Throwing chairs, tossing zingers and misusing the English language are probably not the best tactics to ensure your message is heard
If you want people to hear what you have to say, give them something worth listening to.
Sounds simple, right? If that’s the case, why does effectively communicating a viewpoint seem to be such a lost art these days?
We are living in the age of Jerry Springer, the TV talk-show host who delights in chair-throwing, bleep-inducing confrontations between people who need serious sedation and anger-management training. Not surprisingly, this kind of in-your-face entertainment has spilled over to more “serious” news programs on formerly respectable networks.
Look at what’s happening. There’s the weird rant of Tom Cruise in a “Today” show interview (which really wasn’t news except that Cruise apparently invented a new meaning for the word “glib”). There’s the printed gripe session in my hometown newspaper in which the same five people seem to be bickering endlessly. There are town-hall meetings – both in the public arena and in company auditoriums all over America – in which the greatest applause is reserved for the person who tosses the best zinger. And now there are blogs, online journals where freedom of expression is pushed to the extreme (I can’t wait for the inevitable tests of this freedom in future court cases).
As someone who makes a living out of trying to help people communicate effectively, all of this is frequently disheartening. As the volume increases, it is more difficult to hear what people are really trying to say.
Listening to different viewpoints is fun. I learn a lot from hearing people talk about what is important to them. Businesses can learn and grow, too, by listening to employees, customers, suppliers and other important groups. But good information gets lost when it’s wrapped in anything that detracts from the message.
Here are some ways to make sure your message isn’t lost:
Know how to use the language. For some people, all the rules of grammar and spelling are enough to cause hyperventilation. (I feel the same way about math.) But let’s face it: communication depends on knowing how to use the tools correctly. If you’re writing a letter to the editor, committing a grammatical error like “your an idiot” will detract from your message. There is little excuse for poor grammar and misspelling in these days of dictionaries and computerized spell-check.
Don’t let pure emotion take over. It is OK to be emotional when speaking on a subject about which you feel strongly. But when emotion is so strong that it overpowers the message, your audience will remember the outburst and forget what brought it on.
Keep your message simple. Whether you are speaking or writing, the person on the other end will remember only so much. (Think about how much information overload you have in your own life.) Rather than drift off into a half-dozen tangents, stick to the central message you want your audience to remember.
Keep your sense of humor. Humor is a wonderful weapon for defusing tense situations. Use it carefully, however, and aim it mostly toward yourself. Be willing to recognize when someone else is attempting to use humor and don’t take yourself so seriously.
Kill them with kindness. You can attract more bees with honey than you can with vinegar. My career has included a fair amount of communicating strong opinions, but I learned long ago that you can be opinionated and kind at the same time.
You must decide – as an organization and as an individual team leader – what spirit you intend to convey with the participation of your employees in social media.
If your intention is for them to be simply mechanical amplification vehicles for a very carefully crafted marketing message, that can work. You’ll likely see some results in terms of absolute reach and volume of short-term message resonance. You will sacrifice a degree of credibility on behalf of your individual representatives and personality and genuineness on behalf of your brand in favor of a consistent, safe(-r) message. You will also likely sacrifice culturally, since your employees will realize they’re part of a marketing machine, not someone who is entrusted to help build and shape a brand.
If your intention is for employees to become individual voices for your organization and unique representatives of your company’s values, personality and diversity, that can work too. You’ll likely see results in terms of trust and affinity for your brand as well as better identification of your advocates, both internal and external. You will sacrifice a certain amount of stability and potential consistency of message in favor of communications that are more unique and individual. You’ll also sacrifice some predictability around outcomes and need to rely on strong education and culture initiatives to guide your teams and hone their own sense of good judgment.
The bottom line: governance and guidance is important. But it’s a means to more scalable social media, not the end.
We’ve said many times here — and will continue to — that social business transformation is far more cultural than it is operational. Getting your employees involved is no different, and your policies and guidelines need to consider not just what you don’t want to happen, but instead what values, vision and intent you want your teams’ social media participation to convey.
