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I spotted a fascinating piece of news today about the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) reversing a social media policy shortly after issuing it. The original policy, issued Friday before the holiday weekend, notified employees that TSA would block certain categories of websites. Blocking certain websites is common, and so were most of the blocked categories, which included extreme violence, criminal activity, and gruesome content. One blocked category, however - sites that contained “controversial opinions” - raised a number of eyebrows.

At about 5:30 this evening, according to CBS News, TSA reversed itself on that particular category, assuring its employees that it does in fact want them to think for themselves (my interpretation).

For communicators, I think there are a couple of lessons here. One, of course, is a simple reminder that “internal communications” no longer exists as a category, if in fact it ever did - companies should operate on the assumption that any information provided to employees will go public, sooner rather than later. A second is that it’s hard to regulate the consumption of information in a way that makes sense in the borderless world of the internet. Most people would - I think - agree that companies have the right to prevent employees from using company provided equipment to access pornography and violence during working hours, but even the definitions of those categories can be problematic  (in reference to the TSA policy, for example, what exactly is “extreme violence” - and does that mean “normal violence” is acceptable?). And it only becomes more complicated, as TSA’s experience shows us.

In an earlier post, I cited Jay Shepherd’s Tweetable Twitter policy as an example of a thoughtful, smart social media policy - any other policies you’d recommend?

Very interesting Detroit Free Press article on how companies are dealing with social media. What is your company doing? What are the best (and worst) policies and practices you’ve seen? I still think the best Twitter policy ever is Jay Shepherd’s 140 character policy but if you have a fave, I’d love to know about it.

How much does communication cost your company? One of my clients just shared an equation she picked up at a conference - try it; it will blow your mind.

• Take the average monthly salary at your company
• Multiply by two (to cover overhead, benefits, etc.)
• Divide by 20 (working days in a month)
• Divide by 8 (hours per day)
• Divide by 60 (minutes per hour)
• Multiply by number of employees at your company

This gives you the cost per minute of having all your employees do something - like read a memo.

Multiply by number of minutes - let’s say by 5 minutes to read and digest a 1-plus page memo. That gives you the cost of communicating. Now let’s see it in action.

• Average monthly salary = $5,000
• Times 2 = $10,000
• Divided by 20 = 500
• Divided by 8 = 62.5
• Divided by 60 = 1.04, or about a buck a minute.

Multiply that by 5 minutes and you get $5.21. Now here’s where it gets really good. Multiply by 5,000 employees and the cost of having all your employees read a memo is $26,050. If you have 100,000 employees that cost goes to $521,000 - and that’s for a SHORT memo. Bring all your employees into a one-hour all employee meeting and the numbers are really amazing. For a 5,000 person company, the cost is $312,000.

I’m a big fan of communication, obviously - but the equation above provides a compelling reminder of the need to think carefully about how and how much we communicate to make sure we’re getting the most bang for the buck.

The Conference Board’s quarterly survey of CEO ConfidenceTM is down slightly for the first quarter, reversing direction from Q4’09. What does that mean? Possibly not much – it’s a drop of only two points, and only time will tell if it’s an exception or a trend. But if you want to read something into it, I’d say it indicates a slow, uneven recovery with the potential for a one-step-forward-two-steps-back twist. And that means communication with employees and other stakeholders will be challenging, and more important than ever.

Think about it. When things are really good, there’s a lot to talk about. Success breeds confidence and confidence breeds communication. CEOs love to tell investors they are making money and employees that they will get bonuses. Bad news, believe it or not, functions similarly, because there’s no choice. Companies are legally obligated to disclose material news to stakeholders, negative as well as positive. CEOs may not enjoy announcing layoffs, but it has to be done. It’s when things are uncertain that executives tend to want to crawl in a cave and wait to see which way the wind is blowing. That’s a mistake.

Yes, things are iffy. Hiring may pick up, but it may not. Consumer spending may increase, but it may not (after decreasing in February, the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence index increased slightly in March – go figure). There’s no need to go out on a limb predicting the future, and someone will just cut it off anyway if they get the chance. But in times of uncertainty it’s really important to communicate regularly with employees. Don’t know what to say? Here are some ideas:

• I know there’s a lot of uncertainty out there
• Here’s what I can tell you
• We have a strategy: it is XXX
• We know how to tell if that strategy is working: we monitor YYY carefully
• We are taking steps to meet the challenges we face
• We will keep you informed about how the company is doing
• We are grateful for your hard work and commitment
• We appreciate all your ideas on how to do this better

What else should executives be communicating in this age of uncertainty? How often should they communicate?

Am I the only person who feels ill every time I hear the word “passion” at work?

This doesn’t mean I am not committed or do sloppy work. I am a classic Type A overachiever. But to me, passion is personal. It’s what I feel for my husband, for the old schoolhouse we’re restoring, for the sweet peas I’m sprouting, for world peace, and – okay, just a little – for Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama. It is NOT what I feel about work.

I feel a lot of things about work – interested, challenged, even excited – but the best word is probably committed. I am fortunate that I have been paid fairly and given opportunities to do interesting, creative things in my career. I have very high standards for anything that goes through my shop – so much so that veterans on my team warn newbies who join up. I am super dedicated and I really enjoy my job. But I am not passionate about it. To me, that’s a word for a different time and place. 

