Viral Change (TM)

The Viral Change Partnership - A call to join a start up – could you help us to find the right people?

2009-06-22T13:36:00.001+01:00

The Chalfont Project carves out Viral Change™ creating a separate dedicated LLP company. The timetable for the start up has started

Having pioneered Viral Change™ and created substantial market presence and implementation experience (www.viralchange.net) we have taken the decision within The Chalfont Project (www.thechalfontproject.com ) to create a new company exclusively dedicated to the expansion of Viral Change™ across industries and geographies.

The new company will be de facto a start up in the form of an LLP (Limited Liability Partnership) The majority partner will be The Chalfont Project but we are looking for a very small number of exceptional start up partners who can see this unique opportunity and are willing to take over our Viral Change™ IP assets, develop them, create business and share risk and profits with the rest of the partners.

Partners will be full time dedicated to The Viral Change Partnership LLP and will be directly responsible for its revenue growth, owning part of the new company in terms agreed in accordance with their contributions. If you know of anybody who is an exceptional professional with sufficient experience and gravitas to become a partner, please forward this email and ask him/her to get in touch with me at leandro-herrero@thechalfontproject.com so that I can share a more detailed information blueprint.

In parallel to this search for exceptional partners, The Viral Change Partnership will be setting up a selected number of associations with individuals or organisations which could not fit the exclusive time commitment but who however wish to establish a close and formal relationship with us. Please feel free to share this call as well with who may be interested

Innovactions changes behaviours into continuing innovation

2009-06-03T19:38:00.002+01:00

London – June 3, 2009 - Innovation is back on the radar in many organizations, driven in part by recent movements such as ‘crowdsourcing’, open innovation and the wikinomic world. Interesting is that a lot of airtime is given to ‘processes for innovation’, which are focused on generating and capturing so-called ‘innovative ideas’.

In Innovactions, Leandro Herrero explains that capturing those ideas will only take your organization so far. “Processes and skills are indeed valuable,” he admits, “but creating an environment that is wide open to inquiry, curiosity and perpetual re-invention will ensure that innovation is no longer a word in your organization, but a behaviour. And not just any behaviour, but one that will lead your company to flourish.”

In this new book, the author focuses on analyzing the components that are needed to create a culture of innovation, with a heavy emphasis on what people do (or don’t do) to achieve (or miss) a goal. These innovative behaviours the author describes as ‘disruptive’, following the thread in his previous book Disruptive Ideas.

Debunking the myth that the capacity to innovate is allegedly connected to the size of the organization or the type of industry, Innovactions will appeal to any manager and leader interested in creating the socio-environmental conditions for innovation within their company. The simple management tools provided by the book will help them create a culture in which different forms and degrees of innovation can co-exist and flourish.

Leandro Herrero was a practicing psychiatrist for many years before holding senior leadership positions in top league business organizations. He is currently CEO of The Chalfont Project Ltd, an international group of organizational consultants, which he co-founded. His previous books include The Leader with Seven Faces, Viral Change, New Leaders Wanted – Now Hiring! and Disruptive Ideas, also published by meetingminds.

Innovactions - Escape from the me-too company
meetingminds, July 2009
£20.00/US $29.00 - Paperback, 200 pages
ISBN: 978-1-905776-06-1
Available to pre-order at: www.waterstones.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.com, www.meetingminds.com and many other (online) bookshops and outlets.

From Penny Power, founder of ecademy

2009-05-27T08:16:00.001+01:00

Penny Power [ 25-May-09 8:47pm ] On 22nd May 2009 I shared the stage with Dr Herrero, I followed his talk. It was the most inspiring talk I have heard. his understanding of the new world and the need for mass behavioral change was articulated at a level that moved minds in the room. The time is now for Dr.Herrero, he is the perfect messenger for the people who fully understand what is actually happening in the Social Networking world. I feel honored to know him and hope that one day he will speak for us at our London Event.

