Black Belt Dojo

Is ghost blogging OK in IC?

A regular issue on Black Belt is whether it is acceptable to ghost write blogs for senior managers.  Afterall, writing statements on behalf of leaders is what we spend a lot of time doing anyway.

However, a posting by pr blogger Simon Collister caught my eye.  His message seems to be that ghost writing blogs is bad practice - and I tend to agree with him because of the implied authenticity...

But I wonder if that will last for much longer?

Liam

Tales from life in an orange bubble

Hi everyone, and welcome to the great big orange world of easyJet Internal Communications! My name is Steve Evans and I am the guest blogger for April on Black Belt Dojo. My aim in my blog posts through the month will be to provide some insight on what it’s like to be an Manager in an environment like easyJet. But first, some history.

I have been a part of the Internal Communications world of for six years now. I started my career at easyJet as a member of our cabin crew; a job which I loved dearly. However as one gets on in life, the enjoyment of getting up at 3am to iron a luminous orange shirt wears very thin indeed.

The opportunity to join the IC team at easyJet came about for me when we announced the takeover of ‘Go’ (initially a low-cost subsidiary of British Airways) back in 2002. easyJet identified a need to have someone come into the team to manage the intranet news and write for the employee magazine ‘Juice’ whilst the IC manager focused her attention on change communications for the integration.

One of the things I have always admired about easyJet is their desire to ‘grow their own’ people where possible. So here I was, with no IC experience being given a chance to embark on a new career. I love the job and have never looked back since.

In the last six years I have gained an incredible amount of experience and I’ve grown into the role of IC manager fairly well. However, it wasn’t until I attended the recent Black Belt course with Sue and Liam that I realised that I still feel like a newbie! There is so much to stay ahead of in the world of IC that it’s quite easy to be intimidated by it. Whether it’s ‘Web 2.0’ which is keeping you awake at night or your ability to answer the question, ‘How does IC add value to the organisation?’ there is much to keep the brain cells ticking over.

So, how do you stay ahead in an ever-changing world? You rely on your fellow professionals. It’s as easy as that. At the Black Belt course, I met people from many different industries and at varying levels of experience within our field. Each and every one of them brought something unique to the table, whether it was an understanding of what life is like in the public sector for an IC professional or the challenges facing a communicator in an industry with hard-to-reach audiences like the shipping industry has. The value I gained from meeting other communicators is immeasurable.

If you don’t have the opportunity to attend events where you can meet other communicators, don’t be afraid of doing it in a virtual world. Melcrum has an outstanding example of social networking for communicators. Go to www.communicatorsnetwork.com to share ideas, insights and problems with fellow communicators.

One of the things we discussed on the course was the power of communications featuring ‘people like me’. See the power for yourself by listening to the experiences of other communicators.

If you have any questions about life inside easyJet, get in touch. steve.evans@easyJet.com

Steve

Is slick good?

I do love the TV programme 'Pimp my ride'.  I especially love the fact that they never seem to touch the underlying mechanics of the cars - they just tackle the cosmetics on the assorted rust buckets that they work on.

Having spent ages in focus groups (which is always a real treat), the similarities to IC have been quite striking.  (stay with me here - the tortuous analogy does work out in the end).  It's very easy to get disconnected in IC from the audiences and a decent focus group always brings you back to earth.

And they always raise tough questions for communicators.

For some time, groups have raised the question for me about what people expect from change communcations and how slick should it be.

Last year, a line manager said to me in a discussion "your people don't expect you to be a perfect communicator - they just expect you to make an effort".  In fact I'm beginning to wonder if people expect effort over perfection every time.

The reason is that when discussing two very different change programmes, groups have talked about communications at length.  For some people, well produced communications tools lack authenticity and credibility.  They want to hear it face to face and with warts.

The issue seems to be that people know that changes at work are always messy - the more complex, the more messy it's going to be.  And when they see glossy brochures, crisply edited DVD's and fancy new websites -they just don't ring true.  At least that's what I've been hearing.

But that's probaby not welcome news for many communicators.  Often during change programmes we are not expected to do much more than put a presentational gloss on the wilder ideas from the project team.  Communications is called in at the end of the process when all the decisons (right or wrong) have been made and all that remains is a bit of reupholstery and some paint to cover over the dents and the rust.

Which brings me back to why owning reserach is so important at times like this.  Knowing the truth about what people are really thinking and care about isn't normally a defined job on transformation projects and is one that clearly sits best with us.  If we know what the punters are saying that puts us in an ideal position to push back when we called upon to apply the gloss to the rusty wreck of a project.

