Simply-Blogging

It's funny what gets you thinking...

I was just clearing out my old email and came across a mailer from IT research company Forrester which contained the following:

"In a time when resources are scarce and expensive, the portfolio of business services constitutes a powerful framework for maximizing the business value of IT capabilities. This portfolio must display a holistic but sharp picture of how IT's capabilities and resources map to business needs as well as a holistic view of its spending patterns and priorities. But too many firms have incomplete portfolio management practices. To correct this, IT executives should design their services portfolio using Lean principles, focusing the IT organization on delivering aggregated services that business customers understand and appreciate and on eliminating waste from duplicated and nonsynchronized activities and resources."

Nope, I didn't understand it either.  I had to have a couple of goes to understand what it was saying.

And I had to turn to Wikipedia to double check what I thought  Lean means (which is shameful I admit!).

But actually there is something in here for IC managers to think about.

The point for me is that in the coming months everyone is going to be squeezed on budgets - you don't need much of a crystal ball to see that one coming.  But, how do you know what you should hold on to at all costs and what can you afford to let go?

I suspect that it is will be worth spending some time asking what exactly are we doing that adds value to our organisation at the moment - and what doesn't?

I remember some time ago reading something by Kristin Kelly about how Owens Corning used their process improvement model to redefine the role of IC.  Of course you can never find the article when you need it (despite the best efforts of Google) although I seem to recall that her point began by listening to the voice of her customers - senior leaders in the organisation.

I've been using the above model (inspired by Kristen) for some time now as a way of starting the conversation about what should be the role of a comms team and can strongly recommend it as the basis for a workshop activity.

The main thing is to have a clear idea of what is being done in the team and ask if it still makes sense to keep doing it.  Clearly, priorities have changed dramatically for most people recently - so why spend ages fighting to retain an activity which is no longer needed - or is simply not providing value? 

Instead, conducting a simple exercise to establish what is really needed is going to pay dividends isn't it?

I suppose the challenge is to make sure that your conclusions reflect the views of your senior stakeholders.  And perhaps the best way to ensure that is to run a series of conversations with them about the way forward....

... and all this rambling came because I was clearing out my email!...

Liam

simply-blogging's 2008 quiz

Everyone is winding down for the holiday season about now, so what better way to relax and take stock of 2008 than by taking the simply-blogging 2008 quiz.

We've come up with a range of questions covering subjects from sport to politics and (almost) everything in between, with a heavy emphasis on communications.

Print it out and get some your friends and family to give you a hand seeing how much of 2008 you remember. 

Make a note of your answers and send them to me at [email protected].

All entries before close of play Tuesday 6 January will be put into a draw to win a $50 Amazon voucher.

I'll post the answers in the New Year, so you can see for yourself how you did. 

Best of luck and happy holidays!

Here are the questions:

Travel

1. Which company’s spokesman put the chaos of a €5.6bn opening down to “staff familiarization” and “luggage performance issues”?    
2.  How did Facebook get some Virgins into trouble for speaking their minds?
3. Who said: "As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border"?

Politics 

1. Which world leader celebrated their birthday by releasing a martial arts DVD?
2. How did Jesse Jackson say he wanted to make Barack Obama’s eyes water and how did Obama actually make Jackson’s eyes water?  
3. What was the name of the now-famous Ohio resident who received more than his fifteen minutes of fame during the third U.S. Presidential Debate in October ’08?
4. Who communicated a bit too much ‘pure poison’ at a Greek tavern this summer?
5. Who said: "Rarely is the question asked – is our children learning?"
6. Which question did George Bush duck at his final Iraq press conference?

Sports

1. Who coined the phrase: “Ping pong is coming home” in August this year and why?
2. Which French soccer player found himself ill-L’Equip(ed) to lead his team mates and why?
3. How did the US media turn the tables in Beijing?
4. Who’s getting back in the saddle after retiring in order to raise cancer awareness? 
5. Which sporting chairman said, in the press: "If it had been about Bernie Ecclestone, it would not have been a "sick Nazi orgy"?

