Isn’t it just about relationships

I’m sat here at 2am in a rather warm Taipei just after Chinese new year unable to sleep because I have a blocked nose and my youngest daughter is also feeling a bit rough.

by gfpeck (cc)

So while I was sat in the easy chair holding her as she slept I started thinking about what people had asked me about bringing her here for the first time. “Is it the first time that her grandparents have seen her?”

Well it is, sort of.  Of course they have seen pictures of her on flickr, Photobox, had video chats on Skype, seen me talk about her on Facebook. I can’t remember when we sent an email or picked up a normal phone to talk – so  they really knew her before she arrived in Taiwan. Of course we have also been able to see how her 4 cousins have grown – not forgetting our own eldest daughter who loves more than anyone to chat on Skype and debate the ways of the world with her grandma and show her what she is wearing. Talking of which my wife was using a site called Babyhome (in Chinese) to share pictures and a diary when she had our first – we know most of our friends in London through this site – well before Facebook was making news.

When I get back to England I have said I’ll do some panel thing at work with managers from around the business – and I’m being touted as a social media communications expert (I am fully aware of what an expert is and it all depends on who is in the room) – within communications I’m probably not doing too bad though. So I was thinking, what the hell am I going to say to these peoplen if I get asked a question, I keep meaning to come up with some line and appear to be organised but it never happens. I usually come up with it on the spot. I was also thinking about something that came up in my review about measuring what I do more or how others can measure it themselves (that is measuring the benefit of social media).

So first off, the way we live and where we live determine what techniques we use to keep in touch. They are not an alternative to seeing my in-laws, they are an addition.  We aren’t going to stop coming here every year because we have Skype or Facebook – which is often where business gets it wrong. They think this will replace a face-to-face. Someone said to me, “I don’t like social media, I prefer to see my friends in the flesh.” Well, duh! Only because you like watching DVDs, does that mean you can never go to the cinema? No.

Funny that someone as anti-social as me is into social media and it has actually made me more social as the number one benefit I get is being prepared for meeting someone I have never met before and can instantly start chatting about topics we both know we like or have in common. Meeting a stranger rarely happens these days. I know most of them before meeting and not just from a phone call.. that is usually the last method of communication.  At work I may see pictures on their Beehive or Facebook profile, chat on Twitter with them or read their blog. And you know what, meetings get going quicker and things get done faster because trust and familiarity  is already established.

I feel how I keep in touch with people outside work is no different from in work. And I don’t sit there once a month looking at stats on how well I’m doing with the in-laws, how many comments I got from friends on Facebook, the number of instant messages on MSN. So why would I do that at work?

To measure the way that you are doing a job is ridiculous. To measure what you produce or achieve isn’t.  Judge me on the overall results of my work not on how I get there. What social media “experts” are saying is that these are techniques that will help you individually, at home, at work and throughout your life. Families come together from different parts of the world, business is the same. Find what works and if you don’t think it is helping YOU.. then try something else.

You won’t need to measure it because you will know, you’ll be talking to yourself.

This was all so much clearer in my head when I was sat in the chair earlier with Zoe. So I still need to invent that machine which takes thoughts directly out of my head and puts them on a screen.. but when I do, that won’t stop me talking to people, it just might mean that this blog was much much shorter.

IBM and Twitter – workforce enablement

I try

Just a quick one before I go away on holiday to Taiwan.

Shel Israel interviews our (IBM) own Adam Christensen about how we empower IBMers to engage in through Twitter.

While the company never embarked on an official Twitter strategy,  the result is consistent with IBM’s long term strategy for social media: to take a smaller centralized corporate presence in lieu of enabling all employees to engage on their own as part of their jobs in the platforms of their choice.

“Our assumption,” Christensen said, “is that the employee will be a much better representation of the company than a couple of guys sitting in corporate. Our business is vast, so to represent the diversity of topics we touch and subject experts we have, we are best served getting average employees to be active in public conversations.”

You could attempt or even have an official presence but the unofficial will always be greater and it is much better to enable, guide and help employees make use of it at work and home that can benefit all sides and of course our clients.

I’m sure if we all put our success stories together, one time Twitter has helped us in a real business situation, we could a book (or a blog).

BTW, the internal version, BlueTwit, is fantastic and perhaps Ev Williams doesn’t appreciate that there are some conversations you would like to have internally – similar to having an intranet and internal blogs.

Going blank again

May be it is just the start of a new year, my approaching vacation in Taiwan or burn-out from a rather hectic, exciting and full-filling year – but I can’t think of a damn thing to write about. This is going to be a ramble.

At present our Internal Comms function is preparing for our 4Q and end of year results. Local video has been recorded of our CGM which will be released internally after the corporate announcement. But I think it will have to be pretty bad or pretty amazing to knock some guy called Obama off the news headlines on his first day of his new job.

My appraisal is on Thursday afternoon – which I think I have done well in and taken the opportunities I’ve been handed and found. Hoping for a band increase. Well we do live in Hope.

Also this week, actually the other highlight of the week, is meeting with someone from another business who is also in Internal Comms – albeit at a much higher level than myself. This will be the third recent meeting with IC people from other companies. It’s really good to find out how others work and what they are doing. They will be coming to our SouthBank office for a chat and perhaps sample the delights of our canteen.

If you work in IC, based in London and fancy a chat over lunch then let me know.

