A recent "Publishing Characteristics Survey," done jointly by the Custom Content Council and McMurry, the publisher I work with, came out at least one finding that really struck me.
Companies are doing lots of four-color magazines these days—but 79 percent of those mags go to external audiences, vs. only 21 percent to internal ones.
In my survey report, in ContentWise (download it for free here), I wrote, "Employee communication is increasingly achieved by electronic communications."
Maybe I should have said, "halfheartedly attempted," instead.
These companies have decided that, to earn the attention and admiration of customers and potential customers, only gorgeous magazines, and all the editorial tools they offer, will do.
But employees, otherwise known as Our Greatest Assets? Ah, we'll post some slop on the intranet, and the pigs can come and get it.
My old man fought in WWII, served in the Battle of the Bulge. But he worried about being called the "Greatest Generation," because it might be embarrassing to be introduced that way in heaven, "with Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln sitting there."
One of the filthy secrets of freelancing is that a freelancer never quite totally completely feels fully free.
There's no such thing as "paid time off," and no matter how many mental calisthenics you do to tell yourself you deserve the afternoon round of golf, a nagging feeling follows you for the first few holes: I should probably be doing more.
Which means you have to impose your own version of the personal day, the sick day, the mental health day or just the fuck-it-I'm-playing-hookey day.
The best idea I've seen lately for doing this on a regular, firm and institutional basis is the bright blue note at the bottom of the e-mail autosignature of a new Murrespondent, the freelance writer and editor Clare C. McDermott.
• Please note: I do not work on Mondays.
Brilliant.
Now, I'm fine with working on Mondays. In fact, I find that I go completely crazy if I try to do anything else on a Monday. Working on Monday is for getting a jump on the week, and keeping the week from getting a jump on you.
Nor do I want or need to take off every Friday, or any other day of the week. But I do want to officially assert my right to keep the "free" in freelance.
So I'm thinking of other Please note, that I might write, for my patrons:
• Please note: My lunches are two-hour sessions, because they usually include a workout before, and a short nap after.
• Please note: I work in the mornings. Jesus, do I work in the mornings! Because at Murray's Freelance Writing we have no meetings or dumb HR procedures or fat-chewing marplots, I get more real work done before noon on Monday than most people do all week. So in the afternoons if the weather's good, I'm often out golfing, or tearing around town on my motorcycle or hanging out with my daughter in order to refresh my spirit sufficiently to work like a wolverine again tomorrow morning. Talk then!
• Please note: Though writing is important, it is not an emergency. Talk to you tomorrow.
Writers, what Gone Fishin' sign would put up for your clients?
I was so nervous before last year's Leadership Communication Days, I got to New York at 8:00 a.m. the day before it started, just to case out ... Manhattan? I wound up wandering around the city all day eating and drinking everything I could get my hands on, from McSorley's Saloon to the Oyster Bar Grand Central Station.
It was the first event of its kind, and as the organizer and moderator, I wondered: What will happen if everyone is shy? Or if one goon dominates the whole conversation? Or if people aren't comfortable enough to tell the truth? Or if everybody has problems but nobody had answers? Or if they don't listen to me when I demand that they turn off their Blackberries?
And I wasn't the only one with worries. Some of the attendees had apprehension too. "Having never attended an event remotely resembling this one," one panicked participant wrote me a few days before the event. "I'm unsure if my self-defined 'best practices' and 'worst problems' are anything other than commonplace, in which case I would certainly be subject to the mockery, if not scorn, of my peers."
As it turned out, none of the attendees—who represented firms ranging from Pfizer to General Electric and organizations from AARP and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management—had any reason to worry.
Instead, we ought to have been sleepless before the event, but only with sheer excitement about finally getting a chance to connect deeply with some of the few other people who understand executive communication.
Over two days (and deep into a night), the conversation was light at times and intense at others, and always infused with good humor. People shared what they were proud of and they trusted the group with the most candid, detailed description of their stubborn problems.
Utterly pleased with how the week came off, I think what suprised me most was how incredibly energetic and generous the group members were when it came to helping one another solve problems. They asked probing questions, offered thoughtful inventive ideas and gave sensitive advice.
"I am inspired by all of you," one vice president told the rest of the group in an e-mail afterwards. "It was an amazing couple of days."
Which is why she's coming back to this year's meeting, which will be hosted by another alum of last year's meeting, AARP CEO communications chief Boe Workman, Oct. 27-28, in Washington, D.C.
Of course I'll be arriving a day or so early, just to get the lay of the land ...
If you'd like to join us, you'd better be an earlybird too, because attendance is capped at 25.
Was at a bar last night watching the Bulls game with my neighbor pals, and though I haven't watched a whole Bulls game since Michael Jordan retired before the turn of this century, I was caught up in the group excitement and found myself cheering and agonizing along with everybody else.
I was also reminded of something I ran across yesterday in my regular ramble through the cobwebs for Vital Speeches:
It is the rare exception, now, when we see a boy that is handy with tools and capable of taking care of himself under all circumstances.
The personal interest in athletics has been largely superseded by an interest in spectacular games, which, unfortunately, tend to divide the nation into two groups—the few overworked champions in the arena, and the great crowd, content to do nothing but sit on the benches and look on, while indulging their tastes for tobacco and alcohol.
Published in the 1910 Boy Scout Handbook, that double shot of reality came seven decades before the advent of ESPN! At the root of how much social evil are these "spectacular games," which so many people spend so much their time watching and so little of their time doing?
Childhood obesity (and grown-up flab-assity), general physical helplessness, an acceptance of vicarious living, an altogether insane emotional and financial overinvestment in professional sports (both collegiate and post-collegiate).
We won! says the Chicago Bears fan after the big game.
No, the Bears won. You drank four beers and ate a hot dog. Yay!
In communication, there are sins—of comission (you say the wrong thing) and of omission (you fail to say the thing that needed to be said).
The same is less often said of heroism in communication.
But it's true:
Sometimes you say the right thing at the right moment in the right way, and you change the world.
And other times, you—well, for instance, yesterday afternoon I needed both my hands to hold my tongue, which was trying to tell Scout that her schooyard nemesis (another seven-year-old girl, after all) is "an asshole."
In life and in communication, it's possible to do good by not doing bad.
A Victoria De Alba, who I don't know, from an outfit called "Third Wave PR," which I've never heard of, e-mails a press release that begins:
Hello! Here’s the head’s-up before we publish the case study illustrating how Magnolia CMS helped ecommerce pioneer j2 Global continuously upgrade its web presence to maximize performance, drive sales, in addition to, increase ROI and save money.
Gee, Victoria, it's our first date and we haven't even sat down to dinner yet. Kindly remove your tongue from my esophagus?
... who is open to the idea that every new business contact and personal acquaintance could be a person of unlimited intellectual power and unprecedented emotional capacity ... and at the same time, not unaware that behind every magnificent man and woman is a desperate child who has spent a lifetime learning how to look cool.
