NevOn

Pricey freedom of the press

BBC News: Danish-Swedish dairy giant Arla Foods says the ongoing boycott of Danish products in the Middle East had so far cost it between £40m and £50m. As the Muslim world refuses to buy Danish goods in protest over cartoons published in a Danish newspaper, Arla is losing £1m a day. Arla has also had to send home 170 employees across Denmark due to the impact of the reduced sales.

Ouch.

I thought it was extraordinary for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten to publish those cartoons (caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed) when it would have been apparent to anyone that they undoubtedly would cause major offence to large numbers of people (and clearly have). Like most western countries, Denmark enjoys freedom of the press. But just because they could publish them doesn't mean they should.

The situation is further worsened when other newspapers in France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Hungary re-published those cartoons this week. What on earth were they thinking? Ah, freedom of the press. Right.

Allan Jenkins - who has been chronicling some interesting things at Arla Foods regarding their blogs - has a thoughtful post on what this story can teach us. In his post he also raises a key point of distinct relevance to organizational communication:

[...] What do communicators need to think about in a world where an article in an obscure newspaper calls down boycotts on your company? When a controversy like this can leave employees pulled in several directions: loyalty to religious faith, a desire to do a good job, a desire not to be beaten at the factory gates.

Empathy for different cultures and beliefs - even when tolerance by some of the differing beliefs by others runs very thin - must be a prerequisite for any organization today doing business in any country, not just those in the Middle East. Respect for such differing beliefs would be woven into the corporate fabric (or DNA, as some would call it) of any organization. This isn't a new idea - tolerance, respect, etc, are already part and parcel of the expected behaviours and attitudes by employees in most companies today.

So it's not too hard to see the role communicators can play within an organization confronted with the situation as Allan describes. Indeed, a situation such as is confronting Arla Foods and many other Danish businesses.

Where it gets pretty complicated, though, is making any difference or exercising any influence on the strong (and inflexible-looking) opinions of people outside the organization.

These are easy answers. The fact is - there are no easy answers.

Sound comfort for sailors

It's comforting to know that HMS Daring, the first of the Royal Navy's latest Type 45 destroyers launched on Wednesday, is fitted with the most advanced state-of-the-art weapons and defence systems. For instance:

[...] The main armament for the new destroyers will be the world-beating Principal Anti Air Missile System (PAAMS) - a collaboration between the UK, France and Italy. This capability represents a major step forward for the Royal Navy, putting the UK at the cutting edge of area Anti Air Warfare and ensuring that the Type 45 can defend her consorts and allies for decades to come.

The new generation of missiles could be sea-skimming, high-diving, supersonic, stealthy or highly manoeuvrable. Attacks could come from any direction and in salvoes. With its advanced combat system, the Type 45 will greatly enhance the ability of the Royal Navy to defend its warships and other vessels it is accompanying from anti-ship missiles and from attacks by aircraft and land-based threats.

More comforting for the crew, perhaps, is their living environment:

[...] HMS Daring's 230-strong crew should be happy too. She and her sisters will be the first "gender-neutral" warships to enter Royal Navy service, and the Hotel Facilities, as the living quarters are known, are the most opulent ever fitted in a British warship. Mess decks are replaced by individual cabins, each with their own I-pod charging points, CD player, internet access, five channel recreational audio and larger berths.

(Bold text is my emphasis.)

No jokes about this in this post! It's not too far-fetched to look at the iPodding of the crew's quarters, with its internet access as well, as a podcasting opportunity for the Navy as an employer to communicate with the crew as employees in a new and interesting way...

(Via Engadget)

CEOs say blogs are useful

CNET News: A growing number of American chief executives rate blogs high as employee communication tools, though a majority of them remain skeptical about starting their own, a new study shows. About 59 percent of CEOs surveyed said they find Web logs, or blogs, useful for internal communications, while 47 percent see them as tools for communication with external audiences, according to a study conducted by PRWeek and Burson-Marsteller.

