Black Belt Dojo

A day in the life of... at RNIB

Thanks Steve/Nicky for your posts... In answer to Steve's question, and using RNIB as the example, we are an organisation with about 2,500 members of staff and over 3,000 volunteers (including our trustees) and a growing community of RNIB 'Members'. We have a passionate group of people working/volunteering and whenever I take visitors around the building (we operate a free site tour service here at Peterborough, one of our largest sites  and covers 8 acres) they always comment on how proud everyone seems to be.

On the comms approach, naturally whatever way we communicate, we have to ensure it's accessible... PowerPoint is not a natural first for us but if anything it definitely makes us more creative in delivery of presentations/udpates etc!

We have 2 segments of comms teams... an external team proactively working with our campaigning office and getting messages out there into the media and being RNIB's voice. Funding success for the wet AMD treatments being one of our most recent cases. RNIB is also organising a mass lobby of parliament in October as part of our campaign to extend eligibility to claim the higher rate mobility component of DLA - to include people with severe sight loss. That's huge is a great opportunity for staff to get out from behind their desks and go along to help too.

We also... now (!) have an internal comms network throughout RNIB and our new CEO brought that into the organisation so we have really embraced that and building as we go. Some managers haven't bought it but I'm finding, by getting out and about - joining team meetings, chatting to everyone and putting the time in to do that, it's paying off and my workload/requests for support etc have increased way beyond my expectations really. All great stuff though.

I sit between the two teams really... and focus on one particular section of the organisation, which enables me to drill down a bit more on subjects and get more involved to do the proactive comms side of things. To work for a charity, I've found motivating as people want to be here for the cause (mostly) and not just for the job. I have the fortune to get out and about and talk to groups of all walks of life and see some of our direct customers whereas I know that some staff come in, transcribe information into Braille... they never see that customer and so don't have that access for having a drip feed of motivational opportunites. We are working on that though!

We have recently re-branded and attached a new underpinning strategy to our new logo and rolled out a communications programme to all our people - in the form of a workshop/session where all staff had to attend (volunteers are next). We cherry-picked our presenters, to ensure we made best use of the time folks were away from their desks. During that session, we were providing reminders of what RNIB's achieved in the past (such as the postage stamp booklets... RNIB had a huge input to ensuring that whilst they are mainstream, they are 'invisibly' accessible to all). We also had filmed case studies of some customers - bringing home to them how RNIB has helped them have access to everyday living... where perhaps they didn't before... and also shared our new priorities/goals and asked everyone for their opinion, through workshop elements, on what services worked well, what we needed to harness from those services and develop to reach our customers in an even better way. We had really great feedback from that so something to expand upon.

Right... typed loads and so will stop jabbering for now. See you next time!

C :-)

On Podcasting

Here is the tension that gives rise this blog post:
1) I have become pretty good lately at producing interesting corporate podcasts;
2) almost nobody in the firm seems to be listening to them!

I was thinking of subtitling this post "If a podcast is played in the forest and no one tunes in to hear, has the speaker made his point?". (Bet you're glad I didn't.)

I want to believe that the answer to the above riddle is yes. Even though podcasting may not have caught on here at PwC Russia, judging from the lack of response, I think it is a worthwhile exercise and I encourage others to try it.

 Now, I will readily admit to being a podcast junkie. My Sunday is not complete without an evening walk with Bill Moyer's Journal on my iPod.  My week doesn't settle in until after my Monday installment of This American Life. And one of the things keeping me Canadian and sane here in Russia is a steady dosage of CBC podcasts. You might think that I began doing podcasts at work out of a prior love for the medium. In fact, the opposite is true; I started listening to podcasts for pointers and only then became hooked.

