For Your Approval

To hell in a handbasket

I've written quite a bit about the changing values of the workforce and how employers, and communicators, need to pay attention to generational differences as their organizations try to attract new people and retain the ones they've got. And it's clear that Generation Y has unique qualities that set it apart. The incoming generation has a different character. It also has a disproportionate amount of power because of the growing shortage of skilled workers as the Baby Boomers retire in droves.

But I've never really considered how much this new generation of "Millennials" is perceived as a bunch of lazy, selfish, brattish punks who share a mind-boggling sense of entitlement. At a cocktail party last night I met a gentleman -- a Gen X-er -- who actually left a job because part of his responsibilities was to conduct job interviews with Millennial candidates. He was sickened by what he saw as their complete lack of a decent work ethic and their expectation that the employer should be pandering to their every need. When he spoke of them, his disgust was palpable. And I know of at least one CEO who feels the same way.

What an interesting dynamic that's emerging! You've got the generation that's now coming into management roles -- the hardened, cynical Gen X-ers who entered the workforce when there were no jobs and had to bootstrap their way to success -- having to manage a generation whose members have never had to worry about getting a job, don't respect authority and are willing to jump ship and go work for the competition at the drop of a hat.

So what does this mean for communicators? I wonder if these generational differences are going to create an even greater gap between workers and management than exists today.  I worry that the Gen-Xers won't be able to easily figure out how to manage  Millennials and the work environment in many companies will become even more dysfunctional than it is today.

How will communicators help connect these two insanely disparate generations? Social media might be part of the answer. But can you imagine a Gen-X manager blogging, and having to deal with all the smarmy comments from the Gen-Ys? Social media might help connect people and build online communities, but it could also create lots of problems for management because it gives people such a powerful venue for whining and complaining.

Big organizations removed coffee rooms decades ago to save money and reduce office chatter, which is now relegated to the outdoor smoking areas. But social media creates the world's biggest water cooler.

Traditional corporate communication is all about controlling information. In a Gen-Y world where information (and people) are becoming impossible to control, is there a role for communicators at all?

New media channels are indeed gaining traction

Erik Samdahl of the Seattle-based consulting firm, The Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), saw my recent post listing my predictions for 2008 and responded with a thoughtfully targeted blog pitch.

My thanks to Erik for sending along a useful overview of recent research on the adoption of social media into the workplace, which comes in the form of a recent edition of i4cp's newsletter, Trendwatcher: Download trendwatcher_20071102_social_tools1.pdf

The evidence suggests that use of social media inside big organizations is trending upward, but isn't yet ubiquitous. We all kinda know that, but it's handy to have a roundup of statistical evidence to back up our instincts.

The i4cp was formerly known as Human Resource Institute (HRI). Eric tells me his firm "helps companies improve workforce productivity by providing a combination of research, peer communities, tools and technology to corporate executives and HR professionals." Good call on the name change. Human Resource Institute sounds like it might be run by Nurse Ratchet herself! Thanks again Erik!

Guru Ronnie on the year behind, and the year ahead

2007 was one of those seminal years in which technological changes, economic trends, generational shifts and business realities made employee communications people more nervous than usual about our place in the world.

We watched as the foofarah over social media came to a bubbly head, prompting those who were "in" to feel trendy and superior, and those who were "not in yet" to soften their skepticism and wonder if it's time to jump onto the bandwagon -- before it sinks, wheels spinning, into the mud of reality.

We worried that the continued globalization of the world economy would outsource all our jobs to Bangalore. (They can update Intranet sites from there, can't they?)

We felt puzzled and threatened by all those millennial kids coming into the workforce, with their goody-two-shoes Gen Y values and their canny ability to communicate with each other without the help of wizened, cynical intermediaries like us.

And we wondered how much longer we would be communicating about "employee engagement" before it gets replaced by another jargony term for the same vain attempts of large organizations to cope with the existential morass that is the modern workplace.

Well, it's pretty clear 2008 is going to be more of the same.

Woo hoo!

I say "Woo hoo!" because these anxiety-inducing trends are such gigantic, interesting challenges that there's truly no better time to be in internal communications. Never has what we do mattered so much. 

