Black Belt Dojo (Australia)

Black Belt Brisbane is in full swing

Sixteen of the best from road to rail and beyond, have gathered for 3 days of sharing and learning at our Black Belt program. It's day two and after surviving measures! the team have crafted great messages to match their audience and now just applying those effective channels..

Creative bunch with some great play doh models and very good audience segmentation with, Bazza, Wazza, Shazza or something like that!

 
We have already cracked open the Flake's (Chocolate that is). The Play Doh talent is certainly worthy of a mention.

 

New 2010 Black Belt dates

Apologies everyone for sadly neglecting this blog. There are always many excuses for such things, and most of them are boring, so I won't bother going there. Instead, I'll get straight into announcing the exciting news for Black Belt for the remainder of 2010.

If you've missed out on a spot in our sold-out Melbourne and Sydney courses, there are now more chances for you to attend!

Black Belt will be coming to Brisbane for the first time from 5-7 October. That is your last chance to do a Black Belt program in Australia until our 2011 dates are announced, so give Melcrum a call soon to make sure you don't miss out.

After the success of Black Belt in Singapore back in May, we're holding another Asian program, this time in Hong Kong from 16-18 November. 

The other big news for Black Belt is the launch of the first ever Black Belt Advanced program, which will be held in Sydney from 31 August to 2 September. The Advanced program is designed for anyone who is the lead internal communicator in the organisation, who has significant experience, perhaps leads a team, and is looking to take the next step in their career. Contact Melcrum for more information.  

Adrian and I look forward to seeing you on a Black Belt program soon, or for our alumni, on our Linked In group.

Cheers,
Melissa

The creativity continues at Black Belt

Only day one of the Melbourne Black Belt program and the Play Doh talent is showing.. Wow what an advanced group we have..hehehe

Oh and lot's of learning sharing and development happening as our group of telented Internal Communication managers head towards being our next Black Belt graduates.

Enjoy the program team

2009 Black Belt in full swing

Here we are again, Melcrum's Black Belt program is in full swing, new format, new team and as usual plenty of fun. We are now in to day two of module one.. So far we have explored 'The case for internal communication' and 'Connecting internal communication with the business strategy' and right now Melissa is working through 'What Channels' keeping everyone laughing with the Deloitte film festival video.

I am just knocking glasses off the table and disrupting the Melissa's flow...yeah right!

As always we capture a group photo of our new Black Belter's what a great looking group they are too.

Good luck team... Enjoy Black Belt 2009

Black Belt in 2009

Hi all,

The dates for Black Belt in 2009 are now available. The four day Internal Communication course will be held:

7-8 April and 4-5 May, UNSW CBD Campus, Sydney
5-6 August and 19-20 August, MBS Carlton Campus, Melbourne

In response to feedback from participants, this year, the course is not residential. We hope this makes the course more affordable for some people who have been keen to attend but have been held back by budget restrictions.

There are also a number of Masterclasses being held during 2009.

The "Making Managers Better Communicators" Masterclasses were held in Feb (and you can view my blog for an overview on what happened there).

Writing and Editing will be held in May in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.

Communicating Change will be held in June/July in Brisbane, Sydney and Perth.

Check out Melcrum for all the details.

You can also see Adrian and I presenting at the Change Communication Conference in Melbourne in April. We'll be running a workshop and a session during the conference itself.

Hope to see you sometime this year and for all our Melcrum alumni, give us a shout to let us know how 2009 is unfolding for you!

Cheers, Melissa

Creative Communicators at Black Belt Sydney

Well here we are in Sydney MGSM for the last of our 2008 Black Belt programs.. What a great group of Internal Communicators from Queensland, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and the land of the long white cloud (New Zealand).. Don't mention the rugby!

A sunny and warm couple of days, just to make our English counterparts jealous of course. But the hidden talents that we talked about on day one, were nothing compared to the creative talents displayed by participants during Module 2.. Play Doh rocks!

Our lovely group enjoying the sun in Sydney.

Some creative Play Doh'ers

Congratulations to our latest Black Belt graduates! it was wonderful working with you.

To all our Black Belt Graduates during 2008. Have a happy and safe Christmas and look forward to blogging again!

Our latest graduates

What a nice little group of new graduate 'Black Belter's' Melissa Dark and I are finishing up with one of our smallest groups and 4 new graduates of the Black Belt Internal Communications program. While Melissa is presenting on Social Media, I am sitting at the back of the room setting up Twitter for the first time and updating of course the Dojo.

Here are the lovely people from the program - Congratulations new Black Belter's and my hope is to have them all go on and do their accreditation to add yet another valuable string to their bow as professional communicators

Of course quite a topic of conversation was the current climate and what this means to communicators showing their value in organisations, as well as the challenges of managing change within organisations. More on that later anyway for now if you want to Twitter me i am at  acropley. Yeah boring name! 

Black Belt - Sydney August 2008

Well the latest new recruits to Black Belt Australia are currently in the last session of the last day of our MGSM program.

Hmmmm and the smarties have just stumped Melissa and I with a stunning presentation of the Globex change strategy... What a great idea to break down the pilot of the Call Centre in India, to being a 4th centre rather than an excercise of potential outsorcing and reduction in staff... Great example of 'breaking down a big change, into small manageable pieces'

Well done...

For your sins.. Here is your lovely photo's on the WWW. Thanks for the fun team!

Innovative ways to get your message across

Well, we’re under way with our third group of Aussie Black Belters completing module 1 of the course in Mount Eiza last week. We had a yet another wonderful group of people and some amazing discussions and conversations about all sort of challenges for internal comms professionals.

One of the great little items we came across to share was this fantastic Deloitte Film Festival behind-the-scenes film on You Tube. It's a great take on an employment branding campaign that used a really different approach - getting their own employees to talk about the organisation and what it's like to work there by making short films. You can watch all the winning films on You Tube too. One of them, The Green Dot, has been watched more than 15,000 times. I don't know about you, but not only do I love the idea I think the execution is amazing.

I also think the Green Dot hero can teach internal communicators a thing or two about telling others what they do for a living. (Cape optional, of course!)

Objectives, schmectives...

Having just returned from judging the Gold Quill awards in San Francisco (an amazing and invaluable experience) as well as preparing for the upcoming Blackbelt Strategy and Planning Masterclass, I’ve had cause to think seriously about communication objectives.

Back at uni we were all taught that objectives MUST be written using the SMART principles (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound) and when I’ve lectured in the past I’ve said the same thing. So why don’t we do it as practitioners?

Of course, I know some people do, but from reading through award submissions, it’s not as automatic as we might think. And, I must admit, I certainly have been guilty of writing some pretty fuzzy objectives at times.

The thing is, if we want to show the value of internal comms, we have to set targets for ourselves. The frustrating thing about reading some of the Gold Quill entries, was that some fabulous work had been done and some great results achieved. But if you achieved a $1m cost saving without setting any target, how do we know that’s any good? What if you should have achieved $10m? What if you set out to achieve $10,000? How can I, as a judge (or your CEO or senior management), know whether you’re worth it?

I'll leave Adrian to wax lyrical about the measurement side of things. My point is, set objectives. Set SMART objectives. Measure your results. Learn from them. It's the only way to prove your worth to the world and to yourself.