BAHRAIN — This is my first time in Bahrain.  That leaves only really Oman in the area that I haven’t been to / worked in.

United Arab Emirates?
√ Check
Saudi Arabia?
√ Check
Kuwait?
√ Check
Qatar?
√ Check

It’s a part of the world that many people can’t (or choose not to) understand.

In the last three weeks I have flown over it 5 times.  Three of those times I have flown over Iraq.

Well, it’s on the way.

The other two times we diverted.  And flew over Syria instead.

But although areas of conflict may be the image and abiding sense that many people have of the Arab Gulf states, it’s not representative.  (No more than when I was a boy living in London and people always thought I’d be caught up in IRA bombs.)

‘The region’, as locals call it, is very diverse and very active in sport, culture and business.  The region is quietly taking on the world.

And that’s not a bad thing.

Change is good.  And planning and communicating change in this region is important.

The oil and natural gas revenues have allowed visionary leaders to invest heavily in construction and in businesses.  The foreign investment is well documented — both successes and failures.  What is less well documented is the local investment.  It’s immense.

And as a result the region is re-writing business laws.  Some of the smartest people working in business anywhere are working here.

It’s something to see.  Long may it last.

/df

PICCADILLY — I’ve been scanning the ‘famous birthdays today’ section of the paper for a few weeks.  Looking at the ages of those who make the list.  And — maybe it’s just me — but one decade seems to be noticeably absent.

Mine.

I didn’t want to turn 40.  But that was 5 years ago, so you think I’d be used to it by now.

Maybe I can’t handle change.

Why are so few people my age recognisable?  Those who do make the paper seem to have ‘former’ in front of their profession (footballer, tennis player) or should have ‘former’ in front (pop star, child actor).  While those who have achieved anything through a more traditional path (study, start work, get promoted) are significantly older.

What has happened to those of us who:

• are old enough to think Serena Williams is disgraceful, but McEnroe is cool
• used to be lazy boys but now act more like picky old men
• have enough pride to tell the gym instructor “I used to be in good shape” and expect to be taken seriously
• find Nirvana’s music derivative
• consider “a good year” one in which everyone got a Christmas present AND the tax bill got paid

Ah.  Maybe that’s it. This is the pause between ambition and arrogance.  The grind.

Five more years.

/df

LONDON — Last night’s black-tie film premiere was a great chance to catch up with some people in the business.  There were too many people to talk to properly, unfortunately.  But some conversations I’ve been mulling over in my sleep.

Quite a few senior people working in communications at the moment are in distress.

I’m not saying it’s a pandemic.  It might just be that I know quite a lot of people, and only a few are talking about it.  But some very senior people in big businesses are struggling.

Here are my top ten signs that your communication job is going horribly wrong.

1. You’re stopping more stuff than you’re starting.

2. People who bring you new ideas are irritating you.

3. You want to know about every decision that is being made on your watch.

4. You’re starting to believe that saying nothing is working.

5. Lunchtime is ideally spent with the guy from HR… or Sales.

6. You miss the days when people believed what you told them.

7. You’ve stopped hiring the best person for the job – they rarely work out.

8. You notice the CEO and Board are much busier than they used to be.

9. Your boss has said that your job is safe.

10. You’re a little worried about your boss’ job.

Hopefully no one looks at that list and thinks we’re making light of a bad situation.  It’s more a reality of modern business.

You could substitute HR / Marketing / Sales director for many of the above.

All is not lost though.  Many Communications professionals just need to get their mojo back.  Sometimes… just sometimes… that’s in a different role.

However, companies and people who let that happen break our hearts.  Because it doesn’t have to be that way.

/df

LONDON — I’ve just been reading about a company that offers “custom executive education” and does so very successfully around the world.

It’s an interesting business.  We were talking to the good people at BraveNewTalent about the subject yesterday. 

How do companies get talented people to learn and grow at / for the job?

Just how many business training companies can you name?  Yes, I couldn’t name any either. 

How about Able and How?  We have been doing successful, bespoke and no-nonsense courses for big international firms since the day we set up.

We offer courses in leadership communication, change management, organisational strategy, and all sorts of other things. 

The difference between what we do and those associated with universities, or the many training ‘schools’ that seem to appear on door-frames up and down Oxford Street, is experience.

We offer training that really is connected to actual business issues.  More often than not, companies ask us to do that because we are working on their business issues at the same time.

As one the best global change management consultancies we work with great, big firms to make them greater and sometimes bigger.  So our training and work with executives is connected directly to what they need and where they are.

From a pedagogical perspective we are equally sound.  Out executive education is equal in terms of interaction, class-time, learning styles and experiential impact to anyone out there.  In fact, our clients say that it is better.  But it would be immodest to say that.

And we would never do that.

