It’s many people’s favourite letter, the world’s most powerful sound, and the delightful Chinese word “Mamahuhu” (horses, tigers, or so-so) says it all. The letter “m” is everywhere that’s anywhere and a very important sound to note if someone is in the people business.
Consider, for instance, world leaders – it is not perhaps entirely coincidental that the letter m dominates: May, Merkel, Macron, Macri, Mardi. The only major leaders missing from that list do not have surnames starting with m, but Donald Trump still has the letter m in his surname and Putin has it in his first name – Vladimir – plus a Prime Minister called Medvedev. Only Xi in China is the odd one out, which probably does not matter for a lifetime President in potentially the most powerful country in the world.
From the beginning of time the letter m has not only had classical significance (Greek letter mu [μ]), but also been enlisted to denote power. It was the symbol of a large number (1,000) in Latin and also denotes the traditional gender dominance of “men” compared to the perceived secondary status of women (the intentionally inverted m was used in ancient Roman texts to stand for mulier women). It is also the key letter in the English word “majesty”. Yet m is not even the most common sound in any language. In English, for instance, it stands at 13th and German 14th – both mid-table in the rank order of the alphabet.
It would be impossible today to imagine a world where leaders had complicated or unusual names like Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff (a true surname) or Cadwallader, and the main reason is probably because the modern world largely subscribes to democracy – or rather, watered-down variants of it. The letter m has huge emotional connotations for those in families because of the word “mother” (madre, mama, mutter, muqin), and in Christianity (Madonna, also called Mary). This all means that anyone who wants to lead has a much easier job if they can enlist the “m” sound and keep their name short.
In business we love the letter m (manager, manufacturing, multinational, mobiles, motivation, multi-tasking, meritocracy, MBAs, etc.), but its potential as a communication tool to employees, shareholders, and the public has been largely ignored. Under the rules of classical conditioning one of the most effective methods is to constantly confine messages to a few points and repeat them over and over. The word “meme” (two m’s) used in social media is also the most powerful way to convey a message. This is how fake news has spread.
But there is also a legitimate way to employ conditioning and encourage the generation of memes. That is, to add a more journalistic flavour to company announcements – not to talk, for instance, about an intended company merger in flat terms, but in an engaging way. The most effective HR communicators, moreover, take a new legal obligation and instead of just amending the company handbook, seek to “sell” the new employee right to employees – making a virtue out of compliance. This was, for example, how the most successful launches of company works councils in Europe took place. Not a grudging acceptance, but a way to show the company was embracing change.
Which gets us back to the letter m. There is nothing in the corporate communications literature about the power of this particular mid-range letter, but if it is maximised in communications it will, undoubtedly, enhance the acceptance of the company’s messages – especially if points communicated are limited and repeated in different ways. That means (not signifies) mending (not fixing) massive (not large) misunderstandings (not errors) in the methods (not the hackneyed word strategies) employed.