Training course: Introduction to Freelancing

I'm running a new training course for CiB on May 14th covering the pitfalls and possibilities for communicators thinking of taking an independent route.

Here's some of the blurb:

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 network
13.00–14.00: 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

New course date for 'output to outcome'

I'll be running a revamped and updated version of my From Output to Outcome course through CiB on April 28th in London.

Here's the blurb:

The global economic downturn has placed ever greater responsibility on internal communicators to add tangible value to their organisation. That means being seen to deliver more for the business than simply managing corporate media. This courses links internal communication directly to business strategy so that communicators are delivering communication outcomes that directly contribute to driving the business forward.

You will learn how to:

• make communication an integral part of the business planning process


• use challenge and build with business leaders


• shine when the going gets tough


• think impact first, media second


• make communication a process - not a series of set-piece events


• use the line more effectively to manage messages and response


• manage the communication needs of different audiences


• embrace 'horses for courses'


• create learning loops.
  

There will also be hints and tips on how communicators can be the conscience, challenge, diplomat, creative genius and commercial guru every organisation needs when times are tough.

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, CMS Cameron McKenna, Northamptonshire County Council, UBM and United Utilities.

Full booking details are here

Quiet...too quiet...for too many reasons

Okay, so the only thing passing across my desk this afternoon seems to be tumbleweed. I'm up to date with work - and I'm even up to date with my admin....with just a large VAT payment to send out this afternoon - yuk!

But I'm feeling tense, and can't really settle. Work has been ever so slow to pick up this month - I've got several projects on, but all are slow-moving, reflecting the fact that the corporates I'm working for have fewer people around being asked to do more. The result is that decision making is taking longer and every time I knock back a draft or a plan or an idea for consideration, I'm then sitting around for days before the clients get back to me and the projects progress.

I'm in one of those gaps at the moment. An article for a legal mag has been re-written by a lawyer (why have a dog and bark yourself?); it's now being pored over by lots of other lawyers and I should have an updated draft back by the end of today....or tomorrow. At that point I'm going to have to unpick a lot of the changes since it's now not in the style/tone of the magazine....and also has several hundred extraneous words included. Still, it's their publication, so unless it has moved miles away from the original brief, I'll clean it up, take the money and move on.

Meanwhile, another mag's just about to go to press and I'm waiting on my briefs for the next issue - so all's good there, but I'm now in the downtime 'tween issues. And it's the off-month for my other regular mag too...typical (pah!)

I'm also working on some newsletter guidelines and the training to go with them. The brief's moved around on this a bit, but the first draft's now back with the client....and waiting for a response.

Meanwhile, two other pieces of work - one web-based and the other case studies for a magazine have been promised...but not yet arrived.

So, in theory, I've got plenty on. The reality is that it's all a bit stop-start.

How many is too many?

I've been at my desk for well over an hour so far today, and slowly my clients are drifting in and starting to send emails to me. I started early-ish as 1) I've got a lot to get through; 2) it's hot and 3) I'm sunburned from yesterday so it's not comfy lounging around!

One of my first pieces of work was completing and sending off a proposal for a training day for 25 business people.

Now I was quite put off first of all because 25 is a very large group for one session, and I normally work with groups of six - 12. But this is a fairly basic course, so I think I can scale up and still deliver something worthwhile.

But what is the best size for a training group? As ever, it depends on what the group's doing, but my rule of thumb is that the best days have more than four participants and no more than 12.

You might think that 1:1 is best - and in executive coaching or employee mentoring that's probably the case. But for comms training, four for me is the absolute minimum. Fewer than that, and there's little chance for the sharing of ideas and the spark of ideas around a group. More than that and you can have two or more groups competing on the training tasks - and that also brings an edge that tends to lift the day.

But 25....that's a lot for the personal attention one would like to achieve. But, in my head, I've the thought that a few people won't turn up and that we'll end up with four or five groups of....four or five. It's eminently do-able. The trick is to make it not feel like a sheep dip but something that addresses personal needs.

Anyway, the proposal has now gone in, so it's back to a bank strategy document and a couple of business magazine features for the rest of the day.

One size doesn't fit all

I really enjoy delivering training. Actually, I enjoy the whole process of assessing a need; building a programme that addresses that need and then working through that programme with people who will really benefit from it.

It's something I do from time to time in house with clients, and also through CiB. In fact, the next O2O course is set to run on November 21. Of course CiB is a not for profit - its courses are, in the main excellent, but they're inexpensive: generally coming in at under £300 per delegate for the day. The downside is that I don't earn a lot from those days - but I think they give me a certain civic sense of having put something back in to my profession.

