TaleCatcher - Tracy Kenny's blog

Don't say anything

Last week we collected Adele's glasses. She's only 3 1/2. We'd not even noticed that she had a vision problem, and I suspected that the highly-distracted consultant at the hospital had given her the benefit of her experience (think 'Blink') rather than the focus of her attention on the day we were there. I was skeptical.

Then I looked through the lenses as I was cleaning them (the first of many hundreds of times. Small children have sticky fingers and poor aim when eating ice cream cones, spaghetti bolognese, etc.)

I say I looked through - I tried, but I couldn't see a thing. It was like looking into a cloudy soupy mess. She, meanwhile, sits quietly looking through them, occasionally commenting 'I can see a bird' or 'I can see a book,' fascinated by discovering a world she never knew was there. 

So I was wrong. I had no idea she'd not been seeing what we could. So grateful thanks to the process (and to the government for sticking with it) that booked her an appointment literally upon her birth to have her eyes examined 3 years later, based on the family history of wearing glasses.

It's thrown up lots of learning for me about service and empathy. I took her to the locally-owned opticians in our little town to get the glasses made, so it was a familiar environment and not the factory atmosphere of Specsavers. Now I got to Specsavers myself, but partly out of fascination, because they stay so busy, and yet despite the expectations my prejudices against big business set me up with, every single one of them seems happy and helpful and genuinely knowledgable. I'd love to get into their recruitment and training to see how they do it.

In our little town, we had the same lady looking after her every time, but their processes were really poor, and I ended up getting cross with them, which is disappointing when I'd actually been trying to  go somewhere where we could have a relationship. They also assumed we'd want the NHS free glasses, rather than paying a measlly £13 for prettier frames, and they never offered scratch-resistant or reduced glare. I'm used to buying glasses. They're not used to 3 year-olds, or they'd have tried to talk me into this.

But the best was at her nursery this morning. I'd prepared for the  rush of encouragement and compliments they'd have for her, but they are soooo switched on about  little kids.

They never said  a word. They asked her about the toy duck she'd brought, asked if she was already wearing sun cream, and if she wanted Weetabix or toast for breakfast.

I took their cue, gave her a hug and kiss, and left - a little wiser.

Through the week I saw a lot of examples of failing to anticipate the customer's need, but the nursery's silence moves empathy into the space of positive action - by saying and doing nothing. Adele wants to be the same as the other kids. She doesn't want attention called to her difference, even in the shape of praise.

And so through Adele's glasses, now I see something much  more clearly than I ever had before: acceptance is so much better than reassurance, and it gets us so close to what customers or audiences we communicate with need. It's just the right place to start.

Anti-viral

My google reader is out of control. Instead of bringing me the internet in small chunks, it completely overwhelms me with what all is going on out there. Still, I'm a possibility junkie, and a 'collector' in Strengths Finder terms (they call it 'input'), and I love having all those articles there just waiting for me to discover them.

Yet most of them continue to wait.

One I try to catch up with though is the blog from The Storytellers. It's this type of company that makes me wish - a very rare occurance - that London wasn't so far away from Norfolk.

Yesterday Jackie Tolland of the Storytellers blogged about Geert Hofstede’s research into cultural differences in the workplace. She captured that traditionally-designed global communications will always struggle to design the right response, because peoples' cultural differences will always drive distinctive corporate expectations and responses.

That all makes sense. Malcolm Gladwell covered some of the same ground in Blink, in his harrowing description of cultural differences in conversations between pilots and air traffic controllers.

What I liked about Jackie's observation was that the right single story of  a corporate communciation can be re-told in a multitude of ways, to fit the individual circumstances and audience.

For me this is about getting the individual to re-tell the story to suit the circumstances they share with their audience, but it's also about investing in a local storyteller who already has a relationship with them. To get someone who understands the listeners shows an understanding and respect from the top, right from the start, and it removes the 'Who's he?' barriers that might stand in the way for an audience. 

It also suggests that the global company understands the personal touch.

I think I've seen something like this before... it's rather like a big company structuring their communciations so that they go to the ranks via peoples' line manager.

The challenge with that is making sure that the line managers understand and buy into the story, enough that they can share their personal journey of coming round to it. And like any vehicle of mass communication, it requires investment - this time of the human kind, to make sure it will accurately and effectively deliver the right message.

In my observed experience it's usually easier just to send an email or film a DVD message. What a wasted opportunity to build  relationships and confidence in the message, for everyone.