When asked to give a short presentation on podcasting for the Social Media module of the Internal Communications Black Belt course this past spring I quickly agreed. I am no expert on podcasting, but was glad for the chance to structure some of what I had learned as I stumbled along in my first year of internal communications. For your reference, here are the PowerPoint slides of that presentation: Download on_podcasting.ppt

The first couple of slides—largely "stolen with pride" from the PwC in-house podcasting manual—cover the very basics. The second half of the presentation is a list of insights that I gained through experience, categorized into before, during and after recording. Now that I look back on them, most of these "insights" are just ways of eliciting from the speakers a confident, honest tone—without which podcasts become unlistenable or unwatchable, in my opinion.

The advice on slide 5 for dealing with pre-recording nerves might need some explaining.

"Perfect-person theory" refers to the tendency to trust someone in a position of authority a bit more after that person has made an innocuous little mistake. (At least, I remember an anecdote to that effect from Psychology 101 and it has not failed me yet.  Want to win over a room? Spill your coffee at the start of your speech.) When coming to someone on staff with fancy recording equipment and a job description that includes the use of it, I find a quick way to build trust and rapport is to make a false start or two. "'Welcome to the Smart Way podcast on office'—cut. Just a sec, sorry, let's start that again. 'Welcome to the Smart Way podcast on audit efficiency.'"

The "slippery sound check" is, as you might expect, a sound check that slips right into becoming the actual recording. I have found that nothing says stress out and clam up like "Ready? Aaaand rolling."

But, anyway. I am sure that many of you know a lot more about podcasting than I do. I would be very interested to read some of your top insights or podcasting tips. And from those of you  who have yet to try podcasting, I would be more than happy to field your questions or concerns.

Let's return to the paradox with which I began this blog post. It seems the better I get at producing podcasts the lower the number of listeners tuning in.

In the short term, I think podcasts are worth the effort anyway because they encourage speakers to reflect on and deliver their message in a new way. They also give listeners the experience of hearing it "straight from the horse's mouth", as the saying goes. When done right, this can foster a deeper and more intimate connection than the written word can, making podcasts great for executive communications. In the long term, of course, podcasting will only be worthwhile if people here at PwC Russia get into the habit of regularly watching and listening to what we produce.

It could be a cultural thing. Perhaps podcasting is as of yet a western phenomenon. PwC Russia is a solid 93% Russian in its staff composition and, let's face it, maybe you can't blame my Russian colleagues for having an instinctive skepticism toward the media—corporate media included. I wonder what the experiences of my colleagues around the world have been. Do podcasts resonate further in some necks of the woods than in others?

Jeffery

From Russia with ... A Slight Delay

Greetings from Moscow, everyone!

My name is Jeffery McMillan and I will be your Black Belt Dojo guest blogger for the month of June. As you can see, things are off to a pretty late start — so before I continue here in the dojo it's fifty virtual push-ups from me.

There, that feels better.

I received my internal communications black belt from Liam and Sue back in March of this year. (Regular readers of this blog may recall some gossip about two guys who had to pay the jargon-busting penalty at the end of Module 2 with a speech on pole dancing and accompanying demonstration. Well, I am the one who kept his trousers on.)

An IC Assistant Manager in the Moscow Office of PwC Russia, I have actually been in internal communications for less than a year. There are few straight paths to internal communications, it seems. My own particular path has taken some odd turns at times — a Korean TV show, a Master's in Sociology at the Russian Peoples' Friendship University, a year of translating tax bulletins and editing audit reports — and so I am thrilled to have ended up here in IC.

Here's an example of why (and the reason my tenure as guest blogger is getting started a week late).

Last Monday the Global CEO of PwC flew in to Russia to visit key clients and partners in Moscow and also to attend the St Petersburg Economic Forum. Just before he arrived in the country, an hour was freed up for internal communications in his week-long itinerary. We were given 48 hours to arrange a film crew, set up a filming location, assemble a panel of 10-15 "regular employees" ready to speak confidently with our Global CEO on pre-approved topics in fluent English under bright lights in front of two cameras, and put together a short film to be shown at our upcoming all-staff meeting. Stressful? Yes. But once we got rolling it was really quite magical.

