The leap inside

End of Year report

2011-12-28T10:23:00.000Z

I'm supposed to be doing some report writing today, so picking up the blog after a few months of inactivity probably isn't a bad way to get back into the swing after a few days' break. I realise I haven't written anything on here since September - not through lack of interest, but through having been too busy both on the comms side and on the academic side to have the time to put the thought into making any sense on here. Now though, we're just a few days from the end of 2011 and it's not a bad time to reflect on a curious year.

Business-wise, I'm finishing the year strongly. Unilever has been a fantastic new client this year, the Adecco Group has kept me busy across several of their brands and agencies such as ArtHaus and Gatehouse have both put interesting work my way. I've picked the odd one-off piece up too - with a small piece for World Vision sticking in the mind. On the flipside, Diageo has been very quiet and some of my regulars from the past few years either are no longer in existence or have reduced their comms work significantly. While there are some signs of growth and recovery in some industries, it's patchy and inconsistent.

My year has definitely been one of two halves. The first was pretty poor, with a lot of scratching around for new work and a rather linear flow to what I was involved in. The second half has been much stronger with a mix of facilitation, training delivery, writing and editing for a range of electronic media and even a few smallish pieces of consultancy work. For the first time in about two years I even had to turn some work down as I didn't have the capacity to deliver it. That's always bittersweet, but at least this time I was able to pass it on to a connection.

I have been courted for a number of interim projects and came close mid-year to taking on a year's contract that looked as though it would have a foot both in comms and in academia. However, the actuality didn't really live up to the billing and the prospect of working with the most unctuous person I've yet to come across in the industry convinced me to stay clear.

I've built on my teaching at Brunel University and am convening a module on US History this academic year. This is tremendously rewarding (other than financially!) but probably has held back my PhD work as I strive to keep at least a week ahead of the students. That said, I've just had my first full academic paper published, and the reaction so far though minimal, is positive.

Looking ahead to 2012, I have one retained, client which is always good, though we're still negotiating what that retainer should be! There's the prospect of both a White Paper and a corporate magazine to keep me busy through January and February, but after that, who knows?

I feel that business-wise I'm in a slightly better position than a year ago, but still feel a month or two behind where I should be to feel comfortable. It has been a tough 12 months with the prospect of another toughie to come. But, in March, I'll celebrate a dozen years outside corporate life - and I'm not about to give up yet!

The Freelance Rules #12 - Be of strong constitution

2011-09-20T15:13:00.000+01:00

You'll get plenty of knock-backs as a freelancer and to make a real go of it, it helps to have the constitution of an ox.

I've been at my desk since about 7.30am today. My elder daughter, off school with an Autumn bug, has kept me company for some of the time, though she has headed back to bed now. To be honest, I'm not feeling great at the moment - the kids go back to school each Autumn and bring home every virus and infection going. And they're very 'sharing', my kids. For the last couple of days I've had a dull headache and have a lovely scratchy throat to accompany it. But as a freelancer, you simply have to rise above such man flu.

Back in the day when I was a magazine journalist, I thought nothing of missing the odd mid-week day after a big night out. When I moved over to corporate life, my work ethic improved, but if I didn't feel 100%, I would call in sick knowing full well that I'd still get paid. Once, when I picked up horrendous food poisoning in Paris and was off for a fortnight (and lost a stone and a half in the process), I was particularly glad for that payment security blanket. Though, as the symptoms recurred over the next year while I struggled to finally get the bug our of my system, my boss was less impressed by the additional half dozen days I racked up in sick leave.

When I started working for myself, everything changed. I have insurance that covers me if I can't work, but it's very restrictive and kicks in only after six weeks. So, the equation for me is simple. If I don't work, I don't get paid. It's amazing the change that understanding prompts. In 11 years, I've only had to cancel work appointments twice. I've never been ill for more than a couple of days (and try and save those for weekends) and regularly work through the minor illnesses that would have sent me in search of my duvet in 'employed' days. Okay, I have coughed and spluttered through a few meetings; attended one where I couldn't sit down having been bitten on the backside by a big bug who didn't wipe his feet; and pitched for a new account in a mis-matched suit jacket and trousers put on in a migraine haze. But the upshot is, the fear of not earning is a fantastic medicine.

There's nothing unusual in my situation - just about every freelance I know operates in the same way. We all know that if we're not around to take on the work, someone else will.

So, if you're thinking about taking the freelance plunge, think about your health and your ability to work through the sniffles. If you're a bit of a fragile flower, you probably won't last long working for yourself.

The Freelance Rules #11 - Trust your gut

2011-09-11T23:50:00.000+01:00

I'm in the very nice position at the moment of having a number of projects to juggle - that's great after a tough couple of years but throws up its own challenges of prioritising, keeping clients happy and generally having enough hours in the day to take part in the meetings and deliver the work.

I recently had the chance to cut the stress by focusing on one project for one client for a year. Okay, the pay wasn't going to be fantastic, but the project sounded great. The spec was to support the internal and external comms needs of a new CEO in an industry I enjoy for one of its biggest organisations - and one that was both new to me and would be a very good name to have on the CV. Stakeholders would be in the UK and International and would cut across the private and public sectors and include considerable government liaison. The call was to create a new strategy and then be a key player in implementing it.

There was a pretty time-consuming procurement process - which saw me spend the day I went on holiday writing a speech among other activities - but it looked like a project worth getting on board.

At the first selection meeting, I didn't meet the guy I'd be supporting. That rang an alarm bell, Instead, I was asked to do some more pre-work (which was never mentioned again!) and then grilled by a panel of four. One actually said nothing; two I took to, but the other managed to come across in turn as unctuous, officious, pompous and overly alpha-maleish. My answers didn't seem to be ringing his bells, and I left the room really not expecting to be asked back to sell-in my services - and not sure I wanted to return anyway.

Within 24 hours, as other client worked buzzed about me, I was asked back - and they wanted to see me pretty much immediately. My gut said let it go - but their obvious (though slightly surprising)interest in me probably flattered my ego a little too much. The lack of chemistry in the first meeting; their forensic interest in what seemed to me not so important issues; and a certain friction when I outlined my preferred way of working should have alerted me that this was not going to end happily. But, it's nice to be flattered and I shifted a couple of appointments and headed for this potential new client.

Again, I didn't get to see the person I'd actually be working for and was faced instead with the gang of four. They drilled into my preference for effective over efficient communication (they seemed to want things the other way round) and pointed to their CEO as being the 'expert' whom I should take my cue from without challenge.

At that point, I was seriously thinking: 'why have a dog and bark yourself?' My gut was telling me to get out of there - but that's not what we do in pitch meetings. Too often we sit there giving the answers we think the other side wants rather than what we actually believe to be true.

By now, Mr. Unctuous had turned particularly pompous. He was virtually going line by line through some other client work I'd been asked to provide to demonstrate the breadth of my work. I didn't take to his school master tones and finally woke up to what my gut was telling me.

These people didn't want a creative, challenging communication partner - they simply wanted a speechwriting powerpoint jockey who wouldn't rock the boat. The package they were selling bore little resemblance to the pretty picture on the box.

Politely but firmly I piped up: "You know what, I don't think I want to take this any further. I obviously don't fit what you're looking for and don't think I need to take up any more of your time."

It would be an understatement to say they were shocked. I think I shocked myself. But I honestly could not see any point in going through the polite rituals for another hour when I knew that there really was no meeting of minds. A few coughs, splutters and uncomfortable minutes later I was walking back to the car.

I should never have gone to the second meeting. It merely confirmed my concerns and wasted the time of five people - and I never did get to see the head honcho......probably a sign in itself.

I feel I dodged a bullet. Myself and Mr. Unctuous would never have got on. But I also feel that potential clients should be more honest in their project specs. If you advertise for a creative challenger and set a process that plays to those strengths, that's what you'll get. If you really want a skilled packager, make that clear on your tender.

Anyway, my gut has stopped rumbling. Since that slightly painful hour in the Midlands, two clients have come by with new work and the pipeline's looking particularly perky.

I'm very far from perfect, but on this occasion I felt vindicated in walking away from a poor, over-engineered process. Chemistry matters, honesty matters and respect matters in project negotiations. When any of those factors is out of kilter, it can leave a particularly painful - and long-term - gut ache.

Be a partner, not a packager: know when it's right to say 'no'

2011-07-11T11:59:00.000+01:00

My working world has been organisational communication for more than 20 years now. Throughout that time, IC professionals in particular have been fighting to establish their role: first in delivering comms, then in gaining employee buy-in and communicating through change and most recently, establishing the position of IC in engagement. The constant has been that IC has never been confident in its role - and the upshot is that communicators and the rest of the business see the IC role as two different things.

Wherever I go, I tend to find well-qualified, talented and ambitious IC people working as packagers: responding to the needs of the business by picking up decisions made elsewhere and processing them for publication - be that on a portal, through a tweet, in a team meeting or even in a glossy magazine. Most are doing a great job, but I'd question whether they're doing the right job in building a culture that will truly drive their organisation forward.

Far less frequently, I find IC people in on the decision making process before the key business decisions are finalised. This is where IC should be and should earn its spurs.

With the democratisation of communication, through the near-ubiquitous SharePoint world of team sites, yammer and the rest, overlaid with the bloom of external social media, comms pros can no longer sit their with a finger in the dyke expecting to control the media flow throughout their organisations. Give people the tools to get on with communication, but then get out of the way. The real value that IC can bring is in expert advice - not in trying to craft every message and manage every mechanism.

If IC wants to be taken seriously, it should be looking at the models being set in other functions - Finance, HR and IT for instance. More and more, those other functions are outsourcing and automating transactional business. Of course, in the last few years, much of this has been driven by the economic climate. Teams have got smaller and in order to make their workload manageable, it has been essential to find new ways of doing the time-consuming but less high-value areas of the job. What has emerged in these functions are a two-speed operation: a few people still looking after the bread and butter process work, but more senior, more able or just more business-focused team members taking on a business partner/expert adviser role further up the business chain. Where such advice works best is before decisions are made. It's a model IC should be fighting for.

I'm ambivalent to the term 'business partner': when a service department is helping a business unit director, it's no more a partnership than when I'm supplying my expertise to an internal client. We'll meet at a point of mutual interest, but I'll always know who's boss. I prefer the concept of expert adviser - and that expertise will become valued and trusted the first time you say 'no' to something.....and are proved right.

We've all had the situation when the CEO or someone equally influential comes along and says: "I need to get this message out now." Sometimes it's a no-brainer: it has to go and everything else gets shoved to the side to make it happen. But on other occasions, your expertise tells you it's the wrong thing to do. Is the message that important? Is the timing right? How does it fit in the context of other communication happening at the same time? What will be the reaction of the organisation? If you have a good case for saying no - and have the evidence to back that case, you prove your worth by challenging the authority figure. But how often does IC do that in reality? How much more likely is it that we stop being an expert and revert to the comfort zone of packaging again?

If IC wants to finally nail a valued role in the organisation, it has to stop being the packager, get into the decision making loop and be far more prepared to challenge far more often.

Are we getting hung up in the Emperor's new clothes?

2011-07-07T16:44:00.001+01:00

The wealth of words spilt in pursuit of organisational engagement is staggering. From ning groups of thousands to a plethora of LinkedIn communities, engagement is the buzz of the decade that's supposed to be delivering organisational success.

But what is it? Can we ascribe measurable benefits to it and can we turn those metrics into something that conclusively delivers results?

Working for a couple of large corporates this year, together with my involvement in Adecco's fascinating research project: Unlocking Britain's Potential and even my own research on organisational communicators' role within engagement, what strikes me is that what's being talked about now isn't a million miles away from the emotional intelligence of a decade and more ago or even the corporate dialogues I was involved while working at Nationwide Building Society 20 years ago.

Back then, before the Internet; when communication was face to face and backed by print, we were taking faltering steps from top-down communication into a world where employees were 'empowered'; they had a voice in decision making and all our focus was on breaking down silos and getting cross-functional teams to collaborate within a culture of success to deliver on a range of defined and beneficial corporate goals. We worked with the eager young tyros who wanted to rule the world by e-mail, and with their elders brought up on paper-based systems to find common ground and a way forward that made the most of their blended skills.

It felt good but didn't seem particularly revolutionary then. Now it seems to be happening all over again - this time with social media advancing the collaboration quicker than email and the first clunky iterations of Lotus Notes ever could.

20 years ago, I learned two allied lessons that seem to have been lost, forgotten and rediscovered. First, no organisation was ever going to prosper without great leadership; and second, business organisations are not democracies.

And that's where the Emperor's New Clothes come in. In the consultancy world, there are any number of people out there telling me that social media is engineering a revolution in engagement, bring people together as never before to create cultures that will reshape business as we know it. They've been telling me this for the last three or four years. Yet the reality is, aside from one or two organisations where the leadership already comes from Gen Y and the structures have been built from the ground up, most organisations are operating as they have since the 80s (in some cases, the 1880s).

The pyramid hasn't been inverted and even those organisations exploring the benefits of of wider, more social engagement are doing so through traditional HR/Marketing/Comms structures. The vision of a joined-up organisation with organic engagement remains largely a vision while good businesses built on meritocracy bolt on teams and departments tasked with delivering an engaged organisation. Somehow engagement becomes a process and the essence of it is lost.

Indeed, other than changing the toolkit, is what our engagement experts are doing actually any different from my days at Nationwide in the early 90s?

While organisations are undoubtedly leaner; have flatter structures and are slightly less driven by command and control, the nature of capitalist practice means that the need to drive the bottom line remains the default setting in the Board Room. Some are seeing that this demands a culture very different from traditional business - look at google for instance. But most aren't. And until a very different generation of leaders break into that Board Room, engagement will remain elusive in meaning, benefit and measurement - and those of us pursuing it from a number of different business avenues may well simply be evolving business practice further, as generations have done before us, under another fancy name.

I'm genuinely interested in what's really different this time round?

The Freelance Rules #10 - Manage Expectations

2011-07-04T13:25:00.000+01:00

Every client assumes you are sitting at your PC (or Mac!) poised, just waiting for their job to come along. They assume you can do it in half the time quoted, and miraculously, it will be completed at a fraction of the cost you originally agreed. Every client knows they're far more important than every other, and every client is convinced you want nothing more than to dump what you're currently doing to meet their needs.

They are, of course, all completely.....right.

One of the first things you'll find out running a microbusiness is that work never arrives to fit in with your circumstances. When you need a new project, no-one will have anything for you. When you're full to the gunnels with projects, another will come along....and then another.....and then, probably, another.

There's no science to managing the workload (as the great Senator John Glenn, he of the Mercury 7 and the Space Shuttle once told me: "just pray for 48 hour days and 10 day weeks" (how's that for a name-drop)), but there is an art. It's all about managing expectations to ensure all your clients are aware of the art of the possible. To repeat an earlier tip: never over-promise. Let your clients know when you're busy but never put them off. Find out what their real priorities are - it'll enable you to prioritise your workload. And don't be afraid to push back on unreasonable deadlines or pressures to do more for less.

Think about what would happen internally: would a manager going to an internal contact expect an immediate response? Probably not. So why should they expect the world to be different dealing with an external supplier? Let them know what you can do - and then do it better than they could have expected. Then get on with juggling heaven and earth.

The Freelance Rules #9 - Find your niche

2011-06-30T15:12:00.000+01:00

When I first started freelancing in the early '90s, my specialism was death. Well, I say death, I mean dead people. And when I say dead people, I mean their money. I'd worked, briefly, as a Probate Commissioner in the '80s and had built on the experience while at Which? Magazine, co-authoring a wills and probate kit and writing both reports and book chapters on how to deal with someone's estate.

So, when I was setting out for the first time as as an independent, I had a niche: a specialism where I really was an authority on my subject. It got me more work on titles for accountants, for the Government and even a couple of BBC radio appearances. That niche led me to new building new relationships with editors and commissioners who used me not just to write about wills and estates, but other aspects of legal issues and, making a sideways leap, investments for the elderly. It all helped me get up and running and gave me a regular income stream in those three years of running my own show.

I've long-since left those initial specialisms behind as organisational communication has filled my plate over the last decade and a half, but have never been afraid to use specific experiences: companies and industries worked for, and areas within those organisations, as my entry card when looking for work.

As a microbusiness, the worst thing you can possibly be is the 'jack of all trades and master of none'. If that's the case, you're always going to be competing for work with others who are just a little bit more specialist in the area where you're trying to pick up work. That will make your business development harder- and you'll have to compromise on other factors (price!) to improve your chance of landing the work.

I pick up a lot of work for finance teams, IT and facilities management - I'd love to get some of the sexy marketing stuff, but have built my best relationships around the back office. It goes back to the days when I was running comms for Barclays' Group Planning, Operations and Technology. It may not be the sexiest of areas - but I've found a good niche where I can operate effectively.

The Freelance Rules #8 - keep on top of your business

2011-06-21T12:57:00.000+01:00

It's important to start out as you mean to go on in your microbusiness life. If you're just passing through, on the look-out for another in-house role, there's probably little point in operating as anything other than a sole trader. It's the simplest way to administer your business - but still needs the discipline to keep control over your financial affairs and to set up the necessary insurances and protections to ensure you're covered for the work you - and should anything go wrong.

If you're set up to remain a microbusiness, it's worth considering whether you need to establish limited company status or, if you're working with someone else, a partnership agreement. It's essential to have a formal arrangement if you're more than one person - you may think your working relationship with your partner(s) will always be terrific. But what if it's not? What if something goes wrong or things turn sour? What if another person in the business wants to move on? You need to know your legal standing and have a plan in place if you suddenly have a stack of projects to deliver, but no-one else to make it happen.

Of course, many businesses start from one or two people and suddenly have three, then four, then eight then 10.....and in the last few years may have been trimmed back to a few or a couple. Clearly if you intend to grow the business, set it on a proper legal footing as early as possible. Being a limited company can be a hassle in terms of keeping accounts - you need a properly qualified/registered accountant to audit the business each year (even if you're turning over tuppence), but it gives more options for growth - and also still seems to hold sway both with banks, if you're looking for finance, and with clients. With most services procured through purchasing teams these days, it's actually much easier to pick up business if you are a legally registered entity. If you're just Jessica Bloggs sole-trading, you may well find it far harder to get on a preferred supplier list, no matter how excellent the service you provide.

Equally, if your clients are big and expect to pay VAT on invoices, it's probably worth registering - even if you fall short of the threshold where you have to. If you're an anomaly in a purchasing process, things are far more likely to go wrong. VAT is more bureaucracy - but it's worth being registered if it helps you get paid the right amount when you expect it.

Most microbusinesses hate business administration - we'd rather be out there doing the work. But it's vital to keep on top of your financial affairs. If you miss that VAT deadline; don't pay HMRC or slip beyond the overdraft (even though it may not be your fault and down to the vagaries of cashflow), your credit rating will soon start slipping and black marks will start appearing on your credit rating. Business health is something procurement teams love to check - so when pitching for that project you'd love to do, the last thing you want to explain is why your business might be flashing up amber or red on a procurement health check.

Don't make false economies: in my case, I pay the rather excellent Amazon Office Management to keep my books on the straight and narrow. Equally, Leapfrog is insured to the hilt in case something happens to me or Jac or if there are any problems with our work (no problems on either count in 11 years). We've never had to claim on any of the insurances, but at least can go to work unworried that the business is at risk.

Cashflow, especially in the past few years, is never too far from the forefront of any microbusiness' mind. But my advice is to get to know not just your clients, but also the people who physically are responsible for paying the bills. We all rail against bureaucracy and a culture that aims to keep money in the biggest organisations for as long as possible, but I tend to find that the individuals actually working in the accounts payable teams are a pretty good bunch. The worst possible thing to do is to blame the inconsistencies of a payment system on the person at the other end of the phone. Much better to find a way to work things out.

It's harder to establish a working relationship with your bank or the taxman - these days they tend to be faceless machines and loyalty appears to count for little. The best bet is to set achievable parameters for paying tax or repaying any borrowings and move heaven and earth to work within them. And, if things go wrong, get on the phone fast. You may not get a lot of sympathy, but you'll generally get a way to move forward.

