ItsDevelopmental - content + technology + people

The psychology of the newsroom

Like this post on East Sleep Publish on how journalists do and don't get on in the changing print/online environment.

There is a reference to some social psychology - that of Muzafer Sherif, who did some work on how individuals in groups relate to one another - which I think is useful as journalists are having to face up to some fundamental changes.

On both an individual and team level colleagues will be feeling less sure of themeselves and this will impact on how people get on. Add in to the mix the fact that journalists are having to adopt new ways of working and one can see how teams could easily start to fall apart.  

From an editorial management perspective, the whole change process needs to be clearly communicated and aligned to the strategy (so there has to be one), step change needs to be mapped out, skills needs assessed, training/coaching provided. AND journalists have to have the right attitude towards chang - so fears need to aired, addressed.

Shaping editorial strategy

Am delighted that our OD director is keen for me to help with training strategy. My line manager is also prepared for me to give time to it. VERY exciting. More on this soon . . .

Tips and tricks for journalists #1 - RSS readers and news alerts

Held the first of my tips and tricks for journalists sessions last week.

The aim of the session was straightforward - for delegates to set up an RSS reader (Google), to start populating it with feeds and to know how to manage feeds. We also looked at how alerts worked and how to set them up.

It is August so numbers were low (only three) but the session worked well. I invited my colleague Rob Moss to help me as he know RSS readers well.

Rob talked the delagtes through setting up a reader and I sat by the delegates and helped them if they got lost. We were in a software training room so Rob used the big screen to demonstrate.

We achieved the aims of the session and feedback for the session was very positive. Indeed, we had an observer from the training dept with us who went home and set up a reader for herself - she is hooked.

A couple of points of note for me:

• Big screens don't always project your laptop screen as it is displayed - so get there early and work out how to get the projection looking good,

• People have pre-conceived come to a training session with pre-conceived ideas and it is great to tease thesee out so they can be addressed. Two examples from the session - 1) one delegate was not heartened to hear she would need to set up a new username and password as she already had lots of different passwords she kept losing. This was a barrier to using software and online services. So, I suggested either keeping a list of passwords on her desktop or keeping the same one for reader type services. And 2) a delegate found the concept of not deleting messages in the reader slightly alien as she liked to delete messages. Sounds minor but it is the type of concern that could be a barrier to using a reader.

• It feels quite different to sit with delegates and pitch in rather than lead the session. But Rob and I worked well and he enjoyed it.

Managing through a divestment

My company is currently going through a divestment process and as a fairly senior manager I am starting to notice the impact on day-to-day business.

As I have previously mentioned, as an organisation we are going through a lot of change. This means looking at what we do and how we do it - especially as we are under commercial pressure.

The problem is that - due to divestment - the business is being very tightly managed in terms of cost and it seems that anything viewed as strategic ie more than a month away is not being acted on with the usual speed.

The upshot is that managers such as myself need to be very mindful of managing expectations. This is particularly difficult when you are trying to drive through change.

Added to this is a very real sense of expectation around the sale - who will buying us? Will we lose our pension? What about redundancies? Etc.

So, I can't promise much to the team and I can't say what the business will look like in a couple of months' time. Try as we may to keep a business as usual feel it is hard to sustain it, especially when you are trying to drive through change.  

Doing fewer things better

A post by Jeff Jarvis confirms my belief that focussing on a few things and doing them really well is the way to help teams grapple with change.

The context here is the changing media. My team is currently trying to do new things - some we do well, some we don't do so well - as we change as a media provider.

With different people doing different things it can be hard to focus the team on who is doing what - and recognition for successes can be patchy. And failure to be recognised can be disengaging.

Unite the team on one project however and it becomes easier to share the experience and success.

Our coverage (I know, this is not how Jeff Jarvis would have it) from the Institute of Travel and Tourism conference in Cyprus involved the team in producing TV, news, email news alerts, text alerts, live blogging, podcasts and a daily print product.

This was the first time we had done such a thing and it worked well in a) showing the team how we can work online and b) demonstrating what a good job we could do (I mean that).

So, as the media changes we need to focus on the things we can do well - there are lots of ways to automate what we do - aggregation etc. It can be disheartening to work on things that get poor traffic and little recognition.

The upshot for editorial people is that they need to become project managers so that they own an initiiative and see it through to agreed goals.

