Black Belt Dojo

give it a rest!

So ... is anyone actually managing to get a break over the festive season? Do businesses slow down anymore?

I've just said thanks but no thanks to some M&A work. I spent between last Christmas and new year waiting for the Ofcom decision on the ntl/Telewest merger, in between trying to unpack boxes in my new house. It finally came through on the afternoon of Friday 30th December - just when I'd decided it was probably safe to leave the house for an hour. Cue flurry of calls on the mobile saying "Sue! Quick! Where are you?!". 

This year I'm having a break.

A quick look on BBC Business on line reveals NASDAQ making a hostile takeover bid for the London Stock Exchange, the Bank of America 'eyeing Barclays', and two steel firms doing battle over who gets their mitts on Corus. Sounds like some of our comms colleagues will be having a busy old time over Christmas, and a fair few employees will be feeling a bit uncertain about what the new year will bring.

I remember when people used to bring games in on the last working day before Christmas and slope off down the pub at lunchtime, never to return til New Year. Oh for the good old days ...

Sue

PS  Now he's safely installed 'down under', Alex Manchester has started an Oz blog! It's an entertaining, non-work related read. And at least the posts about nasty poisonous things will keep you from getting depressed about the ones about glorious sunshine and barbies on the beach ...

Places for pics?

I seem to have been on istockphotos for ages this evening and I'm not getting very far finding the pics I want. In fact I can't figure why on earth it keeps coming up with half of them, given the search words I'm putting in. 

Still, some of the descriptions make me laugh. I just put in a search for 'choice' and it brought up a series of photos that are various combinations of 'sexy beautiful business woman'. In fact that's the exact title of one of them. Not quite sure what it's got to do with 'choice'. The mind boggles.

Anyone have any other recommendations for sites providing decent, low cost photography?  I know Timm isn't a fan of some of these sites...

Sue

Scary stats

I heard Monika Stafford, who heads up IC for Lloyds TSB, speak at a meeting last week. She quoted some statistics from a report that I hadn't seen before. Namely, that:

• UK companies 'lose' the equivalent of 36 days per employee, per year
• The estimated cost of poor UK productivity in 2005 was £70bn
• And here's the best bit ..'executives say poor Internal Communication is the prime cause'

It's from a document called the 2006 Productivity Report, by Proudfoot Consulting. I have to say, the summary is pretty sketchy about the detail. There's no mention of HOW exactly internal comms is apparently the cause of so much trouble, or what companies should do about it. Or indeed, what they mean by 'internal communication', which, let's face it, can encompass whatever you'd like it to. I've sent off for a copy of the full report to see if it's any more illuminating.

In any case, however they reached this conclusion, they HAVE reached the conclusion that poor internal comms is marking companies inefficient.  So the two worrying things are that, a) this is what the 'executives' interviewed for the report actually believed and b), as Monika pointed out, this report could well end up landing on your CEO's desk. Not the best thing for them to be reading before the annual budget round, maybe.

What do you think?  One to file under 'unsubstantiated high level statements', or no smoke without fire ...?

Sue

Stupid people stole my christmas...

Well folks I'm off tomorrow to New Zealand for three whole weeks.  I'm escaping the British Christmas for a chance to wear last Summer's shorts again and marvel at house prices somewhere outside the South East of England.

Although if you read the papers in this country you'd think I'm not actually going to miss much because all sorts of people are trying to ban Christmas.  Apparently a shadowy force is out there secretly removing the words "Christ" or "Jesus" from anything which could possibly offend those in our society who could possibly be offended.  No one has done a dawn raid on my house yet, but it seems it's only a matter of time before the swoop to check we've got non-demoninational advent calendars.

Luckily we're half Jewish so we can wave the menorah at the police who'll probably offer us conselling and compensation...

But it's a shame really - it's a shame that IT'S NOT TRUE!!!!

This may come as a bit of a shock but, newspapers in Britain have been making up stories.  Hard to credit, but apparently it's been happening.  It seems that there is very little evidence to show that anyone in authority has been trying to stamp out a festival that's been celebrated for quite a while (a couple of thousand years according to some estimates - but I don't know who to believe anymore).

There is some evidence that in one or two cases, STUPID people have decided to make up their own rules.  I can well imagine the same people who stopped the boys playing football at my son's primary school have relatives in the town halls in every district in the country - in fact in every country.

But you have to remember that these are STUPID People.  They have always existed and always will.  And in the future, newspapers will invent another conspiracy and use the acts of STUPID people to prove that there is a secret cabal planning to overthrow life as we know it.  And to paraphrase someone not at all stupid "All that is nescessary for STUPID to suceed, is for Not-Stupid people to do nothing."

