Fifteen minutes of fame

Proudly presenting the first guest blog from: Manon Sas, internal communications advisor, The Netherlands. Manon's private blog

Being the very first guest writer at this blog is just one of this year’s memorable moments. What else? Well, I’m taking my career to an exciting next level: I’m the best followed member at my organisation’s Yammer platform! It’s like being the kid that’s picked first to join the sports team.

What are you working on? That’s that main question of Yammer, a free application that can best be described as internal corporate twitter. Read what your colleagues are doing, comment, like, share or set up a community. Basically: the same things that happen at the coffee machine, but then without the ‘how was your weekend’ and ‘did you hear that Ian …’ chitchat!

At my company early adaptors were very eager to join Yammer. Many first time visitors never returned. Others started to really use the platform. It didn’t take very long before the IT and Legal guys started asking questions. Are we sure our competitors are not on the platform stealing our ideas? True – after leaving the company (i.e. to work with The Competitor), you can still access Yammer if no one else deletes your Yammer account. And yes, we use the basic free service (as opposed to the premium account which has security tools). But so does global consulting firm CapGemini who use Yammer with approximately 20,000 members worldwide, including the CEO. So our Yammer community is growing as well as my fanbase ;-).

Do I miss the coffee machine chitchat? No worries, I still have lots of coffees. Isn’t that the whole point of coming to the office?

Any guest writers out there?

I would like to open up my blog for guest writers, as I’m sure that you will otherwise get sick and tired of hearing from me all the time ;-) So, would you like to contribute, just once, or on a regular basis, on a broad spectrum of communications subjects, please drop me a line at vanveenarns@gmail.com, or add a comment in the comment box.

This blog is a hobby, of course, so I cannot offer you any financial reward, just a growing number of readers, and a change to engage with other professionals. I am looking forward to your contributions!

A CEO from communications heaven

I was lucky enough to be invited to a town hall meeting with a CEO of a company. For multiple reasons I cannot share with you who the CEO is, or what name of the company is. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is what happened to me. I was inspired by this CEO. I was invited to the meeting by his communications advisor, and she told me beforehand how wonderful he is in town hall meetings, and what a pleasure it is to work with him.

In the meeting he addressed a crowd of around 300 employees, who were just told that their budgets were cut. Employees were given the opportunity to ask questions beforehand. My communications contact there told me that the CEO never wanted her to prepare questions. His philosophy is that he should be capable to formulate the answers himself, and boy do I agree with that!

Now, what did the CEO do that inspired me?

1. He used just one (!) slide, to reiterate the company’s strategy, explaining it in simple words, and stressing the importance of every word, not leaving room for any doubt about the fact that he had thought about it, made the choice, and was ready to defend that strategy to any audience.

2. He did not use any business lingo, on the contrary, he spoke in clear, personal, genuine words.

3. When answering the questions, he picked the most difficult ones, and answered them straight on, with great respect for the feelings behind the question, addressing that feeling and explaining very calmly the rationale behind his decision. Every question, no matter how hard, or sometimes unreasonable, was answered this way. Here, it really showed that he was not prepared by a Q&A session, but that he could answer from his own knowledge of the matter.

4. He took ownership of his decisions, admitting mistakes, explaining which parts were his call, and why he made those calls. He said: “I believe in chance before you have to chance”, which I think is a great one-liner, and explained that that was his duty. To chance the company’s direction before this chance would be enforced.

5. I came out inspired, and so did 300 employees, so whatever he did, it was successful.

Communications, it can be so simple if you keep it simple!

Secretaries are communication heroes

Way back, when I was a student at university, I was taught that secretaries are important communications hubs, both in formal and informal communications networks. So, if you want to do communications research, on how informal communications networks function, for example, secretaries need to be included in that research.

Over the years I have learnt another feature about secretaries: they may be the most important communicators in many organizations. Actually, it is fair to say that apart from organizing their bosses work, communicating is probably their main task. I dare to state that secretaries communicate as much as communications professionals and I feel that their work is underestimated and underpaid.

Think of it: they write emails, letters, make phone calls all day, organize meetings, make meeting minutes. And I have found that they often master digital communication tools, like Office programs and social media far better than their bosses, or most other employees in the organization. They are probably the group with the best communication skills in the workforce.

