They thinks it’s all over … it is now …

I’ve been wondering what to do with this blog for a few weeks now. I couldn’t make up my mind as it’s been a labour of love for over a year and I’ve picked up a fine following of interesting peeps along the way.

While I hope it will remain a useful resource for those starting their own corporate social media journeys, I’ve decided I’m pulling the plug on this blog and not posting here again :-(

My role at BT has changed and I don’t have the time to be clever anymore …

Also, while my back was turned my personality escaped and rushed off to the other side of WordPress Land where it’s calling itself: Richard Dennison Uncut. Frankly, I think it’s being very irresponsible and I wouldn’t go over there if I were you. And, if I catch anyone subscribing to its blog feed I’ll be VERY, VERY annoyed indeed. Enough said!

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Musical chairs …

Wow … has it REALLY been that long since I last posted?? :-(

In my defence, we’ve just finished a high-stakes game of musical chairs in my bit of BT – when the music stopped, there were 25% fewer chairs to sit on and they were arranged in a different way.

I had to dust off my CV and have a job interview for the first time in more years than I care to mention … fortunately, I secured one of the new chairs upon which my butt is now firmly placed … to recover from the experience, I had to take two weeks off!

Anyway, I’m now responsible for managing a group of business partners in a channels centre of excellence team providing channels expertise to the communications community in BT.

The major downside to this is that I’m having to hand over all my lovely social media toys to Mark Morrell, the BT Intranet Manager :-( I’m sure he’ll love and nurture them as if they were his own … and if not, I’ll be waiting for him in a dark alley one night when he least expects it!

Although I no longer have the luxury of majoring on social media in BT, I am still very involved … we’re actually doing some really interesting pilots engaging with our customers in on-line forums … and Twitter is also on the radar screen which is really exciting.

In recent weeks, there has been a huge amount of interest in engaging with customers and stakeholders externally in social channels from different bits of the company … we’re taking it slowly and not biting off more then we can chew. The great thing about this enthusiasm is that it’s coming from unexpected quarters and from people who seem to get it. I’m optimistic that we are doing, or plan to do, the right things … time will tell.

Anyway, one of my final parting shots as social-media-guy was to re-write our social media guidelines. If you’re interested, take a look (downloads a PDF file; some of the links in it pointing to BT Intranet pages obviously won’t work).

I plan to keep blogging … if you can call my poor performance over recent weeks blogging! Must do better …

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IntraTeam conference

A couple of weeks ago I spoke at the IntraTeam event in Copenhagen which was an excellent event in every way … a gave a short video interview after my presentation and did an interview for the funniest man on the event circuit, Steve Crescenzo.

I’m taking a break now from conference speaking until I have some fresh material to share.

Usability warning …

I just had the following conversation with my son:

Felix: I found this really cool racing game on the computer.

Me: What do you have to do?

Felix: You use the forward and sideways arrows to control the car – but I’m not sure yet whether you’re supposed to ram the other cars or race past them.

Me: Why don’t you read the instructions?

Felix: I never read instructions, I just figure it out for myself.

(Felix is 8 yrs old!)

TAKE NOTE intranet system designers!

Here today, gone tomorrow …

I’ve seen lots of articles recently asking whether social media is the death of knowledge management (KM) … I’ve even written about myself, albeit nearly a year ago now.

In this context I was struck by an answer in Computer World from John Seely Brown to a question about what he learnt at Xerox (thanks  to @jobsworth for the heads-up):

“First, wisdom is often the biggest obstacle to innovation. In a rapidly changing world, the assumptions that underlie our past learning may now be invalid. So, an idea that didn’t work five years ago may work fantastically now.

Second, we tend to hold on to assumptions longer than we should. Often, by letting go of old assumptions, whole new vistas are created.”

I’ve always felt that traditional KM practices are too slow moving and try to impose an overly simplistic and controlling model onto what is essentially a chaotic, vibrant, real-time reality. Sometimes, it feels like KM is trying to take a series of still-shots of this real-time reality to present back to users who have already moved on – and when you put the still shots together, you get a jerky and incomplete picture.

