Black Belt Dojo

Leading the way

I'm still in my 'how much do we really help our leaders?' frame of mind. So, from the things I've heard consistently from leaders over many years, here's my six step guide to 'things we internal comms types can (and do) do to make life more difficult for line managers'...

1. Don't give them any time to prepare for briefings. If a senior leader insists on actually talking them through the brief, at least make sure it's only a short space of time before they have to brief their own teams. Especially in change scenarios. The commmunication might be awful, but at least it won't leak.

2A. Give them PowerPoint slides or scripts to read from. Ask them not to deviate from the materials 'to ensure consistency'.  Don't give them additional discussion notes or prompt sheets - they'll be fine with the bullet points on the slides. They won't mind at all that their team has read the the lot before they've got through the first line.

OR 2B Give them a VERY large pack of supporting documentation, including process flow charts and a 50 page Q&A - obviously in no particular order and containing answers that have been through Legal six times, so are nice and woolly and don't actually say anything.  Take the really sticky questions out. You don't want to go putting anything in writing, and they're bound to think of something to say if the team asks - see (3) below.  And do remember point (1) - don't give them any time to work out how to use the pack.

3. End all communications with the words 'If you've got any questions, please speak to your line manager'. Don't worry about giving line managers any additional information to answer questions though, they're quite happy to say 'I don't know, but I'll get back to you'. (P.S. Don't give them a route to find out the answers to all those questions they don't know the answers to either. They can always ask their own manager - see point (5))

4. Always publish important announcements on the Intranet, send them out by email to all staff, or even better, tell your customers about them, BEFORE you tell leaders. They like being caught on the hop.

5. Tell middle managers frequently that they are the 'marzipan layer' where communication falls down.  Point out how awful the commmunication scores are in your employee survey and urge them to do better. Ask senior leaders to talk to them often about the importance of communication. (That will be the senior leaders that send out all their briefing material by email because they haven't got time to talk the marzipan layer through it; don't pass on anything from the CEO's leadership updates because they're not sure if it might be too sensitive; and order all team meetings and training to be cancelled in the contact centres for the next three months because of service levels.)

6. Always provide managers with good, solid corporate materials. Their teams really do like to hear about high level figures, governance structures and changes in the senior leadership. It's good for them to see the bigger picture. Include plenty of jargon and business speak that line managers might not understand themselves. And remember, ask them not to deviate from the script. Probably nobody will ask them what 'streamlining our operational imperatives and building world-class propositions' means anyway.

There. That should do the trick ...

Sue

PS I'm not claiming I'm immune, and it's helped me no end to spend a lot of time with line managers in the past year and be constantly reminded of things I've done over the years to make their lives more difficult. So let's be honest, how do you stack up? It can't just be other people's organisations that do these things.

Be careful about the words you use...

...because you can never be sure who's mouth they've been in!

I wish I could remember where I first read that but it seems quite appropriate to the thought that occured to me the other day when I was musing about 'engagement'.

In the last couple of years it seems to be the word on everyone's lips and it's rapidly become as devalued as 'strategy'.  We all know lots of people who use it in subtly different ways - and with resulting confusion.

Some people use it for a concept that is all about workplace co-operation.  Others use it to describe what I used to call employer branding and others for discussing just employee retention programmes.

But most worrying, many of our colleagues in general management use it to mean 'gaining attention'.  Someone used it the other day to describe to me a programme that was visually striking and memorable.  "We really achieved employee engagement with that" they told me. 

And in a dictionary sense they are all right.  Funny how as communicators we can be some imprecise about something so important....

Liam

It's not rocket science, but ...

Today I started my training to be a volunteer helping kids to read in schools. I wouldn't blink at communicating difficult news to 30,000 employees but I'm feeling pretty nervous about sitting down and reading with three children!

The trainer started by saying that what she was about to cover wasn't rocket science. It was all common sense and we probably did it all the time, but the day was about breaking it down and thinking about it. "Interesting", I thought. "Almost exactly how I introduce my line manager comms workshops". So I found myself thinking about things from two perspectives all day - the 'how to help children read' perspective, but also the 'and how might this apply to me as an internal comms person' perspective.

