One solution is productivity improvement with the resources that are available. What does that look like in real life? Here’s an example. In a recent story by Greg Keenan in The Globe and Mail, we learned how General Motors stepped up production of some hot models produced at one plant to 225,753 from 152,007 the year before. One of the ways they did it was a productivity boost. “Increasing productivity and eliminating bottlenecks added another 50,000” units, the story said.

 Compare that to one of the other production boosts: adding a third shift at the plant – about 350 workers according to reports when it was announced – to get 60,000 units more.

What if GM had not added another shift? They could still get that additional 50,000 units from productivity improvements without adding many more people – certainly not 350 more as in the added shift. Dramatic.

 So, instead of grumbling about resource reductions as most of us have, or just sharing the extra work amongst the remaining resource, take a page from GM’s playbook.  Don’t add inefficiency when more efficiency is needed.

 For instance, how much time/resources are you using to re-create knowledge (processed information) that you’ve already invested in creating (a staffer’s work output on a project or issue, for example), but just can’t find or haven’t asked for? Just think of the inefficiency and productivity challenge that causes for the person who is assigned to re-create the knowledge (a distribution list, a position statement, a proposal, a company profile, etc.).

 We have more productive capacity in our desktops, laptops, iPads and smartphones than most of us will ever use. Employ that hardware and software to organize, store and communicate your departmental/institutional knowledge. If getting it all together is the challenge, hire a part-timer, like a student, to get it going.

 And if you have to justify the expense with metrics, try this:

1. Ask your teams for examples of knowledge re-creation (rework) and estimates of how much time they have invested.
2. Calculate the monetary value and ask the team to estimate how many of those re-creations they do in a normal week.
3. If the work day was NOT expandable, what’s the productivity effect in time and cost of this one common productivity problem? Try reducing it by a set metric, say 25%, over the next three months.
4. Repeat until the smaller and smaller gains are outweighed by the resources to achieve them.
5. Maintain discipline and work on another productivity waster.

 In August 2010, I wrote a post about how communications improvements can make major productivity and efficiency gains. Find it here: HOW COMMUNICATIONS CAN BOOST PRODUCTIVITY AT WORK

nar·ra·tive/ˈnarətiv/

Noun: A spoken or written account of connected events; a story.

 Narrative. So powerful. But what if it’s working against you? A narrative like the  ’Birther’  issue that has haunted President Obama through his first term. I have worked in public relations for many years and have had to manage narratives that ran counter to my client’s interests many times.  It always felt to me at first like getting caught in a rip current at the beach. No matter how hard you fight it, it just seems like it is going to carry you out to sea.

The solution to a counter flowing narrative is, in fact, much like the advice given to those caught in an actual rip current: remain calm, get your feet down on something solid, get help and be patient. More on this later.

What brought the power of the counter narrative back to my consciousness was a column by Toronto Globe and Mail writer Margaret Wente: “Can you handle the truth?  Forget the narrative of catastrophe. The Gulf of Mexico is nearly back to normal.” Her story picks up on an AP report  that basically says that, while not completely back to pre-Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill state, it’s not the disaster we might think it is. What’s instructive here is how this powerful narrative is playing out. After 100 days of almost around the clock coverage and a narrative of environmental disaster, reinforced to this day, that story sticks with many of us. I’m as influenced by it as anyone. The surprising “truth”, says the AP report, is that it is not as bad as we might think. However, for the seafood industry, the tourism industry, the oil and gas industry and BP in particular, they are still fighting the rip current fed by the narrative of destruction that is running against them.

Wente draws an interesting conclusion about why the “narrative of catastrophe” remains, in spite of the facts.

“I think it’s because we saw the spill as a giant morality tale: evil versus good, rapacious oil interests versus the environment, greedy consumers (that’s us) versus oil-soaked pelicans and the unspoiled natural world. The visuals were devastating, and the coverage was relentless. The media took turns hyping the disaster. They had a lot invested in this storyline and, when it took an unexpected happy turn, they couldn’t handle it. They couldn’t even see it.”

So, how do we go about keeping our heads above water and surviving the power of the narrative rip current?

Keep Calm: High emotion and panic lead to bad decisions. Swimming against a rip current often leads to exhaustion and drowning. Use your head. If a narrative is running against you, don’t start thinking like a victim. That’s emotional. Think like the receiver of the narrative. Will they pay attention to it? Will it makes sense to them? How much exposure to repetitions will they get?  How much credibility do you have with the receivers versus the storytellers or protagonists? Plan all actions and communications with the answers to these questions in mind. Be deliberate. Don’t flail about.

Get a Solid Base: If you are caught in a rip current, you’ll find that the water has more power than a swimmer. So – as they say and I have experienced – get your feet on the bottom and walk out if you can. Point is that the solid ground gives you powerful traction to counter the force of the current. Facts and logical arguments will be necessary to counter a strong narrative that is running against you. Obama has come out with the definitive proof of birth in Hawaii that confirms he is a citizen (not for everyone – there are doubters who will never be convinced and there are those with agendas that don’t want to be convinced). Many hope that this action kills the “birther” narrative that has taken up so much space in the public affairs geography. Without the proof, this story had no chance of dying.

If a narrative comes down to their opinion versus yours, you may never win. A formerUSMarine General was reported to have told a group: “My opinion versus yours, mine wins. Your facts versus my opinion, you have a chance of convincing me.” Another element is that people can accept things they don’t like, but only if they understand them. So, while a strong narrative may initially hold sway, planting the seed of doubt with facts and arguments that undermine the narrative can be the beginning of the end. Caveat: the facts and argument have to make sense to the receiver. Too often counter arguments are made that make sense to the party feeling victimized by the narrative, but these arguments don’t make sense to the receivers. An example would be an oil company saying that a spill wasn’t their fault – because they believed it was a subcontractor’s or nature’s fault. The receiver, on the other hand, thinks: “Your well, your oil, your instructions, your oversight, your responsibility, your liability.” Pushing against this is like trying to swim directly against the rip current.

