Black Belt Dojo

The sin of Photoshopping

Anyone see this story this week?  If you were outside the UK you probably missed the shock of it what with all that important news about Burma and Global Warming...

So here it is in summary...An English hospital is doing a photocall with local politicians to celebrate construction work on a new wing and the PR's ultimate nightmare happens.  The Government minister who was also due to attend is stuck in traffic and turns up after everyone has gone home.

So they press on and take a picture of him in the same spot as the other group photos were taken and... Photoshop him into it.  The composite image (which wasn't really very good anyway) gets published in a staff newsletter and hey presto...

The result?  Calls for his resignation for defrauding the public followed by claim and counterclaims about whether he consented to the manipulation.  Get a life!

This story broke whilst I was driving home from Cranfield where Sue and I had just done another Black Belt course - which normally involves a group photograph at the end.  This time Sue commented that she didn't really like how she came out in this set of photos and I'd been joking that I'd get Dan, my teenage son to apply a little digital manipulation (not that it was needed of course I must stress).

So I've just spent the last 35 minutes trying to superimpose a  Hairspray wig on her...without a great deal of luck I'm afraid... But she should count herself as being officially warned..it's only a matter of time before I master the technology!...

Liam

New black belt stars

We're nearing the end of another Black Belt, and I expect to see some of this lot on stage some time soon after a particularly operatic version of Robbie's Angels at the end of our quiz night.

We found Pam's spectacularly jargon-filled description of her outing to a German Spa very enlightening, and were impressed by her creative use of fruit to illustrate her points ... And also v.useful for illustrating cultural differences after I managed to translate 'German Spa' said in Pam's cultured tones into my "I'm from Yorkshire, you know" equivalent of 'jam on spa'. (I did think it was a bit of an odd subject!)

I'd also like to reassure regular readers that standards are as high as ever on Black Belt, and we did NOT award a quiz point to the team who described the purpose of the Sears model as "to justify internal comms' existence."

It was particularly reassuring that our new social media slot is working well, and all our teams knew what RSS stands for. Unlike one previous group, pre-social media slot days (you know who you are), who just guessed wildly and came up with such likely gems as 'Reuters syndication system.'

Disappointingly, however, everyone found our new additions to the question list far too easy. In particular, it took fractions of a second for people to correctly answer "Who does Liam think fancies him?" (everyone). And one team added 'Everyone AND Sue' for good measure.

Much chocolate has been consumed, and a good time has been had by all ...

Sue

Black Belt in Australia is almost here

This past week, Adrian and I have been working with Melcrum putting the finishing touches to the Black Belt Australia brochure. It’s now all confirmed:

Sydney: Thursday 1 and Friday 2 November, then Thursday 15 and Friday 18 November at Macquarie Business School

Melbourne: Monday 18 and Tuesday 19 February 2008, then Monday 17 and Tuesday 18 March at Melbourne Business School Mt Eliza

We’re both really excited about it and looking forward to forming our very own dojo of Aussie Black Belt alumni. With the backing of Melcrum’s fantastic research, our combined 30-plus years of comms experience (gulp!) and the shared learning from all the participants it’s going to be one intense experience.

From the interest we’ve seen already it looks like it may be quite an international group, with queries from as close as New Zealand and as far away as India!

My interesting experience of this week that I’d like to share with you is talking with a friend of mine who has just completed the ‘Inconvenient Truth’ training with Al Gore. My friend Nick, an environmental campaigner for many years, was selected from among thousands of applicants to be trained by Al Gore to deliver his environmental message. Nick’s classmates included Oprah’s new Aussie favourite Jamie Durie as well as many ‘normal’ every day people with a passion to protect our environment.

As well as sharing the research and facts and figures behind his messages, Al Gore had some wonderful presentation advice for his budding trainers. One of the things Nick told me about struck a chord and I thought it was pretty good advice for any type of message where your goal is to persuade others. Gore says while speaking you must meet three ‘budgets’: time, complexity and hope/opportunity.

Time: obviously if you’re booked to speak you have to start and finish on time, but you can sometimes add to this budget if you are humorous and engaging – the audience won’t mind if it’s five or ten minutes over.

Complexity: there is a limit to how much information people can absorb from one presentation.

