Black Belt Dojo

Getting our priorities straight

Earlier this week I was asked to give my opinion on what the priorities/big issues will be for internal communicators over the next year or so.  These were my three offerings:

1. Change communication - mindful of what's happening in Western economies, surely this has now has to be firmly at the top of the list. Even the 'safest of the safe' companies no longer seem to be, and whilst redundancies and restructures have been a fact of life for years, at a time of rising prices and the prospect of not being able to walk straight into a job somewhere else, suddenly they seem a fair bit more ominous than than there were before.
2. Doing more with less - I'm talking about the internal communicators themselves, here. Again, it's nothing new to be asked to juggle more balls, wear more hats, work more miracles, but the current environment must surely be making more demands on people, I'm hearing of lots of internal comms teams going through their own restructures and cost-saving exercises, and I'm mindful of the emails I'm getting from people about workloads and coping mechanisms.
3. Leadership communication - this is not a new one, and it's probably on here more because it happens to be a personal passion of mine. Why did we ever think (and yes, let's not kid ourselves, we DID think, once upon a time) that we could take on the mantle of all communication ourselves? And even if we now know that it's a leadership responsibility, how can we expect them to do it without the proper support?  Leaders will be having to step up a gear around (1) and (2) just as much as internal communicators, and they will need the right support to do it.

So that was my humble opinion. What do you think? Like to agree, disagree or suggest some more? What do you expect to be focusing on over the next 12 months?

Sue

Audiences, stakeholders or something else?

Last week I was at Melcrum's strategic research forum, talking about a new project that I'll tell you more about when it gets a bit further down the track.

In the course of the discussion, up popped a subject which has been niggling me on and off for ages. Which is ... what should we call those people that we communicate with? If you're writing a comms plan, and you have a section where you segment people into different groups, what do you call those groups?

You could go with audiences ... but I know some people hate the term, and in fact I was told I was 'old school' after one conference in which I used it!  The reason for that is that can have implications of a passive group of people, there simply to be 'fed' messages. It's not the way I mean it, but I know that's the sense some people take from it.

So, alternatively, you could go with stakeholders ... which implies people have a stake in the organisation, and will take an active role in communication rather than just sitting listening. The issues with this one are that a) I do find it such a horrible jargonistic word! and b) when some organisations talk about 'stakeholders' they can mean something quite different.

Neither very satisfactory, really. I started hunting around for another word.  The CIPR's diploma course (on which we were forbidden to talk about 'audiences'!) refers to 'publics'. I don't know about you, but I definitely don't like that one!

So, what gets your vote? Audiences, stakeholders, or something else entirely?

Sue

What would you do?

I have a challenge for you. I need some assistance and I think you are the best people to offer me some advice.

In a nutshell, the aviation industry is a tough place to be at the moment. Oil price is at an all-time high which means our fuel bill is also astronomical. It’s a competitive environment and we have to be the smartest and the strongest to survive.

We’ve been asked by our Chief Executive to come up with a campaign to raise awareness of the high price of fuel and also our need to keep our costs and spending to a minimum.

So, do you have any ideas? We have recently launched a campaign called ‘Ideas Pay’ which is a web portal for our staff to submit money-making or money-saving ideas. Depending on the viability of their ideas, they get a financial reward for it.

We have the option of posters, intranet news and email. We will also consider some social media as we have blogs built in to our Sharepoint-based intranet. So, what would you do?

In other news, I mentioned in my previous post about how the employees love Fresh magazine, but the Chief Executive doesn’t. It looks now as though one of the first cost-cutting measures will be the printing and posting of the magazine. It is likely to become exclusively available online. This in itself throws up some challenges, as most of our people spend the majority of their time in the air and without access to online content. Is it even worth continuing with it as an online publication? Should I fight back and try to keep it?

Intrigued to hear your thoughts…

Steve

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

One to watch

Terry MacKenzie is guest-blogging over on the Melcrum blog. Terry heads up internal communications at Sun Microsystems and I've mentioned her on here before because I find her an entertaining and thought-provoking conference speaker and I'm always interested to hear what she has to say.

