Category: Tips & Tricks

The hybrid workplace has been an effective—not to mention necessary—adjustment since the advent of the pandemic, but it’s also inevitably presented a number of challenges to both employers and employees.

One of those challenges involves preserving an organization’s culture. Forbes recently cited a pandemic study by the Society for Human Resource Management finding that fully one-third of all employers reported difficulties maintaining company culture.

Which isn’t surprising.

Culture tends to develop through familiarity and proximity, two things that are often unachievable, and even at times undesirable, in what’s now a predominately decentralized, and often disconnected, environment.

Organizational Culture in the New Hybrid Workplace Reality

But it’s a challenge that many organizations must now embrace; Forbes has also cited yet another finding of the same study: 72% of business leaders now expect some sort of hybrid model to continue to be the prevailing norm. 

This article isn’t necessarily about strategies for organizations to maintain a unique culture; there are any number of approaches for achieving that, and many can be employed simultaneously.

These approaches include everything from traditional office-based displays (such as in conference rooms and lobbies), to website and intranet communications, to incentives and rewards tied to performances exemplifying core values.

This post will focus instead on some of the opportunities that organizations can seize to promote and reassert their values. 

Here are just five that you should be attuned to for their potential for highlighting and advancing your organization’s culture.

• Anniversaries

The most obvious anniversary celebration is that of the company or organization itself, but that doesn’t have to be the extent of your focus—especially given that the topic here is furthering and promoting your culture. You could, for instance, see an appropriate opportunity in the anniversary of a mentorship program your company offers; a special internship, or pro bono program, or its support of, or involvement with, a certain charitable cause or group. Again, the focus should be on highlighting values.

• Milestones

Here again, organizational milestones present opportunities beyond the ones that might immediately come to mind. Yes, the attainment of a revenue or new user goal can go a long way in solidifying your position as a market leader, something that shouldn’t be discounted and may be central to your company or organization’s values. But there are other milestones that can also signify values that are likely ones your organization also prizes. The introduction of a new product, for instance, can be held up as an example of your organization’s commitment to innovation; or a new drug brought to market might, on the other hand, exemplify your firm’s awareness of, and commitment to, underserved patient communities.

• Third-Party Honors

Among other things, social media has driven home the power and sway of third-party endorsements. Your organization’s selection as among the Best Places to Work, or Best Companies for Women, etc. is something that really speaks to the heart of your culture.

As mentioned above, defining and promoting organizational culture is something you will undoubtedly set about in a variety of ways. Desktop displays, which can be for both home and office use, are a proven way of celebrating these kinds of accolades.

• Training & Mentoring

It probably isn’t news to you that one particular challenge uniquely posed by the pandemic is in the area of training and mentoring. 

Here again, this is an area where proximity, familiarity, routine—all things that the pandemic has undermined—have historically been the cornerstones for passing along professional and institutional knowledge.

Fortunately, a variety of strategies for facilitating mentorship in a hybrid environment. Those are beyond the scope of this post, but there is a relevant point here. The heightened significance of mentorship and training clearly makes it a critical area for organizational recognition. If you don’t have a formal mentorship program in place, you may want to consider one, and one which provides for some form of recognition for top contributors.

• Redefined Values

Perhaps the greatest immediate spur to promoting values is that those values have actually changed, or need to be revised. The pandemic has caused many organizations to reassess their attitude toward an array of issues, including flexible hours, and working from home, to name just a few. For that very reason, you may want to revise your organization’s stated values to reflect the new realities of the hybrid workplace.

One Approach to Sustaining Company Values

There are, again, any number of approaches to the challenge of upholding company values in an increasingly hybrid work environment. Most likely, you and your organization will find the most success through a combination of strategies.

At The Corporate Presence, we’ve been helping organizations of all kinds effectively promote their values for over 40 years. Our particular approach comes in the form of (primarily) highly visible and customized desktop displays, typically of crystal and Lucite. They could very well provide a successful component of a strategy for your organization as well. Reach out to us to get more information on possible ideas and designs.

