Tag Archives: performance

Selling Storytelling

03 Thursday Dec 2015

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Once upon a time, storytelling started “trending.” We now hear about it frequently from many perspectives. And with good reason: people love stories. We watch them, we listen to them, we read them, and we tell them. They work for us as entertainment and as a way to communicate information. And of course, this holds true in the business world. Facts are necessary in making a decision or building a case for change, but stories bring the facts to life.

McDonald’s is known for quantifying and measuring. When our department made the case for a single, global digital asset management system we had our research, numbers and facts ready. When we made our pitch, however, we told stories of teams of people searching for a single asset, of existing media being recreated and of the same image being stored in dozens of locations. Our leaders know how to scale. The truth of those stories combined with our data helped them understand the scope of the opportunity and the project was approved.

Selling the idea of using stories isn’t hard but, telling those stories can be. A story requires focus while clients often have volumes of material they want to include in the project. Too many facts and details get in the way of a good story but, clients often insist on what they want. How can we get clients to adopt an effective, storytelling approach?

I have found that one way to manage clients through this process is to give them what they want right at the start. Write a treatment or a synopsis or draw up a sketch that exactly reflects their wishes. Then work up the same thing for the version that you recommend. Sit with your clients and take them through their version. Don’t “pump” it or “sell” it, just tell it. Sometimes this step is enough to convince clients that their version is a poor idea. This experience can open the door to you presenting your second version.

Either way, then say that you’ve been thinking about their objectives and their audience, and you’ve come up with another version. “Would you like to hear it?” I’ve never had a client say “no.” Pitch your idea and make it come alive. Use the power of the story to do the work. The engagement, clarity, and focus of your version will be apparent and can be easily approved.

Frequently, your clients will then spend too much time thinking of ways to add back in most of their previous information, which creates another client management item for you to handle.

I look forward to hearing your story of how you succeeded with that.

Article contributed by Jeff Boarini, CMMA Board Member

Is It Time to Caption Everything?

18 Wednesday Nov 2015

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One of the “Fast Track Solutions” topics at the recent CMMA National Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico was titled “Captioning Conundrum”. Working in smaller groups provided an opportunity for the media managers in attendance to share how each of us is approaching (or avoiding) the issue of captioning the videos we produce.

The American with Disabilities Act of 1990 prohibits discrimination and ensures equal opportunities for persons with disabilities in employment, government services and facilities access. But there’s still a lot of gray area surrounding the concept of “reasonable accommodation” for the hearing-impaired. However, technology is making it easier and faster to provide captions than in the past, which moves the needle on “reasonable accommodation” closer to the “always caption” side of the argument.

At Q Center, we recently contracted a vendor to provide CART services to a hearing-impaired guest during a two-day event. We sent audio from the sessions through a phone bridge, and a CART transcriber (presumably working from home in their pajamas) turned the audio into text in real time. Our guest was able to view the text on his smartphone or tablet, which allowed him to participate in the meeting in a more meaningful way. It was surprisingly easy to do, and could have easily been expanded to additional guests or even projected on the screen for everyone in the room.

Which highlights an often-overlooked benefit of captioning: it not only allows hearing-impaired people to participate, but it also is very helpful for those who are not native speakers of the language. Non-native speakers often can understand language much better when they see it written than when they hear it, particularly if the person speaking has an accent (doesn’t everyone?). Years ago, we were captioning English language videos in English for just this reason – it can be a useful tool for improving the language skills of the viewers, rather than simply providing the text in their native tongue.

But at the conference, I learned about a potential benefit of captioning that I’d never considered before — the value of captions as metadata. Since the caption files that accompany the video contain the full transcript of the video as well as time signatures, they give you the potential to make videos searchable by text without creating a complex taxonomy of keywords and search terms. In theory, a digital asset management system or your corporate website could allow users to enter specific phrases and quickly pull up not only the video files that contain those phrases but the exact location in each file as well. YouTube is already including the caption files in their search criteria, which helps with search engine optimization. My question is, is anyone using this data within your corporate intranet? If so, I’d love to hear your story.

