Thoughts on Assignment B for Executive Communication

Hello. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and are now ready for the sprint to the Christmas/Hannukah holidays. I also hope that my comments on Assignment A were helpful (sometimes in small, picky ways) to help you polish your executive writing skills.

Just as our work with "tipping point communication" was somewhat cutting edge (you noticed that you can't look it up in many places, even though the idea of tipping points is well-established), similarly our Assignment B will take you into the relatively new territory of Communication Architecture.

I've talked with many of you about your papers. Here are four points that emerged in each of those conversations:

1. Communication channels and protocols ("rules") seem to spring up like weeds in organization, without plan or forethought. Your assigment B will give you the chance to describe a real or hypothetical communication system that is PLANNED. I, for example, would LOVE to plan a better communication system for our School.

2. If you're having trouble getting started, think of a past or present work experience (which may be disguised) where communication patterns and protocols (not personalities) lay at the heart of the organization's problems. A description of that bad situation becomes the first page of your paper. The remainder of the paper presents your analysis of how a better, planned approach to communication could have avoided the problems you described and, in addition, brought the organization many advantages.

3. In your analysis, consider "thinking time" or "executive time" as an endangered species, if many channels of communication are allowed to break into our day at will. In your plan, you may want to think through how you PROTECT your most creative people from communication overload.

4. Organizations have suffered (expensively) from the social dimension of communication. Frankly, it's fun (at times) to write or text funny stuff to your colleagues; it can be equally amusing just to chat by phone with friends within the company. Even admitting the need for good morale, such freedom to entertain oneself and one's colleagues during the workday can be enormously distracting in terms of productivity and mission. You may want to give some thought to the possible abuses of the social dimensions of various communication channels.

I hope these comments are useful. Feel free to give me a ring (415-422-6170) or email (bell@usfca.edu). Usually an email will bring a faster response because I check my email hourly and, at times, remotely when in meetings when I can't check my voicemail.

I learned volumes by reading your perspectives on tipping points in Assigment A. I look forward to the same kind of learning experience in Assignment B, and of course I hope the consideration of these topics are helpful to your executive development.

Art

Example of Minds Bonding in Action & Excellence

Hey all,

I am writing to state simply that I enjoyed seeing the group presentations yesterday. I for one really enjoyed working with a couple of my classmates and showing a collaborative effort. It was definitely Minds Bonding in Action & Excellence.

Additionally, the only way we are going to get better at presenting is to keep doing these, and accepting constructive criticism. Please don't hesitate to let me know what I can improve upon...particularly when/if you review my piece of our presentation (not looking forward to watching my performance).

Last, thanks to Tracy, Allan and whomever else worked on creating our poster. I love that we have it present every class. Picking off some of the principles that showed up yesterday, I saw:
Positive recognition - being done by a lot of you after each presentation
Assume and allow leadership - saw it on my presentation team from Gil, Annabelle and Jeff
Honor commitments - we all played a part on a team
Safe environment - I hope everyone felt as safe as I did yesterday...safe to present in front of you all
Constructive criticism - here's some from me...we ALL need to rehearse more before presenting...

Thanks, Duke

Exec. Communication will meet during MORNING session this coming Sat., Nov. 15

Prof. Roberts has graciously agreed to switch time slots for this coming Saturday. Executive Communication will take place during the morning session; Prof. Roberts' accounting class will take place during the afternoon session.

As indicated in previous emails and our blog (www.mbaecomm10.blotspot.com), our communication session this coming Saturday will be a workshop on best practices in oral communication. Your group will present its assigned topic and we will videotape your speaking. If you plan to use PowerPoint or other graphic supplement, please check out all technical details well in advance. (We don't want to be scrambling for the right cable or connector at the last moment.)

You will receive in-class feedback both from your instructor and classmates. You will also be able to view your video on Blackboard after your instructor has had a couple days to study it and offer you additional written feedback.

Please don't consider this experience a 'final performance.' It would be better, in the spirit of a workshop, to think of it as a 'dress rehearsal' where you are presenting a work in progress.

As I mentioned, in a later MBAE class where you have a formal presentation to give, I will sit in (with the instructor's permission) to give you constructive feedback on what your group considers a highly polished presentation.

Looking forward to hearing what you have to say!


