Back Off So We Don’t Communicate

You step into an empty elevator in a public building with two of your friends as you continue talking and laughing. The doors close … almost.

Someone jabs in a hand, the doors retract, and the obese guy steps in. You’re feeling a bit crowded. The joking stops. Right behind him comes an exceptionally attractive young woman. Keeping your eyes off her is difficult. Then enters two foreigners speaking their language, followed by a homeless person, and finally an elderly woman with a walker.

Can you feel your anxiety rising, your emotions bouncing? What’s happening? In brief, physical proximity to the unknown, the uncomfortable, and the unwashed creates contradicting cues. You want to be gracious and open-minded but at a distance. You have no distance in the elevator.

3 observations on distance and communication

1 Getting close to someone close
The better we know an individual, the more relaxed we are when close to him or her. Makes sense. But let me restate that: the more positive we feel toward an individual at any given time, the more relaxed and uninhibited we are when close. Talking encourages good feelings, which leads to laughing, which encourages affection, which can lead to hugging, which can lead to … well, you know.

Tension between two people reverses that process. After an argument with our spouse or best friend, we’re not much in the mood for hugging. That’s obvious. But is the reason so obvious? It’s because such an upheaval confuses us and makes us uncertain about how to respond. We can’t be physically close to the person we are normally closest with because our anger won’t let us.

Consequently, we tighten our muscles, climb into our mind to draw up a battle plan, and move our bodies away from the perceived source of our discomfort. Even shaking hands with a colleague we’re angry with would confuse us. How could we not like this person right now and yet the physical contact of a handshake would say we do?

The irony of these situations, of course, is that understanding and resolution will come not from our mouths or our heads at a distance but from simply being close to the “enemy” and feeling disarmed. Closeness causes communication.

2 Getting close to colleagues
Desks and conference tables are more than flat writing surfaces. They set the comfortable distance between participants for intellectual, structured exchanges of acceptable information at a certain volume – in other words, business talk.

By contrast, confidential or personal information generally is shared informally while standing close to each other using hushed voices. Distance defines the type of communication; the type of communication defines the distance.

Even the way we position ourselves around a desk or table is revealing. If someone stays behind his desk (his territory) when meeting with you in his office -- close to his computer, papers, telephone, and other information sources -- he is in control while you, on the opposite side without such tools, are the supplicant. He reflects a certain comfort and power that you likely don’t. In this situation, communication usually is rigid.

Likewise, in a group meeting in a conference room, we rarely sit beside someone with whom we routinely disagree. The physical proximity would unnerve each individual and likely make both hesitant to comment because it is awkward to disagree with a person so close. Additionally, sitting across from someone with opposing views typically results in one person contributing ideas and the other dismissing ideas. Communication goes haywire.

One more example of distance. I deciphered a pattern when I worked for a major public relations firm years back. On accounts that involved multiple agency offices, the further geographically a group billing on that account was from having to explain an invoice to the client face-to-face, the more money they billed.

3 Getting close to yourself
About to join the health club or about to lose 10 pounds sometimes seems as real as actually exercising and dieting. If we can convince ourselves that something will happen – actually might, could, should happen – then our minds seem satisfied while our bodies still suffer.

Now, think of the times you stayed on an exercise routine and dropped a few pounds. What did you tell friends? Probably, “I have never felt so much energy and focus.” Why is that? Simple.

When we’re out of shape, overeat, over-caffeine, under-sleep, and over-work, our minds separate from – rather discard – our bodies. Living in our minds requires less maintenance than taking care of our deteriorating shells. Yet, a physically sound body, connected to an alert mind, and all on a sensible schedule opens up new possibilities for productivity, learning, and achievement.

5 Close-up Tips

1. Agree with your loved one that someone will initiate a hug within 5 minutes following an argument. Even asking, “whose turn is it to initiate?” will lead to chuckles and snuggles. As my blogger friend Seth Simonds says, "We fight for the win when a win on either side means a loss for the whole"


2. Approach someone you have wronged and, without even thinking, tell him you’re sorry and extend your hand. If he refuses, put your hand calmly in your pocket; don’t clench it. You might have another chance later.


3. Deliberately sit in a meeting beside someone with whom you don’t see eye-to-eye. Create small talk before the session starts. Do this exercise at three meetings and you are likely to discover some common ground.


4. Have coffee with someone associated with a group you disagree with and have strong feelings about. Sitting near each other and talking may not change your mind, but it could affect your heart.


5. Exercise your body and mind by walking for 30 minutes three times a week while listening to a novel on your iPod. Congratulate yourself each time. Give yourself a hug. Then take a shower.

Richard Skaare 01.13.09

Resources:

• One of the seminal works on space and communication is Robert Bales’ “Interactive Process Analysis.”
• Seth Simonds’ blog offers some wise and practical advice on “getting close to someone close.”

Credit: Graphic by The Gold Guys

Navigating Web Caves ... How To

Did you hear the one about the two Saudis and an American who go into a cave with 25 Europeans and a Dutch guide holding a lantern? Of course you haven’t because it really happened, and I’m going to tell you about it.

The Saudis are my clients, and I’m the American consultant. We’re in Maastricht, Netherlands for a round of video interviews with their European leadership. The interviews will turn into content for the learning portal I’m helping the company build.

It’s the weekend, and I decide an outing at a popular tourist attraction might be fun for all. The St Pietersberg Caves there are famous. Approximately 2,000 passages comprising 125 miles, the caves were formed from centuries of mining marl, which was used primarily in constructing area buildings. Napoleon visited the caves, Rembrandt’s paintings and downed American pilots were hidden there from the Nazis … many stories. So, why not go there?

The three of us board a boat for the 30-minute trip down river, then a 20-minute climb uphill, followed by a 10-minute walk down inside the mountain. Before we descend, I discover that the cave tour is conducted only in Dutch. I approach the tour guide hoping that he excelled in English in school. He says curtly that, if I stay close to him and if he has time, he will translate for me from Dutch to English the information he just told the group. I will then convey his comments to my Arab-speaking clients, whose English, fortunately, is quite good.

When we arrive in the cave’s first large chamber, whose rock walls are adorned with paintings and stories, the crowd gathers around the guide. I position myself on a nearby ledge up against the cave wall to watch his body language and not block the view of children. The first words out of the guide’s mouth are directed to me in English: “Don’t touch the walls of the cave.” My companions slip into the crowd to avoid being associated with the culprit.

Think about that experience. You are trusting someone you never met to lead you where you have never been, explaining in a language you don’t know about unfamiliar writings and designs on walls in chamber after chamber. And what if your guide was to turn off his lantern and you were standing there in 50° blackness without a flashlight? How would you make your way back out?

Now, think about the website, intranet, or portal you’re building. You’re leading people who don’t know you, down paths they have never been, to rooms of information where you use terminology that is yours not theirs. Fortunately for them but not for you, if they get lost and panic, they simply click out.

Of course, good web designers and user experience experts know the standard tricks for helping people navigate sites. They can logically explain to you how those techniques will work. However, that doesn’t excuse you, the site originator and manager, from the process. Quite the opposite. Your role is to be the human in that process, the user.

Long before getting user testing underway – you will be doing user testing, right? -- you have to be the user. When your consultants and colleagues are saying, “they’ll (users) figure it out,” or “after they read all the information …” you should be thinking, “I don’t want to have to figure it out,” and “I probably would skim and grab information, not read it all.”

