Black Belt Dojo

From Russia with ... A Slight Delay

Greetings from Moscow, everyone!

My name is Jeffery McMillan and I will be your Black Belt Dojo guest blogger for the month of June. As you can see, things are off to a pretty late start — so before I continue here in the dojo it's fifty virtual push-ups from me.

There, that feels better.

I received my internal communications black belt from Liam and Sue back in March of this year. (Regular readers of this blog may recall some gossip about two guys who had to pay the jargon-busting penalty at the end of Module 2 with a speech on pole dancing and accompanying demonstration. Well, I am the one who kept his trousers on.)

An IC Assistant Manager in the Moscow Office of PwC Russia, I have actually been in internal communications for less than a year. There are few straight paths to internal communications, it seems. My own particular path has taken some odd turns at times — a Korean TV show, a Master's in Sociology at the Russian Peoples' Friendship University, a year of translating tax bulletins and editing audit reports — and so I am thrilled to have ended up here in IC.

Here's an example of why (and the reason my tenure as guest blogger is getting started a week late).

Last Monday the Global CEO of PwC flew in to Russia to visit key clients and partners in Moscow and also to attend the St Petersburg Economic Forum. Just before he arrived in the country, an hour was freed up for internal communications in his week-long itinerary. We were given 48 hours to arrange a film crew, set up a filming location, assemble a panel of 10-15 "regular employees" ready to speak confidently with our Global CEO on pre-approved topics in fluent English under bright lights in front of two cameras, and put together a short film to be shown at our upcoming all-staff meeting. Stressful? Yes. But once we got rolling it was really quite magical.

Call me starstruck, but I found it amazing to be given access to the Global CEO — a man at the head of an organisation employing 140,000 people in 149 countries — after only having  worked here in the firm for less than two years.

For me this underlined the importance that is placed on IC at PwC. It also brought home some of my favourite lessons from the Black Belt course. Liam mentioned that as communicators we do not really have any power in our organisations, but we do have influence. It is important to recognise the difference. The second lesson was an interesting technique that Liam recommended for building up that influence: schedule regular meetings with the top managers and be seen to be coming and going from their offices (regardless of whether the meetings have involved little more than small talk). The final lesson is that once you have established influence, you can only use it once. After that, people will figure out ways of getting around you.

This is beginning to sound a little abstract. Let me bring things back down to the mat with a few questions for you, colleagues. What are your thoughts on (and experiences of) the wielding of influence by internal communicators? Where should internal communications position itself in relation to management and staff? Where is the line between deciding how to word a policy and deciding what the policy should be? Have you ever ended up on the wrong side of that line?

Forgive me if these questions sound a bit naive. As I have said, I am quite new at this, and I am exactly half of my IC network here in Russia (so far). I am really looking forward to chatting with you and getting to know you in the month ahead.

Last word for today is a big hello to Liam, Sue and my fellow black belt trainees from February and March. For a short trip down memory lane, follow this link:

http://jefferymcmillan.com/blackbelt

Jeffery

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

Changing Organisations: A Beginner's Guide

I am 3 months in to a new role in a new organisation.  And one of the things that I've naturally been reflecting on a lot is how to become an effective influencer within the organisation.

The biggest stumbling blocks so far have been to do with knowing how to get things done.  Being recognised as a knowledgable expert with a valuable contribution to make does not automatically transfer to a new organisation no matter what salary and position you arrive with.

Obviously you need to earn respect through your actions rather than expecting to be automatically accorded the position of trusted counsellor - but how to start?

1. Pay attention to the power balance within the organisation - understand whose decisions count for most and work out who the conduits and power brokers are.  Avoid getting bogged down by Molasses Men, Head Treads or Sinkers.
2. Understand the internal politics within the senior management structure - who is likely to automatically oppose something purely because another individual is championing it?
3. Work out the personalities of key managers - in a systems theory way it is they who will dictate the culture of the organisation.
4. Understand the normative approach to getting 'the board' to discuss/approve something - overtly going about it a different way will thwart your progress.
5. Learn how to subvert or short-cut the formal processes in order to get concrete decisions made informally in corridors or outside of meetings.

I am going to be on the constant lookout for a foothold or a way in - sooner or later an opportunity will come along for me to prove myself.  Challenge Number 2.