I feel that often they are a victim of the tendency in many organizations to delegate the real work as far down as possible. They don’t have anyone to turn to, and most often they deliver time after time. Just felt the need to write that down at least once in my life.

Value them, my friends, they are the heroes of the modern office!

Is social media ruining students?

Last month I wrote a blog post entitled 'students don't use social media'. Under this somewhat provocative statement, I shared with you my observation that students don't see social media as a separate entity; it is just part of their lives. Highly recommended reading, that blog post, of course ;-).

Interestingly enough, I received an email from Cathryn Vance (thanks Cathryn), who shared this infographic with me, stating that it would be interesting to the readers of this blog. And, indeed, it is a nice overview, very balanced, leaving room for your own judgement. To me, it shows that research and insight around social media are maturing. We have left the phase of fore or against, and we are starting to focus on pro's and con's. I find this a very healthy development, as all media have pro's and con's. Knowing these, help us communicators choose the correct media wisely. Hope you enjoy the infographic as much as I did. If you find it hard to read, here is the link to the original site. http://www.soshable.com/is-social-media-ruining-students/. There you can click to enlarge the image.


Via: OnlineEducation.net

Enter the Intranet Innovation Awards 2011

Just wanted to point you to a very interesting award. Last year, working at my previous employer, we entered the competition, and although we did not win the award (darn…), entering did benefit us. The award is not for the entire intranet, but focuses on great ideas and individual improvements to intranets. The awards are given for specific, tangible innovations that benefit the organisation.

Last year, as we entered, we were forced to sit down with a couple of people involved and think about what we did. And that is great; in every day’s fast business life we hardy take the time to look back and write down what we achieved. I found that to be one of the benefits.

The award is organized by James Robertson, one of the world’s leading intranet experts, and a regular speaker at the leading intranet events around the world.

Try it out, who knows you will win this time and get worldwide recognition. Unfortunately, I will not be able to participate this year, as I have very little involvement (yet) in the intranet in my new job.

Grumpy Old Communicator

Reading the blog post that I wrote over the past few months, it struck me that I have been writing a lot about what is wrong in our communications profession, or what needs to be improved. Why is that, I asked myself? Don’t we have great jobs? Every day is different, we get to be involved in all parts of the organization, we can be creative, can organize fun events, our jobs are becoming more and more important in organizations.

So, to all my readers (and I can see from the statistics that they are spread all over the world), I am sorry if I came across as a grumpy old communicator. Hey, being in communications in 2011 is a ball! Never in the history of mankind have we been using so many different media. The social internet is revolutionizing our jobs, but the old communications rules still apply, so we are in the middle of a revolution.

Why then, was I so grumpy? After some thorough soul searching, I came up with two possible answers to that question:

1 I am in the middle of a mid-life crisis…

2 As our profession is changing, our scope becomes very unclear: what is, and what isn’t corporate communications? These questions bothered me, and I just wrote them down.

I leave it up to you to decide, but I promise to cheer up!

Students don’t use social media

In the past two years there have been numerous discussions on social media forums about the use of social media by the younger generation. People come up with all different kinds of statistics, showing one day that teenagers, students, generation x,y, or z are not using Twitter (for example), and the next day that a different research outcome shows exactly the opposite. Very often these researches have no scientific backgrounds or methods whatsoever, and what makes it worse, is that people use these very shaky statistics to prove their point for whatever cause they want.

I wanted to share with you a few recent experiences I had with students from both Western and Eastern Europe. I had groups coming to my workplace, and I gave some guest lectures and presentations about the subject of social media. Before I started, I would always ask students if they use social media themselves. An average of only 5 to 10 % would raise their hand! Now, what an amazing outcome. One would expect a score close to 100%, right?

Interestingly enough, after this first question, I would always fire a few more questions at them: ‘Who has a Facebook account, who has uploaded a YouTube video, who uses Flickr, who shares music, who has worked with a wiki’? Well, eventually, all fingers were raised… They just told me that they were not aware of the fact that they were using social media.

Here is the thing: we, the older generation, need to make a distinction between the old media, and the new media, between 1.0 and 2.0. For these students, and most certainly for the generations even younger than them, the term social media is not relevant. They are just using the media that they know, and they are not aware of the underlying revolution. Nor do they care about the term social media.

