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.
Management
A marathon is not a sprint!
As I wrote yesterday’s post, I remembered a conversation I’d had with a client of mine a few years ago. I’d commented that the people in his organization were acting as if they were running a sprint when they were really in a marathon. In their case, it was more like a very, very long, cross-country ultra marathon every day for over 5 years and a stream of change programs and reorganizations. My client laughed. He’d been a sprinter in a past life and reminded me that a 100 meter sprint lasts under 11 seconds!
Not anything like a marathon.
No wonder people were exhausted. They all believed that if they just pushed harder then they’d catch up and things would get back to normal. And the CEO, the execs, the professional communicators and human resources professionals all believed it too. Well of course this wasn’t true then and it isn’t true today, 4 years later. I hear that the organization is still working people at a sprint pace. Busy “sweating the small stuff” as the current CEO said in a recent interview.
Doesn’t sound like a prescription for being the best we can be – institutionally or professionally – to me. And, it made me think. What, if anything, can we do to help institutions that are behaving as if they are in a sprint when they are in a marathon?
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“Sometimes you just have to go rogue”
“Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on. Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be. Being able to read what people want. Putting yourself in the right place where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can be seen. But you can save yourself a lot of time by working on the right thing.” [Caterina Fake at Happiness Hack]
There’s nothing fake about Caterina Fake’s take on the role of management. She’s co-founder of Hunch and Flickr. And thanks to Hackingwork you can hear how she, as “a management 2.0 leader thinks about [her] role and best practices for being a disruptive hero”. [really gets going at 4 minutes]
Yep. “Sometimes you just have to go rogue.”
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Scale & proportion in communications
"The Fisherman," Saul Steinberg, from The Labyrinth
I think internal communications design at its best is compositional. So, that takes me to the arts to see if there are things I can learn there.
Scale and proportion are two important considerations for the artist or architect. Should they be considerations for those of us who design communications plans? Scale refers to the size of the work. Proportion refers to how we see elements within the work in relationship to each other.
It’s easy in the heat of the moment or the “big” announcement to lose sight of what really matters to our colleagues in different functions and at different levels across our organizations. Not all decisions and announcements are created equal from the point of view of those we’re trying to reach and engage. Not everything is as big to “them” as it is to us.
Designing a communication approach that is the right proportion and scale for the news we’re sharing is as important as any other aspect of communication plan we’re building. Overdoing something that isn’t all that relevant to employees or failing to communicate something that is will lead to equally bad outcomes: Confusion and erosion of trust.
Thinking about the scale and proportion of the communication from the receiver’s point of view helps.
- Scale – the number and variety of communication channels, the frequency and duration of the communication, the effort level to engage people in a conversation
- Proportion – how evident we want to make the communication in context of everything else that is going on organizationally at any point in time and over time, and within the communication itself what is most relevant/important for different employees to ‘get’.
Next time you’re about to communicate a ‘big’ new corporate decision, business strategy, human resources policy, technology change, acquisition, or quarterly financial results, think about what this news really means for the people you’re communicating it to. What impact – direct or indirect – will it have on them? What do you want them to know, feel or do as a result of your communicating with them?
And once you have the answers to these questions, think a little bit more like an artist, design a communication that is right in terms of scale and proportion.
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Do we know what we’re doing?
I’m just back after an “official” training run. Those of you who know me, know I am passionate about chiwalking and running. Though a “late in life” runner I came to believe what my trainer told me, that running is “perfect freedom”. It took three years to find any level of enjoyment, but I did and was getting quite confident and competent.
Last June due to unrelated injuries Michael and I stopped running. It started as a short break. We continued to chiwalk regularly and at a pretty fast pace – racking in many kilometres up, over and around Mont Royal during the fall, winter and spring. In fact our winter chiwalks made the winter quite wonderful no matter what the conditions – rain, snow, sleet, sunny, cloudy, -10C, -30C. They are all about focus and alignment two of my favourite things.
Now, almost a year later we realize that even though our chiwalks have no doubt kept us relatively fit, they aren’t giving us the same results as chirunning. Over the spring we’ve integrated a few short 20 minute runs, but without any real discipline [and to be honest mostly downhill – small cheat]. This morning was different. We followed lesson 1 of Danny Dreyer’s training guide for beginners, a 12-week program to prepare for a 10K. We went for a relatively flat [not my favourite, since I like the variation of trail running] 5 minutes on and 1 minute off chirun repeated 6 times.
Big lesson: If you want to build and maintain capacity then there’s only one way to do it and that’s with discipline and practice.
You’ll not be surprised to hear that this experience has made me think about whether and how we can achieve an adequate level of communication mastery in our organizations?
Relationships are fundamental to organizations. Organizations exist based on the assumption that working together we can do something we can’t do alone. Given that human relationships without communication are impossible to imagine then communication mastery, must be a critical factor for success of any organization. But do we think about communication in that way?
I don’t think we do. We may make the odd nod to individual development, but institutionally I think we make the assumption that since virtually all employees can speak, write and hear then as an institution you’re communicating. This of course is simply not true. Any more than making the assumption if you can walk, you can run is true. [Or if you can walk you’re walking in an aligned and efficient way that will protect your body [that’s another story].] It takes training, discipline and practice to build and maintain adequate levels of skill and capacity.
So, what would communication mastery look like? Not just for your employees or managers but for your institution as a whole? What are the institutional benefits of achieving that level of mastery? Where are you today in relationship to that level of mastery? What actions would you need to put in place to get there? And, how do you create the right conditions for achieving it?