So, step aside from the others, realize that you’re on the tour alone, walk around the passages and chambers of your prototype site, and monitor your thoughts and feelings. Let me put you in the right frame of mind. Think cave.

3 Directions

1 Moving vertically
The homepage is the orientation center. You will spend only 30, maybe 60 seconds here. No time for hype. You’re busy, and you came to this page for a purpose: to get an annotated map. If the map is too difficult to decipher, you simply will find your own route using the search function. You have a search function on the site, right?

As you, the visitor, make your way down through a passage from the homepage to the information chambers, you should drop some breadcrumbs that show you how to get back. And you know what breadcrumbs are on a site: they’re the string of categories found consistently near the top of the screen that serve the same purpose as a “you are here” map. The highlighted “crumb” indicates where you are in relation to each step along the path. Click left on a crumb and you are back at a higher level. Keep the crumbs simple: they’re crumbs, not bread slices.

2 Moving laterally
Each chamber in the St Pietersberg Caves has distinct content. Some contain wall paintings, some plaques, and one has baking ovens that once fed people in hiding. No matter how different the content of the rooms, common to all is rock -- rock walls, rock floors, rock ceilings. Wherever tourists are, rock tells them they’re in a cave.

Diversity is good. Yet, taken to extremes on websites by organizational family members who want to establish their own identities -- often meaning separateness -- visitors who wander to those places can get confused and lost. Unless politically impossible, make sure all parts of your site share at least the rock ... that is, share common design elements and structure -- colors, type fonts, heading styles, whatever -- that visually tell users they are in the same cave, just different chambers.

Sometimes a departmental intranet was up and running before you decided to launch the central site. For example, the Supply Chain group has its own wiki-type site, which includes a learning management system and training courses. However, you have planned for a learning section on the main site for centalizing all training. Supply Chain wants its staff to link to your learning options but is unwilling to give up what took so long to build.

You can think territorially about this and wage a battle, or you can think like an employee who, frankly, doesn't care who owns what. Easy access and minimal clicks are all that matter. Consequently, build a transitional page that visually signals users coming from or to the main site that they are about to move into a different zone.

3 Moving out
Bailing out of a site is simple. Once again, think like a user. What would make you do a u-turn and linger just a bit longer, then return soon and often? Of course, the content must be engaging and applicable. Assuming that's true, you the user would want to do something with that content such as:

• rate the value of what you read or heard;
• bookmark a page using your preferred service: Delicious, StumbleUpon, etc.;
• capture and store information from various pages (e.g., Google Notebook);
• share information with others by clicking on email, print, ShareThis, and various social networking options; and
• receive email or SMS cellphone alerts on items of interest.

5 Moving Tips

1. Flash motion can add personality to pages, but sometimes that personality is narcissistic. A revolving header screams, “look at me because I’m more important than what you’re looking at."


2. Moving images -- video, animation, etc. -- add entertainment and a human touch to content. Use those formats increasingly but let the site visitor choose to turn them on.


3. The canned message on the homepage from your CEO probably won't move visitors. It's rarely read and never read on the second visit. Save the real estate.


4. Keep the user stationary by integrating all media into pages rather than separate windows.


5. Construct the homepage as a map, but realize that many, if not most visitors will move from another site directly to a page of specific interest on your site.

Richard Skaare 01.11.09
Credit: Photo by Luke Redmond

Beware: What You Create Could Own You

Writing, designing, producing -- anything creative – can easily turn from imaginative to seductive. Our mission was clear and exciting when we started the article or graphic. Yet, at some point, after hours of brain-wrenching thinking and redrafting, we lost our way and what we were creating began to own us.

I know this dilemma well, as illustrated by this story.

The first speech I wrote in the first month of my first corporate job years ago had the industrial-strength title of “The Economics and Politics of Human Rights.” The title was mine. In fact, most of the thinking and all of the crafting – organizing, writing, and tuning – was mine. Or so I thought as I finished the first draft.

My hazing as the new guy was to write a speech for an executive vice president who had been invited to present at a prestigious business school. Other executives were quite comfortable talking at Rotary Club luncheons in plant communities about the company’s exploits. My client wanted to take on ethical issues. Eager to prove myself, I readily took the challenge.

I met briefly with the EVP who sketched his thoughts on the topic. I didn’t ask many questions because I was eager to frame up my own ideas, show him the finished piece, and then convince him to buy in. I wrote a draft quickly, hammered it endlessly, and gave it to the bosses on the three rungs above me. Two days later, they replied.

The cover memo was glowing. I glowed. They even used the “unique” word. Then I turned the page to review specific comments on the text. The margins were cluttered with critiques, some harsh; whole paragraphs were crossed out; summary criticisms were added at the end. Whoa! Panic attack.

By the third review of the massacre, I was getting somewhat objective. Perspective was returning. I realized that the more emotionally-laden comments were less about writing quality and more about the critics’ own enthusiasm for the topic. They were acting out the speech in their minds: envisioning it being delivered by the executive, watching the audience’s reaction, and anticipating questions. From that came their changes.

I could disagree with their specific alterations, but I could not disagree with their passion to make this unusual speech even more penetrating. I realized that the phrasing, the texture, and the substance were still mine, but the final speech was a composite of the three seasoned communicators and the novice.

After judiciously incorporating changes, I sent it to the EVP and subsequently met to discuss it. This time I listened. He liked the speech a lot. Much more important, however, he got talking comfortably and deeply about the impact on developing countries when their resources ran out and the metals company exited.

Hearing his heart-felt reflections, I knew I had to rework the speech at least once more. He had added a dimension I had overlooked as I rushed ahead to create what I knew could be an outstanding portfolio piece for me. He had humanized the topic. And he had reminded me without ever saying it that the speech was his not mine.

Remember the ring in JRR Tolkien’s trilogy? Everyone who possessed it was possessed by it. Similarly with our creative work, we are exhilarated by its power and sometimes overpowered by it. We flinch at suggested changes, restrict access to the work; position ourselves as authorities on it. Our pride blinds us to the ultimate purpose. In short, we mistake the means for the end, which is communication.

How does this happen?

3 Thoughts

1 We view communication as proprietary, not open-source.
The open-source concept, long fostered by software developers, is simple and uncomfortably counter-intuitive: give away your work to increase its worth. You come up with an ingenious original, but rather than protecting it as your property, you share it with others so they can add to and benefit from it. Your reward is that you started the value-adding chain.

That’s our job as creative types. We originate, collaborate, appropriate, and then let go. In other words, I created a speech, my more experienced bosses perfected it with me, the executive adapted it to his style, and the audience walked away with a different perspective that they can share with others. I am proud that I started the process flowing. If I demanded we do it my way, if my superiors demanded the corporate way, if the presenter had demanded that he knew better, communication would have been lost.

The best writers, designers, and other creative types I have known:

• spend time walking around an idea or assignment;
• agonize over approaches;
• suddenly get inspired by an angle;
• mash it up with other angles;
• develop a love-hate relationship;
• toss out the initial version;
• and then yank it out of the recycle bin the next day and make it work.

They like the finished piece -- sometimes too much. They run it by others and try to keep quiet when feedback is unpleasant. But eventually they come to their senses, knowing that the value of what they incubated flowed partially from others and mostly from their own imagination. They also know that, ultimately, the value of their work will be determined by the people who receive and use it. If those people “get it,” it’s really good.

