Here’s what Charlene wrote:

I go to church in the Grandview-Woodlands neighbourhood in Vancouver (which got a shout-out in your book!), and each year during Lent, my church invites people to create linocut prints inspired by the Stations of the Cross for display in our sanctuary.

For my piece, I chose to explore visual representations of community-making, and settled on mapping as my primary metaphor. I stumbled across your book at a local library, and your first and ninth chapters in particular provided so many great ideas for understanding how maps are understood by various cultures, and also how maps hold keys to how a community sees itself.

In case you were curious to see what your work inspired, I’ve attached a terrible photo of my linocut print (use the image of the Coast Mountains to orient the piece in the proper direction), as well as the artist’s statement. . . 

In her artist statement, Charlene explains that she thought of Mary as she asked herself, “Where do I see Christ on the way from my house to Grandview Calvary Baptist Church?”

She continues:

These signs chart the journey I took, both literally and metaphorically, to come to this church. They indicate hardship and sin: places of doubt, relationships spoiled, events where I did not know how to receive or give grace. They also show the hope and joy that come with God’s presence. The hobo sign that I found myself using most often indicates, “good people live here” – for me, at least, a reminder that God is the giver, creator, and restorer of communities previously unimagined.

Thanks, Charlene, for sharing this work.

View the full Artist’s Statement here

Greenpeace used the video to draw attention to Nestlé’s use of palm oil from Indonesian rain forests. Nestlé reacted as most aggrieved companies would: by demanding that the video be removed immediately. This only touched off a kerfuffle on Twitter and on Nestlé’s Facebook page; a “boycott Nestlé” Facebook group sprang up. And the result? The video is still on the web.

Nestlé and many others in the food industry are trying to catch up to societal attitudes on corporate responsibility and concerns about obesity and the state of health. These firms may reduce portion sizes, change packaging, adjust recipes and ingredients, or disclose calorie information. But many of these same firms also have a checkered reputation, having grown fat by helping people get fat. So the question is, Should they publicize their new “healthy” initiatives or should they lay low and not invite negative buzz?

To answer this question, researchers Kolk, Meg Lee, and van Dolen (U Amsterdam) studied the online reactions to corporate announcements relating to health-related initiatives. They tried to determine which announcements generated the most buzz, positive and negative, and which were ignored.

Kolk and colleagues collected and analyzed blog posts and comments relating to press releases from 10 large U.S.-based food companies: Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, McDonald’s, Subway, KFC, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Mars, and Nestlé. The press releases and blog posts, culled from a period of two-and-a-half years, were sorted into four categories of health-related initiatives: cost (altered package size), convenience (reduced portions or altered package design), taste (altered ingredients), and knowledge (greater transparency).

One of the first things they noticed was that most of the press releases from food companies during this period fell into the “taste” category. Virtually none were related to cost or convenience. “Despite the recent debate and suggestions concerning ‘supersizing’ and serving portions, companies have opted for communicating about adapting the taste to address health concerns and about engaging in an educational role,” the researchers wrote in the journal California Management Review.

Other takeaways:

* Forty-two percent of the press releases generated responses in the blogosphere — generally positive rather than negative buzz. Press releases on topics relating to taste generated significantly more, and also more positive, responses than those relating to knowledge.

* Food companies generally got a rough ride online when they announced initiatives that deviated from their core products. Examples: KFC’s launch of grilled chicken and Coca-Cola’s acquisition of Honest Tea. “This interplay of message framing and consumers’ original beliefs or perceptions is not always easy to forecast,” the researchers concluded.

* Starbucks and Coca-Cola stood out for having the highest number of blog posts and comments, but for different reasons. Starbucks attracted mostly positive buzz, Coca-Cola mostly negative. In the social media world, Starbucks no doubt is helped by its dedicated army of brand enthusiasts.

