In addendum - Leaflet-gate.

So, it seems my post on the DWP leafletgate fiasco may have struck a chord with other comms people across the land.

I'm struck by how many of us have been in a similar situation - feeling like we're being dragged along by poor decision making out of our control. Leading often to poorly conceived communications that, at best don't hit the mark and are a waste of time and effort; and at worst can do real reputational and brand damage to an organisation.

So how might these situations come about? Well, one very nearly did for me this week.

I was in a meeting with a group or consultants and other senior clinical staff, discussing how we can increase awareness internally, and externally, about the work we're doing to combat a particularly nasty (and fatal) illness.

Basically, the hospital has put into place a new IT-based system  that flags every time a patient may be suspected of having said nasty illness - and provides a step-by-step guide to treating the patient.

The system has had a real impact on survival rates in the time it's been in action - but some staff aren't using the system as they should do.

We did a big internal campaign about the issue about a year ago, which seemed to have a good impact. So we met again to think about doing something again to re-energise it, and to focus more on staff behaviour around using the IT system.

So I suggested that rather than re-heat last year's campaign, let's make it a bit more human this time.

Let's look at those figures that show much improved survival rates, and compare them with a previous period last year. We can say that "x people are alive this year that wouldn't have been last year...." etc.

Or we could actually tell proper human stories.

The conversation then proceeded as follows (I'm paraphrasing)...

Person 1: "Yeah I like that idea. But we could actually use real examples of people that we've had in."

Person 2: "Yeah sounds good. Only problem is patient confidentiality. We wouldn't want to identify individuals"

Person 1: "True. But I'm sure there's a way round that. I suppose we could use real examples but sort of make-up the people so we don't reveal any confidential details though couldn't we?"

Me: "Everyone, please stop."


Anyway, the point of sharing this (simplified for the purposes of this blog) exchange is to show how, with the best of intentions of all concerned, an incident like DWP leaflet-gate can so very easily come about.

I'm lucky that the individuals in the room know me and trust me, and my judgement - having delivered a successful campaign for them in the past.

I, to some extent, have been there and done it, and have the (mostly mental) scars to prove it. So I have no problem sticking my oar in and saying "hang on a minute - let's not do this." I say it from a point of view of experience, and on the whole, people tend to listen to what I have to say.

For this I'm really grateful. It shows that we have a culture where expertise is recognised and respected.

But I do worry for others in this situation: our younger colleagues, or those that are new in post, understandably desperate to make the right impression, and show that "can-do" attitude that we're told is so important.

Had I been either of the above, can I honestly say I'd step in the way I did in this encounter?

The people involved in the discussion are highly respected, highly educated people, doing an incredible job saving lives every day. I cannot even fathom their level of intellect or expertise in what they do.

I guess I may have felt a bit intimidated by that. And on that basis I can't guarantee that I wouldn't have ended up putting a campaign together featuring fake real people to tell a sort-of true story - just to show that I can deliver to brief, and to show that I'm cooperative and good to work with.

I've had some great discussions on Twitter this last two weeks about my last post. One discussion in particular was discussing about the idea of "faux outrage" around the DWP fiasco.  Some suggesting that whatever the situation that led to it, we as citizens and tax payers have every right to be angry about a government department fabricating information to intentionally give a misleading impression.

Good point that.

But, still, I just can't get past the human element of this. People in high places make poorly judged comms decisions that they're not qualified to make, and often with the best of intentions. If the culture is such, very often comms people, out of a fear of having to justify their positions jump to ill-judged non-negotiable directives to demonstrate their worth to the organisation.

This is sad. But it maybe is a reflection of such places that comms people feel timid about their expertise, and their role in the bigger picture. (This feels like another blog in the making right here...)

But what can we do in the meantime?

Well certainly for those aforementioned younger, somewhat greener colleagues that can find themselves in an intimidating position, we as leaders or more experienced pros have a vital role to help them see their worth, and to give them the confidence to stride into such situations armed with the vital knowledge that their expertise is worth something.

It is.