2 We view communication as standalone forms and job descriptions.
We know that the function – the purpose – of our communication work is to transfer what is in our heads – or our management or client’s heads – into the audience’s heads in ways that will shift their attitudes and alter their behavior. Yet we seem to be more addicted to the forms than to the function: the blog we write, the website we design, the event we organize.

Why wouldn’t we? Form gives us an immediate confirmation of accomplishment. It says we are doing our jobs producing publications as the publications manager or websites as the webmaster. Executing is what we get paid to do, isn’t it?

But is the publication or website communication? Actually, no, not in itself. It’s a piece of the puzzle. We probably agree on that point. But who is putting the pieces together? Isn’t that the job of anyone who calls himself or herself a communicator? Are we not integrators rather than separatists?

The point I think is obvious. Nothing we create should be a stand-alone. Our creations are nodes on a communication network. Together, we build that network.

3 We view communication as a support service not a business function.
I wrote about this issue in a previous blog post (Want to Communicate? Don’t Call the Communication Department). Summing up what I said:

Management views communication as strategic and part of their responsibility, primarily for two reasons:

• Their personal communication skills, they believe, helped get them to where they are. They understand communication better than anyone, they think.
• They confuse communication with information, which they consider something they originate, regulate, and approve.

Management views communicators as tactical.
In part, that’s because they have met few professional communicators who are anything but implementers. However, they typically think that more tactics will correct the organization’s weak communication.

Affirmation, appreciation, and respect for communicators can get skimpy in many organizations. We all moan at times about management’s failure to understand our work.

But switch places with an executive. Could she not complain that we lack an understanding of the business? If we want our work to have a greater impact on the big picture, we have to put on tri-focals to see that big picture, the medium-range plans of the organization, and the daily interactivity of various functions.

Finally, as if all of what I have said is not enough to overload your mind, here are ideas to help you reconsider ownership of what you create.

5 Ideas

1. Read Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral & the Bazaar.
2. Convert your next article, say on a profile of an ambitious employee, into three points that a salesperson could readily incorporate into a sales pitch he is making to a top prospect.
3. When sending or presenting a creative work to your employer or client, have everyone in your group sign it.
4. Identify the best communicator in the organization outside the communication department, and have him teach you communication from the outside in.
5. Remove your title and those of your staff from business cards or call yourselves “Communicator.”

Richard Skaare 01.06.09

How to Win the CEO’s Ear and Trust

Should Jane Klaviter switch careers from prompter at the Metropolitan Opera to executive coach, I would strongly recommend her to my clients.

Klaviter sits in a cramped, three-sided box at the edge of the stage and hand-signals or calls out instructions to singers, even divas, who forget lines or miss the pitch. Pointing her finger up says, “sing higher;” down mean “go lower.” Holding her hand up means “stop,” usually because the singer has jumped ahead of the orchestra.

I could have used that last technique when a CEO I worked for was sitting thigh-to-thigh with too many presenters on a low-rise stage at an outdoor dedication ceremony. I saw him about to move his chair backwards for more room, at which point a raised hand might have prevented him from tumbling off the platform, which he did. I quickly passed my resume to the president of the ad agency next to me.

The Met performers trust Klaviter because she has answers, is not intimidated by the powerful, and can prevent public embarrassment. And that’s the same three factors that get CEOs to listen and trust us.

3 ways to get the CEO to listen and trust

Be smart, but not smarter than
You are the best at what you do, right? Did I hear an “amen” or were you choking? If you don’t consider yourself highly proficient – with lots of room for improvement, of course – there’s no need to read further. The CEO may like you personally but not trust you professionally if you are insecure about your know-how.

You will always be trying to prove yourself with him or her. So, figure out what’s causing your uneasiness – it’s probably not a lack of information – by getting help from a mentor, coach, or therapist. I did when I was younger.

Assuming that you’re head-smart confident, equally important is to be street-wise competent. In short, you have to be long on emotional intelligence. And that means, to borrow from Dan Goleman:

• understanding what the CEO is feeling because you know what you are feeling;
• keeping the executive calm in stressful situations because you are in control of the facts;
• broadening the scope of the CEO’s understanding because you are always aware of what is happening throughout the organization.
• sharpening the CEO’s decision-making ability because you know how to communicate with him so he “gets it.”

All of that is to say that you need to function as a leader who support his/her leader.

There is a caveat, however. You can let your insightful advice flow freely in private with an executive but not always in public. Upstaging an executive in public can makes him/her feel less important, less in charge, and less kindly toward you.

For example, I had a difficult one-on-one discussion with a regional president during which I told him diplomatically that his bullish promotional campaign contradicted the corporate communication initiative I had launched to wake everyone up to the dour financial outlook for the company. I would not have done that in a group meeting.

However, once I participated in a meeting with a CEO, my boss, and outsiders during which I made several comments, judiciously timed I thought, that brought clarity to issues. Afterwards, my boss called me into his office and said that, “sometimes, you can be too intelligent.” It sounded like a compliment. It wasn’t.

Avoid upward delegation
A CEO who is outspoken, command-and-control, or exceptionally smart can be intimidating. That can cripple risk-taking and decision making.

Stand tall. Don’t be bullied into sacrificing your expertise and authority by checking out all your ideas and decisions with the CEO. He delegates to you, not you to him/her.

Don't worry about job security. Think more about integrity and your long-term career than job security. Besides, the CEO may shout but is unlikely to fire you for standing up to him. All he can do is say no and hurt your feelings. Big deal. Over time, he will respect your fortitude.

You have a professional (and ethical?) responsibility to present solutions -- not merely suggestions -- to the senior executive. But do so efficiently. One page with the problem/solution defined in the first paragraph beats a tome. A one-on-one discussion with the CEO beats PowerPoints during a staff meeting where some players waste time posturing.

In my experience with him, Al Rockwell, former CEO of Rockwell International, had an amazing ability to bring out efficient solutions among his advisors. In a meeting I attended with other advisors – lawyers, financial experts, etc. – he briefly described the problem he faced. Then, without an agenda, instructions, or pecking order, each advisor succinctly framed the issue and offered solutions from his area of expertise. At the end of the session, Rockwell extracted the best of the comments and declared the single solution he wanted to pursue. Meeting over.

Prevent embarrassment
A senior executive gets embarrassed when he/she does not know something, does not know someone, or does not know the truth. You can help prevent that awkwardness, first, by disciplining yourself to pay attention to details, even minute details (see Details, Details).

To illustrate, a designer who was related to the CEO of the company where I headed communication recommended a gray speckled paper for the annual report. I was sure the CEO would like it a lot. However, I thwarted that possibility – and potential embarrassment -- by pointing out to the designer that those specks might turn up as decimal points in the wrong places in the financial section. Having the New York Stock Exchange stop trading in your stock because of confusion is not an embarrassment a CEO takes well.

Make sure your CEO knows who will be at a particular event and receives a written one-liner about the key attendees that he/she can read en route. The people he greets with that knowledge will be very impressed, and the CEO will be very pleased with you.

The executive needs to know the truth about a situation. If you play the blame game along with others, you do your boss an injustice, not to mention those whose livelihoods will be affected. Untangle the situation, identify contributors, even malefactors, but, again, advise on a solution that prevents over-reaction and executive embarrassment.

