Biz Bytes
The show for leaders who want their technology investments to work and understand that starts with fixing the operating model.
- We talk about the work that happens before the system gets switched on.
- We unpack the messy middle between “strategy approved” and “technology delivering value”.
- We teach the execution disciplines that make tech adoption stick.
Biz Bytes
When Nobody's Listening: The Hidden Power of Authentic Communication
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What happens when two podcast hosts named Anthony—one Australian, one Kiwi—discover they both run shows called "Biz Bytes"? Magic, that's what. This special crossover episode dives deep into communication as the fundamental cornerstone of business success.
Drawing from Anthony Pearl's extensive background in broadcast journalism and talk radio, we explore why truly effective communication extends far beyond simply delivering a message. The conversation uncovers why the same announcement might be heard completely differently by various team members—one person hearing opportunity while another hears threat in the exact same words.
Through fascinating parallels between sports commentary, podcasting techniques, and business leadership, we unpack the critical elements that make communication stick. Why do radio commentators describe the action in such detail while TV presenters focus more on analysis? The answer reveals profound insights about how we must adapt our communication style to different mediums, audiences, and contexts.
The most compelling revelation? Stories transmit meaning far more effectively than facts alone. From ancient tales that have persisted for centuries to modern business narratives, storytelling creates connection and comprehension unlike any other communication tool. We explore how today's leaders can leverage this innate human tendency to process information through narrative.
Technology now offers unprecedented opportunities for real-time feedback and engagement. From simple QR codes to sophisticated polling platforms, today's communicators have powerful tools to gauge whether their messages are landing as intended—provided they're willing to listen to the responses.
If you're struggling to get your message across, feeling misunderstood by your team, or simply wanting to become a more effective communicator, this conversation offers practical insights you can implement immediately. Remember: if communication isn't listed as a core deliverable in every role in your organization, you may be overlooking the most fundamental skill for business success.
Welcome to a crossover episode of Biz Bytes. Today my guest Anthony Pearl joins us from his podcast Biz Bytes for Thought Leaders Now slightly different focuses, slightly different audiences, but we thought two Anthony's with a podcast, each called Biz Bytes, was too good an opportunity not to pass up, Despite our utterly different accents. See if you can pick up on that and program emphasis. We got together. I joined Anthony on his and today he's on mine In this episode.
Speaker 1:Anthony and I dive deep into the fundamental topic of communication. We draw on Anthony's extensive background in broadcast journalism, talkback radio and his current business focused on Podcast Done For you to explore how effective communication is the core to engaging audiences. We're going to discuss some key themes, including two-way communication. It's not a one-way street. It still requires listening to your audience, understanding your audience crucial for marketing and internal businesses. Engagement tool how to foster interaction beyond just listening. Tailoring messages, adapting your content to different medians and expectations. The power of storytelling, how stories convey values and simplify complex information. The nuance of message delivery, why the same message is heard differently and how to prevent misinterpretation. Leveraging technology for feedback. Using those modern tools to ensure your message lands. And communication as a core deliverable, why it's fundamental to organizational success. So get ready for an insightful conversation between two Anthonys about how to truly connect and communicate with your audience, both inside and outside your business. Anthony, welcome to BizBytes.
Speaker 2:And it's good to be on another BizBytes program. Welcome, Anthony, it's nice to be with you again.
Speaker 1:Likewise for those who haven't picked up through the introduction, Anthony Pearl, my guest today, also has his own channel called BizBytes. And when we found that two Anthony's across two different countries I can't pick up from the accents One of us is Australian, One of us is Kiwi I'll let you work out who's who but both of us have our own channel called Biz Bytes and we thought it was too good to not do a crossover between us. So we've already done Anthony Pearl's Biz Bytes and today it's Anthony McMahon's Biz Bytes.
Speaker 2:A lot of fun and it's so weird how it happened. And it's so weird how it happened. I think we kind of shared it a little bit on my program, but it came from a mutual contact of ours that you asked to be on your program and said, but hang on, I've been on Biz Bytes with Anthony already and it turns out she'd been a guest on my program. So I love it. There's room for two of us and we do have slightly different programs and slightly different emphasis on things. So it keeps it interesting.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. It's a good point. There's a very, very minute difference in that. Obviously, mine has a technology focus, so it bites with a Y and yours is just bite spelt normally.
Speaker 2:It is and mine is BizBytes for thought leaders, so it does have that extension a little bit. But you're right, If you're not paying close attention, people won't know they can hardly tell the difference in the accents either.
Speaker 1:I know, I know we joked about this before, but there's people out there who won't even know the difference between the accents and they'll be like what are you guys talking about? You sound the same.
Speaker 2:No one in Australia or New Zealand will ever think that?
