Black Belt Dojo

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

How do you handle idiots?

I was laughing with a friend the other week about the number of people in any given workplace who are just simply idiots?

We weren't talking about people who are perhaps a little less bright - we were sharing stories about the sort of muppet who wastes everyones time and energy with their postings on the bulletin-board/corporate blog.

Every IC person recognises the type (although they come in all shapes and sizes) - some wear patterened bow ties in lieu of personalities, others have extensive wardrobes of  black tee shirts (often preserved from Def Leppard’s glory days playing the Milton Keynes Bowl). 

Others speak in a strained and convoluted English (assuming that linguistic dexterity is in itself amusing) and often hail each other with ‘Greetings’ rather than a simple ‘hello’.  Some could take Lord of the Rings or the works of Terry Pratchett as their specialist subject on Mastermind…

Instead of making helpful postings they ask ‘clever’ questions about the price of sauté potatoes in the canteen or waste time reliving the humorous moments of last night’s team outing to the pub.  Others will see the bulletin board as an opportunity to play Perry Mason interrogating senior management about their personal adherance to corporate policy on one subject after another.

Often they are highly intelligent people who are very good at their jobs – that’s why their line managers never say anything about their incessant time-wasting (either that or their manager can't face talking to them more often than the annual performance review).

However they have the common characteristic of being harmless in the wild but a nightmare in captivitity and with access to communication technology.

But they are a dangerous hazard to IC managers.  Their regular contributions on-line fora make it easy to mistake them for the authentic voice of the organisation.  On top of that, defending their imaginary corporate right to free speech can be a costly and pointless exercise for internal communicators.  And to cap it all, like flashers in a park - when they're lurking,  no one else is going to come to play - making any discussion group a waste of time and an embarssment.

I wonder if there is any benchmark data on the typical proportion of an average workforce is made up of plonkers?  I hope Melcrum develop something soon...but in the meantime, all advice on keeping them off the blog/discussion board most welcome...

Liam

Snow and more questions

I spent the last couple of days running a MasterClass at Hendon and, amazingly for an event in the UK, we didn't come to a juddering halt just because there were a few centimetres of snow - although I had to stop organiser Alex Garforth running a snowman competetion.

One issue that was debated a bit was "how do you use on-line planning tools".  A couple of the delegates were considering setting up centralised systems for air traffic control and were wondering what experiences people had with them.  What they wanted to know was what are the potential pitfalls and what are the things you have to do to make sure they work - i.e. what do you only find out with a bit of experience when it's too late!  For example there was a long discussion about how do you get people to lodge plans on a central system when it looks like the benefit of doing so is actually enjoyed by someone else. 

Anyone got any tips and hints?

Liam

Places for pics?

I seem to have been on istockphotos for ages this evening and I'm not getting very far finding the pics I want. In fact I can't figure why on earth it keeps coming up with half of them, given the search words I'm putting in. 

Still, some of the descriptions make me laugh. I just put in a search for 'choice' and it brought up a series of photos that are various combinations of 'sexy beautiful business woman'. In fact that's the exact title of one of them. Not quite sure what it's got to do with 'choice'. The mind boggles.

Anyone have any other recommendations for sites providing decent, low cost photography?  I know Timm isn't a fan of some of these sites...

Sue