5 specific suggestions

1. The CEO is your best challenge, not your best friend -- even if he invites you to a party at his home.
2. When your CEO embellishes or distorts the facts in a presentation and glances at you for a head-nod, avoid eye contact.
3. Spend more time with the people the CEO wants to influence than with the CEO.
4. Overloading the CEO with reading materials shows that you don’t understand his/her time constraints.
5. Don’t take your CEO-linked power seriously. As Bob Dylan sings, be kind to the people you see on the way up because you will see them again on the way down.

Resources:
Information about Jane Klaviter comes from “She Prompts Opera Stars,” Secrets of New York City, by Marjorie Palmer, pp 19-21, ©2002 by Silver Lining Books.

Credit: Photos by Ed Rombout; photo design by Camagine. I highly recommend both professionals.

Details, Details ... Why We Overlook Them

Here’s an ordinary snapshot of two ordinary people: elderly, plain, friendly enough. But, wait, don’t move ahead quite yet. Want to know them just a bit better? Focus briefly on a few obvious but easily overlooked particulars that give glimpses into their lives.

The woman -- she looks early 80's -- has her arms crossed awkwardly. She doesn’t know what to do with them: hide the aging, melanoma-like spots on her arms, her self-conscious size, or, possibly, a masectomy? Her pure white hair looks manageable and stylishly simple, as do her gold earrings, tinted glasses, and straight teeth (probably dentures). She likes this part of her body; she can control its appearance.

On the man’s arms are smudged tattoos, one of 1930’s cartoon favorite Betty Boop, the other almost unrecognizable except as a memory to him. It's likely he got those tattoos in his wild days “in the service,” as people used to say, and given his age – probably close to 90 -- he likely fought in the Big War. His hands are large and gnarly; he was a laborer of some sort – construction, plumber, carpenter?

He’s wearing a jersey from a cruise through the Panama Canal. He doesn’t seem to be a cruise enthusiast. Perhaps he went for her sake. She made him buy the shirt, I would guess.

If you look quickly at the photograph, you might say, “nice.” If you pay attention to its details, you probably will say, “Hmm, fascinating. What more is here that I’m missing?”

We all understand the importance of details. Why, then, do we often miss them?

3 reasons

1. We overlook details because we over-extend
   We hated the word “no” as a child and even more so as an adult. We don’t easily take “no” for an answer nor do we feel comfortable saying it to others. “No” sounds rude, makes us look inadequate, and opens us up to the likelihood of being unliked.
   
   So, we say "yes" way too often to way too many activities that we don't have time or desire to do. Consequently, we replace thoroughness with busyness. Expediency shoves focus aside. Unrealistic deadlines ignore details.
   
   
2. We overlook details because we self-direct
   My wife is amazingly other-directed. A conversation with her is a conversation about you. She honestly wants to hear more specifics because she cares about you and what you're saying.
   
   That’s not my style. I’m affable but tainted by narcissism. Do you share the same dilemma? We pick up cues in the conversation to which we hook our experience so we can talk about us. The exchange is more about our agenda, about our script, and about posturing than exploring the nuances of the other person.
   
   
3. We overlook details because we procrastinate
   Occasional procrastination can be good (see Regret Writing). Habitual procrastination is not. Procrastination is avoiding details that test our knowledge, skills, and stamina. Details require responsibility and accountability -- two frightening demands for a procrastinator.
   
   Procrastinators get off the hook by assuming that others are taking care of details. Too bad they’re assuming you’re taking care of them. We blame them, they blame us.

5 -day rehabilitation program

1. Monday: Say no at least once today to participating in what seems to be yet another good idea at the time.
2. Tuesday: Reporters are detail addicts. Take one to lunch and learn how they look for specifics that turn into meaningful stories.
3. Wednesday: Dissect a new assignment and find the 20 percent of the details that could sabotage the project and embarrass you. Invest 80 percent of your time in that 20 percent.
4. Thursday: When you shake someone’s hand, watch his face and other non-verbals, and write a paragraph later on what you think all of that meant.
5. Friday: Give an assignment to a staff member and tell him he will have to answer at least eight of the ten questions you will ask him when he thinks the project is done. Don’t tell him the questions.

A few final details:

• When one more detail is added to the original image – a loving daughter-in-law -- everything changes.
• Did you catch the typo in the second paragraph?(mastectomy)
• My widowed mother is doing well with long days and short years. My father moved on in 2005. You would have liked him. I certainly did.

Richard Skaare

The 140-Character Resume

You’re standing silently in a field with three friends on a crisp, clear night taking in the panorama of stars. Then someone says, “Isn’t this beautiful?” and babbles on about nights like this back at summer camp. The indescribable just got trivialized. Experience over, you might as well go home.

Sometimes words – even well-intended words -- spoil. Jumbled thoughts too often don’t get disentangled before they reach our mouths and typing fingers. So we over-talk and over-write.

In a recent post on getting back to basics, I suggested the crazy notion of writing your resume in 140 characters (characters, not words). That’s the maximum Tweet allowed on Twitter. What? Forget that for now. What’s important is that forced brevity sharpens the mind and quickens the soul.

Frankly, for just about any topic, 140 characters is long enough to capture what’s important and short enough to prevent loose vowels. Restricting yourself to 140 characters should strip away most pretentiousness, stop that voice from telling you to “explain yourself, young lady.” and convince you that, maybe, just maybe you are as sharp as you want people to think.

I’m about to put you through three brief exercises, if you have the courage. The formula is not magical. When you’re done, you may revert to talking too much at times, writing too long, obsessing too much – all to spike up your self-confidence. Yet, I hope my free advice will give you a memorable taste of raw honesty and self-trust.

3X5 Thinking

3 Exercises

1. Your life in 140 characters
   I can see you’re already thinking about clicking off this page. This one is tough. I’m not talking here about gravestone stuff. Think less of your death and more about your future. What is it about your life that makes you optimistic about next month … about the next ten years?
   
   Okay, okay, I’ll go first and show you the way. Here’s my life in 140 characters:
   
   

   Navigated the rapids so far, laughed way more than cried, trying to love as much as being loved. Head down, chin up, whimsically moving on.

   Of course, you can go shorter -- “Met God, no turning back.” – if one event sums up your life-core. Brevity is only one point; truth about yourself is much more important.
   
   
2. Your resume in 140 characters
   This one’s less overwhelming but more intimidating because it forces you to look at yourself the way you want others to look at you, namely prospective employers.
   
   You could easily write down “Results-driven salesperson with an impressive track record of milestone achievements yadda, yadda.” Show that one to your buddies during half-time and watch them yawn. That’s not you, it’s every salesperson. Try again. Maybe mine will get you thinking:
   
   

   Communication experience: been there, done that. Write like I talk, talk like I write. Smart, getting smarter. Eager to give more than take.

   Sure, it sounds somewhat cocky – I prefer confident – but it’s a start. “Been there, done that” says I qualify for senior positions. “Write like I talk …” suggests I’m a natural communicator. And I make the point that I am smart but open-minded and passionate about being a valuable contributor. Seems to me that’s what employers want, and what I would want from people I might hire.
   
   
3. Your business plan in 140 characters
   Business strategists – they’re called Chief Strategy Officers -- will consider this approach frivolous. How can you capture the complexity and criticality (strategic word) of a business plan in 140 characters?
   
   You can’t. But how many strategic plans are implemented successfully? Why is this? No one reads the document, at least not more than once. It’s complex – too many data points -- and doesn’t seem to be that critical to workers who are sweating this week’s production quotas. What’s missing in the plan is commonsensical, unadulterated, gut-leading, shameless simplicity.
   
