IABC 2010: Meet the Anti Social Media Guy

By James Bennett, Head of Content, Melcrum

It’s Sunday afternoon in Toronto and the unseasonal rain has given way to bright sunshine. The brightest spot of my day at the IABC’s World Congress so far, however has been meeting a beaming David Grossman of the Grossman Group, friend of Melcrum, leading consultant, and speaker and author and one of America’s foremost authorities on communication inside organizations. Not only is he celebrating the birth of his first child (David – many congrats from everyone at Melcrum) but he’s also here to deliver one of the main presentations at the annual Congress and sign copies of his book, You Can’t Not Communicate, now, according to his website, in its second printing due to popular demand.

David, and his dozen strong team, consult and coach some of the world’s largest organizations and their leaders including Heinz, Lockheed Martin and McDonald’s so his session is arguably one of the highlights of an action-packed program. He gave me an exclusive insight into tomorrow’s session entitled “The communication leader as a coach”.

“I’ll be sharing with delegates what we need to be thinking about as leaders because many of us forget we’re in fact leaders ourselves. Many of us are not trained in leadership or even as communicators [because of our varied backgrounds and training] so this is crucial. I’ll also be sharing best practice on strategy and influence,” he said.

“There is an increase in the number of cross functional teams so having influence and great influencing skills is possible the most important skill a communicator can have today,” he added.

David will also explore how we as communicators can be more purposeful in how we communicate and therefore be more effective as well as the issue of self-awareness and that to be more influential we need to know ourselves more.

Rather interestingly, however, when I mention the fact we’ve both been tweeting in the last 24 hours using the hashtag #IABC, he tells me he likes to call himself the “Anti social media guy”.

“I believe face-to-face communication is on life support and that so many companies are simply attracted to social media because it’s new and shiny,” he said as I lowered my iPhone, put my Flip camera back into my bag and shut down my MacBook. “Too many companies are using social media as an ‘it’ and not as an ‘and’. It’s not the be-all and end-all shiny solution we all think it is, it’s an added extra that companies can use.”

He believes the majority of the world’s largest businesses are using social media with little thought as to how it can contribute to the organization’s overall strategy and that its use is destroying the integrity of face-to-face conversations and replacing it with “hidden conversations”. This is arguably true to some extent with many companies confused as to the role it should play inside the corporate framework. There are, however some successes. He cites IBM and Cisco Systems as two obvious examples. If you’re struggling with social media why not read Melcrum’s new 150-page report that will be on sale next week. Email me your details and I’ll be sure to send you more information.

In the meantime I think I’ll tweet this blog.

Employee engagement Day 2: Y'all feelin' engaged now?

By James Bennett, Head of Content, Melcrum

Melcrum 6th annual employee engagement conference – Day 2

I’m rich I tell you, rich! I’ve discovered the way to convince every internal communicator this earth has living on its soil that putting communication at the forefront of engagement and performance can make a massive difference to the bottom line of every organisation there is: Chocolate, oh and not forgetting everlasting gobstoppers (courtesy of WMW’s sweet emporium).

On a more serious note, today’s second and last day featured a fantastic keynote presentation from Jennifer Shulte, global engagement director at Mars. The small bribe of a miniature sachet of M&Ms on each table aside, Shulte described how the global food giant had calculated that actively disengaged employees, or “associates” as they’re known (all 68,000 of them across 60 countries), were costing Mars $500 million with eight out of 10 of the poorest performing plants in North America.

Shulte said that disengaged employees used to feel like “trapped prisoners” and that Mars had a certain section of staff that felt "stuck". This, however, was before it introduced Gallup’s Q12 survey tool in 2004 – a series of 12 questions aimed at every team of no less than five “associates” that simply asked: “What do we need to do to drive engagement forward?” In 2004 Mars had a scorecard ratio of engaged to disengaged employees of almost 1:1, in 2007 it rose to 1:5, while today this target has been smashed (this wasn't disclosed but I will of course find out) thanks to Shulte’s team’s work on employee engagement. So how did she do it?

Firstly, the executive team had to take notice. Shulte even heard the CEO suggest that his employees were “not engageable” and “unless we pay them more nothing will change." She took this as a personal challenge and soon convinced the leadership team as soon as Shulte presented the cost disengaged employees were having on Mars’s bottom line.

Shulte had to take evasive action and knew she had to investigate one of the worst performing factories in the States in Cleveland, Tennessee. Unfortunately this was where the majority of employees were long serving, had become disenfranchised with their jobs and their working environment and were all southern, gun carrying Americans. The car park, she said, contained nothing but pick-up trucks with gun racks.

Shulte, a colleague and interestingly, a graphic reporter, parked up and proceeded to interview 24 random employees. They then sat and drew the results of each conversation with each disengaged employee. If there was an award for bravest internal communication piece I don’t think she would have much opposition.

“We went there, spent two days off site with the graphic reporter, and just asked simply, ‘tell us, in your own words, what is and isn't working’, and we heard back exactly what they hated about their jobs, and then moved on to the next person,” she said earlier today.

