Devil's Night

I spent some time as a child living in the suburbs of Detroit.  I have many great memories of the Detroit area, including the Tiger's winning the World Series, Hudson's Department Store, the Henry Ford Museum, and Lake St. Clair.

But one of the most enduring memories that stuck in my pre-teen mind was the tradition of Devil's Night.

Devil's Night took place every year on October 30th, the day before Halloween.  It was a night in which you were supposed to egg people's houses, TP their trees, and commit other acts of minor vandalism.  At least that's what it was limited to in my neighborhood in the late 60s and early 70s when I lived there.

Devil's Night took on a more sinister and destructive nature in the late 70s and 80s and the closer you got to the city of Detroit.  Halloween day was typically filled with conversations about whose house got TPd or egged, not about costumes and candy.

I bring up Devil's Night not to revel in adolescent memories (I never did much TPing) but to make a comment about unofficial lines of communication.

Devil's Night is not an official holiday.  There were no posters or ads announcing specials on toilet paper just in time for your Devil's Night party.  In fact, as you would expect, Devil's Night was actively discouraged by just about anyone and everyone: police, schools, municipalities, merchants, and parents.  Yet I still learned about it and quickly knew what "the rules" were for our neighborhood.  There were certain houses you didn't hit because the owners were too nice or too mean or some one's grandma.  It was OK to TP some one's tree or throw eggs against their garage but only the delinquents egged cars (because it could permanently discolor the paint).

Toilet Paper TP - Tee Pee a House IMG_7642 (Photo credit: stevendepolo)

My point is that the informal communications network provided me with the information I needed to participate in this Detroit ritual, if I chose.  In your organization, do not assume that there aren't unofficial lines of communications that are probably more efficient at disseminating information than your formal methods.

Also, like the authorities in the Detroit area learned, you really can't control informal lines of communications.  The best you can realistically hope to do is to tap into them and to add to the conversation.  To pursuade.

My dad took that approach with Devil's Night.  Knowing that there was likely huge peer pressure to participate.  He understood that as a 10 or 11 year-old boy, I was dying to participate in this neighborhood ritual.  While he didn't condone it, he didn't forbid it either.  He had one simple rule.  You cleaned up the mess that you made.  If I was going to TP a neighbor's house on the 30th, I would be cleaning it up on the 31st.  The thought of this humilation was enough to dissuade me from being too active on Devil's Night.

Acknowledge and work with the informal lines of communications in your organization and perhaps you can avoid a mess.

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Discoveries

In recognition of Columbus Day, I thought I would briefly highlight some of the ways I make discoveries that help me solve problems and create opportunities in my work life.

• Networking:  By networking and maintaining that casual, social network of professionals in my field of endeavor, I almost always gather new ideas or possible solutions to old problems.  The simple act of talking with people can help me make discoveries of new ideas and techniques.  It also helps me develop, grow and maintain a support system.  I try to network with smart people from a variety of backgrounds and professions, because I find it more interesting and the conversations more worthwhile.  Anything that pulls me away from the desk for a cup of coffee, lunch or a drink every once in a while, while still providing work benefits, needs to be practiced with regularity!
• Contests:  I participate in professional contests in which I submit work to be judged.  The value of this is in the evaluation of my work by the judges more than any awards that I might win.  Having said that, it is always nice to be able to bring back awards certificates to the office to show my boss and board that I might know what I am doing!  
• Attend Awards Ceremonies: When I am not able to participate in contests (usually because I missed the deadline), I still try to attend contest award ceremonies.  Many of these programs allow you to view award winners and sometimes take samples.   Talking to winners and reading about their award-winning work shows me how others are addressing challenges and opportunities similar to mine.
• Judge Contests:  Better even than participating in a contest is judging one.  This is better because it allows me to see a variety of projects and forces me to evaluate them.  I have never participated in judging without coming up with at least one great idea which I later "borrowed."
• Read voraciously:  I try to read, or at least scan, material from a lot of different sources. The in-depth perspective you get from a book is different than the overview nature of a magazine article which is different than a blog or internet post.  By trying to expose myself to a variety of sources, I get different ways of looking at issues, different ways at addressing a problem or challenge.  My reading is not limited to books and magazines on marketing and communications related topics.  I strongly suggest that it is more important to read books of other disciplines and broad-based business publications as well as fiction, history, and other non-fiction.  All of these will help you gain a better insight into the workings of the human mind.  Reading outside of your current discipline can also help expand your awareness of issues you are working with, help you develop stronger business empathy and, candidly, be a nice break from dealing with the same topic all day!
• Volunteer:  Volunteering has many advantages.  In addition to being good karma and allowing me to feel the benefit of doing something for others, volunteering helps me get a fresh perspective on my job.  By getting involved in another organization, I can often find a different way of addressing tasks I have to deal with at work.  Whenever possible, I get involved in responsibilities different than those I have at work. When the marketer becomes the Little League treasurer, and the IT head manages the inventory for the homeless shelter, they gain a new perspective and greater insight into how organizations run.  That greater insight helps them do their job more creatively.  

