Monday, October 20, 2008
HC+T Update: October 2008
HC+T Update: October 2008
HC+T Update
October 2008
- Next Webinar: Intranet Communication Strategies
- Marriott Blogs Pakistan Devastation
- Don’t Give Apple A Pass
- A Misdirected Email Leads To A Company Crisis
- Lessons For Non-Profits From The Grass Roots
- Flash Quiz For PR People: What Is A News Release?
- No Time For Blogging
- Sites Of The month
- HC+T Update
- Boilerplate and subscription information
The last update went out in late July. As much as it may seem that this bulletin has become a quarterly, I’ll continue to crank it out as I find time.
As usual, this issue represents mostly material I’ve written for my blog since the last issue (with the exception of the blatant advertisement in the first item). You can find the blog at http://blog.holtz.com. And don’t forget, you should seriously consider switching from the email subscription to the RSS feed. Just add the following URL to your RSS news reader: http://blog.holtz.com/index.php/update/rss_2.0/.
1. Next Webinar: Intranet Communication Strategies
A new Webinar featuring Shel Holtz, ABC
Beginning Monday, October 27, 2008
$195 covers the entire five-week Webinar
Register at http://tinyurl.com/3ugp4n
Solid internal communications achieve business goals, but most communication on most intranets is just the publication of news and features, harkening back to the old days of company publications. Some are even starting to question the link between a company’s commitment to effective employee communications and their intranets.
In this five-week online workshop, we’ll explore five distinct classes of internal communication that can be supported on an intranet that go far beyond the simple publication of articles. The approaches examined will include those you can adopt right now, without the introduction of new software or technology, as well as some that require the use of new communication channels. Included in this webinar will be…
* Corporate initiatives—From organizational change to quality improvement, we’ll look at how the intranet can support a company’s efforts to introduce a new approach to employees.
* Business literacy—Intranets can serve as a dynamic tool for bringing employees up to speed about customers, competitors, the marketplace and a company’s own products and services.
* Line of sight—Research makes it clear that companies perform better when employees can connect the dots between top-level decisions and their own day-to-day work. Learn how intranets can strengthen that connection.
* Bad news—Companies are being snatched up and melded together at an increasing pace. Employees are receiving layoff notices at an alarming rate. Rumors swirl about the future of businesses. We’ll look at approaches to helping employees get through periods when the news is bad enough to distract people from their work.
* Benefits and open enrollment—It may be the dullest part of an internal communicator’s job, but benefits are a vital part of what attracts people to work at a company. While open enrollment takes place on intranets, these networks are woefully underused when it comes to benefits.
During the Webinar, you’ll benefit from lectures, links to other online resources, downloadable handouts, and interaction with your instructor as well as other Webinar participants.
If you haven’t participated in one of these webinars—which take place entirely online over a five-week period (they are NOT 90-minute teleseminars with PowerPoint pushed over the Web), watch the brief video introduction at http://www.shelholtzwebinars.com/index.php/site/info/C11#video
2. Marriott Blogs Pakistan Devastation
The power of a corporate blog is nowhere more evident than on “Marriott on the Move,” the blog from the hotel chain’s CEO, Bill Marriott.
Responding to the horrific terrorist act that levelled the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, the company posted a statement on Saturday, the day of the attack, followed in less than five hours by Bill Marriott’s personal post titled, ”This Senseless Tragedy…”
In the post, Marriott notes that most of the bombing victims were hotel employees. He gives special attention to security staff who died while examining the suicide bomber’s truck. “These guys were defending the lives of hotel guests and their fellow co-workers,” he writes. “They were killed in the line of their duty.”
The post does not include the usual audio file. Marriott records his posts into a digital recorder, which his communication staff transcribes for the blog. Visitors can choose to read or listen. The absence of the audio file for this particular post is curious. If ever people—especially employees—would want to hear the voice of their CEO, this is the time. I have no doubt, however, that the words are Marriott’s -— communicators preparing a statement would never use informal language like “these guys.”