But sometimes I'm a wee bit gobsmacked when I see what other providers charge.....especially when I'm left wondering how much they're tailoring the offering - or not - for their local audiences. Marc Wright from Simply Communicate dropped me a note recently inviting me to take part in the Advanced Writing and Editing Seminar he's running in conjunction with one of the chaps from Ragan. On the surface it looks a good deal - a tad under £1,200 for a two day workshop delivered by two participants.

But two things struck me. First: Marc informed me that 'Written communication is pretty lackluster at 90 percent of companies ....' - okay, a sweeping statement, but do I want to go on a writing course in London where the provider can't spell lacklustre? It smacks of a bit of lazy marketing: taking an American promo piece and just cutting and pasting it in.

Second: Marc informed me that this was the course for me if......

• You’re new to corporate communications; this seminar will give you the tools to succeed
  
• You’re a veteran communicator; AWE will give you new ideas, recharge your batteries, fix some bad habits and get you out of a rut
  
• You’re struggling with communication of any kind; AWE is the place to get some real answers!

So, it's something for everyone......which, from my experience, means a poor compromise for anyone. I've got 20 years plus in the business, and don't want to be spending my time going slowly over the basics with rookie writers. And if I was a newbie, I'd want to work with my peers, not the seasoned to cynicals looking to recharge their batteries.

The best training I've had has always been bespoke or tailored for a particular audience. O2O is definitely for experienced professionals and if any newbies came my way I'd point them to something more basic. Courses like AWE leave me cold: I get the feeling that they're about cramming as many delegates in as possible to maximise the return. With comms training, one size doesn't fit all and heightens the risk of pleasing no-one.

Not a tick box exercise

Communication will move no organisation forward if it's treated as a tick box exercise.

In the last couple of weeks I've run training and started on new projects that have all demonstrated the value effective organisational communication can bring - but all have also shown how communication can be lost in task-orientated organisations.

There is still far too strong a mentality, especially in project work, that sees communication as a 'workstream' - something that can be bracketed off and completed by checklist. It's also an exercise that's undertaken by communicators and conducted once the real decision making has been made.

I'm currently working on a communication strategy document for a project within an organisation that wants to improve the way it manages some of its non-core activity. The project is sound and will deliver a better way to work and some good cost savings - but they've been managing communication in a reactive way, and have been focused on a communication strategy as an end in itself, not a means to an end.

There's already a strategy document, but nobody's using it since it feels like an off-the-shelf where only the names have been changed. Its creation feels like a theoretical exercise rather than something that's actually helping the project team open the right doors, get the right information and come up with something better for the organisation.

As I said when I delivered the latest O2O course last week, I don't believe in a communication strategy. I believe in a well thought out and articulated business strategy and then planning effective communication to help deliver that strategy. That's where I am now: taking the project strategy - which fits directly with the business goals - and why we need to communicate, what we need to say to each group at each stage and how best we can connect with them to ensure the project reaches the right outcome.

My plan probably won't look anything as grand as what the client may be used to, but I hope it will be rather more useful than the beautiful creation that currently sits in the project area, unloved, untouched and unwanted.

Interested in outcomes more than outputs?

There are just two places left on my Output to Outcome course which I'll be running through CiB in London on June 19th. I only run the course for small groups, so there's plenty of time to look at individual circumstances and scenarios during the day.

If you want to know more about it, give me a shout at mark.shanahan@leapfrogcomms.com.

New course date - June 19

I have a new course date for Output to Outcome, which is being delivered through CiB and will take place on June 19 in London.

This one day course is aimed at comms managers with at least three years' experience and focuses on assessing where your communications strategy is now, and how you can refocus communication on delivering real business objectives.

I'm also now taking bookings for two half-day courses that I will be offering later in the year through Leapfrog. The open courses will be delivered in London and Oxford in September, and can also be offered as bespoke in-house sessions to suit client needs.

The new courses are:

Effective writing for organisational communication; and
The new Comms Manager - putting communication on the front foot

The writing course is aimed at those new to organisational communication who may find themselves asked to write for an internal audience for the first time; while the second is aimed at the many managers who come to the comms function from elsewhere in business.

If you're interested in booking a place, please contact me at mark.shanahan@leapfrogcomms.com

Tips for the new corporate editor

A couple of weeks ago I asked through this blog, through the IABC's MemberSpeak and through CiB's freelance forum for tips for newbie editors that I could use in hand-outs for one of the bespoke courses I run.

