Communication – Page 6 – The Consulting Artist

More Than a Number

Why turning numbers and statistics into stories is so important.

I don’t know about you, but I’m often skeptical when businesses try to distil something important into a simple score.

‘Our employees are 42% engaged’ ‘Trust in our company is at 54%’ ‘Our net promoter index has risen to 7.6’

Shudder.

I get that it’s easy to throw out a stat or two, but they often lack any real context and more worryingly, they seem to be unquestioningly accepted as the ‘truth’. I am not convinced that you can reduce these things to a number, at least not in isolation. I want to hear and read the story behind the digits, I want to understand why 42%, not just 42%. To help illustrate my point, here’s a personal example for you.

I’ve recently returned from a great trip to Chicago where I headed to be at the annual Illinois SHRM conference. I’ve already written about the anticipation of the event here, and shared some of the Art for Work’s Sake experiences Joe Gerstandt and I helped to cocreate at a packed pre conference workshop.

The second day saw me presenting on collaboration. I was on the main stage at the Drury Lane theatre…Oakbrook, not London 🙂 As I was introduced, something quite unnerving happened. The main stage lights came on and all of a sudden I could not see the audience. Eye contact is very important to me when speaking – I get nervous in front of an audience and one of the ways I get past this is to engage directly with people, looking at someone as I am talking – trying to make direct contact, albeit briefly, with as many people as I can. These direct connections help me feel like I am talking in many one to one conversations – and my nerves ease. I tried to get past this blinding lack of contact and the only way I could achieve this, was by leaving the stage often, and walking around in the theatre so that I could see people and achieve the eye contact I needed. It puts me at ease, and so the audience seem to relax too. The talk unfolded and afterwards I got a lot of positive feedback from people in the room.

You often get scored after giving a talk at conferences, and this one is no exception. A couple of weeks after the conference I got some feedback. My scores for overall effectiveness look like this:

Excellent – 65%
Good – 26%
Poor – 8%

Those numbers represent a pretty good shape for me. People often ask me why I am happy to get some ‘poor’ ratings – and the fact of the matter is – I take risks when I present. I try to find thought provoking angles to share, and these are not designed to please everyone – otherwise I don’t think they would be particularly thought provoking. I often remind people at the start of a talk that this time is theirs, not mine. I am their guest and I’d rather they voted with their feet on realising that my content and style is not working for them, than sit and endure me. Anyway – those are the numbers, and they don’t really tell us that much…do they?

The written feedback is perhaps more useful? Here’s what it says:

Relevant & Engaging. Very Collaborative.
Not the most compelling speaker.
Maybe a smaller room for Doug who likes the more personal space. The audio was distracting as he kept moving into the audience.
Great to have interactive part, interesting, overall did great job.
Different venue to allow for collaborative experience theatre setting was awkward.
Engaging speaker – look forward to more.
Doug is fab & needs the space to interact with the crowd.
Low energy not sure of his point.
Speaker would be more effective/comfortable in smaller breakout sessions.
Common viewpoints & not engaging (head down) but had some points to ponder.

I’m so pleased that a few people took the time and trouble to write stuff down for me. These few lines are for me, much more helpful than the scores. As you can see – some people concurred with me that a space designed for a play, did not work (or at least suit me) as well as a more typical presentation setting. On reflection – I could have anticipated the stage light issue perhaps – but I responded as best I could in the moment and thanks to the feedbackers, I’m in better shape for next time.

So what? For me – this experience serves as a very useful reminder that while 65, 26 and 8 may have some worth – it’s the story behind the numbers that really adds value, and helps me get better. So the next time someone tells you their engagement score is up from 29 to 41, please don’t just take that at face value and move on. Ask them – why is this so, and why does this matter? We owe it to ourselves, and to those who would seek to convince us, to delve a little deeper, and get a little better.

Creative Leadership – Essential Reading #2

A quick review of The Year Without Pants by Scott Berkun

Following a quick peek at 101 Things to Learn in Art School, next up in this mini review series is the epic, The Year Without Pants, by Scott Berkun. This book was recommended to me by the very lovely Heather Bussing (here’s her excellent review of it here) and it’s without a doubt, one of my favourite, most useful and enjoyable reads of all time.

