I was channel surfing America’s Got Fat Dancing Losers and the cable news channels last night watching people bloviate about public options and peace prizes, and wondering where to apply for one of those death squads for grandparents.   It reminded me of a story in The Week, summarized from a longer piece in The Atlantic.

Why do people cling to an opinion even after they’re presented with contradictory evidence? 

A new study has found that people employ “motivated reasoning” to fend off any evidence that their strongly held beliefs are wrong.  Many people feel that they are their opinions, and hate to lose arguments; as Vince Lomabrdi once said, “Every time you lose, you die a little.”  So when confronted with new, troubling information, ideologues selectively interpret the facts or use ’contorted logic’ to make conflicting evidence just go away.  You’ve hear it said that some people ‘don’t let the facts stand in the way of a good story.’

Researchers found that exposing people to contradictory information actually ‘intensified’ their existing beliefs making them more rigid and entrenched. 

The bottom line is that you’re probably not going to be “changing anyone else’s mind with facts or rational discussion.”

It’s a topic and one that’s covered.  Classes are coming up in more than 35 locations, so please call or email me if you’d like to learn very nicely in the Emotion, Outrage and Public Involvement class that we’re doing with IAP2 and Dr. Peter Sandman more.

www.TheAtlantic.com

www.GodecRandall.com

www.IAP2.org

John

Jonah Lehrer has a book out called How We Decide. It’s about the dichotomy between “emotional” decision-making and “rational” decision-making and what science can tell us about these two kinds of thinking.

In the world of experts and scientists there’s a popular notion that they’re employing complete objectivity and reason for every decision they make.  Not quite. 

People who experience damage to the parts of their brain responsible for emotional reactions are unable to decide, because their rational mind dithers endlessly over all the possible rational reasons for each course of action.  That purely rational being who makes decisions without some kind of gut-instinct is really a helpless schmuck who can’t decide between “white or brown toast?”  

But decisions based on emotion will also get us into serious trouble. There’s a sweet-spot in there between white-hot emotional thinking and ice-cold reason.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/08/how-we-decide-mind-b.html

Generation Y – the Millennials — is that age group born between the 70’s and 90’s who have given us something new to worry about.   They don’t do ambiguity.

They’re less able to cope with uncertainty than older generations. It’s not just Generation Y, it’s a universal truth.  Each generation tries to provide a “better,” more assured life for the one that follows.

So here are some of the consequences:

1. Animosity between workers and bosses will increase.
2. Younger employees will ‘opt out’ of the corporate system
3. Leadership will suffer

The story on SmartBlogs isn’t all gloom saying that these challenges can be corrected, but can you think of a more ambiguous time than we’re living in right now?   

Details and the other six problems are at:

  http://smartblogs.com/workforce/2009/10/05/why-well-miss-ambiguity/

 There’s a good story in Business Week about some of the best ways to screw up your next presentation. 

It starts with:

1. Misspelled words.  Failing to check the spelling on your slides shows a complete lack of care. If you don’t care enough to proof your presentation, your audience won’t care about you or your message. It’s the easiest way to look unprofessional.

2. Distracting color combinations. Blue on green is especially hard to read.

3. Inconsistent fonts.  Professional PowerPoint designers use no more than two, or maybe three font styles in an entire presentation.

4. Using really small font sizes.  If you really want to drive people crazy, say something like: “I know you can’t read this, but here’s what it says.”

The other 11 and more details are at:

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/aug2009/sb20090825_379576.htm

Found a video blog on motivating employees in startups that has some universal truths and I thought you’d find interesting.  In a nutshell it lists three primary motivators:

1.               Autonomy:  The urge to direct our own lives.  It is really important for employees to feel         autonomous.  Just provide some guardrails and let your people to find their way to the              outcome, their creativity may surprise you.

2.            Mastery: The desire to get better and better at something that matters.  Everybody      wants to excel at something, so provide opportunities for your employees to grow           through training, practice, and time.  It is a tremendous motivator.

3.            Purpose: The yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than.  Define            and communicate a big vision that is impactful - it is a powerful motivator. 

http://www.inspiredstartup.com/how-to-motivate-others-and-yourself/

So a grasshopper walks into this bar and the bartender says, “Hey, we’ve got a drink named after you…”

And the grasshopper says, “Is that right? Why would anyone name a drink Bob?”

It’s been an incredibly busy couple of months and I’ve been remiss in getting this blog updated in a very timely fashion.   I started writing this on vacation last week.  OK, mostly on vacation but doing this mailer is more fun than work and I was doing a lot of goof-off reading including Garrison Keillor’s latest ‘Prairie Home Companion – Pretty Good Joke Book’ from which the previous oldie-but-goodie comes from.  I also read ‘The Unthinkable’ by Amanda Ripley which I really like and want to talk about in a future issue, and I’m still working on Michener’s Hawaii which I should’ve read a long time ago.   

And by the way, I’m booking dates for a terrific new class:

Outrage Management and Public Participation is a new 2 day course developed as a joint venture between IAP2 and Dr. Peter Sandman, one of the foremost experts in risk communication.  When you take this class you’ll:

·    Learn to predict and identify outrage and know its causes

·    Know how outrage hinders public participation programs, and manage it

·    Understand the principles, approaches and strategies for dealing with emotion and outrage

·    Practice the principles, strategies and techniques and be prepared for upcoming challenges

If you work in public participation or stakeholder relations, or work on projects that are controversial, emotional or that result in public anger this course will be right up your alley.  It’ll help you understand and deal with the emotion so that you can build meaningful, effective public participation and consensus.  If you’ve completed the IAP2 Certificate course this is the next obvious step, but it can certainly be taken without having had the Certificate program.  The course will likely be offered in Phoenix and Tucson this fall, or if you’d like to discuss bringing the class to your group I’d be happy to talk with you about it.

Call 602-266-5556 or email me @ jdg@GodecRandall.com for more details.

Here’s an assortment of stories that I thought you’d like.

