Black Belt Dojo

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

Making engagement engaging

Just found this blog post by David Zinger about how to make ideas more real and believable and breathe life into dull statistics.  He quotes Stephen Covey's way of bringing to life some fairly dismal stats about employee engagement, by relating them to a football team:

'If a soccer team had these same scores, only 4 of the 11 players on the field would know which goal is theirs. Only 2 of the 11 would care. Only 2 of the 11 would know what position they play and know exactly what they are supposed to do. And all but 2 players would, in some way, be competing against their own team members rather than the opponent.'

Read the post to see the original stats - but it makes the point a bit better than a graph on a PowerPoint slide, don't you think?

Sue

Book recommendation...

I've just been asked by a recruiter what books I'd recommend to somone who is an excellent writer wanting to move into IC.  I said she should read anything by Bill Quirke but I was wondering if people had other suggestions....

I'm tempted to add Shel Holtz's Corporate Conversations...

Any other thoughts?????  What did you find useful when you first started????

Liam

Podcasting - found this helpful

How to podcast article...

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/beginners-guide-to-podcast-creation/

Liam

Food for thought

I've just been finishing off an article Liam and I are writing for the next SCM, and have come across two great websites full of quotations.  There's the quotation center on Cybernation.com and The Quotations Page.

I like these three quotes about goals:

"The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don't define them, or even seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them." (Denis Watley)

"A goal without a plan is just a wish."  (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

"Set priorities for your goals. A major part of successful living lies in the ability to put first things first. Indeed, the reason most major goals are not achieved is that we spend our time doing second things first."  (Robert J.McKain)

And I also like this little quote from good old Dennis the Menace:

"The best thing you can do is get good at being you."

Sue

Resources

I'm just typing up the buy/sell board from the latest masterclass and one of the 'buys' is a list of resources (books, weblinks etc) that people have found useful.

I'm going to suggest that people look at the bibiliography that Lee Smith put on the Inter-comm site.  But it would be great if we could tap into the collective wisdom here....

Can people take a look and we'd love to see any other suggestions that people have (Book reviews most welcome!!!!)

Liam

juggling priorities

1. "Where do we add the most value?" is a question we ask throughout the first Black Belt module. Where should we ideally invest the biggest proportions of our time to make the most difference to our organisations?  And how ARE we spending our time today?

The answer we often find is that we're spending much of our time 'doing the doing' - writing, organising, sending out, fire-fighting ... when we'd actually like to spend more of our time supporting and coaching leaders and acting as consultants - understanding where the business is trying to get to, and working out what role communication can plan in trying to help it get there.

But if you do resolve to spend more of your time strategising, who's going to do the doing?  Particularly if you're in a standalone role or part of a small team that's already under pressure, it's hard to know where on earth to start. 

What's your experience?

Practical examples please, from anyone who has managed to start shifting the balance without doubling the size of your team or budget.  Here are some quick thoughts to get things started

1. Get simple processes in place, to save having to re-invent the wheel every time.  For example, make sure you have a basic suite of channels, with clearly defined purposes, so there's a natural route to communicate things such as changes to processes, business results, senior leadership messages etc.  Put together a simple template that you'll use to put together project comms plans. 
2. Train other people. What activities are you carrying out that other people could do for you?  If you invest in training, templates, toolkits and hand-holding up front, you'll reap the benefits down the line.
3. Imagine your resource has been halved and you have no choice but to stop doing some things or find other ways around them. What will you do?  I once had no choice but to reduce a team from 60 people to 6, in the space of 2 weeks. It's amazing how it focused our minds. Where previously we'd have said 'but we can't ...' now, we had to - and we did. Once you've decided how you'll cope, fill up your new-found time with something else.
4. Get yourself a network of communications champions, if you haven't got one already. Where there's no formal resource in place, a network of people who give a couple of hours a week to communication can take some of the load away from you. You'll need the support of senior leaders to identify one or two people from each business area.
5. Pull out all the stops to deliver an example of what you'd like to do more of. Make a success of it, so that people want more of it, and then give them the choice.  'I'd love to do something like that for you, but all my time is being taken up booking rooms for the project roadshow. If your PA could take over booking the rooms, that will give me time to look at this for you instead."
6. Make the choice. Sometimes, people tell me they've made a shift simply because they resolved to, and they started acting differently.  We once saw somebody come back on the second module looking like a new woman just because she'd done exactly that. Sometimes the only thing holding us back is our own perspective on how things have to be.