Before I decide what will happen in 2008, let me look back at what I saw coming in 2007. At the start of last year I made a bunch of pompous predictions, most of which were vague enough to keep me off the hook, 12 months later, as I freshly prognosticate again. The only prediction that I clearly blew was the most specific: that Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson would add another 50 episodes to the vast audio bank of their podcast, For Immediate Release. The prolific duo produced twice that, and Shel and Neville continue apace.

So, here are my predictions for 2008:

1. This will be the year that every Fortune 500 company, every government, every big NGO -- pretty much every organization with more than 200 employees -- will have a social media strategy, which will include an employee component. Some will dive in, others will dabble. But this trend will touch EVERYBODY in 2008. In February 2009 the Gold Quill Awards program will be swamped with social media entries, just as it was swamped with corporate Web sites in 1997.

2. Smart communicators will use this sweeping trend as an excuse to start a meaningful conversation with their CEOs about what it will take to connect with employees and build a strong internal community. Others will blindly do stuff just because it's trendy, wasting huge amounts of money and further alienating employees with needless information delivered in new ways.

3. Facebook will launch a sister network designed for business (along the lines of Linkedin, but better) that will become extremely popular, but will prompt many companies to install clunky internal social networks in a vain attempt to keep their "walled gardens" closed to the outside world. In a related trend, employees will start bringing their own wirelessly connected personal laptops to work so they can stay hooked up to their social networks during the day. Some will get fired for this, making headlines and inspiring others to follow.

4. There will be a global shortage of internal communicators. This will be driven by the rise of social media and the increasing desperation of corporate leaders as they try to figure out how to improve employee engagement. Salaries and job positions for employee comms professionals will finally begin to approach parity with external communications.

So, 2008, bring it on! I'm ready, and so are communicators everywhere. It's going to be one hell of a year.

 

A cautionary message from Roger D'Aprix

In today's ragan.com Daily Headlines, reporter David Murray brings us a condensed version of a speech by internal communication god Roger D'Aprix, an old dog who's wary of the new tricks of social media. It's a thoughtful look at the pros and cons of this industry-sweeping trend, and well worth a read.

Social Networking at Work

There's been a lot of talk lately about the potential uses of social media within large organizations, at the same time as we're hearing about nervous companies shutting down access to blogs and sites like Facebook for fear this kind of activity compromises security, leads to drops in productivity and abuses network bandwidth.

Kind of reminds me about the old joke: Why don't Baptists have sex standing up? Because it might lead to dancing.

The point is that organizations that are too prudish about the new social media risk losing out on its potential benefits. This recent article from TechNewsWorld gives a great overview about how organizations are starting to figure out how to use the new tools, and that the corporate world is further along on this track than one might think.

Big outfits like IBM, Morgan Stanley and AAR (an aviation services company) are installing social networking software and customizing it to suit their business needs. I hear that the market for this kind of enterprise software is going to exceed $US 400 million this year and it promises to be a fast-growing segment.

The idea is that if companies put their own social networks in place, they can control them more. As IT guy Rich Lyons, president and founder of Lyons Consulting Group, puts it in the TNW article, "If it's the property of your company you can monitor the content...Its much harder to monitor what someone's doing on MySpace, but if your company has installed it, it's much easier. Plus, you can focus on how it's going to help your business. You can set up different forums for discussion and actually use it to foster communication but yet drive efficiency at the same time."

That's an IT consultant talking; it's pretty self-serving because Mr Lyons helps his clients get these kinds of internal social networks up and running. But also reflects the thinking of many businesses and it's a realistic, low-risk approach to entering the world of social media.

But I dunno. Like my friend Shel Holtz, I'm more of a libertarian when it comes to this kind of thing. It makes the most sense for companies to not only install their own social networking solutions, but to also give employees the freedom to surf where they want. This approach recognizes that people take work home all the time, so they should be able to do a little personal networking at work, and also that there are lots of good business reasons for being able to have unfettered access to the Web.

Because, you never know, it could lead to dancing.

Is this cool, or what?

I just got back from Australia a couple days ago. What a great trip. Wonderful hospitality, a beautiful country, and an excellent conference that I was honoured to be a part of.

One of the big highlights for me was during my all-day workshop on internal communications. In one part of the agenda I talked about social media and how it fits into the overall mix, and then, as a special treat for workshop participants, I used the power of the internet to connect us with my friend Shel Holtz, famed blogger, podcaster and guru of social media as it relates to business communications. Shel spent about half an hour talking with me about emerging trends and answering questions from the group.

