Take this simple communication quiz

Following is a simple but not common communication scenario. Please read it, and then submit your answer to how you would handle the situation.

All submissions will go into a drawing for a HUGE, free prize from Ragan (no kidding). You'll find out the prize at the end of this item.

Here is the scenario:

One day, you have a communication brainstorm: Why not have facilities management put up simple, open-ended 'frames' above the urinals in the men's bathrooms, and on the stall doors of the women's' bathrooms, so you can put communication materials there and take advantage of a very captive audience?

So you do it. And for a month it works beautifully.

But them some joker probably, you assume, that pervert son-of-a-bitch Harv Waverly in Sales goes around to all the men's rooms and replaces your communication piece with pictures of nude women from Playboy.

So now, as workers are standing at the urinals taking care of business, they are looking at Nudies instead of your latest advertisement for the United Way campaign.

Well, you can imagine the ensuing productivity and efficiency crisis that sweeps the company. For the first time in the company's history, there are lines to get in the men's bathrooms. And the average bathroom trip has gone from 4.3 minutes up to 12.6 minutes.

Fistfights are breaking out over which urinal people want to use. It's complete chaos.

And to make matters worse, the Gay Male Blue Collar Worker Union (GMBCWU) is furious, and threatening a major lawsuit.

The union (which in reality is made up of only two guys�a driller named Chuck and a pipe fitter named Lewellyn) is charging the company with 'extremely heteronormative' behavior.

(Note to readers: This is a real new word. According to the Chicago Sun Times: 'Jada Pinkett Smith, who, while accepting an entertainment award at Harvard University, offered a few thoughts on how relationships between men and women can be improved, has been condemned by the Harvard Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Supporters Alliance and the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relationships for subjecting her audience to remarks that were 'extremely heteronormative.'' Just so you know I'm not making this stuff up.)

Obviously, since you put the frames on the walls in the first place, you're in trouble.

What would you do? I'd like to hear your original options, but here are some to get you started:

1. Admit that you can't keep up with the perverts in the organization, and take the damn frames down.

2. Start putting nudie pictures in your other communication vehicles, to build readership.

3. Take Harv Waverly out to a long liquid lunch, so Security can search his computer files. If they find what you know they'll find, you'll have a nice little scapegoat on your hands.

4. Replace the easy-to-tamper-with frames with the glass-covered kind, under the theory that even the most diehard perverts would be embarrassed to bring tools into the bathroom just to post some porn.

What suggestions do you have for this interesting communication scenario?

And if you play, here's what you can win!!

One free(!) registration to Ragan's Employee Engagement Summit, which is being held in New York City on May 18-20. It's going to be an excellent conference�with dozens of heavy hitters speaking on the hottest topic in our field.

Note to readers: This price tag on this conference is $1,500. So when you go to your boss and tell him that you won a $1,500 conference, there will be no question but that the company will pay your expenses to attend, I would think.

And then you are in New York City! At that point, it doesn't matter if you go to the conference. You should, because it's going to be a great one. Or, you can do what I do half the time I go to a conference in New York City: Pick up the materials from the conference and put them in my suitcase . . . then criss-cross the city, hitting museums, Broadway shows, Central Park, etc. . . . until I end up stumbling around The Village, listening to live music.

Submit your entry in the Comments section. We'll run the contest for about a week.

Have you heard about the new TV show Fox is planning? In a world of lousy reality TV, this is real good news.

It's called 'Real American Idol,' and it will follow the same premise as 'American Idol.'

But the difference is, instead of wannabe pop singers, the show will feature scientists, inner-school teachers, cancer researchers, writers, and social workers, who will each get a chance to convince the audience that what they do is worthy of being idolized.

'We just thought that rather than 'idolizing' teeny boppers and half-good singers, maybe this country should instead idolize the people who really matter,' said Fox Chief of Programming Charley Blind, in a news release. 'It's about time America turned away from sports stars, fake celebrities like Paris Hilton, and bored, horny housewives, and started paying attention to the people who are working their hardest to make this country—and this world—a better place.'

