Category: Business

Building A Better Post Office

The State of Corporate Video and Creative Services

From Mailman to Post Office Builder

Post Office

I recently participated in a LinkedIn discussion, and I wanted to open it up to the world (or anyone who wanted to read or contribute to it). It is partially edited so it reads better in a blog format. I thought what John Clarkson commented back was brilliant. What do you think? Any brave souls out there?

Kent's profile picture

What’s the “State of the Industry” for corporate video and creative services?

As the recession lingers on, I believe that most companies are continuing the trend of downsizing their corporate video and creative services departments. Those areas are always considered dispensable by corporations when the economy goes sour and the last to recover. What do you think? Are companies hiring? If so, what types of positions?

Jeremy Person's profile picture

Jeremy Person’s Response

Social media’s value is that it is created and communicated by the people for the people. If you look at newspapers, broadcast television, and FM/AM radio, it is now well understood they worked well if you wanted to hear one point of view. It was also great if you didn’t want to provide your viewpoint or ask your questions back to the communicator. Let’s face it; it was great because it was all we had.

Now, communicators all over the world have extremely powerful communication tools to have a conversation with practically anyone of their choosing for next to no cost. Companies are likely downsizing the creative services departments because they aren’t seeing a direct ROI. Why aren’t they seeing an ROI?

I’m not sure this works in all cases of course, but maybe where we get ourselves in trouble is I don’t personally think a creative services department should always be a 100% dedicated “support organization” to others.

The reason I say that is people will come to you with what they want to throw your way but if what they throw your way isn’t valued by those consuming the content, you won’t have long term value, or a long term career. Instead, I’d be interested in hearing if anyone has focused a portion of their team on finding a problem and using their creative organization to pitch solving a real world business problem so you not only solve problems given to you, but you also help identify and offer a solution to those problems you have helped identify or address from people “in the field”.

High profile projects are nice because they get you exposure to those who may promote you or sign your paycheck. However, if those giving you projects provide you a subject matter that content consumers don’t want or need, your services are wasted, and you are looked at as a department that can be eliminated when things get tight. By the way, shouldn’t businesses always make smart decisions regardless of whether times or tight or not?

Social media can also provide its own problems when communicators create or produce content that doesn’t solve or help a real world need. Social media is full of babies and animals doing cute or funny things, people tweeting about what they are having for dinner, and professionally produced content is full of dry and boring content (let’s face it these tend to be the stereotypes).

Whether it is professionally created or not, I think if your creative department solves a real business problem, makes it engaging, makes it usable, measurable, and informative, you have a winning combination of long term employment and success.

Has anyone stopped being a service organization that provides what the customer wants 100% of the time, and started being a partner with the business to solve real world business problems? If so, I’d love to hear more and any lessons learned.

John Clarkson's profile picture

John Clarkson’s Brilliant Response

Amen to that! Could we say:

What’s Expired

Being a “mailman” (the commodity provider, delivering other people’s messages for them without regard to value to the enterprise)

What’s Tired

Being a “letter-writer” (the artisan, trying to pretty-up up other people’s messages, then delivering them, in hopes they will have some value for the enterprise)

What’s Wired

“Building the new post office” (the entrepreneur, innovating apps, databases and information fields to solve problems, and demonstrating value to the enterprise)

Key Insights for Creative Departments

Solve Real Problems

Focus on delivering content that addresses actual business needs

Be a Partner

Move beyond merely executing others’ ideas to becoming a strategic advisor

Demonstrate Value

Make your work engaging, usable, measurable, and informative

Join the Conversation

Has your creative department evolved beyond the “mailman” role? What strategies have you used to become a true business partner?

Low Esteem & The Factory

“If you want to hire people to do a job, to be cogs in the system and to do what they’re told, you might want to focus on people who don’t think very highly of themselves.  People with low self-esteem might be more happy to be bossed around, timed, abused, misused and micromanaged, no?  And the converse is true as well. If you want to raise your game and build an organization filled with people who will change everything, the first thing to look for is someone who hasn’t been brainwashed into believing that they’re not capable of great work.  A harried teacher might find it easier to teach a class to obey first and think second, but is that sort of behavior valuable or scarce now?

