I don’t mean all the content was depressing (I’m hoping it wasn’t!); I mean that the way the session was structured brought employees’ energy level down, rather than pumping it up.
As I’ll explain in tomorrow’s web workshop, the problem is the way town hall agendas are usually set up:
This type of town hall exists to provide information on a variety of topics (which is, in terms of energy level, a downer) rather than engage employees in a compelling topic. Plus, the way the leader’s content is constructed is flat (as in flat line) rather than built like a story, with a dramatic arc.
A “story arc” is a term that fiction writers, Broadway playwrights and Hollywood screenwriters use to describe the ups and downs of a narrative. For a quick overview about story arcs, read this Daily Writing Tips blog by Ali Hale.
The story arc idea can be applied to any type of session in which the objective is to involve and motivate people, and encourage them to take action. Think about a campaign rally, for instance. If the speech is well-constructed and enthusiastically delivered, participants will cheer and leave determined to help their candidate succeed. If the session is dull and factual, without drama or energy, participants will clap politely and leave without being committed to take action.
A town hall isn’t an information-delivery channel; it’s a key tool in the campaign to win the hearts and minds of employees. So you need to think differently about the way you create your agenda and help the leader develop his/her content. Ask yourself: How can you put this town hall together to raise employees’ energy and leave them feeling more motivated than when they came in?
]]>Yet when it came time for Q&A, an eerie stillness filled the room. Employees didn’t speak. They didn’t even move. And they certainly didn’t make eye contact with the CEO. Finally, the employee communicator stood up and asked a question that had been secretly written by the head of HR. That broke the ice a little bit and eventually a few more questions were asked, but the Q&A never really caught fire. In fact, the town hall meeting ended 30 minutes early.
What went wrong? Actually, a lot of things. (Sign up for my January 24 town hall workshop to learn more). For now, I’d like to focus on the simplest one: The way the room was arranged discouraged employee participation.
Those responsible for organizing this town hall asked the hotel to arrange the room in theater style: semicircular rows of chairs facing a stage.
Here’s the problem: A theater-style set up sends a signal to people that their role is to observe and listen. We think of concerts, plays, movies, sporting events—all experiences where we’re not participants, but audience members.
Theater-style seating is one of the two worst room arrangements for participation. The other terrible setup is classroom style, where employees sit facing the stage behind a desk-like table. Classroom-style seating reminds us of being third-graders: We’re there to absorb information, and all power is at the front of the room (where the leader/teacher stands).
So, back to our original town hall scenario. What advice did I give about changing the room arrangement? I suggested that the room be set up with round tables, with employees sitting in a semi-circle around one side of each table, facing the CEO.
Changing the chairs (and using a few other techniques to encourage participation) dramatically improved the dynamic of the session. Employees interacted with each other more before the CEO began speaking. More importantly, when it came time for the Q&A, they actually asked questions. Some even made comments.
The upshot? Next time you conduct a town hall, consider the chairs.
]]>The book’s premise is that information overload is making it difficult for business people to focus and take action. “In our information-driven global economy,” the authors write, “the real challenge lies in keeping your head above the flood of data, learning how to separate information from facts, and acquiring the judgment to use what you find to inspire others to act.”
To deal with the deluge, Mr. Frank and Mr. Magnone recommend a number of strategies. One has particular relevance for those of us who communicate with employees—it’s so useful, in fact, that I’ve included it on my list of professional resolutions.
The idea is simple: Before you start any project, first identify your “essential question.” (The authors call this an “essential business question” but I’ve simplified it to cover a variety of situations.) The problem with being overloaded (with work, as well as information) is that we often plunge into situations without stepping back and asking what the issue is really about.
But asking the essential question provides perspective and “leads to an orderly, informed process of discovery and, ultimately, to success.”
The essential question “should be prescriptive. It should be written so that it has to be answered by a business action (target, explore, go, no-go, continue, etc.). Essential Questions do not have to be complicated. In fact, the simpler question is usually the better question: What business am I in? What am I providing of value to the customer? Which customers will pay for it?”
