# Simon Wakeman - fractional COO, consultant and advisor

> Helping leaders in scaling businesses create high performing organisations.

> Contact: simon@wakeman.work

### Posts

#### "Town hall Pravdas" once again
Pretty much since the government published the latest version of the Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity back in March 2011, Eric Pickles has been talking about putting compliance with the code on a stronger legal footing.
At the moment under the Local Government Act 1986 councils must "have regard" to the code of recommended practice on local authority publicity.
But the government feels that a stronger and legally enforceable regime is needed - and their focus is clearly on council publications. Today they've launched a  consultation entitled "Protecting the independent press from unfair competition" that proposes some new powers for the Secretary of State in relation to the new code.
In the words of the consultation:
Underpinning this new Publicity Code is the recognition both that good, effective publicity aimed at improving public awareness of a council’s activities is entirely acceptable, and that publicity is a sensitive matter because of the impact it can have and the costs associated with it. It equally reflects the government’s view that local authorities should focus their resources on frontline services, reducing resources expended on publicity such as newspapers, and above all that it is wholly inappropriate for taxpayers’ money to be used to pay for material that could be perceived as political or competing with the independent press and media.
So the government plans to put the code on a more robust legal basis by creating some new powers:

	the Secretary of State will be given the power to direct one or more councils to comply with some or all of the recommendations made in the code
	the direction could be to a single council, a number of named councils, to all authorities in a particular class (presumably this means types of authority, such as London boroughs or district councils) or to all councils to which the code applies
	these directions could be issued anytime the Secretary of State considers it appropriate to do so - which means because from the information
available to him he considers the authority is not, or there is a risk that it might not, comply with that recommendation in the code
	before issuing a direction the Secretary of State would be required to give notice to the authority or authorities in question of his intention to issue a direction to them to allow them a chance to prepare or to tell him why they don't think a legally binding direction should be issued (in the case of multiple councils he would give this notice to any collective representatives of councils, presumably the LGA or London Councils)
	a time limit for complying with the code could be issued if the Secretary of State wishes
	once a direction had been issued, any interested party could pursue a council that doesn't comply with the code through the courts using a court order

You can see the full document here. The consultation is now underway and closes on 6 May.
Back in November 2011 you might remember the government published a plain English guide to the Localism Act - one of the flagship aspects of the devoluton of powers to localities. In the introduction to this document, Greg Clark - then the Minister for Decentralisation - said:

For too long, central government has hoarded and concentrated power. Trying to improve people’s lives by imposing decisions, setting targets and demanding inspections from Whitehall simply doesn’t work. It creates bureaucracy. It leaves no room for adaptation to reflect local circumstances or innovation to deliver services more effectively and at lower cost.
Further on in the document extolling the importance of local-led decision making the government's position seems clear:
The Government is committed to passing new powers and freedoms to town halls. We think that power should be exercised at the lowest practical level - close to the people who are affected by decisions, rather than distant from them. Local authorities can do their job best when they have genuine freedom to respond to what local people want, not what they are told to do by central government. In challenging financial times, this freedom is more important than ever, enabling local authorities to innovate and deliver better value for taxpayers’ money.
Hmmm....

#### 100 mile bike ride tomorrow
Tomorrow's the day I'm riding the Castle 100 bike ride around Kent in aid of Action Medical Research.
Thanks to all of you who have sponsored me in aid of this great charity - and if you would still like to you can read more about the charity and sponsor me online here.
I'm planning to use the MapMyTracks GPS mobile phone sports tracking tool to show my progress live on the internet (disclosure: MapMyTracks is a client) - the ride starts around 7am tomorrow morning and live tracking will appear on the MapMyTracks site here.

#### A brilliant resource for public sector social media
It's not very often I say this, but this site is brilliant: http://sandbox.dius.gov.uk/digitalgovuk/
It's a site compiling examples of UK public sector use of social media. Nothing complicated there, and a concept that's been executed with varying degrees of success on blogs, wikis, websites already.
But there's a touch of social media magic behind this that I've not seen elsewhere.
Here are three reasons why I like it:

	It uses freely available social media tools, like del.icio.us, to create an entirely new resource.
	It fits in with the community spirit of social media as it will be a success because it will be updated by the community, tagging relevant content on del.icio.us with the tag digitalgovuk.
	It's full of fascinating and thought-provoking examples of how social media can be used in the public sector.

I'll certainly be tagging interesting examples as I find them, and will find the site an invaluable resource over the coming months.
The site was created by Steph Gray from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills - he's put together a great resource and if you're interested in public sector social media check it out and get tagging.

#### A curious term
I might be missing something, but what's a "portable bike"?
A "non-portable bike" strikes me as a bit pointless really.
Sometimes marketers can get tangled up in the detail of their own language that they forget the true meaning of terms.
Via Marketing Week magazine.

#### A different web consultancy project
The new Medway Primary Care Trust (PCT) website has just launched at www.medwaypct.nhs.uk.
The site was designed and build by the team at Netsite, and I acted as website consultant for the folks at the PCT.
It was an interesting role for me, as usually with these projects I'm either the client who's commissioning the project, or in the agency role shaping and delivering the site. On this project my role was mainly to help the client team understand the objectives of the site and develop a site structure to achieve these objectives.
The client team wasn't particularly experienced in website creation - for an organisation like a PCT the creation of a website from scratch is pretty much a one-off project, so they needed to buy in some expertise to help them.
The danger with these kinds of projects is that the site structure often ends up replicating internal organisational silos, rather than meeting customer objectives. The initial suggestions for the site's information architecture did just that.
Through a series of interviews, a scoping workshop and some customer testing I developed a customer-focused site structure, and secured buy-in for this from the key client personnel and the web agency.
It's great to see it live on the web now.
The other thing is that you'll spot there are no social media goodies on there at all. It's very much a web 1.0 site. And that's very deliberate.
The audience for this site is extremely broad, and so the site needed to be as simple and as "conventional" as possible. While that in itself doesn't preclude using some social media elements, I felt a fair proportion of the target audience and the organisation itself wasn't ready for social media.
One day I'm sure some social media tools will be mainstream enough to be used on a site like the PCT's, but that time hasn't come yet.
That said my team at Medway Council is working hard on a couple of very exciting social media projects for the council that should launch late 2006 - and from what I can see those will be pushing new territory for the public sector in the UK by targeting niche audiences that aren't reached by traditional public sector communications.

#### A GDS for local government?
Richard Copley has written a well considered and detailed blog post about what a Government Digital Service for local government might look like and why the sector should have one.
This is a debate that’s bubbled up a few times in recent times, with Carl Haggerty’s local government digital group emerging to try to push for greater co-ordination and sharing among those working in digital in local government. More details here.
Richard does a good job of highlighting the indisputable benefits of a more joined-up approach – including the potential savings from the removal of duplication in systems operated across hundreds of councils and the benefits to users from a more consistently user-focussed experience on council websites.
The latter is something that is still not properly embedded in the sector. We should recognise things are moving in the right direction, but the local government digital estate is still too dominated by councils doing things their way rather than building around their users.
Internal silos showing up in site architecture, use of jargon, wrangles over ownership and customer journeys dictated by the way obscure back office systems work are still all too common and obvious in many council websites.
The latest generation of council websites recognise the importance of a focus on user goal completion, but often when you look deeper you can see that while there’s a veneer of user centricity on the surface, underneath you’ll still find the clunky processes that are hard wired into old systems that sit within the organisation.
Richard’s vision for a local government digital service rightly challenges the assumption that every council needs its own website.
This is great stuff – it recognises that for the majority (but not all) of tasks that a user seeks to accomplish with their council digitally, there’s not a lot of difference across different councils. So why haven't we invented a different way to do it for each council?
He then sets out a detailed approach to how the back office integrations for multiple councils would need to work with a  single digital front end – which all sounds sensible in theory to me (although in all honesty that’s not my area of particular expertise).
But where I think I have the greatest concerns with the approach is not in its indisputable appeal in principle, but in the context into which it would need to be deployed.
The work of the government digital service has been a success for many reasons – not least because it’s a very sound concept – but one that we mustn’t forget is that it comes with a consistent and long-term political mandate for change from the top within the civil service, with an influential minister backing it.
That’s not to underplay the difficulties they still face in delivering change across many central government departments, but the mandate and consensus around need for change is well established in the machinery of central government.
What I struggle with when applying Richard’s thinking to local government is that I can’t see where an equivalent mandate for such radical change would come from.
The distributed nature of the sector means there’s no single source of such a mandate that could give the backing to a new sector-wide digital approach.
Anyone that’s delivered partnership working or shared services in local government will be familiar with the challenges that delivering change across multiple councils can bring.
So while I think the idea of a local government digital service is a great one in principle and the theoretical benefits are hard to argue with, I think it’ll remain just an idea for the foreseeable future.
I guess that’s why when you look at the current work being led by Carl and others, it’s quite organic and “from the ground up” in its approach – as without a central mandate for a direction of change, it’s only through consensus and the voluntary participation of engaged enthusiasts that digital progression will happen in a cross-sector way.
And sadly that means the scope will always be limited - and the major benefits for the sector and residents that Richard sets out will remain substantially out of reach.
I know this does come across a bit defeatist - which isn't my normal take on all things digital - but I think it's important to recognise that the nature of change means that the challenge here is one of transformational change rather than simply improving a digital service.
That said, I was talking this through with a fellow team member today who had a slightly different take - that while there may not be a central mandate for change, if the ground-up stuff is compellingly good, then it will drive adoption among councils the quality will be so high that it will be an easy choice for councils to make individually - with no compulsion or coercion required.
An offer so good councils want to use it. Sounds familiar?

#### A great customer experience
Customer experience is a growing area for many companies as they seek to differentiate their offer from competitors.
The tools of customer experience have grown from technology user interaction, web design and marketing to form a rapidly evolving discipline. The pace of change in customer experience thinking is rapid, but for a good summary of the basics check out Beyond Philosophy or my background article on this site or the Tinderhouse website.
Last week I returned from a holiday in the New Forest, in South East England. We rented a holiday property - and it was this experience that I thought was a good example of how a great customer experience can differentiate one holiday property from its competitors.
We tend to rent holiday properties rather than stay in hotels, so have stayed in quite a few. And when researching somewhere to stay in the New Forest we found there were hundreds, if not thousands of places we could have rented - so holiday property owners need to differentiate their offer to attract customers.
The property we eventually went for was The Captain's House  in Hythe. In this article I've looked at some of the things that made our experience renting this property great.
Pre-purchase
We tend to look on the web for information about places to stay on holiday, so the first time we came across the Captain's House was as a result from a Google search.
Clicking through to the site at www.captains-house.info the first thing we saw was some attractive pictures of the property and the view from the front window - a real selling point.
Exploring the site further it appeared comprehensive, and provided plenty of information to help us make the decision to rent or not.
The site was a pleasant change to many of the holiday property websites we found - many of which didn't provide enough information for us to decide whether to even consider renting them. Most people wouldn't consider renting a property on the basis of a picture and three bullet points of information (the worst site I found had just this).
The website was also fully accessible and advertised that fact using the common W3C HMTL 4.01 and CSS logos, along with a strapline for the less techno-friendly visitor ("_The above logos show that we have taken the care to create an interoperable Web Site for people with disabilities._"). While this wasn't relevant to our web browsing, it showed an attention to detail that hinted at some of the values held by the owners.
The website sold it to us, so we thought we'd request a brochure and email with some further questions we had. Even though it was the Christmas period the brochure arrived promptly with a personal letter from the owners.
My email was answered more than comprehensively a few days later, accompanied with profuse apologies for the delay (over Christmas Day!).
Having decided to rent the Captain's House we booked over the phone with the owner, and the paperwork was completely promptly and accurately within just a few days.
Before our holiday we received a helpful information sheet showing us how to get to the property and how to get access. A range of further contact details were also included should we need them.
The product itself
When we walked into the property, the first thing that struck us was how clean and tidy it was. Everything was in good condition and a lot of care and attention has obviously been lavished on it.
This shows a key point about customer experience - the core product must be sound for the special aspects of customer experience to be valid. If the property had been a mess and badly looked after, the little touches below wouldn't have made any difference to our overall experience.
So what made a good experience great? Well it's the little touches - things that individually might seem trivial, but when combined with a good product make a real difference - at the Captain's House these included:

	all the property keys were colour coded, so we immediately knew which key opened which door
	the property had been left with the heating on, so when we arrived it was warm and welcoming, rather than cold and damp as many properties are when you rent them out of season
	a card with a personal message from the owners welcoming us was left in the kitchen, with a bottle of wine chilled in the fridge
	the instruction manuals for the domestic applicances were all filed, so if we needed them we could easily find what we needed to know
	an information folder was provided about the area - this is quite common in rented holiday properties, but this one had several pages of information written by the owners, and was arranged in order with an index. It also included local takeaway menus which was much appreciated.
	one of the marketed benefits of the property was its waterfront view, and being able to see all sorts of shipping coming and going on Southampton Water. The owners had provided a schedule of expected shipping movements.

Post-purchase
Having had a great holiday we received a personal letter from the owners within four days thanking us for leaving the property tidy and returning our security deposit.
This element closed the whole customer experience of renting the property in a consistent way to the overall experience, and helped make a good customer experience great.
On the basis of our time at Captain's House we have already recommended the property to several other people, and will continue to do so.
Summary
Our holiday at Captain's House reinforced some key points about customer experience:

	the core product must be good for the little touches to be of value in improving the overall customer experience
	marketing and customer experience can be aligned closely - and become a very powerful combination
	the production values of marketing materials (in this case the website, brochure and letters) say something about the product you're marketing
	get the customer experience right and you'll have harnessed the most elusive yet powerful marketing tool of all - personal recommendation and word of mouth

#### A great reality check
I attended a public meeting for work the other evening.
The majority of the people at the meeting, called to let people air their views on a recent festival, were aged over 40.
And it was a great reminder for me that while we can get very excited about the undoubted potential of social media/new media/web 2.0, in helping extend the reach and effectiveness of local government communication and consultation activities, there's always a role for face to face engagement and other "traditional" channels.
I'm happy to admit that I have a passion for social media in communications, but my job is to communicate effectively with lots of different publics - and that means using the communications tools most appropriate to those publics - not just the shiny new exciting ones that I may gravitate to personally.
A show of hands revealed there weren't many web users in the meeting. Yet they were all happy with the concept of an open meeting, advertised in the local newspaper, as a way to get their views heard and debate some issues with the council representatives in attendance.
That said it's probably true that there were also people who wouldn't or couldn't attend the meeting - and a complementary online way for them to air their opinions would have been useful too.
But the bottom line is that we need to plan communications and consultation campaigns with the target audience in mind...obvious but all too often overlooked.

#### A great resource for managers
I've just finished listening to my first podcast from www.manager-tools.com.
The site, run by Mark and Mike, features hundreds of podcasts on management-related topics. A new one is posted each week, and judging by the quality of the one I've just listened to this is a great resource for developing yourself as a manager.
Mike and Mark discuss the topic of the day with clarity and insight. Sometimes a handout is provided to be printed and viewed while listening, but as I listen to podcasts in the car I couldn't do this. Even so the discussion was very interesting and I took away some practical and actionable tips to try out.
I've added the feed to my RSS feeder and am looking forward to next week's show.

#### A love for trainers, gear and gadgety stuff
I am a gear freak. There you go I've admitted it.
Whether it's a gadgety mobile phone, an extensive collection of running equipment or a few sets of outdoors trainers, I'm a sucker for some new features or the latest innovation.
Which is why I was dead chuffed when Fitness Footwear asked me to road test the latest North Face Hedgehog GTX XCR trainers. So here's a picture from last weekend's Sunday morning dog  walk in Blean Woods proving that the North Faces are suitable for climbing up dead tree  trunks to impress your small children with your tree climbing prowess.
For the last year or so I've been wearing a pair of Karrimor trainers which have seen better days. They get daily use for dog walks, including trips to the beach, woods as well as just day-to-day out and about wear. They've done a winter which included a fair amount of snow, mud and rain.
The North Face Hedgehogs are a step up from the Karrimors - here's the tech spec straight from North Face themselves:

	Waterproof, breathable Gore-Tex® Extended Comfort  Range membrane
	Abrasion-resistant, bomber synthetic nubuck and  breathable sandwich-mesh upper
	Gusseted tongue
	Northotic™  ergonomic footbed
	Lightweight,  compression-molded EVA midsole
	Heel X-2 O2™ air pod
	Injection-molded  TPU shank plate
	Exclusive lightweight Vibram® rubber outsole

I have to admit some of those specs mean absolutely nothing to me at the moment. What's most important to me is that, four days in, they're very comfortable and are waterproof because of their Gore-Tex membrane (although I've not had a summer rain shower to test out that quite yet).

I'm planning on giving the shoes a good road test over the summer - daily dog walks, a caravan holiday and generally using them for getting out and about.
(disclosure: free review pair of North Face Hedgehog GTX XCR trainers supplied by Fitness Footwear)

#### A more efficient writing tool
This post by Lee Hopkins struck a chord with me.
I really struggle when sitting down to write, whether it's a media release or a strategy. I often get diverted by incoming emails or following hyperlinks to sites which become gradually more distant from the topic I'm working on.
So having checked out Matthew Stibbe's post that Lee cited, I decided to download Dark Room - a no frills editor that takes me back to the old days - green text on a black background.

I've been using it all day, and it's definitely helping focus on writing, and making me think about what I'm writing.
As a Textpattern user I blog using Textile. This keeps the code for formatting and layout to a minimum when posting, and I guess the principle is the same for using Dark Room. Stripping out the complexity helps focus on the content.
I'd definitely recommend you give it a go.

#### A new arrival
Readers will know that I blog about marketing and public relations, but some events in life are just too significant not to be mentioned.
At 6.38am on Tuesday morning our second baby was born. Toby James Wakeman weighed in at 7lb 8oz, and I'm pleased to report that mum and baby are doing just fine.
We're now home and adjusting to having a newborn baby around the house as well as a three-year old toddler.
Blog posting over the coming few weeks will certainly be less frequent and probably at some very odd times of day and night, as I'm sure those readers with young children (or memories of young children) will understand.

#### A presentation by Richard Reed from Innocent
Earlier this evening I went to a talk by Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent. The company launched in 1998 and sell fruit smoothies in the UK.
I go to this kind of business event fairly often, but I have to say Richard Reed was the most engaging, personable and inspiring speaker I've seen.
He spoke with a real passion about developing Innocent from a start-up to the multi-million pound business it is today. But most of all, he talked about strategic marketing issues in a simple and clear way.
All too often people fall back onto complicated charts, tables, Venn diagrams, flowcharts and the like when explaining marketing strategy.
Richard used none of these, yet communicated a clear brand proposition and positioning, talked about the lessons he has learnt along the way, and managed to be informal and entertaining throughout.
He talked about using consultants and research - but made a really good point that when it comes to it, marketing is gut-feel. It's not a science, and you should never try to use research as a decision-maker - it can only inform decisions that you make because you believe they're right.
If you get the chance I'd recommend you go to a talk by Richard. For students the Innocent story makes a great case study for various things, and for the marketing professional he inspires and shows that the conventional approach doesn't have to be the only way to work.
The event was organised by the Kent branch of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) and Business Link Kent.

#### A sound bit of branding theory
If you go to marketing school you learn a whole bunch of theories and models that they tell you underpin marketing - things like the 4 (5, 6 or 6) P's, the AIDA model, and Maslow's Hierachy of Needs. I went to a CIM Kent Branch presentation yesterday by branding consultant James Hammond. I have to admit I went along expecting to hear what I already knew about branding and have a generally nice evening.   But I was wrong. I had a nice evening but James' presentation forced me to challenge some of the thoughts that I have about branding and marketing in general. What's behind his theories on branding is a belief that most "modern" marketing theories are, in fact, woefully out of date - developed 20 or 30 years ago they are increasing irrelevant in the markets most of us work in today. James believes that nowadays customers don't buy features and benefits, they buy brands.  Sounds a bit glib really, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised it was true. In making purchase decisions, consumers have more information at their fingertips than ever before. But rather than serving to inform their decisions, this information overload confuses them to the point where the only way they can make a purchase decision is based on your own value judgements - coming from your own individual world view. The only way brands can make connections is therefore by articulating emotional benefits of a product that connect with a purchaser's world view - features and benefits just aren't enough. Of course any branding presentation just wouldn't be right without a definition of brand:  Branding is the total experience a customer has with your company, its product or service The beauty of James' definition of brand is that it exists in the customer's mind - it's the experience they have, rather than the one you provide. Most definitions of brand rely on what the company does, rather than the customer's experience. I won't go into real depth here on James' presentation - his full set of slides is here. The main point I took away is about how the human brain processes emotional response faster than rational response. It's a medically proven fact apparently. This means that consumers, even if they may protest otherwise, make purchase decisions based on emotional response, not rational response. Brand is the way to generate the right emotional response, and James has some sound methods to do just that. James explained this really well with a combination of marketing theory, psychology and neuro-linguistic programming. If you get the chance to catch James presently he's well worth listening to. He's also got a book and CD tutorial coming out later this year which sets out his theories and supporting evidence in more detail. I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for his book, and be thinking about how I can use his branding theories in my day-to-day work. James has websites at www.brandcreative.net and www.brandhalo.co.uk [tags]branding, brand+halo, james+hammond, brand+strategy[/tags]

#### A time to reflect with a trip to 1993
There plenty of reviews of 2006 and previews for 2007 knocking about the blogosphere right now.
I'm not going to indulge in such a post, mainly because the past 12 months seems like a blur from which I could pull so many highlights, professional and personal, but more importantly because I'm scarcely more qualified to predict the future than anyone else.
All I'm going to do is point you to a 1993 news report, courtesy of CBC (via For Immediate Release), which talks about an emerging phenomenon called "Internet".
That was just over thirteen years ago. I was still at school then, and about year after that report had my first brush with "Internet" when I got my first email address through a summer job at Exeter University.
The CBC report really started me thinking about the true impact of the internet on our lives, how in 1993 we could never have anticipated or believed that, and about how the future can be so hard to predict.
So the only certain prediction for 2007 I can genuinely make is that online communications will change pretty damned fast in 2007, and the ride will be an exciting one. Enjoy!

#### A very big news conference indeed
I've been in Paris today at the route launch for the 2007 Tour de France at Le Palais des Congres.
This is where the full route of the world's largest annual sporting event is announced, and I was there as next year the race starts in London, and finishes in Canterbury. I'm working on communications around the race when it passes through Medway.
The announcement of the route is a big deal for the French national and cycling media. The launch was attended by around 3,000 people, mostly journalists, and more than 50 TV crews from around the world.

The sheer scale of the news conference was much larger than anything I've seen before. The quality of the on-stage production was extremely high, with multiple projection sources including stills, animations, flythroughs and live video.
One particularly chaotic moment was at the end of the formal part of the conference when a fair proportion of the media in the audience rushed towards the stage for the open question and answer part of the session. The quality of the overall presentation fell a bit here as a stagehand produced a small wooden easel on which to put a route map for a photo opportunity.
The arrival of the tour next year will be a real spectacle, with more than 200 riders and a supporting entourage of around 3,000 people. It represents a great communications challenge as we look to maximise the benefits from such a world-class sporting event coming to the south east of England.

#### Abseiling 114m from the Arcelor Mittal Orbit for charity
This weekend I'll be descending the UK's largest sculpture along with colleagues from digital agency Deeson in aid of Porchlight, a charity supporting the homeless and vulnerable across Kent and Croydon.
At Deeson we've worked with Porchlight for some time on projects and we're happy to be able to give back to this wonderful charity - although I'm not sure I'll be so convinced about that as I lower myself into thin air 114m above Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
From there on, it’s over the edge and down on an adrenaline-fuelled ride to the ground, taking in the breath-taking views across London including iconic buildings such as The Gherkin, St. Pauls, Canary Wharf and Wembley Stadium, as well as the world-famous sporting venues of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
If you'd like to support us in raising funds for Porchlight, you can make a donation here.

#### Accepting second best
Every day on my drive to work I pass a Little Chef restaurant. Around six months ago it had new fascia signs installed, but this one on the front appeared to be too small for the sign it replaced, leaving a fair-sized and visible gap on the left hand side. Since then the sign hasn't been replaced or fixed up. If you settle for second best on the outside of your business, what does that tell your customers about what goes on inside? [tags]little+chef, branding, signage, visual+identity, customer+experience[/tags]

#### Adland - the history of the global advertising industry
Having worked in marketing for most of my career - and having undertaken more professional qualifications that I can remember in that time - I've enjoyed learning about the theoretical and academic side of marketing.
Over the years I've been a keen reader of the marketing trade press and that, combined with personal contacts in the business, has helped me see the development of the industry since 1998. But one area that I'd never really known much about was the origins of the industry we now work in.
Adland - the second edition of a book by journalist Mark Tungate - is a fascinating read that charts the history of the advertising industry. It starts in the mid-1800s and follows through the development of the global advertising giants through to pretty much the present day.
Based on extensive research and interviews with key industry players, Mark's book is an easy read. It's written in an accessible journalistic style that tells some great stories about some of the key moments in the development of advertising.
It charts the major split in the industry that occurred when the business of media buying became detached from the creative side of things - and how more recently this divide is becoming less relevant as the more recent integrated and media-neutral agencies have thrived.
Going back a bit further in advertising history, one particular thing that struck me was that right from the early days of the industry there was a tension between the creative, freewheeling side of the business and the more academic and research-driven side of things.
I'd always assumed that the use of research and evidence in advertising was a relatively recent phenomenon as the industry thrived in the post-WW2 economy, but actually it goes back much further than that.
What becomes clear as the story unfolds is that the most successful agencies have been those that have been able to combine epoch-defining creativity with the research and evidence to give campaigns the greatest chance of delivering the desired end result. Plus of course success depends on commercial and professional risk-taking by the agencies themselves, with the stakes getting ever bigger for the major global groups that dominate the industry today.
The development of the advertising industry is also a tale of perpetual renewal - as agencies start small and nimble, grow and are acquired by larger groups, with a never-ending stream of new start-ups taking their place at the bottom of the pile - and more often than not driving the creative and sector development through their innovations.
So if you work in marketing or advertising, I'd recommend Adland as a great primer for the background to the way the advertising industry is today. Plus there's plenty of great insights into how great campaigns came about that we can all learn from in our day-to-day work.
Disclosure: Free publisher review copy supplied
 
 

#### Advanced public sector social media workshop
Please note: this workshop is now sold out. See Leeds course on 25 May here, London course on 23 June here or email nick@publicsectorforums.co.uk for other locations.
It's been a while since I last ran a public sector social media workshop in the UK, so I'm pleased to be heading up to Glasgow this April to run an advanced public sector social media workshop.
I've put together this workshop to build on previous public sector workshops I've facilitated. It explores some of the most important topics in social media in the public sector and will be as practical and hands-on as possible - to make sure everyone comes away benefitting as much as possible from the day.
As usual the workshop is being managed by Nick Hill at Public Sector Forums, so for bookings and more information about the venue, email nick@publicsectorforums.co.uk or call him on 07816 830221.
The workshop cost is £200 plus VAT if you book before 18 February, or £250 plus VAT afterwards. It takes place on 6 April 2011 at the Thistle Hotel in Glasgow.
If you're interested in attending this workshop in other locations, get in touch with Nick using the details above as we are planning other venues later in the year.
The draft workshop programme will include:

	Mastering the essentials for successful public sector social media strategy and implementation
	Managing social media use within the organisation – mitigating risk and striking the personal/professional balance
	Stakeholder engagement – developing a business case to ensure social media can be used as part of the communications mix
	Monitoring and auditing – Effective social media listening
	Conducting a social media audit as a basis for developing an integrated offline/online communications strategy that incorporates social media
	Focus on Facebook and Twitter within an integrated communications and marketing mix
	Engaging and consulting – Incorporating social media into policy development and service delivery processes
	Social media relations – Managing outrage and other responses
	Handling the social media reputation firestorm – the good, the bad and the ugly
	Developing a personal action plan for social media

#### Advanced social media course in Leeds - book now
Hot on the heels of my recent trip to Glasgow to run the new one day Advanced Social Media for the Public Sector course, I'm delighted to confirm a new date in Leeds. I'll be running the course there on Tuesday, 27 November at the Park Plaza hotel.
This is a new course I've written that's aimed at intermediate and advanced users of social media in communications, engagement or service delivery - although feedback from some absolute beginners on the Glasgow course was very positive too.
Here's what some previous delegates said:
Excellent workshop with good examples. Simon was extremely knowledgeable
Excellent interactive workshop with hands on examples
This workshop was excellent; I learnt a lot and it gave me much food for thought!!!
The workshopmet my objectives and more. Simon made the content accessible and easy to understand on a practical level
Excellent amount of content. Not information overload and very informative that I can take forward. Would recommend to colleagues
The course includes:

	The theory behind social media
	Advanced social media channel implementations using social networks (eg Facebook, LinkedIn), microblogging (eg Twitter), blogging and video sharing (eg YouTube)
	Setting up a social media monitoring system
	Dealing with negative coverage on social media – interactive exercise
	Strategies for creating thriving social media communities
	Building social media into your communications, marketing and service strategies
	Paid-for opportunities on social media
	Best practice use of social media in emergency situations

Plus I've written a new segment about LinkedIn after feedback from delegates in Glasgow that they wanted to find out more about how this professional social network could be used in public sector communications.
It's a great fun course to deliver (and hopefully to participate in too) and is designed to be interactive with plenty of time for discussions and sharing of experiences.
The cost is £300+VAT per person. You can book your place now here, by emailing Nick Hill or by calling 07816 830221.

#### An award winning team
A bit slow in posting this as it's been a hectic week, but earlier in the week I attended the UK Public Sector Communications Awards seminar.
As part of the seminar I delivered a presentation on "Public sector communications in 2015 - an unaffordable luxury?" which explored the nature of change in the public sector and what communicators need to do to ensure they actively contribute to the future of public service delivery. It was the first outing for a new presentation I'd been deveoping for a while so I was pleased to get such positive feedback in the room and on Twitter.
In October the shortlists for the awards themselves were announced, and the team was really pleased to be shortlisted in six categories - every one we'd entered - making Medway the most shortlisted council at the awards.

I was even more pleased for the team that we won the Insight Award which recognised the "creation of a campaign that reflects knowledge and understanding of its target audience" for our Love Medway campaign.
Fingers crossed for more success in the future for the team!
Image (c) Don't Panic Projects 2012

#### An empowered communications team equals an empowered community?
This is a guest post by council press officer and MSc student Adrian Winterburn. He can be reached by email or on Twitter at @adie_winterburn.
Localism means that now, more than ever, local government communications managers need to have a seat around the table at the highest level of decision making. Communications teams will play a key role in enabling and facilitating community building. But council budget cuts means that cutting back on the communications function seems like an obvious option, especially to those working outside of communications.
Do PR practitioners hold the key to successful community empowerment? With their expertise in engaging stakeholders, should the communications team act as the bridge that brings together the residents with the decision makers in the council?  When considering why people don’t engage with their council it strengthens the argument that communications departments should lead on this agenda.
Research shows that people don’t trust political institutions, but also they don’t understand the decision making process. So clearly there is a role for communicators to help build trust, but also to make sure people are informed enough to contribute to decision making.
And then there is that question people ask themselves: “why should I get involved? Nobody listens to me anyway”. That is what people think. Tokenistic pawns rather than empowered people. But surely, if we engaged effectively with residents and showed them how they did make a difference, we could reduce that perception. But that is a challenging route to go down, because if we aren’t careful we could end up spinning the truth, which surely won’t help build trust.
So how do we get through to our residents? How do we empower them? How can we convince residents that they can trust us? But also how can we convince senior managers that we, as communicators, need a place on that decision-making table? Because if we are the ones leading on engaging our residents, then we have the evidence, and skills to advice the senior managers how their decisions will be received by residents.
And amid all this confusion there is this other big trend– social media. Surely an efficient way of engaging with masses of numbers? Well not exactly. Sure it has the potential; but it doesn’t have the power to change organisational culture or to convince people to trust their council? Or does it?
I’m a communications officer for Leeds City Council, and in my spare time I studying for my MSc Corporate Communications. I am now writing my dissertation, and I am researching the role of communications departments in empowering residents, and the strengths of weaknesses of using social media for this purpose. If you think you can help me with my research? Or if there is somebody you know who could, then please get in touch.
I am looking for volunteers who work for a local council in a communications role. It doesn’t matter if you are in a management or officer position, just as long as you have opinions on the issues discussed above. You will take part in an online discussion forum, focussing on four topics relating to the issues discussed above. You will need to make at least one contribution to each discussion. Research will take place over two weeks, and I predict that the time commitment will be one hour per week.
If you can help me with my research please get in touch by emailing me at  awinterburn5@googlemail.com or tweet me @adie_winterburn

#### An exciting new job next month
I've got some news about a new role I'll be taking on from 25 February - Medway Council and East Sussex County Council have entered into a partnership to develop proposals for a regional shared communications agency for the local public sector.
And that partnership means I'll be moving to a new exciting shared communications role - as joint Head of Communications and Marketing for Medway Council and Head of Communications and Engagement for East Sussex County Council.
As well as that I'll be leading the development of proposals for the new shared communications agency over the next six months - involving the communications teams from both councils in that process. Busy times ahead!
I'm really looking forward to the new job - it's going to be a great challenge professionally and I'm looking forward to learning lots as well as working with the teams to deliver high quality communications at both councils.
The full press release issued jointly by Medway Council and East Sussex County Council is below:

South East councils to share communications
An innovative and creative approach to local public sector communications in the south east has moved a step closer thanks to a new agreement between East Sussex County Council and Medway Council.
During 2013 the two councils will work together to develop proposals for a regional shared communications agency for public sector communications. The proposed shared service would provide communications, marketing and engagement services to the two councils and other councils and public sector organisations in the region.
These proposals will build on Medway Council's existing award-winning communications and marketing team and East Sussex County Council's ambitious vision for improving communications and engagement with its residents. A final decision on the proposals is expected in Summer 2013. The exploratory work will look at the benefits of shared communications, opportunities for broader communications partnership working with other organisations and delivery models for the shared service.
Under the agreement Simon Wakeman, Head of Communications and Marketing at Medway Council, will also take on the role of Head of Communications and Engagement at East Sussex County Council from February 2013 - the first time two upper tier councils have shared their top communications role in this way.
East Sussex County Council and Medway Council are members of the SE7 partnership of seven councils that have committed to working together to improve the quality of services and to achieve savings.
Cllr Keith Glazier, Deputy Leader of East Sussex County Council, said: “This is another really good example of councils sharing services and using their resources in the best way possible. Our partnership with Medway will enable both councils to learn from each other and improve their communications.
“We’ll continue to work with our SE7 partners to look for new partnership opportunities that help to save money and improve services for our residents.”
Cllr Alan Jarrett, Deputy Leader of Medway Council, said "The challenging financial position for local government means we need to look for new ways to sustain and improve the services we deliver. This exciting new venture is an example of Medway's commitment to innovation and best practice in public sector communications."

#### An open letter to the new Managing Director - my leadership lessons 2016-2020
Dear Sarah,

Earlier this month when we announced the news that you'd be taking over as Managing Director at Deeson, I started writing this open letter. I wanted to share with you some of what I've learnt over the past four years leading the agency.

I write this not in an attempt to tell you how to do your job - you need to be your kind of leader, not try to emulate the way I chose to do things - but in a genuine attempt at personal reflection on what it takes to be an agency leader in 2020.

Deeson, Canterbury

Less than four weeks have passed since I wrote the content for this letter, yet so much seems to have changed. We're now locked down in our homes in the midst of a global pandemic. The economic future that lies ahead is uncertain yet undoubtedly more challenging than any of us can remember

As I thought about whether my reflections might still have value for you now, I realised that, over the next few months, the agency will need your leadership more than ever. 

You'll face challenges unlike any that I experienced in the role, so if any of what I learnt in the last four years is useful, then this letter will have helped you just a little bit in your own leadership journey.

After much reflection, writing and editing, I've think there are ten lessons that I take away from my time in the role and that I hope you'll find useful as you settle into your new role:

Lesson 1: The context for leadership.

I realise now that the contextual nature of leadership styles is more important than I realised four years ago. Different phases of the agency's transformation and growth over the past four years have required different types of leadership. 

At times, an enabling and facilitating servant leadership style has been the best way to help our journey - indeed early on I wanted to make this the default mode in which I operated. 

But there have also been other times when a more directional style was needed. Sometimes these have been time critical interventions - where I felt we weren't properly addressing a challenge we faced - while at other times a more hands-on approach was needed to radically refocus and pivot our direction.

There have been moments when I needed to be a transformational leader, driving through major and rapid change. While in other situations I've tried to be a coaching leader, helping others grow and develop, building capacity for the agency's future and enabling others to fulfil their own personal development goals.

I came to realise that being able to recognise and adopt the most suitable mode of leadership for a particular time, challenge of context was a skill in itself. I learnt to do this deliberately and thought often about how to manage myself to be a contextually relevant leader.

Lesson 2: The influence of leadership.

Influence is a tool that I learnt to use wisely in business leadership. I learnt to think about the different ways that I influenced what happened in the agency and be deliberate about the choices I made about how to use them.

While having a job title like Managing Director gives a degree of legitimate influence, I've tried to minimise my use of this. But I also realised that it's very easy to think you're not deliberately using the influence that your role has, yet my words and actions carried influence with team members even when I was trying to minimise this influence. 

I tried to reduce the direct influence I had on the business through reward and coercion - the ability to encourage behaviours through positive incentives alongside negative consequences for undesirable actions. I did this as I wanted to create a transparent system that used behavioural psychology to help people take their own decisions that aligned with the interests of the business. 

This was an important part of creating a self-organising culture that was focussed on individual and collective success. I also felt strongly that my own hidden biases could risk the unfair use of reward and coercion, so I should minimise the times I had to use this influence directly.

Later in my tenure in the role, I realised about the expert influence I had. This source of influence was based on the knowledge I had of the agency Tim and I developed and from the work I'd done with our clients. You may not realise it but you go into the role with a unique expert influence based on your career to date and I encourage you to continue to develop that influence for the benefit of the agency and you professionally.

The influence through the information I had and shared as Managing Director was often an interesting conundrum. My instinct has always been to be as transparent as possible - that's why we share so much information as openly as possible at Deeson. I wanted this as I felt that our team members could take the best decisions possible with the most information possible. I also recognised that what and how I personally communicated information had a significant impact on the way people in the agency felt and acted.

But on the margins, there were sometimes things that I chose to share that didn't have the influence I expected. The consequences were unintended and sometimes damaging. I realised that information is only useful with the right prior understanding and if it affects choices that people can make. 

For example my initial instinct on sharing information about how the agency was performing financially was to share full management accounts. Yet I soon realised that most people don't know how to read a set of accounts (and nor should I have expected them to). 

Instead it was better to present a summary of the monthly financial accounts, alongside a narrative that sets the numbers in context and suggests what those numbers mean for the decisions we want people to make in their day-to-day roles. Information without understanding and interpretation can have unintended consequences.

The last type of influence that I felt I achieved after a while in the role was referent. I realised that through careful and thoughtful use of interpersonal skills, I could shape the work if the agency without obvious and directional intervention. In a service business that's so dependent on the team members for its success, this is the form of influence I wish I'd worked harder earlier to develop given the impact it had.

Lesson 3: Personal vulnerability is a good thing.

When I started the job I put myself under pressure to always know enough to have the answer to every question that came up. But it was mentally exhausting and, I realised after a while, doomed to failure as I could never expect to know everything about the agency. 

It's OK to not have all the answers and be open about that. I hope doing that made me more human and approachable as a leader in the team. 

As my confidence in the role grew, I started to be more open about some of the challenges I faced in the role and drew more visibly on experiences I have had in previous roles and in life more widely. I hope this helped shape a more open and contributive culture that showed other people it was a good thing to share things that in the past we may not have previously talked about at work.

Lesson 4: Build and iterate "the system".

I ended up looking at the job of running an agency in two ways. We needed to find a system for getting stuff done to achieve our goals and then we needed to help people be effective fulfilling their accountabilities within this system. 

The system is never perfect and never finished - as the agency is always adjusting to the world around it. But we kept iterating and improving, building on our learnings about what worked and what didn't.

This approach led me to recognise when I was working on improving "the system" and when my work was to help people do their best work within the system. I became deliberate in my separation of these two domains of work as a Managing Director.

This way of thinking helped me be clear what problems I was trying to fix or what I was trying to make better - and therefore the best ways to approach that.

Lesson 5: Break big problems into smaller ones.

Early on, I had a habit of getting stuck on how to solve big problems. 

The interconnected nature of the agency system meant that it was all too easy for me to end up unsure how to address an issue. They seemed intractably complex. Or I found myself coming up with potential solutions that were disproportionately large compared to the problem I was trying to solve.

My learning here was that once I thought I had a decent understanding of a problem and its root causes, I then needed to break it down into the smallest constituent parts before I attempted to solve the problem. 

This helped make sure that the solutions were more likely to be practical and achievable. It also helped decouple solutions, reduce dependencies and increase the pace of improvements.

I learnt lots of small improvements was better than large monolithic improvements that never quite got fully implemented and ran out of steam as the next big challenge inevitably came along.

Lesson 6: You end up with the trickiest problems.

The way the agency system at Deeson works gives people in every role ownership of a lot of how they do their work. That's by design because I believe it increases engagement and allows people to thrive professionally.

What it means for the Managing Director is that when an issue lands with you, it's usually because it's not like one that anyone's seen before. Your to-do list will end up being filled with the trickiest, most complex problems.

Earlier on I used to worry that this was because there were lots of problems going on across the business, but then I worked out that it was simply a logical result of the way we have empowered teams that can solve the vast majority of problems very capably themselves.

Lesson 7: Being MD can be a lonely mission.

This one affected me a lot in the early days. 

As Deeson was my first role as a Managing Director, it's the first time I've really been fully accountable for the ultimate performance of a business. Previously there's always been someone else above me who held that accountability.

I welcomed the responsibility, but hadn't realised how when things were hard, I was the only person who had the overview of the whole business and had to come up with solutions. 

That said, I was extremely well supported by Tim, my predecessor in the role and the previous agency owner, my leadership team and the informal network of agency peers I've been lucky enough to get to know. 

You have my commitment that while I'm moving to a non-executive director role at Deeson in due course, I'll always be available for you for advice, guidance or just someone to have a chat with. 

That last one is something I really valued in my relationship with Tim. Moving into the MD role your relationship with your previous peers changes. However much you try to avoid losing valued relationships with team members, the fact you're the Managing Director means relationships will change.

Lesson 8: Evaluating the future, three moves ahead.

I've spent a lot of time looking forward. 

Time spent thinking about scenarios, permutations, possibilities and curved balls is time well spent. That goes for growth and transformation as much as it does for more negative scenarios too.

In particular I've focussed on trying to think ahead beyond the immediate obvious next step. Like in a game of chess, what might the options be in two or three moves time? What options might the decisions that the Managing Director makes now open up in the next year or two? 

None of us can predict the future at the best of times, let alone now. But I tried hard to develop scenario planning skills so that at least I was prepared for the range of options that might present in the future, rather than being blindsided by an unexpected situation. 

I won't pretend I always called it right, but the analytical thinking about the future helped me deal with those unexpected twists and turns when they happened.

Lesson 9: Always have a plan B.

Linked to thinking about future scenarios, I always tried to make sure I had a fallback plan or an exit scenario for any big call I had to make. 

It's inevitable that we'll all make mistakes in big decisions and I learnt to accept that reality. But I found it's how we recognise and deal with those mistakes that makes the difference. 

I found that thinking about what a flawed decision might look like and thinking about what I'd do if things didn't work out well helped me a lot. It helped me make better decisions and helped me pivot rapidly if I got the first decision wrong.

Lesson 10: Be yourself, not a stereotype.

When I took on the role in 2016, I had a mental image - a stereotype I guess - of what a Managing Director did. My image of how the role should be done was shaped by my predecessor, by the good and bad leaders I've worked for previously and by a whole bunch of other external influences too.

But I soon learnt that trying to be that stereotype was a mistake. I learnt that authentic leadership could only come from me and the way I wanted to be as a leader. So please never try to be me in the Managing Director. Be you. That's who we want you to be.

Be kind to yourself and recognise it'll take time for that authentic leadership style to emerge and for you to be comfortable with that. Looking back I think it took me at least a year in the role before I felt confident with the role and my interpretation of it.

So having reflected a lot about my experiences over the past four years as Managing Director at Deeson, those are the ten lessons I'll take away from the experience. I sincerely hope they help you in your journey over the coming months.

While moving on for me is inevitably a mix of sadness and excitement, it's the right time for me to take on new challenges and I'm really proud that you'll be taking on the role. You've already been part of the agency's ongoing transformation since you joined us two years ago and I'm very confident you'll be a success leading the next phase too. 

I'm sure there will be some challenges ahead that neither you nor I expected us to be facing in 2020, but I'm looking forward to working with you and my fellow board member Tim Deeson to help the agency through the next chapter in its long history.

With my best wishes,sw

#### Another big step for RSS
Mainstream adoption of RSS took a step forward yesterday when Google launched its Reader product. This is the new version of Google's RSS reader and includes features like feed discovery and sharing (also spotted on Steve Rubel's blog).
RSS is a key technology in pushing forward mainstream adoption of social media tools. It's the glue that puts together a lot of the content sharing networks that make social media tick.
But the real issue is most users don't know and don't care what RSS is. So as long as we have RSS readers or RSS aggregators we have a problem. It's the same as 3G - no-one cares what it is, but they probably do care that they can get video on their mobile phones. Stephen Davies had a post about this on PR Blogger a little while back.
As marketers our role is to take the technology and what it's called out of the equation. Customers buy or use things because of the benefits they get. So it's great that Google Reader is being positioned as "your inbox for the web". Indeed the Google blog post announcing its arrival doesn't even have RSS anywhere in the post - great stuff. Marshall at Techcrunch congratulates Google for making a video that demystifies RSS for the average user.
Yahoo! Mail's new beta version also includes an integrated RSS reader. When you consider the number of users that Yahoo and Google have combined, it's easy to see a big hike in the use of RSS when these two tools are marketed, and that can only be a good thing for social media.

#### Another definition of marketing
Back in September 2007, the UK's Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) launched a discussion about a new definition of marketing. I wasn't too taken with it at the time. Now our colleagues in the US are at it too. The American Marketing Association (AMA) has just announced its new definition for marketing:  Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. They used to define it as:  Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders. Unlike the CIM's definition this new one is reasonably succinct. I like it for two main reasons:  it views marketing as about more than just something part of an organisation does - it's breadth encompasses the wide range of activities that people undertake and approaches people use within the broad church that is marketing like the CIM definition it articulates very clearly an outcome for what marketing does - create value. Plus this outcome covers the areas of marketing that aren't concerned with profit, which used to be the focus of many previous definitions. The other aspect that makes the AMA definition better than the CIM is the way it defines how marketing delivers the value outcome. The CIM definition argues marketing creates value by "stimulating, facilitating and fulfilling customer demand" while the AMA definition broadens things out by saying marketing is responsible for "creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings". I'm more comfortable with the latter approach as it recognises that marketing extends beyond the business of demand creation into broader outcomes for organisations beyond pure demand creation. Interestingly the AMA reviews its definition every four years, recognising that marketing is evolving rapidly and so definitions need to keep pace.

#### Appearing at...forthcoming conferences
Now Christmas and the New Year break is well behind me, I'm looking ahead to the next few weeks and months.
Plenty going on, including two trips out to speak at conferences and seminars.
On 5 February I'll be up in Birmingham at the LGComms seminar on new media. I'll be talking about our experiences at Medway: "What has worked, what hasn't - what lessons we have learned" as well as participating in several panel discussions.
This seminar is free to LGComms members and £50 to non-members. For more info and to book email lgcommunications@westminster.gov.uk.
Then on 19 March I'll be running an interactive "social media hints and tips" workshop at the Association of Colleges Communications Annual Conference 2009 in London. For more information and to book visit the AoC website.
As ever it'll be great to meet delegates attending these conferences, learn more about what other people are up to and catch up with some familiar faces.
In particular in Birmingham it'll be good to spend more than the five minutes I spent with Dave Briggs last time I was up there, as well as being great to meet Nick Booth too.
At the AoC conference I'm particularly looking forward to seeing Philip Young and Chris Rushton from the University of Sunderland again - they spoke at the first social media conference I ever went to and, along with the other speakers, inspired me about how social media is changing the business of communications and marketing for good.
If you're going to either of these events, leave me a comment or get in touch.

#### Are niches the way forward for blogs?
Richard Millington has an interesting post about positioning your blog in the crowded PR blogging scene.
As a newcomer to my thirties I'm not sure I can respond as his post is titled "For young PR bloggers", but I do have a few thoughts that probably apply to us older PR bloggers too.
Richard's take is that PR bloggers need to specialise in tighter and tighter niches in order to differentiate themselves.
He's right that moving into a smaller niche is one way to achieve differentiation.
However it's not the only way. Another way of differentiating yourself in a crowded marketplace is on quality - stand out by being (among) the best in your field.
Writing the best posts, having the most interesting discussions or breaking stories the quickest - these are all ways that a blogger could differentiate him/herself in the marketplace. It's still about satisfying a niche, but in a different way.
The other thing that struck me was that when I subscribe to a blog's feed, I usually do it on the basis of who the author is. I subscribe to hear their opinions, as well as the information they provide.
Sometimes the posts they write aren't covering the same topic as I'd expect them to, but what they're writing is interesting nevertheless as it's their take on it. The added value that the particular blogger provides is what I'm subscribing to.
Looking at it this way I'm not sure ever tighter niches are a sustainable way to differentiate yourself as a blogger. In the short term they'll work, but as those niches become busier where do you move to next?
It strikes me that a more sustainable way to differentiate yourself in the PR blogosphere is to identify what you want to be known for (insight, speed, analysis, niche specialism) and create a consistently-delivered personal brand around this through your writing.
Part of this involves having a niche and sticking to it - but that alone isn't enough anymore.

#### Are trackbacks dead yet?
Antony Mayfield asks are trackbacks dead yet? Steve Rubel seems to think so, but I'm not so sure.
Trackbacks are an effective way for bloggers to create multi-threaded conversations that take place on multiple blogs.
It's been suggested that widgets and other integrated third-party tools that bloggers embed on their site can take the place of trackbacks. They show who's linking to a particular blog or post and are automatically updated by the third-party service itself, rather than relying on the blogger to send a trackback.
However I still think there's value in trackbacks. They provide a direct link between two related blog posts, rather than an indirect link through a third-party site.
As a blogger I welcome trackbacks even more than I welcome comments - because if someone's sending a trackback they've typically taken the time to write a post referencing mine, which shows a (slightly) greater level of engagement than writing a comment directly on my blog.
That said there are some real disadvantages to trackbacks. As Antony notes, bloggers need to be disciplined to send trackbacks when posting, as it's all too easy to forget.  Plus there's the fact that some blogging platforms don't accept trackbacks (why?) which means they aren't a universal standard on all blogs.
I'll keep sending trackbacks when it's appropriate - and hopefully people will keep sending them my way too.
(and please, no-one ask me the difference between a trackback and a pingback - I've never really understood - but they seem to give the same end result)

#### ASA ruling on Talksport blog
In the UK the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) is the advertising industry's body for self-regulation. It polices advertising using various industry agreed codes.
This week's round of ASA adjudications is the first time I've seen a ruling about a blog.
The ruling relates to blogs placed on a number of football club websites in the UK by radio station talkSPORT.
One of the blog posts was written in a fairly chatty style and clearly was meant to read as if it had been placed by a regular football fan, when in fact it had been placed by talkSPORT:
"Fellas, Have you heard what talksport [sic] radio are doing this season. They are recruiting a fan from every club in the premiership and football league, 92 fans in total who will become the voice for their club on their station.  If the manager is sacked, the club has gone into administration or if the club mascot has gone missing, they will call you up and get you on air as a representative for your club.  I found this link on their website, so head there is [sic] you wanna register ... Those selected will get a free copy of FIFA 07 from EA Sports on whatever platform you wish.  At the end of the day it basically gives you the chance to be on air regularly throughout the entire football season and it might even get you on the first step to a new career.  I just hope we get someone who knows what he is talking about!"
The ASA ruled that this form of advertising breached its code on two counts: firstly because it was untruthful (it was misleading as it read like a genuine post from a real fan) and secondly as the post wasn't readily identifiable as advertising.
For me this is important as it shows the ASA will apply its code to blogs, and probably by extension other social media tools. While most marketers are familiar with the ASA codes, I suspect many public relations practictioners are less so.
However even if PR people don't know the ASA codes, the root cause of this upheld ruling is an issue that the public relations profession is equally hot on: being open and transparent.
There is a growing list of examples where a lack of transparency in social media activity by organisations has backfired - and it looks like, in the UK at least, one of the industry regulators is going to be policing the social media space too.

#### Ask.com misses the mark with lack of transparency
Ask.com is behind a misguided offline and online campaign that's aiming to encourage UK search users to stop using Google.
The virtually unbranded website, at www.information-revolution.org, suggests an organic campaign set up by internet users to challenge the dominance of Google in web search:
But this is 2007, not 1984. So we're speaking up before things get out of hand. Raging against the machine kind of thing. The machine of conventional wisdom if you like! 
But delving a bit deeper reveals this so-called web user uprising is in fact a marketing campaign, devised by agency Profero, for its client Ask.com.
There's a very small logo in the bottom right of the page and Ask.com is clearly identified in the site's terms and conditions.
The site allows users to post comments. It's already attracted a fair number of negative comments about this being a poorly executed advertising stunt. Comments such as those below sum up the general response:
So, another irritating piece of corporate advertising dressed up as revolutionary fervor. Sickening in a way, all the language of protest gradually getting warn down by overuse, suffocating, rather than making me look for an alternative, it makes me feel there actually isn’t one.
At first I thought this was something genuinely new and unique, then I realised that this was all marketing for ask.com. I’m slightly disappointed by this blatant marketing.
Jesus, like 99% of the people who have commented, i came to this site because i thought it could be something interesting. Instead I find a frankly revolting ‘viral’ (read SHAM) website which is no more than an advert for a lame search engine.
I hope the PR people at ask.com read these comments and learn from their mistakes. 
This is a good example of the use of social media in marketing and public relations campaigns needs to be transparent and genuine.
If something isn't what it tries to appear to be then users will not be convinced, and the campaign will actually be detrimental to the brand.
If I were Ask.com I'd be asking some serious questions to Profero about this campaign. Profero bills itself as a digital marketing agency. I wonder if this is an example of the marketing community failing to appreciate the nuances of working with social media?
I'm convinced that the public relations profession is best placed among the creative industries to operate in the social media space. Many public relations competencies, such as ethics and relationship management, are vital when using social media for commercial goals.
As someone with a foot in both the marketing and public relations camps it pains me to write this, but marketing professionals seem to struggle more with integrating social media into their campaigns than public relations people do.

#### Attack of the Customers by Paul Gillin and Greg Gianforte
Over the past couple of weeks I've been reading Attack of the Customers - which looks at the power that consumers have in a social media-enabled world and how organisations need to operate in this environment.
Having read plenty about this topic online over the years, I was slightly cynical that a book - yes, a real book made out of paper and all - would offer much more value than the diversity of online comment and thinking on the subject could.
But I am more than happy to admit that my cynicism was misplaced.
The book provides a well thought out and evidenced explanation of social media "attacks" and how they happen. It uses a range of case studies to do this and looks at the motivations behind the different kinds of online confrontation that organisations might experience - both private and public sector.
There's a good chapter looking at how the different types of social media site can be used by "attackers" to mount effective campaigns - which is a useful analysis for both communicators seeking to defend their organisation using social media and for those looking to use social media to mount pro-active campaigns of their own.
The authors also take a look at the relationship between mainstream media and social media in these confrontational situations - and how an online crisis can easily translate into a more traditional mainstream media crisis.
As well as a range of examples Paul and Greg also set out how they consider organisations can work to prevent social media "attacks" taking place. Their recommended approach is a combination of a well planned and executed online listening programme - to spot problems before they morph into crises - and undertaking an online influencer programme - systematically identifying and engaging on a one to one basis with those people in online networks who have the potential to wield greatest influence with your target audience.
And for when the crisis hits they have some sound thinking on strategies that can be taken during the crisis and recovery phases. Much of this will be familiar to communicators used to operating in a crisis situation, but the social media focus is really helpful in providing practical tips on what to do during a social media crisis - although I'd recommend reading the book well before you reach that point!
What's most interesting is their thinking on what constitutes an "attack-proof" organisation - or at least how to be as "attack-proof" as possible. They contend that the only sustainable route to avoiding social media firestorms is to deliver such great customer experiences that the impact of the inevitable small scale attacks don't snowball into something larger - because your customers are such strong advocates and defenders of your cause.
So in effect they're saying that a strong brand - delivered through a managed customer experience at those moments of truth that really matter - is key to making your organisation more resistant to brand damage through social media. This, of course, is that branding is all about - and is no different to how things were before social media came along and changed the game.
Disclosure: free review copy of the book supplied

#### AVEs are not PR evaluation
I’ve been reviewing a fair few CVs this week for a communications role. One that I read sticks in my mind particularly – and not in a good way.
This particular CV trumpeted loudly in several places about how they had evaluated the effectiveness of their PR work by achieving some ridiculously large advertising value equivalent (AVE) figure in the media.
Once I’d reminded myself that it was 2013 not 2003 and lifted myself out of a pit of despair about the state of the PR profession, I read the rest of the CV which was fine and showed some good examples of creative PR work (evaluation aside).
This particular applicant had revealed a lack of understanding about current practice in communications evaluation through their use of AVEs.
Last time I judged some PR awards it was the same – with some entrants still quoting AVEs as proof of their success – although thankfully some awards have now specifically penalised AVEs in their award entries.
For anyone that’s still using AVEs, check out the Barcelona Principles on PR evaluation. They’re pretty clear on AVEs and on how communications evaluation can be done.
The rest of the AMEC website is a good resource for learning more about the subject too.
In particular I’d highlight the valid metrics guidelines as a practical resource that gives a sound theoretical framework for communications evaluation and some practical ideas on what’s worth measuring to demonstrate the impact of PR activity.
The principle of the valid metrics guidelines is that PR evaluation should be about measuring outcome – what happens as a result of PR – rather than output. Historically the profession’s been too focussed on measuring outputs and history is just where AVEs should be left.
And when we’re measuring outcomes we need to use a range of measures depending on the purpose of the PR activity. There’s no single measure that works across all PR activity – the aims of communications activities are too diverse for that.
The basic model behind the guidelines presents PR as three steps:

	Public Relations Activity – the process of producing or disseminating the desired messages
	Intermediary Effect – those messages being disseminated to the target audience via an intermediary – which could be a traditional media outlet or a node in a social media network
	Target Audience Effect –the target audience receiving the communications and doing something as a result

Ideally we’ll be able to measure across these three steps, with the target audience effect being the best place to measure (but in practice usually the hardest too).
So if you’re still dealing in AVEs, please stop now. Read the Barcelona Principles and start using the valid metrics guidelines from now on!

#### Award winning Tinderhouse project
The Royal Yachting Association (RYA) has chosen Whitstable Yacht Club’s website (www.wyc.org.uk) as the winner of the RYA Communications Award – South East region.
The site was built by Tinderhouse - a communications consultancy specialising in delivering high quality internet and marketing services set up by Nick Tatt and me a couple of years ago.
We designed and created the club’s new website in January 2004. The website features club information, race schedules, race results and other essential sailing information. Tinderhouse also provided a full content management system which allows club officers to update the site quickly and easily.
The website was built to provide maximum accessibility and usability to its visitors. It complies with website industry standards and can be viewed on PCs, mobile phones, PDAs and even digital televisions.

#### Back from holidays
It's been a full 13 days since my last blog post, although Chris and Simon kindly kept things going in my absence.
Arrival of the builders at home meant an enforced holiday for the Wakeman family on the waterfront at Hythe. We returned on Saturday to a very dusty house and the task of moving all our furniture back to its rightful home.
Now that's all sorted out I have a chance to log on and see what's been happening on emails and RSS. Relying on newspapers and television news for a week was interesting - I felt that I was missing out on a level of insight and analysis that I normally get from the breadth of sources I read online.
More than 200 emails and 2400 posts in my RSS readers means that I have plenty to catch up on. I'm afraid to say that I'll have to do a quick scan through my RSS feeds and not read them as carefully as I do normally - I just don't have the time to tackle a backlog that large.
From tomorrow I'm aiming to be back online daily, so normal blog service should hopefully be resumed very soon!

#### Back once again...
Well my summer break from the blog is over. It's time to focus on the challenges for the next few months - a busy time ahead with lots happening in public sector communications to keep me busy.
We're on the run-in to a general election, hotly tipped for early May 2010, which means more political activity around the business of local government. While communicators can't and don't engage in any politically-driven communications activities, the looming election does mean a changed context for decision-making and a whole set of different circumstances for communicators to operate in.
Plus when the election gets closer there's also the purdah period to think about too.
Before then, local government communicators will also be handling the announcement of the first round of comprehensive area assessment (CAA) in early December.
While the Audit Commission presents the results of this unified assessment of all local public services in a resident-friendly website (oneplace, demo site here), local government communicators will be trying to explain that green and red flags aren't opposite to each other in meaning, and the inevitable creation of league tables of the number of green and red flags isn't really how the Audit Commission meant things to be.
Restructuring of communications functions in many councils continue too, whether driven by a need for more strategic and centralised communications, need to save money on non-frontline services, the fallout from local government reorganisation earlier this year, or indeed all three.
While the inevitable pain that restructures brings is bad, if such changes help raise the level of professionalism that local government communications demonstrates and help position communications folk as more than solely channel managers in the running of local government, then hopefully that will be a good outcome for those that survive the restructuring pain.
On the blog front, I've got some really interesting content lined up for the Autumn, including posts on creating the dream communications team in public sector communications, lots more on social media including policies, strategies and case studies, a few interviews and probably lots of other things that cross my path in the next few months.
So if you're not already a regular reader, sign-up to receive the blog by email here or get the RSS here.

#### Bad customer service from Halifax - a rant
I know this is a bit off-topic, but once in a while I get so frustrated by my experience dealing with a company that I feel compelled to share it here.
So please forgive me the rant that follows in the hope that it will make someone else in a similar position benefit from my experiences!
Back in January I wanted to open new bank accounts for our two boys - and the Halifax Children's Regular Saver seemed to be one of the best offers around so we decided to go for it.
So on Tuesday, 20 January I applied for two accounts for the boys, with Mrs W and me as trustees. We did it online as that's easiest for us, and as the website says
Applying is easy - it takes just 5 minutes to apply online now.
Ten days later on Friday, 30 January we received two letters from the Halifax asking us to visit a branch with identification for the boys. Fair enough as there's no way to verify the identity of a two year old and a four year old online:
"...as part of our opening process to activate the account, our procedures require evidence of the child's identity...please call into your local branch with evidence of the child's identity...once we have received the above, you will be able to start using your account."
Interestingly the letters tell me that I've actually opened two accounts for each son - one regular saver (what I wanted) and one Save4it account (that I didn't want or ask for).
So are you still with me?
So the following week Mrs W heads into our local branch with the requested forms of identification for the boys. She presents them and is told that's fine.
Later that day the branch calls up to say there's a problem. She should have taken in identification for the trustees on the accounts too.
This wasn't mentioned in the letters we received, so I called Halifax, who said they knew it wasn't in the letters but I did need to present my identification in person to a branch to start using the accounts. Once I'd done that it would all be sorted and we could start using the accounts, they promised.
Later that week I went into the Chatham branch to present my identification. All sorted I'm assured.
At this point I also tried to pay in my pound into each of the accounts that I didn't want but had to have to anyway. This took nearly half an hour of head scratching before the very helpful lady worked out why she couldn't get the system to accept my pounds and give me the books I didn't want for the accounts I didn't ask for.
Apparently my wife needs to present identification before the account can be used - and she needs to do it in person!
News to me I say, but apparently the rules are the rules, despite the fact they seem to keep changing. The staff at the branch were helpful, but seemed to be as confused as I was about what was happening.
So off Mrs W traipses to our local branch again with her identification. She's promised this is all sorted and we can start using the accounts.
In the meantime the passbooks for the accounts I didn't want turn up in the post as promised by the helpful lady in Chatham. The only snag is that they can't be used until the invisible signature is added - and to do this we need to present identification in a branch (again).
If you're still with then well done, but don't think the saga ends here...
This morning another letter arrives at our home address where we've lived for more than five years from our friends at the Halifax.
Apparently they now need to confirm our address (the one they've written to three times by now and has led to our three branch visits and multiple phone calls) as they have different addresses on file for us!
In the course of a 26 minute phone call, Mrs W establishes that Halifax still seem to have our old addresses on file from when we were previously mortgage customers of theirs in the past - despite those mortgages having been fully redeemed years ago and us no longer being customers (we thought).
It takes some convincing for the various people on the Halifax end of the line to believe we are the people who've presented identification three times at branches following letters written to the address they're not convinced we live at.
So, five weeks, six letters, three branch visits and several long phone calls later we hope we've managed to open the accounts after our 5 minute online application.
I can't believe how hard Halifax have made it to open two simple accounts - an apalling customer experience from start to finish and one that I wouldn't want to repeat in a hurry.
Interestingly around the same time I opened new accounts online with two other financial institutions - First Direct and Tesco.
I'm already a customer with First Direct and recommend their great service to everyone who'll listen to my ramblings - and they had the accounts up and running in a couple of days.
We were new customers to Tesco, but their online application did everything it needed to for money laundering regulations and the like and we were using the accounts within a fortnight.
And what's worst of all, I now have the sound of the Halifax TV ads running around and around my head:

#### Bad direct marketing - www.terminatetherate.org
Once in a while I see or receive a piece of marketing that drives me to despair at some of the rubbish the marketing profession can produce.
Last week's source of anger was this piece of direct mail received at home last week:

It's not a great picture, but just so we're clear, it's a box approx 4x4x4 inches, containing just a piece of paper folded up into a fortune teller like you used to make at school. Nothing else.
It's from terminatetherate.org.

The first problem with this is that I shouldn't have received it in the first place. I'm on the Mailing Preference Service (MPS), which means I shouldn't receive commercial direct marketing material, although I'm not absolutely sure whether this is considered commercial as it's trying to get the recipient to sign an online petition, but the site's backers are primarily commercial players with a commercial goal.  Certainly not screening any mailing against the MPS list breaks the Direct Marketing Association's code of practice.
But that's not my main bugbear with this mailing. It first arrived at our house last Thursday, but because there was no-one here when the post arrived, we got the note from the postman asking us to collect from the depot.

Given the 4 inch cube box never had a chance of fitting through a standard letterbox, the lesson here is that unsolicited direct mail that doesn't fit through a letterbox is a great way to alienate your intended audience before they've even opened your mail piece.
The size of the fortune teller inside could probably have just about fitted in a box that would have gone through the letterbox - it may have been a little squashed but the box it came in had a lot of spare space in it - and a smaller box wouldn't have cost the £1.20 that terminatetherate.org paid to send it to me.
I'm not making any comment on the campaign's goal itself here - just the approach to direct marketing that they've chosen to take.
It just smacks to me of direct mailing that doesn't take account of the audience's context - sending an unsolicited mailing of a piece of folded paper in an overly large cardboard box suggests they don't understand their consumers and that they have marketing budget to waste - something that doesn't sit well with their positioning as a pseudo-grassroots campaign to eliminate a certain type of mobile phone charge rate.
Update
Had an email the day after I wrote this post from Matt at 3mobilebuzz about this:
I’m writing to you concerning your blog post on the Terminate the Rate fortune teller. Though it was in support of Terminate the Rate, it was actually sent by 3mobilebuzz; as you were a previous Skypephone and Mobile Broadband trialist we thought this would be of interest to you.
An email informing you about both the fortune teller and the Terminate the Rate launch campaign was sent to you on the 20th May, but it may have been missed.
Please accept our apologies if you feel you should not have been sent anything from us. We’ll ensure you do not receive anything again and your details will be removed from our 3 contacts list.
Regarding the packaging, we felt that it was best to send the fortune tellers pre-made but obviously this meant they would not fit inside an envelope. Again, we apologise if you felt the packaging was
unnecessary.
If you’d like to speak to anyone directly about this, please let me
know and we can arrange a call.
It's good to see they're monitoring for mentions of the campaign and nice to see an email response - while I stand by my original comments, Matt's email goes some way to improving the reputation of the campaign in my eyes.

#### Bad experience with my new digital SLR
A fortnight or so ago I got a new Nikon D50 digital SLR from the Jessops store in Bluewater. After a lot of research online and in photography magazines, we'd opted for this entry-level digital SLR.
Jessops run a price match scheme, where they will match the price that any internet retailer is offering. This shaved a few pounds off for the retail price for us.
We took the camera away on a week-long holiday, armed with two new 512Mb SD cards (one Kingston and one Sandisk). We merrily filled both cards with JPG images that looked great on the preview screen.
However once we got home today and I downloaded the images onto our PC, a fair number of the images were corrupted. Over the two cards I had taken 326 images, of which 151 were corrupted. They won't open in any graphics package, and they can't be rescued using any of the recovery software I've tried (Photorescue, Pixrecovery, Photosrecovery).
The problem definitely isn't the SD cards (completely different brands, images corrupted on both) or the way data was transferred to the PC (different method used for each). So I can only conclude the camera is faulty.
Here are some of the images that weren't completely corrupted, but clearly aren't right:

I'm really gutted to lose so many pictures from my holidays, particularly as I shot a number of test images before I went away. Plus I've had to shell out for recovery software to get back what images I could.
I'm going to get in touch with the Jessops branch tomorrow to see what they are going to do. It's going to be interesting to see how their customer service is - the only reason I went to them instead of buying online was because of their internet price match, and the the fact that any technical problems could be dealt with face to face.
Let's see whether my second assumption actually works...
Update Saturday 17 June, 2006
Went into my local Jessops and received good service - they were happy to exchange with no queries or quibbles. Seemed to know what they were talking about and gave me free digital picture printing vouchers as compensation for the cost of the recovery software.
Just goes to show that while the internet offers some very competitive pricing, customers should always remember that customer service is important as well, and many offline stores have an advantage compared to their online competitiors.

#### Bad writing - an eighth type
Matthew Stibbe at the Bad Language blog has a great post about seven types of bad writing that many of will see every day.
As I read through the bad habits Matthew identifies I could think of examples I've seen in my professional life of each one. Indeed early in my career I can think of a few that I was responsible for.
At university you're taught to write (or at least encouraged to write) in a certain way. Moving into marketing, and then subsequently public relations I had to learn to write in a completely different way - using words sparingly and carefully, and constructing concise sentences to communicate ideas and arguments.
I'd add an eighth type of bad writing to Matthew's seven:
UOA (use of acronyms)
Every organisation has shorthand codes for many phrases used regularly. It's bad enough when these are used internally to an audience who generally understand them - how many times have you had to explain to a new recruit what his or her new colleagues are actually saying?
But the real problem is when these acronyms stray into external use. It's all too easy for them to slip through to an audience for whom they are completely meaningless. It's a surefire way to limit the effectiveness of your communications activity.

#### Becoming an agile council - fit for the future
Predicting the future is a tricky game at the moment in local government.
Even the best economic forecasts still present a challenging financial picture for councils, which combined with the impact of aging populations and rapidly shifting government policy, makes planning for the future more difficult than ever.
That's why councils need to become more flexible and agile - so that they can respond to changing and uncertain circumstances rapidly and effectively.
Consultants PwC have recently published a useful think piece about the current drivers affecting local goverment and why this means councils need to change to become more agile in the future.
In their own words:
Agile councils think and act differently – they break down existing models in favour of new approaches that centre on the customer, they base decisions on strong business intelligence and operate through simpler, standardised organisational structures and processes.
Most importantly, they re-think the ways in which they work - they reduce organisational complexity and create more flexible operating models that are capable of responding to change, managing demand and operating at lowest cost.
It's well worth a read. You can download the PDF here. There's also a video discussion on the topic here.

#### Beef up your blog feeder
A couple of days ago I spotted an interesting post by Steve Rubel about how he finds news and material to blog about - he has created what he calls a blog feeder.
I've been playing about creating something similar over the weekend, and can see how this approach could also be used to create a very basic free social media reputation monitoring service.
The potential for this just got greater, as Steve has blogged that Technorati now offers RSS feeds for searches, which means that it's a whole lot easier to include Technorati searches in a blog feeder. Also spotted this news on i-wisdom and Webfeed Central.
I'll be adding a few Technorati RSS searches to my nascent blog feeder, and will see how useful I find it.
It never ceases to amaze me the potential for networking and sharing of information with the rapidly evolving social media tools that are out there, but I always try to remember that at the heart of it all is content, and the better the content the more effective it will be - just as it always has been.

#### Being a new generation marketer
Troy White has a good post about the wide range of tools that are now available to marketers.
When I was a marketing trainee some eight or so years ago, I was taught that marcomms tools were either above or below the line. And there was a fairly small number of different tools available to employ. Being a marketer you had to grasp how to use these communications outlets to achieve your objectives.
I've blogged before about how marketers need to understand the digital medium to be able to do their job effectively. Troy makes a strong point about tools - there are many more tools now available, but the results we achieve as marketers depends not on how many tools we have, but how we use them, and more importantly how we use them in combination.
I'd be really interested to know how marketing is taught on trainee programmes now. The old way of teaching the basics of marketing strategy, and then detailed teaching on a small number of marcomms channels can't work anymore.
The only way to know and understand the plethora of channels available to marketers is to have a go at using them, and then try to think about how they could be used to meet a particular set of objectives. The skill will be to select the most appropriate marketing tools for a campaign, and then know how to use them most effectively.

#### Bells and whistles
Over the weekend I've added a couple of extra features to my blog.
If you're browsing the site and hover over an external link, you now get a small preview screenshot of the website that is linked to. This gives you a feel for the site without actually having to click through.
This service is called Snap Preview Anywhere and is absolutely free. It's also a doddle to install - just copy and paste one line of code into the head of your HTML template.
I'd be interested to see if this proves useful or a bit annoying - I'm unsure at the moment but thought I'd give it a shot.
The other new feature is a new Grazr to replace my ridiculously long blogroll, podroll and vidroll. This was starting to get so long that it was unbalancing the blog page layout - the left hand column was much much longer than the other two.
My new Grazr (it's here) shows all the feeds I'm tracking. It's updated live from my Newsgator/FeedDemon subscriptions, so as I subscribe, unsubscribe or categorise a feed in my reader it will appear immediately on the site. This works by publishing my OPML list in Newsgator as publicly available (here).
The only downside is that my private feeds are also shown as I can't work out a way to stop them appearing in the OPML without actually unsubscribing. However because of the nature of the information they contain the feeds are password protected anyway, so there shouldn't be any security risk.

#### Better desktop research
John Grant from BrandTarot has an interesting post about how he uses the internet for desktop research.
John lists a number of different search engines and techniques he uses to find information. His post is well worth a read, especially if Google is your main source for desktop web research.

#### Big City Plan - great online consultation from the community
Consultation is something the public sector does a lot of. It's an important link between those that formulate public policy and those that live with its effects.
Yet effective online consultation is something that remains a challenge to do well. That's something that Dave Briggs and I have discussed before and he has picked up on in a recent blog post.
Along similar lines, something really interesting's going on with the current consultation on Birmingham's Big City Plan - a regeneration consultation for Birmingham.
The official plan is available on Birmingham City Council's consultation site here.
It's a big, beefy document with plenty of long, heavy-going, jargon-rich paragraphs. You can post comments on the document, but beyond stakeholders with a lot of time on their hands, I can't see the "man on the street" engaging with this document.
There's also an official consultation site at bigcityplan.birmingham.gov.uk/. This features the usual routes for feedback from consultations - email, post and the aforementioned online portal.
But what makes this interesting is the creation of bigcitytalk.org.uk by members of Birmingham's social media community.
This site breaks down the large, inpenetrable document into bite-sized chunks, translated into plain English.
For example:
Professor Parkinson was subsequently commissioned to ‘Vision the Masterplan’ to set the framework for the Big City Plan. His report recommended that careful thought be given to the best way to fund and deliver change in the city centre. He recommended that the Big City Plan should address five drivers of competitiveness.
becomes the more easily understood
We asked Professor Michael Parkinson to write a report on how Birmingham could achieve its aims. He recommended that we should create a plan for the city centre — and that it should look at five things in particular.
The site then allows people to leave comments on each chunk of the document. It also aggregates tagged content from other social media sites using the soup.io tumbleblog functionality.
What the Birmingham team have done is to create a great example of how public sector organisations need to change the way they consult online.
A combination of writing plain English content and using technology to help people engage and feedback in whatever way they're most comfortable with doing can make online consultations much more effective.
Let's hope the team behind bigcitytalk.org.uk share more about the results of this approach and that people working on public sector consultations pick up some of the approaches that are being used.
(and a quick look at the source shows the site is powered up by Wordpress - another great example of the versatility of this open source CMS)

#### Birds Eye gets into social media
Birds Eye has made its first venture into social media with a blog from the "pea expert" Colin Wright. It's been going a couple of months at http://blogs.mtengine.com/peaharvest/.
I was a bit cynical when I first read about it, as I wasn't sure how interesting the content would be, or how it fitted into the company's overall communications mix.
As I read on though I found myself becoming surprisingly engaged in what it takes to get peas onto our tables and how Birds Eye ensure the quality of its products.
The blog gives readers an insight into the production process for Birds Eye peas, and does this in a way that wouldn't be possible with traditional media.
The blog is written by Colin and several members of his team - this makes the messages around quality and freshness much more credible than if they came directly from the company itself.
I'm sure that's one of the reasons Birds Eye wanted to raise the profile of some of the key people in its business, and giving Colin a blog was a way to build on this further.
The blog also links to images on flickr that Colin and the team have been uploading - this is great as it helps visualise some of the things that are mentioned in the blog, and helps the reader relate to the blog authors better. Plus of course all the benefits of well-tagged images in Flickr and the resulting social networking that follows. There's even a video on YouTube tucked away on an early post.
I wonder how many visitors the blog gets, as it is referenced on the main Birds Eye site, but it's hardly marketed with real vigour. I couldn't see any comments made on any posts (although I didn't read all the posts), and there were only a few odd trackbacks around. I'd be interested in any post-campaign analysis they did.
One way they could increase visits to the blog would be to start tagging the content with Technorati tags (or another similar service) or to start a del.icio.us page with bookmarks to other interesting pea or food-related content. The lack of tagging and the branding that isn't consistent with the main Birds Eye site suggests that this a really tentative experiment.
Looking below the surface the blog is being run for Birds Eye by their agency Tullo Marshall Warren (a London-based direct marketing agency). I wonder how much of the decision to run the blog was down to the agency and how much was down to the client asking for it. My gut feeling is that this was an agency-driven initiative, but it'd be interesting to know.
I applaud Birds Eye for taking the plunge and seeing how social media can contribute to a more traditional marketing and PR mix. A great start - let's hope they continue to do more of this kind of thing as it proves that social media has a role to play in the mainstream marketing and PR business.

#### Black, white and the reality of grey
As a wet-behind-the-ears graduate my first real job was as a graduate trainee at retailer Boots.
I joined the marketing scheme in their Nottingham head office. I spent many hours in meeting rooms being drilled in the disciplines of marketing and management.
One of the mantras that Boots drilled into us was a management philosophy called value-based management (VBM).
At its core was a focus on taking management decisions that added shareholder value.
As a major listed company the logic of this was clear. And the congruence between what made sense for the company and what that meant for our decisions as newbie graduates was clear as well.
But where VBM went wrong was in its implementation.
It paralysed too many managers (and graduates too) by encouraging them to look for data-led evidence of whether a decision would add value.
Analysis of data became paramount as the means to making and justifying a decision. I remember well pushing through layer after layer of statistical analysis to try to justify a decision.
Leaving aside the way this so obviously slowed down decision-making to a snail's pace, with the benefit of hindsight and nearly 20 years experience I can see a fundamental flaw.
The way Boots did VBM tried to make binary decisions - either a particular course of action was shareholder value-adding or not.
But that's not the way things work in the real world.
As an agency MD almost every single decision I make is not binary.
If I'm making a binary decision, it's probably one that someone else should have taken.
So my decision-making is typically somewhere on a continuum between a "one" and a "zero" in the binary world.
It's in the grey, not the black or the white of decision-making.
The grey is the space where your judgement counts.
It's the place where personal experience, skills and context really come into play.
Yet being able to assess and take decisions in this space is really hard.
It's where objectivity and subjectivity collide. And it's where success and failure are really determined.
Like my esteemed colleague Ronald wrote about earlier in the year, being able to deal with "the grey" is vital.
Yet my instinct tells me that social media, algorithmic news and confirmation bias are combining to lead to polarisation of decision-making.
The ubiquity of information through digitally-connected tools provides a firehose of content that can justify and amplify just about any reasonably held opinion.
And that confirmation leads to things being seen as binary once again.
Which is very different to the real world where virtually nothing is really binary.
Yet in politics, society and culture we're seeing the polarisation that shows binary thinking is more and more common in the world around us.
A bit of me can't help but think that a bit more thinking in the grey and a bit less black and white thinking wouldn't hurt.

#### Blog design - what would you recommend?
I'm not a trained designer. I designed my own blog, but getting to a finished design was more trial and error than a well-rounded creative process.
However it's been almost two years since I did any design work on my blog.
In that time the design has moved quite a long way away from the original look and feel, thanks to the addition of various new widgets and Wordpress plug-ins.
I think it's time to spruce things up a bit.
I don't have the time to fully redesign it myself and code up a new Wordpress template, but I'd like to make some changes to the current look and feel to make it look a bit more modern and easier to use.
For the record my main gripes with the current design are:

	Little use of colour - only two main colours, one of which is grey
	Too text heavy
	Not enough whitespace
	Too much information in sidebars, making them much longer than the centre column

I'd also like to introduce Ajax-based comments and search onto the site as well.
So, if you were me, what would you do to the site?
Any thoughts, advice and tips gratefully received...

#### Blogging for business
Earlier this week I was meant to be speaking at the MIPAA bloggers' brunch, but owing to a family emergency I couldn't be there.
I was going to talk about the basics of business blogging, so I thought I'd post the outline of my presentation here in case anyone finds it useful:
What makes a blog?

	Usually a series of articles on a website, ordered with the most recent ones first
	A personal tone - either from a person (or a group of people) - companies don't blog, people in companies do
	Functionality for conversations through comments (and quite often trackbacks - links from other blogs)
	A tendency to link to other information useful for readers, even if it's competitive or conflicting
	Provision of RSS feeds - that people can sign up for to get updates when a new post is published

Blogs are just one type of tool that's available to corporate communicators - the real challenge before setting up a corporate blog is to understand how it fits within an integrated communications strategy.
Only set up a blog if you know what it can do for you that other tools can't, and only do it when you feel you have a good understanding of blogging etiquette and how the blogosphere works.
Seven points to think about before embarking on corporate blogging:

	Culture - is the company's culture ready for the transparency, scrutiny, speed and two-way conversations that genuine blogging brings?
	Employee policies - is the company clear on what it will allow its employees to do and not do in the blogosphere? 
	Technology platform - what's the best system to use to manage your blog? And how do you engage your IT department to support you?
	Bloggers - who are the right people to be blogging? Is it your senior execs, the public relations team or indeed anyone who wants to?
	Ghost writing - a hot topic in the blogosphere, with strong supporters and many people against it too. For me, ghosting's fine, but the transparency of the blogosphere means it's best to disclose it.
	Comment moderation - will you moderate comments, on what grounds, who will do it and (importantly) how quickly will it be done to avoid suggestions of censorship. Be clear and transparent with blog readers on how you will moderate.
	Frequency of posting - the most effective blogs are updated frequently. Can your organisation devote the resources to regular blog posts? A blog that has obviously not been updated in a long time reflects badly on the author and their company.

Companies running blogs also need to think about the legal and professional standards that they need to stick to. In the UK there's history of the Advertising Standards Agency ruling on blogs that don't meet its CAP code, so it's clear that corporate blogging is regulated along the same lines as traditional advertising.
Other professional standards worth checking out include the CIPR social media guidelines and those from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA).
I've posted a number of relevant useful links on del.icio.us - including good and bad examples of corporate blogs, guides to blogging/social media and some good case studies.

#### Blogging like a pro
Matthew Stibbe has a great post about how he has created his successful Bad Language blog.
I certainly learnt something from his 18 tips, and will be trying out a few new things over the coming weeks and months.
Since I started blogging properly in January this year it's been an exciting learning curve for me. I've learnt a lot from reading blogs and entering into conversations, and relish the challenge of writing content that people want to read.
The challenge is achieving and maintaining stand-out as more and more bloggers enter the fray. This challenge will inevitably push up the quality of content that is blogged, and can only inspire those who want to produce quality blogs in their chosen fields.

#### Blogging year one - 2006
I've had my own website at www.simonwakeman.com since 2001. Until January 2006 it featured basic information about me (such as a CV), the odd bit of news and not a lot else. Over the past twelve months that's definitely changed.
During the 2005 Christmas/New Year break I did some work on the site to set it up as a blog. At that stage I didn't have much idea what a blog really was for or could do, but I wanted to be able to post more regularly and use the site more effectively as a marketing tool.
A year on it's really interesting for me to look back and see how my blogging has developed over the year, and how blogging has really helped me professionally:
January and February 2006
Managed a single post during these two months, so I'd obviously not worked out that successful blogging needs a real and persistent commitment to writing new content.
March 2006
More of the same really, with only a couple of posts on marketing and customer experience. Traffic to the blog remained a trickle, and I didn't have any RSS subscriber statistics as I was still using the native Wordpress RSS feeds.
On a positive note I had my first proper blog comment thanks to Antony Mayfield.
April 2006
In April I started to seek out new blogs to read, and began to explore how social media worked. I soon realised that to make a success of blogging I needed to think more about what I posted, post more frequently, and set up my blog so I could promote it effectively and monitor traffic.
I still managed only three posts, but made a number of tweaks to the blog (which was still running on Textpattern) and routed my RSS feed through Feedburner for the first time. This meant I could track the number of subscribers to my feed properly for the first time.
May 2006
Started to post more often, with eight posts this month, ranging from continuing frustrations with the Textpattern blogging platform to several about social media. I realised the importance of tagging in raising the visibility of posts to Technorati, and this is where it began to dawn on me that Textpattern was holding back my blogging.
I also posted a very short review of Peter Fisk's Little Book of Marketing Genius, which somehow ended up being quoted as a review on Amazon (they didn't ask!).
June 2006
June continued in the same vein as May, with seven more posts on topics including marketing, running events and my problems with a new digital camera.
Behind the scenes I was beavering away to relaunch the site using the Wordpress platform, while also trying to ensure that by doing this I didn't hurt the site's search engine performance too much.
July 2006
This was the month when things started to fall into place. All I'd learnt about social media seemed to rapidly click, and I began to understand how fundamentally the world of communications was changing. This excitement obviously inspired me to blog more often, with a record-breaking thirteen posts this month.
The significant date this month was July 25th, when I finally relaunched the site using Wordpress. I haven't looked back since.
August 2006
I began to blog more regularly and started to understand what I wanted my blog to be about. Before August the content areas had been quite varied, but I began to appreciate more about the audience that I wanted to reach with the blog.
I joined the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in August, and a post I wrote around that time was the most read so far and generated eight comments - a genuine discussion. My eyes were opened wider to conversations in social media, and the importance of timing blog posts.
Traffic to the site had started to build gradually over June and July, but I was still disappointed with the consistently low levels of RSS subscribers being reported through Feedburner.
September 2006
More than twenty posts this month, spurred on by the ever-increasing RSS subscribers to the blog:

I don't know exactly what happened in mid-September, but it seems to have been the tipping point from which traffic and subscriber numbers started to grow month on month - a trend that has continued.
While it's not just about the absolute numbers, it's heartening to know that people are reading your blog, especially those who actively choose to receive the RSS feed. I certainly found this a motivation to blog more in the last three months of the year.
October 2006
Another busy month by my blogging standards, with twenty six posts, tending to focus on public relations and social media.
Another real proof point for me about the power of social media to form networks that wouldn't have otherwise existed was connecting with Libby Ranzetta via the For Immediate Release podcast. I'm hoping to do some podcast work with Libby early in 2007.
November 2006
A professional highlight of the month for me was attending the Delivering the New PR conference in London. It was great to meet a number of people who I'd got to know through social media, but had never met in person.
Managed twenty posts this month, which wasn't too bad given I was on holiday for part of the month and had taken some well-needed offline time.
December 2006
The month kicked off with the GREEN Communications Word of Mouth conference in London. As well as hearing some interesting speakers it was great to finally meet Simon Collister, Ian Delaney and Heather Yaxley, as well as catching up again with Andy and Nicky from Don't Panic event management.
The highlight for me was finally launching the UK's first local authority podcast - finally putting into practice some of the things I've learnt about social media in 2006. This month I also joined up with Feedburner's PR network to try to broaden readership of the blog and link with other PR professionals globally.
I'm sure I've missed out much from this not-so-mini review of 2006 on my blog. Looking back it's been really exciting, and blogging has really opened up many new horizons for me professionally. I've met many new and interesting people, and have learnt a massive amount.
It's an exciting time to be working in marketing and public relations - I was just starting out in my career as the first internet wave hit. With the social media boom now here, 2007 looks like being a great time to be working as a communicator.

#### Blogs as an advertising tool
Yet more evidence that blogs are becoming a trusted information source in consumer purchasing decisions, courtesy of an Ipsos MORI survey.
Ian Green and David Phillips have both posted good commentaries about this.
One part that caught my eye was:
Blogs, or weblogs, are a more trusted source of information (24 percent) than television advertising (17 percent) and email marketing (14 percent), the survey said. But they still lag behind newspapers (30 percent).
As the report and commentaries acknowledge, people have always trusted other people's opinions, and social media gives them the tools to connect with more people than ever before.
This expansion of user networks created with social media means companies need to take more notice of user-driven movements than ever before.
Engaging in social media can help them participate in the conversations about their companies and move away from the command and control communications model.
It's right to sound a note of caution though - just because blogs rank highly as trusted sources of information, and because they can be cheaper than other communications channels, doesn't mean that they're right for every situation.

#### Book review: Brand You by John Purkiss and David Royston-Lee
As the author of a popular communications and marketing blog, I get sent a fair few business, marketing and leadership books for review.
I try to make time to read them all as you never know what they're going to be like and what you might learn from them.
But I have to admit at times doing this does test my patience a bit.
Some of the so-called business books I read comprise little more than unsubstantiated assertions about a particular theory or technique combined with a few unanchored anecdotes peppered around the publication.
Don't get me wrong - I know business books are written for a different audience than academic textbooks - but for me a good book that's offering guidance or suggestions about a particular aspect of business needs to have a sound theoretical grounding, rather than just a point of view and not much more besides.
I recently read Brand You - the second edition of the book about personal branding and how to manage a personal brand in the digital age -  by John Purkiss and David Royston-Lee.
I've read plenty of books before about people as brands and how to apply brand management practices to your career.
Many of these are, in essence, little more than guidance about preparing CVs, networking and thinking about your online presence in the context of your professional life as well as your personal life - with a bit of marketing 101 thrown in for good measure.
But Brand You was a refreshingly different take on this. Yes, there were some of the practical elements that are common in similar books in this market, but what underpins the book is the concept of archetypes.
The book's assertion is that the best way of managing your personal brand is through the identification of a small number of archetypes that you should be able to call upon throughout your professional activities - and being true to this set of archetypes at all time is key to success in personal branding and, in turn, career progression.
The book discusses a number of situations, such as the way we behave in the workplace, applying for jobs and personal marketing, and in each considers how evoking different archetypes helps build a consistent and powerful personal brand.
The authors get the balance between theory and application about right for this type of book. Their arguments have challenged me to think about some aspects of my personal branding, both offline and online.
You can see the book at Amazon here.
Disclosure: free review copy supplied by publisher

#### Book review: Where's the sausage? by David Taylor
I've read a fair number of marketing books in the course of my career. They seem to typically fall into one of two camps: they're either dense, academic texts stuffed with theories and principles, or they're dumbed-down idiots' guides to the profession. David Taylor's recently published book seems to fall somewhere between the two. I've not read a professional book that takes this approach before - "Where's the sausage?" is a story about a year in the life of a sales manager in a sausage company who is transferred to become brand manager for a year.  What unfolds over the year is the story of his discovery of how branding can work and how it can contribute positively to the development of a business. Along the way he also sees how branding shouldn't be done, courtesy of his boss Hugo.  David provides a number of practical tools and techniques that readers can easily take away and think how they might apply to their own brands or situations. The narrative ticks along quite nicely and provides useful context for the real gems in this book - the practical and bullshit-free approach to developing and managing brands. Somehow putting the theoretical stuff into a practical situation makes it seem more relevant and helps the theories fit into a logical brand management process. It's an easy read and covers a lot of ground, but at several points in the book I found myself nodding, chuckling aloud and recognising situations that I'd seen in real life.  If you're expecting a full technical guide to branding then this isn't the one for you, but for a well thought out and practical guide to branding basics I'd definitely take a look at this book.  If you like David's approach to branding, then it's also worth subscribing to his blog for more of the same. Disclosure: free review copy supplied [tags]david+taylor, brandgym, where's+the+sausage, brand+management, book+review[/tags]

#### Bookmarks for October 16th through October 21st
These are my links for October 16th through October 21st:

New 2008 Social Technographics data reveals rapid growth in adoption - Update to Josh Bernoff's social technographics ladder with new data for 2008.
All Work & No Play? Digital Media Use Survey Puts Web 2.0 to Work - Survey looking at personal use of gadgetry and rich media Web publishing platforms, adoption of such tools and parallels between personal use and professional application.

#### Bookmarks for October 21st to November 10th
These are my links for October 21st through November 10th:

UK Kids and Teens Communicate Nonstop - eMarketer estimates that in the UK 4.2 million young people ages 8 to 15 had Internet access at home in 2007.
Network citizens - power and responsibility at work - Interesting thought pamphlet from Demos on how social networks provide collaboration opportunities in the workplace - and particularly how they can be harnessed for organisational ends.
RSS Adoption at 11% and it May Be Peaking, Forrester Says - Steve Rubel on RSS.

#### Branding in social media
Brand is one of the most mis-used words in marketing.
Most commonly it's used to mean visual identity - what a company, organisation or person looks like. But visual identity is only a part of what makes up a brand.
From my time as digital account director at Enterprise IG I like to think about a brand has having three parts:
1) What the brand looks like (the visual identity)
2) What the brand says (the copy, words, and tone it uses)
3) How the brand acts (the actions it takes and the philosophy behind them)
It struck me today about how this definition applies to blogging - because blogs are read in a variety of different contexts, the relative importance of the different aspects of the brand definition changes.
To cut a long story short, the way blog content is delivered means the visual identity is less important than ever before. As a blogger your personal brand is communicated more through what you write and how you act as a blogger - how your site looks is less important than ever before, especially for your audience that reads your RSS feeds.
For example take a recent short post I wrote on my blog. I read my feeds on my Dell Axim X51v PDA using Newsbreak software - this is what the post looks like there - no visual identity elements at all:

Sometimes I check feeds using Newsgator - again there's very little branding to visually differentiate my feed content from all the other feeds there:

Yet when I think about how my blog posts are being viewed by my readers, I tend to think of them being seen on my website, with all the visual identity elements that I have on the site:

Checking my blog stats, around 65% of my readers read my blog initially through RSS feeds, and it's fair to assume that most don't click through to my site as I publish full content in RSS feeds.
So it's worth remembering that as a blogger a greater part of your brand perception is formed by what you write and how you act than in most other communications channels.
There aren't many other channels where the role of visual identity in brand perception is virtually eliminated for many audiences.
A blog is a great way of reaching audiences and shifting perception, but it's always worth thinking about the brand you're trying to create, whether corporate or personal, and the brand values you want to communicate.

#### Brands matter to kids
Spotted a piece of research today that made me happy as a marketer and sad as a parent: researchers in California have shown that when presented with identical samples of McDonald's food in branded and unbranded packaging, children showed a genuine preference for the branded food:  Almost 77% said the branded french fries tasted best while only 13% preferred the non-branded fries The effect even seemed to apply to foods that might not traditionally be seen as relevant to the McDonald's brand:  54% preferred McDonald's-wrapped carrots versus 23% who liked the plain-wrapped sample While the sample size is quite small (63 children aged 3 to 5 years old), this does provide strong evidence about the role of brands in achieving product differentiation.  In this kind of test if everything else is genuinely the same, then the perceived difference in taste can only logically be attributed to the power of the McDonald's brand among the children (worth noting that by far the majority of the children had ever eaten at McDonald's, with a third eating there weekly). I know from personal experience how my 3 year old recognises logos when we're out and about - Tesco and B&Q seem to be his favourite, which probably gives a good idea where we regularly spend part of our weekends.  This visual recognition is the first step towards establishing a deeper brand relationship which carries with it values that positively differentiate a brand's product or service against its competition. That's the same for customers of any age. And the research on the McDonald's brand proves that it even applies to very young children.  Personally I'm depressed by the thought of my boys' choices being influenced in this way, although working in marketing I do of course realise that this is how the world works. As a parent I guess my role is to try to instill values in my children that allow them to make as independent decisions as possible. The study's author, Dr. Tom Robinson, makes the point that "because young children are unaware of the persuasive intent of marketing, (branding and marketing to children) is an unfair playing field".  That assumes that if people are aware of marketing that its effectiveness is reduced, which probably isn't the case. All the same, the survey seems to add to the weight of evidence and momentum towards a continuing reduction in marketing to children.  However it'll take a more sophisticated approach than has been applied to advertising to kids in the UK to counteract the power of branding.  Marketers have to face up to the ethical balance between achieving sales and their broader social responsibilities as corporate citizens. [tags]branding, mcdonalds, marketing+to+children, differentiation[/tags]

#### British Army to add social networking to site
This week's UK Marketing magazine covers the forthcoming relaunch of the British Army website, which will for the first time include social networking features (also available online, subscription only).
The site will feature social networking features such as blogs, message boards, pictures and video.
The new-look Army portal will house a microsite dedicated to each of its units...the idea is to give members of the public and potential recruits a glimpse into what life is like in the Army.
The interesting aspect of this is that the Army will for the first time be using content generated organically by employees as a marketing tool. Soldiers will be using the social networking features to create their own blogs or spaces, which strikes me as a great internal communications tool.
This content will then serve a second purpose to show people in the outside world what it's really like in to be in the Army.
To let go of the marketing reins in this way is a brave move, but definitely to be applauded.
Using your employees to be your recruitment drive helps provide a genuine and more credible message about what it's really like to work in an organisation.
I look forward to seeing the site when it launches. The site is being developed by Grand Union, through COI. I interviewed Jamie Galloway from COI earlier this year.

#### Broadband advice needed
I've written before about problems with our broadband supplier, TalkTalk. Over the weekend our broadband stopped working competely with our 3Com router. The synch light on the router kept flashing, which basically means it can't connect with TalkTalk's equipment at the local exchange. After several long technical support calls TalkTalk "changed some settings" on my line, and I can now connect with the TalkTalk-supplied Speedtouch 330 modem. However I still can't get the connection working again with my router, which we need as we need the wireless access throughout the house. I've fiddled with plenty of settings on the router, including the MTU - while I'm not sure exactly what this is, I've seen forum posts talking about how this has fixed problems with router access to TalkTalk broadband. Having spent three evenings fiddling and tinkering, I can get the router to connect (the synch light stays on), but the download speed is so slow it's useless - the BBC homepage took around 20 minutes to download! TalkTalk won't help me as the 3Com router isn't supplied by them - and they won't admit to making any changes over the weekend that could have caused a problem with the router set-up. So it looks like it's time to look for a new broadband and phone supplier and possibly a new, more modern, router. What's important to me is:  working connection with a router decent technical support price - for phone and broadband package I expect I'll end up paying more than I do now with TalkTalk, but that's worth it to have a more reliable broadband service - it's hard to be a consultant and blogger without web access. Do any UK readers have any advice on broadband suppliers please? Who do you use and who would you avoid? [tags]broadband, talktalk[/tags]

#### Build #1 - The starting line
I'm driven by a belief that there's always a better way to do things. That passion extends to the puzzle of how we can best organise ourselves for getting work done.
For many people they spend the majority of their time working. Yet many of the ways we design and run businesses are built for a previous era. The time when people could be treated as interchangeable cogs in an organisational machine has passed.
Build is for anyone who has influence in scaling businesses, regardless of their role, to help them think consciously about how we organise ourselves for long term sustainable work together.
It is an exploration of how businesses can scale better - becoming sustainable organisations for the long term, not grown too fast upon weak foundations.
My goal for Build is to explore interesting stories, practices and experiences of scaling businesses, with a focus on progressive and sustainable thinking.
My own journey into progressive organisations and new leadership thinking began in 2014 when I picked up a copy of the newly published Reinventing Organizations. It opened my eyes to the limitations of much of my career learning to date about how to build and lead sustainable, human-centric businesses.
Since then I've taken a progressive slant on the leadership roles I've had and the businesses I've helped shape. I played a big part in transforming a leading UK digital agency from a traditional management to a self-organising model.
Build launches in January 2023, but you can subscribe now to receive fortnightly emails after launch.

#### Build #10 - Lenses and mirrors in decision making
A colleague recently told me I was obsessed with lenses.

Apparently I say a lot of things like:

"let's look at this through a client lens"

"if we look at this through the lens of a user then..."

"if I use a shareholder lens..."

Ignoring my clumsy verbal constructs, I realised she was right.

As I thought more about what I was doing, I observed subconcious attempts to overcome my own egocentric bias.

This is is a common cognitive bias. It's where we lean too much on our own worldview, beliefs and experiences when trying to consider how others might see things.

Egocentric bias affects different people in different ways. Age is proven to be a factor. There are plenty of other factors shown to have an effect too.  What's true is that everyone experiences some egocentric bias.

Egocentric bias often comes with a side dish of false consensus effect.

This is when we overestimate how much other people share our own behaviours and beliefs.

You often hear it at play in meetings when someone says something like: "I don't want to speak for Jane because she's not here, but I think that she would say..."

As a leader in a scaling business this duo of biases is likely to pop up frequently.

Scaling is a game of identifying and solving problems in business over and over. Leaders to be able to understand problems from a range of perspectives.

When faced with a problem or decision there are three steps I take before making a decision:

Who - what groups or individuals might have a perspective on this?

What - what do we know (not think) about what they think? How can we learn more?

Why - why might they think that or react in a certain way to a decision? What is behind this thinking?

By considering the issue through their lenses, I can tackle egocentricity and false consensus bias at work head on.

It's a lot better than using a mirror.

Five ways to reduce false consensus in decision-making

Take time to appreciate alternative perspectives - through building more diverse teams, being curious about perspectives and seeking to understand viewpoints that conflict with your own

Understand why you might think what you think - once you understand that you can see where different perspectives might arise and why

De-bias how you make decisions - for example slowing down decision-making, carefully selecting the physical environment where you make a decision and using quantitative data rather than subjective estimates

Create psychological distance from your own perspective - I like to think about decisions from the perspective of my future self. This temporal distancing helps reduce contemporaneous factors from decisions.

Raise awareness of false consenus - talk about it in teams and think about how you can design decision-making processes that take account of the inevitability of false consensus.

#### Build #100 - Ringing the changes
One of the things I seem to do a lot with founders is prioritisation.

There's a real purity in knowing what to focus on and where to place the effort we put into building businesses.

And now it's time for me to take a bit of my own advice and get my house in order.

Many of you will know that a real focus for me this year so far has been launching and building my new operating partner business - Team Wakeman, as well as my new founder newsletter The Operating Edge.

So with that comes a need to prioritise my efforts.

Since I went independent in January 2023, I've published 100 issues of the Build newsletter. It's become a place for exploring thoughts, sharing insights and building a community of readers who regularly get in touch with their feedback.

But now it's time for a bit of a change.

Build isn't going away - but you'll be getting it monthly from here on. The Operating Edge is where you'll find my regular fortnightly content for founders.

You should already be receiving The Operating Edge, but if you're not, you can sign up using the link below.

Thanks for being with me on the journey so far. It means a lot.

#### Build #101 - A worse version of you?
I've been noticing something over the last month that's been making me increasingly uncomfortable, so I wanted to share that in this month's Build.

Let me give you an example that stuck in my mind. Last Tuesday, I was reading a Slack message from a founder I'm working with. It was perfectly constructed, well formatted with clear bullet points and a nice professional tone.

But still it took me reading it three times to realise what was really nagging at me: there was none of them in it. Just the ghost of a ChatGPT prompt. Nothing human in any way.

That got me thinking about what's happening across many of the businesses I have the privilege of seeing inside right now.

The rise of management by AI

Over the past few months - particularly since commonly available AI tooling became properly sophisticated - I've noticed something shifting.

Not in what AI can do (we all know that's transformative), but in what people think they should be doing with it.

You've probably seen it. You get reports that look accurate. Presentations that tick every box. Emails that sound... fine.

But they're all surface, no depth. To me they're the business equivalent of those AI-generated hands with seven fingers - everything looks right until you actually look at it.

I've written about AI workslop before.

But here's what's really concerning me: I'm increasingly seeing people use AI to do their actual managing.

That might be feedback delivered via Slack that's obviously been produced by an Openclaw agent. It might be strategic direction issued by email that reads like it came from a prompt library. Sometimes it's performance reviews that could have been written about literally anyone.

And look, I do get it. We're all knackered and pushing hard to scale businesses. We're all trying to do more with less. The temptation to let AI handle the difficult conversation or write the tricky email is enormous.

But this is also where it falls apart for founders.

When the questions start

I had another experience this month where I watched this play out.

A COO I know had used AI to provide feedback on a project deliverable. The message was comprehensive, technically accurate and well structured. So far so good you might think.

The team member has read it, had some questions about a particular point - a subtle, organisation-specific nuance that the AI had missed - and asked to discuss it.

The COO couldn't engage meaningfully in the discussion that ensued.

That wasn't because they didn't want to, but because they genuinely didn't understand the subtleties of their own feedback. They'd outsourced the thinking entirely.

And in a moment suddenly their credibility as an expert in their own domain was completely undermined.

This is the thing about management that people are missing when they automate themselves too much: management is an irreducibly human act.

Collaborating with others. Learning to navigate conflict. Dealing with ambiguity and risk. Reading the room. Knowing when to push and when to ease off.

These aren't administrative tasks you can automate away.

They're the actual work of leadership.

So what should you be using AI for?

Let's be clear: I might be hitting 50 this year but this isn't a luddite rant about avoiding AI. That ship has very much sailed and I'm super excited about what I can do with technology now that wasn't even in my thinking a year ago.

AI is transforming how we work, how we scale and how we build businesses. If you're not using it, you're operating with one hand tied behind your back.

The question isn't whether to use AI. It's what to use it for.

Here's a working thesis that I'm exploring:

Use AI to supercharge your strengths. If you're brilliant at strategic thinking but rubbish at first drafts, let AI help you get words on the page faster. If you're great with people but hate documentation, use it to capture and structure your thinking.

Use AI to shore up your weaknesses. Struggle with data analysis? Let AI help you spot patterns. Terrible at grammar? Fine, let it polish your prose a bit.

But don't use AI to replace yourself.

Don't use it to handle the difficult conversations you're avoiding.

Don't use it to provide feedback you haven't actually thought through.

Don't use it to sound clever about things you don't understand.

Because here's the thing: as a founder, you have something AI fundamentally cannot replace.

You have skin in the game.

You have context that goes back years.

You have intuition built from pattern recognition across hundreds of decisions.

You have relationships with your team that are built on trust and shared experience.

You have a vision that exists somewhere between your lived experience and your imagination.

That's not something you can prompt engineer or capture in a Markdown file in your personal operating system.

The uncomfortable bit

What I'm seeing - and deep down I think this is what's really bothering me - is founders and leaders using AI to avoid doing the hard work of leadership.

Having the difficult conversation.

Sitting with the ambiguity.

Making the decision with incomplete information.

Showing up as a whole human being rather than a polished professional persona.

But surely that's inherent the role of the founder?

The founder role isn't to produce perfectly formatted feedback or comprehensive strategy documents. The role is to lead people through uncertainty, building trust and making others others better.

And you cannot outsource that to a large language model.

So here's what I'm asking myself (and what I'd invite you to ask yourself):

What am I using AI to avoid rather than to enable?

Where am I substituting algorithm for authenticity?

What conversations am I having with Claude that I should be having with actual humans?

Because the real risk isn't that AI will replace us.

It's that we'll replace ourselves with worse versions of ourselves before it gets the chance.

#### Build #11 - Mise en place
Chefs know a lot goes into making consistently good restaurant food.

Each dish is a detailed, time-critical project with high quality thresholds. Dishes need to be synched with the rest of the food for the same table. And the kitchen needs to be delivering food for multiple tables at the same.

It's a challenge. And it's tough.

One of the ways chefs deal with this is "mise en place". This means having everything in place before making the dish.

Ingredients are measured out in advance. Vegetables are prepared and cut to size. Elements of each dish, like sauces or finishing decorations, are cooked ahead of time. Pans and utensils are laid out so they are there when they're needed.

When service starts, the complexity has been reduced as much as possible.

The parallels with the complexity of growth businesses are interesting.

Founders and leaders can reduce the complexity of scaling by using the mise en place approach. What can you prepare now that'll make your life easier in three, six or twelve months time?

Looking ahead

Preparing food in a professional kitchen involves following a recipe that's developed ahead of time.

Recipes help replicate the same dish over and over, regardless of who's working in the kitchen that day. Diners expect dishes to remain consistent.

But in growing businesses that's not always the case. The dishes have to change pretty frequently.

What works well now might not be right in six months time. Things change. None of us can see around corners.

But we can often have a pretty good guess what some challenges might be ahead in the growth journey. There are stages and patterns in growth that are common.

New teams need to form. New processes are necessary. New skills are needed. Sales and recruitment become high volume activities. Change becomes harder.

Plus the business will be hit by things you don't know about yet.

Accepting a state of not knowing about the future in the increasing uncertain and volatile world matters to help on the growth journey.

Growing and selling a digital agency taught me the value of acknowledging uncertainty. I built techniques into the day-to-day cadence to the business to surface the fact we didn't know as much as we thought we did about the future. An agile mindset and culture was important.

How each business responds to known and unknown challenges is unique to the business.

But how good they are at anticipating them, embracing the uncertainty and having as much in place as they can to help solve future problems are good indicators of scaling success.

Three questions to consider

What are the current signs of tensions in your organisation that indicate a need for change?

What could you learn now to better deal with what's ahead?

How does your team work with uncertainties?

Get deeper into this

1. I love Stowe Boyd's thinking and writing. This article talks about working in uncertainty and pre-mortems - a great tool for practical planning in the face of plenty of unknowns.

2. Understanding the scaling journeys of other businesses is a useful way to think about your own. In Upscale James Silver tells some fascinating stories of UK scale-ups and the challenges they overcame.

3. Felix Velarde's book Scale at Speed has a useful tool called the strategy map that helps anticipate the scaling challenges ahead.

#### Build #12 - Process isn't boring
Working with process gets a bad press in many creative businesses.

Process work is stereotyped as stifling creativity and restricting individual autonomy.

Laying out processes that surface how things are done in a business right now can be a helpful thing to do.

It helps set boundaries for people in their work if done collaboratively. This can help enable autonomy to a degree.

But if you stop there, that's when process can become a bad thing.

What if you saw that as the starting point for a journey of improvement?

Once you know how things are happening now, then you can start making changes.

Opportunities for innovation and improvement become clearer.

Friction due to inconsistent delivery and repetition previous mistakes is reduced. The business can move faster.

And once you understand process, you can peel back the layers. This'll reveal what's really going on.

Behind every documented process there's a messy mix of humans and technology.

That's where things get interesting.

It's where you'll be able to get to the fundamentals of why your business works the way it does.

And that enables you to work with those realities to drive growth and change.

Exploring the iceberg

The iceberg model is a useful tool to get behind processes in business.

Rooted in systems thinking, it encourages you to delve deeper than what appears on the surface:

Having a process in place gives clarity and visibility to what's going on.

Thinking about the iceberg is about going beneath the surface.

What are the patterns of behaviour or the trends that you see going on?

This might show up as people not working within a process. They spend time finding workarounds to the system you want them to use.

Here's one I see a lot in digital change. Data is recorded in a workaround tool - maybe paper or a spreadsheet - as well as in the system where you want it to be.

Then you go behind that trend. Why are people doing that?

It might be because their experience of the system you're trying to get them to use was poor when they first used it. Maybe you used an MVP version or a flaky dev environment for their training.

And once you're clear on that you can probe the mental model behind those trends.

For system avoidance people may hold a deep belief that a system is unhelpful to their day-to-day work. What values, beliefs, and assumptions do people have about that system?

By understanding this you can then take action to address the underlying belief.

This'll work a lot better than directly pushing for process compliance. That would fail because you'd be trying to work against an underlying belief that the system isn't up to scratch.

Three questions to ask now

What are the key processes in your business that create value?

Do you know who is accountable for each of those processes?

When is it OK for someone to ignore a process in the business?

#### Build #13 - Deciding on deciding
Businesses run on decisions. They control the flow of work in your business. Paying attention to how and when they're made as well as who decides about what is important.

Every working day is a torrent of situations to understand, options to evaluate and decisions to make.

Decision-making spans the entire organisation. It runs from high volume micro-decisions to big bets that shape the future of a business.

Yet it amazes me how little attention is paid to how decisions are made.

We prevaricate too much over some decisions, while wilfully ignoring the significance of others. Our natural human biases are baked into decisions.

People avoid making decisions. They fear of consequences of making a perceived mistake. They're unsure whether they have the permission to make a call on something that matters.

In hierarchical organisations people with management responsibilities get decisions escalated to them.

They lack the contextual knowledge needed. The sheer volume of decisions ending up with them causes overwhelm. They slow down the pace of the business and frustrating those around them.

The pivotal act of decision making is neglected. The shadow of that neglect is cast over the future of many businesses.

But it doesn't have to be like this.

Brilliant businesses and their leaders decide about deciding.

They are deliberate about where and how decisions are made.

They create clear boundaries for decision-making autonomy. By doing this they unleash the latent potential in their people.

They have guardrails for decision-making. They create proportionate processes that they expect their people to follow.

They expose decision-making and its supporting rationale widely. They drive transparency and so widen situational awareness in their businesses.

There are three steps that leaders should take to improve decision-making:

Define boundaries for decision-making on a per-role, per-individual or per-team basis.There are many ways to articulate boundaries for decisions. Do this through criteria that are easily interpreted and that will endure for as long as possible. Don't produce a definitive list of what's in or out of an individual's decision-making orbit. It won't age when you scale. Instead help them understand where the boundaries lie and will shift.

Have a clear and shared decision-making process. I love decision-making processes because they make methods explicit.Groups often start a discussion without being clear how a decision is going to be made. They default to consensus as the basis for a decision without considering if that is the best way to decide.A decision-making process provides consistency in what a business wants to happen. It encourages deeper reflection. It ensures the right people are involved according to the nature of the decision being made. It can raise consciousness of human biases in assessing options.And it helps build trust and grow confidence for those taking decisions.

Be context conscious in your decision-making process.Decision-making will always be imperfect. In complex systems we can never wholly understand what will happen when we implement a decision. The consequences of decisions vary a lot.That means we have to be OK with the consequences of a decision. Even when those consequences aren't our desired outcome.But it does mean we need to think about effort and risk in a particular decision-making context. The effort going into a decision needs to be considered alongside the potential outcomes from that decision.Amazon has some famous principles that guide decision-making. They talk about one-way and two-way doors as descriptors for consequences of decisions. Some decisions are irreversible so merit different consideration to those that can be reversed out of quickly.What are your equivalent of Amazon's one-way and two-way doors?  How can you build this kind of contextual awareness into your decision-making process?

Decision-making is tightly bound with accountability in effective businesses.

A key facet of accountability is understanding the consequences of decisions taken.

Performance discussions need need to include decision-making. They should focus less on whether the right decision has been made and more on how it was made. Otherwise hindsight bias creeps in too easily here.

To understand how effective a team member has been in fulfilling a particular accountability, look at how they took decisions:

How well did they follow your decision-making process?

Did they demonstrate an appropriate degree of curiosity before making a decision?

Did they involve the right people and use an appropriate decision-making method?

Did they consider the range of potential consequences realistically?

If they didn't, consider why that might be. It's probably not for the reason that you might think is obvious.

By reflecting on decision-making as a learning tool, businesses can build decision-making skills, helping create a culture of devolved accountability.

Three questions to ask now

How do others in your business make decisions now and what do they feel about making those decisions?

How consistent is your decision-making across the business? Inconsistencies point to opportunities for improvement.

What can you learn from previous big decisions you've taken? Hint: beware of hindsight bias when answering this one.

#### Build #14 - Feeling the mountain
Recently I was talking with Lesley - a ski instructor - about her work helping people improve their skiing.

She talked about the importance of understanding the learning styles of her pupils. That helped her to best coach people through developing the subtle skills of skiing. She also talked about how one metaphor she used worked almost universally - learning to "feel the mountain".

You start first with learning to intentionally feel your feet in the ski boots. The differing pressure in parts of the soles of your feet, the shifting angles and changes in sensation all give subtle signals to the skier.

Then once her students had mastered that, they add sight and sound to the mix. This helps them understand more about what's going on around them as they skied.

Bringing all those feelings and observations together in real time was the key. They provide the triggers for different techniques that the students had learnt. Reflecting on our conversation, the parallels with leading in the world of business seemed obvious.

As a consultant I'm used to going into businesses and pretty quickly getting to an initial understanding of what's going on.

But I'm always conscious of the limits of my understanding and the risk of missing something subtle.

I see leaders in many businesses reach for solutions too readily. They grab for a familiar response or the latest management fad from a podcast they heard recently. Recency bias can play into this too.

Are those leaders really "feeling the mountain" in their business? Have they developed a highly attuned sense of what's really going on around them to inform decisions about what to do?

Developing that innate sense of what's going on in a business relies first on an appreciation of one's own limitations.

A leader is just one node in the network that makes up any business. Their visibility of what's around them degrades incrementally through that network. They tend to bias towards the stuff they see or experience firsthand. They subconsciously overestimate the prevalence of this in the wider business.

Reporting on performance metrics helps provide a way to gain wider insights into what's going on. Over time trends and patterns in the data help build a picture. But it's not a complete picture and never will be. What's not measured or can't be measured is an important part of learning to "feel the mountain" too.

Getting out into the business, experiencing different areas  firsthand and talking to a wider range of people helps. It provides clearer lines of sight to what's going on for people in the business and can be a source of diverse perspectives.

And direct contact with customers or clients matters too. Given most businesses exist to solve problems in some way, it's good to see how they're doing at fulfilling this purpose on the ground.

There's a caution here for leaders getting closer to team or customers - be careful to not over-extrapolate from a single data point. Instead look instead for patterns and recurrence that you need to be responding to.

What's your equivalent of Lesley's "feeling the mountain" in your leadership practice?

Towards sensemaking

I'm drawn to the practice of sensemaking for leaders.

Complexity in business means they need to consciously manage their awareness of what's around them.

They need to continuously evaluate what they see and experience. They need to pick up sentient cues while learning to discard insights that are contextually irrelevant.

Sensemaking is how you develop mental models of what's going on in your organisation. It's about testing out those models through listening, conversing, learning and action.

Here are my top ten things to try out to build your sensemaking skills:

Build a network across all levels in your organisation. Don't rely too much on existing hierarchies or relationships.

Seek out insights from diverse sources across your network in the organisation. Don't always lean on the same people.

Learn to ask open questions, holding space for people to share their experience and views.

While listening, you need to allow for the effect of a likely power assymetry between you.

Apply appropriate weighting to the insights you gain.

Use critical thinking. If someone says "everyone is thinking this" the chances are that's not true. Very little is universally true. Seek the nuance.

Get close to the frontline of whatever you're trying to learn about. Seek firsthand insight and downweight what you hear secondhand. Networks obfuscate detail.

Be aware of your role and impact as a leader. You're part of the complex system that makes up the organisation, not separate from it.

Challenge yourself when you find yourself thinking "I've seen this before". The chances are you haven't. You may recognise elements from previous experience, but every situation is unique.

Test the mental models you build through conversation first and then action. Refine them. Repeat.

Three questions to ask now

How could you diversify the sources you use to interpret what's going on in your business?

What unrecognised assumptions might you be making in your analysis?

How can you explore what's not being talked about in your business?

#### Build #15 - Escape from firefighting
Firefighting. Fire drills. Chaos. Pulled from pillar to post. Overwhelmed.

I hear those words a lot in my conversations with founder CEOs in growth businesses.

The conversations continue. I hear explanations of actions taken in response to the latest tsunami of problems to hit.

And then I ask them to consider what's really going on.

I ask them to dial up the curiosity and think beyond the obvious. To look into the hidden corners  to consider the unspoken truths of their business.

Sometimes this leads to a deeper understanding of who they are as founders. It surfaces the unconscious influences they have on their business.

This is the first step to escaping their cycle of firefighting.

Brent Lowe talks about three traps that founders in growth businesses experience:

Founder burnout - where the founder is giving all the energy and time they can, but it's not making the difference the business needs.

Lack of a cohesive plan - the business is growing. What worked previously to hold things together doesn't work anymore. A new approach is needed for the next phase.

Founder leadership - being a visionary founder and creating a business from nothing demands one form of leadership. Growing a business sustainably takes another.

He uses a helpful matrix to think about the relationship between action and clarity in a business:

Source: BASE Associates / Scale Together accelerator

Many founders I work with who talk about firefighting are operating in Brent's "chaotic burnout" quadrant.

They're highly active but lack the clarity of having a clear intentional purpose for their business. That shows in the business they're creating and its constrained pace of growth.

As businesses scale, complexity seems to grow exponentially.

Founders typically resist process because they worry it will kill off innovation. But the right kinds of processes don't do that. They reduce operational complexity into repeatable, lower risk work.

This process work needs to happen alongside developing that clear intentional purpose for the business and well-defined accountability for people's roles within it.

Which of Brent's four quadrants do you want your business to operate in? Where is it right now and how might you get it there?

Three questions to ask now

How clear are you on the intentional purpose for your business and how is this really understood by your team members?

As a founder what symptoms of firefighting do you recognise in your working week?

How could your business better identify accountabilities for roles to power up growth?

#### Build #16 - Founder to CEO?
Great founders don't necessarily make great CEOs. Being deliberate about founder role transitions is often overlooked in scaling businesses.

Growing a business means getting comfortable with transitions everywhere, all at once.

The notion of a steady state is a mirage.

Something is always changing - processes, partners, roles, structures, cadences, systems and more.

I've worked extensively with founders who are scaling their businesses. One of the most challenging role transitions I've observed is when a founder moves into a CEO role.

It's difficult because it demands different skills than were needed previously.

In the start-up phase of a business a founder is across every aspect of their business. They have to hustle. They are personally involved with most activities in the business and keep a close eye on the rest too. They are a central node in the small network that is a start-up.

In footballing terms they have to be as comfortable playing up-front as a striker, dazzling in midfield and retreating to be a gritty defender too. They are the ultimate shapeshifting all-rounder.

Yet in the scale-up phase of a business, what's needed from a CEO changes.

Rather than being on the pitch covering multiple positions, they need to have extricated themselves from the on-field action. They should be observing from the bench and seeing things that the players can't see from where they are.

They need to help the team understand the strategy the business is executing. They need to devise and set up the system in which the team plays. They relentlessly coach individual players to perform at their best.

But I've seen founders end up tying themselves and their businesses in metaphorical knots with the founder to CEO transition.

The needs of the growing team exceed the founder's leadership abilities or appetite. They typically end up letting go too fast. Or they try to remain fully in control of every last detail in the business.

They end up stifling the next stage of organisational maturity that a scaling business needs.

This is a transition that too few founders and their boards seem to talk about. Its significance in the scaling of the business is undervalued.

The most successful businesses I've worked with are those that have been deliberate about this transition.

They've thought deeply about what their business needs from a scaling CEO.

They've been as objective as possible about whether a founder is best placed to fulfil these needs. It's not an easy or comfortable conversation, but it's immensely valuable.

There are many other valuable roles a founder can play. But they have to put ego aside and be open minded towards someone else coming into the CEO seat.

Don't assume that as a founder, you have to automatically step into that CEO seat for your company to fulfil its potential. The best move you can make as a founder to drive scaling might just be to bring in someone else to play that role.

One of the most interesting books I've read that covers this area is Work with Source by Tom Nixon.

Using Peter Koenig's research as a starting point, Tom's book explores the importance of the founding role and how this role can evolve during the life of a business.

The Source Compass - Tom Nixon, Work with Source

He explores the important evolving role that scaling businesses need from a founder, highlighting the co-existing tensions that a founder needs to be continuously reconciling.

This article is a good summary of his key themes but the book is recommended reading for founders and boards in scaling businesses too.

#### Build #17 - Systems thinking in scaling business
Systems thinking is a way of thinking about your business. It helps leaders better understand their organisation and how to maximise their impact.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past nine years exploring leadership in growing businesses.  Systems thinking is one area I’ve been increasingly delving into.

It's a way of thinking about our world that can be tricky to understand for anyone but the most avid student.

But I know also that systems thinking is something I wish I'd understood more about earlier in my career. It provides a solid framework for interpreting what happens in growth businesses.

So what is systems thinking?

At the simplest level it's an approach that considers parts of a system and how they relate to each other. In most of my work, the system in question is the organisation of a business.

Donella Meadows is an OG in the systems thinking world. Here's her take on systems:

1. Systems are made up of a set of things.

In the case of a business those "things" could be the people who work there, customers, partners, technology platforms, policies, processes or indeed anything else that exists in the business.

2. Those things are all connected to each other. A connection can be direct or indirect.

3. The connection between two things produces a pattern of behaviour. This is a quality that is emergent as it's determined by the way those two things interact.

4. Because all the things are interconnected, you can't view that pattern in isolation. Everything connects to everything else. The way each "thing" behaves is dependent on everything else.

This way of thinking about scaling businesses is better than the traditional linear thinking I learnt in my early career.

In linear thinking you'd look at the interaction between two things - A and B.

You'd assume that because you make a change to A, you can then predict what would happen to B.

Think about a growing SaaS business with a small customer success team (let's call this team "thing A").

The business invests in expanding this team. Linear thinking might lead to you to expect customer satisfaction ("thing B") to increase .

But with a systems thinking mindset you wouldn't make that assumption.

That's because thing B is connected to thing C and so on. The way A and B interact depends on C (and in turn all the rest of the other things in the system).

So in our SaaS business the sales and retention team ("thing C") works pretty independently.

As customer satisfaction started to grow, they might see that increase as a signal that prices can be hiked to grow revenue. This in turn drives down customer satisfaction offsetting the original gain in satisfaction.

That's a super oversimplified example. But it shows how thinking of a scaling business as a system opens up new perspectives.

Feedback loops

These are where an action that's taken returns back to where it started through a loop in the system.

In our example the newly expanded customer success team starts to experience delays in responding to customers. That's due to increased contact volumes complaining about the price increase.

There are two types of feedback loop to think about in systems:

a reinforcing loop - where the original action is reinforced by the feedback from the system.In the SaaS example the complaints from customers might lead to the business hiring more customer success people to deal with the volume.

a balancing loop - where the original action leads to a signal that moves the system in the opposite direction to restore balance.In our example this might be where the customer success team identifies the pricing issue early. It then works with the sales team to change pricing policy for existing customers, reducing the complaints.

Leverage points

So now this is all sounding quite mind blowing. And it can be a real rabbit hole to get lost down. Bear with me.

A concept that I talk a lot about in my work in growth businesses is leverage points.

These are simply places within a system where a small change can make a big difference.

They're the things that are as close to the mythical "silver bullet" in the world of business as you get.

Understanding how your business works as a system better now means you're more likely to spot the leverage points. Then you can really start to work deliberately with those leverage points to move forward.

Complexity

Most of what we do when scaling a business is seeking to drive change.

We define how we want things to be in an ideal future. We come up with ways of making that future a reality - closing the gaps between the ideal future and the present.

But complexity undermines the practicality of that view of how change happens. It challenges the belief that we can really understand the impact of the measures we put in place to close the gap.

Complexity encourages leaders to take a different mindset for change.

Through better understanding how and why the business works now, you can see what you might try to change next. You define the direction of travel, not the destination itself.

Another big thinker in this world is Dave Snowden. He says:

Managing the present to create a new direction of travel is more important than creating false expectations about how things could be in the future.

It's quite easy to get overwhelmed when thinking about all this in practice.

I find Cynefin a practical framework for better understanding the current context.

It gives leaders insights and direction that is relevant to where you start from, not where you're going.

#### Build #18 - Building a company - introducing the B3 framework
Founders and CEOs talk a lot about scaling businesses, but typically pay a lot less attention to building the organisation that lies behind any successfully scaled business.
And when the organisation is talked about, it's often considered in terms of organisational structure, reporting lines and job descriptions. 
This is just one way of looking at an organisation and isn't the right starting point for creating a resilient scaling organisation.
Why does this matter?  
The key to answering that question lies in the creation of a sustainable and resilient business - one that is able to thrive through the inevitable shocks, unpredictable events and setbacks that happen.
That sustainability and resilience comes from the people that make up any business. It comes from the way they collaborate to generate value in the present, anticipate potential futures and respond to the unanticipated events that hit every business.
But even then, a business isn't merely the sum total of their individual contributions.
A sustainable and resilient business comes from the added value that being an effective organisation generates - bringing together the work of many people within an organising framework that gives focus, agility and coherence.
An organisation is a container which holds everything that binds people and their work together. The container provides boundaries for the organisation as a system. It's stuffed full of things that make each organisation unique and enable people within the organisation to feel belonging, collaborate effectively and generate value.
Some of those things are tangible, like systems, tools, artefacts and process. Others are less tangible, such as culture, purpose and behaviours.
I created the B3 framework® to help leaders build brilliant businesses. 
I knew from experience that getting the business foundations right early in the scaling journey can significantly reduces the challenges ahead.
The framework brings together every facet of what it takes to holistically scale a business into a simple yet powerful framework. It sets out the elements that must be in place to build a business that’s sustainable and delivers consistently.
It doesn’t tell you must create each of those elements, nor the tools, techniques or methods you should use. This helps avoid the overly prescriptive nature of many approaches to organisational design and business scaling.
It provides flexibility for leaders to develop their own implementation, while ensuring a coherent and high performing business throughout the scaling journey.
The beta version of the B3 framework is now live to download from my website.

#### Build #19 - Designing leadership teams in scaling businesses
"What's the right structure for my leadership team?"
This is one of the most common question I come across in conversations with founders who are scaling their businesses.
It's hard to understand what leadership roles are right for the business now but also to make sure they're right as the company grows too.
Sometimes founders create job with titles that store up problems for the future. Does your 20 person tech product business really need six job titles starting with Chief?
To get leadership team design right start from the basics.
What leadership does your business need to be able to be grow now?
And what's your best bet about what leadership it will need to be effective in 12 to 18 months time?
A common mis-step I see is to design a leadership team with roles as the starting point. Roles should be the output of the design process, not the input.
Stage 1: Start with accountabilities
In most organisational structures, accountabilities are nested.
That means the highest level of accountabilities are all held by a member of the leadership team.
So start designing that team by getting clear on what those accountabilities are.
Jump into Miro or grab the post-it notes and start listing them out. Don't worry about how they fit with roles or who does them now.
Be as granular as you need to be so that you can capture everything that someone needs to own among that senior team.
If in doubt, capture it. The game here is to think about the breadth of the business and make sure you've got everything covered.
(hint: the B3 framework® can be a useful starting point to get the ideas flowing. You should end up with multiple accountabilities identified for each section of the framework. The PROCESSES box is where you'll end up with most, as this is where the day-to-day work of most businesses happens)
Try to define the accountabilities in terms of the outcomes you'd like to be true:

"ARR of at least £2m" rather than "Revenue"
"Successful hiring and onboarding of 20 people per month" rather than "Recruitment"

Most scale-up businesses end up with between 70 and 100 accountabilities mapped out at this stage.
Stage 2: Refining accountabilities
Now it's time to do a first pass looking for themes in the accountabilities.
Where possible bring individual accountabilities together into themes. Give each theme a clear name.
The themes should feel coherent and represent the areas that are important to the success of your business.
For example you might have many accountabilities that span recruitment, selection and onboarding. These could form a logical theme together that you might call "Growing the team".
Once you've trawled through all the accountabilities and grouped them together into themes, it's time to move on.
Stage 3: Creating roles
A leadership role in a scaling business is a set of accountability themes held by an individual.
So now it's time to group the themes into roles that are coherent, logical and manageable for one person.
There's a choice of approach for how to do this.
Start-ups with an existing leadership team might start by bringing the themes together to represent the existing roles. This usually then shows:

that some themes aren't held by any roles now and so need adding to an existing or new leadership role
that some roles are too large as they hold too many themes. You need to decide how to break up that role into two or more new roles. This is common as business scales and roles become deeper and more specialised.

For start-ups without a leadership team, bring the themes together to represent new leadership roles.
These need to make sense for your business but also be similar enough to roles in the wider world. For example if you create a Marketing, Technology and Legal Director role you might not easily find someone capable of doing the job (unless you already have that person).
A repeat warning - be careful on job titles. Handing out big job titles that don't really match the level of accountabilities held by a role is just storing up pain for later in the growth journey. If you call a marketing manager a CMO, it's a lot trickier to bring in a CMO role in future when you really need one.
Now you have roles clearly defined that cover all the accountabilities needed to lead the growing business. You can then use these role definitions for recruitment, onboarding and ongoing performance conversations.
I've used this approach multiple times and it works well for leadership teams at most levels in a business. It typically takes between two hours and a day, depending on the size/complexity of the business and the people involved.

#### Build #2 - The value of organisation
How your business is organised is at the core of creating sustainable growth. It probably needs more focus than you give it.

Businesses are usually built to thrive and grow. The pursuit of profit, and increasingly wider societal benefits, is at the heart of a capitalist system.

At one level it's a simple game. Make or do something customers want, find those customers willing to pay you and then supply them with what they want or need.

Much of what's written about business focuses on specific parts of this super basic process. And none of those ways of looking at business are wrong.

But often they fail to ask a deeper question about where value is created in businesses.

We obsess over things like product, brand, efficiency, pricing, production, culture and a myriad of other things in business.

None of those are unimportant, but once you strip away the the layers of business speak, the real answer is simple.

Value creation comes from the people within that business and how they organise themselves together to create that value.

Think about a business of any size you know and how it goes about its work. At its heart will be the people in that organisation and their collaboration to get work done.

The truth is organisations matter a lot. And so does how they are created and cultivated.

Organisations help us bring together people with different skills, experiences and aptitudes. Together they achieve things that those people couldn't achieve by themselves.

Let's be honest, many of the organisations that exist as businesses are pretty shit.

They take the natural energy of humans and constrain them unnecessarily. They stifle human potential in the interests of conformance within a machine-like organisational system. The bigger a business gets, the more this tends to happen.

They might be successful as businesses despite being poor organisations. And they may well be even more successful as businesses if they were better organisations.

So why do business leaders not pay more attention to the organisations they create?

How they can create the conditions for people to work and grow to their full potential?

Understanding organisational design feels like an undervalued leadership competency. Whatever their size, businesses are complex systems that need understanding and intentionally nurturing towards success.

As a business leader looking ahead to 2023, why not take a moment to think consciously about the power you have to organise better to create a more sustainably successful business?

The trap - org design vs org structure

Organisational design isn't drawing a structure chart.

Designing an organisation for a business means thinking a lot more broadly than structure.

I like Sergio's definition:

Organisation design is a set of tools and methods aimed at creating the most effective architecture for an organisation to reach its strategic purpose, taking into consideration environmental and legal constraints, necessary capabilities to operate and the required operational governance processes.

When done correctly, it allows the forming and continuous development of a culture capable of creating value and sustaining the successful achievement of the organisation strategic objectives.

I also like Nikolay's diagram:

Organisational design, Nikolay Worren

And I like the succinctness of Nobl's definition too:

Organizational design is a strategic process of aligning how to win together with how to work together.

Core concept - the organisation

A bounded container for people collaborating to deliver value from their work through shared purpose, systems, processes and policy.

Questions to consider

What metaphor would a frontline team member use to describe how your business is organised and does that reflect your view of your business?

How much was your business designed with an intentional focus on how value is created?

As it has grown, how has your business accumulated organisational debt that impedes getting the valuable work done?

#### Build #20 - How can founders get people to do what they need them to do?
I've been speaking to a lot of founders in scaling businesses recently.
When they talk about challenges they face, they often talk about a common frustration: 
"I can't get people in the business focussed on the right things."
It's a challenge that goes directly to the heart of companies. How to bring people together to work towards shared goals in a business.
And the solution lies in dissecting the problem into two parts. 
Start with thinking about the "right things".
As a founder you could tell people what those right things are. 
Giving specific direction is right for some contexts like a short term crisis.  Beyond that, telling people what to do limits their personal growth and doesn't scale well.
There's a better way. Make sure people know enough about what the business wants to achieve. Help them interpret how their role contributes to this. 
Then let them work out what the right things are. 
This builds their capacity, reduces founder dependence and is a lot more scalable. It also helps increase team engagement in their work.
In practice there are a few things you can do as a founder to help:

tell the company vision story...a lot. Find many different ways to explain. Ensure they resonate with different people, cultures and attitudes.
articulate clear goals for teams and individuals. Use timeframes that are right for those teams and individual. The more experienced the team member or the more mature the team, the longer the timeframe can be. 
share information as transparently as you can. If you want people to make good decisions, don't keep information secret.
think about guard rails for people deciding on the right things. Start with tight guard rails.  Then incrementally pull them back as your trust in their confidence and competence grows.

And then the second part is about getting people focussed.
The truth is you can't do this. There is no way for you to force it. 
Create a working environment that nudges people towards getting focussed themselves. For founders this means:

thinking about how to tap into intrinsic motivations. Don't rely too heavily on crude extrinsic motivators.
communicating and celebrating behaviours that demonstrate focus on behaviours and acheivements that contribute positively
taking away distractions and unnecessary "busy" work. Be laser focussed on what matters. Strip back relentlessly.
developing a culture of candour and give feedback often. Don't let interpersonal problems fester or pretend they don't exist.
ensuring roles are clearly defined with boundaries that are widely understood. Incoherent or overlapping role accountabilities cause a lack of focus.

Use the B3 framework® to help diagnose root cause issues that might be behind misalignment or lack of focus. 
What I see most behind lack of focus in teams is either a lack of clear communication about the creating a foundation and making a business layers or an absence of adequate thinking by founders about roles, structure and governance.
As a founder you'll never stop iterating these things. Over time you can delegate and share the load of keeping people and teams focussed, but remember it's a process not a one-off task.

#### Build #21 - Ultra running & leading scale-ups
Last weekend I finished my first 50 mile ultra run.
With 4000 metres of climbing and a lot of mud in England's Lake District, it was the hardest physical challenge I've taken on yet.
When running ultra distances every step I run is crucial. How my foot lands and the terrain beneath it matters.
Landing well with good grip enables me to take a confident and strong next step. 
Choosing the wrong place to put my foot risks slipping, twisting an ankle and ending my race early.
I visualised crossing the finish line to keep myself going when things got hard.
Parts of the route were steep and rocky; the kind of terrain where I couldn't sustain my pace for long. I knew that as long as I recognised this, I could get through.
I thought a lot about pacing my run and taking on the right food and water to sustain myself and reach the finish line.
To do this I broke down the challenge of 50 miles and made it into more relatable distances between rest stations.
I rewarded myself with food at those rest stations. These milestones prompted me to assess how I felt, helping me adjust my running as conditions and my physical state deteriorated.
The approach I took had a lot in common with leading a scaling business.
Leading a scale-up means recognising the long term vision and understanding the routes to take the company there.
At the same time you need a relentless focus on the next step in that journey. Each move forward is an opportunity to take stock, adjust and refocus for the next bit of growth.
To do this demands a wide field of view across the business. Company building involves moving different parts of the business forward together coherently.
Sustainable resilient organisations emerge from recognising this - and not allowing one part of the business to power ahead or lag too far behind.

#### Build #22 - Working with organisational debt
Technologists often talk about technical debt.
It's the accumulation over time of decisions that prioritise short term speed over well-designed code.
Technical debt isn't always obvious to those outside the technology realm.
But people across the business feel its effects.
Technical debt reduces speed to market, agility, stability and quality of customer experience.
The same concept exists for organisations, especially those that are scaling.
In the drive to grow a business, founders have to take decisions that are shortcuts or are "right enough for now".
They prioritise short term progress over longer term stability. A growing organisational debt is inevitable.
How can founders and leaders use organisational debt in their work?
Make the implicit explicit
Be clear when you know you're adding to organisational debt in a decision you're taking. 
Call out something that is "right for now", but might well need ripping up in the future.
This will help teams understand how you are making the inevitable trade-offs between the short and long term in that decision. 
They'll be more accepting of problems if they know the solution has a limited shelf life.
The organisational debt backlog
Think about where you know you have issues from short term decisions as the business has grown.
Ask teams to consider where they have organisational debt that's not obvious to leadership teams.
Then create a shared list of known organisational debt.
Balance new initiatives with addressing organisation debt
You have plenty of new initiatives that you need to implement as your business grows.
You probably use a regular review and planning cycle to prioritise these.
It's useful to regularly review the organisational debt backlog as part of this cycle. It stops the less obvious organisational debt problems getting lost in the chaos of growth.
Distinguishing different types of organisational debt
There's a secret superpower in working with organisational debt.
Learn to distinguish between organisational debt that will hold back future growth and debt that will be irrelevant in the future.
Some debt can be left behind safely as the business grows.
For example if you took shortcuts when training staff on an early CRM, you might be able to leave that debt behind if you know you'll be introducing a new one in the near future.
Just remember to take the lessons into the new deployment rather than addressing the historic debt.
But other debt can't be left behind so easily.
You might have had a poor onboarding process for new team members over the last six months.
This is organisational debt you can't leave behind.
You need to put in an intervention to address this with the people who've joined through this process.
You might address this with a plan to spend time with those team members - a "re-onboarding". Doing this will help catch them up with what you wish you'd done with them in their onboarding first time around..
It'll increase team engagement and reduce staff churn. You will have eliminated a long term organisational debt.
Organisational debt is a concept that a founder at any stage of business growth can use. If you'd like some help understanding how organisational debt is holding you back, I'm happy to help.

#### Build #23 - The craft of company building
This year I’ve interviewed more than 50 founders about their experiences building businesses through the seed and series A stages.
I've been struck by two contrasting themes emerging about how founders perceive the growth of their business and the organisation that lies within it.
Art?
I've met founders and operators who see the emergence of a company as a practice akin to an art.
For them it's a creative endeavour, powered by instinct, emotion and imagination.
Or science?
And I've also met leaders who have taken a planned, methodical approach to building their companies.
They reflect on their company building experience as being about experimentation, analysis and the consistent application of logic.
Neither is entirely right and neither is entirely wrong.
I can see no discernible pattern of impact or effectiveness in building healthy companies between those two schools of thought.
Company building as craft
This got me thinking about company building as a craft.
As we look around us, how much of the world has been shaped by craftsmen and women from previous generations? Buildings, streetscapes, objects and even the design of many modern day creations carry the imprint of their expertise.
Most definitions of craft feature a combination of creative thinking, requisite skill and methodical application.
That's a good definition of what it takes to build a sustainable and resilient company too.
Company building strikes me as an undervalued craft in start-up culture.
Why think creatively when you can just roll out what worked at your last employer?
Why bother developing company building skills when LinkedIn promises you a lazy hack for just about anything in business?
Yet the best companies are those where founders have taken a deliberate, considered and mindful approach to building a business.
That's not to say they can't grow fast or pivot with agility if that's what's needed.
But throughout the rollercoaster of growth they are able to maintain the craft of company building.
Like the master craftsperson, they are intentionally shaping a beautiful, functional and elegant creation: a company that can thrive and grow with a soul of its own, but with the skilful handiwork of its founder evident over many years.
That craft of company building matters in building successful businesses. And so we should pay more attention to how founders can learn that craft too.
By learning from others, surrounding ourselves with their diverse wisdom, and committing to developing our own practice as company builders, we can grow thriving lasting businesses that embody our true craft.

#### Build #24 - Holding to account
I've been working with a product scale-up business to create the conditions for a culture of greater accountability in their business.
In one conversation we talked about what it really means to hold people to account.
It struck me that this is something that is much discussed in leadership. But there's little understanding what it means in practice.
It often conjures up mental images of a pseudo-legal, adversarial and combative process. A verbal joust that's designed to shine a light on under-performance.
But it shouldn't be like that.
Done well, holding to account increases clarity, creates opportunities for feedback and enables reflective learning.
And yes, it should feel a bit uncomfortable too. It will push beyond existing norms to help professional growth.
A process for holding to account
So to help my client see what I was talking about, I shared my 3Hs model for holding to account:
1. Have clear expectations
Holding to account starts with be able to set measurable and relevant outcomes. 
Ensure there's clarity on how a specific role contributes to what the business is trying to achieve.
Three to six clear outcomes seems to work well.
It's enough to capture the diversity of most roles, but not so many that it's impossible for someone to achieve them.
Make sure expectations are framed as outcomes, not outputs.
In a culture of accountability, people find ways to work out what outputs they need to deliver. In low accountability cultures, people are just told what to do.
2. Help people understand consequences
In accountable cultures people embrace being ultimately answerable. They appreciate the consequences of achieving or not achieving that outcome.
Encourage people to think about the consequences for their team, business, client or customer of hitting an outcome successfully.
What does you achieving that outcome mean for those groups? How will they be affected if you don't deliver against the outcome?
And for the person holding the outcome, what are the consequences for them of achieving or not achieving an particular outcome?
If an outcome happens, what does that mean for the individual who's been accountable for that success? What might it mean for them and where might it lead them?
Be careful about making overly extrinsic reward associations here. It's not that simple.
This isn't about generating unnecessary fear or threat if an outcome is missed either. It happens, but an accountable culture means expecting people to reflect and learn from the experience.
Over time, a pattern of not being able to deliver against outcomes is an indicator of a deeper issue. In my experience is usually down to the role, the team member or a combination of those two things.
3. Hold regular review conversations
Find ways of having honest dialogues about how it's going. Do it regularly and frequently.
If things are off-track, talk about ways that the person who's accountable might understand why and take action to make things better.
Ask open questions and encourage reflection. Resist the temptation to solve for them.
Support them to overcome the obstacles to delivering their outcome.
In summary
The 3Hs of holding to account is a simple, easy to remember process:

Have clear expectations
Help people understand consequences
Hold regular review conversations

By building it into your organisational cadence, you can help a more accountable culture emerge throughout your scaling business.

#### Build #25 - The real role of leaders
Over the past five months I've interviewed more than 50 founders in scaling businesses for a project I'm working on.
As I review the interview transcripts, I notice an interesting divide emerging in how founders see leadership.
Leadership as direction
The majority see the primary task of leadership as one of direction setting, although they execute this leadership through diverse personal styles.
Yet at its core lies a deep belief that the founder is the right person to establish and change direction for the business.
Founding a business is to create something from nothing more than an idea.
That founder has to deeply believe that they know something that others don't.
Otherwise someone else would have got there first.
Leadership as enablement
But a minority of founders I talk with see their leadership differently.
They see it as being about creating the conditions for others to take on leadership across their businesses. Distribution of leadership, not centralisation.
While doing this still has a directional aspect, it comes from a different place.
It embodies a commitment to realising human potential in a common cause - the creation of a shared endeavour that will succeed as a business.
However they lead, scaling can be a painful and uneven path to travel for founders and their teams.
Directive and concentrated leadership can give the reassuring impression of things being under control. At least someone knows what to do for the best.
But this sense of agency for those in leadership roles is illusionary.
A more sustainable and resilient business comes from quietly enabling distributed leadership.
Having the intellectual firepower of people throughout the business solving the right problems for their expertise and for the business is the secret.
It means being able to set a high level direction as a founder and then creating an organisation in which people can do their best work in service of that vision.  
It means relentlessly eliminating sources of friction that get in the way of this happening.
It means founders being able to let go of the archetype of the all-knowing leader and take steps to share power more equitably with their teams.
The long shadow?
As I look back over the hours of fascinating conversations I have had with founders, I wonder how this difference in leadership mindset shows up longer term.
Founders are reflected in their organisations long after they've moved on. 
How might they best lead to ensure it's a reflection their successors are grateful for?

#### Build #26 - There's no such thing as a growth hack
Recently a client told me I have a "no such thing as a growth hack" speech. 
She explained that on several occasions, I've pushed back when she's suggested a course of action that doesn't really reflect the reality in her fast growth start-up.
Thinking about this, I realised I do have a tendency to rail against things in scaling businesses that look like easy shortcuts.
This diagram does a great job of explaining why many formulaic approaches to business scaling are ineffective:

It comes from a brilliant book called "The Wiggly World of Organization: Muddling Through with Purpose, Courage and Skill” by Chris Rodgers.
My simple summary is:

Businesses are complex systems.
These complex environments are where founders or execs in scaling businesses operate.
Leadership means taking the best possible next step at each point in time given what a founder knows / feels / senses in the moment.
But when humans look back, they post-rationalise the steps they took with the benefit of hindsight.
They falsely identify a logic and rationality they didn't have in the moment.
Researchers take these post-rationalised experiences and look for patterns.
These patterns get codified into models that are attractive in their simplicity for people leading businesses.
But these models ignore the original complexity of the situations that leaders dealt with in the first place - so they are built on sand.

And that's why you should ignore prescriptive models for growth and change.
They fail to acknowledge the contextual and emergent nature of good leadership practice, pretending instead that life is rational and predictable.
Chris talks about the flawed nature of "their apparent promise of ‘if you do this, you’ll get that’ certainty, predictability and control". Amen to that.
That's not to say we can't learn from others' stories and experiences. 
I love hearing how other people succeeded or failed in the situations they faced.
But the abstraction of these experiences into models that ignore past context is where things go awry.
For founders who are scaling their businesses, the lesson here is about growth models that are too specific or formulaic.
If you're looking at a model that's promises "do this, get that", then that's something to be super careful about.
But models in business that are flexible and malleable can be really helpful.
They provide helpful scaffolding for our thinking about how to grow businesses. 
They help founders organise their thoughts and create clarity for their teams.
And that's all my founder client is seeking to do in her work. 
That's what I need to remind myself next time I reach for the "no such thing as a growth hack" speech.

#### Build #27 - Congruence is underrated
Many founders see themselves as visionaries. They hold their ambition for the future they will create and are strongly driven to bring it into reality. They see their energy and drive as core to the creation of a new business.
But I'm wondering if self-awareness and competence do more to sustain high performance over time.
That need for self-awareness is obvious when trying to build a team or company.
Every scaling business needs to have some parameters that describe how they want people in the emerging organisation to show up. That might manifests as statements around values, culture or behaviours.
Yet often I see a divergence between the future that founders want for their business, as articulated in such statements, and the reality that is emerging.
There's an insidious creeping dysfunction. It grows as the misalignment widens between what founders preach and what's actually going on day-to-day.
Founder actions speak louder than words. And teams notice dissonance.
Yet the "cult of the founder" remains a strong theme in start-up land.
The high profile unpacking of Theranos, WeWork and FTX has reinforced once again that much “cult of the founder” thinking contains more smoke than fire.
Hero founders don't reliably create healthy cultures.
Culture emerges from an interplay of forces, not a single brilliant yet uncompromising leader.
And dysfunction often stems from lack of congruence through decisions, skills, and systems rather than any single point failure.
Incongruence exhausts people and erodes standards over time.
The unsung work of achieving congruence comes through coaching, role modelling daily behaviours, aligning teams to objectives, and embedding best practices into norms.
Culture flows from an endless stream of small signals, not just big speeches and personality quirks.
There is no shortcut around earning trust and credibility through actions.
And finding that congruence consistently requires founders to develop their self-awareness skills.
Do their words match actions that are happening, both at the individual and organisational levels?
Do they walk the talk with humility, surrounding themselves with voices of reason?
Do team talents and incentives in their growing business fit the playbook, reinforcing the desired future for the business through genuinely shared beliefs?
Maybe when building businesses, specific tactics and leadership styles matter less than achieving this congruence between founder actions and words.

#### Build #28 - Books for leaders - my recommendations
I read a lot of business books. 
I've read some that were instantly forgettable. 
Yet some are so thought provoking and useful that I refer to them most months in my work as a consultant and advisor.
So here are the books that I most frequently recommend to clients:
Scaling people - Claire Hughes Johnson
This book dives into the messiness and uncertainty that happens after a promising start-up gets going and growth starts to plateau. Claire provides guidance on getting through this critical phase without losing momentum. 
Read it if...you are scaling a business or team.
Creativity Inc - Edwin Catmull
An unprecedented look inside Pixar's unique culture that has fueled iconic films. It offers an insider's perspective on how to foster ingenuity and collaboration in teams.
Read it if...you care about culture and how it affects teams.
The Messy Middle - Scott Belsky
A pragmatic guide for founders and leaders navigating the challenging phases of growth. Drawing on his experiences as an entrepreneur and investor, Scott offers candid insights into the unpredictable journey from startup to established business. Lots of practical advice on decision-making, resilience and adapting to change.
Read it if...you want to get deep into the practice of scaling businesses.
Range - How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World - David Epstein
An insightful exploration into how generalists and interdisciplinary thinking triumph in a specialised world. Explains how connecting ideas from multiple domains leads to creative breakthroughs. 
Read it if...you're designing structures or roles. Or if you're a generalist at work needing validation.
Exponential - Order and Chaos in an Age of Accelerating Technology - Azeem Azhar
A thoughtful analysis on exponential technological change and how leaders can adapt. Examines accelerating computing, surveillance, cannabis, China's social credit system and more. 
Read it if...you're developing strategy or are looking to understand technology-related risks and opportunities.
Working Backwards - Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
A behind-the-scenes account of Amazon’s working backwards approach to product development. Useful lessons from Amazon’s customer-centric culture that seeks perfection before solutions exist. See beyond the Bezos fanboy sections to get to the real insights.
Read it if...you're looking for insights on product or service development
Good Habits, Bad Habits - Wendy Wood
The book delves into the science of habit formation, offering founders and leaders some profound insights into human behaviour. It's a research-backed exploration provides practical strategies for cultivating positive habits, enhancing productivity, and fostering a thriving organisational culture.
Read it if...you want to better understand human behaviour and what that means for teams.
Alchemy - The Magic of Original Thinking in a World of Mind-Numbing Conformity - Rory Sutherland
I love Rory Sutherland. His book is an insightful reframe on the role of original thinking in business. He provides thought-provoking ideas on how to foster creativity and breakthroughs. 
Read it if...you want some ideas on building innovative cultures focused on inventiveness.
Brave New Work - Aaron Dignan
A classic on progressive organisational design. Aaron's book envisions a future of work that transcends traditional structures, with lots of valuable insights into fostering agility and adaptability within their organisations. Plenty of content on decentralised decision-making and human-centric workplaces.
Read it if...you need help to navigate the evolving landscape of work and leadership.
The Culture Code - The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups - Daniel Coyle
Uses groundbreaking research to delve into what makes some teams successful while others fail. It offers leaders practical insights on building cohesive, high performing cultures. 
Read it if...you lead a team.
Team of Teams - Stanley McChrystal
Learn from McChrystal's military experiences, gaining insights into fostering agility and collaboration as well as leadership in complex environments. This book challenges traditional hierarchical models, providing a blueprint for leaders seeking to build adaptive and high-performing organisations.
Read it if...you want to break out of hierarchical thinking in organisational design and leadership.
Corporate Rebels - Make Work More Fun - Joost Minnaar and Pim De Morree
A manifesto for injecting joy into the workplace. With real-world examples, the Corporate Rebels offer insights for leaders to create engaging and fulfilling work environments. By emphasising the importance of fun and creativity, they challenge leaders to rethink traditional approaches, making work not only productive but also enjoyable.
Read it if...you want to learn about new ways of working and widen your horizons as a leader.
Never Split the Difference - Chris Voss
This book translates hostage negotiation tactics into business strategies. Lots of practical techniques for negotiation and decision-making. Voss's insights, drawn from high-stakes situations, provide valuable lessons for founders and leaders navigating complex business environments.
Read it if...you want to improve your negotiation skills.
Good Strategy Bad Strategy - Richard Rumelt
The best book I've ever read on strategy. Good Strategy Bad Strategy clarifies the difference between effective strategic planning versus  goals and aspirations. Provides a clear framework for articulating strategy. Absolutely essential reading for leaders aiming to set strategic direction.
Read it if...you ever use the word strategy. In fact, just read it.
Lead Together - Brent Lowe, Susan Basterfield and Travis Marsh
Grounded in lots of practical examples (including my work at Deeson), Brent advocates for collaborative leadership models, fostering inclusivity and shared responsibility. Essential reading for founders and  leaders committed to building cohesive teams and achieving organisational success through collaborative leadership.
Read it if...you want to learn about alternative ways of working and models for leadership
Reinventing Organisations - Frederic Laloux
The OG - the first book I read about new ways of working. Envisions a new paradigm for organizational structures. By exploring teal organisations, Laloux challenges traditional hierarchies, offering a roadmap for leaders to create adaptive and purpose-driven workplaces. This book is a revolutionary guide for those seeking to transform their organisations but takes a bit of work to think through how the insights translate into practice.
Read it if...you want a primer on new organisational forms and ways of working.
Scale at Speed - Felix Velarde
Lots of practical insights into accelerating business growth, particularly in service-based companies. Actionable strategies for maintaining agility and innovation while expanding operations. Nice focus on empowering teams over top-down direction.
Read it if...you want a guidebook to scaling and building team capabilities.
Turn The Ship Around! - David Marquet
This book recounts a submarine commander's experience transforming a submarine crew's leadership dynamics. It shows founders and leaders how to empower their teams, fostering a culture of decentralised decision-making for improved performance. Lots of lessons on leadership and accountability.
Read it if...you want to level up your leadership, regardless of the kind of business you work in. 
The Positive Organisation - Robert E Quinn
A deep dive into why founders and leaders should take a positive leadership approach. By emphasising the impact of positive culture on employee engagement and business success, the book provides a roadmap for leaders committed to building positive and high-performing teams.
Read it if...you want to learn about leadership practice based on proven evidence. 
Humanocracy - Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini
Another new ways of working classic. Humanocracy makes the case for reinventing organisations to tap into human potential by putting people at the centre instead of control.
Read it if...you want to build people-centric cultures focused on trust and collaboration.
Leadership Unravelled - Mark Cole and John Higgins
Explores the multifaceted nature of leadership. A comprehensive guide that addresses the personal and professional dimensions of leadership, going well beyond the usual leadership tips that lack depth and thinking.
Read it if...you want a holistic understanding of leadership.
The Manager's Path - Camille Fourier
Aa practical guide for aspiring and seasoned managers alike. With insights into the various stages of a managerial career, this book equips founders and leaders with the tools and perspectives needed for success when managing people.
Read it if...you manage people or teams.
Who - Geoff Smart and Randy Street
A strategic guide to effective hiring. With a focus on making informed and successful hiring decisions, this book is essential for leaders aiming to build high-performing teams and drive success through effective talent acquisition.
Read it if...you hire people.
Team Topologies - Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais
For leaders and team managers to help them organise teams to optimise flow of information and make data-informed decisions on team structure. Any leader aiming to maximise their team performance should read this.
Read it if...you're designing organisations or teams.
Human Powered - Trenton Moss
I love Trenton's book. Practical tips aplenty for creating a workplace that centres on the human experience. Lots on collaborative problem solving, managing conflict and inspiring teams.  
Read it if...you want to improve team performance.
Executive Coaching - Catherine Sandler
A comprehensive guide to the art and science of psychodynamic coaching for leadership development. Shows how to leverage coaching as a powerful tool for personal and organisational growth. This book is a must-read for founders and leaders seeking to enhance leadership skills through effective coaching practices.
Read it if...you lead or coach people.
Mesh: A human-centric organisational design for a decentralised world - Gráinne Hamilton and Jen Kelchner
This book proposes a human-centric organisational design for the decentralised world. Focusses building adaptive and resilient organisations.
Read it if...you're (re)designing teams or organisations.
Emergent Strategy - Adrienne Maree Brown 
This is a transformative guide to organisational change. Brown's exploration of emergent strategies challenges traditional approaches, offering founders and leaders a fresh perspective on adaptability and innovation. 
Read it if...you want to increase creativity and responsiveness in your business.
Decision Maker: Unlock the Potential of Everyone in Your Organization, One Decision at a Time - Dennis Bakke
Aa compelling approach to decision-making that empowers individuals throughout a business. Shows how founders and leaders can create a culture where decision-making is distributed and collaborative. 
Read it if...you want to improve the quality of decision-making.

#### Build #29 - How role definition drives growth
This month I've been working on an interesting project helping a business define roles.
For start-ups moving into a scaling phase, founders often wrestle with this.
To be able to grow they recognise the need to better define the jobs to be done in the business in the future.
They also fear that doing this will constrain entrepreneurialism, reduce agility and lead to a culture of "that's not my job".
And they're right be have those fears.
Three traps of role definition
Many role descriptions fall into one or more of the classic three traps of designing work:

Activities not outcomes - reducing or eliminating a team member's autonomy to decide the best way to get their work done.
Now not the future - failing to provide the space for roles to evolve fast enough as businesses grow.
Badly designed boundaries - overlapping role boundaries can cause friction and reduce velocity, while gaps between role boundaries lead to process failures.

Poor role design makes it hard for people to do their best work for the business, reduces staff engagement and constricts growth.
Getting role definition right
So what's the best way to create role descriptions that avoid the traps and genuinely harness the motivation of people in a business?
The short answer - there is no single right or wrong way to do it.
But there are three important questions that every team member should be able to answer about their role in a business:

What's my contribution to the business?
How shouId I work with others?
How do I know when I'm succeeding?

If a role description enables someone to answer these questions, then it's probably fit for purpose.
I like to use accountabilities as the basis for defining contributions to the business.
This enables a clear thread from company purpose and mission through to every role in the business. The nesting of accountabilities by organisational layer makes those links super clear.
Using outcomes is a good alternative, but I've found outcomes tend to be framed in shorter timeframes. This means roles need to be redefined more frequently, particularly in fast growth businesses.
I also love collaborative role design (here's how I do that with leadership teams in growth businesses).
In the right cultures, the process of understanding together what work needs to be done across a team or business and then breaking it into roles can unite people around a single mission.
It improves mutual understanding of how roles interact and improves the quality of thinking about role definition.
Using role definitions in practice
You've crafted some wonderful role descriptions collaboratively with your team. So what next?
The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) has a nice little acronym about roles - GWC: 

G - Get it - is the role properly understood by a team member?
W - Want it - is it that something they want to do?
C - Capacity - are they actually capable of doing the role?

For most scaling businesses, using the role description as the basis for a conversation between a team member and their line manager is a good starting point. The goal for this conversation should be to establish a mutual understanding of what the role involves - do they "get it"?
This is a natural lead into a conversation to establish or confirm whether the team member wants that role?
And then the role description can be used to assess capability - and to inform a professional development plan to address any gaps in capability.
Doing this across all roles enables founders to get their teams aligned and focussed on the work that needs doing to accelerate business growth.
It can be a messy winding path to achieve that clarity, but it's one worth walking to unlock human potential to drive growth in a scaling business.

#### Build #3 - Power in scaling businesses
Power tripping. Power games. Power hungry. All too often we talk about power negatively in businesses.

But how we can use power to achieve growth goals is an opportunity for scaling businesses.

Businesses are complex systems. And power is our capacity to move energy through that organisational system. (h/t to Larissa Conte for that definition).

Everyone working in a business uses power - it's all around us as we work. It is contextual to a particular situation and time.

Power exists in the relationships that we hold with other people in businesses. This is where power moves from being a latent thing to being an active force in business growth.

Or in other words, to get stuff done at work we need to collaborate with other people. We hold relationships with those people and the power influences what goes on a lot.

To be more conscious of how we use power in business, we need to think about the different types of power that we have.

Way back in 1959 John French and Bertram Raven defined five types of power and then added another type a few years later:

Legitimate - where someone has the formal right within a system to make demands of others. They expect them to act in line with those demands. Traditional manager/subordinate relationships have plenty of this kind of power.

Reward - where someone can give a reward for taking a particular course of action or achieving a certain result. A CEO giving a bonus to an exec for hitting a goal is a classic example.

Expert - where someone has the capacity to influence because of skills or knowledge they have. Think of a deeply respected specialist in a business and they'll typically have lots of expert power.

Referent – a type of power where other people are drawn towards the holder of power. Think about someone in business with a clear vision or purpose that people are willing to choose to coalesce around - that's referent power in play.

Coercive – this is where someone has the power to use punishment or threat to get others to behave in a certain way.

Informational – where someone shares or withholds information they have to influence others.

Think about the role you have in your business. You should be able to identify which sources of power you have a lot of and which you have less of.

But what does this mean for businesses that are scaling?

To set a business up to scale there are some important things to do to ensure we use power to support scaling:

Recognise how formal and informal power exists in the business. Go beyond the structure chart and think about how things really get done.

Have open conversations to surface the types and uses of power you have going on in your business. Think about how they relate to organisational values, culture and the experience you want staff and customers to have.

Set power boundaries so people use power towards the business's goals. For example develop clear decision-making processes or governance structures. These provide clear boundaries for people using power in their everyday work.

Traditional organisations use hierarchy as the primary means to manage power. The concentration of legitimate, reward, coercive and informational power increases towards the top of the organisational pyramid. Power is typically seen as a finite resource to hoard and protect.

Progressive and agile organisations find ways to define different types of power structures. These distribute power more evenly across the business. They recognise the value that this brings. They see power as a limitless source of potential for growth in their people and business.

There's no single right way to do this. What's important to enable rapid scaling is finding ways that work for your business. And recognising these ways of managing power will evolve on the scaling journey.

The alternative is an unhealthy organisation that lacks power boundaries. This absence of boundaries leads to inadvertent or sometimes deliberate misuse of power.

If you don't formalise power structures, you'll end up with informal ones proliferating. These will soon become a drag on scaling the business.

Set boundaries for the use of power in a way that is appropriate for your business. Do this for the organisation you are now and and the organisation you want to become as the business scales.

Talking about power is nothing new.

In 1924 scholar and polymath Mary Parker Follett's wrote:

Genuine power can only be grown, it will slip from every arbitrary hand that grasps it; for genuine power is not coercive control, but coactive control. Coercive power is the curse of the universe; coactive power, the enrichment and advancement of every human soul.

She sees coactive power as a positive source of growth.

More recently we've seen this thinking developed into a paradigm of "power over" to "power with" at work. Check out this useful one pager from Brene Brown:

The "power with" paradigm is how scaling businesses can turbocharge growth. It's how you can tap into the latent potential of people, wherever they are in the business, to help achieve rapid growth.

Decentralising power and sharing it amongst team members is a start. Set them boundaries for what it's ok to decide on and what process you want them to follow when making a decision.

Make discussions about power and consciously using it part of your organisational narrative. Done well, this opens up growth mindsets and provides more fuel for the business to push forward.

Core concept - power

An individual's capacity to move energy in the organisational system through the relationships they hold.

Questions to ask now

How do your senior leaders think about and work with power?

Think about your top two or three goals as a business. What types of power are necessary to achieve these goals and who has those powers now?

When something goes wrong in your business how does it get resolved?  How  does this reflect how power is used by people in the business?

#### Build #30 - Pastiche in business
I had an initial conversation with a founder recently that stuck with me.
The founder told me in detail about the company they were creating.
They reeled off several different initiatives and features they'd implemented, proudly highlighting the provenance of these achievements.
Old favourites like dedicated time for innovation ("we've got Google's 20% time") and a multi-disciplinary team structure for product delivery ("we've used Spotify's squad model") both featured.
As a brief aside, this is a great post about why "The Spotify model" isn't quite what most founders think it is. 
Back to my founder chat. As I reflected on a sense of unease I felt after the conversation, I began to realise why.
The founder was convinced that by grabbing at well-publicised initiatives and features and putting them together, they'd end up with an effective company.
That's just not going to work. It's superficial thinking.
It's the equivalent of hitting the ready meal aisle in Tesco and buying one of every pre-packaged dish you can lay your hands on.
You'll end up with what looks on paper like a delicious and varied menu to enjoy over a couple of weeks. But what you've really got is a pretty unhealthy mix of ultra-processed, high salt, high fat dishes that doesn't add up to a holistically balanced diet.
The founder hadn't taken the time to think about what their start-up really needed and then devise ways of meeting those needs.
They had assumed that because if it worked for Google/Spotify/Amazon/whoever, it'll be right for their business.
It won't.
At best those solutions worked for those businesses, at that time.
They won't work for your business, right now. Every company is unique and so needs unique solutions to their growth challenges.
I'm a big fan of learning from other companies and founders. 
Every story you hear about something that's really worked or an initiative that's failed is a source of learning.
But use that learning critically. 
Think about what's behind the choices that company made then:

What's similar to your context and what's fundamentally different?
What does this mean for how to solve the problem you have in your business?
How might you solve your problem with original thinking, not pastiche?

#### Build #31 - Where do brilliant teams come from?
If we look at the great teams in the worlds of sport and business, it’s clear they don’t happen by accident.
Creating a team that’s able to consistently perform at a high level takes time, effort and intention.
Teams need a clear purpose, a shared vision and to be set up so that every team member knows their role in achieving that vision.
That’s the theory behind team design in a nutshell.
Think about a car gearbox. It’s a set of perfectly engineered cogs that interlock with each other precisely. There’s very little friction between the cogs, they run super smoothly and the gearbox performs efficiently. Minimal energy is wasted.
But in the real world, designing and recruiting brilliant teams is more tricky than making a gearbox. Every team starts with a group of people. Yet we often design teams as if they are gearboxes. We define jobs like cogs in the gearbox and then expect people to fit into them precisely.
We forget that each of us is a unique human being. We rarely slot neatly into a role that’s described within a team. And even if we do, our skills and attitudes evolve over time in response to the environment we’re in and the people that we’re working with.
So if we treat creating a team in business just like an engineer building a gearbox, we’re going to struggle. Yet not taking that deliberate approach to building a team risks wasted time and energy, lack of focus and dysfunction.
The answer lies in being able to design teams in a human-centric way, bringing the right people into those teams and then finding ways for them to self-organise to achieve the goals the business needs.
This approach balances the art and science of bringing people together to work. It keeps team members engaged in their work and harnesses the intellectual brilliance of unique individuals in service of a shared ambition.
I’ve helped many high growth businesses to build the teams they need to scale. When I reflect on that experience, there are three areas where things go wrong:
1. Getting role design wrong
The building block of a well-designed team is the role.
When designing teams we need to break down the work that needs to be done into coherent groupings of activities. Those groupings are the roles that we then hire people into.
It’s simple and most founders know this. Yet they rarely get it right.
2. Not paying enough attention to the recruitment process
Once a team is designed, it’s time to start hiring into those shiny new roles you’ve just created. And now’s the time when reality hits: people don’t fit neatly into roles.
When hiring into teams at scale, it’s really important to think about the process you’re going to follow. What stages do you need? Who will make decisions at each stage? How does this process fit with your scale-up’s culture and behaviours?
3. Not onboarding new hires properly
The third area where I’ve seen scale-ups struggle is how they bring new people into the business. This is a formative stage in the journey to create new teams.
There’s a peak of emotional engagement with the new business for many new hires at this time. That’s an opportunity to lay down foundations for a deep and long lasting relationship between the business and the new hire.
Yet often onboarding processes are too functional. They only focus on the basics of contracts, equipment and system access. And sometimes even those elements aren’t delivered competently. I’ve seen too many people start work without a laptop or even not being able to log onto the company’s systems.

I've written a much longer article for my friends at Screenloop about how to tackle these problems in practice and create brilliant teams in your scale-up. Check it out here.

#### Build #32 - Ten questions for founders
Last month I spent five days on a coaching course, developing my skills in that side of my work. Self-reflection is a big part of any coach’s journey.

The skills to be able to step outside yourself and observe objectively is one worth honing.

Which got me thinking about founders and self-reflection.

I thought about the questions I discuss with founders regularly in my work.

And the founders I’ve worked with will be super familiar with versions of these 10 questions:

What’s the single sentence that describes your strategy and why it’s differentiated?

What problem/s are you solving in our work and who are you solving them for?

How are you shaping the culture of the company you need to build?

Can everyone in the business tell me their own goals, how they relate to the company’s goals and how they’re doing against their goals?

What are the five simple metrics that you and your leadership team look at regularly?

As founder, are you playing on the pitch or managing/coaching from the sidelines?

How systemised is your approach to selling and how predictable are the results that approach delivers?

What’s your established pattern of leadership team meetings and 1-to-1s that give the business strategic and tactical cadence?

Are all roles in the company clearly defined with the right people in the right seats for this stage?

Are you hiring for today or tomorrow?

Taking a few minutes out to reflect on these questions pays back. Every time. The answers point to the next problem to solve for founders.

#### Build #33 - Grow your company like it's time to sell (even if you're not selling)
I was chatting with a founder friend recently. 

He's been running his tech product business for more than a decade now and it's doing ok. They've got around 30 employees, steady but not spectacular growth, and a solid enough product.

But as we talked I sensed something wasn't quite right. I sensed a new lack of drive and a growing tone of exasperation with the business.

After a bit of gentle questioning he confessed "I'm fed up. It's time for a change. I'm thinking of selling". 

And then he went on to expand on what that meant in practice: "But now it's a mad scramble to get things sorted. There are so many things to get tidied up all at once."

Reflecting on our chat, I began to wonder….why do founders wait until they're ready to sell a business before getting things in order?

What if they built their companies every day as if they might be sold the very next?

Valuations and discount factors aren't just for sellers

Many of the things that maximise valuation when selling are the same things that make for a well-run, successful company.

Pulling on that thread, let's think about what potential acquirers really look for:

Consistent financial performance

A strong management team with minimal founder dependence

Scalable processes

A diversified customer base

Competitive differentiation in the market

A clear long term strategy for growth

That sounds to me like a founder's wishlist too…regardless of whether they actually intend to sell.

When valuing a business, buyers always look for reasons to pay less. These are things that are called "discount factors" in the M&A jargon.

But addressing discount factors isn't just about increasing a sale price. 

They're (mostly) the things you should do anyway to building a robust, efficient business.

A buyers wants to see management accounts with predictable revenue and profit. They want to see tight management of cashflow and get a sense that financial data's being used to run the business, not just a monthly glance in the rear view mirror.

If they spot a business relying too heavily on a few big clients, that's a red flag. And for founders it should be the same. 

During growth, it's easy for some customers to grow fast. That's often a driver of your overall growth and is an inevitable part of scaling. But keeping an eye on revenue concentration and the risks it might pose is vital when building a resilient business.

And if your business relies too heavily on you or a few key team members, that's a problem. Documenting processes, cross-training staff and building systems that reduce this dependence is at the heart of creating a business that can continue to exist without your founding energy.

Acquirers want to know the long term plan. Where's the value once the deal's done? 

That's where a clear multi-year strategy and shorter term roadmap with actionable projects comes into play. Without that long term plan, your valuation will be lower.

But now's the point where I need to contradict myself just a bit.

What about taking risks? What about reinvesting in growth rather than maximising profit? What about taking a calculated bet on a new feature?

How do these things sit with running a business like it's about to be sold?

The answer is they don't. 

Like all good rules, there are exceptions.

There are times when running your business like it's perpetually for sale isn't the best move.

Sometimes it might be right to invest heavily in new roles ahead of revenue, dragging margin down in the short term. If it's the right thing for the long term, then ignore my advice.

Or taking a bold step to launch something new? A sale-ready founder might shy away from this, but through a longer term lens those big bets are exactly what's need.

The key thing here is learning to balance both perspectives. Build a business that's healthy, efficient, and valuable - but not at the expense of growing and innovating.

So how do founders find the sweet spot between these seemingly opposing viewpoints? Here are four things I discuss with founders I work with:

Always build strong foundations: Strong financials, efficient processes and a differentiated value proposition are always good business.

Build for scaling: Even if you have no plans to sell, design your organisation and structure as if it could run without you. It'll make your life easier, your team happier and your business stronger.

Stay flexible: Don't let valuations rule your world. Be willing to make strategic investments or take the calculated risks when the time's right. Respect the value of your instincts on these calls.

Regular check-ins: Schedule a regular cadence by doing periodic "sale readiness" reviews. They'll keep you honest, highlight areas for improvement and allow you to take a different perspective on what's important right now.

Running your business like it's time to sell doesn't mean you have to sell. It means building a company that's valuable - to you, your team, your customers and, if the time's right, future buyers too.

It's about creating something that could stand and thrive on its own, even if you stepped away. There are few things in life that are certain, but whether you sell to a buyer or hand over the reins to someone else, I guarantee you that one you will step away.

Are you building a business that's ready for anything? Or are you waiting until the "for sale" sign goes up to get your things in order?

As a founder the choice is yours, but having worked with plenty of founders I know which approach I'd be going for.

#### Build #34 - The real role of leaders
I had a thought about leading a business as a founder having listened to a podcast recently

Your real role as a business leader is to know when to:

 step up,

step in, or

step out

Stepping up makes space for others to lead.

Stepping in stops a spark becoming a bonfire.

Stepping out to disconnect proves you’re creating a sustainable, long term company.

This perpetual dance is what makes leaders.

They’re intentional in choosing the move they’re making. They have conscious actions, behaviours and rituals to execute their chosen step.

And it’s rarely a sequence of the same steps.

So what step do you need to take today?

#### Build #35 - WTF is an operating model?
I tried ​googling to learn about operating models​.

I waded through the hundreds of complicated consultants’ charts that said so little in so many slides.

I found myself reminded how I feel when I get drawn into a discussion about wine.

Everyone has an opinion. Most people are bluffing.

And there’s always someone who claims to be an expert but can’t quite explain why.

A bit like choosing wine, getting your operating model right can make the difference between successful scaling and a gnarly hangover.

I digress. Let’s get back to operating models.

What isn’t an operating model?

Maybe we can shed a bit of light on what an operating model is by ruling out some things it’s not:

an operating model is not an organisational structure

an operating model is not a process or standard operating procedure (SOP)

an operating model is not your business strategy

an operating model isn’t a roadmap for action

an operating model isn’t outsourcing or partnering.

That gets a few common areas of confusion off the table.

A simple definition for an operating model

So what actually is an operating model then?

Strip away the consultant-speak and things become a lot clearer.

Your operating model is simply how your business runs day-to-day to create value.

It’s the connective tissue between your vision, strategy and execution - a blueprint that shows how decisions get made, work gets done, information flows, people collaborate, and resources get allocated.

It’s how work happens and value gets created.

Think of it as like your company’s central nervous system.

When it works well, signals flow smoothly, responses are coordinated, and everything functions in harmony.

When it doesn’t, you get the business equivalent of a cheap red wine headache.

Signs of an effective operating model

If your operating model is in good shape, you’ll notice (or maybe even take for granted) things like:

Decisions happening at the right level of decentralisation, by the right people, at the right speed. You as the founder aren’t a bottleneck, and teams move forward confidently with authority and autonomy.

Information flows freely but doesn’t overwhelm. People have the relevant context they need without drowning in Slack notifications or emails.

Your resources (usually people, money and time) get deployed where they create the most value.

Your teams understand their priorities, can make good trade-offs and access what they need without friction.

Problems getting solved close to where they happen. Teams are empowered to handle issues without everything escalating to leaders or the founder.

Everyone understands how their work connects to the big picture company goals. There’s a clear line of sight from daily tasks to bigger objectives.

Failing operating model symptoms

And watch out for these symptoms of an ill-fitting operating model:

Decisions bouncing around or get stuck in endless discussions.

Too many meetings about meetings (pre-meets, post-meets etc).

Teams are unclear who owns what.

Good ideas die before or during execution.

People feel blocked or frustrated (leading to higher employee churn)

Everything needs founder input.

Simple things take forever.

Different parts of the business feel disconnected.

Teams optimise for their self-selected goals at the expense of others

New hires take an age to become productive.

In my experience, if three or more of these sound familiar, your operating model probably needs attention.

Developing your operating model

The key is to think about your operating model as a living thing that needs regular attention, not a one-time exercise. As you scale from 10 to 100 people, you’ll likely need to revisit and refine it several times.

When delivering operating model projects it’s super important to keep things simple.

Start small. Pick one area of your business to pilot changes. Then learn and iterate before rolling out more widely.

The more collaborative your approach the better. Your teams probably know where the problems are better than you. Get their input and buy-in early.

Don’t copy operating models from other companies without context. Just because a model worked for Spotify or Google doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. Context matters.

Be culture-conscious. Your operating model needs to work with your culture, not against it.

Don’t over-engineer things. Keep your model as simple as possible. Complex models create their own problems.

Unlike your expensive wine, your operating model isn’t something to keep locked away.

Share it, discuss it, and refine it with your team. The more people understand how and why things work the way they do, the better your operating model will work for you.

And if you’re still not sure where to start?

Like a bottle of wine, sometimes you just need to open it up and try it.

I only ever recommend one book for clients that want to learn about operating models - ​Operating Model Canvas​ by Andrew Campbell, Mark Lancelott and Mikel Gutierrez.

Remember, the goal isn’t perfection – it’s about evolving an operating model that helps your business scale efficiently while maintaining what makes it uniquely special.

#### Build #36 - Being more mycelium
Late Autumn is my favourite time of year to get out running in the woods near our house.

I love the combo of the near freezing temperatures, a clear blue sky and the colours of autumnal leaf fall.

On one of my regular routes last week I spotted that an animal had been digging a lot under the trees. Among the muddy mess it had exposed a dense root network that's normally hidden beneath the undergrowth.

My curiosity was piqued just a bit so when I got home I did a bit of research (and I admit…a useful distraction from writing an academic essay about coaching practice).

It turns out that the roots I spotted are something known as mycelium.

And the more I read, the more interested I became.

My wife tells me I'm at risk of getting a bit boring as I approach 50 and I fear you may now be thinking the same. I get that but please bear with me.

Mycelium is fascinating.

I learnt that it's an underground web of funghi that connects plants, trees and lots of other forms of life in the woods.

It’s not just holding the forest soil together. It’s facilitating communication and resource sharing among plants and creating a thriving ecosystem.

The parallels with working as a COO screamed out at me and started a thread of thinking.

So strap in and hold tight for my four "be more mycelium" observations for company building founders.

1. Foundations and connections

Mycelium spreads beneath the surface in the woods, connecting trees and enabling nutrient flow.

In the same vein, a good COO is a connector of the dots within your company.

When you're scaling everything can quickly get chaotic and feel out of control. That’s where a COO steps in. They establish processes and ensure lines of communication work well across teams.

A good COO makes sure everyone’s on the same page, just as that clever mycelium ensures that all the plants it connects are getting just the nourishment they need.

2. Managing resource

I also learnt that mycelium is a master of resource management.

It breaks down organic matter in the soil and redistributes the nutrients where they’re needed most.

It acts like the super efficient ninja traffic manager of the forest, making sure that each plant gets what it needs to thrive.

As a founder, who's really thinking about your teams and resources as you scale up?

A good COO helps you optimise these resources and thinks several steps ahead. They'll identify bottlenecks, streamline processes and ensure that every team has what they need to get their stuff done.

3. Fostering growth

Now, let's not forget about growth as I disappear further into this world of funghi-related fun.

Just as mycelium facilitates the growth of trees, leading to a healthier ecosystem in the woods, your COO is all about pushing for growth in your scale-up.

They’re not just a process obsessed number-cruncher; they’re proper horizon-scanning strategic thinkers.

A great COO will analyse data, sense shifts and spot trends to help you scale sustainably.

This is the kind of growth that mycelium encourages within the woods —it’s not just about adding more trees to your forest; it’s about making the whole woodland ecosystem balanced, healthier and thriving.

4. Cycles of change

And here's something else I found fascinating (last one, I promise).

Mycelium helps ecosystems heal.

When a dead tree falls over, the mycelium network springs into action. It breaks down and recycles the dead organic matter, creating resources that are used for new growth elsewhere in the network.

As businesses scale, change is part of that journey. Systems, processes, teams and activities that used to be a vibrant, healthy part of the business can become obsolete. Sometimes COOs need to clear away some of that dead wood that accumulates.

Rather than seeing that as a loss on the journey, founders can benefit from thinking about how to capture and recycle the energy that's gone into these now redundant parts of their scaling business.

#### Build #37 - Teams, bonding and zombies
Last week’s fungi-related ponderings elicited a good few suggestions about personal consumption of mushrooms, alongside the more usual work-related responses I tend to get.

Today I bring you a quickfire look at the three most interesting things for company builders that I’ve spotted recently:

1. Better bonding​

The FLUX Review has an interesting take on bonding in teams, distinguishing between cold bonding and bond strengthening. Cold bonding is about creating connections where none exist while bond strengthening deepens and enhances existing relationships-

My take: A useful lens when thinking about bringing workplace teams together for the first time or when onboarding a new member to an existing team. Consciously designing employee experience for pre-existing bonds (or their absence) can help accelerate effectiveness.

2. Towards self-managing teams​

Lisa Gill shares a useful graphic on three shifts that teams need to make to dial up self-management. I enjoy Lisa’s podcast Leadermorphosis and her writing, so if you want to learn about progressive teams and new ways of working, check her out.

My take: The three shifts Lisa highlights aren’t just relevant to self-organising teams. I’d venture they’re relevant to anyone that’s building a workplace for 2025 not 1985.

3. Slaying zombie management ​

Michele Zanini has been on a conference panel. He’s highlighting three popular management concepts that need to be laid to rest: control through rules and standardisation leads to better performance, change should be engineered and that leadership is related to organisational role.

My take: I’m 100% with this. Michele talks a lot of sense and I’ve loved his thinking since first reading Humanocracy. His examples illustrate the points well and it’s worth noticing what you notice in your company once you’ve read his thoughts.

#### Build #38 - The joy of work
I'm collaborating with a co-founder on a new venture.

It's been a while since I've spent time at this formative stage of a business…thrashing out the basics of ideal customers, their problems and better ways to solve them.

We were grappling a bit with the "why" part of my B3 toolkit - being able to articulate why each of us really wanted to do the hard miles to bring a new business into existence.

That forced me to think about my own "why". What was it that our new venture was really about?

And the answer came down to the relationship between joy and work.

When I reflected on the moments in my working life when work has felt best, it's been when there's real joy in the activity I was doing or what it was leading to.

Joy at work is about feeling genuinely alive, engaged, and fulfilled by the activities you're doing and the impacts of what you do.

It comes from being able to express your own authentic talents, motivations and creativity in the service of something that you personally find meaningful and motivating.

And joy is much more than just superficial happiness at work.

It's an internal sense of energising flow and connection with your own intrinsic motivations.

Joy at work means finding a profound alignment between the activity of work itself and your core values. This alignment boosts motivation, productivity and life satisfaction.

I know at this point just a few of you have already concluded that I'm going a bit wu wu. But bear with me, please.

At times leaders, very much including me, become preoccupied with things like KPIs, OKRs, ARR, and EBITDA - dehumanising abbreviations and numbers that can crowd out human perspectives from businesses.

Rarely is there enough attention paid to the very human experiences unfolding within scaling businesses each day. The subjective feelings, mindsets, and personal journeys of employees get overlooked.

Any scaling business is simply an organised collective of individual people collaborating together to achieve a shared goal. It's not a machine where the individual parts are homogeneous, replaceable and predictable.

Each person brings their own hopes, struggles, motivations, and need to find joy and meaning through their work.

When leaders zero in so intensely on structures, systems and metrics at the expense of the lived individual experiences playing out within, It's a missed opportunity . Both matter for successful scaling.

As we head into 2025, I invite you to recognise how the success of organisations and the individual experience of work within are intimately connected.

Nurturing joyful experiences at work universally helps engagement, retention, quality of work and a whole load more besides.

I'm really clear. Joy at work is not at odds with scaling success, but the integral catalyst for achieving it.

And with that understanding in mind, what might need to change for you or your business in 2025?

#### Build #39 - leading, urgency and restructuring
I’ve got three things I spotted recently for founders in scaling businesses:

1. Reorganisations aren’t the answer​

Colin Mulholland explains why the restructure is often the wrong tool for many of the problems that founders need to fix in their businesses. But using them as part of a mix of changes can be effective, as long as as they sit alongside a deeper rethinking of ways of working.

My take: I recognise a past failing of my own here. Early in my managerial career I relied too much on restructuring to try to fix problems in teams. Colin sums up nicely the approach I’ve since come to believe in. A short piece and worth the two minutes it’ll take out of your day.

2. Urgency and the ROI on reflection​

This article from the team at The Ready talks about the danger of working with urgency alone. Scale-ups are invariably moving at pace, but if that comes at the expense of deep learning from what’s gone before it can be a fool’s errand.

My take: As a coach self-reflection is strongly baked into my practice. In businesses I work with I try to create opportunities for leaders and teams to look back and learn from their experiences together. This article does a good job of explaining why you should do that and the value it can give.

3. Respect over popularity as leaders​

I like this old HBR article as it nicely sums up many of the traps that leaders can fall into. It sets out the tension between a natural human desire to be popular and the need for leaders to do what’s necessary, not popular.

My take: Leaders spend their lives managing tensions and trade-offs. Accepting that doing the hard thing is the right thing and then delivering on that with grace, integrity and focus is what sets good leaders apart.

#### Build #40 - the two types of problems for growth businesses
Founders are natural problem solvers. Creating a business from nothing means spotting and solving problems, over and over again.

In my work, I often talk with founders about the distinction between problems to solve and problems to work on.

Problems to solve are the ones where you can identify and treat root causes. With focused analysis and decisive action in response, you can make changes and the problem goes away.

In contrast problems to work on are those where you’ll never reach a final resolution. They’re open-ended, wicked issues that lack clear root causes and perfect solutions.

When dealing with a problem to work on, rather than aiming for a permanent resolution, your goal is to apply sustained effort to continuously make incremental progress on the issue.

Things go awry when leaders mix up the two types of problems.

Treating a problem to work on like it can be solved for good just leads to wasted effort, often creating a load of undesirable unintended consequences for the business.

So how can you identify what type of problems you’re facing in 2025?

For more straightforward solvable problems, you’ll find the constraints, rules and parameters tend to be relatively stable and well-understood. Often the problem is confined to a single process, system or team.

There’ll be a lot that seems familiar. Teams will be able to reference previous experience and patterns from their prior work as they get to the bottom of what’s going on.

But if trying to map out the causes, effects and dependencies for a particular problem makes your head spin, it’s likely it’s a problem to work on rather than a solvable issue with cleaner boundaries.

Problems to work on tend to be highly complex, with many interrelated factors and stakeholders involved. They’re pretty resistant to linear cause-and-effect analysis. The terrain keeps continually shifting as new variables and unexpected obstacles emerge over time.

If it feels like the goalposts keep moving, it’s a strong signal that you’ve got a problem to work on. That’ll need sustained iterative effort rather than a one-and-done fix.

When I’m consulting with founders, I often ask about their company’s track record with the issue they’re facing.

I’m looking to see if they’ve already cycled through multiple “solutions” that might have given some short term relief before the issue resurfaced in a new way. That’s a classic sign of when the problem needs to be seen as one to work on rather than solve once and for all.

The other thing that I’m looking out for is when a problem starts off appearing solvable, but then reveals itself to be more wicked over time.

These can be the most insidious situation for a scaling business - founders deploy scarce time and attention on finding the elusive “solution” when in reality no such fix exists. Instead sustained management and re-evaluation is what’s truly required.

So as you set priorities for the start of 2025, make sure you think about the types of problems you’re solving before getting started.

#### Build #41 - FOMO, decision-making and failing on culture
Here are three things I spotted recently for founders in scaling businesses to think about:1. ​Zola’s decision-making method​Often when debating decisions extroverts tend to dominate the discussions, while people with differing opinions sometimes feel silenced. This article explains how Zola uses a structured voting and debate process to make big decisions. Their approach adds genuine diversity of thinking to their decision-making while building team unity.My take: I talk a lot about decision-making in my work. In fact this post was one of the most read from Build in 2023. But often it’s hard to know what this looks like in real life, so this article is helpful to show a real decision-making process in action.2. How to fail at influencing culture​Business orthodoxy suggests that devising strategy, planning, executing, measuring and correcting happens in neat cycles (who’s doing annual planning now?). But in reality life moves on faster than those cycles can happen. Geoff Marlow argues the only solution is embedding a culture of ongoing change, tightly coupling sense-making, decision-making and action.My take: I love Geoff’s writing and thinking. In this piece he neatly nails four ways that businesses attempt to but fail in shaping their futures: “they all fail to focus precisely enough and deeply enough on ensuring that the actual key influencers in the organisation”. Keep that top of mind when thinking about change.3. FOMO at work​Fear of missing out (FOMO) happens when people miss events involving people they value. It comes from perceiving missed opportunities for bonding and concerns about how this could damage future relationships. People get more FOMO when they miss events that could have led to stronger bonding, even if the event itself seems unenjoyable - for example a funeral - suggesting that FOMO stems from anxiety about potential social costs rather than just missing a fun time.My take: This caught my eye as I was doing some work on a governance structure for a client. It got me thinking about why people wanted to be part of the various forums that we are developing. Sometimes it’s not for the obvious or articulated reasons. That meant a need to think about how to create other opportunities for the bonding that people outside the forums felt they were missing out on.

#### Build #42 - the atomisation of work
I’ve been noodling around with thinking about the future of work since first reading Reinventing Organisations by Frederic Laloux back in 2014.

Laloux’s “Evolutionary-Teal” paradigm started my journey to challenge much of what I’d learnt about organisations and management in my career before then. Teal organisations are characterised by self-management, integration of the whole self at work and serving wider interests beyond profit alone.

There’s a consistency between Laloux’s thinking and the work that Hackman and Oldham did back in the 1970s on what makes job roles motivating and engaging in the first place.

Their job characteristics model suggests five dimensions to create roles that are motivating for people at work:

Skill variety: The degree to which a role requires a range of activities and skills.

Task identity: The ability to complete a whole, identifiable piece of work from start to finish.

Task significance: The perceived importance and impact of the work being done.

Autonomy: The amount of freedom and discretion someone has over how they perform their role.

Feedback: Clear information about how effective someone’s being in that role.

That’s been a good starting point for organisational design for a long time now, but I’ve been reflecting on how that might be changing.

The growth of remote work, recruitment challenges and a generational shift in attitudes towards work have led to more work happening beyond the scope of traditional employed roles. Platforms like Fiverr, Upwork and Toptal are the most visible signs of this trend.

In my work with founders, I’ve noticed this greater atomisation and externalisation of work becoming a stronger driver of how organisations and processes are set up. Externalised atomisation offers a level of agility and flexibility that can be invaluable for rapid growth.

Breaking down work into more specialised tasks means that founders to tap into a global freelance talent pool through platforms and direct relationships.

But I’ve also seen the downsides where a lack of stable core team in a business leads to problems creating organisational memory. This can usually be handled through greater focus on how knowledge is captured and held in a business, but I sense a deeper issue at play here.

As work becomes more atomised and parcelled out to specialist freelancers, what does that mean in the context of Laloux’s thinking?

The positive view might be that they are focussing on work on their terms, able to integrate their personal and professional lives on their terms and explore their professional passions, freed from the shackles of traditional management.

On the flipside you might see greater worker exploitation, less security of tenure and mental health challenges through managing repetitive work without relevance to some wider purpose.

For founders building companies I think there’s a delicate balance to strike.

We build organisations to achieve things that we can’t achieve alone.

But if those organisations are overly dependent on loosely attached freelancers, they feel fragile and lacking the longer term deep human relationships that underpin longer term collaboration, creativity and the development of novel ideas.

In practice there’s also a hidden overhead. The management cost of overly atomised work is something that often gets overlooked in growth businesses. It just takes more time and effort than most founders think.

And as I think about the job characteristics model I wonder how greater external atomisation affects employee motivation.

My sense is that it reduces work to a far more transactional status and even with the best intentions that has a negative effect on quality of the work and the experience for the person doing the work.

Many growth businesses are highly dependent on retaining key knowledge workers. In that context my instinct is that the demotivating effects of excessive atomisation outweigh any efficiency gains.

The harder but long term better path is to conceive organisations that enable Laloux’s vision of work and allow individuals to act with autonomy, making meaningful contributions to the future of the business.

The trend towards atomised work is undoubtedly part of this, but the externalisation of this work may be a second order concern.

Finding ways to atomise work in a way that’s consistent with the Laloux’s thinking and the criteria that Hackman and Oldham developed feels like a good place to start in 2025.

#### Build #43 - organisations, mirrors and founder mode
Here’s your weekly dose of thought provoking links, curated to help you take a different perspective on building your company:

1. Organisations are mirrors​

An old article that James Gairdner’s recently updated that looks at the relationship between founders and the organisations they lead into being. He uses the thinking of Elliot Jacques to explore how the human faultlines that are inherent in us all can become transposed into the companies we found.

My take: I love chatting with James and debating themes like this. He takes a more academic lens than I tend to. His writing takes a rock solid academic base and creates space for deeper reflection on founders, leaderships and growth in business.

2. Hourglass organisations​

An interesting look across an oft-debated topic - the role of middle management in organisational design. Perry Timms comes from a people leadership background and explores the changing demands on middle management from the complex, networked context in which those managers operate.

My take: What grabbed my attention was Perry’s point about Gen Z in the workplace and how there’s a generational shift in aspirations related to management. He got me thinking about what this means for the way organisations are designed and how we shape the experience of work for future generations.

3. Activate founder mode​

Last year a memo by Paul Graham started a debate about the role of management in growing businesses, with the usual post-hoc rationalisation of individual experiences into generic wisdom. Michael Wolfe’s piece builds upon the original memo with a thoughtful and more considered look at different modes of leadership and their relationships with agility.

My take: I like the nuance in Michael’s piece. He captures the practical challenges that founders face in modulating their leadership approach depending on the issue they’re tackling at the time. His exploration of why a growing scale-up isn’t a small version of a large business is insightful (h/t to Tim Deeson for sharing this link with me).

#### Build #44 - a tightrope between predictability and agility
I’m fascinated with the enduring tension between seeking predictability and embracing agility in growth businesses.

It’s a classic tightrope for founders to walk. What shows up as agility in the early days of a business doesn’t scale well.

Add 50 people to an agile 25 person business and you usually end up with a sh*tstorm of a chaotic 75 person business.

Conventional wisdom encourages founders to reach for process, policy and structure to help create predictability.

And so once again the double-edged sword gets swung, risking choking off the founding spark and energy that has got them to this point.

The answer is to think about where predictability adds value and where it doesn’t.

Where you’ve worked out how to do something effectively, that’s where you need effort to systemise it.

Taking a systematic approach means putting in processes to ensure consistency in operations, delivery and decision-making. It helps ensure that mistakes aren’t repeated, quality is maintained and you can add headcount without causing chaos.

Being deliberate about where you want predictability or agility is the key thing here.

Be explicit about where you value having a defined and predictable operating system. Go for “minimum viable process” and be willing to iterate process regularly. Create clear de-centralised ownership for parts of your operating system.

Drawing lines around the zones of predictability in the business means then you then can think about where you want a bit of agility.

There are always areas where you want less predictability, giving greater space for people to explore new concepts, ideas and ways of doing things.

Decision-making is important here too.

Without conscious effort, decision-making gets increasingly centralised as headcount grows.

When a company is small, decision-making is typically held by a small group around the founder (and sometimes solely with the founder/s themselves).

Add more people without being clear about what decisions you expect them to take leads to an enduring centralisation of decision-making.

You’re cementing the habits of those heady early days into the culture of the growing business. That’s not a good thing.

It often shows up in the business as decisions bottlenecking with the founders, a nagging feeling that the organisation is lacking its former pace and a building sense of frustration among newer team members.

And I want to sign off with a little reminder. Agility is not the same as chaos. It really isn't.

Agility adds value and creates opportunity. Chaos saps energy, loses you good people and hurts your business.

Agility needs founders to create the right conditions for it to emerge. Chaos is often the result of a failure to plan for agility.

#### Build #45 - People, sincerity and status
This week’s pick of three interesting things has a people and relationships strand running through it. I won’t claim that’s by any kind of inspired intention...they were just the three most interesting pieces that made it on my shortlist for this week:

1. Your people are your worst asset​

Joe O'Mahoney has an interesting post about the relative importance of people and systems in the scaling phase of business. He argues that an over-emphasis on people, and in particular individuals, as founders grow their businesses can be counter-productive. He suggests that creating systems is more important to building a scaled business than building around individuals.

My take: This is something I 100% agree with. When scaling a business, it’s important to build out an organisational system that’s as independent as possible of the people who work within it. As Joe says, the priority needs to be turning the knowledge and experience people in the business into an organisational asset that can outlast any individuals working there.

2. Sincerity and longevity in relationships​

People typically assess the value of relationships by how long they last, but this article explains why longevity alone can be a poor measure of value. It suggests that sincerity - the willingness to be present, open, and engaged - can be the most influential factor in a relationship, regardless of its length.

My take: The FLUX Review is always good value for a thought provoking read. Their piece on sincerity and longevity in relationships got me thinking about the nature of relationships that are formed through work and how they can fall into one of the four categories set out in the article.

3. Desiring status ​

Status in organisations is a big deal, even in organisations that claim it’s not. This study has a fascinating insight that people with lower view of their own status are less likely to praise others for their work or contribution. The real gem is that by not praising others, they actually lower their own status - whereas if they’d acted against their intuitions and given the praise, they would have actually raised their own status.

My take: This got me wondering about leaders who struggle to give praise or credit to others. I’m hypothesising that being armed with this insight might give them an extra push to recognise others, thereby enhancing their own status as a leader.

#### Build #46 - the case for curiosity
Our life experience shapes who we are and the way we work.

It strongly influences the way we perceive those around us and our interactions with them.

Yet we rely too much on our experience and this leads us to make flawed decisions. Psychologists Emre Soyer and Robin Hogarth have a great book about this called The Myth of Experience.

While I was reading The Myth of Experience, I was struck by a distinction it drew between two types of learning environments.

A “kind” learning environment is where there are predictable, recurring patterns. It’s often quite constrained or structured.

That means that when you make a change, the result or feedback from that change is pretty immediate and obvious.

In a business setting this might be a checkout at a supermarket - where the variables are quite locked down and everyone knows the rules of the game. If you change something you can predict what’s going to happen pretty reliably.

But those kinds of environment are pretty rare in start-up and scale-up businesses.

Instead we’re dealing with what Soyer and Hogarth call “wicked” learning environments.

Here a lot of the information that we need to understand the impact of a change is hidden.

The impact or feedback from a change is often subject to a long time delay, infrequent, confusing or simply non-existent.

That sounds like pretty much every day for founders growing their businesses.

So as I work with founders to navigate wicked learning environments, I observe them doing so with differing degrees of success.

I notice that those founders that thrive are relentlessly curious about what is happening in and around their businesses.

They create a culture of curiosity where little is taken for granted.

Unsaid assumptions are dragged into the daylight, challenged and tested. Previously accepted thoughts are looked at with fresh eyes and new perspectives.

And there’s solid academic research that backs up what I see in my work with founders too.

The very best founders learn when to do deploy curiosity to avoid getting overly stuck on a particular decision.

They know when to accept prior wisdom and move on. And they develop a sense of when it’s time to dig deeper and be curious about what’s really going on.

My absolute favourite way of putting this curiosity into practice is the “five whys”. It’s super simple yet always yields new insights.

Get the right group of people with diverse perspectives together around a particular topic or problem, ask the “five whys” and you’ll get a new perspective to help you navigate that wicked learning environment.

Be willing to listen and explore your business from new perspectives.

One founder I work with diarises “learning walks” with his team members. This creates space for different dialogues that explore things that the founder hasn’t seen or has made ill-informed assumptions about.

And it’s great for engagement too. Team members feel genuinely listened to and it shapes a culture where different voices are valued.

So my challenge to you is to take a few minutes today and reflect on your use of curiosity.

What assumptions have you made this week so far that might have benefitted from more curiosity?

Have you created meaningful contexts in the rollercoaster of scale-up growth for curious exploration?

And how might you signal to team members that curiosity-led challenge is valued and welcome in your business?

#### Build #47 - place, governance and the ego toll
A quick canter through three interesting things I spotted this week:

1. We are shaped by place​

Jindy Mann explores how place shapes who we become on our journey through life. Through the lens of his own experience, he considers how the contexts in which he has worked and travelled might have shaped the people he met along the way.

My take: I love Jindy’s writing. It's beautiful. It never fails to transport me outside my normal worldview and see something from a new perspective. As I reflect on this piece and my work, I consider how in the era of homeworking and RTO mandates we need to consider the spaces where people work more deeply. We don’t think enough about the environment people work in and how it affects them.

2. Governance in beta​

Scott Sherbin has written about governance, exploring what life might look like if we challenged the unwritten, deeply embedded norms about what it’s like to be part of an organisation. He looks at the relationship between governance and trust, recognising most governance starts from a place of distrust.

My take: This really got me thinking. In growth businesses very few people get excited about governance. And if they do, it often ends up being boiled down to a few meetings or a board terms of reference document. By doing that we miss the opportunity to consider governance as a set of guardrails to enable people to exercise greater autonomy in their work.

3. The ego toll on change​

An article by John Cutler about the relationship between change in businesses and individual identity. He asks why what look like easy fixes are rarely as easy as they appear on the surface. He suggests framing as growth vs rigid mindset as a way of unlocking the potential for change.

My take: This stood out to me as it made me think about the stories we tell at work - the way we thread together narratives in everyday conversations and the set piece moments. We need to be mindful of the need to save face and protect identity, combined with an awareness that our understanding of the identity of others is limited by our own self.

Over the past few years I’ve become increasingly convinced that it’s the hidden, under the surface stuff about us as humans really differentiates the businesses we create. These three articles play nicely into that belief.

#### Build #48 - why you need a BOS
I’ve worked closely with founders in growing businesses since 2014.

Over those years I’ve noticed a few patterns that hold true almost everywhere.

One is about the founder’s ability to devolve the right to make meaningful decisions.

The sad version of this pattern is where the founder holds decision-making power close and doesn’t really enable others to genuinely take decisions.

As the business hires good people into leadership roles, they work out pretty quickly that the only way to get stuff done is to be close to the founder.

They endlessly second guess what the founder would say.

Their energy goes into jockeying for influence on the founder, not actually leading the business.

Messy politics abound, frustration builds, growth slows and the most talented newly hired leaders quickly get the picture and leave.

The happier version of this is where the founder recognises the need to create a system that allows them to spread decision-making more widely. They do this to help people stay focussed on goals, working autonomously with the protection of clear guardrails.

This is where a business operating system (BOS) comes in.

A BOS comprises the essential concepts, tools and disciplines needed to build and run an effective company.

Usually a BOS in a growth business will cover:

vision - a compelling big picture vision that people want to get behind

goals - a way of setting long and short term goals that ensures alignment

customers - a clear understanding of what you’re selling and to who

people - high performing, capable people in well-defined roles working effectively in teams

structure - an organisational structure that’s right for the work to be done

process - standardised ways of working that balance predictability with space for autonomy

meetings - a cadence of effective meetings to oversee and steer the business

data - reliable numbers that drive insights and action

The right combination of these things, consistently implemented over time, will turn a founder-dependent business into an enduring and founder-independent company.

Two of the most well-known business operating systems are the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) and Scaling Up.

They’ve been around for a long time and give founders comprehensive frameworks and tools to share decision-making and leadership widely.

EOS was developed by Gino Wickman. It’s based on combining vision with traction and emphasises getting the right people in the right seats, developing a strong vision, creating priorities through rocks, quarterly and weekly meeting rhythms and has a useful process for solving issues.

Verne Harnish’s Scaling Up BOS was based on his work studying strategy and execution practices of successful entrepreneurs. It focuses on setting priorities, achieving quarterly wins, using data for accountability and having an adherence to proven processes (spotted a theme yet?).

I tend to take a fairly progressive view on how companies should run, which means some of the more hierarchical aspects of EOS and Scaling Up don’t work for my natural approach. They come from an era where top-down control remained a management theme, which feels antithetical to enabling genuine accountability across a business.

One of my favourite business operating systems that has been developed more recently is System & Soul. Functionally it does much of what EOS or Scaling Up will give you, but it does this through a human as well as organisational lens. It feels much more relevant to the kind of businesses that most progressively-minded founders want to build.

I’ve implemented plenty of systems over the years, but it’s extremely rare to do an implementation of something like EOS or Scaling Up straight out of the textbook. There’s always business and founder-specific context that means some element of the BOS needs to be customised.

Creating and embedding a custom BOS takes time, but even the early stages of instilling new ways of doing things can have a really positive impact. I advocate a implement early and often approach, with tight testing and learning loops. That’s the best way to come up with the system that’s right for your growth stage, people and you as a founder.

Getting it right allows founders to gradually step back from the day-to-day. The company’s purpose, values, goals and ways of operating are codified, allowing new joiners to understand and navigate their new role more independently.

A robust BOS enables more decentralised decision-making while still keeping alignment of teams to the overall vision and strategy.

This means founders can spend more time working on the things that have the greatest impact and are important to them and their passions. It enables scaling beyond the capacity of the founder to be personally involved in every decision.

So if you recognise the signs of my sad pattern of founder delegation, maybe it’s time to consider creating a more coherent BOS for your growth business?

#### Build #49 - coaching, measuring and disaggregating work
Hope your week’s going well and you’ve got a little corner of brain space for three interesting articles I spotted recently:

​1. Measuring knowledge work is hard​

Cal Newport has an interesting article that segues neatly from Elon Musk through management by objectives to its modern day counsin OKRs. The common thread is the challenge of measuring the unmeasurable - how knowledge work is inherently unmeasurable, despite a lot of effort to prove otherwise.

My take: There’s a lot in this to consider. OKRs have become the go-to methodology for tech businesses trying to gain top-down alignment to a common mission. In my experience, their effectiveness depends on the way they’ve been implemented and the wider organisational culture. They’re not a magic fix for employee disengagement or a lack of clear vision.

​2. The separation and reaggregation of work ​

The way happens is changing radically - traditional full-time jobs are becoming disaggregated and reallocated to a portfolio of solutions, human and technological. This article explores the drivers behind this trend such as remote work, demography, the gig economy and AI-enabled efficiencies. Rishad argues we need to adapt by rethinking org structures, leadership and personal career strategies to thrive.

My take: like Rishad Tobaccowala’s podcast and this article is a good summary of the thesis behind his new book. For founders this article is good food for thought on how the nature of work is shifting and how they need to reflect this as they scale up their operations.

​3. Dialling up the coaching in your leadership​

My Extra Brain collaborator Cath Brown has a nice article about how coaching can help leaders develop a more effective style, holding reflective space for deeper insights. She simplifies a lot of the noise around what coaching really is and helps provide some simple steps that any leader can adopt to increase their impact.

My take: As a coach this really resonated with me. I liked the way Cath disassembles some coaching confusion and provides practical advice that any founder can adopt with their teams or customers.