Read full article via sideraworks.com
Having worked in internal communication in a variety of organizations since 1997, I’ve seen and heard a lot of myths and aphorisms about “good communication” which, alas, are either untrue or deeply overstated.
Here are eight of the real doozies—I’m sure there are others; if you know of any, pile into the comments below:
Social Media is new
This one is an absolute classic—the idea that employees talk with each other informally and that those informal conversations are important is one that is as old as any organization. The only thing that’s new about social media is the technology—and how it makes this process easier. Word of mouth is timeless.
Treat employees like customers
One of the true “doh” ideas on employee communication, even if it did spawn the “internal marketing” industry in the ‘90s.
Workplace relationships are far richer than the ones employees have with their cereals and even their cars. Workplaces are where employees hold most of their personal relationships, exert much of their personal efforts and energies, and are where they derive most of the resources for the other aspects of their lives.
Employees are much more like citizens than like customers.
Good communication is free
I remember seeing this howler recently on some HR blog somewhere. It somehow places no value on the time involved with preparing, delivering and understanding any message—assuming that employees don’t work for free either. And some good communication really does cost money too.
Employees can’t say no
One of the big myths of internal communication is the assumption that, at the end of the day, the employee is not free to disagree with or resist the messages he or she is being given. I’ve found this particularly prevalent in American companies, who take a directive tone in their communication much more frequently than do European companies. The downside of presenting something as fact to staff who disagree is that can act as a charter for sabotage or at least reinforce resistance. And, despite the best efforts of corporations, resistance has hardly been eliminated from corporate cultures.
Use the disembodied “we”
Nothing smells of bad communication—not to mention resistance to individual accountability—like the use of the disembodied “we” to communicate an organization’s policies, stances, or changes in official behavior. Such use of the “royal ‘We’” can also be highly disempowering and even feed resentment among those who don’t see themselves as part of that “we”. My core writing principle—no quote, no story.
Good communication is all about recognition
Recognition is important—sometimes even critical to employee retention and morale. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that every bit of employee communication needs to be larded up with 25-year service awards for staff at far-away cafeterias. An over-emphasis on recognition in internal communication can get in the way of urgent and strategic messaging. Where possible, keep the recognition machine ring-fenced from more pressing communication activities.
It’s all about the bosses
One online conversation I saw recently discussed the extent to which an over-emphasis on quoting CEOs and senior executives was driving down readership for a certain tool—to the point where the editors stopped quoting senior management entirely. I personally think there needs to be a balance—CEOs and senior executives are effective at setting parameters and policies, but stories from the field are far better at bringing those things to life.
Line Management Cascades are the best form of communication
To many in corporations, the only “real” form of internal communication is the line management cascade—the formal presentation of authorized corporate information by the line manager to his/her staff, to be repeated step by step until the presentation reaches the shop floor unscathed.
But while cascades do an excellent job of reminding people “who’s the boss”, cascades fail on many other grounds. For one thing, they move with bovine velocity, with long gaps between delivery by a boss and by his/her direct reports, magnified over geography and hierarchy.
Secondly, the further they move, the more corrupted their tone and content become—particular when managers omit sections for time reasons (or perhaps, darker motives), or when they add in inappropriate inflections or gestures (air quotes for a new bit of terminology, for instance). Third—while less prevalent perhaps most damning—they inevitably omit information or smooth over gaps or rationales, which then prompt a surge of back-channel communication to get clarifications or seek to clarify through the distribution of rumors.
While, as my colleague Liam Fitzpatrick would say, “internal communication is not rocket science”, I would also argue that it’s neither voodoo nor witchcraft either. Being able to take on clients and bosses who seek to play “communication strategist” and overspecify tools and tactics is one way to help ensure your own effectiveness in these interesting times.
The biggest challenge I find for managers responsible for the employer brand strategy is they don’t understand the science of branding and lack knowledge in branding principle and practices which have been informed by decades of research into how brands grow. I’m going to go over that here, and then get to what you can do to grow your company brand.
