Find the Courage to Ask and Receive

The Surprising Power of Questions, a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, is great but not surprising. It’s well accepted that asking questions “spurs learning and the exchange of ideas, it fuels innovation and performance improvement, it builds rapport and trust among team members. And it can mitigate business risk by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards.”

So, if asking questions is so important and productive why aren’t people more inquisitive? Why don’t more leaders create a culture of questions?

The HBR authors share some answers including egocentricity, apathy, overconfidence and not understanding the value of good questions.  But the most important reason, from my internal and external consulting experiences, is fear: Fear of the answer; fear of being wrong; fear of looking foolish; fear of having wasted time and money, fear of having to spend time and money, and fear of losing power.

It’s not only learning to embrace the question that’s important, it’s learning to embrace the answer.

Yes, we need the courage to ask, to have the inquisitiveness to learn more, and to take the initiative to interact with our stakeholders. But we need the courage and ability to put the organizational needs above our own; we need to identify the anxieties and work our way through with an “eye on the prize.” Nelson Mandela said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

Fear has come into play when I’ve been asked to help fix a problem concerning corporate or brand reputation. The expectation is the delivery of a new public relations program, story placements, or an advertising campaign. It’s the “stuff” of communications and marketing that is wanted. Unfortunately, there is often less of an interest in first determining the issues – asking and answering the questions – underpinning the problem. Leaders must not be intimidated by what research might uncover.

Future leaders must also learn to question; it’s an essential element in a mentoring relationship. Good mentors know this, even in legend. When the future King Arthur asked, “Would you mind if I asked you a question?” Merlyn answered, “It is what I am for.”

In the workplace, we need to be open to Q&A from those above, below and beside us. But seeking questions and answers is also of personal importance. There’s no way to fix or foster a relationship unless one is open to an exchange, and hearing and acting on the information.

I’ll end it here with some questions: Was this helpful? How do we move this forward? How have you found success in this arena? What other articles, resources on this subject have you found valuable? When have you encouraged others to seek questions and answers? I welcome your answers.

Between posts, I invite you to follow me on Twitter @pauloestreicher.

Thanks for Asking

Decision-making will never be the same in the age of big data, algorithms and artificial intelligence. We’re fortunate to have such massive amounts of information at our disposal. But there’s a big difference between data and intelligence, between information and insight.

While our reliance on digital sources grows, a recent Harvard Business Review article makes the case that surveys remain one of the best ways of measuring employee engagement and intent. The lesson is that, in addition to querying our databases, we must continue to query our employees (and constituents, customers, investors, etc.). Surveys remain relevant in the digital age.

More broadly, when there's an issue or opportunity, people don't ask enough questions. Yes, use your analytics. Use your judgment. But asking creates engagement. Asking offers a degree of acknowledgement and validation.

Some may see surveys as annoying – even invasive – or vehicles only to justify what the survey sponsors want to know. Those are all indications of poor survey design or bad intent. Surveys are often too long, have little incentive to complete, or contain obvious language bias.Designing a survey and reaching the appropriate audiences are not trivial. You know, it’s the old “garbage in, garbage out” routine.

So, there’s actually a lot on the line when it comes to asking good questions. The novelist Thomas Berger said, “The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.” And the way one asks questions (see Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler's work on choice architecture) can help "nudge" behaviors in the direction of positive change.

There may be other reasons why surveys are less appealing these days. There’s less ownership and more anonymity in observing online behaviors and sifting through the numbers. And sometimes we don’t ask because we don’t want to know. I have teed-up surveys only to have them pulled, more than once in my career.

We need the courage to ask, to have the inquisitiveness to learn more, and to take the initiative to interact with our key audiences. In the business arena, for example, there are many questions to ask but even some basic ones – too often unused – can save untold time and money:

Do we have an understanding of the problem?

What needs to be accomplished and by when?

Who are the people, organizations, etc. who have influence over our success or failure and what are their issues/concerns?

Where are the gaps in our understanding and how can we use those to do/make something new?

Is there something that needs to be stopped, promoted or changed?

What resources are needed and how do we access them?

Asking goes beyond information gathering and good business practice; it can create and deepen relationships. Anxiety about receiving unflattering news or believing the investment is not worth the return must be weighed against the power new knowledge would bring and who comes along with it.

This article also appears in O'Dwyer's PR.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter @pauloestreicher.

A Game's Afoot

Attempting to Bolster Pharma Reputation Facebook Style

I saw an article in Medial Marketing & Media several weeks back entitled, “Boehringer's Pharma-ville could salve industry's bad reputation.” The article was about Syrum, an on-line game where the “objective is to save the world, one disease at a time.” According to their web site, “Syrum is a social game on Facebook which sees you take control of your very own pharmaceutical company. You’ll have to equip and use your laboratory to discover new drugs and bring them to market in order to increase global health.”

