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.
The employee amplification effect
Converged media is the new marketing sweet spot. I first heard Jeremiah Owyang talk about it and the implications for institutional branding in spring last year on Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation Podcast.
The idea is that converged media is the proactive, integrated management of three types of media:
- Paid media. This is what we used to think about as advertising. The institution pays a third party to carry their message – newspapers, magazines, television, radio, cinema, direct mail, and paid search.
- Owned media. This is anything the institution carries in it’s own channels – brochures, signage, point of sale, retail outlets, websites, microsites, Facebook fan pages, mobile apps.
- Earned media. This is what happens when the brand experience generates word of mouth discussion – virtual and not. Letters to editors, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Youtube, Flickr, blogs, forums.
It’s a simple and elegant way of looking at the new world of media:
Paid + owned + earned = reputation
Since then I’ve heard and read others on the topic. But, up until now something pretty key seems to be missing. Do you see it?
- Paid media – focus on potential and current customers
- Owned media – focus on customer-focused and
- Earned media – the objective is to have customer ‘fans’ who love the institution, its products or services so much that they talk favourable about it.
We all know that brands and reputations are built and can be destroyed by employees. Imagine if the integrated media strategy was built with an intentional focus on employees:
Paid media – involving employees and other key internal stakeholders [e.g. strategic suppliers] - as an source of insight, a reality check, pre-launch.
Owned media – including internal communication channels – intranet, town halls and other key institutional meetings, internal micro-blogging [e.g. Yammer], instant messaging, blogs, wikis, sharepoint, orientation programs, feedback systems, newsletters, management, etc.
Earned media – was designed to support and encourage employees, suppliers and their families in being part of the discussion – good, bad and indifferent – and we had a way to learn from the conversation.
Imagine the amplification effect that would happen by including internal stakeholders!
The case for investing budget in internal communication has never been clearer. What will it take to get internal communicators into the planning, implementation and evaluation of converged media strategies?
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Communication as the fall guy
Communication is almost always the institutional fall guy when things don’t go well.
Over the holidays I found myself helping an elderly friend manoeuvre through our medical system. It’s been quite a journey and seems to be ending well for my friend. She’s home and slowly getting better.
And it seemed like the biggest challenge over the past couple of weeks has been communication. But has it?
In Quebec, we have clinics – les centres local de services communautaires or CLSCs – where as a citizen of Quebec you can get free access to doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists, physio and occupational therapists, etc. A fabulous idea. They were initially designed to take pressure off of the emergency rooms in our hospitals. Today they are also replacing general practices – in Quebec we don’t have enough family doctors, so if you need one this is where you go. And, they’ve become the frontline coordination hub for services that enable patients to remain in their homes rather than in institutions. That’s all a very good thing. Unfortunately it doesn’t work nearly as well as it might. Ask anyone in the system and they’ll tell you the problem is communication.
Within the CLSC we went to things actually worked well. We spoke to an intake nurse right away. We were assigned a long-term nurse within 24 hours. The first full evaluation of my friend at her home happened very quickly. My friend can can have access to a social worker and other resources that will advise her about what she needs to do to stay safely in her own home and connect her to other resources if she wants them – meals on wheels, hairdressing, etc. It isn’t perfect, but it is pretty darn good especially given we were dealing with them over the holidays.
What didn’t and doesn’t work all happened once we had to deal with other professionals outside the hub. The CLSC is neither well connected to the hospital – where my friend ended up in emergency for 3 nights – or to the patient’s doctors – in this case a general practitioner, a cardiologist and a vascular specialist. And the hospital wasn’t connected to the pharmacy – which is the only other hub where critical and integrated information on the patient’s care is held. In fact, the hospital sent my friend home on New Year’s Eve without a single and very critical dose of antibiotic to tide her over until the pharmacy was doing deliveries after the holidays. These disconnects are big problems. The long-term care nurse has [or should have] the complete picture of what’s going on with the patient on all fronts and what that looks like from the patient’s point of view given their context. In this case it was impossible and felt like a telephone game we played as kids but with much more dire consequences if things went wrong.
There are disconnects and overlaps in communication at almost every point in our journey.They are costing the system significant dollars and, I can only assume, the lives of patients.But, look a little deeper and there’s a more fundamental problem. The protocols are there. They just don’t work. They were designed for a different system: A siloed hierarchical doctor-centric system. And, it was often badly executed. Except for the patient’s health there seem few consequences.