Common employer branding mistakes
Some of the most common mistakes I see made by companies include:
- Creating recruitment advertising that doesn’t build or refresh relevant memory structures or associations about what it is like to work for the company
- Viewing employer branding as merely a recruitment strategy or short-term recruitment advertising campaign
- Failing to conduct research with the internal and external audience to determine what makes their employer brand distinctive
- Paying premiums for low-reach media that is sold by money-hungry vendors as “reaching a niche audience”
- Relying on a ranking in “best places to work” surveys as the sole metric for the employer brand strategy
When Should We Measure Communications?
Annual in depth surveys. Engagement and satisfaction surveys are typically carried out annually and can carry additional questions to provide some insights into the effectiveness of communications.
Prior to a specific communications campaign. In order to best understand the impact of communications, it is necessary to measure (awareness, attitudes, knowledge etc) before a campaign.
After a significant communication or campaign. It is important to measure the effectiveness and impact of significant communications programs and initiatives. This allows you to tailor internal communications to make sure they are effective and delivering quantifiable business value.
At intervals to track attitudes. Regular measurement helps communicators to gauge the ever shifting feelings and attitudes within an organization and to tailor messages to make sure they are appropriate to their audiences.
Pulse checks and temperature checks during and after specific events provide an insight into the issues and challenges an organization faces and to gather feedback on specific issues.
At intervals to benchmark and track against KPI’s. Measuring regularly against benchmarks and tracking trends over time provide an early warning of issues that may go undetected until they have escalated further.
What to Measure?
Determining which aspects of communication to measure will depend on the organization’s specific business and communication objectives. A few examples of useful communications measurements include:
How should employees behave as company representatives on social media platforms?
- Transparency. Should employees acting as company agents identify themselves? Should they use their own names? Should they list their job title? Should there be specific rules that apply their use of photographs or avatars?
- Confidentiality. What information are employees allowed to disclose? Is this information already public? If not, does it require specific approvals? Who gives permission for release of non-public information? Is the information of competitive value?
- Financials. How should employees discuss corporate results or financial situation? This is particularly important for publically traded companies where regulatory agencies are involved.
- Copyright. How are intellectual property (aka IP) issues to be handled? What are the internal procedures? To whom should employees address their questions?
- Competitors. Since social media forums tend to be open to the public, how should employees treat competitors and their representatives? Are there specific procedures that they should follow?
How much planning has your organization dedicated in enhancing (or, God forbid, establishing) a creative corporate culture?
First, let’s get a grip on the “creative” in creative corporate culture. Creativity isn’t just for design firms, art studios and elementary craft projects. Creativity and creative thought is necessary for all agencies and communication professionals who seek innovative strategies for their clients. Consider your organization’s best and brightest idea—was there not a light bulb of creativity that popped on (even flickered) that lead you down the path of project righteousness?
It’s also important to recognize that culture comes from the people—it is the people. Think about the individuals within your organization—what are their personalities like? Who are they outside of work? What tickles their fancy? All of these things lend to the culture of your organization, and ultimately your agency’s product. Once we begin tapping into these quirks, culture begins to form.
As daunting as the idea of a creative corporate culture may seem, fear not my fellow PR and marcom professionals. If you are one of the bold and daring to take on the challenge of building said culture in the New Year, here are a few tips for your right brain to digest:
1. Get a desk tchotchke, already. Culture is built by sharing parts of our personality with those around us—what better place for that than your workspace? If your personality could be personified by something small that fits on your desk, what would it be? Find that thing, embrace it and share it!
2. Build a community space. Forget the archaic days of water cooler chats. People like to hang in hip spaces—gather ‘round a Wii, create a community bulletin board or have a reading nook filled with industry related publications. As the saying goes, “if you build it, culture will come.”
3. Play games and buy toys. Incorporate games (and yes, even toys) into traditional office activities. Play a round of Apples to Apples before a staff meeting, or leave baskets of building blocks around the office. Using different parts of the brain is important to creativity and improving the overall quality of our ideas.
