by Caroline Leach | Apr 25, 2015 | Careers, Leadership, Learning, Work/Life
#MPOWR was a perfect theme for Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day on April 23.
At DIRECTV, our headquarters campus was filled with the energy and excitement of visiting children. They got to see what their parents do each day to bring the world’s best video experience to more than 39 million customers in the United States and Latin America.
They also got to meet two amazing filmmakers, Sarah Moshman and Dana Michelle Cook. We screened their documentary, The Empowerment Project, which encourages girls, boys, women and men of all ages to dream big.
My daughter and I were introduced to the film at a National Charity League event. After the first few minutes, I couldn’t wait to bring it to colleagues in the DIRECTV Women’s Leadership Exchange and beyond.
With backgrounds in reality TV, Emmy-award-winning filmmakers Sarah and Dana wanted to show more positive images of strong women in the media.
So they launched a Kickstarter campaign, formed an all-female crew, and took a 30-day road trip across the U.S., interviewing “ordinary women doing extraordinary things.”
It didn’t take long to see that the women were far from ordinary – both behind and in front of the camera.
“Be bold and naive,” said architect Katherine Darnstadt. “You are a leader of your life,” said pilot Sandra Clifford.
“Do right by people,” said Navy Admiral Michelle Howard. “Treat people with dignity, and then that means in the last days of your life, you have no regrets. That’s a measure of success.”
“You don’t necessarily have to find passion in your work, you just have to find passion in your life,” said chef Mary Nguyen. “Just know that if that passion is your work it will become your life.”
How true. Writing is my passion. Why? It’s about thinking. It’s about making connections among sometimes seemingly disparate ideas and people. It’s about changing beliefs and behaviors. It’s about expressing thoughts and ideas in interesting, inspiring and engaging ways.
This is why I love my work in corporate communications and why I love writing this blog. They both absorb me in the amazing “flow” state that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described as “the creative moment when a person is completely involved in an activity for its own sake.” In the film, Dana described her empowered feeling during the road trip as not having worked a day of it.
So what would I do if I weren’t afraid to fail? I’d write more often and share this blog with others.
When I launched this blog on New Year’s Day, my intent was to post twice a week. And while I haven’t been as prolific as I planned, I’m happy that a goal I set on January 1 is something I’m still doing four months later.
Now it’s time to move on from “designing at the whiteboard” as yet another extraordinary woman, Tara Sophia Mohr, would say, and leap into sharing this blog with others for their input and feedback.
What would you do if you weren’t afraid to fail?
To learn m
ore about The Empowerment Project and bring it to a school, business or community group, visit the film’s website, check out the project tour video and follow @EmpowermentDocu on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Their Instagram collage opened this post.
by Caroline Leach | Apr 5, 2015 | Careers, Change, Corporate Communications, Leadership
If the purpose of the Communications function is about reputation as I wrote in a recent post, then its reason for being is change.
Changing mindsets. Changing beliefs. And ultimately changing behavior. All with the goal of developing a well-known reputation of being a great place to work, buy and invest, in a socially and environmentally responsible way.
If a communications strategy, plan or tactic isn’t ultimately about change, it’s unnecessary. Why communicate at all if you’re not working toward making your organization and your team better?
And what better season to embark on change than the spring? It’s the time of new life, new beginnings and new possibilities.
Whether you’re launching a major organizational change or you want to make positive changes in your own life, here’s what’s worked in my experience.
Start with why. “Why? How? What?” is the golden circle of action, leadership expert Simon Sinek says in one of the most-watched TED talks, “How great leaders inspire action.”
It’s modeled on his book, Start with Why. He defines “why” through a series of questions – “What’s your purpose? What’s your cause” What’s your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? And why should anyone care?”
It reminds me the key question I learned in a “Strategy 101” course by McKinsey & Company for DIRECTV leaders. I ask it often – what problem are we solving for? It’s another way of starting with why.
It could also be framed as a vision statement. An aspirational view of what the desired future state could be.
Or as change expert Darryl Conner would ask, “what’s the burning platform that is forcing you to change?” As he aptly describes, people will change when the pain of maintaining the status quo exceeds the pain of changing to a new state.
Form a key team. Any change effort needs a key team of people to lead and champion it. At DIRECTV we form steering committees. These are the people who, in Darryl Conner’s lexicon, are the sponsors of change.
It worked well as we institutionalized a focus on the customer experience and winning loyalty for life. It began with a steering committee and an operating committee and grew to encompass leaders and employees alike. We now have one of the highest levels of customer satisfaction in the pay-TV industry.
It enabled us to create a connected enterprise with new social collaboration tools. We began with a vision of employees being able to connect, collaborate, access and share information, anywhere and any time, leading to increased engagement, productivity and innovation. Nearly 90% of eligible employees have adopted our social intranet.
And it drove new ways of working and increased pride in our company when we moved into a newly renovated headquarters campus with more natural light, open space and new amenities. Not only is it a more environmentally sustainable space, but employees also gave it high marks, after initial concerns about how their work areas would change.
Paint a compelling picture. How can the future be better than the present? What has to change in order to get there, and how? Why is staying in the present state going to be more painful and less advantageous than making a change? What benefits will various stakeholders experience?
These are all questions you must answer in one way or another as you paint a compelling picture of what the future will look like.
Involve people. Every successful change initiative I’ve worked on has involved people throughout our organization.
With the customer experience, we had a steering committee, an operating committee and a learning lab that was ultimately scaled across the organization.