So, I wonder what happens when I tweet the title of this blog post: students don’t use social media. It might trigger some interesting discussions. Hope people take the time to read this post, as clearly, my point is something else.

Wiio’s Laws, or why communication always fails

About 10 years ago, I was a part-time lecturer at the Business Communications Faculty of a university in the Netherlands. The subject I taught was Communications Research Methodology. For the students it was one of the last subjects in their final year, before they would start to work on their Master’s thesis.

To set the scene in the first lesson, I always kicked off with a presentation of Wiio’s laws. Osmo Wiio is a Finnish researcher, who wrote these laws as a bit of a joke. Although these laws are a clear exaggeration, I always told the students, that once they would start their career, this might be a good framework to always keep on hand.

These laws typically received mixed reactions from the students. Some loved them, others were puzzled by them, and some even became almost angry with me, as they thought that my view on our profession was for too negative. This mix of reactions was – of course- exactly what I was looking for, as it would spark of a nice discussion about what communicators can and cannot achieve in an organization.

To this day, I always have a copy of Wiio’s laws on the wall of every office I work in. It serves as a reminder to me to never underestimate the difficult job that we as communicators have.

Wiio published his laws in 1978, but I think they are still valid today, or even more valid, probably. Well, judge for yourself, here they are: communications’ own Murphy ’s Law or Wiio’s laws*

1 Communication usually fails- except by chance

· If communication can fail, it will

· If communication cannot fail, it nevertheless usually does fail

· If communication seems to succeed in the way intended, it must be in the way which was not intended

· If your are satisfied that your communication is bound to succeed, it is then bound to fail

2 If a message can be understood in different ways, it will be understood in just that way which doe the most harm

3 There is always somebody who knows better than you what you meant by your message

4 The more communication there is, the more difficult it is for communication to succeed

So, next time a communications project fails, you can now explain that Wiio’s Laws were to blame.

*In this version, I left out some of his laws that refer to mass communications, and I have seen some other versions with minor changes.

Keep It Simple Stupid!

A few years ago I came across this thought provoking statement for the first time. It was used in the context of a communications plan, and it was referred to as the KISS principle (the first letters of Keep IT Simple Stupid, obviously). It is such a nice phrase to use in discussions about communication plans, as it always provokes a reaction; it always puts people off guard. I have noticed so often that people really started to pay attention when this principle was thrown into the discussion.

The great thing about the KISS principle is – of course- that everybody immediately knows what you are talking about. In the corporate environment we often tend to make things far too complicated. Managers often feel that their messages need to show that they really know what they are doing.

So often does this tendency lead to phenomena like what I like to call ‘PowerPoint Body Building’. “Hey, look how complicated this chart is. I manage this, and I know all the details”. So, OK, you got muscle, but what was it that you were trying to say to us, because we are totally lost here…

Another issue with many managers or project leaders is that they just want to communicate too much. You don’t need to cover all your areas, just focus on what is important to your audience. Communication is very much about what you don’t say!

When I make a communications plan, I usually try to get the KISS principle (spelled this way, and just explained once) in the communication strategy part of the plan. It is a great phrase to refer to whenever people make things too complicated. Everyone knows immediately what you mean when you give feedback.

Anyone any other examples of principles that they use? I’d be curious to hear about them.

Sorry, we don’t speak English here

English is the business language in the corporate environment, no question about it. I hope my German and French readers don’t feel offended, but this is reality in the global village that we call world.

If we were to look at the communications profession as a toolkit, language (so, in the corporate world, the English language) is our most important tool.

O.K, this is a given, but I’d like to point out two things that we sometimes tend to forget in our daily practice.

1 Native English speakers have a huge advantage over non-native speakers. I am Dutch, so I spend most of my days communicating in a foreign language. My English is in reasonable shape, but clearly, I miss many nuances as a result of the fact that I am not communication in my native tongue. If you are a native English speaker, please take into consideration how difficult it can be for a foreigner to communicate in a foreign language.

2 I think we, as communications professionals, should stress more and more that we need to train people to master the corporate language. It never fails to amaze me that we keep hiring people in a corporate environment that don’t master our preferred language at least at a basic level.

