Still putting stuff together for the two training days I'm delivering this month, and am most erked as I can't find a very important tool that helps to open up an audience.
The tool is pretty naff - a brass 'tool kit in a hammer' that I picked up in a 'five n dime' in Nantucket some years back (back before 9/11 when you could safely take such things on a flight back to the UK from the US!). It was made in the Far East and cost very little.
The story behind the hammer was nice - though probably apocryphal.
Essentially, the Nantucket whalers were supposed to have used such tools about a hundred years ago. The brass hammer wouldn't have rusted in the cold wet weather, and provided a cosy and space-efficient soluton to storing a mini tool kit - tweezers, screw driver, punch etc.
The hammer had one flat end and one pointed, and I've previously handed it round at the start of sessions and asked people what it's used for.
It normally doesn't take long for participants to work out that the bottom unscrews and that there are tools inside. They're sometimes a little stumped by what the pointy bit is for though......
The story is that sailors would have open barrels on deck to collect rain water during the storms of the south Atlantic. All too often these would freeze over in the night and it was one poor sailor's duty to work his way around the boat with his little brass hammer.........breaking the ice!
I suspect my poor modern imitation is long lost - and I can't find any others anywhere.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Pressure to deliver
Well, I've now heard that my May 17 course - Output to Outcome is full - in fact oversubscribed by one, but that extra person is very welcome indeed.
The content's coming together and I've got the chance to roadtest part of it at a quarterly development day for Penna consultants the week before. May 17's definitely going to be a very interactive day as:
a) I'd bore people to death if I spoke for five hours +
b) The calibre of delegates looks good and I'd rather let them do a lot of the talking
c) My style is conversational/story-telling rather than show and tell
d) We've got a few exercises to work through that'll get people on their feet/scribbling/arguing.
I've already got one opportunity to run a bespoke version of the course in the summer and hope to evolve it further as time goes on.
The content's coming together and I've got the chance to roadtest part of it at a quarterly development day for Penna consultants the week before. May 17's definitely going to be a very interactive day as:
a) I'd bore people to death if I spoke for five hours +
b) The calibre of delegates looks good and I'd rather let them do a lot of the talking
c) My style is conversational/story-telling rather than show and tell
d) We've got a few exercises to work through that'll get people on their feet/scribbling/arguing.
I've already got one opportunity to run a bespoke version of the course in the summer and hope to evolve it further as time goes on.
Monday, April 24, 2006
Currently.....
Listening to the new Goo Goo Dolls album Let Love In; looking forward to starting Tom Wolfe's 'The Right Stuff' which has just arrived from Amazon as part of my Apollo history research; and writing both a client feedback media report for my law firm client and my own Output to Outcome course notes for next month's course.
It's funny: I can talk about the concepts of O2O 'til the cows come home, but now having to structure it into five hours' of worthwhile training, it's proving hard to nail down what has to be in - and what's less important to dwell on. I just hop I end up pitching it right.
Meanwhile, it was U10 son's rugby festival yesterday - six and a half hours in the drizzle as the team didn't do particularly well. Still, they seemed to enjoy it and picked up a medal. Meanwhile I reffed throughout the tournament....and now bits of me I didn't even know I had are aching. Still, rugby finishes this weekend....cricket starts tonight, and tennis on Thursday - that's son sorted, while large daughter's new drama starts also on Thursday and small daughter's getting us all up early each Saturday for her drama class. I remember when I used to have a social life....now it's just an evening and weekend taxi!
Anyway, West Ham made the Cup Final, so all's not too bad with the world.. Right, back to singing along tunelessly to the GGDs.
It's funny: I can talk about the concepts of O2O 'til the cows come home, but now having to structure it into five hours' of worthwhile training, it's proving hard to nail down what has to be in - and what's less important to dwell on. I just hop I end up pitching it right.
Meanwhile, it was U10 son's rugby festival yesterday - six and a half hours in the drizzle as the team didn't do particularly well. Still, they seemed to enjoy it and picked up a medal. Meanwhile I reffed throughout the tournament....and now bits of me I didn't even know I had are aching. Still, rugby finishes this weekend....cricket starts tonight, and tennis on Thursday - that's son sorted, while large daughter's new drama starts also on Thursday and small daughter's getting us all up early each Saturday for her drama class. I remember when I used to have a social life....now it's just an evening and weekend taxi!
