Blogging About Blogs – Casey's Blog

Working out loud

Building connections – being more human

About a billion years ago I supported the adoption of WarwickBlogs at the University of Warwick. (I think I’d read somewhere that putting one heel up like that would make me look slimmer.)

We won awards and everything. CIPR Midlands PRide Awards 2005/6

I became a total convert to the community-building power of working out loud. Sharing your thought process as you go. Giving colleagues a window onto what you’re up to. Allowing them to follow you – and chip in if they want. Testing the mettle of your ideas. Getting builds and challenges. Just lurking and learning what others are doing. Understanding colleagues more as humans.

Blogging not communicating

In this sense blogging is not ‘communicating’ – you’re not addressing a plural audience. It’s more reflective. More like letter-writing or journaling.

I think we’re all a bit more used to it now than we were 13 years ago. Now, it’s just like a long-form Facebook post or Tweet.

I’m currently working at the ESFA and I’m challenging colleagues to Work Out Loud using our Delve blogs.

What does that mean?

Part of the process is learning ways to make your work visible and frame it as a contribution.
How to work out loud – Rachel Miller: http://www.allthingsic.com/wol/

Encouraging sharing
Opening up to knowledge exchange
Continuous improvement
Building a team
Celebrating and sharing our professional expertise

What’s your source for that?

Quick guide to Working Out Loud in Office 365: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2013/07/02/working-loud-mythbusting-tips/
Working Out Loud at Sun Microsystems: https://johns2as.wordpress.com/category/corporate-blogs-and-bloggers/sun-microsystems-corporate-blogs-and-bloggers/
Working Out Loud (TEDx) – https://youtu.be/XpjNl3Z10uc

Why?

The big why – beyond even the immediate benefits – is that it helps us to show people what we do, what we’re good at, what we’re working on, and what we’re doing for the wider organisation.

Have you got any examples?

Why, yes! I’m delighted you asked:

Ain’t nobody got time for that meme / Time spent blogging is time invested in clarifying your thinking.

Talking to Yourself (Out Loud) Can Help You Learn – https://hbr.org/2017/05/talking-to-yourself-out-loud-can-help-you-learn
The Feynman Technique: The Best Way to Learn Anything – https://fs.blog/2012/04/feynman-technique/
Understanding management students’ reflective practice through blogging – https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257496473_Understanding_management_students%27_reflective_practice_through_blogging
Working Out Loud – Action Learning for the Digital Age? – https://outlandish.com/blog/working-out-loud-action-learning-for-the-digital-age/

Promise

This post is about fulfilling a promise to someone with promise.

LG joined our internal communications team six weeks ago as an intern. I’ve been line managing and mentoring him.

He has a communications degree, some outstanding short-term print and broadcast work experience, and a go get ’em attititude. But he is also hungry – impatient to be straight in to a full-on, unleaded, creative, decision-making job, and longing to be doing something fulfilling.

Even more than that, he wants a job that is fun.

And this might be why he still hasn’t found the first full-time comms role for him.

Part of me wants to nurture and encourage that desire. (Yes, hold out for the job that is fun, and you’ll never work a day in your life.) The rest of me wants to show him how many of us started our careers by cutting, sticking and photocopying press cuttings *every* morning.

I still remember resenting my mum’s well-meant words: nobody ever loves their work; you just need to find something you can put up with.

We are half-way through.

In the meantime we are working on building up his strengths (story-spotting, creativity, writing, digital media) and finding opportunities for him to develop in other areas (stakeholder management, planning, time management).

And, as a team, we are learning from him – we are remembering how to be more impulsive, how to ask ‘so what’, how to bring in the social angle into the mix, how to be more real-time, how to use different media.

And I am remembering that it’s OK to expect fulfillment, and that maybe its as much about your approach as it is about your role.

As I encourage LG to showcase his writing and his podcasting through his blog, I am fulfilling my side of our contract by dusting off mine.

Turning Over a New Leaf

Right, this is my declaration that I’m disinterring my blogging mojo. It’s time to come back.

