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.
Mitch Joel
You have a presentation to make
You get there just in time, find the room, and grab an empty seat. The event begins and you sit patiently listening to the other speakers and making small talk with the people at your table. Finally, after an hour and half of waiting, it’s your turn. You look around the room as you’re being introduced. The applause begins. You take your time getting to your feet, shake hands with the people at your table, and make your way in slow measured steps to the lectern. Taking out your notes, you straighten your jacket, clear your throat, and looking back at the screen where your PowerPoint slides are flashing you begin: “I hope everybody can hear me. These don’t look like the right slides.”
What do you think is the single greatest mistake made by this presenter? There are a great many, but one might you might have missed is: “you sit patiently listening to the other speakers and … .”
Recently I had a conversation with my friend Mitch Joel, the marketing guru who wrote the book Six Pixels of Separation, and writes the newspaper column and blog by the same name. Mitch is president of the Montreal-based marketing agency Twist Image and makes a lot of high-profile keynote presentations. Anything he says about presentation I listen to. You might want to as well. What does he do before the presentation begins? He said that in the time immediately before he goes on he focuses entirely on what he is going to say, his message, and getting his energy up. Pacing up and down. Rehearsing before a mirroir. Whatever it takes. You might not give many keynote presentations, so you might not think you have to go to all this effort. After all it takes alot of dedication, concentration, and discipline, to be a professional speaker, but then again you might want to give it a try. It just might be what you need to do:
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The ultimate question & employees
I just listened to my favourite podcast, Mitch Joel’s “Six Pixels of Separation”. In this episode, Mitch spoke with Fred Reichheld. Not surprisingly, since Mitch is a brand marketing expert and Fred is a customer loyalty expert and author of the Loyalty Effect and the Ultimate Question, their conversation focused on the customer and the ultimate question: Have I treated you in a way that is worthy of your loyalty?
So, what does that have to do with employees and employee communication? Imagine asking the ultimate question to employees. I did. And, it made me think that perhaps we should be scrapping our annual employee surveys and instead start tracking the employees answer to this one question.
What could we learn by knowing whether our employees were “Promoters, Passives, or Detractors”? Would an employee net promoter score actually tell us more than we’re learning from our annual engagement and job satisfaction surveys? Would it be easier to administer and manage? Would the results be easier to communicate and act upon? Could that deeper understanding help us better achieve our business goals and build toward sustainable success fast?
Even if you don’t think this is the ultimate employee question, the idea of the one question employee survey is an idea who’s time has come.
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Storytelling, media & me
Today, I read an article about the growing demand for people who are able to tell stories in every media - photographs, text, audio, video, alone or in any combination - and made the case for pr [read communications] professionals to build these skills. The medium, it seems, really is the message.
So, I thought it was a good time to check in and see where we stand in this world of ‘content’ production.
Me? For the past couple of years I’ve been experimenting with different social media and getting used to writing and sharing ideas and stories online - here, as support to Michael for From Marshall and me, on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and FourSquare [which after much frustration I've stopped using] and by commenting on other blogs when I feel I have something to add to the discussion. I’ve attended a two Montreal PodCamps and several Third Tuesdays to get a deeper understanding of what technologies and applications are out there, how they are used, and what opportunities there are for institutional communications. I’ve met amazing people - Mitch Joel, Julien Smith and Michelle Sullivan - who have advised, provoked and inspired.
In the past few months, I’ve been revisiting and rebuilding my structural thinking and consulting skills. The most recent training was last week. I attended a fabulous 5-day Advanced training with Robert and Rosalind Fritz. The importance and power of structure to the creative process and in storytelling was clearly evident. I always knew this training was key to my professional consulting practice. Now I know it is key to being a good storyteller.
Today, I’m officially committing myself to the next step in my journey to create compelling content and learning how to share it in different ways. Sure, I will continue to blog and do the stuff I’ve been doing, and, over the coming months I’ll be learning and building mastery [OK getting competent] with as many communications technologies and applications as I can.
This is a pretty big step for me. As those of you who know me will attest I’m no geek! Here’s my starting point. What technology is usable and what’s not!
Ouch! And, it is a secondary choice to a primary choice to producing great, compelling stories that I can share. Standby.
You? I’d love to hear about what you’re doing to build your storytelling and media skills? What were your successes? What did you learn from your failures? What can you recommend?
BTW: I’ve already started experimenting with my new camera [Canon S95] [no commercial relationship]. I’m still not working with the SLR or video features, but I’m looking forward to that. And, the scanner is plugged in and ready to go so that I can start a family project I’ve been thinking about for years. An opportunity to experiment and learn to tell a different story in a new way…
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Making “magic in the marketplace”
Today, thanks to Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation, I came across this key note address by Bill Taylor, the founding editor of Fast Company Magazine and author of Practically Radical: Not-So-Crazy ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself.
Here’s what really caught my attention: ”You can’t build something special, compelling, distinctive in the marketplace unless you also build something special, compelling distinctive in the workplace… Strategy is your culture. Culture is your strategy. Success today is about so much more than just price, performance, features, technology, pure economic value. It’s about passion, emotion, identity, sharing your values… Real magic in the marketplace is when you make your organization more memorable to encounter.”