Organisational Change: New Approaches and Role of CEOs

2009-05-24T12:28:00.000+01:00

An old review of Viral Change now found! The book is reviewed together with Lynda Grayton's Hot Spots in the context of MBA materials
Organisational Change: New Approaches and Role of CEOs

From my presentation at CIB

2009-05-23T10:10:00.000+01:00

Wonderful people at the CIB conference, a professional body of internal (external) communicators

Dr Leandro Herrero says viral change is infectious

CIPR Inside event an evening with Viral Change author Leandro Herrero

2009-05-23T09:45:00.000+01:00

Se Lee's Smith call to this meeting
Deliggted to be back to CIPR
Leandro
Talking Internal Communication...: Free CIPR Inside event an evening with Viral Change author Leandro Herrero

Viral Change and internal social networks

2009-04-28T09:32:00.001+01:00

An article by Computing guru David Tebbutt

Social computing - start small, think big - Networks - Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com

Most people have an opinion about social computing - a term I use to refer to social networking as well as web 2.0 communication tools such as blogging and wikis. 'Dangerous', 'liberating' and 'time-wasting' are three of the most common reactions to using these technologies within businesses.
The problem with such blanket reactions is that they inhibit adoption. If the boss says a technology is a waste of people's time, IT has no choice but to disregard it. Unfortunately, users that want it have no such inhibitions. They will still find ways of introducing it, usually by subscribing to web-based third-party services which cheerfully tunnel through the firewall.
It's better by far for management to give the green light to social computing in principle, allowing IT to exercise a measure of control over the proceedings and, perhaps, limiting its use to certain members of staff.
The main issue behind the decision to adopt social computing techs is that of command-and-control versus self-organisation. And hidden behind this is the issue of trust.
The workforce and management are moving from command-and-control to self-organisation at different speeds and it will be a source of tension for many years to come. Wholesale change will, in the main, come about slowly. Some say 10 years, some say 50. This week I even heard a podcast in which one pundit - Euan Semple - said it could take as long as a 100 years for the transition to be complete.
Social computing is not just an IT issue, though - it's a behavioural issue as well. If a company decides at a high level that some kind of collaborative computing is required, then certain people within the organisation will respond positively to this. As they infect others, so the culture will shift as a result.
This reminds me of a book called Viral Change, in which author Dr Leandro Herrero explains how ideas spread within organisations - and, more importantly, how to make them spread rapidly. Because he has a background in psychiatry and business management, he focuses more on human processes than any IT that underpins them. Yet the book resonates well with social computing, although it owes little, if anything, to the subject.
Herrero presents the idea that it is a small minority of people who bring about change and innovation in organisations. These individuals discuss and champion new behaviours - the only things which actually result in new organisational outputs. These people need to walk the talk as well, otherwise others have no behaviours to mimic. They also engage with visible sceptics - if they get them to change, then it gives permission to all their followers to change as well.

Continue reading the rest of the article

I'll be in Princeton, NJ, 2-5 May

2009-04-15T11:04:00.000+01:00

I'll be in Princeton. NJ, 2-5 May .... (if you are around?)

Dr Herrero Keynote Speaker at Sales Force Effectiveness Summit, USA May 4th-5th, 2009
Leandro

30 little, effective explosions

2009-04-15T10:58:00.000+01:00

See what Jack Vinson makes of DISRUPTIVE IDEAS. Thanks Jack

30 little, effective explosions - Knowledge Jolt with Jack

Imagine having your pick of 30 different fireworks. Each has its own effects, but taken in combinations, they can really light up the sky. That's the idea behind Leandro Herrero's Disruptive Ideas - 10+10+10=1000: the maths of Viral Change that transform organisations, a how-to follow-on to Viral Change. There is a book website where most of the book contents are posted, and readers are encouraged to comment. I was sent a review copy last year and have finally gotten around to it.
What makes a disruptive idea? It's something that changes the way the business runs, and it's something that can be started easily and create a wildfire of change (viral) through the organization. It is definitely NOT something that requires a large implementation. Each idea is described through stories around how the idea might impact an organization. Herrero often touches upon popular management literature and turns it around with suggestions like "talk the walk" instead of the usual "walk the talk."