I had a unique perspective of events on September 11, 2001. I was in Albany NY speaking at a national conference on security and emergency response, and subsequently sequestered for several days staffing a backup NY State emergency operations center with some of the world’s foremost security and intelligence thinkers.  I learned from these folks early on about the profound sense of hopelessness and humiliation by young people in parts of the Middle East.        

http://www.homeland1.com/domestic-international-terrorism/articles/533719-Experts-Many-young-Muslim-terrorists-spurred-by-humiliation/

Nonverbal communication (context) is often more important than the content of what you’re trying to communicate.  Here’s a quick recent take on western versus eastern cultural differences . 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=facial-expressions-east-doesnt-meet-09-08-13

True grit

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/08/02/the_truth_about_grit/

Real Public Involvement

In early August about 100 people were invited to meet with White House representatives to outline an agenda for improving democracy in the United States. I was fortunate to be part of this group as a representative of the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2).  In light of the recent ‘town halls’ conducted for the health care debate the following op-ed was first drafted by some of my colleagues in that group and customized by me.   

As noted in a recent New York Times story, “Joe the Citizen” is feeling squeezed out of the current health care debate. Health care is a complex issue, and there are many reasons that people across the political spectrum are feeling fearful or hopeful, confused or angry. As is evident in Arizona’s Town Halls last week the arguments are heating up. 

This polarized debate reveals deeper problems with our democracy, particularly what’s missing from it. While partisans who already have strong views on one side or another have ample opportunities to tell us what they think, we lack spaces where people with honest questions can explore tough policy issues, hear one another, and productively work things through to find common ground and solutions.

The democratic ideal of a “town hall” has been co-opted by campaigns over the last decade, and in most places has become more a myth than a reality. The current “town halls” on health care provide opportunities for people who support the President’s plan to sell their program and for those who oppose it to shout them down. But they don’t offer much to the millions of Americans who see the tough trade-offs that need to be addressed, or who are simply confused and want an open, fair discussion to help make up their minds.

Adding to this mix is increasing polarization of the media, campaigns that deliberately spread false information, and the viral nature of social media. In this atmosphere, where we lack trust and genuine opportunities for civil disagreement and discourse, misinformation and discord spread across our nation like wildfire.

A key founding principle of our democracy is that the voice of the people should have an influence on public policy, at elections and in between them. We honor the rights to speak up and dissent as fundamental to our democracy.

Beyond simply having a voice, people should have a chance to be informed, to hear each other, to work through tough decisions with each other and their elected officials, and to use democratic processes to figure out how to solve the problems that face us. At a bare minimum, efforts to spread misinformation and to insult people who have different views and concerns harm our social fabric and weaken our democracy. We must find ways to move beyond stereotyping and preconceived notions of what “the others” believe and care about.

As critical as this is, we need to go further than encouraging more civil behavior. What we urgently need is a vibrant, inclusive democracy where people from different views and backgrounds can routinely meet, hear each other out in productive ways, and find ways to move forward.

Recently about 100 scholars and leaders in electoral reform, deliberative democracy, community organizing, collaborative governance, and advocacy advocates, and leaders in the democracy reform field were convened to outline an agenda for improving democracy in the United States. I had an opportunity to be part of this group, as a representative of the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2).

Today, we call for a strong democracy, a democracy that reclaims the promise and potential of the New England Town Meeting and creates an authentic place for our communities to come together in rich deliberation and community problem solving. We know that these kinds of meetings are possible. For two decades, growing networks of people and organizations around the country such as IAP2 have been bringing all kinds of people into meaningful discussions on contentious public issues. Based on hundreds of these experiences – taking place in neighborhoods, cities, and states – we know that it is possible to have conversations where every voice is heard, where emotions don’t have to be checked at the door, and where elected officials agree to listen and say what they think about what they are hearing.

When these kinds of opportunities exist, people have the chance to understand their own deep concerns and those of others. They learn to stop fearing and stereotyping one another. They come to a deeper understanding of the issues at hand, and figure out necessary tradeoffs. They find areas of common ground, and sometimes they agree to disagree. Most importantly, when these kinds of opportunities become part of our governance, we get better solutions. Public policy can reflect the values and considerations of real, everyday people, and ordinary people of all backgrounds and views can work together on the solutions they themselves have created. When they do so, government becomes a thing they own rather than a spectacle they watch. When laws and policies result from narrow partisan victories, they easily topple when political winds shift. But when they are rooted in broad public deliberation and participation, they are far more likely to grow strong and true in the decades to come.

There is no better time for all of us to raise our voices and actions in support of what our democracy can be. Not only meaningful health care reform, but the health of our democracy is at stake.

The Toughest Communication of All

A client and friend recently related the story of a 50+-year-old man crying in her office after she was forced to lay him off because of economic conditions.  For a period during my past corporate life I was alternately known as ‘the closer’ or the ‘angel of death’ as I helped shutter facilities in a major downsizing.  That task simply sucked. But, like everything else, there are ways of doing it respectfully and better.  Read on. 

Layoffs, plant closings, and the shuttering of retail outlets are never easy events to communicate to those hardest hit by the economic downturn. But if organizations effectively demonstrate sincere concern for, solid commitment to, and strong action on behalf of the most precious resources they’ve got – people — they can limit reputational damage and lay the groundwork for better days ahead.

As giants like G.M., Chrysler, Caterpillar, Microsoft, Home Depot, and Starbucks headline the list of companies that have already laid off hundreds of thousands of workers in 2009 alone, all eyes are firmly fixed on the steps companies are taking to reassure a beleaguered workforce. If you’re faced with this tough choice, keep the following in mind:

First, you need to communicate in real time with all of your employees, especially those that are retained. Employees need to know why actions are being taken, the chances that additional layoffs could take place in the future, and what management hopes to gain. In business many employees are also shareholders so they’ll have concerns about the impact on their holdings.

Second, companies that are closing plants or offices need to be good neighbors to their host communities. There are at least two reasons why it is vitally important to keep community leaders in the loop on everything that’s happening:

• If a company maintains another office or plant nearby or keeps one open while laying off workers, its executives need to maintain a good relationship with local decision-makers who can repeal tax breaks, revisit zoning decisions and building easements, or take other punitive measures if public support for the company wanes; and
• If a company pulls out of a community entirely, stories about how it handled a plant closing in one state will have consequences years later when it tries to open a facility in a new, different state. And the Internet makes this information readily available forever.

