GOT ID?

Losing or having your wallet (or purse) stolen is one scary life moment.

Suddenly, an unknown someone else knows who you are, where to find you, and how to wreak havoc on your credit.  Unless you’re super-organized with lists of whom to call and what to do, helplessness and fear set in.  [Admission:  It’s happened to us, more than once.]

Estimates by security gurus claim that one U.S. ID is stolen every three seconds.  Put another way:   11.6 million American adults were victimized in 2011*, a number rising by double digits every year.

Compare those emotions with the FUDs (fear, uncertainties, and doubts) occurring when a work change is announced.  Especially if that change involves a corporate transaction, say, a merger, acquisition, divestiture, spin-off, and the like. 

Then:  Who you are is up for grabs.  You might not be able to say for much longer that “I’m an XYZ manager with ABC Corporation.”  Instead, you and your colleagues scramble, drafting resumes, placing networking phone calls, and surfing career sites. Productivity can drift downwards, with reverberations felt in every part of the organization.

Ah.  Those memories resonate with everyone we know.  At the same time, identity crises of all types can present major opportunities to, yes, get involved.  After Day One in a merger-type transaction, there’s often room to refresh the corporate brand, along with its values.  It’s a chance to review what’s working, what’s not in the communications arena – and if your team can provide comfort to colleagues and staff who are experiencing loss.  Professionals working in industries under fire, whether in the energy or financial services or other sectors, can attest to the sense of accomplishment that participation in “identity” work brings. 

Think, too, about the lists, other than the traditional resume and references, that will help you recharge work identity … for you, your team, department, and firm.  In the broadest sense, getting prepared is a move towards independence and developing flexible identities that work. 

Elementary?  Perhaps.  Yet determining how to reinvent your working self – and that of your employer – is a valuable (and continual) pursuit. 

*Latest statistics from Javelin Strategy & Research.

BESPOKE-ING

Hullabaloo aside, the very British Royal Wedding in April 2011 appealed to us mightily.

In thinking about its one-year anniversary:  Enjoying some of the U.K.’s most marvelous customs, like tea and scones, was one benefit.  As was the visual spectacle, and our tacit participation in an unusually happy occasion.  [Okay, we could skip the 4 a.m. wake-up … but that’s beside the point.]

An underlying theme, best expressed in the parade of idiosyncratic hats and fascinators,  was the notion of “bespoke,” that nation’s elegant tradition of customizing apparel and accessories to customers’ needs.  Today, it’s become an expensive tradition, one that few can afford. 

On the other hand, bespoke speaks to us.  Especially in this world of templates and patterns and other forms of easy “let’s just use this example” replication. 

We find that companies and clients often ask for models to follow during change events.  In launching a branding (or re-branding) initiative.  At the kick-off of an enterprise-wide IT implementation.  For a review of HR programs.  During times of corporate combinations, like mergers and divestitures.  And so on. 

Those same-old, same-old models somehow are incorporated into every activity, all change events.  Consultants and employees alike tend to use them as more than patterns, sticking almost slavishly to these guides without much adaptation.  All far from the original intent.

 Let’s go back to the first definition of “template.”  In the 1600s, the French templet referred to a “weaver’s stretcher” or “building for worship” (i.e., temple).  Only 200 years later did its meaning shift into the more modern pattern for shaping a piece of work.  Even Cambridge scientists Francis Crick and James Watson identified template as a strand of uniquely individual DNA that serves as a pattern for the synthesis of a protein or nucleic acid.

Unfortunately, far from providing a base or foundation for change work, the template becomes our go-to for communications and design (among other purposes).  It rules our world, usually with little room for tailoring it to project needs and audience segments.   Instead of guiding us, it begins to define what we do and how we do it.

Why not return to the art of bespoke, using templates as building blocks only?  It’s certainly not the secret of life, as the two Nobel Prize winners claimed about their DNA discovery.  But bespoke can change our work – and our results, for the better.

IT'S BOOM CITY, HERE

We’re fascinated by tech statistics – combined with, of course, very human stories.

The latest?  For the past year or so, a number of reputable firms, through various research studies, announced that the boomer generation is a rather significant middle-of-the-road adopter of technology.  From Blackberries to Internet surfing, we boomers account for 40 percent of the spend (though we’re 25 percent of the population).

What’s more, we text, use search engines, check online ratings, answer email, and, in general, practice all of the e-activities commonly associated with younger generations, whether you call them Xs or millennials or Ys.  And speaking for ourselves, we’ve developed quite a CrackBerry (substitute:  iPhone) habit, almost obsessively looking at our smartphones to determine the latest news  – and who needs us.

