More training!

Fiona Clancy, Disruption "Black Belt"

I have been working in TBWA for nearly 3 years, but all I know about Disruption is 3 steps: Convention, Disruption and Vision; and some case study such as Apple or Absolute. When George told me that I would go with him for Disruption training, I kept wondering why me, he should bring creative instead. But after reading Disruption book, I realized that this book for planners. This teaches you how to come up distinctive strategy. My knowledge about Disruption was improved a lot such as disruption can be applied for anything, from business, product, to communication. Disruption is not just a breakthrough idea for creative execution.

And I got more and more surprises when training. There was a big group; people came from different countries like Japan, Singapore, Korea, and Dubai…  My first impression is they look very senior which was totally different with George told me <he just wanted to make me confident…>. Some of them are regional planners, that means they don’t base in any office, their role are rolled out from different offices in the network who need their help for pitching or Disruption Day. So you can imagine how much professional they are.

The training is not to teach you about Disruption; it teaches you how to organize Disruption Day!!!!!!!!  For whom don’t know what the day is: Disruption day is kinda of brainstorm where agency and client spend a whole day or even more to solve problem for brand/company. But the problem here is very big, it affects the vision, the way cooperate run business, it has to get involved from top management. Our instructor used to run disruption day with 75 people, from marketing, brand team to finance. It will take agency a month or even more to prepare the day. During the day, participants have to gone a lot of exercises to find out the answers for problem. In the training, we were given exercise and set up the plan for Disruption Day…  Again, I never ever heard any exercises before until the training... Okie blog time is over. Now I get back to work.

-Van Anh, account manager

Social Media. It's all fun and games until someone gets fired.

Social media channels are a great way to stay connected with your family, friends and colleagues. They’re also great at helping you find out about special store promotions, news on upcoming events and just about anything you’re into. And now they’re a great way to get yourself fired.

With Facebook, Twitter and personal blogs, it’s easy to post your everyday random thoughts whatever they may be. It’s self-expression at its finest. People can find out what you’re up to and what’s on your mind. It’s generally something you never need to think twice about. And why should you? They are your thoughts and no one else’s right? Not really.

It’s easy to forget the real meaning of www.  Just when you think only a few people are reading your thoughts, several hundreds may have seen it as well. Essentially, it’s gone public. In the past, we’ve read news reports and stories about people being fired for posting how horrible their jobs were. One woman even posted on Facebook how much of an ass her boss was. Stupid right? Of course, she was well within her rights to say whatever she wanted to her friends on FB, but she forgot that she had ‘friended’ her boss (a mistake she’ll probably never make again). She was fired on the spot with a posted reply from her boss.

So should someone be fired for expressing themselves through social media? Truth is, it’s human nature to ‘bitch’ about things that frustrate you. And since we spend so much time each day at work, it’s not difficult to find something frustrating at some point in time. There’s probably not a single person alive today that can say they’ve never had an off-colour comment about their job or someone they’ve worked with. Although chances are any ‘bitching’ was probably kept between a couple of friends, a bartender and few drinks - not 800 of your Facebook friends.

Or should a negative post serve as a conversation starter between the disgruntled and subject of aggression? For any company manager, reading a negative post online from an employee is surprising and probably very shocking (Because morale is so great at your company right?). But it raises an honest question. Are your employees truly happy? Does the company do a good enough job in providing an open environment that allows employees to discuss work issues and problems with personnel without fear of losing their jobs? Obviously for this to work it requires professionalism and maturity on both sides, not just the employer.

Imagine if every company in the world made it a goal to be great at this, we’d probably never see another negative posting about work again (Don’t hold your breath). But until that day comes, you might want to refrain from airing work issues online and try going straight to your boss. Or better yet, head straight for the bar.