Anyway, West Ham made the Cup Final, so all's not too bad with the world.. Right, back to singing along tunelessly to the GGDs.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Moonstruck
I've never been star struck, in the sense of wanting to hang out with with today's celebrities, but since the age of five, when Armstong's moon landing brought my corner of North West London (my world at the time) to an eerily silent halt, and we watched the fuzzy images beamed back from deep space confiming the Eagle had landed, I've definitely been moon-struck.
Growing up in the 70s and 80s in Wembley meant that there were fairly few heroes around in my life. We had punk and Thatcher and George Best getting pissed and looking fat playing for Fulham. Somewhere off in the distance, Nixon was disgraced, and a bridge on Park Lane, just before Wembley High Street proclaimed Radio Caroline on one side, and US Hands Off Vietnam on the other.
Unlike my father - whose own father served as a gunnery instructor through WW2 - I didn't have men in uniform close by to look up to. I marvelled at Concorde, but the Chuck Yaegers and RAF equivalents were a generation before me. Everest had been conquered and technology was taking over as the new frontier.
Yet I could look at the 12 men who set foot on the moon between '69 and '72, the six others who floated alone in the Command Modules and those who'd been in orbit as a Mercury, Gemini or early Apollo crew member - and now manned the desks in Houston - as real heroes.
I used to gaze at the moon at night during those missions, hoping to see some sign of life, some sign of the action, some connection. Down in my small bedroom, Action Man would be dressed in a crackling silver space-suit - definitely more Mercury than Apollo - and I even had a second-hand Action Man space capsule - again harking back to the Mercury one-man shows. But then, when I was about eight, it all abruptly ended. Skylab was hardly a fitting epitaph, and though I've travelled to Cape Canaveral to visit the Apollo and shuttle launch sites, everything since that has been space related has paled in comparison to what the likes of Amstrong, Aldrin, Cernan, Scott, Duke, Bean and the rest have achieved.
The pace of my life quickened, but deep inside remains a frozen wonder at the ability of man to reach out into space with less computing power than is in my mobile phone.
It has all come back to me in the last few days. Some weeks ago I pitched the idea of writing about the possibility of man going to Mars in my lifetime to a couple of editors. One was interested, but wanted a hook for the piece. So I said I'd try and contact some of the people associated with space travel to date to get their views - since mine as an enthusiastic space watcher, without an 'ology' to my name, are worth pretty much nothing.
Since then, I've been trawling the web, re-reading articles and even dropping the odd e-mail the way of NASA, some of the British authorities on the subject - and even one or two astronauts (the ones that have web sites).
What I understand is why we would go and whether there's sufficient rational reason to invest huge amounts of time and even huger amounts of money into what could be an ultimate folly. To try and understand this, I've been trying to rationalise why we went to the moon - and why three years later, we stopped.
A great an compelling source of information has been Andrew Smith's Moondust . Here, Smith charts his own personal journey to meet the nine surviving men who've stood on the moon to try and understand the impact it has had on them.
For me, one of the most fascinating aspects is how so few can communicate what their experience has meant to them. Some have channelled their lives into new directions, perhaps to explain, or in some way communicate, the massiveness of their experience, but others have become more 'Spock-like' either distant from the aura or trapped in the logic of the events. But isn't that what we should expect if we send totally-focused engineers to encounter an experience beyond the imagination of so many?
Perhaps we would have viewed the whole Apollo experience if the 12 who'd stepped out on the moon had included a poet, a politician, a rock star....and even a female or two?
Relating Smith's experience to my own, I've often found great clarity but little poetry when discussing business communication with engineers and execs who come from that background, whereas there has often been passion, warmth, involvement and connection when covering the same areas with those who've come from marketing or people disciplines - but rarely much sense of detail or analytical depth. The key to great leadership communication, of course, is the mix of both.
But back to the moon. Nearly two years ago I had the chance to meet Apollo Commander David Scott when he was launching a new book, but passed up the opportunity to attend the press briefing and gave my ticket to a talk he gave in Oxford away. Having read Smith's book (and he was at the event that night), I now regret that deeply, since it turns out that Scott is even more reclusive than the legendary recluse, Neil Armstrong.