Running a business is about doping significantly more than the service you're paid for. It's rarely sexy, but it's essential to get the basics nailed as early as possible in your business life.

The Freelance Rules #7 - Keep Developing

2011-06-12T17:42:00.000+01:00

While out and about last week I ran into a guy who used to freelance regularly for me back in my Barclays days. 'What are you up to now?' I asked. 'I'm pretty much out of the comms game now,' he responded. 'I do a bit of book keeping for my son, and have a sideline in importing specialist wines, but the comms work dried up a few years back - I think the market just moved away.'

It was a bit of a shock to hear this, as the guy had been one of the best independents I'd used - and is only about 10 years older than me. He was a magazine specialist, with a long background in printed magazine journalism. His problem, it seems, is that's what he did. As comms moved ever more electronic and then social; and as the skills of an organisational communicator moved from packaging information to facilitation/corporate conscience/leadership coach and all the other areas that have built on the basics of an ability to tell a story, he was rather left behind.

When you're out of the corporate world, it's very easy to get left out in the cold when it comes to training and development. But our world moves pretty quickly now, so it's incumbent on any freelancer hoping to keep up with the game to stay on top of the trends and keep finding new ways to apply our skills.

Straight-forward commercial training courses from the likes of Melcrum and similar outfits in the market are a non-starter for most microbusinesses. They're aimed at corporates and thus are premium-priced. Given that independents pay twice for any training opportunities (cost of attending and opportunity cost of a lost day's work), I've always reckoned the best way to take part in such a course is to present it! If you have a skill that's in demand in the market, train people on it. You'll probably gain as much as you impart - and if my experience is anything to go by, you can generally barter a couple of days delivery for places on other courses.

Make the most of associations too. I've been to a number of IoIC conferences and IABC events down the years without ever paying full price - instead, I've given something in kind to hear the latest industry presentations. In the days when the IoIC was CiB and even BACB, I've presented sessions; covered the conference as a news event and even driven exhibition kit up and down from Newcastle for a conference place. I've gone on waiting lists for standby tickets to events and have even stepped in when clients have had to give up a paid-for ticket.

Never forget that associations deliver training too. It may not be as flash as a Ragan or a Melcrum, but IABC or IoIC training days are likely to be a fraction of the cost - and often with the same calibre of expertise.

These days, LinkedIn groups are a great informal developmental source. People throw out questions and the collective brain power of the group quite often gets involved in an electronic brain dump - often there's great insight to be had: free of charge.

Just because you work for your own business, don't neglect on the job training either. So often we work as part of a major change project or large corporate initiative where our clients grow and develop through the experience. Why shouldn't we do that too? Wherever I can on a big project (and the comms team is a great place to be) I've looked to suck the brains of leaders and experts dry. I suspect every new thing I learn now will be applied on future work further down the line.

Finally, I've found another route to keep developing. I went back to university in 2007, first gaining my MA, and now working towards a PhD. The research has little directly to do with my current job, but often opens up new avenues of thought to me. Sometimes just sitting with fellow students talking about each other's work can set me off thinking about a project I have in my work-life. And it's weird how people expert in Hungarian economics, Arctic politics or sovereignty among Native American nations can spark off a great idea for a thorny comms problem. Perhaps it's just being among people devoted to learning, but it;s given my own development a new lease of life - and may even open new areas of opportunity to me in the future.

The bottom line is that however good you are at what you do, the business world will keep evolving. If you don't, the only way to go is the way of the dinosaur.

The Freelance Rules #6 - Know your worth

2011-06-06T11:07:00.001+01:00

I love Jessica Hische's contribution to the unending debate microsbusineses and our clients get into around price and value. For me, the bottom line when it comes to commercial organisations is never work for free. I'd add another strand to that: establish your real value and stick to it. In essence, don't give your services away cheaply.

That's been really tough in the downturn, but once you know your worth, aligning your charges to the real value you bring to a client it helps you, the market and clients too.

I hate quoting a day rate to potential clients: in terms of £ per hour/day, I'm by no means the cheapest (though, I surprised myself on a rates survey recently to find out I'd dropped from upper quartile to middle) - and far too many service procurers are driven only by price. I don't actually know anyone who does what I do as fast as I do it. Equally, I have 20 + years experience in my field, and work with a group of people equally experienced. So, what the client 'gets' for a day's worth of my time is far more than they'd get from someone who may charge less, but may also not deal so well with the real issues - and may end up reworking (and recharging) several times before the client is satisfied.

Price-driven procurement is fine when the procurer is sourcing widgets that will meet the same need in the same way day in and day out. Buying a service is very different - but the pressure on the smallest businesses is to keep cutting prices to satisfy the client's desire to cut their costs. But microsbusinesses have to be braver: we have to recognise the value we provide and stick to it. The easiest way with procurement teams is actually a cop-out: it's to start higher than you would expect and compromise pretty much at the point you would normally charge anyway. They feel better - and you still get your expected return. But overall, this probably has the effect of inflating the market: not what 'procurement' is supposed to do.

Once you know the client and are dealing with the real commissioner not their procurement team, you can actually negotiate on the basis that they'll understand the value you bring to their team. If you merely duplicate something they can already achieve in-house or can buy in cheaper from another supplier, you can't expect to charge huge rates. But if you have specific experience or a skill that they can't duplicate elsewhere, your service will be at a premium and you're in a much stronger position to stick to your guns on price.

The flips side is that you have to offer service levels that justify your charges - there's absolutely no room for complacency.

Somehow clients seem to think they can pay an independent or two-person business considerably less than their high-powered, all-singing-all-dancing agencies. I'd contend that if I'm guaranteeing to provide as good a service as that agency - or indeed a service that the agency can't offer - there should not be a difference in the price the client pays. The reality of course is that I don't carry the overhead of that agency so Leapfrog can be a far more cost effective vehicle for getting the job done. And, of course, many agencies are little more than a front. The business developers and a small core team work directly for the agencies - and many services sold on to clients are actually bought in from independents (and we're charged out at well over the price we charge the agency).

Occasionally, clients have a very naive view of payments though, and assume that the £xxx a day I charge them goes straight in my pocket. Somehow the fact that I have to cover pension, insurance, office costs, legal and accountancy costs, VAT, corporation tax and all the rest before I even see any of the income passes them by. Though there are undoubtedly some tax advantages in operating as a limited company, it's marginal these days. What I would say is that it's apples and pears to try and equate a day rate to a salary.

Driving down on price has a harmful effect on clients in the end as many really good small suppliers are simply driven out of business - and those that remain will, in due course, simply push up prices again as their services will be scarce. It's all terribly cyclical when it doesn't need to be.

Meanwhile, those independents who deliberately undercut the market do themselves no favours. Names soon get around in what's a pretty small, tightly-knit community - and once you set a value on your services, it's hard to increase your prices later. If your clients know you as a £200 a day person, how can you expect to justify double and triple that - even if that actually reflects your market worth?

So, as a microbusiness, it's essential to check out what the rest of the market is charging, not just when you start, but on a regular basis. You will have to justify your worth time and again. You'll know what it costs you to run your business - you have to get to know your break-even point and the point at which you can make the money that delivers the lifestyle you want. If your service justifies it, price around that (without being greedy). If not, it may be time to get a job.

The Freelance Rules #5 - know your place

2011-06-01T11:49:00.000+01:00

I learned a very salutary lesson on one of my first projects after I left Forte. I was commissioned to collect testimonials for an internal change team and produce an internal communications strategy, activity plan and toolkit they could use to promote their services to the rest of the organisation. They were a busy bunch, so after agreeing a budget and timeframe, they pretty much left me to get on with it. It was a relatively large project and I decided the best way to fulfil it was to work with a larger consultancy who could provide both bodies and expertise to ensure we got the research completed effectively and could then work on the necessary tools.

The problem was, as we interviewed stakeholders across Europe and the US, the picture of the change team that emerged was not as rosy as we'd expected. The feedback was by no means awful, but a number of issues emerged . The value of the change team was called into question by some stakeholders; some points of process clearly rankled with some of the areas of the business they'd worked with and some of the personalities in the team - including its leadership - had definitely rubbed the internal clientele up the wrong way. We sat down as a research team to discuss our findings and rapidly moved into solution mode. Over the course of the next week - a week in which I devoted a good 70 hours to the project, we turned a six figure assignment into a small five figure one - all by exceeding our brief and not being attuned to what the client required.

The meeting where we presented our research back to the client ranks in the top two of awfulness for me still - the best part of a decade on. It's only trumped by the day I wore one suit's jacket and another's trousers to pitch for a hotel's PR account while beset by a migraine and not knowing that the brief had changed significantly between getting the appointment and delivering my presentation.

But back to this early experience. In my days at Forte and Barclays I had been expected to stand up and challenge management on their behaviours and practices. My comms team had fulfilled the role of corporate conscience, calling to account actions that sat outside our corporate culture, vision and values and then working with the leadership team to use communication as the enabler to role model the desired culture through the organisation.

I hadn't been asked to do that here. I'd been asked to facilitate a sales communication process for a team that was confident in its own abilities; had the mandate of the global management team and was delivering a significant change that was painful but necessary for many of its stakeholders. We weren't being asked to hold up a mirror to them to show them their faults. I have never known a client so incandescent with rage either before or since that day. Much of what we had to say was right and the issues we were highlighting were real. But we did not have the authority to presume that we were the people to provide the solutions to those issues.

Our mistake had been two-fold: first, to jump into solution mode and to second, to bypass the team's communication manager who had hired us. We assumed we could change the nature of our assignment by appealing straight to the top guy. We had brought the comms manager into the loop a couple of days before the meeting. But she, feeling undermined, had quite understandably let us hang ourselves in front of her boss. We hadn't set out to undermine anyone, and thought we could add real value and integrity to our offering. But in listening most acutely to the views of the most disgruntled on the receiving end of the change process, we'd manage to completely lose sight of the brief. Our proposed strategy, though sound, never had a chance of a fair hearing and the lucrative website, training, events and supporting collateral all disappeared to another supplier more willing to execute the brief as stated.

At that point I learned the difference between being an internal communication lead and an external supplier. Ever since I've worked hard to deliver on the brief given to me to the best of my ability. By building relationships with clients and working closely with them over the years, I've reached a point where often I can influence a brief; where my viewpoint is respected, sometimes sought and sometimes acted on. I'm a partner in the communication process, but when my input to the company is measured in four or five figures, and their turnover is measured in billions, I know that it's no way a partnership of equals. I know my place.

Knowing my place doesn't mean being humble or simply delivering without question. My value comes in being able to get to the heart of an issue, challenging where necessary and charting the best course of action. It's best expressed by getting on board early in a project working with and for my internal contacts and finding the best way to use communication as an enabler to achieve the required outcome. But the bottom line is that whatever project I'm engaged on is owned internally. I can influence the shape and direction of the project, but the buck doesn't stop with me.

In effect, my role is to make whoever commissioned me look good, not to undermine them. There's a business dynamic at work here: the best way I can make them look good is by delivering my best possible effort. The more I do that, the more I get invited to pitch for better quality work and the more word gets around that Leapfrog's a decent business to work with. The more that's the case, the easier it is to pay my mortgage and even provide some decent work for others.

Sometimes, work comes along where it's best just to bite your tongue, execute the brief well, and take the money. Take pride in what you do, but leave your ego at the door.

Next up on The Freelance Rules will be: Know your value.

The Freelance Rules #4 - Establish a routine

2011-05-31T10:13:00.002+01:00

When you move from corporate life to an independent operation, it's often very hard to establish an effective routine. It helps to know if you're really out of the corporate world for the long term or whether you're just passing through an independent phase for a short time while looking for that next great corporate opportunity. But if you've established that a microbusiness life is the working life for you, it's important to set a routine that distinguishes your work from the rest of your life.

That's what we set out to do when Jac and I set up Leapfrog, though 10 years down the line, I look back at some of the early thoughts (and early expense) and cringe. Having freelanced from a back bedroom for three years in the 90s, I was determined that Leapfrog would be different, so set about finding an office we could work from to give us a presence. And to a degree, Leapfrog was different - it wasn't just me making money from the venture, and I wanted to be competing a little further up the business chain - getting the projects, not just the in-house overflow. So we sub let an office in Henley and then moved to a lovely office in Oxford - marble pillars and even a shared swimming pool! With the desks, the tech and even a sofa in it looked a treat. The problem was, we were hardly ever there.

My two main associates lived in Kent and Bedfordshire respectively - so while we occasionally met up at the office (and they even more occasionally worked from it), we were more likely to meeting in London where most of our clients were. And the fact our client base was in London largely negated the need for an office in Oxford. We'd selected it, cleaned it up and made it look welcoming because I naively thought we'd have plenty of clients coming to see us - but of course, that didn't happen. Since they were buying our brains and the ability to make their communication work, what they needed was us: sometimes in person, sometimes on the end of a phone - more often across a flurry of emails. In the first year of the Oxford office, I spent 40+ days working on Diageo's premises and more than 60 in London, Paris, Bristol, Brussels and Zurich on a project for Orange. For many of those days, the office was empty. It was something of a vanity expense and not in the best interest of the business long-term.

When Jac and I moved house, we decided to buy somewhere with an office built-in. The room I'm writing from now is an extension to the original extension on the house. It has space for two desks and is just about big enough for Leapfrog's needs. But it fits a changing microbusiness world. The business is portable and goes where the work is. Sometimes it's just me working on a project and at other times the network swings into action again - though now we're all connected over the internet from our respective home offices.

The difficulty working from home though is establishing a working routine. It demands discipline and balance - but can be far more productive than working in a office.

If I'm not at a client's premises, I'll be in here from 8.30 in the morning. I close the door and am 'at work'. The difference to being in a big corporate office is that I'm not called into a million meetings that are less than directly relevant to my work and I'm not also copied into all those interesting but not overly productive emails that circulate in any organisation. It tends to mean that when I have a task to focus on, it gets done quicker and with far less distraction.

Much as the office brigade may buy into the myth that we homeworkers just sit with feet up and the telly on when work is slack, I can probably count on one hand the number of days I've actually done that. Sure, I'll put the washing on and get the dishwasher going. I might even put out the bins, but from 8.30am - 6pm I'm in 'at work' mode. I will, however, break off for a natter with the kids when they come in from school and wander up to Costa to meet up with my fellow homeworkers - the very worst thing to do is to stay in the bubble all day with no external contact. I'm also very reward-driven: editing a document by such a time might earn me the time to read a chapter of a book; arranging my week's meetings might get a chocolate biscuit - that kind of thing.

I wish that all those hours in the 'office' during the week were billable, but of course they're not. But the trick is to make them productive nonetheless. For the last few years for me that has been fairly easy. I do some training and coaching, and there's always a deck to tweak or material to update. I'm also in mid-PhD and that, frankly, counts as my learning and development. So, as well as the part of the week I devote to university stuff (scheduled in, of course,) I'll grab a couple of hours here and there to take notes on a text or do a bit of online research. Then there's the necessity to 'stay connected' (see previous post) and the aligned need to keep up with clients and former clients and even potential clients to see where future work may come from. So, even if I'm not immediately busy on a piece of work, I have to keep myself occupied on ensuring there's work in the pipeline. And of course, business red tape ensures there's plenty of admin to fill the remaining time - as a microbusiness, there's no-one else around to do it for you (that was quite a shock after so long in-house).

When I started off running my own business, a more experienced colleague said: "Make the most of your downtime." A decade on, I know what she means.

Of course, routines are there to be broken, and one of the great advantages of being my own boss is that I've been able to walk my youngest daughter to school for much of the time we've lived here and can slip away more easily to school events than I ever could when I worked at Forte or Barclays. I even have the chance to take a day off on a whim.....though in practice, rarely do.

Rules get broken the other way too. While I endeavour to finish up my working day by 6pm (earlier if I feel I've put the right effort in), the dynamics of working to other people's agendas do still mean I work some late nights to hit rush deadlines. But it never feels so hard to switch off the PC at midnight and just walk up the stairs knowing I'm home rather than contemplate a late-night tube and train ride.

My routine works for me: others will find a very different way to make microbusinessing work. The trick is to find the balance that's right for you.

The Freelance Rules #3 - Stay Connected

2011-05-23T17:10:00.002+01:00

One of the biggest shocks of moving from corporate life to a microbusiness was the status change that comes from no longer being a budget holder and instead being a service provider. Overnight, my position on the chain of influence slipped hugely and suddenly the people who'd been generous with their time, their interest and their lunch accounts when I'd been on the inside and putting work their way were far less willing to return my calls or even answer my emails.

Instead of being an opportunity for their business I was, to some, a threat, and to others simply not worth wasting their time. No longer a corporate decision maker, I was no longer worth any effort. What hit hardest was the change in relationship with former colleagues. Some stayed in touch, were supportive and, indeed, put some great work Leapfrog's way. For others, I was obviously tainted with redundancy, and I rapidly moved off a few people's Christmas Card lists.

Frankly that's an attitude that has baffled me over the past decade as I've watched myriad former colleagues move in and out of corporate roles, interiming and freelancing. I work in a small, incestuous and interconnected industry - and you tend to bump into people time and again, so surely it pays to keep up cordial working relationships when you can?

In truth, when I formed Leapfrog it didn't take me long to realise that I had to move on - and if I couldn't move my business connections with me, I had to find new ones. Too many fledgling microsbusinesses fail when they rely only on the people they've worked with before to provide their future success. It sounds like an absolute no-brainer - but you'd be surprised how many independents just end up picking up the slack from their old job as a 'consultant' - and never really make the break (I should know, it's what I did for nearly a year with Nationwide back in the early 90s).

You'll recognise your real friends from the corporate world by considering who you're still in contact with six months down the line after your last leaving 'do'.

Today, it has never been easier to build connections thanks to the plethora of social media abounding in the tekkywebisphere. But being 'linked'; being a facebook friend or following someone on Twitter doesn't establish a real connection. You have to work on those: to get your voice out there; to become a recognised voice in the right fora; to be seen in the right professional social media environments. Create the right net rep and it will help add credibility to your emerging business reputation. While it won't bring you work directly it might help open the odd door.

But the best connections remain real face to face ones. That's where the real work comes in. It's terribly easy when you're working on your own or perhaps as part of a two-some to get really isolated. It's good to let people know you're still out there. Steel yourself for the polite refusals, but ask the person you'd like to meet professionally out for a coffee, or just give them a call. Emails are very easy to ignore - and going that step further shows people you're willing to make an effort.

Think beyond business development too - work at building a network of people in associated services - or even people who could cover for you (or you for them) at some point down the line. You're not working in isolation, and the sooner you can build and contribute to a network of professional interest, the better you'll be placed to move onwards and, who knows, back up that influence chain again.

Appreciating the quiet aura of success

2011-05-20T09:38:00.002+01:00

I spent yesterday morning in the company of the great and the good who link technology education and the workforce environment as part of one of Adecco's 'Unlocking Britain's Potential' round table events. One guy stood out: not for his loud voice or strident opinions; not for the force of his rhetoric or, indeed, any startling originality of contribution.

That guy was Mark Richardson, a British Olympian who won Silver on the track in Atlanta in 1996. He's a slight guy; not very tall but with a fierce intensity and sense of focus that I've only ever seen in people who have been at the top in their sport. I used to work with a guy called Jon Potter, another Olympian who won a hockey Gold medal. Yesterday I recognised that same sense of calm authority and absolute belief. Each is someone who has benefited from superb coaching in their sporting career and has turned that same approach back into their business life. It's an approach we still use too rarely in the time-pressured atmosphere of the workplace today.

Listening to Mark made me recall the absolute high I felt at age 16 when I broke 54 seconds for the 400m in an early summer school athletics meeting. My time, in benign conditions when I'd been towed round the track by a faster runner (and probably benefited from hand-timing) was almost two seconds under my personal best. I didn't even win the race but it was one of the best feelings I've ever experienced, and briefly, for a few seconds, I felt I could really achieve something in sport. Athletics had been my main focus, but rapidly gave way to O Levels. By the next summer, I had a Saturday job and a girlfriend and the track didn't have anything like the same allure.

Guys like Mark Richardson followed their passion, pushing all other distractions to the side to be the very best. I've no doubt I could and would have shaved a few more seconds off my PB (which would have put me 100m behind the winner at Atlanta!) but I never had the natural talent nor the strength of focus to be more than a decent club athlete. Nor did I have that coaching environment around me to help me to excel.

