Just an old cynic?

I've just come back from the dump where's there's a new sign by the gate.

I read it an it said 'Last month we recycled 73% of material left at this site. WELL DONE!'

Rather than feeling full of warmth, I felt vaguely patronised. Am I just an old cynic?

Listen to what I say? Better to look at what I do.

I've been working with a company on service excellence. For years their directors have talked a good game, but their actions have been totally out of kilter with their words.

Over the last 18 months, some new faces near the top have started to change the way the business operates. Rather than stick to the 'motherhood and apple pie' values they've talked about but then ignored, they've worked with their employees to build values that have life within the business and both reflect reality and give something to aspire to.

More importantly the company has stopped talking to customers and suppliers about its commitment to service. Instead, they're letting their actions speak for them.

It strikes me that the companies who talk most about their customer focus often deliver least.

Tell me you're committed to customer service and I'll think you may protest too much. Show me and I'll find you far more credible.

Not so grouchy

Quite a few of my recent postings have been quite grouchy - but sometimes it's worth enjoying a little success.

One of my clients sent me this feedback on something I'd written:

The content/copy is amongst the best I've ever read in the company - energising language, short sentences, clear concepts well explained, lots of different voices. I found myself smiling at every page - 'All the news that fits' on page 2 + snappy intros for the stories that actually made me look forward to getting to the page - also the upfront explanation of the MUSIC name.

Makes it all worthwhile really.

Operating on a loftier plain

I was on holiday in France last week. I was really enjoying myself. Jac and the kids were having fun; we were in a nice place - Le Touquet - in a decent hotel with plenty to do. But one thing was nagging at the back of my mind.

I'd spent all of June working on two projects for one large client. The invoices submitted at the end of the month signified all of my income for the month - and one had to cover much of the expense of a trip to the US.

Before heading off for France, and on the assumption of these invoices being paid as usual in the last week of the following month, I'd set up for my quarterly VAT and a number of other payments to be made electronically - on top of my usual business outgoings.

By July 27, when the invoices were due for payment and when I'd normally expect to see some inward activity on my business account, there was nothing, and I headed off to France with just a small worry lodged at the back of my head that something may be wrong.

Give or six days later I logged on to the hotel's computer to check my business account. Nothing had arrived. So, I fired off a couple of e-mails to my clients to let them know the invoices were late and to ask them when payment would be received.

Next day I signed on again and was informed the client had changed their policy and that from June 1 had adopted a practice whereby invoices would be paid at the end of the month following the month in which they were processed.

For me, this meant at least an extra month to wait for payment for two jobs I'd already completed more than a month before. It was a shock. 2005 was really lousy for me in terms of work and it has taken all of 2006 to get my finances pretty much back in the black again.

June was a very good month and should have enabled me to clear all outstanding debt on the business and get ahead of ongoing expenses. The downside was that the two projects had taken all my time and I'd been unable to carry out any work for other clients. The result was no money coming in from elsewhere. So, here I found myself in France, unable to pay my July salary and unable to cover my outstanding debts - and all because of inefficiencies and high-handed practice in a £ multi-billion client.

My direct clients were mortified, and one has managed to get an emergency payment to me which has helped greatly. But they shouldn't have to do that.

The Finance team of the client has pointed out that they informed suppliers of the change some months ago. I've kept the letter and referred back to it. It's so ambiguous it could mean anything. Their supplier communication was extremely poor and now they're apparently copping a huge amount of flak both from small suppliers like me, and from the internal business teams they're supposed to support. Good! They deserve all the shit headed in their direction.

I've always ensured that I get invoices to this client before the end of one month, and they've always been paid at the end of the next. That can be tough as it's not a company where it's easy to get purchase orders in the first place and the volume of work that actually transpires can be well in excess of the original estimate. So, the client practice has been to accept an estimate but wait and see the actual size and cost of the job before raising a PO. But it seems that has often led to panic at the heart of the accounting team whose practices are apparently not as efficient as they could be. They're used to settling invoices for widgets and the like with long lead times and regular payments - not dealing with micro-suppliers who get a PO one day, submit an invoice the next and expect payment 30 days later (although it happens all the time). And this is despite printed 30 day terms on my invoice - terms that they simply ignore.

Their new rules seemingly allow them to sit on an invoice for as long as they like and only set up payment at the end of the month following their final action. I've just found that one of my June invoices has only just been processed and that the company thinks it's perfectly reasonable for me to now wait until September 30th for payment.

In so doing, they're classifying my tiny business in exactly the same way as they would one of their multi-million pound suppliers. Sure the big guys can absorb a month or two's late payment. For me, especially rebuilding after a poor year, things can be rather more hand to mouth. Surely it's not too difficult to have a separate payment category for small-time small volume marketing service suppliers?

