CEO, strategic planning expert and world traveler.
Vice President, author and renowned communication guru.
Consultant, Presidential speechwriter for Bill Clinton and published author.
Consultant, technical communication expert and social media enthusiast.
Why Should We Care About Social Media?
By mcampbell | October 10, 2008
I’ve always felt that we’re all connected in one way or another, and ever since the rise of “Six Degrees of Separation” in the early-90s I’m increasingly convinced that it’s true. This play, and the subsequent movie, by American playwright John Guare, revolves around the idea that any two individuals are connected by, at most, six others. As one of the characters states,:
“I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names. I find it A) extremely comforting that we’re so close, and B) like Chinese water torture that we’re so close because you have to find the right six people to make the right connection… I am bound to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people.”
SixDegrees.com was an early social networking site based on this concept. Now, with the advent of newer social media and networking tools like LinkedIn and Facebook, it’s possible for everyone to see and track these connections. I’ve been a member of LinkedIn since 2004, and find it to be an invaluable tool for keeping in touch with colleagues and friends— especially in Silicon Valley, where people tend to switch jobs often. The intelligent features of these tools also show you who you might know based on your past positions, education and contacts. Facebook has also been a great way to find people I haven’t seen since graduating from high school in the 80s (gulp!), and finding out, if somewhat vicariously, what people are up to.
Why should we care?
So why should we, as communication professionals, care? After attending the Ragan Summit on Social Media in Chicago last month, I’m even more convinced that we really don’t have the option not to care – social media is the future of communication, whether we like it or not! For “Gen Y,” the largest generation entering the workforce since the Baby Boomers, social media is not just a fun diversion. It’s a productive way to collaborate and keep in contact with people that eliminates the need for email.
One of the biggest roadblocks against using social media technology within a company is that it’s hard to demonstrate a quantitative business case. Things like information overload and productivity loss are hard to measure, but when you look at tools such as wikis, which enable people to store, edit and access documents in real time without the need for email, you understand the impact these tools could have if implemented on an enterprise level. Through the research of ROI Communication, and after hearing the opinions and observations of social media experts such as Steve Crescenzo and Shel Holz, I’d like to share some of the top reasons communication professionals should pay attention to and embrace Social Media:
Ten good reasons to care about social media (in no particular order)
- Social media is the way that Gen Y communicates – companies are at risk of losing this critical segment of the workforce if they do not adopt social media technology and allow its use by employees
- Social media enables greater collaboration of global teams by creating shared workspaces that are accessible 24/7 from anywhere in the world
- Many social media tools are low-cost/no-cost and web-based – this means they can be used by everyone and do not require downloading or paying for applications
- The ability to easily collaborate and communicate virtually at no cost can also reduce the need to spend money on travel and communicating via long-distance phone calls – this can result in companies saving a nice chunk of change
- Social media democratizes content and gives everyone the chance to participate – the old “top down” communication model no longer works to engage employees, and it’s more about a conversation than pushing down “corporate speak”
- Social media helps meet the need for human connection in an increasingly virtual world – it enables people to collaborate based on interests and can lead to greater creativity and productivity by connecting larger groups of people and their ideas
- Web 2.0 has raised the expectations of our employee audiences – they’re used to seeing different types of media, including video, audio, blogs, polling and comments on the web, and we must meet their expectations to keep them engaged
- The wisdom of the crowds. One of the largest examples of Social Media/Web 2.0 is Wikipedia, which taps the collective knowledge of thousands of experts. This technology is already being used within leading companies to create rich knowledge bases that enable employees to quickly find information on virtually anything
- Enabling people to choose the way they “pull” the information that’s important to them, and providing it in a variety of social media channels, reduces information overload and increases engagement
- Engagement is the top driver of employee loyalty according to research by Hewitt – Social media and Web 2.0 change communication from a one-way message to an engaging, two-way conversation
Just do it!
There are many, many other reasons why social media makes sense. The one thing I can recommend to my fellow communication professionals is to get out there and try it! Start small by joining a social media site like LinkedIn or Facebook, and see where it takes you. Download Skype,buy a $20 webcam and start holding video meetings with your colleagues. Once you start using it and see how easy it is, you’ll begin to see how social media can really work within a corporate setting to provide a richer and more engaging way to communicate with employees, and for employees to communicate with each other.