In business, the best organisations I work with have that ability to bring on excellence; to encourage, to motivate and to celebrate when we get things right. We need a few more Jon Potters and Mark Richardsons in business - more personality, empathy and understanding of that un-bottleable feeling that success delivers.

The Freelance Rules: Numbers 1 and 2: If you can, do - but don't over-promise

2011-05-16T17:54:00.000+01:00

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been working with a number of newbie independent communicators - a couple have chosen to move out of full-time in-house roles, while a couple more have had the decision thrust upon them.

As an 11-year veteran of running a microbusiness that has never involved more than four people - and most of the time has involved half of that or me alone, they've been picking my brains as to what it takes to keep in business year in and year out. In the coming weeks, I'll be happy to share any insights I've garnered.

First, I'd say, never turn down work unless you really, really have to. Today, for instance, I had planned to write part of a large report - something I thought would take all day. Mid-morning, I was actually going great guns, so when a request for a news story for a client's portal came in before lunch, I thought I might as well knock it off straight away. I did so - to the client's surprise and got the response "My god man, you're quick." She's a relatively new client, so it's nice to go beyond her expectations. Meanwhile, I've raced on with the main project and probably covered twice the ground I expected today.

But that's just a small example. Over the past few years I've very rarely turned down any work - and nearly always regretted it when I've had to. There's a weird freelance maxim at work: work will only come in when you're busy. There'll be times you look at your calendar and think: 'I haven't possibly got time to do that extra piece'. The problem is, someone out there will find time. If you say no, you don't only run the risk of damaging a client relationship, but are handing an opportunity to someone else who may get the client's call first in the future. And, as has happened once or twice in the last couple of years, the big piece of work that's set to block out the week or month can sometimes arrive late, or not quite as big as expected....or even not arrive at all.

As freelancers, we're not bound by the 9-5 or the Monday to Friday. So, wherever I possibly can, I'll try and say yes to any work that comes in unexpectedly. And if I really, really can't take on the job, I'll at least try and hand it on to a someone I know (and know will do the work well). We're a fairly small bunch in this profession, and I certainly believe if you help fellow freelancers, the good karma will come right back at you.

My second, connected, rule is don't over-promise. The worst possible thing you can do is take on a challenge you're really not up to. While I've choked through my teeth on it sometimes, I've always tried to be honest about what I can and can't do. If something's out of my skillset, I won't pretend I can do it (though that skillset is distinctly elastic around the edges) - but again try and turn a negative into something positive. I've built a lot of good connections in associated professions over the years, so if someone's looking for design consultancy, I know a man who can, and the same goes for quant research, photography, illustration, conference organisation etc.

This job is all about personal relationships - and any independent is only as good as the last impression we've made.

The CFO - Strategic Expert and Commercial Co-Pilot

2011-05-11T15:15:00.000+01:00

The CFO workplace study I wrote for Badenoch & Clark is now out. You can get hold of the key findings at: http://tinyurl.com/5two85j.

The next phase of the research sees B&C host a series of meetings up and down the country (which I'm facilitating) to dig into the findings with groups of senior and up-and-coming finance people. The plan is to produce a follow-up report later in the year.

You make your choice and take the consequences

2011-04-18T12:35:00.000+01:00

I'm a tad gutted that I've had to turn down Sean Trainor's offer to speak in one of the CIPR Inside's Engage Inside Expo sessions in London on May 5. It would have been a chance to share the research I worked on at the tail end of last year - and look forward to how it may move on this year.

But, the way I choose to operate my business has meant I've had to give up the opportunity to share a platform with the MacLeod 2 team and other practitioners with some skin in the engagement game. While the Expo will be in full swing, I'll be a dozen miles west in Uxbridge on day two of my university's annual research student event. It's just about the only compulsory event for researchers all year, but if I'm not there (and I missed it last year while stuck under a volcanic ash cloud), my chances of advancing to my next year of PhD research will be slimmer than a pre-pregnancy Victoria Beckham.

Back in 2007, I took the conscious decision to ease back on work and complete an MA in International Relations. It meant about a day and a half a week onsite at University from late September - April - with a frantic drive to over-index on work from late April to early September. The MA went really well and by 2010 had segued into PhD research (NOT part of the plan in 2007). That was easy to fit in when times were tough and I wasn't picking up work. However, the past year has been a less easy balance.

Long-term (post PhD) I plan to do more in academic research and, if there's any left by then, academic teaching. To that end, I've been balancing up comms work with part-time lecturing and support for some of the full-time staff (essay marking, running seminars etc). At times there's a really interesting synergy between the academic work and the organisational comms stuff but at other times there are some tectonic crashes as my two worlds collide. The Expo is one of those occasions.

Still, last week I had the pleasure of sharing a roundtable event with MacLeod 2's Nita Clark (of course it should be Clark/MacLeod ) during the kick-off phase of Adecco's 'Unlocking Britain's Potential' . The theme of this first roundtable was engagement - and while there was probably still too much time spent attempting to define what engagement is, there was consensus that no successful organisation can afford either to ignore it or to place it in a 'task' box. I'm going to be working with Adecco and the research team Loudhouse on the research outcomes/plan of action report later in the year. Perhaps it's another tip in the balance from organisational comms consultancy into research into the outcomes of such consultancy? It's not a leap I want to take totally yet, but the applied end of research is an area I find fascinating.

'A list' clients

2011-03-21T08:29:00.000Z

Whether directly, or via the excellent ArtHaus , I've got the most amazing list of clients for current projects. At the moment, I have work on for Lafarge, Unilever, ITV, IHG, Adecco and Diageo. I just have to put in a 'blue chip' performance now.

There's a long way between a great meeting and a done deal

2011-03-09T14:44:00.000Z

Every time I think I've crested the worst waves of the economic downturn and ridden out the financial storm, I get a little reminder that running a microbusiness is far from plain sailing quite yet. There are two brooding enemies on the horizon as I write, cashflow, and the gap between the great first meeting and actually landing the work.

My cashflow has taken a buffeting recently through two causes: large companies pushing out their payment terms ever further, and a small company going under before I could bill them. I'm pig sick about the latter as I incurred cost on the company's behalf - and then naively held off billing them as more work was supposed to be coming my way. It never did, and when I called to find out what was happening, the phone just rang and rang. A few days later I found the company had gone into liquidation.

With the larger companies, long payment terms are now the norm. It's an area where Government could and should act to protect the smallest businesses where even a couple of payment delays can break that business. The effect that I'm actually seeing is that small businesses are charging more to offset the impact of a long payment wait and are less willing to cut prices when the client can clearly afford to pay an 'honest' rate.

As I write this, I'm sitting waiting for a client telecon that should have started half an hour ago. For the client, keeping me waiting half an hour for a call or an extra few days for feedback or a couple of weeks between meeting me and getting going on a job, may mean very little. All I see in client companies now is fewer people asked to do more with less resource. However, in trying to structure my day, my week and my projects so that I can try and regularise my income, those delays are a major hassle. Sometimes I don't think the penny has dropped with some clients: whatever they do, if they're in-house, they'll get a salary payment at the end of the month. On the other hand, if i don't generate the work, do the work and then bill the work, I don't get paid.

That other potential storm on the horizon is turning great meetings and conversations into billable work. There are more projects out there and even today, I've picked up a website to revamp. But much of my last few weeks has been responding to client calls, meeting them, agreeing a way forward....and then waiting. There's still a great caution to commit on new communication work out there. At the moment it's merely frustrating. Many more months like this and it'll be distinctly financially damaging.

Anyway, 45 minutes now - and still no telecon...

Engagement: a definition

2011-01-25T14:46:00.004Z

My recent research paper on the role of employee communication in engagement (see blog entry below) has thrown up a few very fair questions on my definition of engagement. So, here it is. The definition I use in the report states:

The Leapfrog view is that engagement is a cultural state, driven by leadership and supported by strategy, environment, systems and processes, which enables organisations to get the best out of everyone in achieving organisational goals. Effective employee communication is an enabler to achieving and maintaining an engaged workforce – but it is only one of a number of factors in the mix.

The interesting question now is how far that squares with other views in the discourse.

Download employee comms in engagement report here

2011-01-14T09:07:00.003Z

If you would like to download Leapfrog's report on the role of employee communication in engagement, you'll find it in the News section on the IoIC's website. There's a downloadable version at the end of the news item.

Employee communication's role in employee engagement

2011-01-13T13:48:00.003Z

In September and October, 72 employee communicators completed a Leapfrog online survey looking at employee communication's role in organisational engagement; the tools employee communicators are using to fulfil their role in engagement; what's most effective, and what would make the greatest difference to employee communicators in improving their contribution to engagement.

The headline findings from the Survey stated:

Over 40% of respondents told us their organisation still had no engagement strategy

11% of respondents stated that Employee Communications was solely responsible for engagement in their organisation while a further 72.2% said they had a defined role in their engagement strategy/process and/or activities

More than a third of respondents' organisations really didn't see a difference between communication and engagement, while a further 25% are firmly on the fence

HR is still the primary owner of 'engagement' and the most popular home for the day-to-day management and delivery of the engagement agenda

Employee communications is playing a leading role as a contributor to the development of the engagement strategy in organisations

Just over half of all respondents consider their workforces to be relatively engaged (scoring 7+); but 36% state their workforces remain largely disengaged with their employer

Electronic tools dominate the employee communicator's toolkit; with email and intranets virtually ubiquitous. Face to face communication is regarded as vital - but print appears in decline

Social media is now a planned part of the communication mix in more than 70% of respondents' organisations

The most effective employee communication tools in delivering the engagement agenda rank as:

1. Face to face meetings (four times more popular than any other suggestion)
2. Communication Champions
3. Line managers
4. Intranet
5. Annual engagement survey

The top three factors that would make the greatest beneficial difference to the role of Employee Communication in organisations' employee engagement came out as:

1. A joined-up approach across functions
2. Effective line management support
3. Active buy-in from the CEO/Top Team

Contact Leapfrog if you'd like to receive a copy of the full report

The pain of the procurement culture.

2011-01-07T14:12:00.004Z

I'm working remotely today - actually writing a book review, which is one of my several sidelines. But a break for some lunch gives me time to reflect on the first working week of 2011.

This week has been all about the return to work. I'm just about on top of things, and very pleased that the pipeline looks considerably better than it did at this time both in 2010 and 2009. Since UK plc opened for business again on Tuesday, I've spent time in London and Brighton on one project; have seen my work signed off on two others and am waiting for client feedback on two more projects.

The only fly in the ointment is one client - an important one for me - tripling the time they plan to take to pay invoices. Now if I was a large supplier, this wouldn't worry me in the slightest, but working at the end of the business food chain - and after the nadir of 2008-2010, still operating rather hand to mouth - this news, which I found out on Tuesday - was a particularly hard smack in the solar plexus.

What made it worse was the fact I found out only when an invoice submitted early in December hadn't been paid, as it usually would be, by Christmas. For the past four years, this particular client has paid me within three weeks - I'd have been happy with four. But now they've put their terms out to six weeks.....and seemingly not told anyone about it. That's what really sticks in the craw.

If they had told me they were changing their policy, I would still have been cross, but at least i would have been prepared.

Supplier relationships work best when there's mutual respect. That respect breaks down when the perception on one side is that the other is taking the piss. I have great relationships with clients and the payment side never is a problem where my direct client - or at least someone in their team - has direct management of the supplier payment process. Things have a tendency to go wrong when the client loses that authority and Procurement or Finance steps in to 'manage' the supplier relationship.

What happens is that the 'relationship' is severed, and replaced with a transactional approach which too often tends to be based on price only. Service, and the added value a small supplier brings gets lost in the mix and is replaced by a process that tends to load the relationship in favour of the client organisation. Given that day rates have been squeezed significantly in the past couple of years - and every large client wants more for less - the loser in just about ever case is the small supplier - micro businesses such as my own.

I have a relatively small number of clients. They all matter hugely to me since my income is directly dependent on me giving them good service, and them consequently buying more of my time and expertise. A procurement or supplier payment team, dealing with thousands of suppliers who are rarely more than a line on an entry screen to them have no need to go the extra mile for me - and probably no comprehension of how important my relationship with their organisation is to me.

I put my terms on every invoice I submit - yet these are routinely ignored and I'm paid only when it's convenient to the client organisation. the effect is that I'm currently giving six to 12 weeks' credit to some of the largest organisations in Britain. Does my bank manager, the VAT man or HMRC understand this? Not really - but again, they're salaried employees who'd soon kick up a massive fuss if their monthly pay cheque wasn't paid.

So what's going to suffer in the end because of the rise in the Procurement culture? It will be the relationships that departments within organisations who depend on the army of small service and goods suppliers have with those suppliers. Will I give my fullest discretionary effort to an organisation that sees me only as a commodity? However much I may like my individual clients, I rather like getting paid at the end of the month too....just like they do....and their Procurement and Accounts Payable colleagues do too.

For all that organisations drum the vital importance of relationship building into their teams, they appear very blinkered when it comes to supplier relationships. It's an area where we're heading swiftly into a cultural breakdown.

Institutes, inertia and a time to break out of the circle

2010-12-13T12:10:00.004Z

Last Friday, I was chased for my annual subs for the Institute of Internal Communication - and organisation I've been a member of in the UK for 20 years. It didn't take me too long to decide that I didn't want to renew.

Under its British Association of Industrial Editors guise, I began to make the switch from consumer magazine journalist to internal communicator, successfully acquiring a Certificate in Industrial Editing. As the organisation morphed into the British Association of Communicators in Business, I became one of the last people to be awarded a Diploma in Business Communication. Under its Communicators in Business Guise, I was a national committee member and was made a Fellow of the organisation. But, as the recession bit and my career direction turned more to academia, CiB (or the IoIC as it now is) and I began to diverge in thought and action.

Today, internal communication plays only a small part in my business output. I write about it, but have found that B2B and B2C work is both easier to pick up and, at the moment, more satisfying. For me, that's because too many businesses have shown their true colours during the economic downturn: turning to organisational communication not to help engagement and build for the future, but to slip back into the default of command and control - telling people what to do if they want to still have a job.

It has been dispiriting. At a time when we should be making a paradigm shift to more open, transparent, enabling and effective communication, underpinned by a far wider armoury that should be built on the opportunity of social media, top teams have been slow to change, and communicators have been weak in championing the necessary cultural shift. There are, of course, pockets of brilliance - but the practice or organisational/employee/internal communication has actually moved far more slowly and covered a lot less ground than it thinks it has in the past two decades.

The fundamental for me is the focus on and rewarding of output over outcome - reflected ingloriously in the organisations supposed to represent the organisational communicators' role and advocate its ascendancy.

The revolution hasn't happened: the 'new' has a distinct whiff of emperor's new clothes; and organisational communicators remain in low earth orbit when we could be reaching for the stars.

I'm going to keep on doing what I'm doing - though probably ever more in b2b and b2c. Internal communication isn't dead - but it seems to need some radical new medicine.

Here is your audience: now engage

2010-11-15T14:41:00.004Z

I spent a fascinating day at the University of Oxford on Saturday, taking part in my first academic conference. The British Association of American Studies' 2010 Postgrad Conference - American Geographies - brought together probably 40 doctoral students from across the UK and beyond to present papers on a range of themes within anthropology, literature and history.

It was my first experience of this kind of event and I was struck by both the intellectual power on show - and by how unengaging so many academic papers are.

I sat through 11 papers before presenting my own and, I think, nine out of those 11 speakers read their prepared texts, hardly raising their eyes from the page, and taking virtually no account of the audience before them. In some cases, it was a very sterile experience, and I found my thoughts drifting far from the seminar room. In other cases it was frustrating: a really good subject with some nuggets of great information - but presented within an academic convention that clouds understanding with meaningless verbiage, and creates a barrier between the presenter and the audience by means of the academic 'do's and don'ts' of presenting.

I don't need the presenter to say 'end of quote' when they reach the end of the passage they're quoting. I don't want them to read in a monotone and make no effort to check for understanding. I want them to engage with me and work to ensure I can share their experience and be a part of whatever knowledge they have to bring to the room.

I tried to do that on Saturday - I had notes, but no fixed script. I expanded on points where people seemed interested and truncated material that was grabbing less attention. I used images to illustrate my points - but was very conscious to avoid reading my slides. I'm not sure how successful I was (I didn't cover everything I'd planned to say), but I got some great feedback after my session.

Walking away at the end of the day, one thing that struck me was how few presenters smiled or looked for a response from the audience. Maybe this was a one-off experience, but I suspect it's an area that academics should be working on more.

Breathe, hold...and release

2010-11-08T10:19:00.003Z

Lots going on at the moment, which is always good. I've got several projects on currently and while some are more fun than others, they're all stimulating.

I'm busy on the PhD front too with a paper to deliver at the BAAS Postgrad conference this coming weekend - and that's adding a bit of stress as I haven't had a whole lot of time to prepare.

However, I've learned over the past 20 years that when life's busy and stressful, the best release is to get a way - even if just for an hour or two - and do something totally different.

To that end, Jac, Sophs and I went walk in Wendover Woods yesterday afternoon. The glorious golden hues of Autumn were a bit past their best, but it was still a relatively warm afternoon; the ground wasn't too muddy and once again I was brought up short by just how beautiful it is here in the Chilterns.

The feedback that makes it all worthwhile

2010-10-20T15:06:00.003+01:00

Eek! Almost a month without a post. Not because I've got nothing to say, but much more so because I've been flat out for the last few weeks.

I'm just about surfacing for air now, and it was great to get a bit of feedback for a rush job carried out over the weekend:

Hi Mark

Just thought I would pass this on to you, just in from the client:

Thanks so much. We have just gone through all the files and your guy has done a really thorough job. Please pass on our thanks - also for honouring the initial quote. We will be sure to recommend him to others here at BL.

It's always nice when a client - or a client's client - appreciates the effort.

It's a runner

2010-09-27T07:54:00.002+01:00

Thanks to everybody who took time to complete the employee comms in engagement survey - according to my colleague at Brunel who knows far more than me about these things, the sample size is now viable.

So, when time permits, I'll start digging into the findings.

Employee communicators in engagement survey - one week to go

2010-09-17T15:16:00.003+01:00

The survey monkey's still ticking over as more and more communicators complete the research questionnaire on the role of employee communicators in engagement. There's still a week to go if you want to add your voice which you can do here

To whet your appetite, here are a few of the trends at the half-way collection point:

Almost half the organisations that have responded have no engagement strategy
While the majority of organisations recognise the difference between communication and engagement, only 4% claim that recognition is total
Almost 90% of communicators who have responded have some responsibility for their organisation's engagement agenda
HR is the top 'owner' of engagement - drawing twice the response of 'everyone'
HR is also the most common owner of the engagement strategy
When it comes to tools, nine out of 10 communicators use email and the intranet
Fewer than half still use printed newsletters/magazines
Over 80% of respondents formally use social media in the comms mix, with blogs and internal social networks the most common uses
Engagement varies widely among responding organisations. No organisation is fully engaged, though 30% claim a 7 out of 10 engagement score
Asked what would make the greatest difference to engagement, the most popular response so far is a more joined up approach between functions.

That's a slice of the picture with a week still to go. Will it change? Your views could be vital.

In this only a Transatlantic issue?

2010-09-13T14:34:00.004+01:00

Interesting: after an initial splurge of responses, the last couple of days has seen only a trickle of responses to my survey looking at the role of employee communications in engagement. In many ways, that's to be expected: those who are interested will respond immediately while others will either delete the message or put it on the 'nice to do' pile for some time never. Still, there are still 12 days left, and if I can double the current response over those 12 days I'll have something robustly statistically viable.

This is a learning experience for me, and one of the most noticeable features is the strong UK/US bias to responses. They're running fairly even; I have a few from Canada; a few from Scandinavia and ones and twos from other northern European countries. I didn't expect much from non-English speaking countries (or countries where English isn't the language of business), but hoped I'd pick up some response from Africa, Australia and New Zealand and, most of all, India. But as yet, it's radio silence.

