Plaintalk

Free Range Innovation

My house is in the middle of nowhere. We’re about 100 miles south of Atlanta and enjoy 10 acres of pine trees and adjoining rolling farm land. It’s a very relaxing atmosphere after a week’s worth of work in the city.

Like many of our neighbors, we have a few non-traditional pets, including chickens. Yeah, I know. That probably qualifies my place as a small farm and me as a true redneck. But so be it. We like our chickens. They add a certain something to the rural lifestyle we’ve come to enjoy.

After I mow the yard on the weekends, we let the chickens out of their pen for a little “free range” time. They strut around the yard and the house, digging in the flower beds and checking out anything new that has appeared since their last romp. It gives them some freedom and excitement from their normal lives and lets them stretch their wings, legs and minds with new and different things to do.

As I was sitting on the back porch with a cold beverage watching them do their thing, I got to thinking about this whole free range thing and how powerful a concept it is for any group, be it flocks of chickens, classes of children or departments of engineers. This notion of giving free time to think and wonder and innovate is crucial to the success of an organization.

Because, let’s face it, most of us spend at least eight hours a day working on those things that have to get done. Rarely do we have ample time to work on those things we think ought to get done. We spend so much time working in the business that we ignore our need to work on the business. And it’s time spent working on the business that drives the organization forward and helps it to create new and exciting processes, products, services and revenue streams.

Free range innovation is rooted in the concept that everyone in the organization is capable of having a good idea that can have a real impact on the business. It’s crowdsourcing turned inward. There are a number of companies who use this method to drive innovation from the inside out to uncover new and different ideas from the very people closest to the operations of the company: employees.

Just look at Dell’s amazing Ideastorm concept to see how they allow employees to generate ideas then allow the whole group to vote on whether to promote or demote the idea based on its merits. The best ideas rise to the top and, most importantly, are implemented. Starbucks has a similar program in place for their employees. And Crowdcast has recently released a game-oriented approach and forecasting dashboard to employee crowdsourced innovation.

The idea of letting employees generate innovations for the business isn’t a new one. But new technologies and ways to improve the process of collecting, voting on and implementing these ideas have changed how these programs work. It’s infinitely easier now to get your employees involved in working on the business and driving innovation at every level of the organization. And who better to tell you how to make improvements to your business than the people who work in it every single day?

As for the chickens, they dutifully return to their pen to roost once dusk starts to settle in. Then it’s back to the daily grind of the established pecking order and delivering eggs like they’re supposed to do. But they remain optimistic knowing that in a few short days they’ll get the chance to free range around the yard again, uncovering new and different things. If I could just get them to innovate rather than just scratch the ground I’d be on to something. Though I’m not sure the world is ready for poultry-based idea sourcing.

Psychology and Motivation Are Part of the Mix

I have a hard time getting my five-year-old son, HL, to keep his playroom clean. Inevitably, we'll fight about it, then it'll get cleaned up and it'll stay that way for maybe a week or so. Then it's back to the same messy state it's usually in: dinosaurs and Hot Wheels cars strewn all over the floor. No matter how much I try, I can't get him to pick things up every day when he's done playing with them so that it stays relatively clean and neat. I have yet to unlock the right motivator that will help him see the value of doing things a different way (short of being a command and control parent, that is).

So much of what we do in internal communications is tied to organizational behavior and psychology. The more we understand about what makes humans tick the better we can frame the business conversations necessary to move the organization forward.

There's a great interview with Guy Kawasaki over at The New York Times recently. He talked about the need for college graduates to be better communicators, to learn to say what needs to be said in five sentences in an email or 10 PowerPoint slides. "What you learn in school is the opposite of what happens in the real world. In school, you’re always worried about minimums. You have to reach 20 pages or you have to have so many slides or whatever. Then you get out in the real world and you think, 'I have to have a minimum of 20 pages and 50 slides.'"