Blind also said that Fox is 'going to keep this show up and running, even if it doesn't get any ratings, because we believe this is an important message to send. It doesn't always have to be about high ratings and big advertising dollars.'

Huh? Whassup . . .what? Oh, sorry, I fell asleep for a second there at my computer and had this wonderful dream . . . .

Why do we continue to waste our executives' time?

Sometimes I have to wonder if communicators realize what an honor it is to get time with a top executive. Because it seems to me that, while communicators love to complain about a lack of access to company leadership, too often when they do get that access, they waste it.

One great example of this that I see time and time again is the 'New Leader Interview,' where a corporate editor welcomes a new senior executive to the company by running a Q&A interview with him. The problem is, 90 percent of 'New Leader Interview' stories I see are pure fluff.

In my recent Ragan Report front-page column, I wrote about one of these puff pieces. The 'interview' (and I use that word very lightly) is in a global energy company's publication, and it is welcoming a man who is taking over the presidency of the company's South American operations.

The editor somehow got on the new executive's schedule, and then wasted his time with the following questions. These appear in the exact order they appeared in the article; my comments appear in italics:

What did you want to be when you were 10 years old?
Huh? Who the hell cares? An informal poll of people I know revealed that, when we were 10 years old, we wanted to be cowboys, spacemen, ballerinas, spies, and baseball players. But what the hell does that have to do with the price of beef in South America? In case you were wondering, Mr. Executive said he wanted to be a diplomat. Really? At the age of 10 he knew that? He knew what a diplomat even was? He's either a liar, or he has been an ass kisser his entire life.

What are your hobbies?
Here's a rule of thumb: Hobbies, unless they are your own, are boring to other people. Especially the hobbies of tight-assed executives who have wanted to be 'diplomats' since they were 10 years old. And sure enough, this guy's hobbies would put an insomniac to sleep: 'I used to play soccer, not very well, and swim. In fact, I participated in college in some swimming competitions but performed better as a student.' Whoooeeeee! You've met this guy before. We all have. In grammar school, he was the kid in the back of the room eating paste and constantly sniffing his fingers.

What is your favorite dessert?
I am not making this up. I wish I was. And you're not going to believe his answer: 'My favorite dessert is plain vanilla ice cream.' Well of course it is. A professional screenwriter could not create a more boring person than this man. But you know what? He's probably not that boring when he talks about what he's good at—his business. But they don't ask him about that.

What is your favorite time of day?
How could this answer ever possibly be interesting to readers? Do you think the new executive is going to say, 'About nine o'clock at night, when my wife breaks out the cocaine and the Taiwanese swinging basket.' Probably not. And you'll never guess what Mr. Excitement really does say: 'I like the early morning time.' Big surprise.

Please please please: For the sake of the communication industry, if you do land time with a major executive, don't drag our entire industry down by asking these kinds of garbage questions.

Ask him about the business: what he thinks of it, how he plans to run it, what he expects from his employees, and what he sees coming up in the future.

Every good writer knows that you should write in the active voice. It's punchier and a hell of a lot more powerful.

(If you doubt that, try this experiment: The next time you are making love to your mate, look deep into his or her eyes, and say: 'You are so loved by me.' It won't have the same effect as 'I love you so much.')

At the airport yesterday, however, I heard a very interesting use of the active voice. And I'm not sure it was a good use, either.

I was walking by a very crowded gate that was jammed with very angry looking people, when the airline employee who was manning (it was a woman, actually, so I guess she was personning) the counter made an announcement:

'Ladies and Gentleman, we have just been informed that United Airlines flight 683 to Charlotte has cancelled.'

Now, isn't that an interesting choice of words? There are a couple of ways you could make that announcement:

1. The passive voice: 'United Airlines flight 683 to Charlotte has been cancelled.'

2. The strong active voice: 'United Airlines has cancelled flight 683 to Charlotte.'

3. Or the sissy-ass, cop-out, active-voice-but-not-really option: 'United Airlines flight 683 to Charlotte has canceled.'

It's no mystery why they chose option three. Taking the best option—option two—would tell people that the airline canceled the flight. And we can't have that, right? People might get upset at the airline.

