A while back, our company was retained by a client in the midst of a reorganization. The 7,000 employee business was moving from a single corporate entity to a divisional structure along product lines. It had been widely stated that the moves would not cut headcount except for a few senior-level positions. The economy was healthy and this company was meeting its objectives when this was underway.

We ran a survey to assess the situation, and here are a few of the comments we received:

• Give the big picture. As people become aware of this, then you can start drilling down into levels of detail.
• It appears we are doing a lot of explaining without a lot of information being revealed. Rumors, speculation and anxiety grows while we wait. I would have done more “behind the scenes” work and made the changes less visible to the organization until we were ready to make the change.
• I would like to see more “personal” meetings with senior levels. Although the communications are effective, they speak to a broad audience. I would like to see members of the executive team go to each site and personally speak to smaller groups of people to explain the rationale and changes.
• The communications have improved from senior management. There should be a weekly bulletins.
• Be open and honest. The rumor mill is rampant about 20% head count reductions. The change was not communicated this way in the beginning. There is even less communication now than ever. Associates want to know the dates when they will find out about their destiny. The vision about accelerated growth has disappeared. There is next-to-no communication about process changes unless you are directly involved.
• Keep up the good work.
• Set an exact timetable. We keep hearing conflicting dates.
• My manager has done an abysmal job of explaining this to our group, has shown no compassion and seems disinterested in our concerns. The process is too slow and is killing our culture. We hear very little from the executives and they don’t do any “walking around.”
• Will these moves really change the company and break down silos? Or is really a financial restructuring that will enable us to sell off parts of the company?

What are the takeaways:

1. Rumors fill vacuums.
2. Leaders can’t over-communicate. Be visible. Some people want more detail and some want less. There is no way to make everybody happy.
3. Have a plan and communicate your plan. Set expectations and then meet them.

I’ll post more soon.

I recently took my daughter off to her first year of college, and picked up a pearl of wisdom from her Residence Hall Advisor.  I’m not sure I’ve fully processed it yet, but he may be on to something.

I was standing in the common room of my daughter’s suite. She was unpacking her clothes in the bedroom. Another father was in the common room with me. His daughter was in the other bedroom. We were cleaning out our Blackberries while waiting for our next command.

In comes the R.A.. “I bet everything in this room is just perfect,” he announced.

We concurred.

He continued, “I love the dads of girls. They are the best.”

“Why is that, and who is the worst?”

The gist of his response: “Moms of boys are the worst. They are incredibly involved. They don’t let their sons do anything. I had to referee a disagreement on closet space between two moms! They don’t realize the stuff will be on the floor in no time. Moms think their boys are completely helpless. And they are – but the boys don’t care.” He continued on, “Fathers of girls are the best. They know their place. Help if asked. Stay quiet otherwise.”

We can leave the nuances about fathers of boys and mothers of daughters to another day. We can also set aside the fact that I agree with anybody who thinks I am the best at anything. A few questions come to mind however:

• In this dorm, the girls’ fathers felt their work was done. The boys’ moms were getting one more parenting lick in. In a work setting, when is it right to just let the action happen? When do you stop “helping” and let people do things for themselves?
• Are America’s youngest working generation impacted by how their parents have been parenting? Are America’s young women more prepared for college and the workforce than America’s young men? Are fathers not helping on move-in day because they know their daughters are already capable? Are the boys truly incapable?
• My generation experienced gender roles in a particular way. If I remember correctly, no male contemporary of mine would have allowed his mother to arrange his dorm room. Does today’s middle-aged manager understand that the 20-something worker has a completely different mindset than a 40-something? Does the 20-something worker expect mom-like help? Is the middle-aged manager prepared to mother the boys? What about the girls?

I’m sure one R.A.’s off-handed observation isn’t as good as a well-researched dissertation. It certainly isn’t adequate to create a new field of thinking about managing across generations. But kids do say the darndest things….