Read the rest here: http://blog.jackvinson.com/archives/2009/04/07/30_little_effective_explosions.html

Gary Hamel on Managing Generation Y - the Facebook Generation - Gary Hamel’s Management 2.0 - WSJ

2009-04-15T09:45:00.001+01:00

Gary Hamel on Managing Generation Y - the Facebook Generation - Gary Hamel’s Management 2.0 - WSJ

See this post. The question of how Generation F (or others for that matter) have social-interaction expectations is important when crafting Viral Change™ programmes. See also McAfee’s comments. This conversation is worth following for anybody interested in Viral Change™

Ideas Rompedoras is Disruptive Ideas in Spanish. To be published soon

2009-04-03T13:04:00.001+01:00

We Urano will publish the book in Spanish in June 09

My favourite G20 picture: one at a time ( = Viral)

2009-04-03T12:40:00.001+01:00

Can’t remember any other time when anybody being pictured arriving to 10 Downing street, official residence of British Prime Ministers, was done so shaking hands with the policemen at the door. It may have happened but haven’t seen it.... Here you have it now. This is the best of G20, believe me. Obama gets it. Obama is viral in nature – here my Viral Change™ interest. In his presidential routes he promised to people A, and B and C ... and then added, ‘whatever it takes, on a person at a time, one family at a time’. Contrast this with our management practices. When was the last time you heard ‘an employee at a time, an individual at a time’? We go for everybody, everywhere in those massive change management or communication programmes, the antithesis of Viral Change™. Viral Change is indeed one-at-at-time change.... Role modelling provided by Change Champions... One generates three, generates 5 etc. It is viral influence. It is this handshake of the picture.

A wealth of ideas on innovation

2009-03-30T19:29:00.001+01:00

Working on my new book INNOVACTIONS and multiples innovation workshops and recent consultng work, I have reviewed and used Jeff Jarvis book. Excellent source of ideas and challenges of business models. Not the usual business book bought in airports and quitely left behind on the plane

Dr Leandro Herrero will run an ‘Innovactions’ Workshop at the eyeforpharma conference in Barcelona on the 3rd of March 2009

2009-02-09T13:03:00.002Z

Dr Leandro Herrero will run the following workshop on the 3rd of March 2009 in Barcelona, at the eyeforpharma conference ‘Sales Force Effectiveness 2009’ (Europe).

Innovactions: last person leaving the me-too company, please switch off the lights!

Creating an innovation fabric by identifying innovation behaviours
Re-designing ‘structures’ with focus on innovation
Killing process that prevent innovation
New skills for a non-me-too company: the new people you need and where to find them
Continuous improvement is prolonged agony: creating transformation now
How a new pharma company is possible now, and how to build one.

Innovactions is a new book by Dr Leandro Herrero to be published in 2009 by meetingminds (www.meetingminds.com)

Eyeforpharma is a leading provider of strategic information for pharmaceutical companies and the organiser of annual conferences such as this one entitled ‘Sales Force Effectiveness 2009’ (Europe)

Dr Leandro Herrero to deliver a key note address at the eyeforpharma conference in Barcelona on the 3rd March 2009

2009-02-09T12:41:00.002Z

Dr Leandro Herrero will deliver a key note address at the eyeforpharma conference ‘Sales Force Effectiveness 2009’ in Barcelona on the 3rd March 2009. Under the title ‘Viral, beta and long tail: how to invent the nee pharma company’ , Dr Herrero will address the challenges which pharmaceutical companies face to differentiate themselves. The key points for this presentation are:

Viral, beta and long tail: inventing the new pharma company
Experimenting with business models and living with several coexisting ones
Neither top-down, nor flat: viral centres of leadership and collective imagination
The revenge of the niches
The long tile of people inside, its HR nightmare, and the (almost) end of the internal ladder
Non-negotiable core: all the rest in beta mode

'People like me'

2008-12-10T17:31:00.001Z

One of the most interesting pieces in the world of social influence mechanisms, both research and practitioners, is Edelman’s trust barometer. The figure/concept of ‘people like me’ has emerged as the most trusted source of communication and possible influence inside organisations. This has significant impact on Viral Change™ programmes and reinforces our practice of focusing on peer-to-peer influence. The whole report is worth reading. Thanks Edelman!

