Category: Communication

We’re Going Back to Being Human

My good friend and associate Gareth wrote a piece this week called ‘Conversation is the New Currency’. I think the post is interesting and I disagree with his assertion about newness. Long before social media ever existed and (insert religious being of choice here) willing, long after too – conversation will be vital. It is indeed a currency older than the Roman Sestersius. The fag break, the lunch break, the hello on the way into work, the goodbye on the way out – all these and more existed long afore ye twitter and ye olde Facebookke.

Rob Jones has written a piece called ‘The One With the Wrong Era’, in which Rob challenges Gareth’s assertion through the lens of his father. Both these posts are well worth a read, and if you’re not already following Gareth and Rob on Twitter, I think you’ll get a lot of value from doing so.

I’m sitting in the sun, reading and absorbing all this stuff when I spot Matt Alder (yeah follow him too) tweet about Rob’s post. Matt said, ‘Agreed, we’re just going back to being human.’ I love it, we’re just going back to being human. If I was some kinda inspirational tweet guru I’d stick that top of my list, or at least on a t-shirt.

Before Frederick W Taylor came along and fucked everything with his well meaning and bonkers ideas around command and control, we used to get stuff done at least partly through talking with each other. Talking, learning, sharing; skills, ideas and methods. And as Rob’s post shows us, we still managed even though FWT’s ideas became widely adopted. Some of the best examples of engagement in the broadest sense and between the broadest range of stakeholders, occurs through the art of conversation. Yes we need to listen, do, feedback, improve, loop the loop and all that. But we’ve all been there. The best places we work are the ones where useful conversation helps to make work better, where the art of conversation is seen as inspiring, not inconvenient, winning not wasteful.

We’ll be talking more about this stuff at the upcoming Stop Doing Dumb Things event on June 27th if you’d like to join us (I couldn’t resist!), and it’s the subject of my talk at the Ohio SHRM in September, although Matt’s title is waaay better than the one I’m currently using (note to self – change it!).

We’re Going Back to Being Human. Thanks Matt.

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Touched

Some days the stars are aligned, and everything clicks into place. It’s great to enjoy those days and to be thankful for them. I had one of those days yesterday and I’d like to share it with you.

The Forest

I spent the day with the Institute of Internal Communication at their annual conference yesterday. I facilitated some conversations in the afternoon which were a lot of useful fun. It was such a nice day that we took some of the conversations outside, sometimes having no slides to hold you back is just the best! I’ll share more about the content of the conversations on a later date but for now I just want to acknowledge all the lovely feedback from people, it was very motivating.

The Big Apple

After the conference I was sitting at Birmingham International station waiting for my train back to London when the phone rang. A small seed of an idea that’s been slowly growing suddenly blossomed into flower. Turns out I’m heading to New York City to do some work after the Ohio gig. I have a postcard from Laurie on my desk depicting the Empire State Building and of course my Dad and I enjoyed a super trip to NYC a few short years ago. I hope to share more on this at a future date, for now my sincerest thanks go to the lovely person who called me yesterday with such great news.

The Letter

On arriving home I found a letter which turned out to be from someone Dad worked with. They’d not seen each other for over thirty years, and news of Dad’s death had recently reached this person. I’m grateful to the letter writer for being in touch, and I hope you don’t mind but I’d like to share an extract from the letter with you:

Paul was my manager in the early 1980’s. He was a good manager to us and a very kind friend to those around him. He also loved children and played delightfully with my son when he used to visit the office. I hope Paul has grandchildren as he would have been a lovely grandfather. I remember when your Mother died how much Paul grieved for her. But above all his concern was how he could love and care for you, and so all the right things. We were very fortunate that he extended his fatherly concern to his staff.

I couldn’t sleep last night with all of these things buzzing in my head, what a day! I’m very fortunate.

The weekend is nearly here and I plan to spend most of it in the garden. How about you? Whatever you are up to I hope the stars align for you too.

 

Better Communication

Later on today I’m heading to Birmingham to take part in the Institute of Internal Communication’s annual conference, the theme of which is Building Peak Performance. I’ll be doing my usual thing of wandering about finding interesting people and trying to learn something new and fun. Tomorrow afternoon I’m facilitating a conversation among the 100 or so guests. We’ve generously been given two and a half hours to have some useful fun together. What are we going to talk about? I’m not sure yet, but as a way of getting me thinking I posed a question on Facebook and Twitter yesterday. The question was:

‘You’ve been given the job of Director of Internal Communications. What things would you change to help make work better?’

I thought I’d share the responses and invite you to add your own.

Via Twitter velotester kicked us off with, ‘Tell the CEO to walk the floor and just talk to people.’

Which led to humapuk suggesting, ‘Send one email to say no-one to send emails to anyone that day and all mobiles off. Invite everyone to lunch together.’

Next up was Chutzpah84, ‘ I actually think I’d turn off email you know…..’

Julsbo said, ‘Give people a space to have ideas that are heard outside hierarchical management lines.’ I replied, ‘online? offline? both? Culture issues would be interesting to watch :)’ which in turn led to, ‘Both! Face to face is to be encouraged, but is not the only way. Ambient idea chatter has value for speakers & listeners.’

mirgray added, ‘Set a max limit of 200 words per internal email blast. If that teaser doesn’t inspire there is little point blathering on.’

The Twitter stuff was fed into the Facebook conversation so I’ll share the whole thing for completeness (with apologies for duplication).

Congratulations, you got the job! Now what would you do differently?

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