For example, let’s say you’re rolling out a new product or service. “The Essential Question should lead you to the one piece of information you need to make that rollout successful. That question might be: How do we identify our most promising prospects?”
What’s the payoff? Mr. Frank and Mr. Magnone promise that if you develop the habit of asking essential questions, “not only will your insight into business solutions, grow, but your personal brand will shift to consultant. And when you are also able to deliver the answer, your reputation will be that of a trusted advisor,” not just an order-taker.
Hope this helps you have a great year!
]]>Front-line employees I spoke to don’t have their own computers, but the company provides computers in common areas—training rooms and employee lounge/eating areas—for employees to use when they have free time. Employees can grab an open computer to complete online training courses, visit the intranet or email their colleagues.
Sounds good, right? But most employees told me that they only occasionally go online. “Usually, I’m too tired after I finish work to check out the intranet,” said one employee, in what was a typical comment. “And if I’m taking training, when I’m done, I don’t hang around—just get up and move on to the next thing.”
As a result, these employees are only “semi-wired” because, while they have access, getting online is not very convenient. Being online is not part of their work routine, as it would be with headquarters or office employees. So “semi-wired” employees at this company don’t rely on the intranet as one of their primary ways to receive information.
This experience is played out at many companies around the world—maybe yours. And it relates to a phenomenon described in a recent New York Times opinion piece The New Digital Divide.
As Susan P. Crawford writes, “Increasingly, we are a country in which only the urban and suburban well-off have truly high-speed Internet access, while the rest—the poor and the working class—either cannot afford access or use restricted wireless access as their only connection to the Internet. As our jobs, entertainment, politics and even health care move online, millions are at risk of being left behind.”
To illustrate the problem, Ms. Crawford cites statistics released last month by the Department of Commerce: “A mere 4 out of every 10 households with annual household incomes below $25,000 in 2010 reported having wired Internet access at home, compared with the vast majority—93 percent—of households with incomes exceeding $100,000. Only slightly more than half of all African-American and Hispanic households (55 percent and 57 percent, respectively) have wired Internet access at home, compared with 72 percent of whites.”
The upshot is that the same employees at your company who don’t have online access at work may not have it at home, either. In short, your communication program may be suffering from a digital divide—between the well-connected, well-paid, well-informed people in offices and the rest of employees (call them the 99 percent), working in factories, stores, transportation, warehouses and other places.
Your first step? Understand the challenge, through demographic and IT data and qualitative research like focus groups. Only by doing so, can you work on ways to bridge the gap between technology haves and have-nots.
]]>Usually, Casey uses email to communicate what he’s working on. On Friday, he sent us a typical note giving a heads up about an upgrade he was going to install over the weekend.
I’m sharing Casey’s email with you because it’s a best practice of how to communicate about technology. It’s simple, clear and personal. The message is not geeky or technical.
Can you say the same about your company’s IT communication?
(BTW, none of us so-called professional communicators help Casey write his messages. I wish I were as good at technology as Casey is at writing!)
Here it is:
I'll be upgrading two of our network switches tomorrow at 8am. The upgrade will take roughly 1–2 hours.
What does this upgrade do?
This upgrade will make our Ethernet/LAN network fully operate at 1,000/Mbps speed. It is a welcome change from many of our computers capping at 100/Mbps due to the network switch that they currently run through. This will relate to faster connectivity to our internal servers. (This will not affect web/internet speed.)
Will this affect me from doing work?
Well, hopefully you'll be sleeping or mowing your lawn during this timeframe. If you happen to be working, please keep in mind that the STU/Cumulus server may not be accessible. However, the email and Davis consulting/graphics server will be accessible. If you plan to come in to the office, let me know.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks!
The study used both quantitative data and qualitative research to conclude that users searching on the Internet exhibit three distinct human behavior search patterns:
Why is this important? Employees are also seeking information in different ways, depending on their interest in a topic. So About.com’s advice for marketers is also relevant to how we provide communication internally:
As always, one size does not fit all, and the more we understand employees’ preferences, the better we can design communication that meets their needs.