#### Build #50 - the journey so far
Today’s Build has a slightly self-indulgent feel.

I’m taking a look back over the last 50 issues of my newsletter for founders. I was going to title it “the greatest hits” but I bailed.

Build began in November 2022 as an exploration of how businesses can scale better – becoming sustainable organisations for the long term, not grown too fast upon weak foundations.

Then as I went independent in January 2023, it became an opportunity to capture learnings, reflections and use writing as a means to think through interesting problems that I was working through.

Twelve months into my independent COO life, I decided it was time too look back at some learnings from my last employed role. The passage of time gave me the chance to take an honest look at what I’d really learnt. The six themes really resonated and sparked off a couple of intense days in my inbox and WhatsApp.

Looking at the analytics, my article on accountability from February 2023 was particularly well shared and I remember a few interesting email discussions coming from this one. It’s a good primer on what we really mean by accountability - something a lot of people talk a lot about, but about which there’s little common understanding.

Decision making is tightly bound up with accountability. My article about “deciding on deciding” played out particularly well on LinkedIn as I unpacked a bit about the need to be intentional in how decisions are made in growth businesses.

And the logical next step from accountability and decison making is being able to hold people to account for their work. This is an area where so many founders go wrong, either failing to hold people to account in any meaningful way or going in far too hard. The real kicker is founders who oscillate unpredictably between these two modes. My article attempts to provide some clarity about how to do this better.

Another commonly misused word in my world is operating models. In fact that’s two words. This article has been shared a lot as a simple explanation of a concept that’s shrouded in consultant BS.

Friction is also a word I notice myself using a lot in my work helping businesses scale. An early article from January 2023 looked at the two types of friction and why they are important for scaling founders to understand.

Problems are things that founders think about a lot. I wrote this article because I observed that founders need to recognise different types of problem and engage with them differently.

But the article I still get asked most about is my exploration of why founders don’t always make the best CEOs for their business. It’s a fascinating topic, bound up in leadership theory, founder identity, ego and all sorts beside.

I love an evidence base for my work, so back in mid-2023 I did a big research project talking to more than 50 founders in scaling businesses about their experiences. As well as underpinning my B3 framework, this research also helped inform a favourite piece of mine about company building being an undervalued craft.

Back in December 2024, I was working on the formative stages of a new venture that ended up as actualise.work. This article about the joy of work generated a lot of debate and reinforced some themes for me as I took on a new fractional COO role.

And more recently I’ve written about the importance of having a business operating system that works. This feels like the logical next step to be able to apply the thinking behind the B3 framework. It gives a tangible form to what founders need to be able to run their growing businesses effectively.

Sometimes my writing efforts have felt more on the contrived end of things. This piece was my attempt to draw parallels between ultra running and leading scale-ups. Through the lens of greater writing experience, it’s one that probably needed more work before I hit publish.

Autumn 2023 was a time when I experimented with formats for Build. This one on the real role of leaders feels a bit over-simplistic and lacking in the depth that I value. I think I was trying to be more LinkedIn but ultimately I learnt to write what I think, not try to ape the style of others.

I find writing Build a pleasure. It gives me space to explore, share and debate the things that echo around my brain across the many plates I spin. I’m very grateful for every person that reads, subscribes, shares, comments and contacts me about my writing.

Next week normal service resumes. If you’ve got a topic you’d like me to explore, just hit reply or find me on LinkedIn.

best regards,-sw

ps looking back through my writing, I stumbled across a piece I wrote back in 2020 as the pandemic just started to bite. It was a reflection on the agency MD role I was exiting at the time. Looking back it’s a lovely summary of my leadership philosophy and it’s as valid today as it was back then.

#### Build #51 - rebuilding better, BOS design and discomfort with feedback
After the joys of last week’s look back at 50 issues of Build, normal service resumes today. Here’s my round-up of the most interesting things I’ve read recently:

1. Rebuilding better​

Michele Zanini explores some high level directions that might be taken in rebuilding US government organisations after Musk has wreaked havoc. He recognises that refreshing organisations involves a certain amount of trauma, but that trauma needs to be targetted and not last too long.

My take: What caught my eye here was the point about inevitable organisational trauma arising from change and the need to properly think about what follows it. Michele’s examples provide some useful progressive case studies from beyond the narrow tech-centric framing of much organisational design thinking in the start-up space.

2. Designing operating systems​

An article exploring the core components ofr an effective business operating system, including context, possibilities, intent, action and mechanisms for aligning and integrating these elements over time. It explores how these become more complex and fragmented as a business scales, requiring more explicit processes and artefacts to keep coherence across groups.

My take: This article from the brilliant John Cutler is a useful deeper dive into some of the practical theory behind business operating systems. It’s the kind of stuff that most founders don’t think about (and if they have a good COO / integrator they probably don’t need to).

3. Feedback discomfort​

A piece from Gustavo Razzetti about why giving or receiving feedback should involve a degree of discomfort - and why we shouldn’t shy away from this. He argues that feeling is the price we pay for professional growth.

My take: Candid feedback was something that I found difficult for a long term. Since I went independent, I’ve become much less uncomfortable with giving and receiving feedback. That's something I remain curious about, but I’ve really since seen the impact it can have in unlocking new thinking and behaviours in those I work with. It’s also something I see many clients struggle with, despite their stated desire to give better feedback.

#### Build #52 - the grip paradox
Many years ago I remember a founder in a company we acquired. He was charismatic, bright, forceful and outwardly hero leading his business.

But once we stripped back the layers, we saw toxicity, dysfunction, an unhealthy culture and a failure to spot and get hold of the real issues holding it back.

We’d uncovered a leader without grip - a performative leader who seems to be taking superficially plausible actions. But in reality they’ve not got a true grip on the things that matter to the business.

They prioritise appearance over substance, leading to a creeping deterioration in the company’s growth and longevity. Being good at managing appearances means they can get away with this for a long time, sometimes not being found out until a lot of deeper damage is done.

I’ve realised that being able to project a polished image, deliver well-rehearsed lines and outwardly show bags of confidence is often be mistaken for leadership.

Performative leaders like this surround themselves with people that say yes. They create an echo chamber that insulates them from constructive criticism and alternative perspectives about their business.

Being a leader with grip isn’t a one player game.

Leaders with a true grip on their businesses seek out and value alternative thinking.

They bring together individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences and viewpoints. They embrace constructive dissent and encourage healthy debate, recognising this leads to better well-informed decisions.

Leaders with grip don’t sit in their office or hide behind their laptop either.

They actively engage with frontline operations, regularly interacting with employees, customers and stakeholders.

This helps give them the deep understanding of the day-to-day realities of the business they need.

Once they’re armed with this perspective, they’re astute in their judgements about which of those realities need their attention.

They connect the dots between now and the future, thinking several steps ahead and then translating this into clear context and direction for the business today.

They live for learning and are open to the new.

They are curious and eager to expand their knowledge. They seek out opportunities for professional development, new perspectives and demonstrate curiosity well beyond their role and their business.

Leaders who have a true grip understand market conditions, customer needs, and industry disruptions as second nature.

Their confidence in this understanding means they’re willing to confidently pivot strategies and approaches. They navigate complex challenges better and grasp emerging opportunities faster.

But don’t mistake grip for control. Leaders with grip don’t overly or directly control.

They can loosen and strengthen their grip according to context. They empower team members and live for a culture of accountability.

They set clear expectations, provide resources and support and hold individuals accountable for delivering results.

Sometimes they know they need to lean in and grip more, while other times they see the signs of a team member thriving and loosen their grip.

Deep down they get the grip leadership paradox: being a leader with ultimate grip is to fully let go.

Creating a thriving team that’s running their business with confidence and competence is the ultimate demonstration of their grip as a leader.

 

#### Build #53 - reflective leadership and organisational containers
Today I've got three interesting founder-friendly links worth your time:

1. Four keys to leading today​

Not another leadership article, surely Simon? In this one Rishad Tobaccowala sets out what he considers important leaders in 2025 through four components.He explores these areas in some depth and provides a refreshing candidness about what good leadership really looks like in the new era of work.

My take: Regular Build readers will know I'm a big Rishad fan. This piece cuts through a lot of bland leadership platitudes and gives plenty of food for thought for founders as they lead growth.

2. Organisational structure — container or constrainer?​

James Gairdner has an interesting and in depth exploration of the role of organisational structure in rapid growth businesses. Through the work of Elliot Jacques he lifts the lid of what's really going on as founders wrestle with the structures of their growing businesses.

My take: This article is worth reading because it looks deeper than many pieces that concern themselves with organisational design in scaling businesses. James encourages founders to think about issues like conflict, confusion or bottlenecks - and whether they are simply operational things or representative of something deeper going on.

3. Why leaders should engage in reflective practice​

Yep, more leadership. This article explains in some detail what reflective practice means in the context of leadership. It makes a strong case for why leaders should reflect more and how this can help them improve their effectiveness.

My take: My coaching studies last year taught me a lot about reflective practice. I love Hayley’s newsletter articles as they balance well-evidenced techniques with real-world pragmatism. This one’s worth ten minutes of your time to understand more about why thinking about yourself will pay dividends.

Next week I’m back with a longer piece looking at why your lovely outcome-focussed goals for 2025 might not be doing you any favours.

#### Build #54 - avoiding OKR fails
A couple of years ago I was being asked to do a lot of work to help founders with objectives / key results (OKRs).

That led me to investing my own time and money in becoming a Workboard accredited OKR coach.

And what I learnt on that course led me to question the value of OKRs in the founder-led growing businesses that I work with. I'm sure that wasn't their goal with the course though.

If we zoom out a little, it’s worth remember that OKRs are a tool to achieve alignment and cadence in a business.

In theory they help manage the tension between a top-down direction for the business and enabling autonomy for individuals and teams to align their work with that centrally set direction.

I’ll say this now: OKRs are only a tool, they’re not a solution to achieving alignment.

And they’re not the only tool for achieving that alignment either.

I’ve seen a lot of OKR implementations that look OK superficially, but aren’t actually achieving that much.

Why OKRs can fail in start-ups

For founders at start-up or early scaling phase, rapidly evolving priorities are the biggest source of OKR disruption I see.

One month you’re super focused on user acquisition. The next, you need to pivot an entire business model after an unexpected bomb drops.

What’s going on here is a misalignment between the pace of the business and the quarterly OKR cadence.

Priorities shift rapidly, so the OKRs and quarterly goals get irrelevant too quickly and are disconnected from the founder’s priorities.

Teams end up constantly pivoting to work on initiatives that weren’t captured in the original OKRs.

Organisational immaturity is also a typical characteristic in those early phases. Teams are in constant flux - expanding, reorganising and firefighting. The effort needed to properly cascade, track and evaluate OKRs across the entire company often exceeds the benefit they give.

Amongst the day-to-day chaos that most start-ups have, it’s understandable that OKRs easily get deprioritised.

They never get tightly operationalised into clear processes and responsibilities, because that’s not what the start-up needs at that stage.

There also a more human point about why start-ups shouldn’t be using OKRs.

As a founder you’ll tend to push your teams hard. OKRs can add unrealistic stretch goals into teams that are already on the edge of what they can cope with.

Why OKRs can fail in scale-ups

For founders entering a scaling phase, I’d advise you to be on the lookout for some different OKR pitfalls.

With bigger teams and more established processes, your main issue is likely to be goal proliferation.

Under a “textbook” OKR implementation, you’ll find that OKRs and goals multiply into a quagmire of objectives. Often the focus is disconnected from your make-or-break priorities as a founder.

I’ve seen teams get caught up chasing metrics that look impressive in theory but don’t actually move the needle on the few things that matter most for growth.

This misalignment stops your teams concentrating enough energy on priorities - it’s a classic “busy work” error.

Short sighted execution of OKRs can also be an issue. That’s when your teams become so fixated on checking boxes off for their OKRs that they miss the emerging signals that their chosen approach is failing.

These might be things like changing customer needs, a shift in the competitive landscape or just plainly implementing the wrong thing.

How to get cadence and alignment right

In my work helping founders steer their businesses, here are my top three alternative approaches I’ve helped people succeed with:

Quarterly priorities: Rather than getting bogged down in cascaded OKRs and metrics, simply defining and aligning the entire company around two or three clear priorities each quarter.​Leaders can help by showing how these priorities are relevant to their teams, while recognising that not everything can be a priority all the time.​This works if the founder or leadership team knows and can articulate the small number mission-critical things that need to be done that quarter.​

Strategy roadmaps: I’ve helped founders with clear strategic thinking build roadmaps that visually map how each team’s projects and workstreams roll up to the high-level strategic objectives over time.​It’s clear, focussed and nicely timebound.​My preferred approach is a 12 or 24 month roadmap with either one or three month increments, depending on the pace of the business.​

Mission metrics: Another approach I’ve had some success with is to define and align around a small set of high-level mission metrics for the entire business to get behind.​Teams then plan what they can do to shift those metrics.​This works best in operationally simpler businesses where there’s a clear line of sight between the metrics and the work of each team. Where this link isn’t clear, this approach goes a bit pear shaped.

The key thing I work on with founders is finding a goal-setting approach that balances focus and alignment with the operational flexibility to capitalise on opportunities.​The approach has got to be right for that business, the founder and the maturity of the organisation.

#### Build #55 - valuable voices, mining metaphors and storytelling skills
This week I’ve got three fascinating articles that grabbed my attention plus a quick recap from last week’s issue:

​1. What you see is what you get…​

Geoff Marlow has a nice piece on how we use organisational metaphors in business. He explains how the use of four dominant metaphors can affect the emergence of organisations, often without much conscious thought about how this is happening.

My take: I’m a big fan of metaphors in my work with founders. They provide an accessible basis for thinking about the impact of so many of the decisions that have to be made in scaling a business.

This article is a timely reminder of the impact of the metaphors we use on the businesses we build.

​2. Why great stories sometimes start at the end​

This article by Nathan Baugh as it teaches founders about story telling skills. The stories founders can tell help shape culture, establish norms and create directional alignment among teams. And the greater emotional connections they can make in those stories, the greater impact they have.

My take: I read Nathan’s newsletter every time it drops. This piece is particularly worth sharing because it gives a nice practical framework for founders to think about when constructing and telling stories in their work.

​3. How to protect the voices your organisation needs the most​

Founders often struggle to get a good read on what’s really going on as their companies scale. There are more people, there’s more going on and power dynamics mean people don’t always give founders the raw honest truths they need to hear.

This article by Gustavo Razzetti explores this issue and provides a few practical ways that founders can deal with it.

My take: I chose this article for Build as it suggests a range of easily implementable ways to help address an issue that founders are often blind to (whether consciously or wilfully).​Not all the things Gustavo proposes will be right for every scaling business, but I’m confident it’ll provoke some interesting thoughts.

And finally…

…you might have missed last week’s Build where I shared a longer-than-usual look at OKRs and how founders can achieve alignment in their scaling businesses.

I’ve got mixed feelings on OKRs and have had some good feedback on the alternatives that I’ve been using with some clients that I shared in the article. Check out the full article here.

ps as a little side project over Easter, I made a free short email course about my journey from being a corporate exec to the world of fractional working - as I get asked about that a lot nowadays. If that’s of interest, you can get it here.

#### Build #56 - systems over goals
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about goal setting and why OKRs aren't the only game in town for founders to help get things aligned during rapid growth.

Since then I've been questioning myself more on this. Implicit in that issue of Build was that goals are actually valuable. But what if that assumption is faulty?

What if goals are just guesses about what we want to happen, just like many plans are works of fiction that don't actually survive contact with reality?

I've since settled on the view that goals aren't inherently bad. They help set a sense of direction.

But we do lean on them too much. We project our wildest aspirations through goals that are unrealistic in actually helping people get the right stuff done.

The heavy lifting of making something happen in business actually comes from the small, repeated actions that add up to big changes over time.

That's where systems come in.

By systems I'm not talking about tech. I mean repeatable documented steps, rituals and habits that we use to make stuff happen.

Putting one foot in front of the other, over and over and over again, to move in the right direction.

In other words, systems represent the controllable elements of the journey you need to go on.

And that's why they can work better than goals for many people. Because done right they give a sense of agency to people at work, rather than the vagueness of goals alone.

I've seen most success with this kind of "systemisation" using checklists on short cycle times - daily, weekly or monthly at the longest. Checklists keep the system steps tangible, short iterations keep up the momentum.

They're habit forming, are more flexible than relying on goals alone and keep teams focussed on actions and immediate results - rather than long term big goals.

I'm not dismissing the value of the BHAG. That sets direction and ambition. But systems provide the tangible form of the journey to get to the goal.

Goal = the destination. Systems = the vehicles that'll get you there.

Both matter.

#### Build #57 - Leadership, competence and the value of simplicity
In last week’s Build newsletter I looked at why systems win out over goals. This week it’s time to share three of the things I spotted recently that deserve a moment of your time.

1. Coaching and accountability in leadership

Timothy Clark has a useful post on leadership, accountability and coaching. He sets out that as a leader, your main job is to help people grow. To enable this you need to give transfer ownership and critical thinking. The main way you help that happen is through coaching and accountability. His 3x3 matrix is a useful tool for leaders to be more deliberate.

My take: There’s so much leadership content around that I tend to skim over most of it. But this caught my eye and really got me thinking. It resonated because it captures simply the nature of leadership and gives clarity about how to lead people effectively in different contexts.

2. Your circle of competence

Here’s a useful model from Farnam Street which sets out how we all have areas of expertise called our “circle of competence”. This is the zone where we operate with an advantage. We need to recognise the limits of your competence and avoid straying beyond them into places where others have the edge.

My take: I like this model as it’s a useful frame for discussions I have with founders to help them grow their self-awareness. The model enables them to more honestly appraise their own competence and see how other leaders might fit into their growing business. This also works well in team building and coaching settings

3. Why smart people miss obvious fixes

Chris Laping talks about dealing with common problems in businesses. His premise is that focussing basic, obvious advice is usually the answer, not complicated solutions.

My take: 100% yes to this. As a founder it’s easy to get too close to the problem you’re grappling with. You know the backstory too well, you’re close to the details and it’s hard to zoom out. When things feel overly complicated, maybe that’s your cue to find a way to simplify and get a new perspective.

I rode my bike for 135 miles on Sunday. I love the reflective time cycling gives me. Next week’s Build will be about something I realised on my ride - that as leaders we too often over-estimate our own significance in outcomes.

#### Build #58 - Words matter
Hey there,

You might know I became an ICF qualified coach last year.

I was surprised me that a lot of the coaching course (and homework) was about self-reflection.

Learning coaching was as much about me my coaching.

It meant time spent thinking about me: the ways I listen. How I react. The words I use. The non-verbal cues I give.

I learnt that my words have a big influence on the mental models of those around me.

And doing that hard work has definitely made me more self-reflective overall. I notice myself much more now (phew, that’s getting a bit meta).

Anyway, a couple of weeks back I noticed I’d slipped into a habit of using words that didn’t sit well with me.

Let me explain.

I work with founders. Most of the time, growth of one sort or another is on the agenda.

I noticed that in my conversations with founders I’d started saying things like:

“When I was an MD I grew the business from £x to £y turnover”

“As a COO I led growth from x to y employees.”

And I felt deeply uncomfortable as I realised the effect those words had on the person I was talking with.

The lazy choice of words implied causation.

They suggested that it was (almost) exclusively my input in those roles that led to the growth.

That’s just not the case.

I was in the right place to be part of the leadership teams in those businesses at the right time.

And we were lucky that our best efforts and hard work coincided with opportunities that led to growth.

I had plenty of influence and used my skills and experience as best I could. But did I cause the growth? Nope.

Through a poor choice of words I was setting founders up to subconsciously believe that they alone could cause growth as a leader.

Despite what much LinkedIn hyperbole would have you believe, that’s just not how it works.

The words matter. The emotions and concepts they evoke create mental representations that colour how we perceive the world around us.

Words influence self-talk, anxieties and confidence levels.

The narratives we construct directly shape mindsets and approaches.

I realised this was about more than just being precise with my words.

It was about taking responsibility for the impact my communication has on those around me.

It’s about being intentional in creating empowering narratives through my choice of words.

That’s it for this week. What resonates for you?

#### Build #59 - Resistance to change, busy work and a team conflict hack
Once again Wednesday is with us, so I bring you the three most interesting things to cross my path this week:

​1. Why is change hard?​

Steven Schlafman’s essay takes a deep dive into change and why humans find it hard. He walks us through models of change, some flaws in the model thinking and some reflections on where the root of resistance to change might be found.

My take: A good deal of leadership is about setting the conditions for change to happen, so understanding what lies behind resistance to making change is valuable. It’s a long read and takes a couple of passes to really land, but Steven’s piece is worth the investment.

​2. Behaving as if you were trying to succeed

This article from David Maciver is a musing on a situation where someone focussed their attention on the job at hand, rather than outcome that job was meant to lead to - or as he puts it “People doing things as if the thing itself was the point… and not thinking about whether their actions will actually in any way help them achieve their goal.”

My take: This resonated with me as it hit my “busy work” sensitivity! It does amaze me how many people I see doing something because “that’s what they do” rather than understanding what the outcome is and why it matters. It’s the role of leaders to articulate those things in a relevant or engaging way. And if they can’t? Maybe it’s time to stop doing that thing?

​3. Dealing with conflict in teams ​

My fellow Extra Brain founding partner Damian wrote about his experience of dealing with conflict in his team. He shares a simple framework that helped him get his team to deal with conflict themselves and to reframe the nature of conflict.

My take: I liked this as it’s a simple, easy to deploy technique for leaders to use to get teams to self-diagnose and think about conflict, rather than pushing it to someone else who’s meant to have the magic key to solving it for them. Grab the technique and try it yourself!

#### Build #6 - Reducing friction
If you leave a boat in seawater for too long, barnacles will start attaching and growing. They glue themselves to the hull of your boat with a glue six times stronger than any human-made adhesive.

As those barnacles accumulate they start to have an effect. It's not immediately obvious but it's a gradual impact that creeps up.

The barnacles increase friction on the boat's hull, reducing the speed it can achieve. They increase fuel consumption because of that friction. It's more expensive to run the boat. And in the longer term they cause corrosion of the hull, damaging the boat itself.

Savvy boat owners know this. They clean the hull often. They apply anti-fouling paint to reduce the build-up of the pernicious little barnacles.

Scaling organisations aren't all that different to boats accumulating barnacles. Friction is something scaling businesses need to think about.

Friction exists in every organisation. It's a particular problem for businesses that are scaling at pace. That's because what makes up an effective business changes over time.

Friction in scaling businesses acts as a drag. It's an invisible force that holds back businesses from growing as fast as they could. It stops them thriving as healthy, sustainable organisations.

There are two sources of friction in your business:

Friction caused by things you do already that don't work as well as they need to. Many old practices won't be fit for purpose on the scaling journey.---> the answer is often to stop doing those things completely or work hard to iterate them.

Friction caused by things that are missing from your scaling business. With growth comes a need for new things that you may not have seen before to help keep the organisation running smoothly. ---> this friction is usually solved by introducing a new initiative or practice  that's not been needed before.

Decision makers need to deliberately challenge aspects of the organisation's past. They must also systematically plan and put in place what's needs to be better for the future of the business.

Or another way of looking at it...they need to take time to scrape off the barnacles and apply the anti-fouling paint regularly. Beyond deeply held values, beliefs and purpose, very little lasts for ever in a rapid growth business.

Look beyond the friction

Once you're aware of friction, it's easy to focus on the obvious symptoms.

For example we leap to judgement and complain about a particular approval process, the need to re-work part of a project or unexpected costs in a business.

But those are not the sources of friction. They are simply signs that friction exists.

To implement solutions to friction, we need to look into what's causing the friction. What are the underlying conditions that cause the friction that the business is experiencing?

The Flux Collective has a great story about this:

In one large enterprise-tech company, the average process time to provision a server was 6 months. People complained about the number of approval steps (29!). To get anything done, people directly addressed the friction by requesting frequent process exceptions. To avoid the process entirely, teams hoarded server capacity. All attention was on the friction. But what were the underlying forces at play?

The company found that regulatory pressure incentivized complicated processes to create logs for regulatory audits. With this force made clear, the company invited regulators in, improved the process, and automated about 85% of the approval work. By comparison, addressing only the friction had created more work when the massive amount of exceptions had to be explained to regulators!

The problem persisted because people focused on the personal impact of the process friction. Looking at the systemic forces revealed the need for capacity on demand and the need to address regulatory concerns. By looking at and designing for both forces, the firm was able to reduce process time while increasing auditability (turns out regulators like logs generated by machines more than by humans).

One of my favourite tools for getting underneath the surface of friction is the "Five Whys":

“The basis of Toyota’s scientific approach is to ask why five times whenever we find a problem … By repeating why five times, the nature of the problem as well as its solution becomes clear.“ Taiichi Ohno

Use "Five Whys" with the right people and dig into the real reasons behind friction in your business. Then you know where to focus to reduce the friction and accelerate growth.

Questions to ask now

Who are the right people to spot friction early in your business?

What signs should you be looking out for in your scaling business that indicate a friction problem?

How confident are you that you're tackling the real root causes of friction in the business?

#### Build #60 - Alleviating decision-making load for founders
This week in Build I’m looking at a favourite topic of mine: decision-making.

Most of the founders I work with are grappling with the challenge of shifting to a wider group of people making decisions.

They’re doing this because they typically face a relentless onslaught of decisions every single day.

Constant decision-making leads to decision fatigue.

And they recognise that to be able to grow their business they need to share the load.

After making too many decisions, the quality of the choices you make deteriorate. Your cognitive resources get used up. You struggle to weight up and make the trade-offs needed.

Your prefrontal cortex is central to rational decision-making and cognitive control. Repeated decision-making exhausts this region of your brain, reducing its ability to weigh long term consequences.

At the same time your right anterior insula is computing the subjective value of your mental effort, integrating signals about cognitive fatigue from your pre-frontal cortex.

When you’re tired, there’s greater connectivity between these regions, skewing your decisions toward the lower effort options. If you hadn’t been so fatigued, you would have weighed the options differently.

Prolonged cognitive activity also depletes glucose in your brain.

This is the brain’s fuel so this affects your pre-frontal cortex function and self-control. There’s also some evidence that your mental load affects glutamate buildup in your brain, disrupting the efficiency of your thinking.

Put simply after a day of constant decision-making, your ability to make the best calls is declining..

Each decision you make taxes your self control and wears down your ability to make subsequent decisions effectively.

Your brain is tired.

In my coaching work, I’ve seen patterns among founders that include:

Indecisiveness and struggling to make choices, even on the small things.

Going with the easy default option instead of evaluating alternatives

Less self-regulation and poorer self-control

Declining quality of decisions and making increasingly problematic choices

General irritability, distractedness and inability to concentrate

If some combination of these ring true for you, there’s probably some decision-making fatigue at play.

When that happens, I often ask founders to think about decision-making fatigue in two dimensions: the personal and the company.

For them personally, there are some quick fixes to try.

They can arrange their days so that they make big decisions when they are mentally fresh. Using genuine mental breaks to rest their brains can provide opportunities for mental recovery during the day.

Once they’re aware of decision-making fatigue, they can be more alert to the signs like indecisiveness or impulsivity. Then they can avoid making big decisions when they spot those signs.

They can also use habits and routines to reduce the mental load of low priority decisions they have to make.

But for the longer term health of the business, it’s about sharing the decision-making load with the right people who are competent and trusted to make decisions.

That’s why a business operating system is one of the most powerful antidotes to founder decision fatigue.

By codifying things like behaviours, processes and priorities into clear guidelines and decision-making frameworks, founders can limit the number of ad-hoc choices they need to make each day.

At its core, a business operating system has these key building blocks:

Purpose and principles that act as a common decision filter

Priorities and goals to align effort and resources on what matters most

Roles and responsibilities to empower autonomous decision-making

Processes and playbooks to streamline execution

Tools and systems that automate routine tasks and decisions

With these core elements in place, you can create a framework for making decisions at all levels of your business. It establishes intentional guidelines, processes and automated systems to handle the majority of day-to-day choices, reducing decision-making fatigue for founders.

And the bonus is that this then frees up your decision-making capacity to focus on the highest impact, strategic issues that really require your attention as the founder.

Essentially you can reduce your mental load, helping you make fewer decisions but also make them better. What busy founder doesn’t want that?

#### Build #61 - Aiming small, founder-led growth, life and work
Hey there,

It’s Simon here with today’s quick issue of Build - my newsletter read by more than 1,400 founders taking an intentional approach to growing their businesses.

But before we launch into the three most interesting things I’ve seen recently, I’m excited to share something new with you.

In July and August this year, the Build Summer Series is going to be featuring guest authors. I’m really excited about the different perspectives this is bringing to Build readers.

I’ve got some brilliant guest authors lined up already but there are a couple of spare berths, so if you’d like to write for the Build Summer Series, drop me a line with some examples of your previous articles and what you’d like to contribute to Build.

But for now, let’s get back to it and check out some links:

1. Creating founder-led growth

This article explains why founder-led growth needs to be a focus and how delegating growth too early can cause wider problems. It gives a straightforward playbook for what founder-led sales can look like, using tight learning loops and making sure that growth is a team game.

My take: There’s a lot of noise around this topic and I tend to steer clear of most articles that claim to have playbooks or growth hacks. But this one does a good job of setting out clearly what founders can do to build growth in their business.

2. Business should serve your life, not consume it​

Justin Welsh provides a reminder to founders about being conscious of what they really seek. He explains how his business is deliberately simple, enabling him to have the experience of work that he wants.

My take: This is a good reminder for founders to be intentional. I work with a lot of founders who are grappling with problems that they don’t love solving. Thinking about which parts of the founding experience are most rewarding to you is really important. How does the journey your business is going on relate to that?

3. Aim small, miss small

Mike Fisher takes a look at why the sweating the small stuff at work is important. He argues focusing on small, specific goals and paying close attention to minor details leads to better results and fewer major mistakes. Building habits of care and precision compound over time but need discipline to avoid calling things “good enough” too soon.

My take: This resonated with me because in my work I spend a lot of time creating systems that reinforce a meticulous approach on the highest-impact issues. Problems that we need to solve aren’t equal. Selective precision on the most important details is what really makes a difference.

That’s the lot for this week.

Don't forget if you’d like to considered to be a Build Summer Series author, drop me a line.

Until next week.

best,-sw

#### Build #62 - Designing for deeper work
Hey there,

I’ve been thinking a lot about deep work recently.

It’s something that’s vital for people in scaling businesses to have space to do. The cognitive costs of context switching and lack of uninterrupted thinking time can really affect productivity, creativity and strategic thinking.

But as businesses scale rapidly, preserving the focused attention and deep work capabilities of teams against increasing communication overhead and distractions becomes much harder.

I took a look at Microsoft’s latest Work Trend Index and the stats illustrating this attention economy problem for growth businesses are pretty sobering:

during typical work hours, employees are interrupted every two minutes on average by meetings, emails or messaging pings. Factoring in activity outside of core hours, and the total reaches an almost unbelievable 275 daily interruptions.

More than half of meetings happen ad-hoc rather than being scheduled in advance.

Microsoft’s data shows spikes in frantic multi-tasking right before meetings, with a 122% increase in PowerPoint editing activity in the 10 minutes leading up to a meeting start time as people scramble to get their stuff ready.

After hours chats are up 15% year-over-year, with 58 messages now arriving before or after traditional work hours on average.

Late night meetings after 8pm have risen 16% annually as more work happens across time zones.

That sounds like pretty much every growth business I work with.

But that led me to think about the hidden cost of all this activity. While on the surface as a founder you might see this level of activity as a symptom of the growth your business is experiencing, but the hidden shadow of that intensity is something you need to think about.

It’s no surprise then that nearly half of employees report their work feeling chaotic and fragmented, with over half of leaders describing the same experience.

The cumulative effect of all this is what Cal Newport calls “solitude deprivation” - a state where we spend almost zero time alone with our own thoughts, free from external inputs and stimuli.

This quote from his book Deep Work sums things up nicely: “Researchers have found that it takes an average of 25 minutes to recover from an interruption and return to the original task, if you do at all…which means we’re never caught up with our lives.”

I’ve certainly experienced this jarring contrast between days with long, uninterrupted stretches for focused deep work versus those with frequent context shifts and multiple Slack and WhatsApp chats happening at the same time.

On the former, my thinking is exponentially richer - ideas have time to marinate and evolve with nuance. With the benefit of thinking time I come up with better insights that and make innovative connections between things that I just didn’t have the headspace to do on busy days.

On the latter, my fragmented attention means that my cognition is surface-level and lacks depth.

There’s a real loss there that comes from constant intensity. It’s hard to quantify but it’s definitely there.

So if you extrapolate that loss across your workforce, your business is missing out on a lot of valuable contributions from talented folk who are just too busy to think deeply about their work.

Growing a business is hard work and teams are always going to be busy. But savvy founders get smart about how they design their business operating system to give people some space to think.

Give people space to think properly about the job you’re asking them to do. They’ll do a better job and enjoy it more as a result

So what could this look like in practice?

I recommend founders start by looking at meetings and communications tools (Slack, WhatsApp, email, Teams etc).

These are the big two areas where your business growth sucks people’s attention away.

Meetings are probably an unavoidable evil for most businesses, but being more planned and intentional about the purpose of meetings really helps. Having clear outcomes that you want from time spent together is simple to do, but surprisingly rare in practice.

Setting company-wide “deep work” periods where meetings are banned and communication expectations are minimal is also worth a try - think things like “No meetings on Wednesday afternoons” or even full deep work days on Fridays.

You might also try allowing your teams to go off-line for chunks of time by setting specific windows when they need to be available to collaborate with others for meetings, calls and Slack. Outside those times, they are free to concentrate on their work.

I’ve also seen success with companies putting in batch communication cycles.

Rather than responding to every Slack alert or email immediately, founders can encourage set schedules for batching communication - like checking messages at 9am, 1pm and 5pm only. Team members can disable notifications in between.

Having a “red alert” channel with alerts left on that’s used when there is a genuine crisis can play a part too.

Founders running companies with their own offices can also think about the physical environment promotes opportunities for deep thinking. That might be small drop-in offices, quiet rooms or booths with sound-absorbing furnishings.

As a founder, the way you manage your time, availability and space for deep work sets an example for your teams.

If you model the work behaviours you want to see, that makes more difference to what happens across the business than most founders realise.

Let’s be realistic - no company can eliminate all interruptions.

But you can be proactive about how you design your operating system to reduce cognitive load.

Being thoughtful about workflows, communication norms and how you use comms tools to optimise for team focus can yield huge dividends as you scale.

That’s it for this week. I’ll be back next week with three interesting links for founders scaling their businesses that I’ve spotted recently.

best, -sw

#### Build #63 - Rewriting leadership, authority and valuing dissent
It’s been a busy couple of weeks in my inbox so I was spoilt for choice while selecting the most useful articles for founders who are scaling their businesses. I settled on these three:

​1. Leadership, Rewritten​

A fresh series of articles from Dr Richard Claydon that challenges many of the superficial notions of what leadership now means. As Richard puts it “maybe you’ve simply stopped believing that leadership - as currently taught, measured, and mythologized - is enough for the complexity you now face.”

My take: I’ve found this series fascinating. Richard has taken his deeply researched academic thinking and turned it into accessible and thought provoking articles. His core idea - that most of what passes as leadership thinking ignores the complexity of the context where it takes place - really resonates for me.

​2. Dissent, Not Consensus, Is the Shorter but Steeper Path ​

Stowe Boyd looks at the importance of dissent in decision-making, arguing that group decision-making can fall into several bias-related traps that affect the quality of decisions that emerge.

My take: Dissent is usually seen as a negative to be minimised or pushed through, but this is a good explanation of why dissent can be valuable in the messy scale-up journey as choices are made.

​3. Depth by Degrees​

The FLUX Review explains how leadership changes in more senior roles through the lenses of authority and influence. As roles get more senior there’s a trade-off between width of authority and depth of influence that people often forget.

My take: I do a lot of organisational design work with founders, helping them work out the right leadership structure as their businesses grow. This is a helpful explanation of the problems that can emerge from the leadership roles we create and how those can be mitigated.

That’s your lot for this week. Have a good one.

best, -sw

#### Build #64 - Organisational design that actually works
I spend a lot of time working on organisational design projects for clients.

To be honest there are times I end up waking up at 4am with my mind racing through permutations of structures and roles.

And I've realised that all too often founders think about structure backwards.

As their businesses scale they build elaborate hierarchies to flatter egos.

They create departments based on traditional assumptions rooted in their early careers.

And then they wonder why nothing flows smoothly once they've put the structure in place.

Reflecting on my experience of these situations, I've come to realise that most people start with the wrong question.

The question they ask is "What should our structure look like?".

But what they should be asking is "How does the value actually get created here?"

Take a moment to indulge me in a little thought experiment.

Think about a customer placing an order in a production-focussed business. What actually needs to happen?

Information flows from a sales lead to design, then to production, then to delivery. Materials need to move through different logistics stages. Decisions have to get made at various points. And inevitably problems need solving along the way too.

That's your value stream - the actual path that work needs to take to become something useful for your customer.

Everything else is just overhead that exists to support that creation of value.

That's all fine and good. But then when you look at org charts, they rarely reflect this reality.

They show neat boxes and reporting lines that often cut right across the natural flow of work.

By designing structures we create opportunities for work to get stuck, delayed or lost in translation between teams.

We all know water flows downhill. It finds the most efficient path around obstacles. What if we could design organisations so that work flows the same way?

When you think about designing your business around flow, you start to ask different questions.

People stop obsessing over who reports to who and think more about how do we get the job done best for the customer.

And this usually means you end up designing structures that have less managers and more people in roles that facilitate low friction flows of work.

They have less hierarchy and more networks. There are fewer gatekeepers and more enablers.

My theory on this is that most organisational problems stem from one place: the artificial barriers that work has to cross in its flow through a business. Yet often founders create these barriers through their organisational design decisions.

Traditional structures are rooted in a flawed belief that you can predict and control everything. But that's not the real world we work in. Markets shift, customer needs evolve and technology disrupts.

The unexpected happens everyday, but we design rigid organisations on the assumption that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday.

Rigid structures break under pressure while more flexible ones bend and adapt.

Savvy founders build flex into structures rather than optimising for too much efficiency.

They create multiple pathways for flow instead of single points of failure. They empower people to make decisions close to the action rather than escalating everything upward.

And smart founders also recognise that people aren't chess pieces to be moved around a board. They see the relationships, knowledge, and insights that don't show up on any org chart.

They understand the informal networks - who actually talks to whom, who knows what, who trusts whom. These often matter more than the formal reporting lines. To create organisational designs that work they use real influence patterns, not just the official ones on the chart.

The best organisational design projects start with your customers' most important outcomes. Trace them backwards through every step, decision and handoff needed to deliver those outcomes. Look for bottlenecks, pointless steps and gaps.

Then ask yourself what would an organisation look like if it were designed specifically to make this process smooth and fast for customers?

The answer probably won't look like your current org chart. In fact it might not look like anyone's org chart. And that's exactly the point. Structure should serve the purpose of your business. When you get this right, work flows naturally, your people feel empowered and customers get what they need.

Everything else is just bureaucracy.

best, -sw

ps I'm really excited because next week's the start of the Build Summer Series 2025. Throughout July and August I'm delighted to have a fascinating range of guest authors joining the newsletter. Keep an eye on your inbox on Wednesday 2nd July for the first one.

#### Build #65 - Rethinking senior recruitment in an emerging AI world
Hey there,

I'm a big believer in the power of collabs in helping founders to build businesses. That's why throughout July, August and September I'm welcoming a series of guest authors to the Build Summer Series 2025. ​Thayer Prime is a tech strategist, leadership advisor and founder of consultancy Team Prime. Her article is a fascinating dive into how the emergence of AI is changing senior recruitment in growth businesses.

best regards,-sw

Most tech founders I work with realise how important senior hiring is, but even the best of us sometimes treat it as a necessary task and not a strategic intervention.

More so, hiring is frequently done on the backdrop of urgency due to someone leaving or a new client expansion, which can further push towards speed over thoughtfulness.

Something that can be overlooked is how C-Level recruitment isn't just about finding someone competent to do what’s gone before and the security that gives; it’s about shaping the next phase of your business growth.

That used to mean looking for people with prior experience (ideally by the bucket load) who can slot in seamlessly where possible.

However, in the last year especially, AI has shifted the foundations of what work in our industry looks like and what it means to have “done it” when few have is changing faster than most hiring models and founder strategies can keep up with.

Rushing to role before strategy

Senior hiring often starts with a quick internal conversation.

“We need a COO. Someone who’s been through this stage and can help us do the same.”

And off we go. We write a role specification based on the previous incumbent and look for them in our competitors or similar companies.

But we rarely stop to ask: what kind of business are we building now in this era of increased security risks and AI escalation, and what does that really require?

Not just in skillsets, but in mindset, influence, and pace.

Why hire from those doing the same as we were, when we could hire better, smarter, and be at the forefront of the new wave.

Another common blind spot is assuming that bringing in a senior hire will resolve an area of pain or unlock a founder’s time. It’s a tempting shortcut.

But it only works if the structure around that hire is clear and ready. Otherwise, you end up with drift: unclear accountability, clashing expectations, and strategic decisions being made in isolation.

A new hire that’s now been thought through can create more problems than you started with, not to mention taking up much more time.

tl;dr a great hire can’t fix a company or organisational structure that doesn’t know what it needs.

AI is reshaping the roles we’re hiring for

One of the quiet shifts happening right now is that AI isn’t just transforming roles from the bottom up.

It’s changing what leadership looks like too.

I would say even more so, because without leadership that understands our AI-quake that’s happening, how can we be forward thinking enough to hire for this next phase of tech?

In the same way I remember print media being left behind as us New Media Kids (as we were back in the late 90s!) starting taking over.

A CTO used to need depth in engineering and architecture.

Now they need to understand how to orchestrate ethical AI-driven teams, oversee responsible data practices, and know when to build versus when to prompt.

Marketing leaders are navigating generative content, journey automation, and attribution models that update themselves.

Even COOs are increasingly managing tech-first operations where the system could be doing the decision-making instead of a human advisor.

This means we need to stop hiring based purely on what someone’s done under the old systems, and start asking how well they adapt when the landscape underneath them changes.

Curiosity, systems thinking, and the ability to build hybrid human-machine teams are fast becoming non-negotiable traits in top-level hires - yet something I’m not seeing play out as fast as I would have expected in our web tech industry.

A lot of companies are about to be left behind, and they’ve not even realised yet.

Structure before search

Before you even start briefing recruiters or activating your network, it’s worth doing the hard thinking: what shape does this hire need to take not just in role but in resilience and fast adaptability, and how do they fit into the company in a way that is successful in both the current and new era of tech operations and offerings?

That doesn’t (just) mean drafting a job spec with 14 bullet points.

It means understanding your business model at this stage and what you’re optimising for next.

It means having trusted advisors to point out your blindspots and consider your own skills gap analysis ready to make sure you’re hiring for the future, not the past.

It means working out who’s already in your company keeping an eye on trends and able to adapt, and how your teams are structured to give your leadership the best chance of success as we all navigate what’s coming next.

Final thought: Your next hire is part of your AI strategy

We are at the start of a shift where AI isn't just a tool but a second operating layer for the business. It affects how decisions are made, who makes them, and how fast they flow.

This flip will - like print vs new media - decide who the forerunners are in our next wave of tech, and who gets left behind.

This has huge implications for your organisational design.

You may need fewer managers and more systems thinkers. You might hire engineers who focus not on writing code but on validating, securing, and optimising what AI writes for them.

You’ll likely need new governance roles to manage data risks and internal AI use, especially as more of your operations become automated by default.

Security also takes on a different shape.

It’s not just about firewalls and access control any more. It’s about tracking how AI agents interact with your business logic and where unintended outcomes can emerge.

So when you’re hiring at the top, don’t just ask “can they lead this function?”

Ask “can they help us lead in this new context?”

Thayer's recommended reading on this topic:

​How Gen AI Could Change the Value of Expertise​

​McKinsey - the state of AI​

​The New ‘AI Psychologists’: The Rise Of Prompt Engineers​

​

Introducing Thayer Prime

Thayer Prime is a tech strategist, leadership advisor, and founder of Team Prime, a consultancy that helps fast-growth software companies hire smarter and scale sustainably. She’s worked in the tech industry since the first dotcom boom and now advises founders and boards on executive hiring, organisational design, and AI integration.

Team PrimeThayer on LinkedIn

#### Build #66 - A founder’s guide to applied AI
​

Hey there,

Week 2 in the Build Summer Series 2025 brings you a brilliant guest article by systems consultant and Volcano Base founder Phil Dearson.

I'm amazed how he's managed to condense so much wisdom about the pragmatic use of AI for founders into so few words. If you want to cut through the hyperbole and use AI to actually improve a process in your scaling business, read on.

best regards,-sw

Artificial intelligence is everywhere, yet few founders can point to a single process it has genuinely improved inside their business. The reason is simple: most start with the technology, not the outcome. This short guide shows you how to deliver a working AI system in days, not quarters, without hiring a bunch of geeks (like me).

1. Choose one model provider and stick with it

AI platforms are converging on similar core capabilities, so optionality is overrated early on. Pick one of the big three LLM providers:

OpenAI – the broadest ecosystem and fastest feature cadence (my current recommendation for most smaller businesses)

Anthropic – a strong safety focus and generous context windows.

Google – seamless if you already live in Google Cloud.

Avoid Microsoft’s Copilot for now. It’s a weedy, clunky model that’s just difficult to work with. Hey, it’s by Microsoft, so we should be surprised. A single supplier means faster testing, a simpler security review, and lower cognitive load while creating your systems.

2. Add an orchestration layer

Firing up ChatGPT in a browser is fun, but the real value emerges when AI models are wired into your existing systems, processes and workflows via a no‑code/low‑code adapter that can call the model, merge it with your data and trigger follow‑on actions. Imagine a sales‑call auto‑transcribed, key requirements extracted, a draft proposal written, and your CRM updated automatically. Today the best orchestration options are:

​n8n - self‑hostable, open‑source, and event‑driven. Ideal for sensitive data. The cheapest and most powerful option, but that comes with a steeper learning curve. (My personal recommendation)

​Zapier - deep library of SaaS connectors, perfect for marketing workflows, but it can get very expensive.

​Make - almost exactly like Zapier but with arguably a nicer interface.

Pick one. Standardise on it. Document the patterns so non‑developers can extend them next month.

3. Start at the finish line: map a single bottleneck

Choose a tiresome, repeatable workflow that slows revenue or customer happiness: onboarding paperwork, support triage, weekly reporting—anything with text. On a digital canvas (like Miro, Mural or FigJam), draw the final output in the top‑right corner (e.g. “Verified customer in CRM”). Then work backwards, box by box, until you reach the trigger event. You now have the skeleton of an automation workflow.

Two sanity checks:

Is it worth automating? Multiply task minutes × monthly volume × hourly cost. If the change won’t shift at least £5,000 a year, whether in savings or new revenue, or if payback exceeds six months, de‑prioritise it and pick another one.

Is the data ready? AI amplifies garbage. Favour structured, workspace‑based data (think ClickUp or Tana) over hunting through email attachments or “FINAL FINAL.xlsx” spreadsheets. The historical file system isn’t very helpful long term.

4. Inject AI where it plays to its strengths

With the workflow mapped, mark steps that involve judgement on unstructured text or images. These are your AI candidates. Typical wins:

Classification: route support emails by urgency or topic.

Summarisation: condense long proposals into bullet‑point digests.

Generation: draft first‑pass responses, invoices, or briefs.

Keep humans in the loop at first (e.g. “click to approve” in n8n). Measure precision and recall for two weeks. Once accuracy exceeds the human baseline, graduate to fully automated.

Pro tip: use system prompts and explicit examples in your calls; they drive consistency and cut token spend by up to 30%.

5. Launch, measure, iterate

Share the initial version with a small cohort. Log three metrics:

Cycle time – hours from trigger to completed output.

Human touchpoints – manual interventions per run.

Quality score – stakeholder rating out of five.

Aim to halve cycle time and cut human touches by 70% without dropping quality. Anything less and the project returns to the drawing board.

Schedule a fortnightly retrospective: refine prompts, tighten regex filters, and delete steps that offer no leverage. Every tweak goes into your shared playbook so the next automation is faster. Every six months, run a tool‑chain audit. New LLM features often collapse multi‑step flows into a single call, letting you delete whole chunks of workflow and bank the savings.

The evolution of the technology is continual, so you have to learn about new capabilities quite frequently.

Final thought

The winners in the AI race will not be those who brag about model parameters; they’ll be the founders who quietly strip drudgery out of their companies, one workflow at a time. Pick a provider, wire up an orchestration suite, map a high‑friction process, and let the chips fall where they may. In six months you’ll have a library of live automations and a team that wonders how they ever coped without them.

Introducing Phil Dearson

Phil Dearson runs Volcano Base - helping leadership teams automate the mundane, outsmart the grind and build real momentum without any technical skills. He does that on his own, with a collection of AI workers.

He has a background in performing arts but, since the invention of the web, he's been advising organisations about all manner of digital “stuff”. And his newsletter goes out every Friday with useful technology tips for small businesses. Get it here.

Volcano BasePhil on LinkedIn

#### Build #67 - Marketing doesn’t need a bigger budget. It needs a brain.
Hey there,

We're now in week 3 of the Build Summer Series 2025 and this week we're taking a pragmatic dive into all things marketing with Rebecca McKee - a fractional CMO and founder of This Brand Works.

I see too many people overcomplicating marketing in growth businesses. That's why I love Rebecca's practical approach to tackling the marketing challenges that many founders face.

best regards,-sw

Let’s get something straight.

Most businesses aren’t failing because they don’t have enough marketing budget.

They’re failing because they don’t have a clue what they’re doing.

Every week, I watch founders launch into “marketing mode” with no strategy, no insights, and no clear positioning. Just a blind faith in tactics. Hire a junior marketer. Run some ads. Launch a newsletter. Launch a podcast…sponsor an event and hope for the best.

It’s not marketing. It’s noise. Expensive noise.

Let’s be honest: most businesses fail at marketing because they lack strategy.

Strategy eats tactics for breakfast

I recently stepped in as a Fractional CMO for a fast-scaling B2B Tech business. They’d been throwing everything at growth- ads, automation, content, events. The works. But leads?

Flatlining.

Within four weeks, using a clear positioning strategy, solid segmentation, and insight-led messaging, we generated 17 qualified inbound leads off the back of one campaign. More leads in one month, than the whole of 2024.

No budget increase. No new team.

Just a brain.

The problem: founders love tactics

Tactics feel good. They look busy. You can point to them and say, “Look! We’re doing marketing!”

But unless they’re rooted in a strategy based on real insight, it’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall hoping something will stick.

If you don’t know who you’re targeting, what pain you solve, or what makes your customers choose you, no tactic will save you. You’re just creating mess and burning cash.

Step one: positioning

You want growth? Start by positioning yourself properly.

It’s the cornerstone of any decent marketing strategy. And yet so many businesses get it wrong.

They obsess over the competition. They copy the category norms.

And worst of all? They forget the customer.

Strong positioning is brutal. It forces you to choose. You’re not here to appeal to the masses, you’re here to be the obvious choice for your ideal customer.

If you can’t summarise your offer in one sentence that hits a nerve, you’re not ready to go to market.

To help you on your positioning journey I’ve created a really simple free positioning tool kit.

Step two: talk to your customers

If you haven’t had a real conversation with your customers in the last three months, you’re marketing blind.

Smart marketing starts with listening. Not just to what people say but what they mean. What they feel.

I always start a marketing audit by listening to actual customers. Not assumptions. Not internal opinions. The real voices of the people who buy (or don’t).

The result? Often a sea change in how the business sees itself. Because it doesn’t just expose blindspots, it reframes the brand through the eyes that matter most, customers.

Once you find that sweet spot, you’ve got your message. You don’t need more blog posts. You need to reinforce your messaging time and time again (see step four).

Step three: targeting

Most companies fail because they try to say too much to too many people.

Tight targeting beats broad reach. Every time.

That means proper segmentation, not just job titles, but differences in pain points, need state and urgency.

For example In B2B SaaS, ‘HR Manager’ isn’t a segment. A 50-person startup hiring their first global employee is a world away from a 50,000 global-person business. Same title. Very different problems.

Segment. Speak their language. Make them think, “this was written just for me.”

That’s how you get attention. Not with a bigger budget but with sharper relevance.

Step four: Be consistent. Even when you’re bored of it.

You might be tired of your own tagline, logo and colours (in fact you should be if you’re using them correctly). Your audience isn’t.

Repetition builds memory. Memory builds brands. If you keep changing your message, your colours, your tone, you’re not evolving, you're erasing everything you’ve built.

Stick to your codes. Build salience. Stay top of mind. That’s how you grow.

And no, consistency is not the enemy of creativity- it's how smart brands build compound brand equity.

Step five: Track what actually matters

You need a simple marketing scorecard to track metrics that matter.

Here’s what actually matters:

Are the right people aware of your brand?

Is your message cutting through?

Are you growing a pipeline with ideal-fit leads?

In my 17-MQL example, we tracked Marketing Qualified Leads and click through rates - enabling agile targeting to improve results. But the real win isn't the uptick in leads, it’s the change in morale.

The marketing team is no longer asleep at the wheel. They have a realtime dashboard and solid recipe to guide them to cook spaghetti that sticks every time!

Pick a few metrics that actually link to growth and track them ruthlessly.

Big brands waste money too

Here’s the irony, even the big budget players screw this up.

They chase trends. They rebrand without reason. They blow six figures on filmic storytelling that doesn’t land because no one knows what they actually do (Jaguar, I’m looking at you).

If they’d spent a fraction of that on insight, on positioning, on getting their strategy nailed?

They’d need half the budget to get twice the results.

So imagine what a scaling business could do with a bit of clarity and a lot of focus.

The bottom line

You don’t need to outspend the competition. You need to outthink them.

That means:

Getting clear on who you are and who you’re for

Listening harder to your customers than your competitors do

Being consistent, distinct, and relevant

Measuring what matters

Most importantly, it means starting with strategy, not tactics.

Because marketing doesn’t need a bigger budget.

It needs a brain.

And if that fails? You can always call me.

Introducing Rebecca McKee

Rebecca is a Fractional CMO and founder of This Brand Works. She helps scaling brands build marketing that actually works, combining sharp strategy with big-brand experience (ex-eBay, Virgin Atlantic, Sky). Known for bold thinking, straight talk, and delivering results without the BS.

This Brand WorksRebecca on LinkedIn

#### Build #68 - How to scale your selling without losing your soul
Hey there,

This week we're talking about selling. Yep, it's that side of founder life that represents one of the hardest transitions to make as you grow.

My guest author is David Biden, co-founder of Growth Venture Group. I've known David for many years. His advice is a must-read for any founder wondering how to make their first sales hire.

best regards,-sw

Every founder knows what it takes to sell in the early days. Grit. Energy. Belief. You’re not just selling a product, you’re selling yourself, your story, your vision of a better future. It’s magnetic. Buyers feel it.

Many founders start companies as a natural evolution of their careers so they decades of experience in the field and are able to answer any and all questions and show they are highly knowledgeable.

“I wish I could just clone myself” is a phrase I hear about once a month from stretched founders.

But you can’t and eventually, if you are to scale this business you have to sell without being in the room.

Most founders hit a moment where they know they need to change something. The business is growing. Their calendar is packed. They don’t love sales but have learn’t to like it but they want to spend more time leading the company, not chasing deals. But handing over sales isn’t easy, especially when your identity has been so closely tied to it.

This is where many stumble. They either hold on for too long, or they let go too fast.

Founder sales does work, it creates just the right mix of passion, pressure and knowledge in a sales person that provides enough momentum for the business to take off. One that I’ve not seen be recreated by hiring a sales person on day one, no matter what the seniority.

But as we know founder-led sales doesn’t scale. You become the bottleneck. Every deal depends on you. And when you’re in fundraising mode, or hiring, or delivery or fire-fighting… sales slows down.

And that’s a big risk as at this early stage growth is everything.

The Myth of the “Perfect Sales Hire”

So what do most founders do?

They try to hire “a salesperson.” Often someone confident, interviews well with a solid CV and maybe some industry experience. They expect this person to come in, figure things out, and “just sell.”

This very rarely works. Not because the salesperson is bad but because they were set up to fail.

There’s a knowledge gap that founders often underestimate. You’ve spent years living and breathing the problem you solve. You know every edge case. Every buyer objection. Every pivot, every piece of language that resonates. That context can’t be downloaded in a week or two.

Instead of expecting them to sell like you out of the gate, the better move is to teach them to sell like you — almost.

That’s the 80% rule.

Building a Founder-Inspired Sales Process

Founder-inspired sales is the middle ground between founder-led sales and a fully autonomous sales engine. Here’s how it works.

1. Document Your DNA

Capture everything you’ve learned from selling. This includes:

• The story you tell and why it works

• Your ideal customer profile (ICP)

• Common objections and how you handle them

• Pricing conversations, pilots, and proof points

• The signals that indicate a buyer is ready

Treat this like a playbook, not a script. It’s not about word-for-word replication—it’s about transferring thinking and approach.

2. Design the Process

Map out your sales process with clarity:

• What’s the buyer journey?

• What are the key decision points?

• What tools and content are needed at each stage?

Even a lightweight CRM setup and a clear set of qualification criteria can make a huge difference. This lets your new hire focus on execution, not guessing.

3. Hire for Coachability and Curiosity

This is probably the most important point but when you hire salespeople, don’t just chase a track record and experience. Look for people who are coachable, who ask great questions, and who can absorb your approach.

You’re not looking for a guru, you're looking for someone who can become a near-expert with the right inputs.

You’re also not looking for a Head of Sales/Chief Revenue Officer or Commercial Director. You are looking for someone that is willing to do 12-24 months of on the ground, sleeves rolled up selling. Then they become the natural Chief Revenue Officer and can hire under them once revenues are right.

4. Train Like It Matters

Founders often underinvest in sales onboarding. But if your goal is to step back from selling, this is one of the highest-leverage activities you can do.

Build out role plays. Shadow calls. Share stories behind wins and losses. Make your thinking transparent. The more you teach, the faster they (and you) scale.

5. Create Feedback Loops

Sales is a source of insight, not just revenue. Set up regular reviews with this person. Look at what’s working. What’s not. Where buyers get stuck.

The goal is to evolve the process with them, not just hand them a script and walk away. It’s very unlikely they will do as good a job as you for the first 6 months and you need to be ok with that.

Why This Is Worth the Effort

Making this shift is hard. It takes time. It forces you to slow down, reflect, and package your knowledge.

But it’s also one of the most strategic moves you can make as a founder.

It unlocks growth.

It creates resilience.

And it frees you up to lead, not just sell.

When done right, founder-inspired sales become the bridge between early scrappy wins and long-term scale. Your story, your mindset, your approach—they don’t disappear. They just evolve into something that can live on without you having to be in every room.

It’s about building something that carries your voice forward, loud enough, clear enough, and strong enough to grow.

So treat founder-inspired like a serious medium term investment, take the time to invest in this person and it will pay dividends (literally).

​

Introducing David Biden

David works with founders of businesses with more than £1m revenue to transition them away from sales and set up a standalone sales functions that allow them to work on their business rather than in sales.

His business, Growth Venture Group, guides clients from founder-led sales to scalable success. Backed by four successful exits and enterprise sales leadership at Salesforce and Accenture, they transform founder-led sales into independent, high-performing teams.

Growth Venture GroupDavid on LinkedIn

#### Build #69 - Spoiler: You might be the bottleneck
Hey there,

This week's guest author is Sarah Harris. Sarah is a fractional COO and seasoned business leader. She supports founder-led businesses to scale sustainably. She’s also a qualified therapist and leadership coach - and my co-founder at actualise.work too.

That means she’s uniquely placed to take a science-based look at how founder leadership runs much deeper than most people realise.

best regards,-sw

It’s 4:33am, and you’re awake. Again.

Your mind’s off, running through everything that isn’t quite working in your business.

Why hasn’t that hire stepped up?

Why is the leadership team still looking to you for all the answers?

Why does growth feel so… stuck?

You’re thinking about strategy, structure, performance. The external stuff. The “what’s getting in the way of scaling” stuff.

But here’s the thing we see again and again with founder-led businesses: beneath the delivery issues, team dynamics, and slow decisions you often find something else.

You find you.

Not in a blame-y, “this is all your fault” kind of way, but in a gently uncomfortable, “oh… this might be mine” kind of way.

Because in founder-led businesses, culture starts with you. Behaviours ripple down. The way you lead, communicate, cope, avoid, react… none of it stays in your head. It builds the atmosphere everyone else is breathing.

You are the culture

Being a founder isn’t just about building a business. It’s about building yourself into it. Long before you scale anything, your own patterns are already baked into the foundations.

Your beliefs. Your biases. Your coping strategies. Your hunger for validation. Your avoidance of conflict. Your relationship with control, trust, and success.

These shape how you hire, how you lead, how you make decisions. Not because you’re doing it wrong, but because you’re human.

Pioneer of humanistic psychology, Carl Rogers, said: “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

And that’s the starting point: founders willing to look inwards, not just outwards.

Culture isn’t shaped in a Notion doc or values workshop. It’s built in the day-to-day. How you give feedback, what you celebrate, how you handle pressure, what you avoid, how safe it feels to disagree with you.

When things feel murky or chaotic, it’s often a sign that something in the founder’s world needs attention.

What are you bringing into the business? ​​You didn’t arrive here as a blank slate. You brought your upbringing, early relationships, and core beliefs about success, safety, trust, and conflict.

Maybe you grew up in chaos, where staying invisible was the safest bet.

Maybe praise was rare, so now you chase achievement like oxygen.

Maybe conflict meant explosions, so now you avoid tough conversations.

Maybe you had to prove your worth from a young age, so letting go feels impossible.

Fast forward to today: delegation feels risky, feedback stings, and trusting others still doesn’t come easily.

That’s not a tactical problem. That’s a psychological echo.

Psychodynamic theory tells us that our earliest relationships shape how we relate to power, autonomy, trust, and responsibility. These internal “templates” don’t disappear when you raise a seed round or hire a COO. They come with you - and if unexamined, they quietly run the show.

So when the business feels stuck, it’s easy to look outward: at the team, the market, the tools. But often, the real unlock comes from looking inward.

Leading from awareness

This isn’t about over-analysing yourself into paralysis. It’s about learning the difference between responding to what’s real, and reacting to something old.

When you’re unaware of your patterns, they take the lead. You think you’re responding to the moment, but you’re actually reacting to something much older, more personal.

We’ve seen founders fire too quickly out of fear. Hold on too long to avoid discomfort. These aren’t bad decisions, they’re survival strategies in disguise. When you name them, you create space to choose something more intentional.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs ends in self-actualisation: that sense of creativity, purpose and meaning. Most founders assume it comes after the business scales.

In truth, it needs to happen alongside it.

You can’t build a resilient company from a reactive mind. You can’t build a people-first culture if you haven’t figured out your own patterns yet.

The most grounded founders aren’t the ones with the smartest plans, they’re the ones who’ve done the inner work. They hold boundaries. They ask better questions. They know how to let go without disappearing.

The practical part: Leading from within

If all of this sounds a bit psychological, it kind of is. But it’s also incredibly practical.

When you understand yourself more deeply, your leadership sharpens. The fog lifts. You stop solving the same problems the same way. You make space for better decisions, better relationships, and better outcomes.

That’s what we mean by self-actualisation. Not some mountain-top enlightenment, just more effective leadership through deeper awareness.

Where to begin? The good news is, you don’t need a therapist on speed dial. You just need to pause the autopilot.

Here are four places to start:

Track your triggers - Notice when you feel disproportionately annoyed, anxious, shut down or over-involved. That’s a signal something deeper is at play.

Name the story - What’s the internal narrative? ‘If I don’t fix this, I’m failing.’ ‘They should know better.’ ‘I’m on my own here.’ These beliefs may be driving your reaction.

Ask better questions – Instead of defaulting to ‘How do I fix this?’, try: ‘What’s this really about?’ or ‘Who does this remind me of’. This is where insight lives.

Pause before reacting – Your brain’s amygdala (threat detector) responds fast. Your prefrontal cortex (decision maker) takes longer. A few seconds of pause lets the wiser part catch up.

And so what?

I believe business growth starts with founder growth.

In my work at Actualise I help founders out of firefighting mode and into strategic leadership. Not just with smarter frameworks, but with deeper insight into who you are.

Our approach blends practical tools with psychological depth - including coaching that challenges assumptions you've outgrown and support to separate what's yours from what belongs to the business.

You didn’t start this business to feel trapped by it.

You started it to build something real and meaningful.

And that starts with the hardest, bravest build of all: yourself.

​

Introducing Sarah Harris

Sarah has spent her career leading and shaping businesses, from scaling operations and building leadership teams to driving strategic transformation.

As a COO, coach (ICF), and counsellor (MBACP), she brings a different approach to leadership and business growth, one that balances practical execution with deep, people-centred change.​

Actualise.workSarah on LinkedIn

#### Build #7 - Pacing your business
Every business has a pace it can sustain indefinitely. Leaders need to find that pace and intentionally influence it as the business grows.

Last weekend I entered my first running race in 13 years.

I was curious what the passage of time had done to my race speed over ten miles and my resilience when running at pace.

I remember the 2010 race well. I started the race running as fast as I could, determined to post a personal best time. I was checking my running watch avidly every few minutes to see what pace I was hitting.

I kept going like that for as long as I could. But inevitably I slowed down. My pace faded first on the uphill sections and then in the second half the miles got slower and slower.

I held it together and staggered over the finish line to collapse onto a nearby bench. My time was one hour 15 minutes exactly and I had nothing left in the tank.

Canterbury 10 race, January 2023. (c) Invicta East Kent Athletics Club

But this year I took a different approach.

The intervening years had taught me the benefit of pacing. I started the race not worrying about pace and didn't look at my watch.

I started running at a pace that felt like I was trying hard, but that I could also sustain for the distance. I was noticing signs in my breathing, legs, temperature and around me in the race to sense what pace felt right.

It was about feel, not the numbers on my watch.

And then I kept going. I only glanced at my running watch a bit later on to help maintain that same pace.

The parallels of my race experience with leading organisations are clear.

Businesses have a pace they can operate at that's long term sustainable and healthy. And they can also work a greater intensity for a shorter, time-limited period.

A sustainable pace in business comes from two things:

The rate of throughput of the organisation - how quickly shit gets done. Measured through things like billable hours, units sold, active users, new registrations, releases deployed to live or support cases closed.

The amount of change happening in the organisation. How many important but potentially distracting change initiatives are happening right now?

Leaders need to focus on the combination of throughput and change to judge sustainable pace for their organisation.

This is where leaders in growing businesses sometimes go wrong.

They mistake periods of unsustainable organisational intensity for a new normal work rate.

Then inevitably, just like my 2010 race, the pace of the organisation gets slower.

Things get harder to deliver. People get burnt out. Morale starts to decline and focus gets lost.

The organisation's resilience to deal with the unexpected reduces. The cycle continues

Inevitably the business falls short of its potential. The pace its leaders sought can't be sustained.

Every organisation needs to be able to achieve a sustainable pace. This sustainable pace will change over time as the business grows and matures.

Good leaders can both read and sense this pace. They pick up the signs and act when things are running too hot. They notice where the business could pick up the pace a bit and shift things up a gear.

And my 2023 race?

I took 72 seconds off my 2010 time. I walked away from the finish line able to comfortably run another five miles later the same day.

I found my sustainable pace that day.

I like this quote from technologist Martin Fowler's book Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code . He's talking about software development but it's equally applicable to scaling businesses:

“If you can get today’s work done today, but you do it in such a way that you can’t possibly get tomorrow’s work done tomorrow, then you lose.”

Questions to ask now

What signs might indicate that your business isn't operating at a sustainable pace as it grows?

How might you better surface the tensions that affect organisational pace in your scaling business?

How could you more intentionally balance change and business as usual in your business?

#### Build #70 - You’re not growing if your team still needs you in every pitch
Hey there,

This week's guest author in the Build Summer Series 2025 is Team Sterka founder Trenton Moss. He's got a great story about how he realised what he needed to change in his business to unleash the potential of his team - and get out of the way himself.

best regards,-sw

If you’re still the one leading every big client meeting, every sales call, every tricky negotiation... then let’s be honest:

You’re the problem.

I’ve been there. You’re probably really good in the room. Clients trust you. You close deals. You fix things when they go wrong.

But if your team can’t handle those conversations without you, you’re not scaling. You’re just spinning harder. And sooner or later, you'll burn out or stall - or both.

The hidden dependency you’ve built

Dependency crops up all the time in B2B businesses - especially those selling complex services, consultancy or anything where trust is a key part of the sale.

You hire great people. You hand over the work. But when it comes to anything messy, strategic or high-stakes... you’re right back in the centre of it all.

The pitch? You lead it.

The client pushback? You step in.

The upsell conversation? You’re there again.

And it’s not because you’re a control freak. It’s because most people on your team have never been taught how to handle that stuff. Not properly.

So instead of building a business that runs without you, you’ve built one that runs through you.

Which means you’re now the linchpin - and the limit.

Been there. Bought the stress.

I ran my own business for 15 years. We grew from nothing to a few million in revenue. And for a long time, I was proud of how involved I was.

Clients would say, “It’s great to have you, the CEO, personally involved.” And I’d nod, while secretly wondering if I’d ever get a week off without checking messages.

We had great people. But I hadn’t given them what they really needed - the confidence and capability to lead commercial conversations without me.

So I decided to change that. And here’s what happened.

We mapped the whole client journey.

We got in a room and asked, what do brilliant client relationships look like from start to finish?

We looked at every step - from the very first conversation to annual reviews with long-term clients. And we didn’t sugar-coat it. We were too reactive. We said yes too often. We avoided difficult conversations.

So we made a big list:

Start: Giving clearer pushback when deadlines were unrealistic

Stop: Over-servicing just because a client sounded annoyed

Continue: Building trust early by listening properly, not pitching

We turned it into a roadmap. Not just process change but skill building.

Then we did the hard part: We trained for it.

We put in place a programme focused on what I used to call “soft skills” - but which I now think of as commercial survival skills.

Things like how to:

Handle tricky conversations without getting defensive

Spot and act on opportunities to upsell

Push back while keeping the relationship strong

Lead meetings with confidence, not waffle

And at first? It was wobbly. One person got flustered in a client workshop and handed it straight back to me. Another froze when asked about budgets.

But over time, they got better. And then something shifted.

Clients started trusting them.

We didn’t need me in the room anymore. The team could hold their own.

Projects ran smoother. Feedback loops were faster. Clients didn’t come to me with every little thing. They spoke to whoever was leading the work - and got better results.

One of our quieter team members ended up closing a large client upsell. Not because she was pushy - but because the client trusted her judgement.

And the commercial impact?

Client revenue went up by 35% in a year.

Not from doing more work. Not from doing better work. But from doing work better - and being braver in the right conversations.

But more importantly, I got out of the way.

I wasn’t the fixer anymore. I wasn’t the safety net. The team didn’t need me like they used to - and that was the win.

It freed me up to focus on strategy. To build new offerings. To think ahead. The stuff I should’ve been doing years earlier, but was too busy firefighting to even attempt.

What I wish I’d done sooner.

If you want to make this shift, start with a few uncomfortable questions:

Where in your business do people default to you?

What’s stopping your team from taking the lead in those situations?

Are you developing delivery people - or client leaders?

You don’t need a 12-month plan to start. You just need to stop pretending this will fix itself. It won’t.

Invest in your people. Teach them how to handle the hard conversations. Let them lead and support them while they learn.

Because here’s the truth:

If the business still needs you in every pitch, you haven’t built a business yet. You’ve just built a job you can’t leave.

​

Introducing Trenton Moss

Trenton runs Team Sterka - supercharging client-facing businesses with people skills. He's a qualified executive coach and a former Samaritan.

He previously set up, scaled and then exited one of the UK’s leading product design and research agencies, Webcredible.

During his 15-year tenure as Webcredible CEO, he nurtured the entire team to be client superstars with some of the UK’s leading brands.

Team SterkaTrenton on LinkedIn

#### Build #71 - Why tech founders need personal consultancy - not just coaching or therapy
Hey there,
We're halfway through the Build Summer Series 2025 - where I've handed the metaphorical keyboard over to a diverse bunch of guest authors. What a ride it's been so far and this week's no exception. ​In this issue Volker Ballueder shows how founders can benefit from the fusion of coaching and therapy to help grow their businesses better.
best regards,-sw
There’s something unique about sitting at the helm of a tech start-up. You’re innovating faster than your HR policy can keep up, hiring at warp speed, navigating the impossible trifecta of product-market fit, fundraising and team culture – all before your morning coffee. Amidst the chaos, founders are often told to "get a coach" or "try therapy", but what many really need is something in-between: personal consultancy.
What is personal consultancy?
Personal consultancy is the fusion of coaching and therapy. It’s where deep personal exploration meets goal-oriented leadership development. Think of it as a blend of two worlds: therapy’s capacity to unpack your emotional drivers and patterns, paired with coaching’s forward momentum, structure and accountability. For founders, this combination can be transformative.
Tech founders, in particular, face pressures that most people in traditional leadership roles can’t relate to. Many are first-time managers, suddenly responsible for large teams. Others are serial entrepreneurs still carrying the scars of previous ventures. All are operating in fast-changing, high-stakes environments where personal growth often becomes the bottleneck to business growth.
The problem with traditional coaching (and traditional therapy)
A pure coach might help you get clear on your goals, establish priorities and improve team dynamics. But what happens when your imposter syndrome hijacks your decisions? Or your childhood conditioning kicks in every time you negotiate a term sheet? That’s where therapy earns its stripes.
On the flip side, therapy can offer incredible insight, but it doesn’t always translate into action. Understanding why you freeze during conflict doesn’t automatically mean you’ll stop doing it in your next board meeting.
Personal consultancy addresses both.
It provides the safe space to understand your internal patterns and the structure to change them. For a founder, that might mean unpacking why you avoid giving feedback – and then practising, refining and embedding a feedback style that actually works. It’s practical, psychological, and profoundly effective.
Let’s be practical
You might be teetering on the edge of (mild) burnout, stuck in the never-ending loop of trying to please everyone - colleagues or clients. What you need isn’t more motivational fluff or another time management app. You need someone who can guide you through calming the anxiety, setting proper boundaries, and structuring your day so you’re not constantly chasing your own tail.
Yes, that means a bit of coaching. Maybe even a touch of therapy. Picture this: a hypnosis session to soothe your nerves before a big pitch or help you finally sleep without rerunning that awkward comment you made in Year 9. 
But here’s the thing - that compulsion to say yes to everything? That might not be about work at all. It could be your attachment style from childhood, quietly pulling the strings behind your polite smile. Once we get to the root of that and know what to do with it, we can shift gears: onto your five-year plan, your P&L, your big goals. That’s where the real growth kicks in.
Most people have either a therapist or a coach. Fair enough. But a Personal Consultant brings the two together — aligning insight with action, healing with planning. Less split-focus, more integration. Fewer buzzwords, more results.
Why tech founders need this now
The start-up world is maturing. Investors are more discerning, customers more sceptical, and teams more values-driven than ever before. Being technically brilliant or strategically sharp isn’t enough anymore. Founders are expected to be emotionally intelligent, self-aware and able to lead inclusively – no small ask, especially under pressure.
This is where a leadership coach with a therapeutic foundation becomes a real asset – not just a sounding board but a true thinking partner. Someone who’s scaled a business, hired (and fired) under pressure, navigated investor dynamics and can read between the lines of your leadership behaviours.
When your coach understands what it’s like to grow from 10 to 100 people, to go from MVP to Series B, to negotiate exits while battling burnout – it shows. The conversation is richer, more relevant, and the guidance hits closer to home.
Founder as human: not just CEO
In start-up culture, there’s still an unhelpful myth that founders must be superhuman. The hustle is glorified, vulnerability is private, and burnout is treated as a rite of passage. But the most sustainable companies are led by grounded, self-aware people – not heroes with capes.
Leadership coaching with a therapeutic lens helps founders stay human. It creates a confidential space to drop the façade, untangle the mental load, and reconnect with what actually matters. It helps answer big questions like: “Why am I doing this?”, “How do I lead without losing myself?”, and “What does success really look like for me?”
The result? Founders who are more resilient, better at relationships, and more aligned in their decisions.
What to look for in a Coach-Consultant
Not all coaches are created equal – and not all are qualified to blend coaching with therapeutic depth. Here’s what tech founders should look for in a personal consultant:

Real-world start-up experience – ideally someone who’s scaled a business themselves and understands founder life from the inside out.
Therapeutic training – not to psychoanalyse you, but to hold space for emotional processing when it’s needed.
Coaching accreditation – because structure, professionalism and ethical standards matter.
A strong BS filter – let’s be honest, founders don’t need more yes-people. They need someone who can challenge them, safely and constructively.

One practical tip: founder check-in
Here’s a simple exercise to bring more awareness into your week:
The Friday founder check-in - take 10 minutes at the end of the week to answer these questions:

What energised me this week?
What drained me?
Where did I avoid something I needed to face?
What’s one thing I can do differently next week?

Write your answers down. No judgment, just observation. Over time, you’ll start to see patterns – and with the right support, you can change them.
In summary
Tech founders are high-functioning individuals in high-pressure environments. You don’t just need support – you need the right kind of support. Personal consultancy, the fusion of coaching and therapy, meets the complexity of your role with an equally nuanced approach.
With the right partner – someone who’s walked the path, understands the psychology, and has the coaching chops to back it up – you won’t just grow as a leader. You’ll grow as a person.
And in the end, that’s what great leadership is made of.
Volker is running a free 30 minute masterclass later this month: ​"3 Conversations Every Senior Leadership Team Needs to Have (ButUsually Avoids)"​​He's looking at how healthy tension builds high-performing teams, talking about:

Signs of passive-aggressive culture (yes, even in SLTs)
Three tactics to make difficult conversations safer and more productive
When to challenge, when to coach

The masterclass is on 28th August at 5pm. Register here.​

​
Introducing Volker Ballueder
Volker isn't just a coach. He founded Obnatus to bea thinking partner, a challenger and an ally to senior leaders who carry the weight, and feel the cost.​He works with CEOs, Director level+, founders and senior leadership teams (SLT) who are navigating growth, tension and change. He helps bring clarity, courage and connection into how they lead.
Obnatus
Volker on LinkedIn

#### Build #72 - From chaos to culture: why the best founders don’t scale alone
Hey there,

In the Build Summer Series 2025 I'm handing over the metaphorical Build keyboard to a series of guest authors. This week Kelly Wakeman (no relation!) gives you a great take on the stages of the founder growth journey. I love her simple framework for this as it nicely captures the personal transitions that happen as businesses grow.

best regards,-sw

Let’s get one thing straight: chaos isn’t a bad sign. In fact, if your business feels chaotic, it probably means you’re doing something right.

You’ve grown. Fast. You’ve delivered. You’ve built a business that matters. And now? You’re feeling the strain.

You’re not alone.

We work with founders and leadership teams in that exact moment, when success starts to creak at the edges. When what got you here won’t get you there. When the weight of every decision, every hire, and every cultural wobble seems to land on you.

And here’s the good news: this is the moment that defines what happens next.

Welcome to the “messy middle”

After a few years of rapid growth, most businesses hit what we call the “messy middle”, where scale becomes complex, roles blur, and culture gets diluted by accident rather than strengthened by design.

The founder is still the gravitational centre of the business. Everything points back to you. And while that worked at 20 people, at 100, it doesn’t scale.

We hear the same things again and again:

“I can’t keep being the bottleneck.”

“My team is good — but I’m not sure they’re ready for what’s next.”

“Our culture used to feel natural… now it feels foggy.”

Sound familiar?

This isn’t a failure. It’s a fork in the road. And what you do next, how you step back, shape culture, and build capability in your team will determine whether you scale with control or lose what made your business special.

Why culture isn’t fluff - it’s fuel

Culture isn’t a poster on the wall or an away day.

It’s how your team acts when you’re not in the room.

It’s the stories that get told.

It’s how decisions get made under pressure.

It’s whether your best people choose to stay or quietly leave.

Strong culture scales decision-making, not just performance. It’s your operating system and right now, it’s likely outdated.

A Harvard Business Review article makes it clear: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” (Drucker may have said it first, but the truth still bites). Without clear values, consistent leadership, and aligned behaviours, even the best-laid growth plans will buckle under pressure.

Early warning signs you’re outgrowing your culture

Not sure whether your culture is helping or hindering? Watch out for these red flags:

Your team avoids feedback or conflict

You re providing all of the answers

People aren’t getting the right things done, at the right time

Decision-making is slow or siloed

Accountability is unclear

You hear “that’s not my job” too often

Your values are just... words or worse behaviours are anti-cultural

At this point, the pressure builds. You either lean into it and evolve or risk watching it unravel as you grow.

The 3-stage shift: chaos → clarity → culture

At Start Inspiring, we use a simple framework to help businesses evolve without losing their soul.

1. Chaos

The hustle. The buzz. The chaos. Everyone’s doing everything. It’s exciting…until it’s exhausting.

You’re the fixer, the visionary, the decision-maker — and you’re in everything.

Risk: Burnout, reactive leadership, cultural drift.

2. Clarity

This is where it starts to shift. You step back to create space. You define what you stand for.

Roles become clear. Leadership gets aligned. You stop building for your team and start building through them.

Focus: Role clarity, shared values, decision rights, communication rhythms.

3. Culture

Now you’re building something that scales. Your culture isn’t just aspirational - it’s operational.

Values guide hiring, promotions and behaviour. Leaders lead consistently. You’ve created an environment where people want to perform.

Sign: You don’t need to be in the room for the right thing to happen.

The founder’s evolution

Scaling is personal.

As a founder, you go from Chief Firefighter to Chief Visionary to Chief Coach. That journey is rarely easy and almost never linear.

You’ll have to:

Let go of some of the things that made you successful

Have difficult conversations with people who’ve been with you since the beginning

Choose performance over loyalty (even when it hurts)

Redefine your role so the business doesn’t revolve around you

You’ll also need to build CEO leverage. That means putting the right people and processes in place so you can focus on what only you can do — and do it brilliantly.

How we help

At Start Inspiring, we work shoulder-to-shoulder with founders and scale-up teams to make this shift.

We’ve helped high-growth companies:

Clarify and activate new values that honour the past but serve the future

Strengthen leadership capability across exec teams

Build cultures that increase engagement, reduce attrition and drive performance

Navigate tough people decisions with clarity and confidence

Unlock Gold Standard performance

We move fast, go deep, and get results. And we do it in a way that makes your journey feel more energising and less lonely.

Want to go deeper?

If this article resonated, these reads will help you take the next step:

​The Advantage – Patrick Lencioni (on organisational health)

​No Rules Rules – Reed Hastings & Erin Meyer (on scaling intentional culture)

​The Culture Code – Daniel Coyle (on building trust and performance)

​Legacy – James Kerr (for values-driven leadership, from the All Blacks)

If you're scaling and it’s starting to bite, don’t wait until it breaks. Book a free 30-minute diagnostic call with us.

We’ll help you pinpoint where you are, what’s holding you back, and how we can partner to make culture your competitive advantage. Book now at www.startinspiring.com Or drop me a message. No fluff. Just honest advice from people who’ve walked this road before.

​

Introducing Kelly Wakeman

Kelly Wakeman is founder at Start Inspiring - the People Growth Partners. She's a qualified performance coach and board-level strategic partner, working with individuals, teams and businesses to gain traction and unlock their full potential.

Start InspiringKelly on LinkedIn

#### Build #73 - Build your agency like you're preparing to sell - even if you're not
Hey there,

I've been involved in the sale of several businesses over the years and have been on the buy-side of many more M&A deals too.

One of the things I've observed from those experiences is that the best acquisitions or investments have been the ones that are are well run, not the ones that were obviously built just to sell.

In this week's guest article for The Build Summer Series 2025 my collaborator and fellow Extra Brain Manish Kapur provides a super clear explainer for founders about why that is.

best regards,-sw

Most agency founders aren’t actively preparing for an exit. But the ones who do, or at least run their agency as if they are, often build stronger, more profitable businesses.

This isn’t about rushing to sell. It’s about creating an agency that gives you options. One that’s scalable, resilient, and enjoyable to run - with or without a future sale in mind.

So, what does an exit-ready agency look like?

Profitability first

Even if you never plan to sell, improving profitability makes your agency more stable and more rewarding to run. Buyers look at EBITDA - but every agency, no matter the size, should be working to improve margins.

That doesn’t mean a drastic overhaul. Often, it’s about a series of small changes:

Rate cards that reflect the value you deliver

Accurate proposals that avoid under-pricing

Projects delivered on time and on budget

Strong utilisation across the team

Streamlined delivery processes

Regular tracking of key metrics

A profitable agency isn’t just more valuable - it’s also easier to run and less dependent on constant firefighting.

Sales that don’t depend on the founder

If all your new business comes from the founder, you’ve got a single point of failure. For buyers, that’s a risk. For you, it’s exhausting.

An agency that’s built to scale has a consistent, repeatable approach to generating leads - one that doesn’t rely on you being in every room or writing every pitch deck. That includes:

Clear, distinctive positioning

A structured lead generation process

A documented sales and marketing strategy

When new business isn’t bottlenecked around you, the whole agency becomes more sustainable.

Avoiding over-reliance on a single client

No single client should represent more than 20-25% of your revenue. It’s not just about risk - it’s about resilience.

Client concentration lowers agency value and makes you more vulnerable to sudden changes. A healthy client mix also makes it easier to make decisions that serve your agency’s future, not just your current revenue targets.

Retainers help here - they provide predictable income and reduce the pressure to constantly hunt for new work.

Financial clarity and control

Strong financial management is essential - not just for a potential sale, but for day-to-day decisions.

That means more than just tracking revenue. You need visibility over:

Profit margins by project and service

Forecasts to support hiring and investment

Patterns that highlight where money’s being lost

Larger agencies may have a full-time FD. But smaller ones can benefit hugely from fractional financial support - bringing rigour to reporting without the full-time cost.

A strong leadership team

Buyers don’t just look at the numbers - they look at the people. If the founder is doing everything, the business is hard to scale and even harder to sell.

You don’t need a full senior leadership team, but you do need people who can take ownership of key functions - from client relationships to delivery to operations.

This isn’t just about value at exit. It’s about giving you the space to focus on strategy, vision, or even take a break - knowing the business can still run without you.

Scalable systems and processes

Processes aren’t about red tape - they’re about freedom. When things are consistent and repeatable, you can grow without chaos.

The most scalable agencies have documented systems for how they scope, deliver, and review work. These don’t need to be perfect - they just need to be clear, followed, and regularly improved.

Strong processes reduce reliance on key individuals, improve quality, and make onboarding new hires much faster.

Clear and accessible documentation

If you ever do choose to sell, your documentation will be under the microscope. But even before that, having the right information easily available reduces risk and boosts confidence.

At a minimum, your agency should have:

Client contracts

Supplier agreements

Employee policies and contracts

Intellectual property clauses

A well-organised file structure makes this painless - and protects the business day to day.

Creating a business that gives you freedom

Preparing for exit doesn’t mean you’re planning to leave. It means you’re building an agency that runs smoothly, grows consistently, and gives you more control over how you spend your time.

That might mean:

Stepping back from operations

Spending more time on business development or creative work

Exploring a new venture

Or yes - eventually selling

But the point is: the choice is yours.

An exit-ready agency is one that works for you - not the other way around. So even if a sale is never on the table, you’ll have built something that gives you space, stability and satisfaction.

And that’s success in its own right.

​

Introducing Manish Kapur

Manish is a Creative Operations Consultant who helps creative agencies boost profit margins by 5–10% and scale sustainably - laying the foundation for long-term growth or a successful exit through operational optimisation.

Manish KapurManish on LinkedIn

#### Build #74 - From accidental CEO to intentional leader: how founders can evolve without losing their edge
Hey there,

Founder life is all about transitions. They arrive pretty relentlessly in the founder's journey. And one of the trickier ones I see is moving from being a founder to being a CEO.

This week my guest author Codie James takes a detailed look at this transition and how founders can take a more intentional approach to developing their leadership.

best regards,-sw

When founders first build their businesses, their success typically hinges on speed, instinct and a relentless, hands-on hustle.

These strengths - often driven by personality and passion - fuel rapid growth and set them apart from competitors. But inevitably, founders hit a tipping point: their business scales, complexity multiplies and what once drove growth becomes a barrier to it.

This shift is one I see repeatedly in my work coaching ambitious founders and strategically guiding their teams through critical phases of growth. It’s an uncomfortable but necessary evolution: transitioning from an "accidental CEO" - someone who found themselves running a company by virtue of having founded it - to an "intentional leader," consciously shaping their role and the organisation around them.

Recognising the accidental CEO trap

Early-stage founders thrive on intuition and decisiveness. They're comfortable making snap judgments and staying intimately involved in operations. But as the business grows, this approach leads to operational friction. Founders become bottlenecks, trapped in endless firefighting, decision fatigue, and micromanagement that leaves their teams disempowered and their businesses stuck.

In my recent blog, "The Sound of Misalignment", I explored how misalignment at the leadership level creates drag within teams. Similarly, founder reliance on gut instinct - while invaluable initially - can inadvertently lead to confusion, inconsistency, and wasted effort as the organisation expands.

Evolving your leadership identity

Founders often fear losing their edge as they evolve their leadership style. Yet becoming an intentional leader doesn't mean abandoning your instincts; it means enhancing them with structure, clarity, and intentionality. Here’s how you can make that shift:

1. Move from reactive to proactive leadership

Initially, founders tend to thrive in a reactive mode - responding swiftly to opportunities and threats. But as your business matures, leadership must shift towards proactive, strategic thinking. Rather than constant firefighting, you start setting clear visions, roles and responsibilities.

In "Why Executive Misalignment is Your Biggest Growth Risk", I discussed the critical importance of clear strategic alignment. Aligning your leadership team around a well-communicated vision ensures everyone moves in sync -maximising your impact without constant intervention.

2. Embrace structure to amplify your strengths

Structure often feels restrictive to founders accustomed to autonomy and flexibility. Yet carefully designed structures and rhythms - such as consistent meeting cadences, clearly defined decision rights, and accountability frameworks - actually enable freedom, creativity, and decisive action across the organisation.

In coaching engagements, I’ve seen repeatedly that clear operational structures don't constrain founders; they free them. They provide a reliable operating framework that allows you to delegate confidently, empowering your team while retaining your strategic vision.

3. Cultivate intentional communication

Founders often underestimate the power of intentional communication. Initially, informal communication suffices. But as you scale, clarity and consistency become paramount. Intentional leaders clearly articulate their vision, priorities, and expectations, ensuring alignment throughout the business.

In my blog "Beyond the Plan", I explored the importance of leadership narrative - how clear communication shapes culture, drives performance, and aligns the entire organisation behind a shared vision.

Practical steps to intentional leadership

To begin your transition from accidental CEO to intentional leader, consider these practical actions:

Audit your decision-making: Track your decisions for one week, noting where your involvement is truly necessary versus habitual. Begin delegating routine decisions to your team.

Define clear roles and accountability: Clarify roles, responsibilities, and decision rights. Remove ambiguity to eliminate micromanagement, empowering your team to take ownership.

Establish rhythmic leadership practices: Implement regular, structured meetings and strategic check-ins. Predictable rhythms reduce uncertainty and operational chaos, allowing your team to move confidently forward.

Invest in personal development: Seek coaching, mentoring, or training that specifically supports this evolution. Understanding your own leadership blind spots is invaluable.

Protecting your edge

Many founders fear losing their entrepreneurial spirit in this evolution. But intentional leadership doesn't replace your entrepreneurial drive - it amplifies it. It channels your energy into strategic growth rather than operational firefighting, enabling you to remain innovative, agile, and impactful.

Becoming an intentional leader isn't about diluting your strengths; it’s about scaling them. It means consciously evolving your approach to leadership to sustainably guide your business to its next level of growth and success.

As the saying goes: what got you here won't get you there - but evolving intentionally ensures you retain your edge every step of the way.

​

Introducing Codie James

Codie James is the founder of ​Bespoke Growth Solutions​, where she empowers growth‑ambitious CEOs and founders with tailored scale‑up strategies. Specialising in leadership evolution and operating model transformation, Codie ensures that organisations grow without losing their people, pace, or purpose.

Bespoke Growth SolutionsCodie on LinkedIn

#### Build #75 - Tension is the work: leading without easy answers
Hey there,

I'm fascinated by the role of tensions in businesses. Too often they're seen as negatives, as problems to solve. But in reality every founder is running a business where tensions are a healthy feature of their organisation.

In this week's Build Summer Series 2025 newsletter, James Gairdner unpacks this topic through the lens of psychodynamic theory.

best regards,-sw

In leadership conversations with founders, there’s a moment I’ve come to expect.

It often arrives after a burst of clarity or action, a restructure, a funding round, a product launch. Things look good. But there’s a pause. Then comes a sentence that sounds something like: “I thought this would make things feel clearer. But somehow, it’s messier.”

What they’re describing isn’t failure. It’s tension. And my invitation, though not always welcome, is this: What if the tension isn’t something to resolve, but something to work with?

Most founders are conditioned, by investors, advisors, or the startup ecosystem itself, to move fast and fix things. Decisions are often framed as binaries: scale or stabilise, pivot or persist, centralise or decentralise.

The belief is that with enough strategic clarity, decisive leadership, hussle and a decent playbook, these tensions can be eliminated. Even though elimination may mean selection of the best worst option, trade-offs, without any guarantee of it being the right choice.

But growth doesn’t remove tension. It amplifies it. Rapid decisions may not provide the panacea to some of the more complex and nuanced, some might say “wicked” challenges, which can torment the leaders of early-stage scale ups.

In fact, the most resilient companies I’ve worked with aren’t the ones who solve their tensions quickly, they’re the ones who learn how to hold them. To stay in relationship with competing needs long enough for something new to emerge.

This is the work.

Psychodynamic theory offers us a useful lens here. It recognises that organisations, like individuals, have inner lives. Emotions, defences, desires, projections. When under pressure (and scale always brings pressure), systems will often try to displace or split off their anxiety. It becomes someone else’s fault. Or something we need to decide now. Or a problem to outsource.

The founder, by virtue of their role and symbolic power, often becomes the container for all of it. They hold the paradoxes others cannot bear. They are both visionary and operator, leader and team-mate, insider and outsider.

This is not dysfunction. It’s the necessary complexity of growth. And learning to stand in it, rather than collapse into one pole or flee to certainty, is what separates sustainable leadership from performative management.

Roger Martin’s work The Opposable Mind gives this shape. He challenges the notion that difficult choices must be reduced to trade-offs. Instead, he invites leaders to cultivate the capacity to hold opposing ideas in tension, not to defer the decision indefinitely, but to suspend the rush to closure.

In doing so, something new becomes possible. Not compromise. But integration.

Martin introduces the idea of “stance”: a leader’s underlying beliefs about how the world works. Founders who believe tension is pathological will try to eliminate it. Those who view it as creative energy will learn to work with it, using what he calls the tension model to get past their innate biases, fall in love with each pole and explore their benefits. Staying with the discomfort and the mess long enough for a third way to emerge. An idea central to another influential text by Adam Morgan and Mark Barden called A Beautiful Constraint.

This, of course, requires courage. Patience. And the willingness to tolerate ambiguity, both in the system and in oneself. And the resilience to shield oneself from the slings and arrows of those who demand immediate resolution.

In one recent engagement, I worked with a founder team grappling with a structural evolution and the tension between centralised control and distributed autonomy. Each leadership meeting seemed to swing from one to the other, first mandating structure, then encouraging decentralised ownership, only to retreat again when chaos emerged.

What helped wasn’t a new org chart. It was the decision to name the tension, to make it explicit, rather than let it operate in shadow.

Once surfaced, the team could begin to explore it: What are we afraid will happen if we let go? What gets lost when we take control? What’s the story we’re each telling ourselves about what ‘good’ looks like?

Tension, made conscious, became data. And data became dialogue.

From that space, a new structure emerged, not perfect, but not a convenient fudge, one more alive to the needs and fears that had previously gone unspoken. Also incidentally aligned to the flow of the work (see Build #64).

This is the invitation I’d offer to any founder who feels pulled in multiple directions right now.

What if the discomfort is not a signal you’re doing it wrong, but that you’re at a stretch point, a necessary, generative place between one version of your business and the next?

To lead well in this space is not to collapse the tension prematurely, but to stay with it. To notice when you're seeking resolution for the sake of relief. And to ask: What might emerge if I stayed a little longer?

Because in that staying, not frozen, but reflective, lies the potential for a deeper integration. One that doesn’t choose between opposites, but honours both. One that isn’t afraid to say: “This is hard. And that’s OK.”

Tension is not a sign of failure.

Tension is the work.

​

Introducing James Gairdner

James is founder at Forje where he coaches founders, early-stage CEOs and their teams, and is particularly useful at moments of transition.

Prior to specialising as a coach, he had a senior international brand marketing and commercial career with The Coca-Cola Company and within Financial Services, in times of seismic change.

He has coached and consulted to leaders across many sectors with a particular focus on pharma, bio-tech, FMCG, financial and professional services.

ForjeJames on LinkedIn

#### Build #76 - The forgotten generation's purpose pivot
Hey there,

In the penultimate article from this year's Build Summer Series, Rebecca Bates gives us a thoughtful look at generation X, the "valley of bewilderment" and their subsequent reinvention of the work they do.

This resonated deeply with me as virtually all of what Rebecca observes matches my lived experience - including my "second mountain" working with purpose as a fractional and consultant COO.

best regards,-sw

I have recently found myself fascinated by a portion of society commonly referred to as 'Generation X'. These are folks born between 1965 and 1980, making them between 45 to 60 years old currently - a smaller cohort sandwiched between the dominant 'Boomers' and the much discussed 'Millennials'.

This 'Forgotten generation' were self-sufficient from a young age; often with two parents working outside the home or from single parent households due to increasing divorce rates. Their formative years and early careers were shaped by the boom in personal computing, the nascent internet and such seismic global events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, AIDS pandemic, end of the Cold War, collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the end of Apartheid in South Africa.

Influenced by these forces, Gen Xers' disillusionment and rejection of what had come before was projected culturally through the later Punk era, Grunge music and aesthetic, and a 'whatever' attitude. For an extreme illustration of this attitude, I highly recommend watching Netflix's recent 'Trainwreck: Woodstock '99'! As a result, Patrick Neate writes, they earned a sweeping reputation for 'cynicism, alienation, amorality, solipsism, childlessness, pessimism, distrust of institutions, atheism and infantilism' and were ultimately labelled 'Slackers.' Ouch.

But Gen X grew up. They emerged much more educated than their Boomer predecessors, with 23% earning a university degree in the UK versus 15% of the previous generation. The majority settled into family life - married, with on average two children. They rose through the ranks into positions of power and leadership in politics, business and culture (think David Cameron, Nicola Sturgeon, Sheryl Sandberg and David Beckham). Yet, through the misfortune of timing and multiple factors, many were not rewarded with financial comfort and stability that is commonly associated with the generation before them. As a tranche of Gen Xers should now be planning their off-ramp from working life, they face 'a dismal retirement outlook' in the UK and across the Atlantic. Double ouch.

The financial crisis of 2008 hit right at what should have been their peak earning and asset-building years, crippling many people's ability to save. They missed the bus on final salary pensions and preceded the uptick of auto-enrolment into defined contribution pension schemes, leaving over half fearing their finances will not be enough to cover their retirement. Higher life expectancy not only means that they need to financially cover more non-working years but also that they are now caring for elderly parents from whom they can expect to inherit wealth much later in life. Having had children later in life, they are simultaneously supporting their children into adulthood. Add to this the fact they have seen the state pension age in the UK rise to 67 (and planned to be 68 from 2044), they are preparing to stay in the workforce longer as 'only one-third of people in the UK aged between 43 to 58 believe they will be retired by the time they reach the state pension age.'

But staring down a decade more, perhaps two, of working life and with 42% already experiencing frequent stress and burnout in jobs where they have climbed the corporate ladder, 'many Gen Xers are at a pivot point now that they’ve reached mid-life, and are re-evaluating the lives they’ve led up to this point.' Rather than grinding out the rest of their working lives in jobs they don't care about, many are seeking more fulfilling future careers. Alongside a trend of increasing environmental awareness and responsible consumption amongst this group, for some this means making a 'purpose pivot' to positively contribute to the causes they are most passionate about.

David Brooks, author and journalist, offers great imagery for this phenomenon in his book The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life. He describes people's lives as a 'two-mountain shape'. The first mountain many climb in life is the one they're told they're supposed to climb, to achieve the goals they're supposed to achieve - the nice home, family, holidays, good food and friends. It is about 'building ego and defining the self', 'moving up' and 'acquisition', about being 'ambitious, strategic and independent.' But many, regardless of their generational label, reach the top of that first mountain, look around, dissatisfied and ask "Is this all there is?"

For Brooks, the subsequent descent into the 'valley of bewilderment' offers a precious, if painful, opportunity for self-reflection and recalibration that 'interrupts the superficial flow of everyday life.' Of course, some cannot face their deepest fears and 'most powerful yearnings' to answer the call, but others emerge ready to take on their second mountain in life - a mountain that feels more like theirs after all. This second mountain is characterised by 'shedding the ego', 'contribution', 'planting yourself amid those who need and walking arm in arm with them.'

There is potentially a great wave of Gen Xers emerging from this valley right now, trying to work out what their second, more purpose-driven mountain could look like as they face the next act in their working life. And it is precisely because of the technological disruption, financial instability and systemic failures they have experienced as the 'sandwich, forgotten, slacker, whatever' generation that makes them, I hypothesise, uniquely positioned to lead on solutions to our most pressing environmental and social challenges:

they span the analogue and digital eras - like no other generation, they have seen incredible technological leaps and had to adapt to them. In a time where we grapple with the societal impact of increasing technological reliance and perhaps a longing for a time before such dependence, they will have unique insights and solutions to offer.

they have built up wisdom, skills and grit over long careers and accumulated vast lived experience as well as the energy to keep building

they have established far-reaching networks and built up professional and social capital and influence

they are pragmatic, entrepreneurial, innovative, independent thinkers

I have had the recent pleasure of working with one such newly fledged social entrepreneur as part of the Extra Brain consultancy collective. Matt Henry - Laurence Olivier Award-winning singer, actor and MBE, having scaled his first mountain to reach the heights of theatre royalty status, was looking back on the industry that shaped him and to the future for the next generation of actors. For a long time he'd been troubled by the accommodation crisis that faces touring casts who have to find their own short-term lets in every new city. Ensemble members are often forced into unsafe, sub-standard rentals within the means of their subsistence allowance.

Matt came with all the wisdom, lived experience, passion, influence and entrepreneurial spirit of his generation. All he needed was some thought partnership and guidance to help him laser-focus on what the problem is he's trying to solve and how to build something brilliant to solve it. And build it he has. He has secured funding and property to bring his vision to reality and is ready to launch his positive impact venture in the next few months.

So here's my question.

How many more of the 'Slacker generation' are out there sitting on an idea for positive impact, teeming with skills and knowledge, ready to work as hard as they always have, but just need help channeling it to release their potential for the greater good?

​

Introducing Rebecca Bates

Rebecca Bates works with mission-driven leaders and organisations to achieve strategic clarity in often complex landscapes. Her background in research, brand and marketing strategy across diverse sectors (agency-side, non-profit, start-up and government) combined with her global experience spanning the UK, US and Singapore, allows her to bring a wide perspective and fresh thinking to the challenges faced by leaders and organisations striving for positive impact.

Albeit MarketingRebecca on LinkedIn

#### Build #77 - Disco timesheets: When operations meet human messiness
Hey there,

We've reached the end of the Build Summer Series 2025 with an article from Jessica Gregson and Helen Bazuaye looking at the interplay between processes and humans. This topic fascinates me as it's something I see most days in my work with founders.

Normal Build service resumes next week with me back on writing duties.

I'd love to know what you thought about the summer series. We had 14 guest authors this year, spanning a wide range of topics for founders. Please email me at simon@wakeman.work   to share your thoughts.

best regards,-sw

There's a moment in every founder's journey when their brilliant team of creative humans refuse to follow a painstakingly thought through process. What you imagined would be a game-changer to alleviate stress becomes the operational equivalent of herding cats. Except, the cats are talented professionals who somehow manage to deliver exceptional work while steadfastly ignoring the procedures you've spent weeks documenting.

This tension - the gap between the structures we need to build sustainable businesses, and the beautiful messiness of real humans.

The process paradox

Here's an example of what typically happens: A founder in a service business discovers they have no real idea which projects are profitable. They implement timesheets. Nobody fills them in. The founder gets frustrated. Team members feel micromanaged. Everyone loses.

The problem isn't the timesheet itself – it's that we've forgotten a fundamental truth: processes must exist to serve people, not the other way around.

When I sat down with Helen Bazuaye, fellow Extra Brain, to discuss this tension, she hit on something crucial: "When founders say 'I can't get people to follow processes,' you almost want to step back and ask – how did you birth those processes?"

It's a killer question. Why? Because most processes are born in isolation, created by someone who thinks they know what's best, then imposed on a team who have had little say in their creation.

Why good people hate good processes

Let's stick with timesheets as our example (though this applies to any operational system). When I dig into why people resist them, here's what emerges:

The big brother effect: "It feels like I'm being watched," one creative director told Helen. The fear isn't just about surveillance – it's about judgment. What if a task took longer than expected? What if inspiration didn't strike in the allocated 2 hour window?

The perfectionism trap: Some team members struggle with the binary nature of time tracking. How do you log "thinking time"? What about when a brilliant idea strikes in the shower?

Disconnection: Perhaps most critically, people don't understand why they're being asked to track time. It feels like an administrative burden rather than vital business intelligence. When a founder takes the time to explain the simple connection between time and profitability, healthy customer relationships and pricing, people feel very differently and begin to understand how the process serves the greater good.

Compliance to co-creation

So, how do we build systems that people actually want to use? The answer lies in shifting from compliance to co-creation.

Start with why (but make it human). Instead of "We need timesheets for project profitability analysis," try "Without understanding how long things really take, we might price ourselves out of existence – or worse, burn everyone out by undercharging."

When you explain that time tracking helps ensure the business survives to pay everyone's rent, suddenly it's not about Big Brother – it's about collective survival.

Embrace the resistance. Don't dismiss people's objections as laziness or rebellion. If someone hates a process, they probably have a good reason. Maybe they've spotted a flaw you missed. Maybe they have a better idea.

Helen made it clear: "Processes will be better when they are co-created by lots of different people because then you get lots of different perspectives, and solutions that have broader appeal."

Make it less painful (or even fun). Imagine a team who turned Friday afternoon timesheet session into a celebration. Music, merriment, collective groaning about difficult clients – a ritual to mark the end of the week rather than a chore. Disco Timesheets anyone?

Maybe there are better tools to reduce friction that we could find or make: "Hey computer, I'm starting the Johnson project."

The art of productive messiness

Even with the best processes, you're still dealing with humans. Glorious, chaotic, unpredictable humans.

Take the perfectionist who consistently delivers award-winning work but always blows the budget. Do you force them into your neat process box? Or do you build a system that harnesses their excellence while protecting project profitability?

The answer, as Helen and I discovered, lies in understanding that teams are ecosystems. You need the perfectionist who wins awards AND the pragmatist who ships on time. The key is creating structures that allow both to thrive while serving the collective goal.

Can you design teams that build on each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and then create processes that allow them to work better as a whole?

Building for change, not compliance

Perhaps the most crucial insight from our conversation was this: change is the only constant. The processes that work today might be obsolete tomorrow. The team you have will evolve. Your market will shift. An outdated process might show up in a lack of engagement, or a complete failure in one area of business.

This means building systems with flexibility baked in. Regular reviews. Constant dialogue. The humility to admit when something isn't working.

For founders and leaders, this presents a unique challenge. You need structure to scale, but rigidity kills innovation. You need consistency to deliver quality, but uniformity crushes creativity.

The solution? Trust.

Trust that your team wants the business to succeed, and motivate and incentivise them to care. Trust that they'll tell you when processes aren't working, and really listen. Trust that a lack of compliance signals deeper friction in how we’ve created the process, not just a rebellion from an unruly team.

The invisible process

The best processes are invisible. They support rather than constrain. They clarify rather than control. They evolve rather than calcify.

So yes, you need timesheets (or whatever your equivalent tracking mechanism is). But you need disco timesheets (!) – or at least systems designed with joy, humanity, and collective purpose at their heart.

In most businesses, we're not building factories. We're building communities of talented humans trying to create something valuable together. And that requires a different kind of operational thinking altogether.

The next time you're tempted to impose a new process, ask yourself: Would people choose to do this if they didn't have to? Will they understand the value or rationale? Have I involved them in how we think about this way of working? If the answer is no, you've got more work to do.

This article emerged from a conversation between Jessica Gregson and Helen Bazuaye about the tension between operational efficiency and human complexity. For more perspectives on building better ways of working, subscribe to Extra Brain's Brainwaves on Substack.

Introducing Jessica Gregson

Jessica Gregson is founder and CEO of Extra Brain - an advisory and consultancy collective. She curates bespoke teams of interdisciplinary experts who strategically solve complex challenges and create long-term solutions.

She also works as a consultant helping founders to make substantial changes to their businesses so they have lower stress levels, higher levels of success and are excited about their future.

Extra BrainJessica on LinkedIn

​

Introducing Helen Bazuaye

Helen Bazuaye is founder of Creative Grace, a content and inclusion agency devoted to telling stories and creating work that celebrates people at the heart of brands and creative enterprises.

Helen's work is shaped by her commitment to making the creative industry diverse and equitable.

Creative GraceHelen on LinkedIn

#### Build #78 - Watching Wembley
A big thank you to all my guest authors who've written for Build this summer. The feedback from readers has been great and I'm super grateful to everyone who contributed an article.

This week I've been reflecting on a recent trip to an Oasis gig and my incessant desire to understand how things work behind the scenes. Some interesting parallels between founder-led businesses and predictably delivering stadium-scale experiences week-in, week-out.

I was sat in the cheap seats at a massive stadium gig at Wembley at the weekend – 90,000 people crammed in to watch a band that looked like ants from our seats.

But here’s the thing. Those rubbish seats gave us something the punters down front didn’t have: a helicopter view of the entire operation. And as a COO I was seriously impressed.

Oasis at Wembley - September 2025

Watching the warm-up acts and stage set-up before the headliners came on got me thinking about founders and the lessons hiding in plain sight at these mega-events. Because when you strip away the pyros and band egos, what you’re really witnessing at that kind of gig is a masterclass in orchestrating controlled chaos.

One shot to get it right

Live events are brutal in their simplicity.

There’s no “let’s have another go tomorrow” or “we’ll patch that in the next sprint.” The artist has to deliver. The crowd, who’ve (mostly) paid a lot of money, expects an experience. Everything hinges on that single performance window.

As a founder how often do you get that luxury of a second try when it really matters? That client presentation. The product launch. The investor pitch. The parallels are stark.

But here’s where it gets interesting. The stadium doesn’t rely on hope and crossed fingers. Every single person, from the people selling pints to the lighting technicians, knows exactly what they’re supposed to do and when they’re supposed to do it.

Crystal clear roles and bulletproof processes

I watched something remarkable happen part way through the show. Suddenly dozens of phone torches started flickering in a small area in the middle of the crowd. Within a few seconds six medical staff with a stretcher were working their way through thousands of people to help.

They knew exactly what to look for. They’d seen that signal countless times before. They moved without hesitation while the music played on and everyone else carried on enjoying themselves, completely oblivious.

That’s what happens when roles are crystal clear and processes are bulletproof. No one’s stood around wondering “is this my job?” or “what do I do now?” They just get on with it.

How many founders can say the same about their teams? When something kicks off in your business, does everyone know their role? Or is there that awful moment of head-scratching and debate whilst the problem gets worse?

The power of decentralised control

But here’s the bit that really got me thinking. Despite the complexity – crowd control, security, CCTV, stage management, hospitality, technical crews – there isn’t a single central command centre with one person frantically directing everything.

Stadiums work because they have multiple co-ordinated points of control. The bar staff knew their patch inside out but didn’t need to coordinate with the riggers. The security team had their protocols but weren’t micromanaging the merchandise sellers.

Each area operated with remarkable autonomy, yet the whole thing hummed along beautifully. That happen because everyone understood not just their role, but also the boundaries of their responsibility.

What this means for scaling founders

As your business grows, the temptation for every founder is to keep everything flowing through you. After all you built this business from nothing. You might know every team member, every process, every quirk in the system.

But stadiums don’t work with one person making every decision - and neither do scaling businesses.

The magic happens when you can trust your team to handle their patch without constant oversight. When your head of sales doesn’t need your approval for every discount. When your operations manager can solve problems without escalating everything to you.

That requires two things you might be uncomfortable with: giving up control and getting serious about clarity.

Are your team’s roles as clear as those stadium staff? Do they know not just what they’re responsible for, but what they’re not responsible for? Can they act decisively when their bit of the business needs them to?

Because if they can’t, you’ll forever be the bottleneck in your own growth story.

What would your business look like if it ran with stadium-level clarity and decentralisation? And more importantly, what’s one role in your team that you could define more clearly this week?

#### Build #79 - Links: frameworks and genius
Hey,

In this week's Build I'm bringing you three links that I spotted that are worth a founder's attention this week.

Today you'll find me at the UK's Festival of Entrepreneurs in Birmingham. If you're attending the event, drop me a line and let's grab a coffee.

best regards,-sw

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #1

Frameworks - handrails for thinking

​Mike Fisher writes about the role of frameworks in providing a structure in which ideas and concepts can be better understood. His uses the metaphor of "handrails for thinking" to explore the inherent simplicity and practicality of frameworks.

My take:​I liked this as it captured the essence of what frameworks can do for founders. As Mike explains, a good framework framework can reduce the fear of a mis-step when dealing with an unfamiliar situation. Given founder life is packed with unfamiliar situations, there's clear value to be had from the right framework at the right time.

> Read more

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #2

Enough with the playbooks and frameworks

​Jurgen Appelo makes the case against frameworks in start-ups. He challenges the notion that frameworks can substitute for the "curiosity...tolerance for chaos...and the willingness to iterate relentlessly until something clicked" that founders need.

My take:​The line "Elon Musk didn't launch PayPal with a Wardley map" caused me a wry smile as I've never actually managed to understand how to make a Wardley map, despite several committed attempts to learn over the years. Jurgen rightly captures a need for something more than following a pattern when starting a business. I was pondering how Jurgen's article sat alongside Mike's piece about handrails. I concluded their arguments could sit alongside each other - use frameworks to help you as a founder, but don't rely on them too much or for the wrong things.

> Read more

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #3

The dangerous myth of genius

This piece by Rachel Botsman caught my eye. She explains how society's concept of genius has evolved from something we "have" to something people "are". This leads to a a dangerous myth that serves as a license for misbehaviour. Instead she suggests that genius emerges from ecosystems of collaboration. The performative nature of modern genius often obscures the communities and conditions that actually lead to meaningful discovery.

My take:​I thought Rachel's piece was insightful and it got me thinking about the organisational design work I do as a consultant COO. The fact that genius comes from how we create organisational ecosystems means if we're designing for innovation or creativity, we need to be intentional about how organisational forms and rituals create greater opportunities for that genius to emerge.

> Read more

Build is Simon Wakeman's newsletter for founders, ditching startup hypeto give you raw, practical wisdom about leading high growth businesses.

Simon helps founders navigate the transition from start-up to scale-up through his work as a fractional COO, consultant COO, advisor and coach.

#### Build #8 - Building businesses with accountability
A lot's talked in business about accountability, yet few people think about what it means.

And plenty of people tie themselves in metaphorical knots. They wrestle with the concepts of accountability and responsibility at work.

Yet accountability is deeply important in running and scaling businesses.

So what is accountability?

It's when someone acknowledges and takes on responsibility for all the decisions, actions and work needed to achieve a particular outcome.

They embrace being ultimately answerable for the consequences of achieving or not achieving that outcome.

It comes with an understanding that in doing so, you also take on the responsibility for reporting and explaining how you're progressing towards that outcome.

Accountability matters a lot. It helps scaling businesses maximise the value that people throughout the organisation can create.

Without a culture of distributed accountability, the business becomes slower. Decision-making is constrained to people who hold positional power.

Accountability is only ever taken. You can't give someone accountability, however hard you try.

Leaders create the conditions for someone to take accountability for specific outcomes. They also have to decide how much of a problem it is if someone doesn't take accountability.

Accountability can't be shared between people. It's something only one person can take.

And accountability isn't just for people with big fancy job titles. It's for everyone working in the business, regardless of role.

That's because accountabilities can be nested. One person breaks down their accountability and in turn creates the conditions where others take accountability for more granular outcomes.

But doing this doesn't absolve that person from having that overall accountability. They can't delegate the consequences of not achieving the overall outcome.

There's a distinction between proactive and reactive accountability too.

Reactive accountability is when people hold themselves accountable for failures. But they do this without having taking adequate steps to prevent the failure. It can be quite performative and not particularly useful in scaling businesses.

What matters is proactive accountability.

This is when people are on the front foot. They are always scanning for what might get in the way of achieving a particular goal. They do all they can to address those blockers early and work through them to effective solutions.

Creating a culture of accountability

So if we can't give someone accountability, how do we increase accountability to help drive growth?

Having a clear direction for the business is important. Everyone on board needs to know where the business wants to head so they can understand the part they play.

This might be expressed as a vision, mission, purpose, goal or strategy. It doesn't really matter as long as the direction is simple, understood and shared.

The businesses that I've worked with that have the strongest cultures of accountability are the ones that pay attention to the small things as well as the bigger picture.

The culture of accountability starts with the little details and caring about them. Being focussed on accountability for the small everyday aspects of work normalises accountability.

That culture of accountability scales as the business grows. The future organisation builds on the foundations of that early attention to small details. It makes the most of the experience and potential of the people joining the business later on.

Putting accountability into practice

In a past role as Managing Director at a growing digital agency we worked hard on accountability.

We saw three things that took accountability from the online handbook into the deep DNA of the organisation:

Clarity of expectations. We set measurable and relevant outcomes that supported what the business needed to achieve.

Communicated for commitment. We knew team members needed to understand why those outcomes mattered. Wherever we could we involved teams in shaping outcomes too. We looked for people to show tangible understanding and commitment to these outcomes.

Consequences counted. We wanted an honest dialogue about what success or failure meant for people. We did this in a supportive and grown-up way. Too many businesses shy away from being honest about this or over-emphasise negative consequences.

Core concept - accountability

When an individual becomes answerable for achieving a defined outcome, accepting responsibility for all the decisions, actions and work needed.

Three questions to ask now

How could you improve your own accountability in your work?

How clear are team members about what is expected of them and their freedom to act to achieve those expectations?

What signs have you seen of reactive or proactive accountability in the past six months?

#### Build #80 - Why we've got decision-making backwards
Decisions have been coming thick and fast in my life recently.

A fortnight ago we decided to sell our lovely family home and move to a house which needs a lot of renovation work.

Last week I had to take a big decision about investing in my fractional business, in the face of rapidly changing circumstances.

Having had a few days to reflect since those big calls, I've been thinking a lot once again about how we make decisions at work (this is a favourite topic of mine).

We're all making more decisions than ever before in a volatile uncertain world that's changing faster than we can keep up with.

But we're still using the same faulty decision-making approaches our grandparents might have recognised from more stable times.

Here's what I've noticed after years of working with founders wrestle with this (and reflecting on my own decision-making processes): we've got it backwards.

The business world has convinced us that good decisions come from checking our emotions at the door.

Be rational. Be data-driven. Think like a machine, not a human.

I certainly had this drummed into me from my early career days as a graduate trainee. I still remember "value-based management" or VBM being drilled into me (please forgive me, it was 1998 not 2025).

But this approach - this emotional avoidance - is precisely what fuels those 3am regret spirals that we all pretend we don't have when making the big calls.

And the funny thing is even the most "data-driven" decision makers I know are actually emotional about their methods.

They're passionate about their spreadsheets, attached to their frameworks, proud of their analytical rigour when making decisions.

But they are also blind to the emotions that are there in their heads, whether we acknowledge them or not.

So why are we fighting them?

Since becoming a coach, I've started thinking about emotions differently. They're no longer inconvenient noise to be filtered out, but just different types of data to be weighed against the spreadsheets.

I now seem them as rich, valuable data about our values, our concerns, our gut instincts - all shaped by years of experience.

When you get that uneasy feeling about a potential hire, even though they tick all the boxes on paper, what's your emotional system telling you?

When you feel genuinely excited about a new direction, despite the risks, what information is buried in that excitement?

But here's the crucial bit (and this is where most of us go wrong): we can't just follow our emotions blindly any more than we can ignore them completely.

When it comes to big decisions, the magic happens when we get good at combining the emotional side with the practical side.

Or in other words: when we make the messiness of being human actually practical.

I've been experimenting with this approach in practice myself and increasingly with the founders I work with.

Instead of pretending we're rational robots, we acknowledge that all decisions are emotional decisions. Then we use simple frameworks to break those decisions into manageable pieces.

The goal isn't to remove emotions from decision-making. It's to use them as one input alongside all the others.

To integrate what Daniel Kahneman calls our fast (intuitive) and slow (analytical) thinking systems instead of letting them fight each other.

Here's what this looks like in practice:

Acknowledge the emotional component of every decision upfront

Ask yourself what your gut reaction is telling you about your values and priorities

Use that emotional data alongside your analytical thinking, not instead of it

Create simple frameworks that help you process both types of information quickly

Let me share three frameworks I've been using with founders that we've found actually help in real life:

The head-heart check

Before any significant decision, I ask founders to write down two things: what their head is telling them (the rational analysis) and what their heart is telling them (the emotional response).

If they're aligned, then we can move forward with confidence.

If they're not, that's where the interesting conversation starts:

What's the disconnect telling you about the decision?

What does it mean we need to explore further?

What does it look like 24 hours later?

The 10-10-10 lens

How will I feel about this decision in 10 minutes, 10 months and 10 years?

This one's brilliant for cutting through the noise of immediate pressure and getting to what actually matters long-term.

It makes you look at decisions through different lenses.

That often forces new perspectives and enables you to allocate different weights to the emotional and analytic data you have.

The regret minimisation framework

This one comes from Jeff Bezos.

When there's a big decision, ask yourself: "When I'm 80 which choice am I more likely to regret not making?".

This one really helped me when making my mind up about buying a new house a couple of weeks ago - when that was never our plan and isn't great timing for lots of very good reasons.

It helped me see that while there's a lot of short term (in lifetime terms) hassle from that decision, I'd regret not taking the opportunity that was available to me.

At work it's often particularly useful for founders wrestling with whether to take risks or play it safe.

If you can get better at combining emotions and data in decision making, it means your decisions can be made with both clarity and confidence.

You'll feel better at choices that you don't have to spend months second-guessing. You'll be able to move faster without sacrificing quality choices.

And in the bigger picture, as automation takes over more routine tasks at work, this kind of integrated human judgment is becoming one of our most valuable skills.

The AI can crunch the numbers, but they can't feel the weight of responsibility, the excitement of possibility or the wisdom that comes from experience.

I wonder...what decisions are you avoiding right now because they feel too complex or emotionally charged?

How might you approach them differently if you treated your emotions as data rather than obstacles?

#### Build #81 - Links: Proposition development, micro ABM and AI-native org design
Quick one this week - once again I bring you three founder-friendly links that got my attention, spanning proposition, business development and organisational design. Grab a coffee, take 15 mins and read on. It's worth your time, I promise.

Have a great week.

best regards,-sw

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #1

The positioning carousel

Robin Bonn examines why agency positioning exercises fail - he explains the costly cycle where agencies spend months crafting superficial statements that lack clear vision, purpose or target audience. Despite involving talented people these exercises usually produce forgettable word salad that tries to appeal to everyone whilst not differentiating the agency at all. Robin highlights the fundamental contradiction: agencies present their positioning as deeply held beliefs yet abandon it far too easily when it suits.

My take:​Robin's a genius at this stuff. I love our regular conversations and always come away with a new perspective or an assumption challenged. While his article is about agencies, there's relevant learning here for founders beyond agency-land who often tackle positioning alone or with their closest team - which often means they lack the deep expertise in thinking about positioning that's needed to achieve genuine differentiation.

> Read more

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #2

Let's start from scratch: organisational design in the age of AI

Jurgen Appelo introduces a framework for designing teams in the AI era. Traditional organisational models were created before AI integration became a big del, making them increasingly outdated for today's hybrid workplaces. Jurgen's approach builds on systems thinking principles, identifying five essential functions any viable organisation has to fulfil. A key point in this is recognising that while certain organisational functions are necessary for success, how they're implemented remains flexible. This allows teams to distribute cognitive load appropriately, creating more adaptable structures suited to the AI era.

My take:​I do a lot of organisational design work and the impact of AI is something I've been researching a lot. There are new paradigms emerging around flow-based organisational design that are AI-native, so when I read Jurgen's article it reinforced some of the experimental thinking I'd been doing on what this all means in practice.

> Read more

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #3

You only need to engage 50 people (the magic of micro ABM)

Richard Millington gives us a nice practical approach to Account-Based Marketing (ABM), arguing you only need to engage with 50 key people to build a successful consulting practice or small agency (although this is also applicable to most B2B sales contexts). Rather than "spray and pray" marketing, his approach involves identifying 10 target organisations and mapping 5 key contacts within each. It's all about relationship-building through collaboration, research calls and genuine value exchange rather than direct selling.

My take:​A lot of the stuff online about ABM is too big and systems-centric for founders. I liked Richard's piece as it's a realistic approach that most founders who are selling B2B can put into practice.

> Read more

From the Build archive

Build #68 - How to scale your selling without losing your soul

How to build a founder-inspired sales machine with guest author David Biden.

> Read the article

Build #64 - Organisational design that actually works

How founders often approach structure backwards and what this means for the effectiveness of the businesses they create.

> Read the article

Build is Simon Wakeman's newsletter for founders, ditching startup hypeto give you raw, practical wisdom about leading high growth businesses.

Simon helps founders navigate the transition from start-up to scale-up through his work as a fractional COO, consultant COO, advisor and coach.

#### Build #82 - The founder's paradox: letting go without losing (too much) control
I've been working recently with two founders who've taken completely opposite approaches to letting go as their businesses scaled.

And the contrast has stuck with me.

The first founder had read all the right books. He hired an MD and stepped right back. Done and dusted, he thought.

The second couldn't let go of anything. He also knew the theories about delegation being essential for growth (he mentioned them constantly). But he kept every decision super close to his chest.

Neither business was scaling well when they brought me in.

Which got me thinking about this central tension every founder faces: how do you actually let go without losing your grip entirely?

We all know the theory don't we?

As you scale you need to trust others to make decisions, to run chunks of your business and to take real ownership.

But knowing this and doing it well? These are two very different things.

These two founders represent the extreme ends of a spectrum I see all the time in my work.

One abdicated completely. The other refused to delegate anything meaningful.

Both failed because they missed the messy middle ground where successful scaling actually happens.

Letting go in practice

To be honest the real art here lies somewhere between hands-off abdication and micromanagement paralysis.

But what does that actually look like? Let me share what I've noticed.

It starts with understanding what letting go really means. How do you gradually release responsibility whilst keeping enough oversight? How do you create space for your team to succeed (and fail) without losing confidence in your direction?

The answer isn't neat or simple.

Devolving power is a process. It’s a long and often messy one. It’s not something you tick off and consider done.

And here's what I tell founders I'm working with: there will be days when it works brilliantly. Your team makes decisions that surprise you in the best way. They spot problems you'd missed entirely.

But there will also be days when it goes a bit pear-shaped.

When someone handles a situation differently than you would have. When a decision makes you wince. When you feel that familiar itch to step in and "fix" things.

This is where the real self-work for founders happens.

As you bring in leaders and give them real responsibility, you need to become incredibly self-aware about what's working. Are they genuinely taking things off your plate? Or creating more work?

Most importantly: can you resist jumping in when it's not quite how you'd do it?

I've realised this might be the hardest part of scaling for founders.

When your business is your creation - your baby - watching others manage it differently can be properly uncomfortable.

But the people you're bringing in need space to make mistakes. To find their way without constantly second-guessing what you would have done.

Bounded autonomy

The founders I work with who get this right have created what I think of as "bounded autonomy."

This means clear parameters within which their teams can operate freely, make decisions and even fail occasionally.

They provide enough context that their leaders can act independently whilst still moving in the right direction.

It's not about finding perfect balance once and sticking to it.

It's about constantly recalibrating as your business grows, as your team develops and as new challenges emerge.

Here's what I've noticed works in the 11 years I've been working with founders:

Start small. Let the team own reversible decisions before the big stuff.

Be explicit about what success looks like. Don't assume it's obvious.

Create check-in rhythms that feel supportive, not controlling.

Celebrate when they solve problems you didn't know existed.

And when something goes differently than you'd prefer, ask yourself: "Is this actually wrong or just different?"

The founders who scale successfully aren't the ones who let go completely.

Or the ones who grip too tightly.

They're the ones who learn to let go gradually, thoughtfully and with enough structure that everyone feels confident about where things are heading.

So here's my question for you:

What does letting go look like in your business right now?

And perhaps more importantly: what would need to be true for you to feel comfortable releasing just a bit more control?

#### Build #83 - Links: Hierarchy and culture, decision-making and founder flow
Hey there,

It's Wednesday morning and time for three of the most interesting reads I've seen for founders recently.

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #1

Big data confirms it: less hierarchy = stronger culture

The guys at Corporate Rebels unpack new research showing companies with fewer managerial layers develop significantly stronger organisational cultures. They argue that this happens because culture has to replace the co-ordinating role that hierarchy plays when traditional management structures no longer exist.

My take:​This is useful evidence to back up a belief that I've held for a very long time. I found the three distinct belief systems behind self-managing organisations useful - market-based rational networks, peer-based collectives and purpose-driven communities. As I reflect on the businesses I've worked with who've pushed self-management, having one of these in place has been a common feature across them all.

> Read more

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #2

The “traffic light” approach to problem solving

Guy Rosen introduces his "traffic light" approach to decision-making - evaluating options against key criteria. He talks about the importance of including diverse perspectives, being clear about goals and using the approach as a repeatable decision-making structure in day-to-day work rather than as a one off exercise.

My take:​Regular Build readers will now I think decision-making is one of the most under-rated skills in leadership. In my work I watch talented individuals and teams struggle to make decisions, failing to do the "thinking about deciding" that's needed to come up with the best decision in a way that's most appropriate for that particular context. Guy's approach is a practical tool for the more nuanced, multi-faceted decisions that usually need taking in the absence of complete information.

> Read more

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #3

The emotional reality ofobsession: the flow and fight cycle

This article by Mark Abbott looks at the delicate balance between 'flow' and 'fight' that happens on the founder's journey. Drawing on the concept of flow - that optimal state where challenge meets skill - Mark looks at how founders navigate between moments of effortless progress and periods of grinding resistance.

My take:​I found this really interesting. I was drawn to Mark's argument that while a flow state represents peak performance, the 'fight' moments are equally vital for growth. The most effective founders recognise which state they're in and respond appropriately: sometimes pushing through obstacles, sometimes stepping back to regain perspective. The key lies in developing real self-awareness skills to distinguish between the two, learning when to lean into fight and when to seek flow.

> Read more

#### Build #84 - Stuck in the middle: how founder misalignment kills growth
This week I've been reflecting on a client workshop from last summer that I still remember to this day. My immediate post-meeting notes have been sitting in my Todoist for too long and really deserved knocking into shape for a Build article.

The workshop in question has to go down as one of the most memorable I've had since I started working with in founders in 2014.

It's a story of being stuck in the middle.

Sitting in a glass-sided meeting room in a London co-working space, I was literally positioned between two high energy founders.

And they completely fitted the classic visionary and integrator pairing.

One founder kept jumping up to sketch their grand ambitions on the whiteboard whilst the other was often deep in their laptop, pulling up spreadsheets showing why we couldn't afford to do this or that.

And there I was as in coach and facilitator mode, caught in the middle and once again mediating between misaligned leadership.

Re-reading the notes from that day got me thinking about something I've noticed after working with dozens of founder-led growth businesses since.

When companies stall - bumping around at the same revenue for years - it's rarely really about market conditions, the threat of AI or the competition.

It's about this fundamental tension at the top table.

The pattern is almost always the same.

You've got one camp that's completely future-focused. They're the visionaries, energised by potential and painting pictures of what could be. But they're often so zoomed out they can't see what's actually holding the business back day-to-day.

They get frustrated when you explain that before you can grow, you need to reset. You need to build the platform that makes growth possible. (I'm usually the person doing that explaining when I'm in fractional COO mode btw).

Then there's the other camp. Rooted firmly in the here and now.

These are your operators, focused on how things actually work, on team performance and creating some operational stability. The people who know exactly why that brilliant new initiative will break three existing processes.

Having reflected on my own leadership and sitting in this seat, I recognise that people here can sometimes be too cautious to see what could happen ahead. They want to perfect the current business model before moving forward - which in the real world means never moving forward at all.

And here's where it gets properly difficult.

Both perspectives are valid. Neither's right or wrong. Both are necessary. The visionary without the operator builds castles in the air. The operator without the visionary builds increasingly perfect CD players whilst the world moves to streaming audio (I fear I may be showing my age with that analogy).

But when these two world views clash? That's when businesses get stuck.

You start seeing it in meetings. Different priorities start surfacing in every discussion. Parallel tracks develop where there should be a single plan.

The strategy gradually erodes as actions become reactive, disconnected from any coherent direction.

Over time progress will slow to a crawl. Founder relationships simmer and frustration grows on all sides.

In my work I've watched versions of this dynamic destroy founding teams that should have thrived.

The really frustrating part is that most of the time, there is alignment on the big stuff.

There's usually a shared purpose and a set of values that everyone believes in. Often there's even agreement on the vision - where we actually want to shoot for in the bigger picture.

The breakdown seems to happen when we get to the messy questions: how do we actually get there? What needs to change? What do we do first?

That's when the fault lines appear.

Jim Collins talks about the Stockdale Paradox in Good to Great: maintaining unwavering faith that you'll prevail while confronting the brutal facts of your current reality.

But what happens when different leaders see different brutal facts? What happens when one sees opportunity whilst another sees risk?

This is where mediation becomes essential. Not to pick sides, but to build bridges.

In my work I've been building a toolbox of interventions that I use to help founding teams overcome these divides:

Creating a shared language around constraints: Helping the visionaries understand operational realities without extinguishing their ambitions. Helping the operators see possibility without their abandoning prudence. This works when both are willing to engage and listen.

Making the implicit explicit: Tensions mostly simmer over into being unhelpful when assumptions aren't surfaced. What does "moving fast" actually mean? What does "being ready" really look like?

Focusing on sequencing, not choosing: It's rarely either/or but too often these discussions seem to get to that point. It's usually about what comes first and what creates the conditions for what comes next. Don't end up in cul-de-sacs of binary choices unless you absolutely have to.

Building in regular reality checks: Monthly sessions where both camps present their perspectives on progress can help. It sounds obvious but it helps eliminate surprises and prevents festering disagreements.

Documenting decisions religiously: People are busy and forget things. Sometimes that's wilful, but nothing breeds mistrust like forgotten agreements or remembered conversations that differ. A decision log or a simple voicenote after a meeting to capture what's been agreed (or the outstanding points of disagreement) really helps.

The fundamental truth is that tension will always exist in leadership teams.

And that's healthy as you want robust debate on direction, strategy and priorities. Groupthink and consensus aren't helpful in growing businesses.

But at some point alignment becomes critical.

Without it the competing tensions between founders become the primary drag on the business.

The businesses that break through this are the ones that find a way to harness both perspectives. They can be ambitious whilst being realistic and get good at pushing forward whilst building foundations.

It's hard work and I still find the mediation mentally exhausting but immensely rewarding. When I'm working with founders or leadership teams and get that moment where both camps suddenly see how their perspectives fit together, when the plan clicks into place and everyone's pulling in the same direction - that's the biggest buzz for me.

So here are three questions for you to reflect on:

Where are the fault lines in your leadership team?

What conversations are you avoiding because they're too difficult?

And perhaps more importantly... what's the cost to your business of not having them?

best regards,sw

From the Build archive

Build #80 - Why we’ve got decision-making backwards

Taking a fresh perspective on how we make the big calls as businesses grow.

> Read the article

Build #75 - Tension is the work: leading without easy answers

Too often they’re seen as negatives but in reality tensions are a healthy feature of every organisation.

> Read the article

#### Build #85 - Volume, quality, spikiness and the value of craft
Hey there,Wednesday rolls around again and so I have three of the most interesting, founder-friendly links I've seen this week for you. There's a bit of an interesting through-line about volume, quality and predictability through this week's articles.

best regards,sw

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #1

The worst designer I've ever worked with was also the most productive

The story of a highly productive designer whose impressive output volume initially won praise. But soon the speed-first approach created serious problems: coping with the output meant bypassing essential processes like QA, testing and wider alignment. This illustrates a dangerous pattern where companies mistake activity for progress - effective design work requires discernment - questioning, testing and refining - not just production.

My take:​This is a good reminder that founders need to make sure we steer clear of rewarding pure output over outcomes. In the era where generative AI makes production of "stuff" ever quicker, it's a good reminder that we should measure all sorts of work by its impact rather than its volume.

> Read moreRECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #2

Spikiness - ups and downs, trust the process

Mike Fisher explores spikiness - the jagged, unpredictable pattern of real progress. Rather than the smooth upward trajectory we often love to imagine, genuine innovation means dramatic rises, painful crashes and lots of reinventions. He explains why we instinctively seek smoothness despite spikes being where actual growth occurs.

My take:​The founder journey is probably spikier than most. As someone who loves a plan, I tend to fall into trap that Mike talks about. His explanation of spikiness resonated as it felt like a much better representation of the reality that unfolds on most scale-up journeys.

> Read moreRECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #3

What is creativity without craft?

Rachel Botsman takes issue with Marc Andreessen's claim that AI video tools "democratise creativity". She questions whether reducing creation to prompt-giving really empowers people positively. She goes on to argue that creativity requires friction - the messy middle where mistakes and repetition build craft, intuition and genuine understanding of the issue or topic at hand.

My take:​I'm seeing a lot more of this play out in "work" that I see produced. Whether it's a strategy, a roadmap or an article, it's too easy to see where there's been an over-reliance on AI and a lack of actual thought. I share Rachel's concern for what this means when true problems at work aren't given the depth of thought they need to achieve a genuine resolution, especially in the rapid world of founder-led scale-ups.

> Read more

From the Build archive

Build #62 - Designing for deeper work

What's the cost of not designing work to give your team members the space to actually think?

> Read the article

Build #56 - Systems over goals

Founders tend to rely on goals too much, but systemising is a better bet to achieve scale.

> Read the article

#### Build #86 - Workflow-first: organisational design for the AI era
I was deep in a Miro board last week when I had one of those moments when something clicked (probably about two hours too late if I'm really honest with you).

I’d been sketching out high level org structure options for a client - thinking about the forms that their organisation could take and trying to get them beyond thinking about you the usual boxes and lines showing who reports to whom.

And I suddenly realised I had slipped back into designing for yesterday’s world. It’s like I was back on my first org design gig in 2010 again.

The options I’d drawn looked sensible enough on screen. But they completely missed the point of what actually creates value in my client’s business. So I had a black coffee, hit delete and started again.

Let me explain.

For the past eighteen months or so, I’ve worked on several organisation design projects with founders. AI has been a theme in all of them. Not the “let’s add a chatbot to customer service” kind of AI work.

The deeper question is really what does it actually look like to build an organisation that’s natively set up to exploit AI’s benefits?

And through that work I’ve come to a realisation that’s been nagging at me when designing organisations.

Workflow is at the heart of value creation.

I know, I know…that sounds obvious when you say it out loud. But bear with me, because the implications are more profound than they first appear.

I’ve been banging on about workflow for years - Team Topologies has been my go-to resource for a long time now. But what’s changed is this: when aspects of work in your workflow become substitutable with AI, workflow becomes a far more important design principle than it was even a few years ago.

In the old world, you designed your org chart around functions. Sales here, engineering there, operations over in that corner. That all dade sense because humans were the primary resource. And in most businesses, humans need to be organised into stable teams with clear reporting lines and career paths.

But what if the primary resource might not always be human?

Or more realistically, what if it’s a mix of humans, AI agents and automations that work in harmony depending on the task at hand?

I’m increasingly seeing scaling founders - or at least the switched-on ones - structure their businesses along the lines of their primary workflow. Not their functions. Their workflow.

This does something rather brilliant.

It reduces friction in the way work gets done and value gets created. But more importantly, it means you can substitute in and out AI-based agents or automations, or indeed add more humans into the mix where you really need them, all without disrupting the structure of the organisation.

Let me give you a real-world example.

One of my clients runs a B2B SaaS business. Their primary workflow is pretty standard:

Find and connect with potential customer

Qualify the lead

Demo the product

Negotiate and close the deal

Onboard the customer

Provide support and expand account through upselling

Try not to lose the customer

In the old world, you’d have separate teams for each function. SDRs doing outreach. AEs running demos. Customer success handling onboarding. Support dealing with tickets. And so on.

But here’s what they’ve done instead.

They’ve organised as a matrix structure around the workflow itself. Each “stream” owns the entire customer journey for a particular vertical - from outreach through to account growth. Within that stream, they’ve got humans doing the bits that require judgment, empathy and creativity. And they’re continually looking at where AI can handle the more repetitive or mechanical bits - for example research, email sequences, data entry and basic support response drafting.

The key bit is this: when they discover that AI can now handle something that previously needed a human (or vice versa), they don’t need to reorganise the entire company. They just swap out one component of the workflow for another.

It’s a bit like building with Lego rather than carving from marble. Their org structure is modular, adaptable and designed for change rather than stability.

Let’s be honest, this matters because none of us really have any idea how quickly AI capabilities are going to evolve, despite what plenty of so-called “AI experts” tell us. None of us do. Anyone who tells you they know exactly what AI will be capable of in eighteen months is either lying or delusional.

As an aside, I’m reminded of the adage that we always over-estimate the impact of tech in the short term but under-estimate it in the longer term (it’s Amara’s Law if you want to quote it).

Anyway let’s get back to workflow-based organisation design.

So the question becomes: how do you design an organisation that can adapt as AI capabilities change, without constantly disrupting your entire structure and demoralising your team?

I think the answer is to design around workflow rather than function.

I’ll be the first to admit this isn’t a complete panacea. There are a few challenges:

Career paths become less clear. When you’re not organised by function, how do junior engineers progress to senior engineers? How does someone build deep expertise in a particular domain?

Hiring gets more complex. You’re not looking for “a salesperson” or “a customer success manager.” You’re looking for someone who can operate effectively within a particular workflow, which might require a broader or different skill set. None of us want to be trying to hire unicorns.

It requires more sophisticated coordination. When work flows horizontally through the organisation rather than vertically up and down hierarchies, you need different mechanisms for coordination and decision-making. These are the kind of practices that are vital for business operating systems to work properly.

But here’s the rub. These challenges are all second order things and solvable with the right focus. They’re design problems, not fundamental barriers.

For me the bigger risk is designing your organisation as if AI doesn’t exist. Or as if it’s just another tool that slots neatly into your existing structure.

Because it’s really not.

It’s a fundamentally different kind of resource. And it requires us to think differently about how we create value.

So if you’re thinking about your organisational design right now, here are a few questions worth sitting with:

What is your primary workflow - the sequence of activities that creates value for your customers?

Where in that workflow do you genuinely need human judgment, creativity or empathy?

Where could AI (now or in the near future) substitute for human effort?

Is your current structure optimised for workflow efficiency or is it optimised for functional control?

If AI capabilities doubled in the next year, how much disruption would that cause to your current structure?

I don’t claim to have all the answers here. I’m working through this in real-time with my clients and we’re all learning as we go.

But I’m increasingly convinced that the companies that thrive in the next few years won’t be the ones with the best AI tools. They’ll be the ones whose organisational design is built to exploit those tools effectively.

And that starts with workflow.

best regards,sw

From the Build archive

Build #64- Organisational design that actually works

Focus on value, not fiefdoms when thinking about where to start with organisational design.

> Read the article

Build #42 - The atomisation of work

A key trend affecting how we design organisations.

> Read the article

Build is Simon Wakeman's newsletter for founders, ditching startup hypeto give you raw, practical wisdom about leading high growth businesses.

Simon helps founders navigate the transition from start-up to scale-up through his work as a fractional COO, consultant COO, advisor and coach.

#### Build #87 - The founder you are & the founder you need to become
This week's Build explores the fascinating tension that shapes every founder's journey: the gap between who you are now and who you need to become.

Whether it's learning to wield power without becoming Machiavellian, challenging the beliefs that once served you but now hold you back or navigating the eternal conflict between maximisers and focusers in your scale-up, this week's three articles all point to the same truth: growth means letting go of something that worked before...and being OK with that transition...over and over again.

best regards,sw

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #1

A clean path to power: six moves that work

Richard Claydon gives founders six practical moves for building organisational power whilst maintaining integrity. His article looks at making outcomes easier for others through increased visibility, understanding real power structures, clear communication, coherent storytelling, strategic networking and sophisticated use of different power modes.

My take:​It's unusual to read an article on power without the usual cynicism or naivety about this topic. Richard's piece acknowledges that doing excellent work invisibly rarely leads anywhere. I particularly loved the practical action plans and his emphasis on publishing artefacts and decision logs. These are tools I use in my work to help build individual power into systemic improvement in organisations.

> Read moreRECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #2

Unlearning is a wildly underrated skill

In his newsletter Chris Laping identifies five warning signs that your outdated beliefs are holding you back. He picks out things like trusting gut over evidence, defaulting to "we've always done it this way", silencing yourself with limiting stories, repeating tired platitudes and relying solely on existing strengths. Catching and challenging these limiting thoughts in real-time before they cost you opportunities is essential for continued growth for founders.

My take:​For me the most valuable insight here is the distinction between intuition that sparks ideas and intuition that replaces evidence. Founders often conflate the two. Chris's challenge to find your own words rather than repeating business clichés is particularly relevant in an era where a lot of founders sound like they've ingested the same LinkedIn feed.

> Read moreRECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #3

Maximisers vs. focusers

John Cutler challenges founders to distinguishing "maximisers" (who favour speed, optionality and parallel bets) from "focusers" (who prioritise coherence, depth and meaningful constraints), arguing that both can be strategic but fundamentally misunderstand each other. He suggests the healthiest organisations don't eliminate either archetype but instead create productive tension between them.

My take:​This article explains what's behind so many founder conflicts I've witnessed. It's a useful reminder that you can't reason someone out of their fundamental operating mode. John's point that "you can't counter with logic" is great: it shifts the challenge from proving you're right to understanding why intelligent people see the same situation so differently.

> Read more

From the Build archive

Build #3 - Power in scaling businesses

A deep dive into the Build archive to look at some key theories around power and how it works.

> Read the article

Build #75 - ​Tension is the work: leading without easy answers

James Gairdner explains why tensions are healthy through the lens of psychodynamic theory.

> Read the article

#### Build #88 - Your team doesn't have an accountability problem
In this week's Build I'm sharing a bit about some work I did with a founder last year. I'm very grateful to him for giving me permission to share a bit about his story here.

I still remember very well the first call I had with Jonny.

"Lack of accountability. That's the problem we have" was the first sentence of that first call.

He talked about how he felt overwhelmed with too many problems bubbling up to his level. He wanted his team to "step up" and "own" the problems that came their way.

Sounds familiar? I hear some version of this from nearly every founder I work with.

The language might change slightly. I hear a lot about "taking initiative", "being more proactive" and "thinking like an owner". In fact back when I was a managing director I remember using most of these myself.

But regardless of the words, the frustration underneath is identical.

Problems keep landing on the founder's desk. The team keeps bringing you things they should be handling themselves.

And you're left wondering why the brilliant people you hired can't seem to solve problems without you.

Let's get back to Jonny.

In our first session together I asked him to explain how all those problems were ending up with him.

"It's pretty simple" he said. "The team find too many problems they can't solve, so they bring it to me and expect me to fix it. I end up owning the problem. I need that to change."

In my slightly annoying coach-like way I pushed him a bit further. "What's going on for them when that they do that?"

I'm not going to share exactly what he said next as it'll get my emails quarantined for excessive use of expletives. It wasn't quite the deeply self-reflective response that deep down I was hoping for.

A fair summary would be that Jonny had concluded his team members lacked the competence to do the jobs he'd given them.

That was why they couldn't solve the problems and pushed them back to him to fix.

Now before you judge him too harshly, I reckon most of us have had that exact thought at 11pm on a Tuesday night when yet another problem has found its way into our DMs.

Those people we hired - those smart, experienced and expensive people - seem unable to make a decent decision without our input.

But here's where it gets interesting.

I asked Jonny to think about the relationship between competency and ownership of problems.

He went quiet. You could almost see him processing that thought. (I love being a coach and watching people work through things with the gentlest of steers.)

Because what Jonny was really asking for - and what most founders ask for when they talk about "accountability" - is for their team to behave like they would behave.

They want their people to make the decisions they would make. To solve problems the way they would solve them.

But here's the thing: you can solve those problems because you're competent to solve them. You've done it before. You know what good looks like to you. You've built the pattern recognition through your journey as a founder.

Your team members don't have that. And they never will to the extent you do.

Our conversation continued and we got onto talking about whether Jonny would continue to focus on ownership. After some more exploration he suggested something different.

He suggested he might need to think more about how to increase their competence.

Not so they could think like a carbon copy of him. But so they could develop the skills to solve the kind of problems that happened in his business.

Because the truth I see in almost every business I work in is this: if team members feel competent to solve the problem, there's no accountability issue.

Let's just pause to think about that for a moment.

Have you ever been truly competent at something and yet reluctant to own it?

Probably not.

When you know you can handle something, you just get on and do it.

When you hesitate, procrastinate or deflect - it's not a character flaw. It's more often than not an indicator of a competency gap.

And this is where most founders get it backwards.

They try to solve an accountability problem when they actually have a competence problem.

They get frustrated (or maybe more than a bit frustrated) about why people won't just step up.

But people can't take accountability without competence.

You can only delegate tasks to people who are competent to complete them.

This distinction matters enormously.

If you're focused on more accountability, you're essentially asking people to behave differently whilst keeping everything else the same. You're hoping for a mindset shift without changing the underlying conditions that created the lack of accountability in the first place.

But if you focus on competence, you're gradually increasing your team's capability to handle the problems that come their way. And then more accountability follows naturally.

People who can solve problems do solve problems. They don't need motivational speeches about ownership or a fancy bonus scheme. They just need the skills, knowledge and experience to be effective.

So what does focusing on competence actually look like?

It means asking different questions when problems land with you:

Not "Why didn't you fix this?" but "What would you need to know to fix this next time?"

Not "Why are you bringing this to me?" but "What part of this problem can you solve and what part do you need help with?"

Not "When will you start taking more accountability?" but "What skills or experience do you feel you're missing to tackle this confidently?"

It means building capability systematically:

Creating opportunities for your team to solve problems just beyond their current competence (with support).

Debriefing decisions and problems together so they can see your thinking process - working out loud and "showing your workings" like you did in your maths exams at school

Being explicit about the frameworks and heuristics you use to make decisions.

Accepting that people will make different decisions than you would. And that more often than not that's going to be OK.

It means being honest about the competence gaps in your organisation:

Where have you hired for potential rather than proven capability?

Where have people grown into roles without the development they needed?

Where are you expecting people to operate at a level they've never operated at before?

Where have you given someone a promotion or a fancy job title to stop them leaving?

I'm not suggesting this is easy.

Building competence takes time. It's slower than just solving the problem yourself (at least in the short term). It requires you to be more thoughtful about how you develop your team not just what tasks you assign them.

But here's what I've noticed: founders who focus on building competence create teams that genuinely take ownership. Not because they've been told to. But because they can.

The ownership isn't forced or performative. It's natural.

And that's how Jonny decided to work differently. He didn't tell his team to stop bringing him problems. He committed to helping them become competent enough to handle them.

We then worked together mapping out where his team had competence gaps. It wasn't a comfortable conversation. It needed him to admit that some of the perceived incompetence he was seeing was actually a failure of his own leadership.

But as we reflected on that moment later in our work together, he found it was also liberating. Instead of having an intractable accountability problem, he realised he had a people development problem he could actually work on. The accountability would follow.

And over time it did.

So here's what I'm wondering: when you look at the problems that keep landing with you, are you seeing an accountability problem or a competence problem?

And if it's competence, what would it take to genuinely close those gaps?

best regards,sw

From the Build archive

Build #8 - Building businesses with accountability

What does accountability really mean?

> Read the article

Build #24 - Holding to account

Accountability drives performance in rapid growth businesses. Discover what it really means to hold people to account firmly but fairly using the 3Hs model.

> Read the article

#### Build #89 - Before you solve that problem
This week's Build explores how we approach decisions and problem-solving. I've spotted three great articles that collectively challenge founders to think more carefully about the frameworks they.

From questioning whether problems need solving at all, ensuring decisions are truly clear rather than strategically ambiguous and to recognising that major decisions are really just hypotheses to be tested - today's Build gives you some refreshing perspectives on solving problems better.

This is the last Build for 2025. I'm taking a couple of weeks off so I'll be back in your inbox on January 7th. I wish you a happy Christmas and wanted to say thank you for reading Build this year. I hope you get as much enjoyment from reading it as I do writing it.

best regards,sw

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #1

Inside and outside perspectives

Andrew Ormerod argues that every problem has an "inside perspective" (accepting the problem's framing and solving it logically) and an "outside perspective" (questioning whether the problem needs solving at all). The inside perspective is our default as humans and is needed for flow states, but also means we can become too absorbed in a problem's internal logic and lose sight of whether the task is actually worth doing in the first place.

My take:​This struck a chord with me as founders often pride themselves on problem solving ability, yet a really valuable skill is really recognising which problems to ignore entirely. The examples of deleting old emails and paying disputed invoices to make problems disappear show how stepping back can save enormous time and energy.

> Read moreRECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #2

Driving extreme clarity

Deb Liu describes how Naomi Gleit at Meta forced teams to document their positions in spreadsheets, revealing hidden disagreements that had been glossed over in meetings. She argues against "strategic ambiguity" and "messy yeses" - those vague (not real) agreements that avoid short term discomfort but create long term confusion and friction.

My take:​I loved "strategic ambiguity". That's particularly dangerous in scale-ups where resources are tight and every decision matters. I've seen too many founders leave meetings thinking they have alignment but discover weeks later that everyone understood something different. We've all done it. The techniques in this article here are good practical ways to avoid this trap.

> Read moreRECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #3

You call it a decision, I call it a hypothesis

Decisions are hypotheses about the future rather than definitive endpoints. In this article Margaret Heffernan suggests that marriage and merger failure rates suggest we're often wrong. She recommends spelling out operating assumptions, building in cooling-off periods, conducting pre-mortems and monitoring decisions as experiments rather than treating them as final.

My take:​This is spot on. Once you've decided a problem is worth solving and achieved genuine clarity on what you're doing, you still need to remain open to being wrong. The pre-mortem technique is especially valuable for founders who can often become too emotionally invested in their own decisions.

> Read more

From the Build archive

Build #13 - Deciding on deciding

How to be much more deliberate about how decisions are made in a scaling business.

> Read the article

Build #80 - ​Why we’ve got decision-making backwards

Balancing rational and emotional approaches when making the big calls in life.

> Read the article

#### Build #9 - Scaling leadership
As businesses grow, what they need from their leaders changes. 

Separating personal and business needs when thinking about this is hard, but important. 

A conversation with Joel got me thinking about this last week.

We talked about the need for leaders to grow professionally faster than their business grows.

But that's easier said than done. Finding space for personal development is tough when grappling with scaling challenges.

Roles and accountabilities shift at pace. The skills that were right six months ago might not be the ones the business needs today.

I read an interesting quote from Cameron Herold in his book Second in Command:

Most senior people can only take a business through two doubles in revenue. The third double makes it hard for them to continue doing the job. A COO could enter a $10 million company that goes to $20 million and then $40 million, but it’s unlikely they’ll do well running it as an $80 million company. A COO who begins with a fifty-person company that goes to one hundred and then two hundred will likely struggle to deliver when it hits four hundred people. Unless they’ve intentionally grown and adapted their skills, they’re likely out of a job.

It's a guide rather than an absolute rule, but his point makes sense - very few leaders are right in a scaling business for ever. We should be honest about that and plan for it openly.

Under the surface there are two linked things at play here:

Role fragmentation - in start-ups roles tend to have wide ranges of responsibility. Boundaries between roles are necessarily blurred and flex a lot. As businesses go into scaling mode, roles need to be more tightly defined.For example in a start-up, a founder might spearhead product management and commercial, alongside leading the business as a whole.With scaling, the business might need to split these responsibilities. There may well need to be separate roles heading up product management and commercial development.This happens all over the business, often repeatedly affecting the same people. Without careful management it can lead to unintended consequences and friction.

Role specialisation - as roles fragment they tend to become more specialised. To be successful, a team member needs to have deeper specialist knowledge and experience in a particular area.Founders may lead on business development or commercial. It's closely tied to early traction. As the business scales, this often splits into a specialised commercial leadership role.To be successful in this work, the business needs someone who's deeply grounded in this type of work. Someone who's been there before and seen many of the problems that the scale-up will face before.Specialisation means there'll be a reducing number of generalist leadership roles in the business overall.

What does role fragmentation and specialisation mean for leaders on the scaling journey?

James has worked a lot with founders. In a conversation he told me he had observed how founders are poor at managing their own succession.

Emotional attachment and bonds of identity between founder and business obscure clear thinking.

Whether you're a founder or leader, think about your own strengths and weaknesses. Get feedback from a range of people you trust and who'll tell it as it is.

You need to be highly analytical about what the business will need next. Use your network to see how the role of leadership has changed as the business passes through scaling milestones.

And then be honest with yourself about how you fit with that and can make a valuable contribution. Or how you don't. Your best contribution might be to find someone new who is a better fit.

Separating your own ambitions and needs from those of the business is tough, but good leaders can do it. It just needs deep reflection, humility and a willingness to genuinely leave your ego at the door.

Three questions to ask now

Where do you see tensions which might indicate a need for leadership fragmentation and specialisation in your business?

How might you better understand future leadership needs as your business scales?

How could you help leaders in your business think more openly about leadership transitions and how they separate personal and business needs in these?

#### Build #90 - Time to chase curiosity
This week's Build features an article I wrote for Extra Brain's Founder's Block newsletter earlier this month. If this is your kind of thing, you can get regular insights from the talented bunch of people (and me) at Extra Brain by subscribing to the Founder's Block newsletter here.

I’m a consultant. People come to me with problems. Or at least they think they do.

But really what they come with are the symptoms of their problems.

Take for example a recent project I did with a founder who was convinced their customer churn problem was about price. He’d seen competitors were undercutting their premium pricing and people weren’t renewing their contracts. A pricing problem.

Except it really wasn’t. After some review work we uncovered the real problem was buried three layers deeper in their onboarding process where an important feature wasn’t being explained properly, so usage was low.

A small friction point that seemed trivial but was causing customers to never properly embed the product into their own workflows. They’d then drift away a year later at renewal and everyone had assumed it was about money. That became the accepted truth.

I so wanted that founder to have been more curious earlier. He should have asked more questions before accepting the obvious answer.

This is a pattern that keeps happening which got me thinking about why that might be.

​

As humans we rely on our experience to navigate complexity. It’s natural. Our experience is supposed to be our greatest asset. It’s what lets us pattern match quickly and make good decisions under pressure.

But the tricky truth is that at the same time our experience often leads us astray.

There’s a brilliant book I read by psychologists Emre Soyer and Robin Hogarth called The Myth of Experience. It explores why our life experience that we rely on most often leads us to make flawed decisions.

The central argument is simple. Our experiences shape who we are and how we work. They strongly influence how we perceive those around us and our interactions with them.

But we place too much emphasis on what we’ve seen before. And in doing that we miss what’s actually happening now.

​

One distinction in the book really sticks with me. The authors talk about two types of learning environments: kind and wicked.

Kind learning environments are predictable. There are recurring patterns, clear rules and constrained variables. When you make a change, you get immediate and obvious feedback.

Everyone knows how it works so if you change something you can reliably predict what happens next. Cause and effect are tightly coupled.

These are environments where experience genuinely compounds. When founders do something enough times and they get better at it. The feedback loop is tight enough that they can actually learn from what happens.

But here’s the thing: those environments are pretty rare in start-ups and scale-ups.

​

Instead founders operate in what Soyer and Hogarth call ‘wicked learning environments’.

In wicked environments the information they need is hidden. Feedback from decisions arrives late, infrequently or not at all. Sometimes it’s so confusing they can’t even tell if what they did worked or not.

For example you hire a new MD and six months later the team culture has shifted for the worse. But was it that hire? Or the proposition pivot you made at the same time? Or the fact that three other people left around then? Or the market conditions that changed?

Good luck isolating the signal. It’s just not going to happen.

​

If that sounds familiar it’s going on pretty much every day for founders growing their businesses. You make a call about hiring, product direction or go-to-market strategy and the real consequences don’t show up for months. And by that time you’ve made fifty other decisions and can’t isolate cause from effect.

For me this is why curiosity matters so much.

What I’ve noticed working with founders navigating these wicked environments is that the ones who thrive share a common trait: they’re relentlessly curious about what’s happening in and around their businesses.

​

They don’t take things at face value. They create cultures where little is assumed and much is questioned. Unsaid assumptions get dragged into the open. Previously accepted wisdom gets examined with fresh eyes and rigour.

And there’s solid academic research backing this up too. The very best founders develop an instinct for when to deploy curiosity. They know when to accept prior wisdom and move on. They also know when something deserves deeper investigation.

It’s a kind of intellectual agility that prevents them getting stuck on particular decisions while still moving fast enough to make progress.

But this isn’t about being curious about everything all the time as that leads to analysis paralysis.

It’s about developing a sense for when your experience might be misleading you. When the obvious answer might be wrong. When you need to dig deeper rather than pattern match from what you’ve seen before.

The founders I see struggling are often the ones who’ve had success before. They’ve built something that worked, exited and now they’re building again. They (think they) know how this all works.

Except they don’t. Because this business isn’t that business. This market isn’t that market. This team isn’t that team. I could go on.

​

Their experience becomes a liability rather than an asset until they realise that fact. Seeing patterns that aren’t there means they miss signals that don’t fit their prior mental model of how things work.

My absolute favourite tool for putting curiosity into practice is so simple that people look at me strangely when I teach it - it’s the Five Whys.

It came originally from Toyota’s manufacturing process but it works brilliantly in wicked learning environments too.

Get the right group of people with diverse perspectives together around a particular problem. Ask “why?” five times in a row. You’ll uncover insights you’d never have spotted.

Here’s how it might play out with that founder’s churn problem:

“Why are customers leaving?”​“Because competitors are cheaper.”

“Why does that matter to them?”​“Because they’re not seeing enough value to justify our pricing.”

“Why aren’t they seeing the value?”​“Because they’re not using the advanced features that really differentiate our product.”

“Why aren’t they using those features?”​“Because they don’t discover them during onboarding.”

“Why don’t they discover them?”​“Because our onboarding focuses on getting them up and running quickly, not on showing them the full capability.”

See what happened there? We went from “it’s a pricing problem” to “it’s an onboarding problem” in five questions.

The first answer (pricing) came from experience. It’s what everyone assumes when customers leave for competitors. The real answer (onboarding) only emerged through curiosity.

It works because it forces you past the surface level explanation that your experience immediately suggests. And once we’re beyond that we’re into the messier, more interesting territory underneath.

But curiosity needs protecting.

In the chaos of scaling, it’s the first thing that gets squeezed out. You’re firefighting, making rapid decisions and moving fast. Who has time to ask five whys about everything?

Which I believe is precisely why you need to be deliberate about creating space for it.

I see founders who say they value curiosity but whose calendars tell a different story. They have no time to think, let alone to question.

And then they wonder why they keep making the same mistakes. Why are they surprised by problems that were obvious in hindsight.

Here are some practical ways I’ve seen founders protect space for curiosity:-

Blocking time for curious conversations is better rather than waiting for them to happen organically. They won’t. Put “a learning walk” in your diary every week with a different team member. Make it non-negotiable.

Rewarding people who challenge assumptions publicly is also interesting, even when the challenge turns out to be wrong. You’re signalling that the behaviour matters more than being right every time. Founders who feel threatened by challenge struggle with this but being brave enough to be OK to be challenged publicly pays dividends.

I love asking founders “what would need to be true for this to be wrong?” about their own strongly held beliefs. It forces them to examine their thinking rather than just defending it. I sometimes do this in leadership team meetings. When someone (including me) is 100% certain about something, I create the space for the team to pause and explore what would need to be true for the opposite to be right.

Bringing in outside perspectives regularly can be valuable (I recognise you’d expect me to say this as a consultant). But I genuinely believe people who don’t share your context or experience will spot things you can’t see. This might be advisors, non-execs or just random smart people from different industries. Their naïve questions are often the most valuable.

I also like to create organisational rituals around reflection. Things like monthly retrospectives where you explicitly examine what assumptions turned out to be wrong. Or quarterly strategy sessions where you question the fundamentals rather than just tweaking the plan.

The irony is that curiosity feels slow when you’re in a hurry to grow.

​

But in wicked learning environments, moving fast without curiosity is just confidently driving in the wrong direction.

You might get there quicker. But you’ll arrive at the wrong destination.

From the Build archive

Build #12 - Process isn’t boring

How to use process to scale better without losing the entrepreneurial essence of your business.

> Read the article

Build #17 - Systems thinking in scaling business

A primer on systems thinking for founders.

> Read the article

#### Build #91 - The infrastructure of culture
In this week's Build I've got an exploration of three perspectives on the foundations that shape how founders can work and lead. Rishad Tobaccowala examines the difference between rulers and leaders, Phil Adams looks at how authentic values create competitive advantage and Mike Fisher warns about the hidden costs of cultural neglect.

Together these articles make a compelling case that the so called "soft" stuff - values, culture and leadership - isn't actually soft at all. I know from much of my work that these things are actually the infrastructure that determines whether organisations thrive or implode.

best regards,sw

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #1

On rules and rulers

In this article Rishad Tobaccowala distinguishes between rulers who hold power and leaders who inspire influence, arguing that true leadership requires six key behaviours: competence, realism, integrity, empathy, vulnerability and inspiration. The piece also explores how understanding different people's internal measures of success is essential for effective collaboration.

My take:​This resonated with me because it cuts through the leadership platitudes to something more useful: the recognition that leaders and rulers aren't the same thing. Understanding what drives people matters more than imposing your own metrics or mental models on them as a founder.

> Read moreRECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #2

Their values are stronger than yours

Phil Adams looks at Buttondown's approach to company values, pushing the idea that meaningful values need to be arguable rather than bland and agreeable. He advocates for them to be written as specific principles rather than single words. Buttondown's CEO Justin Duke explains that values only work when reasonable people can disagree with them, demonstrating how customer support as a "profit centre" reflects both strategic choice and cultural commitment.

My take:​For me this is a masterclass in how values should actually work: as active principles that guide decisions rather than decorative statements that gather dust on an About page or a faded poster on the office wall. The observation that most companies share identical single word values with organisations they'd never want to be associated with is both funny and a bit damning too. It exposes how little thought goes into this supposedly foundational work that founders talk about.

> Read moreRECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #3

Culture debt - the invisible interest of speed

Mike Fisher introduces the concept of "culture debt" - the hidden cost of neglecting the systems governing how people work together. He draws parallels with technical debt but argues it's more dangerous because it erodes trust rather than just slowing code. He shows how culture debt accumulates through small compromises where rewards diverge from stated values, eventually compounding into crises that can destabilise entire organisations.

My take:​This useful for any founder who's ever prioritised speed over cultural maintenance (which in my experience is most of us). The comparison to technical debt is good, but the crucial insight for me is that culture debt lives in people's memories and relationships, making it far harder to refactor than code.

> Read more

From the Build archive

Build #72 - From chaos to culture: why the best founders don’t scale alone

The stages of the founder growth journey unpacked with a handy three stage framework for founders.

> Read the article

Build #28 - Books for leaders – my recommendations

The books that I most frequently recommend to clients to help them grow as founder leaders.

> Read the article

#### Build #92 - The illusion of knowing everything
I've been thinking a lot about control lately.

Not in some grand, philosophical way but more in the "why did I just spend 20 minutes researching the optimal way to load a dishwasher" kind of way (and yes, I really did that without catching myself).

During my reflections I've noticed something about many founders - they're often truly obsessed with knowing everything. They want answers. They want certainty. They want to feel like they've really got their arms around their business.

And I do get it. Because I'm often exactly the same in my work and much of my life away from work too.

But there's an uncomfortable common truth that lies beneath the surface.

That need for control often comes from a place of fear.

Maybe it's fear of being caught out or fear of losing control of something we've poured our lives into as founders. We've all got our own fears going on.

I heard a brilliant line on a podcast on my drive back from the French Alps last week: "People who think they know everything are really annoying to those of us who actually do."

I can't remember which podcast now it was but it made me laugh. And then it made me cringe a bit.

When you're scaling a business the number of things you don't know grows pretty quickly (new markets, new team dynamics, new tech, things that used to work don't work anymore etc).

It's overwhelming if you try to master all of it.

And yet we try. We stay up late reading, attend too many webinars, create frameworks and processes and hire people like me in the hope we know.

All this in service of the illusion that if we just know enough, it'll all be ok.

But what if we didn't have to know everything?

What if being comfortable with not knowing was actually a competitive advantage?

I've been working with a founder recently who's noticeably managed to make this shift. They can pivot much more quickly because they're no longer attached to being right. They're building a stronger team because they're genuinely curious about what others know. And they're sleeping better too now.

Which all got me thinking about what it really means to embrace uncertainty.

Let go of the wheel (at least occasionally)

This sounds a bit woo-woo I know. But there's something profound about accepting you don't have to orchestrate every outcome.

When you stop trying to be on top of every decision, you create space for better solutions to emerge.

I'm not suggesting you become unnecessarily passive. I'm suggesting you become selective about where you apply your need for control.

Trying to control everything means you're controlling nothing effectively.

Stop pretending you know stuff you don't

This is the big one. We think we need all the answers because that's what leadership looks like.

No. Just no.

The strongest leaders I work with can say "I don't know but I know we can figure it out" or "That's not my area so who can we talk to?"

They've realised that pretending to know things is exhausting and gets in the way of real learning.

And it's terrible for culture too. When you pretend to know everything, your team think you're the only person who can solve problems. It encourages founder dependency. They stop thinking for themselves as much as they could.

Actively seek out your knowledge gaps

Deliberately putting yourself in situations where you're the least knowledgeable person in the room is incredibly valuable.

Take on that project you don't understand. Hire that person who's smarter than you. Enter that room where you'll be you a novice.

Real growth happens not in the comfortable territory of what you already know, but in the messy space of what you're figuring out.

Founders who scale successfully have developed a comfortable relationship with uncertainty.

They're still rigorous and thoughtful. But they're not paralysed by gaps in their knowledge.

They've learned to distinguish between things they need to know deeply and things they need to trust others to know. They've built teams precisely because they can't and shouldn't know everything.

And they've stopped using "knowing everything" as a proxy for being in control.

They've become comfortable with not knowing.

So here's what I'm wondering - what would change if you stopped trying to know everything? What decisions might you make differently? What conversations might you have? What help might you ask for?

What if not knowing wasn't a weakness to hide but a doorway you could walk through today?

best regards,sw

From the Build archive

Build #82 - The founder’s paradox: letting go without losing (too much) control

Examining the experiences of two founders with contrasting approaches to letting go.

> Read the article

Build #13 - Deciding on deciding

Letting go of decision making is key to reducing founder dependency yet it continues to amaze me how little attention is paid to how decisions are actually made.

> Read the article

#### Build #93 - Three ways founders waste energy (without realising it)
This week's selection from my inbox explores three different perspectives on how systems resist founders' best intentions. I bring you insights about birds that teach us about adaptive leadership, the art of saying no without burning bridges and why brilliant ideas fail when they clash with existing systems. ​A strand that connects all three of this week's recommended articles is the fact that founder success isn't about having the perfect plan. It's about understanding the forces that push back against change and learning to work with them rather than against them.

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #1

The Shape of Leadership

Mike Fisher talks about how bird flight patterns - the structured V-formation of migrating geese and the fluid murmurations of starlings - can be metaphors for different leadership approaches. He argues that effective leadership isn't about choosing one style permanently, but rather understanding which pattern the moment requires and having the discipline to shift between structure and autonomy based on circumstances.

My take:​This landed with me (do you see what I did there?) because so many founders get stuck believing their preferred leadership style is universally best, when in reality early-stage chaos and scale-stage structure demand fundamentally different approaches. Mike's observation that V-formations work when "the cost of mistakes is high" whilst murmurations thrive "when learning matters more than efficiency" is particularly useful for founders navigating different growth phases.

> Read moreRECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #2

How to say no effectively

Justin Welsh presents a practical framework for declining requests without damaging relationships. He calls out three common failure modes: ghosting, over-explaining or saying yes when you mean no. His solution is a simple email template that responds quickly, acknowledges the request, clearly declines and (if you want) leaves the door open for future opportunities.

My take:​I've been thinking a lot about this myself this year. It tackles something I know most founders struggle with but rarely discuss openly - the compounding cost of poor boundaries from saying yes too often. The template itself is immediately actionable, but the real underlying thing for me is that "a clean no, delivered quickly and warmly, builds trust". Being able to do that signals that your "yes" actually means something when you give it. I'm practising this myself in 2026.

> Read moreRECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #3

The system always kicks back

Drawing on John Gall's systems thinking, the Flux Collective gang explain why impressive demos often fail during in the real world - because existing systems actively resist change through invisible constraints, incentives and politics. They argues against comprehensive top-down solutions in favour of incremental approaches that work within existing systems rather than attempting to replace them entirely.

My take:​I think this has to be essential reading for anyone who's watched a "game-changing" launch or major transformation fail to gain traction despite its obvious superiority. The distinction between "disruption vs equilibrium" cuts through much of the thinking in startup culture. Resistance isn't a temporary obstacle to overcome, it's the default state that founders have to negotiate with rather than ignore.

> Read more

#### Build #94 - The hidden cost of unclear roles
I've just completed two organisational design projects with founders looking at creating the first leadership teams for their businesses.

That means I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about role clarity.

Which got me to noticing the complete absence of it in so many scaling businesses when I first come across them.

Let me give you an example. Last week I had a half hour intro call with a founder who told me her team was "totally empowered to make decisions."

Then in the same call she spent at least five minutes telling me how nothing was getting decided without her involvement.

The contradiction didn’t seem to register until I asked her to reflect on the relationship between those things she told me.

This got me thinking about poor role definition and the problems it creates.

Those problems typically seem completely unrelated until you realise they all stem from the same root cause.

Let's explore that a bit more.

When roles aren’t properly defined, delivery slows to a super slow pace.

People duplicate work because nobody’s quite sure who owns what.

Or things fall through the cracks entirely because everyone assumed someone else was handling it.

I’ve watched teams spend hours in meetings trying to untangle who should be doing what, when a simple DACI matrix would have solved it in fifteen minutes.

As I seem to say a lot - it's all gaps and overlaps. But it gets worse...

Founders end up with this bizarre situation where people are technically empowered but functionally paralysed.

You’ve told them they can make decisions. You think you’ve given them autonomy but they're not taking it.

But because their role boundaries aren’t clear, they don’t know which decisions are theirs to make.

So they either make none or they make the wrong ones and step on someone else’s toes.

And what happens next? Silos emerge naturally.

Single-function teams put more focus on their own stuff cross-functional collaboration requires clarity about who does what. Without it, every interaction becomes a negotiation and that's harder than getting on with your own work.

Marketing doesn’t know what they can expect from the product team. Product doesn’t know where their responsibility ends and the engineering team’s begins.

So everyone retreats to their corner and focuses on what they can control.

People communicate constantly but ineffectively.

Slack is red hot. Sync meetings crowd our calendars. It all looks productive.

But in reality nobody has the right context because role clarity creates valuable understanding about who needs to know what.

When you know what someone’s accountable for, you understand why they’re asking questions, what decisions they need to make and what information they need from you.

Without that clarity, communication is often just noise.

The kind of changes you need to make as you scale become sources of interpersonal tension rather than opportunities for growth.

Because when roles were fuzzy to begin with, any change feels like a personal slight rather than a structural adjustment.

"Why is Sarah now doing what I used to do?" becomes a question burdened with emotion rather than a simple clarification of responsibilities.

And then there’s accountability. Or more specifically, the lack of it.

Nobody holds anyone accountable because it’s not clear who should be held accountable for what.

And ironically no-one knows who should be doing the holding to account either (this is all getting a bit meta).

The patterns I recognise through my work are things slipping and deadlines coming and going. The same few heroes step forward every time to save the day (most founders will know exactly who I’m talking about in their businesses).

You get stuff done, but resentment builds. Those heroes burn out or leave. Everyone else feels a bit useless. A culture that felt entrepreneurial feels like it's drifting away from you.

The actual value you're creating in your business gets lost.

Trust erodes when people don’t know what to expect from each other. You can’t trust someone to do their job if you don’t know what their job is.

You can’t rely on someone if you’re not sure whether they’re supposed to be doing the thing you need them to do.

I could continue, but you get the gist: lots of unwelcome things are the inevitable consequence of poor role clarity as you scale.

The good news? It’s fixable. Not easy, but fixable.

Start by defining roles around outcomes you want rather than activities that currently happen.

Use role scorecards regularly in 1:1s to create a shared understanding about what someone needs to achieve.

Share these so everyone knows everyone else's role.

Make accountability explicit.

Create clarity about decision rights.

Create space and habits for holding to account. These might be 1:1s, check-ins, personal dashboard - choose your approach, do it often and consistently.

But before you embark on these things, you have to acknowledge the problem exists. So here’s my question to reflect upon - which of these symptoms are showing up in your business right now?

And more importantly, what are you going to do about it?

#### Build #95 -  Purpose, organisation-building, and the end of jobs a we know them
This week's Build seems to have inadvertently landed on a theme around the uncomfortable gap between corporate rhetoric and reality. These three articles share a common thread about the limitations of aspiration when confronted with the messy complexity of real organisational life. They challenge us to move beyond comforting abstractions that founders tend to rely upon on towards harder, more honest questions about how we lead and what we're building.

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #1

Purpose is pointless

Margaret Heffernan looks at how Johnson & Johnson - a business once celebrated for its ethical credo and corporate purpose - systematically endangered consumers through products including talc-based baby powder and opioids despite decades of internal warnings. She raises fundamental questions about whether purpose can ever meaningfully make a difference to people's behaviour in businesses.

My take:​I love Margaret's writing as it really forces founders to think. In this article I liked her call to abandon "magic words" and instead ask adult questions about how profits are achieved. If you still believe that articulating values alone can shape organisational behaviour, you need to read what she says about acknowledging trade-offs rather than hiding behind abstract nouns.

> Read moreRECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #2

The paradox of organisation building

In this article Andrew Ormerod explains that building organisational capability is the CEO's most important responsibility but it rarely appears explicitly in their diary - because it happens through everything they do rather than as discrete tasks. He suggests that having a clear vision for the kind of organisation you want to build and maintaining it through regular conversations rather than delegation to HR is what enables founders to shape behaviour and make consistent decisions that actually build organisational capacity.

My take:​I wish I'd written this article myself. It's spot on and is also a refreshingly practical counterpoint to Margaret's article, acknowledging that organisation-building can't be reduced to statements or systems. It has to be actively maintained through dialogue and vision. I liked Andrew's paradox that the most important work is never explicitly scheduled, but I did wonder whether the emphasis on conversation and vision might itself become another form of comforting abstraction unless used alongside more specific. accountability mechanisms

> Read moreRECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #3

Work: The four big shifts

Rishad Tobaccowala identifies four fundamental transformations reshaping work: the uncoupling of work from traditional jobs, the shift towards agentic and fractionalised employees, the need for leaders to develop learning and unlearning capabilities and the emergence of AI-first organisational designs.

My take:​I included this piece as it forces founders to think about how building organisations must now take account of workforces that are predominantly non-human or distributed. When reading Rishad's line about reconsidering "every aspect of our work and career" alongside the other articles, I found myself pondering whether this disruption offers an opportunity to build something genuinely better rather than simply automating many of our existing dysfunctions at work.

> Read more

#### Build #96 - How "professional management" makes things worse
I’ve been thinking a bit about a pattern I keep seeing in the founder-led scale-ups I've worked with over the years.

It goes like this. Founders hire a “professional manager” to bring structure as their companies grow past the a number of people - usually 20 to 50.

That manager arrives with all the creds. They talk about governance frameworks and reporting cadences and accountability matrices (I am aware that I talk about those things a lot too - bear with me).

Six months in, they’ve got more process. More status updates. More syncs. More meetings about the meetings. More meetings to debrief about the meetings.

But mysteriously, less actual real progress is happening.

Meanwhile the people who were actually making things work - the ones with judgement, who could hold complexity, who protected the team from nonsense -now look “less senior” because they’re not playing the performance game.

And that’s not a bug in the system. It’s the system that manager designed working exactly as designed.

A lot of scale-ups don’t fail because they lack talent or strategy.

They fail because they get trapped inside a governing ideology that makes everything look under control whilst making it progressively less able to learn, adapt or even tell the truth.

Yes my friends, that ideology is managerialism.

It’s the belief that performance comes primarily from measurement, oversight, targets and professionalised control over others. It treats businesses as if they’re best improved by tightening grip: clearer KPIs, sharper accountability, more reporting, more standardisation.

If you squint hard enough it sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

But under the complexity of the real world in scaling businesses - where the work is interdependent and uncertain - managerialism creates a predictable pattern of failure.

Work becomes legible, not viable. By that I mean the system optimises what can be seen and counted, not what actually matters.

Judgement gets displaced by compliance. People learn that staying safe means following process, not solving the real problem even if that's what they know should really happen.

Deep learning is replaced by performance theatre. Dashboards and RAG statuses multiply, whilst the underlying work that creates value stays stuck.

This is the root of more failure in scaling businesses than people seem to talk about.

When a system is governed primarily by managerialism, it becomes excellent at appearing coherent and increasingly incapable of being coherent.

The tragedy of managerialism isn’t just that it fails the potential those founders embued in their businesses.

It’s that it systematically fails to recognise the leaders who are actually doing the work of coherence.

Those are the ones redesigning rhythms, simplifying handovers, clarifying responsibility and reducing friction. They're building capability instead of policing compliance.

In other words it punishes the very leadership it claims to want.

I see this pattern a lot with the founders I work with. They're stuck because they hire managerialism dressed up as expertise. Being a big 4 consultant doesn't necessarily make you a great fit for being a scale-up operator.

So what’s the alternative?

It's not chaos. It's not the flat, leaderless organisations I would have advocated for a decade ago.

It's a different governing logic that recognises coherence comes from:

Clarity of purpose and responsibility (not proliferation of KPIs)​Distributed judgement (not centralised control)​Rhythm that creates space for thinking (not reporting that consumes it)​Leaders who can hold ambiguity (not managers who need everything measurable)

It means asking yourself whether we're building real capability or are we enabling the merry dance of performancemanagement theatre?

Because the organisations that scale well aren’t the ones with the most sophisticated dashboards.

They’re the ones where people can still tell the truth.

They're the ones where someone can say “this isn’t working” without triggering a blame cascade.

They're the ones where the system is designed to be coherent, not just to look coherent.

"So Simon, how do I spot this?" I hear you ask. Here a few questions to think about to see if this is going on in your scale-up:

When you look at your leadership team, who gets promoted? Are they the people who make things work or the people who make things look like they’re working?

How much of your team’s time is spent doing the work versus reporting on the work?

What's the ratio of managing the work vs doing the work?

And if you're really honest with yourself, are you building the organisation you say you really want or a managerialist machine that’s just better disguised?

​

#### Build #97 - Getting things done through others
I spent most of last week with a nasty bout of gastroenteritis, so work had to take an unplanned back seat to rest and recovery. But that did mean I read a lot and so for this issue I bring you three articles that circle around a single question: how do you get things done through other people?

Whether it's handing off tasks to your team, thinking about the relational structures that underpin your organisation or building the kind of influence that makes outcomes easier for everyone, the common thread here is that founders who try to do everything themselves eventually hit a ceiling.

And the good news is that each of these pieces offers practical ways to break through it. Have a great week and stay healthy.

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #1

How to delegate in six steps

Dr Hayley Lewis sets out why people struggle to delegate - from perfectionism to a fear of losing control - and explains the research-backed benefits when they do manage it. She explains a practical six step framework, covering everything from listing and prioritising tasks through to matching delegation levels with team member experience, communicating expectations clearly and giving feedback afterwards.

My take:​Hayley's newsletter is one of the few that I always open without fail. I like that she treats delegation as a genuine skill to be developed rather than a simple instruction to "just let go." I chose to include it because the distinction between delegating and dumping is one that too many founders fail to make and her three level model for tailoring your approach is immediately usable for any founder.

> Read moreRECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #2

Beyond hierarchies: the real org chart

Joost from Corporate Rebels argues that relationships, not org charts, are what truly shape organisational outcomes. Drawing on anthropologist Alan Fiske's four relational models (Authority Ranking, Market Pricing, Equality Matching and Communal Sharing), he maps these onto different self-managing organisation types from Haier's internal micro-enterprises to Buurtzorg's purpose-driven nursing teams.

My take:​I've become increasingly cynical about the self-management movement over recent years, but I found this a genuinely thought-provoking reframing of self-management, moving beyond structural mechanics to the human connections that make or break any organisational model. For founders considering how to scale without defaulting to traditional hierarchy, the relational lens offered here is a valuable starting point.

> Read moreRECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #3

A clean path to power: six moves that work

Richard Claydon presents six practical moves for building power with integrity, drawing on Jeffrey Pfeffer's research but adding some guardrails of transparency, contestability and proportionality. Through a running case study and concrete micro-practices such as publishing "decisionable drafts" to building power maps and crafting a repeatable one-sentence story, Richard argues that power comes not from deserving it but from making outcomes easier and making that contribution visible.

My take:​I found this a refreshingly honest take on a topic that many founders and leaders find uncomfortable to discuss openly. I included it because I liked how the practical framework turns abstract ideas about influence into specific actions. The emphasis on clean and transparent power feels particularly relevant for any founder building a company culture they can be proud of.

> Read more

#### Build #98 - AI and the workslop epidemic
I've been thinking about a particular kind of waste in business a lot recently.

Not the obvious kind - where someone clearly hasn't done the work or has done it badly. That's easy to spot and easy to fix.

No, I'm talking about something far more insidious: work that *looks* perfectly fine but is actually wholly worthless.

It's work that appears plausible, sounds professional and uses all the right language. But when you really examine it, there's nothing there. No insight. There's no original thinking and no substance that actually moves anything forward.

We've got a name for it now: workslop.

Harvard Business Review defines this as content that "masquerades as good work but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task."

And this is destroying productivity, but not necessarily for the reasons you might expect.

The real problem with workslop isn't that it's obviously rubbish.

The real problem is that it's plausibly adequate*

It passes a superficial inspection by looking like work has been done. It gets sent, read and responded to. And that means it creates more work downstream.

Here's what makes it so dangerous for founders (and COOs): it's invisible waste.

When someone doesn't do their job, you know it immediately. When someone does it badly, you can usually see and feel the problems.

But when someone produces something that looks like good work? That seems to slip through too often.

It's not just the illusion of progress that's a problem. There's another layer to this that's even more of a problem for founders.

Workslop that gets created and then completely ignored.

As a COO I see this constantly with standard operating procedures (SOPs).

These look brilliant on screen and just the kind of documentation you'd be proud to show an investor during due diligence.

Except in the real world nobody's following them.

Because nobody's been trained on them and that's because nobody actually knows they exist beyond the person who asked AI to create them.

I was working with a client last year who proudly showed me their ops handbook. It ran to forty-seven pages of beautifully formatted procedures covering everything from customer onboarding to quality control.

I've seen a lot of handbooks and playbooks, but my spidey sense was pinging as this one was too good.

I asked a few questions and learnt they'd created it in an afternoon using ChatGPT.

When I asked to watch their team actually onboard a customer, not a single step matched what was actually in the manual. They weren't deliberately ignoring it - they literally didn't know it existed.

The team member who had created it had done what they'd been asked to do. The founder felt good about having "sorted out their processes" and in reality no-one had made a difference to anything that matters.

And that's not a one-off. I see it a lot.

This is workslop at its most wasteful. It's not just meaningless, it's actively misleading, creating the illusion that something has been done when actually, nothing has changed at all.

The gap between what's written down and what's actually happening becomes a kind of organisational fiction which nobody notices until something goes wrong.

Let's get this straight...the work isn't the document.

The work is the implementation, the training, the integration into daily operations and the often long-winded checking that people actually understand it.

But that's hard. It takes time and that requires actual engagement with your team.

But of course it's much easier to get AI to produce something that looks like you've done all that, file it away, and move on.

Here's what I've realised: AI isn't creating this problem. It's just making it impossible to ignore. Businesses have always had a workslop problem with people going through the motions, producing outputs that look like work but lack genuine thought.

AI has just industrialised it, making it faster, easier and a lot more prevalent.

If your organisation is drowning in workslop, that's a leadership failure.

AI doesn't have judgement. It doesn't understand what actually matters versus what just sounds good. It doesn't know the difference between depth and the appearance of depth.

It produces output that looks like work because that's what it's designed to do.

The question is whether you can tell the difference and does your business operating system have the in-built checks and balances that weed out workslop.

Until leaders get serious about defining what good work actually means - what the right depth of thinking looks like and what shows a successful implementation has been completed - it's only going to get worse.

So if I leave you with one thought today, it's going to be that you need to start asking how wide the gap is between your documented reality and your actual one?

Would you even know?

> Read the article

#### Build #99 - Mind the gaps
There's a particular kind of organisational dysfunction that really been bugging me this year - when everything looks right on paper, yet nothing quite works in practice. This week's Build pulls together three articles exploring critical gaps that separate intention from reality in how we build companies. What makes these gaps so dangerous isn't that they're invisible, it's that we seem to have become remarkably skilled at pretending they don't exist at all.

RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #1

Want a better work culture? Change your team conversations.

Gustavo Razzetti argues that culture change fails not because of poor strategy but because organisations focus on top-down comms rather than the quality of daily team conversations. He introduces the concept of 'conversational debt' - the compounding cost of avoided discussions - and identifies three patterns that keep teams stuck: avoidance (believing conversations won't change anything), blame (focusing on fault rather than solutions) and groupthink (prioritising harmony over talking honestly to each other at work).

My take:​The conversational debt concept is useful because it quantifies what most founders probably realise is going on but can't measure - that every avoided discussion doesn't disappear. Instead it accumulates a debt until the gap between what everyone knows and what anyone will say becomes the unwelcome defining feature of your scale-up's culture.

> Read moreRECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #2

Why almost every value stream example you know is wrong

Jurgen Appelo's article proposes that traditional value stream definitions are dangerously narrow. They start too late (with customer orders) and end too early (with delivery rather than validated impact). He suggests extending value streams earlier to capture early market signals and competitive positioning and onwards to include impact validation.

My take:​Two gaps going on there - the bit before anyone asks for what you make/do (where others are already shaping demand) and the gap after you ship (where you claim success without showing results). If you're wondering why perfectly executed work can produce disappointing results, this article might be useful food for thought.

> Read moreRECOMMENDED THIS WEEK #3

From control to presence: the essential leadership shift

Jeroen Kraaijenbrink looks at how traditional leadership's emphasis on control - analysis, efficiency, decisiveness - worked in stable environments but now creates distance and disengagement in organisations. He describes a 'leadership split' where thinking dominates feeling and doing dominates being, arguing that the shift required is not from strong to soft leadership but from pressure to presence.

My take:​The 'leadership split' creates perhaps the most consequential gap of all: the one between the leader you present and the person you actually are. What makes this gap so damaging for founders is that their organisations inevitably replicate it, creating cultures where everyone performs competence whilst privately experiencing fragmentation. The distance between public confidence and private uncertainty becomes the unspoken norm and an uncomfortable place to be for founders.

> Read more

#### Building a website using the Wordpress content management system
Many bloggers will be familiar with the Wordpress open source content management system. But Wordpress can do much more than just run a blog - I've just used it to launch a "traditional" static website, complete with password-protected members' area and some extra database goodies to boot. The site I built, on behalf of client British Marine Electronics Association (BMEA), is at www.bmea.org. It is intended for members of the association (who have access to member-specific news, content and feeds), prospective members and customers buying marine electronic equipment.   The beauty of the Wordpress system is that it provides a simple system for managing content, as well as allowing delegation of content editing rights to clients. Its other real benefit is its extendability - there are thousands of plugins available that extend what the system can do - I've used plenty of plugins on the BMEA website, especially to provide the searchable database of BMEA members. As Wordpress is designed as a blogging platform you have to approach building a static site in a slightly different way. The bulk of the static content on the site is set up as pages, with the news area set up as posts. On a blog it's the other way round - most content is posts with a few static pages. The main plug-in behind the members' area and database is Cimy Extra Fields. This plug-in allows administrator to add extra fields to the users that are set up in Wordpress - I've used this to hold all the extra data about member organisations, such as extra contact details, region and the list of products and services supplied (example here). The plug-in itself allowed me to set up users in the administrator area, but my PHP skills weren't up to coding the front-end PHP for templates to allow retrieval and searching of member information. The plug-in authors produced me some extra PHP for my templates to do just this - the result is an effective member search facility.  If you're looking to do something similar in Wordpress I'd definitely recommend getting in touch with Cimatti Consulting - the combination of their free plug-in and bespoke coding means there are few limits to creating custom user data and search for your website. I've also used a really powerful plug-in called Who Sees Ads to control the appearance of various advertising slots around the site (although most are disabled at the moment so you may not spot many).  This plug-in allows the administrator to set conditions (referred to as "contexts") to determine whether a particular piece of content is displayed or not displayed. The criteria on which you can set conditions are really wide ranging, including things like whether the visitor has come from a search engine, whether they have been on the site before (once or a set number of times), the age of the content on the page, or indeed any condition that can be coded in Wordpress (eg is(home) to return true if the page is the homepage). The content that can be displayed can be any piece of HTML code. As the name suggests it's designed for displaying adverts, but equally could be used to customise editorial content on a site or present a welcome message to visitors who haven't been to a site before. There are similar Wordpress plug-ins to do this, but Who Sees Ads seems to be the most flexible that I've seen. The full list of plug-ins used on the BMEA site is available here: www.bmea.org/plugins (thanks to a handy plug-in called WPPluginsUsed). The BMEA site design was produced by Nick at Tinderhouse, with XHTML/CSS coding by PSD2HTML. [tags]cms, website+development, BMEA, tinderhouse, cimy+extra+fields, who+sees+ads[/tags]

#### Bus advert copy overload
As a public sector marketer I lead a team that does all sorts of marketing activity, including booking traditional media formats like bus advertising.
Which means I am quite sad when I'm out and about and can't actually look at adverts anywhere without scrutinising them from a marketer's point of view.
So when I spotted this bus advert in the traffic ahead of me on the way home today my heart sank:

I should at this point mention that it isn't one of our adverts, but if it was I'd have been fuming.
When designing and copywriting adverts, you need to think about the context in which it'll be viewed.
Bus adverts are typically viewed in very short bursts while people are driving, often at speed, or being passed by an advert-laden bus.
Which means there's not much of an opportunity to read lots of words.
In fact 5-10 words is probably too much. Have a look at the next bus advert you see and count the words. Any more and the message is lost.
So to my mind this advert is a wasted opportunity to sell and a waste of precious marketing budget.
I hate to say it, but it's usually public sector organisations that try to squeeze too many words onto adverts. I don't see many adverts from large private sector companies that fall into this trap.

#### Busy times
Life is particularly hectic at the moment and unfortunately that's taking time away from blogging.
The main thing that's keeping me busy in the day job, and extending the day job late into the evening is that fact that tomorrow is local elections day in the UK - in Medway the election count takes place overnight on Thursday evening.
For local government communicators this means the dubious pleasure of working all night at the election count.
At the last parliamentary election I worked on media relations for the local, regional and national journalists that attended the count. With three marginal seats it was a long night with plenty of recounts. In the end we finished up around 6.30am and trooped off home for a few hours sleep before returning to work.
This time around I'm overseeing the team's work, and in particular making sure that the council's website is kept up to date with the latest results through the night and running the big public information screen on the stage at the count.
It's one of those nights where I marvel at the range of skills that public relations people need to have nowadays. Tomorrow night I'll be stage managing the running of the audio-visual set-up one minute, and then be handling media questions and requests the next.
Versatility and an ability to be professionally sharp after 24 hours without sleep will be key to things going well tomorrow.
Luckily having a young baby means that I'm used to functioning with little sleep, but even so it's going to be a long night tomorrow. The current favourite finish time in the sweepstake is 6am, but fingers crossed for something more like 4 or 5am and a problem-free count.

#### Can the Bernard Matthews brand survive bird flu?
Over the weekend the UK had its first substantial outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu. The outbreak was suspected late last week and has led to the culling of more than 160,000 turkeys at a farm near Lowestoft, Norfolk.
This is also the first time that an outbreak of such a disease has hit a branded farmer - Bernard Matthews. In the past, outbreaks of other infections among UK farmers have been centred on unbranded producers who form the vast majority of the UK farming sector.
While there's undoubtedly damage to the generic brand when an outbreak hits unbranded producers, and there will be harm done to all poultry producers in the UK from this outbreak, will this outbreak be the nail in the coffin of the Bernard Matthews brand?
Bernard Matthews is a brand that, having launched in the 1950s, grew rapidly in until the 1990s as Uk food buyers demanded more convenience and pre-prepared food. In this climate the Bernard Matthews brand staked its claim as a trusted producer, with Matthews himself featured in advertising campaigns alongside the strapline "Boootiful!". As a child of the 1980s I certain remember it!
However in the past few years the market has begun to work against mass-market food brands. The big growth in the food sector has been in organic foods and brands that appear more wholesome and small-scales (although in fact many are mass-market in scale).
In this climate the Bernard Matthews brand has risked becoming a anachronism, a product of the past with no brand resonance except nostalgia among a dwindling group of customers.
The brand has been hit further in the past few years by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver's crusade to improve school meals (and rid of them of another Matthews product, the much maligned turkey twizzlers), and by a court case which found animal cruelty on a Matthews firm.
The latter case also shone a revealing light into the world of large-scale farming which can't have contributed positively to Bernard Matthews' brand equity.
My feeling is that a brand with as much heritage as Bernard Matthews can survive the bird flu outbreak, although the sheer scale of the farming operation and birds that have been culled will push even further brand away from the niche, small-scale food brands that are growing so rapidly.
However the Bernard Matthews brand feels like one in long-term decline. One that is evolving, but not rapidly enough or in the right direction to sustain a long-term future. The bird flu outbreak will be another notable point in the decline, but won't be the final blow.
Bernard Matthews is a family-owned brand. I wonder how long the brand would have lived on under more ruthless brand operators, such as Procter and Gamble or Unilever?

#### Change and internal communications with IC expert Kevin Ruck
As I've said more times than I'd care to remember over the past seven months, change communication is a vital skill for communicators to master.
And one vital dimension of this is internal communication - ensuring this important group of stakeholders understand what is happening, their role and their contribution to the eventual outcome.
That's why I'm dead chuffed that Kevin Ruck, author of new book Exploring Internal Communications, agreed to an interview about change and internal communication.
Kevin is a founding director of PR Academy, a CIPR qualifications centre providing education, training and coaching for communication professionals. He has spent more than 20 years in various communication roles within the telecoms and ICT sector, latterly specialising in internal communication.
Kevin's book, Exploring Internal Communication, is a companion for Chartered Institute of Public Relations qualifications in internal communication and a general introduction to the fast developing fields of internal communication and employee engagement. It's relevant to people currently working in these areas, from either a corporate communication or human resources background, and also to operational managers seeking a better understanding of internal communication.
In his book Kevin emphasises that there is no magic internal communication “silver bullet”. Instead he aims to provide a basic grounding in theory and practice that can be used to tailor effective internal communication to the enormously varied organisational situations that exist.
But the book is clearly written from a perspective that argues that effective internal communication puts the employee at the centre of the organisation and that genuine, honest, two-way dialogue forms the basis of effective, strategic, practice.
Anyway, here are Kevin's insights for public sector communicators:
Simon: So Kevin, what are the links between internal communication and service delivery /organisational reputation? How do we demonstrate the business value of internal communication?
In a service based organisation, your employees are your brand. Internal communication is fundamental to employee engagement. Engaged employees create an engaging brand. And engaging brands are more successful.
The evidence for this simple equation is overwhelming, though, as ever with communication it is difficult to prove direct correlations.
In terms of return on investment, the Towers Watson Communication Report for 2009-10 found that companies that are highly effective communicators had 47 percent higher total returns to shareholders over the last five years compared with firms that are the least effective communicators.
However, in the same report, it was found that a little more than half of companies are effective at educating employees on company values. This is reinforced by research conducted for the CIPD in 2006 that showed that only 32 per cent of employees feel that they are both fully/fairly well informed and also have opportunities for upward feedback. This is group is, unsurprisingly, highly engaged.
In their report to the UK government in 2009, MacLeod and Clarke argue strongly that “there is evidence that improving engagement correlates with improving performance”. According to Gallup, in addition to profitability, other benefits of employee engagement include higher customer advocacy and higher productivity.
Gallup also found that eighty-six per cent of engaged employees say they very often feel happy at work and happy employees are more likely to provide a good service that reinforces organisational reputation than unhappy employees.
Simon: Significant organisational change is going to be widespread in the public sector in the coming months. What should communicators be thinking about now to get ready for the internal communication challenges this change will bring?
Kevin: Coming changes in the public sector will really stretch internal communicators. Firstly, they will be part of the change so will have to do more with less, so this means thinking laterally about how to use channels effectively.
Secondly, they should be talking to senior managers about the importance of involving people, as far as possible, in the way that change is managed.
Thirdly, they should be emphasising that communication should be based around people and their concerns as well as what the new strategy and organisational structure might be.
Simon: What can internal communicators learn from the private sector when communicating change?
Kevin: We shouldn’t assume that practice in the private sector is necessarily better or ahead of that in public sector. A lot depends on the organisation and its history. Some private sector organisations are more used to change than public sector organisations, so internal communicators may be more experienced in change communication.
One aspect that crops up a lot in the classes that I run is that technology tends to be more conducive to social media in the private sector than in the public sector. Though there may be technological limitations in the public sector, some private sector organisations that have embraced social media may have some good tips.
Simon: Employee engagement is really important in maintaining service delivery, especially during times of change. What evidence is there for what does and doesn't make a difference to employee engagement?
Kevin: A lot of the thinking about employee engagement is based around the individual’s role and work. This is clearly important. However, there is also more and more academic evidence emerging about the importance of organisational identification.
Research for the CIPD in 2006 identified three key factors for employee engagement; feeling well informed, opportunities for upward feedback and line manager commitment to the organisation. This sounds straightforward, the challenge is getting all three in place so that employees get all the information they need to then have their voice heard in a way that helps organisations improve processes and service.
Simon: What roles should senior leaders in organisations be playing in times of change? What advice should communicators be giving senior leaders?
Kevin: Above all, leaders should be visible.They need to be very clear about what is happening and ensure that all employees feel fully informed and have opportunities to have a say in what is happening.
Leading organisations is not about democracy, but employees should have a say that is seriously considered. They should also show concern for employees and acknowledge the issues that major change involves. They should also set a firm timescale for when things will happen – something that many are afraid to do in case dates get missed.
Simon: Let's talk tactics. Are there any case studies of good internal communication that you'd like to share with public sector communicators?
Kevin: It’s tricky to find examples of internal communication as they’re often not freely made available in any detail. However, there are some great examples of CIPR award winning practice on the CIPR website.
The Simply Communicate web site has some good case studies at www.simply-communicate.com.
There is a good slide pack on social media and internal communication at BT here too.

#### Changing news and public sector media relations
The web has changed how people consume news beyond recognition - that won't come as a surprise to anyone reading this - but I've been thinking about what these changes mean to communicators in the public sector.
While the changes are, in part, about the rapid growth of social media, what's also relevant is how "mainstream" media outlets are changing and how the practice of media relations.
Before the internet was around, news media was typically produced and consumed on an episodic basis - whether that was a TV news bulletin or a newspaper published every morning or evening.
And that rigid schedule meant a certain predictability to the news cycle - journalists had deadlines, which meant media relations officers had deadlines and everyone knew when the news became available in public.
But nowadays things are a bit different. While publication deadlines do still exist, they're less important in driving the business of news than before.
Mark Borkowski sums the advent of internet-enabled media nicely on his blog:
Consider the net a wire service, a huge, powerful story feed where everyone who wants it can get the message at high speed – delivered to their mobiles the moment it goes up if needs be. Psy Ops campaigns on the net are simple and easy to run, but it’s ludicrous and hypocritical of the media to suggest that this evil propaganda device is a new phenomenon. It’s just running at the speed of thought now.
So what does this mean for media relations in the public sector?
Media relations officers need to understand the changing way journalists have to work now. Many media relations officers are ex-journalists, but if they've been on the PR side of the fence for more than a few years, they're mistaken if they think journalism is the same as when they were journalists.
The advent of multimedia newsrooms means news needs to be produced quickly across print, audio, video and online - so when writing news releases and supplying supporting assets, media relations professionals need to bear that in mind.
And when producing this content, whatever it is, it's more important than ever that it's produced with the end audience in mind - not your internal stakeholders who need to agree it - because there's no time in a typical journalist's day to rewrite corporate marketing-speak into copy worth publishing or extensively edit your polished PR video into a segment that can be published onto a website.
The role of deadlines is also interesting - the pressure to publish fast means public sector organisations need to be ready to respond quickly - quicker than before - otherwise the story will go without a comment, quote or response - losing any chance of influencing the direction of the story at the early stage.
This means ensuring effective working relationships with colleagues throughout the organisation as well as making it more important than ever to prepare for issues that are likely to become news stories - requiring a strong and well managed approach to issues management.
The rapid changes in the media, both through the role of the internet and the evolution of traditional media organisations, are changing the role of media relations beyond recognition - and that's before even considering the role of social media and how public sector communications teams need to evolve in response to that.

#### Changing roles for local government communication teams
One theme that has emerged strongly this year in local government communication has been how the role of the communications team is changing.
The value of behavioural marketing is finally being recognised as being an important and under-utilised tool in delivering public services.
But what has really resonated with me has been the growing recognition that communications teams aren't the only answer to effective communication.
Of course communication channels need managing professionally, but the greatest volume of communication between a public body and the people it serves doesn't go through the communications team - it is through the people working across the organisation.
It's the same in any service sector company too. And it's been made even more so by the use of digital tools to connect staff and customers together as well.
So that means the role of the communicator is changing.
There needs to be a greater focus on internal communication, particularly as an enabler of a broader drive to enhance employee engagement.
I've heard this shift as being described as the need to create an army of narrators - with effective communicators enabling this to happen and being active listening and sharing nodes within formal and informal networks inside the organisation.
For a long time communicators have wanted to be the striker on the team, passed the ball in front of the goal and being the one to put the ball in the back of the net (and at times, dare I say it, take the accompanying glory as well).
We've wanted to have control of as much communication as we can to shape messages and own channels - seeing our role as being the final stage in the journey of information from deep within our organisation to the outside world.
But actually the role of communicators should be more like a roving midfielder, not afraid to move comfortably around the pitch linking together moves and helping the team function effectively. The role is as much about listening, engaging and facilitating as it is about being out front for the team all the time.
Sometimes we'll still get a shot on target and be the people who get information out, but much of the time it'll be others on the team that get the goal. And it doesn't matter who gets the goal as long as that goal is what the organisation needed to deliver its objectives.
Of course there are some activities that remain exclusively the communicator's domain as specialist skills and experience are valuable, but things are starting to shift as the scale and  value of genuine interactions with audiences are recognised in their own right.
Game on!

#### Changing UK media landscape
Last week Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator, published its regular research into the UK communications market. The report contains a lot of useful information for marketers, and paints a picture of rapidly evolving consumption of media by UK residents.
The trends are important for marketers to get their heads around. Past assumptions about the best communications channels are shattered as the fragmentation of channels and audience groups has continued apace.
Marketers need to think more creatively and innovatively when finding a way to get their messages to audiences.
The good news is that consumption of many communications services is increasing:
On average in 2005, mobile subscribers made more calls and sent more texts than they did in 2001, internet users spent almost 20 minutes more time online per week and TV viewers watched for 11 minutes longer.
Not surprisingly it was the 16 to 24 year olds who showed the greatest change in media consumption, and Ofcom noted that the difference between this group and older people was more marked in 2005 than previously.
The 16 to 24 year olds gave marketers a glimpse of how people will consume media in the future - they use a much wider range of technologies to receive (and increasingly send) communications. The evidence from Ofcom is clear - the young:

	watch less public-service broadcasting output than ever before - 58% of vieweing time compared to 74.3% in 2001
	listening to proportionately less analogue and local commercial radio than average and substitute it with digital listening from the newer national commercial services.
	are ditching fixed-line telephony in favour of mobile calls and texts – 16-24 year old subscribers make on average seven more calls and send 42 more texts per week than the population as a
	spend more time online; young adults who use the internet do so for 21 more minutes per week than the UK average and at least 70% of them have used websites for keeping up contacts (against 41% of all adults).

Think about a teenager you know - he or she probably carries the latest model mobile phone with internet access, an iPOD, has broadband internet access and digital TV at home.
So more importantly what does this mean for marketers?
Understanding new media and how to use it is vital - new media and social media channels aren't just an add-on to campaigns to make them edgy - these channels need to be at the heart of communications planning, and in many cases the first channel that is considered.
Marketers need to get the nuances of the channel, and how to keep the online and socially networked blogosphere with you.
Conversations are integral to social media, so it's inevitable that whatever your campaign is, it will get discussed. And as a marketing or PR person you need to accept the loss of media control that social media brings compared to advertising (although thinking about it, that loss of control isn't all that different to the difference between advertising, where you control the message, and editorial coverage where you don't).
That loss of control is where the real potential of social media marketing lies. Harness the online community and you'll have many more voices independently endorsing your message in a way you could never deliver by yourself.
Lee Odden has some interesting thoughts about social media for marketers - in particular he has five tips for marketers to consider:

	Tightly define your group. Gives example of tax attorney and M&A attorney as specific groups. It’s not enough to define a group like “financial attorneys” as that is too broad.
	Be not afraid of your features - When you’re talking to a click, you need to focus on the features.
	Look for an increase in influencer ratio - A clique is a gathering of people. They pass new information as currency and then go away and make recommendations. Tactic is to drop your message into the group and they will take it and pass it along.
	Support the community - Cliques are hard to get into. Basically need to “buy” your way in.
	Clone the tactic - Once you’ve done it right, apply to other similar situations.

