Braintrust

As anyone who has crammed for an exam can tell you, usually the number of hours we work without interruption is inversely proportionate to how much we accomplish. So how do these entrepreneurs manage to work so many hours without suffering from brain fatigue?

Well, first of all, it is because they truly love being an entrepreneur and are passionate about their enterprise. But, I believe, part of the answer is that they wear so many hats. They never get stuck doing the same kind of work for too long.

Here are some more brain-based tips that can work wonders and could be what helps propel entrepreneurs forward:

1. Buy a good office chair, or get a standing desk. 

Focal Upright Furniture has a brand-new chair-and-desk combination on the market. Invented by Martin Keen, of Keen shoes fame, it uses a position between sitting and standing, and allows lots of movement as you work. It also helps those who use it remain attentive.

2. Do not multitask.

John Medina, author of Brain Rules, tells us the brain cannot multitask, period. What it does do is switch back and forth between tasks very quickly. Someone whose attention is interrupted not only takes 50% longer to accomplish a task but also makes up to 50% more errors. A study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that people who talk on the cell phone while driving are four times more likely to have an accident, because it isn’t possible to devote your full attention to both driving and talking at the same time. Hands-free calling offered no advantage. What’s the lesson to take away? Focus on one task at a time, and you’ll accomplish each better and faster–without killing anybody.

3. Use all your senses.

Work is more entertaining for your brain–and therefore makes you more alert–when you engage as many of your senses as possible. Use colored paper and pens. Experiment with peppermint, lemon, or cinnamon aromatherapy. Try playing background music.

4. Don’t make too many decisions in one day.

It sounds farfetched, but if you go shopping in the morning, then negotiate yourself out of eating a cookie at lunch, and finally try to decide between two job offers that afternoon, you might choose the wrong job because you didn’t eat the cookie, according to Scientific American. Making choices depletes your reserves of executive function, or “the mental system involved in abstract thinking, planning, and focusing on one thing instead of another.” This can adversely affect decisions you make later.

5. Take a quick break every 20 minutes.

A study in the journal Cognition reveals that people can maintain their focus or “vigilance” much longer when their brains are given something else to think about every 20 minutes. That’s the time when thinking becomes less efficient. This trick is called momentary deactivation. If your mind isn’t as sharp after a long period of work, it may not be completely fatigued. It just needs to focus on something else to refresh the specific neural network you’ve been using.

6. Work with your own circadian rhythms. 

Are you an early bird or a night owl? Do you fade every afternoon, or is that when you are strongest? Don’t schedule an important meeting at a time when you will be operating on one cylinder. And don’t waste your peak work time at a doctor’s appointment.

7. Relax for 10 minutes every 90 minutes.

When you’re awake, your brain cycles from higher alertness (busy beta waves) to lower alertness (alpha waves) every 90 minutes. At that point, you become less able to focus, think clearly, or see the big picture. You know the signals: You feel restless, hungry, and sleepy, and reach for a coffee. Herbert Benson of Harvard, author of The Relaxation Response, recommends working to the point where you stop feeling productive and start feeling stressed. At that moment, disengage. Meditate, do a relaxation exercise, pet a furry animal, go for a quick jog, take a hot shower, pick up your knitting, practice the piano, or look at paintings. Allowing your brain to go into a state of relaxation, daydreaming, and meditating will reset your alertness.

Read full article via Inc.

Your workplace is filled with liars! How do I know?

I’ve got this straight from one of the foremost authorities on body language in business, Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. Carol conducted an extensive survey to research her new book, The Truth About Lies in the Workplace (Berrett-Koehler).

Here are a few of the startling facts she uncovered:

• ·         67% of workers don’t trust senior leadership
• ·         53% said their immediate supervisor regularly lied to them
• ·         51% believe their co-workers regularly lied
• ·         53% admitted lying themselves

Lies and deception are running rampant in the workplace. Fortunately, Carol’s terrific new book explains in easy to understand language:

• ·         How to spot a liar and what to do about it
• ·         How men and women lie differently
• ·         How to deal with liars whether the liar is above, below, or on the same level as you
• ·         The one lie you better not tell  your manager
• ·         How to NOT look like a liar when you’re telling the truth
• ·         Ways to foster candor and decrease deception in your organization

Carol’s advice applies whether the liar is a co-worker, boss, customer, prospect or board member. Her tips will help you defend yourself and your company from backstabbers, credit taking colleagues, lying bosses, gossips, and cheating job applicants.

I recommend that you read The Truth About Lies in the Workplace. When you order your copy now, you will also receive over $500 worth of career-building bonus gifts from Carol’s friends (including Communitelligence). And that’s no lie.

P.S. If you think you are too sharp to be taken in by a con man like Bernie Madoff, you had better read Chapter 3: Why We Believe Liars and How We Play Into Their Hands twice. Get your copy now.

Looking to increase your business’ sales? Don’t spend all your time thinking about how your customers view your company. Instead, do your best to ensure that your employee view of corporate reputation is positive. And not just positive, but better than your customer view of your corporate reputation. Research suggests that sales tend to rise when employees’ views of the company exceed those held by customers, and that they stall when employee views fall below those of customers.

Reputation matters
A good external reputation is a source of competitive advantage. More reputable firms can charge premium prices; attract investors and employees; improve customer attitudes; lower a client’s perceived risk; and create higher credibility. However, reputation is fragile – it can get stronger but also get damaged easily. Samsunghas demonstrated how oneness and collective passion can top Sony, a premium Japanese brand. Samsung is now the industry leader in terms of both brand strength and financial performance. On the other side of the ledger, sudden damage to reputation can adversely affect performance, as happened when Arthur Andersen collapsed following allegations about its involvement in the Enron scandal. These were once regarded as reputable companies in various media rankings.

It’s all about the gap
The key factor when it comes to sustainable reputation, then, is not just either its external or its internal reputation, but the nature and magnitude of the gap between the two. The internal reputation of a company is built on how employees perceive and feel about the company. This is important because these perceptions will in turn affect external stakeholders’ behavior. Our field interviews with 4700 customers and employees from 63 business units shows that when a company’s internal reputation perceived by employees falls below those held by the customers, their sales will fall. Companies with a good internal reputation are commensurately more likely to offer good service, while those with a poor internal reputation have less cheerful staff and lower service levels. Alongside this, customers have higher expectations of companies with positive reputations than they do of other businesses.

Fortunately, it’s easy to build trust in a business relationship. Here are the rules, based on a conversation with a true expert in trust-building Jerry Acuff, author of The Relationship Edge: The Key to Strategic Influence and Selling Success.

