how new packaging should look. I knew that our brand equity was hurting, largely in part to the sub-standard pack materials and cheaper design.

As we spoke, Greg started to extol the virtues of cheaper packaging emphasizing—the hefty sum he had saved the company over the years. I stopped him out of the blue and asked him what kind of car he drove. Stunned at the change of topic, he stammered “Who? Me?”
“Yeah,” I replied “do you have a nice car?”
“A Porsche!” he said beaming with pride.

I feigned pleasant surprise, eyes wide open,—“Wow, do you think a cheap import could compete with your Porsche?”
He thought for a second and emphatically pounded his chest saying “No!”
“Why not?” I asked.
He thoughtfully stroked his thin mustache” Well because my car is classy, it’s high quality – it’s just not the same.”
“Well,” I said, “do you think that if we could make our product seem like a Porsche in the eyes of our consumers, that Private Label would be able to steal our share?”
The question prompted his stunned silence. Private Label was a big concern for us because the majority of our product line was in the economy segment and was being hurt by house brands.

Greg’s eyes popped open, and he drew his breath in and let out a very Austin Powers-like “Aaah— I get it now.”
The cheap pack talk was dropped promptly. We proceeded to talk about how to make the new package design better while setting a cost target that was acceptable for both of us.

The above story doesn’t just illustrate developing marketing strategy or building brand equity, but rather how I got close to the opposition by speaking Equus.

Equus is what former horse farmer Monty Roberts (now leadership trainer) calls the language that horses share. He’s the original Horse Whisperer who discovered that if you speak to creatures in their own language that you’ll get cooperation much easier and faster than if you continue to speak your own language and expect the creature to understand you.

Monty is credited with inventing the amazing method of horse whispering which changed the practice of horse breaking forever. Horse breaking is the painful process of tying the back leg of a horse to its own back and forcing it to accept a harness; this is followed by an excruciating two week wait for the horse to stop bucking. This is all in the name of getting a horse to join a domesticated herd.

Of course, you’ll probably feel as sick as I did to discover that the reason a wild horse is bucking when something is on its back is that through centuries, in the wilderness, predators attacked horses on their backs. As a result, the instinct to flee from danger and throw whatever’s on their backs is deeply ingrained in horses from birth. Horse breaking prevents the horse from doing both these things. Can you imagine how painful this must be for both the horse and the trainer?

Monty intently watched how the Alpha female horse got an unruly wild colt to join her herd while growing up on his father’s horse breaking farm. . By mirroring these gentle movements of communication, trust and forgiveness, Monty miraculously got a wild stallion to join his herd within a mere matter of minutes. His fundamental belief was that “violence is never the answer.”

The Equus theory obviously also applies to human beings. All humans see the world differently and hence have a different way of expressing themselves. I entered Greg’s world when I spoke to him about brand equity through the perspective of luxurious cars. Not that I’m calling him a horse or anything, somehow I think he’s been called worse…

As a mid-level manager you’ll find that you’re constantly trying to woo, cajole, influence and yet have no direct control over anyone other than yourself. Speaking from your audience’s frame of reference is sometimes difficult because you don’t understand their values and often don’t take the time to figure out their drivers.

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