Without a blog, the organization would have been restricted to traditional channels for expressing itself. These channels don’t come close to providing a leader with the ability to convey his own reaction, or to providing stakeholders a channel through which to react. Nearly 170 comments append the post as of right now, most offering condolences and expressing outrage and shock. There are comments from people who have been injured in other attacks on hotels, from former employees, and from loyal customers. Some address Marriott’s business specifically, such as these:
—“I am confident that you will make the right decisions to take care of the Marriott associates’ families in the tragedy and to keep the trust of your loyal customers to continue to want to stay at Marriotts.”
—“Mr. Marriott: As a Silver level member and a regular traveling business customer, I will now change my stays from Hilton to Marriott for the rest of this year. I can’t help but see that the militant Islamic forces target your establishment due to its Christian heritage. I appreciate your candor and certainly, your hotel staff’s service.”
—“When I saw this horrid news, I went straight to the Marriott website to see how the company would be handling it. I appreciate your directness, and extend my deepest condolences to the families of those who lost their lives. I for one would feel perfectly safe at one of your hotels, despite this tragedy.”
In the face of such horrible devastation and loss of life, the Marriott blog—which already had an established voice a leadership—gave the company…
- The means to reach out to customers and employees with an authentic expression of grief
- The ability to react almost instantly
- An opportunity for stakeholders to offer their own thoughts, serving as a form of catharsis
- The ability for Bill Marriott to assume leadership during the crisis
There are plenty of reasons for organizations to maintain a corporate blog, from search engine optimization to addressing business issues head-on. But if Marriott’s experience isn’t enough to make other organizations consider adopting a corporate blog, nothing is.
3. Don’t Give Apple A Pass
I was embarrassed back in August during my presentation at New Media Expo in Las Vegas. John C. Havens, the co-author of my new book , and I were delivering a talk on the the theme of the book, “Tactical Transparency.” When discussing the notion of being transparent about business processes and problems, I used Apple’s Mobile Me as an example, showing a screen shot of the MobileMe Status page on the Apple website.
As soon as I started talking about it, a hand shot up. Allison Sheridan said the MobileMe status page was a terrible example.
I was confounded. After all, the inaugural post to the MobileMe status page made my point precisely:
“Steve Jobs has asked me to write a posting every other day or so to let everyone know what’s happening with MobileMe, and I’m working directly with the MobileMe group to ensure that we keep you really up to date.”
But Allison explained that updates to the site had stopped. David G., the site’s author, did not make good on his promise. Her husband, she said lost weeks worth of email and looked to the status page for information that was never posted. I had added the screenshot shortly after the third update was posted because John and I were required to meet a deadline for delivering a copy of the presentation. I hadn’t checked the site since then. Big mistake.
When I got back to my room, I visited the site. There are still only three posts there, the most recent from July 29. That final post concludes with these words:
“Next post later this week.”
Is David willing to blow off Jobs’ instructions to “write a posting every other day or so?” (That would take some chutzpah.) Has Jobs decided to return to Apple’s traditional opacity when it comes to communicating with customers? I can think of a dozen or so other reasons the updates may have been suspended, none of which excuse the shrugging off of a commitment made to customers to keep them informed. To make matters, worse, there have been continued problems with the service. Still, no updates.
But, hey, that’s just Apple. We’ll let it go because they make such cool products, right?
In fact, Apple frequently gets a pass for atrocious communication practices (among other things) because the manufacturer of such cool products can do no wrong. The Apple faithful turn a blind eye to any flaws, excusing the company because, well, we all just love our Macs and iPods.
Personally, I prefer Windows to the Mac. I had a Mac for 15 months and wound up giving it to my daughter and returning happily to the Windows world. But I have several other Apple products that I do love. And I still don’t think that makes the Mobile Me situation acceptable. Any organization that makes a public commitment to communicate and then clams up is, more than likely, hiding something. Even if they’re not, that’s the perception that will be created by their sudden silence.
MobileMe was (and continues to be) an unmitigated disaster (particularly compared to the relative trouble-free launch of Microsoft’s Live Mesh). The company launched a status page and promised updates “every day or so.” The company provided three updates, then went silent. And there has been barely a whisper of protest. (I say “barely” because there have been some reports of the sudden halt to updates, but not many…certainly not nearly as many as there would have been had it been Microsoft in the hot seat.)