He also had some great insight into what makes a good manager. "Maybe it was just my education, but much of education is backwards. You study all the hard stuff, and then you find out in the real world that you don’t use it. As long as you can use an HP 12 calculator or a spreadsheet, you have the finance knowledge that you need for most management positions. I should have taken organizational behavior and social psychology — and maybe abnormal psychology, come to think of it."

A great new book about psychology and motivation is Drive by Daniel Pink. Pink talks about the real motivators of human behavior and how using these motivators can change the workplace dynamic in meaningful ways. I won't give it away by listing these motivators but you'll be surprised how simple and basic these are to understand and implement: at work, at home, with your children, in any kind of relationship.

The next time you're plotting internal comms strategy, give a really tough look at what motivates and drives your employees. Set up the conversation around these drivers and watch how the results may change. Because when you're talking their language and giving them a reason to act, people will usually do what needs to be done.

In the meantime, I'll work on motivating HL to do what he needs to do to keep his playroom clean, using some of the principles from Drive. I'd hate to have to resort to what used to motivate me to keep my room clean. My backside hurts now just thinking about it.

Five Trends in Employee Engagement for 2010

Last week Brian Burgess and I conducted a webinar on five trends impacting employee engagement in 2010. Here's a link to the slides:

MS&L Five Trends in Employee Engagement

View more presentations from MS&L Worldwide.

Rock It!

If you haven't heard of it or tried it yet, you should check out SlideRocket. It's an online presentation suite that gives you a ton of flexibility and customization for your presentations. Since it's web-based, you can do away with using PowerPoint or Keynote to develop and present your slides.

New Year, New Job

For those of you keeping score, I'm proud to have joined MS&L Worldwide in Atlanta. I'll be responsible for developing and managing employee engagement and internal communications initiatives for our clients.

It's nice to be back among familiar surroundings and friends!

Good Morning, ALI!

About to present at the ALI Social Media for Government conference in Washington. Should be a great group of folks!

7 Social Media Trends for Employee Engagement

Fleishman-Hillard recently conducted a webinar on Seven Social Media Trends for Engaging the Workforce. The material covered emerging trends in the use of social media for internal communications. We used case studies from best-in-class brands, including both clients and others, to show how social media is being used behind the firewall to improve employee communication and drive business results.

The slides can be found on SlideShare here:

Seven Social Media Trends for Engaging the Workforce

View more presentations from Fleishman-Hillard Internal Communications.

Would love your comments or thoughts.

Enjoy!

Training Goes Social

Training within the organization is starting to go social, catching up with other parts of the company that have been social for a while including external communications and, in many cases, internal communications. Check out these examples from the USDA and Best Buy. Thanks to Becky Ericson at Fleishman-Hillard for uncovering these!

USDA upgrades to a social e-learning platform

Best Buy has gone social with their training through Learning Lounge:

Storefront: https://www.bestbuylearninglounge.com/

Best Buy's Learning Lounge discussion on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StifXdtYMaw

The Destructive Power of a Jerk

We've all known them. The jerk of a manager who has a chip on his or her shoulder and lives to make life suck for everyone in close proximity. I've known a couple of people like that in my career. And, from personal experience, let me tell you it's no fun having to deal with that kind of a person in the workplace.

In one instance years ago, this one leader was so tough on her team that we all joked that the candy dish on the front desk should be filled with Prozac to help us all cope on a daily basis. I've never experienced more frustration, angst and literal crying in a workplace before or since. A typical day would start out with a team meeting tirade that did more to demoralize the team than help the company succeed. Weekly tongue lashings were commonplace, with every minor error exploded out into ridiculous proportions. All we could do was take it and wonder when it would end. Unfortunately, leaving became the only way to escape all of this and most of us eventually did. Those that remained became jaded about work in general and, in my opinion, never really recovered. And those of us who did escape took a long while to recover from such emotional abuse in the workplace. It sucked.

