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.
Behaviour change
If the US Army is embracing social media, you can too!
Imagine this paragraph from the opening letter to the US Army’s social media policy - Army social media – Optimizing online engagement - written for your organization:
The US Army isn’t embracing social media as a nice to have. It’s a critical element of their operational strategy.
If the US Army is embracing social media, isn’t it time you did too! And not as a nice to have but as key to your operational strategy.
Random Posts:
From campaign to composition
Let’s face it, we live in an event, event, event world. One event after another. Big events and small events. A new brand. A new executive. A new policy. The latest quarterly results. A new acquisition. A divestiture. A new product. A flood of separate moments. From an employee point of view it can all look pretty disconnected and confusing.
The challenge we have as leaders is to have these discrete events build momentum toward the business results we’re after.
But in an event, event, event world here’s what usually happens. A big shiny new brand launch. A month or two of hints about what’s coming. Lots of energy and hoopla focused on the day of launch. A campaign. Internally all goes incredibly well. Better than expected in fact. Then nothing. Or maybe a little something. And then nothing.
Communications based on discrete events will only ever be just that. What’s missing? The composition, “the plan, placement or arrangement of the elements” in relationship to each other. The same events communicated in the context of the whole will build momentum and action toward the business results we’re after.
To move from a series of campaigns to composition takes a change in perspective. It means looking at the events in context and understanding how each event impacts the other as well as how separately and together they support the overall business objectives over time.
It means understanding what these events separately and together look like from an employee [insert any other important stakeholder here] point of view. What does success look like? If the new brand [insert any important business event/announcement here] is a success, what will we see? Specifically how will it advance the business? What are the proof points? How and when will we know? How will we tell that story over time?
As business leaders isn’t it time to insist on integrated communications strategies that will help build business momentum. Isn’t it time to move from communications campaigns to composition?
Random Posts:
Bursting our bubbles
When I’m at my clients, here in the blogosphere, volunteering, or with my family and friends I tend to find myself in groups that are mostly white, mostly of a certain age and economic level. I’m in a bubble.
And, it struck me over the head again a few weeks ago. I was attending the Living Art, a week-long workshop on creating. I looked up early in the training and realized it was one of the most diverse group of people I might ever have been in [not counting the Apple store on St Catherine's Street here in Montreal - for another post].
There we were 24 of us. A few more women than men, but not by much. Ages ranged from 21 to 75. The youngest was an African American who’d served in the military and was now studying writing at Columbia Univerity. The 75 year old was a contemporary art expert and the daughter of holicaust survivors. There were two married couples. Two french Canadians, an Aussie, a Kiwi [affectionate term for someone from New Zealand] and a German. There were three East Indian Americans. There were about 4 students and one full-time mom. There was a chiropractor and a financier.
There were so many points of view. A rich and wide range of ideas. Over the 7 days, we worked together on a number of projects all designed to help us build our capacity to create. It was an amazing experience.
Back to reality. According to an article earlier this month, it will take women in Canada 151 years at the rate we’re going “before the share of men and women at the management level” will be equal.
That’s not just shocking because we know that women make up almost half of the work force in Canada, or that women make most of the buying decisions, but because we know lack of diversity hurts “employee retention, productivity and innovation.”
So, when are we going to learn and burst this bubble?
Random Posts:
Back to school. Back to work.
Rene Magritte’s famous painting Golconde. Work as a formalized dreary rainy man’s world.
This image, seems so right and so wrong. Today, after the official end of summer holidays here in North America and in much of the western world, we are returning to our work routines.
The good news. The opportunity for change is perhaps as great as at any time of the year as plans will be submitted for final approval for 2012 [and in some cases beyond].
Time to think about the institution’s real values. Time to think about the culture that will best suit your institutional objectives given those values. Time to make the business case for investing in the capacity to make it happen.
Random Posts:
Smile!
… and the world smiles with you! Or not, according to an article in today’s Globe and Mail. How and when we smile depend on “gender, race, culture, and class”.
It’s interesting to think about the impact this small thing, a smile, has on our boardrooms and workplaces. As an example: ”Impassive facial expressions are the default for men” and “women are more likely to… return a smile and … to smile when the are disappointed.”
So, the people in power aren’t smiling [men hold 86% "of board seats among the 500 largest Canadian companies"] and their women employees are out there smiling even when they are disappointed. See a problem here?
