Jennifer Frahm Collaborations

At the risk of sounding like bragging, I picked it. Over the last couple of months, IABC Victoria Board Members have been putting together a report on the Top Trends of Communication in 2009 ( topcommstrends-09.pdf ) There’s a lot in it to unpack, but one of the things I said was that we would see a rise in the uptake of Social Media (yeah, OK, no big one there?!), but we would see a very clumsy uptake of social media.

No sooner had I submitted this wisdom, when mUmBRELLA broke the news that Tourism Queensland had faked the Girl with the Tattoo Youtube video.  Well, technically, the agency faked it. For those not familiar, Tourism Queensland has run a very creative social media campaign to recruit somebody to blog about living on an Island. Tough gig if you can get it.  Tipereth Gloria explains summarises the affair really well here. Then, last week, a major fashion retail store, followed suit (pardon the pun), and released a youtube clip of a girl pretending to have met a really hot guy in a cafe, hit it off, he left, she didn’t have his details, but he left his jacket (with really nice lining) behind.

Glass slipper anyone? Now, no doubt about it, really cute storyline and engaging creative. So why, oh why did they then lie about it when the news agencies picked up the story?? Again, mUmBRELLA covers this better than I can here.What I find really interesting, is that within the space of a week, news agencies and social commenters start refusing to name the brand involved, yet TQ are still getting their name out there.

What’s the matter with putting your social media hand up and saying, Ýep, it was us! Weren’t we clever?? Are these agencies deliberately using deception to drive more media interest? Not sure. What I do know is that one of the core virtues of social media is authenticity.

It’s very hard to engage your stakeholders in a sustainable dialogue, if you are a big fibber!

As mentioned in earlier posts, I have had the pleasure of teaching and supervising Honours students in Management. In 2008 I supervised a student (Sharon Ho) who was interested in researching the difference in generational use of collaborative technologies such as wikis in businesses. The best bit about supervising honours students is you learn a lot. While you may guide them in the process of doing original research, they introduce you to new ideas and new research. Sharon has kindly permitted me to overview the research here. Given I am rather partial to collaborating, this was a great topic to supervise. Sharon started with Himmelman’s (199) four Hierarchy of Relationships:

1)    Networking - simply involves exchange of information for mutual benefits.

2)    Coordinating - involves information exchange, altering activities for mutual benefits and achieving a common purpose

3)    Cooperating  - builds on coordination and requires participating entities to share resources, implying a higher level of organisational commitment which sometimes

 4)    Collaborating - is the highest hierarchy of relationship, requiring the greatest level of trust, time and share of organisational resources and jurisdiction 

It had me thinking about various Web 2.0 technologies. How many are really using them to collaborate?  As Sharon notes, the qualitative difference with collaboration is that it is based upon the willingness of the participating entities to enhance the capacity of each other to achieve a common purpose. It begs the question – how much ‘value adding’ are you getting out of your collaborative technology use? What are you putting in for the other party?

Sharon interviewed 15 subjects, five from each of the three generation. She used thematic analysis to come up with the findings. This is an exploratory study – so too early to run large surveys.  I found her summary of the Generations and their usage quite interesting.

 Baby Boomers: My responsibility 

•  Web 2.0 technology is a useful tool for collaboration  
• Their responsibility to create  a collaborative environment
•  Engage in the networking and cooperating
•  Concerns about anonymity and quality of information shared.

 Generation X: My Career

• Quite instrumental in use of web2.0
• Makes task completion  easier, quicker, more efficient and effective.
•  Used to advance career. 

Generation Y: Our Community.

• Most likely to cross organisational boundaries·      
• Second nature
• Real collaborators
•  High level of openness and trust.  

So what are Management to do?  

The research findings suggest: 

1)    Manage the meaning of collaboration. What does collaboration mean to your employees and what are their expectations?

2)    Encourage a culture of knowledge sharing if you really want a collaborative environment

3)    Determine what the ‘safety nets’ are that your employees need to conduct collaborative behaviours safely (for Gen Y, its rules and policies, for Gen X its social networks, and Baby Boomers, personal responsibility)

 4)    Think about the roles of brokers and boundary spanners 

Anyway, if you are keen to know more, the thesis summary can be found here. report_summarydoc.pdf

 Congratulations Sharon on a great job!

