Black Belt Dojo

Seeing is believing

I've just been hunting around for some good exampls of using visuals and dialogue as part of change programmes and came across a fascinating website for the Institute of Visual Practitioners, Graphic Recorders and Graphic Facilitators.

As the title suggests, it's a site for and about people who use visual techniques. The Graphic Recorders and Graphic Facilitators are those people who use graphics to facilitate, and show the outputs of, meetings, conferences and World Cafe style dialogue sessions.  The comms people I know who have used these kinds of techniques have raved about the results. So if you're interested, this seems a good place to start exploring.

Here's their explanation of what visual practitioners do and how visual techniques add value.  And here, by way of an example, is a visual explanation, which was used as the basis of a conference session to give people an introductory overview.

Finally, here is a blog from a real life visual practitioner - Avril Orloff from Vancouver. I don't know Avril - I came across the blog when I was snooping around. I found it a really interesting read, and it gives a good illustration of the types of scenarios where you can use these techniques and examples of the outputs.

Fascinating stuff. Anybody used these kind of techniques and care to comment on how you found them?

Sue

Fancy being a black belt guest blogger?

It has just struck me that about this time last year I was tentatively emailing Darren Crozier, Mark Darby and Timm Suess to say 'um, we thought we might try introducing the idea of a monthly guest blogger on the dojo - what do you think ... and would you be up for it?'

Being the helpful people they are, all three agreed, and in fact Darren has the dubious honour of being our first ever guest blogger, in December last year.

We're always looking for new guest bloggers, so if you're a regular reader and have found yourself thinking 'why don't they talk about x?' or 'wouldn't it be interesting to talk about y?', please mail us and let us know. If you've never blogged before, it's a good opportunity to have a go, too.

I have been very bad at doing my share lately - I'm sorry. I blame it on spending most of my life on an assortment of trains and planes at the minute. I must resolve to spend my journeys writing blogs instead of reading or sleeping ...

Sue

Taxing times

It's been an interesting few days in the UK - the saga of the missing tax data rumbles on although the media seem to have gone quiet for a few days...

If you've missed it - the brief story is that a junior official at the UK Tax authority sent a couple of CD's containing personal and banking data of 25 million people to another government aganecy through an internal post system. 

And the discs got lost. 

And the data wasn't encrypted. 

And now we're all meant to be panicing that some master criminal is hacking into our bank accounts right now...

Now, the thing that interests me is that politicians have to find a way of pinning the balme for this seemingly simple error on the most senior politicians in the government. 

You could just point out that its all bad luck.  It all happened because a junior member of staff was trying to cut some corners to get the job done.  And the six other discs that have got lost in the recent past?  Well I bet few organisations of the size of the UK tax people can claim that they don't loose stuff either.

Yet politicians have to find a way of connecting the bloke in the post-room in Newcastle with the minister in charge of the department.  If you can put a smoking address label in the hands of the Prime Minister himself - even better.

The circumstantial case is looking quite good.  Morale at the department has fallen a little and the trade union hasn't been slow when it comes to fingerpointing.  A massive change program which includes job losses and new working practice is always going to throw up people making the connection between what could be a simple slip-up and the pressure to reform the organisation.

However, there is a point here.  Even if the political name-calling doesn't generate much insight it is worth asking a few questions about whether you can have such a thing as  "systemic failures" or "institutional incompetence".  In recent years allegations of deepseated problems have been pointed at organisations as diverse as BP, the Metropolitan Police Service and Cadbury's chocolate. 

Is there very much that internal communcators can do?

You'd probably say that we should provide a conduit for listening to the complaints and concerns of employees.  And I can certainly think of one situation where a focus group I ran once predicted with frightening accuracy a disaster that came to pass 10 years later.

But, if we're honest - how realistic is it that we'd make a difference?  If Senior Management are ignoring the feedback through normal channels or have created a climate where people won't speak out - do we honestly think IC would make the difference?.  Then there is the issue of how you judge when feedback is important insight or just the natural noise that a change programme will generate.

