http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/ en Copyright 2010 Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:36:54 +0000 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Over his office door, storied New York Times language columnist William Safire had a sign: “Abandon ‘hopefully’ all ye who enter here.” It’s an allusion to the words above the entrance to Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” But because that was written before I was born, and you know what I’m trying to say when I misuse “hopefully,” you’re, like, old and boring me when I’m trying to text Rachel. The day started well, with my dentist, Dr. Katz, taking me up on my suggestion to play “Memories” (from “Cats”) over the intercom in his waiting area as an “oral/aural” – ha, ha – gag, and laughing at both my “I have an inconvenient tooth” and “You can’t handle the tooth” puns. When he took an impression and I said it was more of an imitation than an impression, he smiled in a patronizing if dismissive way and said he’d use it. Then the trouble started. I went to the grocer’s for some tooth-friendly food, and asked for “pitted olives.” The bilingual deli maven pushed the packaged scoop over the counter. They had pits. I said, “No pits.” He said “unpitted”? I said, “When I want a chicken without bones, I say, ‘boned,’ not ‘unboned.’ ” He said, “What do you say when you want shrimp without veins? ‘Veined’?” I said, “De-veined.” He threw me a knowing and contemptuous glance, and I skulked to the register. When I got home, Rebecca was watching HGTV, where they seem incapable of describing a home or its features without using the five words “nice,” “very,” “just,” really,” and “wonderful.” For example, while a couple first sees, let’s say, new bathroom shower tile: “It’s just really wonderful, and very, very nice.” Same for Antiques Road Show: “What you have here is a very wonderful, really nice manuscript of 20 of Shakespeare’s lost plays. Do you have an idea what they’re worth?” Then, on the late night sports wrap-up, a local athlete got involved with the law, and said things like (paraphrasing): “I exercised poor judgment.” “I made bad choices.” “I put myself in the wrong position at the wrong time.” (Workshop exercise: Substitute the name of a famous criminal like Hitler or Manson or Madoff as the speaker for those quotes, and start laughing.) Does anyone ever speak concretely and frankly any more? In a parallel fictional bizarro world, someone else in the same position as that athlete might have said something like this: “I was drunk. I beat up a helpless old cab driver for fun. I ran away and got caught. I think my talent and money make me privileged and better than the fans who pay my salary. I’m an arrogant celebrity, and being famous – for anything – is all that matters in America. My PR rep told me to read this, and in a week no one will remember my victim’s name.” In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit he got off a classic – if unintentional – oxymoron: “It was a pretty ugly scene.” “Pretty ugly” – good one. This is all by way of prelude to the NFL season. The Bears look great. Cutler under center. But the NFL season is also “Death to the English language” season, so I’ll run linguistic interference in this blog. My pet peeve (We live in a city apartment; it’s the only pet we can keep) is the dangler: “Talking with Coach Smith in practice this week, he mentioned . . . .” “What dangler? You’re old and boring me and you know what I’m trying to say. Rachel?” Basta! Stop the madness! Rage against the machine! http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/08/highway_to_hell.html http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/08/highway_to_hell.html The road to linguistic perdition is paved with vague inflections Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:36:54 +0000 Usually, when Jim’s phone rings, our future client on the other end wants to do something quick: to launch a new publication, or an intranet, or a CEO blog, or a video series, or an all-employee meeting to support some initiative. The classic mistake for communicators is precisely that: to leap to tactics, especially when there’s some urgency from an internal sponsor. But all successful communication begins with one act, the same act: listening. Do what Jim does: Ask your internal client these four simple questions (with follow-up), and the vehicles will be even better. 1. What’s the business case? What goals are you trying to meet: cost reduction, innovative products, employee retention, profitable growth? In this economy - in any economy - knowing what business goals you’re supporting is the only way to align your work with the CEO’s agenda to prove your worth and get the resources you need. 2. What sorts of information do the employees want? What do they need to understand about this? How will they know what they’re supposed to do, to change the way they work? What’s in it for them? What motivates them? Where’s the pain or fear? 3. Are you sure you know what vehicles your internal audiences prefer – and which messages go in which vehicles? Are you sure? Have you asked them – both qualitatively, in focus groups, and quantitatively, in surveys? Do you know which vehicles different demographic groups want? You want a Sharepoint site – do they? Your CEO wants to blog, but will anyone read it and respond? You want to kill print? Not so fast, Johnson. Print is back, but in a new role; that’s in response to employee demand. 