With our connected enterprise, we launched an Enterprise Collaboration Council with leaders across the company. We engaged key stakeholders in a beta test, which improved the platform and created early evangelists for social business.
With our new headquarters campus, we formed teams of employees to give input into new ways of working. A few examples – the conference center, the cafeteria, the fitness center, wellness, sustainability and workplace flexibility.
We engage our employee resource groups in major change efforts, because members come from all over the company and communicate well about change.
As you’re building your communications team, look for people who have grit – those who are resilient and can figure it out as they go.
Address resistance. Resistance was a concept I resisted for a long time. It challenged me because it falls in the realm of emotion rather than logic, where I prefer to dwell.
But with my recent exposure to the work of Darryl Conner, I’ve come to accept that resistance is a normal part of change. And that the absence of resistance isn’t a good thing, but a warning sign that issues aren’t being actively addressed.
So look for resistance. Acknowledge it, validate it and use it an opportunity to explain the why behind the change.
The picture above is from the awe-inspiring Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibit in Seattle, which my family visited last week. I chose this image because it reminds me of the messiness and the chaos that can be part of change, but also of its ultimate beauty.
Share wins. Change isn’t always a fun process. But done right, there will be some early wins. Make a big deal of those. Share successes with key stakeholders. We’ve done this through videos, awards and events. Use wins as a chance to bring people together and increase enthusiasm and inspiration.
Reflect and repeat. What did you learn through the change process? What worked well and what would you do differently next time? Apply that learning to your next change effort, or as you scale the current change.
Think back to some of the doom-and-gloom you may have heard early on. The naysayers. The critics. Maybe some of those voices even came from you. Did the worst outcomes come to pass? The best? More than likely, the change was a net plus.
I’ve changed colleges, careers and companies. With each change there was some fear and resistance. But there was consistently a better outcome ahead because I was willing to change.
Every time I’m launching a new change, I think about that.
by Caroline Leach | Jan 12, 2015 | Careers, Learning
Once you find your dream career, how do you get a foot in the door?
That became a three-year career change process for me. And it had three parts – getting an advanced degree, building a portfolio of comms work and creating a new network. (Yes, I’m a planner. Probably to an unnecessary degree in this case, but it ultimately worked for me.)
An advanced degree. First I went back to my alma mater and enrolled in the Public Relations certificate program through UCLA Extension.
Then I thought about grad school. Once I discovered corp comms, though, I abandoned plans for an MBA.
Ironically, an undergrad degree in economics worked against me early on. Hiring managers wanted communications, journalism or English.
Only recently has econ turned into an advantage. Now we have to be well versed in business strategy and operations.
I next set my sights on journalism and applied to the University of Southern California.
But I didn’t get in.
Undaunted, I applied to the USC Annenberg School for Communication.
I took two evening classes a semester, learning about organizational comms, the diffusion of innovations and comms research from luminaries like Janet Fulk, Peter Monge and Sheila Murphy.
While I was at Annenberg, the journalism and communication schools merged. So I ultimately became a graduate of the school that turned me down.
The lesson? Rejection is part of chasing your biggest dreams. And sometimes life can surprise you in interesting ways.
A portfolio of work. My masters work helped me build a portfolio of communications, because I could tailor projects to my areas of interest.
I also joined a professional association in my field at the time, the National Contract Management Association. As the chapter’s comms chair, I edited the newsletter, wrote news releases and served as the group’s spokesperson.
Today there are great ways to showcase a portfolio on the web and through social media – a quantum leap from the big book of publications and press clippings I used to lug with me to job interviews.
A new network. The best way to make a lateral career move came from building a network in my new field.
First I joined a professional association. IABC, the International Association of Business Communicators, took me as a member before I had a job in the field.
A local chapter invited me to join their board. It was the perfect opportunity. I invited senior communicators to speak at our meetings. It gave me access to people in way I could build relationships.
When I was asked to be chapter president, it was a fortunate coincidence that I finally landed my first job in the field. Later I become a district director, international executive board member and world conference general session speaker on social media.
My network was valuable in two ways. First, I did informational interviews. Following the Richard Bolles path from part one of this series, I met with people in the field and asked them about their work.
I asked how they got into the field. What they did every day. What they liked and didn’t like. What they looked for in new hires. How the field was changing.
Second, my network became a source of job referrals. I decided a good way to make a lateral move was within the 10,000-person aerospace unit where I already worked. That way I could leverage my knowledge of the company and the industry while moving into a new functional area.
However, the company was so big that to its communications team I was an outsider. But a professional association gave me an in. I met people on the comms team and learned about job openings, often before they were posted.
That led to a series of interviews. And a series of rejections. It became a familiar refrain. The hiring manager liked me, but another candidate was a better fit.
Job opportunity #5 was for a graphic design position. By that point the department was almost as eager to hire me as I was to join. But the position didn’t use my strongest skills, so I declined to pursue it.
I told myself something better would come along. And it did.
A few weeks later, the same hiring manager called me with job opportunity #6. One of his writers had just resigned. Would be I be interested in the job?
Uh, yeah.
A body of awards. Early in my career I tried to establish credibility quickly, to make up for lost time. Awards carried career currency then.
A “with distinction” notation when I passed my master’s comprehensive exam. The outstanding young PR professional award from the Los Angeles chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.
A TRW Women of Achievement Award (that’s me, second from the right, in the opening photo). Communicator of the Year from IABC/LA. Several IABC writing awards.
Seems almost silly now, how eager I was to prove myself.
Today our value is measured in new ways. And that’s the subject of my next post.
Recent Comments