How many of the communication problems in your organization are the result of management system design and execution problems and not just communication. Let’s stop being the fall guy and push to be part of a fundamental rethink and redesign of management and operational systems that no longer work.
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Tilting at windmills – The transparency, authenticity challenge
There has been much written, especially since the financial crash of 2008, about how institutions and individual leaders need to be transparent and authentic. And, there’s been at least as much written by communication professionals and leaders about how difficult this is to achieve. Are we just tilting at windmills? Let’s take a closer look.
The underlying assumptions: Institutions and leaders can be either
- authentic or not.
- transparent or not.
The first assumption. Every decision or action is a reflection of who and what they are; their fundamental values. How could an institution or individual be other than what or who they are? We might not like what we see, but it is always authentic: good, bad or ugly.
As communication professionals and leaders this can be hard especially where our values are in conflict. The best we can do for ourselves and our organizations: Face reality. [see below]
The second assumption. There are two possible reasons for not being transparent. It’s:
- a conscious decision designed to hide reality [there are different ways to do this - spin, black out - but these are for another post] or
- unconcious. Leaders simply don’t know they aren’t being transparent and/or don’t want to know how to be transparent.
In the former, where there is a conscious decision to be opaque, then as a communication professional or leader this will be a question of whether this is in conflict with your values or not. If you find yourself in this situation, you probably need to ask yourself if you can live with the lack of transparency. There is nothing you can do to change this situation.
In the latter, it’s about not knowing what they don’t know. As a communication professional or leader this is where there’s a real opportunity to raise awareness, educate and build approaches to ensure transparency.
Conclusion. This is the transparency and authenticity challenge. We need to face reality sooner than later. The only situation where a communication professional or leader has any chance of changing things is where their organization or leadership may want to be transparent and don’t know how. Then there are two questions we need to ask ourselves:
- How to find out if they really do want to be transparent?
- Do we have what it takes to help them get there?
Otherwise we will certainly continue to find ourselves tilting at windmills: Exhausting ourselves and our organizations.
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Is doing good good?
Companies, all kinds of companies, are getting more involved in “doing good”. But, why? What’s the primary motivation? Building the brand or creating a better world?
Flash back to the mid 1840s, Titus Salt a woollen manufacturer had already made his fortune. He was planning to retire. Instead, he decided to consolidate his 5 mills on one site and improve the lives of his workers. He had already begun to try to improve the living conditions of his employees and would take 2,000 workers {and their families] on day trips out of the dirt and grime of Bradford and into the fresh air of the country around it: by train into the Yorkshire Dales, to his own estate or the seaside at Scarbourough.
He was not alone in taking action to improve the social needs of his workers, but his vision was bigger and more comprehensive. He would open one huge woollen mill, Salts Mill, outside of the heavy pollution of Bradford in Shipley. He would create a healthy place for workers to live and work.
They would have access to a dining hall across the road from the mill. Workers homes would be built in a ‘village’ near by with a church, schools, a library, a hospital, a park, allotment gardens. Everyone would have access to water, drainage, gas and a backyard with a private toilet. The main street would have shops to provide for all of the tenants needs. He would build almshouses [in the end 45] and a chapel for the infirm or aged on one edge of the village near the hospital. And he did. He built Saltaire – named after the mill/founder and the river that runs beside it.
The cynical would say this was all paternalistic and self-serving, but when Titus Salt died 100,000 people thronged the funeral’s processional route. And, 100,000 people can’t all be that wrong.
Titus Salt was a man of his time. He was a man who wanted to create a better world. And in making a better world for his workers he did better business and created a brand that endured well into the 20th century. Today Saltaire, the town Titus Salt built, is a UNESCO heritage site. A monument to a man and a time of incredible social vision.
Flash forward 160 years. How many of today’s brands will be remembered for the good they did? What will their legacy be?
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The Times Square effect
It’s that time of year. Every retailer moves into the black in a flood of promotions and sales – online and off. Fundraisers and not for profits raise the most money for their causes and make their last big push in a flood of messages designed to make us feel bad and hopeful. Everyone is selling. The visual cacophony reaches a crescendo at this time of year. But, visual noise is something we live with throughout the year and in lots of different settings.
At a large local hospital yesterday I got off an elevator in search of the transportation office so I could get a wheelchair for my friend. I ended up having to ask three people for directions before finding the office. The third said, “The signage is pretty poor”, pointing back at a wall plastered with posters. All different sizes, colours, messages and slammed on the wall with no apparent rhyme or reason. The result: I saw nothing.
