This blog is about the relationship between organizations and the people who work for them. And, it’s dedicated to the millions of people around the world who go to work every day wanting to do a great job.
Archive for December, 2010
Will 2011 be a reap year?
A friend of mine, Eunice Ajambo, is starting an NGO for educating young women entrepreneurs in Uganda [UgWO - sorry no website yet]. In a recent e-mail she said she felt next year was going to be a year of reaping. Of course we won’t know until this time next year. Today, what I know is that 2010 for me was a year of learning and consolidating. And it was fabulous in so many ways.
As a communications professional, I’ve been trying to find ways to explore social media in a more direct way. Move my understanding from theory to experience to practice.
This blog is part of that exploration. I was fortunate to have met Mitch Joel a few years ago and he got me seriously thinking about it. Interestingly that turned into my husband Michael diving in first with his ode to Marshall McLuhan. But, thanks to Mitch I started reading more blogs and commenting – building my nerve as it were. And thanks to that voyage I’ve met a whole raft of amazing professionals through CommScrum. These connections have felt a bit like coming home – but a lot less warm and fuzzy.
The turning point on blogging for me happened earlier this year with the encouragement of Michelle Sullivan, Leslie Quinton, and Lisa Chandler – who all in their own way said: “Come on, who are you kidding, you’ve got opinions on everything. Just do it.” Thanks ladies – I think. I’ve learned more about what I really think and value than I ever expected. Putting your ideas down and pressing post is a very humbling experience.
But for me not nearly as humbling as my experiments with Twitter. Here I’m still a bit lost. Tamsen McMahon @tamadear, my apologies for not responding to your response to my tweet. It’s not because I didn’t want to. It’s because I didn’t and still don’t know how. Sigh. Much more learning to do here.
There have been other experiments – FourSquare, Sharepoint, Goodreads, Skype, Facebook, LinkedIn. Some of them have been a success and are now fully integrated into my way of working and living. And others haven’t. And there’ve been some challenging and provocative conversations [Julien Smith – you know you are].
All of this is making me a better professional. And though I’m sure there will be a few more Mount Everests of social media for me to climb, the journey so far has been very enriching.
Next year may be a reap year as my friend suggested, I just hope the learning and the opportunity to meet new communities of like-minded [or not] people continues. I wish the same for you in 2011.
Random Posts:
What’s with “strategic pillars”?
Well, it’s that time of year again. It’s the time of year when institutions of all kinds check-in on their progress against their current strategies and/or announce new ones. It’s the time of year when thoughts will turn inevitably to the 3, 5, or 12 strategic pillars. [Just Google “strategic pillars” and you’ll see what I mean. I got 3,340,000 results.]
Why pillars? They are static and heavy. They hold something up, but can be knocked down. Remember Samson? So why do we insist on using this tired cliché to describe something that we want to motivate employees and engage them in action?
Isn’t it time we gave a little thought to how we’re communicating organizational strategies?
Random Posts:
“Fear grows that it will be ‘freedom 75’”
For those of you who don’t live in Canada this headline from this morning’s paper will require a little explanation. Freedom 55 is a very successful London Life campaign that encourages people to save and invest using their financial products including life insurance so that they can/ will have the good life of retirement sooner – age 55 not 60. The TV and print ads show images of fit and active grey-haired couples in exotic locations, golfing, just sitting looking out on their secluded lake. Free to just have fun.
The good life view of retirement is something relatively new. In the west, sometime in the 1930s our governments began designing pension plans and tax laws to encourage the growing numbers of old to get out of the workforce. But, by the 1950s it was clear the “old” weren’t interested in retiring to do nothing. And so retirement was sold as the fun time we get after the slavery of our life up until then. [source]
Ah retirement! Ah Freedom 55.
Fast forward to today’s headline which goes on to say: “40 per cent of 25-to 34-year-olds concerned about when they can retire.” Why are 25 to 34 year olds concerned about when they can retire? I don’t mean they shouldn’t be saving or investing or planning for the future. They certainly should. But what I find discouraging is that instead of demanding more from their work and workplaces they’re worrying about how soon they can stop, get out.
Retirement. First it was a social obligation. Then an economic privilege. And now a personal entitlement based on a Faustian deal. Work hard at something you are neutral to, or dislike, and eventually you’ll get the prize. Retirement. Or maybe not.
And for this 40% who are focused on when they can retire it’s a huge loss – for them and for the organizations they work for.
Random Posts:
Places worth caring about
“The emersive ugliness of our everyday environments… is entropy made visible. We can’t overestimate the despair we are creating…”
James Howard Kunstler
Wow! ”Entropy made visible.” ”Despair we are creating.”
Nowhere is that more true than in our places of work. These are mostly soulless places. Nothing that would build hope or confidence. Nothing of the brand experience we talk about and expect our employees to be so proud of and to deliver to our customers daily. Not even a hint of the business you’re in unless the corporate identity on the wall behind the reception desk gives a clue.
And, reception areas where the receptionist is missing. They lost their job two rightsizings ago.