Part of the solid base is context. It can be beneficially powerful. But like most powerful tools, it can also be dangerous, if used improperly. Here’s an example as cited in Wente’s column:  “Tony Hayward, BP’s CEO, was reviled for saying that the amount of oil leaked was ‘tiny’ compared with the ‘very big ocean.’ But he turned out to be right.”  So, good piece of context but delivered too early. In the face of 24 hour video coverage of the oil spewing from the fractured underwater well and the huge slick on the surface and the dead fish and oil covered wildlife, marshes and beaches, Hayward’s offering did nothing more than further damage his credibility. He needed to be calm and patient. Minimizing the problem comes across as defensive and callous. In fact, it is seen as supportive of the negative narrative.

Get Help: If you get caught in a rip current, get help. A boat might be needed, if you can’t walk out. Also, the experience and credibility of someone like a lifeguard might be what you need to successfully counter the current. In the case of a narrative, other credible voices that are prepared to put forward facts and arguments that counter the narrative may become the only credible voices. Yours may be discounted, like Mr. Hayward’s.

Be Patient: Walking out of a rip current can be slow and very difficult. Waiting for a rescue boat can seem an eternity. Be calm and patient. Certainly this is very true when the current is a strong narrative. A national survey checking on attitudes of consumers found that 71% are still concerned about the safety of Gulf seafood, even though fishing is not allowed until the species is deemed safe following testing. It’s going to take time to change the narrative. With both the fishing industry’s  and the government’s self-interest an issue, the credible third parties that are having some traction on the narrative are chefs who are vouching for the safety and quality of the seafood by serving it in their restaurants. This one will be a word of mouth change to the narrative. Set against 100 days of 24 hours of pictures at 1,000 words a picture – well, it’s going to have to be a slow and steady turnaround.

So, given all of the above, and given that he had the definitive proof in hand, why would Obama have let the birther narrative build for almost four years? This might be one of those cases where the credibility of the narrators took a hit with every telling, because the narrative wasn’t of interest or didn’t make sense to most of the receivers. I get the sense that on April 27^th, 2011, when the document was finally released, Obama just calmly and deliberately walked through the current and out of the water. Just sayin’!

I know people don’t have time to memorize their speeches. So, we tried to offer tips on how to read a speech so that the audience would forget it was being read. (One way to read a speech is to use a teleprompter. But not many can afford it or find it appropriate to use the clear screens that flank the lectern and that deliver the written text to the speechmaker. Some say they are overused and the President of The United States – POTUS- endures a lot of this criticism for his reliance on TOTUS – Teleprompter of The United States.)

That’s not what has prompted this post. What struck me about President Obama’s State of the Union Speech (SOTUS) on January 25, 2011 was an insight that addresses a powerful element found in influential speeches that is often lost when they are read.

After the SOTUS, Time.com’s editor-at-large and Senior Political Analyst Mark Halperin wrote in his blog The Page:

“Obama’s presentation was close to flawless: upbeat and animated, leisurely and assured, surprisingly engaging even when he lapsed into the professorial mode he favors over tub-thumping. He also offered up some light, teasing humor, a rare feat for the generally sober president, whose forays into comedy often seem forced or hammy. Rehearsals with one of the Democratic Party’s best speech coaches clearly paid off, allowing him to internalize the text and focus on conveying the emotion of the words with grace and spontaneity.”

I underlined the last two lines because therein lies my point. It’s not just reading that needs to be mastered. It’s the delivery.

When I have worked with clients on presentations and speeches, a good part of my contribution is to constructively challenge the words and thoughts in the speech – the content. My intention is not to re-write the material. It is to help the client “internalize” the content. To make all of it conscious as content, not just the words on a page. It’s difficult to do this if you are the person giving the speech. So my suggestion is: get a coach. Just like a stage actor – even a veteran – has a Director to help with this.

A coach’s job is to challenge everything in the content. If you are the speech giver, don’t get defensive. Understand that explaining, say, the purpose of the speech or a line or a word, is part of a process of commitment and internalization. It’s the process to move from a level of just getting through a read with a bit of inflection to the level where we might say the thoughts and points are lifted off the page to fly to the audience instead of dully trudging through space and too often not penetrating the audience’s consciousness. The difference is performance rather than just a read.

So, the upside of reading is that we keep on track, we have an external memory (the script) to rely on and that lessens anxiety and we don’t have to memorize. The downside of reading is that without the extra work, the rehearsal and the use of the reading techniques, the read can be flat and lifeless – a fail that undermines purpose.

Why not be spontaneous, memorize or use cards as prompts? If you can do this well, by all means, use this approach. Unfortunately, too often the preparation is not good and the performance is poor. This fail damages your personal brand.

Yes, POTUS used TOTUS for SOTUS. But, because of Obama’s ownership of the content, his rehearsals with a speech coach and his use of the teleprompters to keep his eyes up and his fear of losing his place in check, we get a review with words like “flawless”, “grace”, “spontaneity”. What more could a speech giver want?

No, crisis isn’t convenient. Lots of people away for the festive weekend. Little warning. Big weather event. Big consequences. So, how did the Big Apple administration respond? Badly, it would appear. But more on that in a moment.

Why have a crisis plan? Almost all organizations have a plan or plans in place for emergencies. The fire evacuation plan is the most basic example. Many organizations have business recovery plans in case something interrupts mission-critical business activities. This might be an HR issue, such as the senior leadership killed in a plane crash. It might be an information technology issue, where products or services cannot be delivered because of a software or hardware breakdown. These are operating crisis plans. Additionally, many organizations have crisis communications plans.  And they have them for a number of reasons:

1. To formalize procedures for managing an issue into a plan so that these procedures can be shared, verified, practiced, revised.
2. To reduce “thinking” time and increase speed of response, often critical to good crisis management.
3. To give the backups to the designated first responders, who might be unavailable, the “manual” of instructions to follow.