Article contributed by Thomas Densmore, CMMA Board of Directors

A CMMA Leader Requirement: Rely on Your Rookie Smarts!

21 Friday Aug 2015

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While attending a recent leadership conference, I was peppered with numerous helpful and inspiring leadership messages. These were all good, and for the most part, satisfying. I love this stuff, and the more leadership ideas, the better! Thinking back on the two-day conference, I realized that I had heard versions of these subjects before; these were “refresher” lessons in leadership development. I saw some of the brightest minds on the leadership spectrum, and one message delivered by author and consultant, Liz Wiseman, stood out from the others: Apply the skills you came into your career with in everyday interactions, decisions, planning and thinking – apply your “Rookie Smarts”.

Rookie Smarts is a concept of going back to the basics that launched our careers and our passion for learning and leading. The idea is to capture that youthful energy and innovative spirit we all had when we began our careers. Use that energy again to foster a culture of learning and mentoring the workforce that’s creeping up behind us…the future leaders, and future members of CMMA.

Admit it. We’ve seen them; the rookies in our organization who think they know everything about anything, and they aren’t afraid to let you know. Sometimes these rookies fall flat and learn lessons the hard way. These rookies also move quickly through organizations with their new ideas, new energy and relevant skills for today’s workforce, and find success. I’m attracted to the concept of Rookie Smarts, and believe that as CMMA members, and leaders within our own organizations, we have an obligation to continually canvas the talent landscape for those rarest of rare jewels: future leaders with vast potential. Face it; many of us will be hanging up the business suit for a canoe paddle in the next ten years (more or less), and it should be incumbent upon each of us to chart a course for developing these new leaders in our organizations. We were the rookies at one point in our career, and if we look back to the traits we employed to bring us to where we are today, just think how we can inspire the rookies of this day. Why should we look back?

Wiseman says that in a rapidly changing world, experience can be a curse. Careers can stall, innovation pauses or stops and strategies grow tired and stale. The concept of being new, naïve and clueless as being an asset is a hard one to grasp; however, I see this as the perpetual learner. This is the experienced leader who is always looking for the new twist to solving an age-old problem (analog to digital, anyone?).

So, take this advice, and invest in your past success, and embrace being a rookie again. Love learning, and embrace mentoring. And by the way, “Rookie Smarts” is also Wiseman’s new book. Embrace the thinking and behavior of that young, energetic person you were, and ponder hanging up that canoe paddle for a few more years. You’re just getting started!

Article contributed by Warren Harmon, CMMA Board Member

Lead Yourself

10 Monday Aug 2015

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Where did the summer slowdown go? You know, that little ebb in the tide of work demands? It used to happen every July and August. Yeah, that one.

I just did my July metrics report and our business requests and output increased in July, and it started me thinking. Is my team getting the rest and recharge time that they need? They take their vacation time (when I give them the stink eye), but are they really doing anything else to manage the stress that comes with additional demands?

CMMA has a great conference coming up in Albuquerque, NM in October, and one of the many things we’re going to learn about and experience is how mindfulness and managing stress can boost morale, productivity and engagement in your team. Stay with me, I’m not going all “woo-woo” on you, I promise. If Ariana Huffington can take a nap every day in her office, surely you can take a few minutes in your office to close your eyes and let some things go.

At Wells Fargo, leaders are expected to “Lead Yourself, Lead the Team, Lead the Business”. Notice that “Lead Yourself” is first. That’s because leadership begins with you, whether you manage people or not. Part of that is managing your own thoughts, emotions and actions. Managing stress and your personal response to it in a mindful and deliberate way helps you build better relationships and strengthens your ability to influence outcomes and manage change in a positive manner. Ahhh yes; some real tools to help you manage the challenges of leadership. That’s what CMMA is all about.

For Communication Media Managers, we have an added budget stress reliever: if you attend the CMMA Fall Conference and love the experience, you get 50% off your membership fee if you join within 30 days of the conference.

