Black Belt Dojo

Interesting event in London...

Is anyone going to the CIPR event on Monday in London?

I think it should be a good one - speakers from Shell, Marks and Spencer and Transport for London talking about internal communications and crises!  And it's hosted at David Ferrabee's fantastic gin palace in Soho Square!

If you're not handling a crisis of your own on Monday you should book a place by calling the CIPR guys on 07789 376503.

Liam

Meetings, meetings, meetings

I feel as if I've spent the last two weeks at conferences and meetings.  Probably because I have.

Last week was Melcrum's Strategic Communication Summit, which Sue and I extended by doing a workshop on the day before the event.

Then this Monday I did the CIPR's Inside Information conference (see wingeing in previous post) - And found a really interesting write-up from Casey Leaver (well worth a read).

So this week I've been running a two day masterclass on Strategy and Planning which always leaves me exhausted (no Sue to argue with or keep me on track!).   

Apologies to the guys for the dodgy photo!

I was more than usually nervous about this one mainly because I'd tweaked the material quite a lot since the last time so I could concentrate more on the question "what should be the strategic concern or purpose of internal communicators?".  That meant that I spent less time than normal on "what should be the contents of your communications plan?"

I was also more than normally intimidated by the group that was coming - a couple of people I know and really admire, someone with acres of training and development experience (who turned out to be a trained hypnotist!) and everyone else seemed to have scarily important positions!

As it turned out, I think it went OK (well at least they were kind with the feedback markings on style and content).  And I think at least one delegate has been persuaded to set up a local self-help group for IC people along the lines that Claire Venn has established in the East Midlands.

However, I do wonder whether "Strategy and Planning" is the right title for the session.  My query is based on the fact that this heading does raise a very broad range of issues for people.  For example when you start talking about the strategic concerns of IC you quickly get into themes like coaching skills, co-ordinating with external comms and stakeholder management.  I'm wondering if we should redesign it to have one masterclass on "Managing IC" and another on "Writing the comms plan".   

Thoughts welcome!

So next week I've got a session at the IABC, a lecture on Comms Theory for the CIPR Diploma plus a workshop for a client.  Maybe I should get some tour tee-shirts printed with dates.

At least I've got a bike ride planned on Friday - anyone want to join me?

Liam

Being polite or being honest?

I've just got home from chairing a one day conference at the CIPR in London.  It was a mixed experience as a chairperson as I never quite know what my role is at these things.

On the one hand I think I should try to keep the day moving and make sure that the speakers stick to time and the audience members who want to ask a question get a chance to do so.  On the other hand, how appropriate is it for me to weigh in when someone speaks rubbish?

Luckily there were some good sessions - I particularly enjoyed Claire Cater from Bell Pottinger on Crises, Paul Middleton of the City of Westminster and ever reliable Russell Grossman.

Yet after one presentation (good manners prevents me from saying which) one of the delegates came up to me and expressed himself puzzled by a piece of advice that had just been dished out.  It particular, he said in the nicest possible way, he didn't think it was really practical and he couldn't imagine the sort of organisation in which it might work. 

I have to admit that I'd missed the point - I'd been too concerned with getting people away for a break (20 minutes late) to have noticed it in what had otherwise been quite a good presentation.  And I had intervened a couple of times to make alternative suggestions during the day so I didn't feel too bad about missing it.

However, since getting home I have felt a bit bad about it - especially given the rants I have made in the past about challenging some of the rubbish that passes for insight in our profession at times.

OK it was quite a trivial issue this time, and possibly a difference of opinion, but I'm still angry with myself from a couple of years ago when I never said anything when a very senior PR consultant had patronised a group of internal communicators with some nonsense that indicated she had no idea or experience of the subject she was pontificating upon... ho hum...

Liam

I’m all conferenced out…(so it's a long post!)

It seems to be conference week for me – which is good given that I rode in an event at the weekend and my brain is definitely best switched to receive mode… There's an even longer one I'm doing on Saturday so don't bother trying to get any sense on me for most of next week!