If employee involvement is our goal, then maybe we need to start with a smile!
Have a great weekend!
Random Posts:
Sucky values suck!
It was impossible to disagree with Robert Fritz when he said, at a training I participated in last week, that:
“Organizations are amoral in and of themselves.
It’s human beings in organizations that have values.
It’s leaders that must impose values.”
So, when I read the most recent Maritz poll results (2010, USA), I had to conclude that leaders may be imposing values, but they aren’t the ones that are being communicated by Corporate communications and HR professionals.
The survey found that “despite a slight improvement in business conditions, the American workforce remains less engaged with their employers than they did one year ago. Poor communications, lack of perceived caring, inconsistent behavior, and perceptions of favoritism were cited by respondents as the largest contributors to their lack of trust in senior leaders.” Specifically:
- Only 7% believe senior management’s actions are completely consistent with their words.
- 14 % of employees believe their company’s leaders are ethical and honest.
- Only 12 % believe their employer genuinely listens to and cares about employees.
- Only 10 % of employees trust management to make the right decision in times of uncertainty.
- About 25 % of employees distrust management more than they did the year before.
What is especially disheartening is that these same leaders are reading this report and year over year seeing the same results disappointing results. What are they making of it? Do they see employee involvement in their businesses as a must have or as a nice to have? What’s keeping them up at night if it’s not this?
Sucky values suck!
Thanks to Hacking Work and Communication at work for bringing this poll to my attention.
Random Posts:
Changing your point of view changes everything!
We’re busy. We’re very, very busy. We’re announcing new strategies. We’re launching refreshed brands and new identities. We’re introducing new values. We’re introducing new products and services. We’re up-sizing and downsizing and reorganizing. We’re changing processes and systems. We’re reducing costs and increasing investment. We’re changing our culture to be more innovative, collaborative, flexible, [insert other]. We want our employees to be engaged, loyal, and proud of the organization they work for so we’re “communicating” and “communicating” and “communicating”.
Changing your point of view is an important source of insight and understanding. Today, I’m wondering if this isn’t what it all looks like from an employees point of view.
Random Posts:
Two days. Two stories.
It started at a recent lunch with a past client. She’s a senior executive who’s been around the board rooms of some of Canada’s largest and most influential companies for most of her career. We were talking about the ‘soft’ side of institutional life and the potential power there is in strengthening the employee relationship. “I agree with you”, she said. Then came the bomb… ”but unfortunately the executives I know just aren’t interested. This is simply not on the agenda in the C-Suite”.
Fast forward a few days and I’m attending an evening with Dr. Jody Heymann, Canada Research Chair in Global Health and Social Policy and head of McGill’s institute for Health and Social Policy. She and Magda Barrera co-authored the recently published book “Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder: Creating Value by Investing in Your Workforce”. After years of research their conclusions are simple – listen to employees [especially those ‘at the bottom’], treat them with respect and you will reap the rewards of higher profits. This is not necessarily new news. Nor is it a surprise. It makes sense that you treat people well and they will be more engaged and productive.
So, how do we think about this apparent discrepancy between the research results and C-suite priorities? What’s going on?
Random Posts:
Celebrating failure
Engineers without borders publishes something called a failure report. They “…believe that success in development is not possible without taking risks and innovating – which inevitably means failing sometimes.” And, they go on to say that they “…also believe that it’s important to publicly celebrate these failures, which allows us to share the lessons more broadly and create a culture that encourages creativity and calculated risk taking.”
Talk about missing the point. The organizational objective isn’t failure. The organizational objective is learning. Celebrating failure isn’t the same as celebrating learning.
And for me it raises a question. How is it that good ideas like organizationally learning becomes something that ‘glorifies’ failure. Is it really so hard to learn from our organizational failures?
For two other perspectives, more individually than institutionally focused check out:
- Steven Parker’s post “Are you part of the cult of failure?”
- Bill Jensen’s post “I F@#ked Up: Big Time… Introspection is Hard!”
Random Posts:
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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Recent posts
- Do you know the 3 best headline writing tricks ever … anyone can do, guaranteed!
- You have a presentation to make
- Shocking news!
- Shining eyes
- Why oh why do presenters put so, so much text on their PowerPoint slides?
- Be aware, be very aware
- If the US Army is embracing social media, you can too!
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