Have you ever been bullied by a designer?

I ask this question after I had an interesting conversation during one of the breaks in my New York seminar last week. I just finished a rant about design gimmicks that make it harder for the reader to get through the publication, and called for a 15-minute break, when I was approached by an attendee.

'My designer does all the things you just showed,' she said. 'She tilts text, shades boxes to the point where it's hard to read the words . . . she even does that thing where instead of doing a line break and indenting for a new paragraph, she just puts a paragraph symbol there and keeps going on the same line.'

'Can you get her to stop?' I asked.

'No,' said the attendee. 'I've tried, but she's very stubborn, and has been with the company longer than me. We're on the same level, so she thinks she has control over the publication.'

I have to admit, I was stumped. Other than going above the designer's head—which in this case wasn't an option because the designer was best pals with the director—I had no advice for this woman.

Do you?

Not that there's anything wrong with that . . .

Two weeks ago, in Los Angeles, I fell in love with a man. As a straight guy, that is not an easy sentence to write (which is why it took me two weeks to write it).

But, I decided that if I'm going to do a blog, damn it, then I'm going to do an honest blog.

So there you have it: I'm in love with a man. And I'm not talking about some harmless, non-sexual crush, like the one I've had on Paul Newman ever since I first saw Cool Hand Luke.

I'm talking about snuggling under a down comforter on a rainy Sunday morning while sipping mimosas and working on The New York Times crossword puzzle.

I guess I better tell you the story.

I met this fellow at an in-house seminar for a health care company. I was there to do some training on how to write for the intranet. At the opening networking session, I was talking to a group of employees, when he walked up.

He was nice looking enough, I guess. In a Greek God sort of way. But I didn't even notice his looks. What I did notice was his personality. He was charming and outgoing and funny, and the force of his intellect was overpowering.

'So,' I asked him, 'what do you do for the company?'

'I'm the director of IT,' he said.

I almost dropped my drink. I couldn't speak. How could this charming, sophisticated man be an IT guy? Where were the telltale stains on his pants, from when he got overexcited about a new software application and couldn't hold his bladder? Where was the ever-present sneer? Where was the condescending attitude?

'Oh,' I said, just to be saying something. 'What's your background?'

'I'm actually a medical doctor by trade,' he said. 'So that really helps me run the IT department here.'

Oh. My. God. A medical doctor and an IT person. With a great personality and a sense of humor. I felt my world start to slip away.

'So what are you going to talk to the group about tomorrow?' he asked me.

'I'm here to teach people how to write for online media,' I managed to stutter.

'Oh, that's great,' he said. 'We need it. The folks around here love to write lengthy e-mails, and long online stories. They need to learn how to write shorter and tighter.'

'Exactly,' I said. 'That's one of my key messages—that it's hard to write short. One of my favorite quotes . . .' I started to say.

'Is by Mark Twain, right?' he finished. 'I apologize for the length of this letter, but I didn't have time to write a shorter one.'

Oh. My. God. Again. Here's a charming guy who can heal me when I'm sick, trade Mark Twain quotes with me on the fly and fix my computer. I guess love really is a many splendored thing.

Before I made a fool of myself, I stumbled over to the woman who had hired me, and mumbled something like 'True . . .true . . . is it true . . .doctor . . .Mark Twain . . . IT guy . . .'.

'Oh,' she said immediately. 'You've met Anthony, our IT guy. His mind works in ways that are just impossible to try and understand.'

Oh, but I do understand. Because since I met him, my mind has been working in ways I don't completely understand. And because of him, I'm never going to make fun of haughty, bedwetting, nose-dripping IT nerds again. Never. Ever.

It wouldn't be fair to my Anthony.

Guess whose bare bottom that is!

Interesting news comes out of England today. It seems that, according to the London Sun, security cameras at British Petroleum headquarters in London have been catching increasing numbers of employees having sex in the workplace.

We always knew those Brits were a quietly randy bunch, like the Canadians, but we had no idea this sort of thing was going on over there! Good for them!

It seems the cameras have caught people in meeting rooms, behind file cabinets . . . and in the bathroom.

But no, in case you're wondering, they do not have cameras in the toilet. Here's how a BP spokesperson explained it:

'When a male and a female enter the ladies' loos and then come out again 15 minutes later looking rather flushed in the face, it can be quite easy to guess what's been going on.'

Yes, quite.

This gives me an idea for your employee publication. You know how some ding-dong editors run pictures of executives, when they were babies, with the headline, 'Guess who this is?' And the employees are supposed to figure out which executive is which baby?

Well, that's real boring.

