As Simple As 'ABC'

This month's guest blog is written by one of Insight's Associates, Ricky Coussins:

The post war years saw little to recommend them to any time traveller.  Rationing was still a part of daily life.  Spam and powdered egg was still on most menus. Much of the nation’s major cities were still bombed out.  Most of the population were struggling to come to terms with a new world order in which the British Empire was beginning to play an increasingly insignificant part. 

But someone somewhere was thinking about issues that concern modern marketers just as actively now as they had begun to then.  A group of the great and the good known then (and now) as the Joint Industry Committee for National Readership Survey– or JICNARS for short (catchy acronyms they had in those days) – was considering how to provide useful information to advertisers about readers of their publications.  They decided that it would be very helpful for advertisers to understand what their readership looked like in terms of socio-economic characteristics.  This way they could match their advertising space purchases to those publications and those readerships that they thought might be most likely to buy their product (or service).  That’s right.  Someone, somewhere had invented the idea of segmentation. 

In order to make this entirely clear to those product producers and advertisers, they decided that they would use alpha numeric segmentation labels that would relate to a group of characteristics.  So an A would be upper middle class and a B would be middle class.  The complete table looked a bit like this: 

Social  Grade	Social Status	Occupation
A	Upper middle class	Higher managerial, administrative or professional
B	Middle class	Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
C1	Lower middle class	Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional
C2	Skilled working class	Skilled manual workers
D	Working class	Semi and unskilled manual workers
E	Those at lowest level of subsistence	State pensioners or widows (no other earners), casual or lowest grade workers

It was pretty revolutionary and very clever stuff.  In fact it was so interesting, clever and well thought out that nascent marketers started to use these distinctions for other purposes. It had that instant appeal of being memorable, exclusive (you had to know to what it referred), logical and easy to understand once you were on the inside of it. 

And what’s wrong with that?  Nothing of course if you are a new bright young marketer living in the ‘never had it so good’ decade of the Beano and the Tiger, Radio Times and The Daily Sketch, holidays in Clacton, plain talking horny handed machine fitters, and folks running things ‘what know best for us’.  Those distinctions make a lot of sense for that social order.

The problem is that people are still using these terms today.  In the 21^st century when meritocracy rules, there is no machine to be a fitter for, Clacton holidays are an interesting historical phenomenon, where is the relevance? So why do people persist in referring to these segmentation characteristics?

Our modern world is far too complex for such simple social divisions. 

In one weekend I might eat at a McDonalds with the kids, have a pint and a pie at the local pub, take the family to a Harvester and then eat at the Complete Angler at Bray.  Yet each of those organisations, if they’re not careful, will see me as a simple mono dimensional code. 

We need to throw out the alpha numerics and replace them with other segmentation models as smart, clever and insightful companies have been doing for more than a couple of decades. 

So it’s time to begin to invent your own segments and segmentation criteria.  Ones that recognise where the world is now and where it is going and what that means to your customers and market places.  And we need to keep re-inventing them to keep pace with the fast changing social dynamics.

And if you are one of the all too many organisations still using these wholly outdated JICNARS socio economic demographics for any marketing purpose, well shame on you.  The world is all now a little too complex for that. 

Don’t believe me?  Well just take a look around your desk and tell me how many other tools you are using now which are more than 60 years old.  I rest my case. 

Time, boys and girls, to forget your ABC, because, as you know deep down, it’s never as simple as that.

For more from Ricky, see his blog and the Coussins Associates Website.

Exploring Diversity

The National Skills Academy Graduate Scheme is making progress at an incredible rate, and we at Insight are already impressed by the caliber of the Grads, and the speed of their development.

We recently ran the first of the Management in Social Care Development Days, focussing on Diversity and Disability. As part of this, the Grads had an opportunity to explore, first-hand, a number of the challenges their service users may face.

Insight would like to introduce you to The Diversity Carousel:

The Carousel has six 'stations', each with an activity. I'll hand over to the Grads to tell you what they found...

Fine Motor Skills

We particularly related this to the experiences older people may have as their fine motor skills deteriorate. Grads tried a number of tasks whilst wearing cumbersome gloves, including trying to put screws and bolts together, sending a text, writing a note... Here's what they said:

"This task... effectively replicated the stiffness of joints with age."

"We noticed: loss of capacity, feeling very self-aware, humiliating, stressful. The task was frustrating as we felt as though it should be easy, and that it was a task we should have been able to complete quickly. We adapted the task to pick the easier option - using bigger screws."

Learning Disability

This task focussed on processing - Grads had to complete a maze whilst only viewing it in a mirror. Here's what they said:

"It was frustrating - what I wanted my hand to do, and what it actually did wouldn't match up. However, it didn't make me any less determined to do it, and I felt a sense of achievement when it was complete!"