There's a role in making sure people internally are reassured (always hard when politicians are desperately trying to make local leaders the scapegoats at any cost).  And that's about it apart for helping the organisation return to business as ususal as soon as possible.

Yet - you can bet we'll be one of the parties that is blamed if it all goes wrong.

So that all makes me wonder.  PR teams have been running scenario planning for years to sharpen up their crisis plans.  I wonder if IC people should invest a bit of time now and again to think through how they would handle a crisis - how they might predict it and how they might advise senior leaders to cope with it...and how they define their role in preventing

Liam

The great Australian vote

Hi all,

Ti's me again, Giving you a quick update on the political Situation in Australia. Yes it has been a weekend of voting. Don't you just hate elections. However let me say the outcome of the voting over the weekend has secured the best possible result... Many Australians will sleep soundly this evening with this momentous and tremendous result. Yes indeed a young lady named Natalia Gauci won Australian Idol! good on ya Nat.. Melbourne is proud of your talent. Oh and yes Kevin Rudd is the new Australian Prime Minister! Almost forgot about that vote! hehehe

Now black belters.. To finish the Spider story. My car minus me, ended up coming to rest on a pavement a few hundred yards from where I got out..Don;t worry i did a commando role and was quite unharmed. My first thought was I had to be brave and get rid of the spider, as my car was not big enough for both of us. So i went back to the car only to see incy wincy climb under the dash again. Hmmm now that was one determined spider, but i had the last laugh. I drove my car to the nearest car dealer and traded it in for another car! Of course i did not tell the dealer of my cars added extra for fear it would be devalued. I am happy to report the new car was spider free and never had that problem again.

Well enjoy your last week of November and start counting down the days to presents and plum pudding.. Here in Aus it is seafood, sun cream and surf! the things we have to put up with for Christmas...

Cheers Adrian

Here's Melissa Dark and I larking around after our black belt program in Aus

Scary goings on in Black Belt city

Last night's goings on at the Black Belt dinner made me laugh a lot!

Subject of the jargon penalty (if you've done BB you will know what I mean ...) was synchronised swimming. All three penalty payers turned up in shower caps and pinching their noses, having done astonishing amounts of research into the history of synchronised swimming in between leaving the classroom and hitting the bar.

Of course there were lots of perfectly synchronised actions to go with the speeches, and we all had to learn and perform three apparently VERY well-known movements at the end. Having got all enthused about social media in the afternoon (well, at least having moved on beyond "it's for young people/sad people"), there had been talk of hunting out a digicam to film the evening's events, put them on youtube and link to this very blog. Much as I would have loved to see a room full of people pirouetting away with fairy-arms on the web, I have a feeling several commsfolk would by now have been bribing us to lose the film!

BIG competition in our end of term quiz - let's just say it was being taken very seriously at some points! Excellent to see the teams trying to do each other in their rendition of the Black Belt legendary anthem. The last lot ended up, for some reason, donning serviettes on their heads to become singing nuns. (Someone was heard to ask if they were about to start singing hits from the Sound of Music).

As I type, Liam is holding court on our final session for the day and we've just seen the team's final presentations as they pitched to James the hard-nosed MD (guess who?) and Jane, his very lovely and reasonable Operations Director (guess who again?) to win their internal communications business. Team name of the day for me was The Communicats - "because we might seem a bit fluffy but we've got sharp claws underneath -we mean business"!

Sue

PS Actually, I've just discovered one of the group got the penalty presentation on video on her mobile phone! Now lots of worried people in the room ...

What’s theory ever done for us?

One of the many differences between mainstream PR people and their Internal Communications colleagues is an attitude to complexity and theory.  More than once I’ve heard PR’s bemoan the tendency of IC people to over-complicate things.