Two hours later when I was returning the wheelchair I took a closer look and realized that with a little thought about who the messages were for the impact would be totally different.
Most of the posters were messages for staff about health and safety – three were the same poster. I guess it was an important problem – slipping and carrying issues. Two were for visitors, patients and staff: one on cellphone usage that no one – staff, patient or visitor – paid any attention to; one with directions to the transportation office.
The posters were visually different – sizes, colours, fonts, approaches – all competing for attention. The result was that I didn’t see anything even when I was looking for it: the Times Square effect!
Our organizations are just as bad. In-boxes, bulletin boards [online and off], chatrooms, newsletters, powerpoint presentations, videos not only create information overload but all of this is amplified by the visual noise.
Are your internal communications creating the Times Square effect in your organization?
[I suggest you turn the sound down and go to full screen to get the Times Square effect.]
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Curiouser and curiouser. Or maybe not!
“We shouldn’t be doing this. After all, we haven’t been invited and curiosity often leads to trouble.”
Alice [to Dina the cat], Alice in Wonderland, Walt Disney [1951]
Today, I am very pleased to tell you IABC Discovery has published Neil Griffiths‘ and my report on the state of the communication profession. We set out to test the CEO recommendations to the communication profession as laid out in The Arthur W. Page Society’s “The Authentic Enterprise” in 2007 against the perspective and experiences of communication professionals today. What we discovered is surprising. We believe asking the right questions now will help communicators take control of their destiny and advance the profession, the function and their own careers.
When we first posted the results of our survey on slideshare back in September, I thought we’d be deluged by questions: How can that be? It doesn’t make sense? What do the results mean really? Why did you conclude this instead of that… We were expecting a bit more of a to and fro.
Well, to my surprise we weren’t deluged. In fact , even though at the time of this writing there have been over 500 downloads of the report on slideshare, an article on Bulldog Reporter and a guest post on the Leader Communicator Blog and this very positive recognition by IABC, we’ve only had three or four substantive comments and one or two questions.
And, I find that very curious. Are we, as professionals, overworked and overwhelmed so that we have no time to think about anything except the next thing on our to do list. Are we downloading and not reading? Are we reading and not understanding/believing? Are we understanding and not caring? Or, is it because as leaders and professionals we believe Alice is right and being curious; asking questions [any questions] will just lead to trouble?
The challenge is that if we aren’t curious, how can we ever ask courageous questions? And, if we don’t ask courageous questions how will our function ever achieve its potential at the executive level?
I’m getting ‘curiouser and curiouser’. What makes you as a leader or communications professional interested enough and curious enough to ask courageous questions?
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Lessons from a zipper
Three winters ago I bought a coat from North Face*. It wasn’t the most expensive coat I’ve ever bought nor was it the least. I live in a climate where having something that is warm when it’s -20C or colder is pretty much a basic requirement. And for me it needs to be light enough to wear when it’s colder than about 9C. It also needs to be stylish enough to wear to a client. Three simple criteria. And surprisingly not that easy to meet.
This coat does in spades. I love it.
So you can imagine my disappointment when I put my coat on this year for the first time and realised that the zipper was broken.
Off to my dressmaker Carmen. She laughed. “Can’t do it!” was her starting position. Then after a few minutes she said she could but it would be complicated. I would need to go to a shoe repair to have the grommets removed [they'd have to put them back too] and then I’d need to buy the zipper. Not any old zipper. The exact zipper. After a bit of tooing and froing, we figured out a way that she could replace the zipper without the shoe repairman step. It would be very time intensive to do, but she could do it at a price. Well worth it I thought. I headed home to search the internet for the zipper.
First lesson. A zipper is more than a zipper. It’s many parts you don’t know the names of put together to make a zipper. And for each part there are dozens of variables – colour, material, size. And the company that makes my zipper , YKK, makes 1000s of zippers for 100s of uses. I soon gave up on this idea.
That’s when I complained to my husband, Michael, and he said the genius thing: “Why don’t you call the store where you bought the coat.”
Second lesson. Listen to your husband. He might be right.
So, I went on line to search for the stores phone number. By mistake I ended up on the North Face site. And there it was: ”The North Face® products are fully warranted to the original owner against defects in materials and workmanship for the lifetime of the product. If a product ever fails due to a manufacturing defect, even after extended use, we will repair the product, without charge, or replace it, at our discretion.” Too good to be true.