BP editors should run pictures of the copulating couples, with the faces blurred out, and the caption: 'File this: Guess who we caught behind the file cabinet?'

Tell me that wouldn't bring some readers in.

Should communicators stay out of the break rooms?

I know a lot of communicators who rely on employee break rooms as a place to put their publications and other company messages. At companies where the employees don't have a mailbox, or a desk, or access to the intranet or e-mail, the break room is really the only option the communicators have.

But I just took part in a discussion that calls that strategy into question. I was doing some consulting for a restaurant company, and as a part of that work we called in a bunch of employees to talk to them about how they wanted to receive company information.

One of the options the communicators at the company were considering was the installation of closed-circuit TVs in all the break rooms. Important company news could then be run on a continuous loop.

That seemed like a no-brainer to me, if they wanted to spend the dough (although my advice was to save that money and instead buy some old-fashioned cork-board bulletins; they tend to work better than technology, TV, intranet kiosks, and other more expensive options, I've found).

Well, the communicator ran the 'TV in the break room' idea by the employees—and they hated it. They absolutely hated it.

'When I go in that break room, I'm on break,' said one. 'I don't want to spend my break catching up on company news.'

'Keep all that company stuff out of the break room,' agreed another employee. 'We're in there to get away from work, not get hit in the face with it.'

Again and again, employees spoke up to keep the TVs out of the break room.

Which is fine. I understand their point. But from the sound of it, they didn't want any company information in there—including a bulletin board, a print publication, or anything else.

My question to you is, should we stay out of the break rooms? Or do we tell employees, 'tough rocks, we need to get you this information and this is our only option.'

Anybody?

Do you fake deadlines?

I ask that question after an interesting conversation I had with an editor at one of my seminars last week. There were three of us having drinks, and one of them was complaining about her design department.

'They tell me they need three weeks of design time to do a four-page publication,' she said. 'I know they can do it in a day, but they just won't.'

That's when the other communicator chimed in.

'Oh, you have to give them fake deadlines,' she said. 'I give everybody fake deadlines. Sources, vendors, executives . . . I lie to everyone about when I need stuff by, or when their stuff is due. I don't think I've given someone a real deadline in five years.'

I agree that fake deadlines are a terrific way to manage the editorial process. I would go so far as to say it's a good idea to create a bogus editorial calendar that you can mail to people, too.

My question is, how many editors out there use this terrific tactic?

One more note about fake deadlines, from a communicator that uses them all the time:

'The best thing about fake deadlines is that when you allow people to break them, when you give them 'a little more time,' they feel so special,' she said. 'They feel like they owe you a favor . . . when in reality, even if you give them an extra week, you'll still get the copy a week before you needed it!'

Preaching to people outside the choir

I'm going to the show. The big dance. I'm about to do something that I've wanted to do my entire career: I'm going to speak to a roomful of executives, company leaders and managers about the power of employee communication.

Now, I've spoken to executives before. I've done executive interviews as part of an audit, and I've presented the results of a communication audit to company leaders.
But this is different. For this presentation, I get one hour to convince the executives of a major health-care company to embrace the power of communication as the organization goes through some massive changes.

I'm so used to preaching to the choir in my seminars. Telling communicators how powerful communications is like telling fat people how good food is. (I can write that without it being offensive because I'm fat. Just like how black rap stars can use the 'N' word).

This is different. The communicators at this company were in my Strategic Employee Communication Vehicles seminar in Chicago last month, so they're already on board. Now they want me to convince the executives—including the CEO, who will be in the audience.

Nervous? Well, sure. Scared? Yes indeedy. I figure one of two things will happen. The scales will come off their eyes as they see what some of the best communicators in the world are doing to change behavior at their organizations. Or they'll use my hour of the agenda to catch up on their e-mail via their blackberry thingies. Let's hope it's the former.

Check this space on Thursday for a write-up of how it all goes.

Last Wednesday, I went down to a health care company in Texas to talk to160 of its senior-level executives, directors and managers. My job: to convince them of the power of strategic employee communication.

(I know, I know. I promised to post some notes from the meeting on Thursday morning. But immediately after my speech, I got waylaid by a bunch of crazy Texans, and they shanghaied me to the bar. Before I knew it, Wednesday night had become Thursday morning, I was already late for my flight, I owed my editor at Ragan two stories that were already a day late, and I had killed so many brain cells the night before that I couldn't figure out how to make the damn high-speed Internet access connection thingie in the hotel room work. I had a serious case of NTTB: No Time To Blog. Sorry.)

Anyway, back to the Texas meeting.

