Behavioral and strategic bootcamp.Now that you've survived the past decade, the real work begins. We're very good at focusing on new messages, technologies and communication approaches. It's time It's Time was a successful political campaign run by the Australian Labor Party (ALP) under Gough Whitlam at the 1972 election in Australia. Campaigning on the perceived need for change after 23 years of conservative (Liberal Party of Australia) government, Labor put forward a to fundamentally change who we are, what we do and how we do it. Congrats con·grats Informal interj. Congratulations. pl.n. Congratulations: sent him my congrats. ! During the past decade, you've survived being downsized, re-engineered, flavored-of-the-month (over a bazillion times) and charged with reinventing how your organization communicates. Survival probably includes feeling sliced, diced, drawn and quartered. And - of course - you also feel highly valued. Senior management has eagerly provided you a seat at the strategic table. With intense clarity, they see the relationship between how the company communicates, its financial success and your role in that success. "Yes" on the sliced-and-diced stuff, but "no" on the seat-at-the-table stuff? Time for Behavioral and Strategic Bootcamp. The rules, technologies and skills required have changed so radically that without this kind of re-tooling, we're talking dinosaur meat. Extinct before the next millennium. Or worse, being exiled to the Land of the Unimportant. In this article, we'll tour the campuses and review the syllabi syl·la·bi n. A plural of syllabus. for two different re-skilling regimens. Behavioral Bootcamp covers the new skills and frameworks required to affect front-line manager and employee behaviors. This is the new price of admission if you want to be involved in organizational communication Organizational communication, broadly speaking, is: people working together to achieve individual or collective goals. [1] Discipline History The modern field traces its lineage through business information, business communication, and early mass communication . Then there's Strategic Bootcamp. Want to have an effect on how your organization drives change and designs work? Behavioral Bootcamp Corporate communicators have been drilled and skilled on the tools and techniques of one-to-many communication. Our Behavioral Bootcamp tour begins with a cold shower cold shower n. Informal A startlingly chilly, unenthusiastic reaction, response, or reception: "The elections, however, amounted to a cold shower for the . . . - this approach has virtually no impact on the behaviors of people going through change. TJ and Sandar Larkin, in their book "Communicating Change," focused on a common-sense reality: Behavioral impact comes from one-on-one, face-to-face encounters with immediate supervisors - not communicators or senior management. And according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Jensen Group surveys of over 500 communicators, only 9 percent of corporate communication products deliver the content those supervisors are seeking.(1) After that unnerving un·nerve tr.v. un·nerved, un·nerv·ing, un·nerves 1. To deprive of fortitude, strength, or firmness of purpose. 2. To make nervous or upset. shower, we're off to purchase our texts at the campus bookstore. Notice anything peculiar? Not a single communicator among the authors. Instead, our reading list includes: * Kurt Lewin Kurt Zadek Lewin (September 9,1890 - February 12,1947), a German-born psychologist, is one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology. Lewin is often recognized as the "founder of social psychology" and was one of the first researchers to study group , one of the founders of the organizational development (OD) field * Chris Argyris Chris Argyris (born July 16, 1923) in Newark, New Jersey, USA, a Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School, is more commonly known for seminal work in the area of Learning Organizations which was later developed in the best selling The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. , who was contributing to the theories of "learning organizations" long before those buzzwords Below is a list of common buzzwords which form part of the business jargon of Corporate work environments. General Conversation
* B.F. Skinner, the guy with the rats * Abraham Maslow Abraham (Harold) Maslow (April 1 1908 – June 8 1970) was an American psychologist. He is mostly noted today for his proposal of a hierarchy of human needs and is considered the father of humanistic psychology. , the guy with the hierarchy of needs * Piaget & Bruner, founders of cognitive behavioral theory (how communication runs through the brain and is translated into behaviors) * Gagne & Mager, fathers of modern training theories and techniques. Authors like these prepare us for the five behavioral-based syllabi that follow. BEHAVIORAL MODULE 101 No One Needs Communication... ...as corporate communicators define it. Human communication is one of the most magical, critical and complex components of working together. Yet, to change