Trying to anticipate how a story will play in the blogosphere is a bit of a mug’s game, as the researchers themselves admit. “How could one predict that the claim that Coca-Cola’s Enviga green tea helps to burn calories would be perceived as false and/or annoying, while the statement that vitamin-added Diet Coke is something extra healthy for Diet Coke drinkers would be welcomed and seen as acceptable?” they ask. “To say that something helps to burn calories or that it is healthy appear to be two different things to bloggers, considering the divergent reactions.”

The researchers advise companies wishing to maximize the impact of their press releases to emulate the Starbucks approach of engaging consumers both offline and online. Setting up a corporate blog and creating continuous conversations are good starting points.

“A Fat Debate on Big Food? Unraveling Blogosphere Reactions”, by Ans Kolk, Hsin-Hsuan Meg Lee, Willemijn Van Dolen, Californa Management Review (vol. 55 no. 1 Fall 2012; pp. 47-73)

Social media experts argue that negative feedback is actually a great opportunity to turn around disappointed customers and showcase a caring and less defensive attitude. It’s a variation on that old chestnut, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Do the marketing or communication professionals in large companies follow this advice? Not really.

Sam Dekay (BNY Mellon Corporation) launched what he called the first quantitative study of how major corporations respond to negative feedback generated by Facebook “fans.” He looked at the official Facebook pages of the top 10 companies in four industry groups — banking, retailing, software and services, and household and personal products. He calculated the number of negative comments posted to the pages and analyzed corporate reactions.

Dekay concluded that large companies do not generally view negative Facebook comments as PR opportunities, preferring instead to delete negative comments or ignore critical feedback.

Findings:

“The study revealed that, at a minimum, 48 percent of the sampled corporations are likely to engage in the practice of deleting negative comments posted to official Facebook pages.” 

Here Dekay is on shaky ground; how do you find direct evidence that a critical comment was deleted? Dekay searched for indirect evidence, such as sampled Facebook pages that contained only positive comments. Unfortunately, there are holes in this methodology.

“Of the corporations represented in this study, 60 percent responded to fewer than one-quarter of unfavorable remarks posted to their sites; nine never responded to negative comments. Only one corporate-sponsored site, 4 percent of the total sample, responded to more than three-quarters of negative comments.” 

Dekay found that retailers were much more likely to respond to negative comments than those in the software and services sector. No companies in the household and personal products sectors bothered to respond to their critical Facebook fans. Dekay also found that, in many instances, fans defended the company’s products, services, or practices; he figures many of these defenders were actually company employees.

To be fair to companies, many may simply want to ignore known trolls who get their kicks by being online cranks, or may not want to risk inflaming an already hot situation.

Dekay suggests that companies seeking to avoid a high volume of negative comments should consider “mixing explicit marketing discussions together with ‘fun’ threads that lack a marketing focus.” Companies employing this strategy include Nike, Walgreens, and Target.

The study was based on data from 2010 and 2011, and companies have likely become more savvy and forward-looking in how they maintain their Facebook channel. But I suspect that these findings still describe the reality for the majority of large corporations with a Facebook presence.

Part of what’s going on here is a reflection of who controls the official Facebook page in large companies: marketing or communications/PR? These are two beasts, with overlapping skill sets but vastly different perspectives. (Marketers are more sly and strategic and are not afraid of data, but I digress.) Communication professionals, who understand that we are now in the “conversation age,” are in a better position to be in the Facebook driver’s seat.

L. Capozzi and L. Berlin Zipfel (New York U) recently argued in the journal Corporate Communications that social media are now so important and ubiquitous because they give consumers a greater voice in their dealings with companies. They cite a study that found 74 percent of customers choose companies based on customer care experience shared by others in online forums.