Liam

It's easy to get into viral trouble...

This posting from cycling industry website Bike Biz caught my eye for two reasons.

Firstly it tells a story of how London transport body TfL has got into trouble for implied plagiarism.  A neat idea for a viral ad has been attacked for failing to credit the original brains behind a very simple idea.  (to be honest - as I remember the original this version isn't all that hot!)

Secondly though, it does remind me of the point that you can only see what you're looking for...

Follow the links through to You-Tube...

Enjoy

Liam

Can you specialise???

I had a really interesting chat last week with a Black Belter who was telling me tales of running comms training for big butch ship builders in Glasgow.  Her point was that persuading charge hands in a ship yard to think about communications called on very different skills to those she'd used before as a civil servant.

This was reinforced by someone else talking about her 20 odd years in a factory.

And I thought..."that's quite a specialised area..."

If you look at most professions, there is a tendency to specialise - either in terms of discipline or in business sectors.  The CIPR has sections for the Motor Trade and for Public Affairs specialist.  Accountants tend to focus on a practice area and a business sector for example.

And I think, already you can see IC specialists - there are some people who do HR or marketing-related stuff.  There are people who specialise in certain businesses (I've met a very interesting bunch of people from the Civil Service lately and I know quite a few people with backgrounds in telecoms).

But, it's quite interesting that we don't talk more about the different skills and talents needed in these differing areas...

Liam

Tales from Black Belt

I can honestly say I've had such a good time over the past couple of days that I'm feeling very lucky to do the kind of work that I do.

We're almost at the end of a Black Belt module 2 at Cranfield. Here's a photo of the motley crew. You probably 'had to be there', as they say, but just to give you a couple of hints about what's being going on ...

Last night's after dinner jargon-busting penalty was on the subject of pole dancing. Two guys paid the penalty - one wrote the jargon-written speech, the other had to act it out.  No, no, whatever you're thinking, you really CAN'T imagine!  I promise it was clean, but the whole thing was summed up to me by this little exchange:

• me (on the grounds that I was laughing so much I had tears streaming down my face): "Oh, I'm so glad I'm not wearing mascara!"
• Steve (the 'acting it out' part of the duo) "I'm just glad I'm wearing pants!"

Even the waiter and waitress joined in (although they disappeared in the jargon-busting thing - I think they were worrying what might happen next!) and managed to win a prize in our quiz. This was after the waiter had got over his horror that I had never heard of some footballer who apparently is very famous. I still can't remember his name, but it begins with T and has something to do with 'va va voom' ..???

And finally .. Bill Quirke now has a new name. My table decided they wanted to name our quiz team in his honour.  Except that when they were trying to remember the name of this esteemed man, they got it a bit wrong, and came up with ... Greg Burke. Which he now shall forever be to everyone in this group. (Sorry Bill!)

Sue

How very dare you????

Killing time at Geneva Airport, surrounded by the biggest collection of posh watches I've ever seen - I wandered into the business section in the magazines in the bookshop - and then I somehow went and got all philosophical (no change there then).

Magazine after magazine talked about strategy.  What strategy to have in a downturn, what strategy to have if employee fraud brings you to your knees, what strategy to have if you can't invest any more.  And there were some neat articles on the business wisdom of Homer Simpson or something.

Then on the plane - more bleedin' strategies! (Sue can tell you about my strategy for getting extra snacks but that's another story...)

But what if you don't have a strategy?  Lots of organisations don't (otherwise how do McKinsey's stay in business?) and what if you're the poor internal communicator?

If you think your raison d'etre is to create 'line of sight' between the corporate strategy and the regular employees you're in trouble.  What do you do?

You're probably not likely to hire in McKinseys if you are a humble IC urchin.  And it's a petty bold communicator who sets out to write a corporate strategy all on their own (although, Lord knows we've all been asked to magic one out of thin air a few times when the centre spread in the magazine is looking a bit bare).

Perhaps you could run a focus group with the guys from facilities or security (enough late shifts have told me they're always willing to share their views on where the world is going wrong).

But let's say that your organisation isn't strategically minded or what passes for strategy around your way just doesn't stack up.  Then what?

Should you throw your hands up in horror and stalk out of the building crying "I can't help you - you're all doomed!"?

Probably not.  You probably do what the vast majority of IC people do every day - just get on with it.  There's still a pretty good job to be done making sure people stick around, are happy to hand in great work or say nice things about you externally.

But I guess that doesn't sell many glossy magazines...

Liam

Those web editors are such a bunch of lads...

Found this from Ellie Lovell and thought I'd share...

Liam