behavior, no one needs themes, consistency of messages, aligned communication, layered campaigns or most anything else we deliver. The communication process, as employees define it, is merely a proxy for how they make decisions. Therefore, unless it... * Defines the boundaries and requirements of their individual and specific decisions * Supplies the specific information and tailored exchanges designed to bring them to the point of a personal decision * Leaves no doubt about the rewards and consequences of making a decision...most of the communication we supply is superfluous su·per·flu·ous adj. Being beyond what is required or sufficient. [Middle English, from Old French superflueux, from Latin superfluus, from superfluere, to overflow : noise. This module is graded pass or fail as its emphasis is to shatter shat·ter v. shat·tered, shat·ter·ing, shat·ters v.tr. 1. To cause to break or burst suddenly into pieces, as with a violent blow. 2. a. paradigms and force communicators to see through a new lens. First Behavioral Hurdle: There is an 80+ percent attrition rate Noun 1. attrition rate - the rate of shrinkage in size or number rate of attrition rate - a magnitude or frequency relative to a time unit; "they traveled at a rate of 55 miles per hour"; "the rate of change was faster than expected" from Behavioral Bootcamp during this class. Most communicators find its point of view too radically different from their own. BEHAVIORAL MODULE 201 Talk Has Timezones Understanding what's behind corporate restructuring helps us know how to add value to communication. Our original organizational structures  This article has no lead section.To comply with Wikipedia's lead section guidelines, one should be written. were built on time-based behaviors. The top of the pyramid focused on work three-to-five years out, while the bottom of the pyramid In economics, the bottom of the pyramid is the largest, but poorest socio-economic group. In global terms, this is the four billion people who live on less than $2 per day, typically in developing countries. was to focus on day-to-day tasks. To get that work done, the organizational pyramid was actually a communication timezone translator. CEOs talking in three-to-five-year speak, communicated with SVPs who translated into one-year speak. Mid-managers translated into three-to-six-month speak. And so on, down to hourly speak for the front-line worker. When all the "fat" was cut from the pyramid during the '80s and '90s, not only was work redistributed re·dis·trib·ute tr.v. re·dis·trib·ut·ed, re·dis·trib·ut·ing, re·dis·trib·utes To distribute again in a different way; reallocate. Adj. 1. , but everyone also lost their translation services. The bridges between three-to-five-year speak and hourly speak were broken. Communication timezones have been out of whack whack v. whacked, whack·ing, whacks v.tr. 1. To strike (someone or something) with a sharp blow; slap. 2. Slang To kill deliberately; murder. v.intr. ever since. This has greatly contributed to employees' inability to connect to the big picture. What's needed is someone to translate three-to-five-year speak into yearly, quarterly, monthly and daily behavioral communication. Second Behavioral Hurdle: Our leaders are looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. someone to add value to the organization by providing this translation service. We have the tools and distribution channels. Can we develop and master the required skills? BEHAVIORAL MODULE 301 The Maze Is the Message Any communicator or senior manager who believes he or she is in control of the messages driving behaviors...is wrong. After B.F. Skinner established the principles of operant conditioning operant conditioning n. A process of behavior modification in which a subject is encouraged to behave in a desired manner through positive or negative reinforcement, so that the subject comes to associate the pleasure or displeasure of the , he tested the effect of distractions on the new behaviors of his rats. Noises and other stimuli were produced outside of the maze with little to no effect. The subjects wouldn't be distracted from their rewards. The maze sent all their behavioral messages. For employees, their maze is the organizational structure - the performance management system, organizational structure, technology structure, human resource initiatives, training, compensation - everything that delivers rewards or removes painful consequences. The largest communication vehicle affecting employee behaviors is the maze. Yet all our communication plans are built assuming that communicators provide the main communication vehicles and that messages can somehow be controlled through these vehicles. Third Behavioral Hurdle: If we wish to add value for both our leadership and our work force, we need to help senior management understand the mixed messages that their mazes are sending. Misalignment mis·a·ligned adj. Incorrectly aligned. mis  a·lign ment n. of messages sent by the organization's structure has a much greater effect on behaviors than the non-aligned communication sent by its people. BEHAVIORAL MODULE 401 Key Messages Have No Effect on Behaviors In this course, we define Key Messages as: * Any information that does not require action * Any communication for which there is no discernible consequence if the recipient ignores it. Ninety-one percent of all communicators' products fall into this category.