Culture/Arts

1. Which divorce lawyer described in the Daily Mail as: "…careful to put as much presentation into her appearance and manner as she does to her cases," ended up with a notoriously unplanned ‘wet look’?
2. Entertainment Blog – allieiswired.com reported that a major headline artist gave `’an odd rendition of the Oasis classic “Wonderwall”. Who sang it where and why? 
3. Who went from frantic media circus to top selling CD ‘Circus’ in 2008?
4. What’s the link between a singing secret agent, Sweden and a taverna? 

Economics

1. Which leader’s mid sentence pause transformed him from bankers back-up to saviour of the world?
2. Who said at a rally in Jacksonville, US: “The fundamentals of our economy are sound”, on the day that Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy?
3.  What faux pas embarrassed World Bank leader Paul Wolfowitz on a trip to Turkey this year?
4. On October 6^, 2008 a Times Online reader, Andrew Shackleton, posted a comment “this is just the tip of the iceberg…” which particular financial iceberg was Mr Shackleton referring to?

Communications

1. Whose sexual bragging upset the people who weren't listening?
2. Who bigged up Pope Benedict in the following way: "Thank you, your Holiness. Awesome speech!"?
3. Who took over as chair of the International Association of Business Communicators in 2008?
4. What percentage of communicators in Britain expect to move jobs over the next 12 months according to a survey conducted by Communicators in Business?
5.  Who won the CIPR's excellence award for internal communications in 2008?  
6. What percentage of people in an October YouGov poll said that they were first alerted to change by secret meetings and hushed conversations by their managers?
7.  In February this year, what percentage of senior agency PR officers believed there would be no recession in 2008, according to PR Week?
8. Who was accused of being out of touch after calling people at 6 am who had written letters to him?
9. According to the UK edition of PR Week, in what month did the alarm bells start ringing for the PR industry? 
10.  David Ferrabee brought out his highly anticipated second book, what was it called?
11.  In what city did communicators gather for the 2008 IABC conference?
12. Who said in 2008: "The credit crunch is an enormous opportunity for internal communicators. When the senior guys do not know what to say, they call for internal communications. It's the only time you get them knocking on your door"?
13. What company’s internal video podcasting platform made headlines at Simply’s Employee Communication Summit in June 2008 and what is it called?
14. Name two companies whose 2007 film festivals won raves in the field of employee communications in ’08?
15. Which longtime Employee Communications expert was quoted as saying, “My concern is with the “social” aspect of social media. It becomes a distraction to people and a potential obstacle to productivity”?   
16. What was the name of the ship that hosted the 2008 Marketing Forum?
17. What U.S. production company stirred up a load of controversy when it released Wal-Mart’s corporate video archive to the public?
18. Which senior company blogger tarnished his reputation with "a crock of shit"?

Well done Kevin...

Hooray to Kevin K for this post.

I have long been depressed by the quality of some of the conferences that I see advertised - very few organisers really seem to care about their quality or value for money for the delegates. 

Liam  

Chatterbox...

I'm a big fan of UK charity i-Can - they work with children with communications difficulties.

And they do some quite creative awareness and fund raising things.

For example they have the chatterbox challenge - which I think is almost as brilliant as their Adopt a word idea.

Liam

From the vaults comes wisdom...

I get a daily email from the Ragan people - which I don't always read right away.

But when I do clear out my mail there are some real gems in there...

Like this - it's an article about becoming influential.  It's a republication of something they first produced donkeys years ago - but its still instructive!

A while back, Sue Dewhurst and I developed a format we called PIANO - the inventory of influence.  I've found an old pdf of it in case anyone is interested.  You can download it here Download Influence Inventory

Liam

What are you Yammering on about?

Drew Benvie over at Hotwire has an interesting post today about Dell generating revenues of $1 million using Twitter – the micro-blogging service that limits postings to 140 characters – to publicise its sales alerts.

