Black Belt Dojo

Sign of the times

...I do a series of lectures on stakeholder management to Project Management students at Imperial College London and have done three sessions this week to undergraduates.  As part of my session I get the students the think about the 2012 London Olympics as an example.  When I asked them to imagine the objectives of the project manager for the games, all three sessions spontaneously suggested 'Security' as the first objective (well ahead of delivering the games on time and to budget)....

Liam

Sorry - it had to happen...

...someone had to say something about UK Big Brother....

For those of you not in the UK or India, you may not have caught up with what's happening in Big Brother in the UK.  The racist bullying of Bollywood Star Shilpa Shetty by Jade Goody has got everyone - including politicians in India and the UK talking.

I hope people vote Jade out of the House tonight - it's frankly embarassing that so many people are willing to make excuses and allowances for her - and I'm glad I haven't been asked by an Indian to explain what it's all about.

Here's the link to our site.....the issue for us as internal communicators is the fact that so many people are willing to deny either that bullying has been taking place or that it's had racist elements.  Organsiations need people like us to have a very clear view of what constitutes racism and depends on us to stand up and be counted when we confront it.  The problem is for me is that I think I've got a pretty good idea what I mean by racism (calling an Indian a "poppadom" ticks the box for me) but I also loathe those people who use anti-racism as an excuse of STUPID stuff (see my previous rants)...

Anyone got a good definition?

Liam

Winners and Losers

In the past couple of weeks I've read profiles on the grumpy Scottish tennis player Andy Murray, Aidy Boothroyd, the manager of my beloved Watford FC.    Both Andy and Aidy have incredibly challenging personal goals.  Andy to be the world's number 1 tennis player within 3 years, and Aidy to be England Manager within 10 years (after winning the Premiership and Champions League).  It's easy to say well they are talented enough to do that - but talent just isn't enough. As Mohammad Ali said (fantastic list of quotes today on the BBC website) "...they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill."

Behind the Will of both Aidy and Andy are very detailed, but flexible plans to achieve their goals. No stone is left unturned, they are willing to try almost anything - and they never doubt their vision and passion.

I looked at our 1 year internal communications plan today (we don't have a 3 year one). Yes - we have a goal - to raise employee engagement in the business strategy to XX%.  Not very exciting is it? Certainly doesn't inspire me or my team. And I am not even sure if all the projects we do are related to that goal.   Soo.... 

The team have set up a meeting for tomorrow, with Krispy Kreme donuts, to set our 1 and 2 year team goal. It's up to us to decide how scary we want to make that goal. Maybe we want to be the best in the world?  It would certainly make us look at our objectives and change the way we work.

Am I being too naive?  Has anyone tried this before?  How do you get the balance right for business, team and personal success?

I have also realised that I have personal dreams (bestselling novel, country house, the other Cheeky Girl) - but no personal goal or plan.  So I'm off home to plan my world domination.

Open to scrutiny

I've just seen that Lee Smith is reviewing a blog of the month on his Talking IC blog.

My immediate thought was 'oh heck, I wonder what he'd say about this one?' 

It's a real sign of the times that anyone can say anything about anyone, quickly, easily and to potentially millions of people. Liam's party trick is typing a company's name into a search engine to see just how many nasty things people have been writing about them. Try it. You might get a shock.

I think it's actually quite a good thing. Apart from giving everyone the power of the pen, being open to this level of public scrutiny and comment must surely make you think about what fodder you're giving people to write about?  I saw from  Chapple's latest update that they've signed up with a new website called Hire Scores, that gets candidate to score recruitment consultants so we can get a view of what they're really like to work with.  It looks like the headhunters' version of Trip Advisor or Top Table, or all those other sites listing reviews from 'normal people' about anything from books to holidays to the best chocolate biscuits.

I thought it was quite a brave thing for Chapple to do. It's one thing knowing there's a reviewers' website around and they're going to write about you whether you like it or not. It's another saying "here we are - tell us what you think! In fact, hey, tell the whole world - why not!"  I used to work with a senior leader who hated doing regular employee surveys, and when I challenged him on the grounds that we did equally regular customer surveys, he said "Yes, but I don't have to write out to our customers each time and tell them very publicly what we're doing badly."