They suggest PR people should step into the breach, keeping in mind these core principles:

Align actions with words (“organizations need to be consistent with their messages and actions, establishing a more information-based dialogue that is begins with advise and consul, not communication”)

Give up message control (“the Conversation Age is based on today’s consumer and the preference for conversation and engagement over messaging”)

Manage relationships with multiple stakeholders (“there are new influencers across every channel [from bloggers to consumer enthusiasts] with whom organizations must engage in real-time conversation. It has become essential for corporations to demonstrate their ability to deliver profit and also enact a social purpose”)

Communicate without prejudice (“it is becoming increasingly necessary for communications professionals to possess the tools and capabilities to observe and predict consumer behaviors, needs, and desired mechanisms of response”)

Ultimately, the answer lies in the tighter integration of communications and marketing. But that will require communicators to develop greater business and strategic acumen, marketing literacy, and commitment to accountability via data.

Sam H. Dekay, “How large companies react to negative Facebook comments,” Corporate Communications: An International Journal (Vol. 17 No. 3, 2012 pp. 289-299)

Louis Capozzi and Laura Berlin Zipfel, “The conversation age: the opportunity for public relations,” Corporate Communications: An International Journal (Vol. 17 No. 3, 2012 pp. 336-349)

This “promoter’s paradox” is a difficult balancing act. It probably explains why corporate communicators tend to take a subtle and implicit approach to promoting their firms’ good deeds, in the hopes of being more persuasive and inhibiting scepticism.

Do they really have to be so timid? Line Schmeltz (Aarhus School of Business and Social Sciences) decided to test CSR communication assumptions by studying the attitudes of “Generation Me,” young people aged 18 to 30, figuring this cohort represents the future of consumer attitudes. Schmeltz’s survey was based on 82 Danish students enrolled in higher education.

Generation Me is thought to be more narcissistic than earlier generations; those in this cohort have grown up steeped in a world of choice and possibilities, and spend much of their time connected to the internet, where transparency is taken for granted.

Not surprisingly, Schmeltz’s survey found that respondents favour companies that engage in CSR without thought of financial benefit. The surprise is that only 22.4 percent stated that they are (slightly) skeptical towards companies that engage in CSR merely for financial gain. This finding indicates that, “even though consumers think that the companies are engaging in CSR for self-centred reasons, the overall evaluation of such activities is positive,” Schmeltz writes in the journal Corporate Communications. “This . . . demonstrates that companies should not hesitate to communicate about CSR activities out of fear of being misunderstood, of being perceived to brag or maybe even being accused of greenwashing.”

The study offers CSR communicators additional insights.

• Consumers are interested in and expect more explicit CSR communication than currently assumed by corporations and academics alike.
• Companies should clearly and explicitly illustrate why particular CSR efforts are of importance to consumers. Consider that perceptions of CSR initiatives are not based on morality and society-centred values but more on personal and self-centred values.
• Respondents seem to favour CSR communication that uses facts rather than impressions. In the survey, 42 percent of respondents liked or really liked the vague statement, “We are constantly working actively on reducing our CO2 emissions.” Compare that 72.5 percent who liked or really liked the factual and more committing statement,  “We have reduced our CO2 emissions by 15 percent – 10 years from now it will be reduced by 50 percent.”

The takeaway: “This paper provides empirical evidence that corporations communicating CSR should have a much more externally oriented and explicit approach focusing on competence and self-centred values instead of on morality and society-centred values,” Schmeltz writes. “This will allow them to create a healthy balance between what they can offer and what consumers demand.”

Line Schmeltz, “Consumer-oriented CSR communication: focusing on ability or morality?”; Corporate Communications (Vol. 17, No. 1, 2012, pp. 29-49)

Well, that depends on what side of the Atlantic Ocean you company is based. If you’re with a North American corporation, you’ll likely practise the black arts of “impression management.” If you’re with a European corporation, it’s just the facts, ma’am.

Impression management is defined as the process by which people seek to influence impression others form of them. In the case of CEOs, the stakes are high, since their reputation can make or break a corporation’s reputation.

To examine varying approaches to impression management, Pollach (U Aarhus, Denmark) and Kerbler (U Vienna) performed a content analysis of CEO profiles culled from corporate websites of 200 large North American and European companies.