And third, organizations should be seen as being in control. When you simply declare, “we have no choice but lay people off,” you look helpless. By contrast, a message that conveys empathetic control could be: “We’ve explored every option and this is the most reasonable course of action under the circumstances. We’re going to provide severance. We’re going to provide training. We are going to do whatever we can to soften the landing for those who are our family.”

Carrying out layoffs or closing an office the right way will help morale, keep relations with communities and constituencies strong, and make it easier to rebound when better times return.

How Does Your Email Sound? 

This is edited from a David Silverman BLOG in Harvard Business Review.  It was written specifically about employee communication but there are lessons here about email in general.

I’ve felt rising anger every time one of my bosses sent an email beginning with, “Please provide the revised presentation…”

It was the “please” that drove me over the edge. And while I didn’t fire off a petulant four-paragraph response, I did seethe quietly. And, more importantly, I didn’t feel very much like “providing the revised presentation.”

Studies have shown that readers add (or invent) emotional bias that is often counter to your intent as the sender.

In this case, all of the niceties you thought you were writing end up sounding very different in the mind of the receiver.

The form of communication itself (emailing your employees) can be interpreted as, “Just so you know, I’m documenting your incompetence.”  When working with the public (real people) you need to find as balance between business-like and human. 

Here are some thoughts:

1.    Call. If your goal is to check on a task and give the employee a chance to respond with questions, or to brief a constituent and build some trust — a call could accomplish this while allowing both of you to hear each other’s tone of voice.

2.    Be conversational in your email. Write the way you might actually talk.  Again, this may not be appropriate for formal business communication but not all situations really require formal business communication.   

3.    Use the passive voice. It doesn’t necessarily make for great writing, but it can help you avoid sounding accusatory.   

It may be helpful to you to read your email out loud before you send it.  How does it sound to you?  How will it sound in your receivers head when they read it and hear your voice in the words? 

Even the simplest emails need to be revised with care. It takes time and thought to ensure you don’t give the wrong emotional cues.

Bullies in the Bosses Office

Edited from the Financial Times

If waterboarding is an “enhanced interrogation technique”, that probably make bullying an enhanced management technique.

Of course bullying is in the eye of the victim and needless to say, some bosses will have no time at all for a discussion on the subject.  But some people have argued bullying may have been a factor to the global financial crisis we’re in.  Clearly, something went wrong with the culture of certain organizations and it’s worth asking if bullying was part of the problem.

Take the case of Dick Fuld, the former chief executive of Lehman Brothers. He was, in the words of one well-placed former colleague, “almost unbearably intense”. He did not have to bully people. Senior managers knew what was wanted and what would happen if they didn’t perform.

He certainly got everyone’s attention when he made his feelings known. At a conference for Lehman’s managing directors in London last spring, he declared: “When I find a short seller [Lehman’s stock was under attack], I want to tear his heart out and eat it before his eyes while he’s still alive.”

For some reason, senior colleagues were reluctant to bring Fuld bad news – until it was too late.

Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive at Royal Bank of Scotland would quiz senior managers during his daily 9.30am meetings and usually question their competence. He reduced senior executives to tears.

You can spot the big paradox at the heart of this argument. These two CEOs were successful, brilliant men. They got to the top and stayed there for a long time. For many years, their businesses were highly successful too.

But you can only drive a vehicle flat out for so long before something it breaks. The best leaders know when to take their foot off the gas and allow for a change of pace.

New research on change management, carried out by Buck Consultants, confirms that, where leaders have simply announced changes to staff, they achieved only a modest rate of success. But those that invited employee feedback and had proper two-way communication with staff did much better.

 Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch shocked people recently when he said, “On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world.”

Welch was a formidable, even terrifying boss.  One former GE executive confessed that one of his boss’s attacks “caused me to soil my pants”.

Now Welch says: “Any fool can just deliver in the short term by squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.”

Notice that we only ever get to hear these management epiphanies, the expressions of regret, sometime after the stellar business career is over?

Every organization is made up mainly of ordinary people and most will have their share of racists, sociopaths and bullies. That’s life. There may not be much we can do about that. But, if the CEO’s corner office is inhabited by a bully who cannot or will not be faced down, that place has a serious problem, culturally and operationally. And when it all ends in tears, it won’t just be those being shed by the bullied victims.

Just Say ‘Hi’

Much of the work that we do is managing and teaching communications and public involvement for complex science and engineering.  Scientists and engineers can be really uncomfortable in dealing with the public – especially with controversial topics, and we help these experts get good at those situations.  People who gravitate to the sciences and technical professions are usually exceptionally smart but not always social butterflies. 

This edited story from Forbes has some applicable tips.           

Bob Goodyear is a wallflower. A technical product manager for a software-security firm, he speaks to large groups of colleagues and clients. While podiums give him strength, he clams up at business social functions, parking in a corner far from the action, sipping his drink and silently taking in the room.

“I was always fine making a presentation in front of a crowd, but when I tried to mingle afterward, it felt like someone was sticking their hand down into my stomach and tying it in a knot,” says Goodyear, 53.

Last September, on a business trip to Australia, Goodyear decided to get over his fear of making the first move at a business after-event.

“I researched all the companies that would be represented at this event so that when I saw the company names on the guest’s name tags, I had a piece of information about their firm to use as a conversation starter,” he says.

He also manages his emotions by putting a time limit on how long he feels he has to mingle. “I tell myself, ‘Bob, there’s nothing you can’t do for 30 minutes.’ “

Most people have some level of social anxiety, especially when it comes to meeting new people. Fear of embarrassment and rejection kills the urge to meet a new business partner, sales prospect or friend. Making the first move can bring on everything from tense muscles to a pounding heart.