And option number one, besides being passive, could also lead people to believe that it was the airline that cancelled the flight. I mean, someone had to cancel the flight, right?

Ah . . . . but option number 3 . . . what a Godsend.

In the small minds of corporate marketing people who make these decisions (and you better believe that the language in this announcement has been focus grouped and analyzed to death), is perfect.

You can't blame the airline. It didn't cancel anything. The flight canceled. It canceled itself. The damn thing. The flight is to blame. It was flight suicide. And how can you hold United Airlines accountable for that?

Enough with the Martha conspiracies, now

Can we finally dispense with the notion that Martha Stewart was targeted because she was a powerful woman?

Remember back when she was charged? It happened right about the same time the Enron and WorldCom scandals were unfolding, and I must have heard and/or read this sentence 1,000 times:

'They're going after Martha Stewart because she's a powerful woman, but if you're in the old boys network like Bernie Ebbers or Ken Lay, you can get away with anything.'

Remember that? Well, it was nonsense then, and it is proven to be nonsense now.
Martha Stewart committed a relatively small crime (and it was crime, let's not forget), did a couple of months in a country club prison, and immediately picked up where she left off, running her very successful company that made her a lot of money when she was in the pokey.

Ebbers, on the other hand, committed a major crime . . . and was stripped of everything he owned and will spend the rest of his life in prison. And, if you believe the legal analysts, Lay is in for the same kind of thing.

Sometimes, the system really does work.

Talk about your highs and lows of being a blogger.

Someone sent me a link to a blog, that mentions me. Here's how the other blogger starts his item:

'I am reading Steve Crescenzo's blog. Steve's blog just got my aggregator. Steve is posting a question, 'Are you network worthy?''

He then goes on to talk about my post in a very intelligent fashion . . .which I thought was pretty damn cool.

So of course I went back to the item later on, to see if it sparked a good discussion. I mean, when an item you wrote can spark discussion on someone else's blog, that's probably the ultimate compliment for a blogger.

And sure enough, there was a comment in the comment section!! Happy Day!! Hurray for Steve, the champion blogger who is generating debate and intelligent conversation all over the blogosphere!! Drinks are on me!

And then I read the comment. Here it is, in its entirety:

'Our penis enlargement specialists has conducted extensive research of a number of different penis enlargement techniques, penis enlargement pills and natural penis enlargement programs. Our goal is to find sensible and sustainable ways for enlarge your penis based on a long-term basis. webmaster@penis-enlargement-methods.net.'

Now I'm all nervous that there's some sort of 'spider' or 'aggregator' or 'RSS thingamagiggy' that is forever going to link 'Steve Crescenzo's Blog' with 'direct-mail opportunity for penis enlargement pills' and those ads are going to start popping up (no pun intended) whenever my name appears on the Web.

You may not know this, but Ragan Communications has launched some message boards. It's a place where communicators can ask questions, commiserate with colleagues, and argue with people if they want to.

It's going great so far . . . there's been some good give and takes, and quite a few people are posting comments and questions.

There was one woman I felt sorry for, though. She works for a large supermarket chain, and a good percentage of her workforce is made up of part-time, younger workers. She's getting frustrated trying to communicate to these employees the company's key messages, overall business objectives, future plans, etc.

She is even considering putting all that information to music and making a hip hop video, to make it more relevant to that audience.

I'm afraid my advice to her was rather depressing. I told her that she should probably just write that segment of the audience off, as far as trying to get them to embrace the company's values/goals/future plans, etc.

I'm basing it on personal experience. When I was 19, I was working part-time at Wendy's. And I'll tell you right now, if any pimply-faced manager tried to get me to even read Wendy's corporate goals, let alone embrace them, I would have laughed in his face.

Future objectives? Business strategy? Yeah, right. My biggest fear at the time was that in two years, I would still be working at Wendy's. My only concerns at the time were making enough money to pay my car insurance, and scoring dope off the black dude who ran the grill. And trying to get someone to have sex with me.

And everybody I worked with felt the same way.

