TaleCatcher - Tracy Kenny's blog

Stuff I've Learned

Before I left Aviva I learned how powerful it can be to frame experience in the words 'Stuff I've Learned.'

'Stuff' keeps it humble, down-to-earth, and accessible.

'I've' keeps it personal.

'Learned' shows that I'm open to the journey, that I don't have all the answers, and that I'm heading in the right direction with the right attitude, even if I make mistakes along the way.

It's much more powerful a practice than it appears.

Today I sat down and captured the Stuff I’ve Learned in a sort-of 'story-listening' project I worked on in February and March. Much of it was learned again - isn't it funny how some stuff doesn't stick! I thought the device and the learnings both worth sharing:
 
1.            People will buy into a cause much more readily if they feel their opinion’s been heard.

2.            A giggle is heart-warming, even coming from deepest Africa over the internet.

3.            People learn deeply when they are asked questions, and they think through the answers.

4.            There is almost always something to find in common with someone, however different they may seem, and have a conversation.

5.            Brazil switches to Summer Time a week before the rest of the world does.

6.            A brand comes through clearly to everybody, regardless of a logo.

7.            Organisations develop metaphorical systems around a concept – which comes first, the thing or the way people talk about it?

8.            My hourly rate is higher than I thought it was.

9.            For the most part people want to get along.

10.          People are loyal first to their own team and direct boss, whatever the organisational structure. Communications plans need to always remember that.

11.          The internet means I may think I’m ringing Tanzania, but it can instead be a place in Massachusetts where I holidayed as a child.

12.          Playing to collective strengths is much more powerful and effective than building up lots of subsets.

13.          People are always going to be worried about how they are perceived.

14.          I still speak more French, German and Spanish than I thought I did.

15.          In reporting, the content leads, the style follows.

16.          When people say their opinion is neither considered nor expert, they like to hear that experts who don’t ask for their opinions will get things wrong. Everybody’s opinion counts.

Value or money

When I was doing the brand workshops for Aviva and their suppliers, one of the things that struck me the most was the discomfort many felt when they saw their own companies' values emerge through the exercises. The suppliers, who usually work toward directly resolving the customers' problems, tended toward values of response and urgency, regardless of their their industry. Aviva, however, which is clearly a financial services provider, spoke of 'Profit. ROI. Cost.'

(I was misplaced in that company you know - whenever anyone wanted to talk about value, I got excited, til I remembered they meant the pounds and pence kind.)

Aviva staff always seemed disappointed, but not surprised, that it was the concentration on money that came through most clearly. In one sense this is exactly how it should be,  because their customers trust them to be stable, profitable, and solvent for when they're needed.It's what they do. They should pay attention to it.

But money's a funny thing. Maybe it comes down to what it means for us.

In the marvellous Book of Silence, Sara Maitland describes the 5th century St Mary of Egypt. As all the best saints do, she spent the first part of her life in decadent  sin, before spending the rest in abject penance. Her sin was prostitution, which she began at the age of 12 - but the hagiographers tell it that she refused money for her services, as she was just doing it out of lust. The suggestion is that working in the sex trade for money would be more forgivable than for sheer pleasure. (Do we feel the opposite today?)

The two anecdotes make even clearer for me my suspicion that we all (including our organisations) operate on a primary value scale, and each of us has to define the upper and lower terms for it. For Mary's 5th century critics, a holy life vs an unholy life were the values to aim for or fail to reach, and the money issue was more of a means to an end. I suppose money was more of a means of survival for them.

So this morning Elena and Adele played one of their favourite games of making tents in the living room. They had all the kitchen chairs through, and all the throws and sheets off their beds. I heard a crash from the other room. In improving the tent, a picture got knocked off the wall, and the glass was in pieces.

Ray soon came down for his breakfast. Now, Elena's expecting a visit from the tooth fairy tonight, so his instant comment 'That'll be your pocket money spent then' felt very harsh. Especially given that at six, Elena doesn't really know what money is or does. She's pretty good at counting it, but it doesn't mean anything to her. If she gets a pound, she shows off because she has learnt that pounds are of value to us grown ups, but what it could mean to her has yet to sink in.

What she does value though is time. In an adult way. If I take her tent down before she's ready, she despairs because I've wasted the time she put into it.

So I explained that we get money when we work for it, and that she would have to spend time working for the broken glass. She spent a couple of hours helping me clean up all the baby and toddler things we're about to sell, and as I expected, she enjoyed sitting in the sun and wiping things clean.