What annoys me more is that this has already cost money to extend my overdraft, more money in additional interest on loan and card repayments - and really gave a horrible ending to my holiday.

Meanwhile the client has covered its internal inefficiencies and ensured that more money (that doesn't belong to it) stays in the business for longer.

My experience at Forte when our Finance team imposed a similar payment structure was that some really good small suppliers walked away and that others put up their costs to cover the additional hassle. This came about through the Finance function being solely concerned with figures rather than the impact on the people on the other side of their decisions.

Along with my marketing colleagues at the time we lobbied hard and got the Forte Finance team to move back from 60 - 90 day + payments to the 'end of next month' scenario I've enjoyed for the last six years with the client currently giving me grief.

I really don't want to walk away from this client, but have just put myestimatee for the next job with them up by 10%. In future, they can expect weekly invoices and I certainly won't be starting any work without a Purchase Order.

For six years, they've prospered on my goodwill. But client/supplier relationships are two-way, and they seem to have forgotten that. Result? A lot less goodwill from me.

Learning lessons

I was in Washington DC a few weeks ago, just before the successful launch of the space shuttle Discovery, and was back home when it successfully touched down after an excellent mission. I know it touched down successfully because I read about it on page 23 of my morning paper, in a little box with a tiny black and white picture.

Space travel simply doesn't have the cache it did nearly 40 years ago when the US v Russian space race was at its height.

Key to my trip to Washington was time spent at NASA's HQ researching the events that led to - and came out of - the Apollo 1 fire which took the lives of three American astronauts back in January 1967. I spent a morning in the basement of NASA's faceless and unprepossessing 1960s office building working through some of the records relating the the investigation that happened after the crash, musty papers that had hardly been touched for 30 years or more; details of the findings that put man on the moon just two and a half years after the accident.

A day later, I was in the National Air and Space Museum's bookshop browsing for something to read on the flight home. Gripped by my new space exploration awareness, I picked up a new Smithsonian publication by a Shuttle astronaut - Tom Jones. Skywalking is a very good read and gave me far more insight into the Shuttle and more so, the International Space Station. I was reading the book in parallel to James Hansen's biography of Neil Armstrong - First Man and the contrast could not have been more vivid. Armstrong's a private man; a man of few words who took an engineer's approach to space flight. The book is high on technical detail, but low on unlocking Armstrong's personality - he simply isn't the subject for that kind of approach and the book is far more successful as a comprehensive historical record, than an insight into Armstrong's soul.

Skywalking on the other hand is very personal, very friendly in tone and very approachable. Despite his background flying B52s and working for the CIA, Jones comes across as likeable, an enthusiast and someone who wants to explain space to the masses. He perhaps isn't critical enough of the powers at NASA - saving his barbs for the Russians - and he never seems to have worked with a crewmate who's anything less than perfect - which perhaps stretches credulity a bit.

But, having bought Tom Jones' book in the museum's upstairs bookshop, I walked downstairs to find him setting up for a book signing. My first astronaut......and he turned out to be a really nice bloke. He signed his book for my son, posed for a picture - and, as the signing hadn't quite started, took some time to chat.

I explained I was researching a piece on Apollo 1, and Tom turned out to be something of a historian of the event and had the huge jump on me in that he's seen the remains of the command module which is still kept at Langley.

The premise of my piece is that Armstrong wouldn't have got to the moon when he did but for the fact of the launchpad fire - which led to over 1,000 improvements to the module in the 21 months that Apollo was grounded. Tom added to that stating that museums like the National Air and Space should do more to recognise NASA's failures as well as celebrating their triumphs, since those triumphs are built on the lessons learned from Apollo 1, from the rockets that blew up before man was launched into space, and from the terrible accidents that befell the Shuttles Challenger and Columbia. He'd like to see at least a piece of the Apollo 1 capsule displayed in Washington - perhaps something that could be done to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the accident.

It was no surprise when, back in the UK, I turned on Fox's coverage of the Shuttle launch to find Tom Jones providing the expert analysis. He has the gift for making complex stuff simple - a rarew gift among space folk.

Anyway, Discovery's safe landing seems to show that NASA is prepared to learn from its mistakes. It's still prepared to push frontiers, but will do things differently.

Somehow that's at odds with too many of our political leaders around the world who keep doing the same old same old - and expecting to get a different result.

We speak the same language....don't we

I'm looking at the thermometer in my office at the moment and it's reading 93 degrees - it's 98 degrees in our kitchen, and probably a little hotter outside.....not the best environment to try and get anything done, but the heat is on in more ways than one.

The business pipeline is good at the moment with a couple of projects each on with two major clients, a smaller piece with another and several pieces of new business heading in too - in fact I had to turn away work this week for the first time in months.

Of course, the upturn always happens at tricky times - it's the nature of running a small business. Next week we're off to France for a holiday, so it's all hands to the pump to cram about three weeks work into a week and a half so that I don't have to take my laptop with me.

