Category: Communication

Friday Fury – Bloggers!

I started blogging in late 2008 and I confess I felt a little like I was jumping on a bandwagon. There were a lot of blogs out there, why should I add another one to the pile?

This blog was started because I felt that there was something missing, a place for employee and customer and community stuff to collide. I’m motivated about making work better in order to deliver better service. I didn’t think about it much more beyond that – but I’d built up a few ideas to get me started and felt sure those and my passion for these connections would see me through. I was wrong. There’s a whole bunch of effort required to keep the train a rollin’.

Now it’s 2012 and it seems every Tom, Dick and Harry met Sally is just piling in. One of the by products of piling in is that after the euphoria of your first few comments and retweets comes the onset of frequent infrequency. It becomes clear that this blogging lark can be hard work, and the temptation to let it drift is often too seductive. The excellent A Better Mess blog says this about infrequency:

‘We crap rationalize with things like, “I’ll only write when I have something really important to say,” or “I’ll get back to blogging once I finish this project for work.” Rather than course correcting, the average blog dies a slow, painful and lingering demise. It’s a death march that not only disappoints your readers, it’s a public commitment that you’ve essentially neglected.’

And if you want people to read your blog, then frequently infrequent ain’t gonna get ’em.  And don’t give me any of that ‘I’m only writing for myself’ crap. Were that true then you’d be ‘blogging’ on one of these babies:

Typewriter

So get real y’all. Blogging takes guts, sweat, persistence and a depth of madness most folk can only dream of. And to that end, have a listen to this (lyrical kudos to @workessence for another musical collaboration):

Kisu Kisu – Pass It On

I’d be surprised if you haven’t played Kisu Kisu at sometime in your life. Some folk may know the game better as Whisper Down the Lane, Grapevine, Telephone or maybe Chinese Whispers. It’s a great fun game and often when people play it – they intentionally miscommunicate in order to make the end result more fun.

I recently wrote about the Death of Service and David K Waltz commented:

In my blog I often remark about siloism within companies. I think what ends up occurring in situations like yours is the game of telephone, where someone in the circle whispers a comment to the next, and by the time it has worked it’s way back around it is nothing like the original statement.

Overcoming this tendency is difficult, if not impossible – well organized and operated companies are rare, so I am sure your experience is common, unfortunately.

In organisations we have silos, we have chains of command, we have org charts (barf!), we have boundaries. And all these things serve to support Kisu Kisu and prevent conversation. Sure, when you play Kisu Kisu it can be great fun. But when you are in a company trying to solve a problem for a colleague or a customer, Kisu Kisi sucks, and conversation rocks.

My love of conversation is probably why I enjoy unconferences so much, and there are three coming up in the next few months that I’m pleased to be getting involved in.

Sukh and his team are getting the inaugural Learning and Development Connect event going on April 24th, Gareth and co. are delivering the fourth ConnectingHR unconference on May 16th, and Peter, Jonathan and me are bringing Stop Doing Dumb Things back again on June 27th.

These events are great for catching up with old friends, meeting new people and for learning and sharing ideas on how to make work better. It’s all about the conversation and I hope you can join in.

Unmarketing

Oh dear. Yesterday I received a sales pitch via LinkedIn. It was sent to me by someone I met once for half an hour in the Starbucks at Paddington Station. It’s called ‘Win contracts and influence people?’ and I think it sucks so badly I wanted to share it with you as an example of how not to win contracts and influence people.

It starts, ‘Hi!’ Wow – an exclamation mark after the greeting. That’s so much more personal than, oh I don’t know…my name perhaps?

It goes on:

‘I hope you are very well.

We are introducing our new programme for 2012 and we are offering 3 of these workshops to companies we have a special relationship with at a reduced, introductory rate. Of course, I thought of you and, particularly, the people in your business.’

Awwww thanks, that’s so sincere.

There follows another 500 words of guff before building to the ‘offer’. Normally this workshop would cost £8,000 plus VAT and venue hire, for me and up to 8 colleagues. I can have it for just £6,900. Lucky me! (Did you see what I did there with the exclamation mark – maybe I was too hasty earlier?).

I wish I was making this up. #marketing #fail