]]>I’m so busy that I don’t have time to think.
A million deadlines are driving me to drink.
And my boss’s latest request has brought me to the brink.
If I had a second, maybe I’d find time to think.
What can I do? Murder will just land me in the klink.
But these clients are impossible—they want everything, including the kitchen sink.
It’s enough to send me searching for the nearest shrink.
Counseling’s nice, but I don’t even have time to think.
This job’s insane; everything is out of sync.
What’s urgent is not important, but I can’t make a stink.
I’ve got bills to pay, so I won’t let them see me blink.
Gotta go now; I simply don’t have time to think.
Check it out: Abstract Sunday from last Sunday's New York Times.
Cool, right?
]]>If you’re trying to improve your employee communication writing, you’ll find this book useful—even if you’re not Canadian. (However, when it comes to editorial style, the book is uniquely Canadian. I’m still trying to figure out why, in Maple Leaf Land, “colour” is spelled with a “u” and “superior” is not.)
The book is about so much more than editorial style—it’s a guide for anyone who needs to organize, research and write content. For example, here is a random sampling of tips that apply to so much of what we write about in employee communication. I hope you find these as useful as I do:
But what you don’t know about email may limit its effectiveness. For example, did you know that sending email at certain times of day increases the likelihood that employees will open a message? And that some days of the week generate more “opens” than others?
To improve email performance, take a page from marketers and pay attention to how and when you send email, not just what the message is. To get you started, here some key facts from MailerMailer's latest Email Marketing Metrics Report as reported in MediaPost’s Research Brief:
Even if you’ve struggled in the past with an overwhelmed and unresponsive IT group, the time might be approaching when you can find common ground between your objective (to make employee communication more up-to-date and interactive) and the agenda of the Chief Information Officer (CIO).
Why the opportunity? As explained in a recent article in Consulting Magazine, three things are top of mind for IT executives: social media, mobility and changing expectations of employees.
First, “CEOs and CIOs need to figure out how social networking can affect an organization’s ability to attract and retain top talent, profitable customers and valuable supply chain partners,” Consulting Magazine reports.
And then there’s mobility, “which refers to the explosive growth of computing power (both personal and business) each employee now commands, represents a classic risk in that it can be both a major threat and a major opportunity (and sometimes both, simultaneously).”
Finally, IT leaders are losing sleep over the “consumerization” of IT, where employees “hold the IT department to the same standard they expect when using Amazon, iTunes or their Droid-powered smart phone.”
I see all of these areas as opportunities for you to build stronger relationships with IT. After all, who better to collaborate with on how to use social media and mobility in ways that fit the needs of your organization? And what a great opportunity for you to support IT to communicate with employees about what new tools are available and how to use them.
It’s worth exploring. Share a cup of coffee with a key IT person . . . who knows where the conversation might lead?
]]>One colleague responded as follows:
“Thanks for a very informative article, particularly the ideas around Q & A. In our quarterly leader forum (a management all hands) we’ve done the small group discussion and it worked well. Some of the leaders complained that the auditorium seating wasn’t conducive to it. But guess what, it still worked better than inviting individual questions and getting crickets in return.
“I wanted to get your take on more CEO exposure with our employees. He’s a great guy, good sense of humor, but still intimidating. To make him more accessible to employees, we are planning to do some smaller employee group meetings in the cafeteria or in conference rooms throughout the facility, with the objective to build some rapport and some buzz, quality rather than quantity. We’re getting ready to communicate a refreshed strategy, so the thought was to keep this a kind of informal input session, appreciative inquiry style: What do you think is going well? How could we do more of that? Any tips on smaller meetings like this?”
Here’s the quick advice I provided to my colleague about small group sessions:
My colleague found these tips helpful; hope you do, too.
]]>But the Huffington Post did announce two new platforms today: HuffPost Women and HuffPost Parents. And in Ms. Huffington’s
interview with New York’s CBS 880 radio, she said something profound that relates directly to employee communication.