In the sober light of day on Sunday, I have to say the speech went pretty well. However, it was a little unnerving, because not everybody in the audience was into it.

See, I'm used to speaking to communicators, and they are almost always into what I'm saying. But in this audience of 160 non-communicators, not everyone was into it. In fact, there were exactly 37 people who had absolutely no interest in what I was saying.

How do I know? Because I'm tremendously insecure, and I crave audience reaction like a crack addict craves the pipe . . . and I know those 37 people just weren't paying attention. How could I tell? Because when you're a speaker, you know that certain lines are going to get a laugh. You know this because they have gotten a laugh the last 247 times you have said them, in a row. Without fail. Because they're funny.

So every time I would hit one of those lines, I would check the people I didn't think were paying attention . . . and sure enough, each time I got nothing. Not a smile, not a chuckle, not a lifting of a lip. So I know they weren't paying attention.

Either that, or they were paying attention, but they hated me and didn't believe a word I was saying. One white-haired woman with a lavender purse who sat in the sixth seat in the seventh aisle on the left-hand side of the room scowled at me throughout the entire presentation. I mean, she scowled. Non-stop. I found out later that she was in HR.

Either way, those 37 people didn't hear the message.

Now, for that kind of group, I guess 123 out of 160 is not a bad percentage. And, to be honest, what I really cared about was quality, not quantity. It wouldn't kill me if Mitch the Middle Manager wanted to use that time to plot out his fantasy football lineup for the weekend. I mean, I'd rather that Mitch paid attention to me, but I can't control the world. What really mattered to me was the corner office. I wanted to make sure I was connecting with the senior-level people in the crowd. Because those folks can put the hammer down on people like Mitch, and hold him accountable for communicating.

And I think I did connect with those senior-level people. No . . . check that. I know I connected with them. I can say that because at least a half a dozen of them came up to me after the speech (or at the cocktail party that night) to tell me they agreed with everything I was saying. I'm talking about people like the Chief Operating Officer, and others at her level.

They told me that they couldn't agree with me more: that the company needed to be more honest with employees; that the company needed to do a better job of making sure information—both good and bad—flowed throughout the organization; that the company needed to do a better job of treating employees like adults and trusting them to handle bad news; and that the company, by not taking advantage of strategic communication, was losing an opportunity to turn employees into ambassadors in their communities.

Now, you might be thinking they were just yanking my chain. But they weren't. How do I know? Because people at that level don't play those kinds of games. They don't have to kiss my sorry ass. If they weren't into what I was saying, they would have left the session; or not showed up at all; or ignored me afterwards; or told me I just wasted their time.

They wouldn't have made an effort to come up to me and spend 15 minutes talking about communication. Not when there were 50 other people in the room that they could be connecting with. No way.

Which all goes to prove a theory that I (and, I'm sure, others) have been saying for a long time: When information doesn't flow at a company, it's often (usually?) not the fault of the senior-level people in the organization. Those people are smart people. And when you're smart, you usually see the power of communication.

No, the information flow usually stops at the middle-manager level—those people who are trying so desperately hard to protect their pathetic little fiefdoms. Those people who think information is power, and who work hard to keep it from flowing past them to the lower levels of the organization.

I call them Bottleneckers. They are the people who act as bottlenecks and stop the flow of information. Those 37 people who tuned me out as soon as they saw the 'C' word—communication—on the agenda? Bottleneckers, every single one of them. Bottleneckers who need to be broken.

I ran my theory by one of the very senior-level people who stopped by to chat with me at the cocktail party (and asked me for a copy of my presentation!).

He agreed 100 percent. 'I'll tell you right now,' he said. 'We [meaning the executive level people] may not proactively think about communication as much as we should. But neither do we make any active effort to thwart it or stop it. I think managers further down the organization do make an effort to thwart it, because they are threatened by it.'

That is my theory. But I want to hear from you folks. Do you agree? Do you think the people at the top understand communication, and would be happy to do a better job of it, if only we could ever get to them and show them the way?

And do you have Bottleneckers at your company? People you just can't pry information out of, and who stop the flow of information every chance they get? Let me know . . . I'd love to get a discussion going on this.

On the road again . . .

Why you should always over-tip airport bartenders

I'm on the road again, teaching the Strategic Employee Communication Vehicles seminar in Atlanta, then heading to Portland, Maine and Columbus, Ohio to do in-house seminars.

Do you know what the worst part about traveling is? No, it's not that every trip is another chance to die in a flaming plane crash. No, it's not the completely incompetent airport 'security' people who I wouldn't trust to run the fry machine at Burger King. And no, it's not being so drunk when you get off the plane that you check into the wrong hotel and don't realize you're in the wrong hotel until the next morning, when you go down to teach a seminar that isn't there.