Speaker 1:No, not at all. So, anthony, tell us a bit about yourself. How did you get to your journey of creating a podcast?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it sort of probably goes back to my youth. I was always fascinated with radio. I grew up with that fascination and I'm not quite sure why, but it always played an important part. I remember very young being given a little radio set that you had to make and run long wires out the window and I'd be listening to the cricket from other parts of the world. And I was always fascinated with radio and the idea of storytelling and being the first then to be able to get information from there and share it with other people. So it was almost like if I think back on it now, it was almost like having my own radio program based on the radio programs I was listening to, because I'd go to school and say, did you hear about this and did you hear about that? And invariably there were people that hadn't listened to what you'd listened to. So you were able to share that news and it kind of fed from there.
Speaker 2:And I went to university and did a BA in broadcast journalism and communications and from there I ended up working in the media, particularly in talkback radio, but also in TV for a little while, and it was all about the creating stories and that was really what it boiled down to engaging audiences and creating these images for people and I just absolutely fascinated with it and I guess after after I worked in the industry for a few years, I ended up gravitating into the corporate sector where I was doing what was the early days of a communications manager.
Speaker 2:It really was a new title at that point and kind of an extension of what I'd been doing. But it's taken some time for it to come back fully to the whole podcasting thing, probably a couple of years ago now where I'd been dabbling with my own podcast Biz Bites for Thought Leaders and it led to a few people asking me that knew about my background if I would help them with their podcast and we found some gaps in the market and it's sort of taken a life of its own from there, so really has now become the day-to-day focus of my business.
Speaker 1:It's solely around podcasts done for you and there's an interesting point that you put in there that I'm going to drive a little bit towards as we have our conversation going, and that's where you went through a communications manager role and I think you'd agree with this statement. But I'm going to throw it out there and you can challenge it if you don't in that a podcast is purely about communicating to an audience, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yes, and I think the important point here is communication is a two-way street. A lot of people think of it really as one way, but it's not. You have to be listening to your audience, because if you're talking to everybody and not member is sitting there listening and thinking you're talking to me and that's what we want to happen in any given podcast, because that's how you make them then feel the need to engage with you. Beyond that, which is obviously what part of the purpose is, for a podcast is delivering people's expertise to the audience, and I think a lot of that.
Speaker 2:People get wrong and a lot of it there's an people fall into a few different patterns in podcasts and I've seen them go astray for that reason. But I think when you dumb it down, it should be that and that's the big, biggest lesson that I learned when I was in, you know, talk radio was that, even though you've got hundreds of thousands of listeners at any given time, it's when people think that you're talking to them, that they feel involved in the process. You want them in a sense, in their own home, talking back to the radio going. No, I don't agree with that, or I agree with that, or yes, you've got it right. And obviously you want them to call in that particular sense as well, but that's really what you want people doing, even if it's not actually saying it and just nodding their head or ticking that off in their mind. That's what's important, because that's how it endears people to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the parallel there and I'm going to keep bringing this back to the themes of BizBytes in terms of what we're talking about is exactly the same way that organizations need to manage their change when they go through a process of change for their systems, for their people, for their processes is you've got to communicate, and that communication has got to be both ways. And in the research I've done on Project Failure, one of the biggest reasons projects fail is partly because they never achieve the outcomes that they set out to do, but also partly because the communication just wasn't there and the audience never found out why that change was happening, so they just carried on doing what they did. And I think there's a lesson there that can be taken from the podcast world, the radio world, the radio world, the communication world and to any leader in a business, of how you communicate and who you're communicating to.
Speaker 2:It's so important. You know, I think a lot of the time people forget particularly when the companies start to get a little bit larger that you can't just tell people. This is what we're doing. You not only have to have a conversation with them and explain it to them, but you have to listen to what their concerns are and address them and get out in front of them, and that, in a sense, is also basic marketing. I mean, I remember years ago doing a marketing exercise for a company that did put water slides into people's homes, right Home swimming pools.
Speaker 2:Now, as a parent, immediately in your mind, you're going why would I do that? Like there's just so many, there's so many hazards and things that you can think of immediately, and so the job really had to be in excuse me in understanding the audience and understanding what those concerns would be and jumping on them in advance, so that we had a whole lot of marketing around these ideas that had safety features and all of that kind of stuff that might be a concern of parents, to get out in front of them and it's no different in a business sense as well. You have to understand what people's concerns might be, no matter how small they might be and you want to get in front of addressing them, so they feel like they've been heard, and then you're talking to them and addressing them. They still might not agree, but at least you've got them out there. But I think it's also then equally providing channels for people to bring forward their ideas or their concerns, so that you can, in turn, get a more personal approach in addressing things.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And that channels is a really good one because at the end of the day maybe much like radio podcast is almost a very one directional flow. If you're not careful, almost a very one-directional flow. If you're not careful, I mean we're sitting here, we've got our microphones running, we're talking, we're having a conversation, but it's not till the episode plays and maybe someone gives you feedback that you actually know how it lands.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's why, you know, obviously comments and things like that are really important and people wanting to engage with you separately, but it's also why things like social media are important, because you can take elements of the podcast and you talk to them on a social platform and it gives people an opportunity to engage and say they agree, they disagree or they might have a further thing to say about it, which indeed might make them a potential further guest on your program as a result of it, to take the conversation to the next level. So it is important that it is an engagement tool and not simply a delivering a message. I think you know there are those that podcast and it's almost like a how-to or it's and it's delivering almost a webinar. That's one of the big mistakes that people make. There is a very big difference between what you would deliver in a webinar and how a podcast should run, and I think that's something people need to think about quite a bit when they're doing a podcast, because it's easy to get. I understand how you can fall into a pattern and easily get that confused.
