I’ve been listening with interest to the national debate over President Obama’s communication style throughout the oil-spill crisis.  For weeks, pundits have been crying that he’s not tough enough. Too much thought; too little action. Then last week, in a pseudo-angry moment, he said he might need to “kick some ass” to keep things moving. For that, he got a real scolding from NPR over the weekend. A three minute editorial depicting his use of “ass” as patently un-presidential.  I, frankly, thought both the comment and the editorial were silly.  I guess I agree that there are more presidential ways to get a point across, but good Lord - how does he find a medium without being tagged as lukewarm?  I’d love to hear your thoughts.

And there is something else on my mind regarding this:

My personal criticism of the president’s style through this crisis draws to light something that comes up often in my training sessions.  Recently, the president was down in the gulf talking to the people who are suffering - both emotionally and economically.  He spent too much time talking about what he isn’t doing,  and what he can’t do.  For instance, he said, “I can’t go down there and plug the hole” and, “I can’t suck up the oil with a straw”.   Sure, sir, we know that. We also know that the president was speaking metaphorically.  However, anytime an executive is talking about what they’re not doing they are missing the opportunity to talk instead about what they are  doing.   In this case the president - metaphorically or otherwise - painted a picture that lacks vision or progress. It was both uninspired and uninspiring. The country is hungry to hear what is known rather than unknown.  We want to hear what he can do rather than what he can’t.  Without that, he perpetuates the nothing-but-rhetoric perceptions that plague him today.

I'd love for you to pay me a visit at www.lynnespinoza.com

A colleague of mine, stuck in yet another meeting-of-small-consequence decided not to doodle this time. On this day, he drowned out the usual corporate yammering by penning the following:

 Too many meetings
in working america
too much, stop it now

If you work in an organization of more than 20 people, communicating with each other by way of meetings is sometimes a necessity. But we’ve moved from necessity to incessenty; meeting for meeting’s sake; how-to-look-productive-to-the-boss’ sake.  I’ve worked in this creativity-numbing environment, and I coach executives who want to get out of it.  Here are some suggestions and guidelines for meetings:

• If you have something to say that really pertains to only  one or two people, talk directly to them. Don’t require the rest of the group to schedule time to listen and watch.

• If you have something to tell everybody - and just one thing - either send them an e-mail or wait until you have several important things to say. Meetings are fewer and more productive that way.

• Don’t send an invite to a “Mandatory All-Hands Meeting” without saying something about what you will talk about. If you don’t, a viral panic spreads through the office, and the rumors alone can hijack the intent of your meeting.

• Try to keep your meetings short, but don’t cut people off or stop engaging conversation just for the sake of time-keeping.  Sometimes spontaneous brainstorming breaks out. Let it happen!

• Make sure that there is a clear meeting objective, and a desired outcome. It helps if you can let people know the intent of the meeting before it happens. That way, people can get some creative juices flowing before the meeting even starts. You can save buckets of time if people come prepared with ideas to share.

• Spread “action items” as evenly as possible. It helps with team building, and prevents that perception of, “Why do I always come away with all the action items??”  If no action items result from the meeting, perhaps a meeting wasn’t needed in the first place.

• If possible, avoid meeting at the same time each day - or even the same day each week. It makes the meetings feel more tedious and forced. And quite frankly, you may not have something to say every Tuesday at 3:00. Maybe your news was better shared on Monday at 1:30. Maybe you didn’t have a full agenda until Thursday at 10:00.  Be flexible, and ask the staff to be as well.

• Even in times of trouble, lead with the positive.  Acknowledge the recent accomplishments of a team or individual. Celebrate little victories, to keep people inspired to achieve the big ones.

• Shake it up! Have fun! Switch meetings rooms! Bring a guest speaker! Don’t have budget for an outside speaker? Invite someone from within the company to share a challenge or success story. Often employees feel more vested in the company when they learn what other people and teams are doing.

• Food always helps!

Below is my attempt at corporate Haiku.  If it strikes a chord in your office place, it may be time to shake things up!

Meetings all the time!
The most productive of all?
The one that’s cancelled!

I hope you'll visit me at www.lynnespinoza.com , where you'll find solutions and programs for anyone who needs to speak well to do well!

Au Revoir, 2009. Hasta la vista, baby. Good riddance.

For all but a very few of us, 2009 was the worst economic year ever.  Though just a few depression-era babies are still in the business world, the rest of us are, well, just depressed. It’s time, though, to pay homage to the fact that we picked up some important lessons in 2009, and use them for good with our business resolutions for 2010.