It was so cool to have Shel up on the big screen. Here we were, in downtown Melbourne, and there he was, sitting at his desk in Concord, Califoria -- and all it took was Skype (free software) a high speed internet connection and a couple of speakers hooked into my laptop. Talk about adding some sizzle to the day! I haven't felt that technologically hip for a long time.

The attention crash

Uberblogger Steve Rubel's recent post reminds us that "human attention does not obey Moore's Law" -- in other words, we are limited in our ability to keep up with the steadily increasing flow of information that's being generated by the new social media. I agree with Rubel that there is going to be a crash. Interesting that an external trend is starting to crash well before it has much traction inside organizations.

A social network for communicators

Last week my friends at Ragan Communications quietly launched a beta version of a new social network for communicators. The web portal, myragan.com, is similar to other online communities like Facebook and Linkedin. Once you sign up with a username and password (membership is free), you have the ability to identify and build a customized online directory of friends, trade instant messages, join special-interest groups, etc.

The difference is that it's designed specifically for communicators -- and, even more specifically, for the thousands of people in our field who pay attention to Ragan's many arms and legs, including newsletters, conferences, workshops, manuals and blogs.

It's a good idea, and looks like it will be a worthy extension of the Ragan brand/empire.

The challenge Ragan and all the other social networking sites are facing right now is that there are so many of them. Right now I have usernames on Skype, Linkedin, Facebook and Myragan, plus of course I spend time keeping this blog going, not to mention trying to work for a living. It's no wonder my barbecue podcast is on hiatus. I'm feeling social media burnout, and I'm far from being a super-user.

But I don't think this is a huge problem for Ragan, because we're still in the "early adopter" stage of all this stuff and the majority of people don't participate in these kinds of things...yet.

It's too early to say whether proprietary social networks will all survive in their current form, or become swallowed up by meta-networks that will be many things to many people. But in the meantime, Ragan has started one heckuvan online party for communicators, and I invite you to join in the fun.

The power of dialogue

One of my favorite blogs is Jeff Jarvis' Buzz Machine. He's a veteran writer, political agitator, social media evangelist and an insightful commentator on all the changes that are happening in conventional media.

His recent post about Dell and its foray into blogging is a great case study in how a company is embracing social media and engaging in a meaningful dialogue with its customers.

It's an inspiring story (one that's not over yet as Dell struggles to turn itself around), and it makes me wonder whether the same kind of changes will happen in big companies as they learn to listen to, and interact with, their employees. As employees become increasingly disengaged and companies struggle to reconnect with them, will internal blogs be part of the solution? I hope so, but I worry that it will take years, if not decades, for us to figure out how to use these tools. And I wonder who will be the first to hit a home run.

Or has someone hit it already?

Delightful connections

One of the greatest things about writing a blog is that it makes so many unexpected and delightful connections with people from all over the world.

My most delightful connection yet happened a few weeks ago, when Ross Monaghan, a lecturer at the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deekin University in Geelong, Victoria, Australia, connected with me through this blog. Ross is co-editor of an innovative podcast/blog called TheMediaPod, which describes itself as an "experimental and collaborative page written by public relations and journalism students and teaching staff at Deakin University."

The connection with Ross turned into a correspondence, which has now turned into a dream come true for me. Ross just let me know he has included my handbook, Writing and editing the Internal Publication, on the prescribed book list for his second semester unit, PR Writing & Tactics. There will be about 300 students in the unit.

When I wrote the book, I had a vague hope that it would some day be used as a teaching tool for communication students. Thanks, Ross, for the huge honour.

On a lighter note, here's another unexpected and delightful connection. Kommunicat, a blog based in Poland, recently featured a post in which the author, Kamil Borowiak, summarized (in Polish) a recent blog post from For Your Approval.

I was, of course, interested in how my words had been interpreted, so I ran Kamil's blog post through a free online translation site, with interesting results. Here's an excerpt from the translation:

"Here word is key community. Correction of mood caused is important challenge for communication in today's times pitiless reduction of cost, bureaucracy, deep change of brand value and very often bad management. They trust from one part of firm employee (staff) not up to the end."

Got a nice ring to it, don't it? Thanks, Kamil, for making the connection.