There it is:  The humanity of technology.  There’s an overwhelming desire to not only be informed but also to be included in work and life goings-on, regardless of age or career situation.  Even our moms, well into their 70s, 80s, and 90s, educated themselves – or via the local public library – on what this computer stuff was all about.  [They then bragged to their friends that they’d met the Internet – and it was theirs. It was a completely different story when they physically encountered screen and mouse.  That’s another story for another day.] 

That need for inclusion, a Maslov-ian desire, underlies our technology use.  There’s no way, for a group so dedicated to changing America, that boomers would not master YouTube, social networking, and the latest gadgets.  At the same time, that discipline is softened by a commitment to ourselves and the world.  It’s our DNA.  And it’s a dominant gene, one for marketers, sales people, communicators to remember.  Everywhere.  Every time.

THE LOST ART OF LISTENING?

Dell and Kodak*:  Worlds apart in product and positioning, in the past few years, both companies named executives to the post of Chief Listening Officer, otherwise abbreviated as CLO (though the earth doesn’t need another c-suite acronym).

According to news interviews, much of the CLO’s listening centers on customer feedback, and, appropriately enough, conversation mining –whether on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and/or other media – to track information that drives product and strategic direction. 

 Fair enough. 

 The art of listening, though, is frequently missing within other business functions, and within our individual communities. Personally?  We hesitate to say how long it’s been since we sat down, shut our mouths, and just listened to our partners and friends.   Even for 15 minutes.   It might be due to our distracted-ness or to a psychological need to express ourselves or to, quite simply, take over a conversation. 

 Professionally?  Though we do listen, it’s fair to say we’re often thinking about three things at a time, as inveterate multi-taskers.  Within our roles as communicators and marketers and designers, working inside a company or as consultants, listening isn’t always embedded in our everyday activities.  After all, we gotta get things done.  And listening takes time.

Here’s the other dirty secret:  Listening is hard.  It requires submerging the ego and paying 150 percent attention to another human being(s) for an undetermined amount of time.  It also demands that we clear our minds, delete lingering perceptions, and become open to the listening content. 

To be honest, listening is not taught in schools.  Nor do many businesses reward us for being quiet and thoughtful, for taking stock of the various dialogues we participate in. It would be a true accomplishment if more companies featured “listening” as one of their values, let alone appointed CLOs.  Imagine:  With true listeners onboard, would there be reason to document performance?  To worry about employee engagement?   To fret that clients don’t understand us?  To plan for constant customer turnover? 

Mom knew best:  It’s all about two ears and one mouth.   

*In 2012, Kodak’s CLO joined a social media agency.

SYMBOLOGY 101

Confession:  Visual design professionals are not the only ones who love symbols and icons.

 To them (and to us), it’s not just filler or decoration.  Nor is it a way of illustrating words to emphasize points.

 Instead, symbols and their iconographic relatives (also known as infographics) connect meaning and the mind.  They break up the pattern of words, singularly, so we notice and absorb quickly – in many cases, much more speedily than reading a page.  They also act as translators for those unfamiliar with a particular jargon or culture.

 What started us thinking about the power of symbols were the subtle and blatant changes in Bloomberg Businessweek and stalwart Time magazine articles.  To depict the changes in the new healthcare law, for instance, Time’s designers segmented the impacts by group – single, newly married, family, senior et al. – and then bulleted those changes in words, with illustrations.  BBW grabbed us with the headline “how not to embarrass yourself in Germany,” featuring boxes, with almost universal symbols (taxi meter, water, utensils), and one or two sentences about what to/not to do in different situations, like taking cabs, drinking, and eating.  Now every print pub’s doing it, from heavy-on-the-pictures Martha Stewart Living to heavy-on-the-text New York magazine.

 What magazines have learned is that Internet-raised readers prefer bits and bytes and symbols as shorthand for communications.  Other industries and professions embrace icons:  CPG marketers use them consistently.  So do architects and planners, among many others.  [And don’t forget graffiti artists.]

 Icons make it easier for us to flag specific topics – and, visually, identify the level of attention needed.  In other words, guiding us about work behaviors and activities.  Instead of all-caps directions in the subject line, images are inserted within copy.  Inside manuals, we turn to pages we need immediately through colorizing and picturing. 

 Some of our favorite worktime actions lend themselves to visuals: 

•       For your information
•       Deadline nearing
•       Mark your calendar
•       Be IT secure
•       @home

 Why not add yours?  Or other icons you’ve adopted?  Words, we know, will never be replaced.  It is time, though, to deliver a greater, more immediate impact when words combine with symbols.