Third lesson. It wasn’t too good to be true. It turned out to be as easy as:
- Calling – The person on the phone was ‘friendly, not familiar‘ and knowledgeable. Obviously proud to be working there – something in his voice.
- Shipping it to them [for less than the cost of a zipper] with a reference number, and
- Waiting. Two weeks later just as the temperature here plummeted my coat arrived. No charge. Good as new.
This is crazy. How could North Face afford to do this?
Fourth lesson. The more I thought about it the more I realized smart companies can’t afford not to. Companies don’t design products to fail. But if they do what an incredible learning opportunity.
North Face had learned that they could use to improve their products and services. I told them how much I loved this coat more than once. They knew my address, etc from our interactions. They knew the model of coat that an urban dweller like me would fall in love with. They could find out how well the fabric and belt were wearing after 2 full winters. They could see the problem with the zipper first hand and would be able to better understand if it was a supplier issue or a design flaw. They’d learn a lot!
You don’t design products to fail, but when they do, there’s a real opportunity to deepen your customer relationship. I’m so happy I’ve already told my friends and family this story. And, now I’m telling it here.
How smart is that?
* I have no relationship to the North Face or any of its employees except as described here.
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Beware: Manipulation mania
“Make employees feel they are doing something meaningful.”
“Have and show faith and trust in your team.”
As leaders and communication professionals this is the kind of advice we get. It comes regularly and it comes often.
There’s something deeply wrong. We want to build healthy sustainable relationship with employees. But taking this advice is almost certainly going to kill the relationship. Let’s take a closer look.
First, the work employees do is either meaningful to them or it isn’t. If we’re ‘making them “feel” that it is, we are manipulating them.
Second, we either have faith and trust our teams or we don’t. Having and showing faith and trust in our teams when we don’t is also a manipulation. This time we’re manipulating ourselves.
Neither of approach is sustainable. And neither is good for relationship.
There’s a manipulation mania out there. Beware. It’s a bad thing?
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Layoffs. When the right way is the wrong way.
I was speaking to a senior HR professional a few weeks ago. They’re going through their 6th or 7th global restructuring in as many years.
We all know that when you have to do it, the right way to lay people off is face-to-face. It’s the human thing to do. Much more human than how my friend, one of the most senior people in their organization, found out they’d lost their job when they weren’t invited to a key strategic planning meeting. Or another who learned by reading the announcement in the weekly newsletter.
But what if you’re spread out geographically and, as in the case of my HR colleague, are working in an organization that is down to barebones HR staff. The decisions have been taken. The list is made. And, because there’s not enough HR staff to go to every location and be there with the responsible executive , it will take a month or more to move across the country.
Now imagine you’re an employee in this company. You know – there’s been a public announcement – that 25% of your function will lose their jobs. And, you have to wait a month or more to hear if it’s you so that you can meet face-to-face for a couple of minutes with your exec and an HR person you may, or may not, have ever seen before in your life.
I don’t know. It just doesn’t sound very human to me.
What do you think? Isn’t there, just maybe, a better way?
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“Getting out of dodge” or “the buck stops here”? It’s a question of leadership
It’s been a long month for many world and local leaders. While Obama may have won the US election, it’s been a much harder month for many others. In fact, it feels like there’s an epidemic of leaders stepping down:
The BBCs Director General, George Entwhistle, left “…over the handling of paedophilia allegations by BBC’s Newsnight”.
CIA Director, David Petraeus, “a retired four-star general and perhaps the nation’s most revered military figure” resigned his post after an FBI investigation uncovered his extra marital affair with his biographer.
Montreal’s Mayor Gerard Tremblay resigned after allegations, which he continues to deny, coming from the Charbonneau Commission into corruption in the city. This was followed by the President of the Montreal’s executive Michael Applebaum’s resignation “…citing the committee’s refusals to immediately make public a damning report on city contracts and to reduce the 2013 property tax hike.”
And the long-time Mayor of Laval [a community on the island of Montreal], Gilles Vaillancourt, stepped down after an RCMP search of his home and office. He suggested quitting was his only option: “Whatever I say or do… the damage (to my reputation) is done.”
Not all of these resignations were created equal. Some definitely come across as more noble than others. It seems like there’s more ‘getting out of dodge’ and not enough ‘the buck stops here”?
As leaders and communication professionals what do you think? What is it about these resignations that is the same and what’s different. Is there even one that make you say: Now that’s leadership? What are the implications for the organizations they are leaving? How would you handle it?
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Recent posts
- 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
- Our preoccupation with innovation. Is it just “lipstick on a pig”?
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