Tom Davenport, a blogger on the Harvard Business Review website and an expert on organizational process and productivity, has an excellent post today about how jerks in the leadership ranks can really ruin an organization. He points to a couple of recent examples from the financial crisis as proof that the wrong people in the wrong jobs can have a devastating effect on a company (and, in these two cases, on the whole economy).

At the firm where I work, we talk about the eight drivers of employee engagement, which are drawn from years of experience in the employee communications business. One of those drivers is having senior leaders who care. Time and again, employees point out that it's important to them that they have senior leaders in the organization who care about them, the business, the competition and the company in general. This caring approach is the exact opposite behavior that corporate jerks exhibit. And that behavior can crush employee engagement and, ultimately, the bottomline results of the organization. I've been amazed at how long this behavior is tolerated within many organizations, as if somehow the results are more important than the methods. Sure, being an ass might lead to short-term gains, but that approach will do a ton of damage over the long haul.

After I left that company with the intolerable boss, the company eventually folded. I have no real idea why it folded. I can only take refuge in the thought that it was driven into the ground by someone who didn't understand what it is to be a leader in an organization. Nobody wants to work for, around or with a jerk. I guess karma finally caught up with her.

Good for karma.

Employer Brand: Fishing for the Right Talent

I like to fish. I mean really like to fish. I go every chance I get, especially during the spring and fall. And while I fish a good bit, I wouldn't say that I'm a great fisherman. I catch my share of fish. But sometimes I do get skunked and return home without the first bite, much less a catch.

But what I've learned over the years is fishing is all about presentation and frequency. I have to put the right bait or lure in the right place repeatedly if I want to increase my odds of catching a fish, particularly a big one. If I'm using the wrong lure or my presentation is too fast or slow or if I'm simply not casting enough into the right places, I'm doomed to having a long day. The fish are smart, but fairly predictable in their behaviors. I have to use that to my advantage if I'm going to have any success.

The same is true of your employer brand. I define employer brand as the face of the company you're putting forward in the marketplace as it relates to hiring the best candidates for your open positions. It's similar to, but not the same as, your external brand or internal brand. It's based on the same value propositions as your external and internal brands, but the messaging and presentation are different. And just like with fishing, a successful employer brand is based on presentation and frequency.

How you present your company to employees-to-be is critical. If you don't take a highly strategic and aggressive branding approach to the recruiting process, you're much less likely to be successful. Don't leave your employer brand to be defined simply by your external communications activities such as marketing, advertising or community relations. These are only telling part of the story that employees-to-be respond to. You need an effort that involves recruits in the process by engaging them and telling a story about your firm and what it's like to work there.

A great tool for doing that is a careers website. Sure, most companies have a careers section or tab on their websites. But having a separate careers website is a much more aggressive path to follow. Freed from the constraints of living on the external brand's website, recruiting activities and materials can have their own look and feel and speak to a completely separate audience than is typically looking at your external website. Liberal use of video, especially of current employees telling their own stories about working there, will go a long way in attracting and engaging your recruits. And having a separate website helps in popping up on career searches on Google, Bing and the other search engines.

What else can you do to increase your presentation and frequency? Plenty, such as:

• A Facebook page about your careers opportunities
• A Twitter feed with updates on job openings at your company
• A widget that people can place on their desktops that lists job openings and career information
• Partnerships with certain colleges and universities to participate in their career fairs, and
• Text messages about current openings people can opt in to receiving

These are just a few of the tools you should consider when establishing an employer brand. Obvious other choices include printed collateral, educated and engaging recruiters, placement ads for newspaper classified sections, placements on job boards, advertisements on blogs and discussion boards and direct mail to qualified candidates you've kept in your database of potential hirees.

Using a variety of lures and baits and placing them in the right places over and over increases the odds you'll land a fish. Nuture your employer brand in similar fashion and watch as your pipeline of potential recruits fills up with the kind of folks you really want to hire. All you have to do then is set the hook.