One of the interesting pieces is working on client relationships with a professional services organisation. We're looking at what really makes a difference and enables the corporate and the professional services provider to work in harmony. So far, it seems to come down to three factors: transparency of price; effective communication and business understanding.

The key is communication. Looking at both sides of the relationship, I've met erudite and articulate people who are passionate about their businesses and the expertise they bring to the office every day. I'm working with English speakers, but they don't necessarily speak the same language.

Each industry and each function within them has its own code; its own jargon and its own shorthand. What's fundamental for any business service provider coming into an organisation is to get under its skin; to absorb the lingua franca and mirror the style, behaviours and language of the people who work there every day - without losing the professional expertise.....and a small degree of detachment necessary to avoid 'going native'.

My client recognises this and has pretty sophisticated sustems in place not just to collect client feedback, but to act on it, using it as the means to drive the business towards much more mutually beneficial relationships. Language is still a bit of a sticking point - but they're getting there.

What does it take?

....not to fall in love, but to get an 1,100 strong business communications group to the minimum 10,000 required members to reach charter status?

That's the challenge facing Communicators in Business at the moment, and a challenge I can affect since I've taken on the role of chairing CiB's membership committee.

Not sure why I did that - a moment of weakness fuelled by wine was enough to flatter me into the post. Anyway, I'm here now, and have gathered an interesting team around me ranging across corporates, agency and freelance members.

The first challenge we face is CiB's image problem. Though there are pockets of leading-edge thought within it, the organisation is still thought of as agency-led and somewhat self-serving in that all those agencies enter and win awards every year for their publications. Clearly, it has been in he agencies' interest to feed and water CiB over the years, and many really good people have taken on roles within CiB's management - most necessary as it's largely a voluntary organisation.

However, that makes it harder to break free of the media and craft focus of the organisation. The result is that it largely recruits and meets the needs of people whose living comes from writing, designing and editing media for internal audiences.

CiB now has a development group in place working on how to attract more senior people and provide an ofering that will make CiB the organisaton to belong to if your prime business stake is in internal communications. The aim is to have a body that still caters for the needs of those on the early rungs of the internal comms ladder, but that also puts all the building blocks in place to support people as they rise through what's becoming a more recognised profession. I see those building blocks as access to best practice and leading edge thought; communities of interest; excellent networking opportunities; recognised professional qualifications and links to he best in academia. Equally we must build links and alliances that bring IC professionals into regular and beneficial contact with peers in related fields such as HR, legal and change as well as the obvious PR/marketing organisations.

The development group is researching now and will report in the Autumn. In the meantime, my group needs to get the transactional processes right to enable us to reach both into CiB to meet the needs of existing members, and reach out to potential members and those who've never even thought of CiB in the past tohelp get the organisation out of the 'craft' bracket and into space where it's truly representative of hat's happening in IC today.

The only potential problem then is that organisational communication is consolidating, so that there's now less of a distinction between external and internal comms and more of a grouping around issue communication. I think there is, and will remain, a distinct skill set for internal comms and thus there's a distinct and necessary niche for CiB. However, CiB needs to play this one cleverly so as not to exclude those of us wh's skillset and audiences span both internal and external stakeholders.

Preaching to the converted

It's hot in here today - probably legally too hot to be working - but that's the up and downside of running my own business. I'm setting up an employee report for a City firm today, so have to make a longish round of calls, but I can do it with the door and windows open, sitting barefoot in a pair of shorts and an open shirt. Probably not the most edifying word picture, but at least I can get the job done without expiring.

Anyway, after hitting three voicemails in a row, I'm having a little break, while I remember to get down a thought that has struck me more and more over the past few weeks.

When we, as comms consultants, talk to internal communicators, we're talking to the wrong people. we're preaching to the converted - to the ones who 'get it'.

There are still the old-schoolers out there for whom internal communication is all about producing magazines and intranets, but in my last few weeks, in London, Baltimore, Washington and in deepest rural England, I've met half a dozen communicators who really understand what we're about. They not only grasp the concepts of issue over output; business enablement and change enablement, but are driving these areas within their business. Interestingly, all came from backgrounds outside journalism - HR, general management, local government management and change. Interestingly too, they all face the same challenge - moving their bosses from old school to new.

More and more, I'm convinced that we should be working with these internal communicators to target business leaders. At present, very few internal communicators have sufficient influence at the top table. Too many CEOs treat their internal comms teams as production houses and give insufficient time and ear-space to the opinions of their internal communicators. Yet they're quite prepared to listen to voices from outside their organisation - especially if we don't call ourselves communication consultants.

When I talk to an organisation as part of a change or business consultancy team, I seem to get far better results - even though I'm doing the same as I ever do with my 'comms' hat on.