4. How will you know if your communications are working? What does “working” mean? How will you measure? When? What will you measure? Outputs – or outcomes? If you can put the answers to those questions in a plan and execute it, you’ll be on your way to creating real value for your internal clients and your organization. These conversations take Jim and me only about an hour; the relationships that result can last years. Listen: Try it. http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/06/before_you_launch_that_web_site_or_print_publication_ask_these_4_questions.html http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/06/before_you_launch_that_web_site_or_print_publication_ask_these_4_questions.html Take one hour to listen to your internal clients and the next year will go better. Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:32:19 +0000 par excellence. Megan Ingmire, who took over as communications director at a critical point in the project, and who may be the only person I know who can make a podcast about an IT project sound like something that should come in a plain brown wrapper. Kathy Toelkes, the new communications director: calm, smart, funny—and ready for anything. Sue Henke, who somehow knew everyone at the agency and knew all that was going on, without ever leaving her desk. And the designers, Connie Hammond and Linda McAndrew, who as it turns out, has a nickname (Throat Dog). And yes, there’s a story there. Two years. Dozens of plane rides. Thousands of hours. On our last day in Topeka, Cindy and I finally did what we had talked about doing since we arrived in the summer of 2007: We went to the Brown v. Board of Education museum. That’s right. The very school that led to the historic 1954 Supreme Court decision to end racial segregation in public schools is right there, in Topeka, not far from that basement full of IT people. The museum was really well done, and quite moving. And when we finished our tour, Cindy and I climbed into our rental car, turned KCMO up high and drove to the Kansas City airport one last time. ]]> http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/06/im_not_in_kansas_anymore_literally.html http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/06/im_not_in_kansas_anymore_literally.html Working for the Kansas Department of Labor allowed us to showcase what communications can really do to help an organization meet its goals. And that's what we did. consulting internal communications Kansas Department of Labor Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:03:57 +0000 No one chooses to be in our profession: strategic communications, for some organization. We wanted to be - what?: a novelist, priest, playwright, scholar, teacher, doctor, a journalist? We backed into it, our job; we discovered it, created it. By necessity – or chance. What did you want to be? How did you choose this profession – where you’ll spend most of your time (other than sleep) between graduation and retirement? Here’s how I did. During my last semester as a professor of the Humanities at The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1979, a first-year student gave me her ticket to the Michigan/Ohio State game in response to my admiration of her hair, blacker than the raven's wing. But – it was a Freshman's ticket, in the low corner of the visitors end-zone. Because I was leaving the academy for a career in business in Chicago (Ragan Communications with 8 employees around 1981), I thought: "What would it be like to see one game from the perspective of the coach, the storied Bo Schembechler - opposing his own mentor: Woody Hayes?” I envisioned Michigan’s cheerleaders and marching band at my command. (“If you want to lead the band,” I recalled, from an undergraduate aphorism, “you have to face the music.”) So I worked my way up through the Sophomores and across the Juniors, down through the Seniors and Alums, until I found myself standing in the aisle on the 50-yard line, tenth row, next to the best seat in the biggest stadium, with its six-figure+ seating capacity, the year’s best game. It was unoccupied. A lovely octogenarian next to the open aisle seat, her silver and gold hair still radiant in the late-autumn mid-afternoon Saturday Michigan sun, with classic chiseled features, draped in blankets and shawls and a tam of maize and blue, said: "Would you like to sit? Watch the game with me?" I said: "Would I? Yes. I would.” After an awkward introduction and silence, I said: “But this is the best seat in the biggest stadium for the most important game of the year. Why is it vacant?" She said: "That was my husband's seat. We met here in our '20s - and during the nation's '20s. The Roaring '20s. We were students. It was grand, that first night, in the arboretum. We lost our virginity together. We fell in love and got married. He went into college administration. I became a professor - Biology. Our children were born here; all of our friends and colleagues live here. "Over the years, we never missed a home game and we’ve built up our seniority, so that now we have the best seats in the best stadium, for the best games - in the country." "That was my husband’s seat. But he died.” I said: "I'm sorry. But can't the people you mentioned - your family, colleagues, friends, and so forth, come to these games with you?" And she said: "Well, sure. But they're all at the funeral." I knew then, that it was time to leave. Maybe try something