Additional Resources
ROI Communication will be facilitating a three-hour workshop on social media and Web 2.0 technology at the upcoming “Social Media for Internal Communications” conference Nov. 17-20 in San Francisco, CA. As a contact of ROI Communication, you can enjoy a $200 discount on registration fees by mentioning the email code “SPK” when registering. For more information, or to register, please visit the Advanced Learning Institute Web site.
Topics: Employee Engagement, Uncategorized | No Comments »
The Deliberate and Accidental Abuse of Language
By rdaprix | October 10, 2008
One of the saddest things about political campaigns is the abuse of language and intelligent dialogue—the tendency to make words connote something other than their real meaning and to mask intent. Or worse, to disseminate outright lies. At this phase of the presidential campaign there’s plenty of both.
For anyone interested in truthful communication, this is the season when you can engage your own communication intelligence to uncover the nature of the abuses. In the end it’s an insult to our collective intelligence for our politicians to use such tired techniques as guilt by association, name-calling and omission of pertinent facts to distort the truth. But that’s the hard currency of negative campaigning as well as an affront to the democratic process.
Regardless of our politics, we should all be on guard for these obvious abuses and respond accordingly. Watch the presidential debates as well as the political ads and analyze each attempt to propagandize rather than inform. I guarantee you that it will be an interesting and enlightening lesson in Propaganda 101 as you score each kind of subtle or not so subtle abuse.
Aside from deliberate language abuse to confuse and deceive, another less obvious abuse is careless or misleading labeling. A great example is the recent effort to stabilize the credit markets, an effort unfortunately labeled as ‘a bailout of Wall Street’ rather than ‘an attempt to rescue Main Street’ from an economic disaster. Anyone with the most basic understanding of public relations would avoid this incendiary and elementary gaff.
If it weren’t so important to our collective futures, this behavior could entertain and titillate those of us who value the power of forthright communication. Instead it’s more than a little depressing.
Topics: Perspectives | No Comments »
Some Thoughts on Voters and Employee Audiences
By rdaprix | September 5, 2008
I’ve just returned from a long and happy vacation at the same Maine coastal cottage my family and I have visited for the last 38 summers. It’s located right smack on the Atlantic on a high rocky bluff with a 20 or 30 foot descent to the water. It’s a modest cottage in the Mid-Coast area of Maine where you can sit on the deck and gaze all day at the lobster boats sailing close to shore, pulling their traps and methodically sorting the legal from the illegal-sized lobsters.
Maine is a state that loudly proclaims itself as “Maine: the way life should be.”
I couldn’t agree more after spending three weeks every year without access to email, a cell phone or the Internet. All there is to do is to sit and read and contemplate ‘the way life should be,’ but rarely is. Every time I’m there I’m filled with the same feelings of nostalgia, liberation and nothing-to-do-or-care-about that I used to enjoy as a kid on summer vacation. A major cause of that feeling is liberation from the technology that shapes most of our work lives. If the locals want to hook up to the Internet, they have to drive several miles to an Internet Café in a corner of a bookshop. Most choose to ignore the opportunity and to live uncluttered lives without a thought about email, websites, blogs and virtual ‘friends.’
But forgive me, this blog is not about a paean to Maine or a knock on relentless technology. It’s really about a provocative book I read entitled “Just How Stupid Are We?” by Rick Shenkman, a political analyst and professor at George Mason University. The subtitle is “Facing the Truth About the American Voter.” That truth as Shenkman sees it is fairly ugly. In his view the American public is easily fooled, uninformed about the actual workings of government and power and manipulated by political operatives who know only too well how to deliver a message aimed at their fears and insecurities.
He claims that if you look at American history, it’s clear that there has been ‘a constant tension between faith in The People and contempt for them.’ The Founding Fathers, he notes, were very careful in the beginning to limit the influence of the people at the ballot box based on their fear that ordinary people would use their votes to confiscate the wealth of the many and give it to the few. If Shenkman’s argument is beginning to sound more than a bit elitist, consider the words of Alexander Hamilton at the Constitutional Convention when he was arguing against universal suffrage. “…the people when they have been un-checked, have been as unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous and cruel as any king…” Shenkman is a piker compared to Hamilton and his conservative cronies.