I think John Seely Brown makes a great point – the world is changing so fast that keeping stuff for future use is becoming less and less valuable and can blinker our future potential. It challenges many of the precepts upon which KM is built.

As the world has become more and more real-time, so the balance has shifted away from re-use of existing information to the notion of relationships. The need for knowledge now is what has driven social media practices which, not only acknowledge the chaos of humanity, but embrace it to deliver distilled, real-time value. It’s not formally organised, it’s often not pretty, but it seems to work.

The million dollar question is how do you strike the right balance between learning from history and living in the past?

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Employee comms people need therapy …

I was on the expert(?) panel at the CIPR Inside event last night at the very nice Soho offices of Hill & Knowlton. The event was about leadership communications and an interesting debate ensued. I won’t attempt to post notes here covering the whole event, as Scott McKenzie of H&K took copious notes and will probably publish them somewhere at some point …

I thought I’d share some of my own deliberations on the subject as I can just about remember them!

The original question the panel was asked was: What do leaders want from their internal communications people?

My immediate response was: relationship counselling (they might not know they want it, but they definitely need it!)

Here’s why … if you accept that internal comms is about building and managing the relationship between the management and employees of an organisation, then the discipline itself is really macro relationship counselling.

I think leaders want their people to trust them, respect them, be loyal to them, and be inspired and enthused into action by them. This will only happen if leaders have a healthy relationship with the people concerned. Leaders who don’t have this kind of relationship will find that, while they might have power, they’ll have no influence … the worst kind of leadership imaginable.

To help create and maintain relationships you need to REALLY understand human nature … the best way to understand what makes people tick, is to find out what makes you tick first. One way to do this, is to have some therapy!

So, my top tip for the best training available for internal comms people is six month’s psychotherapy! :-)

As an aside, given what I’ve said above, I personally think employee relations better describes the discipline than employee communications.

[I've talked a bit about leadership before on this blog: here and here. There's also an article on the future of leadership communications]

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I’m still here …

Sorry for the long silence! I was quite busy before Christmas and then had flu for three weeks … I’m a stone in weight lighter and look 10 years older!

Anyway, I’m coming out the other side! Thought I’d just let you know of a couple of conferences I’m speaking at over the next three months:

Internal communications: A vital business function in difficult economic times on 11-12 Feb in London
IntraTeam 2009 in Copenhagen on 3-5 Mar (there’s a 15% early bird discount if you book by 10 Jan – sorry not long left to do this – if you quote ‘Dennison15′) - added 8 Jan – thanks for the clarification Kurt – see Kurt’s comment below

After these two conferences, I’ve decided to take a break from speaking as, quite frankly, I’m getting bored of the sound of my own voice and I’m repeating myself too much! When, and if, I have something new to say I’ll start speaking again.

We’re really going through a bedding-down period with our social media tools – trying to increase adoption levels and ensuring they comply with our governance and information management standards. While this is extremely important for us, it isn’t that exciting to talk about!

Anyway, I’ll endeavour to keep posting to this blog so keep stopping by every now and then!

Happy New Year to everyone!

Perils of a social media consultant …

Mrs D: What are you doing?

Me: Trying to think of something intelligent and engaging to write on my blog

Mrs D: What’s a blog?

Me: It’s a kind-of website about me and my work and what I’m up to

Mrs D: Tell me what you do again?

Me: WHAT?? How many times do I have to explain it …*SIGH*

Mrs D: Sorry – just tell me once more – I’ll listen this time, I promise

Me: I’m responsibile for … <<repeat same explanation I’ve offered a million times before>>

Mrs D: When are you going to put that shelf up in the bathroom?

Me: *SIGH*

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Feel the fear and do it anyway …

For the first time, I’ve started writing a blog post without really having a clear idea about what I want to say or what point I want to get across. Given the growing tide of bad news battering our lives at the moment, it felt like a good idea to write something about … well … feelings. I’ve no idea where this is going, but here goes …

Sustainability has become such a buzzword these days that it’s become almost meaningless … but, there is a dimension to sustainability that seems to get little attention – personal sustainability … in other words not the external, macro-level sustainability talked about all the time, but an inner dimension that is personal to each of us and that fuels and energises us each day … a sustainability that offers periodic renewal so that we can embrace life and work with new enthusiasm and through fresh eyes.