Of the 131 CEOs surveyed, CNET reports, 7 percent are actually blogging while many others say they are unlikely to start a blog themselves. About 18 percent of these CEOs say they plan to host a company blog over the next two years.

This is the part in CNET's report that is most telling - the survey indicates that chief executives see blogs as useful for communicating new ideas and news, providing an informal channel of communication and getting instant feedback.

That's certainly one of the ways to see the value and potential benefits of how blogs can be effective communication tools.

FIR Interview - Jonathan Mast and Aidan Hagood - October 24, 2005

In this edition of For Immediate Release podcast interviews, Shel enjoyed a 24-minute conversation with Jonathan Mast and Aidan Hagood. Jonathan is a senior communications specialist with Sedgwick Claims Management Services; Aidan is the communications department admin. Together, they host "QuickCast," arguably the first completely internal podcast.

Download the conversation here (MP3, 9MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and our future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need software such as the FeedDemon RSS aggregator, or the free ipodder or DopplerRadio).

Interview Segment Time Points:

• 00:20 Audio clip of the intro to "QuickCast"
• 00:38 Shel introduces the interview
• 01:35 Shel introduces Jonathan and Aidan
• 01:52 Jonathan provides some background on Sedgwick CMS
• 03:02 A look at Sedgwick's traditional communications
• 03:44 The motivation for producing a podcast for employees
• 04:15 The strategic planning behind the podcast
• 05:35 They conducted research on digital media player ownership among employees
• 06:17 Sedgwick PCs have audio capabilities
• 07:12 A look at the content of "QuickCast"
• 08:45 An opportunity to get employees closer to the customer
• 10:02 How the podcast was marketed to employees
• 11:25 How "QuickCast" is distributed and plans for RSS feeds
• 12:58 How "QuickCast" is recorded
• 13:50 They try to keep "QuickCast" to no more than six and a half minutes
• 14:30 Employee feedback on the podcast
• 16:00 Measuring listenership
• 17:35 Jonathan and Aiden on developing a co-hosting relationship
• 19:04 What it costs
• 19:21 Future podcasting plans
• 20:27 Final comments
• 21:07 A clip of a "QuickCast" featuring Sedgwick CMS President and CEO Dave North
• 21:35 Shel wraps up the interview segment
• 22:03 General information on "For Immediate Release"

Links for the individuals and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the conversation:

Sedgwick Claims Management Services, Audacity audio recording and editing software, Lawrence Ragan Communications Inc.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel's and my podcast blog.)

New online resource for internal communicators

Melcrum Publishing, the global communication publisher, today launched The Hub, a new online knowledge resource for internal communicators with hundreds of resources to help communicators do their jobs more effectively.

The first of its kind in the UK according to Melcrum, The Hub provides members with resources that include networking, news and analysis, learning guides and downloadable tools and templates.

A key value element of those resources is the involvement of global communicators to whom members of The Hub have an opportunity to put their burning questions on employee communication issues through the site's Ask the Expert Clinics. Communicators who will be participating in running the Expert Clinics include Angela Sinickas, Bill Quirke, Helen Coley-Smith, Fraser Likely and me (I'll be addressing internal communication issues related to channels and new media).

The Hub is live from today. You can sign up for a free 15-day trial for limited access, or become a member with access to all content at the exclusive launch price of £295/€435 for an annual subscription.

Webinar: Blogs and internal communication

If you have responsibility for internal communication and want to find out how you can use blogs effectively within your organization, you might want to consider participating in a 90-minute webinar on Wednesday 31 August in which I will be one of the speakers.

Blogs and their implications on internal communication - are you ready for that call? will address the following issues:

• Understand what you want to achieve with blogs - internal blogs serve very different purpose than external blogs
• How to address the concerns of managers who may be nervous about legal issues and lack of control
• Understand what a blog is in communication terms - how are they different from other interactive media you may be using?
• Learn and set the rules for blogging: you'll be the person who is asked to draft the blogging policy - would you know what to write?
• How to get them right from the start and avoid embarrassing and humiliating mistakes
• How to overcome the concerns of your legal department and senior managers
• Understand the legal ramifications of launching a blog and how to establish guidelines so that executives and employees understand what material is off limits

My fellow speakers will be Victoria Mellor, CEO of Melcrum, the publishing and event management company who have organized this online event, and David Berger who manages strategy communications for IBM. David helped create IBM's blogging point-of-view and employee blogging guidelines. In addition to his work on blogs, wikis and syndication for IBM, he is responsible for communicating IBM's corporate strategy to their 320,000 employees.