I also think Sun are doing good things on the social media front. Even if you're fed up of the general hype, here's an example of a company using social media tools for real and having some good results.  See this article about CEO Jonathan Schwartz talking about his blog. And see Terry's own blog - she's one of around 10% of Sun's workforce who have one.

And by the way, if you're still in the 'what the heck is RSS and I know what wikipedia is but I still don't really understand what a wiki is' camp, do try these short videos from the CommonCraft blog. Yes, it's the second time I've mentioned them recently and no, I'm not on commission, but we showed them at Black Belt last week and people found them incredibly useful.

Sue

PS And no, I really didn't post this at 5am. I'm back overseas for another workshop. I shudder to think about my carbon footprint. Holidays in the UK for the next ten years for me, I think. 

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 we thinking global?

I'm typing this at Korea airport, en route to Melcrum's summit in Sydney.  Very appropriately, i'm clutching a pile of case studies from the latest research report I'm working on about communicating effectively with globally dispersed audiences. 

The research forum members asked us to look particularly at communicating in parts of the world where business is growing rapidly and work is being outsourced - China and India, in particular. It's been fascinating to understand the different styles of leadership communication people want to see, what they expect in terms of involvement (a good thing? Or actually a sign of weakness on the leader's part?), the extent to which people will speak up and give honest answers in feedback and research exercises, and the way things get done in the workplace.

As my Asiana Airlines plane was taxiing along the runway here in Korea, I was looking out at the planes we passed - Korea airlines, China air, totally unfamiliar names. I walked into an airport where I don't even understand the letters words are written in, never mind the language. I marvelled at all the gadgets (the loos have heated seats and little control panels with tiny showers and dryers!). And the service culture amongst the flight attendants was totally different from a UK crew.  (For the record, absolutely excellent.)

It dawned on me that there are parts of the world I have next to no understanding of at all. Here am I worrying about getting myself up to speed with social media to save being left behind as an 'old school' comms person when the whole topic about what's happening to global demographics has largely passed me by.

The message from many of the case studies I've been reading is 'get yourself up to speed'.  The world's becoming a much smaller place. Countries like India, China, Japan are becoming increasingly important.

That's the great thing about internal comms. Just when you think you're starting to get the bases covered, there's always something else to learn. Anyone else had any 'aha moments' or learnt something new from working with national cultures you've not interacted with before?

Sue

Control or influence (not a social media posting)

Years ago, my sister-in-law had a boyfriend who was a producer on a music radio station and he was launching a new show with a new presenter.  One night he was writing all the letters from listeners that they would use in the first week of the show, which rather surprised me. 

He explained that he wanted to set a particular tone and that if you didn't you'd just attract lots of boring "can you play something by Daniel O'Donnell for my auntie who has a cold..." sorts of messages. 

His ploy worked and he's gone on to far greater things, like owning his own radio station for a while.

I remembered this the other day when thinking about the issue of control and social media.  I don't think it's new - it's been around for as long as we've had things like intranet fora and in quite a few places you can still see an official censor's stamp on postings on staff noticeboards.

And I think the control issue is one of the biggest barriers to the growth of social media in the workplace

There is in many organisations an entirely understandable concern that a disaffected but vocal minority could poison a whole workforce.  Assuming that there is little legitimacy behind the complaints, the logic goes that if you deny them access to the means of communication they won't spread and multiply.

I have a degree of sympathy with this view.  The internal communications team would be unwise to act as a convenor for mutinous debates.  Why put your credibility on the line so that the same old group of moaners and complainers can exercise their imaginary right to workplace free speech? 

However, I also think that you can't stop people having negative thoughts at work - denying people access to media doesn't remove the cause of dissatisfaction.  And organisations need some sort of safety value to allow people to vent steam from time to time.  As I saw Shel Holtz write somewhere, just because you're not listening, it doesn't mean they're not saying it.

But what interests me more is how do you encourage people to have the sort of debate on social media at work that is profitable for everyone?

I think this is quite legitimate to follow the lead of the radio producer and seed the debate with examples of the sort of thing you want.  From time to time perhaps encourage people you know to hold an interesting opinion to post comments if they will help the tone of debate or maybe open up new topics as a diversion if an existing strand is failing.