Speaker 2:People go with different expectations and you've got to remember the atmosphere in which people are listening to podcasts Most people. I've challenged the people that are listening. You know they send some comments in about where you're listening to this podcast at the moment. You know, are you doing some exercise? Are you, you know, doing some work, and you're in another browser window doing that, or what is it that you're doing at the time, whereas when you're sitting in a webinar, there's an expectation that you're going in to be educated and to learn certain things. You're also going in with an expectation that, more than likely, they're going to sell you something at the end of it, and a podcast is not about that at all. So I think there's a place for both of them, but they're not the same thing, and a podcast is not about that at all. So I think there's a place for both of them, but they're not the same thing.
Speaker 1:And a really good point there. I'm going to use my own personal experience of being a podcast listener as opposed to a host on this one. People will consume their content in different ways. There's a parallel to that to corporate communication, again, and communicating change. People will respond in different ways to different mediums.
Speaker 1:For me, I listen to podcasts when I'm walking the dogs. Others will listen to them while they're in the car or at the gym, as you said, or maybe relaxing on the couch with a glass of wine. So the way you present that is going to your audience will have a big bearing on that and knowing how that's happening. The best example I can think of of one that works for me because I've probably seen the footage beforehand, but locally there's the Aotearoa Rugby podcast, which is produced by Sky TV, and it's produced in a television format that's then played back in an audio format. So occasionally they have footage of a game over the weekend that they analyze and break down and from a listening experience, it's very hard to get that on board and I think that's something for people any message, podcast or not to talk to is understanding what they're presenting, who's consuming it and how they might want to consume it and not trying to do too much in one go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it is even to a similar point around sport is. Listen to the difference between commentary on radio versus commentary on TV. Yeah, tv is restricted by the pictures it can show, whereas radio is not restricted by that, because you're painting the picture with your words. Also, the difference is TV can allow the visuals to speak for themselves, whereas on radio you can't have more than a second of silence before alarms start sounding and that becomes a problem. So there really are very different mediums and I think it's important to not get that confused, particularly if you are going to do a video-based podcast.
Speaker 2:There's nothing wrong with video-based podcast, but do understand that the word podcast is there for a particular reason, but the expectation is that people will be listening. So if you are going to show some footage in that particular scenario, then you would have to give some pretty clear commentary as to what is happening, so that people that are not watching are not penalised and understand that, because otherwise you do lose your audience. I mean, there's nothing worse than saying just oh, you know, look, as you're seeing on screen here now and you're going. Well, hang on.
Speaker 2:I'm out for a run and I'm listening into the podcast while I'm out running. I'm not watching it on YouTube, I'm listening to it on Apple or Spotify, so I don't even have the opportunity to pick up the visual, even if I wanted to. So it is important to understand the medium that you're using and how you're using it, and I think that's again that applies in business as well. People forget that the medium that they're using is really important and also that people learn differently, so some people will love the video, other people will prefer the audio and some people will just prefer the text, and that's the beauty of being able to produce things in multiple platforms is so that you can account for those different people that learn in different ways, but you do have to be cognizant of all of them when you're doing something like that, so that no one platform feels isolated.
Speaker 1:Definitely and that you're covering that broad spectrum. And I think your point there about commentary you've got me thinking about some of the rugby games I've listened to on the radio which are, as a listener, a very different experience and the level of detail, yeah, I think the one line that keeps coming back to me is the ball goes into touch 10 meters out from halfway on the left-hand side of the field. Now I know exactly what that means. You're never going to get a TV reporter commentator saying that because you saw it.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean it's very simple. I mean, if you listen to the commentary on TV, they're doing mostly calling names. Because that's what you struggle with as a viewer is, you might not be as au fait to be able to quickly and easily identify who the people are. So they'll name the different players, but whereas in radio they'll not only name the players, they'll say passes the ball or kicks the ball, all of those kinds of things they're adding in that bit, Whereas in TV they tend to add more commentary.
