Louise McGregor Leadership

In memory

Sometimes, if you’re very lucky, you get the boss you need just at the right moment.

That was the case for me in 2005 when I started working for Theo van der Biessen then head of the New Media Team at ING’s Corporate Communications department. He gave me a long list of things to do and then left me to it.  I don’t mean he was a hands-off manager I mean he literally left me to it – he took the next three months off work to have heart surgery. I sent him hand-written notes every couple of weeks to let him know my progress, and somehow I thrived with the lack of attention.

Don’t get me wrong, Theo was no saint, there were many, many, days when he drove me crazy. He’d organise his day in such away that he had no time to go from one meeting to another – and was therefore always late. He wasn’t very organised around various management tasks – making our lives difficult on occasion. So of course he came in for his fair share of complaints.

In 2008 the team was split, with Theo leading the events team – which was the stuff he really loved, and me leading what became the Web Expert Centre – which is the stuff I really love.  So Theo wasn’t my boss for all that long but he had a deep impact, I learnt a lot about being good at my job and a lot the human side of being a good manager.

I think the biggest lesson I learnt was from seeing how much Theo cared, genuinely cared, for his team. He trusted us, he supported us – even when he didn’t agree 100% with what we were doing, and when we screwed up he was there to help solve the problem. Remarkably I never once heard him say “I told you so”. He was full of creativity and encouragement, he had masses of ideas – not all of them good, but some of them great, and he was always generous to me, and my team.

After that first heart surgery Theo recovered rather well for a few years, and then started to get sicker, eventually undergoing a series of open-heart surgeries, each one piling risk onto his damaged heart. The last surgery proved too much, and on the Saturday after the operation I heard that he had passed away. Despite knowing how sick he had been I was shocked. Theo had so much life and energy in him it seemed utterly impossible news.

I didn’t know it when I signed up for the job back in 2005, but I was extremely lucky to know and work with Theo.

Louise McGregor Communication

Switched Off

I saw that Volkswagen have forcibly limited the time during which employees (although not senior management) can receive emails. This radical step was taken to redress the work-life balance, to reduce the pressure on employees to be online and answering emails 24/7. It was negotiated between the works council and the company, and a spokesman  agrees that it’s not for every company.

I read the story back in December when I was on the other side of the world with a time difference of 12 hours. Although I was on holiday I was following a couple of issues that needed to be solved by the end of the year that I’d had to delegate. So I was checking my emails first thing in my morning, which was after the close of business back in Amsterdam. My first thought was therefore that it was particularly unhelpful to anyone travelling in different time zones. A colleague pointed out that imposing this limit would mean she’d stay at the office longer, whereas now she has dinner with her kids and then answers emails once they’re in bed.

I think it’s a step backwards; email, blackberries, remote access are all tools to allow us to work more flexibly. Cutting them off seems to defeat the purpose.

I do recognise the problem, it’s really easy to become addicted to the fast response. It’s easy to substitute email for communication. However email is convenient, it’s less disruptive than a phone call – and the employees of Volkswagen can still receive phone calls.

A better solution would be to implement an email charter in your company, setting out how you expect email to be used. If you can’t imagine what that means don’t worry – there’s a handy one already made for you via Chris Anderson of TED fame.

The Charter has rules that are pretty obvious and simple; respect the recipient’s time, promote clarity, don’t cc endlessly.

I’d add one – model the behaviour you want, particularly if you’re a team leader. Respect the recipient’s own personal time, don’t send an email on a day off that doesn’t need urgent attention – or if you do make sure “for Monday” is in the subject line.

We get to use the tools, they don’t rule us.

Louise McGregor social media

Twits on Twitter

Earlier this week I was looking for a way to contact RTL (a TV broadcasting company in the Netherlands) and tell them that their online television guide wasn’t showing the info for all channels – a very distressing proposition for me, as it will result in the phenomenon knowen as “random viewing” where I end up channel grazing for hours.

I couldn’t find an appropriate email address on the site so I turned to twitter,  that fab new tool that companies the world over are embracing to use for the customer contact. It seems that a lot of other people thought that RTL would be the company, and have tweeted questions and comments with @RTL in the tweets, instead it’s someone in fukuoka, with a locked account so I don’t know how active he/she is.

There are loads of tools out there to monitor tweets, so I wondered if perhaps RTL was picking up on these questions and responding somehow. Further digging revealed the offical RTL Netherlands twitter account @RTLNL, with zero tweets.

Lots has been said about how companies should set up their twitter accounts, how they should be used, how it’s vitally important to staff them etc, so I won’t go into what RTL could improve. In any case someone managed to get in contact with them – because the programme data is back today.

But I’d like to point out that users could also help by checking that the account they’re sending comments to is one that will provide an answer. In this case @RTL is a random person in Japan who’s getting messages in languages he can’t read.

To increase the chances of the company helping you via twitter check;

  • does the company have a twitter account?
  • are they actively using their account?
  • if the company has more than one account, which one is relevant for your question?
Louise McGregor Communication, Editorial

New Years Resolutions

Welcome to 2012

I know we’re halfway through January but I’ve had a slow start to the year with a long break visiting family and friends on the other side of the world.

So here I am on my first post of the year, and I’ve been thinking about New Year’s Resolutions. There was a flurry of posts on this subject from Christmas until about 5 January including a timely reminder from HBR that some resolutions might be about stopping ineffective behaviour at work, and the advertising to join a gym/lose weight/stop smoking and generally improve your life has escalated. But it was a quiet comment from a colleague I respect that inspired me to write this.

“I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions,” she said “you can decide any day of the year to make a change in your life”.

I don’t do resolutions either, but there is something healthy about taking some time to look back at what you’ve achieved, and what you’d like to improve and the end of year seems a natural moment to do that. However natural it is to translate that into resolutions it seems we’re not good at keeping them.

Around half of those who set resolutions succeed in keeping them occasionally, only 8% always keep them, compared with 24% who never keep them according to Daily Infographic.

So what goes wrong? Well, we’re too ambitious, making resolutions that are “significantly unrealistic”, according to Psychology Today. We’ll also think that solving one issue – reducing debt or exercising more – will fix our whole life and then then become discouraged when that turns out not to be the case.

There is plenty of advice all over the internet on how to improve your chances of keeping your resolutions the most common items are; focus on one goal, make it specific, make it measurable, take it in small steps, celebrate success – and laugh at failure.

Psychology Today’s list also reflects the advice of my wise colleague “Don’t wait till New Year’s eve to make resolutions. Make it a year long process, every day”

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Image New Year Mosaic 2008 /maplemama/ CC BY-NC-SA 2.0