1. Be yourself.

Everybody on the planet has had unpleasant experiences with salespeople, and many have walked away from a sales situation feeling manipulated. So, rather than acting or sounding like a salesperson, simply act the way you would when meeting with a colleague.

2. Value the relationship.

If you want people around you to value having a relationship with you, you must truly believe that relationship building is important. You must also believe that you honestly have something of value to offer to the relationship.

3. Be curious about people.

People are drawn to those who show true interest in them. Curiosity about people is thus a crucial element of relationship building. Having an abiding fascination in others give you the opportunity to learn new things and make new connections.

4. Be consistent.

A customer’s ability to trust you is dependent upon showing the customer that your behavior is consistent and persistent over time. When a customer can predict your behavior, that customer is more likely to trust you.

5. Seek the truth.

Trust emerges when you approach selling as a way of helping the customer–so make it your quest to discover the real areas where the you can work together. Never be afraid to point out that your product or company may not be the right fit.

I’ve been a “quality” person after reading Pirsig’s book some 10 odd years ago, and as I try to apply the quality principal to my clients as a freelance Web designer, there seems to be an increasing swing towards measuring ROI from online marketing in terms of the QUALITY of customer delivered rather than the quantities.

This is not really that surprising as the online market becomes more saturated, competitive and consumer-savvy. The interest in the volume of Web site traffic turns to an interest in conversion metrics which turns converts into ways or how often we can keep a customer returning for more.

As the costs of gaining a new customer go up, it becomes increasingly important to get the right (quality) customers, not just any old ones. Of course, the Internet makes it potentially easy to gain customers, but it is unfortunately often just as easy to lose them as well.

All of which got me thinking: Do different forms of online marketing typically deliver different qualities of customer, rather than quantities or volume? This has been my experience thus far:

Search Engine Marketing – can deliver quantity and quality. Quality will depend on the “quality” of your keyword targeting, timing, choice of search engines, etc.

• Affiliate Marketing – perception, rightly or wrongly, that the quality of customers delivered is lower in the long-term scheme of things. However, the volume of conversions can be very high.
• E-mail Marketing – this really depends a lot on the quality of the list, the quality of the offer, the timing, the brand, etc. It is the most effective for converting existing registered users or repeat selling to existing customers.
• Interactive Advertising – for something such as banner advertising, click-through rates drop, as opposed to a PPC text-based link, but I haven’t seen anything or read anything to know about the quality of the customer that gets through. Even though volume is lower on banner advertising, perhaps the quality of the customer is higher (wealthy, frequent visitor). PPC does deliver a high quantity of click-throughs, but depending on the quality of the keywords and program choice depends on the quality of the customer.
• Viral Marketing – volumes can be very high (or next to nothing), but the quality of those customers…? Conversion rates tend to be low but of those few who convert I guess it’s a potpourri of valuable customers and not-so-valuable ones.

Most businesses, and managers with targets to hit, need a mixture of volume of sales and value of customers, so as ever, it’ll be a choose-your-best-marketing mix scenario in terms of what, how and when to use the above online marketing avenues.

I’d be interested in hearing from others about their experiences with online marketing venues and results – email me at hk@sparkmaninternet.com.

~Holly Sparkman

This is a bibliography of writing books I recommend in my seminars. You may order most of these books by clicking the links below.

Bonime, Andrew, and Pohlmann, Ken C. Writing for New Media,

     New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998.

Brooks, Brian, George Kennedy, Daryl Moen and Don Ranly. News

     Reporting and Writing, 8th ed. New York:

     Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2005.

Brooks, Brian, George Kennedy, Daryl Moen and Don Ranly.

      Telling The Story: The Convergence of Print, Television

      and Online Media. 2^nd ed. Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2004.

Brooks, Brian and James Pinson. Working With Words, 6^th ed.  New       

      York.  Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2006.

Caples, John, How to Make Your Advertising Make Money. Englewood   Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1983.

Flesch, Rudolf. The Art of Readable Writing. New York: Harper &    Row, 1977.

Kennedy, George, Daryl Moen and Don Ranly. Beyond the Inverted

      Pyramid. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992.

Kilpatrick, James. The Writer’s Art. Kansas City: Andrews,

      McMell & Parker, 1984.

Ogilvy, David. Olgilvy on Advertising. Toronto: John Wiley & Sons, Canada Limited, 1985.

Osborn, Patricia. How Grammar Works: A Self-Teaching Guide. New    York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1989.

Ranly, Don. Publication Editing. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt

      Publishing, 1999.

Strunk, William and White, E.B. Elements of Style. 3rd ed. New

      York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1999.

The Associated Press Stylebook And Briefing on Media Law.   

      Perseus Publishing, 2004. 

Zinsser, William.  On Writing Well.  2^nd ed,, New York: Harper &

      Row, 1980.

Film and now electronic images have been influencing world events for almost a century now. The prison photographs coming out of Iraq this spring are images that not only are reshaping world opinion, but are also unique in both form and function. All of these pictures were made, as far as I know, by amateur photographers — people actually involved in the events themselves. Some say that as many as 1,000 such photos were made — all of them with digital cameras. In the past, most opinion changing images were made by professional photojournalists and videographers functioning as news reporters. These amateur photographers used digital cameras and computers — which allowed them to make, store, copy, and even transmit and ultimately publish their images via the Internet with instant ease, and at no cost. And so digital technology itself — this time in the hands of rank amateurs — has come to play a central role in shaping world opinion.

(Digital technology apparently also played a major role in still another picture-scandal coming out of Iraq this spring. Pictures published in the UK involving the British military were apparently electronic fabrications, undermining the validity of news reporting still again in this era of journalistic fraud.)

Another unique aspect of these crudely made digital snapshots made by American soldiers in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib Prison is that those who made them were actually recording their own criminality in progress. Some images not only document their actions, but even go on to show us how these soldiers felt about what they were doing, as they went about doing it.

Still another important fact has emerged — many of these photos apparently were made as part of the actual punishment and pressure these soldiers are applying to their prisoners. They were making these pictures not just to record the event as documentation or personal souvenirs, but to further humiliate the Iraqi prisoners in their care, in order to “break” them.

Ultimately, these electronic images were not only published in newspapers and magazines everywhere, but also shown by television networks all over the world, and with varying contexts. In the most recent, and horrific, twist, the kidnapped American, Nicholas Berg, was murdered on videotape. According to his executioners, the killing was in reprisal for the American photographs coming out of Abu Ghraib prison.

Nobody can say where all of this will take us. The images themselves are only evidence — the substance rests in the brutality itself and its political effect on history. But when that history is written, electronic imaging will loom large as the visual story teller.