Industries that need to subjugate women or demonstrate power over one class of person or another are always on the lookout for people they can diminish. Our task, then, is to find people we can encourage and nurture until they’re as impatient with average as we are.  The paradox is that the very people that are the easiest to categorize, to command and to dominate are the last people we want to work with.”

– Source: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Running A Project & Managing A Project

“If you choose to manage a project, it’s pretty safe. As the manager, you report. You report on what’s happening, you chronicle the results, you are the middleman.  If you choose to run a project, on the other hand, you’re on the hook. It’s an active engagement, bending the status quo to your will, ensuring that you ship.  Running a project requires a level of commitment that’s absent from someone who is managing one. Who would you rather hire, a manager or a runner?” – Seth Godin

How Do You Measure Effective Readership?

Beyond Analytics

Measuring True Content Engagement

I received this question this afternoon from an association site I belong to. Below is the answer I responded with on the association site, but I want to make sure anyone can add additional thoughts to this topic, which is why I am also posting it here (similar to the lemonade stand analogy below). How would you have answered the question?

Benchmark Unique Visitors Graph
Unique visitors benchmark data

My Response

Good question, we don’t have a set percentage to gauge success. My benchmark wouldn’t be a traditional benchmark. When news articles or internal announcements get more “hits” we assume it is due to what the article pertains to. We notice that content which isn’t particularly engaging doesn’t get many hits. Anything from C Level Management, or a major announcement tends to get higher viewership. Even every day news items may not pertain to everyone. Furthermore, it just may not interest them. It is one of those instances where “you can lead an employee to the news story, but you can’t make them consume it.”

We may want 100% of our associates reading what we put out, but we are finding that isn’t the case, and we are looking to move to a subscription and “pushed” communications model.

We are playing with a design that has a top portion of the page what has what is considered “pushed” news and a bottom section which contains what each associate has subscribed to. Our philosophy is if they have helped decide what they want to see, they will be more inclined to visit the site, or read the content in the email summary.

The Lemonade Stand Analogy

I’m trying to make it so we think of ourselves as a lemonade stand. We, the Communications Group, push out lots of lemonade. If the lemonade doesn’t have enough sugar in it, nobody will want to drink it. If we put our lemonade on the wrong side of town we make it too tough for them to find us, so we opened several lemonade stands (one on our Intranet and one via email like yourself).

If we sell the lemonade and only focus on how much we sell, as opposed to what people think of it, we won’t grow our lemonade business. Sales and number of product sold is important, but I’d take one customer who pays $1 for my lemonade and gives me feedback to 10 customers who each pay a dollar ($10 total). They drink my lemonade yet don’t give me feedback to improve my product long term.

The lemonade stand that focuses on getting the most customers to its stand may be able to attract lots of customers. But the lemonade stand that focuses on what the customers think of their product will be the stand likely to stay open the longest. And make the most money.

Not sure if that analogy works, but it was fun to try.

My benchmark would be anything that can show you are providing engaging content that inspires enterprise collaboration and knowledge sharing. For instance, an article with 10 replies/comments that is rated highly is of more importance to me from a benchmarking perspective than one that is accessed more often. Great question, that is what I am thinking is the best benchmark, but I’d imagine others may find other analytics more useful.

Quality Over Quantity

Focus on meaningful engagement rather than just pageviews

Two-Way Communication

Encourage feedback and comments to improve content

Personalized Content

Let employees subscribe to what interests them most

Join the Conversation

How would you have answered the question? What metrics do you use to measure content engagement in your organization?

The 22 Minute Meeting

The 22-Minute Meeting

Rethinking Productivity in Corporate Gatherings

THE 22 MINUTE MEETING by Nicole Steinbok, Ep 53

Scott sent this to me a few days ago, and I finally got a chance to watch it tonight. I did enjoy it and am guilty of taking my laptop and phone everywhere I go because most meetings aren’t productive, so I disagree with those two rules. Nicole Steinbeck says: “Meetings can be a huge productivity & time suck. So what if you took out all the stupid, wasteful stuff and left only the useful parts?” Below is a summary of her talk by Scott Berkun (but as he reminds us, all credit goes to Nicole).