Take a moment and just breathe…

This article is contributed by Patty Perkins, CMMA Board Member

Hanging with “My People”

06 Wednesday May 2015

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I just got back to the office after attending CMMA’s Spring Development Conference at Marriott’s World Headquarters outside of Washington D.C. It was my last conference as CMMA President, and in the couple days since then, I have been in a reflective mood about my tenure in that role – and about CMMA in general.

Bottom line, it’s been a great ride as President and with CMMA. But why exactly?

I’ve been an active member for over 9 years. For me, to put it simply, the essence of CMMA is to learn and share. Looking at the conferences we put on the last couple years, the themes were respectively, “The Innovation Conference,” “Communicating in a Digital World,” “From Hollywood to Topeka: Differentiating our Value through Story and Craft” and “Become a Center of Excellence.” My hope is that the events not only gave us an opportunity to stretch our thinking (maybe even disrupt our thinking) and deepen our knowledge, but also to share and learn from each other’s experiences so that we would be that much more savvy going back to the office.

At its heart, peer to peer learning is arguably the most compelling benefit of CMMA membership. In all the busyness of the D.C. event there were a couple of moments where I took a step back and thought about who I was in the room with, thinking to myself, “These are my people! I’m in a room hanging with my counterparts from Bank of America! Mayo Clinic! Kate Spade! Sandia National Laboratories!” Those guys handle nuclear weapons! What an eclectic bunch!” (Feel free to name any other combination of companies or organizations that attend our meetings).

It’s awesome knowing these folks, all of their experiences and know-how are accessible: across the table from me at breakfast, in the bus on the way to the President’s Dinner, just an email or phone call away. In D.C. I certainly took advantage and engaged with them on a number of topics.

What’s also awesome is that these relationships turn into lasting friendships and can blossom in a myriad of ways as we journey through our careers together. The challenges, the opportunities, the highs and lows. And the same dynamic happens with our Partners too.

I can’t think of any other organization that is so elegant in its simplicity. Professionals getting together, learning, sharing. That’s CMMA.

This article was contributed by Chris Barry, CMMA Board of Directors

The Most Important Person in the Room

06 Monday Apr 2015

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Peter F. Drucker once said that “The most important thing in communication is to hear what is not being said.” We have a similar paradox when we’re developing a project or a presentation: the most important person – the audience member, is typically not in the room.

When starting a project it’s easy to not consider the audience. To start, we’re likely in a hurry and are already behind schedule. Then, we’re probably smart enough, have plenty of experience and have done many projects like this before. It’s easy to believe that we know just what to do. Sometimes that may be enough to communicate successfully. But, considering the barriers an audience might have to receiving our message can challenge exactly those preconceived ideas we’re banking on to get the message right.

It’s Communications 101 to remember that communication is a two-way process between sender and receiver. Communication doesn’t happen until the message is received. Understanding the audience perspective can make all the difference in crafting an effective message. Knowing what the audience is willing to receive should shape what message you send and how you send it.

Consider a presentation you’ve made in the past that didn’t go as planned or a project that wasn’t very successful; chances are you learned something during the process that, had you known or considered it earlier, would have changed your approach. That’s a hard way to learn and I know that I’ve had more than one lesson. At the same time I can think of many other successes and I can recount clearly one project where considering the audience was not only effective, it was essential in even continuing the work.

The project was to introduce to a sales force a new line of copiers. Interviews with the sales reps revealed that they were still fuming about the current line which had suffered from a lack of features, a non-competitive price and repair problems. The sales reps were working extraordinarily hard to move these machines. While they were eager for the new equipment, what they also wanted was an apology from Management. This was not on Management’s radar as we started the project. Our interviews with sales reps revealed the true “temperature” of the audience and enabled us to shape the new message in an acceptable way. While Management never apologized, they did acknowledge the problems with the current line and thanked sales reps for their hard work. That was good enough for the audience and they were able to rapidly begin moving the new products.

Having a full understanding of your audience makes a world of difference in your work. This holds true whether you’re creating a presentation to thousands or for a one-on-one budget meeting with your boss.

When you sit around the table to start creating, be sure to leave a seat for someone from your audience.

