Managing The MessageSteve Snyder

Your Message

If you’re not managing your message, somebody else is. You need to construct your story, choose your language carefully and use imagery that people can relate to.

I have said this before!Own your successes!

Share with your team

Get in front of bad news

More importantly, Own your failures! You are the captain of your ship, you are responsible

for everything that happens on your watch…. No excuses No blame You garner a level of respect from peers, employees

and management when you own your team’s failures

Three S’s of the Success StorySuccess stories offer a setting , a situation and

a solution .

Remember, you're the hero of your stories. Your decisions, actions and insights made a difference and it's OK to say so.

You don't have to be boastful, but make Howard Cosell proud: tell it like it is!

ExamplesPresident Obama says a major mistake of his first term in

office was not telling the American people a story.

“The mistake of my first term - couple of years - was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right,” he said in a Thursday interview with CBS News.

“And that’s important,” he added, “but the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times.”

A Few Examples

Costa Concordia

Costa Concordia The captain of the capsized luxury liner who refused to reboard his

ship cried in the arms of a chaplain for 15 minutes after reaching the safety of shore, the chaplain claims.

"At around 2:30 a.m. I spoke to the captain," chaplain Raffaele Malena told the French magazine "Famille Chretienne." He was talking about last Friday night when Costa Concordia ran aground, killing at least 11 people.

"He embraced me and cried like a child for about a quarter of an hour," Malena told the magazine.

The picture of Francesco Schettino, the captain of the Costa Concordia, sobbing like a child is the latest description of Schettino undergoing an emotional collapse.

HMS Bounty

HMS Bounty"I truly feel if he had any reservations he would not have done

it," she said from St. Petersburg, Fla. "He wasn't gambling with anyone's lives. He didn't have a death wish...and he loved the boat. The last thing he wanted to do was lose the ship.“

Wallbridge, 63, and a crew member died after a huge wave broadsided the three-masted craft 100 miles off the North Carolina coast Oct. 29.

John Svendsen said Wallbridge's endless drills and preparation were the reason 14 lives that were saved.

"I give my life to Robin, and to his ingenuity, to his leadership, that I'm here today," the first mate told ABC News,

"After this, I'm never going to have another bad day in my life," Faunt said

Orca

ORCAOrca turned out to be toothless, thanks to a series of deployment

blunders and network and system failures. While the system was stress-tested using automated testing tools, users received little or no advance training on the system. Crucially, there was no dry run to test how Orca would perform over the public Internet.

Part of the issue was Orca's architecture. While 11 backend database servers had been provisioned for the system—probably running on virtual machines—the "mobile" piece of Orca was a Web application supported by a single Web server and a single application server. Rather than a set of servers in the cloud, "I believe all the servers were in Boston at the Garden or a data center nearby," wrote Hans Dittuobo.

If nobody owns the failure, everyone associated with the project has failed in the organization’s eyes.

Framing the storyWhat is your problem

What is the ideal outcome

What do you want the person you are telling the story to do for you

What happens if you do nothing

What is the perfect world solution

What is an “acceptable” solution and what do you leave on the table with this option

Learn from others“One of the darkest moments in my career came a few years ago when I was visiting the chief executive of a well-known institution. They were about to start an ERP project but he might as well have been a man headed for the gallows. Head hung low - all he could talk about how much of an overrun he needed to prepare his organization for. And his project had not even started. I felt sick - never felt so un-proud of my chosen profession. I could not give him much hope that his pessimism was unjustified.”

“Fall down seven times, get up eight.” – Japanese proverb

Make sure that your team and your boss know what’s important to you!

Michael Jack president and general manager of WRC-TV

Jack recently polled his department heads to see if they knew his most common mantra. Their response: "What are we doing to grow our business?"

For him, that is what every one of his 200-plus employees should be asking ad nauseam.

"It's not elegant, but it's the one thing that I probably say the most," Jack says.

Managing UpKnow what matters to your boss. If your

boss is a numbers person, then quantify all your results. And know which numbers matter most to him.

Say no. Say yes to the things that matter most to your boss. Say no to everything else and your boss will appreciate that you are focused on their needs.

Managing UpTalk like your boss. If your boss likes daily e-

mails, send them. If your boss wants a once-a-week summary, then do that. Convey information to your boss in the way they like so that they are more likely to retain it.

Toot your own horn. Each time you do something that impacts the company, let your boss know. Leave a voicemail announcing a project went through. Send a congratulation e-mail to your team and copy your boss, which not only draws attention to your project success but also to your leadership skills.