WHAT HARVARD LEARNED FROM US

As communicators, we feel vindicated.  Big time.

In a summer 2014 issue of Fast Company, no less an intellectual celebrity than the current president of Harvard, historian Drew Gilpin Faust, admitted she was bewildered and challenged by communicating messages in a large organization.  Her solution?  Say them again and again and again.

We wonder, though, if the good Doctor truly embraced the concept of different repetitions.  Training gurus will tell you to communicate the same thing six different ways – through pictures, spoken and written word, demonstrations, teaching, and activities, for example – for stickiness.  Plus they’ll also point out the difference between learning and mastering repetition.  Think of a nascent marathoner who’s figuring out, with help, the right ways to run.  That’s the learning part of the equation.  Then contrast that with a seasoned miler who’s perfecting his/her technique to win that race.  Voila:  Mastery!

With us, though, the issue with repetition is boredom.  It’s an imperative of our and any business that, with new information, strategies, benefits, changes, we better understand it in order to spread the messages.  Invariably, though, we get fatigued, tired of the same-old, same-old and yearn for the novel.  So we quit, perhaps earlier than the sixth iteration.

The same thing sometimes occurs with our advertising brethren.  The client or the agency or whomever decides that ‘enough is enough’ and shifts the campaign, even though it might just have started to work.  Even though not enough eyes and ears have been exposed.  And so on+.

Guess we’re becoming Walt Whitman:  “Do I repeat myself?  Very well then, I repeat myself.”

REWORKING OUR NET

At yesterday’s lunch, we overheard – okay, deliberately – a twinned table talking about business development, referrals – and networking.

[Yeah, we like to eavesdrop.  It reveals a whole ‘nother side of humanity.  Sometimes funny or not.  But always enlightening.]

That started us on the topic, and the ways in which we abuse networking.  Just remember these various and sundry conversations:

“Boy, my business isn’t what it should be.  Gotta start networking … again.”

“Alice just got laid off.  Wonder when she’s gonna understand the value of networking.”

“I’m going to a (fill in the blanks) conference next month.  Guess I better stock up on my business cards as hand-outs.”

The concept of one-way connections just doesn’t work anymore.  Sure, information on individuals is more plentiful than ever, whether we Google, LinkIn, gtweet, or otherwise contact new and old acquaintances.  And the e-friendships do work, at least for a while.

Cynical-ness and skepticism, though, win out.  In the back of our minds:  What does s/he want?  Why are they bothering with me – and I’m not sure I can do anything?

Here’s our solution:  Swap the word for ‘relationshipping.’  It better connotes what we should  be doing:  Giving, rather than receiving.  Asking for the beginnings of a business friendship.  Inquiring about your health and welfare first, then, later, talking about me.  Providing value in the forms of time and thought, from scanning and sending an article of interest to mutually beneficial introductions.  Being old-fashioned enough to enjoy face-to-face conversations, and the delight of human connections.

Yup, it’s a favorite topic, one we tend to return to.  People, too.

DOWN ON THE FARM

General Motors and silos continue to be linked in the media.

And in our minds.

According to new GM CEO Mary Barra in her Congressional testimonies, the auto company’s managers operated in isolation, failing to connect and act on evidence that’s now been linked to fatal accidents.  That, in the words of Harvard guru Ranjay Gulati, smacks of protectionist behavior, decision-making conflicts, and just general inside-out perspectives.

Sound like any business you know?

Regardless:  In the mid-Aughts, after studying a number of different companies (e.g., GE Healthcare, Jones Lang LaSalle, Cisco, Starbucks), Gulati proffered his four-C solution to silo-busting:

• Coordination to share customer information and labor
• Cooperation, along with metrics, that will dethrone the current power structure
• Capability development, when customer-centric generalists also see a clear career pathway and
• Connection, or strategic alliances with other companies.

Later in the decade (or in this one), he holds up IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative as an example of a sword that demolishes silos, saying that values and concomitant images, symbols, and stories, will support the beginnings of a new culture.

Ahem. 

There’s one ‘c’ he’s forgotten:  Communications.  A discipline that, better than any others inside companies, can explain, educate, and elucidate employees on ‘what customers want.’  A function that, almost automatically, delivers awareness and drives actions on behalf of the corporation.  A mindset that will, either alone or in tandem with L&D/HR, establish parameters and ways in which an outside-in perspective reigns.

Ee-i-ee-i-oh, Mr. MacDonald.

HOW DO YOU SPELL IT?

Of late, we’ve been pondering success. 

Maybe because of sitting through relatives’ graduation ceremonies, where speakers always tell captive audiences to “do their best, make their mark, give back.”

Or maybe because of the annual Bloomberg Businessweek round-up of commencement quotes, coupled with a many-paged special on success.

Either way, it prompted us to stop.

Those profiled in the mag have little in common.   Except all are originals, in their own way.  The Fault is in Our Stars John Green created a unique conversation with teens – direct, sympathetic, intelligent.  Shaq of Shaquille O’Neal fame fastidiously manages his brand, a peculiar kind of goofiness … sort of an oversize fun kid attitude.  Max Temkin and friends launched Cards against Humanity, a decidedly non-Internet game encouraging people to spend time together, sans Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, and other e-distractions.

The other share-able attribute?  Again, each person gives back.  In different ways.  It might be product or time or a particular philanthropy.  What mattered most was the act of doing things for other people.

It’s what Robert Greenleaf meant when he talked servant-leaders in the 1970s.  Those execs who put people first, help them develop to their highest potential, and share power.  The top of the pyramid, he felt, has to show caring attitudes and actions, building a solid foundation for performance for both the individual and the organization. 

In these uncertain days, we feel, giving is vastly under-rated.  It’s part of our definition of success.  And yours?