A good way to see how up with social media you are as a marketer is to check out Mack Collier's top social media/networking sites. How many are you a member of? Do you know how they are used? If you don't then you can't expect to be able to deliver a marketing or PR programme using them.
Get online, register and start being part of the network. Without an understanding of social media theory and the practical experience of using these sites, how can you expect to deliver a campaign using them?
It's important marketing and PR people do that, and do it quick. Today's 16 to 24 year olds are leading the charge towards fragemented media and increasing interaction through social media.
Anyone familiar with the diffusion of innovations curve will know that the young are the early adopters, and the mainstream audience will follow. Plus of course today's young people are tomorrow's adults and parents, carrying with them the media habits of their early years.
Of course then their children will probably have new channels to communicate with, and I'll be reposting this in ten years time talking about a channel I can't even imagine now.

#### Changing world of marketing and PR
The world in which marketing and PR people operate is changing. And it's not just slow incremental change. It's a fundamental shift that will affect how we all operate.
1. Mass markets are no more
The days of communicating with a mass market are past. Niche markets are becoming the norm, presenting more challenges for communicators to reach fragmented audiences.
2. Consumers have more control over media consumption
The days of the broadcast model are numbered. With TiVO, Sky Plus, video on demand, podcasts, RSS and the like, people have control over what media they consume and when.
3. Consumers are more sceptical than ever before
I don't buy the view that one day in a golden advertising past people just lapped up advertising and did as advertisers wanted, but a general lack of trust in corporates (and governments for that matter) means traditional advertising is less effective than ever before.
4. The internet is changing media consumption
The internet today is demanding over a quarter of weekday media time among UK residents with access over 15 years old  (BMRB Internet Monitor Q3 2005). The media mix is changing fast, and for good. Marketers and PR people cannot afford to ignore the role this channel could play, whether by accident or design.
5. Social media and user generated content is happening
The traditional split between publisher and reader is no more. Anyone can get themselves a voice online through a blog, and connectivity between user generated content is massive, through social media networking tools like Flickr, Del.icio.us, Technorati etc.
To be effective in marketing and PR you need to understand these changes, and how they affect your audience and communications mix.
The environment is changing so marketing and PR people need to too.

#### Chartered Marketer status
At last the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) have confirmed that I now hold Chartered Marketer status. To achieve this I completed a two year continuing professional development programme following the CIM Diploma in Marketing.
I am committed to retaining this award through producing my own continuing professional development programme.

#### Chewing the new PR fat once again
I spent yesterday up in London once again at the Delivering the New PR 2.0 conference.   The day seemed to present a pretty good balance between exponents of new tools in PR and the pragmatists - I came away thinking about a few things differently and certainly built on my existing knowledge of social media. It was good to catch up with Stuart, Ian, Andy, David and Neville (briefly!) as well as meeting a few new faces too. My ever-ringing mobile phone stopped me meeting PR blogger Stephen Davies, although we're both on the bill at the CIPR Northern Conference later this month so I'm sure we'll meet properly then.   Two members of the marketing and PR team at Medway Council joined me at the conference and got a good grounding in how PR is changing and social media is having on impact on PR practice (without making all the "old" PR skills redundant). If you're looking for a good basic social media conference then you could do worse (and pay more) than heading along to the next instalment in the Delivering the New PR series. Disclosure: Free place at the conference and pictures thanks to Andy and Nicky. [tags]delivering+the+new+pr, conference, don't+panic+projects, andy+wake, stuart+bruce, neville+hobson, david+phillips, ian+delaney, stephen+davies[/tags]

#### Chip Griffin on the new media cocktail
Convergence and niches are the two main themes of Chip Griffin's new e-book "The New Media Cocktail". At 31 pages it's not a quick read, but it's well worth the time investment as piece of thought leadership on how the media landscape is changing.  Chip talks about how convergence of media channels, professional and user content, applications and content is changing media, and how the power of this convergence will be focussed on niches - potent groups of people with similar interests. You can download Chip's PDF from http://www.pardonthedisruption.com/NewMediaCocktail.pdf.

#### Choosing a public relations dissertation topic
I've reached the final hurdle in my CIPR Diploma studies - researching and writing the 6000 word personal project.
The personal project looks like a great opportunity to put everything I've learnt so far into action, and do some real in-depth research into a topic that's interesting and useful for me as a student and practitioner.
I'm keen to research a subject that's relevant to my day job, so I've been thinking of the following as a title:

"What is the role of social media in local government communications?"
There's real potential for the use of social media for local government to communicate and consult more effectively with local audiences. However to date the sector's adoption of social media has been slow and patchy.
In my research I hope to draw on UK and international case studies to understand how social media can play a role in helping local government communicate, particularly with audiences that it does not traditionally communicate effectively with.
I need to start thinking about my research methodology, but what do you think about this topic? Are there any must-see resources for public sector use of social media that you can point me towards? Do you have any examples of how your local council has used social media?
[Comments on this post are now closed]

#### CIPR - social media consultation
The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) has just published its consultation document on social media. It's now available via a link on president Tony Bradley's blog.
It's great that CIPR is taking an active interest in social media and its impact on professional practice, especially give the shenanigans earlier in the year between the blogging community and Colin Farrington.
I've downloaded the full paper and will be taking a proper look through over the next few days, and will post my thoughts then, as well as passing them directly to the institute.
My first reaction when I heard that CIPR was going to be publishing a guidance note or code of conduct for social media, was to question whether such a document would be necessary?
Social media gives the PR practitioner another set of tools with which to build relationships and influence perception, so is the CIPR's existing code not enough? The principles we should uphold in our professional are the same, regardless of whether we're blogging, issuing news releases, running stakeholder events or producing podcasts.
I sense from Stuart and Richard's posts that they're thinking along the same lines.
That aside, I'll hold off any further comment until I've read through the paper properly. I've published the text of the paper on Google Docs, and will make detailed comments and annotations there (it's at  docs.google.com/View?docid=dgn42txf_12g9wkt7). If anyone would like to add their thoughts there do drop me a line and I'll add you as a collaborator on the document.
UPDATED: Philip Young also has a good post about this.

#### CIPR and a positive way forward for social media?
So David Brain has had an unexpected opportunity to chat face to face with Colin Farrington, CIPR director-general. And the conversation has thrown up a challenge - what does the UK social media  community want CIPR to do to promote these new communications channels?
The issue of CIPR, blogging and Colin Farrington's view on it has received much attention among the UK social media community over the past few weeks. It was covered in For Immediate Release #175 and by bloggers including David Brain, Stuart Bruce and Simon Collister (as well as here).
In his post following his face to face with Colin, David lays down the challenge for the social media community to come up with some constructive suggestions for the CIPR.
So here are my initial thoughts on this:

Own the space
CIPR needs to take an aggressively positive stance on social media. There are many professions vying for credibility in this space, and as a respected body the institute can articulate the valid credentials for our profession.
It's easy for anyone to get into social media, but the professionals who are seen to understand the strategic, tactical and operational use of these new channels will be those who can benefit most commercially from them.
That's not to say a debate isn't healthy - but a corporate stance is needed from the CIPR on social media to give a firm indication of its position - otherwise the messages on behalf of the UK PR community will continue to be mixed.
Create appropriate professional standards
The profession needs standards that respected practictioners can work to. I wholeheartedly endorse Stuart Bruce's proposal that these standards are reached in a way appropriate to the  community. He suggests using a wiki, rather than the standards being devised by committee (the usual route).
The idea is great as it acknowledges that social media is different, and will get more buy-in from practictioners in the space than the traditional top-down edicts (even when they are consulted on).
Look for linkages with "traditional" PR
The real value of social media will be when it becomes integrated into the everyday marketing and PR mix. Showing how this can be done will increase awareness and understanding among those who aren't actively engaged in social media now.
Colin's letter talks about the older members of CIPR - as the proponents of these exciting new communications tools, I think we can gain acceptance by showing how social media can be used as part of a broader mix of tools - after all that's how it will be used in mainstream PR, certainly in the short and medium term.
These are very much my initial thoughts on this - hopefully a positive discussion will emerge in the social media community over the next few days, and a constructive way forward may emerge from the negativity of recent events.

#### CIPR consults on social media
Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) president Tony Bradley has blogged about the strengthening up the institute's ability to deal with members who flout the rules.
In the same post he also talks about some developments with the institute's consultation document on social media:
We are also looking at how the rapid growth in social media impacts on the Code, and our Assistant Director General Francis Ingham has produced a consultation document which you should take a look at and perhaps comment on - the paper will be published here and on the CIPR website on 23rd November.
It'll be really interesting to see what the consultation document includes and how the institute chooses to engage with its members who have the greatest experience in this field. From Tony's post it's not exactly clear what the purpose of the document itself is - whether it's a policy, code of conduct or just a guidance note.
I know from conversations I've had with other members who are engaged in social media that there are many strong opinions about what CIPR should and shouldn't do to recognise social media as a public relations tool.
The eventual result of this consultation will be an important factor in establishing whether CIPR can represent the interests of its members who currently engage in social media, and just as importantly the interests of many more members who will need to take a professional interest in social media in the months and years to come.
I'll definitely be checking out the consultation document on 23 November, as I'm sure many other CIPR member who share my passion for social media will be.

#### CIPR Diploma - Critical Reasoning Test answer
*** Long post alert! For PR students, and particularly those studying the CIPR Diploma, I thought it might be useful to share my answers for the Critical Reasoning Test paper that I completed in September 2007. Overall I received a "merit" across both papers. The answer shown below received a "pass" mark.  The question for this paper was: Why do you think some people accuse PR of being the same as propaganda? What arguments would you present against that point of view? My essay text is below: The accusation that the discipline of public relations is the same as propaganda is a frequently levelled charge. In contemporary society the overwhelmingly negative connotations that the term propaganda carries imply a strength of criticism for public relations itself when the two are considered the same.  In considering the merits of the assertion that public relations is the same as propaganda, it is first worth seeking a definition of propaganda. While since the late twentieth century the term has carried negative values, this has not always been the case. The early theorists such as Bernays and Laswell viewed the practice of propaganda as a legitimate practice and as such the term carried fairly neutral overtones (L’Etang, 1998):  "Propaganda is the consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group." (Bernays, 1928)  "Propaganda is the control of opinion by significant symbols, or, so to speak, more concretely and less accurately by stories, rumours, reports, pictures, and other forms of social communication. There is a need for a word which means the making of a deliberately one-sided statements to a mass audience. Let us choose 'propaganda' as such a word." (Laswell, 1934)  Many public relations practitioners today will recognise their own activities in the context of these two definitions, although they may baulk at the negative overtones of calling their work propaganda. This view is also articulated by Grunig and Hunt (1984) who argue that propaganda forms a part of publicity where “practitioners spread the faith of the organisation involved” although the Grunig and Hunt also observe that this practice often takes place “through incomplete, distorted, or half-true information”.  It is useful at this point to look at the assertion that public relations is the same as propaganda in the context of the four models of public relations proposed by Grunig and Hunt (1984):  Their first model, press agentry or publicity, is described as being for the sole purpose of propaganda. It implies little respect for truth or accuracy in its communications and is one-way in direction with all communication flowing from practitioner to public.  Jowett and O’Donnell’s definition of propaganda is consistent with Grunig and Hunt’s model (1992) as it emphasises the imbalance of interests that they assert is inherent in propaganda: they define propaganda as being a “deliberate and systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions and direct behaviour to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.”  Some of the highest profile public relations practitioners, as perceived by those outside the profession, probably belong to this group. Max Clifford is often quoted as a leading contemporary publicist in this context. Similarly political practitioners such as Alastair Campbell and entertainment practitioners like Mark Borkowski also meet Grunig and Hunt’s criteria for the publicity model, in which propaganda is inherent.  Davis (2004) notes that in the UK the use of propaganda is concentrated in politics, and cites the creation of a dossier of intelligence by the UK government to support the as an example of how propaganda was used. The history of the dossier is explained well by the BBC (2003). A key influencer of the content of the report was Alastair Campbell, a leading propagandist in the government of the day. A key supporting claim in the report was later withdrawn and the dossier later discredited. The synonymous nature of propaganda, “spin” and public relations in this instance gave weight to the argument that public relations is propaganda, particularly given the lack of focus on accuracy of content in this instance.  It would appear easier to argue that public relations is the same as propaganda when one considers a number of relatively niche, albeit high profile, parts of public relations, in particular those that aim to influence public opinion in politics and economics.  However while publicity does share a number of characteristics with propaganda, Davis (2004) argues that it is not the same. He identifies that characteristics of propaganda like “belligerence, dogmatism and demand of unquestioning agreement and obedience” do not apply to publicity. By implication this suggests that some propaganda is the same as the publicity model of public relations, and some is not.  It is reasonable to assume that in this way there exists a continuum between propaganda and publicity. At some point on that continuum activities cease being public relations (in the form of publicity) and become pure propaganda. However under most definitions of public relations, the practice of publicity as defined in Grunig and Hunt’s model could be considered a fringe public relations activity when at the propaganda end of the continuum.  Grunig and Hunt’s second and most closely related model of public relations is called public information. It shares its one-way nature with the publicity model, but is clearly distinguished by the focus on accuracy of messages being communicated. Truthful and accurate information is a central part of public information. This model has been identified as being the most widely used in contemporary public relations (Harrison, 1999).  The role of truthfulness in the public information model raises the question of how truthfulness can be gauged. While a practitioner should be aware of the truthfulness of the communications they produce, how truthful these communications are perceived as being is entirely different. Cutlip et al (2000) identify expertise, sincerity and charisma as being three key factors in public relations persuasion.  If the primary differentiator between Grunig and Hunt’s publicity and public information is truthfulness, and when considered from the recipient’s point of view this can only be gauged through personal value filters such as those highlighted by Cutlip et al, then this could cause public information to be perceived as publicity or propaganda, even if the message originator believes the information to be accurate.  The subjectivity of the judgement of truthfulness by the receiver is key here in determining whether public relations is the same as propaganda or not. However given this judgement is made by individual receivers, it would seem difficult to judge at an aggregated audience level whether the balance of perception of truthfulness leads to a public relations practice being perceived as propaganda or not.  So considering Grunig and Hunt’s first two models of public relations, it is clear that propaganda is integral to the practice of publicity and may well be present in the practice of public information, depending on the perception of truthfulness from the receiver’s point of view. However taken together, these two models and their similarity to propaganda do not mean that public relations itself is propaganda.  The arguments to support the view that public relations is not the same as propaganda are closely linked to Grunig and Hunt’s alternative models of public relations: two way asymmetric and two way symmetric.  These models have in common the concept of a communications loop – where information flows both way between the sender and receiver, compared to the publicity and public information models of public relations where information only flows from sender to receive
r. A key distinction between the asymmetric and symmetric models is that in the asymmetric model there is an imbalance in the information flow – more information is flowing from the sender to the receiver than vice versa. In the symmetric model the information flow is more balanced between the two parties, leading to relatively equitable levels of power in the transactions.  In the asymmetric and symmetric two-way models of public relations Grunig and Grunig (1992) identify a concept of excellent public relations, suggesting they represent the professional field of public relations. They contrast this with publicity and public information, which they characterise as craft public relations.  The existence of the communications loop, or more importantly its absence in publicity and public information, determines whether propaganda is present (Grunig and Hunt, 1984). The absence of the return path inherent in the communications loop allows public relations practitioners to be less truthful or straightforward in their communications than they could otherwise be with the presence of a return path.  However this relationship would appear to hold less true today than it did in 1984. The advent of widespread internet access and the emergence of social media tools has given a voice to individuals in a way they did not have previously, thereby potentially blurring the distinction between Grunig and Hunt’s excellence and craft public relations types.  Social media has allowed the creation of information return paths from receivers to senders in a way that could not have been envisaged in 1984. However for such a return path to be effective in a relationship, the original sender needs to be actively receptive to such messages – this is where Grunig and Hunt’s model continues to be valid.  I would therefore suggest that it is not solely the existence of a return path as part of a communications loop (and therefore integral to Grunig and Hunt’s concept of excellence) that differentiates propaganda from public relations, but also the willingness and capability of the sender in that context to listen to information flowing back through the return path. If the sender believes that they are participating in a one-way process, then the return path, while it may exist, will not achieve any relationship function as the information is not being received by the sender.  Given these conditions, it would be reasonable to assume that propaganda is the same as public relations if there is no communications loop or there is a communications loop but the sender does not actively seek or listen to the information that is being sent back. Alternatively if a communications loop does exist and both parties are sending and receiving information, one can assume that public relations is not the same as propaganda in this context. It could easily be argued that while not the same, the practices of public relations and propaganda are so closely entangled that there this to the untrained eye little difference between the two, and no realistic prospect of this relationship changing.  Moloney (2000) emphasises the relative importance and longevity of propaganda: “Propaganda will never die out. Intelligent men must realise that propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can fight for productive ends to bring order out of chaos”.  Given the high profile, influential and enduring nature of propaganda activities in mainstream media, it is reasonable to assume that the perception of propaganda as being the same as public relations arises from the activities of practitioners operating in niches or at the fringe of the overall discipline, although their activities are over-represented in terms of visibility and perceived influence among non-practitioners.  It is also worth giving consideration to how propaganda is perceived in the public sphere. Propaganda when it is recognised is often perceived as being bad, when the same message that had not been recognised as propaganda may well have been perceived more positively. Propaganda is not inherently an unethical form of communication – it is a neutral tool, that can be put to both ethical and unethical purposes (Hamilton, 1986).  Jones (2007) suggests that all organisations maintain an element of propaganda in their communications, as they are selective in their communications: without exception they all choose to communicate the aspects of their business that they want their audiences to know about, and choose to not communicate the aspects they don’t. The conclusion from this approach would be that all public relations is propaganda, because the nature of public relations is to selectively disclose information in communications rather than non-selectively disclose information.  However this black and white approach oversimplifies the true situation. While truthfulness seems to be the main factor that distinguishes public relations from propaganda, it is necessary to consider broader ethical principles and how these relate to truthfulness in public relations.  In particular it is worth noting the role of consequentialist theories of ethics, their role in truthfulness and therefore their impact on whether public relations is the same as propaganda. The consequentialist approach to ethics in public relations suggests a focus on the outcome of a particular action – the practitioner must consider the effect that action has. In this context an ethical decision would be considered one that causes more benefit than good. However this approach to decision making will not always result in the truth being told – there will be situations where a practitioner judges it is the right course of action to not tell the truth or, more commonly, withhold some information from a public. If this is deemed untruthful then does the activity cease to be public relations and become pure propaganda, even when the practitioner has taken a carefully considered ethical decision?  If truthfulness alone is not the only determinant of whether public relations is the same as propaganda, then it is worth considering what other factors may differentiate the two. In his analysis of Bernays and Ellul’s different analyses on propaganda, Olsen (2005) notes that two consistent features of propaganda are a contempt for the individual who receives the propaganda and a underpinning belief that the masses (public) need guidance from the elite few.  The former feature would appear to indicate that a determinant of whether public relations is the same as propaganda would be the intentions of the practitioner – Olsen’s practitioner contempt would seem symptomatic of an approach to publics consistent with, but not necessarily the same as, a desire to deceive or be economical with the truth. From a theoretical point of view, this would seem consistent with the virtue ethics approach which considers an individual’s motivations for their actions, rather than their actions themselves. Implicit in Olsen’s analysis is that a propagandist will have different standards of virtue ethics compared to a public relations practitioner – the propagandist will have less respect for their publics and will be more comfortable with less accurate or truthful communications.  In summary, there is much evidence to support the view that public relations is not simply the same as propaganda. Propaganda, while it is often cast in a negative light when referred to, is not inherently a negative activity. While judgements about whether a specific activity is negative or positive are grounded in individual and societal customs and practices, propaganda can be used for purposes that could be considered positive or negative.  However while the activity of propaganda does form a small, but highly visible, part of public relations, it cannot be considered as the same as public relations comprises many more activities beyond the practice of propaganda. The analysis of Grunig and Hunt’s four models of public relations shows the range of other types of public relations that exist beyond propaganda.  An important factor in c
onsidering whether public relations is the same as propaganda is the role of truthfulness. It is clear that propaganda does not require truth at its core – many observers cited above have noted that the absence of a duty to be truthful characterises propaganda, and sits less well with public relations as a professional discipline, even though Grunig and Hunt suggest that propaganda is a form of public relations.  I would suggest that in reality most propaganda is part of public relations, although it is probably practised regularly by a small number of practitioners operating in discrete sectors. While most practitioners work using more than one of Grunig and Hunt’s models of public relations, propaganda is used relatively little by those who do not use it full-time. However those that argue that public relations is the same as propaganda are over-generalising about what public relations actually involves, although it is somewhat ironic that it is the profession’s inability to accurately and realistically communicate its own function that is behind this confusion outside the profession.  [2605 words]  Bibliography BBC (2003) How the Iraq dossier was written. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3076692.stm [Accessed 13 September 2007]  Bernays, E.L. (1928) Propaganda. New York: Liveright  Cutlip, SM, Center, A.H and Broom, GM (2000) Effective Public Relations, 8th edition, Prentice-Hall  Davis, A (2004) Mastering Public Relations. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan  Grunig, J.E. and Grunig, L.A. (1992) Models of Public Relations and Communications in Grunig, J.E. (1992) Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates  Grunig, J.E. and Hunt, T. (1984) Managing Public Relations. Orlando: Holt, Rinehart and Winston  Hamilton, S. (1986) PR Ethics, from Publicity to Interaction in Public Relations Quarterly, Vol. 31, Issue 1  Harrison, S. (1999) Propaganda, Persuasion and Symmetry: Local and Central Government Perspectives on Communicating with the Citizen in British Journal of Management, Vol.10, issue 1  Jones, D. (2007) Comment to blog post discussion . Available from: http://bloggingmebloggingyou.wordpress.com/2007/02/11/prpropaganda/#comment-13677 [Accessed 13 September 2007]  Jowett, G.S. and O’Donnell, V. (1992) Propaganda and Persuasion, Thousand Oaks: Sage  Laswell, H.D. (1934) Propaganda. Propaganda. R.A Jackall (ed.). New York: University Press  L’Etang, J. (1998) State Propaganda and bureaucratic intelligence: the creation of public relations in 20th century Britain. Public Relations Review, Vol. 24, issue 4  Moloney, K (2000) Rethinking public relations: the spin and the substance. London: Routledge  Olsen, C (2005) Bernay vs. Ellul: Two views of propaganda in Public Relations Tactics, Vol. 12, issue 7

#### CIPR Diploma - Critical Reasoning Test answer
*** Long post alert! For PR students, and particularly those studying the CIPR Diploma, I thought it might be useful to share my answers for the Critical Reasoning Test paper that I completed in September 2007. Overall I received a "merit" across both papers. The answer shown below received a "merit" mark.  The question for this paper was: Why do you think Public Relations is so difficult to define? Is this a problem for the field? Which of the existing definitions seems most useful to you? My essay text is below: Since its first emergence in the early twentieth century public relations (PR) practitioners have struggled to identify and agree what the discipline they practice actually comprises. There have been many attempts at definitions, many of which are examined later in this essay, yet none have become universally adopted by the profession worldwide.  The lack of a universally acknowledged definition for public relations proves that the profession is, by nature, difficult to define. As Hagley (1999) notes, most people working within public relations cannot define what they do. Hagley also argues that the profession has been harmed by this inability among practitioners to identify clearly the activities they undertake has harmed the profession as it is not possible to accurately measure or quantify success when it is not clear what activity is being undertaken.  As a profession public relations is relatively young. With its roots in post-war private sector America and local government in Great Britain, the discipline has evolved rapidly. The youth of the profession, combined with its rapid evolution into the profession we see today has mitigated against the creation and universal acceptance of a single definition of the profession.  The background of the author of a definition is a further reason why PR is hard to define. There are two distinct groups that approach the definition in different ways. The first group are those who practice academic public relations; the teaching and research into the profession as a social science. The alternative source for definitions of public relations is professional practitioners.  While there is transfer of knowledge and people between these two groups, they typically approach the definition of PR in different ways. Tench and Yeomans (2006) note that definitions from practitioners tend to focus on activity; the tasks undertaken on a day-to-day basis by public relations practitioners. In contrast definitions coming from academic practice are more varied, but tend to place increased emphasis on the strategic nature of the profession, the goals it seeks to achieve and the ideal practices it would comprise, rather than the practices that form the reality of the profession for most practitioners.  Public relations is one of a number of professions, including those such as accountancy and law, that are almost universally practiced. Such professions are not limited to any particular industry sector or group. Public relations is used in virtually every business and organisational sector that exists, including private, public and third sectors.  This breadth of application means that the profession comprises a wide range of activities, that at their most extremes would be barely recognisable as being parts of the same profession. For example a publicist for a London West End theatre company may find little in common in their day-to-day business with a local authority consultation manager in Scotland, yet both would probably still claim they practice public relations. This breadth makes it very difficult for the profession to be defined clearly and succinctly.  Many professions are regulated by official bodies in the United Kingdom. For example the medical profession is regulated by the British Medical Association and parts of the legal profession are regulated by the Bar Council. This statutory regulation of practitioners in a particular profession gives clarity in definition to the profession.  The nature of regulation requires the regulator to be very clear about what activities fall within the scope of its regulatory powers and which do not. This requirement leads to a de facto definition of what the profession comprises, and is therefore usually well-adopted within the profession and outside it. Leaving aside several countries where public relations is regulated for primarily political control reasons (Falconi, 2007), public relations is not generally regulated. This lack of compulsory regulation has meant that professional associations have seen their definitions of PR become universally accepted in the way that regulated professions have.  One of the shortest and simplest definitions of public relations was produced by Grunig and Hunt (1984). They defined PR as being “the management of communication between an organisation and its publics”. The three main elements of this definition are that it implies PR is undertaken by an organisation, that is involves the process of communication and that it is, to a degree, targetted to specific audience groups.  While the focus on organisational communications is probably appropriate for the majority of public relations practitioners, some PR practitioners work to communicate on behalf of individuals, such as celebrities or politicians. For these practitioners, Grunig and Hunt’s definition would not apply. However Grunig (1992) acknowledged this shortcoming in the earlier definition, noting that while the definition allowed for differences in practice while still including elements such as communication and external relationship management.  This definition’s suggestion that public relations involves a degree of targetting or tailoring of communication for specific publics would appear to be at odds with Grunig and Hunt’s (1984) models of public relations as publicity and, to a lesser extent, public information, as these two models do not seem to include a strong notion of targetting specific publics for an organisation, relying instead on a model of impersonal mass communication (McQuail, 1994).  L’Etang (2004) offers an alternative definition for public relations, suggesting it is “The practice of presenting the public face of an organisation….the articulation of its aims and objectives and the official organisational view on issues ofrelevance to it”.  Her notion of public relations being the externally-facing appearance of an organisation seems applicable, although within similar organisational confines to Grunig and Hunt’s definition. She focuses on public relations as an articulator or communicator of organisational viewpoints. However this would seem limited as it does not suggest importance attached to the persuasive nature of much organisational communication.  Wilcox et al (2005) identify three characteristics of persuasive public relations which emphasise the central nature of persuasive rather than neutral organisational communications within public relations. L’Etang’s definition appears weaker for its lack of recognition of this facet of the profession.  L’Etang (1994) draws a distinction from being able to articulate ideals and techniques in a definition of PR and being able to justify the discipline’s core purpose. She suggests this is due to “a lack of intellectual rigour in the field and also by practitioners' desire to separate their practice from propaganda”. Moreover she considers this to be a problem for the profession because it makes it difficult to identify the profession from competing interests such as marketing.  Moloney (2000) suggests that the disparate nature of the public relations profession means a single definition is impossible to achieve. However its influence, particularly when advocating organisational interests to the detriment of other organisational or societal interests, means that focus should be placed on the influence that public relations exerts. He suggests that three approaches to defining public r
el
ations are valid: as a concept, echoing the Grunig and Hunt (1984) definition, as a practice, echoing many of the definitions originating from practitioners, and as an influential force within society.  Moloney’s latter approach to definition leads to broad definitions of public relations. Moloney himself notes that the influence could be achieved through mass media, such as in the field of media relations, or through private lobbying, such as in the practice of public affairs. This lack of clear distinction between public relations and perceived similar disciplines can harm public perception of the role and value of the profession in society.  As Galloway (2004) notes, “when a profession with such a wide charter has no clear brand identity, the public provides its own.” As such public relations has historically been (Olasky, 1987, Baskin and Aronoff, 1988), and is still often referred to in conversations and in media coverage in a negative context or used as a synonym for cynical media manipulation (“a PR stunt”, “spin doctors”). In a similar vein, Martinson (1981) bemoans the definition of public relations as being about “buying the public” through the use of “gimmicks and catchy ideas”.  Having a clear, universal and communicated definition for public relations would help to address these negative associations. Such a definition would in the longer term increase credibility for profession and could potentially increase its effectiveness as there would be a greater understanding among publics of what activities practitioners undertake and the ethical principles to which they adhere.  In the longer term it would be reasonable to assume such negative misperception would have a detrimental effect on the attractiveness of the discipline to new entrants. This supposition is based on the assertion that the profession’s dominant public face is an influential driver of career choice among school leavers and university graduates. However consistent recent evidence does not support this assumption (City and Guilds, 2007). However there is little data on the proportion of school leavers and graduates that remains within the profession after an extended length of time. An abnormally high rate of these people leaving the profession would suggest a mismatch between expectations and practitioner reality for public relations.  Continuing practitioners should however be concerned by the profession’s inability to define itself. Gordon (2006) notes that there only 14 marketing directors on the boards of the UK’s FTSE100 companies. He identifies this perceived lack of representation as being due to the undervaluing of the marketing profession among senior officers of these companies. He asserts this situation arises from the lack of a clear and widely-known definition of what marketing is. It is likely that the same argument can be applied to public relations – without a clear definition understood by practitioners and non-practitioners alike, the profession will continue to struggle to achieve recognition and roles at the highest levels in organisations.  Spicer (1993) notes that public relations practitioners have increasingly practiced under alternative job titles to avoid a degree of stigmatisation that arises from the term public relations. Such alternative titles include “corporate communications” and “investor relations”. However Edelman (1996) encourages public relations practitioners to practice under the nomenclature “public relations” as it is the only term that adequately recognises the breadth of activities that comprise the profession: “Public relations encompasses the broadest range of all activities which by definition involve relationships of the company and all its publics.”  The lack of clear naming of certain practice areas of the profession arises because of the lack of a clear definition for the profession. As Burson (2007) notes, such ambiguity can only serve to lessen the impact of public relations as a body on the practice of business and government.  One of the most often cited definitions of public relations is known as the “Mexican Statement”. It was agreed by the first World Assembly of Public Relations Associations in 1978:  "Public relations is the art and social science of analysing trends, predicting their consequences, counselling organisational leaders and implementing programmes of action which will serve both the organisation's and the public interest."  A strength of this definition is its breadth. It encompasses both the creative/artistic side of the profession, as well as the more scientific areas of the discipline. The focus on evaluation and analysis is also important, as it gives greater depth to the profession than a focus on the practice of communication alone. The role of counselling that this definition identifies would seem to accurately identify on of the main roles undertaken by some public relations practitioners.  However despite the strengths identified in the previous paragraph, this definition has not gained universal adoption in the past 29 years. This is testament to the difficulties in defining the profession generally, but also likely to be because of the definition’s assertion that public relations acts in the organisation’s interest and the public interest. This dual role addressing two sets of interests at the same time seems somewhat idealistic, given the number of public relations practitioners on the payrolls of private companies whose primary and over-riding interests that must be addresses by employees are their own.  The evidence identified so far in this paper strongly supports the view that the lack of an adopted definition for the public relations profession is a clear problem for the profession. It limits the ability of the profession to increase its credibility, among audience publics, internal stakeholders and peer professions.  Many of the definitions identified thus far in this paper focus on the activities that are undertaken within public relations and the strategies that the profession employs. These definitions are activity or process led, which can be a limiting factor in their application.  Given the importance of any corporate activity in contributing towards corporate goals, be they financial in the case of private sector organisations, social or reputational, perhaps a better definition of public relations can be achieved through looking at its outcomes – what it achieves rather than what it does.  This is not a new theme. Bernays (1927) includes an element of outcome in his early definition of public relations by identifying the outcome of public relations as being public understanding and acceptance:  “Public relations is a management function which tabulates public attitudes, defines the policies, procedures and interest of an organization followed by executing a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance."  Two of the largest professional bodies for public relations also include outcomes in their definitions of public relations. The UK’s Chartered Institute of Public Relations (2007)) defines public relations as:  "The discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics."  This definition, while it does include elements of activity and process, does identify the outcomes from the discipline of public relations as being “maintaining goodwill and mutual understanding”. Cutlip, Center and Broom (1985) identify a similar outcome for public relations which “establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships”.  While these outcomes are valid, I would suggest that the organisational value of public relations is understated. The discipline contributes much more than maintaining goodwill and mutual understanding – if this were not the case I suggest that public relations would be a much smaller and less inf
luential discipline than it is today.  Green (2006) identifies a broader outcome for public relations in his proposed definition: “Public relations is about creating sustainable added value for an organisation’s reputation by managing its brand, actions, memes and networking”. The concept of reputational added value is strong as it can be applied equally well in the private and public sectors where public relations often is used differently. Some observers may view this same part of the definition as its weakness, arguing it does not identify clearly enough the outcomes from public relations.  I suggest that the most useful definitions of public relations are definitions, such as those identified above, that clearly articulate outcomes for public relations, rather than focus on process or activities. There is clear value in the articulation of such outcomes as it assists the profession to argue its value in the corporate structure and relate its outputs to broader corporate goals.  Over the longer term definitions that clearly state the outcomes of the profession will also prove more resistant to change over time. The activities that comprise public relations have evolved continuously and will continue to do so. The rapid pace of adoption of new technologies, such as the internet and social media, will continue change the activities of the profession. The outcomes of the profession are likely to change relatively little, while the activities may well change significantly. An outcome-based definition for public relations will be sustainable through the ever-shifting nature of day-to-day public relations.  The nature of these outcomes will be constantly debated by practitioners and academics alike. A core theme for most definitions that identify outcomes is the management of relations between organisations and publics to improve such relationships. It is implicit in most definitions that this relationship management aims to improve relationships for both parties, although in reality I would suggest that organisational public relations aims to primarily benefit the organisation and its goals.  Valin (2004) provides a useful summary of the outcomes that bind together the many different strands of public relations: “I would like to emphasize the part of the definition that deals with managing relationships- as I see this as the cornerstone of everything we do in public relation. It is without a doubt the common denominator in our profession and this is true throughout the world. You may not realise it completely, but whether you are working in London, Djakarta or Sao Paulo, you are managing relationships.”  In conclusion the lack of a universally adopted definition for public relations does present several problems for the discipline and no identifiable benefits. Like many of its peer professions the struggle for definition leads to confusion among those outside the profession and a lack of recognition of the value which it can add to organisational achievements. In seeking a workable definition, the breadth of the profession means that general principles rather than detailed specifications need to be the backbone of a good definition. The inclusion of outcomes for the profession, focussed mainly around the positive management of relationships, is the final facet of achieving a better definition for public relations.  [2853 words] Bibliography  Baskin, O. and Aronoff, C. (1988), Public relations: The profession and the practice (2nd ed.) Dubuque, lA: Brown  Bernays, E.L. (1927) Manipulating Public Opinion: The Why and the How. American Journal of Sociology 33  Burson, H (14 March 2007) About Job Titles and How We in PR are Perceived. Available from http://www.burson-marsteller.com/Innovation_and_insights/blogs_and_podcasts/harold_burson_blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=33 [Accessed 9 September 2007]  Chartered Insitute of Public Relations (2007) What is Public Relations? Available from http://www.cipr.co.uk/looking/index.htm [Accessed 9 September 2007]  City and Guilds (2007) The Aspiration Index 2007. Available from http://www.cityandguilds.com/cps/rde/xchg/SID-0AC0478D-032B3C99/cgonline/hs.xsl/19477.html [Accessed 7 September 2007]  Edelman, D.J. (1996) Let's Hold Fast to the Term Public Relations. Public Relations Quarterly, Summer 1996, Vol. 41, Issue 2  Falconi, T. (2007) Is licensing an option or a must? Depends on whether we believe we are a profession or an organizational activity. Available from http://www.prconversations.com/?p=285 [Accessed 7 September 2007]  Galloway, D. (2004) PR's Quandary: Branding a Profession. Brandweek, 1/12/2004, Vol. 45, Issue 2  Gordon, P (2006) Why some things should change. Available from: http://www.themarketingleaders.com/articles/nov06/peter_gordon.htm [Accessed 7 September 2007]  Green, A (2006) Quoted in To clog or not to clog, that’s PR’s question. Available from http://greenbanana.wordpress.com/2006/10/20/to-clog-or-not-to-clog-thats-prs-question/ [Accessed 9 September 2007]  Grunig, J.E. (1992) Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrense Erlbaum Associates  Grunig, J.E. and Hunt, T. (1984) Managing Public Relations. Orlando, FL: Holt, Rinehart and Winston  Hagley, T.R. (1999) Defining public relations in two words. Public Relations Tactics, September 1999, Vol. 6, Issue 9  Hutton, J.G. (1999) Cited on p199 in Public Relations Review, Summer 1999, Vol. 25 Issue 2  L’Etang, J (2004) Public Relations in Britain: A History of Professional Practice in the 20th Century. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc  Martinson, D.L. (1981) How Future Practitioners Define Public Relations, Public Relations Quarterly, Spring 1981  McQuail, D. (1994) Mass Communication Theory, An Introduction. Third edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Ltd  Moloney, K (2000) Rethinking public relations: the spin and the substance. London: Routledge  Olasky, M. N. (1987) Corporate public relations: A new historical perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc  Spicer, C.H. (1993) Images of Public Relations in the Print Media. Journal of Public Relations Research. Vol. 5, Issue 1  Tench, R and Yeomans, L (2006) Exploring Public Relations. London: Prentice Hall  Valin, J. (2004) Overview of Public relations around the world and principles of modern practice and Remarks by Jean Valin, APR, (2004) Fellow CPRS Chair of the Global Alliance at the CONFERP conference Brasilia, October. Available from http://www.globalpr.org/news/features/overview_jv_04.pdf [Accessed 7 September 2007]  Wilcox, D.L., Cameron, G.T., Ault, P.H., and Agee, W.K (2005) Public Relations Strategies and Tactics. Seventh edition. London: Pearson

#### CIPR Diploma - Planning Assignment
One of the reasons I've been so quiet on the blogging front recently has been the fact I'm studying for the CIPR Diploma.
I started studying back in June 2007, and was delighted to pass the first hurdle, the critical reasoning test, last Autumn.
The second formal assessment on the diploma course is the planning assignment which was handed in just after Christmas (no prizes for guessing what I spent my holidays doing!). The assignment aims to encourage students to demonstrate their ability by applying planning theory to a practical public relations situation.
This time the scenario was about crisis communications and issues management - two areas I have had limited exposure to in my career so far, so I found the assignment a challenge. The objectives were to produce an action plan and rationale for a major organisation facing a crisis addressing key issues and developing a strategy for restoring reputation for the longer term.
One aspect of the assignment I found tricky was writing a workplace strategy, but then at the end of it having to write an academic rationale for the business decisions and approaches I had taken. This certainly forced a degree of rigour into my thinking that wasn't there before.
The results for the planning assignment were published just before Easter. I was quite apprehensive as I wasn't sure how well I'd done, so I was delighted to be awarded a "distinction" grade.
I'm publishing the assignment and my answers here to help other PR students, particularly those studying for the diploma. I found a number of web resources useful when researching my assignment, so it seems the right thing to do to put my work into the public domain to help others.
There are three PDF files in this assignment:

 	The background and scenario
 	The tasks for the assignment
 	My submitted assignment (in three parts: crisis comms plan, issues management proposal and supporting rationale)

Now my attention turns to the final stage in the diploma - the personal project - where I'm researching the role of social media in local government communications, but more on this as things progress.

#### CIPR Diploma study day
Spent today up in London at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations HQ meeting with fellow students on the institute's online diploma course. This was the first time course participants and lecturers have actually met face to face. We've been studying since early June and using forums, webinars, podcasts and wikis to share learning and experience. It's always slightly disconcerting meeting people  face to face who you've previously had dealings with online. You feel like you know a bit about them but at the same time seem unfamiliar when you eventually meet them. My fellow students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and indeed countries, with students coming from as far afield as Romania, Bahrain, Russia and the Cayman Islands. We had some good discussions about the theories that we've been studying in the early days of the course. It was also good to learn that I wasn't the only one who's finding switching between reading work copy (plain English, most of the time) and dense academic copy a real challenge. While I find the theories and models we're looking at now interesting, I'm particularly looking forward to applying them and looking at more practical aspects of the subject once September's critical reasoning test is out the way.

#### CIPR Diploma update
I've been studying for the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Online Diploma since June this year. It's been hard work so far, but it was nice to hear that Ellee, who started the diploma well before me, has passed her third paper on the course.  Ellee found the qualification helped her get a better strategic understanding of the practice of public relations. That's a benefit I've experienced too.  The first part of the course was heavily focussed on academic theories and research reading, which was a bit of a shock having not read or written academic text since 1999.  That section of the course culminated in the Critical Reasoning Test (CRT) which I completed in September. Last week I heard that I'd passed this with a "merit", which gave me some comfort that I was making progress with my learning. We're now well into the planning assignment which needs to be completed by early January. This is a combination of a "real-life" scenario where students need to write a PR plan and writing an academic rationale for the decisions made in the plan. I'm finding this easier than the CRT although it's still a bit odd writing a PR plan and having to justify everything in it using academic research. The rigour this introduces into my thinking can only be a good thing. Once the planning assignment's out the way, there's the small matter of the 10,000 final project to think about, but that's for next year...

#### CIPR local public services awards and conference
There are just a few weeks to go to the CIPR Local Public Services group annual conference and awards on 7 and 8 February in Bristol.
Unfortunately I won't be able to be there as I can't be away from work given some developments that'll be clear soon. I'm disappointed about this as the team at Medway Council has six shortlisted entries in five categories in the awards:

	Media Relations Excellence - apprenticeships campaign
	Media Relations Excellence - Thames Estuary Airport media campaign
	Digital excellence - Medway Council website
	External newspaper or magazine - Medway Matters
	Publication, leaflet or flyer - "What's on Medway" publication

So fingers crossed for success in these awards to follow our win in the Public Sector Communications Awards last November.
The conference itself has a strong line-up of speakers and is designed to be flexible to allow delegates to select their own programme according to their areas of interest. If you're interested in going along, book your place now here.
Thursday, 7 February 2013
Speakers
Conference keynote address - Iain Dale
The prominent political commentator, publisher of Total Politics Magazine, one of the early pioneers of political blogging, the first openly gay Conservative to fight a parliamentary election, a LBC Radio host, Iain is a high profile and outspoken figure who is passionate about online citizen engagement and the power of radio.
Harnessing the legacy from London 2012
Julie Morrow, Director of Communications, Legacy Trust UK
Charlotte Fitzgerald, former Head of the Olympic and Paralympic Games Communications Programme, London Borough of Hackney
Tony Taylorson, Communications and Media Manager,Cambridgeshire County Council
London and the UK achieved something very special last summer. How can we harness the 2012 legacy to promote health, well being and participation in our communities?
The Future of local government communications - David Holdstock, Head of Communications, Local Government Association
Workshops:
Strategic Leadership: what role should the Head of Communications play in developing service change?
With Graham Farrant, Chief Executive of Thurrock and Barking and Dagenham Councils will talk about what Chief Executives now want from communications.
Making an impact a senior level and working with members
With Peter Holt, Service Director, Communications and Marketing, Bristol City Council.
This workshop around how to make an impact and understand political risk is aimed at middle managers, and those seeking management positions. Our host communications director has a unique perspective as a former Council Leader.
Connecting with young people
With Liz Goodwin, Senior Product Manager, Polydor.
It's a huge challenge for all local authorities – how can we use digital and other channels to connect with that hardest to reach audience? We hear from a music industry expert who has created award winning campaigns in her sector by connecting with young audiences.
Public health – taking on the challenges of public health campaigns
With Richard Kenyon, Kenyon Fraser Communications, public health social marketing specialists (invited speaker tbc).
As Public Health moves from transition to full integration into councils this workshop is for authorities looking at best practice in public health communications.
Planning and localism – what will the changes mean for local communications
Changes to the planning system and through the Localism Act could have a big impact on districts and rural areas. This workshop will look at the potential communications issues.
 
Friday, 8 February 2013
Speakers
New models of democracy and engagement
Sue Mountstevens, Elected Police and Crime Commissioner for Avon and Somerset
George Ferguson, Mayor of Bristol
Polly Cziok, Head of Communications London Borough of Hackney
Simon Parker, Director, New Local Government Network
How will directly elected figures such as Mayors and Police Commissioners impact on local public service communications? What are the opportunities to connect with communities in new ways? This panel discussion will answer these and other any questions you have.
Closing keynote speaker - Phillip Blond
The author of Red Tory, and the brains behind David Cameron's 'Big Society' talks about the evolving role of local public services and the implications of the Social Value Act, which he played a large part in developing.
Workshops
Partnership Working
The Honest Truth is a unique partnership between Devon and Cornwall Police, Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue, Devon County Council and Teignbridge District Council, along with private businesses. It has made a serious impact on young drivers and made the roads safer. Find out how this award winning project works.
Social Care Communications: communicating change to vulnerable audiences
With Ben Coleman, North West Chair of Association of Communicators. This workshop will look at best practice for communicating the complexities of social care change.
Crisis Communications Masterclass: Aftermath: Relationships, Reassurance and Community
Sarah Pinch, former Director of Communications, University Hospital NHS Trust, Bristol, Chair CIPR West of England Group
Gareth Jones, Media Manager, Edinburgh Council
Rhian Davies Moore, Head of Communications, Dyfed Powys Police
Three experts talk about managing the aftermath of complex and difficult crisis scenarios and how they managed relationships and built cohesion, between stakeholders and within communities. Followed by a practical groupwork session.
Leadership in tough times
With Woodcock Lee Associates: specialists in coaching and senior management development in local public service
A practical workshop for Heads of Communications and senior managers around keeping team engaged and motivated as staff cuts kick in, whilst expectations rise

#### CIPR local public services communications awards
If you work in local public service communications, now's your chance to get your work recognised by the CIPR local public services group Excellence in Communications Awards 2010
You've got until Friday 6 August to submit your entries. For a late fee you can have an extra seven days - there is an extended deadline of Friday 13 August.
The annual awards, which will be presented on Friday 22 October at the Grand Hotel, Brighton, are run by the CIPR Local Public Services Group which represents all communications professionals in all public services such as local government, health, housing and education. I've been a committee member for a few months now and have been really impressed with the commitment and drive of the volunteers that run the group.
The CIPR LPS is committed to help local public services deliver the highest standard of communications during a period of significant change and austerity in the public sector.
Camden council's Ashley Wilcox chairs the group:
In times like these it’s very important to keep staff and management motivated. We will be rewarding PR teams, individuals and campaigns, that demonstrate real creativity and cost effectiveness, particularly partnership working and originality on a small budget.
There are 11 entrance categories, which look for excellence in key areas such as consultation, digital media, creative savings and partnership. The winners will receive their awards at a special gala dinner which marks the end of the CIPR LPS 2010 Conference which is being held at the Thistle, Brighton from 20 – 22 October this year.
For information about the awards click here (ignore the dates on the page linked to from here - both deadlines have been pushed back by seven days).
If you're interested in the conference, you've missed the early bird discount but it's still a great value two day conference. Booking details here.

#### CIPR Local Public Services conference - October 2010
This October the CIPR Local Public Services group is organising a two-day conference in Brighton.
Public sector communicators are facing unprecedented challenges - the scale and pace of change being experienced in the public sector mean communicators need to be able to adjust to the rapidly changing environment.
For that reason the theme of this October's conference is "Navigating change: Shaping a new model of communications in local public services". It takes place on 21 and 22 October at the Thistle Hotel in Brighton.
Speakers confirmed so far include:

	Alastair Campbell - former Director of Strategy and Communications for Tony Blair
	Scott Chisholm – former Sky News Anchorman and one of the UK's leading media trainers
	Peter Bingle - Chairman of Bell Pottinger Public Affairs and one of the UK's leading lobbyists.
	Paul Mylrea - Head of press and media relations at the BBC and President elect of the CIPR.
	Jonathan Males – Director of Performance 1 and former Olympian

There will be a choice of three master class sessions, one which will be on Personal Styling with Igor Srzic Cartledge - Igor uses his keen sense of style to help clients find the look that's right for them as an individual. Another of the master classes will cover Social Media which will be held by Catherine Howe, Chief Executive of Public-I, a Hove based company that was created to respond to the new opportunities the internet presented to local authorities for re-engaging with their citizens.
The conference is designed for communicators working in areas including local government, health, police, fire and the voluntary sector. It will be a great opportunity to learn from some top speakers as well as network with colleagues and share experiences and tips about working in local public service communications.
Full details and a booking form are available on the CIPR website here or you can read the brochure here.
[disclosure: I'm a member of the CIPR Local Public Services committee]

#### CIPR Local Public Services group - new media presentation
I'm up in Edinburgh today presenting to the Chartered Institute of Public Relations local public services group.
I get plenty of emails after conferences asking for the slides, so in the interests of sharing knowledge you'll find them below. They're also available for download here.

One thought about when publishing presentation slides here on the blog...I'm always a bit concerned that the slides are just a tiny bit of what gets said in the presentation - but people keep asking for them.
How useful are they really for those people that aren't in the room at the time?

#### CIPR Northern Conference
Next month I'll be running a workshop session at CIPR's Northern Conference in Newcastle.
The conference takes place on Thursday, 21 June and features some interesting keynote speakers such as Paul Corley, (GMTV Managing Director, GMTV) and Graham Goodkind (Frank PR, Chairman), plus a broad range of workshop sessions.
I'll be talking about how the team at Medway Council conceived and launched the UK's first podcast from a local authority: the Mixit Podcast.
The workshop will explore how a public sector organisation can use podcasting effectively as part of its communications mix. We'll also talk about some of the challenges of implementing a new communications tool, such as podcasting, in an organisation which has not previously used social media.
The conference takes place at St James Park in Newcastle. More information is available here or check out the full programme. Book your place online here.
If any readers are going to the conference do let me know - it'd be great to meet up face to face over a coffee. I'm also looking forward to meeting fellow speaker and PR blogger Stephen Davies - another blogger who I've not yet had the chance to meet properly.

#### CIPR social media guidelines
With the deadline for responses to the Chartered Institute of Public Relations' social media consultation approaching (yes, for those in the UK it's the same deadline as your tax self-assessments) the guys at GREEN Communications have published their thoughts.
Check out Ian and Simon's posts for some well considered thinking. Interesting too that Ian's summary has been adopted by their regional CIPR group.
Simon notes that not many people have commented publicly with their thoughts on this, even among UK public relations bloggers.
Aside from David Phillips (who commented last year when the document was originally published - can't find the link now though) and the GREEN boys' thoughts I can't recall seeing any other bloggers publishing their feedback. I blogged mine earlier this month.
The deadline for your comments is 31 January 2007 (yes, tomorrow) so make the most of the opportunity to get your voice heard. The consultation document is here and explanatory post here.

#### CIPR social media guidelines - my feedback
Like Simon Collister, I've had a gentle and ever so polite reminder from Elizabeth at CIPR that I haven't provided any feedback on the latest consultation on social media from the institute.
The proposed guidelines are an evolution of the previous set that were written in early 2007. It's interesting to see how almost two years of progress has changed their relevance.
While social media and public relations have both moved on a lot in that time, much of the content of the previous document is as relevant (or irrelevant) as it was first time around.
There are a few new additions too. One of the most important is the Unfair Commercial Practices directive which contains a number of stipulations which can directly affect how social media (or indeed any other PR tool) is used.
My main nagging doubt with the guidelines is that I'm not sure I really see a role for them at all.
As I wrote in my email to Elizabeth:

Many of the ethical and practical issues around social media in PR are already covered by the institute's existing Code of Conduct for members. Many of the examples given in the document relate to a practitioner having a reasonable level of professional competence in social media. While the CIPR has a role in guiding members, surely it's the individual member's responsibility to ensure they have the requisite level of competency to operate in the social media space?
I guess I'm still questioning the need for the institute to maintain a separate set of guidelines for social media. The mere existence of the guidelines suggests that social media is seen as distinct from "mainstream" public relations, when in fact social media is changing the practice of public relations fundamentally.
It feels like social media is still seen as needing to be positioned "at arm's length" by the institute - rather than acknowledging the radical changes it's making to communications and marketing practice.
I know the CIPR is a broad church and that I'm probably one of the earlier adopters of social media among CIPR members, but I genuinely believe that social media is changing the public relations game more than most members realise, and the institute's position needs to reflect that - at the moment I'm not convinced that's the case.
I'm a paid-up CIPR member and place a lot of value on professional associations and their role in public relations and marketing - particularly helping establish the disciplines as professions in their own right. I just hope CIPR can move with the times on this one.

#### CIPR social media guidelines agreed
Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) president Lionel Zetter reports a busy day of meetings last Wednesday in his latest blog post on PR Voice.
Included in his rundown of the day's events is confirmation that the CIPR Council agreed the new social media guidelines for members. A consultation was announced on these last Autumn with the deadline for responses extended to 31 January 2007.
I provided my comments to Francis Ingham at CIPR earlier this year.
It's interesting that CIPR managed to turn around the guidelines for approval so quickly - from collating all the responses at the end of the consultation period at the end of January to providing a version for council approval just one week later is remarkable, particularly given you'd expect the council papers to go out in advance of the meeting.
Unfortunately I can't see the final approved guidelines on the CIPR website anywhere, neither in the public area nor the members' area, so it's impossible for members to know what guidelines have approved and how feedback from the consultation has been incorporated into the final guidelines.
I'm sure the final guidelines will be made available to members soon - it's just a bit odd that the first the CIPR membership knows of them being approved is in an unrelated blog post from the institute's president.
We wait with bated breath...

#### Cision Top 10 UK PR blogs
My blog's been ranked in Cision's top 10 UK PR blogs once again - which is something I'm really chuffed about.
I was wondering how the list was determined. Here's an excerpt about how Cision put it together:
Cision’s blog ranking methodology takes into consideration social sharing, topic-related content and post frequency.
You can see more about the list here.
Most of the top 10 blogs are already on my RSS reading list and I'll be adding the others tonight too.

#### Clarity is a good thing
After a particularly manic week on all fronts, it's good to take a few minutes out and reflect.
One thing really strikes me about my experiences this week, and the more I think about it, I can see it applies to every job I've had, client I've worked for and project I've done: clarity is a good thing.
We waste a huge amount of time, effort and emotional energy at work because we're not clear about something. A bit more clarity would really go a long way towards making us more efficient at work.
Here are four examples of what I mean:
1) Briefings from clients
How many times do we accept a loose or poorly considered brief from a client, only to end up having to rework or change the project deliverables later on. Of course there's a direct cost involved with doing this.
Granted sometimes clarity is difficult to achieve early-on, but in my experience lack of clarity in briefing is often down to lack of time and effort on the client's part, rather than a clear brief being an impossibility at the outset.
2) Crisis management
Dealing with PR in a crisis situation is a great challenge, and one that draws on a wide range of PR and management skills. Having dealt with a couple of crisis PR situations in the past month, what both had in common was a lack of clarity among the key players within the organisation.
Most of the effort in dealing with the situation was focussed internally within the organisation, rather than communicating with valuable stakeholders (both internal and external). Clarity about the situation and the organisation's response would have meant the PR professionals could have focussed on communicating, rather than trying to resolve internal politics and cut through to the real information.
3) Clarity of roles
Most professionals don't work alone - they usually work as part of a team, particularly in the connected world of social media. But how many times have you seen a particular task or piece of work fall between two people because they'd assumed that someone else would do it.
When managing a team one of the most valuable things a leader can do is to be clear with team members about what they should do, when and how. Yet so often this clarity isn't achieved, leading to wasted effort or missing work.
4) Clear delegation
In our busy world it's all to easy to delegate or be delegated to without a clear communication of what's actually expected. I'll put my hands up now and admit I do it - I delegate something without being 100% clear about what the task is - which inevitably means confusion and wasted effort.
The value of working in a team is that tasks can be shared and work undertaken to each team member's strengths. Yet without the leader having a clear understanding of what tasks are necessary, what these comprise and being able to communicate them effectively, the team won't be as efficient and effective as it should be.
Having reflected on this I think I take away one thing I'm going to do differently next week - I'm going to make sure I'm absolutely clear on what I'm doing, why I'm doing it and how other people are involved.
I'll make a conscious effort to do this, and it'll be interesting to see if it has an impact on what I achieve in the weeks to come.

#### Colin Farrington, CIPR and social media
The discussion around the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and the thoughts of Director-General Colin Farrington on social media continues.
A few weeks back David Brain,  			President & CEO Edelman Europe, sent an open letter to Colin Farrington about the subject.  On Friday David posted Colin's response to his letter. This has since been picked up other practictioners in this space, including Stuart Bruce and Simon Collister. Stuart and Simon make some very pertinent points that I wholeheartedly agree with.
In a previous post titled "Walking with dinosaurs?" I talked about my concerns on CIPR and social media. There was a fair amount of coverage of the broader issue and indeed this post was one of the most visited on my blog to date.
I was particularly interested in the point Colin makes in his letter about the work the CIPR commissioned back in 2000 into the impact of the internet on public relations:
This still draws criticism from older members.
I appreciate that keeping the broad range of members (and other players) happy is probably an impossible task, but this does hint to me that the institute places more emphasis on this than keeping with the pace of change in our industry.
The business of communicating is changing at a phenomenal pace - some communicators are driving this pace, some are in the middle, and some are dragging their feet or completely ignoring the change.
It's the classic adoption curve I suspect. But the role of an industry body with the status of CIPR needs to be towards the front of the curve, otherwise it risks disenfranchising the element of its membership that is driving the change.
There's one other area that Colin covers in his letter that I should note:
Some "blogs" are stimulating and purposeful. But there are many...that seem to me to be either pointless and/or unlikely to have anything but a negative effect on reputation.
Colin is right to an extent - there are many blogs that seem to many of us to be pointless. But the real point is that not every blog is aimed at him. A blog about poodle breeding will seem pointless to most of us, but to that small group who are into breeding poodles it'll have the potential to be a valuable communication channel.
Since I've been posting regularly on my blog and engaging actively in the social media space, I've found it a very nurturing and encouraging community in which to learn and grow my skills.
For example very soon I'm going to launch my first podcast - not something I've done before, but an area where I want to develop my skills professionally. I'll do my best, but it won't be perfect first time, but I'm putting it out because I know that I'll get genuine, honest and constructive comments from the online PR community.
This type and tone of interaction is pretty typical - almost an unwritten rulebook adhered to by the majority who interact in social media's many conversations. So when posts are written or comments posted that aren't in this spirit they really stand out. I was stunned when I saw the comments to a post from respected PR professional Elizabeth Albrycht.
Sure, everyone's entitled to their own viewpoint, but as professionals in this space we should know there are ways to disagree without causing offence. And sometimes written online communication can be misconstrued - "the wrong end of the stick". But to go back again in a similar vein just compounds things.
I've never met Colin, but in an age where our reputation spreads faster than ever before, this paints him in a poor light, and by implication the organisation he runs - the CIPR.

#### Come and join us at Transformed By You
Do you have ideas on how you can improve your local area using the web or other technologies?
Do you want to get together with others to see how you can turn these ideas into prototypes of new online services in just a day?
Kent County Council and Medway Council are running the "Transformed By You" interactive event on Saturday, 20 March. I'll be there and am really looking forward to an exciting and challenging day where hopefully we'll end up with some genuine innovations that can be rolled out both locally and to other areas nationwide.
At the event we are bringing people together for a day to develop prototypes of online tools that tackle local challenges.
In advance of the event, we want you to tell us what challenges you want to work on the day. You can either vote on those we've put forward or suggest your own! The deadline for voting will be 14 March. The top 10 will be the challenges we work on the day itself.
Examples of challenges could include developing prototypes of ideas on how to “find out what’s going on in the local area”, “report problems, “help people help each other”.
On the day itself, you will able to get into small groups to brainstorm ideas on how to tackle these challenges and develop prototypes based on the ideas you come up with.
Public sector organisations face growing pressures to deliver bigger and better services with far less money. Kent County Council and Medway Council recognise that by tapping into local creative thinkers they could go someway to resolve some of the issues that are emerging.
Digital technologies are effective at doing just this. More people are talking and sharing ideas online in ways that weren’t possible before. Technology also provides opportunities for individuals, businesses and other groups to create innovative models to meet these new demands.
The venue hosts a main room where you will meet and network and breakout rooms where you can get into a group and develop ideas. These all have wifi internet connection.
There will also be post its, pens and flipcharts provided as well as all day refreshments and lunch from  Cafe Sunlight.
Please feel free to bring your laptops if you want to use them to develop prototypes on the day.
We're looking for a wide range of people to come along on the day - you don't necessarily need to have technical, computer or IT development skills - your thoughts, ideas and active participation in the workshop could help make a real difference to services that are provided for people in Kent and Medway.
The venue is located directly off the A229, which can be easily accessed by both the M2 (junction 3) and the M20 (junction 6). There are also good public transport links - you can get the 101 bus from Chatham Rail Station - see here for more. See map here.
To book your place visit transformedbyyou.eventbrite.com now.

#### Comet - we live electricals
Working in marketing and PR it's difficult to watch TV ads from a consumer point of view - I always find myself analysing the thinking behind the ad and the quality of the execution.
The one that is really troubling me at the moment is for the UK electrical retailer Comet. Through Saatchi and Saatchi they've managed to come up with this strapline:
Comet - we live electricals
For me this fails dismally on a number of levels. For one it's symbolic of a really old school corporate way of thinking - we're telling you about us because what we're telling you about us is important (we think).
The pedant in me is also troubled by electricals. Is that really a noun? The last time I looked it was an adjective - electrical goods maybe, but electricals? C'mon...
But the killer reason why this doesn't work for me is that it fails to offer the potential customer a benefit. One of the things that was drummed into me early in my career as a lowly product manager in Boots, was the features and benefits.
Features are specific characteristics of something. But benefits are the good things those features give to customers. And customers buy benefits, not features.
So what's the benefit here then? You should shop with us because we are passionately into what we do? Well yes I sure Comet is passionate about electricals (sic), and in today's retail climate you'd struggle to find a big retailer who isn't similarly passionate about what they sell.
Straplines can be a good way to expand on a business name or campaign, and can reinforce brand values well. But only if they're done well, and for me Comet's is the worst one I've seen in a while.

#### Coming to Belfast in September
In September I'm delighted to be heading to Northern Ireland for the first time to speak at a conference about public sector social media. It's taking place on Wednesday, 23 September at The Odyssey Complex in Belfast. I'll be doing a new presentation focussing on "Projecting and protecting your organisation’s reputation and message online", covering topics including

What are the risks involved in real time, online engagement and how to manage them
Establishing protocols for social media use for brand communication to your members, executive team and staff
Using online tools to find out valuable insights into your customers/ audiences
Measuring the impact of your online communications activities

 Other speakers on the day will include Niall McKeown (Ion Online Marketing), Alex Butler (COI) and Gareth Dunlop (Tibus).
I'm particularly looking forward to this, partly because I've never been to Belfast before, but also because I've not met or heard the other speakers before and am sure I'll learn a lot from them as well as meeting delegates.
For more information about the conference and to book click here.
 If you're planning to go to this event, leave me a comment here, email me or find me on Twitter.

#### Comments featured on FIR #143
For Immediate Release - The Hobson and Holtz Report (aka FIR) is a twice weekly podcast published on Mondays and Thursdays. It covers a range of communications topics, focussing particularly on the use of social media in PR and corporate communications.
The show is presented by Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz. I've been listening for around a month now and find it an interesting and thought provoking listen. The quality of the discussion is down to the undoubted experience and knowledge of the presenters, and the comments and feedback that are sent in by listeners.
FIR 143 featured some comments I emailed the guys about blogs that do and don't enable commenting on their blogs, plus some feedback on the live Skypecast show (FIR 142).
I've posted a clip of the relevant part of the show here, but don't forget to check out the whole show on the FIR website.

#### Communicate to Inspire - leadership communications
Over the past couple of weeks I've been reading a new book by Kevin Murray, Chairman at Good Relations Group, about leadership communications. It's called "Communicate to Inspire - A Guide for Leaders" and builds on his previous book of more than 60 interviews with organisational leaders (reviewed here).
In his latest book Kevin explores how leadership has changed in the digitally-connected world where transparency is far greater than ever before. He moves from how this affects leadership generally towards how the communication skills of leaders must be more developed so that they can lead successfully.
His approach puts an understanding of emotion and aspects of neuroscience at the core of great leadership communication. This is a refreshing change from some of the more cliche-ridden texts on leadership communication. Kevin's analysis goes behind what good communication looks like to understand more about why good communication actually works.
There are two strong themes that emerge for me from Kevin's analysis and models for effective leadership communications: the value of listening and the importance of storytelling.
Listening is an important skills for leaders to master and use regularly. Kevin explains why this is the case and also looks at the other signals that leaders can use, deliberately and inadvertently, to influence people they work with. I like his suggestion of doing a "signal audit" to make sure that you're aware of the signals that leadership teams give to the rest of the organisation - how behaviours are affecting the way things happen.
Storytelling in leadership communications is a theme that featured in Kevin's previous book - indeed it was stuffed full of good leadership communication stories. In Communicate to Inspire he looks at stories in more detail and explains why stories work in ways that rational, fact-stuffed presentations don't, how stories are constructed and where to get genuine and meaningful stories from.
This section of the book particularly resonated with me. In my experience the most successful leader communicators are those that have the breadth of communication skills to vary the way they communicate to the needs of a particular audience. We're conditioned to make fact-based arguments and presentations, but while this may work for some audiences, it overlooks that people often think in stories, gossip and anecdotes.
If we learn to tap into this natural predilection towards story-based content, our communications can achieve results that pure fact-based content can't. As Kevin says:
Stories have an emotional power to persuade that gives them the edge over pure logic.
The book ends by referring back to examples from the interviews with leaders and using them as short anecdotes that reinforce the key thrust of Kevin's manifesto for better leadership communication.
It's very rare that I read a business book that I get so much from as I did when reading Communicate to Inspire.
Kevin balances some action-focussed theories and models with just the right amount of stories and case studies to make this an interesting read with plenty of practical steps for improving your personal leadership skills.
In fact, I've made a mental note to come back and re-read it in a couple of months time as I'm sure I will have forgotten some of the things I've learnt this time around!
Disclosure: Free review copy supplied

#### Communications and agile
In the course of my career I've worked with many different technology teams and a range of different approaches to software development.
I first worked with the agile approach at Egg on a project designed to improve the customer experience for credit card applicants.
Agile is all about a better way of delivering software - and I've been thinking about how the principles of agile might apply to marketing and communications projects - especially when used alongside the project management approach that the marcomms world is moving towards.
The original creators of agile set out twelve principles that define an agile approach - and I've been thinking about what that might mean in a comms team context.
 Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. 
For comms project teams this means that we need to think about how we engage the client - the person who we're working for - during the project. Just delivering a formed campaign plan and creative at the end of a project isn't agile, but providing regular incremental information, materials or engagement for the client during a project certainly would be. But does that demand skills and time that clients just don't have or want to make available?
 Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for  the customer's competitive advantage.
This should be a given. The world around us in which we communicate changes every minute. So if we have new evidence to challenge our thinking, let's hear it and respond to it.
 Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
Not quite sure how this relates as directly to communications projects - but it could suggest that we need to develop campaign concepts and plans in short iterations and test often - whether with clients or in a quick form of pre-testing for materials or channel selection.
 Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
Yes - the combinations of perspectives from communications professionals and service-based clients is more powerful than one group alone.

 Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need,  and trust them to get the job done. 
Yes absolutely. Pick the right people that are motivated to deliver the task at hand. And give them the tools, information and, most importantly, space to get on with it.
 The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
Interesting one. I'm a great believer in the value of written briefs of one sort or another - to define what's needed from a campaign. Otherwise things can tend to wander about a bit and make it hard to know when you've got the campaign right. But that's no substitute for face to face engagement. I guess the two need to happily co-exist.

 Working software is the primary measure of progress.
So in the comms world this means getting something on the table early that shows what the end campaign might be. It may be a rough plan, some creative concepts or a bunch of evidence that points to a strategic direction. That's certainly better than keeping things under wraps until the final client presentation.

 Agile processes promote sustainable development.  The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
I get this completely in software development. But I'm not quite sure how it might apply to a communications team. I can see the value for people and those leading teams to ensure a constant sustainable pace, rather than the peaks and troughs that characterise much of our business, but I can't see a way to make constant indefinite a pace a reality given the nature of communications work.

 Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
Yep - paying attention to the technical and aesthetic quality of what's done is important. And valuable.

 Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.
And yes, I agree with this one completely. Keeping things simple is important as it forces a focus on what's important - in much the same way as it's more tricky to write high quality concise copy than it is to go long.

 The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
And this works for communications teams too. The behaviour and productivity of self-organising teams is better for delivering quality results than imposed teams or strictures. The best teams are able to reflect, understand and re-orientate themselves to optimise what they do. For me, the role of a leader is to facilitate this - creating an environment where the expectation of this happening is clear, but leadership isn't overly directional.

There's definitely much in the agile theory that can help communications teams. Have you tried using agile principles in the team you're part of? I'd be interested to hear if this resonates with others or if I've just gone a little bit loopy at the end of a long short week!
Update: 1 April 8.30pm - Sharon O'Dea has reminded me that she's blogged on a similar theme - well worth a read on the concept of agile in communications project management.

#### Communications conversations on Twitter
Been meaning to post on this for a while but it got kind of stuck in my drafts folder.
If you're looking for an opportunity to network with like-minded communicators using Twitter, you could do a lot worse than check out one of the regular "chats" that take place among groups of communicators.
A few are worth highlighting in particular:

	Comms Chat - a Europe-wide general comms discussion covering "all aspects of comms including PR, marketing, reputation management, internal comms and all things digital". Usually Monday evenings, UK time, using hashtag #commschat
	NHSsm - mainly on social media for NHS communicators. Usually 8pm Wednesday evenings, UK time, using hashtag #nhssm
	Polchat - for police communicators. Used to use #polchat on Thursday lunchtimes (1-2pm, UK time) but I think is currently inactive (check Amanda's blog for info)
	Lgovsm - for local government officers interested in social media. On Twitter as @lgovsm. Using hashtag #lgovsm on Tuesday evenings from 8pm each week (UK time)

The active chats usually have transcripts of the conversations that have taken place if you can't participate live.
However while these transcripts do have some interesting content, I think the greatest benefit is in participating in the conversations, learning and networking. If I had a few more hours spare I'd try to be more involved than an interested bystander.
If you know any other online conversations, do leave them in the comments below.
 
 
 

#### Communications in a hung council
So last week's local elections in many parts of England produced eight more hung - or no overall control (NOC) - councils than before voters went to the polls on Thursday.
Given one of these is East Sussex County Council, I figured I should do some research as I haven't been responsible for communications in a hung council before.
However my research hasn't turned up the definitive guide to communications in a hung council - but I have spotted a couple of useful sources to help inform my thinking over the next few days.
First up, the Local Government Association has an interesting guide for chief executives at hung councils - based on case studies and experience from chief executives at hung councils.
Then through the power of Twitter I found this good post from Nicola Davies at Straight Bat PR. She has some really helpful tips for communicators at newly-hung councils.
What seems clear is that there's no definitive guide to the situation - which makes sense as each council will be unique and the political and officer dynamics will be different.
Reading both these pieces, it's clear that open communication from all involved in a new hung council is really important. Through this open communication, new working relationships can be established that are vital to the efficient running of a council.
And comms people are well placed to be facilitators of this as they are typically among the most networked and connected people in a council.
 

#### Communications jobs in East Sussex
We're currently advertising for three roles in the communications team at East Sussex County Council.
To find out more information or to apply for any of these roles please visit Access East Sussex Jobs. The closing date for applications for all three roles is this Sunday.
Communications Services Manager (£35,633 to £38,939) 
This role is an opportunity to join the management team of the dynamic and forward-looking communications team at East Sussex County Council. The Communications Services Manager will take responsibility for specific communications channels, products and standards - these will include our council magazine, social media and consultation portal.
The role is also about workflow/traffic management - planning and allocating specialist staff within the team to make sure that we have the right people available to deliver projects quickly and flexibly. The Communications Services Manager will also own business processes and policies within the team and provide financial/performance information for the service.
Communications Research Analyst (£26,555 to £28,684) 
This role is crucial in developing an evidence-based approach to communications at the council. It will involve providing quantitative and qualitative evidence and analysis to support the development of communications and marketing campaigns as part of a cross-disciplinary communications project team.
The successful postholder will ensure that high quality communications evaluation and research is delivered and championed across the council.
Communications and Engagement Manager – Bexhill to Hastings Link Road project (2yr fixed term - £33,313 to £34,646)
This role is an opportunity to join the dynamic and forward-looking communications team at East Sussex County Council working on one of the council's most high profile projects.
You will plan, coordinate and deliver communications and engagement activity for the Bexhill Hastings Link Road project (and associated initiatives) to facilitate the effective delivery of the project.
Managing a small team, you will act as communications lead for the project and champion best practice in communications and engagement. You will also work as part of the communications team to deliver other communications and engagement activities to protect and enhance the council’s reputation, as well as working with senior stakeholders to gain buy-in and endorsement to proposed communication and engagement approaches.

#### Communications, leadership and storytelling
I've been doing some reflective thinking this week in a few odd gaps here and there. Sometimes it's good to step away from the day-to-day of emails, tasks, meetings and calls and make a bit of time to read, think and learn.
Two things that I've kept coming back to this week have been the role of communications skills in effective leadership and the value of using storytelling in communications. And of course the crossover between the two as well.
As part of my personal development, I'm currently participating in an advanced leadership development programme with a small group of delegates from the private and public sector. It's quite challenging as it's forcing me to relook at pretty much everything I do in my professional existence, how I do it and crucially how I can do it better.
It's a useful time for me to be doing this as since January I've taken on responsibility for a major change programme as well as leading communications and marketing. I knew the skills that this would demand would be different and it's a great opportunity for me to learn and do different styles of leadership, particularly in a sphere where I can't fall back on professional skills and experience in a particular discipline.
Effective leaders are good communicators. I knew that before I took on the new role.
But unpicking that a bit more is interesting. And this article in the Harvard Business Review really helped sum it up for me - and make a link to my other favourite topic at the moment - how we can make communications in a busy, crowded landscape of messages and user generated content really standout - a challenge in which for me the telling of connective stories is really important.
The article starts of about risk, but the interesting part for me was halfway through when it starts talking about the role of a CEO:
It's the CEO's job to convey that unmistakably — to tell stories about your strategy and your culture that clearly illustrate the individual behaviors necessary to making the company work and the behaviors you don't want.
This resonates particularly at the moment given the debate about Barclays and its misdemeanours - and whether those at the top knew about what was happening. For me, leadership can't be about knowing everything that's going on - it's impractical but more importantly it's not enabling for people in the team. So the description above sums up nicely what the role of a leader should be - and how it relates to what actually happens in an organisation.
Storytelling is nothing new. It's the original form of person to person communication that's existed for thousands of years.
But good communicators are now refocussing on storytelling as means to create authentic, engaging content that goes beyond the practical dissemination of information to reach people in a more meaningful way.
Stories are particularly effective in a time when bland corporate communications lack the emotional energy and reach that's needed in an era when person to person communications have re-emerged through social media as a more dominant force in how influence is exercised.
Mindtools has a useful typology of stories that can be used in communications:

	"Who I Am" Stories...If you tell a "Who I Am" story when you first become a team leader, you can give a powerful insight into what really motivates you.
	"Why I'm Here" Stories...The goal is to replace suspicion with trust, and help your team realize that you don't have any hidden agendas. Show that you're a good person, and that you want to work together with them to achieve a common goal.
	Teaching Stories – It can be very hard to teach without demonstrating, and that's the whole purpose of Teaching Stories....Use Teaching Stories to make a lesson clear and to help people remember why they're doing something in the first place.
	Vision Stories – Tell these to inspire hope, especially when your team needs occasional reminders of why they're doing what they should be doing...Find a story that reminds everyone what the ultimate goal is, and why it's important that everyone reaches that goal. This type of story should be told from your heart, with emotion.
	"Values in Action" Stories...Every value can mean something different from person to person. If you want to pass on values to your team, start by defining what those values mean to you.
	"I Know What You're Thinking" Stories...The advantage of telling this type of story is that you can recognize another person's objections, and then show why those objections aren't applicable in this situation. You can show respect for the other point of view while convincing the person that you're right.

What I need to do is think more about how I can use this range of types of story in what I do - both my personal leadership role and when I am supporting others in the organisation to communicate to help achieve their goals. That's something I am going to actively do over the coming weeks.
I know I struggle to recall experiences spontaneously, so I'm going to start documenting some of my key stories to help me tell them more effectively when the situation demands. Plus on my travels around the organisation I am going to actively seek out stories, particularly those involving customers, that I could draw on in my leadership of the team.
I'll leave you with three roles for storytelling in leadership from the Harvard article - which I'll be thinking about in more detail over the next few days. The first one is expressed in the context of a professional services firm, but is just as relevant if you think about it in terms of organisational behaviour in other contexts:
The first have to do with our...organization. We talk freely about the clients we want as part of the PwC portfolio — and the clients we don't want. In some cases, they may not be willing to pay the fees, and as a result we don't want to go too low because we couldn't do the work in a way that meets our standard of quality. We're clearly trying to grow revenue, but people need to understand that we have to do it in a profitable and risk-adjusted way. So, without naming any names of companies, we talk about times when we walked away from work, for whatever reason. That's one series of stories.
The second set is about individual behavior. Your personal brand is tremendously important. What you put on social media today is tremendously important. So talking about what is appropriate to put on there and what is not, what builds your personal brand and what detracts from it, that's another series of stories that I tell.
The third set has to do with our people. The average age of our employees is 27. We as senior managers need to model the same behaviors we expect of them. So we tell stories about how the leadership team — top management, middle management — does the same things as everyone else so they can see those goals come to life. Every year, for instance, I do three town halls for the entire firm — that's about 35,000 people. One of the first questions we ask at these town halls is: Tell us about your last vacation when you actually got a chance to leave? How did you balance the work/life flexibility issue? So each town hall starts with a story about how a senior manager found that balance. These are powerful examples of behavior we want our people to emulate.

#### Communications, social marketing and behavioural change
Time for a confession: delivering effective communications is one of things that keeps me awake at night sometimes.
Effective research and evaluation has to be a pre-requisite for evidence-based communications.  But sometimes I think it's important that communicators look even more broadly for a scientific based approach to making communications do the job they're meant to do.
Over the past few years, social marketing has grown in prominence as a branch of marketing that's focussed on delivering public good from marketing rather than the commercial benefits that sit behind much conventional marketing theory.
One of the key facets of social marketing theory is the application of social psychological theory and behavioural economics to delivering change in people's behaviours - understanding the thought processes people go through that lead (or don't lead) to them changing behaviours.
These theories explore the role of attitudes, social norms and other drivers on the way people act. An understanding of at least the principles here is vital to ensuring that our campaigns are designed in a way that has the greatest chance of actually being effective.
However as someone that has studied for professional qualifications in both marketing and public relations, this isn't something that's explored at any depth in either field. On that basis I'd guess that these are areas that many other public sector marketers and communicators aren't entirely au fait with either.
But I'm convinced this needs to be an area that we get better at. While these theories are applied well on big, national campaigns with big budgets to match, I don't think even the most high-level insights from social marketing theory are used effectively in many local public service communications activities.
The COI has recently published a very helpful guide on this topic that should be recommended reading for public sector communicators and marketers. It sets out in relatively straightforward terms the basic theories and how these can be applied to communications planning and delivery. It uses real-life campaigns to illustrate these points in terms that communicators can relate to.
The guide can be downloaded here.
This area is certainly something I'm going to spend more time looking into. As discretionary public sector spending comes under increasing scrutiny in the coming years, communicators will need to get better at demonstrating the impact their activities have.
I can see the use of social psychological theory and behavioural economics helping to provide a framework for planning and delivering communications, as well as a basis for evaluation that helps link communications outcomes to the broader delivery of policy objectives.
Or to put that in plain English, the social marketing way of thinking can help communicators make sure what they do actually makes the right difference to people's lives - and that's got to be a good thing.

#### Comparing Google Analytics, Statcounter and Feedburner Site Stats
I have three different website statistics packages running on my blog - Google Analytics, Statcounter and Feedburner. I figured it's about time I wrote a review about how I use each one.
Google Analytics is a completely free service, while Statcounter and Feedburner have free versions with paid-for advanced functionality. I use the free versions of each, and find these more than adequate for my needs as a blogger.
Installation
At this point I should note that my website runs on Wordpress using a bespoke template, so that's my experience of installing these services. All three were equally simple to install - a small copy and paste into the relevant place in the template.
The Google Analytics script goes into the header, the Statcounter script into the footer, and the Feedburner script goes into the part of a Wordpress template that handles post-specific information. I never quite worked out why this was the case for Feedburner, but the installation instructions were pretty clear to follow.
Screenshots
The screenshots below show the "homepage" of each statistics system - the place where basic statistics are presented and from where you can explore further.
Google Analytics:

Statcounter:

Feedburner:

Functionality
In a direct comparison of the range of statistics features available, I'd say Google Analytics appears the most powerful tool. It's certainly the one I've used most to delve into the detail of who's visiting my site. However this power comes with a price: it's much more complex to learn to use than Statcounter or Feedburner.
If you're interested in measuring your site's conversion performance or tracking different web marketing campaigns, Google Analytics offers a range of bespoke features that allow you to set up and track conversion goals.
For most bloggers though Google Analytics is probably overkill - if you're like me you probably won't have the time or inclination to regularly check the detailed reports.
Feedburner presents site statistics very simply, and if you use Feedburner to manage your RSS feeds then you'll already be familiar with the layout and interface. Feedburner now presents site statistics alongside RSS statistics, which means that if you're checking your RSS numbers regularly, you can get a quick update on your site visitors in the same place.
However I do find Feedburner's analysis a bit too simplistic - I like to be able to dig a bit deeper, cut information different ways or compare trends over time. While Feedburner does some of these things, Statcounter does them all.
The beauty of Statcounter is that it's really quick to check your basic visitor numbers, but it's equally straightforward to get into the detailed stuff too.
One thing to note: Google Analytics and Statcounter update in real time and allow you to set your timezone - so figures for a particular day are correct for your geographical location. Feedburner doesn't seem to allow you to localise for your timezone, meaning that days reported aren't exactly aligned with days in your timezone.
Conclusions
So what's the best package from the three I'm using? Well, as usual, the answer is "it depends".
If you're a marketer interested in sales conversion or web advertising, then Google Analytics is probably for you. If you're a blogger just wanting a quick insight into visitor numbers then I'd go for Feedburner. If you're a blogger or owner small to medium website then the Statcounter offering might well hit the mark for you.
Most bloggers I know are obsessed with their traffic statistics - I'm no exception and log in at least once a day to check mine. One disadvantage to all these services is that they don't offer RSS feeds, so you have to visit the site to check the latest figures.
Steve Rubel points to a new site statistics service called Clicky that does offer RSS feeds for your statistics. I'm going to give that a go over the next few weeks to see how it fares against the other three.

#### Complete the NMK survey
Ian Delaney from New Media Knowledge needs people to help complete their survey about what they do and what they should do in the future.
You can complete the survey here: 
Plus if you complete it, you'll have a chance to win an iPod Touch (there are two first prizes available) or one of five £20 iTunes vouchers.

#### Comprehensive area assessment (CAA) for communicators
Last month marked the start of a new era in local public service inspection in the UK.  OK, so that's not the most exciting of first lines to a blog post I've ever thought up, but things are changing and communicators in local public service organisations like councils, primary care trusts and the police need to understand a bit about what it means for them.  I should probably add a bit of a health warning here: I'm not an expert in the business of public service inspection regimes, but, just like fellow communicators, I'm starting to get my head around comprehensive area assessment (CAA) and what it means for communicating in the local public sector.  There are two parts to CAA: the area assessment (essentially the difference public services make to people living in a particular place) and the organisational assessment (where the organisation is inspected on how it's performing).   The idea is that the assessments focus on outcomes, rather than outputs - looking at what difference a particular public sector activity makes rather than the fact the activity itself takes place.   Of course there's much, much more detail that will become more familiar over time to those working in the local public services.  So what does it mean for communicators?  I think CAA will further the drive to more co-ordinated local public service communications in a particular place - something local area agreements and the place shaping agenda have already kicked off. Public service communications need to be better co-ordinated in terms of timings and messages, but there's also a role for shared intelligence in communications - helping ensure that communications are targetted at appropriate audiences in a specific place.  The area assessment part of CAA will also force council and other local public service communications to become more strategic - public service will be measured, in part, on perception of aspects of life in a place - so it's not enough to just tell residents the council provides a particular service anymore - it's about the difference that service makes to someone living in the particular place.  And I think that means an increased focus on relevance to place in communications - shifting away from a broadcast, one-size-fits-all message approach, to communicating with communities in smaller-sized segments about messages more relevant to people in that locality.  I think it also demands different skills from local government communicators - I can see the traditional silos of media relations, marketing and consultation officers being eroded as the skills required to deliver effective local government communications in the age of CAA change.  That shift in skills required is on top of the one that's already under way as local government communicators adjust to the impact of social media on the business of communicating - the CAA documentation does make some explicit references to digital communications, but there are a good deal more implied references in there too.  I've spent almost five years in the public sector now, and one of the real challenges still is managing the complexity of the public sector communications environment - the heady mix of customers, politicians, politics and inspectors means local public service communicators have plenty of interesting times in the coming months and years.

#### Conference reflections - local government, social media and mobile internet
Had a great couple of days on the road at the end of last week.
Thursday took me to Birmingham's Edgbaston Cricket Ground for the Public Sector Forums event on council websites.
Travel arrangements meant I was only there for a couple of hours, but it was good to meet the guys from Public Sector Forums and in particular Dave Briggs - someone I've communicated online with a few times and whose blog is a must-read for public sector folk interested in social media.
Dave's presentation covered some great examples of social media in practice in local government and was an inspirational call-to-action to councils to start being creative in their application of social media in communications and engagement.
I talked about the mobile internet, why councils should be becoming more interested in it over the coming year, and what they should be doing with it. My presentation is here.
Then on Thursday night it was up to Manchester to hook up with Andy and Nicky from Don't Panic event management and the rest of the speakers at Friday's Don't Panic Guide to Social Media conference. It was great to catch up with familiar faces and meet new people too over dinner.
Friday's conference was at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester - the best venue I've spoken at or attended a conference at so far. A great building, lovely space and definitely the largest screen I've ever presented with:

I had to rush off after my presentation, so missed out on the rest of the day, but judging by the active Twitter backchannel provided by Sarah Hartley, it was a good day.

You can see blogs posts so far about the day from Tom Murphy and Richard Bailey, plus a new blog started by a delegate inspired by the conference.
(images thanks to Andy at Don't Panic)

#### Conferences next week in Newcastle
It's been a pretty busy week and a bit, so no new posts from me on the blog and a bit quiet on Twitter too, but looking ahead to next week I'm heading up to Newcastle to talk at a couple of conferences on Tuesday, 7 July.
First up I'm at the PSFBuzz event (also known as the Public Sector Forums event "Effective Social Networking & Web 2.0 Strategies for Local Authorities") - talking about why I think the advent of web 2.0 is such a big deal for local government communicators.
Then I'm jumping in a taxi over to the CIPR North East region's social media conference where I'll be talking more generally about social media in public sector communications.
I'm really excited as it's a couple of years since I've been in Newcastle and the speaker line-ups for both events are really good, so it'll be a great opportunity to meet speakers and delegates alike.
More information and booking details here for the PSF event and here for the CIPR event.
Leave me a comment if you're going to either conference - while it'll be a bit of a whistlestop tour as I need to be back in Kent by the evening, I'll be at the PSF for the morning coffee break and at the CIPR event for the lunch break, so will be good to meet then!

#### Content, contact, community - a simple, universal marketing strategy
Spotted a really interesting post over on the always thought provoking Duct Tape Marketing: Content, contact, community - a simple, universal marketing strategy.
The three C's seem a really good base for a marketing or web strategy for any business.
I can't think of any type of business that this wouldn't be relevant to, plus it's simple and flexible enough to work with clients who are new to the web or interactive marketing.

#### Context in marketing and public relations
Have you ever thought about the role of context in communications?
I hadn't given it much thought, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like a big deal.
I should probably clarify what I actually mean by context. Think about how your reaction to marketing or PR communications at different times or in different places.
For example, I receive copies of PR Week and Marketing magazines at both my office and home. Yet I rarely even tear off the shrink wrapping from my copies in the office, even though I always read the copies that go to my home from cover to cover.
Same magazine, same person, but the messages in one instance are much more effective at hitting their target in one place than another.
In one context (the office) I'm too busy and have too many other calls on my time to even skim read the magazines. But in another context (at home) I have more time and am more able to read the magazines in detail.
To a marketer I would still have the same demographic profile - but my response to the same advert or editorial is different because of my context.
Context is an important part of user experience development on the web- this article explains it well - but I haven't seen much about how it can be applied to marketing and PR thinking.
Here are just a few ways you could consider the context of your target audience in your marketing or public relations:

	Time of day and day of week
	Where they are when they see your advert or coverage
	What they're doing - are they actively or passively seeing your messages
	How they like to receive their information
     Access to response channels - are you making it easy for them to follow up?

Many of these factors are ones that you'll consider anyway, but can considering them more holistically as context help improve effectiveness of your marketing and public relations?
A technique I've used in the past for web development projects has been user personas - creating some archetypes that bring your target audience to life beyond dry statistics and demographics.
These personas can then be used as reference points in the development of websites and services to ensure that the site meets the needs of that group of users - basically does it work for a specific user persona?
Would there be value in applying this approach to developing advertising creative or writing web copy? I'm not sure, but it'd be interesting to give it a try and hear if anyone else has done the same.

#### Contract vacancy for a web expert at Medway
We're looking for a web guru to join Medway Council's successful Communications and Marketing team. We have a ten month contract on offer to cover maternity leave.
We relaunched our website in Autumn 2010. This role's about improving our website further to provide the best possible online service for residents in Medway. You will be working closely with the council’s transformation programme to increase the take-up of online services and help the council meet its goals for channel shift.
Here's a bit more more about who we're looking for:

	A qualified web, communications or public relations specialist (for example CIPR, CIM, IDM, related degree or suitable alternative) or with demonstrable substantial relevant experience
	Someone with significant experience of managing or co-ordinating a large or complex website,
	Someone ideally with in-depth knowledge of the issues facing and workings of local government
	Good political awareness
	Excellent IT skills of course! To include word processing, internet applications, content management systems, basic HTML and social media including blogs, Twitter, Facebook.
	Someone with excellent communication skills, with the ability to present complex information in an understandable way.

The role's based in Chatham, Medway, Kent (easy walking distance from Chatham station - mainline to Central London) and attracts a pro-rata annual salary of between £22,958 and £30,011.The closing date for application is 25 November 2011 and interviews for shortlisted candidates will take place on Tuesday, 6 December 2011.
For more information drop me a line or call Charlotte Edwards on 01634 332449.
For full details and to apply online visit the council website.

#### Could planned communications have helped?
One of the political hot topics this summer is the changes to vehicle excise duty (VED) bandings announced in the budget earlier this year.
Motoring taxes, like mortgages and retail prices, are an issue that affects the vast majority of UK residents. That's one of the reasons why there's so much sustained media interest in this topic, long after it was first announced back in March.
A report from the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee has criticised the lack of a proper strategy for communicating the change. The detail was buried in a dense appendix to the main papers, leading to a lack of detailed information being available once the headline changes had been announced.
The committee's report endorses the role of planned communication in such announcements:
"If the point of green taxes is to change behaviour, they need to be properly publicised, so that people are fully aware of what they are being encouraged to do. A failure to advertise green tax details to the public...breeds suspicion about their objectives."
From a public relations point of view this endorses the need to address difficult topics head-on, seizing the agenda from day one. It seems that because this didn't happen, the media agenda on this topic is being driven (excuse the pun) from the ground up. A building momentum of discontent on forums, blogs and in specialist media has gradually tipped over into the mainstream media - providing prolonged exposure to a difficult taxation message from almost six months ago.
This is a non-political blog, so I'm not getting into the rights and wrongs of the decision. I'm more interested in how more planned communication on this decision could have affected the perception of the story.
In this case even the basics seem lacking. Even now it's hard to find an authoritative explanation of changes on a government website, beyond the basic facts about rates and banding. A more pro-active web approach could have set out the case for the changes, provided case studies about the different bandings and been open about the impact on car owners. Given the number of blog posts debating this issue, perhaps some sensitive blogger relations could have helped too?
Communicators can't make unpopular messages popular. What they can do is ensure that the case for a difficult policy change is presented coherently and consistently as well as respond to and clarify confused reporting off and online.
The speed of policy change will always present a challenge for communicators, but I agree with the committee's report - this is a great example of where communicators could have done more to manage the communication of this policy, rather than dealing with the fallout reactively.

#### Council communciations job in Dorset
Being a Devon lad born and bred, I know that Dorset's a pretty nice place to live. But not as nice as Devon of course.
So if you're looking for a public sector communications job it's worth checking out a role that was emailed to me by Colin Wood, Head of Communications at West Dorset District Council.
He's looking for a Communications Team Leader for his team. Here's the lowdown on the role:
We need someone to lead the team that is responsible for all West Dorset District Council’s internal and external communications.
There are some big communications challenges ahead, including proposals to merge our workforce with Weymouth & Portland Borough Council’s and to move to smaller and more efficient offices in Dorchester.
The successful candidate will:

	Be inspirational – you must be able to motivate others and quickly gain the confidence of senior management and councillors
	Hate jargon – we need someone who can communicate complex issues and topics in a way that makes sense to staff and local people
	Be versatile and very organised – you will be involved in a number of high profile projects at the same time, while supervising the work of others
	Make sound decisions and act quickly - on behalf of the council and your team

The post suits someone already working in communications with a track record of producing innovative and creative campaigns and who can show that they are ready to step up to a role in which they can inspire a team of people.
For more information check out the job ad here.

#### Council communications - HoC job and a contract opportunity
A couple of interesting opportunities hit my inbox this week, so I thought I'd share them here in case anyone finds them useful.
First up, Reading Borough Council is looking for a full-time Head of Communications, based in Reading. Full information is here.
Secondly Georgia Turner from Bournemouth Borough Council is looking for someone to undertake a communications audit from now until March 2011. The audit is to identify opportunities for:

	Financial efficiencies in council spend on print and online communications by identifying scope for rationalisation
	Better value for money through an improved focus on corporate priorities by centralising staffing and spend
	Strengthening the council’s reputation through better communications branding and quality control

Ideally they'd like some to be based within our team, at least part of the time. The role is to start immediately and complete by the end of March 2011. The full brief is here and if you can contact Georgia at georgia.turner@bournemouth.gov.uk.

#### Council publications
The debate about council-run newspapers, magazines and newsletters has been running for some time now.
I've heard from several sources in the past few days that things are soon to come to a head with the announcement this week of a consultation on changes to the local authority publicity code which governs how and what councils communicate.
It's being reported consistently that the consultation will put forward a limit of four publications per year, along with restrictions on how information can be presented. The Guardian's got a piece on this here.
Expect also proposals on restrictions for public sector lobbying contracts and possibly PR contracts too.
The devil, of course, will be in the detail about how any restrictions are drafted and put into place.
Communications will be key to keeping the public informed about services the local public sector provides and changes in these services in the coming years - for many councils newspapers and magazines form an important part of their communications mix - so communicators will need to build any possible forthcoming restrictions into their communications planning for next year.

#### Councillors connected: an online conference for councillors and council officers
Next week I'm participating in an online conference about social media in councils.
The conference, organised by the IDeA, is taking place on the Communities of Practice platform - a kind of professional social network site for council members and officers.
It's a network that's worth joining anyway if you have an interest in local government - and there are groups within the community for almost every area of work that takes place within the sector, including communications and social media.
The online conference aims to explore the benefits (and risks) of councils and councillors using social media for better community engagement, communication and the improving local public services. It will also be  covering councillors own use of social media (blogs, Twitter, Facebook) and the benefits of going where communities are already gathered online (e.g. Mumsnet, Facebook, community sites).
Many of the "speakers" have submitted written posts or video content, and will be available online to discuss and advise delegates during the conference. Unfortunately I'm not available to participate in conversations on the conference days, but I have submitted a post about councils and Facebook. I'll be checking the site and responding to comments later on next week.
I've not participated in an online conference like this before, so it'll be interesting to see what happens and how people participate in the online space.
Anyway, if you're interested in participating you'll need to become a member of the communities of practice (it's free) and then register for the Councillors Connected event here.

#### Councils, councillors and social media
The LGA's got some more examples of councils and councillors using social media here - interesting stuff.

#### Crayon launching in Second Life
Just a quick post to wish the best of luck to the founders of Crayon with their official launch in Second Life on Thursday. I've been mighty busy this week so am quite late to the party with this I know!
I'm in Paris on business all day on Thursday, but will be checking out their Second Life place and real world website when I return.
For some insight into what the Crayon venture is all about check out posts by Neville and Shel, two of Crayon's co-founders.
It sounds like a really exciting time - the combined contribution of the four founders of Crayon to social media and new marketing is immense, and it'll be great to see the fruits of their combined professional expertise for their clients.
I wish them all the best of luck and fortune with the launch of Crayon - as Neville has noted the expectation bar has been set very high, but I'm sure these guys will surpass even the highest of expectations.
I just hope they continue to share their wisdom and knowledge with the rest of the community as freely as they have to date :)

#### Creating local networks through Twitter
I know this is the umpteenth time I've written about Twitter recently, but there's so much happening so fast that it's hard not to at the moment - although I should point out I do spend most of my time working on things other than Twitter - and I'll be writing more about those after I launch the blog's redesign at Easter. What's caught my eye today is a post by Chris Dalby in which he talks about the @medway_tweet engine he's set up for Medway. I should point out at this stage that Chris has no connection (that I know of) to the council in Medway - indeed the only reason I know of Chris is because our Twitter monitoring picked up his messages about @medway_tweet. The @medway_tweet engine scans Twitter and BBC Backstage for mentions of Medway and then reposts them in a single Twitter feed. By putting all conversations about Medway in one place, the feed is proving really valuable in connecting people who share no common interests other than they have written about Medway on Twitter. I'm certainly making connections with people that are actively using social media in Medway that I wouldn't have connected with any other way - many of these don't disclose a location on their Twitter bio, so without the @medway_tweet engine the connection wouldn't have been made. Chris has just launched similar feeds for @barnet_tweet and @hackney_tweet. I think it's great Chris has set these feeds up and it'll be really interesting to see what happens with them. I can see them emerging as a means to create effective geographically-specific networks of people on Twitter, in line with the development of hyper-local communities on other social media platforms. For more information check out Chris's blog at www.yellowpark.net.

#### Creating space in leadership
This is something that's fascinated me for a while now - how to create space for teams to thrive, solve problems and do their best work while shaping direction and managing risks as a leader?
Years ago when I led communications and marketing teams in the public sector, I used to frustrate my team regularly when they came to me to ask for help. I'd reflect the question back to them and ask them what they thought before sharing my opinions.
In that role I had the professional domain expertise to have an informed enough opinion - I'd started my career in communications and marketing and had a good few years experience to draw upon.
But I always had a nagging doubt that even with that experience, there was no way I could have a better way of solving an issue than the person who was bringing it to me.
It struck me that facilitating them to find their own solution was a better way of helping team members develop and to find better ways of solving problems.
Yet the typical organisational hierarchy and directional management styles that were deeply woven into the way the organisations worked felt like they worked against a facilitative leadership style.
Fast forward a few years and now I lead a vibrant and innovative digital agency working with open source technology. I'm lucky enough to be part of a team that has passionate people wrangling new technology and creativity every day of the week.
There's no way I can offer any useful domain insight into many of the specialist disciplines we have within the agency. We hire the best people we can in these fields precisely because we need expertise.
It now seems more counter-intuitive than ever to me that someone in a leadership position should be offering strong opinions on what should happen when teams are delivering services and solving problems.
With the right people, processes and tools, the leadership role is about creating space for those teams to do great things and help them through when they hit blocks.
But as leaders we have to accept that what we say and do (as well as the things we don't say and don't do), carry weight with our teams. The role that a leader holds gives them a level of influence, whether they realise it or not.
So I've been making deliberate efforts to not give opinions or potential solutions as I may have done all those years ago.
I've been retraining myself to use questioning as my predominant mode in discussions, meetings and workshop.
One day I tried to go the entire day using only questioning to contribute towards team discussions. I didn't manage it for the whole day, but it was a great way of forcing myself to think differently about my interactions as a leader and facilitate better.
While it's been hard to break some long-held habits, I've been amazed at the power of using open and deliberate questioning in discussions to help team members solve complex problems themselves.
This helps individuals in their own professional development as well as shaping a culture where the solutions to problems can come from anywhere in the team.
So next time you're asked for help, start thinking questions first, not answers.
 

#### Crowdsourcing social media training - your help needed please
Over the next six weeks I'm delivering a number of basic social media training sessions for elected members and officers at Medway Council.
I'm planning on talking about what social media and why it's such an important change in how organisations need to communicate, as well as doing some practical interactive stuff too.
One of the things I want to prove is the value of crowdsourcing and sharing knowledge through social media.
So to prove my case on the crowdsourcing front, please could you spend a minute giving me your thoughts on the top messages you think I should give in the training sessions? What would you talk about? What examples should I show to give people a good feeling for social media in local government?

#### Custom barcodes as a call to action
Spotted this six sheet ad at Canterbury West station on my way to work this morning:

Being a bit of a marketing geek, what caught my eye was the inclusion of a bar code as a call to action for the poster:

I’m a cynic when it comes to the use of QR codes in many forms of marketing collateral, so I took a closer look at what this bar code was for.
It turns out you to use it to access the George Michael album on Amazon, most users would need to:

	Go to the app store on their mobile
	Download and install the Amazon app
	Scan the bar code
	Finally arrive at their desired content in the Amazon app

Or they could save themselves the hassle and use the URL as an alternative call to action:

	Open the web browser on the phone
	Type in the 25 characters of the URL
	Arrive at their desired content on Amazon’s mobile site

I can understand there are strong commercial reasons why Amazon would want people to use their app rather than the browser route, but I can’t see a compelling reason why a customer would use the barcode call to action instead of the URL from this poster.
My instinct tells me that users will naturally default to the simpler URL route, but it’d be fascinating to see some data on how different calls to action like these perform on a single advert.

#### Customer insight, CRM and innovation
I was really interested to read David Armano's post about a Bain survey of top executives.
He reports just over half of executives believe that insufficient consumer insight is hindering their performance. In response to this he notes:
Executive anxieties about losing touch with their customers is driving higher and higher usage of customer tools such as CRM and segmentation. These tools have moved from below average use to second and third place, respectively, in the 10 years since Bain has included them in the survey.
The interesting thing here for me is that the focus is on tools that companies believe will help them to address their customers' or prospects' needs more effectively.
John Dodds goes further in his post, making some very valid points about traditional marketing approaches and concluding that CRM isn't really a solution:

CRM is all about reports, efficiency and CRM software, it's not about the customer. And that's a problem. 
But really understanding your customers or prospects is only a small part of the picture. Genuine product or marketing innovation is vital to satisfying existing demands or generating new pockets of unanticipated demand.
If I were one of the execs interviewed by Bain I'd be thinking about how I could foster an internal culture of innovation and risk-taking - without that customer insight won't generate much value by itself.
While marketing and PR quite rightly look externally, sometimes we lose sight of the internal workings that are necessary to deliver business growth.

#### Cuts and the public mood
Like many public sector communicators I'm spending a lot of my waking hours (and a few non-waking hours too) thinking about cuts.
Mainly considering how to communicate difficult messages to customers, colleagues and other people who need to know about what's happening and why, as well as spending the odd minute or two wondering if I might be one of them.
One of the things that communicators need to factor into their thinking is the attitude of their intended audiences to what's happening. For local public service communicators the national context is really important. And is possibly the most rapidly evolving context in my time in public sector communications.
Since the election campaign, the formation of the coalition, numerous central government announcements through to the emergency budget in June, the national media agenda has been driven by the need to cut public spending, the depth of the cuts and where they should fall.
I've been keeping a look out for evidence that helps communicators understand more about people's attitudes towards reductions in public sector spending, job cuts and most importantly the services to the public that are affected.
So here's a selection of what I've found so far...
The shift in public opinion about how quickly to cut the deficit continues. The public now seem to accept the government’s stance that cutting the deficit needs to begin immediately. In March, over half said the national debt should not be cut this year as it may stop the recovery – just a third (35%) say the same now....Perhaps unsurprisingly, those of lowest social grades (DEs) are most negative about the Budget. They are most likely to think Budget is bad for them personally (56%) and for the country (41%), as well as being most likely to oppose the rise in VAT (67%) and most likely to oppose raising pension age (60%). Among this group there is also higher opposition to cutting housing benefit (43%).
Ipsos MORI/ The Economist - 2 July 2010
Consultation of public sector workers will have little or no influence on the decisions the government takes on cuts, in the view of the vast majority of voters.
PoliticsHome -  25-28 June
Just over half (51%) of Brits feel prepared for the spending cuts ahead, although this approval comes before specific cuts have been outlined. And while most feel prepared, a significant proportion (42%) feels ‘unprepared’ for a change in lifestyle as a result of cuts....In general, most (55%) support the Government’s proposed cuts to public spending.
You Gov/The Sun - 8 June 2010
Many of the government’s proposals for reducing the deficit are proving popular with the public...notions of fairness and providing a safety net are core to the public’s understanding of public services. Most people feel that government and public services have tried to do too much in recent years and that people should take more responsibility for their own lives (64%).  Local control is cautiously welcomed, but concerns about variation in services dominate. For example, more people think that standards of service should be the same everywhere for health services (81%) and even relatively straightforward services such as recycling (70%). Most of the public say they do not want to be actively involved in how public services are run – but there are still significant minorities who say they do, which represents millions of people across the country as a whole. Further, it is likely that those who are directly affected will be more likely to get involved; for example, parents are far more likely to want to have more of a say in how Primary Schools work than people without children.
Ipsos MORI / The Economist - 28 May 2010

Updated 5 July 2010:
62 per cent of people would prefer local councillors to make decisions about public spending in their local area...Taxpayers also think NHS managers, quangos and overseas aid are the top three areas where cuts should be made to save money...Just one per cent respectively thought street cleaning, care for the elderly by social services and rubbish collections should be cut to save public money...The services people regard as being frontline are: police (84 per cent), fire service (81 per cent), doctors, nurses and other hospital staff (80 per cent), schools (59 per cent), care for the elderly by social services (49 per cent), rubbish collection (44 per cent), help for disabled people by social services (43 per cent), child protection (40 per cent)...The survey also shows that almost three quarters of people (74 per cent) believe frontline services will be hit by cuts.
ComRes/LGA - 5 July 2010
My reading of the situation in broad terms from the evidence is that there is a growing and substantial acceptance of the need for cuts - driven by messaging and actions at a national level. But I don't think that has yet been widely linked to services stopping or changing at a local level - and it's the understanding and acceptance of this that is crucial for public sector communicators that are trying to keep residents informed at this challenging time.
However things are moving fast, so I'll be keeping an eye out for more evidence that might point to the communications impact of public sector spending cuts being felt a the local level.
Feel free to add any more links to relevant research/evidence in the comments below.

#### Cycling 100 miles for Action Medical Research
Help me raise cash for Action Medical Research this summer - I'm cycling 100 miles on the Castle 100 Ride around Kent for this great cause on Sunday, 17 May.
The charity
Action Medical Research specialises in children’s health, tackling problems affecting pregnancy, childbirth, babies, children and adolescents.
The charity's research funding currently focuses on three crucial areas:

	giving babies a better start - tackling life-threatening pregnancy complications, finding ways to reduce premature birth and improve care for sick babies.
	stopping suffering in children - serious childhood conditions, many of which originate at birth, as well as projects to improve the quality of life for children with disabilities, and those that tackle the causes of both rare and common childhood conditions.
	improving health for all - looking for new treatments that could benefit both the young and the old. For example, funding research into conditions that cause blindness, and chronic conditions like inflammatory bowel disease which cause pain and misery for thousands of people.

The charity's previous research has led to healthcare innovations that have touched the lives of many of us - I certainly wasn't aware of Action Medical Research's role in funding research that led to many of the healthcare services we take for granted today. These include  ultrasound in pregnancy, the polio vaccine and the hip replacement operation.
Check out this page for more information about the charity's achievements.
The challenge
A 100-mile circular road ride which starts and finishes at Tonbridge Castle in Kent on Sunday 17 May 2009.
The countryside route, through the 'Garden of England', takes in some of Kent's wonderful castles and sections of the Pilgrim's Way:

The furthest I ever cycled was the London to Brighton charity ride in 2006 - and that was around 56 miles, so 100 miles is a real challenge.
Raising money
I'm aiming to raise at least £250 for this great charity from my ride.
So I'd ask if you find my content on this site useful, you consider sponsoring me on the ride to help me raise money for Action Medical Research.
You can sponsor me online at www.action.org.uk/sponsor/simonwakeman.

#### Daily Links
activeCollab - open source project management and collaboration tool.
		Easy to use project management tool - like Basecamp but open source
		(tags: tools)

#### Dangerous driving around cyclists
I cycle pretty much every day now, including a six mile round trip to and from work.
So I see a lot of pretty poor driving around cyclists, including cars pulling out into my path as a cyclist, dangerous overtaking and passing far too close to be safe.
And I see some pretty bad cycling too, although that is rarely dangerous to anyone other than the cyclist themselves.
A little while back I got so fed up of all this that I got myself a helmet camera to record the things I was experiencing far too regularly for comfort.
On 31st October the driver of YM53 GYW completely ignored my presence on a mini-roundabout and decided to not give way and proceed to drive straight across my path as I turned and signalled right:

I reported this incident to Kent Police and supplied the video evidence.
I'm not sure realistically what I expected to happen, but given I clearly had right of way and the motorist passed at some speed close to me, I hoped that Kent Police would take some action against the driver - particularly as I had a clear video of the incident.
I completed the paperwork that Kent Police sent me and supplied a statement about the incident.
Today I had a letter from Kent Police telling me they wouldn't be taking any further action about this.

In a way I wasn't surprised. I know how stretched police resources are and this wasn't the crime of the century I know.
But what annoyed me was the reason that nothing would happen as a result.
Between Kent Police and the Crown Prosecution Service it seems they've decided that dangerous driving around cyclists and ignoring the rules of the road is OK for drivers - as long as the cyclist doesn't have to "brake or deviate from their path of travel".
In this incident I actually did have to brake as I'd seen the car not giving way to me at the mini-roundabout and had braked to avoid the car coming into the side of me.
So if you're a cyclist and you experience dangerous driving - make sure you brake, swerve and record it all to have any chance of Kent Police actually doing anything about it - even if you have video evidence that shows a vehicle clearly not following the Highway Code.
Not impressed...

#### Davies goes solo with launch of 3W PR
One of the bloggers I've followed since the early days of the PR blogosphere, and someone I've had the pleasure of meeting and speaking alongside at conferences several times now, is PR Blogger, Stephen Davies.

His blog is one of the top rated UK public relations blogs - started in his student days at Sunderland University - and has charted his rapid progress from PR student, through a couple of top London PR agencies, back to his native north-east with Webit PR and now onto a new chapter in his professional life.
I'm going to make myself sound older than I really am here, but Stephen's a public relations practitioner who's a natural digital native. He has a superb understanding of how PR works and how to apply this in today's digitally connected society.
That's why it's really exciting that Stephen's launched his own PR consultancy, 3W PR specialising in online PR and social media.
It'll be really interesting to read more about 3W PR's work over the coming weeks and months. Knowing Stephen, there will definitely be some interesting stuff.
Good luck with the venture Stephen - and make sure you keep us posted on progress on PR Blogger.

#### Dealing with feed overload
Over the weekend my RSS feed count hit an all time high - I now have more than 100 feeds set up in my RSS reader.
The problem is that these feeds generate a very large number of items for me to read, and I simply can't keep up.
Given the time diferences between the UK and US, I typically have 150 to 175 new items each morning, and between 20 and 30 new items per hour during the daytime. Scanning these, let alone reading a proportion of them properly, takes more time than I have.
So, it's clear something has to change. I sense Lee might have been experiencing a similar feeling with his post last week.
I thought about just pruning the list down and being ruthless, but I have added every single feed because I thought the author had written something I wanted to read. By deleting the feeds I read least I worry that I may still miss a post that interests me. But  inspired by this post I thought I could probably do something better.
Thinking about why I read RSS feeds led me to conclude that I have three main types of feed set up:
1. People feeds:
These are feeds I've added because I specfically want to keep up-to-date with the author personally.
2. News feeds:
These are feeds, from either individuals or organisations, that I've added because I want to keep up with news and information on a relatively small range of topics or areas (such as marketing, social media, Medway or Kent).
3. Functional feeds:
These feeds are ones I use for notifications, such as outage messages for web hosting or updates to my project management workspaces. There aren't many of these feeds, nor is the frequency of posts within each particularly high. However each item is usually of interest to me.
So far I've always treated all feeds the same, but my plan to cope with the torrent of news is now to treat these three groups differently.
I'm going to keep my "people feeds" set up in my reader as now, as I like to read all the items that those authors publish. I'll also keep the "functional feeds", as I regularly read almost all of the posts within these.
However I'm going to start to filter the "news feeds" I get. My plan is to set up an OPML list for these feeds, blend them into a single RSS feed (using something like Feedrinse or Blastfeed), and filter this feed against certain keywords.
The benefit of doing this is that I'll be able to keep track of relevant news from an even wider range of sources through a single filtered RSS feed.
The downside is that I risk missing out on information that doesn't contain my keywords - but I figure in the age of niche communications I should be trying to focus on reading my news topics in depth, rather than reading across a broad range of topics.
I'm going to implement this over the next few days, and will post again once I know whether it helps me deal with RSS feed overload. I'll also have to sort out something to reflect this in my blogroll on my site once I know whether it works for me.
I can only see this becoming a more common problem as RSS use increases over the next twelve months, so anyone who can develop a tool that helps handle, manipulate and filter RSS feeds will have a winner on their hands.

#### Dealing with feed overload - the answer?
Late last year I blogged about how my RSS reading list had reached 100 feeds and was becoming impractical to keep up with. An update to the post is here.
Initially I tried solving this by reclassifying my RSS feeds and employing keyword filtering tools. The Blastfeed service was the best keyword filtering tool I used - it was easy to combine several feeds into a single composite RSS feed, filtered by keywords in the same way as you write a Google search query.
I didn't have much success with Feedrinse - having imported my OPML list the service kept crashing. I contacted their helpdesk but never heard anything back - a reminder that while many web 2.0 services are self-explanatory, if you're going to launch one you need to make sure customer service is on your radar too.
However combining most of my RSS feeds into filtered composite feeds wasn't really the solution that I thought it could be. Filtering just by keywords was too crude - running filtered feeds alongside the normal unfiltered feeds, I noticed that many of the posts that interested me actually didn't have the exact keywords or phrases in them, so I would have missed out if I had only been using the filtered feeds.
However I have found a solution to my ever-growing RSS list - changing the tools I use to read RSS feeds. Previously I only read RSS feeds on my Dell Axim X51v PDA using Newsbreak. I had tried using a desktop reader in parallel, but my main frustration was that it was impossible to use both desktop and PDA readers together as when I read a post on one, it still showed as unread on the other.
In December I thought I'd try out a combination of the FeedDemon desktop software and Newsgator Go for my PDA. I'd heard from several people how good these tools were, although when I initially tried in June 2006 the PDA software was just too slow to be usable.
The real benefit from using these two tools together is that the RSS subscriptions and read/unread information is synchronised via Newsgator Online. This means whether I read feeds on my PDA, desktop or anywhere else using the Newsgator Online website, my feeds are always up-to-date and show which ones I have read.
So having this working well means I have more opportunities to keep up with feeds - I can use my desktop PC at home or the office to read feeds, as well as using my PDA in the odd few minutes when I'm away from my desk or out and about.
The other benefit is that the interface and functionality of the FeedDemon software means it's possible to scan a list of headlines or post summaries exceptionally quickly - I can very easily pick out the posts that interest me and discard the rest.
Since I started using Newsgator Go and FeedDemon I've actually increased the number of feeds I actively track, without spending any more time doing it. Plus I can now use the OPML file that Newsgator produces to run my Grazr - which is now automatically updated when I add a feed to my reading list.
So, it looks like the solution to feed overload is not read less, but read differently.

#### Dealing with feed overload - update
Earlier in the week I blogged about how I could deal with my ever-increasing RSS feeds.
I've been setting up Blastfeed to filter an aggregated feed of my news sources, based on keywords. I've only been using it for a couple of days - first impressions of the Blastfeed system are good as it's easy to use and seems to work.
I'm not sure it's designed to do quite what I'm doing with it, as selecting from a large number of feed sources isn't easy and I can't fit many keywords into the search criteria - meaning I have had to set up a number of filtered feeds. I'd originally envisaged setting up one with some clever search terms. Having several means I often get the same post showing up in multiple feeds - if the post contains two keywords it shows up in two separate filtered feeds.
This article at 37 Signals caught my eye, as it's discussing exactly the same problem as I'm having. The post and comments make interesting reading.
The Feeds 2.0 service that is mentioned looks interesting - as it claims to learn and filter intelligently based on what I'm interested in, rather than relying on static keywords to filter on. I've signed up for beta access, so hopefully that'll come through soon so I can test it out.
I don't think I've found the solution yet, but I'll keep trying!

#### Dealing with salespeople at work
One of the less enjoyable parts of my role heading up marketing and PR at Medway Council is the endless stream of salespeople who want a slice of my time. I think there must be a general sense among salesforces that local authorities are a soft touch - all you need to do is pitch up and an easy-going council officer will just get out the council's chequebook. I probably receive three or four phonecalls each day from people trying to sell me something at work. The most common sales calls are for advertising, printing services, graphic design and merchandise. Each salesperson invariably asks if they could "just pop in and see me for half an hour because they're sure I'll be interested". I'm quite regularly told this before they've even asked me about our needs and how they relate to what's being sold. I just don't have the time to spend in these meetings, even if I wanted to. Here are the big mistakes that people make when trying to sell to me at work:  get my name wrong - sometimes people call asking for my predecessor by name. He left more than three years ago. I particularly enjoy these calls when they're from direct marketing agencies or list brokers. These usually end pretty quickly when I suggest they need to sort out their own contacts before trying to sell me direct marketing.  not knowing what we do - I work for a council, so don't bother with sales patter about increasing profits and generating shareholder value - it just makes it really obvious that the salesperson hasn't done the most basic thinking about what I do at work. Have a look at our website, Google me or my organisation - even the most basic research will reveal more about us than most salespeople know when they call.   assuming I'm interested- unless I've been asked and I've told the salesperson what I'm working on, they shouldn't assume they know. Why do so many seem to think they know better than me what products or services I need right now?  not taking a hint - if I'm not interested I'll tell the salesperson politely. I wish they'd take the hint and not fire a list of alternative sales pitches at me in case one sticks.  pestering me - if what I'm being sold sounds interesting, but isn't relevant right now, I'll probably ask the salesperson to email me details for my files. If ask I for an email that doesn't mean I want you to email then phone me again, and it doesn't mean I want a glossy folder or information pack - it'll go straight in the bin.  jumping straight into budget - I get this less frequently now, but it still happens, usually with "old-school" salespeople. If the first, second or third question I'm asked is about how much I want to spend, then the conversation usually stops there. Unless I've actually indicated I want to buy, I don't want to be asked what my budget is - it's none of their business and I wouldn't tell them anyway.  selling on features not benefits - I'm only briefly interested in what your company, product or service does, and who else it does it for. I'm more interested in how it will help me achieve what I need to do, and to do this you need to understand more about what I'm doing. Very occasionally I end up dealing with a salesperson who's a pleasure to deal with. They listen more than talk, don't pressure me, take the time to understand the marketing and PR objectives I have, and then articulate the benefits of their product against what I want to achieve.  People like this are a pleasure to deal with, and are often from the companies that we end up using over the longer term.  So, am I being unfair on our colleagues in sales or is my experience typical? Do you have any sales experiences or tricks that you'd like to add? [tags]selling, sales, sales+people, salesman, sales+strategy, sales+tips, adsales[/tags]

#### Declining trust in the media
The power of the media to influence reputation is something that many PR practitioners take for granted - yet that power relies on the reader trusting the media they're consuming.
Neville Hobson has an interesting post picking up on the theme of declining trust in media and the changes in the practice of journalism described by Nick Davies' Flat Earth News.
This decline in trust, matched with the generally declining reach of local newspapers means public sector communicators need to think more broadly at their communications mix.
It's no longer adequate to rely on media relations as the mainstay of a communications mix - yet many councils do just that.
A combination of lack of experience of broader communications planning and an addiction to local newspaper coverage among senior people in local public sector organisations serves to perpetuate this myth.
Surely it's the job of communications professionals to present the true picture of how people get news and information in a place - what's the reach of local papers, radio and television? What alternative channels exist? What's the trend and what does it mean for a public sector organisation's communications?
The communications landscape is changing, and the practice of public sector communications is changing too. I wonder which is changing faster...

#### Delivering the New PR - London
Just arrived back from Delivering the New PR in London today - an excellent conference on using social media tools in public relations.
The impressive speaker line-up meant delegates got a really great insight into social media from some of the UK and Ireland's leading professionals in this area. The conference was useful for me as an active blogger, but was also attended by PR and marketing professionals with widely differing experience levels of social media.

The first part of the morning session comprised excellent scene-setting presentations from Philip Young and Tom Murphy about what social media is and means for the public relations profession.
That was a really good way to kick off the day as it made sure everyone understood the strategic context for the more practical presentations that followed on blogging (Stuart Bruce) and podcasting (Neville Hobson).
The afternoon featured an interesting presentation from Chris Rushton (University of Sunderland) about some research he'd undertaken into how media organisations in the north-east receive and use media releases. Many of his findings backed up my own experience and provide some insight into what PRs see happening with releases sent to regional media.
The session from Chris was extremely useful, but did seem a bit out of scope for the general theme of the day - that being social media and how PR professionals can use it as a communications tool.
The day closed with an overview of networking and a short but debate-provoking foray into Second Life and how it could be used for communications.

Part of the value of going to conferences is meeting new people and networking. In particular it was great to meet people who I've got to know online through reading their blogs (Stuart Bruce and David Phillips) and listening to their podcasts (Neville Hobson). Initially it's slightly unnerving to meet people face to face who you know online through social media, but it was great to be able to share experiences today with these guys.
It was also interesting to meet other delegates over coffees and lunch, including Richard Millington and Andrew Lacey (APT Marketing and PR), Rob Skinner (First Direct), Emily Lacey (Media Strategy), Rachel Bhageerutty (Notting Hill Housing), Rachel Bannister (Red Door Communications) and Victoria Newlands (PR student and social media enthusiast). I found it interesting to find out different experiences to applying social media in PR, and found while the organisations differed widely, many of the barriers and challenges were similar.
I wouldn't normally mention the sponsors when I blog about an event or conference, but I really should mention the event's headline sponsors Indigo Red. Director Lydia Mallison-Jones opened the conference with an enthusiastic endorsement of social media that set the tone well for the rest of the day. Lydia attended an earlier Delivering the New PR conference as a delegate, and was so taken with what she heard has since launched a blog of her own (and I won't mention the "quaking with excitement" comment again I promise).
The event was managed by Nicky and Andrew Wake fron Don't Panic, and it was great to meet them too.

Today's event was the last in a series of five, but there are likely to be more next year. Speaking to the team I know they're looking at what next year's events should include. I think there's still value in running a similar introductory event next year, but it would also be good to run events that look at the next stage for integrating social media into the communications mix.
For me this could mean covering things like using social media in integrated communications campaigns, more detailed case studies of integrated social media and possibly running clinic sessions. This last idea would help people see how they could use these exciting new social media tools in their own organisation.
I came away from today with renewed enthusiasm for using social media in public relations, and I know many other delegates did too.
I'd thoroughly recommend this conference to any marketing or PR professionals wanting to know more about social media. Social media doesn't change the basic professional skills of PR, but it is another influential set of tools that we can use to reach people and engage in conversations with them that have never been possible before.
As marketing and PR people we should never underestimate the impact this can have and is already having on reputation and engagement.
UPDATED: Pictures with many thanks to Andy Wake from Don't Panic.

#### Delivering the New PR 2.0 in London
Next Tuesday 5 June the Delivering the New PR 2.0 conference rolls into London.

I found the first Delivering the New PR conference really interesting and I certainly learnt a lot.
This time around the conference features completely new content from a top notch team of speakers.
Tom Murphy will be setting the scene about how public relations is evolving (I hesitate to write "new" PR, but I know what they mean), while Neville Hobson will be talking about public relations in a virtual world - I'm sure Second Life will be the subject of much discussion as last time, although the most popular virtual world has received much more mainstream coverage than it had late last year.
I'm particularly looking forward to hearing Stuart Bruce's insight on how to integrate social media into communications strategy. Most PR practitioners will need to be able to use social media as part of a broader, more traditional mix, so being able to integrate new tools effectively is key.
There will also be sessions on measuring and ROI, law and new media as well as a look at social media in the public and voluntary sectors.
A couple of the marketing and PR team from Medway Council are coming along with me - I hope they find it as useful and thought-provoking as I found the first event.
For more information on the event check out the Don't Panic website - it's not too late to book your place.
If you're planning on going to Delivering the New PR do drop me a line - as ever it's great to be able to meet blog readers face to face.
It'll also be good to catch up with Neville, Stuart, Andy and Nicky once again - all of whom I met at the first conference having read their blogs/listened to their podcasts for a while.

#### Delivering truly integrated marketing and public relations campaigns
Nick Porter, director at Iris PR, has an interesting article about how agencies need to delivery genuinely integrated campaigns on the BrandRepublic website.
I was particularly taken by Nick's description of what it takes to truly integrate, especially as for many campaigns integration still seems to mean creative consistency, when in reality it's far more than that:
True integration is about taking a strong central theme and deftly threading it through the most appropriate media for the maximum return on investment.
Robin Grant makes a good point in his comment on Nick's article - that PR could be substituted for many other disciplines such as digital or direct marketing and the points made would still be valid.
Over time the boundaries between many marketing and public relations areas are blurring. Companies are demanding integration, both in campaign strategies and the people or agencies they employ to deliver them.
It strikes me that now, more than ever, it's important for marketing and public relations people to have a broad skillset, and be able to deliver competently across many different areas.
There will always be a place for specialists, but if I were starting out in the business in 2007 I'd make it my priority to get as much broad experience as possible for my CV.

#### Deloitte's 2013 UK Media Consumer survey
Regular readers will know I love a bit of research - part of my obsession with evidence being the basis for decisions we make in communications and marketing.
Sadly with digital and social media, there's a fair bit of rubbish evidence out there - based on tiny sample sizes extrapolated up and given meaning that just isn't there.
But I spotted Deloitte have just published their 2013 UK Media Consumer survey which, having read the small print, I can see is based on a decent sample size and worth checking out. It's the seventh in the series of annual tracker studies.
One insight that stood out for me is the section that talks about a divide in how online users start their web journeys - and a shift from search to social as the starting point for these:
It seems that there is a digital divide in the online population between the over 25s who are “search-first” in their Internet usage and the under 24s, who are “socialfirst”. If this is the case, there are profound implications for the business models of those companies that advertise online
The other area that's interesting in the digital sphere is the data about the continuing proliferation of device types that consumers are using to access digital content.
I've been in communications long enough to remember when designing for the right device meant a choice between aiming for a 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 screen resolution.
But now we need to think about digital experience design that is responsive to a range of device types that is wider than ever - including the challenges of different user contexts and input devices.

You can check out the full report here. For a quick glance, here's the now compulsory infographic too:

#### Developing a new standard for news releases
After much debate triggered by Tom Foremski's post a group is emerging from the global social media and PR community to come up with a new standard for the news release.
I've blogged about this before following Todd Defren's post on a new template he'd created. Since then the project has snowballed and many more people have got involved.
The exciting thing about this project is that it's open to anyone who wants to play, and is an opportunity for public relations practitioners to get involved with the future of our industry.
I've signed up to the group and have just posted my first thoughts using the Google Group. I'm looking forward to being involved in future developments and contributing to the debate.
Other places to check out for more background on the project are the Social Media Club and the New PR Wiki.
For good background to the project check out the venerable Shel Holtz (of FIR fame) and Chris Heuer on this podcast.

#### Differentiation in communications
In my early marketing days in the head office of health and beauty retailer Boots, I remember many of the marketing training courses I attended making a big deal of differentiation in the marketing process.
To be successful in growing market share a business needed to be differentiated from its competition - something which it could achieve in one or many dimensions - for example by price, quality, speed or features.
Beyond the marketing community the notion of differentiation is a strong one in effective communications and public relations too.
To be effective, communications need to be differentiated in the complex and busy environment in which most of our target audiences live. Our message and the vehicles we use to communicate it need to stand out to be noticed.
But being differentiated isn't enough. Just like the product on the supermarket shelves needs to appear different to its competitors in a way that appeals to the consumer, the messages and the channels we use for communicating need to be differentiated in a way that resonates with our audience. And they need to be differentiated in way that's credible and appealing to that audience group.
For me that's where some public sector communications work falls down. It's either not differentiated at all, usually in an attempt to target too large an audience segment or in a failure to identify any segment ("this is aimed at all adults in the county"), or is differentiated in a way that does not resonate with the chosen audience segment.
So differentiating your communications is important. But differentiating them on the basis of something that your target audience actually cares about is even more important.

#### Digital Britain - what it means for public sector communicators
Today's unveiling of the interim Digital Britain report makes interesting reading for marketing and publication relations people working in the public sector.
The work's objectives include:

	Fairness and access for all: universal availability coupled with the skills and digital literacy to enable near-universal participation in the digital economy and digital society
	Developing the infrastructure, skills and take-up to enable the widespread online delivery of public services and business interface with Government
 
Universal availability of digital communications, combined with ensuring as many people as possible are comfortable interacting using digital channels, is important in public sector communications - when running campaigns that target mass audiences, we can't make the assumption that everyone has access to digital channels such as email or the internet.
In a developed country such as Britain, everyone should be able to be part of the digital economy and digital society. 
So that fact immediately leads to campaigns almost always comprising online and offline elements targetted at the relevant audiences by channel as well as by their propensity to respond in the desired way. Pushing the levels of digital availability and literacy changes the balance in this consideration of channel and provides more of a "level playing field" for consideration of different communications tools.
There's also a recognition that without intervention there's potential for digital exclusion becoming a reality within communities in the future - a challenge to the cohesiveness of communities that's integral to the place-shaping agenda:
Inequality in the use and application of digital technologies is potentially a significant new driver of social exclusion in the 21st century, which risks accelerating existing social divides and creating new ones. 
The report also provides a boost to the delivery of public services digitally - the report commits to:
ensure that public services online are designed for ease of use by the widest range of citizens, taking advantage of the widespread uptake of broadband to offer an improved customer experience and encourage the shift to online channels in delivery and service support. 
This means we need to think about the range and usability of services provided by local government over the internet, as well as continuing to find an appropriate role for other digital channels, such as mobile and digital television, to provide complementary or alternative means of access for citizens.
There's not a lot of detail in the report about what will be done to mnake this happen, so I guess we'll have to wait until the final report in late Spring for that.
A couple of the annexes to the main report also make useful reference material for marketing and public relations people considering digital as part of their communications mix:

	Digital Britain: An Audit - looking at the current picture of availability and use of a range of digital channels - along the same lines as the annual communications market reports produced by Ofcom
Key trends and issues in UK media and telecoms to 2012 - a look forward at future trends along with a reprise of the digital natives/digital shoppers/refuseniks typologies

#### Digital Leaders 50 - place your vote!
I was really pleased last week when a colleague pointed out that I'd made the top 10 digital leaders in the local government category - particularly as I didn't even know I'd been nominated!
The Digital Leaders 50, in association with Digital by Default News, recognises leaders and organisations who demonstrate a pioneering and sustainable approach to digital transformation.
Apparently the winners will have shown leadership and innovation in harnessing digital technology and the internet as providers of information, key services and social interaction.
The awards acknowledge an increasing number of committed changemakers across government, elected officials, industry and non-profits who are using digital in government.
So I'm dead chuffed to have been nominated. I'm not sure who nominated me, but thanks anyway to whoever did that.
You can see the full shortlist here - and I'd be very grateful if you could lend your support by voting for me in the local government category - place your vote here by Friday, 18 October - that's next Friday!

#### Digital neanderthals, marketing and the shiny new things
I was talking last week to a friend who's a qualified children's football coach.
He was explaining to me the difference between coaching five year olds and coaching eleven year olds.
At age five the biggest challenge is to stop all the team members chasing after the ball at once. The idea of positions, tactics and linking together as a team aren't worth thinking about at that age.
Yet coaching a team of eleven year olds is a different matter. There's a different maturity to work with as a coach which means there's greater potential to coach different skills and disciplines.
I was reminded of this conversation when I spotted a blog post on David Taylor's Brandgym site over the weekend.
In "insights from a(nother) digital neanderthal" he talks about how the marketing industry has rushed headlong into social media, much in the same way as the five year olds chase the ball in a football game.
He uses some entirely sensible statistics to back up his views and I can't dispute the statistics David uses.
And he's right that our profession does have a tendency to over-emphasise the value of shiny new things at the expense of a more disciplined and rigorous assessment of the old and the new.
But I'm not sure the analysis of the reach of different marketing channels tells the whole story.
What it doesn't do is consider the changing patterns of media consumption and interaction.
As Ofcom's Communications Market Report puts it:
Huge growth in take-up of smartphones and tablets is creating a nation of media multi-taskers, transforming the traditional living room of our parents and grandparents into a digital media hub.
The challenge for marketers is to really understand the complex multimedia landscape and how to compete effectively for audience engagement
That's about more than understanding marketing channels, whether they're new or old.
It's about understanding audiences and how they engage with content, however it's delivered to them.
That is why the content-led approach, while it has fallen victim to the marketers' love for the next big thing, remains a sound strategic basis for marketing in the complex digital lives of most audiences.
Understanding how audiences receive, interpret, understand and share content is the right way for marketing to remain relevant and effective.
The challenge is to cut through the marketing hype around content marketing and determine what's effective and why...as well as to behave more like the eleven year olds rather than the five year olds as well.

#### Direct mail, opt-in, opt-out and saving the environment
The UK direct marketing industry is responsible for producing 550,000 tonnes of paper mailings each year. To put that in perspective that's almost 17kg of paper mailed each year to each adult in the UK.
There are clear negative environmental impacts from this, in terms of the paper used, carbon emissions from production and distribution, and disposal of unwanted mail.

Precision Marketing reports the threat of government intervention is looming:

Environment Secretary David Miliband's threat to force companies by law to get consumers to opt-in to receive direct mail has sent shockwaves through the industry....He claims that the 550,000 tonnes of 'junk mail' sent each year is "unacceptable for consumers' convenience and the environment.
Leaving aside the environmental impact for now, I think there are some broader marketing trends at work here too.
To date UK marketers have been able to rely on opt-out for their mailing lists - people need to positively opt-out of receiving direct mail when giving their contact information. Digital marketing is the exception to this where the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 mean people actively need to opt-in.
The direct mailindustry has a voluntary scheme in place that allows users to opt-out of all direct mail lists - the Mailing Preference Service - but apart from this the vast majority of direct marketing in the UK is sent to people who haven't asked for it.
In a world where the marketing environment is changing so fast am I being naive in seeing this as unsustainable?
Can marketers really build meaningful (and profitable) transactions with customers on the back of a dialogue that a customer hasn't asked for, even with the best targeted campaign?
The world is changing. Customers are increasingly selective in who they will entertain communications from, let alone sales pitches.
Customers are much more savvy about marketing - they need to be able to see a rational and emotional benefit before making a purchase decision - but this needs to be backed up by an existing customer-company relationship, whether this has come from a previous marketing or PR, or from a previous purchase.
Surely a real moment of truth in that crucial relationship must be the customer allowing the company to send direct marketing to a customer?
If what the company has to offer is attractive enough and the ground has been well prepared with the existing relationship then the customer will surely happily opt-in for more relevant marketing.
If they don't opt-in then I'd guess there's a fair chance that they wouldn't have responded to unsolicited marketing material they'd been sent anyway.
So by implication opt-in direct marketing would mean smaller volumes being sent (giving an instant improvement in environmental friendly-ness) but a higher proportion of recipients responding.
Given how the communications landscape is shifting in favour of the consumer, I'd venture it means a net business gain too.
Is now the time that direct mail joins the digital marketers in giving consumers control over what they receive? I hope for the sake of direct mail it is, before government intervention threatens to impose more draconian rules on marketers using the postal system.

#### Discover web 2.0 sites in the UK
Stumbled across an interesting post this morning about web 2.0 websites in the UK on the Read/Write Web site. I certainly learnt about some new sites I wasn't aware of, and saw some that I did know about.
It was particularly interesting to see that behind at least two of the ventures listed were execs from Egg, where I worked for a few years.
It suggests to me that many of the pioneers of the web revolution first time around are still working in the space. They clearly understand the dynamics of how social media / web 2.0 work, and more importantly believe that they can create a viable business from social media.

#### Dissertation survey - help needed
Ian Vaughan is doing his PR dissertation on web 2.0 usage in local government focusing on how it can improve employee/citizen engagement and collaboration.
Help him out by completing his survey here.
Ian will be sharing the results of his research so it's well worth participating in the survey to get hold of his insight and analysis afterwards!

#### Do brands need protection?
Guardian Online carries an interesting story today about the launch of a new brand management product from Creston - a holding company for a number of UK-based marketing services agencies.
I couldn't find any mention of the product on the Creston website, save for a brief mention in today's news release about their interim results for the six months ended 30 September 2006 (page 2, paragraph 3):
Highlights...launch of ‘e-Influence’, an online brand management and influencer initiative
between the PR and MARCOMS Divisions.
The tone of the Guardian article struck me straight away as the product is clearly being positioned as a defensive tool for brands against the social media space.
I did wonder whether it was the angle the journalist had chosen to take to stir up a reaction, but the quote from Creston's chief executive, Don Elgie, suggests that Creston sees this as being a defence for companies against the threat of social media, and blogs in particular:
What has happened with the growth of the internet is that brands and manufacturers have lost control of their brand reputation and that is because of bloggers.
The article suggests the new product will be competing against the blog monitoring offering from Nielsen Buzzmetrics, among the host of other blog tracking services that are available
Details of the service are sketchy but Creston expects to be able to tell clients:
how to correct false information on blogs and how to deal with legitimate complaints doing the rounds in cyberspace.
From what I can see of this service, and Creston, it strikes me as a service from a company that doesn't understand how organisations should engage with the blogosphere.
I have to admit my perception of Creston is a rumour I heard on the grapevine earlier this year that a Creston company was considering introducing a policy banning employees from blogging, not only in work time, but in their own time at home too. For me that's short sighted on two counts, but that's another story.
This new product positions the blogosphere primarily as a threat to companies that is to be defended against, rather than a community that should be actively engaged with (on positive and negative reputational issues for the company).
If my PR or marketing agency were to position a social media strategy in this way, I'd fire them.
At a general level, the best way to manage a brand and the blogosphere's relationship and impact on the brand is to actively participate. Find a way to engage with the community, participate in the conversations and hold true the open and transparent values of the community.
Sure, this will mean different things for different organisations in different sectors, but the principle is learn and participate, not block and rebuff.
If organisations take a defensive stance and put up the barricades against this small but growing community, they risk losing out to their more open and positive competitors who do engage the blogosphere.
Many of the key word of mouth opinion formers offline get their information from online sources, so how an organisation operates online can rapidly percolate through into perception and reputation offline.
It'll be interesting to see if Creston can help me understand more about the service they're offering - after all you'd hope they're using their own tool to track how they're being talked about in the blogosphere.

#### Do councils need a website at all?
At Medway Council we're look at rebuilding and redesigning our website at www.medway.gov.uk.
One idea that's been playing on my mind for the past few days is whether a council needs a website at all.
Initially this might seem like complete heresy. Surely a public sector body providing services to local residents needs a website to help them communicate and provide online services to their residents?
But do they need a website in the sense that we might see a traditional "destination" website - a place where people go to find out information and do council stuff online?
One of the things that is making me challenge some assumptions is the increasing focus on place in local public services. For the uninitiated this means that there's much less focus on the organisation providing particular local services (eg council, police, primary care trust...) and more on the organisations working together to provide services in a coherent way that suits residents and businesses, not service providers.
So why a council website alongside a police website alongside a primary care trust website?
If the focus is on coherent local services regardless of provider, why not a single place website that provides information and online services for people in a particular place?
Of course not all visitors to a council website are looking for service information, so there's probably a case for a corporate presence on the web, in the same way as most retailers have a customer site selling product as well as a corporate/investor relations site with organisational information. But this presence could be completely distinct from an integrated place website providing services to residents and businesses.
For this to work councils would need to be confident in their own branding and service provision to throw their online presence into a shared place website. And that's before the inevitable IT hurdles of integrating content management systems and online tools between public sector bodies, often with differing and overlapping geographic boundaries.
So maybe as an end goal this is a non-starter. But the concept could give a couple of pointers for councils thinking about their websites in the next few years:

	council websites need to integrate as closely as possible with the online lives of their target audience - focussing on the customer not the organisation - which means open standards and being able to link with the current generation of online social tools as well as tools that will emerge in the future
	councils need to get together with their partners to think how online information and service provision can work together - while this might not be a single website, what about an area portal? This can easily become a reality if the organisation websites can easily syndicate content to the area portal (through RSS for example)

#### Do good presenters need Powerpoint?
That beloved business tool, Microsoft Powerpoint, was the topic of much discussion in the office yesterday.
The main talking point was whether good presenters need Powerpoint or not.
All too often I see presentations where the Powerpoint slides seem to take over - the combination of flashy graphics, unnecessary transitions and the way the presenter seems led by the slides, rather than the flow of the presentation itself combine to detract from the overall impact.
Yet some of the best presentations I've seen have used Powerpoint. It's been used as a visual aid for the audience, not the presenter. The presenter has had the skill to ensure that the main focus of the audience's attention is their content, not what's on the screen.
Personally I do use Powerpoint in most presentations I do, but I make a real effort to use it as an occasional aid and focus on showing pictures rather than words.
I write my initial presentations in Powerpoint, but then hide most of the slides with words on that guide what I say, and keep images, screenshots, video and audio that supports, rather than dictates, what I'm saying.

#### Do political blogs influence broadsheet newspapers?
Fellow blogger and CIPR Diploma student Simon Collister has just completed his diploma dissertation...a moment I look forward to with some anticipation. He's looked at how political bloggers in the UK have influenced agenda development in broadsheet newspapers. In due course Simon's going to publish the full text of his paper (presumably once it's been assessed and he's finished the diploma), but his outline findings make interesting reading.  He notes  ..in all the case studies influential, high-traffic blogs – or networks of lower-traffic ones – acted as framing devices around the story, pulling together key information and interpreting/analysing issues. This was reinforced by one journalists who admitted in an interview that he used blogs as sources of “comment” and “insight” for stories.. But this needs to be considered alongside his findings that while there is   theoretical evidence for media agenda-setting by UK political blogs, results from the newsdesk indicate that for the majority, blogs are not a trusted source of news. So the headline is journalists seem to use blogs as sources but aren't comfortable with admitting it. But then very few journalists do reveal story sources, so maybe the apparent reluctance to admit blog reading among Simon's sample reflects on a general reluctance to reveal sources? Interesting stuff, and worth subscribing to Simon's feed for when he publishes the full paper.

#### Do RSS subscriber figures always go up?
Neville's celebrating reaching a milestone in his RSS subscriber numbers - he's hit the big 1000 subscribers for the first time.
Such a large number of subscribers is a great achievement that can inspire the rest of us to keep blogging, reading and interacting in the blogosphere.
Although I'm nowhere near Neville's number of readers, my RSS subscriber figure (tracked through Feedburner) has been on a pleasingly upward trend since last September:

However I sometimes wonder if there's a natural trend for RSS subscriber figures to grow over time? Does anyone have an example of an RSS feed that has seen a real decline in subscribers?
That's not to take anything away from a healthy growth rate in RSS subscribers, but once someone subscribes to an RSS feed they will need to make an active choice to unsubscribe - by taking it out of their subscriptions list.
Aside from a very infrequent housekeeping exercise on my subscriptions, I tend to not remove feeds that I don't read any more. I just skim over them or ignore them completely, but this would of course show as an active RSS subscriber in Feedburner, as I am still downloading the feed.
This could represent a natural inertia meaning that RSS figures will have a stronger tendency to be static or grow than they would to decline.
There is, of course, an underlying growth rate from developing an audience for a blog and increasing use of RSS, but this could be overstated by people downloading but not reading a feed instead of just deleting it from their feed reader.
The real point here is that RSS subscribers, page views or unique visitors don't give you a necessarily accurate view of who's actually reading your content.
They can tell you who's receiving it, but it's a lot more difficult to know who's actually reading it.
You can get a feeling for who's reading your content by seeing who responds, for example through emails, comments, blog posts or trackbacks.
But this doesn't give you a complete measure of who's actually reading your content - and I'm not sure such a measure exists. The best a blogger can do is use a variety of ways to track the performance of their blog - and be aware of the limitations of this approach.

#### Do social media and council meetings mix?
A post from Dave Briggs on how social media could enhance the business of council meetings - generating more interaction from the public than currently happens - has got me thinking.
Last summer's Communities in Control whitepaper represents a real driver for increased citizen engagement.
And to my mind social media, in its many guises, is a great tool for helping with that.
So how could this work in practice?
The comments to Dave's post make interesting reading and have experiences that help point in the right direction.
Thinking about formal meetings that make up some of the business of local government, there's a wealth of process and protocol and the opportunities for citizen involvement are limited at the moment - usually to a few prepared public questions.
Dave notes that overview and scrutiny committees may be a more appropriate place than full council or cabinet meetings - as there's more scope for varied citizen-member interactions at that format of meetings.
One area I think there's real potential is in consultation meetings. These typically take the form of one or more speakers standing up in front of an assembled throng, imparting some useful information, and then taking questions from the audience. And once in while they'll be a row or two to boot.
In my experience such meetings aren't actually particularly effective in capturing the thoughts and feelings of the assembled audience - the linear format of question and answer limits the number of people that can engage. And that's before you consider that many people aren't confident enough to stand up and ask a question in such a context.
It'd be really interesting to think about how a backchannel, possibly Twitter, could be used in that kind of meeting to allow more people to have a say.
Along similar lines how could basic audio and video capture (that most people can do on their mobiles), be used in conjunction with social media technologies to allow anyone at such a meeting (physically or virtually) to register their point of view.
This is a really interesting area for local government - thanks to Dave's post I've got a few things I'd like to try out in the coming months on consultation and engagement projects.

#### Do the Brits get social media yet?
Spotted an interesting discussion about a recent report by Nielson Netratings, which included some insight into awareness of some new-ish technologies or tools like RSS, IPTV, VOD or wikis.
Ian Delaney talks about the low rates of awareness among the general population, while Stuart Bruce prefers to focus on what he sees as the surprisingly high rates of awareness shown by the report.
Once the acronyms were explained, Ian notes that rates of awareness were higher:
When researchers referred to these technologies in full, rather than using acronyms, recognition levels soared. 333% more people, for example, understood ‘video on demand’ as opposed to VOD. 350% more had heard of a personal video recorder.
I'd be willing to bet that once if they'd tried asking about awareness of Sky Plus, rather than PVR or personal video recorder, the rate of awareness would be much higher again.
David Phillips sums this up nicely:
You don't have to call it near field communication - you can call it an Oyster card or a season ticket.
It's not about the technology, what it's called or an acronymn. The consumer forms an emotional bond with what they buy, and that's almost invariably a brand, not a technology.
People don't buy digital music players, they buy iPods.
People don't buy PVRs, they buy Sky Plus.
People don't buy VoIP, they buy Tesco Internet Phone.

#### Do web 2.0 tools present a security risk?
E-consultancy reports a survey from Clearswift about staff use of web 2.0 sites presenting a potential security risk for businesses.
The survey findings are well presented, showing a picture of increasing use of social media sites during work hours by younger employees:

The survey highlights the considerable amount of time today’s young office workers spend surfing social media sites from office PCs, with 39 per cent of office workers aged 18-29 admitting to accessing social media sites ‘several times a day. 
It's particularly heartening to see the conclusion reached by Clearswift’s Ian Bowles:
Finding the balance between harnessing so-called ‘Web 2.0’ technologies for business benefit and maintaining strong security is key.  For example, it isn’t difficult to envisage an employee posting unauthorised comments about their organisation’s product or service quality issues on a blog – causing major brand damage – but at the same time, banning all blog access is not the answer as it cuts the organisation off from conversations with partners and customers.
The point for me here is that web 2.0 tools don't present any more of security risk than existing business tools such as email. Tools don't leak sensitive information, people do.
The real focus for keeping sensitive information private needs to be on people - a mix of policies, organisational culture and management to minimise the risk of information being leaked, regardless of the tools used in the organisation.

#### Do you know who you're dealing with?
Richard Millington has a post about how easy it can be to create fake PR - and has some examples to prove it.
His post reminded me of an experience we had last year on a high-profile entertainment PR project we were working on. Having sent out news releases about the subject, we received a number of enquiries from journalists.
In particular one journalist claimed to be from a national publication, and was keen to visit to see more about the story. We entertained him and started negotiations to try to secure some coverage in the publication he claimed to be from.
This dialogue went on for a week or so, but over time we became more suspicious that maybe this  journalist wasn't who he seemed. We always communicated with him through a mobile, and when he called and left a message he always wanted us to call him back.
So a quick call to the main switchboard from the publication he claimed to be from revealed that he wasn't who he said he was. A bit of web research using Google showed that he hadn't written some of the coverage he claimed to have.
Alarm bells were ringing loudly by now, and because of some of the negotiations that had taken place we called in the police.
Eventually the fake journalist was arrested and cautioned.
I took some valuable lessons away from the experience for future media relations work:

	Always check the credentials if you're dealing with a journalist you don't know
	Always have contact details that include a landline, and ideally a postal address
	Never get carried away with the buzz of a new opportunity - like in the rest of life, if something looks too good to be true it probably is

As Richard notes, it's pretty straightforward for someone to pretend to be someone they're not in public relations. The onus is on you to identify who is doing this and protect your interests accordingly.

#### Do you need a social media strategy?
I get plenty of emails each week asking about social media strategies for public sector organisations, especially councils and PCTs. Having a specific strategy for social media seems to be almost a prerequisite for many such organisations. But I've been mulling over the appropriateness of this in my mind for a while now - and I can see some arguments for and against this. So far I've always come at this from a communicator's point of view - thinking about how social media is changing the way public sector organisations need to communicate. But recently I'm moving towards a broader perspective on social media and public sector organisations generally. The main reason I can see for having social media strategy is around the fact that social media tools are still pretty new and unknown territory for many public sector communicators. My research last year showed that public sector communications are still grounded in the public information model of one-way communications, with the mix of tools dominated by traditional media relations and untargeted marketing. Against this backdrop, communicators can use a dedicated social media strategy as a "way in" - a set of activities that can be understood and bought into by key players in the organisation that provides a drive for adoption of social media. There's definitely value in a strategy that can be circulated, discussed and adopted as a way of gaining a wider consensus around a particular topic. But my nagging doubt with this approach, especially in the communications field, is that social media shouldn't be seen as a "special" set of tools that needs a dedicated strategy. Surely consideration to be given to social media tools alongside all other tools that communicators consider when planning a campaign? That requires a strategic approach to planning communications in general, something that I hold very important in delivering effective communications using any tools. So I'm not convinced that communications teams in public sector organisations need a dedicated social media strategy as social media should really be a "business as usual" tool that forms part of every campaign strategy where it's relevant to the objectives. More recently though I've been coming around to the idea that a broader social media strategy for public sector organisations is important. The impact of social media is being felt much more widely in public sector organisations, like councils, PCTs, universities, schools and police forces, than just in the communications team. For example I presented to all senior managers at Medway last week on social media - and everyone I talked to afterwards had started to think about what social media means for their respective areas - and without exception they had all appreciated that they had work to do to as a result. The fact that the effects of social media are emerging in almost every aspect of such organisations' businesses demands a joined-up response rather than individual parts of the organisation acting in an uncoordinated way.  And this is where I think the real value of a social media strategy is - the intensity of scrutiny and power of social media to demand organisational transparency and consistency means that organisations have got to get their approach to social media, both internally and externally, right and be consistent in their activities and behaviours around social media, wherever in the organisation that is coming from. Without that joined-up approach to social media, the organisation will appear at best inconsistent and at worst incompetent - much as it would if it had a poorly delivered visual identity for example. It's just that the risks around an approach that isn't joined-up are far greater with social media because of the the speed and scale of response and its potential impact on the organisations reputation. I guess I'm concluding that public sector organisations need to have a strategy, or at least a strategic approach, on social media, but that this should be organisation-wide. Its content should focus on key high-level actions that need taking to provide an environment where innovation in individual parts of the organisation is fostered, while providing a usable framework for managing consistency, policies and risks of social media in the organisation's activities. So has anyone got one of these then?!

#### Do you want to be Head of Communications?
Do you fancy doing my job - or strictly speaking the East Sussex part of it?
Well here's an opportunity. I'm moving onto exciting pastures new next month, so the job of Head of Communications at East Sussex County Council has just been advertised.
It's a great local government communications role based in Lewes, East Sussex. Here's the full advert:
This is an exciting time for communications and marketing at East Sussex County Council.
Following a major review, we launched our new communications team last year. We aim to provide a modern, flexible and responsive service which helps to deliver the Council’s priorities across all channels using the latest communications and social marketing techniques. We have a client-focussed team that has recently been awarded the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) Communications Management Standard accreditation.
The Council works in partnership with Medway Council as part of the Bluewave communications partnership. This helps provide resilience for both teams, sharing campaigns and experience and developing opportunities for providing communications services to other local public sector organisations..
We are seeking an experienced communications and marketing professional to lead the East Sussex team and share responsibility for developing and managing the partnership with Medway. If you combine experience of delivering strategic, evidence based communications and marketing activity that has real impact, with leading and developing teams, this could be the next role for you.
For more details and to apply visit Access East Sussex Jobs. The closing date is Sunday, 13th April 2014.
Image credit:  "Cuckoo Bottom, Lewes" by Jonathan Tweed

#### Does newscounter's right to reply really help communicators?
Newscounter is a new UK-based website with an interesting idea behind it.
In their own words it's
a new right to reply service for people and organisations to respond to controversial press stories. This should
stimulate debate about public trust and the role of the media in society.
Newscounter editors scan the UK press and receive nominations from registered users - controversial or particularly newsworthy stories are then put live on the site.
Users can then petition for a response to a controversial story, read responses put forward by parties named in the original articles and then vote which side of the argument they think is most persuasive.
It's an interesting concept - take for example this story about dog poo that appeared in the Daily Mail (can't find it on their website). It has been voted to recieve a response, and newscounter has secured a response from the authority named in the story.
The story and response that are combined on the website certainly seems to present a more balanced version of the story. This is likely to help communicators when the tone of media coverage is typically negative to their cause.
Newscounter also tries to ensure that their version of the story/response ranks highly in search engines. If they don't rank highly they say they'll buy their way to visibility:
If the newscounter response isn't on the first page, we buy google advertising to make sure it is.
Doing a quick Google (UK) search on the dog poo story suggests they're not quite there with this part of the service yet - at the time I searched  the story wasn't in the first page of organic results nor the paid-for listings.
And here lies my main problem with newscounter: while the principle behind it seems fine, the fact that the story/response is disconnected from the original coverage means that its value as a tool for redress seems limited.
If a story appears in printed press, then an online response, however balanced, is of limited value as only a small proportion of offline readers are likely to track the story on the newscounter website or in web searches. The only way around this is for newscounter to secure large reader numbers that approach the readership of offline titles.
For stories that exist primarily online then there's more potential for newscounter to make an impact. To be effective it needs to gain equivalent profile and readership to the websites or blogs that it seeks to counter.
From my initial glance a few ways that newscounter could use to do this would be:

	Providing RSS feeds for stories covered and responses
	Increase the profile of the titles in which original articles appeared to help search engine positioning
	
Ensure the site is covered by Technorati to help cover original articles in blogs

Organisations that want a right to reply have to pay as customers. Although it's not clear what the newscounter charging structure is, I'd bet that most of the organisations on the site so far haven't paid though.
As a communicator I'd be looking for some evidence of the effectiveness of this approach before committing budget to it. That said it'll be interesting to see how it evolves over the coming months.
(image credit: raisinsawdust via flickr)

#### Don't buy from ecyan.com
Before I buy online from an site I haven't purchased from before I usually do a Google search on the site name and the term "complaints".
This has provided me with useful information on other people's bad experiences, and has convinced me not to buy on several occasions.
In December I wanted a dual SIM kit for my mobile phone. After looking on several sites I found the right one on www.firstmobileshop.co.uk, which appears to be run by www.ecyan.com.
I order it on a Friday morning, and the site promised next day delivery. It arrived the following Wednesday. Two chasing emails went unanswered.
When I tried the kit in my mobile it just didn't work. I did all the recommended troubleshooting steps but the kit was definitely faulty.
I checked the return instructions on the site and emailed for a return code. I heard nothing back, and ended up sending eight emails, none of which were answered.
Luckily I paid on Visa so my card provider advised me to send the goods back by recorded delivery. I then provided proof of return to my card provider and the payment was refunded to my card.
To date I still haven't heard anything from the site at all. I've written to my local trading standards department to make them aware of the problem as well.
I order goods regularly online, and haven't had a problem before. My lessons from this were clear:
* always Google for other people's complaints
* for big purchases try contacting the company before buying to see if they reply
* pay by credit card, not debit card
* always tell Trading Standards about problems, so they can take action if they get lots of complaints
* post information about your experience on your website or blog - help others avoid the same experience.
Update 14 January 2006 - the website I ordered from seems to have disappeared, but www.ecyan.com still appears to exist. Looks like my experiences aren't unique - see post at www.blagger.com.
Update 5 May 2006 - they are also trading at www.speedydelivery.co.uk. More information about this company also spotted at www.britishcompanies.co.uk, www.ebusiness-strategies.co.uk and www.ixat.net.
Update 15 January 2007 - check here for an important follow-up to this post and its comments.
Update 20 July 2007  - I have received an email from one of the companies that was named in the comments to this post threatening me with legal action if I do not remove this post and its allegedly libellous comments. I have no desire or inclination to get into legal proceedings and do not have the resources to defend myself against the threateningly large amount of damages they are seeking, so I have reluctantly removed the comments from this post and turned off further comments.
I have left the post here as I know its contents are a true reflection of the bad experience I had with this internet site. I also have email addresses for a number of other people who shared their experiences in the comments. If you would like to contact them for their experiences, please contact me and I'll put you in touch.

#### Don't create a social network for your council
Once in a while I have a discussion with a council officer about creating social networks.  Usually someone says "I'd like to create a social network. You know, a forum. Like a Facebook for [insert name of any service here]". When probed on why they'd like this, it's because they know social networks are popular and they believe it'll create a group of people who are willing recipients for messages about their particular service. I've met people at events who have created their own social networks for councils, image sharing sites for councils etc. I've yet to meet anyone that's created their own video sharing site though. And what most of these sites that have been created in this way have in common is that they have very few users. Sometimes none at all. Why is this? Lots of reasons probably, but the key one is that just because you create a platform for a community doesn't mean a community will form. There are plenty of places where people congregate in online communities already - they range from mass networks to small, niche networks.  Creating a community of your own requires significant resource to set up and even more to keep going through community facilitation. So instead of thinking about creating their own networks, councils need to focus on how they can use existing sites to best effect.  That's where residents are engaging with each other already, so public sector organisations need to think of innovative and creative ways to engage with people there, rather than creating their own presences in the hope people will want to engage there too. That could mean presences like pages on Facebook or channels on YouTube, but it could mean other things too. How can you widget-ise your organisation's content to make it possible for other people to share it through their own networks? Is there a role for the public sector in enabling local social media activism to help develop online engagement with the public sector? Sometimes I think public sector communicators become too concerned with doing everything themselves when there are people out in the community that are keen to get involved - the challenge for communicators is about learning to work with these people and giving up the perception of message control that still exists among many communicators.

#### Don't do it just because the technology can
A couple of weeks before Christmas I received this sales pitch email from a company I don't know:
From: **** ****** [mailto:********@******.co.uk]
Sent: 12 December 2008 10:01
To: wakeman, simon
Subject: Web accessibility - do you get it?
Hi, Simon
Just a short reminder following the email you'd opened offering our
'Accessibility Best Practice Guide'.
If you'd like a free copy please let me know and I'll send you the PDF.
Thanks
John
Now I know I've written about this before, but I think here's an example of a technology being used without a thought for customers/recipients/prospects.
Any email marketer will know how easy it is to track whether an individual has opened an email or not. But doing that and then actively pointing that out to the individual strikes me as a mistake.
If I'd replied to the email, then fine. But emailing a follow-up explicitly based on open rate tracking just feels like an intrusion.
What I take from this is reinforcement of my belief that technology can do many things for marketing, but marketers need to think about the impact of how they use the technology - seeing the whole experience from the customer's point of view.

#### Don't Panic Guide to Social Media - May 2008
Friday, 23 May is the day that the Don't Panic Guide to Social Media rolls into London.
The conference, aimed at senior communicators in the private and public sectors, will examine the rapid growth of online PR and the social media tools that are driving the revolution in communications.

The line-up features a great range of speakers:

	Sam Barratt, Head of Media - Oxfam
	Kerry Bridge, Head of Digital Media & Comms - Dell
	Stephen Davies, Social Media Manager - Webitpr
	Robin Goad, Director of Research - Hitwise
	Graham Goodkind, Chairman - Frank PR
	Neville Hobson, communicator, blogger, podcaster and Second Life
explorer - nevillehobson.com
	Marshall Manson, Director of Digital Strategy - Edelman UK
	Meg Pickard, Head of Communities and User Experience - Guardian Unlimited
and some bloke called Simon Wakeman, Head of Marketing and PR - Medway Council
I'm going to be talking about the extent of social media usage in local government with examples of those authorities who have used social media channels to reach their audiences. I'll also be looking at
the reasons why some authorities may still be reticent to create truly open dialogues with those they serve.
Assuming my CIPR Diploma research runs to plan, I'm hoping to be able to talk about some original research findings in my presentation too.
The full conference brochure is available to download here.
Tickets are on sale now for £295 + VAT or £250 + VAT for charities and early booking before 30 April 2008. For event booking or further information please contact Nicky or Andrew at Donʼt Panic on 01706 828855 or alternatively places can be securely booked online at www.dontpanicprojects.com/booking.htm.

#### Don't Panic Guide to Social Media - presentation
Bit late posting about this, but last Friday I presented at the Don't Panic Guide to Social Media conference in London.  The day was a broad-ranging canter through social media in a variety of guises. My slot was talking about the use of social media in local government (and other public sector organisations), including some initial findings from my CIPR Diploma and case studies from Medway Council.   I enjoyed catching up with fellow speakers and event organisers that I'd met before, including Neville, Andy, Nicky and Stephen, as well as meeting other speakers and delegates for the first time including Kerry Bridge (Dell), Marshall Manson (Edelman) and Meg Pickard (Guardian). My presentation slides are now available to download from www.simonwakeman.com/dpgsm.   Check out a delegate review from Sherrilynne here. Plans are underway for a similar conference in Manchester later on this year. Watch this space for more information.

#### Don't Panic Guide to Social Media - the final chapter
The third instalment of the Don't Panic Guide to Social Media conference series is happening in London on Wednesday, 1 April.   I've spoken at the previous two outings in London and Manchester and enjoyed the range of perspectives the conferences had on social media, with speakers from agencies, corporates, local government and the police service. I've always learnt a lot and have met some really interesting people. April's conference features a similar line-up to previous conferences, including:  Stephen Davies from 3WPR  Graham Goodkind of Frank PR  Marshall Manson from Edelman  Chief Inspector Mark Payne, West Midlands Police  Robin Wilson from McCann Erickson  Stuart Bruce from Wolfstar  and me talking about our work at Medway Council It all takes place at the Barbican in London - tickets available now with an early-bird discount at £245 (excluding VAT).  Check out the details here.

#### Don't Panic Guide to Social Media comes to Manchester
I'm going to be speaking at the next instalment of the Don't Panic Guide to Social Media in Manchester on Friday, 5 December.
The conference, aimed at senior communicators in the private and public sectors, will examine the rapid growth of online PR and the social media tools that are driving the revolution in communications.

I'm going to be exploring how social media is currently used in local government communications, talk about some case studies from Medway and beyond, as well as looking at some of the barriers to effectively deploying social media as part of a council's communications mix.
I'm really looking forward to hearing the other speakers too - some I've met before and others who are welcome additions to the conference line-up since its last outing in London.
Full information is available to download from the Don't Panic website.
Ticket prices are £195 + VAT or £175 + VAT for bookings before 14 Nov & charities.
For event booking or further information please contact Nicky or Andrew at Don't Panic on 01706 828855 or alternatively places can be securely booked online here.

#### Drupal for marketers in 2015
It’s clear from working with our clients and keeping an ear to the ground that big data, open source, content marketing, personalisation and online communities are just a few of the trends that are high on the agenda for this year.
Providing the backbone of a good content management system (CMS) allows marketers to develop and deploy innovative digital campaigns and initiatives, empowering them with instant control and flexibility,
All too often we meet clients and companies who are struggling with quite the opposite, engaged in a hand-to-hand battle with their CMS, a tool designed to make their lives easier. In a horrible turn of events, the content management system has become an obstacle to getting the job done.
Too much energy goes into finding ways around content management systems that have failed to keep pace with the needs of the contemporary marketer. So how can you avoid these issues?
The first step is to make sure that in the crowded world of content management systems you choose the one that best meets the needs of your business. Our particular choice is the open source Drupal CMS, built specifically for managing online content, communities and commerce.
If you’re not familiar with it, here are my five reasons why you should consider Drupal as a CMS for 2015.
Integration with social media
We all know that the right social media can be a great platform for reaching your audience. We work with Robbie Williams and his management team to develop and run Robbie’s official website (www.robbiewilliams.com). The site is designed with social content at its core, featuring heavyweight social integrations to give a seamless cross-channel experience for Robbie’s fans. Using Drupal we’ve made sure it’s resilient to the traffic spikes that are inevitable on a website for a global pop legend .
Targeted to the right audience
Another very clever thing that we can do with Drupal is to flexibly personalise the content of a website according to the users visiting the site regardless of whether a user is logged in. We can use clickstream data to power this personalisation or can pull in data from other sources to deliver a great personalised experience that increases user engagement and encourages repeat visits. Drupal’s open source code means personalisation can be customised far more flexibly than with proprietary content management systems.
Device and language flexibility
When planning a global marketing campaign, it’s vital to have a CMS that can handle translation and multi-language support. Drupal has the flexibility to allow users to switch languages as well as see your content in multiple languages. This means you can reach a large demographic with the least amount of fuss.
Enabling big data through integrations
It’s inevitable that you need your CMS to integrate effectively with other third party systems like CRM systems, video platforms and payment gateways to use big data in your marketing. We’ve worked with companies like Johnson & Johnson and ITV to develop websites that integrate mission-critical back office systems with Drupal.
Being part of a large open-source development community using Drupal you can be confident that the platform will continue to expand its functionality and cross-platform support in 2015.
Developing owned communities
As organic reach through popular social media platforms declines, marketers are focussing more on owned communities. Drupal’s power and flexibility is ideal for marketers seeking to develop engaging communities around brands. We’ve used Drupal to build a worldwide learning community for surgeons, to connect professionals in membership organisations and to build communities around big brands.
As an open source system Drupal has no upfront or ongoing licensing costs meaning you can get better value from your existing digital and marketing budgets as well.
So, if the thought of using your current CMS brings you out in a cold sweat, maybe it’s time to check out whether it’s really up to the job. With major websites including the Brit Awards, MTV and Lush now using Drupal it’s clear that the marketing and digital community is waking up to the potential of open source content management. In 2015, Drupal is the content management platform to beat.
Cross-posted from the Deeson agency blog and the Drum.

#### Edelman goes public on Wal-mart
Several days on from the original debate around "Wal-marting across America" Richard Edelman and Steve Rubel have posted about Edelman's involvement.
There's already been much debate around the length of time it's taken for the company to post a response. Things travel fast in the blogosphere with the pace driven by bloggers, but as a professional communicator I'm only too aware that if a company wants to communicate in this space its responses need to be more considered.
Sensitive content does need checking before publication, regardless of whether it's on a blog or a newswire. Yes it would have been better if Edelman had entered the fray quicker, but I'm realistic about how much work must have been going on behind the scenes at Edelman to identify what happened.
The responses were pretty clear - and I think the blogging community needs to accept it's happened, and take the view that these things can happen to anyone operating in the fast-paced, experimental world of the internet.
All of us working in this space should take a lesson in corporate transparency from Edelman's experience, and make sure we don't fall into a similar trap ourselves. With this in mind it would be useful to find out more about how it actually happened, and I suspect we may see this over the next few days.

#### Elections and council websites - a great opportunity
UK county councils saw their web traffic double last Friday and Saturday thanks to their coverage of county and EU elections, according to SOCITM.
SOCITM Insight's survey of online election results coverage by councils looked at websites of county councils and new unitaries to see how the results were being reported, following up on a similar study in the May 2005 elections.
This time around, some of the key features of successful online coverage of elections were:
Pre-election coverage and promotion - elections aren't just about the count night and the results. Councils have a role (and soon a duty) to promote local democracy - in the context of local elections this means making sure people can vote (through promoting electoral registration and how to vote) and do vote (through increasing engagement with council activity and decision-making processes).
There's a role for the full communications mix here as the challenges of increasing democratic participation vary across the different parts of the community.
Live reporting of results online - as the organisations running elections and with access to publish from the count floor directly to their online presences, councils can be first with election news. On the count night itself there were plenty of examples of council sites carrying election results, while local and regional news sites were still playing catch-up.
Estimates of when results expected - something that's extremely hard to do accurately, but really makes a difference if it can be done. Needs a good working relationship between officers on the count floor and those working in communications and web teams.
RSS feeds for results - this is all about making data available in a way that can be easily reused by other people and services. A good example of this is how easy it is to republish RSS-based content onto Twitter - during the election Derbyshire County Council's Twitter follower count went up from 122 to 335.
For a really useful inside view on how one council put all its online election coverage together, check out two posts from Sarah Lay from Derbyshire County Council - parts one and two.
For councils, elections are a great opportunity to raise the profile of their websites among people that may not previously have had a reason to visit the site - councils need to think about how to harness this traffic and convert it to longer-term take-up of online services, as well as reaping the reputational benefits of being able to publish election results and news quickly and accurately.

#### Elements of branding
For those who studied chemistry back in their school days the periodic table will be a dim and distant memory. For a bit of a Monday morning distraction, here's a marketing version from the folks at Kolbrener:   Check it out at http://www.kolbrenerusa.com/elements.htm.

#### Email marketing vs RSS marketing
After a good week or so completely offline I'm now back to find more than 800 emails in my inbox, and that's after the junk filter has done its best. I also have more than 1,500 unread entries in my RSS reader.
And which one am I looking forward to tackling first of all? Easy. Even though I've got more entries in my RSS reader I'll be looking there first.
And why? Because I've actively subscribed to every feed that I receive. Granted I probably won't get through all 1,500 odd posts, but I can say with confidence they'll all be of some interest to me because I asked for them.
In contrast I'm dreading having to open my email inbox. I'm sure buried in there will be some emails that are actually intended for me, but I can be equally sure that there will be a fair number of actual spam emails and marketing emails that may as well be spam.
As a marketer I tend to opt-in for email marketing from most companies I deal with. I'm interested in seeing what a wide range of companies are doing with their marketing, but it does place quite a load on my email inbox.
Seeing a week's worth of emails in my inbox and posts in my RSS reader has shown me two things:
1) Email marketing can't have a sustainable future once RSS becomes mainstream (and with IE7 out that's not going to be far off).
The real user control over subscriptions means that RSS will become channel of choice for digital communications - email will be reduced to a secondary supporting marketing channel.
The lesson for businesses is that having a website and an email marketing programme isn't enough. Content and messages need to be available by RSS feed as well to give users that choice.
2) Tools that help manage, sort and prioritise RSS feed content will become ever more useful.
The ever-increasing torrent of information that we receive by RSS will mean that there's a real consumer need to sort and prioritise content. Tools that can do this in an intuitive and user-focused way will make users' lives easier.
Marketers need to be conscious of this as these kind of tools will also enable consumers to sort overtly commercial messages from other types of content.
As marketers we'll need to ensure that our messages have enough content value to be worth reading and engaging with, rather than just being sales pitches.
The other challenge will be how marketers can personalise their marketing through RSS, although I haven't really worked out how that could be done yet. Any ideas gratefully received...

#### Escaping from CIPR studies
Regular readers will probably have noticed that over the past four or five months, and over the past six weeks in particular, I have virtually disappeared from this blog.  There's only one reason for this really: the final stages of my Chartered Institute of Public Relations diploma. I started back in June 2007, and having deferred the final project deadline once, I finally handed in my project on Thursday. The final project is a 6000-word piece of personal research into a topic chosen by the student. My project looked at the role of social media in local government communications, but more on that in a future post. A couple of days on from handing it in, I'm starting to feel a sense of relief and my perspectives are once again broadening beyond the world of PR theory and academic papers. One of my aims when setting out on the diploma was to give my PR work a decent theoretical grounding, in the same way as I have with my marketing work. If anything the CIPR diploma is more weighted towards theory than its CIM marketing counterpart. I've learnt a lot about PR theories, their relative merits and, most importantly, how they relate to the practice of PR in the real world that we work in. But it's been hard work. From past experience I knew that taking on a distance learning qualification eats into the little spare time that I had. I have a lot of respect for those people that take on academic qualifications alongside a career and a family. The CIPR diploma was one year and I found that a challenge, so people that study for masters and doctorate level qualifications over extended periods of time deserve a great deal of credit for their perseverance and tenacity.  I was a member of the first cohort to take the CIPR Diploma online. The basis for the course online presence was the open source Moodle application, delivered by PR Academy. I enjoyed the online interaction with other students and found the tutors helpful and thought provoking. Unfortunately I only made it to one of the two face-to-face learning days, but that was definitely worth attending. So now it's all over, what I am I up to? Well, aside from enjoying the rest of the summer, getting to know my family again and upping my weekly running mileage a bit, I'm looking forward to getting back into blogging and being part of an ever-exciting online conversation among marketing and PR people that I've watched (or should that be listened to) from the sidelines recently. To those of you who have stuck with me (and there are a few, I promise), thanks for your patience and I hope I can reward you with more blogging that reminds you why you subscribed in the first place!

#### Essential skills for listening
Be able to listen, and actively show you're listening, is a really valuable skill in business.
It can help you develop relationships more effectively with colleagues, managers, clients and suppliers.
Leo Bottary has a great post with some practical tips for developing these skills and eliminating bad listening habits.
Listening skills is one area where I know I can develop better skills, so I will certainly be trying a few of the things that Leo talks about.

#### Ether-Ray PR survey
My friends over at Ether-Ray have emailed me about a survey they're running for PR professionals.
It's only one page and takes just a couple of minutes to complete, so if you have time here's the link:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=FreIEA0_2bYsq8u2zgMfxyuA_3d_3d
Once the survey's complete the guys will be releasing the results of the survey.
In case you're wondering what Ether-Ray do, they provide software solutions for PR people. They're got one product that I saw in development last year called Codex, which is a contact management system that has some web 2.0 ethos behind it - basically you can share your contacts in return for access to everyone else's.
That's an interesting approach. I some PRs will baulk at this having spent years developing their own contact books, but in the era of information being easily available I like this approach.

#### EuroBlog 2007 - blogs, podcasts, RSS, video and image sharing
Philip Young has posted about the results of Euroblog 2007 - a European academic research project that looks at how social media is affecting communications.
The full results are available for download, but at first glance they appear to show that, compared to the 2006 research, social media is rapidly moving from being a niche interest in communications to the mainstream.
Almost every question that was asked seemed to show a big jump in usage and adoption for social media in communications.
A note of caution though: the paper itself acknowledges that the sample for this research isn't representative and is biased towards an early adopter group. Put simply, the trends shown are probably exaggerated compared to the population as a whole.
That said I think the findings are still valid - don't get hung up on the exact scale of the trends picked up, but do believe that they are happening.
There's also a good section about some of the challenges for adoption of social media tools in communications. This section particularly resonated with me:
Committed bloggers face a triple bind:

	carving out time in their busy workdays
	
reacting to audience feedback
	being creative with new posts

Check out the full Euroblog 2007 findings if you need any more evidence that the communications landscape really is changing, and why marketing and PR professionals will need new skills to be effective in the future.

#### Euroblog2007 survey
The Euroblog2007 survey has been underway for some weeks now, but I've only just been reminded to participate by Philip Young's post today about the survey period being extended.
The survey takes around five minutes to complete, and the results will give a picture of how some social media tools are being adopted in European public relations. It'll also be interesting to see the trends since the last survey in 2006.
The main results from the 2006 survey were:

	divergence between enthusiasts who saw wide-ranging benefits from weblogs and “anti-bloggers” who failed to see benefits for their companies or clients.
	31 per cent said they regularly wrote or contributed to weblogs, 26 per cent said they never did. Only 4 per cent said they had not yet heard of weblogs, so one in-four respondents were making a conscious choice not to use them.
	most enthusiastic users came from Austria, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Germany.
	42 per cent of respondents who didn’t already maintain blogs intended to do so within the next 12 months. Nevertheless, a significant 32 per cent didn’t expect to introduce blogs.

(source: EuroBlog2006 press release)
If you work in public relations and haven't already completed the survey, please head on over to the EuroBlog2007 site and take a few minutes to complete the survey.

#### Evaluating your communication tools - what works, what doesn’t?
I'm a big fan of evidence-based communications and marketing - making decisions based on real facts, rather than the traditional reliance on hunches and guesswork that's dominated our profession for too long.
But even with the best intentions it can sometimes be hard to find robust enough evidence to inform strategic planning or tactical decision-making.
There are plenty of evaluation models and approaches out there for PR generally, most of which are reasonably relevant to public sector PR.
However Westminster City Council has just published its "Evaluating your communication tools - what works, what doesn’t? The Westminster Model" report - which shows very clearly the approaches that Westminster takes to evaluating the impact of its communications and managing the communications function generally.
You can download the report here. It's well worth a read as there's a lot to learn from Westminster's approach.

#### Every business is a digital business
Here's an interesting (and quite long) piece of thinking from Accenture on the relationship between digital and business.
The overall argument that's put forward is:
Becoming a digital business is no longer simply about how we incorporate technology into our organizations; it’s about how we use technology to reinvent those organizations to get out in front of the dramatic changes that technology is creating.
You can download the full report here.

 
They pick out six trends worth noting in this space, namely:

	Digital–physical blur: Extending intelligence to the edge
	From workforce to crowdsource: The rise of the borderless enterprise
	Data supply chain: Putting information into circulation
	Harnessing hyperscale: Hardware is back (and never really went away)
	The business of applications: Software as a core competency in a digital world
	Architecting resilience: “Built to survive failure” becomes the mantra of the nonstop business

The section on the digital-physical  blur and the rapid growth of edge-enabled devices particularly caught my eye.
It's this space that is likely to yield the greatest innovation in the business to consumer marketplace as the "internet of things" moves beyond the early adopter phase.
The technology will create the opportunities for new user experiences with digital in contexts that simply wouldn't have existed previously - and that's an exciting space to be experimenting and innovating in.
 
 

#### Every impression counts
I'm back in the office for one day only today - conducting recruitment interviews for a role in the team - before returning to paternity leave for another week or so.
Preparing last night for the interviews lreminded me about when I was interviewed by my current full-time employer.
When I arrived for the interview I was met by a lady who walked me up several flights of stairs, along corridors and eventually to the interview room where the two interviewers were waiting.
She was very chatty and welcoming. I now know this lady is the Communication team's office manager,  and she's always very friendly.
Several months later I was talking to my line manager about the day I had my interview.
She mentioned that the office manager had said, based on our informal chat as we walked to the interview room, that I'd made a positive impression with her and that what I'd said on the walk to the interview room tallied with what I'd said in the interview room.
Now I'm not suggesting that the walk to the interview room becomes a formal part of the recruitment process, but the lesson here for marketing and PR professionals is that every impression counts.
Every piece of communication, every conversation, every action you take on behalf of your business, brand or organisation needs to be consistent with the values that organisation holds.
Without that your audiences will see your organisation as fake and insincere, just as I would have appeared had I been offhand or inconsistent on that walk to the interview room.

#### Evolution of digital communication tools
I'm always a sucker for a nice two by two matrix and a bit of strategic thinking. Looking at different digital communications tools, Alex Iskold has produced this one on Read/WriteWeb:   Alex's post is a really good summary of how different communications tools have evolved and why.  There are several other dimensions that you could consider when looking strategically at communications tools, such as access, barriers to entry and perception of quality among readers. However using slow/length vs quick/compact and one-to-one vs broadcast seems to work quite nicely, as Alex's matrix shows. For those working in communications the challenge is to understand how these shifts in communication affect the work we do every day. How do our practices need to evolve to ensure we remain effective and relevant in the rapidly evolving world of digital communications? A good first step for any practitioner would be to ensure they're familiar with the new communications tools, either passively by reading and watching, or even better actively. Write a blog, set yourself up on Twitter, get onto Facebook - I've been actively trying to do things like these for 18 months or so now.  The experience has dramatically improved the marketing and PR work I do, has helped me meet many great people I'd never otherwise have met, and has opened doors for me in so many other ways. It takes time, but it's well worth it. [tags]Alex+Iskold, Read/WriteWeb, digital+communications[/tags]

#### Exploring word of mouth marketing
I spent an interesting day today at GREEN Communications' Word of Mouth conference at the Dental Institute in London.
The event was geared towards exploring how marketing and PR practictioners should and shouldn't use word of mouth in the communications mix.

The day kicked off with a vigorous look at personal brandcasting from Andy Green. I've always believed in the value and active management of personal brands - Andy had some really thought-provoking points about personal brands, memes and networking.
Other presentations included a good case study of successful use of word of mouth (William Ostrom, 118118), a marketer's view (Ivan Palmer, Wildfire Word of Mouth Marketing) and a glimpse into the world of publicity (Mark Borkowski, Borkowski PR).

Fergus Hampton (Millward Brown Precis) shared some interesting research results on word of mouth.
His statistics gave a reality check for the relatively low importance of online word of mouth compared to offline. He did however caveat this by noting the results were from 2005, and that online word of mouth was rapidly increasing in strength.
The importance of social media in reaching word of mouth influencers was demonstrated by the finding that this group tends to use online resources (including social media) to get the information they then spread offline.
Highlight of the afternoon for me was Graham Goodkind (Frank PR), who gave a really good insight into deploying word of mouth day-in day-out in a PR agency, including how ideas are conceived and developed, as well as how effectiveness is measured.
Graham also shared some real case studies, including the work Frank PR did for HP Sauce last year (remember snooker player Jimmy White changing his name to James Brown, HP sponsoring the brown ball at the snooker masters?).
Unfortunately I had to leave early to attend a meeting so I missed fellow blogger Simon Collister's slot on blogging (which I'm sure would have been the highlight had I stayed!).
That said it was great to see several other bloggers at the conference, including Ian, Heather, Andy/Nicky, and of course Simon.

Thanks to the folks at GREEN Communications for putting it all together, and to Andy and Nicky Wake (Don't Panic Event Management) for the invitation.
UPDATED: With pictures thanks to Andy at Don't Panic, and links to follow-up posts from Andy, Ian, Heather and Mark Borkowski.
[Disclosure: I attended the event as a guest of Don't Panic Event Management.]

#### Fake blogs to become illegal in UK
Niall Cook points out a story in this week's UK PR Week magazine - about a piece of European law set to be enacted in the UK at the end of the year.
I haven't seen the full article as my copy of PR Week doesn't seem to have arrived yet, but according to Niall:
The directive will apparently prohibit "unfair commercial practices" including "falsely representing oneself as a consumer".
This would seem to clearly outlaw the practice of fake blogging (flogging). It may well outlaw a number of other ethically dubious practices at the fringe of professional PR practice.
The practice of fake blogging was also outlawed late last year by the UK's advertising self-regulation body, the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA), when it ruled on a fake blog produced by radio station talkSPORT. Full details are in my blog post about the ruling.
The forthcoming EU law would seem to add extra legal clout to the ASA's ruling on future cases similar to the talkSPORT one.

#### Fancy a job by the sea in Kent?
Over at Tinderhouse we're hiring.   With exciting in-house projects like MapMyTracks and Tinderhouse Publishing, as well as a varied and established client base, this is a great opportunity for an experienced web developer or designer to join the team.  Here are the details:  Tinderhouse is seeking to employ an experienced website developer/designer that has a complete understanding of producing accessible XHTML and CSS website solutions. This is a permanent position based in Whitstable, Kent. The successful candidate will work within the existing team to deliver various client projects. The job would include:   Working closely with the client to deliver the project to their exact needs;  Use of our project management system to ensure the client is kept up to date;  Development using PHP/MySQL to create applications for the client whilst; adhering to our existing style and coding standards; and  Short- and long-term maintenance of completed projects.  The following skills are considered essential for this position  Excellent XHTML and CSS experience  Understanding of developing with PHP  Experience with MySQL as a database of choice  Ability to work to deadlines  Good communication skills  An understanding of web site accessibility would be an advantage.  Notes  Position available immediately.  This position is based in our Whitstable office and is not open to those wishing to work remotely.  Please apply by sending your CV to studio@tinderhouse.com with details of existing experience, two project references (including contact details for clients).  Only direct applications for this position will be considered. All applications from recruitment agencies will be disregarded outright.   Plus of course Whitstable's a lovely place to live, and the office is only a three minute walk from the sea.

#### Feedback on CIPR social media guidelines
Late last year the UK's Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), of which I'm a member, published its discussion paper on social media. My initial post about it is here.
I've finally had a chance to respond to CIPR with my thoughts. Rather than write a new post I've pasted below the email I sent to Francis Ingham at CIPR. It includes a link to Google Docs where I've published detailed answers to the specific questions asked in the document.
Hi Francis,
I've finally had a chance to properly read and review the CIPR's draft social media guidelines.
My detailed responses to the questions you posed are published in Google Docs at http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dgn42txf_12g9wkt7
My feeling is that the discussion document does focus too heavily on ethical issues, which I believe are for the most part already covered by the institute's existing Code of Conduct for members. Many of the examples given in the document relate to a practitioner having a reasonable level of professional competence in social media. While the CIPR has a role in guiding members, it's the individual member's responsibility to ensure they have the requisite level of competency to operate in the social media space.
I worry that such a detailed set of guidelines could be seen by some as a set of "boxes to tick" when working with social media, when in reality social media is evolving so quickly that a grounding in underlying principles (as enshrined in the Code of Conduct) and good working knowledge of social media is what a practitioner needs.
My other concern is that introducing too detailed a set of guidelines isn't "futureproof". New tools, techniques and practices are emerging all the time, and whatever the institute publishes needs to be generic enough to not need updating every few months. I believe the existing Code of Conduct is strong enough to apply to social media without additional specific clarification. I don't believe it's common practice for the institute to issue such guidance for other tools of our trade, so why would it do so for social media?
CIPR does have a role to play in educating members and sharing learning between members operating in different parts of the profession. There is much the institute can do to help increase awareness and understanding of social media among PR practitioners, but I believe this should be through education and information, rather than introducing detailed and specific professional standards for one particular PR tool.
I hope you find my feedback useful. I'd be happy to discuss further and be involved with future discussions about social media at CIPR so please do get in touch if you need anything else from me.
Best regards,
Simon
The discussion document has generated much discussion among bloggers and non-bloggers alike. It'll be interesting to see what finally emerges from the process.

#### Feedburner Site Stats launched
Many bloggers use Feedburner to republish their RSS feeds - the service provides a great selection of statistics about RSS subscribers.
In 2006 Feedburner acquired a blog statistics company called Blogbeat. They've now completed the integration of the Blogbeat technology and have launched Feedburner Site Stats. The basic stats package is free.
At first glance the site stats page in Feedburner looks as simple and as intuitive as the RSS stats that I already use. I've installed the small tracking script into my Wordpress template, which was a straightforward two minute job.
I now have three stats packages running on my blog - Google Analytics, Statcounter and Feedburner Site Stats.
I'll post a review on how the Feedburner offering stacks up once I've had a proper chance to road test it.

#### First steps with Twitter
Twitter seems to be exploding all over the blogosphere at the moment.
When I first took a look at what all the fuss was about I was a bit bewildered. I certainly shared the sentiments of Stephen's post where he questions the real value of Twitter.
I'm still not convinced I know what the real point is, but as with many new services like this the real value hasn't yet been discovered. Ian Delaney has a good article on New Media Knowledge that discusses some of the issues around Twitter.
However I really believe it's important to be using and learning new services all the time - some of the time I spend doing that will be wasted, but some of it will be a good investment as it'll give me knowledge and skills that help me be more effective.
So I've registered - my Twitter page is at www.twitter.com/simonwakeman. I've added a few people I know as friends, but do let me know if you're on Twitter so I can add you too.
At the moment I see Twitter as being an opportunity to post short thoughts in between blog posts. Sometimes I don't have time to write a full blog post, or the random half-formed idea doesn't really merit a blog post.
In the past these thoughts would disappeared into the ether, but with Twitter I can publish them.
Twitter might add value if it turns out that other people are thinking something similar and an idea can develop on Twitter, when if Twitter hadn't existed the initial idea wouldn't have snowballed. Perhaps there's a role for Twitter as a tool for enabling innovation?
Or it might just be another great way for me to spend even more time doing nothing on the web. We'll see...

#### First thoughts on the 3 Skypephone
It's been a couple of weeks now since the team at 3mobilebuzz.com sent me a pair of 3 Skypephones to test out.
Their arrival caused a bit of a stir in my house, especially with my three year old son who wanted to know why daddy needed three mobile phones (I already have a Nokia 6120 classic on 3 as my personal mobile). The chaotic opening means no pictures or video of the event, but John Griffin has some nice pictures of the same handsets here.
The two Skypephones are now safely in use by other members of my family, and we're all using mobile to mobile Skype to keep in touch, rather than "standard" voice calls.
The deal for customers is that Skype to Skype calls are free on 3 on contracts and for pay as you go customers who keep their phones topped up each month.
I'm particularly  interested in how this offer will change the market for mobile voice calls - to date voice over IP technology in various guises (branded offers like Skype and Vonage as well as unbranded clients) have remained relatively niche. I suspect understanding of the technology has been a barrier to adoption, and in this sense a branded handset with fully integrated Skype may help reduce these barriers.
More posts to come on the 3 Skypephone over the coming week or two, including a handset review, a look at how the handsets could be used in the small business environment and hopefully an insight into how the 3 Skypephone's social media relations are being handled.
[tags]3, skypephone, VOIP, 3+skypephone, mobile, reviews[/tags]

#### First thoughts on the new London 2012 brand
So the new brand identity for the London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games has been unveiled in London this morning.   The logo comprises shapes representing the number 2012, the Olympics rings and the word "London".  It looks like the organisers have gone for a logo that appeals to the young audience that the games seek to inspire. It's certainly a bold visual statement compared to previous games logos.        This bold choice is likely to polarise opinion in the short term, but the challenge for the designers on a project like this is to come up with something that will last through to 2012 and beyond, while satisfying the complicated network of stakeholders that comes with large-scale sporting events. There won't be an opportunity to rebrand, which is a luxury most brands will have in the next five years. Often logos for large events and organisations are bland - by seeking to appeal to many different target audiences they are watered down to a point where they don't really stand for much to anyone. It's nice to see that the London 2012 organisers have clearly targetted a young demographic with this identity and avoided trying to be all things to all men. In my experience the initial reaction to logos bears little resemblance to the long-term impact of the overall brand - in the longer term it's about how the identity shows up as part of the overall brand, and the applications where it's used. After brands are as much about what you do as how things look.  The London 2012 brand stands for passion, achievement, inspiration and participation. It'll be the actions of the games organisers that make these brand values come alive, not the logo. Over time the logo will become the common identity that binds the diverse range of cultural, sporting and educational activities together. What do you think about the new logo? Is it a bold move to target young people, or have the organisers missed the mark? More launch images available on Flickr. Initial coverage from BBC News.

Update: further analysis here.
[tags]london+2012, london, logo, olympics, brand, branding, paralympics, london+2012+logo[/tags]

#### Five days in...
So I'm now five days into my new job.
The week's whizzed by quickly, yet looking back I have a feeling of having accomplished a lot in a very short space of time.
I've spent two days in Medway Council's Gun Wharf office in Chatham with the team there, two days in County Hall in Lewes with the East Sussex team there, eight hours or so on trains, presented to a team of 45 managers from the East Kent Services shared team and a spent a day working from home. And I've cycled seven miles on my dinky little folding bike too!
Being fully immersed back in the world of communications, I've tried to make sure I spend more time than I've been able to over the past year in reading as broadly as I can - which has helped some of those long train journeys go just a little bit quicker as well. And I'm hoping to be able to return to blogging a bit more frequently too.
I'm rapidly familiarising myself with the workings of East Sussex County Council - trying to meet as many people as I can to understand how things tick and what makes things happen. I haven't spent a lot of time in East Sussex in the past so there's a fairly steep learning curve about the place for me too.
Looking back over the past year it's also interesting to reflect on what I learnt during my secondment to the Medway Council transformation programme. This week I've found myself drawing on the many of the experiences I had during that year - particularly about people and how they respond during different phases of change.
The week ended well with the publication of SOCITM's Better Connected 2013 results. Despite my misgivings about some of SOCITM's PR, the independent benchmarking for council website that Better Connected provides is really important. It's easy to poke at the methodology, but for me it's a crucial look at how well our websites are doing compared to others - and provides good quality evidence to help advance the digital cause within the organisation.
So when the results were announced this morning I was really pleased to see East Sussex County Council's website rated as four star and one of the top county council sites nationally, as well as seeing that Medway Council's website had attained four star rating for the first time too and ranked in the overall top 20 council sites nationally. These results are testament to the work of the web teams in both councils and I'm really proud of both teams' achievements.

#### Five things meme
Given there's an end-of-term feeling around the office at the moment, I suppose it'd be OK to take five minutes out to respond to my tagging by Richard Millington.
In case you've missed it, the idea is that you write five things that other bloggers wouldn't know about you, and then tag five other bloggers to do the same.
Having spotted a post about sharing a bit more about yourself on Problogger yesterday I can see a bit more value in this too, so here goes:

	At the age of 20 I was qualified to fly a light aircraft solo (I can't anymore...).
	The first record (yes, vinyl) I got was Julian Lennon - Too Late For Goodbyes. It was free with tokens from a breakfast cereal I think (I was eight at the time).
	In my first job I was responsible for buying (among other things) feminine hygiene products for a High Street retailer, so I'm willing to bet I know more about towels and tampons than any other male blogger out there (just watch someone now point me to a male feminine care blogger - it's all about niches after all!
	I enjoy running and cycling, have run several half-marathons and one day would love to run a marathon.
	I have a degree in geography, which isn't particularly relevant to marketing and PR, but seemed like a good idea at the time.

So now you know!
Over to Nick Tatt, Ian Delaney, Simon Collister, David Phillips, and James Barbour to see if anyone else has the time to play.

#### Five things that good communicators do
I've been doing a lot of thinking about my leadership skills recently and how I can improve the way I operate and my personal effectiveness at work. At the moment I'm doing two jobs - leading a communications and marketing team and leading the council's transformation programme.
Moving away from my professional background in communications and marketing into the new area of change and programme management has forced me to look at my skills and competencies - and how I need to develop to be as successful as possible in both roles.
And that got me thinking the things that good communicators need to do to succeed.
So here are my five things that I think make a difference:

	Develop an intuitive communications sense - every organisation and the communications environment it operates in is different. Good communicators understand the dynamics of these environments, the channels through which information spreads and the networks that link actors in these environments. They can apply this knowledge and experience to real and hypothetical situations to make informed and balanced judgements about messages, stories and strategies - and how effective they will be at delivering outcomes that are needed in a particular situation.
	Have great personal communications skills - and being able to use them when dealing with people at all levels of organisations. There aren't many roles that demand the ability to be able to deal with such a wide range of people - both face to face and in writing.
	Be strong relationship managers - having a wide-ranging and well-cultivated network is vital for communicators to be able to operate and be able to stay closely in tune with the workings of the organisation they're part of.
	Positively engage with change - the communications environment is more dynamic than ever. Good communicators can understand the nature of change, what it means for them, their teams and their organisations. Without this they risk their skills becoming moribund and their effectiveness declining.
	Having fun and keeping a sense of humour - the best teams I have worked in have been those where, even when things are stressful and the way forward isn't clear, work is still fun. Communications usually involves juggling multiple issues and rapidly changing situations while retaining a clear sense of judgement and priorities. The best communicators can do this while keeping their head and enjoying the adrenaline rush that comes with some communications situations.

What do you think? Have I missed anything major that good communicators should be able to do?

#### Flight MH370, crisis public relations and social media
The tragic mystery surrounding the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has captured the airwaves worldwide since 8th March.
As the story has changed in real time since then, there can't be many communicators who haven't looked at what's happening and wondered how on earth they'd handle such an unprecedented crisis situation.
But sometimes it's hard to draw meaningful conclusions on a particular public relations or marketing issue as it's rare to have the same information as those practitioners making the decisions. There are almost always things that outsiders don't know that affect professional decision-making in ways those outside the situation don't know.
It's all too easy to highlight what could have been done differently with the benefit of hindsight and at a safe distance from the crisis situation.
But a couple of posts on the public relations and social media side of the crisis caught my eye as they provide helpful insight for communicators on what they can learn from how communication is being handled.
Jane Wilson, writing in The Drum, provides a strong analysis of the challenges that this complex and unprecedented crisis presents for communicators:
I sense that this combination of lack of precedence, highly complex interdependencies between Malaysian agencies and international partners, the absence of traditional tracking sources on board and a lack of coordination within the airline have led to public confusion and poor public relations. Even the best PR team may have buckled in these circumstances.
She also draws out several useful insights that communicators can learn from how the PR around this crisis has evolved. You can read Jane's full article here.
Meanwhile Deeson Group's Emily Turner takes a useful look at the day-to-day practicalities of digital and social media in times of crisis and uses examples from the MH370 crisis to illustrate this well.
She identifies seven things that Malaysia Airlines have done across their digital portfolio in response to this crisis situation. You can read Emily's full article here.

#### Flt Lt Sean Cunningham - Red Arrows
I've been thinking through this post since I heard the news yesterday about the tragic accident at RAF Scampton - where Flt Lt Sean Cunningham was killed yesterday in an accident.
Sean, who most recently flew as Red 5 in the Red Arrows, started his RAF flying career at the East Midlands University Air Squadron (EMUAS) - he joined the squadron the same day that I did in 1996. I joined then because I was interested in finding out more about flying and possibly a career in the RAF.
By that stage Sean, who was among the most focussed and single-minded in our intake, had already completed his private pilot licence (PPL) training. While the rest of us were still grappling with the basics of flying training, Sean was always happy to help us out and share his experiences. I have some very happy memories of flying training as well as the partying side of my time on the squadron. I remember a particularly excellent summer spent on camp at RAF Kinloss in Scotland:

While most of my contemporaries from the squadron went on to careers in all walks of life, Sean and a handful of the most talented pilots went on to join the RAF, complete their flying training and go on to fly operational tours in combat zones all over the world.
When Sean was selected for the Red Arrows it made me think back to those early days at EMUAS and how he stood out as an immensely talented and thoroughly nice chap. When the Red Arrows flew over our campsite in the New Forest this summer I was truly proud to tell my two boys about Sean and what it took to be a Red Arrows pilot.
My thoughts are with Sean's family, friends and the rest of the Red Arrows team at what must be an unimaginably difficult time for them.
We should be very proud of people like Sean and many others like him in our armed forces. They are people that are willing to give everything to pursue their dreams and serve our country.
There is an online book of condolence run by the RAF that you can sign here. A Facebook page for Sean is here.
Thanks Sean. It was an honour and we have lost a true gentleman.

#### For Immediate Release
A post I wrote last night about statistics packages for bloggers (Google Analytics, Feedburner and Statcounter) has made it into tonight's instalment of the superb For Immediate Release PR podcast.
It's nice to know you're reading the blog Neville and Shel!
If you're interested in public relations, social media or online communications then Neville and Shel's biweekly podcast is definitely worth a listen.
Each show is now under an hour long, and well worth the time investment given the amount of news and insight in each episode.

#### Forthcoming conferences - social media and local government communications
A few conference dates on the horizon for me:
Next Thursday, 19 March I'm speaking at the Association of Colleges communications conference at the Inmarsat Conference Centre, London. I'll be running a one hour workshop on social media hints and tips.
Then on Wednesday, 1 April I'll be at the Barbican Centre in London for the final instalment of the Don't Panic Guide to Social Media. There's a really strong and varied line-up of speakers from the PR world, both private and public sector. I'll be talking about social media in local government communications.
Between 6 and 8 April I'll be contributing to an interesting online conference facilitated by IdEA called "Councillors Connected". The conference will focus on how councillors in particular and councils in general can make appropriate use of new media tools and techniques. It takes place online on the Communities of Practice platform - more information here.
Looking a bit further ahead I'll be in Manchester on Thursday, 30 April at the Public Sector Forums event "Effective Social Media & Web 2.0 Strategies for Local Authorities". I'll be talking about "Social media: a revolution in local government communications". Other speakers confirmed so far include Dave Briggs and Tim Davies.
If you're going to any of these events, drop me a line or leave me a comment - it's always nice to meet people face to face!

#### Four roles for social media in local government communications
This is the third of a three part series of posts looking at use of social media in local government communications in 2008. First post is here and second here.
In this post I'm suggesting four different of role for social media within local government communications.
The roles are meant as mutually supportive steps for local government to take to develop the use of social media as part of an overall communications mix.

Role one: environment scanning
Regardless of whether a council is already using social media or not, there will be user generated content on the web already about the organisation or its area. Councils should use commercial or freely available tools to monitor social media to help aid their understanding of public perception within their area. Such monitoring could also help councils in identifying issues that may cross over into mainstream media - this is increasingly useful given the emerging relationship between coverage in social media and the mainstream media.
Role two: public information
In this role, councils can use of social media tools as one-way broadcast channels. The nature of such one-way communications will be familiar to councils given the ubiquity of the news release, but will become increasingly important given the decline in penetration of traditional local media and increasing reliance on online sources for news and information.
This is also an opportunity for councils to reduce the role of local media as a gatekeeper. It'll be particularly relevant where a council has a local traditional media environment dominated by one or most inherently hostile media organisations.
However this role fundamentally under-uses the potential of social media to create dialogue between an organisation and its publics, as well as between members of its publics as well.
Some social media enthusiasts would also probably argue that use of social media as a public information tool is not genuinely social media as it doesn't satisfy the shared or collaborative nature of some definitions of social media. However being pragmatic, I think this step is important even thought it'll probably upset some purists.
Role three: public communications
Here social media is used in external communications to its greatest extend, enabling publics as well as the organisation to create a conversation that is mutually beneficial to everyone participating
This role is a significant opportunity for councils to engage with publics and benefit from increased participation and subsequent benefits to reputation from increased resident satisfaction.
However doing this means that councils must accept the potential for reputational risk from critical or difficult conversations.
The degree and speed of scrutiny that social media can demand will be a new challenge for council communicators to meet. It's vital that communicators in councils prepare the council as a whole for engaging in a more open and transparent way than may have happened previously.
Role four: internal communications
I can also see a clear role for social media in improving organisational performance through more effective communications among employees. For example Kent County Council has done some interesting work creating Communities of Practice; effectively internal social networks focussed on knowledge sharing, innovation and communication. Think about how a microblogging platform could be used to share information and create short employee-to-employee interactions.
As I've said before though, effective deployment of social media within local authorities needs a supportive culture where use of social media tools isn't seen as a potential risk of timewasting and more as a productive type of business communication.
This is the third of a three part series of posts looking at use of social media in local government communications in 2008. First post is here and second here.

#### Free communications and marketing event in Canterbury
Socialbury is a monthly free knowledge sharing event for communications and marketing people in Kent. It's run by Kent communications and marketing agency Deeson Creative where I'm now based as director of communications and marketing.
Following on from the success of the monthly Socialbury breakfast event, we're extending the Socialbury concept to include a new evening event - it's called Socialbury Lightning Talks and takes place on Wednesday, 28 May in Canterbury.
Socialbury Lightning Talks is an opportunity to hear six great 10 minute communications and marketing presentations in an informal setting with like-minded professionals (as well as having a beer at the same time).
We're really excited about the line-up for 28 May:

	Google: Putting people at the heart of your services
	Turner Contemporary: From zero to a million visits in three years
	University of Kent: Letting go of control to reach your audience
	Canterbury City Council: Talking rubbish - getting 68,000 households on a new bin system
	South East Water: How Twitter saved Christmas
	Porchlight: Keeping awareness fresh after 40 years

The event is completely free and takes place at the Gulbenkian at the University of Canterbury. It starts at 7.30pm and there's plenty of free parking on-site.
If you'd like to join us at Socialbury Lightning Talks next month, you can bag your free place now.
And if you're planning on coming along let me know so I can pop over and say hello too (tweet me @simonwakeman)

#### Free managing reputation in a crisis seminar
It's hard to know how we'll cope in a crisis. As military strategists put it, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Often the only way to know whether you will cope when the heat is on is to reflect on whether you have. By then, it can be too late.
Managing a Reputation Crisis is a one-day event exclusively for LGcomms members designed to give you the opportunity to learn about surviving and thriving in a reputation crisis. It takes place at Westminster City Hall, London on 7 October.
Three of the biggest reputation crises to hit local government in recent years were:

	The Lakanl Fire - Southwark 2009
	The Dale Farm Clearance - Basildon  2011
	Pork in halal school meals crisis -  Westminster 2013

At this event you will learn first hand, from the people that were there, about how these crises were managed and what lessons were learned.  You will also be given the opportunity to try out and develop your own skills in an interactive workshop.

The event is free to LGcommunications members. To find out how to join or to register for your place email  lgcommunications@westminster.gov.uk.

#### Free marketing, public relations and social media consultancy
Every once in a while I have an open hour for my freelance clients - they can give me a call about anything they like. No charge, but a great opportunity to have a chat without any strings and share information and knowledge.
It's a great way of building and reinforcing relationships and I've learnt a lot from doing it. Hopefully my clients have too.
I get many emails from readers asking about things I write about. Sometimes it takes a while but I get back to each and every one. So I thought it might be worth trying as an open hour or so for blog readers too.
I've no idea how popular this will be, so I'm going to put this "out there" and see how much interest there is.
Here's how I see it working: next Tuesday, 11 November, between 7.30pm (London time) and 9pm I'll be available by phone or Skype for readers of this blog to have a chat about marketing, public relations, social media, Wordpress, website building or anything else that I blog about and you might want to talk about.
Call it free consultancy, networking, knowledge sharing - whatever you like. No charge, no obligation, no strings and no hassle from me afterwards (I promise!).
To keep things manageable, I'll split the evening into 15minute slots like I do with my client sessions.
If you're interested in having a chat email me with your details and what you're interested in - I'll put you down for a free slot and let you know how you can get hold of me.

#### GAP 60% discount voucher
Retailer GAP looks like it's following Threshers' example from last year, and is circulating a fairly deep price discount voucher by email and the usual other social channels. In case it's any use to anyone reading the blog, you'll find a link to the voucher below:  Check out update below...(link to the 60% voucher removed - definitely fake)  At home our broadband woes continue with intermittent ADSL modem web access only, so blog posts are even less frequent than usual right now. I'm waiting for our phone line to be transferred back to BT, so then we can order broadband from another supplier and finally escape TalkTalk. It's amazed me how dependent we were on having wireless web access throughout the house - once we're up and running with a new supplier I'll be able to get the wireless router working once again and life should return to normal. Update: I've been emailed a 30% voucher that may be genuine - download it here (thanks Andy).  Update part 2: A nice man called Richard from Gap has emailed me a voucher for 30% - download it here - given Richard works for Gap I'd recommend you use this one (thanks Richard) Update part 3: I've been exchanging emails with Andy McLellan who is European Customer Relations Manager at Gap (who has been commenting below). He's clarified a few things:  all 60% vouchers are definitely fake either of the 30% vouchers available above are valid anyone presenting a 60% voucher before 2nd December will be given a 30% discount whether or not they have a valid 30% voucher I'm happy to help Andy spread some facts about the vouchers. He's tracking this post and its comments, so if you have any questions about the offer that you want to ask someone from Gap, then it may be worth posting a comment here.   [tags]gap, voucher, discount[/tags]

#### Generational differences
Ipsos MORI has a fascinating piece of research looking at the generational differences in society called Generations.
It looks at four generational cohorts which have increasingly differentiated characteristics across a variety of metrics:

As the introduction to the full report sets out:
We’re at a key point in the influence of different generations on our society. We now have four sizeable and culturally quite distinct cohorts co-existing, as the chart below shows. It’s easy to miss this point when we discuss our national demographic profile, because we tend to focus on how the population is ageing. That is undoubtedly true – but it’s also vital to understand that the current old are still dying out, and they have very different values and attitudes to our future old.
In his book The Pinch, David Willetts talks about how we’re at a point of “generational equipoise” , where the median person is around 40 years old and can expect to live to 80. We’re also at a point of balance between generations – and changes in how much each makes up of the population are driving significant shifts in the national balance of opinion.
What particularly caught my eye was the data on internet usage shared by Bobby Duffy (@bobbyipsosmori), which highlights the rate of growth of mobile access which is something I seem to end up discussing most days now. In particular it's striking how the usage of mobile is different across the four generational groups that the research looks at:

The full internet and technology section of the analysis is here. It'll be interesting to see how this cohort-based analysis develops in the future.

