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.
Cultural norms
Not all stakeholders are created equal. Now what?
- Partners would inform each other immediately – face-to-face or by text or by email – of the outcome.
- Employees directly involved on the pitch, in the office and in other offices, would also be informed as quickly as possible and ideally in a face-to-face meeting [conference call or Skype if necessary because of the schedules of the partners] with a chance for them to learn the outcome and discuss the implications for the team. This meeting would be relatively short.
- Other employees – depending on the size and nature of the news and it’s implications – would either receive an e-mail [while the pitch team was in their meeting] inviting them to a small group meeting with their partner, or to gather with the pitch team for a celebration or mourning
- Peers and colleagues outside the office would be informed as appropriate after that
- The partners and pitch team would create opportunities for debriefing and learning within the days following the news.
Random Posts:
“We didn’t know…” Now what?
Two very different stories, and the same response – “We didn’t know…” – were in the news this week.
The first was very close to home. Just down the street, in fact, where last week the “Truth and reconciliation committee national meeting” was being held here in Montreal and where victims of the residential school system broke 150 years of ‘silence’ to tell their stories of mental, physical and sexual abuse. How could we not know? And yet we didn’t. Now we do.
The second was very far from home and yet as close as your closet. Nearly 400 workers at a textile factory in Rana Plaza near Dhaka, Bangladesh died when their building collapsed. Numbers may grow even higher since it is estimated nearly 2000 people were believed to be inside on Wednesday morning when the building crashed in on itself and the people that worked there. For a very compelling interview check out CBC Day 6]. How could companies not know that these health and safety violations were being perpetrated within their supply chain. And yet they didn’t. Now they do. And so do we.
One thing that is true is that once you know you can’t go back and perhaps that’s the dilemma. That’s what makes it easier to look the other way? Not to ask enough questions.
But, now that we do know there are two questions that we need to be answer:
- How could we not know? How, where, and when did communication break down?
- Now we know, what needs to happen so these human rights violations never happen again? What role can communication play?
[For more on this see related posts: Learning from the Vatican part 1, part 2, and part 3]
Random Posts:
Worker health and safety and you
It’s a shocking fact that according to Canada’s health and safety website, “… every year work-related injuries and diseases cause nearly 1,000 deaths” in Canadian companies and organizations. That is nearly 3 work related deaths per day! That’s in a country with a relatively small population and well-publicised and enforced worker rights.
So, even though the two recent worker disasters in Bangladesh:
- a fire killed at least 112 garment workers at Bangladesh’s Tazreen factory who were locked in
- the building collapse at Rona Plaza that has reportedly killed nearly 400
The question remains what is the real cost of fast fashion and our seemingly insatiable demand for stuff? How many Bangladeshis are dying as a direct result of health and safety issues that could and should be changed? We don’t know. What we do know is that these deaths are avoidable.
Time to think about the impact of the story of stuff on workers…
What does health and safety and workers rights look like in your organization? Your supply chain? What role can we, as leaders and professional communicators, do to change this very human disaster?
Random Posts:
Innovation. You gotta be a little bit crazy!
Looking back to an Apple ad from 1997 for a little inspiration.
Where are the “crazy ones” in your world? “The misfits? The rebels? The trouble makers? The square pegs in round holes? The ones who see things differently?” Where are the people crazy enough to change the world in your organization?
What are you doing as an institution to support and encourage their crazy world changing ideas? If you’re looking for innovation, this may just be what it takes.
Random Posts:
Telecommuting. The promise and the reality.
“We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.”
What? With that short message to all employees last week Yahoo opened the door to some pretty strong feedback from the blogosphere. Immediate reaction from outside has been pretty negative. And, one can imagine even stronger negative reaction from affected employees.
I think we can safely assume Yahoo has strong business reasons – beyond what was stated in the employee memo – for making what is a very bold announcement. From the business side of things, we know we’re never going back to 40 hour work weeks so one might wonder how Yahoo is going to pull this off. And in the coming days and weeks the implications of the decision on the business will be clearer.
In the meanwhile, let’s take this opportunity to think about telecommuting – the promise and the reality of telecommuting from an employee point of view.
Social technologies have made it easier and easier to work where, when and how we want. And that can be a very good thing.
But, is the choice of where, when and how to work really our choice? When you’re accessible 24/7/52, are you expected to be available 24/7/52? I certainly know of organizations where that is the expectation no matter what any handbooks say.
Are your human relationships – work, family and friends – enriched or diminished by the technology?
Is it easier or harder to get/be part of teams working to create meaningful outcomes for yourself, your organization, your community?
The Yahoo! policy, opens up the opportunity to think about the kind of places, choices and ways of working employees really want.
It’s just not as black and white as the initial reaction would have it. What do you think?
Random Posts:
“How do we shut Twitter off?”
Reportedly this was a question asked by a senior marketing executive at HMV when some head office employees went rogue on Twitter after learning they were losing their jobs.
Here are my questions:
- Given the importance of social media today, how responsible is it for senior executives not to have even a basic understanding of what social media are? How they work or don’t work? Isn’t it time for executives to get online and start partipating in the social media revolution? [BTW I would ask the same thing of concerned parents whose children will inevitably be on social media]
- Will your culture protect you from rogue employees if/when the going gets tough? If not, what needs to change.
Random Posts:
Building practical institutional wisdom
The psychologist Barry Schwartz, says in his fascinating TED Talk from 2009, that any job that involves working with people is moral work. It’s hard to imagine any institutional work that isn’t moral work.
According to Schwartz moral work depends upon practical wisdom. Building the reflex to know and do what is right is practical wisdom. But, he also says this skill is destroyed by the over reliance on rules and incentives. Since so many of our organizations are so rules and incentives oriented this can’t be a good thing.
How does your organization encourage moral skill and moral will? How well are you doing in building practical institutional wisdom?
For some inspiration, and some practical approaches to building moral capacity, check out Schwartz’s talk:
With thanks to the Charter for Compassion and Marilyn Turkovich for bringing this TED Talk to my attention.
Random Posts:
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.
Random Posts:
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?
Random Posts:
Employee involvement. It’s not magic!
It’s coming up on that time of year again. Year end results. Launching new strategies and plans – for brands, for products, for businesses. The big employee event. And, maybe an employee campaign.
A recent article in the Globe and Mail, “A question of engagement: do you employees want to come to work?” got me thinking about this. According to the report, 67% of Canadian employees aren’t engaged. They would rather be somewhere else, doing something else than coming to work. The article goes on to make two important points:
- An engaged workforce isn’t necessarily a happy workforce. [think about nurses - super engaged, but given their working conditions not so happy]
- An engaged workforce isn’t necessarily a productive workforce. [it may be a contributing factor, but just one of many]
- in knowing what they’re expected to do and how that work contributes to the overall ‘customer’ experience
- in having what they need – information, tools, workspaces – to make it easy for them to do their jobs well
- by developing leaders that know how to listen and to respond as well as to tell and motivate.
Sign up for mailing list
Recent Posts
- 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
- Our preoccupation with innovation. Is it just “lipstick on a pig”?
Authors
Recent posts
- 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
- Our preoccupation with innovation. Is it just “lipstick on a pig”?
- Anatomy of an internal announcement. Top 3 lessons from Yahoo!
- Google Glass at work!?