Here
is a sample of what you may have missed at the 2004 CiB Conference
in Warwick.
Ethical
inspiration
7 May 2004
Fr
Dermot Tredget OSB (right) explained that company practices such
as recognition and reward schemes, respecting and valuing stakeholders
and concern for the environment can all be considered virtuous
behaviour.
He also explained
that an increasing number of companies are seeking to recruit
people who do not just have the intellectual capacity for a role
but the emotional and spiritual abilities to fulfil it.
Stephen Hall,
McDonald’s community affairs manager, explained how the company’s
campaign to train 10,000 football coaches had provided inspiration
and pride in the workplace for many of McDonald’s 70,000
employees.
“When
people like Sir Geoff Hurst and Kenny Dalglish walk into one of
our restaurants and tell the crew how great the scheme is, they
believe it,” he said, adding that sending Sir Geoff to a
Scottish restaurant hadn’t been his best idea!
For the Co-operative
Group, which was founded on ethical principles, the challenge
has been to continue its traditions while operating as a successful
business. Head of communications Peter Jackson explained that
the social successes of the organisation had helped it establish
market advantage.
His team is
currently trying to organise the company’s 34 statements
of intent into three layers, comprising its founding values, the
organisational values which are built on those foundations and
those that govern individual behaviours.
When
Deutsche Post World Net decided to bring its three express and
logistics divisions under the DHL brand, the challenges were immense
– and they’re still ongoing.
In the UK
alone it meant bringing together Securicor, Danzas and DHL –
and that’s only one of the 220 countries the company operates
in, which include Afghanistan and Iraq.
The global
communications team set up a communications tool kit for regional
and local communicators, which included items such as templates
for presentations and basic design guidelines for publications.
Following feedback, editorial guidelines were also added.
One of the
hardest jobs for the global team is managing expectations. “We
held a conference and we have a monthly conference call that operates
like a surgery,” said DHL's Christina Fee. “But there
are times when local communicators have to race ahead with something
before we have looked at it – but we turn a blind eye to
that.”
In the first
session of Friday morning, Sandy Keilloh from T-Mobile, asked
delegates to consider whether their intranets should just be inward
facing or whether they should be opened up to suppliers and customers.
His top tips
were to keep it simple and to make sure the intranet has hooks
to keep people coming back for more; making it a necessary part
of day-to-day business rather than ‘just’ a communications
tool.
“It’s
not just about content, it’s more about being interesting,
usable and adding value to the business,” he said.
A self-confessed
fan of the de-centralised approach to intranet management, Sandy
added: It doesn’t have to be a leviathan from the beginning.
Start small – it’s better to have 200 pages of great
content than 100,000 pages of verbiage.”
He also advised
setting up a simple style guide covering basic design and editorial
principles and auditing team’s pages.
“With
over 200,000 pages of content we don’t check every page but
if someone is breaking our guidelines we do remove their pages,”
he said.
Nigel
Risner (right) asked delegates to work out if they were a caring
dolphin, a cautious elephant, a to-the-point lion or an enthusiastic
monkey.
All the animals
have their upsides as well as their downsides and the challenge
for communicators is to connect with all of them. He also pointed
out that everyone has a part to play in the communications zoo.
“If you
think you are too small to make a difference, try going to bed
with a mosquito in the room,” he said.
He also gave
four tips for being better communicators – drink, steal,
swear and lie.
“Drink
from the fountains of knowledge: all leaders are readers. Steal
a little time every day to do something for someone else. Swear
to make every day the best day of your life, you don’t know
which one is going to be your last. And when you lie down, thank
God you have dreams and you can make them come true.”
Are organisations
telling their employees one thing and their external stakeholders
another? David Silver from Intercommunic8 revealed the findings
of a survey called Mind the Gap, which indicates that’s exactly
what’s happening.
When respondents
were asked about the match between the organisation’s values
and how it acts externally, 80 per cent felt there was compatibility.
But when asked about the match between values and behaviour to
staff, that compatibility rating fell to less than two-thirds.
In addition,
35 per cent of respondents were not convinced that their organisation’s
values were anything other than hot air.
Sir Michael
Bichard from the London Institute made the point that many managers
are wrongly using communications as a substitute for trust.
As the chairman
of the inquiry into the Soham murders, he has been examining the
advice given on data protection regulations. “The best communicators
are able to put themselves into their audience’s shoes,”
he said. “In many cases the guidance given has not been designed
to help the person receiving the communication but to protect
the person who is communicating it.”
He also said
that careful attention would be paid to the report so it communicates
clearly when it is published.
Russell Grossman
from the BBC explained that in an organisation where passion and
creativity were paramount, careful consideration had been paid
to managers’ communication skills.
“We looked
at the difference between great and good communicators and decided
it was better to provide 7,000 people with the skills to be good
communicators than it was to make 1,000 great communicators and
ignore the remaining 6,000,” he said.
Here
is a sample of what you may have missed at the 2004 CiB Conference
in Warwick.
Fr
Dermot Tredget OSB (right) explained that company practices such
as recognition and reward schemes, respecting and valuing stakeholders
and concern for the environment can all be considered virtuous
behaviour.
When
Deutsche Post World Net decided to bring its three express and
logistics divisions under the DHL brand, the challenges were immense
– and they’re still ongoing.
Nigel
Risner (right) asked delegates to work out if they were a caring
dolphin, a cautious elephant, a to-the-point lion or an enthusiastic
monkey.