#### Geo-targetting web advertising
Last week we had a number of marketing agencies pitching for an exciting project, targetting people that live or work in Medway.
The demographic groups we're trying to reach mean that using the web is vital as part of the overall marketing mix.
One of the topics that came up for discussion was targetting web advertising by location - and how accurate it is for targetting people in a specific city location.
The first way this can be done is by using IP addresses - looking at the city where an individual's IP is registered. The assumption here, and it's a big one, is that your ISP is based in the same town as where you live.
I can't find any data on this, but my gut feeling is that this isn't especially accurate. My ISP is based in London,  but I'm actually based around 70 miles to the west.
How does this technique work for you? Check out your IP address here, and then look up the city it's registered in using the IPInfo tool at www.dnsstuff.com/.
The second way that web advertisers offer geo-targetting is through the use of registered user information. This only works for sites where registration is needed - the data you input when you register is used to more accurately show geographically relevant adverts.
This is good because it's inherently more accurate than IP targetting, but the limitation is that it only works for sites that require users to register.
You could target a specific location by buying advertising on a site where the content targets a specific area - for example a local newspaper site - but the nature of the web means the traffic coming into such a local site isn't guaranteed to be local.
So, I guess if you need to target a geographical area using web advertising, don't assume the targetting is foolproof. If anyone can find any hard stats on how accurate it can be (and I'm guessing the answer is "it depends"), I'd be keen to be pointed in the right direction.
It's worth remembering that advertising isn't the only way to target people in a specific area on the web. Social media presents a myriad of opportunities for other ways to approach people locally using locally targetted content - so if web advertising doesn't do the job, take a look at using social media.

#### Getting email marketing to the inbox
Getting your email marketing to the inbox can be a challenge. The Internet Advertising Bureau has just released a great new free guide to doing this successfully.
The guide sets out in easy to understand language what the main deliverability issues can be in email marketing, and gives some basic ideas about how to deal with them.
It also talks about how you can identify if you have a deliverability problem, as this can often be masked in other measures you may be using to track effectiveness of your email marketing.
Email deliverability is an area where it's important for a marketer to understand the basics of how email and broadcast email systems work. In the past this would have been purely the domain of IT departments, but now marketers working in the digital space need to understand how the technology used impacts on the marketing channel's performance.
More information about the guide is here, and the full report here.

#### Getting into word of mouth marketing
In most marketing environments I've worked in, I've always known that word of mouth marketing is the most effective marketing tool around, yet one of the hardest to manage and monitor.
I was interested to see some research published about word of mouth marketing by Boldmouth and Osterman Research.
I'm always a bit cynical reading research commissioned by an agency or organisation which specialises in a particular area. However, once you've cut through this, the Boldmouth/Osterman research carries some really useful insights into word of mouth marketing.
You can download the full pdf at the Boldmouth website, or for some highlights check out the news release.

#### Getting real about evaluating public relations
Reading PR Week's campaigns section this week has wound me up a touch about evaluation in public relations.
I can't find a copy of the article online tonight, but it's a case study about Aviva's sponsorship of a world record attempt to sail around Britain and Ireland by an all female crew.
The objectives for the campaign are listed as:

	To increase awareness of Aviva within the UK and support the name change campaign
	To strengthen the association between Aviva and Dee Caffari (the lead sailor)
	To extend beyond the traditional sailing audience

Reading these I found myself wondering if they're actually real objectives. For a start they're not specific about what they're aiming to achieve empirically - PR and marketing students will be very familiar with the concept of SMART objectives, which these definitely aren't.
The article then goes on to describe a decent campaign and what the agency actually did.
But it's when it comes to the measurement and evaluation section that it all falls apart. I know it will have been subbed down, but the headlines from the evaluation from the campaign were:
....100 pieces of coverage were generated over a one-month period...one third of these were on TV and totalled 42 minutes of UK airtime.
The BBC covered the world record attempt from departure to completion, and covered the completion live with seven pieces on BBC One's Breakfast programme and six on the BBC news channel.
In total 12 pieces of national print coverage appeared in various publications...seventy-one per cent of all coverage featured a logo or photograph.
Eh? Surely evaluation needs to address the reasons why you did the campaign in the first place?
Leaving aside it would be hard to know whether the stated objectives were ever achieved because of their lack of SMART-ness, how does that pass for evaluation? It looks at some of the impacts of the campaign (ie coverage) but doesn't even come close to considering the outcomes (ie what happened as a result of the coverage).
In the second opinion part of the feature where an external PR person takes a critical look at the campaign, it's claimed there was a 93:1 return on investment on the campaign.
I'm really struggling to see how given these objectives and evaluation that focusses on coverage as this one seems to how anyone could come up with a credible return on investment figure. I'm guessing the ugly head of advertising value equivalent (AVE) has probably popped up somewhere though.
I'm being a bit narky about this one - I'm sure the campaign was very nice, but it does wind me up a bit because it's so familiar - woolly and unclear objectives and misleading or non-existent evaluation are too common in public relations.
In a time when budgets are under ever-increasing scrutiny, public relations professionals have got to be able to frame campaign objectives measurably and in terms that link PR success to organisational goals, whether they are commercial, behavioural or reputational. And they've got to ensure they have methods in place to provide valid empirical evidence about whether the campaign has delivered those objectives.
Without both those things, I fear public relations will continue to struggle to justify its activities and be accountable for what it contributes to the organisation's activities.

#### Getting to know you better
One of the real joys of blogging has been connecting with people who I otherwise wouldn't have had the chance to do so.
Since I started this blog I have had many comment and email conversations with marketing and public relations people throughout the world. I've even had the pleasure of meeting some of them in real life.
However what do I know about you - the people that read my blog? Less than I'd like really.
It's immensely gratifying that between 80 and 90 people choose to download my RSS feed each day, and a similar number of visitors arrive at my website.
I never forget that each one of these people has actively chosen to receive my content - and they must all have had their own reasons for doing this.
While I know who some of these people are, and I know a bit about them personally and professionally, I don't have a faintest idea who most of my audience are.
I can see some basic information through my server logs and MyBlogLog, but what I'd really love is to know who is reading this and a bit about them.
I'm always keen to know why people read the blog so I can make sure I stay on-topic and cover stuff that's relevant to the majority.
So it's a big ask from me this Monday morning: if you're reading this on my website or in my RSS feed please do leave me a comment to this post - whether you're a seasoned commenter or you've never commented on a blog before.
I'd love to know:

	Who you are
	What you like about my blog
	What I can improve about my blog
	More about you - for example do you have a blog or website? (and make sure you add the link so I can pay you a return visit)

This is a bit of a stab in the dark, as I've never pimped for comments before on the blog, but I figure if you don't ask then you'll never know.

#### Ghost writing, social media and ethics
One of the perennial debates about social media ethics is around ghost writing - the practice of getting someone else to write content in your name.
Of course this is nothing new. It's been happening offline for a very long time - particularly speechwriting and op ed pieces in newspapers and magazines. Everyone knows it, and I've not heard anyone with a particular problem with it.
However with social media - and in particular blogs and micro-blogging - there's a much bigger ethical discussion around ghost writing and its acceptability.
The main debate hinges around whether social media tools are inherently different to the long-established PR tools where ghost writing is the norm. Essentially, the argument goes that the audience's expectation is different with social media - there's an expectation of authenticity that precludes the practice of ghost writing from being ethically acceptable.
That's a principle I sign up to. No question.
But in practice how does this work - as many organisational and political leaders, despite best intentions, don't have the time or skills to use social media effectively? For them to use social media as part of their communications mix, ghost writing is a must.
The way around this is disclosure - being open, honest and transparent about how social media content in an individual's name is created.
There's plenty of online debate about social media ethics - and some strong opinions in the various camps. A particularly good post I spotted recently that I agree with most of the arguments in is from Dave Fleet - worth checking out for a summary of some of the main ethical issues around ghosting.
The UK's Chartered Institute of Public Relations consultation recommends erring on the side of caution in disclosing relevant information about content authorship in social media - but also suggests that not disclosing the practice of ghost writing may break the law in the UK (in the form of the Unfair Commercial Practices directive), although there's no case law (yet) to back this up.

#### Global marketing, social networking spam and work-life separation
This is a guest post from Simon Young. Simon's an entrepreneur, journalist and aspiring filmmaker from Auckland, New Zealand.
First up, thanks very much to Simon for the opportunity to guest post on his blog. My name is Simon Young (same first name so as to avoid confusion).
On my own blog, http://madyoungthing.blogspot.com, I talk about everything but especially marketing and technology, with a bit of psychology and spirituality thrown in for good measure. I also founded SimonYoungWriters, a crack team of specialist writers in various disciplines. If you need words, the right words, for the right people, we've got 'em.
Sorry, sales pitch over.
In fact, I don't want to sell today, I want to ask you a question. In an increasingly globalised world, do you care where your words - or anything else - comes from? When a conversation is just an email or a Skype call away, does it matter that you're dealing with someone in a different location?
For me, running a business in a very small economy like New Zealand, this is quite a vital question. But it's also a pressing question for someone like Andrew Swift, MD of a UK marketing services recruitment firm Price Jamieson, who just sold his company to Aquent. On a recent ResearchTalk podcast, Swift said companies are getting much more global, which means partners and suppliers are also expected to be global. He said to provide that sort of service, a recruitment company needs to be on the ground. I agree.
But what about a writing service? Web development? Ad agency? PR consultant? What are the services you would consider going offshore for, and which services absolutely require someone in your neighbourhood?

Social networking spam?
Spam is as pernicious as ever, and endangers the viability of email as a marketing medium. But it doesn't just affect marketers who use email as a sales and marketing channel.
Social media, which has overtaken email marketing as the Most Exciting Thing Ever, is held together by email. Confirmations, opt-ins, notifications, invitations are all sent using email.
I didn't give it much thought until receiving an invitation to join WAYN (Where Are You Now) from a colleague. A few hours later, I received an email from the colleague asking me to ignore it, saying:
"Whist the WAYN service may be legit, and may even be ok to use – any contact with their website seems to result in a file invading your email contact list and exporting it so I suggest you delete any emails from WAYN immediately."
Scary stuff! But it was just a one-off, so I didn't pay it much mind.
Only days later, I received an invitation from another colleague, a man in his 50s, not someone I expected to be part of the social network Tagged.com. However, the email said he'd tagged me as a friend. Maybe he's trying something new? Getting down wif da youth... hm.
But no. This email arrived from him shortly afterwards:
"My apologies I have been spammed and my address book penetrated….. The offending site has been reported.  We are cleaning our data files."
Hmmm.
It's not really clear from his email (and I haven't checked) whether "the offending site" is Tagged.com, or another site. A phishing scam perhaps?
Anyway, it's a sobering reminder that spam is ever present. Be careful out there!

Work-life balance or separation?

As I waded through emails, RSS feeds and twitter posts this morning, I heard about Tim Ferris' radical ideas. This guy takes no prisoners: we don't need work/life balance, he suggests, we need work/life separation. Which means planning leisure time activities as seriously as if they were business commitments.
That's a familiar message, from books like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People to familiar stories like the one about fitting rocks and sand into a jar (you put the rocks - the important things - in first).
What's special about Tim's take is his approach to information management. You just don't need to know everything. Now that's scary, especially when your credibility seems to be measured by how much you know about what.
Ferris recommends the "Low Information Diet". Is it possible to maintain? And how low is too low? Whatever it is, it must be better than my information binges and purges. Maybe the big thing for the second half of 2007 will be fatblogging for infomaniacs!

#### Glum councillors
Spotted this one on Twitter a week or so back, but it continues to make me smile, so I thought I'd share it for some Monday morning amusement.
In their own words, Glum Councillors is a blog that
will doggedly collate images of councillors looking glum whilst pointing at holes in the road, wearing hard hats or presenting oversized cheques
Well worth a quick click over to http://glumcouncillors.tumblr.com/ for some light relief this Monday morning.

#### Gobbledygook in public relations
David Scott has a great new manifesto on the Changethis website that's well worth downloading. It tackles the over-use of jargon, hype and generally meaningless terminology in news releases and marketing copy.   David explains well why words and phrases like next generation, flexible, robust, world class, scalable and cutting edge are over-used by marketing and public relations professionals, particularly in the technology sector. David then sets out why this kind of language becomes commonplace in many sectors, and offers some thoughts on how to improve the quality and effectiveness of your copy, whether it's for marketing collateral or for a news release to the media.

#### Going off-topic
Yesterday I started writing a post about the London to Brighton bike ride that I did at the weekend. However I stopped halfway through, as I was questioning whether that kind of thing was really what my blog readers would value.
Since I started the blog it's been a mix of professional and personal stuff, with a focus on my work and experience in marketing, PR and new media. So I figure most people who read my blog must be interested in that kind of thing.
Posting stuff about what I'm up to outside the marketing, PR and new media area is probably not going to provide that much interest to my readers, so I binned my post about London to Brighton. And yes, I know I've done it in the past, but in the future I'm going to try harder to keep on topic.
Looking around at most of the blogs I read, they do focus on one area, and as a reader their relevance in this area is what keeps you motivated to read. It's really a fundamental communications principle, not one that's just limited to blogs: put the user/reader at the centre of your communications.
Do it for them, not for you.

#### Google hits your RSS subscriber statistics
If you track your blog's RSS subscriber figures as closely as I do, you'll know that the number of people downloading your RSS feed tends to drop markedly at the weekend.
Yesterday mine went up though. This is probably because yesterday Google started reporting subscriber statistics when it requests your RSS feed on behalf of Google Reader subscribers.
Previously this didn't happen, which meant that it wasn't possible to work out how many RSS subscribers you had through Google Reader - most statistics packages just counted Google Reader as a single subscriver, even though in reality you may well have multiple people reading your feed through Google Reader.
More information is available from the Google Reader blog, Feedburner and Fedafi.

#### Guessing the price of websites
Over on the Deeson blog I've been writing about agencies writing proposals for client websites.
Having been back agency-side for almost two and a half years now, it's fascinating to see how many of the norms of the digital agency business remain unchanged from almost ten years ago - including the fixed scope, fixed price website proposal.
In my post on the Deeson blog I talk about why this is a bad idea for both agencies and clients. But I also know that for many agencies there's no choice but to enter into the guessing game that fixed price/scope tenders really are - that's a commercial reality as fixed price/scope is the norm for our industry.
So if you want to learn why I'm so convinced about the inadequacy of this way of delivering client-agency digital projects, check out these two links:

	The iron triangle of project management
	Why fixed price and fixed scope proposals are a bad thing

#### Guest bloggers wanted
In mid-May we're planning on taking a week off work on vacation.
We're going away and the property we're renting has no internet access, which means no blogging.
This is probably a good thing as I think it's a good idea sometimes to switch off completely work and anything vaguely associated with it.
In the past when I've gone away I've left the blog with a few timed posts, set to go live while I'm away. But this time I thought it'd be a good idea to invite my readers to think about contributing a guest post.
If you're already blogging, writing a guest post for my blog while I'm away will be a good way to raise your profile among my audience and hopefully attract some more traffic or subscribers to your own blog.
If you're not already blogging then writing a guest post for my blog could be a good way to test out blogging for yourself without having to set up your own blog.
My blog typically covers marketing, public relations, digital marketing and social media - so ideally I'd like guest posts to be about one of those topics, but I have an open mind as I've never done this before.
If you'd like to guest blog here in May then drop me a line at simon@simonwakeman.com or post a comment here.

#### Guide to competitions and promotions on Facebook
If you're using competitions or promotions on Facebook as part of your marketing mix then you need to know the rules.
The Institute of Promotional Marketing in the UK has just published a really useful guide to doing this. As they say:

Facebook is now a key platform for executing and communicating promotions and one that is only set to grow in importance. Facebook provides new and  exciting ways of doing things for the Promotional Marketer, but along with this huge potential also comes an added responsibility. Not only do we need to ensure that our promotion complies with UK Law, the CAP Code (the rules which govern advertising and marketing communications in the UK) and any other relevant codes, but Facebook has its own ‘rules’ which must be followed. Facebook’s own rules also require that you comply with local laws and regulations.

This new way of communicating throws up a number of new best practice issues as well, all leading to a certain amount of confusion around how best to structure Facebook promotions so that they achieve their objectives, whilst staying out of trouble and treating consumers with the care and respect they deserve.
You can download the guide here.

#### Guy Kawasaki's feed - lapsing
Among the feeds I read regularly is Signum sine tinnitu--by Guy Kawasaki which used to be available at http://feeds.feedburner.com/letTheGoodTimesRollByGuyKawasaki.
Am sitting on a train catching up on feeds offline, but in my reader software Guy's feed has disappeared, and been replaced by this message:
Hello World
This is an incredibly small blog that’s intended to: redirect you to Guy’s new feed, show Guy (and others) the reason why they don’t want to just let their Feedburner feeds get deleted, and gently inform Feedburner, Bloglines and others of a little problem that needs to be fixed.
For those of you who are are seeing this message in your feed reader and wondering why I’m not sounding like Guy Kawasaki, here’s the deal. You are subscribed to an outdated Feedburner feed that Guy allowed to lapse. You should unsubscribe to this feed and subscribe to his current feed, which is located at this URL:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/guykawasaki/Gypm
Message to Guy… See? This is what I’m talking about. By allowing your Feedburner feed to get deleted, you’ve opened your subscribers up to having somebody else (like me) to come along, create a feed by the same name in Feedburner, and capture the eyeballs of your subscribers.
Message to Feedburner… Ahem. Perhaps you want to think about the process by which feeds are deleted? Some kind of waiting period (a month, 6 months?) before somebody else can create a feed with the same name? Perhaps some kind of permission-granting thingy?
Message to Bloglines… Ahem. The reason I can do this is because of your tendency not to clear out the cache of “subscribable” feeds very often. I pounded Guy’s blog URL into your “Add” gizmo and got a huge list of feeds, including 2 obsolete Feedburner feeds. I found the “hijackable” feeds by going to the feed URLs in turn, and finding a couple that have been deleted from Feedburner.
If I was an unscrupulous type guy, I could put up a site that: looks just like Guy’s site but spoofs his unsuspecting subscribers into clicking on things by hijacking his credibility, or direct his subscribers to his competitors or do any of the things that people do with domain names that expire…
Yep, here’s the issue — this is just like dropping domain names. ‘Cause that’s what’s happening, a feed URL is being dropped in such a way that somebody could easily write a script to, um, snap up those domains.That’s it. Remember, Guy’s real feed has moved to:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/guykawasaki/Gypm
Onward,
Mike — www.haven.com
I'm sure there's more to this than meets the eye, so once I'm off this train and have a more stable connection I'm going to look into this.

#### Happy Christmas wishes!
Judging by the traffic to my website and hits on my RSS feed, I'd say many of my usual readers are winding down for Christmas.
My diary is no exception - it's the Tinderhouse Christmas meal tonight, and the Communications team at Medway Council is celebrating tomorrow.
I've a few work loose ends to tie up tomorrow and then I'm looking forward to a well-earned break with family over Christmas. It's one of the few times of the year when I can really switch off and focus on the more important parts of life.
Blog posts will probably be a bit thin over the next week, but I'll be back to business as usual early in the New Year.
In the meantime I'd like to wish everyone who has read the blog, posted comments and got in touch since I started up the blog a very happy Christmas!

#### Happy new year...
...to everyone who reads this. And for those who are waking up with a sore head this morning, I hope the hangover clears soon.

Image credit: Morguefile

#### Hear hear: credibility by media type in Canada
Thanks to Judy Gombita for the link to a Canadian study into which types of media are most trusted (reported here, full results here). The study showed that credibility of "new" media rated significantly lower than "old" media - something that I regularly have to remind myself when I get a bit over-enthusiastic about the social media ecosystem that I personally enjoy participating in. Award for sensible quote of the day goes to Apex president, Pat McNamara:  "It's no secret that there are more information options than ever before, but what we've learned with this study is how and why consumers are making certain choices...if we want to communicate with the public, we need to understand where they get their information and how they are making decisions...we can't abandon traditional media. But we also need to understand that it's becoming increasingly vital to talk to audiences through multiple channels." Who audiences trust for information is the result of a complex thought process involving more than just channel of delivery - factors including audience age, consumption history, "relationships" with individual authors and political outlook are also important when individuals make their sub-conscious assessment of how much importance they place on a particular communication. But it's useful all the same to try to isolate the trust that different channels can contribute to the overall trust placed in an information source. The important factor here could well be that with "old" media I think there's trust in the channel - people trust their usual newspaper - whereas, taking blogging as an example of "new" media, people don't trust blogs per se, as there are thousands of blogs they are exposed to, but they trust bloggers instead. And this trust takes time to build up, just like it would in a face to face friendship.  [tags]trust, statistics, old+media, new+media[/tags]

#### Help a PR student with his diploma research
PR student Kevin Baker from the Environment Agency is looking for public sector communicators to complete a short online survey.
The survey is for his CIPR Diploma research project looking at 'How Public Sector organisations are using social networks to engage with their stakeholders'.
The survey is at http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229CYS67JSH.
It only takes a few minutes and I know Kevin would appreciate any public sector communicators taking the time to help him out.

#### Help with public relations dissertations
One of the most visited recent blog posts I've written is about choosing a public relations dissertation topic.
Like Richard Bailey I get a fair amount of email on this topic as well.
If you're looking for information about this topic, it's well worth checking out Richard's post on the topic:
http://prstudies.typepad.com/weblog/2008/09/pr-dissertation.html
There are plenty of useful pointers on public relations dissertations in the post itself and the comments too.

#### Help with social media research needed
A couple of folk I know are working on research projects - so if you're feeling generous with a few minutes of your time, stop by and help them with their work:
David Prior is looking at the use of social media in businesses worldwide for his MBA - complete his survey here.
Liz Azyan is researching for her PhD and looking at innovative approaches to citizen engagement and communication online in local government in the UK - an area close to my heart. If you work in local government or have an interest in it (which should apply to anyone living in the UK really) then please help by completing Liz's survey here.
I'm looking forward to meeting Liz on Thursday when she visits Medway to discuss our social media work in more detail.
In the spirit of social media I'm sure both David and Liz will be sharing results from their research once complete, so helping them now will be worth it in due course.

#### Honest marketing is important
I was in London yesterday and spotted this ad on the tube:

The ad headline reads:
Cheaper car insurance for homes with two or more cars
And the flash says:

Kate and Steve could insure both their cars with Admiral MultiCar and SAVE UP TO £200
Yet on closer inspection the small print on the ad is quite revealing:

It's not a great picture, but the small print reads:
13% who had a multicar quote between July - Dec 08 for 2 cars & 2 drivers and provided a best alternative quote saved £200
Now while that says to me that not all customers getting quote provided a best alternative quote, of those that did only 13% actually saved the amount claimed in the flash on the ad.
Is 13% of people really justification for saying "cheaper car insurance" and "could..save up to £200" in an advert?
Well, within the letter of the code that governs advertising, yes, it is.
But to me it just seems dishonest - aiming to mislead potential customers on the basis of information that doesn't properly back up the claim made.
There's a real difference between claims you can make and those you should make in advertising.
And for me, basing a claim of savings that only apply to 13% of people just doesn't stack up.

#### How Barack Obama raised the social media campaigning bar
Much has been written about how Barack Obama used social media as part of his campaigning mix in his presidential campaign - and no doubt his team will continue to innovate and work effectively in this space in the coming months.
Edelman has a really good white paper on their website that sets out what Obama's team did and provides some useful strategic tips that can apply to many different organisations and campaigns:

Check out the full whitepaper here.

#### How social media is changing internal communication
If you're interested in hearing some thoughts on how social media and the networked nature of communications is changing the role of internal communicators, check out this video.
It's from Richard Dennison of BT. He makes some very interesting points, many of which are also relevant to communications more generally.

#### How the credit crunch affects media consumption
Here's an interesting piece of research about how our media consumption habits are changing in the current economic climate (sadly not covered in any more detail on the the7stars website here).
The headlines are:
	
74% of consumers see TV ads as "inappropriate" - although from what I can see there's no trend data here, so it's an assumption to say this proportion is increasing as the economy declines
	a quarter of consumers are deliberately avoiding bad news - with 40% preferring free newspapers to paid-for papers - although I'm not sure whether the inferred connection is justifiable - it could easily be argued that a shift to free media is a function of price sensitivity rather than avoidance of negative content
66% of consumers are more likely to believe an ad on ITV than on Google - I wonder if this is because TV ads are seen as expensive, so only "proper" companies can advertise with them, while anyone can advertise on Google - so online advertisers are trusted less...

There's a logical case at the moment for media substitution from paid-for media (papers, subscription TV) towards free media - which would include online media consumption - although the results published online so far don't give much away in this respect.
I can definitely see a case for marketing and public relations folk to think carefully about their audiences, how they are affected by the economic climate and the impact that has on the communications mix employed.
It'd be interesting to see more results of the research from media agency the7stars (let's see if they have a social media tracking programme!).

#### How to be a great marketer and stand out from the crowd
A few weeks back I spent some time at a major marketing show. Over the years I’ve always noticed that the largest stands in the highest visibility locations typically belong to the latest trend to hit the world of marketing.
This year was no exception with a plethora of firms offering a variety of technologies bringing together marketing automation, campaign management and social media. The systems on offer from the likes of Adobe Marketing Cloud and ExactTarget are pretty compelling and give the marketer an impressive range of tactics to deploy easily through a powerful web-based interface.
But this started me thinking about the value of skills and knowledge in delivering marketing campaigns. The capabilities of these kinds of systems mean that a generalist marketer has at his or her fingertips the power to implement campaigns that not that long ago were the preserve of some pretty niche specialists.
This commoditisation of the technical skills to implement marketing campaigns is an interesting phenomenon.
It means a greater emphasis on the strategic and analytic side of the profession. That’s the space that marketers have to differentiate themselves in to stand out from the crowd.
Think about it like this: I’m a keen amateur cyclist and enjoy riding my bikes on the road and on the trails.
I like to think I have the basic all-round bike handling skills to be able to cycle most places (although my cycling companions may disagree).
One day I could go to a velodrome, hire the same kind of professional bike that an Olympic cyclist would use and then make a pretty valiant attempt to spin the pedals and make it round the track in one piece.
I’d be able to do it at a basic level, but my lack of ability, skills and training to perform at the level of the Olympian would be pretty obvious. I’d be using the tools of a high performer but not be able to perform at a high level.
The new generation of marketing tools are much the same.
They mean that anyone can place pretty complicated campaigns across multiple platforms and produce detailed analysis. They can set up complex, rules-based campaigns using conditional logic and path analysis. And they just need a fairly basic level of skills to be able to get started.
But in the same way that if I rode Chris Hoy’s bike I wouldn’t be setting world records round the track, having a powerful marketing tool at your fingertips won’t make you a great marketer.
It means to be a great marketer, there’s a greater emphasis on being able to spot opportunities, conceive great ideas, interrogate data intelligently and think creatively.
You need to understand a broader range of marketing, relationship and network theories than ever before.
You need to be thinking about what the latest advances in neuroscience mean for marketing effectiveness.
You need to live and breathe multi-channel marketing and know your target audience inside out.
And you need to have a wide understanding of the broad strategic context in which a particular activity is deployed. Customers don’t live in isolation from the outside world and neither can the work of marketers.
The power of the tools available to marketers mean that anyone can place technically complicated marketing campaigns but that doesn’t mean anyone can place great marketing campaigns. And where great marketers can really shine.
Image courtesy of 24oranges.nl

#### How to be a great PR consultant
Stephen Davies has kicked off a discussion about what it takes to become a great PR consultant. He's published five tips for starters:

1.  You should ideally have an interest in people.
2.  Stay on top of the news agenda.
3.  PR yourself
4.  Don’t be afraid of making mistakes
5.  Take each day as it comes

I can't disagree with any of these, and they're equally applicable to in-house PR as well. Most of the skills that an independent/agency PR consultant needs are the same as an in-house PR, the only difference being that the clients are internal when you're working in-house. The exception to this is that independent/agency PR consultants need to also have an understanding of their own business model, revenues, costs etc.
Heather Yaxley has also followed up with a thoughtful post including her own recommendations and some "golden rules" from other sources as well.
It's interesting that both Stephen and Heather have picked up on the importance of personal PR and the personal brand. In our business the way our personal brands show up, both offline and online, is vital in proving our professional competence. Yet all too often when I've been recruiting marketing and PR people I've been disappointed with how poorly marketing and PR professionals market themselves, both in the basics (a CV) and beyond (personal websites or portfolios, blogs, professional profile etc).
The only tip I'd add to the collected thoughts so far would be to have fun!
For me this is important for two reasons, the first of which is entirely personal.
I think I produce my best results when I'm enjoying my work - it makes me try that little bit harder to deliver the best results I can. For that reason I'm always careful what projects I take on. I make sure that whatever I do interests and challenges me. There's always going to be more and less fun projects to work on, but it's about making the overall balance fun.
The second reason why having fun is important is because it's important your clients enjoy working with you. If you're enjoying the work, and you ensure they enjoy your meetings/workshops/courses more than other similar ones, then you're achieving an additional competitive edge.
If a client needs to choose who to work with from a choice of agencies, once they're satisfied that all the agencies can do the job, if they enjoy working with you then that's a big differentiator for you.

#### How to get a job in public sector PR, marketing or communications
This year I seem to have been involved in more recruitment than I can remember for a few years.
That means sifting through hundreds of application forms and CVs to select candidates for interview and then spending many hours meeting candidates. Some of the things I've read, seen and heard have amazed me.
There's no magic bullet for securing a job, but here are a few tips to help those looking to secure a job in public sector marketing, PR or communications. Many of the tips will apply to private sector roles too, but there are a few that are particular to the public sector.
Application form / CV

	Spelling - check your spelling, double check it. Don't just rely on a spell checker - it can miss American spellings and out of context words.
	Missing information - provide the information asked for. If you can't for any reason do that, then say why. If you don't it looks slapdash or, at worst, like you're trying to hide something.
	Sell yourself - most public sector jobs are advertised with a job description. In this you'll find something like a person specification - setting out the skills, experience, qualifications etc that the recruiter is looking for. Sell yourself with this in mind - don't include irrelevant details - your application will probably be scored against the person specification and other elements of the job description.
Get the name right - an application form with the wrong organisation's name on it (yes, I've seen it) is a bad sign. So is a misspelling or inaccurate version of the job title that your applying for. It shows a lack of attention to detail and that's not a good start.
	Your web presence - think about your online presence through social network sites, blogs, image sharing sites and the like. I often look up candidates on Google and it's surprising what that shows up. There's no separation between professional and personal content online - so only put it online if you don't mind a potential employer seeing it.

At the interview

Dress appropriately - this might be a shirt and tie, it might not. However you need to dress appropriately. I've met candidates in jeans and t-shirts - for a role in a council communications team that's not appropriate.
Use examples - when I interview I'm looking for real examples of what candidates have done - ideally as relevant as possible to the role that the candidate is applying for. If you haven't got relevant experience just say so and try to give some thought about other related experience you might have (possibly outside a work setting).
Research the employer - I'm amazed how little some candidates research the organisation they're applying to work for. Look at the organisation's website, read its reports and publications, look what others are saying about it by Google or blog searching. Find out what it's biggest challenges are. I often ask what research people have done - the best candidates show that they've researched in depth the job and the role. Some candidates I've met this year have openly admitted they haven't looked at our website before the interview - not a good start.
Research the interviewer - find out who's interviewing you and Google their name. Find out what they do in the organisation, their career history, their background. It may well give you some hints about the areas they'll be looking to cover in the interview and help you establish some common ground to generate rapport during the interview.
Appear interested - ask follow-up questions if the chance arises. Have some questions prepared that demonstrate your interest in the role - that always impresses more than just asking when the interviewers will be getting back to you with the outcome of the interview.
Why public sector? - think about why you want to work for the organisation and why you want to work in the public sector - and be honest. I've met too many candidates that want to "put something back into the community" by working in local government - an answer that belies a lack of understanding about the roles of public sector bodies and annoys every interviewer I've interviewed with in my time in the public sector.

#### How to give customers bad news
Regular readers will know that this site is now hosted by Dreamhost. They'll also know that since I switched over the availability of the site hasn't been great, with a number of short and long outages.
I was starting to worry that I'd done the wrong thing by moving to a new host. Despite being well recommended (Neville Hobson, Barry Parr, here and here to name but a few), their customer support being quick and helpful, and their superb web control panel, the availability had been very poor over the first few weeks.
Dreamhost use a dedicated external support site (www.dreamhoststatus.com) and associated RSS feeds to give news on outages and problems. There were regular posts about downtime on all servers, power outages and similar.
Things have improved over the last week, but I was left wondering if my experience was typical of how things are normally with Dreamhost. However yesterday this post showed up in my feeds, and in an email newsletter from Dreamhost.
It explains in detail what happened with the outages over the last month, what Dreamhost is doing to address the problems found, and apologises to customers for what happened.
This approach is great for keeping customers on-side, even when their experience hasn't been up to the standards you'd expect. It's upfront and completely transparent.
Judging by the tone of the 91 comments so far I think the majority of customers have accepted this bad news well, although there are a number of posts still critical of Dreamhost for not having enough redundancy etc to cope with the problems they experienced.
For me I'll be sticking with them to see what the next few months bring. Save the outages, they've been the best host I've had in five years. Their communication when things go down is much better than any other host I've had, but let's hope I don't have reason to get much more of this kind of communication.

#### How to monitor news using free tools on the web
Alex over at The Bivings Report must be a mindreader. I'd been mentally putting together a post about how an organisation or individual could use a range of free social media tools to monitor online news and coverage.
But Alex has beaten me to it. The post sets out how to use free tools to aggregate, present and search your selected coverage. Great stuff.
David Phillips at Leverwealth has spotted my post about blog feeders, which work along the same lines, and has helpfully pointed out that Google Reader can be used for this kind of thing as well.
David is spot on when he notes:
If you can't monitor news, blogs and web sites these days you will be at least 20 hours behind the news so I do it and I expect every PR practitioner does it as well.
The game has changed and is now much faster than ever before. News clippings being faxed the next morning are virtually out-of-date as we now need to be monitoring in real time - and the good news is that this isn't difficult to start doing.

#### How to say no
I've had a lot of discussions at work recently about how we say no.
More accurately, it's usually how we say no and can then suggest an alternative and, we believe, better course of action.
But often that's a difficult conversation to have - as the person we're dealing with will already have established a degree of attachment to their idea or request.
So to be effective we have to have a way of overcoming that attachment and getting our message over.
We need to be able to say no and offer alternatives without alienating our client or colleague and without causing frustration or angst.
And the solution is?
Well for me it has to start with establishing rapport and being seen and heard to understand the problem - you get what they're trying to do and you need to show that.
That mean's a combination of playing back to the person a summary of what you believe the problem is - for example "I understand you want us to do X, because that's a possible way of dealing with the problem caused by Y" - and some more subtle demonstrations of emotional intelligence and empathy too.
If you don't establish with the person you're dealing with that you accurately understand the issue you're dealing with, your push back will almost always end in conflict.
Once that bit's done, the next stage is about being positive and constructive about the situation and your proposed alternative way forward.
The discussion has got to focus on the issue - as that's where the lowest level of emotional engagement is in the conversation, although that will rarely be without any level of emotional attachment at all.
If the discussion strays into how we believe we should respond to the issue - whether the person's preference for their solution or our preferred alternative - then things start getting more difficult. People don't the sense of losing, being inferior or perceived as wrong - so sticking to the facts of the matter as objectively as possible is the best way of minimising the risk of this.
Throughout the discussion use whatever evidence you can to back your case. Keep to the facts and prepare beforehand so you have the facts. But don't overwhelm with evidence in one go as that can backfire too.
Make sure you've thought through a range of alternatives, related them to the evidence and reached a professional judgement - ideally before, not during, the conversation.
If things get tricky one tactic I like is to try to broaden the discussion out by looking at analogous contexts. What's happened elsewhere, in different sectors, different markets or at another time in your organisation? I've lost count of the number of times I've used the analogy of a pub full of shouty people when discussing social media relations and responding.
Another way of wielding some influence is to identify other people that are trusted by the person you're saying no to. While you may not have as much influence as you may wish for, influencing through others or saying no by proxy can sometimes be a useful tactic.
There are times when bringing in someone else to say no can help - for example asking your boss to join you for the conversation. But in the majority of situations I think this leads to a longer term undermining of credibility that's best avoided. A tactic to be used rarely and selectively I think.
And I suppose the bottom line with saying no, is knowing when to stop saying no.
There's no magic rule and it's one of the hardest judgements as it means accepting a temporary loss of status in your relationship with the other person - although this can be managed depending on how you back down. And sometimes that willingness to flex can be repaid in later situations as well.
It's easy to say yes - and many of us do it too often.
Yet it's hard to say no. But where our instincts say no, we've got to equip ourselves with the tools to constructively say no and make that stick.

#### How to: use even more free tools to track coverage on the internet
A few weeks ago I published a post about how to use free tools to keep an eye on mentions of your organisation on the internet. The MarketingPilgrim website has a great list of twenty six free tools that can be used to just the same thing - well worth checking out. The list includes some specialised tools for searching events, forums, jobs listings, patents and products. There's also a useful tip lurking in the comments about how to use GMail to process and filter email lists and then produce RSS feeds for them. [tags]MarketingPilgrim, RSS, website+monitoring, media+monitoring, free+tools, gmail[/tags]

#### How to: use free tools to track your organisation's coverage on the internet
There's an interesting discussion happening on my CIPR Diploma students' discussion group about social media. One of the posts there mentioned that there are so many blogs/websites/discussion forums that it's impossible to keep track of all of them. I've been using a bunch of free tools to track keywords on the web for several years now - but I'm amazed how many people don't do this. So I thought it'd be useful to show just how easy it is to keep a good eye on keywords being used on the web using regular search engines, RSS and a couple of other free web services. In this post you'll find five steps to set up automatic notifications of the keywords you choose - so you're notified automatically as soon as any of the search sources you choose picks up a mention of your keyword anywhere on the web: Step 1: Choose your keywords To keep things simple, I'm going to just use a single keyword - the name of my home town: "Whitstable". In real life you'll probably want to set up many different keywords or phrases using the tools in step 2 below. Step 2: Find your sources and create your feeds You need to use web search engines of one sort or another to do the searching for you. And to make the later steps possible you'll need to use search engines that allow you to subscribe to feeds for your keywords.  These feeds are sometimes referred to as RSS feeds or XML feeds - the BBC has a good primer on feeds here. Usually they'll be accompanied by one of the icons below:   or   The good news is that there are many different search tools that offer feeds. The information below is a good summary of some you may want to use - it's adapted from a good list on the FeedForAll website and was produced by Sharon Housley (via Judy Gombita). Check out the FeedForAll site for detailed instructions for how to set up particular search engines and find the RSS feed you need (http://www.feedforall.com/ego-searches.htm). News search engines  Google News - http://news.google.com/news  Find Articles - http://www.findarticles.com/  Yahoo News - http://news.yahoo.com/  Blog search engines  BlogPulse - http://www.blogpulse.com  Technorati - http://www.technorati.com  Ice Rocket - http://www.icerocket.com/  BlogDigger - http://www.blogdigger.com/  DayPop - http://www.daypop.com So, for this example I'm using "Whitstable" as a keyword, which means that I now have a number of RSS feed addresses for this keyword on a selection of the sites listed above:  http://www.blogdigger.com/search?q=whitstable&sortby=date&type=rss http://news.google.co.uk/news?q=whitstable&output=rss http://api.search.yahoo.com/WebSearchService/rss/webSearch.xml?appid=yahoosearchwebrss&query=whitstable&adult_ok=1 http://feeds.technorati.com/search/whitstable?language=en Step 3: Get a feed reader At this point you should have a list of feed addresses like mine above. It might have just a few addresses, or it may have many addresses if you're tracking many different keywords or sources. To keep an eye on these feeds you'll need to use an RSS reader - these are usually small software packages installed on your computer or web-based readers that you use in your internet browser (there's a good list here). Either way they allow you to subscribe to and keep track of RSS feeds and newly published content (you could even subscribe to my feed at feeds.feedburner.com/simonwakeman too!). You could stop here and subscribe to your list of feed addresses individually in your chosen reader, but there's more you can do to make it even easier from day to day. Step 4: Combine your feeds (optional) If you don't want to have to check lots of different feeds each day, why not merge them into a single feed? You can use the RSS Mix website to merge together any number of existing feeds into a single one. It's free - all you have to do is paste your feed addresses into the box on the homepage. The site then gives you a single RSS feed to which you can subscribe - with the content from all your existing feeds. For my "Whitstable" keyword the merged feed address is http://www.rssmix.com/u/24273/rss.xml.  The RSS Mix website also provides a useful web page featuring content from your merged feeds - the page for the "Whitstable" keyword is at http://www.rssmix.com/u/24273/.  You could keep checking this page regularly to see where your keyword is mentioned on the web. Why not pass it to your friends or colleagues who might find it useful? Step 5: Turn your feed into a regular email (optional)  Some people don't want to or can't keep an eye on RSS feeds, so why not turn your combined keyword feed into a regular email that your colleagues can subscribe to? Each day they'll then get an update on the mentions of your keyword that your searches pick up.  You can do this for free by signing up with Google's Feedburner service at www.feedburner.com. Once you've registered, select the option to burn a new feed and use your RSS Mix merged feed.  Once you've got the feed set up in Feedburner, enable the email subscription option under the "Publicise" tab. Once you've done this, scroll down the Publicise: Email Subscriptions page to the section called "Subscription Link Code".  There you'll find a link to a webpage where people can subscribe to your monitoring - here's mine: http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverifySubmit?feedId=1102791&loc=en_US. Send that link to your friends, colleagues, indeed anyone you want to receive your search results.  All your colleagues or friends have to do is enter their email address and follow the confirmation instructions from there.  And that's it - a completely free way to keep an eye on mentions of your organisation on webpages, blogs, web news services.  There are of course plenty of other ways to achieve this, including paid-for services, but my aim for this post is to show how simple it is to use free services to keep an eye on your organisation's coverage on the internet.  I have set up simple and advanced monitoring services for clients, so if you'd like to know more about how I could do this for you, please do drop me a line.

#### How Twitter works for me
So I've been on Twitter for several weeks now and it's about time I thought a bit about why.
For the uninitiated I should explain that Twitter is a service that helps people keep in touch with each other using a website, RSS feeds, instant messaging and text messages. Its basic premise is to answer the question "what are you doing now?".
My initial concern when I signed up was that I'd be inundated with mundane announcements about people's domestic movements that I really didn't need to know about.
Browsing around Twitter there seems to be a fair amount of this type of posts, but the key is that you have control over the people you get updates from - so if you're not happy with the posts that one of your "friends" is making, then unsubscribe - simple as that.
Since I've been using Twitter I've noticed several ways that it has added value to my professional life:

	Finding out about new stuff fast - this is the digital grapevine at its fastest - and I've certainly found about things faster than picking them up from blogs or searches
	Short conversations - I've had interactions with people I know that don't merit writing an email, but were valuable all the same. Without Twitter these interactions just wouldn't have happened.
	As a micro-blogging tool - posting stuff that doesn't merit a full blog post, but that I'd like to share anyway. I will probably think about how to integrate the feed into my blog properly, although the replies to friends' messages don't make sense out of context, so I'll have to strip them out from the RSS feed (surely I can do this in Pipes with a bit of perseverence).

The two main concerns I have with Twitter are stability and threaded conversations:
Twitter has experienced a phenomenal growth in subscribers over the past month, and sometimes the site has become unusably slow. However over the past week or so I haven't had this problem much, so maybe they've increased their capacity.
A more fundamental problem I have is that when a "friend" of yours has a conversation (where the posts are prefixed with @username) with another Twitter member, you only see half the conversation. Here's an example, courtesy of Simon Collister:
simoncollister  @paull Of course! ;) @drew good point. But even the number of blogging contacts seems to have gone up recently.  about 14 hours ago  from web
Now as I don't have Paull and Drew as "friends" in Twitter, I don't see the other half of the conversation, so it makes no sense.
The only way I can find out what the conversation is about is click into Simon's Twitter page and read the conversation there. That's fine when you're looking on the Twitter website, but when you're following Twitter on instant messaging, text messaging or RSS feeds that's just not an option.
So I'm sticking with Twitter for now to see how things develop.
There's been a bit of buzz around a similar service called Jaiku recently, so I'm going to check that one out too and see how it fares against Twitter.

#### How we treat our customers
Over at Kathy Sierra's Creating Passionate Users blog I spotted a very thought provoking post. As marketers we tend to focus our efforts on acquiring new customers, and don't spend much time or effort on existing customers - yet this isn't sensible if we really think about it.
Kathy suggests that if we put more effort into helping people get more out of the product they've purchased we can create more loyalty, which in the long term will translate into more cross-sales and personal recommendation.
Seth Godin endorses Kathy's views, but Darren Barefoot has a different take on Kathy's post.
This reminds me of a concept that I learnt back in my economics lessons at school - utility - basically how much value a user/customer gets from a product.
As marketers we need to maximise the utility customers think they're getting from a product or service. That's why marketers for intangible services like to ensure they give customers something tangible as well as the service itself. And that's why making sure users can actually use a fair proportion of a product's features is important.
Providing a decent manual isn't an indication that the product is hard to use - although it should be secondary to ensuring a product is simple to use in the first place.
Ensuring maximum utility from a product means that customers will have their purchase decision re-affirmed - they will feel a warm glow because they will feel confirmation that they did the right thing in buying a product. And this will lead to more loyalty in the longer term and more recommendation to other prospective customers.

#### How-to guide to monitoring Twitter
Jon Bounds has a really good guide to using free online tools to monitor Twitter for mentions of your company, organisation, brand, place etc.
Great stuff - check it out on Jon's blog here.

#### I am still here, honest
I'd like to apologise for the lack of posts over the past month and a half.  I've not had the time to write on the blog anything like as often as I'd wished to - although hopefully now things will ease up a little to allow me to get back on track. Since June I've been studying for the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Diploma - and the first assessed work is due in tomorrow. It's called the Critical Reasoning Test (CRT) and comprises two 3,000 word essays from a choice of four questions.  You have a four-week period during which to complete this work - which seems like a long time. However it's almost ten years since I last wrote an academic essay (back at Nottingham University in 1998). I found it a real challenge, both in terms of switching from my normal writing style into a much more academic style, and in terms of the time it takes to research, construct and edit an academic piece of writing. So the four weeks has whizzed by, and now I feel a real sense of relief having submitted the essays this evening. Alongside the CRT, I've just launched a new website for a freelance client, the British Marine Electronics Association, at www.bmea.org. The site and all its features run using open source content management system Wordpress (just like this blog). It's been a four month project and I'm really pleased how it's looking. There are still a few minor bugs and content issues to sort out over the coming weeks. More about this project in the next week or so, as I'll put together a blog post on how versatile Wordpress can be as a content management system for websites that aren't traditional blogs. Finally there are some interesting times ahead for my employer as it faces a difficult budget for next financial year. There will certainly be some really meaty communications challenges for the team in 2008 given this situation. That said, I'm really looking forward to getting back into the blogging groove. I've caught up on my 2000+ RSS feeds and can't wait to get stuck back in to reading, commenting and writing once again. [tags]blogging, Simon+Wakeman, CIPR, CIPR+Diploma, BMEA, British+Marine+Electronics+Association[/tags]

#### I did it - 100 miles on the bike for Action Medical Research
Sorry this has taken a couple of days to post, but on Sunday I completed the 100mile bike ride to help raise money for Action Medical Research.

The first ten miles went nicely, but after the first ascent of the North Downs about 12miles the heavens opened and a fast downhill laced with sharp gravel chippings seemed to cause tens of punctures for riders, including me.
So two inner tubes later I rolled into the feed station at Rochester (30 miles) wet and miserable. The race mechanics helped me out with two more spare inner tubes and a decent amount of air into my tyres - and a couple of colleagues from Medway Council came down to cheer me on waving their posters.
The next 20 miles were hard work - two ascents and descents of the North Downs, gusty winds and driving rain made it tough. Passing through the 50 mile mark and over the M20 into West Kent the weather picked up, the sun shone and the roads got flatter and surfaces smoother (important when your backside feels every little bump and ride!).
After a brief lunch stop in Headcorn (56 miles) it was onwards through the picturesque Weald in the sunshine to feed stations at Bodiam Castle (80 miles) and Goudhurst (90 miles).
Leaving Goudhurst I knew I was going to make it and relaxed into the last ten miles with heavy legs but excited that the end was in sight.
Looking back on the day, I really enjoyed the experience and the opportunity to test my physical and mental abilities against possibly the toughest physical challenge I've taken on (so far!).
And most important of all, thanks to generous sponsorship I raised over £450 for Action Medical Research's important work into children’s health, tackling problems affecting pregnancy, childbirth, babies, children and adolescents.
Thank you so much to everyone who sponsored me on the ride - your support is very much appreciated:
Alison Goldsmith
Andy and Nicky Wake
Billie Jeyes
Catherine and Tim Day
Cathy and Mike Barrow
Colette Glasson
Doug Haslam
Jenny Wells
Jo Knowles
Jo, Olly and Toby Wakeman
John Fox
Julian Day
Kathleen and Graham Vinten
Kelly Wood
Laura Cheshire
Malcolm Wright
Mark Dent
Mark Wakeman
Nick Tatt
Paul and Di Cheshire
Philip Young
Rachel Davis
Richard and Pat Wakeman
Sarah McNally
Simon Lewis
Steph Coole
Stephanie Fearria
Steve Briley
Tim Cooper
Tina Larby
Victoria Crabtree

#### I'm going to Delivering the New PR
I'm pleased to say that I'm going to be going to the Delivering the New PR conference in London on Friday, 10 November 2006.
It's going to be a great opportunity to learn from some people who I've already learnt a lot from reading their blogs (Stuart Bruce, Tom Murphy, Elizabeth Albrycht) and listening to their podcasts (Neville Hobson).
I'm sure I'll get a lot more out of seeing them present and hopefully getting a chance to engage in some discussions about putting social media tools into practice.
Plus PR Blogger Stephen Davies is going so hopefully I'll get to meet him as well - I've read his blog for some time now and have exchanged emails with him.
From what I've heard from previous delegates and looking at the calibre of the speakers this should be an excellent event - I'm certainly really looking forward to it.

#### IE7 released - RSS goes mainstream
Microsoft has today released Internet Explorer 7 for download at www.microsoft.com.
This is a big deal for social media as IE7 has support for RSS feed subscription and reading.
It's another step for RSS from being a slightly awkward and technical concept for everyday web users to being as common as email or bookmarks in internet browser packages.
The effect will be to increase the networking element of social media, as ever increasing numbers of people will be tracking feeds, increasing the communication networks that form within social media users.

#### Immersing yourself in your customers
In my first job at Boots I used to spend a lot of time visiting stores to see how people actually shopped, rather than how people in head office thought they did.
When I worked in marketing at Egg - a leading UK online bank - I was even more acutely aware of the importance of seeing real people interacting with your website and communications.
In a purely digital business like Egg seeing customers interact can be difficult, but it's even more important as your assumptions about audience context can be way off the mark.
John Winsor has been posting some interesting thoughts about how you can immerse yourself in your customer (part one and part two).
John's thoughts have inspired me to commit to doing more customer immersion. I'm going to block out some time each week in my diary, and try to experience the world that some of my audiences live in. I'm sure it'll be time well spent, and will improve the work I do.

#### Improving advertising recall - the Asda bread bell
Asda's latest TV advertising campaign features comedienne Victoria Wood "training" to be an Asda instore baker. The ads push the fact that in many stores fresh bread is available throughout the day.

A version of the ad is available to view here. There's also a version playing out at the moment that features Victoria ringing a bell at the end of the ad to let shoppers know that fresh bread is ready.

Passing Asda earlier today I spotted a series of posters outside the store advertising fresh bread again, and reminding shoppers to listen for the bell.
Now I'm sure that the bell isn't a vital part of the baking operation, but it strikes me as a good way to achieve advertising recall instore, and most importantly to act as a strong call to action at the point of purchase.
Using an audible call to action will also help achieve standout in the cluttered retail environment where packaging, shelftalkers, showmaterial and poster advertising all fight for attention.
The use of the bell is a clever touch that will improve the effectiveness of the campaign across its touchpoints. The next time I'm working on an integrated campaign I'll be trying to think of an equivalent to the bread bell that can make the campaign work that bit harder.

#### Increasing RSS feed subscriptions
Inspired by a post by Rohit Bhargava I thought I'd try to make it easier for readers of my blog to add the RSS feed to their favourite feedreader and to their preferred social bookmarking site.
Rohit's post is worth checking out, along with all the linked resources and his more recent post. The concept of social media optimisation seems like a logical one to me as a marketer.
Since I've been blogging the traffic to the site has been growing steadily, but RSS subscriptions through Feedburner haven't grown at a similar rate. So I thought it'd be worth trying a bit of optimisation.
I had originally thought about using a Wordpress plug-in to put a set of buttons against each post to let users subscribe with one click. But something about having a long list of buttons seemed like a waste of precious screen space to me, plus I'd never be able to keep the list up-to-date as new RSS services come along all the time.
Then I found iFeedReader (courtesy of All Narfed Up)- it's a free service that allows me to put one subscribe button (and one social bookmarking button) on the site, which then links to a page with a wide (and growing) list of services. You'll see the two big orange buttons at the foot of each post. The "hit the button" approach appeals to my sense of usability I think.
There's also a long list of similar tools on 3spots but the simplicity and scalability of IFeedReader wins it for me.

#### Innergie mMini DC10 review
With the summer holiday season in full swing, charging gadgets on the move in the car is a fact of life.
When we head off on long journeys we have a GPS, phone charger, tablets and sometimes a DVD player all hanging off a motley selection of 12V splitters.
The Innergie mMini DC10 is a handy little gadget that allows you to run two USB-charged devices from a single 12V socket - helping reduce the spaghetti of wires when on the move.
It's a smart little bit of kit that gives off a strangely satisfying blue glow when it's in use. It retails for £19 in the UK. It's small - 7cm x 2.3cm - so doesn't take up much space and most of the charger ends up in the socket rather than protruding out the end.
For the real geeks like me out there, it charges at 10W, which means it's meaty enough for tablets as well as phones.
Not much more to say about it than that really. It's small, stylish and it works!
Disclosure: Free review kit supplied by the manufacturer
 
Innergie mMini DC10

#### Inside Innocent
A couple of weeks ago I posted some thoughts about the Innocent brand. Interestingly Dan from Innocent picked up the post and commented on some of the issues I raised. David Taylor has gone one step further and taken Innocent up on their open invitation to pay a visit to their HQ. He met up with Dan and has two interesting posts about his visit - well worth a read. Bit slow on blogging this one, as it's been a crazy week without any time to blog - more on that later. [tags]Innocent[/tags]

#### Interview with Jamie Galloway, COI
The Central Office of Information (COI) is the UK government's centre of excellence for marketing and communications. COI works with government departments and public bodies to produce information campaigns on issues that affect the lives of every citizen in the UK - from health and education to benefits, rights and welfare.
In this email interview Jamie Galloway, COI's Director of Digital Media, talks about how the UK government uses digital media in its campaigns.
COI is widely reported as the UK's third largest spender on advertising, spending around £167m in 2005. What proportion of this spend goes on digital activity, and what are the most important forms of digital advertising for COI?
Spend on digital media in 2005/06 was £12 million.  Digital media services include website design, online advertising, search engine optimisation, online partnerships and other online related media.  There is no guide to the proportion of spend allocated to any communication channel for government campaigns.  The split is based on the requirements of the campaign and the audience that we are trying to reach.  Communications planning is carried out by strategic planning agencies that consider all media channels to ensure the right mix of channels to achieve the campaign’s objectives.
Can you tell us a bit more about your responsibilities as Director of Digital Media? What does the job involve? How many people are in the team?
There are 25 people in COI’s Digital Media team.  My responsibilities are to manage the team effectively to ensure that we supply an excellent service and achieve best value for government departments, in line with COI’s objectives.  The job involves day-to-day management, strategic input into government projects, attending pitches and planning for future business strategy.
The rapid growth of social media is changing the communications landscape. What impact is this having on the campaigns that COI produces on behalf of its clients? 
COI and the agencies we work with are responsible for communicating specific messages to the public on behalf of government departments.  COI has excellent knowledge of developments across the communications industry, technology and channels to ensure best advice is given to government departments.  Social media is having an impact but there are many other factors that we consider, such as digital TV, PVRs and mobile to name but three.
Social media means organisations have to cede control of the message to the community. This can be quite difficult for large organisations to adapt to. What has your experience been with this?
Communications strategies need to take account of a range of channels.  COI advises government departments on the most appropriate mix of new and traditional channels to effectively communicate messages to a range of target audiences.
Do you have any examples of how COI has employed social media tools such as blogs, podcasts, wikis, video sharing etc as part of integrated communications campaigns? 
The Royal Air Force (RAF) has used podcasts and blogs as a part of the RAF careers website. We have used messenger advertising and Myspace in innovative ways. The use of video is becoming increasingly important and videos feature on some government websites. The public has loaded government ads onto Youtube.
COI Digital Media also works across areas, including mobile, interactive TV and search to effectively deliver messages to defined target audiences.
What tools does COI use to track the effectiveness of these social media tools? 
Evaluation varies for each campaign.  COI has a framework/roster of research agencies to assess communications campaigns to ensure effective use of taxpayers’ money.
Deploying social media effectively as part of integrated communications requires specialist skills and a good understanding of social media. What types of agency have you worked with that have a good understanding of this? 
COI works with a range of leading agencies in the field of digital media, all of them are listed on our website.

#### Introducing house rules
I've been running the blog for almost a year now. In this time the vast majority of comments posted on the site have been in the general spirit and values that most blogs hold.
However I think it's about time I posted about how I interpret these values and how I'll apply them to posts, comments and trackbacks here on the site.
Having researched other people's policies, it's clear there's a wide range of policies out there, from the extremely concise to some very detailed policies. A collection of rules I particularly liked are in my Google Notebook.
My particular favourite was Neville Hobson's terms of use on his website.
Neville's very kindly given me permission to base my policy on his original terms, so I've edited down and adapted them for my site. Thanks for that Neville - much appreciated.
My new terms of use are now live on the site.
I've also put a link next to the comments box so the rules are available to commenters. There's also a link at the foot of each page.

#### Introducing Technorati tags to Textpattern
Figured it was about time I got with the tempo and started using Technorati tags on my posts.
My site already runs Textpattern, so introducing the tags wasn't too tricky. Here's the lowdown:
1. Use the keywords field in Textpattern to enter the tags
2. Use the ajw_technorati_tags plug-in to get the tags to appear on the site
3. Use a Textpattern hack to get the tags to appear in my RSS/Atom feeds.
It was a 15 minute job to get this done. Now I'll have to find out how to make the most of being able to tag my content.

#### Is asking for blog comments unethical?
There's been a good old blogosphere mini-storm brewing over the past few days around Debbie Weil and an email she sent on behalf of a client (GSK and its blog Alliconnect). One of the recipients, David Murray, posted his thoughts on the email that he received:  Hi everyone, This is a shameless request. I'm working with GlaxoSmithKline on theofficial corporate blog for alli, the first FDA-approved, OTC weightloss product. You may have seen the TV ads. While traffic to the blog is growing, readers seem shy about leaving Comments. You can help jump start the two-way conversation! Take a peek at theblog at http://www.alliconnect.com. If you're inspired or provoked, leave a comment on any entry. No needto say that you know me, of course. It really is kind of neat that a Global 100 company is doing a bloglike this. It's not easy. - D Debbie also posted a similar message on her blog, asking people to check out the new blog and leave a comment if they felt so inclined. Since then follow-ups from people including Lee Hopkins, Allan Jenkins, Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson have been fairly critical, although Stuart Bruce is a little less outraged by the whole thing. Debbie's follow-up blog post is also worth reading. Reflecting on the original email and the subsequent discussion got me thinking about the ethics of this. What was the supposedly unethical bit of this?  It could be seen as mildly unethical I suppose to use professional contacts that you make in your day-to-day business activities to market a client's blog. But equally if you sent an email to one professional contact in a similar vein, would that be more acceptable? Perhaps the fact that it was a group email, rather than an individual email adds to the feeling of discomfort among the email's recipients. Debbie's follow-up post claims that emailing "friends and colleagues asking them to "take a look" and "leave a comment" on a recent post" is common. I wouldn't dispute that. But again the ethics seem to start to become more questionable when it's an email on behalf of a client, rather than on behalf of yourself. Do the financial payments between client and consultant make sending this email unethical, when if it were sent on behalf of yourself it would be less so? I think the ethical clincher for me is around disclosure. Trust in social media is determined to a fair degree by transparency. You need to know and believe who you're dealing with for the communication to have any value. That trust is built up over time, and knowing you're getting "the whole story" through open and honest disclosure is an important way of building that trust. That's why the line in Debbie's email that says "No need to say that you know me, of course." is probably the bit that sets most ethical alarm bells ringing. I strongly believe that you do need to disclose how you came to be commenting on the blog, as otherwise the conversation that takes place there isn't as transparent as it should be.  That makes sense as an unethical situation when viewed in isolation. But if you need to disclose how you came to be there to be transparent, why shouldn't you have to disclose along similar lines when you arrive at the blog by other routes? Now that, by itself, doesn't seem to make sense, but I'm struggling to rationalise the difference between the two in pure ethical terms. However in some ways the ethical debate here, while important, actually misses the real point here: If the blog is struggling to generate conversations with its intended audience, then an email like Debbie's won't be a long-term fix.  There could be lots of reasons why people aren't commenting - it could be that the audience is less inclined to leave comments because they're not familiar with blogs and posting comments, they could lack confidence in their own voice and words, or the subject matter perhaps doesn't lend itself to public debate as comfortably as some others. Looking into the reasons why comments aren't being made and then addressing the findings would probably be a better way to increase the conversation, rather than pimping for comments in an openly "shameless" way. I should add that Debbie is a highly-rated blogging consultant, and her Corporate Blogging book is one I've read and learnt a lot from, which makes it all the more surprising that she's caught up in this. I guess it goes to show the subjectivity of ethics in public relations and how even accomplished operators can sometimes inadvertently get it wrong.

#### Is public sector marketing good for your CV?
When I moved to a marketing and PR job in the public sector, colleagues at the time were surprised. It was seen as a backward move and not one that would enhance my CV.
At the time I had very good personal reasons for making the move, but more importantly I also saw it as a good opportunity to broaden my marketing and PR experience.
A year and a half on and I'm absolutely convinced it was the right move. The experience I've gained so far has been invaluable, and I'd go so far as to say I think every marketing or PR professional would benefit from spending some time working in the public sector.
So why do I say this? Well it all boils down to the environment in which a public sector marketer has to work.
Complex audiences and messages
Most private sector marketers are used to working in an organisation where objectives are straightforward to define. Even complex matrix marketing organisations can usually simplify their objectives into a few sentences. In listed companies it often boils down to generating shareholder returns.
The contrast with the public sector is stark. Local authorities in England provide a diverse range of services, stretching from rubbish collection, through social services to events and tourism promotion. Each of these services has its own marketing and PR needs.
As a marketer it's a constant juggling act to reach different groups with relevant messages about services. And it's not enough to go for the easy to reach segments. Local authorities need to be able to communicate effectively with people who mainstream marketing doesn't reach. For example those who don't speak English, can't read or those who just don't want to be communicated with.
Management structure
Before I worked for a local authority I had no idea how the role of politicians worked with the role of staff at a council.
The real challenge is that there are effectively two management reporting lines - through the staff management structure and through the political leaders. Whilst the direction of both groups is broadly similar, there are sometimes tensions between these two groups, especially on points of detail.
This dual reporting structure exists and is a challenge for marketers to operate in - especially when developing strategies and signing off creative.
Budgets and priority
Marketing in the public sector often isn't seen as a priority, but communicating effectively is becoming recognised as more important. For example whilst crime is probably coming down generally, fear of crime is rising. Effective marketing can help address fear of crime, but only as part of a mix of measures.
There is a danger that marketing or communications are seen as or used as a sticking plaster, and core underlying issues aren't addressed. But leaving this aside marketing and PR are becoming more and more important in the public sector, which can only be good news for budgets.
The public sector is a fascinating communications environment in which to work. It's a cliche, but each day is completely different and often unpredictable. Strategies and tactics often have to be worked out in a few hours, and campaigns delivered within very short deadlines.
The experience of marketing and PR in the public sector would be a great development for anyone seeking a rounded set of skills and a new avenue on their CV. I had my doubts, but my advice to anyone considering it would be go for it.

#### Is social media a revolution in local government communications?
I'm presenting tomorrow at the Public Sector Forums web event in Manchester - it's a really interesting line-up of speakers and I'm looking forward to learning a lot from hearing and discussing with speakers and delegates alike.   If you can't be there you can still follow and participate online using the www.psfbuzz.com website (@psfbuzz on Twitter). It'll be interesting to see how this Dave Briggs-powered approach to social reporting works alongside a more traditional conference setting - I've got my Flip video camera and Sony pocket audio recorder with me in case the opportunity to use them arises.   My talk is on social media - a revolution in local government communications.   I'll be looking at some of our experience in Medway and discussing how significant the adoption of social media is for the business of communicating in a council.   But perhaps that's the wrong title - as I think social media is only part of the changing environment that local government is communicating in.   The decline and shift online of local newspapers as the traditional tool for local government communications, the growth of hyperlocal websites, declining trust in institutions and institutional figures are just a few of the other factors contributing to these changes.   This multidimensional changing communications environment demands new skills from council communicators - we need to develop skills that allow us to bridge the historic divides between media relations, marketing and consultation - using these tools in a blended way to deliver properly integrated communication and consultation campaigns.   Council communicators also need to have the full range of digital tools at their disposal - that means being skilled and knowledgeable in the use of social media services as part of the communications mix, as well as effective deployment of digital marketing tools like email marketing.   This need for a wider, more blended skill set probably extends into the roles that exist within a typical public sector communications team and who does what. I lose count of the number of times that we have had to work out who should handle a particular aspect of a communications issue that has come from social media - whether it's an emerging issue picked up by monitoring or social media relations - we've had to work out as we went along who within the team or within the broader organisation who is best placed to deal with it.   That's something that's manageable at the moment given the relatively low volume of that kind of interactions, but soon we'll have to have a more formalised way to integrate communications work coming from social media into the team's roles and responsibilities.   The general trend in councils is towards a more centralised approach to communications, and that seems like a good first step. As part of this many councils are also creating dedicated digital (and in a few cases social media) roles which also helps - although I do think there's a difference in skillset at the moment that needs recognising between digital marketers and digital PR people in the way they approach social media (and for the record, I think the PR-led approach is more effective).   There's also an impact on council policies and protocols that needs addressing. My research last year showed a high proportion of councils barring access to many social media sites, which strikes me as a very short-sighted move, but points to a sense that social media tools being perceived as a distraction rather than a means to engage with residents.   But HR and IT policies need to be flexible enough to allow officers to use these tools appropriately and effectively in the course of their job, while retaining appropriate safeguards for the reputation of the organisation. Most councils operate a form of media protocol that prevents most officers from talking directly with the media - should this approach translate to social media, or is a more permissive approach required?   I think the communicators (and sometimes other social media evangelists) also have a role in educating their organisations about social media. I've been presenting regularly to officers and members about what social media means for a council - and it's been really useful in raising awareness of social media as being more than just geeky types watching YouTube in their bedrooms.   Having social media explained properly helps people see the links between their service, social media and the community - and that can only be a powerful catalyst for councils to be more effective in delivering services for local residents.

#### Is social media taking over?
David Phillips certainly thinks so.
David has posted some interesting analysis using Alexa traffic statistics.
He looked at top 30 Alexa ranked UK sites and compared growth over the past three years between different types of site. His charts show very clearly the rapid rate of growth of social media during that time.
The trend to date has been the growth of stand-alone social media sites, such as Myspace and YouTube.
As Google's purchase of YouTube shows, the next wave will be the coming together of traditional websites with social media websites, whether through direct acquisition or addition of social networking functionality to "web 1.0" sites.
In just a few years time we won't be talking about social media as the shiny new thing - it'll be everywhere on the web, integrated into the fabric of almost every website, and something else will be the next big thing that demands our attention.

#### Is the Innocent brand losing its magic?
The UK smoothie brand Innocent is often held up as a good example of a successful brand launch into a competitive marketplace.  Until recently the brand's positioning has been well differentiated against its competition - despite the rapid scaling up of the Innocent business the brand maintained the feeling of being a small, ethical, and most of all "nice" brand whose products you'd like to drink. Stephen Davies has a good post on prblogger.com that explains well the brand and what it's all about. However recently I'd begun to wonder about whether Innocent was starting to make some moves that weren't as consistent with the brand's values as they could be. David Taylor from brandgym is thinking along the same lines. His post picks up two warning signs: the relaunch of Innocent's water range as a loosely affiliated brand called "This Water" and the size of the Innocent business reaching sales over £100m per year. The other decision that caught my eye was the trialling of Innocent products in selected branches of McDonald's in the UK.  This decision caused much debate offline and online from brand afficionados and commentators - was Innocent doing the "right thing" by providing a healthier drink to people eating in McDonald's (as the company argued), or had it "sold out" to a brand whose values were intrinisically incompatible with its own? Like David, I really hope the brand isn't starting to wander from the values that made it great in the first place. Innocent should be an inspiration to marketers to show that if you get it right, it's possible to launch a successful brand into a competitive category dominated by multinationals. [tags]innocent, this+water, innocent+smoothies, brand+strategy, brand+positioning[/tags]

#### Is there anyone out there - where have my Feedburner stats gone?
Just logged into my Feedburner account to check RSS subscriber figures, which are normally around the 200 to 250 mark:   I'm sure this is a glitch, but there's no mention of it on the Feedburner blog and only a couple of unanswered threads on the support forum too. Are any other Feedburner users seeing this too?
Update 2pm GMT: The feed itself at http://feeds.feedburner.com/simonwakeman is down too:
XML Parsing Error: xml declaration not at start of external entity
Location: http://feeds.feedburner.com/simonwakeman
Line Number 2, Column 1:
^
Update 4.30pm GMT: Normal Feedburner service restored, and thanks to Don Loeb from Google for picking up a problem with my source feed too, introduced by a new Wordpress plug-in I installed last night.
[tags]RSS, feedburner[/tags]

#### Is there such a thing as advanced?
Liam Fitzpatrick has an interesting post about advanced internal communications, although the principle would seem to apply to most marketing and public relations disciplines.  On his courses he finds that there is a group of people who are looking for the holy grail of internal communications - based on a perceived insecurity within the internal communications community that means it's always searching for something new and better to improve on current practices. Yet Liam's come to the conclusion that there's no such thing:  The truth is that in IC, like most branches of human activity, nothing much actually changes that dramatically.  If you think that somewhere someone is doing "really advanced" ninja-level IC you're probably going to be disappointed. I think he's right, and the same applies to most marketing and public relations areas.  From my experience practitioners know more than they apply. Those with a sound theoretical grounding don't always get to put it all into practice all the time. Putting knowledge into action is an inevitable compromise between what "should" be done, based on the theory, and what "can" be done given the practical constraints of the operational situation. Yes, professions do advance in their body of knowledge, but only relatively slowly with a combination of academics and early-adopters driving the pace. For most practitioners the advanced practice comes from being able to put into play more of what they know than usual. So instead of focussing on trying to achieve that advanced level, try thinking about what you know already and how you could improve putting it into action better next time around.

#### It's a trust thing
Edelman launched its eighth annual Trust Barometer this morning in London. The survey looks at how well trusted individuals and organisations are among 3,100 "opinion formers" across 18 countries.
David Brain has a good summary of the findings, especially those that relate to the UK. The media release is here, and FT coverage here.
As someone who spends most of his professional life as a local government communicator, it was depressing (but not surprising) to see that trust in government has nearly halved, from 33% in 2005 to just 16 per cent in 2006. In 13 of 18 countries governments were the least trusted institution.
My take from this is that governments need to focus their communication efforts more on facilitating communication and influencing among more trusted groups - essentially communicating by proxy, rather than directly from government to citizen (or government to citizen via traditional media!).
Ian has a good analysis of what the barometer results mean for bloggers and social media. Trust in bloggers went down from 10% in 2005 to 6% in 2006 - bad news on the surface.
However Ian's right - how the question is framed can influence this result. Trust in "people like you" was 45% in UK/France/Germany - the joint highest group rated. Personally I'd count people I know who blog as "people I know", but people who blog who I don't have a connection with as blogger.
David explains what factors affect the credbility of a "person like you" in the UK:
shared interests (72%), while same gender (7%), religion (6%) and race/ethnicity (2%) 
So I guess the barometer shows that blogging itself doesn't build trust, it's the relationships that form when you blog and participate in blog-related communities that build trust and can lead on to influence reputation.
Thanks to Stephen Davies for the invitation to this morning's presentation - unfortunately I couldn't make it up to London today owing to much last-minute preparations for Medway's 2012 programme launch tomorrow.
As well as hearing the barometer results presentation, it would have been a great opportunity to catch up with bloggers I have met (Ian Delaney and Stuart Bruce) and meet several bloggers I haven't had to the chance to meet yet (Stephen, David Brain, Iain Dale and Hugh MacLeod).

#### It's about people not the technology
I've seen a fair amount of commentary recently about social networking sites, in particular Facebook, being banned from many workplaces. This article from the Telegraph is fairly typical of the coverage I've seen, and the BBC has a longer commentary piece on the issue here. I am experiencing a mild feeling of deja-vu here. It's just under ten years since I left university and landed my first job as a graduate marketing trainee at Boots. At that stage email and internet access were just becoming common at work - and I remember a fair amount of controls being implemented for what sites we could visit. The motivation for these seemed to be an underlying assumption that visiting websites was a non-productive activity and could only be relevant to work in the minority of cases. Thinking about that now makes that assumption seem ridiculous. The internet is an integral part of most working days now and is accepted as such in most organisations. I can't help thinking that in a few years time we'll look back on social networking site bans and see them in the same way as I view the internet controls back at Boots. Posts on this topic have generated some interesting debate on the blogs of Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz. But what's really interesting me is that with access to technology tools at work, it's not usually the technology that is "bad", "subversive", "time-wasting" (substitute your complaint of choice) - it's the people. Facebook doesn't waste time, some people waste their time at home or work using it. Tackling the tool is missing the point - it's the people and the culture that allows them to feel able to waste time that need addressing. Closer to home I spotted this story about a university librarian being bullied via Facebook. Now I'm not condoning what the librarian experienced and I have a lot of sympathy for him - a group of students set up a Facebook group that was used to trade insulting and threatening messages about him on the web. But the point again is that these bullies would probably have acted in the same way had Facebook not existed - it's just the sniggering, innuendo and threats would have taken place in a different context.  Technology makes banning access to selected websites very simple. However if organisations are serious about addressing the issue then they need to think more about the root causes of the problem and how they can be addressed culturally, rather than opting for the technology quick fix.  [tags]facebook, bbc, telegraph, neville+hobson, shel+holtz, bullying, policies, HR[/tags]

#### It's been a while...
It's been almost five months since I joined Deeson - the Canterbury-based digital agency - looking after the company's marketing, creative, user experience and strategy work.
And it's been a good few months since I last blogged here too, although I have been contributing the odd post over on the Deeson blog. So I thought it was really about time for an update here.
Looking back over the past few months, I've had a great time really getting into my role.
Working in a new environment has been a great professional challenge. I've loved the feeling of being able to learn at such a rapid rate and have found that professionally reinvigorating.
I've enjoyed getting to know a new team of dedicated, professional people who care about the work they're doing.
Last month we launched a full rebranding of the agency - repositioning the business to reflect the nature of the work we're doing and to provide a platform for our marketing in the future.
The rebranding project was one I approached with some trepidation. It had the potential to be complex to make sure we ended up with a new brand that was right for the business.
That's why I was determined that we'd follow our own client project methodology - which puts users at the heart of the creative and technical development of digital properties - for the rebranding of our agency.
The best digital experiences come from genuine insight about what a business or organisation is seeking to achieve and where this intersects with the lives of its users, customers and clients.
You can read more about how we relaunched the Deeson brand in a blog post by Mike - one of our user experience specialists - here.
The experience of our project and the results we've achieved so far have reaffirmed for me the importance of  a user-focussed approach to marketing, digital and communication.
It's the only viable way to ensure that we avoid our own biases and pre-dispositions to build experiences that users will find compelling and engaging - as well as achieving the business goals that are behind the project.

#### It's been emotional
Designing customer processes to trigger desired emotional reactions is a key way of differentiating your product or service from its competitors. This is particularly true online where the differentiator of personal service doesn't come into play.
Since I worked with leading UK internet bank Egg I've always been aware of the role of customer emotions in their overall experience. We undertook a significant piece of work to redesign the customer experience that people received when they first became an Egg customer. As a part of this we actively created emotional touchpoints where we sought to form an emotional bond with the customer.
Chris Lawer has a great post about measuring emotion in customer experience. He explains several techniques for how you can measure emotions, and gives examples of how each tool is used in practice.
Chris also highlights First Direct - a UK telephone bank - as an example of a company actively seeking to manage emotional responses in their dealings with customers.
At Egg I always cited First Direct as being a leader in financial services customer experience. On a personal level I bank with First Direct, and my personal experience is that their service is outstanding.
Their people deliver outstanding personal service in every transaction. While recruiting the right people is an important factor in achieving this, there are undoubtedly some pretty good customer experience tools being used as well to deliver such a consistently high standard of experience.

#### It's been flat out...
It's been almost a fortnight since I last managed to write a blog post - which is pretty much the longest the blog has gone without tending since last Spring. My days and evenings have been well and truly absorbed by a combination of a big restructure proposal at work, a client website project in the evenings, my CIPR diploma studies and training for a marathon in early September.   My RSS reader is showing just under a thousand unread items. Tonight's the first time I've had to sit down and try to catch up. Hopefully normal service will be resumed very soon. [in case you're wondering, the pic is of me having completed a very hilly 10k road race a couple of weeks ago]

#### It's still about the mix
Another busy week, so little time for blogging I'm afraid, but on the way home today I was thinking about the week the team's just had.
As a local authority marketing team delivering campaigns for everything from theatres to tips and concerts to children's services we have to be able to deploy virtually every single tool in the marketer's toolbox depending on the campaign's objectives.
The "day job" is about traditional marketing channels - paid-for advertising in newspapers, outdoor advertising, direct mail and the like. Email marketing and effective use of websites is also a core part of virtually every campaign.
New media and social media play an increasingly important part of these campaigns, but they're not the main focus of our work.
And a lot of the time there's no established "right way" to use social media as part of the marketing mix for a local authority.
But what's important is that we try new approaches to social media, be prepared for what could happen and most importantly learn from what happens so that next time around we can use social media (or whatever other tool is appropriate) more effectively.
I'm always looking around at what other councils are doing - particularly with new and social media. We can always learn from what others are doing and the experiences they have.
I've also had meetings with a few advertising reps this week - and it's interesting to hear from them. In particular meetings I've had with local newspaper advertising people have just reinforced my belief that the nature of council communications is changing so rapidly.
The role of the local media as an intermediary is declining rapidly thanks to declining circulation figures and social media enabling councils to engage more directly with their residents and other stakeholders.
But that doesn't mean the end of local media - they're evolving rapidly and delivering content in different ways, although the options they offer for advertising still have a way to go to catch up with an advertiser's needs.
That said for the foreseeable future council marketing and communications programmes will still include a wide range of marketing channels to reach their target audiences - contrary to what many social media evangelists will tell you, the future for marketing and communications is about being able to combine traditional and new tools in properly integrated campaigns.
It's certainly an exciting time to be working in marketing and communications.

#### Jargon, plain English and local government
Late last week I received an email newsletter from a national organisation about local government issues. The lead piece was titled "What’s stopping local government from using plain English?" and linked to an interesting online debate about the use of language in local government (something I've blogged about previously). The next article was entitled "Reducing worklessness and raising skills". Sometimes I know I find myself slipping into public sector-speak, but how many people know what "worklessness" is?  Surely that's a classic example of not using plain English? Anyway, if you want to know what worklessness is, here's a definition, thanks to the London Development Agency:  Detachment from the formal labour market in particular areas, and among particular groups. Workless individuals include individuals who are unemployed and claiming unemployment benefits, individuals who are economically inactive and eligible for inactive benefits (who may or may not be claiming them), and individuals who are working exclusively in the informal economy (who may or may not be also claiming benefits) What's wrong with "people not working" as a plain English alternative I don't know...

#### Jean-Claude Saade's seven doors of connection for brands
We encounter hundreds of brands every day, both online and offline. Yet branding as a discipline is much misunderstood, and often confused with visual identity.
To me, a brand is:

	What the brand looks like (the visual identity)
	What the brand says (the copy, words, and tone it uses)
	How the brand acts (the actions it takes and the philosophy behind them)

But how can an organisational or personal brand build empathetic connections with their audiences?
Jean-Claude Saade has an interesting paper on brandchannel.com about how brands can build deeper connections.
Brands that really want to connect with customers on a deep and meaningful level will have to identify common ground and areas of similarity and synergy with these customers.
Jean-Claude identifies seven areas where brands could try to do this:

Shared Values (Peace, equality, liberty…)
Shared Roots (Religion, ethnicity, language, culture, citizenship, education, profession, geography…)
Shared Fights (Politics, environment, wildlife…)
Shared Interests and benefits (Wealth, power, information, notoriety…)
Shared Lifestyle (Fashion, housing, restaurants, vacations…)
Shared hobbies (Sports, arts, music, travel…)
Shared Preferences (Food, drinks, cars, clothing…)
What's particularly interesting is that these seven areas can be equally be applied to public relations and blogging - they are essentially types of communities that are more likely to form, whether around a blog, product, brand or service.
There's also some relevance with personal branding. How can you use the seven doors to enhance your personal brand connections and professional network?
Jean-Claude's full paper is well worth a read as it has some good examples of the seven doors at work. It's at www.brandchannel.com/papers_review.asp?sp_id=1290.

#### Job hunting and social networking sites
Personal branding is more important than ever before when you're hunting for a job.
Many employers already admit to checking out candidates on the internet as part of the recruitment process.
Having your own blog can be a great way to develop a web presence of your own, as long as you're happy that the content you post is suitable for potential employers to check out. Comments you post on other blogs or sites also need to be consistent with your professional image as they may well show up in a web search too.
Professional social networking sites, such as LinkedIn and Ecademy, have a role to play in online job hunting too. They provide a web presence and accessible network that job hunters can use to research opportunities and raise their personal profile among a networked audience.
eMarketer has a useful summary of the major professional social networking sites:

The article quotes a SelectMinds research report about how workers use social networking in their professional lives:
Young workers are the most likely to see professional networks as beneficial to their career development, with 72% of GenYers citing such networks as very important, compared with 66% of workers age 30-39 and 61% of workers age 40+.
Based on these findings, employers wanting to be successful in their recruitment efforts need to ensure that they are seen to facilitate and encourage online networking and use of social media tools. Otherwise they risk appearing out of touch, and losing access to the candidates that may be most suitable to their business.

#### Job interview etiquette
Spent the afternoon interviewing today for an analyst to support our direct and digital marketing work at Medway Council.
One of the candidates didn't show up. At all.
We called her and she said that she wasn't interested in the job at all. She'd changed her mind since we arranged the interview with her a week ago. It hadn't crossed her mind to let us know that she wasn't coming.
Since when did that become acceptable behaviour!?
I know people change their minds or get another job so won't want to come for an interview. But in those circumstances surely a phone call or just an email is the polite thing to do?
You never know when you might meet people again in your career, so a bit of common decency and politeness wouldn't go amiss.

#### Joining the LGcomms national executive
For a good few years now I've been impressed with the work that's been done by LGcomms - the national professional body for local government communications - in developing a more positive professionalised and strategic approach to communications in local government.
Their joint work with other bodies like the LGA has led to some major milestones in the sector - including the original reputation guide (2007) and its successor the New Reputation Guide (2010).
Having returned from a part-time secondment outside the communications sphere earlier this year, I was keen to get back to working on some projects that will help push the sector forward and to ensure my teams and I benefit from the learning opportunities that LGcomms can give us.
So I was really excited to have the opportunity to join the national executive committee in May.  I attended my first meeting a couple of weeks ago and was impressed by the professionalism and drive of my fellow committee members (including a couple of representatives from the excellent Future Leaders scheme).
There's loads of great stuff planned for the year ahead. I'm particularly looking forward to setting up a one-day employee engagement seminar with some top notch speakers as well as working with other committee members on other projects.
But more on that another time.

#### Jumping on the YouTube bandwagon
As a communicator who spends a fair proportion of his week working in the public sector, I was quite excited to read this article about Ten Alps launching Public TV - a "YouTube for the public sector".
But checking out the site I found Public TV is far from a social media play - it's a collection of videos, but without any social media features to speak of. Where are the:

	comments
	tags
	ratings
	codes for embedding videos in blogs
	viewing figures?

Another example of an organisation trying to jump on the social media bandwagon to raise its profile, and not understanding what features make a normal website into a social media property.

#### Jumping the gun?
Like Simon I've been following the outpouring of blog posts about "Wal-marting across America".
There's no value in me recounting the whole saga, as that's not what this post is about. I'll just point you to the original story in BusinessWeek, and the results of a quick Technorati search.
I've been reading and listening about this with the comments of Shel Holtz in FIR #180 ringing in my ears. Shel made some very valid points about the "Apple wants to trademark the word podcast" scandal that never was
Shel was observing that while journalists check and double check their facts, while bloggers tend to post without checking their facts carefully enough. He was looking back at the blogosphere coverage about the Apple cease and desist letter - most of which was inaccurate as Apple wasn't actually looking to trademark the word anyway, and the cease and desist letter was referring to a different term to podcast.
I was thinking about this when I spotted Constantin's post, where he raises a doubt about whether Edelman is really behind the Wal-marting across America blog.
I don't know about the facts of this, and won't be posting an opinion as it would be ill-informed, only being based on my reading of the original BusinessWeek report and subsequent coverage.
I'm sure more will emerge on this over the next few days, and the true picture will emerge.
The point for me is that the connected nature of social media means messages travel faster than ever before - whether they're valid or not.
As bloggers we have a collective responsibility to be clear about the information we're posting and its provenance. That's why trackbacks and links are so important to social media.
But just quoting or linking to another blog can't be relied on as being a source on which to base a post, can it? Surely you've got to go right back to the source of the information to be really confident in your facts. Sometimes this will be an online resource that's there for all to see (and link to), or on other occasions it'll be offline research or information.
As a blogger your credibility to your audience depends on your posts being trustworthy (as well as informative, entertaining etc). Being really thorough and transparent about your sources is the only way to do this - otherwise as a blogger you risk becoming a cog in the social media rumour mill, which can only be a bad thing for your reputation as a blogger or communications professional.

#### Keeping commuters informed
Ellee Seymour's post about her train journey from London to Cambridge earlier this week really struck a chord with me. I used to commute from Whitstable up into London every day when I worked at Open..., Egg and Enterprise IG. The two and a quarter hour door to door trip was often extended by up to two hours by train cancellations, delays and general transport chaos. Ellee's experience is a familiar one. All too often I would arrive at London Cannon Street to find it overflowing with frustrated commuters, thanks to delayed or cancelled trains. For commuters on the Kent Coast Line the only alternative was to hotfoot it on the tube over to London Victoria to see if trains were running from there. Sometimes staff at Cannon Street told you trains were running from Victoria, and when you got there they weren't. And sometimes staff said they weren't running, but when you got there they were. If you decided to stay where you were and wait, information was patchy and inconsistent. The whole experience seemed to comprise a lot of standing around on cold platforms, a lot of people all shouting down their phones about the delay and its causes (triggering off even more people to phone home to relay the version of the story that they've just heard from the person next to them), and the odd cattle stampede to a platform where a train, any train, was arriving, just in case it was actually going where you were headed. Just thinking about it makes me glad I made the decision to work outside London. I now work a thirty minute drive from home. The three and a half hours of every day that I've saved are spent doing much nicer things like being with the family and keeping fit. Back to Ellee's post, she's absolutely right that what's missing in those commuter nightmare situations is accurate and timely information. Travellers accept things go wrong and they accept that situations change. But accurate, consistent and reliable information would make the whole experience much more bearable, and would help public perception of the operator and travelling by train generally. I wonder what role public relations can play in those kind of situations. I'd venture a guess that it's mostly seen as an operational situation that needs dealing with, rather than a public relations challenge. Yet taking a PR-based approach would lead to more attention being paid to managing messaging in those situations and managing relationships between the train company and a significant public - its travelling passengers.

#### Keeping it legal with email marketing
E-consultancy reports a piece of research by CDMS claiming that 31% of the UK's top companies are failing to comply with EU directives on Privacy and Electronic Communications.
The article rightly points out that concluding a third of UK companies are email spammers from the report isn't really valid. However my guess is that if that's the rate of non-compliance among large companies with professional marketing departments, then non-compliance among small businesses is probably higher.
The best guide I've seen to getting email marketing right comes from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) in the UK - it's available free on the DMA website.
If you're outside the UK bear in mind that different rules may apply, but the principles of sound email marketing are the same all over the world.

#### Keeping it short and simple
Inspired by a fairly old post on 37signals I've been thinking again about my site, and how it's structured.
Since I started it some three years ago, it's been growing in size, without any real thought about how it should be structured. Even though I have a reasonable grounding in information architecture, I now see I've fallen into the trap of having too many pages, and too little of any substance or purpose to say on them.
So, starting now I'm rationalising and rewriting.
Over the coming weeks pages will disappear, especially in the services section, and hopefully some very old and tired copy will reappear as sparking, tight and to the point words. Useful hints come from Matt Weston at www.businessbricks.co.uk who has made some spot on observations about writing (generally and for the web).
I'll also be taking the opportunity to add some nice little features to the site, and tweak the design, including tidying up those messy submenus (if they're still needed!).
Here goes...hold onto your hats

#### Keeping pace with Web 2.0
Over in Australia Lee Hopkins is feeling the frustration of leading adoption of Web 2.0 tools amongst his clients.
His post highlights the frustration that many early adopter marketing and PR professionals feel when we work with mass market players.
I remember a few years back working on website projects, trying to convince clients and prove the value of having a site, and driving interactivity throughout their businesses.
Nowadays websites are the norm, but Web 2.0 is the new kid on the block. The consultant's challenge is to understand how to integrate Web 2.0 into the everyday marketing and PR mix.
It's all very well knowing understanding the latest trends, but the real value of this insight is knowing how to apply it to what communicating organisations are doing right now.
Sometimes this means a big foray into Web 2.0. Sometimes it means a toe in the water.
One thing's certain though. In a few years time we'll be writing the same thing about Web 2.0 being commonplace, and there'll be a new wave to surf.
Whatever happens, it's always an enjoyable ride though.

#### Keeping quiet during purdah?
At some point before early June we're going to be having a general election, which for civil servants and local government officers means a purdah period between when the election's called and polling day itself.
As a council communicator I'm very familiar with how the purdah rules affect the business of communicating, but civil servant Steph Gray's blog post about how he will be avoiding blogging and using Twitter during purdah started me thinking.
Steph's doing this because to him the whole nature of using social media while under purdah rules is too risky. The chance of being misquoted or inadvertently involved in a political debate is too great for him to risk his job over.
I understand what he's saying and have been contemplating similar thoughts myself recently as the intensity of political activity grows both nationally and locally.
However my blog and Twitter content has never and will never be in any way political as long as I'm a public servant. The rules are very clear and I'm always very careful to only write about topics that are relevant to the blog and not politically biased.
But in the heat and excitement of a general election, particularly with the role that online media will play this time around, I'm guessing virtually any topic that I write about here could be construed as politically sensitive. Because I write about public sector communications (and mainly local government), comments about an organisation, for example, could easily be taken out of context and given a political angle that was never intended.
Similarly with Twitter I know that a number of local and national politicians from all political parties follow me (and indeed I follow them too). Which means, in theory, there's a chance that political nuances could be given to my Twitter messages and I would need to steer clear of Twitter conversations with politicians during the purdah period.
I agree completely with Steph's view of the risk here - my job as a public sector communicator is my livelihood and keeps a roof over my family's head. I would be foolish to risk that job - but I'm still weighing the risks up against the professional benefits that I get from blogging and using Twitter.
I'm not sure what I'll do yet, but I guess I've got a few weeks to decide yet. I will, of course, be posting my conclusion here before purdah starts.
What are other local government bloggers and tweeters thinking about doing during purdah?

#### Keeping to new year resolutions and the power of habit
As a marketer I spend a lot of time, in fact probably too much, thinking about behaviour change and how to achieve it.
Whether it's changing a behaviour for a commercial or social gain, getting people to do things differently is what most of marketing boils down to.
And at this time of year plenty of people are wrestling with making behaviour changes stick - as the novelty of changes they've made as new year resolutions begins to wear off.
It reminds me of a book I read last year about habits - The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg - and what I learnt from it.
Duhigg explains that many of the thousands of decisions we make every day aren't made consciously - we just do many things on a kind of autopilot that's hardwired into our brains. Psychologists recognise this as the unconscious or automatic process within dual process theory.
Those habits are vital to us going about our daily lives without getting stuck in endless deliberations with ourselves about mundane things that just need to happen. If we used conscious thinking all the time, everything would take a lot longer.
And this is where the power of habit comes in, as Duhigg explains how you can train your mind to rewire the hardwired habits within your mind to help change behaviour - whether it's yours or trying to influence behaviour in others.
For a change like a new year resolution to stick, it takes more than just willpower.
Duhigg identifies the habit loop as being a useful tool in understanding habit-based behaviour. There are three components to the habit loop:

	The cue - the thing that triggers off the habit loop
	The routine - the behaviour that you exhibit in response to the cue
	The reward - the thing that you receive - usually something you like - as a result of the routine
To effectively change behaviour in the long term, we need to clearly identify cues and then develop new behaviours as a routine response to these cues. Without doing this, the old hardwired habit loops will take over before too long.
For example, last new year I made a commitment to myself to do at least 15 minutes exercise every day.
I live a pretty hectic life so I knew this was going to be a challenge, especially as I'd tried before.
What I'd tried to do was to go for a quick run around 7pm once I'd put our children to bed each evening.
But once I'd kissed them goodnight, I really struggled to motivate myself to get changed into my running gear and go out in the dark and cold, especially having been at work all day.
In my case the cue, putting my children to bed, was linked to the routine of going downstairs and making something to eat. I was trying to override this habit and go for a run - but failing to stick to my commitment to exercise.
Once I realised this habit loop existed, I worked out that if I changed into my running kit before putting the children to bed, once I hit the cue, it was a lot easier to go straight out running as I was already dressed and ready to go. I managed to break a habit loop through a minor change in the order I did things in and change my behaviour.
So coming back full circle to marketing, it's really important that when we look at the desired behaviour we're seeking from a campaign, we think about cues, routines and rewards in how we design marketing campaigns if they're to be genuinely effective.
Happy new year!

#### Last call for Glasgow advanced social media course
Have been spending the evening putting the finishing touches to a new course I've written for various venues this Autumn - trying to help communicators in the public sector build on existing social media usage to achieve better results.
Sometimes it's hard to know what to put in and what to leave out, but the areas the course will be covering include:

	The theory behind social media
	Advanced social media channel implementations using social networks (eg Facebook, LinkedIn) microblogging (eg Twitter), blogging and video sharing (eg YouTube)
	Setting up a social media monitoring system
	Dealing with negative coverage on social media
	Strategies for creating thriving social media communities
	Building social media into your communications, marketing and service strategies
	Paid-for opportunities on social media
	Best practice use of social media in emergency situations

There are just a handful of places left on the first course - it's in Glasgow on Friday, 14 September. Full details and booking details here.
 

#### Latest LGinsight/Populus local authorities perceptions research
Using evidence in marketing and communications is a favourite area for me. It's only by using real evidence that we can genuinely demonstrate the impact of public sector communications and marketing activities.
That's why I really like the regular national research undertaken by LGinsight - it provides a good national snapshot for local government communicators and helps provide good context to local trends (evidenced through research, of course) that different councils will be experiencing.
Neil Wholey sums up some of the highlights as part of his strong analysis of what the data tells us:
In the absence of any substantial criticism in the media (or from Government) the reputation of local government appears strong. Two thirds (64%) of British adults think that their local council has received either positive or neutral coverage from the media in the last few months, up from 61% in June 2011.  Perceptions of pos/neutral coverage of local councils across the country have gone from 41% to 49% at the same time.  The polling from LGinsight/Populus highlights how councils are engaging with residents and continuing to deliver high quality services. But, as we approach the end of the year there are indications that this could be the calm before the storm.
In January 2011 underneath a mound of snow and ice the reputation of local government fell.  Satisfaction with how they were running local areas fell to 62% as services such as refuse collection suffered. By September reputation has rebuilt to 72% satisfaction, in line with the previous month, built on satisfaction with refuse collection increasing from 73% to 84% and street cleansing from 67% to 77%. Throughout this period the proportion of people feeling informed about the services and benefits provided by their council has gone from 54% to 59%.  This shows that despite the new local government publicity code councils are still able to communicate with their residents and drive an improved reputation.
You can read Neil's full analysis here and download the data tables here.

#### Latest trends in UK media consumption
One of the most comprehensive pieces of media research in the UK is Ofcom's Communications Market report. The August 2008 edition has just been published.
The report provides a great amount of in-depth information on UK communications from a variety of angles, many of which are extremely relevant to marketing and public relations people alike.
Heather Yaxley has an interesting commentary here, and for those with a bit more time the key points of the research are here.
For a more succinct summary try Guardian Online or BBC Online.

#### Launch of Tinderhouse
Today local designer Nick Tatt and I launched a new Whitstable-based communications consultancy. Tinderhouse specialises in delivering high quality internet and marketing services to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Kent and South East England.
Nick said “With our experience in developing and delivering internet and marketing propositions for many national firms, we believe now is the time for SMEs to start using the internet aggressively.”
We are well placed to deliver cutting edge marketing activity to local clients and have over seven years combined experience of working with the internet and new media. Tinderhouse can offer a fully integrated solution from developing marketing strategy with clients through to delivering local or national marketing campaigns and websites.
Launch clients of the newly formed consultancy include Bladonmore Publishing & Training, The Marketing Practice, Visual Media and the Chartered Institute of Marketing Kent Branch.
For more information see the Tinderhouse website.

#### Launching Behind the Spin online
Last week I pushed the button to set live a new website I've been working on since January this year.    Behind the Spin (www.behindthespin.com) is the online version of the CIPR's magazine for public relations students and young practitioners.  The magazine has been around for a few years in its offline format, but recently Richard Bailey from Leeds Metropolitan University has taken over the reins and led the creation of the new website. Richard asked me to run the technical side of the website, so I can take no credit for any of the high quality content on the site. The site has been created using Wordpress and uses a heavily modified version of the commercially available Revolution theme.  It's a great example of how an open source blog content management system can be used to create a website that isn't a blog (I almost said "traditional", but you know what I mean). With features like commenting and RSS feeds, the site does have some features in common with a blog, but it's not a blog. Richard calls it a "blogazine", which probably sums it up pretty well. I'd commend the site to prospective and current public relations students and people new to the profession too. Sign up for content by RSS or email and read some of the freshest thinking from PR students in the UK (and soon overseas too).

#### Launching the new London 2012 brand
On Monday the new brand for the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics will be unveiled.
The brand identity for an event as significant as the Olympics plays an important role in setting the tone for the run-up to the games, the event itself and the legacy that persists afterwards.

The London games are meant to be all about

staging an inspirational Games that capture the imagination of young people around the world and leave a lasting legacy.
It'll be interesting to see what the new London 2012 brand is, and see how the aspirations and values of the games translate into the brand itself.
The grand unveiling is at 11am on Monday in London. It's an invited audience only but, thanks to Simon Collister at Edelman, I'm lucky enough to be going along.
If you want to be among the first people to see the brand as it's unveiled, you can register now for instant access on the web as soon as the brand is unveiled at 11am on Monday. To register just head over to www.london2012.com and enter your email address right now.

Update: posts from the launch here and here, and further analysis here.
Image credit: http://www.benmautner.com/widerangle/2005/07/olympic-logos.html

#### Le Tour de France - it's finally here
It's been a pretty hectic week, meaning lots of late night working and no time for proper blogging. And the reason for this? The Tour de France Grand Depart has arrived in London, and the race will spend around 20 minutes passing through Medway, en-route to the stage finish in Canterbury tomorrow. Medway Council is one of Transport for London's partners in hosting the race. It's been a really exciting experience to be working on an event of this scale, even though my involvement has mainly been focussed on Medway rather than the event as a whole. I first attended a meeting about the race coming to London and Kent back in late 2005, and have been working on it ever since. There have been more media launches than I thought ever possible for a single event, including a huge media conference in Paris last autumn. The main part of our work in Medway has been in the past three months. The geography of the area and the routing through Medway means that we've had to undertake a two pronged approach to communicating - promoting the race and its effects generally as well as communicating with residents in small areas that are affected in a very specific way. The challenges of the complexity of this, alongside a mix of excitement and apathy among Medway residents, has really tested the team. Looking back on the communications on the eve of the race, I can certainly see some things that we would do differently next time, but I have a generally good feeling about how the communications in Medway all worked out.  We took a complex and difficult task and approached it strategically, breaking it down into manageable pieces of work. I'm looking forward to putting together a post-campaign evaluation next week that should reveal lots about how we'd approach similar communications projects in the future. As I write this my colleagues in events and highways at Medway Council will be working, setting up miles of barriers and event hardware. The route will be cleared overnight and by 7am tomorrow morning, the route in Medway will be closed to traffic and almost ready to hand over to the race organisers. Of course it's not over yet for the communicators either. Several of the team, including me, are on duty tomorrow handling media interest and dealing with any communication-related issues that might crop up (although I'm sure there won't be anything quite like the last time a professional cycle race came to Medway). I'm lucky enough to be working at the first sprint section of the stage, where there should be some decent racing taking place. As a keen cyclist myself I can't help but get caught up in the excitement of the event itself as well. The Prologue today in London looked pretty exciting and well-attended.  The weather forecast looks good for tomorrow, so it should be a great day out for thousands of residents and visitors throughout London and Kent.  And I'm sure tomorrow evening I'll be breathing a sigh of relief, along with colleagues from Transport for London and the other partners who have worked so hard to make it all happen. Next week it'll be back to business as usual, tackling my ever-expanding to-do list and hopefully getting back on the blogging trail too. Image: Shawdm, Flickr  [tags]Tour+de+france, medway, cycling[/tags]

#### Learning from the Threshers promotion
Heather Yaxley has blogged about the UK drinks retailer Threshers' 40% discount voucher that circulated the UK blogosphere recently.
The voucher was originally intended for a limited audience, but spread rapidly around the internet once it had been posted by top UK blogger Hugh McLeod and on (originally) the Stormhoek wine blog (some background here, thanks to David Brain).
At the time the promotion hit there was much speculation about whether it was intended as a viral marketing tool, or was a friends and family promotion that spread beyond its original intended audience.
Stuart Bruce had some pretty strong thoughts about how the promotion reflected on Threshers as a business. Judging by the press release that Heather quotes (can't find the full version on the Threshers site), I would tend to agree with most of the points Stuart makes.
However my interest in the whole affair is less about Threshers and the commercial aspects of the promotion, and more about how a promotion has gone viral through social media.
The Threshers experience does highlight a few points that marketing and PR people should think about:

	You can't predict what will turn viral and what won't - it depends on external / environmental factors as well as what you do
	You can however create a favourable context for a promotion that makes it more likely to go viral - doing something that has "tell a mate appeal" helps - whether the benefit for the recipient is financial, humourous or just has perceived value (aka gossip)Always evaluate the impact on your business organisations or reputation if a promotion does go viral - even if the viral effect isn't what you want, see it as risk analysis

What would be really interesting would be to do some analysis of the routes the message spread along through the blogosphere - it would show how social networks can be pervasive throughout many different groups and geographies in the physical world. It'd also show how quickly the blogosphere picks up on hot topics.
Another facet of this kind of analysis would be looking at the content/tone of the message as it spread - a bit like the Chinese whisper effect. What started off as a price promotion message rapidly distorted in places into a potentially unfavourable discussion about relative pricing between Threshers and its competitors (eg here) - a good example of how messages can evolve and the originator always loses control in the social space.

#### Learning something new
Sometimes it can be really great to stumble across a blog and learn something new. I did just that this evening when I ended up reading Ian Delaney's explanation of non-linear search.
Having read his post, which was clear and very useful, I wandered around the rest of his blog. I was impressed with the range of things he's blogging about, and the clarity with which he writes.
I don't normally post when I add someone to my blogroll, but Ian's explanation about search was so good I felt I really should say thanks by posting.
Thanks also to Simon Collister for leading me to Ian's blog at www.twopointouch.com.

#### Leaving local government for an exciting new opportunity
In April I'll be leaving my role at Medway Council and East Sussex County Council for an exciting new opportunity. I'll be joining Canterbury-based Deeson Group as director of communications and marketing.
After almost ten years working in local government, I will be sad to be leaving the sector where I have learnt so much and have had the pleasure of working with teams of whom I am genuinely proud. Both teams have achieved a lot and I am looking forward to see their partnership thrive in the future.
The complexity and diversity of the local government world is something that I have enjoyed working in, but now it's time in my career for me to move on and continue to challenge myself professionally and personally in a new environment.
That's why I'm really looking forward to my new role with Deeson Group. They've has been helping businesses and organisations to achieve their goals through digital solutions, publishing, branding and marketing communications since 1959. My role will be working across the group's three divisions: Deeson Member Communications, Deeson Creative and Deeson Online.
It'll be good to be able to draw on my previous career experience in my new role too - including working in client-side marketing roles across financial services, retail and interactive television, as well as agency-side marketing and internal communications for clients including BP, Vodafone, SABMiller, Nominet, Principality Building Society and Fujitsu.
I'll be working with the Deeson team to deliver some really innovative and strategic marketing communications projects and to help grow the business further. Professionally it'll be a great opportunity to work entrepreneurially across a broader range of marketing, communications and digital projects in a variety of sectors - something I find very motivating and can't wait to get stuck into.
Here's the official press release from Deeson Group that's gone out today:
SIMON WAKEMAN JOINS DEESON GROUP TO HEAD COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING
Canterbury-based agency Deeson Group announces a new senior appointment to spearhead its continuing business growth.
 
The digital, publishing, branding and marketing communications agency will welcome Simon Wakeman in April as director of communications and marketing.
 
Simon, former head of communications and marketing at Medway Council and East Sussex County Council, has PR and marketing experience across the financial services, e-commerce, telecoms, retail and local government sectors.
 
He brings significant digital and web experience, including launch marketing for the UK’s first interactive TV service and customer experience management for a major internet bank. He has led nationally recognised innovation in public sector social media and the development of highly rated council websites.
 
In 2013, his contribution to digital practice in the public sector was recognised in the national Digital Leaders 50 Awards.
 
Simon will work across Deeson Group’s clients, as well as developing new business opportunities with private and public sector clients.
 
Established for 55 years, Deeson Group is the UK’s oldest customer publishing company and an internationally recognised website developer. Clients include Robbie Williams, Shepherd Neame, ITV, Johnson & Johnson and the Society and College of Radiographers.
 
Tim Deeson, managing director, Deeson Group, said "Simon's significant experience across digital, marketing and communications will enhance our success working with blue chip companies, professional bodies, major media brands and some of the public sector’s largest organisations."
 
Simon Wakeman said: "I'm really excited to be joining Deeson Group in this new role. I’m looking forward to working with the team to deliver innovative and strategic marketing communications projects to help grow the Deeson Group business further."

#### Leaving TPXimpact
Today’s a big milestone for me - my last day working at TPXimpact.

Back in April 2014 I joined a digital agency with around 20 team members based in Canterbury and in 2018 that became part of TPXimpact - a business that now has more than 700 employees across the UK, Europe, Bulgaria and Norway. It’s been quite an experience.

I’ve learnt a massive amount, experienced some huge highs and lows and spent a hell of a lot of time on video calls. I’ve worked with many amazing people along the way. 

But most of all I’ve loved delivering great work for clients and supporting brilliant client-facing teams.

A lot’s changed at TPXimpact since I made the decision to leave earlier this year and build out a new more flexible working life as a consultant. It’s really great to see a new senior leadership team forming and the jigsaw pieces of an integrated TPXimpact fall into place. 

Thank you to all the people who’ve been part of this journey - especially current and former colleagues from across TPXimpact and its predecessor businesses. There are too many folk to name individually but I’ve been grateful to have learnt from each and every one of them.

From January I’m kicking off a new phase in my working life. I’m grateful to the many people who’ve spared me time over the past six months to share their experiences working as consultants so kindly.

I’ve got some fascinating ideas kicking around about what I’ll be getting up to and am already looking forward to working with some brilliant businesses.

Some of these ideas are pretty early stage so not ready for sharing, but you can already check out some of what I’ll be doing as a consultant and fractional COO. And if you're interested in working together, drop me a line and let's chat.

Image credit: Daniel McNeil

#### LGC on social media - "Now tweet this…"
There's an interesting piece in this week's Local Government Chronicle (LGC) about social media and councils.
I'm not saying that because I'm quoted in it, but because it's a decent look at a number of different people's perspectives on the topic.
The piece also references the LGiU's excellent paper on social media in councils: Local Government 3.0 - which is well worth a read in itself.
One of the key things I'd pick out of the LGC piece is that social media is only part of a communications strategy - it's not a communications strategy in itself. How appropriate social media is compared to other tools depends on the campaign objectives, target audiences, key messages and a whole lot more.
But equally it's a tool that needs to be considered for use in all communications strategies by councils - and at the moment that's not something that's happening as much as it should.

#### LGC social media conference
Below is the feed of Twitter messages I posted while at the recent LGC social media conference.
It was an experiment using a live blogging plugin to feed Twitter messages directly into Wordpress.
11:41:55 AM: time for the panel sessions, @dominiccampbell up first #lgcsoc11:43:25 AM: #lgcsoc @dominiccampbell "welcome to the 30yr old blokes session" (that's for you @carriebish )11:46:24 AM: #lgcsoc @dominiccampbell playing video summing up key issues of trust, lack of information among residents,11:48:02 AM: #lgcsoc social media not going away, convergence of customer service, engagement, communications11:49:27 AM: #lgcsoc showing some strong networking analysis tools11:50:03 AM: #lgcsoc london no1 city for twitter use (and equal 1st for facebook)11:52:46 AM: #lgcsoc barnet leader now twittering his own expenses, sharing raw corporate/peer feedback on youtube <---impressive eg of openness11:53:14 AM: #lgcsoc myidea4ca.com - crowdsourcing community ideas, bottom-up policy making11:54:53 AM: #lgcsoc new shoutboxhq is corp moderation tool for twitter, but should is that desirable or just a pragatic response11:56:15 AM: #lgcsoc @dominiccampbell talking about facebook advertiser tool as means for getting stats on who using fb in your area11:58:23 AM: #lgcsoc "chill out a bit"11:58:47 AM: #lgcsoc @dominiccampbell finishing, now it's @davebriggs12:04:06 PM: #lgcsoc @davebriggs talking about frustration of lack of adoption of online tools for effective online engagement12:06:08 PM: #lgcsoc blogs not necessarily an online diary, it's a medium for publishing stuff12:08:10 PM: #lgcsoc 5 chars of blogs: freq updated, recent first, permanence of links, rss, commenting12:09:11 PM: #lgcsocs blogs v search engine friendly <--- very true but often forgotten12:11:00 PM: #lgcsoc @davebriggs - it's about stories - think about who can contribute stories12:11:57 PM: #lgcsoc authenticity is key - people can see through ghosted, PR puff content on social media12:13:19 PM: #lgcsoc blogs shouldn't exist in a vacuum - need to engage in a conversation, use the power of links (sharing stuff freely)12:13:53 PM: #lgcsoc "keep listening" - respond as appropriate12:14:09 PM: RT @stuartclarkson: #lgcsoc Check out my podcast @rochdalecouncil  http://feeds.feedburner.com/localmatters and let me know what you think!12:15:03 PM: #lgcsoc @carlhaggerty @russ_t_uk now on12:17:20 PM: #lgcsoc rel'n council site to soc media - use website as hub/co-ordinate content (<----also add authenticity to external presence)12:19:19 PM: #lgcsoc ugc - not many people in the room publishing UGC on council websites (<----need to link to purpose/role of website)12:22:21 PM: #lgcsoc caution - to do soc media integration takes time, knowledge - "don't go storming in", don't create unfulfillable user expectations12:22:45 PM: #lgcsoc "it's all about people and conversations" - absolutely right12:23:47 PM: #lgcsoc do people want to go to council website on daily basis? <---no they don't -absolutely right, and need to remember that!12:24:14 PM: #lgcsoc some thoughts on how to measure influence on social media, what value can be realised from being there12:25:05 PM: #lgcsoc use web stats to monitor referrals (inbound traffic) from soc media sites12:26:28 PM: #lgcsoc got to understand the platform to understand what is relevant in terms of success12:27:26 PM: #lgcsoc @carlhaggerty and @russ_t_uk finishing - panel discussion sessions now, am taking a break from twitter to join in

#### Link round-up for this week
Digital outlook is positive for 2009UK online ad spend will pass £3.5 billion in 2009, overtaking television spend, according to a new report from eMarketer.
Deloitte survey shows we’re living in a “media democracy” » VentureBeatWe’re living in a media democracy, where no single form of media dominates the attention of Americans. It’s also an age where everyone contributes to the media, not just traditional media companies. That’s a conclusion of the third annual Deloitte survey on the state of media, which asked respondents how they spent time with media.
Twitter’s New Users Drive 600% GrowthPopular microblogging site Twitter now has approximately 4M-5M users, the majority of whom joined in 2008 and have contributed to the site’s 600% growth in the last 12 months, according to the first “State of the Twittershpere” (pdf)  report from HubSpot.
American online activity statisticsWith so many Americans already using the Internet, we're past the point of seeing massive increases in the percentage of the population that's wired. However, this masks a steep increase in the past few years in the proportion of people who spend a significant amount of time online.
Internet access 2008ONS stats on internet access by region. Pubished last August but for some reason I've only just seen them.
For all bookmarks that I've made check out del.icio.us.

#### Live blogging - I just don't see the point
I'd been thinking about live blogging for a while now and wondering what the point really was.
It's become common practice at conferences in the US for bloggers to blog live from presentations and discussions. I've seen it a bit over here in the UK, but I don't think it's as common.
The whole topic of live blogging flared up in the blogosphere when Steve Crescenzo wrote about his experience as a presenter being live blogged at a recent conferece.
As a reader of blogs I've always questioned the value of the posts that come from live blogging.
The stream of slightly disjointed notes and running commentary on who's saying what very rarely provides any insight or indeed a useful record of the conference proceedings.
Many live blog posts remind me of meeting notes I used to take on my PDA where they made sense to me at the time, but a few days later I couldn't fathom out what I had noted at all.
I struggle to make enough notes for myself at many conferences I attend, let alone formulate them into a meaningful blog post at the time.
There is an argument that live bloggers are looking for news to break, and that by being there on the conference floor they can get the scoop they crave. But let's be realistic, how much news is really made in the conference room itself? Not much I'd say.
The bloggers who create a useful record of conference proceedings are those that make decent notes, reflect, think and then write (and edit) a post a few hours later.
The additional insight they add, as well as the quality of their summary of proceedings makes their posts much more useful than quickly-dashed off live notes that don't hang together as a coherent post.
Allan Jenkins is thinking along the same lines as me, as well as making a couple of good points about manners at conferences.
If you were speaking at a conference what do you think about live bloggers? Do they add value or would you prefer they powered down and participated in the main event?
I know a few event managers read this blog. What's your take on live blogging?

#### Live stream from Social Media for the Public Sector conference today
Today I'm chairing and speaking at Connected Nottingham's "Social Media for the Public Sector" conference.
Speakers include Caron Lyon (PCM Creative), Mark Payne (West Midlands Police) and yours truly.
You can watch the event through the live streaming below and follow the #sm4ps hashtag on Twitter.

#### Local authorities and social media - the current picture
This is the first of a three part series of posts looking at use of social media in local government communications in 2008. More on Wednesday and Thursday.
Earlier this year I surveyed the current use of social media among local authorities in the UK. The work was part of the primary research for my Chartered Institute of Public Relations diploma.
The results give an interesting snapshot into current and future use of social media tools among local authority communications. Responses were received from communicators working in 61 councils, representing 13.8% of all 442 councils identified by the Local Government Association in England, Wales and Scotland.
Current local authority communications mix
The mix of communications channels in use in local government communications is dominated by traditional communications tools. The news release is ubiquitous in its use among respondents to the survey. Public meetings and paid-for advertising (including press, radio and outdoor) complete the five communications tools in most widespread use among local authorities in the UK:

The common element to these five most used tools is that they are pretty untargetted – delivering messages to significant groups of people rather than being able to be targetted to publics or homogenous market segments.
It's interesting to note that these untargetted channels have been in use for an extended period of time in both the private and public sectors. Does this support the view that the public sector is slower to adopt new communications tools than the private sector as shown by the top tools currently in use?
Probably not. I'd see this as an oversimplification as it ignores the breadth of communications objectives held by local authorities. These include a requirement for communicating with all residents (whether as a single public or broken down into smaller publics within the overall population) about universal services, such as waste collection or highways, as well as communicating with targeted smaller publics about issues that are only relevant to that group, such as localised community safety messages or a planning application relevant to a particular neighbourhood.
This breadth of objectives means local authorities need a broader mix of communications tools, including a bias towards untargetted tools, that's less likely to be required in the private sector where communications are typically more targetted towards specific publics (or market segments) to achieve specific commercial objectives.
These most commonly used channels are also all one-way in nature. They don't generally lend themselves easily to delivery of a two-way communications campaign. The scale of use of one-way channels suggests to me that the “return path” for local authority communications is either seen as separate from the initial delivery path for the communication or non-existent.
Current use of social media
More than 50% of respondents are using blogs in their council communications and almost 40% are using podcasts.
I was surprised by this high level of adoption, especially given the apparent low level of visibility of usage among councils. That said the uses of social media I found in my survey includes use within organisations (internal communications) as well as for external communications.
It's also worth noting the claimed frequency of use of these most used social media tools. Although more than 50% of communicators surveyed used blogs regularly, occasionally or rarely, just 22.4% of communicators used blogs regularly. Similarly almost 40% of communicators used podcasts as part of the communications mix regularly, occasionally or rarely, but only 6.6% of communicators were using them regularly.
Use of other social media tools, while less widespread, was more than I expected too. Social bookmarking sites and virtual worlds were the least used channels, reflecting a lack of understanding of these tools in a communications context and low use among practitioners surveyed.

Looking beyond the current usage of social media tools, my research shows a clear intention to increase usage of four types of social media tools within the next six months in local government communications:

	Podcasts - 38.2% of councils plan to use in next six months
	Video sharing websites (eg YouTube) -36.8% of councils plan to use in next six months
	Blogs	- 32.9% of councils plan to use in next six months
	Social networking (eg Facebook, Myspace, Bebo) - 30.3% of councils plan to use in next six months

These specific social media tools are probably among the most widely known and used among UK internet users. This potentially explains why these tools are the ones that are planned to be used to the greatest extent in the next six months in local government marketing and public relations.
How does personal use affect professional use?
I thought it was worth looking at whether personal use among communicators correlates with use of the same social media tool in a professional capacity in a communications mix.
I used the survey data to evaluate the relationship between personal and professional use of the four social media tool types that are most commonly used at present; namely blogs, podcasts, content aggregators and social networks.
It gets a bit statistical here, but linear regression analysis showed only a weak correlation between personal and professional use for each tool.
However when you take a look at the data at an aggregated level (across all tools ignoring frequency of use, both personal and professional), the picture is clearer:

This shows that use of social media tools in a personal capacity does not appear to strongly influence whether such tools are used in a professional capacity as part of the communications mix.
However if communicators don't use social media personally, it does make them much less likely to use social media as part of a council’s communications mix - 15% of respondents who don’t use social media tools personally use social media in their council’s communication mix, compared with 44% of respondents that do use social media tools personally.
Choice of communications channel
I also looked at which factors respondents considered were most and least influential in their choice of channels in their communication mix.
The most significant factors were “use of the channel among target audience” and the linked determinant of “appropriateness to my communications objectives” – both these factors were rated as very important by 65% or more of respondents. Cost was also cited as a very important factor by 40% of respondents:

Use of the channel among target audience - 72% rated as very important
Appropriateness to my communications objectives - 65% rated as very important
Cost - 40% rated as very important
Ease of access to appropriate technology - 27% rated as very important
Support from line manager - 27% rated as very important
Support from senior officers -	23% rated as very important
Reputational risk from critical coverage/responses - 21% rated as very important
Personal level of knowledge/experience of the channel - 16% rated as very important
Support from elected members - 15% rated as very important

This is the first of a three part series of posts looking at use of social media in local government communications in 2008. Tomorrow I'll be looking at what this research means for social media in local government communications in the future.

#### Local authorities and social media - the future
This is the second of a three part series of posts looking at use of social media in local government communications in 2008. First post is here. More tomorrow.
A proportion of local authorities are using a range of social media in their communications, although the numbers using such tools regularly are small. There's also an appetite among a larger number of local authorities to use the most popular social media tools in their communications within the next six months.
That said, there is a significant proportion of local authorities that have no plan to use social media tools in their communications mix. This proportion is greatest when considering social media tools beyond blogs and podcasts. It ranges from 42.1% (video sharing and social networks) to 78.9% (virtual worlds).
Communicators that don't use social media tools personally are much less likely to use social media tools in their work than those that do use them personally. There is also a correlation between a communicator’s age and their personal use of social media tools, meaning that councils with older communicators are less likely to be using social media than those with younger communicators.
However there isn't a strong correlation between level of personal use of social media tools as a whole and level of professional use within a council communications mix. This implies that there are other reasons why social media is not used beyond personal familiarity with the tool.
Using an appropriate tool for a campaign’s objectives and one that is used by a campaign’s target audience ranked highly as factors in channel choice for campaigns.
This could account for a proportion of the non-use among councils, especially due to some of the relatively distinct demographic groups using certain types of social media tool. However this argument doesn't sit as comfortably with the fact that most councils have a duty to communicate with a variety of different publics, a number of which will be those that do have high levels of social media usage.
That means there are therefore a significant number of councils with a responsibility to communicate with social media-using publics that are not using social media tools in their campaigns.
The research suggests a number of other challenges exist for communicators wishing to use social media in their communications. The most commonly cited barrier to use of social media was the lack of support from ICT teams within councils. This was due to factors including a lack of technical knowledge of the tools being considered, apathy and, in some cases, active blocking of social media tools through firewall policies.
The majority of communicators surveyed considered reputational risk from critical coverage/responses as an important factor in chosing which communications channels they used. It could be argued that this concern about critical coverage, probably linked in part to the political nature of the local government environment, is a challenge for local authorities wishing to use social media tools.
Social media tools reduce or eliminate the ability of councils to influence coverage of their organisation's message. Considering traditional media relations with mainstream media outlets, the perception of control within councils is probably greater than the actual control that a council can exert.
However the use of social media requires a much more significant shift in organisational attitude to allow councils to give up this perception of message control and use social media to engage in conversations with publics. These conversations may well be difficult in terms of relationship with council policy, subject matter or tone.
While some of these risks can be mitigated through clear “rules of engagement” for social media participations and moderation, they don't fundamentally change the shift in organisational attitude that is required.
The broader picture
The context for local government communications in the UK is changing.
The 1999 Local Government Act gave councils a duty to consult with publics on matters of policy.
There is also a clearly recognised link between councils that are effective in communications with publics and those that are highly rated by their residents. This alone presents opportunities for councils to use social media to enhance existing consultation and communications activities.
Thanks to the Lyons review, the concept of place shaping at the heart of the future for local government. Place shaping is at the heart of the new local area agreements and other assessment frameworks for local government.
Place shaping is about how “local government can work with residents to develop and deliver high-quality public services that meet the needs and preferences of local people”.
Social media tools would appear to be very suitable for local government and its partners to engage in two-way dialogue with local publics about place and the impact on public services.
The online participatory nature of such tools is likely to extend the range of such communications beyond members of publics that will typically attend public meetings and engage with other commonly used local government consultation techniques.
However it's also worth noting the concept of digital exclusion. Councils have a duty to engage with publics that will include members that do not have access to online services such as social media.
While councils have sought to reduce the impact of this through provision of free online access, for example in libraries, this divide still exists. This means digital exclusion must be considered when using social media as part of the communications mix.
In July 2008 central government published the “Communities in control: real people, real power” white paper. This wide-ranging white paper seeks to enhance the ability of communities to influence the delivery of local services more strongly and, in turn, strengthen local democracy by increasing participation.
It aims to “help citizens to get involved when they want to on their own terms”.  I believe this policy agenda will further increase the importance of social media tools as a means to engage with a broader range of publics using social media tools that they are familiar with and active users of.
This is the second of a three part series of posts looking at use of social media in local government communications in 2008. First post is here. Tomorrow I'll be identifying four roles for social media in local government communications.

#### Local authorities on Twitter - a perspective
My Google Alerts threw up an interesting link today - a "league table" of councils on Twitter, ranked by the number of followers they have on their primary Twitter feeds.
Looking at some of the comments and chat on Twitter about the league table, published by Guerilla Policy, some people have already identified some basic inadequacies with the approach:

	Looking at the total number of followers for a specific council needs to be viewed alongside the total target audience for that activity - which in the case of most council corporate feeds is going to be people living in the local area - it's not surprising that Glasgow has more Twitter followers than Winchester - they've got more residents!
	Followers is a crude and poor substitute for effective communication. Late last year I did some analysis for a Welsh council I was working with that showed that more than 80 per cent of their Twitter followers weren't actually from their local area - which shocked them as they'd assumed their followers were local residents and were targetting their social media content accordingly.
	Plenty of councils use a number of Twitter feeds - to target different audience segments with different content and conversations - something that doesn't appear to have been taken account of in the analysis.

So for the chaps at Guerilla Policy to claim that the councils with the most followers are "seizing the opportunity" of social media is a tad misleading - although I've got plenty of respect for their patience in looking up almost 400 councils and their Twitter stats.
While this kind of list makes for great linkbait (yep, I fell for it too!), it is essentially meaningless.
The only way to evaluate who is seizing the opportunity of Twitter is to understand what councils set out to achieve on there in the first place - for different organisations there will be different drivers for what they're up to - and therefore different ways of judging what is successful and what's not.
It's not just about how many followers, but who they are, who you want them to be, what content they consume, how they interact, and what they think, do and feel as a result of what a council does on social media.
However Guerilla Policy isn't the first to fall into the trap of seeing the most easily measurable numbers as being those most indicative of success. SOCITM have done much the same in some of their analysis of social media in the past too.
But any sensible communicator will be looking beyond the obvious numbers and asking more probing questions before proclaiming one council or another as an example of good practice on social media.

#### Local government and social media - the big questions
The IDeA's Ingrid Koehler has an interesting post on her blog asking about local government and social media.  Here are my thoughts and responses to add to the conversation: What are the greatest areas of potential benefit in councils using social media?  While there are many roles social media can play in improving council services, I come at this from a communicator's point of view. To that end I think the benefits of social media to local government marketing and public relations are:  reaching a broader range of publics than the "traditional" council communications mix  moving towards a more genuine two-way dialogue with council publics, instead of a reliance on the outdated broadcast model of communications  effective networking with peers - council officers face similar (but not necessarily the same) challenges nationwide. Sharing knowledge and skills between practitioners is important - in the past this has typically meant conferences, email groups and local face-to-face forums. Social media explores the potential for this and increases the pace and breadth of innovation coming from effectively shared information (more info on networking for council communicators on a previous post here). How can councils support local communities and individuals in becoming digitally enabled and empowered?  As a starting point I think councils still need to continue to provide digital access for those that, for whatever reason, don't have a computer and internet access themselves. Alongside that councils need to play a role in providing education and skills training for people to equip them with a level of digital literacy to use the internet effectively. Beyond that, it's important that councils provide up-to-date, accurate and comprehensive service information and data on their websites and beyond through open data feeds. It's also important that councils provide transactional capabilities on their websites - and that means usable, accessible services that are easy to use for the majority of residents - contributing to the delivery of the "unavoidable contact" national indicator as well as reducing transaction costs compared to other channels. Thinking about communications, it's important that councils deploy new media (note not just social media) carefully as part of an integrated mix of communications techniques - by providing information in this way they will drive more general adoption and usage of digital tools, particularly among those residents where trust may be barrier to broader use. I believe the .gov.uk domain suffix has a role to play in demonstrating a site/service that can be trusted - although this positioning carries some responsibilities too. How can local and hyper-local social networks increase community cohesion and empowerment? I see this as being a case where digital social networks can enhance existing "in the flesh" networks that already exist in neighbourhoods - extending the reach of these and making them more active than face to face interaction alone allows. There's also the potential for the creation of new networks - demonstrated by the emergence of local networks like those discussed here. This is where it gets really exciting as we'll start to see new groupings in society that will rapidly start to demand a role in how places are shaped - online activity like this makes this happen much more rapidly and effectively than could happen without the digital connections that social networks bring. These networks have the potential to encompass people that are excluded from the traditional council circles of influence and discourse. The challenge for local government is to be aware of the groups in the digital landscape to the same degree as they're aware of traditional power groupings in their area and understand the different "rules of engagement" for these group. How can councillors develop their leadership and communication skills using social media?  I sense a real demand from councillors in many areas now to understand more about social media. There's clearly a recognition that councillors need to know more about social media, coming in part I suspect from the Obama campaign in the US. I think councillors can develop their skills using social media through listening to existing social media conversations and then, once they're comfortable with the way it works, engaging either through commenting on other people's content or creating content themselves. I think there's also a need for awareness of risk - helping councillors understand the power of social media extends to negative messages as well as positive messages, and considering the role of social media as a source for traditional media. How can councils create the space for community conversations without overpowering them?  I don't see this as being about creating "space" in the sense of a dedicated space for conversations - be it a website, wiki, blog or the like. I think councils need to engage with residents on their terms - so choosing a tool bearing in mind the audience and objectives for the project. However I think what's equally important is engaging with residents "on their patch" in social media - having the mechanisms in place to monitor online conversations that relate to a council and be prepared and able to participate in those conversations in an appropriate way. While on the surface that may seem simple, in practice it demands an organisational awareness of how social media is changing communications and a responsive and skilled communications team to make it happen. How can social media be used for more effective social marketing encouraging the behaviour change necessary to achieve complex outcomes?  As part of an integrated approach - social marketing demands a complex mix of activities depending on the campaign objectives and social media is just one of those tools. What’s the “next practice” in social media, including virtual worlds and more?  I find this a hard question to answer, as "next practice" in social media in local government is probably about more adoption of the tools that are out there now, just as ten years ago organisations were grappling with the introduction of a new tool called email.  Looking beyond this I think the importance of providing data in open, accessible and flexible ways will be important for government (local and central) to make sure that government is able to be an active participant in a future internet (whatever that brings!).  You can also see Stuart Bruce's perspective on this here (particularly interesting as he comes at it from two angles: as a professional communicator and a former elected member of a council).

#### Local government and social media presentation
I've just hopped on a train and am on my way back home after presenting at today's Don't Panic Guide to Social Media conference in Manchester. A great day so far with fascinating presentations from Tom Murphy (Microsoft) and Marshall Manson (Edelman). Many more to come during the day that I would have liked to stay for, but I'm equally keen to get home to my son's school Christmas fair - and it's a fair old trek back from Manchester to Whitstable. I talked about how local government is using social media, my CIPR diploma research, case studies including the Mixit Podcast, Fuse Festival on social networks, Barnet Council and some first steps on getting social media into a council's communications mix (thanks for Dave Briggs for the inspiration on the last point). Here are my slides from the day. If you want to download the full powerpoint set, click through to my Slideshare page and you can grab them from there.   View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: social+media local+government)

#### Local government on Twitter
Having spent a few hours over the past week setting up Medway Council's Twitter presence and associated systems, I was planning to write a post about how we did it.
But scanning through my RSS feeds this evening, I spotted this post from Stuart Harrison:
A beginners guide to Twitter in local government
Stuart's post is an absolutely superb and comprehensive summary of how a council can easily get started with the nuts and bolts of a Twitter presence - based on his experience at Lichfield District Council.
At Medway we're using Twitterfeed (RSS to Twitter), Twittermail (email to Twitter) and Twilert/Tweetbeep (keyword alerts for Twitter) to make things work.
The only comments I'd add to Stuart's piece are about how councils can use Twitter - once they've got it up and running as a communications channel.
Councils could fall into the trap of setting up Twitter as a broadcast channel - using it to send out mass messages to people that choose to follow the council.
But I think that's missing the real value of Twitter.
To get the most of Twitter councils need to use the tool to engage in conversations - listening and interacting with residents and other stakeholders in a way that more traditional tools don't allow to happen.

#### Local government people to follow on Twitter
Yesterday a conversation with a colleague at work who was just getting into Twitter, prompted me to ask people in my Twitter network who the best local government people she could follow were.
As usual I had plenty of helpful comments back, as well as a fair few people wanting to know the answers so I thought I'd summarise in a blog post here.
There are a few lists of local government Twitter users out there worth checking:

	Andy Sawford from LGIU maintains his top ten list on his blog here - includes elected members as well as officers

	Dave Briggs has a comprehensive list including central and local government people here
	Carl Haggerty also pointed me in the direction of this site - www.governingpeople.com - where a number of the contributing authors are clearly marked as Twitter users

I'm not going to try to replicate a full list here, but if you do work in local government and are on Twitter feel free to add yourself in the comments below or to Dave's list on his site.
However the best way to discover interesting people (from any sector or interest group) on Twitter is to explore the network - follow a few people you know, check out interesting exchanges they're having with others, and before you know it you'll be discovering and connecting with likeminded people you've never met or heard of before - and to me that's one of the most powerful things about Twitter.

#### Local government publications
One of the most contentious topics in local government communications over the past couple of years has been councils publishing newspapers and magazines of their own to communicate with residents.
I won't go into a protracted history of the issue here, but suffice to say councils generally find them valuable in helping communicate, local newspaper publishers generally see them as anti-competitive, and the coalition's programme for government says
We will impose tougher rules to stop unfair competition by local authority newspapers
These tougher rules first appeared as part of the consultation into changes in the local government publicity code. This consultation ran from September to November last year, with the new code meant to come into force in January this year. The consultation proposed:
Local authorities should not publish newsletters, newssheets or similar communications which seek to emulate commercial newspapers in style or content. Where local authorities do commission or publish newssheets, they should not issue them more frequently than quarterly. They should not include material other than information for the public about the business, services and amenities of the council or other local service providers.
In December the Communities and Local Government Select Committee held a session hearing evidence from various interested parties about the proposed code.
Their report is published today and comes down firmly on the side of councils in the debate about local authority publications.
The committee calls on the government to commission an independent inquiry to quantify the competitive  impact of council newspapers on the independent press; to review the publication rules that apply to statutory notices; and to develop a separate code of practice to govern the use of lobbyists by local councils.
While acknowledging the concerns about a small number of local authority publications, the report takes a measured approach to the majority of councils newspapers and magazines:
There is a clear concern that some local authorities are using council tax payer’s money to promote their local politicians and policies. It is appropriate that the proposed Code should prevent such activities being undertaken at taxpayer’s expense. However, we doubt that the proposed Code should specify a maximum frequency of publication, especially in the context of the Government’s professed commitment to greater ‘localism’. If properly enforced, we believe the provisions in the proposed Code relating to cost effectiveness, content and appearance are sufficient to deal with the excesses seen in the handful of council papers that have caused concern.
They conclude that there is little evidence to support the assertion that council publications are, to any significant extent, competing unfairly with independent papers published in their areas.
Committee chair Clive Betts MP noted “ Most local authorities still find they do not need to communicate information to residents more often than quarterly – in line with the principle of cost effectiveness contained within the Code. In line with a commitment to local decision making it should also be left to every local authority  to choose for themselves how often they publish an information sheet."
The committee also says the government should review the publication requirements for statutory notices, with a view to making them more cost-effective and better able to take advantage of new means of publication such as the internet.
However what this means for the new publicity code itself isn't yet clear. There's no word from the government on when the new code will be announced or will come into force, so while the committee's report makes interesting reading, we certainly won't have heard the last of this debate yet.

#### Local government purdah
Communicators working in local government will, once in a while, have to manage their way through the purdah period - which in local government is the time between a formal Notice of Election being published and the election day itself.
Purdah has never been a clearly defined concept - for either national or local elections. Deciding what it's appropriate to communicate during purdah relies on good judgement combined with a strong working knowledge of the laws, rules and codes that are relevant to local government communications.
For councils with elections on 5 May this year, the purdah period starts tomorrow. This time around it's a bit more complicated because of the AV referendum taking place at the same time too. And the new local government publicity code coming in as well means it's worth anyone working in local government communications taking a bit of time to think about what purdah means to them.
LGcommunications held a useful event earlier this month that covered the purdah period - in the video below Alex Aiken, Director of Communications and Strategy at Westminster City Council, explains comprehensively the legal considerations for local government communications and about the purdah period:

In his presentation, which helpfully is available to download here, Alex summarises the key test for local government communications during purdah - "could a reasonable person conclude that you were spending public money to influence the outcomes of the election?".
The advice from LGcommunications about the pre-election purdah period is:

	No publicity should be given to matters which are politically controversial
	The general presumption should be that no references will be made to individual politicians in press releases
	Great caution should be exercised before undertaking any significant media exercise unless it can be demonstrated that this was included in the forward diary before the election was called
	No photographs including candidates at the election should be issued
	Before any request for Council photographs and other materials are acceded to enquiries should be made as to the use to which they are to be put and an appropriate restriction on use imposed if the request is acceded to
	The position of a Civic Mayor as the figure-head of the authority is different and we can be more relaxed about issuing material relating to him provided that it is apolitical

The impact of purdah will vary in different councils. Some will choose to take a very risk-averse approach in terms of the legal provisions of purdah - which actually may cause problems in the longer term as a regaulr flow of information about services to residents and service users is important in increasing satisfaction with local government.
Other councils will take a more pragmatic view of things - looking at individual communications activities carefully and considering whether they could or should be delivered during purdah.
In my view it's important for communicators to ensure they understand the code and are able to provide well informed advice about what can and can't be done during the purdah period. Alex's video presentation and slides that are linked to above are a great place to start to get a good overview of the relevant information.

#### Local government social media and lessons learnt
Here's the presentation I gave to the LGcomms new media seminar today on our experience with three social media initiatives we've tried at Medway:

You can download the full set of slides here.

#### Local government social media research
Ian Vaughan, Intranet Manager for Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council, has kindly given me permission to share his social media research on my blog.
This research was part of his university dissertation - it aimed to discover about web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0 technologies in local government and learn how the sector is embracing these new technologies. It also expored the factors inhibiting adoption of these technologies in local government.
There's plenty of interesting data in there about current adoption of social tools and barriers to future adoption. Thanks to Ian for agreeing to share his information.
You can read Ian's survey findings here.

#### Local services need to use social media - Ashley Wilcox
There's a great opinion piece in this week's PR Week from Ashley Wilcox making a pretty watertight case for local public services to use social media in their comms mix (can't find it on the PR Week site so no deep link I'm afraid).
Ashley's piece makes some pretty sound points:
Treat social media as part of the comms mix, not a quick fix gimmick
Absolutely - social media provides new communications tools, but does far more than that by shifting the balance of communications power in the relationship between the public sector and the public - tokenism or box ticking by just deploying new media comms tools for the sake of it is a short term strategy that will undermine effective communications.
Comprehensive area assessment (CAA) means the public sector needs to make better use of social media
Yes - CAA explicitly mentions the role of digital media in engaging with residents, but more importantly also forces the public sector to focus on residents' experience of living in a particular place - and for many people that includes their digital experience as well as their physical experience of a place.
Two-way communications through social media is vital, and even more so given the declining role of local media
Again, he's right. The role of the local media as gatekeeper for local public sector messages is in rapid decline, thanks to declining circulations and reduced resources in local media.
The public sector needs to understand this and grasp the ever-growing opportunities to communicate directly with their publics - whether through direct marketing (through email, for example) or through social media.
The issue of public sector workers not having access to social media at work
This is something that features strongly in the emails I receive, but is something, thankfully, I haven't experienced personally. There's a conversation going on out there about people's experience of living in a place, and if the public sector blocks it out, it'll still be going on, it's just those that should be listening and responding won't be able to.
As Ashley says

They need to trust staff and stop missing massive opportunities to speak to their service users.
It's really encouraging to see some social media advocacy from a council communicator from outside the usual group of social media proponents - the mix of CAA, growth of social media and structural changes in mainstream media means interesting times ahead for public sector communicators.

#### London 2012 and that Hindley image
Amind the positive buzz around yesterday's handover of the Olympic host city status to London, there was inevitably going to be a sour note somewhere.
From the rolling news coverage last night and this morning, it looks like the use of a shot of a portrait of Moors murderer Myra Hindley within a promotional video shown at London 2012 event in Beijing last night is that sour note.

BBC News is showing footage of the video being played at the party. The shot appears for a fraction of a second as part of a sequence of images of London and appeared because the portrait was being displayed in a gallery, presumably being used to represent London's cultural scene in the video.
There's already been denouncement of the use of the image by everyone you'd expect, including London mayor Boris Johnson and Prime Minister Gordon Brown (although the latter not yet on his snazzy new website).
To me this is just a slip-up, pure and simple. And not a massive one at that. It won't do any lasting damage to London 2012's reputation.
This does highlight the ever increasing intensity of scrutiny that London 2012 will be under. If a half second glimpse of an inappropriate image can be picked up in this way, imagine the impact of a more fundamental difficulty. This just demonstrates the importance of a planned approach to issues management, helping organisations take a wider view to their interactions with the world around them than individuals within the organisation would necessarily take.
Taking a different example, if I'd been responsible for commissioning this leaflet, I'd have been pretty disappointed with myself for not spotting the incorrect skyline image. However I'd be even more ashamed of not admitting the mistake right away rather than trying to argue against a pretty obvious problem.

At an individual level as marketing or public relations professionals commmisioning any sort of promotional material, we have to take responsibility for the content that we commission. While we sub-contract degrees of responsibility to designers, producers, cameramen and the link, we must still retain overall responsibility, and that includes maintaining a mental filter for potential slip-ups like this.
To be able to apply this mental filter effectively we must have a considered and informed understanding of the environment that we operate in, its cultural and political sensitivities, as well as good dose of common sense to boot.

#### London 2012 brand launch - the aftermath
It's been an interesting day - having been at the launch of the London 2012 brand this morning and then getting home this evening to read the reaction to the new logo online. Thanks to decent wifi at the Roundhouse and a handy table, I managed to get a picture of the logo up as the presentation was continuing. and then followed up with my initial reactions a bit later on.    I've not live blogged like that before, but it was certainly an exciting experience blogging and racing to be quick to post my thoughts. As a result today's the busiest day by a fair margin that I've had since launching this blog. To call the reaction so far to the logo (not brand) mixed would probably be a charitable interpretation. Comments posted on the BBC and Guardian websites seem overwhelmingly negative. Meanwhile in the blogosphere Ellee thinks it might grow on her, while Jon reports a mixed reaction from the team at Lewis 360. Johnnie focusses on the launch and some of the hyperbole that went with it, while Heather is along the same lines as she questions the wisdom of using public relations to promote what's effectively a marketing device.   Personally I can't say I love it or hate the logo. I stand by what I wrote earlier and commend the organisers for being courageous enough to do something different with the visual identity, rather than playing safe with a bland or predictable option. But really whether people love it or hate it now isn't really relevant. The identity is only a small part of the overall brand. To see whether the identity works we'll need to see it applied to websites, merchandise, documents etc. What will really matter is whether the organisers can bring their brand to life in reality, away from the glitzy high budget launches and instead on the streets, playing fields and running tracks of Great Britain. If their actions over the next five years are true to the values of the brand they announced today, then a fuss over the logo today will seem an irrelevance.  In the long term the value of a brand will come more from what the organisation does, rather than what it looks like, but the big reveal today has served to focus attention (too much) on the identity to the detriment of the other messages that were talked about today. I hope the people at LOCOG have the confidence in their convictions to ride out the negative headlines and stick with their bold new identity. On a related note with Edelman running media relations and online PR for the launch, it'll be interesting to see how the organisers plan to use social media in their communications over the coming years.  It was a bit of shame to not see a social media press release today to kick things off on the social media front, especially as presumably they had the Storycrafter tool at their disposal. More launch images available on Flickr.  [tags]london+2012, london, logo, olympics, brand, branding, paralympics, london+2012+logo[/tags]

#### London 2012 brand to be unveiled this morning
I'm live blogging from the Roundhouse in Camden (London) this morning at the launch of the new brand for London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. London's bid for the 2012 games centred around four themes: passion; inspiration; participation and stimulation, so I'd expect the brand will be all about bringing those values to life between now and 2012.  I'm a firm believer in brands being about more than just visual identity, even though they're so often confused. The visual identity (including the logo) is just a small part of what a brand's about. My simple definition of a brand - it is:  how you behave - the decisions and choices you make and their results how you sound - the words, language, tone of your writing and verbal communication how you look - your visual identity, your buildings, people, vehicles - or indeed anything people can see So how does London's new brand stack up? What will the games organisers be doing to put their brand at the heart of preparations for the 2012 games? The big unveiling is at 11am, so maybe I'll have the answers then. [tags]London+2012, 2012, london, branding, brand, brand+values[/tags]

#### London conference recommendations
A couple of forthcoming conferences in London have caught my eye recently:

I went to the last Delivering the new PR event in London late last year, and really enjoyed it.
Now the same team is back in London on 5 June with a follow-up conference focussing on how to create value through social media. With first-rate speakers such as Neville Hobson, Stuart Bruce and Tom Murphy this should be a good event with plenty of realistic and friendly advice on how organisations can make the most of social media.
I'm definitely heading to this one, and look forward to catching up with Neville, Stuart, Andy and Nicky who I met face to face at the last event, having got to know them through their blogs previously.

NMK Forum07 takes place on Wednesday, 13 June and promises a really strong line-up of digital media speakers from around the world, including Jason Calacanis and Dan Gillmor.
The forum promises delegates will be able to participate in debates on stage, online, on mobile and offline. It'll be interesting to see what tools the guys will be using to facilitate these debates and take the forum beyond the traditional one-way conference model.
I'm not sure if I'll be able to attend this one owing to work commitments, but if you're a blogger you can get a 5% discount on the delegate rate by displaying the forum badge on your site.
If you're planning on attending either of these events please do leave me a comment. It'd be great to connect with blog readers face to face once again.

#### London Marathon - three weeks to go
It's just three weeks to go until I'm running the Virgin London Marathon.
It's a great challenge and, from what friends who have completed the London Marathon tell me, it's a race with an excellent atmosphere too. I'm running to raise money for a charity called Action Medical Research - the leading UK-wide medical research charity dedicated to helping babies and children.
The charity finds and funds the very best medical research in hospitals and universities across the UK that is most likely to deliver real benefit to babies, children and young people. Their funding is focussed on research that aims to improve medical care in three areas:

	Treating sick and vulnerable babies
	Helping disabled children
	Targeting rare diseases in children

My lead sponsor for the race is Public Sector Forums (PSF) - one of the UK's leading public sector IT, web and communications communities and event organisers. I'd really like to thank Nick Hill and Gary Marston from PSF for their generous sponsorship for the marathon as well as everyone else that's sponsored me online and offline.
I'm aiming to raise £3000 for Action Medical Research - at the time of writing my total sponsorship was just over £2050 with three weeks to go before the race.
If you'd like to support me then we've set up a Facebook group where you can support me and take the mick out of me for wearing excessive amounts of lycra when running.
If you'd like to sponsor me for the marathon and help me raise as much money as possible for this great charity, my online sponsorship page is here or use the link below:

#### London to Brighton bike ride 2006
Just got a pack in the post confirming my place on the London to Brighton bike ride 2006 (www.bhf.org.uk) - a 58 mile bike ride on Sunday, 18 June with more than 30,000 riders taking part.
I'm riding with my Tinderhouse colleague Nick Tatt, and am doing it all for fun and to raise money for the British Heart Foundation.
We're starting training this weekend, as the event is less than two months away and 58 miles seems like a very long way to ride.
You can sponsor me by visiting www.bhf.org.uk/sponsor/simonwakeman.

#### London to Paris cycle ride - in under 24 hours
I've always been one for a challenge of one sort or another.
Inspired by the brilliant Sean Conway, Sophie Radcliffe and Donald Hirsch, the idea of cycling from London to Paris in under 24 hours seemed like a good one to take on to celebrate my 40th birthday this summer.

So last weekend we hit the road out of London and rode to Paris. And we made it in under 24 hours too, having a brilliant time along the way.
I've shared more details about our trip, routes, experiences, kit list and more on a dedicated page at www.simonwakeman.com/london-to-paris-by-bike-in-24-hours/.
If you'd like to know more details about cycling from London to Paris in under 24 hours, drop me a line.
The experience has certainly got me thinking about next year's cycling challenge - it's amazing what you can pack into 24 hours on your bike.

#### Looking back at the CIPR Northern Conference
Yesterday I was up in Newcastle presenting at the CIPR Northern Conference about Medway Council's Mixit Podcast (slides and notes here).   As well as my presentation I stayed around for the morning of the conference, including the keynotes from Graham Goodkind (Frank PR) and Paul Corley (GMTV) and an interesting workshop on PR for arts with Claire Byers (BALTIC) and Diane Green (NewcastleGateshead Initiative).   Paul's keynote focussed on media regionality, and how digital technology is breathing new life into regional content delivered through the internet. He put forward the view that localised television content and the compelling power of localised advertising will work together to bring about innovative localised media services. Unfortunately I had to catch a flight so missed the afternoon session, including Stephen Davies' workshop on online PR. I really enjoyed the whole experience, and particularly finding out about PR in the north-east and meeting new people including Claire Byers (Director of Communications, BALTIC), Liz Lewis-Jones (CIPR President-Elect) and Laurel Hetherington (Laurel Hetherington Associates). It was, of course, also nice to catch up with familiar faces Andy and Nicky (Don't Panic) and Stephen Davies too. [tags]CIPR, Chartered+Institute+of+Public+relations, mixit, medway+council, podcast, newcastle, don't+panic, BALTIC, claire+byers, laurel+hetherington, liz+lewis-jones, stephen+davies, nicky+wake, andy+wake[/tags]

#### Looking for a marketer for the team at Medway
We've got a vacancy in the Communications and Marketing team at Medway Council - for a Senior Communications Officer (Marketing).
It's a two year contract role to help plan and deliver the council’s marketing programmes on behalf of council service areas.
You'll be able to conceive and deliver high quality marketing programmes as well as providing marketing advice and support to council services.
Ideally you will have/ be:

	A degree in Marketing or equivalent (or relevant experience)
	A CIM Professional Diploma in Marketing (or IDM equivalent)
	Experience of developing marketing campaigns/initiatives from concept to implementation
	Experience of using a range of offline and online marketing techniques in the delivery of marketing campaigns
	Experience of using a website content management system
	Experience of working in a busy marketing environment with multiple projects at the same time
	Experience of monitoring budgets
	Demonstrable experience of using Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint
	Experience of client / account management
	Experience of proofreading and checking to a set styleguide

The deadline for applications is approaching fast - next Friday, 6 January 2012.
You can read more and apply online here.

#### Looking for direct marketers
We've just completed a restructure of Medway Council's communications team to help us focus on the marketing and PR challenges that we have. One area we're really committed to improving is our direct marketing. We want to understand the council's customers better - while some of our services, like waste collection and recycling, are universal, many require a more targetted approach to marketing.  Our leisure centres, golf courses, theatres, festivals and events are just some of the areas that will benefit from better direct marketing and customer data analysis. We've created two new jobs to help do this, and are now recruiting for a Direct and Digital Marketing Manager and a Marketing Data Analyst. The manager job will be responsible for a small team that will deliver direct marketing, email and SMS marketing, data analysis, as well as being responsible for managing and developing the council's portfolio of websites. The data analyst will be heavily involved in developing a customer segmentation and profiling system as well as overseeing marketing data quality and producing analysis reports to support the work of the marketing team. More details are available on the council's website:  Direct and Digital Marketing Manager Marketing Data Analyst Closing date for applications for both roles is Friday, 11 July.

#### Looking for great designers
Building a team is hard. Building a great team is harder.
But that journey always starts by hiring the right people.
At Deeson we're on a sustainable path to grow the business, and right now we're looking for designers (as well as experienced Drupal developers and solutions architects).
With the arrival of a talented new Creative Director last month, I'm now looking to grow our creative firepower as an agency.
We've reinvented our discovery stage on digital projects to put creativity right in the centre of the way we solve problems for our clients using digital technology.
To help roll this out we need great people to join us as designers.
Find out more about how designers at Deeson work in Andrew's blog post.
While we're a distributed agency with homes in London and Canterbury, our designers are physically located in London (Angel) and Canterbury so you'd be based in one of these places.
We work hard to foster an agency culture that allows our team to do their best work and recognises that everyone has a life outside work as well as a working life.
For a bit more about our culture check out MD Tim's blog post and presentation, what our team members say, and some information on the benefits everyone gets.

#### Looking for UK local government communicators
I'm looking at the role of social media in local government communications as part of my CIPR Diploma research project. More information about my project and work-in-progress is on my wiki.
One of the research methods I'm using is a questionnaire that is aimed at communicators working in local government in the UK. If this is you I'd be very grateful if you took five minutes to complete my questionnaire - you can find it here.
If you know anyone who fits the bill, please do point them in the direction of the questionnaire.
I'll be making the research findings available to all participants so they get something useful back from their input, plus of course I'll publish the project findings on my blog once the final report has been marked.

#### Making connections with social media
Social media is all about making connections. And yesterday once again I experienced this in real life.
I regularly listen to For Immediate Release - a twice weekly podcast presented by Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz. It's a great way to keep up-to-date on the latest developments in social media and learn from two extremely knowledgeable PR practictioners.
The show welcomes comments from listeners, and I occasionally send in an email or audio comment. Last week Shel read out one of my comments, in which I mentioned that I'm working on an exciting social media project for Medway Council which will deliver podcasts and video podcasts for niche audiences in Medway.
Shortly after the show was published I received an email from Libby Ranzetta. She'd heard my comment on the show, had found my website and was getting in touch about the public sector social media work I'm doing. Libby runs a consultancy that specialises in the impact of alcohol misuse and local alcohol strategy development. She works primarily with the public sector and is really keen to employ social media tools in this space.
We had a really interesting telephone conversation about what we're doing at Medway Council, and shared our respective experiences of some of the obstacles to using social media effectively in the public sector. Libby has been running a professional blog for more than a year now recently started a podcast aimed at alcohol misuse professionals in the UK.
This struck me as a great example of where social media is opening up communications channels to audiences that weren't previously viable - the niche of alcohol misuse professionals in the UK is fairly small, yet social media tools like blogs and podcasts are effective means to open up conversations with niche audiences like these.
The barriers to entry in socia media are very low and in fields where knowledge sharing is important, the two-way nature of social media can benefit everyone participating in the conversation.
It was great to make a public sector connection with Libby, and we've agreed to share our experiences and knowledge in the future as we both explore how social media can work effectively in the public sector.
And thanks FIR - a great example of social media in action.

#### Making the move to Wordpress
I have been running this website for around five years now. Over that time it's evolved from a few simple pages about marketing consultancy services into a much larger beast.
The first step away from flat HTML pages came in 2003 when I built the site using Textpattern. At the time I remember narrowing down the choice of system to use to Textpattern and Wordpress. They had very similar features and it was a close call between the two, but I plumped for Textpattern.
There wasn't too much of a learning curve with Textpattern, but before long I kept bumping up against limitations. Serving static pages as well as chronologically sequenced blog content was possible, but not as simple or intuitive as it could have been.
More recently I've spent a lot of time struggling with getting pings and trackbacks to work on my Textpattern installation for this site. It involves plug-ins, which increases the potential for problems and code errors. Eventually I have to admit I gave up, and started looking into alternative systems.
Having installed and test driven several alternatives I chose Wordpress. It handles non-chronological pages easily and includes trackbacks and pings out of the box. It will also handle multiple content areas on the same page, which was always a frustration with Textpattern. A site I found useful when evalutating potential new systems was www.opensourcecms.com.
I don't know exactly why this is, but compared to where Textpattern and Wordpress were when I initially went down the Textpattern route, there is now a much more obvious difference between the two. Wordpress seems much more rounded and complete, whereas Textpattern seems to have only inched forward in terms of functionality and user interface.
Migrating content over from Textpattern was as simple as running a built-in script, which moved the content without any errors. The template migration was quite straightforward - I merged the XHTML/CSS from my old Textpattern templates with code taken from the great Minimalist Sandbox template. I then went through all my old content and removed the Textile (although had I wanted to continue with Textile there's a plug-in available to run Textile in Wordpress).
So this site is now running on Wordpress instead of Textpattern. You won't notice much difference initially, although over time I will be delving into the Wordpress plug-in library to add new functionality to the site.
I haven't abandoned Textpattern altogether as I still have many client sites still running using it. However depending on my experience with this site, I may start migrating client sites as well. I will keep my Textpattern user manual going though, as it's useful resource that's downloaded regularly, and if it helps people who want to use Textpattern then that's a good thing.

#### Managing your personal brand
A post today on Duct Tape Marketing reminded me of a conversation I had with a colleague a few days ago about personal branding. We were talking about why I had a website and why I took the time to create it and blog regularly on it.
I started my website back in 2001. To be honest at that stage I didn't really have a clear idea what its purpose was, but it felt like the right thing to do at the early stage in my marketing career. It was primarily brochureware, or more accurately CV-ware.
Since then as my career has developed, I have continued to develop the site further. As the web has sped towards social media I've tried to evolve the site to reflect this trend and become an active participant in conversations about my professional interests.
Feedback from two companies who've recruited me indicated that they'd checked me out on Google and visited my website before my appointment. That was a pleasing validation of the time and effort of the time I'd put into the website and my personal brand.
It also made me very conscious that anything I post on my site, or indeed as comments on other peoples' sites needs to reflect my values and the level of professional standards that I aspire to in my career. As Harry notes anything that you write on the web could be seen and interpreted by potential clients or employees, so you need to be ensure the right brand messages are communicated.
The concept of a personal brand is nothing new. Back in 1997 an article by marketing guru Tom Peters for Fast Company talked about the concept of brands for individuals, and what they meant (thanks to Zoe for finding that little gem). The conversation has been continued by various bloggers since, including Robert Scoble and Krista Bradford. Dave Lorenzo has some great tips for promoting your personal brand as well.
When considering any brand there are three main facets to what drives brand perception:

	how the brand looks
	how it sounds (written and verbal)
	how it behaves

In my work with Enterprise IG these were the three basic things that made up brand delivery programmes. It sounds simple, and at that level it is, but the complex set of activities that underpin the three facets of brand isn't!
So what does a basic personal brand management programme consist of?
For me it involves a fairly simple, yet powerful, bunch of things that you can do to influence your personal brand, its awareness and its values:
How your personal brand looks
I guess the starting point is your appearance. I'm not going to offer any glib rules about what to where, as what's appropriate for one situation and one personal brand isn't for another.
But it's worth thinking about, as so many people don't. I've interviewed people who have worn inappropriate clothing for the job (both too formal and too scruffy), and while I did try to look beyond their appearance it did make me question why they'd chosen to wear what they did.
Also think about your online appearance. How does your website look? Does its appearance reflect the brand values you aspire to for your personal brand. I've redesigned my site several times as I've become clearer about my brand values and how I want to be perceived.
Online everyone starts off equal. So it's good to be able to differentiate yourself and stand out from the crowd. One thing I'll be doing soon is putting a decent picture of myself onto my website, probably onto the header so it is on every page. It will give my site a bit more personality - at the moment without it I think the site can look a bit flat.
How your personal brand sounds
It's simple - what you say, both in person and online. Make sure that what you say reflects the brand values you want. While this is fairly well practiced in the offline world, the transparency that the web and search gives means there's nowhere to hide.
If you post a comment to a blog which is nothing to do with your professional interests and think people who are potential employers and clients won't find it, you're wrong. Anything you put on the web will be found by someone, and therefore should be consistent with your personal brand values.
If I'm researching someone online the starting point is search tools, both general web search engines and blog search engines. I also look at citations and mentions on other sites, as well as content produced by the person themselves.
Make sure what you say is consistent wherever you write or say it. If you're inconsistent then it will show up - have your values and stick to them.
How you behave
It's obvious really - how you act/behave will affect what people think about you. This works in your professional and personal lives. So when you're online remember the way you are seen to behave will affect your personal brand. And as I've said before you never know who will see how you behave.
In reality this means adhering to the unspoken conventions of the online environment you're working in. If you flame someone badly without a reasoned justification then a potential client may well see it and wonder if you'd say something similar about them.
That's not to say you can't disagree with anyone on the web - just you need to do it in a way that's consistent with your personal brand values. Indeed if you want your behaviour to hold true to your personal brand values, then you need to be seen to disagree with something that you read and don't agree with - doing anything less could be seen as inconsistent. Just like people who sit in presentations nodding and agreeing with the presenter, then criticise them and question everything once they're out the door.
Personal branding is a really interesting area that's been pushed to the fore by social media and the transparency that it brings. Yet mainstream marketing and PR hasn't really addressed it to any significant degree. I find this surprising as your personal brand is probably the most important brand a marketer can manage.
Your personal brand can certainly be the most influential brand on your life and career path, so why don't more people who specialise in marketing (and brands) take a more strategic approach to managing their own brand? I guess it's the old quote from Robert Burton (Anatomy of Melancholy--Democritus to the Reader, 1887):
Him that makes shoes go barefoot himself.

#### Mark Borkowski on role of a publicist
Last Wednesday Heather Mills, estranged wife of Sir Paul McCartney, undertook a series of media interviews presumably designed to defend her own position against an almost universally hostile tabloid media in the UK.   She kicked off her day with a GMTV interview featuring a fair selection of claims, including comparisons between her treatment by the media and those experienced by Princess Diana and Kate McCann. This interview generated subsequent coverage itself in other news outlets throughout the day. During the day it also emerged that she had parted company with her publicist, Phil Hall, over a disagreement on PR strategy. Basically it seems he didn't want her to take the GMTV approach, advising her to "keep your head down and let's wait until the divorce is over, and then rebuild your career ", while she wanted to go public as she eventually did. I've always been interested in the role of publicists in managing celebrity reputations. While much of their work is generating coverage for their clients, publicists, probably more than any other PR practitioners, do much of their work behind the scenes keeping clients away from the media and managing reputations skilfully. If you want a really interesting insight into this, it's worth checking out this post on publicist Mark Borkowski's blog. Mark talks in depth about the Heather Mills GMTV meltdown and the role of a publicist when dealing with a client in that kind of situation. [tags]heather+mills, GMTV, mark+borkowski[/tags]

#### Marketers more aware of social media?
My career background means I have one foot in the marketing profession and one foot in the public relations profession, with a good understanding of the digital medium as well.
So it's been interesting to watch how each professional group has adopted social media as a tool for communicating. From my point of view PR professionals have adopted social media much quicker than their marketing counterparts.
While there's always much crossover between marketing and PR as they're such close disciplines, there seem to be more PR professionals blogging, podcasting and generally adopting social media.
Certainly it seems to be PR agencies who are promoting the medium to their clients most. There are certainly less mainstream marketing and advertising agencies using social media as a marketing tool - and when they are it's often as a small pilot as an add-on to a large mainstream campaign.
However I get the sense things are changing. Last week Marketing magazine in the UK carried a front page lead about how Coca-Cola will develop a social networking community around its new deal with Apple. The original Marketing story is here (and here, here and here).
This week's front page lead in Marketing magazine is again about social media. This time it concerns how the Conservative Party (UK's main political opposition) is launching a website to encourage social networking as a discussion around key social and political issues. The site will launch later in 2006 and will be developed by Rubber Republic.
And then reading on inside, Marketing magazine is launching a dedicated digital section for the first time. Good stuff! And then on page 13 Andrew Walmsley from i-level has his first regular digital column and it covers virtual worlds like Second Life, Whyville, Toontown and There. While I don't agree with all the points Andrew makes in his column, it's great to see the profile of social media rising among marketers.
It'll be interesting to see if the increased coverage of social media in the marketing press marks the start of the adoption of social media by mainstream marketers. They have some ground to make up on their public relations colleagues, but the opportunities to leverage social media in marketing are huge so there could be some interesting projects ahead.

#### Marketers need digital experience to get on
Full mix experience in marketing used to mean knowing what you're doing both above and below the line. Yet now, to be a full mix marketer you need to know how to manage and execute digital campaigns properly.
Proof of this comes in the shape of a report showing that online advertising is nearly as big as offline advertising, and is likely to overtake offline advertising sometime this year.
bq. Total UK online advertising expenditure in 2005 grew by 65.6 per cent to £1.4 billion to take the sector’s market share to 7.8 per cent, research by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Internet Advertising Bureau, the trade body for online advertising, showed. At £1.4 billion, online advertising expenditure is almost three quarters the size of national newspaper advertising, which was worth £1.9 billion in 2005.
This  development  has  been  well  picked  up by the  blogosphere  (in particular Open and Stuart Bruce), but what does it really mean for a marketer's career.
Being a generalist or all-round marketer means you have to have real experience in delivering digital campaigns, yet many digital marketing roles are purely digital. Marketers without digital experience working in generalist roles will have to get digital experience to get on.
The next step for the generalist marketer who knows how to run a digital campaign is to be able to integrate a campaign offline and online, both in terms of strategy and creative.
Marketing employers will need to know what to look for on potential marketing employee's CVs. I know what I'd look for - good solid experience of offline and online marketing, backed up by a reliable academic qualification such as CIM or IDM. Specific digital qualifications, such as the IDM Diploma in Direct and Interactive Marketing, while still relatively new will grow in value over the coming years.

#### Marketers show commitment to online marketing
New Media Age today reports evidence that online marketing continues to grow as part of the marketing mix.
The article reports that the proportion of marketers surveyed spending over a quarter of their marketing budgets online increased by 13% to 40% between 2005 and 2006.
Just 27% of people surveyed spent less than 10% of their marketing budget online, compared to 56% last year.

#### Marketing and Google Notebook
Google Notebook is a great little tool - it allows you to clip information you find on the web and store it in a central notebook.
Combined with the browser extension it makes collecting and storing snippets of information from the web very easy. You can publish your notebook to the world as a web page, or just share it with selected collaborators.
Here are just a few ways marketers could take advantage of this tool:

	Competitor research - clip key information or news stories about your competitors and share it regularly with your team
Email marketing - when you get marketing emails that're really good and worth keeping, clip them to use as a case study in the future (and yes I also do this for the really bad ones too!)
Create RSS feeds to share your notes with your colleagues or customers (tip: use a web to RSS tool like Feed43)
	Keeping a watch - use the notebook search to see what other people are clipping about you or your company

What other ways can you think of for marketers to use Google Notebook?

#### Marketing and PR - two views on social media
Last week's UK Marketing Week magazine marked a moment of truth for me about how the marketing and PR professions each view social media.
The magazine's cover story, titled "Bubble and strife?" focusses whether the internet industry is heading for another downturn, in the same vein as the dotcom bubble which burst so spectacularly in the 1990s.
The interesting thing for me is that the article's main discussion is about advertising and converting clickthroughs to sales. The editorial by Dominic Dudley in the Marketing Week Interactive supplement continues along the same theme - the value of social media sites to marketers is in the large traffic volumes they attract rather than the opportunity to engage with users.
There's been much discussion in the PR community, particularly among Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) members, about what PR professionals need to do to position social media as a tool for public relations.
I've always believed that public relations professionals can become the respected experts in the use of social media in communications. And having read Marketing Week last week I'm even clearer about this.
I'm going to generalise now, but my impression is that the marketing community sees social media websites as being an important place to advertise, because of the large volumes of users who see the adverts, particularly among the hard-to-reach young audiences.
From what I see happening, and the coverage in the marketing press in the UK, this is about as much as the marketing community gets involved with social media. Of course there are companies or organisations where the marketing people are employing social media tools (blogs, podcasts, social networking etc), but more often than not the apparent value to the marketer of doing this is in advertising clicks or data collection.
Marketers don't appear to place much value on the relationships that are inherent in social media, and the communication networks that form so effectively.
In contrast public relations professionals place value of the relationships that social media can propagate, and are less concerned about the absolute numbers of users. Indeed PR professionals often suggest that with social media it's not about the number of readers or viewers you have, it's about who they are - a quantity versus quality trade-off.
One of the core competencies of public relations is being able to build relationships with discrete audiences, and use these relationships to shift perceptions. I can't see any other profession having a better claim on social media - the challenge now is for PR professionals who are using social media to push adoption beyond the community's early adopters.

#### Marketing and public relations students take note
I know there are plenty of marketing and public relations students that read this blog.
Sometimes they contact me to ask me questions and I'm always happy to help where I can. People helped me when I was studying for marketing and public relations qualifications, so I feel I should do the same.
I do freelance projects in marketing and public relations, but I WILL NOT write essays and projects for students, however much they offer to pay me.
I'm still astounded that students even ask - in my day as a student it never crossed anyone's mind to do this - the worst that happened was the odd bit of plagiarism with the odd paragraph being lifted from someone else's work.
I don't know if there's a spate of student deadlines coming up, but I've had a more than a handful of people contacting me about writing their assignments recently.
So if you're thinking of it, please don't bother.
It's unethical, it undermines the value of professional qualifications, and I won't do it.

#### Marketing and the customer experience
What do Harley Davidson, Starbucks and BT all have in common? Over the past two years, they have all launched customer experience projects to advance their product or service offerings. In this work, Harley Davidson realised that the lifestyle they were selling to middle aged men and women was as important as the motorcycle itself. Customers were buying the experience not just the product.
In this article I look at marketing and the customer experience and how marketers can benefit from the customer experience approach.
What is customer experience?
As with any new thinking there are plenty of definitions around. Most identify the customer experience as all the tangible touch points between the customer and the business. For example, the customer experience of booking a hotel would start when I see the advert in a national newspaper, continue when I phone to make a booking, include my stay at the hotel and end when I get home.
However, many observers have also identified a less tangible part – recognising the emotional reactions a customer has to a particular experience can really differentiate one experience from another.
Ask a customer to talk about a great experience and a poor experience. It is likely that they will use phrases like “I felt….”, “I got the feeling…” to describe the experience they had, because they are subconsciously referring to the emotional aspect of the experience as well as the tangible experience.
How does the customer experience concept fit with marketing?
Marketers have traditionally focussed on the presentational and sales aspects of service or product delivery. Over time the definition of marketing has broadened to encompass the concept of satisfying customers’ needs in a profitable and sustainable way.
The concept of customer experience fits well with this way of defining marketing. The marketing department, as one of the most customer aware areas of a business, is well placed to take on the customer experience challenge.
However, taking on the customer experience requires a broader set of competencies and skills than many narrower marketing roles demand. Champions of the customer experience need to be able to work across a business, always seeing delivery from the customer’s point of view. They need to have a deep rational and emotional understanding of customers and their differing contexts. This depth of understanding leads them to evaluate products and services from a truly customer focussed standpoint, both rationally and emotionally.
Why should I bother – it sounds really complicated?
Traditionally, businesses have been able to differentiate themselves from their competitors by a number of factors – often focussed around quality and pricing. However, once a market becomes commoditised with customers assuming that all products are equal and differentiating on price alone, businesses need to position their products differently in customers’ minds.
In the short term this can be achieved through brand repositioning, but the gain will be short lived if the experience being delivered doesn’t match the expectations set by the brand.
A long term approach is to focus on the customer experience – make your customer experience great and customers will recognise this. They probably will not do this consciously, but they will recognise that your business is different and become advocates.
So what should I do?
A good starting point is to undertake an evaluation of your product or service from a customer’s point of view. This work often throws up surprises for businesses about how they show up to their customers.
Then you need to try to understand the emotional aspect of the product or service you provide – what is the emotional range of customers at the start of your customer experience? Does your product or service enhance these emotions or work against them? How can you do things differently to enhance emotional reactions and differentiate yourself?
Who should be responsible for customer experience?
Earlier in this article, I said that marketing departments were well placed to carry the customer experience torch. However, that doesn’t mean they are the only people involved – every single person in your company has some influence on the customer experience. People who answer the phone have a very direct influence, whilst people in HR have a very different influence as they can control the type of people the business is hiring.
In larger organisations taking on the customer experience challenge often involves trying to change the business culture – many businesses become inwardly focussed over time and need to refocus themselves on the customer and the experiences that are being delivered. The scale of this cultural shift need not be monumental – small changes and gradual shifts are easier (and cheaper) to make happen and often are more sustainable.
How can I find out more?
Much of the work on customer experience happens in larger companies who have the resources to dedicate to customer experience programmes. I believe that the customer experience approach to marketing can benefit all customer-facing organisations – the implementation may differ but the core concept remains unchanged.

#### Marketing Apple-style
I've been heads-down in the books over the past fortnight. It's essay time on the CIPR Diploma which means two 3,000 word essays due in next week. I've managed to complete one so far; looking at why it's so difficult to define what public relations actually is. I've spent this evening catching up on emails and RSS feeds and a new e-book about Apple's approach to marketing caught my eye. It's written by a former Apple exec and provides a succinct five-point summary of how Apple approaches its marketing. You can download the e-book free here. [tags]apple, marketing+apple, marketing, steve+m+chazin[/tags]

#### Marketing executive vacancy at Medway Council
We've got a short term contract up for grabs in the marketing team at Medway Council.
We're looking for a self-motivated marketing executive to plan and deliver a range of marketing campaigns for us.
You'll need to be great at identifying appropriate marketing solutions, managing budgets and maintaining good relationships with council services, suppliers and colleagues.
The team has more than 170 marketing projects on the go at any one time, so you've got to be good at multi-tasking, planning and project management.
The job's on a three month contract to start as soon as possible. It's based in the council's offices at Gun Wharf, Chatham.
For more information give our acting Marketing Manager Charlotte Edwards a call on 01634 332449.
Salary is in the range £19,427 to £26,016 pro rata depending on experience. Closing date is 8 June so if you're interested check out the details and apply here.

#### Marketing executive wanted
We're looking for a marketing executive to join our team at Medway to fill a vacancy. Here's the lowdown:
We’re looking for a self-motivated marketing executive to plan and deliver a range of marketing campaigns.
It will be down to you to identify appropriate marketing solutions, manage budgets and maintain relationships across departments. Multi-tasking is a must in this fast-paced job, so good planning and project management skills are essential.
This is a demanding role, but with a solid marketing background, excellent communication skills and organisation that’s second to none, it’s a challenge you’ll be ready for.
It's a full-time permanent position. The salary range is £19,621 - £26,276 and the closing date is 12 March 2010.
For more information check out the posting here or contact Charlotte Edwards (01634 332449, charlotte.edwards@medway.gov.uk).

#### Marketing Genius book
Marketing magazine this week came with a promotional mini-book: The Little Book of Marketing Genius by Peter Fisk.
I've only had a quick read, but one bit really stood out:
Inspired marketers...
...See what everyone has seen...but think what nobody has thought
...Have the same skills and tools...but do what nobody  else has done
...Face identical challenges...but succeed like nobody has before
Spot on

#### Marketing Manager vacancy at Medway Council
We're recruiting for someone to join us on a fixed term contract until January 2011 to oversee a big PCT-funded marketing campaign during 2010.
The ambitious year-long initiative aims to help the citizens of Medway eat better, exercise more and live longer. This is a great opportunity to work on a campaign that will make a difference to real people.
The successful candidate will relish being given genuine autonomy – and will be happy to be accountable for his or her own campaigns, as well as being able to demonstrate a track record of achievement.
The role involves working closely with the marketing and public health teams. Ideally candidates will have some experience of marketing within the NHS / local government / not for profit sectors – or will possess a genuine personal interest in these sectors.
Candidates need to be capable all-round marketers and up to speed with the latest trends including social marketing, web 2.0 as well as more traditional marketing techniques.
For more information and to apply click here.
Salary is £31,439 - £40,338 per annum.
Closing date is 16 September, with interviews on 29 September.
Previous applicants need not reapply.

#### Marketing videos on the web
It's not like the internet's short of video content nowadays, but there's not all that much quality marketing video news and analysis that's available free. One site I spotted recently was marketingsuccess.tv. It describes itself as "a dedicated broadband tv channel for the marketing industry" and aims to "inspire, instruct and advise marketing professionals and students alike with a series of succinct, easily digestible video presentations from leading experts in the marketing industry." Having had a quick browse through and having watched a few videos, there's a good range of recognisable marketing "names" on the site talking about some of the big issues affecting marketing today. The site content is produced by a company called Global Broadband TV and seems to be backed by the Direct Marketing Association, the Institute of Sales Promotion and the British Promotional Merchandise Association as well as other commercial sponsors. The site seems to be part of a network of success.tv sites, including ManagementSuccess.tv and EventSuccess.tv. The videos are free to watch online. Monetisation on the site seems to comprise banner adverts with the option to buy the videos on DVD or download as podcasts coming soon.

#### Marketing Week feature: Because we’re worth it
Just a quick link this evening to a feature that I contributed to in the current issue of Marketing Week magazine.
It's an piece looking at the changing role of public relations in the marketing mix based on research by the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA).
A few of the highlights from the research:

Key statistics
46% Think PR is more valuable now than it was five years ago, while 36% believe it is just as valuable as it was five years ago. Only 6% say it is less valuable.
17% The proportion of businesses spending between £50,000 and £100,000 on PR per year; 42% say
they spend more on PR now than they did five years ago.
70% Say that PR and communications needs to better align delivery with wider business objectives, while 39% say the function needs to improve how it communicates with the board.
21% Of senior PR and communications professionals say they spend one to three hours with their chief executive every month. But 18% say they don’t spend any time with their CEO.
13% Say that their PR and communications function is doing an excellent job, while 73% say the department is doing a good or average job.
81% Believe PR and communications could be seen as a source of value to build and sustain reputation, which is considered highly important by78% of companies.

The full feature is well worth checking out here.

#### Marketing with interactive media
If you're looking for a comprehensive overview of the digital marketing space, then a good place to start is a new report from GroupM.
Called "Interaction - all change: marketing in addressable media", the report raises some interesting points about how internet protocol is changing marketing.
At 64 pages it's not a quick read, but it's worth downloading for the international data alone as well as the insightful and challenging narrative.
The full report is available for download from Simon Andrews' blog here.

#### Marketing yourself better
I've recently been involved with the recruitment of a number of marketing roles. Earlier this week I spent a good few hours shortlisting candidates on the basis of the application forms they had submitted.
The forms we used were pretty standard application forms, with a blank page at the back where candidates can write whatever they like to show why they are particularly suitable for the role.
Given all the roles had a heavy marketing focus, I was really disappointed with the responses that had been written.
A core skill in marketing is being able to clearly articulate features and benefits of a product. Very few applicants managed to do this when the features are their skills and experiences, and the benefit is the value those skills and experiences would add to my team.
A full job description and person specification was supplied with application, so it was pretty clear the what the features and benefits were that we were looking for from applicants.
Yet most focussed just on themselves - their features - without any reference to the characteristics we were specifically looking for.
And those that did manage to pick out some of their experience and skills that were particularly relevant to the roles often didn't really sell the benefits of their experience and skills.
I'd never really thought about CVs and job applications before as a marketing tool, but obviously they are just a way of marketing yourself. I'd bet most of the people who applied for my jobs hadn't thought of them in this way either.
So next time you're looking for new employment, try thinking about yourself as a product or service you're responsible for marketing. Apply the same disciplines and rigour to your applications or CVs as you would to your latest direct mail piece or press advert.
I'd guarantee you by doing that you'll stand out from the crowd for the right reasons and get results.

#### MarketingSherpa Marketing Wisdom for 2007
My feedreader is awash with predictions, tips and hints for surviving 2007 in the world of marketing and public relations.
I don't have the time to pay much attention to most, but the MarketingSherpa Marketing Wisdom PDF is definitely worth downloading.
It's a collection of 110 marketing tips produced by MarketingSherpa readers - covering a range of traditional and digital marketing fields. It's an easy read and is a great way to benefit from other people's experience in a number of different sectors.
Areas covered in the report include:

 	Email campaign segmentation tests and results
	Blogging, podcasting and mobile marketing tips
	Search marketing tactics and offline advertising
 Web site design and social networking done right
 
The PDF can be downloaded from the MarketingSherpa website.

#### McDonalds launches user generated advertising
Media Guardian brings news that McDonald's has launched a new advertising campaign, centred on a member of the public's experiences behind the scenes with the fast food giant.
Agency TBWA/London is behind the new campaign. Their executive creative director, Steve Henry, sums up the campaign's approach neatly:
Marketing in general is moving away from the hard sell, interruptive style of advertising into engagement and involvement. We offered professional guidance on art direction, all the people picked to be quality scouts were initially sceptics. We want to show a journey with open-minded people.
The campaign is pushing people to visit a dedicated McDonald's at www.makeyourmindup.co.uk where they can find out more.
Interestingly this website launched in May 2006 - delving into the website it looks like a good example of a corporation deliberately taking an open and transparent approach when faced with a major public relations challenge.
I particularly like the "your questions" section, where anyone can submit a question about anything about McDonald's. Questions are answered within a fortnight. I'd like to this section, but as the entire site is coded in Flash I can't link directly to it (a lesson there for agencies who still like creating entire websites in Flash!).
The real strength of this section is that the tone and content of many of the questions shows that they are genuine - many are directly critical. The responses to the questions are clear and don't try to hide any potentially difficult messages.
This approach to difficult questions is a big positive step for a company trying to improve its public perception. It'll be interesting to see how the new ad campaign works alongside the website.

#### Measuring authority with Technorati
Spotted a nice post on Twopointouch about Technorati's attempts to measure authority - using Technorati's link data to categorise blogs into four categories (A to D) based on authority.
You can check out your "ranking" here. To save anyone the hassle, I came out as C-list!
It's all a bit of fun really. Ian and Amy Gahran are absolutely right in their analysis of whether or not authority can really be measured by just looking at how many people link to you.
While it's headline-grabbing to use hard statistics to classify things, the truth is that authority isn't about the numbers. It's about the people in the audience you reach.
For example most PR bloggers will never reach a massive audience - but if they are read by a small number of people who are key PR players, then that gives them a fair degree of authority with their target audience.
Away from professional blogs, many people write family blogs to keep in touch with families spread throughout the world. The audience for these is tiny, as Technorati's authority measure would be. Yet in reality the blog's authority with the target audience is very high.
The old adage springs to mind - it's not really about the quantity, it's the quality that counts.

#### Measuring blog engagement - the Fedafi approach
One of the things I love about blogging is the opportunity to engage professionally with people I'd never otherwise have had the chance to.
Being a bit of a strategy freak as well I also like to be able to visualise intangible things through models or frameworks.
That's why the slide below from Gary Reid at Fedafi grabbed my attention.

#### Media and PR assistant vacancy
At Medway Council we have a vacancy within the Communications and Marketing team for a Media and PR Assistant.
The media and internal communications part of the team is responsible for the council's relations with print and broadcast media. The team handles hundreds of media enquiries each month as well as developing proactive campaigns to promote the council's work. As well as media relations the team is also responsible for public relations and internal communications with staff and elected members.
This role is all about supporting the work of the team - which includes writing news releases, responding to media enquiries, assisting with public relations activities as well developing new internal communications activities. There's also some monitoring coverage and production of basic reports about the team's work.
We're looking for someone with a relevant qualification (e.g. CIPR, journalism, degree) or have some experience working in a PR, media relations or publicity role (paid or work experience is ok).
The team is based in Chatham, Kent and salary is up to £21,412 (pending review). The location is easily reachable from London - the office is a seven minute walk from Chatham mainline station.
Full details of the role and online applications are available here.
Have been meaning to post this for a few days now, so apologies for the short closing date this Friday, 5 September.

#### Meet Andy Sawford from the Local Government Information Unit (LGiU)
In this week's email interview Andy Sawford, chief executive at the Local Government Information Unit (LGiU), gives us a really interesting perspective on some of the big issues facing local government today.
Andy joined the LGiU in March 2008 having previosuly worked in parliament, at the LGA, and from 2004 as a policy and public affairs consultant for local authorities and organisations such as the National Association of Local Councils and the Association of Police Authorities.
He blogs here and is also on Twitter as @andysawford.
You're Chief Executive at the Local Government Information Unit (LGiU) - what does LGiU do and why is it important to local government?
The LGiU is the leading national thinktank on local public services and local democracy, working through our Centre for Local Sustainability, Centre for Children’s Services, Centre for Service Transformation and Centre for Local Democracy.
We believe that democracy strengthens communities and improves services so that they better meet local needs and aspirations.   Working with our network of 40,000 councillors, council officers, and others involved in local public services, we provide policy information and share good practice, develop new policy ideas, and contribute to the national policy debate.
Our activities include organising over 100 events each year, publishing Cllr Magazine which is sent to 10,000 councillors, advising the All Party Local Government Group, and running major national networks such as the Childrens Services Network, our Local Economies Network and Carbon Trading Councils.
In July 2008 we were voted ‘Thinktank of the Year’ in the national policy and public affairs awards.
Can you tell us a bit more about your career before you joined LGiU?
I joined the LGiU in March 2008 as Chief Executive. My previous experience includes working in parliament and at the LGA and from 2004 as a policy and public affairs consultant for numerous local authorities and organisations such as the National Association of Local Councils and the Association of Police Authorities.
In 2005 I led the establishment of the All Party Parliamentary Local Government Group to promote improved dialogue between local and national politicians, and make an impact in debates on key issues, such as the group's major inquiries on the role of councillors (2007), the future of older people's services (2008) and the current inquiry on localising criminal justice.
What's the biggest challenge facing local government in the UK right now?
That’s a big question. Local councils right now are trying to keep all the balls in the air in terms of delivering good local public services, whilst also focusing on what they can do to support their communities through the recession.
Part of the work councils are doing in relation to the recession is making sure they are delivering good value, and getting to grips with the financial squeeze that is already biting, and that will have a major impact over the next decade.
And what does that mean for council communicators?
You have to keep doing what you’ve always done but do it better within ever tighter resources, which means finding new ways of doing things.
An example is how some councils, like Essex and Westminster CC are providing their comms services to other councils in a way that helps the client council, supports the overall improvement and reputation of local government and generates income and develops the capacity of the provider council.
Another major development, which you are leading the field in Simon, is around social networking and how you harness that.  I am a big fan of Twitter and invite anyone reading this to follow my regular updates there.
On the economy specifically, it is important for comms teams to be tuned in to how the council and your elected members are trying to support the community and make sure you effectively get the message out, particularly if it is a new service, or where timing is key.
A good example is the investment that councils are making in credit unions, to help people manage their finances, and crucially to stop the loan sharks.  It is a great idea but to be successful it needs effective communications so that people know what help is available.  In this case you need to get a message across particularly to the more vulnerable, and perhaps harder to reach members of your communities, and you really need to work with the credit unions and local voluntary organisations, community and religious groups.
That means innovation and greater collaboration, and not just of the new media kind, because in this example you are probably not targeting the Facebook and Twitter users.
Genuinely empowering residents at a time when people are less concerned than ever with local democracy is a challenge. What do councils need to do to better engage citizens in policy development and effective service delivery?
I don’t accept the premise that people are less concerned with local democracy because as councils are getting more ambitious and starting to innovate around the role that they play, such as Essex’s work on post offices, people are going to take more interest.
We’ve seen people, both at a local level and the national political parties, looking to local democracy as one of the ways forward from the current political malaise around the MPs expenses scandals.  Whitehall has to get over the fear of the postcode lottery and accept that local diversity in service provision exists already and that it can be a very positive thing if the diversity reflects local needs and the choices that people make.
I want to see us moving towards a new approach where local people, with and through their elected representatives, get much more say over how local services, particularly policing and healthcare, are run, rather than the situation now where Whitehall is in charge to a large extent.
As we move to give people more say, and I’m not talking about ‘consultation’ which unfortunately has become a bit discredited, we need to find new ways of giving people the information and the appropriate opportunities in the decision making process, to register their views.
It isn’t right to be prescriptive about how you do this in terms of what combination of ideas such as Citizen’s Panels, petitions, public meetings, Councillor surgeries, social networking, referendums, works best because I have seen good and bad examples of all these techniques.
One thing that you have to be consistent about though is making sure that elected members are central to your approach to getting the public engaged.
Comprehensive Area Assessments (CAA) mean councils need to work even more closely with local public sector partners. Where has this made a difference to the way local public sector organisations deliver communications?
In the area I live I don’t see a lot of evidence of effective ‘joined up’ communications from the various local public sector organisations.  CAA is being driven by strategic and senior connections in the public sector organisations and the collaboration between teams of staff in those organisations is going to follow on, particularly where there is a clear benefit to this in delivering services.
The rationale for more effective collaboration in comms is clear but it will mean setting aside some of the normal rules of engagement, such as the drive to get maximum recognition and credit for your organisation, particularly for councils where there is a political element to this.
What advice would you give a young communicator thinking about working in the local public sector?
Do it.  Public sector comms is going to have to keep innovating and new people coming in should have lots of scope and lots of fun.   It depends of course what kind of person you are and what motivates you, but I say to my team all the time that we are there to change the world.  There should be a feelgood element to working in the public sector because you are trying to help improve your community and improve people’s lives.
Is there anything else you'd like to add?
There is a major comms implication from the government’s new legislating putting on councils a “Duty to promote democracy” and a “Duty to involve”.
Whilst I don’t think this kind of legislation is really necessary, of course it is right that councils inform and involve the public in the process of democracy.  What I would particularly urge public sector comms to do is make sure you put the politicians and those in a governance role in organisations such as police authorites and PCTs to the fore in your communications, to increase the connection between the public and local decision makers.

#### Meet David Holdstock, London Borough of Hillingdon
In this week's interview David Holdstock tells us more about his work in the Corporate Communications team at the London Borough of Hillingdon.
As a member of the council’s corporate management team, David heads a team that provides the professional lead on reputation management, public relations, internal communications, publications, marketing, design, consultation and e-communications.
David's team is currently the Good Communications awards PR team of the year and council of the year.
What's your current job and what does it involve? What are you  responsible for?
The day job is Head of Corporate Communications at the London Borough of Hillingdon.  I am responsible for the strategic management of the council's communications and engagement with staff and residents.
I am also national chair of LGCOMMUNICATIONS, the professional body for council communicators aimed at raising the standard of council communications.
How did you end up doing this role? 
I previously worked in all the communications teams at the Metropolitan Police Service and as head of communications at Slough Borough Council.  I got into communications by starting in the internal communications and parliamentary briefing unit at New Scotland Yard and developing my skills from there.
Can you tell us about a project or campaign you've worked on that  you're really proud of?
The UK's first anti-terrorism awareness campaign.  Following the Docklands bomb in 1996,  we launched a year-long campaign aimed at raising awareness and protecting people across the UK.  The results were very successful and I am sure helped to save lives - no better measurement than that.
Tell us a bit more about Hillingdon - what are the council's priorities for the area?
Our priorities, I guess like most councils are those which our residents put at the top of their list - the environment and community safety.  We also have initiatives aimed specifically at our older and younger residents.
What do you think is the biggest challenge facing local government   communications today?
The current economic climate is very challenging but a real opportunity for councils to demonstrate their community leadership role and how we are delivering high quality value for money services.
How is the new comprehensive area assessment (CAA) process changing the way your council communicates?
We are now working much more closely with communications colleagues from our partners - police, health, university, college and voluntary sector.  It's in all our interests to communicate effectively as a partnership.
How is the growth of social media affecting your job/team?
It's actually quite an exciting time - we are trying to embrace new media to support the way we communicate with our residents.
What advice would you have for a young PR professional wanting to work in public sector communications?
Enthusiasm is everything - get as much experience as you can, volunteer for everything as it will be you adding to your CV and not someone else.
Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Working in public sector communications is something I would recommend to all PR professionals - try it and you never know, you might just stay.

Next week it's the turn of John Shewell from Brighton & Hove City Council to tell us more about his role - I'm particularly looking forward to this as Brighton & Hove is a unitary council that's very similar to Medway in terms of population size and whose communications and branding I always admire when we're visiting Brighton.

#### Meet John Shewell from Brighton & Hove City Council
This week we meet John Shewell, Head of Corporate Communications at Brighton & Hove City Council. His interview gives a really interesting insight into the work of a senior communicator within a unitary council in southern England.   John makes some interesting observations about how the new comprehensive area assessment will lead to changes in the way council communicators deliver campaigns, as well as giving an insight into how Brighton & Hove City Council is integrating social media into its communications mix.  What's your current job and what does it involve? What are you responsible for?  I am the head of corporate communications at Brighton & Hove City Council. My role basically boils down to promoting and defending the reputation of the council. This means providing advice to the leadership of the organisation in terms of managing the council's reputation, setting out a clear direction for building the council's reputation, and making sure that the communications team remains focused on this purpose. I am ultimately responsible for my team's actions to deliver a successful outcome, and this means having an effective strategy that drives performance.   I also regularly meet with the chief executive and leader to discuss how the organisation is moving and agree a course of action.  In terms of operational responsibility, I have just restructured the team and I'm currently working on centralising communications activity. The new structure will see five units merged into three - media relations, marketing-communications and design services; and all three have a head of service who report to me. I've just recruited a former director of Text100 (a global comms agency) to be our new head of marketing, so I'm really looking forward to the next six to 12-months.  How did you end up doing this role?   I applied for the head of corporate communications at Brighton & Hove City Council after seeing it advertised in the Guardian back in November 2007. Before this role, I was the campaigns & reputation manager at the London Borough of Sutton (where I worked for over four years) and led on several major campaigns - one of which I won the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (Local Public Sector) award for best campaign on a shoestring. Before LB Sutton I worked in the private sector. I was at Golley Slater where I worked on clients such as the Army, which was a great experience. And before GS I worked at one of Australia's largest public affairs agencies called Brumfield Bird & Sandford where I worked on clients in the banking sector, regional and national government, property and also dipped my toes in the lobbying arena. I learnt a lot at BBS and my mentor there was a chap by the name of Paul Turner who was a former political advisor and he taught me a lot (including the art of 'Australian diplomacy'). But I'd have to say that my biggest inspiration in terms of career support was Paul Martin, the current chief executive at LB Sutton. I wouldn't be where I am today without his support and continued guidance, and he's such a great advocate for local government. He's probably the main reason why I've continued working in local government because he inspired me to make a difference.  I studied two degrees - Bachelor of Arts (majoring in media studies) and Bachelor of Business at the Queensland University of Technology - during this time I worked for Nestle in their marketing department and then at Brisbane City Council.   I currently sit on the management committee of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations - Local Public Sector Group and I'm also a full member of the CIPR.  Can you tell us about a project or campaign you've worked on that you're really proud of?  I'd have to say that the project that I'm really proud of was getting Brighton & Hove City Council to agree their vision - 'city of opportunity'. When I started at Brighton & Hove CC they didn't have one clear vision and I basically pestered them to develop one. Nine months later and we had one and by the time my first 12-months came round we were signing it off. So that's been a huge achievement and one that I'm especially proud of.  A close second would be the 'Take Part Take Pride' campaign that I ran for LB Sutton. I created this campaign to fit the council's vision but was given virtually no money to run it. I had to leverage support from partners, build word of mouth and actually get out and about selling the concept to colleagues to get them to back it. In the end, we got hundreds of local residents participating in the event and lots of good coverage. The following year BBC London radio came along and held live broadcasts over three days to promote the event. I was mentally and physically drained as I did virtually the whole lot from strategy to execution - and only with a handful of others pitching in - but it showed me that you can deliver quite a lot with a bit of imagination and hard work. The icing was winning the CIPR award for it.  Tell us a bit about Brighton & Hove - what are the council's priorities?  Brighton & Hove is a fantastic city with an established place brand built on fun, festival, diversity, creativity, architectural legacy and cosmopolitan free-thinking lifestyle. It's a city full of ideas and passionate people. There are about 260,000 people living in the city and we’ve got one of the most highly qualified adult populations in the country with nearly half the working age population having the equivalent of a degree or higher. The city has 32,000 students at two universities. This means our residents are very much interested in current affairs and take an active interest in their community, which the council plays an important role.   Our top priority is steering the city through the recession - we're doing everything we can to shield the city from the recession and position the city to benefit when we come out of it. We've been running a very successful campaign called 'Be Local. Buy Local' (www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/buylocal) and our two initial objectives were to get 100 businesses signed up to the campaign and 1000 residents backing it by March of this year. I'm pleased to say that we exceeded those targets and the campaign is really taking a life of its own now. If you walk around parts of the city all you will see in shop windows the Be Local. Buy Local campaign stickers - the response has been huge and the media have lapped it up. Polly Toynbee wrote to us congratulating our efforts, so we're really pleased with the way it's going.  What do you think is the biggest challenge facing local government?  I think the single biggest issue facing local government is the economic situation. The government has decided to spend its way out of this recession and to do that it has borrowed heavily, which is creating a budget deficit of immense proportions. The FT reported recently that because of rising real spending on debt interest payments, tax credits and social security benefits, a freeze will mean real cuts on schools, hospitals and other politically sensitive programmes. Failing that, taxes will have to rise by an average of £1,250 each family for the next six to eight years. The other option is to cut public spending. Personally, I can't see the public agreeing to a tax rise in these tough times and independent surveys show that there is no appetite for further stimulus measures. This means local government can expect an even greater tightening of the public purse; therefore we've got to prepare for this now by being more innovative and disciplined; and we've got to get used to making some very tough choic
es.   How is the new comprehensive area assessment (CAA) process changing the way your council communicates?    Brighton & Hove City Council has an excellent track record of working with other partners - it's famous for being collaborative - and given that we're a city that attracts a lot of people, we've already been working with a number of partners to promote the city. We just got our Place Survey results back and we did really well on nearly all our indicators and in some instances we're bucking the national trend. So I think we're well placed to benefit from the CAA, but I do think we will need to work a lot more closely with our local partners in terms of comms planning and coordination to promote the place. I'm currently setting up a working group with all the Local Strategic Partners' heads of comms to discuss how we can work together. I think the next logical step is for more 'place communications' with partners, which the local authority should be taking the leadership role.  How is the growth of social media affecting your job/team?  Immensely. Social media is all around us now and in a city like Brighton & Hove in which the digital industry is regarded as amongst the best in Europe we just cannot hide our heads in the sand. We've dipped out toes in the water with twitter, facebook and youtube - but to be honest we're a long way from cracking it. We've just drafted an online marketing-communications strategy which will enable us to exploit social media in a more focussed and authentic way. One of the key issues we've got to get to grips with is that the 'old' model of funnelling information through a 'mediator' (journalist) is gone and now we're into a 'mashed up' style of comms in which the online community has the same, if not more, access to information that we do. The online community (which is just about everyone today) doesn't have to rely on the top-down model of comms anymore - witness some of the stories that have broken recently and look where they came from - bloggers! You don't really need to read the papers to find out the latest news anymore, you can follow bloggers and Twitter is going to make this even more interesting. News will be constant and more democratic. For councils (and any organisation for that matter) this is a huge challenge that we've got to get to grips with now.   At the council we're in the process of mapping out our social media eco-system in the city to find out where people go, what they talk about and what influences them so we can start having a more meaningful dialogue with them. This also means that everyone in the team must understand social media and how to create conversations on the likes of Twitter etc. We'll be training everyone from media officers to internal comms on social media. We're also exploring how we can use social media as part of our internal communications activity. The best thing about social media is that it's about two-way communications, which is what we should always be aiming for.  What advice would you have for young PR professionals wanting to work in the public sector?  Do it. The public sector is a great place to work. Having worked in both private and public sector, I can definitely say that the public sector is one of the most challenging and satisfying places to work. But it needs more talented and ambitious young people who want to make a difference - particularly to the lives of people and the way their organisations work. I'd also suggest they join the Chartered Institute of Public Relations' Local Public Sector Group so they can benefit from some excellent training like 'second steps' which helps young PR professionals understand the 'politics' of public sector better.  Anything else you'd like to add?  I am an Australian who arrived in the UK in 2001. I live with my partner and three year old son in Brighton. I also sit on the management committee of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (Local Public Sector Group). 

Next week it's the turn of Stephen Parkinson from Preston City Council to tell us more about his work. If you work in public sector communications and would like to be featured in my weekly interview blog, drop me a line or find me on Twitter.

#### Meet Sarah Mainprize from North East Lincolnshire Council
This week's email interview is with Sarah Mainprize, Head of communications and marketing for North East Lincolnshire Council. She's had an interesting career to date, spanning agency-side public relations, journalism, public sector comms as well as a nice selection of degrees and qualifications too.
What are you responsible for at the council?
I look after media relations, internal communications including the monthly staff magazine, corporate marketing and design, and our monthly newspaper for residents.
How did you end up doing this role? 
I've previously worked for another local authority for three years, a regional newspaper for seven years, and a PR agency.
To be honest it was down to chance that a local government comms opportunity arose at a time when I was developing my academic management knowledge and wanted to put my new skills into practice in a different kind of role. Qualifications include an MBA, a CAM diploma in marketing communications and a degree in law and English literature.
Can you tell us about a project or campaign you've worked on that you're really proud of?
Well I've done a fair bit of work on developing the content and presentation of the civic publications at two local authorities, and was certainly very pleased by increased readership and winning national awards!
Council newspapers and magazines have taken a bit of a battering recently with the national debate about their impact on local newspapers, but I firmly believe direct communications with residents is essential and complements the media offering.
Tell us a bit more about North East Lincolnshire - what are the council's priorities for the area?
The council has just launched it's new three-year vision for the borough. The aims are to improve the quality of the built and natural environment; strengthen the local economy; create a safer and more secure area; improve health and wellbeing and be a well managed, top performing council.

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing local government communications today?
Having a measurable impact on those all-important satisfaction ratings, which we know are linked to people feeling well informed. And possibly facing the shadow of the axe as council purse strings are pulled ever tighter in the next few years.
How is the new comprehensive area assessment (CAA) process changing the way your council communicates?
We need to get better at measuring the outcomes of our communications rather than just our outputs, and we'll need to look at how we link in with other local agencies and organisations to improve co-ordination, consistency and value for money across the piece rather than in silos. Social media will have a key role to play too in terms of the CAA and the use of digital communications.
How is the growth of social media affecting your job/team?
We are dipping our toes in the waters and multi-media communications are built into one specific role within the team, but it's still very much unknown territory - however we are willing to explore!
What advice would you have for a young PR professional wanting to work in public sector communications?
Get some experience of working in the media to gain a good understanding of what makes a journalist tick, and be prepared to be multi-disciplined as many comms roles are becomingly increasingly broad - you may be writing news releases, working on employee engagement, devising an integrated marketing campaign or organising a major event.
Is there anything else you'd like to add?
I'm particularly interested in potential future developments for local government communications - as we move to area/place-based service delivery, will communications follow suit with a move away from corporate comms from different public sector organisations to a single voice and function?

#### Meet Stephen Parkinson from Preston City Council
This week's email interview is with Stephen Parkinson - he's been Head of Communications at Preston City Council since 2003. Stephen has improved internal and external communications at Preston culminating in winning three gold awards from LG Communications in 2007 including best A-Z, best environmental campaign and best district communications.  He is married with three children and enjoys running, squash, photography as well as being an avid supporter of Preston North End.  What's your current job and what does it involve? What are you responsible for?   Head of Communications – responsible for internal communications, external communications, media relations, website and new media, consultation, and supporting corporate projects and initiatives.  How did you end up doing this role?   By accident really.  I started my local government career in 1988 at Lancaster City Council as a YTS trainee working in the general office earning £25 a week! I then managed to get a full time position in committee administration and the council supported me with my studies enabling me to gain an ONC, HNC and professional qualifications in administration.  I worked my way up in administration and then in 1996 the council set up a dedicated Policy and Public Relations Section.  I was asked to help set up the section and I’ve never looked back, joining Preston in 2000 as Public Relations Officer and becoming Head of Communications in 2003. Administration has been a really good background for me – working with elected members in developing a political and PR antennae as well as having good organisational and writing skills.    Can you tell us about a project or campaign you've worked on that you're really proud of?   Winning three gold awards in 2007 from LG Communications, including best district communications is certainly a highlight but the stand out project is Preston’s successful bid for city status in 2002.  The Chief Executive asked me to lead project and it was wonderful experience.  We worked hard on getting the local community, businesses, key partners and the local media right behind the bid and that was one of our biggest strengths.  Looking back, it would be different now as new media and on-line would play a much bigger role in the bid than it did then.  Preston was a 25-1 shot to get city status, but we knew we had a strong, well supported bid and we were all absolutely thrilled when we won.    Tell us a bit more about Preston - what are the council's priorities for the area?  Preston is a great, vibrant, young city.  We have a wonderful community spirit and people from all different communities get on well together.  This is down in part to the University of Central Lancashire (sixth largest in the UK) which really helps with the vibrancy of the city.  The council’s main focus is on regeneration.  We have plans for a £700m city centre regeneration which would see Preston achieve its vision to offer an alternative city experience to Manchester and Liverpool.  What do you think is the biggest challenge facing local government communications today?   Getting heard, or getting the message over.  The proliferation of communication channels means it is harder for local government to get its message over.  People now have more choice over what they watch, listen and read and if you are not on their playlist then you will be anonymous. As communicators we have to use all forms of communication to reach out to people and also make what we say more relevant to people’s lives.  There is a lot of interest out their – the growth in grass roots activity and communications including residents and campaign groups, community blogs, and discussion forums means we have to reach out in new ways.  The days of relying on press releases and community magazines are over.  Whilst this is a challenge, it is also a real opportunity for councils to engage with people, address issues of concern in the community and work together.    How is the new comprehensive area assessment (CAA) process changing the way your council communicates?  It means we are more focused on outcomes, customer/community intelligence and public satisfaction.  This is a good thing – especially for communicators whose skills are needed to help councils successfully engage and have two way communications with citizens.  With the advent of new media too, it’s an exciting time to work in local government communications and as local government communicators, we are well placed to work with members, senior officers and the community to harness the potential of this change and improve the work, relevance and standing of local government within our communities.    How is the growth of social media affecting your job/team?  Massively.  We are using new media to communicate with people directly.  It’s a really powerfully tool and presents a whole host of new opportunities.  The sheer speed of communications in using Twitter and Facebook is amazing and gives us a platform to have a two way dialogue with people interested in Preston and the city as a whole.  We’ve recently updated our website www.preston.gov.uk to include blogs, discussion forums, even the ability to upload photos like Flickr which is popular too.  New media and social networking is a bit like having new tools in the toolbox – only they are “power tools” and really help you to do your job. It’s great for members too, to be able to connect with people and as local government communicators we are well placed to help the make the most of this great new technology.  The two way nature of social networking is great too as it allows you to engage and get feedback from people – helping you to improve what you do.  And, using social networking like Twitter of Facebook is free! Although to be effective, you do need to commit time resources to it.  What advice would you have for a young PR professional wanting to work in public sector communications?   Go for it.  It’s a varied and interesting career and you’ll meet all sorts of people.  Every day is different, bringing its own unique challenges. You need to be savvy to the sometimes conflicting needs and demands of members, the council, the community and the media!  All this keeps you interested and with new media there has never been a better time to join public sector communications and make a difference to the communities we serve.

If you work in public sector communications and would like to be featured in my weekly interview blog, drop me a line or find me on Twitter.

#### Meeting the public sector communications challenge
Increasingly I get the sense that communicators working across the public sector are feeling like a threatened group. While of course communicators aren't and shouldn't be immune to the impact of reducing public sector spending, I sense something broader causing unease in the profession.
I've believed for some years now that significant penetration of high speed internet access and the advent of the social web is changing the dynamics of communicating. That's a trend that's well established and to which public sector communicators cannot be blind.
That alone is a paradigm shift in how public sector communications should be planned and delivered. But the operating environment for communicators is also shifting rapidly in other ways.
At a tactical level the media and public mood is increasingly critical of public sector messages. Without careful planning, it's hard to avoid messages being caught up in a media filter where the focus falls on how much is being spent and a subjective judgement on whether this constitutes good value for money.
Since the election earlier this year, the national political context has changed significantly too. Yes, there's a focus on reducing spending and the looming CSR announcement on 20 October, but as well as that communicators and the organisations they work for are still trying to understand how they fit into the new model of the public sector and the concept of the Big Society.
Add into that the need to be alert to and respond to announcements from central government that hint at possible future policy directions and all considered the public sector communications environment is radically different from this time last year.
And all considered that's what presents the challenge to communicators. The real discussion now should be about how the profession responds to the challenge.
It's not enough to look back at examples of where public sector communications has made a contribution to the work of public sector organisations in the past. While this is valid and does help, we've got to acknowledge that this isn't enough.
We need to look forward and be part of the change in the public sector. Communicators need to understand the trajectory of the sector, and establish themselves as part of the delivery of the future direction of the sector.
We mustn't look back at the pre-2010 era as a golden age of public sector communications which has since passed with the removal of significant expenditure from the sector.
It's inevitable that reduced funding will change the nature of public sector communications and many traditional high cost communications activities will have to cease unless they can genuinely demonstrate robust return on investment.
But what public sector communicators need to do is continue to demonstrate the value of communications, not as an end in itself, but as an agent for making things better for the public. Where appropriate and wherever possible we should focus on making sure communications activities are inseparable from service delivery - an integral part of what's needed to deliver service to the public, rather than a high cost low return add-on.
However that's not enough. Communicators need to research and understand the government's thinking on the big society agenda. This "turning upside down" of the way that many parts of the public sector will work means communicators need to think about how they can act more as community enablers and facilitators.
Rather than seeing audience segments as groups "out there" with which we have to communicate and engage, it's easy to see future communicators playing an important enabling role in helping communities help themselves - through facilitating communications and brokering communications skills within those communities.
That's not to say that aspects of what public sector communicators now do won't continue in the future. Of course they will. But the pace and scope of change now is both a challenge and an opportunity for the profession.
My hope is that this doesn't lead to a bunker mentality among commicators - we have to learn, engage and participate actively in the future direction of public service. Without this I fear the perception of communications in the public sector as primarily an expensive "nice-to-have" could increasingly take hold. If that happens much of the genuine value and benefit that communications gives in public service will be lost.

#### Mixing customer experience, marketing and public relations
Google the term "customer experience" and you'll turn up more than 5million websites on the topic.
Yet taking the time to read through just a few of these may not give you a clear understanding of what customer experience is really about.
You'll find some really technical stuff about customer experience in software, information about user experience (a different, but related discipline), and if you're lucky some other gems like "X company improves customer experience through dynamic IP management" (yes, really).
While none of these are fundamentally wrong, for me they miss the point about customer experience.
Delivering a competent service or a functional product, whatever business you're in, won't differentiate you from your competitors. But if you can't do this properly, then you can't start to build the next level of customer experience, which is when real differentiation happens.
Real differentiation from customer experiences comes from playing with customers' emotions. The trick is to find those little emotional touchpoints that make a customer's day that little bit better or make them notice how well you're doing for them.
The challenge is to identify these and then work out how to build these into your day-to-day business, whether that's running a website, shop, call centre or consultancy. The principle is the same wherever.
The example I often quote is the airline Virgin Atlantic. Years ago they fundamentally changed the customer experience of watching films on a long flight. Until then airlines had always just seen films as a way to entertain passengers.
But Virgin realised that they could achieve differentiation through turning the usually mundane experience of watching a film on a flight into something more - by providing low-cost goodies normally associated with cinema-going (eg ice-cream, popcorn), they turned the film into a positive experience. They tapped into a positive emotion that was normally associated with going to the cinema - a pleasurable activity.
Mike Thomson gives another good example of how DHL does this over at the Duct Tape Marketing website.
So how does delivering an emotional element in customer experience link to marketing and public relations?
It's all about word of mouth. It's commonly accepted that word of mouth is one of the most powerful reputation influencers there is. People always trust other people more than companies or organisations. Yet it's also the most difficult public relations channel to use - how do you get other people to talk positively about you?
For me the answer is to actually give them something positive to talk about. It's surprising how many companies don't.
Find that emotional trigger in your customer experience and pull it. If you get it right then customers will soon start talking positively about you and word of mouth will be an important part of your marketing and public relations toolkit.