Sidestep formal structures for effective change (from David Tebbut's blog)

2008-11-27T19:26:00.001Z

Many companies like to think they understand all about business processes and change management. They spend fortunes on consultancy, design, structures, processes, training, roll out and management, then wonder why they don't get the results they expected. So they have another go...
Well, maybe things aren't quite that bad, but I bet you can think of plenty of examples of 'change initiatives' that just don't get the buy-in of the grass-roots people who are supposed to implement them. Part of the problem is that they quite often try to appeal to reason. They use PowerPoints with lots of bullet points to try to hook the intellect and forget the emotional dimension. Maybe they think there's no room for emotion in their business.
But why do people go to work generally? Especially so-called 'white collar' workers. It's for the satisfaction of doing a job well and for recognition and this doesn't just mean in the pay packet. Not a good motivator at the best of times.
Part of the problem is that we've become accustomed to treating business as a mechanistic process. And a predictable one at that. Do this, force it through these process pipes, and consistent results will pop out the other end. In truth, many of the most important business processes are chaotic. Think of sales and marketing, for example. Untidy real life gets in the way. Reality has little to do with the org chart and formal processes and much more to do with endless workarounds and informal communications.
Yes, of course some processes or workflows do what they're supposed to. Regulations have to be followed and suchlike. But these are a bit like the unconscious processes of the human body. We can walk down the street while we pump blood, breathe and digest our food. But our attention is on the interesting conversation with the person walking with us.
So it is in business, the interesting stuff and the stuff that is likely to do the business most good in the future is probably the stuff that lies outside the fundamental formal systems of the organisation.
Leandro Herrero has written a most interesting book on how organisations can bring about change by acknowledging that all is not what it seems in the body corporate. He alights on the fact that, alongside the 'organigramme', lives a communication network in which all employees and business partners participate to a greater or lesser degree. Some people are highly connected, others only slightly. These are the strong ties and weak ties beloved of social network analysts. His book is called Viral Change.

Continue reading in David's Blog

Change, activism, technology, REAL communication, WOW!

2008-11-26T18:42:00.002Z

This is magnificient in all counts. http://www.girleffect.org. Visually, conceptually, social activism! I wish I could create something similar to project VIRAL CHANGE and keep communicating what it is and does!

Crowd surfing

2008-11-07T10:50:00.001Z

This is a good book: Crowd Surfing by Martin Thomas and David Brain.

This is the Amazon’s description: The way people buy has gone through a massive revolution in recent years: thanks to blogs, review sites and chat rooms, we no longer have to rely on what a company says about its products and services we can read what our fellow consumers think about what they've bought, and make our own decisions bearing those views in minds. The result? Empowered customers who know exactly what they want and who can now explore many ways to get it. Many companies, however, just won't accept that things have changed and haven't adjusted their marketing efforts to match. In Crowd Surfing, David Brain and Martin Thomas explain what marketers, advertisers and brand specialists need to do to communicate with today's savvier consumers. They include case studies of successes and failures from the business world and beyond, and interview leaders such as Michael Dell and Sebastian Coe to help illustrate their points.

See a review of the book and an interview with David, president of of Edelman and co-author.

Edelman’s trust barometer is a good supporting tool to understand the source of trust in organisations and the significance of the peer-to-peer influence that we use in Viral Change™

Viral (social) Change in action: The Chicago CeaseFire model

2008-10-28T16:58:00.008Z

Viral (social) Change in action: The Chicago CeaseFire model
By Leandro Herrero (28.10.08)

I am just back from the annual Pop!Tech conference in Camden, ME, USA. This is my third time as a participant. This is a forum for exploring the interactions between technology and society. It is evolving towards a platform more focused on social innovation, social entrepreneurship and change. The audience, participants, speakers (mainly US people) are a mixture of people from arts, design, academia, engineering, social trends, entrepreneurship, socio-economic fields, health etc.

