http://blog.ragan.com/stevesblog/ A blog on corporate communications, straight from the twisted and sometimes relevant mind of Steve Crescenzo … en Copyright 2008 Thu, 12 Jun 2008 08:10:20 -0600 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss really scary thought. Because anything he has to say, I don’t want to hear. I kept waiting to hear things like: “Touch me again and I swear I’ll piss the bed for a week straight.” (Remember, I had been on the road for a long, long time). “Remember that girl in college, from the townie bar, when you were on mushrooms? What the hell were you thinking about, asshat? Don’t you ever give any consideration to what I have to go through when you make decisions like that?” “Will you please stop telling anyone who will listen that I’m the size of a longshoreman’s forearm? It’s embarrassing . . . to say nothing of being a bald-faced lie.” But the voices weren’t saying anything like that. In fact, the voice was talking about a television show. And when I shook the acid flashback out of my head and looked down into the urinal, I saw the real source of the voice. There, in the urinal, instead of one of those deodorant cakes they sometimes stick in there, was a little round recorder thingy that, when hit with water (or, in this case, urine), started playing its message. The message itself was an advertisement for some asshole macho TV show on some asshole macho TV station called “Spike TV,” which I can only assume is a TV station for asshole macho guys. At first, I was pissed . . . no pun intended. Then, I started thinking. Could this be the next great employee communication tool? I’ve long advocated posting news articles in bathrooms stalls and above urinals, where you have a captive audience. Isn’t this the next logical step? As our intranets and Web sites go more multi-media, shouldn’t our urinals follow suit? Call it Urinals 2.0! Can you imagine if, whenever your average employee unzips and gets down to business, he hears the CEO talking to him directly? Saying things like: “As you liquidize your assets, I’d just like to remind you that here at Horizon Enterprises, YOU are OUR greatest asset. Now take care of business, and remember as you go about your work today to always pay heed to the 47 Guiding Principles of Horizon, as well as our Mission Statement, our Vision Statement, our Code of Ethics, and our Safety First Guidelines, all of which are posted on the wall in front of you. Remember, Horizon’s future is in your hands! Well . . . it’s not in your hands right now . . . uh, at this very moment . . . but, you know what I mean. Have a great day, and remember: All employees are required to wash their hands!” Some would say most CEO communication belongs in the toilet anyway . . . why not put it there directly? ]]> http://blog.ragan.com/archives/stevesblog/2008/06/the_next_great_employee_commun.html http://blog.ragan.com/archives/stevesblog/2008/06/the_next_great_employee_commun.html Thu, 12 Jun 2008 08:10:20 -0600 Well . . . hello again! Remember me? The guy who used to blog in this space? It’s been almost two months since I last blogged. Almost two months to the day, in fact. Tomorrow would have been two months exactly, and since one of the things I teach in my seminars is that you have to blog on a regular basis, I feel I would lose some credibility if I let two months go without blogging. One month and 29 days and about six hours? That’s okay? But two months? That’s bullshit. Why no blogs? Well, my last one was on April 5th. It’s now June 4th, and I’ve been in London for two days. Since April 5th, I’ve also been in: Atlanta, New Orleans, Seattle, Albuquerque, Toronto, New York, Minneapolis, Charlotte, and now London. Add to that three events where I didn’t have to travel, but still had to stay in hotels in Chicago and work very hard: The three-day Ragan Fellowship meeting, the three-day Corporate Communicator’s Conferenc, and my two-day Advanced Internal Communication seminar with Jim Ylisela. Mind you, I’m not complaining. I made good money, had a lot of laughs and some unbelievable meals, met some terrific communicators . . . and gained ten pounds. I’ve got about a dozen great stories that I’ll start sharing out here this week. Some of them even have to do with communication! But I feel like I was on one long road trip . . . and it didn’t start very well. Let me tell you about it. Whenever I leave for any trip, even if it’s just for a couple of days, I try to leave from my son’s house in Naperville, if at all possible. I like to see him the day I leave, and the day I get back. So I always leave from his house in the suburbs, which is 45 minutes from me . . . even if that means just seeing him for an hour before school in the morning. Well, this Bataan Death March I’ve been on started with a trip to Atlanta, on a Wednesday, which is a school