Article contributed by Jeff Boarini, CMMA Board of Directors

Standards of Quality

06 Friday Mar 2015

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Is your team operating under a well-articulated vision, with an expectation that the quality of work will always be at a certain level – or are they simply responding to customer requests and doing what they think makes sense? A simple but succinct vision for the standard of quality is at the forefront of every project my team produces. This started years ago shortly after my introduction to the business.

My first job as a media manager was at a large pharma company.  After getting my new assignment I decided that in order for my team to support our customers I needed to know everything there was to know about big pharma. It didn’t take long to realize that the pharmaceutical industry was extremely complex and not something this director of Creative Services was going to have to learn in short order. As I looked at our various buckets of work – Training and Development, Marketing, Executive Communications, Public Relations, Research – I saw a consistency in the stakeholders in each of those areas. That thread was a highly educated, highly experienced, passionate workforce. And that’s where I found my answer. I realized, or rationalized perhaps, that I didn’t need to know their business at all. Rather, my team and I would commit to them that we would be as good at what we did as they were at what they did. After all, they own the content; we simply help them communicate it. This thought process has served me and my teams well over the years and through various assignments.

In my current role at Mayo Clinic, this philosophy means that my team doesn’t need to know how to perform open heart surgery in order to support a cardiac surgeon – thankfully. Rather, our commitment to each physician, administrator and public relations professional we support is that we will be as good at our jobs as they are at theirs. It’s really that simple.

Mayo Clinic was recently named the Best Hospital in the Nation for 2014-2015 by US News and World Report. If our hospital is the best, then it follows that our Media Support Services department has to be the best as well. Luckily, one of our guiding principles in Media Support Services in Florida is continuous improvement. Yes, our standards are very high at Mayo Clinic as I’m sure yours are where you work.

Bottom line, it’s critical to have a commitment to quality, regardless of your role or your clientele. If you don’t have an articulated standard of quality, I recommend you establish one, shout it at the top of your lungs and review your teams’ work on a regular basis to make sure it meets the high standards of your customers, the company you support and your personal brand as a leader.

Article contributed by Clifton D. Brewer, CMMA Board Member

The 8 Essential Leadership Skills for Today’s Communications Manager

19 Wednesday Nov 2014

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What does it take to be an effective leader of a corporate communications team? At a time when market forces, globalization, and a new generation of employees are changing the workplace, the old command-and-control approach to management no longer works. Corporate communications managers must engage with employees in a way that leads to their success, the success of the department and the corporation.

Here are eight behaviors central to your success as a corporate communications manager.

  1. Vision/Purpose: As the leader of an organization you need set a clear, compelling vision for your team and the work they deliver. A well-reasoned vision for the work of your team is critical in uniting your people behind a purpose they can feel confident in supporting.
  1. Character: People follow those they can believe in – leaders who demonstrate integrity, honesty, determination, and respect for others. There are times you should take the project lead. Not to show you are “part of the team,” but to stay grounded in the understanding of their needs and to earn their trust and loyalty.
  1. Listen Courageously: It’s important to be a good listener, remain open to input from all stakeholders and respectful of their ideas. A successful leader must develop the ability to listen carefully and act courageously when called upon to do so.
  1. Communicate Clearly: Interpersonal skills and the ability to motivate people has become a core competency of leadership. Be transparent – those around you will respond positively if your decision-making process is viewed as open, fair, and consistent.
  1. Demonstrate Flexibility: The speed of business requires constant monitoring of business trends, directions, and opportunities. However, being flexible does not mean constantly changing direction. Your credibility as a leader requires focus and directing the effort of your team on the most promising opportunities.
  1. Embrace Risk: Guardians of the status quo can never be leaders. It takes courage to seek new and better ways your team can contribute value back to the corporation. Be prepared for change and when the opportunity is right, pursue it.
  1. Technical Competence: As a member of the management team you’re accountable to the organization for delivering business results, not demonstrating technical prowess. You do not need to be a technical expert in all aspects of communication, but you must stay informed about the forces shaping our industry.
  1. Build Your Team: A leader is only as effective as the team they build. Be passionate. Inspire others to dream and provide them the opportunity to achieve. Recognize and reward their efforts and that of others to reinforce those actions. As a leader your success will be measured by the success of others.