Best,


Art Bell

MBAE 2010 After Class Meeting Spot

Hey everyone,

I'd like to propose a designate social meeting spot for quick after class drinks whenvever anyone is in the mood (Professors are welcome!).
"PolengLounge"
Great atmosphere
Great drinks (Tu-Fri Happy Hour from 4-5:30pm - think intensives!)
Yummy snacks
Best of all - its a block away from class!

This would allow us to simply go and not have to coordinate.....
I'll be there after class this week should anyone be interested!

-Anees

Assignment B Due Nov. 15

I loved your various notes--and the humor was much appreciated. Just to clarify where we're at:

Oct. 25 Please hand in Assignment A (posted on blog Oct. 4) to Prof. Kathy Kane. I will grade them and get you back some specific feedback as soon as possible (well before your Nov. 15 assignment is due).

Nov. 15 Your team will give a "practice" presentation, based on the blog assignment posted in early October. We won't consider this assignment a "graded" experience, since we haven't had time to work through an executive presentation class together. But let's do give the presentations, which I will videotape and give you feedback on. I'll work with Karl Boedecker to schedule a later date in your MBAE program (perhaps in coordination with a presentation for another class) so we can finish up our formal presentation work together, per the syllabus.

Nov. 15 ASSIGNMENT B is due. By this time you will have read about Communication Architecture and other topics of a "macro" nature to executive communication. The assignment: Please write about three pages describing how and why you would structure a human communication system (including technical links, of course, but focusing on how humans at different levels of responsibility can best communication) for a) an existing organization OR b) an organization you would like to develop. Feel free to include as appendixes any schematics or other visual representations of communication relationships in the organization you choose. (You may keep all identifying information about the organization anonymous.)

Why do this assignment? Human communication patterns and channels tend to grow up like weeds in organizations--unplanned, haphazard, unmonitored, redundant, and expensive especially in terms of salaried time. We can DO BETTER by thinking creatively about what kinds of communication access (personal and electronic) should be available to different levels of employees to maximize efficiency, productivity, and morale. Part of your planning and analysis may include cultural rules regarding communication habits in the organization ("rules of the road") which all participants tend to obey for the good of the organization. Feel free to email me with questions. I look forward to your best thoughts on this important topic. (Due Nov. 15 in class.)

Dear Dr. Bell
I wish you a speedy recovery and may we see you back very soon!
Gil Keinan

Professor Bell - I am sorry to hear this news. I wish you a speedy recovery and we hope to see you in class soon!

Best,
Bruno.

Wishing you well Dr. Bell!!! Here's a little Communications humor......

I hope you feel better soon

Professor Bell - I echo the others. I am very sorry to hear about your heart attack, and I hope that you feel better soon!!

Rest and Get Well!

Dr. Bell:

I hope you're feeling better and will be back to doing normal things soon! We look forward to having you back in class.

Mary

Hurry back to class !!....and a litte trivia.

I echo everybody's sentiments...we wish you a speedy and healthy recovery, you are in our thoughts.

So, as you are resting in bed and reading our blog, and maybe you're a little bored, here is some small trivia up your alley;

What was the name of Bill Evan's first album, what year was it released, and when did he win his first Grammy ?

No Internet help !...get those brain juices flowing.

:)

Take care of yourself!

I just saw the email about you...take care of yourself and let me know if I can do anything to help!

Get Well Wishes for Professor Bell

Dear Professor Bell,

I was so sorry to hear of your heart attack and wish you all the best for a speedy recovery.

Kelley

Assignment C Group Assignment

On November 15, your group will have 25 minutes to present your findings and recommendation to the question posed to you by your corporate board (as posted below). Following your presentation, we will have 5 minutes of Q & A. The entire 30 minutes will be digitally recorded for my review and yours. Our session on Oct. 25 will be primarily devoted to executive speaking skills; the criteria explained at that session will guide my evaluation of your group presentation. In the meantime, Chapter 4 in your Management Communication textbook will help you brush up on concepts and best practices for oral presentations.

Rules of the road:

1. All members of the group must present for approximately the same amount of time. (Obviously I'm not checking with a stop watch; I just want each member to be an active participant in the delivery of the presentation.)

2. While you are welcome to use PowerPoint or other speaking aid, I want the main focus of the presentation to be on you, not on a screen. Please consult with me prior to your presentation if you have questions about this point.

