THESOCIALPRESS June 2015
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THESOCIALPRESS VOLUME 7 | JUNE 2015
03 TOP STORIES 04 EDITOR 22 QUOTE OF THE MONTH 12 TOOL REVIEW 14 ANGELS ON THE LOOSE 21 CARTOON OF THE MONTH 23 INNOVATION BOX
HOW TO BE A
10 SOCIAL MEDIA GURU BY CEMANTHE
BA’S 5
05 BIG MISTAKES
GUEST BLOG BY PAUL MATTHEWS
IMPACT THOUGHT
18 LEADERSHIP
GUEST BLOG BY MURRAY GRAINGER
BENEFITS OF
15 CAREER COACHING GUEST BLOG BY EMMA PRATT
07 BENEFITS OF MID - YEAR REVIEW BY DOMINICA
IN BO NOVA X TIO N
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TOP STORIES Who millennials trust, and don’t trust, is driving the new economy. By PricewaterhouseCoopers’ projection, the biggest sectors of the “sharing economy” ó including transportation and travel companies like Uber, Zipcar and Airbnb ó could be pulling in as much as $335 billion in global revenue by 2025. That’s a massive number (PwC puts it today at about $15 billion), and it reflects according to a market analysis the company published this week some fundamental shifts in consumer behavior. “Access is the new ownership,” and such. www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/ wp/2015/04/16/who-millennials-trust-anddont-trust-is-driving-the-new-economy/
Cemanthe New Media Angels
June 2015
A Note from the Editor
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The last two months have certainly been a mix of ups and downs! The highlight being getting a few new clients for management and LinkedIn Profile training. I’ve also joined a networking group to promote my photography, and taken my mum in a helicopter trip over London for her 60th birthday. I ran a seminar at City Business Library which was very well received, and also launched a local networking club as well as attended a pre-existing one for a delicious lunch! We’ve also added a new Angel to the team who I’ll introduce next time and finished off two client projects. I also managed to get a post I made about the eclipse to go partly viral quite by accident and my claim to fame is that it reached an Italian newspaper And on weekends and evenings I continue to drive forward the campaign for parliament! Busy however always here and there and everywhere. Happy Summer
Cemanthe June 2015
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BA’s FIVE Big Mistakes With Customer Research I have to tell this story. We have many clients who are choosing to use surveys at the moment to assess their customer’s level of satisfaction. Whether it’s exit surveys, text surveys, email surveys or focus groups, surveys can be an immediate and accurate assessment of what the customer REALLY thinks. So with designing great surveys at the forefront of my mind it was with much interest that I received a survey from British Airways. Sadly, it was not the first time that a survey has led me to think even more negatively about a business AFTER I had completed the feedback! After a recent flight to Edinburgh I decided I had had enough of Easy Jet so I booked a British Airways flight to Manchester. I joined the BA Club, which in itself was not very easy to do online. At the last minute I had to cancel my booking. So after searching online for twenty minutes (there is no point looking for a phone number – I don’t think they exist anymore) I found the option to cancel my flight. I received a message informing me that I would have an email within a few days confirming whether I would get a refund. I received nothing. Then, a week later, I receive a message from a market research company asking me to complete a survey following my discussion with the call center. continued...
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6 Mistake number one
– the market research company have the wrong data. I did not make or receive a call from the call center, as I cancelled on-line. The survey I received was not relevant to my experience.
Mistake number two
– After trying and failing to contact BA direct, it appeared that this survey was my only way of communicating with BA. Therefore for all 40 questions in the survey I have no option but to answer them all with low scores; this was my only avenue of expression! Of course this means that the research results for BA are now not accurate or relevant. I can imagine the Marketing Director pouring over the results wondering how the scores could be improved. Well, how about starting by targeting the right customers?
Mistake number five – once you have completed your survey the final message states: ‘Your survey has been submitted. Thank you for your input.’ This clearly has been written by a researcher and not by BA. So how do you fix this? •
You make sure you send the right survey to the right customer. This prevents any incorrect or inappropriate results. This might mean the research company may have to behave like me, the customer – unthinkable!
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Limit the questionnaire to eight questions. If I become disinterested I will not complete the survey accurately.
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The first question should allow me to assess whether the questionnaire is relevant to my experience.
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Incentivize me – how are you going to reward me for giving you my time?
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Give me an option to ask a team member to call to discuss my concern.
Mistake number three – the
survey had 40 questions. The irony of many market researchers is that they write surveys to gain customer insight yet they never walk in the customer’s shoes. Customers do not want to answer 40 questions. Why should I spend 15 minutes of my valuable time answering a questionnaire to help a company that clearly does not care about me?