Well, I hope I did not make too many mistakes in this blog post. Native speakers, please forgive me, and if you want to see a real funny example of what I just wrote, just watch this hilarious video.

A communications plan is not a communications calendar

It is the core of our job: a communications plan. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you might recognize that I challenge current practices every now and then. Here is one that you might recognize. Too often I see communication plans that have just two elements: a stakeholder analysis and a communications calendar. I have seen some (well, many…) consultancy firms in my day doing just that.

The element that is too often missing is the communications strategy. OK, so we have this project. Do all project members agree on the core messages? Given the stakeholder analysis, what should our strategy be? Why do we come up with the media mix in the communications calendar? I have seen numerous plans state that they want to engage their stakeholders. Then, when I read the calendar, there are newsletters, intranet pages and kick-off meetings planned. You don’t engage people using digital media and presentations... OK, I know many of these consultants just copy and paste from their previous assignment. If you are a consultant: use a better template! If you want to hire a consultant, check if their communications plans are more than just communications calendars. Our profession is becoming mature, you know

Feel like a child again, start a new job

So I started a new job. Gone are the days of warm goodbyes (thanks Océ colleagues, what a great way to part), back to reality and the beginning of a new exciting journey. One of the first differences I noticed is the use of social media for external purposes. The pharmaceutical industry is very different from the printing industry. This business is all about quality and safety. Everything that distracts people from these two key performance areas is more or less irrelevant. Moreover, this is a highly regulated business. Companies are very restricted in what they can say or do in the outside world. So, more than ever before, I need to stress that this is a personal blog. I will keep following trends in internal communications, but I will not share any information about my present company.

I noticed first hand now how digitalized our world has become. Fortunately, I have kept up with the trend, but consider all the new things I need to learn: a new phone, a new operating system, a new teleconferencing tool, a new intranet, a new navigation system in my car, you name it. When you need to change all these things you suddenly become aware of how depended we have become on digital communication tools. I felt like a little child that first week, and I am still figuring out Vista, but at least I can answer my phone now ;-)

One of the greatest things for me to pick up will be the staff engagement program (volunteer work, sports, theatre, staff celebrations, you name it). There is a lot available, also from the corporate HQ, but good ideas are more than welcome.

10 things that struck me at Océ

1. Proud to have worked for a typical Dutch engineering firm, with great engineers and designers who make fantastic printers.
2. Where are the women at the top???
3. Very decentralized organization.
4. Great history, what will the future bring?
5. Great, nice, creative colleagues at the International Communications Department, who are at their best when they organize fantastic trade shows.
6. At HQ language breakdown, my estimate: 2% English, 38% Dutch, 60% local Limburg accent (very different from standard Dutch)
7. The HQ closes for two days during Carnival.
8. WOW, do they know how to celebrate ‘Carnaval’ in Venlo. I have learned to see the difference between ‘Carnaval’ and ‘Vasteloavond!’
9. The financial crisis really hit us. What an impact!
10. As everyone says: Océ will always stay in your blood. That’s correct.

All the best Océ, I really enjoyed my time, but it is time to move on! Amgen, here I come.

Boost your ego, leave your job

This week I announced that I will be leaving Océ to take on a new challenge as Corporate Communications Senior Manager at Amgen Europe. B.V.
I am really looking forward to my new job, but what I wanted to write about in this blog post is not the content of my current or my new job.

I just wanted to share with you how amazed I am about the enormous amount of sweet, positive, heartwarming messages I got. I talked about this with a few people who had switched jobs too, and they all said the same. All of a sudden people with a role to play become just regular human beings again. Wow, life is so much better if we connect on a human-to-human level instead of a role-to-role level. I know it is impossible not to play a role, but still; I am convinced that it pays out to just be yourself, in any given situation.

In the Netherlands there is a famous book about life in the corporate world, called hoe word ik een rat? (how to become a rat). In a funny way it describes that one needs to become a bit of a rat to survive in the corporate jungle. Push the right buttons at the right time, make yourself visible or invisible at the right time, use you elbows, play the politics game really well. Or, as my manager states it: “success has many fathers, failure one project manager”. Indeed, that is how it often works.