How do you discover new lands and new approaches to your problems and challenges?

The Local Newspaper

There is nothing quite like a local newspaper.  It is a unique information source.  It is a unique community resource.

It is the local newspaper that lets you know about the high school soccer team or the city council debate on zoning law changes.  It is the local newspaper that highlights the local almost-celebrity, tells you about the opening of a new business, and provides you a review of a local theater production.

It is a local reporter who works for a local newspaper that often uncovers a local politician who bends the truth, or the law.  It is that reporter who writes the Freedom of Information Act requests and sits through the city council meetings to ensure that someone is paying attention to the actions of those in power.

It is the local reporter and the local newspaper who hold up the small town heroes, philanthropists, business owners and politicians when they do something extraordinary.  It is that same reporter and newspaper who tell you, sometimes with barely contained disappointment, or rage, when those same people puts their own interests in front of the interest of the public.

Because of these things, I subscribe to several local newspapers.

Because I want to make sure there is someone to sit through the municipal meetings, I subscribe to a local newspaper.

Because I think the fourth estate is a vitally important part of the United States governance structure, I subscribe to a local newspaper.

Virtually every major news story started with a local reporter, somewhere, noticing something and following up on his instincts.  Because I want a strong and active news media and because I feel that local newspapers are more independent and more likely to follow a lead regardless of the implications, I subscribe to local newspapers.

I understand that my subscription fee actually does very little to cover the expenses of publishing the newspapers I read.  BUT, those newspapers sell advertising based on the numbers of readers and subscribers they have.  By subscribing and reading my local newspapers, I am helping them sell advertising and stay alive.

By subscribing and reading local newspapers I am supporting grassroots journalism and community development, community focused media and editorial engagement.  I am supporting an open and informed society.

Not bad for a little bit of newsprint and ink!

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Face to Face

Try as we might, email and Skype will never replace all of our face to face interactions; webinars and conference calls will never be the same as sitting across a table from someone and solving the world’s problems; Facebook and LinkedIn will never take the place of grabbing dinner and drinks with friends.

Don’t get me wrong, conference calls and webinars serve a valuable purpose, but they don’t do a good job of establishing relationships, which is the basis for any successful business or marketing effort.  I have run successful events almost entirely by conference call, but I believe that worked because most of the people on the conference call already knew each other.  We had met many times in face to face meetings and networking opportunities and had worked together before.

What is it about face to face meetings that make them so powerful and important?  There are the obvious benefits.  You can read body language and facial expressions.  The fact that someone took the time to meet in person denotes a value to the meeting.

The real benefits of meeting in person are more subtle.  With apologies to all the online dating sites out there, I think it is nigh impossible to develop a solid relationship entirely online, regardless if the relationship is business-oriented, platonic or otherwise!  There are too many nuances and subtleties that are not a part of communications when you are separated by screens.   

I also think that promises and commitments made in person are more solid and harder to ignore than those made online.  This is especially true if you’ve only known the person online.

I think that there are wonderful tools out there that allow us to improve our productivity, increase our connections and talk to more people for much less investment (in time and resources).  I think these tools are most effective as supplements to existing relationships.  I also think that there will never be technology that truly takes the place of a face to face conversation. 

If only because it’s harder to share an appetizer that way!

Key Communicators are...Key

People talk to people...and those people talk to other people...who talk to others...and so on and so on and so on.

The holy grail of any professional communicator is generating positive word of mouth communications.  We all know that people find messages from their friends and neighbors to be more trustworthy and worthy of consideration than messages from ads or other "professional" communications sources.  Word of mouth messages are seen as trustworthy because they are filtered through the opinion of a disinterested third party.  The thinking is "I trust Becky and if Becky is giving me a message, that message must be trustworthy!"