Phil Douglis, The Douglis Visual Workshops

Editor’s note:  For another reading of these photos, see the May 23, 2004 New York Times article Regarding the Torture of Others(must be registered) by Susan Sontag — whose essays and books on the role of photography in society have given us much food for thought over the last 30 years.

The familiar profile of Half Dome is over eight miles from this viewpoint, which is just beyond a tunnel cutting through the middle of a granite cliff.

From Phil Douglis’ Wisdom Lesson: Landscape Photography

While visiting Chengdu’s Panda Research Center, we came upon a class of local students training for jobs in the hospitality and tourism industries. They were at the Center, no doubt, because of its importance to tourism in the area. The group was made up primarily of young women — the fellow in this picture has a tough act to follow. Copyright 2004 Phil Douglis Lisbon, Portugal, 2004 Lisbon’s famous Elevador da Gloria is bright yellow funicular street car that rattles up the steep hill to the Bairro Alto neighborhood. Needless to say it was out of service the day I wanted to take it. So I photographed Lisboans taking the long steep walk on foot. (The graffiti on the wall behind her is probably somebody’s signature.)

Shanghai sits on the sea at the mouth of the Yangtze. Its land space is limited, and its eight million people make the population density of Shanghai one of the highest in the world. Its skyscrapers reach towards the heavens, as does this monument in the People’s Park. Copyright 2004 Phil DouglisDiscu

Yellow, White and Red The colors of fall and winter greet each other near Bridgeport. From Phil Douglis’ Wisdom Lesson: Landscape Photography Discu

As a leader, you must understand that your stakeholders are watching you, most every minute, most every day.

And they’re learning.

They’re learning if you care about them.

They’re learning if you believe in them.

They’re learning if you believe in yourself.

They’re learning if you believe what you’re saying.

They’re watching to see if you walk the talk or just crawl a little.

They’re waiting for you to slip up and reveal the man behind the curtain, or the phantom behind the mask.

Because they’ve been taught not to trust leaders lately.

Enron, WorldCom, Steroids and Corked Bats, American Idol, Sarbanes-Oxley, all the fine print, the word “virtually.”

All lies and manipulation, clouding their heads and wounding their hearts.

So they’re desperate for truth. Which is why they’re watching and listening.

Everything you say and do and write communicates. Everything you don’t say and don’t do and don’t write communicates.

So, yes, they’re watching you.

And, yes, it’s an awesome responsbility.

But, if you want to be a leader, you know all about responsibility.

They’re watching you… and learning.

Be aware of that.

And then forget it and just be yourself. Someone who cares. Someone with courage. Someone who gets it.

They’re watching… and I’m guessing they like what they see.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Forget about what mom said about keeping your hands in your lap while talking.

Gesturing while speaking appears to free up the brain to perform other tasks, such as remembering a list, scientists said on Thursday.

In experiments with nearly 100 adults and children, psychologists at the University of Chicago found that gesturing while explaining a math problem improved the recall of a previously memorized list of numbers or letters.

To draw the conclusion, memory test results were compared when subjects were permitted to gesture and when they were told to keep their hands still.

The value of gesturing to convey meaning to the listener has been shown in previous research, but it also may help the conveyor of the information, researchers Susan Goldin-Meadow, Howard Nusbaum, Spencer Kelly and Susan Wagner wrote in a report published in the journal Psychological Science.

They said that even blind people gesture with their hands when talking to blind listeners, suggesting another purpose to all the hand-waving.

“Producing gestures can actually lighten a speaker’s burden,” they wrote. The report suggested that by tapping into a different part of the brain dealing with visual and spatial subject matter, gesturing may make demands on other memory stores and allow the speaker to remember more.

“Whatever the mechanism, our findings suggest that gesturing can help to free up cognitive resources that can then be used elsewhere. Traditional injunctions against gesturing while speaking may, in the end, be ill-advised,” they wrote.

NOTE: complete details of this same story can found here

By John Gerstner – CEO, Communitelligence, ABC Copyright 2000

It occurs to me that my office at Deere & Company is a communications world divided. The front half is where I process and warehouse the daily deluge of mail.  It is mostly of the junk category … pseudo-letters trying to sell me something, conference brochures, newsletters about newsletters, computer catalogs, magazines, memos, and once in a great while, a quaint personal letter.  This is the dead-tree side of my office.

The other half is my Way-Cool New Media side.  It houses a ram-charged, gigabusting desktop computer so loaded down with multimedia, graphic, Web authoring and miscellaneous software that it processes about as fast as a donkey running up the Grand Canyon — or so it seems as I sit, fingers poised over keys,  impatiently waiting milliseconds for Web pages to load.  The computer is flanked by a big, honking monitor, 600 dpi color printer, flat-bed scanner, Syquest disk drive, and a TV-VCR … all connected by a fearsome hairball of wires that snake along the floor like a python ready to spring.  This is the electronic side of my office.

And so every day at work, I am tugged by the yin and yang of today’s communications world.  Do I attend to the never-ending stream of paper that is heaped on my desk, much of it lavishly printed and designed … or do I plug into the torrent of raw bits streaming onto my screen in the form of e-mail messages that beep their arrival, and web pages that flicker and flash … all just a mouse-click away. Atoms or bits? That is the question.

Well … I’m here to admit that for the past three years, the electronic side of my office has me in its Web.  I estimate I am now spending about 80 percent of my time working with the New Media. This is quite an admission, considering when I started my communications career the ultimate high-tech communication tool was an electric typewriter, and the ultimate editing tools were a pair of scissors and cellophane tape. 

It’s not that I have totally forsaken my first love, print, for this younger, sexier communications mistress.  Let’s just say I’ve been enamored and intrigued ever since I first saw her enter the communications party three years ago.  What makes this fling difficult is that I still have a “real” job.  As Manager of Internal Communications for Deere & Company I continue to plan strategy and create content for JD Journal  magazine and “JD In Focus”  video, plus consult with Deere management and unit communicators worldwide.

I must admit I am still a print person at heart.  In my mind, you really can’t compare a finely printed magazine to a Web site, no matter how cool it is. Words printed in publications take on value, if for no other reason than they are expensive to produce and distribute.  A magazine is real.  You can start a fire with a magazine. 

A Web site, on the other hand, only exists on some distant server as an illusive metaphor of print.  Unless I have all the computer gadgetry to plug in, I can’t even see the brilliance.  No one really likes to read text on a screen, and when it comes to reading in bed or bathroom, print wins hands down.  Yet, we’re all being cyber-hyped and dot-commed to death by — guess who — the print and television media.  Go figure.