The important thing was to make the loss meaningful. The fair exchange became one picture frame = two hours of not playing Barbies etc.

I wonder what the Aviva staff are thinking, then, that the company's focus on money means. Because it's not just a profit/loss scale, it's money vs something else, in their minds. Is it generosity? Is it a kind of behaviour or attitude? Are they reflecting on themselves, and noticing that they fail as individuals to live up to an expectation they would have? What is the exchange, and what does it mean?

Let's be clear about values

When someone mentions 'value' at work, I get all excited to think we're finally about to get to the point.

Of course I work in the financial services world, so most of the time they actually mean 'value' with a pound sign beside it.

I slump back, disappointed.

Values drive everything, and they have to, or your organisation will be much more haphazard about getting where they want to go.

Again I  return to what simplicity can teach us.

Elena asked me why in Formula One racing, the men who always win keep getting to start at the front.

Of course it's because speed is pretty close to the ultimate value* behind Formula One racing. They want nothing to get in the way of them going, and fast.

In Elena's primary school mind, she felt like those who hadn't had a chance to win before should be given a head-start.

I like her thinking. Of course she's been well-trained by her school and its value of 'every child mattters.' They even make sure that every child gets an award at one of their Celebration Assemblies. These are for for everything from 'reading really well' to 'always using a confident loud voice during PE.'

And I noticed they don't use the word 'clever,' because that's a standard some of them can't live up to. They use 'sensible' instead, which I find a bit of an odd choice, but I get what they're trying to do. (I still fancy a chat with the headteacher, to find out more.)

Anyway back to the point: the school is much clearer about its values than most organisations, even in its tone of voice and choice of vocabulary. Just like Formula One.

But business is messy, so we think that it's a good enough excuse to be a bit vague about what we stand for. It seems like in business we get away with not talking clearly about why we make decisions, just because the issues are a bit hairier.

Or maybe we don't want to say that we're in it to make money. Does it not sit well with some part of us to admit such a thing?

I reckon if companies did get that clear about what they're about, and stuck to it, then everyone would know what the appropriate, on-brand responses are to the problems they come across.  And profit would go up, along with staff engagement, productivity, and customer service.

It's worth trying - in a working group, in a team, in a department, for a start. And with ourselves.

(*By the way, I said speed is pretty close to F1's ultimate value, because being all-focussed on one thing doesn't mean at all costs. Another of their values, 'safety,' tempers their thirst for speed.)

(Last comment: we've never seen F1's 'values' in writing - but they come through clearly. So do all of ours, whether we design them in or not. The question is whether we care enough about where we're trying to get to, to articulate the values that will get us there, and hold each other accountable to them.)

 

Pirates and brands

Ahoy there mateys.

You know what this is about, don't you?

Okay I'm a day late. Yesterday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day, but it wasn't til today that I noticed what's interesting to this blog about it.

There's a way pirates talk. As a profession, it would be fair to call it their tone of voice, and it's absolutely clear who it belongs to. You get somebody saying 'Shiver me timbers,' and you know instantly what kind of behaviours you can expect from them.

And when you add a certain type of appearing (big buckles, eye patches, wooden legs), to a way of talking, to a way of behaving, it adds up to a brand.

Ray and I went to a party once where the birthday boy's (he was 50) daughter-in-law didn't know where we work. Her office was next door to the island site, and after a few drinks she was having a bit of a rant about the drones who went past her window on their way in every day, all looking the same and acting the same.  Whilst I disagree with the drones bit, she's right. There's a brand at work here.

The best bit for me about pirate talk, though, is that what we understand of it was almost entirely invented by Robert Newton in the pirate films he starred in in the 1950s. It was his own accent, but because it was authentic (his native Cornwall had a strong nautical tradition) and captured imaginations, it defined the world's expectations of how pirates should be.

So: get at the heart of something, and be true to it, and go for it. If you live it, and take it forward, people will see it and change their understanding of your passion, based on their understanding of you.

PS In a nice bit of matching language to audience's preferences, Facebook offers Pirate as one of the languages you can use the service in :-)

Reasons to blog

I met someone in the week named Zahra. I don't know anything more about her than that she had a lovely gentle smile, enjoys slowing down to listen to the music around her, and wants to open a tea room in a small place, maybe on the coast.

Zahra said that she'd like to visit every tea room in Norwich to explore. I think this is a terrific idea (I'd like to go with her!) - and a perfect opportunity for a short-term blog.