4. Find a platform and give back. A surefire way to build corporate culture is engaging team members in charitable activities—it feels good to give back, and when you do it as a group it creates unique bonds and fun memories. Find a kooky charitable activity in your town and make a day of it!
5. Eat, drink and be creative. The easiest way to enhance an organization’s culture is eating together. Consider a monthly potluck where staff can bring their favorite fares for teammates to enjoy. Encourage exotic recipes and fanciful presentations—these always create a buzz around the office.
Joseph P. Pieroni, President, Sankyo Pharma
Visioning is a team sport. Today’s most successful leaders guide their organizations through transformation not through command and control, but through a shared purpose and vision. Leaders adopt and communicate a vision of the future that impels people beyond the boundaries and limits of the past. But if the future vision belongs only to top management, it will never be an effective force for change. The power of a vision comes truly into play only when the employees themselves have had some part in its creation.
“We created a vision for the future by engaging everyone in that conversation. Vision facilitators guided the process for the national organization, at each and every affiliate, and among the different constituents — medical directors, clinic directors, educators, etc. Although my views were strongly represented, everyone’s input was considered. The result is a cohesive vision that is owned by the entire organization.”
Gloria Feldt, President, Planned Parenthood Federation
Diversity is crucial to harnessing the full power of collaboration. Experiments at the University of Michigan found that, when challenged with a difficult problem, groups composed of highly adept members performedworse than groups whose members had varying levels of skill and knowledge. The reason for this seemingly odd outcome has to do with the power of diverse thinking. Group members who think alike or are trained in similar disciplines with similar bases of knowledge run the risk of becoming insular in their ideas. Instead of exploring alternatives, a confirmation bias takes over and members tend to reinforce one another’s predisposition. Diversity causes people to consider perspectives and possibilities that would otherwise be ignored.
The following is excerpted from a letter to Marriott managers from the Lodging Director of Diversity:
“We must begin to see diversity as an asset to our business and encourage the special talents and diverse perspectives of each associate to produce quality service of superior value for all of our customers.”
Now that “doing more with less” is the universal business mantra, managers are scrambling to develop the innovative capacity of their teams. If you are looking to increase your team’s creative output here’s a review of a classic technique and an introduction to some strategies you may not have tried before.
Linus Pauling once said: “If you want great ideas, you need to have lots of ideas.” Brainstorming is the most popular technique for producing lots of ideas. But, although it is widely practiced, it is seldom utilized to its full potential. If your group uses brainstorming, check to be sure these fundamentals are in place:
- Start with a warm-up exercise – especially if the group doesn’t brainstorm frequently or when the group seems distracted by outside issues. Use word games or puzzles or humor to set an atmosphere that is relaxed, fun and freewheeling.
- Encourage everyone to participate, either with original ideas or “piggybacking” (adding on to) other people’s input.
- Focus initially on quantity, not quality of ideas. Write all ideas on a white board or large sheets of paper and number them to help motivate participants and to jump back and forth between ideas without losing track of where you are.
- Urge participants to say anything that occurs to them, no matter how wild or “far out” those ideas may seem.
- Realize that brainstorming sessions tend to follow a series of steep energy curves. When the momentum starts to plateau, the facilitator needs to build on what’s been stated (“That’s a great idea; now what are some other ways to _____________?”) or to jump to another point (“Let’s switch gears and consider _____________.”)
Ideally, the brainstorming session should be broken into two parts: the first for idea generation and the second for evaluation. During the idea generation phase, no one should be allowed to judge, criticize, or squelch any of the ideas presented.
- Stay alert for nonproductive comments such as, “We tried that last year,” “I don’t think that will work,” etc.
- Counter premature judgment with, “This isn’t the time for evaluation yet.”
And, as effective as brainstorming can be, remember there are many other collaborative techniques that stimulate creativity. Here are just a few:
Metaphorical thinking is a great tool for breaking out of current patterns of perception. By comparing your situation to another more well-understood system or process you may spot similarities and come up with an unexpected idea. The exercise asks: What can I learn from this comparison?