Never treat your audience as customers, always as partners

Never treat your audience as customers, always as partners.

says Jimmy Stewart.

(See, I've managed to squeeze a Christmassy reference in already through an oblique nod to It's a Wonderful Life!)

As Liam made a special mention of my interesting audiences I thought I'd make that the topic of my first post.

I seem to be making something of a speciality of working in academic institutions: first Warwick and now The Open University.

And, of course, the big difference, in terms of audience, is the variety.  Very often at Internal Comms events you hear about trying to engage people 'from the MD to the cleaners' - at a university it's 'from the academics to the cleaners'.  The academics are what make the difference.

I'm readying myself to be pilloried here - but in effect it's more like dealing with a membership organisation than dealing with staff.  Other useful comparisons might be with partnership organisations such as law firms, or with research intensive organisations, or public sector bodies like councils.

This is for two reasons:

1. You have a pool of 'talent' which is aware that it is the engine of the organisation and that everyone else exists to support.
2. A stereotypical academic will prioritise his personal research work (and research collaborators in other institutions), then his department and only then at a push will acknowledge membership of an institution.

This can make it very tricky to engage academic colleagues.  On the other hand, non-academic colleagues can often be very easy to engage - as long as they have PC-access...

Let us not forget the armies of non-desk-based people that it takes to make your average university run: groundspeople, catering staff, cleaners, security and lab technicians to name but a few.  Some of these may speak English as a second language or have limited literacy!

(The pitfalls of the 'non-academic' tag are self evident - don't define people by what they're not.  But what else do you use?  Support staff?  Academic-related?)

If you add to this the unique OU model of splitting your academic staff into central course designers on permanent contacts and in-the-field course deliverers on casual contracts then you're  upping the ante again!

This variety means that despite delving as much as you like into your staff statistics you will never know the best way to communicate with your different stakeholder groups without working with them.  And I don't just mean sending round a staff survey, I mean getting out and understanding the environment in which different stakeholders work and the pressures on their time.

Now, three months in to the new job, I can hardly claim to be a paragon of virtue in this respect - but I know that I will be within a year.  Challenge number 1.

Getting to know you

I'm sitting typing this at Cranfield University whilst Liam is holding court about building relationships and influencing.

Being able to influence/work well with others starts with being self-aware. If you've got a good understanding of how you tend to communicate, influence, think and make decisions, you can watch how other people prefer to interact and spot whether you're on a potential collision course because your approaches are totally different.  Make allowances and adapt your style to theirs, and things should be a lot easier.

There are loads of tools around to help you get to know yourself better. I'm fascinated by what makes people tick, so I've done a fair few of them. I can tell you my:

• Myers Briggs profile (ISFJ - introverted people person that likes practicalities and planning ahead)
• Insights profile (Green - people person again)
• Belbin type (combination of a Co-ordinator, Team Worker and Resource Investigator ... but it's ages since I've done it)
• negotiation style (collaborative. But with a competitive streak that creeps in if someone gets my back up!)
• learning style (reflector. I hate 'doing' stuff. When a previous company tried to send me on an outward bound course, I told them they'd have to fire me first.)   
• I even know my preferred Hermann Brain Dominance quadrant (C - people and emotions again. I'm just so predictable.)
• And a smattering from NLP about how I process information.

If you've not had the chance to indulge in using these types of tools to get to know yourself a bit better, it's worth asking your HR team about them. I find them incredibly useful in working out how to adapt my approach when I'm working with important stakeholders. You can see instantly from the bits of profiles I've just outlined that I'm a pretty instinctive and emotional people type, but the last CEO I worked with was a 'just get to the point' data person.  I always went in with a bullet point list for our meetings, stuck to the facts and had data to back up everything I said.

They're also helpful for every day team working. Most of the time, that person who drives you nuts insisting they do things in a certain way isn't being difficult or unreasonable - their profile is just different to yours. Liam and I have almost opposite profiles - which is good, because between us, we'll cover every angle. But it can also be painful and lead to heated debates at times because we both prefer to approach things in very different ways. The good thing is that we both know about it, we make allowances for each other and we'll preface any conversation we know is going to be REALLY painful with 'look, I know you probably won't like this, but I really need to do x'.