Needless to say, his previous employer’s equity has taken a hit in my eyes. We won’t be doing business. He, on the other hand, did me a favor by respecting my time and I’m inclined to repay the favor. The winners and losers in this conversation could be have reversed if the employer had a workforce reduction plan that respected its people, customers and suppliers. It isn’t hard, it just takes effort. Let’s put aside whether they are cutting “fat” or “muscle.”  They cut at least one of their opportunities for future growth.

Think about it if you are doing the cutting.

According to the study, 76% of companies change their sales compensation plans every year. This wasn’t a surprise to me. Additionally:

• 58% of these organizations communicate these changes directly to front line sales managers.
• 14% communicate directly to the salesforce.
• 13% take a decentralized approach.
• 7% do nothing.

The fact that 42% of companies don’t communicate these changes directly to front line sales managers was a shock to me.

I share the following thoughts, not as a change management practitioner, but as a former salesperson and sales manager.

• Salespeople are reward-driven. Granted, so are lots of other people, but salespeople live and breathe for their rewards. Do not keep the potential for rewards a secret.
• If a salesperson thinks you want dohickeys pushed and widgets are a second priority, you will get it. If you changed your mind, tell their managers that compensation is now tied to widgets and not dohickeys. Don’t let there be any confusion about priorities.
• Everybody’s most important point of contact is their manager, but in sales, the point is magnified many times over because of their “remote” nature. Show the manager respect and it trickles on to the salesperson. Leave the manager out of the communication loop, morale will suffer.

I’m a little biased, but many managerial rules of thumb are magnified in sales. Salespeople are willing to achieve great things for your company, but need management basics executed particularly well. Your revenue stream and customers deserve nothing less. Leaving managers out of the communication loop makes no sense.

My daughter was recently accepted to a college on an early decision basis. One of her first moves was to search Facebook for her new class / school group. Interestingly, there were two. As it turns out, one group was formed by some new students. The other group was formed as part of a viral marketing campaign by a company interested in targeting college students. Not only had this company formed a group at my daughter’s school, they had formed a group for over 200 schools.

If you would like to see how Web 2.0 really works, this post shows how the company behind the viral marketing campaign effort was “busted.” A group of students and administrators worked together to identify, investigate and expose the program in a matter of hours. It is a fascinating read. It took the Journal of Higher Education quite a few days to catch on.

A few thoughts:

• Think twice before you start to bend the internet’s rules. You will get caught and you will be embarrassed.
• Know that somebody will be targeting your employees. A Facebook group for General Electric Finance is filled with recruiters looking for candidates and “students” looking for information about “business models.”

“Managing the message” is incredibly hard in a Web 2.0 world, but ignoring what is happening out there is not smart. Somebody in your organization needs to be responsible for watching what is happening and acting appropriately.

Don’t do it. Never make the goal 100%. Let me explain with a story.

On February 23, 2007, The Wall Street Journal published a piece on how the Census Bureau is planning for the 2010 census. Question number 3 will be, “What is this person’s sex? (Mark ONE box).”

You would assume that 100% of people should be able to answer this question correctly. This would be a bad assumption. In a 2005 field test, .05% of people asked checked both answers. Extrapolated out, 150,000 people in our country of 300 million would answer this question incorrectly.

If you choose to pursue 100% of anything – even the most basic communication goal – you will fail. Just think about the 150,000 confused folks among us.

So what is realistic?

• If you don’t have 70% of people prepared to move in a particular direction, the group will take an inordinate amount of time to go. 70% is your awareness tipping point.
• The high 80s begin to become problematic. You are spending lots of resources for the last few points of awareness. Perfect will become the enemy of good.
• If information is fairly basic, low 80s is a reasonable, yet challenging goal. If the information is more complex, 75% is reasonable.

Don’t forget, new hires, vacations, leaves of absence, travel schedules all get in the way of achieving super-high awareness numbers. It won’t be your efforts that are the issue; it will be the changing nature of your audience. 