Hope/opportunity: you have to be aware (particularly with a potentially depressing message such as climate change) about the balance between hope and despair – ultimately Gore aims to leave people with a sense of hope so they will take action. In the case of a business audience, he says it’s about opportunity rather than hope – what opportunities exist as a result of this information?

Read the thoughts of someone who blogged about the experience here.

My guest blog spot is almost over, but I will be back with one last post before the end of the month. It’s been fun!

Beginning with the end in mind

I had a blonde moment yesterday. I'm back in Stockholm to run a workshop and was checking into my apartment. Reception gave me the key card and said I needed to go to another building on the left.

Rather too busy thinking about the enticing shopping mall close by, I headed along the street, saw a card swipy-thing on the wall and set about swiping card. Several times. It didn't work. Finally, nice student-looking-man saw me looking perplexed and used his card to let me in. Went inside, saw lots of student-looking posters on the wall, thought it all looked a bit odd, and suddenly realised I had no idea exactly WHERE on the street my apartment building was. Or what number it was, or even what the apartment company was called.  Conversation ensued as follows:

Me: "Er, am I in the right place?"

Nice student-looking-man: "Erm, I don't know. Where IS the right place?"

Me: "I don't know"

Nice student-looking man: "Well, in that case, I don't know whether you're here. And if you're not, I don't know how to get you there either."

Very embarrassing. Had to go back to reception. But very good story for illustrating the importance of setting communication objectives in my workshop. (Every cloud ...)  If you don't sit down and work out what exactly you're trying to get to through communication, you probably won't get there. And even if, by chance, you do, you won't know whether you have, because you won't know where 'there' is. 

Setting goals is the starting point for any communication plan, or should be. But it's tempting to skip it, and I've seen lots of entries for communication awards fall at the first hurdle because there were no objectives in place.

Just a thought for the day. Always nice when something half decent comes out of one of my blonde moments ...

Nasty questions

One of the games we play on the Black Belt course is to ask delegates to imagine they are evil consultants who have been charged with the task of proving that the IC team in a fictional company are poor performers and should be closed down.  The challenge is to come up with a list of killer questions that every IC manager would dread being asked.

I thought I'd share with you some of the recent suggestions - they are quite chilling...

• What measurements do you have to show how you add value?
• Why do we need an internal communication team when we can just buy in a toolkit and some training for our managers to be communicators?
• Can you actually prove that you’re contributing to business revenues?
• How does your communication plan fit into the business strategy?
• Why do we need an in-house team?
• If I chose a member of staff at random and asked them last year’s revenue figures, would they know?
• How much money do you spend on internal communication?
• How can you justify the cost? What’s your return on investment (ROI)?

And my favourite...

• What would happen to the company if we shut down the internal communications department? Would anyone notice?

Nice.

Liam

Split infinitives, misplaced prepositions and missing hyphens

It's a sad day for the poor old hyphen. As the BBC explains, the Oxford English Dictionary has hauled it out of 16,000 words. Leap-frog is now officially leapfrog. Pot-belly has become pot belly. Some lucky person must have had a fun time deciding which words got split into two and which got squashed together. Can you imagine the debates? Not to mention the sign-off loop. (Er, signoff? sign off? sign-off?)

So, where do you stand on the whole grammar thing? Will you be learning the new non-hyphenated words off by heart? (if you do 16 a day, I'm sure you'll get there eventually.) Is it part of a communicator's job to know the rules and stick to them?  Do you know where to put your apostrophes, commas and semi-colons?

My grammatical knowledge should be pretty good. I did Latin to O-level, Spanish, English and German to A-level and linguistics as part of my comms degree. At one time I knew the phonetic alphabet and I even wrote an essay about why we need a level of morphology. (Both of which have obviously come in VERY handy, and I am in great demand as an after dinner speaker.)

But my personal approach is generally to write as I speak. I know the grammatical rules, but I break them. I start sentences with conjunctions and end them with prepositions. I split infinitives. I abbreviate liberally. I put commas where I want people to sense a pause in a sentence, not where they grammatically should be.

It's a personal style thing - I like people to be able to hear someone speaking when they read their notes. My writing on here is very informal, because that's how I am. If I'm ghost-writing for a leader, I'll try and copy their rhythms and the way they talk.  Even in 'non-personal' writing, for me, sticking totally to the rules can make things feel stuffy and inaccessible. If a normal person wouldn't say it in everyday speech, I'm not going to write it. 

