Growing Lean

Crafting Transformative Business Strategies with Allan Steinmetz: Uniting Internal Branding and Stakeholder Values

• Ethan Halfhide

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Embark on a journey of business innovation with Dylan Burke as I sit across from Allan Steinmetz, the visionary CEO of Inward Strategic Consulting. Together, we unravel the essence of transformative business strategies that resonate with the core of stakeholder values. In our compelling exchange, Allan recounts his transition from the world of advertising to leading a consultancy that champions customer experiences through the powerful alignment of internal branding and company purpose. We examine Inward Consulting's origin story against the backdrop of challenging ERP implementations and highlight the potent combination of adaptability and resilience that has allowed the firm's marketing tactics to flourish for over two decades through economic ebbs and flows.

Allan and I also dissect the burgeoning concept of stakeholder capitalism and how it's reshaping corporate purpose to reflect environmental, social, and cultural integrity. This episode peels back the layers on how companies can thrive by embedding their mission into every facet of their governance, transcending traditional sales metrics for a holistic approach to business success. We discuss the generational diversity of today's workforce and the undeniable magnetism of a purpose that extends beyond profit. If you're looking to forge connections and expand your thought leadership, Alan Steinmetz provides a treasure trove of advice on how to cultivate a community that fosters meaningful engagement. With the promise of Inward Consulting's expertise at the ready, this episode is an invaluable guide for business leaders poised to make an impact.

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Speaker 1:

Hey folks, welcome back to the growing Lean podcast sponsored by Lean Discovery Group, an award-winning app and software development firm based out of Virginia. This is your host, dylan Burke, also known as Dege, and I'm happy to be here today with Alan Steinmet, ceo and at Inward Strategic Consulting. Welcome, alan.

Speaker 2:

Welcome. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here today.

Speaker 1:

Yes, thanks for your time. So, alan, to get us started, can you give us a little bit about your history and background and how you ended up doing what you do today?

Speaker 2:

Sure, I think of myself as an advertising guy and I started and prepared my career to go into advertising. I spent 17 years in the advertising world at McCann Erickson and at YNR, Young and Rubik Hamm. I then left there as a senior vice president, director of business development, and went on to a client which was at the time Anderson Consulting, which was trying to launch itself as a consulting firm away from Arthur Anderson. Later it became Accenture and I was the worldwide director of marketing there and helped launch their brand for three years. And then I joined another consulting firm called Arthur D Little, which is a major global management consulting firm that specializes in technology and environmental, health and safety and management consulting strategy. And I was there for five years.

Speaker 2:

And while I was at Arthur D Little in the late 80s, there was an early 90s. There was a new phenomenon called ERP Re-Engineering, Transformational Change and one of the things we learned from our clients was that major change initiatives and ERP implementations were failing and 80% of the time that they were failing, 50% of the programs were failing and 80% of the time why they were failing had to do with the lack of acceptance and buy-in from their internal constituencies. So we decided to create a process and methodology called inward marketing to get people to embrace and adopt to change in order to have effective re-engineering acceptance in the marketplace. So that evolved into a practice and after about two years there was so much interest in what we were doing we decided to launch it as a company called Inward Strategic Consulting, the company I now have now, and after two years we took it over. I became the CEO of that group and just actually yesterday we just celebrated our 25th year of anniversary.

Speaker 2:

The company has evolved to not only include change management but also internal branding, team alignment, external brand positioning and adoption, and what we basically do is work with organizations to help them embrace change amongst their people so that they can provide a better and understand what the company stands for in terms of their purpose, their mission, their values, so that they can ultimately provide a better customer experience. Our clients have included Walmart, McDonald's, American Airlines, Prudential, Fidelity and Investments and fortunately, knock on wood, we've been successful at doing what we do and we pretty much launched a whole new category of business. You have external advertising agencies and external public relations firms, but we're almost like an agency for the internal employee base of larger corporations, and that's what we do. We have codified methodologies, creative design, strategy, messaging the whole nine years and it's been very rewarding.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing to hear. I'm glad you've done so well over the last 25 years. Business is as old as me. That's amazing.