And not surprisingly, many IC professionals wouldn’t come within a million miles of the PR department because they think it’s populated by knuckle dragging cavemen who can’t understand anything more sophisticated than a conspiratorial phone call to a news desk and bottle of white Burgundy.

If anything this prejudice is reinforced by the annual round of letters to PR Week from seasoned hacks questioning the value of academic study in the field of communication.  It’s almost as if some parts of the profession are proud to be dumb.

However, there are some central tenets to the creed of internal communication which thankfully have a robust basis in classical communication theory. 

For example, where does the idea that line managers are the best way to communicate with staff come from?  Well, employee surveys always give us a clue, but dig out the work of Katz and Lazarsfeld from 1957 and there you have it.  We can be more easily influenced if a message is relayed to us via a trusted source.

And what about the idea that we should develop internal networks of communications ‘champions’?  Rogers’ 1983 theories on diffusion of innovation  (the one where he coined ‘early adopters’ and ‘laggards’) is on hand to explain things.  It seems that only a tiny proportion of people are moved by formal communication to embrace new things – most of us wait to see what the innovators do before we start to experiment.

This has to be important for anyone trying to introduce change at work – and there’s evidence to support it.  It’s great to know that what I do has actually been shown to work and it’s not some form of strange voodoo (although that might make it more fun occasionally).

If you think I’m showing off then I should own up that I’ve been revising for some seminars for the CIPR’s Diploma group in London.  I don’t normally spend that much time reading textbooks.

Yet it has been a refreshing experience to read up on the subject – and it’s provoked some challenging thoughts.  I’ve already spotted a couple of things I can do differently in practice.

And reading around the subject has reminded me why Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point is so good. 

Which was also a point made to me by one of the Black Belters last week.

Gladwell has managed to take some of the more obscure elements of communication theory and work them together to try to offer an answer as to why social trends or fashions take off.  Which I think is what we communications practitioners are paid to know about.  After all, who else is meant to influence the opinions and behaviours of employees?

I’ve got a lot out of it all and would certainly recommend a re-read of Gladwell.

And as for other sources?

For a good trot around the subject try “Applying Communication Theory for professional life” by Marianne Dainton and Elaine Zelley.

A more chewy read is Joep Cornelissen’s “Corporate Communication”.

And if Amazon ever deliver “Strategic Organizational Communication: Into the Twenty-First Century” by C.R. Conrad and Marshall Scott Poole I’ll let you know if it’s worth a read…

What’s worked for you?

Liam

Generation Y - great summaries

Thanks to the change masterclass crew for recommending a trawl around the Deloittes website for some top notch information about Generation Y.

If you're not familiar with Generation Y, this is the youngest generation coming to a workplace near you now. Generation Y-ers have very definite communication preferences, not least because they've never experienced life without computers.

This is a very good, simple summary of the Generation Y characteristics and here is an explanation of what they look for in a job, the types of leaders they respect and a bit about their communication preferences. Interestingly their 'preferred method of communication with their employer' is 'a combination of email and personal interaction' (70%) whilst only 25% chose 'personal interaction' alone as their preferred method.

Very accessible, well-laid out summaries and they won't take you long to read. Well worth a look.

Sue

Preparing for Module 2 - Spider update

Hi All,

Just me again! Well thought it was time to post again and do my duty as a guest blogger! Lets start with the first installment of the 'Spider' story. As Sue was alluding to in her post a couple of weeks back.. I am not really a spider person, to say the least. Well it so happens we do have a spider called a 'huntsman' Big hairy ugly spiders that can grow as big as a persons hand.. Not that I have ever measured one. But they can flatten themselves out and crawl through the narrowest of gaps! so they get into the most unusual places. Now they are not actually deadly but will give you a nasty bite if you really provoke them 'Why you would get that near in the first place escapes me' Anyway.. I was driving to work one day when one of these creatures pop out from under my dashboard, positions itself on my windscreen right in front of me! Yuck! 'Now I believe contrary to reality is they are called 'hunstman' for a reason.. It just looked at me and I could hear it say its me or you kid, this car is not big enough for both of us' It was right.. so i proceeded to jump out of the car. Only thing is the car was still moving! (wait till next time for further on the spider story)

Well I am in recovery after our first Black Belt module in Aus. This week marks module 2. We have a first 9 participants.. check out the pic on the virgin group in Aus, taken last week.