So what's that got to do with internal communications?

Well, as I started ranting to myself, I kept thinking about those people in the workplace who invent bizarre reasons why you can't do stuff.  I'm not talking about the IT department who will claim that the technical thing you saw only last week working down the road was a figment of your imagination.

I'm talking about the people who try to tell you that you can't talk about christmas because it might offend someone.  Or people who try to alter stories on the intranet because of some imagined law that prohibits even referring to the fact that as time passes things and people get older (anyone who has had a Age Descrimination conversation recently will know exactly what I mean). And every organisation has its own sub-culture of imagined rules.

I once worked with an organistion that "didn't celebrate christmas".  When the new Marketing Director put a bit of tinsel on his PC he was treated with the type of fear and loathing normally only seen on very old vampire movies when the brash young visitor declares himself immune from superstition and "gosh darn it, I've been invited up to castle Dracula myself this evening...".  When the new boy dug around he discovered that 10 years previously the company had laid off a bunch of staff at Christmas and the CEO thought it inappropriate to make a big deal out of Christmas that year - but no one had ever dared to check if it was OK to take the radical step of reintroducing it.

And how many times has "Health and Safety Reasons" been cited as a reason for not doing something?  When I started work it used to be "we're not insured to do that" was the all-purpose reason for being STUPID.  We used to talk about "jobsworths" people who were stupidly inflexible at work - but there's even an employment agancy now that calls itself that!

Rant almost over - but I think there's a book in here of funny anecdotes of stupid rules that didn't really exist.  If you send me examples I promise i'll credit you and give the proceeds to charity.

Have a great christmas/channukah/winterval/secular face-stuffing

Liam 

Great male/female divides

Helpfully all the lovely weather today brought down the power lines for the railways in the Midlands so I got back to Euston Station this evening to discover every train cancelled. Cue grumpy journey across London to catch another train that called at probably every village that exists between London and Birmingham, took HOURS to get anywhere even vaguely near home and then dropped me off 45 minutes away from where my car was parked.

So here I am catching up on e-mails far too late before setting off at some unearthly hour in the morning to drive up to Halifax to run some more training sessions.  Note to self:  make new year's resolution to get some work life balance!  Still, such is my dedication to this blog that I couldn't resist a quick post ...

Bond -v- Borat

Read in the Metro this morning that Daniel Craig (aka James Bond) and Kazakhastani journalist Borat Sadiyev are locked in a battle of the downloads, and there's a big male/female divide about who's downloading what. Apparently women are choosing images of Mr Craig in his swimming trunks, whilst men prefer to have a picture of Borat on their mobile phones. Er, why? I can see why you might not want the lovely Daniel, but why would you want Borat?  Explain please, male persons?

Blogging and the male/female divide

Anyway, the other big male/female divide, it's seeming to me, is blogging!  One glance at the 'comments' list on this site shows a list of male names. Mark Darby told me yesterday that 'blogging's a bloke thing'.

I KNOW there are women reading this because several of them have told me so this week.  So come on fellow females - write something back!  I'm outnumbered here!!

Sue

Help for homeworkers?

OK, so I'm sitting here in my friend's flat, looking at the estate agents' description of her place on the web. AND there is an audio guided tour attached, for some reason by a strange automated voice ... with an American accent.

Talking of audio things, I'm hoping someone can help me out with something. I'm doing a fair bit of line manager comms training at the minute, mainly focused around face to face comms. This week there was someone in my group who managed home workers. When we were talking through the Mehrabian stats about the impact of words/body language/tone, he asked if there was any equivalent for written comms/conference calls, to give guidance to people like him who can go for quite a while without seeing his team.

I don't know of anything. Do you?

I was reading an article in TheLondonPaper on the way here enticingly titled 'SMS pests and tipsy texts in an age of turbo-charged love'. (I take it they recruit their journalists from The Sun.)  They quoted a 'lifestyle consultant' as saying that "93% of commmunication is voice, tone and body language, so with a text you only send 7 % of what you are trying to say."  In other words, he's quoting the Mehrabian figures, but apparently these figures can't be applied to texts and are generally applied to types of communication that they were never designed to refer to.

Can anyone help on this one?

Sue

Who's your sounding board?

George Bush has apparently denied in an interview that he phones his father for policy advice.  No comment!

But it did get me thinking about where I go to get my advice.  And it's made me realise what a fantastic support network I have, and how much they help me keep learning, reflecting, making new connections and generally staying sane.  In fact it's a good job I've not had a couple of glasses of wine, or I would right this minute be working my way through my phone/e-mail list and telling them all I love them!!