So it's up to us comms people to get in there, roll our sleeves up and not be shy about our expertise and ability.

We're there for a reason. The organisations we work for chose us to be there for that reason. So let's sharpen our elbows and make our voices heard.

And please, for the love of God, let's avoid another leaflet-gate.

“Leaflet-gate” – what comms people can learn from the DWP-made-up-benefit-claimants fiasco

Picture the scene if you will.

You’re a middle ranking comms officer somewhere in public sector land.

Your boss has just come rushing back from a board meeting (or a “Leadership Team Transformational Enablement Workshop”– call it what you will) in a mild panic.

“[Insert name of non-comms expert head of department] is putting pressure on us to do a campaign to really sell [insert name of so-far unsuccessful initiative]. It just hasn’t had the take up they hoped. I know we argued they were rushing it out without thinking about it properly, but they just didn’t listen, so we are where we are” he / she says.

“So they need to see something close of play. They want posters, they want leaflets, and they want them now. We need a comms plan!”

So you have a quick 10 minute brainstorm / thought shower / ideation workshop / burning-bridge-navigation scenario.

Given that you’re a good comms person, you suggest, “let’s focus on what this initiative means to our audience. After all, it’s them we need to reach and convince.”

You then convince your boss that the only way to do this is to go out and actually talk to some service users to get their views on said initiative. You could even then feature the individuals in some campaign materials if they’re agreeable.

Yes this will take a bit of time (a couple of days to arrange the people to talk to in a focus group) to get some insight, and then a few more days to arrange a photoshoot with some key people with good stories to tell, and to make a note of their experiences to use for the copy in the campaign.

But you manage to convince your boss that, if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. And in any case, you’re not reinventing the wheel. With a bit of buy-in from the top, this is pretty straightforward and ideal for a quick, yet meaningful campaign.

So you dutifully put a timeline together for your boss to take back to the Head of Department in question, and get on the phone and start arranging to meet with some service users.

All before lunchtime too. Pretty impressive.

Bad news. The Head of Dept is not impressed. He / she wants something quicker.

“We simply cannot wait that long. Anyway, we know what people will say, as some of us have some very vague anecdotal feedback.  You ‘comms people’ will just have to ‘commsify’ it.”

“And we don’t have time for a proper photographer and all that lot. Just make it happen.”

Wow. Ok. So what do you do?

So you get said vague anecdotal feedback, and you dutifully “commsify” it.

But what about actual people? If we don’t have time or resource to find actual live humans that this initiative in any way affects, where do you turn for imagery?

Where do you think?

Once you’ve waded through several hundred pages of “women laughing at salad”, you find some images of “real people”. You give them names that “real people” are called. Names like “Sarah” and for our male, something more out there. Something like “Zac”.

The next step is to put nice, short, pithy quotes next to Sarah and Zac about how this under-subscribed initiative has helped them.

A day or so later (as you’ve begged your agency or design team that this is super urgent and has to go out straight away), you’ll get some creative back. It’ll be designs for posters and leaflets probably. 

The Head of Dept wants a promotional pen as well, but that will be dealt with at the end.

There’ll be plenty wrong with it. You know it’s not real people or real quotes but for a rushed job, and “for illustrative purposes” it’s fine. It’ll do the job. You send it to your boss, who then sends it on the Head of Dept in question.

“Yes I quite like this,” comes the reply. “But there’s nowhere near enough text about [insert irrelevant pet-project example] or the fact that [insert totally unimpressive statistic], I want to see these in before this goes out.”

“And I’m picking the kids up at 4 today so I need to see it back straight away.”

A couple of iterations later, and you’re left with a hotch-potch of an overly-wordy piece of fluff, the content of which is full of vague platitudes, ascribed to non-existent people.

You hate it. But the Head of Dept is happy. And he / she is off your boss’s back.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well. This, potentially.

Politicians and commentators are calling it “outrageous”, “disgraceful” and “shocking” (SHOCKING!)

Even worse than that, it's become a meme.

And the next thing you know you’re scrambling round trying to recall them all.