More sophisticated crisis response plans have an escalation provision that increases the response, depending upon the severity of the issue. I once worked with an organization that had a response plan that they summarized as “Get Big Quick” (GBQ) when an incident was classified as severe. How many crises may have been minimized had organizations responded with GBQ at the first sign of an impending issue? However, the organizational tendency, in my long experience, is to minimize, not maximize. They always hope the problem just goes away. Usually it doesn’t. The momentum of moving to GBQ that is lost to indecision and tentativeness has often been the difference between a well-managed issue and an out-of-control situation – which is my definition of crisis.

Well, having a plan is one thing – sticking to it is another.  The New York Daily News reported on December 29^th: “The MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) failed to follow its own emergency protocol before the blizzard that crippled large swaths of the subway system.

“The MTA didn’t declare its highest-level Winter Operations Plan 4 in effect until Sunday when the storm was underway…An all-hands-on-deck declaration should have been made on Saturday when the forecast first predicted a blizzard would slam the city, the 300-page plan says…Instead, the Level 1 plan – the lowest – was officially in effect Friday into Sunday.”

In the days following the blizzard, the Daily News chronicled the City’s tragically poor performance.  Calling out more workers for snow clearing on Christmas day brought poor results – some just couldn’t get to work. Actions taken were sometimes misguided – like sending out buses without tire chains, only to see many of them get stuck and block more streets.  Those were the operational problems. How about the communications response?

On the Monday, with the City still snowed in, the Daily News reported that Mayor Bloomberg said: “The world has not come to an end…On balance, I think you’ll find we kept the city safe and we’re cleaning it up.”

The Daily News showed in its anatomy of the storm and response that New Yorkers didn’t agree.

“Laura Freeman, 41, was among the desperate 911 callers when her elderly mother fell ill in her Corona home. By the time first responders made it through the snow-choked streets, 75-year-old Yvonne Freeman was dead.

“Later, as the distraught family watched in disbelief, Bloomberg appeared on television.  “He said, ‘It’s horrible, but take in a Broadway show,’” recalled Lisa Moyano, another of the victim’s daughters.”

Lessons to be learned

So, what are we to take from New York’s misfortune?

First, the Plan is key. Keep it current. Don’t let other objectives (like finances) diminish it (it’ll cost more to fix than is saved by skimping). Orient new employees to the Plan. Practice it. Follow it.

Second, even a good operating response will suffer if communication isn’t handled well. BP’s “I want my life back” and NYC’s “Take in a Broadway show” will live in infamy.

Third, in crisis where someone dies, no matter what words you use, “sorry” doesn’t help the dead.

This isn’t new – just the volumes and importance of the communications are novel. People have been blowing the whistle, as they say, and leaking caches of communications for a long time. The solution is prevention. Simple, but far from easy. Why? It requires major behaviour change and that, I have concluded, is the hardest solution to achieve.

Leaking isn’t the only way private communication gets into the public domain. Decades ago I worked for a company whose in-house lawyer demanded that all senior management personnel get more “security” conscious about our communication. He wanted us to be careful about how we said things in our written communication, especially advice or comments that were meant for management’s eyes only. I had largely forgotten that counsel – behaviour change is hard to remember – until I saw this report about Shell Oil in The Guardian Newspaper in the UK. Everything that lawyer warned us about so many years ago became reality for Shell.

The lead paragraphs from the Guardian story paint this picture:

Secret internal company documents from the oil giant Shell show that in the immediate aftermath of the execution of the Nigerian activist and writer Ken Saro-Wiwa it adopted a PR strategy of cosying up to key BBC editors and singling out NGOs that it hoped to “sway”.

The documents offer a previously hidden insight into efforts by the company to deflect the PR storm that engulfed it after the Nigerian activist was hanged by the country’s military government. Shell faced accusations that it had colluded with the government over the activists’ death.

I do not in any way wish to minimize the seriousness of the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa by using this report as an example of the need for caution, even in internal advice communication. However, the example, as exposed in the Guardian story, powerfully shows the conflict between the very serious context and the bloodless way in which communication can sound many years later, particularly with the language that is chosen. Here’s just a sample from the report:

The documents even reveal that Shell discussed whether it should stay in the country in the wake of Saro-Wiwa’s death. One scenario was called “milking the cow”, whereas the “pull-out” scenario was seen as “giving in” or “caving in” which would set a “very negative precedent for the group”. Another reason for not leaving was that “issues of liability will not disappear even with a total withdrawal.”

So, does this mean that we shouldn’t commit our advice to written (paper or digital) form? That would bring the business/organizational world to a halt. And as I said, even though I was warned a long time ago about the dangers of legal exposure or “leaking” that we now see in the Guardian story, I have written many PR strategy documents in the intervening years and I am certain my language and my advice, at times, have been fairly strong.

After reading the Guardian story, I wrote a strategy for a client addressing a post-crisis recovery and I changed my usual behaviour as a consequence. I think the takeaways from the Guardian example include the following:

• We need to remind ourselves and others to be conscious that everything we communicate – memos, emails, tweets, voicemails, verbal comments – can be brought out in court evidence that includes testimony (where a witness testifies to what you said in a private meeting, for instance).
• Our choice of language is critical and will often be reviewed later in the absence of the emotion that provoked it or the context that explains it. Just look at the offers of resignation sparked by the WikiLeaks exposure of diplomatic cables.
• If you make a conclusion, back it up with some proof. I did this in the strategy I wrote after reading the Guardian story. It only took one more sentence.
• Speed is the enemy of well considered communication. Emails and tweets needing remediation are so frequent these days one doesn’t have to look far to find proof of this lesson.
• If you couldn’t tolerate having your communication out in the public domain, then eliminate it (and I mean by that don’t write it or say it – I don’t mean delete or shred it, which in some circumstances can be criminal offenses) or re-consider how you will communicate.