Mark Goulston is a Santa Monica, Calif.-based psychologist who has battled his own debilitating shyness. At the next party he and his wife attended, Goulston set a goal for himself: “to meet three new people and have them be glad to have met me.” Twenty-six years later, Goulston, 61, writes and lectures about overcoming anxiety and guides patients through the process.

Dr. Goulston has another strategy he calls the “FTD delivery.” Hook strangers by asking how they feel, what they think or what they have done or would do about a given topic. Focusing on them is a form of generosity–not off-putting aggression.

Yet another trick is the self-induced head-fake. Before approaching someone, look for physical characteristics that remind you of a close friend or relative, suggests Dr. David Barlow at Boston University. Maybe the person’s hair is like your mother’s, maybe he smiles like your best friend. Focus on the similarities, and you can convince yourself, if only for the moment, that you are comfortable with a complete stranger.

Although this article refers to business situations, developing relationships and social lines of communications at public gatherings requires similar skills.  Experts standing in a corner or only talking among themselves appear arrogant and standoffish, and that’s usually the worst possible time.  Good communication is a necessary and learned skill.      

Great training

The IAP2 Certificate course – some of the best basic public involvement and consensus training on the planet – now qualifies for AICP CM credits.  (If you’re an American Planning Association member you know that this is a very good thing.) We have classes coming up this fall. 

We’re also introducing a new two-day Outrage Management for Public Involvement class, created with Dr. Peter Sandman, a global authority on risk communication.

 Call (602-266-5556) or e-mail if you’d like to learn more.

White House Office of Public Engagement Launched    

Pubic problems

A group of us communication types were discussing our most interesting typos last week, and I related my early-career 30,000 run print order with a subheadline that read Chances for Pubic Input.  Somehow I stayed employed but I still have deep respect for good proofreaders. 

Here’s a related story by Mario Marsicano from Mental Floss:

Last month, two members of the Washington Nationals took to the field without noticing their team name was misspelled on their jerseys. Apparently, it took them until the third inning to realize they were experiencing their own version of a wardrobe malfunction. This typo didn’t result in anything more than a little embarrassment (and with a 10-19 record, there are bigger things to be embarrassed about), but some typos in history have had more significant outcomes. Here are a few examples.

1. They weren’t as strict back then, were they?

In 1631, a widely distributed Bible came to be known as the “Sinner’s Bible” when readers noticed a very important “not” had been omitted from Exodus 20:14, making the seventh commandment read “Thou shalt commit adultery.” This resulted in printer fines, recalled copies, and one crazy bingo night in 1632. Today, 11 copies are known to exist (and you have to think Hugh Hefner owns at least one).

2. I’ve been dord a few times.

On July 31, 1931, Austin M. Patterson, chemistry editor at Merriam-Webster, sent an internal communication to the printers that included the phrase “D or d, cont./density.” The intention was to add “density” to the existing list of words that the letter “D” can abbreviate. The printer misunderstood, and instead, printed a single, run-together word: dord, meaning density. The typo got past proofreaders and appeared on page 771 of the dictionary in 1934. It wasn’t until February 28, 1939, that an editor noticed “dord” lacked an etymology, and an urgent plate change soon followed.

3. My kind of super-saver rate.

For twelve hours on April 5, 2006, an Alitalia business class fare from Toronto to Cyprus was listed as $39 instead of the usual $3900. Someone at farecompare.com posted the news online, starting a buying stampede that lasted until the fare was corrected. Alitalia initially tried to cancel the already issued tickets, but eventually relented, and approximately 2000 people flew to Cyprus for under $200, including taxes.

4. Whatever happened to a simple toy surprise?

Earlier this year, an Oregon company had to place a rush order for new packaging for its Peace Cereal. It seems a typo on the box sent callers to a phone sex line instead of the cereal maker’s 800 number. So, instead of reaching the Golden Temple consumer relations department, callers were greeted by a recorded voice asking, “Do you love sex?” A spokesperson for the company attributed the incident to human error. And many Peace Cereal purchasers attributed their laughing fits to the incident for days to come.

5. The world’s most expensive typo?

This one comes from columnist A.J. Jacobs, writing in mental_floss magazine. “In 2005, a typo by a Japanese stock trader cost one investment bank $224 million. The broker meant to sell 1 share of J-Com at 610,000 yen, not 610,000 shares at 1 yen each.”

6. Can you hear me now?

One more from A.J.: “In 1991, a single mistyped character in a line of computer code left 12 million people without telephone service. DSC Communications and Bell Systems confirmed that massive outages on the East Coast and West Coast could be traced back to the one, tiny error.”

7. …and the rest is history.

In 1997, Larry Page was in his office at the Gates Computer Science Building at Stanford University with several graduate students, including Sean Anderson. They were having a brainstorming session to think of a name for a website where immense amounts of data would be indexed. Sean suggested “googolplex,” and Larry shortened it to “googol.” Sean immediately ran a domain name search, but not being the best speller, he typed in “google,” which was available. Larry liked the name, and within hours he took the step of registering google.com for himself and Sergey Brin.

Pandemic planning

 As you’re reading this it’s anyone’s guess at what stage we’ll be in terms of the current swine flu issue.  That is the nature of issue/crisis management. 

 First things first: Epidemic is defined as an outbreak of disease that occurs in more cases than you would normally expect. Pandemic is defined as an outbreak of disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects an exceptionally high percentage of the population.  Semantically it’s that simple.  

The World Health Organization (WHO) moved to Phase 5 (of a six phase scale) on Wednesday. It’s likely that a pandemic is inevitable, but not necessarily imminent (it could dawdle for months, especially if it doesn’t like Northern Hemisphere summers) and not necessarily severe (mild pandemics are still pandemics, but noticeable only to professionals; it’s too soon to really know how mild or severe this one might be).  As of today it looks like this outbreak might not be quite as severe or unmanageable as some agencies had originally feared.  But H1N1 or some variation will probably be back during the next flu season.

According to the WHO, since the 18^th century we have averaged 3 pandemics per century, every 10 – 50 years, so there’s no reason to think this won’t happen.    

Public awareness and concern is growing, which is probably good, but public trust of authority has declined over the years, not the best of situations.  

