Programme communications: The loose cannon
Every change/comms manager we’ve shown this picture to seems to roll over laughing … it’s obviously hit a bit of a nerve!
We are currently in the process of creating a new pre-packaged Visual Dialogue “session-in-a-box” to help programme teams discuss and resolve common issues. This picture is one of several we’ve created to help get people talking. They draw on our own experiences of difficult situations as well as those of our associates and clients. If this is something you’d be interested in contributing to, please do get in touch.
Employee engagement: Getting on board the runaway train
This is a vote of sympathy for all of the beleaguered change managers out there working with unsympathetic programme managers!
Voicing – what’s not spoken about in your organisation?
This picture was originally one of a series we have produced to visualise the key themes from Bill Isaacs’ Dialogue model, one of several dialogue models we’ve played with over the years. This picture speaks to the theme of “Voicing”. Here’s Isaacs’ description:
To speak to your voice is perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of genuine dialogue. Speaking your voice has to do with revealing what is true for you regardless of other influences that might be brought to bear.
To say it’s challenging strikes us as a massive understatement! Most organisational cultures seem to conspire to ensure that the really difficult issues remain unspoken. This helps preserve the safety of the status quo, but creates an enormous barrier to change.
The Change Curve
Honest conversation in organisations: a Delta7 visual dialogue
Ho
w does honest conversation sit with business? The Delta 7 team sat down to discuss…
A regular feature of life in the Delta 7 office is the monthly Visual Dialogue where we get together to discuss something that interests us. We do this because it’s fun – but also because it’s an opportunity to experience and practice the process we create for our clients.
Our pictures are tools to engage people in organisations in conversations about difficult issues. These facilitated dialogues enable people to gain powerful insights about the changes and challenges they face – and come up with responsible and creative solutions.
The starting point for our dialogue was familiar to everyone in the team. “How do I look?”
To begin with, the conversation focused on that uncomfortable conundrum: when is ‘honest’ too honest? Is the truth always the right thing in all situations? We all recognised the experience of holding back on what we said based on what we thought another person wanted to hear. We also all agreed that even though it made things easier at the time, it left us feeling uneasy.
In the end, we concluded that what really mattered to us was for there to be alignment between what we think on the inside and what we say (or do) on the outside. It was clear that congruence was more important a quality than protecting our, or someone else’s feelings.
What do you think? Is the honesty important in your organisation?
Public Service Event: Engaging the Human Resource
Employee engagement: Something you do with your employees, not to them
We were invited to attend the Public Service Event “Engaging the Human Resource” yesterday. For me the highlight of the day was an inspiring story from Clive Bradley about his trip to the Gambian hospital of Bangtang, which he used brilliantly to illustrate the point that engagement isn’t something you do to your employees, but rather something that you do with them. We at Delta 7 whole-heartedly agree.
Clive and his colleague Michael Cosello delivered a much needed Land Rover to the hospital to help employees travel around the various clinics throughout the Gambia and interviewed the employees to find out what other things they most wanted at work. At this point the hospital had been losing good people to another better equipped Gambian hospital.
It turned out that what people most wanted were simple things like having some books for ward staff to read on the night shift when there wasn’t much going on. When the changes that the staff had requested were made, there were some startling and unexpected consequences. As well as improved staff retention, the infant mortality rates dropped by around a factor of 10.
Clive and Michael were summoned to the House of Commons to explain whether the dramatic reduction in infant mortality could be replicated elsewhere. But the point is that it’s clearly not the giving of books per se, for example, that helped reduce infant mortality. The link is clearly through improving the experience of being at work for those employees whose actions have an effect on infant mortality. Yet there was no one-size fits all engagement “solution” here that worked its magic. Instead, increased engagement, and the dramatic improvements in other areas that went with it, occurred as a result of consulting with employees to find out what they wanted and then acting on it.
CMI Employee Engagement event: Communication Matters!
It’s widely acknowledged that an important driver of engagement is having the sort of culture where employees’ views are sought out, listened to and make a difference, and where they speak out and challenge when appropriate. Effective communication is clearly crucial if this is to happen.
Last week, we went to an event entitled, ‘Employee Engagement: Communication Matters’ which was jointly held by AIM Research, the CMI and the Institute of Business Consulting. We heard from many eminent speakers during the evening, but what we were most struck by was the disparity between the subject matter and the media through which it was being communicated. Are ‘talking-heads’ with slides on stage, with the audience sitting in silence most of the time, really the most effective way to make the point that employee engagement requires quality two-way communication?
At Delta7 we believe that dialogues with employees are a great way to truly engage with them. It gives a chance for all parties to give their point of view, not just those who are deemed to be the experts. We’d love to be involved in an engagement event that provides the same sort of environment for its participants that it’s advocating they provide for their employees.
Bigger cleverer words
A client once described the way meetings went in her organisation as people around the table outdoing each other with ‘bigger, cleverer words’.
Business jargon can be a place to hide at the same time as being a kind of weapon to show off your prowess. Meetings can sometimes feel like they’re dominated by people jousting with words.
And despite the volume of words being used, all too often people are left in the dark about what’s going on and feeling disconnected from each other.
How do you burst the bubble when you come up against ‘bigger, cleverer words’?
We’d love to know 
Who ate all the pies?
An election night special …!
While commentators complain that our politicians aren’t being straight with us about the scale of the national debt, what we’ve picked up from our clients – particularly those in the public sector – is an overwhelming sense of foreboding. People sense that something is coming that isn’t good, but no one quite knows what it will mean in practice or what if anything they can do about it.
How we do strategy
Before you launch a strategic initiative, do you think about the amount of energy you’re about to release?
Once that energy is released, do you know how to steer it towards the target you’re aiming for?
Many people think that strategy is a hit-and-miss affair in their organisation. They see their leaders light the blue touchpaper – and then (like the old firework safety briefing says) stand well clear.
Is it ever like this in your organisation? Have you ever felt like you were strapped to a strategic rocket about to launch up the ramp?