So, do organizations – particularly knowledge work orgs – have a productivity problem? Well, a study that will be released in September (it has been leaked and reprinted here) is reported to conclude that: 

“In the UK private sector, staff are productive on average 44 per cent of the time. While this is pretty low compared to better performing countries or the best UK businesses, it is still much higher than the 32 per cent we observed in local government.” Paul Weekes, Principal Consultant, Knox D’Arcy Management Consultants.

 Obviously not all organizations, according to Mr. Weekes, are laggards on the productivity front. However, enough are that they produce these stunningly low averages. Think about your organization. Do you know the level of productivity of your staff?

Exploring the problem a bit more, we need to understand where the time goes. The Knox D’Arcy report explains that:

 “‘Lost time’ breaks down into obvious lost time (such as waiting for work, information or instruction, arriving late, leaving early, social chatting, taking informal breaks) and also time spent on activity which is ineffective, such as work  which is done incorrectly and has to be reworked.”

Well, wouldn’t you just like to quantify that to get another perspective on how costly it is? I can do that, thanks to another study by the IDC research and advisory firm. In 2001 analysts Susan Feldman and Chris Sherman authored an IDC White Paper titled “The High Cost of Not Finding Information.” In the paper, they developed scenarios to try to help with understanding of the problem. I want to focus on “Scenario 2: Cost of Reworking Information,” because to me it has a mis-communications genesis and it clearly  reflects some of the “lost time” aspects of low productivity identified in the Knox D’Arcy comments.

From the IDC White Paper:

Scenario 2: Cost of Reworking Information

A 1999 IDC study found that Fortune 500 companies would lose $12 billion as a result of intellectual rework, substandard performance, and inability to find knowledge resources. IDC call this the “knowledge deficit” (see European Management Fact Book, IDC#21511, January 2000):

“The knowledge deficit is a metric that captures the costs and inefficiencies that result primarily from intellectual rework, substandard performance, and inability to find knowledge resources (both information and experts). IDC’s extensive study of European firms and end-user return on investment (ROI) analysis has enabled us to estimate the average cost of ineffective knowledge management (KM) within organizations. The knowledge deficit translated into an average cost of US$5,000 per worker per year in 1999, growing to US$5,850 in 2003.

“A study by Kit Sims Taylor found that knowledge workers spend more time unwittingly recreating existing knowledge than in creating new knowledge. This study was presented at the International Conference on the Social Impact of Information Technologies in St. Louis, Missouri, October 12-14, 1998. According to Professor Sims Taylor, roughly one-third of productive time is spent in knowledge reworking. The other nearly two-thirds is spent in knowledge finding          and communication, with only about 10 per cent of time spent in actual creation         of new knowledge. For instance, Whirlpool expects to increase productivity of its engineers by 30 per cent by giving them access to existing designs for products. The following scenario uses an extremely conservative estimate of time spent in knowledge reworking.

• Knowledge worker salary = $80,000 annual salary plus benefits
• 1,000 knowledge workers x $5,000 per year (knowledge deficit)
• Calculation of cost: 1,000 knowledge workers x $5,000 per year
• Conclusion: An enterprise employing 1,000 knowledge workers wastes $5 million per year because employees spend too much time duplicating information that already exists within the enterprise. If we apply this finding to Fortune 1000, we see that in aggregate, enterprises are wasting $5 billion annually. And this is a conservative estimate, since many corporations employ more than 1,000 knowledge workers. The productivity cost is staggering.”

 I find Prof. Sims Taylor’s comment about 10 per cent of time devoted to creating new knowledge interesting as I think back to my early work years and time spent on a factory floor running a machine. If that $100,000 piece of equipment had only produced at 10 per cent capacity, a lot of heads – belonging to me, my foreman, our shift supervisor and the section manager – would have rolled. The company would have immediately known there was a problem and action would have been swift to get productivity up to acceptable levels. This is the problem in many knowledge work organizations – private or public. Peter Drucker’s comment “What gets measured gets managed” tells us  productivity in this work environment can be so low because it is generally unmeasured.
 
GENERIC SOLUTIONS

In organizations where output is measured – whether on the factory floor, hospital emergency unit, office, or service desk – my assumption is that for the most part productivity is much higher than where it is not measured. So, create a measurement system for your knowledge work and work environment. I will say that counting key strokes seems to be a bit draconian, but defining the output and measuring and monitoring that output is reasonable. Unfortunately, many organizations default to measuring activity, not output, because it’s easier.

Improve communications. How do we end up with unproductive work that is ineffective or has to be redone? I think we can all relate to situations where we have been told that our work output is not acceptable and has to be reworked. That can be done, but how to prevent it happening again? That takes a root cause analysis.

 On the factory floor and in other environments, this happens automatically and very often continuously (quality assurance/control). In knowledge work environments, not so much. In fact, Knox D’Arcy found that supervisors were often unproductive in terms of supervising because they were doing or re-doing their staff’s work.

 The wonderful element of factory floor work that I remember is the clarity of the communication. I was taught how to use the machine. Supervised closely to ensure quality. Supervision loosened somewhat as I built up speed and attempted to reach the consistent output expected per shift. I never made it. Even with more coaching I could not make the numbers. I was replaced on the machine by someone else and given a forthright and fair  explanation. I was then moved to another position where I met expectations and survived the summer work term.

 This happens in good organizations and sometimes under the supervision of a good manager in a bad organization. But I don’t see it as often as required to fix those productivity numbers that IDC and Knox D’Arcy have found. I conclude that the root cause in most of these situations is poor communications and by that I mean  unclear, ambiguous direction (e.g. “you get the idea” or “figure it out”); lack of priorization of work assignments (e.g. “I know that’s a lot of things I’ve given you, but I do need them all at the same time”); inadequate training or instruction or supervision; lack of/no access to appropriate information; duplicated work assignments (e.g. three people given the same assignment unbeknownst to each other).

 The fix is simple but it is not easy: clean up the communications and productivity will improve.

SPECIFIC SOLUTIONS

So, how can you clean up communications in the workplace?

