Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

The only thing employees want to know

by // 3 Comments

Yesterday communication veteran Robert Holland published his list of "Things Employees Want from Communication."

Robert Holland's Opus, in a nutshell: Employees want to be treated like adults, and to be communicated with by adults, through modern communication media and also direct contact with both senior management and direct supervisors.

Rookie communicators ought to have that sentence laminated for their wallet.

But once they've got that down, the question is: What exactly do employees want to know? (Don't go asking them, because they don't know themselves.)

We'll call it Murray's Manifesto:

They want to know what kind of people they are working for.

Let me repeat: They want to know what kind of people they are working for.

That's all they want to know: What kind of people they are working for.

But that's a lot: They want to know how smart are the people they're working for. How honest. How empathetic. How interested in new ideas. How down to earth. How consistent. How careful. How generous of spirit. How forward-looking. And how committed to the welfare of the employees.

Seriously. That's all they want to know. You may want to give them other kinds of information, and they may be pleased to get it.

But if you can convince your employees that the people who run the organization are solid human beings who care about what they're doing … well, that's a team employees will find a way to help.

And if you lack the communication ability to get that across (virtuous executives not included)?

You'd better dance fast.

Why aren’t IABC Richmond’s chapter meetings fun anymore?

by // 24 Comments

Last week communication blogger, Boots regular, new McMurry colleague and IABC watcher Robert Holland sounded an alarm that his Richmond, Va. chapter and others like it "need help—now!" from the mother organization, IABC International.

He said it's killing him to watch his beloved local chapter struggle to retain members and fail to cajole people to attend monthly meetings.

"As we recalled last night, coming to an IABC/Richmond meeting was [once] an
energizing experience. Now the chapter is struggling, but it is not
because of mismanagement or lack of effort by local volunteers.
Understanding the problem—and, more important, what to do about it—requires more resources and experience than IABC/Richmond leaders can
muster. And the Richmond chapter is not alone. This scenario is playing
out in many other chapters, especially in North America."

I have a couple of reactions to Robert's post:

First, I question Robert's contention that it takes an international organization based in San Francisco to understand why the bounce has gone out of a local club's bungee. Isn't that a little like demanding help from the Miller Brewing Company to explain why the Thursday night crowd has tailed off at the J&M Tap? 

Not that I don't think the mother organization should be motivated to understand why some chapters' membership is down while other chapters (like Chicago and Toronto) are thriving.

Overall, IABC is down a thousand members thanks to the economy (membership stands at about 15,500), and the association brass is launching a study to assess members' needs. Here's what I expect the study will find:

Where once IABC was the lock, stock, whole nine yards, kaboodle and barrel of all communicator networking—luncheon meetings for local chumming up, the big fat directory and the International Conference for national and international networking—LinkedIn and other social networking platforms have handled the basic national networking, leaving IABC's core value on the outer margins:  global, and hyper local.

I'm an IABC member, but I consider LinkedIn my go-to network. Why? Because even though my LinkedIn connections are only a modest 184, these are communicators I know all over the country (and a few more far-flung). So if I need to talk to a communicator in San Francisco or at in the auto industry, I'll probably turn to my personal network long before figuratively thumbing through a virtual IABC phone book.

But if I need a communication contact in Shanghai or New Delhi, I go to IABC, which not only offers me contacts there, but a useful introduction, too: "Greetings from Chicago! I'm a fellow IABC member …."

The rest of the value IABC offers is local. Without IABC, each city would need its own communication Grand Poobah to start a club and host meetings that appeal to locals and make a group culture all their own … wait a minute, each city does need all these things, even with IABC. IABC's central office only provides a framework. (And if it were too heavy-handed, those Richmond meetings would never have been any fun in the first place.)

If Richmond's IABC meetings are dead these days—especially in an economy where people are networking with one another other like beetles in the spring—I suspect one of two things is true:

Either Richmond's communication community is shrinking, longer having enough generous veterans to speak at meetings and accept résumés, enough up-and-coming pros to run the meetings, or enough eager beavers to populate them.

Or, the community is lacking a Grand Poobah with sufficient charisma and talent and energy to pull together good meetings.

Can IABC International do a better job of supporting IABC Richmond? Might San Francisco be a better clearinghouse for chapter-to-chapter survival tips? Might it be argued that IABC should divert some of the resources it puts toward national programs toward chapter support? Yes, yes, yes.

But the first chore, it seems to me, is introspection, at the chapter level. If we find out What's the Matter with Richmond we'll know what's the matter with IABC.

And I trust IABC Richmond veteran Robert Holland to answer that question in far more revealing and useful detail than some survey issued from California.

Don't you?

A blog that’s afraid of politics is afraid of communication itself

by // 9 Comments

There's a good yak starting over at Robert Holland's blog about trust: the extent to which communication relies on it versus the extent to which communication can actually build it.

Robert got the conversation going by talking about a couple of personal relationships, and how his efforts to communicate with children and lovers rise and fall on whether or not they trust one another.

I weigh in by saying that organizational communication is essentially political, that:

everything we do takes
place in a socio-political context having to do with rich people’s
attitudes about middle-class people and vice versa, middle-class
people’s attitudes about poor people and vice versa, managements
attitudes about labor and vice versa.

And it’s EXACTLY why modern communicators, who believe they can be
effective if only they’re organized and align their messages and their
media and their measurement tools, are fools.

Unfortunately, they’re fools who tell management exactly what it
wants to hear, and they get hired over the guy who says, “Look boss, we
need two years of trust-building just to get the guys down at the
Trenton factory to listen to the first word out of your mouth.”

It also occurs to me to add here, a point I've been thinking about for awhile, about politics and the advisability of writing about them in a "communication blog," like mine, Steve Crescenzo's, Shel Holtz's or Robert Holland's.

I think two truths apply:

1. Readers don't come to a communication blog (or an IT blog or a horse whispering blog) to hear one more asshole's opinion on the merits of the public option. A communication blog will be resented for ranting and raving about the same policies or politicians that Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly are railing about. It's not hard for our readers to get to, "If I wanted to listen to this crap, I'd turn on my TV."

• But almost as off-putting is a communication blog that never reveals the writer's political view. We are not just "communicators"—amoral information trumpets to be played, sweetly or sourly, by whoever owns us. We are players in the organizations we work for, participants in the lives of the people we communicate to, factors in the consciences of the people we advise. If we believe that management is greedy, that is one thing. That employees are whiners, that's another. That spineless middle managers are the problem, that's a third.

Our attitudes about labor unions, technologists, American customers (are they always right, or is a fool born every minute?), investors … these are all political points of view that must necessarily inform any communications we do—and advise our clients to do.

Is the solution persuading employees that current working conditions are "competitive" (and, thus justified), or is it getting managers to make a key concession? Does the organization need to improve the quality of its products, or do consumers need to be "educated" to have more realistic expectations. Communicators don't have a final say in such decisions, but they certainly have a horse in the race.

And so a communicator who takes pains to hide his or her general attitudes and specific opinions about these kinds of issues—as circumstances arise and as the spirit inspires—is doing so in order to give hiring managers the false (or worse, correct) impression that they'll play whatever tune that's requested.

Talk about your trust issues.