The challenge, from a professional communicator's point of view, is that the very factor that makes word of mouth so desirable makes it very hard to manage!  To someone who is used to developing style books,  overseeing every comma and semicolon of an organization's communications, and who's mantra is "stay on message," this is difficult to accept.

You may not be able to control the message when it comes to word of mouth communications...but you can influence it!

Developing a key communicator network of key opinion leaders in your community or industry is one way to let the grapevine work for you.  The concept is simple.  You identify those individuals who are opinions leaders within your target audience.  These are the people that other people listen to and believe.  These are not always just the community or industry leaders.  They might be the hairdresser or PTA Mom or the blogger whom everyone listens to in order to find out what's what.

Once you identify who you want to be in your group, you invite them to join.  You tell them that as they are the opinion leaders of the industry or community, your organization will be providing them with extra information on your organization.  The only thing you ask in return is that they participate in some future survey or focus group once or twice a year that allows you to collect THEIR opinions on what people are thinking about regarding issues important to you.

You supply your key communicators with additional information about your company, your issues and/or your industry.  It is important that you provide your key communicators with accurate, realistic data.  Don't try to "spin" your key communicators or you will lose them.  However, if you provide them with real, trustworthy information, on a reliable basis, amazing things can happen.

This works for a few reasons.  First, being recognized as a Key Communicator is an honor to most people.  Better yet it is an honor that comes with few obligations!  Second, you are giving your Key Communicators something that they truly value, access to unique information.  Since they are communicators, they should value being able to share information with their various contacts.  Access to the information you are providing them increases their stature as a communicator.  Third, if you are doing this well, this works because you are not putting any caveats on their access to the information.  You are not even suggesting that they go out and share the information.  You are sharing it with them because you feel that they would find it interesting.

Once again, the frustrating part of this is that you, as a professional communicator, cannot control the message or the flow of information.  You have to just put it out their on faith that it will do your organization good.  And you may never know what good it does, but every once in a while you get confirmation that the process makes sense.

A week or so after my school district celebrated a rare referendum victory, I was talking to a community member who was in my Key Communicator group.  She was congratulating me on the referendum and started talking about how some people in the community had had misunderstandings about the referendum.  She proceeded to tell me about a couple of neighbors who told her why they planned to vote against the school district and then shared the arguments she told them in favor of the school district.  Her arguments, coincidentally were taken almost directly from a referendum fact sheet I had sent our Key Communicators.  This Key Communicator, without even realizing it, had helped promote the district's point of  view.  I became a committed believer in the power of Key Communicators at that moment.

It Takes a Community...To Spread a Message

"Community has little to do with proximity."
                                                                                               Aaron Starkey

Mr. Rogers called it the Neighborhood.  Seth Godin calls it Tribes.  Tribal Africans and US politicians refer to it as a village.  Regardless of what you call it, humans form connections.  We are social animals and will form communities in most of the things we do.

Communities, as Mr. Starkey points out, has little to do with physical proximity.  Rather community, or tribes, teams, neighborhoods or affiliate groups, share a proximity of experience and/or beliefs.  Backyard chicken farmers, retired Marine sergeants, and 1977 graduates of Adlai E. Stevenson High School are all communities for one reason or another.

These communities have many advantages. Among those advantages is that they aid and abet communications.  Communities, because of their shared experiences or beliefs, usually share a language and a lingo of common experience.  This language is often unique to the community.  I can mention "The Big Gun Award" and other 1977 Stevenson High School alums will know what I mean, without explanation.  (If the Marine sergeants think they know too, I guarantee they are thinking of something different!)  This common language helps to speed communication within the community.  Members can talk in a kind of shorthand.

Communities can also help speed up the spread of a message.  And help it to spread beyond where you can take your message personally.  Members of your community already understand your message, the implications of it and its inherent importance.  Since we all belong to many communities, when community members start to share your message, invariably they share it with members of other communities they belong to.  This helps spread your message to others you would not have been able to reach on your own.

Communications are possible without communities.  Your communications are just more effective and have a greater chance of having the desired impact if you are communicating from within a community.  Compare the street corner preacher and the pastor of a church with 1000 people in the pews.  Both have a chance of getting their message to someone within earshot, but who do you think has a better chance of generating a positive response?