Mistake number four
– the survey has not allowed me to tell you why I am disappointed. 40 questions linked to Net Promoter Score (where you answer the question out of 10) does not allow the customer to explain why they were disappointed. You need to capture the customer’s sentiment.
Research can be easy and extremely helpful or it can become complicated and unreliable. Keeping It Simple Stupid (KISS) will ensure a good take off. Shopper Anonymous offers Customer Service solutions and Mystery Shopping across the UK.
I can imagine how these sorts of surveys develop: the market research company starts with 5 questions and the team at BA insist on trying to capture more information for their analysis – ‘can we add a question about this, that and the other?’ Good intentions, yes, but in the process they forget about their customer. Paul Matthews
Regional Director Shopper Anonymous 07710394729 www.shopperanonymous.co.uk/ June 2015
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How to Conduct Your Personal Mid-Year Review How often do you take the time out to really reflect on how you are progressing towards your goals for the year? Now that we are coming towards the half-way point of 2015, now is the perfect time to conduct your own personal mid-year review!
Why Conduct a Personal Mid-Year Review? Conducting a mid-year review gives you the time and space necessary to evaluate your progress towards your goals. Without taking the time out to reflect, how do you know whether your decisions, behaviour and actions for the first 6 months have helped you move towards where you want to go in your life? Reflection is one of the most fundamental skill sets of successful people. “Reflection enables us to evaluate experience, learn from mistakes, repeat successes, revise and plan” – Sherry Swain If you are serious about creating your best life and making your dreams a reality, then you need to reflect to ensure you are making the right decisions and working towards them in the most effective and efficient way.
Benefits of Conducting a Personal Mid-Year Review There are a tonne of benefits from conducting your own mid-year review. Some of the major benefits include: •
Determine if your actions are progressing you towards your goals
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Determine if you are progressing at the right speed (i.e. will you reach your goal on time?)
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Determine if your goals are still relevant
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Understand the challenges you have faced and what learning’s you can make
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Identify more effective or efficient methods of achieving your goal New Media Angels
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8 The more often you can conduct a personal review, the more effective you will become in your life. I would recommend that you at least do a 6-monthly in-depth review of your goals. In fact, I encourage you to do it as often as you can. When I talk about these reviews, I’m talking about your ‘big life goals’.
Conducting Your Personal Mid-Year Review Get Yourself Setup Before we get to the questions, the first thing you need to do is get yourself ready for your mid-year review. No, this doesn’t mean you have to dress up nicely and look pretty, it simply means you need to get yourself in an environment that is conducive for reflection. So, to get setup:
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Find yourself environment
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nice,
quiet
Have your goals and any other supporting materials with you that you can use to look over
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Make sure you have something to write with
One piece of advice on the environment… try conducting your mid-year review away from your ‘normal’ working environment. This would mean getting out of the office, or away from your home and out into a park or somewhere where you can think about your life more objectively and freely. Let’s get into it! Question 1: Are My Goals Still Relevant? Goals change over time. Life is full of surprises! This is not something to be June 2015
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concerned about, but something to be aware of. The first thing to do when conducting your personal mid-year review is to look over the goals that you have set and ask yourself whether they are still relevant.
How have your goals changed? Sometimes when you originally set your goals the future is murky. It’s impossible to predict the future and to know with 100% certainty that a set of circumstances will eventuate. Inline with this, you may have had some clarity on the general direction of where you want to go, but now that you are six months into the year you have realized that there is a slight alternative that you are now working towards. This is fine and goals are to be constantly tweaked and refined… this is all part of the process! The key is to ensure that your goals are still linked to the things that you are passionate about. Passion creates the drive, energy and enthusiasm necessary for success. Question 2: What have I achieved? Now that you have confirmed that your goals are still relevant, the next step in the process is to reflect on what you have actually achieved. How are you tracking towards your goals? What ‘mini-goals’ have you met or what smaller steps have you done to help you reach where you are? Taking the time to reflect on what you have achieved will help you to determine whether your actions and progressing you towards your goals and whether you are likely to achieve them on time. One of the best things about asking yourself this question is that it will highlight the behaviours and actions
9 that have worked. This is superimportant to being able to progress further in the back half of the year. Question 3: What challenges have I faced? When you are looking back over your progress for the year, it’s important that you also look at the challenges you have faced. Very rarely can you reach your most important goals without a challenge being thrown your way. Reflect on what these challenges have been. Why did these obstacles or challenges occur? How did you feel when they were presented? What did you do to overcome these challenges? The other thing that this question can raise is what can you do in the future to prevent these challenges from happening again?
Question 5: differently?