There are technology solutions. I want to mention one, because when I began my research on the question “how much does mis-communication in the workplace cost business?” I started at an iSixSigma Discussions forum on the cost of rework that took me to IDC’s work for Cognisco and then back to the original IDC White Paper. Cognisco has an online product to measure employees’ understanding of their job.

 There can be systemic solutions, where processes are put in place that everyone follows. For some simple examples, I looked in my filing cabinet for work forms and pulled out a sample from a car rental agency, from a roofer, from a local car repair firm and one from a contractor who worked on our house. Each one provided clarity of communication about the assignment to be completed. And we all know that if there was a dispute about the work later, we’d find ourselves back at the work form, discussing what was agreed to be covered and what was not. Interestingly, all of the forms had my signature or initials on them. There’s a formal commitment there that would be absent if the agreement was verbal. So, yes, we could use these kinds of tools to improve communications in knowledge work. And while the resistance might be high at first (“it’s too bureaucratic, it takes too much time, we’re above that”), once the benefits are seen to outweigh the perceived negatives, then we might find these solutions to be very acceptable.

 So, what can you do, short of filling out a multi-copy work order form, to get the benefits of clarity and measurement? Two things: structure and training.

 Structure: A work order form is just a structure of communication. In using structure, we get clarity, comprehensiveness (everything we need to know and agree to between us should be on that car rental form, for instance, including the vehicle, price, timing, contingencies/insurance, range, etc.). We use structure for priorizing work in many environments, usually on a chronological basis. Staffers might relieve a lot of stress if they could say to their boss: “That assignment is number 8 on the list and I am currently working on number 3.” Some do say something like this. Most don’t. And bosses don’t like resistance. So we hear stories of bosses saying things like: “I don’t care, just get it done.” The communication is poor on a number of levels, not the least of which is around the priority of each assignment given the limited resources, like time. The root cause here is not an unproductive staffer perhaps, but an unstructured boss. And that may be because his or her training and/or the system of that organization does not encourage such a disciplined structure. Well, if productivity is important, add structure. It works wonders on the factory floor.

 Individually, anyone can improve their own productivity and that of the people around them by adding structure. In my communications training practice, I am still surprised when very successful managers tell me they’ve had no training in communications. Many have had zero training in supervising or managing as well. They learned it on the job. All the successful people I’ve worked with want to get better. They may have resistance to get over regarding a new idea or way of communicating, but if the idea or structure has strength, they embrace it.

 So, we all could improve by using more structure in our communications. Putting it in writing works in services industries and other businesses. Why not in knowledge work environments? Handing a staffer a written assignment allows for discussion to surface missing information or different approaches to resources allocation. Many work environments use this structure as an assignment contract and the parties do what I did with the roofing contractor: we each sign it.  At minimum, if a manager writes down the assignment and ensures all the needed bits are in it – its priority, or who else it has been assigned to, for example – and then uses that written information to give verbal instruction, my educated guess is that productivity is going to rise as rework or ineffective work is eliminated.

 We started this discussion with the call out:  How Communications Can Boost Productivity at Work. There are two choices, just as there are in that old saying: How do you eat an elephant? All at once or one bite at a time.

Unfortunately, Friday’s recall was colored by a warning letter from the FDA that said in part:

“The Agency is concerned about the response of Johnson & Johnson (J&J) to this matter. It appears that when J&J became aware of FDA’s concerns about the thoroughness and timeliness of McNeil’s investigation, whether all potentially affected products had been identified, and whether the recall was adequate in scope, J&J did not take appropriate actions to resolve these issues. Corporate management has the responsibility to ensure the quality, safety, and integrity of its products. Neither upper management at J&J nor at McNeil Consumer Healthcare assured timely investigation and resolution of the issues.”

I would like to say that this situation takes nothing away from the brilliant execution of the McNeil team in 1982, but I can’t. While they performed so admirably 28 years ago, this current situation does not reflect well on McNeil or Johnson & Johnson. Like it or not, it also reflects poorly on the Tylenol brand. Brands are assets. And when they’re in crisis, their stewards need to choose their goal, keep focused and execute precisely to achieve that goal. I expand on this below.

Primary Crisis Goal:

Make it tight and get it right

By Patrick McGee

Copyright September 2004

 When it comes to crisis, my view is that a positive outcome will only be determined when one out of the many goals is designated as the primary goal. If that goal is ‘tight and right’ it will drive the response of the organization — including its actions and its communications – to success.

 Realistically, there are a number of goals that organizations have when faced with crisis. Here’s a fairly typical list of commonly promoted goals:

Don’t panic the public.

Avoid/minimize legal action.

Avoid/minimize media coverage.

Minimize financial loss/cost.

Minimize reputation (brand or corporate) damage.

Protect the share price.

Protect the customers (employees, community, public).

Restore operations/business recovery.

Manage the immediate threat.

 Nothing wrong with any of them. But if you can only choose one – if you have to make it a tight focus – which would you choose?

 I’ve asked organizations to make this choice during crisis. It would have been better had they done so ahead of the situation they were facing. But, there we were, with good goals competing with each other for primacy – because the right primary goal can determine resource allocation, priority of actions, tone, and success.

 Does choosing one goal for primacy over the others mean the others will not be realized? Certainly not. Experience shows that choosing the right goal for primacy can ensure the realization of the other goals. In fact, almost all crises that would be considered successfully handled achieved most, if not all, of the goals outlined above.

 So, which goal is the best one to choose in order to get the most benefit for the other goals?

 I believe that it is to protect/respond to the safety, health, and concerns of people such as customers, employees and so on, first and foremost. With that as the stated primary goal, I believe that everything else is achievable. If we look at crisis situations that have been dubbed successes or failures, the pivotal element was what priority this goal received.

 The funny thing is, most organizations have this in their values statements. As well, they are almost obnoxious in touting their focus on the customer or on the fact that their employees are their most important assets. But when the chips are down, profit, hard assets, lawsuits and other considerations often push for priority. And sometimes the wrong goal gets primacy.

