Bloghound

After reading the book “Bowie in Berlin: A New Career in a New Town,” poet and creative coach Mark McGuinness wrote this great post about creative takeaways from David Bowie’s “Berlin period.”  Here’s a summary of Mark’s post:

1. Zag when others zig
2. If you’re always crashing the same car, get out
3. Make the most of other people’s talent
4. Give yourself culture shock
5. There’s a time and a place for mucking about
6. A sound business model makes up for a multitude of sins
7. Trust your curiosity
8. Embrace new technology
9. Don’t assume it will be difficult
10. Rock stars get special treatment
    

Installing Web 2.0/social media tools is easy. Realizing the benefits from them might not be, depending on a company’s culture.

Steve Radick has a good post over at Social Media Strategery (say that three times fast) where he poses 10 questions to assess whether an organizational culture can support what social media enables.  Good questions all.

1. Are employees discouraged from contacting people outside of their chain of command?
2. Are employees discouraged from challenging authority?
3. Is risk-taking rewarded or punished?
4. Are employees rewarded for collaborating with other colleagues or for authoring/producing original work?
5. Do your employees have regular access to the Intranet?
6. Does your leadership value the feedback of employees?
7. Are employees prohibited from speaking externally without prior permission?
8. Is the contribution and sharing of intellectual capital part of the employees’ regular routine?
9. What’s more valued, entrepreneurship or following orders?
10. Do employees derive more value from networking with colleagues or from using the Intranet?

The risk of rigid corporate cultures: talent suck

What’s especially interesting to me is that if a company doesn’t value contributions, risk, networking and entrepreneurship, what will happen to the company in the next three years? Can organizations stay relevant if they are this rigid? Unlikely — especially in any industry where talent is at a premium. (And that is most. This recent Business Week article, “The Global Talent Crisis,” is especially insightful about the issue.)

A communications professional recently asked me for advice on where to start with social media considering that her CEO doesn’t value communications, never mind “this new stuff.”  (The CEO’s words.)  My advice to her was to get a new job at a different company. If senior management doesn’t want to empower employees and collaborate with customers, there was little she could do. And yet, the longer she goes without social media experience, the more difficult it will be for her to  advance professionally.

Creative, innovative talent will not tolerate the old command-and-control corporate culture. It’s too suffocating an experience, too difficult to learn new skills, and bad for career development.

To open our workshops about creating online communities, we at Beeline Labs start with an exercise that asks people to reflect on what it was like to be part of a real world community or group that they loved — could be anything from a summer camp to a college group to  a sports team.

After people share what was great about their group experiences, we explain that those same attributes are what make online communities great.  The magic is the experience with people, not the technology/venue, not the number of members or the amount of participation or activities.

Here’s what people at the Web 2.0 Expo/New York loved about their real world groups and communities:

• Shared purpose and experience
• Trust
• Feel like it’s safe place to share
• Respect for differences of opinion
• Passion for purpose or vision
• Friendship
• Ability to take or give
• Cool place to hang out
• Failure-free zones
• Excitement of finding diversity in a common group
• Openness of people in group
• Constantly something new going on
• Affirming: being part of group adds to your own identity
• Opportunity to learn
• Common ground rules respected by all
• Common problems
• Thrill of achieving something big together
• Initial investment, emotional or monetary, needed
• Good coordinator of leader

The secret to word of mouth marketing is to create products people love to talk about. Here’s an example from Deborah Kracht of Art Head Studio.  I’ve bought a bunch of her note cards and magnets for holiday gifts — especially for friends who need a little inspirational push for 2009.  Let’s all fly on this rocket next year.

More and more companies are starting corporate blogs that are dull, dull, dull. Here are 17 ideas for topics that make for interesting posts and will help get you out of dullsville.

1.    Conferences: Your comments on one (or several) of the speakers. What struck you as interesting and why? Or your takeaway on conference overall: 3 things that were most interesting or most over-hyped.

2.    New studies and reports: What are the top one, three, or five takeaways you think are particularly relevant/interesting. (People like reading lists, bullets in blogs.)

3.    YouTube videos: upload, link, add commentary on what you like, find interesting about video that has caught your attention.

4.    Book recommendations: Note on what you’ve just read and 3- 5 bullet points on what you thought were most interesting about book.

5.    Notes or emails from customers/employees/partners that are worth sharing because of their ideas, advice, appreciation, experience, etc. Just make sure the person is OK with you sharing.

6.    Stories about people: When you hear of a story about a person or fellow employee who does something that moves you, write about it – and include why the story affected you so much. This helps get to know you and your company’s culture.

7.    Views on breaking news: what’s your point of view on a story that’s in today’s headlines that’s relevant to your business?

8.    Dinner/meetings with customers: what’s on their minds and why – about industry trends, the economy, talent, etc

9.   Do a guest “interview”: send 3 questions to someone influential who you respect – a peer at another company, an academic, the head of a major industry association, a sports figure — and ask him/her to email answers. Then post in a Q&A format.

