In the age of technology, it’s not about age at all
By aheinrich | March 16, 2010
Anyone out there want to take a guess at how many entries you’ll get if you google “multi-generational workforce?” Try over 450,000. Sure, that’s not the over 20 million you’ll get by googling Lindsay Lohan, but it is an amount worth tweeting about.
As I read through some of the blog posts that come up, I wonder whether or not any of the entities writing, consulting and complaining about this phenomenon have actually spent any time in a multi-generational workplace. Most of the contributors categorize baby boomers as the “me” generation, Gen Xers as the cynical generation, and the Millenials or Echo Boomers with
every term related to super-connectivity which leads me to believe that the closest they’ve gotten to “multi-generational” experience is their last family reunion.
I’m not criticizing the labels as much as I’m pointing out that what’s really driving the differences within the workforce is not just chronological age, but the speed and willingness of technology adoption at the individual level, regardless of how old we are.
My dad is in his mid-70s and spends more time on his computer with an ease that I never thought would be possible 20 years ago. He has multiple email accounts, a Facebook page, and a large library of music. Yet, I have heard of CEOs in their 40s who still don’t quite get the concept of email — they ask their assistants to print them out for them — and certainly don’t understand Twitter, Facebook or even LinkedIn. I’ve met 20-somethings who have sworn off as much social networking as they feel they can get away with, and 30-somethings who wouldn’t know how to live without their smartphone for a day. Yet all of these people could very well work in the
same place together, separated or united as much by their affinity and adoption for the technology du jour as they are by their expectation of how they are managed and rewarded.
As with any issue, the multi-generational workforce is one that has multiple points of view and varied dynamics. The sooner we realize that age is not the only factor, and possibly not even the deciding one, the more likely we can start making this unique and historical situation work instead of working to make it unique.
Topics: Perspectives, Uncategorized | No Comments »
What happens when you and your clients aren’t speaking the same language?
By spfaff | March 9, 2010
As communicators, we’re constantly surrounded by buzzwords and jargon that no one outside of our companies or communications teams may understand. So isn’t it fun when we all get to talk to each other? We can “build on” each other’s perspectives, we can “to your point” each other to death, and we can talk ad nauseum about “deliverables” and “action items.”
But what happens when your client doesn’t use the same vocabulary?
I had this happen awhile back and it was instructive in how to try to have a conversation about communications strategy without resorting to jargon. The disconnect in this case was the use of “press release.” The client I was working with kept referring to wanting a “press release” when that wasn’t my recommended approach. Or, for that matter, what I thought he really wanted either but it was the term he was most familiar with. So what do you do? Do you give in and say yes, and then do what you really think is best? Or do you take a step back and try to define the outcome you want to achieve, strip out the jargon or confusing language, and agree on the approach.
In this case, I took the latter tack and eventually finished what was a challenging phone call relieved that it seemed that we were finally “on the same page.” Until I got his follow up email, reiterating that he was expecting the press release by Monday.
Ah, such is the life of a consultant.
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Mentoring in a Multi-Generational Workplace
By rdaprix | February 26, 2010
A recent survey from The Conference Board shows that Americans of all ages and income brackets are increasingly unhappy at work. Only 45 percent claim to be satisfied with their jobs, down from 61.1 percent in 1987. Worse, the youngest cohort of employees—those under age 25—express the highest level of dissatisfaction ever recorded for that age group with only 25.7 percent satisfied.
Linda Barrington of The Conference Board notes that these numbers do not bode well for the multi-generational dynamics of the labor force. Only 46% of the Baby Boom generation express satisfaction with their jobs. Barrington worries that their growing dissatisfaction will negatively affect multi-generational knowledge transfer—an increasingly important task in today’s competitive economy—not to mention the potential loss of discontented, young talent.
Workplace malaise aside, the hope in organizations has always been that the more experienced employee would mentor the less experienced. That usually meant that older, experienced workers would be training younger, less experienced workers in what seemed to be ‘the natural order.’ Increasingly today the mentoring process is being reversed. Those under-25 Gen Y workers, who practically teethed on computers and cell phones at the same time that they allegedly learned to expect the words “Good job” as their just due, are frequently the mentors to their older colleagues on all things technical
How both parties handle this changing role reversal and what it means going forward in their relationships will be important to future collaboration and knowledge transfer. What’s required on both sides is a willingness to learn as well as respect for the other’s experience and vulnerabilities. In other words this can be touchy.
Is there an answer to this long-standing issue of generational misunderstanding? The obvious one is the old bromide of improved communication. In short, learn to explore and appreciate one another’s values and life experience. Above all, don’t patronize or dismiss.
As a young man in my first corporate job, I found myself working under an entire generation of World War II veterans, who had tended to bring their military experience and its autocratic leadership styles back to the workplace. While it would be dishonest to say that I learned to appreciate ‘because I said so’ as the end of a discussion, in time I did learn to respect and even to feel some affection for many of my old bosses. The ultimate answer was to understand their battles and demons with compassion and understanding. In return and over time, many of them eventually reciprocated my respect with a greater tolerance for dissent and questioning.