day. So I drove out to Naperville at 5:30 a.m., so I could take Zach to school. Which I did. But that was at 7:30, and my flight wasn’t until 1, so I had some time to kill. So . . . knowing I would be eating and drinking like a pig for two months, I thought I’d work out. So I headed over to the Naperville Bally’s, worked out, then realized that I had to shower, and I didn’t have a towel. I didn’t have anything with me to dry myself . . . not even an extra shirt. But getting on the plane without showering wasn’t an option . . .so I showered and then stood in the open stall, naked, my hairless body glistening like a baby seal, trying to figure out what to do. First, I tried to sort of rub the water off with my hands. But there were four other dudes in the shower, and I don’t think they were comfortable with a large hairless bald man standing in their midst, slapping at himself like he was on a bad acid trip. Finally, I did the only thing I could do. I went to the hot-air hand dryer, turned it on, and crouched underneath it, like a midget taking a hot-air shower. And I started rubbing myself to facilitate the drying process. And then I made a horrible mistake. I looked up . . . and there was a mirror right there. And I got to see myself, like a 220-pound naked mole rat, all pink and hairless and fat, pathetically crouched under a hot-air dryer rubbing myself, while seven or eight muscle-type guys tried hard not to look at me. I finally gave it up, dried my feet with my dirty workout shirt, put on my clothes, which immediately stuck to my wet skin, and went to the airport for a very unpleasant flight. That’s how the two-months started. And boy do I have some stories to share with you. I’ve got a cab ride story from New Orleans, a culinary experience in Seattle, some great communications work done with a big government agency, a terrific experience doing executive interviews for a client . . . lots have happened since April 5th. So look to this space often in the next month . . . if you’re still bothering to come here at all. http://blog.ragan.com/archives/stevesblog/2008/06/has_it_been_almost_two_months.html http://blog.ragan.com/archives/stevesblog/2008/06/has_it_been_almost_two_months.html Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:07:12 -0600 1. Research (the boring, but necessary part: focus groups, surveys, executive interviews, vehicle assessment). 2. Planning (the even more boring, but even more necessary part, where we build a communication plan from the ground up.) 3. Execution (the fun part, where we talk about vehicles and social media and intranets and all the stuff I love). 4. Measurement (back to the boring but necessary stuff: making sure that what you are doing is working). I thought the execution/vehicles/social media part of the seminar would be the most popular, but I'm shocked at how starving people are for the research/planning/measurement information. We’ve had great crowds in D.C., San Francisco, and Atlanta so far, and we’re still going to Seattle, Toronto, New York, and Chicago. There's still room in some of those cities, so sign up! And, as usual with my seminars, I'm learning as much as I am teaching. For example, last week in San Francisco, I met a couple of people from Intel. Now, Intel has always been ahead of the game, when it comes to technology and online publications and social media. And they still are. In fact, they have a policy where any employee can blog . . . and many of them are. They use them to share information, swap ideas, get the word out about something . . . all sorts of reasons. But when I was chatting with the Intel communicators, they told me something I had never heard of before. “Our executives—some of them, anyway—are starting to ‘pop in’ to employee blogs, and join the discussion,” one of them told me. “You know how you used to have Management By Walking Around? This is Management By Blogging Around.” MBBA!! What a concept. If you believe executives, they have no time anymore to walk the corporate halls and chat with people . . . even though that’s a very effective management technique (and one that used to be very popular in the 80s). But they do have 15 minutes a day to stop into some blogs, leave a comment, add to the discussion, read the comments, and see what people are saying. Management By Blogging Around. What a wonderful concept. Now, maybe this isn't all that new. Maybe Shel Holtz will come out here and tell me that MBBA has been around for years. But it's the first I heard of it. Of course, it will only work if employees are allowed to blog in the first place . . . so it probably won’t catch on anytime soon. ]]> http://blog.ragan.com/archives/stevesblog/2008/04/management_by_blogging_around.html http://blog.ragan.com/archives/stevesblog/2008/04/management_by_blogging_around.html Sat, 05 Apr 2008 11:54:38 -0600