“We spent some time asking them what the ‘good old days’ were like, capturing all of this information on a big blank piece of paper and then we worked with series of photos, asking them to choose two pictures of what their ideal workplace looked like and what they would like to see in the future. And this was big guys with guns!” she added.

But her efforts paid off, in a big way. “One of angriest guys we had met said: “At last I feel better going home to my family because I finally feel something is going to change around here.”

Today, the company’s vision of what good engagement looks like in Mars has completely changed. Everyone now has their say, there are action planning groups where staff can leave their day jobs for 24 hours and discuss various issues as well as mingle with managers who present to employees and employees present to managers, with the critical step being they work together to implement their ideas. As Shulte summarised: “There is now a real commitment to making the actions happen.”

Today engagement is on every business document, while every associate within a local team is expected to take the Q12 and discuss it in-depth with one another.

Look out for a full summary of both days on Melcrum’s website tomorrow.

Top reads to improve your communication

By Annie Waite, North American Editor of the Internal Comms Hub, Melcrum

Employee communication specialist, Lee Smith, has put together a great must-read list of books for communicators via Amazon listmania, featuring books by a lot of the well-known communication 'suspects'.  

In addition to Lee's very thorough list, I've a couple of suggestions, concerning reading matter that might help you break down/understand some cultural barriers or differences between North America and the UK.

First, as a gift before heading over to our Chicago office, our CEO Victoria Mellor gave me a great book called Divided by a Common Language: A guide to British and American English by Christopher Davies. It's been an eye-opener and a distinct advantage when trying to avoid inadvertently offending any US citizens and our customers with inappropriate Brit jargon and so on.

Of course, I've had a few stumbling points: seemingly I was the only person left on Earth who hadn't yet soaked up that Arkansas is actually pronounced 'Ark-en-saw', for example. And as Christopher Davies mentions himself "Brits coming over on 'holiday' still use the term 'bathing costume', much to the amusement of Americans within earshot." Guilty. My puzzled colleague thought I was talking about heading out to do amateur dramatics in the bathroom - sorry - "washroom" - when I mentioned I'd bought a new bathing costume.

I've also started reading Made in America by Bill Bryson, which tracks and analyses the history of the English language in America. So far, it's pretty much persuaded me that a lot of (barring Arkansas!) American pronunciation and description of objects etc makes far more sense than some of our UK versions of certain things. E.g., 'Pavement' versus the more straightforward 'sidewalk' – no contest!

So, I wondered if blog readers can recommend any further tomes of knowledge in the communication field that might have passed us all by, or perhaps not seemed immediately relevant to the comms profession but can actually be quite useful?

If so, let us know here and add a review to the Communicators' Network reviews section so that other comms practitioners can feed back about it.

Making your message stick

By Robin Crumby, Managing Director, Melcrum

How do you make your message stick?

The answer it seems is to: keep it simple, credible, unexpected and, perhaps most importantly, tap into the schema (or frame of reference) of the intended recipient.

Or so says the book that everyone's talking about: Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. After a succession of speakers at both the SCM Summit in Chicago and London referenced it, and an extended stay at Heathrow terminal 4 scouring the best-seller list, I thought it was high time I found out what all the fuss was about.

The killer passage for me (so far, I’m only half-way) is actually taken from Stephen Covey's 'The 8th Habit' and describes a poll of 23,000 employees drawn from a number of companies and industries, that should resonate with communicators:

• Only 37 percent said that they have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve and why
• Only one in five was enthusiastic about their team's and their organization's goals
• Only one in five said they had a clear 'line of sight' between their tasks and their team's and organization's goals
• Only 15 percent felt that their organization fully enables them to execute key goals
• Only 20 percent fully trusted the organization they work for

As Chip and Dan go on to say: ‘pretty sobering stuff’ and enough to make most executive teams sit up and listen. But what takes these already powerful statistics to the next level is Covey translating them into a context more familiar to the average global exec namely soccer (that’s football to me and you). Just imagine:

‘If, say a soccer team had these same scores, only 4 of the 11 players on the field would know which goal is theirs. Only 2 of the 11 would care. Only 2 of the 11 would know what position they play and know exactly what they are supposed to do. And all but 2 players would, in some way, be competing against their own team members rather than the opponent.’

Suddenly those rather dry stats have been transformed into a powerful message: Corporations should operate like teams, but they don’t.

Just imagine: new star executives drafted in from Brazil on fabulous salaries, the new Spanish CEO sacked after ten weeks of poor results, the injuries, the egos, fifty thousand customers lining up each week to cheer your business on, the highs, the lows, the ensuing riots…Nah, it would never work.

Corporations should stick to doing what they do best: corporate speak, jargon and unfathomable statistics. The tried-and-tested building blocks of 'employee engagement' eh?

Made to Stick is rich with anecdotes such as these that illustrate time and again that your message can be made ‘sticky’ in a few oh-so easy steps.