10.    Best practices and management tips: Share some of your company’s best practices – or your management advice — so others can learn from you.

11.   Share a presentation: If you’re making a presentation at a public conference, embed it as a post.

12.     10 things that surprised me about… This theme is evergreen. 10 things that surprise me about my company during my first month here. 10 things that surprised me about working in this new geographic location.  10 things that surprised me about learning to work for our well known CEO.   10 things that surprised me about expanding our business in China …

13.  Be magnanimous: No company has all the answers. Have you seen things at other companies you admire or think deserve attention? Praise and talk about them, taking the opportunity occasionally to tie it back to  your POV.

14.  Wax metaphoric: Observing a thread or theme in your business that’s comparable to something outsiders might find accessible, e.g., baseball? Wrap a post in a metaphor to put a new spin on things and make your view of the world more accessible.

15.  Be a (constructive) critic: Don’t be afraid to weigh in on something - in the news, on other blogs, in the markets - on which you have a strong opinion. Having a well articulated and strong point of view pulls people in, elicit reactions, and, if positioned constructively, can engage you in and expand an existing conversation that’s already got some momentum.

16.  Take sides: (Partly related to the item above.) Is there some big issue playing out in your industry or related ones on which your company has a position? Then say so, articulating why you believe what you do, while always trying to be respectful of those with other points of view.

17.  Historical corollaries: Have any great anecdotes to share that relate to today’s climate? Something in the past that readers will find an interesting and unique perspective that sheds new light on a current issue? Tie the present to the past with an observation that points out the parallels.

Thanks to my Beeline Labs partner Hylton Jolliffe for brainstorming on this.

Last night I randomly opened the Age of Conversation/2 and landed on Ernie Mosteller’s “The New Creatives Get It” article. Wow.  Here’s his take on the two fundamental differences between new and old creative, which I think really gets to the heart of the creative sea change.

1. Information first, entertainment second. It used to be that creative led with entertainment to get our attention, and then served up product information. Today people are looking for information, so effective creative leads with information people are looking — even if they’re looking for  entertainment.
2. Elegant complexity vs. clever simplicity. Old advertising focused on simplicity. But, Ernie warns, “on the Web simplicity fails. Miserably.”  Today great creative is telling an intricate story, but in ways that are interesting, fun and compelling to prospects.

Is you organization in the new creative mindset — or the old?

(I love the line on Ernie’s blog: “The medium is the audience.”  Oh yeah.)

Setting up clear, concrete guidelines for online communities is crucial. Doing so:

• Helps  members understand community expectations and culture
• Makes it easier for your team — and other community members– to  manage the community
• Helps get legal buy-in as together you’re addressing many known risk areas

In his book Managing Online Forums, Patrick O’Keefe provides thoughtful, detailed recommendations on developing and enforcing guidelines based on running several thriving communities.  Here are just 10 of his many guidelines; check out his book for more, as well as real world examples and nitty gritty advice on  running a communities.

10 community guideline ideas

1. Advertising and spamming: beware the many, many sneaky advertising  methods people try to use. Patrick provides several examples, which are also helpful to bloggers  trying to understand  whether some comments are legit or a backdoor spam strategy.
2. Copyright: guidelines should help members understand what they can and can’t do within copyright and intellectual property laws.
3. Personal, real-life information and privacy: don’t allow home addresses and phone numbers.
4. Vulgar language and offensive material: Not allowed.
5. Freedom of speech: Communities are intended to be places where people with like interests can share ideas, debate views and give and get help. But they;re not places where anyone can say anything. “You have no obligation to allow people to say whatever they want, whenever they want. It is your site and it is your responsibility to set the guidelines that all users must adhere to.”
6. Respect: Inflammatory or disrespectful comments not allowed, including slanderous information. Related, “Do not allow your site to become a soapbox for someone you believe has some sort of agenda.”
7. Deleting accounts and/or posts in the future: put guidelines in place that will respect someone’s request to have his/her posts removed, without removing valuable content from the community. (Patrick’s advice: change user name to something non-descriptive like username85673.
8. Hotlinking: No posting and linking to images, videos, fies on servers that you don’t have permsission to link to as the person paying for the server  is paying for this. “The result is badnwidth theft.”
9. Caution on advice: “Your policies should make it clear that any advice given on your site is for informational and educational purposes only, that it is not verified by you or anyone else for accuracy and as such, it can be inaccurate.” He notes this is especially important if the community conversations get into highly sensitive — and often regulated — issues like healthcare and financial advice.
10. Who’s the boss? Make it clear who has the final say on enforcing guidelines, and be clear about who people should contact with a complaint and how the complaint should be lodged, e.g., via private email vs. on the community site.

Note: Chapter 6 of Patrick’s book,  “Banning Users and Dealing with Chaos,” addresses issues that every corporate legal eagle worries about when it comes to social media and that not enough marketers think through  before launching. Showing legal that you have anticipated these types of possibilities and have detailed plans in place for dealing with them will help you more quickly overcome legal’s concerns and get them working with you vs. finding reasons why NOT to have a community.