I have a presentation to prepare this afternoon, but after that, I suspect I'll be pushing the survey out to those particular communication outposts.

Early days, early findings

2010-09-10T13:03:00.003+01:00

Just one day into the survey mapping employee communicators' roles in engagement and there are already a gratifying number of responses from across the UK, Continental Europe and North America - it would be great to get some input from other parts of the world too.

Anyway, the number of responses is statistically interesting, but perhaps not get a truly viable sample - still there's a fortnight yet to go.

Some early findings - which may well change as the number of responses rises suggest:

Almost half of all respondents have a role that includes employee communication - but has responsibility for other stakeholders as well.
Almost half of all respondents state that their organisation has no employee engagement strategy.
A third of respondents' organisations really don't differentiate between employee communication and engagement.
Virtually all employee communicators are involved in engagement strategy or implementation, with a third of respondents stating their team 'owns' engagement in the organisation - though HR is the most common 'owner'.
The intranet is the most widely used communication channel from our early respondents, closely followed by emails - with face-to-face channels very popular, but restricted by time and capacity, especially of leadership.
More than three quarters of respondents to date use social media in their organisations, with blogs and internal social networks leading the way - though one respondent is also using virtual worlds.
Engagement levels vary widely, and the 'must haves' to help employee communicators vary from a social media strategy to effective line management support and a joined-up approach across functions.

However, this is just a broad-brush round up 24 hours into the survey. It still has two weeks to run. If you haven't taken part yet, why not do so here?

The role of Employee Communications in Employee Engagement

2010-09-09T13:59:00.005+01:00

While the debate continues around the correct terminology for employee engagement, there's an equal lack of understanding of the role the employee communication function plays in engagement within organisations.

I'm currently working on a report covering exactly this area, and would very much like to get a snap-shot of where exactly employee communication practitioners operate today within the engagement agenda.

It strikes me that too few organisations today differentiate properly between employee communication and employee engagement - but I'd like to apply some evidence to that hypothesis.

So, if you have a role in employee communication and perhaps play some part in engagement in your organisation, pleas complete this survey and help build a picture of what role the employee communication team plays in engagement - and how you're fulfilling that role.

The survey will be open until September 24th - and I'll post details of the final report once it's published.

The eternal triangle

2010-08-25T14:52:00.007+01:00

I had a phone call yesterday afternoon asking for a price on a piece of work. The call went something like this:

Prospective client: I need a brochure written, what will it cost?

Me: Okay, let's step back a bit. Can I check what outcome you want to achieve? Who's your audience and what's their expectation. Actually, I've got quite a few of this kind of question, so can you run me through the story of what you're looking to do?

PC: Listen, I need a brochure - do you want the work?

Me: Okay. Let's focus on a brochure. Same questions: who's it for? What's its purpose? Are you thinking electronic, print or both? What other comms tools do you use and how will this fit in? Wh...

PC: FFS. Look we're a new independent financial services business and want to have a brochure to send to prospective clients and leave behind when we do face to face sales calls. We're launching next month. We've got the website and the logo and need the brochure as soon as possible.

Me: Okay.....So in effect, you want two pieces of communication - one to mail and then one for meetings.

PC: No, why would we want two?

Me: Err, won't people be getting the same piece of collateral twice?

Pause......

PC: That doesn't matter. Just tell me how much a brochure will cost.

Me: How long's a piece of string?

PC: What the f***? Are you taking the piss?

Me: No, but I suspect you may be. The cost of a brochure will depend on quite a few factors - the content, the design, imagery, the ease of getting hold of information and the time it takes me and a designer to come up with a draft. From draft stage there's time involved on both sides to get to a finished product. Then there'll be print costs, distribution costs etc. etc. At this stage with no kind of brief, I can't quote a price. I need far more information from you.

PC: Well, my mate Jeff reckoned an eight pager should cost no more than £2K - how does that sound?

Me: Meaningless - do you mean just the copy, just the design, just the printing or what? I think you need to sit down and come up with a rather more detailed spec before asking for prices.

PS: Listen mate. I know what I want. I want an eight page brochure to be delivered by the end of next week and I want it cheap. Comprendez?

Me: Okay mate: I can put all my other client work aside for the next few days, engage a design firm work with you to devise the copy, work with them to come up with a design concept and if you agree to it immediately, we can get a rush print job done next week....after the Bank Holiday. I'll charge a premium rate for my time as this is a rush job and you'll also pay a packet for the designer. We'll probably have to pay more for a rush job at the printers since nothing's yet booked in - and the job will probably suffer in quality for the lack of a proper brief and the fact that it'll all be rushed. And, if you suddenly decide to make changes at the 11th hour the budget and timescale could all go out the window.

I can do quick to the best of my ability but it'll cost you more.

I can do a very cost-efficient job at high quality if you give me the time to structure it properly.

All you'll get in your timescales for the kind of money Jeff's talking about is something quick and dirty. Is that how you really want to communicate your new business?

PC: Yea right. I'll call you back.

He hasn't.......

Fit for purpose costs, whether it's in time, money or both. Fast? High quality? Cheap? Perm two from three.

Grimond's vision of the future wasn't far off

2010-07-26T15:06:00.007+01:00

Last month, when I was researching in the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas, I was struck by a White House Staff Note from October 1957. The short piece in the news round-up aimed at White House insiders chimed with significant resonance. Was there more than a touch of Nick Clegg's post electoral coalition dilemma?

The note recounts a conversation between Jo Grimond, the Liberal Party leader at the time and Jock Whitney, the US Ambassador to Britain. According to the White House record: "Grimond made an unusually frank admission to Ambassador Whitney that would shock his followers, namely he envisages no future for his party except by merging with the Tories or the Labor (sic) party, either of which he could contemplate........Grimond observed that the party's future might be in developing modern political ideas, selling them to one of the major parties, and then joining that party to ensure implementation and prevent backsliding to extreme policies."

It's worth noting that Grimond saw both rival parties as facing dilemmas in holding together the extremes of their support. But, tantalisingly, the report doesn't say which of the big beasts he preferred the Liberals to merge with.

Make the most of your line managers

2010-07-06T09:32:00.002+01:00

I like this post from Melissa Dark over in Aus http://melissadark.com.au/?p=154. I've added a comment which I hope will be moderated soon!

Funny, I commented on a Melcrum posting recently on one of their hub articles - and it took about a week to be cleared!

Social Media - it's neither the replacement nor the panacea

2010-07-05T16:45:00.005+01:00

I've had two conversations today that sum up for me the range of misconceptions people have about social media. The first was with a shared services director who wants a social media strategy created for her team. It was an odd request - even odder as it came to me via a design agency.

The oddest thing was that the team all work in the same building - in fact in a big open plan space on one floor. One wonders why they need a strategy for social media when they all meet in real life every day. The next thing on the odd scale was that they don't have a communications strategy. They have a few electronic communication tools - and in fact, a great director who's a powerful force for engagement.

Having got a sketchy brief this morning, I called her - and things began to fall into place. Her team's going through a big change: they actually want a communication framework aimed at supporting the delivery of their business goals - but her marketing colleagues had been pushing heavily the virtues of a facebook site, tweets and a blog. To my mind, that was a bit of overkill in a smallish team, one-room environment and with a person who sets a great example for face to face comms. There are virtues in using some social media - and there's definitely a role in the team for social learning. But a social media strategy? Her wider organisation doesn't have one yet and to my mind, she'll be much better served by building a comms framework and activity plan that allows for, and enables, social media tools to be part of the comms mix. Where she does need to get a handle on social media is with some rules for her team on what's acceptable or not in a work environment. Apparently it has been a free-for-all in the past - but now the upper management has taken a draconian attitude and the kind of social communication that's now an unstoppable part of everyday life is now verboten in that workplace. We talked about a happy medium: all part of creating a great place to work. But what emerged at the end of an hour's conversation was the need for a good old integrated communications plan with a mix of tools that will achieve the right outcomes. Will I get the project? I don't know. I'm sure there will be social media specialists offering something completely different from me. But will their offering be truly suitable? In this case, social media tools alone won't meet all the needs of this team.

However, I had a conversation this afternoon with a friend who works for small business that supports charities and is crying out for a social media solution. Working in the UK and three Continental mainland countries, this business communicates at present only by email, the phone and one annual get-together. Money's tight, but they were looking to set up a newsletter for staff and volunteers. Yet they really don't need the formality of this - but assumed 'that's what companies do'. As a result of our conversation, my friend is investigating some 'free' solutions - a facebook page; a twitter account and getting on one or two of the forums aimed specifically at organisations that deliver services to charities. I think she's already moved a long way down that road in her head, but assumed a professional approach to social media would be expensive. We simply talked about some common sense rules and about adopting the same professional standards of managing dialogue in the same way she would through other media. I came off the call feeling good: feeling I'd validated her thoughts.

It's time we stopped handling 'social media' in business as if it was another new world. It's a communication evolution that has a strong, but not overwhelming, role to play in organisational communication. My view is that communicators have a role to play in educating people around integrated organisational communication. In the end, it's about the right horses for the right courses. The skill is in tipping the most suitable beast.

Wisdom no more

2010-06-30T14:42:00.004+01:00

Just over 24 hours ago, I had a wisdom tooth removed, ending - I hope - a saga that's involved a long period of discomfort - and certainly one that doesn't help a freelance lifestyle. It's amazing the disproportionate effect one partly-erupted tooth can cause, and I've had months of toothache and infected gums before finally biting the bullet and having the nasty third molar removed.

Yesterday was almost euphoric. Having been promised cutting and stitches, the tooth popped out far more easily than expected. Of course these days, teeth are 'elevated' not pulled! My head was frozen from my scalp to my lower jaw so I was certainly feeling no pain when I returned home. By midnight, the drugs and pain killers were just about wearing off but I was in good shape. By 4am, with the first birds tweeting, I was still awake with a horrible dull ache radiating from the now empty tooth socket to a point just over my right eye.

I've achieved a lot less than I'd hoped for today - I'm tired but can't sleep but the pain killers are making me drowsy. Still, it's a very temporary thing and I'm sure I'll be bouncing back tomorrow.

Capturing the authentic voice

2010-06-16T09:11:00.004+01:00

Over the last few days I've been writing a number of statement pieces for particular characters within a couple of my clients. In each case, the person voicing the particular piece of communication has a distinctive style and particular way of communicating. Putting words in their mouth, so to speak, made me very aware of my need not to sanitise individuality ans to ensure that not only the content was authentic, but that the communication also captured the true voice of the speaker.

Years ago, I used to work for an Austrian lady who was well known for her ability to strangle the English language yet still get her points across in a vivid and memorable manner. Face to face, she was compelling. On paper, she was often hilarious but the point was made and the reader was always clear that this was a personal and passionate communication. However, she was promoted and gained the services of the organisation's external PR agency who started 'improving' her communications: cleaning up the English and applying the same bland urbane style that made so many of this organisation's public communications so un-memorable. Somehow, she lost some credibility and her pronouncements, which had been 'must read' just became part of the overall deluge of information swilling around the place.

Over the last few days, I've been working hard to try and capture the voice of those I'm helping - frankly with mixed success. In the end, it has to be the participant's communication and not mine, so where a couple of people have toned the edge down, I've had to acquiesce (though most of the authentic voice has been retained). But as I always say, I only draft the copy - those who have to deliver it must take my draft and personalise it. The more they can make it distinctively their own, the better it will be and the more credibility it will retain. A client has done precisely that this morning - building on my words but making them sound as though they genuinely come from her. It's much more her communication now than mine - and that's exactly how it should be.

As communicators, it's our job to give voice through the right channels to the people who really matter. There's no value in carefully crafting words if they lack authenticity - we simply won't make the right connections. Written communication should create a picture in the mind for the reader. That picture has to conjure up the speaker - not make the 'ghost writer' a visible presence.

Back in the saddle

2010-06-14T11:30:00.004+01:00

Back to work properly this morning after a week and a half on a research trip in the US. Just 112 emails to respond too...and I thought I'd kept on top of stuff while I was overseas!

It was good to spend time absorbed in my research, though the trip threw up a number of points of comparison with the work I'm currently involved in.

While researching in the NASA HQ archive, I spent my first few days in Gallaudet University - the US' premier education facility for the deaf and hearing impaired. Everyone working in the conference hotel signed and many were themselves hearing impaired. Apart from being a very quiet place to stay, it also threw me a little to find myself as the minority communicator. I don't sign (and even if I did, I imagine I'd have learned BSL not ASL) and not everyone I was dealing with read lips. I was out of the swing of mainstream communication and had to work harder to be 'heard'. It made me reassess the way I communicate, and certainly will shape my thoughts on employee communication - and getting through to those hard-to-reach audiences, moving forward.

Last week I was right in the US heartland working at the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas. Some 160 miles west of Kansas City, the archive is in a small farming town, home to 6,700 people, 33 churches and, weirdly, about half a dozen petrol stations. I was immensely struck by the genuine warmth and friendliness of the people - a fellow researcher actually made the point that 'the beauty of Kansas is in its people'. Abilene is at the border of the flat lands: this is plains country; home to cattle and crops. It was a massive contrast to Washington DC and the issues that affected people were significantly different from the coastal fringe. Sure, the BP oil disaster was the lead national story, but what people were talking about was much more oriented to family and farming. There was also quite a lack of curiosity about other countries, other continents. People, in general, were fiercely proud and protective of Kansas first and the US second. Not too many had ventured over seas and their view of the world was very much coloured by their every-day experience - though a number worked for big organisations: the likes of AT&T and the US Government. Sometimes when we communicate out from the centre, we forget about what really matters and drives the mindset of our far-flung receivers. Sometimes culturally, we're more different than we let on.

Finally, a week looking at Presidential communications from 1957-1960 has reminded me that what goes around comes around. The fledgling NASA had all sorts of problems managing stakeholder communications. The Head of Comms felt his function was under-resourced while his boss felt the team was underskilled for the role they had to play. Not a lot changes, eh?

The joy of freelancing

2010-05-24T13:06:00.002+01:00

It's about 80 degrees outside - rare for Britain in May and rarer still, it's the third day in a row that the temperature has climbed way above the seasonal norm. Of course, it's a Monday, and a busy Monday as I grapple with a deluge (well, nearly) of content for a website; some thoughts on a presentation later this week, and - for most of this morning - editing an agency's paid pitch document.

The fun part is that I've got the mother of all head colds at the moment. We've just come through the big family event of the year - Kirsty's wedding - and I held out on the germ-spreading through the chocolate-making (Rory was doing the table chocs); the 200 mile drive north on Saturday, thee dressing-up game; the big event and a drive back into Harrogate, before my defences were finally breached.

Saturday night was hot and sticky - so was I. Yesterday was an endurance, driving back home in the heat of the day. Thankfully Jac let me crash out when we got back. Nearly a day later, I'm red-eyed, hoarse, headachey and shivery.

If I was an employee, I'd be tucked up in bed. But running my own show, if I don't work I don't get paid. What I've learned over the past decade is that colds, man flu and the like are as bad as you let them be. Yes I feel grotty today, but necessity says sweat it out. I've got too much stuff to do - and simply can't afford to be ill.

Spring's Connections extends the employee engagement debate

2010-05-14T09:31:00.005+01:00

It's always nice to receive a fat envelope with my copies of Badenoch & Clark's Connections magazine -and the Spring package duly arrived this morning. I've contributed 18 of the 28 pages this time round, and am particularly pleased with the features on:

Employee Engagement

Onboarding; and

Social Business Enterprise

while I also had fun particularly with the analysis pieces on social media in the public sector and the legal industry's response to both a changing market place and the Legal Services Act.

I got some great contributions this time round. so if you want to read the employee engagement thoughts of the likes of David MacLeod, Mike Klein and Sean Trainor, or learn about social business enterprise from guru Rod Schwartz, or even find out how the likes of BP and E.ON bring their businesses to life from first contact until you're happily ensconced in the job, get hold of a copy of Connections. It will be on the Badenoch & Clark website soon, but the print version always gets a head start. So, if you'd like one of those old-fangled but nice smelling hard copies, email connections@badenochandclark.com

Our friends electric

2010-05-11T14:47:00.004+01:00

Yesterday, I found out that Gordon Brown was stepping down as Labour Leader via Twitter. The same social medium informed me that West Ham had sacked Franco Zola as their manager this morning, while a business acquaintance informed me we'd both been at Wembley Stadium this day 25 years ago to see Wealdstone grab the non-league double by winning the FA Trophy.

I've worked for much of the last five days with the BBC News website in the background, spending almost as much time working out the permutations of the UK's next Government as I have on finessing a wireframe on a new corporate website, finalising a training module I'm due to deliver, or even assessing the impact of the changes that appear to be happening inside one of my clients - a firm that was swallowed up by a bigger player at the end of last year.

While I might have cause to worry about the impact of that change (I note the MD left a couple of weeks ago), I'm not on the inside, so any change in the way they run their comms will happen to me - not with me. Change may be afoot,but I can't influence it and will have to wait and see what comes out the other side.

And, for all the 24-hour wall-to-wall media coverage, I'm feeling ever-more disenfranchised by the Machiavellian intrigue that is UK politics at the moment. The election and its immediate fallout were fascinating to follow via twitter and the political blogs. At first it felt as though we, the electorate, were actually having an impact. But over the last few days I've begun to feel ever more like the outsider looking in. For all that we seem hard-wired to the action, the politicians have defaulted to what they always do: backroom discussions leading to politically expedient deals that favour those on the inside - very possibly at the expense of the so-called 'good of the nation'.

Social media may have made us a more immediately connected and critical audience - but that's what we remain: an audience outside the action. Democracy may have set the change train rolling, but it will be a political oligarchy that charts the direction for this country once again in the coming months - with every danger that our PM may once again be anointed without the mandate of the people.

Fascinating, though somewhat disturbing times.

The social communication election

2010-05-07T14:52:00.002+01:00

Was supposed to be writing copy; updating a website and tracking a call-over today - I'll manage the last.

Instead I've been following the election via the BBC News website and Twitter - fascinating stuff and an object lesson on how politics has moved closer to the country through social communication.

I've got to work now, or I'll be working all weekend. But will try to gather my thoughts later.

Top tip for internal comms students?

2010-04-20T08:58:00.003+01:00

Rachel Allen is compiling a list of top tips for internal communications students - I've chipped in, and it's probably worth keeping an eye on.

Why not add your own tip here?

Ashes to ashes

2010-04-19T16:25:00.002+01:00

The last few weeks have been a return to the 'new' normality - if that isn't a paradox.

Much like the first eight years of Leapfrog's existence, I've been working a number of projects in parallel; chipping in with the odd weekend shift and pounding the keys through odd bursts of late-night inspiration.

I spent a good chunk of March chasing a number of different work opportunities - I was offered a job...and turned it down; came close to landing a long-term piece of work for an airline....but was pipped at the post...(grrr)...and then landed projects from two clients who had placed virtually no work externally for over 18 months. I've even picked up a tiny piece of work from a consultancy I last worked for in early 2008 - interesting, though their end-client thinks his business is perfect (it's not!) which makes comms and engagement a bit of a hard sell!

Anyway, overall, there's a definite sign of recovery - though it's fragile and too much more Icelandic volcanic dust may even put the position into reverse. I'm supposed to be in Edinburgh on Thursday but flights from London look doubtful and I've already had to knock back a meeting in Dublin on Friday - still we'll manage with a combination of technology and a couple of sub-meetings half way up the motorway network.

While the work's definitely coming back, what I'm noticing is that budgets are still tight; pennies are being watched more hawkishly than ever; and the internal teams I'm working with are leaner than ever, with wider responsibilities and a task to sweat their assets harder.

I doubt there'll be any big budgets and easy projects through 2010 - but it's just great to have a pipeline building and variety in the work diet.

Onboard or overboard?

2010-03-17T16:26:00.003Z

I'm researching a piece on 'onboarding' - the effort an employer makes to welcome you into your new role - at the moment and was reflecting on the good and bad experiences I've had over the years.

The way you're inducted (or is it induced?) into your new working life can make a huge difference to your attitude to the role and how engaged you become in the business. At best, it can set you on the way to becoming the perfect ambassador for the business. At worst, it can send you overboard all too quickly. I've had both.

