View from the Hill

First time nerves

Do you remember the first time you made a speech to an audience? How many people were you addressing? What did you wear? How did you deal with your nerves?

Like many others all over the world yesterday, I watched the Duchess of Cambridge’s first speech and I was thoroughly impressed. No matter what you think of the monarchy, private education and image, you will no doubt appreciate what a scary thing it must have been for this young woman to stand up and speak knowing that she was being broadcast around the world.

What Kate (if I may be so bold) demonstrated is that there are tricks you can employ to control your nerves.

-          make sure you are very familiar with your speech (rumour has it she wrote it herself). Personally I think it’s absolutely acceptable to read from your notes as long as your head isn’t buried in them.

-          wear clothes/shoes in which you feel comfortable whilst also looking smart. You don’t want your outfit to detract from what you’re saying – either positively or negatively. As demonstrated yesterday, there’s no need to splash out on an entirely new outfit, you can borrow one from a friend or even your mum! For me, the shoes are crucial – wearing heels that are too high affect my ability to stand and breathe properly.

-          be well-groomed. Outrageously, I heard a comment on Radio 4 this morning from a tabloid newspaper that Kate “touched her hair too much”. If you had hair that lovely, wouldn’t you touch it? As far as tics go, it isn’t exactly a bad one and I would defy the journalist to present without touching their hair or face at some point. It’s an unconscious thing and doesn’t really affect the impact of your speech. Do your hands shake? Clasp them in front or behind you, in the manner of the Von Trapp Family singers!

-          speak slowly and incorporate pauses. This is the best way to get through any sort of public speaking when you’re at all nervous. It wasn’t difficult to tell that Kate was nervous but she took her time whilst reading. She paused between punctuation points taking her time to look at the next sentence so that she could deliver it to the audience with a smile, lots of eye contact and a few hand gestures. Pausing between points really does give the audience a chance to digest what you’ve said as well as giving you that all important moment to breathe, gather yourself and move on towards your conclusion.

The Duchess is quoted as saying “I find doing speeches nerve wracking”. Who doesn’t? Whether it’s speaking up in a team meeting or addressing 100 (million?!) people, it’s only natural to feel nervous. I think it’s worth remembering that if you’re not even a teeny bit nervous, you probably don’t care and that's not necessarily a good thing. Which leads me to my last point for conquering nerves and making a good impression. Speak from the heart. Kate clearly did this yesterday. You could hear it in the tone of her voice and it was obvious from her body language and the warmth of her smile. It only ever gets easier. I promise.

- Suzanne

Should Information tip the scales on the balance sheet?

Our Friday breakfast discussions highlighted the importance of online content strategy being understood and supported by everyone in an organisation, in particular at CEO and board level.  Information, unlike a warehouse full of product or work in progress, is invisible and often not recognised or valued as asset.  In the current climate the easily recognised costs of organised access to information are often being cut (the information managers) thus indirectly adding to the cost of ensuring that those who need it can find and identify the appropriate information.  This becomes even more difficult in a global organisation where the cultures may differ and local management have a differing view.  Corporate memory is an eroded value asset.

Equally having a sound information or online content strategy can bring benefits that outstrip information forced into an IT infrastructure that doesn't always fit the need of the users or the organisation.  One delegate mentioned that the corporate ethos of "make search work" was somewhat at odds with several thousand users developing their own mini libraries on local servers without understanding the need for globalised sharing.  This led another delegate to make the point that in their company people only admit where their information stored is if it appears they may lose it or lose access to it.

Risk is always an issue.  Users expect the keepers to circumvent the rules put in place by IT or even to try and bypass contractual limitations. The security of information in the cloud was seen as uncertain - sanctioned by some employers and feared by others.  Social Media is still blocked in certain types of organisation and consequently people use their own personal devices more and more.  This is something that mobile and home working tends to take advantage off.  Providing accessible access to internal information but encouraging staff to provide their own space, PCs and devices cuts overheads whilst at the same time giving risk management a higher profile as organisations try and balance security, access and reputational management.

Intriguingly cultures differ within the same types of organisations and recent co-operation between public organisations has brought that into perspective.  Of three local authorities moving to shared services one has everything outsourced, directly opposite to another where everything is done in-house whilst the third has a mix of both.  Change needs driving from the top down but you often still need information people to make sense of it.

Above all the ability to make a decision (be it right or wrong) is vital as failure to make decisions invariably causes damage and can stall progress.  In a tracked programme of change, four months of 13 months was attributed to failure to make appropriate decisions.  A valuable aid going forward has been to run risk registers alongside the process thus facilitating better decision making.

