Leadership and Communications

In the world of internal communications and human resources it is well known that workers prefer to develop themselves in an enjoyable and nice workplace, in which they can reach their personal growing and goals along with the organisational ones. This is very important to take account, not only for workers but for the business itself because it could bring a lot of new opportunities to improve productivity and commitment.

One of the main factors to do this is through creative and assertive leadership. I wouldn't like to talk here about the wide range of theories about this issue, I'd rather talk about the way this can be useful in our daily work as managers, in order to raise productivity and make profit from this.

1.Your people need a leader, not only a boss.
Once upon a time I met someone at work who everybody wanted to work with, even those who didn't work in the same department. His workers used to understand and accept his commands and follow his orders without complaining. He was a beloved and respected boss, someone able to inspire others towards a common vision.People need someone who guide them and teach new knowledge, and this guy knew how to do it.

2.Can you practice what you preach?
Another important point people used for good value is the capacity that you, as a boss, have to do what you preach, I mean communicational coherence that give real meaning to our words. People need to find real coherence in their boss's behaviour, in this way employees tend to follow easily a model of authority.

3.Open communication channels
It means using descendant communications for let your workers know that you appreciate their work and efforts, not only for getting information about the way they work. On the other hand let them make suggestions and set projects, nothing is better for generating commitment among employees than the opportunity to manage their own ideas. Open communications produce feedback, which is very important to reach high standards of productivity.

4.A good leader knows how to delegate
There are some things that need to be delegated and avoid power concentration. This will improve employees skills in order to get more experience and expertise in some tasks. Workers will appreciate that.

5. Everyone knows what to do, and how to do it!
That's an important issue in terms of human resources in every company: a good boss have to set functions, define positions and share them among employees. People feel better if they know what and how to do their functions. Moreover, they will know what they have to expect from others, because it reduce uncertainty.

8 key advices to improve your internal communications in a large factory

Internal communications is a fascinating field which is very important to look after in our daily human resource management due to the fact that, as a company, we should take control of othe internal interactions among workers which could help us to reach our main organisational goals.

Internal Communications Management, as part of corporate communications, is a useful tool that has the goal to improve the human resource commitment to the company and to its core values, but how can we improve this? . Here I would like to give you few insights in order have an efficient internal communications management in your company.

1.Internal market research RIGHT NOW!

You need information about the company, its mission and vision, history, myths, heroes and enemies; I mean corporate culture! So you have to choose the tools to get that useful information: surveys, focus groups, interviews, etc. As long as you have the best information you will probably get the most suitable information.

You can divide the information into cualitative and cuantitative data. I strongly recommend to geto both, in order to have a panoramic view of the organisation.

2.You need to set goals

Forget doing things without goals, you need to know what do you want: commitment, avoiding rumours, improving leadership, etc. How long will it take? And last but not least, how can we measure that? So we need indicators!

These are the goals, and they need to be powerful: Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timeable. The so called SMART Goals.

3.Strategy of attack

From my experience you need an appropriate strategy to get attention from you audience, and this comes from the information you collected before in your internal market research. Is your strategy defensive or offensive; maybe you prefer a guerrilla attack. Do you have enough resources? Do you know the field? Also you have to wonder the what is the best moment to do it.

4.Choose you best channels of communication.

Some managers love colourful and maybe useless billboards around the company walls, but not all of your workers really read them. Some other managers rather prefer emailing as a way of communication, but maybe many people, often in factories, don't work with computers in front of them. So you have to select the best mix of internal channels: Blackberries, billboards, internal magazines, emailing, communications 2.0, etc. Choose the best ones in order to have the best outcome.

5.Design the best message

A message is divided into three components called PET: Promise, Evidence and Tone. Promise is what you offer to your people, while evidence is the way you will show them that. Tone is how warm, severe, or friendly is your “voice” while saying that.

6.Do you have a strategy of feedback

Once you launch your campaign you need the best feedback to measure how effective are your efforts of communication. It might be necessary to improve anything: maybe your targets, primary and secondary ones; your internal channels could vary according to the moment... so be prepared to change your plans.