I suspect I am not the only print communicator straddling two worlds today.  We are all victims of the Internet neutron bomb that dropped on Planet Earth three years ago and blew communication and commerce to bits … literally.  Print is now obsolete, but it won’t go away. It just has to reinvent itself, as radio had to do when television came along.  It serves no good purpose for any of us to clutch our newsletters and magapapers and cast dispersion on this new darling medium of the communication world.  Better to start down the so-called Superhighway than dawdle and wind up as road-kill.

No matter how cold you may feel to this cool new medium, it is indisputable that print suddenly has some serious competition.  Nothing printed will never be instantaneous and global. Nor can its audience give immediate feedback.  Nor can you get a real-time detailed log of who’s hitting what pages, where they came from and how long they stayed.

Print publishers must simply digest the Web and re-focus on what print does best … such placing mirrors and filters in front of the world so that readers can see it with context and perspective.

It is also indisputable that the role of the communicator (and a whole lot of other professions) have been turned upside down.  We communicators no longer have the luxury of simply crafting messages that mold opinion and elicit action.  Now we must also help invent the medium the messages are being delivered on.  It is as if the architect had to draw the blueprint and then put in the plumbing.  The problem is, with all this fuss over the network, browsers, bandwidth and protocols, who’s minding the message?  Plus, now everybody’s a communicator.  Oh, what a tangled web we have woven.

The good news is that the communicator’s role and potential contribution to an organization is greatly expanded.  By helping invent the medium, the communicator can help sort out the good, bad and ugly from a virtual universe of New Media stuff.  Just because we now have the tool to push 50 info-channels to employee desktops does not mean that this makes any business sense.  As new and dazzling communication possibilities come along …  from real time chats to 3-D animation to virtual reality, the communicator can help digest and feed back valuable insight to the developer, who can then come up with even better technology.  And on and on.

            
The bad news is that old media never dies, and since most corporate Web sites and intranets are still garage operations manned by people with “real” jobs, we all must work a lot harder these days, and probably for not much more pay.

Which undoubtedly explains why a lot of good communicators have been sitting under the shade tree next to the Information Superhighway waiting for the dub-dub-dub-dot-com-hype to  subside.  They see the Internet as a lot more work, and since most of their audience isn’t wired anyway, why not wait it out?

The only problem with this strategy is that if we communicators don’t jump in and help invent the medium as well as the messages, who will?  One of the reasons why so many Web sites are so bloated, confusing and shallow with no center is that communicators were not sitting in front of the screen along with the teckkies.

With or without us, an army of technologists and entrepreneurs are piecing together an amazing new ether-world that promises to transform the way we live, work, shop, gamble, invest, learn, entertain ourselves and even have sex — all with amazing efficiency.  This conjures up the scary vision of Americans spending their days lazing in their homes, with the only traffic outside those brown trucks delivering the merchandise they have ordered over the Net.

Of course this is only a virtual pipe dream at this point.  Those of us actually trying to do this Internet stuff every day are much like the poor gold miner slogging through the muck to find that little info-nugget.  The Superhighway Strike is an illusive fantasy, always over the next cyber-horizon.  And deep down we know the real gold will go to guys like Bill Gates anyway. 

Those of us in Camp Intranet are mired down with much more mundane concerns, like justifying employee Web access to cynical managers, writing and enforcing intranet policies and publishing standards, and building brick-by-brick a truly information-rich and user-friendly internal Web … intranet dial-tone.  This is an immensely large, complex and time-consuming task.  We are only beginning to bite into this elephant we have to swallow.              After three years of toiling on my own little intranet outpost, I have reached these conclusions, all debatable, of course:                        

No one person, department or profession does the Internet. Internet projects are by definition multi-departmental, multi-disciplinary team efforts. Three skills are crucial — communication, technical and design — but resources must also be tapped from Marketing, HR, Legal, Finance, Advertising and the Library, to name a few.  There’s never been a better time to take someone new to coffee or lunch.

It’s very easy to get hooked on the technology.  Timothy Leary saw computers as the New Drug, and I think he was on to something. Since cyberspace in some respects is like visiting another planet,  it’s not surprising that some people escape and overdose on computer games and chat rooms.   There’s also real allure to working on the front edge of new technology. Figuring out how to deploy new Net tools such as BackWeb and Net Meeting is a lot more fun than writing another Chairman’s Report to the Stockholders.  The trick is to keep one eye on the technology while keeping your seat in the chair, crafting good content and intuitive navigation to it.  Internet hype is everywhere.  Discount everything by at least 50 percent.

The Internet blurs everything. Who’s home page is it when it contains content from a dozen divisions of the company?  Who’s responsible for setting and enforcing Internet policy in an organization?  The HR department?  Computer Security?  Corporate Communications?  Management?  What’s the professional communicator’s role when everyone’s a communicator?  How about facilitator, mediator, translator, or simply project manager?  Sometimes the role most needed is Turf Referee.

Sometimes it’s all a bit much.  I’m undoubtedly biased but I consider the Internet to be the mother of all corporate projects, the largest team-project ever.  But every Internet project has amazing scope and complexity, wearing detail. huge ramifications and therefore, sticky politics. The task is even more difficult because everything is new and everything is rush (1 Web year = 2.5 months).  Unfortunately, playing Master-of-the-World Wide Web day in and day out takes its toll.  Some days even the word Internet makes you tired.

Technology is not the hardest part.  Human beings are.  Because Internet technology poses a huge reengineering potential on the workplace, there’s a tremendous inertia to overcome before every new streamlining advance is put in place.  There are at least as many meetings needed to figure out the human paradigm shifts as are needed to figure out how the hardware and software installs.  The trick is to skate to where the puck is headed — and not talk every new technology to death.

Learn the language.  The Internet has its own vocabulary, and there are certain acronyms, protocols, terms and slang that you should be able to hear without visibly having your eyes glaze over.  For instance … 128-bit encryption, client/server architecture, data mining, legacy systems, whiteboard, push technology, dynamic pages, frames, server side includes, ISDN, jpeg, SAP, and SQL Servers. Java and cookies, anyone?

Don’t judge the Internet by what you see today.  As incredible an invention as the networked computer is, the so-called Superhighway is really a rutted dirt road with lots of go-slow zones and detours to nowhere.  We are about where television was in the 1950s … at the test-pattern stage … waiting for some good programs to come on.  At this point, there’s still a lot of hoopla about very little great content.  But as the computer, telephone and TV converge, couch potatoes undoubtedly will never be the same.         