Okay, that last one comes close. That was a hell of a morning.

But no, the worst thing about business travel is the people I call the Airport Barflies. These people are usually salespeople. And they are usually drunk. And they are always LOUD. I mean, really loud. And they spend so much time in airport bars that they think they own them. (They don't. I own them. But I'm a quiet owner.)

Flying out of Chicago on Monday, there were a couple of Classic Barflies in the O'Hare airport bar. These two arrested development types were hitting on anything with long hair, harassing the bartender about making stronger drinks; and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

It was almost enough to make me have a fourth martini.

Then, when they were leaving, the one loud guy said to the bartender, in a voice that could be heard in the next terminal:

'Hey, I told you we'd be on a first name basis before we left, huh? Right? Right? We're not bad drinkers, are we? Are we? Right?'

Yes, I wanted to say to the jerk. You are a bad drinker. In fact, you are the poster boy for bad drinkers.

What I did say, I said to the bartender after they left.

'I bet you get on a first name basis with a lot of those guys, huh? First name jag, last name off?'

He just smiled. Airport bartenders have a special place reserved for them in heaven.

This headline grabbed me . . .

As an editor for Ragan, I go through a couple of dozen publications a week, looking for stories. (By the way, if you're reading this and Ragan is not on your mailing list, can you put us on there? Ragan editors are constantly fighting each other for 'pubs'—hiding the best ones when they come in, rifling through each other's desks, and flat-out stealing piles of publications and taking them home. Well, I guess I should say that I do all that stuff . . . I'm not sure if anyone else does).

And as I wade through these pubs, I see a lot of crappy headlines: Synergy! Challenges and Opportunities! Senior Management Team Meets Offsite!

But every once in a while, a headline will really jump out and slap me in the face. I was reading a pretty good waste-management company's publication last night after the seminar in Atlanta, when this headline jumped off the page at me:

The Sweet Smell of Special Waste

That baby just defies the reader to ignore it, doesn't it? The sweet smell of special waste, indeed. It reminds me of an old college roommate, who was convinced that his waste was, in fact, special. And that it did, in fact, smell of roses and lilacs. It most certainly did not, but you couldn't tell him that.

For the record, the story (of course I read it, wouldn't you?) was about non-human waste, obviously. Here was a quote:

'Chanel No. 5, ThermaSilk shampoo, and marijuana are all part of [the company's] special waste mix.'

'Special waste' is waste that is 'too dangerous or too sensitive' to go into a standard landfill, according to the story.

Of course, that line begs an obvious question, doesn't it? Who the hell is throwing out perfectly good reefer?

Recognition . . . or humiliation?

I was out in Portland, Maine last week, doing a short in-house seminar on intranets for a Belgium holding company that owns a bunch of supermarket chains in the northeast part of the country.

When I walked into the reception area, there were three receptionists there, all working closely together. My client wasn't quite ready for me, so I had a chance to look at all the corporate stuff on the walls—posters, mission statements, values statements, corporate vision . . . you know all the regular stuff.

There was also a poster of three women on the wall that I barely glanced at. But something about it nagged at me . . . like I had seen it before. So I walked over and gave it a careful look.

The caption said, 'Our receptionists are world class.' And it was a photo of the three women at the desk! With complimentary quotes from customers. This wasn't some low-rent poster, either. It was a professional-quality marketing poster.

I thought that was pretty cool . . . and I mentioned it to the women.

'Hey,' I said. 'That's you guys! You're like celebrities!'

'Oh, God,' one of them moaned.

'I wish they would take that stupid thing down,' said another.

They hated the poster!! Which I found ironic. I'm sure the Powers That Be thought they were recognizing superior performance and giving the receptionists a nice shot in the arm. And they hated it!

Which leads me to ask the question: How many times are we inadvertently embarrassing employees when we try to call attention to them?

What irritates you about the Web?

We all surf the Internet, right? We surf it for business, for fun, for pleasure, for information . . . for all kinds of reasons.

So . . . what irritates you the most about the Internet? What do certain Web sites do that really bug the holy living hell out of you? I'm going to compile a report, titled: '100 Things That Irritate Web Users More Than Anything Else,' and would love to include your input. (That is a working title, obviously, because upon reading it again just now, I realize that it really sucks).

But let me hear from you. What bugs you the most about the Internet? Tiny type? Horizontal scrolls? Inconsistent navigation? Overblown flash?

And . . . if you have any examples that we can use, that would be even better!