Speaker 2:

There have been ups and downs. The COVID certainly took a hit. We lost a couple of clients here and there. But the process, the methodology and the commitment is resilient and we're always looking for new business, always. And we used to say at R3D do a little, sell a little, do a little, sell a little. You have to do it all the time. So that's why we're here.

Speaker 1:

Over the last 25 years, I'm sure you've gained a number of tactics and tools that you use to support or help create a project regarding sustainable growth grow your business. What have been the main tools that have stuck with you or tactics that have stuck with you over the last 25 years, or have they been, or do you keep pivoting and changing and updating your inventory?

Speaker 2:

Well, we actually have a methodology for building external brands. We call it dialogue marketing, and the intent is to identify targets and audiences that have the need for what we do and then go through a four-phase process of making them aware of who we are, number one. Number two make them understand the skill sets and capabilities of what we have them. We call it educating. The third one is converting them from being aware and educated to becoming a shopper Seriously considering, by offering services, incentives, pricing and programming a taste, if you will. And then, once they close, then it's maintaining the relationship after the fact through loyalty marketing programs. Each one of those four phases have specific tactics that are aligned with that.

Speaker 2:

So, to build awareness, we do outbound email blasts, we do webinars like this and podcasts.

Speaker 2:

We speak at major events like the Association of National Advertisers and the conference boards, and that gets them to know who we are.

Speaker 2:

And then, once we get into the education phase, we do webinars specifically around topics that may be of interest to them. Once they've raised their hands, we will invite them to breakfasts or symposium with our clients so they can hear some of the successes and case histories. And then, in the third phase, we'll do website design and development, social media components Facebook X formerly Twitter as well as LinkedIn posts. And then, finally, for recognition and rewards, we'll give special treatment and special access to databases and information that we accumulate through research, access to clients case histories, and so, when you have a whole spectrum from awareness all the way to recognition and loyalty and rewards, you are able to build tactical marketing programs. The biggest challenge has been doing it consistently. As I said before, when you're busy, you get busy, and it's hard to allocate time and resources to devote this without the critical mass of a company behind you to be able to do it day in and day out.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, 100%. And more recently, have you started making use of the technology that's becoming more available to us?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. There's not a day, literally there is not a day that I do not use artificial intelligence and chat GPT for some facet of what I do. And it's really, it really amazes me and blows me away, to be honest with you, of the impact. For instance, I will never, ever send out an outbound email without first I'll draft it and write it myself, but I'll always go through GPT to improve it, edit it, proofread it and come up with a better, let's say, call to action or close, and invariably it always has an impact. That's one.

Speaker 2:

I've had them I've also in our master service agreements and contracts. I've also used it to help me improve that. I've used it here and there to we do a very we're very big blog posters that goes out pretty much weekly to our mailing list of over 3,500 people and I will write the piece, the blog post. But I will often enhance it, embellish it through the help of chat GPT in terms of headlines, tag lines, call to actions. So it's very, it's very, very compelling. I've just we've just started experimenting a little bit in regard to design and illustrations and photographs using some of the new techniques, but I'm actually seeing literally every single day, another enhancement using artificial intelligence. That just blows me away. I just came across a website, a website called durableaicom, that co-rather that builds literally builds a website from scratch in three minutes. Blow me away blow me away.

Speaker 1:

It's absolutely mind-blowing what, how fast we can get things done now with these tools.

Speaker 2:

It's amazing I haven't done it for business prospecting yet, or data-based CRM. In terms of list management, I have a database of over 10,000 names that we've acquired over the last 25 years. I would love to find a artificial intelligence tool that can help me call that down, update it, so on and so forth. There are tools that can do that the WZA Rocket, Reach, B2B Rockets and things of that nature. We hope to start experimenting with some of those when we have some free time and resources to allocate to that kind of an activity.

Speaker 1:

Okay, yeah, it's definitely beneficial. Even if there isn't a tool available, it's not that difficult to get it made, because the I don't know how to explain it it's just because of AI. We have the ability to build more tools to implement AI, so it's just like feeding on itself and making it easier and more accessible, and it's honestly amazing. I wouldn't say it allows us to do our work better, but it definitely allows us to do our work a lot faster, like extremely fast.

