Striking a Responsive Chord

All it takes is a couple of mountain guides, a dozen or so Sherpas, and some planning.

One of our clients, Brian Jones, owner of Canada West Mountain School and lead guide, reached the top of Mount Everest last month, along with Canada West Mountain School guide and instructor John Furneaux, Sebastien Sasseville and four Sherpas - Then Dorjee Sherpa, Mingma Dhukpa Sherpa, Pasang Ila Sherpa and Chedden Sherpa. The team summitted on Sunday, May 25th, 2008 some 13 hours after setting off from Camp 4, the final camp before ascending the summit. It was their first attempt at climbing Everest where making it to base camp at 17,600 ft (5,360 metres) is a feat in itself.

For Brian (who also happens to be my brother), the ascent caps his bid to climb the Seven Summits - the highest peaks on each of the seven continents - a distinction held by less than 200 climbers in the world and only a dozen or so Canadians. As for fellow expedition member and client Sebastien Sasseville, he became the first Canadian with Type I diabetes to reach the top of Mount Everest.

When I met Brian for coffee one morning a couple of weeks ago, he looked pretty relaxed for someone who had just spent 72 days on the world’s highest mountain. The significance of the event hadn’t quite sunk in, and maybe never will. “As team leader,” he said, “most of my time was spent organizing the expedition, coordinating the team, making sure we had all the permits and equipment we needed, that there was enough food and oxygen to go around.” He told me that it was only when they reached Camp 3 that he began to feel the enormity of the challenge.

Read more about Canada West Mountain School’s expedition here www.themountainschool.com/blog/everest.html.

My brother Brian, who is leading an expedition up Mount Everest, recently sent this post from the Himalayan Mountains.

What a world we live in - I am sitting in a Cyber cafe in Namche Bazar, at 3,500 meters in the center of the Nepalese Himalaya. This is the trading center of the Khumbu region and loaded with ancient temples, home to the Sherpa people and smack in the middle of the traditional trade routes between Tibet and Nepal. Yet, here I am still working away on my laptop, drinking a coffee and listening to Jimi Hendrix.

I’m not sure what caught my attention the most - that he was able to access the Internet from a remote village in Nepal, or that a Jimi Hendrix song was playing in the background. Either way, a cultural disconnect.

You can read more on his Canada West Mountain School blog here.

Shortly after this post, the Chinese government shut down communications from the mountain and apparently confiscated all computers, cell phones, and satellite phones. They’re worried about pro-Tibetan disruptions while Chinese climbers take the Olympic Torch up Mount Everest on the final leg of its journey to Beijing.

Be careful of what you say and how you say it.

A provocative headline from an article first published last year (“The eight most dangerous consumer technologies,“ by Mary Brandel, Computerworld.com, September 5, 2007) got me thinking about the dangerous role of e-mail and its cousins - instant messaging, Twittering, etc.

The article actually deals with security risks, but I was more interested in the risk to relationships. Take the “7%-38%-55%” model developed by Albert Mehrabian, a pioneer in human communications. Through his studies, Mehrabian established that, in face-to-face or spoken communication, meaning is conveyed through three elements:

Words, which represent 7 per cent of meaning;

Tone of voice, which represents 38 per cent of meaning; and

Non-verbal or facial expressions, which represent 55 per cent of meaning.

Thanks, by the way, to UBC’s Ann Rice who uses this stat in her work on assertive communications.

According to Mehrabian, for communication to work effectively, all three elements must match or we will send mixed messages.

Consider, then, forms of communication that rely solely on writing - letters, reports, memos and, most dangerous of all, e-mail - where the intent or meaning relies solely on the strength of the written word. Without the verbal (38 per cent) and visual (55 per cent) cues that help create meaning, we must be extra careful about what we say and how we say it.

Why e-mail is trickier than other written forms of communication is that, more and more, it is being used in place of and considered the same as telephone or face-to-face communication. Yet, unlike formal letters and reports which usually take more time and involve more thought and attention to detail, e-mail and instant messaging are meant to be quick and instantaneous. In the moment.

But they’re not truly “in the moment.” As Mehrabian’s model suggests, we may want to think twice before sending that e-mail, especially where emotions or feelings are involved.

Speaking of practicing what you preach (see yesterday’s post), organizers for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games are being taken to task for not hiring enough people with disabilities.

According to The Province newspaper (“Games’ hiring of disabled criticized,” by Damian Inwood, April 3, 2008), only two people with disabilities have been hired out of a total 504 people hired so far. Two, representing 0.4 per cent of emloyees when the average number of people with disabilities in British Columbia represents 12 per cent of the population. (To be fair, this is like comparing apples to oranges. A more accurate comparison is the percentage of people with disabilities represented in the workforce, not the population as a whole.)

Nonetheless, 0.4 per cent seems awfully low, considering that the 2010 Winter Games includes both the Olympics and the Paralympics, and that the Organizing Committee has not been shy about promoting its commitment to sustainability and social inclusion. In fact, the figures were released as part of a sustainability performance report which highlights progress on a number of initiatives.

It would be easy to let VANOC off the hook. What the news story overlooks is that the figures represent the number of employees who “voluntarily identify themselves as having a disability.” (www.Vancouver2010.com/Sustainability). I can only assume from this that employees are not legally required to state whether or not they have a disability, making it difficult for VANOC (and other employers like them) to champion their progress in this area.

It’s a double-edged sword. Yes, there’s a chance that acknowledging a disability could lead to being stigmatized. But, at a time when we need to increase workplace diversity and awareness, success stories and “leading by example” are often the most effective ways to accomplish that.

Back to “practicing what you preach.” One of the lessons we can learn from VANOC’s experience is that organizations need to be extremely careful about making commitments they can’t keep, no matter how good their intentions and especially if you’re in the public eye. You need to constantly monitor and evaluate your organization’s goals and objectives to make sure you can achieve them.

A New York-based advertising agency has set up a special “green” unit to develop campaigns for clients in the green sector. According to an article in DM News (”Union launches green ad agency,” by Alyson Grala, DM News, March 26, 2008), one of Union Green’s first tasks will be to “bridge the gap” between a brand’s message and its practices.

“The reality is that even green message advertising created by brands who want to say they are making a difference is far from being green itself,” says Bob Wyatt, founder, partner and president of the new unit.

From what I can determine, Wyatt is referring specifically to producing environmentally-friendly advertising, such as placing ads in publications that use soy-based inks, or working with production companies that hold similar values (see “We Practice What We Preach” at www.union-green.com) - values that seem to aspire to a higher standard than other aspects of an organization’s practices.

But wait a minute. Leaving the green message aside, doesn’t bridging the gap between an organization’s message and its practices apply as much to public relations as it does to advertising? In fact, isn’t that the foundation of a good public relations strategy? And if it isn’t, why not?

Public relations is all about creating positive relationships that are based on trust and integrity. Relationships with your employees, your customers, your suppliers, your investors, your community. If those relationships are strong, than there should be little or no gap between what you say you do and what you actually do.

And if you are congruent, if you “practice what you preach,” whether you’re talking about how you treat your employees or how you treat the environment, than there won’t be a discrepancy in your advertising or in your message to any of your stakeholders, the media included.

It’s not wrong to hold green practices up to higher standards than we’re used to. What’s wrong is not scrutinizing our other practices with the same rigour.