And that’s one of the most interesting arguments in this provocative book. Conservatives have historically—until recent times—evidenced a constant mistrust of the wisdom of the people. Liberals, on the other hand, have tended to blame a variety of bogeymen, including Wall Street, corporations, the lobbyists and sinister behind the scenes power brokers for our problems. Shenkman describes this as ‘brilliant politics’ because it leaves the people off the hook whenever bad things happen.
He goes on to say that Liberals are dismayed because they tend to be held in bad repute in what historically has been a liberal democracy. The twin causes, he claims, are the Civil Rights Movement and the women’s movement. In his words, “Voters punished liberals at the polls not necessarily for what they had done wrong but what they had done right. This rankled.” It also left them shaking their heads because it put them at odds with their own belief in the people’s wisdom and good faith.
After stating his case, Shenkman closes with a heavy dose of hope. In the end he points to the Internet and blogging as hopeful signs that people can be engaged. He argues strongly for courses in civics and weekly testing of college students in current events as ways to raise the political IQ of Americans. He also urges that more people get actively involved in the party system where they can learn the actual working of politics and power.
As I watched the lobster boats slip over a tranquil blue ocean and past the Maine cottage, I wondered what all of this means and implies for two things I care about—first the current election and where it will take us and second what it also implies about internal communication and our need to conduct ourselves with ever more regard for the truth and the resolve not to manipulate people in the workplace as we have in the broader society.
Topics: Perspectives | No Comments »
How to Leverage Your Learnings
By jpollack | July 25, 2008
One of the great strengths of American English is its adaptability. Unlike many other languages, it tends to welcome new words easily – the verb “to Google” is perhaps the most famous, recent arrival. This linguistic mutability reflects America’s wonderfully informal, innovative spirit, but also sometimes comes at a price: the common abuse, misuse and overuse of certain words – especially in politics and business.
As a speechwriter, I like to say that Washington is where good words go to die. The current administration, for example, has relied so heavily on the words “freedom” and “liberty” that the words have acquired entire baggage trains of subsidiary political connotations, which vary greatly depending on your political orientation. And the next administration will surely adopt its own rhetorical arsenal, probably to similar, diminishing effect.
As a business consultant, I often encounter an entirely different set of overtaxed words – words that should be put through the office shredder and mulched for use on the traffic islands out in the parking lot. First among them is “leverage.” How many times every day do people suggest we “leverage” a presentation, a strategy, a memo, an idea? Start counting. Somehow, it’s as if the word leverage has become the Swiss Army Knife of business jargon, a proxy for vaguely articulated thoughts that would be much better expressed through other words.
Leverage does not mean reuse, repurpose, copy, adapt, integrate or modify – all noble, labor-saving practices which I support. According to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Unabridged), leverage is not even a verb. To lever, by contrast, is a verb; it means to pry, raise, move or work with, as if with a lever. Why not say exactly what we mean, by choosing our words more carefully?
The other word that needs shredding and mulching is “learnings.” More and more, I hear people ask offer to summarize the “learnings” from a meeting, a project or a conference. As I write this, the red squiggly line of Microsoft Word suggests that this word “learnings” doesn’t even exist – a suspicion confirmed by my trusty Webster’s. We don’t learn learnings; we learn lessons. Or perhaps we didn’t lesson our learns in grammar school?
To reiterate, one of the great gifts of American English is its flexibility. Use it and love it. But try not to abuse our friendly lexicon, even unintentionally. So please, the next time someone suggests that we leverage their learnings, let’s send those ailing words to Washington.
Topics: Perspectives | 1 Comment »
Has Technology Affected Our Ability to Think?
By rdaprix | July 18, 2008
The July-August issue of The Atlantic features a cover story entitled “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?” by writer Nicholas Carr. His thesis essentially is that our online proclivities are short-circuiting our powers of concentration and affecting our ability to focus. In his words, “My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing…I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading, immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. ..Now my concentration starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
Carr blames the fact that he’s been spending too much time online although he calls the web ‘a godsend to me as a writer.’ He adds, however, that the blessing of ready online information comes with a price. He observes that the net seems to be robbing him of his powers of concentration and contemplation. Again in his words, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski.”