Speaker 2:

My wife is a very successful realtor in the Boston market, where we live, and she started developing storybooks about some of the properties she has to sell and she's using AI to help her write the content to tell a storybook about houses, and it's fascinating, absolutely fascinating. Yeah, it is. So it's just a matter of time before it will be used for copywriting in our fields and benefits and wellness programs, helping people with meditation. Without question, it's going to happen, I mean, if it hasn't already, so we'll see, yeah, 100%.

Speaker 1:

And I wanted to ask could you speak of any metrics or KPIs that you use to measure the success of your business and your clients?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. We have a proprietary tool that we use called ChangeFX, and we usually will do a census of the population, of an audience, either external or internal, but mostly internal of associates and employees, to find out their attitudes and opinions and views of their employee experience and employee experience is very different from employee satisfaction and we cover five different metrics and we measure performance improvements pre to post. So hence the change effects, and we can, we could get it down to the ability of the individual, to the group, to the function, as well as to the corporation as a whole, and we could illustrate, as a result of our integrated internal dialogue marketing programs, the impact and the changes that we're able to provide. That's one metric that we have. Another thing that we do If the client is so inclined, we, as part of the goals and objectives of setting out an engagement and we build this right into our master service agreements we will identify the key variables that they want to have a change or improve and we'll create what we call a KPI index and we'll report in terms of risk mitigation and governance for the board of directors, which they then have to report on to demonstrate that the risk, mitigation of risk is improved as a result of the index going up or down, things such as it's also being called stakeholder capitalism or experiences.

Speaker 2:

So so you know the you want to look at things such as wellness, customer experience, quality improvements, product satisfaction. If we, if they track all those together, will combine them in such a way that we create an index for one metrics which allows the board to demonstrate that their, their risk associated with those that metrics, with that index, is being mitigated and managed. Things as simple as you know. You know environmental, society and and the cultural implications even those kinds of things are being measured and managed by boards, and so stakeholder capitalism is a big, growing phenomenon. In fact, I'm, there's an, a group called enterprise engagement association that's been promoting it. I'm actually going to be speaking to their group through a podcast in a couple weeks, which I can also send you some information. But but that is a and also the economic forum in Europe is also looking at understanding that in a better fashion as well.

Speaker 1:

Okay, amazing. And what metrics in your business are you looking to improve? Obviously, sales is always on the top of everyone's mind, but other than that, what are your internal metrics that you're looking to improve?

Speaker 2:

It really isn't all that different from that of our clients. It's how do we create a fulfilling and engaged work environment for our people so that there is a greater sense of purpose and loyalty? My father was a butcher and on his day off he would go to other butcher shops to check the prices to make sure everything was good. I had always had an impact on me, but it's the accomplished children. We have to make sure that we practice what we preach for our own people, so that our employees feel that they have a future, that they're contributing to something meaningful in their personal lives as well as in their professional lives, and create harmony and peace for themselves. Not to get political, but in the current state of mind and where we are as a society, that's very, very difficult with all of the social feces and political and economic challenges that we have. I'll give you an example.

Speaker 2:

There's a very successful global furniture and housework company called Wayfair, an online pervader. A couple of years ago, they were fulfilling a contract for immigration for the southern border so that there would be beds for the immigrants that were becoming the legal immigrants that were coming into the United States. Their people at their headquarters 2200 people felt that that was so wrong, they walked out. No one's put them out of business for a couple of weeks If your people aren't aligned with your purpose and your mission and your vision and your values other than sales and growing revenue.

Speaker 2:

Those are things that we think about In our mind. We also want to be good corporate citizens. You have to say, well, how does that have an impact with sales, with business? But in reality it does. You have to give back. In my opinion, give back. You have to have a personal purpose that is aligned with the company purpose as well. I'm actually having a running debate about this right now with a couple of my professional colleagues about how far is too far with the current political climate out there, especially here in the United States between Republicans and Democrats and the craziness that's happening.