What
can
I
do
Now is when your mid-year review has its biggest impact. Your future. Based on everything you have learned from answering the above questions, it’s time to think about the actions that you will put into place to make sure that the back half of the year is even more effective than the first half. It’s all about continuous improvement! Never get complacent. •
What habits do you need to change?
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What extra support do you need?
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What processes do you need to put in place to be more effective?
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How will you address your next challenge?
Question 4: What have I learned? Life is one big learning experience.
Next Steps
When you’re making progress towards your life goals you’re going to make a million decisions. Some good and some bad. One of the key ingredients that separates successful people is the ability to learn from their actions. Looking back over your answers to the previous questions, now is the perfect time to ask yourself what have you learned from these experiences?
There are 2 things you need to do first and foremost as next steps:
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That is, what have you learned about your goals in life?
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What have you learned from your achievements?
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What have you learned from the challenges you have faced?
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Set yourself a date for your next personal review
Write down 3 things that you can do immediately (or sometime today) to start building momentum in your life…. and go do them! Your personal review should be a regular thing. If you can make it habitual then you’re well on your way to success. The more regular you can review your progress towards your bigger, life goals, the more effective and the more speedy you will get there.
Taking the time to understand the key things that you have learned will help you get set-up perfectly for answering the next question.
Dominica New Media Angels
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Cemanthe June 2015
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Tool Review GoAnimate! The Diary of a GoAnimate! Newbie
Day one: After being recommended this piece of kit I decided I’d give it a darn good try, the sign up was pretty easy and, I’ll admit, I liked the way it was laid out. I suppose that’s the wannabe designer in me coming out there. As you can see, my dashboard is, well, it’s got nothing in there! I got a lovely automated email to say hello from the team, and it shared a link to a tutorial (yay!) and a list of how to’s (double yay!) now to watch the tutorial. I’ll be back!
Day Two: The video tutorial (the short version) was exactly that – short, to the point and helped me to realise it’s rather like a few other online explainer video tools but, much more unique. What I mean here is that you can make some fantastic alterations to the icons and things you add to your video. I think I might give it a go. Wish me luck!
Hannah June 2015
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Day Three:
My thoughts:
Uh oh…I think I might just spend all day in here!
If you fancy having a go and getting more people to learn about your business, then a video is the way to go.
The pre-made themes are fun and have a great variety. If you want to upgrade to other packages, you can, but it doesn’t hold you back from enjoying the huge array they already have available. I picked the first one that popped out to me: the Whiteboard Animation. I have always loved how all these cool brands use a whiteboard like video to explain what they’re doing, while a hand draws what’s going on.
Day Four: Oh this is fun! I have even started to learn how to add voices to our videos. It takes a little moving around but you can do it. And they even have the option to add your own voice, as I don’t have a microphone; I used one of their many text to voice robots. Yes they sounded a little, well, robotic, but it was a fab start.
They are fun, unique and mostly easy to do, once you’ve had a chance to get to grips with all the options available. Goanimate is much like other options out there, however, the ability to add my own voice or a robotic voice from text, is fantastic. This can be a hugely costly addition to other sites out there, and the fact they do this in the profile I have created is amazing. Another great thing about this site is thanks to the amount of people using it, the forum actually has answers to many of the questions I had, without having to contact support or feel silly. This was a good helping hand when I had forgotten how to add a voice over (yes, it was very simple once I remembered!). If you fancy taking a look at my very first video, you can view it here (insert link). New Media Angels
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Angels on the Loose This month we have signed up a great new client who has written a screenplay for a TV series and is raising funds through crowdfunder, so looks to be an interesting project for us as we race against the clock to raise money without being salesy!
WeĂve also ďŹ nished off two websites, one of which we also did illustrations and kindle publishing for, and have signed up two ladies for Linkedin training. Hannah and I also visited a favourite client.
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COULD AN EXECUTIVE COACH REALLY HELP ME? HOW? You’ve heard of Executive Coaching haven’t you? You might even have a friend, colleague or employee who’s worked with an Executive Coach to help them find their career direction or with their career development. Perhaps you’ve contemplated having Executive Coaching yourself, but you’re not entirely sure what it is nor how Executive Coaching could possibly help you, your career or your organisation? The benefits of Executive Coaching are actually almost limitless as career and organisational needs, challenges and aspirations constantly change and evolve over the course of our working lives. Be it the desire to be promoted, optimise performance in a current role, develop leadership skills, increase confidence, gain insight, work out a career path, or even career transition, Executive Coaching can be of benefit at various career stages to achieve many different goals.
