The Sydney Morning Herald reported yesterday that social researcher Hugh Mackay is retiring from Ipsos Mackay to focus on writing novels.

I have seen Hugh speak on a number of occasions at writing festivals, and within a business context. The Mind and Mood survey which he pioneered is unique in terms of qualitative research projects into social trends. His voice in the area of social research will be missed.

Ipsos reported on 8 June that there will be a new voice, though, with the Mind and Mood report to be authored by Dr Rebecca Huntley, author of ‘The World According to Y”.

Qualitative research is such a fundamental part of understanding our audiences. The insights to be gained from facilitated conversations and from techniques such as appreciative inquiry can increase the ability to connect with stakeholders or employees.

Kathleen Gilroy, the co-author of a chapter of the Melcrum publication “Transforming your intranet” has released Chapter 2 in PDF on her blog at Otter Group.

Shel Hotlz drew attention to this free resource on his excellent blog.

Links
www.blog.holtz.com

A short one today to honour the birthday of Irish poet and Nobel recipient William Butler Yeats in 1865. He gave us this (and so much more):

“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.”

‘Democracy’ is listed at number ten in the AFR Boss list of 41 Big Ideas.
This is democracy in the sense of participation and shared contribution toward the development of products, services and ideas. This really is an idea to watch as we see it already in play through more and more form of open source development on the web. By open source, I don’t just mean application development, but whole bodies of knowledge (wikipedia), shared creative sources (creative commons). Even marketing is becoming democratic with the resurgence of ‘choose your own adventure’ style campaigns relying on consumers electing content and designing campaigns via SMS and web interaction. This was well covered in a Time magazine article earlier this year.

Back to the workplace, the relevance of this for communicators is that participation requires engagement and access to information. Giving employees the resources and opportunity to participate requires the commitment to see the process through. Treat employee contributions superficially is a fast path to destroying trust and leadership credibility.

In the previous post, we see where communication came in on the list!

Links
www.wikipedia.com
www.creativecommons.org