This is a bold statement, but I know I am not a corporate rat. Sure, I loose the occasional battle from a rat. Yes, I am too modest about my successes (although with this blog I am trying to prove the opposite…), but in the long run I still have enough successes to celebrate. My career is still in an upward mode. That’s really nice, but that is not the only reason why I have been walking with a big smile on my face all week. In fact, more important is the fact that all the positive feedback I received proved to me that it pays out to just be yourself. There is room for being genuine in the corporate world, and that is a very encouraging thought.

I’d like to dedicate this blog post to my father. He spent his working life quite high up in the hierarchy of the corporate world, and when he died at the age of 59, his 200 or so business friends disappeared from our lives within two months. Some of these people had worked with him for over 25 years and had seen me grow up. What I learned from that awful experience is that life is too precious to play a game. Or as Stephen Covey states: there is no one who says at their deathbed:’ I really regret that I didn’t spend more time at the office’.

As Manager Internal Communications, I don’t manage 99% of internal communications

As a Manager Internal Communications I am not responsible for 99 per cent of the internal communications in our company. Think about it: where and how do people communicate? On a daily basis, every employee communicates via email, phone calls, one-on-one conversations, small group meetings, departmental meetings, phone conferences, video conferences, reports, you name it.

In my current job I am responsible for NONE of the above… OK, it makes sense that I don’t write your emails, but - in fact - I have no say in email as a prime communication tool too.

Defining Internal Communications as a profession is traditionally hard. I am still not able to really pinpoint it, but I like the approach of a Dutch consultant, Ilse van Ravenstein. She is the owner of Involve, an agency dedicated to internal communications.

She defines different playing fields. The model varies in words every now and then, but this is my interpretation of it. Our field of responsibility:

1 Players: empowering our employees to communicate themselves (this covers the 99 per cent I mentioned. We can be a consultant to our employees or we can train them).

2 Media: the obvious one, our internal media mix; intranet, newsletters, blogs, you name it.

3 Themes: we often take responsibility for a cross media approach of themes that matter to everyone; strategy, sustainability, change programs.

4 Measure: embed and guarantee: we should measure the internal communications need and -effect, make sure that we embed our efforts in the organization and ensure that our actions are followed up.

5 Organize the IC function: we need to organize all the above: ensure that the Internal Communications function has its place in the organization. We should build up a network of people responsible for internal communications.

Does this model cover it all? No, but I have not seen a better one so far. The definition question will remain, but at least a framework like this allows us to discuss our scope in a more structured way. The model helped me discuss my program with my internal stakeholders at Océ. I am sure that the scope of the internal communications function will differ from organization to organization. With the 99 per cent in mind, it might be wise to focus on empowering the players: our employees. If you are a regular reader of my blog, it should come as no surprise that I think that there is a world to be won in that area.

ROI or RODP of internal communications

Last week I attended a meeting about communications, and one of the topics was accountability. How can we, as communication professionals show, or better still, prove our added value?

Tough question when we apply it to internal communications. What is the ROI (Return On Investment) of internal communications? Five minutes time saved per employee with our cool intranet page that allows people to find crucial information, times 24,000 employees is an x amount of FTEs saved per year? Nice try, often used, but complete nonsense, as these 5 minutes will be used by every individual to do something else. We will not fire one of them as a result of time won on a huge bunch of added up 5 minutes.

OK, we can just show the numbers: 200 news items, 1 million page views per month on our intranet, 12 magazines, 4 town hall meetings, 10 presentations for the Board. Those are just the bare facts, and it is at least something to show.

I would like to introduce a new standard for measurement: the RODP, or Return On Damage Prevented. Think what would have happened if your employees would have been informed by the press, not by their own organization. What damage would be done if nobody was informed about our latest rebranding and logo standards? I am sure there are loads of examples that we could use to create our own RODP scale. I’d love to hear your examples.

If your meetings are compelling, useful and effective, don’t read this blog post

In years and years of practice in internal communications I have met so many people who hate meetings. Just look at the faces of most people in a larger meeting. Or listen to people complaining about the fact that their day is fully planned with meetings, keeping them from ‘work’.

Meetings often don’t start on time and don’t end on time. Very often it is unclear what is decided. Action points are not followed up. The meeting is dominated by just a few people (the loudest, not the smartest). We often tend to start discussions without a clue of what the goal of the agenda point is, and there are quite a few meetings that don’t have an agenda at all.