On Tuesday I was at an event on brands and employees – where I learnt the new phrase “brandwashing” – meaning to bombard staff with brand messages in the hope of creating zombie-like ‘brand advocates’.

What struck me was the fact that there seems to be a shortage of practical examples often at these events.

For example someone talked about the phenomenon that is Magners Cider (if you’re in the UK you’ll know what I’m on about. Five years ago, the brand didn’t exist. But by careful market analysis and patient marketing the brand has been driven to redefine the category). So if marketers can create a brand from scratch, can’t HR people create employer brands from a zero baseline?

I’m sure they can, but the examples don’t always come out at conferences which are often long on theory and short on real ideas that you could actually apply in your own workplace.

By contrast, at the Melcrum Engagement conference yesterday morning, Mark Blundell of McDonalds talked about the practical steps that they are taking to retain and motivate staff. He illustrated his story with press cuttings and told a fascinating story about how they are creating a diverse workforce. He also gave some thoughts about how they use online communities to build the confidence of their staff (their model is that confident staff are better performers but many of their employees enter the workforce with development needs – needs that the company invests in).

Annette Ware of Vodafone kicked off with a couple of really strong stories about her personal life as a commuter – a great way of drawing you in. And then she backed it up with lots of fascinating detail on how they use they use survey data and research.

Debbie Whitaker from Standard Charted blew me away with her use of data to test her hypothesis that line managers made a difference. – she’s definitely going to be a case study when I refresh the line manager session of Black Belt!

And it shows in the questions that people ask. Mark Blundell was asked dozens of questions on topics that ranged from the theoretical through to some quite detailed practical points. Ditto with Annette – lots of “how did you…?” questions.

As my chum Monika Stafford would say, they showed that people were actively processing in their minds what they are being told – rather than switching off at slide 2.

Ironically, when I got home last night I found an email from the organiser of a conference that I’d chaired a few months ago containing an analysis of the delegate feedback. Guess what…people said “give us more practical examples please!!!!!!!!! – enough of the theoretical waffle!”.

I’ve been reading an excellent book which uses the development of psychiatry as its backdrop…It explains how, at public lectures, the great founders of the profession posited theories but supported them through case studies and demonstrations. OK, Freud made up a lot of his case studies (allegedly) but at least there was a recognition that we learn about our world through practical testing of hypotheses.

I think I've said on here before that as a profession we need to be more critical.  I'm all for a bit of free-thinking and energy but Sue quotes someone who always used to say “In God we trust – everyone else brings data…”

Liam

Telling stories

This is my last one for today, I promise.

Given that I spend so much of my time these days speaking and training, I find myself paying more attention to how people are presenting at conferences rather than what they're saying.  When someone stands out from the rest, why is that? What exactly are they doing? And how can I use it, or how can I help a CEO or someone I'm coaching use it?

At the risk of sounding as if I'm on Darren Briggs' payroll (I've already enthused about the content of his presentation), he's one of the people that stood out for me over the past two days. Why was that?  Because he made very few points in his presentation - this wasn't a mad rush to see if he could get through 70 slides in 60 minutes - and he made them well.  He told stories, he made us laugh, he involved his audience, and he went for the 'tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you've told them' technique.

How did he use story telling?  Well, to start, instead of lecturing us about the importance of CEOs in influencing company cultures, he put up photographs of the Chelsea football manager (I, of course, had no idea who he was, but everyone else seemed to), Tony Blair and the CEO of Vodafone and asked us to vote on who was under the most pressure. (Tony Blair and the Chelsea guy, we all said).  He also asked us to vote on what had the most influence on a company's culture (employees, we said). And in doing that, he'd subtly 'told us what he was going to tell us'.

Then he used facts (the CEO turnover study I posted about yesterday, for example), some self-deprecating humour, a bit of at table discussion and a few call-out questions to get us thinking about the two messages he wanted us to take away (at least I'm assuming they were the two messages!  They were the ones I heard loud and clear anyway.)

