Author: Jon

Jon https://jweedon.wordpress.com
Jon's avatar

Organisational Vietnam

Blogging has an unforseen advantage! I’m going to use this as a way of keeping track of my own contributions to conversations on other people’s blogs. It is all too easy to add your thoughts to someone else’s discussion and never find your way back to it.

Mike Klein recently set out a few questions to think about before deciding on whether an “employee engagement engagement” will be an exciting and worthwhile challenge or a quagmire worth avoiding. I had a few thoughts on how to avoid an “organisational vietnam”.

From mass communications to masses of communicators

When it comes to social media, IBM, the self proclaimed most forward looking company in the world have led the way for many years. In 1997 they were encouraging their staff to get out there and mix it on the world wide web when many companies were doing their damnest to restrict their employees access.

Seven years later their blogging policy was being held up as an example to us all at a time when many of us thought a blog was some kind of nasty medical condition.

I’ve been reading their current Social Computing Guidelines and I see no reason not to think they continue to lead the way. The guidelines themselves are pretty standard; no doubt due to bulk plagiarism across the globe for many years. No – what made them stand out to me was the following line in the preamble:

“IBM is increasingly exploring how online discourse through social computing can empower IBMers as global professionals, innovators and citizens. These individual interactions represent a new model: not mass communications, but masses of communicators.”

It’s a phenomena that the PR and Corporate Communications industry has been debating for a while. Some see it as a threat to their profession, others as an opportunity and some as a passing irrelevance.

Personally, I think IBM are spot on and I intend to spend some time over the next few months taking a closer look at what I see as the inevitable convergence between external and internal communications as the new masses of communicators model forces the old mass communications model to either adapt or die.

The Marzipan Layer

I love a good analogy. Somehow they help you see things very differently.

I recently stumbled across an interesting description of middle management – the “marzipan Layer”. My very limited research suggests that it describes those in an organisation who are a cut above the cake itself but who are not quite wealthy enough to be the icing. Dame Laura Tyson, one of Barack Obama’s economic advisors, has used the term to mean the layer of managers ‘stuck’ below the top-level ‘icing’.

In my line of work I see the marzipan layer as something slightly different. It can often be the layer within an organisation where communications get stuck. It can often prove to be a bit of an impenetrable layer, where important messages from the executive team get stuck and never make it down to the bulk of the workforce underneath.

Likewise, important feedback and ideas from the ‘cake’ too often never make it up through the marzipan layer to the ‘icing’. There are any number of reasons for this, many of which are legitimate and understandable. They can be addressed through training, awareness, support, and incentivisation. The one standout exception is those managers who deliberately hold back on passing feedback up the line because they fear it will make them look bad.

In a culinary sense, Marzipan it is a dense pungent paste made from ground almonds and sugar. It serves to provide an impenetrable layer protecting the spotless and clinically clean icing from being stained by the moist rich fruit cake underneath it.

Hey maybe there is more to this analogy than I first thought!

Read rage

I’m a bit of a foodie. I love cooking and cookery. My mother recommended reading AA Gill’s recent review in the Times of Heston’s Pub in Bray, the Hind’s Head. She knew I’d be interested as she and I went to The Fat Duck last year for lunch.

I was not impressed with Mr Gill’s review. Not because he did not have anything good to say about the food. More because he had nothing good to say about anything or anybody – and after reading for 5 minutes he still had not began to review the Pub. I felt cheated and angry. He was wasting my time – so much so that I felt compelled to register with the Times online simply so I could tell him what I thought about his review.

And just In case my comment disappears, here it is, recorded for posterity to remind myself of the day I suffered from read rage:

Jon Weedon wrote:

“The room was packed with happy once-or-twice-a-year diners taking out their in-laws and new pullies. They were jolly and full of good cheer.”  Not everyone can afford the time or the money to eat out every day you rude man – and thank God when they do they at least allow themselves the possibility of having a good time. Pretentious claptrap so full of irrelevant smug self righteousness its put me right off my bacon and egg sarnie.
January 12, 2010 9:51 AM GMT

New Brand Tribalism

I am a sucker for a good brand and follow many. Given the affinity I feel with many, what I find irrational is that despite a strong bond with a brand, it only takes one small act of poor customer service and the love affair is all over.

All except one. What is it about football clubs? They make so little effort to create and maintain a community – because they don’t need to. I have suffered brutally poor customer service over the last 34 years from Fulham FC but do my feelings diminish? Never!

For me it illustrates the absolute strength of authentic long term emotionally based relationships. Emotions are far more powerful for some of us than reason and logic, and the emotional commitment a football fan has generally creates a virtually unbreakable bond that most commercial brands would die for.

I’m going to return to this when I’ve had a bit more time to think about it. I’m thinking New Brand Tribalism…..

Until then; COME ON YOU WHITES!

Flipping videos

I’ve been thinking about using the excellent flip for internal communications. There’s no doubt that internal use of video can be a very engaging way of bringing corporate news to life, however the overheads in terms of cost and time get in the way of doing it on a daily basis.

I believe there will always be a place for the video profesionals to work their magic on the bigger events but that this can sit comfortably alongside impromptu low budget clips of staff commenting on issues, products, etc.

I just stumbled across a useful video and discussion on this subject here. The one thing missing that would make the flip an absolute winner for me is a wireless microphone. Picture quality is not a problem to the YouTube generation, but without great sound quality the best you’ll get is close-ups of people shouting at the camera, which just doesn’t do it for me.

Discretionary effort

Great posting by Tammy Erickson in the HBR today on her predictions for 2010 Five changes in the way we work

I particulary agree with prediction 3 on the competition for discretionary effort, which I unashamedly reproduce here:

Engagement has been a hot topic in talent management circles for the past decade. But its benefits have focused primarily on attracting and retaining employees. Increasingly, managers’ focus will shift to competing for an employee’s discretionary energy — competing with other priorities in the employee’s life, including other options for work — but also competing against employees who are only “going through the motions.” More and more of the work in today’s economy cannot be done rotely — success requires a spark of extra effort, creativity, collaboration, and innovation.

Goes back to what I wrote about yesterday – the importance of creating a climate at work where people can be themselves!

Work hard, play hard

You see this rather hackneyed phrase far too much these days for my liking. People seem to like wearing it as a badge of honour. My problem with it is that it serves to reinforce the traditional boundaries between ones work life and social life, which in my book is a problem.

OK, some use it to justify work related jollies, which is fine. In fact it’s more than fine. If it’s true it’s a beautiful thing. However, others use it as an excuse to sneak out early on a Friday afternoon because their super human efforts have enabled them to pack into 4 hours what their less able colleagues take a whole day to achieve.

I’ve just finished reading a very interesting piece by Julian Birkinshaw, Professor of Strategic and International Management at London Business School called Is social networking at work good for employee engagement?

The fact that more companies in the UK ban the use of social networking sites in the workplace than don’t means that this is already a much debated issue. There was an excellent piece a while back on Mashable which pretty much articulated my own very strong views on the matter. What interested me most was the bit on the blurring of the boundaries between home and work, especially given that in my inaugural introductory post yesterday I boldly stated I like this trend.

It’s true, I feel this blurring is a very positive thing – what Professor Birkinshaw has done is help me think harder about why. The truth is I had never really thought about it, other than to rationalise that it is a very powerful force in creating stronger bonds between a company and its customers. I hadn’t really considered that people who like to keep their work life and social life completely separate may be leaving their more creative and playful side of themselves at home.

Professor Birkinshaw suggests that when people bring more of themselves to work the benefits are increased creativity, engagement and discretionary effort. Rock on!