Nothing came back via the blog! The IABC forum produced one response, but these were the tips that came in from my CiB colleagues:

Set clear objectives

Be absolutely clear about your objective (or the message originator's objective) for writing any article or message. What do you want people to do, think or feel in response? Then focus clearly and concisely on that when you write. Too often in big companies, the real message is hidden two paras from the bottom of a page of waffle - and beyond the point where many people have stopped reading.
Brian Johnson, Communications Contractor

Think impact – and not just in the words

Involve your the designer at an early stage. You must present an holistic approach for a communication to be effective. Designers think visually and will bring a new dimension to your work.
Phil Steed.......not surprisingly, a designer

Two for the price of one

Don't try and be too clever. Too many of us think that we are being witty, urbane and ironic, when we are not. Keep it simple. And ignore anyone who tells you that you cannot ever start a sentence with And or But. This is something that too many people dimly remember from their long lost schooldays as not acceptable. If it's good enough for The Economist or The New Yorker, it's good enough for your newsletter.
Mike Thompson, communications specialist

Set deadlines – and stick to them

Set your deadline a day or two before the point where you really need to be ready in order to give yourself enough time/some flexibility. Ensure everyone in the approvals loop understand that it is up to them to come back to you by the deadline, not up to you to endlessly keep chasing all of them. Warn them clearly of the deadline and tell them that if they do not come back by the deadline, you will assume they are happy for the articles to appear unchanged.

Tell them that the deadline given really is the real deadline, not just an initial one that can be ignored for a few days pending the final one. Say at the outset that it will be respected. It is not a movable feast. f someone in the approval loop will be on leave they must make alternative arrangements for someone to sign-off on their behalf.
Lilian El-Doufani, writer & PR consultant

Check your facts

The three most important attributes of a story are: 1) Accuracy. 2) Accuracy. 3) Accuracy. If you get someone's name wrong it's the only thing about your beautifully written story anyone will remember.
Louise Birkett, Consultant, Leapfrog Associate........and law specialist

It’s all about meaning.........so when you’ve drafted some copy:

Get another person to read your copy aloud to back to you. The difference between what you think you've communicated, and what others perceive can be amazing.
Carol Harris, writer and pig breeder

Stamp of approval

When the newsletter goes on the approvals round, state up front that those approving it can only make changes where there are factual inaccuracies. It stops everyone putting their stamp and personal style on the text for the sake of it.
Carole Seawert, Copywriter

Be prepared

Make sure you have some stories and features in reserve for the times when somebody pulls a story or feature at the last minute.
Sue Williams, Editor and co-ordinator

All of these are freely shared....especially with the person who felt I was taking people's good ideas for my personal gain.......!

And a good time was had by all.......

Lazy language and boring imagery. Both drive me to distraction and both came up in the training I ran last Thursday.

The language issue came up around a series of people appointment announcements in a business newsletter which all began: "I am delighted to announce......" Frankly, these guys must have been in a state of constant delight - and that can be very painful - since one chap was delighted on three occasions in the same bulletin, and another had about forty reasons to put a rictus grin on his face.

The point is, the announcements were formulaic. They were exactly the same every week and most people switched off even before they got to the end of the first sentence. The editors involved were worried that if they changed anything, it would slow down the process. The people wording the announcements were senior, and the newbie editors didn't want the hassle of ruffling feathers.

But that hassle's the job. In the end it's not about treading on the toes of the great and the good, it's about connecting with your audience - giving them something they want to read; providing information they can't find elsewhere.

Shake the top team out of their complacency. Give them the evidence that no-one's sharing the delight in their lazy words. Show them a better way to get the message across.

The same goes for pictures. As an editor I've been sent umpteen giant cheque presentation pictures, but I never use them. They're boring - a dull cliche that so often masks a great story.

Not so long ago I was guest editing a publication and heard a story about a guy who was terrified of flying yet had gone up in a small prop plane and buddy jumped thousands of feet on a parachute to raise money for a cancer charity because his partner had died of the disease. It was a good story and needed a strong image - something from the jump, the look on his face when he landed or even when he was climbing into the plane. He was surrounded by supporters, surely someone had shot a few frames? Nope. I got sent a picture of a man in a grey suit holding a cheque......BORING!

If we're lazy and boring we won't be read. We're in the business of storytelling and well chosen words driven home with great imagery is the way to convey meaning. Yet too often, we get reactive and cliche-bound.

My course went very well last week.......in fact, you could say that a 'good time was had by all'....But I'd rather you didn't.

TrainingZone

My thoughts are featured in this month's Training Zone's headline article - check it out.

Basically, I'm back on my high horse stating that we should be equipping business leaders with organisational communication skills rather than always delivering our training to practitioners - while the leaders learn how to make the most of PowerPoint.