Remember, the internal communicator’s job is to broadcast messages to everybody, and management’s job is to narrowcast within their area of responsibility. The two efforts need to work together. Practically speaking, managers will be picking up “loose ends” that don’t get addressed during your broadcasting. On the other hand, recognize you must reach that 70% minimum. Without it, management’s initiative will be fighting an uphill battle.

1. They both help design the organization’s future,
2. They both see somebody else as responsible and accountable for implementing those changes.
3. The press that covers these groups is frequently discussing the question, “Why don’t we have a seat at the CXO table.”

A Facilitator Ran This Road Crew

Many I spoke to saw their role as facilitators. I absolutely believe in the value of a good facilitator. Unfortunately, facilitators, by definition, are more focused on the process than the outcome. People at the CXO table care about outcomes. I didn’t share my story about a particularly frank CFO adapting an adage about lawyers. When confronted with a huge problem and an army of consultants, he turned to his team and said, “First, let’s shoot all the facilitators.”

Stewardship has many definitions. In biblical times, the steward was a servant that managed the master’s household affairs. It was a position of honor and earned through trust. Today, stewardship refers to a mindset where a person takes responsibility for something that the person does not own. Environmentalists use the term to refer to the appropriate usage of the earth’s resources. Stewardship is a proactive mindset that says, “Count on me to do the right thing.” Anybody can be a steward.

I turn off the lights when I leave a room in my home, and in hotel rooms. I’m a mini-steward of the environment. I try to teach my children to take responsibility for things they don’t directly control. With basketball season upon us, my comment became, “Instead of criticizing her for missing free throws and the fact that you have to run more, invite her to work out with you and show her how to shoot better shots.”

Think about the working world. There are people you work with that regularly stand up and say, “I can make sure that happens.” The task at hand has nothing to do with the person’s job description. They make things happen by influence, not force. (The best thing about those people is that they frequently don’t say a thing; they just do it.)

The next time you want to see change happen, don’t say, “I can’t do anything because I don’t control the situation.” Ask yourself, “What is the number one thing can I influence?” One light in one hotel room won’t stop global warming, or lower my price on the next visit, but it did make a difference. My daughter has yet to realize that the coach is going to make the team run and she will never get to avoid it. She might as well have a teammate who can shoot.

I’m sure you will find you can influence at least one thing in a positive direction. The best part of stewardship is that practice it makes you better at it. The more you act as the steward, the more you will want to, and the more others will want you to. You can influence a tremendous amount just by ignoring your job description and saying, “count on me to do the right thing.”

• 62% were expecting difficulties in meeting corporate goals.
• 71% believe their company’s leadership should be communicating more about the economic situation.
• 54% had not heard from their company leaders on the impact of the crisis on their company.

Now is the time for leaders to be most visible. Visible leadership enables stability, stability turns into productivity, and productivity turns into dollars. Abdication to the company rumor mill is a wasted opportunity.

Disclosure statement: Monday’s post quoted from the CEO of Weber Shandwick. Today, I quote from one of their research documents. I have no affiliation with the company, but find it interesting that they got the same message to me through two different channels. Kudos to the public relations company – you seem to know something about executing PR.

“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” The immortal line from the movie “Cool Hand Luke” is especially apt these days.

The systemic failures plaguing our banking and financial system are real and have caused genuine pain to millions of Americans. But the problems have likely been made worse by the public’s reaction, or overreaction, to the systematic failure of our nation’s political and financial leaders to communicate effectively with us since the crisis began.

At every step along the way, we have been told that the most recent government initiative taken to resolve the problem was sufficient and would be successful. And, within a matter of days or weeks, the claim was proven wrong. As a result, the banking crisis has morphed into a crisis of confidence in our leaders, our institutions and, in no small measure, in the free market system itself.