Long characterless hallways. Rows of cubicles [no personal items please]. ‘Art’ that isn’t or motivational posters or nothing. Overly sterile washrooms. Kitchens where everything that matters – cups and cutlery are locked up. [You have to pay for your coffee as a cost control measure - my God you’re working 60+ hours a week at wages that were designed when people in your position worked 38.5].
Common areas that aren’t. No one wants to hang out there.
Boardrooms filled with chairs and designed for PowerPoint presentations not for people or work we really do or the collaboration and innovation virtually every organization today is aspiring for.
By the way, this description is focused on white collar environments. But I have to say that I’ve been in smelters that were more human and more appropriate than most office spaces I’ve been in.
We say we want to engage employees. What is there about the place you work in that is engaging? We say that the employee experience of the brand is a key element of culture. How does the design bring your brand to life for employees? If it’s not, then isn’t it time to get this on the Corporate agenda? How?
__________
Thanks to Mitch Joel for reminding me about James Howard Kunstler’s inspiring and funny TED talk.
Random Posts:
Random Posts:
Random Posts:
What is it about share price?
This morning thanks to CommScrum’s Kevin Keohane, I read “Internal comms at IBM shift from creation to curation”. It’s an interesting perspective on the changing role of the internal communications function. And, IBMs thinking about their intranet would have made the Great Ideas posts here, but for one thing…
“You cannot remove our share price from the home page,” Ben Edwards, IBM’s vice president of digital strategy and development says, “because we believe you should pay attention to our share price.”
Why do they think employees should pay attention to share price? I just don’t get it.
Employees don’t have any direct control over share price [who does?]. Share price doesn’t help employees do a better job. It doesn’t give them feedback that would help them serve customers better. Or become more efficient. Or design better products and services.
It’s another example of the pressure on short-term thinking that isn’t connected to vision. It’s like asking watching a score board for another game while you’re playing a tennis match [or for my CommScrum friends, playing football].
Why, oh why, do organizations as smart as IBM think that it is the measure that matters for employees?
Random Posts:
“Leadership makes all the difference”
Robert Fritz’s work on Structural Dynamics began over 20 years ago after he observed something pretty odd: “Success does not succeed in organizations” and asked “Why not?”
As those of you who follow this blog know, I studied with Robert Fritz for over 8 years. The principles of Structural Dynamics remain the foundation for the work I do in communications and change management. Last month, he and the other founding members of Innovation Associates – Peter Senge, Charlie Kiefer, and Peter Stroh – were invited by the Pegasus Systems Thinking in Action Conference to talk about the work that originally inspired them. Robert’s talk – “The Structural Dynamics of Leadership” – is a great primer to the work that has inspired me for years. So, for those of you who are interested, here are some highlights from the talk that may provoke some thinking and questions:
- Leadership is critical
- Leaders are subject to the structures they are in. Structures are created by elements in relation to each other and lead to specific behaviours – oscillating [structural conflict] or resolving [structural tension]
- Without a change in underlying structure change efforts will be reversed [i.e., where the structure is an oscillating one]
- Structural conflicts that drive oscillation can be addressed through hierarchy. The hierarchy is a leadership decision. [i.e., Where there are competing systems there needs to be a decision about what is primary]
- Structural tension can be designed in
- Shared vision is good. Shared structural tension is even better
- Structural tension as an object gives direction and coordination. Working with structural tension can take the complexity and organize it very simply to a unified and aligned direction while providing for all the freedom in the world to express your talents, creativity and imagination
- Leaders need to think in terms of outcomes not problems
- Workload to capacity is one of the key issues of leaders today. Leaders need to build capacity for the future.
- Leaders are pressured into short-term thinking. Short-term thinking without a sense of vision will hurt the organization
- The purpose of a company is not shareholder return on investment. Maximizing profits undermines the company’s ability to grow and better compete in the marketplace
- Business strategy is about generating wealth. The key to business strategy is making an offer that can’t be refused
- Composing the organization aligns resources and systems to a common direction
- The senior person needs to have an executive team that is aligned and masterful at implementing strategies. Too often the executive team is the first to undermine the alignment
- Where senior people are doing their jobs then dissemination, multiplication, amplification of leadership becomes available to the organization. That is golden.
And here’s the full talk [80+mins]. It has lots more provocative thinking including some thoughts about the difference between command and control, self-organizing and compositional organizations that are very convincing and worth a listen just for that.
http://www.robertfritz.com/tsd_of_leadership.mp3
Does success lead to success in your organization? If not, why not? I’d love to hear what you think.
Sign up for mailing list
Recent Posts
- Building a brand experience is just not that complicated…
- 100 years of brand building wiped out in one walk
- Communication failure in Montreal. Sir Richard Branson dies.
- Not all stakeholders are created equal. Now what?
- Why you need to master the art of segmentation
- The single most important question you can ever ask
- “We didn’t know…” Now what?
- Worker health and safety and you
Authors
Recent posts
- Building a brand experience is just not that complicated…
- 100 years of brand building wiped out in one walk
- Communication failure in Montreal. Sir Richard Branson dies.
- Not all stakeholders are created equal. Now what?
- Why you need to master the art of segmentation
- The single most important question you can ever ask
- “We didn’t know…” Now what?
- Worker health and safety and you
- Innovation. You gotta be a little bit crazy!
- In search of great communicators