Anyway, it's nice to see my reasoned rant in cyber-print.

What should the newbies know?

I'm running a session for internal communication practitioners in a large global company next week. Most are young, very bright and on the upward curve in their careers. Some have come into the roles from university; others from sales, marketing and HR - but none has a background in corporate communication. They've been handed communication portfolios to manage for discrete parts of the organisation and operate fairly autonomously, providing a service for their functional or market 'top teams'.

The scary thing is that while they're most likely very competent managers, none yet regard themselves as competent in the craft skills of communication.

That's no problem when you first take on a comms role - but some of these managers have been in place for a year or more. My take is competence in writing for internal audiences is the start point for an IC career, but the reality is that it's a skill that's learned on the job by many in the new generation of communicators.

So what pearls of wisdom can I share in a couple of hours? Fortunately, my task is made easier by focusing on newsletters, print and electronic.

I'm going to run through the basics:

• When is it right to use a newsletter
• Where do newsletters fit in your comms strategy
• How to define outcomes and use the newsletter to deliver them
• What makes a good story
• News v Features
• The importance of accuracy
• Who, what, where, when how....and why?
• Simplicity, active language and compelling writing
• Audience shoes
• Sign-offs and approvals
• Structuring for maximum impact.

So, I need two days not two hours - but this is a first scratch at the surface.

I'm after hints and tips on good newsletter writing to share - and have already put out a request through both CiB's Freelance forum and the IABC's memberspeak.

But if anyone passing through here has a 'must have' tip to share, please take time to leave a comment below.

Can we preach to the needy not the converted?

I've just posted something in the IABC's memberspeak area that's also worth raising on here. If you have a take on this issue, please do chuck in your view.

I'm writing a piece for a training publication in the UK on what communication skills we should be training line managers and leaders in across our organizations.

My take is that there are many great communication courses out there - both in-house and provided externally - covering both the strategic side of communication and the nuts and bolts of making it happen, yet places are invariably filled by professional communicators.

Leaders may get courses in powerpoint and presentation skills, yet remain ill-equipped to take on the challenges, particularly in internal communication, that our new democratised communication frameworks and social media opportunities offer. If we, as professional communicators, are less of the doers and more of the facilitators, what skills should we be enabling line managers to achieve? And, if we know the blueprint for what communiation skills the line should have, how far are we in terms of getting those managers skilled-up?

Course: From Output to Outcome

I'll be running the latest version of my output to outcome course in London on March 20. It'll be hosted by CiB, so the delegate price is extremely reasonable.

Last time the course - which is very interactive - ran, it picked up a lot of very favourable comment from a blend of internal communication professionals ranging from less than a year's experience to a whole career in the IC game.

I'm looking forward to meeting the next group for what I'm sure will be a totally different, though - I hope - just as successful event this time round.

Build from the basics

This week I've started work on two projects that reflect the changing face of internal communication. The first is raising the prrofile of two HR processes within a global bank, and the second is creating training tools for some new communicators.

On the first project, my client is an HR professional. Despite her organisation being huge and with a massive trans-continental reach, like many, it has very little communication resource at the centre - and what's there is focused on external comms and protecting corporate reputation. So, she has come outside the organisation to look at what's necessary to get managers and staff across the world to use a self-service recruitment tool, and a process for referring external contacts for jobs within the bank.

In the past, I would have expected to be working with corporate communicators with an established communication framework providing the boundaries for anything I did. Not here. My client is a resourcing expert, but a novice when it comes to using communication to get the best from the policies and practices she manages. In many ways that's great since she's open to new ideas and has none of the jaundice that too much time in corporate comms seems to bring. On the other hand, it has been a return to first principles, and parts of the project feel like pushing a rock up hill as we struggle to pin down interviews and cope with an intranet that has been piled up layer-on-layer rather than with any sense of strategy. Still, it's a good project and we've already managed a quick win or two.

Project two started today and rather than being run out of HR (like so many internal comms projects I get involved with now), this one actually comes from a large organisation's corporate communications team. However, this team has gone through a massive reorganisation recently with the result that approaching a dozen new communication managers have come on board. All are fresh, eager and full of great ideas - but none has come through a formal communications route. Finally, the age of the hack-turned-internal communicator appears to be over. In their place, I'm seeing graduates with three years or less in a business moving into corporate comms as a stepping stone to a management career.