The biggest thing that struck me was how something that seems so easy to you can be so hard for someone else.

We were given exercises that put us in the position of someone trying to learn to read. Presented with a page of double dutch with a picture at the top, I panicked - I hadn't got a clue what it meant or how to start working it out. After five minutes of trying really hard and only managing three words, I was ready to give up.

We were given pages of tricky sentences to read out loud, and found ourselves counting down to which would be OUR sentences so we could try and work out how to pronounce them so we didn't look stupid when it was our turn. We saw how it's the 'easy' words like 'is' and 'the' that are hardest to learn because you can't visualise them (what's a 'the'?). We realised how full of contradictions and anomolies the English language is! Why DO 'cough' and 'dough' sound different? Why doesn't 'dead' rhyme with 'bead' or 'meat' with 'great'?

I started thinking about how it might feel to be a manager that's not a natural communicator.

How much do we ask of them, and how much help do we give them? What's our equivalent of the 'here's what it's like to learn to read' exercises? How do we feel what it's like to be a manager that doesn't get this whole communication thing, when the things that seem obvious to us seem an uphill struggle to them?  And how can we make it easier?

I also thought about how often we just TELL people stuff.

We spent this morning sitting in our chairs with someone talking to us. I don't remember much of it. I was too focused on when I could have another cup of that nice belgian chocolate from the vending machine.

in the afternoon, out came all the games and exercises to get us thinking about how difficult it is to read. Those are the things I remember. I got involved, I thought about it, I had a good laugh and I learnt by  DOING and coming to my own realisation. in the same way, we were taught to play games with the children, and to make reading fun. 'Why should they bother if it's dull and boring?' said the trainer. Good point. How do your communications stack up?

What else? Lots of checking understanding and asking questions to make sure the kids really have got the meaning of what they're reading. And the power of pictures to help people remember and bring things to life, instead of just words. Which I guess equates to feedback ("I always mean to do it, but I've realised I don't often get round to it" said someone on a recent Black Belt), and using pictures in communication. Organisations that use visuals like learning maps often say they're one of the most powerful methods they've used.

It's not rocket science, this communication stuff

But it's our total focus and even we're not great at it sometimes. We churn out the top down tell stuff that's dull and full of corporate speak.  So how much help do we give to a manager that has 100 other things to do, less time and resource to do it, and possibly more of a natural connection with figures and logic than emotions and people? It might seem obvious to us, but how do we understand what it feels like to stand in their shoes?

Sue

 

Self improvement

One of the spin-offs of doing Black Belt, from a self-improvement point of view, is that I've joined a book group, among whose attendees is next month's guest blogger Fiona Gibson (with links like that I should have been a DJ).

There were only three of us at this week's meeting but at least we had all read, or were in the process of reading, the set book: Winter in Madrid. (At my mum's book group, they spend afternoons at someone's house watching episodes of a TV adaptation of Lorne Dorne, with a copy of the book on hand in case they need to refer to the back cover.)

As we're all communicators in our group, we got into a discussion about coaches and mentors, and whether it would be useful to have personal coaches who were also experienced communicators. Speaking personally, I would fine this immensely valuable. I can see that one of the downsides of moving from corporate to solo life is no longer having an entitlement to personal development programmes, allocated training days, buddying schemes, e-learning tools and so on. Although there are always new lessons to be learnt as a consultant, I imagine it gets lonely sometimes and having someone experienced and objective to talk to could become a real lifeline.

What do you think? If there are communicators out there with personal coaches/mentors - what's their profile and how valuable do you find their support? And if you're a coach or mentor yourself, do you tend to work with people in the same profession?

Emma

All about change..

It's a long one...

We’re at Cranfield again running another Black Belt course. The people who run this place are very good – they may not have the beautiful scenery of Henley, but it’s a pretty slick operation. I’d certainly recommend it as a venue if you’re looking for an alternative to the same boring hotels and you want to get people into a learning frame of mind.

In one of the sessions yesterday, as a prelude to the input on change that we do on the final day, Sue gets delegates to discuss examples of change that they have seen done well (and some they have seen done less well). I thought I’d share some of the thoughts that came out of that. There was a lot of talk about the value of really thorough briefing packs for managers.