Is Displaying Your Mission Statement Worth It?

After all, you may already have made the effort to put a mission or values statement in writing; and you may even already be promoting it, perhaps on your website or in some form in a reception or conference area. Shouldn’t that be enough?

Do you really need to go beyond that, to do what some organizations do and give individual employees their own desktop mission statement or table display?

There’s an especially telling moment in a recent documentary about legendary music producer, and Motown founder, Berry Gordy.

In Motown’s earliest days, Gordy apparently not only took the time to write a company song but also insisted that all employees, including his top recording artists, learn it by heart.

A succession of interviews makes clear that these employees not only remembered the song, they could also either sing or recite the lyrics—-word for word—roughly 60 years later.

So, should you immediately stake out the nearest babbling brook and start composing some heartfelt ode to your company or organization? Probably not. 

But you might want to take to heart the lesson of the Motown song: a set of core beliefs, whether you call it a creed, a mission statement or a values statement or whatever, can make a significant contribution to your organization’s culture and ultimate success. The key is keeping that mission top of mind.

Mission statement displays can be a great way of keeping that statement of values and goals prominent, and uniting your employees and other stakeholders behind a shared purpose.

Mission Statements: A Key Branding Tool

First things first: do you already have a mission statement?

Do you have one, but it needs to be updated or revised?

It’s obviously necessary to have a mission or values statement before you can set about displaying it.

This is the point at which many organizations can get stymied.

Most people dread the prospect of any goal-setting exercise, especially one that can require some time and reflection, and seemingly doesn’t bring with it any immediate benefits.

Crafting a mission statement is beyond the scope of this particular post, and there’s plenty of expert guidance on the subject available online.

But there is one relevant insight here that might help you in either making an initial pass at writing or refining a mission statement—-or just thinking about how best to display an existing one.

Promoting a mission statement is essentially a branding opportunity. You could take that statement even further. You could argue that mission statements offer the ultimate branding opportunity since they should define the crucial characteristics and elements that set your organization apart.

Like your logo and corporate colors, a mission statement can be something that links all stakeholders, whether in the case of your organization that means not only employees but also donors or shareholders, investors, suppliers etc.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that many savvy organizations tend to make use of their branding in promoting and displaying their mission statements.

We’ve included some examples here.

The National Football League’s Mission Statement

The National Football League is one organization that probably doesn’t need a lot of guidance in the area of branding.

After all, the N.F.L. has long been recognized as not only a consummate marketer, but also an astute curator of its brand.

As you can see in the photos below, the designs chosen by the N.F.L. for its mission statement displays for individual employees incorporate a relatively subtle, though highly effective, branding element, its Shield.

In the case of the BlackArch Partners mission statement display, also shown here, the design plays off of the firm’s logo.

In both cases, the organizations have opted for a relatively simple, understated design for their mission statement display. That’s understandable, even advisable since the centerpiece should really be the content of their missions.

But, on the other hand, both organizations, in laying out their respective missions, have also taken advantage of the opportunity to promote and advance their brands.

The Corporate Presence and Your Mission Statement Display

At The Corporate Presence, we certainly can’t hold ourselves out as experts at distilling your organization’s mission.

But over the course of 40 years, we’ve gained a considerable amount of experience and expertise in helping clients make full use of traditional awards and commemoratives.

What exactly does that mean?

Yes, we provide clients with conventional awards and commemoratives, the kind you’ve probably already seen on a variety of websites (and the National Football League is just one organization for which we regularly provide not only highly customized pieces but also more traditional, elegant high-end recognition awards).

But our real area of expertise—-our particular mission—is providing our clients with design options that go beyond the same default, off-the-shelf, lookalike “employee recognition awards” and commemoratives.

Our goal is to use significant occasions in the life of any organization, times when far too many organizations just go online and select some random slab of crystal, acrylic, or marble, that’s actually distinctive to that organization.

