Have you ever sat at your desk and had an idea that was going to make you, or the company, rich? You know what I’m talking about. It’s the idea so brilliant that you can’t concentrate on the daily tasks at hand? Think Kramer from the Seinfeld. Remember the inflatable ball filled with oil that would surely eradicate all spilled crude worldwide a la Exxon Valdese? Kramer’s idea didn’t work, but it was worth the effort to explore (at least in a sitcom world).
Creativity and innovation is the key to the United States remaining the economic super power of the world. Forget China and India. They remain light years behind but are catching up every day. Their progress cannot be ignored.
Channeling and encouraging creativity and innovation at the workplace is the key to building a lasting business. When someone down the line has a great idea, there needs to be a forum for them to share with the rest of the team. A few techniques to consider:
Keep an open door policy. If colleagues have a great idea, they likely will share it with their superiors. Encourage interaction and foster an environment that rewards idea generation.
Be careful of wormholes. Sometimes great ideas, which are the birthing process for innovation, can be distracting and off company message. It’s a slippery slope. Encourage ideas and communicate a bold vision so conflicting creativity does not happen.
Adopt quickly. There is nothing worse than everyone agreeing to a change that will help the company grow, especially if the idea worked organically up the flagpole with approval along the way, only to have it stagnate at the top. If you encourage innovation and creativity, be ready to implement it.
As consultants, it is important to find the right balance when working with a new client on complex communications issues. The balance between ‘getting it done’ the way the client thinks it should be done and giving a professional opinion that may be in conflict with previously held beliefs may be tricky.
For example, many of our corporate and association clients have always produced a printed newsletter. Newsletters, as a rule of thumb, are a predictable way to communicate progress in an organization on a consistent basis. Once the ink is dried on the contract, the CEO in larger businesses will transition our contact to the public relations person from the organization. These professionals will share the fact that huge amounts of their time are consumed by producing a monthly or (gasp) weekly printed document. Not to mention the enormous organizational costs of postage and printing. In some cases, we’ve seen hard costs equal a highly paid manager. You know what comes next? You guessed it. No one in the organization reads the thing.
Don’t get me wrong, sharing information on a regular basis is important. A couple of suggestions for organizations coming into this world where blogs rule, YouTubing is an action and whistleblowers are waiting for any sign of wrongdoing from management, is to question the intent. Ask yourself – and the CEO – what the end goal is? Perhaps you can accomplish it while saving money.
Convert your newsletter to an online edition. It’s simpler to produce (you can even use Microsoft Publisher to make it look like the old newsletter the CEO loves to get). All your readers are tossing the printed version after reading – if they read it. Lose the ego. Your newsletter is not ever going to hold value like the 1902 National Geographic your grandparents are saving.
Distribute the writing to each department. Spend your time editing and finding where the good stories are. Rather than write one feature story on Jane in marketing with her new campaign that has increased sales, ask ‘Jane’ to write 50 words or less about what she has implemented (or at least give you bullet points). Same with ‘Steve’ in accounting. If you are lucky, the CEO who loves getting the newsletter may even take his hand at writing something every now and then.
Start a blog. If you are like me, then your writing has become technical and perhaps even rusty. Start a blog about your industry and your role within that industry. Receive permission from your boss first and be careful about divulging company information that isn’t for public consumption. Stay away from gossip and innuendo. Plus, it’s kind of fun.
Underestimating the oft-underestimated Oklahoma is nothing new to those of us in the Sooner state. That’s why it came as no surprise when our own ‘Oklahoma City boys’ became owners of the Seattle NBA franchise last week, essentially punching our own ticket for the future of basketball in Oklahoma. Even better, we took control of our own destiny. I’m not surprised.
Seattle and Oklahoma City do not have much in common after Starbucks. They own the worldwide behemoth and we just buy coffee there. I’m reminded of the character Al Pacino plays in The Devil’s Advocate, John Milton, when he’s coaching Keanu Reeves character about surprising people. The short and devilish Milton tells Reeves, ‘Don’t let them see you coming’. They never saw our community pulling it off – which is where the leadership of Bennett comes in. The devil, Oklahoma City is not. I suspect if we had to do a real analysis, our God-fearing, flag waving community would rank somewhere north of our NW neighbors on the spiritual scale.
Although not involved, I’ll suggest three communications tactics for our own Professional Basketball Club LLC for the remainder of 2006:
- Negotiate for the new arena deal in Seattle in 2006
- Seattle fans aren’t stupid. They know that their team is gone. An ‘up’ or ‘down’ decision needs to come in 2006. On the other hand, the NO/OKC Hornets will likely make their decision (now forced) to return to New Orleans by December at the latest because of season ticket sales. Seattle isn’t going to support the team this year, so bargain in good faith until December 31 and then let’s get on with the business of moving south. Oklahoma City doesn’t deserve to skip a year of NBA action because of dragged on negotiations in a city where a new arena deal isn’t going to happen.
- Go quiet in the Oklahoma City media for the rest of 2006
- The Hornets are our home team this year. Despite a big mouth, George Shinn has put money into the free agent market for a competitive team in 2006. Chris Paul and the boys have a chance at the playoffs. As a community, let’s enjoy the present and not worry about next year. Bennett and co. should keep their front row tickets and figure out some better music between time-outs and what to name the new dance team.
- Hire back Paul Mott
- Shinn fired one of the key players in making the OKC experiment work. He understands the market. Bring him in as President of the Sonics now.
Seattle, and George Shinn, never saw Oklahoma City coming (last year and now) and that’s part of the fun. Count me in as one of the new fans of the soon to be Oklahoma City Sonics. I never thought the NO/OKC Hornets sounded right anyway.
“It is never the wrong time to make the right decision”.
In any business, there comes a time when taking a risk(s) becomes mandatory. In fact, by not taking a risk you endanger and inhibit your ability to grow. The type of risk that I’m talking about is one that could conceivably go the wrong direction, potentially even ruining a company.
In Oklahoma, current first term U.S. Senator Tom Coburn risked his entire political future this past year by fighting a ‘right argument’ against the practice of Congressional earmarking in Washington. By Congressional reports, community and legislator pet projects have increased from just over 4,000 in 1994 to nearly 16,000 this past year. That will build a lot of bridges, to ‘no-where’ and otherwise. Prior to Coburn’s criticism, this out of control practice had little backlash outside interest groups.
Currently, our strategic communications business has the opportunity to organize, promote, and execute a large scale event in our community centered on honoring the global war on terror this Sept. 11. We have no outside funding but great ‘buy-in’ from key stakeholders. The timeline is 61 days. It will be tight.
To grow, we decided it was important to make the ‘right’ decision and move forward with a project that we could conceivably fail at. The event combines all of our expertise and will grow and area we’ve talked about improving at. Besides the fear of failure, we believe it can be successful and that’s part of the fun – and why we continue to grow out footprint. Making the ‘right’ decision never sounded so good.