Quite early in my career I joined a big national company and found that my boss had cleared his diary on my first day to ensure he was on hand to answer all my questions and show me the ropes. He also made sure all the hygiene issues of security badges, car parking and all the rest were sorted before I started so that I had a smooth entry into the business. During week one, he'd set up a series of meetings tailored to exactly what I was going to be involved in so that I got a little face time with the key people right up front. For the rest of the week, I shadowed my colleagues in the team, going to their meetings and learning how things got done in the firm by being involved. In between these meetings I had all the usual health and safety stuff - and on Friday lunchtime, we all went out for a team lunch. Within a week, everything felt familiar and I felt I was a contributing member of the team.

Contrast that with a project a few years ago when I turned up as the new communications lead for a new phase of an ongoing project for a major transport infrastructure operator. I arrived as planned on day one at the new office to find the building door locked. I had no pass to get into the building and, even after following someone into the reception area, found the project team were secluded behind another locked door. I rang my new boss - but her phone was on voicemail. I rang her boss - my main client - and found she was set to be on leave all week. Eventually, someone came out of the office and let me in.

I was met by silence from a dozen people ranged around a long narrow room, with all their work stations facing the wall. No-one knew who I was or why I was there. There was a narrow window at one end of the room - needless to say, the only spare work station was right at the other end - and that was mine.

Day one was useless. My boss was off site. I had no security pass, no log-in to the system; nothing to do and no means of generating my own work. My new 'colleagues' made no effort to help and were reluctant to to talk to me. They all headed off for a meeting at lunchtime, and didn't return for the rest of the day.

I nearly didn't bother coming in on day two. I did, and spent most of it getting all the necessary passes and log-ins sorted - time consuming admin that could have, and should have, been sorted before my arrival. I didn't meet my boss until day three - and even then she had no onboarding plan for me. I was very much left to my own devices.

The programme experience improved a little after that first couple of days, but I never felt settled in the role and was secretly delighted when the who thing was canned about six weeks later when the business was suddenly put up for sale.

The old adage of 'you have only one chance to make a first impression' is all too true with onboarding. And in these days where an engaged organisation is the holy grail, you really need to pay attention to getting that initial welcome right.

But what does 'right' look like? Care to share?

Squaring the employee engagement circle?

2010-03-08T09:04:00.003Z

I started a discussion on LinkedIn in the Melcrum Communicators' Group about Employee Engagement being a misnomer. My argument - shown below - comes from my feeling that though we've coined the term, we haven't really agreed a strict definition of what EE is. But there's a stronger point emerging in my mind too: that's the feeling that to place the responsibility for EE with IC devalues it and makes it unattainable. Anyway, some of the heavy hitters in the field are now weighing in to the debate. It'll be interesting to see how it develops further. Please do get involved, either by commenting on this blog, or here in the Melcrum Group if you're a member.

Here's my opening question - and the response (with names removed) to date:

Is employee engagement a misnomer?
So, employee engagement's the holy grail for successful organistions. But why have we coined this phrase? It hardly sounds inclusive does it? Doesn't the employer need to be engaged too? And in fact anyone who works alongside the organisation like your key suppliers and any temps/contractors or outsourced functions. So are we limiting ourselves by a poorly thought-out name?

The problems organisations face in this post-recession world are pretty-much common to all: keeping the best performers; continuing to drive productivity; growing market share; attracting the right people.....and for those already there, doing more with less. And there's a growing consensus that the best way to deliver on high productivity demands is to have an engaged organisation. Macleod defines this as being underpinned by four enablers:Leadership, Engaging Managers, Voice and Integrity. All are vital - but perhaps difficult to achieve if we continue to call it 'Employee' engagement.

So is it time to ditch the term - and what could succeed it as a more relevant shorthand for what we're all striving to achieve? And are MacLeod's enablers sufficient?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Posted 5 days ago Delete discussion

Comments (12)

MK

Not just ditch the term--cremate and bury it too.

The one-way nature of the term belies the cynicism exhibited by a good share of organisations who see it as a way to generate extra productivity cheaply--and by practitioners touting unsustainable returns on investment for ginning up one-way "employee engagement" schemes built on implicit promises that organisations may not be willing or capable to honour.

Engagement is at a minimum a two-way street. But in the current environment, where organisations have been pulling back from a lot of traditional commitments,multi-directional re-engagement across the stakeholder universe becomes vital. And, playing a pivotal role, organisations may need to reshape their workforce relationships completely to be able to engage their workforces to support their customer and stakeholder agendas.

Employees have more external credibility than corporate spokespeople these days, and while internal communication needs to continue to support employee productivity, it needs to raise its game to support employees as a credible external communication channel. Abandoning the inward--and often cynical--mentality embodied in the term "employee engagement" is a crucial step.

ST
I think the majority agree (and repeatedly agree) that the term 'employee engagement' is imperfect and for all sorts of reasons.

Here are my top 3:-
1. the term 'employee' is myopic
2. 'employee' and 'engagement' are two highly misunderstood terms in their own right - put them together and it creates a different order of magnitude in ambiguity (and let's not even discuss 'employee-brand-engagement')
3. employee engagement 'professionals' have been dining out on this ambiguity for years without shifting the results, driving even more cynicism.

I do not believe that a name change will not get over the deep-rooted cynicism (think: Consignia-->Post Office, Personnnel --> HR) as you point out Mark the term has been coined so why not capitalise on it? (Ironically, the four enablers you reference from "Engaging for success" introduce even more ambiguous terms e.g. "strategic narrative")

I do believe the priority for the profession is to keep the name and raise their game.

P.S.
There are currently 3 debates running on professions changing the name of their offer:-
1.change management
2.internal communications
3.employee engagement

They have at least 3 things in common:
1.They all talk about holistic offers with very specialist disciplines, so therefore difficult to define and ended up with generic terminology.
2.The impression of distressed professions lacking confidence in their own ability.
3. Angels dancing on the head of a pin.

JW
"Keep the name and raise their game" just about says it all for me. I recall you saying something similar recently about the need to focus on action rather than re-definition.

I think no one word or short combination of words will ever accurately reflect what we'd all like it to and this should not deflect us from striving to do our best for our companies or clients.

IW
Agree with J, let's not use management science terms to define the hell out of this so we lose touch with the people with whom we're supposed to be 'engaging'. Remember it's not the language our people speak.

TQ
Agree with MK and others. It feels like just the latest catch-all phrase to describe what the organisation wants - like "employee/internal branding" and "loyalty" before it. And while it implies a two-way relationship, the reality is usually trying to extract greater productivity and ideas from the people in the organisation.

Conversation with Liam Fitzpatrick recently when we were presenting a masterclass on internal comms - he also highlighted the degree to which it's become meaningless because everyone can re-define it to encompass whatever they're doing at the moment.

It also calls to mind an issue that I don't think is much discussed yet amongst we comms professionals - where do we draw the line between permissible expectations of our employer organisations and over-reaching demands that encroach on people's personal lives? Communications sent home?

Much of the talk of recent years smacks of one-way demands, even when dressed up in the talk of personal development - "emotional engagement", "bringing our whole selves to work", etc. Why? Who benefits?

And in my experience it's often not accurate either - emotions can be negative as well as positive, but those are not welcome at work, presumably.

BJ
The problem is that employee engagement is a term coined to provide a common focal point for addressing a multitude of problems. Like most such terms it will mean different things to different people and be used to drive different agendas. Ultimately it boils down to language and the fact that as human beings we can seldom be sure that any word or phrase means exactly the same to one person as to another. If be killed the term and cremated and buried it we would still be left with finding something else to convey all the term is intended to convey.

The real issue is not the term, but the fact that it has become part of the management lexicon and so joined the ranks of management speak. It has thus become part of a top-down solution to improve organisational performance and so will - for that reason - always arouse suspicion amongst the very people that are supposed to be engaged.

Mark Shanahan - second contribution

Excellent responses and builds. I dislike the term employee engagement but I'll use it as the common coinage here. But I'd like to throw out a further question: why are so many organisations making employee engagement a responsibility of internal comms? To me, comms is just one enabler but the 'task' of employee engagement still seems to reside firmly in the IC camp in a number of organisations I work with. Is there a more appropriate place in the existing organisation for employee engagement: a place where it can be co-ordinated and driven truly effectively? Or do we need to create a new function that enables the kind of multi-directional approach that MK raises?

It strikes me that however good the IC effort, we'll never reach engagement nirvana if its not matched by the right leadership behavours, systems and policies, culture and environment elsewhere in the organisation.

AS
I find it interesting that management theories seem to have decided that certain things coming together will facilitate employee engagement (though no two agree on what), but they look at completely different ways of describing highly motivated and successful leaders. One group of leadership gurus found that the examples leaders gave of their "career best experiences" had something in common. Those experiences occurred when they were working in an organization that needed the competencies they were good at and were passionate about. Isn't it just that simple for employees? Before offering/accepting a job or promotion, employees and employer need to agree that 1) the candidate would be good at the job (not just someone who excelled in a previous job and was due a promotion), 2) the organization needs and rewards the things the employee is good at, and 3) the employee feels passionate about getting the things done the job requires. They call this the "sweet spot." Applying this concept to having the majority of employees finding their sweet spots would mean that the organization would know what kinds of employee skills and behaviors are truly needed and valued, there would be a training/development program geared to finding and developing people with those skills, and making assignments of people based on what they truly enjoy doing. I'm not sure how employee communication would make any of that happen.

KD

Hooray! a debate about a term that's not properly understood, not universally defined and probably no better at getting to beneficial organisation outcomes than good, old fashioned job satisfaction.

I wonder if the fad gurus have got organisations so fired up about another sticking plaster solution to what essentially is poor management, that they don't care that it's not universally agreed and if there is no proper (and tested) definition, it can't be measured in any way accurately.

Iit's highly unfashionable - not to mention financial suicide - for consultants to be so post modern in their views, but I too wonder about the ethics of trying to "engage" employees past the normal activities of their role. The decline of trust in organisations, the slavish attention to the shareholders means that employees KNOW - whatever the management says - that they are a cost on the balance sheet and can be "trimmed". In which case, where does the whole concept of engagement fit in?

And even the definition of the term is so managerial, it's doesn't really allow for the possibility of two way discussion(MK). However, unlike AS, I do think that IC has a role to play here if only to support the whole idea of voice that is a major part of some of the older (and less fashionable) models which once guided the development and creation of jobs. This thinking also had feedback as a crucial element of how employees feel about their role and while this is primarily line manager led, it can also be a corporate responsibility.

But for me, the key objection to the whole notion of engagement is that it doesn't work without trust. Trust has been (and still is) in short supply, with UK public sector organisations in particular glancing nervously over their shoulders wondering when the 14-26% cuts are going to hit, and who will get the chop.

OK - rant over and I'm going to go and watch some mindless TV.

ST
So many views, so little consensus, and no surprise. I rest my case on why I believe noone will ever come up with a better terminology than 'employee engagement' despite its flaws.
I AM AN EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT CONSULTANT - GET OVER IT!
Despite the valid diversity of viewpoints I cannot believe that anyone would ever question the role that employee communications plays in engagement.
However, I do believe that when your only tool in your toolkit is a hammer, every problem is a nail.
Without putting a spanner in the works (pun intended) how about a debate around the value of measurement vs communication in driving employee engagement?

AS

In spite of my earlier comment, I do believe communication plays many different possible roles in enhancing the chances that engagement can occur. I even wrote an article for Melcrum a few years ago about Linking Communication to Engagement--and the link happens through research. So...I don't see the issue as the value of measurement VS. communication; they work together.

AMcK

This debate is important - both parts of your question are entirely valid Mark, as is each response above. I remember a heated debate on this and getting very frustrated - to me this definiton is a great example of how our industry has taken something that's hugely emotive and means something different to each person, and tried to over define and over-process it. If I remember rightly, the whole concept arose out of decades of academic research (the concept of 'affective commitment' isn't it?) that became trendy c. 2000 with the talent wars etc.

So each employer knows that if people feels good about the work they do they do it better and will contribute more. And each person in the organsition (at all levels and roles) feels more equipped to give their best if the culture allows them to and they feel it supports them, is genuine and initiatives not contrived. So we want to spread a positive emotion, and then go at it in a formulaic and programmatic way? I guess it's about balancing the risk - but for comms practitioners this is a very difficult balance.

Internal Comms is crucial to any engagement 'programme' as Angela says. How can we achieve any progress across an organsiation without effective communication of some sort? But Mark's points on the wider ingredients of the content and perception of comms (leaders' behaviours, policies etc) are also pertinent. Should the IC team own engagement? We go full circle to owning that emotion, that 'click', that feeling of connection that engaged people and engaged organisations have.

Like any good role brief, I think it comes down to clearly defining what the end goal (success) is to be and then both sides understanding what they're asking of each other. Maybe that would bring clarity to Sean's prompt above. And I hope there'd be different answers from place to place...

Let's not forget the basics

2010-03-01T14:07:00.003Z

I spent the greater part of this morning with a client turning an inside-out document the right way round.

The document was a detailed project update as the organisation approaches a major milestone on its change journey. It was written by the programme manager and the comms lead sensed it wasn't quite up to scratch. He'd tried to turn it round, but felt that a fresh pair of eyes would help.

He was right, and over a fruitful few hours the work became an object lesson in getting the basics right.

First, there was no clarity on what the piece was meant to achieve. It was more than just an update - buried in the text was a call for some very specific actions. That was half the problem - the important stuff was buried. Much of this morning has been spent digging it out and making sure the call to action would help achieve the project manager's desired outcome.

Second, the piece was written from an internal perspective: the writer simply hadn't put himself in his audience's shoes. There was far too much about what he knew rather than what his audience needed to know. A lot of that was context setting. It wasn't necessary at this point in the change journey. We stripped out the bulk of the context and added some links to past updates - if people want to know the full back story, there's a 'compelling narrative document' underpinning all the comms. There's now a link in the latest update to that.

Third, the piece was written in a mix of passive language and project jargon. Just making the language active made it far less clumsy; far more direct. Turning the project jargon into the everyday language of the business made it more accessible and much more straightforward.

Finally, there was the sheer bulk of the piece. Everything including the kitchen sink was in there: one size fitting at least two, probably three, distinct audiences. We've certainly come up with three slimmed-down versions of the document now - each aimed at a specific segment of the stakeholder audience.

It has actually been refreshing to go back to first principles and turn around something that no-one would have read into a piece of communication that really meets a need. It's being road-tested on a few internal bods this afternoon - I'm looking forward to the feedback.

Keeping it real

2010-02-23T15:03:00.003Z

I missed out yesterday on something that's rapidly becoming a Monday morning tradition: a face to face meeting with a friend, colleague or associate where we both have the chance to chew the fat on work, life and all that's somewhere in between.

A few weeks ago I met up with Rich the legal journo; then it was Paul the consultant, and yesterday should have been Annie the PR-turned-lawyer. In this age of electronic communication, there's all too little time to stop, pause for breath and have a good old chat about what's happening in our world, and seemingly less opportunity to have those outside-the-office talks face to face.

Back when I started work in the mid-80s it was all so different. At Which?, we were regular lunchers en masse as a team, often frequenting the pubs around Charing Cross and then the lower reaches of Camden. Later when I worked agency side, we lunched in the pub most days, and certainly on a Friday, not a lot got done in the afternoon. In between times, I worked in the age of the business lunch where I was either hosting business feeds or being a guest of a supplier or my peers just about every week. And we weren't like the French: lunchtime was a time to sort out business issues over a pint; to be creative and come up with great solutions. There was a great bond, working as a team but in a social situation - far better than the forced team-building so loved by big business in the 90s.

And for me, it was the mid to late 90s when everything changed. As email really took over as the medium of convenience, and as intranets and the first clunky collaborative working tools replaced phone conversations and meetings, the culture of informal face to face contact went out the window.

As we worked longer (though not necessarily more effectively), the social lunch - especially with alcohol - became increasingly frowned upon to the point of being a total non-starter. And as social media have emerged, the urge even to meet people face to face has been seen too often as too much of a time waster.

I hold the opposite view. I can achieve far more meaningful contact in one face to face meeting than in any chain of tweets, emails and blog posts. Today it's far too easy to feel we know peers and colleagues because we follow them on Twitter or are friends on Facebook. The reality is that we may have a far wider framework of acquaintances, but we can't ever really get to know these people if all we're doing is conducting a keyboard or touchscreen relationship.

By nature, I'm a pretty anti-social networker: it's easy to hide behind the keyboard, harder to get out and spend the time really engaging, face to face. I'm trying to break my bad habits - even if it's more likely to be in Costa than in the pub.

Anyway, last time i went into my local, a pint cost £3.75. Even if I wanted to get drunk in work time now, I couldn't afford to. That's a sobering thought.

2010-02-15T16:42:00.005Z

Apparently, there's a fear among many senior leaders of adopting social media within their organisations as it will lead to a loss of power. Hierarchical business structures ensure that power is always at a higher level - and the real power resides in the Boardroom. Therefore, the thinking goes, if you democratise communication, you'll democratise decision making and those who sit in the Corporate Suite will be disempowered.

Frankly, that's a right old load of tosh and misses both the benefit of connecting people across your organisation and the real truth that no business is a democracy.

I'll leave the social media analysts to argue the first point. My limited, but pragmatic, understanding is that great ideas don't just happen at the top of any organisation. Therefore, if social media provides new tools to improve organisational effectiveness; to open up conversations among communities of interest within organisations and to make better ideas travel through the right parts of the organisation quicker - involving all the right people along the way - then why should any executives fear them?

As for turning businesses into democracies - tosh and double tosh. Isn't that where great leadership comes in? Great leadership isn't command and control. It's not sitting divorced from the organisation, reading the balance sheet and declaiming what should be done.

Today, more than ever, as most organisations take the first steps to economic recovery, it's all about being at one with the heartbeat of the organisation. It's still about all the traditional stuff of understanding your market, your stakeholders and the wider business environment and charting a path to deliver success. It's about having the right strategy to thrive and the cash, processes and technology to make it happen. But it's all about PEOPLE. It's how you bring them onside, involve them in making their working world better and tap into their expertise to make a better business outcome for everyone involved in the organisation.

The nub is that you don't have to know it all or do it all: the best leaders are those who can tap into the consciousness of the organisation and make the kind of decisions that enhance engagement AND improve business performance. That's real leadership.

Social media are tools that can help that happen. So why on earth should any organisational leaders be afraid of them?

What's in a name?...Or, do the terms we use limit us more than they should

2010-02-08T17:26:00.003Z

Much of my life at the moment is involved in aspects of employee engagement as I try and get myself around some of the knotty problems organisations are involved in as the economy all too slowly emerges from recession.

The problems are pretty-much common to all: keeping the best performers; continuing to drive productivity; growing market share; attracting the right people.....and for those already there, doing more with less.

For my clients at least, a return to profitable business doesn't mean a return to the business costs of pre-2008. Their internal teams are leaner, budgets are meaner but the expectation of success is as high as ever.

The great thing is that many more organisations than before have realised that the best way to deliver on high productivity demands is by having an engaged organisation. The Macleod report defines this as being underpinned by four enablers:

Leadership
Engaging Managers
Voice and
Integrity.

I agree that they're all absolutely vital yet feel they're very difficult to achieve if we continue to use the term 'employee engagement'. I can see why it's used - not least the fact that it's been the common currency term among communicators and HR people for a number of years.

But thereby lies the problem. It's a term used almost as a throw-away by business leaders and given to HR or Comms (or often a combination of both) as a transactional task to deliver. The assumption is that with the right 'corporate hygiene' and internal comms we will draw everyone into the business to deliver far more than the 'competency' people are recruited for.

But MacLeod - and anyone with any sense would see that engagement has to begin at the top. While boards may be beholden to shareholders and analysts, only they can set the tone for the organisation: only they can create the environment and role model the behaviours that set the tone for the whole organisation. They must be engaged more than anyone else in the organisation. Employee engagement implies a top-down, traditional structure and some kind of paternalistic benevolence from the top.