Today I have my second meeting with my mentor, who is actually based in Germany. Still working out in my own head how this mentoring stuff should work for me, what I want to get out of it. Never had a formal mentor before but have kept up with people I admire on an informal level. They probably didn’t realise it (or me) but they were also mentors.

End of week.. hols..

A lesson for social media users

Just before Christmas I ran into an article on Profy.com about FriendFeed being blocked by companies.

Not interesting in itself as we see this sort of thing all the time but what was interesting was the conversation that continues in the comments.  As it appeared the person that wrote about someone complaining FF had been blocked at work didn’t do enough research and got some timings wrong about the way the person mentioned got round it. Again not big news, people get it wrong all the time.

What I found interesting was that the person who was being blocked from FF at work and was now using an iPhone to get round it was upset (and so were her friends) that they had been used as the example in the article without her permission. These are comments on FriendFeed. Err hang on, all this is in the public domain anyway.  Who needs permission?  No one.

“protect the identity of the subject so as to not humiliate her any further.” said Susan in one of the comments. One of the points being that her employer may be able to id her.  Her employer could be searching on FF themselves. Infact anyone can see what was already written.  The fact that the iPhone had been purchased before the block makes no difference. The fact is that they are getting round the block and in my book, well done. Company, wake up.

Now getting the facts wrong is one thing – indefensible.  But using the words that are you freely available on the net a crime?  I think not.

I’m not an addict

The author made a remark in the article that the user seemed to be an addict;
“And since Yolanda seems to be heavily addicted to FriendFeed..”

This to me is fair comment.  “seems to be” is different from “is” but when you put it into the context that many Friendfeed users make jokes about themselves being addicted to the application it makes more sense that the word addicted was selected.

Addicts are always the last to know though )

Where did it go wrong?

Well for one a company blocking any website is on a hiding to nothing as iPhones and other mobile devices enter the workplace.  Companies, you are wasting your time trying to stop people using them.  You could get free access to Facebook on Orange – if you can get reception that is.

Second, embrace the technology and help educate your employees how to protect themselves. Come up with a set of social computing guidelines, tell them about the required etiquette and the common pitfalls. Gen Y (bless them) may be using this stuff all the time and not thinking about it.  You have a problem – because they don’t think about it they can write anything.  Older generations are a little more weary of technology and so think about what they publish.

In the end those employees go home are still representing you even when they aren’t working for you. Turn their past time into an asset – not a liability.

Take an example at the most simple level – re-tweet on Twitter.  You write something and then they re-publish it so all their followers can read it too. So, people need guidance.

Thirdly, to expect that writers never make mistakes or may be put an angle on things is to be incredibly naive. Humans make mistakes and so try to be responsible for you own and not blame others for your mistakes. That doesn’t mean that writers shouldn’t check facts as much as possible.

Comments gonna work it out

So in the end the comments actually worked things out.  Nowadays we get to make our voice heard either within the articles or on other platforms – online writers have nowhere to hide. Gracefully, the author apologized and the people in the article got to have their say.

Whatever you blog/twitter/comment may be taken down in evidence and re-published without your permission

Are we still Internal Communications?

Wondering out loud on Twitter the other day I asked if Internal Comms should still be called so, or if it should, in the light of recent changes be called something else.

You may argue that the name is of little importance, what you actually do makes the difference – anyway this made me recall a blog I posted on myragan.com in the middle of last year about my self imposed job title change.

~*~

Recently I updated my job title on our company profile directory (BluePages – what else) from “Internal Communications, w3 editor” to “disruptive communicator” – I was somewhat surprised at the results.

“Disruptive by nature” is one of the tag lines taken from our CEO Study 2008 and having been involved in social media, new media, web2.0 or whatever the hell you want to call it this seemed like a nice way to sum up the way I work and what I’m interested in. So, I became a “disruptive communicator.” A force for change, upsetting the apple cart, kicking some metaphorical butt – not doing things how they have always been done.

To be honest, I really didn’t think anyone would take note but at a team meeting my manager brought it up and liked it. You had to pick me off the floor. Not only that, the phone started ringing. Well it didn’t, Sametime instant messaging started popping up with questions from more people I didn’t know and invitations to chat to clients about our social media “stuff” aka Lotus Connections, et al.

It may have been coincidence but new people who call on me always mention it. Some laugh, it may be a joke but it has certainly change perceptions of how some people see Communications – or my part of it.

To a certain extent Internal Comms is often seen as company propaganda by some employees in all companies or the team that will send out a mass mail (even worse).

Our job is changing, actually it has changed.  We are a force for change, enabling masses of communicators rather than communicating to the masses.  Enabling employees to use web2.0 tools is what it is all about.  From that comes so much more. There is a feedback loop from blogs, file-sharing and social media that otherwise just wouldn’t happen. And if you don’t provide the tools don’t expect the next line of grads to be knocking at your door anytime soon – they expect these tools like email and telephones.

Serendipity creates some amazing opportunities, I was speaking to one of our engineers who uses Twitter and by some chance coincidence he came across a tweet from a guy in Austria that ultimately led to his company becomeing a business partner with solutions in the pipeline to go to market.

Innovation is banded around a hell of a lot these days and to many means very little.. I wish there was a another word for it but these days to get teams working together, collaboration is not just essential, it’s fun and motivating.  It gives me a buzz.

In a nutshell, create the new working environment – enable everyone to join in if they want and watch the emerging (hidden) talent rise to the top.