   Take my simple business, for example. Here is the 140-character strategic plan for SkaareWorks, a consulting business in communication and change:
   
   

   Get attention, get understood, get clients, get valuable, get results, get appreciated, get paid, and get asked back.
   

   Can this be done for your clients, your department, your organization? Give it a Twhirl (sorry, Twitter talk).

5 140-characters or less guidelines

1. Wait. Don’t write now. You might just copy me. Let ideas percolate overnight, then write tomorrow in your pajamas before coffee.


2. Flow, don’t glow. Write fast, not feel-good. Don’t be overly precise in your choice of words at first, or frilly.


3. Avoid swearing after the second draft. Off-color words are colorless. Get the emotion off your mind but out of sight.
   
4. Write once, edit thrice. Then let it go. Did you hear me? Let it go.
   
5. When done, combine all three exercises into one 140-character tagline for your business or person.

If you want, Tweet me @skaareworks and show me your best entry. I have time to read only 140 characters

Richard Skaare 12.22.08

Social Networking with Yourself

I ran into myself online last week.

I was connected to LinkedIn, the networking site, scanning their list of my uploaded contacts for blue names. Blue means a match between my crowd and LinkedIn’s crowd. Those are the people I want to cultivate.

There I was under “S”: blue Richard Skaare, prospect. But how did I get on my list? Was this really who I thought it was? I decided to check me out to see if I was worth contacting.

Looking at Skaare’s LinkedIn profile, the photo was a grabber. Tightly cropped, the guy obviously wasn’t afraid to get in your face. Nice smile though. You could trust that smile. What, maybe mid- to late ‘50s, maybe older? A bit gray, bald, some wrinkles. He’s been around.

It says that he’s the President of SkaareWorks – a one person shop, I suspect; “CEO” would have sounded cocky. Previous jobs showed a lot of VP titles – and, man, did he have lots of jobs. He did PR, marketing, organizational development, a whole bunch of stuff. A real corporate stiff! Wait … he’s been a consultant for years too. Guy must be more like 78.

Skaare went to Gordon College (never heard of it) and did a couple of Masters, one at Boston University, the other at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Maybe he’s a priest. Nah, I popped over to the Gordon-Conwell site. Protestant, multi-denominational, Evangelical. He was a McCain supporter for sure. But he looks like a Sixties alumnus. Maybe he’s a closet liberal.

I linked to his website and blog. This guy thinks weird, like he cares about stuff, like he knows how to solve problems. I even learned something from one of his blog posts. And he Tweets. Can you believe a guy his age on Twitter!

So, I say to myself, why not send Skaare an invitation to join my LinkedIn network? I did. Here’s the note:

Richard:
This is a bit strange and awkward but I came across me – I mean, you – on LinkedIn. We have the same name and, to be honest, similar backgrounds. I thought we could help each other out by networking. Besides, I work alone out of a home office and I need someone to chat with from time to time. What do you say? Want to link?

Your friend
Your avatar
Richard

Almost a week has passed and still no reply. That’s okay: Angelina Jolie and Steve Jobs haven’t responded yet either. Though I would like to hear from myself and learn more about me. But I’ll be patient.

How about you? Have you taken a look at yourself from the outside in?

Richard Skaare 12.20.08

Hiring Grown-up Interns

Unconventional times call for … well, unconventional hiring. Huh?

And how’s this for unconventional: hire an intern who isn’t a student. Better yet, hire two or three. I’m talking about big people, people with mileage. They’re available, they’re affordable, and they’re capable of rejuvenating your modus operandi and getting you ready for the eventual economic recovery -- if you’re clever enough to snag them now.



3X5 Thinking

3 reasons to hire grown-up interns

1. You need re-engineering not reverse-engineering. Benchmarking is reverse-engineering, as is recruiting competitors’ employees. While both short-cut development time, you end up with cloned ideas and bump-off programs that short-circuit imagination and impact.
   
   Reverse-engineering also suggests you lack confidence in your staff’s creativity. Why not decrease benchmarking and increase the competency of originality. Re-engineer your department with clever, experienced interns who will convince you that, indeed, brilliant ideas can be invented here.
   
   
2. You need to organize a farm team. Given tough times, your staff is probably suffering from generalized anxiety disorder. They are likely cautious and defensive, and are hunkering, waiting, and looking busy. Though the best may reinvent themselves, some may never fully recover.
   
   When times get good – and they will eventually – you will need additions and replacements. If you want to run fast and smart later as a league-leading team, you better have backups now in top condition who know the playbook and have chemistry with the other players.
   
   
3. You need to work the law of averages. No matter how many interviews you put candidates through or how many references you checked, one or two of the people you hired awhile back have not met expectations. Firing is too complicated, especially now. But you can minimize the chances of repeating that mistake by setting up a training system of sorts.
   
   If you have student interns, their contributions are limited, quality levels are acceptable, everyone will eventually want jobs, and all hires will be entry-level.
   
   If you have seasoned interns, you get high-value contributors, quality levels will be generally high, the best may have to be convinced to stay, and if they do, you will have a solid core or productive and profit-generating professionals.

5 interns to choose from

Career-changer This is someone in his 30’s who may have been driven down a career road by a well-intended parent or guidance counselor but who no longer can fake fulfillment. He has the core traits to perform well – self-initiating, creative, collaborative – as well as writing and presentation skills, and a great attitude. Example: A young journalist friend saw the future of reporting, opted to complete a Masters in public relations, and then was hired as an intern for four months by a leading regional advertising/public affairs firm.

Gap-filler You’ve wanted to venture into social media/networking but have been tepid because you lack the know-how and a go-to resource. Now you have an opportunity. Offer an internship to someone who was the web developer for two years for a, now, financially stricken organization and who spends most of his late hours interacting on Twitter, sharing on Digg, and blogging. This person will put you years ahead in just one, eight-week internship.

Between-jobber A well-heeled professional in your business network has a three-month severance from her former employer and has interviews set up with prospects. She has the luxury of time, wants to learn something new to prepare her for her next job, and as she says, “help you out.” Hire her for two months, half-time at intern wages, and extract every lesson she has learned. Who knows, she might love the experience so much she stays on.

Veteran He enjoyed high school – the non-academic parts, that is – pulled bad grades but scored high on his SATs. He’s back from Iraq, earned an Associates’ degree, and demonstrates a knack for, say, selling. What he lacks are resume points and credibility. Your unit needs his perspective, skill, and military efficiency.

Teacher Your daughter’s English teacher wants to understand business writing but prefers hands-on experience rather than a course. Hire her for next summer. Teach her by having her write letters, RFPs, brochure copy, and other materials, but use her to teach your staff the basics of grammar and spelling.

Resources
Using internships for recruiting IT staff
Rating internships
An intern who took charge

Learning to Hustle ... and Swing: Back to Basics

It’s not likely that I will Twist again like I did last summer. I was showing off my archived dancing skills at a wedding reception in July. Some folks were impressed; others thought … hmm, alcohol. I thought pain because afterwards I could hardly limp to my car. My right knee wasn’t working real well.

Now, five months later, I’m back to the basics. I’m standing with my wife on the dance floor at Arthur Murray’s for our first lesson, still feeling twinges of dull pain in that leg (the orthopedic doctor told me to buck up). The ballroom has more mirrors than a Poconos hotel room, the other couples don’t look like they’re fellow AARP members, and I’m wondering if the lovely young instructor would be a dating possibility for my oldest son.