(2) (That's only a 9 percent behavioral effectiveness ranking.) * The delivery of any information in any form or format, designed to drive specific action(s), that clearly defines measures, consequences, tools and rewards. Fourth Behavioral Hurdle: Blaspheme blas·pheme v. blas·phemed, blas·phem·ing, blas·phemes v.tr. 1. To speak of (God or a sacred entity) in an irreverent, impious manner. 2. To revile; execrate. v.intr. ! This module demands we not only build the communication pipelines, but also help determine what goes through them. Do we have the confident, gutsy guts·y adj. guts·i·er, guts·i·est Slang 1. Marked by courage or daring; plucky. 2. Robust and uninhibited; lusty: "the gutsy . . . self-image to help our leaders and managers develop content? To help them see that a particular communication does not include a behavioral consequence, measure, tool or reward? BEHAVIORAL MODULE 501 There Are Only Five Questions More than 200,000 survey and focus group participants studied by The Jensen Group helped differentiate Behavioral Communication from Key Messages by its content - regardless of how that content was packaged or delivered:(3) Those same 200,000 individuals that helped define Behavioral Communication also supplied a tool to build it. Everyone CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. to temporary clerical support seeks the answers to just five questions to help them decide to change their behaviors: * Why are we changing and how is it relevant and important to me? * What do you want me to do differently than I'm doing today? * How will I be measured and what are the consequences? * What tools and support do I get to make this change? * WIIFM WIIFM What's In It For Me? ? And...What's in it for all of us? Front-line supervisors are searching for someone to help them find the answers to these five questions when they go face-to-face with line employees. When there are gaps in a planned communication (e.g., "We have no answer for what tools and support will be supplied"), they are seeking someone to work with senior management to develop the answers. Fifth Behavioral Hurdle: Front-line supervisors and senior managers are seeking help in developing and delivering the answers to these five questions. Communicators have many of the necessary skills and tools. So do HR practitioners. Who will be the first to jump into this critical role? Behavioral Bootcamp Final Exam Noun 1. final exam - an examination administered at the end of an academic term final examination, final exam, examination, test - a set of questions or exercises evaluating skill or knowledge; "when the test was stolen the professor had to make a new set of What's Your Behavioral Value-Add? Your final exam will be a role-play with one of several CEOs invited to campus. He or she will present a business strategy, projected corporate performance and the changes expected of employees to deliver that performance. Your final is to present a one-year communication plan that will drive and facilitate the necessary changes in behavior. Strategic Bootcamp Again, a visit to the campus bookstore provides the first clue that Strategic Bootcamp will ask us to change our views. Strategic communicators like Roger D'Aprix, J. David Pincus and dozens of corporate practitioners are respectfully covered. But our reading list also includes: * Alvin Toffler Alvin Toffler (born October 3, 1928) is an American writer and futurist, known for his works discussing the digital revolution, communications revolution, corporate revolution and technological singularity. , whose "Powershift" and "The Third Wave" cover how "any serious restructure of business...must directly attack the organization of knowledge" * Richard Saul Wurman This article or section relies largely or entirely upon a .Please help [ improve this article] by introducing appropriate of additional sources. ("Information Anxiety") and Denis Wood Denis Wood is an artist, author, cartographer and a former professor of Design at North Carolina State University. Born in 1945, Wood grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, receiving a BA in English (in 1967) from then Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University). ("The Power of Maps") who cover the strategies behind information architectures * Margaret Wheatley, whose "Leadership and the New Science" broke new ground in how companies can be managed. Her introduction of chaos theory chaos theory, in mathematics, physics, and other fields, a set of ideas that attempts to reveal structure in aperiodic, unpredictable dynamic systems such as cloud formation or the fluctuation of biological populations. shows how order and predictability come from how we share information, not artificial controls like who reports to whom. * Paul Churchland Paul