Then, he asked us to vote again. OK, we said, you win. The CEO of Vodafone is under the most pressure, and CEOs get our vote for having the most influence over a company's culture. BIngo. We'd reached our own conclusions by working through the issues, and in getting us to think about the two key point again by using the voting buttons, he was 'telling us what we'd told us'. We got the message.

I guess none of this is new to any of us. We know about story telling, we know the 'tell them what you're going to tell them' stuff, we know about interaction and humour. But it's easier and safer to put bullet points on lots of slides, isn't it?  It's like most things in internal comms. Generally, we don't hear stacks of things that are new to us, but now and again it's handy to hear the things we know about again - or even better, to see them working really well in action - so we can remember why they're important.

Another fantastic story teller I saw at the US Summit was Terry MacKenzie, who heads up Internal Comms for Sun Microsystems.  Very, very funny presentation; incredibly impressive story teller. I bet it's a lot of fun to work in her team, and I've just found out that she has a blog.

Any more examples of what makes a great presentation/training session? I'm all ears!

Sue

roll up, roll up

Just going through my notes from the summit (expect several postings as I keep thinking 'oooh, yes!  THAT was interesting!') and have come across the notes I wrote from Victoria Mellor's presentation about Melcrum's latest research about the IC profession. 

It's interesting stuff - I wrote the 'expert commentary' (blushes furiously) for the report and drove Liam mad at the time, by constantly calling/e-mailing and saying 'did you know ...'   Lots of stats about salary levels (if you want to earn the most, start your career in the UK, move to the US after two years and get a job in the Financial sector), budgets, structures (big trend towards IC functions sitting in Corporate Comms - mostly - and also HR), where people's time is focused and what we think we're good and bad at.

Anyway, the amusing point in the presentation yesterday was when Victoria asked how many people were planning to stay in their current job, how many were planning to move and how many were off to join the circus. 

The results? A fairly even split between leavers and stayers, and 21% are off to join the circus!  Unfortunately there was no option in the voting question for 'I already WORK in in a circus ...'

Sue

Jetlagged but inspired

I'm just back from Melcrum's US summit.  It's the first time I've ever been to the States, can you believe. Fantastic shops, great customer service, but can't believe nobody walks anywhere ...?!

The conference really made me think about new technology.  I saw a great presentation from Steve King, Senior Advisor for the Institute for the Future. He sees Marketing teams embracing new media, but Internal Comms teams largely retreating and he warned us not to miss the boat. The message was that new technology is here to stay, and the new generation of employees (Generation Y) is far less likely to trust more traditional corporate, managed channels and far more likely to trust more informal new media that give them the chance to interact, create, and feel more authentic and human.

So blogs, Wikis, RSS and podcasting are in. Apparenly video is set to be very big too. Us longstanders like words; the newbies, apparently, like pictures. It's interesting to see that YouTube has been bought by Google today for $1.65 billion. Watching how people are using technology in the outside world gives food for thought about what they might come to expect at work.

The big question for me is, what will all this mean for everything we thought we knew about communication?  For example, we think we know that face to face is best.  But apparently the youngest generation is not so keen on face to face. I picked up a great book at Phoenix Airport: How to Talk so People LIsten by Sonya Hamlin. It has an interesting chapter comparing the different generations and their thoughts on communication and technology.  For Generation Y, face to face meetings show up as 'uncomfortable, confrontational, and overly formal'. I foresee a whole new set of challenges on the horizon about how to help line managers to be effective communicators.

Then of course, there's the question of control.  In Steve King's view, now anyone can create content, we're going to have to give up any notion of 'controlling' messages and learn to manage the process instead. Somehow.

We're going to have to learn how to use all these goodies for the younger generation of employees, and I reckon it will mean re-thinking our rule book. Stand by for some new models and stats in the next few years.   And now I'll have to stop as this post is getting too long. Our average attention span is now apparently 90 seconds, according to Sonya Hamlin.  Frightening. Hope you can read fast ...

Sue