I'm looking forward to the next few weeks when I have a number of interviews lined up with people who I'm assured can make the science of getting to Mars memorable and compelling.
I hope that they can also provide a rational but exciting reason why we have to get back into deep space, one that will excite people around the world to support the endeavour. My children will be adults by the time whatever follows Apollo into deep space finally heads for Mars - if it ever does. Perhaps their children will experience that same thrill, that same sense of wonder, and the slight butterflies of fear that I remember from those far off days.
Meanwhile, I'll remain moon-struck (even Mars-struck), and perhaps I'll even get to talk to an astronaut - always heroes in my book.
Growing up in the 70s and 80s in Wembley meant that there were fairly few heroes around in my life. We had punk and Thatcher and George Best getting pissed and looking fat playing for Fulham. Somewhere off in the distance, Nixon was disgraced, and a bridge on Park Lane, just before Wembley High Street proclaimed Radio Caroline on one side, and US Hands Off Vietnam on the other.
Unlike my father - whose own father served as a gunnery instructor through WW2 - I didn't have men in uniform close by to look up to. I marvelled at Concorde, but the Chuck Yaegers and RAF equivalents were a generation before me. Everest had been conquered and technology was taking over as the new frontier.
Yet I could look at the 12 men who set foot on the moon between '69 and '72, the six others who floated alone in the Command Modules and those who'd been in orbit as a Mercury, Gemini or early Apollo crew member - and now manned the desks in Houston - as real heroes.
I used to gaze at the moon at night during those missions, hoping to see some sign of life, some sign of the action, some connection. Down in my small bedroom, Action Man would be dressed in a crackling silver space-suit - definitely more Mercury than Apollo - and I even had a second-hand Action Man space capsule - again harking back to the Mercury one-man shows. But then, when I was about eight, it all abruptly ended. Skylab was hardly a fitting epitaph, and though I've travelled to Cape Canaveral to visit the Apollo and shuttle launch sites, everything since that has been space related has paled in comparison to what the likes of Amstrong, Aldrin, Cernan, Scott, Duke, Bean and the rest have achieved.
The pace of my life quickened, but deep inside remains a frozen wonder at the ability of man to reach out into space with less computing power than is in my mobile phone.
It has all come back to me in the last few days. Some weeks ago I pitched the idea of writing about the possibility of man going to Mars in my lifetime to a couple of editors. One was interested, but wanted a hook for the piece. So I said I'd try and contact some of the people associated with space travel to date to get their views - since mine as an enthusiastic space watcher, without an 'ology' to my name, are worth pretty much nothing.
Since then, I've been trawling the web, re-reading articles and even dropping the odd e-mail the way of NASA, some of the British authorities on the subject - and even one or two astronauts (the ones that have web sites).
What I understand is why we would go and whether there's sufficient rational reason to invest huge amounts of time and even huger amounts of money into what could be an ultimate folly. To try and understand this, I've been trying to rationalise why we went to the moon - and why three years later, we stopped.
A great an compelling source of information has been Andrew Smith's Moondust . Here, Smith charts his own personal journey to meet the nine surviving men who've stood on the moon to try and understand the impact it has had on them.
For me, one of the most fascinating aspects is how so few can communicate what their experience has meant to them. Some have channelled their lives into new directions, perhaps to explain, or in some way communicate, the massiveness of their experience, but others have become more 'Spock-like' either distant from the aura or trapped in the logic of the events. But isn't that what we should expect if we send totally-focused engineers to encounter an experience beyond the imagination of so many?
Perhaps we would have viewed the whole Apollo experience if the 12 who'd stepped out on the moon had included a poet, a politician, a rock star....and even a female or two?
Relating Smith's experience to my own, I've often found great clarity but little poetry when discussing business communication with engineers and execs who come from that background, whereas there has often been passion, warmth, involvement and connection when covering the same areas with those who've come from marketing or people disciplines - but rarely much sense of detail or analytical depth. The key to great leadership communication, of course, is the mix of both.
