Hive Health

This week I have been in Eindhoven on a four day facilitation skills course that uses constructionism (more to follow) to help assess the ‘hidden’ intelligence in a room of attendees. We have been put through our paces at Seats2Meat Eindhoven an inspiringly entrepreneurial social enterprise. Seats2meet is Dutch and has a business model that relies on meeting room rental to cover the costs for the free availability  of the space/canteen/facilities for new businesses, social enterprises, and non-profit making organisations. These organisations sign up to a social charter that provides a framework for a community of likeminded people. It self policing, a hive of activity, and really positive in terms of atmosphere, and a sense of salience.  All this housed in an old Phillips light bulb factory. An otherwise declining light industrial building put to good use fueling the next wave of ideas.

What has struck me more than anything is the calibre of facilitators I have been sharing this week with. The time spent working one to one and in groups with my nine European colleagues has been incredibly useful. Arriving Sunday night and returning tomorrow we have started at 8ish and worked through til 10pm finishing up individual projects and applications of the techniques we have been learning.  Finishing at this time, I have had 20mins to clear my head on the walk back to the hotel tired with the pace, the full on nature of the technique and the sheer variety of learning methodology. 4 days with not one single powerpoint slide, has been deeply influential on us all. Proper skills training, using a variety of proper teaching methods and approaches.

My late evenings have been spent finding restaurants that are open at this time, settling in and ordering something that is going to match the day. Food that can inspire, challenge and be successfully different. Most of these restaurants have been proponents of fusion food a craze that continues in Holland for blending of two or more cuisines. Whether that be Spanish thrown together with Japanese, or last nights malay and french effort its been a mixed bag of tom yum foam, with pimenton prawns or a prawn cracker topped with olive oil snow. The highlight gave me an omelet with chilli sauce in the centre, a sort of thai egg wagon wheel. Luckily this sense fest was accompanied by 7 wines to taste*. It’s fair to say that my evenings have been filled wanting some identity and confidence back in the kitchens of my hosts.

Whilst not wishing to be confused for AA Gill. This local trend sounded a connection. My days have been filled with framing questions, grounding approaches and metaphors this one is too approximate an opportunity to pass over. It strikes me that I have been making a similar mistake in our strategic kitchen. I think I need to get considerably better in defining where I as a consultant starts, and where me as a facilitator ends. Across all the agencies I have worked in we have consistently clouded the two roles. As a consequence failing to do either job with the clarity of purpose required, the independence needed, or having missed out on our input mid session when we have been guiding the group. It’s fusion of competencies.

One requires guidance, framing questions and independence and the suspension of solution provision. The other value judgement, input and subjectivity. Both have huge value but the danger exists in the middle ground facilitating the answers to core questions where we feel we should also be part of the answer. As a consequence influencing and skewing the result. This lack of clarity is a concept that I have seen present in many if not all of the facilitators I have worked with over the years in healthcare, and as much so in myself.

I feel the solution is for more of us to be up-skilled and competent to a much higher level than the marketing communication industry requires us to be. Accompanying this to strive for a set of guiding approaches/set formats that allow us to work across each others accounts when independent facilitation is needed.  I think this should be pretty doable for I/us here at Hive. We have more leadership level people per unit business than anyone else. Our resource model insists on an hour glass in place of a pyramid shape with our senior members making up a healthy wodge of client focused talent. We have the resources to get us all to a beyond industry level of competence, the desire to develop standardised approaches for typical challenges and certainly the humility and track record in learn from other sectors.

The week has been a steep learning curve and provided me not only with a new vocabulary, but a new respect for my European colleagues in their professionalism and discipline. From technical skills, to focus and purity of role I hope to put much of this into practice at Hive. I shall be striving for some fission, and kicking fusion into touch.

*This was a week of training permitting some low level relaxation. It’s possible to drink 7 glasses of wine on your own in a restaurant by following the following guide;  You certainly need a tasting menu, and do start with a beer, and a copy of a good book ideally something featuring food, drink and servant girls. Ignore the wine list and suggest your restaurant match each course. Do bare in mind that these types of gaffs will insist on sending 3 little bites to amuse prior to one of your starters arriving.  Then hang up your taste buds, and travel the increasingly hazy world.

Google is pretty convinced  that when we sat down for our Skills Hackathon that this was a World’s first.

Facilitated by the efficient and straightforward to use Lotuslive Meetings software , 17 of us from across Hive and Ebee pushed towards the bleeding edge of people development. What resulted was a publication centred around our specific development requirements.

Once through name co-creation, and prioritising a list of our desired skills. In hacking pairs we searched, filtered and curated content from across the world on time management, presenting with nerves, selling creative, communications strategy, leadership, giving feedback, negotiation, communicating ideas, adapting behaviour, regulatory environments, dealing with change and also facilitation.

LotusLive was brimming with banter, encouragement, and articles to be scooped into Swarm. We voted for Hack favourite; pizza (thanks Dominos - 2 for 1 Tuesday and all) and washed it down with Stella/Carling/DC.

In two and a half hours we packaged up a diverse group of 72 articles to make anyone of us better all in a readily accessible format. Having never run a hackathon before, the most rewarding aspect for me was the vibe, everyone buzzed with efficiency and the quality focus was really there. Skills development has never been thus! If you fancy having a look through Swarm do stop by. If you want to follow the evenings activity check out  Twitter, the pace of activity was pretty cool to follow. Live it was ace.

A worlds first? Maybe. Regardless looking through the output this morning I think we can be rightly proud.

