peacock creative blog

When I looked in the closet of my mind this morning, I found I had many more hats than I had heads. This wasn’t too alarming; I knew that hats had been piling up for a while now. But, what is increasingly amazing to me is how many of those hats I can wear at any given time. It seems with age one’s head only gets more “hat capable.” Of course there is a point of diminishing returns and while some might argue otherwise, I think I’m still years from that.

Of course I am not speaking literally. But I was recently reminded of the, ‘many hats we all wear’ during a recent Association of Fundraising Professionals breakfast meeting. On this particular morning Mr. Terry Barber, Vice President and Senior Strategist for the Grizzard Communication Group was in attendance to share some thoughts in his presentation “Build your Brand and they will come.” I attended the meeting because of the obvious connection between the topic and my goals as a consultant and I expected I’d learn a thing or two from someone like Mr. Barber.

Well, I did learn a thing or two but what my mind has been constantly regurgitating since that morning is Mr. Barber’s reflections on the typical, and often disastrous, split within organizations that occurs between the staff in the development department and those staff in the marketing department. It is true for some reason that these are two groups are frequently at odds with each other.  Sometimes more than “just at odds” too.  It can get bad - akin to the Hatfield McCoy feuds - all out war.

While we are at this point it is worth also mentioning that it is common also for tensions to exist between the development and finance departments and, if there is a separate public relations office, well they aren’t left out of development non-seeing-eye-to-eye-ism either. But for this piece, let’s just focus on development and marketing.

I’ve heard it from other fundraisers and I’ve experienced the split in the organizations where I have worked; but, no matter how prevalent it is, it just doesn’t make sense to me. Not when you look at the big picture. When I was a part of this type of organizational dysfunction I tried multiple ways to build bridges and to change the situation; sometimes with success and, sadly, sometimes without. I don’t claim to by a psychologist, so I can’t tell you what fosters this type of competition and distrust between departments in the same organization, nor could I tell you sure fire ways to get over it if you are dealing with it. But, Mr. Barber suggested a solution and deserves some credit for it.

He advised that although these divisions exist within our organizations that we should seek common ground in which to operate more cooperatively. Make sense so far? Further he suggested that if the marketing and development departments can put aside their differences, even if only for just a short while, there are three key areas in which they should band together in common cause and by doing so will have a much greater impact on their organizations.

The three areas?  Mr. Barber called them “brand drivers.”  He suggested finding common ground to:

1. Spark Imagination: Tell your story and envision your mission as met.
2. Build Integrity: Your organization’s authenticity is at the heart of its success.
3. Inspire: Put a face to your cause and drive for ‘mission accomplished.’

Mr. Barber didn’t say it would be easy.  But, I believe if you can get your two departments talking about these three things they’ll find they will be much more effective and might even come to like one another after all.  Let’s hope!