You’re left with your head in your hands. You saw all this coming.

- -

Now. 

I feel it's important to point out at this stage that, genuinely and in all seriousness, this entirely fictitious scenario does not relate to anything I've experienced where I work currently. 

We have a really good and collaborative relationship with the top of our organisation. We have actual direct conversations when seeking to resolve a comms challenge, which leads to the right solutions and the right (shared and agreed) outcome. In that sense we're very lucky. 

But others aren't. In other places I've worked or observed, this kind of panicked thinking is commonplace. And often takes comms folk down a road of no return of which they have no control. This is a problem. But a totally avoidable one. 

And this is the reason, try as I might, I can’t join in the Twitter-rage on DWP-leaflet-gate.

I have no evidence that this is what happened here. But having observed stuff like this and heard others experiences, I’m willing to punt that there is something similar in the DWP situation to the entirely made-up scenario I’ve just described here.

My over-riding emotions are, obviously faint amusement, but also proxy-annoyance with the higher echelons of the organisation that (probably / possibly / theoretically for the purposes of this argument) forced their comms team into the series of rushed compromises that led them into this position.

And finally and overwhelmingly: sympathy with the comms team itself.

I could be wrong, but I cannot imagine for one minute that any comms people in the public sector who had free reign to produce a campaign on something as important as national benefit reform would’ve come out with this.

It reeks of compromise, of a comms team forced into rushing something out to please the hierarchy rather than focusing on a shared outcome.

So the lesson? Be brave. Hold your ground. Remember that comms is YOUR speciality – and that’s why the people that are now telling you that “they need a leaflet NOW” have made the decision to employ you.

And for the rest of us. Don’t join in the faux outrage. We’ve probably all been there in our own ways.

We’re just lucky that we’re able to put those much compromised and unsuccessful campaigns in a locked draw somewhere – without them appearing on the 10 o clock news.

Anatomy of a Greentastrophe - the defining comms moment of the 2015 General Election

What was your defining moment of the 2015 General Election?

The #edstone?

The Farage unresignation?

The whole "Ed Miliband the power-crazed back-stabbing womanising-traitor" thing?

The David Cameron remembering how "pumped up" he was about whatever it was he was talking about that day thing?

As we look back, 3 or so months after the event, these are all memorable things among many others that made for a faintly hilarious election campaign. And I think we can all reflect on and be thankful of it for a very generous amount of ridiculous / bizarre / inept / downright stupid moments.

Thanks politicians. Your ridiculousness is indeed inspiring.

But for me, as a comms bod, the defining moment came actually way before May - back in February, when the Green Party did their manifesto... sorry not their manifesto launch, but their campaign launch. Which as everyone knows are two COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS.

Don't remember this? 

Allow me to remind you. Yes. That. 

The toe-curling, soul-crushing horror of it all.

Just for context, you might remember that before this the Greens were doing actually pretty well for a tiny party. Depending on which poll you read, they were there-or-there-abouts level pegging with the Lib Dems (remember them?), and had enjoyed a massive rise in membership, that took them above UKIP in members - the somewhat optimistically named #greensurge.

As it looked like the UK was inevitably heading towards another hung parliament (how wrong we were), there was a genuine belief that the Greens could be genuinely influential in some kind of post-election confidence and supply arrangement with Labour.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint) Wednesday 24^th February 2015 effectively blew all that off course with the most stupifyingly inept day of media appearances in modern political history.

Looking back on a day that everything that could've gone wrong, literally did go wrong, it's easy for us to laugh, cringe or chew our fists from a safe distance.

But as comms people - especially comms people in the public sector - I think many of us were probably watching the sheer unending unfolding media cataclysm that day with a very clear sense of "there but for the grace of God go I".

So, now we've drawn breath from May and are safely coming to terms with a new political reality, I think it's time that, whatever your political viewpoint, we put them aside and reflect on what we as communications people, can learn from this historic Green Catastrophe - or Greentastrophe if you will.