There are many rules to follow in the practice of crisis communications, but two are inviolate: when in crisis, communicate; and don’t do anything to undermine your credibility. The people who run our government and financial institutions have violated both.

(The whole piece is available at this link: http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/a-crisis-of-confidence/)

I saw the effects of this leadership crisis on Saturday night during a dinner with several friends. One of these friends is a nationally-known investment manager. (Our children go to school together and you may have seen him on the television.) He told a story about eating dinner with somebody even more well-known – a general of the financial industry and a political appointee of the highest level. It wasn’t a good story.

Much like we were waiting for some form of comforting wisdom from our friend, he had had wanted to hear similar wisdom from this uberexpert. The general’s answer to the question, “how do we get out of this,” was relayed to us with just one degree of separation, two days of aging and three measures of nervousness: “pause…. pause…. clear throat…. pause…. I’m not sure if anybody knows.”

We were crushed. If anybody could have provided us wisdom and comfort, it would have been our friend. Instead, he gave us cause to worry well beyond his own pedigree.

Whether it is a dinner among friends, or a meeting where a VP says, “I don’t have time to worry about preserving productivity, I need to cut heads quickly,” our leaders are showing fear these days.

I’d suggest a “cool hand” is far more necessary in times of crisis. People who look up to you are basing their actions on yours.

A little Googling shows disagreement over the word “strategy” is not new to our presidential debates. George Bush and John Kerry were debating virtually the same topic in 2004.

BUSH: I listen to our generals. That’s what a president does. A president sets the strategy and relies upon good military people to execute that strategy.

GIBSON: Senator?

KERRY: You rely on good military people to execute the military component of the strategy, but winning the peace is larger than just the military component. 

A little more Googling yields some text (claimed by quite a few different authors) on the differences between military strategy and tactics:

Broadly stated, strategy is the planning, coordination, and general direction of military operations to meet overall political and military objectives. Tactics implement strategy by short-term decisions on the movement of troops and employment of weapons on the field of battle. The great military theorist Carl von Clausewitz put it another way: “Tactics is the art of using troops in battle; strategy is the art of using battles to win the war.”

Strategy and tactics, however, have been viewed differently in almost every era of history. The change in the meaning of these terms over time has been basically one of scope as the nature of war and society has changed and as technology has changed. Strategy, for example, literally means “the art of the general” (from the Greek strategos) and originally signified the purely military planning of a campaign. In the 19th and 20th centuries, however, with the rise of mass ideologies, vast conscript armies, global alliances, and rapid technological change, military strategy became difficult to distinguish from national policy or “grand strategy,” that is, the proper planning and utilization of the entire resources of a society–military, technological, economic, and political. Tactics have always been difficult–and have become increasingly difficult–to distinguish in reality from strategy because the two are so interdependent. (Indeed, in the 20th century, tactics have been termed operational strategy.)

Now that nearly everybody has weighed in, let me: One person’s strategy is another person’s tactics. It all depends on the relative position of the people involved and how the objective is being defined.  Let me give a personal example.

I have an objective to retire at a reasonable age. To meet my objective, I have a strategy to limit expenses and maximize savings. Within this strategy, I have a tactic, called: “turn off the light when you leave a room.” This tactic is emphasized to my children on a regular basis.

If, however, you ask my children, they will tell you that turning off the lights is clearly a strategy. To them, turning off the lights results in a marked decline in dad’s crankiness. It is a major maneuver – a surge, if you will – in the balance of power and peace within the house. Their objective is different than mine. In short, strategies exist to meet an objective and tactics fit within a strategy.

Bush and Kerry were talking about different things: winning a battle and winning a peace. McCain and Obama were also talking about different things: McCain was answering a question about “the lessons learned in Iraq” and Obama was talking about broader issues.

It will never happen, but I wish I would hear more people say, “You mention ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics.’ Could you define what you mean by those words so we all have the same understanding?” Now that would be unbelievable change!