/df

LATE IN LONDON — We like lists and in recent times this blog may have been harder on Internal Communicators than is deserved.

So here are a few things that you can do in a single day.  They will advance your case, secure your reputation and make your organisation more successful.

1. Create a six month plan on one page

Put the months across the top and down the left hand side write the business-wide, functional, geographic and any other grouping where activities are generated.  Put your channel publication schedule across the very bottom (if it will fit.)

2. Go and help a colleague communicate something

It doesn’t have to be the CEO or Board, or the Head of HR or Finance.  It can be Bill in Facilities.  Just make a friend and hone your skills on something that will give you no glory, but make Bill’s communication more successful.

3. Spike that human-interest story

You know the one about the lady in that office.  Which is far from here.  And she does that thing, that you can’t help being a bit patronising about.

Write instead about someone doing something vital and exciting that really is ambitious and takes the business forward.  It could even be that lady in that office, but you’ve gotta be impressed by it (and a bit in awe).

4. Get in front of the big change communications programmes

You know the thing that is rumoured?  Or announced but feared?  You may even be aware of it and a bit worried that you may be asked to help with it.  It’s big and not popular or not guaranteed success.

That’s the one.  It’s going to change the business, and like it or not, it’s your job to help make it work.  Go now and get in front of it.

5. Say “I know a really good change communications company.” And get some good advice

It doesn’t have to be us (although I’d rather if it was) but there are a unique combination of skills that you need.  You have to get the project sponsors to draw breath long enough to regroup and focus their planning and engagement.  You can do it.  You’ll learn in the process.

Thanks for listening.  I can go to sleep now.

/df

P.S. The lady up top is ‘leading the parade’.  Right.

THE BOROUGH POOLS — There’s nothing quite as much fun as a good old fashioned disagreement.  And there’s one going on today on our LinkedIn Group (Change Management and Internal Communications).

Must be serious, right?

Yup.  It’s about whether company newsletters have had their day.

Often it’s the most out-dated and obtuse issues that get people’s dander up.

Had a good chat about HR Communications lately?

Don’t get angry.

We’re working for the HR department of a major US flag-carrier business.  And it’s great work.  It’s about “employee marketing”.  A subject that would cause immediate ex-communication from the more purist church of Internal Communication.  But it’s actually quite an interesting topic.  And one day I am sure you’ll read about the cool stuff they’re doing.

On the other end of the spectrum one of our bigger clients called off a brief to help with a big change programme today.  They’ve asked their HR consultants to do it.  And it’s one where I know we can do a better job, cheaper, clearer and faster.  But there you go.

HR itself is also under some scrutiny these days.  News of ”a marketing director” made Head of HR causes shock and mutterings amongst the payroll clerks.

It’s a phenomenon that Communications have been getting used to for years. Even finance directors have been made head of comms in recent times.  And it’s actually proved to be quite a good thing.

But as Human Resources are forced to face up to the skills shortage and the sudden and heavy transience of employee (lack of allegiance, they say, wrongly)… then HR Directors are going to have to swot up on marketing and communication skills.

A better performance review won’t fix it.  Having courage, curiosity and talking to new people will.

/df

CROMWELL ROAD — There was a little girl with her dad on the bus today.  She cried the whole trip.

“I don’t like the teachers…!  I don’t want to go…!  I want my MOMMY…!!” 

That kind of crying that is so deep and, after a while, so filled with mucus that breathing is affected.

The adults shifted uncomfortably.  Because half of you wanted to shout out:

“For the love of everything, pick her up and take her home! Let her play at home all day!”

And the other half of you thought: Man there are days when I want to cry like that too.

“I don’t want to go to work.  And you can’t make me…”

This morning the Gallup Management Journal published this gem as a way of trying to get you to read more:

“As Egypt and Tunisia have shown, persistent joblessness can contribute to momentous social upheaval. What’s more, Gallup’s global surveys confirm that people who have jobs rate their lives more highly than those who are unemployed.”

For which, I am sure, someone is due a Pulitzer or at least have a spot on Biography.

However, there is an interesting ying and yang in there. (Listen to me go all eastern.)

Even the lucky amongst us who genuinely love our jobs have days where we really don’t want to do it.  And we dream of the day when we can do nothing (which is harder to do than one imagines.)

And those who hate their jobs.  What do they do?  Sobbing on the bus isn’t really socially acceptable.

At the same time, a job is really what we are here for.

(You might argue that you don’t want to work: you want to be a philanthropist, or a famous intellectual, or an underwear model… But all of those are work.)

We do get pleasure and self-expression out of work.  And that’s what part of work has to be about.

So what can we do to make it better?  How can we improve it?

That’s probably what the rest of this blog is about.