I believe there's five key lessons:

1. Know your whys, your whats, AND your hows

Up to the election, the Greens did focus on the “why” quite well in their messaging. Whatever your view, “for the common good” is a nice simple phrase that encapsulates what they’re all about. 

They weren't bad at the “what” either. More investment in wind energy here, half a million new social houses there. All ideas that sound quite exciting. 

However, they quite obviously sucked at the “how” – and this is what caused Natalie Bennett's infamous brain freeze on national radio. 

This shows that all three elements of the messaging holy trinity (how, what, why) have to be clear and instantly graspable. So the next time you’re briefing your chief exec, or putting a campaign together, make sure you have all these bases covered. Two out of three, clearly is bad in this situation.

2. Know when it’s time to retire a cliché

“Hope is triumphing over fear”. 

Don't get me wrong, the Greens are by no means alone in their liberal (note: small "l") use of incredibly vague platitudes. See the current equally hilarious Labour leadership context for evidence of that.

But everyone, seriously, a lot of water has gone under the bridge since Obama 2008. 

Unless you have the type of charisma (like Obama) to make these unquantifiable abstract nouns sound anywhere near inspirational - just, stop using them.

3. Your best speakers might not be your best administrators

You’ve got to give Natalie Bennett some credit. She presided over a massive (in relative terms) surge in popularity and membership of the party up to the election, and under her leadership forced their way into the mainstream (and into the prime time leadership debates - with limited success). So she’s obviously a good and successful strategist.

With the best will in the world however: a “great communicator” she ain’t.

Poor Natters had just suffered that horrific interview on LBC then, as if it couldn’t get any worse  up pops Green MEP and Baroness Jenny Jones to, with the best of intentions I’m sure; totally humiliate her at their comically awful press launch. 

Lesson here: get your best speakers up , whoever they are.  Make sure they're impeccably briefed, and know how to keep their cool under pressure.

Whatever someone’s profile, role, or talent, if they can’t put a message across, or are a liability with a microphone, leave ‘em at home.

4. Do it once, and get it right.

Thinking of having a “launch” of some kind? Not quite got all the details in place yet? Then, for the love of Great Odin’s Raven, DON’T DO IT YET!

If you find yourself saying to anyone: “of course, this isn’t the actual launch, that’s next month once we’ve actually figured out what it is we’re launching,” then please do everyone a favour, and abandon ship before it gets embarrassing. 

There’s nothing to be gained in rushing something out when it’s not ready to stand up to any kind of scrutiny. Or to be more specific, there’s no point in a campaign launch if you’ve not yet sure what exactly you’re campaigning for (like, oh I don’t know, a manifesto maybe?)

Take your time, and get it right. 

Do it once, and make it memorable….for the right reasons.

5. Keep it real, but know your audience

In the aftermath of the Greentastrophe, a lot of people (well, left wing people I follow on Twitter and are friends with on Facebook - ever the accurate arbiters of public opinion)  commended Natalie Bennett on her LBC performance by saying how it showed she was a real human being, and not a robotic politician in the vein of David Camerobot 3000 or Ed Milibandnet.com4.0. 

And you know what? There might be something to that.

Authenticity is a very rare commodity in politics and in public life in general, so if you’ve got it, or whoever you're thinking of putting up before the public has it, absolutely flaunt it.

But with that, undeniably comes a health warning. Understand where and when you’re flaunting it.

I remember listening in to the Today programme that day where Natalie Bennet explained to Justin Webb that in order to come to a peaceful settlement in Ukraine Britain should ensure that Vladimir Putin would "have to walk away with something" and that "realistic concessions" should be made.

Now, look. We're all grown ups. We know that this stuff happens behind closed doors in embassies across the world every day. No diplomatic solution has ever come about through one side entirely capitulating to the other. So if you really look at this, she's probably strictly correct, and in a conversation round a water cooler in the Foreign Office, this kind of thing is probably not too shocking an idea.

But on national radio, this kind of talk is tantamount to heresy. And when talking to an audience made up of people still having nightmares from seeing Threads in 1984, this was probably not the wisest move.