new. Move to Chicago. Meet some girls. Answer an ad in the Trib. Edit the Ragan Report. http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/05/an_80yearold_woman_gave_me_my_vocation_when_i_was_29.html http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/05/an_80yearold_woman_gave_me_my_vocation_when_i_was_29.html Who gave you yours? Fri, 29 May 2009 00:16:09 +0000 The weather starting getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed. If not for the courage of the fearless crew, the Minnow would be lost. (Everybody) The Minnow would be lost. . . . Not to worry, the Skipper called out. We’re going to Indianapolis. And so we did. That’s when I met Heather and Becky. They were working the B3 gate when we all stumbled out of the plane. It was 12:30 a.m. They greeted us warmly, then they went to work. Since the airport was closed, they asked the ground crew to bring out some extra snacks, soft drinks and waters. Then they immediately began working on alternatives for everyone. We had two choices: 1. Bag it. Get on a fight the next morning, go get a hotel room and grab some sleep. More than a few people decided to do that. 2. Hang tough. We might still get this plane out of here, they told us. I decided to wait, still hoping to get home in time to grab a few hours sleep and then catch my morning flight to Dallas. And Becky and Heather were right there with me. We talked. We told jokes. We looked at the weather on the radar. By around 2:30, we still thought we’d get out. Then the storm that was eating Chicago hit the Indy airport. Hard. A voice on a loudspeaker told us that the control tower was being evacuated. Chicago suddenly seemed very far away. And still Heather and Becky stayed. They made sure everyone got on a morning flight and were still there when their relief came. Just before they left, around 5:45 a.m., I bought Heather a cup of coffee. She handed me my boarding pass and gave me a big hug. The ultimate in face-to-face communications. Thanks for playing with us, Heather and Becky said to me as they were leaving, at least five hours after their normal shift had ended. We’ll see you again. “Hey, this was so much fun I’ll be here tomorrow,” I said. “And I expect to see both of you.” A flight attendant standing nearby jumped in: “It is tomorrow.” I turned to Becky and Heather. “See?" ]]> http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/05/ode_to_an_airline.html http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/05/ode_to_an_airline.html Everybody's got a story about crabby airline employees and angry, stranded customers. This is not one of those stories. Tue, 26 May 2009 11:04:07 +0000 1. “Time to go beddie-bye.” “We’ve got some surplus capacity we need to re-engineer to position ourselves for positive growth.” 2. You ate every bite for papa! Such a big boy.” “I am continually amazed at the wealth and talent we have in this organization.” 3. “Mommy wuvs her little boopsie.” “People are our greatest asset.” 4. “There, there. Shhh. It’s OK. Mommy’s here” (best accompanied with patting and burping). “We face some unique challenges and opportunities in the near term” (best accompanied by liquor). 5. “Did someone go poopies?!” “I see that you’re efforting a solution to that problem.” Welcome back, people. And stay out of my sandbox.]]> http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/05/back_to_work_time_to_relearn_your_jargon.html http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/05/back_to_work_time_to_relearn_your_jargon.html A writer wants to help returning workers get up to speed by teaching them how to speak mumble mouth. corporate speak jargon writing Tue, 12 May 2009 17:21:20 +0000 This week, we’re hosting our Corporate Communicators Conference in Chicago. It’s our most important event of the year. We do everything we can to make it the best professional advancement experience. People come to Chicago, to the conference, to attend the events and listen to the experts described in the brochure. To see Chicago. To renew friendships. To learn new methods. Whether or not you’re coming, it raises an interesting question: How can you get the most out of a conference? Well, I’ve been to a number of them and, for me, they’re best when I: 1. Come in a little early, a day, to get settled and scope out the setting: the hotel, the city. I don’t like to show up tired and crabby and confused. 2. Review the materials, the schedule, and get my own agenda ready. 3. Hook up with colleagues from previous conferences. Everyone always says that the social aspect of event was a highlight. We’re a profession, a community of colleagues. So e-mail them and make your plans. 4. Meet the speakers, before or after they speak: Trust me: They want an ongoing relationship 5. If you’re there to learn, Write during the sessions. Four Latin aphorisms have stayed with me since my seminary days. The first is: “Qui scribit bis legit”: The person who writes, reads twice. Heighten your active learning by taking notes. 6. The second: Laugh: “Castigat ridendo mores”: “Laughter succeeds where lecturing won’t.” In favorable reviews of presentations, one of the most common notes is: “I liked his sense of humor.” Well, how about yours? Attendees should try to make others laugh. 