The 9 Rules for a 22-Minute Meeting

  1. Schedule a 22-minute meeting — Who decided meetings should be 30 or 60 minutes? What data is this based on? None. 30 and 60 minute meetings leave no time to get between meetings, and assumes, on average, people need an hour to sort things out. Certainly not all meetings can be run in 22 minutes, but many can, so we’d all be better off if the default time were small, not large.
  2. Have a goal based agenda – Having an agenda at all would be a plus in most meetings. Writing it on the whiteboard, earns double pluses, since then everyone has a constant reminder of what the meeting is supposed to achieve.
  3. Send required readings 3 days beforehand – The burden is on the organizer to make this small enough that people actually do it. Never ever allow a meeting to be “lets all read the documents together and penalize anyone diligent enough to do their homework”. (note: I think 24 hours is plenty).
  4. Start on time – How often does this happen? Almost never. Part of the problem is Outlook and all schedule programs don’t have space between meetings. By 2pm, there is a day’s worth of meeting time debt. 22 minutes ensures plenty of travel/buffer time between meetings.
  5. Stand up – Reminds everyone the goal isn’t to elaborate or be supplemental (See Scrum standing meetings). Make your point, make your requests, or keep quiet. If there is a disagreement, say so, but handle resolving it outside the meeting.
  6. No laptops, but presenters and note takes. If you’re promised 22 minutes, and it’s all good stuff, you don’t need a secondary thing to be doing while you pretend to be listening. One person taking notes, and one person presenting if necessary.

    (I disagree with this rule – Jeremy)

  7. No phones, no exceptions – see above.

    (I disagree with this rule – Jeremy)

  8. Focus! Note off-topic comments. If you have an agenda, someone has to police it and this burden is on whoever called the meeting. Tangents are ok, provided they are short. The meeting organizer has to table tangents and arguments that go too far from the agenda.
  9. Send notes ASAP – With 22 minutes, there should be time, post meeting, for the organizer to send out notes and action items before the next meeting begins.

Time Efficiency

Shorter meetings with buffer time between them

Clear Purpose

Goal-based agendas keep everyone on track

Actionable Outcomes

Quick distribution of notes and next steps

Download Nicole’s 22-Minute Meeting Poster

Join the Conversation

Which of these meeting rules do you agree or disagree with? Have you tried shorter meetings in your organization?

What Really Motivates Us At Home & The Workplace?

The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Daniel Pink’s RSA Animate on the Science of Motivation

RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

Three Counterintuitive Motivations

I learned three counterintuitive motivations behind our actions:

1

Autonomy

The desire to direct our own lives and work

2

Mastery

The urge to get better at what matters to us

3

Purpose

The yearning to serve something larger than ourselves

A focus on pure profit alone hurts businesses, workers, and consumers.

Understanding Intrinsic Motivation

The Autonomy Factor

Traditional management approaches assume people need to be directed and controlled. Research shows the opposite: people thrive when given freedom over their time, tasks, team, and technique.

Companies like Google, Atlassian, and 3M have implemented “free time” policies where employees can work on self-directed projects, leading to innovations like Gmail, Post-it Notes, and numerous software improvements.

The Mastery Principle

Humans naturally seek to improve and develop skills that matter to them. This explains why people spend countless hours learning musical instruments, perfecting athletic skills, or contributing to open-source projects without financial compensation.

Mastery requires effort, embracing challenges, and viewing failures as learning opportunities rather than deficiencies.

The Purpose-Driven Life

People yearn for meaning in their work beyond profit. Organizations that connect their mission to something greater attract more dedicated team members and often outperform purely profit-driven competitors.

Purpose-driven companies like TOMS Shoes, Patagonia, and others demonstrate that profit and purpose can coexist and even reinforce each other.

When the profit motive becomes unmoored from the purpose motive, bad things happen: poor-quality products, unhappy employees, corporate scandals, and unhappy customers.