She was honest, yes - but maybe a bit too honest given her audience.

So the lesson is, authenticity is a good thing. But knowing your audience is an even better thing...

Let’s all please make some good come from this day-long, and achingly slow car-crash of a national media event, well, until the next one inevitably comes along. Which it will.

And let’s never talk of it again…

Lessons on staff engagement from #commscamp15

CommsCamp is great.

You learn a lot from other like-minded, and like-experienced people. And sometimes, just sometimes, they learn something from you too.

This was definitely the feeling I came away with from the first morning session I took part in, which was all about staff engagement.

Especially in the public sector, this is a massive deal. You can very rarely just shout across the office, or call a “right, everyone in the kitchen in 10 minutes” type meeting, like you can in smaller organisations.

When you’re working in communications in an organisation with literally thousands of people, it’s hard. I work for a hospital trust with about 5,500 staff.

As part of the comms team I write a weekly emailer that goes out on behalf of and in our Chief Exec’s voice saying what’s good, relevant and interesting this week. It takes usually half a day to collate the info, and to write it; then another half to get it proof-read and to get it approved and signed-off by the man himself.

Every Monday morning, I press “Send” and that’s that. The whole organisation is communicated with. Job done. Or job-half done. Or possibly a third done. One of those things.

The fact is, only about 2,500-3,000 (depending on who you ask) staff actually have email addresses or any access to email whatsoever, so we have a massive gap. And this is where departmental managers are supposed to come in, as part of their work to disseminate important information.

And, guess what? Some of them are better at this than others. Which can still leave swathes of the organisation uncommunicated with. And this is where the session on staff engagement at CommsCamp came in really handy.

We talked a lot about the “Engage for Success” framework – beloved of managerial guru types and “Internal Comms” people, but one that, truth be told, I’d never looked into. And you know what? There’s a lot in there for all of us communicators, whatever our role. Just to remind ourselves, here’s the “four enablers” that we need in place for good internal engagement to happen, according to EFS:

1. A Corporate Narrative

 Here’s where all of us, whatever our particular specialism – even if we’re not internal comms people - have a really important role.

It’s up to us to set the scene, to be the voice, to provide the language about who we are, what we’re for, and where we’re going. As communicators or marketing types or whatever, we must resolve to having a crystal clear big picture story that’s relevant for now and the immediate future. But we also must make sure that we resolve that the details matter when telling that story.

This is where fiddly stuff like policing the use of Comic Sans and Clip Art becomes really important. All of this stuff matters. All of it tells the world who we are. But importantly it also tells ourselves who we are, and why what we do matters.

Are we professionals? Or are we amateurs? Are we a £multi-hundreds-of-millions healthcare organisation, local authority or business? Or are we a children’s holiday art club?

These details set an important scene, and set that corporate narrative, and are therefore essential for internal engagement.

2. Engaging managers 

This, of course, is the holy grail.

We’d all love to work for the type of organisation where pressing “Send” on the weekly corporate email was enough, and where we could rely on our managers to take the initiative, and to make the time to put their own perspectives on corporate messages, to leave their teams feeling informed and motivated for the week ahead.

And in some cases, that does happen.

This is what I’d call “engaging (adjective) managers”. That is: managers that one would describe as “engaging”.

But in many cases, we will usually find ourselves dealing with “engaging (verb) managers”. That is, putting the effort in ourselves in engaging with managers to actually give them the Janet and John approach to keeping their teams informed. This, from a comms team is time-consuming and frustrating, especially when those corporate communications we’ve spend days crafting get seemingly get blocked by a veritable Berlin Wall of middle management.

Well, this view is unfair and a bit lazy in my opinion. Managers, especially hospital-based NHS managers, are very often running around putting out several fires caused by several ignition sources at once. It’s unrealistic to expect them to have our beautifully calm and rounded helicopter view of things when they’re dealing with an outbreak of Norovirus and several blocked toilets!