CBS 880 interviewer Pat Farnack noted that the Huffington Post just posted its 100 millionth comment. Ms. Farnack asked, “Do you see the role of your sites as not only as providing information but also as getting a conversation started?”
“Absolutely,” replied Ms. Huffington. “That is at the heart of what we see, both through our thousands of bloggers and through our millions of commenters. People don’t want just to read and to absorb and to receive information. They want to be part of the story of our times, and self-expression is becoming increasingly important.”
So here’s my question to you: Is your employee communication program reflecting this trend of participation and self-expression? Have you gone beyond providing information to creating a conversation?
And if not, could you be missing a crucial opportunity to engage employees?
]]>But here’s data that indicates that naysayers are looking at this issue from the wrong angle. A new study by the Pew Research Center first disputes the myth that social media is just for kids. In Pew’s sample, 79% of American adults said they use the Internet and nearly half of adults (47%), or 59% of internet users, say they use at least one social network. This means the average age of adult-SNS users has shifted from 33 in 2008 to 38 in 2010. Over half of all adult social network users are now over the age of 35.
Interesting, right? But here’s the really intriguing part: The Pew study finds a direct link between social media use and trust. Here’s Pew’s conclusion: “We asked people if they felt ‘that most people can be trusted.’ When we used regression analysis to control for demographic factors, we found that the typical Internet user is more than twice as likely as others to feel that people can be trusted. Further, we found that Facebook users are even more likely to be trusting. We used regression analysis to control for other factors and found that a Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day is 43% more likely than other internet users and more than three times as likely as non-internet users to feel that most people can be trusted.”
Why should trust be affected by connections made via social media? Fast Company writer Adam Penenburg connects the dots in his June article. He starts with the fundamentals: “We humans are hard-wired to commingle with one another offline and on-, and the web and its platforms like Facebook and Twitter make it more efficient than ever. That's because virtual relationships can be as real as actual relationships.”
And trust is more than a good feeling, writes Mr. Penenburg: It has a profound impact on how we humans operate. For example, trust influences what we buy. “A 2009 Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey study found that shoppers value the opinions of people they know the most, followed by online reviews written by strangers or in online communities.”
So, if you can change the focus of the social media conversation away from the worry-wart negatives, and toward the incredible potential of social media to build trust, maybe you can finally make some progress. You can push that rock all the way up the hill and bring social media into the mix. Wouldn’t that be cool?
]]>It seems like a good idea. You want to know how employees learn about a certain topic. So you ask this question: “How do you get information about the company strategy?”
And then you provide a list of options (like intranet home page, email bulletin, town halls, etc.), asking survey respondents to “Check all that apply.”
What could possibly be wrong with that?
The problem is two-fold. First, we’ll start with human nature. If you give me a list of different types of chocolate candy—Milky Ways, Hershey’s Kisses, York Peppermint Patties, etc.—and ask me which ones I like, I’ll check most of them. After all, I like chocolate.
So the first problem is that the structure of the question doesn’t require me to differentiate between candy I like a little and candy I like a lot. There’s no judgment required—just the easy, thoughtless process of checking boxes in a list.
Which leads to the second problem: Mediocre data.
For example, for the survey question you created about information about the strategy, let’s say that 87% of employees checked intranet home page, 76% email bulletin, 67% town halls.
You conclude that the home page is employees’ main way of receiving information about the strategy. Yes, but you don’t know whether the intranet is effective at providing this information. Employees may be receiving lots of strategy info on the home page, but may think it’s all junk.
The better way? Develop a question set that starts like this: “For each of the following channels, please indicate its effectiveness at providing you with information about the company strategy.”
Then list each channel with a four-point scale: effective, somewhat effective, somewhat ineffective, ineffective.
Yes, this takes more time (and survey real estate), but you’ll end up with much
better data about the effectiveness of each channel, and you’ll be able to compare the effectiveness of one channel vs. another.
So, please, just say no to “Check all that apply.”
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