They found that, overall, 63 percent of American CEO profiles contained specific impression management categories, while only 34 percent of European profiles contained such content.

“Leadership roles in associations, the CEO’s social stance, nominations in the press, and the CEO’s involvement in political activities play a bigger role in the construction of CEO competence in North America,” Pollach and Kerbler write in the Journal of Business Communications. “Whereas CEO profiles of North American companies show CEOs as active participants in social, political, and public life, European CEOs are presented as primarily business-focused.”

In both the North American and European samples, CEO profiles most commonly contained information on the CEO’s previous positions and the year in which he or she joined the company. After job-related information, education was the most frequently used category, found in about 75 percent of all profiles. Awards earned was commonly used as well.

The CEO’s success on the job was mentioned explicitly in more than one quarter of North American profiles and in several European profiles. In these profiles, the researchers report, the company’s success was attributed to the CEO’s competence. Masters of the Universe.

Now the differences:

While the CEO’s age frequently showed up in the Germanic and Latin European profiles, it was significantly less evident in North American and Anglo profiles.

Ditto for nationality, which showed up more often in Germanic and Latin European profiles.

On the other hand, profiles of North American CEOs were much more likely to contain references to political involvement and military service.

Similarly, North American profiles were more likely to include leadership roles in associations, such as nonprofit organizations, professional associations, trusts, think tanks, museums, or university boards.

The researchers write: “When CEO profiles talk about philanthropy and welfare organizations, the CEO is sometimes presented as the causal agent of corporate giving, for example, when voluntary hours contributed by employees are presented as the CEO’s achievement. This only occurs in North American profiles, and European profiles in fact rarely talk about philanthropic activities.”

Irene Pollach and Eva Kerbler, “Appearing Competent: A Study of Impression Management in U.S. and European CEO Profiles.” Journal of Business Communication (2011 48: 355)

Respondents in all five countries reported that lack of time and money were the biggest challenges to being more creative. Other barriers to creativity included self doubt, other personal or work obligations, and age.

Here are additional findings that I found noteworthy:

• Only one in four people feel they are living up to their creative potential (high: U.S. at 39%; low: UK at 15%).
• There is increasing pressure to be productive rather than creative at work (high: France at 85%; low: Japan at 58%).
• There’s universal concern that the education system is stifling creativity (high: U.S. and France at 62%; low: Japan at 51%).

I think this last point is the most telling.

Notwithstanding the mayhem we may see around us, the world is getting “smarter.” Various measures of intelligence show rising IQs. In recent years, average scores on the Scholastic Assessment Test, which measures aptitude for verbal and mathematical reasoning, have increased as well. These are the happy dividends of improved nutrition, reduced inbreeding, and increased affluence.

But intelligence doesn’t make for creativity. Indeed, judging from test scores in the U.S. over the past decades, creative thinking is plummeting. Researcher Kyung Hee Kim (College of William and Mary) mined the scores from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT). The TTCT was developed in the mid-1960s and is now considered the best predictor of creative or divergent thinking. Kim studied samples from almost 275,000 kindergarten through grade 12 students and adults, going back to 1974.

Reporting in Creativity Research Journal, Kim found that creative thinking scores remained static or decreased, starting at sixth grade. The TTCT results also indicated that since 1990, even as IQ scores rose, creative thinking scores significantly decreased, particularly among those in kindergarten through third grade.

The decline among young children “is especially concerning as it stunts abilities which are supposed to mature over a lifetime,” Kim wrote. “The decrease of creative thinking for younger children probably arises at home rather than in schools, because kindergarteners and first graders tend to be influenced more by home than school, or possibly both environments contribute to the effect.”

Whatever the root cause, this does suggest that the decline in creativity goes deeper than the lack of time or money at our disposal.

Kyung Hee Kim, “The Creativity Crisis: The Decrease in Creative Thinking Scores on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking.” Creativity Research Journal (23(4), 285–295, 2011)

Then you went back to work. Did anything really change?