So anyway, back to this blog, and I AM asking. What do you like about it? What don't you like? What could we be doing better?  How would you rate it if you were reviewing it? What would make you want to sign up to the daily e-mail updates?  Views and ideas please - good or bad!

Sue

Reputation (mis) management

Last week my local council wrote to ask whether I thought a local authority merger should go ahead. I don't understand much about it, but as they'd taken the trouble to consult me, I put the letter on one side to read up about it and send in my views

I found out this evening that my parents did the same. But they've now put the letter in the bin, after Shropshire County Council's head of communications made the news for e-mailing colleagues telling them how to navigate the technology to be able to place multiple votes in a BBC on line pole on the same subject, to help sway the vote in the Council's preferred direction.  My parents have taken it as a signal that the Council really isn't interested in their views and the whole consultation is just a PR exercise. 

Helpfully, the head of comms has said:

"I have actually got quite a lot of feedback from people internally about this who feel quite rightly that it doesn't sit very happily with our core values about being open and honest in terms of the way we communicate"

Quite.

It's now the lead story on our BBC local news site. I'd say Shropshire county council's consultation exercise has definitely done a fair bit to influence their reputation.  Just not quite in the way they might have intended.  It's a good example of how a consultation or survey exercise done well, with the right intention behind it, can pay dividends. And done badly or with any intention of manipulating results or pulling the wool over people's eyes, it can well and truly backfire.

Sue

Podcasting...is it really that easy?

I've had to reload all my iTunes files recently which has been a real pain although it's been interesting to see the customer service at Apple.  When you visit the Apple Store in London you get to see what great customer service really looks like...

But it's been a great opportunity to track down the regular podcasts which I used to listen into...and I've been using http://www.podcast.net/ to find some of my favourites.  Clearly I've signed up again with Shel Holtz's "For Immediate Release" and most of the content from the BBC website!  I've also finally got around to looking at the material that's available from the University of Warwick.  There's some amazing material on there. 

I'm listening to a really interesting item right now and I'm reflecting on how easy it is to put this stuff together.  Warwick's Tom Abbott was raving about it about eighteen months ago to me and having downloaded a couple of free programs it's striking how right he is. Just follow the links at http://www.podcasting-tools.com/how-to-podcast.htm and you'll be producing your own files in less than an hour.

But I guess the challenge is how do you make something that actually sounds interesting.  Shel Holtz, for example is either a natural talent or has some basic radio production skills but there are some people out there who are DULL. 

Not everyone has an interesting voice, but they could at least try (check out some of the more specialised sections of the pod casting world)... and surely a little thought about how you order information, paint a picture with words or whether you drone on for hours about nothing much in particular.

Is anyone out there offering courses in production skills for broadcasters? Anyone got any recommendations like this one?

Liam

Induction / Brain Washing

I've been on company induction for the last 3 days. I thought this was a little strange as I've been at Visa for 6 months now - but it's actually a damn good course.   It turns out that you're not allowed on straight away - as it tests what you've picked up on the job.
It also refreshed my mind about a number of internal communication ABCs too. 

1.  Face to Face is best as long as it engages.   I now know what happens between using my Visa card in a store, and the money coming out of my account.  I learnt this from a Dilbert lookalike, who had every delegate blu-taking credit cards and arrows and pictures of banks on the wall.   Only at the end of an hour did he use a powerpoint slide.  Our sales guys (who pitch to customers almost every day), took us through 60 slides over 90 mins in a "our world is so tough, but we are awesome fighter pilots" tone of voice.  I learnt precisely nothing, but did get my highest ever score on tetris on my phone.   
I cannot be too critical of the sales guys - because how many times have I put together a pack of slides for a board member and been proud that I have got it down to say 10 slides?  I understand it because I've been engaged by working on it.  I bet you my audience isn't engaged at all.  Mouth to mouth, not face to face, is needed - because both groups need to be able to talk.