 So what made Johnson & Johnson/McNeil different in the handling of Tylenol back in 1982? In the admitted absence of a crisis plan, what guided the response to the strychnine poison added to some its products in order to extort money from the company? What led them to make a decision to remove the product from the store shelves – a $100 million decision – against the advice of legal counsel?

 It was their “Credo” (definition: any system of principles or beliefs).  Here’s what they say about it on their website:

“At Johnson & Johnson there is no mission statement that hangs on the wall. Instead, for more than 60 years, a simple, one-page document – Our Credo — has guided our actions in fulfilling our responsibilities to our customers, our employees, the community and our stockholders.”

I am reproducing it in its entirety below because if Tylenol is the Gold Standard of crisis management we need to understand precisely why. Note in the first section what they identify as “first responsibility” and then the goal they identify as the “final responsibility” in the last section.

Our Credo

We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services. In meeting their needs everything we do must be of high quality. We must constantly strive to reduce our costs
in order to maintain reasonable prices. Customers’ orders must be serviced promptly and accurately. Our suppliers and distributors must have an opportunity to make a fair profit.

We are responsible to our employees, the men and women who work with us throughout the world. Everyone must be considered as an individual. We must respect their dignity and recognize their merit. They must have a sense of security in their jobs. Compensation must be fair and adequate, and working conditions clean, orderly and safe. We must be mindful of ways to help our employees fulfill their family responsibilities. Employees must feel free to make suggestions and complaints. There must be equal opportunity for employment, development and advancement for those qualified. We must provide competent management, and their actions must be just and ethical.

We are responsible to the communities in which we live and work and to the world community as well. We must be good citizens – support good works and charities and bear our fair share of taxes. We must encourage civic improvements and better health and education. We must maintain in good order the property we are privileged to use, protecting the environment and natural resources.

Our final responsibility is to our stockholders. Business must make a sound profit.
We must experiment with new ideas. Research must be carried on, innovative programs developed and mistakes paid for. New equipment must be purchased, new facilities provided and new products launched. Reserves must be created to provide for adverse times. When we operate according to these principles, the stockholders should realize a fair return.

 And did Johnson & Johnson abandon these first principles in favour of other goals when faced with a number of deaths from the criminal act involving its brand? Certainly not. As Larry Foster, Vice President of Public Relations said: “It would have been hypocrisy at its best or worse.”*

 The goal definition was tight. It was about customer safety. That’s why they’re the penultimate example of getting it right. That goal helped achieve other critical goals: protecting the brand, financial/business recovery, positive media coverage, manageable legal action, and so on.

 So, is your crisis plan guided by a goal?  Does it put people first?  Will your organization stick with that goal if the price tag heads up to, or north of, $100 million?

 If you don’t have a plan, start with your organization’s first principles to set the tight, right goal the plan needs to accomplish.

                                                                                                           -END-

 *http://www.cces.ca/pdfs/CCES-PAPER-Malloy-E.pdf.  David Malloy, PhD University of Regina cites Fritzche 1997 p.132 quoting J&J’s Larry Foster.

UPDATE:

I have been informed of an alternate view of the “gold standard” that has been around for a number of years. It is summarized on the subscription only site O’Dwyer’s PR Daily, but reproduced  on the PR Watch website http://www.prwatch.org/taxonomy/term/104?page=7&from=70. Find below the counter argument:

Crisis Management “Gold Standard” Actually Tinny

Source: O’Dwyer’s PR Daily (sub req’d), May 22, 2007

As many speeches, magazines and books have done previously, the current issue of Fortune magazine calls Johnson & Johnson‘s (J&J’s) response to the 1982 Tylenol capsule poisoning deaths “the gold standard in crisis control.” O’Dwyer’s PR Daily writes that “the Tylenol story, as commonly told, is a ‘fairy tale,’” as PR executive James Lukaszewski once called it. J&J’s CEO at the time, James Burke, “learned of the tragedy” of the seven Chicago-area deaths “on Wednesday, Sept. 30, and called a staff meeting for Monday” — in contrast to the “myth” that he acted immediately. J&J also “tried to localize the problem, recalling two batches that were circulated in the Chicago area.” A wider recall wasn’t launched until “after another attempted poisoning using Tylenols took place on the following Tuesday in Oroville, Calif.” And “while Burke has been lauded for his openness with the press, he did not hold a press conference.” The problem was the capsules, which “some pharmacists would not stock,” because they “could easily be taken apart and ‘spiked.’” After another Tylenol capsule poisoning in 1986, J&J’s Burke admitted he was sorry that the company “did not stop making Tylenols in capsules after the Chicago murders.”

While the counter view of the 1982 Tylenol crisis management may be accurate – I wasn’t involved so I can’t say either way – I stand behind the thesis of my 2004 blog above. There will always be competing interests in managing a crisis. Which objective will get primacy and how will that be determined? Look to a defined process or structure to help analyze the competing options. A values statement or credo can provide such a structure.

 We all have our ways of preparing to exercise influence. Some of us are aware of these approaches and for others the approaches are largely unconscious. A way of preparing that yields the best results is to use a formula to guide our research and analysis of what needs to be in our influence/change communications.

 There is a 1960s vintage formula that I have found provides a very useful question stimulus and analytical framework through which to strategically prepare for an influence opportunity. I’m referring to Gleicher’s Formula or Equation. David Gleicher was a  consultant at Arthur D. Little. In equation form, his formula looks like this:

Change = Dissatisfaction ´ Vision of the future ´ First steps towards that vision > Resistance.  (C=DVF>R)

This was later refined to DVF > Cost (economic and psychological). The thought is that, if any of the elements on the left side of the equation are weak or missing, then overcoming resistance/cost won’t happen.

 The great value of using a formula like Gleicher’s when we are planning to exercise influence to achieve a goal is that it brings discipline to our thinking (or lack thereof!) It makes us examine our assumptions against what the person we are trying to influence is thinking, believing, fearing, wanting, etc.