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16 Executive Coaching also brings great benefits to organisations who want their staff to flourish. An Executive Coach will help to develop the performance, capability, motivation and results of a company’s employees, helping them to meet performance and business objectives. In turn, this delivers fantastic results for the individual as well as for the organisation. A common misconception can be that Executive Coaching is more relevant to one person, level or industry than another. This is not the case. Everyone and every business can benefit from Executive Coaching. Having a sounding board, challenger and motivator by your side or supporting your staff will help individuals navigate career goals and performance objectives more easily, clearly, quickly and with more confidence. In fact, some of the world’s largest and most successful corporates, business leaders and even politicians, with Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson, Donna Karan and Bill Clinton among them, are known to have a coach.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF COACHING? There are numerous ways in which Executive Coaching can benefit both you and, importantly, your organisation or business. In fact, according to the ICF Global Coaching Client Study, conducted independently by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 99% of individuals and companies who hire a coach are “somewhat or very happy with the overall experience” and 96% would repeat the process.
JUST SOME BENEFITS OF EXECUTIVE COACHING •
Taking a pause from the day-to-day for an hour or so to focus on yourself and your career. This gives you both the space to think without distractions and to have someone else focus fully on you. How often do any of us give ourselves the time to do that?
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Helping you to become clear and focused on what comes next in your career. Is it developing a roadmap to achieve your career aspirations, achieving promotion, developing new skills, achieving more fulfilment from your role, creating a better work/life balance, achieving performance or business targets or is it a completely new career direction?
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Developing inspiring, visionary and effective leaders
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Identifying your values, interests, skills, strengths and motivators, and working through what might be holding you back as well as what can move you forward
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Developing personal effectiveness, prioritising demands, gaining clarity, refining ideas, setting better goals and performing at your fullest potential
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Managing role transition to make an impact, perform at a higher level and thrive on new challenge and responsibility
WHAT EXACTLY IS COACHING? The International Coaching Federation (ICF) defines coaching as bringing fresh perspectives on personal challenges, enhanced decision-making skills, greater interpersonal effectiveness, and increased confidence… Those who undertake coaching also can expect appreciable improvement in productivity, satisfaction with life and work, and the attainment of relevant goals. Executive Coaches can help you move from one place in your career to another, helping you to find the insights and answers for yourself. Coaches are not teachers, mentors, counsellors or therapists but will instead help you reach your fullest potential and achieve satisfaction, success and ultimately fulfilment in your work, by looking forwards, with your active participation. An Executive Coach will motivate you by increasing your awareness, responsibility and commitment to action. June 2015
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Having a sounding board; someone to challenge you, expand your thinking, create options, develop strategies and who will motivate you to action
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Improving the performance and motivation of your staff, helping them reach their peak level of performance to achieve set objectives
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Helping your staff to understand themselves better so that they can people manage, communicate, work with and influence others more effectively
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Helping employees who have great potential to overcome the obstacles that might be holding them back, enabling them to flourish in their role
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Coaching helped as I had somebody to listen to my story in a completely objective way, pick up on certain points I hadn’t and to challenge me on some of my ways of thinking. I can now see the beginnings of some real structure and focus that I will really be able to build on.” Client testimonial
If you think Executive Coaching could help you progress your career or benefit your staff or your business, then book your free 30 minutes consultation with Emma at Performance Path Coaching now.
Perhaps the best questions to ask yourself when deciding whether or not to work with a coach as an individual or an organisation are:
What is working? What isn’t working? What do I / we need to change? What would I / we like this to look like in 12 months time? What is the cost of not making this change?
If the answer to the latter isn’t appealing then it’s time to talk to Performance Path Coaching. I have helped hundreds of Clients identify and achieve their career goals, enabling them to achieve happy, fulfilling and successful working lives for both themselves and their organisations.
