I didn’t get what I wanted, but I got what I needed

I prayed to God for more money. He showed me how to consolidate more of my bills so my money would last longer than my month.

I asked God for a new job. He decided to make me a mommy.

I asked God that He would enlarge my territory and He showed me people who needed my help.

I prayed to  God that He would send me someone who would love me as much as I would them and He gave me a son.

I asked God to help me be kinder and more patient.  He left me in my current job.

I asked God to give me better friends. He took all my friends away so I could learn that He is a friend like no other.

I didn’t necessarily get what I wanted, but God gave me everything I needed. He didn’t change my situation, but instead He changed me. That’s a blessing and an answer all by itself.

Signed,

Laniece D. Williams

What being pregnant has taught me about PR

If you read the tagline of my blog, it states that this is “what I’ve learned while working in PR and what I’ve discovered about life along the way.”  It’s funny how some of my personal life experiences can translate into the same situations I find myself facing in my professional life as I strive to establish a career in PR. From dating experiences that I have used to in PR to establish proper communication techniques for various audiences to the different personality types I have encountered that taught me who wouldn’t necessarily be the best person to run a social media campaign.

However, no experience to date has taught me more about a career in PR  than learning that I was pregnant.  This nine month journey is almost over, but the lessons I have learned have made my life journey a bit easier and as time goes on, hopefully it  will make me more successful as a PR professional.

Even the best laid plans can go awry:

I am the type of type of person who likes to plan things down to the smallest detail. I try to account for every scenario and all the things that could go wrong and have a plan to combat it.  But what I’ve discovered is that even when you plan everything “perfectly” and even when you think you have accounted to every possible scenario, things will still go wrong. What you do after that and how you handle the setback is what makes the difference.

The show still has to go on:

So your “perfect” plan has gone horribly wrong and the first instinct may be to panic or even cry. You can do that, but at the end of the day, you still have a job to do and you must do it in a way that maintains standards of excellence and integrity.  Your client or organization still expects you to communicate their message to a particular audience.  The website that was redesigned to focus on a new product or service has crashed two minutes before launch. Okay, it sucks, but what can be done in the meantime? Can you use social media to showcase some of the features? Can  the existing website still be used and some features quickly added while you wait for the new website to be completed? Perhaps there is another announcement that may have been pushed to the back burner because of the latest announcement that  is still important and exciting. The great thing about PR is opportunities are always around. Sometimes there are the opportunities we seek and at other times, there are the opportunities we find because we don’t have an alternate choice.

I don’t think anyone was more surprised by my pregnancy than me. I definitely didn’t plan it and I thought I had taken all precautions to prevent it, but even still my son will be here soon. 

In  an honesty moment, I will say this. When I found out I was pregnant, I was scared and angry. I had so many things planned for my life and so many things that I wanted to do and so many things I needed to do that I could not fathom a child, my child, coming in and being able to fit into all of this organized chaos.  At the time of my discovery I was and still am trying to establish a career in PR.  It’s hard to find a job period nowadays. Add the stress of a new baby and it’s twice as hard.

But at either rate, he is coming and I still have a life to live and a career to get on track. One monkey (baby) can’t stop my show. With my son coming, I am even more determined to be successful and still do all the things I want to do and need to do to prove myself as an example to him. Life hands you setbacks, but you have to keep moving.

Even when the best laid plans go awry look for the lesson and/or the opportunity:

As I mentioned before, PR offers a variety of opportunities sought after or not. Each day is a learning experience.  Your speaker or industry expert has suddenly gotten ill or had a family emergency 90 minutes before he is to give a highly sought after television interview. The opportunity here may be to give another person who has been trained the chance that they have been waiting for. If there is no other person, the lesson here could be to always have multiple people who are trained that can deliver the same message on short notice.

Perhaps a community event you planned didn’t generate the response you predicted or generated a response from an unintended audience. The lesson could be to establish better research techniques before embarking on such an endeavor. The opportunity could be that now you have access and a chance to connect with an audience that you haven’t previously considered or that has been largely ignored. Whatever it is, make the best of it.

My pregnancy has forced me to learn a lot of lessons and is causing me to seek out new opportunities that I didn’t necessarily want or were too afraid to embrace. I’ve learned life rarely goes as planned, just because you have a master’s degree doesn’t mean your new and improved job is going to come and people sometimes disappoint you and hurt you without even realizing it.  Those are just a few. 

But on the flip side and even brighter side, I’ve found that my original passion hasn’t died and even though PR isn’t yielding the professional results I hoped it would at this point, I still have time to make things better. The opportunity? Branching out on my own and using my experience and education to help companies deal with a sometimes underserved  necessity of employee communications. 

I’m not sure where I will end up professionally or where I will end up on the parenting scale. What I do know is my original “perfectly” laid plan has failed and the show has to  go on. How it ends, well, that’s up to me.

Signed,

Laniece D. Williams

A Case for Wednesday Morning Staff Meetings

If you happen to work for or with anyone other than yourself, chances are you have staff meetings. If you’re like me, you probably dread them. In my experience they are a soap box for some people to stand on and just list every grievance they have had for the past week and if you’re lucky, the past month.  Usually, it’s one person talking to hear themselves talk.  Five minutes or perhaps 10 are reserved in the end for commentary on the things that have been discussed and upcoming tasks and projects that need to be completed by the next meeting. This is not very productive or a great use of my already limited time.

Additionally, staff meetings are usually scheduled on inconvenient days and during inconvenient times. Mondays at 9, Tuesdays at 9 and Fridays at 8:30 have been some of my personal favorites (sarcasm intended).   If I had my way, I would schedule staff meeting on Wednesdays at 10:00 am.