Yeah, Apple’s products are cool. But it’s time to stop giving them a pass.
4. A Misdirected Email Leads To A Company Crisis
In the days before email, someone at a company where I worked inadvertently pushed the wrong speed-dial number on a fax machine. Instead of faxing a draft press release to outside counsel, he sent the release to a newspaper reporter who covered the company as part of his beat.
It was fear of this kind of all-too-human mistake that led attorneys in organizations everywhere to resist the introduction of fax machines to the workplace. The same paranoia accompanied earlier communication technologies, including photocopiers and telephones.
More recently, lawyers lobbied against email, worried about the ease with which company-confidential information could escape the ever more porous walls of the organization. There is good reason for lawyers to worry. More than one email has been sent mistakenly to external addresses from within IBM, one about a switch to Linux for employee desktops, another from an executive telling employees about the company’s woes. There are hundreds of such stories from companies, but few as chilling as the tale plaguing Carat, a media agency owned by Aegis Group, as reported yesterday in AdvertisingAge.
Faced with an impending round of layoffs, Carat’s HR staff prepared an email for those tasked with notifying affecting employees. The email was accompanied by PowerPoint and Word attachments that covered key talking points for those to be laid off, those remaining, clients and vendors. The email also telegraphs the extent of the layoffs by talking about consolidation of business units, although actual numbers aren’t included.
Rather than send the email to the intended audience of senior managers, though, the company’s top HR executive inadvertently sent it to all employees.
The AdAge piece will give you all the details about the layoff itself, along with a quote from John Hollon, editor of Workforce Management (an AdAge sister publication), who said:
“It seems to me the issue here is one of a dumb, stupid error that just about everyone who uses e-mail does from time to time. You would think that the chief people officer would be more careful given their position in the company—a reasonable assumption to make—but that’s not always the case. Owning up to the problem, apologizing and emphasizing it was a terrible mistake won’t solve this or make it better but can go a long way toward getting beyond it quickly.
“Still, if I were the CEO, I might want to start looking for a new chief people officer. You pay those people to step up in these situations, not make it worse.”
Over on David Murray’s blog, comments revolve around whether it makes sense for Carat to can Rose Zory, the chief people officer. On the one hand, it seems like a PR move designed to pacify without really addressing the issue. On the other hand, as one commenter put it, “I still really question how effective that HR person will/can be moving forward after a fiasco like this.”
(I learned about the story from a reader who read about it on David’s blog.)
A series of questions beyond that of Rose’s fate arise from Carat’s unfortunate experience, key among them…
- How do you deal with layoffs now that employees have had sneak peeks at all the layoff materials?
- How do you handle the reputational damage outside the organization?
- What steps do you take to minimize the risk of this happening again?
The first decision the company should make is to take the hits. Being defensive won’t help. Admit this was a horrible mistake and just deal with—even agree with—the criticism.
Next, acknowledge that nothing is going to fix the situation. It will take time—and positive action—to rebuild the company’s damaged reputation.
Be utterly transparent about all this. No equivocation, no hunkering down. Admit and elaborate on plans that were exposed in the email, even if your original intent was to keep them quiet.
Dealing with employees is tougher, but not impossible. An apology from the highest levels of the organization is a good start, followed by a conversation about how the process for managing the layoff unfolded. There’s not much you can do for employees who will lose their jobs, but plenty for those who are staying, including becoming more open in your ongoing communication with them about the state of the business and the forces at work on the organization, as well as the previously-hidden internal workings of HR. Employees are never surprised by a layoff when they work for companies that keep them well informed.
Finally, don’t jerk that knee and restrict the ability to send email. Rose’s mistake was a bad one, but it was a mistake. Organizations are made up of humans; we are all inherently imperfect. I doubt there’s even a need to reinforce the need to be careful when pushing that “send” button—no message could be stronger than the one that has already been sent.
If you were counseling Carat, what advice would you have?
5. Lessons For Non-Profits From The Grass Roots
These are tough times for non-profits, especially those looking for the contributions required to fulfill their missions. It’s hard enough asking for people to part with their money, but high energy costs and an uncertain economic outlook make it even tougher than usual.