The Net has already impacted traditional media in mighty ways.  Wired Magazine looks like the Web it reports on.  Some Web sites are spin-offs of television programs, and some television programs are spin-offs of Web sites.  On the print side, the firehose of information gushing from the Net means no one has the luxury of writing long anymore, except novelists.  New-Media sensitive newspapers, newsletters and magazines are now compressing articles with about the same ratio as the latest Internet software compresses audio and video files.  (Thus I wonder how many people will read to the end of this 2,000-word article.)  Does this mean the end of serious thought?

Strive to be simply brilliant.  The Internet has spawned terrible complexity.  Every next step requires questioning old ways, defining new requirements, finding owners, getting the budget, settling on a timetable, and doing a pilot. “Do you want the hack, or do you want us to do it right?”  This was the question posed by one of our resident Gurus recently.  “The hack is about $10,000; doing it right will cost $150,000,” he added, making it a no-brainer.  When it comes to Web work, favor action over discussion.  Execute simple first steps.  Too much talk guarantees inaction. It’s not like print, where mistakes live forever. You can change the Web site tomorrow.  Expect order to eventually come out of chaos.  Do the hack.

Content is still king.  With the glut of confusing information coursing through the Net daily, thoughtful, well-crafted and designed communication has never more needed.  Which is why print — and we trust, communicators — won’t go away.

John Gerstner, ABC, is Manager of Internal Communications for Deere & Company, Moline, Illinois.  In 1996, Gerstner was named to lead the launch of Deere’s Web site (www.deere.com) and help guide Deere’s intranet, JD Online, which links 15,000 employees representing eight divisions in 10 countries.   He continues to be responsible for JD Journal, the corporate internal magazine of Deere & Company,  John Deere In Focus, an employee video program.  His department just rolled out a new design for  JD Online that promises to make it a key internal communications & HR tool for the company.

Gerstner has been awarded 13 IABC Gold Quills since 1977.  He is a current Director-at-Large of IABC’s Board, and a Trustee of  IABC’s Research Foundation.  He is a frequent speaker and workshop leader on Internet, intranet, and organizational communication.  His series of interviews on “The Civilization of Cyberspace” appeared in Communication World magazine. (Interviews with John Perry Barlow, Nicholas Negroponte, and Cliff Stoll).  In his spare time, Gerstner creates and exhibits Photo-Paintings, which can be viewed at Performing Arts Gallery in Davenport, Iowa, and on the Web at: http://www.netins.net/showcase/fotolink/intro/welcome.html.

Michael J. Petrillose, Ph.D.  Assistant Professor, Hospitality Management, SUNY Delhi

Diane Gayeski – Ithaca College Ph.D., CEO, Gayeski Analytics and Professor, Organizational Communication, Learning & Design, Ithaca College

Abstract

Workplace violence is a worldwide epidemic and is a major financial and performance risk in any organization, especially restaurants and hotels.  Synthesizing research on workplace violence and organizational performance engineering, this paper rejects the assumption that aggressive behavior is best prevented by screening, surveillance, and training.  Rather, it asserts that many typical management and communication practices actually create an environment that breeds poor service, property destruction, anger, and even violence.  A pilot tool for assessing an organization’s management communication infrastructure is presented, accompanied by recommendations for initiatives to advance this stream of research and practice in the hospitality industry.

From desk rage to homicide: threats to the hospitality industry

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the workplace is the most dangerous place to be in America.  Violence that leads to serious injury or death is merely the most visible tip of the iceberg of aggressive behaviors.  Workplace stress can cause what has been coined “desk rage”, a syndrome that includes pushing, teasing, or yelling at co-workers or customers (Integra Realty Resources, 2001), damaging property or equipment, or purposely “hiding out” and not working up to standards (Girion, 2000).   Belligerent behavior – from simple verbal abuse to actual homicide – represents a major financial and performance risk for any organization, especially for restaurants and hotels.  These environments typically are characterized by many situations in which it may be difficult to control negative behaviors:

q       Large staffs with a high turn-over rate and spotty performance in prior jobs and education

q       Lack of ability to carefully monitor employee behavior (e.g. high employee to supervisor ratios, much work done independently such as housekeeping, night shifts done with minimal supervision, etc.)

q       Complex work environments that create opportunities for mischief (e.g. kitchens where food can be contaminated, use of knives, etc.)

q       Workplaces open to the public with constant mobility of customers (e.g. hotel public spaces)

q       Hours of operation and environment that tempts crime perpetrators (e.g. late-night restaurants with minimal staff to protect people, property, and cash).

The hospitality industry has typically taken a person-oriented approach to preventing violence and aggressive behavior.  The underlying assumption is that the tendency for negative behavior is situated in individuals: in other words, there are people who are prone to violence or who simply don’t know how to control their anger and be courteous. Thus, the common management interventions to preempt negative behavior have been:

q     screening of prospective employees

q     surveillance of the workplace through cameras, security guards, etc.

q     training employees in customer service and  harassment prevention

Although these assumptions and interventions are partially appropriate and effective, research indicates that rude and even injurious behavior is often prompted by factors in the organization itself – specifically policies, culture, and management communication (O’Leary-Kelley, Griffin, & Glew, 1996). The management system itself  (rather than employees’ backgrounds, character, or training) may well be the most powerful factor associated with aggressive behavior.  Because the hospitality industry is so susceptible to violence (Desk rage is on the rise, 2001) and its success is so intimately tied to safety and courteous customer service, (Petrillose, Shanklin & Downey, 1998; Petrillose. & Brewer, 2000), it is critical to:

q       Conduct research about how organizations unwittingly create environments that breed aggressive behavior

q     Develop practical assessment methods to screen organizations for management factors that are associated with aggressive and violent behaviors

q     Create tools and techniques that hospitality executives can use to preempt aggressive behavior and violence through management interventions that go beyond the common practices of employee screening and surveillance

q     Teach and model the management communication techniques that are required for future hospitality supervisors to sustain a courteous and safe environment.

This paper presents a foundation for these initiatives.