Cool, collected, and wise

In our house we're really enjoying the poem 'The adventures of Isabel' by Ogden Nash. It's a great example of how poetry isn't alienating, a lot of the time it's just well-chosen words that tell a great story.

I've spent a few days trying to figure out the adult appeal of this one - why I enjoy it as much as the girls do. It's not  necessarily about strength, because as you'll read Isabel is not strong, she's just an ordinary girl making it through the 'threats' a child imagines.

And a lot of what holds us back are perceived threats as well. I'm wrestling with a few of those myself.

For me it's a great reminder about having the confidence of one's convictions, about understanding when threats are actually not as big as we imagine they are, and about knowing when actually the threatening thing might just be good for us.

Enjoy!

The adventures of Isabel

Isabel met an enormous bear,
Isabel, Isabel, didn't care;
The bear was hungry, the bear was ravenous,
The bear's big mouth was cruel and cavernous.
The bear said, Isabel, glad to meet you,
How do, Isabel, now I'll eat you!
Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry.
Isabel didn't scream or scurry.
She washed her hands and she straightened her hair up,
Then Isabel quietly ate the bear up.

Once in a night as black as pitch
Isabel met a wicked old witch.
the witch's face was cross and wrinkled,
The witch's gums with teeth were sprinkled.
Ho, ho, Isabel! the old witch crowed,
I'll turn you into an ugly toad!
Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry,
Isabel didn't scream or scurry,
She showed no rage and she showed no rancor,
But she turned the witch into milk and drank her.

Isabel met a hideous giant,
Isabel continued self reliant.
The giant was hairy, the giant was horrid,
He had one eye in the middle of his forhead.
Good morning, Isabel, the giant said,
I'll grind your bones to make my bread.
Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry,
Isabel didn't scream or scurry.
She nibled the zwieback that she always fed off,
And when it was gone, she cut the giant's head off.

Isabel met a troublesome doctor,
He punched and he poked till he really shocked her.
The doctor's talk was of coughs and chills
And the doctor's satchel bulged with pills.
The doctor said unto Isabel,
Swallow this, it will make you well.
Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry,
Isabel didn't scream or scurry.
She took those pills from the pill concocter,
And Isabel calmly cured the doctor.

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?

Pitchforks and champagne

Here's a little story my friend Sam sent me a while back.

When the Montgolfier brothers invented the hot air balloon the local French peasants thought they were creatures from another world. The brothers learnted to carry with them bottles of champagne to prove that they were French and stop them from being attacked with axes and pitch forks. As a result it is now tradition that all balloon flights end with a glass of champagne to celebrate a safe flight and landing.

She sent me this to encourage me, and I treasure it.

I've landed - and in a single day, today, I've seen pitchforks as well as champagne.

I've learned that people aren't always going to like us for being positive. It doesn't fit with what they're tellng themselves about the world.

The journey is bigger than the landing.

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.

Relationship of your own

A certain snobbery exists in business. Probably more than one, actually, but for now I'm talking about the number of people who are put off by the word 'story' and are wary of the whole concept. I have been very lucky that there are a fair few advocates in the company now, and the 'thing' itself, rather than the word we're using, is spreading.

Personal reflections: great. Most everybody's got time for those.

Allegories: I can usually fit a few of those in.

Urban myths, gossip, and compay folklore: People are usually up for those as well.

But where there still seems to be a limitation is around children's books. And I can see why, so I never take them in and try to do a sort of grown-up story time on cushions sitting in a circle. That's just not what it's about.

But same as looking at an extreme example where a population is crystal clear on its values (Greenpeace, the WI, the BNP, the Amish) can give us really good insight into the usually wooly topic of values, brand, and behaviour, the simplicity in a really good children's book can shed a lot of light on human relationships of all kinds.

My current favourite book is called 'This Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown.' Stick with me - give me 100 words. The young girl in the story has a well-loved and worn toy rabbit she calls Stanley. Emily's problem is that the amazing adventures she and Stanley have together (riding through the Sahara on their motorbikes, exploring the outermost regions of the milky way) keep being interrupted by the Silly Naughty Queen Gloriana the Third, who wants to steal her Bunnywunny.

It's a refrain throughout the book. In fact it's the whole point. Queen Gloriana has so much that she doesn't have a relationship with any of her toys, so she wants to steal one that is proven to be cuddly and fun. And she's already invented an intimate pet name for him. Over and over Emily Brown says 'This rabbit is not for sale. And his name is not Bunnywunny. It's Stanley.'

