Just Say No to Slogans

In the spring of 1999, a federal agency chief gathered several hundred employees into an auditorium to announce the agency's "Y2K, OK" campaign. From the prepared materials--briefing papers, fact sheets, a Web site, public service announcements and so forth--it was clear that a lot of time and effort had gone into the campaign to announce the agency's preparedness for the millennium computer bug.

It also was clear that agency leaders were quite pleased with themselves and their "Y2K, OK" slogan, while the employees in the auditorium thought the whole thing was goofy.

After everyone had taken their seats, the lights dimmed and an infomercial-style video ensued. A starry night sky appeared on the screen. The "Y2K, OK" slogan flew in with a swoosh. People giggled. Loud enough for everyone to hear, one employee called out, "May the Force be with us!" Chuckles echoed through the auditorium.

The moral of the story: Slogans are silly. Yet federal executives can't resist using them. "Faster, Better, Cheaper." "HUD 2020." "Work Smarter, Not Harder." "Do It Right the First Time."

Slogans are meant to convey direction, to focus employees and to motivate them. But workers' instinctive reactions to slogans usually are negative. Slogans breed mistrust, ridicule and eye-rolling-and for good reason. They are a sales tool. The public tolerates jingles because they know that salespeople are trying to sell something.

But when someone who is not supposed to be selling something--a boss, for instance--starts sloganeering, then wariness is natural. What are these tinsel-tongued managers trying to get their employees to buy? Why don't managers just tell their employees what they want them to do? Why wrap their orders in a catch phrase?

Slogans convey the message that managers are more interested in appearances than in realities. The General Services Administration, for example, recently kicked off its "Get It Right" campaign in response to an inspector general audit that found some field offices were skirting procurement restrictions to please customers at other agencies.

"Get It Right" materials explain that the campaign, aimed at employees, "reaffirms GSA's deep commitment to ensuring the proper use of GSA contracting vehicles and services." Imagine you're a GSA employee. How patronizing is that?

The implication is that employees need to be re-educated to do their jobs and have to be taught about commitment to doing things right. The wording makes GSA leaders appear blameless and employees look like reform school students. (GSA is "deeply committed" to proper contracting, but the employees need some "reaffirmation.") If agency leaders were interested in the realities, they would take responsibility for failing to lead and for failing to strike the proper balance between pleasing customers and adhering to procurement rules.

By contrast, when Colin Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, took over the State Department in 2001, they launched a series of sloganless efforts to improve morale and performance by improving facilities, adding employees, increasing management training and modernizing equipment, to name a few. Armitage even laughed at the suggestion that they would invent a slogan, saying that management actions speak louder than words. Ask anyone at the State Department whether it's a better managed place four years later.

"Actions speak louder than words" might be a good motto for managers to keep in mind when the urge to sloganeer hits them. But if they simply must come up with a saying, then-as the Y2K heckler said-"May the Force be with us."