As Mandy Thatcher points out in her review of the same book in the latest issue of SCM, it’s the ‘born or made’, ‘nature or nurture’ argument applied to the effective communication of ideas with a well-earned tip-of-the-hat to Malcolm Gladwell’s equally hyped ‘The Tipping Point’.

Is it worth all the hype? Well, unlike other best-selling business books that take a simple idea and repeat it dozens of times in dozens of different ways, it’s kept my interest for 140-odd pages so far... It's even provided some useful insight into what makes a message truly sticky.

More reviews are available of Made to Stick and other good books for communicators at The Communicators Network.

Enjoy.

Are you in need of People Power?

If so, then David Farrabee's new book might be what you're looking for. David has been blogging over at the Hill & Knowlton blog site for over two years on the topic of change and internal communications, social media and more. [Disclaimer: David's also the presenter of Melcrum's European Social Media Workshops.]

The book is over 200 pages and fully indexed. It includes the 180+ blogs that David has written in the last two years, gathered by chapter, with a new introduction written for each.

From the book's blurb: "People Power is an easy to read guide to internal communications and change management from someone who really knows. Ferrabee is a consultant and a speaker on these topics and one of the people who has seen this new discipline through from its infancy. This book is a must read for managers, students, professors and any professional with an interest in organisational communications."

Congratulations on the publication, David.

(You can buy the first edition of the book here.)

Read any good business books lately?

If you haven't already checked out the new reviews section on the Comms Network, there are now over 120 resources on internal communication, corporate communication, social media, leadership, engagement, measurement and more.

You can read all the reviews without logging in but to write a comment or rate a resource, you need to be a member. It's free to join and takes about 90 seconds to create a profile and upload your photo and start networking.

You’ll find resources you know and some you don’t, such as:

33 Books
From authors Bill Quirke, TJ Larkin, Gerry Robinson, Lucy Kellaway, Susan Drake, Paul Gillin, Robert Scoble, Shel Israel, John Cass, John Smythe, and Andrew Keen. Be the first to write a review or if you prefer just give it a 1-5 star rating anonymously. If you can't find a book you've read, then upload it.

42 Blogs
From popular bloggers such as Neville Hobson, Shel Holtz, The Melcrum Blog, IABC Cafe, Tom Keefe, Lee Hopkins, Debbie Weil, Hill and Knowlton, Dan York, KD Paine, Steve Rubel, Allan Jenkins, the list of blogs on communication topics is growing by the week.

15 Websites
Useful sites for communicators like melcrum.com, InternalCommsHub, Communitelligence, MyRagan, IABC.com to name but a few.

18 service providers
Be the first to recommend the service providers you rate such as Bluegoose, Bonfire Communication, Edelman, Peopleclick, Synopsis, VMA Group, Yellow Communication and many more.

10 Podcasts
From popular podcasts such as For Immediate Release, The Melcrum Podcast, Marketing Voices, and Social Media Today.

You'll also find dozens of groups to join formed around regions, industries, organizations or interests, plus discussion groups on a range of topics.

The CommsNetwork is slowly building into the definitive online database of knowledge and resources for communicators, fully rated and reviewed by you. Add your voice now.

Robin.

Are you in touch with The Living Dead?

Melcrum's events organiser, Alex Garforth, is currently onsite at the latest Black Belt training program and something that's come up in the delegates' discussions is a book called 'The Living Dead'.

Alex mentioned that some of the stats contained within the book are scary, while some are sort of amusing. For example, one in three mid-week visitors to the theme park Alton Towers has taken the day off work on a dishonest pretext!

And many reports suggest that plenty of offices exist that are filled with people that come in, look like they're working and then go home each day providing very little value to the business.

Are there any other scary/amusing stats from the book or elsewhere relating to the workplace that anyone would like to share with the Melcrum blog readers?

Just get on with it!

Just saw this article by Melissa Brown, an associate professor of applied business at the University of Alaska.

Brown is talking about “It’s Called Work for a Reason”, a book by fellow American Larry Winget.

Brown and Winget say that while the internal comms profession is busy thinking up ways to make employees feel happier and more fulfilled, we need to remember that in the end, when an employee takes a job they're entering into a contract with an employer to do a certain amount of work each day.

 

Or to quote Melissa Brown:

"Winget says, 'You’re not paid to love your job.' When you were hired you struck a deal with your employer to do a certain amount of work for a certain amount of money, regardless of how you may feel about it. But somewhere along the way, people often forget about this agreement. As time goes by, companies continue to pay employees more, even though they produce less."

Or in other words if an organization pays a person to work, why does it then need to spend more money motivating them?

A communicator's favourite things...

Over at the Black Belt Dojo, Liam and co. are putting together a list of internal communicators' top-rated books.

Current nominations range from the serious (Harvard Business Review on Change) to the less so (Who Moved My Blackberry?).

What would be in your must-read list for internal communicators? Is there a book (or other resource) that you use every day? What have you read that's revolutionised your thinking? Send us your nominations and we'll compile a full run-down.

Josie