David Satcher, former U.S. Surgeon General said, “To the extent that the public panics, to the extent that the public demands antibiotics when they don’t need them, all of these things represent weaknesses in the public health infrastructure”. 

Some people are appropriately worried; some are excessively worried; some are imagining that what’s quite possible soon is already here (e.g. “worried well” showing up in hospital emergency rooms with mild respiratory symptoms); many are unduly apathetic.  Panic would be a VERY bad sign, but official fear of panic (“panic panic”) tends to lead to over-reassurance and suppression of alarming information – which tends to undermine trust and perhaps even lead to public panic. 

Public health agencies have a tough assignment – making sure that people are adequately aware and informed enough to take care of themselves, without being too apathetic or too panicked.  While the agencies themselves try to hit a constantly changing and moving target. At the same time experts have to rely on news media to get the facts right and get the facts out, without overhyping it to the point that people stop paying attention.

Officials at every level need to be candid, to encourage dialogue, and to tell citizens the things they can do to prepare and ways they can help their community prepare.  We want a public that can bear its fears, not a public that has been persuaded not to feel them. 

If your family or organization doesn’t yet have a plan, today would be a good day to develop one.  Your planning should be built keeping the following in mind: 

1. Follow the hygiene recommendations and instructions of your local health officials — wash your hands often with soap and warm water and cough into your sleeve.  Prepare to stay home for awhile — make sure you have enough food, water, medicine, and anything else that you might need if you couldn’t get out or if stores were closed.    
2. Government encourages ‘social distancing’ as the primary preventative course of action.  Sick people need to stay home and others will want to, but critical work and functions will have to continue.
3. The uncertainty of a chaotic and unpredictable situation highlights the need to know what’s going on.  Communication is and will remain critical.
4. The first goal of an effective communication strategy is to create a community or ‘social context’ for dealing with an unfolding situation.  Make sure you know how to reach and communicate with your family and critical employees at all times.  Make sure that you have a way of communicating with your sick employees.   

Crisis planning and response should err on the side of overreacting and over-communicating.  Don’t allow a vacuum of information to be filled with rumor.

Here’s a link to a good checklist for your business or agency.  

http://www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/business/businesschecklist.html

Stay well.

Building great teams and managing monster egos

Back in a previous life I worked with and managed high profile radio personalities.  Legendary Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski (Coach K) recently told business executives at the Milken Institute Global Conference how he builds winning teams.   Anyone who supervises talented people can relate.  

·   Leadership isn’t singular. No one leads alone, Coach K says. When he was building the team that won gold at the Beijing Olympics, he relied on Lebron James, Jason Kidd and Kobe Bryant as the team’s “internal leaders.” They had tremendous sway on the rest of the team. “If they said it, it’s pretty much going to go,” he says.

·   Soaring egos need a higher purpose. Talented players often have outsized egos. It’s not Krzyzewski’s style to break them down, but he has to keep ego from blocking improvement. To get them working as a team, Krzyzewski first meets with each player individually, lays out what he expects from him and instills in each a common purpose. Fellow panelist Pete Carroll, head football coach at the University of Southern California, said it best: No matter how huge the ego is, a star player needs to feel he is part of something bigger than himself. “You have to look every one of them in the eye, respect that they’re unique and figure out where they’re coming from,” Carroll said. “You have to give of yourself to figure them out.”

·   Great players learn best from each other. When Krzyzewski met with Lebron James before training for the Olympics began, James told him that he wanted to learn the secret of Jason Kidd’s excellent passing, and how Kobe Bryant, whom he considered the best player in the sport, prepared off court. James forged close relationships with both men and has become a better player because of it, Krzyzewski says. The trick for the coach, he said, is to create an environment in which the players learn from each other without having to expose vulnerabilities. “The guys who are really good in our sport don’t want to show weakness,” he said.

·   Love them after they leave you. College players, like rising young executives, will move on. Fulfill your commitment to them by maintaining your ties, Krzyzewski advises. His players have gone on to play in the NBA, to coach at influential colleges or to new endeavors. “We maintain a relationship of being a friend and part of their family for the rest of their lives,” he says. It’s a form of networking that he finds particularly rewarding. He suggests looking for ways to make it easy for former protégés to ask for help without losing face.

Prepping for TV

A story in Forbes by Klaus Kneale lists some tips for doing well on any TV appearance. Simply put, arm yourself with simple facts, wear solid colors and focus on just three ideas you want to get across.

Scott Baxter was on CNBC in recently to talk about the economic stimulus package’s effects on small business, but when he got there he found his interview was actually a live debate with Reps. Maxine Waters and J. Gresham Barrett.

He says he survived because he had come prepared with “fun facts.” He had rounded up some simple, poignant nuggets of information from sources like the Census Bureau and the Small Business Administration.

In a previous time on TV he wasn’t nearly as prepared, and the interviewer “ate me alive,” he says. It’s hard to stay cool on live TV, Baxter admits, “But knowledge is king,” he adds. Anecdotes aren’t bad, but you look your best when you can rattle off impressive facts.

Bill Delaney at Ketchum offers a list of the simple rules:

• Wear solid, preferably dark colors, because dots and stripes can create weird patterns on camera and light bounces off lighter colors more.
• Speak in straightforward, declarative sentences.
• Stick to three key ideas in order to remain clear.
• And no matter how busy you are, take 15 minutes ahead of the interview to arrange your thoughts.
• Don’t debate reporters, it rarely works. Your interviewer will usually have an agenda and will want to steer the conversation. Remember that reporters ALWAYS have the last word. Use questions as a chance to tell your story.
• Admit when you don’t know something, you’re wrong or you’ve made a mistake.

Office Politics

I ran across and edited a story from LeadershipBlog that reminded me why I gave up being a corporate puke.

We all play games. They’re a coping mechanism to help us to navigate uncertain and challenging settings. But they are self-serving and drain people of energy and commitment.

“A lack of knowledge about games allows them to thrive” say Mauricio Goldstein and Phillip Read in their book, Games At Work: How to Recognize and Reduce Office Politics. “The more you know the better able you’ll be to limit their damage and turn the energy of your people in more productive directions.”