One of the presentations was by Dr Gary Slutkin, who is executive director of The Chicago Project for Violence Prevention. I must confess my total previous ignorance of that work. Under the logo/slogan of ‘CeaseFire’, the project engages people from communities and neighbourhoods to literally stop the circle of violence by confronting individuals of gangs and ‘stopping the shooting’ (on spot sometimes) and/or stopping the frequent retaliation. The project is extremely successful achieving reductions in shootings up to 40% in the neighbourhoods where the model is operating
What is extraordinary for me is the obvious similitude between our Viral Change™ model and CeaseFire modus operandi. CeaseFire, like us, uses the language and models of epidemiology (Gary Slutkin day job is Professor of Epidemiology!). Like Viral Change™, the real work in CeaseFire is done by a selected small group of connected individuals called ‘interrupters’ or ‘Outrech workers’. In the graphic below I have attempted to summarise this comparisons.

Viral Change™ has been designed, developed and implemented with the organization in mind. The only reason for this has been so that I could focus on the territory of my daily consulting work as organizational architect. But the Viral Change™model is a social model, not constrained to those borders. Social change (communitarian, micro-social, social innovation initiatives, public health initiatives, etc) is a perfect territory to implement Viral Change™ as the Chicago ‘CeaseFire’ project shows.

I will be working on those micro/macro social areas as well in future to at least gather examples of implementations and broaden the Viral Change™ scope. Those of us who do organizational work are bound to learn a lot from the dynamics of social change. Similarly I believe that Viral Change™ can contribute to the further refinement of social initiatives.

Not all of those social change initiatives are Viral Change™ as I have described in multiple places including the second edition of the book. Most of them still follow what we call in Viral Change™ ‘Big Splash’, that is, ‘massive ( as massive as possible) reaching out’. In many of those programmes there is an implicit assumption that behavioural change will follow the right information or communication campaign (e.g. AIDS). It is a pity that money is largely spend in the communication/big-splash side versus the formation, development and training of ‘social activists’ that influence other people and ‘train’ other activists.

This is a summary of Viral Change™ and CeaseFire. I do not pretend to have all the CeaseFire facts right. I am hoping to be able to visit Gary Slutkin in Chicago at some point, soon to learn more and close the loop and hope to be able to contribute to them as much as they are already showing me how wonderful model the one of ‘small numbers’ is….

New independent book review - Viral Change (2nd Edition).

2008-10-12T16:43:00.001+01:00

New independent book review - Viral Change (2nd Edition). The alternative to slow, painful and unsuccessful management of change in organisations By Leandro Herrero; Meetingminds; ISBN 9781905776054; 402 pages; ₤ 19.95

Three quarters of all change initiatives in organizations fail. Are we missing something? Leandro Herrero turns common views about change upside down. He calls his approach ‘viral change’ and combines mechanisms from the behavioural sciences with recent insights from social sciences and the network theory. New ideas, processes, behaviours and changes are more easily spread through an organization when spread like a viral infection. Viral Change deals with this ‘infectious behaviour’, which first spreads slowly until it reaches a tipping point. Then, the new behaviour quickly becomes the norm. And it only takes a few minor behavioural changes in a limited number of people in a network. Four principles form the basis for infectious change: the only real change is behavioural change; behaviour changes the culture of an organization (and not the other way around); organizational and cultural change is not a long-term issue; and it only takes a few key items to focus the energy.

In the first part of his book, Herrero shows which persistent beliefs about change management leaders and consultants cling to, why he thinks many changes fail and why Viral Change is such an attractive alternative. To date, a lot of knowledge has been gathered about organizational life. And this knowledge helps to discuss and analyze conventional and traditional perspectives on how the organization works. Next, the author brings all insights together and stresses the differences between the traditional point of view and his viral approach. In summary, the first part contains theory for the pragmatists, because, all too often, they are too eager to grab ready-made solutions off the shelf without really understanding how organizations really function. These pragmatists really need to mull over one more time all that is known about organizational life today.