Tonight’s lesson is Rumba and Swing, next week Hustle and Foxtrot.

It’s not easy returning to basics. Pride makes up lots of excuses: no need, no time, no gain for the pain. But whenever I was dogged about doing some particular thing right or better, I went back to basics, such as:

• when I took swimming lessons at age 40 after swimming since I was five.
• when I joined a Beginners Golf class after playing the game off-and-on for twenty years.
• when, now at age … well, a good age, this American Bandstander is back taking dance lessons.

But for me, returning to basics was the toughest when I had to do it in my profession. I led corporate communication departments because I was presumed to be the best and I later advised clients who trusted that I knew virtually everything about communication. Despite the image, I never lost sight of hindsight. So, I went back to basics at times to shore up my skills and confidence, and learned or relearned:

• how to write more with nouns and verbs, less with adverbs and adjectives;
• how to listen intently even though I had counseled many people;
• how to give up on slick marketing ideas when the market had no interest;
• how to nurture a creative idea rather than grabbing an answer off the shelf; and
• how to start always with the audience’s needs rather than unloading information on them.

3x5 Thinking
If you wonder whether or not it’s time for you to return to some basics, here are:

3 tell-tale signs:

1. You’re coasting, and you sense it. The CEO or client trusts you; management likes you; your staff is still smiling. You’re managing the workload. You’ve got the organizational script down. Your career is on course – or was that the career you have had but may not have if the economy continues to plummet?
2. You’re jabbering, and you hate it. How many times can you tell habitually sceptical people that “your organization is well positioned for the future because you have the bandwidth to push the envelope with mission-critical, next-generation deliverables?” If you talk and write like that, I say “eat your own dog food on a daily basis going forward,” or drop back and learn to write like people talk – like you once did.
3. You’re suffering, and you’re not admitting it. You look and sound successful, your paycheck confirms it. But, face it, your work bores you and the environment is suffocating. You’re up a pants size, you can’t remember what you’ve accomplished on any given day, and even if you have a friend who would understand, you wouldn’t know how to explain what’s happening to you. Don’t wait to go flat-line before you stop and start again.

If you missed them as you raced ahead in your career or need to relearn them, here are:

5 shoulda-coulda-outta basics

1. Relearn how to think. Switch from uber-linear to free association. Learn simple mind-mapping. Understand patterns of thinking, not just logic. Also, read novels for two months rather than business books. Rediscover the powerful advantage of stories over white papers.
   
   

   Dance lesson: Foxtrot in a straight line and you will eventually crash.

2. Relearn how to write. Learn brevity by writing your resume in 140 characters (not words, characters). Here’s mine:
   
   Communication experience: been there, done that. Write like I talk, talk like I write. Smart, getting smarter. Eager to give more than take.
   
   Once you do that, you will know at your core who you are and why you’re good. Then, write up your full resume with those truths as your themes. Also, post your resume bite on Twitter, which mandates 140 characters or less, and watch the effect of personal viral marketing.
   
   One more writing suggestion: always carry 3x5 cards. Write one impression, one story idea, or one nugget of wisdom per card. You’ll be amazed at how having cards in your pocket improves your vision and hearing.
   
   

   Dance lesson: If you want to Swing, rock in place, side to side, then left foot behind right foot, and rock, rock. Short and simple, huh? And cool, very cool.

3. Relearn how to listen. Spend time listening closely to the folks who leave work promptly at 5:00 p.m. – the ones you sometimes consider laggards. Hear how they help out each other without being asked, how they gossip because they don’t qualify for information benefits, how they get excited about going home to coach soccer, read romance novels, watch “Heroes” – simple stuff, fun stuff, life stuff. Hear the beat of their work-play lives.
   
   

   Dance lesson: If you can’t hear the beat of the music, the rest of your body gets confused.

4. Relearn how to present. For your next report presentation to management, don’t use PowerPoints, organize everything around the only two messages the group is likely to remember, use at least one personal story, warm up before you speak not as you speak, say what you know and simply, and be more interesting than your audience’s Blackberries.
   
   

   Dance lesson: With slow, formal dances, you look good from the armpits up even if your feet are catching up.

5. Relearn how to relate. Explain what you did at work yesterday to a four-year old, then your neighbor, then your clergy leader, and finally to your partner. Do that weekly until every one of them maintains eye contact. Now you’re relating.
   
   

   Dance lesson: If you’re the leader and think your partner can easily follow, remember she or he is trying to follow you backwards.

__________

Resources
When Adjectives are Necessary
How to Listen
How to be Creative (from the Dilbert blog)
How to Mindmap (Tony Buzan)
Writing with Confidence
Panorama of presentation styles here

Slogging through the Early Blogging Weeks

Whenever I paced nervously around our kitchen as a youngster, my watching mother would say, “You don’t know what to do with yourself.” I didn’t understand what she meant back then. I do now because I’ve been pacing nervously around the social network for a month or two not quite knowing what to do with myself. Fortunately, John Updike stepped in to help.

After bouts of intense work over the past year building a learning portal – a.k.a. a social network -- for a Saudi company, I finally had some downtime. I decided to become my own learning portal, loading up and distilling gobs of information about social-everything, and then blogging energetically and insightfully. Subsequently, I read incessantly, bookmarked randomly, blindly built a blog, peddled my best comments on discussion groups, and went to be bed most nights stressed and exhausted.

Whatever enthusiasm I had for potential blog topics was repeatedly dulled by discovering that other bloggers had beaten me to them. I realized that originality might be a myth. Successful blogs use mostly blue-colored fonts; their posts are primarily clicks to other blogs.

Blogging, I sensed, was like re-gifting: whatever one receives, just repackage and give it to others. Write for attention, write with searchable key words, blog for bloggers. So, this social media business was more akin to telemarketing than conversation?

Competing in this craze made me a bit panicky. I simply couldn’t keep up with what I saw others doing.

• Speed-feeding stories on Twitter, like an ATM dispensing cash, from content aggregators such as AllTop.
• Scattering comments across the blogosphere to generate links that would drive up traffic and SEO scores (search engine optimization). One blogger pays $25 for typing 250 quick comments on various blogs -- “Nice post. I was reading a similar article here” -- to lure visitors to his site and spike his stats.
• Bouncing from site to site, rapidly adjusting to diverse formats: video on You-Tube, banter on Facebook, archiving on Delicious.

I started to show early signs of information anxiety and social fatigue. Maybe I just wasn’t hungry enough to jump into the feeding frenzy. I felt like I was, again, anxiously waiting to board a plane at the Shanghai Airport, flesh-pressed at the gate with more passengers than unreserved seats, running to the plane when the doors opened, and finding no place to sit.

Solace finally came oddly in a short interview with novelist John Updike on a wonderfully ordinary blog called Daily Routines. Updike shared his work habits:

Since I've gone to some trouble not to teach, and not to have any other employment, I have no reason not to go to my desk after breakfast and work there until lunch. So I work three or four hours in the morning, and it's not all covering blank paper with beautiful phrases.

You begin by answering a letter or two. There's a lot of junk in your life. There's a letter. And most people have junk in their lives but I try to give about three hours to the project at hand and to move it along. There's a danger if you don't move it along steadily that you're going to forget what it's about, so you must keep in touch with it I figure. So once embarked, yes, I do try to stick to a schedule.

