Can I get the Cliff's Notes version?

Before the days of Google and YouTube and online ‘note-sharing’ sites,  the enterprising high school or college student, tasked with reading a long book or mastering (at least well enough to pass the test), a complex subject had only two choices.  One, actually read the entire 23,000 pages of ‘Anna Karenina’ or two, head down to the local bookstore and pick up the Cliff’s Notes version.  The Cliff’s Notes hit all the high points - characters, plot, themes - all in an easy to digest neat little package.  

The Cliff’s Notes ‘study guides’ were launched in the US in 1958, and were meant to serve as a supplement (yeah, right), to the original texts that many students struggled to plow through and comprehend.  Naturally students began substituting flipping through the Cliff’s Notes as a substitute for reading the ‘real’ books, and was born a what has become a rich and long history of sloppily structured term papers and reports, bound together by shallow plot and character analysis, large fonts, and wide margins.  

Aside - in later years the ‘Let’s rent the movie version and watch that’ strategy began to take some of the shine off the Cliff’s Notes gambit. While even less of a commitment of time and energy, the movie version approach led to a new set of issues.  Namely, the creative licence sometimes employed by film directors that makes significant and material changes to the plot, characters, and even ending of the source material.  Witness the professor’s comments on my 5-page opus on Malamud’s The Natural - ‘I know you only watched the movie’.

But even though generations of students have used the Cliff’s Notes (and other shortcuts) for other than their noble and intended purposes, that doesn’t mean that the drivers that lead to taking those shortcuts (lack of time, inability to connect the material and effort required to a tangible benefit, sheer humdrum nature of most of the works), are not valid or real.  In fact, many of those same reasons apply in the real, grown-up world or work as well.  Whether it is company sponsored training and development course materials, the content of your voluminous new employee onboarding manual, or even the latest vanity book published by your CEO - most of us feel already overwhelmed with information coming from all angles and multiple sources to realistically digest more data, especially in large chunks.

We’re all too busy in our email inboxes all day long anyway. Email we notice.  The CEO’s book,  the 79 slide ‘2011 Planning’ PowerPoint deck that someone nicely printed for us, or the 37 archived HR Happy Hour podcasts on our iPhones don’t seem to get the attention they deserve. But maybe in smaller, more easily digestible pieces, this content would have a better chance of being seen, heard, and marked.

Which is all a long (we really need an editor around here), lead up to the main reason for this post. An online service called ‘Daily Lit’.  Daily Lit is a service that delivers books in easily digestible daily email or RSS subscription formats.  You sign up, choose a book from the selection of about 1,000 titles (lots of Seth Godin for whatever reason), and start receiving a daily message or update in your RSS reader with the first installment of the selected book.

Why read a book via email or RSS? From the Daily Lit FAQ’s:

Because if you are like us, you spend hours each day reading email but don't find the time to read books. DailyLit brings books right into your inbox in convenient small messages that take less than 5 minutes to read. This works incredibly well not just on your computer but also on a Treo, Blackberry, Sidekick or whatever the PDA of your choice.

All in all, a pretty cool idea and interesting service.  And I think one that could be a lesson to those of us that are charged with workplace communications in their various forms.  You spend ages planning, developing, and promoting your content.  You want, and in many cases need, employees to consume and understand.  But if your delivery mechanisms do not match the employee’s preferred and potential inclinations for consumption, you may as well lock all your creations in the file room, never to be seen or heard again.  I am not necessarily advocating turning all your communications into a series of bite-sized daily emails; the last thing many of you want to do is hit your employee population with more email.  But what does seem clear that that good and important content alone may not be enough, the methods of delivering that content might be just as important, and for employees buried all day long in their email inboxes, they might not have time to look up and notice anyway.

Email and Easter Eggs

Chances are many of the emails you spend all day cranking out to your colleagues take about 1/10th of the time to actually scan read as they do to for you to compose.  By the time they get to paragraph three,(assuming they made it that far),  most recipients have tuned out, distracted by the three new messages that just popped into their inbox, a phone call, a text message from their kid, or, if they are really on the cutting edge, a stray Tweet or Direct Message.

If there is something in the message that is really, truly, important you can't bury 175 words in. Hardly anyone is paying attention that far down, trust me.  Don't think this applies to you? Test it out sometime.  Draw up another one of your typical 385 word soliloquies on the budget planning process, or next year's performance management initiatives, or whatever is consuming your thoughts today.  But in the third or fourth paragraph, slide in the  equivalent of an 'Easter Egg', a concept taken from video games where game players can unlock secret or extra functionality by discovering a hidden code, message, or other undocumented feature. Unlocking the ‘egg’ grants the player more abilities, or access to normally hidden levels for game play.