And that my friends can’t happen when the relationship with employees is the last thing on the C-Suite’s agenda! It can’t happen when leaders do not trust employees [though they expect employees to trust them], where leaders are not loyal to employees [though they expect loyalty from them] and where they are not proud of employees and the work they do [though they expect employees to be proud of the leadership and the organizations they work for]. Broken cultures on the inside will always show on the outside sooner or later!
Recommend you take the 20+ minutes [Bill comes in at about minute 4] to watch it. Some great stuff on bench marking too!
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Can we use video to reinvent … internal communications?
In a recent post, Mitch Joel introduced me to Salman Khan.
At about minute 7, Salman got my attention when he talked about how teachers used his YouTube videos as homework and changed the nature of their time with students in the classroom. Now, instead of classroom time being “one-size fits all lectures to 30 kids fingers on their lips and blank faces, looking slightly antagonistic”, the time is spent in the classroom is on working together with their peers on problems that advance their learning. This way, the students learn are able to pause, repeat and watch the video ‘lectures’ in their own way and time to build to mastery. By minute 15, I was sitting up as he described how the teachers have used technology to humanize the classroom.
The potential link between what Salman describes and the way we orient employees and build their institutional competence is clear. And, using this approach to inspire the creation of powerful leadership development programs pretty obvious.
But, can we use technology to humanize the workplace? Think about your corporate internal communications? How much employee to human time are your employees getting – with peers, with direct reports, with their supervisors and executives? And how can we make that time together more valuable – to the employee and the institution – by making it more human? And, can technology help? [more soon]
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Will 2011 be a reap year?
A friend of mine, Eunice Ajambo, is starting an NGO for educating young women entrepreneurs in Uganda [UgWO - sorry no website yet]. In a recent e-mail she said she felt next year was going to be a year of reaping. Of course we won’t know until this time next year. Today, what I know is that 2010 for me was a year of learning and consolidating. And it was fabulous in so many ways.
As a communications professional, I’ve been trying to find ways to explore social media in a more direct way. Move my understanding from theory to experience to practice.
This blog is part of that exploration. I was fortunate to have met Mitch Joel a few years ago and he got me seriously thinking about it. Interestingly that turned into my husband Michael diving in first with his ode to Marshall McLuhan. But, thanks to Mitch I started reading more blogs and commenting – building my nerve as it were. And thanks to that voyage I’ve met a whole raft of amazing professionals through CommScrum. These connections have felt a bit like coming home – but a lot less warm and fuzzy.
The turning point on blogging for me happened earlier this year with the encouragement of Michelle Sullivan, Leslie Quinton, and Lisa Chandler – who all in their own way said: “Come on, who are you kidding, you’ve got opinions on everything. Just do it.” Thanks ladies – I think. I’ve learned more about what I really think and value than I ever expected. Putting your ideas down and pressing post is a very humbling experience.
But for me not nearly as humbling as my experiments with Twitter. Here I’m still a bit lost. Tamsen McMahon @tamadear, my apologies for not responding to your response to my tweet. It’s not because I didn’t want to. It’s because I didn’t and still don’t know how. Sigh. Much more learning to do here.
There have been other experiments – FourSquare, Sharepoint, Goodreads, Skype, Facebook, LinkedIn. Some of them have been a success and are now fully integrated into my way of working and living. And others haven’t. And there’ve been some challenging and provocative conversations [Julien Smith – you know you are].
All of this is making me a better professional. And though I’m sure there will be a few more Mount Everests of social media for me to climb, the journey so far has been very enriching.
Next year may be a reap year as my friend suggested, I just hope the learning and the opportunity to meet new communities of like-minded [or not] people continues. I wish the same for you in 2011.
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Places worth caring about
“The emersive ugliness of our everyday environments… is entropy made visible. We can’t overestimate the despair we are creating…”
James Howard Kunstler
Wow! ”Entropy made visible.” ”Despair we are creating.”
Nowhere is that more true than in our places of work. These are mostly soulless places. Nothing that would build hope or confidence. Nothing of the brand experience we talk about and expect our employees to be so proud of and to deliver to our customers daily. Not even a hint of the business you’re in unless the corporate identity on the wall behind the reception desk gives a clue.
And, reception areas where the receptionist is missing. They lost their job two rightsizings ago.
Long characterless hallways. Rows of cubicles [no personal items please]. ‘Art’ that isn’t or motivational posters or nothing. Overly sterile washrooms. Kitchens where everything that matters – cups and cutlery are locked up. [You have to pay for your coffee as a cost control measure - my God you’re working 60+ hours a week at wages that were designed when people in your position worked 38.5].
Common areas that aren’t. No one wants to hang out there.
Boardrooms filled with chairs and designed for PowerPoint presentations not for people or work we really do or the collaboration and innovation virtually every organization today is aspiring for.
By the way, this description is focused on white collar environments. But I have to say that I’ve been in smelters that were more human and more appropriate than most office spaces I’ve been in.