Review of workplace violence research

Persons in service–related fields are more likely to be victims of workplace violence, according to the Insurance Information Institute. Violence is most likely to occur in public and government facilities (17.2%) followed by restaurants and bars (14.6%) and hotel and motels (1.4%) (Desk rage is on the rise, 2001).  One in four workers are attacked, threatened, or harassed each year, with instances of verbal violence being about three times that of physical violence.  The cost of this is estimated to be as high as $36 billion in the United States alone, reflecting lost productivity (500,000 employees missing 1,750,000 days of work per year), diminished company image and customer retention, more than $13 billion in medical costs, and increased security and insurance payments.  When there are aggressors in the workplace, employees and customers are repelled, causing tardiness, absenteeism, turnover, and lost sales (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2003; Johnson & Indvik, 2001; Reisenauer, 2002).  In telephone surveys, employees across various industries admit that stress and anger at their employers is causing them to pick fights with and yell at co-workers or customers, cry on the job, purposely damage equipment or property, and intentionally work slowly or look busy while doing nothing (Girion, 2000).  The personal and societal cost of poor work environments is also significant: many unhealthy patterns such as lack of sleep, abuse of alcohol and drugs, and overeating are common reactions to stress, and family and community relationships suffer.

What factors are associated with workplace aggression?  Although most violent crimes are perpetrated by individuals who have some history of psychological and /or social problems, much belligerence is caused by factors in the work environment.  Thus, it is important to avoid a “blame the victim” approach when instituting measures to reduce bad behavior.  Based on a synthesis of the research on workplace violence, the following factors have been found to be indicators of the kind of problematic workplace environment that is associated with aggressive behavior:

q     Highly authoritarian workplace

q     Employees overloaded by work and stress

q     Long hours and inadequate breaks

q     Supervision is changeable and unpredictable

q     Employees get mixed messages

q     Management methods are invasive of privacy

q     Extreme secrecy; management not open about goals, strategies, or current business data

q     Employees are devalued; their unique contributions not solicited or recognized

q     Short-term benefits are pursued at expense of long-term effectiveness

q     Tolerance of moderate levels of aggressive conduct or rude behavior of peers or customers

q     Recent downsizing, poor business performance, or other major changes in jobs

q     Uncomfortable workplace (poor temperature, seating, etc.)

q     Long, stressful commute

q     Use of new technologies that cause information overload, require continual learning, and cause stress when they are unreliable (e.g. e-mail, new POS systems)

A communication and performance engineering approach

As indicated above, an emerging body of research finds that much violence and uncivil behavior in the workplace is caused by managerial and environmental factors rather than individual traits.  O’Leary-Kelley and Griffin (1996) defined the term Organization-Motivated Aggression (OMA) which is based on social learning theory.  Their exploratory study found that a major factor associated with workplace violence and aggression is modeling of peers’ or supervisors’ behavior, despite training or executive assertions that rudeness, harassment and violence are not tolerated.  In other words, many supervisors operate according to the old saying, “do what I say, not what I do”.  This study and others found that rude, patronizing, and punishing behavior by supervisors is common, especially in service industries, and thus a focus on managerial communication is essential because employees model the behavior they experience.  Put simply, employees treat others as they are treated.  Research specifically in hotel management has reinforced this assertion, finding that service behaviors and an orientation towards quality must emanate from top management actions (Withiam, 1996).

Another approach to reducing workplace aggression is provided by the field of human performance technology, a professional model for organizational improvement that focuses on assessing root causes of performance gaps and developing interventions that address both the workplace environment and the worker’s repertory of behavior (Van Tiem, Moseley & Dessinger, 2000).  Thomas Gilbert (1978), one of the founders of this approach, developed the Behavior Engineering Model as a way to categorize the management approaches and personal factors that impact performance (see Figure 1). 

Figure 1  Behavior Engineering Model based on Gilbert (1978).

Rummler (1999) asserts that the most influential factors in workplace performance are the organizational and job systems: policies, procedures, communication climate, information, and management incentives: “If you pit a good performer against a bad system, the system will win every time.” (p. 55). Even when organizations do focus on their management systems, decision-makers often inadvertently institute performance interventions that generate exactly what they wish to avoid.  For example, rigid managerial control and surveillance develops a suspicious culture in which employees do not feel valued and trusted. This is precisely the climate that research shows is associated with destructive and violent behavior.

Sending employees to training on customer relations or harassment prevention can also lead to unexpected results. Employees may feel punished or insulted by being “sent” to training rather than having a say in this decision themselves. For example, one major study in the training industry reported that workers have a significant voice in the decision about whether they will receive training less than 10 percent of the time. More than seven times out of 10, that decision is made by a supervisor, manager, or higher executive (Schaaf, 1998).  Patronizing content or approaches or exercises that bring up sensitive cultural or personal issues can be direct antecedents to violence.  A workplace shooting in August 2003 occurred directly after the perpetrator attended a required ethics training course during which he apparently became agitated (Seven Dead in Chicago Workplace Shooting, 2003).  Other studies find that sometimes front line employees actually perform more poorly after training: they are so overwhelmed with information that they return to the job and freeze.  This information overload causes stress, which is associated with absenteeism, turnover, and hostile behavior – exactly what the training is trying to prevent. 

Communication technologies such as voicemail, e-mail, the Internet and corporate intranets, cell phones, and instant messaging are also stressors.  In a consulting engagement with a major restaurant chain, it was found that store managers were typically rising at 5 AM and beginning to listen to their voicemails as they dressed because they could expect to receive several hours worth of voicemails from various corporate sources throughout a typical day (Gayeski, 1999). Similar research has found that workers are typically interrupted by email or phone messages every few minutes.  This overload of data, as well as the popular and unquestioned assumption that “more communication is better” have made these problems even worse.  Communication and training activities take time away from one’s “real” work, further adding to stress because employees then have to somehow catch up on the work that accumulated while they were in meetings or courses.  Too often, corporate messages come from different sources and are not coordinated; in fact, they may be contradictory and seemingly arbitrary. This dis-integration of the communication system is causing stress, an erosion of credibility, an attitude of cynicism, and poor performance focus (Gayeski, 1998).

Clearly, new approaches for not only interpersonal communication but also for selecting and managing formal communication and training are needed. Often the most powerful messages are embedded in the communication and training policies themselves rather than in the content of instruction or meetings. For example, employees may be required to attend “empowerment training” and to wear silly empowerment buttons – clearly sending the message that they are not, in fact, empowered. However, uncovering these unintentionally destructive patterns is not as easy as it may appear.

Prototype screening tool

To bridge the gap between theory and practice, the hospitality management field needs tools to screen operations for the typical management and business environment factors that have been shown to be antecedents to organizational-motivated aggression. Building on established models for organizational communication audits (Gayeski, 2000), and the review of literature on workplace aggression, a survey has been developed and is being piloted at selected hospitality operations. Each item will be rated by an individual employee on a 1-5 Likert scale, from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The statements noted here with asterisks indicate problematic factors; the rest of the statements represent conditions or policies that are considered “best practice” in avoiding aggressive behavior. (see Table 2).