People remembered the usefulness of providing detailed scripts, Q&A documents and responsive feedback channels which gave managers access to more information if they asked for it. One large UK public sector body has just made some announcements and provided “champions” – experience communications advisors who gave practical (and importantly, moral) support to managers breaking the news to their staff.

Other people include a discussion guide for handling one to one conversations which also include a checklist to help people prepare. The checklist even went into the detail of making sure managers had water or tissues to hand if they were likely to be breaking bad news to someone. The key strength of this approach is that it goes some way towards ensuring consistency of messaging.

This organisation also ran a single question survey after the announcement of change. All it asked was whether people had been told about the planned change. This allowed them to be quick (rather than bogged down with process or analysis) and to give a very clear picture to the board of management how communications had performed. Someone pointed out the importance of making materials “translatable” – not just into different languages.

They said that you have to think about the level of customisation or adaptation they should permit line managers. Too much and the messages is lost – too little and they won’t use it. There was quite a bit of talk about making change feel like business as usual. One guy said “we know that we’re in a business that needs to adapt continuously so we’re very conscious of the need to make each change into a good experience – otherwise it will affect how people react to the next one”. Others talked about not making things seem unnecessarily scary.

We also discussed what to do in the event of announcements leaking and there was general agreement of the need to have some contingency plans in place. In the days before an announcement, knowing how to contact senior leaders in the event of an emergency is important if approval for a quick message is needed (and those leaders need to know that you might contact them).

People also warned of the importance of being ‘joined up’. We heard a tale of one division in a company getting different messages about change which caused confusion in other teams when people started comparing what they had been told. The lesson is to have oversight of everything that was being said so that IC can check for consistency.

Someone else also highlighted the importance of checking the authority for a decision. They gave the example of a senior manager who gave undertakings about an office relocation – undertakings he wasn’t in a position to deliver on. The result was considerable disruption when the Board subsequently over-ruled his decision.

However, this also underlined the role of very senior managers in announcing change and their value. Although there was general agreement on the central importance of line managers people said seeing a senior leader talking about change has an important impact.

Although we talked a lot about the moment of an announcement, we heard one very positive story about spending time preparing people for the news and then bringing them together to discuss it when they have had time to digest the implications. This meant that people had a much more productive discussion about than they might have had if they were asked to debate something immediately after being told about it.

Someone also said you have to think about pacing the news – change is not normally instant so avoid making a big announcement and then having nothing to say. If it’s going to take a year, plan communications to keep rumbling along and be clear about the timescales in your messaging. People also talked about the problems of timetable slippage. Things rarely happen entirely as planned and sometimes that leads to a communication vacuum – a space that is filled with rumour and leaks.

Getting senior managers to understand the need to say something even if it’s “there’s nothing to report” is clearly important. In the absence of news, people make up their own views which results in productivity drops and unwanted resignations. Messaging should also illustrate that the personal cost of the change is less than the benefits wherever possible.

The dream scenario for IC people is to be involved early in the planning process which underlined the importance of having a good intelligence network in the organisation. If you find out in enough time you can add more value than simply making sure the intranet notice has the right wording. Being able to test the assumptions of the planners at the very beginning of their thinking brings an employee perspective into the process at the point when mistakes can be avoided.

It also enables you to test the assumptions being made by the guys planning a transformation – after all it's communications that has to deal with a sceptical audience when a mad idea is inflicted on the organisation!

Finally someone talked about finding simple ways that people can get involved in practical actions. We were given an example of a safety programme that got people involved in clearing up their workplaces under the banner “a tidy place is a safe place”. Given the mess we made of the room I thought this was rather funny!

I hope these thoughts are a useful reminder of the sorts of things we have to do to support change – it would be interesting to see what else people would add to this list (take a look at Nicholas Ranken’s blog for more tips!).

And we had snow here this morning – so we took some photos inside  (Sue was really pleased because someone said she was obscuring them in the photo – that must be a first!) And as soon as Alex gets down to SnappySnaps we’ll post some pictures of the January gang (I promise Jeroen!). Liam

Getting to know you

I'm sitting typing this at Cranfield University whilst Liam is holding court about building relationships and influencing.