But back to the moon. Nearly two years ago I had the chance to meet Apollo Commander David Scott when he was launching a new book, but passed up the opportunity to attend the press briefing and gave my ticket to a talk he gave in Oxford away. Having read Smith's book (and he was at the event that night), I now regret that deeply, since it turns out that Scott is even more reclusive than the legendary recluse, Neil Armstrong.
I'm looking forward to the next few weeks when I have a number of interviews lined up with people who I'm assured can make the science of getting to Mars memorable and compelling.
I hope that they can also provide a rational but exciting reason why we have to get back into deep space, one that will excite people around the world to support the endeavour. My children will be adults by the time whatever follows Apollo into deep space finally heads for Mars - if it ever does. Perhaps their children will experience that same thrill, that same sense of wonder, and the slight butterflies of fear that I remember from those far off days.
Meanwhile, I'll remain moon-struck (even Mars-struck), and perhaps I'll even get to talk to an astronaut - always heroes in my book.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Course: From output to outcome
I'm putting my money where my mouth is and running a one day course through CiB called 'From Output to Outcome' on May 17 in London. The details are here.
Essentially it'll take attendees through the changing comms landscape that moves organisational communication from a 'decision made, end of process transaction' to part of the business planning process focused on finding the right tools to create the desired business impact.
Once we've got the theory out of the way in the morning, the afternoon will be spent creating a comms plan around a real-life scenario - and participants will be able to match up what they did against what happened in the real-world experience.
There's only one place left on the May 17 event, but I'm happy to run a second May/June date or take the programme into companies if there's further interest.
Essentially it'll take attendees through the changing comms landscape that moves organisational communication from a 'decision made, end of process transaction' to part of the business planning process focused on finding the right tools to create the desired business impact.
Once we've got the theory out of the way in the morning, the afternoon will be spent creating a comms plan around a real-life scenario - and participants will be able to match up what they did against what happened in the real-world experience.
There's only one place left on the May 17 event, but I'm happy to run a second May/June date or take the programme into companies if there's further interest.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Grabbing the right land
I'm a member of the Communicators in Business Council. Now CiB is the UK's association for people working in corporate communications and has always drawn most of its membership from internal communicators.
However, a little like the IABC, CiB has for too long tried to be all things to all communicators.
At our council meeting at the end of March we endorsed a motion which included taking steps: To publicly declare the Association’s aspiration to become an institute of internal communications
Now I'm pleased about this move since it will enable CiB to grab a unique space and build from a position of being the UK's authority on internal communications.
Some people see it as a way of alienating some current members since they work primarily for external audiences. That may well be so, but so many other members and potential members have a foot in both camps.
Earlier today I was talking to one client about internal change communications; later this afternoon I'm off to London to talk to another about engaging clients through an aspect of CSR and on Wednesday I'm in a workshop defining stakeholders (internal and external) in a change programme.
Our boundaries are blurring and ever more our communication is around issues - not the simple external/internal split.
CiB is now seriously talking about how being an authority on internal comms will work. I believe it will work only if there's a recognition that people on the inside, whose start point is employee comms, will invariably be communicating with wider stakeholder groups going forward. Employees have unique needs when it comes to communication and CiB is right to fill that niche. But the niche doesn't exist in isolation and my CiB colleagues and I need to keep on the pace of a changing communication-scape that will put the issues first, and the delineation of who deals with which audiences somewhere further down the line.
However, a little like the IABC, CiB has for too long tried to be all things to all communicators.
At our council meeting at the end of March we endorsed a motion which included taking steps: To publicly declare the Association’s aspiration to become an institute of internal communications
Now I'm pleased about this move since it will enable CiB to grab a unique space and build from a position of being the UK's authority on internal communications.
Some people see it as a way of alienating some current members since they work primarily for external audiences. That may well be so, but so many other members and potential members have a foot in both camps.
Earlier today I was talking to one client about internal change communications; later this afternoon I'm off to London to talk to another about engaging clients through an aspect of CSR and on Wednesday I'm in a workshop defining stakeholders (internal and external) in a change programme.
Our boundaries are blurring and ever more our communication is around issues - not the simple external/internal split.