Table 2  Hospitality communication analytics survey

Copyright Gayeski Analytics 2004 all rights reserved

Judy Gombita spotted this list of Great Literary Taunts:

• “A modest little person, with much to be modest about.” — Winston Churchill (about Clement Atlee)
• “I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.” — Irvin S. Cobb
• “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” — William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
• “He had delusions of adequacy.” — Walter Kerr
• “They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.” — Thomas Brackett Reed
• “I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” — Mark Twain

One of the most debated questions in all of journalism is how to handle direct quotations. Journalists “claim” (what a nasty way to attribute something) that they put inside quotations marks only what a person says. That’s what I urge in a chapter on quotations and attribution in the Missouri Group’s “News Reporting and Writing” (Bedford/St. Martin’s Press). But I could prove on any given day in any given newspaper that that rule is broken as much as it is followed.

Nevertheless, it’s a whole different story in corporate communications and news releases. I have been amused in seminars to corporate communicators how shocked they are when I tell them to change direct quotations however so slightly. For example, people use “very” very often in their everyday speech. I’d knock it out in direct quotations. Shocking. These same people often have little trouble making up whole quotations. Often the direct quotes are long, wooden and pretentious. I often ask, “Does he really talk like that?” Sometimes the answer is , “Yes, you betcha.” If he does, should you let him in print?

Do you have a policy on direct quotations? What is it? Join the discussion.

Don Ranly

Of the three words in your book’s title, “Intelligent Wireless Web” the word “intelligent” really strikes me as adding a new and much deeper meaning to the wireless Web discussion. I was particularly intrigued by your exploration of the concept of Web intelligence, how the Web learns, where Web intelligence lies, and the push to formulate a Web IQ. Does your interest in this subject stem more from the challenges posed by the intelligence questions or the wireless ones?

Alesso: Intelligence is central to our thesis for the ‘Next Generation Web,’ which Dr. Smith and I foreshadow in our new book, “The Intelligent Wireless Web.” Our expectation is that intelligent programming will offer increasingly valuable Web transactions, while wireless connectivity will ‘stretch’ our computer access to keep us connected in a nearly continuous fashion. The result could be improving our efficiency and productivity as this process becomes more uniformly adopted.

Let me explain a little about what we mean by intelligent programming. Intelligence usually refers to the ability to reason, solve problems and learn new things. And notwithstanding the difficulty of defining intelligence, even among experts, it is worth recognizing that terms such as “artificial intelligence”, “intelligent agents”, “smart machines” refer to the performance of functions that mimic those associated with human intelligence. So, as we begin to add more intelligent agents, smart applications and Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs to Web sites, we will have to explore some uncharted territory and face some probing and provocative questions, such as:

• How smart are Web applications today?
• What is Web intelligence?
• How does the Web learn?
• Where does Web intelligence reside?

In our book, we discuss how to introduce intelligence to enlighten the optical pathways that inhabit the Web. But for now, let consider that the Web consists primarily as a huge number of data nodes (containing texts, pictures, movies, sounds). The data nodes are connected through hyperlinks to form `hyper-networks’ that collectively can represent complex ideas and concepts above the level of the individual data. However, the Web does not currently perform many sophisticated tasks with this data. The Web merely stores and retrieves information even after considering some of the “intelligent applications” in use today (including intelligent agents, Portals, and Web Services).

So far, the Web does not have some of the vital ingredients it needs, such as, a global database scheme, or a global error-correcting feedback mechanism, or a logic layer protocol, or a method of adopting Learning Algorithms systematically throughout its architecture or universally accepted knowledge bases with inference engines. As a result, we may say that the Web continues to grow and evolve, but it does not adapt. And adapting is an essential ingredient of learning. So the jury is still out on defining the Web as intelligent, but we can still consider ways to change the Web to give it the capabilities to adapt and therefore, sometime in the future, perhaps to learn.

Of the five emerging technology areas you identify as necessary to fulfill the vision of an intelligent wireless web, which do you believe will be the hardest to solve, and which do you expect to be the easiest?

Alesso: The development of the next generation of technologies will happen concurrently, for the most part, as each advance encourages progress in associated fields. I suspect, however, the intelligent programming will take the longest to develop simple because it will never be completed. The search for knowledge is often referred to as an insatiable appetite and I suspect this will be shown to be true for the Web. As we are able to produce Learning Algorithms that prove effective, we will experience positive feedback that encourages even more experimentation and progress. Just as there are always more questions than answers there is always more to learn.

Alternatively, there are some technologies that show a clear path to an important end-point for the Wireless Web. Wireless LAN and the WPAN for your Personal Space are becoming commonplace within our Internet infrastructure already. They bridge gaps for last mile delivery, where digging and laying of optical cable within inner cities is expensively prohibited. In addition, despite some stumbling about, broadband wireless handheld devices will make tremendous penetration within the next two years

On a 1-10 scale (with 10 being the furthest evolution we can now imagine, how far along are we on the journey to the intelligent wireless web? Corollary question: How would you describe the “science-fiction like end point”?

Alesso: There are a few distinct time markers by which you can measure our progress toward building the Intelligent Wireless Web. The first will be the integration of wired and wireless networks within just the next two years. As handheld devices become wide spread, demand for improved access and performance will grows. There should be distinct behavior changes in worker transactions and customer spending habits to illustrate this access. News reports and company stock prices should reflect this important trend.

Then, in 2005, the prototype of MIT’s Project Oxygen should be complete and reporting results. Without a doubt, the scientific community should be buzzing about whether it demonstrates success or failure. If it shows successful progress in many of the technologies necessary for the Intelligent Wireless Web, then I expect it will have a ‘cyclone effect’ of drawing technology research and development into its sphere of influence, as research laboratories rush to get on board the ‘discovery express.’

Progress on user interfaces, such as, touch, writing and speech recognition is continuing and will expand. However, several reports have found that the error rate of these technologies make them unattractive to consumers. We will have to wait until trustworthy applications are available before we will see wholesale replacement of small handheld device’s keyboards. Never the less, the time scale for this progress should be closer to 5 years than 10 years.

Again the final laggard will prove to be intelligent programming. As we have already discussed, it will never be completely finished.

So how far are we on this path? Actually, we have already seen nearly every technological necessity already demonstrated in the laboratory. It is more a matter of power, efficiency and cost to produce an equivalent outcome for the masses. So let’s say, in answer to your original question, that we are at 5 on the evolutionary ladder and that we will be at an 8 within another five years. We should expect the results to be sporadic, however. That is, the technology will not be uniformly distributed around the globe. Pockets, such as, Universities and large enterprises will most likely have a disproportional amount of the technological progress, while rural less populated areas will have to wait.