7. The third is Teach: Share your own knowledge: “Docendo discimus”: “We learn by teaching.” Do you come to a conference to learn? Then teach others what you know, what’s going on in your organization. You’ll learn more if you do. 8. Finally, Experiment: Try new things, or try familiar things again. Don’t say, “We tried that before and it didn’t work.” Don’t say: “That’s not our way.” Take the risk: “Quae nocent docent”: Things that hurt teach. No risk, no innovation. Failure is what every successful person does right before success. Edison and the light bulb. In the Consulting Group, Jim and Katrina and I say that communication is everyone’s responsibility. That goes for a meeting, a conference, a webinar, a workshop – those are all forms of communication. Their success, in part, is the teacher’s or presenter’s responsibility. But also, perhaps in greater part, the student’s or attendee’s responsibility. I’m not sure attendees or students get that. I think, too often, they just show up. There’s a certain knack to teaching a workshop, leading a meeting or conducting a conference session. The greater gift, I think, is knowing how to take responsibility for attending one. http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/05/eight_ways_to_attend_a_conference.html http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/05/eight_ways_to_attend_a_conference.html Your satisfaction with the event is up to you Mon, 04 May 2009 03:22:57 +0000 As baseball season begins (the crack of taut horse-hide on polished ash), I sometimes think of the observation by ex-jock announcers of current rookies: “His future is all ahead of him.” Communications is about hope, the future, helping our organizations meet their goals. When Jim and I conduct strategic communication planning sessions, we often engage participants in a “SWOT” analysis of the communication department’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Except we make it a “SWTO” analysis, to end on the note of optimism, the future, “opportunity”. I once read in an essay by Woody Allen, referencing another, more intimate, context, that nothing is sadder than a missed opportunity. An anecdote to illustrate the point: Last Oct. 30, Jim and I were in Dallas, and, because it was his birthday, we went out after work for one perfect martini, before dinner with the client/friend. The waitress, a bright, literate, engaging young woman, talked us into a martini with blue cheese-stuffed olives on a stick. They were so great we asked her, with her intelligence, presence, communications skills, etc: “Why are you waitressing?” She told us she had just graduated from SMU (Southern Methodist University) with a degree in corporate communications and was looking to find a job. We told her that, coincidentally, we work for Ragan Communications, the oldest and largest company in the profession, with information sites, conferences, training, consulting, even a job site specifically designed for recent grads like her. We told her that our social site, myragan.com, had a networking group for recent grads. Could we give her our e-mails and review her resume, or the addresses of our sites? She smiled, as if we two older men were trying to make small talk, seemed completely distracted, pre-occupied and busy. Few people get a job because a career counselor gives them a resume template or their parents tell them they’re special. It’s usually a connection; sometimes, a chance connection. Much of life happens by chance encounters. So Jim and I went off to his birthday dinner with our client – our favorite client. It was great. We’re too old to miss an opportunity. See you behind the Hertz counter at DFW, sweetie. http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/04/professional_communicators_can_shape_the_future.html http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/04/professional_communicators_can_shape_the_future.html Hanging curve over the outside corner, waist high: Swing or take? Sun, 19 Apr 2009 19:25:08 +0000 Before “What’s your sign?” the great conversation starter was “Have you read any good books lately?” Or: “If you could take only one book with you to a desert island, what would it be?” That gave way to “Have you seen any good movies lately?” And today: “Have you made any good movies lately?” Evidently, people still read books they hold in their hands and turn its pages, though Kindle may well become this year's anniversary gift of choice in a certain blogger’s marriage. But my point is that “Books I have read” is one of my favorite Profile categories in our sister social site, myragan.com. The maddening response, of course, is “Too many to list.” Obviously, the point of the category is to advance the networking goals of the site, and let’s hope anyone who makes her or his living with language has a certain depth to the bibliography. It’s like a visitor asking us what our favorite Chicago restaurant is, and our saying: “Oh, there are too many good ones to mention.” That’s true, but not a conversation starter. The person who posts “I’ve read too many books to mention” simply wants the Profile visitor to know that he or she is literate. And that’s my point: The handful of books we reveal as having most influenced us is an index to our identity. It’s a glimpse inside us – and intimacy makes us uncomfortable. One of our consulting colleagues –Katrina Gill, an expert on audits – asked me on a road trip last year what I was reading, and I told her the truth: “The Joy of Cooking” as prose and the “Catholic Catechism” for its structure. I think the candor of my response may have cemented our friendship. On myragan.com, three of the best-read people in our company offered