For one, there's my coaching and training supervisor. I have a monthly call with her to reflect on the coaching and training work I've done in the past month, think about what's worked well, talk through situations I've found a bit tough, and have someone reflect back what she's hearing, challenge me on some points and help me draw out learning points.

I also have a coach.  I don't work with one permanently - just for set periods of time when I'm serious about making changes - whether it's heading off in a new direction, setting some new goals, or working out what the heck I'm doing with my life! So that's a regular call that helps me set a course and stick to it.

And then I have a great network of friends, clients, colleagues and acquaintances that I can call on for any number of scenarios. Liam is my general sounding board and puts up with my moans, doubting Thomas moments and indecisive bouts - lucky bloke, huh?!  And then there's always someone I can call up to ask about the latest research or theory on a specific subject, what's happening in a certain industry, what their experience has been in a certain area ... you name it.

I find it helpful to have a network that extends outside internal comms.  So far it reaches to HR, writing/journalism, training, coaching, any of the corporate comms areas, project management, IT, marketing and finance (this last one because I'm so thick with figures that I've ended up making good friends with the long-suffering souls in finance in my in-house roles that have had to explain figures to me "REALLY simply" several times over!)

As a classic introvert, I've not built my network from standing in rooms full of people I don't know with a glass of wine in my hand.  That's my idea of a nightmare, and I remember having a conversation with my first ever coach about it. "That's not what networking has to be about," she said. "Networking is just about building relationships with people you like."

And she's been right. Since then, I've just made the effort to keep in touch with people whose company I've enjoyed, whose ideas I've found interesting, whose thoughts I've respected, whose training courses have made a difference to me - who, for whatever reason, I've made a connection with. It does take effort - it's all too easy to lose touch with people. But for me, it's well and truly worth it.

Who's your sounding board? And how's your support network?

Sue

Be gentle with the new guy..

Well here it is - my first blog. I freely admit that it is something I have avoided for a while, deciding to stay a blog virgin for as long as possible - well at least until the right one came along anyway. So please forgive me as I learn the ropes. (Lesson no.1 - stop watching the football and concentrate!)

When Sue and Liam kindly asked me if I would like to take part I agreed without hesitation, not quite knowing what I would ramble on about or if my tiny man-brain could cope. So I began thinking about why I wanted to help out and get involved.  A shy, retiring type(?!), it certainly wasn't for a stage to perform on. In all honesty I think it came down to saying thank you (particularly to Liam and Sue) and playing my part in the black belt community that has helped me so much over the past year with ideas, tips and sometimes just friendly chit-chat to keep me sane.

I think that within the Internal Communications profession in particular, there can be a real sense of mutual understanding and togetherness. Maybe that stems from doing a job that is sometimes a lonely, frustrating and often thankless role.

I was lucky enough to attend the PPA Scotland awards last Thursday night and had the pleasure to sit next to a journalist (no seriously) who asked me what I do for a living. Now, as someone who tells his mum he 'works with computers', this is not a question I have mastered with a one-line response yet. However after describing in some detail and at some length what I do and why I believe it is important, the said journalist asked me where my passion for what I do comes from.

Now that may be a future blog in itself, but I am passionate about what I do and I strongly believe in everything that good communication and behaviour can help to achieve.  And that is why I try and get involved in professional associations such as the CiB and melcrum - to meet people with the same passion as me; to share ideas on what individually and together we can achieve. It's true that you only get out of these things what you put in, but like the current adverts on TV point out, who knows what might happen when you start to say yes...

(Lesson no.2  - know when to stop - ideally before the second half starts.)

Darren

Introducing our guest bloggers

In a flash of creative brilliance, we've decided to invite a 'guest blogger of the month' to join us in posting here.

Our guest blogger for December is Darren Crozier, Communications Manager for the Scottish Executive and esteemed Chairman of the CIB for Scotland. Look out for Darren's posts throughout December.  I'm off to Glasgow to run a line manager comms skills course on Monday, so I'm hoping to meet up with Darren whilst I'm in his neck of the woods.

There's nothing like planning ahead, so in January we're looking forward to hearing from Mark Darby, Head of Internal Comms for Visa Europe. And in February our guest blogger will be Timm Suess, HR Project Manager for Novartis. Both Mark and Timm have personal blogs, which are well worth a read in the meantime.

Whilst I'm posting, I should also wish Alex Manchester a safe journey back to Oz. Alex is Melcrum's technical guru, the guiding light behind this blog and an all round top bloke (he is very patient with the endless 'Alex, how do I do this again?' e-mails - all from Liam, of course.). Alex is off back to Oz permanently, but fortunately for us will still be working with Melcrum over there.

Safe journey Alex, and make sure you let me, erm, I mean Liam, know when you're back on e-mail!

Sue