Autistic Spectrum Disorder

For this task, Grads were given two laptops, and told to hold a conversation over an instant messenger without using any punctuation other than a full stop, or any emoticons or smiley faces. Here's what they said:

"My group struggled with the lack of social cues, such as facial expression and voice intonation, as we realised how much we used nonverbal communication in our daily activities. We felt that a huge part of social interactions is lost for individuals on the autistic spectrum and we recognised the need to adapt our language and tone to ease understanding. We saw that conversations could become quite a ‘cold’ exchange through this. The lack of punctuation caused intended meanings to be misread or, at least, hard to decipher – in particular, we found it difficult to tell when questions were being asked. Conversations could be challenging if, for example, sensitive issues were not recognised as such. We discussed the perseverance needed to continue with a conversation in which the communicator knows the recipient will struggle to grasp their intended meaning."

Sensory

Grads were given a blindfold and an iPod and were asked to nominate 1 person to block their sight with the blindfold, and another to block out sound with the iPod. The remaining members of the group were to try to facilitate conversation. Here's what they said:

"As one of the facilitators in this exercise, it was hard to involve everyone as their communication needs were so different. As a group member with a sensory impairment, I felt isolated, and even when efforts were made to include me I felt self-conscious and embarrassed that others were having to go to such lengths just to include me in conversation."

Mental Health

This task simulated one of the ways Schizophrenia can manifest itself. Two Grads were told to hold a conversation, whilst another two whispered in the ears of one of them. Here's what they said:

"We found it difficult to concentrate on the person we were having a conversation with as the 'voices in our head' were hard to get rid of, especially when they asked questions. Not only was it hard to concentrate on what the other person was saying, but it was hard to hear them at all. This lead to confusion, and a person could become highly anxious as a result of this. Some people felt they wanted to be in their head, and make sense of the voices rather than deal with reality, which could of course lead to isolation from society and withdrawal socially. Other people also mentioned the whole situation was disorienting, and that they wanted to answer the voices no matter how hard they tried to block them out."

Homelessness

This 'station' was slightly different to the others - when Grads arrived at it, there were no instructions. The trainers wouldn't answer their questions, people walked through their area, and they were ignored. Here's what they said:

"We felt aimless and didn't know what to do with ourselves. We also felt very segregated from everyone else, and devalued by the way we were ignored and our space was invaded. We'd also underestimated how powerful boredom can be! There are lots of struggles in the life of someone who's homeless, but there can also be a lack of stimulation, and that can be incredibly demoralising."

Overall, the Grads recognised that while we may understand a person's condition or situation on the surface, and we can work to support them and meet their most basic needs, it's often the detail, or the underlying emotion that is overlooked. If we're to support an active state of Wellbeing in our Service users, we need to work with the whole person, not just an aspect of them.

~ Laura

Effective Meetings

Meetings.

Does your heart sink at the word? The meeting room becomes a place outside of time, where people seem to age quickly and energy is mysteriously drained...

Or do you welcome the opportunity to  sit in a warm room, with colleagues you get on well with, and take an hour away from doing 'real work'?

It's very easy for meetings to become a weekly time-waster, so here are Insight's 6 top tips to make them useful again:

1. Have a purpose

It may sound obvious, but often we arrange meetings without there really being any purpose to them. Meetings may be used to make a decision, to update people on progress and therefore to plan next steps, to gain approval for a course of action etc, but there will always be an objective. This should be formalised in an agenda, and the agenda should be circulated at least 2 hours before the meeting to ensure participants can prepare or read anything they'll need. To help you to identify the objective, complete this sentence: 'At the close of the meeting, I'd like people to...'

2. Only invite people who need to be there

Invite the minimum number of people necessary to achieve the objective. Anyone who isn't directly involved is likely to be distracting and chatty.

3. Stick to time!

Set a start and finish time and keep to them. Don't wait for latecomers, mark the mid-way point, and give a 10 minute warning before the end. If the expectation is that meetings wont be allowed to overrun, attendees will ensure that everything that needs to be said and done is finished by the end of the meeting.

4. Have a Chair

Ensure someone is nominated to chair the meeting. Someone needs to be responsible for ensuring the meeting runs to time, covers all points on the agenda, and achieves the objectives. Without a chair, meetings are likely to overrun and lack purpose.

5. Encourage everyone to talk

Be conscious of certain people being dominant in the conversation. If everyone was invited because it's necessary for them to be there, they need to be involved in the conversation, and in decision-making. Make sure you draw everyone in to participate fully, as they all hold valuable information and suggestions.