I've been maintaining this schedule off and on -- well, really since I moved up to Ipswich in '57. It's a long time to be doing one thing. I don't know how to retire. I don't know how to get off the horse, though. I still like to do it. I still love books coming out. I love the smell of glue and the shiny look of the jacket and the type, and to see your own scribbles turned into more or less impeccable type.

It's still a great thrill for me, so I will probably persevere a little longer, but I do think maybe the time has come for me to be a little less compulsive, and maybe the book-a-year technique which has been basically the way I've operated.

Here is what I learned (or relearned) from Mr. Updike about what to do with myself in this networked world of frenetic hustle and hyper-promotion.

3x5 Thinking

3 reminders to myself (you can listen if you want)

1. I have no option but to blog. I am genetically and compulsively a writer, a persuader, and connector. “I have no reason not to go to my desk.”
2. I do not have to cover “blank paper with beautiful phrases” but I must deliver a product that I love only a little less than my readers.
3. I need to ease up but not give up. Like Updike, I will “persevere a little longer, but … be a little less compulsive.”

5 commitments to myself (and for you, if you want)

1. Stick to a schedule; produce something every day, publishable or for my soul only.
2. Write first for readers, second for search engines. Don’t sacrifice good word-smithing for key-wording.
3. Avoid being a substance abuser: write factually, credibly, and confidently from my head and heart.
4. Borrow comments from others, but steal the best ideas from my own mind.
5. Do what I do best over and over -- and then do it day in and day out.

Your Organization’s Anniversary: Looking Both Ways

My friend Bruce Weindruch can look in two directions simultaneously. He can keep one eye on the future while the other looks at the past. In fact, he built a successful global business called The History Factory on the odd premise that your organization’s past can define its future if you let its future define its past. Absolutely brilliant! Now, what does it mean?

Consider this scene. The CEO drops by your office to volunteer you to head up the organization’s 25th anniversary in two years. You muffle a gag. Two to twenty-five sounds like a prison sentence. You hardly have time to plan two weeks ahead and you’re at least 25 days behind in your work.

You graciously accept. Yes, indeed, welcome to another opportunity.

So, go get some green tea and I’ll explain how to apply Bruce Weindruch’s two-way formula.

It’s simple: start your anniversary assignment with the future and work backwards, not the other way around. The future-back approach converts your history into strategy. The “in the beginning...” approach can easily turn your history into an over-written, tedious story that ends the day before the future starts.

Employees, customers, shareholders, and others appreciate the past, but live for the future. Immerse them in the organization’s history but link it to the agenda that will affect their bottom lines tomorrow.

If you lay out your organization’s history chronologically, here’s what could result.

• The story has gaps because, for example, your soft-spoken CEO, who is trying to leave his own mark, might want to trim coverage of his effervescent, ever-popular predecessor. That predecessor might, as well, want to trim the accolades of that ornery chief in the early 1990s who almost bankrupted the organization.
  
• The story gets obese because the organization’s unofficial, self-appointed, invaluable and inviolable historian by reason of longevity, loyalty, and memory will feel that his day of redemption has come and will swamp you with minutia and endless oral stories – like I just did.
  
• The story has no plot because the volume of written and visual materials is overwhelming and unwieldy. This assumes that you can find those materials in dingy warehouses and locked credenzas of organization lifers. Then you have to categorize all that stuff, most of which will never be used. Finally, you have to connect the dots to ascertain some meaning. Too much, way too much.

There is a much better way to think and end up with a much better product.

• Get your CEO to tell you the organization’s history from the vantage point of five years from now.
  Set up two one-hour sessions with your senior leader. Prep him/her to think what the organization might look like in five years and then turn it into a story that looks back. Ask him to describe the future organization’s size, profitability, customer base, investor support, values, employee morale, and the like.
  
  Then, most important, have him tell you what factors made it that way. Was it sheer determination, pride, ingenuity, smart investments, customer loyalty, or something else? What changed over those five years and why? What, during that time, was consistent with the company’s history?
  
  With all of that information in hand, you can efficiently extract from the past only those facts, stories, and materials that substantiate future strategies, priorities, and values. This is not revisionism, it’s pragmatism.
  
  But why two sessions? In the first session, he/she will talk from the head about the strategic plan. After hearing himself in the first session, in the second, he will tell the same information as a story from the heart, which is what you want as a communicator.
  


• Envision an orientation program for a multi-age group who has zero knowledge of the organization’s history.
  What will capture their imagination? A lecture-hall talk by a former executive on important historical milestones? Not likely. How about a multi-screen presentation featuring long-term employees extolling the organization’s promising future with examples of how employees made it happen in the past? That should do it.
  


• Repeat three times to yourself: History brands the future.
  Use the anniversary event to revitalize the organization’s brand. You can choose to either a) fabricate an image from the outside in by what appeals to your publics or b) define the organization’s reputation from the inside out, substantiated by the past, and cleverly incorporate that into your brand. Choose “b.”
  
  I can hear Bruce saying that an organization's history substantiates the reputation that substantiates the image. He’s right.

Start your organization’s history project from the beginning and historians and curmudgeons will love it. Those constituents who need to be inspired to invest more of their lives in the future will yawn. So, move into the future and keep looking in your rear-view mirror.

Oh yeah, if you really want this project to be a milestone in your career, call Bruce Weindruch. He has lots of neat stories and ideas.

Illustration by: Jo McLure

My comments are based in part on a cover story I wrote for Communications World magazine: The Historical Future: Publicity through Feature Writing (copyright 1993, International Association of Business Communicators; copyright 2004, Gale Group).

How To Up Communication During This Down Time

Whew! Your job didn’t get eliminated. Your boss is gone and so is half your staff, but you still have a paycheck and benefits … at least for awhile.

Two other positives to ponder:

When you have nothing, you may realize you didn’t really need something. (Preach it, brother!) It’s true. You can now cut those budget line-items you inherited that eat up trees and your time but have little traction with audiences: for starters, the holiday card, pocket calendar, and reprints of aren’t-we-wonderful booklets.

You also have an unusual opportunity -- though painful -- to test your leadership mettle, which you may not have done on your own. Maybe you will even re-engineer yourself. A CEO boss of mine used to say that anyone can manage in the good times, but …

Back to the uncomfortable news. Here are scenarios that are likely to befall you.

If you lead a headquarters and/or service department, the “o” in overhead just got capitalized. Every sale not made or order cancelled means that your colleagues are struggling that much more to pay for your existence. They like you, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that they don’t quite know what you do and, if they have some knowledge they’re not sure that what you do is worth doing. It’s not that you have a bull’s eye on your back; it’s that you have to demonstrate your worth more aggressively but authentically as well.

While employees have been cut, expectations have not. Whatever your group had been doing, no one higher up or sideways is thinking that your output will go down. In fact, if your team complemented or coordinated the work of counterparts in other departments, probably those counterparts have departed. Expect a batch of hurting managers to be calling with that team-spirit pitch for help.

Your remaining staff is experiencing a death in the family. Their colleagues/friends are gone, the programs that defined much of their identity are gone, and whatever predictability there had been about the future (though a delusion) is gone.

• Some of them have now become super-busy real fast out of fear of looking dispensable.
• Others have gone catatonic, thinking that a low-profile keeps them below the radar.
• Still others scan for scraps of rumors and quibble among themselves as to who really should have been let go.