At the same time, I'm aware there must be people who think I just don't know my grammar ... and how appalling for someone who works in communication! Years ago my Finance Director used to send notes back down to me with angry red rings around the offending items. (I ignored him.)

As for things like hyphens, let's just say I won't be learning my 16 a day. I found out from the BBC article that I've been calling that sugary frozen stuff 'ice cream' all these years, when it should have been 'ice-cream'. My perfectionism doesn't extend to beating myself up about it.

I do think some rules shouldn't be broken, though. I get really irritated when I see professionally-produced materials with apostrophies in the wrong place. It was noticeable enough for my last team to buy me Eats, Shoots and Leaves for one of my birthday presents. (I think it was also something to do with the emails they used to suffer saying things like: 'YOUR = POSSESSION.  YOUR BOOK. YOUR DESK.  YOU'RE = SHORT FOR 'YOU ARE'!!!)

So, where do you stand on this one? (I'm predicting Liam may be the first to comment. I've just labelled him on Facebook as 'person most likely to correct my grammar'.  Or TRY, at any rate ... )

Sue

PS I've just found this site from Oxford Dictionaries - has a good list of grammar Q&As from their experts.

Coming in the front door...

I guess travelling over the summer has made me think about this... but aren't immigration officers funny?  And what do they tell you about the country you're visiting?

When you turn up in Italy they look fantastic (and the uniform worn by the customs officers is pretty neat too).  At Auckland in New Zealand they are amazingly friendly (I even noticed one chatting up a young visitor and they routinely let small kids stamp their own passports!).  In Britain they always seem miserable and there's a whole book to be written on the US experience (which is in marked contrast to the way you're treated in the rest of the country).

Once on a cycling holiday in Spain I crossed into Gibraltar and found myself stuck into a lengthy conversation about the relative merits of different types of tyre with a boarder guard.

Of course it's easy to stereotype and it all depends on who's on the desk and what kind of day they're having.  I'm still grateful to the guy at Los Angeles for his restaurant recommendations when I went through with my family. I guess if I wasn't white and travelling on a EU passport my experiences might be very different around the world.

Years ago, I heard about Wally Olins' concept of the journey into the firm.  He said that your impression of an organisation included everything beginning with how you are treated at reception and for your first few minutes inside the front door.

I doubt many of us have time to make sure that the receptionists or the security staff are properly exemplifying the corporate values.  But having visited many different organisations over the years I do think that those few moments at the front desk can be pretty telling about what you are about to find inside.

A visit to one place where the staff were terrified to break the rules began with a lecture on how cars were to be parked in the car park (all pointing outwards for some reason).  At another workplace in chaos I was welcomed by a charming but hopelessly disorganised chap in a portacabin.  And most PR agencies?... it's a lovely experience all round.

I wonder what your reception says about you....

Liam

Social media terms made simple

I know, I know, I'm sorry - another social media post.  I've been trying to stay away from them. I may be a sad Facebook addict, but I'm SO fed up of reading about it.

But this is for anyone that doesn't quite get some of the techie terminology. 

Try out these short videos from Commoncraft's blog explaining social networks, RSS, wikis and social bookmarking in totally jargon-free plain English. And with v.good drawings of stick people, too ...

Sue

Back from the land of the long white cloud

I have been in Wellington, New Zealand, this week, running masterclass workshops for the wonderful people at the IABC Wellington Chapter. We had a lovely time there, even finding space in the hectic schedule to eat at one of my favourite restaurants, Arbitrageur, and do some browsing (and a little buying!) of the glorious NZ fashion design.

The one thing I find interesting the more I travel is that communicators all around the world have very similar issues and challenges.

Wellington, being the capital of NZ, is home to most government departments and agencies and we had quite a few government communicators in the masterclasses.

Although I have worked in government, it’s been a while, and most recently I’ve been working in the private sector with companies that are reasonably advanced from a technology perspective in terms of intranet, social media, etc. I’ve been facing the challenges many of us have in terms of adopting these channels – not just because we ‘should’ but for sound strategic reasons that enhance the overall communication effort.

From what I heard in NZ, the challenge is slightly different in government circles. Many of the communicators I met were frustrated at how slowly government is adapting to new technologies. And although some channels might just be perfect they are finding it next to impossible to convince their department or agency to give it a try.