#### Mixing memories - Summer 1997
OK, this is completely off-topic, so if you're looking for my usual public sector communications and marketing content you should probably not bother to read on.
Back in my student days in Nottingham in the late 90's one of the things I got up to was a bit of DJing - anything from cheesy discos, student parties through to messing about on the decks at our house parties.
What reminded me of this was coming across a bag of old mixtapes this morning, and discovering a tape of my very first "real" live DJ gig. From memory it was a friend's private party held at Nottingham's Deluxe nightclub - scene of some of great clubbing nights out in Nottingham and where a lot of the big-name DJs played when they came to town. The tape's dated August 1997 and I remember being dead chuffed being able to play in the same DJ booth as some of the UK's best DJs (although obviously not at the same time).
I've just digitised the set on my laptop and cleaned up the tape hiss a bit - and then listened through the whole 90 or so minutes. The mixing varies from horrendous to passable.
The playlist seems to be mainly late 90's house and garage with a fair chunk of uplifting piano and vocal house in there too. Oh, and of course a bit of cheese and for some reason a bizarre vocal segment with a tune from a singer called Horse (it starts about 50 minutes in - thinking back I have no idea how or why I played that, although I suspect a bit of dutch courage for my debut nerves may have affected my judgement just ever so slightly!).
I know a few of you that read my blog share my enthusiasm for old school house, so if you want it the full MP3 is available to download here (mp3 format, 85MB).
But the best news was that in the same bag of tapes were all my proper mixtapes from real DJs - so now I have hours of old school house, garage and hardcore from the likes of Sasha, Digweed, Carl Cox, Graeme Park, Slipmatt, Easygroove, DiY, Tom Wainwright, Chris and James and Jeremy Healey. Plenty to keep me company on the many long runs I'll be doing over the next three months as I train for this year's London Marathon!

#### Mobile GPS location sharing with Yahoo! Fire Eagle and Map My Tracks
There's a real buzz around location-based services right now - the rapid increase in the number of GPS-enabled mobile phones and high speed data for mobiles are combining to open up all sorts of new opportunities for using location data in new and creative ways.
Yahoo! has spotted this - its Fire Eagle location sharing service has been in private beta for a while now, and today it's launched properly - check it out at fireeagle.yahoo.net.
Fire Eagle acts as a broker for location data - you can use a range of sources to update your location with Fire Eagle and then use the service to control which third-party services your location is then shared with.
On the surface this might not seem like a lot of functionality, but the potential for its use is huge - in the same way as the simplicity of Twitter has created a platform for sharing information in ways that go far beyond the pure functionality of the service itself.
At Map My Tracks we've been working hard to integrate our mobile GPS live tracking application with Fire Eagle. Map My Tracks users can now share their mobile location information free with Yahoo! Fire Eagle - from once per hour right up to every minute. This provides users with an easy real-time feed of their location that they can then use in whichever way they wish.
(disclosure: in case it's not obvious, Map My Tracks is a client of mine)

#### Mobile web presentation - Public Sector Forums conference
Today I've been at the Public Sector Forums event in Birmingham talking about mobile internet and local government.
Here are my slides from today in case they're of any use to anyone:
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: local+government mobile)

#### Monthnotes - April 2020
It was hard to know where to start this time around when writing my monthnotes, looking back over a month when we could only leave the house for essential shopping and daily exercise.

Thankfully family, friends and colleagues have stayed healthy so our main focus has been on continuing to learn and adjust in our new home-based lives.

One reflection I had as I rode my mountain bike through the April mud earlier this evening was about the nature of distributed work.

At Deeson, we set the agency up to enable team members to work remotely some years ago and so the transition to full-time home working in early March was pretty seamless. The tools were in place and team members were pretty used to location-independent working rhythms and cadence.

But one thing we have learnt this month is that the intensity of our work at the pace we deliver, while being fully home-based, is mentally demanding - much more so than when spending two or three days per week working from home, mixed up with some office time or days spent with clients.

For some people that, alongside the challenges of home life, has meant we've needed to support team members more than in normal times. We've worked hard to be a supportive employer and change some of our working practices to help as far as we can.

As we've watched the world around us adopt home-based work at an unprecedented pace, it's reinforced what we've learnt over the past few years - that home working isn't about recreating office-based interactions over video calls.

It's about finding fundamentally different ways to interact, communicate and collaborate to get work done. I liked this article which covers some useful themes on the different levels of distributed work.

Personally it's been a month of transitions at work. I've enjoyed seeing our new MD at Deeson - Sarah Harris - take on the role and make it her own. I continue to work closely with Sarah to help her thrive in the role, particularly given it's not the easiest time to take on leadership of a business.

I've spent time getting to know the team and the work at our conversational AI consultancy GreenShoot Labs. We're looking forward to launching new packages and services for specific market verticals over the next few months, building on the great client work that the team has already delivered for clients including BDO, Avaya, iPhysio and Brunel University.

Over the past couple of weeks I have also been getting into new projects working with colleagues across Deeson and GreenShoot Labs' parent company The Panoply.

It's a fascinating opportunity to help shape the direction of the group, with an initial focus on delivering a rebrand of the group and its businesses, helping define a cross-group marketing operating model, creating a shared back office finance team and launching two new businesses within the group.

My blog post reflecting on my leadership lessons has proved to be a popular article on my site and on LinkedIn. It covers the high level themes of Deeson's transformation to an agile, self-organising agency, including servant leadership, autonomy and psychological safety in teams.

I've had some great feedback and it's sparked some fascinating conversations about what leadership of self-organising autonomous teams really involves. 

As we head into May and there's an increasing focus on how countries move forward from the lockdown, I'm starting to think about what work looks like in the future and how the coronavirus lockdown experience might have changed the trajectory of workplace transformation.

The enforced trialling of homeworking will undoubtedly have accelerated the adoption of more distributed work, challenging the norms of office-based work in a way that couldn't have been envisaged a few months ago.

I suspect this will open up new opportunities for the use of collaborative workspaces, potentially shared on a timeshare-type basis - as well as substantially undermining business models of existing shared workplace operators and commercial landlords.

Teams and organisations will adjust the way they work to be more effective in fully distributed or mixed-location working. It'll be fascinating to see how the nature of work evolves given the combined challenges of phased exits from lockdown in parallel with the inevitable recessions that most economies are likely to experience.

#### Monthnotes - April 2021
It's interesting that the past month for me has been quite focussed on thinking about the future. Maybe it's the start of the financial year providing a planning cadence which forces forward planning or maybe it's that the UK's emergence from Covid-19 lockdown continued and I now have my first vaccination booked for next week.

Whatever's behind it, I look back at the past 30 days and realise I spent a lot of time looking forward. I led a strategic planning workshop for The Panoply senior team where we looked at the challenges we face and the opportunities that exist for us over the coming years. I enjoyed getting into some real detail on developing good strategy (I re-read my favourite strategy book in preparation).

It was also energising to see colleagues face to face and recognise it was the first time that this team has been all in the same room together. We're so conditioned to working together asynchronously and via video that it was really interesting to experience the richness and energy of in-person collaboration again.

Earlier this week we also announced that our trading during the year ended 31 March 2021 was strong and ahead of our recently upgraded expectations.

We're expecting our revenue to be not less than £51m (up 62% on the previous year) and adjusted EBITDA to be not less than £6.9m (up 79% on the previous year). Our like-for-like organic revenue growth exceeds our goal of 10-15% per year.

Alongside the financials, we were also able to confirm strong progress with our ESG commitments. Later this year we'll be reporting improvements in both diversity and inclusion statistics across The Panoply, as well as progress towards our commitment to be carbon neutral, including historic emissions.

To be able to deliver this performance against the backdrop of successive lockdowns and long term homeworking is a real testament to the dedication of the teams across the group and their commitment to our clients and the quality of work we deliver for them.

It was also great this month to see a new technology product emerge from The Panoply. OpenDialog is a genuinely unique conversational design platform targetted at conversational designers. It combines solid academic thinking about conversational interfaces with powerful cloud technology. We're really excited about this launch and the potential for the product. 

On a personal level I'm proud to have played a small part in its journey from Ronald Ashri's idea, through an in-house R&D project at Deeson in 2017, through to a standalone agency business in GreenShoot Labs and now a separate product business within The Panoply. But the kudos for reaching this milestone has to go to Ronald, his co-founder Tim Deeson and the current OpenDialog team for the long slog they've put in to get the product this far. 

It's also worth recognising that to enable a focus on the OpenDialog product, John Ennew and Antoine de la Gardette moved from GreenShoot Labs to sister Panoply business Manifesto to push on with delivering chat and voice-based projects at scale with the help of the wider Manifesto team. 

This split of agency services and product development has provided the clarity of mission for each that's needed to grow technology businesses at pace.

This is a good example of leadership effectiveness and where the less priorities and breadth of responsibilities that a leader has, the more effective their leadership can be.

This resonates with the concept of single-threaded leadership, popularised by Amazon and explored in detail by Colin Byar in Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon.

Considering this insight alongside organisational design led me to the realisation, obvious in hindsight, that traditional hierarchical organisational structures inherently lead to leadership complexity. 

The aggregation of accountability across a breadth of domains towards the top of the traditional organisational chart makes this inevitable. This complexity reduces the potential impact of individual leaders which has a knock-on effect on the ability of an organisation to deliver pace and agility.

I've been thinking how what this insight means for scaled professional services businesses and how we might experiment with progressive organisational designs that reduce leadership complexity, while retaining clarity of accountability. My sense is that this is easier to accomplish with agile projects and initiatives, but needs deeper consideration when applying it to ongoing operational delivery.

The other area that's been occupying my mind this month has been how we sense the organisation around us at work and how we add more deliberate process to decision-making.

This led me to rediscovering a framework that I've written about previously but had forgotten about - the Cynefin framework by Kurtz and Snowden almost 20 years ago. This article provides a good and less academic summary. The breakdown of leadership contexts into simple, complicated, complex and chaotic, along with thinking about different approaches to leadership best suited to these contexts, is a powerful insight.

Reflecting on my own work as a leader over the past 18 months, I've transitioned from a role which involved primarily simple and complicated contexts to one which spreads much more equally across the four contexts. This has required me to grow my skills and confidence operating across the contexts, as well as learning to diagnose context more deliberately and quickly.

My commitment to writing monthnotes, established 18 months ago, is providing me with a really interesting look back at the leadership journey I am taking at The Panoply. As I write this on the last day of the month I always reflect on previous monthnotes I have written as well as the sketchy notes I've made through the month that go towards the monthly round-up. 

In doing this, it's fascinating to see the progression of my thinking during the past eight months in this role. and be able to see a consistent theme of optimism and excitement to be part of creating a unique scaled business with genuine purpose at its heart at The Panoply.

#### Monthnotes - April 2022
Looking back at last month's notes, I can see I was aiming to get back to regularly exercising. I'm signed up to a 50 mile ultra run in Snowdonia in early September, so there are four months to get as fit as I can for that kind of adventure.

My success in stepping up the mileage this month has been mixed. I've managed a couple of ten mile runs and have been out on my bike. I've also got back into a pretty regular routine for CrossFit.

However I have to admit I'm not loving the running right now - I've always gone through cycles of really enjoying the feeling of running and then struggling to motivate myself to pull on my trainers and get out. Even with the goal of an event I've never done before, I can see this pattern playing out over the past few weeks.

We were lucky enough to get a few days away with my family over the Easter weekend, heading to Norfolk for a short break. Plus we have also started to plan holidays for later in the year, which has meant things have started to feel a bit more post-Covid than over the winter months.

Workwise it's been a month where a few days off and the Easter bank holidays have meant it's been hard to hit that cadence where I feel I'm achieving lots. A lot of parallel workstreams has meant progress has seemed a bit more intermittent than I'd like.

I seem to have spent more time in London this month too, with two or three days a week spent across our offices in London Bridge and Spitalfields. It's been a good reminder of the value to time spent face to face with colleagues.

In particular it's been the unplanned conversations that have really seemed valuable - making connections, sharing informal insights and talking through problems together. A good reminder of some of the friction that hybrid working gives us to working through complex issues - and how human interactions and relationships are a lot harder through a Zoom window.

Away from the day job, this month I've also taken on a new board position as non-executive director at National Support Network CIC. This is a not-for-profit social enterprise that hosts the UK’s largest hub of trusted support services, such as helplines, for companies to signpost customers or employees in need.

It's a really exciting start-up that's aiming to building upon existing successes to commercialise and grow its impact. I'm really looking forward to working with the co-founders and other non-execs to be a part of the organisation's growth.

#### Monthnotes - April 2023
Looking back at this month and trying to work out what went on, two interesting inflexion points stood out for me. 

Since January I've been experimenting with working as a freelance Chief Operating Officer (COO). I've been iterating through consultancy and fractional propositions, trying to work out what I want to do next professionally. 

I've met more than 65 new people from all sorts of different businesses and backgrounds, said "yes" to most opportunities that have come up and have been pretty much fully utilised (yes, my agency background means I have set myself a utilisation target). 

Early in the month I joined the COO Roundtable. 

This is an invitation only community for startup and scale up COOs to come together, share experiences and learn. Its founder Davinia is passionate about all things COO and is a thoroughly nice human being too.

I've thrown myself into the programme of learning events and networking with gusto. 

It's been a true revelation as it's the first time I've really met other people who do what I do. As a professional generalist who's gravitated towards Chief Operating Officer type roles over the past four years, it's been fascinating to hear about other COOs' experience and roles.

Unlike other "C-suite" roles, the COO gig is a pretty varied one. And the people that do it are just as diverse too. 

This felt like inflexion point number one in April - where I became much clearer about what the kind of work I want to do and the kind of businesses that I want to do it in. 

I love the variety that being in the COO seat in a growing business brings. It's a great fit for the range of stuff I've done in my career and where I seem to be able to make a real difference to businesses and the senior teams that lead them.

And then inflexion point two for April took me a bit by surprise. 

In the second half of March and over Easter I'd not travelled to London much. I'd been working pretty much entirely remotely at home.

Then a couple of weeks ago I had a day working in London. In the morning I hung out in a co-working office doing a mix of calls and laptop work. In the afternoon I met up with some new clients for a kick-off session. 

It was a long and full-on day. And I loved it.

In the co-working space I met three new people, chatting over the desk and in the queue for a coffee. Those chance connections just felt energising and reminded me what I used to love about an office environment back before the pandemic. 

And starting work with a new client was a rush. Nice people, interesting challenges and a shared desire to make progress. Love it.

So those two inflexion points stand out for me. They validate the direction I'm taking with my career as an independent COO and remind me that being with people face to face for some of the time is really important for how I work. 

In terms of that work, I'm now pretty close to being fully booked up until my summer holiday in late July. 

Along with doing some really interesting work between now and then, I'm embarking on a more intentional marketing push for fractional or interim COO opportunities with tech-centric scale-up businesses for the autumn.  

Away from work the last week of the month has been quite a whirlwind. 

Reflecting upon those inflexion points in April, I'm suspecting there might be a third less welcome one on the health front too next month, but that's maybe one for May's monthnotes. 

One step at a time.

Music this month…

New DJ discovery this month was Henry Saiz. I love the epic long progressive sets spanning multiple genres. Soundtracks well to a day of writing, thinking and creating. This 6 hour masterpiece is a current favourite.

Podcasts this month…

A light month for podcast listening this month, but I did manage a couple from the London School of Economics events series. I like the variety and thought provoking.

Reading this month…

A conversation with my son who's off to study economics at university led me to modern monetary theory - something that didn't exist when I did economics in sixth form a long time ago. I read Stephanie Kelton's book The Deficit Myth and did a lot of thinking about the applicability of modern monetary theory in the climate era.

Running this month…

38.5 miles

Cycling this month…

152.5 miles

#### Monthnotes - April 2024
It's been an up-and-down kind of month. 

A sickness bug, dog hassles and rubbish weather led us to wish we'd gone away somewhere for a break at Easter. But as I look back there are also some highlights too. 

The month began with my first show on internet radio station Love Will Save The Day FM. 

The full show is here. It's a genre-spanning look at the influence of samples from four early 1970s disco classics. I loved planning, mixing and recording the show. I also learnt loads about presenting and audio production - I enjoyed the steep learning curve and being an absolute novice at something again.

A family day out in London was also a day I particularly enjoyed. We took advantage of some rare sunshine and walked around some parks and some of the touristy spots, as well as a West End show and dinner near Borough Market. 

Despite being in London most weeks, I never take the time to see London as a visitor rather than as a commuter. It's strange how you notice different things about the city depending on why you're there.

I also spent a weekend in Belgium riding the Liège-Bastogne-Liège sportive. Having been ill and not really put the training rides in properly, I opted out of the 155 mile route in favour of the 100 mile version. 

And that proved a wise decision. A rainy cold day on the bike, combined with almost 9,000 feet of climbing, made for the hardest 100 miles I've ridden on a bike. But looking back, I'm glad to have done it and seen new roads in a different part of Belgium.

Work has continued in the same busy vein as last month. I'm pleased with the progress I'm making in a fractional COO role - I'm often frustrated in the early days of any engagement about the lack of visible progress, but in the past week or so there's a sense of plans coming together and some really great new hires in the pipeline. 

I've also been running OKR workshops with a media client. They're adopting OKRs to align and focus their teams in their work. It's good to be putting the skills I learnt in my OKR Coach qualification last year into practice again.

Last week I also ran a learning session for the Extra Brain network on my B3 framework for company building. It was great to be talking and sharing about the framework. I loved hearing the positive and constructive feedback from a pretty heavyweight group of consultants. Plus getting confirmation of the trademark application for the framework later that day was a good reminder that I need to keep sharing and promoting it.

Podcasts this month…

A new find that I'm enjoying a lot this month - What Next? with Rishad Tobaccowala. Really insightful conversations into the future of work that resonate strongly with my thinking about how work is changing. 

Music this month…

I've been enjoying a bit of an 80s retro music adventure this month. I loved rediscovering Dire Straits' Alchemy live album. I remember buying this as a double cassette pack from Woolworths in Exeter in the 1980s!

Reading this month…

My real highlight was Cal Newport's new book Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. It's a good balance of evidence-backed writing and practical techniques - challenging the knowledge worker norms of work intensity and pace that we blindly take for granted.

Cycling this month…

184.3 miles

Running this month…

27.6 miles

#### Monthnotes - April 2025
Today marks the end of a month that's felt very transitional.

I'm sat outside writing.  The weather is set sunny for the next few days with a real feeling of summer around the corner. The contrast with the start of the month feels stark in many ways.

This month I've started work with two new clients, giving a new balance and variety to my typical working week.

One's a first-time COO who I'm coaching as he navigates a new role, commercial challenges and working with an ambitious founder. 

I've also started work with a client who's launching a chain of affordable places for theatre actors and crew to stay in as they tour the country. 

It's fascinating to see how he's identified a real problem that exists and is developing a genuinely innovative approach to helping the theatre community that he's part of. 

My remit is to help be his operational brain, tying together all the strands needed to move from a start-up idea to a functioning property rental business.

I took a few days off before Easter to slow down a bit too.

It was nice to have a bit of time out, but I did spend some of that time on a side project. I noticed that I'm getting more and more people contacting me out of the blue about becoming fractional leaders. I always have a 30 minute chat with them, just as others shared their experiences with me as I navigated the transition from employment to freelancing.

I ended up putting together a short email course about my journey from being an executive in a 700-person business to becoming a fractional COO. It's now available for anyone who wants to hear about my journey and how I approached it. They can sign-up here.

This month Sarah and I launched our first Actualise.work webinar that's coming up in mid-May. We're doing a deep dive into the psychology of self-actualisation in leadership. It's free and there's more info here.

Away from work I tried something different and spent a day with my younger son learning to wingfoil. I used to windsurf back in the pre-children era and wanted to try a new wind sport, so we headed down to Rye. It was a chilly day on the water, but I enjoyed the experience of being an absolute novice and remembering how to learn something from scratch. Plus the wind was gusting so we managed some serious speed too.

Mid-month I decided to enter a 125 mile sportive around Kent in May, so I've been training for that over the last three weeks, getting out on the bike far more. I did 86 miles last weekend, which was lovely in the sunshine. I'm looking forward to the 125 miler this coming Sunday. It's got me thinking again about whether to try to plan a group to take on Route des Grande Alpes from Lake Geneva to Nice next year for my 50th.

Jo and I managed to sneak away with our mates for a couple of nights in the motorhome in Kent. Spent one night at a micro-pub and the second by the seaside near Dover. Was nice to be away and enjoy waking up to a beautiful sunrise over the English Channel.

I'm a senior trustee at The Caldecott Foundation - a children's residential care charity in Kent. Our chair steps down later this year and I've been leading the recruitment for a new chair of trustees. It's been interesting to be on the client side of a recruitment process for this role, especially as I've recently been interviewing for People Director and COOs on behalf of a client.

Music this month…

Particularly enjoyed this very disco-ey Disco Waltons Sunday Service with Even Funkier.

Podcasts this month…

Longer days on the bike has meant time to listen to a few epic Acquired shows. The history of Rolex was a fascinating one. A colleague has recommended Sliced Bread so have added that to my playlist.

Reading this month…

Am part way through The Trauma-Informed Coach. It's an interesting topic but I'm still thinking about how it relates to the work I do (and our work at actualise.work). 

Cycling this month…

Increasing the time in the saddle. 260.7 miles.

Running this month…

Slacking off a bit as had a recovery week mid-month. 27.5 miles. Need to enter an autumn ultra to have something to aim for.

#### Monthnotes - April 2026
The Easter bank holidays in the UK at the start of the month plus a few days off work gave the first half of April a bit of a stop-start feel.

It was really nice to have some time to do some different stuff away from work after a pretty intense March at work and with things at hone.

We had a nice weekend away with my parents and brother's family over Easter itself in the East Midlands. Then Jo and I managed a lovely five day motorhome jaunt to the Cotswolds and Wiltshire - it was so nice to get away and go exploring new places with the sun (mostly) shining.

I also managed to finally catch up with Tim Deeson and Sarah Harris for dinner in London at the start of the month. It was one of those typically free ranging conversations that managed to span clients, AI, former colleagues and some stories about mutual acquaintances that I won't be capturing for posterity here!

And then last Thursday we were up super early to collect our youngest son from Gatwick at 5.55am. He's returned from his three month trip to Asia and is now back with us for the summer until he heads off to uni in September. It was great to hear about his adventures and to have him home safely.

We also caught up with friends locally last weekend and enjoyed sundowners on the riverside decking in their garden in Chartham. It's such a chilled place to enjoy a drink together.

The reconnection theme continued through my work too a bit, catching up with former London and Los Angeles clients during the month. I'm hoping that one of these conversations might evolve into a longer term ongoing collaboration, but just catching up and hearing how people have been getting on was good.

There's something positive about a month where I lifted off the accelerator pedal a bit and had time to reflect on some of the work I delivered in March. It's interesting to pick up a detailed audit report I wrote in March once again and review it with a client a month on from the end of the project. The findings and recommendations felt even more pertinent given what's been unfolding in the business in the intervening period.

I also started work with two new coaching clients this month. As a coach I love the mental challenge of these early stages of a coaching relationship and seeing the progress new coachees can make in the first few months of working together.

Music this month…

Been diving into some proper old school 90s house mixes this month, including this MC'ed classic Sasha mix from back in the day.

Podcasts this month…

I listened to the Acquired episode on Formula One on a couple of long runs this month. It was interesting to hear about the early business machinations of Formula One. It was also fascinating to get an American perspective on a sport that's been a feature of UK life for decades before Netflix took Formula One to the states.

Reading this month…

I’m reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. I don't read a lot of fiction but this book is superb and has really grabbed my attention from the first few pages.

Cycling this month…

113.6 miles. Trying to increase the mileage a bit before May's Little Lumpy sportive, but struggling for time.

Running this month

63.8 miles. Been easier to find the time to run this month, which is good as I have a 50K run next month too.

#### Monthnotes - August 2020
As August draws to an unseasonally wet and windy end in Kent, I reflect on what’s felt like quite a transitional month in many senses. Since returning our family holiday in early August, 

With English children about to return to school after more than five months away from the classroom, the annual cadence that’s familiar to parents with school-aged children is returning. One chapter in our Covid-19 affected year is ending, with another new phase about to begin.

And that sense of change extends to work over the past month too.

Last week marked the retirement of Dominic Deeson from Deeson Publishing - having worked for more than 40 years in content and publications - and the closure of that part of the former Deeson family business.

We were lucky enough to be able to meet up with Dominic and the small publishing team for socially distanced get together to mark the occasion. It was the first time I’ve seen that team since late February and I really enjoyed being able to chat with them all face to face.

I’ve also spent the past month preparing to hand over the remaining aspects of my former role at the Deeson digital agency business, before moving to be Chief Operating Officer at The Panoply in September.

I’ve found the experience of gradually packing up and handing over every aspect of a former job really interesting. It’s helped me move on from a role that occupied my thoughts day and night for many years. I’ve noticed that being able to do this has also given me greater capacity to focus on what’s coming up - starting to think in more detail about priorities and contexts for what I’m doing next.

As I start the new role tomorrow I’m looking forward to working outside my comfort zone once again, continuing to learn new leadership skills in a different context and helping build a different kind of business driving change in the public sector.

Change and uncertainty is certainly going to be a strong theme - the likely second spike in Covid-19 cases and a potential hard Brexit in January 2021 mean that strong contextual awareness, rapid decision-making and organisational agility will be priorities for many this autumn.

#### Monthnotes - August 2021
Today's my first day back at work after a couple of weeks off, so August feels like it has been a month of two very different halves.

The first half was spent working with colleagues on our company-wide change programme, bringing together many of our businesses into a single organisation under a new single brand.

We've got some very strong beliefs about the kind of progressive organisation we want to become, providing a very different experience of working with us for both our clients and our team members. Over time we'll become one agile, progressive and integrated company, with full independently assessed B-Corp certification demonstrating our commitment to balance purpose and profit in all we do.

But the journey to become that company needs to be different to a traditional top-down transformation programme too. We need to take an iterative approach to change, being agile and responsive to the rapidly evolving world around us - while also staying laser-focussed on new and existing clients alongside the needs of our team members.

So it was from an intense first half of August that we then headed to Wales for two weeks holiday - staying in our caravan in Brecon for a week and then onto Snowdonia for a week.

It was really nice to switch off from work and spend proper time as a family together after a pretty intense period for us all. We did plenty of outdoor activities and enjoyed exploring new places too. We were lucky to enjoy a pretty much rain-free fortnight and the sun even shone in our second week.

Being away also meant plenty of time for reading too. I got through a pretty broad selection of three books while we were away.

One that I've wanted to find time to read for a while now was "NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently" by Steve Silberman. It's a long and detailed read, spanning the early days of European and American autism research in the early 20th century, right up to emerging thinking and the neurodiversity activism movement.

I wanted to read this book as I felt I knew far too little about autism and the experiences of people with autism. In this context the book really taught me a lot and gave me plenty of food for thought at work and more widely. In particular it was fascinating to understand the drivers behind increased diagnosis of people on the autistic spectrum - the so-called autism epidemic.

The second book I read was "The Perils of Perception: Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything" by Bobby Duffy. This was a fascinating read looking at how our perceptions are repeatedly off the mark. Based on extensive quantitative research the book contains plenty of evidence about how we are wrong and thinking about why this might be the case.

I liked the underlying premise of the book and the evidence base on which it was founded, but I did find it a bit repetitive and thin on detail beyond the core premise that people think the world is different to how it actually is.

The final book I found time for on holiday was something completely different. Growing up in the 90s, DJ Carl Cox was a name that I knew well and my mixtape collection featured a fair few of his live sets. Earlier this month he published his autobiography "Oh yes oh yes!". It's an easy read and a fascinating insight into the world of rave and club music that I really enjoyed.

Today was my first day back at work and so I spent much of it catching up with colleagues and prioritising what I need to do in September. It was good to get back into things with a fresh and renewed perspective having been out for a couple of weeks.

#### Monthnotes - August 2022
Looking back at the past four weeks, it's been a bit of a disjointed month.

The first week we were on holiday, enjoying time as a family in British Columbia, Canada. That was swiftly followed by an overnight flight back to the UK and returning to work at TPXimpact.

It's felt quite hard to get momentum at work this month. I'm not sure if the holiday data backs this up, but it's certainly felt that a lot of people have been taking well-deserved holidays in August. This has led to a degree of discontinuity as projects haven't moved forward as quickly as they otherwise would have done. Hopefully September will be an easier month for getting progress to happen.

As parents of an 18 year old, we've also been through the tribulations of A level results this month, missing the required grades by one mark in 300 in one subject, a re-mark, a better grade re-awarded and securing the university place he wanted in the space of six days.

I've been practising my drone flying skills this month too, trying to work on understanding the basics of drone photography. I managed to capture some lovely summer evening shots flying over Kentish hop fields earlier in the month, including the featured image above. The creative opportunities you get from photography from the air are really interesting.

Over the past week or so I've also been increasingly thinking about my trip to north Wales this Saturday to take part in the Snowdon Ultra.

I entered this 50 mile ultra-running event earlier in the year to set myself a challenge and have been preparing for it since. Training has been variable, with a calf tweak this month providing a bit of a scare.

Not having done anything as long as this before, I've also had to think about preparing kit, food, navigation and familiarising myself with the route.

The event takes in ascents of Tryfan, Snowdon, Glyder Fach and Glyder Fawr - more than 3,250 metres of climbing in around 50 miles on the trail.

There's a 24 hour time limit and my goal is to get around in that time. The weather forecast is good and I'm looking forward to getting onto the start line in Betws-y-Coed early on Saturday morning.

It's been a good reminder for me that I am at my most focussed when I have a clear goal to aim at - a former colleague described me as "mission-focussed" and I think that's pretty accurate.

Music this month…

Being back at work has meant a lot more background music when I'm working and thinking. Soundcloud is usually my first destination for mixes and I've particularly enjoyed discovering new mixes from the Kitchen Raving Misbehaving crew in the past three weeks.

Podcasts this month…

Less running in the past few weeks with a sore calf has meant less podcasts, but I've listened to a couple of episodes of Brave New Work which reminded me what how good this podcast can be. I particularly enjoyed the show 139 which covered decision-making. 

Reading this month...

I discovered a couple of business biogs on my Kindle library that my son had bought ages ago that I'd never got around to reading. So this month's reading has covered Bob Iger's "Ride of a Lifetime" and Phil Knight's "Shoe Dog". 

The Bob Iger book was interesting as it gave an insight to what it's like in a leadership role in a huge global business with more than 130,000 employees. I've not finished the Nike book yet, but so far it's covered the story of how the business began as Blue Ribbon and the early start-up stage of its growth.

Sometimes I find business biographies a bit airbrushed, lacking in genuine self-analysis or criticality, but these two seem to tell their tales with a degree of humility and reflective thought that makes them more than just vanity memoirs.

#### Monthnotes - August 2023
This month was very much a holiday month and a welcome break from work. 

When I left TPXimpact last December I wanted to take a month off, but January wasn't a good time to be taking time away, so we planned it for the summer instead.

So in late July we loaded up our motorhome and headed to France for a four week tour. It was the longest I've been away from work since summer 2019 and was a superb break.

I deliberately didn't want to work while I was away and managed to stick to that pretty well. I had to do a couple of work-related calls, but other than that I didn't have to do or think about work at all.

I was able to properly reflect upon my first seven months working independently across fractional and consultancy engagements.

When I started out in January, my goal was to work more flexibly and get greater variety in my work. I've been pretty much achieving those things in the way I've been working so far this year. 

But I also realised that my thinking about work has moved on too.

I miss working with a consistent team that's on a mission to achieve something. The experience of solving tricky problems and hitting goals together is something I really value and isn't quite the same when working as a consultant or advisor. 

So while I'll be continuing with my consultancy and advisory work, my focus for the autumn is finding an interesting interim role where I can get back into working with a leadership team.

That might be an interim COO or CEO role - or even a permanent gig if it's a really good fit. 

My focus is on tech-centric businesses that have up to 100 people as that's where I think I can add most leadership value and enjoy working most. In practice that probably means seed or series A stage funded businesses.

I'm in no rush to leap into anything as I am still enjoying consulting and advising, but I will be stepping up my search for interim roles over the next few weeks.

It's going to be fascinating to see where some existing and some new discussions lead this autumn. Bring it on!

Music this month…

I did a lot of running and cycling while I was away. Sometimes I was a bit low on energy so this piano house classics megamix was my musical pick-up of choice. It's a relentlessly intense mix of classics - the audio equivalent of a strong caffeine and sugar-loaded energy drink. Not something for every day, but useful once in a while!

Reading this month…

Read a lot while I was away too. I particularly found Gillian Tett's book - Fool's Gold - about the 2008/9 financial crash really interesting. It gets into some complex detail on financial markets which helped me understand more about why the crash happened. I don't know much about financial services so it was good to learn more about that world.

Cycling this month…

382.3 miles.

Running this month…

42.8 miles.

#### Monthnotes - August 2024
One of the perks of being self-employed is managing your own time and working commitments. 

This month I took full advantage of that to take an extended break from work. We drove our motorhome south through France, over the Pyrenees into northern Spain and then back up the western French coast for nearly four weeks.

With the exception of a couple of pre-planned days for monthly advisory clients, I managed to steer clear of work, emails, Slack, WhatsApp and Discord.

One of the joys of the trip was to not have a firm plan of where we were going and how long we might stay in any one place. With the motorhome we can be flexible, responding to finding new places, avoiding heatwaves and exploring without a fixed agenda.

We did some background research before the trip, but didn't have any specific plans to stick to. That means needing to work out things like where to park for the night on the fly. There are useful apps, forums and Google Maps that help with that.

But one recurring reflection keeps coming to mind about working out plans on the road. The version of a place you get from apps, forums and the internet is incomplete. 

In the real world there are always more interesting things, more unexpected sights, more places to park up for the night and special places to visit than appear in the online world. And many of these places just don't exist online. 

It seems obvious in hindsight, but the internet is not the world. It's a partial, biased view of the real world at a single point in time. That's a good reminder for work too - where too often I inadvertently fall into a trap of believing what's online is all there is. The internet isn't the real world.

Earlier in the year I read Cal Newport's book "Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout" and on our trip I re-read it. In the book Cal advocates for finding more sustainable patterns of work. One of these patterns is about interspersing periods of high and low intensity work - the variation in pace being the thing that helps make it sustainable.

I'm planning the next few months on that basis, with clearer time boundaries and client commitments to help build in changes in intensity. I'm also looking forward to bringing to market some new ideas that I've been playing with for months now but not had the time to implement.

Next week I'm back to work, starting a new engagement phase with a fractional COO client and kicking off a new consultancy client project. I'm also itching to refresh my website with a tighter value proposition, relaunch my Build newsletter and get some groundwork underway for some new collaborations for the Autumn.

Music this month…

I'm training for a half-marathon, so have been listening to higher BPM mixes more. This live set from Hannah Laing has been a regular companion on my faster runs.

Podcasts this month…

A lot of driving and cycling hours this month. This epic 9 hour two parter from Acquired on the history of Microsoft was really good - I thought I'd never have the patience to listen to it all the way through, but it was fascinating with lots of useful lessons that are still applicable today.

Reading this month…

I read a lot while we were away. The book that really had an impact on me was "Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … and Why Can’t We Stop?" by Chris van Tullekin. Well grounded in academic research and proper science, It stopped me in my tracks several times as it set out why much of what we eat is harming us. It's made me think more consciously about what we eat and the decisions we make each day about our diets.

Running this month…

56.7 miles.

Cycling this month…

321.2 miles.

#### Monthnotes - August 2025
August has been a wonderfully different time.

Officially I'd given myself the month off work, although in reality I've been gradually doing more over the past couple of weeks as September approaches.

The highlights of the past few weeks have been travelling. The start of the month saw us continuing our motorhome trip in southern France, culminating in meeting friends for a few days at a wonderful lakeside campsite near the Gorges du Verdon in Provence.

I loved our time on the road, from quiet nights with just the two of us spent parked up in picturesque vineyards, spending some time on the road with our younger son to our activity-filled time at the lake.

I managed to do plenty of running and cycling, exploring new places most days. A standout highlight was a 70 mile ride in 40 degree heat around the Gorges du Verdon. It was probably one of the best days I've spent on a bike - the views were spectacular and the riding tough.

Then mid-month we sprinted back to reality in the UK for our youngest's A-level results. We were super proud that he got three B's and got the place he wanted to study Sports Technology at Loughborough University next September.

A day later I was up in London picking up our eldest from his hostel in London where he'd lived for six weeks while doing a summer internship. We whizzed back to Kent and then off to Gatwick the next morning for our flight to Dubrovnik.

We drove down into Montenegro and had a lovely quiet week to ourselves, enjoying the sun, pool and sea. We never made it as far as Dubrovnik and Montenegro in our big 2019 European road trip, so it was nice to see some of the places that we'd researched but just didn't have time to get to then.

We got back to the UK a few days ago and my mind has started to look forward again. I've committed (somewhat foolishly) to running the New Forest marathon in mid-September thanks to my son's girlfriend planting that idea, and I've also entered a 55 mile ultra run in Snowdonia in November. It's good for my motivation to exercise to have things to aim for.

And I've also been thinking more about some big adventures I want to do next year - as turning 50 feels like a milestone that I want to mark with some memorable trips that I've not got around to organising so far.

On Wednesday we were back up in London for a Coldplay concert. We've seen them live before and the show was as spectacular and polished as ever.

Workwise, my focus has mainly been on my product business Going Fractional and the launch of our first course on 15 September.

I've done a lot of reading over the summer about successful product businesses. That's given me a lot to put into practice over the coming months to test out whether Going Fractional is a viable strand of my work for 2026.

Early indications are positive with encouraging pre-sales of the course and more than 220 people signed up for a webinar next week from my initial marketing push.

I've also started work with two new coaching clients, which is a part of my work I continue to enjoy and develop my skills in.

And I'm picking up two interesting COO consultancy projects that I began before the holidays again. It'll be good to be back collaborating with fellow Extra Brains on these from next week.

Music this month…

Been a pretty varied month given we've been travelling so my son's playlists have dominated my music consumption.

Podcasts this month…

Been listening to a lot of Acquired episodes on my longer runs. The long-form format keeps my attention well and I find a lot of the stories thought provoking for the work I do.

Reading this month…

I've read a lot so it's hard to pick out a single highlight, but Why We Remember by Dr Charan Ranganath is an interesting read that I'm still reflecting on.

Cycling this month…

161.5 miles. Including an ascent of Mt Ventoux and the superb Gorges du Verdon.

Running this month…

48.3 miles. And a lot of vertical ascent on the Montenegro runs.

#### Monthnotes - December 2019
Looking back over December, it's hard to avoid gazing back further over the last 12 months, which seemed as ever to culminate in a particularly busy and positive period at Deeson in the run-up to Christmas.

It was good to see some the Deeson team successfully launch new functionality earlier in the month for several clients, including a nice new Algolia cross-platform search implementation for the Chartered Institute of Building. This pulls together search results from across multiple Drupal and WordPress sites, improving user experience significantly.

What's really pleasing is that this project, like many others we've delivered for clients in 2019, has come from our annual strategic roadmapping process that we run with all Deeson clients.

This roadmapping work helps both the client and us take a step back from the day-to-day business of managing complex digital estates - so that we can better understand our clients' long term organisational goals and help them plan out how to maximise the value of their digital activities in reaching those goals.

The first three weeks of December were also busy on the new client front too, with five potential new clients confirming they wanted to work with Deeson in 2020. We're still finalising contracts, so I can't share names yet, suffice to say there are some impressive organisations who we're very excited to be working with next year.

Another new Deeson client that we've recently signed a contract with and so can announce is London's Southbank Centre - we're building their new website to launch in Summer 2020. It's a really fascinating project from both a technical and design perspective.

It's also just over a year since Deeson joined AIM-listed technology services group The Panoply. While Deeson continues to work as an independent agency within the group, we're also collaborating more than ever with sister agencies Manifesto, Futuregov and Notbinary. This is helping Deeson do more than ever for our clients and I'm looking forward to developing these collaborations more extensively in 2020.

In mid-December the Deeson team also celebrated Christmas in style with our annual Christmas party. The spectacular venue was The Guard Chamber at England’s largest surviving medieval gateway at Westgate Towers in Canterbury.

I'm really proud of every single member of the Deeson team this year. They've delivered superlative work for our clients over the past 12 months and are genuinely the most effective team of people I've had the pleasure to work with in my career so far.

And so on that happy note, that's 2019 well and truly done.

A very happy new year to you and best wishes for a successful 2020.

ps we're hiring developers, senior developers and lead developers in Canterbury. DM me for more details or an informal chat.

#### Monthnotes - December 2020
I've started and re-started this post several times over the past few days.

Taking some time off work since 23rd December has given me a bit of a break to look back on a hectic three weeks of the month, as well as taking stock of the year as a whole.

It's hard to know where to start writing this month's notes and to avoid repeating a bunch of clichés about the past twelve months.

As I read back over the monthnotes I've written this year, it's interesting to reflect on the way that Covid-19 changed the course of the year so dramatically, both at work and at home.

The discussions we were having in late February about enacting business continuity measures at Deeson as early Covid-19 appeared in the UK seem like a distant memory.

The adrenaline and energy of those early days feels obscured by the many fresh challenges we've faced every week since then.

Since then the need for resilience and adaptability in the face of rapidly evolving situations has been at the heart of life at work and home.

And as we head into the eye of the Covid-19 storm once again, we need to continue to maintain focus on planning for multiple scenarios that might unfold in the next few months.

The promise of vaccination rollouts offers a light at the end of tunnel, yet a cursory look back at 2020 reminds us that timescales for anything Covid-19 related are unpredictable.

My hunch is that the impact of vaccination will follow this pattern and that optimistic predictions of its widespread impact by Easter are unrealistic.

I also look back on the changes that 2020 led to and appreciate the colleagues I have the pleasure of working with.

As a rapidly growing business, we've welcomed many new people to our teams during 2020. Many of them haven't had the opportunity to meet in person, yet have formed new effective teams tackling gnarly problems that none of us could have foreseen just a few months earlier.

So as we approach the last few hours of 2020, I am genuinely optimistic about 2021 - not because of any predictability but - because I truly believe in the people I share my life with - family, friends and colleagues - to deal with whatever 2021 throws at us.

I know there'll be ups and downs on the way. Things will happen that we don't expect. 

There'll be wins that we didn't see coming and downs that didn't feature in anyone's plans. 

But based on what I've seen over the past 10 months, I'm very confident that with the same resilience, commitment and communication that I've seen in 2021, even with the depleted reserves of energy and stamina, together we can face 2021 with the same brilliance that we faced 2020. 

And I truly hope and believe that when I write this post in 12 months time, there'll be continuing positive news to reflect upon and celebrate. I keep my fingers crossed.

With best wishes for 2021 - happy new year!

#### Monthnotes - December 2021
I've been prevaricating about writing December's monthnotes for a few days now. I'd put this down to not being sure what to write about and having been off work for a a fortnight for an extended Christmas break.

This made it a month of two clear halves for me. The first half of December was a particularly pressured period at work, trying to get loads of things finished by Christmas while also teeing up some new organisational governance to start in January.

And then I just stopped work for a break for the last two weeks. It's been an enjoyable period away from the laptop, being able to see family and spend time doing things that I don't manage to find the time to do normally.

I've also been doing a fair amount of DIY work around the house, accompanied by a lot of interesting podcasts that I've been meaning to listen to for ages.

I'm pretty disciplined about not dipping into work when I am properly having a break and this has helped me get some mental separation from the intensity and complexity that I seem to get quite immersed in during typical working weeks.

That separation has led me to a few realisations about the work I'm doing and my relationship with it. That's important as at times I can feel like my own personal identity becomes indistinguishable from my work, which for me isn't the most healthy long term way to be.

Having had that time away, I've realised that the complexity of the work I'm doing, combined with the unpredictability of the world outside work, has probably been the thing that has taken most mental energy from me in the past few months.

I love a complex and multi-faceted work puzzle to get into and solve. In fact I thrive on juggling several of these at once and working with others to help move things forward.

But I recognise I can be my own worst enemy sometimes and end up spending too much time thinking about these things, even at weekends when I'm not working. And that's not then giving me proper downtime to enjoy other aspects of life that are important to me.

Having come to this realisation I did what I always do and went researching round the topic. I found a great article by Joseph Bentley called "Leadership is a wicked problem" which resonated strongly with my thinking.

While some of his assertions around the role of leadership don't fully align with my thinking on leadership in progressive organisations, his key message is that there are two types of problems - and seeing success as solving both types is setting yourself up for failure.

"The primary and most important purpose of leaders...is to identify the important problems that they are facing and make sure they are solved. Everything else they do is connected in one way or another with their struggles with problems."Joseph Bentley (Leadership is a wicked problem)

He then sets out that there are tame problems - that can be solved - and wicked problems that cannot be solved, only worked upon:

Most organisational problems cannot be solved, they can only be worked on. Giving up the expectations of “solving” is crucial.For wicked problems, there are no “solutions” to be discovered. “Solutions” must be created by committed people working together.All solutions to wicked problems are temporary arrangements that, while they may make things better for a while, but must be visited again and again in order to make new arrangements. For wicked problems, no “solutions” are permanent.For wicked problems, there is no single “root cause” that can be discovered and fixed. There is an infinite number of causes that affect any problem. The task of those who are working on the problem is to decide which of these are the most important.All wicked problems are unique. No one has seen them before. Figuring out what is different about each one is required before moving to action.Joseph Bentley (Leadership is a wicked problem)

For me, it was that first point that struck home. I have been equating solving with personal success, which given the nature of wicked problems isn't a sensible approach.

A mindset that's more focussed on coming up with "good enough" solutions that employ a learning approach and strong personal analysis and decision-making processes feels like a more personally sustainable way of self-evaluating my impact at work.

It reminds me of the need to focus on the "controllables" rather than outcomes, as in a complex system there will always be other factors at play that can affect outcomes, but we can always hold ourselves to account for our actions in relation to the things that we have personal control of.

So with that in mind I'm back at work next week with a renewed energy and a few changes that I'm going to trial to help make my working life more sustainable in 2022. It'll be very interesting to re-read this post as I write monthnotes in December 2022 and look back on how I got on!

Happy new year!

ps at this time of year a lot of people set new intentions or resolutions for the new year. I've found this podcast episode and book really good at helping understand how to make changes that stick - based on sound academic research, not Insta-guru wishful thinking.

#### Monthnotes - December 2022
December's definitely been a month of two distinct periods for me.

The run-up to my last day at TPXimpact on 16th December was a particularly intense time. 

I did a lot of trying to wrap up loose ends and making sure I'd handed things over properly while also giving myself a moment to get my head around not being employed for the first time in 25 years.

It was interesting to notice how the process of withdrawing from activities and accountabilities provided space for others so quickly - a good reminder that at work we are just part of a complex system. It's impossible to predict with complete accuracy how that system will respond to change. 

Instinct also tells me that leaders naturally err on the side of caution when considering the impact of people-related change, not considering the possibilities and opportunities with the same focus as we think about loss and risk.

The second half of the month disappeared quickly in a blur. 

We spent five nights on a family holiday in New York before Christmas, enjoying spending time away together as a family before our eldest son heads off on his gap year travels in early January. It's almost 20 years since we last went to New York and it was fascinating to see what had changed. I love the experiences of exploring new places and new cultures. 

Watching a city like New York exist 24/7 with such energy and fervour, it amazes me how people live permanently in large cities. It's just not an environment I would thrive in for extended periods - I enjoy the space and peace that being away from cities too much.

After New York, the Christmas and New Year week gave us another bout of Covid in the family, leading to an unplanned quiet few days at home and sadly some last minute rearranging of family plans.

Having had some time away from TPXimpact, I've also been able to devote some time and mental energy to refining the next iteration of what I'm going to be experimenting with at work next month. 

There are three broad areas where I'm going to be focussing and refining: consultancy projects, working in a small number of companies as a fractional COO and taking on one or two carefully chosen new non-executive roles.

I'm grateful to the many people who've offered me feedback and advice so far in my journey going independent. They've shared a lot of really valuable insights which have helped me approach 2023 with confidence and to embrace experimentation with what work I do next.

Music this month…

Been loving a pair of 80s mixes featuring some refreshed and re-edit versions of plenty of classics, courtesy of Dr Packer. These are spread across part one and part two on Soundcloud.

Podcasts this month…

Not been listening to as many podcasts this month, probably as I've been doing less long runs. Favourite episode this month was Gustavo Razzetti on Dave Stachowiakx's Coaching for Leaders podcast, talking about building culture among remote team members.

Reading this month…

I've been working my way through The World in Conflict: Understanding the world's troublespots by John Andrews. It's a super detailed (and pretty objective) analysis of where conflict exists in the world and why it's happening. I wanted to learn more about why regional clashes and tensions happen, going beyond often superficial or one-sided online analysis. It's a good book if you're committed to learning, but not one to pick up for a relaxing read.

#### Monthnotes - December 2023
Looking back over the last 31 days, it feels like December was definitely a month of two halves.

The first half of the month was busy with work. I'd planned for December being relatively quiet, but that didn't pan out quite as I had expected. 

And then I finished up work on 15th December, so the second half of the month has been a nice break. I've enjoyed spending time together with family and having our eldest son back from university. 

A particular highlight was a short break to Berlin with friends before Christmas. I've not been to Berlin before so it was great to explore a new city and learn about its fascinating history. The Christmas markets were also definitely worth visiting and another highlight was a tour of the German parliament building - the Reichstag.

It's now 12 months since I left my job and became an independent fractional COO, consultant, advisor and coach. I took that decision because I wanted to have more variety and flexibility in my work.

As I look back over that year, I see the steep learning curve I've been on. Looking at my CRM system, I can see I've met more than 160 new people this year. The generosity of other consultants and fractional execs to share their experiences, particularly earlier in the year, was amazing. I resolved early on to pay this forward and in recent months have been helping others making a similar move.

 I've iterated my proposition many times, focussing on articulating my experience better and developing a sales funnel. The work I did in agency new business over the years has set me up well for this.

There have been periods when I've struggled with the uncertainty of work pipeline. A particular low was September when I returned from holiday with little work lined up and began to doubt whether I could make the numbers stack up. A real structured focus on business development over a couple of weeks paid off and led to a busy autumn period.

So now as I look back at the year, I feel comfortable that my goals of flexibility and variety have been met. I've enjoyed being able to work flexibly - better combining work and other parts of life. I managed to take around seven weeks off work, including a month in the summer. I was lucky that my health scare didn't affect my clients too much - that felt like a time when having paid sick leave would have been a benefit!

And as for variety, I've enjoyed working on engagements across different sectors - venture-backed tech SaaS, privately owned software, agency, consultancy and e-commerce businesses. That's been a particular highlight and something I couldn't have achieved in a single job.

I've developed my own IP - a framework to help founders understand what it takes to build a sustainably resilient business. The beta version feedback was encouraging and I've got a much improved version coming out in the next couple of months. 

Looking at the financial dashboard for the business, I can see that I end the year ahead of target on utilisation, revenue and profit. That's a real weight off my mind and gives me the confidence to head into 2024 with ambition.

Having had a couple of weeks away from work, I can also reflect on how differently I feel about work compared to a year ago. Back in December 2022 I was tired, lacking enthusiasm and feeling drained of passion for what I do. 

As we move into 2024, I feel like I've got that spark of enthusiasm for my work back. The time I spend working feels generative once again and I'm getting a lot more satisfaction from what I do. And I have also found my ambition in my work again, which I was really missing for at least a year before I made the switch.

Podcasts this month…

Been working my way through System & Soul - a US podcast about growing businesses. Their underlying model for building businesses really resonates with me.

Music this month…

I'm really enjoying this three hour epic from Sgt Slick. It's a seamless mix of more than 350 tracks from back in the day. I first listened to it on a long run and ended up singing out loud for much of it.

Reading this month…

I'm reading Britain Is Better Than This: Why a Great Country is Failing Us All by Gavin Esler. It's a good articulation of why governance is at the heart of this country's problems. As we head into what's likely to be an election year in the UK, it's interesting to think about whether the problems the book talks about ever make it onto the political agenda. 

Cycling this month…

242.1 miles, including a lot of Zwift, Wahoo SYSTM and FulGaz but also a rare winter outdoor ride yesterday.

Running this month…

A neat 26.2 miles. Will be stepping this up a bit ahead of a ten mile road race in late January.

#### Monthnotes - December 2024
December's been a month which has mixed together some time spent finishing off projects, looking back at the goals I set at the start of the year as well as thinking ahead to a newly confirmed fractional COO engagement next month too.

There's something really nice about taking a bit of time to pack away work for a couple of weeks at a time when many other people do much the same. To me it's always felt very different to taking a break at other times of year for that reason. 

I was aiming for a gentle, phased wind down for the first three weeks of the month. I should have known better on that front. It was only in the last couple of days before Christmas that work slowed down a lot. Before then, I spent a fair amount of time on finishing off pre-Christmas deliverables, wrestling some short notice requests for delivery ahead of the holidays and getting work sorted for January onwards.

A consultancy project I particularly enjoyed this month was working with a B2B live events agency on their growth planning. Working with Jess, we've been focussing on how to build an agency team around a new proposition that's getting good early traction.

It's been really interesting working out what fractional COO role to take on next year. I only ever work on a single fractional COO engagement role at once, alongside some coaching, consulting and advisory commitments. That means when it's time to find a new fractional role, there's a bit of a juggle to work out who to commit to next. This month's been no exception on that front. 

Having been looking for my next fractional role for around four weeks, I had six qualified opportunities in the pipeline and I'd forgotten how much time managing that process takes. In the end things worked out well, with a new role being confirmed just before I shut my laptop for Christmas. It's a nice fractional COO role in a brilliant social agency with so much potential, starting mid-January.

I know it sounds a bit like LinkedIn hyperbole to say this, but I have noticed how excited I am about this new gig. I already find myself thinking a lot about the team, the work and getting started - and I know myself well enough to know that's a positive sign. Can't wait to get stuck in.

I also signed up two new COOs for my operational leadership coaching practice this month and started working with a new coaching client too. I'm really enjoying meeting new potential coachees and hearing more about their work, roles and desires for coaching. 

On the coaching front, I'm also putting time into two academic essays for the coaching qualification I did back in September. They're due to be handed in during January, so I'd like them done before I start the new fractional role. 

The adjustment from writing newsletters and articles to a more academic style hasn't been that easy. It's been 27 years since I last wrote an academic essay. Alongside being generally rusty on style, referencing and structure, I've had to think more about my writing process as what works for writing the Build  newsletter is so different to the process for essay writing.

Away from work, we're lucky enough to have escaped to the French Alps after Christmas too. We've headed to a different part of the Alps to previous years and it's been great to explore new pistes, finding new places and just enjoying being somewhere new. Seeing the sunshine in the mountains feels great after a particularly murky, misty couple of weeks in our part of the UK too.

Thanks for reading monthnotes this year. I wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous 2025.

Music this month…

New DJ discovery this month is Vik Benno. Particularly enjoyed the variety on this mix from her.

Podcasts this month…

I've enjoyed "The Week Unwrapped" podcast this month. Hosted by Olly Mann, it's a look at some of the weekly news that may not have hit the headlines in a big way, but is worthy of a discussion. I like the panel format and the diversity of the things they cover each week.

Reading this month…

Been reading Supremacy by Parmy Olson. It's a well sourced and thoughtful look at the stories of two AI businesses: OpenAI and Deepmind. I like learning about some of the human dynamics behind the technology that's rapidly become part of work now and in the future.

Cycling this month…

Less miles on the bike this month as I've ramped up the running ahead of February's ultra, so 97.8 miles on the road and on the trainer.

Running this month…

59.4 miles.

#### Monthnotes - December 2025
It's the end of December and it's seems to have been a month of two halves.

The first half was pretty busy with work, with a few projects coming to a close and plenty of loose ends to tie up. I've also been finalising terms on a new engagement for January onwards plus a couple of interesting consulting project enquiries came in too.

Earlier this month I also completed the sale of my fractional course business which was an exciting step forward. I enjoyed writing and launching the course over the summer and early autumn.

Early course sales and feedback were positive, but I quickly realised that I didn't have the right skills to market the course as much as it needed, nor did I have the time (and maybe desire) to learn those skills.

In the spirit of being more careful what I spend my work time on, I'm pleased to be working a partner who has the experience of marketing courses. I'll still be involved with the business to help grow the student base, but I'm pleased not to be leading on marketing, sales or back office operations any more.

Earlier this month I also spoke at The Caldecott Foundation's Christmas business networking dinner.

This was something a bit off my normal patch and I happily admit I was pretty nervous writing my talk, as my brief was to talk about business networking, trusteeship and the foundation's work.

I've done hundreds of business presentations but this felt different as it was an after-dinner speech, but it went well and I enjoyed the experience - and most importantly the evening was a success with thousands raised for the foundation's work.

The third week of the month was a sudden change of gear as emails and Slack slowed down.

I even had a few hours to spend on my own admin, automations and getting organised for 2026. It was good to have a bit of a transitional few days before stopping work for seeing family, Christmas and then the long drive to the Alps for a week in the snow.

Looking ahead to 2026, I'm pretty busy in January with fractional work and a short new systems consulting project. I'm also excited to be launching two new founder-focussed propositions in Q1 - one building on my previous fractional experience, the other focussed on building effective leadership teams to reduce founder dependency.

But for now I'm making the most of the last few days of my break before kicking back into intense work mode on Monday next week.

Music this month…

Stumbled across this extended set from Franky Wah at Hackney Church from earlier this year. Truly epic and great background for a few hours work.

Podcasts this month…

Discovered Aoife O'Brien's Happier at Work podcast earlier this month and have been enjoying working through older shows. I like Aoife's mix of real workplace experience and academic evidence for the practices she explores in the podcast.

Reading this month…

"Very Bad People: Fight Against Global Corruption" by Patrick Alley was a fascinating read. I'd not heard of Global Witness before, so Patrick's book was an introduction to criminal practices in a range of places and sectors.

Cycling this month…

82.3 miles this month, mostly commuting and Zwift although I did manage one real world ride on a sunny clear day which was great.

Running this month

18.5 miles this month. A combination of work, a possible stress fracture and short days kept me off running more than I would have liked.

#### Monthnotes - February 2020
February might have an extra day this leap year, but it feels like a lot’s been squeezed into the first four weeks already.

At Deeson we’ve been recruiting for a number of new roles as we grow the business in 2020. We welcomed a new lead developer last week, with new hires in user research, development and finance joining us over the next few weeks.

We also welcomed a new client too - a global sustainability organisation - who we’re looking forward to working with over the coming years to help them share sustainability best practice. There’s a really strong alignment between their mission and the shared values we have as a team at Deeson.

We’ve continued to see strong demand for our strategy consultancy services this month. There’s a clear need for evidence-based and pragmatic consultancy to help organisations understand how they need to change and to help them through the bumpy road of change. 

We’ve also completed the first four strategic business reviews of the year with some key Deeson clients. Most of our clients are with us for long term digital partnerships. We help them with building, managing and optimising complex digital platforms, but the strategic business reviews are designed to take a step back from the day-to-day and build long term digital roadmaps that span several years.

And the end of our own financial year next month means we spent time this month as a leadership team planning for the next 12 months at Deeson. We’ve set out a plan that covers a number of new initiatives, building on the success of the past year. 

One of the things I’m particularly proud of at Deeson is that we’re very good at organising ourselves for delivery - both on client projects but also in the way we manage our own operations day-to-day. We use external accreditations like ISO9001 and ISO27001 to make sure we’re really on top of things and get an external perspective to help us improve.

We feel the benefits of how well organised we are every day in the way we get stuff done, but this week the spread of Coronavirus meant we really saw the benefits of our business continuity planning. 

Within three hours of taking the decision to escalate our continuity planning we had circulated a Coronavirus-specific business continuity plan among the agency leadership team for review. 

Within 16 hours, all staff had been briefed about our contingency plans, we’d tested that those plans worked and we’d communicated with all clients about how we will deal with any challenges that an escalation of the situation might bring. 

As ever, we’re open and transparent with our plans. You can read about our preparedness - and everything else about how we manage Deeson - in our company handbook.

Earlier this week we announced some big news about Deeson leadership too. 

In April I’ll be moving away from the role of Managing Director at Deeson. After four years in the role, it’s time for me to find some new challenges and hand over the reins.

While I’m sad to be stepping away from the team I work with and the running of the business, I’m immensely proud of the team we have at Deeson, the business we’ve built and the work we’ve done with our clients during my time as Managing Director.

I’m also really pleased that Sarah Harris - our current Head of Client Services - is being promoted to take on the role of Managing Director from April onwards. Since she joined us two years ago she’s successfully introduced a client services team into Deeson, helped us grow our relationships with clients and taken on numerous other responsibilities too. 

I know Sarah will be a great Managing Director and that she'll do a superb job for our clients and our team.

On a personal note this month I was lucky enough to be able to take a week off with my family during February. We headed to the French Alps and enjoyed a mostly sunny week on the ski slopes, away from the UK's rain, wind and storms. 

Over the next couple of months we're still hiring at Deeson and in our sister company GreenShoot Labs. If you're interested in working with us, drop me a line at simonw@deeson.co.uk.

#### Monthnotes - February 2021
February might have been a short month, but it feels like a month where change has been a strong theme in many ways, both at work and outside work.

In Kent the month began with a proper icy blast of sub-zero temperatures and then gave us a week of snow to break up the meteorological monotony of weeks of rain. The month has ended with some lovely sunny and warm days which have brightened things up. The arrival of snowdrops and daffodils certainly gives a sense of a change of season approaching. 

As a cyclist, swapping from a winter bike with grippy tyres to a summer bike with narrow slick tyres this morning felt like a seasonal milestone, especially as it was my first ride for a long time not in full winter clothing too.

At work, it's been an interesting four weeks too. There's a sense of pace and momentum in our businesses continuing from January which is great to see. I did some really interesting strategy work looking at operating models for the group, refreshing my knowledge of the operating model canvas as a tool for evaluating and exploring operating models - and its relationship with value propositions.

We've also been doing a lot of thinking about how we manage change. As a group that's growing rapidly through organic growth and acquisitions, we need to develop a strong competency in how we manage change. 

We've been experimenting with new approaches to facilitate teams dealing with change. I've known the value of coaching for a long time, but have often felt that some coaching approaches failed to really get beyond a superficial level - looking at what people did (or didn't) do at work but not really helping them understand why they felt or acted in a certain way. 

I was really interested to be introduced to James Gairdner at Heresy Consulting (thanks to Tim Deeson and Alex Wright). In conversations with James we've explored the psychodynamic approach in psychology and its relevance to teams working with change. 

Based on the work of Sigmund Freud, the underlying premise of approach is that the way we think is driven by things beyond our conscious level of thought. For me it starts to offer a way of understanding deeper motivations than many cookie cutter executive coaching frameworks. 

We've been experimenting with the pyschodynamic approach to helping a team through change and the early indications are positive, so I'm looking forward to iterating further to help us build our change competencies in the future.

Another project I've been working on this month is looking at what our need for physical spaces might be in the future. We're keen to consolidate numerous London offices into a single location, but we also want to be bold in our thinking about types of work and their relationship with the physical spaces in which we work.

We're sure that we won't be reverting back to some of the more traditional "fixed desk" models of offices where presence in an office represented work. A hybrid home, client site and collaboration space model is probably our expected mode of work for the future. 

This means being very careful about what a new physical location might need to look like in future - rows of fixed desks as the core physical feature of the space seems obsolete. It'll be interesting to see what options emerge for new kinds of workspaces that maximise the value of time that team members spend in the same place, maybe one day a week or even less. 

As we head into March, there are numerous professional and personal transitions that face us that we need to prepare for. Children are heading back into school in a few days time which means new challenges and opportunities for working parents.

The move out of lockdown and into new patterns of work is one that I don't underestimate. In the UK we're heading closer to this transition and while we'll be pleased to move beyond the challenges of extended homeworking, we should also recognise that change is hard to get right and the post-lockdown phase is just that kind of change. We shouldn't let the fact this is a positive step mean we forget it's another new transition that we need to navigate carefully with our team members.

#### Monthnotes - February 2022
I started writing this month's notes a couple of weeks back - I had a week off and had some spare time while travelling to start turning my usual random list of collected thoughts into a more coherent article.

But as I was picking that article up again this evening to hit publish, much of the content felt much less important than it did when I wrote those words not that long ago. It feels like a lot has changed in a short period of time.

Last Thursday I had an early start as I drove the three hours from home to the southwest for a family funeral. I spent those three hours in the car listening to Radio 4 and hearing the confusion, uncertainty and disbelief of journalists reporting live from Kyiv on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

I have some very early childhood memories of the Falklands War aged six, but I can remember much more vividly the start of the first Gulf War after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. I recall listening to a radio late at night in my bedroom as the early stages of aerial warfare began.

This time the proximity of war seems much greater.

Maybe it's because I'm older and work in the connected world of technology that I know people and businesses directly affected in a way that I didn't in previous conflicts.

Maybe social media and digital media provides a depth of insight into the brutal reality of war that is more immediate and unfiltered than I've seen before.

Maybe as a father this has a greater impact on me than on my younger self.

I don't know and it doesn't really matter. What matters is how we respond to this new reality.

Helping those we know or work with directly affected, participating in voluntary organised initiatives and holding our government to account for their actions in this situation feel like tangible things that can be done right now.

Being careful in our actions on social media is important too. Information and disinformation are key in this war - as social media users we need to carefully consider what we say and share online. For professional communicators, the UK's government's toolkit on countering disinformation is a helpful resource. 

And so to summarise the month of February for me...I spent a lot of time working with colleagues to launch a new employee experience proposition, spent time working to increase leadership effectiveness, did a lot of business and financial planning for the year ahead and had a week away with family and friends...all of which feels quite insignificant given what's going on 1600 miles to the east.

I found this article helpful in understanding some practical ways that people in the UK can help right now. 

Image credit: UP9 - CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6935083

#### Monthnotes - February 2023
I worked out that this is my 41st consecutive set of monthnotes. Sometimes when I first sit at the keyboard to start writing it's hard to find a distinct theme that sums up the past month adequately. February was just one of those months. On superficial reflection I knew a few things happened, life went on, but nothing stood out strongly for me.

Then I took a bit more time to think and skimmed back through my calendar. Doing that surprised me. In a short month - and one in which I took a week off - I got a lot done.

I'm now two months into my new working life as a consultant and fractional exec for growth businesses. 

I've hit my personal and utilisation goals for the first two months. I've continued to meet many interesting new people, learn about their work and explore future opportunities to work together. March is looking really busy and some really fascinating new challenges to take on.

If I'd known three months ago that's what I'd be writing at the end of February, I'd have been happy. I sum up my desire to go independent as wanting more flexibility and variety in my professional life and so far that's playing out.

One of the things that worried me before I made the move was how I'd cope with the uncertainty of knowing what work was coming up (and coping with the feast/famine cycle I'd been anticipating). At heart I like a plan and I like to create certainty from uncertainty, but I also know well how to cope with the ambiguity and uncertainty that's inherent in leadership.

As I reflect on that fear now, it seems a little odd. There hasn't been a time yet when I've worried about those things. I've thought about them a lot and considered plenty of scenarios for how new opportunities, proposals and discussions might turn out - but those have been neutral thoughts rather than troubling ones.

So what's been going on this month?

We were lucky to have been able to head off to Les Gets in the French Alps for a super sunny ski week at half-term, so that means I seem to have crammed a lot into three weeks of work:

I've signed a new fractional exec role that I'm getting stuck into later this week. I'm looking forward to working as part of the leadership team for that business to help it through the next few months. The nature of fractional work has meant I've had to think about my leadership practice and how to get greatest leverage from part-time involvement in the business, rather than being present all week.

I began working with my first client in the 2Y3X two-year acceleration programme. I first worked with the founder of this programme - Felix Velarde - back in 2016 and am really pleased to be collaborating with him again now.  

It was inspiring to work closely with the client's growth leadership team and think deeply about how I need to work as a consultant and coach so they can grow their business as well as their own practice as current and future leaders. And they're a really nice bunch of people too. When I wanted variety in my post-employed existence, this work feels like a good example of what I wanted to do and I'm looking forward to seeing them in March for the next session.

I was also really chuffed this month to join up with Jess Gregson and the crew at Extra Brain. I'd been following Jess and Dan's new venture for a while and it looked really interesting. It's a small consulting network with a diverse bunch of people and skills. I'd been speaking with Jess last autumn about working together so it was great to get started earlier this month. 

What's impressed me about Extra Brain is the people they have involved - super talented, friendly and open - with a passion for doing good work for clients. Leaving employed life, one of my anticipated downsides was not being part of a team, so being part of Extra Brain is a real positive in that sense too.

I've been talking for too long about writing a book. My co-author and I have been on the steep learning curve of first time authors, but it felt like this month we made some real progress. We've been spending time refining our book proposal and thinking - and it feels like we've found some interesting intersections of ideas that are a sound basis for a book that leaders in business would find valuable. 

It's taken a while to get to that point, which partly reflects availability of time, but also the need for ideas to sit, evolve and be thrown away repeatedly. The process itself builds quality thinking and elapsed time is a positive in that context.

Last week we also relaunched a sustainability meet-up for Kent. People Planet Pint (PPP) is a national initiative, organised by Small99 and sponsored by Krystal (web hosts for www.simonwakeman.com). PPP is a relaxed forum for people interested in sustainability to meet, share and learn.

Working with co-organisers Maria and Danielle, we relaunched the Canterbury event last week. Next month we're in Margate and then Maidstone the following month. Our goal is create regular event communities in all three locations, growing awareness of sustainability practices, particularly in small and medium sized businesses in Kent. The Margate event is on 29th March and you can sign up free here. 

The audience for my email newsletter, the Business Aside, continues to grow nicely too. I've written another four posts this month, publishing every Thursday morning. As my consulting and fractional proposition evolves, I need to think about the newsletter and what it's there to do - it needs greater focus and curation than I'm giving it right now.

My youngest son is a keen U16 footballer, playing every week for his club team. They're doing well this season and he's top scorer for the team. Last Sunday I watched his match and saw him score five. It was a proud moment for me to see him play as part of a team and how close the bonds between this group of young men were. They're played together for many years now and the depth of understanding and camaraderie was clear to see. 

So as I review this month's notes, I'm surprised how much went on in those three weeks. And even more surprised by how energised I am by those things - a good sign for building a personally more sustainable home and working life too.

Music this month…

Being enjoying a bit of a change from nu-disco and house this month, so loved finding this epic mix from Chad Jackson.

Podcasts this month…

Not spent much time listening to podcasts this month, but How I Built This remains a favourite for long runs/rides and The Infinite Monkey Cage accompanied us on the long drive through France. 

Reading this month…

This is a curious one. I've been reading about the process of dying. 

With the End in Mind: Dying, Death and Wisdom in an Age of Denial by Kathryn Mannix is an immensely insightful read. It's a set of short first-hand experiences from a palliative care consultant exploring the process of death and how death has become a taboo in society. 

She draws out many themes that she has observed and interprets them in the context of living well. I'm not sure what prompted me to read it other than a growing awareness of death in midlife, but it's really good. I'm learning and thinking a lot about a subject that I'd previously avoided a bit I suspect.

Running this month…14.6 miles.

Cycling this month…110.9 miles.

#### Monthnotes - February 2024
Writing these notes on the 29th day of February led me back to wondering about the last leap year.

Revisiting my monthnotes from February 2020 took me right to the early, chaotic days of the Covid pandemic. The memories of that early phase are still particularly vivid as we began to appreciate the enormity of what was unfolding. Thankfully February 2024 lacked the drama and anticipation of four years ago. 

It's been a particularly busy month. I'm pretty much at capacity with client work for the next few months and also took a week off in the not-so-snowy French Alps.

I've also been getting a bit clearer on some longer term opportunities that I'm really excited about. The freedom to develop new ventures alongside doing interesting work with a variety of clients is something I sought when I went freelance 13 months ago, so it's good to be experiencing that.

I get the sense that my B3 framework for company building is slowly building momentum too. I'm sharing it with founders for feedback and to build awareness. Sign-ups on the site are increasing and I'm excited to be working with a new collaborator to develop the content further.

Away from work I treated myself to an Ebay bargain this month - an old but working four channel DJ controller with lots more knobs than I'm used to. It's the first time I've been able to DJ with four decks instead of two. And it's slightly blown my mind.

I've gone from being very comfortable with my DJing kit to feeling like a complete novice again. The challenges of mixing three or four tracks without sounding horrendous are fascinating. It's a steep learning curve but one I'm enjoying a lot.

The discomfort that came with needing to learn was a good reminder that I need to avoid getting too comfortable with expertise in anything I do. It's always good to feel the need to learn, diversify my experience and be exposed to novel problems. 

Podcasts this month…

Been enjoying The Rest is Politics Leading interviews this month. I'm cherry picking some of the interviewees that I wouldn't normally choose to listen to - trying to diversify the perspectives I take in a bit more.

Music this month…

Enjoyed All-Star House Party LIVE! with Jet Boot Jack, 2 Bad Mice, DJ Ramsey, Disco Waltons, & Grant Richards a lot this month. Seemed to capture my attention and keep me interested for the full 4.5 hours.

Reading this month…

This month I read a few fiction books, which was really unusual for me. Plus at the moment I'm reading a really entertaining book about tax evasion. It sounds like a non sequitur but is actually a funny look at some of the weird ways people and corporations minimise their taxes: TAXTOPIA: How I Discovered the Injustices, Scams and Guilty Secrets of the Tax Evasion by The Rebel Accountant.

Cycling this month…

173.8 miles.

Running this month…

25.5 miles.

#### Monthnotes - February 2025
I was trying to think of a word to sum up February.

After much deliberation I've settled on "serious".

It feels like "serious" sums up the nature, intensity and progression of much of my work this month, but also some of the proper grown-up things going on beyond work this month.

As I look back at the start of the month, I reflect on there being a lot going on workwise:

The fractional COO role I took on in January has been really, really good. I'm enjoying the work a lot and it's been interesting to observe the shift from "learning mode" to "doing mode" in the past couple of weeks. That experience has reinforced that I get most satisfaction from  making a real difference to people and businesses that I work with.

I made a real push on networking this month, deliberately putting extra time into going to events that I might previously have skipped. It feels like it's paid off. I've met some fascinating people from beyond my usual circles and learnt something from everyone I've met along the way. I'm grateful for those conversations and the people that invited me to be part of those events.

We made some solid progress on a new business venture that's been brewing for a while. Galvanised by a conversation with my co-founder in late January, we did some hard work to get clear on ideal customers, refine a couple of products, build a website and get a couple of test clients onboard. Looking forward to pushing this out into the public domain next week.

Juggling a few interesting consultancy projects too, some with ongoing clients and also a new client with challenges that are a bit outside my usual space. The variety this brings is a really valuable part of what I wanted from building a freelance working life.

Roadtesting a new engagement model built around retainers - helping two founders with ad-hoc advice, insight and perspectives. It's an early experiment so it'll be fascinating to see if this way of working adds value for the founders and is viable alongside other work.

Finished up with a couple of coaching clients who were with me for a fixed term after my coaching course last year. It was really helpful to hear their feedback on my coaching work and build that into the way I'm working with new coaching clients who I'm bring on board in the next couple of months.

My Build newsletter continues to grow. Having gone weekly last year and established a manageable cadence of writing, publishing and engaging with reader feedback, I'm really enjoying the newsletter as a way of exploring thinking, sharing knowledge and building a community of founders passionate about building better companies. Sign up here to get it directly in your inbox.

Beyond work, some older generation family health issues played on my mind too. I guess those are likely to be a growing theme over coming years one way or another so I need to get used to this kind of thing.

Also on the health and wellness theme, I didn't get to do the 50 mile ultra I planned to do in February. Pretty disapppointing. I managed to tweak a muscle in my leg a week before the event and spent a few days limping around, so the sensible thing to do was to not run 50 miles. 

I'm back running now but still feeling some soreness. I need to find a new goal to avoid my exercise motivation dropping off, particularly now I'm in London three days a week again so there are less opportunities to get out.

On a more positive note, we enjoyed a nice family day out in London with my brother, his wife and three children. We were joined by my elder son and his girlfriend too as we toured some of the sights of London. It's always interesting to see the city through the eyes of a visitor rather than as a workplace.

I was inspired by a fun-filled afternoon of dancing in the mountains at Avoriaz last month to get back on my decks for a new mix this month.

My "Not La Folie Douce" mix was fun to record and share earlier in February. I'm also looking forward to DJing live again at an event in June - I want to do more of these, but haven't really put in any time to making this happen. Maybe that's something I should focus on later in the year.

I also started back in the gym once a week. It's been a couple of months since I was able to go regularly thanks to work commitments, so it's good to get a regular time slot in the week and be able to stick to it.

Music this month…

A new discovery this month - DJ Metaflore has a nice blend of house and disco with a particular French vibe. It was her Folie mix that got me exploring more of her live sets.

Podcasts this month…

Not too much podcast listening this month so nothing new to recommend.

Reading this month…

I took a deep dive into a book about crypto this month. Quite an eye opener into a world that I was only peripherally aware of before. If you want to see how tech, culture, groupthink and hype bubbles intersect, Number Go Up by Zeke Faux is definitely worth a read.

Cycling this month…

Still haven't been out on my road bike or MTB this month. Managed 124.8 miles across commuting on the electric Brompton and indoors on the Wattbike.

Running this month…

A low mileage month - 29 miles. Recovering from the injury but glad to be getting out more in now and enjoying the lighter mornings.

#### Monthnotes - February 2026
I realise I say this most months, but February felt simultaneously short and packed. 

Maybe it's the combination of a 28 day month, half-term, illness and trying to maintain momentum across a lot of different workstreams,  but the month vanished faster than I'd have liked.

As I look back on the month, my overriding immediate reflection is one of disappointment. I ended up getting ill with gastroenteritis - or "stomach flu" as my US clients call it - for a week in the middle of the month. That's what lies behind that sense of missed opportunities.

I don't get ill very often and am not great at resting, even when I know I should. I also find it really hard given the work I do - as when I can't work, my clients don't get what they need from me and that makes me feel like I'm letting them down. 

I lost a couple of planned work days to sickness this month, which put some pressure on in the last week to catch up. My clients were, without exception, entirely supportive while I was unwell, so I do know that this pressure is coming from me, not them.

As well as just not being able to get stuff done for clients, I also missed a big launch event for my client The Actors House in London. We'd been organising this for a couple of months and it was a key opportunity to raise awareness of the venture among investors and supporters. I'm very grateful to my Extra Brain colleagues for stepping into the breach and helping make sure the event ran smoothly.

The disappointment was also down to the fact I'd booked a couple of days off work so we could get away in our motorhome for a short break on the south coast. We delayed getting away for a day because I felt unwell and then I got worse while we were away, so in the end we were away for a night and didn't really get the break we wanted. We've booked a few days off work at Easter so will try again then.

Once I get past that sense of disappointment about February, I can actually see a lot of progress in the month in my clients' businesses and on my own stuff. 

We're doing a major system migration this weekend with one of my fractional clients, replacing a shaky Clickup instance with the Productive agency management system. I wouldn't usually do a big system change this early in my engagement with a client, but in this case it's the right thing to do to get clear visibility of what's going on and make some big leaps forward on workflow standardisation. 

My new venture - Team Wakeman - is starting to take shape nicely. The v1 website is now live and the lead generation programme is starting to roll out. The buzz of getting the first inbound lead call booked was a good reminder that I really do enjoy the excitement of finding and winning new work.

We're still in the very early days but I'm getting an increasingly confident sense of what it could become and we can blend human thinking and AI to create business operating systems with founders. A conversation with former colleague Ronald Ashri really helped me think about the technology side of things.

Away from work, our project to build a new house in rural Kent is starting to get quite real. We spent a couple of days out at self-build shows, meeting suppliers and learning a lot about different aspects of what building an ecologically friendly, modern house involves. I love that we're doing a project together to build a house that we'll live in for the next 15-20 years at least. We're both learning a lot and are excited about what we might be able to create.

Yesterday we completed on the purchase of the plot we're going to build on. That was a big step forward and makes it feel very real. Our current home is now on the market and selling that is the next big milestone on our critical path for the project.

It'll come as no surprise to those that know me well that I've got a lot of detailed planning spreadsheets to work out how we can pull this off. It's an 18 month project from here on I think. I'm determined we won't end up like many of the people on Grand Designs - we have a budget and timeline and I'm staking my professional reputation on hitting it!

Cycling this month50.1 miles - mostly indoors and a bit of Brompton commuting. Hoping for better weather in March to get some outdoor miles in.

Running this month15.7 miles - illness and too much work. Did most of these miles in the last week to prove to myself I was recovering from being ill.

Music this monthI have a soft spot for old school 90s, so this live set from Slipmatt soundtracked some work this month.

Podcasts this monthA real work focussed one this month. Been trawling through the back catalogue of Trenton Moss's Human Powered. Loads of great agency tips and stories in there, plus Trenton's relentless energy and passion.

Reading this monthI read Crypto Confidential: An Insider's Account from the Frontlines of Fraud by Jake Donoghue this month. I've read a couple of books about the crypto wave, but this was an eye-opening insider account of the world of crypto. Fascinating and mind boggling at the same time - as someone that works inside lots of businesses I couldn't believe some of the stuff that happened.

#### Monthnotes - January 2020
As a family we spent four happy weeks last summer exploring nine European countries and learning more about cultures, people and places beyond our own. That experience reinforced to me the important of the shared values and bonds that we share with our neighbours on the European mainland.

It's hard to avoid the fact that today, the last day of January 2020, is the day that the UK is leaving the European Union. For me the sadness that leaving the EU brings is significant. It feels like a generational backward geo-political step in this connected world. 

The delusion that we'll be able to achieve more outside rather than within the European Union is all too pervasive. 

And it represents a collective lack of self-awareness among many fellow Britons about our real significance on the world stage in 2020 rather than in 1920.

The contrast between the dignity and good grace with which our departure from the European Union has been commemorated in European capitals and the petty flag waving from Brexit Party MEPs yesterday is a powerful representation of this delusion.

But this is the reality we have got ourselves into and I don't believe it's healthy to devote mental energy to things that I can't make a difference to personally. 

So life goes on and we have to create opportunities to shape the future within the new contexts that will emerge as we start to understand what a life outside the European Union will be like.

On a much more positive note, January at Deeson has kicked off at a frenetic pace. The passion and energy of our team members in their work never ceases to impress me.

We've started work with Middlesex University to work with them on their new website discovery and digital strategy project. This is really exciting as it builds upon the successful work we've delivered in the higher education sector in the past two years for clients like University of Derby (www.derby.ac.uk) and London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (www.lamda.ac.uk). 

So far I've been really impressed with the team at Middlesex and their passion for their work - we're excited about the potential to design a new web platform that both the university and Deeson can be truly proud of.

Other work also kicking off this month includes:

a new web platform build for a major UK membership organisation in the cultural and media sectorthe build phase of our work on the new Southbank Centre websitediscovery and design work on the rebuild of website and online collections platform for a top-10 UK visitor attraction in London.digital strategy for a UK membership organisation that's very close to my heart as a marketer by training.a new user research project for a government department.kicking off a new digital partnership client in the B2B sector, further expanding our work with the Wagtail CMS.- onboarding for a new digital partnership client in the culture and visitor attractions sector, helping them plot out their digital future at an exciting time in the venue's transformation.

We've also experienced the highs and lows of the agency pitch process this month. Because of our unique operating model that gives each client a named permanent team for the long term, we're very selective about taking on new client work. 

But when we do pitch for new clients for whom we're confident we can deliver excellent work, we do so in the knowledge that only one agency can come out of that process successfully. 

This month we had the infrequent experience of coming out of that process unsuccessfully with a public sector pitch that we delivered early in the month. While that's disappointing, it's also a fact of life in a competitive pitch process. We've reviewed and learnt from the experience. 

Part of that retrospective highlighted the importance of the client's role in running the agency selection process effectively. This particular client had put a lot of thought into the process to ensure it allowed them to consider and select an agency partner fairly and at pace. 

Things like having a well-written and coherent brief, shortlisting a pragmatic number of agencies to submit proposals and then move forward to pitch, providing rapid and full answers to clarification questions and being flexible rather than dogmatic about process were all positive signs. 

Those things reflect well on the client and their insight into the needs of the client and the agency in a successful selection process. It's no surprise that they have an experienced digital project lead with real agency experience on their team.

But the standout part of this selection process was the quality of the feedback given to us - it was well considered, extensive, fair and actionable. It showed the rigour of the process and the factors that led us to being a genuine close second. 

As we head into February we're developing our business plan for Deeson for the 12 months ahead. Lots of exciting new initiatives, partnerships and new ideas for team Deeson to bring to fruition. Things never stand still!

If you'd like to be part of this journey we're hiring for Canterbury-based junior, senior and lead technical roles (full stack, PHP, React) and a London-based user research role. More details at www.deeson.co.uk/careers or drop me a line at simonw@deeson.co.uk.

#### Monthnotes - January 2021
It's a wet and windy Sunday evening in Kent as I look back over the past month at work and at home. 

The first working day of the month, just four weeks ago, seems like a distant memory. The pace of work after the Christmas break pretty much hit full speed again in the first week back and hasn't dropped since.

At The Panoply it was great to be able to release a positive trading update earlier in the month. Strong performance aside, it was also good to be able to reflect on the impact of some of my work during 2020 and the difference it made to the group's overall performance so far.

Earlier in the month I facilitated a remote planning workshop, looking at 90 day goal setting for The Panoply team. It's been a while since I ran this kind of session and I enjoyed the experience. We did some ruthless prioritisation to make sure we were focussing on what really mattered and that's set us up for a good quarter of getting things done.

I also put into practice a few of the lessons our teams have learnt from running hundreds of client workshops over video conference over the past 11 months. What would normally have been a half day session was split into a couple of two hour sessions, recognising that keeping engagement levels high among a virtual group for much longer than that is unnecessarily hard.

One of the things that's been reinforced to me this month has been the importance of pace and focus in moving the organisation forward. It's not a new lesson, but the workshop was a timely reminder of how we can maximise our chances of succeeding in our mission. 

The simple pattern of identifying opportunities or issues, properly understanding them, choosing the right things to put our energy into and then getting the right steps in place to move forward is at the heart of this. If we can do this consistently and at pace, that's when any organisation or team is at its most effective.

I think often this simplicity gets lost as organisations grow and I'm determined to not fall into that trap. The creeping webs of complexity that can stifle larger organisations distract from simple pattern of getting the right things done well consistently. It's been interesting to explore how we can design an operating model that enables growth yet fights inherently against unnecessary complexity.

I was lucky enough to move house a couple of months ago, which now means my weekends are mostly spent on home projects as part of the refurbishment of an 1870s agricultural building. It's good to have some mental and physical challenges away from the screen to get my head around. It's also been a good reminder for me about the difference between complicated and complex. 

In my day job I deal with a lot of complex issues. They are the norm and require a particular set of techniques to gain insight, however incomplete or imperfect that might be, and then make the best possible decision in those circumstances. Yet my home refurbishment efforts this month have mostly been in the complicated space.

A lot of evenings were spent studying a wired burglar alarm system that was installed in the 1980s - not a particular area of expertise for me.

Tracing wires and testing with my multimeter helped me understand what had been done. I was then able to research a replacement modern hybrid wired/wireless alarm and install it successfully. There was a fair number of problems to solve along the way, but ultimately it was a complicated project but with entirely predictable outcomes, as long as I worked methodically and systematically. 

One casualty of a busy work life and time consuming home projects has been fitness and wellbeing this month. I've gone three or four days sometimes without getting outside, which I know isn't good for me in many ways. 

But from tomorrow at The Panoply we're taking part in the Zevo Fittest Workplace 2021 competition - we have a number of cross-company teams within the group and will be competing against other businesses to be the most active over the next two weeks. It's been great to see the galvanising effect of a bit of internal competition so far and I'm hoping that'll be the push I need to take more exercise this month and get outdoors more, whatever the weather.

#### Monthnotes - January 2022
How people at work interact within organisations is an endlessly fascinating puzzle for me. And this month's been all about trying to solve that puzzle just a little bit more every day. 

There are plenty of ways to approach how to make more effective organisations, but I'm increasing convinced that the most useful framing considers both the health of the organisation as a convening system alongside the drivers of individuals' effectiveness in their work work.

That's quite a mouthful, but on the ground it boils down to creating the right context for people to do their best work...while making sure that those individual contributions add up to what the organisation exists to do.

As the new TPXimpact organisation emerges, we've been working with some external advisors to help us navigate some of the more tricky aspects of this. In particular we've been exploring the journey of leaders in the transition we're making from many companies to one organisation.

We've started using a model from Elliot Jaques' Requisite Organization to help understand where we are in our journey and help us make some of the transitions we have underway. It's a really interesting way of looking at the nature of leadership roles in an organisation and some of the typical pitfalls that befall organisations making major changes.

There's a good explanation of the thinking here. The part we've been using considers the levels of work that Jaques proposes need to happen in an organisation for it to be effective. Some elements of Jaques' work might seem counter to much contemporary thinking about self-organisation and how it relates to organisational structure, but I have also found much of use in the theory and how it isolates the intersecting functions of leadership in modern organisations.

The other interesting reflection I have over the past four weeks has been about the concept of "cycle time". How quickly can an organisation, or parts of an organisation, go through cycles of learning and doing? For example we've been testing the first iteration of our new organisational governance at TPXimpact this month. It's been interesting to learn new habits, break some old ones and reflect on what needs to change next for a functioning form of governance to emerge.

This month we've been trying to reduce our cycle time to get some key areas of work moving faster. This has typically meant reducing the number of people being directly involved in specific projects. While delivering benefits in speed, there are costs too thanks to less people being directly involved in some work, leading to more effort being needed to co-ordinate and join up pieces of work. Quality of the work delivered is also a consideration in the right size and composition of teams solving problems too.

I've been getting out and about more with work this month too. The value of time spent working face to face with colleagues and new teams has been significant. Last week I also caught up with former colleague Tim Deeson. It was great to reflect on his work since leaving the business and what he's learnt about himself and his experiences during that time.

Outside of work this month I've been managing to stick to my fitness drive, attending CrossFit sessions twice a week and trying to do exercise most days. I've upped my running mileage and done two half marathon distance runs this month, along with several 10K runs. I also managed to get in a 100km bike ride too so my Strava stats for the month are looking good.

This has given me the confidence to sign up for a big challenge in October - a 50 mile ultra across the Lake District. The dual challenge of the distance and navigating through some of the highest peaks is exciting and daunting at the same time. The longest run I've done to date is a marathon so it's definitely a new adventure for me.

Luckily my renewed interest in running has coincided with our month-long fitness challenge at work, so I should be able to contribute a healthy number of steps to our team's step count for the month. In 2022 we've got nearly 100 people signed up for the challenge after we first ran it last year. It's great to have another motivator to get outdoors in one of the harder training months - as well as to see which of my colleagues are the most competitive this time around!

#### Monthnotes - January 2023
This month marked a new chapter for me at work. 

On 3rd January I opened my laptop and began work as an independent consultant - after spending all 24 years of my career so far as an employee.

I made the move because I wanted to have more flexibility and variety in my work. 

And so far it’s working out well.

I’ve spent a lot of time this month meeting people to talk about their work and mine. I’ve met so many supportive and helpful people - without exception they’ve shared experiences freely and honestly. I’m very grateful for that as I embark on this new adventure.

One thing I wanted to do more of this year was writing.

So I’ve started an email newsletter about building businesses. Four issues in and the subscriber numbers are well above what I was aiming for at this stage. I’m getting lots of really helpful feedback and encouragement as I tweak the content, format and style each week.

Topics so far have covered organisational design, power, friction and pace in business. You can sign up to get it by email each week here.

I’m also working on an exciting book with a co-author. We’ve been learning a lot about the book publishing process and working hard to wrangle our thinking into a coherent and interesting book proposal.

I’ve also spent some time refining my consultancy and fractional COO propositions. I’m continuing to iterate them based on what I hear, learn and deliver in my work, but it feels like they’re reaching a steady enough state for the time being.

I'm also helping organise a series of Kent meet-ups focussed on sustainability - a topic that's very close to my heart. People Planet Pint is a nationwide initiative from Small99 that's aimed at business owners and professionals working in the net zero, BCorps and sustainability fields. 

Working with Maria Soleil and Danielle Ward we're running monthly events in Kent, rotating between Canterbury, Thanet and Maidstone. The first one is in Canterbury on 23rd February. Free registrations here.

Away from work, earlier this month we said goodbye to our 18 year old as he headed off to the southern hemisphere for 3 months on his gap year travels. 

It felt like quite a milestone for us as parents and one that we faced with mixed emotions. We experienced real sadness at him leaving but also pride in his confidence and maturity as a young man. 

I also empathised more with my parents who must have experienced similar when I travelled aged 18, especially given how different global communications are now compared to 1993. 

Music this month…

As a dance music lover growing up in the 90s, mix tapes and CDs were the thing. So it was with great excitement I found The Classic Mix CD Series on Soundcloud, with 1000 mix CDs from back in the day. Check out volume 1 (1-500) and volume 2 (501-1000).

Podcasts this month…

Been enjoying the Second in Command podcast. Once you get past the hierarchy-laden title, it features some really interesting conversations with people in COO or similar roles.

Reading this month…

I've spent a lot of time this month really trying to get into Post Growth: Life after Capitalism. 

It's a topic I wanted to understand more about before taking a view on whether there's any validity in the concept. But despite a lot of persistence, I have given up with the book. 

It fails to land any real coherent arguments for the concept of a post growth era, instead taking overly long multiple page diversions into semi-relevant metaphors. Too often it draws links where there is little evidence to justify a link. 

I've downloaded a couple of other books that explore sustainable growth and the relationships between finite resources and uncontrolled growth. Let's see if they offer a more coherent look at this important debate.

Running this month...41.2 miles.

Cycling this month...225.4 miles.

#### Monthnotes - January 2024
"A bit of a grind".

That's how I described January in a conversation with my son about two weeks in - and that still seems like an appropriate description.

It's a full 31 day-er of a month. It seems like ages since Jo and I joined our friends for a New Year's Day dip in the sea at Deal.

And after December it feels like a back to work, get focussed and get stuff done kind of month. 

And so that's what I did.

While I made progress on plenty of things workwise, the sense I have looking back is that not quite enough got over the line. 

I seem to have just a few too many things that aren't quite finished enough yet, so I need to focus on finishing stuff over the next couple of weeks.

One project that I did make good progress on this month was helping an agency with organisational design. 

They've got ambitious plans for growth and are well-placed to deliver them given their client base and the niche they work in. I'm helping them with business transformation and have been working with the team to make sure there are clear role scorecards and structure in place.

As businesses grow, being able to define roles properly in a way that fits with the strategy and operating model, but also doesn't stifle innovation, agility and autonomy, is really important. It's one of those core building blocks that often gets missed during the early stages of growth.

My coaching practice with operational leaders and MDs across agencies and VC-backed scale-ups is growing nicely too. I started work with two new individual coaching clients this month. I love this work as it's very satisfying to see leaders grow and achieve their personal and business ambitions. 

I also had a bit of spare time this month, so I caught up with a few founders who I haven't seen for a while. It's fascinating to hear their stories, progress and kick around some of the challenges they're grappling with over a coffee or a beer. I always learn something from each conversation and get to assimilate that into my work at some point. 

Away from work I've been pretty focussed on fitness this month. I've stuck to my commitment to at least 30 mins of exercise everyday. I've run a 10 mile road race and ridden an epic 142 miles to see my son at university.

And I found a bit of enthusiasm for DIY too, finally getting around to decorating my office and the kitchen at home early in the month. Since then my energy for this kind of thing has disappeared a bit though.

I also spent some time on music this month. Thanks to Jess, I found a brilliant internet radio community called Love Will Save The Day. I've really enjoyed some variety in my music this month as I've explored new shows. 

Inspired by this I also knocked up a quick website for my DJing and recorded a fresh mix for this month. 

Podcasts this month…

Acquired is back for a new season. I've queued up the first one to play when I next have a chunk of time to listen. It's a super deep dive into the backstory of individual tech and growth businesses.

Music this month…

Been enjoying some long modern / nu-disco sets from Steve Farrell like this one. Have also been exploring new music on Love Will Save The Day.

Reading this month…

I re-read Humanocracy by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini again this month. It remains a firm favourite of mine as a primer for progressive thinking in how to build organisations.

Cycling this month…

457.8 miles.

Running this month…

54.3 miles.

#### Monthnotes - January 2025
As I look back over the last 31 days, I'm thinking that I seem to have packed a lot in this month.

I started a new fractional COO engagement with a London (and soon to be US) based client. They're a fast growing social agency doing some really brilliant work with big brands.

For this engagement I'm in London two or three times a week and am really enjoying being back in a lively, buzzing office. The team are a really friendly bunch and it's been really good to get to know them and their work more over the past three weeks.

I'm now starting to shift to think about how to help make the improvements I'm there to deliver. I know it's a good sign when my mind's going into overdrive out of hours about how to make a difference. I enjoy the mental challenge of taking what I've learnt and done in the past and thinking how to come up with the right solutions for this agency, these teams and this stage of growth.

With this new gig taking up a lot of mental energy, it's been quieter on the consultancy projects front, although there are a few interesting things that might come to fruition over the next couple of months. Progress has also been slower on a new venture that I'm working with a co-founder on, but I'm hoping to kickstart that with greater focus next month.

My Build newsletter has continued to get really positive feedback on LinkedIn and direct into my inbox. It's sometimes a struggle to come up with original content regularly, but I think it's the original thinking that's important given the amount of generic, rehashed or just AI generated blah that swills around LinkedIn.

The subscriber numbers are creeping towards 1,000 now, so it'll be time for a mini-celebration when I hit that milestone. I guess with that in mind…if you're not already subscribed and want to get my wisdom in your inbox every Wednesday morning, please do sign-up here.

Away from work, I've been lucky enough to have done two trips to the Alps this month for some skiing adventures. Over new year we enjoyed a family ski holiday with friends in the little French resort of Sainte Foye. Highlights included a ski touring expedition and a big snow dump on the penultimate day.

Then last weekend I was back in Les Gets with my first annual BIMA ski trip. It was great to meet a new bunch of really friendly agency folk, enjoy the sunny slopes at Les Gets, Morzine and Avoriaz, as well as the sights and sounds of La Folie Douce.

Music this month…

Hard to pick out a single musical highlight this month. As I've been more office-based, it seems like I've spent less time finding new music to listen to and have been sticking to a few favourite mixes. One of those is this classic from Larry Levan, live from Paradise Garage - it amazes me to think this is 46 years ago and how DJs like Levan inspired the music that so many of us enjoy today. 

Podcasts this month…

Been enjoying Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway this month. Interesting, original and timely takes on what's going on in tech, business and politics right now.

Reading this month…

I read a book this month that was so good, as soon as I finished it I read it for a second time. Matthew Syed's Rebel Ideas is a superb read about the value of diverse thinking. It gave me so many insights into where ideas come from and how to create the situations where the best new ideas are likely to emerge. Inspiring, thought provoking and probably the best business book I've read in the last year at least.

Cycling this month…

I've not cycled anywhere for fun this month thanks to weather, travel and plenty of other stuff keeping me busy. Managed 61.2 miles commuter riding though.

Running this month…

A bit short on the miles too and I've ended up the month with an injury, so the ultra next weekend is looking unlikely - 42.9 miles.

#### Monthnotes - January 2026
The month started with what's probably our last family ski holiday for a good few years I suspect - we had a great week in Sainte Foy with family and family friends. The snow wasn't quite what we'd hoped for, but we had a great time skiing together. There's definitely something about knowing it's likely the last one that makes you pay attention differently.

Back to work on the 5th meant starting a new fractional COO engagement with Veza Digital. They're a rapidly growing and acquisitive Webflow agency - fully remote, ambitious and clearly ready to level up operationally. I'm working with them on implementing an agile delivery methodology, which is exactly the kind of structural operational work that helps scaling while reducing chaos. What's impressed me most so far is how receptive the founders and team have been to change. Everyone genuinely wants to improve which makes my work a lot easier.

Another new client this month was Abbie Dando's SEO and content agency - Monday Clicks. I've not worked with an SEO-focused agency before, so I was learning plenty about that world. Abbie's done a brilliant job building the business from her freelance roots into a small, well-respected agency with some great clients. The workshop was about helping her see what she's already achieved, build confidence whilst mapping out the steps for our work together this year - particularly around reducing founder dependency. I'm excited to see what she can achieve this year as we work together each month. 

Mid-month I was back in Coventry on-site with ImagePlus, a fractional client I began work with last year. We're focused on modernising their operations, building out their leadership team and sharpening their proposition, with particular attention on account management and growth. It's the kind of foundational work that I enjoy - it takes time and patience but builds real momentum when you get it right.

I got lucky with an extra trip to the mountains this month too with my second annual BIMA ski trip - this year in Val d'Isère. It's officially a business ski trip, but in reality it's a bit of business, a great group of people and some excellent skiing. It snowed whilst we were there which made for perfect conditions. Only had to do a couple of work calls whilst away too, which felt about right to justify expensing the trip for corporation tax purposes. It was great to catch up with the group and meet three new people who joined us this year too.

Away from client work, I've been developing a new venture I'll hopefully be launching soon. It's an operating partner business - an agency for businesses that want hands-on help with their ops but don't want to have to learn or build it themselves. It's something I've been asked for a lot over the past 18 months or so, but haven't previously had a way of fulfilling. It's a natural evolution from my fractional work, but will involve other people - employees and associates - not just me. I'm working with Outdo on the GTM strategy and execution, which has been really helpful in clarifying the positioning and approach as well as building out the marketing machine.

And yesterday was a big day at home - we headed to London Heathrown to drop off our 18-year-old son who's off to Asia for three months. We're really proud of him for having the confidence to do something like that but for Jo and me it was a sad day too. Both our sons are now away from home, one at university, one travelling. I guess it's another step in this transitional period of our lives . We knew it was coming of course but I guess you're never fully ready for it when it does.

Our long term house project continues to crawl forwards. It's really interesting doing something that's in an area where things work on a different cadence to the digital sector. The world of architects, planning and construction involves a lot more long term planning and patience than I'm used to!

Not been doing much running this month because of the amount of skiing and being away. Need to get back into that next month and find an event or challenge to keep me focussed on fitness in the wet, dark winter months here in the UK.

Music this month…

Enjoyed this Mick Willow mix promoting a new night in Dubai. It's pure vocal house that takes me right back to the mid-90s.

Podcasts this month…

Been exploring agency podcasts a bit more this month. Getting into the back catalogue Jenny Plant's Creative Agency Account Manager podcast was my highlight - some great conversations and every episode gave me plenty of thought provoking ideas to take away.

Reading this month…

Ctrl+Alt+Chaos: How Teenage Hackers Hijack the Internet by Joe Tidy has been an eye-opening read. I learnt a ton about the world of online gaming, hacking and how it spills over into criminality. 

Cycling this month…

Not commuting at the moment so less time on the Brompton plus rain and ice kept me off the roads too. 118.3 miles, mostly Wattbike.

Running this month…

14.6 miles.

#### Monthnotes - July 2021
July feels like it's been a long month. A lot of ground covered both mentally and physically seems to have taken its toll a bit and I'm feeling quite empty and lacking in my usual drive and passion. A day off and a short trip away to visit family at the end of the month has helped a bit, so I'm really looking forward to a longer break in August when I'm taking a couple of weeks off for our family holiday in Wales.

This month our pre-application university visits for my eldest son have taken us to Southampton, Birmingham, Warwick and Bristol this month, having gone to Nottingham and Loughborough last month. 

While we've spent a lot of time on the road, it's been good to show him different places and start to see the subtle differences between the likely university experiences he might have - which have been hard to discern from online open days. 

Earlier in July it was good to get together near Bristol with a number of colleagues from across The Panoply, meeting many of them for the first time in person. We spent the day talking about how we will deliver our future plans together, spent the evening with an 80s themed party and then went surfing the next day.

We began the month by releasing our preliminary results for 2020/21. The detailed market announcement is here, but the key highlights included revenue up 62% to £51.1m with an organic like-for-like revenue growth of 19%. Adjusted EBITDA increased 87% to £7.1m against £3.8m for the previous period. 

It was great to be able to share such an impressive set of results, particularly for a year which began with so much uncertainty for us all and was delivered with our team members working in unprecedented circumstances throughout. 

But a key part of the announcement was being able to share news about what I've spent a lot of time and mental energy working on for the past few months. Our success in progressing towards our commercial and impact goals for 2023 meant that we have taken the decision to build on this success and set a more ambitious vision for 2025, including

Achieving a run rate revenue of £200m (£150m public sector, £50m commercial sector) by March 2025, putting us into the top 20 public sector suppliers in our markets.Delivering 10-15% organic revenue growth per annum.Delivering improving EBITDA marginsHalving the 21 gaps that we have identified across representation, pay and inclusion for employees from underrepresented backgrounds.Achieving net zero status.

In practice this means launching a new integrated client value proposition, delivered under a single new brand replacing the existing brands of companies that have joined the group and The Panoply brand itself. We'll be moving towards being one agile, progressive and integrated company, with full independently assessed B-Corp certification demonstrating our commitment to balance purpose and profit in all we do.

There's plenty to do to make all this happen and the challenge is an exciting one to be part of. Collectively across the group we've achieved a lot in a very short space of time, which gives me a lot of confidence in the team of colleagues I work with across our companies and our ability to make this vision a reality together.

So while I end the month feeling more tired and lacking in energy than I have in a very long time, I'm looking forward to playing my part in the future of The Panoply and creating a truly differentiated digital services business - a truly exciting journey to be part of.

#### Monthnotes - July 2022
July shaped up to be an interesting month in my work at TPXimpact. It felt somewhat like another watershed in the journey of change from being a holding company with more than ten operating businesses to becoming an integrated business.

In the middle of the month we announced our preliminary results for the financial year ending 31st March. The results showcased an impressive performance delivering 58% revenue growth to generate £79.7m revenue for the year. Adjusted EBITDA was £12.2m, up 72% on the previous year. We now have more than 600 employees, up from 22% last year. The business had around 200 employees when we first floated on the AIM market in December 2018.

In his results presentation our CEO Neal Gandhi also talked about the extent of the change we took on over the past year and how we are continuing to stabilise and mature the nascent operational divisions within the business. 

As the new leadership structure really beds in and our new organisational governance settles, my focus has turned to the creation of a lean central operations team, the recruitment of a new permanent Chief People Officer for the business and the work to bring four more recently acquired businesses into the fold.

We've spent a lot of time thinking deeply about what we've learnt over the past year and how we apply these learnings to the next wave of business integrations we work through.

During these reflections, it's been important to be brutally analytical of decisions we made. Taking an objective, critical look at things has been vital.

And this has also meant being conscious of contemporary context - a common retrospective trap is to apply what we know, feel or believe now to a decision we took in another context when we maybe didn't know, feel or believe those things at that time.

That's not an excuse for letting ourselves off the hook where we got things wrong. But it is important to come up with a balanced appraisal of what we take forward from this cycle of learning.

I've also been doing a lot of reflection about my own role in the business over the last year and particularly how the roles I end up playing in businesses relate to other leaders and teams.

I've realised that I've always been fascinated by how things work, whether that's at work or at home. I remember vividly my parents taking me to see a show at a theatre when I was young. I can't remember much about the show, but I do remember being fascinated by wanting to understand what it took to make the production happen and being desperate to peak into the wings offstage and see what was going on.

My mind was alive with questions about the set, lighting, sound and how everything seemed to run so smoothly with the show. It all looked so elegant and effortless, yet even then I had a sense that a lot went into making things happen.

A few years later I had the opportunity to get involved with school drama productions. I jumped at the opportunity to learn to answer some of those questions that popped into my head that day at the theatre. I learnt the basics of lighting design, audio production and building sets. Over time I began to realise that the backstage teams were the hidden heroes of the theatre world. They were the people that literally created the stage on which actors performed.

And so began my fascination with how things in the world worked. This fascination has been a real driver for me at work in the past decade.

As I've delved deeper into what I've done at work, it's clear to me that I enjoy and have a real impact when I'm able to understand how organisations do and could work, helping founders to realise their vision and helping organisations to emerge and evolve.

As I've sought a theoretical framework for growing and evolving organisations, I've been drawn strongly to systems thinking. Viewing a business as an interconnected of elements that's organised to achieve a mission works for me.

And with that perspective on a scaling business as an organisational system comes an appreciation that such a system is innately complex. Too often we're guilty of linear thinking - that if we pull a particular lever in business, there will be predictable consequences. Yet there rarely are predictable consequences and the interdependence of what happens in different parts of a business is important.

So this month I've been reading and exploring a lot about systems thinking and complexity theory in rapid growth businesses. It's been interesting to get my head around some new (to me) concepts and consider how they apply to what I enjoy doing - collaborating with founders and senior to solve the challenges of rapid scaling.

As a family we've also managed to escape for a summer break. We took a trip to the Canadian Pacific northwest that we first planned in 2019 and had originally booked for summer 2020. Two years on and a pandemic later, we managed to finally make the trip. A particular favourite place was Tofino on Vancouver Island - a small, friendly and chilled surf town in the Pacific Rim national park.

Music this month…

I'm not sure why but over the last few weeks I've been on a bit of rediscovery mission when it comes to music. I've been scouring Tidal for albums that I listened to a long time back, but haven't heard in ages. I particularly enjoyed Suede's Dog Man Star (1994), Licensed to III by the Beastie Boys (1986) and Alchemy: Dire Straits Live (1984).

I also dug out my DJ controller again this month and enjoyed messing around in the mix, working on a refreshed and updated version of a live club set I played out on CDJs back in 1997.

Podcasts this month…

I did a bit of a shake-up of my podcast subscriptions this month to bring some fresh perspectives to my listening. "How I Built This" by Guy Raz has been a podcast I've enjoyed a lot this month, along with a particularly interesting episode of "Honey I Blew Up The Business" with Dan Kirby and his guest Spencer Gallagher.

Reading this month…

Bit heavy going on the reading front in July. I found Heresy Consulting's "The Heretic" a thought provoking quick read and a good contrast with some pretty heavy going but valuable reads about systems thinking (Thinking in Systems - A Primer was probably the best of the bunch). 

In search of some new material, I've also started reading Anthro-Vision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life by Gillian Tett. I knew very little about anthropology before I began the book. I'm only a few chapters in but I'm hooked. It's interesting to get a grounding in the anthropological approach and how it's been applied by businesses to better understand societies and customers.

#### Monthnotes - July 2023
July's felt like a bit of a one-off month, lacking the usual cadence of working life.

Finishing up with a couple of fractional COO engagements and an interesting consultancy project over the first couple of the weeks contributed to a real end of term feeling.

It was good to wrap up this work and feel like I drew the first six months of freelance life to a close. One thing I've learnt over the past few years is that I like the sense of accomplishment that comes from an end point in my work - whether that's hitting a goal, finishing a project or handing over at the end of a fractional engagement.

Having a bit more spare time meant I could spend more time thinking about what types of work I'm keen to do in the autumn and work towards signing up some new interim or fractional COO gigs. I've got some interesting conversations in play and am excited to see where they might lead later in the year and into 2024.

I've deliberately kept a six week block of time pretty much clear over the summer. It's the break from work that I wanted to take when I left TPXimpact in December, but delayed until the summer - because that just felt like a better time to take some time out.

I was lucky enough to take a four week sabbatical in summer 2019 from my role as Managing Director at Deeson. Indeed it was the time away from work then that led me into start writing monthnotes when I returned. I remember how I felt after that break, so it'll be interesting to see how my world of work looks when I log back on in late August.

Away from work, it was good to get away to the Lake District for three days with my younger son - fresh from finishing his GCSEs in late June. It rained - a lot - but that didn't stop us cramming in a Via Ferrata adventure, a wet ascent of Scafell Pike and some indoor freefall fun too. 

Music this month…

More old school vibes this month with the highlight being a newly discovered epic 7 hour set from Paul Taylor. 

Podcasts this month…

A new addition to my podcast repertoire this month - the Acquired podcast - courtesy of a recommendation from James Herbert. Am enjoying the longer form conversations and learning about the backstories of some interesting businesses.

Reading this month…

I found Built on a Lie by Owen Walker fascinating. It's a look at the rise and fall of Neil Woodford and explores how he built a successful investment business, only then for it to fall apart in spectacular style. 

The lessons I took from it weren't really about investment and financial services, but more about the dangers of hubris in leadership and how failing to keep in touch with reality can lead to ever poorer quality decision making.

Cycling this month…

112 miles.

Running this month…

38.1 miles.

#### Monthnotes - July 2024
Writing these monthnotes today, there's a real end of term feeling going on for me as I wrap up work for the next four weeks.

I first took a sabbatical from work back in 2019 when I was running a successful digital agency. 

We'd put in a policy that gave long serving team members a paid sabbatical as a retention tool (my business partner's idea I will happily admit). Before long my turn came along to take some time out.

We used the time to drive as a family from the UK to the Adriatic, taking in France, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium in a six week road trip. As a family we look back on this trip with many happy memories, particularly given the restrictions on travel that followed in the Covid years.

And so when I took control of my working life and went independent in 2022, I made a commitment to take some time out every summer. 

This year I've worked pretty hard so far so that I can take August off work and recharge for a busy autumn ahead. It's taken some careful planning to make sure I can fulfil commitments to clients ahead of properly managing to disconnect from work, but now it's time to stop.

I've got lots planned at work for the autumn. Re-engaging with some previous clients and some exciting new collaborations to work on to hopefully build out new ventures for 2025 and beyond. 

I've had to try hard to not dive right in and get started on these - I needed to finish existing engagements this month and start September with fresh energy to make the best of those new opportunities.

Looking back over the past month, it's been quite a blur of work, drinks with clients and plenty of family events outside of work too. 

We've had plenty on. Highlights included entertaining friends for the Euro 2024 final, celebrating my wife's birthday, visiting friends for a BBQ, being back together yesterday as a family of four after my eldest son being away for most of the month and having a great evening out seeing Suede and the Manic Street Preachers in Margate a couple of weeks ago. 

As a 90s teenager, I loved Suede and the Manics first time around and they both put on a great show at Margate, but I have a particularly soft spot for Suede - the first band I ever saw live in at Exeter University's Great Hall in February 1995. 

I'm back on a running training plan for a half-marathon in October, so fitness is going well. I've been enjoying the mix of running faster over shorter distances plus the longer slower runs at weekends. I'm also plotting a 100 mile bike ride on Saturday in Kent and East Sussex too.

Music-wise I've been enjoying creating more live mixes and experimenting with music production software a bit too. I've got a couple of my own mash-ups and remixes that I'm playing with to learn the tools.

Music this month…

With the longer runs I've had to find some new musical entertainment. This 3 hour mix from Australia's Sgt Slick has accompanied me on some longer runs and helped keep the energy up.

Podcasts this month…

Trying to avoid recency bias here, but the new Wisdom from the Top out today was great. Margaret Heffernan is always an engaging read/listen and this episode's more of the same. Good stuff.

Reading this month…

Enjoyed Paul Millerd's Pathless Path this month. As I reflect on my career so far and the changes I've been making in the past few years it's given me some interesting challenges to reflect on over the next few weeks.

Running this month…

76.1 miles.

Cycling this month…

133.7 miles.

#### Monthnotes - July 2025
As I write this monthnote on the last day of July, I'm enjoying my long awaited summer break watching the sunrise over a vineyard in the Burgundy region in France.

One of the joys of working independently is being able to dictate my own holiday allowance and this year I've awarded myself nearly six weeks off (albeit with a couple of days work to keep in touch with my coaching clients and run some monthly team workshops).

The six months from mid-January to mid-July were pretty full on, with a great fractional engagement and plenty of consultancy projects too. But as the summer break approached I could feel like the tank was emptying fast and by mid-July I was definitely running on fumes.

We left the UK in our motorhome a week ago and have since meandered through the Champagne region, the Auvergne and have now arrived at Lyon for a couple of nights.

I love not having a clear plan and just exploring each day. The joy of discovering unexpected places or events is such a contrast to the busy planned life I lead in the UK.

However tomorrow's a work day so I'm off to a co-working space in central Lyon, which will be a bit of a change of pace compared to our leisurely life on the road. I'm also looking forward to meeting Emily Rose Dallara in person too for a coffee in Lyon.

I've been re-reading Cal Newport's Slow Productivity book where he talks about working in periods of intensity interspersed with periods of relatively low productivity.

That's my plan once I'm back at work full-time in September - to try to be more planned in the work I take on to have peaks and troughs of intensity, but maybe not quite as intense as recently.

This month I also did some facilitation work which I really enjoyed. It's been a while since I did a purely facilitation-based engagement, so running a management awayday for 27 people was a good reminder how much I love designing days that bring people together to forge meaningful connections.

I've also kicked off a client project with fellow Extra Brain Manish Kapur this month. We're helping a PR, social and events business understand how they can improve their systems and automate as much as possible of their operational processes. It's been nice to work with Manish and enjoy the experience of jointly delivering consultancy work.

I'm excited about my fractional course - The Fractional Executive Launchpad - that launches on 15 September. Pre-sales have been encouraging and my "top of funnel" marketing activities seem to be working nicely now. I'm enjoying learning new techniques in both the production and commercialisation of the course.

Had a bit of a blip with the course platform last week where some Teachable "upgrades" took out the course platform and checkout. It was a situation where I needed support from Teachable, but it was pretty slow. With my checkout down for several days and frustrated buyers emailing me, I had to resort to a LinkedIn post to get some priority - and then within a couple of hours they'd fixed the issue.

It'll be interesting to see if the course and associated services this remains an experiment or if it has the potential to become a meaningful part of my work portfolio. I've given myself until the end of the year to answer that question.

Music this month…

Going to see Texas and KT Tunstall live in Margate this month has led me to a rediscovery of the Texas 1990s back catalogue.

Podcasts this month…

Loving "How Stories Happen" with Jay Acunzo. In each show he dissects the signature stories that leading public speakers use, along with practical tips about how we can learn from them.

Reading this month…

Got to be Robin Bonn's "Market of One" book. Robin and I always have great conversations when we catch up. His insightful thinking and down-to-earth style takes abstract marketing concepts and makes them accessible - if you run an agency, please get Robin's book and read it. Then read it again.

Cycling this month…

183 miles. We're thinking of heading off to Mount Ventoux next on our roadtrip so looking forward to tackling this iconic climb for the first time.

Running this month…

51.1 miles

#### Monthnotes - June 2020
As I sit down to write this month's reflections, it feels like a month in which some sort of corner has been turned - a sense that we've moved into a new phase of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis.

Sure, there'll be passionate debates about whether lockdown was eased too early and whether the approach taken was right. The sense of community unity and support that defined the earlier stages of lockdown is rapidly disappearing in England, to be replaced by a far less cohesive, more individual-focussed behaviours.

As I reflect on the bigger themes behind the UK's response to the pandemic, I keep coming back to centralisation and my belief in the latent power in decentralisation in effective organisations.

As a country we've taken a highly centralised approach to dealing with the pandemic. We've not taken advantage of established local public health teams with deep expertise in their local communities, instead preferring centrally procured and rapidly stood up teams.

Local community leaders haven't had access to accurate or timely data about what's happening in their areas, preventing them from taking decisions about how best to deal with the local challenges of Covid-19.

In a crisis strong leadership is important. And having worked in local public services for 10 years I know it's far from perfect as a system.

But the broader mistake I'm seeing is to assume that leadership is a top-down activity with power centralised in the few.

With decentralised thinking, autonomy, information and accountability, more effective leadership can emerge across an organisation, country or community. Pushing decision-making as close to the frontline helps improve decision-making quality.

This progressive thinking about how agile organisations can best respond to fast-moving situations has been really lacking in our country's handling of the past few months.

Over the past few weeks I've been working with the founders of The Panoply and company CEOs to help design an operating system for the rapidly growing group. Decentralisation and how to dissipate decision-making power has been part of that work too.

Defining how we work together and decentralising autonomy to empowered and entrepreneurial CEOs, while getting the benefits of working as a group, has been at the heart of my thinking.

I've enjoyed the intellectual challenge of defining and iterating the system, working closely with other people in the group and learning about the work of other group companies. Over the coming months our focus shifts to implementing the system, building relationships and learning to work together in new ways.

At GreenShoot Labs my growth role has been all about scaling delivery teams this month. We've been hiring at scale, both contract and permanent roles, in technology, conversational UX and product strategy.

It's a fascinating time to be involved in conversational AI applications and I think the next couple of years will be a rapid growth and maturing period for this technology.

As I write these notes, it's clear to me that the past few weeks have been an increasingly positive time at work after the shorter term focus since lockdown began in March.

I've been learning rapidly again, having new experiences and meeting new people - all things that I was keen to do more of as I moved on from my previous role. I've also had to face a few new challenges which has helped me develop professionally too.

I'm looking forward to much more of the same in the coming months.

#### Monthnotes - June 2021
Earlier this month I joined my first session of a monthly networking group for people worldwide who are working in progressive organisational design.

Organised by Brent Lowe, it was a superb opportunity to meet people working in a wide range of sectors, doing a wide range of jobs, uniting to share knowledge and experience freely on what it means to develop progressive organisations.

In a time of Covid-19 lockdowns and content algorithms, it was also a good reminder for me of the value of connecting with people with diverse life experiences to help challenge my own thinking, assumptions, biases and prejudices.

Plus I heard about a few things I'd like to experiment with at The Panoply when the time's right, as well as also sharing experiences from progressive organisational design work I've done over the past few years.

A topic that we've had a lot of debate about this month (and in fact most months) at work is about organisational culture.

How we might sustain, develop and nurture culture in a changing and distributed organisation has been a hot topic for debate. I'm more convinced than ever that we might be asking the wrong question here though.

Culture, however you might define it, is an emergent characteristic. It can't be created or managed. It emerges from the interactions that individuals have with each other at work. The nature of these interactions are determined by the formal and informal processes that define how stuff gets done in an organisation.

So our focus has to be on designing organisations and ways of working that are congruent with the culture we seek, but we also need to acknowledge that as an emergent property from a complex system, we can't predict with precision how culture will develop or shift.

June was also a month where I spent a lot of time planning some upcoming changes we're making. I enjoyed spending time listening to and debating with leaders from across our organisation, working hard to sense across the communities we have and reach consensus on how to develop the next iteration of our organisation.

I've found this immensely rewarding but also quite mentally exhausting at times. There's a lot of insight to process, consider and triangulate. I've had to try to be disciplined at taking breaks and exercising regularly. I can't say I've always succeeded at this, so I'm going to renew my focus on exercise and regular time out in July.

We've also been busy pulling together The Panoply's annual report for late July and preliminary results for 2020/21 which are out on Monday, 5th July. It's been a useful reflective piece of work, demonstrating the progress we've made over the past year and helping frame what that means for our vision over the coming years.

Beyond work, we spent a couple of days on the road last weekend visiting universities with our elder son who's applying later this year. Our first stop was the University of Nottingham. Having studied there from 1995 to 1998, it was very strange going back as a parent after so long.

Visiting my former hall of residence was particularly odd, especially as it seemed to have not changed in the 26 years since I was there - and it wasn't exactly modern back then. Our road trip also encompassed Loughborough and Egham too, so plenty of miles and new scenery which was refreshin given how little travel there's been over the past 16 months.

Tomorrow is eight weeks since my first Covid-19 vaccination in a closed-down former Debenhams store. In the morning I'm off to the cinema in Canterbury for my second dose. There seems a certain irony that I haven't been to a cinema for a very long time thanks to lockdown, yet the first time I do go is for a vaccination. Hopefully this time the side effects won't be as bad as first time around. Fingers crossed!

#### Monthnotes - June 2022
I was at a party last weekend and someone asked me what I did. I gave the obvious shortcut answer and told them my job title. Not surprisingly they then asked what that really meant I did.

And that was a much harder thing to explain. I'm not convinced I did a particularly good job of explaining what happens in my day-to-day working life.

But the conversation started me thinking about how we describe work (as well as how meaningless or even misleading job titles can be as a shorthand for answering this question).

There's one view of work that is about what you're accountable for - the laundry list of things or measures that make up a job. Essentially this is  the "buck stops here" view of a role.

Then there's the activity-based way of looking at it - the "I do x, y and z" view of what work means. But that can sometimes be quite hard to capture succinctly when a role has quite diverse and flexible responsibilities.

And finally there's a view of work that's about what skills, experience and judgement you bring to work - the "I have x and y skills and have done z in the past" view of a working life.

My mind then headed back to something that I've spent a bit of time thinking about recently at work: value propositions. 

And then that led onto some musings about what each of us brings to work expressed as a personal value proposition. What problems do we solve, who do we solve them for and why are we particularly suited for doing this?

It's an interesting way of framing an answer to the party question about what do you do. It forces a focus on where we add value specifically in a particular work context and what we personally each bring to that.

Workwise this month, it's felt like a continuing month of stabilisation, consolidation and pieces starting to fall into place. 

In some areas that's meant creating work backlogs and shaping teams to begin to address those backlogs, while in others it's been about welcoming new team members who join us to help us move the organisation forward.

One particular area I've enjoyed spending time thinking about has been how we shape up internal communications for TPXimpact. This has been a gap for a while now that we've felt quite intensely, so it's good we're starting to make progress on improving our communications with colleagues. Plus for me, it's been a return to an area of comms work I've not been involved with in such detail for almost ten years now.

Our wider leadership community has been doing some really thought-provoking inclusive leadership training with Nadya Powell and the team at Utopia. I've learnt a lot in the three sessions so far. One thing that's really stuck with me is about how much inclusive leadership is about knowing and understanding yourself, as much as it is about being curious, respectful and conscious of others.

Music this month…

I bagged myself an Ebay bargain earlier in the month and so have added an active subwoofer to my office audio system. It's really improved the sound quality and means a much richer bass than before.

While that makes quite a difference to my usual electronic musical choices, it's also given me a good reason to try out a wider range of music than I've been working to recently.

A particular favourite has been Koffee's album Gifted, which I've played several times while wrangling with budget spreadsheets this month. Reggae isn't something I listen to a lot, but a positive online review led me to Koffee and I'm really enjoying her album and music. 

Podcasts this month…

I've not done as much running this month as May, so my podcast listening hasn't been as extensive. One podcast that I've been getting into has been Slo Mo with Mo Gawdat. 

Mo is a really interesting host and tends to delve a lot deeper into the issue he explores on the podcast. His guests aren't typically people I've heard of previously, which means each one feels like a bit more of an adventure into the audio unknown - which chimes nicely with my continuing mission to hear viewpoints beyond my usual information sources.

Reading this month…

In a mostly futile attempt to keep myself motivated for my ultra run training, this month I've been reading Don't Stop Me Now by Vassos Alexander. It's an easy read that's quite inspiring as you learn about his journey into running from being a complete novice to a runner with a sub 3 hour PB for the marathon.

#### Monthnotes - June 2023
June was very much a business as usual month after the disruption of my health scare and surgery last month.

I was properly back at work juggling two fractional roles alongside consultancy and coaching clients. 

I'm taking a holiday break in a few weeks time, so this month has partly been about transitioning out of one fractional role and making good progress on a couple of consultancy projects which will need finishing up in July.

With the autumn in mind, I've been in full-on business development mode too. 

Having a pretty open work schedule for mid-September onwards has been a good opportunity to reflect on the first six months as a freelance COO. I've worked with a really wide range of clients and on different types of engagements during this time. 

That experience has helped me learn more about what I want to be doing later this year - and so I've used this to focus my new business pipeline development work much more tightly than I have done before. 

Through feedback and reflection, I've seen that I offer the most value when I'm working with founders who need a practical, pragmatic and experienced senior leader to help make their visions a reality. 

One client described me as "the one who makes things work properly" and "someone who gets shit done". Both those are pretty good descriptions I think.

Another former colleague described me as a "serious company builder". I like that as it describes what I do well - do whatever it takes to build and scale organisations, teams and businesses.

Businesses that are at late seed stage or series A are probably where I offer greatest value. That's the time when the foundations for longer term scaling are laid, where leadership teams need to evolve and when headcount rises rapidly, presenting new and previously unseen challenges.

I'm enjoying working across fractional and consultancy engagements. For the autumn I'm focussing more on interim or fractional opportunities, while still holding some capacity for one-off consultancy projects for the right clients.

Away from work it was good to get back to running and cycling too.

To prove my fitness post-op, I entered a 34 mile ultra in Kent - which happened to be one of the hottest days of the year so far. It was great to be back running and some new eating strategies meant there were no repeats of the digestive issues I experienced on my last ultra.

A friend's 50th birthday party also provided a real treat mid-month...a last minute drop out from their booked DJ meant an opportunity to get behind the decks for a proper house, nu-disco and Ibiza mix set for 200 guests. 

It's been a long time since I've played out live and to that many people. Needless to say I absolutely loved it and the crowd were in a serious party mood so the dancefloor was rammed for the whole 4hr session. 

Music this month…

Been loving the old school 90s house sounds this month. This mix was a particular favourite as it captured a lot of memories.

Podcasts this month…

Not been listening to many podcasts this month, but not sure why. Did catch up on a couple of episodes of Bruce Daisley's Eat Sleep Work Repeat podcast, which always has some useful work-related nuggets.

Reading this month…

I read a book called Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company that Addicted America this month. It's a depressing but also very engaging read about drug consumption - both legal and illegal - has affected the US over the past 20 years. Thoroughly recommended.

Cycling this month…

119.1 miles.

Running this month...

70 miles.

#### Monthnotes - June 2024
June has felt like a bit of a transitional month at work, focussing on delivery of current engagements while also planning ahead for my Autumn 2024 commitments.

I've finished up a couple of interesting consultancy projects. I completed the leadership team design, job specs and transition planning for an LA-based digital marketing agency. I've also worked with UK agencies on leadership team design, exit strategies (M&A) and developing ambitious growth plans.

I have also been planning for the last two months of this phase of a current fractional COO engagement. It's been interesting to look back at the engagement goals and see the impact I've had in the first five months. That process of reflection also gave me a reminder that I needed to pull back from some detail I'd gotten into and focus more on setting up the leadership team for success.

Having to think about my Autumn work commitments has forced me into some thinking about the different types of work I do and making some firm decisions. When I began my journey as an independent COO in January 2023, I threw myself into lots of different opportunities. 

The passage of time, a lot of learning about independent working has helped and a personal retrospective exercise has helped me re-focus on priorities for the next phase. I'm also making a conscious effort to say no to some opportunities that come my way that don't fit with my priorities, which isn't something I've really done so far. 

I really enjoy fractional work as being an active leader in a business. The satisfaction from seeing change and delivering results is valuable to me. But this way of working is quite mentally intense with a deeper sense of involvement than consulting. The context switching between fractional work and other clients can be pretty full-on sometimes too.

So I've got a few changes in mind for September onwards about how I deliver as a fractional COO that will address some of these challenges.

I enjoy the flexibility and diversity of consultancy work, so I'll continue to take on projects when they seem interesting and I have the capacity to take them on. As part of this I'm developing a deeper relationship with a group of like-minded consultants, so I'm hoping to be able to share more about this in the Autumn.

The coaching side of my work is something I'm going to be focussing on more in late 2024 and 2025. By the end of September I'll have completed my ICF coaching qualification and will be launching the new coaching proposition that I've been testing this year. More on that in September's monthnotes.

Away from my work, things have been busy too. My parents came to visit for a weekend which was nice, we've visited three universities with our youngest son, our eldest came back from uni for a bit before heading off to Malaysia for four weeks and we celebrated two family birthdays. 

We also enjoyed a night at the London Stadium for a spectacular Foo Fighters gig last week. It's not my usual kind of music, but it was an amazing experience which I really enjoyed. Our ears were still ringing when we got up at 5am the next morning to head off on the train to a university in the Midlands.

Music this month…

Been going proper 90s old school this month. This is a solid two hours of old school house that I loved.

Podcasts this month…

Been hard to avoid politics this month given the general election and impending change in government, so I've been listening to The Rest is Politics, Political Currency and the R4 Today Election podcasts a lot.

Reading this month…

My birthday meant lots of new books to read. I've made a start on Rory Stewart's Politics on the Edge. So far I've found it a pretty insightful glimpse into the ineffectiveness of our government here in the UK.

Running this month…

59.6 miles.

Cycling this month…

106.7 miles.

#### Monthnotes - June 2025
June's been a pretty full-on few weeks and as the month draws to a close, I'm pretty worn out. It's three weeks until my summer holiday which can't come soon enough.

There's something very satisfying about the feeling of wrapping up work before a break that I'm really looking forward to, but it always comes with a sense of pressured acceleration in the weeks that precede a holiday.

June's always a busy month in the Wakeman household, with two birthdays in quick succession. It's been nice to have a full house again and go out for a family birthday lunch last weekend. I also squeezed in a trip to Devon to see my parents for a weekend this month too.

And workwise there's been lots going on too.

My current fractional COO engagement draws to a close in three weeks time as a new permanent COO joins the business. It's the point in a fractional role where I need to start packaging up with work I've done ready to be handed over, as well as helping the new permanent COO learn the business and put their own experience to work.

I've also started work with a new client from a different sector through my associate relationship with Start Inspiring. It's a short facilitation engagement, but it'll be interesting to see where that might lead later in the year.

I'm ramping up the marketing for my online course - The Fractional Executive Launchpad - working with a social media manager. The course helps people who want to transition into fractional working to learn from my playbooks and experience. It goes live in September but there are some great pre-order offers for people who sign up now (the super early-bird deal expires at midnight GMT tonight).

I'm excited to launch an experiment with my Build newsletter this week. During July, August and September I'm handing over the newsletter to a new collaborator each week, brining different voices and perspectives to the 1,400 founders who read it. It'll be interesting to see how that lands.

Music this month…

Loved this set from Greg Wilson in Ibiza last month. 

Podcasts this month…

A new addition to my podcast list this month from coach Emily Rose Dallara. Bubbling Out is proving a fascinating listen about neuroscience and somatic practice in the context of leadership.

Reading this month…

Ahead of my hols I'm re-reading Cal Newport's Slow Productivity. A lot of the book resonated with me when it came out last year, so I'm taking another look to help with reflecting on how I want to work later in the year.

Cycling this month…

122 miles.

Running this month…

49.7 miles

#### Monthnotes - March 2020
When I began writing my monthnotes in September last year, I could never have anticipated that six months later I'd be working from home full-time in the midst of a global pandemic.

At Deeson, we've been set up for full remote working for many years now, so the impact on our day-to-day operations wasn't too great. We took the decision to move to home working quite early to help protect our teams and reduce our potential for spreading coronavirus to more vulnerable people.

Even with that preparedness, we've still had a lot to learn. 

We've all had to learn about what it's like to work from home full-time, while adjusting to the fundamentally different lifestyles we will lead for the next few months. 

On a more practical level we've been redesigning client workshops that we used to deliver face to face for our clients - taking account of the different capabilities and experience of workshopping over video conference.

It's been good to see the Deeson team and colleagues across the wider Panoply group coming together to share experiences and learn about how we can best continue our work in this new environment. 

We've also worked hard to support clients - reprioritising projects to accommodate their new priorities and mobilising teams to rapidly scope and deploy new solutions to problems that didn't even exist this time last month.

Thinking more widely about what we've seen happen in the past few weeks, you can read my observations about the power of pivots in my final newsletter for Deeson. 

Today marks the end of my four-year stint as Managing Director at Deeson. 

There are so many highlights from my time in this role that it's hard to pick out favourites. Being part of the agency's transformation into a leading UK digital agency that works with high profile clients has been a joy. 

I've gained a lot of fulfilment from seeing Deeson teams and clients working together to deliver great work - whether that's strategy consultancy, experience design or complex technology implementations. 

And our progress in increasing diversity within our workforce is something I'm also particularly proud of. 

I also wrote a blog post about my reflections on four years leading the agency and my ten leadership lessons I took away from the experience. 

I've loved working with team members to take the agency forward and I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Tim Deeson - agency founder - who hired me in 2014 to help take the agency forward and has been a valued colleague, friend and advisor ever since.

I’m moving on to work once again with Tim and Dr Ronald Ashri within our parent group, The Panoply. I’ll be joining leading conversational AI consultancy Greenshoot Labs as Chief Growth Officer as well as working on wider cross-group initiatives too.

So while tomorrow marks a new start for me professionally, that change does seem somewhat insignificant compared to what's happening beyond our four walls and the amazing work being delivered by people in public and essential services in the UK and worldwide right now. 

Their work helping the country get through the immediate future and deal with the recovery from Covid-19 in our societies and economies is something that we should all be immensely grateful for. 

I hope one legacy from our shared experience of a global pandemic is a greater professional and societal respect for people working in public and essential services. Their contributions to society have been taken for granted for far too long.

#### Monthnotes - March 2021
Last month I wrote about a sense of change and March feels like it has continued in the same vein.

The continuing success of the Covid-19 vaccination programme in the UK, the return of face-to-face education and more recent easing of lockdown measures have all contributed to a clearer direction of travel as the UK approaches the post-pandemic era.

At work this has meant greater time spent on thinking about the transition to new working practices and avoiding a reflexive snap back to pre-pandemic ways of working.

There are still many unknowns about how work will evolve this year, so taking an iterative and learning approach feels sensible. It'll allow us to prototype different approaches to workstyles, on-site working with clients and new types of physical space needed for face-to-face working.

I've spent some time this month working on a new value proposition as well. This is an exciting piece of work as it's a key part of shaping the next phase in the growth of a business. I'm also enjoying the intellectual challenge of the strategic thinking needed on this project. It's been a joy to manage to block out a few hours without video calls to really think this through and collaborate with colleagues closely.

This month has also been about planning the implementation of the group operating model work I led earlier in the year. I've been focussing on how we can implement the model through an iterative change process.

We're moving at pace while recognising ambiguities and uncertainties at this stage in our detailed understanding of some aspects of the model. The trick is to work out what "just enough, just in time" understanding is to allow us to move forward, alongside acknowledging we are testing and learning on the journey.

As today is also the last day of our financial year at The Panoply, we've also been reflecting on how far we've come in the past year as a business. Our share price is almost 270p, up more than 400% on the closing price a year ago. Earlier this month we announced another major acquisition and our expectations for revenue and EBITDA for this financial year.

The pace of change in the business has been remarkable during the past 12 months, even more so when considering the wider context in which this has happened.

There's also probably ground to make up over the next few months in building deeper working relationships, especially among many colleagues who've never met in person. 

We're thinking hard about how to provide contexts and situations to allow this to happen, without resorting to artificial or contrived team activities. These emerging relationships will underpin the next stage of our maturing as a larger and progressive business.

The improving weather this month has meant I've got into a better routine of exercising before work each day. Having recently read a fascinating research-based book about the science of habits, I've put some of the things I learnt from the book into action to help get into the habit of exercising most days, something I've not managed to do consistently before.

It was also good to get out on my road bike for a 100km ride mid-month - this is the longest I've ridden for almost a year and I really enjoyed the freedom and space that comes with a longer road ride.

I'm looking forward to a few days off over the Easter break, spending some time at home with my family and away from the laptop. Having only taken a couple of days off since Christmas, it feels like time to recharge a bit before tackling some of the fascinating challenges that I can see will need solving soon to help us achieve our ambitions at The Panoply. 

I can be certain that if we achieve as much in the next year as we have in the past year, we'll all be able to look back with a real sense of accomplishment and pride once again at the impact we've had.

#### Monthnotes - March 2022
Having lived by the annual P&L account for so long now, the end of the financial year has always felt like a time to mentally close down the current financial year, take stock for just a moment and then launch into a new reporting period and chase a new set of numbers.

This year's no different, but on top of that I'm looking back on a period of change unlike any other in my career.

It's 323 days since we held the first planning session where we looked at how we could integrate the then six companies that made up The Panoply into a single rebranded and radically different professional services business.

A lot's happened since then. A lot of progress, learning and hard work from people throughout the business - and tomorrow this phase of change comes to an end as we say goodbye to the Manifesto, Nudge, Deeson, FutureGov, Difrent, Foundry4 and Panoply brands.

It's been a change project like no other I've been involved with.

We've launched a new name, a new brand, two iterations of a website, a new employee experience proposition, benefits package and contract, a single organisational structure, published a book, transferred hundreds of team members into a single business and implemented new finance, HR, recruitment, payroll and CRM systems.

It's been hard and I've learnt a lot fast. I've certainly made mistakes and errors of judgement along the way. But I've also been careful to bear in mind that decisions are contextual - and so sometimes what was right in the context then, might appear not right now because the context has moved on. Hindsight bias is definitely a thing. 

Outside of work I've particularly enjoyed reading a book about professional generalists - challenging the predominant professional narrative that deep specialist skills are more valuable than a wider but less deep skillset.

"Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" by David Epstein provides a compelling case for how there's real value in being able to draw upon a diverse range of professional experience. 

As someone that's worked across multiple sectors and professional disciplines, it really resonated and helped me think more about where and why I can add value in an organisation.

Fitness-wise it's been a month of two halves. In the first two weeks I really stepped up the mileage, managing a 14 mile run in my training for the 50 mile ultra in September. The past couple of weeks have been super busy at work and my motivation for fitness has really suffered. I really need to get back on track in April.

I listen to music and podcasts while I work and exercise. That's a lot of hours each month. 

On the music front, my favourite mix this month has been Carl Cox's 2018 disco set at Burning Man.  His longevity, versatility and skill as a DJ is remarkable. I still have a digitised version of the first Carl Cox mixtape I had back in 1993.

A close second was his b2b set with Fatboy Slim at the Saatchi Gallery in 2019, but the quality of the mix on the Burning Man set pipped it for me.

My fave podcast episode this month was Leadermorphosis. Hosted by the immensely knowledgeable Lisa Gill, I particularly enjoyed this discussion about the critiques and possibilities of distributed autonomous organisations (DAOs). There were some fascinating insights into governance and the extent of governance that has to exist to provide enough boundaries and scaffolding for self-organisation, while not stifling the autonomy these kinds of organisations intend to enable.

#### Monthnotes - March 2023
Looking back at the time since my last monthnotes, it feels like it's been a pretty work-centric month as the season turns and spring is marked by the arrival of lambs in the field next to our house.

Things have definitely stepped up a gear and I've been busier than I planned to be when I went independent.  I'm ahead of where I planned to be in terms of utilisation at this stage, so that'll give me some flexibility in the summer if I want to take some time out.

Starting with a new fractional client has meant a pretty intense period of onboarding, getting to know a new team and a new business at pace. It's been really interesting to get stuck in and has definitely provided me with some pointers about how I want to develop a longer term fractional and consultancy client base in my work.

I also enjoyed running a face to face workshop with the crew at We Create Popular mid-month. I'm delivering the 2Y3X growth acceleration programme with them. It was a good reminder of the energy that comes with a full day working in the same room. And it was great to see how much progress they've made with their business since our February workshop.

As a creative bunch they kindly gave me a challenge to show off their new merch over the month until I see them next. Ever one for a challenge, I've embarked on a kind of "photo a day" project to show a new hoody on my travels. The photos some days are more interesting than others but I've stuck to the cadence so far - day 9 of 31.

I also met recently with Divinia Knowles who founded the COO Roundtable - a selective networking group for chief operating officers. We had a great conversation about all things COO and I was really pleased to join the roundtable this month. I'm looking forward to attending their events and meeting fellow COO members from different backgrounds and businesses.

I've seen a lot of interest this month in the latest iteration of my fractional COO proposition, which is encouraging as I've evolved it a lot in response to feedback since going solo in January. Fractional work is definitely a growth area and I'm starting to see what types of company could benefit most from a fractional COO with my experience.

It was also great to sign up a new coaching client last week too. I'm looking forward to kicking off our work together in April. 

At home my younger son has been focussing on his GCSE revision in between football training and matches. This evening we're off as a family to Heathrow to pick up our elder son - he's been away on his gap year travels since early January. We're really looking forward to seeing him and hearing about his adventures.

Music this month…

Been loving Clockwork Orange on Soundcloud this month. This 2022 set from Toolroom founder Mark Knight is a belter. And I'm a sucker for an old school MC too.

Podcasts this month…

Been hunting out some new podcasts this month. As a consultant who spends most of their time helping businesses grow, I've been exploring the relationship between economic growth and sustainability. I stumbled across the Capitalisn't podcast which I found interesting and a bit more balanced and curious than some of the more evangelically anti-growth content I've read and heard recently.

Reading this month…

Really liked Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth. I studied economics at school and so it was really interesting to see the theory I learnt 30 years ago dissected against the backdrop of modern day thinking. Lots of food for thought about the role and purpose of business in the era of doughnut economics thinking. 

Running this month…43.1 miles.

Cycling this month…165.4 miles.

#### Monthnotes - March 2024
Thirty one days since I last hit the keyboard and wrote some monthnotes...and it feels like a lot longer. I feel like I've crammed a lot into those 31 days, both at work and away from work. 

I've been working with a new client as fractional COO which has been fascinating. The business is experiencing strong year-on-year growth and I'm working closely with the founder to establish some firmer foundations for that scaling. We're using the B3 framework as the basis for understanding the issues and how we might solve them.

It's been interesting to learn about a new sector that I've not COO'ed in before, although as I'm learning with every fractional engagement I take on, the root causes of problems that growth businesses experience are pretty common across sectors. 

I also helped a different client in the tech consultancy sector with developing their business strategy for change, facilitating a leadership team workshop and working with the co-founders to make decisions about the inevitable trade-offs that strategic thinking demands.

In my work with a technology agency client this month, I helped diagnose some challenges in the new business process that are hurting project profitability. That led to a redesign of the "opportunity to project kick-off" process to address the challenges we found.

And last week it was great to run a live in-person event again. Felix Velarde (author of Scale at Speed) and I ran a well attended agency founder masterclass last week in London looking at agency scaling. The feedback from the session was really positive and if you're in/around Manchester, we're running the same masterclass on 16th April as part of the Manchester Digital City Festival. Tickets are free and you can get one here.

I've also been doing more with the Extra Brain crew which has been really fun. It's great to be part of such a vibrant community of independent consultants. We've run several interesting learning sessions and a face-to-face social at the Union Club in Soho was great to be able to drop into. I'm looking forward to running some OKR workshops with Extra Brain founder Jess next month with a long-term agency client, building on the OKR Coach qualification I completed last autumn.

My B3 framework for company building is really getting some traction now too. I've been joined by a new collaborator who's helping me build out the detailed content which I'd hoped to get done this month but have failed miserably to do. I'm hoping we'll get her new content up on the site in the next couple of weeks.

The framework was also the subject of a podcast interview I did with Bethany and Brandon from The Operations Room. I really enjoyed our chat about all things COO and how the B3 framework helps COOs take a structured approach to company building. The full podcast is episode 36 here.

So that's the work! And then away from work I seem to have crammed a lot in too.

I'm off to Belgium in three weeks for the Liège-Bastogne-Liège sportive, riding 155 miles of the route that the professionals will do the next day. I figured I should get some training miles in, so have been out doing longer days in the saddle again.

I've also been doing something different this month too. I've got a one hour show on internet radio station Love Will Save The Day FM tomorrow evening (1st April, 6-7pm). 

The show's called Backspinning and is a genre-spanning look at the influence of samples from four early 1970s disco classics. I had a great time planning, mixing and recording the show. 

I learnt loads about presenting and audio production and hopefully I'll get the opportunity to do something similar again in the future. The community at Love Will Save The Day is a positive and supportive bunch of music lovers - and it's great to be part of that.

Our youngest son turned 17 this month too, so my wife and I have been doing a lot of nervous passenger-ing as he builds up his hours behind the wheel. He's doing really well so hopefully he'll take his test successfully soon.

Podcasts this month…

On my older son's recommendation I'm working through episodes of Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson. So far some really interesting and different conversations so definitely one that'll be staying on my podcast list.

Music this month…

Old school rave has featured a lot on my long bike rides. This Slipmatt set from NYE 2013 is a particular fave.

Reading this month…

As someone who's passionate about the future of work, I've been reading Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by anthropologist  David Graeber. It's an interesting theory of where some types of work have gone wrong and the impact this has on the people stuck in those kinds of roles. A good reminder for those of us who design roles and organisations to think about the human impact of what we do.

Cycling this month…

286.9 miles

Running this month…

47.2 miles

#### Monthnotes - March 2025
This month has definitely had a sense of Spring about it.

Outside the weather's been warmer, there are lambs in the field behind our house and out running I'm seeing the woods come to life once again.

At work there is strong sense of moving forward too.

In my current fractional COO engagement I'm into the phase where I need to start making changes. I've done enough discovery and have built relationships. I've got a strong sense of what needs to happen and now I'm actively making those changes happen.

Early in the month Sarah and I launched Actualise.work. This is our new venture for early stage founders that's grounded in our belief that understanding themselves psychologically is as important as understanding the practical side of building a business.

We call it the "dual domain approach" to company building and it's the basis for two founder support programmes that we've launched with:

Actualise Shift - for founders who want a business that thrives beyond them, not one that depends on them.

Actualise Solo - for founders launching and growing without a leadership team.

We've already onboarded one client and are looking forward to welcoming several more to the Actualise programme over the next few months.

I'm also a founding partner at consultancy network Extra Brain. This month we launched an exciting new cohort-based expert learning community for founders called Founder's Circle.  

The first cohort launches in May and we're looking for SME leaders committed to building better, happier businesses while supporting others on the same path and enjoying the journey.

This month I've also been helping a long term agency client with their team's professional development. I designed a pragmatic and simple approach to self-reflection and planning activities for the year ahead. We're just finishing up the rollout so that their team members go into the new financial year with their own self-led development plans.

Away from work this month, it was our youngest son's 18th birthday - a milestone for him and also for us as parents of two young adults. He was in the middle of his mock A levels so it was a fairly muted birthday with some celebrations the following weekend.

The better weather has also meant I've rediscovered my love of road biking. I've been out every week building up the mileage and am feeling good on the bike after several months of riding for commuting only. I'm hoping this continues and am looking forward to riding new roads on the continent during the summer holidays.

Music this month…

Am enjoying the latest live sets from Housework at MoS last month. 

Podcasts this month…

I particularly enjoyed this episode of A Facilitator's Journey as a lot of the content resonated with me as I continue to think about what my work future might look like in the second half of the year.

Reading this month…

I'm part way through Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller. It's an interesting look at how the development of the semi-conductor industry has shaped global geo-politics. 

Cycling this month…

Enjoying being back on the road, plus lots of commuter miles too. 300.3 miles.

Running this month…

Am in a nice cadence of running 10k-ish twice a week plus the odd longer weekend run. 46.6 miles.

#### Monthnotes - March 2026
This month's notes are probably the saddest I've had to write since I started writing monthnotes back in 2019.

Last Thursday, our beloved labradoodle, Meg, had to be put to sleep. She was nearly seventeen years old. It's been a very sad time and a lot of tears were shed in our family last week.

As I reflect on our time with her, she joined our family when our boys were very small and has been a constant part of their growing up. 

Meg was a remarkable dog, always full of character – loyal, friendly, gentle and kind. As she got towards the end she was blind, nearly deaf and began to struggle to stand. We did our best to try to make her comfortable, but we had to make the difficult but right decision that enough was enough. 

Toby, our youngest son, is on an extended trip in Asia so it was especially hard for him. He wanted to be as present as he could be so he had to watch her final moments on video call - so we did share her final moments with us as a family in a way. Now the house feels very empty without Meg and our other dog Dot is adjusting to being by herself. 

At times it's hard to see much beyond what happened last week, but there's been plenty of other things going on.

On the work front it's been another busy month. 

The launch is Team Wakeman is going well, with marketing now happening consistently and an early client engagement this month. I've been delivering a Team Wakeman project, a Find audit for a third-party logistics business. It's been really interesting getting into the inner workings of the business to help the founder understand what's going on and to show the root causes behind what's happening. Hopefully that turns into a further engagement to help him address the issues I identified.

There seems to be a bit of an M&A theme this month too. Three clients are involved in M&A activity that's rapidly progressing, so that's interesting to be back doing that kind of work, this time mostly on the sell-side this time rather than the buy-side. Undoubtedly those clients will continue to work with us over the coming months to help them navigate the process.

I've also been coaching a new operations director in an agency, helping her build out a roadmap to address some of the challenges of smoothing out operations in an agency that hasn't previously had a particular operations focus or a dedicated operations director role.

With one of my fractional clients, I've been working hard to help develop leadership accountability. This involves putting in leadership team scorecards, ensuring each leadership team member understands what's expected of them and then showing them what a monthly one-to-one process to hold people accountable to those scorecards actually looks like in practice. They've responded really positively to that and we're now starting to cascade that way of working out to more people in the team.

We had an Extra Brain board meeting this month, which was great as we start to think about what the next stage of Extra Brain looks like and begin to calibrate our aspirations with the capacity we have. Extra Brain is a consultancy collective where I'm a founding partner, but it's a part-time part of my work. All of the board members have their own clients alongside our roles leading Extra Brain so there's a constant tension between doing the work and building the business.

Away from work this month, lots has been moving forward on the house we're looking to build near Ashford in Kent over the next couple of years. 

We've been having lots of meetings with the architect and moving the designs forward. We also headed up to Birmingham for the Motorhome show in the middle of the month for a home-building show at the NEC. That was really helpful to meet lots of suppliers and understand much more detail about the different choices we need to make on a house-building project. 

Our current home is up for sale with good early interest, so hopefully things move forward on that front in the next month. Jo did a great job hustling journalists this month, which led to our house being featured in the Sunday Times yesterday. 

This year, as I turn fifty, I've finally booked in some challenges to keep me focussed on training. My friend Paul and I are doing a 50K ultra run in Kent next month. It's going to be quite a flat ultra run compared to what I'm used to, but it'll be nice to be doing it with someone else. I think 50K is about the right distance for this time of year given I haven't been training properly for a while - I've got about eight weeks to get some miles into my legs.

I'm also excited to enter a 120-mile cycle sportive on the South Downs in mid-May. It starts and finishes in Hazelmere in Surrey and does a number of ascents of the South Downs. It's not an area I've cycled in much so I'm looking forward to going somewhere new, as well as getting some road miles early in the year.

Music this month…

This Carl Cox mix is a belter and has been played a lot very loud this month. 

Podcasts this month…

I enjoyed this chat between Trenton (a fellow consultant) and Jess (a client of mine) about her experience leading PrettyGreen. I've always admired how PrettyGreen balance clients, their team and the business so well - and this podcast goes into how Jess does it.

Reading this month…

I'm reading Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty at the moment. It's a pretty deep dive into the Sackler family and their links to the opioid crisis in the US. Fascinating and shocking in equal measures so far.

Cycling this month…

More time on gravel and road this month as the weather improves and the mud dries out. 187.2 miles.

Running this month

Need to up the miles, but have got back into weekly speed rep sessions to help with cardio. 25.8 miles.

#### Monthnotes - May 2020
At work this month I've spent a lot of time thinking about the future, helping develop organisational designs and evaluating future scenarios.

It's been fascinating to do more work in this space and find new challenges to solve, collaborating with a wider group of senior leaders across The Panoply.

Predicting the future with certainty is a flawed art during normal times, but the current social and economic situation has further undermined traditional planning and budgeting processes.

Visions for the future that were written just a few months ago can look very different and planned budgets for the financial year will be wholly redundant in many businesses that have closed, seen significant drops or spikes in demand.

All of which points to a need to find ways of managing plans and budgets in organisations, throwing away redundant yet ingrained annual budgeting cycles for something more agile.

I've believed for a long time that traditional hierarchical organisational structures aren't appropriate for most organisations. They hinder individual contribution and rely on flawed assumptions about where decision-making best takes place.

This month I've spent some time looking in detail at an approach known as Beyond Budgeting. This framework is a useful tool to help organisations develop more iterative and adaptive planning processes.

While we can't predict the future, we can certainly do better at understanding scenarios that might happen and make sure organisations are better prepared to respond to them.

As well as working with colleagues across The Panoply, I've also been collaborating closely with the GreenShoot Labs team this month. Last week I presented a very successful webinar looking at conversational AI in higher education - there's a real sense that conversational AI tools have a role to play in helping this sector face the challenges ahead.

Meanwhile at Deeson, our transition to a new Managing Director continues to go well and our planned handover of responsibilities is ahead of where I expected us to be.

It's heartening to see former colleagues on the Deeson team adjusting so effectively and successfully to the changed leadership roles - creating the next iteration of the Deeson digital agency business with genuine passion, energy and commitment in these challenging times.

#### Monthnotes - May 2021
As well as being my 18th wedding anniversary, apparently today's the hottest day of the year so far in our part of the UK. The sun's shining, the coast-bound roads are busy and I was lucky enough to spend the bank holiday weekend weekend at a small campsite in East Sussex with my family and friends (can definitely recommend Sunday lunch here too).

A weekend away was just what I needed after a pretty full-on few weeks at work. It's felt like one of those periods when several related threads of work started to come together and make a difference. Professionally very satisfying, but also quite mentally tiring too.

Towards the start of the month I also had my first Covid vaccination, which felt like a big milestone. Felt pretty rough for a couple of days afterwards which I wasn't really expecting, but was of course just very happy to get the jab and grateful to the NHS staff and volunteers running the centre at Folkestone where I went.

I met up with some colleagues from The Panoply last week in London and have had the pleasure of face-to-face work and some social time recently too. It was great to see people that I hadn't seen in a long time and meet a number of the team for the first time in person too.

We're still feeling our way into the new hybrid working model and this was a useful test of how to get the most from the in-person aspect of the new approach. The experience was a good reminder of the value of face-to-face interactions in some kinds of work. It's something I knew instinctively but the richness of in-person workshops allows teams to achieve so much more at pace than trying to do the same via video or asynchronously as a remote team.

A particular highlight for me this month was the culmination of The Panoply's Future Leaders programme. The programme brings together business mentoring and training in a number of specialist areas to help young entrepreneurs develop their fledgling businesses. It finished with a showcase where each young person presented their business and the progress they'd made thanks to the programme. The cohort this time was particularly inspiring thanks to their passion for their work and the range of different types of businesses featured.

Last week I also wrote a book review that was published on Enlivening Edge sharing my thoughts on Lead Together: The Bold, Brave, Intentional Path to Scaling Your Business. Coincidentally I also recorded a short interview with author Brent Lowe recently too - it was great to chat with him again more than a year and a half since we first spoke at length about our passions for growing progressive organisations.

Earlier in the month I also attended a trustee board meeting for the Caldecott Foundation (https://www.thecaldecottfoundation.co.uk/) where I've been a trustee for several years now. It was good to hear about the progress the exec team there is making, even despite the challenges of delivering education and residential care during lockdown. It's fascinating to learn new skills in this non-executive environment, particularly one in which I don't have any professional grounding.

June looks like another hectic month, with some interesting new projects to get underway to help us achieve our bold goals - both commercial and impact - for March 2023. Plus we'll be finalising our preliminary results for early July and publishing our annual report in late July.

Fingers crossed the sun stays out and I might even sneak a few days working outside if it does. It'd be nice to be able to get some fresh air while working from home a bit more than I've been able to over the past month.

#### Monthnotes - May 2022
The past month has felt like a transitional period in many ways, bringing with it the contrasting emotions that come with that.

At work the change from being multiple separate companies into a single integrated organisation has continued. Many people, including me, have been learning our way through what that means in practice as new teams continue to form and people develop new working relationships together.

It’s around a year since our integration journey began and I am finally starting to see the first phase of change as behind us. That’s not to say there’s not still lots to do to become the integrated organisation we are headed towards, but the change is now at the strongly formative stage.

The emergence of the new integrated organisation and greater clarity on roles means that the energy behind this work is coming from ever more people across the our teams, rather than a small group of change agents.

I’ve particularly enjoyed spending more time with colleagues who are working closely with our clients, learning more about the wide range of projects we now have the capability to deliver and seeing the real difference our teams make to clients, their communities and customers. Being just a little closer to the work has felt good, as getting too distant from clients and the value we create for them isn’t good in a professional services or agency business.

This month I recognised in myself some signs that the efforts of the last year were mounting up. I had an extended period where I was lacking in energy and enthusiasm, both for my work and in my home life too.

I've learnt that this is probably down to me pushing too hard for an extended period and it's a sign that I need to enforce some healthier work boundaries and look after myself better. In the past week I've focussed on that and I think the extended Jubilee holiday will be a good opportunity to take some time out and reset.

It's interesting to observe that as I've given myself a bit more space in each day, taking proper breaks and making sure my out-of-hours working is kept to sensible levels, I've begun to see the future more positively and regain excitement about what I do and how this might evolve in the future.

There's definitely a lesson for me there that I need to remember, especially as I know I have a tendency to go "all-in" when it comes to work that I enjoy.

Away from work, I've enjoyed the better weather, getting out running ever longer distances and getting back on my bike too. My 50 mile ultra run in Snowdonia in September is approaching fast, so the running miles are really starting to ramp up at the weekends.

Our eldest son is taking his A-levels at the moment, which feels like the start of a months-long transition as he leaves school, takes a gap year and then starts university.

Both my wife and I are acutely aware of the transition that we have ahead - immense pride in the young man has become but also sadness as he leaves home on his travels. We're also very conscious that our younger son will be experiencing a transition too and so we need to help support him through that.

And today is my 19th wedding anniversary too, so I need to acknowledge and thank my wife Jo for her her brilliant brilliant love, counsel, support and companionship. We are a great team and I know that I wouldn’t be able to lead the life I lead and achieve what I want to achieve without her by my side.

Music this month...

Music-wise this month I've been enjoying a lot of disco from the likes of Pete Le Freq, Barry & Gibbs, Mike and Tess and Barry Harris. Fave mix of the month was a live set from London's Jet Boot Jack at Vivid People Disco in Hoxton last month. 

Podcasts this month...

As my running miles have ramped up, so has my podcast listening. I've been making a deliberate effort to broaden my repertoire, seeking rather than avoiding perspectives that don't sit comfortably with my view of the world. With that in mind, I particularly enjoyed listening to Stephen Bartlett talk with Piers Morgan on the Diary of a CEO podcast earlier this month. 

Reading this month...

It's been a light month on the reading front. Lack of time and then falling asleep when trying to read in bed has meant I've been making my way through High Performance: Lessons from the Best on Becoming Your Best by Jake Humphrey and Damian Hughes. I've enjoyed the High Performance podcast a lot, although at times more recently there are times when I've felt there could have been a bit more grit and challenge in the conversations. So far the book is a good summary of familiar podcast content, so it'll be interesting to see if there's much added value in the remainder of the book.

#### Monthnotes - May 2023
Today - 31st May 2023 - is our 20th wedding anniversary. 

I can't really believe that Jo and I have been married 20 years. It's been a privilege to share those years together with such an intelligent,  brilliant and lovely woman as my wife. She's also a truly brilliant mum to our 18 and 16 year old boys. 

As I look back over those 20 years it's the times when the four of us have been together, travelling to new places and sharing new experiences and milestones in life, that are among the happiest memories.

She's been ever supportive, loving, caring and I couldn't have asked for more. I'm truly grateful for her being the best friend and companion I could ever have asked for as we've gone through the highs and lows of life.  

And unfortunately my memories of much of this month are of it being one of those lows.

The first 19 days of May were dominated by my balls, or to be more precise one of them.

I spent more than half the month being 95% sure that I had testicular cancer and then having an operation to remove the dodgy ball.

My recovery from the op went well and I was back to being active pretty quickly. I kept busy doing some awareness raising and trying to normalise men talking about this kind of thing.

Then when I went back to the consultant for the histology results, my wife and I were rendered speechless when we were told it wasn't cancer.

I was incredibly lucky to be in that 5% where the all the symptoms and tests point to cancer, but the growths were benign. 

Because of the poor state the ball was in, it was at risk of becoming cancerous in future and the pain I had before has now gone - so all in all I'm pleased to have had it removed.

The full story and a load of helpful links about male cancers is here.

I took a few days out to recuperate this month after the op, but other than that work's been busy this month with two ongoing fractional roles, a consultancy project and a new coaching client too. 

I've also been doing reflecting on the freelance work I've been doing in the past five months - exploring what I've enjoyed and what pointers the experience gives me for the future. 

I'm grateful to Divinia Knowles and Tim Deeson for valuable conversations last week to help me shape my work priorities for after the summer. I'm clear now where I want to focus in my work and have a plan to find some interesting opportunities for the future.

Music this month…

Been enjoying some D&B this month, with this live set from London Elektricity a particular favourite. I'm a sucker for an MC at the best of times, let alone a duo.

Podcasts this month…

I did a lot of walking after my op before I could run and cycle, so I've been hunting out some new podcasts. I found Practical Founders with Greg Head as a nice contrast to some of the more "growth at all costs" business podcasts. It's a series of interviews with founders who've bootstrapped their growth, rather than taking outside investment.

Reading this month…

I read a lot this month. I'm going to pick out The Silo Effect by Gillian Tett as the most interesting. It's an exploration of the downsides of silos in private and public sectors, although it maybe downplays the benefits of specialisation and focus too. It was published more than eight years ago so some of the examples have weathered the test of time better than others, but it's worth reading to challenge some traditional norms we take for granted in leadership and organisational design.

Running this month…

27 miles, plus 25.4 miles of walking before I was allowed to run again.

Cycling this month…

28.2 miles.

#### Monthnotes - May 2024
I read a lot of business-ish books, but many of them don't leave me too many lasting lessons.

Last month I read been Cal Newport's "​Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment without Burnout". 

I've enjoyed a couple of Cal's previous books, but I have to admit my instinctive reaction to the subtitle of this one was a degree of cynicism. 

A month or so on though, many of the arguments he makes in the book are still reverberating around my head.

He proposes that in the post-pandemic era of work, we make our experience of work better and more sustainable by focussing on three areas:

do fewer things

working at a natural pace

obsessing over quality

This philosophy really resonated with me I continue to build and iterate my independent work as a consultant, fractional and advisory Chief Operating Officer. 

There's been a steep but mostly enjoyable learning curve over the past 18 months as I've built network, created a client base and devised my own IP and techniques for the work I do.

I've been pretty much at capacity since January and am now focussing on the work I do from September 2024 onwards.  I'm incorporating many of the lessons from Cal's book in my planning so it'll be interesting to see how many I can make stick and the difference they make.

Workwise, May has been busy with two concurrent fractional COO engagements and some consultancy projects too. 

One of these businesses is experiencing rapid year-on-year growth, so the challenges are all about establishing the core features of an organisation to build resilience and sustainability - while also keeping dealing with the inevitable bumps in the operational road that fast scaling businesses hit.

The other business has had a successful marketing push in the last few months so we're onboarding new clients. This helps with the financial stability and confidence to plan longer term growth and bring in new talent to drive things forward.

On the consultancy side, I'm helping a US-based agency with leadership design and succession, as well as finishing off a project leading an OKR  deployment across a UK-based publishing business. 

Away from work, we enjoyed seeing the Northern Lights at home earlier in the month - although it was interesting that the view through a mobile phone camera was much more dramatic than with the naked eye. I did wonder how I'd feel if I'd travelled to the Arctic Circle for that expeirence.

Jo and I enjoyed a trip to the coast. We wanted to explore somewhere new so we parked up and walked several miles of beach to get to Broadstairs. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon so the beach was busy with tourists and a lot of film crews shooting a mobile phone commercial.

I also got back on a paddleboard last weekend. We'd not used our boards since lockdown, but I fancied a change from cycling so dusted off one of the boards and paddled five miles of the River Stour from Fordwich to Grove Ferry. It was lovely to be out in the sun and enjoying the peace of the river.

It's our 21st wedding anniversary today. We've shared another happy year together, navigating the experience of one son going off to university and one rapidly gaining his independence as a year 12 student with a driving licence! 

I'm thankful and pleased to be doing those things with Jo. As I look ahead I know family life will keep on evolving and while I'm sad about some aspects of that, I'm also excited to see what we do together in the future.  This week we've been away in the motorhome away for a few days. It's nice to be able to spend some time together after a busy month and enjoy the freedom to roam without any firm commitments or plans. 

Music this month…

I found time to get back to playing with my decks, so I recorded a new mix with strong nu-disco vibes. Been enjoying hunting down new music for DJing and planning out several new sets. 

Listening-wise, I'm enjoying a retro old school 90s house period I think. This mix from Zoey Poey has been a particular fave for running and cycling.

Podcasts this month…

Been enjoying The Rest is Money with Robert Peston and Steph Mcgovern. This episode with Andy Haldane was particularly interesting, rekindling my interest in economics and theories of economic growth.

Reading this month…

Not much time for reading this month, although I have been dipping in and out of Scott Belsky's book The Messy Middle and Claire Hughes Johnson's Scaling People as valuable resources for my work this month.

Running this month…

49.2 miles

Cycling this month…

153.3 miles

#### Monthnotes - May 2025
That felt like a tough month. My energy is quite low but I'm glad it's weekend. 

There's been quite a lot of complexity to wrestle with this month of one sort or another and I feel like it's taken it out of me a bit.

But on a more positive note, it's also my 22nd wedding anniversary which is an opportunity to recognise how thankful I am to be married to my brilliant wife. I know I don't say it enough, but I really am grateful to her for the support, patience and love through the ups and downs of life.

Workwise there's been a lot going on and as I sit looking back it's been pretty intense. In between plenty of client work some of there are some particular highlights that stand out.

The month began with a client's rebranding launch party in Soho. They're a cyber consultancy that I've worked with for just over a year now. It was great to see them deliver a successful rebrand and use that as a springboard for their marketing activities.

I also went along to another client event mid-month, hearing about Tiktok content from different perspectives: brand, agency, platform and creator. I was impressed with a strong turnout and interesting angles from each of the panel.

Last week we held an Extra Brain board afternoon where we explored our longer term ambitions for the business as a newly formed group of founding partners. We rounded the day off with "Friends of Extra Brain" drinks on the terrace at The Carpenters Arms in London's Fitzrovia.

I also seem to have done a lot of interviewing this month, both for clients and for The Caldecott Foundation. I've met some really interesting potential charity chairs, COOs and FDs along the way.

Unfortunately client commitments meant I missed a dinner with my fellow COO Roundtable members, which was a shame as it's been a few months since I caught up with them in person.

In between all that I made good progress this month on a couple of new early stage experiments too.

Sarah delivered a fascinating webinar for Actualise looking at founder psychology. We'll be rolling out more content on this topic soon as we grow awareness of the founder / leadership team coaching packages that Actualise is delivering.

I also soft launched an online course that I've created for executives who want to go fractional. Initial signs are positive so I'm working with a social consultant to help drive audiences for this. It's a new area for me so lots to learn and many mistakes to make along the way I'm sure. There are more details here.

At weekends my wife and I have been doing more walking together, taking our smaller dog out and exploring the local countryside together. It's been nice to enjoy the sunshine together away from screens and chores at home.

Music this month…

Enjoying exploring Greg Wilson's live mixes this month. A very talented DJ spanning genres with ease. 

Podcasts this month…

A bit of light relief with more exploration of the "What It's Like To Be" back catalogue this month. 

Reading this month…

Am reading "Empire of AI: Inside the reckless race for total domination" by Karen Hao. As the title suggests, it's a deeper more critical look at the tech AI arms race. Useful perspective compared to much of the AI boosterism in my feeds.

Cycling this month…

251.5 miles.

Running this month…

Upping the miles. 49.1 miles

#### Monthnotes - November 2019
I seem to have spent a lot of time this month thinking about people and behaviours at work. My role as MD at Deeson is really about helping create the conditions for people to do their best work for our clients.

I was lucky enough to speak at an Agency Hackers event earlier in the month telling the story of Deeson's transformation into a leading digital agency with a strong self-organising and autonomous culture.

In the conversations I had after the session, I reflected on the reality the work to create those ideal conditions for our team members is never done. There's always more that could be done, but the real skill is to know when to stop and move onto the next opportunity to improve or fix something.

Lots of opportunities with potential new clients at Deeson this month too - which means a lot of proposals and presentations, as well as meeting lots of interesting new people too. And as a result of all this two fascinating new projects kicking off in the next few weeks too.

We've also been working hard on Deeson's marketing this month, with new case studies launched sharing more about our work with clients Imperial War Museums, Bond and University of Derby.

We've also held two of our popular breakfast briefing events this month - the first looking at storytelling and online collections in the culture and museums sectors, and the second exploring the use of conversational interfaces in higher education.

Our strategy consultancy practice continues to grow rapidly. Highlights for me this month included facilitating a digital strategy day with a major UK charity and seeing the team work with another new museum client on a fascinating brief that's quite different to what we typically help our clients with.

Last week we held the Christmas edition of the Deeson client and friends drinks evening in London - another well attended event that marks the start of the Christmas drinks and social season. It's looking like a busy few weeks ahead on that front.

On a personal note, I've been doing some work on my personal value proposition - looking at what I do professionally and where I add the greatest value to the organisations I work with. It's been fascinating applying design thinking principles to help me think about my work priorities in 2020 ("Designing Your Life" by Bill Burnett was particularly helpful).

As we look ahead to 2020, the first few months look particularly busy at Deeson, with many new major projects kicking off. As part of our growth in 2020, we're hiring in Canterbury and London for several roles in our technical team - developers, lead developers and development managers working across an ever expanding tech stack. DM me for more details or check out our careers page.

#### Monthnotes - November 2020
The cyclical nature of lockdown life seems to give days and weeks a strange timelessness. Hours, days, weeks and months feel like they're whizzing by in a blur of Zoom calls, home grocery shopping and the daily rollercoaster of Covid-19 news. 

This month has been no exception, yet while it feels like it has gone by in a flash, when I look back at what's gone on in the past month, a lot has happened.

On the work front at The Panoply we published a very healthy set of interim results covering the six months to the end of September. I've continued to learn a lot about the work of many of our companies and have had the pleasure of collaborating with some new colleagues from across the group. 

We've spent time thinking about work might look like in 2021 and beyond. The likely shift towards a more blended distributed/on-site collaborative working style is a strong driver for a project I'm leading to bring together our various London offices into a single location in mid-2021 that's fit for the way we expect our teams to be using office space next year.

I also enjoyed the opportunity to participate in a panel session at this year's Silicon Valley Comes to the UK Digital Summit (SVC2UK). It was really interested to talk about our experiences at rapid scaling through acquisition and organic growth, as well as doing some start-up coaching with a few of the participating start-up businesses. It's been a while since I did any public speaking and events - I'd forgotten how much satisfaction I get from this kind of experience.

With work being so busy and the days getting shorter, I have to admit I've let my fitness slip a bit this month. My cycling and running stats are well down for the month, although I've enjoyed exploring new areas on my regular dog walks. I've also started combining work phone calls with walks where possible to break up the video calls. A noise cancelling headset seems to be a must for this to work, especially on the more windy days!

It was also good this month to receive a review copy of Brent Lowe's new book - "Lead Together: The Bold, Brave, Intentional Path to Scaling Your Business". I read Brent's first book a few years back so was delighted when he got in touch last year to interview me about our experience of developing a progressive organisation at Deeson. I had a long and fascinating conversation with Brent about the way we transformed the business, what had worked and where we'd learnt some hard lessons along the way.

The book is a great read, combining new insights and case studies of progressive management with practical techniques. It avoids many of the cliches of self-organisation texts and goes beyond the oft repeated case studies to examine what leadership really means in a progressive organisation. There are plenty of ideas that I plan to trial in my work at The Panoply in 2021. I'll share a full review when I get time to write one properly.

With only three or so working weeks left before a Christmas break like no other, there's plenty to get done. I used to head to London three or four times a week so  it's odd to be taking only my second trip there since February to look at potential office locations. It'll be good to see some socially distanced colleagues face-to-face for the first time in months too.

#### Monthnotes - November 2021
I'm struggling to know where to start this month's notes. It's more than two years into my practice of reflecting at the end of each month, yet sometimes the words flow and sometimes they don't. Today they don't.

This month marked a year since we moved house, which has been a nice anniversary to reflect on at home. In many ways it feels a lot longer since we lived in our previous house and we've settled well into a new home in a village just outside Canterbury.

But in other ways it seems like less than a year, with memories of what we've done here seeming quite recent and fresh. The time warping effect of the Covid-19 pandemic has also played into our perception of time here too I suspect.

At work the past month has been all about facilitating change, pushing on with our work to bring together eight companies into an integrated business. Making a more than 20 senior appointments made this month felt like quite a milestone and has really helped pick up the pace of change.

As part of this I was really happy to take on a new role as Chief of Staff, working closely with our CEO and colleagues across the business. I wrote a short blog post explaining the basics of the role and I'm continuing to figure out what I need to do in our version of this role.

It's been a particularly intense period this month, with some days feeling like one of those old school in-tray exercises that I've experienced at assessment centres in years gone by. There've been times when I've felt I'm at a limit and then something new has happened to push that limit just a bit further.

I've had to stay disciplined and make sure I prioritise ruthlessly, which I've had mixed success with. Plenty of days have felt like they've just blurred into the next without any real opportunity to get time to properly down tools. 

A renewed focus on exercise and cutting back on alcohol has helped with managing stress better this month. I've started CrossFit sessions at a local gym which has been an interesting addition to my usual repertoire of cycling and running.

It's been good to be collaborating with colleagues that I'd not previously worked closely with before - there have been plenty of interactive workshops as we design our new sales, account management, marketing and resourcing teams. There's plenty more to get through, but it's good to be underway and broadening out the range of people we can involve in the organisational design work.

This month we also hired an interim marketing director. And we're recruiting for a permanent marketing director too. It's been great to see the immediate impact that bringing Sharon on board as interim marketing director has had, helping focus on bringing together our marketers and delivering new campaign activity for 2022. 

The experience has reminded me how much personal satisfaction I get from solving problems and getting the right people involved in the right things - seeing things that seemed previously stuck getting moving at pace.

I also enjoyed my first visit to our Bristol office and spending an evening with some business owners who are close to joining TPXimpact soon. The opportunities for regional growth in our workforce and client base are significant - with Wales and the west of England important areas for that.

Over the past few days we've also spent more time thinking about Covid-19 and its impact on our teams, clients and work than we have done in the recent past. The emergence of the Omnicron variant has meant we've had to refresh many of our working protocols, particularly in the run-up to the Christmas social season.

The next few weeks feel quite critical as the traditional work sprint to the Christmas break, going out season and a new Covid variant collide in a unpredictable period. I go into December hoping that things don't turn out as badly as they look like they might now, but my feeling of uncertainty is stronger than it's been in quite a while.

#### Monthnotes - November 2022
I managed to get Covid for the first time at the end of November. 

I've not knowingly had it before, although I always wonder about a suspect bout of flu-like symptoms I had in late February 2020 before testing was widely available. 

But this time two lines on the PCR test meant no doubt. 

It took me out for a few days in the past week but am feeling better now. I suspect it's put this coming weekend's 50k ultra off the table too.

Across this month I've found myself in a lot of conversations where I've been asked about what I plan to do after I leave TPXimpact in December. And in each of these conversations I've explained that I don't really know yet and that's a deliberate choice of mine.

But during the past 30 days my mind has increasingly been turning to the future.

Several people who've done similar career moves have given me some consistent advice: to not rush into making any long term decisions and allow time for a period of experimentation.

They talk about how their own perspectives on work they wanted to do shifted unexpectedly in the months after they finished in a role.

I do feel now that I want to take on an MD or CEO role again at some point - I enjoy the multifaceted challenge and clear accountability that those kind of roles bring. That's not something I was clear for myself about earlier in the year when I decided to move on.

Being part of building a team and a business is something I really enjoy and I'm expecting to miss next year. 

But I also know that at least the first half of 2023 is going to be about experimentation and taking advantage of some of the flexibility that you don't get in a super full-time employed role.

That experimentation will likely be a mix of consultancy projects, some pro-bono work, personal projects and generally saying "yes" to things that I've not been able to do while employed. 

I'm loving the ambiguity of this and am really excited about where it takes my work next.

More widely this month I've also be thinking a lot about the intersection of three issues: the global climate emergency, relentless business growth, and how healthy resilient organisations emerge.

Society and the financial markets reward a linear model of economic growth, celebrating those businesses and leaders able to deliver significant business growth at pace.

Yet much of this model of economic growth rewards extraction of finite resources from the planet, generates damaging pollution or environmental harms. One way or another current models for economic growth damage the planet at a rate greater than it can heal itself.

Is there a better way of thinking about growth? A more holistic way of looking at the value businesses add than just economic growth - one that balances environmental sustainability, human wellbeing and societal prosperity.

This is something that is in the founding principles of TPXimpact and is behind the surging numbers of companies seeking B Corps status.

But let's not pretend anyone's cracked it yet. The wider systemic drivers of corporate behaviour remain stacked towards economic growth at the expense of the environment.

I'm drawn to The Calm Company Fund and their thinking about investment. They take a deliberately different approach to traditional VCs, investing for the long term in businesses designed to sustain. Their commentary on what they term "long term ambitious" companies resonated with me:

"Never burn out. Over a long enough timeline, founders and employees burning out is the biggest risk to achieving your long-term goals. Structuring the entire company and strategy around avoiding this is long-term ambitious.Retain key employees. Many calm companies we know have had employees who stick around happily for 10, 15, even 20 years. This is a major advantage of being calm.Don’t risk the entire company. By raising capital and growing more sustainably, calm companies are not racing down a runway that means the whole company will die if it falls short of aggressive growth targets. This means calm companies have a much higher survival rate.Don’t stuff the business with too much investment. One of the most common and gut-wrenching ways tech businesses fail these days is raising far too much capital at too high of a valuation and not being able to hit the lofty growth rates needed to catch up to the valuations. We call this foie gras’ing the company. Many companies that would otherwise have been great businesses become “zombie startups” or shut down simply due to being crammed with too much capital. Calm Companies avoid this entirely.Grow at a sustainable, profitable pace. Aggressive spending and acquiring customers at negative margins are short-term ambitious. Calm companies know that the best way to stay in the game is to grow at a sustainable pace that maintains healthy margins.Make more money than you spend. What a novel concept we know, but it is an essential ingredient in the success of calm companies."
The Calm Company thesis

As someone that's in the business of building organisations, there's something interesting here for me about the resilience and operational integrity of organisations depending on how quickly they grow.

Much of what binds together really effective organisations is the vision, mutual trust and inter-connectivity that comes with time. It can't be faked and the symptoms of its absence are obvious in many well known scaling businesses worldwide.

I'm fascinated by how this all comes together - creating new ways of delivering growth more holistically sustainably, at a slower pace and to create more resilient long term organisations. 

Maybe this is a pointer towards things I should explore further in 2023 in some way.

Music this month…

Bit late to this one, but I've been enjoying the Fred Again Boiler Room set from the summer played loud this month. It's fascinating to watch him in action - a seriously talented artist. 

Podcasts this month…

A new find for me this month via a colleague: Work Appropriate with Anne Helen Petersen. Loads of fascinating topics being discussed, so I've got a queue of these ready to listen to.

Reading this month…

I found The Future We Choose by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac an inspiring read. It sets out clearly and succinctly the positive choices we can make globally and as individuals to lessen our impact on the planet.

#### Monthnotes - November 2023
Looking back over November, it's felt like a bit of a "hard graft" kind of month - one where there was plenty to get done, the nights got longer, and the pressure to get stuff done before Christmas kept on growing.

On the client front, it was good to take a trip to Leeds to meet a new client team face to face for the first time. Once again I was reminded of the difference in what a group workshop in the same room can achieve compared to remote delivery.

I also enjoyed getting stuck into another operational maturity audit with a technology client that's at series A stage. This work uses the B3 framework® to take a structured look at where a scaling business needs to focus to be able to accelerate its growth. 

The framework provides a rigorous structure  for understanding what it takes to scale a business. I'm getting increasing feedback from new users and I'm now working hard on the v2.0 release for January 2024. I want to build out more implementation resources and tools to help more companies use the framework on their scaling journeys.

I also spent a day this month qualifying to become an OKR Coach using the Outcome Mindset Method™. I've used OKRs in various businesses over many years, but it was good to learn more about techniques to deploy and coach others in the use of OKRs at small and medium sized companies. 

Networking also featured fairly intensively this month, both in London and Kent. I enjoyed a Friday pub lunch with a friendly biotech VC partner. This was really interesting to learn more about biotech VC and appreciate some of the subtle differences compared top the tech VC world I know better. 

One discussion point that stuck with me was how for drug target businesses, the business is essentially a project - a vehicle to bring forward a specific innovation through the drug development process. This is a very different way of seeing company building. 

For most other sectors, company building is about creating the environment for people to do great work together, but for drug target businesses it's not about headcount growth. It's about project managing a collection of suppliers and investors through a structured development and testing process. Leadership in that context requires very different skills to leading people-centric businesses.

Podcasts this month…

Been enjoying listening to some of the older The Rest is Politics Leading interviews. These are longer format interviews with a bunch of interesting people from different backgrounds.

Music this month…

I enjoyed revisiting the Coachella set from Fred Again, Skrillex and Four Tet. I'd heard this several times before over the summer, but had forgotten about it. That led me on a trip down memory lane of Four Tet mixes, reminding me how good he really is. The musicality and skills in mixes like this are brilliant. 

Reading this month…

It's been all about the AI this month. I've been reading The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman. 

It's very very good - a considered and well-written look at the progression of technology and what this could mean for how AI affects our world. So far I'd say it's the most interesting take on the issues of AI and ethics that I've read.

Cycling this month…

178.9 miles, including a lot of Zwift, Wahoo SYSTM and FulGaz.

Running this month…

37.9 miles

#### Monthnotes - November 2024
"This one's gone quickly."

I seem to start a lot of monthnotes with that sentiment, which may be something I should reflect upon more deeply, but November's no exception.

A week off at the end of October meant I started November with a big push for the last eight working weeks of the year. Most of the heavy lifting workwise is concentrated into November and the first week of December, so it does feel like another break is within touching distance.

As my schedule gets a bit more open, I've found time to book in a few catch-ups with people that I've not seen for a while. I really enjoy hearing about what they've been up to and I always learn something from every conversation.

Client work this month seems to have had a strong leaning towards recruitment.

I've led recruitment for a Chief Operating Officer, Finance Director and Delivery Director for one UK-based client. It's been good to see how a well-designed recruitment process can attract a more varied diverse pool of quality candidates than this client might typically get for a director-level hire.

Fingers crossed for getting successful hires over the line in the coming weeks. Then my focus shifts towards onboarding and helping the new leadership team become genuinely effective.

As a senior trustee at The Caldecott Foundation, I'm also leading the search there for a new Chair of Trustees as our current chair is stepping down next year. It's interesting to talk to specialist search consultants and think about how recruitment processes need to differ when it's a senior voluntary role compared to a full-time executive hire.

Alongside a lot of recruitment, I've been running a consultancy project developing an agency growth roadmap. Run over two non-consecutive days and in collaboration with Jess at Extra Brain, it's been a pleasure to work in depth with an ambitious agency leadership team to help them bring their vision to life.

I love the intellectual and practical challenge of leadership team workshop facilitation blended with consulting - and enjoy seeing leadership teams make real progress on issues that they've grappled with for a long time.

This month I've also had a bit more time to spend on developing work for next year. My coaching practice is growing gradually and it's looking likely I'll have capacity to take on a new fractional COO role from mid-January onwards.

As a fractional COO I work closely with founders and emerging leadership teams in scaling businesses. I enjoy the hands-on nature of fractional working, leading operational teams and helping solve the day-to-day challenges that rapid growth brings.

Away from work I've entered my third ultra run. It's another 50 miler, this time in the South Downs in early February. I like a clear goal (at home and at work) so having an ultra planned in is helping me get out running regularly over the winter.

I'm also trialling Runna to help get a bit more variety and focus in my training. So far that's working well and I've managed to stick to the recommended training plan.

My choice of image this month was a bit tricky, as it seems there haven't been many photogenic moments this month. I settled for a picture of our lounge during one of the many power cuts we've had during this month's storms.

Music this month…

Stumbled across DJ Ian Perry on Soundcloud and have been enjoying his "Can U Dance to My Beat" series, spanning nu-disco, deep house, soul and a few big piano anthems too.

Podcasts this month…

Very excited to find a new (to me) podcast called What It's Like To Be. The format is really simple - 30 minute conversations with people about their jobs. I love learning about what other people do, so it's a real gem. I've learnt a lot about different jobs that are a million miles away from what I do for work.

Reading this month…

It's taken me most of the month to get through The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté. It's interesting stuff about "what our bodies are expressing and our minds are suppressing". It's given me some useful perspectives for my coaching work. I'll happily admit there were some bits I had to read several times before I worked out what was actually being said!

Cycling this month…

163.9 miles

Running this month…

58.3 miles

#### Monthnotes - November 2025
It's a wet November day and once again I'm sitting down to reflect on the month.

I realise I say this most months, but once again it feels like it's been a really intense month. Taking a moment to look back shows just how much is happening a the moment. 

I'm working fractionally with a digital agency based in the West Midlands. As I head into month 3 it's really interesting to see how things are changing in the business. The MD and CEO are leading with much more confidence, clients are starting to respond positively to our experiments with a fresh proposition and we're starting to tighten up processes to improve the ways things work within the agency. 

I'm also working with a rapidly growing agency with teams on both sides of the Atlantic. I've been delivering my new COO Blueprint Audit - a rapid seven day deep dive into the operational health of the business using a 180 point diagnostic tool (based on my B3 framework). 

The client is a super rapidly growing business and very acquisitive. It's fascinating to work with them to understand the story of the business so far and help them set up their operational infrastructure to cope with their next round of acquisitions.

A different project that's coming along nicely this month is a piece of organisational design work I'm doing with a tech-centric legal organisation. It's a fascinating project thinking about how you build an organisation around an AI enabled workflow. This is something I'm really excited about and is a theme that's come up a few times this year in organisational design work I've done. I'm expecting that trend to continue next year.

This month also marked another exciting milestone on a project that I've been working on with singer and actor Matt Henry. This isn't my usual kind of project as it's a start-up rather than a scale-up, but when I first spoke with Matt I was inspired by his passion and vision to create The Actors House - a portfolio of affordable, accessible, safe and high quality places to stay across the UK for touring actors and creatives.

We did a research call with Equity earlier this month. Hearing about young actors having to sleep on mouldy mattresses in damp conservatories or having to share beds to be able to afford somewhere to stay when touring was a reminder of the difference that Matt's venture will make. We're still learning and iterating the business model, but a big milestone this month was the launch of the first property - a House in Bradford - where we welcomed our first paying guest.

As we approach the end of the year, I've also been thinking ahead to next year. I'm working with Alex at Outdo working on my own proposition. We've been thinking about how fractional work is evolving and what that means for how I might position and market my services next year. The pace of change in the fractional market means that there's a need to be more differentiated and focussed in my own marketing.

I've also been working on my joint venture with former colleague Sarah Harris. We launched Actualise earlier this year. I think both of us are frustrated that we didn't launch a proposition that was compelling enough. After some soul searching we tapped up Tim Deeson who's generously helping us to kick a fresh new proposition into shape. I came away from our working session this month energised and keen to get our new idea out there in February.

I'm teaming up with a Taiwan-based fractional CFO on my course business Going Fractional. Having successfully launched the course earlier this year, I've recognised I lack the skills and time to properly promote the course and realise its potential. I'm excited to have partnered with someone who has an established course business, along with the tools and knowledge to take Going Fractional forward in 2026. More on that in due course.

Away from work, I headed up to Snowdonia mid-month to do a 53 mile ultra. Despite a huge storm the night before, it was a sunny day in north Wales with some beautiful views during the day. Overall the run wasn't as physically tough as the last 50 miler I did but mentally it was a lot harder. The combination of much longer spent running in the dark, a particularly long hard three mile ascent and descent in the dark with no discernible path and the remoteness meant I had to work hard to hold it together mentally.

Last weekend was a bit of an unexpected and unwelcome turn of events. Our elder son who's at university was hospitalised in a lot of pain. Thankfully a lot of tests ruled out a lot of scary things and he was home the next day. We headed down to see him and it's been a relief for us both that he's continued to recover OK this week. 

On a happier note, I treated myself to a turntable this month and entered the middle-age crisis of building a vinyl collection. I've been enjoying the addition of vinyl to my DJ set-up as well just loving the feel and sound of real records once again. 

Music this month…

Got introduced to Marsh by Enya this month and have become obsessed. Am loving his long sets as I work. This 7 hour epic at Fabric is a particular fave.

Podcasts this month…

Lots of podcasts with all the running training and a long drive to north Wales and back. I'm particularly enjoying the conversations on One Question with Michelle Cox.

Reading this month…

Am reading a fascinating book about the economics of the narcotics trade - "Narconomics: How To Run a Drug Cartel". It's really interesting to see the parallels with the business world I work in and the illegal drug trade.

Cycling this month…

Less miles and mostly indoor this month as it's all been about the running. 45.6 miles.

Running this month

82.4 slow ultra-paced miles. Be good to get back to faster pace now the ultra's done and restore a bit more aerobic fitness.

#### Monthnotes - October 2019
I seem to have used the words "opportunity cost" a lot this month.

As an agency MD, I'm acutely aware that every hour we have in the working week is commercially valuable. It certainly sharpens your focus on the value of time and where to invest that time. The opportunity cost of time is on my mind most days.

That's why as I write this on the evening of 31st October 2019 - some 1223 days since the UK's Brexit referendum result was announced (and coincidentally my 40th birthday too) - I reflect on what the UK could have achieved in that time.

Instead addressing important issues in society such as domestic abuse, social care funding, economic growth and a creaking healthcare system have been effectively abandoned in favour of a turgid parliamentary and public sector focus on Brexit (or not).

And that state of paralysis continues in our country too.

I don't think we've properly realised the opportunity cost of Brexit over the past years, let alone the damage that leaving the European Union will do to our country's prospects as today's children grow up. I fear my children will grow up living in a more inward looking, narrow minded and intolerant country than I knew growing up.

Opportunity cost has also been a theme for me at work over the past few weeks. It's been a particularly busy period at Deeson so we've needed to be ruthless in making conscious decisions where we put our time.

As organisations evolve and change, it's all too easy for teams to unconsciously accumulate habits, biases and processes to the extent that people's natural potential is being stifled. That's why this piece by Corporate Rebels about simplicity and transformation really resonated with me - thinking about how to minimise opportunity costs in change programmes.

Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow is a new book I've read this month. It's focussed on designing teams and organisations for optimal software development, but had plenty of useful contemporary thinking for other types of people-based service businesses too.

Over the past couple of weeks I've also been reading Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by David Thaler. It's not the easiest of reads, but having studied economics and read several books by Daniel Kahneman, I found Thaler's book a fascinating challenge to traditional economic theories with psychological and behavioural research. On a practical note, there's a wealth of useful learnings for anyone involved in designing services and products too.

In the digital sphere, I also managed to finish Tools and Weapons: The Promise and The Peril of the Digital Age by Brad Smith. It's a Microsoft-centric look at some of the big issues affecting digital in global society - including data, privacy, AI, ethics and digital governance. I particularly enjoyed learning about how a large corporate like Microsoft grappled with the pace of public affairs issues that it faced.

At Deeson this October we've had plenty of presentations, workshops, team collaboration and launches to celebrate too. We welcomed two new clients to our digital partnership service as well and are looking forward to kicking off work with them very soon.

I've also enjoyed getting out and about meeting with potential and current clients to keep learning about the challenges they face for 2020. Some great insights that will help us ensure we continue to provide relevant and valuable work with our clients.

We've got two of our popular breakfast briefings coming up at the Shard in November too - one looking at digital in the culture and visitor attraction sectors, with the second focusing on how we've helped higher education institutions transform customer interactions with chatbots.

It's also been a real pleasure this month to see Deeson spin-off business GreenShoot Labs growing strongly. The team has found a strong niche working with conversational AI and developing an open source framework for rapid deployment of conversational tools. And we're hiring too - check out the priority roles.

Away from Deeson and all things digital, I've spent some time this month in my voluntary role as trustee at The Caldecott Foundation in Kent. I'm really enjoying learning new skills operating in a non-executive capacity and get a lot of personal satisfaction from being a very small part of an amazing team that's changing the lives of some of the most vulnerable children in society.

At today's board meeting with said goodbye to our chair Mike Lauerman CBE who left the board after ten years as a trustee. In the 14 months I've been a trustee I've seen the impact of his board leadership.

Mike's legacy is a charity that's significantly more effective, financially stable and demonstrably making a positive difference to hundreds of children through residential care, education and fostering services - certainly an achievement he can justifiably be proud of in his well-earned retirement.

#### Monthnotes - October 2021
It's an early morning writing session for October's monthnotes today. The combination of the end of UK summer time and returning from a sunny week away in Ibiza yesterday has meant an unusually early start for a Sunday morning for me.

With that week off, it's been a shorter working month for me but a lot seems to have happened in that time. The benefit of having a few days away where I didn't think too much about work has been to remind me about some truths in organisational change that I sometimes lose sight of when I get too close.

We're on a journey to bring eight businesses together under a single new brand - TPXimpact - to create a progressive business that delivers impactful, sustainable, digital transformation. In reality this is a multi-year journey that has no defined end point, particularly as the business will continue to grow and change in future, through acquisition and expansion.

But this kind of ambitious change requires some big efforts along the way to overcome the natural inertia that exists in any kind of organisation. Over the summer we launched the change internally, with an initial external launch in late September.

Now we're into a phase where we are moving to our first iteration of an integrated structure for the organisation. The design for this structure has been an interesting challenge, bringing together a single operating model and understanding what leadership roles need to exist initially to help make that operating model a reality. The level of ambition in this initial structure needs to be balanced with the need to continue to deliver business as usual.

As someone that believes in the potential of people throughout organisations, the concepts of structure and leadership mean different things to me than they do to others. Aligning on a common understanding of what these terms mean and signify is an important part of becoming a single organisation, leaving behind some of the traditional vestiges of positional status, hard power and directive influence that lie behind these words.

An interesting manifestation of this has been in how to present the structure of the organisational visually. Trying to avoid a traditional looking hierarchical structure chart - to signify progressive change and avoid building in notions of hierarchy from the start - needed to be balanced against the need to be able to effectively communicate the shape of the new organisation in the language and visual forms that people are most familiar with at this stage in the journey. 

It's also been interesting to think about how any kind of structure chart has limited temporal validity. It's only really applicable at that moment in time and will be in a continuous state of iteration. This seems obvious when thinking about an organisation under the organism metaphor, but because of decades of machine metaphor thinking about organisations, it shouldn't be a surprise that a visual representation of an organisation is often considered as a detailed definition of how it functions. 

Yet a structure chart is not the same as an architect's plans for a new building or a technical drawing for a car engine. It is not definitive for the future and is not a descriptor of how an organisation works - merely a visual construct to provide one perspective on how individuals and teams in an organisation might interact.

So as we head into November, I am also reminding myself that every change, whether at home or work, involves a messy middle. It's that time when change feels hard, things go wrong, unexpected obstacles trip you up and you have to be willing to pivot. But it's also the time to reinforce the longer term vision, communicate, listen, celebrate the small wins and build a ladder of change for people throughout an organisation to climb at their own pace as part of their own personal journey of change.

In practice this means finalising appointments to the new TPXimpact leadership structure for the integrated organisation as soon as we can, working to explore what leadership really means in the new organisation (with servant leadership being a strong theme) and starting to collaborate to work out how devolved decision-making, radical transparency and accountability work in practice for us. It'll be this collaboration that really define how we become the organisation we want to be, rather than any organogram or structure chart. 

So tomorrow I'm back to work with a renewed focus on playing my part in creating an integrated organisation that is genuinely different to other businesses in our markets, truly built around the potential of people working together in multi-disciplinary teams to solve complex problems for our clients through transformation.

#### Monthnotes - October 2022
I've been writing monthnotes for more than three years now. Some months the memories just flow and the words come easily. But other months, including this one, it can be hard to grind out the words that adequately reflect my experiences over the preceding weeks.

At work, October's been a very different kind of month. 

The appointment of a new Chief Executive Officer and Chief Finance Officer has meant I've spent a lot more time looking backwards than I expected, helping them understand the journey of the business to date as well as working together on the business today.

I've seen close-up a lot of the emotion that is involved with a founder transition and how it affects the founders, their successors and people in the wider business.

Often this month I've been reminded that it's important not to assume how people will react or feel in a particular scenario - it's all too easy to make rational assumptions about this when it's unpredictable emotional responses that are the reality. Without having proper conversations and listening intently it's impossible to really understand what's going on for people in these situations.

There are just seven weeks left now before I leave full-time employment at TPXimpact and head into 2023 as an independent consultant and non-exec. I've started to explore what work might look like next year and have spent a few evenings working up some ideas I've been sitting on for quite a while.

I'm spending a lot more time meeting new people and exploring some interesting consulting and job opportunities than I have done in quite a while and it's something that's really energising for me.

Another 2023 goal for me is to do more writing about building progressive organisations and challenging many of the accepted norms about how we work.

I'll be launching an email newsletter in January 2023 that explores these themes. Having written a blog for many years more than 10 years ago, I'm looking forward to getting back into writing more frequently.

Plus my long held ambition to write a book about what I've learnt about growing businesses is moving just a little closer too. More news on that soon hopefully.

Outside work we managed a short break in the New Forest as a family at half term. It was good to get away for a few nights and enjoy the time spent together. There's less and less time when the four of us are together nowadays, especially with our eldest son leaving home to travel for three months in January, so those times feel more precious than ever right now.

I've also entered another ultra run and am pretty excited to be having another go at this kind of endurance event. This time it's a 50k event in the Surrey Hills in early December, so less distance and less hills than Snowdonia - but an opportunity to try out better nutrition and overcome the problems I had in September's 50 mile event.

And then the completer finisher in me still keeps coming back to the Snowdonia ultra from September. For someone like me, completing 41 of 50 miles before dropping out means unfinished business - so I'm very tempted to enter next year and see if I can make it through the full 50 miles in 2023.

Music this month…

My top choice has got to be the new Arctic Monkeys album The Car. Have listened to it several times over and enjoying it more each time.

Podcasts this month…

As I've been out on longer runs most weekends, I've been through a lot more podcasts once again this month. An episode that sticks in my mind was "A Better Way to Worry" on Hidden Brain which looked at anxiety and how we can work better with anxiety as an emotion. 

Reading this month…

"The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture" has been my focus this month. Aside from having an implausibly long title, this book is an interesting but fragmented set of insights into the hard yards of building a business. It's written by Scott Belsky, co-founder of Behance and looks at lessons from many different start-ups, focussing on the hard middle part of a company's growth journey.

#### Monthnotes - October 2023
A good friend once told me that building a portfolio working life was like planting saplings to form a new forest.

He explained that over time some would die and some would grow slowly and steadily, affected by strong winds or soil around their roots. 

And others would unexpectedly grow at pace, creating a diverse forest ecosystem.

October was a month when I experienced what he meant.

I started work with several new clients during the month and some of the marketing saplings I planted earlier in the year began to grow.

 I really enjoyed getting stuck into new challenges with different teams. It was a good reminder that I really thrive on variety at work.

Being able to bring what I've learnt so far in my career to the table to help solve gnarly problems keeps me fresh and interested in my work.

Last month I published a framework that's helps leaders build companies better. It's called the B3 framework® and is something I use most days in my consultancy work.

I created it because I wanted the tool I wish I'd had back in 2014 when I first joined a digital agency with growth ambitions.

It captures many of the things I've learnt since then about what it takes to build a sustainable and resilient company.

Having published the beta version, I began to get helpful feedback on it this month from founders, investors and operators. This was really useful to help me refine the framework further.

I'm also in the middle of my second round of founder interviews to help further validate the thinking behind the framework. 

I've really enjoyed meeting nearly 30 founders and hearing about their experiences founding and scaling their companies. It's been particularly interesting to hear about businesses in some really interesting sectors beyond pure technology.

Too often start-up culture celebrates the "tech SaaS" ways of founding and scaling a business, but ignores the multitude of other routes that founders take to make their ideas into real businesses.

Away from work, I enjoyed completing the 54 mile Lakes in a Day ultra run earlier this month. Having DNFed on a 50 miler last September, I was determined to finish this time.

It was by far the toughest physical challenge I've taken on and I really loved it. I finished in just under 18 hours, having climbed more than 4000 metres and waded through a couple of miles of flooded paths next to Lake Windermere.

I'm thinking ahead to physical challenges to keep me motivated during the winter months.

I'm pretty sure I'll take on the Canterbury 10 mile road race in January to see how my pace fares against this year's PB.

I'm also hoping to get over to Belgium in April to ride the Liège–Bastogne–Liège classic sportive. It's been a while since we did any cycling adventures and I'd love to ride one of the iconic spring classics.

And on the ultra running front, the 100Km distance feels like an achievable step up from this month's 50 miler, so I'm still looking for an interesting 100Km event next year in a part of the country where I've not run before.

Music this month…

All about the modern disco this month. Leeds promoters Downtown Disco have provided many of the soundtracks to my runs and my work this month. This is a particular fave with Mousse T, Michael Gray, Ian Ossia and Lisa Jane.

Reading this month…

I've been wading my way through Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. An interesting read about someone with whom I share very few beliefs about building businesses. I've got a nice newsletter sitting in my drafts about some valuable lessons that I took from the book about process development and automation.

Cycling this month…

72.4 miles

Running this month…

82.8 miles

#### Monthnotes - October 2024
As I look back, October's definitely been a busy one at work and at home.

The month began with a fascinating quick agency project, working with Lisa Mandell at Jolt. Looking back at the work we did, I'm really proud of the quality of thinking we delivered for the client. 

I also finished off two smaller operations consultancy projects that began last month, including a really interesting operational discovery project for a PR, social media and events agency.

As part of my portfolio approach to all things work, this month we announced that I've taken on a board role at Extra Brain - a consultancy collective that I've been increasingly involved with since January 2023. 

One of the things I really missed when I went independent was the close collaboration that comes with working in a business. 

Working flexibly within my portfolio of work with the Extra Brain team gives me the opportunity to work closely with a seriously talented bunch of people on interesting projects. Looking forward to see where Jess, Dan, Damian and the wider Extra Brain collective can take the business next. 

I'm also now ramping up for new client work from January onwards. I've relaunched my email newsletter - Build - and am putting the finishing touches to some more proactive marketing too. 

I'm likely to have availability for a fractional COO role from January 2025, alongside a small number of slots for operational leadership coaching. 

For many years I've been a trustee at The Caldecott Foundation. I'm stepping up to chair the Audit & Risk Committee and am leading on our search for a new Chair of Trustees to take on leadership of the board in mid/late 2025. Spending a couple of days on charity business this month was good as I missed some of the July meetings due to other commitments.

Away from work I enjoyed running a seriously fast half marathon in Victoria Park, east London early in the month. It was a flat, lapped course which meant I took around six minutes off my previous PB, running the course in just over 1hr 39m.

A wet weekend also meant an opportunity to put together a new DJ mix, with a full-on 90s focus. A bit of planning and preparation feels like it paid off on this one and I'm enjoying listening to it back on longer runs.

Last week, we also went to an interesting presentation about a new vineyard in east Kent focussing on premium English sparkling wine. I've cycled past the vines a lot of the years, so it was good to learn more about the new winery that's been built and the history of the business.

As it's half term this week, I've taken a few days off work. We're off to the Cotswolds for a family get together tomorrow and late last night we got home from a short break with friends in Valencia. 

We enjoyed our time in the city, although the tragic consequences of the extreme weather at the end of our stay are still becoming clear. 

We were due to fly home at 9.20pm as the worst of the storms hit, so we spent the night in the airport mostly oblivious to what was unfolding in Valencia city and the wider region. Eventually our flight took off some 20 hours later than scheduled and within a couple of hours we were back in the UK.

Music this month…

A lot of time spent at my desk meant I had Tidal on auto-discovery, cycling through everything from 70s prog rock, 80s hip hop through to modern disco.

Podcasts this month…

Learnt a lot from this Guy Raz interview with Jim Collins on Wisdom from the Top. This one's a consistent favourite business podcast of mine so definitely worth subscribing to.

Reading this month…

I was fascinated to read Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou. This is the story of Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos scandal. Given the work I do, it was really interesting to observe how toxic leadership behaviours shaped the story of that business and the experience of the many talented people who chose to work there.

Cycling this month…

92.9 miles. Back on Zwift and Fulgaz now as the days get shorter and weather wetter. 

Running this month…

38.2 miles.

#### Monthnotes - October 2025
October has been one of those months where you can feel things shifting into place.

Not in a neat and everything’s sorted kind of way as that's never how life actually works…but in the sense that multiple threads of work, thinking and doing started to align in ways that matter. Looking back through my calendar, Todoist and Goodnotes, there's a coherence to the month that wasn't always visible day-to-day.

I’ve been getting properly stuck into a new fractional COO engagement. What makes this particularly interesting is the challenge this client is facing: securing the foundations of their business while building for a future that effectively skips a generation of business maturity. We're not just shoring up what exists but addressing fundamental questions - what's the proposition, what does the operational model look like, how do teams actually work - designing all of it to be fit for 2026 and being as fit as we can for the AI era (whatever that really means).

The fascinating bit is doing this whilst the business is still running, still delivering client work and still dealing with all the normal pressures of agency life. You can't just stop and rebuild. It's more like renovating a house whilst living in it - except you're also redesigning the layout for a world where some of the rooms might not need to exist anymore (the choice of metaphor is deliberate - as one of the other things we did this month was decide to move house and take on another “project” house which I’m sure will feature increasingly in future monthnotes).

In another COO consultancy project this month I’ve been finalising leadership team design for a 50 person business. This started as a relatively straightforward org design project but has evolved into something more interesting: collaboratively building out governance structures: who decides what? How do decisions get made? What needs to be escalated and what doesn't?

These questions sound simple but they're where so many organisations get stuck. We've been doing this collaboratively, which takes longer but creates much better buy-in. The senior team has been actively involved in designing how they want to work together, what good looks like and where the boundaries are.

I also onboarded another new impact-focussed client this month. They're at a pivotal moment as they transition from one operating model to something that works at a much greater scale. This is early-stage work as we explore what this might mean for organisational structure and the change process that might entail. I’m excited as the project is highly collaborative which is the way I love to deliver my consultancy work.

In my role as founding partner at Extra Brain, Jess Gregson and I spent a day at the Festival of Entrepreneurs at the NEC. It’s the first time that event has been run and for me it was a mixed bag. Useful for understanding the landscape of consultants, coaches and advisors supporting SMEs and some valuable talks, but attendance was a bit low overall and some of the panels were a bit too bland and full of start-up truisms for my liking.

Talking of panels I spoke on a panel this month at a Connectd event in London this month, focused on aligning culture with organisational goals. There was a really engaged audience and the kind of conversation where you can go beyond the surface-level platitudes. The event was a good reminder that I genuinely enjoy public speaking and I should probably do more of it.

Away from work, October has been dominated by training for my 100k ultra run in Snowdonia next month. This means a lot of miles - long runs on weekends and shorter runs during the week. The long runs have also meant lots of podcasts and the Dub Pistols have been a consistent soundtrack when running energy sagged a bit.