Speaker 2:And actually one of my biggest frustrations in TV sports particularly I'm more of a rugby league fan, but it applies to rugby union as well is that when the TV commentators spend an inordinate amount of time telling you that this player used to be at a different club 10 years ago, Like who cares? Seriously, stop telling me this. You know my team's full of players that played somewhere else. So what you know, but they do have those fillers. That's the point is that in TV they're normally filling in with things, the extra information, whereas in radio it's different.
Speaker 2:Again and again, if you want to look at really different, you go to the cricket commentary, because cricket is completely different, because it's a much slower pace, particularly if you're talking about test match cricket, that the pace of which the game is played is completely different. So listening on radio, that's what I grew up with, because I remember listening to the BBC commentary and the cricket component would be, you know, like 5% of what they were talking about. They were talking about the cake that someone had brought them or the golf that they played on the weekend or other amusing things that are happening around the ground, which was that colour fill, Whereas on TV, you know, they could allow the pictures to speak for themselves and it was often the poignant little comments that made an impact, that were more important than filling the space, because they didn't need to fill the space. So really is contrasting in in how you approach those different mediums, yeah, and and that filling the space.
Speaker 1:I think there's a lot of business leaders out there who could probably take away from that when communicating um of how and when to fill space. Because when you are delivering a message to your people about change that impacts their jobs, impacts potentially their livelihoods, you've got to be clear that during that message, if you're just standing up in a half hour presentation and throwing a wall of words at them for 30 minutes and some PowerPoint deck, slide deck, that may not add any value to that audience and they may come across more confused because you haven't left any pauses or any space for any gaps to fill themselves in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to say the power of the pause is huge and the power of the pace of which you deliver. Different scenario to this, but it was to a community. I was delivering a message it was really a fundraising message and it was an opportunity to get in front of them and speak passionately about the particular community organization and what it was doing and how it needed people's support. And one of the things that people said to me afterwards was wow, I didn't know that you could speak and project in that way. And it came across completely differently to the way you normally deliver. And I said, yeah, because it called for that. I needed the messages to be short and sharp. I needed the messages to be short and sharp. I needed pauses, I needed the pace to which you were delivering it to put emphasis on particular words as you were going through or particular ideas so that they stuck there. I remember one particular message was discounting a belief that most people had that funding was coming from a particular area and it wasn't. So I made a very deliberate pause after I delivered that message in a very short but slow pace, and that kind of thing can make all of the difference and I think people forget that a lot, lot as well is how you deliver messages is just as important as what the messages themselves actually are. And then I think it's so much painting the story around all of that as well, because I think that's where it often gets lost. Yeah, is that the power of the story is so huge? It's the place where people get to understand a lot more about who you are, your values, what you see as important, the way you treat people in the scenario of the picture that you've painted.
Speaker 2:I often use the example from a business scenario. If we're having a conversation now and you start talking about, well, yesterday I was dealing with a startup business, as opposed to you coming on and saying, well, yesterday I was working with a company and they had about a hundred employees that we were talking to, so in my mind, I've got a completely different view from one versus the other as to who you deal with. It also gives a completely different as you move through that story. How you engage with those people will also demonstrate your values, without you actually saying well, these are my list of values and these are the things that I do, and I think that's the power of story. We remember that and I think people hear this idea of story and don't fully grasp it, and I think that is such an important thing.
Speaker 2:I often use this example with people where I say, if you want to know the power of story, go and choose a hundred random people anywhere and ask them to tell you the story of Noah's Ark. Yeah, because everybody will be able to tell you that story in a pretty similar way. Whether they believe it or not is irrelevant, but they will tell you that story. Now, that is an incredibly powerful thing to have a story that is hundreds of years old and still people will tell it in the same way. And we've got lots of examples of that. And it shows how the stories are so powerful in a business sense because, again to that scenario where you might be talking about some kind of change in a business sense, that how people will hear it will be completely different unless you paint the picture with a story.
Speaker 1:And on that storytelling, this is going back a few years now, but I was at a Microsoft Ignite industry conference 2015, 2016,. I don't remember the year, but Microsoft's chief storyteller was there and he had a keynote session and he had some really good points about the power of stories, both in writing and visually as well and I'll come back to the visual point in a moment. But one of the things he referenced was that Microsoft, with a few of the products they developed over time, particularly for the campus management system, for their core campus, they told the story themselves and he said that they were getting feedback from mainstream media big mainstream media in the States saying why are you telling this story? That's our job. And his point was yeah, but you'll filter it. If I'm telling the story, it's unfiltered and I can tell it the way I want to and get the key points across in the way I want to. I guess that's a really valuable part of where you're coming from with that story side, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is. And I think the way you tell a story I mean we've all got stories that we've told a thousand times, but we rarely tell them in the same way because it is about who's in front of you at the time, and it is about not just the scenario but the time you have. I could tell you a story about what I ate for breakfast and I could go and say, well, I got out of bed and I walked to the cupboard and et cetera, et cetera. Or I could say, yeah, I had a bowl of cereal this morning. Now I'm telling you the same story, that I had breakfast, but the detail is different depending on the scenario. You know, if there was a scenario about where, where you are trying to judge you know the time that I eat, you know what time I eat breakfast, whether I'm being healthy, about my choices in breakfast, all of those kinds of things is very different to, hey, just taking a box that I ate some breakfast.