Call me starstruck, but I found it amazing to be given access to the Global CEO — a man at the head of an organisation employing 140,000 people in 149 countries — after only having  worked here in the firm for less than two years.

For me this underlined the importance that is placed on IC at PwC. It also brought home some of my favourite lessons from the Black Belt course. Liam mentioned that as communicators we do not really have any power in our organisations, but we do have influence. It is important to recognise the difference. The second lesson was an interesting technique that Liam recommended for building up that influence: schedule regular meetings with the top managers and be seen to be coming and going from their offices (regardless of whether the meetings have involved little more than small talk). The final lesson is that once you have established influence, you can only use it once. After that, people will figure out ways of getting around you.

This is beginning to sound a little abstract. Let me bring things back down to the mat with a few questions for you, colleagues. What are your thoughts on (and experiences of) the wielding of influence by internal communicators? Where should internal communications position itself in relation to management and staff? Where is the line between deciding how to word a policy and deciding what the policy should be? Have you ever ended up on the wrong side of that line?

Forgive me if these questions sound a bit naive. As I have said, I am quite new at this, and I am exactly half of my IC network here in Russia (so far). I am really looking forward to chatting with you and getting to know you in the month ahead.

Last word for today is a big hello to Liam, Sue and my fellow black belt trainees from February and March. For a short trip down memory lane, follow this link:

http://jefferymcmillan.com/blackbelt

Jeffery

A quick question

... for anyone who's done the Black Belt programme.

When you're putting together your CV (which obviously none of you would be doing in the interests of finding another job, because you are all happy and fulfilled with your current employer, but everyone needs an up to date CV, don't they? Just in case.) what do you put on there about Black Belt?

Genuine question someone asked me today, and I wondered what people generally put. This person said if they use 'Black Belt' people think it's something to do with Six Sigma. I know at least some of the headhunters here in the UK recognise it, because one of them has told me before  that they do notice it and see it as a plus point for the candidate concerned.

Anyone happy to share how you and where you reference it on your CV?

Sue

Scary goings on in Black Belt city

Last night's goings on at the Black Belt dinner made me laugh a lot!

Subject of the jargon penalty (if you've done BB you will know what I mean ...) was synchronised swimming. All three penalty payers turned up in shower caps and pinching their noses, having done astonishing amounts of research into the history of synchronised swimming in between leaving the classroom and hitting the bar.

Of course there were lots of perfectly synchronised actions to go with the speeches, and we all had to learn and perform three apparently VERY well-known movements at the end. Having got all enthused about social media in the afternoon (well, at least having moved on beyond "it's for young people/sad people"), there had been talk of hunting out a digicam to film the evening's events, put them on youtube and link to this very blog. Much as I would have loved to see a room full of people pirouetting away with fairy-arms on the web, I have a feeling several commsfolk would by now have been bribing us to lose the film!

BIG competition in our end of term quiz - let's just say it was being taken very seriously at some points! Excellent to see the teams trying to do each other in their rendition of the Black Belt legendary anthem. The last lot ended up, for some reason, donning serviettes on their heads to become singing nuns. (Someone was heard to ask if they were about to start singing hits from the Sound of Music).

As I type, Liam is holding court on our final session for the day and we've just seen the team's final presentations as they pitched to James the hard-nosed MD (guess who?) and Jane, his very lovely and reasonable Operations Director (guess who again?) to win their internal communications business. Team name of the day for me was The Communicats - "because we might seem a bit fluffy but we've got sharp claws underneath -we mean business"!

Sue

PS Actually, I've just discovered one of the group got the penalty presentation on video on her mobile phone! Now lots of worried people in the room ...

G'day!

I thought I'd better post a photo in case you'd forgotten who I am - it seems like absolutely ages since I've posted on here!

After three weeks away in Oz (that's the Daintree rainforest behind me) and another ten days away in the UK, I'm feeling very happy with life, the universe and everything. Despite sitting here surrounded by a mountain of post, with a scary inbox to match.