Leadership Journey
If you truly aspire to a leadership position, or want to make the most of your opportunity, work hard at these eight skills. It promises to be a rewarding journey.

Article Contributed by Tom Morse, Principal Multimedia Project Manager, SAS

Inherent Traits/Skills of a Good Production Person

28 Sunday Sep 2014

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Whether a staff person or a freelancer, what skills, competencies and personality traits do you consider being most important? When it’s performance review time, how do you assess performance? What factors determine which freelancer or supplier you hire? Whether it’s a Producer, P.A., P.C., or A.P., what competencies are most essential – leadership, creativity, technical skills? Certainly, there’s a lot at stake if it’s a staff person , but even making a decision about a freelancer/supplier who can become the face (and voice) of your department, can be mission critical. Under the heading of “you’re only as good as your last project,” I’m reminded it’s my department’s reputation that is on the line during every interaction with a client, whether face-to-face, on the phone, via e-mail or text. I’m guessing that like me, one of your responsibilities is to make sure the assigned staff person or freelance producer working on a project is the “right one” to put in front the client.

Related to performance assessment, I’m sure every company has a process. In order to clarify performance expectations my company has defined several “Leadership Competencies that represent the key skills and behaviors needed to drive business success.” Along with the “results achieved” in your specific job, these competencies are used to assess performance and identify development opportunities. The competencies range from “Communicates Effectively and Candidly” to “Leads Change and Innovation” and “Plans and Acts strategically.” Others touch on talent development, teamwork, and the ability to influence others. In addition, my officer has shared the following competencies she feels are important to be a leader in the areas of Communications and Corporate Relations. They include:

  • Intellectual horsepower and curiosity – intelligent and agile, deals with concepts and complexity comfortably, able to make sound, reasoned judgments
  • Ability to deal with paradox – can manage through seemingly irreconcilable differences
  • Composure – is calm and calming under pressure
  • Understands others – can see and relate to different perspectives, sensitive to differing feelings, emotions and cultures
  • Relationship management – understands the importance of building and nurturing both internal and external relationships
  • Creativity – develops new and unique ideas, is original and innovative, adds value
  • Courage – able to take and express a contrarian view in a constructive way
  • Influence – gains trust of others and builds relationships in order to influence effectively

Clearly, these are all good qualities/traits and they play an important role when I’m assessing performance or deciding who I want on my team. Having said that, my experience has led me to put more emphasis on what might be considered the “softer” skills. I look for excellent personality traits and interpersonal behaviors, rather than actual production expertise, technical skills or years of experience. Certainly, experience is very valuable and I usually assume that anyone who’s survived in this business for more than five or ten years, most likely has perfected the majority of the competencies and traits listed above.  So, as I’ve alluded to, I lean towards initially assessing a person’s heart rather than their head. Quite simply, first and foremost, I want to work with a nice person. Someone who;
…has a positive attitude.
…has a genuine passion for the crazy business we’re in.
…can look me in the eye and carry on a conversation.
…can tell a joke, and laugh at one.
…I wouldn’t mind spending a tough day/night in the trenches with.
…I can rely on.
…I can trust.
…is not afraid of hard work, but also knows that hard work needs to produce results.
…understands that actions most often speak louder than words, but also knows when and how to “speak up.”
…understands that you’re not entitled to anything – you need to “earn it” – especially respect.

You can teach someone what a good production schedule looks like or how to frame a good shot, direct an edit session or audition talent, but you probably can’t teach them the traits I mention above. They either have it (the heart, passion and personality for our business) or they don’t. In my opinion, if they have good interpersonal skills and make decisions based on ethics and integrity, they’re more than half way home to becoming a great Producer/Director.

Again, just my opinion – would appreciate yours.

Article contributed by Tom Bowman, CMMA Board of Directors