Being able to influence/work well with others starts with being self-aware. If you've got a good understanding of how you tend to communicate, influence, think and make decisions, you can watch how other people prefer to interact and spot whether you're on a potential collision course because your approaches are totally different.  Make allowances and adapt your style to theirs, and things should be a lot easier.

There are loads of tools around to help you get to know yourself better. I'm fascinated by what makes people tick, so I've done a fair few of them. I can tell you my:

• Myers Briggs profile (ISFJ - introverted people person that likes practicalities and planning ahead)
• Insights profile (Green - people person again)
• Belbin type (combination of a Co-ordinator, Team Worker and Resource Investigator ... but it's ages since I've done it)
• negotiation style (collaborative. But with a competitive streak that creeps in if someone gets my back up!)
• learning style (reflector. I hate 'doing' stuff. When a previous company tried to send me on an outward bound course, I told them they'd have to fire me first.)   
• I even know my preferred Hermann Brain Dominance quadrant (C - people and emotions again. I'm just so predictable.)
• And a smattering from NLP about how I process information.

If you've not had the chance to indulge in using these types of tools to get to know yourself a bit better, it's worth asking your HR team about them. I find them incredibly useful in working out how to adapt my approach when I'm working with important stakeholders. You can see instantly from the bits of profiles I've just outlined that I'm a pretty instinctive and emotional people type, but the last CEO I worked with was a 'just get to the point' data person.  I always went in with a bullet point list for our meetings, stuck to the facts and had data to back up everything I said.

They're also helpful for every day team working. Most of the time, that person who drives you nuts insisting they do things in a certain way isn't being difficult or unreasonable - their profile is just different to yours. Liam and I have almost opposite profiles - which is good, because between us, we'll cover every angle. But it can also be painful and lead to heated debates at times because we both prefer to approach things in very different ways. The good thing is that we both know about it, we make allowances for each other and we'll preface any conversation we know is going to be REALLY painful with 'look, I know you probably won't like this, but I really need to do x'.

So, how well do you know yourself? Which tools or techniques do you use? How do you use them? Which ones would you recommend to everyone else?

Sue   

 

My imaginary PhD...

I had a really nice cup of tea yesterday with Monika Stafford - what a civilised idea. Rather than having beer or lunch, go and have tea and a very nice cake!

And what an interesting conversation we had - thanks to the fact that she's so well read and is really excited about cognitive psychology.  We talked about what we'd do if we won the lottery and how nice it would be to do a PhD (well the first couple of years when you're expected to read lots of books).

Well that got me thinking a bit about PhD titles and we chatted a bit about engagement (I'm starting to think there's an element of the Emperors' New Clothes about 'engagement') and I said "I'd like to know if there really is hard evidence on a large scale that co-origination or involvement results in higher levels of employee support for something" and Monika said "There you go, that's your PhD question..."

On the train home, I kept thinking about it and I realised that the relationship between involvement and commitment is one of the sacred tenets of our profession.  And I know from my personal experience that people around me are more likley to work with me if I enlist them in planning something rather than directing them towards my chosen solution.

But if I was challenged to point to evidence that you can translate that personal experience to large scale organisations I'm not sure I'd know where to look.  And in fact many organisations are very sucessful despite the lack of debate or involvement (indeed some thrive on it - at least that's what I assume happens in the Army).

You see, what I don't understand is what else is making people collaborate at work.  Is it the personal charm of their boss? Is there some peer pressure? Maybe there are persuasive rational attractions to working together or perhaps there is an inherant human pleasure in working as part of a team?  What I can't say for sure is that where involvement and committment coexists, the element of involvement is the most powerful or significant factor.  For all I know it could have something to do with sun spots or flouride in the drinking water.

I'd be interested to know what evidence does exist and whether anyone has researched the importance of other factors.  And what would be brilliant if we were close to producing a predictive model that pointed us in the direction of the right mix of incentives, involvement and emotional benefits that will win the support of employees to significant change in large organisations.