6. Get rid of all the chairs! (Except the one running the meeting!)

If you're willing to embrace a little lateral thinking, take all of the chairs out of the room - if people have to stand, they're not going to want to spend hours telling you about their holiday! Meetings will instantly be more focussed and succinct.

Got any other tips you think should be on this list? Let us know!

~ Laura

The Leadership of John Adair

How do people who develop managers, develop themselves?

I 'do' management development and Leadership for a living, so I have a responsibility to keep up to date. However, in February I got the chance to look back at the way Leadership development has changed!

I went to an event to meet John Adair, organised by the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM). Adair is something of a founding father of management development, and an advocate of 'Action Centred Leadership'. In 1979 John became the world’s first Professor of Leadership Studies at the University of Surrey. Today, at the age of 78 he is running Leadership programmes for the UN.

He told us that in 1968 there were no meaningful Leadership programmes anywhere in the world. Leadership was thought to be “in the genes”. It was “male, military and western”. By 2012 spend on Leadership in the UK stood at 1 billion pounds.

This shift was brought about by the level of change in the workplace and globalisation.  

Change requires leadership!

Adair posed an interesting question:

“Why is one person accepted by a group as a leader, rather than another?”

Part of the answer seems to be that Leadership is tribal!  In other words the Leader manifests the traits expected by the group.  For example in the military – courage.  In nursing – compassion.

This set me thinking! I've worked in some modern organisations where leaders do not necessarily represent the traits or qualities of the staff. One example is the NHS - leadership in the NHS is quite 'managerial'. Senior medics are very 'professional' and the staff are... well, perhaps that's another blog!

 Adair's ideas about leadership do still have relevance and some sectors (the military for example) still apply them enthusiastically. However, I came away wondering, if you're a modern organisation, subjected to ceaseless change, does being 'Action Centred' actually provide comprehensive answers?

Maybe not! I think I'll go away and re-read Beverly Alimo-Metcalf's stuff on Transformational Leadership...

~ John

A Few Words from The Chair

Maybe it’s a result of my natural learning style, but I’ve always believed the most powerful learning comes from direct experience. Sometimes this can happen in contrived environments, like the simulations and exercises that we build into our workshops, but sometimes good learning can turn up completely unexpectedly.

My most recent experience happened quite by accident, in the form of a broken ankle! Early learning confronted my total lack of skill in being able to balance on one leg, resulting in even the simplest task became a major feat! Why should balancing on one leg make cleaning teeth such an impossible task?

I needed to get back to work as soon as possible, and whilst crutches are ok for hopping between the sofa and the loo, they’re not ideal for trekking around the country running training events.

I decided to hire a wheelchair (thank you Wheelfreedom – amazing service!) and that’s when my learning really moved up a gear! I started to think about the logistics of travelling to my sessions and was surprised to discover in this technologically liberated / customer focussed era that if you are a wheelchair user, journeys on public transport need to be planned with military precision. Trains need to be pre-booked so that ramps can be available to get on and off the train, and routes planned to ensure step-free access at the beginning and end of every journey. Bus services seem to be better, with well designed wheelchair areas as standard, together with automated access ramps or ‘low-floors’, meaning they can be lowered to pavement level by the driver at bus stops.

Once I had begun to re-claim my place in the outside world, it highlighted the next – and in many ways most powerful - learning: As a wheelchair user, I became invisible! People stopped seeing me (the person) even if they managed to notice The Chair! At it’s most terrifying, this resulted in being climbed over by stressed commuters trying to get to work in the snow, who failed to register me as anything more than an obstruction! However, on many occasions people stopped talking to me, even if it was about my need. I found it harder to be assertive, felt it challenging to be independent, and even found my style of training changed as I couldn’t easily move around the training room which made it more difficult to facilitate my groups..

In many ways this wasn’t new learning. Over the years I’ve worked with colleagues and clients with a range of disabilities which has given me perspectives on how we, Society, can stereotype people and reduce inclusion. This knowledge has led me to be an advocate for Equality and work towards making it an everyday reality. However, as the KOLB learning cycle explains, Knowledge and Experience are totally different things! What I learned from my first-hand experience has added a depth of understanding and awareness to my knowledge of the concept of inclusion.

Lastly on this particular journey I’ve remembered the power of setting goals to motivate progress. I’ve signed up for ‘Race for Life’ in June. I won’t be running the 5K, but am determined I will be walking the course, without crutches.  That means I’ve got 14 weeks to get out of the plaster and into the running shoes – oh yes, and achieve the £500 sponsorship target I’ve set myself! Challenging goals? Maybe, but that’s what makes them interesting!

Help me to achieve my £500 target, and give me a few words of support at my sponsor page:

http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/terrylinehan0

~ Terry