But engaged organisations aren't like that. My definition of engagement is simple: it's creating the right culture to keep your best people longest. That means having the right behaviours, beliefs and ways of working to ensure that everyone knows what their role is within the organisation and are confident to give of their best in delivering on expectations. But it goes further: it's about creating an environment where everyone works collectively to drive the business forward - that means having leaders at all levels who listen, lean and apply great thinking irrespective of the thinker's job title.

Talking to David MacLeod last week, we agreed that colleague engagement is probably a better term. However, that's still a little limiting to me as to my mind it still implies a group of people who work directly within the organisation. But businesses, government departments, charities and any other functional community tends to have tentacles winding out in all sorts of directions that remain within that community.What about the contractors? What about the outsourced functions working in your building? What about those suppliers you work with every day, without whom your job could not be done? Aren't these all a part of the community that needs to be engaged to drive the organisation forward? Shouldn't we be investing in the tools to bring these quasi-internal stakeholders on board too? Surely it's by embracing this wider community that we'll achieve real engagement.

So what to call it? A large part of me wants just 'engagement' - but possibly that's too vague a term. Business engagement's a possible: but doesn't that exclude the public and third sectors?

At the moment, the best I can come up with is organisational engagement - still a mouthful but a more encompassing, less one-way and less top-down term. But does it have legs?

Engaging conversations

2010-02-04T10:01:00.004Z

Some days in this job lift the spirits - and yesterday was one of them. It was a day of good conversations moving several fronts forward.

Two of the best conversations were with Leon Benjamin and David Macleod. I'm still mulling over what they had to say, and much will end up as a magazine feature so this blog isn't the right place to pre-empt that piece. However, each played into the employee engagement conversation with both style and insight.

Leon Benjamin has long argued the case for social media inside the company - his own blog distills it here. During our conversation he made several telling points that struck home with me: most around the fear and insecurity of the current crop of business leaders and managers who draw power from hierarchy, and are afraid of losing that power through the non-hierarchical building force of social networking. Leon argues that old-style leaders gain and maintain their power from the top of the organisation: the Board makes the decisions; the rest of us implement them. Real leaders, by contrast, draw their power from the bottom: they're prepared to share; prepared to listen to and learn from anyone in the organisation who can help it thrive. His view is that this braver style of leadership will emerge - ever more so as Gen Y becomes more established in management structures. The conversations in business will change as social media technology usurps more traditional channels. The days of command and control management are numbered: hierarchical structures aren't going to collapse yet, but the foundations are already shifting.

It was a pleasure too to speak to David MacLeod about employee engagement. We discussed whether it's even the right term since the stakeholders affected range wider than a strict definition of 'employee' but also because employee engagement reflects a hierarchical 'us and them' approach that's at odds with the truly collaborative, involved, shared environment that a truly engaged organisation must be. Colleague engagement seems a better term - but employee engagement was used for the report since it's the common currency term within its own community of interest.

I questioned David on whether he was 'preaching to the converted' as most of the events he and his colleagues have been speaking at have been organised by HR and comms people for HR and comms people rather than those who need to adopt and champion EE - organisational leaders. He agreed - but countered that they're now working hard to get on the right platforms to hit those leaders with a more analytical bent who clearly aren't buying in to the whole concept of EE quite so easily.

We talked about 'what next?' following the review too. The completion of phase 1 will be the launch of a raft of EE material through BIS in March; but the really interesting part for David is phase 2: making it happen. I agree with him strongly that there's no magic bullet for EE. There's no one-size-fits-all solution that automatically creates the right attitudes and behaviours that will deliver the right outcomes. Every situation is contextual and the set of requirements that will deliver engagement in organisation A may be quite different from those that will bring engagement to life in organisation B. So, it's eating the elephant one bit at a time - there'll be a similarity of flavour, but the texture will be very different with every bite you take.

What's clear is that Leaders are pivotal. EE can't be created, sustained and nourished from a comms or HR function somewhere in the middle of the organisation. It has to be embraced and actively championed from the top and at all the points of influence throughout the community. It isn't a task - it's a more complex set of beliefs and attitudes that values people as much more than a cost on the balance sheet.

MacLeod - preaching to the converted?

2010-02-03T11:21:00.005Z

I'm interviewing David MacLeod this afternoon. He's the lead author of the Government's Employee Engagement review - Engaging for Success published last year. While I'd read about the report before this morning - I hadn't really dug into the document. So I sat down after breakfast and have ploughed through the whole 157 pages since then.

I'm impressed by the weight of evidence MacLeod and his team have pulled together - great case studies, not just from the largest, best-resourced organisations, but from a good number of SMEs too. What's it's lacking is context: it states that the UK lags behind in terms of employee engagement, but doesn't show what other countries are doing better and or even where in the world employee engagement is already being seen to make a quantifiable difference to business on a more widespread basis.

However, two questions are burning on my lips - what happens next? And, isn't the report simply preaching to the converted.

I may be wrong, and happy for the author to correct me, but all the briefings I've heard about on the report have been aimed at HR people and communicators. But we're already bought in: we're doing the do, striving to make engagement the way of life in our organisations. The laggards seem to be at Board level: CEOs and primarily CFOs. I haven't seen much evidence of them being directly targeted as the key stakeholders in this report.

That could well be because the report is weak on just how leaders can deliver the cultural change necessary to create employee engagement. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence in the report - but it's not a toolkit for action - and the call to action is frankly weak.

So my second question is 'what next?' - The review aims to open up the debate, bring resources together and challenge organisations to respond. I'd love to know from the author just what that response has been.

Jan 2009 v Jan 2010 - there is a difference

2010-02-01T11:52:00.004Z

So we're now into the second month of 2010. We're officially out of recession and my CiB colleagues (or the Xchange team anyway), say that the only way the organisational communications market can move is up. I hope that's the case, though I've yet to see the fragile optimism translate into money in the bank.

But looking back on January - with the perspective of a whole day - I can already see that the month was quite a different proposition from its partner in 2009. I have been a lot busier than at this time last year, and while this isn't reflected in a poor billing month, there's definitely more reason to feel positive.

If I look at my January calendar I can see that barring a couple of snowed-out days, I was engaged in the dark arts of communication on every work day. I'd love to say it was all day every day: it wasn't. I'd love to say it was all fee-earning stuff: it wasn't.

In January 2009, I waited for the anticipated surge that has happened every year since I started Leapfrog in 2000. It never came. This year I didn't expect it. I had a few small pieces of work carrying over from December, and have completed or brought these close to completion over the last few weeks. Bits of billing have gone in, some more will happen over the next week, and more small tactical pieces of work have come my way. Not the much-needed 'big project', but all good stuff, and all a real step forward from this time last year.

What's been different from 2009 is the number of conversations I've had about upcoming work of all varieties, and the number of pieces of work - of all hues - that I've been asked to quote for. Not everything has been rosy, but the overall feel is that the market's finally beginning to move.

On the downside for me, I had some facilitation work that I hoped would lead to a larger piece of change comms work. My piece of the jigsaw went well - but the team made a crucial decision that day to run the project from Switzerland rather than the UK. It's the right decision and means they can resource the comms internally. It was tough to miss out on the work, but I hope the client saw enough in me to consider using me in the future. Certainly they were very positive about the planning/facilitation I did for them.

The upside is a number of conversations about work opportunities - some for ad-hoc support, others for the more encompassing 'big project'. These conversations just weren't happening 12 months ago. I've spent a significant amount of time putting pitch material together and the vibe feels a lot better than last year. While much of the quality work remains in-house, there's a bit more budget around, and certainly more appetite for communication as a means to prepare organisations for the upswing.

I now feel I'm on the runway, wheels rolling. It's a much better feeling than last year when I, and too many of my peers, were stuck in a snowdrift.

Latest 'Connections' hitting intrays across Europe

2010-01-19T17:16:00.004Z

The latest copy of 'Connections' - Badenoch & Clark's B2B publication is now out. It has reached its 11th issue, and I've written the bulk of it since the start. You can read it online here. I think there's some pretty good material in there this time round.

One of my targets for 2010 is more regular publication work - online or in print. It's something I still really enjoy doing. So, I'm on the lookout for opportunities.

A good morning so far

2010-01-18T09:02:00.001Z

It's only just 9am on Monday morning and already I've had a three-feature pitch accepted by a magazine and had a case study cleared off at source. Things are looking up!

It's snow good

2010-01-14T09:16:00.005Z

I live in maritime climes on an island not known for its extremities of weather. We assume that, throughout the year, trains will run, roads will be passable, power supplies will be consistent. The last eight days have rather thrown all of that into a cocked hat - and the knock on effect for Britain's fragile business recovery will probably take some time to gauge.

The middle of last week was a write-off business-wise. It should have been the first week back for most people after the long Christmas break, but just a day in, we were faced with the worst snowfall since 1963. all the schools closed round here, if you hadn't got a 4 x 4 the roads were a no-go area and public transport ground to a halt.

By Monday, all the kids were back to school and normality should have been returning - there was even a slight thaw. I was set up for a day of case study work, followed by the last workings on a 70-page piece of marketing capability development communication with the prospect of the rest of the week being devoted to a project kick-off and all the actions that would flow from yesterday's planned meeting.

But it snowed again. One of my two case study contributors saw his university campus close for the day Monday - leaving him with a 12 mile walk home. Things were no better yesterday. I did manage to speak to the other people I needed, so at least have one case study in the bag.

I waited for the big report to arrive - I needed a hard copy to mark up and it was being biked to me. It arrived 26 hours after it was expected. I spent the next five hours working through my end of the project but had no way of getting it back to the agency until yesterday. Then, yesterday morning my contact phoned: stuck in the snow, miles from his place of work. I finally dropped in my marked-up copy at 1pm - having driven across the Chilterns at about 25 miles an hour. My contact still hadn't made it to his office.

I should, of course, have been in London - but that meeting was cancelled too. Some participants couldn't get to London, others couldn't even get into the UK. I'd planned an agency meeting on the back of my trip to London with the intention of warming up a slow-burning relationship that has been fitfully fruitful over the last decade or so. Needless to say, that face-to-face was replaced by a brief telephone conversation.

At my end of the business food chain, the impact of a freezing week and an amount of snow that would seem negligible if we were in the Alps or Canada, say, has been significant. The work hasn't gone away, but has been delayed to the point where my nicely planned week will crash into other upcoming activities once the white stuff's finally gone. My cashflow's fragile enough at the moment, and delays like this don't help - not do the 'empty' days that any micro business can expect, but that none of us relish.

We did have the snowball fights and the bracing walks last week; I was able to get some university work done and catch up on the boring business admin (which largely involved writing cheques for my accountant and the taxman), but I really wanted to start 2010 with some business momentum.

I sensed a fragile optimism as we headed into the New Year - I hope the stuffing's not been knocked out of it by a dose of Siberian conditions hitting our temperate shores.

Weather 1 UK 0

2010-01-06T11:08:00.016Z

Once again a few inches of snow has brought Britain to its knees. It's actually snowing quite heavily out here in the Chilterns - we've got five or six inches on the ground and the only things moving on the roads are 4 x 4s. All the kids' schools are closed , as is Jac's office. I struggled into work...down the stairs and through the kitchen - but my clients in Bucks and Berks are conspicuously quiet this morning. Still, it makes for a few nice pictures! I won't be using my outdoor 'pondering' seat this morning - and I may pass on a swing too.

Let's get rolling

2010-01-04T10:05:00.002Z

Odd day today. I've been back at my desk since 8.30am, but the three kids are all still in the house, with their respective school terms not starting until tomorrow. So today feels like a bit of a false start. I carried over one project from before Christmas, and am doing some artful tarting on that this morning, but chasing down contacts for another live project seems to be a fruitless task so far - I'm sure first day back for corporate bods means a lot of internal meetings and clearing a backlog of hundreds of emails - I know I've already got rid of many invitations to purchase viagra, hook up with hot girls and invest in Nigerian mining operations already this morning.

Still I hope the year begins on a livelier note than 2009 - that became scarier and scarier as January remained dead. Last year I left it too late to react: this year my resolution is to be far more proactive. Nothing happens if you're not making it happen.

Summing up my 2009

2009-12-21T11:51:00.003Z

The pace of work is dying down as we head into Christmas - I'm still chasing some case study material, but some of those I need to speak to have already clocked off for the festive season and won't be seen again at the end of a business phone line 'til 2010.

Like many, I'll be very glad when 2009 is over. Too many people have been far too euphemistic when describing this year's business performance. I won't: for me, right up to November, 2009 was pretty disastrous. My fee income dropped by almost half; projects that were slated never happened and others were slimmed down considerably from their original scope.

My business is now almost 10 years old but by about July, it was on life-support. I was offered, and very nearly accepted, a full-time role, but couldn't quite bring myself to throw in the towel. I'm glad I didn't. the 'role' became a project that kick-started some other activity, and while September-October were still pretty grim, the first signs of recovery reappeared in November and have carried on into this month. Clients I hadn't heard from all year reappeared, and the kind of projects that simply weren't happening in the first half of the year have just started to be talked about again.

The pipeline for January isn't great - but clients are making the right noises about some new projects, and I've had a couple of interesting conversations this month about potential link-ups with other small businesses in the New Year.

2010 has to be better than 2009 - quite simply for this micro-business because it couldn't get any worse!

So what have I learned in 2009? First, never again will I turn down any work. Since I started Leapfrog in 2000, I've had the luxury of being able to pick and choose the projects I've worked on. For much of the time, work has come to me and even when the pipeline has looked particularly thin, something's always turned up. Often I've been able to pass work on to associates or bring them in to work on projects under the Leapfrog banner.

At the start of 2009 I turned down a couple of projects I didn't feel were quite right for me on the expectation that I was about to start on a large piece of change work. That change work didn't come off, and the clients for the other pieces sourced the work elsewhere. Work for the next six months was either linear or non-existent. I filled the gap with working hard on my MA - and that resulted in a Distinction - but that should have been secondary to keeping my business going, not some kind of a justification for turning down work.

Second, for all the hype around social media, much of my best work has been around face-to-face communication. The lesson for me is that social media gives us new tools to get people talking, but they replace neither the existing communication toolkit nor the outcome-delivering-content we should be focused on.

I've worked with a couple of organisations battling to stay afloat this year. What has worked for them is having a clear set of values and beliefs; strong leadership and an ability to listen, learn and respond quickly. Some of the new social media tools have helped widen the involvement of the organisations in riding out the economic storm. But nothing has replaced the benefit that comes from a Board director putting the miles in on the motorway network to get around their branches and offices and spend high quality time with their people, talking through the issues the business faces and coming up with ways forward that everyone can own.

Social media will grow and evolve. It may well become a crucial part of the communications mix for many - but it's not a panacea.

My final lesson this year has been finding out who my friends are - the clients, suppliers and fellow independents who've been prepared to help keep me in business this year - and the few who've been oblivious to the plight of microbusinesses. On the plus side, I'm heartily grateful to my accountant for delaying his invoice; to my book keeper for dropping her fee; to the agency which paid ahead of terms and to fellow freelancers who put leads my way. I've less time for the couple of corporates which moved their payment terms out to 60+ days - and were still late paying; to the largeish agency which suddenly adopted a 'pay-when-paid' policy (after agreeing to my T&Cs) and still won't pay and to the other agencies that just stopped talking - I can think of three that haven't even been bothered to reply to emails for the last six months. I know times are tough for everyone, but for communication businesses to stop communicating is a pretty poor show.

It has pained me that I haven't been able to put out work to other people this year, and it has pained me more to see good people disappear from our industry. I hope 2010 will be better for us all.

Bit manic, no panic

2009-12-07T11:45:00.002Z

Last week I was contemplating a gentle glide into Christmas. How wrong I was: more magazine stuff has come my way than expected; I've delivered a strategic summary on a firm's three year plan and worked on the first tranche of case studies for another. I now have 230 pages of technical copy to edit by Wednesday plus a training session to deliver - and then more case study work to come. Oh, and my first internal PhD conference to poster-present at on Thursday.

Sorry, no time for Christmas at the moment.

Today, I am the Master....

2009-11-27T11:24:00.003Z

Yesterday I got my MA result - I got a Distinction, the highest award possible. I was absolutely delighted - I still am - a mite surprised, and very proud that the last two years of hard work have produced a personal achievement way ahead of anything I've done academically before.

We celebrated last night with a bottle of champagne - not the greatest idea on top of my incipient cold. Today I'm trying to write, with gaps in the information, a quiet hammering in my head and regular sniffs holding me back a bit.

Now my challenge is to work my new Master of Arts in International Relations into my day job. The two years to date at Brunel have opened up my horizons - I hope the formal qualification will open up some new opportunities too.

There are a thousand meanings for 'yes': a lesson in cultural awareness

2009-11-16T13:41:00.005Z

I've had a meeting blown out through what amounts to a classic cultural disconnect.

At the moment I'm doing a small piece of work for a company with an AsiaPac office. We had a meeting and a follow-up telecon last week at which I specified a few actions that needed to happen on the client side to move the project along. At the meeting, everyone agreed with the proposed actions, we divvied them up and set a touch point for today to check in on progress.

The AsiaPac guys seemed enthusiastic, made all the right noises and nodded their heads vigorously when actions came their way. Their English was excellent......and I assumed they understood what was needed of them.

Lesson 1: never assume

The alarm bells rang just a little on Friday when the follow-up telecon became a repeat of the previous meeting. instead of moving the conversation on, we seemed to be covering the same ground. Nonetheless, I was looking forward to this week's meeting where we'd be able to share the results of everyone's actions. Except the meeting has been postponed - and no actions have actually taken place.

Apparently, the AsiaPac guys hadn't really understood what I and their EMEA colleagues were asking them to do. But to have said so in the meeting would have been a huge loss of face. So every time they were asked to support an action or to let us know whether they understood or agreed with what we were asking them to do, they just smiled and said yes. Clearly, we hadn't made our case well - but our colleagues were too polite to point this out.

My EMEA contact who cancelled the meeting today told me that after the meeting and on the flight back, his AsiaPac colleagues had got into an argument over what was required of them: there were two distinct camps with opposing views and neither was prepared to back down. The result was, that when they were back at base, they did nothing. It's culturally not in their make-up to ask for help - especially from another office, and actually more acceptable to put their collective heads in the sand and wait for resolution.

Lesson 2: patience pays off

Picking up on what had most probably been happening, my EMEA colleague has spent several long telephone calls over the weekend taking his colleagues through the plan again, checking their understanding at every point; getting them to play back exactly what their role is and setting a revised deadline for action. Without being rude, he hasn't accepted the 'yes' responses at face value, but has continued to question, check understanding and build confidence. I've learned a lot from him in a short space of time.

Just because it's a western company, we can't impose a western outlook on employees with very different cultural values and working practices.

Our next call is for a few days' time: I'm going to be much more tuned-in to the nuances behind every 'yes' this time round.

Will the market change forever?

2009-11-13T09:24:00.009Z

Apparently the first green shoots are appearing in the UK: house prices are inching up, unemployment has peaked and the demand for talent is beginning to increase. But I have to say I haven't felt the uplift yet in organisational communications. I'm sure it will happen, but I suspect what will emerge is a leaner, more professional model where more of the key work is handled in-house. The impact on the food chain that feeds off the big organisations will be marked. I suspect many businesses will be fighting for survival. Strangely, I don't think that's a bad thing.

In the boom years, I noticed a new breed emerging in my specialism: internal communication. Many great managers moved into senior in-house IC roles. But what they were great at doing was managing. What it meant for me and people of my ilk was that we had a say in developing these organisations' communications strategies, and once the comms strategy was in place, these managers were content to outsource much of the delivery of that strategy to external partners. The demand on in-house folk grew which meant the function grew too - as did the amount of work pushed out into the food chain.

An awful lot of 'communication' happened in a lot of organisations - some great, some pretty dire....and a lot that really was 'nice to have' rather than necessary. Every new project had a team and a campaign around it; every little initiative fought for share of mind......and those of us on the delivery side did very well thank you very much.

The last 15 months has been very different. First the hatches were battened down and nothing happened. Then organisations realised they needed to communicate their way through the financial crisis and called on their in-house teams to up their game...but cut the cost.

