You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2010.
I recently attended the National Summit on Strategic Communications at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington DC hosted by the Institute for Public Relations. Price Floyd, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the US Department of Defense, opened the conference and woke everyone up when he shared that Hezbollah has as many information officers as it does war fighters.
Wow, that’s quite disturbing especially when contrasted with Karen Hughes, former Senior George W. Bush Advisor and Senior US State Department official, that the State Department didn’t have anyone focused primarily on reaching out to Arab Media before she joined the State Department. Karen had to fight through red tape and begging Congressional Appropriators to hire two media specialists focusing on Middle East media outlets. Regardless what one thinks about the war(s), it is clear that the West needs to do a much better job communicating with skeptical and sometimes hostile populations.
Continuing on this same theme about the need for communicators, Gary Sheffer, VP of Communication and Public Affairs from GE shared his story about how he and his staff met the Financial Crisis head on. He was bold and he requested and hired Ten New communicators. Gary also scrapped all their contingency communication plans which were quite similar to running a defensive war room. He instead transformed his team into a daily and grueling battle which he could only compare to running a major Presidential Campaign.
With their new talent, they were able to incorporate powerful story telling into their strategic communication. He gave his staff two directives. One, they “must explain big concepts simply to build credibility” and two that “Public Affairs must be central to creating and protecting business opportunities.”
I’d love to hear tips from other communicators on how can you convince senior management that you can be more valuable to the organization if given the resources. I’ve found that communicators are great at telling the organization’s or management’s story but horrible requesting things for themselves. How can you tell you and your department’s story effectively internally to help deliver results?
The Federal Communicators Network and the DC chapter of IABC recently hosted a great workshop entitled, “What’s your story? Using story-based communication tools to engage employees [and other stakeholders].”
Cindy Atlee, Partner at The StoryBranding Group, gave the group valuable insight into the power of stories and the narrative to raise your communication effectiveness. She shared with the group that there are four levels of communication from the least effective to the most effective.
- Descriptors which inform and are based on Facts (Who, What, Where, When and maybe Why)
- Differentiations which promote and focuses on Strengths and Assess Benefits (Why this Matters)
- Connectors whish Inspire and Involve and is based on finding shared values, belief and finding meaning.
- Motivators which move the recipient to Action and Allegiance and is based on a deeper emotional connection.
My communication background is writing AP Style communication which has primarily focused on answering the Five W’s and the How. I find I have very little difficulty communicating using the first two levels- Descriptors and Differentiators, but I have a much tougher time with creating Connections and Motivators.
I know I’d like to tell more powerful stories that inspire, engage and motivate, but I am a poor story teller. So poor, I have difficulties telling the simplest of knock knock jokes. I usually reveal the punch line way too early and my comedic timing is worse than Al Gore’s.
How do you connect and motivate your stakeholders and really get them to participate?
This is an interesting piece about some of the obstacles organizations face when it comes to encouraging all employees to bring new ideas to the table.
At PollStream, we really believe that great ideas can come from anyone in your organization. As you know, Sparkplug is an idea marketplace that capture’s every employee’s best thinking.
Steven Green and I recently attended the Council of Communication Management’s Annual Conference in Philadelphia for senior communicators. The theme of the conference was “What’s Next?” which took a look into the future. It also included great best practice case studies from industry leaders.
I was honored to be asked to moderate a lively Social Media panel from industry leaders – Day and Zimmerman, Sun Microsystems, GE and Wal-Mart. The panelists were wonderful and one of the biggest takeaways was that you don’t have to implement everything all at once. Take baby steps, tackle the smaller things first and make them successful before moving on.
Wal-Mart wowed the audience with their after hours site that reaches millions of their non wired employees. I think these sites that include benefits, corporate information and possibly work and vacation schedule setting will finally help the communicator successfully engage front line employees. The old and unsuccessful org chart cascade method has been an uphill battle for communicators.
The conference also took a look at the profession and the crucial role communicator will play in the future especially around social networks. It was clear by both the presenters and the attendees that Social Networks are only going to become more important. The communicator’s role will be less about creating and pushing content and more about becoming listening, counseling and becoming the facilitator’s of discussions.
Taking this prediction one step further, I predict that the communicator will need to develop more business acumen skills. I think that the MBA, operation and even finance experience will become required requisite for a communicator to lead a global communication department. As discussions about the business increase at all levels of the organization, I think it will be imperative for the communicator to be able to identify business solutions and opportunities. Technology, like PollStream’s and others, will continue to become refined helping the communicator identify these opportunities in the complex peer to peer discussions . The communicator will need to have the skills to present and make actionable recommendations to senior leaders and executives.
The organizations that embrace this grass roots listening and identifying approach to running a business will gain a significant competitive advantage. So I foresee cultural wars in corporate boardrooms where those that are comfortable with the old Top Down Management approach will fight to hang on to their command and control model while those that leverage the collective wisdom will seize leadership positions where listening is crucial i.e. more General Petraeus and less General Patton.