Interesting event in London...

Is anyone going to the CIPR event on Monday in London?

I think it should be a good one - speakers from Shell, Marks and Spencer and Transport for London talking about internal communications and crises!  And it's hosted at David Ferrabee's fantastic gin palace in Soho Square!

If you're not handling a crisis of your own on Monday you should book a place by calling the CIPR guys on 07789 376503.

Liam

Useful resources....

I've just come across something  I thought you might like.

Casey Leaver's blog has a neat simple template for a staff networking event. 

It comes at an interesting time as one of the BB guys this week wanted to talk about building internal networks - Casey's post isn't exactly about that but it is pretty relevant.

Enjoy.

Liam

Back on the road again....

I've started worrying about my carbon foot print again.

Which might have something to do with the five new car tyres I've just had to buy and the fact that my diary has me flying three times before the end of the month. And today I'm off to Cranfield again and from the looks of it at least half of the delegates will have flown in.

But yesterday, I didn't actually leave my house - I spent most of the day trying to get my IT to work whilst desperately trying to deliver a plan for a workshop.  I'd love to be able to claim that new media saves us travelling around destroying the ozone layer - but for some reason two virus checkers have declared war on each other inside my faithful laptop... it looks like it's a fight to the death and I may be collatoral damage.

At least I caught up on some calls. 

I was able to ring Lee Smith and tell him I wasn't driving up to Nottingham on Friday so wouldn't be having lunch with him.  I might pretend that it was a green decision but it wasn't really...

And I tried to call Debs to say thanks for being a brilliant guest blogger in October.  I also wanted to say thanks to her for help with a genric comms planning template that I've drawn together from a few places (thanks Karen Goodhind as well).  By way of an experiment - I wonder if people can Download 071029lfitzcampaign_template.doc ...

And I got to daydream between reboots about the day off I had on Friday... I bunked off with my chum Ian Oliver for a bike ride - and at least climate change means you get some lovely cycling weather in early November....

Now if I can work out how to carry my kit to Cranfield, maybe I can cycle to the next module...  If Visa's Mark Darby can do the New York marathon...

Liam

November's blogger reporting for duty!

G'day Dojo member's, thanks for having me this month as a guest blogger. Thanks so much Sue for the lovely picture on your welcome message. As a scrape myself off the floor and back onto my office chair, which by the way, is one of those extra sensitive rotary chairs, where the slightest movement sends you into orbit! I guess you get the picture :) As president of the arachnophobia association I appreciate the humour of madame dojo, well in time I will! There is a story Sue is sure to tease out of me during the course of the month, my near death experience with one of those hairy legged creatures! I was talking about the spider not Liam.

Anyway as the story unfolds over the month, let me turn my attention now, to the first Australian Black Belt program or as you Brit's say 'programme' that's what you get after a British colony matures and aligns itself to the good old USA, 'Hmmmmm'. Thank heavens we have a federal election this month, we might gain some independent thinking again- oops I'm ranting. Anyhow we had our first nine virgin BB'ers from a diverse range of industries and backgrounds and from across the country. Our first programme 'see i can do it' was held at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management in Sydney on the 1 - 2 November.

Module one is now complete and we had nine very keen participants, and a group that are looking forward to module two next week! Melissa Dark and I have kept the programme the same, except for a few different case studies. Everyone got right in to the activities and discussions, as well as sharing plenty of ideas, we just love the Buy/Sell board. It was such a pleasure to work with a great bunch! The highlight being Melissa's prowess at 1980's Music Trivia, as we all had a side splitting after dinner game of 'name that tune'. Boy did we show our age! but I must admit the more wine the better we all got. The challenge is on for the next after dinner extravaganza as we plan for Module two, I am sure it will be a good one.