Over to you ...

Sue

Wot, no WIIFM?

"Oh joy ... a bill!" was my reaction to the British Gas envelope landing on my doorstep this morning.  Several minutes later, after ploughing through no less than five pieces of literature giving me fantastic news about sales on boilers, my exciting new style energy bill that's a 'piece of cake', apparently, and my new British Gas bond that enters me into a draw to win fantabulous prizes ... I was genuinely feeling bemused about whether this WAS in fact my gas bill, or whether they'd just decided to write to me out of the goodness of their hearts and shower me with goodies. But aha, no, finally, wrapped up inside a leaflet, my bill was lurking.  I shan't be at all surprised if loads of people end up with red reminders because they don't realise there's a bill in there at all. 

What if there's no WIIFM factor?

I've noticed the tactics of 'let's hide the bad news away and hope customers don't actually notice it' since their prices started sky-rocketing. I was trying to work out whether a) I thought British Gas were quite clever in the way they had plied me with goodies before hitting me with the nasty part or b) I was fed up with them for trying to hide the real message, and it made me think back to a discussion we were having about messaging on the Master Class last week.

We were talking about the importance of finding the 'what's in it for me (WIIFM)' angle when putting together messages.  Looking at things from the audience perspective instead of the company's point of view.  The question that came up was, what if there is, absolutely, categorically, no WIIFM?  My gas bill has gone up goodness knows how much in the past few months - what's in it for me?  Where's the WIIFM in a cost-cutting programme that's purely about boosting profits and lining shareholders' pockets?  Somebody told me a couple of weeks ago that her company had tried saying 'reducing costs now means we'll protect jobs and you'll get bigger pay rises later'. Nobody believed a word of it, oddly enough.

Some things that work

1. Be honest. Don't fudge it.  I reviewed one set of communications for a 'streamlining' exercise and couldn't fathom out the reason why this company was actually doing it. As far as I could see from the communication, everything was going swimmingly well.   Actually, it turned out all was not well at all, but the comms person told me she'd been taught never to talk about cutting costs, because it was too negative, and it might get into the papers.  Why would people buy a cost cutting exercise if they can't see a need for it?

2.  Use trusted sources to deliver your message. I'm afraid when energy suppliers tell me their prices are better value than anyone else's, I don't believe them, because I expect them to try and compare them in a way that means they'll look good.  I probably WOULD believe an independent watchdog, or one of my friends that had tried every supplier going and found this one the cheapest. Understand who is most trusted in your organisation, and get them on board to help get the message across.

3. Make sure you're not cancelling out what you say on one hand with what you do on the other.  If you tell everyone it will make all the difference if they make black and white copies instead of colour, turn off the lights when they leave a room and cancel the chocolate biscuits in meetings .... and then announce at £1 million bonus for the CEO, it's fairly obviously not going to work. (Or so you would have thought, but companies do it all the same.) Make sure the people at the top are role-modelling the changes.

4. Show people how much difference the actions they take can make to the company as a whole. I saw one company illustrate with a moving scale on a PowerPoint presentation at a conference how much difference a 1% reduction or increase in costs for one business area made to the overall company results, and what they'd contributed already. 

5. Explain the process you've been through to decide on the cost-cutting measures and outline any other suggestions you might have considered and had to reject.  Help people reach their own conclusions about why this is necessary, rather just telling them the decision and expecting them to accept it.

6. Compare the issue to something closer to home. Talking about EBITDA, being cashflow positive and market positioning doesn't help people make a connection. Comparing it to managing your monthly income and tightening your belt if you can't afford to pay the mortgage makes it more understandable. 

7.  Use a genuine burning platform, if there is one. When I was IC Director at NTL a few years back and we were heading into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, when we said we had no choice but to get costs down, it was obvious we weren't being overly dramatic.  If you're talking about 'the competitive environment, a challenging year, blah blah blah' for the fifth year in a row, people probably stopped listening a long time ago.

And finally ... be sure the payoff is worth it.  Actions like cancelling the Christmas party, taking the free vend off the coffee machine or reducing the subsidy in the staff canteen don't save millions, and the signal they send about your commitment to staff and the impact on motivation will cost the company far more in other ways. Be prepared to make sure the company really understands the implications of its actions, and challenge hard if you think it's the wrong decision.

Those are my suggestions for starters. What else have you seen work, or what have you seen go badly wrong?

