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.
Social media
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.
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After 168 years, what changed?
As anyone who is on the ‘grid’ knows by now, News of the World, once the most widely read newspaper in the world will be no more after Sunday’s last edition. Why? What changed after 168 years in business?
One reporter suggested: “In the ongoing battle to maintain circulation and stay relevant to readers in the electronic age, News of the World editors and reporters had conspired to adopt news-gathering practices that plainly violated ethical codes of conduct.” I think a little background reading and it’s pretty clear that they’ve been violating ethical codes of conduct for quite some time. Long before electronic age competition. Let’s face it, the combination “of grisly crime and adulterous sex” sold papers.
I think the seeds of today’s story were sown long ago. Back at the very beginning, in 1843, when News of the World’s first edition announced … ”Our practice is the fearless advocacy of truth. [We] will seek for the patronage of no party …will conceal neither the merits nor the faults of any party, but… will aim alone at doing good service to old England by maintaining her glory and security, the prosperity of all classes of the people.”
This is a strong and clear ‘mission statement’. In fact, after a quick read you might want to leap into action for “good ol’ England” [even if you are Canadian]. Too bad, because upon closer inspection, their founding motto left the door open to everything that has followed. Truth at all cost is the message. Over the century and a half they’ve been in business, employees were empowered by these words. A culture that “advocated for truth” was left to run rampant even if it meant breaking the law.
In 2006, one reporter was sent to prison for hacking the royal families phone lines. Nothing changed except that News of the World now began paying millions of dollars on a series of high profile libel settlements.
In January 2011, one former editor was forced to resign as the spokesperson for the British Prime Minister. And, since then, 3 other colleagues and another freelancer have been arrested and released on bail. Allegations of corruption and phone hacking continued to mount. Police investigations were ongoing. Still nothing changed at News of the World as far as we can tell.
But, on Monday of this week a “British freelance magazine editor began calling for advertisers to ‘reconsider’ their financial support of News of the World” on Twitter after the most recent and most appalling accusations relating to a kidnapping and death surfaced. And they did. That’s what changed.
And, today, just 5 days after his first tweet, 200 employees have been told they will lose their jobs as of Sunday. The former editor is being held for questioning. The Prime Minister promised public inquiries.
Twitter, that’s what changed!
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The [r]evolution of storytelling.
Unbelievably, yesterday was TED’s 5th anniversary. The TED talks have enriched our lives and learning over the past few years. For those of us who find it hard to break free of our bubbles – personal and professional – TED is an amazing gift and window on other worlds and other thinking.
Thanks to a good friend and a link on FaceBook, I celebrated this milestone in a special way. This collage and animation of TED sound bites inspired in less than 2 minutes! So put your brand marketing, human resources, and/or communications professionals hats on, and think about this:
Are you part of the [r]evolution? If not now, when?
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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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The challenge – Change the profession!
We’ve heard it all before. The traditional approach to corporate communications – tightly “scripted messages delivered by the chief executive, first to investors, then to other opinion-formers, and only later to the mass audiences of employees and consumers“ has got to go.
And it needs to be replaced by vibrant “peer-to-peer and horizontal discussion across stakeholders. [Where] the employee is the new credible source for information about a company, giving insight from the front lines. [And], the consumer has become a co-creator, demanding transparency on decisions from sourcing to new-product positioning.” [Ref for these quotes]
And yet, even as Web and Intranet 2.0 are about to become 3.0 we’re still working through 1.0 [ok maybe 1.5]. And if you have any doubt, just pop into CommScrum to check out the animated discussion going on there over what and how our main professional association IABC is or isn’t serving the needs of our profession in this new world.
As early as 2007, Arthur W Pages’ publication, the Authentic Enterprise in 2007, presented recommendations for transforming “our profession, open[ing] up new and meaningful kinds of responsibility and learning, and creat[ing] exciting new career paths for communications professionals. If you haven’t read it, it’s a great starting point for thinking about the revolution of our profession.
And, in June, after months of online consultation, The Stockholm Accords were published. Their aim “… is to articulate and establish the role of public relations in the “communicative organization” within a fast-evolving digital and value-network society.” [I think the authors would do well to refer back to the Authentic Enterprise].
We know what we need to do, so what’s stopping us?
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Social media are rocking our world
Social media are changing what we do and how we do it. With our families. With our friends. With strangers. With our colleagues. At play. At work. Social media haven’t even come of age and they are already rocking our world.
Nowhere will these changes be more profound than in our workplaces. Social media are changing basic assumptions about how we organize to get things done.
| Was | Will be [if it's not already] |
| Centralization | Decentralization |
| Formal hierarchy | Informal networks |
| Chain of command | Collaboration |
| Central planning | Collective learning |
| Bureaucracy | Community |
| Departments | Tribes |
| High control | High accountability |
| Machine models | Complex adaptive systems |
I don’t for one second think that it’s as clear cut as this conversation makes it out.
I don’t believe institutions of the future will operate fully one way or the other. They will need to find the right balance – their right balance – given the nature of the work.
And, social media create institution-wide opportunities for connecting that simply didn’t exist for large organizations before. Social media are already driving changes in behaviour, attitudes and expectations. They are already having a profound effect on our institutions and the role of the managers who run them.
What is certain is that the function of management is changing. The days when power and authority based on hierarchy alone is gone. Instead, managers will need to be influencers. Facilitators. Consensus-builders.
And, it is certain that this will change the function of institutional communications especially internal communications. In a world where managers are influencers, what is the role of internal communications? In a world where employees will have access to what they need, when and how they need it [thanks Bill Jensen, Work 2.0], will the internal communications function even need to exist?
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Great idea #1 – Mayo Clinic’s roving video reporter
An occasional post on a really great idea for internal communications – simple and high impact.
The Mayo Clinic is not only a globally recognized medical institution but it turns out they’re pretty accomplished communicators too.
They’ve created the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media “to improve health globally by accelerating effective application of social media tools throughout Mayo Clinic and spurring broader and deeper engagement in social media by hospitals, medical professionals and patients.” Now that is a great idea!
And, one of the best internal communication ideas I’ve seen in a long time takes the old idea of a reporter at large and refreshes it creating a video reporter at large.
A member of the Mayo Clinic’s internal communication team [i.e. an employee] roams the halls and interviews staff and patients with a videographer in tow. The reporter happens to be fun and charismatic. The choices of topics interesting and aligned to their overall brand positioning. Scripted and unscripted. And the pacing just right. And, bonus, they post it on YouTube and link it on their website, getting both internal and external impact. It really works.
The Mayo Clinic’s approach is a real contrast to the usual talking heads and static interview style of most internal videos. A simple idea. Executed well. It’s great. Take a look.
Now, this production is pretty snazzy. So for those of you who are thinking – yes, but… here are a couple of things to think about.
1: Hand held cameras create videos people really trust, so, maybe the production values in most other contexts would actually work against it in some way.
2: You can produce professional looking video at very low cost today. What it takes is a little imagination. My 15 year old nephew Matthew is making great video productions using a 3 year old JVC camera and using editing software he got online. He doesn’t even use an external mike.
The potential’s incredible. So, grab your teenager’s video camera and editing software. Find yourself the right stories and the right employee reporter and go. Have some fun!
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Recent posts
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