Blogging About

I’m having a great time right now, putting together the final chapter on my book, and the workshop that goes with it, which looks at communication strategies and tools for innovation amplification in an organisation. What I call Speed Duck Herding.

It has a little bit of everything. Basically, I walk readers through a four-step system for improving their internal communications generally but specifically for ideation and new knowledge. The same ideas work for any communication goal if I’m honest, but as it is supposedly about creating and promoting innovation I thought we best focus on that.

1. Research. This is the essential but sometimes tedious part of finding out what people probably already know or suspect and would normally pay a huge consultant's fee just to have a sanity check. What you get back is ' nobody in the warehouse has a clue what the sale departments are doing'. ( Sales don't know what they are doing anyway so no surprises there) That sort of stuff: we do introduce the concept of simplifying it using a Map of Engagement™ and lines in the sand.

2. Planning. The even more tedious part which lays out what we are going to do although it is basically is the same for each programme, just the copy and paste and change the name of the project. It is that generic. I can actually write it in a paragraph but most people seem to think that they need 50 pages of analysis and justification for any document to be worth anything. They don't feel as if they are getting their money's worth unless there are at least five appendixes. Common sense is as common as a politician’s apology.

3. Implementation. Now this is the fun part, where we talk about the development of the stories and beautiful questions, the ways to get them out there into the social software and all the social media, intranets and all the fun stuff that really floats my boat.

4. How are we doing then? The necessary stuff about measurement- to look at gaps, impact and essentially gives the bullets for the gun that gets the budget from the board for the next phase.

I’ve passed this new the chapter on to a few colleagues for their input. I had thought that the implementation and soclal media part would be of most interest, but I'm surprised at how hungry people are for information on the 1, 2 and 4 processes.

And, as usual with my writings, I'm learning as much as I am teaching. For example, one of my network was telling me about what is happening in their company were they have a policy where any employee can blog . . linked to their intranet, (clever people) .and about 30 % of them are bloggophiles which is a pretty remarkable take up. They use them to share information, swap ideas, get the word out about something, anything. From baby news, holiday and car sharing to asking and looking for specific solutions. All sorts of reasons.

But their bosses are using it in a different way I hadn’t heard of before. They are a multi site operation; have 200+ retail outlets and are using a variation of the 'management by walking about principle'- a really effective tool started in the 80’s and used with great effect by managers with imagination. Definitely so in this case, as rather than burning petrol, they are popping on with the odd comment, to employee's blog sites. They read the comments, and see what people are saying and add to the discussion. Just a brilliant use of social networking to get a real dialogue going throughout an organisation that bypasses the upward and sideways filters that so often get in the way of the real story.

The process has been gaining momentum on the back of just one story of it working in practice. One casual employee, a student who just worked a few hours a week, posted on their shop blog site a low level complaint that the stock was not being labeled clearly enough and the codes were all over the place. Wouldn’t it be easier to put a photograph of the content on the outside?

Operations director talked to their suppliers about labeling, and just asked the question, was it actually doable? And it was so. Now it is being phased in across their suppliers as part of prequalification. This saves them hours of frustration, clipboards, climbing up and down ladders to read code at 10 pt size from ten feet. It makes the retail managers jobs a whole lot easier more fun and requires less training. Its is so easy to misread a 12 figure code number so they are adding images to their ERP system and stock control and ordering system. You do it for your client on your web site, why not for your own colleagues? Of course the IT department had a kitten fit about bandwidth- No Surprises there then) Derrrr. . God knows how much money time and effort it saves them but importantly it shows how sometimes the obvious can be overlooked. The scary part is that this idea that would have been missed. The Saturday girl comes up with the beautiful answer.

Now I remember one CEO who used to complain to me that 'his door was always open' but no-one ever came through it and I was trying to explain, tactfully, that the door works the other way too. He has legs. His staff, no matter how affable he thinks he is are just plain scared. That is how it works. The beauty of blogging about is that with just a few minutes every day any manager get a feel for the mood, problems and general well being of her of his ecosystem. Identify problems and eliminate some of those worst practices that have a disproportionate effect on company morale. You can’t be everywhere but the benefit of employee blogging gives the opportunity to at least have the opportunity to absorb and understand in a way that zillions of reports and PowerPoint files and spreadsheets just cannot do. And most importantly to provide a continuous feedback and constant noise rather than an annual engagement survey which is basically a historic document as soon as you receive it. But you have to start somewhere.

Of course, it will only work if employees are allowed to blog in the first place . . . so it probably won’t catch on anytime soon.

But I’m going to have to add another bloody chapter now, just in case it does.