You won't kill a debate if it is real and people care about it - but it may provide enough of a diversion if it's the pet rant of only a couple of people.

With one proviso, I think it is acceptable to set out the parameters of the debate you expect on certain channels.  If you want a forum for questions about business strategy does it help people to have to wade through dozens of questions about the price of potato chips in the canteen or the allocation of parking spaces?

Clearly, unless you have a vehicle for these sorts of issues they will come up where you don't want them.  And you have to be wary of the impression you give if you attempt to suppress inappropriate or misdirected comment.

However, someone recently likened the role of internal communicators to that of a good dinner party host.  Finding enough topics of conversation that everyone can join in and making sure that the bore at the end of the table doesn't ruin it for everyone.

Liam

Story-telling...

...is another one of those vague concepts IC people worry about.  It comes up more and more on the Black Belt and I've always found it rather problematic.

I say problematic, not because I don't like stories.  In fact the reverse is true and I even had negative feedback from a Black Belter who couldn't bear any more of my anecdotes!  Maybe it's my Irish blood.

No, I mean I struggle with the concept because much of what is written is actually quite vague when it comes to the practicalities.  I get the idea that people connect more to a narrative than they do to dry facts - seems pretty obvious to me.  But what does that mean in practice?  Do we have story-telling sessions at 3 pm?  Should the CEO talk about their personal life?  Does the legal department have to approve official tales?

Many of the write-ups of story-telling are connected to specific products that someone is trying to sell.  So the literature tends to be of the "this stuff is really important and if you want to do something, call our sales team on..." variety.  Not very useful if you just want a bit of inspiration about how to work into next year's strategy.

If it's not linked to videos/learning maps/CEO speech writing services the companies I respect are naturally loathe to give away the secrets of processes they have spent years developing!

One recent insight I got into this world came in the form of an HBR article that a friend (Thanks Jack) sent me.

It's an interview with Hollywood screenwriter Robert McKee who makes me stop and think.  You'll need to buy the article for yourself but I was struck by the following points:

• a compelling story has drama; a struggle against opposing forces
• the protagonist has clear human desires and human emotions
• a credible story needs to acknowledge frailty, uncertainty and even ignoble motives
• great stories are born out of self knowledge.

As I read it I ran a mental slide rule over presentations I've done or encouraged others to do containing cold and dry data and started to feel uncomfortable.  I found it a really challenging read and would urge people involved in coaching leaders on speeches or presentations to take a look...  Investor relations might not like it but...

Liam

Trust - what's our role?

Reading through the latest issue of SCM, I came across an interesting article from Pam Hurley and Dr Johan Siebers of TOSCA.  It talks about a three year study from the Future of Work Consortium, which says trust has gone out of the window in a lot of workplaces, making basic communication and co-operation more difficult and leading to poorer business performance.

To build trust, they suggest following four principles when you communicate:

• Quantity - give people as the right information, but don't go overboard
• Quality - don't say things you don't believe or can't back up
• Relevance - keep your communication relevant to the topic
• Manner - don't fudge it, and get to the point

It sounds pretty obvious stuff, but they reckon a lot of communicators either try to avoid the principles (oh come on - don't tell me you've never done a spot of fudging in your time!),or try and look as if they're following them when they're absolutely not ... which is where the dreaded spin creeps in.

Which leads me to the next article that caught my eye. Ben Page, MD of Ipsos MORI, writing in PR Week. He's talking about the accusation often levelled at the British government to date that they've been too focused on spin over substance. (Yep, guilty in my book. I don't think they've done the reputation of comms people any favours.) Fallen over themselves to make announcements and 'manage the media', and ended up with a general public that trusts them less as a result.

His solution to building trust?  Stop communicating. Act. No more promises of jam tomorrow. Sort out the policies and actions first, wait until they're working, things are starting to improve and people are starting to notice, and then tell them what you've done.

It reminded me of Jim Schaffer's say/do matrix.  What leaders/the company say and what they do have to match, or the actions will undermine the words.

It also reminded me of the time I was working out the comms plan for a project that had been promised to staff for five years.  I was given it at the point it was actually going to materialise. It even appeared on the business plan as 'project we really mean it this time'. I think that's what's called a poison chalice ...!

Sue