Speaker 2:And I think the point is as well that when people are listening, what they hear are different things as well, like the scenario in a business sense is so we're going to introduce this new piece of technology that's going to be whiz, bang right, because some people will sit there and they'll hear my job's at risk. That's all they will hear is oh my goodness, I'm going to lose my job. The next person will hear wow, there's a great opportunity to learn about new technology. The third person will only hear wow, we're going to be really churning out some more stuff here. This is going to switch on the pace. I'm going to have to keep up. So you could probably list about another four or five different ways that people could hear exactly the same story.
Speaker 2:So it's really important to understand that, even though you're telling a story, that the way people will hear it will depend on who they are and what they're about, and the real challenge for any organization is to try and get all of those people onto the same page.
Speaker 2:So the person sits there and goes well, my job's not at risk. What they're actually going to do is they're going to retrain me and I'm going to give me new skills and I'm going, or they're going to move me into another area, because they know my core skill is probably not matched with the technology but can move me here, or indeed, maybe it is time to move on. Maybe I'm not a match for this company anymore, and maybe they feel that way. So, again, each individual scenario has different potentials of where it can go, so that the filtering from the storyteller is important as well, because if it's not that main person that's telling it, then the risk is that the way the second person tells it will be influenced by their own individual bias and perception of what is happening, for better or for worse, and so we all have to understand that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I've drawn this before and used it on LinkedIn and I'll drop a link to it in the show notes as well. But what you've just described is something I came across years ago which I've branded the pyramid of knowledge, but it's just a pretty way to put it, and it's the idea that you have different tiers of knowledge and expertise based on where the message has been either received, heard or read, and so right at the top of that pyramid is the expert. In your case, you're the expert of producing and creating and developing podcasts. The next layer, down from that is people who have had a conversation with you, maybe read your books, maybe gone through your program. They're not the expert, but they're at least as close to you as they're going to get. But then, as they start diluting that message further and further away, you start to get more and more layers and eventually you'll be at the fourth or fifth layer where someone will be portraying themselves as an expert, but the knowledge has been diluted down because they heard it from me, who heard it from someone else, who heard it from someone else who read it a book that you wrote and that message has it's.
Speaker 1:It's chinese whispers, um, or the old game of telephone. It's just changed ever so much. By the time it gets that fifth person, they're sitting there going I'm an expert. Are you really, though? Are you really an expert in something that you have never done at that top tier? And that's something that, again, coming back into a corporate world is, particularly when the leadership team stands up there and says one thing, and there's someone in their role who's been there for 20, 30 years, they're an expert at what they do. They're going to hear a very different message from someone who's just been in there for 10 minutes and has an MBA and not much else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think as well, the features is a good way of focusing in on that. Someone's delivering something and it's saying, well, we've got this new piece of technology and it's going to do A, b, c, d, e. What people focus on goes well. I didn't mention this thing, and this is where the biggest problem is in the organization, and it doesn't have that feature. In fact, it's missing a feature that we had in the previous version now. So now there's even more work. You know that could be the way that they go, and so it is important to understand. That's how we'll do it, and I think we've. You know the thing.
Speaker 2:The interesting thing about a Chinese whisper scenario is that it's going down the line, but sometimes you also have to remember that people are standing in the room and they're hearing the same people speaking at the same time, and they will hear completely different things, and I think we've all had that in our, in our personal lives. You know that you can be standing there with it, whether it's with your partner and family, or it could be just friends, and what you hear and what they hear can be two completely different things. Yep, and that's just human nature, and so the important thing is to try and grapple with that and to bring people along and understand where they might be because of their own individual scenarios. And so it is about trying to make people feel comfortable but understand where they are individually address them. Sometimes the mass message is not the best way of delivering it. Sometimes it's important to give people that as an initial opportunity, but then to take that and drill it down to a much more core level really is more important, I think, than the overall message. It's because, particularly when you're talking about any kind of change, no matter whether that change is a new piece of technology or it's moving locations, it's merging. It's because, particularly when you're talking about any kind of change, no matter whether that change is a new piece of technology or it's moving locations, it's merging, it's any number of different things that could be happening in a business at any time. How you deliver, that is everything you know, absolutely everything to the success that you'll have moving forward. Because you can guarantee that if you do just the mass message, the Chinese whisper thing will happen and that's how rumors start flying. I mean it's again let's use the sports analogy Anyone who's listened to any sports program at any time anywhere in the world will hear about some kind of rumor.