That he is not imagining his loss is evidenced in the work of developmental psychologist Maryanne Wolf from Tufts University. She’s an expert in the neurology of reading who claims we are ‘not only what we read but also how we read.’ In her work she’s discovered that when we read online we tend to be ‘mere decoders of information,’ a tendency that limits our ability to ‘interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction (italics mine.)
Carr ends by quoting the words of the playwright Richard Foreman in a view that resonates totally with me. He says, “I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my) ideal was the complex, dense and ‘cathedral like’ structure of the highly educated and articulate personality—a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. I (now) see within us all…the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self—evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the ‘instantly available.’
If the end result of our powerful, and now essential, technological tools is the loss of the ability to think beyond the mere information given, we are in serious trouble as a democratic society.
Topics: Perspectives | No Comments »
Finding Our Groove
By rdaprix | July 10, 2008
A fascinating dialogue took place online a few weeks ago. The subject was the proper role of internal communication professionals in their respective organizations. It’s a subject that badly needs airing in a time when increasingly I believe that internal communication practitioners are losing their way.
The people that were engaged in the online dialogue are all veteran communication pros with years of experience in the trenches. The dialogue was triggered by an innocent query from another participant who asked if and how electronic kiosks made sense in a decentralized manufacturing environment. One of the first responses said that the issue was not electronic kiosks; that the question should be whether and how kiosks might improve the company’s performance at that facility. He went on to say that the real need was to look at the barriers to performance in that organization and to address those barriers with appropriate strategy. His position was that essentially all that matters is serving the needs of the customers and the shareholders of that company for quality products and services. He asked pointedly whether kiosks truly serve that overriding need and whether the absence of kiosks was truly affecting company performance.
His position soon motivated a very different response from an equally passionate participant, who said—in effect—that people don’t live by bread alone. Here’s his verbatim question: “Does the whole worth of employee communication consist in solving specific business problems?…I’m troubled by the implication that if you…haven’t got your whole program focused on troubleshooting performance issues, you are functioning at some primitive level of the craft. Let’s not forget that just plugging away at the creation and maintenance of an essential climate for success can be pretty darned strategic, if you’re good at it.”
A third participant chimed in with his view that after years of studying the issue of role, he had concluded that there were at least five roles that a communication professional could play. These were: communicator; educator; change agent; small c consultant; strategist. He added, “The first corresponds with an infrastructure/channels/vehicles/content aggregation/dissemination role. The second is the training/coaching role, making others good communicators (CEOs; supervisors). The third refers to the role we play with corporate strategy execution, in particular with resulting change management programs and required large-scale culture/climate/behavioral change. The fourth is what I would call small c communication change built around specific operational process improvements. Finally the fifth, which I have labeled as strategist, focuses on being a player in the organization’s overarching strategic management process…”
Aside from the quality of this discussion is the largely ignored debate that underlies it and that needs to be engaged by more than these three veteran communication pros. What I read mostly these days about our profession is related to technology and the need to introduce more social media into our organizations. In my opinion that conversation badly misses the mark. Worse, it’s a distraction from the really important questions facing our profession and the need to debate what would constitute our value-added role in organizations in the midst of chaotic and revolutionary change. That’s a monumental question that begs to be answered in these bewildering times if we are truly going to help our organizations succeed.
I have been working on a new book entitled “The Credible Company: Communicating with Today’s Skeptical Workforce.” It’s scheduled for publication by Jossey-Bass Publishers in October of this year. After outlining what I believe is a proper communication prescription for today’s skeptical audience, I conclude that ours is a profession at a crossroads. We can sink deeper into craft, continuing the tendency to apply newer and newer technology as an end in itself with slight regard to human needs in the workplace—in the process making ourselves more and more irrelevant to our leaderships and our audiences. Or we can wake up to the complexities of getting through to a skeptical workforce with a sound strategy that addresses their needs and views.