What all of them share are a degree of survivor guilt and a deep-rooted sense – or hope -- that maybe, just maybe, they will survive all of this mess.

Your assignment is to move the group from survive to thrive -- not an easy role but, then again, you are a leader. You can start by setting three priorities:

1. Focus much of your time over the next month on intra-staff communication. Win over your staff to possibility thinking and they will encourage others to tough it out. Shift their focus gently from empathy toward colleagues who have exited to the special challenges that require their resourcefulness.


2. Focus communication on the positive without being pollyannaish, on honesty without naiveté. Stick to the facts about the organization's unfolding financial situation and cite comments and stories from seasoned, credible leaders with survival experience.


3. Focus on producing more results with fewer resources. You don’t want to just boost morale, which can be fleeting, but bolster a spirit of ingenuity, ideas, productivity, and results.

Consider implementing these five ideas:

1. Develop a Survive and Thrive kit, which should include your reconstituted 12-month plan and whatever clever ideas can convey the more-with-less message. Make it upbeat but not silly.


2. Direct the staff to convert the 12-month plan into individual performance objectives. But change the format. Tell them you want those objectives in a resume as if it were written one year from now. What do they expect to accomplish that will convince a potential employer they had produced impressive results under pressure? If you effectively lead the group to greater productivity in this downtime, they will stay with you for the long-term.


3. Share with your staff the job descriptions of former staffers and, for each one, ask them to prioritize the three most important responsibilities, given current conditions. Then ask who would want to take all or some of those responsibilities as a way to stretch themselves professionally while keeping the department and organization functioning.


4. Spring for a half-day from a skilled social marketing consultant and have him/her review your new 12-month plan and explore with the team about how to reroute efforts and increase effectiveness through viral communication, social networks, and other cost-efficient sources. Make sure the nodes in that network are those most likely to be suspect of your department’s value.


5. Identify external resources --- whose charges these days are negotiable -- who can support those departments that are looking to you for help. When they have to pick up the tab, they may quickly develop priorities and back away.

Resources
How to boost team morale after a layoff
Mass layoffs can lead to ’survivor guilt’
Layoff Aftermath: Learn how to minimize the aftereffects of layoffs


Illustration by: Joan M. Mas

Emails, Calls, Meetings -- all Twitter

Depleted from the labor pains of birthing my blog, I turned for titillation to Twitter, the online, hyperventilating chat network.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t set up my “friends” network when I signed on months back, and I wasn’t sure who I would talk with. But, c’mon, of the 2.3 million people who use Twitter, surely someone would say “hello” (which is 139 words fewer than Twitter’s longest short message).

After signing on, a window popped up saying that no one was following me and I was not following anyone, and asked, “What was I doing?” In other words, “Nothing to say … no friends?”

Aren’t those the two reasons why corporate managers – the decision-makers who thumb social networking up or down -- won’t take to Twitter. They don’t have time to follow anything else nor do they want anyone following what they’re doing. And when they hear about Twitter, it strikes them as a lot of key-tapping for what amounts to trivial exchanges.

But, is Twitter really extra work and a waste of time or, strangely, could it possibly be a more engaging, and, yes, efficient way to achieve business results? Is it much different than what occupies our time now? Stay with me.

Look at what we say runs and over-runs our lives: emails, smart phones, and meetings. Why? Don’t blame technology. We choose to open emails, turn on phones, and attend meetings. We impulsively tell colleagues and new acquaintances to “keep us posted,” “call us,” and “set up a meeting about that.”

Why?

It’s because we humans crave attention, news, and companionship. We are driven to be in the know and be known, to like and be liked, and to draw power from information and people. We will even consider that information when it’s trivial -- gossip, speculations, reality TV – and from people we don’t like all that much.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Call it chatter. We chatter when we jot a few words in response to emails from colleagues, banter with customers by phone between golf swings, and when we catch up on each other’s lives while waiting for a meeting to start.

Quick-fire exchanges seem like time-wasters -- rationally thinking, that is -- but are they ever informative. The more emotional the conversation, the less posturing people do; the more babble, the more we seem to understand what’s going really going on behind what appears to be happening. That’s because, in part, the messages are short, transparency abounds, and PowerPoints are missing. Chatter is good: it informs, centers, and stimulates us. And we like all of that.

Strangely, meetings are more fulfilling than phone conversations, which are more satisfying than emails.

• Emails are one-to-one, pre-meditated, time-delayed, and impersonal.
• Phone conversations are one-to-one, spontaneous, immediate, and friendly exchanges that rely on questions for context: “What are you doing now?” “Where did you go for lunch?”
• Meetings are one–to-many, many-to-many, and yet personal. The most effective meetings involve lots of interaction, honest sharing of ideas, to-the-point questions, and concise dialogue.

Now we’re talking Twitter: one-to-many and many-to-many; quick transactions of unedited, raw-honest comments that feel personal.

But do we really want all those interruptions? Don’t we encourage that now?

• We tell everyone that our door is always open to them.
• We extol the interactivity that cubicles are supposed to provide.
• We let our staffers have our cell number on speed dial.

As David Sacks notes – he’s the founder of Twitter competitor Yammer -- we don’t want to hear five times a day what friends are doing, but we do want to hear from co-workers five times a day about what they’re working on.

If I have convinced you at all that the nature of Twitter is the nature of what we’re doing already – and want and need to do – then why not try out this new channel as possibly a more effective way to learn from each other and increase productivity.

Here are three painless ways to explore the possibilities, ranging from you as a bystander to you as a full participant:

1. Pick an enterprising staff member who is a social networker (uses Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc.) and ask her to set up a staff Twitter group. Have your administrative assistant participate. Your lead staffer will give you reliable reports; your AA will tell you if and when you should connect.
2. Set up a Twitter group among those with direct and dotted-line reporting relationships to you and who are working remotely (at home, in other offices and countries). Explain that you are exploring new, possibly more efficient and more human channels for keeping everyone informed and swapping ideas. In this scenario, you join in, at least every few days, to check progress and add comments.
3. Set up a group for an upcoming event -- a trade show, annual meeting, customer outing – and use Twitter on laptops and cell phones, primarily, to orchestrate the logistics. Here you are a constant participant by monitoring your staff’s work, adding brief revisions, and throwing in accolades.

Try out Twitter for three months with these guidelines.

• Stick with this one channel for now; jumping headlong into My Space, Flickr, and other networks will make you cool with your kids but will quickly lead to fatigue.
• Get regular staff feedback on how to customize the use of Twitter to your group's specific needs.
• Focus on results, though don’t be too rigid on making a go/no-go decision at the end of the three months. You may want to extend its use or apply it to a different situation before you add or cut Twitter.

I almost forgot. What about the concern of being followed? If you’re a leader or emerging leader, you know the formula: be transparent, dialogue honestly, show trustworthiness, be available, entertain all ideas – in short let people know you, how you think, and how you act and, perhaps, they will indeed follow you at work and on Twitter.

Resources
Set up a Twitter account
Read 11 reasons to use Twitter for business
Read Applying Twitter: How It Works For Business
Read Looking for Mr. Goodtweet: How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter
Read The Secret to Twitter
Subscribe to TwiTip, a new blog on Twitter
Twhirl. a tool that reportedly simplifies. beautifies, and amplifies twittering
Statistics supporting the Twitter craze