3. Corporate casual dress is fine for this occasion. I recognize that you would dress more formally for an actual board presentation.

4. I am certainly open to your refinement of your topic. Please communicate any changes you wish to make by email (bell@usfca.edu); I will get back to promptly. You may make whatever assumptions you wish about the nature and circumstances of your hypothetical company in addressing the questions below.


Teams and Topics (speaking order of teams to be decided by a draw of straws on Oct. 25)

Team A Question from your board: "What background information should we know about romance in the workplace and
what policies do you recommend?"
Lisa Marie
Jason
Anthony
Nicholas

Team B Question from your board: "As a company seeking to develop new technologies for marketing to consumers,
what is the current state of interactive television for consumer sales and what must we do to become a
technology leader in that space? What has prevented the widespread use of interactive television for consumer
sales to date?"
Cortney
Bruno
Chris
Michael

Team C Question from your board: "We have emphasized employee honesty and integrity in our corporate
values statement. What is the current status of honesty testing from a legal perspective and from the
point of view of its validation across industries? Do you recommend that we install a system of
honesty testing in our company, beginning in the hiring process? What costs, benefits, and possible pitfalls
might be involved?"
Sarah
Joseph
Allan
Eugene

Team D Question from your board: "Bring us up to date on best practices for effective, legally defensible employment
hiring. Specifically, what is behavior structured interviewing and should we be doing it? If so, at what levels within our organization? Give us a roadmap to take us from our present "old-style" interviewing procedures to
whatever interviewing practices you recommend for the selection process."
Alan
Mary
Sean
Clark

Team E Question from your board: "We are frankly befuddled by the current status of affirmative action hiring and
promotion. What standards should guide us with regard to ethnic diversity in our workforce (approximately
4500 based in Detroit, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, and Seattle). Give us a specific list of do's and don'ts to
keep us on the right and legal side of this difficult issue."
Gil
Annabelle
Jeff
Duke

Team F Question from your board: "We have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars providing in-depth training for
all our employees with regard to sexual harassment in the workplace. But now we understand that lawyers
are winning big settlements from companies such as ours for verbal abuse directed toward members of
EEOC-protected groups. What do we need to know about verbal abuse as a board and what kind of
training program do you recommend to ensure that our managers don't embroil us in legal problems based
on their verbal interactions with co-workers?"
Kelley
Jeremy
Anees
Tracy

Team G Question from your board: "We are debating whether to monitor the flow of email and downloads to hard-drives on
company-owned computers with an eye toward protecting the company against actionable violations of various
kinds. What can you tell us about electronic oversight and monitoring of hard drives as well as incoming and outgoing email
messages across industries? Is this practice as common as the routine monitoring of business phone conversations in many companies? After explaining the pros and cons of email and hard drive monitoring, make a recommendation for our company of 3500 employees in the chip technology sector, with significant defense contracting."
Emily
Carl
George
Kim
Sasha

Assignment A--Reflections on a Communication Tipping Point

In about three pages double-spaced, please respond to this question: "How has a communication tipping point influenced your professional life?" You can recount an experience involving another person's or your own communication actions and options. In either case, the goal of the paper is three-fold: a) to describe a communication tipping point (i.e., a critical communication act that had significant impact on you and/or others; b) to explain other alternatives that could have been chosen; and c) to justify your selection of which of these alternatives would have been best for the circumstances involved.

To recap our class discussion, a communication tipping point is an utterance (written or spoken) that disturbs the balance of the status quo in some significant way. For example, a manager sometimes faces a tipping point moment in deciding how to discipline an employee who is widely popular with the rest of the workforce.

In writing your three pages, I suggest that you save time by trying the "Idea Circle" technique or the Classical Questions (p. 48) to stimulate your reservoir of ideas. In evaluating your work, I will of course pay primary attention to your content, but I will also consider the degree to which you followed the eight style recommendations we investigated in class.

This assignment will be collected at the beginning of our class on Oct. 25. Please bring hard copy (making it easier for me to give you specific feedback).

Re- Kim's Dilemma

I would reply with a simple 'thank you'. Just like I don't mess with monkeys, I also don't mess with 'Smart Aleks'- just let them be.