Speaker 2:Where do those rumors start? They start usually from overheard or misheard conversations or even someone hypothesizing. I've had that happen to me in a work scenario where I was on work experience. I wasn't even employed and I got on particularly well with someone in a control room and he was joking oh you know, if I ran the network, I'd do this differently. And I'd say, yeah, it'd be great, if I ran the network, I'd do this. And it was just, we were just messing around. What we didn't know was that someone who was a reasonably junior at the time but employed, overheard our conversation, then started a rumor that they thought that I was about to try to work out a way to take over the network. I was on work experience and fortunately I heard it back from someone that I was friendly with on the team and said listen, you've got to be careful because they've heard this. And we were able to confront the person and go. You know it was a joke, you know that, you know. And so we shut it down, which is great, right, and but I learned that lesson very early on.
Speaker 2:You don't know who's listening. You don't know how they're going to perceive things. You don't know what's on their mind. He he was a junior reporter at the time. He felt a little bit insecure.
Speaker 2:I was coming in on work experience, potentially with a better background than what he had in. But you know, I wasn't working in that way and maybe he felt insecure about his job. Actually I wasn't after his job at all. If he'd have bothered to have had that conversation with me. He was a on-camera journalist. I wanted to be behind the scenes, so we weren't even talking the same language and that. But that happens all the time in a business sense and I think that's what's important to understand is where people's mindset is at any given point is going to be different, and if you're a CEO of a larger company, you're not going to know the details of every individual employee at that level.
Speaker 2:But you have to, I guess, try and find a way to make sure any core messages are being filtered down in the right way, and that means delivering them in multiple ways to multiple groups and understanding that if it's going to have a big impact on an organization so we're not talking about something small hey, we've just.
Speaker 2:You know, we decided we're going to. You know we're going to have a luncheon today. You know we decided we're going to. You know we're going to have a luncheon today. No, but if you're talking about, as I said, you know things like mergers or relocating or new technology or things that are going to. You know new people that are coming into at a higher level in the organization, all those kinds of things that are going to have a significant impact, it's worth your time to be delivering those messages at a smaller level and not just dismiss them as one simple idea and off they go. And again, if we bring it back to podcasting, one of the powers of podcasting is that you've got that message that people can go back and hear in their own time and over time, and I think also, then, that you've got something that can then be extracted and delivered in multiple different ways.
Speaker 1:I was just going to say that you've got the ability to, depending on what channels you're using. If you're using video, you've got the ability to caption the conversation as part of the video. If it's audio only, which I tend to do, you've got show notes, you've got a transcript, you've got everything else that goes with it and obviously I'm starting to establish a sub stack channel that goes alongside the podcast, which has more insights that go with email, so you can build on a whole range of different mediums and still have a single podcast and still have it all linked to each other. But the message has become quite clear to everyone as to what it actually is meaning.
Speaker 2:The one thing I love about the podcast platform is that it has a cascading effect, that the authentic stories and commentary that you provide in a podcast can then be transferred into multiple different ways and multiple different platforms. So, yes, if you're recording the video, you can extract the audio, you can extract the transcript. From the transcript you can extract multiple different short forms or longer forms of content. You can write a short post, you can write a longer blog article, just as an example, from the videos you get shorter videos and indeed from the audio as well. And catering for all those different audiences because I think that's the important thing here too is for people to understand is just the old days of where I decided I'm going to put out a newsletter on the third Wednesday of the third month, you know, every three months. Great, that's wonderful for you. Is that convenient for the people that are reading it? You know, 20, 30 years ago, we didn't have a choice. The expectation was oh, this is when the newsletter comes out. It's a bit like people used to queue for the paper to be released. We knew the paper was at newsstands at 5 am. Therefore, we want to be the first to get the news, so we'd be there waiting at 5 am.
Speaker 2:Nowadays it's a 24-7 news cycle, and people are used to picking up news on multiple platforms in a format that they want when they want, and so, as a business, it's incumbent upon you to deliver that in the same way, whether it's internally or externally.
Speaker 2:That's the expectation that has been set, and if you are not giving information into each of those different channels on a consistent basis, then you're doing yourself a disservice.
Speaker 2:And you can't be everywhere all of the time, but you do have to find where are the people playing that are most important to you. You have to be there consistently for them and understand that feeds are different for everybody, no matter what platform you're on, so they may or may not see it. You want them to subscribe to things so that they do see it, and just because you post it at 9am doesn't mean they're going to see it at 9.01. They may not see it until the next day, tuesday, or two or three days later. I mean, for example, I looked in my Facebook feed this morning and I saw a really interesting post and I thought, oh, I was reading that maybe I'll share it with a couple of people. Then I went back and looked. Actually, it was from three days ago, so that's just how it landed in my feed at the time. There's nothing wrong with that, but the chances are the people that I might have wanted to share it with have probably already seen it, so that's okay.
