Archive for November, 2003
We recently conducted a leadership development series on conflict management, and dealing with an angry counterparty was a prominent theme during participant discussions. The fact is that anger can often become an element of conflict, and when it does, it requires management just as surely as does the conflict as a whole.
How to best manage anger? First recognize that anger is an emotional reaction: Whether you believe the other person is justified in becoming angry or not frankly isn’t relevant … you still have an angry person whose reactions you need to manage.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Harvard Business School Working Knowledge site recently posted an article on employee retention as a core business strategy. The piece is full of references to process-based communication and convincing decisions, and you can read it here.
We alerted you recently to a UK-based company’s decision to ban internal email in support of its customer service strategy. It seems our description of this—as an Emerging Case Study—was spot on.
The November issue of Health & Hospital Networks reports that the Interim President and CEO of St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson, NJ, Richard Birrer, M.D., “declared June 20 an e-mail free day.”
bq. Many of the employees said, ‘Wow, what a great opportunity for me to get out on the patient floor,’ Birrer recalls. Others said, ‘What am I going to do?’ I thought to myself, ‘Maybe you need a different job.’
bq. As a service business, health care is all about people, Birrer says. If we lose that through our use of technology, we’re not serving our customer.
bq. The whole idea is to go through a paradigm shift where we reach out to our service constituency, Birrer says. The platform I’ve established is ‘Back to the Basics, Back to the Bedside,’ and though it’s still too soon to see the full impact of this, I think most of us get the point.
As many of you can probably guess, we believe that this is exactly the right call…and would classify it as a convincing decision in support of St. Joseph’s strategy. We’re sure that we’ll see more companies following this example, and will keep you posted when we do.
You can visit the article in its entirety here: ‘Welcome. You Don’t Have Mail.’
Thanks to Ellen K. for the article.
The November issue of Information Outlook contains an article we co-authored with a client, Barbara Wilson. Barbara manages the Knowledge Center, a shared services function at Rohm and Haas, a Fortune 500 chemical company. The article describes the communication and stakeholder management strategy we created to increase awareness and use of the Knowledge Center among Rohm and Haas employees.
After interviewing a variety of users and potential users, we arrived at three conclusions that would guide the communication strategy.
- Employees like Knowledge Center employees more than they like Knowledge Center technology. Consistent with McLuhan’s oft-quoted maxim—“the medium is the message”—we recognized the need to more effectively leverage Knowledge Center employees as users’ preferred information source.
- The Knowledge Center was seen more as an internal vendor than a strategic partner. This orientation commoditized the Knowledge Center’s services and promoted very transactional relationships. (This is an issue that many of our IT and other shared services clients are currently tackling.)
- The barrier against greater awareness was a “wall of rational ignorance.” Users and potential users were making a choice to not attend to Knowledge Center messages—because: (1) they were too busy, and (2) they could not clearly anticipate a compelling return on their investment of time and attention. The implication: We could not achieve the Knowledge Center’s objectives merely by making its messages “louder.”
The article, which you can download here in PDF format, elaborates the communication strategy we prescribed to address these issues.
A bit of an unusual book recommendation for us: Adrian Slywotzky’s “The Art of Profitability,” which Publisher’s Weekly describes as a
compact tome … [that] offers 23 business lessons via the tale of a manager’s quest to learn the “art of profitability” from David Zhao, a wise master. It’s an attractive and refreshing concept that taps into the Zen of business.
I know … it sounds a bit touchy-feely. But here’s why you should read it:
* For communication professionals, it’s a simple yet fog-lifting exploration of how businesses create profit … a central part of the general business acumen essential to your credibility with senior leadership and folks from operations.
* For senior leadership, folks from operations, and communication professionals alike, Slywotzky (a Vice President at Mercer Management Consulting) adroitly handles a challenge many of us face daily: articulating the organization’s profit engine in a manner that line employees can easily grasp and apply to their daily experience.
The book is short and breezy–you’ll finish it in just a few sittings (if not one)–and perfect for reading on the plane or train. Visit it here at Amazon.
Yesterday’s USAToday included an article on compensation strategies for growth companies, and while the thrust of the article was compensation planning, it also argued for the importance of communication in setting employees’ fiscal expectations:
Founders and owners of companies that have passed the threshold into equity-financed revenue growth are likely being held accountable for setting fiscal expectations and producing results on budget. In terms of communicating this process to the workforce, it’s easy to slip into a lazy pattern of sugarcoating the finances when times are bad and overestimating successes when times are good.
The better strategy is to help employees themselves see the big picture—namely, how their jobs fit into the company’s overall objectives, and the necessity of adhering to a budget to get there. Employees won’t grasp the full facts of your company’s financial situation by reading the income statement and balance sheet. Understanding comes only with a significant investment of management time in disclosures that come through company meetings and all employee communications. Those that have been there will tell you that an informed work force will commit more fully to critical company goals than one that is being kept in the dark — especially during the bad times.
We agree; read the rest here.
Reagan speechwriter and Wall Street Journal editorialist Peggy Noonan has offered a slender summary of her advice on speech giving and speech writing in On Speaking Well. The subtitle is “How to give a speech with style, substance, and clarity,” and for the most part, the book provides sound if somewhat obvious advice. Some examples:
* Keep any speech to 20 minutes or less.
* Begin writing any speech with a single headline that summarizes the entire point, followed by a general outline.
* The more difficult or complex the subject, the more simply you should craft the language.
* Be on the lookout for words that, when spoken, may be difficult to discern (example: “saver” and “saber”).
Noonan also offers guidance to those who write speeches for others, which includes similar useful-if-common-sense guidance.
On the whole: No surprises here, but On Speaking Well confirms much of the advice we offer others. It’s worth reading if you’re looking to improve speech giving and writing, but likely not if you’re a seasoned practitioner. Be aware, however: Noonan takes every opportunity to argue her political perspective throughout via examples and anecdotes … if you’re a dyed in the wool Democrat you may find yourself cringing.
HRNext reports today of a recent study from Watson Wyatt that links effective internal communication with increases in shareholder return and reductions in employee turnover. Data was gathered from 267 companies.
bq. “The survey results clearly demonstrate that the better a company has communicated with its workers, the better its shareholder returns have been,” said Kathryn Yates, one of the study’s co-authors. “The bottom line is that employee communication is no longer a `soft’ function but rather a business function that drives performance and contributes to a company’s financial success.”
Key findings include:
* A significant improvement in communication effectiveness is associated with a 29.5 percent increase in market value.
* Companies with the highest levels of effective communication experienced a 26 percent total return to shareholders from 1998 to 2002, compared to a –15 percent return experienced by firms that communicate least effectively.
* Organizations that communicate effectively were more likely to report employee turnover rates below or significantly below those of their industry peers.