Non-profits can learn a lot from some of the organic, grass-roots efforts that have received attention in the social media space over the last several months. In the case of the Frozen Pea Fund, the American Cancer Society did not launch a campaign to raise money. Instead, those who knew Susan Reynolds, who blogged that she was afflicted with breast cancer, undertook to raise money as a means of expressing their support for Susan, with the funds they collected earmarked for the American Cancer Society. The Austin blood drive tweetup produced a record number of first-time blood donors, but not based on any call to action from the blood center. Instead, it was a program launched by the Austin Social Media Club and promoted by interested individuals through tweets and blog posts.
People listen to each other thse days more than organizations. That’s precisely why a bunch of people on Twitter raised money from people who would not have otherwise donated to the American Cancer Society. It’s why people gave blood in response to an appeal from others in their network when they had never responded to a direct appeal from the Red Cross or their local blood center.
The lesson for the non-profits is to turn some of their donation efforts over to their most passionate advocates. Rather than hold out their hands and ask for money, they can make information available about the needs the donations will address. Get this information into the hands of people who will use it, from those you have already identified as your biggest supporters to those whose current social media activities indicate they’d be highly sympathetic to your cause.
Your own employees can even promote the issues, as long as they’re transparent about it and remain focus on the results the donations will produce instead of requesting money.
This notion isn’t dissimilar to something I head of Christopher S. Penn and John Wall’s “Marketing Over Coffee” podcast, the idea that if you ask a venture capitalist for money, you’ll get advice, but if you ask for advice, you’ll get advice and money. Translated to non-profit donation efforts, ask for money and you’ll get an excuse, but if you can make the need resonate with the right people, you’ll get money (or blood, if that’s the goal).
Non-profits can grease the skids by making material available for people to use in their efforts. How much easier would the Frozen Peas donations have been if the American Cancer Society had a place where the grassroots activists could have created a landing page that included a donation button and a place for the effort’s leaders to tell their story?
This is about more than just engaging in conversation. It’s about enabling people who care—people with networks—to have the conversation on your behalf.
6. Flash Quiz For PR People: What Is A News Release?
Ah ha, caught you, didn’t I? You started to blurt out an answer, then stopped. I know I did, when I read a “Big Idea” post on FastCompany with the provocative title, ”Text messaging has become a likely alternative to traditional media releases.”
Barack Obama will announce his vice-presidential running mate on Twitter. People who follow Obama on Twitter will be the first to learn who will round out the Democratic ticket (including journalists). Who needs a press release?
Obama’s move is great on a number of levels, but I’ve no doubt the Obama campaign will still issue a release articulating all the right talking points. So, I thought to myself, a Twitter-first strategy isn’t really an alternative to a news release, because a news release is…
And I stopped.
To define what a news release is today, it’s useful to revisit what it used to be. There are three important points to keep in mind:
- The publics organizations wanted to reach relied on mainstream media to deliver content. There was no “pull.”
- There were two ways to get a message out through the mainstream media: Buy it (advertising) or earn the coverage (PR).
- Journalists—the gatekeepers—had limited channels through which they could receive organizations’ news: phone, fax, wire services, the postal system and (more recently) email.
News releases worked all the way around. Organizations could distribute them by fax, wire service, the mail and email. Reporters learned about news to cover and got a kick-start on their reporting. Publics had access to this information. (Yes, a lot of what was and is communicated in press releases is crap. But a lot of useful and important news and information has also been conveyed in press releases.)
Fast-forward to today. To begin with, the publics organizations want to reach are made up of individuals who are able to choose one or several channels to receive information. They can choose what to read and they are not forced to rely on any single medium or gatekeeper to get it.
The media are not limited to old channels for story leads or research. A study by Brodeur revealed a growing reliance on blogs by journalists as sources of information.
Finally, organizations are not limited to the media in order to convey information and make announcements.
But—and here’s the kicker—organizations still have to communicate news and information and there are people who still have an interest in knowing what that news and information is.
So, in this environment, what is a news release? It is not any one thing. There is no single bolt-from-the-sky alternative; you can’t “kill traditional releases and just blog it.”
I submit that a news release is the communication of an organization’s news or other announcements through all appropriate channels in a transparent manner using tools that work in harmony and open the door to further conversation on the information released.