Some of the common games they mention:

• Gotcha …where people act as if they get points for pointing out others’ mistakes.
• Gossip …the rumor mill is used for political advantage.
• Low Budget …where managers purposely low-ball budget requests as a negotiating ploy.
• Marginalize …exile individuals from teams or groups because they challenge the status quo, or aren’t one of the boss’ people.
• Blame …individuals find scapegoats to excuse failure.
• Gray Zone …deliberately fostering a lack of clarity about who should do what to avoid accountability
• Pecking Order …people play favorites and put others in the doghouse to show power
• Pessimism …artificially inflating the difficulty of an assignment in order to create lower expectations
• Big Idea …touting visionary strategies and concepts to promote your creativity regardless of whether the ideas can be implemented.
• No Bad News …ignoring negative data in relentless pursuit of a positive approach.

Goldstein and Read provide an outline for managers to address and end the games people play in organizations. They also present five principles to keep in mind:

To game is human. Your goal is to have fewer and less.

Games flourish during times of high anxiety. Companies need anxiety to fuel performance, however this anxiety and stress needs to be channeled into productive rather than manipulative behaviors.

Your company’s games are not comparable to another company’s games. Different organizations have different game ecologies.

Minimizing game playing starts at home. As soon as you deny that you play or facilitate games, you’ve limited your options for dealing with them. Recognizing this tendency in yourself helps you deal with these issues at a personal level.

Dialogue is a natural antidote to games.  Don’t create programs and policies to punish game playing. This will serve only to create more games. Speaking openly and honestly discourages game playing.

Some of the best training you can get

The International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) Certificate course – the best basic public involvement and consensus training on the planet – now qualifies for AICP CM credits.  (If you’re a member of the American Planning Association you know that this is a very good thing.)

The class is scheduled in Philadelphia, June 15-19; and, Boston July 13-15.  Call (602-266-5556) or e-mail me for more information.

The Facebook generation vs. the Fortune 500

I was talking to a law-partner-buddy of mine recently who wanted advice on dealing with new, young lawyers and their ‘lousy work ethic and sense of entitlement’.  The rules are obviously changing in dealing with different generations. The following story is focused on employee recruitment but it sheds light on the differences.  

Edited from Wall Street Journal, by Gary Hamel:

Growing up online will shape the work expectations of the Facebook Generation.  

If you hope to attract the best of Gen F, you’ll need to understand their Internet-derived expectations and in the future, any group that lacks a vital core of Gen F employees will soon find itself stuck in the mud.

This is a list of 12 work-relevant characteristics of online life and tomorrow’s employees will use these as yardsticks to decide if your company or agency is “with it” or “past it.”

1. All ideas compete on an equal footing.
On the Web, every idea has the chance to gain a following—or not, and no one has the power to kill off a subversive idea or squelch an embarrassing debate. Ideas gain traction based on their perceived merits, rather than on the political power of their sponsors.

2. Contribution counts for more than credentials.
When you post a video to YouTube, no one asks you if you went to film school. When you write a blog, no one cares whether you have a journalism degree. Position, title, and academic degrees—none of the usual status differentiators carry much weight online. On the Web, what counts is not your resume, but what you can contribute.

3. Hierarchies are natural, not proscribed.
In any Web forum there are some individuals who command more respect and attention than others—and have more influence as a consequence. These individuals haven’t been appointed by some superior, authority trickles up, not down.

4. Leaders serve rather than preside.
On the Web, every leader is a servant leader; no one has the power to command or sanction. Credible arguments, demonstrated expertise and selfless behavior are the only levers for getting things done through other people. Forget this online, and your followers will soon abandon you.

5. Tasks are chosen, not assigned.
The Web is an opt-in economy. People choose to work on the things that interest them, everyone is an independent contractor, and everyone scratches their own itch.

6. Groups are self-defining and -organizing.
In any online community, you have the freedom to link up with some individuals and ignore the rest.

7. Resources get attracted, not allocated.
In large organizations, resources get allocated top-down.  On the Web, human effort flows towards ideas and projects that are attractive (and fun), and away from those that aren’t.

8. Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it.
To gain influence and status on the web, you have to give away your expertise and content, and you must do it quickly or someone else will beat you to the punch. Online, there are a lot of incentives to share, and few incentives to hoard.

9. Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed.
On the Internet, truly smart ideas rapidly gain a following no matter how disruptive they may be. The Web is nearly perfect for aggregating the wisdom of the crowd. The voice of the masses can be used as a battering ram to challenge the entrenched interests of institutions in the offline world.

10. Users can veto most policy decisions.
The only way to keep users loyal is to give them a substantial say in key decisions. You may have built the community, but the users really own it.

11. Intrinsic rewards matter most.
The web is a testament to the power of intrinsic rewards. Think of all the articles and add up the hours of volunteer time and it’s obvious that human beings will give generously of themselves when they’re given the chance to contribute to something they actually care about. Money’s great, but so is recognition and the joy of accomplishment.

12. Hackers are heroes.
Large organizations tend to make life uncomfortable for activists and rabble-rousers. On the Web, malcontents are frequently celebrated as champions of the Internet’s democratic values—particularly if they’ve managed to hack a piece of code that has been interfering with what others regard as their inalienable digital rights.

These features of Web-based life are written into the social DNA of Generation F.

People are getting angrier

Adapted from Financial Times By Emma Jacobs

As public distaste at taxpayer-funded bail-outs has turned to “bonus rage” directed at specific individuals.

The home of the former head of Royal Bank of Scotland was vandalized last month.  Windows were smashed, his Mercedes was damaged and e-mails from a group claiming responsibility for the attack branded all bank bosses “criminals” and warned: “This is just the beginning.”

Edward Liddy CEO of AIG told Congress of death threats, and Jimmy Cayne, former CEO of Bear Stearns, hired armed guards.

Corporate security is by nature and necessity a secretive industry but it’s clear that corporate figureheads have become visible targets in the downturn.