I think small business owners are different. Most of those I have met ARE passionate about the businesses they’ve started. But for those of us who work for someone else, it doesn’t feel like the right word. At work, I don’t want passion – I want intelligence, creativity, dedication, stamina, and, yes, PLEASE, the ability to proofread. In fact if someone told me in a job interview that their job was their passion, I would question their truthfulness, not to mention their sanity. 

Am I crazy? Am I merely splitting semantic hairs? Or is passion at work overrated?

According to numerous accounts, Americans’ New Years resolutions are fairly predictable. Not necessarily in this order, here are the top ten for 2009:

• Stop smoking
• Get Fit
• Lose Weight
• Enjoy Life More
• Quit Drinking
• Get Organized
• Learn Something New
• Get Out of Debt
• Spend more time with Family/Friends
• Help Others

All worthy goals, to be sure – and as anyone in a leadership role knows, it’s important to have a goal. With that in mind, I’d like to suggest some resolutions for leaders to consider in 2010:

• Listen more than you talk
• Lead by example
• Show you value employees by asking for their ideas and input
• Communicate clearly, in plain language
• Say “thank you”

What else should leaders be thinking about as we look toward a new year?

In September 2001 I skipped a family Labor Day dinner because I had to work. It turned out to be one of the last we’d have with my father, who was diagnosed with cancer shortly thereafter and died the next January. I swore I would never again put work above real life.

I did pretty well for a number of years, but a few weeks ago, I slipped. “I’m sorry,” I told my sister, “I can’t hang out and take my nieces back to school shopping – I have to work.” When evening came around and I looked back on how I’d spent my weekend, did I regret my choice? You bet.

Why is this relevant to leadership and communications? Because we all have good intentions, and we all make promises, and we all slip.”I will communicate more frequently with employees,” we tell ourselves. “I will work harder to make sure they understand the role they play and how they contribute to the company’s success.” “I will spend more time walking around talking to employees and less time in my office or locked up with my executive team.” But then things get busy and people make demands and we revert to our old patterns.

I’m not saying we should beat ourselves up for slipping, but we shouldn’t stop trying either, even if we slip repeatedly. My nieces are coming over this weekend, and I’m not working.

 Last weekend we decamped to the coast for a family gathering – four sisters, two husbands, two teenaged nieces, one baby nephew, and two dogs. My nieces started channel surfing late one afternoon and stumbled across Lethal Weapon, with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. My husband said “Hold on, that was a fun movie.” So we watched for a few minutes – and then looked at the kids, who were looking at us with the half-pitying, half wondering, “What’s wrong with you?” look that only teenaged girls can do effectively. The pacing has changed so much since 1987, when that movie came out, that what we remembered as a fast-paced, shoot-em-up buddy movie moved at the pace of slow molasses. It was painful to watch even for us, and for my nieces – who make their own videos, edit them, and upload them to Facebook – it was incomprehensible that it had EVER been good.

It reminded me of two things.

One is the Charlie Brown specials we watched every year as kids, where adults’ voices are always depicted as remote, incomprehensible sounds (”Mwah MWAH, mwah mwah mwah MWAH…”)

The other was my first year of teaching. I had attended college when a good lecture was as good as it got – hard as it is to believe now, we were not only willing, but happy, to listen to one voice speak for an hour while we took notes. When I started teaching, I realized pretty quickly that for the TV generation I was lecturing to, I wasn’t enough. I began starting every lecture with an appropriate song (for example, Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s inspired version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” for Race and Equality in WWII; Country Joe and the Fish “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” for Vietnam) and bought myself a copy stand so I could shoot my own slides. It worked wonders.

As leaders, we are used to communicating in certain ways. We need to keep in mind that our audience may be used to a different kind and pace of communication. Leadership is all about storytelling – but keep it short and snappy. For more on this, see Stew Friedman’s “How a 2-Minute Story Can Help You Lead.”

Years ago, I was one of only two female junior faculty members at a large state university in the South, and often the only female at a given meeting. Invariably, one of the middle-aged white men at the table would look over at me and suggest that I take notes. Although at first I said OK – who can say no to anything during their first few weeks on the job? - pretty quickly it began to irate me (as they said in that part of the south). But I didn’t know what to do.

I debated saying, “You know, I’m junior faculty, not a secretary,” or “I took notes at the last three meetings; who else would like to take a turn?” but feared I’d come off as too uppity. Finally I hit on an idea: I left my pen and notebook back in my office. When the request came, I smiled disarmingly and said, “Oh my goodness, silly me – I didn’t bring pen and paper!” In the silence that followed, I could HEAR them chewing over the alternatives: “This is damned awkward.” “If we ask her to go back to her office and get the pen and paper…” “I could offer to lend her pen and paper but that’s almost worse…” Eventually one of them motioned to one of the others: “Morton, you take notes this time.” BINGO. I never, ever brought a pen and paper to another faculty meeting. [And I never regretted it until (fast forward to my next life) my boss, who I adored, laughed and shook his head as he passed me yet another pen and a sheet of paper and said, "Why don’t you ever have a notebook with you like a normal person?" But that’s another story.]

Why am I telling you this? Because in figuring out how to construct communications that drive behavior it’s important to remember that there’s more than one way to skin a cat.