Speaker 2:It's not a problem, it's just how it came to me, and that's the thing, that a lot of this stuff is even out of our own control, let alone the fact that I may not have looked at Facebook for five days, for our sake.
Speaker 1:And your point there on the news cycle is relevant to all of this as well. My wife and I actually were talking yesterday about. We both grew up in homes where the six o'clock news bulletin was sort of sacrosanct and dinner had to be ready and everything had to be done so that mum and or dad or both could watch the six o'clock news and thinking about it as you're talking, I haven't watched the six o'clock news in probably the better part of a decade and in fact the last time I really thought about it was probably in the car and I remember joking with a family member about this. I was in the car and the advert for the six o'clock bulletin came up at like 4.30 and the anchor was something happened at America Day.
Speaker 1:We'll reveal what happened next at six o'clock. And I'm like you mean reveal what happened next. I read about that 12 hours ago on the news side. What are you revealing to me? That's not new, this is old and I guess that's to play that into a corporate communications lens as well. That's something you've got to be careful of with the way your employees not just how rumors start, but employee will talk and information will get shared pretty quickly. And if you are scrambling to catch up on that, you've already probably failed to deliver the message.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you're right and, with all the best of intentions of trying to keep things secret, things slip. Whether they're deliberate or not, they slip and or there are signs that people read and interpret you might be. For example, you might be planning to buy a major piece of capital equipment for it, and the only person that, the only person that might know, is the CFO. But the people in the accounts department are going well, hang on, there's money that's being put aside here that you know they're going to spend it. What are they going to spend it on? It looks like it's a fairly significant piece. Ah, they must be buying. They'll put two and two together and work it out and they'll tell 10 people without even thinking about it because they don't know that it's confidential. They're just looking at it and going well, it looks like they're going to be. They're shaping up to do this and get it again.
Speaker 2:Use the sports analogy. I mean you hear players being traded. So we're really interested in. You know, this team is really interested in getting this player and you, and immediately you go. If we're releasing this player, that must mean we're freeing up money so that we can go and buy this player over here and go hang on. How do we work that out? Like is that? There are, you know, but it's the nature of human beings and and how we, how we think and where we go. So, with all of that in mind, you have to be really cautious in how you approach things, whether it's your existing internal team or whether it's an external audience. You need to understand that these things will happen, they'll get out. So better to be on top of it and better to be proactive in what you're doing and talking to people about where you're going, because, equally, equally, you don't know where those opportunities lie. I get sometimes there are things that have to be kept confidential for legal reasons, and I understand that that that can happen and you usually try and keep a very tight rein on that. But the majority of stuff that happens in business often it can be. You know, we were actually thinking of doing this and actually putting that out there for a conversation, both internally and externally, can reveal lots of things. It's really interesting when you look at it again.
Speaker 2:It's easy to bring it back to the media because people understand that and I won't use an Australian example because I, you know, realize that not everyone would be familiar with it, but there are programs that we watch on TV that get axed right and we often don't have an idea as to why they're being axed Now. Sometimes the TV stations make a decision going well the ratings are poor, therefore we'll stop supporting this program and we'll bring on another program. Now the interesting thing about that is could they have twisted? Do they know what the audience thinks and why they've stopped watching? Could it be that there was a particular person on the program or a particular storyline or something that was happening that has had a negative impact? That could be shifted, or you could experiment with that, versus taking the extreme example of removing the program and putting something else back.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's even a simple thing that happened recently. There's a program where they asked the host. Now, if they had bothered to ask the audience, they would have heard that the one thing that was not wrong with that show was the host, the one thing that everyone loved the most and that why people kept coming back was because of the host. There were other things on the program that could have been changed, but the host is definitely not the thing that they should have changed. And what does that lead to A whole outpouring of people that are saying no and signing petitions and all of that kind of stuff. The deed is done, I assume, and so they're unlikely to go back on their word.
Speaker 2:Now the question will be what happens? Because you see the audience all going well, if they're going to change it to this person I'm not watching anymore so will they have attracted more people who do like the new one versus the people that they're going to lose because of the old one? Again, having that conversation with the audience, there's lots of different ways to try and test it out. There's market research that can be done if you want to be formal about it, but there's informal conversations that can happen. Hey, we're thinking of doing this in the business. What's your take on that? We're thinking of doing this in the business, what's your take on that? And you'll get some great opinions, and there'll be some you'll discard immediately because you realize that they're biased or they're just not your flavor, and sometimes you'll just ignore them anyway, but you take them on board so you understand what you can learn.