I managed to get five full days away with my wife in our motorhome in Suffolk too which was a real highlight. Terrible mobile reception was absolutely perfect as I could actually switch off for most of the time away. There's something about being in the motorhome that creates a different quality of time with simpler rhythms, fewer distractions, more space for conversation, reading and just being together. Suffolk was lovely - quiet beaches, big North Sea skies and some good walks between the showers. It was also lovely for Jo and I to spend an evening over dinner with Jess and Dan Gregson at their beautiful Southwold home.

Music this month…

It's all about the Dub Pistols this month. A new discovery for me via Mucky Weekender. Am loving the breakbeat and the variety weaved into many of their sets.

Podcasts this month…

Long runs have meant a lot of Acquired. Enjoyed their Google/AI show this month which filled a lot of tired miles.

Reading this month…

Lots of fiction this month as we were away. No specific highlights stand out though.

Cycling this month…

121.8 miles. A lot more time indoors on the Wattbike.

Running this month

86.6 slow miles.

#### Monthnotes - September 2019
Having benefitted from a four week break from work this summer (thanks to the Deeson sabbatical scheme), I came back to work in early September with renewed energy and focus, as well as having had a chance to reflect on my place in the world of work more generally.

One of the commitments I made this summer was to get back to writing more about my work in digital and leadership.

From 2003 I wrote a busy blog about comms, marketing and digital on my website, but made a conscious decision in 2015 to retire that blog. My work had moved on significantly from the fields of marketing and communications which I had been writing about.

But I have always found writing a good way of refine my thinking and challenging myself to articulate ideas better. So "Monthnotes" is my new monthly round-up of news, observations and links from my world.

Despite having only been back at work as MD at Deeson for four weeks, we've packed a lot in. Looking back the highlights have included:

seeing the Deeson leadership team rise to the challenge of managing the agency during my time off. It was great to see things in such great shape when I returned.two new senior hires at Deeson to help us continue to build our strategic and creative talent in the agency, including a new Head of Strategy (Martijn van der Heijden) and a new Associate Creative Director (Mark Ellis).a day spent at the Disruption Summit Europe. Some fascinating presentations (personal favourite was Chris Sheldrink, founder of What3words), interesting potential client conversations and good to be exhibiting alongside fellow The Panoply companies too.presenting at a Deeson breakfast briefing event about how to choose a web content management system. This is a topic that's top of mind for many organisations as the end of support for Drupal 7 approaches in 2021 and as the world of CMS becomes ever more complicated.concluding a digital strategy consultancy engagement for a major UK charity, helping them understand their current digital activities better and plot a strategic roadmap for their continuing growth over the next three years.

I was fascinated by Carrie Bishop's piece about her role as CDO in San Francisco. It was good to read a genuinely honest and reflective read about the realities of digital practice in the public sector in the USA.

And as a digital agency with a strong open source focus, Owen Williams' article about open source contributions also caught my eye this month. At Deeson we've always supported team members to contribute back to open source projects and it remains something I'm committed to us continuing to do in the future.

Looking forward to October, we've got an exciting new website launch coming up as well in a couple of weeks, plus we're firming up some really interesting events spanning higher education, culture, arts and membership as well.

And there's more thinking and linking in last month's Deeson client and friends newsletter too. Enjoy!

#### Monthnotes - September 2020
Earlier this month, before the government's return to advising working from home by default, I made my first trip to London since late February - the longest I've been away from London for many years.

On reflection it was a bizarre experience, with my former peak-time train from Canterbury to St Pancras virtually deserted. The bike ride over to the FutureGov offices at London Bridge took me past familiar streets, yet the roads were quieter with many shops and cafes shuttered. The City and Shoreditch were subdued versions of their former selves, lacking the energy, bustle and vibrancy that I'd got so used to.

The day also remind me of the value of face to face interactions at work, as the time I spent with various colleagues that day was invigorating. As we head into another extended period of remote working, but this time in the dark and cold days of winter, I think we need to focus even more on wellbeing. 

Energy reserves are depleted after such a long period of enforced home working since March, so the prospect of many more months of the same is a challenging one that we have a responsibility to help our teams through, learning and adapting as we go. 

Four weeks into my new role as Chief Operating Officer at The Panoply, I'm starting to understand how the role fits into where the group is now and where it wants to be in the next three years. The Panoply is far from a typical technology services group and the role is far from a typical Chief Operating Officer role.

It's been a busy month with Difrent team joining The Panoply early in the month, bringing with them a wealth of experience in the health sector. We're also relaunching our internal communications to improve cross-group communications and implementing a more consistent visual identity across companies. Earlier this week FutureGov sponsored the GovTech Summit, with FutureGov and Difrent team members at the fore of presentations and panels debating some of the major issues in public sector technology, change and policy today.

Our Ameo team has joined forces with FutureGov, bringing a track record and expertise in local government restructuring and change management to their mission to build 21st-century health and public sector organisations. Next week sees the culmination of a lot of work in several of our tech businesses, bringing together Notbinary, Human+, Disruption and Arthurly into a single business - Foundry4. More details on that here.

Our strong belief in the potential of devolved autonomy is at the heart of how we are designing The Panoply to work. We are deliberately designing and prototyping an operating system that enables genuine empowerment for people in our companies, while helping them achieve more through cross-group collaboration and meeting the needs of our wider stakeholder groups - such as the communities we work in, the clients we work for and our investors too. This is a fascinating conceptual and practical challenge to take on and I'm loving it.

This means that my role so far is all about designing and embedding this operating system. I'm working with our companies as a servant leader, facilitating change and delivering cross-group projects to accelerate our progress. The role is all about building strong relationships with people from across our businesses, helping understand the challenges they face and how we can solve them together. 

With that focus on relationships comes a lot of questioning, listening and learning. Building a mental model of the organisation as a complex network of people is an important first step in understanding how to design and influence change.

The biggest challenge for me this month has been balancing my default servant leadership style with the occasional need to take a more directional approach to leadership. There will be some times when I need to flip between these two modes and I need to work on how to do that without it seeming inconsistent or damaging relationships with colleagues. This is something I continue to focus on in my professional development.

Over the next few months I'm taking a renewed focus on professional development, working with a coach to help focus on the needs of the new role and how I can grow and thrive with the new challenges I was looking for when I took it on. It'll be fascinating to see where this journey of development takes me in the coming months and years.

#### Monthnotes - September 2021
As my reminder for monthnotes popped up today, my instant reaction was "how was that a month?".I've stuck to the discipline of reflecting at the end of each calendar month for the past two years and it's become part of the cadence of my working life to look back regularly.

After a slightly disjointed August at work with lots of people being on holiday, it's felt like the pace of change in September has really picked up and that momentum is likely to continue for a while yet. 

With the last few months of my working life (and many of my non-working hours too) thinking about some big strategic challenges, it feels like a lot has become more tangible this month.

Earlier in the summer at The Panoply we announced our intention to bring the many businesses across the group together into a single integrated organisation working under a single new brand.

That means a complex change programme spanning just about every aspect of our work to think through and get underway. And we're completely focussed on making those changes while delivering a consistent experience for our clients, whichever business they happen to be clients of.

I've spent a lot of time working with colleagues on organisational design. The challenge of bringing together multiple businesses to create a new progressive organisation is a fascinating one. It's one that we're managing iteratively, trying to break down change into the smallest units of change possible, while also recognising that organisation change isn't software development. 

While a user story in software development can typically always be broken down into a more granular unit, that's not always the case in organisational change. We acknowledge that we won't get everything right first time and have established some clear change principles that strongly echo themes like testing and learning, co-creation, prototyping and user centricity. 

I've also grappled with the challenges of expressing a vision for how the merged organisation will be progressive in nature, avoiding the pitfalls of growth that tend to accumulate with scale. We strongly believe in maximising autonomy for people working in the organisation, while also recognising that autonomy can only be paired with equivalent responsibility. 

I know from our early work at Deeson that this principle is sound. The fascinating puzzle now is how to operationalise it at scale, enabling the pace and agility that autonomy brings - ultimately leading to a sustainable competitive advantage - but without responsibility bringing bureaucracy and unnecessarily stifling processes. 

Last week we launched the name for the new organisation - TPXimpact - marking the start of a five month brand migration as we retire each of our company brands. A few weeks back I spotted this article on the BBC News website and it captured many of the challenges that have faced the cross-business team that's been working on developing the new name and identity. 

As a marketer at heart I know that naming is just a small part of branding and that brands develop and evolve over time. We have a great starting point with a clear brand strategy in place and over the next year the brand will grow in profile, extending as the business grows and as it becomes a day-to-day tool for our marketing and new business teams.

I've spent a day or two per week working back in London this month too. I've seen London go from pretty quiet early in September back to something approaching what seemed like the old normal today, at least around London Bridge and St Pancras.

At home it's also felt like a month where things have snapped back to something like the old normality. With the school holidays over and school "bubbles" a thing of the past, there is a real sense of a new normal. Clubs and activities are back and so family logistical planning with the shared Google calendar is back in force!

For us this has also been tinged with a feeling of change approaching with our elder son entering his final year at school, applying for university, planning a gap year, getting his first part-time job and booking his driving test in the space of a few weeks. 

We've also been lucky enough to enjoy some time out and about this month too, with the highlight being a long overdue birthday meal for my wife at The Sportsman in Seasalter last week. This was originally booked for early last year but was repeatedly delayed during lockdown. It was lovely to spend the evening out together and enjoy some great food as well. 

#### Monthnotes - September 2022
After reflecting last month about how August felt like a slow and disjointed month, September has certainly shifted gear for me.

The month began with a big adventure challenge. I've done some great long distance cycling adventures but I wanted something different in 2022.

The quest for something different led me to ultra-running. The multi-faceted challenge of covering long distances on foot, navigation, endurance, sleep deprivation and nutrition seemed interesting. Plus the opportunity to spend extended periods in amazing scenery appealed too.

So being me, I set my sights high and entered the GB Ultras Snowdon Ultra® 50 Mile race. 

That's a 50 mile race over 24 hours with 2785m of ascent, including ascents of Tryfan, Snowdon, Glyder Fach and Glyder Fawr.  

The race began at 6.15am in Betws-y-Coed on 3rd September. Almost 35 miles and 11 hours later I'd climbed and descended Tryfran, Snowdon (up the Pyg track, down the Miner's) and the Glyders. This was the mountain section that I'd been most focussed on getting through. After that the gradient eased as the route returned back down the valley for a further 19 miles.

Going through checkpoint 6 at 34 miles I felt good. My legs were tired but mentally I was OK. I pulled out my head torch in anticipation of dusk and headed towards Capel Curig.

And then it all started to fall apart. The occasional stomach cramps turned really bad and I couldn't eat or drink properly. I felt really sick and because I couldn't take onboard any nutrition I started to lose energy. My mile pace went down and down - so by the time I got to checkpoint 7 at 41 miles I was done. 

That was the point where I decided to stop. I was lurching from one side of the wide easy path to another and mentally I was in a dark place. The thought of another 9 miles with such pain and no nutrition was too much. I hitched a ride back to Betws-y-coed and registered a DNF on my first ultra.

But I'd travelled more than 41 miles, climbed nearly 11,000 feet and had a brilliant experience. I loved being in the mountains, bonding with complete strangers over shared pain and pushing myself physically and mentally further than ever before. 

My legs were sore but OK. My feet were unblistered. My back was raw from the abrasion of my running vest. But it was my digestive system and nutrition choices that finished me off. Talking to a friend who's done plenty of endurance events, I've got a few ideas how to address this next time around. 

Mid-month I was also able to share my plans to leave TPXimpact and explore some new work challenges in 2023.  It was good to be able to be open about my intentions with colleagues. 

I recognised a while back that I needed to think about work and what my next career move would be. Having discussed this in January 2022 with TPXimpact founders Neal Gandhi and Olly Rigby, I then decided this June that I wanted to move on by Christmas.

I wrote more about making this choice and some thoughts about my next more here. I'm hoping to spend a bit more time in the coming months thinking about what I want to do next.

However the past few weeks at work have been particularly intense, so I've not had much spare time to think about 2023 though. In some ways TPXimpact has had a challenging period over the past few months, culminating in a trading update today. 

I've spent a lot of time this month thinking about succession and watching founders experience the  shifting expectations on leaders. I'm very grateful for the opportunity I've had to work with many founders of businesses over the past nine years - and I've got immense admiration for people who have the mix of vision and drive to found successful businesses.

As September ends, my focus is shifting to managing leadership transitions, working with the new CEO and CFO at TPXimpact and other senior leaders to help them become effective. 

Music this month…

I'm enjoying (nu-)disco a lot at the moment. Favourite new mix is a long one - six hours of live disco with Dr Packer, Birdee, Ian Ossia & Lisa Jane - Downtown Disco Live from August 2022.

Podcasts this month…

I've enjoyed Tim Harford's writing for a few years now, but this month I discovered his podcast Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford. They're short enjoyable episodes and I've found them interesting to help challenge my lazy assumptions or ingrained thinking.

Reading this month…

A new favourite book this month: All That We Are: Uncovering the Hidden Truths Behind Our Behaviour at Work by Gabriella Braun. I loved this book. It's a fascinating look at people, work and the author's own journey - I'm increasingly drawn to the psychodynamic approach that's at the heart of this book. I couldn't put it down and that's unusual for me when reading a professional book.

#### Monthnotes - September 2023
September was a back to reality month for me - both at work and home.

At work the first two weeks of the month felt like a time for ramping up. There was a real sense of getting back to work, with my calendar filling up more rapidly with interesting conversations and a health uptick in new consulting opportunities.

But I still had a slight sense of reduced energy for work. I was mindful that this could have been the lingering effect of my health scare earlier in the year, having had an extended break, the changes at home with our eldest off to uni or something to do with how I was working.

After a bit of soul searching mid-month, I realised that I needed to be more patient as I developed my consulting practice. 

A number of more experienced consultants had warned me that they'd underestimated how long it would take them to hone their proposition, develop marketing and find new interesting work. My experience so far was matching theirs.

So with that realisation, the second half of the month felt much more fulfilling. 

I kicked off with several new clients, which gave me a fresh burst of energy with new relationships to build, interesting problems to solve and new people to learn from.

And I deliberately invested time into professional learning and my business itself. I've underinvested so far in new business and marketing, so I put time into that and have now got much more organised and systematic. The degree of ongoing mental load this freed me up from surprised me.

I launched a new framework for leaders who are scaling technology businesses too. 

I've been working on this for several years now, on and off. It's intended to capture the things that I wished I'd known when I began scaling tech businesses in 2014. There's still lots to do to improve it and start making it work harder for me, but it feels good to have it out there and be getting positive and constructive feedback.

At home I managed to get away for three nights with my eldest son before he went to start his first year at university. We took our motorhome to Pembrokeshire and enjoyed outdoor activities including coasteering and surfing together.

Last weekend my wife and I then dropped him off at his university halls to start his degree. 

We headed back home as two parents feeling an odd mix of intense sadness and immense pride simultaneously. Our house feels a bit empty with the three of us remaining at home. We continue to adapt and work out what him leaving home means will be different for each of us.

I'm also learning a new sport - touch rugby. I've not played any form of rugby - nor indeed any other team sport - since I was at school 30 years ago. I wanted to try to take up a new sport to play socially and to put myself in the situation where I needed to learn something that I had no prior experience in.

The feeling of being completely novice at something is one that I think you tend to experience less as you get older. I feel it's important to put yourself in new situations and seek new experiences deliberately. Touch rugby proved to be great fun to play with a friendly and supportive group, so I'm looking forward to playing each week and continuing to learn and improve.

Music this month…

Back to work means a lot of music that helps me concentrate when I'm working. This four hour live set from John Digweed earlier this month at Salón Metropolitano has been a regular on my playlist. 

Reading this month…

Finally got around to re-reading Creativity, Inc by Ed Catmull. I read this when it first came out nearly ten years ago, but it was definitely worth picking up the new edition and reading again. There's new content too, which is interesting to read alongside the original text from the first edition. Catmull is a reflective thinker and uses his leadership experience at Pixar to draw out wider observations about the nature of leadership and culture in growing businesses. It's a really worthwhile read for anyone leading creative or technology businesses.

Cycling this month…

81.3 miles

Running this month…

Tapering towards a 50 mile ultra next week plus a cold last week means lower miles for the month: 41.5 miles.

#### Monthnotes - September 2024
It's five years since I began writing a short monthnote on the last day of the month. Sixty months later and I've not missed one.

Looking back at my monthnotes from a year ago, I was grappling a bit with whether being an independent consultant was for me.

I'm naturally quite impatient at work. With the benefit of hindsight, I see that I hadn't given myself enough time to really find my groove. I was close to deciding it wasn't for me and getting back into a "normal" job, whatever that means.

Fast forward to this September and I feel very different. I went back to work at the start of the month with both new energy and a clear focus for September to the end of the year. I've found a clear niche as an independent COO and am enjoying working flexibly with an interesting range of clients - just what I want from my work.

A plan I put in place earlier this year to take 5 days out to continue my professional development as a coach began to pay off. This month I went on the Human Technics Advanced Certificate in Executive Coaching course and really enjoyed it.

Being able to take five days away from work to focus on learning and practising as a coach was brilliant. I enjoyed being part of face-to-face course with a very knowledgeable tutor and a diverse engaging group. Now I've got to get on with the coursework and reflective practice to continue developing as a coach.

I've kicked off a couple of new consultancy projects this month with clients as well as an interesting M&A-related project too. My schedule's pretty busy for October now too and I've been pleased to be able to share a couple of new opportunities with other independent colleagues.

I also enjoyed being a panellist at Start Inspiring's HRD community event in London this month too. It was good to share experiences and get to meet a bunch of interesting new people from the HR/people space. We talked a lot about the transitions in growth and what this means for people teams and working with founders.

Discussions, conversations and chats have also been a strong theme this month. My time tracking shows me that I spent 20.5 hours on networking this month. The "back to school" sense has meant many people are keen to move forward with ideas that we've been chewing over for a while, which has been good to hear. My focus for the next few months is to make sure I invest my time in the right ideas that keep building.

Music this month…

On a bit of a harder techno vibe than usual for me this month. Sets like this from Afterlife have been common sonic backdrops to work.

Podcasts this month…

Found a new interesting podcast this month (although I wish I could remember who tipped me off). School of Facilitation has provided a lot of insightful listening, particularly as I develop my thinking about coaching. 

Reading this month…

Been reading Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters by Brian Klaas. Not through it yet, but it's a deep dive into randomness and the way we perceive how the world works. Thought provoking but not sure quite what it all means to me yet.

Cycling this month…

111.2 miles.

Running this month…

47.9 miles.

#### Monthnotes - September 2025
Here we are at the end of September…and like a lot of people I'm wondering how is it October tomorrow?

My theme for the month has been something like "acceleration" I think.

Coming back from a break in August, the first couple of working days felt like a slog.

Motivation was low and it took a bit of effort to remind myself where I left off, regain the context on client work and get moving.

I also put a lot of time into finishing my course (The Fractional Executive Launchpad). It's a bit of a side project that's taken way more time than I'd expected, but the early signs are encouraging.

There's been a really steep learning curve in writing, shooting and producing an online course, along with a lot of the marketing and fulfilment infrastructure that's needed.

The course launched in the middle of the month with encouraging early sales. More than 300 people signed up for my introductory webinar and more than 70 actually turned up - which was a surprise given typical drop out rates.

I also got a bit sidetracked into automation this month - learning the n8n open source automation tool. It does what tools like Zapier do, but with a lot more power and flexibility. The downside is the need to learn a new platform. Thanks to Phil Dearson for introducing me to n8n earlier this year.

Last week I kicked off work with a new fractional COO client, based in Coventry. It's a fascinating business with a lot of potential, so I'm working through a rapid diagnostic phase to help deliver some early impact with them.

This month I've also kicked off some sell-side M&A with a client, helping develop their investor deck and start making connections with potential acquirers. It's been a while since I did any sell-side work so it's good to be keeping those skills sharp.

On the coaching side of my work, I started working with two new coachees this month from very different backgrounds and working in very different roles. I enjoy coaching as an opportunity to continue to develop my coach skills and really get value from seeing coachees progress, tackling things that previously seemed impossible with new confidence.

I did some awards judging for BIMA this month too. It was interesting to meet some new folk as judges, as well as catch up with fellow BIMA ski buddy Alex Holliman. There was a pretty broad range of entries.

The ones that came out top in my voting would be worthy winners (judges don't get to know who actually wins overall until the night), but there were also some pretty average entries that didn't seem to demonstrate much progression in digital craft since I last ran a digital agency in 2020.

Away from work I ran the New Forest Marathon mid-month, having entered a couple of weeks beforehand. It was a pretty tough course and the weather wasn't ideal, but I enjoyed the experience and managed to take around five minutes off my marathon PB (from 2010).

The marathon was a good staging post in my training for the 55 mile ultra I'm running in Snowdonia in mid-November. I need to keep pushing on with longer runs over the next few weeks to get some good miles into my legs.

We also went to Wembley for the second time in five weeks to see Oasis. It was great to see Oasis live having never managed that in the 90s, although the clear lack of on-stage chemistry was quite a contrast to other bands I've seen this year.

Music this month…

Enjoyed the Country Cockney set from this month's Mucky Weekender festival. Am pondering whether to head to this festival next year for my 50th. We spotted it from the M3 on the way to the marathon and the line-up looked right up my street.

Podcasts this month…

Am loving Abbie Dando's Marketing Vs The World podcast. Her down-to-earth style and the practical wisdom on all things marketing really hits the spot for me. It's relevant for many of my clients and the work I'm doing on my own marketing and my course.

Reading this month…

Not so much time to read this month, but I managed to finish Why We Remember by Dr Charan Ranganath. This was a fascinating (and quite in-depth) look at the contemporary science around memory. Lots of useful insights when thinking about leadership development, coaching and communications. I'm sure some of these will feature in future issues of my Build newsletter.

Cycling this month…

161 miles. Less time on two wheels this month, but a nice gravel ride towards the end of the month for a change.

Running this month

49.3 miles.

#### Monthnotes – July 2020
In normal times the last few months for me at work would have felt quite turbulent - although with the impact of Covid-19 on the wider world hitting at the same time, the recent changes in my own professional life haven't occupied a lot of my mental energy over the past few months.

Taking a holiday in France in late July has been great to have some family time together along with a welcome change of scene. It's also been an an opportunity to take stock away from work and look forward once again with a fresh perspective.

At the end of March I moved on from my role as MD at Deeson which had consumed most of my professional attention for almost four years. I've been working with the incoming MD, Sarah Harris, to help ensure there's a successful leadership transition.

She's certainly had a lot more challenges than she or I expected when we planned the transition earlier in the year - and the growing success of the team and the business during the first four months of her tenure is particularly remarkable given the wider world.

During the past few months I've also been working with GreenShoot Labs to help the leadership team continue to plot out the growth of the business - working primarily on new business and recruitment to take advantage of the coming of age of conversational AI applications.

But now we've made several new hires at Deeson, including a new senior role to take on responsibility for new business, the time for me to commit to a new full-time role beyond Deeson is fast approaching.

Handing over remaining responsibility for new business later this year will signal the time for me to become a non-executive director in this business.

While I've enjoyed the diversity of challenges I've had at work since April, I also wanted to use this period to reflect on my experiences and what I wanted to do next at work. Having been so focussed on my former role, it was hard to get the perspective I needed to work out what I wanted to do next.

In September I'm going to be moving to work full-time with Deeson and GreenShoot Labs' parent company - The Panoply - as the group's first Chief Operating Officer. 

My role will be to work with group companies to ensure they are supported to grow and change, making sure incoming businesses are effectively onboarded and to developing a group operating system that enables autonomous businesses to thrive within the group. I'll also be taking responsibility for group marketing and internal communications as part of the role too.

The Panoply isn't a traditional holding company and that means this isn't going to be a traditional Chief Operating Officer role. The business has big growth ambitions for growth, both through organic growth of our existing businesses and further acquisitions. It also has a strongly decentralised model, empowering entrepreneurial leaders to grow their businesses within the group.

I'm really excited about this move and the challenges it'll give me professionally. I'm looking forward to collaborating with a wide range of people across the businesses that make up The Panoply and working out what this kind of role means in a new and decentralised growth business.

The Panoply's results for the last financial year are impressive and I'm looking forward to contributing in my new role to the next chapter of the group's story, along with colleagues from across our businesses.

#### Monthnotes – October 2020
Since I first began recruiting and managing teams, back in 2004, I've talked about "the dip" with every new person joining my teams. 

Stealing just a touch from Run-DMC, it goes a little something like this:

"When you start a new job, it's usually an exciting and positive time. Your mind is focussed on meeting new people, understanding a new team or company and looking forward to getting stuck into new challenges. There might well be nerves and insecurities too, which is a natural human reaction to such a major change.

It's also a really valuable time because you'll never have the opportunity to observe as an outsider again. There are very valuable insights that come from asking the questions that those on the inside miss because they blinded by familiarity. In some organisations I've worked in, institutionalised might be a good descriptor.

But what you should expect is that at some point, usually between two and eight weeks of being here, is that you'll experience "the dip". You might panic. You might experience feelings of regret. You might want to go back to your old job. You might be overwhelmed by your perception of what it would take to become effective in this role.

When, not if, this happens, I don't want you to worry. I don't want you to panic. I want you to share that it's happening and we'll work our way through it together. 

So now you're expecting it, please don't be blindsided when it happens. I've seen it with most new team members over the years and it's 100% normal."

What's really going on here is about levels of consciousness about personal competence. As your understanding about the needs and demands of a role grows as you begin working in it, you transition through stages of the conscious competence ladder.

Starting a role, there's typically a high level of conscious competence. You know what you can do and you've got the job, so someone else must be confident in what you can do too. 

But as you work your way into the role, your understanding of the role and what's needed to be effective grows. And in some way or other, this'll shift your perception of what you need to be competent in to be successful. 

The extent of the intersection of your perception of your own competence and your newly acquired understanding of the needs of the role determines "the dip". It can be a minor feeling of misalignment or something more than that. Or in other words, you're becoming consciously incompetent in some areas.

It's important to see this as a positive progression from being unconsciously incompetent on the ladder ("you don't know what you don't now), rather than being a regression from being consciously competent ("I don't know if my skills are a good fit for this role").

The other thing I often get people to consider at this stage is where they may be unconsciously competent and how this relates to the role. Most people underestimate their unconscious competence so some clear reflection on that can be useful too.

Looking back at October personally, I experienced "the dip" in the second week of October. A lack of energy, lack of motivation and a feeling of disengagement from things I'd normally find exciting hit me for a few days. Reflecting on why I felt like this and talking it through helped me work out how to deal with "the dip".

For me it was about the scale and "newness" of the new role I've taken on. My current role is as COO in a rapidly expanding business that's taking innovative approaches to our work and the way we operate. It's not a traditional COO role in most ways and that's a big part of why I wanted to do it. 

But I recognise that I need to know what success looks like to be able to judge my own effectiveness in a role. I needed to take ownership of that and remind myself that the our success won't be determined by reaching perfection in anything we do. Our success is about how effectively and quickly we identify problems, solve them and learn for the future.

Monday will be my 45th working day in the role. Looking at what's changed at The Panoply and my role in those changes was a useful reminder for me of what I've learnt and delivered in that time.

With those insights I re-focussed some of my work priorities and within a few days began to feel more effective and being able to appreciate the impact I was having. I felt more engaged, excited and motivated at work once more.

October was another month of full-time home working. With London moving to tier 2 of the UK's Covid-19 restrictions during the month, a planned day of meetings in London was cancelled. I spent a few hours in Deeson's Canterbury office one day and it was nice to see some familiar faces that I hadn't seen in many months.

It was great this month to work with colleagues to finalise an ambitious vision for where The Panoply wants to be in March 2023 - two and a half years away. Having set clear commercial goals previously, we wanted to have equally ambitious goals for our purpose and impact. We've focussed these on environment, people and the communities we work in. We'll be targeting our work and reporting transparently on these areas to make sure they get the same focus as our commercial goals.

Early in the month I led a successful strategy and planning session with The Panoply central team to help us define our goals for the next six months and make sure we were prioritising them in line with our overall group goals and the needs of each of our companies. This helped us break down some of our longer term goals into more addressable shorter term actions, making sure everything we do is in service of those longer term goals.

It was also great this month to be able to share some initial information about our robust performance during the past six months and to welcome a new non-executive director to the business. 

This month I began working with a coach this month which has been a really interesting experience so far. I'm looking forward to seeing how that will help me continue to develop in my new role. I also took on a new mentoring commitment, helping a team member in one of our companies progress her career and tackle some of the challenges that new managers face. I've done this many times before, but this was a good reminder for me of how much personal satisfaction I get from this area of work.

My WFH revelation this month has been getting a wobble stool. Since the start of lockdown I've been working on my DIY standing desk, which is inside a repurposed Ikea cupboard. However I'd been struggling to stand up all day, so the wobble stool allows me to move around, stand for a while and then sit at different heights and angles. I much prefer it to standing all day or sitting in a traditional office chair.

So as we approach November and the likely national lockdown for England, I can look back at "the dip" as a normal part of my own progression in the new role and look forward to helping our companies and teams continue to deliver through the Covid-19 winter ahead.

#### More effective communications - Made to Stick with the Heath Brothers
The Heath Brothers make a big play about making things stick - be it communications, presentations, training courses, interviews or more.
Their website is a real treasure trove of useful resources and information helping businesses organisations be more effective in their work.
In particular I like their SUCCESs model for communications - they say that "sticky" communications should meet as many as possible of their six criteria:

	Simple - prioritising your message right down to the core concept and not cluttering it with unnecessary language or visual distractions.
	Unexpected - your message needs to grab attention and keep it. Curiosity gaps or challenges can be useful devices for achieving this.
	Concrete - your message needs to hook into as many different memory types (sensory, auditory, cultural etc) so think how you frame your message to do this.
	Credible - get credibility from external authorities (endorsements) or internal authorities which help people validate the credibility of your message from their own experience, knowledge and background.
	Emotional - remember people care about people, not numbers. And don't forget to answer the "what's in it for me?" question too.
	Story-based - the Heath Brothers are right: "Stories drive action through simulation (what to do) and inspiration (the motivation to do it)."

It's well worth reading more about this thinking. You can download the full model and read more from the Heath Brothers by registering for free at www.heathbrothers.com.

#### More from Manchester's web 2.0 conference
The second morning session from the Public Sector Forums conference is now underway.

Next up speaking is Paul McElvaney from Learning Pool, along with Becka Johnson from Cardiff Council.
Paul's talk focussed on online training - going from transactional training to deliver specific outcomes to something more fundamental in terms of how knowledge is transferred.
Something I've heard quite a lot this morning so far is "overstrategised" - while I'm not sure this is a real word, the sentiment is valid - it's easy to do too much thinking around some social media stuff, especially when working with suppliers with a vested interest in a lengthy development process.
Being effective with social media is about being agile, in development and strategy terms. For councils this often means developing cultural and policy shifts to provide an effect context for being agile in.
Paul also made a really good point about getting it wrong - it can and does happen, but don't let this make you afraid of trying something with media - just be aware of the risks and know how you'll manage those risks. You can always make changes rapidly - as long as you're aware of what's happening.
Second speaker is Tim Davies talking about social media and young people.
Tim kicked off with a set of figures showing how important social networking is prevalent among young people - proving the case that this is worth looking at. He also makes a good point that information flows are changing - less through the media, more through your friends and connection - it's worth thinking about how that impacts on the business of public sector communications.
He also talked about how social media is context aware - mapping onto your life right now - and that context is constantly shifting - which is a different communications environment to the more static traditional media-led environment that communicators are more familiar with.
Young people are using technology in their own ways - appropriating technology for things that its developers didn't originally intend - which to me makes the case for making versatile technology rather than trying to create defined use cases for specific tasks.
Tim discussed how growing up in a digital environment changes young people - in particular how a piece of information without context (such a leaflet through the door) gains less traction that one with context (such as via a trusted contact on a social network). I think this is a really good point that gets to the nub of how marketing communications is changing right now.
Tim also set out three levels of engagement with young people:

Providing information
Providing channels for feedback - essentially two-way communication
Providing outreach - people on the frontline

Tim's also talking about PLINGS - providing this information as feeds as well as on a website, so that people can take subsets of information about positive activities for young people and take local ownership of that content. In his experience these sites need regenerating every couple of years to keep the ownership fresh (as young people grow up and move onto doing other stuff).
PLINGS also enables more effective production of offline information, like posters and flyers - it's about getting the data right in the first place, and then repurposing it. This strikes me as a really sound principle that goes beyond the context in which Tim is referring to it.
Something that Tim mentioned that I hadn't considered extensively before was about sharable content - test out how your council content shares using the usual sharing buttons into Facebook etc. If it picks up the wrong image or no image it can affect the clickthrough rates back from the social media site to the council site - Tim quoted a figure of more than 200% increase in clickthrough where an appropriate image has been picked up in the sharing onto the social network.
Tim's final point was about creating with young people as partners - something I'd definitely agree with - it's extremely valuable to do - but it's worth noting that when project planning you need to allow more time and space for this to happen effectively.
That's if for me on the conference blogging for now - I'm speaking after lunch and then it's into a taxi back to Manchester Picadilly for the long train ride back to Whitstable. I'll be following things online from the train of course though - it's all at www.psfbuzz.com and @psfbuzz / #psfbuzz on Twitter.

#### More interesting stuff on the web
Here's some more interesting content I've found on the web recently:

UK Seniors: Indifferent to the Internet? - As in other countries, UK residents 55 and older have not turned to the Internet as quickly as younger age groups. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) calculated that just 26% of adults ages 65 and over used the Web in 2008.
UK Kids and Teens: Hyperconnected Youth - Kids and teens in the UK are developing complex media habits—shifting rapidly among different channels and multiple devices. In order to reach them, marketers cannot rely on simple, old-style media plans and traditional platforms.
Online bargain hunting increasingly social - Though email from retailers is still the best way for consumers to learn about discounts and deals online, nearly 30% of shoppers now say they look to links forwarded from friends, peer comments and social sites for the best bargains.
Marketing Executives - Social Media Practices Still in Infancy Stages - Despite the fact that many marketers feel like they are losing the race to adopt social media practices, the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG), today announced the findings of their social media membership survey which reveals most marketers are still in the early or experimental phases of adopting and measuring social media.
More people watching TV in 2008 - The number of people watching television has increased by five per cent this year, according to figures released from Thinkbox.
Marketers Still Face Steep Web 2.0 Learning Curve - The majority of marketing executives are still in the early, experimental phases of using and measuring social media and 80% say that they have not yet fully integrated the core elements of Web 2.0 into their marketing efforts, according to a survey from the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG).

For all bookmarks that I've made check out del.icio.us.

#### More interesting stuff on the web
Here's some more interesting content I've found on the web recently:

MMA study finds increase in mobile marketing receptiveness - The Mobile Marketing Association annual study finds increase in mobile marketing receptiveness and Adoption Global Study.  It also provides insight into consumer attitude and usage for Mobile Marketing in selected markets World-wide
Survey: Youth Are Willing Companions to Online Advertisers - A new study shows that many young adults not only buy brands but also talk about them and add brand content to their instant messenger services, Web homepages and social networking sites.
Age before beauty: Look before you leap into social media - Despite the many industry voices that herald the importance of social and multi-media content in e-mail marketing, only 12 per cent of UK consumers claim they would be more likely to respond to messages linked to video, micro-sites and social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube.
If RSS Is Niche Media, Why Use It? - Really Simple Syndication (RSS), which lets consumers subscribe to automatically updated content, is not exactly the most popular digital marketing tactic in use today.

For all bookmarks that I've made check out del.icio.us.

#### More interesting stuff on the web
Here's some more interesting content I've found on the web recently:

Can Social Networks Predict What You'll Buy? - Those stalking the social-networking field are betting that birds of a feather don't just flock together -- they buy together too.
Few respond to email marketing messages - Fewer people are opening and responding to email marketing messages in 2008, according to a new report from MailerMailer.
comScore Reports That More Than 14 Million U.K. Internet Users Visited a Blog in August - a study of blog visitation in the U.K. examining the top blog platforms and individual blogs as ranked by total U.K. visitors. In August, 14.5 million people in the U.K. visited at least one blog, representing 41 percent of the total U.K. Internet audience.

For all bookmarks that I've made check out del.icio.us.

#### More interesting stuff on the web
Here's some more interesting content I've found on the web recently:
Social networking site addiction drives mobile internet accessSocial networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo, are seeing huge boosts in traffic thanks to mobile phones, with average users checking their profiles more than eight times a day, says new research.
Pew Internet: Future of the InternetA survey of internet leaders, activists and analysts shows they expect major tech advances as the phone becomes a primary device for online access, voice-recognition improves, artificial and virtual reality become more embedded in everyday life, and the architecture of the internet itself improves.
For all bookmarks that I've made check out del.icio.us.

#### More interesting stuff on the web
Here's some more interesting content I've found on the web recently:
European Communication Monitor 2008The second transnational survey on future trends in communication management and public relations in Europe, conducted in the summer of 2008.
Global web audience passes 1 billionThe global Internet audience has surpassed 1 billion visitors in December 2008, according to new data from the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service.
How Important Is Search to Users?The percentage of Internet users who are searching online varies by study, but its popularity is undeniable. According to the TNS “Digital World, Digital Life” report, 81% of Internet users worldwide used search engines in 2008—which raises the question, what are the other 19% doing?
Social Network User DemographicsThe share of adult Internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled since 2005, from 8% to 35%, according to a November–December 2008 Pew Internet & American Life Project survey.
For all bookmarks that I've made check out del.icio.us.

#### More interesting stuff on the web
Here's some more interesting stuff I've found on the web recently:
Traditional media use stabilizes as online risesTraditional media usage by Internet users in the US remained largely steady in 2008 after falling in 2007, judging by respondents to a Ketchum and USC Annenberg Strategic Public Relations Center survey conducted in late 2008. For instance, less than two-thirds of respondents said they watched major network TV news, about the same as in 2007 but down from the 71% who said so in 2006.
Key trends and issues in UK media and telecoms to 2012A look forward at future trends along with a reprise of the digital natives/digital shoppers/refuseniks typologies.
Digital Britain: An AuditLooking at the current picture of availability and use of a range of digital channels - along the same lines as the annual communications market reports produced by Ofcom
For all bookmarks that I've made check out del.icio.us.

#### More interesting stuff on the web
Here's some more interesting content I've found on the web recently:
Social Networking Grows 93%; Communication Becomes EntertainmentSocial networking among US broadband users has grown an impressive 93% since 2006, and has increased the amount of time people spend communicating online 18%, to 32% of total online time, according to a new report from Netpop Research, LLC that delves into social networking trends and habits.
Younger US Demos 12% Less Likely to TweetThe majority of Twitter users worldwide are age 35 or older, and young adults ages 18-24 make up only 10.6% of the Twitter population in the US and are less likely than the average user to Tweet, according to an analysis of February data by comScore blogger Sarah Radwanick.
Marketers’ Top Social Media: Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, FacebookAn overwhelming majority (88%) of marketers in a recent survey say they are now using some form of social media to market their business, though 72% of those using it say they have only been at it a few months or less, according to a social media study by Michael Stelzner, sponsored by the upcoming Social Media Success Summit 2009.
Fast-Growing Facebook #1 in Most of EuropeFacebook logged 275 million global visitors in February 2009 and has catapulted to the #6-ranked online property worldwide, a 75% increase over the same period last year, according to data from comScore’s World Metrix service.
Twitter mobile directions — NevilleHobson.comSome useful statistics from HubSpot via Neville.
comScore: The growing appeal of social networks in EuropeInteresting research and analysis by Neville Hobson.
For all bookmarks that I've made check out del.icio.us.

#### More interesting stuff on the web this week
A bit of a bumper round-up here as I've been playing catch-up for about three weeks...some interesting stuff though:
TV Viewing and Internet Use Are Complementary, According to NielsenThe heaviest TV viewers are also the heaviest users of the Internet and 30% of in-home online activity takes place while simultaneously watching TV, according to The Nielsen Company's new TV/Internet Convergence Panel, which electronically measures both television and Internet usage in the same homes.
How much are information sources trusted?Fascinating stuff from Forrester: not only do blogs rank below newspapers and portals, they rank below wikis, direct mail, company email, and message board posts. Only 16% of online consumers who read corporate blogs say they trust them. If you’re a corporate blogger or somebody who advises companies, you need to take this into account.
European research on cultural, contextual and risk issues in children's safe use of the webThe EU Kids Online project (2006-2009) examines research carried out in 21 member states into how children and young people use the internet and new media.
Are Young Adults Really Brand-Resistant?The 18-to-24-year-old set is famously media-drenched, with high Internet and mobile phone usage. However, these young adults are not solidly opposed to brands themselves, and are willing to spread the word about the ones they like. Some good charts and analysis based on same survey as already bookmarked.
Young adults do talk about brandsTwenty-eight per cent of 18 to 24 year-olds have talked about a brand on a discussion forum as the younger market becomes more willing to spread the word about brands they like, according to new research from Synovate.
Chief Marketing Officers of Leading U.S. Brands Haven’t “Friended” Social Networking SitesDespite the cultural phenomenon that Facebook and MySpace have become in five years’ time, 55% of the chief marketing officers at leading brands surveyed by Epsilon said they’re not too interested (22%), or not interested at all (33%), in incorporating the social networking sites into their marketing strategies.
Online Reviews Second Only to Word-of-Mouth in Purchase InfluenceOnline reviews and comments written by users - often overlooked by marketers in favor of things they can control - are disproportionately influential to consumer buying decisions and are second only to personal word-of-mouth for purchasing influence for American.
Avoiding a reputation crisisSocial media offers brands the prospect of engaging in open and honest conversations with customers, and brands are embracing this opportunity by creating communities of their own.
Quarter of Brits access Web via mobiles and other mobile statsExamining how people in the UK are using their mobile and Internet together. Includes  comparative insight into internet behaviour across the country’s mobile and PC Internet screens.
Social Networkers Aren’t There for AdsUsers want to communicate with each other, not necessarily with brands. No surprises there then.
Public Sector Marketing 2.0 reportsA nice collection of reports on web 2.0 and public sector marketing - a few I hadn't seen before.
For all bookmarks that I've made check out del.icio.us.

#### More on weather and the web
My post last week on the influence of weather on web traffic attracted the attention of self-confessed weather nut Andrew Bond from Metcheck. He emailed me to let me know about a service his company provides that allows websites, particularly internet retailers, to customise their website content based on predicted weather in the user's local area. So for example, if it's going to be a sunny weekend ahead then the site could push outdoor furniture or barbeques. Essentially the digital equivalent of remerchandising your prime retail display areas based on the weather - a common practice in retail (how many times did I move that umbrella display unit in my store placement at Boots?). Andrew emails that his site traffic, not surprisingly, is affected by the weather:  Snow, heat and thunderstorms all affect our traffic, whilst "traditional weather" like sunshine and 22c and light rain have little effect. Interesting stuff. I wonder how the public relations profession could use weather data? How about trying to match the content and angle of your news releases to the forecast weather for your targetted publication date?  It could increase relevance and cut-through for your message if the forecast is right, but do exactly the opposite if it's wrong. It'd be interesting to know some more about Andrew's corporate clients, particularly any particularly innovative marketing or PR uses of meteological data.

#### Move to Medway Council
Today I’ve started work at Medway Council in Kent as Marketing and PR Manager.
I’m pleased to have secured an exciting role working within a dynamic communications team. I will manage a small marketing, design and internal communications team.
I am really looking forward to learning more about public sector marketing, and not having to commute to London each day!
For more information view the press release issued by Medway Council about my appointment.

#### Moving on up
I've just realised I hadn't got around to posting here about my new job, despite telling people a bit about it earlier this month on Twitter and Facebook.
Until recently I headed up the marketing, web and graphic design teams at Medway Council - leading all the council's marketing programmes being delivered by the newly formed centralised marketing team.
However I'm now taking on the new role of Head of Communications and Marketing at Medway. This broader role encompasses my previous responsibilities on the marketing side of the team, plus the responsibilities of my current manager who's retiring from the role of Head of Communications in 2010.
I'm very pleased to have this opportunity to develop my career further at Medway, and have to thank my manager from whom I've learnt a lot over the past few years since joining the council. It's certainly an interesting time to take on and shape a new job.
I'm looking forward to really getting stuck into planning and delivering some exciting strategic communications initiatives as well as improving our planning and evaluation of communications campaigns. We'll still be carrying on with our use of social media but will continue to only social media tools where they're appropriate for the communications objectives we have - that certainly won't be changing.
More broadly, the inevitable squeeze on public sector budgets in the coming years mean communicators need to be able to justify the difference their activities have made.
That means campaigns with clear objectives that support the organisation's goals - integrated with the "golden thread". And it also means making sure we can evaluate the effectiveness of those communications, both to inform future campaign planning as well as demonstrate the value of communications in the public sector.
Anyway, more about that in future posts I expect as the new role starts to really take shape.

#### My decade in review
Inspired by Dave Briggs' canter through his last decade, I thought I'd write something similar, although with my ruthless holiday efficiency I didn't actually remember to hit "publish" until today.
So, for what it's worth, here are the some interesting bits of the past decade...(and I'm sure I've forgotten a fair few as well):
2000
Started on a high as official "first date" with Jo was New Year's Eve 1999 in Greenwich. Here's the first photo of us  together from that evening:

Having worked as Sales Manager at Boots in Bluewater as part of my graduate placement in Autumn 1999, I returned to Boots HQ in Nottingham to work in the online team. Later that year moved to London with Jo and started work at Open.... Finished CIM advanced certificate in marketing. Driving: Peugeot 306.
2001
Bought first house in Whitstable in late 2000, so 2001 was spent decorating and doing large amounts of DIY. At work I was approached by Egg to join them and did so later that year - to work for Dave Murdin - the boss who I think has had the greatest impact on my career so far and who gave me the confidence to really push myself. Set my PB for a 10k road race (running!) at 44:53 on the Whitstable 10k - and haven't managed to beat it since. Started CIM postgraduate diploma in marketing. Driving: Fiat Cinquecento.
2002
Got engaged and spent a lot of time caning it up and down the M1 between Kent, London and Egg's Derby office as well as sitting on trains between Whitstable and London. Finished CIM postgraduate diploma in marketing. Driving: VW Golf GTI.
2003
Got married in Canterbury. Still working in various roles at Egg and sitting on trains a lot. Helped Nick Tatt launch Whitstable-based web consultancy business Tinderhouse. Driving: VW Golf GTI.
2004
Moved house (still in Whitstable). Moved jobs, twice - firstly to Enterprise IG and then to Medway Council in the autumn. Olly born in June. Started my fledgling consultancy business. Awarded Chartered Marketer status. Driving: Renault Laguna.
2005
Working at Medway and being daddy. Driving: Renault Laguna.
2006
Still working at Medway and being daddy. Started blogging properly in January. Did the London to Brighton bike ride for the first time. Attended a conference late in 2006 that I think was one of those tipping points in life that sets a part of your life off - it was called Delivering the New PR and opened my eyes to social media and why it was changing the business of communicating so radically - I owe a lot to Andy and Nicky Wake who organised the conference and to Neville Hobson, Tom Murphy, Stuart Bruce and Philip Young who spoke at the conference and who I've had the pleasure of getting to know and speaking alongside at events since. From what I heard at the conference, led the launch of the UK's first local authority podcast in December. Driving: Renault Megane.
2007
Toby born in March. Promoted to Head of Marketing at Medway Council. Started the CIPR Diploma. First conference presentation in Newcastle for CIPR North East. Driving: Renault Megane.
2008
Undertook research project on use of social media in UK local authority communications. Set PB for half marathon at 1:45:44 and 10 mile race at 1:17:25, both in Canterbury. Awarded merit for CIPR Diploma. Spoke at conferences in London, Manchester and Birmingham. Got a caravan and loved it. Olly started school. Driving: Saab 93 sport wagon.
2009
Cycled one hundred miles round Kent for charity. Promoted to Head of Communications and Marketing at Medway. Busy year for conferences with appearances in London, Birmingham, Nottingham, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Belfast plus my first training course in social media in Birmingham in November. Got a puppy. Discovered the joys of Briitish Military Fitness. Olly learnt to ride his bike without stabilisers on our summer hols (in the caravan, obviously). Year/decade ended with the worst three weeks of the whole decade with a health scare for Jo resulting in an operation just before Christmas, but got some great news at 6pm on NYE that put an end to our worries. Driving: Saab 93 sport wagon.
And the photographic evidence from this end of the decade:

Looking back now, it's been quite a decade - here's to the next one...!

#### My journey into podcasting
At a key organisation I work with I've managed to persuade the powers that be to commit to a six month trial of podcasting and video podcasting. This is a real step forward in communications for this type of organisation.
This is a really exciting step for me, as I've watched social media and in particular these two communications tools evolve rapidly over the past two years. Running a strategic trial of these two tools will be a great experience professionally, and will be a great opportunity to learn new skills.
I'm realistic about my personal knowledge in this space. As a PR practictioner I reckon I have a pretty good understanding of what these tools can and can't do, but I know very little about the actual process of developing audio and video content. I've done some basic home video and audio editing, but that's about it.
The next couple of months are going to be a steep learning curve as I try to learn best practice and try out new ideas before the trial goes live. I'm going to do everything I can to find great online resources to help the organisation develop this trial and give it every chance of success.
I believe these tools are right for the audience and the organisation's communications objectives - but the trial needs to measurably perform for these tools to become a permanent fixture.
I'm thinking about capturing my personal learning curve as a PR practictioner developing his skills in this space. What I have in mind is producing a podcast about my journey from now until the trial completes.
The podcast would capture my learning, successes and mistakes, and would hopefully be a useful resource for any other PR practitioners wanting to try podcasting. I would use tools like del.icio.us and flickr to share what I find and learn - ensuring the whole resource becomes as useful as possible in the future. I could also use a wiki if this was appropriate.
Personally the whole experience would help me learn vital skills and test out techniques and ideas with a friendly audience before the organisation's trial goes live. There will be a limit what I can specifically say about the organisation and the reasons for the trial before it goes live, but there will be plenty of generic learning and resources in the journey to launching the trial.
So my question is should I produce a podcast about learning to podcast? I'd really value reader feedback on this, so please do leave me a comment or drop me an email.

#### My three inspirational communicators
Chris Norton's tagged me in the "inspirational communicators" meme that's doing the rounds at the moment. I have to admit that I've been quite lax on this, having originally had an email from Andy Wake who started this back in July.
The idea is to "list the three communicators living or dead who have most influenced your way of thinking professionally and perhaps personally too. Who do you think the real innovators are? Who’s been most responsible for kicking the industry forward? And just who are the communication PRunks?"
  
So my top three are:
Richard Branson - one of those people with a natural and consistent sense of public relations and its value in a business context, as well as someone who hasn't been afraid to challenge the establishment (before arguably becoming part of it) - a born publicist.
John Lennon - someone who showed the power of words and music combined both with the Beatles and as a solo artist.
Lord Sebastian Coe - a topical one this week, but someone from his time as a world-class athlete, through politics to his current role heading up the organising games for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Having seen and heard him in media interview action on TV and on the radio, as well as face-to-face, he is a consumate interpersonal communicator - a skill I wish I had as much as him.
So that's my selection. From here I tag James Barbour, Jane Smith and Tom Murphy.

#### My Virgin London Marathon
Five days on I've got around to posting about last Sunday's Virgin London Marathon - a race I ran in aid of Action Medical Research.
The marathon is like no run I've done before - the atmosphere is superb with people lining the entire route offering cheers, encouragement, drinks, food, music and entertainment. The weather was kind - not too hot, but good for spectators as well.
I finished in 4 hours, 38 minutes and 4 seconds - which was about what I was expecting to run. The first half of the race went really well - I passed 13 miles in exactly 2 hours. But then at 16 miles as the route headed down to the docklands area, I really started suffering from bad cramps. My pace chart tells the story:
Once I'd sussed that this was about being dehydrated as well as fatigued I drank lots of lucozade and consumed as many jelly babies, banana pieces and energy gels as I could. Miles 16 to 20 around the tall buildings of docklands were miserable - with a few thoughts about not completing the race, but as I hit 20 miles and began to head back towards central London, I knew I could make it around the full route.
There was no way I was failing to complete the marathon for the sake of the 6 miles left to run, so it was a heads-down keep going approach - although the last 3 miles were incredible with noisy support from thousands of spectators lining the route along the Embankment.
Running the last few hundred metres past Buckingham Palace and heading down the Mall to the finish was a great feeling - the tiredness and cramping faded away in one last rush for the line! 
As well as being about completing a long-held ambition to run the marathon distance, the race was about raising money for a great charity, Action Medical Research.
So far my race has raised £2634 - thanks to my sponsors Public Sector Forums, friends, family and work colleagues. That's a great total and more than I had ever expected to reach.
I'd also like to thank my supporters on the day: my parents, Jenny and Amelia Benson, Jo and Olly. Their presence along the route kept me going and gave me mental high points to look forward to throughout the 26.2 mile route.
But most of all I must say a massive thank you to my wife Jo and boys Oliver and Toby for their support - both on the day but also during the long winter weekends when I was out trudging through dark wet forests putting in the training miles. I couldn't have done it without their support and I am very very grateful.
Having done the marathon last week, I'm racing again on Monday at the Whitstable 10K, and then I'm looking forward to keeping fit with running and BMF, but without the pressure to run ridiculous distances every weekend!

#### My week in media meme
It's thanks to Stephen Waddington's meme tagging that I'm finally getting around to my first proper post of 2008. A happy new year to you all!  The idea behind this meme is to reveal your media consumption habits for a week, and so far it's been interesting to see what people are reading/watching/listening to beyond the usual PR-related media that we have in common.  The past seven days haven't been particularly typical for me. A bank holiday and spending most evenings writing an assignment for my CIPR Diploma have meant my media has been a bit different to normal.  What I’ve read     The Guardian as daily newspaper of choice when time allows (less often than I'd like).    Medway Messenger, Kent on Sunday and Medway News/Standard for keeping an eye on council coverage.    Whitstable Gazette for knowing what's going on around home.    Catching up with a backlog of trade publications, including PR Week, Marketing, Marketing Week and New Media Age.    Exploring Public Relations by Tench & Yeomans and a handful of other PR textbooks.    A few pages of Not Quite World's End by John Simpson that I got for Christmas.   What I’ve listened to     BBC Radio Five Live on the way to and from work.    Radio 4 on Wednesday morning as the council's decision to progress a planning application for a new coal-fired power station was getting coverage.    Invicta FM while doing the washing-up and generally tidying.    Some early 90's happy house mix tapes on my MP3 player while out running.   What I’ve watched  Not a lot. In fact I can't think I've watched any TV in the last week except the odd bit of CBBC when the boys were watching.  What I’ve surfed  A lot - too many to list. As well as 300ish RSS feeds that I'm finally caught up with, I seem to surf the internet day in day out whether on the PC or on my mobile. Sites I seem to frequent most often are news websites, PR academic websites, blogs and running/cycling sites.  So that's my last week in media. Time to pass the baton onto Liam Fitzpatrick, Andy Wake, Richard Bailey and Simon Collister. Over to you then guys...  [tags]memes, media[/tags]

#### Myths about PR in the public sector?
Sam Oakley has recently started a new PR blog at theukprforum.wordpress.com. I believe Sam works in PR for a local authority so I have a special personal interest in what he has to say.
He recently posted about exploding some public sector PR myths. Having worked most of career in the private sector, and now working in the public sector along with private consultancy, I understand completely some of the points he's making and have some more thoughts as well:
1. People do or should intrinsically care more about the public sector than than they do about any brand.
I think it's about the relationship people have with brands. With commercial brands Sam rightly notes that choice is an important factor in the brand-customer relationship, but where the supplier is a monopoly brand-customer relationships do exist, but in a more strained context.
The issue here is that I think most public sector organisations (not just local government) don't have a strategic view about how they want to manage their brand to develop the brand-customer relationship. And by brand I mean my definition that includes how the brand looks (visual identity), how it sounds (written style) and most importantly how it acts (behaviour - how the organisation ensures decision making at every level is consistent with the brand's values). Too many people in the public sector think brand equals logo, but that's another story.
Most public sector organisations are a long way away from thinking strategically about their brand, and even further away from being able to deliver brand values through their complicated management structures (both on the officer and member side).
2. The public sector are good steady clients.
Sam's spot on with this one. The pressures of public scrutiny and politics on budget planning usually mean either a rush to spend budgets early in the financial year (as there's little confidence it won't be taken away later in the year if not spent) or a rush at the end of the financial year to spend anything that has been squirrelled away from the accountants. This applies to most areas I think, not just PR.
3. Local Government is the slowest organisational structure on earth.
In some cases this is probably right, although in my experience things can happen with surprising (and indeed uncomfortable) pace. And working in PR you have to have the ability to handle the very fast evolving situations as expertly as the slow burners.
4. The public sector needs the publicity so it works in PR right from the start right?
In my experience I think it depends on the organisation. Where PR is seen as an integral part of the organisation it gets considered at the appropriate stage in the project. So it's more about the organisational culture (and often whether it's internally focussed, or more externally/customer focussed). This in turn often depends on the experience of council staff - those with previous experience in the private sector tend to think about communications impacts earlier than council lifers.
5. Local Authorities understand the local news agenda.
I think Sam's being a bit harsh in his commentary on this one. In my experience a good PR team with strong local media links will understand, and in many cases drive, the local news agenda.
Where the council works against the media in a confrontational way I suspect this wouldn't be the case, but the nature of the media relations in this situation may be a sympton of a more internally-focussed culture, which would suggest less understanding of the news agenda and what is actually interesting to the public.
Local authority PR isn't seen as a sexy area to work in, but I maintain the skills and experience a marketing and PR person can get working in a local authority are extremely valuable in the private sector - I've blogged this before and the more experience in the public sector I get, the more I believe it.

#### New blog launch case study
ProBlogger Darren Rowse has a good good post updating on a new blog he set up in 2006.
The case study makes interesting reading for any blogger as Darren highlights a range of techniques and tricks to improve his new photography blog. It certainly triggered a few thoughts for me.

#### New business launched - GreatPlaceToStay
GreatPlaceToStay is a new business venture we launched today. It provides marketing services to holiday property owners in the United Kingdom and Europe. GreatPlaceToStay is initially offering a range of templated low cost website solutions.
For more details visit the website at www.greatplacetostay.co.uk.

#### New ChangeThis manifesto
Over at the ChangeThis website, Meryl K Evans has a new manifesto published called Five Quick Tips to Building a Better Blog.
Her five tips for improving blogs can be summarised as:
1. Have a small banner
2. Have short articles
3. Make the text readable (font size)
4. Post frequently
5. Keep it silent (no music)
She also details some other useful tips for improving customer experience on your blog.
Check it out - I learnt something new. You might too.

#### New CIPR consultation on social media guidelines
Back in early 2007 the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) launched a set of social media guidelines for practitioners using social media.
Life moves on quickly in social media and public relations, so now the institute has another consultation paper out on revisions to the guidelines. It's now available online at www.cipr.co.uk/consultation/.
I had my concerns with the first incarnation of the guidelines (blogged here), so I'll definitely be taking a good look this time and will be submitting my thoughts to CIPR.
The consultation is asking:

	Do you believe this document covers the issues highlighted in sufficient depth?
	Do you believe there are other important issues which should be addressed (and if so, what are they)?

The deadline for comments is 1 November, so if you want to get your voice heard by CIPR make sure you get back to them by then.

#### New email and website rules for UK companies
UK marketers and businesses may not be aware of some new rules for UK companies using websites and email that were introduced on 1 January 2007.
There is a range of laws that affect UK companies or businesses operating online, including the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002. However the new requirements have come from an amendment to the Companies Act.
The Register sums up the main requirements pretty succintly:

Every company should list its company registration number, place of registration, and registered office address on its website as a result of an update to the legislation of 1985. The information, which must be in legible characters, should also appear on order forms and in emails. Such information is already required on "business letters" but the duty is being extended to websites, order forms and electronic documents.
What's required is pretty common practice anyway, but it's worth being aware of what's required if only to avoid the possibility of a fine.
A fuller briefing is here (also here and here).

#### New hosting
If you're reading this it means my transfer over to new hosting at Dreamhost is complete.
I have been looking for a new host to serve this site, and a number of clients. Having had a trial run with Webfusion's reseller package, I was disappointed with the lack of functionality it offered (eg not supporting .htaccess).
So when I saw a recommendation from Neville Hobson I thought I'd check Dreamhost out.
So far I've been really impressed with the customer service (quick and friendly) and the control panel (very powerful and flexible).
Based on my experience to date I'd thoroughly recommend them.
[as with Neville, no hidden referral links ec above, but if you want the affiliate link, here it is]

#### New LGA/LGcommunications Reputation campaign launched
This week saw the launch of the LGA and LGcommunications' latest campaign to improve council reputations.
You can check it out online here, although there are still some areas where not all the materials and information has been published online yet.
The idea is to help communicators in local government by analysing as much available data as possible to help determine what's behind the reputation of local councils and what communicators can do to improve that reputation.
I like it (and its previous incarnation) as it helps give an empirical and evidenced argument why local government communications needs to focus on certain areas (and not on others). Too much communicating in local government isn't focussed on clear, business-led outcomes - and a toolkit like this helps address that.
There is a risk however that communicators see this as a quick-fix - do what it says and all will be good. As the website explains though, it's not about being prescriptive and more about giving a base of evidence to help communicators plan local strategies using both local and national evidence.
One tool that's not yet fully live on the website is a calculator that aims to determine what local satisfaction with a council should be, based on six variables that have been shown to determine this. The tool looks like it will then compare this theoretical satisfaction score with a particular council's actual score (from the Place Survey in 2008) - showing whether a council is under or over-performing on satisfaction given the nature of their local area. I'm looking forward to investigating this further once it goes live.

#### New publicity code for local government
Last Friday marked the introduction of the new publicity code for local government that applies to all councils in England.
I blogged about the consultation for the code six months ago and since then it's been the subject of a select committee hearing and has made its way through the the House of Commons and House of Lords.
The code has its legal basis in the Local Government Act 1986 - section 4(1) of the act says that councils have to
to have regard to the contents of this code in coming to any decision on publicity
Later in the act publicity is defined as
any communication in whatever form, addressed to the public at large or a section of the public
In effect this means that the code applies to a wide range of publicity, communications and marketing activities that a council may choose to employ. This includes hosting material which is created by third parties - essentially clarifying that the responsibilities of the code extend to social media content that isn't created by a council, but is displayed or hosted on a social media presence curated by the council.
The code is structured into seven principles - council publicity should:

	be lawful
	be cost effective
	be objective
	be even-handed
	be appropriate
	have regard to equality and diversity
	be issued with care during periods of heightened sensitivity

The lawful principle basically says that any publicity has to follow the rules and laws that apply to that type of publicity, as well as the legal provisions that enable councils to use communications in the first place. A few specifics are listed, but they're not exhaustive. For example for direct marketing activities the Data Protection Act and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations are also relevant.
Cost effectiveness is a mixed bag - covering the need to demonstrate value for money as now but also cautioning councils against recreating materials produced by other parts of the public sector unless doing so adds value or impact.
However it's in the appropriateness principle that things start getting really prescriptive. This is where the much-trailed quarterly limit on the publishing of council newsletters, magazines and newspapers is featured. The ban on employing lobbyists and taking stands at political party conferences pops up here too.
There's much more there too and you can read the full document here:
Publicity Code 2011
However it's worth noting that the code isn't legally enforceable. Section 4(1) of the Local Government Act 1986 says that coundils should "have regard to the contents of this code in coming to any decision on publicity".
That's different to saying they must follow the code to the letter - but equally means you must have a pretty good reason not to do so as well.
I'm not a lawyer so can't offer any more thinking than that, but it will undoubtedly be tested by some councils in the coming years as they try to feel their way around the sensitivities in the grey areas at the fringes of the code.
As ever LGcommunications has a useful sample report for use by council comms people - it can be downloaded here.

#### New RSS feed for UK top marketing blogs
Neville Hobson points to a new ranking list for marketing blogs - the Todd And Power 150 top marketing blogs.
The list was originally published in January 2007 and was limited to American blogs. However thanks to some nifty automation by Techbrew the list now covers all English language blogs wherever they're based.
The blogs are ranked on four criteria:

	Google PageRank 
	Bloglines subscribers
	Technorati ranking 
	Todd And points - a subjective quality measure evaluated by Todd himself

Lists like these are a great resource if you're looking to find more high quality blogs to broaden your reading. I've been on the lookout for more UK-based marketing blogs for a while now, so it was good to see 17 UK-based marketing blogs on the lists (including this one, creeping in at #237).
For convenience I've used Yahoo Pipes to combine all the UK marketing blogs on the list into a single digest feed - it's available at:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/topukmarketingblogs

#### Newcastle conference double-bill - 7 July 2009
Next month I'm in Newcastle speaking at a couple of conferences on Tuesday, 7 July:
First up I'm at the CIPR North East Social Media Conference - providing a public sector and local government perspective on the use of social media in public relations. More info here.
Then I'm hotfooting it over to Life to the PSF event Effective Social Networking & Web 2.0 Strategies for Local Authorities (aka PSFbuzz) where I'll be talking about our experience of using social media and what it means for local government communicators. More info here.
If you're heading to either event drop me a line or leave a comment - as ever it's great to have the opportunity to meet people face to face.

#### Next generation council websites?
There's a new generation of council websites emerging at the moment - with some really interesting social media integration too.
The trend was started by the launch of Redbridge i - a groundbreaker among council sites.

I particularly like their mapping tool which shows how geo-data can be used well to show council services in a geographical context. However beyond that and its web 2.0 look and feel I do find the site a bit lacking in social functionality - for example I couldn't find an RSS feed and there's not a great deal of integration with social media sites.
I also have my doubts about the value of the widget-ey homepage, slick as its implementation is. That kind of customisation it allows only seems to have value for sites that people come back to regularly - and to date I'm not sure council sites are that sticky (yet).
Barnet Council has also recently relaunched its site at www.barnet.gov.uk - some really strong integration with active social media tools here including Twitter, Flickr and YouTube.

I think what's important here is that the website is aggregating real social media activity that the council is already delivering on other sites. The principle behind this is sound: engage with people where they are already, rather than trying to get them to engage "on your turf" on the council site.
This week sees the launch of the new site from Cheltenham Borough Council. As well as boasting a nice, clean look and feel, the site has tight integration with YouTube and Flickr. However there's not a lot of two-way interaction going on other than on those YouTube and Flickr pages.

Maybe that's the next phase of development for sites like this - moving beyond sites that replicate the broadcast model that dominates many councils' offline communications is an important step for local government websites.
Generating an environment for residents to interact online with their councils will generate more engagement with the democratic process and council work in general - but it needs truly interactive platforms, a supportive culture within the council and a drive from officers and members to create genuinely two-way conversations.

#### Not as cheap...
Spotted this on my travels earlier this week in Faversham:   I think the banner proclaiming "we're not as cheap as Wetherspoons" is great. All too often marketers can get stuck in the discounting trap, seeing price as the most effective part of the marketing mix to attract customers. The Railway Hotel is turning price competition from the nearby Wetherspoons pub on its head by shouting that they're not as cheap.  The implication, of course, is that by not being as cheap the Railway Hotel is in fact better.  Even in a market driven by price, there's always a different angle for differentiation that will attract new customer. It's the marketers job to find it. I didn't actually make it into either hostelry, so can't comment on the accuracy of either claim, although the menu outside the Railway Hotel did look pretty good!

#### Not much interesting stuff on the web this week
OK, that's definitely not the case. The problem is that I've not had enough time to catch up on emails, RSS...did spot this though:
Standards in public life researchThe third survey of public attitudes towards standards of conduct in public life shows most people think that standards of conduct of office holders in the UK overall are ‘fairly high' (38%) or neither high nor low (38%) but 20 per cent in 2008 rate standards as ‘low.
For all bookmarks that I've made check out del.icio.us.

#### On employee engagement
As part of my role on the LGcomms national executive, I'm working on a one-day member workshop in early November on employee engagement.
It's a fascinating topic and one that I think local government could do more with, especially as we head into another round of sustained funding cuts and financial pressures.
The Engage4Success movement is a great place to start if you want to find out more about what increasing engagement can do for a team.
This post caught my eye earlier on employee engagement and going with the flow in organisations - Sam Dawson talks about the Chinese concept of Tao and what that thinking means for how we can engage employees more at work.
He has three tips which make a lot of sense to me:

	Go with the flow. Well, not quite, but the most successful organisations use existing momentum within their business as a framework from which to hang employee engagement initiatives. There are many organisations who run engagement surveys and are looking to break the ‘you said, we did’ cycle. Remember a survey in itself is not going to drive engagement or business performance.
	Sow the seeds of engagement. We know from many of the high performing companies we partner with that the key to their engagement success is the ability to embed the concept of engagement at local levels. These organisations use an engagement model that resonates with employees on the ground, and a commitment to enabling them to be successful is often the key.
	Enable your workforce.  Ensure employees are set up for success. The best organisations ensure that their people have the right resources and their jobs are structured for optimal impact. This helps them stay ahead of the curve, increase performance and retain talent.

The "go with the flow" idea makes a lot of sense. Rather than trying to force an agenda or a message that doesn't fit with the existing currents of knowledge, belief and trend within an organisation, trying to go with and subtly develop existing narratives should be more successful than setting off in a completely new direcrion.
The ability to embed engagement at multiple levels is consistent with the Viral Change approach to using internal networks and influencers to drive engagement.
Fascinating stuff and definitely an area that communicators should be familiarising themselves with and championing.

#### On MyBlogLog
One reason I write a blog is to create a network of contacts that I couldn't have otherwise created. One of my frustrations with blogging has been not knowing who the majority of my blog readers are, and not having a way to connect with them other than through blog posts and comments.

MyBlogLog is a tool that can help with this. It's a social networking site allowing bloggers to easily create communities among their readers. I've had the MyBlogBlog sidebar on my website for a couple of weeks now (I've customised it with CSS to match the design of my blog).

MyBlogLog has been in the news earlier this week as it was acquired by Yahoo (and here). It's also had some teething troubles this week with Michael Jenson showing how easily the system can be manipulated.
I'm sure the Yahoo/MyBlogLog partnership will overcome this kind of problem and the slowness that the service sometimes experiences. Judging by the interactions I've had with readers as a result of having MyBlogLog set up, I think there's definitely value in the service for bloggers.
This service certainly seems to have momentum in new subscriber growth which is important for any social networking site to become useful. I look forward to seeing how Yahoo incorporates MyBlogLog into its existing social media portfolio, without overcomplicating sign-up processes or hurting the great core functionality of MyBlogLog.

#### On the move
I have today started my new interim role as Account Director as Enterprise IG. I will be responsible for a range of blue chip client design and branding projects. I will also be responsible for further developing the digital design business at Enterprise IG.

#### On the road next week - speaking at...
It's been a while since I've spoken at a conference but next week I'm speaking at not one, but two, conferences.
On Thursday, 4 December I'm at the Public Sector Forums event at Edgbaston Cricket Ground, Birmingham - "Public Sector Websites - Essential Issues for Managers, Developers and Others".
I'll be talking about "Mobile internet and local government" - an interesting area that takes me back to my days working on the mobile channel at Egg. I'll be covering the growth of the mobile internet, what it can do for local government communications and websites, and examining some of the practical considerations for councils wanting to increase their presence on the mobile web.
Then on Friday, 5 December it's up the M6 to Manchester Bridgewater Hall for the northern instalment of the Don't Panic Guide to Social Media.
I'll be exploring "Local government and social media" - looking at the extent of social media usage in local
government along with examples of those authorities that have used social media channels to reach their audiences. It'll be an updated version of the presentation I did at the London leg of the conference back in May - looking back at what I said then, it's amazing how things have moved on in the intervening six months.
Tickets are still available for both conferences if you're interested.
I'm looking forward to meeting people I've known online for a while now: Dave Briggs will be a fellow speaker in Birmingham, while in Manchester it'll be great to catch up with Andy and Nicky from Don't Panic, Richard Bailey, Stephen Davies and Stuart Bruce among others.
If you're heading to either of these conferences, leave a comment, tweet or get in touch. It's always great to meet new people at events who read my blog.

#### Online collaboration with Thinkature
Found a great new online collaboration service today called Thinkature.
The site calls it a visual workspace - essentially an online shared page where you can draw, add images, text, sketch and do lots of other things too.
You can share your page in real time with other collaborators that you nominate and they can edit as well. There's an instant messaging client built in too.
I can see Thinkature being very useful when used alongside Skype for one to one discussions or conference calls. I've often found myself trying to describe a complicated thought in words on a conference call, when a simple diagram would communicate the thought in seconds - Thinkature would be a great solution for this.
I know there are plenty of other web meeting services available, but I think this is a bit different as it's for collaboration and idea development, as well as just sharing and communicating.

#### Online networking for public sector communicators
An email I received today from a fellow local government communicator started me thinking about how local government and other public sector communicators network professionally.
The email was sent from a council communicator to hundreds of other communicators in a massive cc'ed email. I don't know where the list of cc'ed recipients originally came from, but the list is used several times a month to ask questions to the other people on the list.
That's all very well, but when people start replying it all falls apart. Most people answer the original question posed by hitting the "reply to all" button. Then someone else follows up developing the thread further using "reply to all" once again.
Before you know it, the conversation trail is impossible to follow and the great information that people are sharing is lost in a mass of cc'ed emails, signatures and the like.
So I was thinking about how this could be done better.
There's great value in sharing information between communications professionals working in similar fields - while each area is unique, there are many challenges we face in common where understanding how others have tackled things is really helpful.
And the good news is that there are alternatives - mostly coming from the social media sphere in one way or another.
One worth checking out is the I&DeA Communities of Practice (CoP) site.

This site is designed for anyone working in local government and aims to help them share information with fellow professionals. There are hundreds of different communities within the site, and if there's not one for the area you're working in you can create one.
The Communications and Marketing community only has 177 members at the time of writing, and doesn't seem all that active. The most recent activity in the forums and blogs was in the first week of January.
I'm also a member of the Social Media and Online Collaboration community which is larger (458 members) and more active - there's usually something going on most days. I've certainly picked up some useful information from keeping an eye on this community.
It's also worth mentioning Public Sector Forums (PSF) here too.

PSF has its origins in the ICT and web areas, but has some useful content and discussions for communicators, especially those working with new media and the internet. Like the CoP site, you'll need to register but it's free.
So what about other networks for public sector communicators?
There's an ever growing group of local government people active on Twitter. Dave Briggs has a good list here. It's also worth following @localgovweb on Twitter to pick up content related to local government.
There's also a Twitter hashtag #localgovweb for relevant local government content, although to be honest I usually forget to use the hashtag when I post stuff to Twitter.
If you use LinkedIn there's a group for local government employees (join it here).
However it's a global group and is open to consultants as well as those working in local government - so the content and discussions are pretty wide-ranging and you need to scan for the stuff that's relevant to public sector marketing, public relations and communications.
I'm sure there are plenty more networking opportunities and groups out there online for local government communicators - if you know of any more (including the inevitable really obvious one that I've forgotten) please post them in the comments to put me out my misery!
Update: The UK's Local Government Association also has a LinkedIn group called CommsNet 2.0 - you can find it here.

#### Online video audiences and broadcast TV
Some interesting findings about how online video viewing is affecting traditional broadcast television audiences in the UK are revealed by a BBC/ICM survey.
The rapid growth in traffic to online video websites, combined with increased provision of online video by traditional media such as the BBC, has led to three quarters of users watching more online video than they did a year ago.
This rate of growth means that the 9 per cent of people who watch online video regularly will soon be joined by many more, making online video an increasingly attractive communication channel.
The challenge for communicators is to work out how to use this new channel to engage with audiences in a way that's consistent with their brand values and communications strategy.
The full BBC report is here.

#### Optimising your blog for Google Blogsearch
Alister Cameron has a very interesting post on ProBlogger about how Google Blogsearch indexes your blog posts.
While it's a very long post, it talks about some really important areas where you can work to improve your blog's performance on Google Blogsearch.
For those who don't want to read Alister's full post, here are the main factors that Alister suggests  affect your Google Blogsearch rankings:

	Number of RSS subscriptions in Google Reader
	Number of clicks on your posts in existing search results
	How many and which blogrolls you are listed on
	How your post is tagged
	How much your content is discussed in GMail and Google Talk

The source for these theories is a Google patent application
.

#### Outdoor advertising planning made simple
Most public sector marketers will, at some point, have purchased outdoor advertising as part of a marketing campaign.
I suspect the majority, me included, didn't have the luxury of a media agency to do media buying for them so would have dealt directly with the usual outdoor media suppliers.
Not having an in-depth knowledge of the local area, I've always struggled to visualise where particular 48 sheet or 6 sheets sites are from the postcode-based listings provided by suppliers.
The other day I spotted the signposter.com website - you just pop in your postcode and the media type you're interested in, and it returns a listing of local sites, their footfall figures, costs (should you buy through the website) and a map with the locations plotted. A fair few sites also have pictures of the actual outdoor advertising board itself.
This makes local outdoor advertising buying easy when you're buying a few sites in a targetted area, which is what I suspect most councils do.
The website was launched earlier this year and claims it can provide 98% of all outdoor poster sitres. It allows you to purchase inventory from suppliers including JCDecaux, Clear Channel, Titan Outdoor, CBS Outdoor and Primesight.
I haven't done any benchmarking on price to see how prices compare to the negotiated prices that you'd get if you purchased directly from the supplier, but the website certainly simplifies the outdoor advertising planning process if nothing else.

#### Overcoming obstacles on projects at work
Had one of those days today where a four hour website workshop left me thinking...a lot.
The workshop was designed to give all parties to a project to create two new websites an opportunity to contribute to a debate about the purposes of the sites (they're closely related) and to reach a consensus on key aspects of the projects that have so far eluded us.
We always knew it would be a challenging session and would be unpredictable.
What actually happened was perfectly reasonable at the time - the discussions proceeded in a series of small steps, each in a direction completely different to the one I'd expected - which meant by the end of the workshop the whole conversation and debate about the key issues was in a completely different place to the place where I'd expected (hoped?) things would end.
Initially I'd felt disappointed - we'd gone in with a purpose and not achieved it.
But reflecting now I'm happier - reaching consensus on complex issues isn't a linear process that can be mapped out - debate and discussions can take things in a different direction that sometimes seems at odds to the direction that I think things should take.
Today we ended up agreeing a number of points that we hadn't previously agreed. That's a positive.
I'm still keen to progress the project, so from here we need to isolate the underlying assumptions that we're making (ie assume x, means that we introduce a risk of y into the project), get everyone happy with them, and then get on with the project.
We aired many of these assumptions today - now that's happened, they can be identified, documented and then left alone, leaving us to get on with the project.
My lesson for today is that even the most complicated obstacles on projects can be overcome with dialogue, shared end goals and a desire to move forward. It's just the journey that can sometimes seem a bit painful and unpredictable...

#### Part of the day job?
During my workshop today at the Association of Colleges communications conference (slides here) one of the delegates asked:
"How do you fit all this social media stuff in alongside the day job?"
It's a fair question, but it reveals much about how some communicators see social media - as an add-on, a supplementary extra to the business of communicating through traditional media and marketing channels.
My response was that social media is part of the day job.
As professional communicators it's our responsibility to use social media tools where appropriate alongside the more established tools of our profession to communicate with our intended audiences.
And that means learning about the social media environment as diligently as we keep up-to-date with the mainstream media environments we work in.
I'd go so far to say a professional communicator's not really doing his or her job properly if they don't have a handle on how social media can be used as part of an integrated communications mix.
So yes, it's definitely part of the day job.

#### Paul Mylrea's bid for CIPR presidency
If you're a Chartered Institute of Public Relations member, you'll have recently received voting slips with the recent issue of Profile magazine.
This year there are two candidates for the institute's 2010 president elect:  Paul Mylrea MCIPR, Director of Communications for the Department for International Development and Jenifer Stirton FCIPR, Director of Communications for NHS Lothian
It's good to see two leading public sector communicators putting themselves forward at this critical time for the institute.
Looking beyond the (hopefully) short term financial problems at the institute, I believe it's time for serious and radical change at CIPR to ensure it regains relevancy to its members and the business of public relations as a whole.
Having read through the pitches from both candidates, I'll be supporting Paul with my vote. I've also committed to lend him what support I can with his bid, so please read on for a message from Paul about his plans for 2010 should his candidacy be successful:
Two years on the board has convinced me the CIPR cannot survive by gradual change. It needs major, urgent reform to re-engage with members. Like many institutions, the CIPR has succumbed to the temptation to prioritise the needs of headquarters over those of its members around the UK. Its public position has been eroded by its failure to keep pace with technological change and by competition from more nimble organisations.
Staff at HQ have undoubtedly worked hard to deliver professional services but now is the time to re-evaluate what we do, and how we do it.
We need to respect the tremendous efforts of those members who have kept the Institute going through its first 60 years and won it Chartered status, as well as the band of volunteers that keep it running in the regions and in sectoral groups. It is for them that we need to re-energise the Institute and secure its future in a digital age.
The UK is entering a period of austerity from which the PR industry will not escape. The CIPR’s Board and senior management must lead by example. That means more efficient use of staff resources, cutting out unnecessary spending, especially foreign travel, and squeezing the best return out of our new, well appointed and well-located offices.
We need immediate action to:

	Secure and build the finances
	Create a lean, professional centre that is outward facing, not London-centric
	Build membership and halt the high number of departures by giving existing members a reason to stay
	Build relationships with other professional bodies, such as the Institute of Directors and the Chartered Management Institute (where I am a Fellow), to make sure PR has a seat at the top table
	Work more closely with the PRCA, for the mutual benefit of both sets of members and for the good of the profession
	Create transparency and accountability to members and regions through online publication of agendas and minutes of board meetings (obviously respecting sensitive commercial or personnel issues)
 
There are opportunities. I believe my position at the heart of the Government Communications Network (GCN) will allow me to make the CIPR the professional body of choice for government communicators across the UK. I set up one of the CIPR’s first partnerships at Transport for London and I have been involved in persuading NHS London to create a new partnership, bringing in 100 more members. We need more of this and I have strong backing from the top of the GCN to make it happen. Building better links with the public sector, a key client for the industry, is vital for all members.
But it’s not just about the public sector. We have to give all members from whatever sector reasons to join and to stay involved. To do that, the CIPR has to change. I will assemble a team which will make that change happen.

#### Pet food poisoning shows brands need to be genuine
Readers outside the United States may not be aware of the growing pet food poisoning scare that's been happening in America and Canada.
To cut a long story short it appears that rat poison has been found in some pet foods coming from a single source: Menu Foods in Canada.
The affected dog and cat foods include major brand names such as Iams, Nutro and Eukanuba, as well as own-label products in US retailers like Walmart and Safeway.
To give an idea of the scope of this recall: the Petconnection website is reporting 48 dog food brands and 40 cat food brands are affected - more than 60 million containers in all. The latest update on deceased pets on the same site shows that 2,300 pets are reported as having died from consuming the affected food.
The interesting thing here is that the whole sorry saga has ripped away much of the brand equity of the big brands involved.
Many of the brands involved will have spent large sums of money creating a brand - a persona for their product that differentiates it from its competitors.
But the revelation that all these brands come from a single source will make customers question how differentiated the products truly are. It's quite likely that all the brands have different formulations, but I suspect this detail will be lost on the majority of consumers.
The lesson for brand owners is that while companies can create brand images, the provenance and reality of their products needs to be genuine to the image they create.
Consumers are demanding transparency in brands more than ever before.
Some of the most successful new brands launched in the past few years, such as fruit smoothie brand Innocent, seem to be those that transparently prove the values in their words and deeds.
Brands can't get away will pulling off a customer con trick in their marketing or public relations any more. Consumers will find out if brands aren't what they seem, and the internet means that once that's been discovered the news spreads fast.

#### Pic and Mix shows the way for public sector data mash-ups
For a while now I've been promoting the value of local government opening up its doors to the use of data more openly on the web.
Freeing the immense amount of data held in councils, police and local health services has the potential to generate significant tangible and intangible value for the communities these public bodies serve.
As well as that, I believe there's a role for reuse of public data in increasing the scrutiny that the public can put public authorities under - particularly in the context of a declining offline local media which traditionally held the role of holding local public services to account.
Kent County Council has an innovation unit that's focussed on exploring new opportunities for local government.
The team has just launched an exciting new website that I think really shows the potential of opening up public sector data and promoting its reuse.

The site (picandmix.org.uk/) has two main parts. First up the data section shows all the different data sets that the council has managed to make available - as RSS or Excel downloads.
The second part of the site allows users to post mash-ups that they've produced with the data - for example using Google Maps or Yahoo Pipes.
It's early days so there aren't all that many mash-ups posted yet, although some early ones do give an obvious nod to the potential of this kind of thing in the future - for example the "schools by postcode" map is a simple mash-up that I would have found useful this time last yer when looking at primary schools for my son - in fact there's no reason why this shouldn't be on the main council site before long I expect.
At the moment most mash-ups are combining a single data set and a visualising tool (mainly maps). It'll be interesting to see when someone posts a mash-up of multiple data sources as for me this is where the value of open data really starts to be demonstrated.
Hats off to Kent County Council for doing this - hopefully it will show other public bodies the potential for open data and we'll start to see this kind of functionality appearing more often on main council websites.

#### Playing by the rules in marketing and public relations
I was talking with one of my team last week about what rules and regulations apply to marketing and public relations.
What struck me during the conversation was that, while marketing and public relations aren't regulated in the sense that financial services is regulated, there are a fair few laws, codes and standards that we have to keep the right side of.
So I've created a list of the ones that apply to me in my current roles - bear in mind I'm a marketing and public relations practitioner based in the UK, so I've tried to identify those relevant to me:
Professional bodies
These codes are binding if you choose to be a member of these organisations, which I do. Other professional organisations such as IABC, DMA or IDM have similar codes for members.

	Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) professional standards (p53-59)
	Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) code of conduct

Industry codes
The most important ones for me here are run by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA), which is the advertising industry's self-regulation body.
While ASA has several different codes, the three that  I have to pay most attention to are:

	The CAP Code for non-broadcast advertising
	The radio advertising code
The TV advertising code

Laws
I'm sure there are many laws of the land that I comply with daily without realising it. However the two pieces of legislation that I most often have to refer to and advise on are:

	Data Protection Act 1998
	The EU Directive on privacy and electronic communications 2002
My main employer, Medway Council, also has a strict code for communicators to adhere to. It's pretty typical of the restrictions that many public sector communicators work under,
On reflection there are more regulations and standards that I'm meant to stick to than I'd realised. I'm sure that nothing I do contravenes any of these standards, but can I honestly say I know the content of all the above rules inside out?
The answer is a very definite no. However ignorance is no defence so I'm going to take some time to read through all these rules again.
Thankfully marketing and public relations aren't professions that are tightly controlled by rules. If they were I don't think working in this area would be half as much fun.
Good professional training, career experience and a bit of common sense are usually all that is needed to keep things legal.

#### PR 2.0 essentials - a necessarily living document
Hot on the heels of the social media press release template, the folks over at Shift Communications have published a superb guide to the basics of PR in the social media world.
It's a downloadable free PDF that sets out very clearly the basic tools that are available today to public relations professionals working with social media. At Todd says in his post there won't be much there for people who know the space, but the real value in the document is as a primer for those people/organisations who don't know about social media.
For many public relations teams social media is an unknown. They've probably heard of blogging, but wouldn't have the first idea what else is available or more importantly how to integrate it into their overall mix of activity.
The guide doesn't give them all the answers, but provides links to lots of other useful resources that will help find them.
Credit to Todd and the Shift team for putting this together and making it available publicly for free, in the true spirit of social media.

#### PR is growing thanks to social media
Spotted an interesting quote from Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP Group, about how the public relations businesses within the group are the main driver for business growth:
YouTube, Flickr and MySpace have emphasised to clients that editorial publicity is stronger than paid-for publicity. If bloggers are saying nasty things about you, you can indulge yourself in a campaign to try to improve what they are talking about. PR has become more important structurally as a result.
Leaving aside the oversimplification about bloggers saying nasty things, I agree completely with this. Public relations is the profession that's best placed to lead businesses and organisations through the confusing world of social media.
Other areas within businesses, such as marketing or even IT, may stake their claim, but it strikes me that the typical public relations skillset is the best starting point for leading effective business communications in social media.
(via PR Week, UK edition)

#### PR theory and social media
Having completed the CIPR diploma last year, I'm still a sucker for PR theory.
But there are times when I wonder whether the theory is really in touch with reality, especially as the business of public relations is changing so much at the moment.
So the chart below, produced by David Phillips, was great to see:

(click the image to see it full size - easier to read the text on most browsers)
It's great because it relates a classic PR theory, that most PR students will know inside out, to some of the contemporary practices that are changing public relations right now.

#### PR volunteering opportunity with CIPR
The  CIPR has recently announced its partnership with the National Citizen Service (NCS), and as part of this partnership they'll be delivering educational workshops to students aged 16-17 across the UK. Our workshops will teach students what public relations is, how they might interact with it in their everyday lives, and how they might pursue it as a career option.
The first NCS workshop will take place in Cranbrook, Kent on Tuesday 17 September from 9.30am to 12.30pm
They're looking for four to six volunteers from across the Home Counties to volunteer at the workshop and help to teach young adults about the public relations profession.
All activities and instructions will be provided and volunteers will receive CPD points in return for their participation.
If you would like to put yourself forward as a volunteer, or to find out more about the opportunity please email Kim Roberts at kimr@cipr.co.uk.

#### PR Week this week
The front page of PR Week catches my eye with a story headed "Borkowski PRO in celeb email spat". I'd received the email chain from a couple of friends, but also spotted Stuart Bruce's take on it.The public relations trade is a pretty broad church, and whether we like it or not the starting point for many people's perception of our business is Ab Fab and publicists. Of course this type of work bears no resemblence to what most public relations professionals do day in day out.
The marketing professions suffers a similar perception problem - marketing being perceived as being just advertising, or even more inaccurately being perceived as sales.
Going back to the email spat, the lesson has got to be that in the transparent connected world in which we operate, never commit anything to email that you wouldn't be prepared to have in the public domain.  Emails are too easily and too quickly forwarded to stay private unless you're dealing with people you really can trust. Anyone remember Claire Swire?
In the public sector section (p6) there's a short piece about East Cambridge District Council outsourcing its communications to Cambridgeshire County Council. It caught my eye as my main job is heading up marketing and public relations at Medway Council. We already manage media relations on behalf of Medway Primary Care Trust and are sole graphic design agency for our neighbours at Gravesham Borough Council.
This model is something we'll undoubtedly see more among public sector organisations in the UK as pressure for efficiency savings increases and the demand for more responsive and professional multi-channel media relations grows.

#### Prediction is futile
I came across a great post on the 100% Open blog about predicting the future earlier on.
In the post they talk about how some predictions can be accurate, but like the 1960s graphic prediction of a future classroom above that they use an example, plenty of predictions can be pretty wide of the mark as well.
As an alternative to attempting to predict the future with enough certainty to take meaningful decisions on, they suggest the rapid prototyping approach of iterate - listen - learn as an alternative.
That thinking's got a lot in common with the agile approach to technology development that has a lot going for it.
Instead of trying to take big decisions based on little predictions, prototyping allows you to try things, fail fast and small, and then iterate until it works.
By definition the approach adjusts to changing circumstances by virtue of the passage of time.
Contrast that with the way much of the public sector does business - fixing a view of the future in a report and recommending a path for that version of the future.
While the immediate future may be reasonably easily predicted, for the longer time frame the likely accuracy of the prediction gets less and therefore the chances of the proposed solution being the best one decline as well.
So the challenge is how do we combine the flexibility and agility of the iterate - listen - learn approach with the strictures of the decision-making processes that quite rightly govern and drive democratically accountable organisations.
One of the projects I'm working on at the moment involves just this kind of dilemma. Over the weekend I'm going to be thinking about how I can take a more iterative approach to it, reducing risk and increasing the chances of delivering what's wanted.

#### Presentation at today's PSF web 2.0 event
Here's a copy of the slides I used in my presention at today's Public Sector Forums conference - my presentation focussed on "Social media: a revolution in local government communications?":

#### Presentations from Newcastle conferences
Today I've been up in Newcastle presenting at a couple of conferences - thanks to Public Sector Forums (PSF) and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) North East group.
Here are the slides from my presentations - they're pretty similar although the PSF presentation explored a bit more detail about social media and the impact it's having on local government:
PSF presentation (download it here):

The CIPR presentation was intended for a mainly non-council audience so was a bit more focussed on public relations and how social media is affecting council communications (download it here):

#### Process and outcome in communications
Over the past weeks I've been thinking about the relative importance of process against outcomes.
As regular readers will know I'm a passionate advocate of the importance of a focus on outcomes in communications. It's where the value of communications is realised and makes a difference to the things that matter.
And I still believe that's true and should be where we do our ultimate evaluation of our work - that makes sense to me and fits with the Barcelona Principles for the evaluation of public relations.
But my holiday reading over Christmas has challenged this for me.
I've been reading a few books about competitive cycling - particularly around the revolution in British Cycling's track team and the subsequent creation of Team Sky. This revolution has been led primarily by Dave Brailsford - Performance Director at British Cycling.
One of the philosophies that he's stuck to for most (but not all) of his time leading cycling teams has been to focus on the process of the sport - the training, preparation and race itself - not the outcome. His view has been that the outcomes - ideally winning - will naturally follow if the process is delivered as well as possible.
His focus on delivering marginal improvements to the process has helped optimise the performance of his cyclists - with the subsequent outcomes being measured in terms of medals or winning road races.
Interestingly the only time he seems to have departed from his "process not outcome" mantra was when launching Team Sky when he explicitly set out the outcome the team wanted - to have a British winner of the Tour de France last year.
When he did that, it turned out that the focus on the outcome took attention, whether consciously or subconsciously, away from the process. And that made achieving the outcome itself more difficult.
So what does this mean for public sector communications where we resolutely push the outcome message as being the measure of value contributed.
It doesn't change the fundamental fact that it's the outcomes that matter in the end - just like winning does matter in professional sport.
But what we mustn't do is let our focus on the outcomes of campaigns to distract us away from the importance of the quality of process in delivering communications activities.
Just because we're focussed on the outcomes, good communications teams will have clear processes in place for the development, execution and monitoring of campaigns. And just like Brailsford's teams, it's these processes that we have to pay attention to make sure they give us the best possible chance of delivering the outcomes we want.
Of course we need to use the best evidence we have in these processes to make sure we have the best possible campaign for the outcomes we want.
So in the end I managed to resolve this in my head - both process and outcome are important.
The better quality the process we have for delivering our communications, the more chance we have of delivering the outcomes we want. Phew!

#### Producing audio and video for the web
A project I've been working on recently has involved creating video news shorts for Medway Council's website. I've also recently been involved in producing podcasts for the first time as well.
The video and audio content for these is recorded and edited entirely in-house by members of the council's Communications and Youth teams.
Now both projects have launched it's interesting to reflect on the differences between producing video and audio content as a professional communicator.
The barriers to entry for both these tools are so low that anyone can produce audio and video themselves without specialist equipment or skills. However the real barrier is the quality threshold that you choose to apply as a communicator.
Do you want your podcast to sound like it's been recorded in a bathroom, or your video to have the production value of last year's home video?
Equally you don't want to sound or look too slick either, as that moves away from the genuine, personal style that works well nowadays to something more corporate and less credible.
It's a fine balance to achieve, made all the more difficult because it's easy for a professional to deliberately sound/look amateur, but it's really hard for an amateur to sound/look professional.
In my experience it's more straightforward to produce audio content that gets closer to the mark than it is to produce video content, although there's always more you can do to learn.
The team had many discussions about the look and feel that was appropriate for audio and video content coming from an institution like a council. The consensus was that the content needed to appear professional and credible.
Feedback on the first video is here. Offline feedback has been very positive, although we have had some problems reported with the Quicktime player we're using. However I think these can be relatively easy to solve soon.
I also underestimated the amount of time it takes to plan, write, record, edit and upload content - something that anyone considering using audio and video on the web needs to take account of.
However I'm absolutely convinced that audio and video news will be part of the council's future communications mix in some form, as they open up opportunities to reach new audiences and show richer information than is possible in text format.

#### Professional institutes, PR and marketing
It's been another hectic week and weekend for one reason and another, but in those downtime moments between doing other stuff, I've been thinking about the two professional institutes that I'm a member of - namely the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) and Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR).
I'm a member of both institutes having joined each when studying for their particular professional qualifications and have maintained my membership of each ever since. I also used to serve on the CIM Kent branch committee and, since April, have been a member of the CIPR Local Public Services group committee too.
Given the focus of my current role and activities, my professional bias is towards the CIPR and its relevance to what I mostly do day-in day-out.
It's been a turbulent time recently at the CIPR. I don't profess to know the detail of what's gone on, but from the significant trading loss last financial year to the major management changes, I can't help but feeling now is a watershed time for the institute.
Leaving aside the internal issues, that's a situation that's thrown into starker relief by the resurgence of the PRCA - fellow industry body and erstwhile competitor to CIPR.
In these challenging times for communicators I think the role of professional bodies in articulating and promoting an industry-wide view on communications and the role it plays in contemporary business and public service is crucial.
I've been critical of CIPR's stance on social media for some time now - it struck me as poor that the body that represents PR could be so dismissive of the role of social media in fundamentally changing the dynamics of the communications environment.
But more recently I've been heartened to see a more active stance from CIPR on this - with the summer series of social media events planned and conceived by interested members as a real step forward in engaging and opening up collective minds to this topic.
Yet professional bodies are, by definition, only as strong and influential as the constituent members and the way they work together to achieve a collective goal.
Those of us who are less active in working with professional institutes have a lot to thank those who give up their time and energy towards leading, overseeing and organising the myriad of the institutes' operations.
And that's what's at the heart of my thinking on this.
Membership organisations will always comprise members with a range of different and sometimes opposing views. But there must be more that members seek in common than they see differently for the organisation to thrive.
Without that shared consenus the organisation will be consumed with its internal battles and factions - and lose sight of the broader goals that it should be pursuing.
And that's my concern about CIPR at the moment - while there are a lot of well-intentioned people freely volunteering their time towards the cause, what's important now is a shared view of where the membership wants the institute to be, and members working collaboratively towards that.
The appointment of a new CEO is a good step forward in moving on from recent troubles. So is the dynamic leadership of Kevin Taylor (previous president), Jay O'Connor (current president) and Paul Mylrea (future president). I know that all these members have given a lot of time and hard work to securing the future of CIPR.
So my commitment for the future is to contribute actively towards building a shared future vision for CIPR and working constructively with others wherever the opportunities arise to make this vision happen.
Without positive engagement from members across the institute, I suspect the institute's future will not be a bright one, despite the best efforts of those members that put in a lot towards the shared cause.

#### Projects and transition planning
If you're involved in projects then this seven minute video from Patrick Mayfield of Pearce Mayfield is well worth a watch.
It sets out some very sound thinking in the management of projects, benefits and performance around change projects.

See more from Patrick here.

#### Proving identity in social media
This is something that's been troubling me for a little while, but the recent "fake Tony Benn" saga on Twitter has prodded me into posting about it. A couple of days ago @tonybenn started posting on Twitter posing as the veteran Labour MP. The posts continued for a couple of days, during which time word spread among the Twitter community and conversations developed between @tonybenn and other Twitter users. Yesterday MP, blog writer and Twitter user @tom_watson outed the @tonybenn account as a fake through a face-to-face conversation with the real Tony Benn MP. This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened on Twitter and on other social media platforms, and I'm sure it won't be the last. I don't think there was any real harm done on this occasion either. But it does expose a risk for individuals and organisations that have not already established a social media presence on key networks yet.  There is absolutely nothing stopping anyone, with genuine or dubious intentions, from registering a social media presence on virtually any social network pretending to be someone else.  Once there they can easily establish credibility through adding text, image or videos taken from elsewhere on the web - which all adds to a sense of authenticity to the presence. Then as people start to friend or follow the presence, a snowball effect takes hold where the presence of a perceived community around the fraudulent presence - providing a subconscious endorsement to the presence encouraging others to believe its authenticity. As the community around the presence grows, the potential for reputational damage grows. And that's why public relations and communicators need to take notice. So what strategies could be used to reduce the risk of this happening? Be there in the first place I guess the most obvious solution is to have a genuine and active presence on the key social media tools in the first place. That won't stop people pretending to be people they're not online, but it'll reduce the likelihood of a community growing around a fake presence as those that want to follow or friend a particular organisation or individual will hopefully have gravitated to the genuine presence in the first place.  Doing it this way would also give a platform for rebutting the fraudulent presence on the same social media tool as it was created - a lot easier than trying to disown a fraudulent presence from off-platform. However it's not feasible to be on every social network and establishing and maintaining a social network presence across multiple platforms takes time (and inclination) that some people just don't have. Having a relatively inactive social media presence has its own drawbacks for reputation too. Use an external site for validation One solution is to use a trusted web presence, like an existing personal or corporate website, for authentication. For me personally this would mean that the only social network presences that could be considered genuine would be ones I linked to from my personal website. This works because only the individual or organisation themselves have access to put content onto the trusted web presence (assuming they have one). But this falls down because people stumbling across a social media presence will have no way of knowing that this strategy is being used. How will a Facebook user befriending an online presence know that the only "official" social media presences for a particular person or organisation are those that are linked to from elsewhere? So for me, this works when people are coming to a social media presence from an already trusted website, but not for those discovering social media presences through search engines or social networking. And I'd guess that the latter is probably the majority of growth in traffic to social media presences once the initial rush of people already engaging with the individual or organisation is out of the way. Neither solution is perfect by any means. It'd be really interesting to hear of any other approaches to securing identity on the key social network tools. Some people would see this as a risk to reputation from social media, but I think it's more of a risk to reputation from not being on social media platforms already.  I can see parallels with the domain name landgrab that preceded the use of websites as a mass-market communications tool - on that basis the solution surely is to secure your social media presence where you feel you need to be and start using it. Keep an eye on the emerging social media tools and those that approach a tipping point and ensure you're there too.

#### PRs and journalists - exploring the relationship
Today I've got a guest post from Emily Turner looking at some of the aspects of the relationship between PRs and journalists - from someone who has experience from both sides of the fence.
Emily's an NCTJ-trained journalist with fourteen years’  public relations and crisis communications experience in the public and private sectors. She blogs at thewomaninbib68.co.uk.
It was really inter­est­ing to read a well-thought out piece by Matthew Brown on the rela­tion­ship between jour­nal­ists and PRs.
Many jour­nal­ists want to go back to the time when they could get infor­ma­tion direct from source with­out a PR get­ting in the way. Who can blame them? Those days were ripe for a gaff-laden quote. But the old days will never return. Busi­nesses and organ­i­sa­tions have too much to lose. A word out of turn can go global thanks to social media and busi­ness is increas­ingly risk adverse.
The rela­tion­ship between PRs and jour­nal­ists is com­plex. It is inter­est­ing that nearly two-thirds of those in PR in the UK are women, accord­ing to the Char­tered Insti­tute of Pub­lic Rela­tions, while Women in Jour­nal­ism says women are under­rep­re­sented in Britain’s newspapers.
It’s a mis­con­cep­tion that a PR’s job is easy, it’s not that far off from a journalist’s duties. There’s reac­tive work as calls come in and com­plaints from the pub­lic and cus­tomers on inter­net forums and social media. There’s the sched­ule of proac­tive work, cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tions train­ing, media analy­sis, blog­ging, tweet­ing, Face­book, releases to upload on web­sites, inter­views to be recorded, press con­fer­ences to arrange and meet­ings with other organisations.
The journalist’s com­mon war cry is that PRs don’t put out enough proac­tive stuff or enough usable proac­tive stuff. Well no one within a com­pany will­ingly offers up a story to their PR. Why add to their own work­load? PRs have to sniff them out and hound until they get all the details and then,when they’ve squeezed the blood out of a stone, often go through a tor­tur­ous clear­ance process. If the story involves sev­eral organ­i­sa­tions or com­pa­nies, the release could go through numer­ous amend­ments. I think my per­sonal record is 25 amend­ments between 15 parties.
As for usable stuff, this is the del­i­cate bal­ance of PR. As a PR you are keenly aware of a journalist’s needs. Many PRs were once jour­nal­ists them­selves. You are also aware of your company’s or client’s needs. Some­times the client or com­pany will not lis­ten to the PR’s advice and a non-news, puffy release goes out. Often it could be because there are inter­nal or exter­nal pol­i­tics going on behind the scenes.
The reces­sion is going to have a dra­matic impact on PR. The reduced PR ser­vice will mean it will be more dif­fi­cult to get a query answered, fewer inter­views and far less proac­tive out­put. The stan­dard of try­ing to answer every query will drop and it will become accept­able to be unable to answer queries because the man­power is not there. PRs will be forced to focus on com­mu­ni­cat­ing directly with their key audi­ences – cus­tomers, share­hold­ers, peers and the pub­lic — through social media and the inter­net rather than rely­ing on the media.
Here’s some thoughts on the world of PR:
Puff v non-puff
PRs hate cheese and they hate puff. They hate hav­ing to write it, place it and talk about it. Most PRs are hon­est with jour­nal­ists about their sto­ries. If it is weak they might try and strike a deal that the jour­nal­ists prints it in return for access to a bet­ter story another time. A puff or weak piece won’t nec­es­sar­ily be the fault of the PR, it has prob­a­bly come from much higher up and they’ve prob­a­bly advised against doing it. If you aren’t going to use it, say so and this can be fed back with a “told you so!” If the release says “unique”, “lead­ing” or “most pop­u­lar”, then it is because the client has insisted on it or no payment.
Con­tact
Jour­nal­ists often want a ded­i­cated PR con­tact but it is safer to email your query into a mail box that every­one in the press office can access. If you mail it to your ded­i­cated con­tact and they are not in, you risk delay in your query being answered.  Also do not ring the press office and then fail to leave a mes­sage. If you leave a mes­sage it goes on the query sheet to be answered, rings do not.  Rings do not indi­cate how urgent your query is either. Be aware that email queries get on the response list faster than mes­sages left on voice­mall. It is always a good idea to fol­low up your email/voicemail with a call a few hours later to check it has been received.
Read­ing press releases
Please read the press release thor­oughly before phon­ing. All too often the jour­nal­ist will call to ask ques­tions which read­ing the release will answer.
The PR call
PRs never win. If they call to check a story’s been received, the jour­nal­ist feels annoyed. Often the PR has been told to do a ring around by their boss. Also if the PR doesn’t ring and the jour­nal­ist misses a poten­tial story, they ring the PR annoyed that it wasn’t brought to their attention.
Dead­lines
It helps when jour­nal­ists are con­sis­tent with dead­lines. Tell the PR if it is a print or broad­cast dead­line or a per­sonal dead­line you are work­ing to, as this gives the PR a real idea of how urgent the request is. If you lie and say you need it absolutely by 3pm “or the world will end” only to change it to “yeah, 48 hours is fine”, the PR is never going to take your dead­lines seri­ously. A jour­nal­ist who is always real­is­tic with dead­lines is rarely going to be dis­ap­pointed.  Remem­ber the PR is unlikely to have the infor­ma­tion you need to hand and will have to source it and get it cleared.
Atti­tude
Swear­ing at a PR is unac­cept­able at any time, no mat­ter how under pres­sure you are or how close your dead­line is. If you con­tinue to behave in an offen­sive way then most press office man­agers will request you email in your queries in future or refuse to deal with you at all. If you wish to build a rela­tion­ship with a reg­u­lar PR then you need to gain their trust. This means being fair in what you print, give a rea­son­able time­frame for a right of reply and then using that right of reply, have a con­sis­tent man­ner, give con­sid­er­a­tion to who is dri­ving the story and their motive and give as much dead­line notice as you can.
Off-the-record
If you’ve gained the PR’s trust, then it’s likely that the PR will brief you off-the-record when nec­es­sary. Most PRs know off-the-record is not really off-the-record. But they might give you back­ground for your guid­ance, which they should say how they expect it to be used (eg non-attributable to them). You can then use that infor­ma­tion and try and get it to stand up else­where with other sources. If you use that infor­ma­tion and attribute it to them, the PR will never give you that extra back­ground again and a use­ful part of that rela­tion­ship will be lost. Like­wise if you need advice on whether what you are print­ing is true or fea­si­ble, a PR is likely to give you guid­ance if you’ve got a good relationship.
Inter­views
Many PRs put out a press release with details about inter­views. If inter­views are to be held on a spe­cific date at a spe­cific time, there will be good rea­son for that. If you call up a day after the inter­views were held, you are likely to be disappointed.
Wast­ing time
Some jour­nal­ists rel­ish the game of “word round­abouts”. This occurs when the PR is not say­ing the words the jour­nal­ist wants to hear. The jour­nal­ist will con­stantly rephrase what the PR is say­ing, end­ing it with “is that what you say­ing?” only for the PR to say “no” and then repeat­ing their orig­i­nal words. If a PR has said the same thing three times then it’s time to accept the state­ment that is being offered.
Exclu­siv­ity
Often jour­nal­ists feel angry that a rival has a story that they haven’t and will blame the PR for keep­ing it from them. It is not for PRs to share another newspaper’s tip offs or what other news­pa­pers are writ­ing about that week.  Don’t ask for exclu­siv­ity on a story either. It’s unwork­able unless you are offer­ing Max Clif­ford sums of money.
Weigh­ing up bridge burn­ing
PRs know that they need jour­nal­ists to get their sto­ries out. But PRs help jour­nal­ists too. PRs often help out less expe­ri­enced jour­nal­ists, show­ing them the ropes of a par­tic­u­lar indus­try and tak­ing time to explain things in more detail. If you are going to stuff your rela­tion­ship with your reg­u­lar PR for a story, it’s worth con­sid­er­ing a few points. Is this story going to really enhance your career? Could this PR go places in their career and will you cross paths again in the future? If you stuff this PR could it under­mine your rela­tion­ship with other PRs?
Finally
A PR is never a “PR girl” (girls are under 18 years of age),  a PR babe (babes are under 12 months of age) or a PR guru.

#### Public relations versus search marketing - the future of PR in an online world
The latest white paper from Daryl Willcox makes interesting reading for public relations professionals.
It challenges the PR profession to consider how it should respond to the growth in online communications. It also talks about the threat that search engine marketing poses to online public relations.
Daryl does make some generalisations about the public relations profession that I don't agree with, particularly given how public relations practitioners are actively claiming social media as a PR tool for business.
However he does make some valid points about the lack of leadership for online public relations from the industry's professional body, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR).
The white paper is available to download here.

#### Public sector social media training
I'm delighted to announce the first in a series of social media training workshops I'm running with the Public Sector Forums team.
For a while now it's been clear that there's a need for genuinely useful social media training for people working in public sector communications and engagement. That's what I've put together - a practical, interactive and targetted day-long course that covers some of the most important issues in public sector social media today.
The first of these courses is taking place at the Studio in central Birmingham on Wednesday, 4 November.
To make sure the course is useful for everyone attending and to ensure everyone can participate effectively, numbers are strictly limited. The course has been on sale for a couple of weeks now, but there are still some places remaining.
For more information, prices and booking details check out the PSF website.
Future dates and locations for the rest of the series to follow soon.

#### Public sector social media training
On Wednesday, 4 November I'm running a public sector social media course in Birmingham with my friends at Public Sector Forums.
I've designed the course for people working in public sector communications and engagement teams who need to know more about what social media is and how to integrate it practically into their communications and engagement mix.
The course takes place at The Studio in Central Birmingham from 9.45am to 4pm.
Places are strictly limited to ensure everyone gets the opportunity to participate and discuss issues relevant to their organisation.
There are just a few places left on this course. Book your place now here.
The areas the course will cover are:
Social media - the basics

 	 What is social media?
    	Seven types of social media explained
    	Usage statistics for the UK
	Why should your organisation care?
 
Using Facebook in communications and engagement
 
Profiles, pages and groups
   	Enhancing your presence – apps, content and updates
   	Promoting your Facebook presence – growing your network
  	Examples of Facebook in action in the public sector – good and bad
   	What can the public sector learn from private sector use of Facebook?
 
Using Twitter in communications and engagement
  
	What roles can Twitter play in communications and engagement?
	Harnessing the power of Twitter to reach new audiences
    	Getting the right content for Twitter – achieving shareability
   	Integrating Twitter into the communications mix
  	Understanding Twitter: hashtags, retweets and the rest
	Developing the conversation – follow etiquette on Twitter
   	Attracting followers to grow your Twitter audience
  	Examples of Twitter in action in the public sector – good and bad
  	What can the public sector learn from private sector use of Twitter?

Social media relations – dealing with coverage on social media

 	What is social media relations?
    	Effective online monitoring
       	The local online audit
	What to monitor and how
   	Should you respond if someone says something bad about you?
    	How you can respond to social media coverage of your organisation

Writing a social media strategy

	Components of a good social media strategy
	Gaining buy-in – the case for and against social media
  	Implementing social media in communications and engagement
	Tackling the issue of blocked access to social media at work
	How to evaluate the effectiveness of social media

#### Public sector social media training in Glasgow
This Thursday I'm up in Scotland running a social media training course on behalf of Public Sector Forums.
The workshop will:

	Provide an overview of social media in  the UK today
	Explore the different social media tools and how  they can be used in public sector communications and engagement
	Provide  a practical introduction to how to introduce social media into the  public sector communications mix
	Discuss real examples of  social media in action in the public sector - good and bad practice
	Give  delegates the knowledge and skills to start using social media in  public sector communications and engagement.

Previous courses run in Manchester, Birmingham and Cardiff have been well received by delegates - here's feedback from Kam Mistry at Stroud District Council:
"This was an exceptional workshop/seminar - perfect for my needs.  For a while I have wanted to get a comprehensive understanding of all  the relevant social media options and how they could work for an  organisation such as ours. I, like many others, simply don't have the  time to research this area properly. This seminar meant that I could get  to grips with everything in one day. The agenda was well thought out  and the seminar delivery by Simon Wakeman was excellent. It was also  very reasonably priced compared to others I have seen! Definitely ten  out of ten. A very productive day."

This time around the workshop takes place this Thursday, 13 May at the Glasgow Thistle hotel. There are still a few places left on the course, so if you'd like to  join us email Nick Hill at nick@publicsectorforums.co.uk.
Previously booked delegates please note the change of venue - this course now takes place at the Glasgow Thistle hotel, not the Mitchell Library, Glasgow.

#### Public sector social media workshop
I'm out on the road in the next couple of months running advanced social media workshops aimed at public sector communications and customer service staff.
It's an all-new course that builds on the public courses I ran last year and is right up-to-date about all the latest developments in social media and what these might or might not mean for public sector communicators.
The course format is more interactive than ever and group sizes are restricted so that everyone has the opportunity to participate and learn as much as possible.
The Glasgow instalment on 6 April is now fully sold out. We've just put the new Leeds and London courses on sale.
The Leeds course takes place on Wednesday, 25 May at the Park Plaza Hotel. Full details are available on the Public Networks website here.
The London course is on 23 June at Two East Poultry Avenue near Smithfields. Full details are available on the Public Networks website here.
Update: The London date is being rearranged for the Autumn. Drop me a line if you'd like more information on this.
The draft workshop programme includes:

	Mastering the essentials for successful public sector social media strategy and implementation
	Managing social media use within the organisation – mitigating risk and striking the personal/professional balance
	Stakeholder engagement – developing a business case to ensure social media can be used as part of the communications mix
	Monitoring and auditing – Effective social media listening
	Conducting a social media audit as a basis for developing an integrated offline/online communications strategy that incorporates social media
	Focus on Facebook and Twitter within an integrated communications and marketing mix
	Engaging and consulting – Incorporating social media into policy development and service delivery processes
	Social media relations – Managing outrage and other responses
	Handling the social media reputation firestorm – the good, the bad and the ugly
	Developing a personal action plan for social media

#### Public sector workers say go social
Huddle has released the findings of its "Social Collaboration and Public Sector" study of 202 local authority managers.
The survey showed social networks like Facebook were blocked in more than half of respondents’ organisations (56%), but there's still an appetite for using social media in the workplace:

	38 per cent of respondents want a government-wide social network
	
31 per cent would like to set up a social network for their own organisation

The results broadly reflect the findings of my CIPR research which I will publish once it has been assessed and graded. I found a high level of use or desired use of social media in a local government communications context. The research also threw up lack of support or active resistance from ICT departments as a key block to progress of social media in local government.
There's probably some merit in the enviromental argument that Huddle uses to suggest increased use of social media in local government. However I think the benefits are broader than that - Kent County Council's work on communities of practice is a good example that shows the breadth of applications of social media.
via Techcrunch UK

#### Publicity code consultation underway
As I blogged on Tuesday, the government has launched its consultation on the local authority publicity code - one of the rulebooks that local authority communications and marketing are governed by.
The much trailed limit on how often councils can publish newspapers or magazines is in there - proposing to restrict such publications to four times a year. The ban on councils employing lobbying firms is there too.
The proposed code also picks up on internet based content, especially third party content like blog comments, videos and images. It provides some additional clarity on how councils should approach these, although as always at this stage there's a lot of detail still to emerge and be discussed.
At the core of the proposed code are a number of principles for local authority publicity:
Publicity must be lawful, cost effective, objective, even-handed, appropriate, have regard to equality and diversity and be issued with care during periods of heightened sensitivity
The consultation ends on 10 November and the new rules are expected to come into force on 1 January 2011 - which means while this is still a consultation, the broad direction it takes needs to be factored into communications and marketing planning for 2011 right now.
The information about the consultation is online here and the proposals can also be seen below:

#### Purdah starts today
Today marks the start of what's called the purdah period for communications for the UK local authority where I head up marketing and public relations.
Purdah period is the time from when a local or national election is called until the election day itself.
During this period public sector communicators are even more restricted than normal in what they can do. We already have a pretty comprehensive set of rules to keep to all the time.
The purdah period exists to ensure that there is no risk of public funds being used, or seen to be used to support one particular political party or another.
In practice it means most communications activity has to cease, as it's difficult to predict what may become a political issue during an election campaign.
Of course the business of local government continues, and some communications are required to support this, but they are limited in number and scope.
Don't get me wrong - we won't be sitting around twiddling our thumbs from now until Thursday, 3 May. We've got some really exciting projects in the pipeline that need developing before they launch.
I'm particularly excited about a project to encourage local action and participation to reduce carbon emissions in Medway. At the heart of the project is a very interesting website featuring some social networking tools and an automated email marketing engine. I really believe the combination of the two will give us a really special communications tool for this important cause. More on that later though - it's scheduled to launch in June 2007.

#### QR codes in marketing - why?
QR codes - the square matrix barcodes - seem to be everywhere nowadays. From lampposts to the end frames of some TV adverts there seems no escaping them.
If you've not used one, the way it works is you take a photograph of the QR code using a smartphone and you're then redirected to the web address behind the QR code - like a simple shortcut or call to action.
For quite a while now I've been thinking through the application of QR codes in marketing. While I can see the value in many of their uses, I'm still, to be brutally honest, struggling to see the point in many marketing applications of QR codes.
To me use of QR codes in most marketing scenarios feels a bit like a shiny new solution that looks cool, but for which marketers aren't really thinking through the problem that the use of the code is trying to solve.
While there's some evidence on current usage, such as recent research by mobile marketing agency Joule and lifestyle and environments agency Kinetic Worldwide, I'm not sure it shows much beyond trialling among the traditional early adopter audience:

	20% of 18-24 year olds use QR codes
	39% think they know how to use one
	37% think they could be useful • Largest use is in a media context
	Almost 40% of consumers are now familiar with the interactive matrix barcodes and across all age groups 12% of consumers have successfully scanned a QR code with their mobile phone camera and accessed the information it contained. However, this figure increases to 20% amongst 18-24 year olds and 15% for 25-34 year olds.
	On average, men were more likely to have used a QR code (15%) than women (12%) and, of people who have used them, most have done so with codes on advertising and on products (both 41%). The study found that 19% of users had put to use QR codes on a poster and 9% on a press advertisement but that ‘media’ was the top use for this technology.
	Although QR codes are achieving relatively high usage rates amongst 18-24 year olds, overall 43% of consumers say they have never seen one and just 1% of those aged 55-64 had used one successfully

So on the surface it's easy to look at the evidence and make the assumption that QR codes are a consumer technology in their infancy, gaining traction among traditional early adopters and therefore it's only a matter of time before they become more generally adopted among mass audiences.
But I'm not convinced.
And the quote at the end of the press release about that research inadvertently makes the point well (my emphasis):
“It’s clear from our research with Joule that younger consumers have been quick to integrate QR code interaction into their repertoire of digital experiences, but more education and information is necessary if QR codes are to reach a wider audience.”
The real problem here is that there isn't one that needs solving by QR codes in most marketing contexts.
The basic function of a QR code is to redirect a user to a piece of content of some sort somewhere online. But there's already something that exists that fulfils the same function - it's called a URL or web address.
So how do QR codes stack up against URLs when used as calls to action in marketing and communications:

	usability - the vast majority of people with access to the internet will recognise a URL and know what to do with it, whereas to successfully use a QR code to respond to a piece of marketing they need to recognise it, ensure they have a suitable app on their phone to handle it and then be physically able to take a picture of it. If you have to explain or educate about how to use QR codes, I'd suggest they're not really fit for purpose in many of their current marketing guises - especially when compared to using URLs themselves as calls to action.
	memorability  - much direct response doesn't happen at the point of seeing the ad - while in most marketers' dreams it might do, in reality consumers are exposed to hundreds of ads every day and don't respond immediately. A good URL will be easily remembered at a glance and recalled later on. A QR code can't be remembered without going through the hassle of snapping it in the first place.
	context - it's hard to see a context from which a consumer will respond to an advert or print publication where a QR code offers greater user value than a normal URL. Sometimes the uses of QR codes don't consider the users at all - for example when it's on the end frame of a TV ad for 5 seconds or on a poster on the opposite side of the railway line at a station. Other times, such as newspaper ads, it's perfectly possible to see either a QR code or URL working as a direct response mechanism - it's just hard to see why most rational users would opt for the QR code instead of the URL.

New Media Knowledge made a brave attempt to make the case for QR codes in their recent article. They quote Ivor Morgan, Head of EMEA marketing at ecommerce firm Venda:
“What QR codes carry isn’t just data. It’s the potential to extend an interaction beyond the original point of contact,” Morgan told NMK. "They can become out-of-hours shopping assistants if you use them in a shop window or you can use them to add to basket as Tesco Korea did with its subway poster adverts. Put them on your product packs and they can deliver far more useful information than the statutory content, calorie and caution information.”
Again, I'm really struggling to see the incremental value of QR in this context compared to the alternatives. What do QR codes do that URLs don't?
Am I showing my age here and developing some mid-thirties luddite tendencies, or am I right that marketers are rushing headlong into a QR frenzy without really thinking about their customers and the context in which they interact with ads?
 

#### Quote of the day
Every consumer experiencing a brand for the first time has taken a journey.  If well constructed, that journey will have been unique to the customer, will have been formed of an interlocked sequence of communications and will have occurred in multiple media - including word of mouth. Gavin Hilton (Planning Director, WWAV Rapp Collins), PrecisionMarketing magazine, 1 June 2007. I agree. [tags]WWAV+Rapp+Collins, brand+experience[/tags]

#### Radio interviews on council Twitter
Having got up to nearly 150 followers on the @medway_council Twitter account without any promotion, we thought it was about time we promoted it a bit.
Our news release grabbed the attention of two of Medway's local radio stations: BBC Radio Kent and kmfm.
Here's my BBC Radio Kent discussion about the council's use of Twitter with presenter Dominic King (@radiodking):
simon-radio-kent.mp3

#### Ramblings on Facebook, social networking and the future
The rapid growth of Facebook subscribers has caught the attention of offline media in a big way. Every newspaper I've picked up this week has featured a Facebook feature, and most have also noted Rupert Murdoch's concern that Facebook is overshadowing the Murdoch-owned MySpace. At the same time new social networks are springing up all over the place. It seems that these sites fall into one of two broad types: sites that don't target particular groups of people (such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo) and those that do (such as LinkedIn, and for communicators: MyRagan and the Melcrum's Communicator's Network). But how many social networks can one person actively participate in?  I can see how being a member of several social networks can easily lead to too much information than one person can cope with - from this tweet Neville looks like he's experiencing just this. In real life most people only have one social network one professional network. So why would they want to be a member of more than one social networking site for each real life network? Doing that would lead to duplication - linking up with the same people but on different services. It's likely that in the medium term any tool that links together social networks will find a role, but in the longer term I can see a big shakeout in the number of social networks out there as people start to congregate around the social network that delivers them most value. Facebook's open model is a big step towards allowing the user to generate their own value from the service through almost infinite customisation and personalisation. So given most people don't have the time to exist on many social networks at the same time, what does this mean for the targetted social networks against the larger general networks? The value of a social network is in people being able to socialise in whatever groups, formations or networks they want to operate in. As long as the general networks continue to allow people to create and manage their own groups, then for social networking alone there doesn't seem to be much differentiation against the specialist networks. In the world of communications, I guess the two specialist networks appreciate this. I haven't joined the Melcrum network, but the MyRagan network offers plenty of free content that's useful to communicators and should help encourage people to visit the site regularly.  The differentiator for the specialist networks here isn't the provision of the content itself, as that could be done in the same way on a general network, but is the fact the network is provided by a publisher that has the resources to produce the quality and amount of content that will help drive repeat visits. LinkedIn is an interesting case - I've yet to see real value from it beyond using it to keep track of professional contacts. If those contacts were on Facebook then I'd probably stop using LinkedIn - as it doesn't seem to offer any extra value as I don't use it for recommendations or introductions to new professional contacts (I've always wondered about the credibility of this kind of introduction, having only received irrelevant or time-wasting introductions myself). At a conference panel discussion a few weeks back a delegate asked how they could separate their personal life from their work life on social networks. The unanimous answer from the panel was that it just wasn't possible to separate them.  The pervasive and connected nature of the social web means that links will be eventually made between any separate profiles, so it just isn't worth doing - just another reason why fewer but bigger social networks will exist in a couple of years than they will now. Other posts worth checking out in a similar vein are:  Simon Collister has some intelligent thoughts on the topic Andrew Smith on the web's "social soup" Steve Rubel with a nice wrap-up on how it's all affecting PR And if you've got this far and don't have a clue what I'm writing about, then I can thoroughly recommend the recently published second edition of the social media whitepaper from Lee Hopkins and Trevor Cook - a great primer for this topic.

#### Reaching an RSS milestone
Logging into my Feedburner account this evening I was pleased to see my RSS subscriber figure was more than 100 for the first time.
As I've noted before the number of people getting my RSS feed has been growing consistently for the past six months.
It's immensely satisfying to know that many people are choosing to download my feed each day.
So thanks very much to all of you who receive the feed, and for those who are reading this on the website what are you waiting for?
The feed is at feeds.feedburner.com/simonwakeman.
If you don't know what an RSS feed is, then the BBC has a good primer that'll help you get started.

#### Reaching council residents with social media
Here's an article I wrote for the CIPR's Profile magazine on local government and social media - it was published in the February/March 2009 issue which is being delivered to members at the moment:
"Not only is it the future, its the here and now" is how Dominic Campbell, MD of FutureGov, describes social media. Whether councils like it or not, their publics are already interacting with each other using a wide range of social media tools. Now is the time for local government to start using social media as an integral part of the communications mix.
Earlier this year I undertook research to understand more about the use of social media in local government communications. The results showed an encouraging number of councils already using some form of social media in their communications. Blogs and podcasts were the most commonly used social media tools, with around 22% of councils using blogs and 7% using podcasts regularly in their communications. However more than 15% of councils had no plans at all to use social media in their communications mix.
The vast majority of UK councils still rely on a traditional communications mix based on media relations and paid-for advertising. The former relies on traditional media outlets with declining audiences, while effective advertising campaigns for councils are expensive and can struggle to deliver messages to increasingly marketing-savvy audiences.
In light of this, social media tools including blogs, podcasts and social networks present a real opportunity for local government communications.

Dave Briggs, independent public sector social media consultant, sees social media in local government communications as "a remarkable opportunity to tell an authority's story direct to the people in a really authentic way, which encourages conversation and feedback".
Indeed the groups that are already using social media most heavily are the young people that councils struggle to engage effectively - Ofcom research shows that 54% of 18 to 24 year olds have a profile on a social network and actively use social networks regularly.
There’s also real value in social media as a consultation tool for local government. Councils have a duty to consult their residents on key policy issues, yet many are still tied to traditional methods of consultation such as questionnaires and public meetings. While these tools are effective in reaching a proportion of residents, it’s often a similar group of politically-engaged residents that responds to them each time.
The government’s “Communities in control: real people, real power” white paper seeks to enhance the ability of communities to influence the delivery of local services more strongly and increase participation in local democracy.
It wants to “help citizens to get involved when they want to on their own terms” – for a significant group of residents this means engaging with them using social media tools where they spend hours engaging with others online every day.
There’s also strong evidence from Local Government Association and IPSOS Mori that residents who are well informed about council services are more satisfied with them.
Social media provides platforms for communicating with younger, more technologically able residents. Councils can start using social media to engage younger residents in local democracy and services to help increase satisfaction rates among young people.
As the concept of place shaping grows in local public service the communications challenge changes. Place shaping means councils need to work better with their local public sector partners, ensuring they deliver services people want to make their area somewhere people like living. This increased focus on a place instead of the organisations providing services provides another opportunity for social media in communications.
Barnet Council has launched a website called whereilive.org. The site allows  residents to speak out about their experience of living in Barnet. The site is closely integrated with image sharing website Flickr, video website YouTube and allows users to post content and stories. As well as providing an insight into residents’ priorities and concerns, it encourages residents to engage with the local council in a new and different way.
Dominic Campbell, one of the key players behind the site, sees the value of the site as providing “great opportunities for us to have conversations that matter with our residents and start to use the information to better shape the organisation in line with the needs and aspirations of those residents”.
While Barnet’s website is a large community-wide initiative, many other councils have tried out social media on a smaller scale.
Back in 2006 Medway Council launched the UK's first podcast from a local authority. We published the half-hour Mixit podcasts each month until mid-2007. The shows were produced in-house by communicators working closely with the council's youth service and a group of young people. The budget was less than £200 and the podcasts were produced using normal desktop PCs and freely available audio editing software.
Our aim for Mixit podcast was to create a two-way channel for communicating with young people in Medway and learn more about how to use podcasting in the communications mix. The shows were typically downloaded 360-400 times in the four weeks after they were published and were well received by young people.
Introducing a new communications tool always has its challenges. Research has shown that a lack of understanding of social media, both among council communicators and IT departments, is a key barrier to it being used more in council communications. How often are blogs or social networks seen as a risk rather than an opportunity in the minds of senior officers or politicians in local government?
To counter this it’s important to present a balanced case for using social media in communications by highlighting both the benefits and risks of the approach. Think about how these risks can be managed. Often other organisations and companies using social media have worked out how to do this.
At first glance the low cost of social media can be appealing to local government communicators. Many of the tools are free to users and councils can rapidly start using them with few barriers to entry.
However there are often hidden costs to using social media tools effectively – comment moderation or content creation are two of the areas where the amount of staff time required is underestimated.
The first step many communications practitioners take into social media is to get involved personally. Research shows a clear correlation between councils that use social media in their communications and personal use of social media by communications professionals.
Using social media personally helps communicators understand the basics of social media and become familiar with the etiquette of social media tools. Why not set up Google Alerts to track web and blog activity relating to your area or read blogs relevant to your area or professional interests?
It’s also worth familiarising yourself with the written and unwritten rules around social media. CIPR has social media guidelines and a code of conduct - keep to these and make sure you don’t forget the normal codes and protocols for local government publicity apply as much online as they do offline too.
Once you’re comfortable with the social media scene, think about how your organisation can engage with what’s happening already in social media. Don’t assume that you need to create your own blog, podcast or social network to use social media.
Barnet Council has identified local bloggers and encourages them to contact it with their concerns and problems. This approach seems to be working in turning potential online critics into social media advocates for the council.
Social media is changing the communications landscape in which local government communicators work. To be effective with reaching the broad populations that local government serves, councils need to understand and communicate through social media with the same level of professionalism as they currently manage traditional media relations.

#### Recent links from del.icio.us
Lightbox 2.2 plugin
		A great plug-in that fades the webpage and displays a linked image over it. Great for lightbox effects
		(tags: wordpress)
	
	
		Wordpress plug-ins database
		A resource containing thousands of handy Wordpress plug-ins
		(tags: wordpress)

#### Recent links from del.icio.us
Brand Mel?
		Post about Mel Gibson and personal branding
		(tags: personal+branding)
	
	
		MySpace Drives Ad Spend
		Commentary on advertising spending on social networking sites
		(tags: myspace+information)
	
	
		ChangeThis - Web 2.0
		A good primer about the impact of Web 2.0 on businesses and marketing activities
		(tags: social+media marketing)
	
	
		ChangeThis - guide to business blogging
		A great primer about why to get into blogging as a marketer
		(tags: blogging social+media marketing)
	
	
		Guide to the impact of Web 2.0 on public relations
		A pretty comprehensive primer for the range of social media tools available, and how they affect public relations
		(tags: pr)
	
	
		Link indication plug-in
		This plug-in is great as it applies custom classes and targets to external links automatically. Just publish the links in your content, set the rules in the admin area and it does the rest.
		(tags: wordpress)

#### Recent links from del.icio.us
Podcasting makes you a member of the media
		Information about podcasting for small businesses
		(tags: podcasting)

#### Recent links from del.icio.us
Podcast expert at PortableMediaExpo.com
		List of podcasting guides
		(tags: podcasting)

#### Recent links from del.icio.us
Recording with external mic [Archive] - Aximsite
		(tags: podcasting)

#### Recent links from del.icio.us
PodProducer
		Free software for podcast production
		(tags: podcasting)
	
	
		Jellycast - the record breaking podcast hosting service - fast podcasting hosts
		Low cost podcast and videocast hosting
		(tags: podcasting)
	
	
		How to Podcast
		Good guide to podcasting
		(tags: podcasting)

#### Recent links from del.icio.us
Before You Record A Podcast
		(tags: podcasting)

#### Recent links from del.icio.us
Podcasting - A smart guide to podcasts and podcasting
		A good introduction to what podcasting is all about
		(tags: simon's+podcast+project podcasting)
	
	
		Create podcasts using your PC
		A good nuts and bolts guide to producing audio content with PC and free software
		(tags: simon's+podcast+project podcasting)

#### Recent links from del.icio.us
London 2012 brand guidelines
		Basic information about protected rights for London 2012
		(tags: olympics marketing)
	
	
		Protected marks
		Summary of protected marks for London 2012
		(tags: olympics marketing)
	
	
		Full information and examples about permitted marks
		A full brief on what is and isn't permitted around London 2012 marketing
		(tags: olympics marketing)
	
	
		Unofficial London 2012 forum
		(tags: olympics marketing)

#### Recent links from del.icio.us
Periodical marketing
		Information about advertising in magazines and periodicals.
		(tags: marketing)

#### Redesigned website goes live
It's been a busy few evenings as I've been working hard to get my new website design live.
You can now see it in all its glory at www.simonwakeman.com.
I wanted to clean up the old design and increase the use of colour. I hope you like it. There are still a few minor display gremlins, but everything should be working as normal.
I'd like to say thanks very much to Andy Wake at Don't Panic Projects for his help with developing the design and colour scheme - I'm a pretty poor designer so Andy has to take a lot of the credit for how the site now looks.
If you spot anything untoward please do leave me a comment or drop me a line.
Normal blog service will now be resumed!

#### Reflections on LGcomms new media seminar
Have been up in Birmingham for a few hours today speaking at an event for local government communicators organised by LGcomms. Hearteningly the seminar was the most popular seminar they've ever organised, suggesting a latent demand for knowledge of new and social media among local government communicators. There were a range of presenters including the Home Office, Westminster, Essex and Medway Councils as well as Birmingham-based social media consultants Nick Booth (Podnosh) and Jon Bounds. It was also great to meet a few Twitter connections face to face, some for the first time. You can follow some of the discussions on Twitter using the #lgcommsnm hashtag. I talked about three examples of Medway's work with social media - you can see the slides here.

On a practical note it never ceases to amaze me how wifi seems to be something hard for conference venues to get right. While wi-fi was available, for whatever reason, it didn't work well as you had to keep logging in every few seconds. Not the organisers' fault at all, but failing wi-fi seems to be a consistent theme at many venues I've spoken at or attended events at. Back to the conference itself...a conversation with the conference chair got me thinking again about something that has come up in several discussions I've had over recent weeks - that there is not yet a single definitive online place or network that local government communications, marketing or public relations people can go to/use to share experiences and learn more about new or social media in action. It was clear from the audience today that many councils face similar issues in how they use and integrate new media into their communications - and sharing experience and knowledge is important. I've written before about the various networks out there that exist for this already, although none of the communicator-specific ones seem to have reached a critical mass. So what's the solution? Dave Briggs has suggested some sort of place that brings together existing communities. I think I agree with his sentiment although I haven't yet got it clear in my head what that actually looks like and how it works. Dave's also putting together a potential one-day event for local government web people, although that's likely to take a wider perspective on web stuff than just communications. What is clear is that large numbers of local government communicators know they want to know more about social media and are happy to share their different experiences to help others learn more. I'd be up for creating or facilitating something to make this happen online - but what would be the best way to do this? Should we create something new, or do we need to more actively push and work on community-building for one of the existing services (maybe the community of practice)?
Image: thanks to BirminghamBest via Twitpic

#### Regulation of UK newspaper and magazine websites
Just spotted an interesting post from Heather Yaxley about the UK's press self-regulatory body, the Press Complaints Commission, ruling about video content presented on a website belonging to the Hamilton Advertiser. The Press Complaints Commission operates a code of practice, and earlier this year extended its jurisdiction to editorial audio-visual content on magazine and newspaper websites. Heather's post focuses on the value of regulation in enhancing the credibility of these sources compared to similar, but unregulated, online news resources. She also notes that  This highlights the need for care in supplying material to online media - but also emphasises an opportunity to take action in the case of materials that may break the PCC code. It's worth noting that the PCC's jurisdiction only extends to what it calls "editorial" content on member websites - which doesn't mean everything that appears on such sites.  The PCC applies two requirements that must be fulfilled for content to be covered under its code:  That the editor of the newspaper or magazine is responsible for it and could reasonably have been expected both to exercise editorial control over it and apply the terms of the Code.  That it was not pre-edited to conform to the on-line or off-line standards of another media regulatory body. Many newspaper and magazine websites now include user-generated content, such as blogs, videos or forums, which may not be included within the PCC's code according to the commission:  Some of it, principally user-generated material such as blogs and chat-rooms, is not subject to editorial control. All such material will continue to fall outside the jurisdiction of the PCC. In the Hamilton Advertiser case the complaint was upheld on the basis of the user-generated content being used to support a more traditional "editorial" story, rather than because the content was published on the newspaper's website per se. If the video had been uploaded directly to a newspaper site by a user and not used to support editorial, then the PCC wouldn't have been able to rule against it. It's a small distinction, but worth noting as more newspapers and magazines blur their online presence to include both editorial and user-generated content. [tags]PCC, press+complaints+commission, regulation, video[/tags]

#### Relaunch of www.simonwakeman.com
I’ve been working hard over the last few weeks to redevelop content for this site. The site now contains more information on the consultancy services I provide and details of a number of the projects I have worked on to date.
Plus I’ve binned the tables and gone with a nice, clean CSS driven design. The learning curve was a bit steep but I think the time invested was worth it for future projects.
I am keen to use this site to show the range of projects I’ve worked on, and over time develop it into a useful place for marketing research and discussion.
One step at a time though…

#### Retune your RSS reader now!
Thanks to the impending demise of the Google-owned Feedburner service I've had to move my RSS feeds to a new home.
For those of you that read my blog via email, there's no need to do anything as I've migrated over to the excellent Feedblitz service (thanks to a useful blog post from Neville). You should be seeing some improvements in the appearance and functionality of the emails as I start playing with the new options that Feedblitz gives me.
If you read my blog using RSS then you'll need to make sure that you add a new RSS feed to your subscriptions - from now on please make sure you use:
https://www.simonwakeman.com/feed
While the old Feedburner feeds still work (feeds.feedburner.com/simonwakeman and feedproxy.google.com/simonwakeman), they won't be working for much longer, so please subscribe to the new feed now to make sure you keep in touch with my blog.
Or if you'd prefer to receive my posts by email you can subscribe for free at https://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=855320. If you're already an email subscriber you don't need to do anything as your subscription will remain active.

#### Revealing Map My Tracks
It's not often I highlight a work project here on my blog, but the Tinderhouse team has been hard at work over the past months creating a new service that we're launching very soon. It's called Map My Tracks and is a tracking tool for sportsmen and women. With a GPS-enabled mobile phone or non-GPS phone with a simple external GPS receiver you can track your runs, walks, bike rides, sailing trips; in fact just about anything that involves moving from one place to another. While out and about you can view a map or satellite image of your location and check out basic statistics. Once back home you can view your track on the web, replay it, analyse it and see even more information. What's really clever is that your track is plotted in real time on the web. The service works anywhere in the world where you can get a mobile connection with data. Here's a track from a quick lunchtime run that I did earlier in the week:  The uses for a tool like this are really varied:  coaches can use the tracks to show you where you went wrong compared to your competitors  friends and family could watch your progress during a race (and if all the competitors had Map My Tracks you could see where you were in the race and lots of other helpful statistics)  motivate yourself by racing against a previous track on the same course, showing how your performance improves with training  Plus we've tried to include some web 2.0 goodness too. Tracks can be tagged, shared, embedded, commented on and exported. There's a Map My Tracks blog as well where we'll be highlighting ways to use the service and new features as they launch. My particular favourite trick at the moment is to export a track to Google Earth and then fly through the track - great for showing other people where you've been and what you've been up to (I'll post a video of that when I get time to record one). The site's in beta testing right now so it's invitation only I'm afraid before the launch in February. That said we're always on the look out for willing beta testers to help us make sure the software works on as many different handsets as possible, to iron out any bugs on the site and to help us develop features that make the service even more valuable, particularly for sports that we're less familiar with (between us we run, cycle and sail). If you'd like beta access to the site, please email us at support@mapmytracks.com and we'll take it from there. It'd be really helpful if you could tell us what handset/mobile operator you use too. Disclosure: I work for Tinderhouse, amongst others.

#### Review: A Mind for Business by Andy Gibson
Psychology and neuroscience fascinate me, even if I do have trouble spelling them when writing a blog post.
With every day that passes I become more convinced that genuine leadership requires leaders to have a good understanding of these two disciplines and what they mean for the human interactions that make up our day-to-day working lives.
So that's why when a copy of A Mind For Business by Andy Gibson dropped on my doormat (yes, a real life paper copy), I was keen to get stuck in and see what it had to offer.
As my interest in psychology and neuroscience has grown over the past couple of years, I've read some pretty heavyweight books on the subjects. This has been intellectually rewarding but, to be honest, pretty hard work.
A Mind For Business is different - and refreshingly so. For the newcomer to this field it does a good job of cantering through contemporary thinking on the subject and giving a broad overview of the key issues and insights. It avoids the generalisations and trite assertions that characterise so many management books.
What I really liked is that while the breezy and practical style of the text is easy to read in the short bursts of time I seem to have to read nowadays, it's backed by decent references and ideas for further reading that help you delve further into the topic and understand the evidence behind the assertions that Andy makes in his book.
My favourite bit is the section about Inner Drive - which explores the value of intrinsic motivation in the workplace. If there's anything I'd recommend managers read, it's this section.
It explains succinctly, and without some of the usual corporate bullshit that characterises motivational thinking, why people are motivated and why they're not. Definitely worth checking out.
And he quotes one of my favourites too - Dan Pink, author of the excellent Drive:
We have oversold carrot and stick motivators and undersold motivators like autonomy, mastery and purpose.

As a brief aside, a lot of what I've learnt through my reading on this has been put into action at digital agency Deeson over the past few months. Tim Deeson and I have worked hard to build a culture based on intrinsic motivation and he's written about what we've done on the Deeson blog.
So back to A Mind For Business and to summarise, this is a great primer for anyone involved in people management, leadership or teamwork. It provides a superb overview of contemporary thinking and is well grounded in evidence.
And if you want to delve deeper, it points you in the direction of some of the best sources around on the subject. This is one I'd definitely recommend.
Disclosure: Free review copy supplier by publisher

#### Review: Compact Innergie PocketCellT
This month things have been pretty busy on the work front. That means plenty of long hours in the office, late evenings on the laptop and a few trips out including running a course in Glasgow.
When I'm travelling I rely on my technology kit to work on, to entertain me and to keep in touch. On longer trips that means that the batteries can take a bit of a hammering, particularly on my HTC Sensation.
On a typical day the battery will last easily through the day. But if I'm using a lot of screen time, GPS or particularly if I'm somewhere with patchy reception, it's surprising how by the end of the day I find myself shutting down apps and turning off the backlight completely to get the most out of a dwindling battery.
I'd been thinking about getting a mobile power pack to carry with me for these occasions when the guys from Innergie sent me one of their new Compact Innergie PocketCellT's to try out.
Having road tested it for a few weeks I'm very impressed. It's a tiny bit of kit - just 10 cm long, 3 cm wide and weighing less than 72g - easy to carry in a jacket pocket when I don't have a briefcase or rucsac with me.
It takes a charge from a USB connection, which means you can charge it up from a laptop USB port or a USB-based charger like most mobile phone chargers. It comes with a neat little multi-device connector which means you can charge virtually any mobile phone, iPhone, iPod, Kindle or tablet easily. The indicator lights on the side show you how much charge is left in it which is a handy feature that not power packs have.
For the techies amongst you it's a 3000 mAh device, which for most of us means in practice you'll get four or five hours extra life on a tablet or up to fifteen hours on an average smartphone. The full spec is here.
The PocketCellT retails for £79.99 although with a bit of online shopping you'll easily find it a bit cheaper than that.
Disclosure: Free trial device supplied for review purposes

#### Reviewing "Life's a Pitch"
A week or so I was sent a free review copy of a new book by Stephen Bayley and Roger Mavity, called "Life's a Pitch".

I have to admit I'm a bit slow posting my thoughts on this one, but I guess I have a pretty good excuse! Stuart Bruce, Ellee Seymour and Richard Bailey have posted their reviews on this book too.
Visually it's a strikingly designed book, with a big bold cover and plenty of clear space on the pages. The two halves of the book have a very different feel, but more on that later.
The big idea behind the book is that we are pitching something almost every day of our lives, even if we may not consciously realise it:
The date which leads to a passionate affair is a pitch. The interview which starts your career is a pitch. Every new meeting, every new opportunity, involves pitching. We're at it all the time.
The book is divided clearly into two halves: the first, by Roger Mavity, is a clear no-nonsense guide to improving your pitching skills in a variety of situations. The second by Stephen Bayley is a more reflective read, with almost a semi-academic tone.
Personally I found the first half much more engaging than the second. I suspect that's because I found the written style of Mavity's section easier to read and the content more directly applicable to my professional life.
On almost every page I found a tip that made me think of what I do at work, and how I could improve my effectiveness. I found myself nodding at many of the situations described having experienced them myself, and I think my empathy with the author made this part of the book extremely credible.
Bayley's book was a more challenging read. With the change in font and text spacing it even looked visually like it was going to be harder-going. But once I managed to adjust to the change in tempo I began to enjoy this part of the book too. It throws up some interesting challenges and questions for further thought.
Since finishing the book I have gone back and read several of Bayley's chapters again. I found them an easier read second-time around, and found myself going away and thinking further about the arguments he made.
I'd thoroughly recommend Life's a Pitch as a practical guide to improving your personal effectiveness at home and at work. Roger Mavity's half will give you with many tips to put into action, while Stephen Bayley's contribution will encourage to you to take a step back and think about some of the situations that crop up in life.
On a related note in a comment to Stuart's review, Richard Bailey notes that the book has an impressive PR machine rolling at the moment.
There's a YouTube video, coverage in last Sunday's Observer newspaper, on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, and in another national newspaper that I picked up in the hospital on Tuesday (can't remember which!).
There's also an interesting mobile marketing campaign for the book, although I'd question whether it's practical for a potential reader to sample a book chapter by SMS - nice to see an innovative approach all the same though.
Given the reviews that have been appearing on marketing and PR blogs, the publishers seem to have a pretty effective approach to blogger relations too. Pitching to bloggers is a fine art, but the publishers Bantam and their agency Outside Line seem to have got it about right.

#### Richard Stokoe on local government public relations
Spotted an interesting piece by Richard Stokoe, Head of News at the Local Government Association, about the role of public relations in local government (article online here).
The general feeling in the article is that local government public relations (or, more accurately, media relations) is predominantly defensive and reactive, focussed on defending reputation.
One of the real challenges I have in local government public relations is rooting out the great story angles that exist in the council - there are probably hundreds of such stories around the organisation, but many of the practitioners responsible for them don't realise they're doing something newsworthy - they just see that they're doing their jobs.
Public relations practitioners working in local government don't just need to be adept media handlers or skilled wordsmiths, they need really strong interpersonal skills to build productive working relationships with local government officers. Without these relationships it's virtually impossible to hunt down those great story angles that can help improve the council's reputation.

#### Roadtesting mobile broadband from 3
A few weeks back we had some problems with our home broadband connection, leaving us without any internet access for a couple of days.  The whole episode made me realise how many of our day-to-day activities rely on being connected. I have internet access through my mobile phone on 3, but I'd been thinking about whether to invest in a proper mobile broadband dongle to give proper connectivity when out and about, and a reserve broadband connection when at home. The arrival of an email from the team at 3mobilebuzz offering a trial of the latest HSDPA mobile broadband USB stick from 3 was perfect timing. I've been using the stick for around a week now, and thought it was about time to blog about my experiences so far. Installation Getting the broadband set up on my Windows laptop was a doddle. I just had to put the SIM into the stick, insert the stick in a spare USB port and then Windows did the rest.  The software required to control the connection is installed on the stick so there are no CDs or software downloads required. Speeds This is where it gets tricky, as the speeds I get on my landline and mobile broadband connections depend on where I am, how I'm connected etc. So my experiences won't be the same as someone somewhere else, but all the same I think the speed tests I've done are worth posting.  For the record I'm in Whitstable on the Kent coast - so not an urban area but not out in the sticks either. I have good 3G coverage at home and for the landline broadband we're about three miles from the exchange. I've done three speed tests around the same time of day: The first is on my landline broadband through a wired connection from my router to my laptop:    The second is using my landline broadband through a wireless connection from the router:    The third is the same test using my 3 mobile broadband connection:   So on speed grounds the mobile broadband is giving me download speeds just over a third of the speed of my home broadband, and upload speeds at around 15% of my home broadband uploads. Those figures surprise me as having worked with the mobile broadband, it doesn't seem slow in everyday internet and email use. I guess that's because the value of faster speeds is only really felt on heftier data volume uses like downloading software or music files. Looking at 3's map of their turbo network coverage I see that Whitstable doesn't have the turbo network yet. When it does I should be able to achieve 2.8MB/s download speeds which will be comparable with my landline broadband. Costs The next thing worth looking at is how much mobile broadband costs. The 3 dongle is available on contracts and pay as you go. On 18 month contracts it costs £10pm (1GB data per month), £15pm (3GB data per month) or £25pm (7GB data per month). Every 1MB over those levels costs you 10p. For most of the contract plans the dongle doesn't cost anything.  If you want to pay as you go, the dongle is £69.99 and each 1MB will cost you £1 (or it's cheaper if you go for an internet add-on). It's taken me a good 20 minutes to unpick the pricing, and to be honest I'm not sure I've got it absolutely right now as the 3 site's not exactly clear on what, if any, line rental you'd pay for your data connection.  While this is more expensive that you'd pay for most landline broadband connections, the benefit with mobile broadband is of course it's just that - mobile. I've used it successfully on the train and when I've been out and about.  The only other thing worth noting is that when the dongle is in use it gets really hot. When you're using it on a laptop without mains connection it does drain the battery faster - in my experience it reduces my laptop's battery life by around 40%. Having ubiquitous internet connectivity is probably the logical next step for me - so much of my work depends on connectivity that it will help make my work more efficient and responsive to client needs. The 3 dongle looks like a good solution for this, although I haven't checked out the competition yet. Disclosure: free dongle and unlimited data for three months from www.3mobilebuzz.com

#### Role of social media in local government - project report
A message from Carl Haggerty reminds me that I've forgotten to publish my CIPR dissertation that I completed earlier this year.
The dissertation looked at the role of social media in local government in the UK - it included primary research into current social media practices as well as considering the roles that social media could play in the future.
While I've blogged about many of the contents of the project, hopefully it'll be useful to local government communications and web folk as well as CIPR Diploma students to see the full report.
Reading it back a few months on, it's interesting how my thoughts on some of the conclusions I reached have changed. The project was very focussed on communications, but the role of social media in local government is far wider than just communications. I think I probably underplayed the role of society and organisational culture too, but that's another post someday soon.
So here it is - you can download the full report using the link below:
CIPR Diploma report - What is the role of social media in local government
Feel free to circulate as you wish - and let me know if you have any comments, questions or thoughts.

#### Roles for Twitter in public sector communications
A useful summary of potential uses for Twitter in public sector communications, thanks to Dave Fleet:

	Early-warning issues management - identify emerging issues early before they bubble up to the media; 
	Monitoring reaction - through persistent Twitter searches, departments can track sentiment, content and other trends in reaction to announcements; 
	
Direct-to-citizen communication - Twitter, and other social media tools, can help organizations communicate directly with their target audiences rather than going through the filter of the media; 
	Put a face on the organization - government often suffer from being faceless organizations, while politicians seem aloof. Social media tools in general can help to counteract this; 
	
Emergency management - emergency coordinators need to get information out quickly to people in an emergency; Twitter could even work at a hyper-local level; 
	Raise awareness of resources - government websites can be impenetrable mazes, designed by committee to placate competing silos with information buried deep inside the site. Twitter can help to point people to the right place; 
	Identifying resources and information - a more individual use, which worked for me - Twitter can be invaluable for finding answers and identifying resources for those last-minute requests (contrary to popular opinion, government communications can move very quickly at times) - just throw the request or question out there for a rapid response

I'd add to Dave's list:
Customer service - providing another alternative point of access for customers to public sector services
Community building - reaching out to people in the community with shared interests to help build a group or coalition about a particular issue or topic - often people that wouldn't ordinarily come into contact with the public sector
What other uses can you think of?

#### RSS and predictions for 2007
The blogosphere is alive with predictions for 2007 - one of the best set I've seen is over at Read/Write Web.
A prediction I wholeheartedly agree with is that the use of RSS by consumers and publishers will explode next year. All the ingredients for this now seem to be in place, with as IE7 with its in-built RSS support dominating the Microsoft share of internet browsers.
One such service that has already appeared is the new Edelman/Newsgator launch of Hosted Conversations (covered here and here).
I'm sure this will be one of the first of a slew of new services that close the gap between advertising and social media conversations. There are already a few services that integrate RSS-fed content into more traditional web advertising formats, but Hosted Conversations adds the infrastructure and content moderation that makes this more attractive to big advertisers.
It'll be interesting to see how the service shows up once it's live for a real client campaign. I wonder how it will deal with some content owners (bloggers) not wanting their feed content repurposed in this way - and whether content owners will welcome this way of republishing their content.
The service is only available to Edelman clients, although I'm sure over time if it's a success it'll be made more generally available.

#### Running for Action Medical Research
On April 25th this year I'll be tackling the full 26.2 miles of the Virgin London Marathon.
It's a great challenge and, from what friends who have completed the London Marathon tell me, it's a race with an excellent atmosphere too.
I'm running to raise money for a charity called Action Medical Research - the leading UK-wide medical research charity dedicated to helping babies and children.
The charity finds and funds the very best medical research in hospitals and universities across the UK that is most likely to deliver real benefit to babies, children and young people. Their funding is focussed on research that aims to improve medical care in three areas:

	Treating sick and vulnerable babies
	Helping disabled children
	Targeting rare diseases in children

My lead sponsor for the race is Public Sector Forums (PSF) - one of the UK's leading public sector IT, web and communications communities and event organisers. I'd really like to thank Nick Hill and Gary Marston from PSF for their generous sponsorship for the marathon.
If you'd like to sponsor me for the marathon and help me raise as much money as possible for this great charity, my online sponsorship page is here or use the link below:

And to use a bit of community peer pressure to keep my training motivation going, below is a live feed from my training log. Feel free to nag me in the comments if you think I'm slacking!

#### Sample social media policies
An important part of managing the impact of social media on an organisation is having an effective social media policy for staff.
A good policy helps staff understand what they can and can't do with social media at work, as well as helping protect the organisation against some of the risks of using social media.
Written carefully a policy should be an enabler, rather than a hindrance. It should help encourage staff to use social media tools in a way that's appropriate to their role and help managers have confidence in this use.
I'm also a firm believer that a social media policy needs to focus on behaviours, rather than tools. Regular review of policies is, of course, important, but focussing on desirable and undesirable behaviours gives a degree of "future-proofing" for a social media policy.
Intel
These guidelines do a good job on focussing on activities rather than specific tools.  They reference other codes that staff need to be aware of and make the organisation's expectations of its staff clear. They also offer positive guidance about what constitutes "good" and "meaningful" online engagement which should help encourage constructive use of social media.
I also like the way the Intel guidelines make clear that responsibility for what staff use social media for lies with staff - it  makes ownership clear while also making strong links with the impact that staff use of social media can have on the organisation's reputation as a whole.
UK Civil Service
Strictly speaking these aren't a full set of guidelines,  but advice to civil servants about how the existing Civil Service Code applies to social media. There's nothing in there that'd I'd disagree with, but I'm not convinced how useful these would be in practice - although some guidance is better than none at all
However these have the feeling of something that's been negotiated by numerous committees and through that process of negotiation and amendment has been oversimplified to reach agreement. I'd be interested to know how useful these guidelines are for civil servants working in this space - I suspect there may be departmental policies that provide more specific guidance on applications of social media relevant to a particular service.
Gartner public web participation guidelines
Similar to the Intel guidelines, these are focussed on ensuring productive use of social media and draw a clear link between use of social media and delivery of business benefits for the company. For public sector organisations writing a social media policy I think it's important that this link is made - to reduce potentially time-wasting but well-intentioned use of social media that doesn't contribute to productive outcomes for a particular service.
It also tackles the thorny issue of an individual posting content that could be seen to contradic a corporate position on a particular issue. While I like the approach, I think local government in particular may need a stronger line on this because of the role of non-political officers in delivering public service in line with policy - this makes the issue of personal points of view in contradiction to corporate policy more challenging.
Devon County Council social media and online participation policy and guidelines
A bit closer to home for public sector communicators, the Devon policy is one of the best I've come across in the local government sector. I like the fact they've got a clear definition of scope and some underlying principles that can be interpreted by officers depending on the tool they're using.
The more detailed guidelines by channel are useful in helping officers interpreting what behaviours the organisation consider acceptable and unacceptable without being overly prescriptive.
The only aspect that I think is missing from the policy (and this may well be because it's somewhere else in the organisation - that's alluded to in the context of youth engagement) is how the council manages its service presences on social media - who is allowed to set up what presences? Can officers do their own thing or is there a approval or regulation process that needs to be followed?
For any organisation looking to draft a policy there's a lot to learn from what other organisations have written, but equally a "copy and paste" approach won't work either as every organisation is different and will have subtly differing things they need to achieve with their policy.
If these aren't enough food for thought you can find even more information and comprehensive lists of social media policies here and here.
If you've got any more policies worth sharing, please post them in the comments here so the local public service communications community  can benefit from your find!

#### Searching for PR professionals in Australia
Checking the front page of my website I see it's been almost a month since I last posted. During that time there seem to have been so many times when I've thought "I must post about that" but then haven't had the time to follow it through.  One of the projects that I've been working on is an interesting search for a media relations or PR professional in Australia on behalf of a client. They've asked me to see how social media could be used to identify a set of potential candidates for setting up their Australian business. I've not tackled a project like this before, but it's been really interesting seeing how social media and the networks it encourages can be used in a different way to the ways I usually use them. I've spent a lot of time trawling through profiles on professional networks like LinkedIn, MyRagan and Melcrum, as well as even dusting off my old username and password for Ecademy (I see I first registered there in 2003). I've also been searching using more mainstream social networks, but as I'd expected, the ratio of suitable to unsuitable candidates isn't great compared to the specialist networks. The next stage in my search is to look for suitable professionals in Australia who are engaged in social media beyond the specialist networks I mentioned. I'm thinking about bloggers, podcasters etc who are probably freelance or contract consultants and have the experience my client is looking for. It struck me this evening that I've missed a trick so far though. I know I have a few Australian readers on this blog, so why didn't I post here about the kind of person that my client is looking for too? The beauty of social networks is you never quite know who is connected to who. So, here's the lowdown: my client is an established UK business providing online media relations management tools, with a particular strength in the public and not-for-profit sectors. They are looking to establish a PR/sales/training operation to expand sales of their flagship tool in Australia, particularly targetting local government and not-for-profit organisations. The person they're looking to employ will be the lead in establishing this presence - learning how to use the tool, introducing it to leads and doing basic training/advice for potential clients. They're a small, friendly business and believe their product sells itself once it's used so definitely don't want a "hard sell" sales person. They're quite open to different types of people with different skills and experience, so the spec for their ideal employee is simple:  have some exposure to councils/not-for-profits in Australia, ideally in PR/media relations technologically savvy enough to explain and show the online tool (it's powerful, but not very complicated) be a relationship builder not a pressure sales person Do you know anyone who could fit the bill? Any names, leads or ideas would be gratefully received. For the right person this could be a great opportunity to develop an Australian business almost from scratch. Plus they're a great bunch of people to work with, and I'm not just saying that because they're a client of mine. :)

#### Senior web developer wanted - Canterbury, Kent
My good friends over at Canterbury-based online design and development agency Tinderhouse are on the hunt for a senior web developer.
They've got some great clients and projects, including the MapMyTracks GPS sports tracking system and are based at the Canterbury Innovation Centre.
The full details are below. If you're interested drop them a line at recruitment [at] tinderhouse.com and make sure you let them know you saw the job here!
Senior web developer
Due to an increasing order book we have an immediate opening available for a senior web developer. As an integral part of the development team you will be responsible for delivering first class web websites and mobile apps across a diverse range of projects.
We are looking for a dynamic forward thinking person to fill this exciting role that will be working on a range of client projects as well as our own service, Map My Tracks.
The ideal candidate will be responsible for developing websites from concept through to completion. Along the way you should be able to:

	communicate with clients on a professional level;
	develop design concepts into completed solutions;
	organise and implement the project to meet the deadline and budget.

Skills required
To be successful in this roll the right the ideal candidate should:

	BSc/MSc/PhD in Computer Science or related;
	be proficient in using PHP, MySQL;
	have a full understanding of AJAX, Moo Tools & JQuery;
	have a complete understanding of hand coding accessible websites using XHML and CSS;
	have a genuine interest in developing leading-edge websites and mobile apps;
	have experience of building websites with a CMS (Expression Engine experience is a must); and
	have a basic understanding of SEO principles.

Responsibilities of the Senior Web Developer

	Work in a structured support environment incorporating: analysis, design fixes, coding standards, code review, quality assurance, source code management and documentation;
	Adhere to department policies, procedures, guidelines and best practice initiatives;
	Contribute to the team by sharing new ideas and technologies in meetings;
	Work closely with account managers to ensure client satisfaction;
	Communicate with all relevant areas of the business to ensure client satisfaction;
	Able to identify and diagnose and fix custom code.

It goes without saying that the ideal candidate should be highly motivated, able to adapt to a changing environment, be flexible and able to work through problems. A passion for the cycling, running and the outdoors is an advantage.
This is a permanent position available to start immediately based in our office at the Canterbury Innovation Centre in Canterbury.
If you think you are the right person for this position send your CV and detail of your experience together with examples your work including your input for each project to recruitment [at] tinderhouse.com.
Benefits

	Great salary
	20 Days holiday a year – rising 1 day per annum served up to a maximum of 25
	Good and fair companywide bonuses
	Training budget to go towards your ongoing growth and training
	Socials

#### Shabby PR from SOCITM
It's been quite a while since my last post I have to admit. Not through any lack of thoughts about interesting stuff to write about, but purely thanks to a lack of time to actually put some words down.
But tonight I have been spurred into action in a minor fit of pique by online coverage of a story from SOCITM about council websites and their (lack of) compliance with the recently enacted privacy regulations on the use of cookies on websites.
I can't see a press release about this in the news section of the website but given the coverage, I'd guess they've put out a release about how poor councils are at understanding their current use of cookies - highlights from various websites below:

	Socitm: Councils will struggle to meet cookie law
	Socitm ‘cookies’ audit identifies scale of task for local public sector websites to comply with new legislation
	99% of UK gov websites are breaking the law
	Council websites fail to cut cookie compliance issue

I've no problem with news stories about issues with council websites - the scrutiny of online or offline media of any sort is valuable in holding the performance of public sector websites to account.
However what really does hack me off is SOCITM, a membership organisation for ICT professionals working in local authorities and the public and third sectors, publicy bashing the competence and performance of the sector they are meant to support. And all of this because they have recently launched a chargeable service to help councils manage their cookies in the light of the new regulations.
As a PR man I'm well versed in the technique in play here - create a stir around headline grabbing stat or two then ride to the rescue with a carefully pitched product or service to solve the various woes created by aforementioned stat. It's a common ploy and used to great effect by IT security companies among others.
But surely a membership organisation for the sector can see the wider picture beyond their own commercial noses? The sector has enough reputational challenges of its own without a body meant to be supporting and helping the sector using cheap headlines to sell their own products.
Apparently one of SOCITM's three aims is:
explicitly benefit employing organisations as well as individual members
It shouldn't really need pointing out, but publicly trashing the services provided by "employing organisations" and "individual members" to get coverage for a product you're trying to sell us isn't going to meet this aim.
Shabby PR tacics from SOCITM and I'm not impressed.
And having got that off my chest, I shall resume more constructive blogging once again...!

#### Sharpening the saw for 2014
If you've read Stephen Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" you'll be familiar with habit 7 - sharpening the saw.
In this excerpt he explains what sharpening the saw is all about:
It means having a balanced program for self-renewal in the four areas of your life: physical, social/emotional, mental, and spiritual.
As you renew yourself in each of the four areas, you create growth and change in your life. Sharpen the Saw keeps you fresh so you can continue to practice the other six habits. You increase your capacity to produce and handle the challenges around you. Without this renewal, the body becomes weak, the mind mechanical, the emotions raw, the spirit insensitive, and the person selfish....
Feeling good doesn't just happen. Living a life in balance means taking the necessary time to renew yourself. It's all up to you. You can renew yourself through relaxation. Or you can totally burn yourself out by overdoing everything. You can pamper yourself mentally and spiritually. Or you can go through life oblivious to your well-being. You can experience vibrant energy. Or you can procrastinate and miss out on the benefits of good health and exercise. You can revitalize yourself and face a new day in peace and harmony. Or you can wake up in the morning full of apathy because your get-up-and-go has got-up-and-gone. Just remember that every day provides a new opportunity for renewal--a new opportunity to recharge yourself instead of hitting the wall. All it takes is the desire, knowledge, and skill.
As part of my "sharpening" a year ago I made a commitment to do at least fifteen minutes of exercise every single day. I kept it up for just over six months and felt much better for it. Since then I've lapsed a bit, but I'm going to see if I can beat my record this year. The MapMyTracks one-a-day challenge for 2014 is a great way to kick this off.
The other area I'm working on as I find it stimulating and rewarding is about learning. I've been eyeing up massive open online courses (MOOCs) for a while now, but have always managed to find an excuse why I can't learn some new stuff on a course or two.
But now I've bitten the bullet and made a commitment to myself to do some learning on some areas that personally interest me. Over the next couple of months I'm going to be studying:
Social and Economic Networks: Models and Analysis - with Stanford University
I'll be learning about how to model social and economic networks and their impact on human behaviour. This includes looking at how networks form, why they exhibit certain patterns, and how does their structure impact diffusion, learning, and other behaviours? The course brings together models and techniques from economics, sociology, maths, physics, statistics and computer science to answer these questions - something that I'll find really interesting and helpful to my work too.
Innovation for Powerful Outcomes - with Swinburne University
Innovation involves transformative thinking and the genuine ability to cultivate and pick the lucrative fruits of our creative labour. This course is about developing an appreciation for a range of tools and concepts that can help make innovation happen. It contains a stimulating mix of creative experiments, intriguing innovation examples, practical tools and robust concepts. These will help induce creativity, gain deep customer insights, and develop an appreciation for creating a compelling innovation strategy.
I've carved out the time each week to meet this learning commitment and can't wait to get started. Who knows where this approach to "sharpening" might take me in 2014?
So what's your commitment to sharpening the saw this year?

#### Smash your brand
This is a guest post from Chris Marritt. Chris is a former national newspaper journalist who has been plying his trade in PR on the agency side for two years, and blogging for six months. His blog, www.hackflack.co.uk , looks at PR, marketing and journalism as he climbs the steep learning curve from Hack to Flack.

I read a post on Shel Holtz's blog recently about Shell Oil's use of video online and more particularly, what he calls 'Edge Content'.
Edge content, Shel says, is about allowing people to encounter their brand where they find it, and can be seen really well on widgets down the side of people's blogs or websites.
Not only does this open up your brand to more people, but encountering brands in this unobtrusive way is far more likely to lead people back - presumably away from the edge - to your website, where they can engage with you more fully.
Todd Defren, on his PR Squared blog, relates to it by saying he encourages his clients to Think Like A Cannon:
"You want to blow your content to smithereens.  Let shards of content scatter across the web; the trails of shrapnel created by this process will lead back to you and strengthen your brand."
It reminded me (apart from Hansel and Gretel) of a piece by Martin Lindstrom on a Times MBA podcast recently (transcript here), in which he talks of smashing your brand.
Work on all aspects of your brand, and on how people encounter it using all their senses, so that if it was smashed into a thousand pieces, somebody could still find one tiny fragment - a colour, a sound, a smell - and know it is a piece of you.
Whether it is through instant recognition of a massively powerful brand, or by following a trail to complete a jigsaw, the key appears to be in getting fragments of you out as far as possible.
This doesn't apply just to photos and videos, and to the way technology platforms allow people to encounter them.
For me, working in PR, this is about the value of short quotes from spokespeople as well as main features on the business; it is  the importance of hitting the target audience both in context and out, yet all the time, remaining consistent; it is about scattering big and small pieces, but making sure they are all part of the same jigsaw.
(image credit: poeckie via flickr)

#### Smell as a marketing tool
Sometimes a really simple marketing idea works.
While I was out and about recently I walked past a fruit and vegetable shop. I was really struck by the strong smell of oranges coming from the display pictured above.
It reminded me about how powerful our senses are in marketing. Without the use of smell I wouldn't have given the oranges display a second glance, but the cut oranges were giving off a great orangey smell that stopped me in my tracks and made me get out my cameraphone (ok, so the last bit is because I'm just a little bit sad about marketing, but there you go).
All too often marketers fall into the trap of appealing to the eyes, for example through printed materials, when using sound and smell can really add to the effectiveness of marketing.

#### So here it is - the new London 2012 logo
Presentation still going on..more later

Update: further post from the launch here, and further analysis here.
  [tags]London+2012, 2012, london, branding, brand, brand+values[/tags]

#### So it's official - Google and YouTube
The deal has been done - Google has picked up YouTube for $1.65m - full information courtesy of CBS.
The guys behind YouTube have posted a short video message about the acquisition - and look as happy as someone who just sold their business for $1.65 should do!
A mixed blogosphere reaction so far. I did spot a good analysis piece on Digital World. Some feel only time will tell whether the deal is a good thing. Mark Cuban is convinced that the copyright issues that Google are acquiring will cause them some problems.
My initial take on this is that the deal is part of the natural grouping of social media services - at the moment most services deal with content types separately, but the next phase of social media development will be closer integration between content types, and the yet wider networking opportunities that will bring. This deal will help facilitate such groupings.
One thing is for sure, this is just another piece of evidence that backs up Simon's view that 2006 is the year social media came of age.

#### So what's a blog then?
The discussion about what makes a blog a blog has resurfaced again - I was struggling with a definition recently when putting together a presentation about social media, so the debate is particularly timely for me.
Neville Hobson has a good summary, while Dominic Jones has a more lengthy discussion of the key issues here.
For me there are two key aspects to the discussion:
1) Does the ability to post comment make a website a blog?
I've always been clear that comments have been an important aspect of blogging - the whole activity of blogging for me is about a two-way conversation - not a one-way monologue.
Shel's comment addresses exactly this point. In an ideal world the dialogue would take place on blogs, with me blogging my input to the conversation on my blog and then tracking back to the blog I'm responding too.
However in the real world this approach would significantly limit the number of potential participants in the conversation as the minority of people have their own blog. From a usability point of view the conversations can be a lot harder to track when they're dissipated over multiple blogs, rather than sequentially listed on a single blog page.
On the flip side conversations comprising a post and sequential comments on a single page can be very hard to follow on blogs with a large audience - for example try to follow the conversation on this post.
So do comments really make a blog? They might do - it depends on the individual blog.
2) Does Winer's "the unedited voice of a person" definition work?
On the surface it does. It expresses very simply the underlying premise of what a blog is.
But when you think a bit further a crack appear. Does it preclude a team or corporate blog where there are multiple contributors?
So I guess the real point is actually the word "unedited".
For me the core essence of a blog is that it's a direct communication from one or more individuals, not filtered, moderated or edited by anyone else.
Being unedited is the pre-requisite. Once that's established we can consider all the other valid factors that we see in definitions like Neville's that can make a website more or less blog-like:
  1. Reverse chronologically-ordered content, written by the author
   2. Author’s personality/passion shining through in the posts
   3. Commenting - the means for visitors to comment on the blog itself
   4. Trackbacks (links to and from other blog posts)
   5. Content distribution by RSS
However I suspect that we may be attempting the impossible by trying to draw a firm line between what's a blog and what's not.
Like most things in life there's a grey area - a continuum between a website at one end and a blog at the other. And there are a number of variables, such as those above, that position a website/blog on that continuum.

#### Social design, systems thinking and communications
Brighton and Hove Council's John Shewell's PR Week column caught my eye today.
He argues that the role of communications teams in councils needs to change radically, advocating a shift from the predominant broadcast model of council communications to a fully-fledged approach based on engagement:
Communicators need to explore this model of communications and reconfigure their operations to capitalise on the vast network of social goodwill that exists to build strong and credible campaigns.
I agree some of John's points about the need to take a broader systems-based approach to delivering behaviour change. Many of the objectives that are set for communications teams demand a broader focus than can be delivered through just the normal communications mix alone.
But I'm not convinced that it's a logical progression to say that communications teams need to make themselves obsolete as John suggests. It's more complex than that.
For a public sector organisation to effectively deliver societal change, a broad and inclusive approach is vital. That approach needs to involve a wider range of stakeholders than traditionally it has done - embracing the co-creation ethos that John so passionately advocates.
But are communications teams the right people to be pushing this agenda alone?
No - they have a real role to play and need to upskill and adjust to a more mutually balanced relationship with their publics, but this fundamental shift in public service isn't about communications teams morphing into something different in a desparate attempt at self-justification in the new environment.
That's just too simplistic an argument to make for me I'm afraid.
The wind is clearly blowing in the direction of nudge theory. Inherently this demands a different approach to organising and mobilising public sector resources to deliver changes for the better in communities.
And there's clearly a role for communicators in this. As the guardians of an organisation's relationships with publics, communicators have the skillset across multiple different engagement channels to influence organisation-public relations.
That doesn't mean they need to take over and over-extend in the way John's suggesting. They need to understand a systems approach to social design as John puts forward and may need to act as advocates or proponents of this approach.
But for it to be a success this approach needs to be hardwired into an organisation's structure, processes and most importantly people. It's not an agenda that communicators can push alone.
Taking the broader view, I have to conclude that there are other things that the majority of council communicators should be doing. Driving up professional standards, increasing and demonstrating the value of communications in public service delivery and acting as genuine strategic counsel to senior officers and politicians are among those things.
Improving the profession's performance in those areas is the way to continue to develop the role of communications in public service, not trying to push in a direction that for most councils will require more fundamental change than one profession alone can achieve.

#### Social marketing: Changing public behaviour through communications
Last month I posted about social marketing and how I see it will become increasingly important in public sector communications during 2010.
Later this month Charity Comms is running a social marketing conference aimed at helping charity communicators learn more about social marketing and how to apply it in their organisations.
The conference takes place in London on 27 January - full details here.
Here's a summary of what the day's about:
Changing the way people think and behave to deliver your organisation’s mission. It’s a daunting task. CharityComms’ latest conference will equip you with the essential tools and knowledge your organisation needs to do it successfully.
Whether it’s encouraging people to live more healthily or pushing them to save the environment, getting people to change the way they think and act is a key goal for many charities.
Changing people’s behaviour can be difficult. But it’s not impossible. Using thinking from commercial and government marketing, charities all over the UK are using social marketing to change people’s thinking and make them act differently.
This conference is for policy officers, media teams, campaign and marketing managers. We will show you how to make social marketing work for your organisation. Using real life examples, we’ll show you how to develop, deliver and evaluate an effective social marketing campaign.
On the agenda:

	Getting the research stage of your campaign right
	How to get an insight into the mind of your target audience
	Involving the people you want to reach in your campaign
	 Delivering and evaluating your campaign

Looking at the range of speakers and topics covered, it looks like much of the day would be relevant to public sector communicators as well as those working in charities if you were looking for an introduction to social marketing.

#### Social media and local government presentation
Today I'm at the Don't Panic Guide to Social Media conference at the Barbican in London.
Here's a copy of the presentation I gave looking at the use of social media tools in local government communications:

#### Social media and trust - Marketing Week
This week's Marketing Week magazine (UK) carries a double page spread about blogging in marketing. Most of the spread is based on the results of the Hotwire/Ipsos MORI survey that I've posted about before. However there's also some interesting discussion about trust in blogs and their use as a marketing tool.
The spread features a view on the topic from Marcus Rich (EMAP Advertising and ECM Lifestyle Magazines). He cites EMAP Advertising's 10,000 strong insight panel, suggesting that most people read blogs far more for entertainment purposes than for information.
Over half the panellists who read blogs (61%) say they take what they read with caution, and only 13% of the pannelists say they really trust the information in them...Panellists are keen to listen to new music on the recommendation of a blog (49% agree), but are considerably less keen to buy goods (only 18% agree).
He also looks at the evidence that consumers are still "crying out" for trusted voices to inform their purchase decision, but few will put their trust in people they meet using social media (14.4% agree they'd trust someone in a social media space).
The issue of trust is key for social media and I don't doubt the accuracy of these figures. However the general thrust of the article is about how marketers shouldn't overestimate the value of blogs as part of a marketing mix designed to influence consumer behaviour.
However what's really behind the figures here is a lack of realisation that social media (and blogs) as part of a marketing and PR mix are about building relationships in the online world.
It's not surprising that people don't trust information in blogs particularly, especially if they've only just found them through search or recommendation. I don't trust new blogs any more than someone I bumped into on the street - trust comes with building relationships - in that way social media relationships are no different to real world relationships.
The real commercial value of social media is in building long-term two-way relationships between organisations, their consumers and their prospective consumers. It's about building trust through interactions and endorsement.
This is the reason why I cringe when I read (repeatedly) in the marketing press that X brand has launched a new advertising campaign that includes a blog. A short-term blog created to go with a campaign can't realise the potential of social media for marketing - it's just another form of interruption advertising that's using a fashionable new tool.
The value of social media for commercial organisations is when they engage for the longer term - the relationships they form are much deeper and can help build networks of advocates for the company or brand - something a short-term campaign blog can rarely do.

#### Social media and young people research
PR student Amanda Dee is researching how social media can help organisations communicate more effectively with young people.
If you have a spare few minutes please do help her out by completing her survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=SoSKuZzpOhJP4D_2b_2f43Y7BQ_3d_3d

#### Social media as a recruitment tool
I'm a bit late to this one, but news comes via Sarah Stimson of Indigo Red's new approach to recruiting PR people.   The firm has launched VlogYourJob - advertising job vacancies in video format and allowing job hunters to sign-up for RSS feeds to be kept up to date with new jobs. The site's looking a bit sparse at the moment, with only a couple of vacancies listed. That said, I think this is an interesting approach to recruitment - given the competition for PR practitioners anything that a recruiting company can do to differentiate itself to potential employees is a good thing. For job hunting PR types being able to watch video about roles being recruited should give a deeper early insight into the recruiting company, its people and the role. The challenge for recruiting companies is to be able to produce a video that gets over who they are without falling into the many pitfalls of corporate videos (I know it's not recruitment, but it's been a year since this one). I can see real value in having the RSS feeds on the site too, although I'm not so sure how comments might work in this context. Job hunting, recruiting and headhunting are, by nature, quite clandestine, so publicly viewable comments about roles being advertised probably won't attract too many commenters. It'll be interesting to hear how this tool is used alongside the more traditional ways of recruiting staff. I'm sure Sarah and her colleagues will share more about that later on. For more context Neville Hobson has an interview with Indigo Red boss Steve Mallison-Jones. [tags]sarah+stimson, indigo+red, vlogyourjob, steve+mallison-jones, recruitment[/tags]

#### Social media as a tool for community engagement?
Karen Connell has kindly sent me her CIPR Diploma in Public Relations dissertation so I can publish it on my blog.
Her research explores the nature of two-way symmetrical communications in public sector organisations, with a focus on whether the growth of social media is affecting the nature of one of the four models of PR proposed by Grunig and Hunt in the eighties.
Karen's introduction, shown below, explains more about her research and what it covers:
It is evident throughout professional groups and in trade publications that social media is a hot topic in Public Relations (PR) and communications. This project aims to apply traditional PR theories such as the two-way symmetrical approach to this emerging trend of communication in order to reinforce the value of social media as an effective tool and not just a passing phase.
The two-way symmetrical approach to PR is one of the four models put forward by Grunig and Hunt (1984). The other models are the press-agentry, public information and two-way asymmetrical. Grunig and Grunig proposed that “excellent public relations departments practice the two-way symmetrical model of public relations” (1992, page 290). If excellence in PR is the two-way symmetrical approach then to find out how effective social media is as a tool for community engagement it would be appropriate to measure the extent to which it represents the two-way symmetrical model.
The Government White Paper, Strong and Prosperous Communities (2006) calls for greater community engagement in the public sector. The White Paper suggests the following steps must be taken to engage communities:
inform citizens – providing good, accessible information on how to access services and on how local services are performing; through, for example, newsletters, information on websites, text messages, local media, or staff working in neighbourhoods;

	consult citizens and communities – about the shape of local services and policies using, for example, surveys, focus groups or neighbourhood and parish plans;
	involve citizens directly in designing, delivering or assessing a service – for example by co-opting a group of young people to help manage a youth centre; and
	devolve responsibility for the delivery of a service – for example through community management and ownership of a local community hall.

Community engagement is now a priority in many public sector authorities. There are close links between community engagement and the two-way symmetrical model of PR as they are both approaches that encourage discussion between publics and organisations, they are also concerned with communication being mutually beneficial for publics and organisations.
The rise of social media is a recent phenomenon. Popular social media platforms, including facebook, Twitter and blogs such as WordPress, are now widely used by individuals and organisations. Social media was primarily based on specific sites but more recently organisations have started to incorporate aspects of social media into their own websites.
The nature of social media makes it responsive, constantly adapting to its environment which can provide a good opportunity for PR practitioners to demonstrate excellent two-way symmetrical communications. This study will look at how effectively PR practitioners are using this medium and with what results. This study aims to test the effectiveness of social media as a community
engagement tool by measuring and assessing practitioners’ experiences of using social media.
In order to answer the project title this research will seek to address the questions:

	How effective do PR practitioners consider social media to be as a tool for community engagement?
	What can ensure the success or failure of using social media in community engagement?

This project aims to explore the strengths and weaknesses of using social media. It
will also seek to assess to what extent social media communication meets the two-way symmetrical model of public relations by addressing the following questions:

	Are practitioners using social media to fulfil their own aims or do they
compromise between public and organisation motives?
	Are practitioners using social media in a way that encourages community
engagement?

There currently exists a wide range of comment, opinion and discussion on the subject of social media on blogs and other social media platforms, however, very little of this content is based on formal research and the information is subjective and not academic or peer reviewed.
Social media is a new and rapidly expanding area for public relations study. It has broad practical implications for use in public relations practice across the industry. The platforms that are currently delivering social media (e.g. facebook) may not be around forever but the concepts around social media, such as sharing, collaboration, and the public becoming contributors and creators of content are indicative of the nature of digital media communications in the future, particularly as more generations grow up with the Internet.
This research seeks to provide objective evidence to link practical ideas about social media with theoretical models to demonstrate what value social media has in modern public relations.
You can read Karen's research below or download the pdf here:

Thanks to Karen for giving permission for her research to be published here. If you'd like to get in touch with Karen drop me a line and I will pass your message on.

#### Social media drives e-commerce traffic
Proof of the force of social media in driving business on the web comes from Hitwise, reported here in Online Media Daily.
The research shows the continuing rapid growth of social media sites, and shows the effect of this in creating additional traffic on e-commerce sites.

Shopping and classified sites, for instance, received 2.4% of their visits directly from MySpace in September - an 83% increase since March. Other consumer-oriented industries that received traffic from MySpace in that period include telecommunications, banks, and travel.
As marketers we shouldn't underestimate the value of the traffic generated by social media sites. With this rate of growth it won't be long before the online advertising market begins to reshape radically, with social media becoming an integral part of all online communications strategies.
The challenge for us will be to come up with creative ways of using social media, beyond slapping banners, skyscrapers etc onto social media websites. The real commercial winners will be using social media to actively engage with their customers and prospects, as well as purely drive traffic for sales conversion elsewhere.

#### Social media ethics - a questionnaire
I've had an email from Jenny Hunter from Eveden Ltd about her CIPR Diploma project.
Having recently completed my diploma, I'm happy to help her find people to complete her online questionnaire about social media ethics.
She's on a short deadline as the survey closes this Friday, 18 September, but if you have just a few minutes, please help Jenny by completing her questionnaire:

www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=em5UpYua4VcYcNS4rhUm5A_3d_3d
In the spirit of web 2.0, it'd be great if Jenny could share her research once it's been completed and assessed - I'd be happy to publish it here as I think it's important to thank survey respondents by feeding back the results of surveys they participated in. I certainly intend to do the same with my CIPR diploma reseach once the results are released next month.

#### Social media hints and tips - Association of Colleges presentation
This afternoon I've been at the Association of Colleges communications conference in London running a workshop on social media - hints and tips.
The slides from my presentation are below:

#### Social media in ChangeThis manifestos
The latest round of ChangeThis manifestos has just been published, and a couple are particularly interesting for marketing and PR people engaged with social media.
Troy Angrignon           	    provides a great manifesto that introduces the basics of Web 2.0, and most importantly helps explain what it could mean for your organisation. 
Looking more specifically at blogging, ChangeThis has also republished Debbie Weil's manifesto on the basics of business blogging. This manifesto provides a good, jargon-free explanation about why blogging should be on most business people's to-do list.

#### Social media in internal communications course - London
Later this month I'm running a course for the Institute of Internal Communication on social media in internal communications.
The course is designed for anyone working in internal communications - no prior knowledge or experience of social media is required.
Here's the lowdown on the course:
Getting the basics right is key to mastering the essentials for successful social media strategy and implementation. This one-day practical workshop looks at social media in an internal communications environment, and focuses on social networks, multimedia use and blogging, harnessing employee enthusiasm, and understanding social media communications.
What you will learn:

	the seven types of social media and how they work
	why people use social media and its application in internal communication
	the three Cs of social media communication
	how to write an evidence-based strategy and measure its effectiveness.
	what makes a successful online community and why people want to participate
	blogging - who should do it and what makes a successful blog
	how to use multimedia in internal communication
	how to develop a social media policy
	... and much more

And here's some feedback from delegates on the previous course in Scotland late last year:

	Really good overview of how social media platforms can be used to enhance Internal Comms. Simon explained things really effectively and the Group work was really useful.
	Really good course, great from a digital designer's perspective to hear about how communications effect social media, and internal communications. Also took away what I wanted to, which was learning more about strategy.
	Great trainer, really informative. Liked the fact that he opened up the Yammer site for follow-up and ongoing conversation. Really internal comms based, very well researched.
	Excellent tutor - good presentation and informative group exercises.
	I thought it was fantastic. It was good to see I wasn't alone in the challenges I face within internal comms - excellent examples and the exercises really got me thinking too.
	Very well presented. Thought provoking and relevant. Interesting mix of people from different industries and backgrounds.
	Very informative and interesting tutor. Good mix of presentation/workshop. Interesting group discussions/networking which always proves valuable.
	Very good - going home enthused! Great links to sites, suggestions etc.
	A good overview of social media, what it's benefits are and how people use this. Good practical exercise in creating a strategy.
	Very informative. Good examples of best practice. Good overview of media platform choice. Simon as a tutor was very engaging and honest.

There are a few places left on the course in London on 22 May - for more info and to book head on over to the IoIC website here.

#### Social media relations for local government
This is the first of a two-part post on social media relations in local government communications. Read the second part tomorrow.
For many councils and other local public services, "traditional" media relations remains the mainstay of their communications efforts.
I've been thinking about how transferable some of the skills of "traditional" media relations are into social media relations, which led me onto thinking more broadly about what social media relations means for councils.
So here today and tomorrow, for what it's worth is my guide to social media relations for local government...comments, thoughts, criticisms and debate all welcomed in the comments.
Defining social media relations
For me, social media relations is a discrete practice of public relations which involves influencing reputation through direct two-way communications using social media.
The important element of this is the fact it's two-way - just using social media as tools for broadcasting messages without being prepared to engage in a dialogue with the recipients of those messages misses a key facet of social media. Indeed not listening and engaging in social media can backfire for organisations and risk reputational damage itself.
Just like traditional media relations, there are proactive and reactive elements to social media relations. The proactive side involves deploying a planned approach to online PR with specific objectives, target audience and messages.
The reactive dimension of social media relations involves dealing with online content concerning the organisation, place etc and engaging if appropriate to try to put forward counter-views, arguments or correcting misinformation.
Why bother with social media relations?
So why should a council, the police or a local healthcare organisation be concerned with social media?
My first reason is that even if you're not concerned about engaging with people through social media itself, it's a very small step from a damaging story online becoming a damaging story in more traditional offline media.
Any local journalist worth their salt will be using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media sites as a rich vein of sources for local interest stories. As soon as they pick up an issue from there, they've got a ready-made story and will be on the phone for a comment right away.
But thinking beyond this, the public sector needs to think about social media relations as the online conversations people have on social media sites will be key influences on their perception of a particular place or organisation.
There's plenty of evidence that one of the strongest drivers of perception is word of mouth, particularly from trusted sources. Those kind of conversations have always taken place in the "real world" yet organisations have never had the opportunity to hear what's been said and been able to potentially join in the conversations too.
Social media, and in particular social networks, provide the opportunity for these word of mouth networks to function more quickly, grow rapidly and extend beyond the practical geographic boundaries that face to face networks experience.
And reputation and perception are increasinly important to the public sector. Increasingly the sector is being measured not on what it does, but what it achieves. Often these achievements are measured on people's perceptions, not just what actually happens.
For example it's not enough for crime rates to be falling, success or failure will be judged on whether people actually feel safer - and that's about their perception (and all the factors that influence it) not just what happens on the ground.
Challenges for social media relations
Effective social media relations can be a real struggle for public sector communications teams.
At a fundamental level the organisation needs to be prepared to engage in two way conversations with its publics - which is a big cultural step for organisations that are more familiar with one-way or at best asymmetric two-way communications to take.
Practically this means getting buy-in to the approach before an issue arises - senior people are probably familiar with the "rules of engagement" when dealing with media enquiries, but before it all hits the fan on social media, they need to be equally comfortable with engaging on social media too.
That means it's encumbent on the communicators to educate and prepare people for this eventuality before it happens, and take a leadership role when it does.
But the challenges for social media relations aren't just internal. The external environment can pose some traps too. While some social media relations can be conducted without a dedicated presence or channel of your own (for example commenting on a blog or participating in a forum discussion), arguably the most powerful weapons in the social media armoury are those that you control yourself - your Twitter feed, Facebook page or blog for example. Without those channels set up and an audience (or more accurately a community) in place, an organisation's right to reply or platform for participation in a debate is pretty limited.
Back in the early days of the internet, cybersquatting was a big issue (and for some people still is). The same's the case now in the social media world. Anyone can go and register your council's name on a social media site - and then do and say what they wish with it. As the legitimate organisation there's very little you can do about it.
So getting out and taking possession of key names on the main social media sites is an important bit of digital land grabbing. Even if you've no immediate plans to use the sites, just having them prevents others from using them and means you can use them in the future if plans do change.
However it's not practical to register for every single permutation of names, so it's also important to prove the authenticity of your social media presences by linking to them from legitimate places on the web.
In my experience for councils the .gov.uk domain suffix is known and trusted by residents - so linking clearly from the council's main website to genuine social media presences is important for achieving authentication (as well as making good marketing sense anyway).
Sometimes though the challenges from social media can come from within the organisation yet show up very visibly outside the organisation.
Social media gives a voice to those that previously may have not had the ability to reach large numbers of people with their messages. When those people are disaffected staff, the impact on organisational reputation can be huge - check out this example in the private sector.
This challenge has implications for both an organisation's internal communications and the policies it expects its staff to abide by both at work and at home when discussing work-related topics online.

What do you think are the key challenges for delivering effective social media relations in the public sector?
What can be done to address these challenges? What can the sector learn from early adopters in the private sector?
In the second part of this series (published tomorrow) read my three steps to effective social media relations in public sector communications.

#### Social media relations presentation
I've just finished presenting to the Local Government Chronicle social media conference on social media relations in public sector communications.
Here are the slides from my presentation:

If you need to download the slides, you can do so here.

#### Social media training courses
I'm running two more "social media for public sector communicators" one-day courses later this year, building on the success of the first course I ran in Birmingham last November.
The courses, managed by Public Sector Forums and led by yours truly, will take place at City Hall, Cardiff on 24 February 2010 and at Manchester Digital Development Agency ,Manchester on 12 March 2010. For more information and booking details click here for Cardiff and here for Manchester.
Here's info on the course, agenda and what some of the delegates last time said about their experience:
Workshop aims

	Targeted at those working in public sector communications or engagement
	Will help those that know you need to start using social media at work but don't know where to start
	Will help delegates learn from the experience of councils and other public sector organisations that are already using social media
	Will help delegates to convince others in your organisation why social media is important.

 The workshop will:

	Provide an overview of social media in the UK today
	Explore the different social media tools and how they can be used in public sector communications and engagement
	Provide a practical introduction to how to introduce social media into the public sector communications mix
	Discuss real examples of social media in action in the public sector - good and bad practice
	Give delegates the knowledge and skills to start using social media in public sector communications and engagement.

Course agenda:

Social media - the basics

	What is social media?
	Seven types of social media explained
	Usage statistics for the UK
	Why should your organisation care?

Using Facebook in communications and engagement 

	Profiles, pages and groups
	Enhancing your presence – apps, content and updates
	Promoting your Facebook presence – growing your network
	Examples of Facebook in action in the public sector – good and bad
	What can the public sector learn from private sector use of Facebook?

Using Twitter in communications and engagement

	What roles can Twitter play in communications and engagement?
	Harnessing the power of Twitter to reach new audiences
	Getting the right content for Twitter – achieving shareability
	Integrating Twitter into the communications mix
	Understanding Twitter: hashtags, retweets and the rest
	Developing the conversation – follow etiquette on Twitter
	Attracting followers to grow your Twitter audience
	Examples of Twitter in action in the public sector – good and bad
	What can the public sector learn from private sector use of Twitter?

Social media relations – dealing with coverage on social media

	What is social media relations?
	Effective online monitoring
	The local online audit
	What to monitor and how
	Should you respond if someone says something bad about you?
	How you can respond to social media coverage of your organisation

 Writing a social media strategy

	Components of a good social media strategy
	Gaining buy-in – the case for and against social media
	Implementing social media in communications and engagement
	Tackling the issue of blocked access to social media at work
	How to evaluate the effectiveness of social media

Feedback from previous delegates
This was an exceptional workshop/seminar - perfect for my needs. For a while I have wanted to get a comprehensive understanding of all the relevant social media options and how they could work for an organisation such as ours. I, like many others, simply don't have the time to research this area properly. This seminar meant that I could get to grips with everything in one day. The agenda was well thought out and the seminar delivery by Simon Wakeman was excellent. It was also very reasonably priced compared to others I have seen! Definitely ten out of ten. A very productive day.
Kam Mistry, Principal Marketing Officer (Corporate), Stroud DC - Attended Birmingham Workshop Nov09
"Very good, everything explained clearly and lots of good examples.
"Really good insight and covered stuff I hadn't thought of looking into including Monitor"
"Very thorough. Started from the beginning on each topic + offered useful personal experiences + insights to demonstrate the point"
"Excellent - very engaging"
"Very good, useful content, well presented"
"Well put together and well presented"
"Excellent information, evaluations, content & presentation"
"Great, useful tips on monitoring, provided examples. Showed good/bad sites"
"A really informative day. Relevant interesting content. Given me a load of insight to inform my work & development of our SM policy"

#### Social media training in Scotland
Just a quick post to confirm that I'm running a Public Sector Forums social media course at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow on Thurday, 13 May.
Below you'll find info on the course, agenda and what some of the delegates on previous courses said about their experience. Places are strictly limited and can be booked online here.
Workshop aims

	Targeted at those working in public sector communications or engagement
	Will help those that know you need to start using social media at work but don't know where to start
	Will help delegates learn from the experience of councils and other public sector organisations that are already using social media
	Will help delegates to convince others in your organisation why social media is important.

 The workshop will:

	Provide an overview of social media in the UK today
	Explore the different social media tools and how they can be used in public sector communications and engagement
	Provide a practical introduction to how to introduce social media into the public sector communications mix
	Discuss real examples of social media in action in the public sector - good and bad practice
	Give delegates the knowledge and skills to start using social media in public sector communications and engagement.

Course agenda:

Social media - the basics

	What is social media?
	Seven types of social media explained
	Usage statistics for the UK
	Why should your organisation care?

Using Facebook in communications and engagement 

	Profiles, pages and groups
	Enhancing your presence – apps, content and updates
	Promoting your Facebook presence – growing your network
	Examples of Facebook in action in the public sector – good and bad
	What can the public sector learn from private sector use of Facebook?

Using Twitter in communications and engagement

	What roles can Twitter play in communications and engagement?
	Harnessing the power of Twitter to reach new audiences
	Getting the right content for Twitter – achieving shareability
	Integrating Twitter into the communications mix
	Understanding Twitter: hashtags, retweets and the rest
	Developing the conversation – follow etiquette on Twitter
	Attracting followers to grow your Twitter audience
	Examples of Twitter in action in the public sector – good and bad
	What can the public sector learn from private sector use of Twitter?

Social media relations – dealing with coverage on social media

	What is social media relations?
	Effective online monitoring
	The local online audit
	What to monitor and how
	Should you respond if someone says something bad about you?
	How you can respond to social media coverage of your organisation

 Writing a social media strategy

	Components of a good social media strategy
	Gaining buy-in – the case for and against social media
	Implementing social media in communications and engagement
	Tackling the issue of blocked access to social media at work
	How to evaluate the effectiveness of social media

Feedback from previous delegates
This was an exceptional workshop/seminar - perfect for my needs. For a while I have wanted to get a comprehensive understanding of all the relevant social media options and how they could work for an organisation such as ours. I, like many others, simply don't have the time to research this area properly. This seminar meant that I could get to grips with everything in one day. The agenda was well thought out and the seminar delivery by Simon Wakeman was excellent. It was also very reasonably priced compared to others I have seen! Definitely ten out of ten. A very productive day.
Kam Mistry, Principal Marketing Officer (Corporate), Stroud DC - Attended Birmingham Workshop Nov09
"Very good, everything explained clearly and lots of good examples.
"Really good insight and covered stuff I hadn't thought of looking into including Monitor"
"Very thorough. Started from the beginning on each topic + offered useful personal experiences + insights to demonstrate the point"
"Excellent - very engaging"
"Very good, useful content, well presented"
"Well put together and well presented"
"Excellent information, evaluations, content & presentation"
"Great, useful tips on monitoring, provided examples. Showed good/bad sites"
"A really informative day. Relevant interesting content. Given me a load of insight to inform my work & development of our SM policy"

#### Social networking to meet real people
The BBC has an interesting story about French social networking site, Peuplade.
The site allows users in a defined geographic area, such as a city neighbourhood, to sign-up and network online with other users who live near them.
According to the article the site actively encourages people to meet other users in the real world - people they live close to but would not otherwise have come into contact with.
The site strikes me as an interesting example of how social media can help create real-life networks that would not have otherwise formed.
There are, of course, plenty of other social networking sites that could do this, but Peuplade strikes me as different as it's targeted deliberately at people living in a specific area with the purpose of forming offline contacts.
Paris Link also has some information about Peuplade for non-French speakers.

#### Some exciting news
I first joined the former Deeson business back in April 2014. Deeson then became part of The Panoply in December 2018 and last year The Panoply became the integrated TPXimpact business.    

I joined a £2m turnover business with around 20 team members based in Canterbury. TPXimpact is now a £79.7m turnover business with more than 600 employees across the UK, Europe, Bulgaria and Norway.

Since 2014 I have had the opportunity to work with so many brilliant colleagues and friends. I've loved the variety, challenge and fun that this journey to today has given me. I've held roles including Managing Director, Chief Operating Officer and more recently Chief of Staff.

I've learnt what it takes to run, sell and buy businesses. I've seen the differences between privately held businesses and UK-listed public companies. I've led major organisational changes, gained so much valuable experience and have learnt so much.

Having some time off last Christmas, I had recognised that I needed to think about work and what my next career move would be. I had no specific desire to leave TPXimpact then, but I knew also that I needed to make a change and find a fresh challenge at some point. 

Having discussed this with TPXimpact founders Neal Gandhi and Olly Rigby, I continued to mull over this itch during the year. And over time it became an itch that I needed to scratch.

So in the summer I decided that December is the right time to make a change and explore some new work challenges. I'll be leaving my role at TPXimpact at the end of December 2022.

From January 2023 I'll be working as an independent consultant, building on my passion for scaling progressive organisations. 

Over the past eight years I've loved working with founders and visionary leaders. They are remarkable people and I'm consistently in awe of their ability to create ambitious visions and motivate others to join them on that journey. 

In working with founders and leaders, I've realised that I am most effective when working to help them create and lead the organisations they need to achieve their goals. In EOS-terms, I'm a classic integrator.

So this is where I'm going to be starting my next work adventure in a few months time. You can see more about that here.

But for now my focus remains working with colleagues across TPXimpact, working to become the integrated organisation we want to be, helping our clients to create meaningful change at scale.

#### Somewhere to play
Running a website means every little change you make to the site takes place in full public view.
Any design tweak, software upgrade or testing you do can be seen by anyone who visits your website. This can make you look unprofessional to visitors when changes don't go according to plan.
So how can this be avoided?
Techie developers always have one or more places where they can test things out before they go live. Full production environments have multiple places where new developments are trialled, refined, tested, and retested before functionality ever reaches the web.
For a blogger running a small site it's still a good idea to have a development site. It provides you with somewhere to try new things out without doing it in public.
I have a test site at test.simonwakeman.com where I do just this. I try to keep it as up-to-date as the main site, with the most recent design templates and versions of the Wordpress software.
Most things I do to the main site have already been road tested on my test site. Sometimes things do go wrong, as the test site is never identical to the live site, but usually if it works on the test site, it'll work here.
Hopefully this is just another little thing that makes the site, and by implication me, look just a bit more professional in the eyes of visitors and readers.

#### Sponsored events - Summer 2007
I always like a challenge, whether it's at work or in my spare time. This summer I’m doing two challenges in aid of charity:   17 June 2007 - cycling 56 miles on the London to Brighton bike ride - I did this ride for the first time last year and really enjoyed myself. It got me back into cycling and I've been riding most weeks since.  2 September 2007 - running my first marathon in the Kent Coastal Marathon - I've done a couple of half-marathons but now it's time for the full distance. A real challenge, both mentally and physically, but one I'm really looking forward to.   The charities that I am raising money for are:    British Heart Foundation – a UK national charity supporting pioneering research, vital prevention activity and ensuring quality care and support for people living with heart disease.  Pilgrims Hospices in East Kent – a Kent charity that provides palliative care for patients and their families in East Kent. Founded in 1982, the hospices are raising money this year towards their 25th anniversary appeal. Luke Pellant Memorial Fund - raising money for The Leukaemia Research Fund, Make-a-Wish Foundation and Diana Community Children’s Nursing team. The fund was set up in memory of Luke Pellant, son of a colleague of mine at Medway Council, who bravely fought leukaemia for three years but sadly lost his battle on 7 September 2003 aged 13. If you would like to sponsor me and help me raise money for these good causes then you can do so online at www.justgiving.com/simonwakeman.   Thanks in advance for your support. [tags]London+to+Brighton+bike+ride, Thanet+Coastal+Marathon, sponsorship[/tags]

#### Staff, social media policies and managing risk
Social media policies may not seem the most exciting aspect of driving forward adoption of new technologies as part of the communications and marketing mix.
Yet to my mind their importance is so great that they should really be a pre-requisite before an organisation deploys social media.
In this article Andy Blacknell at consultants Towers Watson nails why:
When thinking about the potential of social media, employers are often put off by the perceptions of lost productivity, leakage and potential liability risks. Given social media usage is likely to increase and most individuals using it are also employees, employers need to ask themselves if it is really less harmful to leave employees to their own devices or rather to provide them with appropriate social media capability and guidance.  We believe the solution is to have social media policies embedded in each organisation.
Organisations need to be really clear with their staff about what, as an employer, companies expect their staff to do and not do using social media in relation to their work (or indeed in a broader context where that use could impact on the company or its interests).
That means having a social media policy that staff know and understand. And that's grounded in sensible reputational risk management as well as good HR practice too.
The need for such a policy is emphasised by this case where a UK employment tribunal has ruled that "negative comments about work by an employee does not instantly justify a dismissal".
In this case the tribunal found that comments made by an employee about her company on social media were relatively mild and did not involve any confidential information. It also took into account that the company's commercial interests would have been unlikely to have been damaged by what happened. Other mitigations included the fact that the comments didn't refer to the company who she worked on behalf of and the fact that the member of staff had apologised immediately.
A social media policy is important for making clear to staff their responsibilities in using social media and should be a starting point - but it's not the only thing companies need to manage this type of social media risk. The solution comes back to effective people management - as with so many of the issues around social media, the solution lies in good management practice independently of social media.
Social media is about connecting people. Which means a risk from its use is that people are by nature individual and sometimes do the unexpected. So good people management is a major part of what's needed to help manage this risk.

#### Starting the CIPR diploma today
I figured it was about time I got myself a PR qualification, so today's my first day studying for the CIPR Diploma in Public Relations. I'd been thinking about studying for a while, but had been struggling with the course venues being in London and centres throughout the UK, but none particularly near home. With a young family, a full-time job, a consultancy business and a bit of a social life, there just wasn't the time to commit to travelling more than two hours regularly for face to face learning. So when CIPR launched the online learning route for the diploma, I was keen to sign up. Having studied for Chartered Institute of Marketing qualifications by distance learning I'm aware of the pitfalls and challenges that distance learning presents, so it'll be interesting to see how technology is used to minimise these. So far the Moodle-based seems quite straightforward and has some interesting features that may well enhance the learning experience. From the course I hope to be able to underpin my PR experience with a solid theoretical base as well as develop my analytical and decision-making skills in PR.  I came into PR from a pure marketing background, so while I have PR experience, the theory will really help (I like theories and reasoning, it's just the way I am). One of the joys of studying is learning with other people and debating issues to increase depth of understanding, so hopefully the other people on the course and the technology will come together to make this happen. Plus, of course, hopefully the other students on the course will be good professional contacts for the future.  It'll also be interesting to see how studying affects my blogging. I'll still be making the time to blog, but I suspect there will be a few posts that are influenced by what I'm studying at the time. The course lasts one year, so hopefully next summer I'll be celebrating passing the diploma - fingers crossed! [tags]CIPR, chartered+institute+of+public+relations, CIPR+Diploma[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis
There?s never been so much media-multitaskingThe only way for people to keep up with the deluge of media options is to multitask - and that?s just what has happened, according to BIGresearch?s 11th  Simultaneous Media Survey.
Social media will ?make or break brands?Highly influential, outspoken, with a loyal following and the power to make or break brands at will are identified in Experian's new report "The Impact of Social Networking in the UK"
Edelman Trust Barometer 2008 - key findingsThe highlights from Edelman's annual trust research available to download.
Customer Focus: Decade of DataResarch looking at US entertainment preferences and media usage patterns since 1998.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.

#### Statistics, research and analysis
Changing Influence of New MediaThe role of traditional media on the purchase decision of consumers may well be dwindling, but the industry is still the top ranking influencer according to a study by consumer intelligence company, BIGresearch.
Internet Grabs Kids', Teens' Attention, Affects TV-Watching - MarketingVOXKids' undivided attention is no longer focused on TV. 64 percent go online while watching it, and 49 percent of US teens do so frequently: anywhere from three times a week to several times a day.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.

#### Statistics, research and analysis
Social networking in the UK - OfcomOfcom's quantitative and qualitative research report into attitudes, behaviours and use of social networks in the UK.
2008 Digital Entertainment Survey - UKA comprehensive audit of entertainment and digital activity in the UK today, investigating
behaviour, trends, preferences and attitudes across all forms of entertainment activity. Findings from representative online survey of 1,608 UK respondents.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.

#### Statistics, research and analysis
LeverWealth: The statistics that say you must take social media seriouslyA great round-up of statistics from David Phillips
Global Youth Survey: Media Consumption & AdvertisingGlobal youth survey exploring the various media outlets young people around the globe get their entertainment.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.

#### Statistics, research and analysis
Overview: Key News Audiences Now Blend Online and Traditional SourcesFor more than a decade, the audiences for most traditional news sources have steadily declined, as the number of people getting news online has surged. However, today it is not a choice between traditional sources and the internet for the core elements of today's news audiences.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
Newspapers easier to read onlineReaders find web versions of newspapers and magazines easier to access, faster, and generally more convenient to use, according to an Association of Online Publishers (AOP) survey.
ClickZ: Active Home Internet Users by Country, June 2007The number of active home Internet users dipped 0.46 percent from May to June in the 10 countries tracked by Nielsen//NetRatings.
Report: The internet in Britain 2007Length research from Oxford Internet Surveys looking at the influence of the Internet on everyday life in Britain, including data on internet access, use and attitudes.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.
[tags]statistics, research, analysis[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
Branded content attitudinal consumer studyOver one-third of certain groups were sceptical about brands that advertised regularly in a traditional way, with around one-tenth actually trusting brands that advertised in a traditional way.
New media doesn't kill old mediaNo surprises here then - a survey from Deloitte and Touche shows that old and new media co-exist happily for all age groups surveyed.
Users? online time spent mostly on contentWeb users spending nearly half their online time visiting content - a 37% increase in share of time from four years ago and nearly as much time as spent on communications and commerce combined - according to the Internet Activity Index.
Web for speed; print for comfortHighlights from an AOP survey that shows readers prefer online publications to print for speed of access and convenience (full version for subscribers only).
Social media's influence overstated?Report from JupiterResearch suggests that influential brand advocates are more traditional in the way they use the internet than marketers may think.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.
[tags]statistics, research, analysis[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
IBM end of advertising survey resultsIBM's End of Advertising consumer survey gives some interesting statistics on device usage and content preference for five countries: US, UK, Japan, Germany and Australia.