But the science fiction end-point of the Intelligent Wireless Web is not just possible, it is very highly likely outcome within the next decade.
You say how fast we communicate is becoming as important as what we have to say. Do you think our communication will become more intelligent the faster we communicate with each other?

Alesso: Fast-talking has never been seriously confused with intelligent conversation. Never the less, you should not doubt that a speedy answer is sometime your only chance for any answer.

There is a humorous commercial being run on television these days that perfectly illustrates this point. The commercial shows a young couple enjoying a romantic dinner at a fancy restaurant when the lady says, ”I love you, John.” The young man sits stone-faced, as several uncomfortable seconds go by. The young lady flushes and leaves. Then, the young man leans forward and says, “I love you too.” Alas, it is too late. She is gone.

For businessmen and engineers alike, rapidly solving a critical problem may be their only opportunity to solve that particular problem. Once missed, you may be faced with a brand new situation requiring greater effort to resolve.

The point is, that a timely answer is sometimes the only chance you get. You had better be well connected, well informed and ready to deliver.
What are the unique challenges of writing for the technology market?

Alesso: Proprietary competition is the most difficult and unique challenge because competing vendors are deliberately secretive to protect their product’s advantages. In addition competitors will put out a product with a great deal of hype, sometimes as vaporware. As a result, a technology writer must gain first hand knowledge of products to gage actual performance and capability. In addition, when exploring a complex integration of various converging technologies the problem becomes complicated by system compatibilities and interactions.

Eventually as standards develop these problems disappear, but it is just in this period of chaos when the technology writer is most needed. He can offer others a change to side-step all the proprietary pitfalls between rival systems.

In my books, I try to particularly draw comparisons between rival products and identify their advantages and disadvantages. In addition, I look at existing standards and explore possibilities of future convergence.
You were an engineer before you began your writing career, what made you decide to start writing?

Alesso: I was an engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for over twenty years. Half of that time, I was a Group Leader over computational physicists and engineers. I led a variety of advanced research programs; including efforts involving developing state-of-the-art parallel processing physics computations.

Throughout my time as an engineer, I have written computer code in over a dozen different languages for many different operating systems, designed experiments, and written papers, journal articles and reports.

So, actually I was doing various forms of writing throughout my career. Only now I have found a great deal of satisfaction in writing books. I guess it is because I have always been a “Big Picture” thinker and a book gives me both the latitude and length to explore a subject to a depth I can enjoy. 

John Gerstner – CEO, Communitelligence

Last year, a friend who works in corporate communication for a major local company advised me to keep my ears open to the topic of “offshoring” — the latest cost-reduction trend of sending service jobs to other countries. “This is going to be a big issue for communicators,” she warned.

I was aware that some companies already were exporting jobs, but sure enough, I began to hear more and more about it. More stories about “offshoring” appeared in business publications, more talking heads with creased brows lamented it, and I even saw more discussion in the public-relations industry press.

I have paid close attention to the topic, but two things keep bothering me. One is that the only thing new about “offshoring” is that it primarily affects white-collar and service-industry jobs. Exporting jobs as a cost-cutting measure is nothing new. It has been going on for years in the manufacturing sector, but white-collar managers essentially told their blue-collar employees to suck it up and get used to the global economy. Now that those white-collar managers are seeing their jobs disappear, the practice has a new euphemistic name and urgency assigned to it.

One of these days — and I hope I live long enough to see it, but I doubt it — business managers everywhere will realize just how condescending they often appear to the people they manage. This is a communication issue because an inappropriate attitude and tone can create huge barriers to open communication between bosses and employees.

The other thing that keeps bothering me is that “offshoring” would be considered a big issue. This is not to downplay the significance of exporting jobs as a workplace issue, but it is only a communication problem when business leaders try to dance around it. Telling people that some of them might lose their jobs is not fun. It’s not easy. The discussion won’t make managers the object of employees’ affections. However, people deserve to know why jobs are being sent to other countries and they deserve the opportunity to express their anger, fear and disappointment.

I was talking recently with an employee of a local company who described a new manager in her department. She contrasted the former manager’s style of keeping everyone in the dark with the new manager’s style of frequent and open communication. The former manager’s approach led to mistrust and dissension. The new manager’s talk of the reasons for upcoming layoffs was not easy to hear, but employees appreciated the honesty and candor.

One of my favorite newsletters for communication executives, The Ragan Report, recently published comments from an unnamed computer programmer for a high-tech firm that was planning to export jobs. She wondered about the degree of employee backlash to “offshoring” and then described why she believes it is not the best solution to her company’s problems. She described the amount of time it will take her to train workers in other countries, to overcome time and language barriers, and to adjust to the cultural differences.

I found the programmer’s points to be interesting, but I couldn’t help wonder how much more useful her ideas would have been if she had the opportunity to express them to the leaders of her business.

Robert Holland

Our organization has been planning this summer. I want to be able to anticipate and prepare to build our business. To do that I need a forecast of where organizations are going rather than where they have been.

One of our crystal balls is an interview the Conference Board of Canada conducted with University of Michigan’s management guru, Dave Ulrich. He identified eight issues to plan for. Four have a special relevance to our work and we thought it would be useful for our readers to know where we will be skating as we go for the puck.

Leadership – Ulrich forecasts a redefinition of leadership to one that focuses on role rather than function. Individuals will be called upon to exercise leadership within their spheres of influence. Leadership will be exercised at many levels of an organization and the culture will encourage and demand leadership of all employees.

Engagement – Talent is increasingly more mobile with fully 58% of Canadian employees open to moving employment. Corporate strategies to engage employees are woefully inadequate and must be beefed up to succeed. Engaged employees are those who can find meaning in their working lives. Successful organizations are those that focus on instilling a high sense of organizational purpose in the minds of their employees.

Managers communicate – The major weakness in most organizations is the ability of line managers to effectively communicate. Employee motivation depends upon how well the line manager communicates face-to-face. Effective internal communication will be redefined in terms of the abilities of line managers to communicate and the degree of accountability the organization places on them to do so.

Measurement – The trend to accountability based upon returns on investment will continue. Measuring performance by the outcomes of work is replacing measures of work by outputs of activities. We will be required to measure success of our work by the contribution it makes to innovation, change and achievement of the organizations strategic goals.

As Ulrich points out that, for the first time in the history of management, it is the human mind that is the primary creator of value. Our priorities will be developing the quality of the workforce and its engagement in the business. These will be the critical success factors in corporate vitality and survival. – for us and our clients.

By Tudor Williams, ABC