m-news > Issue 28, November 2004
This is m-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 is a communication and events company. m-news includes information about related themes - six quick snippets about business, organisational and individual effectiveness, communication and public relations.
Communication empowers.
Karen Morath, managing director, M Power
The ‘quick six’ for November are
1. Organisation insight
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. Organisation insight
Corporate entertaining may have become a little droll and predictable - how many times have you had the deja vu experience of walking into what looks like a function you have been to before? - but companies who are not holding parties are missing a great opportunity to communicate with their network.
Parties, not conventional dinners and sporting events, that have been designed to speak to the crowd in a pre-determined way are one of the best tools to communicate something new, a mood, a re-thinking or a promise.
We don't mean parties of the ab-fab variety (Bolly-soaked events for the sake of events - not, to quote Seinfeld, that there’s anything wrong with that) but parties that are consistent with what the host organisation is all about and that are part of a strategy which involves engaging people as individuals not numbers filling a room.
2. A quote we like
“I think communication is probably the most underrated skill of all.”
Source: Gail Kelly, Chief Executive, St George Bank, BRW, October 28, 2004
3. Tips on preparing a speech
Don’t just do the standard thing and certainly don’t wing it.
Before you do anything, consider
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Who are you talking to?
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What do you need to say to them?
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How does your content apply to them?
Source: BRW November 4, ‘Know How’ Speech Therapy, Emily Ross.
4. Too much information
Too much feedback can have a corrosive effect on employee morale and therefore performance, according to a Canadian study.
The research found that employees who were regularly surveyed about how they felt about stress and how they were being managed, reported the surveys contributed to their stress and their feeling that they were being scrutinised not led.
Communication empowers, certainly, but old fashioned 'horses for courses' thinking applies.
Source: 'Feedback Backlash', Harvard Business Review, October 2004
5. Focusing on the solution
Often community engagement focuses on seeking input from the public about solutions to problems. It goes something like this "we have identified a problem and here is what we think we should do about it, what do you think?"
Seeking to engage the public in a process of solving the problem, rather than 'voting yes or no' on someone else's solution, can achieve more meaningful results.
Source: Vivien Twyford, President’s Report, International Association for Public Participation newsletter, November 2004
You're Hired by Bill Rancic, Harper Business, New York, 2004
It had to happen - a book on business by the winner of 'The Apprentice'. I was sceptical but curious and I loved it (except the first chapter, and the particularly horrible last chapter).
Usually, books about entrepreneurs are written by or about billionaires whose success seems beyond most of us, but Bill is a thirtysomething business man who has enjoyed the sort of success that is impressive but not intimidating.
His descriptions of growing up and discovering that he wasn't like his friends and family - he was entrepreneurial - and how he reconciled what drove him with what his peers expected from him is one of the best descriptions of what it is to be an entrepreneur that I have read.
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