Internal Comm. + External Comm.

There is a LinkedIn Group Q&A about how effective it would be if a single person handles both internal and external communication. I am glad that almost all the respondents feel that it's far more effective if it's handled by one individual. Consider the synergies and assets of internal communications that external communications leverage to create a lasting impression on the target audience:

• Uniform, integrated content and messaging
• Far deeper understanding of the organization's history, culture and management thought
• The employee as a brand ambassador

Content for Branding 1

If branding is the promise you want to keep, content is how you ensure that the promise is kept. If branding is about all about how a customer views a company, content is all about the written and spoken text (visuals used only to complement, emphasise and help in recall) used to convince the customer that his perception is correct.

Fabulous Mindware

In the June 4, 2010 issue of Forbes India (Ideas to Change the World), Thomas Davenport, the President’s Distinguished Professor in IT and Management, Babson College, Massachusetts, write about the gift of deliberation.

He says, “The definition of that term I like best is: … weighing and examining the reasons for and against a choice or measure; careful consideration; mature reflection…”

Davenport’s column is about people receiving information faster than they can “absorb and react to it”. “We skate on the surface of a vast information ocean, and seldom have the time or interest to penetrate its depths,” he writes.

How can Deliberation help:

• It helps us live better lives
• It helps us make better, effective decisions
• It helps organizations identify decision alternatives, consider them seriously, select one to apply and yield a “reflective decision outcome”

How can Deliberation be advanced in the lives of people?

• Make a conscious choice to disengage occasionally from the information stream
• Everyone should have periods during the day in which they do not receive electronic messages
• Organizations should encourage such periods so that no one will feel the pressure to communicate
• During those times, focus on human relationships and the meaning of life

Thank you, Mr. Davenport, for validating my views in my previous blog entry.

Effective-mail

• Improve chances of your email being read.
• Increase chances of your email recipients making conversation with you.
• Enhance your brand recall.

How?

• Your name is displayed fully and correctly.
• Append your team's name to your name so that recipients connect you to your function.
• Let the subject line clearly suggest what the message contains.
• Use keywords in the subject line that you feel recipients will search.
• Use a pleasant font, not the default one.

Quiet Time Tips

Quiet time improves productivity, improves focus and sets limits of tolerance on co-workers. But then a well-meant quiet time does have a habit of crossing over to cold vibes. But the benefit of doubt should go to the hermit.
I know some very successful communicators, those who have sent one protégé after another to senior editorial positions. Their secret to success: locking themselves out for hours and days from the agony of idle chit-chat, innumerable phone calls and the general frustration associated with being present.
A social setting is a sure-fire way of turning writer's block into a grinding millstone, or even a slick guillotine. I've struggled so many times to move from subject to verb, let alone end the sentence with the object.
However, self-imposed quietude doesn't work. There is a real and clear danger of being labelled asocial. The immediate fall-out is that you will be left out of forwarded funny mails or a particularly-interesting viral popular on YouTube that your cubicle-mate stumbled upon.
My Quiet Time tips for aspiring writers?

1. Set aside two hours every day. Don't set a fixed time because you never know when an idea will hit you.
2. Made your work style clear to team-mates in order to avoid unsavoury incidents or silence being misconstrued as snobbery.
3. Ensure that the team knows that the silence is for the good of the team.
4. Share your output with the team after the Quiet Time.
5. Use the In / Out tag for the team to know when you are Away.