And very often we bemoan “poor communicators” as a barrier to getting our messages across. I think it’s up to us to define what we think a “good communicator” is. And I don’t think it has to be someone who really understands messaging and strategy. That’s our job. And I don’t think it’s necessarily a gregarious “chilled out entertainer” either.

I think often it’s just someone that understands the value of their fellow colleagues as human beings. Someone who gets and understands the value of a “good morning” and a “thank you”.

If they have chosen to work in health or in a role that basically helps progress a sense of common good, they will understand these things. It’s sometimes our role to try and bring that out of them, by getting out of our comfort zones and engaging with them on their turf.

Basically we should: …have an engaging approach to engaging to create engaging engagers.

Put that on a promotional pen.

3. Employee voice

 This, I like to think is something that we at our hospital Trust are actually pretty damn good at, and has pretty well been central to improving our staff engagement rates.

We’ve been part of the Listening into Action programme for a while now, and actually won an HSJ Award for it last year. *takes a bow on behalf of 5,500 people*. Problem was, even in spite of this our staff satisfaction rates as part of the NHS staff survey were, well, "a challenge". A toxic mix of structural change, financial pressures, a really challenging winter period seemingly took its toll, no matter what we did. It was all a bit depressing.

So this year our newly formed Staff Engagement team (a separate team but sharing one team member with comms) gave themselves a challenge to visit 100 work areas over 2-3 months (or 100 days if you prefer).

There now follows a description of a process that I was not necessarily personally involved in on the ground, but am really proud of my colleagues for achieving.

Is that clear? Jolly good, let’s get on with the story:

In these visits the team asked whoever was there two questions:

What are you most proud of?
What changes would you like to see happen?

Very often, before this, they’d been asked the second question in discussion groups or whatever without the context of the first – leading to a series of unhelpful, transactional moaning sessions (*PERSONAL OPINION ALERT*).

By just flipping the emphasis into asking teams what they were proud of, rather than simply reciting the corporate line, created a whole new tone. Call it appreciative inquiry if you want. I call it just focusing on the positives.

Many teams reported a bit of a bunker mentality that was behind a sense of togetherness in the team. But as this was the first time they’d ever been asked, it was like a light going on for many of them, and this led to a more appreciative response to the “what would you like to change” question. And the great thing about this bit is that mostly put the brakes on the perennial “we want to be paid more” answer.

Teams were suggesting often simple things that could be done pretty quickly to make them all feel a bit happier – stuff like just making sure that aforementioned pesky blocked toilet got fixed at long last. There are more details, but to cut a long story short, we’ve just seen a real improvement in our staff satisfaction rates at the last time of asking.

The reasons? Well for me, a big one: boots on the ground.

This has proved conclusively that there is no substitute for getting out there and speaking to people face-to-face. Yes we want managers to do this for us. But where the culture is engrained and you have a clear and present issue, you sometimes have to just make it happen yourself.

Don’t wait for the culture to catch up with you. Get out there and show the way.

 Be a leader, take the initiative, and let your staff tell their own stories.

4. Organisational Integrity

Do what you say. Keep your promises. Keep it real. Make sure the reality matches up to the words.

Avoid hyperbole that’s impossible to deliver on. Do your homework on that “amazing new initiative” that’s going to “save millions of pounds” before reporting on it to make sure it’s as “revolutionary” as that excitable initial email said it was…

And feed back to your staff who suggest things to show that they’re important and valued.

Now here’s where we all, as communicators, must resolve to do something. We must all unite and come together in the face of a common enemy. We must KILL “YOU SAID WE DID”.

Who is “you”?

Who is “we”?

Why aren’t we all “we?”

If we’re empowering staff to own their problems and take pride in their organisation, there should be no “you” – there is only “we”.

So I learned something – specifically the 4 pillars of engagement, and that other big organsiations have the same problems we do, AND that already we’re doing some things actually quite well! And if that’s not a ringing endorsement of CommsCamp, I don’t know what is….

When’s the next one?

And can I have that banana cake recipe?


P.S. - my new blogger avatar is courtesy of this excellent photographer and from this album. I also was involved in a commscamp discussion about intellectual property...