Date : Wednesday 31 August
Time: 2:00pm to 3:30pm US Eastern time
Cost: $295

More information and registration here.

Mission impossible statements

Most large companies have a mission statement, an expression that sets out the purpose of the organization or what the organization intends to achieve over time.

In some large organizations, it's not uncommon to walk around an office and see posters displayed with a statement to remind everyone of the organization's mission (which some people really do see as the successful end result of communicating that mission to employees).

One goal for many companies who have articulated their mission is to hope that employees act the part in their behaviours and their interactions with fellow employees, customers and everyone they come into professional contact with.

It can be hit and miss when acting out the mission, so to speak - more miss than hit if this story is any indicator.

In recounting his sorry experiences in dealing with a customer service employee of Avis, the car rental firm, when he queried some charges on his rental bill, Financial Times reporter Sathnam Sanghera noticed that "We Try Harder", Avis's 42-year-old mission statement, was emblazoned on surfaces around the office:

[...] The words haunted me as I stomped off to write a long and ultimately unsuccessful letter of complaint. We Try Harder? Try harder to do what? To irritate our loyal customers? To drive them away? Weeks later, the words were still swilling around my head. So, as an outlet for my rage, I began researching the subject of mission statements, to find out if they are all as annoying as Avis's.

Ballmer interview turns communication upside down

Watching Robert Scoble's video interview with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is the confirmation for me that formal, pre-planned and carefully-controlled organizational communication has now reached an evolutionary end point.

Traditionally, planning and managing communication in organizations is a function managed by people skilled in particular areas of communication (corporate, marketing, PR, investor, internal, etc). So planning and doing an interview like this would typically involve quite a few people in different functions, all of whom would participate in arriving at a decision about it.

Yet an interview like this one turns much of the traditional approach to communication - and, indeed, the traditional communication function - upside down.

Here we have Robert Scoble (who's not part of a formal and traditional communication function) who can set up an interview with the CEO that's highly informal and unstructured, discuss topics that would be carefully pre-planned and controlled - scripted, even - in a typical company, and then immediately publish the resulting video on a public website for all the world to see. That includes employees.

While Microsoft may not (yet) be typical of the average company in terms of its sheer openness and transparency - meaning that most companies would be unlikely to bare all, so to speak, in this way - an interview like this is a tremendous example of some new and different thinking that can be employed alongside traditional thinking. And I'm not suggesting that, in this example, Robert just went ahead and did the interview without consultation with, let's say, the formal communication structure in Microsoft.

If I were a communicator at Microsoft, I'd want to find out what different people think about this video interview. While you could do that through informal means like quick surveys and just asking people, I'd want to measure it a bit more formally and see how it's perceived in the context of overall (yes, formal) communication.

However it was planned and whatever the objectives are that it will try and achieve, it's a great example. It also gives you some sense of Ballmer the person in a far more authentic way than the dry and formal bio you see on the Microsoft website.

Anyway, watch the video and see what you think of it. You can also read a transcript.

Technical note re video still image

The image of Ballmer you see above is a frame from the video. Trying to capture a still image from the video proved to be very tricky indeed using the screen capture programs I tried (Paint Shop Pro 8, Snag-It and HyperSnap DX 5, and even the printscreen function in Windows XP). In each case, all I got was a solid black object.

I figured it must be something to do with things like video layers, codecs and even needing hardware like a video capture card. Reading a paper on video capture in the Windows XP Resource Kits helped me understand things a bit more but not find an easy solution. All I wanted to do was quickly capture a still image from this video, not deeply understand all the technical stuff about it.

