New site for Kalessin

I got an email from Google inviting me to use Google Apps. I was interested in using it for some voluntary work I'm involved in so finally got around to taking a look yesterday.

I'm not really sure if we need corporate email or collaborative capabilities inside Kalessin Consulting. But it really is fantastic to explore and understand the options. In less than 24 hours I have bought a domain name and set up a website for the company. OK, it takes a bit of fiddling about, and knowledge of SharePoint, Blogger and other publishing tools comes in handy. And I still haven't worked out how to change the heading styles.

Take a look: www.kalessinconsulting.com

I can build an external website and a collaborative intranet for no more than the annual cost of the domain name ($10) and my time. That's vastly cheaper than paying Microsoft to host SharePoint for you. I believe the security is not quite at the same level, but if it saves me a few million dollars a year it's probably not a problem....

I'm really looking forward to developing all of this further, the next time I have a spare day :-)

I'm still not sure if it's the right tool for a volunteer group, but it really is brilliant for a small company.

The future of internal communications

I was talking last week to a friend and former colleague working in one of our key UK divisions. She spends probably no more than 5% of her time writing content and the rest of the time devising processes and getting sign-off.

Increasingly internal comms does not seem to be about creating content which will interest people or that they will enjoy reading. It's not even about creating a structured approach to comms as a key part of every project or programme of change. Nor is it about delivering material which will help people do their jobs. It's as if the structure has become more important than the material itself. Provided you have a plan, a flow chart, 10 sign-offs, and full integration with other functions, it doesn't matter if what you deliver is almost unreadable, uninteresting, and is superseded on the intranet homepage within a couple of hours.

Surely, this is madness. People are turning to blogs and discussion groups to find out what is really going on and to wikis to share information about working. I don't think it's true that classic corporate comms is dead yet, nor is it even dying - there'll always be a need for some comms which represents the official position of the company - but I think it is quite sick.

Reptilian brain

On Friday I went to the engagement part of my cousin Mark and got chatting to a chap called Francis, who is a second cousin of my aunt (I think). He's involved in marketing and is doing some work on how we make choices using the reptilian brain, or brainstem.

Wikipedia helpfully says that the reptilian complex "... is responsible for rage^[1], xenophobia^[1], and basic survival fight-or-flight responses^[1]. Often, the R-Complex can override the more rational function of the brain and result in unpredictable, primitive behavior in even the most sentient of creatures, humans included."

Francis thinks that this explains a lot about why men like fast red cars with big bonnets. But how much does it influence people's response to internal communications? Do we judge everything in a rational way or is some of it instinctual?

One of our senior HR directors used the phrase "create an emotional burning platform" in a recent news item to launch a series of summit conferences for senior managers. This has raised an internal debate about use of jargon. Clearly a lot of people read this sentence and are immediately turned off. The HR director contends that we won't learn new phrases unless we encounter them. It's a bit like Beatrix Potter's soporific lettuces.

Several questions arise:

• In good communications, should we explain every phrase which might be unfamiliar to the audience? (I would argue yes, but you have to know your audience to avoid being patronising).
• When is it permissible to use jargon? (only if you know you have a specialist audience - which was not the case).
  
• What percentage of users will actually go away and look up the phrase or ask others what it means? (A few).
  
• What percentage of readers will use their reptilian brains to decide this phrase must come from an alien culture, triggering a xenophobic reaction? (A lot).

Changingminds.org says: "The term 'burning platform' is now used to describe a situation where people are forced to act by dint of the alternative being somewhat worse. The crisis may already exist and just needs to be highlighted."

I wonder if the blogosphere is actually quite small?

My current client has around 60,000 employees, half in the UK. But on the active blogs there are probably only 20 or 30 commentors, and many of them post to all the blogs and join the discussion groups too.

Perhaps it's like a pyramid selling thing....after a while you just run out of possible audience and it becomes incestuous.

Reminds me of my favourite corporate statistic: If an organisation has more than 400 people they can spend all their time interacting with each other and never get any actual work done. Wait. I'll just go and see if I can verify that...

Rowing in the same direction

I had a longer session with Toby, the new group CIO, on Friday for an interview we're publishing on the intranet. What a breath of fresh air! He reminds me a lot of Steve Boden, who was my boss several years ago - masses of enthusiasm, really positive, very bright, and with clear ideas of what is the right thing to do. Sadly, Steve was never given the power to achieve what he wanted and eventually had to take early retirement. It's not surprising that the division we worked for no longer exists.

Toby's view is that IT has to operate as a team – in a vertically structured organisation it acts as a kind of horizontal glue. He said if we’re all on a boat (this is a man who likes analogies) then we need to decide where to row. And if everyone is rowing north-west and he finds a couple of people at the back who are rowing south-east, he will have a very serious conversation with them. If they persist he will put them into a penalty box (all the best rowing boats have penalty boxes don’t they?). And if they really don’t want to go the same way as the rest of the team he will help them to find a new team outside the company.

I said that one of the company's problems is that we have a very consensual culture, so if people can’t agree, then no progress is made. He said in that case someone, ie him, has to make decisions. He said if it’s a committee which has authority, “we have to drop a ton of bricks on that”. Steering groups are OK in the right places but sometimes they aren’t, and a single decision-maker is better. And he doesn’t much believe in setting guidelines either.

When I was working for Steve we spent two years, literally, trying to get the two key UK divisions to agree on anything at all - IT or otherwise. It's rumoured that a crucial employee letter was delayed for six months because one division wanted it to start "Dear Miss Jones" and the other one wanted it to say "Dear Samantha"... How can any organisation be so dysfunctional?

PS.

I met the new CIO today. He's cool.

Does blogging work?

For ages there's been a bit of an effort to bring together all the communicators across the company. It hasn't worked very well. People have been focused on their own business units. They haven't seen the point in sharing information. Only the heads of comms or their next in command are usually involved. Being a global company means either a hugely expensive conference or a web meeting/teleconference.

Now we're moving towards becoming One Organisation it seems like a good time to try a blog as a means to bring communicators together. Of course it won't be easy. But it could be worth it. Now I'm told I have to define the exact strategic aims for the blog. No, I think someone may be missing the point somewhere....