Writing a blog never stops being intimidating, because it is to some extent writing into the ether, and each blog, writer, and audience have to form their own purpose. Many people read them, and you never know who they are or what their response is - very little gets commented on. (I'm relaxed about that in this blog, because the purpose here isn't necessarily to start conversations online, but to start them in person. And there have been plenty of visits to tea shops and cafes, so that I know that's happening. :-)

When you're moving into a new phase of life or business, though, that's a brilliant time to blog - especially if it can set you up for the next chapter. When my friend Neil was in the terrible position of having to keep up team morale and performance while they were busy sending their work out so the location could close, I recommended he keep a blog: for the period of one year, he could tell the stories that show he can cope under stress, manage resource, show empathy, and all while being a professional and not letting his own feelings get in the way. It would also have been a great vehicle for his people to get to know the man and what was behind his decisions, as well as being a living, breathing, quality CV.

Zahra's in a similar place. In the five minutes we had together I don't feel like I sold the idea enough. How good would this be though?

Tour de Thé: 100 cups of tea in 100 days

Day one. This feels like a crazy plan, and I don't even want to think about what it's going to cost me when I figure in bus fares, cakes, and the occasional sandwich - I can't waste the opportunity to explore the standard of food out there - but despite the nagging doubts, I'm going to do it. This is it, starting with Cafe Morello.

Day two. Cheese scones were scrumptious at Morello, and I love the tablecloths, all red and white checked. I'm thinking I may need to walk instead of riding the bus. But sitting there watching the young office workers drinking coffee, I'm wondering how I'm defining tea shop - who exactly am I seling to?

Do you see what's happening? Marketing concepts such as defining the market come to life, and in articulating her thoughts, she gets a handle on what's important and what she really wants.

Day three. The Tea Lounge, Ber Street. I guess I may as well admit now that I have a real weakness for cheese scones, so when I saw online that the Tea Lounge is meant to have the best in Norwich, well I skipped breakfast so I didn't even have to pretend that I wasn't going to have one. It was cold when I set out, and by the time I got there around 11:30 the wind was whipping the rain around me. So when the young, beautiful (and dry) young thing set me beside a radiator and recommended the mushroom soup to warm me up...

In 'her own' voice, Zahra is showing her personality, and more importantly, what's important to her. She's differentiating her own tea shop - which hasn't even got a premises yet - as being something really special, just by showing that she sees the small touches that make a difference to customers.

And when she gets into comparing the cafes against each other, she'll be setting herself up as a real expert in her chosen field. Because she'd have sampled it all, first-hand, the other tea rooms would be getting to know her, and looking out for her. She'd single-handedly raise the bar, even in remaining her own gentle self.

She gets some cheap business cards from Vista, leaves them behind with everyone she meets, and she tells her story while she drinks tea. People will read, will follow her adventure on twitter, and join her - they'll even look for her when they drink. Her blog will be populated with the warm and goofy characters she meets and who accompany her. Before she ever opens her door, she's got a solid story: I love tea and I love people who have time to love tea.

And this: even if she gets to the end of her scrummy market research and decides that she doesn't want to open a tea room after all, she's got a great demonstration of what she's about, just through the vehicle of an adventure in tea. She can take that with her anywhere.

Some people and even businesses operate for years without ever having such a handle on their story. Not bad for 100 days' work.

If you've got a short-term adventure coming up: fostering a child, looking for a job, learning to play the piano, working on a secondment, relationship managing a supplier, caring for your neighbour's chickens - whatever - write about it. You've got the material. All you need to do is populate it. The more important stuff, the stuff people will come back for, will come through.

Together

I picked up in HBR's The Conversation blog a piece about Eric Whitacre's virtual choir. Whitacre is a conductor who recorded a video of himself conducting a piece of music, entirely in his own head, in complete silence. Then 185 singers from around the world responded to his virtual direction, recorded themselves singing their part, and he pieced it together into a choir. 

Now we've been enjoying watching the BBC Proms lately, but I must admit I enjoyed this more than a great deal of what I've seen on tv. Seeing each person sing their bit, with all the passion and emotion that comes from singing in the privacy of your own home, was deeply moving. But as they were wearing their own clothes, they hadn't been to the hairdressers, and they were in their own homes, you can see the beauty that a choir is: they are all different, yet their shared love of a single piece of musical mastery brings them together, and they create something new and wonderful. 

In the article Jeanne Meister and Karie Willyerd use it to explore how we can use remote technologies in a more human way.