CiB is now seriously talking about how being an authority on internal comms will work. I believe it will work only if there's a recognition that people on the inside, whose start point is employee comms, will invariably be communicating with wider stakeholder groups going forward. Employees have unique needs when it comes to communication and CiB is right to fill that niche. But the niche doesn't exist in isolation and my CiB colleagues and I need to keep on the pace of a changing communication-scape that will put the issues first, and the delineation of who deals with which audiences somewhere further down the line.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Infamy, infamy...
....they've all got in it for me.
Well. Not at all. It seems that fame has struck at last. Well, not fame exactly, but fame in the narrower band of the blogosphere. Well, not the whole blogosphere, but the PR blogosphere. And since that's the area in which I operate, that's more than good enough for me.
Shel Holtz referenced my comments on the IABC's Communications Commons in the latest For Immediate Release podcast. Neville Hobson was then complimentary about this blog - and owned up to being a lurker here for the past five months.
Well, that's very gratifying to know and turns the wheel full circle - as I've been checking out Neville's blog since hearing him speak some months ago at an IABC/CiB event in London where he, plus Euen Semple from the BBC and a chap from Guardian online were discussing the impact of the new millennium's communication tools. NevOn has now transmogrified into a new site at a new location here. I keep coming across Shel'd name more and more, and plan to look much more closely at what he has to say at the shel of his former self.
Now I'm technologically semi-literate and, while an advocate of podcasts, wikis and the like, haven't ventured beyond this blog. I've never even put a tracker on this site (partly through never having spent the time working out how to) as I've always had it in the back of my mind that the blog is actually visited only about four times a day - three times it's me, and once it's a spammer.
I guess I'll now have to be a little less random and rather more regular in posting a little bit of sense and less Shanahan angst.
But isn't this just the way that the new social communication is going? People I don't know and have had next to no contact with are taking an interest in what I have to say. It's only human now for me to be more interested in them - and for me to want to say more that I hope will be of interest. Ever more I believe that even as keyboard warriors, we can use the new tools as a way to create and unite far wider, deeper and richer communities of interest than anything available in the past has allowed us to do.
Well. Not at all. It seems that fame has struck at last. Well, not fame exactly, but fame in the narrower band of the blogosphere. Well, not the whole blogosphere, but the PR blogosphere. And since that's the area in which I operate, that's more than good enough for me.
Shel Holtz referenced my comments on the IABC's Communications Commons in the latest For Immediate Release podcast. Neville Hobson was then complimentary about this blog - and owned up to being a lurker here for the past five months.
Well, that's very gratifying to know and turns the wheel full circle - as I've been checking out Neville's blog since hearing him speak some months ago at an IABC/CiB event in London where he, plus Euen Semple from the BBC and a chap from Guardian online were discussing the impact of the new millennium's communication tools. NevOn has now transmogrified into a new site at a new location here. I keep coming across Shel'd name more and more, and plan to look much more closely at what he has to say at the shel of his former self.
Now I'm technologically semi-literate and, while an advocate of podcasts, wikis and the like, haven't ventured beyond this blog. I've never even put a tracker on this site (partly through never having spent the time working out how to) as I've always had it in the back of my mind that the blog is actually visited only about four times a day - three times it's me, and once it's a spammer.
I guess I'll now have to be a little less random and rather more regular in posting a little bit of sense and less Shanahan angst.
But isn't this just the way that the new social communication is going? People I don't know and have had next to no contact with are taking an interest in what I have to say. It's only human now for me to be more interested in them - and for me to want to say more that I hope will be of interest. Ever more I believe that even as keyboard warriors, we can use the new tools as a way to create and unite far wider, deeper and richer communities of interest than anything available in the past has allowed us to do.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
As Desmond Tutu said to me.....
I had an e-mail from Archbishop Desmond Tutu today - okay, it came from his PA - but it's not every day (no, correct that, it's not any day) that I get an e-mail from one of the best-known and most respected figures in the world.
So why was the Archbishop writing to me?
Well, I've been conducting a number of focus groups in businesses recently where one of the issues covered has been: 'Who do you look up to as a communicator and why?'
Not entirely surprisingly, almost no-one has pointed to an exec in their own business, and while the likes of Gates, Branson and Sugar have all been mentioned in passing, very few people have pointed to business people as engaging communicators.
