M Power is a Melbourne based public relations company that believes communication empowers. Karen Morath is the founder and Managing Director of M Power. M Power provides consulting, training and communication services to organisations largely in the locality of Melbourne

This ism-news, M Power's monthly e-newsletter. We hope you enjoy reading it.Feel free to forward it to friends or colleagues who may find it useful.

M Power isa communication and events company. m-news includes informationabout related themes - six quick snippets about business,organisational and individual effectiveness, communication and publicrelations.

Communication empowers.

Karen Morath, managing director, M Power

The ‘quick six’ for January are

1. Stakeholder relations
2. A quote we like
3. Tips on preparing a speech
4. Too much information
5. Focusing on the solution
6. This month's book review

1. Stakeholder relations

Ina buzzword world where organisations are talking about wanting tocommunicate with their ‘stakeholders’, there is much confusion aboutthe potential to do it properly.

Ideally, astakeholder mapping exercise would be part of the initial researchphase of public relations strategy planning, but there is more to itthan simply identifying which stakeholders to communicate with.

The challenge isto establish ways in which an organisation’s stakeholders cancommunicate with the organisation, not simply be ‘communicated to’ or –worse – ‘communicated at’.

Effectivestakeholder relations require opportunities for organisations to bechallenged, questioned, informed and shaped by the thoughts andopinions of those which have a ‘stake’ in them.

We are hearing alittle bit of talk about ‘dialogue’, but watch for ‘two-waycommunication’ becoming the next significant communication buzz term. And rightly so.

If organisations respond, then they will be really communicating – not just talking about it.

2. A quote we like

"You get into a fix; you get yourself out of it. It’s that simple. There is no way to run the sausage machine backward and get pigs out of the other end."

Source: Norman R Augustine

3. Too much information

Too much feedback can have a corrosive effect on employee morale and therefore performance, according to a Canadian study.

The research foundthat employees who were regularly surveyed about how they felt aboutstress and how they were being managed, reported the surveyscontributed to their stress and their feeling that they were beingscrutinised not led.

Communication empowers, certainly, but old fashioned 'horses for courses' thinking applies.

Source 'Feedback Backlash', Harvard Business Review, October 2004

4. Tips on using meetings wisely

1 Deal with operations separately from strategy

2 Focus on decisions, not on discussions

3 Measure the real value of every item on the agenda

4 Get issues off the agenda as quickly as possible

5 Put real choices on the table

6 Adopt common decision making processes and standards

7 Make decisions stick.

Source – Stop wasting valuable time, Michael C Mankins, Harvard Business Review, September 2004.

5. Focusing on the solution

Oftencommunity engagement focuses on seeking input from the publicabout solutions to problems. It goes something like this "wehave identified a problem and here is what we think we should doabout it, what do you think?"

Seeking toengage the public in a process of solving the problem, rather than'voting yes or no' on someone else's solution, can achieve moremeaningful results.

Source:Vivien Twyford, President’s Report, International Association forPublic Participation newsletter, November 2004

6. This month's book review

The Empty Raincoat - making sense of the future, Charles Handy, Random House 1994

Interestingly, thefact that this book was written about the future and is now 10 yearsold adds to the value of reading it now. In some cases it ispossible to marvel at how accurate his musings were and othersfrustrating that there is still so much that we could change if wereally wanted to. This is a book essentially about work andits role in people's lives, but also about the role of people's livesin life. It explores community, family, organisations andbelonging and uses a series of paradoxes to highlight how little we canbe sure of. There is a lot that Charles Handy can teach us. I loved this book.

To buy the Empty Raincoat from Amazon click here.

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