I have asked this question time and time again, to employees in a wide variety of businesses: “How much time do you spend in meetings?” The average number, for office workers, is 30%. Then, when I ask them if they received any training in meeting skills, the usual answer is: none at all; in college, nor at work.

So, we spend 30% of our time doing something that we were never trained to do. This fact never fails to amaze me, and I think it is a hidden problem in many organizations. In my opinion, we internal communicators should tackle this problem. For years now I have been conducting meeting workshops, and people love them. I teach them how to prepare a meeting, how to ensure that everybody can contribute, techniques to keep time and  techniques to ensure that the meeting members stick to the goal of the agendapoint. I add some background about group dynamics and I stress the importance of following up on what was decided. Basic stuff, but everybody loves it.

For me, in my role as manager internal communications, this is probably one of the best contributions I can make to improve efficiency in our organization. People often tell me that they saved hours and hours of time as a result of the workshop.

This could be a Dutch problem, though, as we are consensus seekers by nature. I am curious about that: is it? Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and experiences with me.

Can you find the experts in your organization?

The people finder functionality (we call it who-is-who) is the best visited part of our intranet. If you need a phone number, an email address or a job title it works just fine. But what if I would like to find an expert in, let’s say, project management. Sure, there is the advanced search (who uses advances search nowadays?), but I would rely on the fact that the project management experts filled in their full profile (who does that?). Well, with any luck they might have, seven years ago, when they joined the company, but I bet you that they either didn’t bother at all, or –in any case- never updated their profile (who updates their profile on the intranet?).

Behold, the biggest problems with Who-is-Who, People Finder, Company Yellow Pages. They do the job for us, but only partly.

A few weeks ago I had two very inspiring meetings with people who both addressed this issue in a very interesting way. My first meeting was with a representative of Yammer, the internal microblogging company that is slowly conquering the corporate world. She outlined the plans for expansion to me, and she stressed that Yammer will keep the conversation between people as the core of their business model.

The second meeting was with representatives of a Dutch start-up called GuruScan. They developed a very interesting tool to find experts. Their tool ensures that profiles are updated, cleverly harnessing the strength of social networks. One example: others can designate me as an expert in internal communications. Now, it is one thing if I make that claim, but it is so much more meaningful if others say I am. Check it out, part of their website is in English. So far this has been the best effort I have ever seen in tracking people’s expertise within a company. Interestingly enough the basic idea was once developed in the company I work for: Océ, but that is not the reason I mention it here, merely a strange coincidence.

I am convinced that the key to dealing with information overload is in social media. People will connect to other people to get to the information they need. Yammer and Guruscan have a very interesting philosophy about it, and I think that as internal communicators we need to facilitate the connection between people in our organizations. I challenge you: can you find the experts in your organization? If you do, please let me know how, and don’t hesitate to share your stories on Yammer, Socialcast, Guruscan, or any other tool that can help me find experts!

Stop communicating, please!

Gerry McGovern, the famous guru on the subject of writing for the web has this famous line: giving an intranet to a communicator is like giving a pub to an alcoholic. Makes me smile every time I hear it, but it is so true!

In fact, this rule probably applies to most of the tools we use internally. Very often, when a manager or a project leader asks my advice, I tell him or her to skip 90% of what they were planning to communicate. Why write a newsletter that nobody reads, why add yet another full, non-relevant intranet page, why make a brochure about your project?

We need to reverse our tendency to communicate. My personal view is that our job as internal communicators should be to reduce the noise, not to add to it. Stop sending, unless you are really sure that you could add value for your readers.

Yes, I am guilty too, don’t get me wrong, but I have promised myself to change my habits, as the era of social media and information overload has changed the way that people want to receive information. Of course, we should not stop communicating, but, at least consider to stop SENDING.

So, why did I write this blog post, isn't that a contradiction? Remember, I am still that alcoholic in the pub, and old habits die slowly. In fact, I will probably write some more blog posts about this subject in the future, as I think the underlying trends will impact the world of internal communications immensely. And, of course, I must be arrogant enough to assume that I am adding value to you readers. I need a drink…