Part two focuses on practice for people who like to lose themselves in concepts and theories, as they could really use some action. Here, Herrero builds his viral approach around 4 components: language, new behaviour, creating tipping points and rules and routines. While in the first half of the book the author is stimulating, ironic and provocative, here he becomes more serious. His Viral Change-approach is developed in great detail. And it quickly becomes clear that this is definitely not a new trick for one-minute-managers. Organizational structure and big top-down change initiatives (and the communication circuses that go with them) become a thing of the past if the methodology is strictly followed. New behaviour is determined and applied by one or more groups of ‘change champions’ to important bottlenecks in the social network that forms the organization. The snowball of behavioural change is rolled around and around by the organization until it gathers such momentum that a tipping point is created and the new behaviour becomes the norm unexpectedly fast. Suddenly, culture change has arrived, and within six months!

This is a gem of a book for (change)managers and one that people in communication should definitely read, as the traditional linear communication plan can be thrown out. So these communication managers need to find a new role. How? Well, you can read that for yourself.

Nico Jong
The Netherlands

Viral Change interview: Sue Tupling and Leandro Herrero on organisations and Viral Change™

2008-10-12T16:22:00.001+01:00

Sue Tupling has interviewed me in the context of my presentation at the Charter Institute of PR, which I hope to post soon. Sue is a wonderful interviewer who made the conversation very easy. I spent seventeen minutes in conversation with here and the outcome is, thanks to her, a good overview of Viral Change. But also, we talked about models of organisations, management education, collaboration and idea generation in companies, social fashions and the beauty of Viral Change™. Not bad for the 17 minutes! Sue, a successful change and communications consultant herself writes the changeworks blog, where you can read her comments and listen to the interview.

Culture 2.0: viral, beta, collective sense making, long tail-PART 1

2008-09-22T13:01:00.001+01:00

Part 1: Collaboration and the enterprise’s DNA: a cultural mutation, as opposed to evolution, may be what is really needed.

By Leandro Herrero

Collaboration between employees as an organisational goal is hardly a new topic. So why is that today, when ‘social observers’ say that ‘collaboration is the real hot topic’ they do so without the expected red face of ‘déjà vu’. I’d like to examine what I believe are the key parameters that are driving a new enterprise agenda where collaboration is not just at the core, but ‘the core’. Consider these two corporate weather storms

Technology gone public

Storm one is what I call ‘technology’s gone public’. In the old days, email was a sophisticated communication tool that you had in the office, whilst a fax machine was something of a luxury that only sophisticated people had at home. Today, online, real-time talking-to-anybody-anywhere is something that everybody, sophisticated or not, can do from home whilst real time social networking (tools) in the office is something that only sophisticated companies have. Web 2.0 and the likes have shifted the collaboration power from the enterprise to home, from big IT departments to a free download from your bedroom, from training manuals to plug-and-go use. The new(er) digital generation of employees are ready to embrace social networking and mass collaboration, if only they had the same tools in the office that their teenage daughters have at home. Some of these companies do have Web 2.0 tools but they are stuck on Culture 1.0.

Continue reading here

Whipping up a storm with disruptive communications

2008-09-18T09:48:00.002+01:00

Posted by Lee Smith, co-founder of Gatehouse and chair of CIPR Inside, in his blog Talking Internal Communications