 Who hasn’t heard the admonition to be client (external or internal) centred (driven, etc.) today? Well, the client’s cost resistance is one thing, but that psychological cost is a swamp of resistance, to play on John Bunyan’s Slough of Despond. From bias, to “I don’t know you”, to the fear factors, such as the fear of failure.

 This side of the formula – resistance – has the most weight, precisely because it is the client’s centre. But how many of us want to believe that we’ll achieve the influence we want to have, based on the client’s dissatisfaction with the status quo (and how much research did we do on this?), combined with our vision of the future for the client (our product, service, idea, goal, etc.), along with our gentle (or otherwise) push with a suggested action or exhortation (“now get out there….”)? Some will do thorough research (questions, surveys, etc.) and analysis, using a disciplined approach that will include the resistance part of the formula. But many will not do much more than a cursory think- through, driven by their firmly held assumptions.

 Resistance is powerful. Facts and persuasive influencers notwithstanding, change can be non-existent or slow if it cannot outweigh resistance.  For example, on the issue of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, Professor Andre Potworowski flags the resistance problem in a column by technology writer Tyler Hamilton.

 “It is, in effect, a challenge of change management… The greatest barrier to innovation comes from resistance to change on the part of the consumer… People must begin to see the possibility of profiting from sustainability,” says Potworowski.

 And every issue, challenge – indeed, opportunity – is the same. Does DVF outweigh R?

 There is a circumstance where influence/change can happen extremely quickly. I’ll take some liberty with Gleicher’s formula to explain. When I ask myself what factors have been present when I’ve seen an immediate result in influence/change that overcomes resistance, it looks like this:

Fear + Urgency + Limited Options (FULO) > Resistance.

Why? Basically the values of Gleicher’s DVF are jacked-up to the “threat” level and the cost considerations – economic and psychological – don’t have as much sway.

 How many times do most of us have these FULO factors working in our favour to overcome resistance when we’re exercising influence? Not that many. So, we have to deal with the CVF factors Gleicher identified. We can “manufacture” FULO. Many high-pressure sales techniques do just that. We can introduce some aspects of FULO into DVF. Certainly there’s an ethical line for using these “weapons of influence.”

 Gleicher isn’t the only one with a formula. Just a sample from my bookshelves includes:

 Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends & Influence People – great advice for anyone.

Robert Cialdini, INFLUENCE – The Psychology of Persuasion – PhD. He has six “weapons of influence.” They are present in every analysis I do and often employed in my strategies and those of my clients.

John Adams, Successful Change, Paying Attention to the Intangibles – a change leader I found by exploring Gleicher, he asked the question “Why do so many of these efforts fail?” He found his own answer. His research led to a list of 12 Individual Change Success Factors that he believes are complementary to Gleicher’s Formula. He shared it in OD Practitioner in 2003.

Howard Gardner, Changing minds: the art and science of changing our own and other people’s minds – Harvard Ph.D. put forward the concept of multiple intelligences, and in this book outlines his 7 Levers of Change, all starting with “Re”. I’m thankful to Gardner for introducing me to a formal examination of resistance. It informs my thinking, training/coaching and counsel.

Gregory Berns, Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently – MD, PhD. Berns wanted to have innovation in the title but it was overused. He really framed the fear factors part of resistance for me.

Chris Argyris, Overcoming Organizational Defenses – Professor Emeritus Harvard and Thought Leader, Monitor Group. Argyris discusses the undiscussable: how organizations resist change by implementing “organizational defenses”. My take on it: Most organizations talk the talk, but few walk the talk.

 I will explore influence and the references above in future blogs, but in the meantime, enjoy your reading if you check out these experts. And don’t forget to use a formula to increase your strategic influence.

Copyright 2009

Asking non-sales staff to sell is an issue that arises more and more these days, as organizations compete to move their products and services. Sounds good on the surface, but the request (or demand) often terrifies people who don’t do sales on a regular basis. If they are going to participate in sales activities they need help. I first wrote about this in 2005 and am updating that article here.

 There is nothing wrong with sales. It is just another manifestation of influence. If the influence is of benefit to the person being influenced, then most societies would usually agree it is a “good” thing.

 So, why are some people and not others afraid of selling? For the answer to this question, which I did not address in my original piece in 2005, I’m drawing on neuroscientist Dr. Gregory Berns’ 2008 book iconoclast, particularly his commentary on “fear”. My conclusion is that some people fear sales because they are uncertain of the benefit of the influence sales represents. They suffer from “ambiguity”, or the inherent fear of the unknown. And/or, they may, like a third of Americans, suffer from the same fear that arises from that most common phobia – public speaking. It’s the fear of failure.

 In his book, Berns references the science of these fears and notes some experiments that prove the power of these fears and their effect on human behaviour. When people who have these fears hear the word “sales”, a movie runs in their head and it triggers a reaction. Think of the fear inherent in making the initiating phone call with the prospective client, or in the “asking for the order” of closing the sale. These images trigger the socially debilitating condition – fear of rejection.

 Before I get into solutions to these fears, let me answer another question. Why would organizations want to have non-sales staff selling? We hear from clients that they want as many points of contact with potential customers as possible. We hear that they also want staff to cross-sell products and services to existing customers. Consulting companies want consultants to go out and bring in new business, or “kill their dinner” as they say. But many of these people are not psychologically equipped to go out and “sell”.

 A number of years ago, I received a call from a truly desperate PR consultant who practically begged me to help him find new business or to get another job. A consulting  firm had recruited him from a position at an industrial association because of his knowledge of a particular industry sector. He told me he had been promised that the firm had lots of business for him to work on and that he would only occasionally be required to participate in new business pitches. Well, that lasted for a couple of months, and then he was told that he had to make a far more substantial contribution to his billings from clients he was to bring into the firm – or he would be let go. This was a likeable, knowledgeable fellow – but a salesman he wasn’t and he knew it. When he told his wife, she was devastated. She had warned him not to leave the association for the consulting field. His distress and bleak prospects had such an effect on me that I use his story as a cautionary tale for anyone who asks me about a career change, where the selling reality is not fully understood. His story also prompted me to want to find a solution to the problem.

