FROM ESCARGOTS TO NEW E-FANGLEDNESSES

As we said before, everyone’s got a solution for the trials and tribulations of email.

Personal assistants (robot-icized).  Internal social media divided by work groups.  Automatic softwares that sort email by sender, topic, urgency, and other categories.  New rules, from meeting protocol (turn off those $!%@!# laptops and smartphones) to days away from the app.   And new behaviors about cc’ing or replying to all and eschewing large attachments, like photos.

It’s clear that something needs to be done about our 122+ individual daily emails – and 100+ billion sent every 24 hours.

Or does it? 

How much, really, would each of us accomplish in a day without our e-crutches?  [You have to admit that the e-newbies like Yammer and HipChat, Convo and Slack are just organized, social forms of our online work communications.  They’re the latest forms of Sharepoint, where groups review and comment on documents and requirements and project management to-dos.]

Proponents of these group-wares cite transparency, the ease of exchange, the convenience of knowing that everyone who needs to be in the know is.  Then again, detractors point to the silo-ing of corporate America and the tendency to ‘say anything’ in small collaborations, regardless of whether the boss is watching.

So in addition to resorting to snail mail from time to time (our most recent remedy), it’s entirely possible that we call on the change gurus to, well, talk about new behaviors.  Such as leaders who’ve figured out how to work/not with email the best ways.  Role models demonstrating collaboration in non e-ways.  And a rewards system (in words or dollars) to motivate all.

Technology isn’t always our friend.

PRESIDENTIAL PARALLELS, THREE (AND FINAL)

“It’s too much hype and hyperbole.”

“Employees don’t want to be marketed to.”

“We get a lot of pushback if we don’t stick to the facts and make our media as objective as possible.”

Those are the responses we hear when broaching the idea of an internal campaign – to drive behaviors, get buy-in, encourage adoption of new technology, and, in general, asking employees to know and feel and act differently.

Serious objections, we admit.  On our side, these rejoinders arise:

• How to gain attention and capture hearts and minds when today’s society is afflicted with ADHD?
• What are results to date using straightforward no-nonsense media?
• How many employees respond to emotional stories versus statistics and studies?

The issue, we believe, isn’t so much with the idea of campaigns as it is with the recent quality of American political crusades.  Mud-slinging.  Slight un-truths or un-remembering.  Slogans with little reality and less soul.  In short, glitz without substance.

There’s a place and time for campaigns inside.  There’s also care to be taken in creating and delivering the exact right messaging, based on the appropriate business case with the perfect (okay, almost perfect) blend of tools.  Scientists respond to stories just as much as facts.  And vice versa for marketeers and HR pros.  Bottom line, it’s all about actions. 

Our thanks to Ross Perot, former Presidential candidate:  “The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty.  The activist is the man who cleans up the river.”

WHEN THE STARS ALIGN ...

We’re sad.

Only (you fill in the blank) more episodes to the Mad Men saga, a time when creative directors ruled and men were, well, men.

Seriously.  With the star power of that era faded (but not completely obliterated), today’s work world, no matter what the industry or issue, resembles team collaboration more than individual creations.  Diversity is rampant.  The pace of digital collapses time and barriers.  That one great breakthrough idea is subsumed by little mini-campaigns, building incremental value.

Except:  Psychologists and social researchers reveal that the notion of team consensus – replacing leaders’ command and control -- doesn’t always work.  Decision making often stops, or slows down.  Execution can be slow at best, stuttering at worst. 

Their solution?  A list of four actions, from playing the connector to ending debate, all within the scope of senior leaders’ responsibilities.  Yet at least two of them, in our opinion, fall into the province of communications/marketing, roles that might not be the most comfortable, but, certainly, are the most needed.

Here are the two we believe we must own:

• Connecting.  It is up to us to bring in the appropriate universe to our companies, our clients.  We should be cultivating information that others might not have heard, sharing it in examples and how-tos.  It might be an arcane approach to storytelling.  A new technology that might excel, inside and out, in achieving goals.
• Modelling.  For sure, we act in all the right ways when we set up cross-organizational diverse networks and labor virtually.  We need to extend that role modeling, showing it live and capturing it in memories for the rest of our populations.  Otherwise, how will they know what collaboration really can mean?

Why not adapt this riff on Don Draper’s witticism:   “If you don’t like what is being done, then change the behaviors”?

THE MEDIA ... AND THE MAN-NERS

It started in New York.

[Of course.  But betcha San Francisco ain’t far behind.]

The media, yes, from coast to coast, has glommed onto a phenomenon known as “manspreading,” where men take up more than their fair share of seats with legs opened in a V-shape.  Public campaigns are now being waged in Manhattan via subway posters and publicity.  The tag?  “Dude, really” with a Courtesy Counts banner.

News reports and editorials make light of the practice, even though many females are outraged – and snapping pix to share on social media.  A Philadelphia spokesperson for a similar campaign denies it’s an endemic practice (though we in the Polar Vortex city claim otherwise). 

What will be fascinating, if metrics are included, is to see the behavior change and the numbers.  Visuals and media coverage notwithstanding, we guarantee that it’ll take more than an ad/PR war to confine the offending males to one seat. 

Ask change experts: 

• Train a gaggle of key spokespeople to hop on and off trains and (nicely) confront the manspreaders. 
• Give subway conductors a few public announcements to voice at every stop (until all 8-something million New Yorkers get the message). 
• Con native celebrities to film a few PSAs … for social media, in taxis, on the Web.
• Tag it to the cause of sustainability – and making sure everyone has a fair ride.

Is rider etiquette all that important?  Change starts small …