The beerground.

A while back our account management were charged with working on a pitch – internal training with a difference. The brief was beer – something the majority of our lads and ladettes (at least after a few jars I’m told) have experience of, if not marketing it, then certainly on the consumption side. In a nutshell the brief was to develop a brand that would achieve differentiation in the crowded beer market. What would it be called, who would they target, where would it be sold and where would they pitch it as far as price? They were split into teams (‘master brewers’) of two and had 15 minutes to share their thinking with us.

The big day.

Pitch day was yesterday and I think I’m right in saying that everyone, not least the panel, had a really enjoyable day, with a few lessons learnt. Sure, there were a few late nights and it came ‘at just so the wrong time’, but as we all know this is part of real life pitching. And as with real life pitching there was an upbeat, post pitch mood and a few beers had.

The panel consisted of myself, my learned colleagues Tim Scorer and Emma Jarvis and two old battle hardened ad lag friends of mine and now friends of Hive, Matthew Howells and Dom Lyon. Now I’ve spent many an enjoyable afternoon in pubs with Matthew and Dom, but never have I judged anything with them, with maybe the exception of the local talent.

In fact it wasn’t overly different, just that the talent took on a different form (ideas, although it is true to say some had ‘legs’ and could probably go the distance), but didn’t cost an arm and a leg (what is it with bloody legs) in buying them drinks all night and didn’t leg it afterwards (struggling with my third leg analogy!).

Over legs and back on form.

So we had 5 teams presenting to us in the upstairs room of The Blue Post Pub. There were thrills, spills (literally – poor Helen managed to soak herself in beer that had been intended as a taste test) and some ideas with a difference.

We, the panel, scored them on presentation (i.e. delivery), product idea and strategic argument – to a set criteria including market context, defining the need state, critical discussion points, strategic recommendations and generally challenging conventional thinking and reaching breakthrough ideas.

Breakthrough ideas versus broken glasses.

Overall the quality was fantastic – a real pleasure to observe.

We had fantastic innovative ideas – such as self-chilling beer – which would no doubt bring yet more peace and utter harmony to our tree-hugging festival going friends.

We had fantastic names such as ‘Bucking Fear’ a real alternative for penniless students and ‘Cavalry – you know when it’s time’, a combination of beer and guarana – the healthy option tackling, drinkers dip and maybe even brewers droop.

Some very clear cut targeting with ‘ETE’ and a female target, in this traditionally male market. The female audience was also embraced with AIG – the Goddess of Health – a sophisticated and conscientious alternative to vino collapso.

Learning.

It’s fair to say that there was learning on both sides of the room.

From the judging point of view it was great to see how much effort had been put in. Pitch theatre, as long as it’s relevant, really does help in dramatising ideas and if there are a myriad of agencies pitching no doubt helps stand-out. Also, the fact that no presentations were delivered via powerpoint did mean there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide – ‘face to camera’ type scenario.

From the pitchers point of view I hope they walked away proud of their efforts and hopefully with a few leanings on how they may have done it differently – it’s only through trial and error than we can up our game.

Many thanks to Matthew and Dom for their excellent feedback to the teams. Well done to Clare and Matt for their winning pitch – ‘Cavalry – you know when it’s time’. They are now the official agency brewers and will be making their beer for real – soon to become our agency beer of choice.

Next time you’re passing feel free to drop in for a jar.

I can’t sleep stuck since about 3.07am, mind racing. I am convinced this is all due to some psychotropic scrumpy I daftly chomped into last night. I can’t stop thinking about the need we have for a centralised development resource for the people I manage. It’s borderline madness.

Ideally we would have something for us to share tips on honing and developing the core skills we need everyday.  It would save any doubling up of efforts in tracking down useful tips and articles for our personal development. It’s not unreasonable to presume a load of  agency folk need this too. Not just us bees. Taking on board some feedback I received recently I thought I might ‘work with others’ rather than consigning the task to my solo To do list. Plus it needs to get up to critical mass quickly as it’s people development and it’s likely to be funner/better with us all working on this challenge.

We recently suggested to a client that rather than run a traditional global workshop with local markets to gain input we co-opt the Hackathon approach. A hackathon is an event where programmers meet to do collaborative computer programming and increasingly it’s a term used to describe any open approach to co-create a solution to a defined problem. The spirit of a hackathon is to collaboratively build bottom up, grass roots stuff, without too much authoritarianism. Sound kind of cool? I think so.

So here is the idea.

Core Skills Hackathon is a group of us (and you of course) working together to kick start and curate a online resource that covers a range of core skills we need in our day today. Working together with transparency on our individual development needs (time management, assertiveness, presentation skills, storytelling etc etc) to develop a bank of useful articles etc that help one and all get better at what they do.

Event details – 13.3.2012 6.30pm – 9.00pm

We sort

• Hive boardroom/tables/sofas/fire escape
• More pizza/beer/soda than is healthy
• Broadband/WiFi a plenty
• Loose facilitation

You sort

• 2.5 hours of your time
• Laptop
• Enthusiasm and openness
• List of skills gaps/development desires
• Bringing along anything that has made you better – articles, crib sheets, models etc

Hackathon structure

1. Welcome and introductions
2. Name development
3. Consolidate the skills list
4. Team/task allocation
5. Curate content – find, sort, sift and select
6. Publish and build magazine

If you are interested then get in touch, ideally you should have enough experience in the healthcare communications world to understand what skills you/we need and to be able to assess good stuff when you see it.