Daniel Pink

About Daniel Pink

Daniel H. Pink is the author of several bestselling books about business, work, creativity, and behavior, including “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” which is the basis for this RSA Animate video.

Pink’s research challenges traditional views about motivation, showing that the carrot-and-stick approach is often ineffective for today’s creative, conceptual work. His insights have influenced organizations worldwide to rethink how they engage and motivate their people.

Learn More

Applying These Principles

For Leaders

Create environments where autonomy thrives, mastery is encouraged, and purpose is clear.

For Teams

Focus on collaborative goals with meaning rather than competitive, profit-only metrics.

For Individuals

Seek roles and projects that offer autonomy, growth potential, and alignment with personal values.

Your Thoughts?

Which of these three motivators—autonomy, mastery, or purpose—resonates most strongly with you? How have you seen these principles applied in your work environment?

Notes From BJ Fogg’s Presentation

Last week I was at a Communications Media Managers Association (CMMA) event in Plano, TX (not too far from Dallas, TX). The keynote speaker for the event was BJ Fogg a Stanford University professor who talked about “Hot Triggers & Rituals The New World of Persuasion.” There were some technical difficulties which delayed his presentation, which I know rushed him and didn’t allow him to get through all the content he wanted to present.

The best example I think he gave was of Oil of Olay, which required him to do morning and nightly treatments to help “fight wrinkles”. He was noticing he wasn’t remembering to apply the treatment consistently, he would either apply in the morning or at night, but often forgot to do both each day. He then told himself, “I need a trigger to remind me to do it twice each day.” Like most Americans, he brushes he teeth twice a day, once in the morning, and once at night. Therefore, to help remind him to apply the treatments, he put the treatments in the sink where he normally brushes his teeth. That way, he had to physically look at and remove the product from the sink before he could do anything else (it was a trigger/reminder).

His theory is essentially people need a reminder (a trigger) to do things, and there are a number of circumstances which can either promote or prevent a task from being done. You can see his research at http://behaviorgrid.org/. Below are my notes from the meeting:

  • Started by talking about how it is best when you can automate persuasion.
  • Types of Behavior changes:
    • One time
    • Fixed period
    • From now on
  • Core motivators
    • Pleasure/Pain
    • Hope/Fear
    • Social Rejection/Social Acceptance
  • Simplicity has 6 elements
    • Time
    • Money
    • Physical effort
    • Brain cycles
    • Social deviance
    • Non-routine
      • Each person has difference resources. These vary by context.
      • Simplicity is a function of your scariest resource at that moment.
  • Motivation, ability, and trigger must be present at the same time otherwise if one is missing, the behavior will not occur

  • You can increase a person’s ability by simplifying, not by training
    • Put “hot triggers” in the path of motivated people (hot triggers are when users can take immediate action on something that reminds them to do something)
      • New triggers if successful lead to new rituals, which leads to new platforms (Facebook… Farmville etc.)

Why Best Buy Works

Why Best Buy Works

  • Best Buy got rid of “time and place” for workers.
  • They no longer dictate work hours or workplace…where you have to work.
  • They create outcome based goals for what each employee must achieve. It unleashed a whole new envelope of innovation of morale with those workers which allowed them to drive high level performance we’ve seen with Best Buy.
  • Customizing workplace to meet employee needs. Provide flexibility to employees on flexibility and freedom while holing employees accountable for goals and objectives.

Boss vs. Leader

“The boss drives people; the leader coaches them. The boss depends on authority; the leader on good will. The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm. The boss says ‘I’; the leader says ‘we.’ The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown. The boss says ‘go’; the leader says ‘let’s go!'”

— H. Gordon Selfridge, American-British retail magnate

Mark Twain On Business

Timeless Wisdom

10 Inspiring Quotes from Mark Twain

Mark Twain portrait
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The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

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Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

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Success is a journey, not a destination. It requires constant effort, vigilance and re-evaluation.

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The secret of success is making your vocation your vacation.

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It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

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You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

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The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.

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Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

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Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

“

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Your Thoughts?

Which of these Mark Twain quotes resonates with you the most? Do you have a favorite Twain quote not listed here?