September 17, 2008
Whipping up a storm with disruptive communications

I've been reading Leandro Herrero's latest book, Disruptive Ideas, and he's got me thinking about the potential we communicators have to transform our organisations from the inside-out.
This book, which I highly recommend, builds on the thinking and methodology outlined in Leandro's earlier work, Viral Change, which I've discussed here before. It proposes a menu of simple ideas which could, if implemented in the right organisation and the right way, fundamentally change the fabric of organisational life - by changing the behaviour of individual employees.
Like Viral Change, Disruptive Ideas is built on the premise that at the heart of every organisation is a small group of highly networked people (change agents if you like) who hold the key to spreading change virally - like an infection. He sees organisations as non-linear and argues that small interventions (disruptions) can have a massive impact. Butterflies and hurricanes. Leandro also believes that the only way to change an organisation is to focus on changing individual behaviours; there is no culture, only behaviours. It's fresh and extremely compelling stuff.
The book itself proposes 30 such small interventions - 10 relating to structures, 10 to processes and 10 to behaviours. They are all extremely powerful yet exceedingly simply ideas.
Here are a few of them that relate directly to our own area of focus (you can read more about these in the hard copy or web-based open book):
Team 365: the team that (almost) doesn't meet - create teams that are 'always on'; that get things done without waiting for the monthly team meeting; that collaborate, share and take action in real time. Use meetings instead to create social glue - to talk strategy, to talk behaviour, to celebrate success.
Face it, don't email it - encourage face-to-face interaction; reduce email clutter; use emerging channels like blogs and wikis to encourage collaboration and reduce email traffic. Stop emailing people who sit a few desks away.
Less Powerpoint, more stories - switch from presentation to conversation mode; kill the slide deck; identify, capture and share real stories about real people doing real things
Go to source (and turn the volume down) - stamp out rumours quickly and decisively by going to the source; decrease the noise coming from the negative, vocal minority; listen to the grapevine; use facts to tackle half-truths.
These four suggestions will give you a flavour of Leandro's thinking and approach, which I'm right behind.
So what else can we as communicators do to 'disrupt' our organisations? If we are the butterflies of the corporate world (excuse the metaphor), how can we start the flapping that will trigger an internal hurricane?
The four ideas above are a good start - hinting at the massive potential we have to revolutionise the workplace. And there are many more of these communication-related interventions that we can drive and influence and that could, collectively, turn our organisations upside down.
I was interviewed recently by Sean Dodson at The Guardian and we got talking about social media as a disruptive technology. I hadn't given the subject much thought at the time, but I have done since. I have no doubt that social media channels - blogs, wikis, social networking sites, etc - can be used to trigger deep and fundamental change inside organisations. They can bypass the hierarchy, boost transparency, stimulate grassroots conversations, identify issues, give the silent a voice, reduce email traffic, trigger action. What's more, if adopted and championed by those all-important change agents, these tools could help spread the virus of change at lightening speed.
Building on Leandro's point about storytelling, I would also argue that injecting more emotion into internal communications has hurricane potential. Much of what gets communicated inside organisations (at least formally) is hard, rational and emotionally hollow. But that's not what how we operate as humans. We think, feel and do - and our communications should reflect this by ensuring wherever possible that it has a rational and emotional component - and, where appropriate, prompts action and behaviour change. Hearts, heads and hands.
Likewise, visual communication is hugely powerful and under-utilised in internal comms. The use of colours, icons, photographic images, charts, visual metaphors and learning maps can get messages through quickly and clearly, cutting through the jargon, gobbledygook, clutter and spin that too often dominates communication at work. Yet all too often we fall naturally into the habit of churning out more words, more bullet points.
These are just a few top-of-head examples, but I'd love to hear your thoughts....
Lee
PS- if you'd like to hear Leandro speak, why not book a place at the CIPR conference on Monday 29 September - see my calendar for booking details.

Why you should consider infecting the employees in your organization

2008-09-11T20:19:00.004+01:00

Why you should consider infecting the employees in your organization

Melcrum event explores the concept of viral communication in the workplace.
After much anticipation, Melcrum hosted its third members only event in London this week. Members from all over Europe joined their peers for breakfast at London's New Connaught Rooms, to network and learn more about research into peer-to-peer communication in the workplace. The audience heard case studies from the new report Viral communication in the workplace, on how organizations including easyJet, Pfizer, Sun Microsystems and Deloitte have "virally infected" employees with enthusiasm and interest in process/culture change programs and various other new initiatives.

Members heard from 3 experts in this area of research:
Kieron Shaw, internal communication specialist and former head of research at Melcrum;
Dr. Leandro Herrero, CEO of The Chalfont Project consultancy and pioneer of Viral Change™; and
Nigel Edwards, UK internal communication manager, Pfizer.