You see, I have a pet theory that many people will refuse to be involved in change at work (or even the maintenance of the status quo) no matter how much involvement they are offered (ever run a performance review with someone who behaved like truculent teenager?).  And some people will sign up for change just because it strikes them as a good idea, it's more interesting than what they are doing the rest of the time or because they like their leader - they don't give a hoot about being involved.

So, guys help me with my literature search here...anyone got any good references that should help answer the question...

And if you help me, I'll be delighted to help with your imaginary PhD's in return...

Dr Liam

Doing stuff (on a Friday afternoon)

So, 2 ½ months into my glittering new career and I find myself… doing a newsletter.

Is that bad? Very??

It seems that sometimes clients just want ‘stuff’ doing. In my defence I would say that I’ve been involved in lots of other (more interesting) things besides – comms planning, stakeholder mapping, change readiness assessments, tookits & templates – things that I’ll be talking animatedly about when the time comes to go in search of my next client assignment (Number Two). But in the meantime here I am, crafting & drafting, laying out & proof-checking – just like the old days. In a way it’s quite nice. Apart from having to pull it all together in two days rather than four weeks.

As a consultant, is it OK to do ‘stuff’? I know it builds credibility to deliver tangibles early on. And it gives you a licence to operate, a foot in the door to get on and have the bigger more strategic conversations once you’ve built up some trust. But can it be detrimental if you’re trying to develop a reputation at the more strategic end?

If you’re a in-houser, would ‘stuff’ be within the realm of what you’d expect to be paying a consultant to do? And if you’re a consultant, do you draw the line at what you would or wouldn’t do for a client – or take the view that it’s all billable work, however high-brow or low-brow it might be?

Just interested in the views of others more seasoned in this respect…

In the meantime, as it’s (nearly) Friday afternoon I’ll share with you some things I miss about life in-house at this time of the working week when people are generally shifting down a gear.

1. Having the “…so what are you doing for the weekend?” conversation with office colleagues. I already know what I’m doing, and there’s only me here, so no need to tell myself.

2. Eating yet another biscuit from the communal kitchen/tea table/desk of someone who’s just had a birthday “because it’s the weekend”. It’s not so much fun pigging out on your own stale biscuits in your own kitchen with no-one to join in and make you feel better.

3. Looking up your own name on Google – I found there’s a boat in a Liverpool ship-yard with my name, and a character in an old episode of Holby City. (Weirdly, my sister is an actress and starred in it once – perhaps they ran out of inspiration and cobbled together some names from old cast lists.)

4. Browsing the internal directory and finding people whose names would go well together in imaginary meetings. I had some particular favourites at Orange (and these are all true):

• Julian Bird, Marie Sparrowhawk, David Jay
• Angie Nurse, Stephanie Hospital, Hans Swabb
• Renee Wap, Jesus Portal (my particular favourite, given the sector).

Go on, give it a try. And have a lovely weekend.

Emma

PS: I’m glad to see Sue praising the involving approach of my former employer Orange – just wish I could claim the credit for that...

It's finally there

The Podcast about the competencies has now been posted here.  I'm rather proud and am very grateful to Dan and James for their fine editing skills...  now do you think I could get a job at the BBC? (I guess I still have a way to go to get up to the same standards as Nicholas Ranken!)

Liam

People power

Just seen this story on Digital Spy reporting that Orange has rejected plans to sponsor the next series of Big Brother after staff objected.  They apparently told the Independent newspaper:

"We asked our staff what they thought about sponsoring Big Brother as we like to get them involved in the decisions their company makes. In this case, the majority of our staff felt that we shouldn't sponsor Big Brother. Having taken this into consideration and having evaluated it further with our sponsorship team, we have declined this opportunity."

I think there's a lot of talking goes on about consultation and involvement but there's often a lot of lip service paid too, so good to see them doing this and making the statement publicly as well.

That's all from me for now. Am in Lisbon, have finished for the day and the sun's still shining!

Sue

PS Have discovered a regular Dojo reader at the conference today who up to now hasn't psyched herself up to commenting yet. Come on, give it a go - you know who you are ...!