Asking delegates present to outline the biggest changes they had seen in the last five years brought forth growing user expectations, outsourcing (justification and value), mobile technologies, ways of working, lack of boundaries, globalisation ideology and keeping up with the pace of technological development and concepts.  The final comment brought a wry smile from all those present; "SharePoint is not the answer!"

Sue H

Work Experience - good for all

For the last two weeks we have had the pleasure of two students from local schools, undergoing work experience. Eamon is 15 at a local school and Hawa is 17 and studying at a nearby college. The timing was fortuitous as they started at the same time as our new Administrator, Shelley (who is 18 and who I found handing out her CV in a local bookshop - never one to miss an opportunity I pounced and brought her back to the office for an interview and she joined us the following week).

Eamon and Hawa have been a delight to have, they have sat in turn with each member of the SHR team understudying and sometimes doing their work with them. They have restored my faith in the education system as both are numerate (essential when checking piles of temporary worker timesheets) and also articulate. They have both impressed Gary our accountant with their intelligent questions about accounts and quickly picked up the essentials of Records Management - I think they know more than me about retention scheduling now.

It takes time to put a work schedule together for them, and then more time to sit with them and explain our work processes but the team here have been happy to share an insight into work in a busy SME, which I think has benefited them as well as Hawa and Eamon. 

In all our years of having work experience students from local schools and colleges we have never been disappointed. In fact one of our work experience students came back here and worked for seven years. He is now a Senior Credit Controller for an investment bank and another (Karen) who joined us straight from school, is a mother and works part-time for us in our payroll and credit department.

Yam Jam at breakfast - more than just toast and jam

Some interesting words reverberated around the lively agenda-setting session at the breakfast table at Roast on Thursday morning for the first SHR networking breakfast of 2012.  Strategic review was swiftly followed by strategy, business objectives and restructuring; budgets, economy, offsite and time fitted nicely with volume; intranets and wikis; and last but not least governance, reliability and compliance.

 One can be confident that 12 people working in strategic information roles will have something to say.  Those present represented all the facets of information not just sectorally but also nationally and globally

 It was exciting to hear of different organisations' views and usage of the myriad of communication channels.  Not all firms are fast movers and adopters and it seems that IT still hold the reins and are hesitant to condone organisation wide of tweeting, yammer, wikis and more.  Yammer implemented firm wide but working outside of the fire-wall raised eyebrows and certainly was of great concern to IT and we were greatly amused by the idea of a Yam Jam.  The need to drive IT to manage cultural shift away from fear of sharing was high in everyone’s minds.  At least one person found it frustrating and pointed out the difficulties in not being the owners of our destiny and thus needing to take a place in the IT queue which placed CRM ahead of KM.  We needed more time to talk about wikis vs intranets vs web but I heard enough to think I could find a use for an internal team wiki.

 I confess I came straight back to work and checked out http://digbig.com/5bfnkn a great blog by Austin Hunter on how he as a non social media user was able to use Yam Jamming as a way to discuss business priorities. 

Concern about corporate memory and impact of its loss came to the fore.  (Is corporate memory becoming an eroded value asset?)  So too did the mix in old business values re new highly mobile bright social media communicators.  This works well when we can ensure diversity in attitudes to work and life balance and boundaries. It’s good when oldies can understand young folks’ need to publicise all they do, and young ones understanding oldies need for boundaries between work and personal life in return!   

We all felt strategic reviews were happening more frequently and not always with good reason.  They shouldn’t’ be driven by panic.  Some felt them hard to endure and wondered what the end game was but others had found them positive and resulting in the creation of exciting new opportunities, directions and ways of working.

Our delicious breakfast (eggs benedict, full veggie borough, boiled eggs with marmite soldiers and more) nourished us for the day and also nourished our minds.

Remember, remember it's Movember

Movember of course being that time of year when men who don't generally sport face furniture grow moustaches with the aim of raising vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men.

This year our very own Ryan Reast has taken up the challenge and is growing himself a lovely lip rug. Ryan hopes his moustache will spark conversations and generate some laughs whilst raising the all important funds and awareness.

Here he is is on Movember 7th. Conclusion in the office is that it's kind of underwhelming so far. But with 22 days left, still plenty of time for luxuriant growth.

But what kind of moustache should Ryan grow? Debate is raging - Handlebar? Tom Selleck? Hitler? Sanchez? Walrus? Ryan is a keen football fan so I think he should pick from the wide range of excellent footballing taches available - perhaps the David Seaman?

Ryan's Movember page is at http://mobro.co/ReastR if you would like more information or to support him.

 

- Fiona

conversations, and no doubt generate some laughs; all in the name of raising vital awareness and funds for cancers affecting men.