There are any number of occasions that present themselves to an organization, whether it’s commemorating a new product, a strategic partnership, achieving some critical benchmark, or an endless array of other milestones.

Promoting a mission statement should be approached in the same way: as an opportunity to celebrate your company’s unique goals, but do so in a way that truly reflects its unique and distinctive character.

Contact us today to find out how The Corporate Presence can help you proudly display your organization’s mission statement.

(This is another in a series of posts, leading up to The Corporate Presence’s 40th anniversary, that will focus on noteworthy deals we have commemorated).

“What’s that place called again where the Broncos play?”.

That’s the question that was posed the first time we wrote about this deal toy.

And at the time, at least, the answer wasn’t so clear.

For years the Denver Post simply refused to call it anything other than Mile High, even after that structure had been demolished and replaced by Invesco Field.

In later years, other local holdouts continued to take their pick of names: “Mile High”, “Invesco Field”, and even, occasionally, what was once its official name: “Sports Authority Field at Mile High”.

The Bronco Deal Toy

The deal toy shown below commemorates the rebuilt facility’s inaugural game in its incarnation as “Invesco Field at Mile High”, and also recognizes the team’s banking partners in the project’s financing.

In the years since, the stadium name thing seems to have been resolved once and for all.

And as for the game itself, a Giants team led by Kerry Collins, Amani Toomer, and Michael Strahan fell to the Broncos on “Monday Night Football” 31-20.

But it wasn’t the outcome of the game that was noteworthy.

It was its timing.

The Post-Game Tragedy

After the game finally wrapped up after midnight EST, the biggest lingering concern for many Giants fans headed to bed, outside the loss itself, was probably the condition of  Shaun Williams, the Giants safety appeared to have suffered a significant knee injury laying an especially nasty hit on Ed McCaffrey (and breaking the Bronco receiver’s leg in the process).

But the events of the very next morning would prove unimaginably worse.

If you look closely at this deal toy, you’ll notice the date of the game: September 10, 2001.

A Catastrophe Unfolds

About 8 1/2 hours after the final whistle, a hijacked passenger plane slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, commencing the 9-11 attacks.

In the days following the attacks, there would be a number of direct and anecdotal reports, in both the press and on New York sports radio, of Giants fans avoiding harm’s way that morning only because they had attended the game in Denver, or slept in because of its late finish on what the New York Times would dub “Nightmare Eve”.

It was a small consolation, but it did offer some degree of comfort to a shell-shocked city.

David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy for the Corporate Presence and Prestige Custom Awards, which provides a variety of awards including ESPN’s Espy Awards, and The National Football League Commissioner’s Awards.

(This is another in a series of posts, leading up to The Corporate Presence’s 40th anniversary, that will focus on noteworthy deals we have commemorated).

It’s hard to imagine which of these might’ve been more satisfying.

Selling your company for $19 billion to a firm that once passed on hiring you…

Or signing that deal in the very same office where you’d once stood in line to receive food stamps.

Facebook’s Acquisition of WhatsApp

Jan Koum emerged from the 2014 sale of WhatsApp to Facebook with $6.8 billion. His cofounder, Brian Acton, came away with $3.5 billion.

The two had worked together at both Ernst & Young and Yahoo.

Their shared employment history also included experience with Facebook: in 2007 both had applied for positions at Facebook.

Both had been rejected.

And as for the place where the deal for the messaging app was signed, it wasn’t the Mountain View, California headquarters of WhatsApp; instead it was a building just down the street that had formerly housed the North County Social Services office where Koun had once regularly picked up food stamps.

“Can’t You Go Standby?”

Koum had been born outside Kiev in 1976 in what was then the Soviet Union. He and his mother emigrated to California when he was 16, relying on government-subsidized housing and food stamps while his mother found work as a baby sitter, and he attended high school and swept floors at a local grocery store.

There was one other telling detail of the signing.