Let’s say, for example, you’re announcing a new product line. A news release would include…
- Blog posts from the CEO, the brand manager, and anybody else in the company that has a perspective on the news.
- A tweet of the news through appropriate Twitter accounts, including any “official” company account as well as employees who have established themselves as company representatives (think RichardatDell). The official company tweet can include a link to the authoritative statement of record, while the tweets of the individual employees can link to their own blog posts.
- It most likely happens as a matter of course, but the company’s official RSS feeds should include the announcement. All content—from individual blogs to traditional press releases—should be distributed by RSS.
- Any company podcasts can include interviews or other appropriate content related to the product. The show notes can link to other content, including, for example, the brand manager’s blog posts if the brand manager was the interview guest.
- Company pages on social networks like Facebook can be updated as appropriate.
- A traditional press release crosses the “wires” for inclusion in places like Yahoo! News and Google News. Mainstream journalists—particularly in smaller markets and trade publications—can also make good use of worthwhile, well-crafted releases.
- Appropriate multimedia should be uploaded to company channels on media sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr. This could be a general company channel or one dedicated to the brand, if the launch is a big enough deal. You can link to any of these assets in tweets and blog posts.
- Establish a Delicious account or two (or more) to house links to related content and/or coverage of the announcement
- Create a social media release
This is not a comprehensive list, of course; there are other channels I haven’t mentioned that could be entirely appropriate, depending on the news and the audience. New channels are opening up all the time. But the core idea is to release the news through all the channels the public and journalists use to receive and share it. (Note there is no pitching involved in any of this. Whether pitching is done well or badly, or should even be called “pitching,” t’s still a separate activity from the release of news itself.)
I remain committed to the social media release because of the role it plays in the symbiotic world of the multi-channel news release. It is the one source that contains everything else. The social media release is one-stop shopping, an aggregator of all content related to the news, organized in a digestable, objective, and usable format. If you read the tweet and want more information, where do you go? If you read the CEO’s blog and want more details on the product, where do you go? If you get the news because you’re a friend of the company’s Facebook page and want more information, where do you go? That’s the role the social media release fulfills.
So the news release is no longer a single thing, nor can any single thing ever accomplish what the traditional release used to. The biggest objection most PR practitioners will raise is thats a multi-channel release takes a lot more work. That’s true. But even some old-guard newspapers, like the Spokane Spokesman Review, are figuring out that tweets, blog posts, and traditional reporting are all now part of a news continuum.
So no, a text message is not an alternative to a news release. It’s part of one.
7. No Time For Blogging
I was running a daylong seminar that led one of the participants to fire off a blogging proposal to her CEO via her Blackberry. She shared with me the two-word answer that came back within minutes:
“No time.”
It wasn’t the first time I’ve heard this issue raised; I’m certain it won’t be the last. Whether it’s a CEO or any other employee, if it makes sense for that individual to communicate by blogging, time shouldn’t be a problem. Here are some thoughts on getting around the “no time” argument.
==Reallocating resources==
One executive with whom I spoke recalled receiving a communique from his company’s board of directors. The board took issue with the amount of time this CEO was committing to his blog. His answer was succinct: He wasn’t spending any more time communicating now than he was before he took up blogging.
Blogging is a new communication channel. Before blogs became widely available and accepted, executives made do with the channels available to them: one-on-one phone calls, conference calls, speeches, road shows, letters, email and so on. I have heard from a number of CEOs that blogs are more effective than any of these tools for a variety of communications. Therefore, they have replaced the use of such channels with blogging. In aggregate, though, they’re spending just as much time fulfilling their role as the company’s chief communicator.
As Thomas Nelson CEO Michael Hyatt put it (in an interview for my forthcoming book), ““At least a third of my job needs to be spent on communication. There are a lot of ways to do that, (such as) emails, phone calls, and speaking publicly. A blog is just another tool to do what a good CEO does: communicate.” (Hyatt addressed the time he commits to blogging in this post.)
Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Massachussettes (also interviewed for the book), concurs: “Part of the job of a CEO is to explain your mission and actions to the public. Why wouldn’t you use one of the greatest communication tools that exists to do that?”