Then I found TopazMoment. What a terrific program! All I did was download it, install it, open the video in it and capture a still image. That's it. If I needed to do this a lot, I would buy this program. Free to try for 30 days then $39.99.

Interview: Angela Sinickas and Tudor Williams - June 22, 2005

In this edition of For Immediate Release podcast interviews, Shel enjoyed a 49-minute conversation with Angela Sinickas, ABC and Tudor Williams, ABC, two of the leading internal communications measurement authorities in the business.

About our conversation partners:

A pioneer in the field of organizational communication measurement, Angela Sinickas has been measuring the effectiveness of communications since 1981. Her prolific publications and speaking engagements on the topic since then have made her name synonymous with measurement of organizational communication. Angela and her measurement work have been cited in Harvard Business Review, Investors Business Daily, HR Magazine, Executive Solutions, PR News, Journal of Communication Management, Ragan Report and Communication World, among many other publications. Angela is the president of Sinickas Communications, Inc., an international communication consultancy helping corporations achieve business results through targeted diagnostics and practical solutions.

Management consultant, Tudor Williams, ABC, is recognized internationally for his knowledge management research, change management strategies and strategic communication planning. With over 25 years of professional wisdom in communication management, he leads Tudor Williams Inc. In recent years he has helped twisurveys earn a market niche with innovative best practices research. His communication management career began with eight years in corporate public affairs management. Since then he has led the communication practices for two international consulting firms, Towers Perrin and The Alexander Consulting Group (now AON). In 1994 he established his own consultancy and is a Principal with twisurveys Inc.

Download the conversation here (MP3, 21MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and our future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need software such as the FeedDemon RSS aggregator, or the free ipodder or DopplerRadio).

Interview Segment Time Points:

• Time codes to come

Links for the individuals and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the conversation:

Sinickas Communications, Inc., Tudor Williams, Inc., For Immediate Release.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel's and my podcast blog.)

Blogs: No substitute for personal communication and trust in the workplace

PR Week published a pretty good piece about policies and guidelines for employee blogging last week. The article includes much of the type of counsel and advice on why companies should have polices or guidelines that you'd expect to see now, given previous media reporting on this topic as well as the widely-reported examples of companies who have publicly talked about their employee blogging policies, such as Yahoo and IBM.

The key message is - yes, if you enable your employees to blog, make sure you clearly set out the ground rules so that everyone knows how things stand.

One comment in PR Week's report that I found especially significant - and one I've not really seen anyone else talking about - came from Christopher Hannegan, who runs Edelman's Employee Engagement practice:

[...] Hannegan says that most employees will exhibit common sense when blogging. "For the most part, employees aren't stupid," he says. "They know if they post confidential information, they'll get in trouble for it." [He] notes that employees are less likely to blog about frustrations with the company if there is another outlet for their frustrations. So facilitating greater employee-manager communication might help alleviate a staff member's need to vent on the web.

This is a an excellent point to think about when considering all the elements about enabling employees to blog. It highlights a fact about organizations and relationships in the workplace - if you provide people with an outlet to express themselves in an environment where such outlets don't exist already or are not trusted, the new outlet you provide (in this case, blogs) will likely be used in unexpected ways that don't bode well for their nurturing and development, nor for good employer-employee relationships.

And remember one crucial thing. Like any other communication tool used by employees, a blog is no substitute or surrogate for the personal communication and trust that must be built and maintained between employees and their direct managers. It's a relationship that takes some work and requires the willing and active participation of all parties.

Christopher also says this in the PR Week article:

[...] One of the reasons employee blogs have garnered so much attention as a PR tactic, he says, is that employees bring more credibility to the public than a CEO or top-level executive. "People are more likely to identify with [bloggers] if they talk like a regular person," he says.

It's a good point, although I don't think you can say sweepingly that "employees bring more credibility to the public than a CEO or top-level executive." If you were to say "employees can bring more credibility to the public than many CEOs or top-level executives," then I'd be more comfortable.

PR Week | Blogs: Firms give staffers larger role in their web presence