It's clear internal comms is being seen as having more business value now - but it's still well down the ladder. I think the tipping point will come when the clever, bright and articulate new wave of internal comms managers finally get into conversations with CEOs about change, leadership and business direction rather than profile pieces for the next newsletter.....

Anyway, I must get back to that next City profile piece.......gotta pay the bills, eh?

Poignant Parallel

I watched an excellent joint BBC/PBS documentary last night called 'How Vietnam was lost'. It focused on two events from October 1967 that marked a change in mood in Joe American Public's reaction to the Vietnam war.

The first incident was the senior brass' reaction to a poorly planned and messily executed US offensive, which saw two companies ambushed 30 miles north of Saigon. Out of 142 Americans on the patrol that morning, almost 70 were killed, with almost all the rest receiving serious wounds. Yet the story of an American victory was spun and even the Generals presenting silver stars and purple hearts to the survivors of the action refused to acknowledge the truth of the situation.

Stitched around this story was the student occupation and police intervention at the University of Wisconsin in Madison as Dow Chemical - makers of napalm - set up shop to interview graduate recruits on campus. The students, originally intent on peaceful protest, were beaten from the building by club wealding local police who had no sympathy whatsoever with their ant-war sentiments.

Initially, the media and political reaction to the students' actions was hostile. The police may have been neanderthal in ther approach, but it was the students - and the faculty who supported them - who were branded as the enemy of the US.

The contemporary interviews were fascinating. The students and professors come across as erudite, balanced and wise. Almost four decades on, the police officers' necks are still wider than their heads.

The parallels with what's happening in Iraq today were implicit but startling. Whether you're British, American or belong to one of the dwindling number of other nations supporting the coalition, it's hard not to be supportive of our troops on the ground, but easy to question the motives and morality of their being sent there in the first place. Dubya's 'war on turrr' - seems, like Vietnam - to be built on shifting sands and an utterly no-win situation.

Just over a week ago I stood in front of Washington DC's Vietnam War Memorial. Tourists were out in force, so it didn't have the quiet haunting impact I'd expected. But there's something stark and challenging - and entirely unglorious to that smooth reflective wall, etched with 58,000 names of those who never returned. 'Futility' was the word that stuck in my head as I walked away. I hope we're not thinking the same about Iraq a few decades down the line.

Land of the free....service not included

Just back from an excellent trip to the US. I had a great day with a client's team at a rum bottling plant near Baltimore - never has a team been so 'up' from a SAP implementation in the history of the world; I then spent a priceless few hours in the archive of NASA researching a history piece - great to get my hands on source material that hadn't been touched or looked at for years; and finally I clocked up more than 20 miles of walking getting myself orientated with DC for a profile piece I'm writing on the city.

So, three jobs in three and a bit days - none warranted the airfare on their own, but taken together, it was money very well spent.

Now that can't be said for all my spending stateside. I found more and more that I've got a real problem with service charges - especially when they're just expected, not matter what level of service is offered.

Across my short stay, I was presented with a series of bills all including a service charge of 18-25 per cent - and then on occasion, the people presenting me with their estimation of how good they were lingered for a further hand out.

An example: I arrived in Washington about 7.30pm on Thursday after spending my day at the bottling plant 30 miles north. I know only one person in the city and had arranged to meet him for lunch the following day. So, after a walk down to the White House - so that I can say that I've been there - and a trawl through the shelves of the local Borders, I came back to my room and ordered a chicken sandwich. In addition to the price, the hotel added 25% mark up for tray delivery and a further 18% for service. The guy who delivered the goods then hung around expecting me to part with a few more $$. Err...... sorry mate. My room was one floor up from the kitchen, right beside the lift. Frankly, next time, I'll collect the sandwich myself.

The following day I was in a restaurant on my own for breakfast. First of all I was ignored. Then I was placed on a table that hadn't been properly cleared from the previous occupant. There was a buffet beside my table: I grabbed a yoghurt and a croissant....one croisant. But I felt like indulging myself and so when the waitress finally realised that I actually wanted to eat food and drink coffee - and not just be a charming if somewhat dissolute addition to their furniture - I ordered eggs benedict at $13 a pop, along with coffee and juice.

The coffee was disgusting and almost cold before anyone bothered to bring any milk. The eggs were good though the sauce wasn't home made. But the potatoes served with it tasted gritty and metallic. I was in a hurry so didn't really scritinise the bill 'til I got back to my hotel room at the end of the day. I'd been charged $32. - $13 for my eggs benedict coffee and juice; a further $13 for the 'buffet' (one yoghurt, one croissant) and $6 service on top. The service was shit and the food horribly overpriced.

If you want to be rewarded for good service, EARN it - don't just expect it. I really liked DC, but found too many people in the service industries too complacent about turning a buck without putting in the effort. Compulsary charging for service that doesn't meet expectations just leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth of the consumer.