In Australia, there’s been a great deal of media coverage about the upcoming Federal election and how both parties seem to have discovered social media pretty much overnight. Check out this interesting article from the Sydney Morning Herald about the issues around fake sites and You Tube ‘viral videos’ – reading this, I started to perhaps understand government’s reluctance.

On another note, it's all systems go for Black Belt in Australia. The first course will be run in November – I’ll post again shortly with all the details.

Cheers,
Melissa 

Useful advice on corporate blogging

Thanks Timm for pointing out this handy guide to corporate blogging...

Liam

Let's get together...

I've been quiet for the last few weeks for a variety of reasons, one of which is that I've been rather busy.

And one of the things that kept me occupied for a short time was the facilitation of a group of internal communicators from England's East Midlands.

Black Belter Clare Venn from Alstom Power decided some months ago that she'd like to know what her peers from around the Derby area were up to - so she invited a dozen or so to a morning show and tell session at her offices.  She attracted some really good people from a range of organisations including Rolls-Royce, Peugeot cars and Barclays.  And she was careful to find a group of in-house people who all had something to share with each other.

She roped me in to talk about change, but mainly to hold the ring so that people could debate their issues and experiences.  She's been thanking me quite profusely (so I'm not admitting how much I enjoyed myself in case she thinks of charging me next time).

I think the session worked because Claire created an environment where people were willing to share real problems and discuss solutions that worked for them. 

The local branch of Communicators in Business also chipped in with a bit of sponsorship which was very good of them (and enterprising of Claire to get hold of).

I know Claire has been thinking of this for some time and that she and one or two other people had to invest some time in bringing the group together.  However, it seems an excellent idea.

Rather than waiting for one of the professional associations to arrange an event outside London or Birmingham or look at a topic that interests you, why not put on your own workshop?  Invite the people that interest you and, hey presto, you're up and running!

Looking at where Black Belt alumni come from...I think I'll start working on the people in Basel as there are dozens of them there and they should certainly be ganging together!

Liam

Remembering who we're talking to

I opened up last week's session on messaging by asking people to imagine they were in a clothes shop. They'd spotted a jacket and weren't quite sure if they liked it or could afford it.  What would they say to persuade themselves they should buy it?  How might their friends persuade them?

Someone said "I'd imagine all the outfits I could wear it with". Someone else said "My friends would tell me how fantastic I'd look in it, or maybe that the colour really suited me" One person suggested "I'd justify the price by thinking how many times I'd wear it - that way it might actually seem like really good value". Someone said "I'd imagine how great I'd feel wearing it". "My friend might say 'come on, you deserve a treat - you've worked really hard this month'."

Then I asked people to imagine the sales assistant had joined in to persuade them to hand over the credit card.  Here's what the sales assistant says: "We're operating in a very competitive environment right now and our revenues are under pressure, so we really need you to buy the jacket to help us increase sales."  Not convinced yet?  How about "We need to improve our cashflow, and we have to show quarter on quarter improvements to the markets. If you buy this jacket, you'll really help us improve our profits."

Ever heard a sales assistant try and persuade you to buy that way? Me neither. They go for the things they know you'll care about.  But quite often inside organisations, we try to persuade people to buy in by talking about what's in it for the company - not what's in it for them.  It's easy to throw together key messages. But if you really think about the people you're trying to connect with and try and look for an angle they'll actually care about, it gets a lot more tricky.

I was reminded of this when I flicked through the airline magazine on my way home. There was a message from their CEO telling me about their new strategy.  Here's an exceprt from it: "Increased customer focus and the courage to change will permeate our business much more than before. We will work intensively to further increase customer confidence by being perceptive and flexible in all areas of operation. This customer focus will form the basis for a work culture that will generate success - we call it "cultural turnaround."   

Now I'm sure their strategy is excellent, and it has 'customer' written all the way through it. But I couldn't figure what any of it meant for me and put it firmly in the 'high level corporate wibble' category.  The language looked depressingly like the kind of stuff that gets churned out to employees though ...

Sue

PS On a personal note, someone went on a spending spree with my credit card details last week. If anyone from the Nationwide Building Society is reading this, your special investigations team was absolutely superb.  From now on I'll be shredding all my receipts and statements, not just tearing them up as I did before - I never realised easy it was for this kind of thing to happen.   