the following responses to the category. • CFO Kevin McMurtrey gives it up for Henry James, Anthony Trollope, C.S. Peirce, Winston Churchill, and others. There’s more to Kevin’s life than numbers. • myragan.com editor Michael Sebastian clearly understands the point of the category and cites “Of Human Bondage,” W. Somerset Maugham’s semi-autobiographical masterpiece on personal triumph over social resistance. • Language columnist and managing editor Rob Reinalda’s tastes are eclectic, but run to the masters of the novel and the play: John Irving, Vonnegut, Salinger, Dickens, Shakespeare, David Mamet. Fiction and drama for Rob. My point is this: Those books we’re willing to admit publicly as having shaped us tell others – strangers – as much about who we are as our resumes. Probably more. The great 20th century Canadian literary scholar Northrop Frye wrote that all of Western literature is about one theme: the individual’s quest for identity. In revealing what we’ve read, we reveal what we’re looking for, the person we’re looking to become. Twenty-eight years ago when I interviewed for my job, Larry Ragan’s first question was “Tell me the last three books you’ve read.” Thank God they were by Faulkner, Küng and Shakespeare, or I’d be selling men’s clothing (my other job offer) today. So – those of you who wrote on myragan.com (and other visitors, of course) that you’ve read too many books to list, let’s have your favorite book of all time here. And, more important – why: what it says about who you are, or who you’re looking for. What does this means for communicators? Try this: If readers are going to get anything out of the story, they must also see themselves in the story. http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/04/you_are_what_you_read.html http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/04/you_are_what_you_read.html Literary choice is an index to character. Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:54:08 +0000 Call me Ishmael (“Moby Dick,” Herman Melville). They can offer great insight to come: I am an invisible man (“Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison). They can be playful and teasing: All this happened, more or less (“Slaughterhouse Five,” Kurt Vonnegut). They can even get us all hot and bothered: Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins (“Lolita,” Vladimir Nabokov). They can be intriguing: All children, except one, grow up. Endings: Endings are harder, because of the information, plot, analysis, understanding, and so forth that come between the lead and the ending: Here are the endings to the leads presented above: On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan. (Melville) On the lower frequencies, I speak for you. (Ellison) Birds were talking. One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, 'Poo-tee-weet? (Vonnegut) I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita. (Nabokov) When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter's mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless. (Barrie) The simplicity, insight, and intrigue that Jim rightly points out as the wellsprings of drama in the leads can become complex, resigned, and ambiguous by the endings. But in every case, the lead points, like a vector, to the ending. So, in our more business-like writing, the point is that the lead predicts the change after the story. • If you begin with conflict, end with resolution • If you begin with a question, end with an answer • If you begin with a problem, end with the solution • If you begin with “then and now,” end with “next.” And today, always end by inviting reader response. Sure, we sit down to write full of hope, purpose and energy. So leads must be great. But by the time we get to the end, exhausted and under deadline, we forget to tell our readers what they should think, do, or feel. Please send us your best last sentences. ]]> http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/03/wanted_one_great_last_sentence.html http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/03/wanted_one_great_last_sentence.html The purpose of a last sentence is to fight like hell to convince readers to change. Sun, 22 Mar 2009 21:47:01 +0000 Call me Ishmael (“Moby Dick,” Herman Melville). They can offer great insight to come: I am an invisible man (“Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison). They can be playful and teasing: All this happened, more or less (“Slaughterhouse Five,” Kurt Vonnegut). They can even get us all hot and bothered: Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins (“Lolita,” Vladimir Nabokov). Can you name the source of this great opening line? All children, except one, grow up. (The answer is at the end of this column.) Journalism offers wonderful opportunities for opening lines. A friend of mine who works for the Philadelphia Enquirer sent me story not long ago. He started it this way: Death came to Donora, a small steel town in western Pennsylvania, in the form of a black fog. Kind of makes you want to find out what’s next, doesn’t it? And that’s the point. The purpose of a first sentence is to fight like hell to convince you to get to the second sentence, then the third, and so on. Corporate journalism can be that way, but too often it isn’t. Corporate leads get tangled up by politics and approvals, with boring details and people’s mind-numbing titles getting in the way of what might actually convince someone to read. We have to fight back. You know the methods, but we can never remind ourselves enough: 1. Go for one sentence. Leave the rest for the next paragraph or copy block. Make it easy on your readers’ eyes. 2. See how short you can make it. One word and two word openings can really hit home. 3. Tell a story. An opening anecdote can pull us in to find out more. 4. Tease us. Make us care to find out exactly where you’re going. 