There is a robust debate about who is best to do the communicating of major change. Some researchers, such as  Dr Laurie Lewis (1999 in the Management Communication Quarterly) and Dr TJ Larkin suggest that the frontline supervisor (or direct report) is best as they have the stronger relationship with the employee. This is sensible as there is usually an established relationship, hopefully based on trust, and with an increased appreciation of what these changes will mean on day-to-day basis to the employee concerned. Delivery of the change messages can be better tailored to the employees’ interests and needs.  

In a back issue of Communication World, (May – June, 2006) Shel Holz, ABC, cites research from major consulting firms (The Hay Group & Towers Perrin) to argue that senior management need to be integral in the communicating of change. There are of course very valid reasons for having senior management communicate during change. I know of one change communications manager in a NZ large public service organisation who reported that the employees were so angry about the changes they wanted the opportunity to have the CEO in front of them. For them to move forward it was important for management to hear their voice and take responsibility for the consequences. Other research repeatedly shows that successful change requires clear communication of the leadership vision.

 If you are looking at the issue from the perspective of managing uncertainty during change, researchers Bordia et al. (2004) in the Journal of Business and Psychology propose that change related uncertainty takes three forms: job related uncertainty (What will happen to it? Will I still have it?), implementation uncertainty (how will the change happen? What timing?) and strategic uncertainty (where does this change fit in the big picture?”). The dilemma of who should communicate change is then a little simpler. James Allen et al. (2007) published in the Journal of Change Management find that the frontline supervisor is preferred for implementation and job related change communication and senior leadership are preferred for strategic change communication.  

My research suggests you won’t know who should do the communicating until you ask, and further, it is important to understand why the employees have these expectations. A frontline supervisor with a poor relationship with the employees will have little effectiveness in communicating changes, as will a CEO who cannot provide clarity on the outcomes. You need to be having conversations with your employees about what their preferences are for change communication before you can design the program.

What works best in your experience? Would love to hear….

Happy New Year and welcome back! It’s been a busy couple of weeks for me, traversing the swamplands of Slade Point, Nth Qld for a family Christmas, and then working for Spring Vale Winery at the Taste of Tasmania Food and Wine Festival. Rousing renditions of “What to do with a drunken sailor” come to mind. For those not in Australia, Hobart is a beautiful harbour city, and the end of the Boxing Day Sydney to Hobart sailing race.  At the same time it hosts a fab food and wine festival. Can highly recommend Bruny Island Cheese Company  : )

 But I digress. There is of course a lot of talk about about New Years Resolutions - our fearless leader Barbara Gibson has revealed hers , as has fellow IABC-er and Melbournite Melissa Dark. I thought I’d share my approach on dealing with the NY Resolutions.

New Years is a terrific time to get reflective and think about what we want to achieve in the following year. But often this comes from a position of deficit. What we didn’t do, what we didn’t get? And often people set goals that reinforce the negative as a result this. This sets up a cycle of frustration and dissapointement. It actually takes some skill to set goals that are positive in intent and don’t have negative triggers in them.  Let alone goals that realistic and achievable.  I think it can be more useful to think in “themes”. Here’s how I do it. And I borrow liberally from NLP, Appreciative Inquiry,  Mindmapping, Steven Covey etc in application.

Start with a big piece of butchers paper / poster chart and a generous helping of coloured pens.

In the centre of the page write 2009. On the periphereal all the areas in your life that you wish to address (eg finance, family, spirit, relationships, health, business). I use different colours for each - it helps my creative process. Then work at jotting down keywords, squiggles,  illustrations, slogans that capture the essence of how you want the year to be.  So for me, 2009 is the Year of Zen. I have a big fat happy buddha sitting in the middle of my page.  And then work outwards.

 Take your time, don’t force anything. Honour your intuition. Look for connections between the areas and relationships between the themes.

 Here comes the hard part. Show it to some-one. Some-one you trust and who knows you well. Some-one who can challenge your thinking and interpretation with compassion.  This is your reality check - there may be a theme that is too harsh, or not ambitious enough. And that person will help you stay on track throughout the year.

Keep the poster visible.

I find this is a really sustainable way of achieving goals.  So what will your theme be this year? Share…