By all accounts, it seems that “fun at work” has become an established movement aimed at boosting worker engagement and the bottom line. But does “packaged” fun, dictated by management, make work more enjoyable, increase motivation, or improve organizational performance? I doubt it.

Intuitively, planned fun time doesn’t seem to hold a candle to planning a work environment where fun happens naturally. Empirically, the link between packaged fun and better performance has not been established.  In an article published a couple of years ago in the journal Employee Relations, Bolten (Strathclyde U) and Houlihan (University Colleage Dublin) expressed their own reservations. They pointed out that, “The pursuit of productivity inspired by the loose belief that happy workers make productive workers appears to invoke an equally loose assumption that workplace fun delivers happy workers – and so the cycle moves on.”

What does organic workplace fun look like? In the same journal, Stromberg and Karlsson (Karlstad U) reported on their study of two groups of meat packing workers — the largely female “slicers” and “preparers” — at a Swedish food preparation company.

The researchers described a continuum of “pure” to “applied” workplace humour: jokes, physical joking practices, clowning, nicknaming, and satire. Pure humour reflects the pleasure of social interaction, while applied humour offers an alternative to serious efficiency-obsessed management practices.

To an outsider, the meat packers’ work may seem greasy, monotonous, and even dangerous. But, the researchers reported, some of the workers saw it differently. The workers told them, “It’s not that bad. We have each other, you know”; “I’ve been in worse places. Here, you’re at least allowed to laugh”; and “Time passes quickly when you’re having fun and laugh . . . and when you’re being a bit mischievous”.

“There is no question that humour plays an important role in the everyday work of the meat packers,” the researchers wrote. “Laughter was often heard and the warm and supportive atmospheres within the groups seemed to create a natural setting for jokes to be told and pranks to be played.”

But as their study progressed, another side of workplace humour was revealed: a more subversive form of fun such as ironic jokes and belittling comments about what was going on within the company. Men and managers were prime targets for meat packers’ satire.

“In these cases these subversive humour rituals accentuate the differences between managers and meatpackers, in similar ways as coded jokes. Repeating words once said by managers, in-group expressions, gestures and mimicry behind someone’s back takes the applied humour one step further.”

This is a far cry from what managers would expect out of their fun days.

For those wishing to use fun as an engagement tactic, an honest size-up of workplace demographics would be wise. After all, there are clear differences in how people of different ages and backgrounds respond to fun in the workplace. Researchers such as Lamm and Meeks  (San Francisco State U) have shown that baby boomers are a lot more negative about workplace fun than millenials. Baby boomers tend to be competitive and searching for optimal work environments; fun is seen as counterproductive to their competitive edge. Generation Xers, who embrace balance in their lives, are more open to organized fun activities. On the other end of the spectrum, millennials are likely to regard fun in the workplace as a requirement, not a benefit, of employment.

At least with these sorts of insights, fun initiatives can be better planned and delivered, with less chance of blow-back.

Sharon C. Bolton and Maeve Houlihan, “Are we having fun yet? A consideration of workplace fun and engagement”; Employee Relations (Vol. 31 No. 6, 2009 pp. 556-568)

Susanne Stromberg and Jan Ch. Karlsson, “Rituals of fun and mischief: the case of the Swedish meatpackers”; Employee Relations (Vol. 31 No. 6, 2009 pp. 632-647)

Eric Lamm and Michael D. Meeks, “Workplace fun: the moderating effects of generational differences”;  Employee Relations Vol. 31 No. 6, 2009 pp. 613-631)

In the next post, I’ll highlight a few studies on fun. In this post, let’s see what Heiss (U Vermont) and Carmack (Missouri State U) learned about the use of humor when new employees first enter a work setting. In this case, humor is particularly important in helping individuals make sense of rules and processes  and in giving veterans a chance to socialize newbies and show them the ropes.

The findings by Heiss and Carmack are largely based on observations and interviews of staffers at a university vocational counselling centre. One of the researchers observed the office for two-hour periods three times a week for eight weeks and volunteered at a career fair for 10 hours, resulting in 58 hours of observation.

