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You have to prove yourself before management will trust you.
I'm reading an interesting book right now . . . and it made me think about employee communications. (One of the many, many horrible things about being me is that almost everything makes me think about employee communications).
Specifically, it made me think about the whole 'fluff versus no fluff' debate, which was raging for a while in my previous post.
I don't want to tell you the name of the book or the author . . .yet. But here are the first two lines of the book:
'It has been reported that Tanuki fell from the sky using his scrotum as a parachute. That is not so ridiculous when we take into account the unusual size of Tanuki's scrotum.'
Now, pretend that you are a publisher, or a literary agent. And that is the first line of a 250-page manuscript by a completely unknown author. You read the line, but—while it may have caught your interest (it certainly caught mine)—would you be willing to risk your firm's money and put your reputation on the line for this unknown author who writes such crazy things?
Not sure? Okay, if you were to keep reading, you would learn that Tanuki is a God from The Cloud Fortress—and that he is a fat, horny, badger-like animal that loves to seduce young women. After scrotumchuting to earth, he immediately goes after a farm girl who is standing by a well. Here, the author describes the action:
'At first, the daughter at the well seemed prepared to accept Tanuki's invitation to lie down with him. She was a farm girl, after all, and the mating activities of animals were as familiar to her as the sprouting of rice or the ripening of plums. Likewise, bestiality was not unknown to her, for she had brothers, cousins, and young male neighbors who, from time to time, were prone to so indulge.
'If we seldom if ever hear of girls participating in such sordid practices, it's certainly not because rural girls are any less lustful than their masculine counterparts. Perhaps it's due, rather, to the universal girlish character, which is cleaner, more restrained, sensitive, and finer-grained than that of the hopelessly coarse adolescent male. Or, it may only be a matter of logistics: it's one thing for a hormone-racked boy to mount a ewe, but a maid presenting herself to a ram is so awkward an enterprise as to be nearly unthinkable. It would test the girl's ingenuity and probably confuse the ram.'
Okay, you're the publisher. Or the agent. In the first five pages of this manuscript, you have a crazy badger with a massive scrotum falling out of the sky and young farm girls engaging in bestiality with said badger.
Do you publish? Do you take the chance? With an unknown author?
Of course not! But you know what? The author in question is Tom Robbins, and the book is the New York Times best-seller Villa Incognito. Robbins—like Kurt Vonnegut before him—gets to publish just about any crazy thing he wants to, because he has earned his reputation. He sells books. He has an audience.
There's no way a rookie, unproven, unpublished author gets this manuscript published today.
And what, you're wondering, do oversized scrotums and badger-humping farm maids have to do with employee communications? Well, you're probably not the first one to ask that question.
But here's the link: It all comes down to reputation. Publishers don't take chances on unproven authors. Management doesn't take chances on unproven communicators.
And if you are busy running service anniversaries and hobby stories, you're burying yourself. And when you go to management and tell them you want to write a story explaining the company's finances, say, or a complicated new-product roll-out, they're not going to let you.
BUT . . . if you build the right reputation . . . if you create a body of work that shows what communication can do to help the organization . . . if you prove yourself to management again and again—like Robbins has done with his publisher—then you can have the same kind of carte blanche with your management that Robbins has with his publisher.
Here's the bottom line:
A communicator who publishes a lot of fluff in his publication has as much chance of being taken seriously by management as an unpublished, unknown author has of selling a book about big-balled badgers bumping bellies with buxom farm girls.
P.S. Thank God Robbins does get to publish whatever he wants, because the man is just a terrific writer. Here's how he describes the birth of the child that was the result of Tanuki sleeping with the peasant woman, Miho:
'The baby rode in on a sweet summer wind. Miho squatted, animal style, on a bamboo mat and gave birth with scarcely a pang. Describing it later, she made it sound as if, following an hour or two of pressure in her lower abdomen, a big quivering blob of plum jelly had suddenly shot out of her to slide down her thighs. Slick, wet, and tickling. Like a tadpole winnowing out of a cocktail straw.'
Like a tadpole winnowing out of a cocktail straw . . . boy, I wish I could come up with stuff like that.
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Feels like Total Recall. Er, Philip K Dick?
Actually, with Steve's example it's a bit scary --- standing at the urinal...
Comments (12)
Well. Can't decide which visual to carry with me for the afternoon.
And I see your point about getting them to take you seriously. If only it involved less writing about Six Sigma.
Posted by Meredith | May 10, 2005 12:04 PM
Posted on May 10, 2005 12:04
Carmen, Mark--
If you work in organizations where it feels like management and employees are truly on the same side, that's great and you should never, ever leave. I think you'll also accept that there are many organizations where management's interests and employees interests do not always intersect.