There’s a lot in my head – which it would benefit me to articulate in words (it may not benefit you much though!).

Future topics are likely to include:

SharePoint Vs Intranet
How to evaluate team briefing
More on social media as an internal comms tool
Use of NLP in internal comms
Values, reputation and behaviours
Internal Comms on a budget (Civil Service Marketing & Communications Spending Freeze!)
Seeing David McLeod at a conference recently
Embedding employee engagement in mainstream business….

I may add to this this afternoon.

Social Capital & Knowledge Exchange: Blogging Inside the Enterprise

You may think I’ve been unusually quiet recently, but I’ve been diverting my energies into other channels, including a guest spot at Simply Communicate a site that collates advice, toolkits and templates covering every aspect of internal communication inside organisations.

Here is a taster:

Internal blogging can give us:

The ability to get to know our colleagues as people and individuals encouraging give and take.
An easier way of building networks of like-minded or useful people.
An easy way to find out what colleagues are working on (and joining the dots with our own work).
An easier way of finding out what people extracurricular interests and skills are (and harnessing them).
The ability to scan the internal environment, take a reading of the organisation’s mood, and spot and pre-empt issues.
An easy way to get a rounded sounding on ideas and test out theories or approaches – both by yourself by beginning to articulate ideas for the first time, and with others as a community of interest which helps to test and build the idea.

Read the full article.

Breasts = Google Gold

Thanks to Laura Dewis for the mention:

And congratulations to vblogger of the month, Casey Leaver, for getting the most views in the video blog series on “What YouTube taught me” for Getting abreast of your health.

Wonder why videos with sperm and breasts in the title got the most attention?

Although, I am rather partial to CK’s Rugby & Seabass and Guy’s Trains.

And just wait til you see the snails and children that we filmed yesterday for Evolution Megalab.

I Do Try New Things

So today I’m trying Moblog – you can text or MMS updates.

Some examples of Moblogs that work.

And my first post of last night’s Warwick staff party (I do old things too). I promise I was only there because it was Sam’s last gig with the Re:Offenders before moving to Brighton to be Director of the World.

Good Luck Sam & Mark!

Am really struggling with the UI though. Which is making me cross.

Blogging Mojo

My blogging mojo has returned. I lost it for quite a while there – but the important thing to remember is, it’s just like a diet, if you fall off the wagon, don’t give up altogether just start again….

A lot of colleagues used to ask me how I found the time to blog – and I always used to reply that it takes no longer than writing an email.

But actually, I’ve found the catch, the actual act of writing takes no longer than writing an email, but if you haven’t found the time for personal reflection then you have to factor that it – and that really is timeconsuming!

Firstly, I don’t make time for reflection when I’m stressed and secondly some topics of reflection are not suitable blog material.

Well, I have two new blog entry stumps to work on:

Laura Dewis has asked me to film a vblog entry entitled “What I’ve learnt from You Tube.”
I took part in a workshop on Tuesday about facilitation
1. What is it? How can it help the OU? Should we train managers or offer a crack team for on-demand support?

More on these, and more in general later….

Citations

Writing about http://www.phwa.org/resources/article.php?id=1137

Leaver, C. (2007, May 21). Employee engagement: Linkages with the Sears model. Warwick Blog [online]. Retrieved May 23, 2007, from http://www.warwick.ac.uk.

On a vanity google trawl the other day I found this…. (It’s important to keep an eye on online reputation management I think!)

I have to say that I was very surprised to have my outpourings referenced in such a meticulous way. Fair play to them.

Although, when I reference, which is not as much as I should, I tend to use the University of Bath Library Citation Guidelines.

What do we do with this Facebook thing?

Adapted from Well, Everything has to Start Somewhere on our work blog.

And more than that, to quote Jane Magé (a former boss):

We are where we are, let’s see where we can go from here.

A quote which I find useful for a variety of occasions…

So, we’ve got this Facebook presence – what are we doing with it? (See other entries for for wailing and gnashing of teeth in this vein.)

A week or so ago we got together to have an open-ended discussion – here are some of the points that arose: Continue reading “What do we do with this Facebook thing?”