Now that began to get me thinking.....
Huge generalisation as I'm sure this is, as communicators, our business leaders are a pretty insipid bunch. If you're looking for credible orators who really inspire those around them, walking the talk and living up to their articulated business culture, you probably won't look deeply into Britain's boardrooms. My take is that we're in the age of the MBA-as-CEO. The '90s and '00s have brought the finance directors ever more into commerce and industry's top seats. Unlike the owner/managers of the past, or the entrepreneurs who built the business from its bootstrings and lived and breathed the making of widgets, today's execs are portable, transferring their skills from boardroom to boardroom and rarely having any experience of life close to the product or service the peddle.
It can be hard for us as communicators to make the suits even consciously effective as champions of their business. So where can we look for the naturals? Who are the communicators who instinctively know what to say, know when to listen and know how to get the right response from their audiences? My recent interviewing has thrown up all sorts of names beyond our traditional business communicators. My list ranges from Will Carling and Lawrence Dallaglio in rugby (no football names mentioned), through Tony Blair, Bill Clinton (but not George Dubya), Archbishop Tutu (plus the new Archbishop of York) and Cardinal Cormac-McCarthy to John Humphries, Robert Elms and Davina McCall as communicators that people sit up and listen to.
But 30-odd interviews where this was one of several areas covered mean I'm only scratching the surface here. Who are those beyond the boardroom that we instinctively tune to? Who are the people we see as credible, honest and informed; the people our business leaders need to be taking a tip or two from?
I decided I'd like to explore this idea of the lessons we can learn from these instinctive communicators. I'm not sure to what end yet, be it an article, a training piece or whatever.
So, I've started writing to the people who've been suggested to date. Two have replied so far - Clinton (or Clinton's people at his New York foundation) to say he unfortunately has no space in his schedule to address my questions, and the Archbishop.
So, what are the secrets of the Archbishop's success as one of the world's most engaging and respected communicators?
Well, this is what he said: "I have no answer to your questions. I simply get out there and do what I feel called to do."
That, in itself is a pretty darned good answer to me. Perhaps in business communication there's too much image making and not enough natural honesty.......And it probably helps to have your God on your side!
I'm still looking for credible, consistent, engaging, natural and instinctive communicators to contact. Who should I be dropping an e-mail to?
So why was the Archbishop writing to me?
Well, I've been conducting a number of focus groups in businesses recently where one of the issues covered has been: 'Who do you look up to as a communicator and why?'
Not entirely surprisingly, almost no-one has pointed to an exec in their own business, and while the likes of Gates, Branson and Sugar have all been mentioned in passing, very few people have pointed to business people as engaging communicators.
Now that began to get me thinking.....
Huge generalisation as I'm sure this is, as communicators, our business leaders are a pretty insipid bunch. If you're looking for credible orators who really inspire those around them, walking the talk and living up to their articulated business culture, you probably won't look deeply into Britain's boardrooms. My take is that we're in the age of the MBA-as-CEO. The '90s and '00s have brought the finance directors ever more into commerce and industry's top seats. Unlike the owner/managers of the past, or the entrepreneurs who built the business from its bootstrings and lived and breathed the making of widgets, today's execs are portable, transferring their skills from boardroom to boardroom and rarely having any experience of life close to the product or service the peddle.
It can be hard for us as communicators to make the suits even consciously effective as champions of their business. So where can we look for the naturals? Who are the communicators who instinctively know what to say, know when to listen and know how to get the right response from their audiences? My recent interviewing has thrown up all sorts of names beyond our traditional business communicators. My list ranges from Will Carling and Lawrence Dallaglio in rugby (no football names mentioned), through Tony Blair, Bill Clinton (but not George Dubya), Archbishop Tutu (plus the new Archbishop of York) and Cardinal Cormac-McCarthy to John Humphries, Robert Elms and Davina McCall as communicators that people sit up and listen to.
But 30-odd interviews where this was one of several areas covered mean I'm only scratching the surface here. Who are those beyond the boardroom that we instinctively tune to? Who are the people we see as credible, honest and informed; the people our business leaders need to be taking a tip or two from?
I decided I'd like to explore this idea of the lessons we can learn from these instinctive communicators. I'm not sure to what end yet, be it an article, a training piece or whatever.