One security director said, “There has never been this kind of populist anger before,” she says. “When executives are revealed on television with bonuses they become a target.”

If you happened to see any television news the past couple of weeks you probably saw the story of Susan Boyle who just won ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ .  I can’t bring myself to get excited about or watch the U.S. version but if the results were a little more like this I might reconsider, this is one of those storys that cuts through the cynicism.  I got an email distribution this week from Marc Cenedella of TheLadders that I thought you’d like.   

Let me set the scene.

You’re a dowdy 47-year-old from Northern England. “Never been married, never been kissed.” No love in your life. No job. No luck.

But you have a gift within you. And you know it.

And you’ve somehow managed to make your way onto a TV Show called “Britain’s Got Talent” and you are now standing on a national stage.

The crowd is hooting with derision. That smarmy judge on the left is snickering at you. Simon Cowell is rolling his eyes. Everybody is pretty much certain that “little old you” is going to crash and burn in a way that will be hilarious to all.

You’ve “never been given a chance before.” And it’s pretty easy for everybody to understand why. You’re an odd-looking lady from the North. They are serving you up to the laughing wolves for the sake of the television audience. This is going to be funny.

What do you do?

What do you do?

Well, if you’re my new personal hero Susan Boyle, you wrap your two hands around the microphone and slowly focus and…

Then you sing your song to the rafters. Your lift your voice to the heavens. You give a life-defining performance, and you sing an audience of millions into tears.

You hit your high note and bring a lump to the throat of the judges.

You bring the audience to their feet and watch as they realize they can’t possibly reach their hands high enough in the sky to applaud you.

You inspire a planet.

You knew you had the gift within you. You just needed to be given a chance, that’s all you ever wanted.

And when you got your chance, you shined brighter than any starlet or supermodel ever could.

Readers, I know I’ve learned a very important lesson from Susan Boyle this morning…

Dream Your Dream.

Warmest Regards,

Marc Cenedella
Founder & CEO
TheLadders.com, Inc.

Recession and crisis communications

The way a company responds to a crisis makes all the difference and it’s crucial for executives to learn how to keep their brand strong as the recession persists.  Bad things can happen to good businesses but you control how you respond

A story by Laura Williams-Tracy in the Charlotte Business Journal notes that one smaller local bank is protecting its brand well by marketing aggressively with a believable message as opposed to the lower-key approach of Bank of America Corp. and its chief executive, Kenneth Lewis.

Lewis made two large purchases of BofA’s stock in late January and early February, investing more than $2 million in the bank. Presumably, he was demonstrating his confidence in BofA. But when reporters asked a company spokesman about the CEO’s actions, the response was “no comment.”

Michael Cherenson, chairman of Public Relations Society of America said “Maybe the banks are concerned that the truth would be more damaging to their reputation,” he adds. “But a communications void will be filled with misinformation.”

Getting a company’s message through is the chief goal of crisis communication. The task is to express that message clearly to an audience that includes employees, the news media, customers and investors.

What’s unique here is that the economy isn’t a one-time event.  Most crises are catastrophic but brief, and then life goes on.  The U.S. and global recession is a long-term problem that will require long-term solutions and transparent communication.

The objective is to build trust — not to spin bad news.  Companies can build and bank some of that trust before a crisis occurs.

One executive said, “When you hit crisis mode, more often than not it’s too late to figure out what your brand promise is. It’s not the time to start saying who we are and what we stand for.”

Even if a company has built good will and enjoys a favorable reputation, it can lose those advantages quickly if it handles bad news poorly.

Most experts give Peanut Corporation of America low marks for its public communication after it was linked to salmonella-related deaths from tainted peanuts.

The company’s CEO appeared before Congress with his arms crossed and refused to answer questions for fear of self-incrimination. Days later, the company filed for bankruptcy.

One practitioner pointed out that, “Successful companies have that ability to take the legal concerns and still operate on basic principles. Good lawyers understand that the brand and company name is valuable and must be saved.”

Successful businesses also know how to tell employees when things aren’t going well. History shows that company performance frequently drops after a round of layoffs that were intended to improve profitability. If you don’t manage moral and build the trust and confidence of the people who are left you may have gained nothing.    

Present better

 Ran across a story by James Duncan Davidson about making better presentations that I thought you’d like.  Paraphrasing:  

Deliver your speech to the crowd, not the screen. How many times have you seen speakers spend all of their time talking to either the left or right side of the room and never addressed the audience. Your slides aren’t the recipient of your presentation. Your audience is. Face them. Address them.

Pick a spot and stay. Move deliberately to another. Don’t pace aimlessly. And please don’t turn all the way around. I know that I’m often guilty of this one — back and forth, never resting.  Sometimes, speakers will go so far as to turn their back on the audience as they shift direction. This says to everyone in the room that you feel trapped and don’t want to be there.  And, if you’re telling the audience that you don’t want to be there with your body language, you’re not helping your words get through.

Take off your name tag while on the stage. You look kind of goofy with a dork tag hanging around your neck.

If you don’t make eye contact with your audience, you make it harder for them to connect to your message. If you pick a few people in various places of the audience and lock eyes with them, everyone else around them will feel that. If it helps, you can lock eyes with friendly people that you know in the audience. If you don’t have any friends, make some by talking to a few people before you go up on stage.

The corner of the stage is darker than rest of stage. Stay in the lit part of the stage so that they can see you more easily. And, unless there’s a follow spotlight on you, don’t jump off and wander up and down the aisles. It’s a lot less cool when you don’t have a spotlight on you.

If it’s being videotaped, all of this matters 10x more.

Rule of thumb for speaker clothing: Dress like you mean it. ~0 to 1 levels above mean “nice” for audience. Be comfortable on stage but don’t look like a slob up there. If you’re talking to suits, don’t show up in a t-shirt. On the other hand, don’t show up in a tux for a technical conference. Know your audience and dress like them or one step up.

When you’re on a panel, don’t look at your shoes, look at the other speaker otherwise you look bored even if you’re not. We’ve all seen photos of speaker panelists who look like they’re sleeping or bored up there even if they’re not. Be engaged in the subject and pay attention to the speaker, you’ll look better up there.  Smarter, even.