Here’s some of the material from last week’s Conference Board workshop about how to extend brands to employees by empowering employees with social media.

The workshop was four hours, yet the time flew as there’s so much to talk about and learn in this area. What made the session especially valuable to me was the tremendous participation and insights from HR and communications executives at some of the biggest companies in the world. What a great group to teach and lead! Thanks all.

During the workshop we did an exercise about “anchors” slowing companies down from realizing the possibilities of social media, which we addressed as part of the session. Here were the biggest anchors from the group, in order of “anchor weight.” The overwhelming resistance to change was a bit frightening to me. How can companies survive, never mind grow, without some risk and and openness to new ideas?

Top anchors slowing down social media adoption

• Time and resources: Finding resources amid competing priorities, where to find budget, who to manage
• Fear: Inappropriate employee comment, fear of bad news, maintaining company secrets, afraid to fail, fear of exposure, fear of unknown - this has never been done; fear of change; loss of control
• Management buy in: Conservative culture; old guard holding on to what has always been done, senior management not in favor of “sharing”; resistance to change; senior executives are anti-communications
• Generational issues: baby boomers not always willing to embrace new technology, generational resistance
• Value: lack of clear purpose for getting involved
• Initiating: Lack of a champion who gets it; knowing how to get started, where do you begin?; no resident expertise

Additional, but less significant, obstacles

• IT: security issues; IT desire to maintain control of tools; Complexity: too many competing technologies, too complex
• HR
• Legal/risk management
• Having to try to make SAP and Sharepoint work as social tools
• Maintaining company voice
• Employees feel they are already asked to do too much

“I can’t believe they said congratulations. This iMac must be really special. No one has ever congratulated me for buying something.”

These words from my 13-year-old son on Saturday morning after we bought an iMac. The store manager came out to the floor and introduced himself, handed my son the box, shook his hand and congratulated him. On the way out a young sales assistant said the same thing.  Talk about a shopping and customer service experience and making a lasting brand impression on a young consumer.

One word conveys a lot of meaning.

Yesterday I talked with a CEO client, one of the smartest, most positive and respected executives I’ve ever worked with. He, like most CEOs today, are creating plans to slash expenses, people and programs. “I’ve been through a number of recessions, but nothing like this,” he explained, with not a trace of optimism.

The greatest challenge is treating people who are losing their jobs humanely and with dignity. The second challenge is keeping remaining employees engaged during such uncertain times. A Gallup poll shows that companies with engaged employees grow earnings 2.6 times faster than those that don’t. In this economy, that may mean that companies with engaged employees make it, and those without  will not.

Here are eight communications suggestions for these difficult times:

1. Create  online alumni communities ASAP – a place to help find new jobs,  provide encouragement and support, get financial advice on how to keep life together, etc. You can be up and running with  Ning community in less than 30 minutes for less than $30 a month.
2. Don’t paint a rosy picture on a bleak landscape: people know things are bad, don’t pretend they are not.  Be clear about your business situation and what you believe the company needs to do to survive and come out stronger.  For every action, help people understand the why behind it. You’ll earn more trust by being real vs. trying to put a “good spin” on a difficult situation, that will continue to be fraught with uncertainty for at least another four fiscal quarters, if you can trust the economists.
3. It’s not about transparency, it’s about fairness and caring: Employees must feel that you care about their personal well-being. A recent Harvard study found that “even well-meaning organizations can destroy trust if they are perceived as being fair but callous.”  Get out of the office and into the field with your employees so that you can both experience their worlds and show that you care and that all the HR  “employees first” mantras are more than just rah rah.
4. Tie every decision to your corporate values: take out those values and use them as the guide for making decisions and communicating.  If you really believe the values, they will guide executive decisions in a way that will resonate with all your stakeholders, particularly employees.  In making announcements, explain to people how the decision supports the organization’s values.  And if the values are not helping to guide decisions,  you know that the vision/value exercise was a failure.
5. Start with managerial incompetence: the largest driver of employee trust, according to the Harvard study, is managerial competence. In looking where to reduce staff, don’t simply cut by salary range or management level. Make sure you keep the A players, and excuse the mediocre. This will earn trust and motivate employees.
6. Put Enterprise 2.0 tools in place to make it easier to work: with fewer people needing to do more work, make it a priority to provide company-wide 2.0 tools (wikis, blogs, communities, forums) that make it easier for people to find help and resources within the company, collaborate, solve problems small and large, and connect as people with other people.  Most of these tools are inexpensive, easy to install and require little training.
7. Sit in the chair: last year a communications manager of a large retailer put two chairs in the company lobby and made herself available to employees who wanted to sit and talk. The response was overwhelming. (Read more here.) Sometimes small gestures go a long way, especially in such stressful times.
8. One point at a time: My tennis partner, a financial CEO,  and I were recently getting crushed in a match. He came over and gave me this advice: “Take it one point at a time.” We did, and we came back and won.  In such stressful, uncertain periods this same advice may be good for business as well.