A financially-strapped Koun had learned to program though manuals he’d purchase at bookstores and, on completion, regularly return for the refund.

Despite the imminent prospect of receiving billions, he insisted that the Facebook deal be consummated in time for him to make a scheduled flight to Barcelona.

He’d booked the flight using frequent-flyer miles.

David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy for the Corporate Presence and Prestige Custom Awards, which provides a variety of awards including ESPN’s Espy Awards, and The National Football League Commissioner’s Awards.

This $3.5 billion deal resulted in what was announced as the “world’s largest audio entertainment company”.

This $71.3 billion deal was Disney’s largest since the $19 billion 1995 purchase of Capital Cities/ABC, through which it had acquired what proved to be a critical asset: ESPN.

The deal also included Fox’s 30% interest in Hulu, raising Disney’s stake in the streaming service to a controlling 60%.

With the acquisition of OppenheimerFunds, Invesco brought its assets under management to approximately $1.2 trillion.

The Roman galley design? It played off the deal’s code name.

Emboldened by the success of Sky’s miniseries Chernobyl, Comcast plans to double Sky’s budget for original programming–and create an in-house studio. Sky Studio’s first planned production is the six-part series The Third Day, starring Jude Law.

This merger brought together three popular outdoor brands: Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shops, and White River Marine Group.

This 2016 deal—aimed at easing regulatory concerns from AB InBev’s $100 billion acquisition of SABMiller—had a good deal of significance in its own right. Worth over $7.8 billion, it gained Japanese brewer Asahi 9% of the European beer market, and a dominant position in the Czech Republic, which leads the world in per capita beer consumption.

Widely reported as the largest transaction in pro sports history when it closed in 2016, this $4 billion deal brought together a formidable group of players, including Michael Dell as well as Ari Emanuel, the acknowledged inspiration for the Ari Gold character in HBO’s “Entourage”.

SoftBank’s resilient CEO Masayoshi Son, Japan’s richest individual, estimates that he lost 99% of his net worth in the dot.com crash of 2000—including $70 billion in the course of a single day. On the plus side, SoftBank was also the first carrier to bring the iPhone to Japan, and took an early 32% stake in Alibaba.

The deal toy was simple and understated but the deal itself was anything but. “Even by the standards of Wall Street”, The New York Times noted, “where high-stakes brinksmanship often determines who wins and who loses in the takeover game—the takeover battle will long be remembered for its last-minute strategic maneuvering”. (See deal toy below for more).

Another perspective on the same $47 billion Cingular-AT&T Wireless deal. The design includes a dig at Vodafone, whose executives had gone to bed in London convinced they’d won the takeover battle—-only to learn of an outflanking maneuver in New York hours later.

Read more about “the most profitable deal in history”.

From 2017: Abbott paid $25 billion for St. Jude Medical, a firm founded in 1976 by med-tech entrepreneur Manny Villafana. The son of Puerto Rican immigrants, Villafana also founded what is now known as Guidant (a part of Boston Scientific).

From 2006: This $9.8 billion deal involving BlackRock and Merrill Lynch Investment Managers, at the time the largest asset-management merger in history, was described as having “far-reaching implications for rank-and-file reps as well as the financial industry at large”. As of early October 2017, BlackRock had approximately $5.9 trillion under management.

Modular deal toy commemorating the acquisition of Albertson’s, the then second-largest supermarket chain in the U.S. The total transaction value of the 2006 deal was $17.4 billion.

Europe’s largest office building.

New York City’s most expensive rental.

The building is nicknamed “The Bottle Opener”.

The hotel was created by feuding blue-blood cousins.

They’re all here—and more—in our Real Estate Tombstones of iconic buildings and properties.

New York City’s most expensive non-hotel rental? It was reportedly a five-bedroom, five-bathroom spread on the 68th floor of the Time Warner Center’s south tower recently listed for $110,000 per month. (The Pierre still topped hotel rentals with a $500,000/month listing).