/df

KENSINGTON — There’s not much that is ‘commercial’ in my house.  Maybe a few dozen old newspapers with adverts in them.  A poster on a child’s wall that promotes a museum or a football team.  One doesn’t expect to be sold to at home.

However there is one exception: the cereal boxes.

We’ve got seven of them.  All different.  All placed at eye-level in front of the kids first thing in the morning.  All shouting something different.  They’re like little, print-based sirens.

And they work.

“Dad! What’s ‘riboflavin’?!”

“How come I’ve never been to Alton Towers!”

“Can we enter this contest?”

When I was a boy Shreddies used to have the most amazing-looking plastic toys at the bottom of the box.  They never quite flew, danced, floated like they did on TV… but what fun.

My cereal boxes were turned upside-down and by the time they were re-assembles they were missing panels and the internal bags hung out the side like… well like things you only usually see in med school.

And that’s why Internal Comms people are a bit like cereal boxes.  Not the medical school part.  The other bits.

Internal communicators have a privileged position in a business.  They are the only broadly condoned public organ. (Stay focused now.)  You are the one publisher allowed to clog up the airwaves, billboards and brainwaves of the busy occupants of the building.

Internal communications people only have a short time with people.  You can’t expect (nor should you aim) to distract people from their daily grind for more than a few minutes a day.

And that remains a privilege, not a right.  If you mess it up you’ll be banished like Cocopops and Frosties.

The contents of the box needs to be right.

Yesterday I heard for the first time in a long time about an organisation where the entire internal comms function had been shut down.

And why not?

Orange juice anyone?

/df

KINGHTSBRIDGE — Years ago when Johnny Carson was the host of America’s long-running Tonight Show, NBC got a call from a distressed lady…

Through the dark window behind Carson that looked out onto a sleeping LA, she could see her errant husband stuck on the freeway… And there was ANOTHER WOMAN in the car with him!

Well the show is pre-recorded in the afternoon.  And the set was actually not a window but poorly painted, twinkly press board.

But it does tell you something about how people’s brains work.

Tuesday the website justspotted.com is set to launch.  It will be a searchable, indexed globe, on which you can spot and track the 7,000 celebrities in their database. (There’s an interesting debate going on about it.)

All of that information is aggregated from other sources — Twitter, Facebook, people’s own blogs etc. Which leads me to wonder why stop at 7,000 people?

With Facebook Places and Foursquare and other apps almost anyone is easy to track these days.  We had an experience at an old employer where someone went off sick and was said to have been fired after posting beach-side snaps on Facebook.

It wasn’t true, but it does suggest where the future might be.

Employers should think about it.  Employees should worry about it.

/df

BROMPTON ROAD — The story won’t go away.  Although coverage might have lightened today.  The 13 different Chinese 18-24 year-olds who have tried to kill themselves this year are not going unnoticed.  Most of them died.  But the world outside Shenzhen in southern China has paid attention.

Shortly after the media had packed up and left the Foxconn manufacturing site yesterday, two more employees attempted suicide.  One succeeded.  The CEO had to turn his plane around and go back.

There are 400,000 people in and around this Foxconn site.  Which makes it a city in itself.  With all kinds of people and a diversity of backgrounds.  So whether the actions of these employees be very private pain or a larger, global cry for help, the timing with today’s mad scenes on Regent Street and around the world with the launching of Apple’s latest must-have toy cannot be denied.

And yet Foxconn – like any other industrial enterprise — need not be in this situation.  There are a few simple things that can be done to relieve this kind of pressure.  Here are a few:

1. Create a better sense of community
As learned in the dehumanizing “council estates” of Britain, simply locating people close to each other doesn’t create community. Community organisations with shared responsibility and choice do.

2. Give people a sense of choice (decision participation)
Helplessness comes with a lack of involvement in the decisions that guide your life.  Those decisions don’t need to be big ones, but they do need to be freely made.  Where I live, who I live with, could be two.

3. Watching the most vulnerable
Every successful society looks out for it’s most vulnerable members.  It is a test of humanity.  And it is made harder when those people are hard to identify.  But no one intentionally makes bad decisions when alternatives and other views are freely available.

4. Think about how you run the business
We call it organisational culture, but call it whatever you want.  Businesses are not naturally benign or benevolent forces in people’s lives.  In fact, capitalism (yes, you can even say that in China these days) is just the opposite.  Businesses are not built for people, they are built for profit and for shareholders.  It takes strength of character and management to change that.

5. Show courage to act in the longer term
Foxconn has announced today that salaries will be increased.  A short-term and maybe initially successful reaction.  (I can hear my friends in PR high-fiving each other.) But the real solution to this issue and the others cropping up in rapidly industrialising areas is more complicated.  It will take longer.  It will involve more change and internal communication.  And more attention.

You can do it.

I know you can.

/df