Black Belt Dojo (Australia)

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

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.