So, how well do you know yourself? Which tools or techniques do you use? How do you use them? Which ones would you recommend to everyone else?

Sue   

 

Something to shout about

I had an interview last week. Only for some voluntary work, but I squirmed and had to think for what felt like ages when I was asked the inevitable 'what do you think has been your biggest achievement?' question.  Just when I'd finally managed to drag an answer from the depths, along came 'what are you most proud of?'   (Thinks: 'Don't be ridiculous, there MUST be something! There must be LOTS of things!' whilst failing dismally to think of any, looking v.embarrassed and fidgeting a lot.)

After I'd escaped from the interview I was thinking about how uncomfortable it can be to talk about your achievements.  And as a profession, I don't think we're great at shouting about our achievements in our organisations either.

On Black Belt, when we ask about what's helped people improve relationships with senior leaders and move teams from being thought of as e-mail-sender-outers to trusted advisors, being able to give evidence of a job well done always features. But whilst external consultancies are great at collecting case studies to showcase their wares to the next client, how are you at collecting them to showcase to other people in your organisation?

You know the type of thing consultancies do.  'Organisation X had a big business problem. This is what we did. This is the outcome.  Here's a quote from v.important senior manager talking about how fantastic we were. Wouldn't you like us to do something similarly brilliant for you too?'

Do you take an hour or so to write up your great case studies?  Do you get testimonials from leaders and project teams when they're feeling impressed and showering you with thanks? How easily can you call up examples to show what a difference you can make to a project or a management team? 

We all know how annoyingly tricky it is to get that elavator pitch answer to the 'so what exactly do you do?' question, and all too often people assume that we just 'write stuff'. Having a few examples up your sleeve makes it a lot easier to say 'Look - THIS is the kind of thing I mean.' And from the occasions where I've prepared for 'real', competence-based job interviews, I know it's much easier to shout about what I've achieved when I've got an evidence-based answer ready and waiting.

Just a thought.

Sue

How to win friends & influence people

Back at Cranfield again for a Black Belt today, and we're talking about stakeholders, relationships and influence.  It got me thinking about my relationships with my clients, and what it feels like for ME to work with THEM.  Maister, Green and Galford say two characteristics of trusted advisors are that they seem to understand us and like us, and that they are reliably on our side and always seem to have our best interests at heart.

I think I'm pretty lucky with my clients. I really like working with them, and now I come to think of it, those two simple things make such a difference. Last week, two of said clients started a conference call by saying "We've just been talking about how we've been yelling at people all day. So we've just made an effort to calm down and get into nice mode - because we really like you!" 

Another client has just phoned me for one of her 'hi, how are you, just thought I'd give you a quick update about things' calls. She also remembers to e-mail me to wish me luck before workshops, calls me if she hears I've had a tough one and has been known to send chocolates and champagne.  One client even insisted on driving out to change my car wheel when I called him to apologise that I'd be late for our meeting because I'd got a puncture and was waiting for the AA!

The result?  I really like working with them, I look forward to seeing them, and if they really need something sorting out, I'll do almost anything humanly possible to sort it. Because I know they like me, they look after me and they make me feel valued.  It sounds so obvious and it only takes 5 minutes of thought now and again, but it makes such a difference.

Odds are, when it comes to the really difficult relationships, we don't make people feel like that. Generally because actually we DON'T like them and think they're a total pain in the backside!  But one of the best pieces of advice I've been given was from my coach years ago, who was trying to help me develop a relationship with a particularly difficult character. When she asked what I liked or respected about him, I saids 'absolutely nothing.' Her response was that I'd better find something, or I'd never build any kind of relationship with him or be able to help him as a customer.

She was right. I thought about it, I can't say I found things I liked, but I did find things I could understand and connect with. And it started to change the way I acted with him. I actually started to treat him like somebody it was worth being reasonable with instead of someone who annoyed the hell out of me. Tellingly, months later when we were getting on swimmingly, one day he said 'you actually DO like me, don't you? For a while I thought I just got on your nerves, and then for a time I thought you just were being polite. But now I know you like me. It makes a big difference.'

So here's an interesting task for the day. Who's your most difficult customer - the one that gets right on your nerves and you just can't seem to get on with?  Now what can you find to like or understand about them? Trust me - it's in there somewhere ...!

Sue