While this sort of money is not massive for a company like Dell, it shows the growing power this kind of platform has as a marketing tool for companies. So while Twitter is proving itself as a marketing tool is one thing, however, I’ve never been sure whether a tool like Twitter can help organisations when it comes to internal communications.

Twitter is mainly for social use and there are several areas that go against it working in an enterprise setting: at work, people don’t necessarily want to hear about what their friends are doing five times a day, but they would probably like to hear about what their co-workers are working on several times throughout the course of the day. Security is another point that goes against Twitter, many people would baulk at the inner workings of their company being visible for all to see on a public platform.

There is a solution it seems. Yammer is very like Twitter except it’s specifically designed for businesses. Users must stay within the 140-character limit on Yammer and it is closed to everyone apart from those of that company. 

Its aim is to improve communication between employees and team members and, when judged against instant messaging platforms, seems like a less invasive way to update fellow employees, have questions answered and provide insights in response and ultimately increase productivity.

Costs are low and it’s proving popular: 10,000 people and 2,000 organisations signed up for the service the day it launched in September. Maybe micro-blogging is just what your internal communication needs right now?

Daniel

Now's the time to....

...do anything that is being plugged by anyone in particular!  The recession is a great bandwagon and there's lots of us jumping on it to further whatever piece of advice we want to plug.

I got quite good at it in the days (decades ago) when I worked in PR... in one glorious episode I had to plug a safety campaign for coach drivers and we did a picture story to coincide with the launch of a code of conduct for drivers.  We had three women drivers standing in front of some vintage buses holding up copies of the Safety Code.

Even I knew it was dull. And desperate!

But at that time Britain was going mad about a TV dramatisation of a series of HE Bates novels set in 1950's Kent launching the career of Catherine Zeta Jones.  So... in an act of heroic cheesiness... we stuck a caption on the photo saying "These darling buds of May show their support...." and - would you believe it - we got it printed in one of the nationals!!!!

Ah, life was so much simpler then.

Simply very different

Hello I'm Daniel Penton and I've just joined simplygoodadvice – a brand new internal communications consultancy led by Liam FitzPatrick (whose blog this post is hosted on) and Marc Wright (whose blog is: http://simply-blogging.typepad.com/publishers_blog/). It’s a massive change from the PR agency that I’ve moved from and had spent the whole of my working life at until last week (all three and a half years of it).

Gone is the tired circa-80’s building on the edge of central London, in its place are some very nice offices in the centre of Soho. No longer do I grapple with a temperamental laptop that I suspect came pre-loaded with Windows 95, now we’re using shiny new MacBook Pro’s (which look very cool, but I seem to be helping Liam with more than I’m using my own). And now the focus is 100% on internal communications, instead of a bit of everything.

As you can imagine when starting up a new business, there is lots to do and its very challenging, but it’s also lots of fun. We’ve been working on the website (which will be going live soon, you’ll all be the first to know), writing some interesting features for simplygoodadvice’s sister internal communications news site simplycommunicate (http://www.simply-communicate.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=1091) and taking part in some very interesting client meetings.   

Having worked on several high-profile internal communications programs at my previous employers, it’s great to be working with Liam and Marc – two of the most experienced internal communication practitioners around.

I’m going to be guest blogging on simplyblogging over the coming weeks to give you a behind the scenes look at life in a start-up communications consultancy. Feel free to leave any questions and comments and see you next week!

Daniel

Interesting...

Thanks to Katie Moffat's blog for alerting me to this report from Forrester.  They reckon very few people trust what they read in blogs - and unsurprisingly are more likely to trust email from people they know....

I wonder what the equivalent data for internal communications is?

Liam

Evaluation - advice from the trainers' guru

It seems that a fair proportion of the thinking about evaluation of IC owes much to historic debates about evaluating training.  In particular, Donald Kirkpatrick has been a thought leader in this field for many years and much of what he says resonates with those of us who are responsible for making sure things work and have an impact.

There's a write up on the website The Training Zone that I just enjoyed reading.

Liam