Speaker 1:

I appreciate that a lot. I don't hear that often is making sure your people are aligned with you. I think it is definitely super important, especially when you're scaling a business. You don't want people there who don't have the same mindset as you. That is important, because I've worked in places where we just don't align and you could feel the energy wasn't dry. I do appreciate that.

Speaker 2:

It's a challenge. Right now, in the United States at least, there's a shortage of people. You have to cast a wider net to attract talents, which means that you have to be able to be more open in regard to their attitude and their purpose and what inspires them and motivates them. Another phenomenon that we experience is that you have an aging population and, at the same time, you're attracting a generation Z whose values are radically different than that of the Baby Boomer generation that I have. Teaching both generations to be open to each other and to what they stand for and what is valuable to them is not easy. A 68-year-old man or woman who doesn't really matter just set across from somebody who's 26 and be equally inspired about work is very, very different. We deal with this not only for ourselves, but as well as for our clients.

Speaker 1:

Yes, 100%. We're on different pages and it's all going to come together. If you know people looking for employees if there's a shortage in the States, there's lots of South Africans that are highly competent, highly educated and would love the opportunity Can you hear me yeah okay, sorry about that. So we are unfortunately out of time, alan, but what advice would you like to give to other business owners looking to succeed in this ever-changing world? You know, yeah, I can hear you.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 1:

What advice would you like to give to other business owners looking to succeed in this ever-changing environment?

Speaker 2:

Um, god, there's so much, the first and foremost. You have to, you have to, you have to be rooted in. Are you there, by the way? You're?

Speaker 1:

I don't see your screen, I'm here.

Speaker 2:

Okay, you have to be rooted with your core purpose and your business processes need to step in order for your business to thrive. If you're only in the business to make money, how does that? And if that's your purpose in life, what are you doing to make sure that that is effective? I would tell you that there's a better and greater purpose than just making money and you have to simply through the core, core values of your business. What are you trying to achieve? And I can tell you that it's usually something that is emotional and something that is altruistic, that could have an impact in the world around us, and when you are able to articulate that in a meaningful way, you will get your business processes to support it and you'll get people to be aligned with that.

Speaker 2:

Look at the example of that right now Subaru. Subaru is a big manufacturing of automobiles and you know it's all about getting supply chain management and union contracts and finding people in the distribution of sales and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah design of automobiles. Their purpose, plainly simply put, is all about love. They stand for love and they've used that to create automobiles that are safe, so that people will love each other, so that they've created a dealer network that are tied to the community so they can spread and share that love. Their advertising programs uses puppies and dogs to communicate how it's all about, you know creating relationships with individuals and people so that you can love each other.

Speaker 2:

Who doesn't want to love a puppy dog? Right yeah. And they have clean, environmental manufacturing processes around the world that help and promote love. So you may think that love is esoteric and, you know, not meaningful, but the reality is it is, it can be, if you work hard enough to make it relevant. So for me, I think the single most important thing is to find a corporate purpose and then create alignments of business processes to support it on a continuous and ongoing basis, and everything else will take will fall from that. In my opinion, 100%.

Speaker 1:

I appreciate that so much and I appreciate your time today, alan. I've really enjoyed chatting to you and getting to know you a bit better. What is the best way for people to get in touch with Alan Steinmetz, if you have?

Speaker 2:

any offers for them.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. Well, the best place for us for people to contact through our website is at the wwwinwardconsultingcom. You'll see in the process right now of updating that and it will be available hopefully by the end of the next month. But also the best way to contact us is through LinkedIn Alan Steinmetz at LinkedIncom Steinmetz slash or something like that. You can find me a few look. And then also you could always contact me directly through email at astinmetz at wwwinwardconsultingcom. And those are the three best ways to contact, and we're always looking for people to share thought leadership with, new ideas with, and so it's not always about finding new clients, it's about creating a community and if you do the right thing, eventually you will you know when you need us. We are there to potentially help you with your needs 100%.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much, Alan.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, I really appreciate your, alan, and best of luck to you and your colleagues, and you too. All right, thank you.