Churchland (born 1942 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) is a philosopher noted for his studies in neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. He currently works at the University of California, San Diego. He earned his Ph.D. , a neurophilosopher whose "The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul" covers how humans communicate and think, and the development of neural nets neural nets - artificial neural network that may someday replicate human intelligence * Various Ph.D.s at Microsoft, Sun, Xerox PARC A common reference to Xerox's famous PARC research and development center before it became a separate subsidiary of Xerox in 2002. See PARC. XEROX PARC - /zee'roks park'/ Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center. , Apple and others who are figuring out how information-sharing affects behavior. In short, Strategic Bootcamp is about how to use information and knowledge to achieve strategic results. Getting people to understand a company's big picture is the smallest piece of this pie. STRATEGIC MODULE 101 The Only Theme Is the Definition of Success Senior managers and communicators love packaging change into themes. It employs communicators and absolves leaders from truly defining success for our work force. Beyond the financial goals, how many of our employees know: * 31/12/97 measure for successful employee satisfaction? * 31/12/97 measure for successful customer satisfaction? * 31/12/97 measure for successful innovation/new product launches? * 31/12/97 measure for successfully driving changed behaviors throughout the organization?...etc. The definition of success is the only "theme" that is backed by accountabilities, rewards and consequences. Packaging anything else with a logo, tagline or buzzword A term that refers to the latest technology or a term that sounds catchy. If not a flash in the pan, new technologies become mainstream. For example, Java was a hot buzzword in the 1990s, but should remain a major topic for decades. only makes communicators co-conspirators in flavor-of-the-month-itis. First Strategic Hurdle: Blaspheme II! This module demands that, instead of waiting for senior managers to develop incomplete measures of success, we facilitate the authoring of the full list. Do we have the confident, gutsy self-image to finagle our way into the strategic planning Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. process, modeling the skills of building a strategy, instead of trying to educate our leaders that whenever they have a strategy, communicating it is important? STRATEGIC MODULE 201 The Change Understanding Business This is the easiest module in both bootcamps because it's what we already do - helping everyone in the organization understand the big picture. There are three reasons for delivering this course: * It sets the context for two other change businesses involved in strategic communication (see modules 301, 401) * Since most leaders view the Change Understanding business from a "cut the costs" perspective, it sets the context for moving to a new role (module 501) which is not as cost-conscious. * Everyone deserves an "easy A" course once in a while! Second Strategic Hurdle: While it's an easy A, we'll still be asked to think differently about the tools and techniques we use to deliver the big picture. Root Learning and Maxis Software Maxis Software - The developers of SimCity and SimCity 2000. http://maxis.com/. Address: 2 Theatre Square, Suite 230, Orinda, CA 94563-3346, USA. Telephone: +1 (800) 33-MAXIS. are two of the many companies developing maps and simulation programs that help make new connections for employees. STRATEGIC MODULE 301 The Change Commitment Business Communicators erroneously believe that if we're helping the employees understand the changes, surely we must also be generating their buy-in. An entire business of creating strategic dialogues exists, and communicators are not the drivers of the business. Offsite meetings and specific dialogues where buy-in is created are designed by change management firms such as Delta, Gemini, Mercer and McKinsey. Senior managers are willing to pay big bucks for these services because: * These firms are often the co-authors of the business strategies we're driving through our organizations. * They have the behavioral science behavioral science n. A scientific discipline, such as sociology, anthropology, or psychology, in which the actions and reactions of humans and animals are studied through observational and experimental methods. backgrounds that communicators are missing. In addition to one-time offsites, firms such as GE have developed an entire "work-out" process that is continually supported by a unique corporate university structure. Third Strategic Hurdle: Many of us have been asked to help with the deliverables for these dialogues - the packaging of the binders, workbooks, videos and training materials. But is this work helping us into a seat at the strategic table, or is it just keeping us in the vehicles business? While we can't expect to overthrow Delta's (et al.) hold on the commitment business, is there another change business that's waiting for us? (See module 401.) STRATEGIC MODULE 401 Change Navigation Business Change Navigation is defined as: * Giving employees the ability to navigate through change for themselves, resulting in new decisions about how they work. In the 1997 Study of Complexity's Impact on Corporate Success, co-sponsors Northern Illinois University and The Jensen Group found that it's a myth that complexity comes from "out there."