Now to dis spell the myths, a few sharks, crocs and bitey things, is a small price to pay for white sandy beaches, bright sunshine and warm crystal clear waters. Besides, the Crocs have a penchant for German tourists, the sharks for American scuba divers, and as long as the Brit's have factor 100 suncream there is no problem. Although the Dingo's do like the odd baby!

Introducing November's guest blogger

So, as the nights draw in and the winter weather begins in the UK (there's thick fog outside my window as I type ...) our guest blogger for November is no doubt enjoying blue skies and warm sunshine at the onset of summer.

Yes, we're heading back down under this month. Our guest blogger is Adrian Cropley, fresh from running the very first Black Belt in Australia last week. G'day to any of the aussie Black Belters reading this - hope you'll be pitching in with some comments and giving us some insights into life in internal comms on the other side of the world.

For any of our UK readers who are feeling a tad envious and down-hearted at the  thought of the sun, sea and surf oh-so-many-miles-away, we can console ourselves with thoughts of sharks, snakes and those apparently harmless but horrifically scary-looking huntstman spiders.  But I guess if you live there, you must get used to it - right Adrian??

Sue

PS I am SO petrified of spiders that I had to scale this photo down rather than have a massive spider looking at me on the page, and I'm seriously debating deleting the photograph from my computer!

PPS Hi to everyone from the change masterclass this week. Hope you'll join in with the comments on here, and remember, we're always looking for guest bloggers ...

I should be so lucky...

(well who needs an excuse to quote Kylie?).  LONG RAMBLE WARNING....

There's a row going on in the US over the IABC new strategy.  There's a great summary over on Shel Holtz's blog so I won't go into detail.

The gist of the issue is that the IABC has produced a new strategic plan.  Some members don't like the plan because of its rather tiresome language and its limited ambition.  One commentator is steamed up that it only wants to grow by 5% or something and there's a question about the probity of the process involving the 'risk averse' professional staff to write the plan.

I can't really comment on the IABC because I let my membership lapse after a year because I couldn'd justify membership for the CIPR and subscriptions for various information sources.  If I had the cash to spare for one more fee I'd send it to the IABC - honest and they wouldn't even have to invite me to a new members' drinks reception.  Frankly, reading some of the comment the IABC have my sympathy.

My take is that wouldn't it be great in the UK and Europe if people got this worked up about their professional associations?  I'd love to see people marching with pitchforks to the door of the CIPR or the CIB.  Wouldn't it be great if they were stamping their feet demanding ever better service and better representation? We'd be so lucky?

But I guess if they did they'd discover that these organisations beaver away quietly doing some great work - but on the backs of volunteers.  People could moan about a lack of ambition or the absence of a campaigning focus - but we've all got day jobs to hold down (which is my excuse for not doing much!).

And underlying all the debate on the US sites is the over-riding impression that the fuss is being created by a very small number of people out of the IABC's 15,000 membership.

So I guess most people are happy to let the committed volunteers get on with the job.  Maybe they actually do reflect what people want from them?

I got a flyer today from the CIPR advertsing an excellent event on 12 November in London looking at crises.  Contact them on CIPRInside@ntlworld.com if you want to know more. I'm going (but they let me in free because I'm a pensioner or something) but I'm really pleased that someone is providing a forum for professionals to chew the fat and drink David Ferrabee's booze...

And I'll plug events for the CiB as well if they want to tell me about them (although Lee Smith already runs an excellent events calendar for the UK).

I wish people did get all steamed up about this issue, but maybe we're all happy?

Now, who's going to invite me to the Paris meeting of the IC association....?

I should be so lucky.

Liam