2.  Competition is not always healthy.    The 4 teams on induction gained points throughout the 3 days.  We got a little competitive to say the least and stopped working/speaking with the other teams.  It was like being part of Lord of the Flies. 

3.  Get to know your audience.   I assumed legal, finance, and IT would have the most dull presentations.  They were the most interactive.  I assumed the views of delegates about internal communications.  I was very wrong.  I need to spend more time with my audiences.

4. Messages, messages, messages.   There were some very entertaining and engaging presentations - from identifying fake bank cards, to naming typical British proverbs.  Question is - did I learn something that I can use in my job? And am I going to do anything different? 
I just looked at my strategy document which I am showing someone on Monday.  I want them to pick out the messages that impact them most, select a key channel, and sign-off the document.  So why do I only have these actions at the very end?   I need to think about my own messages too.

Has anyone else recently been reminded about a communication ABC? 

Mark

They said it

We're back at Cranfield for a Black Belt this week, and this morning we looked at audiences and messages. In between slots I've been checking out the latest issue of SCM and having a look around Cranfield's (very good) library. Two quotes I noticed that picked up on things we talked about earlier.

"To be able to yourself in someone else's shoes successfully, you have to take off your own shoes first"  (Malcolm MacDonald in his book Market Segmentation)

If you've done Black Belt, you'll know we ask people to put themselves in the place of being the Executive Team and also a Contact Centre audience.  The temptation is to keep slipping back into IC person mode, which really does put a different slant on things. This morning someone reflected on how much time they spent actually out there with their audience to really understand the people they were communicating with. "Not enough", was their conclusion.   

"We have to earn people's attention. We can't just assume that because we put out an e-mail or a video or put something on the web that people will be interested. That's very presumptious. We have to come up with unique ways to earn people's attention."

(Heidi Burgett of Yahoo!, talking about her guilding philosophy for internal comms in SCM)

I like this quote. It sums up perfectly our conversation this morning about how important it is to know what people's 'emotional hot buttons' are, and find the angle on a subject that's actually going to grab their attention and interest them, rather than assuming they'll be interested in the latest briefing about competition, the market and our strategy for the next 10 years if we bombard them with it enough.

Sue

Interesting link

Thanks Tony for this....

http://www.euractiv.com/en/pa//article-160713

Read the article and follow the links through for the "Scientists' Guidelines on Communicating with the Media" - some interesting lessons in here.

Liam

(and I'm not really posting so much to make up for lost time over Christmas!)

Double maths...

Sue and I have been melting our brains this week making sense of all the information from the survey and focus groups we ran before Christmas.  Here's a picture of Sue explaining the relationship between different types of communication role and why we can't have a model of 3,000 competencies.  Thanks to everyone who has helped us so far....

.

It's been a really interesting process though as there has been so much to argue about (and if you know us you'll know that we like a good bicker whenever we can).  The debates have ranged from "Is writing a core competency for everyone working in IC?" (the message is that it is folks) through to "what exactly do people who call themselves internal consultants think they do?".

What's emerging (and we'll write this up a little more for everyone in the next couple of weeks) is that people generally dispute the old models of IC careers which put "strategic consultants" at one end of the spectrum and "message distributors" at the other end.  Careers in IC clearly are not a straight linear progression which can only be successful if they end up having long coaching discussions with the CEO.  There are plenty of experienced and excellent people out there delivering for their organisations by running highly effective message delivery and feedback collection operations.

The problem comes from the fact that the terms 'coaching' and 'consulting' have become so misused that perhaps their very meanings are debased.  For a large number of IC professionals their interactions with managers are all about suggesting better ways of shaping and delivering a message.  But this sort of advisory role gets confused with the act of helping leaders explore how communication fits in with their mission.  Because people call both 'consulting' or even say that when they are saying "no" to a story appearing on the intranet they are 'coaching' there is a lot of confusion - and a fair amount of insecurity as a result.

We're debating the final conclusions right now so we'll know when we're publishing very soon.  But today, it's back to the three dimensional chess for me whilst I start work drafting some of the competencies.....

Liam