Resolution #1: Make customer service your unwavering priority.  You have some customers who stuck with you through the worst of times. Celebrate them! Treat them better than you’ve ever treated them before. Thank them effusively for their relationship with you. If you are able, offer them something that will ease their weary bottom line. If that isn’t possible (yet),  make the little things matter:

• Answer their calls quickly, and happily
• Send thank you notes along the way
• Do more than what is expected
• Help them make connections: refer customers to them whenever you can
• Treat the relationship for what it is - a relationship, rather than a transaction
• Say thank you. Again

Treat new customers the same way.  Sure, new customers are more exciting - like a shiny new toy gets the glory at Christmas - but remember that the more established relationships are what carried you through a dismal 2009.

Resolution #2: Employers - Remember that your employees are your number-one asset. They have been through the ringer, too.  Even if you were lucky enough to keep all of your employees, each one of them came to work in 2009 with a sense of dread. They watched their neighbors and friends lose work and wages; they suffered through months of tragic economic news and listened for the sound of their own shoe dropping. What to do? See tips under resolution #1.

Resolution #3: Employees - Curb the complaining, and celebrate your continued success. You think supporting your own family and financial obligations is daunting? Imagine supporting a whole company; its employees and the families that come with them. Few things weigh heavier on a business owner than the thought of sending someone home to tell their family they’ve been fired.  This year, when the toner is empty, the help-desk is busy and bonuses have been cut - take a breath and smile.  Things will continue to get better, and you’re still standing!  For more advice, see tips under resolution #1.

Here’s to 2010! A year filled with optimism, and packed with lessons - valuable lessons - from 2009. 

Cheers! Come share a toast with me at www.lynnespinoza.com.

It began with James Carville and George Stephanopolous trying to focus presidential candidate Bill Clinton on what mattered most in 1992:

“It’s the economy, stupid!”

Now twenty-seven years later, the economy is again the most pressing issue on the minds of executives everywhere.  For some, the last two years have been the most desperate in their company’s history. Top executives are focused on many things that float just above the bottom line: employees; shareholders; health-care costs; impatient board members.  Today, as companies are just begining to rise from the recession, some executives seem to have lost their focus on the one factor that can help them the most: CUSTOMERS!

 Because it appears that we have hit the bottom of the recession, executives are quick to send the message, “This company is strong! This company continues to deliver the best product and services!”  Not a bad message for the financial community, I suppose, but nowhere does a message like that speak directly to the customer.

A company message can always be re-framed to focus on the customer.  The quote above is inward-facing and self-congratulatory.  So how about something like this: “Our customers are turning to us for products and services that make their lives (better; easier; more productive), especially in this economy”.   The take-away is that the company IS strong, because customers find value.  The financial community likes this message as much as the company-focused message, and the paying public hears that you are focused squarely on their needs.  A win-win.

Whenever you are drafting your company’s message framework, look for opportunities to put your customer front and center. Make sure that your executive is trained to talk less about the company and more about the customer.  And unless you’re James Carville or George Stephanopolous, don’t expect to get away with calling your executive stupid.

I'd love to hear from you, at www.lynnespinoza.com

This is my favorite book:

The authors are Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway and Jon Warshawsky. I need to tell them that I bring their book to most of my training sessions, and promote it as “required reading” for corporate spokespeople.

I’d also like to tell them that their book led to the end of my cushy six-figure job.

I had been working for a tech-focused PR agency for seven years when my manager gave me “Why Business People Speak Like Idiots” .  I was running the communication training department, and my boss thought the book would give me good fodder when training executives. The problem was, the more I read, the more I realized that I had become one of the idiots.

Before I joined the agency, I was a good communicator; “good with the words”, as my husband likes to say.  I was a TV reporter, so stories were distilled to reach the broadest audience.  But after seven years in the bowels of tech PR, I had learned to talk like this:

“The challenge, at the end of the day, is to ensure we have the bandwidth to showcase our deliverables. We’ll have to ping the right stakeholders to optimize our visibility. Let’s really drill-down on our competencies to demonstrate that we bring to bear the ecosystem to find the connective tissue and execute the plan.”

Holy crap.

I left the agency exactly four months after reading the book. I also need to tell the authors that I have re-learned basic English, and I’m happy as a clam. I'm running my own business and teaching people how not to speak like idiots.

Getting rid of undecipherable acronyms and meaningless jargon is harder than it sounds.  That’s because every company has both its own culture and its own language. Executives and employees are moving so fast, that it’s simply more efficient to come up with a sort of corporate shorthand. That’s how acronyms become ubiquitous; meaningless to the outside world but well understood within the corporate micro-culture.

That rationale doesn’t work for the awful jargon, however. Upper management uses jargon to sound powerful; lower levels use it to sound important. The kid in the mail room deduces that’s just the way adults talk. No one uses it for meaningful  conversation.

I am of the mind that the world moves forward because of meaningful conversation, which in turn forms meaningful relationships. Those are tough concepts when we’re just talking one idiot to another.

Lynn Espinoza is the president of Speak! Communications, providing tools, coaching and cajoling for anyone who needs to speak well to do well.  Visit www.lynnespinoza.com for more!