The next expectations of your workforce

 

In all of the wide discussion of "business use of social media," we've finally reached a maturation point.  The comparisons with Facebook or even LinkedIn are gone.  We now have some specific terms of success--collaboration, meritocratic contributions, reduction in email--that point directly to productivity gains.  What remains is either to wrestle SharePoint to the ground and bend it to our will, or to actively look for more elegant platforms that sit well on enterprise servers.

McKinsey Quarterly has put out the above video featuring Don Tapscott, who will be part of the World Economic Forum this week and has published an insightful TED book, Radical Openness.  He's making a career midwifing companies from old information flows and barriers to new knowledge pathways.

Implicit in this analysis is the understanding that your workforce is showing up in your organization with expectations for input, collaboration, and access.  Does your corporate culture encourage those values or thwart them?  And do you understand the changes that will be necessary in traditional, top-down employee communications in order to participate credibly in this new environment?

First, the bad news

Think transparency is easy?  When something goes wrong, does your business culture really encourage you to bring it forward?  It should.  This has long been a tenet of effective business teaming, but a commitment to transparency is usually one of the first casualties in times of overwhelming stress or unmanaged change.

Some great excerpts from "Lessons from the dark side of information use" by Donald Marchand, in The Journal of financial transformation published by the CAPCO Institute:

"Here is a test question: Do people in your company trust each other enough to talk about failures, mistakes, and errors in a constructive manner, free of unfair repercussions? . . .

"Managers who discourage their people from identifying 'bad news', punish the bringers of bad tidings, suppress constructive responses to mistakes, errors and failures, stifle opportunities for preventive action or improvements to company performance. . . 

"Transparency is critical for human improvement, whether improving the poor shots in your golf game, or tackling operational or customer service problems.  Managers who cannot hear bad news cannot turn it into good news; they are incapable of learning, and they discourage learning among their employees."

Turning bad news into good news is NOT spin.  Do you know how to do it?

Full disclosure: CAPCO has been a client.

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Know how to TED?

TED is driving communications.  Are you ready to be TEDified?  You could do worse.

If you feel a little under-a-rock about TED, have a look.  TED conference presentations are one of the current darlings of social media, forwarded and shared like crazy, garnering millions of views.

Why?  Because 18 minutes turns out to be an almost ideal time frame to deliver stories and ideas--even complex ones.    And it's significant what types of stories are most popular on TED: they're the ones that follow a pretty standard arc of Here's who I am, Here's something I tried, Here were the results.  In most cases, the results are surprising or delightful and almost always inspiring.

TED presenters are also allowed to use slides and videos, but not to distraction; the clear focus is on the presenter on an open stage, no notes or script prompts, showing that they are open, responsive and knowledgeable.

Business presentations should take a page from TED.  If you say there are some corporate messages that don't fit the TED arc, I would ask: why not?  Are you really resigned to the belief that certain messages must, by nature, be a big bore?

The laws of good storytelling are as ancient as our race.  What's the next presentation you need to make -- and how could you take it from okay to great?

Executive presence: some people have it . . .

I've known a number of executive coaches, and their value is being able to customize their counsel to fit their client.  But if they had to boil down basic executive communication skills into a manageable list, this would be it.

This is the list you should print out and post nearby and commit to reading at least weekly for at least a year.  What I like about the list is that each tip is really a stand-in for an important aspect of executive leadership.  Why master a sense of humor?  Because it's a sign that you are well-rounded, sensitive to appropriate topics of conversation and basically comfortable with other people.

This is also a great link to send along to your mentees or direct reports whom you're counseling for advancement.

I take to heart the reminder to keep posture in mind when speaking in a group--which of these would you choose to work on?

Bonus content: here's a list of ten communications mistakes, if you want to look at the dark side.  Both lists are from Forbes.

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Big Data being used by Small Minds?

This video clip form David Court at McKinsey takes the hot trend of Big Data down to brass tacks: Now that your business has its hands on more sophisticated data, are you sure your people are going to get the most out of it?

A number of things (pun intended) could happen.  One is that a range of functions seize implications from the data and have different ideas of what to do next.  Another is that your people have a lot of enthusiasm but not much skill or direction in using it.  The introduction of Big Data into an organization, by itself, isn't going to guarantee results.

The norms for accessing, analyzing and acting upon sophisticated data have got to be considered elements of the corporate culture.  Those norms are going to illustrate very vividly what you really mean by shared leadership, by accountability, by quality and by team work.  And like every other culture shift, if the journey to the new culture is not thought through and planned out in advance, waste will be created (passive voice intended).

Have a look at the video and think through where, specifically, things could go very well or very wrong with the introduction of Big Data into your business.  Have you got the right transition planning team to accelerate success and realize benefits quickly?  (Hint: Is there a communicator on board?)

Need engagement? Don't communicate

I've posted along these lines before, but because the hot topic of engagement doesn't seem to be going anywhere soon, it's worth a refresh--and this brief article from Forbes online make the point again.

Businesses seek engaged employees because the unleashed energy will drive the business farther and faster.  But the focus and energy of engagement aren't the same thing as "happiness."  If anything, they're more like "hope."

As the article mentions, one more team lunch at Olive Garden won't do the trick, probably because that lunch will be seen as 1) the shallow gesture it is and 2) the time spent now means I'll be getting home later.  So much for happiness.  People get energized about their work when they can see that their best efforts can make an important difference: product quality, business reputation, recognition, pay, new opportunities (and no, you can't add "you get to keep your job" to that list).  People have to be hopeful their increased energy and investment will pay off for them.

Will a strategic communication campaign get that done?  Probably not.  As the Broadway song put it, "Don't talk of June, don't talk of fall -- don't talk at all! -- show me!"  The goal is that employees have first-hand experiences of the effectiveness of their efforts and the responsiveness of their leaders and systems.  Communications can support those experiences, but it can't deliver them.  

One of the most tried-and-true tactics to take when facing an unengaged workforce is to stop and ask people to articulate what's grinding them down.  First, you get credit for listening.  Second, you're likelier to get the solution right.  And be sure that "listening" doesn't feel like just another employee survey.

Next time you have the urge to sink resources into that campaign-theme video, sit down until the feeling passes.  It could just be another kind of breadstick.

Who's ready for BYOD?

Two articles: one a trend piece, the other a cautionary tale.

Shel Holtz, in the newest CW Magazine, talks about the "bring-your-own-device" culture that is emerging in the workplace:

"Some refer to this phenomenon as the consumerization of IT.  Others label it technology populism. . . Technology populism has weakened IT’s ability to keep the hatches battened down by simply controlling what people use.  What’s more, IT has been forced to deal with a growing demand among employees to use their personal devices—smartphones, tablets and more—at and for work.  BYOD has gained momentum among employees who would just as soon use their preferred technology as anything the company would give them."

Implications:

• employees want to be able to access company assets (intranets, file servers) from their own devices
• employees want their business apps (sales tools, logistics trackers) to go onto their personal devices
• employees may NOT want to receive typical corporate communications this way
• employees may not fully understand the risks they're absorbing (lost unprotected devices, redistribution of proprietary info)

I carried around two phones for a while—mine and the company's—and it sucks.  So BYOD is a trend that won't reverse, especially after IT starts to report some cost savings.  But is someone in your business thinking through those implications and how to manage them into effective communications?

The cautionary tale is from DiversityInc.  They give an example of how hot—in this case, racist—election rhetoric can find its way into the workplace via technology.  It's a very short distance from reading or downloading to discussing or, worse, forwarding.

IT, Legal, HR, division leadership and Communications are going to have to work on this together.  What should be your business' first step?

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