Banner blindness: old and new findingsJakob Nielsen decides that unethical design pays off when producing web advertising according to his latest eyetracking research.
Creating & Connecting - Online social and educational networkingResearch from US National School Boards Association looking at how online social networking is so deeply embedded in the lifestyles of tweens and teens that it rivals television for their attention.
Internet rivals TV as primary media sourceHave already linked to the IBM report that this is based on, but Marketing Charts have a really good summary post and set of graphics on the changing consumption of media in several countries.
Quarter of UK?s online population is its richest netizensA quarter of Britons online come from households with £50+ in annual income, and finance and travel-related sites tend to be those with the greatest concentration of wealthy UK visitors, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
IPA trends in television report - Q2 2007 (UK)Latest figures show the first year-on-year increase in average daily viewing levels for some time - now reaching 3.46 hours.
The decline of TV and rise of the internetIBM global consumer research shows balance of power in communications and entertainment has shifted dramatically towards the individual consumer, away from media companies.
Creative destruction: an exploratory look at news on the internetUS research looking at traffic to news websites. Large national newspapers seem to enjoy audience increase on the web, while local newspapers and "traditional" news sources overall are suffering.
Offline channel influence on online behaviourTwo thirds of online searches are driven by offline triggers, and around 40% of these searches lead to online purchases - a good reminder that seeing offline and online marketing in isolation is a big mistake.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.
[tags]statistics, research, analysis[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
UK online population at its peak despite summer holidaysDespite the onset of the summer holiday season, when media consumption decreases as people leave their homes and offices, in July the total UK online population reached its highest-ever figure - 31.8 million unique visitors - according to comScore.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.
[tags]statistics, research, analysis[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
Survey of tech journalists shows impact of social mediaSurvey of technology journalists' use of social media in their research and writing.
Business blogging still rareOnly 5% of UK corporations use blogs on a regular basis, according to the WebTrends-commissioned "Marketing in the Dark" report, conducted by Loudhouse Research in January 2007.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.
[tags]statistics, research, analysis[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
Multichannel data utilisation is marketers' greatest challengeMultichannel data utilisation is marketers' greatest challenge, cited by almost 30 percent of respondents to a recent survey of marketers attending the Alterian Annual Summit, held in Chicago in August.
Teens learn about new TV shows from TV, not internetMost teens (51%) find out about new TV shows from TV ads and promos, though buzz is also a high source of information, specifically conversations with friends or boy/girlfriends (33%), and other kids in school (28%), according to an OTX study.
Americans' blogging behaviourAccording to a recent Synovate/Marketing Daily survey, 8 out of 10 Americans know what a blog is and almost half have visited blogs.
Alternative advertising mediaBillboards and TV product placement top the list of alternative advertising media about which consumers express the most interest, according to research data from Mediamark Research Inc.
Sports TV and multi-taskingAmerican sports fans are doing a lot more than just sitting back and watching the big game on TV - they?re simultaneously connected with others and more engaged with advertising.
ANA accountability studyFormal marketing accountability programs are becoming an accepted business practice among marketers, but dissatisfaction about marketing measurement and internal marketing accountability processes is rampant, according to a new study.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.
[tags]statistics, research, analysis[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
Almost two thirds of social network users enter false information to protect identityNearly two thirds (62%) of networking sites users say they are worried about the safety of their personal data held on these sites and one third of users (31%) have already entered false information about themselves to protect their identity.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.
[tags]statistics, research, analysis[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
?Passionista? consumers can help brands harness digital mediaConsumers passionate about certain issue - dubbed ?Passionistas? - are much more likely than typical consumers to create and share content online about their passions and the brands associated with them, according to new research from Yahoo and MediaV
US digital radio study 2007Research from Arbitron/Edison Media Research looking at radio, including digital platforms like online, satellite, HD Radio and podcasting.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.
[tags]statistics, research, analysis[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
European brands not necessarily gung ho on mobileMobile messaging is greeted with mixed opinion, according to an independent survey of 50 of Europe?s global brand names.
UK online advertising overtakes direct mailInternet advertising buoyed the UK advertising industry with above-expectation 41.3 percent year-on-year growth in the first half of '07, achieving a half-year high of £1,334.3 million - compared with £917.2 million a year ago.
The television-internet connectionUS statistics on use of the internet while watching TV.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.
[tags]statistics, research, analysis[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
The Rise of the Mobile Super-userWill Harris has produced a thought-provoking paper on how developments in mobile telephony are creating a new class of mobile super-users.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.
[tags]statistics, research, analysis[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
More people growing comfortable with and trusting web 2.0 toolsMore than 36% of Web users ?highly trust? the information they receive from friends and acquaintances in their online social networks. But isn't the trust in the friend/acquaintance, rather than the channel through which information is communicated?
Multitasking Media Users Merge Internet with TV, Other Media - Marketing ChartsInternet users are multitasking more than ever by incorporating various media into an interconnected media experience. And watching television while online (58.3% of respondents) is the most common offline activity connected with internet consumption.
Edelman - the online world: a new constituencyGlobal research from Edelman looking at online influencers and advocacy in France, Germany, UK and the USA.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.
[tags]statistics, research, analysis[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
IBM - The end of advertising as we know itWhite paper from IBM looking at the future of advertising as consumer empowerment and technological advances change the practice of advertising.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.
[tags]statistics, research, analysis[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
New research on loyal brand advocacyNew consumer research in Europe shows brand advocacy is worth five times that of an advertising spend, in terms of creating new and loyal brand advocates and driving sales. Good insights from Weber Shandwick and Paul Marsden in Colin's post.
Online reviewers driven mostly by altruismThe vast majority of consumers who post online reviewers are overwhelmingly motivated by goodwill and positive sentiment. 90% of respondents write reviews to help others make better buying decisions, and more than 70% want to help companies improve.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.
[tags]statistics, research, analysis[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
Media Myths & Realities: A Public of OneResearch looking at media consumption habits among 1,500 consumers, communications professionals and influencers in the U.S. and 500 consumers and influencers in each of the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC).
EIAA Mediascope Europe 2007Now in its fifth consecutive year, Mediascope Europe 2007 provides a unique insight into the evolution of TV, Internet, Radio, Newspaper and Magazine consumption across Europe, and the role the Internet plays in people?s lives.
'Evolved' CMOs want more executive cloutTwo-thirds of chief marketing officers (CMOs) want more involvement in business strategy development and increased profit & loss responsibility, according to a joint study conducted by Forrester Research and Heidrick & Struggles International.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.
[tags]statistics, research, analysis[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
What worked in 2007 for marketersNext Level SMG?s brand strategy trends survey looks at marketers' high points for 2007 and resolutions for 2008. Based on a survey of 82 marketing execs in a range of industry sectors.
Blogging?s a low-cost, high return marketing toolNew York Times article on the use of blogging as a promotional tool for small businesses (not much hard data, but some useful opinions).
Americans more connected and quite ad-tolerantWithin the span of eight months, the use of online and mobile devices for entertainment has rocketed among online US consumers, according to the second edition of the ?State of Media Democracy? new-media survey from Deloitte & Touche.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.
[tags]statistics, research, analysis[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
The ageing UK internet populationSilver surfers are claiming a bigger share of the online population at the expense of under 25s, according to Nielsen Online research looking at the UK internet population.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.
[tags]statistics, research, analysis[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
New Media, New Influencers and Implications for the PR ProfessionAs more companies adopt social media, they struggle to find effective metrics for deciding who are the most influential players, according to a survey of nearly 300 PR and marketing people who have experience in social media.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.
[tags]statistics, research, analysis[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
Customer Focus: Decade of DataResarch looking at US entertainment preferences and media usage patterns since 1998. Socio-economic barriers to web access narrowFactors such as education, income, age, gender, and place of access have typically influenced web usage and broadband access worldwide. Find more statistics, research and analysis here.

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
Here's a summary of interesting research, statistics and analysis that I've spotted over the past few days:

US - 2008 business in social media Study - Results of online survey conducted September 11-12, 2008 among 1,092 adults. According to the survey, 59 percent of American consumers who use social media sites and tools are already interacting with businesses through social media. [requires contact info to download]
Social media transforming purchasing decision-making - Interviewing 17,000 people in 29 countries this post reports data that conclusively proves that social media is now directly impacting the way we buy products and services. Social media is fundamentally changing the way everybody online sources opinions on products, brands and services when they buy something.
Social media tracker wave 3 - Universal McCann global research into the impact of social media - measuring consumer usage, attitudes and interests in adopting social media platforms.

For all bookmarks that I've seen on research, statistics and analysis check out del.icio.us.

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up
Journal of Computer Mediated CommunicationResearch and analysis in contemporary computer-mediated communication (via SimonSays)
Traffic to news sites by age groupAndrew Lipsman from Comscore takes a quick look at some web statistics for news sites by age group.
Priorities in PR ResearchResults of Tom Watson's research into the areas that academic PR research should focus on.
Pew Internet: Online VideoThe Pew Internet / American Life Project's first major report on online video containing some useful insight. Headline is that 57% of internet users have watched videos online and most of share what they find with others.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up - w/e 1 June 2007
6 in 10 UK internet users go online dailySome good basic statistics on internet usage in the UK from the Office for National Statistics. Google and Yahoo grow share of search marketHitwise statistics show Google and Yahoo increasing their share of the UK search market at the expense of MSN and Ask. Find more statistics, research and analysis here.  [tags]ONS, internet+usage, google, yahoo, MSN, ask.com, hitwise[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up - w/e 13 April 2007
iProspect social networking user behaviour study
One in four US adult web users visit social networking sites regularly. This means the sites are a realistic choice for marketers in their campaign planning.

Web retailers cause wilfing
UK internet users spend an average of two days a month browsing the web without any real purpose.
Netpop | Pocket
Adoption of the mobile Internet is still slow among US broadband users.

Forrester - Men, women, and the internet
Women are still less likely than men to be online, and those who are online spend less time and use it differently.

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up - w/e 13 July 2007
PR industry's adoption of social mediaGood white paper on how the PR industry is shaping up to the challenges of social media and finding new competition a challenge in that space.  Marketing Pilgrim EssaysA free e-book with insights on search engine optimization, pay-per-click management and social media marketing.  Ninety per cent of marketers want to launch social media projectsSurvey from Lewis PR shows enthusiasm for social media also shows a fair amount of reluctance among marketers too. [The survey's press release is in the news section of the Lewis PR website, but it's a nasty flash site so I can't link to the release itself]  Participation in US social mediaGood visual from BusinessWeek, based on Forrester's data, looking at who's using which social media tool in the US. Pew/Internet home broadband adoption statistics for US47% of US adults have high-speed internet connections at home. UK attitudes to mobile advertisingLooks at different types of mobile advertising tools and their effectiveness with different customer groups. People want expert-generated contentWeb users are turning back to experts they can trust in the face of untrustworthy user-generated content. Not convinced on this one - people place trust in bloggers (they know), not just blogs generally.  Virtual worlds not just for grown-upsReport from ClickZ on the growth of virtual worlds tailored to younger audiences. Find more statistics, research and analysis here. [tags]marketing+pilgrim, SEO, pay+per+click, social+media+marketing, lewis+pr, businessweek, forrester, social+media, mobile+advertising, virtual+worlds [/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up - w/e 20 April 2007
AOL / Henley Centre Brand New World study
The web is driving changes in brand perception and purchase decisions, both online and offline. It's also changing the purchase process by making it longer and more complex.
BBC report on tracking web traffic
Two studies cast doubt on the accuracy of cookie-based systems and the effectiveness of page view as a measure of site traffic.
UK search engine stats from Hitwise
Heather Hopkins provides an update on UK search engine traffic.
UK public concerned about security of their data
Survey reveals high levels of identity theft and concern about security of personal data.

McKinsey survey on business use of Web 2.0 technologies
A good insight into how businesses are adopting Web 2.0 tools at a relatively slow rate compared to other new technologies.
Getting started with social media
A good primer on social media, with analysis and statistics as well as a good selection of references.
Best fonts for online reading
A summary of research into how different fonts work on websites.
Facebook numbers
Selection of statistics on social networking site Facebook, from Fastcompany.
Cutting complexity can increase sales - World Business
Analysis that challenges conventional wisdom that cutting product inventory leads to a reduction in sales.
Web 2.0 participation less than expected
It's generally accepted that only a small fraction of visitors to web 2.0 sites interact, but this research suggests that participation is even lower than previously thought.

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up - w/e 22 June 2007
Online retailers fall down on customer serviceResearch with 62 UK online retailers shows surprisingly poor customer service, with 45% of retailers not replying to emails and almost half of those that did reply didn't actually answer the queries put to them. But 78% of shoppers are happy with online retailersSo says an IMRG report covered by e-consultancy. Web was purchase channel of choice for books, DVDs, CDs online, travel bookings and tickets. Eight out of ten homes now have digital televisionLatest figures from Ofcom also show that Freeview has overtaken Sky as the biggest provider of digital television in the UK. Shoppers miss out on savings by staying offlinePeople are more worried (than they should be) about paying with their credit card online, and this leads them to pay higher prices by not shopping around. [tags]online+shopping, IMRG, Talisma, Ofcom, OFT, Sky, Freeview[/tags]

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up - w/e 25 May 2007
A bumper round-up this week as it's been a full three weeks since the last one - thanks to local elections, a week-long holiday and domestic chaos thanks to our builders!
Broadband users spend half their spare time online
Some useful stats from a paid-for Media Screen report via ClickZ, based on research from July 2006.
Future of Online - May 2007
Useful report from an E-consultancy roundtable session, including views on search engine marketing, mobile marketing and online advertising.

UK research suggests web users receptive to pre-roll video on the web

Some useful information on how UK web users spend their time online, plus the suggestion that "the overwhelming majority of UK Internet users are open to pre-roll online video advertising, so long as it does not extend past 15 seconds in length". The research comes from Utarget Networks, which "has recently launched an online video advertising pre-roll network" - so that finding comes as no surprise really.

Silver surfers close to becoming the largest group online
New stats from Hitwise show that over 55s, or ‘silver surfers’, account for 22% of online visits. The largest group online at the moment is the 35-44 age group, which accounted for 23.5% of internet visits in the four weeks up to 12th May.
More than 90% of UK teenagers have used a social networking site
Q Research report for MediaGuardian.co.uk shows that one-third of teenagers have at least four social networking profiles, and a key driver for this is that their friends use the sites too.
What annoys online shoppers
No surprises here really, but some information on what aspects of online shopping customer experience can prevent a purchase or just annoy the customer.
One third of podcast downloads not listened to
An interesting statistic that quantifies what I've always suspected to be the case, but have never known the extent of. The research also has some other useful information on podcast listeners.

Online retail in the UK grows faster than ever
Verdict Research says the key driver for this is faster and cheaper internet access in the UK. Sales expected to almost tripling over the next five years, with most growth coming from existing purchasers buying more rather than new online shoppers.
Third of employees 'risk sack for blogging' 
Croner research, quoted by E-consultancy, found that 39% of bloggers admitted to publishing sensitive or damaging posts about their workplace.
Communications Market 2007 - UK
Ofcom's latest research into telecoms, television and radio markets in the UK. Lengthy stuff, but has loads of useful statistics and insights if you have the time to find them. Most of the general statistics are in this part of the report.

Advertising on web 2.0 sites converts less well, but is cheaper
New Media Knowledge reports some research by BlueLithium on advertising cost per conversion on web 2.0 sites compared to other websites. With my PR hat on, I'd question whether advertising is really the most effective way to generate value from web 2.0 properties, but the web marketers are impressed by the rtraffic volumes so advertising appears an attractive option.
Find more statistcs, research and analysis here.

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up - w/e 27 April 2007
36% of online American adults consult Wikipedia
Usage is particularly high well-educated and current college-age students, says the latest research from Pew Internet & American Life Project
Ketchum media myths and realities 2006
A survey of 1,490 American adults and 500 corporate communicators to see how different media are consumed and used to communicate corporate messages.
US search engine rankings, March 2007
American web searches rose 6 percent from the previous month and and 14 percent from March 2006.

Forrester’s new social technographics report
Interesting reading on how consumers approach social technologies – including the concept of a participation ladder for these technologies.
MarketingSherpa research on viral marketing
Shows an increasing divide among marketers with experience of delivering viral campaigns and those without.
Understanding influence, and making it work for you
CNET Networks study on the nature of influence and the validity of common marketing models.

Honeymoon is over for social networks
MediaPost report on the pressure social network sites are under to realise value from their members (see also this report from the owners of MySpace)

Gartner's five laws for virtual worlds
By the end of 2011, 80 percent of active internet users will have a presence in virtual worlds.
Social networkers spend more time on the web
No surprises there then, in a report from MySpace / Marketing Evolution.
Find more statistcs, research and analysis here.

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up - w/e 29 June 2007
Effectiveness of adverts on different types of website
Research by bluelithium into effectiveness of advertising inventory on user generated content (UGC) sites and non-UGC sites. Non-UGC sites appear to convert better, which comes as no surprise as companies need to engage more cleverly on UGC sites and in social media than just placing advertising.
Discovering more about "digital mums"
Some interesting data and information about women with children and how they use the internet.
Social media adoption in Canada

Use of social media has doubled in the last six months in Canada. Women are driving the increase. 16% of Canadians with web access have  downloaded full-length movies in the past month.
UK adspend on the up
Spending on press, TV, radio and direct mail fell, with the overall growth being driven by online, cinema and outdoor advertising. Online adspend rose 42% compared the same period in 2006.
Loyalty among social network users
Many social network users keep profiles on multiple social networks, with smaller networks generating less loyalty than the larger players.
Find more statistics, research and analysis here.

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up - w/e 30 March 2007
Insight into US consumer email behaviour
The Email Sender and Provider Coalition has a study with some interesting findings for email marketers, including the insight that 80% of users report emails as spam without opening them - meaning getting the right sender address and subject line is vital.

EyeTrack07: The myth of short attention spans
Poynter has published an in-depth eye tracking study that has some surprising and some less than surprising results about how people consume news content online and offline.

UK online adspend figures for 2006
Figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers show online advertising expenditure jumped 41.2% to £2.01bn during 2006, making the online ad spend greater than national newspaper ad spending for the first time.
Active home internet users by country for February 2007
Figures from Nielsen//NetRatings show a slight dip in active internet users in the countries surveyed.
Most successful UK websites for 2006
Hitwise reports on the behaviour of more than 8million UK web users and details the busiest sites in 50 different sectors.
Kids' informal learning with digital media
An ethnographic investigation exploring how US young people use digital media in their everyday lives.
Food and drink trends in the ‘New Europe’
Consumers in new EU countries, such as Poland, Hungary and more recently Romania and Bulgaria, are developing a taste for western lifestyles and brands, according to new figures from Euromonitor International.

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up - w/e 4 May 2007
Almost half of users dismiss advertising on social networks
Research by NMA/Brand Strategy suggests 49% of respondents rated ads on sites like Friends Reunited, Bebo, MySpace or Facebook as 'bad'. I'm not exactly sure what a bad rating means, but it's not good!
Europe's digital economy growing strongly
More households embrace convergence between fixed, mobile and Internet services. Almost 30% are now connected to the internet via high-speed broadband links and households increasingly use mobile phones as fixed lines become less popular.
UK Search Engine Marketing Report 2007
E-consultancy's latest research offering looks at search engine marketing. Free sample content, but you'll have to pay for the full report. Based on the quality of previous E-consultancy research I've read, it'll be worth paying for.
Find more statistcs, research and analysis here.

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up - w/e 6 April 2007
Mobiles and advertising in the UK
Only one third of 11 to 20 year olds want to receive advertising on their mobile phones, but more than two thirds would be happy to receive targeted information. Picture formats win out against text and video too.

Top UK businesses not addressing mobile SEO
The UK's largest listed businesses aren't optimising for mobile browser search: 93% of FTSE 100 companies’ homepages do not appear in the first page of search results on Google Mobile Web UK.

World broadband statistics Q4 2006 (free registration required)
Worldwide broadband lines at 281.5m. 17.7m lines added in the quarter. Overall global penetration for broadband is 5.4%.
Video advertising on the internet
Video ads prove more effective than still images for interaction and clickthroughs.
Two thirds of Spanish marketers rate mobile marketing as effective
A very small sample size, but some interesting insights into Spanish mobile marketing.

AOP - What we know about digital consumers
Consumers are accessing more content than ever before and are using a greater variety of tools to do so.

Dave Sifry/Technorati - State of the blogosphere
More blog-related statistics than you could possibly ever need, but interesting reading all the same.
UK regional breakdown for users visiting blogs
Interesting chart from Heather Hopkins at Hitwise showing blog readers are concentrated in London and the Yorkshire/Humber region.

Taking the pulse of marketing
Business Week surveys some top US marketers to spot trends in marketing.
Understanding the multi-cultural market
Research from Weber Shandwick on marketing with ethinic minorities.

Assorted insights from Shel Holtz
Rather than reproduce them all here I thought I'd link to a post with plenty of insight and supporting links taken from a Shel Holtz presentation.

Online ad market driven forward by social networking
Half of UK marketers plan to use social networks to reach consumers in 2007.

#### Statistics, research and analysis round-up - w/e 8 June 2007
Rapid growth in UK mobile searchIncreased wireless internet connectivity and increased awareness of mobile internet increase use of local mobile search. Selling online is all about customer experienceI guess it makes sense, but a good customer experience on a website means more customer loyalty and greater likelihood of financial success. UK boasts most active online populationLatest data from comScore on internet usage by country. Also covered here. Web shoppers want to recreate the social experienceThere are two types of shoppers: rational and social. So far web retail has focussed on the rational, so now the big opportunity is the social shopper. How can online retailers recreate the social nature of shopping online? Podcasts not just for young peopleStatistics on who's listening to podcasts, with 35-44 year olds showing surprisingly high listenership. Young women lead UK internet useWomen aged 18 to 34 are the single biggest group of UK web users, according to figures from Nielsen/Ratings. Web shoppers' expectations continue to riseSnazzy features such as enhanced search, ratings/reviews, and the ability to zoom and spin product photos can increase customer loyalty to web retailers. Find more statistics, research and analysis here.

#### Strategic communication in a changed media landscape
I get asked to contribute to a fair few pieces of academic research around public relations and communications. I'm always happy to help as it's usually interesting engaging with students researching this area and I want to help others as others helped me when I was studying public relations.
One of the most interesting pieces of work I helped with recently was Sarah Hazen's research into how strategic communication has changed in the new media landscape in which we operate. I've been meaning to publish this for ages, so apologies to Sarah for the delay in getting this live.
To quote from Sarah's introduction, this is the background to the research:
In the space of a little over 50 years, the world has witnessed an evolution of communication as well as a phenomenon of social media. From an era dominated by newspapers and radio broadcasts, the media environment has crescendoed via the creation of the World Wide Web into a fast paced, highly vivid, instant and interactive landscape. While the population going into retirement can remember a time when media was constrained to magazines, newspapers and possibly two or three basic black and white channels, a little over half a century later, Generation Z’s ‘digital natives’ are traveling with the internet in their pockets. The technological advances of the 21st century have changed the way the world connects, consumes, digests and re-narrates information.
Social media lies at the heart of the new media environment, reinvented into a number of forms including text, audio, visual and video and syndicated through different forums including web blogs, Wikis, social networks, video sharing, message boards, podcasts and RSS feeds. These social tools have become a part of everyday life in the developed world, and in the developing world to a lesser degree, and are affecting the way in which people interact with one another, with a community, with a business and even with a government.
The changing media landscape has been a discussion popular in public relations literature and practice for over a decade. As the landscape evolves, strategic communication is experiencing a rapid and significant transformation which has been argued to be both adopted, but also neglected and ignored by active public relations practitioners. The advances of technology have been reasoned by those in the industry to have strengthened the core roles and functions of public relations practice as a communicator, but as the paradigm shift in online communication changes from a traditional model of an authoritative, top-down, centralized, one-way communication to an interconnected, democratized, twoway symmetric discussion, some evidence suggests that practitioners are reluctant or slow to adapt their traditional methods to digital strategies.
The decline of a communications hierarchy has lead to the decline of the clear, delineated roles of producers and consumers, the media and its audience – each a crucial element in the practice of media relations. Surrounding literature shows a lack of consistency in defining media, its power and its role in a developing communications ecosystem, indicating a significant need for analysis that focuses on the changing roles played out in this evolving media landscape.
The above description paints a picture of weakness and strength, challenge and opportunity for the PR industry, and the definite need for further exploration into the changing media ecosystem than has already been researched and discussed. With a goal to add greater and improved understanding to the wider investigation and the PR body of knowledge, this study aims to explore the changing media landscape, its effects on press, journalism and the news agenda, and subsequently, how those effects are changing the practice of media relations and the role of public relations within it.
If you're interested in the theory behind strategic communication and how it's changing, Sarah's research is well worth a read. There's some great evidence in there giving a range of practitioner perspectives, plus some very insightful analysis:

If you'd like to download the full report you can download it here. If you'd like to get in touch with Sarah drop me a line.

#### Sunday Times on web 2.0 and YouTube
Today's UK Sunday Times has a good and considered analysis on the sale of YouTube to Google, including discussion of the copyright issues and some broader commentary on social media.

#### Take two minutes to help a worthwhile cause for nothing
My brother Mark and future sister-in-law Tor are both members of Rossendale & Pendle Mountain Rescue Team (RPMRT).
They and their volunteer colleagues give up their time to help people in need. As Mark says:
We are all volunteers and rely on charitable donations to carry out our role. You may never go to mountains, but you may be surprised as to what we do - urban searches, ambulance cover, rural searches, rescues, and more. You may well come across us any way!
The team attended more than 130 call outs last year to casualties and the emergency services requiring help from their specially trained team of volunteers. However they have outgrown our base and are fundraising for a new, more suitable premises.
They have secured the land for their new base and are now fundraising to actually construct the new building.
Amongst many other activities they're taking part in the Natwest CommunityForce competition - where you can vote for them to receive £6,000 from Natwest towards their new HQ.
It only takes a couple of minutes to register on the CommunityForce site and vote for the team - just click on the link below, register your details and place your vote. If you find this blog useful, I'd be very grateful if you could give the team your vote and help them help others in Lancashire and Yorkshire.
Vote now at the CommunityForce website.

#### Talktalk, the broadband update and my router
Since May 2006 I've got my broadband service at home as part of a landline, mobile and broadband "triple-play" package from TalkTalk.
Last week TalkTalk wrote to us, saying it was time for the equipment in our local exchange to be upgraded to their own, faster kit. This is part of what's called local loop unbundling (LLU) - providers other than BT installing kit in BT exchanges to provide direct broadband services.
Since last May we've had a one meg service, but the upgrade promises a much faster eight meg service (although we're so far from the exchange we never receive the headline speed).
So the big day comes. The letter warned of some minor service downtime to phone line and broadband. However we were greeted with a silent phone call (presumably a test) at 1.30am.
However during the day our wireless router (a 3Com OfficeConnect) stopped connecting properly. The "synch" light just kept flashing, when it should flash for a short period and then be on constantly when the router is connected.
I tried the usual tricks like turning the router off for a few minutes then turning it back on, but it still wouldn't connect.
Figuring that the problem must be associated with the upgrade - as my router's worked fine since I bought it in September 2005 - so I called TalkTalk's customer support line. I had pretty low expectations, and TalkTalk just about met them with a great combination of long call wait times and disinterest.
Once they knew it wasn't a TalkTalk router they weren't interested, and said it must be a router problem, so they couldn't help.
A quick Google search threw up plenty of other people with a similar problem when the TalkTalk equipment upgrade took place on their exchange.
Having read through many of the posts, I figured that the first thing to try was upgrading the firmware on the router. I did this and, bingo, it worked properly.
I don't know why I bothered with the customer support line. I would have been better trying Google myself and working it out myself.
From a marketing and PR point of view the thing that irks me is that this should have been a positive experience - it's good that TalkTalk is putting in a faster line.
It's just a shame that a simple bit of advice wasn't provided to help customers with routers - by even suggesting this their customer service could have saved me a wasted evening, and reinforced a positive experience with positive problem resolution.
Rant over now - I'm off to catch up with two days of accumulated feeds now I'm back in touch with the internet.

#### Tameside MBC, evidence and the £36,665 Second Life presence
Today's seen a fair bit of coverage of one council's foray into Second Life back in 2008 and how much it all cost. You can see the Daily Mail's slant here and the MJ's here
I will freely admit I know nothing about Tameside and the thinking or decisions behind this project, so all I'm basing my thoughts on this on the documents that have been released under the Freedom of Information Act in response to a request by Liam Billington.
I'm always reluctant to blog about stories like this without a rounded view of the facts, but having read the documents released there are just some obvious things that are crying out to be said about this. To allow you to make your own mind up about this, you can read all the documents and Liam Billington's follow-up request here.
So, to cut a long story short it seems that Tameside MBC commissioned a company called Second Places to build them a presence in virtual world Second Life. The company had also produced similar Second Life presences for Manchester and Oldham. The total cost for the presence was £36665 and the project was seen as a pilot - essentially to test the water with a new and innovative digital presence.
The scoping document produced by Second Places looks like the best summary of what was envisaged - you can read it all here. What are also worth a read are the internal report that were put forward for approval of the project - the first that was written in February 2008 is here, while a second produced in May 2008 is here.
The first report to the management team  includes this paragraph:
Second Life presents a real opportunity to be at the forefront of a new technology which provides new ways of interacting with the community. It gives us the chance to empower and engage with hard to reach groups...It allows Tameside to establish itself as a leader in the use of new technologies, in new ways of doing things and it is an opportunity to publicise the borough on a global scale. This could be the next railways and canals opportunity, transforming our services in a dynamic and accessible way for the benefit of all in the borough.
The second report is more detailed and includes quite a lot of detail about what's being proposed and how it would benefit the council:
As highlighted at the workshop the applications for Second Life can be as wide in scope as Real Life, but we have decided to concentrate on the following areas on the basis of that these might be the areas that TMBC would find easiest to demonstrate tangible benefits to the business and community:-

	Virtual Council Office
	Service Delivery Applications
	Consultation Applications
	SME Support Service Applications
	Community Engagement Applications

Now regular readers of my blog or people that have heard me speak at conferences or on training courses will know I'm a big fan of evidence. Real evidence that proves a point about why public sector organisations should or shouldn't do something. That means basing decisions on a particular communications or engagement tool on real facts about current usage among the target audience and, in the case of pilot projects, realistic estimates of likely future usage.
I've read through all the documentation released about this project. What's strikingly missing is any evidence of an assessment of who the presence is aimed at (beyond a very untargetted "Tameside residents), any clear outcomes or measurable objectives, or indeed a very basic assessement of how many Tameside residents might be Second Life users (or even potential Second Life users).
While ideally this kind of evidence would come from primary research - for example the inclusion of a question in a representative piece of research about levels of Second Life use - it's not that difficult to get a steer of levels of usage from publicly available information.
From what I can read in what has been released by Tameside MBC that didn't happen, so here's how I would have approached measuring the likely audience for a presence in Second Life back in May 2008 when the project was approved:

	Based on publicly available data in February 2008 from the people that run Second Life , the UK then had 41182 active Second Life users
	At the time the TMBC report was written, the best estimate of the UK resident population from the Office for National Statistics was  60,587,300.
	That means the penetration of Second Life users within the UK population at that time was 0.00067971%
	The estimated population of Tameside MBC (admittedly in 2005, but I don't imagine the growth that may have occurred would be significant in this analysis) is 214,100.
	As a rough estimate of audience size for the Tameside pilot project, it's reasonable to apply the UK penetration of active Second Life users to the Tameside MBC population - giving an estimated number of Second Life users living in the Tameside MBC area as 146 at the time the trial was commissioned.
	Around that time Second Life was reporting user sign-up growth of 10-15% per month - so taking the most favourable growth rate of 15% per month in active users (and that's generous because not all new sign-ups will convert to active users), the 146 estimated users in the TMBC areas would become 656 users after a year or 2578 users after two years

Leaving aside the upfront costs to set the presence up, the two year running costs for the Second Life presence were £9940 (comprising "rental and support") - that's £4970 per year.
So in year one, the average estimated number of Second Life users in the area would be 401 (assuming a linear growth rate from the initial total number of users of 146 to the end of year total of 656) - and that's using that all Second Life users chose to interact with the council's presence on Second Life - which will be an overestimate, but again let's take the most favourable view.
That means in year one there would have been an estimated 401 users against a running cost of £4970 - £12.39 per active user.
And remember this analysis is using data available at the time the trial was commissioned. I don't have the SOCITM channel benchmarking data to hand, but it's hard to argue that an online presence with such a low penetration is worth £12.39 per active user - especially when all those users will, by default, have access to the internet where a fully interactive online presence is available to all online residents anyway.
I don't want to labour the point further on this one. I recognise the importance of innovation and testing in public sector communications - but that must be within the bounds of a resonable expectation about what might come out of the end of a pilot project.
My main thought on this is that as communicators (and others working in the local public sector) that commission communications and engagement tools to help us communicate and deliver services to people we must make decisions based on the best evidence we have available at the time. We need to avoid hype, bandwagon jumping and pet projects so that we can make decisions that will deliver the right outcomes at the right cost.
Being able to evidence our decisions in communications and marketing has always been important. We won't always make the right calls and mistakes will be made, but what we do choose to do should be based on sound professional judgements the best information available to us at the time.
That's always been important and will be increasingly more important as public sector spending is opened up to public scrutiny in the coming months.
So I'm not writing this in any way to criticise those involved with this project directly, but the thing I take away from reading about the whole experience is a renewed commitment to use evidence in making decisions on communications and marketing and challenging others to do the same.
Without good evidence-based decision making  the Tameside MBC Second Life won't be the last of this kind of story that we'll read in the next 12 months.

#### Teaching social media on university PR courses
Stuart Bruce points us in the direction of an emerging debate between PR lecturer Richard Bailey and one of his students Natalie Smith.
Richard is asking how he should be teaching the topic of social media on his PR degree course. Natalie has responded on her own blog with a good list of things that PR students need to get their heads around.
I wouldn't disagree at all with Natalie's list. What I'd add is that while the things on her list are valid now, the pace of change in social media means that in a few short years time there will undoubtedly be more tools that need adding to the list.
Something that I think would be good for Richard to consider would be teaching how the theory of social media relates to the practice. Having just completed a PR qualification I'm very aware of PR theory and its links with what I do day-to-day. Social media has challenged many of these theories and requires practitioners to think about them in different ways.
The other aspect that's worth considering is how social media can be integrated into an overall public relations campaign. Very few PR people use social media alone - it's always used alongside more "traditional" techniques. For me integration is a real challenge and an area that I think could benefit from more academic exploration.
That's it for my thoughts. I hope they help Richard and Natalie. I'm well aware of the value of PR education, both for individuals and for the continuing professionalisation of the PR business.

#### Technorati, Ogilvy and verbal diarrhoea
James Byford and Antony Mayfield have blogged about the Technorati/Ogilvy link-up that was announced last week.
James is probably more troubled by the whole thing than I am. Maybe I'm being oversimplistic in my thinking but this looks to me like a bit of a branding exercise for both parties. Certainly as Antony and Simon Collister noted, Technorati hasn't shied away from outside investment/partnerships in the past with the Edelman link-up.
The main aspect of the announcement that stands out to me is that much was said in the respective news releases and posts, but it all meant so little. I thought this when I read the initial posts, and Johnnie Moore seems to have been thinking along the same lines.
Johnnie has posted a brilliant critique of some of the copy used in the Technorati/Ogilvy announcements. His post is well worth reading for its analysis of some of the hype and jargon that fills many such announcements.
It's a worthy warning shot for anyone writing this kind of copy - writing in plain English so people actually know what you mean is so much more powerful than using jargon that disguises your intended meaning. Unless, of course, that's your intention...

#### Ten years on...
This month marks ten years since I first started full-time work, having left Nottingham University in June 1998.
My first "proper" job was as a marketing trainee on the Boots plc graduate scheme. To be honest I can't remember why I opted to apply for a scheme that focussed on marketing - when talking to potential employers on the milkround I think marketing looked like the most interesting and exciting discipline on offer from many graduate employers.
Since that first day in September 2008 spent learning about the dynamics of the dental products market, the first ten years of my marketing and, subsequently, public relations career have been exciting and, best of all, unpredictable.
One thing I did spot early on in my career was how the internet was changing the world that we worked in. I'd built my first very basic website while at university, but had been amazed to find that when I joined Boots access to the internet was seen as a luxury, only to be used for business purposes (and even that was hard as there was so little relevant information on the web anyway). Emails were still a novelty, with most suppliers still communicating by letter and fax.
I was lucky enough to land a placement in the Boots team that looked after e-commerce - an exciting place to be as Boots started to wake up to the potential of the internet.
I was hooked by the digital revolution and pretty quickly moved to London to join the world's first transactional interactive television service, Open, which was subsequently acquired by Sky and became the start of the Sky Active service.
In many ways Open had a lot in common with many start-ups around that time, despite its ownership by four large companies. The pace of change and entrepreneurial nature of marketing in that environment made it an exciting and challenging place to be.
In mid-2001 I was headhunted to join Egg to manage their interactive television service on the Open platform. Almost three years of exciting work and great people later, I left Egg and, via a six month contract stint as Account Director at a branding agency, I ended up doing something very different.
Working in local government marketing wasn't something I set out to do at the start of my career, but four years on I look back on the decision to join Medway Council without regret. I had to learn much about applying my marketing skills in a range of campaigns much broader than I'd worked on previously, and any myths about the pace of life in local government being slow have been well and truly blown away.
Perhaps most significantly, the role has given me the opportunity to broaden my skills and responsibilities to include public relations - an area I'd not previously worked in. I have since taken the CIPR Diploma to give me a greater understanding of public relations theory.
Looking back on the ten years, it's really interesting to see both how I have changed and developed professionally over the time, as well as to think about how much the environment marketing and public relations have to operate in has changed. The contrast between today's web 2.0 world and the way the internet was on my first day at Boots is stark.
I certainly couldn't have predicted where my career has taken me in ten years, nor where the internet would develop in that time, so I'm not going to make any predictions about either over the next ten years.
My focus will be to ensure I continue to learn more and adapt to the changing communications environment in which I work. Where that journey will take my career, who knows, but as long as it continues to be this enjoyable, I don't mind.
Given almost all my readers weren't people I knew ten years ago, I'd be fascinated to hear what you were doing ten years ago. What job did you have and what's been your most enduring memory of the past ten years of your professional life?

#### Terry Leahy on internal communication
Great quotes on the importance of face to face inn internal communication from the ex-Tesco CEO's book "Management in 10 words":

Usually, the ‘internal communications’ department at a company’s headquarters produces presentations and piles of bumf for managers to dole out to their teams. That would have defeated the entire purpose of the exercise. Our teams had to express, in their own words, what we were trying to achieve: it had to be their plan, not ours. And this worked well. Whenever people from outside visited Tesco, they always commented that, no matter who they spoke to, at whatever level, Tesco staff always seemed to know and feel part of the big picture.

To help a team in any organisation understand what is expected of them – how they should behave, what the purpose of the organisation is and how they fit in – you cannot rely on a memo or an email, nor can you take the easy option of sending round a DVD to be played. Nothing beats a face-to-face talk. I stress the word ‘talk’: not high-flown rhetoric, full of gushing phrases and big words, but a simple chat, explaining what you are there to do, how you are going to achieve it, and why each and every person listening has an important role to play.

Each day in stores, depots and offices, managers would brief their team leaders who, in turn, briefed their teams. We called them Team Five meetings – because they only took five minutes and so they could be done standing up. Those five minutes made a big difference, as everyone then knew what was going on and that they had a part to play.

You can read more right now over on Marc Wright's blog - where he has more quotes and a useful commentary.

 

#### Test drive the Medway Council website in beta
We've been working on the project to relaunch the council's website for almost a year now. The launch is coming up very soon and we're in the final stages of testing it out and finishing off a number of loose ends. Bear in mind that some bits may not be working absolutely 100% yet as this isn't the official version for launch yet.
Our immensely capable project lead in the Communications and Marketing team on this project has been Rachel Curtis - so I'll leave it to her words to explain where we're at and how you can check out the site:
The new Medway Council website is on the way and we need you to tell us what you think of it. We have released a beta site which we would like you to test drive with the following questions in mind:

	Is it easy to use?
	 Can you find what you are looking for?
	 Do you like it or dislike it and why?

Why beta?
Every website needs to be tested by users before it launches. If there are parts of the site that you find difficult to use, please tell us and we'll try to fix them before launch. We want you to fully explore the site and tell us what works for you and what doesn't.
The site is in beta because it isn't finished yet. There are features missing, the content isn't all in yet and some things may not work 100 per cent. We are still working on the site but wanted to ask for your thoughts as soon as possible so that we have time to improve things.
There are a few new features that you might want to test out:

	Find my nearest - location based services, tailored to your postcode;
	 Search box - we've invested in this so that you can find your information quickly and easily;
	 Top tabs - whatever you want to do, get it done quickly;
	 Navigation - search by who you are or what you want to do.

With your input, we can make sure it is as useful as possible for you and fulfils your expectations.
So if you can spare two minutes, visit the beta website here - http://beta.medway.gov.uk
When you have had a good look around, please tell us what you think.  Either add your comments to the discussion on the Medway Council re-development blog, or email webeditor@medway.gov.uk.
Your feedback is greatly appreciated.
If you'd like more information about the project, we've been publishing as much information, feedback, reporting and data (including budget details) on the project blog - you can explore that here.

#### Testing the new Windows Live Writer
This is my first post using the new beta version of Windows Live Writer.   I usually use the Wordpress web editor to write posts, but increasingly now I am offline for periods of time and want to be able to write blog posts then. The interface and range of functionality on this version of WLW is impressive - I used the original beta for a while, but grew frustrated with regular problems uploading to my Wordpress blog. It'll be interesting to see how this one fares - it's certainly a worthy competitors for the other offline editors I've tried such as Ecto, Blogjet and Qumana. I'm running Wordpress 2.2 on PHP 5.2.2 / MySQL 5.0.24 - no problems so far with getting WLW to configure with the Wordpress installation, and I guess if you're reading this then I haven't had the same problem as Neville had with XML-RPC. [tags]Windows+Live+Writer, blog+editor, offline+blog+editor, wordpress, neville+hobson[/tags]

#### Textpattern end user manual - moving on
Around two years ago I published a basic end-user manual for the Textpattern content management system. It's been downloaded more than 2,000 times since I first released it.
At that time I was using Textpattern for my website and for several client websites. When I made the decision in 2005 to go with Textpattern it was a two-horse race - the other choice being Wordpress.
However since then I've watched the two systems evolve in different ways. Wordpress now offers much more functionality for running a hybrid website/blog, and is far more versatile thanks to a wealth of plug-ins.
So I've been moving most of my hosted sites over to Wordpress, and now I don't have any sites running Textpattern.
That's why I've decided to stop upgrading my end-user manual. I'm going to leave it on the site in case anyone still finds it useful (it refers to an old version of Textpattern), but I just don't have the time to update it properly any more.
If anyone would like to take it on, they're more than welcome to. Just drop me a line and I'll happily link over to its new home!

#### Textpattern end user manual - updated
Bob Janes has done some further work on my Textpattern end user manual to make it more user friendly.
I originally wrote the guide more than a year ago. I had found that the excellent Textpattern content management system didn't have a basic user guide that I could give to clients.
Thousands of copies have since been downloaded. I'm hoping to update it soon to reflect the new Textpattern releases.
See www.simonwakeman.com/resources/textpattern-end-user-manual to find out more and download the manual.
Thanks to Bob for taking the time to improve the manual. He can be contacted by emailing bob@bobjanes.com

#### The (local) state we're in research
A new piece of research from PwC gives communicators in local government some useful insight into the current challenging context they're operating in.
The research - entitled "The (local) state we're in" - covered 65 local authority Chief Executives and 40 elected Council Leaders across the UK as well as an online survey of 2,010 UK adults aged 18+ which was carried out from 16th to 19th March 2012. The results of the public opinion poll were weighted to nationally representative criteria.
The headline finding is
that local authorities have successfully delivered against an ambitious programme of financial savings over the last year, without any marked reduction in the quality of frontline services. It further highlights a strong level of confidence within councils about being able to repeat that performance in the year ahead. There is notable nervousness however of further financial pressures beyond the current spending review period
There's a useful section in the research looking at communications in local government. It identifies a difference between perception among senior local government people and the reality about how well informed the public is about why councils are making savings:
Our surveys also uncovered a mismatch between the perceptions of both leaders and chief executives on the one hand, and the public themselves on the other, about how well informed the public are on the reasons councils are making savings. Over half of chief executives and three quarters of leaders said that they thought the public very or quite well informed about the reasons that the council was planning to make savings. By contrast, only one quarter of the public thought that they were very or well informed.
While there was little variation between men and women, there were significant differences across age bands, with only 19% of 18-34 year olds saying they felt very or quite well informed, compared to 27% of 35-40 year olds and 31% of those over 55%.
The report speculates the reason behind this apparent discrepancy could be the wrong choice of communications channels. While there's nothing to suggest this isn't the case, personally I suspect that part of the discrepancy could be down to a lack of objective evidence being used by communicators to demonstrate the impact that their work is or isn't having.
I know I can be boringly repetitive on this, but communicators need to get better at using evidence to understand the baselines of perception and reputation as well as showing what difference they're making. If this evidence isn't reaching top officers and politicians then they have no way of knowing what people really think and will base their opinions on their own perceptions and contacts with residents.
The research also gives some interesting perspectives on social media. It recognises that while the sector has rapidly adopted social media in the past years, most social media deployment to date in local government has focussed on exchange of information rather than underpinning broader improvements to efficiency and effectiveness.
The analysis suggests that social media can help local government in three ways - where:

	there is a broad community of interest who would find value in being connected together, having access to information and the advice, support and opinions of others
	there are tools or useful applications that can be provided to help individuals or groups to make decisions or progress through an activity
	support to an individual or group can be delivered through a social or digital media channel, or the connection made between need and service provision.

The research can be downloaded free (registration required) from the PwC website here.

#### The agency of the future
This is a guest post based on an excerpt from the latest edition of Mark Tungate's book Adland.
If you like this, blog readers can get an exclusive 30% discount and free P&P on the book (here's my review).
To get the discount buy online at www.koganpage.com and enter the code WAKEMANADLAND30 - giving you the book for £17.49 rather than £24.99. The offer expires on 31 August 2013.
The agency of the future
‘Brands can no longer force themselves on an unwilling public’
For almost 30 years, the advertising landscape evolved remarkably slowly. Anybody who had worked with Bill Bernbach in the early 1950s would not have felt out of place at an agency in the late 1970s. About the only technological innovation of any note had been the adoption of FM radio by rock stations. Only when cable and satellite emerged in the 1980s did tectonic shifts in media consumption habits begin to occur. By the early 1990s, it was clear that fragmenting TV audiences and the rise of the internet were going to change everything. It seemed likely that, at some point in the near future, computers and television sets would merge. ‘Convergence’ became the new buzzword.
In May 1994, Edwin L Artzt, chairman and CEO of Procter & Gamble, told the American Association of Advertising Agencies: ‘The advertising business may be heading for trouble – or it may be heading for a new age of glory. Believe it or not, the direction… is in our hands. The reason: our most important advertising medium – television – is about to change big-time… From where we stand today, we can’t be sure that ad-supported TV programming will have a future in the world being created – a world of video-on-demand, pay-per-view and subscription television.
Within the next few years… consumers will be choosing among hundreds of shows and pay-per-view movies. They’ll have dozens of home shopping channels. They’ll play hours of interactive videogames. And for many of these [there will be] no advertising at all. If that happens, if advertising is no longer needed to pay most of the cost of home entertainment, then advertisers like us will have a hard time achieving the reach and frequency we need to support our brands’ (‘P&G’s Artzt: TV advertising is in danger’, Advertising Age , 23 May 1994).
The advertising agencies agreed that he was probably right, scurried off to write white papers on the issue, and did relatively little. This was not the first time they had been warned. Way back in the early 1960s, a West Coast adman named Howard Gossage had pinpointed everything that could go wrong with advertising. Known as The Socrates of San Francisco, he was uncommonly lucid about his own trade. Advertising, he considered, was ‘thoughtless, boring and there is simply too much of it’. He was opposed to repetition, suggesting that it took only one direct hit to kill an elephant. Although he was not lacking in cynicism regarding consumers, he at least argued for the involvement of audiences in advertising, citing the old proverb that when you bait a trap, you should always leave room for the mouse. He believed that an ad ‘should be like one end of an interesting conversation’.
But it is the following quote that is often highlighted by Gossage fans for its relevance today: ‘Advertising may seem like shooting fish in a barrel, but there is some evidence that the fish don’t hold still as well as they used to and they are developing armour plate. They have control over what type of ammo you have, when the trigger gets pulled, and how fast your shot moves. Oh, and they’re not all in the same barrel anymore’ (‘Rich media, online ads and Howard Gossage’, Clickz.com, 8 November 2004).
The arrival of the digital video recorder in 1999 chilled agencies to the marrow. Allowing the viewer to ‘time shift’ viewing and skip commercial breaks, it represented the slow death of scheduled television and, potentially, the 30-second advertising spot. And then there were all the other distractions available to audiences: video games, blogs, social networks, phones that were becoming entertainment centres… suddenly, the agencies didn’t know which way was up. The advertising industry resembled one of those cartoon characters frantically plugging leaks in a rowboat, only to find more fountains of water springing up around them.
Even Kevin Roberts, the worldwide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi,suggests that consumers are, on average, less confused than advertisers. ‘Consumers know exactly what they want,’ he says. ‘They want it all. They want to read their news in the newspaper. They want a weekly magazine to give them a bit of perspective. They want updates on their mobile phones. They want to check stuff out on the internet. They want to listen to the radio in their cars. They want big pictures on their TVs in the evening. They’re not remotely confused.’
For Roberts, this is a bonanza for brands. In the future there will be more screens, not fewer. In our homes, at work, in supermarkets, on mobile phones… all the world’s a screen. ‘Our job is to create emotional connections with people, wherever they may be,’ he says.

#### The anti-story
I was thinking the other day about writing for this blog, or more precisely about why I struggle to publish new content as frequently as I'd like to.
It's too easy to blame lack of time, although that's probably there in the background too.
But when I the thought about it a bit more deeply I worked out the real reason why. Most days I find myself thinking about what I could write, but then more often than not I then find myself thinking about the anti-story - what someone with an opposing view might write in response.
Don't get me wrong here - nothing I consider writing about is particularly controversial - but as a communicator I constantly have an eye to where risks may come from.
But where I have gone wrong in thinking about my blog posts is that, for whatever reason, I have been too risk averse in my assessment of the likelihood of the anti-story actually happening.
So the lesson for me is that while a highly developed sense for the anti-story is a good thing, it's important it comes with an objective assessment of the magnitude and likelihood of the anti-story actually happening.

#### The basics of website promotion
Stumbled across a great little primer for people looking to promote their websites, courtesy of Forty Media.
It includes the basics of search engine optimisation (SEO) and blogging - nothing too complex, but would be useful for an offline marketer who wants to find out a bit about this area.

#### The Brand Republic 200
Yesterday saw the publication of the Brand Republic 200 list.
A few people have let me know that my blog has made it in at 93rd in the list - which is nice to see and, to be honest, quite surprising given recent inactivity around these parts.
So what's it all about? In their own words, BrandRepublic describe their list as
The best advertising, marketing, media, PR and digital blogs from around the world, ranked in terms of traffic and social influence.
A few people have let me know that my blog has made it in at 93rd in the list - which is nice to see and, to be honest, quite surprising given recent inactivity around these parts.
I can't find any meaningful information about how the scores are calculated, but all the same it's nice to be recognised - and is a good nudge for me to try to post a bit more frequently than I have been recently.

#### The change curve and communicating difficult messages
If there's one thing that's constant in UK public sector communications at the moment, it's the need to communicate difficult messages.
Whether communicating changes to services provided to the public or communicating radical changes within an organisation, the skills to effectively communicate difficult messages are going to be vital in the next few months and years in the public sector.
I won't pretend I have a magic solution to this,  but I always remember a model that my line manager during a store placement at Boots during the first 18 months of my career told me about. The model's called the change curve.
It was originally created by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969 to illustrate how people deal with the news that they have a terminal illness. As with all such academic models it has its challengers and debaters, but it's a tool that I've used at times in my career when looking at how to communicate difficult messages - so is something that's worth checking out if you've not used it before.
It sets out a number of emotional phases people experience when receiving bad news:

Take for example (and from personal experience at a previous employer) a major redundancy programme, consider the possible reactions at each stage in the curve:
Immobilisation - ...the instant shock of receiving news renders you unable to think about much else...
Denial - ...as the shock takes hold, the feeling that this can't happen to you takes over. On the other hand maybe it won't affect you too much after all...
Anger - ...but then you become angry that this really is happening to you...
Bargaining - ...and you begin to wonder if this is your fault. What did you do to deserve this? Is there a way out or around it?...
Depression - ...but pretty quickly you realise there's not and it all seems pretty bleak...
Testing - ...and before long you start to think of new options, permutations from the new way forward that weren't previously obvious or possible. Thinking about these gives the future a new shape...
Acceptance - ...and gradually for one reason or another a clear path forward emerges that you can rationalise to your satisfaction. Over time you accept the change and your new way forward and get on with it.
There is, of course, no way of predicting how people will react at each phase of the curve - but it does help anticipate and plan for some reactions, and think about the need for different messaging phases in a communications strategy for bad news.
Because people are different emotionally in this way, I'd also suggest that any communications tactics employed need to take account of the differential paces of emotional reactions. Different people will go through the curve at different paces.
In practice that means that you may well need to provide several opportunities to re-communicate what may seem like very similar messages, and be prepared for different reactions each time.
It also means providing access to information or a back catalogue of information or materials communicated so people at different stages of the curve can reference previously communicated facts or statements.
When implementing change that can be perceived as negative, it's also worth thinking about points in the change process where you need interaction, contribution or co-operation from your audience. Consider how you can communicate with them so that they've gone through some of the more extreme phases of emotional reaction before you need the opportunity to engage with them more constructively.
Communicating bad news is never the happiest work a communicator can do, but that's no reason to not use a strategic model like the change curve to plan and deliver communications.
While this week will inevitably bring many changes that people don't like of one sort or another, effective, honest, open and well-planned communications will help those involved through the change curve while minimising the inevitable distress involved in unpopular or unwelcome changes.

#### The difference between websites and blogs
I did a phone interview with French company Skema this afternoon about blogging.
One interesting question I was asked was about the differences between a website and a blog for large corporations.
While technically blogs actually do exist on websites, blogs have a number of characteristics that mark them out from normal websites. These usually include chronological ordering of entries, the ability to add comments and provision of RSS feeds.
However it struck me that the most fundamental difference between a website and a blog for an organisation is that a company's website carries messages on behalf of the company or brand - written typically in the third person.
On the other hand a company blog would carry messages from an individual - written in the first person.
The fundamental principle for companies looking at using blogs in their communications mix is that companies can't blog. Only individuals in companies can blog, so to use blogging companies need to identify who should blog on behalf of the company.
Those selected individuals need to have good written communication skills and understand the boundaries which limit their communication on behalf of the organisation.
The use of blogs in the corporate environment requires leaders to place trust in their people in a way that they probably haven't had to previously, and that means that the company's culture must support this trust.
So for an organisation to be ready to use blogs in its communications mix, the first step is to develop an open and trusting organisational culture. Without this corporate blogging is likely to be a step too far.

#### The future of advertising
The UK's Sunday Times has a thought-provoking lengthy article about online and offline advertising.
Clients are recognising that it's not enough to take the 30second spot and repurpose it online. Increasingly campaigns are created with digital at their core, with offline elements playing a secondary role (a bit more on the Nike case study referenced in the Sunday Times article here  and here).
The article does note that the role of social-networking sites, such as MySpace and Bebo, is growing. The UK's online advertising growth is still being driven by Google, and search advertising more broadly, with online display advertising less important.
What the article doesn't address is whether the interuptive advertising model is around for the long term. I suspect consumers are becoming more immune to being distracted from the task they're undertaking online.
I believe the future of online marketing lies with engaging positively with users on their terms, rather than trying to get in their way and divert them.
This will impact online display advertising revenues further. What's equally interesting is whether the marketing or public relations departments of our biggest advertisers will be leading this shift.
(via Make Marketing History)

#### The future of public sector communications - 2013 and beyond
At the recent Public Sector Communications Awards in Manchester I delivered a presentation about the future of public sector communications in the coming years.
I've since had a few emails and Twitter messages asking to see the slides, but given they were a one word minimal affair, I thought instead I'd turn the presentation into an extended blog post.
As we reach the turn of the year it's that time when we tend to reflect on the previous twelve months and look forward to what might be coming up. And earlier this month the Autumn Statement from the government confirmed what was pretty much expected - more austerity and more funding cuts.
I've headed up communications and marketing at Medway Council since late 2009 - shortly before a time of fundamental change in the sector following the general election in May 2010. It wasn't long after then that unprecedented in-year spending cuts for local government heralded a new era for the sector - a new reality everyone in the public sector has had to adjust to.
The challenge for communicators has been to tell the story of reducing spending and major changes to services against the backdrop of massive change throughout the public sector - including fundamental restructuring in the NHS and central government.
In local government there has been an emerging understanding of a new reality driven by reducing budgets and growing demand for services.
The Barnet graph of doom has focussed attention on the fact that before long the sector won't be able to afford to deliver its statutory services in adult and children's social care, let alone any other statutory or discretionary services.
More recently Birmingham's jaws of doom chart tells a similar story - demonstrating the ever-growing gap between resources available and funding pressures.
These charts sum up the situation really. Things have got to fundamentally change. We just can't carry on without some big changes in the public sector. And that includes the communications profession.
In their Agile Council report PwC  talk about the evolution of organisations. Their three stages of development of organisations provide a useful framework for thinking about the role of communications in the public sector.
Their first stage of development is where organisations configure themselves around structures - basing the way the organisation works on the basis of line management structures and groups - something the public sector has traditionally been quite comfortable with.
In this world it's easy to see where communications fits - as usually there will be a communications team or function which delineates clearly the place that communicators have in the organisation.
But in a time of cuts - salami slicing and beyond - a non-frontline team like communications will be vulnerable in this model - as they will struggle to articulate their value in an organisational model inherently places greater value on those teams that directly deliver service than those that form the so-called back office.
The next stage of development of organisations is when they start to configure themselves around processes - ensuring the resources they bring to bear to deliver service are configured around key customer-facing processes.
This focus on the value chain of activities is core to the business of shared service delivery and helps break down internal and external silos within the public sector. But in this model the function of communications tends to be marginalised - probably a tactical function supporting the delivery of customer processes but not fulfilling a more strategic purpose within the organisation.
But according to PwC the most advanced organisations are configuring themselves around outcomes - going beyond organisational boundaries and individual processes to deliver a clear focus on what they actually want or need to deliver to people.
And in this model the outcomes are delivered across sectors - so the most successful public sector organisations will be those that can work seamlessly with partners from the public, private and voluntary sectors to get stuff done.
That's the future world in which public sector communications needs to find a role - being able to clearly define, articulate and prove its place in delivering outcomes that matter to the organisation and the people it serves.
Which takes us to performance management. It's not something that many communicators naturally align themselves with, but without a strong performance management framework for communications we're not going to be able to prove our value in delivering those outcomes that matter.
The most successful communicators of the future will be as comfortable with counting rules and data quality as they will with press releases and Twitter. Whatever we do, we must be able to prove its value - continuously.
As a profession we've got to do this and get beyond a sometimes lazy focus on outputs. Too often we measure how many press releases we've produced, how many leaflets we've sent out, how many people like us on Facebook or how many people visit our website. In an outcome focussed world these measures are meaningless. The sector doesn't exist to send out releases or get people to websites - they're simply part of a bigger journey towards improvement of one sort or another.
And while I'm on the subject of measurement and evaluation I have to say when judging the awards recently, while there were some really strong entries, it was disappointing to see advertising value equivalent (AVE) still popping up as an evaluation measure all too often. The PR industry has moved beyond this misleading practice. Public sector communicators need to make sure they're familiar with the Barcelona Principles which set out a sensible approach to measuring the value of PR and a focus on outcomes.
So what are the skills a communicator needs to be able to play a valuable role in this future? Well I think there are six areas that we need to focus on.
Digital
It goes without saying that a communications practitioner needs to get the digital space. It's a core skill and has been for some time now. But the really good communicators will understand how to use digital channels as part of an integrated mix of tools - and be able to select those tools critically based on evidence.
Customer-focussed
This one shouldn't be a surprise either as a focus on internal and external customers has always been at the heart of communications and marketing - whether through the marketing process or in the business of internal communication.
But the best communicators will be able to understand customers and the role of communications as a cog in the gearbox of service delivery - integral to the effectiveness of the gearbox but unable to function without the other cogs in the gearbox as well.
Agile
Public sector communicators of the future need to demonstrate real agility in the way they work. The sector will be defined by its ability to change and communicators need to be able to roll with this - being responsive to the increasingly dynamic nature of their organisations and their environments. They need to be increasingly cross-skilled - allowing communications teams to flex according to needs and demonstrate greater cross-discipline resilience.
Change-ready
While everyone in the sector will have a view about the future and what it may bring, none of us have that magic crystal ball to be able to predict with great accuracy. But while it's a real cliche, it's true that we can be certain that change - rapid, sometimes unexpected and always challenging - will be a feature of the public sector future.
Communicators will often be at the forefront of this change and at times personally as well as professionally involved in it.
The best communicators will be comfortable with that rapid and sustained change. They'll be able to separate their own emotions and natural responses to change from the professional challenge that change brings them as communicators - to ensure they can deliver high quality work even when the personal circumstances are difficult for them.
Habit challengers
I'm a big fan of the concept of dual process theory of reasoning. It helps explain how we approach our work and how we go about doing things. According to the theory we have two minds or systems.
The first is an automatic mind (or system 1) that tends to solve problems by relying on prior knowledge and belief. It has rapid, parallel and automatic ways of working where only the final product is conscious - so our mind automatically jumps to a conclusion, decision or action without realising the thought process we've taken to get there.
The automatic mind is a good thing as without it, we'd be forever cogitating on things and would never actually get stuff done.
But the habits it engenders can be limiting too - they're a barrier to taking active choices in work situations and stop us questioning our behaviour, challenging our choices and giving genuine consideration to alternatives.
The second mind is reflective (or system 2). When we use this mind we undertake abstract hypothetical thinking and use reasoning combined with logic to reach a conclusion. The reflective mind is slow and very demanding of our mental energy but helps us take a broader and more considered view.
And in the business of communications there's a place for both. Strong communicators will be aware of this and the limitations of both - making conscious choices in their approach and being cognescent of the underlying factors that influence the functioning of their automatic minds. They will be able to shift out of habits to use their skills, knowledge and experience to make the good decisions in every situation.
Network players
We live in a networked world. People have always been connected through personal relationships, but the digital age has expanded the reach, volume and strength of many of the links in these networks.
And that's a game changer for public sector communications. Our former modus operandi in communications was communicating for or on behalf of our organisations.
In the future our role will be about communicating through others - using their role, place and trust within their unique networks to help tell our stories and play our part in delivering outcomes.
We live in an age where people rely on others they know for information, not the organisations or prominent people they used to get that information from.
So the best public sector communicators will be able to understand and see the networks that exist, will know their place and role in them, and most importantly enable others to function within the right networks to help the sector achieve its goals.
And it's this shift that means public sector communicators have to be able to let go.
We have to drop the pretence that we can control communications. I'd argue we never could control as much as we (and probably others) thought we could, but now it's clear - we can't dictate timescales or messages as the networked people in communities will say what they think when they want. And what they think will be influenced most by other people in their network that the trust.
So to be successful we have to be able to let go of the concept of control and learn to participate. We can make a choice to operate in a new mode - participating, engaging, facilitating and enabling - and that's a choice as professional communicators that we have to make.
It's that choice that will allow us to differentiate ourselves from the amateur communicators in our organisations.
After all every organisation has its amateurs. Anyone can write a news article can't they? And web design - if you've been on Dreamweaver course then job done.
Of course there's always been a tension between the amateur communicators and the professionals. The professionals smart from the perceived incursion on their turf while the amateurs can't see what the fuss is about. And the arrival of social media has given the amateurs another thing "they can do".
So in this busy, networked world there's a lot of noise; lots of channels to communicate through; lots of content - which all makes it harder to get our messages out there and heard by the people we need to hear them.
It's easy for communicators to see the amateurs as a persistent threat - constantly challenging, nibbling away at the reputation of the professional communicators in an organisation and generally making a nuisance of themselves. But the best communicators will see this not as a threat but as an opportunity.
In the busy and confusing digitally networked world, anyone that can help people and organisations navigate this chaotic space will be invaluable as the public sector experiences unprecedented turbulence and sustained change.
And I'd argue it's only the communicators that can do this well. The best communicators naturally understand relationship management, they can intuit the impact that good communications will have and they can adjust tactics to suit the context of delivery.
They'll be able to use the psychology of motivation, the mechanisms of influence, the theories behind networks and the drivers of group or community participation to deliver the best work they can they help the public sector do its stuff.
It's that unique blend that'll mean the successful communicators of tomorrow stand head and shoulders above the amateurs in their organisations.
And that's where the real future for public sector communications lies. We have the right skills to make communications an indispensable part of the public sector machinery in the future and make a really valuable contribution to society.
But it's not going to happen by itself. No-one's going to set it out for us. And it won't be easy.
But it will be exciting - as public sector communicators continue to get a better understanding of the sector, how it's changing and continue prove the value of communications in supporting the delivery of public sector outcomes for people in our communities.
So I have committed to myself that in 2013 I will continue to work hard on achieving this vision for public sector communications, continuing to learn and develop myself, and most importantly enjoying working in the turbulent and challenging place that is the public sector right now.
Image credit: Mr. Corso on Flickr

#### The Language of Leaders
Communications and leadership are two of the areas that I find particularly interesting in working life.
That's why I was keen to read "The Language of Leaders" - a book by Kevin Murray (Chairman, Good Relations Group) on how top organisational leaders in the private and public sectors use communications as part of their leadership role.
The insights in the book come from more than 70 leaders from organisations including Marks & Spencer, British Red Cross, the Department of Transport, BskyB, the Met Office, British Gas, Unilever, The Olympic Delivery Authority and The British Army.
From interviews with these leaders, Kevin's book identifies 12 principles of leadership communication - the things that leaders need to focus on in their personal and business communication. These principles are explained in detail in the book through a good range of stories, case studies and examples to illustrate the value of communications in a leadership role.
I was particularly taken with the section about the role of listening as a leadership tool and a means to gain engagement. The role of conversations and the skills required of leaders to be able to have the conversations that make a difference to performance are emphasised strongly.
The book is packed with useful insight that can anyone with a leadership role can take away and actually practice - it's not heavily academic in tone and distils down a mass of information and perspective into real-world actions for leaders to take now.
The book ends with a round-up of the key insights from the interviews. What comes through most strongly in this is the role of authenticity in leadership communications - the complexities of the leadership message being bound up in the passion, belief and authenticity of the leader mean that, in essence, a leader needs to believe in their mission and values to be able to communicate effectively.
That's something that seems pretty straightforward when written down in print. But in day-to-day work settings it is more complex to achieve - which is why being completely clear on what you are seeking to achieve in your leadership and how you are going to do it is vital. Without that reference point from which to anchor the way you do your job day in day out, your leadership will inevitably be compromised.
So I guess the challenge for me is to be really clear and consistent what that mission is. And be able to reference that in every situation that your professional life throws at you.
And I should end with thanks to a new member of my team who has inspired me to sit down and write a blog post for the first time in a while by saying she actually read my blog - thanks - you know who you are!
Disclosure: Free review copy of Language of Leaders supplied by the publishers
 
 
 
 

#### The New Influencers book
Paul Gillin is writing a book called The New Influencers - a history and commentary on social media, what's behind its rapid growth, and profiles on some key players in this space.
The book will be published in spring 2007, but Paul has made his draft chapters available on a blog at www.paulgillin.com/NewInfluencers.
I've read several of the chapters and will definitely make the time to read the rest. Paul's style is compelling and the content very interesting. The finished product will make a great primer for anyone wanting to learn the basics of social media.
Posting his work in progress on a blog isn't new, but it's still a great way to receive feedback from readers before committing to print. It's also a great way of creating a pre-publication buzz around the book, without any additional marketing investment.

#### The new marketing for beginners
Matthew Stibbe at Bad Language has a great post about new marketing techniques.
It's a pretty long one, but is well worth the time investment as Matthew looks at some interesting UK case studies - and not the usual ones that we regularly read about.
I certainly learnt a few things, and it made me challenge my thinking in some areas of marketing. Thanks Matthew!

#### The new McPR way
Just finished leafing through this week's PR Week magazine (UK) - the front page lead on McDonald's and its move to use staff as brand ambassadors caught my eye.
Simon Collister's managed to beat me to it with his post on the same topic.
The gist of the story is that McDonald's wants to position its people at the centre of its communications - because people make up a business, and people are more credible than corporates.
Simon reckons this is a risky strategy. He's right, as handing over control (or more accurately the corporate perception of control) is a brave move.
It's only the right move if you have confidence in the people in your organisation, and to do this having an effective internal communications and engagement programme has to be a prerequisite.
For McDonald's I wonder if it's one of few strategic PR options remaining, given the many challenges the brand faces from all around.
It'll be interesting to see what the strategy means in practice. Nick Hindle, UK PR chief for McDonald's, is quoted as saying
We should give staff the confidence they need - some will talk to the press, some will blog, others will talk to their mates down the pub. 
Does this mean McDonald's will be positively enabling and encouraging their people do become their PR machine, or does it mean that they won't be as strict as in the past in trying to stop their people talking on behalf of the company?
It'll be interesting to see.

#### The next chapter...
I believe strongly that leadership is, in part, about building capacity for an organisation to function effectively in the long term. That's why one of my goals over the past 12 months has been to ensure that I could move on from my current role  at Deeson with the agency well set up for future success.

With the appointment of Sarah Harris as Managing Director at Deeson and a great leadership team in place, I'm confident that now is the right time for my next challenge.

I've learnt a lot over the past six years at Deeson. It's been a brilliant experience and I've really valued the close collaboration with fellow director Tim Deeson and other colleagues over that time. 

I know Tim took a big decision to trust me to take on the leadership of his family business in 2016 and I've admired the professionalism he's shown and wise counsel he's given me through the highs and lows of agency life over the past four years as Managing Director.

Having worked with a brilliant team at Deeson and achieved so much commercially and organisationally in the agency, I wasn't ready to move away from the team completely. But I also knew that I needed to gain new experiences to ensure I continued to develop professionally. 

With Deeson becoming part of The Panoply in late 2018, I wanted to be able to take on new responsibilities within the group.  So as Sarah takes on the day-to-day leadership of the agency, I'm moving to a new role as CEO at Deeson. I'll be responsible for overseeing the strategic direction of the agency during the next phase of its development, supporting Sarah and the leadership team in their work to continue delivering excellent work for our clients.

Alongside this, I'm really pleased to be working closely again with Tim and Dr Ronald Ashri, co-founders of leading conversational AI consultancy Greenshoot Labs, in a new role as Chief Growth Officer. I'll be working to continue the rapid growth of the business, helping organisations understand how they can incorporate conversational AI into their product and service strategies.

This move also means I'll be able to work with founders Neal Ghandi and Olly Rigby on the development of The Panoply over the next year. I'll be helping group companies share back office services more effectively and ensuring the group has effective marketing and branding for the next stage in its progression as a purpose-driven design, technology, innovation and transformation business.

I'm really excited about the diverse challenges that I'll be tackling over the next few months and being part of the next chapter in the development of The Panoply, Deeson and Greenshoot Labs. Lots to learn, new people to collaborate with and plenty of new experiences - that's all I can ask for in my new roles in 2020.

#### The power of visual identity
It's been a topsey turvey 48 hours at Wakeman towers, but I'm happy to report things are returning back to normal.
While passing a few minutes reading a newspaper yesterday, my three year old son gave me a powerful reminder of the importance of visual identity.
Spotting a branded Tesco advert in the paper he said:
That is a picture of Tesco.
We shop at Tesco so he's been to the store fairly regularly and seen the logo there. Now he recognises it in other situations away from the store, even though he can't even read yet.
For me that's a real demonstration of how important strong and consistent visual identities really are.

#### The Public Relations Handbook - out now
Earlier in the week a copy of the hot-off-the-press fourth edition of The Public Relations Handbook popped through our letterbox.
According to the publisher, it is:
 a  comprehensive and detailed introduction to the theories and practices of  the public relations industry. It traces the history and development of  public relations, explores ethical issues which affect the industry,  examines its relationship with politics, lobbying organizations and  journalism, assesses its professionalism and regulation and advises on  training and entry into the profession.
The book combines  theoretical and organizational frameworks for studying public relations  with examples of how the industry works in practice. It draws on a range  of promotional strategies and campaigns from businesses, public and  non-profit organizations including the AA, Airbus, BT, Northamptonshire  County Council, Cuprinol and Action for Children.
I wrote the public sector PR chapter in the book so I'm particularly chuffed to see my work in print alongside many other authors who, not that long ago, I was reading as a PR student.
I should thank Northamptonshire County Council and Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council in particular for their help with preparing the case studies in my chapter.
 

#### The right time
Tom Murphy has a great post about knowing when technologies have moved from being the domain of early adopters into mass usage.
He's right when he says the real answer is "it depends", and it's the responsibility of professional communicators to know what tools are the right ones to deploy for a specific purpose.
Having a professional interest in social media, Tom's post made me reflect about how participating in social media myself, my perception can become coloured by my personal involvement.
As a communicator I need to do my absolute best to remain objective when considering what the most appropriate tools to use. While I have no doubt that social media is rapidly becoming an important tool for the "average" PR practitioner, it's just one tool alongside the more "traditional" tools that I use.
Your world view is always driven by your own experience and perceptions and this is only natural. A mark of our professionalism as communicators is being able to take a more external view of a communications challenge, without losing the benefits that our personal and experience bring to things.
Knowing the right time to deploy new technologies in a communications mix is just one of those professional decisions that we have to make.
But to make that decision properly as a communicator I need to have a detailed understanding of social media - you wouldn't dream of pitching a journalist without reading their publication beforehand, so why would you consider using a blog or podcast without properly understanding them beforehand?

#### The science of persuasion
I'm really fascinated by this kind of stuff and how it can be applied to make more effective marketing and communications campaigns:

#### The secret of a successful blog
I've been thinking about what lies behind a successful blog. I don't mean specific features or content, but what is the secret at the core of successful blogs, regardless of their subject or audience.
Communication is typically a transaction or exchange between two entities (usually people or organisations).
A blog is no different - it's a communication between two individuals, happening many times between the author and the blog's readers.
If you consider a blog as an information exchange, then it must offer value to both author and reader.
Readers follow blogs for their own reasons; some have news scoops, some have unique or niche content and some are the best way to follow what an individual or organisation is up to.
What's behind all these reasons is that the reader is getting value in a way that's relevant to them (and as a blog author the challenge is to keep giving your readers value consistently over time).
On the other side of the value exchange equation is that to be sustainable, the blog author must get value from blogging.
At an individual level with individual readers I get this value from professional networking, learning new things and sharing knowledge.
At an aggregate level I also get value from raising my professional profile, generating new consultancy business and indulging in some shameless self-promotion to boot.
Taken as a whole I get enough value from blogging to make it a worthwhile use of my time, and my readers must get enough value on their own terms to keep reading.
So the secret to a successful blog is to offer enough value to attract and retain readers among your target audience, and get enough value from writing the blog to be able to sustain the significant time investment that blogging requires.
Easy really...

#### The social media plateau?
I've spent some of the weekend reading this year's SOCITM Better Connected report in more detail.
A quote from outgoing Head of Communications at London Fire Brigade, Richard Stokoe, caught my eye:
Yet the major problem in 2013 is that it is still communication departments that almost exclusively hold the keys to the social media cupboard and jealously guard them. This allows those departments to justify their current spend, blaming this new medium for why their time and budgets are sacred. In turn, senior management and chief executives have been content to leave it in the domain of communications people, partly in fear of social media and partly because of lack of comprehension of its power. This has left the true potential of social media in delivering operational benefits to the public, and cost efficiency to the taxpayer, almost completely under-explored.
I agree with Richard's comments about the underexploitation of social media in the local public sector - we do generally seem to have reached a plateau in adoption where social media has, to a large extent, become stuck within communications teams and their communications work.
Where I disagree with him is in his swipe at communications teams using social media to justify their current spend. It feels like a bit of a cynical claim that's slightly detached from the reality. I'm certainly not aware of any councils that have been able to use social media to justify a communications operation - the only thing that can do that is decent outcome-focussed evaluation that really proves the value of communications.
But back on social media, and more generally digital, I think the cause needs champions in any organisation - and that communications people are best placed to be these digital champions. But they must recognise the responsibility this role has to be the advocates of digital in the broader organisations - pushing out the case for digital engagement to be more deeply integrated into the way the public sector delivers services.
Those local public service organisations that do succeed in genuinely adopting digital will be those who have a genuinely strong organisational and leadership understanding of digital - and can harness this to radically reshape their business to the extent that digital has reshaped the world in which they operate. It's not just about having people Twittering and a decent Facebook page out there. It's far, far more.
Image credit: Mark Hunter

#### This week's interesting stuff round-up
Here's some more interesting content I've found this week. In a less busy week I'd have managed a few blog posts about some of them, but I'm afraid this week it's just a simple summary:

Millions of adults lack access to computers and internet - UK - Over one-third (36%) of adults do not have access to a computer and over two-fifths (42%) lack access to the Internet. These are the headline findings of the Annual Media Literacy Survey 2008 from NIACE.
IAB UK : Social media handbook - ‘Social media’ is more than a concept, and certainly more than a simple add-on to the rest of your campaign activity, it's more than a simple PowerPoint slide full of ‘web 2.0 logos’, and it’s no good to us marketers unless we know how to use it.
Middleberg/SNCR Survey of Journalists Reveals Generational Gap - While journalists across all age groups and beat assignments are rapidly adopting social media tools into their everyday work, the greatest usage is shown by young “Millennial Generation” journalists. The disparity in usage between younger versus older journalists is striking and holds important implications for journalists and communicators.
Majority of Kids Are Computer Savvy - An overwhelming majority (89%) of all kids age 6-11 in the US spend at least some time doing online activities and - though many of their basic social activities haven’t changed much over the years - they have vastly different communication styles and preferences than older age groups, according to a study from Experian Consumer Research.
P&G's McConnell Not Sure Marketers Belong on Social Networks - Social networks may never find the ad dollars they're hunting for because they don't really have a right to them, said Ted McConnell, general manager-interactive marketing and innovation at Procter & Gamble Co., at a Nov. 15 forum on digital media.
Consumers Open to SocNet Shopping - Nearly one-third (30%) of online consumers say special sales and exclusive products would make them consider shopping on social networks, and 27% say viewing comments about items for sale would similarly encourage them, according to a survey from Volusion, conducted by Harris Interactive.

For all bookmarks that I've made check out del.icio.us.

#### Thoughts from LGcommunications conference
I've spent the day in Leeds attending a day of the LGcommunications annual conference. It's been a while since I've been to a communications conference and it was certainly interesting spending a day in the company of fellow local public service communicators, as well as speaking on a panel session in the afternoon.
The first session I caught was a discussion about total place, communications and what the new coalition government means for all this. There was general agreement that the concept of total place - a way of looking at all public money flowing through a place regardless of who provides the service - was something that was here to stay, although possibly under a different moniker.
There won't be any prizes for guessing the other certainty of the session - the need for a reduction in public spending generally and what it means for local public service communicators. There's a need to continue the drive to make communications spend, whether on people, channels or campaigns, more accountable and linked to outcomes (or to avoid the jargon, things that actually make a difference to the lives of local people). There was a good discussion about how this could be done and different approaches that could be taken.
There was also a debate about how joined up communications functions between local public service providers could become a reality. One view was that creating a single communications team for a place, covering the remits of council, PCT, police and others, was just the kind of visionary thinking that the current times demand. Idealistically I can see the appeal of this logic - an area's sustainable communities strategy is the blueprint for what every public service partner should be doing in an area - and this should therefore where the outcomes for an area are set out and those are what communicators should be supporting. Job done.
However the creation of such a team has its challenges - the need for each organisation to give up some of its more organisationally focussed goals would require a real change in thinking for many organisations, especially those with politics at their core. I think there's a real risk also that a shared communication resource between partners would become a lightning conductor during times of conflict between those partners - if a shared communications function is to become a reality this kind of eventuality will need considering and approaches agreeing before it happens.
Others in the audience could see other solutions to removing overlap in communications functions in local areas - one suggestion that sounded interesting was organisations in a local area taking a lead on different parts of communications - for example one organisation may host a media team while another may lead on graphic design. Again with this I can see challenges, particularly on the practical side, but I wouldn't dismiss any options at this stage.
What's very clear is that we need to take a wide ranging look at what communications contributes to local public service organisations, ensure that contribution is aligned to what the organisation actually wants, and think radically about different models for delivery that can increase efficiency yet further.
Alex Aiken's workshop on Westminster's latest thinking on their approach to communications was also very useful - giving me plenty to think about and challenging once again some of the comfortable norms of communications thinking.
The other session that was really useful was from Prof Stephen Coleman who spoke about changes in politics, society and the internet. He challenged public sector communicators to think about how they needed to recast the public engagement agenda that's needed in the new mode of technologically enabled politics and in the era of an unprecedented public mood towards politics. He had three challenges for the future:

	Where do people find information - much council information is not demand-driven - organisations need to push information to people but this is a greater challenge in times when people have so many competing demands for their attention
	The exclusive narrative of public sector communications - many communications "talk" in words or terms that people just don't understand (and shouldn't have to understand). Communications need to be framed in a narrative that people can related to - and in the conversations of social media we have a great window into those real-world narratives. We need to learn how to interpret them and fit our communications into those narratives.
	The challenge of efficacy - the best single predictor of successful engagement is people's belief in their ability to influence the world around them. As a belief it's an entirely subjective measure but is really important - if people think they can make a difference, they will participate, and if they think they can't make a difference, they won't.

And then Stephen closed with three areas for delegates to take away and put into action:

	mapping - taking a "from the bottom up" approach to how and what to communicate - rather than building from the current practice - because incremental, creeping growth of a communications landscape will invariably lead to less effective practice than a clean-sheet approach
	storying - thinking about how communicators can take the day-to-day life narratives of real people, which are far more influential than council or council people's narratives, and using them in communications. The next level would then be to connect these narratives together to tell a story of place grounded in people, rather than the physical aspects of place which form many existing communications.
	production of meaningful, tangible consequences to feedback - or put simply, we need to be able to tell people what we've done with things they've told us. From Stephen's research the lack of this is one of the biggest frustrations among audiences that have participated in public sector research or consultation. Making these links is key to sustaining and developing a culture of participation and engagement.

Having left home at 4.30am this morning and expecting to get back at 10pm it's been a long day, but very worthwhile. I've certainly got a lot to think about putting into practice, and I might even manage a few blog posts on some aspects of it - after this is meant to be a blog about public sector communications after all!

#### Thoughts on developing your people
Anna Farmery at the Engaging Brand blog has a nice post about what you can do to develop your team members.
She has some good and (most importantly) easily actionable tips for helping develop the skills of your team.
Anna asks for more contributions from her readers, so here are some from me that I've found since I've been managing a team:
Don't be afraid to look back - encourage self-review of all projects and situations, both good and bad. The most powerful learning points are those that team members realise themselves when they take a step back at the end of an experience.
Encourage knowledge sharing - all your team members know things that others don't, so encourage them to share their knowledge and experience with each other and you. Your team as a whole will benefit, and it's a great way for an individual to raise confidence in their professional ability.
Avoid comfort zones / the norm - when managing the team, makes sure you don't fall into a rut of expectations. Ask different team members to do different things, rather than always relying on the same person to do the same type of activity. Doing this will develop the team and will encourage better teamworking.
Ask for feedback - create a open climate where your team can give you honest feedback about your performance as a manager. That feedback can help you improve what you do - and therefore help your team as well.
Anna writes a really interesting blog - if you're interested in self-development or personal branding I'd encourage you to pay her a visit at the Engaging Brand. She also has a podcast although I haven't had a chance to check this out yet, but I will be doing so very soon.

#### Thoughts on public sector web content management
Over the years I've seen web content management in action a range of organisational environments, from a High Street retailer, an online bank through to a unitary council. While each place had its own peculiarities, many of the issues around content management for websites were similar.

Derbyshire County Council's Sarah Lay has an interesting post about discussions her team is having about how content should be managed on their website.
At Medway we're hoping for approval at tomorrow's full council meeting for funding to allow us to kick off our website redesign project with a brand new content management system - so many of Sarah's thoughts and questions have been in my mind while putting together the proposals for a new site.
Sarah's questions are below, along with my personal thoughts on them:

What experience does anyone else have?
Do others implement devolved authorship?
In Medway at the moment we have a hybrid devolved/centralised model on the main website where content is published by a service-based published, checked by a local co-ordinator, then checked and pushed live by a centrally-based web editor. The model is similar for the intranet but without the third step from the central web editor.
On other satellite sites there is usually a one step publishing model, although this publisher is more often than not a centrally based web editor rather than a service-based officer.
At Egg we had a centrally-based team that did all publishing. This was mainly for compliance reasons so an audit trail of all published content could be maintained and to ensure strict control over who could publish what.
However the number of pages and range of subjects covered on the site was much less - which is why I'm not convinced this model would be great for a council - as few councils would have resources to properly publish all material through a fully centralised publishing team, and to do this would require very strong and clear communication lines between the officers running services and those publishing web content.
What is the ratio of authors to size of organisation / website?
We have more than 100 publishers trained to use the content management system (CMS) from an organisation with around 3,000 staff. However the number of trained publishers that are active is much less.
What skills do those authors have? Why were they chosen as authors? Is it a dedicated web author role or part of A N Other job?
Our publishers typically undertake web publishing as part of another job role - there aren't any dedicated web content people outside the centrally-based communications team.
The publishers are sometimes nominated by line managers, less often they put themselves forward for the training.
While writing for the web/house style is part of the web content publisher training, I think there's a bit of a gap with this approach as it has meant the website has grown semi-organically from its planned structure into something unwieldy and, most importantly, internally-focussed rather than user experience-focussed.
What training is provided? 
Two day web publisher training course - part-technical (ie how do you actually use the CMS) and part-writing (how to write web copy and about house style).

What is the incidence of retraining?
What level of support is needed / provided?
Typically on a one to one basis as requested by the publishers themselves.
Is content 'let free' by authors or is there an approval system in place?
As above - three-step approval process. While this does give a fair degree of control, it can also lead to inefficiencies.
The second stage co-ordinators don't always check as thoroughly as they could, as they know there's always someone else that will pick up mistakes, problems etc. This leads to greater workloads for the final stage editors as they pick up problems that should have been corrected earlier on.
Having a three stage model also causes a delay in the time it takes to get content live as it has to sit in two people's queues of content to check - while the final editors are full-time on the web, the co-ordinators aren't. There are ways to get content live quickly, but it relies on goodwill and clear communiction rather than a structurally quick content publishing model.
Has anyone gone from devolved authorship to centralisation of publishing or 'super users' (sort of extension of the web team)? How was any change to the process received?
The launch of our current system was before my time at Medway, although this change is something I think Medway had to do as the previous model was, I believe, pretty much decentralised.
If you run more than one website do you have different levels of devolvement / approval? For example, do you approve web content but not intranet content?
Yes, intranet is two stage approval, while website is three stage.
I suspect as our intranet evolves in the new project, probably to something more resembling a collaborative workspace rather than a classic intranet site, we may relax the intranet approval process further - as genuine, real-time interactions on a collaborative intranet demand instant publishing rather than delays for content approval.
Update - a Redbridge perspective from Dan Harris is here.

#### Thoughts on the 3 Skypephone
We've been playing around with the new 3 Skypephone for a month or so now, so I figured it was about time I wrote a post about our impressions of it.   The phone itself is a pretty nice sized candy-bar style handset. The pair I have are in a stylish matt black finish, although I think they come in silver too. Size-wize, it's just very slightly smaller and lighter than the Nokia 6120 Classic that I have on a contract with 3. While the 3 Skypephone has the usual camera, video, media player, web browser functionality that most mobiles do nowadays, what makes it different is that it has direct access to the Skype service built-in. When you turn on the handset it signs into the Skype service, and then the square central button gives one-push access to your Skype contacts instead of your normal phone contacts. When making calls to other Skype phones and calls to Skype PC clients, the sound quality seemed to be on a par with PC to PC Skype calls. The plus points  size and appearance  well integrated Skype client  free (effectively) unlimited Skype calls, as long as you top up each month  a decent 2 mega-pixel camera The not-so-good points  a fiddly key pad (lots of wrong button presses!)  a relatively low resolution screen  lack of support for SkypeIn calls I don't want to get all techy, but my understanding of how the Skype client on the 3 handsets works is that it actually uses a phone gateway through which Skype calls are routed, so you're not actually making a true 100% VOIP call (not that this makes a blind bit of difference as far as I'm concerned). A Skype client has been available on 3's X-Series phones and packages for a while now (I already had it on my Nokia 6120 Classic), so the launch of a dedicated handset is part marketing hype and part deeper integration of the Skype service into hardware and interface design on the handset. Personally if you use Skype a lot, I'd recommend getting a 3 mobile, as it means you can always be available to Skype callers without any expensive call forwarding from within the Skype service when you're not at your PC. That said, if you're going to do this, I'd recommend getting an X-Series mobile on the 3 network, as they're more advanced handsets than the 3 Skypephone itself, and (if you can cope with a slightly less integrated client) they still have Skype on them. The X-Series handsets are more technically advanced than the Skypephones - meaning you can do everything the Skypephone does and more. My guess is that the Skypephone is probably targetted at a different market from the X-Series phones - Skypephones are aimed at bringing accessible mobile VOIP to the mass market pay-as-you-go user, while X-Series is more about using handsets for a wide range of data-intensive smartphone applications.  It'll be interesting to see whether the Skypephone does sell in large numbers - despite widespread availability PC-based VOIP clients have remained relatively niche in the UK, probably in part due to competition in the landline market meaning call prices remain relatively low and many users have unlimited call packages. My main gripe with 3's implementation of the Skype service is that it doesn't support SkypeIn numbers (traditional landline numbers that connect to you on your Skype account), nor does it support SkypeOut (Skype's service for calling non-Skype users). I can see some commercial challenges with these services for 3, but the omission of SkypeIn really limits the usefulness of having Skype on your mobile for me - it's fine for Skype to Skype calls, but not much use for people calling me on my SkypeIn number.

#### Three steps to effective local government social media relations
This is the second in a two-part series of posts. Yesterday's post explored some background into social media relations in local government and local public services.
This post sets out a three-step model to effective social media relations in local government. It's focussed on the business of proactively and reactively managing reputation through social media channels.
Step 1: Monitoring
The first step to doing social media relations properly has got to be to have a good understanding of the environment in which you're operating - just as you'd undertake an environmental audit at the start of any communications project.
I think there are two parts to this when it comes to social media (and indeed the online world more generally).
The first is to undertake an audit of the local internet scene. This involves deep research into local websites and local presences on key social media platforms. The purpose is to identify key influencers and networks that exist online and relate to a local area. Try to understand who the key players are in these networks - what are their positions on issues that your organisation rates as important? How do these people link into existing offline networks of influence?
This audit can be quite a time-consuming piece of work and is only a snapshot of a particular time. The nature of the social web means new networks and influencers can emerge rapidly, but I don't think that negates the importance of doing a proper online environmental audit on a regular basis.
Once you've got the audit out of the way, it's time to think about setting up some regular online monitoring. There are plenty of paid-for solutions out there, but here are a few free services that can be used to set up a basic online/social media monitoring service:

	Google Alerts - particularly good for "normal" websites, blogs and online news sites. Provides web interface, email alerts and RSS feeds.
	Twitter Search - keyword and advanced search of Twitter messages. Provides web interface and RSS feeds. For email alerts try Tweetbeep.
	Facebook search - search people, pages, groups and places. Main issue here is that I haven't yet found a reliable alerting system for Facebook so regular manual searching seems like the only option (this is probably because FB want to keep people on their site as much as possible - so search results aren't exposed much through the site API).
	Backtype - good for tracking conversations in comments on blogs. Email alerts only, no RSS.
	Technorati - blog-focussed. Used to be one of my favourites, but doesn't seem to pick up keywords as quickly/widely as Google Alerts on blogs now. Web based search and RSS feeds available.
	Icerocket - quite a broad search engine, but particularly useful as it includes MySpace results. Web based search and RSS feeds available.
	Socialmention - billed as "Google Alerts for social media", this sites covers a broad range of social media properties, including bookmarks. Offers web-based search interface, RSS feeds, email alerts and downloadable results. Also has some sentiment and other metrics, although haven't paid a lot of attention to these so far.
	Social media firehose - a raw Yahoo Pipes mash-up allowing you to search a whole bunch of social media sites effectively. Web-based search, RSS, email alertts and other options available.
	Nielsen Blogpulse - blog-focussed, but with plenty of trend and other analytics. Includes RSS feeds and email alerts.
	BoardReader - forum-focussed search engine. Offers RSS feed and email alerts.

(I don't claim this list is by any means comprehensive, but these are the services that I've used over the past few years. If you have any more must-have free social media monitoring services, leave them in the comments below.)
When setting up alerts, it's worth thinking broadly about the terms you need to monitor on. Consider places, issues, names of key people, organisations - and learn how to write more advanced search queries on each tool to eliminate unwanted results from your searches.
It's also worth thinking about having accounts set up on key social networks that you can use to join groups - so that you receive notifications of group activities that don't show up in normal searches. However this can be uncomfortable and potentially risky if officers need to use an identifiably personal account (that they may use primarily for their own personal home use) to join what could be controversial issue-related groups on a social network.
However even with this wide range of tools at your disposal, there's no substitute for manually reviewing the results. There will often be overlap between results from different sources that arrive at different times that require careful reading and intepretation.
Step 2: Assessment
So you've got a pretty refined alerting system in place and you spot some social media coverage that sets alarm bells ringing. What happens next?
It can be tempting to leap straight to the conclusion that a response is the right solution, but now's the time to sit back and assess what's been said, by whom and how.
Is the person involved a troll (someone with a history of persistent narky, abusive, critical comments)? If they are, is it worth responding? In my experience it probably isn't and tends to just incite further critical coverage.
Similarly if the content is obviously a joke, taking the mick or satirical, a response probably isn't the right solution.
The assessment also needs to take account of that person's influence - how influential are they in the networks you've identified in your local online audit? The more influential they are, the more likely your need to engage with them online to achieve your communications goals.
You also need to consider whether you can engage online - in local government there are restrictions on, for example, officers engaging in a political debate. If your assessment is that a particular issue could be construed as politically sensitive then remember the limits to your ability to respond as an apolitical officer.
Having thought through all these factors, there are three outcomes to consider:

	ignore and do nothing
monitor and review regularly - and maybe if the content spreads or develops consider a different outcome
actively engage

Step 3: Action
So if your assessment is that you need to act, it's time to think about the appropriate way to do this.
I'm assuming here that as a communicator a mandate exists for you to engage with social media participants - which ideally would be something specifically enabled in the organisation's social media or communications protocol.
In my experience the best way to deal with an "angry mob" situation, where there are a large number of people critical of the organisation, isn't to wade into the public discussion to try to advance your case. It's better to try to take the conversation forward with key influencers in the group either privately or on other channels.
For example this could mean asking for someone's email address so that you can have a more considered and lengthy exchange of messages than is possible or practical on say Facebook or Twitter. Indeed for some tricky situations I think it's preferable to try to have a direct telephone conversation with the person involved - this can help eliminate some of the misunderstandings that can creep into written electronic communications and can help establish a more personal relationship than is possible purely online.
Sometimes if the purpose of responding is to correct misleading or incorrect information, it may be the right course of action to post directly in response, either in the same place as the original coverage or on your own social media presence (and then placing a link as close as possible to the original coverage).
However if you do this, I think you need to be prepared to then engage in the inevitable subsequent online conversations that follow - to not do so could give the impression that the organisation isn't prepared to genuinely engage and undermine the intent and purpose of the original intervention.
Regardless of the type of response you choose to make, I'd suggest a few principles that you must keep to:

	Transparency - disclose who you are and who you work for. To not do so is unethical, breaks professional codes of conduct and will most likely backfire when someone traces the comment back to you or your organisation
	Timing - social media moves fast and if not addresses quickly enough, the story can develop well beyond its original scope. This means having the organisational processes in place to respond quickly and accurately - who needs to sign off social media responses?
	Considered - once you've made your response, it's out there on the internet and there's no retraction - so you must be happy that what you've produced might be published in public (even if it was sent as a private message), quoted, interpreted, forwarded on and thrown back at you. Don't publish in haste and take out unnecessary passion - if in doubt, ask a colleague to read it before hitting send.
	Tone and style - it feels like heresy saying this as someone responsible for corporate style, but you need to match the tone of your response to the environment into which it's being published. YouTube has a different feel to its language than say Facebook or Twitter - your response needs to acknowledge this in the way it's written. And the chances are writing in corporate style or (even worse) unintelligible public sector jargon won't be at all appropriate.

Once you've completed your response, it's time to tweak your monitoring to include potential impacts of your response and then start the whole cycle over again.
This three-step model is my initial stab at setting out a methodology for handling social media relations in the local public sector. It oversimplifies a lot of pretty complex and judgement-based decisions but hopefully provides a basic framework on which more complicated processes can be developed.
I'd be really interested in readers' thoughts, comments and challenges to this model in the comments below.

#### Time for a break
It's been a long time coming, but it's time for a holiday.
I've got two weeks holiday from the day job and I'm going to spend at least some of it offline as well - a complete break from consultancy projects, blogging, reading RSS feeds, surfing the web etc.
I've been really looking forward to spending some decent time with my family and taking things a bit slower. I was ill last weekend, which is always a sign that I'm due a break.
I'll definitely be offline for a week or so from tonight, but I will be back in the marketing and PR world by Friday, 11 November when I'm going to the Delivering the New PR conference in London. Then after that it's back to work properly on the following Monday.
My mobile is now off. My PDA is off. My laptop is staying in its bag, and once I've posted this my wireless router is going off too. Completely offline!
Back in a week or so. Take care all.

#### Time for a new definition of marketing?
Coming up with a definition for marketing seems like a never-ending challenge with no universally accepted definition for the profession. Public relations seems to suffer with a similar inability to define itself too. I did wonder why having a definition really matters, but in reality a clear definition of a profession is important for those who work within it and to help increase understanding of the profession from outside.  Perhaps some of the commonly held views of the two professions from outsiders come from the lack of clarity of definition (my particular favourites being marketing = sales and public relations = spin). The UK's Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) has one of the most commonly cited definitions of marketing:  The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably. Quite succinct, with a balance of what marketers do ("the management process"), who it's about ("customer requirements") and why they do it ("profitably"), although the last aspect does ignore much marketing that takes place for reasons that are not about profit, such as in the public and voluntary sectors. But now CIM is proposing a new definition. According to the coverage I've seen (MyCustomer.com, BrandRepublic, themarketingblog, creative match, mad.co.uk) the revised definition is proposed in a new Shape the Agenda paper from the institute, although at the time of writing I can find no reference to it on the CIM website or the Shape the Agenda website. So, according to the reports, CIM says marketing is now:  The strategic business function that creates value by stimulating, facilitating and fulfilling customer demand.  It does this by building brands, nurturing innovation, developing relationships, creating good customer service and communicating benefits. By operating customer-centrically, marketing brings positive returns on investment, satisfies shareholders and stakeholders from business and the community, and contributes to positive behavioural change and a sustainable business future. You what? Having recovered from nearly choking on my coffee let's look at this a bit more. As I can't find a copy of the full white paper on the web I clearly can't comment on the rationale, but let's just think about the proposed definition. The shift in balance of emphasis from management process to customer can't be argued with. Neither can the catch-all outcome of value creation - which covers the diverse concept of value in the different sectors where marketing plays a role. The coverage suggests CIM and the report's author, David Thorp (CIM's director of research and information), think that the definition will improve outsider perception of the profession. I struggle to see how this is true - I'd suggest most people outside, and a fair number within, the profession won't have the faintest idea what the definition means. The combination of such a broad definition that could encompass aspects of sales, public relations, customer services, human resources and organisational development, along with some buzzword bingo classics like "operating customer-centrically" and "sustainable business future", really doesn't hit the mark. The reality is marketers do not operate in a sealed bubble - they have to work alongside professionals in other disciplines to deliver just about anything, but that doesn't mean that these other disciplines and their outputs are really part of marketing. To me this all suggests a real lack of clarity of thinking about what the profession actually is. Like PR, marketing is a composite profession, consisting of a number of loosely affiliated disciplines with similar but not identical goals.  With such a composite profession, there will always be internal tensions and debate about what's "in" and what's "outside" the definition of the profession. With this new definition it says to me that rather than try to isolate the core essence of marketing and the marketing approach to doing business, CIM is taking the "big tent" approach and trying to encompass every activity in the definition. For me the only way to come up with a sustainable definition of marketing is to consider what makes marketing different from any of its allied professions - the core essence of the marketing approach that makes it distinct. Combining this with a focus on outcomes - what marketing achieves - would be a better approach to definition. Sorry CIM, this really doesn't do it for me. Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephanedelbecque/ [tags]marketing, definitions, cim, chartered+institute of marketing, buzzword+bingo[/tags]

#### Time spent on digital media now exceeds TV
Spotted a useful bit of research from eMarketer earlier in the week that looks at how long UK consumers spend on different media types each day.
The big headline is that the rapid growth in use of mobiles means time spent consuming content using digital devices now exceeds the time spent consuming content via television:

 
The research counts time spent using multiple channels simultaneously separately - so an elapsed hour spent dual screening between TV and online counts as one hour for each channel.
You can find more details on the research findings and methodology here.
 

#### Time to get real about social media
As a blogger, podcast listener and active participant in many social media conversations, it's easy to forget that I don't operate in the mainstream. While a trackback or mash-up makes sense to me, I'd venture that most marketers and public relations practictioners wouldn't know their pings from their podcasts.
So this is my call to action for all marketers and public relations people. Wake up - social media is here, and now is the time to start experimenting and see how these rapidly evolving tools can be part of your communications mix.
Big businesses and leading marketing agencies are entering the space in the UK. Even the UK government is dipping its toe into the social media space. Check out the great Social Media Report for a good collection of useful information on social media developments.
The basics - what is social media?
Wikipedia provides a good background definition:
"Social media describes the online tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Popular social mediums include blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs."
I'd add that social media is characterised by conversations - dialogues between participants, both between originators and message recipients, and between message recipients. The medium is defined by these multi-way interactions, and for the communicators this is where the value is. Social media allows organisations to communicate their messages, receive feedback, and then respond directly to this feedback.
Networking is inherent in social media. The practice of linking from one piece of content to another is how social networks form, and how social media networks can drive a low profile piece of independent content to a heavily consumed piece of well-networked content.
The other key component in social media is user generated content. Social media tools give users a platform to create, share and develop their content, whether it's the written word, audio or video.
Media consumption is changing

A recent report by Ofcom confirmed that a radical shift in UK media consumption is underway:
The Report reveals striking evidence that a new ‘networked generation’ is turning away from television, radio and newspapers in favour of online services , including downloadable content – used on multiple devices such as iPods and mobile phones – and participation in online communities.
Television is of declining interest to many 16-24 year olds; on average they watch television for one hour less per day than the average television viewer.. .instead, the internet plays a central role in daily life; more than 70% of 16-24 year old internet users use social networking websites (compared to 41% of all UK internet users) and 37% of 18-24 year olds have contributed to a blog or website message board (compared to 14% of all UK internet users)...
...Extensive use of the internet has also influenced 15-24 year olds’ consumption of other media. Their radio listening is lower, by an average of 15 minutes a day compared to the wider population; additionally, 27% of those surveyed said they read newspapers less as a consequence of their online usage.
So by not employing social media in a marketing and public relations mix you're making it harder to reach the networked generation. Yes they can be reached by traditional channels, but their main communications channel is social media. They naturally gravitate to these channels, so if you want to reach them you must to.
And it's not just the 16-24 networked generation who are on the move. Even among middle-aged audiences use of television is declining in favour of the internet.
This trend means audiences are fragmented in a big way. Audience share for the traditional big TV channels is in decline. Niche audiences are the way forward, served initially by the explosion of choice from digital television, radio and online.
New technology has made accessing niche audiences within the financial and technical reach of anyone with a computer. Witness the breadth of podcasts available on the internet - many serve really tight niche audiences that could never be viably reached through radio or other traditional media.
And availability of technology means most people with a mobile phone have a tool in their pocket that can produce basic video or pictures for online distribution. The barriers to entry in the new media landscape are virtually non-existent.
The proliferation of blogs, podcasts, vidcasts and other user generated media means the competition for audience is intense. To be effective as a communicator in this space you need to ensure you target your audience and remain relevant, interesting and interactive - nothing new there then.
Now is definitely the time to start experimenting with social media tools for mainstream marketing and public relations. It's easy to try and those who learn and refine the tools for their campaign objectives will be those who ride the curve most effectively. Use of social media tools is exploding, and will soon be as everyday as email or instant messaging.
So have I convinced you? Why not test out one of these tools now? Just by trying one out yourself you will appreciate the power of networked social media content.
When I started to get into this space I made a conscious effort to explore these new channels. Mack Collier has a great list of top ranking social media sites that are worth a look.
I'll get off my social media high horse now. I've had one of those days where I feel the need to encourage my fellow professionals to seize this opportunity and make the most of it. So as I have a blog, I could and I did. And I now feel much better about it too. Thanks for bearing with me.

#### Tips for better events and launches
I seem to have spent a lot of time recently organising launch events for clients. Reflecting on the way home from one such event I thought it would be useful to put together some basic ground rules for organising media and/or stakeholder events.
As a communications tool events have the potential to engage and connect with audiences, but this effectiveness needs to be harnesed in a positive way.
Launch events can set the tone for the communications programme that follows, and can affect how the subsequent coverage that your product or service gets.
So here are my top tips for organising successful events as a communicator:
Know what the event is for, and make sure your clients do too. It may sound really obvious, but an event without a clear and agreed purpose is one that will almost certainly disappoint someone.
Plan the flow of the event as if you were an attendee. Think about what information people will need to be happy throughout the event. Think about when journalists will want press packs or interview opportunities. Consider creating common talking points (eg some exhibition boards) if you have many guests who haven't met previously.
Get help. Unless you are running a very small event, having people to help and act as runners will alow you to keep an eye on how the event is running, rather than getting tied up in the detail.
Ensure all guests are met on arrival. Station as many helpers as you need to at the door to welcome guests, direct them as necessary, and answer any questions they may have. Brief your helpers to find you if any of you VIP guests arrive, so you camn greet them personally.
Give everyone a name badge when they arrive. It makes life easier for you and your guests.
Meet all your speakers and other participants beforehand. Know how good their public speaking is, and give them a role to suit.
Keep speakers on message. Give them a crib sheet that summarises key messages, provides supporting information and highlights any potentially tricky areas.
Practice and rehearse If you anticipate difficult media questions, commission a freelance journalist to run a rehearsal for your spokespeople and ask them to be as aggressive and probing as possible.
Ensure the basics are right for the media. Provide suitable spaces and resources (eg power, wi-fi, ISDN, seats, space for vehicles). Making things simpler will improve your chances of getting good coverage.
Have a photographer working for you. Brief him to get a wide range of press shots that you can offer to the media afterwards, along with news release write-up.
Consider also offering audio and video content if you think your media audience may use it.
Follow-up to consolidate relationships. Whether by phone or email, make sure you thank people for attending, and find out if they need any more information or have any other questions.
I hope these are useful. Any more tips please add them as comments - I'm always looking for ways to improve my events/launches.

#### Today is OneWebDay
Today is OneWebDay - "a global day to celebrate online life".
When I heard I did take a few minutes to reflect how the internet has changed the life I lead.
I had my first encounter with the internet when I was 18 and had a summer job at a university. With my system sign-on I also had access to my first email account - not that I knew many other people to email, but soon I was connecting with friends at university and planning a round-the-world trip with the benefit of email and the internet.
During my university degree I built my first website - I can't remember what it was about, but remember the excitement of being able to publish my content as a website for the first time.
In my first proper job as marketing trainee with the Boots Company plc I experienced a business coming to terms for the first time with the power of digital communications. While the public facing website wasn't great, the company's intranet was the backbone of its staff communications. I ended up working in the e-commerce business unit where I got the digital bug.
The internet and digital communications have played a key role in my career and life ever since. I've had the joy of working in some pioneering web and interactive television businesses, and my day-to-day life is punctuated by things facilitated by the internet. From the podcasts I listen to in the car, the wireless network that I have at home to my website and blog, the internet is key to everyday life now.
Twelve years ago when I sent my first email I couldn't have envisaged what role the web would play in my personal and professional lives now. And the exciting thing is trying to use my experience so far to project forward - what role will the web play in our lives in one, two, five years time? I can't pretend I have the answers, but I know it'll be an exciting journey.

#### Today's web 2.0 conference so far
Today I'm at the Public Sector Forums web 2.0 conference in Manchester.

First up was Mike Saunt from Astun Technologies - setting the scene for the day with his thoughts on social media in public sector use. Early on Mike questioned whether people would want to follow council news on Twitter - it's a fair question, but my take is that so far 272 people are following @medway_council on Twitter - it won't be everyone's desired way of hearing from their council, but if it reaches people who may not traditionally have received information from a council then it's a good idea, especially as the barriers to entry for a basic news Twitter feed are quite low.
Mike's presentation highlighted some examples of social media in use today:

	Planningalerts.com - a good service for the end users, but Mike challenged the audience to think about the impact of a third party controlling the customer interaction
The much discussed FixMyStreet - again a third party service that's providing a customer service interface between a council and its residents
Mashing up BBC Travel News live with Google Maps - via a bit of scripting to create traffic news maps
Cleveland Police - providing location based information, albeit not tagged with standards-compliant location data

Mike also had a useful example of how introducing location-specific information on a website (for waste and recycling) actually reduced inbound phone calls by around 1000 calls per month - a really good example of how effective use of the web can reduce avoidable contact (NI14).
Mike's presentation concluded with a call to action for local authorities to free up their data, providing open and appropriately tagged RSS feeds, so that community can make the most of data in ways that suit them, rather than on the council's terms.
Second up was Simon Smith from CMS suppliers GOSS Interactive.
Simon talked about how people's expectations of how they receive information are changing, and that means we need to think about integrating these tools into what councils do on the web.
Simon also suggested that people don't want to come to council websites to do stuff (which I'd argue with to an extent), which suggests councils need to get out there interacting where the people are already (which I'd agree with wholeheartedly).
The question of accessibility on third party social media sites like YouTube and Flickr is also worth considering - the public sector must make its content accessible to all, yet using social media sites alone doesn't fulfill that obligation.
The value of RSS also formed part of Simon's talk - along with being prepared for that data to be reused, possibly in ways that the council may not have originally envisaged. For me that's an important point: opening up access to data isn't just about providing feeds for everything, it's about preparing the organisation culturally for a new level and speed of scrutiny from people who haven't traditionally been empowered to scrutinise public sector activities - something that was traditionally the domain of mainstream media.
GOSS was also behind the www.nottinghamcc.gov.uk website, which features extensive user customisation opportunities - something I've questioned the value of before. Simon was honest enough to admit no-one knows if it'll work or not, but in his view it's an approach worth trying. For the record, I'm not convinced about the value of widgety, customisable council homepages - because I think most council website users are probably very task focussed and visit fairly infrequently - so we should focus on making it easy to find the right information and conduct transactions online rather than letting people customise their own homepage.

#### Top ten mobile applications
Since I upgraded my mobile phone to a Nokia 6210 classic on the UK's 3 network late last year I've been using some great mobile applications.  The combination of a decent handset and an unlimited data plan have really changed the way I access internet content and services. Checking through my last phone bill it struck me that I'd used it to access the internet every day - when I'm at home, in the office and on the move. Here are the top ten applications that I'm using day in day out on my phone: 1. Skype Only for 3 customers this one (if you're in the UK), although there are some generic mobile VOIP clients that will give you Skype access on non-3 handsets. Free calls to Skype at home and other Skype users. Free. 2. Amaze GPS Combining my handset with an external GPS receiver turns my mobile into a decent GPS navigation system. I used this to get from Calais to an address in Paris without any problems. Works by downloading the route at the start of navigation, so a data connection is required, but great for someone who only needs an occasional sat nav system. Free. 3. MapMyTracks In beta at the moment, this lets me use an external GPS receiver to use my mobile to live track my runs and bike rides. When I get home I can replay tracks, check split times and much more. I'm working on the launch of this service through my work with Tinderhouse. Free to beta testers, free and monthly chargeable plans available after launch. 4. Shozu Great for handling pictures and videos I take on my mobile. Simple one or two click uploads to Flickr, email accounts, YouTube and plenty of other services. Free. 5. Opera Mini For times when the phone's inbuilt browser falls over on some websites, Opera Mini is a great fallback. Free. 6. GMail Access to my entire GMail account, including full search and tags. Makes sending and receiving email on the move a doddle, although I still can't for the life of me work out how to get a line break in messages I write on the move. Free. 7. Google Maps  Maps and satellite images from Google Maps using this mobile application. The new "my location" feature often doesn't work or places me several miles from where I know I am, but assuming I know where I am it's great for working out how to get to places. No more need for an A to Z anymore. Free. 8. Map24 Mobile My fallback map service in case Google Maps doesn't have decent coverage of where I am. Free. 9. Newsgator Go! RSS client for on the move. Best of all it synchs seamlessly with Newsgator Online and my desktop Feeddemon reader. Even better it's now free, along with Newsgator Online and Feeddemon. 10. Yell.com Handy little application giving access to the Yell telephone directory while on the move. Well integrated with the voice capabilities of the handset and maps. Free.

#### Top ten tips for a web 2.0 makeover
Ian Green's writing a short piece for Revolution about corporate blogging.
I've added a comment to his ten tips about making sure the organisation is ready. Incorporating social media fully into an organisation's communications mix means a real culture shift - from control to conversation.
Organisations (and more importantly the people in them) need to realise that they can't influence the interactions in social media as they can in conventional media. If they haven't realised that when the blog launches, problems will start to appear once the blog discussions turn to areas that conventional corporate communications would shy away from.
However if the organisation buys the principles of social media, there's a lot to be gained from dipping a toe in the social media water.

#### Tracking traffic on your blog
Since I started blogging I've always tried to keep an eye on my traffic statistics, referrers and other activity on the site. It's nice to know who's reading what, and see what is effective in creating interest and attracting readers.
I moved the site over to Wordpress earlier this year, and put in some more determined effort into blogging. Posting regularly to the blog has been great for traffic and search engine ranking, but I've never completely settled on a single stats package to use.
Over the past month or so I've had three different free statistics packages running on the site, and the comparison has been interesting:
Wordpress Shortstats plug-in

Spotted this one on Neville Hobson's blog - it provides some simple stats that show up in the Wordpress dashboard area. No installation required - just upload the plug-in and activate.
Google Analytics

An extremely powerful stats package, based on the Urchin software that was acquired by Google. Required a short piece of code that was easily added to the Wordpress template files.
Statcounter

Another powerful package, although the free version limits the amount of historical data that is stored for trend analysis and the like. Again required a small piece of code that is added to the Wordpress template files.
I have tended to check the Shortstats data most times I log into the Wordpress admin area. I've beeing checking the other two services less often, although Statcounter does have a regular email report which does act as a reminder. What would be really handy would be a regular RSS feed (Performancing does this, but when I tried this service the results seemed to bear no resemblence to those on the other services - they just looked very wrong).
However the real trap I fell into was looking at the number of unique visitors I've been getting. This metric is notoriously hard to track - it'll never be truly possible to track numbers of individual people who visit websites, because of people sharing computers, dynamic IP addresses, cookies, cookie blocking and a host of other factors.
But unique visitors is still a useful measure to track over time to spot trends and get a general idea of traffic. There are two main ways of identifying unique users: IP addresses and/or cookies (good metrics summary here).
It's a fact that unique visitors based on IP addresses will always be more than those based on cookies, but even I was shocked when I compared the stats packages I'm using. I'm guessing Shortstats uses IP addresses, although I couldn't find anything that actually confirmed that, and Google Analytics/Statcounter definitely use cookies (confirmation found here and here).
The chart below shows how the three services compare when measuring unique users:

Google Analytics consistently picks up the lowest number of unique users, with Statcounter averaging 18% more unique users than Google. The trends seem relatively similar on these two services.
The real shock was that using IP addresses alone, Shortstats tracks an amazing 514% more unique users than Google.
In the future I will have to remind myself to ignore the unique user statistics in Shortstat. I won't delete the plug-in as it does give a quick reminder on recent resources used and recent referrers. But for more serious analysis and more accurate unique visitor figures I'll still be using Statcounter and Google Analytics - which of these two is better remains to be seen.

#### Transformed by You - a great day
I spent yesterday at the Transformed by You event in Medway. Organised by Kent County Council and Medway Council, the day was about getting people together to come up with innovative solutions to local issues, with a particular focus on online services.
The event was designed to take some aspects of the unconference/barcamp approach, but use them in a slightly more structured way to help the flow of the day. It's a first for us as councils so the day was also about understanding how these kind of techniques could be used in a local government consultation or engagement context.
We had 23 delegates at the event from across Kent and Medway - with a really interesting mix of people from all sorts of different backgrounds and places.
Courtesy of social media reporter extraordinaire Dave Wilcox, here's a short video of Noel Hatch and me talking about the day before it all kicked off:

Before the event people could propose ideas for topics they wanted to explore on a Uservoice site and a voting system was used to help reflect the popularity of different ideas. Then in the first session this morning people volunteered themselves to work in groups on the topics that interested them most. The four areas that we started the day with were:

	How to reach the "hard to reach" groups in communities
	Finding out what's going on in your local area
	Asking your council a question
	Tackling challenges using mobile or smart phones.

The morning session was spent thrashing out what the actual issue was that each group wanted to tackle, identifying who is being served/who's involved in the issue and how a solution to it might work. Then after the lunch break it was onto more detail about what each group was actually producing, which was where each group's work took very different directions depending on the issue they were working on.
Here are the videos from each group presenting back the work they'd done during the day:

And here's Carol Patrick from Kent County Council and yours truly summing up at the end of the day:

All in all a great day - some really great thinking that could be taken forward in a variety of different guises both by the councils and the broader community. Plus it was good to catch up with a number of people I've not seen in a while and especially to meet lots of people I've "known" online for a while but have never met properly - as ever good proof of the power of social media to connect people around areas of shared interest!
http://socialreporter.com/
You can also read more about the event in blog posts from Julia and Catherine. The full set of videos are available here.

#### Transformed By You event - become a facilitator
"Transformed by You" is a one-day innovation event, run by Kent County Council (KCC) and Medway Council, taking place on 20 March 2010 at Innovation Centre Medway in Rochester.
The event is about bringing local innovators together for a day to develop prototypes of online tools that tackle challenges about accessing local public sector services online - basically looking to make local residents' lives easier through better online tools. And the things the event creates should be easily reused in other local areas throughout the UK.
To explain a bit more here's an extract from the background paper for the event, produced by the most excellent guys and girls at KCC's innovation team:
Why are we doing this?
Public sector organisations face growing pressures to deliver bigger and better services with far less money. For local authorities, like Kent and Medway, the changes needed to make this happen do not necessarily require more funding, but tapping into creative ways of thinking and delivering our services.
Digital technologies are effective at doing just this. More people are talking and sharing ideas online in ways that weren’t possible before. Digital technologies also provide opportunities for individuals, businesses and other groups to create innovative models to meet these new demands.
Examples of this include Enabled By Design and School of Everything. These haven’t just created new ways of delivering services that didn’t exist before, they’ve exploited the power of the web to create approaches that offer micro public services.
What do we want to achieve?
We need to create an environment that allows innovators to develop and take these models to scale. We need to join up people with the skills – the innovators – with the people with the influence to make innovation happen – the service providers. We want to enable those groups to come together on specific challenges, and we believe that this is one of the most effective ways of achieving this need.
Kent and Medway Councils want to enable people within the community to benefit from our resources to develop innovative solutions to common problems. We understand that there is always a risk when encouraging change and experimentation, but without it there is no way for councils, businesses, communities or users to move forward and improve.
How are going to organise this?
That’s why we want to bring people together to develop their ideas into prototypes of online services in our one day. We believe that doing it within 24 hours will help to ease the risk of change and experimentation.  You may find it surprising that such online services can be created in a day, but Enabled By Design, Good Gym and MyCouncilTax were all developed in similar types of workshops.
Organising “Transformed by You” would highlight which bright ideas are worth fast tracking and would provide us with an opportunity to showcase the expertise of local innovators.  This will hopefully stimulate greater engagement between our organisations and the wider community. Finally, this concept can bring benefits to the community itself as the tools created over the day would tackle common challenges.
Who do we want to involve?
We are reaching out to people whose experiences, expertise and enthusiasm will really benefit the event – not just those taking part, but also people who can facilitate the activities during the day. There will be around 30 people taking part of all ages and sexes split into 5/6 groups.
We want facilitators who can create the glue with participants as well as facilitate the activities within the group and make sure groups can complete the actions on time.
As well as facilitators, we will also invite “critical friends” to drop in and out of groups, who can provide advice if needed on how the ideas could work in real life and we will invite people who can provide general support on the day.
What does the analysis show us?
The success of this day will be based as much on the quality of relationships that are formed, as it is on the event itself. To incentivise people to achieve something, we want to let people experience and test out different ways they can get involved. The organisers will seed facilitators to lead discussions that captivate people.
There are different ways of organising “innovation camps” - from informal meetups like at Teacamps, all day events like at 2gether08 to weekends like at SI Camp. Whatever type of activity is chosen, there needs to be a balance between centrally coordinated and self-organising activities.
Bottom-up activities are very popular but they’re also very new to people, so we want facilitators to make it as comfortable as possible for people to self-organise, or if it senses people are finding difficult to do that, then playing a more “supporting” role by suggesting ways forward.
We'll be advertising the event itself very soon, but for now we're looking to recruit some help with facilitation from someone who knows how make an event like this tick. If you think this is something you can help us with, read on.
We're looking for a short submission response detailing how you will provide the above requirements and any other inclusions as your feel are appropriate.
The submission must include:-

	Your background including any previous work in this area
	Costing including VAT
	Any ideas and feedback you have on the approach to facilitation and organisation of the day
	Your name and contact details

All responses to be returned by 4th February 2010 at 5pm to innovation@kent.gov.uk
The submissions will be evaluated based on previous experience, understanding of the requirements, cost and the best value offered to Kent County Council.
The successful applicant will be contacted by 10th February 2010. It is anticipated that an initial detailed meeting with the organisers of the event from Kent and Medway Councils will take place within the following 5 days.
For any further details please contact Noel Hatch (07515992174, noel.hatch2@kent.gov.uk, @noelito) or Adam Fox (01622 694532, adam.fox@kent.gov.uk)

#### Trust in government on the up
Trust is something that underpins the effectiveness of every communicator's work, yet it's often taken for granted that the person on the receiving end of communications trusts the organisation or individual trying to do the communicating.
In fact trust's not a constant - it increases and decreases over time - something communicators need to be conscious of and take account of.
Each year Edelman runs a worldwide survey looking at how much different institutions and people are trusted in different societies. The 2009 survey results were unveiled today - details online here and the global findings are here.
The UK findings paint a picture of trust declining generally:

68% trust companies less than they did a year ago
Trust in media dropped ten points to 28%
Trust in banks down 16 points to 31%
Trust in "People Like Me" declined 13 points to 38%

But for communicators working in local and central government there's good news - trust in government appears to be rising for the second year in a row, with 41% of people in the UK now trusting the government compared to just 16% two years ago:

An interesting trend - possibly politically-driven with the change of Prime Minister, possibly linked to the current economic situation and feeling that governments are among the last bastions of institutional stability in society.

Robert Phillips' presentation also highlights some more trust trends for public sector communicators:
Britain trusts media less than any other of the 20 countries surveyed (30%). 
Traditional sources of information are on the wane and at an all-time low: newspapers down 10 points at 19%; radio news down 20 at 33%
Low trust in conventional corporate comms: only 5% trust corporate/ product advertising; 15% for corporate website, press releases, live speeches
Younger info-entials continue the push into social networks and digital dialogue (by a credibility factor of 3:1 vs. 35+ age group) – but curiously are more trusting of all information sources including traditional media too
So for public sector communicators I think this means a need to use this position of increased trust wisely - both in choice of message, content, tone and channel.
Government, both local and central, also needs to continue to look beyond traditional media and overcome the media trust decline by innovating with new media as a communications tool - reaching out directly to those who don't use or don't trust "traditional" media.

#### Twitter - what it is and what it does
Here's a great paper from weaverluke that sets out some basics of Twitter - how it works and a whole load of examples of how it can be used:
http://r.hiddenchemistry.com/lr/twitter.pdf
I'll certainly be using it when explaining Twitter to colleagues and clients. If you're already using Twitter, I'm here.
(via Lee Hopkins)

#### Twitter and website tweaks
I've spent the past couple of weeks doing some minor tweaks to www.simonwakeman.com.
The site design hasn't really changed since early 2007 when I last did a full redesign. The new version has more content, particularly in the sidebars, as well as improved navigation throughout.
The homepage has also been redesigned to allow space for client testimonials as well as updates from my Twitter account.
I've been a bit hit and miss in my use of Twitter so far, struggling to keep track of other people and post anything interesting and relevant myself. However now it's displayed on my site I'm committed to using it more regularly, particularly as already I'm finding the small time investment useful through learning new information fast and keeping in touch with people.
The key to my new found commitment to Twitter is the Twitbin plug-in for Firefox. Having Twitter in my Firefox sidebar seems to be a good way of fitting it into how I use the web from day-to-day.
So, if I'm not already following you on Twitter, I'm here if you want to link up.
Any feedback/bugs on the site tweaks gratefully appreciated....

#### Twitter follow etiquette for councils
We've been running @medway_council on Twitter for a few weeks now.  One thing that I'm still unsure about is how councils should use Twitter's concept of "following" others.  People are choosing to follow @medway_council for their own reasons, and we are, of course, very happy that they have chosen to do so. But should @medway_council follow those people back? Should @medway_council follow other people who haven't followed us? On my personal Twitter account (@simonwakeman) I follow people that I'm interested in hearing from. I look at everyone that chooses to follow me and if their bio looks relevant to me (PR, marketing, UK-based, possibly public sector) I'll follow them back.  However I can't help feeling the situation is different for a council on Twitter. Looking around I can see different councils have adopted different strategies, and I can't see a great deal of consensus about which is best. Here are four different approaches for councils and their followers: 1) Autofollow There are tools that allow you to automatically follow those that follow you on Twitter, including some that allow you to automatically message the new follower. The advantage of this approach is that is it doesn't require any time to review and process new followers - saving valuable officer time. However I can't help but feel autofollowing is fundamentally missing the point of a microblogging platform - where it's all about people interacting with other people - even if some of those people are doing so under an organisational or institutional guise. If a council autofollows (and it's fairly obvious if it does because the follow back and message happens pretty much right away), what does that say about the organisation? It just feels impersonal to me and doesn't seem to help create a network of value to the council. So for me, autofollowing is a non-starter 2) Manual follow those that follow you A better way would be to check out those that are choosing to follow you and see if they're relevant to the network a council is trying to build through Twitter. It might be that a council is seeking to build a local network, so location might be a criteria for following back, or it may have broader aspirations leading to a different set of criteria for whether it follows. However while this may well be a manageable approach now, when the numbers of council-citizen interactions on Twitter aren't huge.  But can this strategy work in the longer term as the numbers get much larger - is it feasible to manually review each follower? 3) Manual follow people that don't follow you Anyone that uses Twitter regularly will know that its power is in the intertwined networks of people that exist. The value of these are in allowing the Twitter user to discover new people who are quite likely to have shared interests and may become valuable new connections.  This is something I've definitely experienced, particularly in "meeting" new people in Medway and beyond who share professional interests with me. When I discover someone like this I often follow them, regardless of whether they're following me. But I'm less sure how this would apply to a council. I'm not entirely comfortable with the concept of a council going out to follow people that it's not had any previous contact/interactions with on the Twitter platform. It strikes me as a bit intrusive and I can see residents being uncomfortable with this approach. 4) Don't follow One of the key things I keep banging on about with social media and public sector communications is that social media is inherently two-way - a conversation. So it may seem a bit odd to advocate a strategy which appears on the surface as not enabling a conversation on Twitter between a council and other people on the service. However councils can still listen and have conversations on Twitter without following other people. We use free tools to scan for all mentions of "@medway_council" (as well as other keywords) on Twitter. My feeling is that if someone includes @medway_council in a Twitter message, they're effectively initiating a conversation with the organisation, and so then it's fine to message that person back. Indeed with scanning in this way it means we're picking up conversations throughout Twitter, not just within the people that the council has (or hasn't) chosen to follow. But a real disadvantage with the way Twitter works right now is that conversation can only take place in Twitter's public timeline. Direct messages can only be sent between people on Twitter who follow each other - which isn't an option if a council has chosen to not follow. At Medway we're primarily using the "don't follow" approach at the moment. But I'm really not sure if that's the right way to go. I'm convinced autofollow is a bad idea, but I feel like the jury's still out on what works best. Plus I'm sure there are other approaches that may be worth exploring too. What do you think? What other strategies are councils using on Twitter? As a resident, how would you feel about your council following you?

#### Twitter suspension shows risks for communicators on Twitter
The recent and continuing suspension of Alastair Smith (Newcastle City Council's web 2.0 communications advisor) from Twitter highlights a real risk for organisations using social media platforms as part of their communications strategies.
Commercial services, like Twitter, can decide the rules for who can and can't use their platforms - usually with the best of intentions to stop spam usage, but sometimes automated systems can cause problems and if these aren't resolved organisations could find themselves without access to a key part of their online communications armoury.
In emails with Alastair he's told me more about what has happened:
So Al, what happened to your Twitter account?
I’m not entirely sure really. On Thursday afternoon I was trying to reply to a tweet about plings data being used to power an app in Bebo called the Boredometer. It’s in public BETA and was looking to highlight it through the council’s Twitter feed (@NewcastleCC). My updates weren’t appearing and I then got an error message telling me my account had been suspended. The message came and went and I had intermittent access to direct messaging until it became clear that the plug had well and truly been pulled.
What have you done to try to get your account re-enabled?
I tried to report the issue online, but Twitter’s “zendesk” system is blocked by our firewall. Instead I followed the instructions and emailed Twitter. At the weekend I used zendesk to register it as it said no support tickets were registered on my account and I could not check progress.
Do you know why Twitter have blocked you?
No. Twitter sent me an auto reply to my email with standard reasons for suspension, the content is as follows:
User Abuse

a large number of people block the profile or write in with spam complaints
aggressive following
imbalanced ratio: the number of followers is small compared to number of people following
misuse of the reply feature
updates consist of duplicate links and/or text
updates consist mainly of links and not personal updates
updates consist of updates poached from others' timelines, passed off as one's own
Technical Abuse

updates consist of links pointing to phishing sites, malware, or other harmful material
a large number of accounts is created in a short amount of time
an account is identified as belonging to a spam cluster

I would dispute all of the above and replied to the email to say as much. The standard email said that investigation of the above could take up to 30 days. I have yet to receive any further communication from Twitter.

Do you think you could have done anything that could have been interpreted as spam?
No. I’m very careful in what I use Twitter for as I use it as a work tool and am aware that if I can use it in a way that is beneficial to my employer I can create a business case for the extension of access to others in the organisation.
What would you say to other council staff for whom Twitter has become a day-to-day tool for doing their jobs?
A similar thing happened to another local government employee the day before I was blocked. His situation was resolved within 40 minutes, and I thought mine would be resolved in a similar timescale. My advice would be that you need a back up or reserve account to inform others of your circumstances. If it does last 30 days it will be very inconvenient, but it is not the end of the world.
If this had happened to one of the council’s main communication channels it may have been a different situation. I applied for ‘Verified Account’ status for our main account a couple of weeks ago and would advise others to do the same so that their main channels are unaffected.
What can councils do to protect themselves from this sort of problem?
Other than the above it would be useful if Twitter could look at the way it deals with large organisations, can workplace contacts be appointed to liaise between the two? It is also best practice to make sure people know the reasons that Twitter use to suspend accounts so that work accounts are not suspended for a legitimate breach.
How can people support you to get your account re-enabled?
People can visit http://act.ly/a1 and post a tweet from there to sign an online petition to Twitter support. We’re also using the hashtag #freealncl.

#### Two weeks to go - 100 miles on the bike for Action Medical Research
It's just fourteen days until I tackle the Castle 100 ride to raise money for children’s charity Action Medical Research.
One of the main areas of Action's work is investigating premature births - each year in the UK around 50,000 babies are born too early. Every week more than 25 babies die as a result of complications arising from premature birth - premature birth is the single biggest cause of death among infants under one year old in the UK.

If you'd like to sponsor me to help raise money for this important research, you can do it online here.
Thank you to those of you that have already sponsored me offline and online (the total on my sponsorship page doesn't yet include the offline money raised).

#### UK Social Media Communications Awards 2013
I'm really pleased to have been asked to be a judge for this year's UK Social Media Communications Awards.
And with the exception of yours truly, the rest of the judging panel reads like a who's who of social media communications in the UK too - including Neville Hobson and Stuart Bruce who I first met and heard speak back in late 2006 at a social media conference called "Delivering the new PR".
Looking back the six and half years since I went to that event, their insight back then helped me see how digital was radically changing the communications environment. And it was that recognition that's helped me progress my career so far since then and has led me to all sorts of exciting professional opportunities that I'd never had experienced otherwise.
Anyway, back to the UK Social Media Communications Awards - now in their fourth year, the awards are about celebrating the very best in UK social media communications and will be held  in London at The Emirates Stadium on Thursday, 24 October 2013.
This year's awards are being launched in association with our headline sponsor UK Fast, media partner PRmoment and are once again supported by both the CIPR and PRCA.
There's a wide range of categories for all sorts of different social media campaigns in the awards. I'm looking forward to seeing some innovative and evidence-driven submissions that really show how social media can make a difference to the outcomes that communications can deliver.
There's also the Mark Hanson Award - this was created to recognise the next generation of social media savvy comms talent in the UK. It's designed to keep the memory of Mark Hanson alive and recognise the most promising social media communicators under 30 years of age on the date of the ceremony. So if you know a bright young social media operator this is their chance to get the recognition they deserve.
The closing date for entries is Friday, 12 July 2013, although unfortunately we can't enter any of our good work at Medway Council or East Sussex County Council as judge's organisations aren't allowed to enter - which is a shame as I've got a great little campaign about using social media to drive up MMR vaccination rates that deserves recognition!

#### UK's first real local authority podcast
I'm very excited as today's a big day: we're launching the first real podcast from a local authority in the UK.
Since I've been working at Medway Council I've been convinced that social media has a real role to play in helping public sector organisations reach audiences that they have traditionally struggled to connect with.
The Mixit Podcast from Medway Council is the first social media project that my team has launched.
Mixit is the brand Medway Council uses for communicating with young people in the area. Mixit started life as two pages in the council's residents magazine, Medway Matters - the core principle behind the brand was that it was written by young people for young people
There's a lot of research showing people trust messages from "people like me" more than they do from institutions, so I've always been keen that the council's role with Mixit was to facilitate young people communicating with other young people, rather than the council communicating directly with young people.
In May this year we launched the Mixit website, which recognises that the web is probably a more relevant channel for the 14 to 19 year old age range that we're targetting.
The new podcast is an important part of establishing new communications channels with young people - a relatively inaccessible niche for the council. It's intended to be a mix of news, features and music from the thriving Medway young people's music scene. The first show is now live, and we're hoping to produce one a month over the next six months.
The podcast is presented and produced by members of the council's youth service, with content guidance and project management from the council's communications team. It's part of a six month trial to measure how we can use podcasting to engage young people, and is the first of several social media projects that I'm aiming to deliver for Medway Council over the coming months.
On the technical side the podcast sits on a bespoke blogging platform built by the council's ICT team, the audio files are hosted by Podcast FM, and it uses Feedburner to distribute and track the RSS feeds. Moderated comments are enabled, and trackbacks should work too.
If you're wondering why I'm calling it the first real local authority podcast - that's because there are other local authorities in the UK doing something called podcasting, but it's really just an automated voice reading their web content - not real podcasting. Here are a couple of examples from Stockport and Lincolnshire.
For me real podcasting means producing regular audio programmes with live presenter content, and encouraging a two-way dialogue and relationship with listeners (I have ranted before on this very topic!).
Any feedback or thoughts about the trial would be much valued - it's an exciting time for me as I really think what we're doing is pushing the boundaries of public sector communications in the UK.

#### Unlocking the power of information
Governments typically have a lot of information. They have data on almost everything imaginable. Yet more often than not it's inaccessible to the public, or is made available on commercial license terms to companies willing to pay the price. Take for example Ordnance Survey - the UK's map maker - which is part of the UK public sector. It holds a vast amount of geospatial data that it only makes available to its commercial partners. Compare Ordnance Survey with Google Maps, which makes its mapping data available freely on the web. Google Maps has spawned a mass of mash-ups - services which combine Google Maps mapping data with other freely available data to provide innovative services that couldn't exist without the data on which they are based. These mash-ups provide value to their end-users that exceed the value of the original data sets by themselves. But who does Ordnance Survey, or indeed any other public sector data, actually belong to? Maybe I'm being oversimplistic here, but surely data held by public sector bodies is owned, eventually, by the public. There are no shareholders or big pension funds holding stock - the public sector serves the public. Along these lines, a report published by the UK Cabinet Office called "The Power of Information" caught my eye. It's a review of citizen and government-generated information in the UK, and makes some very interesting recommendations that relate to social media and web 2.0 tools. The main vision of the report is buried on page 20:  that citizens, consumers and government can create, re-use and distribute information in ways that add maximum value. The authors make some really good recommendations about how governments should engage with the private sector to exploit the data that they hold for the social good:   welcomes and engages with users and operators of user-generated sites in pursuit of common social and economic objectives;  supplies potential re-users with the public sector information they need, when they need it, in a way that maximises the long-term benefits for all citizens;  protects the public interest by preparing citizens for a world of plentiful (andsometimes unreliable) information, and helps excluded groups take advantage.  In particular interest is the first recommendation - that the government should engage with existing user-generated sites if they have similar objectives to the government itself. While this report doesn't represent government policy, it provides interesting food for thought and I would hope would show a likely future direction for policy. So far the public sector's engagement with user-generated private sector websites hasn't been great. There is a myriad of opportunities for the public sector to engage with the private sector for social benefit - the challenge for public sector communicators is to understand how fundamentally the communications landscape is changing, and realise what this means for the way they need to achieve their communications goals. [tags]uk+government, data, mash-ups[/tags]

#### Upgraded to Wordpress 2.0.5
I run my website and blog using Wordpress - it's a great content management system as it's easy to use, extremely versatile and has an unbeatable price.
The latest version - Wordpress 2.0.5 - has been around for about a month now, and I've finally found the time to upgrade my installation.
Having taken a full local back-up of all my files, the Wordpress upgrade was as simple as uploading a set of new Wordpress files by FTP and running through a database upgrade wizard.
All very straightforward and the site was only down for a matter of seconds. I've tested the site and everything seems to be working fine, but do let me know if you spot any glitches.

#### Upgrading to Wordpress 2.0.4
The guys over at Wordpress have just released the latest upgrade which takes the system up to version 2.0.4.
The full announcement is on the Wordpress development blog.
I've downloaded the new version and successfully upgraded this site this evening with no problems or hitches.
I've had a pretty comprehensive look through the site, and all looks fine, but if you spot any gremlins please do drop me a line.

#### Upgrading to Wordpress 2.1
This is my second attempt to write a post about upgrading to Wordpress 2.1.
The first was a glowing review about how easy the upgrade process was. A simple 20 minute process, with straightforward step by step instructions on the Wordpress website. Looking around the site after upgrading, everything seemed in order.
However when I hit the publish button on the first version of this post it all went wrong -the post disappeared and doesn't seem to have been saved, let alone published.
That's kind of ironic, as one of the new features in Wordpress 2.1 is the automatic saving of posts as you write them, to avoid any loss of work if you don't hit the save or publish buttons (or as I have several times, manage to use a browser keyboard shortcut to go back to the previous page, losing the content of the post).
Anyhow I'll hit the publish button now, and see what happens. Fingers crossed.

#### Upgrading to Wordpress 2.1.2
I've just upgraded the blog to run the latest version of Wordpress - v2.1.2 - which was released yesterday.
As usual with Wordpress a straightforward process, and assuming I manage to post this entry then a successful one too.
This release followed some security breaches and malicious code being introduced into the downloaded versions of the previous release, as Dougal explains:
If you recently installed version 2.1.1, you should upgrade to WordPress 2.1.2 immediately. There was a security breach on the server which housed the download archives, and some files in the 2.1.1 download were modified to include a serious security hole.
If you spot any glitches do drop me a line.

#### Upgrading to Wordpress 2.8 - a painful process
Have just spent a frustrating few hours upgrading to the latest version of Wordpress - 2.8 - which was released earlier today.
Having done the usual backups beforehand, I foolishly tried the auto-upgrade feature that's built into Wordpress - usually I upload manually by FTP.
The auto-upgrade didn't seem to work fully - it put the site onto maintenance and then kept creating files in the web root called core.xxx with xxx being an ever increasing number - until the site reached it's maximum data allowance. Upon deleting these files, it just kept creating more and I couldn't work out how to stop this seemingly endless loop.
In the meantime I then had a 500 server error on all admin and frontend pages - thanks to a tip-off from Jack Pickard I went on the hunt for plugins that weren't WP2.8 compatible.
Having renamed all the plugins via FTP to disable them (as I couldn't get into the admin area to disable them properly), I started renaming them back to their original names one-by-one, testing the site each time to see if it reappeared.
Eventually I've traced the 500 server errors back to two plugins which don't (at the time of posting) work with Wordpress 2.8:
WP-PluginsUsed
WP-Options-Manager
Once these two were out the way, the 500 server errors stopped and all seemed almost normal.
The only remaining problem was with the /blog/ section of the site, where all my blog entries reside. For some reason it was showing an old entry from 2007, when it should show recent posts in reverse chronological order.
This is controlled by the filosofo-home-page-control plugin - which looking in the admin section appeared to still be set up correctly. However by re-entering the settings for the plugin and resaving them, it all now seems fixed.
Please let me know if you spot anything looking amiss, but hopefully all is now well. I think I'll do all future upgrades manually again as I could have done without three hours of fiddling with the Wordpress setup for what's normally a simple and straightforward process.
ps just tried to upload an image with this post, but it seems the overlay image uploader in the admin area's broken too, but it's late and I can't face troubleshooting that now!
Update 15 June 2009
Both the offending plug-ins above have now been updated and work fine with 2.8 - the lesson for me is to wait until plug-in releases catch up with Wordpress core releases!

#### Useful research from Ipsos MORI
I'll happily admit I'm a sucker for a decent Powerpoint pack stuffed with research-based evidence.
So in the interests of sharing the love, here are a couple of useful recent research summaries from Ipsos MORI for those working in the public sector:

	The future of local government
	Public service reform: taking the public with you

Lots of useful insights for public sector communicators trying to work their way through the challenges of communicating in the age of austerity. Enjoy...

#### Useful social media research...yes, really
The problem with most social media statistics and "research" on the web is that it's hard to know what to trust.
All too often the methodologies behind so-called evidence are weak. Sometimes conclusions are drawn or meaning inferred where the sample size behind the numbers is far too small.
And then there are the ones where even though no methodology was given in the first place, because there are enough websites ready to repost anything vaguely related to social media, the research seems to gain currency by being reposted so frequently.
So I do spend a lot of time deleting social media research I am sent unless it comes with enough information to determine its usefulness.
In the past week I've had two interesting pieces of research come my way though - both are worth checking out.
The first is the Chartered Institute of Marketing's twice annual social media benchmark report.
It's based on a snapshot of marketers and looks at current and future usage of social media by marketers in the UK. The fullreport is paid-for, but CIM members get it free. However there's plenty of useful insight available for free on their infographic here.
The general picture is of social media playing an increasing role in the marketing mix, but still very much at the experimental stage for many organisations. Time and skills seem to remain a key barrier to adoption, but it's good to see social media analytics featuring highly on the priorities for investment in 2012.

The second piece of research that caught my eye comes from BDO and looks at social media use in local government. You can read the press release about the research here and get the full report here.
It's a nice rounded bit of research which sets out well many of the key issues around social media adoption in local government. It's also got a lot of useful case studies which demonstrate the range of potential applications of social media, although some pf the case studies could do with a bit more assessment of outcomes achieved rather than outputs (in my opinion).
The report also goes through a useful process for evaluating return on investment for social media activity.
All in all it's a really useful piece of research for anyone working in local government who wants to get a good grounding in how to use social media well.

#### Using Google Analytics
A colleague recently pointed me in the direction of Google Analytics. It looks like a pretty comprehensive solution for analysing web traffic, including how it reaches your site, and how it converts on the site.
I've worked with a number of web analysis tools on client projects, including at Egg. Whilst all the usual suspects provide information about visitors, what really let them down was the ability to follow journeys on the site and look at key drop-out points in sales journeys.
In the end we developed a bespoke solution to do this at Egg. From first glance it looks Google Analytics does this using the funnel feature. Being able to overlay and segment the data using a wide range of variables seems to make this tool very versatile.
To date I've been using Mach5 FastStats Log Analyzer on my site and client projects to measure customer journeys on websites, using weblog data. In particular the hyperlink tree viewer is a useful tool for spotting trends and pinch points.
Installing Google Analytics on my Textpattern-driven site is a breeze. I just needed to drop a few javascript lines into a single form that contains all information on the site.
Apparently it takes around six hours for the first traffic data to register, but the useful stuff comes when there's a decent amount of data to look back at.
I'll post more information about how I find it in due course on this site. In the meantime I'd be interested to hear any experiences of using the Google Analytics tool or other software that does similar journey analysis.

#### Using marketing segmentation and personas to understand customers
I've been thinking about how personas can be used in marketing for a while now.
This article by Steve Mulder explains really well about the role of personas in marketing, and how they can link to market segmentation.
Personas and segmentation are complementary tools to help make marketing more effective:
Where market segments help you target qualified potential customers, personas help you satisfy these people. Working together, they complete the loop by helping you generate demand and then satisfy that demand.
If you're interested in exploring more effective market segmentation then Steve's article is well worth a read.

#### Using plain English in local government communications
Last week the Local Government Association treated us to its list of banned words - jargon used by local authorities that means very little to residents and businesses. The full list is here.
Neville Hobson has picked up this on his blog, sparking an interesting debate in the comments to his post about whether plain English is actually a dumbing down of language. The alternative view is that written and verbal communication is meaningless (and pointless) if both parties don't share a common understanding of what's being communicated.
As a communicator working in local government this really interests me. As part of our written styleguide we have a list of banned words, along the same lines as the LGA's. The principles behind it are important - being able to communicate with our audiences relies on us using words and phrases they understand.
The same applies in both public and private sectors; this article picking up on an Accenture internal memo certainly proves that point. And for communicators the challenge is the same: remembering that external audiences don't speak your internal language.
It's fine for planners within a local authority to talk about curtilages to each other - indeed the use of specialist technical language is important as it often carries complicated meanings within concise phrases.  But when planners need to talk to members of the public, they need to speak the public's language, which means changing language to suit the audience. I'm not picking on the planners in particular here - it's a trait that exists in most specialist disciplines within organisations (including marketing and public relations, I have to admit).
The challenge for those who work in communications in local government is that most communications don't come through the professional communicators. The bulk of council-resident interactions happen between officers and members of the public, through letters, emails, phone calls and face to face conversations.
As a communicator an important role is educating and equipping others to communicate more effectively. It's a relatively straightforward task to ensure materials coming from the professional communicators are up to scratch, but getting standards to the same level across the organisation needs a different set of skills and the ability to network effectively - to get non-communicators to communicate more effectively and act as a champion of plain English.
My preferred alternative to plain English is appropriate English - the language that's right for one audience isn't right for another. For example if we were producing a leaflet about building regulations for architects, the language may well be different to a leaflet on the same subject for residents - it's about choosing appropriate words and phrases for your intended audience.
A brief footnote - interesting to see the LGA list has the banned word "coterminous" with the suggested alternative as "all singing from the same hymn sheet" - swapping one bit of business jargon for another equally bad one surely!

#### Using Twitter for public sector organisations
Jon Bounds has produced another useful Twitter guide, this time looking at the business of using Twitter on behalf of a brand or organisation.
You can read his full post here.
One of the interesting areas that he covers is how to get personality across when one or more people uses Twitter under an organisational account.
Personality's important, but I don't think that necessarily means the same as having an identity - it's not vital to have a named person using Twitter on behalf of an organisation - @downingstreet goes under the guise of No10 admin, but posts with enough personality and interest to carry it off well (in my opinion).
Jon reckons any content posted on Twitter for an organisation needs to cover one or more of these four criteria:

	Interesting 
	Entertaining 
	Informative
	Helpful

I'd agree with this, although the challenge comes as whether the message meets one or more of these depends on who's receiving the message - one person's interesting is another one's dull - so it's about ensuring being clear who the intended audience for your Twitter output is, and making some assumptions about what content they'll value.

#### Using video to promote recycling collections
Andrew Daniels from Chorley Council has emailed me to let me know about their use of a video to promote changes in their recycling collection services.  The video was produced professionally and features a couple of members of staff from the council to get the message across:

 While using video on YouTube isn't particularly innovative, it's worked for Chorley on this campaign so was clearly worth doing.   But what caught my eye about this was that while the video itself has supported the campaign, it has become a story in itself, as Andrew notes:     It's also generated a front page news story in the local press, featured on the radio and we've had debates on local PR/media websites. It's also been picked up on local blogs and forums.   There's definitely potential for use of new or different communications tools as a trigger for debate and coverage in other places - and this is something that we can sometimes underexploit when our focus is on delivery of the core campaign itself.
It's also interesting to see how the council has responded to some of the less than positive feedback that has been made about the broader topic of recycling in the video comments. The council has answered the comments factually and in a friendly, non-corporate tone - which reflects the need to engage on a person-to-person not organisation-to-person basis.
Getting coverage for this kind of thing also has an impact on the way the council itself is perceived - done well, it can position the council as more forward-thinking and in touch. Done badly it can make the council look remote, out of touch or amateur.

#### Using Writely
This is my first post that I have written using Writely - an online writing and collaboration tool from Google. The beta launch of the site follows hot on the heels of Google's online spreadsheets tool.
At the moment you have to sign-up for an invitation. I did this a couple of weeks ago and received my invitation this morning.
The easiest way to describe the site is as an online word processor that features a whole bunch of collaboration tools as well. Those of you who use 37Signal's Writeboard  will recognise the basic functionality in Writely, and will find a whole lot more as well.
I haven't had a chance to play extensively yet, but some of the things that look useful are:

	one-click posting to a host of different blogging engines (will be testing this with Wordpress in just a moment)
	being able to invite collaborators by email
	version histories (as in Writeboard)
	being able to email directly into Writeboard (so you can cc an email as a starting point for an online document to work on together)
	being able to tag and star documents to help keep larger numbers of documents organised
	selecting documents as public and allowing anyone on the web to view them (and edit for people with invitations)
	being able to save your work out as HTML, MS Word, OpenOffice formats (and more)

I can think of a wide range of applications for a system like this. I know there are many other online collaboration tools out there, but none I know of have the range of features that Writely does. However what might set Writely apart as a mainstream tool is that it's very similar in feel to a desktop word processor that most people are familiar with - the extras are there, but don't distract from the basic task of writing, formatting and editing.
About to hit the post button now, so let's see how the integration with Wordpress works...
[update: 17th August 6.50am]
Posting to Wordpress went well. Easy integration within Writely. Only bug seemed to be that it didn't carry the article title over. I also had to enter categories and tags once in Wordpress.
I don't think Writely is intended as a blog editor (there are many tools that do this much better), but it's useful to have that function there anyway. The real value is in the collaboration.

#### Vive le Tour de France!
OK, forgive me the continental flavour of the headline...it's been a good day with the sun shining on Kent. The Tour de France came through Medway and finished with a Brit taking the honours in Canterbury. Throughout the route the race looked well supported, and I was particularly pleased to see good crowds in Medway.     I spent the morning watching the pre-race build-up and race itself in Gillingham, at the first sprint section of the race.  Aside from fielding phone calls from various council colleagues and keeping tabs on what was happening in other parts of Medway, it was nice to be able to forget about the communications challenges that have gone with the event over the past couple of months and enjoy the spectacle of the world's largest annual sporting event visiting these shores.   The race is preceded by the publicity caravanne - a parade of floats and other promotional vehicles that entertain the waiting crowds. Unfortunately where I was standing they decided to go quite fast, so it wasn't that easy to see the floats properly:  Then around noon the crowds were cheering for a British leader - David Millar came through leading the stage and taking the first sprint honours too:   Three or four minutes later the peloton sped through, followed by lots of team vehicles and race officials: The cyclists themselves passed by in just 10 or 15 seconds - in case you missed them, here's a slow motion version!  More of my pictures are available on Flickr. [tags]Medway, tour+de+france, gillingham[/tags]

#### Vodafone going into Second Life
Marketing Week magazine (UK) confirms that global mobile telecoms firm Vodafone will be launching a presence in Second Life by the end of this year.
The company plans to use SL as another channel for its advertising campaign, and also to make its content available in SL as well.
Vodafone's director of brand strategy and manifestation David Erixon is quoted:
Second Life is an exciting place to be at the moment and allows us to engage with our consumers.
The news was broken earlier this week on 3pointD and Tech Digest, although the Marketing Week story is the first confirmation I've seen from Vodafone itself, rather than Rivers Run Red.
I signed up for Second Life a couple of months ago, but haven't spent more than a couple of hours in there since.
The learning curve is quite steep, and it's not the kind of thing I'd naturally do (I'm not a gamer). However I feel I ought to try to get a decent understanding of how Second Life works, as like it or not it's a place that a communicator needs to understand and be able to incorporate into a communications mix.

#### Voting deadline extended for CIPR elections
A little while back I wrote a blog post about the Chartered Institute of Public Relations elections for president elect 2010.
I'm backing Paul Mylrea MCIPR, Director of Communications for the Department for International Development in his bid to lead significant and long overdue change at the institute to make sure it's fit to serve the needs of the public relations profession in the UK. You can read more about this in my original post.
The deadline for voting has been extended to this Friday - I'd encourage any members who haven't voted yet to do so - the institute is at a critical point both strategically and financially.
Voting papers were mailed with the last issue of Profile magazine, but if you've lost yours contact Ben Carrett (020 7631 6900, BenC@cipr.co.uk) and he'll fix you up with new paperwork quickly.

#### Waddington for president!
While I'm a member of two professional bodies - the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) - I've never really got into the governance and committee side of the organisations.
But over time I've begun to appreciate the significance of the leadership of these bodies and the role that they can play in the development of the professional space that I spend my days and evenings in.
As a public sector communicator and marketer, the CIM has become increasingly irrelevant to me as it has failed to adequately recognise the diversity of the marketing profession and the role that behavioural marketing plays in the public sector.
But the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) has become increasingly relevant to my work over the past few months and I've been very impressed with their offer and their ability to engage flexibly with the diverse parts of the communications profession.
And that brings me to the CIPR.
I've been a member for many years now and have seen the organisation transition from an out-of-date legacy institution to a far more progressive and engaging professional body. The combination of strong leadership and a ground-up effort from social media-literate members has really pushed forward the organisation and maintained its relevance in this rapidly evolving communications environment.
That's why this year's election for CIPR President-Elect seems so significant.
To me it feels like the election is a choice between two directions for the leadership of the institute. And that's why I'm paying attention this year more than I ever have done before.
There are two candidates - Dr Jon White and Stephen Waddington. I don't know either of them personally, although I "know" Stephen through his online content on his blog and Twitter.
Reading both their personal statements on the CIPR site, it seems like members are faced with a clear choice - between a strong, focussed and relevant vision for the institute and a vision that seems grounded in the academic sphere of public relations.
While I place great value in the importance of academic research and theory underpinning professional practice, the locus of our profession is in practice. It's in the decisions and actions that communications people take day in day out in response to the unique environments that they face.
And in that context, Stephen's vision seems clear, bold and covers all the areas that I consider important for the future of our profession. He seems to have the all-round view of the challenges that we face and can articulate a direction that fits with the way I see communications developing.
So that's why for me Stephen's vision for the organisation resonates much more strongly than Jon's. And that's why he'll be getting my vote for President-Elect this year.
Voting opens on 7 May and closes on 21 May, so if you're a CIPR member make sure you check out the candidates and make your vote count!
 

#### Walking with dinosaurs?
I've just joined the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR). I paid my dues a few weeks back and a thick membership pack arrived on my doorstep on Friday.
Over the past month a lively debate has been taking place among bloggers, triggered by comments made by the institute's director-general Colin Farrington. His initial piece was published in the institute's magazine and is available here.
In the latest issue of Profile, the institute's magazine (and my first as a member!), Colin continues the theme in a similar vein.
I'm not going to go into the pro-social media (and especially pro-blog) arguments here as they've already been far more capably articulated by others - including Neville Hobson, Simon Collister and Richard Bailey.
Stuart Bruce raises an interesting point in his post - he questions whether as director-general of the institute, Colin has the right to put forward such arguments without the members or decision-making parts of the organisation having agreed a policy. I guess in much the same way as the government and civil service work - politicians set the policy, civil servants deliver it.
For me the question isn't the rights and wrongs of the debate, although as I'm writing this on my blog you'll probably work out which side of the fence I'm on. My concern is more how this reflects the thinking and direction of the organisation I've just joined. I wanted to join the institute as my work is more and more PR-led now, having started off with a pure marketing background (and having been a Chartered Institute of Marketing member for some years).
I joined CIPR to further my professional development in the PR field, and to become more connected to the PR scene. All the way through my career I've enjoyed working at the leading edge of marketing and communications channels. I like the challenge of applying emerging technologies to mainstream communications challenges.
I don't know enough about the way the organisation works to know whether Colin's comments should concern me or not. He's entitled to his opinions, and there's nothing wrong with sounding a note of caution just as some very wise people probably did before the internet bubble went pop.
I'd like to think that Colin's views are trying to stimulate a wider debate among CIPR members about the way PR can use social media. At the moment the discussion is probably among people who are already using social media, making the conversation somewhat one-sided. The fact that the CIPR president, Tony Bradley, blogs and that there's a suggested (light-hearted) tension there, points to an attempt to push a discussion I suspect.
I'm just not entirely comfortable with Colin pushing his views in this way. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be representative of the membership, and being director-general isn't a personal platform for image making. It's about running the organisation for the members (and doing it very well from what I understand).
So in joining CIPR am I really walking with dinosaurs? Many of the bloggers I read and respect their professional views are CIPR members so I doubt it. I just hope I'm proved right and my annual fee is worth it.

#### Want to work with Deeson Group?
At Deeson Group we're hiring.
We work across digital and print to deliver top quality projects for an exciting range of clients that includes big names like Johnson & Johnson, ITV and Robbie Williams.
At the moment we're recruiting to three roles:
Online Producer
Our project managers / producers work with clients and the internal teams to deliver high quality results on time, every time.
They liaise with clients, help specify features and provide accurate estimating and planning information.
A combination of deep industry experience combined with planning and analysis skills is required to provide leadership to both clients and project team.
You'll have credible commercial experience in delivering comparable digital projects, ideally using an Agile (Scrum) methodology.
Digital Designer
We're looking for a designer with a portfolio that demonstrates your ability to create something special. Versatility and flexibility are important, as well as a real passion for design and creative thinking.
Specifically you'll have experience in:

	translating requirements into a user interface via wireframes
	working with UX teams
	creating stunning web layouts in Photoshop
	building responsive front-end templates
	collaborating with development teams to integrate front-end code into CMS templates

Digital Marketing Executive
We are seeing increasing demand for integrated digital marketing services from our existing clients and from new clients. This new role will help us provide a broader range of digital marketing services including on and off-site SEO, analytics and online advertising.
We're looking for someone that is:

	great at web analytics and evaluation (ideally with Google Analytics IQ)
	knowledgeable and comfortable with Google Webmaster tools
	Google Adwords certified
	visible and credible on social media
	interested in social media, content marketing and the next big thing
	comfortable with data, analysis and evidence-based thinking
	able to communicate effectively with clients and colleagues through written reports, blogs, presentations and conversations
	always researching trends, analysing and communicating knowledge to with clients and colleagues

All three roles are based in Canterbury and salaries are negotiable.
Plus we're a friendly bunch to work with. And do groovy stuff like our recent charity picnic.
Interested? Drop us a line at web-recruit@deeson.co.uk and introduce yourself.

#### Was the Royal Navy really that naive?
PR Week has a piece about the selling stories saga that has unfolded since the 15 British hostages were released by Iran.
I'd been wondering about how the initial decision was reached, apparently by the Royal Navy, to allow the sailors to sell their stories to the highest tabloid bidders. This decision was reversed a couple of days later once it was clear that public opinion found this unacceptable.
According to the PR Week article, the Navy had
allowed its personnel to deal directly with media organisations in a bid to appear transparent.
Each freed hostage was given a "media shield" to give strategic advice, but these "shields" weren't involved in financial negotiations.
I just can't see how anyone considered it would be appropriate to expose the freed hostages to the tabloid media, particularly just hours after they'd been released from the worst experience of their lives.
Surely the Royal Navy had a duty of care to its people that meant it should have actively protected them from the media in the hours and days following their release.
Media handling is a specialist skill, especially when dealing with the charged world of tabloid news gathering, so why on earth would it be appropriate to let the hostages deal directly? The transparency argument just doesn't add up.
What amazes me even more is that apparently when the deals were done, the Royal Navy was surprised that the unsuccessful bidders didn't go away nicely:
We had people who wanted scoops [who didn't get them] and so we had people who spoiled it and stirred things up a bit.
It's pretty much standard practice for the tabloid papers to run spoilers or attempts to discredit people or stories when they're unsuccessful in the bidding for an exclusive. Any PRO worth his salary should have predicted that scenario.
It's easy for me to write this with the twin benefits of hindsight and no time pressures, but I would have expected the Royal Navy/Ministry of Defence communications teams to have plans in place for any of the scenarios that could have happened once the sailors were captured.
Maybe they did and their error was to misread how the sale of stories would be perceived in the wider world.
It's really disappointing that what should have been a story about successful diplomacy and happy homecomings rapidly deteoriated into a story about poor media strategy and handling by the public relations people.

#### Web 2.0 features on new Royal Navy recruitment site
Brand Republic reports that the Royal Navy has relaunched its recruitment website to
introduce Web 2.0 features in an attempt to capture the 16- to 24-year-old market.
Hot on the heels of the British Army announcing it is to use social media features on its new website, this looked like interesting news.
However having had a look around the new website I do get the sense it's a bit of a missed opportunity. The main new features seem to be primarily multimedia (videos, screensavers, mobile downloads), rather than more genuine web 2.0 social networking tools.
Don't get me wrong - it's a very well deployed recruitment website that uses the potential of multimedia very well.
It's just I feel there's more that could have been done to show a more genuine insight into life in the Royal Navy. It all feels a bit too much like a glossy recruitment brochure than a real opportunity for a genuine conversation with the Royal Navy and its people.
The site was designed and built by twentysix London and overseen by COI.

#### Web 2.0 meets press releases
Todd Defren at SHIFT Communications has just published a very comprehensive press release template - it combines the "classic" release features with a wealth of Web 2.0 information.
The template can be downloaded from Todd's blog at pr-squared.blogspot.com.
The challenge now is encourage adoption of this approach - both in terms of pure functionality (having the technorati, del.icio.us, RSS, podcasts etc in place) and client desire.
The latter is particularly key as the Web 2.0 approach opens up direct linking to a world of information outside the normal sphere of control.
Of course, this has always been available to any journalist using the web as a research tool, but there will be a barrier for clients to overcome about linking to information that may not be to their taste.

#### Website take-up and social media
Today I'm at the SOCITM event in London talking about website take-up.
My talk looked at social media and focussed on how these new tools can help drive take-up of online council services. Slides are below:
Using Web 2.0 tools to drive take-up and engagement

#### Week in view - w/e September 1st 2006
Most weeks I see a few things that I'd like to blog, but don't have the time during the week. So I thought I'd try just saving them until the end of the week when I have a bit more time to do a round-up.
That's not to say I won't blog in the week as well, but will hopefully be able to cover a bit more ground by producing a round-up as well.
I spotted a very thought provoking post about how marketers tend to focus efforts on acquiring new customers, and don't spend much time or effort on existing customers. Seth Godin weighed in his support, but Darren Barefoot had a different take on Kathy's post. Didn't mean to, but ended up writing a full post about this after all.
On a personal note it was heartening this week to see a report in New Media Age (UK) that the country's leading digital satellite TV provider, Sky, is to consider running more interactive television adverts in commercial breaks. Then change comes as news broke that 93% of satellite homes had interacted with an advert during the first half of this year.
I was working at Open... (now part of BSkyB) when the first ever interactive advert was broadcast. It felt like a defining moment in interactive television, and it was. Six years on the channel has come of age, both in terms of interactive editorial content and interactive advertising.
As Neville and Shel would say, there was much kerfuffle in the UK earlier in the week about "junk mail". The whole story kicked off on Tuesday when it emerged that the Royal Mail had suspended postman Roger Annies for producing material telling his customers how to reduce the amount of "junk mail" they received. Apparently there was a well-kept secret about how to opt-out of a certain type of "junk mail" - namely unaddressed items that were delivered by Royal Mail.
However the housewife's read Daily Mail picked up on the story and started one of its beloved campaigns to reduce the amount of "junk mail" received. It kindly added a front page splash on Wednesday as well. Royal Mail was unable to cope with the volume of opt-outs to a previously very low profile phoneline.
Leaving aside the questionable PR handling of the issue, the situation for Royal Mail is difficult. The company makes significant revenue from delivering 3.3bn door to door items annually, so to have mass opt-outs would reduce this revenue and make door to door a less attractive delivery option for direct marketers and public service communicators.
I'm working tomorrow (Saturday) at stage five of the Tour of Britain cycle race on behalf of Medway Council. Weather forecast isn't great, but it'll be interesting all the same to see how we can take advantage of large-scale events like the tour as experiential marketing opportunities. The Tour de France starts in London in 2007 and runs through Medway so will be a great opportunity - the challenge for me as a marketer is to make sure we take advantage to achieve our communication goals.

#### What are the best and worst business blogs you've seen?
I'm on a panel tomorrow at a Motor Industry Public Affairs Association event about blogging.
I'm on the lookout for some examples of business blogging and its best and at its worst.
So what's the best business blog you've seen? And why is it so good?
And at the other end of the scale what's the most disappointing business or corporate blog you've seen?
I appreciate any examples readers of this blog can let me have - open source presentation writing in action!

#### What do senior managers want to know about social media?
I'm putting together a new course about social media in the public sector.
This time I'm focussing on senior managers, heads of service, assistant directors in the public sector - and creating a unique course that gives this audience what they need to know about social media from one day spent out of the office.
I've been running practical courses on social media for some time now - focussing on the more hands-on aspects of social media that communications and engagement practitioners want to know about (in fact there's one coming up in December in Leeds if that's what you're looking for).
Getting the content right for the senior audience is a challenge - I've got a few ideas based on discussions I've had with many senior managers, but I thought it would be a good idea to get some ideas from the community...so if you're a senior public sector manager what would you want to get out of a one-day social media course with ongoing coaching/support?
And if you'd like to send your boss on the course, what do you think they need to know about?
Let me know in the comments below, drop me an email (simon@simonwakeman.com) or find me on Twitter.

#### What do you do when it rains?
Retailers have always been obsessed by the weather.
They know that a cold snap in May can knock a hole in their summer clothing sales, or an Indian summer can drive purchase of outdoor furniture unusually late in the season. It looks like the offline trend holds true in the online world too.
In the UK we've just had a pretty wet and miserable bank holiday weekend so I was interested to some statistics from Heather Hopkins on a large jump in UK online traffic that is probably down to people staying at home and shopping online:

It's logical to assume that bad weather means people staying at home, and I suppose by implication good weather means more people go out so less internet usage (given most internet use is still at home).
It'd be interesting to know what the traffic pattern looks like on a sunny bank holiday weekend - is there a trough that means we could make a rough estimate on the level of increase that poor weather can drive?
Do you think the trend also applies to blog readership? As soon as rain is forecast should I reach for the laptop and get blogging?!

#### What does a Chief of Staff actually do?
Over the past eight months I've been working on a major transformation project to bring together the eight companies that made up The Panoply group into a single integrated business under a new brand.

Today was another major milestone in this continuing journey as we announced the first tranche of leadership appointments for TPXimpact. As part of these changes I'm taking on a new role as Chief of Staff, working closely with the CEO and other senior leaders across the business.

Chief of Staff is a common role in many political, governmental and military settings, but is less common in business. However it's increasingly seen in technology businesses too. 

Wikipedia summarises the role as:

"A chief of staff provides a buffer between a chief executive and that executive's direct-reporting team. The chief of staff generally works behind the scenes to solve problems, mediate disputes, and deal with issues before they are brought to the chief executive. Often chiefs of staff act as a confidant and advisor to the chief executive, acting as a sounding board for ideas."

Breaking this down a bit further, Harvard Business Review identifies out five specific areas of work for a Chief of Staff:

serving as an air traffic controller for the leader and the senior team as an integrator connecting work streams that would otherwise remain siloedas a communicator linking the leadership team and the broader organisation as an honest broker and truth teller when the leader needs a wide-ranging view without turf considerations as a confidant without an organisational agenda

That's a useful generic list, but as we've developed the accountabilities for each role in our new structure, we've tried hard to think how a role adds value to the specific organisational contexts we have. That's helped us frame the Chief of Staff role as being about:

Being a strategic advisor and counsel to senior leadership team, with a focus on organisational design, internal delivery of vision for the type of organisation we want to be and integration of acquired businesses.Visible internal ambassador, supporting and enhancing leadership communications across the organisation.Creating and maintaining cross-company relationships to enable leadership success.Responsibility for specific cross-company projects and initiatives, including the integration of existing and new businesses into TPXimpact.

Continuing our journey of change, with a focus on becoming a truly progressive and different professional services business, is a key focus for the role. I'll be continuing lead the design and implementation of a progressive and agile operating model for the business, ensuring change across TPXimpact is consistent with our organisational design principles and a coherent organisational architecture.

We're continuing to grow through acquisition too, so the Chief of Staff role also includes leading the integration of businesses into the new TPXimpact organisation, championing an iterative approach to integration and maximising the autonomy of leaders in the design of their areas of responsibility.

As a human-focussed business I'll also be prioritising the development of an organisational culture where autonomy is maximised and servant leadership is the norm to enable team members to fulfil their potential at work.

I'll be striving to provide effective leadership communication across all parts of the organisation, augmenting the work of our CEO and other leaders as required. This also includes facilitating the work of the company's new governance models and wider leadership forums to ensure an inclusive leadership environment which fosters alignment and high performance.

It's going to be a fascinating few months ahead as I work out how to do this in practice and continuing to learn and evolve my personal approach to work. 

I'm particularly looking forward to working more closely with many leadership colleagues I know well already and to meeting new emerging leaders over the coming years too. I'm really excited about the opportunity and am excited to see where the journey leads at TPXimpact.

#### What does the future of marketing look like?
OK, so that's a pretty big question for Tuesday night when I've on the go since 6.15am.
But in my quest to answer it, I'm going to be assisted by some useful material sent through to me from Steven Van Belleghem - author of The Conversation Manager - who gets marketing, social, technology and how it all mashes together.
It's worth checking out his presentation on Slideshare about Marketing 2020 - it's a biggy at 111 slides but worth the time investment to see how his thesis hangs together towards the end and for some great thought-provoking examples too.

I won't rehash the reasons behind the fact that marketing's changing, but Steven's analysis is that there are three dimenions that will affect marketing in the future:

Extreme customer-centricity: customers will no longer be satisfied with an average treatment. Those companies with a policy of extreme customer-centricity will be the most successful.
Technology: marketing and technology will be two sides of the same coin. IT budgets will continue to shift toward marketing. For marketing departments all over the world, data and technological know-how will be prerequisites to success.
Selling without selling: convince customers through expertise instead of commercial messages. Win them over by bringing added value to their lives.

The customer-centricity argument is about a focus on customer experience - and identifying the bits that make a difference. It reminds me of work I did years ago at Egg when we looked at the emotion-driven "moments of truth" in a customer experience that represented the opportunity to differentiate a fairly standard financial product on the basis of experience. But the need for this is magnified by the faster-moving digital world we all now inhabit.
The technology dimension is about a migration of control of technology from IT departments to marketers. Some of this is about better sales through use of data to drive the pricing and promotional parts of the marketing mix, while it also focusses on how technology can be used to enhance customer experiences through self-service, customisation and automated targetting.
But what's most interesting to me is the selling without selling angle. This is one that comms people will probably get more easily than traditional marketers, as it recognises the value of networked people and content in influencing decision-making among customers.
According to Steven, it's all about the story - the narrative that weaves together added value for customers, a touch of inspiration and the right customer context - get those three factors right and that's the key to getting people to talk about your story. That's something I agree with wholeheartedly - although the trick is to operationalise this and get it off the fancy Powerpoint decks and into the cultural DNA of service-based organisations.
I also quite like Steven's take on what leadership looks like in this new marketing world he foresees:

The new leader’s main objective is managing the ‘why’. Primarily, he manages the company’s reason for being as well as its long-term vision. In addition, there are three aspects that characterize the conversational leader:

Empathy: the new leader is a good listener. He is available both for staff and customers. His job is to provide support and counsel wherever possible.
Connecting: the conversational leader is a bridge builder; he connects people. He believes in the power of networks and helping other people, even when there’s no short-term gain involved.
Decisive: the conversational leader is capable of making decisions and executing his vision. It’s not just about listening; in the end it’s also about taking action.
Plenty of sensible thinking there on how leaders need to operate and some practical stuff that reinforces what I try to make sure I do, but sometimes struggle to actually make happen in the day to day busy-ness of the working day.
So what's your take on Steven's view of future marketing?
Image credit: David Silver on Flickr

#### What does the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive mean for marketing and public relations?
Earlier this year I wrote about a European directive that's being enacted into UK law by April 2008.
The directive is called the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and the UK government is currently running two consultations on its implementation in the UK - through the Office of Fair Trading and the Department for Trade and Industry.
To put it very simply, the directive aims to stop businesses treating consumers unfairly. It seems to act as a blanket back-up to many existing laws that protect consumers (such as the Consumer Credit Act, Sale of Goods Act).
Buried deep in one of the consultations (p46) is a list of 31 practices that are deemed unfair. These practices won't be ones that are practiced by reputable marketing and PR practitioners. They include dodgey things like:
Falsely claiming that a product is able to cure illnesses, dysfunction or malformations.
Or how about..
Explicitly informing a consumer that if he does not buy the product or service, the trader’s job or livelihood will be in jeopardy.
So nothing for us to worry about there then.
But it's on p34 of the consultation document where we need to look to find out how the act could affect what we do.
The list of naughty things on p46 isn't exhaustive. The directive will make it an offence to do anything misleading that causes a consumer to buy something they wouldn't otherwise have purchased, or in the words of the consultation:

A commercial practice is a misleading action...[and therefore "banned"]...if it causes or is likely to cause the typical consumer to take a transactional decision he would not have taken otherwise, taking account of its factual context and of all its features and circumstances.
It'll be an offence to put anything untrue in advertising or promotional material (but then this is covered under various other codes anyway). It'll also be an offence to present truthful information in a misleading way if it's deemed likely to deceive a consumer.
Practices such as running fake blogs or a company/agency commenting on blog posts without disclosing their identity would definitely seem to be included in this category.
The consultation also makes it an offence for a company to not comply with a commitment contained in a code of conduct which the trader has undertaken to comply with - which reads to me that if you're a member of a professional body (eg CIM or CIPR) then the directive puts your compliance with that organisations code of conduct on a legal footing.
From my reading of the consultations, it doesn't look like there's anything in there that will cause major problems for reputable marketing and public relations practitioners, although there will definitely be some provisions that they need to be aware of.
I should really add a health warning to this post - I'm not a lawyer and the consultation texts are full of legalese and very complicated clauses. I've read them in a fair amount of detail, but that's not a guarantee that I haven't missed anything!
I definitely need some fresh air now to wake myself up...
Photo credit: gwilmore on Flickr

#### What I learnt about Powerpoint today - presenter's tips
1. Check your powerpoint slides on the PC that's being used for the projector, all the way through, before you're on. 2. If you're using any unusual fonts (is Garamond unusual?), check them carefully and keep a copy of the font on a memory stick along with your slides. I didn't do either of the above today, and halfway through my mobile internet presentation, noticed that words were appearing larger than I'd thought, were hanging off the side of the screen and over-running the background badly. What had happened? I worked out that the PC that was being used for the projector didn't have the Garamond font installed on it. So my nicely styled slides in Garamond were defaulting to Times New Roman, which is generally larger than Garamond - hence the odd styling. You live and learn...hopefully it all still made sense though.

#### What I really learnt then
Twelve months ago I left behind the relative comfort of being part of a business leadership team and the monthly salary that came with it for a new work adventure.
In January 2023 I took the leap into independent work, seeking greater variety and flexibility in my work. Since then I've learnt a lot and gradually found the right blend of work and clients to meet those goals.
When I left my last role, I wrote some pretty raw reflections on the experience I'd gained in recent years. I wanted to capture for myself what I felt was important then and what I needed to take with me into my future work.
Last week I pulled out those notes and looked at them with the benefit of greater hindsight. It's interesting how the passage of time changes perspective.
Context is important too. Those thoughts came from being in the leadership team of a services business that scaled from 300 to 700 people in two years, primarily through acquisition and integration.
Some feel much more enduring now, while others that felt important then are much less so now. 
I've pulled together those reflections into six themes for what I learnt about leadership back then:
Leadership is a team sport
No-one has all the answers to the complex problems leaders face so don't pretend you do. A good leader knows how to bring a team around a problem and help them work towards a solution - and a solution that's better than one that any individual leader could have come up with alone.
Consistency
Things take time to change. Give leaders the time, space and consistency of priority to be able to lead. Entrepreneurialism changes with scale. Rapid pivots in bigger companies can be value destroying, not enhancing.
Leaning in or standing back
The urge for leaders, especially founders, to lean in and fix/solve is strong. Resist it actively. Lean in sparingly and only where delay could likely lead to unacceptable consequences.
Sensing is underrated
Good leaders develop a radar that's able to pick up signals, weak and strong - and understand them in context. Sometimes misinterpreted signals are worse than unheard signals. This skill changes with scale and leadership means adjusting how you make sense of things as a business scales.
Prioritising and deciding
Being willing to take decisions about one thing being more important than another matters. And then so does sticking to those decisions. Inherent in taking those decisions is the fact that it's ok to decide to not do things too. That's a good thing as long as you explain why.
Understanding capacity
Like the current ratings on electrical wires, every business has a finite capacity for throughput. If you exceed this capacity, wires heat up and cause fires. The same applies for businesses. You can't do everything. Understanding what the organisation has the capacity to do and the size of the initiatives and changes you're trying to put through it is important.

#### What I've missed - the big RSS catch-up
I've been catching up on my RSS and email backlog after a relaxing half-term week off. A few themes caught my attention as I scanned through the hundreds of unread posts and emails: Public relations vs SEO Stuart Bruce has a nice summary of a debate that's been happening on Twitter and elsewhere about the relative roles of public relations and search engine optimisation (SEO). For me the two are very different beasts, although there is some crossover. Stuart hits the nail on the head identifying SEO as one of the many tools that a rounded public relations practitioner should have available for use, depending on the objectives of the public relations campaigns and the best way to achieve them. Government's Director of Digital Engagement The Cabinet Office has advertised for its Director of Digital Engagement role - seen as pivotal in pulling together many strands of digital innovation that are taking place across government and putting digital engagement at the heart of policy making. Neville Hobson has a good commentary on the role and coverage surrounding it.  I agree with Neville's sentiment about the role being potentially too broad for one individual to tick every box in the person specification, but am less convinced that it could be delivered instead as he suggests by a team of specialists - a role like this needs someone who can function in a complex, political world where lobbying, influencing, persuading are just some of the skills required. That said, if it's not already, this role would definitely need a multi-skilled team to support its work and maybe that's where a wider variety of people can be used to best effect.  Thanks to Steph Gray you can put forward your thoughts on what the new director should be doing here - some interesting ideas emerging already. Social media as a consultation tool I've written before about how the Birmingham's volunteer-led Big City Talk website was a great example of how social media can be used as part of a consultation and engagement campaign - although this one was produced by a group of volunteers working independently of Birmingham City Council. I also had the chance to meet a couple of the people behind the site back in December. Now Jon Bounds has posted a great four-part insight into the project - well worth reading for anyone involved in public sector communications or consultation: part one, part two, part three and part four. Social media and local government The IDeA's Ingrid Koehler has a great post - ten local government social media myths - I agree with every myth she's covered and will have a think about any more that I come across in my work and when I talk with others working in local government communications.

#### What is a blog for?
Philip Young has been doing some thinking about what a blog actually is for a public relations practitioner. You can read his thoughts and challenges here (and here).
In a private email conversation he argues against the notion that blogs should be treated as publications, and therefore held up to the same level of scrutiny as any other publication.
Philip's main argument against this is:
the permissible engagement and criticism is connected to the perceived purpose and function of the blog.
And he continues to illustrate what he means by this using an analogy of his Mediations blog being a party where he knows some people well, but that is also open to complete strangers as well.
I agree with Philip - it's not really valid to suggest that there's an equal level of scrutiny applied to all publications. The Financial Times gets a good deal more scrutiny that the local church newsletter that gets posted through my door once in a while.
Both are publications, yet one gets more scrutiny because of its purpose and status.
Blogs are no different - the GM Fastlane blog would be treated by its audience very differently from a 14 year old's blog about dolphins (Philip's example!). The way the messages land and the socially acceptable response behaviours are very different, yet the channel is the same.
It strikes me as a real oversimplification to suggest a degree of homogenity for blogs as either publications or places - a blog is a communication channel just like the many others that most public relations practitioners know already.
And just like those other channels, blogs have all the social and cultural overlays that make communication the complex business it is.
Andrea Weckerle is thinking about how professional and personal content can mix in a blog setting, and how each can influence a reader's perception.
This is a great example of how complex these overlays can be - in some business cultures disclosure of personal details or information is an accepted part of building a relationship offline, and I can't see why it would be any different online. In other cultures the opposite is true - and in the global world of social media it's impossible to differentiate among your audience.
My take on this is that, as with all communications, the right content (and mix of professional vs personal content) depends on your audience. If you've build readership based on purely professional information, then changing this mix wouldn't be a great idea.
But if the communication has always been professional information, with a degree of more personal information and endorsement then you would have built an audience on this basis, and the audience probably values the mix.
Actually writing this now I am beginning to question myself about this point - is there something about blogging that makes the inclusion of personal information somehow endorse or reinforce the professional stuff?
Maybe it's about how we building trust in digital relationships, as the normal visual or social clues about trust we get face to face aren't there online, so the better we feel we know the author we more we trust them?
I don't think I've reached my conclusion on this part - it'll be interesting to see the discussion continue.

#### What is social media?
Spannerworks has just published a handy new e-book covering the basics of social media.
Having had a quick flick through it looks like it's pitched at just the right level for marketing and PR professionals who don't know social media well. I'll certainly be encouraging my colleagues at Medway Council to have a look, especially as we're working on some exciting social media projects for later this year.
Blogger Antony Mayfield is Head of Content & Media at Spannerworks. Also spotted the guide thanks to the ever-reliable Simon Collister and Richard Bailey.
Interesting to see that the e-book was also covered by Steve Rubel, which undoubtedly would have given Spannerworks a nice traffic spike!

#### What is the current reputation of local government?
I'm not afraid to admit that I am a research bore. There you go, I've admitted it.
While that might give you a hint about my MBTI profile, what's more important is why research is so crucial to the business of communications - because it helps base decisions on as objective a view of possible about the current reality and the desired reality on any particular communications issue.
It's been considered best practice for some years now for councils to track their reputations to understand how they are perceived and how these perceptions can be influenced.
While a longitudinal view of reputation for a specific council is valuable, what's also useful is to understand the reputation of a local authority against the national perception of councils and how this is changing.
That's why I really like the regular research that's commissioned and published by LGinsight. Since late 2010 they have researched and tracked changing public opinion about councils, providing an extremely valuable perspective for local government communicators.
Today they publish their latest round of the research, based on fieldwork from May 2012. You can download the report here.
The message from the research reinforces the fact that council reputation is driven by three factors:

	what the council tells people about itself
	what others are saying about the council
	what people see the council is doing

The research shows that
local government is not doing too badly in maintaining
its reputation. In May 2012 seven in ten (70%) Britons say they
are satisfied with the way their council is running things, and
this is the same proportion as we saw back in October 2010
when this series of polling started (69%).
The chart below shows the headlines on the most significant council reputation measures over the past two years or so.

The trends shown are interesting in the light of the PwC research I mentioned yesterday. This showed low levels of understanding among residents about why councils were planning to make savings. Contrasted against a generally (but not universally) improving reputation of local government there are some interesting debates to have.
You can read more about LGinsight research here. Thanks to Neil Wholey at Westminster City Council for the pre-publication heads-up on this one.

#### What makes a good news release
HookJab points to an interesting example of where three different university PR departments have produced news releases on the same story.
They each have a different angle on what's essentially the same story. It's interesting to compare the effectiveness of the different approaches.
What would also be interesting to know would be the process that led to each version being released. I have a hunch that the University of Manchester version was hacked around by the academics (or at least not by the PR people) to push what they thought were the interesting parts.
One lesson from this is that for a news release to be effective, there needs to be an interesting story on offer and it needs to be the first thing that a recipient of the release reads.
It's up to the PR people to work out what the story angle is, and to stick to their guns when getting the release approved to ensure the news shines through.

#### What makes a poor leader?
I've been thinking about an interesting article I spotted on the Harvard Business Review website earlier on today about what makes a bad leader.
The research, based on a large-scale of business leaders, identified ten characteristics of poor leaders - as defined by 360 degree feedback . It notes that the characteristics typically exist in groups of three or four - as many of them are interlinked.
The ten characteristics, in descending order of importance, are:

	Failure to inspire, owing to a lack of energy and enthusiasm.
	Acceptance of mediocre performance in place of excellent results.
	A lack of clear vision and direction.
	An inability to collaborate and be a team player.
	Failure to walk the talk.
	Failure to improve and learn from mistakes.
	An inability to lead change or innovate owing to a resistance to new ideas.
	A failure to develop others.
	Inept interpersonal skills.
	Displays of bad judgement that leads to poor decisions.

No surprises really, but all the same it's good to see them based on real evidence rather than the jargon-heavy evidence-poor management babble that you find in spades online.
But what struck me was the synonymous use of leader and boss in the article - making the assumption that a boss is always a leader, which is almost always the case, but also that a leader also needs to be a boss, which really isn't the case.
Leadership exists at all levels and scales - but the transferable skills of leadership are pervasive - and are something that everyone can work on developing and honing - not just those people with line management responsibilities.

#### What's behind a community?
Ian Delaney at twopointouch.com has an interesting post about how to characterise a community. He makes the point that the behavioural psychology behind communities probably isn't that different in online communities compared to offline communities - indeed the three sources he references all pre-date the internet as we know it now. I agree with Ian on that point - many of the communities, groups and behaviours that exist on the internet are in many ways the same as exist offline. What's different now is that technology has enabled the same things to happen, but has taken away geographical, social, economic and temporal boundaries that previously existed that limited the frequency with which said things could happen. [tags]twopointouch, ian+delaney, community, behavioural+pscyhology[/tags]

#### What's the difference between marketing and public relations?
I use a handy little utility called 103bees to see what search terms people are using to find this site.  As well as showing raw search terms, 103bees also shows the top questions that people are searching on each week. The top question every week is always the same:  What is the difference between marketing and PR? I've posted about this before, but I think there's probably a more succinct way of explaining the difference, without resorting to a list of different definitions for the two professions: Marketing is about changing behaviour, while public relations is about keeping or changing reputations. The two aims work together well. Changing behaviour is a lot easier if you have a reputation that's consistent with that behaviour; indeed I'd say that your reputation is a pre-requisite to marketing.  Similarly what you do to change people's or organisation's behaviours does a lot to influence your reputation, even though that may not be the aim of the marketing activity itself. Does this way of illustrating the difference between marketing and public relations stand up, or am I glossing over too many of the subtleties? [tags]marketing, public+relations, definitions, 103bees[/tags]

#### What's the difference between marketing and public relations?
At a workshop session yesterday I was asked what was the difference between marketing and public relations.
A good few years ago the answer would have been that marketing was paid-for exposure under a company's direct control, while public relations was free exposure.
But that answer misses so many of the differences that it's not really valid. Let's have a look at some trade body definitions for the two professions:
Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably. (Chartered Institute of Marketing)

Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals. (American Marketing Association)
Public relations is a strategic management function that adds value to an organisation by helping it to manage its reputation. (Chartered Institute of Public Relations)
Once you cut through the business jargon that shrouds these definitions, what's left?
Marketing has at its core a desire to reach consumers and make them think, believe or do what you want. Public relations is more focussed on influencing reputation, whether corporate or personal.
This graphic  from Ads of the World sums it up nicely.
The two professions are clearly complementary - a strongly positive reputation makes the marketer's job easier, while marketing activity affects a company's reputation.
If you ever want to infuriate a public relations professional, suggest that public relations is part of marketing.
While the PR function in a company is often managed within a broader marketing division, this is usually for logistic management reasons rather than because PR skills are a subset of marketing skills.
Those organisations that have the most effective communications are those that don't get hung up on what's marketing and what's public relations.
Instead they focus on choosing the most appropriate tool for delivering their objectives, regardless of which toolbox it comes from.

#### When is a podcast not a podcast?
This is one of the most misleadingly named services I've seen in quite a while: Readspeaker Podcaster.
It's a text to speech service that reads out webpages, and puts the enclosure into an RSS feed. Now while technically I suppose you could say that's a podcast (it's an MP3 file delivered through RSS), in no other way is that a podcast.
This kind of thing makes me furious - it's a real case of jumping on the bandwagon (in this case podcasting), without taking the time or effort to find out what this new communication tool is all about.
I don't blame Readspeaker, as they're just trying to make more revenue from their very good technology that reads webpages. But it does make me despair that users of this service will start promoting what they are producing as podcasts.
If the first podcast someone downloads is produced with Readspeaker Podcaster, then they're going to get a pretty poor impression of what a podcast actually is. This will affect the perception of podcasts as something of value to listen to, and that's a bad thing because podcasts can be a good way to reach some audiences as part of a communications mix.
For the record I think a genuine podcast needs to be presented by a human being, and is characterised by two-way communications between the presenter and the audience. That's a pretty wide definition that reflects the wide range of podcasts out there.
However my greatest fury is saved is for the communicators who commission this kind of service and then call it podcasting.
If you want to include podcasting (or indeed any social media) in your communications mix then take the time to get to know how the channel works in detail - listen to podcasts, even produce your own, or take advice from someone who knows better.
Don't just jump on the podcasting bandwagon. Providing a "podcast" like this won't add to the effectiveness of your communications like real podcasting can, so why bother?

#### Where did it go?
Regulars around these parts will recognise there hasn't exactly been a dearth of posts on this blog recently. It has been more than a month since I last posted and I can't believe where the time has gone.
So what's going on? Well, life has been pretty hectic on all fronts really.
At work life is busier than ever with a lot happening on all fronts, but without fail more to do than be fitted into office hours. As ever the breadth and range of challenges never ceases to surprise me and I'm learning lots every day.
At home we've moved house so there has been a lot of lifting, shifting, painting and fixing. Our friendly builders are still occupying most of the downstairs of our house and there seems like an ever growing list of jobs to do (and bills to pay!).
I've also spent a fair few evenings in the past three weeks writing my Public Relations Handbook chapter on public sector PR too.
So all in all I'm afraid blogging has taken a bit of a back seat.
That's a shame really as every day I spot something interesting happening that I mentally compose a blog post about, but then never get time to sit down at the laptop and actually get it onto the website.
But I will be back blogging more regularly in the near future I promise. In the meantime I can just about fit 140 characters into my crazy days, so if you're not already do feel free to follow me on Twitter - @simonwakeman.

#### Who are your internal communications for?
 
An article by Thomas J. DeLong in Harvard Business Review caught my eye about the "ignored majority" of employees in companies.
The diagram shows a categorisation of employees by how they are meeting the organizational  performance goals (on the y-axis) and how they are meeting their own personal standards of expectations at work (on the x-axis). It leads to a model where there are people in all four corners, with the majority in the middle.

The general argument in the piece was that leaders in organisations spend too much time concentrating on those in the four corners of the model, at the expense of the largest number of employees who actually fall into the central "stalwart" category.
But what is a stalwart then?
The quickest way to identify Stalwarts is to list the people who make  the fewest demands on the CEO's time. Such reserve is utterly alien to  most Stars, who make sure that they squeak loudly enough to get the  attention they want.
The other signature trait of Stalwarts is their deep loyalty to the  organization. They are responsible and care deeply about the  organization's values, and they generally steer clear of risk. Stalwarts  are intrinsically motivated by the service they can render for the good  of the organization, and they let their own careers take a backseat to  the company's well-being. They feel that they have accomplished  something if the company is running like a well-oiled machine.
Thomas goes on to identify some commonly-held beliefs about stalwarts that are wrong:
Everybody is the same.  Not every employee  wants to give his all (or even his best) to the organization, leaving  little time and energy for people and passions outside the workplace.  Stalwarts place a high premium on work-life balance, and they highly  value the time they spend with family and friends. In fact, many of the  most productive Stalwarts are recovered Stars who, for a variety of  personal reasons, have made a conscious decision to drop off the fast  track.
Everybody wants the same thing out of work. Leaders often assume that all of their followers share their drive for  power, status, and money. That's just not so. Many Stalwarts want to  influence others in their jobs. Others value autonomy, creative  opportunities, or the chance to develop unique expertise.
 Everybody wants to be promoted. Not every  employee wants to climb the ladder and rise to corporate prominence. The  truth is that many Stalwarts seek recognition and stability rather than  promotion. Stalwarts strive for advancement, but not at all costs.
Everybody wants to be a manager. Corporate  career-planning practices typically operate on the assumption that  people will feel rewarded and special if they are given even nominal  management responsibilities. For that reason, we often ask Stalwarts to  give up their technical competencies for managerial ones. In the  process, we often turn terrific specialists into mediocre managers.
This got me thinking about internal communications - and how communication channels, messages and tone need to be varied by these different groups.
While the discipline of segment, target and position is at the core of the marketing discipline, I fear it's not as strongly ingrained in the internal communications discipline - leading to overfocus on the stars and saints in terms of targetting and positioning of corporate messages.
While this may well help paint a shiny gloss on the company's achievements, does it really serve to help improve performance when the majority of employees are in the stalwart category and may well have alternative motivations and drivers of performance to the saints and stars in an organisation.
Maybe a more nuanced approach to internal communications is what's needed here?

#### Whose job is social media in organisations?
If you've got ten minutes to spare, it's well worth checking out this post on Shel's blog.
While it's long, it's a great summary of the debate about who should be responsible for social media in an organisational context.
I agree with Shel's conclusion that, in the absence of a specialist social media team, the PR/communications function within an organisation is probably where responsibility for social media should lie. He also has a good summary of the social media functions that such a team should fulfil. As he says, "answer is simple in concept, complex in execution".
The post also makes the point that:
Corporations don’t communicate. People do.
That's something worth remembering for communicators, particularly in my experience in internal communications where there is a desire for messages to come from the corporate centre, rather than a leader in the organisation - inherently weakening the traction that messages have with the intended audience.

#### Why "Share a Coke" was a successful integrated marketing campaign
I'm a bit of a sucker for decent evidence behind marketing campaigns - both to inform campaign development and to work out afterwards whether it was actually worth doing in the first place.
But commercial considerations mean that it's usually only when a campaign has gone really well that a company or agency wants to brag about their work. After all an unsuccessful campaign doesn't make for much of an award entry does it?
A piece on The Drum in late January on the "Share a Coke" campaign caught my eye as it was based on statistically valid research into brand awareness and perception as well as actual advertising exposure. 
The case study gives a really good insight into how the campaign worked - with two things standing out to me.
The first is a recognition of the value of personalisation in a marketing campaign as well as the difficulties of getting this right in a data-sensitive consumer environment. 
The reason good personalisation works is that it taps into an emotional connection between a brand, an individual and their networks. The "Share a Coke" campaign demonstrated this is possible without taking a heavyweight big data approach to personalisation in marketing campaigns.
And secondly the data highlights that social isn't simply another marketing channel that you consider alongside other channels. It highlights the value of a social approach in maximising impact from every marketing channel.
That's because social is a pervasive force that is relevant across all marketing channels - as genuine social is about connections, networks and people - all of which exist independently from the marketing world. 
So that means that an integrated marketing campaign needs to exist across multiple channels according to objectives and audience, but also be developed with the socially-connected audience in mind.
This which means understanding the human pyschological and emotional responses involved in the marketing mechanic - meaning marketers need to think more about whether the campaign should work on Facebook or not.

#### Why agile is important in public sector communications
One of the themes I keep banging on about in public sector communications is the need for an agile approach to delivery - in the absence of a better phrase or word; agility.
But what does agility actually mean? While you may by this point have a mental image of Crufts, dogs and numerous hoops, hopefully the rest of this post will explain more about what I'm on about.
For me there are a number of things that define an agile approach:
Speed of response - having a team that's able to reorient its work rapidly in the face of changing priorities, leadership or external factors.
Committed and passionate people - delivering an agile response demands having a team that's prepared to "go the extra mile" to deliver something they truly believe in.
Ready infrastructure - basically having some building blocks in place that are flexible enough for a wide range of possible uses - while this might be technology-based (eg web hosting) it could easily be something relevant for a broader marketing or public relations use - like a strong list of suppliers for a wide range of deliverables or having an effective network of community contacts to help communicate with community groups rapidly.
Experience with building blocks - trying to do everything for the first time when the pressure's on is tough. Doing something again that you've done before it a good deal easier - that's why it's important to have good experience of the tools of your trade - whether those are online services, media contacts, advertising formats - whatever it takes to deliver what you do in your day job normally.
Management support - agility in public sector communications needs strong and decisive management from those in the reporting line above the communicators. Agility demands the confidence and knowledge to make decisions quickly - not falling back on deferring decisions to more senior management unless absolutely necessary.
A great example of this agility in practice is demonstrated by today's launch of the new Department for Business, Innovation & Skills website - put together in the space of 72 hours this week by teams from the two previous government departments that were merged last week.
Check out the full story from the two of the team involved - Steph Gray and Neil Williams - and when reading their accounts remember that these guys did this against the background of (presumably) a fair degree of uncertainty about their personal positions within the merged organisation - a clear demonstration of the importance of personal commitment and passion in delivering public sector agility.
Over the next few weeks I'll be thinking about how to make sure our team is ready to deliver agile communications - as I'm sure at some point we'll need to be ready to respond to an unanticipated eventuality and I'd be delighted if we were able to deliver agility in the way the web guys at BIS have demonstrated is possible.

#### Why coding email marketing properly is important
I received a promotional email today from sportsshoes.com.  It's a great example of why lazy email marketing by just using a load of images is a bad idea. Good email marketing uses well formed HTML code, inline styles and descriptive alt tags on images for when those images are not displayed in the recipient's browser. This is all important because many webmail sites (like my GMail account shown below) and desktop browsers block images by default. That means if you're lazy and just use images in your email marketing, it looks like this:   Even though when you send it, you think it looks like this:   Given the number of clients that use image blocking by default, there's a good business rationale for coding your marketing emails carefully.

#### Why doesn't the BBC offer full RSS feeds?
There's much discussion about the merits of publishing full or partial RSS feeds on your website.
There are some good arguments both for and against doing this if you're a blogger, but for media organisations it's a bit different.
Newspapers and organisations that rely on paid-for advertising to support their businesses are likely to see RSS feeds as a tool for driving traffic to their website, so publishing partial RSS feeds makes sense.
The BBC doesn't rely on advertisers' cash to pay the bills, yet they only publish partial RSS news feeds. I have several of them on my reading list, but I'm constantly frustrated by the short  excerpts in the feeds.
Often these snippets contain so little information that I have to click through to understand what the story's actually about. A bit of a pain if I'm connected to the web, but if I'm on the move without a connection that's just impossible.
So why doesn't the BBC publish full feeds or even offer both types?
Doing this would allow audiences to get news and information in a way that suits them, rather than relying on the out-dated concept of driving traffic to a single place.
It's straightforward to measure RSS traffic, so the BBC could still measure its audiences effectively across the different touchpoints
So the answer is I really don't know why the BBC doesn't offer full RSS feeds, so come on let's have full RSS feeds please auntie.
I've contacted the BBC Press Office to see if they give me any more information on this.
ps in the meantime there is a way to get full content feeds, thanks to Duncan Barnes (via Ian).

#### Why I love my PDA
I'm not ashamed to admit I like my gadgets. But I do particularly like a gadget that makes my life better.
Earlier this year, after much deliberation, I bought a Dell Axim X51V PDA. My main reason for buying it was to allow me to check emails and browse internet sites when I'm away from a PC.
However over the past nine months the PDA has become so much more useful than I'd originally anticipated.
Here are eight ways I use my PDA that I didn't expect:
1. As an MP3 player - using Resco Audio Recorder with headphones or with my (now legal) Audiax FM transmitter in the car.
2. Making notes. I make text-based notes using PhatNotes and sketches/handwritten notes using PhatPad. No more hardback notebooks or reporter's pads for me.
3. Keeping tabs on RSS feeds with Newsgator Go! (as well as synching with my desktop and web-based RSS readers).
4. As a powerful and Outlook synch-ed diary and contacts manager, using Pocket Informant.
5. As a phone using Skype Mobile when I'm in a wi-fi zone.
6. Watching DVDs, using a clever piece of software called Spb Mobile DVD.
7. As a digital audio recorder, for recording meetings or even interviews for podcasts (hint: the 3.5mm audio jack is for both headphones and mono microphone - split the socket into two using item PX50MS here)
8. As a pocket calculator, using the bundled Windows Mobile 5 calculator.
The only thing I wish is that I could use it as a mobile, to save me having to carry both around.
There are, of course, PDA/phone hybrids around, but none had the processing power or feature spec that the Axim did.
By the time I next replace my mobile and the Axim I suspect I'll end up with a hybrid device with a higher spec than the Axim - which will be a good thing as the one aspect I haven't managed to successfully set up is GPRS network access using my mobile (via Bluetooth).

#### Why I'm fed up of talking about social media, really
I'm just back from eight days in the caravan in sleepy Cirencester, without laptop, blackberry and mobile signal - enjoying spending time with Jo and the boys and generally chilling out. It's always nice to switch off from work for a while - as well as being great fun and getting back to what life's really about, I do find it gives me a renewed sense of clarity when I get back to work and my professional life.
One thing I've been mulling over for a while, but couldn't quite get straight in my head was a sense of frustration around social media and local government communications. To put this in perspective I've spent a lot of time over the past four years exploring, talking, researching and learning about social media. I've taken a real focus on what role it could play in local government communications and have tried to ensure I have a very broad range of learnings from beyond the sector to draw on.
I remember when I first went to a conference and talked about social media it was still seen as a geeky, niche kind of thing which many communicator thought would go away. But it hasn't gone away, and for some demographic groups it has become an integral part of their day-to-day lives and their main way of keeping up with their friends.
Yet I'm frustrated with local government's approach to social media. Sure it's great that lots of councils are interested in social media and what it can do for their communications. But what is really starting to annoy me is that too many councils are asking the wrong questions. As communicators we shouldn't be pushing social media as something we must do - it's something we can do, where it's an appropriate tool for the communications objectives we have. And if we don't have clear, measurable objectives that contribute something positive to the lives of local people, we should be relooking at the communications strategy not working out how many people like a particular Facebook page.
On one level social media is just another tool in the communicator's toolbox. Communicators need to have the practical skills to use these tools and to recognise when it's appropriate to do so - as well as the more traditional skills that we all recognise, not as a substitute. We need to learn how to monitor the conversations that happen on social media and learn what to do about these to help safeguard the reputations of our organisations.
The bottom line is that we've got to learn how to use social media strategically as part of the communications mix.
But that's it. As communicators we've got a lot of other challenges - not least driving up the quality and accountability of communications so that we can truly demonstrate what we contribute towards organisations. And I'm not talking about counting how many followers we've got on Twitter - I'm talking about the real headlines that are important to the organisations that we work for and the communities we serve.
Don't get me wrong, digital/social communication skills are very important. But social media seems to be treated as a must-do priority in too many places, ahead of many of the more fundamental initiatives that we need to do to drive up communications performance across the mix.
And in taking this very narrow focus on social media, I fear communicators, as well as neglecting broader performance issues in the wider mix, are contributing towards organisations overlooking the greater potential for real innovation in service delivery through social technologies - in the drive for Facebook pages or Twitter feeds local public sector organisations are missing the bigger picture.
While for communicators social media is another tool in the box, for public sector organisations serving communities such tools are an opportunity to redefine relationships between organisations, officers and the residents they serve. The public service climate over the next few years will demand radical shifts in how we approach delivery of services and organisational relationships with residents, groups of residents and the third sector. It's here that social technologies - people connected in effective, communicative and productive relationships through technologies and shared interests - can make the biggest difference to delivering services and changing people's lives in a particular place.
Yet in many councils I've seen in the past few months, this broader and far more powerful use of emerging technologies has been subjugated to a desire to stick up a Facebook page and be done with it.
There's a role for social media in local public service communication and a need to research more what impact it has on the things that matter. But what would be really heartening to see would be more examples of councils grasping social media as an opportunity for genuine innovation on a greater scale - maybe that's a year or two off yet, just as when I first starting looking into social media its inclusion in the communications mix seemed like a stretch, but the context seems right for it now.
Or do I just need another holiday?

#### Why is Flash so bad?
Found a good summary of why building your site mostly or all in Flash is a bad idea: courtesy of Pigsaw.
Yet still mistakes are made by big businesses that should know better. Most recently River Island:
www.netimperative.com
www.accessifyforum.com
www.othermedia.com
www.bigshinything.com
and many more...

#### Why is Twitter useful for work?
Last week I was running a briefing session on social media - and asked people that follow me on Twitter to help prove to some particularly sceptic delegates that social media could be useful for professional purposes, so I tweeted:
proving value of twitter in soc med trg group - pls reply with your job/org to prove twitter is useful for work (convince sceptics in room)
10:53 AM Sep 16th from web
The answers were really useful, so I've published them here for future reference:
alncl @simonwakeman I use twitter for work every day. It provides examples of best practice and a chance to share problems and solve them together
11:00 AM Sep 16th from HootSuite
harry_harrold @simonwakeman I'm a project manager. Twitter helps keep up to date with best practise: I get help, I help others.
11:04 AM Sep 16th from web
escapetocreate @simonwakeman Am developing a new tourism business - twitter great for connecting me to people who want to work with and buy from me
11:05 AM Sep 16th from TweetDeck in reply to simonwakeman
ingridk @simonwakeman Policy /KM/project manager type role - Twitter essential for me in discovering new practice in gov, a network of the helpful
11:11 AM Sep 16th from TweetDeck
leejorgensen Looking 4 stats/research on social media use. Have @simonwakeman http://bit.ly/FjVLB & @lizayan LGEO http://bit.ly/VOtpw #lgcsoc #psfbuzz
11:12 AM Sep 16th from TweetDeck
charlottetwitts @simonwakeman PR for @Hillingdon. Great way to get news out quickly to colleagues and trade press. Good for networking. Handy to get ideas.
11:13 AM Sep 16th from TweetDeck in reply to simonwakeman
sharonodea @simonwakeman I'm an internal comms mgr, and I find Twitter invaluable for getting research and info in my field, networking with others
11:13 AM Sep 16th from web in reply to simonwakeman
abeeken @simonwakeman Web Officer/Lincoln City Council. Use of Twitter for networking with other councils helps to keep on top of trends & news
11:17 AM Sep 16th from HootSuite in reply to simonwakeman
abeeken @simonwakeman Has helped to add functionality to customer facing website that wouldn't have been aware of otherwise.
11:18 AM Sep 16th from HootSuite in reply to simonwakeman
annaleeb @simonwakeman Media relations, Northants - love it for breaking news, making connections (professional and personal) and sharing woes
11:18 AM Sep 16th from Snaptu in reply to simonwakeman
TessaHallett @simonwakeman Communication Officer, Swale Borough Council
11:19 AM Sep 16th from web in reply to simonwakeman
lesteph @simonwakeman I'm Head of Digital Comms. Twitter keeps me in touch with stakeholders, gives me ideas and helps me promote our campaigns
11:20 AM Sep 16th from web in reply to simonwakeman
sharonodea @simonwakeman oops, forgot to say where I work - London Borough of Sutton
11:20 AM Sep 16th from web
pubstrat @simonwakeman Serendipitous connections: finding out about people, ideas and activities faster and better
11:20 AM Sep 16th from web in reply to simonwakeman
juliac2 @simonwakeman echo @ingridk + @lesteph - I'm in digital comms - good tool for quick updates and ideas - a network of the helpful
11:23 AM Sep 16th from web in reply to simonwakeman
Symmetry_PR @simonwakeman Can be v useful, depends on work/campaign. Gd 4 environmental scanning, issues & crisis mngt, relations. Not 4 product push.
11:25 AM Sep 16th from TweetDeck in reply to simonwakeman
pezholio @simonwakeman I find Twitter invaluable for networking and sharing ideas with people who I might never otherwise have met...
11:30 AM Sep 16th from Tweetie
pezholio @simonwakeman ...With budgets tightening, it's less easy to get out and about and meet people through the usual route of conferences too
11:30 AM Sep 16th from Tweetie
simoneverest @simonwakeman web strategist @defragovuk - share ideas with peers, feedback from end-users, up to the second news…
11:31 AM Sep 16th from web in reply to simonwakeman
danslee RT @pezholio @simonwakeman I find Twitter invaluable for networking and sharing ideas with people

#### Why local government shouldn't be on Facebook
Over the past six months I've picked up an increasing interest in social media among public sector communicators. I've met more people, had more calls, emails and tweets about this than I did this time last year - there's clearly a recognition that social media has an important role to play in local government and more generally public sector communications. Most councils are still dipping a tentative toe in the water with social media - trying to see what they can and can't do and see what's working for others.  In particular at the moment it seems that Facebook and Twitter are the two social media tools that are attracting most attention. More on Twitter soon, but I've been thinking about how local government should be using Facebook. There are already many councils that have set up a page on Facebook for their council - and have attracted "fans" with varying degrees of success. Their pages usually feature a mix of aggregated content from other sources, photos, videos and a scattering of comments and the odd response from the council. I'm not going to mention names here, as my observations are about councils generally rather than any specific council - and to be really clear, I think it's better that councils are trying Facebook rather than avoiding it altogether. But my real concern is that I don't think councils should have a presence on Facebook for themselves as a council.  I think it's the wrong approach and I think it misses the point about the way people interact on social networks. People using social networks befriend (or fan, whatever the appropriate phrase is) organisations, movements, clubs etc on Facebook and other social networks because they have an emotional bond of some description with that entity. They might be fans in the muscial or film sense (eg by signing up to a band's page), be replicating membership of an offline group (eg by signing up to a sports club's page) or be part of a shared interest movement (eg by signing up to a campaign or political group's page).  All of these conscious choices by individuals using social networks are done because they have some empathetic or emotional relationship with the entity to which the page belongs. They become a fan because they want to and because they care in some way. How does this sit with a local council? In the real world I'm not convinced people have such a bond with their council as a corporate body - yes, they have that emotional or empathetic reaction about many of the services that their local council provides them, but not about the council as a whole. There's no real world basis for the creation of an online community. And that's why I think councils that set up corporate pages on Facebook aren't going to experience much success. I'm sure they'll get a growing number of "fans" as the numbers using the social network grow, but I'm not convinced of the worth of corporate pages as a communications and engagement tool. So what should councils do on Facebook? Well I think there are two areas that councils should be focussing on: 1) Create Facebook pages for things people care about Think about those things your council does that people care most about. Which do they feel most involved or engaged with? Where might there be a shared interest that would naturally lead to the creation of an online community? What do people care most about? What are the most active issues that are concerning residents in your area? In Medway we've not created an official Facebook presence for the council, but we have used Facebook groups to promote festivals and theatres - as we know that the customers for these services do have a sense of belonging with the service and so there's a basis for an online community to form. Once you've created a page there's lots more to think about - like how you're going to manage and develop the community and ensure the council is actively engaging with the page's fans, but more on that in a later post. 2) Reaching out to existing users The oft-repeated adage about "build it and they will come" is as wrong on Facebook as it is anywhere else on the web. Just because you have a presence on Facebook (whether it's as a corporate body or for a specific service area), that doesn't mean you're automatically using Facebook to its greatest potential as a communications tool. Try searching out people in your area using Facebook already. Look for groups that are concerned with your area. Try to spot activists among the groups - who seem the most active and vocal? Once you've done this think about how to engage with these people appropriately - and I don't mean send them a message saying "I see you're from XXX, why  not join our group?" - the skills and subtleties of engaging with residents through social media are as complicated as the more traditional media relations that councils are so familiar with. If handled sensitively, most people will be impressed their council is engaging residents directly through social media - and once you have established a relationship with key activists or players in the local social network scene, then you have the platform to start using that network to spread council messages in a credible and effective way. There's far more to it than creating a page and loading it up with council content I'm afraid - but the rewards for doing it properly will include reaching and engaging with parts of the community that traditional council communications struggle to reach.