I think there's another point, actually much simpler: we may be different, but a leader with a strong vision and compelling story, where we can clearly see the contribution we will make, can draw us together. We will believe in the cause, and give our time to it. And that because of our shared belief, even those who don't participate will know that these things that are important, and will be drawn to them, and moved by them. 

A few years ago at work we had the slogan 'Together We're Stronger.' There were posters up about it for years after we dropped it. We've now got a better poster-removal strategy, and the concept has been replaced by 'individual recognition.' Individual recognition rings true, but I think there's still a lot to be said for what we have in common, and the power that comes from sharing it.

Space for the imagination

Looking at an extreme example often sheds light on the ordinary. Thinking about how the BNP, for instance, would communicate and reinforce their brand internally, or how Greenpeace would do the same, gives us some idea on how we do or don't get brand across in our much more-balanced industry of insurance :-)

Similarly, the extreme situation of worry for a loved one's health has helped me understand a smaller facet of how stories work. I often explain that part of the power of an effective story is that it gives the listener space to re-create it as their own, within their imagination. If on some level they relate to the character, and the action in the story resounds with a situation they face themselves, then their mind takes over and projects what might happen.

And that's where the damage happens when you're worrying. Making people wait for the rest of the story gives them huge scope to (either forget the story altogether or) blow it up to tremendous proportions in their minds. Three times this week I've had conversations about the torture of hearing that someone is unwell, and having to wait to hear how it finishes up. The gap in time allows all our worry to grow, and it is a ripe ground for all the agony of previous heartache to surface.

The mind is indeed like a parachute: it only functions once open. And once open, it is a really big place we can get lost in.

If you're telling a story, remember your poor listener, and tell them how it ends.

On engaging

We're kicking the word 'engagement' around a lot at work. There's high anxiety about how we're going to 'get people engaged.'

Hang on.

People are engaged, but not necessarily at work. And it's never because of something we've done to them, but rather that they are bringing their whole selves to work: playing to their strengths, using their passions, living by their values, and doing it their way.

People are engaged when they play video games in the evening. Or do needlepoint, or play squash, or dig up their potatoes on their allotment.

Schools have learned in the last several years that it's about giving children space to learn, rather than beating them on the head with the lesson we intend to teach. Children interact with the material, interpret it in line with their own experiences (like stories do), and add something of themselves to the lesson. That's real learning.

Engagement is the same. Give people a solid foundation and a structure that's robust enough to accomodate them as individuals, and then talk to them in an authentic and honest voice. They interact with it, interpret it, and find the space to engage.

Trust them.

Typical

Typical.

It's one of several words that carries a lot of baggage, and packs a lot of weight, and does a lot of damage, without any need for the speaker to explain their position.

Have I said this before?

Somebody finds the coffee machine broken. They have a choice: they go away and find another route to a hot drink, or they stand there and spout venom. It's always said with contempt, you know.

'Typical.'

Challenge them. Ask, 'Typical of what?'

Do they mean it's typical of the sort of thing that happens around here? Are things always broken? Are they broken just for your benefit? Does nothing ever work? Is the company actually out to get them?

Offer a different story: 'You know it was broken last week, and I just rang the number here and they had it fixed within a couple of hours. It's probably just the filter needs changing.'

Even better: go one further, and take all the wind out of their sails. Offer to make them a real coffee while they go and report the fault.

When someone spits out the word 'typical,' people usually just agree with them, and by default they're agreeing with the whole load of whatever unpleasantness they're referring to, even if it remains unarticulated. It reinforces the perception that things are always a nuisance and that nothing ever goes right.

Do you really want that story in your organisation? Do you really want to stand by and become part of it?

Continuing on a theme: spelling, bookshops, tea, and good signs

So joy upon joys, I've found another bookshop. A new favourite, in fact.

[photo of Book Hive - computer is failing me - I will try again if I manage not to chuck the whole thing out the window in a minute...]

I didn't think to snap a photo of Henry, the owner. Next time maybe I will.

The shop is beautiful - it was last occupied by a florist. I think I bought some violets there once. The whole place feels like a bookshop for people who love books. The selection of books is that bit different as well - would it make sense if I said it's a bookshop for people who know how to read? The fact it's locally owned makes it that much better, if it needed it.

And there's free tea and coffee :-)

But what caught my eye was the personality of the place. The story that Henry's built in.

There's this sign up above the till, to underline it:

The place has got story. And they're willing to take the p*** out of themselves. They're relaxed enough about their intelligence to know that they know they can spell, and they can make a joke out of the printer's mistake. Let's all laugh about it. Fancy another coffee?