She found that veterans used humor both aggressively and empathetically. They used humor in aggressive ways to assert power, maintain cultural stability, and preserve group cohesiveness. While aggressive humor was not “we-oriented,” they write in Management Communication Quarterly, its ambiguity allowed employees to avoid some of the negative consequences of addressing problems.

“In essence, the use of aggressive humor created a ‘humor gauntlet’ that newcomers had to complete in order to be part of the group,” they write.

Once newcomers were accepted by the group, they were usually met with what they considered to be friendly and empathetic humor: amusing stories and good-natured practical jokes. By using empathic, humorous storytelling, veterans avoided positioning themselves as superior.

Humor was useful to newcomers as well. It greased the wheels for them to learn about organizational culture and expectations while not embarrassing themselves. Employees “often had to learn through trial and error, observations, and/or asking questions,” the researchers report. “Newcomers were encouraged to ask questions. However, because organizational members were busy, newcomers often felt burdensome or incompetent. Newcomers often asked questions in a joking manner so as to make light of their lack of knowledge or reduce others’ perceptions of the amount of help needed.”

Does this sound like what goes on in organizations you’re a part of?

Sarah N. Heiss and Heather J. Carmack, “Knock, Knock; Who’s There? Making Sense of Organizational Entrance Through Humor.” Management Communication Quarterly (26[1] 106–132)

So I was pleased to see the spring book releases include a timely executive guidebook, Power Listening: Mastering the Most Critical Business Skill of All, from consultant Bernard T. Ferrari.

Ferrari has an interesting perspective: the man has been a surgeon, corporate executive, and business consultant. The great listeners he’s observed share three traits:

1. They show respect.

Great listeners honestly believe that everyone around them has something unique to contribute. They are able to help their reports draw out critical information without spoon-feeding them with immediate solutions. That involves listening and asking pointed questions in a respectful manner.

2. They keep quiet.

Ferrari’s personal rule of thumb is that a conversation partner should be speaking 80 percent of the time while he speaks only 20 percent of the time. This is a tough one for many of us but with practice we can certainly hone our ability to hold back and weigh in at the right time. Using silence has the added benefit of encouraging others to fill in the dead air with deeper insights, and giving the leader a chance to pick up on nonverbal cues.

3. They challenge assumptions.

Good listeners try to understand — and challenge — the assumptions that lie below the surface of every conversation. “Many executives struggle as listeners because they never think to relax their assumptions and open themselves to the possibilities that can be drawn from conversations with others,” Ferari writes. In other words, Mr./Ms Know-It-All, embrace ambiguity.

I interviewed Raver for an article in Queen’s School of Business Magazine. We talked about her research into “destructive criticism,” the withering, disrespectful feedback that attributes poor performance to a person’s character. Raver and her colleagues focused on trait competitiveness — the degree to which people define themselves as being superior to others and strive to maintain superiority. This is a key factor that influences how people interpret criticism.

They found highly competitive people on the receiving end of destructive criticism are indeed motivated and say they will work even harder to prove themselves and maintain their superiority. But they actually perform worse. They perceive the criticism as an attack on their self-identity, so their performance suffers as they obsess over the criticism rather than bear down and perform the task at hand.

People scoring low on competitiveness don’t have such issues. They may not like experiencing destructive criticism, but their jobs are not as central to their identity. As a result, when faced with such harsh feedback, they are better able to focus on doing what’s necessary to better perform the task. Perversely, destructive criticism may even motivate them.

One of Raver’s other research projects looks at the impact of highly agreeable and disagreeable people on overall team performance. Raver and her colleagues found that students who were abrasive and didn’t care what others felt had a particularly strong and corrosive impact on team collaboration, which eventually rubbed off on others and created dysfunctional dynamics. Not even adding “good egg” workers to a team is enough to overcome the effects of a “bad apple.”

Read more about these studies in the QSB Magazine article