Sue

From the top

I'm a real 'must be organised' person, so I can never stand to see the state of my office when I finally come back from a stint of travelling around. There are piles of papers everywhere, where I've put them down and picked the next lot up ready to get on the next train/plane. So the past couple of evenings have been spent laboriously sorting through my papers. (I know. I really should get out more.)

I've just come across some notes I made whilst at the Melcrum US summit headed 'advice from the top'.

Brad Casper, President and CEO of the Dial Corporation, gave an interesting presentation, but when people really sat up was when they were able to start asking him questions. Why are there so many CEOs that don't 'get' communication like he does? ("there's no magic formula - some people just won't get it")  When CEOs get together and talk about communication, what do they say? ("We don't really tend to talk about communication")

And the question where everyone sat with pens poised - What advice do you have for us as internal communicators about working effectively with CEOs?  These were Brad's three tips:

• CEOs like best practices. Coming back from a conference like this is a good time to talk to us about the best practices you've seen that we could learn from.
• Presenting a senior executive with a full-developed plan can be dangerous - we may not feel part of the solution. Leave some room for dialogue.
• Be ready to cite examples that are working and driving business results

I also noted down a piece of advice in a workshop run by Linda Dulye of L.M.Dulye&Co.  She was talking about the importance of data at the time, and took us back to a conversation with a senior manager that had influenced her approach to communications from early on in her career.  "Where's your data?" he had asked her.  "In God we trust - everyone else, bring data."   From that point on, she was determined to make sure her approach was built on evidence, data and measurement in just the same way as every other function, and she's built a very successful career on it.

What other advice have you been given by senior leaders or CEOs at various points that has given you insights or influenced your approach to internal comms? 

Sue

risks, issues and RAGs

Darren Crozier (Black Belter and esteemed Chairman of the CIB in Scotland) e-mailed us yesterday on the subject of IC managers acting as project managers and business planners. I'm afraid it prompted a mini rant (sorry Darren) back from me about the trials and tribulations of working with project teams. Taken aback by the steam coming out of my ears, Liam helpfully suggested it could be an interesting topic for the blog ...

My issue with projects is when the necessary process and discipline involved goes into overdrive. I turn from a mild-mannered smiley person into a stroppy and irritable hag when I'm asked to produce back-up templates for my templates (I was, on one occasion, asked to produce a contingency plan for the contingency plan), fill in RAG reports every 2 days and get quizzed about whether the red triangle on my gantt chart shouldn't ideally be a yellow circle.

There's also the scenario when you're constantly told you're on 'red' because you haven't produced a comms plan.  "I can't produce a comms plan," you helpfully explain (several times and increasingly through clenched teeth), " because you haven't worked out the project plan yet." Producing a neat matrix showing weekly updates for the next six months with a couple of conferences thrown in (just to make them leave you alone for 5 minutes) appears to get a tick in the box, even when you point out that actually it's not related to anything at all and will get re-written when the project plan finally turns up.

(Takes deep breath and climbs down from soap box.) So, given that we do want to be treated as workstream leaders, steering group members and valuable contributors to projects, how do we add value, and what are the secrets of success?  Here are three suggestions as a starter. Please add yours to the list ...

1. Provide constructive feedback and challenge about the project plan itself.  As someone who doesn't hasn't been totally immersed in the new system/product/whatever it may be, you're well-placed to challenge assumptions, give a realistic view about potential reactions, question timescales and spot holes in plans.

2.  Understand where project managers are coming from.  Speak their language and give them the milestones, progress updates and risks and issues logs that show you're in control of your brief.  And where you feel there really are risks or issues from a comms perspective, make sure they get heard. Sometimes they can feel tiny to a project team that's focused on the fact that they're 20% over budget or the new system's developed a major bug.

3. Be clear about roles, responsibilities and boundaries.  Set out what you will and won't do, and where you can and can't add value.  Some times templates and tracking charts are eminently necessary, but sometimes it can go OTT. On those occasions it's worth pointing out what's NOT going to get done that they really need your communication expertise for, because you have to fill in another round of templates. It may well turn out that there's someone else on the project team that can look after some of the process piece for you.

Seriously, I do enjoy getting involved in a good, meaty change project that you can get your teeth into, and I've worked with some great project managers, some of whom are now good friends.  But it's quite likely that we've had a few 'spirited' conversations in the course of our work together, and they would probably tell you with a wry smile that 'Sue doesn't do gantt charts'...!

Anyone else want to share any project working horrors or suggest some tips?

Sue