So, am I still full of such workaholic tendencies that I had to switch my laptop on and get straight on the dojo before even unpacking my bags?  Well, the thing is, I need to introduce our next guest blogger before I then start packing my NEXT case to get straight off to Stockholm for a Black Belt early tomorrow morning, and I know she's raring to go with her first post.

There's an exciting story behind this one. Aside from being at the Melcrum summit in Sydney, the other reason I was in Oz to start with was to meet with Adrian Cropley and Melissa Dark. Both very well-known, experienced and well-respected communicators, and about to lead - drum roll please - the very first Black Belt in Australia! 

Yep, Black Belt is going down under, and Adrian and Melissa will be leading the programme there, set to kick off in November. And very good hosts they are too. We did the going-through-all-the-black-belt-materials piece in Sydney, and then met up a week later in Melbourne for a night out which finished in a fantastic place absolutely full of sticky cakes and pastries. Hurrah!

So, to tell us all about the preparations for the Australian Black Belt and no doubt lots more besides, Melissa will be our guest blogger for September. Looking forward to it!

Sue 

Latest Black Belt gang!

We’ve nearly finished the first module of our latest Black Belt at Cranfield.   Lots of laughs right from the start on this one – kicked off by the mix of interesting, entertaining and downright bizarre ‘secret talents’ people shared in their introductions.

To name but a few, we have an expert in nail clipping rabbits, someone who enters chickens into poultry shows, one person who wants to connect with 1500 men (greedy, I call it), a singer with an acapella group, a comedian who once played a prostitute on the TV, a bell ringer and a celebrity gossip expert.

I really should be keeping a list of memorable secret talents/previous jobs. Front of mind from previous courses is the person (hello Anna!) who won awards for her tuneful sneezes (and I can vouch for their tunefulness) and in a former life had to reject cucumbers that were too bendy to go onto supermarket shelves.

Any more intriguing interests/talents/former jobs anyone fancies sharing? It’s always interesting to hear what fellow IC-ers do when they’re off duty …

Sue

PS Stop press - the comedian that played the colourful role on TV ... she's our guest blogger for May. Stand by!

Cartoon blogging blackbelter

Found out in the bar last night that one of our blackbelters has a cartoon blog with 500 hits a day ... and it's very funny - definitely worth a look.

Try this one - the 'onosecond' - subject of a conversation last night about that split second after you've sent a text message or e-mail and you SO wish you hadn't!

Or this one in the 'men are from mars, women are from venus' line - another of our bar conversations yesterday.

Love the blog Jeroen - you've definitely got yourself another subscriber.

Sue

Robbie will never sound the same again ...

Tonight on Black Belt, we decided to try an after dinner quiz for the first time.  Despite OUTRAGEOUS cheating on Mr FitzPatrick's part and my team being unfairly denied a bonus point for having the excellent name of 'the kick ass comms chicks', it was almost neck and neck by the time we got to the music round.

So when we offered double points for the first team who offered to sing a Robbie Williams song of our choice after the round, we were nearly knocked over in the rush. After much arguing and shouting, we agreed to let all three teams sing one by one and award the double points to the best one.

Oh dear!!

I thought the second team took some beating for sheer tunelessness, but the sound of the entire room then joining in at full volume for the final chorus very nearly brought tears to my eyes. And I REALLY wish we'd had a camera with us to capture the full arm-waving effect.

So a very good time had by all this evening, nicely finished by one lovely table giving me their flowers, which are now sitting here beside me in my room!  I'm just so easily pleased, really ...  Although it's not quite up there with the time one group pestered the kitchen staff for two small baskets, filled one up for Liam with the mini-moisturisers everyone collected from their rooms and the other one for me with the chocolate mints they saved from dinner, stuck plastic flowers on the top and presented them to us with great ceremony at the end of the course. Aww. Now I know what teachers must feel like at the end of term.

Night all.

Sue

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