A radical change in internal communication

Having worked on Melcrum's research reports from 2000-2005, Kieron Shaw (pictured, right) felt he'd covered every aspect of internal communication had reached all his conclusions about it. Thinking that there was nothing new left to explore, he went traveling for a year, only to return to what he called "radical change".
"When I left Melcrum, they'd just launched a new report called Top 10 New Technologies for Internal Communicators, which explained in very basic terms what a blog was and what a wiki was and so on.

When I came back a year later, I saw a radical change in the way people communicated with each other, and everyone was going crazy over social media. It was an exciting time. There was democratization of communication, and no more hierarchy," said Shaw.
"I saw a radical change in the way people communicated with each other. There was democratization of communication, and no more hierarchy."

He went on to look at various case study examples of viral communication being used in organizations, including the Deloitte film festival, which saw employees making their own creative video clips about how it felt to work at Deloitte. These were distributed around the organization and published on YouTube. The clips were used as a recruitment tool, as well as to build the employer brand.

Social media is not essential to viral communication Shaw also highlighted that while viral communication has been pushed or even facilitated by social media, the two shouldn't be confused. Like Novo Nordisk has demonstrated, messages can be communicated virally without any use of technology at all. The Dutch Pharmaceutical company created three "secret societies" to build influence and engagement. The communication team deliberately kept information from the workforce, bar members of these 3 small societies, who were under strict instruction not to disclose information – even if asked by colleagues. This secrecy aroused employee curiosity and interest to a level that a standard corporate email or strategy meeting would never be able to attain.

We've always known about the employee grapevine - so what's changed? Both Shaw and Herrero agreed that employees have always been talking, and communicators have indeed long been considering how to tap into their conversations. But they said that the tools that now exist make it both easier and more urgent to understand informal employee conversations, and pick out the key influencers to help spread messages about organizational changes.

According to Shaw, the initial message still needs to come from the CEO, but it then needs to be discussed, peer-to-peer, in order for the message to stick, and be internalized by employees. This, he said, is what the viral method is all about.

Make accountability fashionable

Herrero argues that employees communicate in clusters. He likened the way they influence each other and the way messages spread, to how fashions spread – by just a small number of influential people.

In an organization, it's easier to reach more people with a small number of influentials, than thinking that everyone is the same and will process messages from the top in the same way.
"Within organizations, we need to aim to make things fashionable. We want employees to think 'hey - it's fashionable to be accountable, innovative, and work as a team!'," he said.

"Organizations need to talk less and do more. The best culture change management program is where the words 'culture', 'change', 'management' and 'program' are silent."

Talk less do more Herrero ended his presentation with a key thought: "Organizations need to talk less and do more. The best culture change management program is where the words 'culture', 'change', 'management' and 'program' are silent."

Video diaries

Finally, Nigel Edwards described how Pfizer armed selected employees with cameras to make video diaries of how they felt during a major culture change program.
Ten employees were selected with geographical spread, job roles and seniority all taken into account. They were asked to record their feelings and thoughts in a very informal, frank and simple way, over the first three months of this change being put into practice.

These diaries were published on the intranet and also put on DVDs and distributed to the entire organization, just before a conference was held to formally discuss the changes and the progress so far. The whole concept was carried out in a very non-corporate, informal manner, with very little editing and moderation done to the video.

Trust needs to be mutual "We trusted this to grow and it did. The diarists were like soap stars at the end of the 3 months. Employees felt reassured that someone like them was going through similar challenges and difficulties during the change," said Edwards.
"The fact that we were confident about making their criticisms public within the organization, and were giving them the freedom to honestly say what they felt, encouraged other employees to trust the organization, and also to talk more about their concerns. It was also an extension of an important aspect of the culture change, to be rid of hierarchy and be more transparent and flexible."

"We were giving them the freedom to honestly say what they felt, which encouraged other employees to trust the organization."

But Edwards warned that if yours is a command and control organization, then you should probably avoid a technique like this. "There has to be will and freedom to operate if this is to be successful," he said.