This blog is about improving 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.
Management
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Management innovation = Communication innovation
Another wake up call.
I just tuned in to Gary Hamel’s recent webinar [ironically - given the closing line to last week's post - called]: Lighting the Fires of Management Innovation.[1] In it he describes how Management innovation was once the source of significant competitive advantage. But, most management innovation took place in the very late 19th and very early 20th century.
So, if we are going to effectively tackle the urgent challenges of today, we need a fundamental reinvention of underlying management principles and practices. And, we need to create this ‘management advantage’ at a time when the pace of change – political, economic, social, and technological – is increasing.
How? Well according to Hamel it will take courage. The courage to:
- Take on big and noble problems
- Question dogma
- Learn from positive deviance [he refers specifically to the ethos of the web and the values that he believes must infiltrate management]
- Start small – we need to be able to be both revolutionary and evolutionary at the same time.
[echos of Grassroots thinking]
Innovation in communication – the communications function and the communications themselves – will be absolutely fundamental to the reinvention of management.
As communicators it’s sometimes easy to be a little complacent around the idea of communication innovation. After all the past decade has brought significant and important innovation to how we do communications. The number and kinds of navigation tools, distribution channels, communication tools and tactics that are available grows exponentially.
But the kind of innovation that Hamel is calling for asks us to fundamentally rethink what we do. Are we taking on or encouraging our organizations to take on big and noble ideas? Do we question dogma – ours and others? Are we learning from positive deviance? Do we start small or are we caught up in one system wide campaign after another?
Are we ready to take this challenge on? As a profession? As executives and managers? As advisors to leadership? As employees and as voices for employees and other key stakeholders?
I’d love to hear what you think. [the conversation continues]
[1] You need to be registered on the Management Innovation Exchange to access it, but it’s well worth it.
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Creating extreme competitive advantage
Meeting people who really get communication is rare. So, I was pleasantly surprised to meet with Bob Weiler, founding partner of Brimstone Consulting Group last week.
It was a meeting that proved to be both interesting and provocative. Early in the conversation Bob suggested I change my business card to read Hinton : Communication strategies for extreme competitive advantage. Boy did he have my attention?
He pushed on. Reminding me of what, as an air force brat, I once knew, which is that the first thing you do when you go to war is take out or try to take out your enemy’s communications. Once you’ve got your enemy in the “dark” and unable to communicate with HQ or each other they start to think very dark thoughts. They will imagine the worst things possible about what’s going on. And this gives you a very critical strategic advantage. So the very first thing you go after is communications.
I felt like a light bulb went back on. Somewhere 100 conversations ago and in the constant fight for limited resources and budget my clients and I’d lost touch with reality. The reality that communications is not nice to have. It’s critical to have. And, great companies aren’t just OK at it. They are great at it. Individual, team and organizational mastery of communications is a top business priority. And, for the super great it is used as a weapon.
Bob suggested I go back to Kotter’s 8 steps of change model [it's a classic]. As a reminder they are: 1. Create urgency, 2. Form a Powerful Coalition, 3. Create a Vision for Change, 4. Communicate the Vision, 5. Remove Obstacles, 6. Create Short-term Wins, 7. Build on the Change, 8. Anchor the Changes in Corporate Culture. Every one of these steps requires not just good communication, but great communication at the individual, the team and the organizational level.
And since Kotter’s change model isn’t the only way think about change I pulled out some notes I had on a newer favourorite of mine – Viral ChangeTM . As Dr Leandro Herrero describes it, this approach takes “a small set of behaviours spread by a small number of people through their networks of influence to create massive behavioural tipping points, translated into new routines and ‘cultures’ (new ideas established, new ways of working, new process adoption, new culture).” What will it take? Great communications.
So, I went back and pulled out some other classics:
Remember the 5 elements of management from business school? What managers need to do to get things done through their people: Planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling. What will it take? Great communication.
Or the 5 P’s of marketing, those things that marketing managers use to control marketing mix: product, people, place, promotion, price. What will they take? Great communication.
Or Jim Collins description of how to move an organization from “From Good to Great”. Remember: Develop level 5 leadership, decide first who and then what, confront the basic facts, use the hedge hog concept [know what you’re deeply passionate about, what drives your economic engine, what you can be the best in the world at], build a culture of discipline, be a technology accelerator, use the flywheel effect. What will each of these need? Great communication.
Or what makes for really engaged employees [this still rankles with me, but since it’s so loved by so many] – job clarity, materials and equipment, matching strengths to the job, recognition and praise, caring about the people you work with, mentoring, valuing employee opinions, connecting to a noble cause, one for all and all for one, creating the conditions so that people can have a best friend at work, regular conversations about individual progress, creating opportunities to learn and grow [based on Gallup G12 questions]. What will that take? Yep. Great communication.
So, why is it that so few organizations make mastery of individual, team and organizational communications an essential business priority? Seems like a no brainer. What do you think?
And thanks Bob for reigniting the flame.
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Not all jobs are in cubicles
It’s easy to forget when you’re working in an office at HQ that not all jobs are in cubicles.