Journalism summer school opens for business

Had the first session of the Travel Weekly summer school today.

It went really well - I led a session that lasted one hour and in it I outlined the way the media is changing and how this is changing the way journalists work.

The session was between midday and 1pm and I did not provide lunch. Not the best time of day but it worked.

I started the session with a task: two post it notes per delegate and on it they had to write a) how the media is changing and b) the core skills of a journalists that haven't really changed over time.

This got energy levels up and the team thinking about the issues I was due to talk about.

I then lectured for the rest of the time - I had two Powerpoint presentations. One was on how the media is changing, the other on how journalists are changing the way they work.

Although I was lecturing we did stop along the way to discuss points and members of the team did ask questions and throw in their points of view.

I felt we achieved a lot in a short space of time and many of the team told me afterwards that they thought it was a good session. I am pleased we took the time to take a step back from what we do and look at how evertyhing is changing.

During the session I said that I wanted us to start talking about the issues raised when we got back to the office - I did not want to spend a long time discussing them in the session as we only had one hour. In any case the working environment is where change is happening and that is where we need to have this dialogue.

The plan worked: when I returned to the office, two colleagues were discussing how to promote their blogs. One even said she wanted to review the way she worked so her blog was central to her workflow. The penny is dropping!

A key point to come out of it for me was that our journalists want to know how to manage their time and how to deliver content, when and why. 

This is a crucial takeaway for me as I will need to demonstrate how to do this and do it well. There is a desire to do things differently - now we the leaders need to make it happen.

My key message was that many of the journalist's core skills have not changed but the way we use them has and is all the time. Therefore we all need to monitor these changes, understand them, use them and have the right attitude - to explore new ways of working and constantly ask: 'What is the best way of doing this?'

I think today went some way to telling the team:

• We are changing the way we work and team members need to take responsibility for understanding this
• That senior managers understand so much change can be overwhelming
• That open dialogue and sharing information amongst the team is how we have to work from now on
• That we are creating a learning environment - one where it is ok to ask questions and try things out.

Hopefully this will go some way to removing some of the fears and anxieties that surround the changing way we work. We shall see. 

Illegible advice on starting up a business

This picture fails to convey my point - because ironically it is too blurry. In today's Metro freesheet there is a column on setting up your own business - unfortunately, due to poor printing you cannot read it. The column features on the business pages which are full of tales of economic meltdown. And here I am considering going it alone in the not too distant future. As a previous mentor of mine said, if you can make it work now then you'll be ok when the economy improves . . .

Management consultants who are Twittering

Twellow.com provides listings of those Twittering by industry. So here is the management stream. 

Lifelong Learning UK

I am hoping to start an NVQ (7303) in Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector shortly.

I'd like to teach in the further education sector as one part of the training work I do. So as a part of my research around the FE sector�I have been looking at FE-related organisations.

Here's today's find - Lifelong Learning UK - the sector skills council responsible for the professional development of staff working in the UK lifelong learning sector.

I'm trying to fathom out some of what the organisation does - It is not entirely clear. i guess that's governemnt skills quangos for you :-)

One company, many cultures

I was sat in a web editors' meeting yesterday and the topic of digital journalism cropped up. The discussuion that ensued highlighted the differences that exist under the roof of one large company - we have many brands that are in different stages of transition moving from print only brands to multi-media and online brands.

So, one editor of a big online brand made the point that as a company we have been talking about journalists becoming multi-media producers for two years and that journalists should 'get it' by now and that it is the responsibility of managers�to show the way on digital journlaism through clear strategy, appraisal targets,� leadership etc.

On my brand, however, we are lagging because we have been print focussed and have not really concentrated on becoming a multi-media brand. But this is changing and changing fast. So, we have work to do. Hence my summer school programme.

The whole discussion reinforced for me the idea that some training initiatives around this transition to digital journalism must be�carried out�at team level. There are lots of issues around team enagagement and culture change which will not be resolved by sending individual team members on external courses where they are likely to encounter delegates at different stages�of experience, knowledge and skills.��

That's a challenge our new organisational development director is grappling with. There will be far more emphasis on 'local' learning initiatives and support for team members who are keen to train their colleagues. This is a refreshing approach to learning which will be far more enaging for all those involved.