 Another situation where non-sales staff are asked to participate in selling occurs when the organization has to make a sales presentation as part of a bid on a major contract. We’ve seen these situations cause serious concern amongst these staff. Organizations that realize the terror this creates come to us looking for training/coaching assistance, to help their non-sales staff to be less anxious and to make a better showing for the prospective client.

 So, what help do we provide these terrified staff?  I should note here that the solutions offered were not derived from, but are consistent with Berns’ commentary on “Taming the Amygdala Through Reappraisal and Extinction”. (The amygdala is the brain’s fear centre.)

 Here are 3 critical components:

1. Brand/Reputation-building, not sales

Change the words and you change the perception of what is being asked of staff. Sales to most non-sales staff (and even to some salespeople!) is as frightening as giving a speech to an audience of 1,000 people. In truth, these people are not really being asked to close deals. Usually they are being asked to find selling opportunities or to contribute to the sales process, not necessarily to do the actual sale.

 It makes sense to use language that doesn’t frighten staff. In fact, what most non-sales staff do is deliver the product or service. If they do it well and look after the customers, they help to build the brand image and enhance the reputation of the organization, thus making sales easier. If the task is explained in those terms to staff, there is likely to be far less anxiety.

2. Customer knowledge

 I always want to have the customer knowledge discussion in these sessions. Non-sales staff have a perspective on their customer and some have a deep knowledge. However, many haven’t fully thought through their customer’s wants and needs. A customer knowledge discussion puts a current perspective about the customer in their heads. It often stimulates a conscious empathy for the customer. Eliciting an expression of interest in helping the customer get what they want/need isn’t difficult after this discussion.

 It may seem like a “no-brainer”, but too often this knowledge and consciousness is taken for granted. When we ask them to tell us the customer’s story at the beginning of this exercise, they can’t. We get part of the story, but not all. So, we should never assume staff have it top of mind. We should always work through the customer knowledge discussion.

 How powerful is this customer mindset? I met the top salesperson for the largest region in a particular division of a major bank. We talked about sales. He said he never sold. He just gave the customers what they asked for. Their ask which resulted in the sale would come after he explored their wants and needs with them, as well as the possible solutions and products that might satisfy those wants and needs. He said he never asked them to buy a product. He didn’t have to. They asked him. His success was based on customer knowledge. And while the monetary reward was good, he said looking after the customer was what he enjoyed most. No anxiety or terror here.

 3. Personal contribution

Most employees believe they are making a contribution and take pride in what they do. We tap into that. We get them to tell us what that contribution is and how it helps the customer. Then we ask, if they were speaking to a customer or prospect, would they feel comfortable in talking about their knowledge of the customer? Or how they as employees contribute at their organization to satisfying the customer want/need? Customers more often want to hear a credible story about how their wants/needs will be dealt with from the people who do the work, rather than hear from a person whose job it is to “sell” making grand claims. But staff doesn’t have this perspective on their minds or the right stories prepared, if they are blinded by the terror of the demand that they have to sell.

 Don’t deal with this terror by saying, “Oh, you’ll be fine, don’t worry” (this line is about as comforting as the “this won’t hurt a bit” line.) Shift the focus from outcomes to a focus on a process that will credibly show non-sales staff how effective they can be at “sales”.

1. A topical analysis of  Judge Sotomayor hearings on her nomination to SCOTUS
2. A reference to a very interesting study on how the Net shortens the news cycle today

Here it is complete with the link to the Study:

Christine Pelosi, Attorney, author and Democratic activist:

From Judge Sotomayor’s hearings, we have learned that United States Senators are on the 24-hour news cycle and Supreme Court Justices are not.

It is perhaps a historic coincidence that America’s first Internet President, Barack Obama, sent up a Supreme Court nominee for confirmation hearings the same week that Cornell University published a landmark study - “Meme-tracking and the Dynamics of the News Cycle” – that demonstrated how the web shortens the news cycle. The Cornell researchers tracked the accelerated web-based circulation of ideas – scouring 90 million articles and blog posts during the 2008 campaign for the “genetic signatures” for ideas, memes, and story lines.

They found what most Americans already intuit: the Internet shortens the time in which a meme circulates from main stream media to blogs (2.5 hours) and into the popular culture, thus words have more weight as perceived evidence of a person’s character and philosophy. The study helps explain why the role of United States Senators in this Supreme Court Justice hearing is to elevate their chosen memes (“most experienced nominee in 100 years” “wise Latina” “prosecutor” “judicial activist” “moderate” to name a few) through repetition and questioning in order to quickly frame Judge Sotomayor’s character and philosophy, capture the conversation, and build momentum to justify their vote.

Meanwhile, by contrast, the role of Supreme Court Justices is to navigate a long-term jurisprudence cycle not a short-term news cycle. Court rulings rely heavily on precedence, must endure over time, and ideally are not swayed by the passions of the moment. As Judge Sotomayor said, “we don’t rule for the home crowd.”

But before she can be elevated to a lifetime appointment to work in the long-term jurisprudence cycle, Sotomayor must endure the last unblinking look of the 24-hour news cycle. Unlike nominees of the pre-Internet era, the judge’s public utterances were captured on tape and can be taken in or out of context with the stroke of a keyboard. Sotomayor must assess the weight of her words on and off the bench to show us her personal character and judicial philosophy without prejudging cases or adding new weight to badly chosen words. In the questioning to date, Democrats emphasize her words on the bench and Republicans emphasize her work off the bench.

She has demonstrated patience, intellect, and the ability to withstand withering patrimony with aplomb. To her credit, Judge Sotomayor is attempting a candid discussion on jurisprudence that will endure over a lifetime and avoiding a gaffe that will circulate in a news cycle.

 Again:  MEME-TRACKING AND THE DYNAMICS OF THE NEWS CYCLE

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/kdd09-quotes.pdf