Except you shouldn't have to make your 'egg' all the secret, or hard to spot.  Try it. First thing in the morning send out your own ‘Easter Egg’ a little something like this:

Lead with 200 words of drivel importance then slip this in ... 'So as we continue in assessing the most critical functional skills of the organization's talent, let's tie up any loose ends in our thinking by meeting at Noon for a long lunch at (insert name of local pub here), where I will buy lunch and beverages for all in attendance.  At the lunch we will continue to examine the cross-organizational implications and synergies of our holistic approach to leadership and increased employee engagement, blah, blah, blah. Thanks very much, etc.

Then don’t send another message about the lunch invitation, try to avoid any direct conversation about the plan, and don’t respond to any calls or emails for the rest of the morning.  In fact, sneak out of your office at about 11:15 or so, (or whatever time is sufficiently early to avoid being seen as ‘going to lunch’) and head over to the pub.  Grab a table large enough for at least a few of the invitees to join you, and wait.

Assuming you are reasonably well-liked (at least enough to accept a free lunch from), one of three things will result:

One - No one, or maybe a token colleague shows up - time to really re-think your communication style because whatever you are doing, it’s not working.

Two -  A small group (3 or 4) turn up.  Not bad, but not great either.  Here’s where you have to really evaluate the composition of the ones that turned up. If it the three young guys that spend most of their time talking about fantasy football and happy hours, you can be pretty confident the only message that got though was ‘free beer’.

Three - The majority of email recipients do actually show up for lunch.  Either you have a really attentive team, or you maybe have one person that found the ‘egg’ and shared it with the group. Either way though, you can feel good that the message did get across, even if it was buried in the blather.

The thing is most of us probably think we are pretty effective communicators.  We might even ask our peers, friends, and colleagues to give us feedback and help us improve.  But, especially if you are the boss, people lie.  A better way to see how your communication stacks up is to put it to the test once in a while.

So where is lunch again?

Sharpen your axe

The best piece of writing I read this week was not in a book, in a blog, a magazine, or in some kind of other forum we'd associate with 'good writing'.Famous Red

It was the instruction manual for a product that I don't even own, an Axe from the Best Made Company. 

Sure, I get what you're thinking, does a tool as simple as an axe really need a complex or lengthy instruction manual?

No, it really doesn't.  And the folks from Best Made realize that as well, in fact they offer an abbreviated version of the already compact set of axe instuctions as follows: 

Note: This manual consists of a short version and a long one. The short one goes like this: Keep your blade sharp, your helve moist, and everything clean.

The manual then does offer a 'long' version, no more that a few hundred words along with color illustrations that simply, clearly, and in a straightforward and easy style take the reader through more details regarding safety, cleaning, and maintenance of the tool.  What a superb idea, to provide the simplest possible set of instructions for those for whom that will suffice, supplemented with more detailed information for beginners or casual axe-wielders.

The axe manual makes the necessary points and covers the essentials without being superfluous, unnecessarily confusing, and by connecting 'what' the axe owner should do with the 'why' of the recommendations.  If your axe blade is dull, it will be harder to chop, take longer to restore the edge, and you or someone are more likely to get hurt.

The manual even advises against loaning the axe to friends and family: 

They may even ask if they can borrow yours. By all means, do not say yes. It has been our experience that once an item is lent to someone else—even a family member—it never returns in the same condition, if it returns at all. So when someone asks if they can borrow your Best Made axe to take to the cabin, it’s best to politely decline and inform them that they can purchase their very own from Best Made Co. This will help lessen the tension at family and social gatherings, because, admit it, there’s enough tension already.

Funny stuff.  And it also helps to connect the owner to the product and cement the ownership experience.  

Why am I blogging about the owner's manual for an axe?  

Because to me this is an example of what I personally need to strive for more often in writing - it's engaging, contains important information without being too self-important, makes the connections simply and effectively, refers the reader to useful resources outside the company, and finally does not drone on and on boring everyone to tears. 

The full PDF of the axe manual is here - even if you don't own an axe, don't intend on ever owning an axe, you might find the manual useful, I did.

Self-Sufficiency

flickr - sean drellingerIn HR Technology projects we often discuss increasing managers and employees direct access to workforce data, enabling more self-directed activity in what were previously HR executed administrative transactions, and empowering the workforce with tools and skills to connect, communicate, collaborate, etc.

But even after a decade (or more) of process automation, deployment of online processes for demographics, benefits, payroll, and otherwise pushing control and responsibility out to the distributed workforce, it doesn't seem like the number of requests for basic assistance have diminished all that much. Perhaps it is just a function of my personal experience lately, who knows, but even after the de-centralization of so much of the mundane processes, the calls, emails, basic inquiries continue to roll in, day after day. 