 

No More Monday Morning Staff Meetings-

I do not know what organization first decided to develop the idea of hosting staff meetings on Monday mornings. Perhaps 20 plus years ago when organizations were different this day seemed to be the most logical. The previous work week had ended and everyone could provide updates on last week’s projects and the upcoming week tasks. In the modern-day organization, Monday morning staff meetings simply do not make sense.

Personally, my Monday mornings can be chaotic.  Usually, despite how hard I try, I am running about 10 minutes late and so is everyone else who lives within a 10 mile radius. I am not sure if this is statistically sound, but it seems more accidents occur on Monday’s than any other day of the week. By the time I get to my office, I am completely frazzled and all I really want is a moment to get myself together.

I turn on my computer and I am usually greeted by dozens of emails that have been sent on Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday. My voicemail box flashing alerting me to at least 7 messages that need to be answered and responded to.

While I am attending to all of that, my co-workers are trying to get my attention to update me or receive updates on upcoming projects, client meetings and the ever important what’s for lunch (seriously). When I am arriving to work at 8:30, the last thing I want to do is rush into a 9am staff meeting. I need a chance to just get a handle on my day and the week ahead.

Furthermore, Monday morning staff meetings do not provide an accurate or realistic status report on upcoming projects or the previous week’s completion. Even if I finished all my projects from the previous week,  a staff meeting at 9am on Monday does not give me time to provide a complete report on my findings.

As for providing details on the upcoming week projects, I probably won’t have a full status report because they week is just beginning and more than likely, I haven’t gotten very far.

 

Tuesdays Are Bad Too-

So Tuesdays seem like a better option I guess, but only in theory.  Tuesdays for me can be a continuation of my crazy Monday. Tuesdays are usually the first day that I am actually tackling new projects or new aspects of previously assigned projects. I use Tuesdays to schedule client meetings, meet with those clients and prepare for the rest of the week. Simply put Tuesdays are the first day in my work week when I make real progress and are very productive days. I don’t want to interrupt the flow.

Friday Morning Staff Meetings Are Unproductive-

I do not know which person in my organization decided it was a smart idea for a particular department to hold its staff meetings on Friday mornings, but I can tell you that this is the worst of the three days. Let’s be honest, come Thursday evening/Friday morning, most of us are on weekend countdown which becomes work week shut down. We are busy trying to wrap up as many loose ends as possible to limit the number of carry-overs for the next week. The last thing I am concerned with is a meeting.

Wednesday, Hump Day Great Day-

 Wednesday is the day of the week I begin to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Not only because the week is half over, but I sorted through the mess that created me Monday, had a chance to connect with clients on Tuesdays and I am beginning to make real progress on the projects and tasks for week.

If a meeting is scheduled on Wednesday, I can provide a sound report on last week’s project details and provide any initial responses if available. Additionally, I have had the opportunity to meet with clients and receive their feedback on various aspects of projects I am working on for them. This makes the staff meeting more productive because I am able to present any problems I foresee and ask for suggestions with ample time to implement them. Moreover,  my status report on the current week’s projects is accurate and I can provide tangible measurements and assesments because I have had time to prepare such things. I have begun the work so my estimated time of completion is more accurate than it would have been on a Monday morning.

Staff meetings are by nature are a pain. Scheduling them on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays is just wrong and unproductive. In my opinion, to get the most of the staff meetings, Wednesdays seem to be the most logical day. Give it a try and let me know what you find.

Signed,

Laniece D. Williams

Polls Close at 7 Go Vote

***Note: In this post I will refer to “local” on several occasions. By local, I am focusing on not only the community you live in, but the state as well. Simply put, local is the city and state in which you reside.***

I’m quite frightened  by the number of people who are refusing to vote during today’s election. To say the least, it’s not a popular election year in Virginia or in many other states throughout the country.  In Virginia, there are no major Senate or House of Representatives seats up for election. The Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General office elections are still two years away. What is up for grabs are county seats and State Senate seats.  From everyone I’ve talked to so far, most people are not planning on voting because they “have nothing to vote for.” This is false and dangerous thinking.

In my opinion, it is the local elections that are more important than the national elections.  The people who are elected to your local offices are the ones who have the greatest impact on your daily life. Yes, national elections can determine the national tax rate, whether or not stimulus money will be given to the states and whether bills will be passed to create thousands of new jobs. However, the local officials determine which counties and areas get the money, jobs and overall top priority.

I was following several different stories on Twitter this afternoon and people from a particular county here in Virginia were begging their followers, neighbors and co-workers to vote. As one tweeter put it, “We need new libraries in the East End just like the West End.” 

There continues to be a large discrepancy between minority neighborhoods and majority neighborhoods in the same county. Usually, there is one group that is gaining all the resources while the other suffers.

Local officials determine how county resources are divided and what will get built where. The national election cannot solve the problems in your backyard. GO VOTE! If you need a new school in your locality, vote for the official who you will believe provide you with that school. President Obama and Congress cannot build the school for you. What they can do is allocate money to the localities for school, but local officials will determine where the school will be built.

Local officials determine the zoning laws where you live. Want more or less Wal-Marts, Targets and Family Dollars? Vote. Vote. Vote. If you think that your locality could use more low-income housing, vote for your LOCAL officials.

Whatever you do, treat this election like the 2008 Presidential Campaign and show up to vote. Polls close at 7, you still have time.

If you are suspect voter fraud or need to report a problem at your polling place, visit this website for information on the proper procedure.

Signed,

Laniece D. Williams