5. Give us the news, vividly. Pick strong verbs and make every word count to offer the only sentence we need to learn the latest. One of our favorite terrible stories over the years is a lengthy piece about a company’s executive team reviewing the results of management evaluations offered by employees. The headline, one of the worst ever, is “Senior management meet offsite.” And if that weren’t bad enough, the lead misses the point altogether, dragging out the CEO and some kind of garble about going on a retreat to do something or other. The lead should have been this: Our managers finally got to hear what you think of them. These are dramatic, worrisome times. Our communication is more important than ever, which means we should do everything we can to get people’s attention and keep it. And if we do, then maybe one day soon we’ll see this good news lead in a company publication: We’re back. Oh, and what about that opening: "All children, except one, grow up"? That’s the first line of "Peter Pan," of course.]]> http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/03/wanted_one_great_first_sentence.html http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/03/wanted_one_great_first_sentence.html The purpose of a first sentence is to fight like hell to convince you to get to the second sentence. Communications corporate writing first sentences leads writing Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:30:24 +0000 Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each other's eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. It’s the opening lines from “Praise Song For The Day,” Elizabeth Alexander’s poem composed for the Obama Inauguration. It’s been maligned, unfairly, in my opinion. It takes several careful readings - or listenings - to appreciate some poems, some songs. I didn’t like many of the poems I return to often until after several readings. I mean, for the first couple’s first dance, Beyoncé sang Etta James’ classic “At Last,” not some goddamned original composition by John Williams or Aaron Copland. My advice: Read more poems at White House events, but go with the tried and true. Something familiar and appropriate for the occasion. Something patriotic and historical: Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride.” Emerson’s “Concord Hymn” (“The shot heard round the world”). You want to strike the somber note of recession? Read Poe’s “The Raven.” When will stocks approach 10,000? Quoth the Raven: “Nevermore.” See what I mean? Who doesn’t like “The Raven”? So, to communicators always looking for something “innovative” or creative, a piece of advice: Execute the tried and true really well: The profile, the interview, the narrative. When John Kennedy asked Robert Frost to read a poem at his 1961 Inaugural, Frost was so familiar with it, having read it publicly hundreds of times, he could pretend that the cold January light was so bright for his old eyes he’d try to recall it by memory. Here it is: The Gift Outright The land was ours before we were the land’s. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. She was ours In Massachusetts, in Virginia, But we were England’s, still colonials, Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed. Something we were withholding made us weak Until we found out that it was ourselves We were withholding from our land of living, And forthwith found salvation in surrender. Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become. ]]> http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/03/communicators_go_with_the_tried_and_true.html http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/03/communicators_go_with_the_tried_and_true.html Readers want the familiar approach – done well. Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:55:01 +0000 People we meet on the road spend half their time on e-mail, half in meetings. Both, they tell us, are broken. One reason is that all the blame is put on the person who runs the meeting or sends the e-mail, in much the same way that readers of employee publications put all the responsibility for the publication’s success on the editor. But readers of e-mails and publications have a role to play, too. And so do people who attend meetings. 1. Come prepared. Read the information sent out in advance. 2. Talk to your team in advance: What do they want you to bring back from the meeting? 3. Clarify your role in the meeting with the meeting planner and sponsor. 4. Do some research. Raise the level of discourse. 5. Help the presenter. Listen actively: full attention, responsive body language and facial expression, clarifying questions. 6. Write. The person who writes hears twice. 7. No blackberry, cell phone or laptop, of course. 8. No sidebars. No interruptions. Don’t leave the room. 9. Participate. Change your mind. Encourage debate. 