What would you do ? (Inter-Office Conflict)

Pursuant to Prof. Bell's request to make this blog a bit more interactive, Im inspired to share my official FIRST blog ever with our class.

Below, is a work email exchange I had with a co-worker several months before. Im interested to hear what you would do (if anything) after reading the exchange.

To give you some context; I work at a company that has 500 employees, offices located around the United States, and I manage our databases and applications.

I had just had a hellish 13-hour day working with vendors and network people trying to fix a network problem. The last piece of the solution was for my team to take down our main Finance application (CMS) from the network, after work hours.

I wanted to be pro-active and give everybody in the company a heads-up warning, just in case some people were working late. I sent out a quick informative email, to the entire company. I only received one email back, which is below.


From: Smith, Joe
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2008 4:51 PM
To: Laur, Kim
Subject: RE: CMS will not be available from 19:30 - 20:30 PST tonight


Kim, We are not on Standard time right now so "PST" doesn't make sense. Joe _____________________________________________
From: Laur, Kim
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2008 4:49 PM
To: #Cornerstone Research
Subject: CMS will not be available from 19:30 - 20:30 PST tonight


We are performing server maintenance and anticipate CMS being down from 19:30-20:30 tonight.


Thank you,

Kim

So, put yourself in my shoes. To give you a context of my emotional being at this point: 13 hour day, eyes blood-shot from looking at the computer screen too much, hungry, and very irritated......

Understanding that Im a manager (and he is too) and that I should probably not engage this individual in email banter, what would you do ?

Some background to 'Joe' is that he is known at the company for trying to get under people's skin with annoying comments. Below are some suggestions, but please consider this a free forum and would love to hear your HONEST feedback....not what one should do, but rather of what you would have done, if in the state I was in.

- Write back with a snappy-type attitude:
Joe, Hopefully you were able to make sense and piece together my email warning with the wrong designation of "PST", as the rest of the company seemed to understand.

-Write back a professional-type attitude and thanking him for clarifying that I should have used 'PDT', and hope that he was not confused when CMS would not be available?


-Ignore his email?



Thanks

Finding the Common Touch with a Common Phrase

At the following link, you will find listed many idioms, expressions, and sayings that (if used well) add life and personality to business writing. If over-used, these same phrases can make your writing seem hackneyed and trite.

Two student groups in particular will find this phrase list useful:

1. Students who want to add an executive touch to their business prose. Executives in our day are always striving for the "memorable phrase" and "the common touch" in their speeches and writing. An old saying, if not over-used, can be just the right addition to make a point in a persuasive, somewhat creative way.

2. Students who are learning standard American English. The phrases listed here cannot easily be looked up in most dictionaries. By getting to know these phrases over a period of time, these students will find that business lectures, readings, and advertisements become much easier to understand. Their own efforts to write and speak in standard American English for internal and external business audiences will also improve dramatically as these phrases are mastered. (If you manage non-native speakers, you may want to pass this list along to them.)

Click here for list of common idioms, expressions, and sayings in American business writing and speaking

Speaker's Nerves Anyone?

You may have been unpleasantly surprised by an unexpected attack of speaker's nerves before, during, or after your recent two-minute presentation in class. If you would like to understand more about this common phenomenon, page through this link to see what applies to you--and what might help. I am available individually to chat with you about this annoying but fixable aspect of professional presenting.

Click here for more than you ever wanted to know about Speaker's Nerves

The "Vic" Reading Required for Saturday, Oct. 4

Please read the following story, asking yourself "What would I have done in similar circumstances?"

Click here for the Vic story

Here's our syllabus for MBAE Executive Communication

Although we may have to tweak the syllabus somewhat as situations emerge, here's "the plan" for our communication work together through Nov. 15. You will also receive hard copy of this syllabus in class on Sept. 24.

Click here for MBAE Executive Communication Syllabus

Please take the MBAE Writing Sample diagnostic by Sept. 30, 2008

Hello. To give you feedback on your writing (and to receive feedback from you), I need about an hour of your time to complete the following diagnostic:

Click Here to take survey


Please complete your work no later than Sept. 30, 2008. (Yes, 11:59 pm is acceptable on that date.) It will come directly to me via the Web and I will have individual, private feedback for you by our Oct. 4 class meeting for Executive Communication.

Thanks!

Art Bell