Speaker 1:And technology is a good note to start to close on here. But technology gives us the ability to get in front of that audience much faster and much quicker as well. And the example I'm thinking of here. Bringing it right back to sport, on Saturday night the international calendar kicked off for rugby, so the All Blacks had their first test against France, and something that I noted hadn't seen before in the broadcast was they were using QR codes for fan engagement. So they had QR code at the start to say it was basic five-question poll how do you feel about the team, what are our chances and that was dynamically updated in real time as people were scanning the code and so it was being broadcast in real time. But then later on they had another QR code for fan engagement to pick man of the match. Now, that's not a new thing. Fans have been able to pick man of the match before, normally with a text in or with a write in, but you're able to see that in real time all of a sudden.
Speaker 1:And that lesson can go back to corporates, it can go back to television studios who are looking for that feedback, because you can actually get some some. You can use some very simple technology qr codes, arc conflicts to get real-time feedback and get that mood, or even even if it's slightly delayed feedback. We've delivered our message. We've given you time to think about it. Now come and give us your feedback through a, through a poll, or through a forum, or through it, through a, through a, through a very simple survey that's anonymous, because we know people don't want to put their name against this. You're going to get that, to get that feedback that you can then take and respond to in the next part and say, hey, we listened and this is what we're changing as a result.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I've seen it done with very simple apps that people can download for free, and I've been in a room where there's maybe 20 people and we're learning about something and the person delivering it saying, well, where do you think this could go? What's your take on it? And it might be an ABCD scenario, and in real time you get where people's heads are at and it's really interesting seeing that. And what's also interesting is seeing the pack mentality, because what you will see, depending on when you decide to deliver the results, it's really interesting If you put up the results live, so people are seeing it.
Speaker 2:How people are responding will influence how the other people are responding in one of two ways. They'll either want to be with oh, everyone's picking A, so I better pick A or they'll go everyone's picking A. I therefore want to pick, or they go everyone's picking A. I therefore want to pick D, and I want everyone to know that I'm picking D, because suddenly it'll go from 100% down to 75% and 25% here and then so on as we're going through it. So I think that's one of the interesting things too, and to understand that mentality. You know, even in I know market researchers will tell you this as well, that when you and I've done this myself when you are asking for people's opinions on things, and particularly if you're in a group, the best thing to do initially is to get them to write it down before they discuss it. And yet, where anyone says a word because otherwise people will have a reaction to whoever is the loudest voice initially, and that can be a good and a bad thing, and it's fine in a conversation sense. But it's also interesting to know where that is, because we've all been in conversations where someone says oh yeah, I was going to say that, were you really? I don't know if you really were going to say that, and so it is actually interesting to measure that.
Speaker 2:And I think the lesson here, at the end of the day, is that technology can help you really understand where people's mindsets are at and therefore adjusting your messages or getting more personal with them to in order to be able to engage them better, which is going to extract better performance for your business and better performance, you know, for teams and job satisfaction, and ultimately, the business grows as a result of all of that.
Speaker 2:And I think it's simple, but communication is absolutely the fundamental key to the success of an organization and I always used to say to business owners when I dealt with them more directly on this sort of scenario, is that if every job description does not have communication as a core deliverable, then you have a problem. It has to be For every position in every business. You have a problem. It has to be For every position in every business. Communication is a core deliverable, no matter what they are doing, and I think that's overlooked too often and it's where things just go astray, definitely definitely, and I think that's a great note to finish on that communication being a fundamental element of every business.
Speaker 1:Just to wrap up, anthony, is there anything else you want to add, anything we haven't covered you wanted to bring in, or a final thought?
Speaker 2:look, I just I think the biggest lesson that I would give to people that are out there listening that the more that you can share your authentic stories, the more that you can deliver things more personally to an audience consistently, the more that you are going to stand out. You know, for my podcast it's about thought leadership and that's you can't be a thought leader if you don't have an outlet for delivering your messages to a broader audience. You know, the power of podcasting is very much about being able to deliver consistently to educate and nurture an audience, both internally and externally, and I think to me that's such a core thing. Don't be afraid to communicate, because if you are and if you're holding back, no matter where you are within a business, then the chances are that someone is going to end up being dissatisfied and somewhere along the way someone is going to make a crucial mistake. And if you care at all, then communicating is core.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Thank you very much for that, Anthony, and for anyone looking for Anthony's show, we'll put a link in the show notes, but it's Biz Bytes for Thought Leaders and it's available on all Goods podcast channels.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and thank you so much for having me on your show. It's great that we'll be able to do the swap, and so we've both been on BizBytes kind of like stereo, isn't it? Bizbytes and two Anthonys how much better can you get?
Speaker 1:And for those of you who have listened all the way to the point, your feedback is valuable. Communication goes both ways, so please do put some comments in or respond to the email when it comes out via sub stack.
Speaker 2:Thanks very much for having me. I really appreciate it and, yes, we will definitely continue this conversation. Excellent Thanks, anthony no-transcript.