When I first began working at Alcan [now Rio Tinto Alcan] our then CEO, Jacques Bougie, insisted on beginning every talk with employees by talking about health and safety starting with the stats for the last quarter. As the newly appointed Director, Internal Communications, I thought this was simply a terrible way to begin every talk. I was wrong. He was right.
The recent explosion of the BP oil rig Deepwater Horizon and the deaths of 11 workers reminds us that every day men and women around the world go to work at dangerous jobs. Some very dangerous jobs.
The “Deaths on the Job Report” for 2010 reports that for the USA alone “In 2008, 5,214 workers were killed on the job—an average of 14 workers every day—and an estimated 50,000 died from occupational diseases. More than 4.6 million work-related injuries were reported, but this number understates the problem. The true toll of job injuries is two to three times greater—about 9 to 14 million job injuries each year.”
What role do you play in communicating health and safety information to your employees, your customers? Your shareholders? What role should you play?
The real work of your institution may be happening in places without cubicles, without internet access, maybe even without computers. By workers who farm, chop trees, provide patient care in hospitals, pack groceries, load container trucks, bottle beer, or teach in classrooms. Who may or may not be literate? And if they are may or may not be speaking French or English as their first language. Their cultures and their lives may be vastly different than yours.
How well do you and your executive understand their employees experience of their work and the organization they work for? What are the implications for how well they/you can do your job?
When was the last time you went and spent time with people on the front line? What was that experience like? If not, why not? If so, when will you do it again?
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Friendly. Not familiar. Rules.
Just to finish the story from yesterday. At our bricks and mortar bank today… Anne-Marie was at reception as she has been for over 15 years. I used to see her often. We didn’t necessarily speak. When I had a problem with the business banking cue a year or so ago, she stepped in and got it solved. Tellers come and go, but Anne-Marie is always there.
Today I was in line at reception to see about getting a copy of a cheque. She was with another client who couldn’t do an electronic transaction. Anne-Marie came out from around the desk to take her to the machines. She saw me and politely asked the other client if she would just wait a second… and said “Mrs Hinton isn’t it? How can I help?” And then gave me the info I couldn’t get on the phone yesterday.
I haven’t even been in the bank when it’s been open for at least 6 months and probably haven’t spoken to her for over a year! This is friendly and not familiar. I feel strangely drawn back into the circle.
Came home to try what she’d suggested. Didn’t quite work. After the last three calls, I was preparing myself for the assault of overly familiar ‘Hi Deborah, how’s your…[fill in the blank with something way to personal]“. This time, though, the person on the end of the phone was friendly and not familiar. No attempts to be my new best friend – just professional, knowledgeable, efficient and yes, friendly. No manipulation. Nice.
How could there be such a difference? It’s the same bank. I don’t know. But local management surely plays a key role by recruiting and selecting people who love people, adapting training and support systems that make it easy for their employees to be professional and solve their customer issues, personalizing and aligning reward and recognition approaches. And, respecting employees and giving them an appropriate level of freedom to solve the customer issue. It is not about encouraging them to get chummy with their customers.
Now I’m sure my grandmother was right. Friendly. Not familiar.
Have you got any stories where you think organizations have gotten it right? Way wrong? What do you think?
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Friendly. Not familiar.
There’s been a lot of talk about making organizations more human from a customer point of view lately. I think the most recent iteration of this idea has been inspired by Design Thinking and the role of empathy in customer relationships [thanks Dan Gray and the gang at CommScrum for getting me reading this literature].
The idea is that if you really understand and care about your customers and show it you can build long-term sustainable relationships with them. Not exactly breakthrough thinking.
Anyway it’s not the idea that’s bad. The idea’s fantastic. And there are organizations that do it and do it well. It’s authentically who they are. The problem starts when not particularly nice organizations decide they are going to institutionalize niceness. And, a recent post by Julien Smith got me thinking about something that had just happened to me.
A story. I called my bank about something a few weeks ago and the person on the end of the phone asked if she could call me Deborah [a little familiar] and then began using my name in every second sentence. Then she asked if she could wish me happy birthday… it was the next week. I felt completely creeped me out.
My grandmother ran her own business successfully for years. Her mantra: “Be friendly. Not familiar.” This clearly broke that rule. This woman didn’t know me. I didn’t know her. I wasn’t calling for a personal relationship with her. I wanted to complete a transaction with the institution. This was simply a pretence of friendly. It was manipulative. She knew it and I knew it.
And this got me thinking about what it must be like to be an employee in an organization that’s decided it’s time to be warm and friendly with customers when the organization has never been warm and friendly before.
Imagine you’re the employee who’s asked to behave this way. You’re given the scripts – customer says “x”, service rep says “y”. If you’re the Borg it’s perfect. If you’re a customer service rep who’s really trying to understand a customer need and meet it? Not so much. It must get pretty hollow pretty fast for the employee. I know it did for the customer.
What do you think? Can you be more human from a customer point of view when you aren’t from an employee point of view? Can organizations institutionalize empathy?
Post script – Had to call the bank again this morning and different person same script… although this lady didn’t ask for permission, just asked if this was Deborah and promptly hung up on me twice! I’m really feeling the love.