Don't we see this same story on Eastenders? I haven't watched it for years, but I can't imagine it's changed. A good-looking young man loves his family and spends time with them, has lots of adventures with them, is with them through the night, and then somebody else decides they want such a relationship and try to steal him.

And at work: Sometimes when people get too far removed from the activity on the ground, they realise they are missing something. They want to get connected again, and they try to breeze in and be friends straight away.

To which I have to challenge: Do you know their names? Do you intend to remember their names?

Emily Brown's advice to the silly naughty queen is to take her brand-new (horrible) golden teddy bear out of the royal toy cupboard, to take him everywhere with her, to sleep with him at night, and be sure to have lots of adventures, and 'then one day you will have a real toy of your own.'

Toy? For us grown-ups, let's read that as 'Relationship'.

With the exception of sleeping with them, her advice is sound for those who seek engagement. It's got to happen along the way. Take your colleagues out of the toy cupboard where you've been storing them up as something you might one day play with. Take them with you. And be sure to have lots of adventures.

Then you will have engagement of your own. It's got to happen along the way.

...versus making yourself right (for a job or otherwise)

On the other hand, it is hard work to get up and out and make something different.

I left work really happy yesterday. I'd bumped into someone whom I don't know very well. He works in another office, across the country. I've probably been in the same room with him less than half a dozen times over the last 18 months. Yesterday I didn't recognise him as the guy I'd first met. Like I said, I don't know him well enough to even call him friend, but from the start I was struck by a meekness, and a genuine curiosity, and a longing deep and true enough to do whatever it would take to grow. He always tells super stories, not because he is a talented storyteller, but because he is not stuck in others' expectations - he only has his own reflections to refer to, and he reflects deeply, to make sure they are right. Over time I've watched him get used to the idea that he has something to offer, and to rise to the opportunities, and give above and beyond the initial expectations. The genuine-ness remains, and he's got a promotion. The suit looked good on him. I hope the role feels good as well. I'm ever so pleased. 

Create a story

People like to think they don't know any stories, but they tell them all the time, particularly when something unusual or surprising happens. And though their intent may be to gossip, the power of the story remains the same; that is, the values in the story as well as the values of the teller come through and influence.

You can create stories that people will tell. You can harness the power of gossip.

My favourite is about a boss (very senior) at Lloyds TSB who was dismissed. I don't remember for what, it must have been some financial indiscretion. Anyway at that level it's not going to be for turning up at 9:05, is it? But the company didn't pretend that he wanted to 'spend more time with his family', as seems to be the euphamism when people leave. They told it as it was: Mr Man had violated a policy, and they had let him go.

The message was clear. This is where we draw the line. We do take action.

Gossip gets around. Not taking action about it sends another message, that you turn a blidn eye - or worse, endorse such behaviour. Taking action and not telling that you have is the same as not taking it.

Do something, and make it mean something. Give them something to talk about, and make it show clearly where your expectations lie, what you reward, and what is absolutely against your and your organisation's values.

Asking nicely

Ray and I wandered up to Chapelfield Gardens to sit during lunch today. They've been having the Norfolk and Norwich Festival up there. I snapped this photo as we left.

(It says 'Thanks for coming. Shhhh. Please leave quietly... we want to do this again!)

It does everything that good communications do: there's all the normal stuff we talk about - ordinary language, lack of jargon, active voice, but it is also confident of what it needs to say, and it says it happily, because it is at peace with itself. It is clear, because the message they want to convey is clear in their own heads, in the first place. It has a clear conscience, and can be a tiny bit cheeky. And there's the quiet reference to the neighbours who might complain, so tying in to a story that the revellers and the organisers have in common, that they could all get in trouble. And the recognition of the individual, and what they're going through, well it's that spirit that makes you know the author and their organisation are ALIVE and want a relationship with you.

Consider the alternative:

PLEASE RESPECT OUR NEIGHBOURS AND LEAVE QUIETLY

It's this sort of notice in all caps that we usually see. Why can't more of our messages be positive? Is it because they are reverting to the voice of authority, instead of trying to appeal to peoples' understandings and better natures?

How about this one. Instead of NO FOOD IN THE PLAY AREA, you could have

Please keep the food on the tables - sticky slides and swings aren't much fun

Give people a reason to do what you want them to do, and they will be much more willing to cooperate.