In February 1964  a group of “English businessmen” arrived for their stay at the Plaza Hotel in New York. “The Plaza’s management”, the New York Times reported at the time, “had no comment on a report that it would not have accepted the reservation of the Beatles..if it had known who they were”.

The Plaza reportedly requested that the group seek other accommodations on any future visits to the city. In subsequent New York trips, the Beatles would stay at The Warwick.

The Shanghai World Financial Center, aka “The Bottle Opener”, is the 10th tallest building on earth–but only the second tallest in its own city. Floors 79 through 93 are occupied by the Park Hyatt, which can lay claim to being the world’s tallest hotel.

The Coeur Défense complex in Paris is Europe’s largest office building. It was last sold several years ago for €1.8bn.

The golf course just east of the Wynn Las Vegas hotel was slated to be replaced by Paradise Park. Plans for the construction of the $1.5 billion complex, featuring a 20-acre lagoon, were abandoned in 2018.

At the time of its completion in 1915, The Equitable Building was the world’s largest office building. The Downtown Manhattan property is a National Historic Landmark.

The original incarnation of the Waldorf Astoria resulted from a feud between two Astor cousins, who ultimately agreed to merge their two rival, adjacent hotels. The property has been closed for renovations since January 2017, with a revised re-opening date of 2021.

The Canary Wharf name reflects the area’s early history as one of the world’s busiest ports—with the “Canary” portion referring specifically to the sea trade in fruits and vegetables with the Canary Islands.

1. Take Shots
2. Embrace the Grind
3. Be a Nice Person
4. Keep Tilt External
5. Be Serious About Your Legacy

Dealmaking wisdom from some investment banking grandee?

Actually they’re tips for beginning World Series of Poker players—offered up by 15-time champion Phil Hellmuth, aka “The Poker Brat”.

Hellmuth’s victory in the WSOP 30 years ago almost single-handedly transformed poker’s dominant class from geriatrics with names like “Slim” and “Tex”, to a significantly younger set, one more inclined to analytics and probabilities than folksy yarns.

We’ve previously marked the opening of the World Series of Poker with a gallery of gambling-themed deal toys.

So with the WSOP set to begin May 28th at the Rio All Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, we thought we’d share some additional designs—some current, some dating back as far as the 90’s.

Take a second to check out a world of riverboats, indoor beaches, and giant lagoons, populated by names like Paradise Park, and Eldorado.

A vintage 1904 slot machine recently sold at auction for $80,000. Bidding for the nickel-plated oak piece took all of 60 seconds. The Okada Manila resort features a 9,000 square-meter indoor beach/nightclub. Cove Manila can accommodate 4,500.

The Rio (shown here in a 1999 deal toy), has hosted the WSOP since 2005.

Since these two 2008 transactions, table games equipment and slot machines supplier Shuffle Master rebranded as SHFL Entertainment in 2012 and was acquired in 2013 by Bally Technologies—which was itself acquired a year later by Scientific Games.

Hollywood Casino Shreveport—a 3-level dockside riverboat — was acquired by Reno-based Eldorado Resorts in 2005.

Paradise Park, Steve Wynn’s planned $1.5 billion addition to the Resorts complex off the Las Vegas Strip—has been reconsidered. The 20-acre lagoon has been scrapped, but the company is still proceeding with construction of a convention center, as well as the redevelopment of the property’s existing golf course.

The firm that helped launch the careers of Ken Moelis, Paul Singer, and Stephen Schwarzman—among many others?

It no longer exists.

But we see reminders of DLJ around our office every day—along with countless other firms that, regrettably, are also no longer with us.

Over the years we’ve received numerous requests to share deal toys done for these now-defunct firms. When we finally agreed to showcase these pieces, we were relieved that the galleries were received in the spirit we’d intended: not as a snarky post-mortems, but as tributes to firms, and bankers, who were our clients, and in many cases, friends.

With that in mind, we now once again pry open the deal toy vault…