Egregious recent examples like Tyco, Enron, WorldComm aside, there are many, many--I don't want to say most but I will--organizations where top management is more or less out of touch with employees, preoccupied with many issues besides employees' well-being, and not easily persuaded that treating or paying employees better will result in higher profits in the long run.
In those organizations, communicators have long served as good go-betweens to make sure management hears employees' voices and employees understand management's perspective. To be a go-between, one must be an independent agent and not ALWAYS assume that "we're all in it together" all the time.
And every once in a while, that means the communicator does something that management, with its limited perspective and limited interest in the rank and file, doesn't understand the utility of doing.
Posted by David Murray | May 11, 2005 10:29 AM
Posted on May 11, 2005 10:29
DATE: 05/10/2005 11:11:1P AM
Steve:
EWWWWW. GROSS. I am not a fan of Tom Robbins, obviously. And I now have no desire to ever give birth after reading that description of it!!!!
But you are right about the proving yourself to management stuff.
Sonya
Posted by Sonya | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/10/2005 12:22:5P PM
Dear Steve:
Like a tadpole winnowing out of a cocktail straw.
If you had ever actually GIVEN birth, you would never have found that line engaging. I would have welcomed a tadpole at one point!
For the record, I believe this is your most disgusting post yet. I must have said, "Oh, sick!" at least four times aloud.
You really need new reading material.
Posted by Eileen | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/10/2005 13:72:9P PM
I think the thing that bothered me in the fluff vs no fluff debate, and to some extent in this post, is this larger idea that we communicators exist solely for management's needs. I feel an obligation to our employees as well as management, and if we risk our credibility by seeming to be the mouthpiece for management, then everybody loses.
And is it just me, or is the first 2/3 of every Tom Robbins novel amazing, and the last 1/3 terrible? I wonder if I'll ever have the chance to use 'scrotumchuting' in a sentence.
Posted by Valarie | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/10/2005 22:35:1P PM
Valarie, I feel I've been waiting 10 years for somebody in our field to say this sentence, which I have always taken for granted: "I feel an obligation to our employees as well as management, and if we risk our credibility by seeming to be the mouthpiece for management, then everybody loses."
Thank you.
Posted by David Murray | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/10/2005 30:83:3P PM
Ahhh, David my friend (as I don't take a sip of Fat Bastard wine, but take a swig of Yuengling beer).... don't even get me started on this old debate again. While deep in my soul I wholeheartedly agree with Valarie's sentence that made your heart flutter, we both know we communicators really DO, unfortunately, exist solely for management's needs. The trick is to fulfill the obligation to employees that we all feel, but make management think we're just meeting their needs. When we do that, we earn every penny they pay us, management's happy, employees are happy and we've earned a place in heaven.
Posted by Robert J Holland | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/10/2005 32:74:7P PM
"The trick is to fulfill the obligation to employees that we all feel, but make management think we're just meeting their needs. When we do that, we earn every penny they pay us, management's happy, employees are happy and we've earned a place in heaven."
Roberto, mi amigo, I like the way you talk: Slightly subversively, to be exact. Slight subversion. That's all I ask.
Posted by David Murray | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/11/2005 13:63:2P PM
I think Carmen is dead on. I think that by doing stories that matter to the business, I am taking employees into consideration. After all what's the reason any business exists in the first place? And as Carmen says, "we're all in it together."
Posted by Mark | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/11/2005 72:93:7A PM
What management wants with respect to employee communications is two things: Are you in tune with employees today? And have you got the vision for where they've got to be in the future? And I don't mean faster, more digitally savvy and blah blah blah. I mean specifics: Have you followed the money?
So fluff vs non-fluff is an irrelevant argument. Either or both can work, if useful in the present and setting the stage for the future.
Posted by Judy Jones | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/11/2005 79:50:1A PM
Robert J Holland has Yuengling beer? Now you have my attention. Why oh why won't they distribute west of Ohio???
Robbins - good stuff. Interesting segue into the communications world.
Posted by Rebecca, Julie's friend | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/11/2005 80:90:0A PM
Steve,
Thank you for the great passages and fresh perspective. I love this kind of writing. And I heartily agree with your point about fluff. Every page we print should be able to stand on its own as adding value to the company and be worth the time and funds that produced it. I find fluff to be condescending because it assumes a lack of interest in the business and a need to bride readers with entertainment.
Regarding the debate between serving management or employees, I firmly believe that we shouldn't take sides. Management and employees are working for the same organization, and my communication is here to support the goals and purpose of that same organization. Maybe that makes me a management mouthpiece, and maybe I'm naive, but I believe we're all in it together.
Posted by Carmen RH | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31