The result has been a fundamental shake-out in internal communication. For the first time in a decade or more, in-house teams have been asked to 'do the do' rather than relying on external expertise to deliver the goods. The poor performers have been found out and moved out of key roles, while those we always knew were good have shone - taking on the end-to-end process from helping to shape the business strategy to feeding the media channels directly. Sure, external people have been involved, but fewer; and doing only the things that really can't be done by the in-house team. Frankly it's something I'm also seeing in IT, in HR, in fact across all the centralised functions.

Those teams who do have the skills have really proved their worth - and there's a direct correlation with the organisations who are riding out the recession best. Look at an organisation where employees are engaged; where the brand is secure; where the direction is well planned and where leadership is clear and you'll undoubtedly find some great internal communication. Meanwhile managers who've been content only to manage have found IC a very tough place, and many have left their organisations.

The interesting part is that some have joined the ranks of agencies, consultants, micro-businesses and freelancers battling for an overall smaller pot of good IC work. As a pool of talent we're currently swollen. The high quality performers are there, but there are a lot of 'me too' practitioners around as well. And with a squeeze on budgets from within our client organisations, coupled with many new entrants prepared to work for less, there's a growing tendency for clients to commission solely on price rather than insisting on the right fit/best quality/optimal solution that we were getting to back in 06/07.

In some ways (he says through gritted teeth), this isn't a bad thing. Some consultancies and agencies were certainly charging ridiculous rates a couple of years ago - there were similarities to the worst excesses of management consultancy days when consultancies were happy to sell us our own watches so we could tell the time. So a euphemistic 'price correction' is probably overdue. However, the squeeze is rippling through the food chain to a point where there's a real danger that 'low bidding' wars will pull down the standards across IC and lead to some very good practitioners moving out of organisational communication, and some very poor work being delivered. This threatens to damage the already fragile reputation IC has built up in recent years.

Actually, I'm already seeing some move back in-house when the opportunities arise. There is a demand for highly skilled senior practitioners who can talk to the top team in their language and deliver the goods in a way that's truly engaging to their stakeholders. But I'm also seeing long-standing independents moving on completely - I now know a teacher, a trainee lawyer and a property developer who were all very solid IC pros less than two years ago.

So what kind of market will we see in 2010 and 2011? Increasingly, in-house teams will be more senior, better skilled but also leaner. They'll have to get to grips with Web 2.0 and release their tight grip on 'owning' communication since the emerging tools will democratise communication across organisations more than ever before. There will be a greater need for compliance driven from the centre, but also a greater need to really upskill line management to be communication leaders. We've all talked about it for a long time. Now it must happen.

Where in-house teams are staffed by skilled practitioners, they simply won't be allowed to grow big budgets any more. So there will be a greater focus on identifying what will drive the organisation forward and building communication into those drivers . A lot of the unnecessary stuff has disappeared already. It won't be back for a while.

There will still be a demand for external services, but it will be more focused on specific skills (social media; line management coaching; the comms end of cloud computing are just three areas where externals should be sharpening their skills) with less general demand for the extra pairs of hands. As external suppliers, we'll also have to deal increasingly with Procurement teams rather than the direct client. Initially this may drive down cost further, but longer-term should actually up the game for supplier who will have to justify costs through the value we create much more comprehensively.

A world-wide financial crisis has placed IC centre stage: a key resource for helping to ride out the storm. As a function, IC has been battered too, though the harshest effects have probably been on suppliers who've become too dependent on the bigger organisations for too long.

We'll never return to pre-2008 days, and if externals want to thrive in the upturn, we need to be as lean, as focused and as able to identify and deliver value as any of the upskilled internal teams we'll be supporting. It's going to be positively Darwinian out there.

Calling experts in procurement, net reps and the world of paralegals

2009-11-11T17:06:00.003Z

I'm getting caught up in researching the next issue of Badenoch & Clark's Connections at the moment, with a slew of articles to be written.

Today (and tomorrow) I'm looking into the future of paralegals in the UK; a piece exploring the role of the Procurement function in business today, and a piece on how seriously employers take net reps both when it comes to hiring new staff, and also performance managing their existing staff. A nice varied bunch then, and I'd love some good input.

So if you have a view, post a comment or contact me at mark.shanahan@leapfrogcomms.com

Germany calling...or calling Germany

2009-11-04T14:28:00.002Z

I'm researching two Continental-Europe focused magazine features at the moment - one a business profile of the German city of Frankfurt, and the second a focus on the prospects for financial services as an employment sector across Europe.

Of course the nature of the beast now, both with recession still biting and so much information electronically 'on tap', is to research and write the pieces from wet and windy Buckinghamshire. But what will really bring them to life is talking to some credible figures on the inside to get some primary source information, opinion and comment. I'll be googling and doing an information trawl over the next day or two - but if anyone has any good ideas or wants to participate, please do get in touch.

Will the last one out please switch off the lights?

2009-11-03T12:29:00.004Z

I got my first expression of interest in the O/O Assessment this morning which is great. But what was far more salutary was the fact that out of all the people I emailed with an outline of the service, a shade under half bounced back - or elicited a response that the person I'd mailed no longer worked for the organisation I'd sent the information to.

None of my 'targets' was a totally cold call: these were organisations I'd worked with before or people I at least knew through the CiB/IABC/Melcrum networks. While I'm sure some people have simply moved on from one organisation to another, it seems that IC has contracted pretty drastically in 2009.

Stop, think and focus

2009-11-02T09:55:00.003Z

Over the past year I've sen most organisations batten down the hatches on organisational communication, pulling what work they are doing back in-house and focusing only on getting through the day to day challenges. It has been tough all round: many teams have dealt with significant redundancy programmes in their organisation while themselves being cut to the bone. Other challenges I've seen have included managing the communication agenda of leadership teams that have become more directive and less inclusive - and the consequent difficulties in maintaining employee engagement. And every organisation I've worked with has faced the daily challenge of having to do more with less to reach targets that are ever more difficult to attain.

In some notable cases - and to their great credit - the in-house teams have thrived, taking on work they would normally have outsourced, and rediscovering the skills and passions that initially drew them into organisational communication. But, a year and more down the line, everyone's tired and many communicators are running close to empty.

In any recession - and I've been through the last three (arguably four) - employee communication is an easy cost-cutting target. Leaders make the right noises about communication and engagement being a massive priority, but then cut back on budget and resourcing anyway. It's tough for the team stuck in the middle of the maelstrom to keep on delivering, and doubly tough to remain focused and objective on whether what they're producing is delivering the outcome the business actually needs. The issue is not just to deal with today's challenges, but to ensure that the organisation is in the right shape to met the different challenges it will face when the upturn kicks in.

And here's the dilemma many organisations are facing: at the moment, calling on external consultancy support simply isn't an option - it's seen as too costly and wasteful - and against the spirit of the organisation in managing costs and preserving internal roles. However, now is exactly the time when organisational communication teams could benefit most from a fresh, experienced pair of eyes to assess how their communications are performing and how well aligned they are with the needs of the business.

Over the summer, I worked for two organisations on quick diagnostic projects - the aim was to stop, think and focus. It was about making small course corrections rather than reinventing the communication wheel. The object in both cases was to look at the business strategy; do a deep dive into what was being done in terms of communication (through desk research and 1:1 interviews with key communication influencers) and to feedback through a highly interactive senior workshop. The feedback session became the basis for an action plan where senior leaders took responsibility for the necessary aspects of course correction.

The sessions were really effective. As an outsider, I could give objective feedback, pulling no punches, and detail where communication was and wasn't working - and why. Once issues were out in the open, the internal teams worked at developing solutions that could be delivered inside the organisation - not by pricey external consultants.

I refined the process over the course of the two projects and now am confident that it's works and is replicable and scalable. One project was for a sizable business and the other for a division of an organisation. In both cases, the key was identifying actions that could be acted on by the existing in-house team within their budget using existing resources. In both cases, I worked on the available budget my clients had - it was well below what I would have charged in the good times, but I knew i could still make the figures work for me - and deliver something very beneficial for the client.

Talking to a couple of Leapfrog Associates last week, we began calling the proto-service 'Austerity Consultancy' - somehow it fits the times.....but isn't the most saleable name. Now I'm driven in my communication makeup by a focus on outcomes over outputs, and realised that this is what this service is all about. So, austerity consultancy has become O/O Assessment - a process to ensure your communication outputs and planned business outcomes are aligned.

My mantra on business communication is only to invest time in those things that will actually drive the business forward - it's about understanding the impact of what you do and being able to measure that impact. And in this economic downturn, it's about doing a few things well.

If you're interested in finding out whether O/O Assessment could work for you, give me a call or drop me an email. It's low-cost, low risk and could really re energise your team to focus on what really matters to your organisation...it might even save you a few ££ along the way.

Sod's law

2009-10-29T12:26:00.003Z

In the midst of mailing out details of a new Leapfrog service the Yahoo mail server has crashed...once again.

When it comes to technology, I'm NOT having a good week!

Is the new blood coming through?

2009-10-27T10:27:00.006Z

I was talking to someone at CiB this morning about a training course I'm planning to run next month and then again in January. To be honest, the bookings are slow and if they don't pick up we may combine the two days into one in the New Year.

I've worked with several training providers over the past two years and all are saying the same: bookings are down and some events simply aren't running.

What struck me most is that CiB had to postpone its Communications Foundation course in September - a very good offering aimed at those new to the industry. The implication was that there simply wasn't a lot of new blood coming through this year.

For me, that's a real worry. If IC is to climb the business agenda, organisations need to maintain their talent pipeline. Of course that can be tough in an economic downturn, but it hardly helps businesses prepare for the upturn if they're neither recruiting new talent nor developing those at junior levels. I know what my experience was in my early career when my employer was not prepared to invest in me: I walked to an organisation that was (Nationwide!).
Frankly, organisations who are just battening down the hatches now and cutting back on the 'nice to haves' (Yuk!!) of development and communication can probably kiss their top comms talent goodbye as soon as business conditions start to improve.

While my mantra on employee communication at the moment is to concentrate on doing a few things well, organisations should not lose focus on developing their own people - not least their communicators.

In this case, my next course isn't too relevent as it's about going freelance, but there's a lot of good training, at more reasonable cost than ever, to be had out there. It's massively short-term thinking for organisations to slash development budgets. Surely this is the time for training providers and employers to come together to define and deliver 'product' that meets the needs of both sides?

Are your comms outputs aligned with your business strategy?

2009-10-26T15:21:00.003Z

I'm looking to pilot a new employee communication business service and need the help of one or two organisations in return for more than a 50% reduction on my normal (already cost-effective!) fee.

Over the summer I conducted a couple of 'quick diagnostic' projects where I went into an organisation, assessed the way they communicated with staff, and produced a report to help them move their employee comms agenda forward. In one case, my involvement with the business was just four days. In the other case, eight.

I have to admit that what has emerged as the O/O Report process started off as an off-the-cuff activity. however, it quickly evolved as it went along and I've spent the last couple of months tightening it up into an eminently repeatable process.

I'd now like to offer it to other organisations. But to build up some positive word-of-mouth for it, I'd like to get one or two endorsers - and will be happy to take these organisations through the process at less for less than half of my normal daily rate. All I'm asking in return is that if you're happy with the service, you'll be prepared to provide a testimonial.

I'm fully aware that budgets are really tight at the moment and most organisations have next to nothing to spend on external consultancy. Fair enough: this piece of work is all about focusing your communication activity on those areas that will deliver the best outcomes for delivering your business strategy. I'd wager that in every organisation it will identify cost savings that will absolutely dwarf any money you spend on Leapfrog.

In terms of how O/O works, it's about a close look at:

your business strategy

your employee communication strategy/rules/channels/media/tools

how you involve your people

key influencers and their part in the communication process

senior team involvement
This is a very interactive, intensive process and the key output is your O/O Review and follow-up action plan.

The USP of the service is that it's a quick but deep external insight with all planned actions tailored to your particular size and style of business. Essentially it's all about bringing a highly-experienced fresh pair of eyes to your organisational communication challenge and finding a way forward that you can act on quickly, easily and without additional cost.

Interested in finding out more? Contact mark.shanahan@leapfrogcomms.com

Leadership 2.0 - reassuringly back to basics

2009-10-26T11:20:00.003Z

Speaking at Melcrum's recent SCM Summit in London, 'Undercover Boss' Stephen Martin presented his 10 10 Tips for communicating to employees during and after the recession. Now apart from the 'to' employees rather than 'with' them, I was very taken with what he was proposing:

His top 10 are reassuringly straight-forward and common sense. They're about creating as many opportunities for conversations as possible; about involving people in getting their business out of recession rather than imposing change on them; about narrowing the us-and-them' gap between management and the workforce, and using front line supervision as your communication bridge and keeping on communicating whatever challenges CEOs face.

The interesting part is that there's no mention of Web 2.0. Martin may have had the tools at the back of his mind when he came up with his top 10, but they weren't the key to effective communication.

It's great to hear about the new tools and techniques for improving organisational communication, but too much of the online conversations among communicators is an endless debate on how we can justify these tools rather than a concentration on the fundamentals. The new tools are great - but are useless if we don't get the basics right. Let's not allow them to become the Emperor's new clothes.

Nick Griffin and the power of free speech

2009-10-23T16:32:00.003+01:00

I've got a lot of time for the BBC. Auntie Beeb gets a lot of stick from all sorts of quarters, but by playing the impartiality card last night on Question Time, the broadcaster showed how the power of free speech was a force to expose the hypocrisy of bigots.

Nasty Nick Griffin, the oleaginous leader of the vile and odious race-based British National Party took his place on the panel of the venerable political Q&A. The show has been attacked today for:

a) allowing Griffin his hour in the zeitgeist; and
b) focusing all but one of the questions on his party and beliefs

Hundreds of people protested about Griffin being allowed on the programme, but I'm glad he got to sit there, slightly sweaty and with the mild panic of a man who's realised he's naked in a room full of strangers. To deny Griffin the chance to be questioned by the voting public would have been shameful. If we stop a right wing politician, do we then do the same to the left? Where do you draw the line...and wouldn't that line get ever closer to the centre?

No, I was glad to see Griffin exposed for the petty, small-minded, narcissistic, racist, outdated and outmoded individual he is. He fared badly. Bonnie Greer ran rings around him. The politicians of the three main parties should have too, but were too busy being on message and party-politicking to kick at the easy targets Griffin provided. Oh for a Tony Benn or a Michael Heseltine to focus in their laser-guided barbs. Griffin would have been mince-meat.

Huhne did ok for the liberals, the Conservative speaker was an obvious choice but not a strong one, and Straw for Labour was weak, muddled and dissembling.

Within minutes, Griffin was toast - but burnt far more harshly by the audience than by his fellow panelists. However, Griffin was made to look a fourth-rate politician by a second rate crop of political opponents.

As for the questions, well those who say they were too BNP-biased miss the point of the programme. I was in the audience for QT when it last came to Oxford - and an almost equally obnoxious 'politician' George Galloway was on the platform. We were all asked to submit a question beforehand and the producers chose the best to pitch at the panel. The questions reflect the mood, and subject choice of the audience. Speaking to someone at QT producers Mentorn today he acknowledged that all but a very few of the questions submitted last night were aimed at Griffin. QT is a case where the audience decides the direction the programme will go.

Griffin earned his place through his party's performance at the European Elections. It was nothing more than a protest vote in an election that very few in the UK felt mattered to them. The BNP's success will not be repeated at the UK elections in 2010. He may feel that all publicity is good publicity, but last night's exposure has made many more people aware of who Griffin really is and what he stands for. I'm with the guy who said he'd like to give loathsome Nick a one-way ticket to the South Pole.

Soundtrack to my day

2009-10-22T11:48:00.003+01:00

Busy editing website copy for a client this morning - a task I simply can't do in silence. So, my working soundtrack so far this morning has been:

Maximo Park - Quicken the Heart

Snow Patrol - A Hundred Million Suns

Manic Street Preachers - Journal for Plague Lovers

I've enjoyed all three, but the Manics stand out. I think it's a really underrated album - possibly a dark horse for album of the year?

Anyway, back to work - but what to play to keep the (working) tempo up 'til lunch?

Perception is reality

2009-10-21T15:42:00.003+01:00

I commented on Rachel Allen's blog recently on how the perception of a 'communications consultant' is different from being simply a business or change consultant. I've been called all three on projects in recent years, and while my role has been largely the same - and the actions I've taken have been around improving communication within and beyond those organisations - my standing, and indeed my remuneration has been higher when I've kept communication out of the title.

I did a project a few months ago where I was asked to improve communication: the assumption was I'd clean up the intranet and probably launch a new ezine. Actually, the conversations within the business proved far more interesting and soon evolved into recasting the style of leadership from one of command and control (probably necessary in a start-up) to something more collaborative and inclusive. It demanded a huge change in communication - not in the use of formal tools, but in the way management operated. The demand was for more openness, more inclusion in decision making or simply explanation when harder leadership was called for.

It was an interesting experience, and all the more interesting when the leaders forgot I was there with a 'communication' hat on, and started talking to me quite simply about how they could improve decision making in the business and move the mindset from a public service ethos to something much more commercial. They may well change some of the formal tools, but by parking 'communication' as a transactional experience, we delved more deeply into the real drivers of engagement and business evolution.

Communication is at the core of this, but by positioning ourselves as the 'communication professionals' we still tend to be marginalised: given the task of finding the best way to package the message once the decision's been made. It's easy to get wrapped up in the tools of communication - especially in how business should embrace social media. There's a danger in this in that the tool becomes the raison d'etre. Chopping the c word out of the conversation can actually drive to the heart of the issue far more quickly and effectively - and enable us to demonstrate our expertise.

All about balance

2009-10-13T13:03:00.002+01:00

Having had a quiet September when I slowly slipped into my PhD study, work has really taken off this month, with new projects, leads about projects...and even a few old projects that won't go away. I'm dying to really spend some time digging into the research, but haven't got time because I'm too busy earning some money to enable me to get cracking on the research.

In the end it'll all be down to balance - making up for a tough business year means work has to be the priority - and there's now finally some good stuff out there. University will have to come second for the moment, with my concentration on getting the compulsory stuff out of the way this side of Christmas so that I can get to the meat of the study in 2010.

The head has to rule the heart on this one.

And the wait goes on...

2009-10-06T16:38:00.003+01:00

I'm supposed to be putting together a briefing pack on a client's strategy this week and was promised the strategy document for first thing yesterday......it still hasn't arrived. But there's no such thing as a day wasted here. So after tweaking a couple of other copywriting projects, I've been sorting out the collected detritus of the last nine years of Leapfrog and chucking out accumulated notes, background documents, drafts, flat plans, proofs and the rest. In fact I took a car load of recycling to the dump this lunchtime.

It turns out I've written for or edited around 40 different print titles over the last decade. Some have been one-offs or campaign specific, while others have had a far longer life. 3M's Impressions and Europa, Forte's Forte First, Barclays' Catalyst and G-Force, Diageo's Guinness Globe and CMS Cameron McKenna's Solve all won awards. But the weird thing is that only Solve is still going - and having been taken over by an external agency, only one issue has been published this year.

There's definitely a gathering pace within organisations from print to electronic for employee communication, and a move away from the traditional format to more social-media-driven platforms. But I've never been able to read a good intranet in the bath and I still like the space and pace of a print publication. I'm actually all for keeping the traditional employee or client print publication - as long as there's a demand from the audience for it. Communication works for me if it's supported by the right horse for the right course. But magazines are something I've always personally felt comfortable with. I really like work that blends magazine writing into an organisation's corporate communication strategy. It's different from straight journalism and demands a greater knowledge of, and feel for, the business of the client company.

I'm in the market for a new magazine writing/editing opportunity. So, if the strategy document doesn't come through in the next half hour or so, I might just start putting a few feelers out.

Thoughts on the jailing of my former RE teacher

2009-10-05T10:25:00.005+01:00

This is meant to be my business blog, but sometimes things happen that transcend the spurious barrier between business and the rest of our lives and are simply too important not to comment on. I have an example today. Earlier this morning I was alerted to the fact that my old RE teacher from 30 years ago was jailed for eight years last Friday for sexual offences against young boys.

The reports of Fr. David Pearce OSB's jailing range from the Sun's typically Rotweillerish 'Devil in a Dog Collar' approach to the Independent's somewhat more considered and rounded report....although it too opts for the rather lurid headline.

