DaChispa

Some common sense ideas about ensuring you are remembered by people who you want to remember you:

• -Buffer a little before giving your name (a comment about your journey for example) to give people time to take it in
• -Make your name more memorable ‘Ford as in the car’ so people have a hook to hang it on
• -Repeat someone’s name 3 times to remember it (in your head!)
• -Telling an embarassing story against yourself can help – being laughed at creates a connection
• -Be interested and be interesting
• -Give to get

Basic but sometimes we forget these.

On reflection, there were some other lessons to be taken from what Rene Carayol said.  When he talked about developing talent, he made the point that people usually recruit people who are not as good as they are, so you a B player will recruit a C player and so on.  His take was that you have to trade up talent so an A player needs to recruity A+ players.  I think this is also relevant to KM, where people often hang on to their knowledge for fear that those following behind them will overtake them.  You actually want to share what you know both so that those following behind can surpass you, but also so that you can move on.  If you are surrounded by knowledgeable people whom you have nurtured – you look even better!   Rene also told a great story about how the breaking of taboos (in this case a leader completely ignoring the ‘way things were done here’ in a very public way) can change a corporate culture in a moment.

His final words, about challenges for the organisation, bear recording:

• -Why should people connect to us?
• -What do we stand for?
• -Why should other areas connect to our area?

This is a particular challenge for ‘service’ areas, I think.

I heard Rene Carayol speak today and he described himself as ‘the world’s biggest optimist’.  I thought that was me, but, having heard what he has to say, maybe he’s right.  In some ways, he reinforced a lot of things I believe and try to do already.  For example:  what can YOU do, leave your cynicism at the door, everyone can make mistakes and that is OK as long as you learn from them.  His main theme was ‘culture is more powerful than strategy’ and that one size doesn’t fit all.  This is so part of what we have to explain in knowledge management, that I almost cheered.  We have to deal with culture first and simply transferring good practice from one place to another is usually doomed to failure.  He also made a clear distinction between management and leadership which chimes with his culture quote.  Management is about strategy/planning/implementation, leadership is about vision/culture/teams/inspiration.  You can train managers, but leadership is a challenge.  Management is a skill – leadership is an attitude.  He believes that you can recruit people with attitude whom you can then train with the skills they need to do the job.  Attitude is far more important. 

He did some other things as well that were interesting.  He told a lot of stories to illustrate his points – yet again proving to me that this is an excellent KM technique.  He also eschewed powerpoint slides in traditional format, but had a rolling demo going on behind him which had the key tag lines from what he was saying, repeated throughout his talk.  This was a really good way to emphasise his key messages.  Here are some of them:

• -Leaders tell stories, managers talk strategy
• -Good people want to work with good people
• -Organisations change in units of 1
• -If you’re bold you might fail, if you’re not bold you will
• -Catch people doing things right
• -Know what you stand for
• -People are good at 2 or 3 things – find them and stick to them.

The important thing about this talk was that he stuck to the basics, but illustrated them with relevant stories, told enthusiastically and with belief.  Not life changing – but it may change the way a few people (including me) approach their work.

The other day I noticed a sign at the till of a food outlet at the train station.  It said “If you don’t get a receipt, you can have your purchases free”.   What a great way to get a customer to re-inforce your good processes.  I found myself watching to see if I got a receipt (I did) and asked the salesperson if there where many occasions when he forgot.  His reply was telling “not since the notice went up”.  I guess it’s a variation on the ‘find a better offer and we’ll give you £x’ or ‘if your pizza is late you get £x’ – but that is more to do with advertising than service.  This was purely to get staff to give out receipts – which is actually of little value to the customer. 

I wish I could think of a way to transfer this to my environment ….

It should be possible to use the induction process to develop certain capabilities in existing staff.  For example – giving an introduction about a project/work area could be good to help someone develop presentation skills and also be better able to publicise what they do in future.  Being a buddy to a new starter could develop interpersonal/organisational skills.  This may not be applicable in all organisations, but it’s a double win where it is benefiting both new starter and inductor.

I used the ‘how will you know?’ question today to see if it got me better information about what the person I was talking to really wanted me to do.  It took the form of ‘how will you know when I have succeeded?’  There was a pause, and then I was told what would actually make them happy if they saw it.  I got what they consider as evidence which is a very very useful pointer for my planning.  I now have a couple of outcomes, quite early on, I just need to work out how to get there.