Are communicators getting too precious?

Was reading Trevor Cook’s blog and saw his reference to this post by PR blogger Tom Murphy about the basics of communication. He talks about being a trusted communication advisor in these complicated days of multiple channels and social media. He says we need to be realistic, understand that the principles of good communication remain the same regardless of the channel and, interestingly, not be too precious about the whole thing: “The more we all take a deep breath and think about what we’re doing, the more we’ll enjoy the moment, be successful and build for the future.” Food for thought.

Hello everyone

Hi everyone,

Thanks Sue and Liam for handing over the reigns of the Black Belt Dojo for September. My very own blog site for a month – what will I get up to? *she laughs evilly*.

Hopefully I can find some interesting things to share with you. These days I spend a whole lotta time on this thing they call the ‘interweb’, but I’m still naive enough to get excited, shocked and just plain confused almost every day. With that kind of entertainment power, who wouldn’t get hooked? No wonder my TV has started sending me cards with mournful cartoon teddy bears saying, ‘We don’t talk anymore…’

The past couple of weeks I have discovered Facebook and I’m loving it. Come visit me (you'll need to have your own profile first) – I need more friends and more fish for my aquarium. (And if you visit my profile on Facebook or the Melcrum Communicators’ Network, it saves me the bother of writing any intro information about myself here).

There’s been quite a bit of debate in the media in Australia and in the Melcrum blog about workplaces banning access to Facebook. On one of my client sites where I use their IT system there seems to be a strange and, I think, unfair policy that allows access for senior folks but no access for the vast majority of staff. Do we trust senior people more? Do they get more value from it? Are they less like to ‘waste’ time?

I haven’t really developed a personal philosophy on the benefits or otherwise of Facebook. It’s great fun, but then, I tend to think lots of things like this are great fun for a short while until I get bored or captivated by something new. (Witness my cupboard full of half-completed craft projects, my dead herb garden, and no less than three ‘you can do yoga at home’-type DVDs.)

Recently I spent at least an hour and a half updating the ‘Cities I've Visited' Facebook application that provides a count and pin-board representation of all the cities in the world you’ve visited. It’s really quite pointless except to position you as a complete show-off in the international travel stakes. And yet still absolutely engrossing.

Was that a productive use of time? If I’d been on someone’s clock other than my own, I think I’d have found it very difficult to justify any kind of work-related benefit. Yes, my Facebook profile has links with colleagues, other people I work with and friends. But I’ve never yet had anyone say, “Because we are friends on Facebook I think we should collaborate on this new project and I’m sure our communication will be improved as a result.”

Or better yet: “I see you like Belle and Sebastian and cool-climate pinot noir. Because you have such great taste in music and wine, please come and do this $100,000 consulting job for me.”

But I’m not giving up hope – yet.

G'day!

I thought I'd better post a photo in case you'd forgotten who I am - it seems like absolutely ages since I've posted on here!

After three weeks away in Oz (that's the Daintree rainforest behind me) and another ten days away in the UK, I'm feeling very happy with life, the universe and everything. Despite sitting here surrounded by a mountain of post, with a scary inbox to match.

So, am I still full of such workaholic tendencies that I had to switch my laptop on and get straight on the dojo before even unpacking my bags?  Well, the thing is, I need to introduce our next guest blogger before I then start packing my NEXT case to get straight off to Stockholm for a Black Belt early tomorrow morning, and I know she's raring to go with her first post.

There's an exciting story behind this one. Aside from being at the Melcrum summit in Sydney, the other reason I was in Oz to start with was to meet with Adrian Cropley and Melissa Dark. Both very well-known, experienced and well-respected communicators, and about to lead - drum roll please - the very first Black Belt in Australia! 

Yep, Black Belt is going down under, and Adrian and Melissa will be leading the programme there, set to kick off in November. And very good hosts they are too. We did the going-through-all-the-black-belt-materials piece in Sydney, and then met up a week later in Melbourne for a night out which finished in a fantastic place absolutely full of sticky cakes and pastries. Hurrah!

So, to tell us all about the preparations for the Australian Black Belt and no doubt lots more besides, Melissa will be our guest blogger for September. Looking forward to it!

Sue