So, I've started writing to the people who've been suggested to date. Two have replied so far - Clinton (or Clinton's people at his New York foundation) to say he unfortunately has no space in his schedule to address my questions, and the Archbishop.
So, what are the secrets of the Archbishop's success as one of the world's most engaging and respected communicators?
Well, this is what he said: "I have no answer to your questions. I simply get out there and do what I feel called to do."
That, in itself is a pretty darned good answer to me. Perhaps in business communication there's too much image making and not enough natural honesty.......And it probably helps to have your God on your side!
I'm still looking for credible, consistent, engaging, natural and instinctive communicators to contact. Who should I be dropping an e-mail to?
New name for the same line of thinking
Right, so the blog's no longer called Leapfrog Corporate Communications.
In the end, I suppose it's pretty boring naming your blog after your business. So, a new name - but the same random thought process!
In the end, I suppose it's pretty boring naming your blog after your business. So, a new name - but the same random thought process!
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
The home for communicators
There are very few organisational communicators who are truly influential at board level. We're generally respected for our ability to craft and package message rather than for our insight into how organisations can grow and prosper.
Given that the nature of the beast is that much of our work is transactional, we tend to reside several steps away from the boardroom. These days, the options seem to be as part of HR; as part of marketing or as part of a Corporate Comms function that could report to either - or could report to the CEO.
My take is that HR is the team that likes to say no - so isn't our natural home; while marketing, be it through consumer engagement, PR or public affairs is to narrow-focused on segments of the external stakeholder constituency to have the holistic corporate view at heart.
So, where do I see us being most effective? Somewhere between the corporate brain and the corporate heartbeat.
I hate the distinction between internal and external communication. The distinction between audiences is breaking rapidly with the explosion and fragmentation of the media. So many employees are now shareholders in the business that the impact of mixed messages is more perilous than ever before. And stakeholders are simply far too savvy now to be divided and ruled by any aspect of spin that curves towards them.
Our role as communicators has to be at the heart of the decision making process in organisations.
I've sat at the top table in organisations, and they're just as subject to childish rants, insecurities and indecision as any other group anywhere within a business. The difference is that the stakes are higher, and the impact of an ill-thought-through decision can be so much greater.
So where's our home and what do we do there? We need to be part of the decision making process but almost at one remove, acting both as a conscience that reflects potential impacts and enables leaders to plot a course to the right outcome. But we need to be at the heart of the organisation too, driving for the outcomes necessary to bring about growth and being the conduit to the lifeblood.
If we're merely top table strategists, nothing will get done. If we're merely priming the pump, stuff will get done - but not necessarily the right stuff.
Given that the nature of the beast is that much of our work is transactional, we tend to reside several steps away from the boardroom. These days, the options seem to be as part of HR; as part of marketing or as part of a Corporate Comms function that could report to either - or could report to the CEO.
My take is that HR is the team that likes to say no - so isn't our natural home; while marketing, be it through consumer engagement, PR or public affairs is to narrow-focused on segments of the external stakeholder constituency to have the holistic corporate view at heart.
So, where do I see us being most effective? Somewhere between the corporate brain and the corporate heartbeat.
I hate the distinction between internal and external communication. The distinction between audiences is breaking rapidly with the explosion and fragmentation of the media. So many employees are now shareholders in the business that the impact of mixed messages is more perilous than ever before. And stakeholders are simply far too savvy now to be divided and ruled by any aspect of spin that curves towards them.
Our role as communicators has to be at the heart of the decision making process in organisations.
I've sat at the top table in organisations, and they're just as subject to childish rants, insecurities and indecision as any other group anywhere within a business. The difference is that the stakes are higher, and the impact of an ill-thought-through decision can be so much greater.
So where's our home and what do we do there? We need to be part of the decision making process but almost at one remove, acting both as a conscience that reflects potential impacts and enables leaders to plot a course to the right outcome. But we need to be at the heart of the organisation too, driving for the outcomes necessary to bring about growth and being the conduit to the lifeblood.
If we're merely top table strategists, nothing will get done. If we're merely priming the pump, stuff will get done - but not necessarily the right stuff.
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