#### Why PR people should care about social media
If you work in public relations and haven't appreciated why social media is important, take five minutes to look through this new slideshow just posted by David Phillips:

#### Why screencast?
We've just launched a new screencast for the Tinderhouse Publishing service. It's the first time we've produced a screencast to explain a new launch.
The boom in online video over the past two years has gone hand in hand with increasing use of video to explain software and services. It's so much more effective as a marketing tool to explain a product or service with audio and video than with static text and images.
A good screencast can shorten the purchase decision cycle, and equally importantly can help shorten the time it takes a user to become effective having purchased a new service.
There are a number of easy tools that you can use to put together a screencast. We used:

	Camstudio - for screen recording
	Audacity - for audio recording
	Adobe Premiere Pro - for editing it all together (but pretty much any video edit package would do)
	Dreamhost media conversion - to turn the MPG file into Flash video
	Flash Media Player - to embed the Flash video into the site

[Disclosure: I helped set up Tinderhouse and continue to act as consultant on marketing, PR and web projects]

#### Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales and PR people
Last week's PR Week magazine (UK) features an article about Jimmy Wales, head honcho at Wikipedia, threatening to ban PR agencies and paid PR professionals from editing Wikipedia if they continue to edit entries about clients.
Simon and Stuart have posted their thoughts on this. I completely agree with Stuart and Simon's posts and most of the comments to Stuart's post too.
I understand what Jimmy Wales is trying to do here, but his threat is based on a flawed assumption, namely that money is the sole negative motive for posting content on Wikipedia that doesn't meet its requirements for quality, including neutral point of view.
There are plenty of motivations for posting inaccurate or misleading content as well as money. Equally most PR people who are posting as part of their job won't have a negative motivation - they'll be doing it to promote an accurate impression of their employer or client.
I think it's a damning generalisation to slur an entire profession by suggesting that, simply because they're being paid, they can't edit content to the community's standards.
I would have no hesitation to edit content on behalf of a client or employer. As someone paid to manage reputation it would be my job to do so, within the accepted bounds of the space in which I am managing that reputation.

#### Word of mouth: making it work
I'm pleased to say that I'm going to be attending the word of mouth conference up in London this Friday. The event has been put together by the guys at GREEN Communications and features a really broad range of speakers, from PR consultancy folk to academics.The event is being run by Nicky and Andy at Don't Panic - the same team who ran the Delivering the New PR series over the past year.
The aim of the day is to explore how PR practictioners can best make use of word of mouth - one of the most powerful and trusted communications routes, yet one of the hardest to manage.
It'll also be a good chance to meet fellow PR blogger Simon Collister - another blogger who I've read and have communicated with by email, but have never met in person. Simon's blog is a really good read, so I'm sure we'll have plenty of PR stuff to catch up on, not least of all our thoughts on the CIPR's consultation document on social media.
If anyone else is heading to this event, do drop me a line - it'd be great to meet up.
[disclosure: I'm attending the event as guest of the organisers, Andy and Nicky Wake]

#### Workshop and presentation dates
A quick post to highlight two forthcoming events that I'm really looking forward to.
First up on 20 November I'll be in Manchester speaking at the afternoon seminar at the Public Sector Communications Awards alongside a number of my fellow judges.
I'll be talking about public sector communications in 2015 and whether communications will be an unaffordable luxury after the next general election. I'll be looking at what skills public sector communicators need to be focussing on and how they can make sure they are relevant to the shape of the future public sector.
Then on 27 November I'm running another instalment of my popular Advanced Guide to Social Media workshop - this time in Leeds.
You can read more about this course, see delegate feedback and find out how to book here.

#### World's shortest marketing plan
Saw a couple of interesting discussions going on last week about marketing plans, and how they often can mushroom into massive unworkable documents.
Credit goes to Kelly Odell for kicking off the debate by posting a simple grid that summarises what needs to go into a marketing plan.
Like Kelly, I've experienced so-called templates that run to the length of a small book. They're just too long to be useful - people (marketers and non-marketers) need to be able to get a sense of the plan quickly.
All too often people confuse the marketing plan with the project or programme plan for its delivery. The marketing plan is the guts of the marketing insight and thinking that is required. The project/programme plan is how you deliver and track the marketing plan. Merging the two causes confusion and creates plans that are too long.
Guy Kawasaki has now developed the grid further, evolving the traditional 4 P's of marketing planning. The thinking behind this came from a post about marketing remix from Sviokla's Context.
I'll definitely be giving both Kelly and Guy's versions a test run over the next few weeks, and will have a think about how to create an equally succinct delivery programme that follows all good marketing plans.

#### Writely is no more
The Writely service has now been merged with Google's spreadsheet system to become the imaginatively named "Google Docs & Spreadsheet". Hop on over to Read/Write Web to see more about this, and some basic screenshots. Zoli also has a good commentary on this, and other services in the same space.
I was using Writely last night, and checking back this morning it's all gone Google on the interface, but all the functionality is still there. Personally I don't think it looks as cool as before, but then I don't judge its usefulness on how cool it is really.
The real value of this move is that it's the first step towards tighter integration of Google's other services, including the newly redesigned Google Reader. Throw GMail and the rapid advance of RSS into the pot as well, and suddenly the possibilities for how this kind of suite of tools could be used get very exciting.
The space between desktop conventional office suites and web services is closing at a faster rate than ever before. The collaborative nature of web 2.0 means that the functionality offered by these new web services will be increasingly valuable against their non-connected desktop competitors.
The only downside I can see is that for large-scale corporate adoption, suppliers may need to overcome some concerns about data security and protection. Until the services beef up their service levels (and of course charging models) to ensure that companies can be confident of the integrity and confidentiality of their data, I can't see many of Microsoft's big corporate customers looking favourably on these new services.

#### Writing better copy
A core skill for marketing and public relations professionals has to be writing high quality copy.
Several years ago I realised that this was a particularly weak area for me.
Most of my writing experience had been from school, university and then writing strategic papers in my first job. What I lacked was being able to write marketing and public relations copy.
Since then I've been trying to learn more about copywriting. I'm never going to be able to write journalist or copywriter-quality text, but I think I've improved my writing skills significantly.
Writing more (including this blog), proofreading and reading copywriting books and blogs have been just a few ways I have managed to enhance my writing skills.
If you're looking for blogs that can help you improve your writing, my top three from my blogroll are:

	Bad Language - Matthew Stibbe
	Copyblogger - Brian Clark
	
Word Wise - Dan Santow

While I'm on the subject, I should note the most common mistake I see when I'm proofreading copy: confusion with singular and plurals.
For example:
The council are responsible for emptying the bins.
The council is a single entity - there's only one council, so it's singular, even if it comprises many people, vehicles or buildings. It should read:
The council is responsible for emptying the bins.
The same applies to teams - such as "the marketing team":
The marketing team are responsible for booking all advertising.
should read
The marketing team is responsible for booking all advertising.
The only exception seems to be sporting teams where it seems to be accepted practice to refer to them as plurals, for example:
"Manchester United are flying to Germany for their next European match."
reads more comfortably than
"Manchester United is flying to Germany for its next European match."
even though strictly speaking Manchester United is a single team.

#### Writing the public sector communications book chapter
A few months back I, probably somewhat rashly, agreed to write the public sector communications chapter in the next edition of Alison Theaker's Public Relations Handbook publication.
Having prevaricated for a while now I'm facing up to the task with similar emotions to when I last wrote anything that was vaguely intellectually-based in my spare time - when i wrote my PR diploma dissertation.
Alison's been kind in letting me have the text from the public sector communications chapter in the last book which she wrote. My task is to work out what should be in the chapter in 2011 and then get on and write it!

	Context - what do we define as public sector? What is PR in the public sector? What roles does it perform?
	History - how did we get to the current roles of PR in the public sector?
	Politics and PR - keeping the two apart while acknowledging the intertwined nature of both
	PR in central government - functions, strategies and delivery
	PR in devolved and local government - functions, strategies and delivery
	PR in government agencies - functions, strategies and delivery
	PR in the NHS - functions, strategies and delivery
	Proving the value of PR in the age of austerity
	Digital PR and the blurring of departmental boundaries
	Key current issues - reducing public expenditure, coalition government, transparency agenda, local government publications
	Case studies - two or three detailed examples of public sector PR in action

The target word count is around 6,000 words by the end of the year.
So what do you think? The book's aimed at PR students mainly, so have I covered a broad enough range of areas to give a grounding in public sector communications and included enough of the current issues to keep the chapter as topical as possible.
Any feedback and thoughts on case studies would be gratefully appreciated!

### Pages

#### About
Build is an email newsletter for founders, CEOs, investors and anyone else that cares about how to scale businesses.I'm Simon - I lead technology-centric growth businesses – working in interim CEO, COO and MD roles to help founders, investors and exec teams achieve their goals. I also work as a consultant, coach and advisor too.I’ve been working since 1998 so I’ve seen and done a fair bit over the years. I’ve held all sorts of leadership roles spanning delivery, operations, strategy, commercial, marketing, growth and change. More recently I’ve specialised in Chief Operating Officer (COO) roles.I’ve sold two companies and been involved in buying many more. I’ve worked in and with plenty of different kinds of businesses. Some of them were amazing. And some really sucked. I learnt that with progressive thinking and an open mind, things could be so much better in business.My mission is to create businesses that combine transformative growth with increasingly regenerative and distributive practices.You can find out more about my work at www.simonwakeman.com. Behind this siteThis newsletter platform is powered by Ghost, uses the Basho theme and is hosted by Gloat.

#### Advisor for scale-up businesses
Trusted advisor for growth businesses 

I help you through the growth journey as an external advisor or board member, providing you with flexible collaborative support from me when you need it.

This usually involves a monthly board or exec team meeting for accountability and working through issues, follow-up discussions and agreed actions to drive change. 

We’ll have also have regular quick chats or check-ins outside these sessions as you work through particular challenges in building and leading your business.

Contact me to discuss advisory work

#### Becoming a fractional executive
Becoming a fractional executive 

In late 2022 I quit my job as a senior executive at a 700 person listed business and started a new chapter in my career. I was looking for greater variety and flexibility in my work.

I'm now a successful fractional Chief Operating Officer working with founder-led businesses that are growing fast. But it's not been an easy ride and I've learnt a lot along the way.

A lot of experienced executives contact me each week to ask about my journey and chat about the playbooks I've used to successfully transition to a fractional working. 

To help them I created a free five day email course that shares a bit about what I've been doing since I started my fractional life on 2nd January 2023. You can get it in your inbox by using the link below.

Find out about my fractional journey

#### Blog
URL: https://www.simonwakeman.com/blog/

#### Book a call
Please use the links below to book in a video call. If you're looking to book in a face-to-face meeting or a workshop, please email me.

#### Book an introductory coaching call
Please book your free 30 minute introductory call using my calendar below:

#### Build newsletter
Get Simon's weekly email newsletter

Build ditches startup hype to deliver raw, practical wisdom for founders about leading high growth businesses every month. Just straight talk from a fractional COO who's seen every mistake, every shortcut and every hard truth founders have to face between start-up and scale-up.

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#### CEOs and leaders
Helping CEOs and leaders grow businesses

As a CEO or senior leader in a scaling business there's a lot going on. Getting the balance right between investing in foundations for growth alongside delivering business as usual growth is hard. It can feel chaotic and the demands can feel overwhelming.

You need teams and systems to be built at pace. Decision-making needs to be distributed widely. More people means more co-ordination and communication, while avoiding complexity that can be a drag on growth.

As a senior leader specialising in working with CEOs and leadership teams in tech-centric growth businesses, I understand the unique demands you face and how to bring clarity and coherence to scaling businesses.  

Benefits for CEOs and leaders

By working with me as a fractional COO, consultant or advisor you'll benefit from:

Expertise from multiple scale-up businesses

Objectivity to help you see your business clearly 

Flexibility so you get just the help you need 

Cost-effectiveness compared to a full-time COO hire 

Scalability for teams, systems and processes

Capacity to deliver more as a leadership team

Access to my extensive network to help your business 

I help with CEOs and leaders with things like...

Vision, values and behaviours for scaling

Growth roadmaps and strategies 

Operating models

Implementing systems and processes

Decision-making and governance

Leadership succession

Buy-side M&A strategy and execution

Developing and nurturing culture

Value proposition development  

Organisational design for growth 

Identifying & resolving growth blockers

Board relationships & effectiveness

Leadership team performance

Sell-side M&A strategy & due diligence

#### Consultant COO for scale-up businesses
Solving problems fast in growth businesses 

Scaling businesses face many challenges at the same time. Every day brings critical decisions and inevitable setbacks. Founders often find themselves tackling tricky situations they haven’t experienced before. 

I’m a specialist consultant COO working with founders in businesses with 10-200 people that are experiencing rapid revenue or headcount growth.

I diagnose operational and leadership issues holding back growth and implement ways of fixing them fast. I focus on creating sustainably high performing organisations by solving these challenges collaboratively.

Contact me to discuss a consultancy project 

Working with me as a consultant COO. 

  	  Enabling business growth.

Growth businesses often struggle to hire fast enough, develop culture and scale operations alongside customer growth. 

I help solve complex problems like these in scale-up businesses through growth-accelerating projects including:

Growth roadmaps and strategies

Developing and nurturing culture 

Value proposition development

Operating models & organisational design for growth

Identifying and resolving growth blockers 

  Transformation and change.

Scale-up businesses have to successfully transform and change at pace. Typically changes are happening in different parts of the organisation at the same time, increasing complexity and distracting focus away from growing the business.

I help founders in scale-up businesses deliver real and lasting change through consultancy projects such as:

Organisational design, role design and team reviews

Operational audits and improvements

Sell or buy-side M&A preparation and execution

Integration and major organisational change 

                           Leadership in growth businesses.

I work with founders, leaders and leadership teams in scaling businesses to help them be more effective.

With a focus on progressive models of leadership, I help tackle common challenges of leading scale-up businesses such as:

Founder and leadership succession

Improving leadership team performance

Increasing leadership accountability

Boards and governance 

Delivering operational improvements.

I help founders identify operational issues, understand root causes and implement improvements quickly.

Taking a pragmatic and evidence-led approach, I work on a wide range of operational improvement projects such as: 

Improving communications and effectiveness

Customer and employee experience enhancement 

Process definition and optimisation

Systems architecture, review and change implementation

Contact me to discuss a consultancy project

#### Contact me
Get in touch anytime for advice, a potential engagement or just an informal chat.

+44 (0) 7771 701902

simon@wakeman.work

You can use the links below to book in a short introductory video call. If you're looking to book in a face-to-face meeting or a workshop, please contact becky@wakeman.work.

#### Designing your leadership team for scaling
"What's the right structure for my leadership team?"

This is one of the most common challenges founders face as they work out how to scale their businesses.

Founders often struggle with:

Seeing what leadership challenges are ahead

Knowing when to bring in specialist roles

Understanding who's right for the next stage

Being too close to the current business

Separating their personal ambitions from the needs of the business

Leadership team design workshop

A half-day collaborative workshop for founders to design your next leadership team for growth. 

Using my unique team design method, I help you understand what functions are right for your leadership team and how to balance specialist and generalist roles. 

You'll get a clear leadership design with full accountability based job scorecards ready for recruitment or discussions with existing leaders.

Delivered on-site or remotely for £5000 (excluding VAT).

Contact me to book this workshop

Founders love working with me 

“Simon is a serious company builder. He knows how to take a founder’s vision for their business and make it real step by step. 

He’s got a collaborative and thoughtful approach to leading teams and getting things done. 

If you want a trusted partner in scaling your business, work with Simon.”

Tim Deeson, serial founder & advisor to early stage start-ups

“Simon has an outstanding skill set and extensive experience in technology, business operations and management. He is easy to work with and can effectively draw on his skills and experience to help solve problems with calm authority and creativity. I highly recommend Simon to anyone looking for efficient, energetic and effective support.”

Neil Benson, serial biotech founder at Xenologiq, Quantlmed & Sevenless Therapeutics

“Simon has often been my go to person to talk to about gnarly problems in technology businesses. 

We’ve often brainstormed ideas around operating models and structures.  I

f you need help with leadership, business models, or people challenges, you’ll be in very safe hands.”

Stuart Arthur, CTO, CIO & Founder

I'm Simon Wakeman, a consultant COO working with scaling businesses. For over 25 years, I've worked with technology centric businesses that are changing and growing.

I've worked with small and medium sized businesses with 15 to 700 employees. I help growing businesses scale their operations and build high performing leadership teams.

I'm passionate about organisational design that generates commercial results. My work is strongly grounded in progressive organisational thinking and a desire to create the right conditions for people to consistently do their best work.

Contact me to book this workshop

#### Founder to CEO: how to make the shift (and why most founders struggle)
nThe hardest move most founders ever makennnnThere comes a moment in every scaling business when the thing that got the founder here stops working. The all-hours problem-solving, the personal relationships with every customer, the instinct to jump in and fix whatever's broken - all of it was the right move at ten people. At sixty it's the problem.nnnnThat moment is what people usually call the founder to CEO transition. It's the shift from being the person who does the business to being the person who leads the business. And it's the single hardest move most founders ever make - harder than raising money, harder than hiring a senior team, harder than surviving the first customer who refused to pay.nnnnI've spent 26 years inside scaling businesses, most recently as COO of TPXimpact, where I helped grow the group from u00a331.5m to u00a383m in revenue. Before that I ran Deeson, the digital agency I sold to Panoply in 2018. I've made this transition myself and I've coached dozens of founders through it. This article is about why it's so hard, what good looks like, and the concrete shifts that actually work.nnnnWhy the transition is so hardnnnnFounders are selected for a specific set of traits: bias to action, willingness to ignore received wisdom, obsession with the product or customer, and an almost physical inability to delegate the things they care about. Those traits are the reason the business exists at all. But every one of them becomes a liability the moment the company is bigger than the founder can personally hold in their head.nnnnThe trap is that nobody tells you the job has changed. One Monday morning you're still the founder who knows everyone's name and personally sells to every major client. The next Monday the company has 80 people, four departments, and a leadership team that needs you to stop being in the weeds. But your calendar, your habits, and your identity haven't caught up. So you keep doing what worked - and the business starts to slow down around you.nnnnIn my experience there are five patterns that trip founders up at this stage. I wrote about them at length in the pillar guide. The two that come up most in coaching:nnnnnThe founder is still the highest-performing individual contributor in the company. They can close a deal faster, write a proposal better, debug a product problem quicker than anyone else. So they keep doing those things - and the organisation never learns how to do them without them.nThe founder's identity is fused with the business. Letting someone else own the customer relationship, the product roadmap, or the sales pitch feels like giving away a piece of themselves. It isn't - but it feels like it.nnnnnWhat a CEO actually does (that a founder often doesn't)nnnnThe CEO job, in a scaling business, is a relatively short list. It looks something like this:nnnnnSet and hold the direction - vision, strategy, and the two or three priorities that actually matter this quarter.nBuild and coach the leadership team that runs the company day-to-day.nAllocate the capital - money, people, and the founder's own time - to where the business creates the most value.nRepresent the company externally to customers, investors, and the market in a way nobody else in the business can.nMake the small handful of decisions every quarter that only the CEO can make.nnnnnNotice what isn't on that list. Running the weekly ops meeting. Writing the sales proposal. Doing the customer call because the account manager is nervous. Reviewing the code. The CEO's job is to make sure those things happen, brilliantly, without them having to do them.nnnnThe metaphor that helpsnnnnThe mental model I come back to most often with coaching clients is the football coach on the sideline. For most of the founder's life they've been the best player on the pitch - and then suddenly the job is to stand at the edge of the pitch and make everyone else better. The satisfaction is completely different. The feedback loop is slower. You feel further from the action. And for a while you're genuinely worse at the new job than you were at the old one, because the skills are different.nnnnThe founders who make this transition well accept that discomfort as the price of admission. The ones who don't keep running back onto the pitch - and the team eventually stops looking to them for leadership, because they're too busy playing.nnnn"Simon has a natural ability to spot opportunities and gaps in our thinking that we couldn't see ourselves. He brought structure to conversations that had been going round in circles."Adam Fowles, Co-founder and CEO, OpenDialog AInnnnFive shifts that actually make the transition worknnnn1. Move from doing to designingnnnnStop measuring your value by how much work you personally got done this week. Start measuring it by how much the system around you is working without your direct involvement. If the answer is "not much yet", that's your to-do list: design the systems, standards, and rhythms that let other people do the work to the standard you'd set yourself.nnnn2. Build a leadership team you actually trustnnnnThis is the single biggest lever. If you don't trust your leadership team to make good decisions without you in the room, you can't stop being in the room. The fix isn't to hover harder. It's to get brutally honest about whether you have the right people, give them the context and authority they need, and then let them make decisions (including wrong ones) so they can learn.nnnn3. Replace firefighting with structurennnnMost founders I meet at this stage are spending 80% of their week on operational firefighting that shouldn't be theirs. The only sustainable fix is structure - a proper operating cadence, clear decision rights, and a business operating system the team actually uses. If you're still the crisis line, the business hasn't made the transition either. I wrote about the escape from that in how to escape firefighting mode as a founder.nnnn4. Let the identity shift happennnnnThe technical parts of the transition - calendars, meetings, delegation - are the easy bit. The hard bit is the identity shift. "I am the person who builds this product" becomes "I am the person who leads the people who build this product". That's an actual grief process for some founders. It's worth naming it rather than pretending it isn't happening.nnnn5. Get a thinking partnernnnnThe loneliness at the top of a scaling business is real. You can't process this with your co-founder if there's tension. You can't process it with your leadership team without causing anxiety. You probably can't process it with your investors without performing. A good coach - or an advisor who has made the transition themselves - gives you somewhere to think out loud without consequence. That's what leadership coaching is actually for.nnnnHow long does the transition takennnnLonger than founders expect. Eighteen months is a reasonable minimum for the operational side - restructuring the leadership team, installing the operating system, rewiring the calendar. The identity side can take longer, and often runs in parallel with a wobble or two when the business hits turbulence and the old habits come rushing back.nnnnThat's not a failure mode. It's the shape of the work. The founders who come out the other side describe it as the hardest thing they've done in their business lives - and the thing that let the company become something they could be proud of for a different reason.nnnnnnnnNext step. I coach founders through exactly this transition - blending operator experience from 26 years of scaling businesses with ICF-credentialled coaching practice. You can read the broader picture in the founder coaching guide, or go straight to the leadership coaching service page to see how it works. Or book a call with Simon to talk about where you are in this transition.n

#### Founders
Helping founders scale effectively

The scaling phase is a new challenge for founders. Your initial vision and hard work to start the the business has got you this far. But what got you here won’t get you through the next stage. Scaling means a new set of challenges that can be overwhelming.

You need teams and systems to be built at pace. Decision-making needs to be distributed widely. More people means more co-ordination and communication, while avoiding complexity that can be a drag on growth.

As an experienced fractional leader and consultant specialising in working with founders and founding teams, I understand the unique perspectives you have as a founder and how to work together to these harness these to drive growth.

Benefits for founders

By working with me as a fractional COO, consultant or advisor you'll benefit from:

Expertise from multiple scale-up businesses

Objectivity to help you see your business clearly 

Flexibility so you get just the help you need 

Cost-effectiveness compared to a full-time hire 

Scalability for teams, systems and processes

Freedom to focus on the work that engages you

Access to my extensive network to help your business 

I help with founders with things like...

Vision, values and behaviours for scaling

Growth roadmaps and strategies 

Operating models

Implementing systems and processes

Decision-making and governance

Founder and leadership succession

Buy-side M&A strategy and execution

Developing and nurturing culture

Value proposition development  

Organisational design for growth 

Identifying & resolving growth blockers

Board relationships & effectiveness

Leadership team performance

Sell-side M&A strategy & due diligence

#### Fractional Chief Operating Officer (COO) for growth businesses
Struggling with scaling? Battling with bandwidth?

A fractional Chief Operating Officer is an experienced independent operator working in your business for an agreed amount of time, taking on the same roles and responsibilities as a permanent COO hire.

They help founders overcome the challenges of scaling a business, building capacity and accountability among leaders for the future.

Working with a fractional COO rapidly frees up founders to focus on growth, maximising leverage from your vision and passion for the business you are building.

How a fractional COO helps you scale better

Work with me as a fractional COO

As a founder you'll be used to the chaos of the scrappy start-up phase. But as you scale you can't shake the feeling of being in constant firefighting mode.

You might be approaching burn-out. You feel like you’re losing grip in your own business.

Or you might be finding that how you used to run the business just doesn't work anymore.

Keeping people aligned is harder and harder.

You know you need experienced operational leadership but aren’t ready to or can't afford to hire full-time yet.

It feels like your investors are paying more attention to what you're doing and are being more demanding.

You know you need to reduce risks in your business but don't really know where to start. 

You want to mature parts of your business to reduce problems and get things moving faster again.

You know you're lacking specific teams to execute properly and need to get that sorted. 

You're so busy delivering now that you can't think about strategic plans for the future.

A fractional COO will help you scale your business better. 

Bringing on a fractional chief operating officer (COO) will help you overcome scaling challenges without the hefty price tag and commitment of a full-time hire.

The right fractional COO will give you a unique blend of strategic insight and hands-on operational expertise. 

A fractional COO will swiftly identify bottlenecks in your business, propose innovative solutions, and implement robust systems to drive efficiency. 

They'll be laser focussed on optimising how things work in your business, from refining internal processes to enhancing customer touchpoints.

By bringing in a fractional COO, you're not just patching holes – you're laying the groundwork for sustainable, long-term success.

As a founder you'll get a new collaborator and confidante. The fractional COO's objective viewpoint can challenge ingrained habits, spark innovation, and help founders feel less overwhelmed. 

Engaging a fractional COO gives you flexible low-risk access to top-tier talent on a part-time basis, allowing you to leverage their skills precisely when and where you need them most as well as infusing your business with fresh perspectives and proven methodologies.

  	 		 			 			 			 		 	  Fractional COO isn't always the right answer.

As an experienced fractional COO I've seen six common scenarios when founders shouldn't hire fractionally:

1. Don't hire a fractional COO if you really need a full-time chief operating officer in your business every day.

2. If your COO role is a succession hire into the CEO seat, a fractional COO isn't the best approach to take. Treat it as a permanent hiring process for a new CEO.

3. Don't bring in a fractional COO if existing leaders are highly resistant to change. Start to address those issues internally first to enable success.

4. If you're expanding into multiple new markets simultaneously, a fractional COO may not have the time to dedicate enough attention to managing the complexity of multiple geographies.

5. High-quality fractional COOs can be expensive, although more cost effective than a full-time hire. If budget is extremely tight, this might not be the most best use of your funding at this stage.

6. Don't expect a fractional COO to succeed if founders aren't willing to transfer genuine responsibility to the incoming chief operating officer.

Working with me as your fractional COO. 

How I work as a fractional COO.

I work part-time in your leadership team as Chief Operating Officer. As a fractional COO I lead teams, represent your business and am fully embedded within your company.

I only work with one business as fractional COO at the same time. That means you, your leadership team and investors get:

Hands-on, high leverage experienced senior leadership 

Equivalent of one, two or three days per week working hands-on within your team as your COO

Unlimited 1:1 access to me via Slack, email & phone

Access to my personal network of specialists 

Contact me to discuss my fractional COO service 

Best fit for my fractional COO service.

My fractional COO service is optimised to deliver most value to businesses have achieved enough product-market fit and are funded to scale. In my experience good-fit companies will typically:

Have a team of at least 10 people

Be aiming for substantial annual revenue growth

Have an open, results-oriented mindset 

Value progressive and agile principles

Have a remote or hybrid workstyle

Be ready to hire a full-time COO within 12 months 

I work remotely, primarily with UK and USA-based businesses.

Not a good fit? I can help you find the right fractional COO.

Work with a fractional COO from my trusted network. 

As an experienced fractional Chief Operating Officer, I have built an extensive network of fractional COOs with a broad range of experience and skillsets.

If my fractional COO service isn't right for you, I might be able to help you find a fractional COO.

I help you understand what type of fractional COO you really need and introduce you to fractional operators that I trust that might be the right fit.

Contact me to discuss my fractional COO network

#### Fractional COO, consultant and coach for founders of scaling businesses | Simon Wakeman
Who I work with

I work with founders - typically of businesses between £1m and £15m revenue that are in the process of scaling. That usually means they have 10 to 125 people working in the business.

Often those businesses are agencies, technology-centric businesses or professional services firms although the challenges founders face at this stage look remarkably similar regardless of sector.

What they have in common is that they've built something that works and now that success is creating the strain. The business has grown beyond what can be run informally. It now needs structure, process and leadership - but building that while running the business at the same time is genuinely hard.

I only work with founders who want to fix that properly, not paper over it.

What working with me looks like

Every engagement with me starts the same way: I get properly under the skin of your business before suggesting anything. I want to see and understand what's working, what isn't, where the real bottlenecks are and what you as the founder actually need - which is often different to what you think you need.

After that the way we work together varies depending on what we've learnt together:

As a fractional COO, I'm embedded in your leadership team for one to three days a week - leading, deciding,  and doing. As a consultant COO, I diagnose and fix specific problems in your business for you, working fast and collaboratively. As an advisor, I'm a trusted sounding board through regular structured conversations. As an executive coach, I work one-to-one with you or members of your leadership team.

What's consistent across all the ways I work with founders is that I'm practical, direct and focused on outcomes that actually change how your business runs - not producing presentations that gather dust.

#### Grow your company like you're preparing to sell - even if you're not
The discipline of being exit-ready without planning an exit

Here's something I've learned from being involved in the sale of several businesses and sitting on the buy-side of many more M&A deals: the best acquisitions I've ever seen were the ones that weren't obviously built to sell. They were businesses built to run really well. 

The fact that somebody later wanted to buy them was a consequence, not an intention. That matters, because the discipline of running a business as if it were always exit-ready is exactly the discipline that makes it a better business to own in the meantime - whether you ever sell it or not.

Most founders I work with as an advisor aren't actively preparing for an exit. Most don't have a defined timeline. Many don't even want to sell, at least not soon. But the ones who run their business as if they might - who build toward optionality rather than toward an event - tend to end up with stronger, more profitable, more enjoyable businesses to own. 

This article explains why and explores what "grown as if preparing to sell" actually looks like in practice.

Why this is a discipline, not a sales tactic

The objection I hear most often when I raise this with founders is that it sounds cynical:

 Why would I run my business like I want out of it when I'm excited about what we're building? 

That's a fair question. 

The honest answer is that the things buyers look for in an acquisition target are almost entirely a subset of the things that make any business genuinely well-run - things like:

predictable profitability

revenue that doesn't depend on one person

low customer/client concentration

tight financial control

a leadership team that functions without the founder being in every meeting

These aren't things you bolt on to impress a buyer. They're things you build into the operating core of the business and the side effect is that they also make the business easier and more rewarding to run day-to-day.

The cynical version - dress the business up, get it sold - is transparent to buyers within minutes of diligence starting. I know because I've been that person doing the due diligence on the buyer's side many times.

The disciplined version - build the business to run well, whether you sell or not - is the one that creates genuine options for founders. If an opportunity to sell appears, you're ready. If it doesn't, you're still operating a better business.

What "exit-ready" actually looks like

Six characteristics show up in every business I've seen that would stand up to proper diligence tomorrow morning:

1. Profitability first

Even if you never plan to sell, improving profitability makes your business more stable and more rewarding to run. 

Buyers look hard at EBITDA but every business, regardless of size, should be working to improve margins. That doesn't always mean a drastic overhaul. More often it's a series of small disciplines: rate cards that reflect the value you deliver, accurate proposals that avoid under-pricing, projects delivered on time and on budget, strong utilisation across the team, streamlined delivery processes and regular tracking of the metrics that matter. 

A profitable business is not just more valuable; it's also less dependent on constant firefighting because profit gives you the cushion to take decisions calmly.

2. Sales that don't depend on the founder

If all your new business comes from the founder - founder relationships, founder pitches, founder follow-through - you have a single point of failure. For a buyer, that's a risk they'll discount heavily. For you it's exhausting. 

A business built to scale has a consistent, repeatable approach to generating revenue: clear positioning, a structured lead generation process, a documented sales and marketing strategy. 

When new business isn't bottlenecked around the founder, the whole organisation becomes more sustainable. This is one of the most common structural issues I work on in advisory engagements, because it's the one that most founders know they have and most haven't yet worked out how to fix.

3. No over-reliance on a single client

No single client or customer should represent more than 20-25% of your revenue. It's not only about risk - it's also about resilience. 

Revenue concentration lowers the value of the business and makes you vulnerable to sudden changes you can't control. 

A healthy revenue mix also makes it easier to take decisions that serve your future rather than just your current revenue targets. 

In agencies retainers help - they provide predictable income and reduce the pressure to constantly hunt for new work. If you've got a 40% client, that's the first structural risk a buyer will raise and usually the first one an advisor worth their fee will raise too.

4. Financial clarity and control

Strong financial management is non-negotiable in a business that wants to be exit-ready - clean accounts, tight revenue recognition, clear cost allocation and proper forecasting. 

If your finance function is essentially a bookkeeper with a tired spreadsheet, you have work to do. This isn't glamorous, but it's one of the single biggest determinants of whether a diligence process goes smoothly or becomes a nightmare. 

More importantly it's what gives you the ability to make decisions based on numbers rather than gut feel as the business gets bigger.

5. A leadership team that runs the business

A business where the founder is still the only person making meaningful decisions is fundamentally unsellable and also fundamentally unscalable. A buyer is acquiring an operating system, not a personality. 

A functioning leadership team - one with clear roles, proper accountability, and the ability to run the business through a week without the founder in every meeting - is the piece of structural work that most distinguishes exit-ready businesses from the rest. It's also the thing my fractional COO engagements most often install.

6. Documentation that would survive scrutiny

Contracts, policies, processes, IP ownership, employment terms, shareholder agreements. The boring stuff. 

In acquisition diligence, gaps in documentation are where deals die or get repriced. 

In everyday operations, the same gaps are where disputes slow you down. Getting the documentation in order is one of the quieter disciplines of running a business exit-ready, and one of the most undervalued.

The trap of building to sell

There's a version of this that goes wrong and it's worth exploring. 

Founders who decide they want to sell in the next 18 to 24 months sometimes start optimising for short-term metrics that make the business look good to a buyer at the cost of the business's health - cutting investment, squeezing margins, discouraging the "difficult but right" decisions because they might show up badly in the quarter being reviewed.

Buyers see through this almost without fail. 

The businesses I've seen get the cleanest deals done and the best prices paid were the ones where the founder never changed how they ran the business when they decided to sell. They were already running it well. The sale process was an extension of normal operations, not a pivot into a different mode.

This is the paradox at the heart of this article: the best way to get ready to sell is to stop thinking about selling and focus on building a genuinely well-run business. If you do the second thing properly, the first thing looks after itself.

Why this is the right lens for founders who aren't selling

If you're reading this and thinking you're nowhere near a sale, that's probably the right time to apply this lens - not the wrong time. 

A founder who is nowhere near exit is a founder with the space to make the structural decisions that take months or years to land. A founder in the last six months before a sale doesn't have that space; they're making trade-offs to get the deal done.

Running your business as if you might sell in two years' time - even if you have no intention of doing so - forces the discipline. 

It forces the leadership team conversation. It forces the client concentration conversation. It forces the financial hygiene conversation. And it forces all of those conversations while the stakes are still normal, not while a deal is on the table and every decision is being pulled toward closing.

In my advisory work, this is one of the most useful prompts I can offer a founder who is otherwise running well but has plateaued. If you were preparing this business to sell in two years, what would you want to change in the next quarter? The answers are almost always the same as the answers to what's holding your business back from its next stage of growth? - because the constraints are the same, whether you're selling or scaling.

Next step. If you're thinking about how to make your business more resilient, more valuable and easier to own - whether or not you ever plan to sell - the exit-ready lens is one of the most useful disciplines you can adopt. And if you want a second pair of eyes to pressure-test where your business actually sits against the six characteristics in this article, that's exactly the kind of work I do as an advisor.

Book a call with Simon | Back to the advisor guide

#### Guides
Learn more about the four ways I help for founders trying to scale a business that runs on more than instinct and guesswork.

Over the years I've realised that most of the initial enquiries I get from founders fall into one of four types.

The first is operational. The business has grown past the point where the founder can carry it on instinct and a spreadsheet, but it's not yet ready for a full-time COO at £150k+. The work is real and ongoing. These are fractional COO conversations.

The second is project-shaped. There's a specific operational piece in front of the founder - a restructure, an integration, a system rollout, an M&A process - that needs months of senior executive time and then doesn't. That's a consultant COO conversation.

The third is more vague but often the founder has the operator they need, either themselves or someone in the leadership team, but they need an experienced voice in the room a few times a month. Someone who's been the operator in scaling businesses, has the scars to prove it and can think out loud about the hard calls. That's usually an advisor conversation.

The fourth is the one founders take longest to ask for. The work isn't operational. It's the founder themselves - how they're leading, where they're stuck, what they need to let go of, what they're avoiding. That's a coaching conversation and it's the one I came to last in my career.

Most founders need different shapes of help at different times. Some need two of these in parallel. The resources below set out what each role actually is, when it's the right tool, what good looks like and the calls I'd make if I were sitting in your seat.

These are genuine operator perspectives not consultant's website marketing copy. I've worked exclusively with founders of scaling businesses since 2014 - first running a digital agency we sold to the listed Panoply group, then as COO of that group (TPXimpact plc) as we scaled from £31.5m to £83m in revenue, and now as an independent fractional COO, advisor and coach working with tech-centric scale-ups in the UK and US. The guides reflect what I actually do, what I've watched work and what I've watched fail.

They're quite long. Each one is a version of the conversation I'd want to have with a founder before we work together, not after.

Fractional COO.

When you need a COO but a full-time hire isn't right.

Hands-on operational leadership for 5-12 days a month

Embedded in the leadership team

Owns operational outcomes alongside the founder

The right shape when the work of scaling is real and ongoing but the business isn't ready for a £150k+ permanent hire - or when the founder needs to step out of the COO role they've been quietly carrying themselves.

> Read the fractional COO guide.

Consultant COO.

When the work is project-shaped, not ongoing.

Senior operational leadership delivered as a defined piece of work. 

Examples include restructures, integrations, operating model resets, system rollouts or M&A. 

Delivered in weeks or months

The right shape when there's a specific operational problem in front of you and you want it sorted, not staffed.

> Read the consultant COO guide.

Founder advisor.

When you need an experienced operator in the room and on speed dial, but not on your team all the time.

An advisor who's been the operator in scaling businesses

Scheduled regular meetings/calls

Ad-hoc support and advice when you need it

The right shape when you've already got the operator you need and want a more experienced voice as a thinking partner across the operational, leadership and growth questions that don't have obvious answers.

> Read the founder advisor guide.

Founder coaching.

When you want to invest in yourself - how you're leading, what you're avoiding & what you need to let go of next.

Structured, confidential coaching programme with an ICF-accredited coach who's also spent 26 years in businesses.  

Designed to help you think more clearly, decide more wisely and grow as the person leading the business.

The right shape when the bottleneck is the founder rather than the org chart - and when you want to do that work with someone who actually knows what the running a growth business feels like from the inside.

> Read the founder coaching guide.

Not sure which way to get help is the right one? 

That's might be a useful conversation in itself. If you'd like to talk through what you're working on and which of these is the right fit, just book a call and I can to help you decide.

Book a free call with Simon

#### High impact coaching and mentoring for leaders in growth businesses
"How do I ensure my leaders grow as fast as my business does?"

Being an operational leader in a rapid growth business is hard. Every day brings new challenges to solve. Leaders are often seeing and tackling these for the first time and this can be overwhelming. 

Scaling a business rapidly means leaders are extremely busy and lack the bandwidth to focus on their own development. 

They often have strong technical or functional expertise but may not have the leadership, management, and strategic skills needed as the business grows.

Founders and early employees often struggle to delegate responsibility and authority as the business scales. They may micromanage rather than empower others.

By investing in targeted, one to one support for high potential team members, you can help them deliver the leadership that's needed in a fast growth business.

Coaching and mentoring for leaders in growing businesses

I work with operational leaders to help them develop their practice, confidence and effectiveness in regular sessions. 

Our work together begins with a goal setting workshop where we collaboratively set goals for our work together.

After that workshop, I meet with you every fortnight or monthly for a one-to-one session. 

These sessions combine a blend of coaching and mentoring in a high impact 60 minute video call. 

Coaching enables leaders to explore challenges that they currently have in their work. Mentoring allows you to gain relevant specialist knowledge quickly.Six month programmes cost £2750 to £5250 (exc VAT).

Contact me to check availability

What my clients say about working with me  

“When managers reach senior leadership positions, it's really important that they continue to reflect and grow. 

Generic training courses don't really cut it at this point, you need space to consider how your personal style can be translated into value for your organisation. 

When I started working with Simon I realised how critical an external perspective is. Simon takes a personalised approach to coaching and mentoring, he has worked with me to unblock complex change management scenarios, design services and helped me see where I could demonstrate readiness for the next stage in my career. 

I was introduced to Simon by my manager, who expressed that he'd like to be in a position to promote me to a director level position within 6 months. 

With Simon's support and guidance, we achieved exactly this. 

Simon is warm, thoughtful and a brilliant listener. Our sessions together invest in my personal growth and tie this to meaningful commercial outcomes.”

Charmagne Rayman-Bacchus-Thompson, Operations Director at Torchbox

“Simon has been an amazing support, champion and challenger for me as I have navigated challenges and opportunities in my career.

I’ve spent most of my career in small organisations, and found myself progressing in a large, more complex organisation - which came with new experiences to navigate. Simon gave me the opportunity to understand where my strengths lie, how I could truly harness them to prosper and rather than dread challenges, use them as great learning and growing experiences.

We’ve been able to use a variety of different approaches and tools, Simon has provided me with some great practical frameworks that I have been able to use, and refine as we’ve deepened our understanding of my focus areas. 

Simon is always great at bringing a different perspective, and through building trust and understanding, he’s also able to challenge me and help me with alternative approaches and viewpoints to broaden my thinking. I continue to really enjoy our sessions, and find them invaluable in bringing additional perspectives, opening my eyes to opportunities and always, always reminding me of the value and experience I have to offer.”

Louise Lai,Chief Client and Transformation Officer at TPXimpact

I'm Simon Wakeman, a consultant COO and coach working with leaders in growth businesses. For over 25 years, I've worked with technology centric businesses that are changing and growing.

I've worked with small and medium sized businesses with 15 to 700 employees. I help growing businesses scale their operations and build high performing leadership teams.

I'm passionate about organisational design that generates commercial results. My work is strongly grounded in progressive organisational thinking and a desire to create the right conditions for people to consistently do their best work.

Find out more about me

Contact me to check availability

#### How 'professional management' can make a scaling business worse
Why more process isn't always the answer for scaling businesses

I've been thinking about a pattern I keep seeing in the founder-led scale-ups I've worked with over the years. 

It goes like this. Founders hire a "professional manager" to bring structure as their companies grow past a certain size - usually somewhere between 20 and 50 people. The manager arrives with all the right credentials. They talk about governance frameworks and reporting cadences and accountability matrices (I am aware that I talk about those things a lot too - bear with me). 

Six months in, they've got more process. More status updates. More syncs. More meetings. More meetings about the meetings. More meetings to debrief about the meetings. 

And mysteriously, less actual real progress is happening.

Meanwhile the people who were actually making things work - the ones with judgement, who could hold complexity, who protected the team from nonsense - now look "less senior" because they're not playing the performance game. 

That's not a bug in the system the manager installed. That's the system working exactly as it was designed to. 

This article is about the trap of premature professionalisation in scaling businesses, why it's responsible for more stalls than most founders realise and what the alternative looks like.

Managerialism: the ideology that eats scale-ups

A lot of scale-ups don't fail because they lack talent or strategy. 

They fail because they get trapped inside a governing ideology that makes everything look under control while making the business progressively less able to learn, adapt, or even tell the truth about itself. That ideology has a name: managerialism. 

It's the belief that performance comes primarily from measurement, oversight, targets, and professionalised control over other people. It treats businesses as if they're best improved by tightening the grip - clearer KPIs, sharper accountability, more reporting, more standardisation.

Squinted at from a distance, managerialism sounds reasonable. Of course we should measure things. Of course people should be accountable. Of course we need process as we scale. 

The problem is what happens when you run that logic all the way through in a scaling business where the work is interdependent, uncertain, and constantly changing.

Under the complexity of real scale-up conditions, managerialism produces a predictable pattern of failure.

Work becomes legible, not viable. The system optimises for what can be seen and counted, not for what actually matters. The metrics are impressive. The business isn't moving.

Judgement gets displaced by compliance. People learn that staying safe means following process, not solving the real problem - even when they know what the real problem is and how to solve it. The risk of deviating from the playbook becomes personal and visible, while the cost of following the playbook into a bad outcome is diffuse and shared.

Deep learning is replaced by performance theatre. Dashboards and RAG statuses multiply while the underlying work that creates value stays stuck. Leadership meetings become displays of control rather than conversations about the actual problems.

This is the root of more failure in scaling businesses than people talk about. When a system is governed primarily by managerialism, it becomes excellent at appearing coherent and increasingly incapable of being coherent.

How it happens (and why it looks like the right hire)

Here's how founders walk into this. At about 25 or 30 people, the informal way of running the business has started to fail. Coordination is fraying. Quality is slipping. The founder is exhausted. Investors or advisors are whispering about the need to "mature" - maybe to bring in a "proper" operations person. The language is telling. "Mature", "proper", "professional". None of which are bad things on their own. All of which become poisonous when they slip into being euphemisms for "install a controlling management layer".

The founder interviews some candidates. The best-sounding ones bring polished slide decks about governance frameworks. They've run matrixed organisations at scale. They use the vocabulary of operational excellence fluently. They feel like grown-ups. The founder, tired and hoping someone will take the operational mess off their plate, hires them.

And then the professionalisation begins. 

More process. Tighter controls. New KPIs. New reporting lines. New meetings. 

Within six months, the business has acquired the appearance of being better run. Diligent observers might even say it looks more professional. But the people doing the actual work of creating value are quietly becoming disengaged, because the new system doesn't reward their judgment, their nuance or their ability to hold complexity. It rewards their ability to fit inside a box.

The tragedy: what gets lost

The tragedy of managerialism isn't just that it fails the potential the founder built into the business. 

It's that it systematically fails to recognise the leaders who were actually doing the work of coherence. Those are the ones who were redesigning rhythms, holding the messy conversations, protecting the team from nonsense and keeping judgement alive in the middle of the business. In the new system, they look like poor performers - because the system can't see what they actually do.

A few of them hang on for a while, frustrated, explaining repeatedly why the dashboard isn't telling the truth. Most eventually leave. 

The business loses the people it most needed to retain, acquires the people best at performing inside managerialist systems, and finishes up with an operating layer that feels rigorous but produces slower, worse decisions than the informal chaos it replaced.

I've walked into businesses at exactly this point. The founder is confused: the new system is working, on paper, but the business has stalled. The answer is almost always the same. The professionalisation went too far, too fast, and the wrong direction.

The alternative: structure that serves competence, not replaces it

I don't want to be misread here. Scale-ups absolutely need structure as they grow. 

A business at 50 people with no operating cadence, no goals framework and no role clarity is going to collapse under its own weight just as surely as one strangled by managerialism. The question isn't whether to install structure. The question is what kind, at what pace, in service of what.

Here's the principle I try to hold to whenever I'm doing this work as a fractional COO or advising a founder who's about to hire one. 

The structure should serve the competence already in the business, not replace it. 

Every process you install should be asked the same question: does this make the people with judgement more effective, or does it constrain them in favour of the people without? If the answer is the second, the process is wrong.

Five principles follow from that.

1. Install the lightest version that works. A weekly leadership meeting is a form of cadence. A goals framework the leadership team uses to align priorities is a valuable practice. A monthly review of the five key metrics is a helpful rhythm. These things are load-bearing but light. Layered matrix reporting, detailed accountability grids and formal RAG dashboards are all heavier and usually premature at 15 people.

2. Name and protect the people with judgement. Before you install any new process, identify the people in the business whose judgement the business most relies on. Make sure the new structure amplifies them, not constrains them. If it would make them look less effective, it's the wrong structure.

3. Reward coherence, not compliance. The highest-value behaviour in a scaling business is the ability to hold complexity and act coherently inside it. That's different from following process. Build recognition for coherence explicitly into how you evaluate leaders, because managerialism will quietly erode it if you don't.

4. Hire operators who are allergic to process theatre. When the time does come to hire a senior operations or COO role, interview specifically for somebody who has visibly pushed back against unnecessary process in their past roles. Ask them for a story about a time they removed something rather than added something. If they can't give you one, don't hire them.

5. Run your operating cadence through a lens of "is this helping anyone make decisions?". Every meeting, every dashboard, every report should pass that test. If nobody is making a decision differently because of it, kill it.

What I do differently in a scale-up engagement

When I come into a scaling business as a fractional COO or consultant COO, the first few weeks are almost always spent resisting the pull toward managerialism. There's usually a founder who thinks they need more structure, a leadership team that wants more clarity, and a vocal investor or advisor who wants more reporting. All of these forces are legitimate. All of them point toward putting more weight on the business. 

My job is to introduce the minimum amount of new structure that actually helps people make decisions, protect the people with judgement from the process theatre that would have followed and build an operating layer that scales without ever becoming the point.

Founders, leadership and a business operating system (BOS) - in that order - are the three levers. The BOS is the third one, not the first one, and when founders skip straight to the BOS without first attending to their own development and the quality of the leadership team, the structure they install usually becomes managerialism by stealth.

Next step. If you're about to hire a head of operations, a COO, or a chief of staff, the best thing you can do this week is pressure-test how they think about process before you ask them to design any of it. The second-best thing you can do is get a second pair of eyes from somebody who has watched managerialism erode a scaling business from the inside and can help you avoid it. That's a conversation I'm always happy to have.

Book a call with Simon | Back to the advisor guide

#### How I work with founders in growth businesses
Growing resilient businesses together.

Your business is taking off, but scaling brings unexpected challenges that threaten your success and happiness as a founder. 

There are four ways that I work with founders like you to navigate this tricky transition from start-up to scale-up:

Business leadership as a fractional Chief Operating Officer (COO)

Delivering consultancy projects to solve problems fast

Supporting founders as advisor or non-exec board member

Coaching leaders as an specialist operational leadership coach

Fractional Chief Operating Officer (COO)

Get the benefits of experienced, senior operational leadership to accelerate growth and build a resilient company. Free up your time and focus as a founder.

Embedded in your leadership team

Ongoing engagement for 6 to 12 months

1, 2 or 3 days per week

Representing your business internally and externally

Leading work of teams in the business

Consultancy projects

A project-based engagement working with you to solve a challenge or move part of your business forward. Delivered collaboratively and supportively.

Fixing a specific challenge in your business

External expert perspective

Flexible, rapid delivery of results

COO/integrator approach to problem solving

Consultative and engaging approach

Advisor 

Helping boards and leadership teams deliver strategic goals. Monthly board meetings plus ad-hoc ongoing advice and guidance when you need it. 

External accountability and challenge 

On-demand expertise and support 

Extensive advisory and non-exec experience

Operational leadership coaching

Structured coaching programmes and regular conversations to help you work through challenges and become a better operational leader.

Ongoing leadership coaching 

Structured, goal-oriented coaching programmes

Accredited coach with specialist experience

#### How to escape firefighting mode as a founder (without dropping the balls)
Breaking the cycle of high action and low clarity

Firefighting. Fire drills. Chaos. Pulled from pillar to post. Overwhelmed. These are the words I hear most often in first conversations with founder-CEOs of scaling businesses. They describe the state in rich detail - the morning that starts with a plan and ends with none of it done, the Tuesday that disappears into an escalation that shouldn't have been an escalation, the Sunday night scroll through a full inbox when the week ahead already looks impossible. The vocabulary is remarkably consistent. So is the underlying pattern.

Here's the uncomfortable thing about founder firefighting mode: it isn't really about having too much to do. It's about the relationship between action and clarity inside your business. Founders who are firefighting are nearly always in a high-action, low-clarity quadrant - doing a lot, but without the structural clarity that would let any of it compound. Fixing that isn't about working harder, or about hiring more. It's about changing the shape of the work so that fewer problems need the founder's attention, and the ones that do can be solved instead of just survived.

Why founders end up here (and why it's not personal)

If you're firefighting, the first thing worth saying is that it isn't a character flaw and it's not the sign of a bad founder. Every scaling business goes through some version of this. The reason is simple: the thing that got you here - your ability to be in everything, hold the whole business in your head, move fast on instinct, respond to whatever needs responding to - is the exact same capability that starts failing you once the business gets bigger than one person can hold in their head.

Brent Lowe, a coach I respect who works with growing businesses, describes three traps that founders consistently fall into as their businesses scale:

Founder burnout. The founder is giving all the energy and time they can, but it's no longer making the difference the business needs. More effort from the same founder, in the same mode, has stopped moving the needle.

Lack of a cohesive plan. The business is growing. The informal coordination that used to hold it together doesn't hold it together any more. A new approach is needed for the next phase - but the founder hasn't had the time or the clarity to design one.

Founder leadership trap. Being a visionary founder and creating a business from nothing demands one form of leadership. Growing a business sustainably takes another - and the gap between those two forms is where a lot of founders get stuck.

If you recognise yourself in any of these, you're not failing. You're at the point where the business is asking for a different kind of leader, and the transition to that leader is the work.

The action/clarity quadrant

The most useful frame I've found for thinking about firefighting comes from plotting action against clarity. Two axes, four quadrants:

Low action, low clarity. The business is drifting. Not much is happening and nobody is sure what should be. This is where very early-stage or badly stalled businesses live. It's rare to meet a founder here who's actively firefighting - more commonly they're in a kind of frozen indecision.

Low action, high clarity. You know what needs to happen. Nothing is moving. This is usually a capacity or commitment problem, not a systems problem.

High action, high clarity. This is the goal state. Things are moving fast, everyone knows why, and the velocity compounds. Scaling businesses that get into this quadrant and stay there are the ones that break through the £3m–£15m danger zone.

High action, low clarity. Chaotic burnout. A lot of activity, very little of it directional. This is where firefighting founders live. It feels productive - you're doing stuff all day - but the motion isn't organised around a clear intentional purpose, and the business ends up constrained in its pace of growth because the founder's energy is fragmented across too many things none of which are the most important.

Most founders who come to me describing firefighting are in that last quadrant. The fix isn't to reduce action. It's to add clarity - a clear intentional purpose for the business, well-defined accountability for people's roles, and a shared understanding of what matters most right now. Without that, any attempt to "stop firefighting" will get swept away by the next round of problems.

Why founders resist the obvious fix

The obvious answer to low clarity is process - defined ways of working, agreed priorities, a rhythm for decisions. Founders almost always resist it. The reason they give is that process will kill off the innovation and speed that got the business here. That resistance is real, and sometimes reasonable, and also - honestly - usually a bit of a self-protective deflection.

The right kinds of process don't kill innovation. They reduce operational complexity into repeatable, lower-risk work, which frees up the founder's cognitive and emotional bandwidth for the bits of the business that genuinely do need them. Bad process is rigid, overbuilt and detached from the work. Good process is light, load-bearing, and invisible to the people running inside it. The difference is in how it's designed - and in whether the person designing it actually understands the business, which is where most generic process initiatives fall down.

Scale-up complexity grows exponentially with headcount, revenue and number of products. You cannot outrun that complexity through sheer founder willpower. The founders who try to tend to be the same founders still describing firefighting eighteen months later, just more tired.

The structural moves that actually get you out

In my fractional COO engagements, the pattern of how to get a founder out of firefighting is reasonably consistent. The specifics are always bespoke, but the shape looks like this:

1. Name the intentional purpose. What is this business actually for, over the next 12 to 18 months? Not the vision statement. The specific direction that lets the leadership team say yes or no to things without asking the founder. Without this, you cannot create clarity downstream, because there's nothing to be clear about.

2. Put a goals framework around it. Translate the intentional purpose into a small number of goals for the next quarter, owned by named people. Three to five is usually plenty; seven is too many. This is the minimum goal structure that a business can use to hold itself to account without the founder being the structure.

3. Install an operating cadence. A weekly leadership meeting that's about solving the hard problems, not about sharing status. A monthly review of the goals. A quarterly planning session. These are the rhythms that give the goals somewhere to live. Most firefighting businesses either don't have these rhythms or have them nominally but use them badly.

4. Define accountability for the top five operational decisions that keep landing on your desk. Who owns hiring decisions at this level? Who owns pricing changes? Who owns client escalations? Make the answers explicit, in writing, and defend them when somebody uses them.

5. Build pattern recognition into the team closest to the problems. Most recurring fires need the same class of judgment each time. Teach that judgment explicitly rather than solving it yourself every Tuesday. This is where the competence lens on accountability and the firefighting lens meet - the same fix unlocks both.

None of these moves are glamorous. All of them are load-bearing. Taken together they move the business from the high-action, low-clarity quadrant into high-action, high-clarity - which is where growth stops being grindingly expensive.

The founder work that runs alongside the structural work

Here's the bit founders least want to hear. The structural moves above are necessary but not sufficient. The other half of the work is on the founder themselves - the unconscious influences you're having on your business, the reasons you keep saying yes to things you know you should say no to, the ways in which the firefighting has started to feel comfortable because at least it's familiar.

Part of my fractional COO engagements is a standing check on the founder themselves - not in a therapy sense, but in a practical one. What's in your week that shouldn't be? What are you saying yes to that the business doesn't need? Where is your energy going that isn't creating value? Where is your anxiety driving decisions that calm consideration would answer differently? This is the half of the work that founder coaching addresses more formally, and it often runs alongside the structural work rather than being a separate thing.

"Simon is an outstanding coach. His calm presence and thought-provoking questions helped me see challenges from new perspectives and overcome obstacles that had been holding me back at work. Each session left me with practical insights that strengthened my relationships with colleagues, leading to better collaboration, faster decisions, and improved outcomes."Mark Moreton, Director of Learning and Development, CVS Group

Three questions to ask yourself this week

If you're reading this from inside firefighting mode, here are the three questions I'd ask you to sit with this week, in that order.

1. How clear are you on the intentional purpose for your business over the next 12 months, and how is that clarity actually landing with your team? Not the aspirational vision. The directional clarity that lets somebody say yes or no to a decision without checking with you.

2. As a founder, which specific symptoms of firefighting do you recognise in your working week? Name them. If you can't name them, you can't design around them.

3. Which five decisions are landing on your desk most often, and who should own them instead? Write the list. It usually takes about 15 minutes, and it's almost always a useful starting point for a real structural conversation.

Next step. Firefighting is a state you can stay in for years if you let yourself. It's also a state that very few founders get out of by trying harder on their own. Most get out of it through a combination of structural work (goals, cadence, accountability, role clarity) and founder work (deciding what not to say yes to, trusting the system, protecting your own focus). If you're in it and can't see your way out, a conversation might be the most useful 30 minutes you spend this month.

Book a call with Simon | Back to the fractional COO guide

#### Implementing the B3 framework
1. FUNDAMENTAL BASICS

This layer establishes the DNA of any business – why it exists and how it wants to develop as an organisation.

WHY

One of the first building blocks for a scaling business is to be able to express why the business exists. It underpins everything that follows in the growth of the business. 

Often this will be closely aligned with the original passions and motivations of the founder/s, although it may also reflect how the business has grown and changed since it was founded.

USEFUL RESOURCES

Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG)

How to Define Your Vision, Values, Purpose and Mission Statement

Lead Together - Purpose (chapter 6) 

IF YOU READ ONE THING...

Do Purpose: Why brands with a purpose do better and matter more by David Hieatt

HOW

A scaling business needs to describe how it wants to exist in the future. There are lots of ways to do this such as describing a culture, values or behaviours. 

The most effective ways are those that define the how in practical, accessible and usable ways - so that people across the business can assimilate the meaning and apply it to their work every day.

USEFUL RESOURCES

Lead Together - Values, Principles & Aspirations (chapter 7) 

How to Define Your Vision, Values, Purpose and Mission Statement

Do We Need Company Values in the Future of Work?

Original Netflix culture deck

IF YOU READ ONE THING...

The Positive Organization: Breaking Free from Conventional Cultures, Constraints, and Beliefs by Robert E Quinn

Back to top

2. MAKING A BUSINESS

This layer takes the foundational aspirations and works out how they translate into a viable business.

STRATEGY

Scaling businesses need a way of setting goals that are in line with why. Strategy is how the business makes and follows through on deliberate choices and trade-offs to achieve its goals. It's where the hardest decisions are made on what will and won't be focussed on. If creating strategy feels easy, it's probably because you're not facing up to the trade-offs you need to think about.

USEFUL RESOURCES

Blue Ocean Strategy

Agile strategy

Strategy that works - rethinking the strategic process

Strategy in teal organizations

Lead Together - Bold Strategy (chapter 23) 

How to Write a Strategy Statement Your Team Will Actually Remember

Building the Agile Business Through Digital Transformation (chapter 9)

And some relevant articles from my email newsletter Build.

IF YOU READ ONE THING...

Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why it Matters by Richard Rumelt

OPERATING MODEL

The operating model provides a blueprint for how value is created and delivered to different groups. 

It brings the business strategy to life and informs decisions about how it is set up and operates. Without a clear operating model, the business can lack congruence as it scales.

USEFUL RESOURCES

What is an operating model?

Architecting an operating model

How to design for agility

Putting customer experience at the heart of next-generation operating models

And some relevant articles from my email newsletter Build.

IF YOU READ ONE THING...

Operating Model Canvas: Aligning Operations and Organization With Strategy by Andrew Campbell, Mikel Gutierrez & Mark Lancellot

Back to top

3. BUILDING AN ORGANISATION

This layer puts in place the building blocks of a functioning organisation - enabling people to work together towards common goals.

ROLES

In any organisation there are accountabilities that need to be fulfilled. A role is a collection of accountabilities taken on by an individual person. By scoping and describing accountabilities and roles, we create a clear understanding of what's expected of each person in the organisation. Accountabilities are preferred over activities as a way to describe a role - because accountabilities enable space for people to have autonomy over how to do their work. 

USEFUL RESOURCES

Designing High-Performance Jobs

Job descriptions: dead or alive?

Shall we give up on job design?

Fluid Job Titles and Job Descriptions at Teal Organizations

And some relevant articles from my email newsletter Build.

IF YOU READ ONE THING...

Humanocracy by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini

STRUCTURE

This is not drawing a structure chart. Never start there. It's about understanding how people and activities are best grouped within the operating model to get work done. Never assume it needs to look like the traditional pyramid with senior people at the top, a middle management layer and then the frontline work happening at the bottom. Think creatively and engage frontline teams in considering how to best organise for autonomy, engagement and productivity.

USEFUL RESOURCES

5 Steps To A Progressive Organizational Structure

The Team Onion

Seven Practices of Successful Organizations

Cell Structure Design Patterns

10 Progressive Organizational Structures Developed By Real Companies

Flat hierarchies - progressive organizational thinking or digital's 'flat earth' theory?

5 Reasons Why A Flat Organizational Structure Fails & What You Can Do About It

And some relevant articles from my email newsletter Build.

IF YOU READ ONE THING...

Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization? by Aaron Dignan

DECISION MAKING

Be intentional about decision making by setting a clear process you expect everyone making meaningful decisions to follow. Be explicit about who can take what decisions and who needs to be involved. Strive for a bias towards devolving decision making to enable greater agility and pace.

USEFUL RESOURCES

What is decision making?

Deciding about deciding

How to Make Decisions that are EPICS

The Tactical Guide to Making Better Decisions When Starting and Scaling Companies

Decision Making

The Power of Collaborative Decision-Making

Decision-Making Practice

And some relevant articles from my email newsletter Build.

IF YOU READ ONE THING...

Decision Maker: Unlock the Potential of Everyone in Your Organization, One Decision at a Time by Dennis Bakker

GOVERNANCE

Often mis-characterised as restrictive and something that gets in the way of progress. But done well, it doesn't need to be any of these things. I think of governance as the minimum set of rules, policies and risk management processes that are needed to ensure an organisation functions coherently, legally and with minimal friction ("minimal viable bureaucracy"). Even the most progressive teal organisational systems codify governance to help people understand how to manage power together.

USEFUL RESOURCES

Open Governance

Where ignorance isn't bliss - start-ups and corporate governance

Why The Command-and-Control Mindset Is Killing Your Company

How to manage compliance and governance efficiently for scaling businesses

Power architecture

And some relevant articles from my email newsletter Build.

IF YOU READ ONE THING...

Power: Why Some People Have It―and Others Don't by Jeffrey Pfeffer

Back to top

4. OPERATING THE BUSINESS

 This layer sets out the practical things you need to have and do to run a scaling business day-to-day.

LEADERSHIP

Seems obvious, but it's important to think about what leadership really means as a business scales. It's not about roles that "do" leadership. It's about how the act of leadership is something that's expected from everyone in the business. It'll mean different things in different roles, but leadership isn't a top down game. There are really strong links to culture, roles and structure to enable this to happen in practice.

USEFUL RESOURCES

Distributed leadership

What is Distributed Leadership?

Leadership in organisation design

Leadership Unravelled - The Faulty Thinking Behind Modern Management

Leadership in Evolutionary Organisations: Who’s leading anyway?

And some relevant articles from my email newsletter Build.

IF YOU READ ONE THING...

Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Building Leaders by Breaking the Rules by David Marquet

CADENCE

Cadence is the heartbeat of any business. It's the pattern of rituals and ceremonies that happen at a predictable frequency that helps bind the organisation together as it grows. The right mix and frequency will depend on the stage and rate of growth of the business. Cadence links together strategy, performance, governance and leadership into a predictable and shared rhythm.

USEFUL RESOURCES

How To Create A Business Rhythm For Better Collaboration

How to create an operating rhythm to increase productivity

Example of an operating rhythm

And some relevant articles from my email newsletter Build.

IF YOU READ ONE THING...

Building the Agile Business Through Digital Transformation by Neil Perkin

PROCESSES

Processes is about getting repeatable activities codified so that they're done consistently and efficiently. It's about doing this in a way that trusts people to use their judgement in how best to do their work and not restricting their accountability. Don't try to define a process or checklist for everything you do. Focus on the high value, high volume or high risk activities. 

USEFUL RESOURCES

It's Never Too Early To Start Mapping Business Processes

The Checklist Manifesto Summary: 8 Lessons by Atul Gawande

Guide to understanding process maps

And some relevant articles from my email newsletter Build.

IF YOU READ ONE THING...

Chapter 4 in Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace 

PERFORMANCE

Performance happens at individual, team and company levels. Knowing what good performance looks like and creating regular opportunities to talk about current performance is important. Identify a small number of key metrics and determine how to measure it consistently. How are these interpreted and shared appropriately? Beyond the quant, how are things like company stories, successes and learnings being communicated to drive performance improvement and nurture culture?

USEFUL RESOURCES

Transparency in business: the next wave in company evolution

Scorecards vs. Dashboards: Definitions, Benefits, and Differences

Business dashboad examples for every use case 

Lead Together - Feedback (chapter 13) and Transparency (chapter 17) 

Create Stories That Change Your Company’s Culture

IF YOU READ ONE THING...

Secrecy In Business Is Dead. Here's To Radical Transparency

STANDARDS

Standards are documented specifications about how all or part of a business operates. They can be internally or externally set. They're usually used as the basis for compliance auditing and then certifying to a recognised level. Some standards are compulsory (such as employment law, GDPR and accounting standards) while others are a strategic choice for a business (for example ISO, specialist accreditations and B Corps). The focus on managing compliance needs to be proportionate to the level of risk in the scaling business.

USEFUL RESOURCES

Why compliance is important for smaller businesses

ISO standards

SOC 2

Small business compliance UK – what you need to know

B Corps standards

Regulations can burden small businesses but our research shows they can also help them grow

IF YOU READ ONE THING...

Barriers to Change: Regulations

SYSTEMS

Choosing the right technology systems for the scaling journey matters a lot. Buy/build decisions have outsized impacts on future growth. How systems are purchased, deployed and integrated can drive efficiency and team engagement, but if done badly can restrict growth, hurt margins and be an unwelcome distraction for leaders. Having a clear target systems architecture provides direction and focus for technology as a business grows. 

USEFUL RESOURCES

Technology strategy in digital scale-ups

The Fundamentals to Enterprise Architecture

Internal and back office systems

Architecture awakens

IF YOU READ ONE THING...

CIO Insider - Reimagining the role of technology

Back to top

#### Investors
Delivering operational expertise for investors

I work with individual, venture capital and private equity investors to give them an expert operational perspective on potential or current investments.

As an investor it can be hard to get under the hood of a business from the outside. Knowing what's really going on and why is important to be able to value a business or provide board leadership for a current investment.

As a senior executive specialising in working with investors, I combine extensive operational experience of tech-centric growth businesses with an understanding of investment models and the needs of different investor types. I give you honest, frank and informed opinions on the things you need to know about in the businesses you work with. 

Benefits for investors

By working with me as a fractional COO, consultant or advisor you'll benefit from:

Real expertise from multiple scale-up businesses

Objectivity to help you see inside businesses clearly 

Opinionated & detailed reporting delivered fast 

Support from origination to post-completion 

Flexibility so you get just the help you need 

Access to me whenever you need it 

Experienced & pragmatic change leadership  

I help with investors with things like...

M&A strategy 

Specialist market knowledge 

Post-transaction support

Change management

Founder and leadership coaching

Research and deal origination

Operational due diligence  

Transitional leadership

Identifying & resolving growth blockers

Board relationships & effectiveness

#### Leadership coaching
Helping you grow as fast as your businesses

Being founder or an operational leader in a rapid growth business is hard. Every day brings new challenges to solve. Leaders are often seeing and tackling these for the first time and this can be overwhelming.

Scaling a business rapidly often means you don't have the bandwidth to focus on your own development. Leaders often have strong technical or functional expertise but may not have the leadership, management and strategic skills needed as the business grows.

Book a 30 minute free introductory discussion

             Coaching for scaling founders.

Founder coaching provides you with crucial support during the intense challenges of scaling. 

As a qualified and experienced coach who has founded and scaled businesses, I help founders like you navigate complexity and make better decisions:

Gain confidence in strategic decision-making 

Build stronger relationships with your team and board

Develop resilience to handle intense pressure

Create space for reflection and personal growth 

             Coaching for operational leaders.

Coaching helps operational leaders thrive in the fast-paced environment of scaling businesses. 

As a qualified coach who has held MD and COO roles in rapid growth businesses, I help provide clarity and support for operational leaders implementing ambitious growth plans:

Strengthen your leadership impact across the business

Better balance founder vision with operational realities

Manage complex shifting stakeholder relationships

Transform challenges into opportunities for growth

My approach to coaching founders and operational leaders. 

My coaching practice is focused on working with founders and operational leaders. I’ve been coaching leaders since 2021 and have completed the Human Technics Advanced Certificate in Executive Coaching. This course is accredited by the University of the West of England, the International Coaching Federation and the Institute of Leadership. I work within the International Coaching Federation Code of Ethics at all times.

Working with me as a coach, you'll have fortnightly or monthly one hour coaching sessions over video call across US, UK and European timezones. During our first session we'll explore your goals for coaching and agree how we'll work together to help you achieve them.

Book a 30 minute free introductory discussion

Book a 30 minute free introductory discussion about coaching. 

To learn more about working with me as a coach, let's book in a short introductory call to get things rolling. 

I'll explain the coaching process, answer your questions and help you understand if I'm the right coach for your situation.

#### Media information
For interview, article, podcast and event requests please call me on +447771 701902 or email simon@wakeman.work. There's more information about events and conferences on my speaking page too.

Short biography (34 words)

Simon is a UK-based consultant COO who helps founders to scale their operations and create resilient organisations. He created the B3 framework® to help post-seed and series A technology businesses scale successfully at pace.

Longer biography (106 words)

Simon is a UK-based consultant COO who helps founders to scale their operations and create resilient organisations. He created the B3 framework® to help post-seed and series A technology businesses scale successfully at pace. He has significant leadership experience of organic and acquisition-based growth in privately held and UK-listed companies. 

His 25 year career includes experience as a founder, MD, COO and non-executive board member of technology-focussed growth companies, including successful exits. Simon is also a trustee at The Caldecott Foundation and his non-executive experience includes technology businesses such as GreenShoot Labs, Deeson and OpenDialog as well as the not-for-profit social enterprise National Support Network CIC.

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#### Organisational debt: the hidden tax on every scaling business
The operational tax most scaling businesses don't know they're paying

Engineers have a language for the cost of decisions made in a hurry. They call it technical debt - the accumulation of shortcuts, workarounds and "right enough for now" code that slows a product down over time. Everyone in a scaling business has heard of it. Most leadership teams understand it as a real liability they have to actively manage.

There's an almost identical phenomenon on the operational side of the business. It's bigger, it's more expensive, and it's almost never named. I call it organisational debt, and it's the single biggest thing a consultant COO is brought in to work on. If your business has grown past 40 people, you're almost certainly carrying more of it than you think.

What organisational debt actually is

Organisational debt is the accumulation, over time, of decisions that prioritised short-term progress over long-term stability. It's the things that were right for the business at ten people and have never been revisited. It's the structures, processes, titles, team shapes and cultural norms that made sense at a different stage and quietly stopped working somewhere between 40 and 120 headcount - without anyone noticing because everyone was busy.

Some examples from businesses I've worked with:

The founder has been doing all performance reviews for two years because the "proper" review system never got built.

Three people inherited "senior" titles from a rapid growth phase and the roles underneath them have never been redefined.

New joiners are onboarded by whoever happens to be free that week. There's no shared standard, so everyone gets a different picture of the business.

A client escalation process was drawn on a whiteboard 18 months ago. Nobody uses it. Everyone just Slacks the COO.

The weekly leadership meeting was designed when the business was a third of its current size. Nothing about the agenda, cadence or attendees has changed, and it's now the most frustrating hour of everyone's week.

Individually, none of these feel like a crisis. Collectively, they're a tax on every hour of work the business does. Decisions take longer. Handovers drop things. Talented people feel like they're swimming in treacle. Founders can't work out why the company feels heavier than it did last year. That heaviness is the debt compounding.

Why it's inevitable - and why that's fine

A scaling business that didn't accumulate organisational debt would be a scaling business that stopped to perfect every process before moving on. That business wouldn't scale. The whole point of early-stage growth is to move quickly, accept imperfect solutions, and worry about cleaning up later. Every founder I've ever worked with has done this. I did it myself running Deeson before we sold to Panoply in 2018. At TPXimpact, scaling from £31.5m to £83m, we accumulated plenty of debt we had to address in flight.

So the goal isn't to avoid organisational debt. It's to see it, name it, and actively manage the backlog - the same way an engineering team manages technical debt. The businesses that get this right aren't the ones with no debt. They're the ones with an honest view of what they're carrying and a deliberate plan for which bits to pay down, which bits to leave, and which bits to rewrite on the way through.

"Simon very quickly identified the things we'd been quietly living with for years and put them into a proper priority order. It was like turning a light on in a room we hadn't realised was dark."Stuart Arthur, CEO, Pivotl

Four moves that actually work

1. Make the implicit explicit

The most important discipline is calling out debt as you create it. When a leadership team takes a decision they know is "right for now", they should say so out loud, in the room, and write it down somewhere. "We're doing this because it's what we can do this quarter. We know it won't scale past fifty customers, and we'll need to revisit it when we get there."

That little act of naming does two things. It stops the team pretending the decision was optimal. And it gives future-you a breadcrumb back to the original trade-off so you can rip the thing up when the context has changed. Most organisational debt becomes invisible because nobody said "this is debt" at the time.

2. Build a proper debt backlog

Engineers keep a backlog of technical debt that they review alongside new work. Operations should do the same. Start with a single document that lists everything in the business where a leader would say "we should really fix that one day". Every process, structure, tool, habit or unwritten rule that everyone knows isn't quite right.

You don't need to fix it yet. You just need to have it written down in one place. The act of surfacing it is usually shocking. Most founders I work with have never actually seen their full list in one view, and once they do, priorities rearrange themselves quickly.

3. Review the backlog on a fixed cadence

New initiatives have a planning cycle. Organisational debt should ride on the same cycle - reviewed quarterly, with a small handful of items pulled onto the active list each time. Without this, debt gets crowded out forever by whatever is loudest this week. With it, you make visible progress on the structural health of the business every quarter without disrupting delivery.

A well-run business operating system already has a planning rhythm that can carry this. If you don't have one, the debt review is a good excuse to build the rhythm in the first place.

4. Distinguish debt you can leave from debt you can't

This is the subtle, high-leverage move. Not all debt is worth paying down. Some of it becomes irrelevant in the future and you can safely leave it behind. A clunky CRM process matters a lot less if you already know you're moving to a new CRM in six months - the fix is to apply the lessons to the new deployment, not to painstakingly clean up the old one.

Other debt can't be left behind. A poor onboarding process over the last six months isn't solved by designing a new onboarding flow for the next hires. You also need to do something deliberate with the people who went through the bad version - a re-onboarding, a catch-up, a structured conversation about what they didn't get first time round. Leave it and you'll pay for it in engagement and churn for years.

Getting this distinction right - what to repay, what to abandon, what to rewrite on the way past - is most of the value a good consultant COO brings to this kind of engagement.

The signs you're carrying more than you thought

Simple decisions take longer than they should, and nobody can explain why.

Every new initiative seems to bump into an old one nobody quite wants to touch.

You're getting the same complaints from new joiners that you got from new joiners 18 months ago.

Leaders are firefighting things that look suspiciously like things they firefought last quarter.

You'd struggle to explain, in writing, how any given process in the business is actually meant to work.

None of those on its own is a crisis. Two or three together is a strong signal that it's time to put debt on the agenda as a real piece of work, not a vague aspiration. The businesses I've seen handle scale best are the ones that treat this as routine hygiene, not as a crisis response.

Next step. Working the organisational debt backlog is one of the two main shapes of consultant COO engagement I run - the other is a structural restructure of a scaling business. The broader picture is set out in the consultant COO guide, and the book a call with Simon to talk it through.

#### Organisational design for scale-ups: what founders keep getting wrong
Why the org chart is almost always the wrong starting point

Organisational design is the piece of work scaling founders most often get backwards. They wait until the business is already painful, then they draw boxes and lines, then they wonder why nothing flows any more smoothly than it did before. The boxes are the wrong starting point. The real question - the one that unlocks everything else - isn't what should our structure look like? It's how does the value actually get created here?

I spend a significant part of my fractional COO work on organisational design projects for clients. I've done enough of them that I sometimes wake up at 4am with my mind racing through permutations of structures and roles, which is a sign either that I care too much or that the work really does matter to the businesses involved. Both are true. This article pulls together what I've learned about where founders get organisational design wrong, the question they should be asking instead, and what workflow-first design actually looks like in a scaling business in 2026.

The mistakes founders keep making

Across the org design work I do, a small set of mistakes keeps showing up. They don't look like mistakes at the time - they look like common sense. That's why they're so persistent.

Building structures around people you don't want to lose. A senior hire is brilliant, so you build a function around them. A year later they're running an empire they never really wanted and the structure makes no sense to anyone else. Structure should serve the work, not the personnel.

Creating departments based on assumptions rooted in early careers. Founders who grew up in big agencies recreate account management, creative, production. Founders who grew up in tech build engineering, product, design. The imprinting is real and almost always premature, because the shape of your scaling business isn't the shape of the business your own career prepared you to expect.

Elaborate hierarchies to flatter egos. Middle-management layers exist not because the work demands them but because a promotion is how you reward a high performer without losing them. Over time, the org chart becomes a reward scheme dressed up as a structure, and nothing flows through it cleanly.

Rigid designs built on the assumption that tomorrow looks like yesterday. Traditional structures are rooted in the belief that you can predict and control what's coming. But markets shift, customer needs evolve, technology disrupts. The unexpected happens every day, and rigid structures break under that pressure while more flexible ones bend.

Unclear roles that create hidden cost. Two people think they own the same decision, or nobody does. The cost shows up as duplicated work, missed handovers, slow decisions, and people quietly burning out from role ambiguity nobody ever names.

The question founders should be asking

Most people start organisational design with the wrong question. The question they ask is what should our structure look like?, and they answer it by drawing boxes and lines. The question they should be asking is how does the value actually get created here?

Here's a thought experiment. Imagine a customer placing an order in your business. What actually needs to happen for that order to turn into something useful to them? Information flows from a sales lead to someone who qualifies it, then to someone who delivers it, then to someone who supports it. Decisions get made at various points. Problems get solved along the way. Materials or artefacts move through logistics or systems. That's your value stream - the actual path that work takes to become value for a customer.

Everything else in your organisation is overhead that exists to support that value stream. If you design structure around the value stream first, you get an organisation where work flows. If you design structure around functions first, you get an organisation where work gets stuck at every functional boundary. It's that simple, and it's also that rare.

Workflow-first org design: what it actually means

A while ago I was deep in a Miro board sketching out high-level org structures for a client and I had one of those moments when something clicks a couple of hours later than it should have. The options I'd drawn on screen looked sensible. They also completely missed the point of what actually created value in my client's business. So I closed the tab, made a black coffee, and started again - this time from the workflow, not the functions.

Here's why that switch matters more now than it did five years ago. In the old world, you designed your org chart around functions because humans were the primary resource, and humans needed to be organised into stable teams with clear reporting lines and career paths. Today, the primary resource is usually a mix - humans, AI agents, and automations working in harmony depending on the task at hand. That changes everything about how you should think about structure.

When parts of the workflow become substitutable - some with AI, some with humans, some with automation - the workflow itself becomes the durable piece of the organisation. The functions become less important. So the obvious move is to organise the business along the lines of the workflow, not along the lines of the functions.

Here's a real example. A B2B SaaS client of mine has a standard customer workflow: find potential customer, qualify lead, demo the product, negotiate and close the deal, onboard, provide support, expand the account, try not to lose them. In the old world you'd have separate teams for each function - SDRs, AEs, customer success, support - and handovers at every boundary. What we did instead was organise them as a matrix around the workflow itself. Each "stream" owns the entire customer journey for a particular vertical, from outreach to account growth. The functional knowledge still exists, but it's in service of the stream, not in charge of it.

The effect is that they've reduced friction in how work gets done, and - more importantly - they can now substitute AI agents and automations in and out of any point in the workflow without disrupting the organisation, because the organisation is designed around the workflow rather than around the people who used to do each step.

The traits of good scale-up organisational design

Across the scaling businesses I work with, the organisational designs that hold up under real-world conditions tend to share a few characteristics.

Fewer managers, more people in roles that enable flow. When structure is designed around the value stream, you realise you don't need as many managers as a functional structure would suggest. What you need is enablers - people whose job is to unblock flow rather than to supervise headcount.

Less hierarchy, more networks. The best scale-up structures I've designed look more like a connected network than a traditional pyramid. Information moves faster, decisions get made closer to the work, and the founder isn't sitting at the top of a funnel through which everything has to pass.

Multiple pathways, not single points of failure. A good design gives work more than one way to get through the organisation. A single gatekeeper in a critical path is a bug, not a feature, and will become the reason your business stops scaling at exactly the moment you most need it to move.

Decisions made close to the action. Empowered people making decisions where the work is, rather than escalating everything up the chain. This is almost always a function of the operating system around the structure - without clear goals, guardrails and accountability mechanisms, people won't make decisions even if the structure says they can.

Role clarity without rigidity. Every role has a clear primary accountability - the one thing that belongs to this person and nobody else. Around that, there's flexibility to collaborate, cover and flex. Unclear roles are one of the hidden costs scaling businesses rarely measure but always pay.

The leadership team is part of the design, not separate from it

Here's a question I get asked constantly: what's the right structure for my leadership team? It's one of the most common questions from founders who are scaling, and it's usually answered badly - by picking a template that worked in somebody else's business and trying to map it onto your own.

The honest answer is that the right leadership team structure is the one that follows from the value stream and the operating system beneath it. A scale-up with a single primary workflow needs a different leadership team than one with three distinct revenue lines. A business that's heavily dependent on a complex delivery engine needs a different shape from one that's dependent on a big sales engine. Start with how value is actually created, and the leadership team falls out of that analysis. Start with job titles, and you'll get the wrong shape every time.

"Simon has carefully negotiated the often challenging restructure of the business for changing times. I can't think of anyone better suited for such a task; taking the time to understand the situation but being decisive and fair in delivery and hugely empathetic to the team."Georgia Branch, COO, We Create Popular

A practical starting point for founders

If you're reading this and thinking you might need to redesign your organisation, here's what I'd do first - before you touch an org chart.

Map your primary workflow end-to-end. From the first customer touchpoint to the last piece of post-sale value delivery. Don't sanitise it. Draw it as it actually works today, including the re-work, the bottlenecks and the re-escalations. This is your value stream.

Identify where work currently gets stuck or slow. Every bottleneck is a design signal. If it consistently takes three days to move from qualification to proposal, something about the way the work flows is badly organised. Note every stick point.

Separate "who owns the work" from "who owns the decision". In most scale-ups, those two things are muddled. A clear design names both, and they're not always the same person.

Then - and only then - draw a structure that supports the workflow. The structure is the last thing you design, not the first. If you start with boxes, you'll paper over the problems with more boxes.

Next step. Organisational design is not a one-off project. It's a discipline you build into how you run the business. The businesses I work with that do this well tend to revisit their workflow-first design every six to twelve months, because the thing that worked at £5m will stop working at £10m. The good news is that once you've done it once, with the right questions, you'll never draw another org chart the same way again.

Book a call with Simon | Back to the fractional COO guide

#### Professional experience
My 26 year career includes experience as a founder, MD, COO and non-executive board member of technology-focussed growth companies, including successful exits.

I have significant leadership experience of organic and acquisition-based growth in privately held and UK-listed companies.

I’m also a senior trustee at The Caldecott Foundation and my non-executive experience includes technology businesses such as GreenShoot Labs, Deeson, thinkTRIBE and OpenDialog as well as not-for-profit social enterprise National Support Network CIC.

My career since 1998 has included leading businesses and teams delivering professional services, consultancy, operations, HR and recruitment, technology, marketing, PR, publishing, customer service and internal communications.

CURRENTLY

Independent Chief Operating Officer (COO) - fractional, consultancy and advisory

JANUARY 2023 ONWARDS

I work with technology-centric businesses that are experiencing early-stage success and are ready to scale. My focus is working with founders, leaders and investors in growth businesses that have 10 to 150 people. I help them solve the typical challenges that come with rapid revenue or headcount growth.

How I work

Current non-executive roles

JUNE 2015 ONWARDS

September 2018 - presentTrustee board memberChair, audit & risk committeeMember, finance committeeThe Caldecott Foundation (Kent and East Midlands)

July 2023 - presentNon-executive board memberthinkTRIBE Ltd.

October 2024 - presentNon-executive board memberExtra Brain Ltd.

PREVIOUSLY

Chief Operating Officer (COO)

TPXIMPACT PLC (FORMERLY THE PANOPLY Plc)SEPTEMBER 2020 - DECEMBER 2022

Senior leadership team member for UK listed technology services group. Scaled revenue from £31.5m in 2019/20 to £83m in 2022/23 and headcount from 361 to 700.Operational leadership including central shared services.Extensive M&A including operational due diligence and new company onboarding.Facilitated leadership transition from founders to new incoming CEO and CFO. Cross-company projects and initiatives, including organisational design, process improvement, commercial optimisation and leadership coaching.  

Managing Director

DEESON GROUP LTDAPRIL 2014 - MARCH 2020

Led 40 person digital transformation agency with bases in London and Canterbury. Full P&L responsibility delivering 95% revenue growth in four years delivering net profit consistently above 29%. Successful new business track record with major new account wins over multiple years.  Responsibility for all agency operations, including new business, marketing, project delivery, recruitment client service, finance and operations.  Sold agency to AIM-listed The Panoply plc (now TPXimpact plc) in December 2018 and led the agency’s integration within the group successfully achieving  earnout targets ahead of plan. 

Chief Growth Officer (secondment)

GREENSHOOT LABS LTDAPRIL 2020 - SEPTEMBER 2020

In April 2020 I was seconded to Greenshoot Labs for a short term engagement leading new product and service development. I implemented new business lead generation, nurturing and conversion processes, alongside testing new service propositions and pricing models.I also delivered pre-sales consultancy work with clients including consumer brands, governments, universities and media to help them understand the potential for conversational AI within their digital channel strategies.

Co-founder / Chief Operating Officer

GREENSHOOT LABS LTDOCT 2017 - FEBRUARY 2019

GreenShoot Labs was a spin-off business from extensive R&D work we undertook in Deeson Group Ltd.The business launched focussing on conversational AI and chat interfaces.It was subsequently acquired by The Panoply plc in 2019 and has since pivoted to developing the OpenDialog AI product.As a co-founder I took operational responsibility for establishing the business, alongside my main role as MD at Deeson. 

Previous non-executive roles

April 2022 - March 2024Non-executive directorNational Support Network CIC (Glasgow) 

June 2015 - September 2023Advisory board member and Vice-ChairCanterbury Christ Church UniversityBusiness School

April 2020 - March 2022 Non-executive Director - digital agencyDeeson Group Ltd 

July 2018 - August 2021Non-executive Director - commercial propertyCastle Street Holdings Ltd 

July 2018 to September 2020Non-executive Director - contract publishingDeeson Publishing Ltd 

Other roles - 1998 to 2014

January 2012 - February 2013 Head of Transformation Programme (secondment)Medway Council

February 2004 - April 2014Marketing ManagerHead of Communications and MarketingMedway Council & East Sussex County Council

September 1998 to August 2004Marketing, customer experience and digital rolesBoots, Open Interactive, Egg & Enterprise IG

Download PDF version of my CV

#### Reflective leadership: the practice most founders skip
The highest-leverage habit most founders never build

Ask most scaling founders what gets squeezed out of their week when things get busy, and the honest answer is always the same: thinking time. Not meetings, not emails, not even exercise. The first thing to go is the slot they'd vaguely meant to keep free to actually reflect on what's happening. By the second or third week of pressure, that slot has been back-filled with someone else's problem and never comes back.

That matters more than founders usually realise. A deliberate reflective leadership practice is one of the highest-leverage habits I know of - and also one of the most culturally dismissed. It sounds soft. It looks like doing nothing. It doesn't have a clear output. And it's the thing that, more than anything else, separates founders who compound their learning over the years from founders who keep making slightly different versions of the same mistake.

Reflection is a hard skill, not a soft one

The soft/hard distinction is one of the most unhelpful ideas in leadership development. "Hard skills" - strategy, finance, commercial - get hours of deliberate practice. "Soft skills" - reflection, self-awareness, emotional regulation - get dismissed as something you either have or don't. But the best founders I've worked with treat reflection the way an elite athlete treats recovery. It's not optional. It's not indulgent. It's the thing that makes everything else work.

Proper reflection, in my experience, does three things that nothing else in a founder's week does as well:

It surfaces patterns you're missing in real time. When you're inside the week, every problem looks unique. When you step back, the same three things keep showing up.
It catches decisions drifting off their rails. Most bad strategic calls weren't made in a single moment - they accumulated over weeks of small choices nobody stopped to check against the original intent.
It lets you process the emotional load. Founders are carrying more than they admit to. Without space to notice what's actually going on, that weight turns into fatigue, short temper, or avoidance - often without the founder seeing the connection.

Why founders skip it

Three reasons come up again and again in coaching.

The first is that reflection feels unproductive. Founders are people who get satisfaction from crossing things off a list. A morning spent staring at a notebook and thinking hard about the last quarter leaves the list untouched. The dopamine is in the shorter loop, so the longer loop gets starved.

The second is that the culture around founders punishes stillness. Everyone wants a quick answer, a rapid reply, a fast call. "I'm going to think about this and come back tomorrow" sounds like weakness, even though it's usually the right answer for anything that actually matters.

The third - and this is the one coaching most often meets - is that stopping to reflect means risking encountering things you'd rather not encounter. Doubts about a decision. Discomfort about a person on the team. Fear about the market. For some founders, the busy week is an escape from that. Until they've got a container to process it inside, slowing down feels genuinely unsafe.

"Working with Simon gave me space to actually think - to step out of the noise of the week and see what was going on. That on its own was worth it."Clare Stack, Chief Customer Officer, Worktribe

What a real reflective practice looks like

There's no single right form. Different founders land on very different versions. But the ones that actually stick tend to share a handful of features.

A regular, protected slot

Daily is hard to hold. Weekly is what most founders I coach settle on - sixty to ninety minutes, same time every week, in the diary like any other meeting, immovable short of a genuine emergency. If it's not scheduled, it won't happen.

Off the laptop, out of the inbox

A screen full of notifications is not a reflection environment. Pen, paper, a walk, a quiet room - whatever form it takes, it needs to be somewhere thinking can actually happen. The shift to handwriting is small but disproportionately useful for most people.

A small number of recurring prompts

Reflection without prompts often becomes rumination. A handful of standing questions helps. The ones I use most often in coaching:

What happened this week that surprised me?
Where did I react instead of respond?
What did I decide? What decisions am I avoiding?
What's changed in how I'm thinking since last week?
If I was coaching myself right now, what would I notice?

A way to hold the output

A notebook you can look back through, a running document, a voice memo - something. The practice compounds when you can see the patterns over months, not just weeks. A lot of founders get more from re-reading old reflections than from writing new ones.

A thinking partner, not just a journal

Solo reflection is good. Reflection with a skilled partner is better, because they can ask the questions you wouldn't ask yourself and name the patterns you're too close to see. That's a lot of what happens in a coaching session - it's structured reflective practice with someone who's been in the room with a lot of founders before. The best clients I work with run a weekly solo practice and a fortnightly or monthly coaching session. The two compound in a way either one on its own doesn't.

How it connects to everything else

Reflective practice is the quiet foundation underneath most of the other work in this cluster. It's how you notice that you're running out of road on the letting go work. It's where the gap between private and public surfaces, which is the whole of congruence. It's how the founder to CEO transition stops being a slogan and starts being something you can actually navigate. It's also where most of the real strategic thinking in a scaling business happens, even if the output lands in a Monday meeting.

Founders who build the habit describe it, almost without exception, as one of the handful of things they wish they'd started five years earlier. It's the highest ROI practice I know - and the one almost everyone skips until something forces them to stop.

Next step. A lot of coaching is structured reflective practice, with someone who's seen the patterns before and knows when to push and when to hold space. The founder coaching guide sets out how I work, and the leadership coaching service page is the best place to start a conversation if you want to build this into your week properly. Or book a call with Simon to talk about what a reflective practice could look like for you.

#### Resources
URL: https://www.simonwakeman.com/resources/

#### Restructuring a scaling business without breaking it
Why the restructure is almost always the wrong first move

When a scaling business is stuck, the restructure is almost always the first tool a founder reaches for. Boxes get redrawn on the org chart. Reporting lines change. Titles shift. A leadership team goes into a room for a weekend and comes out with a new design. Everyone feels briefly optimistic. Six months later the same problems are back, and nobody can quite explain why.

I've been on every side of this. I've led restructures that worked. I've led restructures that didn't. And early in my managerial career - before I ran Deeson or joined TPXimpact as Group COO - I leaned on restructuring far more than I should have, because it's a tool that makes a leader feel in control while the harder, slower work goes undone. Restructuring a scaling business is a real and important intervention. It is also, more often than not, the wrong answer to the question the founder is actually trying to solve.

Why reorganisations are so tempting (and so often wrong)

Restructures are attractive because they are visible, decisive and feel like progress. A founder who is worried about pace, underperformance or a misfiring team can stand in front of the business and announce a change, and for a week or two it looks like they've done something big. That's appealing when the alternative - slower, quieter work on how people think, decide and operate - is uncertain and doesn't produce a satisfying single moment of action.

But most of the problems restructures are reached for aren't structural. They're behavioural, cultural, or systems problems wearing a structural mask. If a team isn't collaborating well, moving them into the same reporting line won't make them collaborate. If decisions are slow, renaming the committee won't speed them up. If a leader isn't performing, a new title won't fix it. In each case the restructure looks like a solution, but the underlying dynamic is untouched - and you now have the additional cost of months of disruption, lost institutional knowledge and the anxiety that every reorganisation creates.

The hard question to ask before any restructure is: if we were to wave a wand and put the new org chart in place tomorrow, exactly what problems would it solve - and which of our current problems would still be there? If the honest answer is "most of them would still be there", the restructure isn't the right intervention. You've got a ways-of-working problem, a leadership problem or an organisational debt problem, and the restructure is going to hide it for a few months, not fix it.

When a restructure is the right call

There are genuinely times when structural change is the right intervention. In my experience, the clearest cases are:

The structure is genuinely misaligned with the value stream. The work flows horizontally and the org is cut vertically in a way that creates friction at every handover. No amount of culture work fixes geometry.

Spans of control have become absurd. Someone has 14 direct reports because a growth spurt was never followed by a rethink of management layers. No individual coaching can recover that.

Two functions that need to operate as one are permanently at odds. Often sales and delivery, or product and engineering, or commercial and operations. Sometimes the only honest fix is to put them under the same leader.

A new strategic chapter genuinely requires a new shape. A major shift in commercial model, customer segment or geography can make the current structure incompatible with the next stage. This is real, but rarer than it's claimed.

The leadership team is structurally wrong. Usually too small, too senior-light, or missing a critical function at the top table. Fixing the top is a legitimate, high-impact restructure.

If one of these is clearly in play, structural change belongs in the conversation. If none of them is, you're probably reaching for the wrong tool.

"Simon's instinct was to slow us down before we leapt at a reorganisation. It turned out the thing we thought was a structure problem was actually a decision rights problem - and he helped us fix it without any of the disruption."Peter O'Brien, Managing Director, Hidden Creative

Seven principles for doing it without breaking the business

1. Start from the work, not the org chart

Map the actual value streams before you draw a single box. How does a customer request flow through the business from first conversation to repeat purchase? Where does the work get stuck, double-handled, or dropped? The best structural designs are the ones that make the real work easier, not the ones that look neatest on a slide. If you skip this step you will optimise for a picture instead of a system.

2. Name the problems you're trying to solve - and the ones you aren't

Write down, in one page, the specific problems this restructure is meant to solve and the problems it explicitly isn't solving. Share it with the leadership team. This stops the restructure becoming a dumping ground for every frustration in the business - a trap I've watched play out repeatedly. A focused restructure that solves three named problems well is far more valuable than a sprawling one that nibbles at fifteen.

3. Use it as part of a mix, not the whole answer

Restructures work best when they're one of several concurrent changes, not the entire intervention. A new structure, paired with a rethink of decision rights, a new operating cadence, a fresh clarity on who owns what, and a deliberate conversation about behaviours - that combination compounds. A structural change on its own, dropped into an otherwise unchanged operating model, rarely sticks.

4. Be honest with the people it affects

Restructures create real anxiety for real people. The single biggest determinant of whether a restructure lands well is whether the founder and leadership team are willing to have honest, human conversations with the people affected - early, directly, and without hiding behind HR language. Sanitised all-hands announcements are the enemy of trust in this work. So is drip-feeding information over weeks because nobody wants to have the hard conversation in one go.

5. Protect institutional knowledge in the move

Restructures are where institutional knowledge goes to die. Someone leaves or changes role and nobody thinks to extract what they knew. Three months later the business is rediscovering problems they'd already solved. Build knowledge transfer into the restructure plan explicitly - handover documents, shadowing periods, protected time with the person leaving the role. This is boring, unglamorous, and absolutely critical.

6. Resist the temptation to do too much at once

Every restructure I've seen go badly tried to change too many variables simultaneously. New structure and new leadership and new strategy and a new operating model all at once leaves nobody with a stable platform to operate from. If you have to sequence them, the order that usually works is: clarify strategy first, then make the smallest structural change that lets you execute it, then evolve the operating model around the new shape. Not the other way round.

7. Give it twelve months before you judge it

Restructures create a short-term productivity dip while people find their feet. That dip is normal and doesn't mean the restructure failed. But I've watched founders panic at week eight, reach for another change, and compound the disruption until nothing can settle. Commit to the new shape for at least a year before you consider another structural change. If something is genuinely broken, fix it inside the current structure rather than redraw the boxes again.

The consultant COO shape of this work

A structural restructure is one of the cleaner use cases for consultant COO engagement. It has a defined scope (design the new structure), a defined outcome (the new shape is in place and running), and a defined time frame (usually three to six months from diagnosis to go-live, plus a twelve-month embedding period). That makes it a good fit for a project engagement rather than an ongoing fractional COO relationship.

The value of bringing in an external operator is mostly about honesty and pattern recognition. Someone who has done this work inside other scaling businesses can tell you whether your problem is actually structural. They can challenge the designs you've already half-committed to. They can have the hard conversations with the leadership team that you can't, because they aren't going to be around next year. And they can sit inside the delivery rather than hand you a deck and leave.

Next step. If you're looking at a restructure and not sure whether it's the right call, that conversation is worth having before you commit. The consultant COO guide sets out the broader picture, and book a call with Simon if you want to scope a project.

#### Speaking at conferences, meet-ups and events
Conferences, events and meet-ups

I started public speaking back in 2006 with a presentation about social media at a small PR event in Newcastle, UK. 

Since then I’ve enjoyed speaking at, facilitating or chairing more than 45 conferences, events, panels, meet-ups & training courses. 

I've loved speaking for audiences ranging from small groups right up to keynoting for a 1,200 person conference in New Zealand. 

Nowadays my talks are a mix of virtual sessions and face to face events in Europe.

I’ve also spoken at schools, universities, government departments and private corporate events. 

If you'd like to ask me to speak at your event please have a look at my speaking FAQs or get in touch.

Some favourite speaking themes

My talks have spanned a range of topics over the years, reflecting my career and evolving professional interests. 

In recent years I've been focussing mainly on progressive organisational design, leadership, culture and performance in technology businesses, including:

"What the scaling journey really means for start-up leadership teams"

"Five mistakes scale-up leaders make and how to avoid them in your start-up "

"What does it take to scale teams at pace?"

"The unexpected personal challenges founders experience on the scaling journey"

"What really changes inside your business when you scale - lessons from the inside."

SPEAKING FAQs

What topics are you talking about at the moment?
Check out the themes above for a sense of what I'm spending most of my time on nowadays. It's mainly about how to build and scale resilient progressive technology teams and companies. The topics I cover in my email newsletter are also a good idea of what has my attention and is interesting to audiences.

Can you create a custom talk for us?
Yes. You'll need to brief me properly so that I understand what outcomes you want for your audience. Because of the research, writing and rehearsal time, custom talks cost more than adapting an existing one.

How much does it cost?
It depends! Contact me and we can chat through the range of fees I charge for presentations, chairing and facilitation. 

To speak at an event, I’ll need to have travel and accommodation covered as a minimum, plus the speaker fee if you’re a for-profit event. There's no speaker fee if you're a community or not-for-profit event as long as your values align with mine.

Do you pay to speak at events?
No. The whole "paying to speak" thing is bullshit and I don't entertain it. It gives a sub-par experience for event attendees. Please don't try contacting me to see if I'll make an exception.

What about speaker diversity?
If you want me to speak at an event with multiple speakers or panellists, I need to understand the mix of people you'll be working with. 

It's important to me that conferences and events I work with provide platforms for diverse voices, so please bear that in mind. I will ask and I do reject offers where diversity hasn't been thought about properly.

What information do you need from event organisers?
Here's a useful checklist of what I need to know, so please try to provide as much as possible upfront - it saves me asking!

What’s your event?

Where is it?

When is it?

What audience are you expecting?

Do you have a specific topic in mind?

How long is the slot?

Do you have a code of conduct?

Is this event free for people to attend?

How did you find me and why do you want me in particular?

#### Stuck in the middle: how founder misalignment kills scaling businesses
What happens when the founders at the top stop pulling in the same direction

I want to tell you about a workshop I ran a while back that I still remember vividly. 

I was sitting in a glass-sided meeting room in a London co-working space, literally positioned between two founders on opposite sides of a table.

They fitted the classic visionary-and-integrator pairing almost too perfectly. One kept jumping up to sketch grand ambitions on the whiteboard. The other was buried in a laptop, pulling up spreadsheets showing why we couldn't afford to do any of it. 

I was in coach-and-facilitator mode, feeling caught in the middle, mediating between two highly capable people whose leadership was no longer aligned.

That workshop is still one of the most memorable I've had since I started working with founders in 2014. 

Not because the dynamic was unusual - it wasn't - but because it was the cleanest illustration I've seen of the single most common reason multi-founder businesses get stuck. 

When companies stall, bumping along at the same revenue for years, it's rarely really about market conditions, the threat of AI or the competition. It's about the fundamental tension at the top of the business. 

This article explains the visionary-integrator pattern, why it's responsible for so much unnecessary stall in scaling businesses and what actually breaks the stalemate.

The pattern: visionary, integrator and the widening gap

Across dozens of founder-led growth businesses I've worked with, the pattern is almost always the same. 

You've got one camp that's completely future-focused. They're the visionaries - energised by potential, painting pictures of what could be, often running ahead of the current reality of the business. They're often so zoomed out they can't see what's actually holding the business back day to day. 

They get frustrated when someone (usually the integrator, usually me when I'm in fractional COO mode) explains that before the business can grow, it needs to reset - that it has to build the platform that makes growth possible.

Then there's the other camp. Rooted firmly in the here and now. 

These are the operators - focused on how things actually work, on team performance, on creating some operational stability. They know exactly why that brilliant new initiative is going to break three existing processes. 

They've seen the last three brilliant new initiatives do exactly that. In my experience, and having sat in that seat myself, operators can sometimes be too cautious to see what's really possible ahead. They want to perfect the current business model before moving forward - which in the real world means never really moving forward at all.

Here's where it gets properly difficult. 

Both perspectives are valid. Neither is right or wrong on its own. Both are necessary. 

The visionary without the operator builds castles in the air. The operator without the visionary builds increasingly perfect CD players while the rest of the world moves to streaming. 

Most of the stalled scale-ups I've worked with into aren't stuck because the visionary is wrong or because the integrator is wrong. They're stuck because the two have stopped talking to each other in a way that produces joined-up decisions.

Why misalignment is so easy to miss

Founder misalignment is one of those problems that's visible only from outside the relationship. 

From inside it, both founders feel like they're being reasonable. The visionary is frustrated that the integrator is holding back the growth the business needs. The integrator is frustrated that the visionary won't acknowledge the operational reality the business is facing. 

Neither of them recognises that their individual competences - the things that made them a useful pairing in the first place - have started to function as obstacles to each other.

The outward symptoms are usually these: the leadership team below the founders senses the tension and starts orienting toward one founder or the other, creating two camps. Decisions that should be easy get re-litigated over and over, because neither founder quite trusts that the other is weighing things the same way. Key hires get stuck because the two founders have subtly different ideas about what "great" looks like. 

The business feels heavy - not in crisis, but not moving - and nobody can quite name why.

The commercial symptom is stall. Revenue plateaus. Profit plateaus. Headcount sometimes keeps growing, which makes it worse. 

And the founders blame external factors - the market, the competition, a tough year - when the real cause is sitting between the two of them in every leadership meeting.

What actually fixes it

The good news is that founder misalignment is fixable. It's not easy and it usually requires outside help, but it's not terminal unless the founders decide it is. Four things seem to matter:

1. Explicitly name the pattern. A huge amount of the tension drains out of a founder misalignment once both sides can see it as a pattern rather than as a personal failing of the other. "You're the visionary, I'm the integrator, and we've stopped listening to each other properly" is a very different conversation from "you're being unrealistic" or "you're being negative". This is often the first piece of work an advisor or facilitator does.

2. Agree the non-negotiables for the next 12 months. A shortlist of things both founders will back, even if they'd personally prioritise differently. This is the unlock that lets the business move. You don't need agreement on everything - you need enough agreement on what the business is doing next that the leadership team can stop sensing the split and start executing.

3. Give each founder a clear lane. Misalignment often festers in the overlap between founder roles. Be explicit about who owns what. The visionary might own product and positioning. The integrator might own operations, finance and delivery. Clean lanes don't eliminate the tension, but they contain it - and they stop the leadership team being asked to choose between two bosses.

4. Install a cadence for the hard conversations. Founder misalignment gets worse when the hard conversations are avoided and only happen in flare-ups. A structured rhythm - a regular one-to-one between the two founders, ideally with a third party present, focused specifically on the alignment questions - is one of the most underrated tools I know. It takes the emotion out of the situation because the conversation is expected, not triggered.

When an outside perspective actually helps

The single biggest reason founder misalignment is hard to fix from inside the relationship is that both founders are right, at least in their own frame. Nobody inside the business can referee that without being accused of picking a side. 

An advisor - someone the founders both trust, who has no stake in the outcome, and who has seen this pattern play out in other businesses - can hold the space for both perspectives without taking sides.

What a good advisor does in this situation isn't tell either founder what to do. It's ask the questions that surface the pattern, name it clearly, and help both founders see that the other's frustration is a signal about the business, not an attack on them. Then it's about helping them find the specific agreements - non-negotiables, lanes, cadence - that let the business move again. 

I've done this with multi-founder businesses where the conversations had been going in circles for a year, and the unlock is often a single afternoon of good facilitation combined with a follow-up rhythm to keep it alive.

When the alignment work isn't possible

Honesty works both ways. 

Sometimes founder misalignment is really an incompatibility that the work can't fix. 

If the founders have fundamentally different views of what the business should become, if trust has eroded to the point where neither can accept the other's judgment, or if one founder is materially underperforming in their role, alignment work is papering over something that needs a different conversation. 

That different conversation is usually about one founder stepping out - as a graceful exit, a role change, or a structured buy-out - and it's the kind of work an advisor or a coach should help surface rather than avoid.

The earlier that conversation happens, the less painful it tends to be. 

Founder misalignments left to fester usually end badly for everyone, including the business. 

Caught early and named honestly, they can be resolved - sometimes into a stronger partnership, sometimes into a clean break, but almost always into a better outcome than the slow attritional stall that would otherwise continue.

Next step. If you're reading this from inside a stalled founder relationship, the most useful thing you can do this week is to name the pattern - to yourself, honestly - and consider whether a third party might help unstick the conversation. That third party might be a facilitator, a coach, an advisor, or a fractional COO. What matters is that they can hold both perspectives without picking a side.

Book a call with Simon | Back to the advisor guide

#### Ten questions every founder of a scaling business should be asking
A quarterly diagnostic for founders who want to see their business clearly

Self-reflection is a big part of any coach's journey, and one of the skills worth honing is the ability to step outside yourself and observe objectively. 

A few years ago, on a coaching course, I started thinking about what that same discipline might look like for founders of scaling businesses - and about the questions I found myself discussing over and over again in my work with them. 

Most of the founders I've worked with will be familiar with some version of the ten questions that follow. I offer them here not as a clever framework but as a reusable diagnostic: a set of prompts that reliably surface the next problem worth solving.

Taking a few minutes out to answer these honestly pays back every time. 

The answers point to the next thing to work on. I'd recommend coming back to them every quarter - ideally not in a meeting, but somewhere you can think. The questions are the ones I most often use as the opening agenda for a first conversation with a new advisory client.

The ten questions

1. What's the single sentence that describes your strategy - and why it's differentiated?

If you can't get it into one sentence, nobody else in your business has a chance. And if the sentence doesn't contain the reason you're different from the obvious alternatives, you're describing what you do, not why it matters. Most founders I work with can't answer this cleanly in the first attempt, which is usually the start of a useful conversation rather than a reassuring one.

2. What problems are you solving and for whom?

Not abstract problems. Specific ones. For specific people. The best answers to this question sound concrete - the particular pain, the particular buyer, the particular moment when they're most open to solving it. The worst answers sound like a marketing deck.

3. How are you actively shaping the culture of the company you need to build?

Culture is the thing founders most often assume is happening by itself and most often find is going in a direction they didn't intend. "Shaping" is the operative word - culture is the sum of the signals you send, the behaviour you tolerate, and the examples you set, not the values poster on the wall. What are you actively doing this quarter to shape it?

4. Can everyone in the business name their own goals, the company's goals, and how they're tracking against both?

Walk through your team and ask them. The answer is almost always more patchy than the founder expects. Clear, visible, individually-owned goals are the operating scaffolding that makes scaling businesses scale. Their absence is one of the most common structural gaps I see, and it's almost always the thing beneath "we have an accountability problem".

5. What are the five simple metrics you and your leadership team look at regularly?

Not 25. Not a dashboard. Five. If your business can't name the five numbers that matter most right now, you're running blind - and so is your leadership team. The act of choosing the five forces the clarity that most scale-ups avoid. The wrong answer isn't "we have seven." It's "we don't really track anything meaningful regularly".

6. As a founder, are you playing on the pitch or coaching from the sidelines?

Early-stage founders have to be on the pitch. Scaling-stage founders have to learn to coach from the sideline. If you're still playing every position six years in, you've become the bottleneck without realising it. If you've stepped back too quickly and the team is floundering, you've over-corrected. Where are you right now, and where should you be for the stage your business is at?

7. How systemised is your approach to selling, and how predictable are the results?

A business where sales comes from the founder's personal relationships and ad-hoc hustle is a business with a fragile revenue engine. A business with a documented sales motion - clear positioning, a defined qualification process, a repeatable outbound rhythm, known conversion rates - is a business with something predictable to scale. Where are you on that spectrum?

8. What's your cadence of leadership team meetings and 1-to-1s that give the business strategic and tactical rhythm?

Not whether you have meetings. Whether the meetings constitute a cadence - weekly, monthly, quarterly - each with a clear purpose, and whether the whole rhythm is running consistently or slipping because the founder's calendar is chaotic. The cadence is the operating heartbeat of the business. If it's irregular, so is everything downstream.

9. Are all the roles in the company clearly defined, with the right people in the right seats for this stage?

Role clarity is one of the cheapest, highest-impact interventions in a scaling business - and one of the most avoided. Unclear roles are a hidden cost every business pays but rarely measures. Plus "for this stage" is critical. A great hire at £3m might be the wrong shape at £10m.

10. Are you hiring for today or for tomorrow?

Both are valid answers in context - but the answer should be deliberate. Hiring for today too long means you end up with a team that can't lead you into the next phase. Hiring for tomorrow too early means you're paying for capability the business can't yet use, and the hires disengage. The best founders I know are explicit about which one they're doing and why.

How to use the ten questions

I'd suggest three uses. 

First, the quarterly self-check in - run through them once, honestly, alone. 

Second, the leadership offsite - work through them with your leadership team and see where answers diverge. That divergence is valuable data. 

Third, the advisor conversation - bring them to a structured external conversation and use them to locate the next piece of work. The answers often surface the single most productive thing you could be working on in the next quarter, which is usually more valuable than a detailed strategic plan.

The point of the questions isn't the answers. It's the thinking the questions force. 

Founders who build a habit of asking themselves a version of these regularly tend to make better decisions, see their businesses more clearly, and waste less time on problems that are symptoms of deeper gaps. 

The hardest part is sitting with the uncomfortable answer long enough to act on it.

Next step. Pick the question above whose answer you find hardest to give cleanly. That's almost certainly the one worth starting with. If you want a second pair of eyes on your answers - or the honest external perspective that makes the uncomfortable answers easier to act on - that's exactly what advisory work is for.

Book a call with Simon | Back to the advisor guide

#### Testimonials
TESTIMONIALS

#### The advisor guide: what a good scale-up advisor actually does
What do scale-up advisors actually do?

Advisor is the probably most loosely-used word in the world of founders and early-stage business. Everybody is somebody's advisor and half of the people on LinkedIn seem to be too. The variance in what the role actually delivers and what it's actually worth paying for is enormous.

This guide is the version of the story I wish more founders had before they started hiring advisors. What the role is really for, when it's the right tool, what a good advisor actually does in the room and how to tell the difference between an advisor who's useful and one who's not.

I'm writing this as someone who has sat on both sides of the table. I've been an operator for 26 years - founder, MD and COO of scaling technology businesses, including leading a digital agency we sold to a UK listed holdco and then sitting on the exec team of that group as it grew from £31.5m to £83m in revenue. I've served as a non-executive director on multiple growth-company boards and I currently advise founders and CEOs of scale-ups as a trusted external operator. So when I talk about what a good advisor does, I'm describing the work I do every month and the work I've watched other advisors do well (and badly) for years.

What an advisor is (and what they aren't)

An advisor is an experienced operator who sits outside your business and gives you counsel - usually in a regular monthly or six-weekly rhythm - on the decisions that are too big to get wrong.

The advisor's job isn't to do the work. Their job is to help you see the work more clearly, so the decisions you make about it are better ones. A good advisor is a pattern-matcher, a sounding board, a challenger and - when the founder needs it most - a steadying voice in the middle of a hard week.

That's what they are. What they aren't:

Not a consultant. A consultant is hired to produce a recommendation or execute a specific piece of work. An advisor is hired for judgement over time. The unit of value is the quality of the conversation, not a deliverable.

Not necessarily a board member. Board members carry fiduciary responsibility and legal exposure. Advisors carry neither. The relationship is more informal, more flexible and often more honest - because an advisor can push you in ways a board director is constrained from pushing.

Not a coach. A coach works on the founder while an advisor works on the decisions in front of the founder. The two roles overlap at the edges - most good advisors coach a little, most good founder coaches advise a little - but the centres of gravity are different.

Not a fractional exec. A fractional COO or CMO or CTO is inside the business doing the job. An advisor stays outside the business, helping you think about the job.

When a founder actually needs an advisor

Four patterns show up again and again in the conversations that become advisor engagements.

You're lonely at the top. Not in the sad-founder-on-LinkedIn sense but in the practical sense: there's nobody inside the business who can hear every part of the problem you're carrying, because it involves them. The leadership team you're talking to is part of the thing you're thinking about. You need a peer-level operator outside the business who can hold the whole picture with you.

Big, infrequent decisions are coming up. A fundraise. An acquisition. A CEO transition. A major market move. The sorts of decisions where the cost of getting them wrong is permanent and where your own pattern library has no precedent for what good looks like. I've been through a number of these as an operator - selling an agency, integrating acquired companies, facilitating the leadership transition from founders to an incoming CEO and CFO at TPXimpact - and the single biggest thing that changes the quality of those decisions is having someone in the room who has lived the shape of them before.

You've hit the ceiling of your own judgement in a domain. Not every founder is equally experienced at every function. You might be an exceptional product operator who hasn't yet built a senior commercial team or a brilliant commercial mind who doesn't have an instinct for operations. An advisor with deep knowledge in that specific gap can lift your decision quality right away.

You need somebody to disagree with you. Scaling founders gradually lose access to honest disagreement. The team reports to you. The board is pleasant. Investors are bullish because they're investors. An advisor is person who gives you structured disagreement in your calendar - the person whose job is to push on your thinking before the decision is made.

What a good advisor actually does

The work of an advisor is mostly the work of conversations and most of what happens in those conversations is invisible from the outside. Here's what it actually looks like from inside the relationship.

Reading the board pack before you see it. A good advisor takes the time to understand what's going on in your business in between sessions, not just in them. That means reading the numbers, noticing what's shifting and coming to the conversation with an informed view rather than a blank page.

Asking the question nobody else will. Most of the conversations a founder has about their own business are filtered - by the team's stake in the answer, by the board's ownership or by the investor's agenda. An advisor's job is to be the person who can ask the uncomfortable question because they have nothing to lose by asking it.

Pattern-matching across businesses they've seen. The value of an experienced advisor isn't that they've seen the exact situation you're in - it's that they've seen the shape of it in five other businesses and can tell you how it usually plays out. "This reminds me of a business where…" is something I say a lot and its worth its weight when the decision in front of you is expensive. My own pattern library runs from a listed group at £83m through M&A integrations and exits through to early-stage tech founders finding their operating rhythm for the first time.

Slowing you down when you should slow down. Founders under pressure tend to accelerate. An advisor's job is sometimes to put a hand on the wheel and say "let's not decide this today." The decisions you regret later are almost never the ones you slept on. They're the ones you forced through.

Speeding you up when you should speed up. The opposite is also true. Sometimes a founder has been mulling a decision for three months because the weight of it is too heavy to pick up alone. An advisor gives them the permission and the cover to make the call and move on.

Being available between sessions. The scheduled conversations are the rhythm but founders I work with the value often shows up in the unscheduled ones - something like a quick WhatsApp message on a Tuesday morning: "we've just had a senior resignation - how do I think about rescuing it?" A good advisor gets back to you before the end of the day with something useful, because the value of the counsel grows when it's available at the moment of the decision.

What an advisor engagement looks like in practice

Every advisor works slightly differently, but most good engagements have a similar shape.

A monthly main session. Typically a 60 or 90 minute board or exec team meeting for accountability and working through the issues that are actively in front of you. I prepare by reading the numbers, the board pack and anything you've shared in advance, so the first fifteen minutes aren't me being briefed - they're us getting to work.

Follow-up discussions and agreed actions. After each main session, we have a clear set of things we've decided and our quick chats or check-ins help drive change between sessions.

Access between sessions. That means emails, Slack, WhatsApp and occasional unscheduled calls. Bounded by reasonableness but not limited. I believe the whole point of an advisor is to be there when the judgement is needed not only when it's scheduled.

Occasional attendance at key moments. Some advisor relationships include sitting in on specific board meetings, leadership offsites or particularly consequential conversations when it's useful. I'm not as a participant in the running of the business, but I am a second set of eyes in the room at the moments where the stakes are highest.

A periodic review of the relationship. Step back from the week-to-week and look at whether it's still producing the right kind of value, whether the questions have shifted and whether the cadence is right. Advisor engagements tend to die quietly when nobody audits them.

How to spot a good advisor

Here are five things I'd look for before signing any advisor relationship:

Operator experience, not just advisor experience. Somebody whose entire career has been advising is a much weaker signal than somebody who has run the kind of business you're running and is now advising from that base. The advisors who have only ever advised have a suspicious absence of scars from exposure to real challenges.

Specific preparation. The best advisors arrive with a question that makes it clear they've actually thought about your business in the week before. The weakest ones arrive blank and ask the founder to bring them up to speed. If the first fifteen minutes of every session is briefing rather than advising, I think you're probably paying for the wrong thing.

Willingness to say "I don't know." A good advisor is clear about the edges of their own competence. If the question you're wrestling with is outside the advisor's pattern library, they should say so and ideally point you to the person in their network who does know. The advisors who pretend to have answers in every domain are the ones who quietly do the most damage.

Portfolio discipline. How many founders are they advising at once? If the answer is 15, you're getting a tiny slice of their attention. A good advisor caps the number of live founder relationships they'll have at any particular time so that each founder gets the depth of attention the work actually needs. Ask the question directly - the answer tells you a lot about their approach as an advisor.

A clear view of when the relationship should end. Some advisor relationships should run for years. Some should run for twelve months and then wind up. A good advisor is willing to name the conditions under which they'd advise you to end the engagement - for example because the relationship has done its job or because the business has moved into a phase where a different advisor would serve you better.

When an advisor isn't what you need

And an advisor isn't always the right answer. Here are three situations where the right answer is something other than an advisor:

When the problem is execution, not judgement. If the thing that's breaking is that the business can't ship what it's decided, an advisor is maybe the wrong intervention. You need somebody inside the business making it happen - fractional, interim or a full-time hire. An advisor can help you see why the execution is broken, but they can't fix it from outside.

When the problem is you. If what's holding the business back is the founder's own development - for example how you lead, how you think, how you handle pressure, how you relate to the team - an advisor can maybe help a little with that, but a coach can work on it directly. Don't make an advisor do the coach's job (unless they're a qualified coach as well as an advisor).

When what you actually want is validation. If you're hiring an advisor because you want somebody to tell you that you're right about the decision you've already made, the engagement will produce nothing useful and cost you money. Don't bother. A good advisor's job is to test your thinking, not to ratify it. If you're not ready for the test wait until you are.

What it costs

Advisor fees vary more than any other kind of operator engagement because the role is so loosely defined. For an experienced operator-advisor working with a UK scale-up, monthly retainers typically sit in the £750 to £1,500 range depending on the cadence and the depth of involvement.

Some advisor relationships are paid purely in equity - typically 0.25% to 1% of the business over a two-year vest, depending on the stage and the depth of involvement. Equity-only arrangements work best when the advisor is bringing something quite specific (customer introductions, fundraising networks, domain credibility) rather than general judgement. 

Hybrid retainer-plus-equity is common where the founder wants cash to flow but also wants the advisor to have genuine skin in the game over the long term. I tend to work on fees or a mix of fees and equity - not solely equity.

The cost question actually matters less than the value question as long as there's enough free cashflow. The right advisor relationship can shift the quality of decisions by a noticeable margin for years which is usually worth many multiples of the fee. The wrong advisor relationship is expensive at any price because you end up making worse decisions while feeling more confident about them.

How I work as an advisor

I advise founders and CEOs of £1m–£15m UK and US scale-ups - typically tech-centric businesses, agencies, SaaS and professional services firms with 10 to 125 people. The rhythm is usually a monthly board or exec team meeting plus access between sessions for the things that can't wait. I cap the number of founders I work with at any given time so that each relationship gets real attention. I expect to know your business well enough to bring a view to the room, not to arrive as a blank page.

Alongside my independent advisory work, I hold non-executive director roles on the boards of growth companies including thinkTRIBE and Extra Brain and I chair the audit and risk committee of a national charity. That mix of sitting on boards and advising founders from outside the boardroom gives me a useful view of the full range of governance and advisory relationships. I find it sharpens my judgement about which shape is actually right for a given founder.

I work best with founders who are carrying the weight of big operational decisions and want a peer-level operator in the room who has lived through the shape of what they're facing. If the problem is fundamentally one of execution rather than judgement, I'll say so in the first conversation and point you at the right answer - which may or may not be me.

Our first conversation is free and diagnostic-focussed. My goal is to be honest about whether an advisor engagement is actually the right shape for the problem in front of you, not to sell you one regardless. 

Further reading

These articles go deeper into the themes that come up most often in my advisory work with founders of scaling businesses.

Grow your company like you're preparing to sell - even if you're not - the discipline of being exit-ready without planning an exit.

Why founders get decision-making backwards - how better decisions happen when you stop pretending emotions don't exist.

Stuck in the middle: how founder misalignment kills scaling businesses - what happens when the founders at the top stop pulling in the same direction.

Ten questions every founder of a scaling business should be asking - a quarterly diagnostic for founders who want to see their business clearly.

How 'professional management' can make a scaling business worse - why more process isn't always the answer.

If you're weighing up whether you need an advisor  or whether the problem in front of you would be better served by a different shape of help, just book a free 30-minute conversation. No pitch. Just a useful diagnostic.

Book a call with Simon

#### The consultant COO guide: project-based operational leadership for scale-ups
Explaining what a consultant COO does in practice

Most of what I've seen written about COOs assumes you're either hiring one full-time or not at all. The reality for a lot of scaling businesses is more specific than that: there's a particular operational problem sitting in front of the founder, it's going to take months of experienced executive time to sort out and when it's done the business will go back to running fine without that person in the seat.

That's the work a consultant COO does. And it's a lot of the work I do with my clients.

I'm an independent COO who's spent more than 26 years in scaling businesses - as a founder, as MD of a digital transformation agency we sold to a UK-listed group in 2018 and then as COO of that group (TPXimpact plc) as we scaled from £31.5m to £83m in revenue across the integration of multiple acquired companies. Those experiences are where my consultant COO work comes from: I've been the operator in the room the first time so when founders bring me in now it's rarely a situation I haven't lived through some version of.

This guide explains what a consultant COO engagement actually looks like, when it's the right shape for the problem in front of you and how it differs from the other options - fractional, interim and generic management consultancy.

What a consultant COO is

A consultant COO is an experienced chief operating officer brought in to lead a specific piece of operational work for a defined period. They have a defined outcome and then step out of the business.

The job isn't to "help think about" the problem. The job is to go in, lead the work that fixes it and leave the business in better shape than they found it. I take a pragmatic, evidence-led approach to doing this. I don't arrive with a standard playbook. I diagnose the underlying problems, work out how to fix them fast and then solve them collaboratively alongside you and your team.

The difference between a consultant COO and a generic management consultancy engagement is in the delivery. A consultancy engagement usually ends in a recommendation - for example a deck, a model, a roadmap - that somebody else in the business then has to execute. A consultant COO engagement ends in the change having been made. The operator is in the room, on the calls, running the conversations and building the decisions into the operating rhythm. The accountability sits with them, not with an implementation team that forms afterwards.

The difference between a consultant COO and a fractional COO is scope. A fractional COO is usually open-ended - they run parts of the business with you for as long as it's useful. A consultant COO is time-boxed and outcome-boxed. You hire them for the thing, they do the thing and then they go.

The three shapes of consultant COO engagement

Across the work I've done since 2014, consultant COO engagements almost always fall into one of three shapes. If what you're facing doesn't match one of these, the engagement probably isn't a suitable for consultant COO - it's something else.

1. Restructure

The shape of the business has stopped matching what the business needs to do. This isn't usually a crisis - it's usually growth that's behind the need to change. Functions that made sense at £3m don't make sense at £10m. Decisions that used to run through one person have bounced around three. The weekly rhythm has turned into a weekly performance, with the same problems being debated in the same meetings because nothing has the authority to close them.

Restructure work is rarely about redundancies, though occasionally it includes them. More often it's about redrawing reporting lines, rebuilding the exec layer, unbundling a function that's become two jobs in one seat or merging two functions that don't need to be separate. The work is sensitive, needs experienced hands and needs to land cleanly because you don't want to do it twice.

2. Transformation or system rollout

A big piece of change - such a new ERP, a new CRM, a new service model or a new way of working - needs to land inside the business. You know you can't run it off the side of an existing exec's desk because it'll take nine months and nobody has nine months of spare capacity. You also know a pure project manager isn't enough because the change touches every function and needs someone with senior experience to make the hard calls.

A consultant COO sits above the project layer, owning the outcome rather than the Gantt chart. Their job is to keep the change moving through the organisation without breaking the parts of the business that still need to run normally while the change is landing.

3. M&A integration or a specific operational problem

You've just bought a company - or been bought by one - and two operating models now have to become one. M&A integration is work I've done first-hand on both sides: I led the integration of the agency I sold into the TPXimpact group and delivered the earn-out targets ahead of plan, and as COO of the group I then ran operational due diligence and integration on the next wave of acquired companies. It's one of the places where experience and scars count for more than any methodology.

The other version of this category is the specific operational problem that has defeated the business for twelve months: margin is leaking somewhere and you can't find where, a key function is underperforming and the incumbent leader is struggling to fix it or the business has outgrown a specific process and needs it rebuilt from the ground up.

These engagements are the most varied, but they share a structure: there's a defined thing that needs to change, an experienced operator is the right person to lead the change and when the change is done the business can absorb it and move on.

When a consultant COO is the right call

I've noticed four signals that suggest the problem in front of you is a consultant COO shape:

The outcome can be named. You can finish the sentence "at the end of this engagement, the business will have…" with a concrete thing. A new org structure. A landed system. An integrated operation. A fixed process. If the best you can do is "the business will be running better," you probably want a fractional COO, not a consultant.

The work is bounded but not small. This isn't a three-week sprint. It's a three-to-nine-month piece of executive work that needs the weight of an experienced operator. Anything shorter and you're looking at an interim operator or a specialist consultant. Anything longer and the work is probably really an ongoing fractional engagement in disguise.

The existing team can't do it on top of their day jobs. Not because they lack capability (although that might be a factor) - but because they lack bandwidth or because the work cuts across functions in a way that would put any single function head in a difficult political position. A consultant COO brings the horizontal authority the existing org chart doesn't have.

You don't need an ongoing COO afterwards. When the work is done, the business goes back to running fine with the leadership team it already has. The COO role was temporary and everyone involved understood that from the start. That removes a perceived threat to existing permanent team members.

Consultant COO vs fractional vs interim vs management consultant

The boundaries do blur in practice, but the useful distinctions are:

Consultant COO: defined project, defined outcome, experienced operator in the room, finite engagement. Typical length: 3–9 months.

Fractional COO: ongoing operational leadership on a defined number of days per week, open-ended. The goal is running the business better, not finishing a specific thing. Typical length: 6-12 months plus.

Interim COO: full-time executive sitting in the COO seat, usually because the full-time incumbent has left or the business is between hires. Time-boxed, high-intensity, full-calendar. Typical length: 3–6 months.

Management consultancy: typically a team from an external firm producing analysis, recommendations and implementation plans, often with junior consultants doing the research and partners fronting the client relationship. Hands-off the day-to-day. Strong on analysis, weaker on shipping change into a live operating model.

If the shape of the problem wants "a senior operator in the room for a few months to lead a defined piece of work," that's a consultant COO. If it wants "twenty smart graduates producing a two-hundred-page deck," that's management consultancy. They're different tools for different problems. Neither is necessarily wrong; they're just rarely interchangeable. Most businesses I work with don't want management consultancy.

What a consultant COO engagement actually looks like

Every engagement is shaped by the problem, but there's a common pattern underneath and it's what I use in every engagement I take on.

The start - diagnosis, plan and align. I get properly under the skin of the business before suggesting anything. Read the numbers. Meet the people. Understand the context. Pressure-test the scope I thought I was being hired for. A lot of consultant COO engagements start with the founder believing the problem is X and finish week two with everybody agreeing the problem is actually Y. Better to find that out in week two than in month three. Then we co-produce a plan - short, sharp, and specific - and take the leadership team through it. We agree what's in scope, what's out, what good looks like and what decisions the engagement will own. 

The middle. Execute. Lead the work. Run the meetings. Make the calls. Write the decisions into the operating rhythm so they outlast the engagement. This is the bit where a consultant COO earns their keep - not by producing new analysis, but by making sure the change actually lands and sticks inside the business.

The last month. Hand over. The team picks up the new structure, the new process, the new system, the new way of working. The consultant COO steps back with a clear set of notes for whoever is picking up the running of the thing going forward. A good exit is visible - you don't want to be the operator who quietly becomes permanent because nobody said out loud that the engagement was done.

What it costs

Consultant COO engagements are usually priced as a fixed project fee or a monthly retainer with a defined end date, depending on the shape of the work.

For a typical three-to-nine-month engagement working with a £1m–£15m UK scale-up, total fees will usually sit in the £15k–£50k range. That's less than a management consultancy would typically charge for a project of similar scope because you're not paying for a team and a partner layer on top - you're only paying for the operator. It's meaningfully more than you'd pay for a pure project manager, because the value is executive judgement not just coordination.

Compared to the cost of the problem not getting solved - things like a restructure that drags for a year, a system rollout that stalls, an integration that leaks margin - the engagement usually pays for itself several times over if it's scoped correctly. The failures happen when scoping is wrong: too narrow means the work doesn't actually fix the underlying problem; too broad means the engagement turns into a fractional relationship that nobody actually signed up to.

How to spot a good consultant COO

The same three things that matter for a fractional COO also matter here - operator track record, relevant experience at your stage and a willingness to push back - plus three additional signals that are specific to project work:

They interrogate your scope before they accept the engagement. The worst consultant COOs say yes to whatever you describe in the first call. The best ones spend the first conversation probing what you actually want, which means they sometimes tell you in week one that the scope you proposed is wrong and needs redrawing. 

They know how to exit. Ask them directly what the last month of the engagement looks like. A good consultant COO has a clear picture of handover - who owns what afterwards, what notes they leave behind and how they make sure the change outlasts them. If they can't answer this question, they haven't done enough of this work before.

They've lived inside businesses like yours. The skill of leading a restructure, a transformation or an integration doesn't transfer cleanly from one industry and one scale to another. My operator experience is strongest in agencies, SaaS, technology-centric businesses and professional services because that's where I've actually run things. If your business sits outside those sectors, I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right fit.

When a consultant COO is the wrong call

When the problem isn't really bounded. If what you're describing is "the business is a bit of a mess" without a specific change you can name, don't hire a consultant COO - you'll waste the first six weeks of the engagement trying to define the work. Either do that definition yourself first or hire a fractional COO who can live inside the ambiguity to work out the answers.

When the real problem is the CEO. A consultant COO can't fix a business whose biggest operational problem is the founder's own judgement or bandwidth. That's a coaching and/or advisor conversation not an operational engagement. The symptoms will look operational but the work certainly isn't.

When you actually want somebody to stay. If what you really want is an ongoing operator who becomes part of the fabric of the business, hire fractional from the start. Hiring a consultant COO and then extending the engagement every few months is the most expensive path to the same destination.

How I work as a consultant COO

My consultant COO engagements are project-based, with a scoped outcome, a scoped timeline and a fixed fee. Most sit in the three-to-six month range. I only take on work where the outcome can be named clearly because I've learned the hard way that vague engagements produce vague results.

The work I do as a consultant COO includes organisational design and team reviews, operational audits and improvements, sell-side and buy-side M&A preparation and execution, leadership succession and transitions, integration and major organisational change, operating model design and specific operational improvements that have been defeating the business for months. The unifying thread is that every engagement is about shipping change into a real, live, scaling business not producing a deck about what the change should look like.

The first conversation is always diagnostic - I'd rather tell you in week one that your scope isn't quite the shape you thought it was than discover it three months in. If the problem turns out to be better suited to a fractional engagement, a coaching conversation or an advisory relationship, I'll say so. Part of the job is helping you pick the right tool, even when that tool is a different one to the one we started discussing.

When I take on a consultant COO engagement, I'm usually in the business the way a full-time operator would be - in the meetings, on Slack, making decisions in real time. The difference is the time-box. We both know, from day one, what the engagement is for and when it ends. Good consultant COO work is visible in the quality of the exit as much as in the quality of the middle.

Further reading

These articles go deeper into two of the most common shapes of consultant COO engagement.

Organisational debt: the hidden tax on every scaling business — the operational debt most scaling businesses don't know they're paying, and how to manage the backlog.

Restructuring a scaling business without breaking it — why the restructure is almost always the wrong first move, and what to do instead.

Next step. If you've got a specific operational piece of work in front of you and you're weighing up whether a consultant COO is the right shape for it, book a diagnostic conversation. We'll spend 30 minutes exploring the scope and working out whether this is a consultant COO engagement, a fractional engagement or something else entirely.

Book a call with Simon

#### The founder coaching guide: leadership development for scaling founders
How coaching helps founders in growth businesses

I came to coaching the long way round. I had twenty-six years experience as a founder, managing director and chief operating officer first - running agencies, scaling a listed technology group from £31.5m to £83m, leading teams through acquisitions, integrations and leadership transitions - and only then formally training as a coach. I've been coaching founders and operational leaders since 2021 and the reason I trained properly rather than coaching based on my operator CV was simple: I wanted to do this work to the standard I'd want if I were the founder sitting on the other side of the conversation.

This guide is the honest version of what founder coaching is, how it's different from the adjacent roles (advisor, mentor, therapist, consultant), when it's the right tool, what a session actually looks like, how to choose a coach and most importantly when to step away from coaching. If you're a founder weighing up whether coaching is the right investment of your time and money, this page is written for you.

What founder coaching actually is

Coaching is a structured, confidential conversation between a founder and a trained coach, usually on a regular rhythm, designed to help the founder think more clearly, decide more wisely and grow as the person leading the business.

The defining feature of coaching - the thing that makes it different from advising, mentoring or consulting - is that the coach doesn't bring the answers. The coach brings questions, a framework for thinking and disciplined attention. The answers come from the founder because the founder is the one who has to live with them.

This sounds counter-intuitive to founders the first time they hear it. Why pay somebody to ask questions? Isn't it faster if they just tell you what they'd do?

The short answer is that the work a founder most needs help with isn't the kind of work that responds to being told. Decisions about how you lead, how you show up, how you handle pressure, how you manage your own reactions, how you sit with the uncertainty of a hard week - these aren't problems where somebody else's answer maps cleanly onto your life. The work has to be yours. My job as a coach is to make the work happen faster and more reliably than it would if you were doing it alone.

The distinction: coaching, advising, mentoring, therapy

These four words get used interchangeably and they shouldn't be. The roles do different work and it's a problem when they get mixed up. 

A coach works on the founder. The subject of the conversation is you - how you're leading, how you're thinking, how you're holding the weight of the role. The business shows up as context not as the central subject. A coach will almost never tell you what to do about the business. They will help you work out what you want to do about the business and why.

An advisor works on the decisions in front of the founder. The subject of the conversation is the business - which way to jump on this fundraise, how to think about this acquisition, how to structure this exec team. An advisor is expected to bring pattern-matched views from their own experience. (I also work with founders as an advisor, separately from coaching - but the two are different engagements and I'm clear with founders about which mode we're in.)

A mentor is someone a little further along the path you're on, usually with a more informal, less structured relationship. Mentoring sits between coaching and advising - a mentor will sometimes ask good questions and sometimes give direct advice. In my experience it's generally looser by design.

A therapist works on psychological issues, often with a clinical purpose. Therapy is the right tool if what you're facing is a mental health concern, a trauma, or a pattern of life that extends beyond the work context. Coaches are not therapists, and a good coach will tell you directly if what you actually need is therapy. Only work with a qualified therapist - not a coach. I am not a qualified therapist but I know some good ones.

The cleanest way to think about the difference between coaching and therapy: therapy is often oriented backwards toward understanding and healing things from the past. Coaching is oriented forwards toward what you want to do and who you want to become from here. The two overlap, but they're doing different work.

Why an operator-coach hybrid is different

There are plenty of excellent coaches who have never run a scaling business. There are also plenty of ex-operators who call themselves coaches without ever having been trained in the craft. Both can work but the founders I coach tell me the combination is what they were actually looking for.

What the combination means in practice is that I can sit in a conversation about a board dynamic, a restructure, a commercial crisis or an acquisition and understand the texture of what you're describing - without falling into the trap of giving you the answer I'd have given as a COO. I've been inside those rooms. I've made those decisions. I've lived with the consequences. That fluency lets coaching work on the real situation rather than on a sanitised version of it and it keeps me honest about the difference between coaching (the work is yours) and operator advice (the work is mine).

When founder coaching is the right tool

Here are five patterns where I've found coaching is consistently valuable for founders of scaling businesses.

The founder-to-CEO transition. The skills that got the business to £3m - like being in everything, doing most things personally, moving fast on instinct - are not the skills that will get it to £15m. Somewhere in the middle the founder has to become a different kind of leader and that's a transition coaching is purpose-built for. The business is asking for a version of the founder that doesn't exist yet and coaching is the space where that version gets built.

Letting go. At every stage of a scaling business, the founder has to let go of something - a function they used to run, a decision they used to make, a relationship they used to own. The letting-go is rarely rational. It's almost always emotional even when it doesn't feel that way. Coaching is where the emotional work of letting go happens, so that the operational work of delegating can actually land.

The weight of the role. Founders are carrying the psychological load of a whole business, often without a peer to share it with. That load doesn't always look like burnout - sometimes it looks like short temper, sometimes it looks like avoidance, sometimes it looks like drift. Coaching is a structured place to put the weight down for an hour, look at it properly and then pick it back up in a way that's more manageable.

A particular relationship that isn't working. Maybe with a co-founder, a key hire, an investor, a board member. These conversations are hard to have clearly inside the business because every possible sounding board has their own stake in the answer. A coaching call is the one place where you can think about the relationship without the politics getting in the way.

A quiet sense that you're not leading the way you want to. You're doing the job and the business is fine. But you've noticed that the way you show up at work is a little more reactive, a little more tired, a little less like the version of yourself you'd want your team to see. Coaching gets to work on that gap before it becomes something more expensive.

I also work with members of founders' leadership teams, which is often where coaching has the fastest visible impact on the business. A senior hire who is being set up to grow into a bigger role - for example a Head of Delivery who is going to become a VP of Operations or a new COO stepping into the seat for the first time - is a perfect candidate for structured coaching alongside the operational work they're doing.

What actually happens in a coaching session

Founders who haven't been coached before are often curious about what a session is actually like. The honest version is less mystical than it sounds and more useful than it looks from outside.

My sessions run for one hour. They start with a check-in - what's on your mind, what happened since the last session, what you want to use this time for. I listen more than I speak in the first part of the conversation, partly because listening is the job and partly because what a founder brings in the opening minutes is almost never the thing the session ends up being about.

Then the session narrows. My job is to help you find the specific piece of the problem that matters most, name it clearly, and sit inside it long enough to see things you wouldn't have seen on your own. That might involve questions you find uncomfortable. It almost always involves silences - long ones - because some of the best thinking you'll do in the session happens in the space I leave rather than in the words I say.

Toward the end of the session, the conversation turns to action - not action in the sense of tasks, but in the sense of what you want to be different next week because of what you've understood in this hour. Sometimes that's a specific conversation you've committed to have. Sometimes it's a practice like a way of paying attention that you're going to try. Sometimes it's just a clearer view of the decision you were circling, and permission to take your time with it.

Good coaching feels as though something has settled after the session. The problem that walked into the room is usually still there but the founder is meeting it differently.

How to choose a founder coach

Coaching is a market with a huge range of quality and the things that matter aren't always the obvious ones. Here's what I'd actually pay attention to if I was a founder looking for a coach.

Formal training, not just experience. Coaching is a craft that can be taught. Look for coaches who have gone through a substantive training programme and work within the code of ethics of a professional body. My own training is the Human Technics Advanced Certificate in Executive Coaching, accredited by the University of the West of England, the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and the Institute of Leadership. I work within the ICF Code of Ethics. Accreditation isn't a guarantee of quality on its own, but the absence of any credible training is a warning sign: it usually means the coach has decided they don't need training because they're "naturally" a good coach. 

Experience in the founder world, not just the corporate one. Coaching a founder of a scale-up is different from coaching a senior manager at a FTSE 100. The stakes are more personal, the context is messier, the weight is carried differently. A coach who has worked primarily with corporate executives may be excellent but may not know the shape of founder life well enough to meet you where you are.

An operator background (or at least operator fluency). You don't need a coach who's been a CEO. But you do need a coach who can sit in the room with a founder talking about a board meeting, an exec-team restructure or a commercial crisis and understand the context of what's being described, not treat every business decision as an abstract case study. Operator fluency lets the coaching work on the real situation rather than on a sanitised version of it.

Somebody whose questions you actually feel in the first conversation. Every good coach offers a chemistry session - a first conversation that's free and that lets you test the relationship. In that hour pay attention to whether the coach's questions move you. Do you find yourself thinking about something differently by the end of the call? Do you feel a little uncomfortable (in a useful way)? If the call felt pleasant but unmemorable, the coach probably isn't the right fit for the work you need to do.

Clarity about what they won't do. A good coach is open about the boundaries of coaching. They won't diagnose. They won't tell you what to do about a specific business decision (that's advisory work). They won't work with somebody who needs clinical mental health support rather than coaching. If the coach pretends to do everything, be cautious.

When coaching isn't the right tool

When what you actually need is advice. If the problem in front of you is "should I structure this acquisition as a share deal or an asset deal?" you don't need a coach - you need an advisor or a lawyer. Coaching can help you work out what you want to achieve with the deal, but it's not the tool for the mechanics of the decision. If that's where you are, my advisory or consultant COO services are likely to be a better fit than coaching.

When the problem is clinical. If you're experiencing something that a good coach would recognise as a mental health concern - sustained low mood, anxiety that's interfering with day-to-day life, trauma, anything that sits beyond the work context - coaching isn't the right tool. A good therapist is. A coach who keeps coaching you when the work has moved into clinical territory is not a good coach.

When you're not willing to be the subject. Coaching only works if the founder is prepared to do the work - to look at themselves honestly, to answer hard questions, to sit with discomfort. Some founders aren't ready for that,or aren't ready for that yet. Coaching with a reluctant founder produces frustration on both sides. It's better to start when you're willing.

How I work as a founder coach

I work with a small number of founders and senior operators at any one time. Coaching sessions are one hour long, on a fortnightly or monthly rhythm, delivered remotely - which means I work with clients across the UK, Europe and the US in their own time zones. Engagements usually run over an initial six months with a review at the end where we decide whether to continue.

Every engagement starts with a chemistry session - a first conversation where the point is to find out whether the work between us is going to be useful. If it's not, I'll say so. There are other good coaches, and part of the job is making sure you're with the right one even when that isn't me.

The founders and operators I coach tend to be leading scaling businesses between £1m and £15m revenue typically with 10 to 125 people. That's the context I know best from my operator career and it's where the coaching work lands most cleanly against the challenges you're actually carrying.

Further reading

These articles go deeper into the themes that come up most often in my coaching work with founders of scaling businesses.

Founder to CEO: how to make the shift — the hardest move most founders ever make, and the five shifts that actually work.

The founder's paradox: letting go without losing control — why the letting-go conversation is never really about delegation.

Why congruence is the most underrated leadership trait — the leadership quality nobody talks about but every team can feel.

Reflective leadership: the practice most founders skip — the highest-leverage habit most founders never build.

Next step. If something in this guide has landed with you, book a chemistry session. We'll spend the time in a real coaching conversation - not a sales call - and at the end of it you'll have a clearer view of whether coaching is the right tool for what you're carrying and whether I'm the right person to do it with.

Work with me as a founder coach →

#### The founder's paradox: letting go without losing control
Why the letting-go conversation is never really about delegation

The most common conversation I have with founders at around sixty to a hundred and twenty people goes something like this: "I know I need to let go of more. I know the team could do it. But every time I try, something breaks, or the quality slips, or I just can't bring myself to sign off on something I'd have done differently. So I take it back."

This is the founder's paradox. Founder letting go is the work everyone agrees needs to happen - and the work almost no founder finds easy, because on the surface it feels like a choice between staying in control of a business you built and losing control of a business you built. It isn't. But until you can see why it isn't, the pattern repeats.

I've spent 26 years inside scaling businesses, including selling my own agency Deeson to Panoply in 2018 and scaling TPXimpact from £31.5m to £83m as its Group COO. I've also gone through this exact pattern myself. And as an ICF-credentialled coach I now sit with founders who are in the middle of it. This article is about why the paradox is so stubborn, and what actually dissolves it.

Why "just delegate more" doesn't work

If letting go was a delegation problem, every founder would have solved it years ago. The advice is everywhere. The books are on every founder's Kindle. The frustration isn't a lack of tools - it's that the tools don't reach the thing that's actually keeping the founder stuck.

What's keeping them stuck is usually some combination of three things:

Identity. "I am the person who cares most about this." Letting someone else own the decision feels like losing a piece of yourself.
Standards. "Nobody else will hold the bar as high as I do." Often partly true, and often used as a reason not to even try.
Risk. "If this goes wrong it's still my name on it." Also true, and deeply uncomfortable when the downside is the thing you built.

None of these are irrational. They're all doing a real job. The work isn't to override them - it's to meet them, and then build structures that make it safe to let go anyway.

The paradox, properly stated

Most founders experience the paradox as: I have to let go, but if I let go, the business suffers. That framing is a trap because it makes every attempt to let go feel like an act of faith.

The more useful framing is this: control and leverage are different things, and the founder who's been acting as the ultimate safety net has been confusing them. When you're personally reviewing every major decision, you feel in control - but the business has almost no leverage, because it's bottlenecked on you. The moment you step back, you lose that feeling of control. What you gain, if you've set things up properly, is actual leverage: the business can now do things you aren't personally touching, at a quality level you trust.

Letting go isn't the same as losing control. It's trading a specific kind of control (doing) for a different kind (designing). The founders who can see that distinction clearly find the transition much easier. The ones who can't spend years cycling through the same pattern.

"Simon has a gift for helping me see what I couldn't see myself. He brings a calm, thoughtful presence to the work and a real depth of experience to draw on."Louise Lai, Chief People Officer, TPXimpact

What actually dissolves it

Start with what the fear is actually pointing at

When a founder says "I can't let go of sales yet", the next question I always ask in coaching is: what specifically do you think will go wrong? The answer is rarely "the whole pipeline will collapse". It's usually something much more specific. "I don't trust that the account manager will spot when a client is getting cold feet." Or "I think the new commercial lead will discount too aggressively." Or "Nobody else has the relationship with this one strategic client."

Those are all tractable problems. They're not "letting go" problems - they're coaching problems, hiring problems, or structural problems. Once you name the specific fear, you can do something about it. While it stays a general feeling of "I can't", you can't.

Build the scaffolding before you step off

Nobody lets go well into a vacuum. The founders who make this transition cleanly almost always build structural scaffolding first: clear decision rights, an operating cadence that surfaces problems early, a leadership team with the authority to actually decide things, and a set of standards everyone can reference without calling the founder. That's what a business operating system is really for - not paperwork, but giving the founder something to let go into.

Let go of the right things first

Not everything is equal. Some things should stay in the founder's hands for a long time (direction, hiring the top team, capital allocation, the relationships that define the company). Some things should leave their hands immediately (day-to-day ops, most hiring below senior level, internal meetings that don't need their presence). The problem is that most founders try to let go of the second category while still clinging to decisions inside the first, and that triggers the "losing control" feeling.

Start with the low-stakes handovers. Let them go badly a few times. Coach the team back up. Build confidence on both sides. Then move up the stack.

Be honest about the identity piece

For a lot of founders the real resistance isn't practical. It's that "I am the person who does X" has become load-bearing for their sense of self, and giving X away feels like disappearing a little bit. If that's live for you, it's worth saying out loud - to a coach, to a trusted peer, to yourself. Otherwise it'll keep pulling decisions towards the old pattern without you noticing.

Accept that the quality bar will wobble, then recover

When someone new takes over something you've been doing brilliantly for years, the first version will almost certainly be worse. That's a feature of handover, not a bug. The question isn't "is this as good as when I did it?" - it's "is this person capable of getting to as good as I did it, with coaching, over the next six to twelve months?" If yes, you're in the right place. If no, you've got a hiring or development problem, which is a different conversation.

The signs you're making progress

You find out about problems in the business because someone tells you about them, not because you personally caught them.
You can take a proper holiday without the business grinding to a halt or blowing up while you're away.
Decisions you wouldn't have quite made the same way are happening - and most of them turn out fine.
Your calendar has more space for strategy, external relationships, and deep thinking than it did six months ago.
Your leadership team is coming to you with options and recommendations, not questions.

These are the signs the leverage is real, not just performative. If your calendar is still full but the business is still bottlenecked on you, the letting go hasn't actually happened yet - it's just moved to a different layer.

Next step. Letting go is the single most common theme I work on with founders in leadership coaching. It sits right next to the founder to CEO transition and the work of building a system of real accountability around the leadership team. The broader view lives in the founder coaching guide. If you want to talk about where you're stuck, the leadership coaching service page explains how it works and how to get in touch. Or book a call with Simon to work through your specific situation.

#### The fractional COO guide: when to hire one, what they actually do, and how it works
If you're reading this, there's a reasonable chance you're a founder whose business has grown past the point where you can run it on instinct and spreadsheets - but not yet past the point where a full-time COO at £150k+ makes sense. That middle ground is where a fractional COO lives.

This guide is the operator's-eye view. I've worked exclusively with founders of scaling businesses since 2014, first as the MD of the digital agency I ran and sold to the listed Panoply group, then as COO of that listed group as we scaled from £31.5m to £83m in revenue and from 361 to 700 people, and now as an independent fractional COO working with tech-centric scale-ups in the UK and US. What follows is what I wish I'd been able to find in a single place when I was first trying to work out whether a fractional COO was the right call for the business I was running.

Here's what you'll get:

What a fractional COO actually is (and what they aren't)

The signs a business is ready for one

What the work looks like in an average week

How fractional differs from interim, consulting, and advisory

What it costs compared to hiring full-time

How to spot a good one

When a fractional COO is the wrong answer

What a fractional COO actually is

A fractional COO is a chief operating officer who works inside your business for a defined number of days a week or month, embedded in your leadership team, carrying the same operational responsibilities they'd carry if they were sitting in the COO seat full-time.

That's the definition. It's not quite what most founders are buying when they hire one.

What they're actually buying is an experienced operator who can walk in, read the operational state of the business in a few weeks, and then start making it work better. Not by writing reports. Not by running workshops. By doing the job. I'm a hands-on leader and practitioner who's spent more than 26 years in the trenches as a founder, MD and COO — not a consultant with theory, untested frameworks and a lot of slides.

The fractional part is about cost and flexibility — you're paying for a slice of someone's week, not all of it. The COO part is the operator bit: this person is inside the business, carrying executive responsibility, not advising from a distance.

If you think of a COO as the person who makes sure the strategy the CEO has decided on actually gets executed — who runs the operational rhythm, who owns the shape of the organisation, who makes sure the promises the business makes externally are kept internally — then a fractional COO is that person, on the days your business needs them.

When a founder actually needs a fractional COO

Most founders I work with don't come looking for a fractional COO because they've read an article about what one is. They come looking because something specific has gone wrong, and they can feel it even if they can't quite name it. These are the patterns I see again and again with founders of £1m–£15m businesses with 10 to 125 people:

You're the bottleneck. Every decision above a certain size comes back to you. You've tried to delegate but it keeps bouncing. The team defaults to asking you because the cost of being wrong is higher than the cost of waiting.

You're firefighting instead of building. The calendar is full of things breaking. By the time you fix one thing, two others are on fire. There's no time to do the work that would stop the fires starting in the first place.

Your leadership team is good at their jobs but not at running the business. Your head of product is brilliant at product. Your head of sales is brilliant at sales. But nobody is stitching those functions together into something that operates as one business.

Growth has broken the way you run the company. The operating model that worked at £2m is now actively hurting you at £8m. You know it. You don't have the bandwidth to redesign it while also running it.

You're headed for a transition the current team hasn't done before. A fundraise. An acquisition. An international expansion. A restructure. The weight of it is sitting on your desk because nobody else in the business has lived through it. In my case, I've sat on both sides of an acquisition — I sold the agency I ran into the Panoply group in 2018 and then led its integration, before becoming COO of the group and running operational due diligence on the next wave of acquisitions. Founders doing this for the first time don't need to reinvent that playbook.

If any two of those are true, you probably need a fractional COO. If three or more are true, you needed one six months ago.

What a fractional COO actually does

This is the question I get asked more than any other, and the honest answer is: it depends on what the business needs. But there are a handful of things I find myself doing in almost every engagement, because almost every scaling business I've seen has the same shape of problem underneath.

Installing a business operating system. Not software — a rhythm. A weekly cadence of the right meetings with the right people asking the right questions, producing the right decisions. Most scaling businesses have meetings. Very few have an operating system. The difference is whether the meetings produce outcomes or just occupy time. The way I think about this is captured in a framework I call B³, which I developed in 2023 from interviews with more than 50 scale-up founders. It's deliberately solution-agnostic: the job isn't to impose a playbook, it's to work out what your business actually needs and build the right operating system with you.

Sharpening accountability. Not in the HR sense. In the operational sense: who owns what, what good looks like for the thing they own, and how often we check. When a team is drifting, it's almost never because the people are bad. It's because the accountability is blurred.

Redesigning how the organisation is shaped. The org chart a founder drew at £2m will usually have sedimented into something unhelpful by £8m. Functions have grown in lumps. Decisions have clumped around individuals. The lines on the chart don't match the flows of work. Part of the job is redrawing the thing so the shape matches the purpose again.

Unblocking the founder. A good fractional COO makes the founder lighter, not heavier. That means taking things off the founder's desk, building the structure that lets other people make the decisions the founder is currently making, and giving the founder their thinking time back.

Running the hard conversations. The ones about underperformers, about budgets that won't stretch, about the leadership team member who was brilliant two years ago and isn't now. These conversations need experience more than they need courage. A fractional COO has had them dozens of times before.

Being the second pair of operator eyes. Founders in scale-ups rarely have a peer inside the business. The leadership team reports to them. The board looks in from outside. A fractional COO is the thing in the middle — inside enough to be useful, outside enough to be honest.

What a typical week looks like

People always want me to describe an "average" week, so here's my honest answer for a founder on a two-days-a-week engagement with me.

The two days in the business — usually one of those physically in the office if geography allows, one remote — running the operating rhythm, sitting in or chairing leadership meetings, working with specific team members on specific problems. Those two days are the thing the team feels. I'm in your Slack, your calendar, your decisions.

The quiet work between the days. The stuff that doesn't happen in meetings. Reading the numbers carefully. Watching where work is getting stuck. Drafting a new decision framework. Redrawing an org structure. Preparing the conversation I'm going to have with the founder in our next 1:1.

The founder conversation. A standing weekly 1:1 plus unscheduled time when something needs my judgement that day. The conversations are about what the founder is wrestling with that week, what the business needs to decide, what's coming down the road.

Unlimited access to me between those formal days via Slack, email and phone — because the best fractional work happens at the moment a decision needs making, not three days later at the next scheduled meeting.

That shape isn't universal. Some engagements are heavier on redesign work and lighter on running the rhythm. Some are the opposite. But the principle holds: a fractional COO is doing the job, not reporting on the job.

Fractional vs interim vs consultant vs advisor

This is where most founders get confused, and fairly — the labels overlap and different people use them differently. Here's how I'd draw the lines.

A fractional COO works on an ongoing basis, at a defined number of days per week or month, embedded in your leadership team as if they were a member of it. The engagement is open-ended. The success metric is: the business runs better and the founder has more room.

An interim COO does a full-time job for a short period. Usually hired when there's a gap to plug — a COO has left, a restructure is underway, there's a specific transition that needs a full-time operator in the seat. Interim is time-boxed.

A consultant COO is brought in for a specific project with a specific outcome. "We need to restructure operations." "We need to land this transformation programme." "We need to integrate this acquisition." There's a defined scope, a defined end. A consultant COO doesn't run the business afterwards.

An advisor sits outside the business and gives counsel, usually in a monthly rhythm. They don't do the work. They help the people doing the work see it more clearly. Advisors are the right tool when the founder is the bottleneck of judgement, not of execution.

Most founders who think they need an advisor actually need a fractional COO. A few who think they need a fractional COO actually need a coach. Very few people get this right on the first try — that's why the first conversation I have with any founder is about making sure we're agreeing on which of these shapes they actually want.

What it costs (and how it compares to full-time)

I'll be direct, because people googling this want a number.

A full-time COO for a £5m–£15m UK business typically costs £130k–£180k in base salary, plus a bonus of 20–40%, plus equity, plus the cost of recruiting them (usually 20–30% of first-year comp if you use a search firm), plus the cost of them taking four to six months to become useful. Total cost in year one is often north of £250k, and most of that is load-bearing whether the hire works out or not.

A fractional COO engagement at one to three days a week will sit somewhere in the £5k–£15k per month range, depending on the days, the operator and the scope. No recruitment cost. No equity dilution. No four-month ramp — a good fractional COO is useful in weeks, not months. And if the engagement isn't working, you can unwind it.

The direct cost comparison is meaningful. But the honest answer is that the cost question is the wrong question. The real question is: does a full-time COO role make sense for the stage of business you're at?

Below about £10m revenue, most businesses don't yet have a full-time COO's worth of work. Hiring full-time creates a role that has to justify its own existence, which in turn creates bureaucracy the business doesn't need. Above about £20m, most businesses have outgrown fractional — there's too much ongoing executive load for a part-time operator to carry.

The range in between is where fractional lives. It's exactly the range of businesses I choose to work with.

How to spot a good fractional COO

Three things I'd look for.

An operator track record, not a consulting one. The work is doing the job, not advising on it. The best fractional COOs have run operations inside businesses, carried P&L, sat on exec teams, and made hiring and firing decisions with their own names on them. A background that's pure consulting — however prestigious the logo — is a weaker signal. I've run a digital agency with full P&L responsibility, co-founded an AI spin-out, and sat on the exec team of a listed group through a run of acquisitions. Those are the scars I bring to the fractional work I do now.

Experience at your stage, not three stages above you. A COO who has run operations at a £500m business is impressive, but the operational reality of a £5m business is a different job. You want someone whose pattern-matching was formed at roughly your stage of scale, because that's the territory they'll know how to read.

Someone who will push back on you. A fractional COO who agrees with everything you say is a very expensive mirror. You want the person who will tell you, in week three, that the thing you think is a sales problem is actually an accountability problem — and then help you fix the accountability problem.

A good fractional COO will also be clear about what they're not. Nobody is a generalist at everything. My experience is strongest in agencies, tech-centric businesses, SaaS and professional services firms — because that's where I've worked as an operator. If you're running a hardware business or a regulated life-sciences company, there are fractional COOs closer to your world than I am, and I'll usually tell you so.

When a fractional COO is the wrong answer

Three situations where I'd talk a founder out of hiring a fractional COO.

When the business is in genuine crisis. If the company is on fire — cash runway is days not months, a core product has failed, a key exec has just walked — you don't need fractional. You need full-time crisis operations, either with an interim in the seat full-time or with the founder themselves treating it as their only job.

When the founder doesn't actually want help. A fractional COO only works if the founder wants the work done and is willing to make space for it. If the founder is hiring because investors are insisting, or because they think they should, but secretly wants to keep running everything themselves, the engagement will struggle no matter how good the operator is. I'll unpack this in the first conversation — if I don't believe the founder is ready to transfer genuine responsibility, I'll say so and decline the work.

When the problem is strategic, not operational. A fractional COO can absolutely help a business execute a strategy. They can't invent one. If the thing that's broken is that the business doesn't know what it is or who it's for, what you need first is a strategic process — possibly with an advisor, possibly with the board, possibly just with the founder taking time out to think. The fractional COO comes in to help execute what you've decided.

How I work as a fractional COO

Every fractional COO works slightly differently. Here's the shape of mine, so you know what you'd be getting.

I only work with one business as fractional COO at a time. Depth matters more than breadth, and founders hiring a fractional COO deserve an operator whose operational attention isn't split three ways. I might run one or two advisory or coaching relationships alongside a fractional engagement, but the fractional COO seat is a single seat.

Engagements are one, two or three days per week, embedded in your leadership team. I'm in your Slack, your meetings and your decisions. The team sees me as a member of the leadership team, because that's what I am for the duration of the engagement.

The first 30 days are diagnostic. I get properly under the skin of the business before suggesting anything: I want to see and understand what's working, what isn't, where the real bottlenecks are, and what you as the founder actually need — which is often different to what you think you need. The prioritised plan comes at the end of week four, not the end of week one.

Then we install and run. The next 60 days are about installing the operating rhythm and getting the first wave of changes shipped. After that, we're running the business together, with me gradually handing more of the rhythm back to the team as the structure holds.

I work through the B³ framework®. It's the shared language I use for what we're building: founder(s) + leadership + business operating system → growth. Don't chase growth — do the right things and growth will come.

If that sounds like the shape of the thing you need, the next step is a conversation — not a pitch, a diagnostic conversation about what's going on in your business and whether this is the right tool for it.

Frequently asked questions

How quickly can a fractional COO start?

Usually within two to four weeks of a first conversation, depending on how much scoping the engagement needs. A good one won't promise tomorrow — they'll want to diagnose first.

Can a fractional COO become full-time later?

Occasionally, but it's rare and I'd be cautious. The skills that make someone a great fractional operator aren't always the same skills that make someone a great full-time exec in a single company. Plan the engagement on its own terms.

Will a fractional COO replace my leadership team?

No. They work with your leadership team, sharpen its rhythm, and sometimes help you see who's working and who isn't. The goal is to make the team you have more effective, not to replace it.

Do I need a fractional COO if I already have an ops lead?

Maybe, maybe not. If your ops lead is strong and just needs air cover to make harder decisions, an advisor might be a better fit. If your ops lead is running the day-to-day but the executive layer above them is missing, a fractional COO is the layer that's missing.

Further reading

These articles go deeper into the topics covered in this guide. Each one is written from inside the work I do as a fractional COO with scaling businesses.

What is a fractional COO? (And when does a founder actually need one?) - a practical guide for founders considering the role for the first time.

Why every scaling business needs a business operating system - the infrastructure most scaling businesses are missing, and how to choose the right framework.

Organisational design for scale-ups - why the org chart is almost always the wrong starting point, and what to do instead.

Your team doesn't have an accountability problem - the real reason problems keep landing on the founder's desk.

How to escape firefighting mode as a founder - breaking the cycle of high action and low clarity.

Next step. If you recognise your business in any of this and want to know whether a fractional COO engagement is the right shape for your situation, the first move is a 45-minute conversation. No pitch. No proposal on the table at the end. Just a diagnostic of where you are and what you'd actually need.

Book a call with Simon

#### What I do
I provide interim leadership for growth businesses.

I help founders, investors and exec teams create businesses that combine transformative growth with increasingly regenerative and distributive practices.

Since 1998 I've held leadership roles spanning delivery, operations, strategy, commercial, marketing, growth and change. I've sold two technology-centric businesses and been involved in the acquisitions of many more. 

I've worked in and with plenty of different kinds of businesses. Some of them were amazing. And some really sucked. I know that with progressive thinking and an open mind, things could be so much better in business.

 Growth focussed

Building a thriving business means more than just hitting financial growth targets. 

It's about deliberately putting in the foundations for scaling a human-centric organisation that can evolve and thrive as the business grows.

 Impact conscious

Environmental, social and corporate governance (“ESG”) considerations are at the heart of today's businesses. 

Businesses need to consider impact for people working in their organisation, their customers, the environment, their communities as well as their shareholders.

 Progressive and human-centric

My practice is strongly grounded in progressive organisational thinking and techniques. 

Sustainable growth comes from creating the right conditions for people to consistently do their best work.

 Building capability

I believe in helping teams and businesses grow their own capability through our work together.

By doing this I can have greater impact as an interim CEO, interim COO or consultant, helping more people develop and run brilliant businesses.

How we can work together

#### What is a fractional COO? (And when does a founder actually need one?)
A practical guide for founders considering a fractional COO

A fractional chief operating officer (COO) is a senior operator who takes on the COO role in a scaling business for a fraction of the time - and a fraction of the cost - of a full-time hire. A fractional COO works closely with the founder or CEO, owns the operating rhythm of the business, and is accountable for outcomes rather than just hours. They are a subject-matter expert and an executor, not a consultant handing over a deck. The work is real, the accountability is real, and the measure of success is whether the business is in a better place than when they arrived.

This guide answers the common question - what is a fractional COO? - and then the more useful follow-up question that most founders only get to once they've understood the first: when does a founder actually need one? It's written from inside the work. I've been running as a fractional COO since 2018, I only take on one business as a fractional COO at a time, and the patterns below are the ones I see over and over in scaling UK and US businesses between £1m and £15m in revenue. 

What a fractional COO actually is

The short definition: a fractional COO is a senior executive who works closely with a CEO or founder to deliver their vision for the business, holding part of a formal leadership role rather than the whole of it. The contribution is measured on value, impact and outcomes, not on days in the diary.

The longer definition - the one I think is more useful if you're trying to decide whether to bring one in - is that a fractional COO is the glue for a scaling organisation. They hold things together. They provide the operating cadence the business needs in order to move faster without breaking. They relentlessly execute the business plan. They hold the leadership team to account. They take the work the founder shouldn't be doing and make it somebody else's job to do it well.

The difference between a fractional COO and a consultant sits in the accountability. A consultant tells you what to do. A fractional COO owns doing it. The difference between a fractional COO and a full-time COO sits in the time commitment, not in the quality or seniority of the work.

What does a fractional COO actually do?

Day-to-day varies by business, but there are common patterns I see almost everywhere.

Translates vision into an operating plan. The founder sets the direction. The fractional COO turns that direction into a plan with clear goals, clear owners and clear timelines - and then holds people to it. Most scale-ups don't lack strategy. They lack the operating layer that turns strategy into week-by-week execution.

Builds and improves the operating system. From hiring processes to delivery workflows to reporting cadences, a fractional COO designs the systems that allow the business to scale without the founder being involved in every decision. This is where a lot of the long-term value sits - in the business operating system the COO installs, which keeps running after the engagement ends.

Leads the leadership team. A fractional COO usually runs the operating rhythm of the business - leadership meetings, quarterly planning, cross-functional alignment - so that the senior team starts working as a unit instead of a collection of departmental silos.

Troubleshoots what's broken. Scaling businesses hit new problems constantly, and a fractional COO has almost always seen those problems before in previous roles with previous businesses. That pattern recognition lets them diagnose and fix things faster than somebody meeting each of them for the first time.

Owns the projects that matter. Whether it's a technology migration, a new market launch, an organisational restructure or an M&A integration, a fractional COO takes accountability for the initiatives that move the business forward - delivering transformation at pace without pulling the founder into the weeds.

Coaches and develops the leadership team. A good fractional COO builds capability as they go. Mid-level leaders become better at their jobs. The operational maturity of the whole organisation lifts.

When does a founder actually need a fractional COO?

The founders I start fractional COO conversations with are almost never asking what is a fractional COO? - they already have a rough idea. What they're really asking is am I the sort of founder who needs one? Here are the five patterns I see most often.

1. You're the bottleneck

Decisions queue up waiting for you. The team won't move without your input. You look at your week and realise almost all of the substantive thinking about the business is happening inside your head, not inside your leadership team. This is the classic founder bottleneck - and it's usually where a fractional COO conversation starts. The fix isn't to work harder. The fix is to install the operating layer that lets the leadership team make decisions confidently without you.

2. The business has outgrown how you run it

What got you to £3m is not going to get you to £15m. The informal coordination that worked when everyone sat in the same room breaks when you're 40, 60, 90 people. You can feel the fragmentation - duplicated work, missed handovers, decisions getting re-litigated - but you don't have the bandwidth to design a better way of working while the business is still running.

3. You have a leadership team that isn't operating like one

Your senior people are good at their functions but the group isn't adding up to more than the sum of its parts. Cross-functional problems never quite land. Meetings feel like status updates. Nobody is pushing each other. A fractional COO can make a leadership team function as a team, which is very different from making each individual perform their role.

4. You're facing a specific transition you haven't done before

A restructure. A product pivot. An international expansion. An acquisition or integration. The installation of a leadership team for the first time. These are moments where pattern recognition is worth an enormous amount, and where the cost of learning on the job is measured in months of business momentum.

5. You're trying to work yourself out of the business

Some founders are preparing for an exit. Some are trying to step back from day-to-day operations so they can focus on strategy, on product, or on a new venture. Either way, the job is the same: build a business that runs without you. A fractional COO is often the best structural investment a founder can make toward founder-independence.

When a fractional COO isn't the right call

Honesty is worth more than the fee. A fractional COO is the wrong call if any of the following apply.

You're pre-product-market fit. Early-stage founders need to be in everything. Installing an operating layer before you've worked out what the business is will create process for problems you don't have yet and slow you down.

You don't really want to devolve decisions. A fractional COO is only as effective as the air cover the founder gives them. If what you actually want is for somebody to execute your instructions rather than to hold the operating role alongside you, hire a programme manager, not a fractional COO.

You need a full-time COO. Some businesses are beyond the point where fractional makes sense. If the business is 150+ people, if the operating cadence needs a seven-day-a-week owner, or if the leadership structure requires the COO in the exec group on a permanent basis, go full-time. A good fractional COO will tell you when you've reached that point and will often help you recruit their full-time replacement.

You have a discrete project, not an ongoing operational gap. If what you need is a defined piece of work - a restructure, a transformation, an M&A integration - with a clear start and finish, a consultant COO engagement is the right shape, not a fractional COO on an ongoing retainer.

Fractional COO vs full-time COO: how to think about the trade-off

A full-time COO at the seniority level most scaling businesses need will cost somewhere in the region of £150–£250k base in the UK, plus bonus, equity and on-costs. That's roughly £200–£320k all-in annually. On top of that you're buying a recruitment process, a notice period to hire, a notice period to fire, and the risk that the first person you hire isn't the right one - which is a common outcome at this level of seniority in scale-ups.

A fractional COO is typically engaged on a monthly retainer that represents a fraction of that cost. You get access to somebody who has already been through the transitions you're trying to navigate, installed for the specific period when the business needs that level of operational leadership. When the moment passes, or when the business is ready for a full-time hire, the engagement ends cleanly.

The trade-off isn't really about cost. It's about commitment, time in the business, and fit for the stage. Full-time makes sense once the COO role is a permanent part of the exec structure. Fractional makes sense for the phase of scaling where you need the seniority and pattern recognition now, but the business isn't yet ready to carry the full-time role.

How much does a fractional COO cost?

Fractional COO costs vary depending on the level of experience, the scope of the engagement and how many days per week they work with you. To give you a general guide:

In the UK, expect to invest between £3,000 and £15,000 per month depending on experience for a fractional COO working the equivalent of one to three days per week. The equivalent full-time COO salary would typically be £150,000 to £250,000+ per year before benefits, pension and equity.

In the US, fractional COO retainers typically range from $5,000 to $20,000 per month, depending on experience and scope. A comparable full-time COO package would cost $250,000 to $450,000+ annually.

The cost difference is significant but the real value is in the leverage that the right fractional COO can give you. A skilled fractional COO working two days a week can often create more operational impact than a less experienced full-time hire, because they've done this before in multiple businesses, across multiple sectors - and they know how to organise people, teams and systems to make a big difference fast. They're not learning on the job.

A fractional COO vs an operations consultant

This is a distinction worth understanding because the two roles are often confused. I get asked this a lot (especially as I sometimes work as an operations consultant alongside my fractional work).

An operations consultant is typically engaged for a defined project. They analyse your business, diagnose problems and deliver a set of recommendations or changes. Then they leave and you're responsible for implementation or making the change stick.

A fractional COO is embedded in your business. They don't just tell you what to do, they do it with you. They attend your leadership meetings, build relationships with your team and take accountability for operational outcomes. They're hands-on and delivery-focussed.

The consultant model works well when you need specialist expertise for a specific problem. The fractional COO model works better when you need ongoing operational leadership from someone who understands the full context of your business and can drive execution over months rather than weeks.

Frequently asked questions about fractional COOs

How many days a week does a fractional COO work?  Most fractional COOs work between one and three days per week, though the exact arrangement depends on the needs of the business. Some engagements start at one day and scale up as the business grows. The key is that a fractional COO's contribution is measured on impact, not hours. It's not just a part-time version of a full-time role.  What size company benefits most from a fractional COO?  In my experience businesses with 10 to 80 people tend to get the most value from a fractional COO. At this stage, the operational complexity demands experienced leadership, but the scale doesn't yet justify a full-time COO salary. Scale-ups that have found product-market fit and are funded to grow are the ideal profile.  How long does a fractional COO engagement last? Typical engagements run from six months to two years. Some businesses use a fractional COO as a permanent part of their leadership model while others bring one in to build operational foundations before hiring a full-time COO. Both approaches can work well.  Can a fractional COO work remotely? It depends. Many fractional COOs work remotely or in a hybrid model, particularly with distributed or remote-first teams. What matters is that they're fully embedded in your communication channels such as Slack, email and regular calls and are present for key meetings and workshops. If your business works fully face-to-face, being an effective remote fractional COO is going to be harder.  What's the difference between a fractional COO and a fractional operations director?  In practice, the roles are very similar. "Fractional operations director" has historicallly been more common in UK businesses, while "fractional COO" is the preferred term in the US and in venture-backed companies. The scope, seniority and day-to-day responsibilities can be broadly equivalent. In some businesses there may be a distinction between strategic and tactical operational responsibilities, but this is less so in smaller businesses where fractional work is more common.  Is a fractional COO the same as an interim COO?  No, not really. An interim COO is usually a full-time temporary replacement who is covering a gap while a permanent hire is found. A fractional COO is a part-time engagement by design, often running alongside the founder or CEO rather than replacing someone. The fractional model is built for businesses that need experienced operational leadership but not necessarily full-time coverage.  

How a fractional COO engagement actually works

Every fractional COO works slightly differently. The shape of my own engagements is: I only work with one business as a fractional COO at any one time, so the business I'm in gets real focus rather than being one of five clients on a rotation. Engagements typically run for six to twelve months in the first instance, with a clear onboarding phase (understanding the business, diagnosing the operating gaps, agreeing the priorities with the founder), followed by an execution phase where the real operating work happens, followed by a handover phase where I design myself out of the role.

Through the whole thing I'm working to install the B³ framework® - the founder-plus-leadership-plus-business-operating-system model I developed from fifty-plus founder conversations and from my own twenty-six-year operator career running agencies and scaling a listed technology group from £31.5m to £83m. The goal is always the same: a business that runs without needing me in it, built on a foundation that holds after I've gone.

Next step. If the patterns in this guide feel familiar, the best next move is a conversation - not a sales call. I'll listen, ask the questions that most need asking, and if I can help I'll tell you how. If fractional COO isn't the right call, I'll tell you that too, and usually point you toward what is.

Book a call with Simon | Back to the fractional COO guide

#### Who I work with
Collaborative and supportive work together

I specialise in working with business founders, leaders and investors in tech-centric growth businesses. This focus reflects my experience and deep understanding of the differing needs and priorities of these three groups.

My work really matters to me, so who I work with is really important to me too. 

I deliver best when I have an open, supportive and honest relationship with the clients I'm working with. Chemistry matters to me as much as it does to you.

Alignment is important too. Being confident that I understand your real goals for our work together is something I check on early in every engagement.

 Founders

Founders have a unique relationship with the business they created. 

I help founders understand what it takes to deliver growth, an exit and their personal goals in business. 

I provide an impartial and experienced perspective to help them see and navigate the diverse challenges founders face, as well as being someone to turn to for support and advice whenever it's needed.

My work with founders

CEOs and leaders

Leadership in growth businesses is tough and relentless.

Balancing growth ambitions, operational realities and wider environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) impacts is key to building a sustainable business.  

I help new and established leaders in growth businesses through coaching, mentoring, consultancy projects and joining as a fractional leader.

My work with CEOs and leaders

 Investors

I work with individual, venture capital and private equity investors.

This work includes buy-side M&A consultancy, due diligence engagements, growth coaching and facilitating founder/leader succession and transition.

I also deliver operational maturity assessments and improvement programmes to optimise for growth and return on investment.

My work with investors

How we can work together

Partnerships

Working with Extra Brain - a network of senior consultants working across agencies, service and product businesses to help leaders progress their growth, operational and change projects.

Delivering the 2Y3X® two-year acceleration programme. Participants range from ambitious scale-ups to market leaders: agencies, tech startups and VC-backed companies from £1.5 to £10million revenue.

#### Why congruence is the most underrated leadership trait
The leadership quality nobody talks about but every team can feel

Most writing on leadership is a list of traits. Vision, resilience, decisiveness, empathy, humility - pick four, package them nicely, put them on the cover. After 26 years of scaling businesses and a decade of coaching founders, I've come to think the list-of-traits approach gets leadership almost exactly backwards. The founders who lead well aren't the ones with the best traits. They're the ones whose inside and outside line up.

That alignment has a name. It's called congruence. And it's the most underrated trait in the authentic leadership for founders conversation - partly because it's hard to write about, partly because it can't be faked, and partly because most leadership development programmes skip straight past it.

What congruence actually is

Congruence, in the sense I mean it, is the alignment between what a leader actually thinks and feels and what they say and do. A congruent founder isn't putting on a performance in the all-hands, then having a very different conversation with their co-founder in the car park afterwards. They're not running one set of values in the deck and a different set in the way they treat people when things go wrong. They're not selling certainty to the investors while lying awake worrying about the same thing at 3am.

They're not perfect. They have doubts, fears, tempers and bad days like everyone else. But the work they've done on themselves means there isn't a big gap between the private version and the public one. And that gap - or the absence of it - turns out to be the thing teams respond to most.

Why teams can tell, even when they can't articulate it

I've watched this in practice for years, in my own businesses and inside my clients'. When a leader is congruent, their team relaxes in a particular way. Conversations get easier. People bring problems earlier. Pushback happens in the room instead of in Slack DMs afterwards. The whole operating system runs with less friction.

When a leader isn't congruent, the opposite happens. People can't always name what's off - they'll say things like "I can't read them" or "I don't know what they actually think" or "meetings with them feel performative". What they're picking up is the gap between the stated position and the real one. Human beings are extraordinarily good at detecting that gap, even when they can't consciously articulate what they're reacting to. And once they've detected it, trust gets harder to build.

"Simon is one of those rare leaders who means what he says and says what he means. It makes him very easy to work with and very easy to trust."Mark Moreton, former Group Finance Director, CVS Group

Why congruence is harder in scaling businesses

Every founder starts out congruent, more or less. In an eight-person startup you can't be anyone other than yourself for very long. Then the company grows. Somewhere between 30 and 80 people, the founder starts to hear advice that sounds like this: you need to act more CEO-ish. You need to be more measured in meetings. You need to project more certainty to the team. You need to stop being so visibly frustrated. You need to "look the part".

Some of that advice is useful. Some of it is helpful translation from a stage they already know. But a lot of it is a recipe for incongruence - asking the founder to perform a version of themselves that isn't real. And when they start doing it, their team can tell, and the trust starts leaking out of the system in ways nobody can quite trace.

The founders I coach who successfully make the founder to CEO transition don't do it by becoming a different person. They do it by getting clearer about who they actually are and leading more consistently from that place.

Four things that build congruence

1. Know what you actually think

You can't say what you think if you don't know what you think. A lot of founders are so busy that they haven't actually stopped to work out where they stand on the big strategic questions they're being asked to answer. So they triangulate from the room, and end up with a position they can't fully defend because it isn't really theirs. The fix is reflective practice: proper thinking time, off-calendar, on the questions that matter.

2. Say the thing

Congruence requires you to actually say what you think, even when it's awkward. That doesn't mean blurt - it means not sanding everything down until it's safe and meaningless. If something's not working, say so. If you don't know the answer, say so. If you have a strong opinion, let people hear it properly, not through three layers of corporate cushioning.

3. Let people see the working

Congruent leaders show more of the reasoning behind their decisions, not less. "Here's what I was weighing. Here's what pulled me one way. Here's what pulled me the other. Here's where I landed and why." That's not oversharing - it's the opposite of performing certainty, and it teaches the team how to make similar calls when you're not in the room.

4. Deal with the stuff you'd rather avoid

This is where coaching earns its keep. Most incongruence comes from a founder avoiding something - a difficult conversation, an uncomfortable truth about themselves, a decision they've been putting off, a relationship they've let drift. While the avoidance is live, the gap between inside and outside keeps growing. When the thing gets dealt with, the gap closes, and leadership gets easier almost overnight.

The payoff

I've watched this play out in every kind of scaling business - agencies, SaaS companies, consultancies, product firms. The founders who do the work on congruence end up with something that's hard to measure but unmistakable when you see it: a team that trusts them deeply, a leadership group that challenges them well, and an operating culture that doesn't require theatre to function. The founders who don't end up with turnover they can't explain, disengagement they can't fix, and meetings they don't know why they're dreading.

Congruence isn't a trait. It's a practice. It's what happens when a founder is clear about who they are, willing to say what they think, and honest about the gaps. And it's the most underrated piece of leadership development I know.

Next step. Congruence is one of the main things I work on with founders in coaching, alongside the letting go work and the reflective practice that makes it possible. The broader picture is in the founder coaching guide, and if you want to talk about where you are with it, the leadership coaching service page explains how it works and how to get in touch. Or book a call with Simon to explore your congruence work.

#### Why every scaling business needs a business operating system (BOS)
The infrastructure most scaling businesses are missing

A business operating system - or BOS - is the single most important piece of infrastructure a scaling business puts in place, and most founders don't know they need one until they're already in pain. It's the combination of concepts, tools and disciplines that turns a founder-dependent business into an enduring, founder-independent company. It's how a scaling business runs without the founder being in every decision. And it's the thing I spend most of my fractional COO engagements building, installing or repairing.

I've worked closely with founders in growing businesses since 2014, and the pattern I've watched play out more times than I can count is this: the founder is the bottleneck, the leadership team is waiting on the founder to make decisions, the founder knows intellectually that they should delegate more, and nothing actually changes - because there's no system for decisions to be delegated into. A BOS is that system. This article explains what a BOS is, why every scaling business needs one, the three best-known frameworks and their trade-offs, and how to think about installing one in your business.

What a business operating system actually is

A BOS is the essential set of concepts, tools and disciplines needed to build and run an effective company. At its most useful, a BOS covers:

Vision - a compelling big-picture direction that people want to get behind.Goals - a way of setting long- and short-term goals that ensures alignment from the founder down.Customers - a clear, shared understanding of what you're selling and to whom.People - high-performing, capable people in well-defined roles, working effectively in teams.Structure - an organisational structure that's right for the work being done, not for the founder's career history.Process - standardised ways of working that balance predictability with space for autonomy.Meetings - a cadence of effective meetings to oversee and steer the business.Data - reliable numbers that drive insights and action, not vanity metrics that drive conversation.

The right combination of these things, consistently implemented over time, is what turns a founder-dependent business into an enduring, founder-independent one. None of the components are especially clever on their own. What creates the value is running them all together, coherently, as a system the whole organisation has internalised.

Why every scaling business needs one

There's a pattern I see in founders who haven't yet installed a BOS that has two versions - one sad and one hopeful.

The sad version is where the founder holds decision-making power close and doesn't really enable others to take decisions. The business hires good people into leadership roles, and those people work out pretty quickly that the only way to get anything done is to stay close to the founder. Their energy goes into jockeying for influence instead of leading the business. Messy politics build up. Frustration builds. Growth slows. The most talented newly hired leaders get the picture and leave. I've been in rooms with founders watching this unfold in real time, and it's painful because the cause is almost always the founder's own ambivalence about letting go, not a shortage of good people around them.

The hopeful version is where the founder recognises the need to create a system that allows them to spread decision-making more widely - so people can stay focused on goals, work autonomously with the protection of clear guardrails, and take ownership of outcomes without second-guessing what the founder would do. That's what a BOS does. It creates the scaffolding that makes devolved decision-making safe, which is the thing most scaling businesses need more than any new hire, new strategy or new product.

If you read nothing else in this article, read this. The reason every scaling business needs a BOS isn't because frameworks are good. It's because the alternative to a BOS - founder dependence - is the single biggest reason scaling businesses get stuck between £3m and £15m in revenue.

The three best-known frameworks (and what to make of them)

You don't have to invent a BOS from scratch. Three well-known frameworks do most of the thinking for you, and each has its own feel.

Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS)

Developed by Gino Wickman and documented in the book Traction, EOS combines vision with execution through a disciplined set of tools: getting the right people in the right seats, building a clear vision, setting quarterly "Rocks" (priorities), running a weekly leadership meeting (the L10), and solving issues through a defined process (IDS - Identify, Discuss, Solve). It's the most widely adopted BOS in the SME world for good reason - it works, it's internally coherent, and it gives founders a handbook they can actually follow. It's also notably top-down in feel, which is either a feature or a bug depending on your temperament.

Scaling Up

Verne Harnish's Scaling Up grew out of his work studying the strategy and execution practices of successful entrepreneurs. It focuses on setting priorities, achieving quarterly wins, using data for accountability and adhering to proven processes. If you've spotted a theme between this and EOS, you're not wrong - the fundamentals of every good BOS rhyme. Scaling Up is stronger on metrics and cash than EOS, and weaker on the softer work of team dynamics.

System & Soul

System & Soul is a newer framework that, functionally, does much of what EOS and Scaling Up will give you but through a human lens as well as an organisational one. It feels more modern, less rigid, and more honest about the emotional reality of running a scaling business - which, in my experience, matches how founders actually live. I tend to recommend System & Soul to founders who know they need a BOS but recoil from the top-down feel of EOS.

I take a progressive view on how companies should run - flatter structures, devolved decisions, less hierarchy - which means the more hierarchical edges of EOS and Scaling Up don't sit comfortably with my own instincts. They come from an era where top-down control was still the default management theme. Useful, but not where I'd start from in a 2026 scale-up.

How to choose (or compose) the right BOS for your business

Most founders don't need a pure off-the-shelf BOS. They need the discipline of one. The way I approach this in fractional COO engagements is to start with the components a BOS needs to cover - vision, goals, customers, people, structure, process, meetings, data - and then choose the simplest tool for each component that fits the culture of the business.

A few principles I come back to:

Pick a framework you can stand. The best BOS is the one you'll actually run. A founder who loathes the EOS weekly Level 10 meeting will let it quietly die within six months, and the whole system will lose its spine. Pick a framework whose rhythms match how you want the business to feel.

Implement all the components together. A BOS isn't a buffet. If you only install the meetings without the goals, you'll have disciplined status updates that lead nowhere. If you install the goals without the data, you'll have aspirations nobody can measure. The system is the system.

Run it for at least two quarters before judging it. A new BOS feels clunky for the first six to eight weeks. The rhythm hasn't bedded in, the leadership team is still working out how to use it, and the founder is tempted to abandon it and reinvent. Don't. Give it two full quarters before you decide whether it's working.

Appoint an owner who isn't the founder. A BOS that lives in the founder's calendar is a BOS that will collapse the first time the founder is overwhelmed. Appoint an integrator - a COO, a chief of staff, or a fractional COO - to own the cadence. The founder is the visionary; somebody else is the keeper of the system.

"Simon is a highly experienced and grounded leader who demonstrated he was capable of walking into the business and quickly making a difference. He is a strong business thinker, capable of taking apart a complex problem and putting it back together to solve it."Peter O'Brien, CEO, Hidden Creative

Why the BOS is the thing I install first as a fractional COO

When I come into a business as a fractional COO, the first structural thing I usually work on is the BOS - not because frameworks are glamorous but because almost every other operational problem a founder is experiencing is a symptom of a missing or broken business operating system. The team isn't "being accountable" because there's no goals framework to be accountable against. Meetings are a waste of time because there's no operating cadence to hold them in. Decisions queue up on the founder's desk because there's no process for anybody else to take them. Good people leave because the only way to get work done is to be close to the founder.

Installing the BOS doesn't solve any of these problems directly. It creates the conditions under which they can be solved. That's why it's the load-bearing piece of work in almost every fractional COO engagement I run, and it's the piece of work most likely to still be delivering value in the business a year after I've gone.

The BOS is also the operational expression of the B³ framework® - the model I developed from interviews with fifty-plus founders, which puts founder development, leadership team and the business operating system together as the three components of any scaling business. A founder without a BOS is a founder whose only lever is themselves.

Next step. If you're reading this and thinking we don't really have a BOS, we have a collection of half-implemented tools and a weekly meeting nobody likes, that's a signal worth taking seriously. The gap between a half-installed BOS and a properly running one is usually the gap between a business the founder runs and a business that runs itself.

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#### Why founders get decision-making backwards (and what good looks like)
How better decisions happen when you stop pretending emotions don't exist

Decisions have been coming thick and fast for most of the founders I work with. 

They run businesses in volatile, uncertain markets that change faster than anyone can comfortably keep up with. 

And yet the decision-making habits most founders rely on are ones their grandparents would have recognised - habits that come from more stable times, with slower feedback loops, and a business culture that treated the emotional side of a decision as noise to be filtered out. 

Most founders have had some version of that drummed into them from early careers: be rational, be data-driven, think like a machine, not a human. I had it drummed into me too. Value-based management, discounted cash flows, the whole apparatus of mechanising leadership.

Here's what I've come to believe after years of working with founders wrestling with this and after a lot of reflecting on my own decision-making in a 26-year operator career: we've got it backwards. 

Suppressing the emotional side of a decision doesn't produce better decisions. 

It produces the 3am regret spirals we all pretend we don't have when making the big calls. 

This article explains why, what good decision-making actually looks like in a scaling business, and how to devolve decision rights properly - which is the single most common unmet need I see in the founders who hire me as an advisor.

The myth of the rational decision-maker

The business world has long convinced us that good decisions come from checking our emotions at the door. 

Don't let how you feel about it cloud your judgment. Run the numbers. Trust the spreadsheet. 

I absorbed all of this in 1998 as a graduate trainee and spent years believing it.

The funny thing is, even the most data-driven decision-makers I know are actually deeply emotional about their methods. 

They're passionate about their spreadsheets. They're attached to their frameworks. They're proud of their analytical rigour. But they are also blind to the emotions that are absolutely present in their thinking, whether they acknowledge them or not. The emotions don't go away just because you refuse to look at them. They go underground, and then they drive the decision from underneath while the founder tells themselves it was the numbers.

Since I trained as a coach, I've started thinking about emotions differently. 

They're not inconvenient noise to be filtered out. They're a different kind of data to be weighed alongside the spreadsheets. They're rich information about your values, your concerns, your gut instincts - all shaped by years of experience you can't fully articulate. 

When you get an uneasy feeling about a candidate who ticks every box on paper, what is that emotional system telling you? When you feel genuinely excited about a new direction despite the risks, what information is buried in that excitement?

Here's the crucial bit, and this is where most of us go wrong. 

We can't follow emotions blindly any more than we can ignore them completely. The good decisions happen when we combine the emotional side with the practical side - when we get good at making the messiness of being human actually practical. That combination is a skill. It's trainable. It's what I spend a lot of my coaching conversations on.

Three things founders get wrong about decision-making

1. Treating every decision the same. Some decisions are reversible in a week, cheap to get wrong,= and should be made fast with whatever information is to hand. Other decisions are irreversible, expensive and warrant real thinking. Founders who treat these two categories the same either paralyse themselves over trivial calls or rush the ones that matter. The first piece of better decision-making is learning to tell the difference and calibrating how much care each decision deserves.

2. Making decisions alone when the information is in the team. As the business grows, the decisions that most affect it move further from the founder's direct knowledge. If you're the one deciding how to price the new service line when the person closest to the market is two layers below you in the team, the decision is being made with worse information than it needs to be. Devolved decisions aren't just faster - they're often better, because they're made by the person who knows the most about the thing being decided.

3. Trying to keep every decision inside the founder's head. The single biggest decision-making constraint in most scaling businesses isn't the quality of each individual decision. It's the aggregate load of decisions the founder is carrying. Founders who don't actively work to shed that load end up bottlenecked by their own bandwidth, and the business runs at the speed of their worst week.

Devolving decision rights: the real unlock

Most of the founders I work with are grappling with exactly the same challenge: shifting to a wider group of people making decisions. 

They're doing it because they face a relentless onslaught of calls to make, and it's not sustainable to have them all flow through one person. 

Here's the frustrating truth - telling your team they can make decisions is not the same as actually devolving decision rights. Most founders who say "I've empowered them" are discovering that the empowerment hasn't translated into behaviour, because the conditions for devolved decisions haven't been built.

Four conditions have to be in place for decision rights to actually move:

Clarity about what is being devolved. Not "you can make decisions" but "you own all hiring decisions up to this level, pricing decisions up to this range, client acceptance up to this size". Specific boundaries, written down, referred to.

A shared decision-making framework. Not a flowchart. A lightweight shared way of thinking about the class of decision - what good looks like, what to weigh, what the founder would want the person to consider. This gives the team a scaffold they can use without needing to second-guess the founder.

Permission to be wrong. Teams that can't be wrong don't make decisions. They escalate. The founder who escalates decisions up because "I just wanted them to check with me" is the same founder who then complains that no-one takes ownership. Permission has to be explicit, repeated, and defended when somebody uses it and gets something wrong.

A feedback loop. Devolved decisions only get better if the people making them get feedback on how they've landed. Without that, the quality of decisions calcifies. Build a lightweight rhythm of reviewing recent decisions as a leadership team - not to second-guess them, but to build shared pattern recognition.

Lenses: the founder's best decision-making habit

A colleague once told me I was obsessed with lenses. 

Apparently I say things like "let's look at this through a client lens," "if we use a shareholder lens," "what does this look like through a team lens?" I'll take the accusation. The habit of consciously switching lenses on a decision is the single cheapest piece of decision-making improvement a founder can install, and it's the one I recommend most often.

Most founders make decisions from one or two lenses by default - usually the shareholder lens and their own operator lens. Both are valid. Both are incomplete. When you deliberately add a client lens ("how will this feel to our customers?"), a team lens ("what does this do to the people doing the work?") and a future-self lens ("how will I feel about this decision in a year?"), you get a materially better picture before you commit. It takes 10 minutes. Almost no one does it.

The founders I've seen make the best decisions over a sustained period are the ones who've built deliberate lens-switching into their decision habits - usually through a short set of questions they run any important call through before they land it.

Decision hygiene: three small habits that compound

If you want to make better decisions consistently rather than relying on individual heroic acts of clarity, three small habits compound.

Sleep on the big ones, decide fast on the small ones. The big ones deserve the overnight - they're usually better after your brain has processed them once without your conscious involvement. The small ones deserve no more than five minutes of deliberation, because further deliberation doesn't improve them and does eat the bandwidth you need for the big ones.

Write down why you decided, briefly. Not a memo. A couple of lines - the reasoning, the alternatives considered, the trade-offs accepted. A month later, when the decision plays out, you can read it back and compare. This is how pattern recognition builds over time, and it's astonishing how few founders do it.

Separate the decision from the meeting. Meetings are a terrible place to make hard decisions. Use the meeting to surface the data, the arguments and the considerations; then take the decision away from the meeting, think about it properly and come back with it. Most of the worst decisions I've seen founders take were taken live in a meeting because everyone was looking at them.

Next step. Better decision-making isn't a framework. It's a handful of disciplines that compound when they're built into how a founder runs their week. The good news is the disciplines are teachable, devolvable, and durable - once they're in the operating system of the business, they keep paying out long after the founder installed them.

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#### Your team doesn't have an accountability problem (here's what they actually have)
The real reason your team keeps pushing problems back to you

"Lack of accountability. That's the problem we have." It's one of the first lines I hear from most founders in the first conversation of a fractional COO engagement. The language varies - "they don't take ownership", "they don't step up", "they need to think like an owner" - but the frustration underneath is identical. Problems keep landing on the founder's desk. The team keeps bringing them things they should be handling themselves. And the founder is left wondering why the smart, expensive, experienced people they hired can't seem to solve problems without them.

Here's the uncomfortable reframe I've come to after running this conversation hundreds of times: your team almost certainly doesn't have an accountability problem. What they have is a competence-and-systems problem wearing an accountability problem's clothes. This article explains the reframe, why it matters, and what to actually do about it.

The conversation that keeps repeating

I want to tell you about a founder I worked with - let's call him Jonny, which isn't his real name. I still remember the first call I had with him. "Lack of accountability. That's the problem we have" was the first sentence. He talked about feeling overwhelmed with too many problems bubbling up to his level. He wanted his team to "step up" and "own" the problems that came their way.

I asked Jonny to explain how all those problems were ending up with him. "It's pretty simple" he said. "The team find too many problems they can't solve, so they bring it to me and expect me to fix it. I end up owning the problem. I need that to change."

In my slightly annoying coach-like way I pushed him a bit further. "What's going on for them when they do that?" I won't share exactly what he said next - it would get my emails quarantined for excessive use of expletives. A fair summary is that he had concluded his team members lacked the competence to do the jobs he'd given them, and that's why they kept pushing problems back to him. Before you judge him too harshly, most of us have had that exact thought at 11pm on a Tuesday when yet another problem has landed in our DMs.

Then I asked him to think about the relationship between competency and ownership. He went quiet. You could almost see him processing it. Because what Jonny was really asking for - and what most founders ask for when they talk about accountability - is for their team to behave like he would behave. To make the decisions he would make. To solve problems the way he would solve them. But here's the thing. He could solve those problems because he's competent to solve them. He's done it before. He knows what good looks like. He's built the pattern recognition through his journey as a founder. His team members don't have that. And they never will to the extent he does.

What "accountability" usually means (and what it should mean)

When a founder says their business has an accountability problem, they usually mean one of three things:

"People aren't owning problems the way I would." This is really a statement about competence. The person doesn't have the pattern recognition to solve this class of problem, so they escalate. Solving it requires either building the competence (training, coaching, exposure) or reducing the class of problem they're facing (simpler systems, clearer inputs, tighter guardrails).

"People aren't delivering on what they said they'd deliver." This is really a statement about goals and measurement. The person committed to something, and there's no structural mechanism to check whether it's happened. Solving it requires a goals framework the whole business shares - quarterly priorities, a cadence of check-ins, visible progress - so commitment becomes observable and correctable in-flight, not just reviewable in the post-mortem.

"People aren't taking decisions they're empowered to take." This is really a statement about permission and safety. The person doesn't believe they have the authority to decide, or they believe the cost of getting it wrong is higher than the cost of escalating it. Solving it requires the founder to be clear about where decision rights actually sit - and then to resist the temptation to overturn decisions the team makes inside those rights.

None of these three problems are really about "accountability" in the motivational sense. All three are structural. And that's the first piece of good news: structural problems are fixable. Motivational problems - "my team just isn't trying hard enough" - tend to be unfixable, which is why that framing traps founders in endless cycles of the same frustration.

The competence lens

After my conversation with Jonny, he went quiet for a while and then suggested something different. He suggested he might need to think more about how to increase the competence of his team. Not so they could think like a carbon copy of him - that was never going to happen - but so they could develop the skills to solve the kind of problems that kept landing on his desk.

This is the reframe I take into almost every fractional COO engagement. If problems are escalating to the founder, the real question is: what do the people those problems belong to need in order to solve them without the founder? And the answer is almost always some combination of:

Exposure to the pattern. Pattern recognition comes from having seen the situation before. If you want your team to solve a class of problem, they have to see the problem, try to solve it, and get feedback - ideally when the stakes are low enough that getting it wrong doesn't break the business.

A decision-making framework. Not a process flowchart. A simple shared way of thinking about the problem class. When I installed one of these with a product scale-up client, problems that used to escalate to the founder started getting solved two layers below, because the framework gave the team a shared language for thinking it through.

Permission to be wrong. Teams that can't be wrong don't make decisions. They escalate. The founder who escalates problems up because "I just wanted them to check with me" is the same founder who then complains those people don't take ownership. The permission has to be explicit, repeated, and defended when somebody uses it and gets it wrong.

Somebody visible doing it well. Accountability is a learned behaviour, and people learn it by watching somebody further along the path. In a small scale-up that person is usually the founder. In a slightly bigger one, it's the first senior hire who sets the tone for everybody beneath them. Protect that person fiercely.

The systems lens

The competence reframe goes a long way, but it doesn't go all the way. There's a second lens that matters just as much, and it's the systems lens. Accountability without systems is a series of hopeful promises. Accountability with systems is an operating reality.

If your business has accountability problems that the competence lens doesn't fully explain, look for these structural patterns:

No visible goals framework. People can't be held to account for delivering on commitments they never made visibly. If your goals live in the founder's head and nobody writes them down, measures them, or reviews them on a defined cadence, the problem isn't the team.

No operating cadence. Without a rhythm - weekly leadership meeting, monthly review, quarterly planning - there's no structural moment at which commitments get examined and adjusted. Accountability leaks out of businesses that don't have the cadence to hold it.

Unclear role boundaries. When two people share an accountability, neither owns it. When no-one is named, no-one is responsible. Role clarity is the condition under which accountability becomes possible.

Founder involvement at every level. If the founder is still the one deciding which projects ship, which hires to make, which clients to take on, the team can't be accountable for those outcomes. The decision sits in the founder's chair. The ownership has to move with it.

These are the components of a business operating system, which is the structural answer to most of what scaling founders call an accountability problem. Install the system, and a lot of the "accountability" problems stop being problems.

"Simon worked with us at ThinkTribe during a pivotal time for the business. He helped us rethink our structure, sharpen our strategy, and confidently navigate the transition from founder-led to a more scalable, leadership-driven model. His calm, insightful approach brought clarity where there was complexity and left us better equipped for the next phase of growth."Deri Jones, Founder and CEO, ThinkTribe

What changed for Jonny

Back to Jonny. Once he'd accepted that the problem wasn't accountability - that it was a competence gap and a systems gap wearing an accountability costume - the work got more useful. We spent less time on language like "step up" and "own it" and more time on what his team actually needed in order to solve the problems they were facing. We built a decision-making framework for the recurring class of problems that kept escalating. We put a proper operating cadence around the leadership team. We tightened role definitions so that every significant decision had one owner. We made it explicit what the team were empowered to decide, and we defended them when they used that permission and occasionally got things wrong.

None of this was about accountability as a character trait. All of it was structural. And the effect on Jonny's week was visible within a couple of months - fewer problems landing on his desk, more decisions happening without him, a leadership team that was starting to feel like a leadership team rather than a list of people with titles.

Next step. If the founder experience in this article feels familiar - the problems landing on your desk, the frustration about your team not "stepping up" - the most useful thing you can do next is to stop looking at the team's character and start looking at the systems and competences around them. That's usually where the actual fix lives.

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