So if there’s an answer to the problem of inter-generational mentoring and knowledge transfer, I believe that it lies with this simple one of mutual respect, patience, tolerance for difference and the golden opportunity to learn from each other.
Topics: Employee Engagement, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Measuring Up – Why Views, Hits and Attendance Really Matter
By jrobertson | February 19, 2010
A lot of new thinking on communication measurement (including ROI’s) focuses on measuring the outcomes of communications. Specifically, did behavior or attitudes change? In the end, this is what matters, but it doesn’t mean we should abandon other important measurement activities which are still very useful for evaluating the overall effectiveness of a program.
Take a common internal communication practice, the all employee event. During these meetings the CEO and other executives will review the company’s performance, provide updates on the strategy and usually do some recognition. Pulling these off takes a lot of work. To evaluate the effectiveness, many companies will send out a participant survey to collect data on speakers, venue, overall satisfaction, and possibly ask if it increased their understanding of the strategy. Often, that feedback will deem the event a success.
However, how many people did this event really reach? The average attendance rate (live + replay) is typically somewhere between 15-40% of the total employee population of the company. This means the content had no impact on 60-85% of the audience because they didn’t see it! Knowing this, you can re-evaluate your approach to market, re-design or use a different method to reach those who didn’t attend.
Here’s another example, your CEO creates a great 30 minute video that articulates the company strategy beautifully. Anyone who watches it says they “get it” after viewing the full video. Mission accomplished… right?
Not so fast. When you review the “hit and view” duration statistics and find that a large group opened the video, but they start to drop off dramatically after 5 minutes. By the end only a small fraction of the users watched the entire video. By measuring the usage, you learn that your videos need to be much shorter to convey the content.
This same rule can be applied to intranet articles, magazines, speeches… really any communication.
The moral is: if it’s not being consumed, then it’s probably not producing the desired outcomes. And you won’t know, if you don’t measure.
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The Internet, Communication and the Multi-generational Workforce
By aheinrich | February 12, 2010
Thirty years ago the unifying force in the workplace was more often than not what you watched on TV, possibly the movie you saw that weekend, and maybe the latest music. Because this was all truly mass media, for the most part the way a 25-year old in 1980 interacted with it was no different than the way a 60-year old interacted. Each sat in front of a TV, a stereo, or screen and let the entertainment begin.
In today’s workplace, the primary unifying force is the Internet, but for the most part that unity goes only as far as its general availability to most people. Unlike watching TV, being on the ‘net is not a passive experience – you search, upload, download, cut, paste, and engage in a plethora of activity. While the ability to interact with the Internet crosses generational lines, it doesn’t take a sociologist to note that different generations have reacted differently to the Internet experience and have taken those differences into the workplace.
For the first time in the history of the workplace – outside of the family farm – we now have a significant number of 60, 40 and 20-somethings working side-by-side. Each of these generations has brought with them decidedly different views as to how information is generated, shared and controlled. The Internet’s evolution into a deep, broad and transparent source of information and entertainment has both created and compounded these differences.
Consequently, communication between management and employees has become far more complex. It’s bound to become even more so as the Internet continues to evolve and the fourth generation to yet be named enters the workforce with expectations possibly even more unlike the ones before it. Look for the best places to work to be those that take the differences and complex generational interactions into account—and have found a way to use the Internet as a way to bring them together.
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Thoughts on “The Credible Company”
By rdaprix | July 23, 2009
Last November, Jossey-Bass publishers released my latest book entitled “The Credible Company: Communicating with Today’s Skeptical Workforce .” Shortly after it was published, the bottom dropped out of the global economy and made that workforce both increasingly skeptical and increasingly unemployed.
The book had been fermenting in my mind and soul for some time—partly as a result of the vast amount of change the workforce had endured since my last book, “Communicating for Change,” was published in 1996, and partly because I believed that our profession has taken a wrong turn and preoccupied itself with technology and ‘conversations’ as the cure for today’s daunting internal communication challenges.
Those challenges loom larger than ever as the workplace undergoes revolutionary transformation, with more and more insecurity and greater reliance imposed on individual’s resources and responsibility for their economic well-being. An estimated 40% of company work will soon be done by outside contractors, according to Time Magazine. Free agency will more and more be the fate of today’s worker, a not altogether negative trend if people are prepared for that kind of independence and self-reliance.
In a recent webinar, I outlined my personal view of these developments and what I believe they mean for our profession. I invite you to take some time to watch the webinar replay and to reflect on its message. We at ROI Communication would be equally interested in your views of the coming challenges. How about giving us your online comments in response to this blog?
Topics: Employee Engagement, Leader and Manager Communication | No Comments »
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 | 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.
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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.
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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.
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