10. Ask for clarity on a decision, next steps and follow-up. 11. Leave prepared to tailor the information at the meeting to your team. 12. Report back to your team. http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/02/how_to_attend_a_meeting.html http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/02/how_to_attend_a_meeting.html A 12-step program Tue, 24 Feb 2009 06:02:47 +0000 One of the categories I like most in the “Profiles” of professionals on our social networking site myragan.com is the topic: “Books I have read.” It’s a useful way to start a conversation, even a virtual one: “What are you reading?” Long since replaced, of course, by: “What movies have you seen lately?” And now: “What’s on your ipod?” When I’m on the road consulting, I’m an unapologetic fan of business books, a sucker for the retired CEO’s advice, scribbling marginalia about any new process out of a leading business school. One of my favorite business books is by the former CEO of furniture manufacturer Herman Miller, Max DePree: “Leadership Is an Art.” Great title. Leadership in business used to be thought of as a science: engineering and finance. Management by objective, the MBA. DePree’s editor, Clark Malcolm, was a classmate of mine in English at Michigan, and it’s nice to see at least one of us was able to bring the liberal arts to a business career. Every rift is loded with ore in DePree’s book. As an example, I like the following passage on the role of leadership. How does your CEO measure up? Here it is: Leaders must take a role in developing, expressing, and defending civility and values. In a civilized institution or corporation, we see good manners, respect for persons, an understanding of "good goods," and an appreciation of the way in which we serve each other. Civility has to do with identifying values as opposed to following fashions. Civility might be defined as an ability to distinguish between what is actually healthy and what merely appears to be living. A leader can tell the difference between living edges and dying ones. To lose sight of the beauty of ideas and of hope and opportunity, and to frustrate the right to be needed, is to be at the dying edge. To be a part of a throwaway mentality that discards goods and ideas, that discards principles and law, that discards persons and families, is to be at the dying edge. To be at the leading edge of consumption, affluence, and instant gratification is to be at the dying edge. To ignore the dignity of work and the elegance of simplicity, and the essential responsibility of serving each other, is to be at the dying edge. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is reported to have said this about simplicity: "I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity." To be at the living edge is to search out the "simplicity on the other side of complexity." In a day when so much energy seems to be spent on maintenance and manuals, on bureaucracy and meaningless quantification, to be a leader is to enjoy the special privileges of complexity, of ambiguity, of diversity. But to be a leader means, especially, having the opportunity to make a meaningful difference in the lives of those who permit leaders to lead. http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/02/are_you_a_leader_is_your_ceo_1.html http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/02/are_you_a_leader_is_your_ceo_1.html A former CEO reveals his criteria Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:41:20 +0000 Mammoth. Very heady stuff for an 8-year-old, but true to form, what Sophie Nyweide couldn’t wait to do was hit the hotel pool, so her daddy and Uncle Jimmy could toss her around in the water. Kids have their priorities straight. In between the festivities, we toured that magnificent city. It was my first time in Berlin, and I wanted to see what was left of the Wall, Checkpoint Charlie and the spectacular Brandenburg Gate, where then-candidate Barack Obama spoke last year to an enormous and adoring crowd. It was also the scene of President John F. Kennedy’s famous speech in 1963, just two years after the Soviets erected the cinder block and barbed wire that separated east from west. In that most dramatic of moments, Kennedy told a rapt audience that he was one of them, that we were all Berliners. What we all know now is that somebody screwed up the phonetics for the president and mistakenly added an extra article (ein) to his text. So what came out was, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” which as any German speaker knows, means “I am a jelly donut.” And you know what? It didn’t matter. At all. The leader of the free world can stand before hundreds of thousands of people and tell them he’s a jelly donut, and no one cared. They got the message. That’s a good lesson for our executives. They don’t have to know everything. They don’t have to be perfect. Audiences, including employees, can be quite forgiving—of your style, grammar and just about anything else—as long as you are sincere, forthright and armed with good intentions. In these difficult times (I’m really getting tired of writing that phrase), imperfect communication is far better than none at all. Urge your executives to worry less about getting everything perfect, or waiting for the ideal conditions, before communicating. There are no ideal conditions. There is no perfection. Instead: Talk often. Listen even more. Be available. ]]> http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/02/no_time_for_perfection.html http://blog.ragan.com/trailmix/2009/02/no_time_for_perfection.html Employees can be quite forgiving as long as you are sincere, forthright and armed with good intentions. Thu, 12 Feb 2009 13:47:35 +0000