We say we want to engage employees. What is there about the place you work in that is engaging? We say that the employee experience of the brand is a key element of culture. How does the design bring your brand to life for employees? If it’s not, then isn’t it time to get this on the Corporate agenda? How?
__________
Thanks to Mitch Joel for reminding me about James Howard Kunstler’s inspiring and funny TED talk.
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Tension that’s good for you
This past week two of my favourite blogs have posted about tension – In over your head and Six pixels of separation. They both refer to the need to create tension if you want to create. And the second, refers to a conversation I had with Mitch Joel the other day. I thought it would be worth expanding on that discussion here. Even Internal Communicators are creators at heart [and often in reality] after all.
So what is this tension? This tension isn’t emotional tension. It isn’t the kind of tension that’s caused by stress, anxiety, or fear. It is the kind of tension described by my friend and teacher Robert Fritz as structural tension. And, what’s great about this kind of tension is that once you know about it you can use it, design it into your life, your projects, your business to increase the likelihood of your achieving what you want.
Hmmm. Sounds a bit like magic doesn’t it. Well, it’s not. And on some level it will seem so obvious you will be scratching your head. And yet to master its force takes discipline and focus. Here are the basics.
First, know what you want to build, create, bring into being and by when [ Time is a powerful force for good in creating]. You can’t fake this part. You either really want it or you don’t. In the case of the discussion with Mitch that could be something like:
A fun, visually interesting blog for people like me who love baking and where I can share my favourite recipes ideas on healthy eating and observations on life [inspired by my friend Helen's blog]. My friends like it and are sharing it with their friends. I’ve posted [insert real number] posts and have [insert real number] followers by September 15, 2010.
Second, know where you stand in relationship to that end state. To me this is always the part that’s a bit tricky. We like to fool ourselves by making things a bit too good or bad about where we are in relationship to what we want. And that, can really muck up structural tension.
I have a cupboard full of recipes. I’ve got lots to say about my passion for baking and life. I have a handful of friends that I know will love this. I don’t know anything about publishing on line. I’m good at taking pictures but I don’t have a camera.
Now here’s the interesting thing. The more you really want and are passionate about the thing you’re trying to create and the more discrepant the end state and the current state are the more power there is in the system. And the actions you need to take just pop out [trust me, it's true. And that can create emotional tension. You'll get over it if you really want what you want.].
I need to start commenting on others blogs so I can get a feel for what it’s like. I need to find out about wordpress. Get a camera. And, get technical advice. And,….
So that’s structural tension. And that’s a very good thing.
In the conversation with Mitch we were talking about web analytics and how it can get you off track. How is that?
Well it doesn’t have to, but if it does this is what happens.
I want to create a blog that attracts my friends and people who love baking the way I do, so I create the blog and have a 100 followers.
And then you start tracking the analytics and realize that 100 isn’t a very big number of followers. After all Mr Big Blogger has 175,000+ followers and can get speaking gigs for $15,000 a time and…book deals and….
I want to get my numbers up, so I start doing things to get the numbers up.
Your focus shifts to building the numbers and away from the original spirit and intent of your blog. You start manipulating yourself and your readers. And when they’re not they create a structural conflict. Over time these competing forces will drive you away from the thing you wanted in the first place and kill the power of structural tension.
Now, here’s the good news. Once you’re aware of structural conflict you can choose. You can decide if you still want what you wanted when you started – a fun little blog with a few loyal followers. And if it is knowing where you stand against your end state is a good thing. Web analytics can help.
And, if not, it’s time to go back to basics and consciously build some structural tension.
Are your Internal Communications driven by structural tension or structural conflict? How can you tell? Something to think about.
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“Resistance is futile”
At first glance social media is pretty alien. It’s another technology getting in the way of face to face relationships. And, as communicators we know in our hearts this is not a good thing.
And yet this is the irony of social media. This technology that on the surface seems to dehumanize in the end enables us to accomplish one of the most human of all needs – to connect with each other.
In the past week or so I’ve been reading about how GM management believe that giving employees access to social media “humanizes” the company with their clients and potential clients. But, I’m afraid this misses the real power of social media: The power to “humanize” institutions internally.
The organizations that embrace social media on the inside are enabling their employees to connect with each other across:
- time,
- geography,
- function, and
- level.
They’re helping employees access the information and expertise they need, when and how they need it to do their work. They’re energizing not just the formal organizational networks, but the informal as well.
Today the number of organizations who are giving employees full access to social media inside and out are few. Tomorrow they will be many. “Resistance is futile.”
What will this change mean for the Corporate Communications or Internal Communications functions? Not only what we do, but how we do it. I’d love to hear what you think.
By the way, as predicted by my social media mentors – Michelle Sullivan, Julien Smith, and Mitch Joel - I’ve learned that social media doesn’t get in the way of face to face relationships. In fact, quite the opposite. And, that’s a very good thing. Thanks you guys.
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Recent posts
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- Why oh why do presenters put so, so much text on their PowerPoint slides?
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