Why do I like it so much? Essentially – it’s just very well written. It has the human touch, lacking in a lot of ‘business’ books, and it’s shot through with some great humour too. It’s about the year(ish) Berkun spent working at WordPress.com, the experience he and others gained and the wonderful shared learning. Rather than offer tons of advice, the book asks great questions – and often encourages you the reader to add your own organisational context. My copy is full of little tabs and markers highlighting little snippets I can easily refer back to. In no particular order, I’ll share a few of those with you here:

On Friday August 24th…I had my first team meeting. It was the worst kind of meeting – the kind where no one knows why they are there.

The only good news was the meeting was short, which is never a mistake. Until the day you can end a meeting where someone other than you says, ‘Wait! Can we meet longer?’ it’s safe to assume the meeting was longer than necessary.

The realisation that everyone is different when you talk to them alone is a secret to success in life.

What assumptions do you have about your organisation that hurt you? And what experiments are you doing to discover them and find better ways to work?

We faithfully follow practices we can’t explain rationally. Why is it that work has to start at 9:00am, and end at 5:00pm? Why are you required to wear a tie of you are a man and a skirt if you are a woman? Why are meetings sixty minutes long by default, and not thirty? We have little evidence these habits produce better work.

I love that when he started his work – Berkun drew up a list of priorities. Here’s his list:

Trust is everything

Keeping it real, keeping it simple.

This book has accompanied me to and been photographed on tour in London, Louisiana, Latvia, I had an L thing going on at the time. It has become part of my memory and a truly memorable read. I enjoy it so much I have bought several copies for friends, and happily supported the Kickstarter campaign for Scott’s next book.

Have a great day – next up it’s the turn of Steal Like An Artist

Note to self – this is the 700th blog post on this site. I need to get out more!

Want Something? Ask For It

When I watched and listened to Brene Brown updating us on her work and research into vulnerability last year, she said something in her closing remarks that stuck with me:

‘I ask for what I need. This feels inherently vulnerable, and do it.’

I know where she is coming from. Maybe it’s a typically reserved Brit thing – but I’m often rubbish at asking for something – simply and clearly. Are you?

I frequently see people frustrated at work by an unwillingness to ask for what they need. Complaining about shortages of resources, unhappy that Doug won’t do as he’s damn well told, stuff like that. And often – when you push back, it transpires that the complaint is voiced before any direct request to fix the shortage, and the unhappiness has manifested itself before Doug’s been asked for whatever it is he won’t do.

When I see these frustrations being played, out, I will say, ‘have you asked Doug?’ And usually the reply (accompanied by some beautiful staring at your shoes action) comes, ‘weeeeellll, no – not exactly.’ We’ve all been there, it’s often easier to blame someone and/or something than it is to take action.

This notion of asking for what we need stuck with me so firmly, I included it in Stop Doing Dumb Things.

It’s a card that really challenges me – and often they are the ones I like the best.

I’m in Manchester this morning enjoying the fine weather and getting ready to travel home after running an Art for Work’s Sake workshop yesterday afternoon, and enjoying some lovely company at an HR tweet up last night.

Previously when I’ve run open courses, I’ve put together the offer, stuck it on Eventbrite and waved it about on social media. A few people always generously share the news – and often, not much more happens. It was Meg Peppin who suggested that this time – I approach things much more specifically. So this time, in addition to what I usually do, I contacted people who have been to previous workshops and people I thought might be interested. I didn’t mass mail folks, I wrote little personal notes, lots of them. In the notes I asked if people wanted to come along and would they please help spread the word. The response was significant, generous and lovely. People shared the news widely and encouragingly, and many wrote back to me with all kinds of support. Thank you to everyone who came and took part yesterday, and to the many people whose support helped to make yesterday a lot of useful fun, thank you too.

On reflection – I clearly grafted a lot harder to make this session work than I’ve done previously, that’s important learning too. And having a clear message, with a clear request makes a huge difference.

So the next time you hear colleagues moaning that Doug hasn’t done whatever it is he’s supposed to have done, test them out with ‘Want Something? Ask for it.’ And if I can be of use to you – well you know what to do…

Happy Friday – have a great weekend.