Over the last few weeks in BT we’ve had a series of much publicised announcements that have made people feel uneasy … nervous … frightened even. We’ve had announcements about poor business performance in our global services division; the need to cut costs and jobs; possible changes to our pension scheme which will make it less attractive to members going forward; … to name but a few!

Don’t get me wrong … all these announcements have been handled VERY professionally … employees have been, or are being, consulted and we get very thorough and timely communications. And, frankly, these changes have been a long time coming and are absolutely essential for BT to be a sustainable (… that word again!) and profitable business going forward. However, while deep down I know that these changes are necessary and far from a surprise, it doesn’t make me feel great to hear them.

So, I hear you say, what the hell have my feelings got to do with my employer?? Quite a lot actually … if I’m not happy and fulfilled I’m certainly not going to be loyal, motivated and probably won’t give a damn about my work. If I don’t give a damn about my work, I certainly won’t be engaged and probably won’t give a damn about the customers annoying me all day. If I feel isolated and disconnected from my colleagues, I’m going to suffer more deeply and internalise or depress these feelings, making them even worse. If I don’t have an outlet to express my feelings and if I don’t feel heard, I’m going to get frustrated and angry.

Wow … lots of touchy feely stuff there … I can feel the suits getting anxious :-)

While I’m not supporting the notion of nanny-plc, I do think companies have a responsibility to provide ways for employees to become connected, to express how they feel, and to engage in conversation. Companies also have a responsibility to support an environment of trust and openness in which employees feel safe to participate in these activities without fear of retribution.

And, when a company does provides these tools and creates the right atmosphere, employees have a responsibility to use them … to express how they feel … both good and bad … to engage openly and honestly however hard that might be to do. Employees also need to learn to help themselves … to get connected, build relationships … make their presence felt so that when bad times do come, they are as well equipped as possible to get through them.

A healthy relationship is an open relationship and all those in that relationship have responsibilities to make it work.

So, I guess what I’m saying in a very roundabout kind of way, is that creating the kind of company that will be successful and that people will want to work for requires tough choices and great leadership … from both management AND employees. Getting social technology working successfully inside the enterprise is more than just another technology implementation project … it’s about understanding people and how they think, behave and FEEL … a lot of the old rules won’t apply … the question is, when our backs are against the wall and when every penny counts, who will be brave enough to acknowledge this?

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Social networking in business study

AT&T, in association with a consulting firm called Early Strategies Consulting, published a very good short white paper last week called: The Business Impacts of Social Networking. As well as a nice, simple introduction to some of the principles of web 2.0, it lists ten predictions and ten challenges for businesses in this space. I’ve reproduced them below:

Ten predictions:

  1. Corporations will change the way they communicate
  2. Corporations will change their vision
  3. Corporations will change their organization
  4. Collective intelligence and customer experience will lead innovation
  5. Networking will be key to employee excellence
  6. Employee mobility will increase
  7. Corporations will adapt their motivation and career path systems
  8. IT/telecoms applications will mutate
  9. Corporate adoption will happen at different speeds
  10. Social networking may allow increased revenue

Ten challenges:

  1. Adopt new ROI model
  2. Security
  3. Intellectual property
  4. Adoption
  5. Storage
  6. Interoperability
  7. Speed: will the corporate world ever keep up
  8. In direct benefits of social networking not appreciated
  9. Risk of loss of employees, losing human and intellectual capital
  10. Capturing the value

What I like about the report, apart from the fact that I agree with almost every word, is that it is simply laid out and written in pretty jargon-free, plain language. If you were thinking of creating a PowerPoint presentation on this subject, you could do a lot worse than use the headings from this report as your structure!

I think a good way to use this report would be to send it to some of the key influencers within your organisation who you have identified as being key to getting social media tools onto your intranet, and then follow up with a call and meeting to talk about the contents in more detail.

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