When communication policies limit progress
By swilson | February 26, 2010
I really tried not to write about the recycling debacle we’ve been dealing with. But, it crept out in my last post and I’ve uncovered a truly valuable lesson for corporate communicators. Some background is required.
Acting upon the suspicions of a family member with the same trash and recycling collector that the collector is mishandling recyclables, I began a deeper investigation in January. I contacted all of the recycling facilities in our area that take what’s called “single stream.” This means you don’t have to separate your stuff. They separate the recycling into groups such as glass, aluminum, paper, etc. They don’t separate recycling from trash however.
I discovered that our collector had not dropped any recycling at any area facilities for two months. So, where was it going? All of the facilities I talked to were quite forthcoming – they have passion about recycling. I found I could call almost any of the facilities and get information about what was dropped, when, how it was coded, who dropped it, etc. One place even sent me the actual dump ticket they create when a drop is made. The creation of such a ticket is a regulatory requirement by the way.
I kept detailed notes (there’s a ton more detail I just won’t go into here). My husband followed and video taped the truck putting trash and recycling into the same truck and dropping it all at a trash facility that doesn’t take recyclables. I decided to let the pros have a turn at creating some visibility for what I believe to be a fraud case. Understand that the collector claims his service includes collection of single-stream recyclables, even providing our community with flyers from several recycling facilities in the area about what can be recycled.
I turned everything over to a local TV station. The reporter called me when she got frustrated. “Everyone sends me to their PR people and no one wants to give me information,” she said in exasperation. “They’ll talk to you, but they don’t want to talk to the media. Their policy won’t allow them to.”
Media and PR policy typically dictates who can talk to the media. Most companies are very strict about this. I’ve been there in corporations, I know. But, when that policy restricts our ability to fix a community problem, something is truly wrong with the process. Obviously, this is a scenario that none of these companies ever anticipated in their media planning. I can hear it now…
“What if we find out an independent collector is fraudulently selling our recycling services as part of his service? But, he’s really sending the recycling to the dump and the homeowners are mad? Let’s put that one in the column titled ‘When We Collaborate with the Media’.”
Yea, right. It does beg the question, when do you bend your policy in order to make the right thing happen? This is a great conversation to have in the communication team. It could lead to a very positive community involvement story. It could lead to a lot of good will for the brand. But, if you are so staunch about your policy – we shall not bend – then you may never know what you missed.
Moral here? Have the conversation about when and why you might bend before you need to do the bending. Then, be ready to bend when appropriate. Make sure you have the right people involved in the decision to bend, and plan how you’ll play the bending to employees and external stakeholders alike.
Topics: Internal Consulting, Planning, leadership | Comment »
Perception is everything
By swilson | February 25, 2010
The perception a company creates in the minds of customers and employees alike can make or break the relationship. Communicators work so hard to build perception – call it the brand promise – but are we spending enough time ensuring that actual behavior matches the perception?
United Airlines tries to create a perception of value, as in we value those who fly with us a lot. Take their policy of boarding first class and top status flyers across a red carpet (which I believe creates the wrong perception for the throngs of mid-level status flyers). Or, take their new policy of automatically putting all status flyers on the upgrade list. No reward for those who proactively request upgrades. Frankly, I’ve only rarely received an upgrade in trade for my own proactivity. But now, it will be damned near impossible to get one.
United bills this as a convenience to the regular flyer, something for which we should thank them. I see past that. It simplifies things for the gate agents. Just another reason why my perception is turning sour – they don’t really care about me as a frequent flyer. Reinforced by this week’s travel.
I printed my boarding pass at home, arrived on time. The flight was on time and my boarding pass showed me in seat 12D, the one I personally chose because it was in the expanded seating area and an exit row. They changed the plane at the last minute, and upon boarding I discovered that my seat was now in the cattle call section of the plane (smaller plane). If they really cared about delivering service that matched the perception, they would have looked carefully at that row to see if they needed to move any of their status flyers.
Here’s another example of mismatched perception. The trash and recycling collector that serves our neighborhood bills his service as including recycling collection. Even provides us with flyers that explain what we can put in our recycling bins for curb-side collection.
Imagine the surprise of the homeowners when they find out that he is actually combining the trash and recycling into one truck and dumping it at a facility that doesn’t even take recycling. This is what I’ve discovered in the past two months as my husband and I have been investigating.
The HOA board swears that we don’t actually pay for the service. But, does that really matter? Hasn’t the vendor created the perception that he’s handling recyclables appropriately? His service is clearly missing the perception mark.
Now for an employee example of missed perception. What if your employer suddenly decided to outlaw cotton pants? One of my prior employers tried this one time. After working diligently to create a perception of the company being a good place to work, develop and progress, the CEO decided to ban cotton pants. It created such uproar it hit the front page of the local newspaper. If Twitter had existed back then, I cannot imagine how bad the fallout could have been.
Perception is everything. If this is true, then we need to ensure that corporate actions actually match the perceptions we work so hard to create. Particularly in today’s environment of crowd commentary and instantaneous messaging, we cannot afford to have individuals demonstrating behavior that is out of sorts with the perception.
Topics: Leader communication, leadership | 2 Comments »
Social technology that solves business problems
By swilson | February 24, 2010
I’ve been working with a client to help them think about social technology from the perspective of business problems and needs. This is tough for the IT people who like shiny things.
To help the client team reset their thinking, I created a written framework for them that illustrates how organizations use different social technologies to solve business problems, what the behavior or cultural implications are, and what added value they might expect.
For example, companies use social networking tools inside to:
- Help people find each other
- Identify expertise and skills
- Better visualize individual contributions
- Surface the activities of groups and teams
- Improve a user’s ability to re-find the stuff he or she needs
The cultural implications are that social networking demands a willingness to share the right types of information about yourself and a willingness to share what you know. Not every organization is ready for this.
Some of the side benefits of social networking include:
- Discovering you’ve got two different teams working on the same problem
- Sharing the resources of an advanced geographic region with those in a less capable region
- With more control over what they see, employees can better cut through the clutter of internal content
For an organization that has eschewed social networking, this line of thinking is beginning to turn the tide. They are beginning to see the value and benefits that could be realized from a business perspective. They just have to get over their fear.
Take podcasting as another example. Whether you use that term or not, it really comes down to user-generated video/audio snippits for education and training. There are so many great examples here:
- A consulting firm that wants the employee voice to be heard in recruiting allows their employees to create their own brief podcasts about their personal employee experience
- The IT shop in a large corporation allows users to create their own how-to podcasts and share them along side the corporate-provided help content, thus allowing the community to better support itself
- A multi-national corporation that needs to reach all continents at the same time about business results, uses a quarterly podcast coupled with a team engagement tool to drive learning and dialog about results
A with any social technology, podcasting comes with cultural implications too:
- People must be willing to share
- People must be willing to engage in dialog
- People must trust and value other people’s content
- People must be willing to take the time to share and learn
Podcasting demands good governance and guidelines, a little equipment investment (not much), and the use of other means (e.g., microblogging, RSS) to promote availability.
You get the idea. It’s about solving business needs: engaging employees in recruiting; improving a support capability; driving dialog for line of sight; uncovering hidden talent; and reducing duplication. Business needs. Business goals. Business problems.
Start mapping these out for yourself and you’ll start to see how the technologies can help solve your business problems. Meantime, we’re going to work on putting the guidelines we’ve created into a tool for our Tool Store. So everyone can think more strategically. After all, strategic thinking is what a great tool is all about.
Topics: Intranet and Portal, social technology | Comment »
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