How do you see our profession and our role evolving in the future? How do Social Networks and building communities play a part?
In 1964 Avis Rent-A-Car ran an advertisement inviting customers to call the president, Bob Townsend, on his direct line if they had any complaints. “He answers the phone himself. He’s a nut about staying in touch.”
Breakthrough ad campaigns usually have a lot of “me-too” followers but there weren’t many CEOs following Bob Townsend’s lead in making themselves available to their customers. Even today you don’t see many top executives making the effort to “reach across the aisle” to their customers – with the possible exception of Steve Jobs in recent weeks.
Imagine what it would feel like if you signed up for a new account at a bank and you got home you found a personal email from the president inviting you to post a comment on the corporate blog about your first experience dealing with the bank?
Certainly top executives can’t correspond personally with every new customer, but every now and then they could reach out to connect with some customers.
Social Software makes it possible to take part in the larger conversation, makes it easy to say “You bought our product? Thank you very much. Let me know if we are earning your business every day.”
It doesn’t have to stop there. Every customer that has access to Facebook or Twitter has the potential to become an evangelist. The corporate web site becomes a place to build community.
To engage with customers around the things that are important to them – like their everyday service experiences.
Take Royal Bank of Canada for example, they have transformed their online banking page from a straight-up collateral message to a conversation with customers about their experiences – all experiences; the things that make them smile and the things that make them steam.
Sure, sometimes you’ll get an earful from a customer. More often, if you reach out to them, they’ll extend a hand back. Engagement, after all, starts with a human touch.
Praise is a powerful workplace motivator and it costs little to nothing to hand out. In fact, TD’s Wow Moments program is a perfect example. Why, then is praise and recognition so scarce in offices across North America?
Here’s what tends to happen: top producers, instead of getting a pat on the back find themselves simply getting more work piled on. When the boss needs a job right, they turn to their star performers. And when the boss is under pressure, guess who pulls the fat out of the fire?
“A leader’s greatest source of power is the ability to change the way people feel,” says Jeff Grimshaw, co-author of the book Leadership Without Excuses. In lean times a manager might not be able to promise shorter hours or hand over a larger paycheck. But she can shape a culture of respect and pride in a job-well-done.
Praise and recognition are most effective when they are handed out in public. Too many organizations rely on quarterly recognition events to praise their hardest workers when they should be delivering recognition on the spot, catching employees “in the act” of a job well done.
Social Software can really help us out here. By enlisting the entire workforce into a cooperative effort to recognize good work, managers can make praise both immediate and highly visible throughout the organization. Employees can give a company-wide “pat on the back” to fellow workers who might not even be on the bosses’ radar.
Disengaged employees can end up costing and organization money. Engaged employees return value many times over. The difference between the two is often times simply the knowledge that the boss truly values one’s hard work.
It is, after all, the human touch of recognition and reward that drives motivation and discretionary effort.
Read more about TD’s Wow Moments program here.
David Zinger and Steven Green recently joined me for a conversation about how to encourage participation in your employee communities and social networks during the latest installment of PollStream’s Real Engagement Webinar series.
They both spoke at length about the role senior executives can play in engaging employees, mobilizing them and making them more productive. According to Zinger, one of the keys is to ensure there is a “visible host” that invites the community to participate, takes the time to make them feel welcome and makes personal connections.
David suggested that often senior executives are a great choice to moderate or host the dialogue taking place inside the community. When senior executives “sit in the middle” community members know their contributions will be taken seriously. “It puts a face on the community and a face on engagement.”
As you’ll hear in the recording of this session, David says that if he had his way he’d have CEOs work have a day sitting with the security guard at the front of the building. “They would sit at the foundation of the organization.”
PollStream founder Steven Green shared examples of customers who had enlisted senior executives as Subject Matter Experts and held live Q&A sessions using Comment Engine. Of particular interest was the story from NYT’s Corner Office segment which told of an executive who modified his blog into a purposeful venue through which to ask questions rather than deliver top down messages in an effort to encourage participation amongst the entire community.
I think that this week’s Corner Office column nicely weds David’s perspective with Steven’s. In “The CEO With The Portable Desk”, AdMob founder and CEO Omar Hamoui talks about making himself available to employees to engage them and learn what they think.
According to Hamoui, “I don’t have an office. We have an open office here. I also move my desk around. About every six weeks or so I just move to another part of the company that I feel I haven’t heard a lot about lately or don’t know the people that well in, and I just sort of sit there.
My whole desk construct is nomadic. I just pick up my computer and sit somewhere else. If people see you just sitting there and you’re not doing anything, they walk up to you and talk to you. It’s pretty effective in terms of hearing how things are going and how people are feeling about the company or how people are feeling about you.”
So my question is, where do you stand when it comes to engagement? Are you accessible? Do you make it easy for people to participate?
pollstreamblog.wordpress.com 