Say you’re sorry

One thing that we talk about with our clients who deal with angry customers, groups or citizens, is the power of simply apologizing when you screw up.  That’s often tough for their lawyers to swallow and we have to explain that an apology doesn’t have to be some admission of guilt.  

Found an interesting op-ed from the Philadelphia Inquirer originally penned by Stuart H. Shapiro, which we paraphrased here:

One of the first lessons parents teach their children is to say “I’m sorry” when their actions cause hurt or an unintended consequence. We teach our kids to acknowledge their mistakes, not run from them.

Yet, for decades, lawyers and insurers have advised health-care professionals to “deny and defend” when an adverse situation arises, believing that apologies or expressions of empathy to patients and their relatives would lead to lawsuits, settlements, and ruined careers.

Pennsylvania is considering legislation that will permit medical professionals to acknowledge, express empathy for, and take ownership of unforeseen outcomes without the risk of litigation based on the apology.

The new law wouldn’t relieve doctors, hospitals, or nursing homes of liability, and it doesn’t prevent patients and families from filing lawsuits. It simply permits health-care professionals to communicate openly and honestly with patients and their families without fear that their statements will be used against them in court.

Numerous studies have shown that anger - not greed - is the driving force behind most medical-malpractice suits. Patients and families are justifiably frustrated when something goes wrong and a health-care provider fails to discuss it with them honestly. In one study, more than a third of those who filed suit said they would not have done so if they had been given an explanation and an apology.

Thirty-five states have passed similar legislation and not only have claims gone down, but customer-service ratings have skyrocketed.

At the University of Michigan Health System, claims and lawsuits dropped from 262 in 2001 to 83 in 2007. Costs for legal defense and claims have been cut by two-thirds, and the time spent resolving cases has been halved.

At the University of Illinois Medical Center, malpractice filings dropped by half and, in the 37 cases in which the hospital acknowledged a preventable error and apologized, only one patient has filed suit.

In states with apology legislation, medical mistakes have become teaching opportunities, not potential cover-ups. It allows medical professionals to talk to patients about what went wrong and why. In those cases in which a lawsuit was filed anyway, settlements were often agreed upon in months rather than years. And families and health-care professionals say they are able to heal sooner and move on with their lives.

Rethinking Think Tanks
Source: Politico.com, February 3, 2009

Fueled by tax-deductible donations and an explosion in philanthropic assets, think tanks have dramatically grown in size and influence during the past 100 years,” writes J.H. Snider, himself a think tank fellow. “U.S. think tanks increased in number from eight in 1910 to 98 in 1960 and 1,106 in 2006. … Despite think tanks’ billions of dollars of tax subsidies and considerable power, they have received minimal public scrutiny and are often poorly understood.” Think tanks should establish ethical guidelines specifying “what types of lobbying, plagiarism and donor promises will be publicly disclosed or banned,” Snider suggests. Think tanks should also be required to disclose their donors, as do “lobbyists and political candidates,” and acknowledge “ethical conflicts.” In addition, “the media should do a better job covering think tanks,” especially around “think tanks’ revolving door with government, functioning in orchestrated lobbying campaigns and claiming credit for others’ work.”

Rebuilding Trust in Business
A condensed version of a story by Bronwyn Fryer in Harvard Business Review:
Wall Street lies in metaphorical rubble. The “Greatest Banker Who Ever Lived,” Alan Greenspan, says he misunderstood market mechanics. Jack Welch says focusing on share price was a dumb idea. The Future of Capitalism is itself in question.

When the business pages make no sense, it’s time to turn to a philosopher. Charles Handy, vicar’s son-turned-oilman-turned-business-school-professor-turned philosopher, has raised many questions and made many accurate prognostications about the future of business.

Consider what he said, post-Enron, about the erosion of trust. “Markets rely on rules and laws, but those rules and laws in turn depend on truth and trust. Conceal truth or erode trust, and the game becomes so unreliable that no one will want to play,” Handy wrote in “What’s a Business For”  (December 2002). “The markets will empty and share prices will collapse, as ordinary people find other places to put their money–into their houses, maybe, or under their beds. The great virtue of capitalism, that it provides a way for the savings of society to be used for the creation of wealth–will have been eroded. So we will be left to rely increasingly on governments for the creation of our wealth, something that they have always been conspicuously bad at doing…..Trust is fragile. Like a piece of china, once cracked it is never quite the same. And people’s trust in business, and those who lead it, is today cracking.”

So what does the future of the organization look like? In one of his very first books, Gods of Management: the Changing World of Organizations, Handy advanced the idea that the best organization operates most like a village–a place where people equally contribute their skills for the good of the whole, where culture matters most, where the initiative is bottom-up, where the shareholders are the people who do the work. “Villages are small and personal, and their inhabitants have names, characters and personalities,” he wrote. “What more appropriate concept on which to base our institutions of the future than on the ancient organizational social unit whose flexibility and strength sustained human society through millennia?”

Pimples and perpetrators

A housing development in Great Britain installed pink lights that highlight zits to stop kids from gathering and causing problems.

A recent BBC story said the homeowners association bought the lights to curb anti-social behavior. The lights supposedly have a calming influence, but they also highlight skin blemishes.

The National Youth Agency said, “They have a right to congregate, it’s part of being a teenager and most young people are good, law-abiding people.”

The lights have been installed in three underpasses on the area. Tony Gelsthorpe, chairman of the Association, said the lights were important for the residents. “We’ve had problems with underage drinking, drug dealing, anti-social behavior and general intimidation.

“I was a little bit dubious about the pink lights at first but it’s done the trick.” 

One of the best parts of parenthood is embarrassing your kids, who knew it was a crime-fighting technique!?

Get better

The International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) Certificate course - the best fundamental public involvement training on the planet - will be offered in Austin April 20 – May1, L.A. May 4 – 8, Houston May 11-15, Columbus June 1-5, Philadelphia June 15-19, and Boston July 13-15.  Call or email me for more information.