Great, but as we’re waiting for further updates, I’ve wondered who this was targeted to and if this was an effort to increase the industry’s reputation, a Facebook game that helps BI find a new audience, both or something else? Reading on, the article said the game could “help address the flagging reputation of the industry,” but John Pugh, BI’s head of on-line communications tried to clarify the intent and said, “The main objective is to create a kick-ass game… It's about pharma and fun."

Too bad. Is that all BI’s leadership wants to get out of this effort? I don’t have an argument with “kick-ass” (however that’s defined) but I wish the endeavor also included some real learning objectives. Engagement and goodwill are important, or course, but can something be taught? Can knowledge be used beyond the game experience? I'd love to hear more about what BI will be measuring.

It’s clear that we need better informed, more knowledgeable customers. How else can they value and trust what we do in research, development, approval and medical education? More knowledge leads to better outcomes. Better outcomes leads to better utilization. Better utilization leads to better satisfaction. Better satisfaction leads to more trust.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t be creative. I’ve said it before: we should use our talents and resources to develop a massive, sustained effort to enhance health and science literacy. When it comes to managing one’s health or the health of one’s family, most people don’t have enough knowledge to evaluate a medical product claim or even formulate the right questions to ask a healthcare provider. This deficit makes the public an easy target for anti-vaccination nonsense, and purveyors of alternative medicines and bogus devices.

If reputation building is a secondary consideration for BI, I suggest a revaluation of objectives because the industry needs all the help it can get. After inching up to 31 percent in the 2008 Harris Interactive Reputation Quotient survey, the numbers fell back to 29 percent in the latest results. In comparison, the technology industry scored 72 percent. Essentially, the scores are mirror images – as many don’t like the pharmaceutical industry as like the technology industry. Pretty sad, indeed.

Unfortunately, much of this reputational gloom is self-inflicted (price hikes, quality problems, data transparency, etc.) but other aspects are controlled by external factors (insurance coverage decisions, political agendas, alternative medicine claims, etc.). It’s complicated and it’s fluid. So, let’s control what we can control: behavior, ethics, standard operating procedures and, in this case, communication and education.

BI deserves credit for exploring the edutainment world. I signed up to receive updates on the Syrum web site and am eagerly await more news. However, I might be outside of their demographic because the cartoonish graphics and sound effects seem to trivialize the point. I hope upon its official launch that the substance, at least, is a little more realistic.

Between blog posts, you can follow me @pauloestreicher.

A Report Card on Report Cards

Why They Don't Always Measure Up

The run-up to the Obama administration's 100th day in office was truly a spectacle. It seemed that every media outlet had a countdown clock to April 29th and massed panels of experts to give the still new President a grade. The Report Card phenomenon has grown wildly in recent years. On the political side, a Google search of "President Obama Report Card" yielded 23,900,000 hits whereas "President Bush Report Card" produced 10,800,000. A crude yardstick, sure, but what makes this even more lopsided is that it took about three percent of the time (100 days vs. eight years) to double the number of hits.

We love to grade and that's fine by me. Measuring success is crucial -- in politics, business, health and medicine, sports, everywhere. There are some problems, however, and we need to ask a few important questions in order to place any grade in perspective:

• Who is grading? We need to consider the source, and determine their qualifications and potential biases. The "experts" gave the President every grade from A to F.


• What are the conditions? An honest appraisal of the environment is necessary in order to compensate for those issues and conditions that are beyond the control of the person being graded.


• How are grades being assessed? The scale must be the same, applied and then evaluated in an identical manner to all in the sample population -- all of the politicians, restaurants, doctors, etc.


• What are we measuring and how much weight should be assigned? The issues or subjects to be graded and for how much they count should be determined in advance. A post hoc analysis isn't fair or valid. In school, classes have levels and we multiply the grade by the number of credits. For news media consumption, this would get complicated. But some discussion of how outcomes are weighed should be attempted. Does reversing the ban on Federally-funded stem cell research count more, less or the same as closing the Guantanamo prison camp, filling Cabinet posts or passing the economic stimulus bill?


• When is it time to grade? Like defining the measurement scales and methods of analysis, the grading timeline should be predetermined. We've seized upon the 100 day mark but, in Washington time, that's practically light speed -- probably not the best time to hand out a report card. Many pundits ended up giving the President an "incomplete" because so many initiatives were in progress (though it would have been more accurate to say, "it's just too early but here's what the trend looks like.").

