"The great thing about quotations is that they give you nodding acquaintance with the originator which is often socially impressive."
As part of a life broader than the Mac and its parts, I often volunteer in a very lovely seventeenth century garden at Ham House which everyone should visit while May feels like mid-June. I’ve done some time working hard in border and vegetable garden and yet, the Mac has followed me and weedled its own sweet way into things here too: http://twitter.com/hamhousegarden
Enjoy the outdoors…
Both.
A 9-year old’s school logo has been changed and he is refusing to wear a school jumper with the new logo on. The reason? He doesn’t like it and “it’s a waste of money”. His dislike of the logo is such he’s happier in hand-me-downs showing the old logo until his leaving day, some 3 years after everyone is meant to be wearing the new version. He is consciously rebelling despite the face that he accepts that the new design is more modern and more appropriate. He even likes the font.
I tried to understand if effective internal stakeholder management would have helped him engage with the new design and not be so resistant to the change (old habits die hard): “They showed us loads of bad logos and I didn’t want any of them”.
Mmm. I’ve heard that one before.
They joined the team this spring with wisdom beyond their years….
As the story circulates the media that Gordon Brown paid $40,000 for West Wing Writers to ‘tailor’ speeches for a US target audience, what is the contraversy? Well, in times of supposed thrift, and given Mr Brown’s personal reputation for counting pennies, it’s a large sum of money. To the consultants who were on Clinton’s team, it’s a few days work, though, surely…
Reading the coverage, it smacks of two other ‘disgusted in Tunbridge Wells’ themes:
1. Unease that Gordon doesn’t write this stuff himself.
2. Shame that no-one in the UK could come up with the goods.
Number 1 is plain naieve. Go back to Churchill for that sort of style and talent. Number 2, I can agree with. As I spend my days thinking about how to target communication to audiences as diverse as medical reps on the road in Berkshire, junior members of governments ooh anywhere and bored middle management waiting for lifts in Central London, surely someone, somewhere (not in Washington, not for $40,000) could have been trusted to come up with the goods? Targetting communication is one skill, so is writing speeches for an individual that you understand, know, work with. The words are coming up out of one person’s mouth, they need to sound like his, have some truth about them, he needs to own them…
For those of us who believe the West Wing is real, that Martin Sheen was President and that Presidential speeches turn the mood of a nation, we would like to think that Toby and Josh would make Gordon a star on the Hill.
The truth is, that now the ‘news’ is out, some consultants that we’ve never heard of have developed some words that will forever be perceived as lacking authenticity, over-crafted, a waste of money…and not Gordon’s own.
Not entirely accurate, in fact, the words are already forgotten.
As the stories mount, the heads roll, the power shifts and we don’t believe a thing *anyone* says, what a great (terrifying) internal communication plan to have to consider…. How to engage MPs.
Organisations seem to be facing the same challenges at the same time in internal communication right now: is it best to talk about what you (top level management) have decided and know now – or wait – until concensus is reached on communication? Agremeent is being sought not just on what is said, but on how it’s said, when it’s said, how many times it’s said, who says it, what languages it’s said in..we could go on.
While this process escalates – and is repeated, probably – employees (not top level management) will have their own assumptions about what is happening, some will have already picked up on aspects of what is happening too. Theories about what is about to be done (to them, not with them or by them) will be discussed and engagement, productivity and time will inevitably be lost. Such delays – or perceived silences – often attack trust. And while internal communication is rightly at the top of the senior management agenda, this focus is not actually getting the job done.
Times have changed – the right people are discussing how to communicate and realising the importance of communication within the organisation. It’s just that in some cases, it’s not these people that are doing the communicating, they’re talking about doing it…
Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people will sometimes step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we were meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.
Sheenagh Pugh, 1990
We are wondering here if ‘employer branding’, once the great conversation opener and preoccupation, especially of HR teams, is now really just (just!) making the existing corporate brand communicate to employees and prospective employees: providing communication tools and management examples of that brand in practice. Simple…
Looking at what often could feel like separate brand identities (separate projects) is too confusing for audiences, could detract from the corporate brand and (appears at least) too costly for clients. What’s interesting is that some agencies (and their clients) are talking employer brands and we are in fact waiting on one’s guidelines for a piece of work we are doing… We are looking forward to them. Perhaps it’s what we have been talking about anyway, just phrased differently?
The Nielsen Norman 10 best intranets of 2008 voted British Airways’ intranet ‘Employee Self Service’ the only UK place in its recent listing. Citing cost savings and communcation improvements, it’s an interesting vote given recent PR and customer relationship calamaties for BA and the current difficult times in the aviation industry. A case of the external image being very far from what is going on internally, perhaps.
The Nielsen Norman 10 best intranets of 2007 voted the RSPB’s intranet the only intranet in the UK worthy of a global top ten ranking. The comment in the summary report that ‘beautiful bird photos illustrate top stories’ is in the context of discussions about an average intranet containing 6 million pages.
The RSPB’s success is a welcome reminder that sometimes something plain lovely says it all. And perhaps more usefully for those a bit content-heavy amongst us, that a picture does tell a 1000 words, or pages more.