==It’s not an essay==
A lot of leaders think anything they write needs to be a 1,500-word masterpiece. They’re accustomed to these missives from their annual shareholder letters and those columns that used to appear on the inside front cover of employee magazines.
Readers of blogs, however, don’t want 1,500-word posts. If every post were that long, people would probably stop reading blogs. Short, pithy observastions, quick questions (such as the time Michael Hyatt asked for feedback on his proposed employee blogging policy), brief activity updates and terse reactions to news and issues are all preferable to essay-length posts. A typical post from Bill Marriott, CEO of Marriott International, runs under 500 words.
==Writing (per se) not required==
Speaking of Bill Marriott, he doesn’t write his blog at all. No, it’s not ghost-written. He records his posts into a digital recorder, which is transcribed (word for word) by his communication staff. On the blog, you have the option of reading the post or listening to it. An HP executive calls his posts into a voice mail line set up just for that purpose; the communications staff transcribes it for his intranet-based blog. There’s no need for any executive to sit at a keyboard and pound out a post.
==Group blogs==
Southwest Airlines’ Nuts About Southwest blog is a perfect example of a group blog to which company leaders can contribute when it’s appropriate. Authored by a group of employees, Nuts About Southwest has featured only a few posts by CEO Gary Kelly, who writes on the blog when the voice of the CEO is the appropriate one to address a specific issue. Rick Wagoner, CEO of General Motors, has taken the same approach on GM’s blogs.
==ROI==
Tom Lehrer noted that life is like a sewer. What you get out of it, he said, depends upon what you put into it. Any number of executives who have undertaken blogging have been rewarded with a return on the investment in their time. This ROI can take the shape of improved relationships with key publics, better innovation, heightened employee commitment, conversation that leads to tangible actions and results (such as Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz’s blog-based conversation with SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, leading to changes in Reg FD), and even direct sales (Bill Marriott credits a link from his blog to Marriott’s reservations system with producing hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue).
==Should a CEO blog?==
It depends. There are certainly plenty of good reasons CEOs can cite for not blogging. In fact, there are CEOs I wouldn’t let anywhere near a blog. They don’t have the conversational manner required of blogging, they don’t have anything interesting to say, or they’re flashpoints for controversy. Bob Lutz, GM’s vice chairman, is the company’s principal blogger because the Fastlane blog is about cars, not the vehicle business (including labor, finance, and other non-car topics). CEOs who won’t maintain the commitment to blog regularly should not start one. And, frankly, a CEO is like anyone else: She has to want to blog. If she doesn’t, drop it.
But for CEOs otherwise inclined to blog if not for the time commitment shouldn’t let that stand in their way.
8. Site of the Month
Web 2.0 in the Workplace
This is the first time I’ve used the “Site of the Month” slot to promote something of my own. But what the heck, it’s free and I can’t just put it in a text email. It’s a video I recorded that explains the key benefits of Web 2.0 in the workplace. It runs about 25 minutes. I hope you find it useful.
http://www.viddler.com/explore/shelholtz/videos/1/
9. HC+T update
- I’m off this week to speak several times at the Ragan communications summit at SAS headquarters near Raleigh, North Carolina.
- It’s less than a month before my new book is released. I co-wrote “Tactical Transparency” with John C. Havens. It’s being published by Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint.
- I’m involved in several consulting projects, including working with a blood donation organization to make donating blood more appealing to high school and college students through social media.
10. Boilerplate and subscription information
You received this newsletter either because you asked for it or somebody who likes you forwarded it to you.
Please feel free to forward it to someone =you= like!
HC+T Update is published monthly by Holtz Communication + Technology.
You can subscribe by visiting the HC+T site on the World Wide Web at http://www.holtz.com and selecting the FREE email NEWSLETTER page. You can subscribe ,unsubscribe and view back issues at http://darkstar.holtz.com/hct/mamboserver/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi?f=list&l=hct.
You can subscribe to an RSS feed of this newsletter by adding “http://blog.holtz.com/update.xml” (without the quote marks) to your news feed reader.
Holtz Communication + Technology helps organizations apply online technology to strategic communication efforts.
(C) 2008, Holtz Communication + Technology. All rights reserved.