In days leading to April 29th, the President's staff repeated the message that 100 days is just a number, it's arbitrary. But what did we see on that Wednesday night? The President took the prime time stage to grade himself. Rather than dismiss the inevitable, he saw an opportunity and leveraged the milestone. The President used his position to choose the parameters, select the subjects and weigh the outcomes. If nothing else, and no matter where you are along the political spectrum, that should get a high mark for public relations.

Knowledge Base

Perspectives on the State of Research Readiness in Public Relations
The following was published in the March 2009 issue of PRSA’s Tactics:

I recently finished teaching the Research Process & Methodology course at NYU’s master’s program in Public Relations and Corporate Communications. Serving as an adjunct professor is a great outlet for the coaching and mentoring that I’ve missed since becoming a communications and business development consultant in 2006. But this particular experience left me a bit unsettled. It drove home the fact that research remains a weak link in the development, execution and evaluation of PR programs.

Becoming Involved
I was invited by my friend and the academic director of the NYU program, John Doorley, to guest lecture within the program and later teach the Strategic Communication course. Then came a request to teach Research Process & Methodology.

Here, however, I had some reservations. Like Strategic Communication, RP&M was mandatory, but this was a subject that most students dreaded. We were to cover qualitative research, including interviews and focus groups, and quantitative methods such as sample selection, questionnaire design and data collection and analysis. The objections were along the lines of, “We’re the creative people, not number crunchers. We’re supposed to be intuitive — that’s why people hire us!”

Even though I had the feeling of being dropped behind enemy lines, I was energized by the opportunity to convey the need for more rigor in PR programming. Now, more than ever, it is necessary to identify competitive, political and social issues; understand key audiences, their preferences and perceptions; differentiate companies and products, and demonstrate the value of communications on business objectives and measure outcomes.

Clients crave creativity but they don’t want guesswork. To be effective, we need information to drive insight. If PR professionals want to be strategic, then research is required to help make the best possible predictions about the potential intended and unintended outcomes in PR programming.

Getting Down to Business
Most of the students’ anxiety was assuaged soon after starting the first class. Setting unambiguous expectations and goals were key. I made it clear that I did not intend to transform them into statisticians or programmers. Instead, they would become more informed users and evaluators of research. To reach this endpoint, and to keep the students engaged for the six hours per week that we met, we worked to strike a balance between theory and application — a mix of book learning with in-class exercises.

In one class, we reviewed and evaluated a variety of award-winning PR case studies including corporate rebranding, the launch of new products and national events. They were eye-opening — even for me. If these were chosen to represent the best work of the industry, the pinnacle of public relations, then we — the profession — had some work to do. Why did those objectives look like a bunch of tactics? What did “we achieved a high level of buzz,” mean? Was the result at all meaningful to the business? One hundred million impressions is a big number, but did the message reach the intended audience?

This analysis helped make the research process more real, more accessible. By the end of the course, the role of research in public relations was duly elevated in the minds of the students. They didn’t leave with a list of formulas memorized, but they did leave knowing how to ask good questions and take their place at the table of strategic PR planning.

Taking the Next Step
While feeling rewarded by the response of the students and the opportunity to connect with some terrific guest experts, I was left with some concerns. After I reviewed the final projects — detailed proposals for their Capstone papers — and posted the grades, I wondered about the state of research training in PR agencies. How do these firms really value research? What expectations do they have of the staff? How is research taught in other programs outside NYU?

I decided to send a three-question survey to the top 25 agencies. I inquired if they had an in-house training program, which courses they offered and if any were mandatory. Only eight of 25 surveys were returned — perhaps these were the firms that were most proud of their programs.

However, the results were still revealing. As one would hope and expect, 100 percent of the respondents offered a variety of courses and workshops. All of the agencies had programs in the traditional areas of public relations: writing skills, presentation skills and media relations. Some offered training in issues/risk/crisis management, advocacy/third-party relations, conflict resolution and digital media.

On the other hand, only three of eight said some or all classes were mandatory. I found this to be both surprising and disturbing. Competitiveness, differentiation and excellence are all based on learning.

When it came to metrics and numbers, the story did not improve. Only half of those responding reported that they offered training in research methods and/or measurement. Respondents at 50 percent of these agencies offered courses on budgeting and/or forecasting. I wasn’t hugely surprised by these answers, as I’ve known for a long time that numbers and words don’t mix for many PR practitioners.

But it’s time to push old habits aside. Indeed, these tough economic times reinforce the importance of numbers. “Good enough” is out. Precision is in. Of course, creativity and fresh ideas are essential. But we need balance: The same urgency that is placed on learning, thinking and executing the soft side of public relations must also be placed on the hard.