Work those muscles...

Hello, I've been invited to Guest Blog this month (I think it has something to do with the fact that I rarely commented because too many of the postings were about social media).  I head up the internal comms team at Visa  (yes I do cover my hand when entering my pin number).

Last week I spent the day with a Vice President of the company. He has a pet hate of e-mail. Loves it as a business tool, but gets angry at the volumes we send out. He limits himself to 10 a day.  He also lent me his pedometer to show how much exercise we were going to get. At 8am he checks e-mails/messages to see who he should speak to, and then during the day, in between meetings, he walks around the 9 floors of Visa talking to people. He takes tea breaks on different floors and makes calls to the people who aren't in the office, and working on documents. Someone not at their desk? He leaves a post-it saying to phone him and he'll pop down again.   At about 4pm he heads back and completes any documents etc he needs to on his PC.

I started off finding it a frustrating experience - I kept saying to myself, I should be back at my desk doing some proper work. Then I started to find that people didn't mind being interrupted for 5 mins, and I got a lot of my questions answered. I met several new people who could help me on other stuff too.  I also realised that the majority of my PC work was e-mail - and I benefited from working on proposals away from the desk.   I also covered 4kms!

I've not noticed a decline in my volume of e-mails received yet - but I have found more people are picking up the phone to me, are coming to see me, or are happy to chat for 5 mins when I suddenly appear. I feel like I am improving my social media (it's just that mine is face to face).

I know I am fortunate that 80% of our employees are in 1 building - but it's been a real eye opener for me and something I am going to try to do a lot more.

My only problem I have is what I say to people when I walk up to their desks, and how to walk away too.  I am sure they are sick of "Hi Bob, how are you?" or "Sam, will you give me 2 mins?"   and "OK Mary, back to the grindstone then"

Any suggestions for me?

Comments

[Annie Waite]

Great first post Mark. How about offering biscuits?! Always a winning move at Melcrum. Not sure if it quite counts as bribery, but if needs must!

Just to let everyone know, Mark will be our resident guest blogger for the next month, posting on a selection of issues facing internal communicators.

[Robin Crumby]

Hi Mark,

Managing-by-walking-around: there's no substitute. I reckon e-mail is the root-cause of most corporate mis-communication and disinformation. And Annie's right, bearing gifts or just a smile normally gets a good reception.

Robin.

[Alex M]

Hi Mark,

In light of the success you've had with this but the admission that VISA is just in one building, how could you go about effectively replicating the idea in a company that is more widely dispersed?

Alex