simply marc

Cheap comment

I'm in the States in a rented house with this on the wall.  Nothing wrong with a bit of patriotism of course.  But turn it round and you find a "Made in China" sticker.  Sort of sums up the predicament here.

Could you fly 9 hours with no movies?

Yesterday I flew with the family (a rare occasion) to the States on Virgin Atlantic (again unusual as I'm a BA loyalist) when Adrian, the Cabin Crew Director announced that the 747's entertainment system was out of action.
It was a hard message to give a Jumbo full of kids and he handled it brilliantly.  He explained what had gone wrong, how the decision was made to fly without the In-Flight Entertainment, and what compensation was planned.  Then he organised a spontaneous drawing competition for the kids to be judged by the Captain and a quiz for the grown-ups. 
The passengers took it very well and our party of 6 did that unheard of thing - started a conversation and did a joint crossword.
Then - an hour into the flight - the inevitable happened.  The movies spluttered into action and suddenly we were all cocooned in our own screen and earphones experiences like so many transatlantic battery hens.
As we disembarked I had a twinge of regret about the resumption of normal service, but I was in no doubt that Virgin can boast cabin crew at least the equal of BA.

Deep thought

On Friday I joined two academics and two practitioners for the first of what has been named rather portentously the Dialogue Circle on the Frontiers of Communication.  The idea from Lindsay Bogaard is to to create a bridge between academic thinking on comms and us day-to-day practitioners.

Or as Lindsay puts it:

"Over the past 50 years, a great deal of communication research has been conducted.  Over the same period of time, increasing activity inside organisations has focused on recognising and improving the effectiveness of communication, much of it based on the findings of academic communication research.  However, academia and organisations are still loosely connected when it comes to the fundamental concept of what communication actually is.  Research insights and current communication practices do not always marry up, partly (and ironically) because ‘they don’t talk the same language’."  

So off I went to London University to meet Lindsay, Thomas Haeussler a philosopher from Bern University, Dr. Johan Siebers an expert in Linguistics at the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Gerry Griffin of Skill-pill.

We had a fascinating dialogue that was kick-started by a reading of Martin Buber's I and Thou principle,  Rarely have my rusted synapses been so tested. 

If you want to get involved contact Lindsay at [email protected]  Here's the deal:

·         The sessions are held face to face quarterly with maximum of 8 people

·         Each session is based on a single piece of text, circulated in advance for pre-reading

·         At the beginning of each session the text is read out loud, followed by a brief period of silence for reflection.  Participants can then talk as they wish.  There is no desired ‘end point’; the dialogue is free to flow.

·         The session is recorded and may later be published.

20,000, 1,000 and twice a month

It's been a bit of a significant week at Simply.  The first thing that happened was that we broke the 20,000 registered readers mark. 
And last Thursday we broke through the 1,000 visitors in one day.
It doesn't mean much for you but for us it's a bit of a rubicon.. 
Of greater importance to our readers is that we are now moving to a fortnightly rather than a monthly publication schedule.  There's just too much good stuff happening to fit into a monthly format.

Enough of blowing our own trumpet!

Moscow vrs London

Observations on a trip to Moscow this week:

On the street people look you in the eye - and it's usually with friendly curiosity.

The Metro hasn't had much investment in 30 years - but it still works.

All office workers dress as though they are going to a Hallo Magazine shoot.

The cars have got better while the traffic has got worse.

Communicators in the Press have returned to self-censorship.

Aeroflot is cleaner, more efficient and more punctual than BA.

Borscht can be good.

The only rude Russians you meet are on the flight to London.

 

When Research Goes Wrong

I was reading an article on research by the inestimable Sue Walker yesterday when I was reminded of a client that managed to do great research but then screw up on the interpretation.
They are an insurance company who have great customer service and a generally happy workforce.  Anyhow, one year in the staff survey they decided to include a question about whether staff ever felt bullied at work.
They were shocked by the results when over 12% responded that they had experienced bullying at least once in the past year. As a responsible employer the company instigated a training programme for managers and team leaders on the evils of workplace bullying and how to stop it.  The managers were surprised and shocked; bullying was just not in the culture.
Then some bright spark thought to go back to the 12% and noticed they were all in customer-facing (or customer-calling) jobs,  When asked who was bullying them at work they all replied:  "Customers, of course."
Bully photo by Kevin Dooley http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/

And now we are simply 3

It was a year ago that simply-communicate was joined by its sister company simply-experience, our live events, video and web production company.  And now we have spawned another simply sibling.  Liam FitzPatrick has joined as MD of simply-goodadvice, our internal communications consultancy.

So now we are 3 - and we have a new home at 45/46 Poland Street in London's Soho.  If you want to come to the house-warming party on Oct 30th just drop mea a line: [email protected]    You will be most welcome!

Angela Sinickas in London

Angela Sinickas landed in London to preach the good word about research in internal communications.  Her presentation was based on the issue of ROI so perhaps it was appropriate that it was hosted by those hospitable accountants Grant Thornton.  Angela comes across as an enthusiastic librarian but the USA's Queen of Measurement does know her stuff.

Angela's key argument is that we are paid so little in IC that we can make a huge ROI by doing something quite small but effective. An example she gives is an IC Manager who decided to create a campaign around getting people to use the long distance phone number. It saved the company $240k a year.  Compared to her annual salary this was an annual ROI of 179%.  Actually it only took 3 days of her time.

Sinickas was less convincing on her external PR examples - quoting a municipal waste programme, but when it comes to internal comms she is right on the money.  One example showed a ROI of 1566%!  So they cooked the figures downwards to make them believable.

Quotes that hit my bottom line:

"Take the right amount of credit that people will not quibble with"

"Make them realise that getting rid of you is like throwing the radio overboard to save weight when the ship is sinking."

Her big insight is to use maths based on the research outputs to get a real figure of what the company actually achieved in sales.  One case study followed this advice and got a three times increase in their next year's IC budget.

Sinickas is not entirely in the Jim Shaffer school of focusing your IC budget only on those projects where you can make a difference.  For her it's a 'both and' - find out what troubles the CEO and develop a programme that fires the hot buttons of the executive suite - but at the same time pick your opportunities in the operational side of the business and get those feudal barons to sing your praises as well.

Wed in Venice - The Movie

Click to play

Communicate 2007

I missed this last year, but the nice people at Communicate have posted my presentation about Web 2.0 which I gave to a combination of TV producers and environmental activists.