So, as a grizzled old Yoda (though not yet 43) I've been asked to turn my experience into training - and pretty basic training too. This new intake is experienced in writing briefs and proposals and managing agencies to do the doing, and has a greater grasp of business strategy than I had 'til I hit my mid-30s. But now these eager beavers are being expected to write for an audience too - to stoke up the intranet; to meet the daily desire for project updates; to draft the speeches their leaders will deliver; and to inform and involve their internal stakeholders through everything from site newsletters to community of interest podcasts. To my generation, crafting the right words for the right purpose is second nature - it's what we were brought up on. But for these guys it's alien territory. So, for the next few days I'll be designing a bespoke course and support materials to give them the basis of what they need through a 'Writing foir your stakeholders' workshop.

It'll make a change from the more strategic stuff I created and delivered on several occasions last year - and I'm really looking forward to putting myself back in their oh so trendy shoes to develop the materials.

What goes around comes around

Something over a decade ago, a large industrial client approached me to produce a guide to writing newsletters. The European end of this global business was made up of many constituent businesses and each was spawning its own communications - at that time, paper newsletters of all hues, all styles and vastly variable quality. The European corporate centre didn't want to stymie communication, but wanted to bring some coherance and consistency....and most of all wanted to demonstrate that there was much more to communication than the latest 'tick the box' project newsletter. So, what emerged a few weeks later was not a guide to writing newsletters, but a guide looking at needs, audiences and outcomes first - and then moving on to the 'how' later.

When I first set up my business website, an 'essay' version of the guide became one of my toolkit offerings. The emphasis had moved a little towards change communications, but the essential message remained the same.

This morning, another client contacted me asking if I still had a copy of the original guide (one of her colleagues had moved from client A to client B and they'd got talking etc. etc....) as she's facing that same proliferation of newsletters from all parts of her organisation. Some are electronic and others on paper - but it sounds like it's more 'tick the box' stuff.

I'm about five computers on from writing the original guide, and am not sure if I even have a copy. If I do, it's in a lock-up with the rest of the Leapfrog archive. But I was able to point her to what's on my website. If you're interested, but too lazy to hit the link, it's reproduced below. It probably needs updating now, but the sentiment remains.

So you want a new newsletter?

You’ve been given the job of communicating a major change, and your boss has suggested producing a newsletter. So what do you do next? Leapfrog’s advice?...........................
STOP!!!

Now, let’s start again. You’ve been given the job of communicating major change. So what are the essentials you need to consider before you even reach a point where you decide on your communication mechanisms?

First of all, consider Why you are communicating What’s the need for the work you’ve been asked to do? Write down a few paragraphs of background to articulate this need and to provide the communication context.

Okay, you’ve got a general need, and the next thing to consider is who you are communicating with. Who are your stakeholders – and what’s the impact of what you want to say going to be on them?

Right from the start it’s important to realise that communication is successful only if it creates the right impact on your audiences, prompting them into the action you want them to take.
And what are those actions? Well, they’ll be based on your objectives. What do you want to achieve as a specific result of this communication?

Again, write them down – and try to limit them to three or four things that are achievable – world peace is a bit ambitious for the average communication campaign. The key is to link them directly to your organisation’s stated business objectives.

Objectives lead directly into success factors. What will success look and feel like if you get this communication right? To drag communication kicking and screaming away from accusations of being nebulous and distant from the business perspective, these factors much be quantifiable – and thus measurable.

So we know who we’re talking to and why – and what it will look and feel like if our communication is a success. Now it’s time to look at what needs to be communicated – your key messages. Step into your audiences’ shoes to focus on what they need to know – not necessarily what your boss wants to say - to achieve your objectives.

Look at prioritisation so that you focus your maximum effort on winning the awareness, understanding, buy-in and commitment from your prime influencers. Don’t waste your time on those who are easy to reach but do little to forward your cause.

It’s only at this point that you consider how you might reach your audience.

Make sure you’re aware of their preferences for receiving information and how they choose to share it.

Look at what already exists within your organisation and look for opportunities to tie into existing channels and mechanisms and share the load with other communication colleagues.

Define clearly the role of management through the line and, indeed of employees in any communication exercise. You may manage the communication channels, but your role is primarily to facilitate communication, not to own every piece of the jigsaw.

Normally at Leapfrog, we draw up a matrix with you at this stage, mapping kinds of messages against potential mechanisms to draw out what’s most effective for each.

You never know, the answer may even include a newsletter – though this is most likely to be a supporting rather than a primary communication tool.

The bottom line is that your communication will be far more effective if you’re prepared to invest time in planning it properly first. Then it’s a case of learning from what you do, and applying what you’ve learned next time round to ensure you get ever closer to your audiences’ needs – while directly supporting your business’ strategy.

copyright Mark Shanahan 2006