Beyond technology enabled process automation, I think if you really want to empower employees and managers, and drive more self-sufficiency in the organization, a few other basic philosophical approaches have to be in place.

1. Make less rules.

Every rule, policy, guideline adds to the canon and creates additional opportunity for questions and interpretations that require HR to have to get involved.  When making a decision, managers and employees should really only have to consider 'Is this the right thing to do (for the business/community/customer). Once the 'policy' is in place, then you have effectively doubled the scope of the problem by making people consider, or setting yourself up to address, the question of - 'What does the policy say?'.  And good luck to you when the answers to the now two questions are clearly at odds.

2. Make it easy for employees to connect

In my HR Technology class we use a class wiki and discussion forums to communicate and collaborate. When students have questions about class content, assignments, logistics, etc. they are strongly encouraged to post them on the wiki, or in a specific discussion forum.  Ninety percent of the time another member of the class can and does provide the answer, or a discussion ensues that will ultimately lead to a satisfactory conclusion.  As the instructor, I get involved maybe 25% of the time.  The students are invested in helping each other to a degree that even surprises me at times.  

How easy do you make it for your employees to help each other in discovering, developing, or creating appropriate or innovative solutions to the questions that are frequently asked of HR?  If the only 'official' conduit to information is via HR, then you are forcing every question (at least the non-obvious ones), through a narrow funnel that empties out all over your policy manual.  Employees will help each other if you give them the chance.

3. Make the answers visible

In the example above, unless the matter in question is of a personal issue involving grades, or some other 'private' information, when I have to get involved in a student discussion or issue on the wiki or in a forum, I make sure my 'answer' is posted publicly as well.  That way all students, whether they were involved in the original debate or not, have the opportunity to learn from the resolution, or gain exposure to a new idea or approach.  Answering individual questions, one at a time, privately, ensures a steady supply of similar questions.  Sure, you could send out some kind of 'official' HR communication to address a recurring issue, (and we all know how well those are received), or you could support and actively participate in a more interactive, lively, and manager and employee focused forum to make sure your answers get as widely socialized as possible.

Think about it this way - how often in HR do you find yourself saying 'Man, I am so sick of answering that question.'

Going Graphic

Almost every day we are faced with some communication materials or other informational resources that for one reason or another are difficult to slog through, that seem to have no real point or call to action, or that simply bore us to tears since we are so tired of their style, format, or delivery mechanism.

At work it could be the quarterly company newsletter, the Annual Benefits Open Enrollment packet, or the organization's bereavement policy - How many days for a second cousin? But we were very close, more like first cousins really.

Last week I posted about a new and innovative technology for delivering Benefits information, and for helping employees to make the best decisions for themselves and their families, the Jellyvision Benefits Counselor interactive video application. The tool transforms the presentation and delivery of potentially dull, and likely confusing information into an engaging and effective format.

This weekend I came across another example of a new and innovative approach to a classically boring and imminently forgettable medium: the college textbook.

Jeremy Short, Texas Tech University professor of management, has taken the traditional and staid textbook, and re-imagined it in a format that students find more appealing, and certainly more relatable - the graphic novel. Short has created two novels for his undergraduate and MBA classes chronicling the adventures of a young entrepreneur named Atlas Black.  In the titles, Atlas Black: Managing to Succeed, and Atlas Black: Management Guru?, students follow Atlas' journey while exploring the concepts of management, organizational behavior, strategic planning, and entrepreneurship.

You can get a bit of the flavor of the textbook graphic novel in the trailer video below (email subscribers will need to click through).

Pretty cool, right?  I mean way more entertaining than the formal text book that it replaces. Can you ever imagine a traditional textbook even having a trailer? 'And then Chapter 7 - with more of the same, long paragraphs and black and white charts!'.

Sure, this re-imagination of the classic management textbook would not work for every course, subjects like statistics and the hard sciences are too data driven, but for courses that are really mostly about ideas and concepts, why not?  Surveys of Short's students at Texas Tech report that 86% feel the Atlas Black graphic novel  "compares favorably" to other management textbooks they've had. 

Oh and one other thing, in a world where a college management textbook runs somewhere north of $100, the Atlas Black graphic novels only set the students back $14.95.

But to me, the best message here is the way the professor has created an alternative to long standing tradition, developed a product designed to appeal to his audience, while taking into account that tastes, preferences, and technology have all changed.  He is still teaching the necessary course material, but by letting go of 'the way it's always been done', has created an environment that is quite different, distinctive, and memorable.

The kind of thing we are all striving for in every communication we create.