And I'm sure most of the kids at that grocery-store chain feel the same way. They're not real employees. They're just biding time until they figure out what to do with the rest of their lives. (Never mind that some of them will be with the company the rest of their lives; in their minds, this is a temporary situation.)

Not to say you can't communicate with these folks. But you can probably forget about that big picture stuff. Tell them what you expect of them, let them know what the company can do for them, provide career choices for those few who want them, and call it a day.

Am I wrong? Does anyone disagree? Better yet, has anyone had success communicating with this kind of transient audience?

Okay, the time is here. It's time to announce the winner of the free Ragan conference registration. Thanks to all of you wonderful people who contributed to the discussion on whether or not to put company materials above the urinals and in the stalls of the employee bathrooms.

I went through and wrote down the name of everyone who participated, and have just now put all those names into a hat. My five-year-old son, Zach, will be doing the drawing.

(For those who didn't get the press release, Zach is the new official Director of Human Resources at Crescenzo Communications. He received this major promotion two days ago; we were driving in the car and he said, 'Dad, you should take more days off during the week so we can do cool stuff in the city when it's not so crowded.' Damn, I thought to myself, I like the way this kid thinks about benefits. Thus the promotion.

His first decision was to give all Crescenzo Communications employees 85 personal days a year. He also thinks we should hold more meetings at Wrigley Field, and follow the European model of three-hour lunches and taking the entire summer off. Please don't try to hire him away from me.)

Okay, here we go . . . a drum roll please . . . the winner is . . . wait a minute, my HR director asked if we could postpone the meeting until SpongeBob is over. Since SpongeBob is how we handle diversity training here at Crescenzo Communications (SpongeBob, in case you've never seen the show, is most certainly a homosexual sponge), we have to wait eight minutes.

Okay! Here we go. There are 26 names in the hat. And the winner is . . . . . Rick!! I only know Rick's first name, but here was the first part of his post:

'Well I too am a first time poster and Steve Neruda draftee. I am also an employee of Monique (I'm the one who makes certain that her low tech ways can exist in this high tech company).'

Rick also mentioned a 'liquid lunch' in his post, so he is obviously a worthy winner.

Rick, can you e-mail me so we can sort out the details?

If Rick doesn't get back to me in a couple of weeks, or if he for some reason cannot fulfill the duties of his post, I will select another winner. Thank you for participating.

Have a great weekend . . . I'll be posting from Washington, D.C. on Monday.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, but I've been on a top-secret assignment for the Army.

No, seriously. I'm working on a communication audit for the Army Research Laboratory, the group that develops weapons and other war materials for the Army. I spent all week on two different Army bases, where the first thing they do when you register to get inside is confiscate your computer and your cell phone.

'Why my cell phone?' I asked the man with the big gun who took it from me.

'Because it can take pictures,' he said.

'But I've never taken a picture with it,' I tried to explain. 'I don't even know how to change the damn ring tune, let alone take and send a picture. I can't even figure out how to send a text message. It's just like a regular phone to me.'

That argument didn't work, so as I moved around the base, interviewing former generals and doing focus groups with employees, I was completely out of touch for the first time in maybe five years. It felt nice . . . but weird.

Speaking of this project, by the way: You think YOU have communication challenges? The communicators at the Army Research Lab got you beat. Guaranteed. First, their employees are spread out around nine different sites around the country. And of course each site is like it's own little world, with its own cultures, needs, and wants. Second, on those sites, employees are divided into different 'directorates' so that the silos have silos.

Third, they can't talk about approximately 70 percent of what they do—because it's classified. Fourth, they've got a weird combination of scientists, Ph.D.s, and ex-military people in charge, which makes for an odd corporate culture.

And finally, they've got more acronyms than a can of alphabet soup. Job titles are acronyms. Product programs are acronyms. The various and numerous levels of hierarchy in the organization are acronyms. Paperwork and forms are assigned acronyms. The different bases and facilities are acronyms. In fact, everything is an acronym.

'I've been here 12 years, and I still don't know half the acronyms,' one employee told me. 'And as soon as you learn one, they change it.'

Talk about a tough communication environment.