7.Special training for supervisors

I need to have clear that you need to train supervisors in order give them communication skill so that they can spread your voice around the company. They are a secondary target you need to have in mind. You will need to set up a schedule of workshops with them.

8.Select and train internal leaders

They are a key part of your plan. Select and train them, by doing this your ensure that informal communications do not become a monster against the organisation.

Reflexiones sobre RED SOCIAL

"..estamos viendo la cuenta personal de Mark sus amores desamores, triunfos y traiciones..."

Hace unos días tuve la oportunidad de ver la película Red Social que es, básicamente, una interpretación de la forma en la que se gestó Facebook, haciendo un altísimo énfasis en el juego de traiciones y sociedades resquebrajadas en el camino. Me gustó mucho la dinámica de la película, los constantes flashbacks le daban un especial cambio de velocidad a la trama, más allá de presentarse como un documental inspirador sobre la vida de Zuckerberg.

Facebook, en general aprovecha la necesidad de exposición de las personal en relación con sus amigos y conocidos. Explota necesidades de aceptación y ostentación; reproduce en el mundo virtual lo que ya existe en el mundo "real", y que es común para todas la culturas de la tierra, por lo que se explica su gran éxito.

Por eso Facebook, al ser una analogía de la sociedad real, se ha convertido también en un market place virtual utilizado por las grandes y pequeñas marcas para posicionarse, con el agregado de facilitar la retroalimentación.

Facebook y Comunicación

Facebook es una herramienta interesante para construir reputación corporativa y desarrollar posicionamiento de marca, eso está claro; de hecho podría ser utilizado también en la generación de canales de comunicación interna de tal manera que se facilite la gestión de las corrientes de opinión dentro las grandes empresas.

Obviamente que esos son elementos que Mark Zuckerberg nunca previó cuando desarrolló la empresa, muchas de estas variables se fueron desarrollando espontáneamente en el camino, porque la naturaleza humana es así, se desarrolla de manera evolutiva (o involutiva), por lo que no está claro qué es lo que sucederá luego; incluso más allá de Facebook.

Red Social, como película, representa una mirada en sí misma a la forma como nos desarrollamos, creamos relaciones y las deshacemos según nuestros intereses, involucra actores y los "quita de tu red". Red Social habla directamente de la red social de Zuckerberg, y que él tradujo en el ciberespacio. En otras palabras estamos viendo la cuenta personal de Mark sus amores desamores, triunfos y traiciones.

Para los más geeks, aquí el guión original de le película.
Social Network Script

¿Le damos a la gente lo que quiere o lo que necesita?

¿Cómo organizamos nuetras actividades organizacionales de distracción y entretenimiento en nuestra empresa? Le damos a nuestros recursos humanos lo que quieren o lo que necesitan.

Creo que en la mayoría de los casos empresariales, le damos a nuestros recusos humanos lo que ellos quieren, es decir actividades meramente distractivas y bastante efectistas, en lugar de organizar actividades que permitan generar identificación y fidelidad, además de educar de alguna forma a nuestro personal.

Si organizaramos actividades que estén relacionadas con los valores de la organización, de tal forma que la gente pueda respirarlos, el efecto siguiente sería el posicionamiento de la marca interna. Sí además existiera una herramienta que pueda medir esos resultados, estaríamos utilizando ya algunas herramientas muy básicas del marketing moderno.

Sugiero utilizar este modelo de trabajo en comunicaciones y recursos humanos, en la medida que a largo plazo serán más efectivas y, no solo nos evitarán conflictos organizacionales, sino nos ayudarán a tener un empresa más sólida y lista para darle coherencia a su imagen empresarial.

Las mejores empresas para trabajar en el Perú - Great Place to Work 2010

Les presento la relación de las mejores empresas para trabajar en el Perú según Great Place to Work en su versión 2010. Este es un suplemento aparecido en el diario El Comercio, con algunas interesantes notas a las empresas destacadas.

Great Place to Work 2010 Peru