Reading the reports immediately took me back to St. Benedict's where I spent seven pretty good years between 1975 and 1982. Pearce arrived on the teaching staff about a year after my arrival as a pupil. He'd previously been Maurice Pearce and had been an army dentist before studying for the priesthood. If my recollection's right, he'd been a pupil at St. Benedict's back in the 1950s.

While the press reports point to his charm and guile, and several commenters on the Sun article point to his wisdom and humility, that's not the man I remember. My recollection is of a 'Cheshire Cat' - a beaming wide, white-tooth-filled smile that was rarely reflected in his eyes; a vanity that expressed itself in naked favouritism towards those who indulged him, and a slightly cruel sarcasm reserved for those who, I think, saw through his insincerity.

He could turn on the charm for parents and teachers alike, and as one of the school's monastic community, was respected by all the adults around him - perhaps respecting the monastic robes more than the man within. But there was something strangely malevolent about Pearce's personality. This morning I realised that this was not just hindsight talking: as pupils, we'd quickly built up a folklore around this new teaching priest. Very early in his time at the school he'd earned the nickname 'Gay Dave', and it was pretty much an unwritten rule among us boys to be wary of him. He did invite boys for tea and toast in his teaching room, though my recollection was that this was small groups, not individuals. Clearly he was smarter than we thought at hiding the nastiest side of his character.

I was never subject to any physical abuse from Pearce, although have occasion to remember the only time I was ever called alone to his room (all senior teachers had a private study). By that time I was about 16 and had a streak of belligerence that would have put any teacher off trying anything on. I'd written a pretty childish essay attacking the hypocrisy of the Catholic church. He awarded me 0% and tore the piece up in front of me. I guess there's something deeply ironic in there somewhere....!

It would be easy to say that my memory of St. Benedict's is now tainted. To find out that there was a predatory paedophile at the school during my time as a pupil is quite shocking, though in hindsight, the pieces fit. If anyone on the staff at the time fitted the profile, it was Pearce. Yet somehow, in an era when corporal punishment was the norm; when total obedience to whatever a teacher ordered was simply the way the school operated and when, perhaps, we as boys were simply more tolerant of a harsher educational regime, it was clearly easier for the bad apples to exploit the system. As far as I know, no-one in my circle was abused by Pearce - but then again, I can't be sure.

Pearce's offences were not deemed to be on the most serious end of the paedophile scale, yet one wonders if this man who led a totally duplicitous life for 30 years or more has actually revealed the full extent of his crimes. I simply don't buy the theory that he committed only 10 offences over three decades, and I suspect there are many more former pupils still too ashamed to come forward.

I never liked him; I'm glad he has been judged for his crimes and I hope he dies in prison. It is just such an awful shame that he was allowed to get away with so much for so long. It is all the more shameful that the monastic community protected him and still seems reluctant to condemn him.

Yet my school years were not tainted. I received a superb education at St. Benedict's, benefiting from teachers who had all the right passions, opening the world of English literature and history to me particularly and infusing me with a love of education that has never died.

Pearce is a deeply flawed individual; there are undoubted flaws in the way the Catholic church operates; and there were many aspects of the education system in the late '70s that would never be tolerated today. Thankfully, the vast majority of us thrived. It's just so appalling that a few suffered at the hands of this evil individual who exploited all the advantages of being a teaching monk so vindictively.

If this is globalisation...

2009-10-01T08:41:00.003+01:00

...then I don't think I like it. Check out this Whopper of a Burger King promo. Very expensive, high production values and a surface balance. But is it not also extremely patronising - and is it even anywhere close to the best example of American culture to impose on the rest of the world? Just another demonstration of how globalisation actually seems to be the imposition of Ameri-centric neoliberalism whether it's suitable or not.

The new business drive starts here

2009-09-28T12:05:00.003+01:00

I'm using today's lunch break to deliver my MA Dissertation to university - the final piece in the MA jigsaw that will bring two years of International Relations study to an end.

Of course, the studying doesn't now stop: far from it. I'm starting a PhD pretty much immediately investigating the relationship between NASA and the media during the US/Soviet space race....so I know what I'm doing with my life for the next four years or so.

What it means is that I need to get my working life in stricter order too. It has been a bit ad hoc over the last year and now I need to get a rather more disciplined balance between work and study. Doing a PhD in a niche nerdy field is expensive...it's not the stuff they hand out big scholarships for, so I'll be funding most of the research myself. That means earning decent sums, which means planning my work time a bit more carefully. That's generally anathema for a freelancer, but is going to be necessity for me.

I've decided that I'm not going to pitch for any more consultancy work that's going to take more than a couple of days a week or where the project's for more than three months. I will take on short, sharp, discrete projects - and actually think that's where I bring most value anyway.

What I will look for is more regular writing work. One of my regular magazines shrank from four to three issues this year and was planned to shrink further to two next year. Now I've learned that it is 'on hold', and plans to revive it look more than a bit iffy. I'm not too badly affected as I've got a mix of writing for print and for the web on for the moment that's going to keep me pretty busy in the short-term, and a number of training days planned in too that will at least pay the mortgage. But it would be great to get one more steasy, regular piece, preferably a b2b magazine where I can really play to my strengths. Now the MA work is out of the way, I can get back in the game a tad more seriously and interest editors and comms managers in what I have to offer.

New issue of 'Connections' now online

2009-09-21T08:46:00.004+01:00

I've just noticed that one of the publications I enjoy writing most is now up on line. It's produced for Badenoch & Clark - a major recruitment business, and I write most of the content. I think I like it particularly as it covers issues relating to people in business rather than being too overt a marketing tool. Key to this is having a range of contributors to interview, the very large majority being beyond the business. It's a bit more of a subtle approach than continually trumpeting how good the business is. Anyway, you can check it out here.

One point worthy of note is that it has reached issue 10 - and has continued right through the recession. In fact, the circulation for this issue is higher than ever at 38,000. It's great to see the client has kept faith with marketing/communication and seen the benefit of the publication.

Going Freelance course: November 17th, MK

2009-09-15T16:08:00.004+01:00

I'll be running my session on going freelance again on November 17th in Milton Keynes. It's aimed at anyone with the urge for semi-detachment from the corporate world and is being offered through CiB. Here's their blurb for the event.

Introduction to freelancing: pitfalls and possibilities for communicators thinking of taking an independent route

Thinking of going it alone as a freelance communication professional? Whether you've always dreamed of being your own boss...or your current bosses are helping you grasp the opportunity, there's much to consider before you take the plunge. Experienced freelance communicator Mark Shanahan, who set up his business in a downturn almost a decade ago, will take you through all the necessary steps you'll need to take to get up and running.

This interactive session will enable you to consider whether you're the right kind of person to thrive outside the in-house environment; walk you through the options on how to trade; look at the practicalities from office accommodation through tax to finance and family and give you the insight you'll need to avoid the common pitfalls that afflict too many first-time freelancers.

Outline for the day:
10am-10.30: Introduction: why it makes sense to consider freelancing including who's who and aspirations for the day

10.30-12.00: what you need to do before you take the plunge: researching your market,your unique selling point, building your networks, finance, kit, office accommodation, family support, freelance temperament, structuring your business

12.00–13.00: networking lunch - share your plans and build your network13.00–14.00: implications of being freelance, pricing structures, billing, tax, pension/insurance/expenses, winning business, terms & conditions, personal development

14.00-15.00: Common pitfalls – cashflow, changing relationships - in-house to supplier, isolation

15.00-15.30: Making it happen - your action plan Round-up and close

All sessions will be interactive and the aim is to make this as much of a working conversation as possible: it won't be chalk and talk!
Location: Milton Keynes

Cost: £315 plus VAT

About the tutor: Mark Shanahan began his career with a three year stint on Which? magazine, before joining the PR department at Nationwide Building Society in 1989. He subsequently held communication management roles at Barclays Bank and the Forte Hotel Group and has been a director of Leapfrog Corporate Communications for the past nine years. During that time he has worked on major change programmes within Diageo and Orange and has also worked with a wide range of private and public service communication clients, including Aviva, the BBC, Northamptonshire County Council, UBM and United Utilities.

To sign up or find out more details, click here

Internal comms = internal journalism? Never!

2009-09-07T12:45:00.002+01:00

Had a good conversation this morning with a former colleague who is struggling to convince her new employers that internal communication is not internal journalism. I've always been of the opinion that anyone who thinks that internal comms is about journalism is in the wrong job.

My take is that with my journalist hat on, I know I can go in, get the information I need, write to the angle I want to pursue and get out quick knowing I don't have to speak to those people again. Internal comms is very different - we become the mouthpiece for the organisation with a view to building engagement - therefore there's no opportunity for, or benefit in, stitching people up, and the angle is determined by/with the subject, not the writer. Therefore I'd always say the keys for any internal comms professional to a good internal business feature are:

* Agree the desired outcome
* Know the business context
* Put yourself in the reader's shoes
* Don't editorialise
* Make sure the interviewee voice(s) comes through strongly
* Understand where the piece fits in the overall comms plan
* Ensure the reader has a clear route to find out more.

In the end it's not about us sounding good as writers: it's about achieving a business aim. Being able to craft a fantastic piece is actually secondary to it being fit for purpose as a tool to move the business forward.

IP address 84.65.211

2009-09-07T09:32:00.002+01:00

I'm uneasy with the number of visits you make to this blog and your reason for accessing it. I have removed a certain picture you seem intent on re-viewing, and have reported your details to nominet. I will look out for any future visits you make and inform the relevant authorities of any future concerns.

Back in the saddle

2009-09-05T05:53:00.002+01:00

I got back yesterday lunchtime from two and a bit weeks in the US. Having not slept for over 30 hours, I finally crashed just before 9pm last night....and was consequently wide awake at 4.30am this morning! I didn't think it was supposed to work that way coming west to east??

Anyway, so far this morning I've sorted out some banking, responded to a few business emails and re-read some dissertation material. My disso's due in at the end of this month, and while it is in draft and I've already revised parts, it's going to take up more or less all non-working hours over the next few weeks.

No major panics on the work front while I've been away - and indeed a couple of new opportunities to mull over now I've returned.

Jac's now up too - could this be the new way of working - 5-6am on a Saturday morning?

Could be a long week

2009-08-10T12:44:00.002+01:00

It's just over a week now 'til I go on holiday, but the pace of work shows no sign of slackening off. Two magazines are still on the boil, with a corporate presentation and a web site review now in the mix as well. One slightly longer-term project is all but finished, but one that's been bubbling on a low heat for much of 2009 is now beginning to sizzle. Whereas I really didn't want to get involved in it this side of my holiday, it now looks as though it's going to demand at least a couple of days input from me before I head for the US. Added to that are a couple of update meetings and a new business meeting, plus a whole bunch of stuff to cover for university.

I have to say, it's all good.....and I'd only be moaning if I wasn't busy!

Dog days

2009-08-03T14:36:00.004+01:00

Florence and the Machine are currently belting out 'The Dog days are over' as my working soundtrack - but here's it's a battle against August's dog days, trying to get a number of projects finished, while most of the rest of the working world seems to be at the beach!

July has probably been my most profitable month this year (though that's not saying much!!) but a number of projects are carrying over into August. Now the fun and games revolves around catching people either before they've headed for the airport or just as they come back - and in neither case are too many prioritising taking calls from journos or signing off copy! Still 'tis all good fun.

The one annoyance - and no time of year is any better or worse than another - is those people who promise to call...and don't; or promise to be at the end of a line...and aren't. Life's hard when you're a low priority!

And the Tweet goes on

2009-07-30T09:42:00.001+01:00

I'm a little behind the times, but found Anu's comments 'Twitter may die...so what?' very interesting. Shame they didn't spark more debate.

Twitter while you work

2009-07-29T16:01:00.003+01:00

Interesting: I've both been asked to write about Twitter recently and to advise an organisation on the benefits (or otherwise) of using it as part of their communication strategy. The business thinking of using it is still getting to grips with its intranet which has become a rather vast and rather unmanaged repository for lost documents (Sharepoint gone wrong!), and I'm minded to tell them to concentrate on getting that particular platform in order first before latching on to this year's 'must have communication accessory'.

Some organisations are clearly making the most of Twitter - Virgin Media's experience appears good - a great collaborative tool internally, and a way top build advocacy externally, but I still wonder if it has legs as a business application in the long-run. A year ago we were all talking about how Facebook would revolutionise the world and only a year or two before that blogging was the only place to be. In the end these are tools, not solutions in themselves. We need to engage with ever wider, ever more layered audiences, so a social media strategy is a must. But pick a few things and do them well: and be prepared to back the new runner each year - be flexible enough to change horses.

Normality strikes

2009-07-19T22:06:00.003+01:00

Working at 10pm on a Sunday night - normality in my business world is striking back! Perhaps I'm a green shoot?

How Twitter will change the way we live

2009-07-10T08:50:00.004+01:00

Worth looking at Steven Johnson's piece on the Twitter phenomenon from this week's Time - thanks to Scott Neilson for sharing it......on Facebook.

All power to a tool that's opening up and extending the conversation - but let's make sure we listen as well as tweet.

Email bounceback

2009-07-09T15:38:00.000+01:00

I seem to have a sporadic problem with emails sent to me from this site - a couple of people have reported bounceback in the last couple of days, and I've just done a test to myself which appears to have disappeared into the ether!

So, if you have an all-consuming desire to send me an email, please send it direct to mark.shanahan@leapfrogcomms.com

Who's using social media best for resourcing?

2009-07-07T16:37:00.004+01:00

I'm on the hunt for examples of organisations who are using social media really well as a core part of their resourcing strategy - not just the ones who post on job boards or have a corporate blog, but those who have built a resourcing strategy that's actively delivered - at least in part - through a web 2.0 platform.

Loads of organisations are dipping their toes...and some appear to be drowning. Indeed, one wonders if the HR community should be tweeting, blogging and all the rest about their business at all?

I'm after some case studies - so if you have any ideas, please shout.

Two ears, two thumbs, eight other fingers

2009-06-29T14:05:00.004+01:00

Over the past year, the more events - especially presentations - I've been to, the more I've noticed the bloggers and tweeters in my midst. And how rapidly they're propelling themselves from the back of the room towards the front.

Now initially, I thought blogging conference presentations was a great idea - a fantastic way to spread the speakers' words to a far wider audience. Twitter seemed a very good option too: capturing that nugget of great thought and sending it into the twittersphere. But now I'm not so sure.

Thinking about it, how is it possible to really listen and learn while trying to keep up a running commentary? Isn't there a danger that you simply reflect at the most superficial level rather than really locking onto the nuances of what any speaker has to say. It struck me most recently when I had a blogger and three different Twitterers feeding back on the same presentation. All had a lot to say, but little of their opinion actually converged. I didn't get much sense of the speaker - just what these people had to say...and that was less than useful.

Equally, last week I was in on an event where lots of people were blogging away. When it came to questions at the end, none of these people had anything to ask. Had they really been listening properly? What's the point of a live event if there's no live interaction?

I guess I'd rather people listened, digested and then fed back.

One small step

2009-06-24T08:59:00.003+01:00

I've been formally offered a place at Brunel to study for a PhD, beginning in October. The letter arrived this morning, and I've been grinning ever since. At this stage though, the PhD work remains an elusive dream, just out of reach, as there's no funding attached to this offer. That comes separately....I hope. I've applied for an Isambard Research Scholarship which is a competitive process so there's no guarantee that my application will actually attract funding.

So, while my feet are firmly in the clouds this morning, I need to wait 'til mid August to find out whether I've secured sufficient wonga to take up the place this year.

Whatever happens, the funding won't be enough to enable me to give up this corporate comms lark yet. If all goes to plan, I'll be working three days a week and studying two long days and probably two evenings a week. In fact it won't be too much different from now - some weeks I'll be working six days plus, and others will be dominated by research. I'm really up for the challenge, and I think it'll help both sides of my career.

Anyway, one project interview already done today and three more people to tap into. I'd better crack on.

No smoke...

2009-06-22T10:10:00.004+01:00

It'll definitely be a lively week this week. I'm planning a workshop for one client - and still completing the research that will sit at the heart of the exercise, while also picking up speed on the latest issue of one of my regular publications. So I'm here and keenly researching information at the moment.......but am working against a VERY strong desire to get back into bed.

Yesterday was busy and I flopped into bed dog-tired just after midnight. Then, at 1.25am all hell broke loose as our two very loud, very piercing smoke alarms burst into life. (More than) momentarily confused, I raced downstairs thinking the burglar alarm had gone off. Only when I saw that all the lights were green did I realise that we might have a fire and that I should probably be escorting the kids from the house and ringing the fire brigade. Anyway, weirdly, shutting the kitchen door immediately stopped the alarm. There was no smoke, no smell, no blown fuses and all seemed ok.

For the next half hour, Jac and I checked every device in the kitchen, office and living rooms to try and figure out what had happened - with no enlightening result. So it was back to bed with a mystery on my mind. Jac was soon sound asleep again. Me, the worrier, lay there tense, waiting for the alarm to go off again. I finally drifted off some time after daybreak......only to be jolted into Monday by the 6.45 sound of the Today programme.

The coffeemaker's on overtime this morning.

It's what you say, not what it looks like...or is it?

2009-06-15T14:04:00.004+01:00

Had a good old healthy ding-dong with a client this morning over how to structure a presentation. He's from the school of 'let's get all our charts together and weave a story around them'.

I come from the opposite school. For me, a good presentation is built on a good story. I like to work with the client to find out what outcome they want to achieve: who they're speaking to, what they want to say - and what they want people to hear. Most of all, it's about what they want their audience to do as a result of sitting through their presentation.

My preference is to script the presentation first and then find the right imagery to add power and amplification to the key messages. As a consequence, if an image, a chart or a sea of bullets aren't adding anything, they don't go in.

Far too often speakers put all the emphasis on making the slides look pretty rather than on what they actually have to communicate. And far too often the result is death by PowerPoint and a lost message.

So my client today sent me half a dozen PowerPoint presentations with the missive: 'Pull the key points out of each of these and weave them together into a coherent order...' - which frankly gave me pain through to my teeth.

So we backed and forthed over a few emails and a phone call and, like in all good business relationships, reached a compromise. We've now talked through the story and agreed the key points to communicate. I've got a sense of the audience and how the piece has to play with them - but I'm still expected to incorporate about 30 PowerPoint charts. I reckon people will absorb two or three, but that we'll need to use about seven images in total to underscore the messages.

Now we'll have a bit of an iterative process as I open with seven, he expects 30 and we'll each haggle our way to somewhere in between.

For inspiration: Meet the British

2009-06-03T14:24:00.004+01:00

Looking for a bit of inspiration for a creative way to present a fairly staid finance business, I came across a great little programme that aired on BBC 4 last night. Essentially a collation of 'Ministry of Informatiojn'-type films made to 'sell' Britain overseas from the 40s to about 1980, 'Meet the British' is an absolute gem.

Not sure it has given me the inspiration I need, but the research has been fun...

The heat is on

2009-06-01T13:37:00.002+01:00

Spent most of this morning working through a fairly dense narrative document. Absorbing work and now, a good few hours on, I realise just how hot it is in here. In climatology terms, today is the first day of summer, and for once it's living up to expectations - I think I'm actually going to have to turn the aircon machine on....on June 1st! Last year I used it only once all summer.....

Working is falling into a more normal pattern now, with fairly full weeks and a bit of a pipeline building. All good after a dire first third of the year. Anyway, I must stop dripping on my keyboard (yuk!!).

Bedtime in my Blackberry

2009-05-26T11:46:00.002+01:00

Is our life divided into work and non-work portions and does modern communication mean that we can never switch off from the office? It's an interesting thought and one Lucie Mitchell picks up on the latest HR Zone's Editor's Blog. A recent survey showed more than half of all respondents working on their laptops or crackberries not just at home in the evenings, but in bed. Now frankly I've got to draw the line somewhere, and that line's firmly drawn at the foot of our stairs.

I'm as prone as the rest of us to read and send emails late on a Sunday night - but I do so from the office PC....which just happens to be in a room off the back of the house. But nothing is so important that I'd even contemplate a bit of keyboard action while propped up on my pillows!