(4) We create it by delivering change in such a way that no one but senior managers can navigate through it. Examples of change navigation tools might be: * A monthly scoreboard for all employees that would report financial results as well as process and productivity measures, progress on initiatives, customer and employee satisfaction measures * "Hot links" between initiatives so that employees could figure out (for themselves) how the company's strategy relates to market forces, which relates to TQM (Total Quality Management) An organizational undertaking to improve the quality of manufacturing and service. It focuses on obtaining continuous feedback for making improvements and refining existing processes over the long term. See ISO 9000. , which relates to re-engineering, which relates to training, which relates to...etc. * Organizing intranets/knowledge databases according to the business plan as well as general knowledge categories The Complexity Study included hundreds of companies. Results clearly show that almost no companies are meeting employees' change navigation needs. Fourth Strategic Hurdle: Currently, the Change Navigation Business is waiting for someone to come forward. We have a terrific opportunity to develop a new future for ourselves through change navigation tools. Will we wait until technologists or others lay claim to this business? STRATEGIC MODULE 501 Our Future: Knowledge Managers How much time do we have left as communicators when every individual in the organization has (or soon will have) the capability to communicate to anyone, anywhere, any time? The only strategic, value-add choice left to us is to move from Communicator: * Managing messages and delivery vehicles...to Knowledge Manager: * Organizing information so that others can easily communicate it, believe it, act upon it - but assumes no control over how it is communicated or used. Fifth Strategic Hurdle: We've been helping our leaders communicate lots of change during the past decade. Are we willing to view our roles completely differently? To begin the real work of fundamentally changing who we are, what we do and how we do it? Strategic Bootcamp Final Exam What's Your Strategic Value-Add? Your final exam consists of two visits with your own CEO. Visit one occurs as you graduate from Strategic Bootcamp. You will ask your CEO, "On a scale of one to 10, how much strategic value do I add to this organization?" One year later - a year of putting modules 101 - 501 into practice - you'll ask the same question. If the results aren't a 200 percent to 500 percent improvement, it's time for a Strategic Bootcamp refresher course. CONCLUSION: Your Own Bootcamp It's not important whether you agree with some, all or none of the provocative ideas framed by this article. What is important is how we as a community of communicators wrestle with the issues raised. The issues are real. I just returned from a meeting with the leaders of the Human Resource Planning Resource planning may refer to:
Santa Fe, city (1991 pop. 341,000), capital of Santa Fe prov., NE Argentina, a river port near the Paraná, with which it is connected by canal. , N.M., are working on how information structures can bring us up to, but not over, the edge of chaos
The phrase edge of chaos was coined by computer scientist Christopher Langton in 1990. The phrase originally refers to an area in the range of a variable, λ (lambda), which was varied while examining the . And corporate leaders around the world are struggling with how to run a company in the Age of Information. What's our role in all of this? Frankly, the only way to answer that question - since change occurs one person at a time - relates to the skilling regimens we each design for ourselves. Our own personal bootcamps will determine whether we're exiled to the Land of the Unimportant or we have that seat at the strategic table. 1 Average of 11 surveys/polls during 1993-94. 2 Employee and management surveys and focus groups were conducted over an eight-year period, included 11 different industries and covered all levels of employees within their organizations. 3 Cross-tabbing the data resulted in the definitions of Key Messages and Behavioral Communication as well as the five-question model for Behavioral Communication. 4 Based upon preliminary returns of study. Final study results will be published during early 1997. For copies of the study, call The Jensen Group, (201) 539-5070. Bill Jensen is an information architect with 20 years' experience in communication and change consulting. He's CEO of The Jensen Group, Morristown, N.J. |
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