It’s high time we began to look seriously at this issue and to put aside the narrow view that is now clouding our collective vision of the proper role of communication in the workplace.
Topics: Employee Engagement, Perspectives | 3 Comments »
Why Dissent Matters
By jpollack | July 9, 2008
I recently read an excellent book entitled Why Societies Need Dissent. Citing examples from the public and private sector, its author, University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein, methodically explores how and why groups often make bad decisions, as well the characteristics and behaviors of groups that make good decisions.
One common denominator is the degree to which groups large and small cultivate or suppress a diversity of opinion. Those that butt heads in constructive ways generally make better decisions. Those that don’t are essentially agreeing to make peace – not necessarily decisions that are in the group’s best interest.
At a time when society is paying the price for the silencing of dissenters and the appalling hubris of risk-takers – from the indicted hedge-fund managers at Bear Stearns to President Bush and his disastrous invasion of Iraq – America would do well to encourage a great deal more introspection, scrutiny and criticism, both in business and government.
As Sunstein writes: “Well-functioning societies benefit from a wide range of views; their citizens do not live in gated communities or echo chambers. The fantastic economic success of the United States owes everything to a culture of open information. Indeed, economic markets themselves embody norms of openness, ensuring success for those who innovate (and innovation is itself a form of dissent).”
That said, while many organizations say they like innovation, fewer actually tolerate – let alone encourage – internal dissent. Those employees that speak up – often with perspectives that don’t quite square with a corporation’s self-image or goals – are often marginalized. In the short term, this pressure to conform keeps the trains moving. Unfortunately, many such trains are often far down the wrong track when the wisdom of the dissenter’s voice later becomes apparent.
In related reading, I recently enjoyed another book, New Yorker writer James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds. His basic argument is that groups generally make smarter decisions than individuals. One important characteristic of such successful groups is cognitive diversity – in other words, people with different opinions. Citing examples from NASA disasters during both the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs, Surowiecki argues that the Apollo group made better decisions due to its greater diversity.
“This seems hard to believe,” Surowiecki writes, “since every engineer at Mission Control in the late 1960s had the same crew cut and wore the same short-sleeved white shirt. But as [former Mission Control operator] Oberg points out, most of those men had worked outside of NASA in many different industries before coming to the agency. NASA employees today are far more likely to have come to the agency directly out of graduate school, which means they are also far less likely to have divergent opinions. That matters because, in small groups, diversity of opinion is the single best guarantee that the group will reap benefits from face-to-face discussion.”
That said, it’s still not always easy to speak out, to be different, to say no – especially in a culture that rewards conformity. Who likes to be the nail that people stub their toe on? Ultimately, we have to get along. But that doesn’t mean we have to go along. Take it from Thomas Jefferson, who penned the Declaration of Independence and ended up President. “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing,” he wrote. Maybe even inside the padded cubicle.
Topics: Perspectives | 1 Comment »
Global Solutions through Communication and Collaboration
By bfsmith | July 8, 2008
Hello colleagues and friends,
This is my first official blog entry on The Bottom Line. It’s an exciting time in the world of communication. We have so many more tools to connect our world. My hope is that these tools will enable us to collaborate on a global basis and turn around the destruction of our world. There are no coincidences, and I believe our communication and collaboration ability has increased to meet the increasingly urgent need to come together as a global community and solve our collective problems – top of which is global warming. We all must play a role in creating solutions. As communication professionals we are poised to influence, educate and enable millions of people to take action.
In a month I leave with my family for a six week trip through SE Asia and then a stint of 3 – 4 months living in Bangalore, India. I’m excited on several levels. First, it will be a fantastic experience personally for me and my family. My daughters are 8 and 12 and they will go to school during that time in Bangalore. My husband will use the time to write that book he’s always wanted to write. And I will be soaking up the experience on several levels, including exploring business opportunities in India and helping to build the community of communication professionals there through the IABC.
I will continue to post on this blog as I travel through China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Nepal and then India. I plan to meet up with other professionals on the way and get insights into the issues they face with booming economies and rapid growth.
Thank you for your interest. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Until next time!
Barbara
Topics: Perspectives | 1 Comment »