I think these are fundamental institutional questions. Shouldn’t we be thinking about getting this conversation going? Are you ready?
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The engagement factor
A little noodling on a snowy winter day.
Communication often finds itself at the centre of the employee engagement discussion. I find this interesting because I doubt if you were asked to describe the elements that impact their engagement that communication per se would come to mind. Or it wouldn’t be a major focus. I know it wouldn’t for me.
Instead isn’t your level of engagement based on factors like:
- The business you’re working for. What stuff does the business do and what impact does it have?
- The nature of the job you get to do. Is it management or non-management? Is it hands on or hands off? Constructing stuff, moving stuff, or taking stuff apart? Etc.
- And your experience of the business. What are the working conditions like? The kinds of people you get to work with? The level of collaboration? Etc.
For every one of us, each of these main categories of factors will have different elements that are important to us. And for each element they could be positive, neutral or negative from our point of view.
|
Factors |
Elements |
From the employee’s point of view |
|||
| Positive | Neutral | Negative | |||
| What | The business we’re in -What the business does and the impact it has
|
[Insert the things that matter most from the employee’s point of view] |
|||
| The job – What I do “at work” every day
|
|||||
| How | The brand experience -What’s my experience of the company?
What’s our customer’s experience of the company?
|
||||
Taken together, these rankings in relationship to each other[1] will result in a level of engagement – high, medium, low, non-existent.
What I find interesting is that these elements of engagement are more likely to be about organizational design and management than they are about internal communications.
I’m not saying communications isn’t an element. It certainly can be; especially where it’s in anyway discrepant with the brand values. It’s just doesn’t seem to be the place to start.
What do you think?
[1] This is based on something called “digital decision making” an approach discovered by Robert Fritz.
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The sustainable relationship quiz
I just finished reading an article in the New York Times – The Happy Marriage Is the ‘Me’ Marriage. Of particular interest since Michael and I just past the 35th anniversary of our meeting on – too cliché – New Years Eve (and yes I was just 5). Skip ahead to the ‘sustainable marriage quiz’.
The more I looked at the questions, the more I thought there might be something here to explore in terms of the institution and employee. So, here is the modified quiz:
“Answer each question according to the way you personally feel, using the following scale. Answers range from (1) not very much to (7) very much. Then, add up your scores and check the scale below to see how your own relationship ranks.”
- How much does being with your organization result in your having new experiences?
- When you are working, do you feel a greater awareness of things because of your work?
- How much does your organization/do your colleagues increase your ability to accomplish new things?
- How much does your organization/do your colleagues help to expand your sense of the kind of person you are?
- How much do you see your organization as a way to expand your own capabilities?
- How much does your organization/do your colleagues strengths (skills, abilities, etc.) compensate for some of your own weaknesses as a person?
- How much do you feel that you have a larger perspective on things because of your organization/colleagues?
- How much has being with your organization or working you’re your colleagues resulted in your learning new things?
- How much has working in your organization or knowing your colleagues made you a better person?
- How much do your working relationships increase your knowledge?
|
Scores [as per the original quiz] |
|
60 and above — Highly Expansive. You are gaining a lot of new experiences and reaching new goals as a result of your relationship. Chances are you have a happier, more sustainable relationship as a result. |
|
45 to 60 — Moderately Exciting. Your relationship has led to moderate improvements in your life and some new experiences. But there’s definitely room for improvement. |
|
Below 45 — Low Connection. Your relationship is not creating opportunities that help expand your knowledge and make you feel better about yourself. Make an effort to share new experiences with your partner to improve your relationship. |
If you’re working in an organization try it out yourself. Ask your colleagues to try it out. What do you think? Any insights about your organization? Your relationship with your organization?
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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?
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“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.
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Great idea # 2 – Netflix on building a great culture
An occasional post on a really great idea for internal communications – simple and high impact.
““I will not lie, not cheat, not steal,
nor tolerate those who do.”
All of us are responsible for value consistency.”
What a simple and obvious way to ensure that values are valued. And that behaviours reflect values. Well, it may be obvious, but how many organizations do you know where employees are really responsible for ensuring values consistency?
Netflix CEO Reed Hasting’s “Reference Guide on our Freedom & Responsibility Culture” presents their current best thinking about maximizing Netflix likelihood of continuous success.
I’m a little behind in seeing this. But thanks my good friend Christine Pietschmann I did.
This deck is one of the best things to cross my desk in a long time. It’s well worth the time it takes to flip through the 128 slides. It’s clear. It’s concise. It describes the kind of culture Netflix is building and practically what that means for employees and managers on a day-to-day basis.
It describes in a comprehensive way ‘how we do things around here’, why, and what that means for you – if you are already an employee or if you’re considering joining Netflix. And it has clear implications for you if you are an investor or a customer or potential customer. No ambiguity. No gray zone. No corporate jargon. No acronyms.
Well done Netflix! You’ve set the bar very high indeed.
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Recent Posts
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Recent posts
- Grey zones are costing your organization big time
- Saying goodbye to jargon
- Don’t leave them laughing
- A master class with Ed Sullivan
- Innovation & collaboration: Strategic priorities or not?
- The truth about the number 1 fear
- Want to know the secret to writing a great speech?
- Connecting for big business benefits
- Staying in touch with reality
- “Just hire a Dalek”
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