Emma Pratt Executive Coach & Director www.performancepathcoaching.com
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Two worrying “non answers” to questions posed to business leaders have marked me during the past fortnight. The first was posed to the General Counsel of a major sports manufacturer during a panel discussion entitled ‘Ethics drives Performance’. Fascinating topic, though why a GC would be well placed to speak to it is perhaps more of a mystery. And so it proved. The question went to the apparent contradiction between on the one hand the company’s professed adherence to ethics, compliance and business integrity and on the other hand their high prof ile sponsorship of a well known sporting body which has recently been the subject of serious corruption allegations. “Gentlemen”, I asked (for no ladies featured on this particular panel), “with all due respect, I f ind myself wondering whether the title here is ‘Ethics drives June 2015
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Performance’ or ‘Lack of Ethics drives Performance’. Are we not in danger of preaching to the choir here, with an audience of ethics and compliance professionals? If we were among CEOs and business people, would the conclusion not be that ‘Sales trumps Ethics every day of the week’?”. No satisfactory answer was forthcoming, though your correspondent did hear a claim that, as these are the bodies running world sport, one has no choice but to do business with them…! One cannot help but wonder what the business impact would be if the major corporations which choose to invest their prof its in high prof ile sponsorships of international sports were to take a strong - and principled - stand on ethics and compliance issues on the part of their well-funded recipients. What might the impact on
performance be in that case? I for one would be much more likely to buy their brand of sneakers over the (less ethically obvious) competition – are you with me? This brings me to the second unanswered question. This was at an Executive Breakfast at which the Spanish CEO of a technology company was presenting on innovation trends. Lots of mention of younger generations and Asian mega-cities; less mention of the hundreds of millions of Dollars which this corporation has paid out for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in various countries around the world. After sharing with the (female) CEO that the research indicates that companies with female CEOs tend to be more ethical, I reminded her
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– and the audience – about the bribery incidents, some of which took place in countries ranked higher than Spain in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.
“What”, I enquired, “does the CEO of the Spanish business do in light of these events, to make absolutely sure that this could not happen here?”. Interested observers, and more particularly shareholders, could be very interested in the CEO’s response… The answer: nothing! We were told about the CEO’s high personal morals and how she would never be able to sleep at night if she was party to dir ty business, oh and also about the hotline in place for people to report ethics violations (strange how that didn’t seem to work in those other countries). In neither case above was there evidence of Ethical Leadership. We have all heard about the importance of Tone from the Top, but scratch the surface and it’s hard to f ind. How can it be acceptable for corporations with state-of-the-art anti-corruption policies and training, who perform due diligence on third parties with whom they do business, to throw millions of Dollars at sporting bodies which fail to meet acceptable standards of ethics, transparency, compliance and anticorruption? Surely paying out tens of millions of Dollars in penalties for FCPA violations forces an organisation to take a long hard look at its global practices? Sadly, the reality appears to be that on the former, this is per fectly acceptable, and on the latter, no such internal action is deemed necessary. As a good friend who serves as Ethics Off
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icer for a multinational manufacturing business has commented, are we not witnessing an ‘Ethical Race to the Bottom’?
This needs to change – now. Having an ethics and compliance programme is not simply a strategic investment, reacting to applicable legal requirements to be able to defend the organisation in the face of allegations of non-compliance. Real accountability, transparency and ethical culture are required – urgently. Initiatives such as Rowland Jack’s I Trust Sport are shifting the debate forwards in the right direction. Grassroots social media movements can inf luence consumer behaviour – hurting companies with inadequate ethics by reducing their multi-million Dollar retail sales. Most importantly, our esteemed (and well remunerated) business leaders need to throw off their ethical dustsheets and stand up and be counted - today!
Murray Grainger Founder and Director Impact on Integrity Ltd. murray@impactonintegrity.com www.impactonintegrity.com UK +44 7787 209 200 ES +34 630 957 200
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Cartoon of the Month
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Quote of the Month
Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers� - Robert A. Heinlein
June 2015
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Innovation Box Innovate UK 2015 The global spotlight on UK innovation, Innovate UK 2015, is back and will take place at Old Billingsgate, London on 9th and 10th November. Hosted by Innovate UK and UKTI, this twoday event will once again bring together 3,000 of the UKĂs most exciting innovators with investors, global corporates and the research base. Innovate UK 2015 will play host to more than 100 exhibitors, 200 inspirational speakers and over 250 international visitors from 30 markets. This year Innovate UK 2015 will be part of UKTIĂs Export Week, a series of events aimed at businesses looking to start their export journey or investigate how to increase their international business. www.events.ukti.gov.uk/innovate-uk-2015/
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June 2015
“Having appointed New Media Angels since October 2010, to run our Facebook and Twitter campaign for Dreamfields Pasta UK, we have been very impressed with her knowledge of this social medium and the results achieved to date. NMA are a valued part of our marketing strategy. Highly recommended.” Lee Chapman, Salubris Dreamfields
“I was overwhelmed & confused by the world of “business social media”, Cemanthe has quickly cut through all the bull out there and helped me understand what I need and how to achieve it, fantastic value for money.Thanks.” Jon Denoris, Club 51
“I am writing to say how enjoyable and useful I found your seminar on Social Media for Business at the Westminster Central Reference Library today. I felt you demystified the whole area of Twitter, Facebook, blogs and so on and made a powerful argument for getting into it – that is where our customers are! I will certainly take you up on at least one of your Power Hours, and look forward to attending another of your workshops or courses. Thank you!” David Marks, BullRodger
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