A classic example of this technique from my book Creativity in Business is of a defense contractor that developed a missile that had to fit so closely within its silo it couldn’t be pushed in. Comparing the situation to a horse that refuses to be pushed into a stall, the solution was to lead the horse in. The solution for the defense company: pull the missile in with a cable.
Forced connections is a technique for finding commonalities between two or more seemingly unrelated concepts or items. One practical exercise is to examine an industry that is very different from yours and look for things you can successfully imitate. Another is to bring “show and tell” items that help you visualize the wide variety of options and materials that could be applied to the session’s topic.
Back to the future starts with an image of the completed goal. Team members compare their answers to a series of questions: What does the ideal end result look like? How is the ideal different from what we have now? What changes are necessary for us to achieve the ideal? How can we make those changes?
Get visual. The most productive creative-thinking sessions are extremely visual. They include mind mapping, sketching, diagrams, cartoons and stick figures. Images stimulate emotion. Emotion opens creative channels that pure logic can’t budge.
Get physical. Get up and move around. Have your team stand rather than sit when grouping around white boards or easels. Act out the problem you are working on. A popular technique used by design firms is “bodystorming” where people act out current behavior and usage patterns to see how they might be altered.
Get fired. My favorite way to end a creativity session is to ask participants to take the last few minutes and contribute ideas that would probably work, but are so outrageous they could get the group fired. (Obviously, the task then becomes to tone-down the potential solutions so that the problem can be solved without risking any jobs.)
And, of course, you want to make sure that you are trying to solve the right problem. The European operation of a business started losing money after many years of outstanding profitability. Worried, the management team initially discussed ways to reduce costs in Europe in order to improve profitability. When the cost-cutting did little to stop the downward slide, the team finally faced the real issue: the geographical distribution of customers had changed drastically. The problem was then redefined as “How do we serve our customers more profitably on a global basis?” Hundreds of ideas were generated around this challenge that resulted in a customer focused business restructuring that not only cut costs in Europe but also added resources in other parts of the world.
By Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. delivers keynote speeches and seminars on collaborative creativity to association, government, and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website:http://www.CKG.com.
After two decades of advising organizations large and small, my colleagues and I have formed a clear idea of what’s required of you in this role. Adaptive strategic leaders — the kind who thrive in today’s uncertain environment – do six things well:
Anticipate
Most of the focus at most companies is on what’s directly ahead. The leaders lack “peripheral vision.” This can leave your company vulnerable to rivals who detect and act on ambiguous signals. To anticipate well, you must:
- Look for game-changing information at the periphery of your industry
- Search beyond the current boundaries of your business
- Build wide external networks to help you scan the horizon better
Think Critically
“Conventional wisdom” opens you to fewer raised eyebrows and second guessing. But if you swallow every management fad, herdlike belief, and safe opinion at face value, your company loses all competitive advantage. Critical thinkers question everything. To master this skill you must force yourself to:
- Reframe problems to get to the bottom of things, in terms of root causes
- Challenge current beliefs and mindsets, including your own
- Uncover hypocrisy, manipulation, and bias in organizational decisions
Interpret
Ambiguity is unsettling. Faced with it, the temptation is to reach for a fast (and potentially wrongheaded) solution. A good strategic leader holds steady, synthesizing information from many sources before developing a viewpoint. To get good at this, you have to:
- Seek patterns in multiple sources of data
- Encourage others to do the same
- Question prevailing assumptions and test multiple hypotheses simultaneously
There are three important keys that all companies should strive for: energy, focus and accountability.
Energy. In a healthy company, everyone is engaged. Next time you’re in a meeting, pay attention to how people are interacting. Are they staring into space? Checking e-mail? Working on other things?
You could get mad at them, but the problem is probably your lack of energy as a leader.
If you’re engaged, if you lead and set the tone, others will follow. It’s the same in leading meetings as it is in leading a company. Set the pace and expect others to keep up.
Focus. Energy is important, but if it’s not channeled correctly, it can become destructive. How do you prepare your team for a meeting? Do you think through what you want to discuss? Do you prepare an agenda? Does everyone know why you’re calling them to a meeting and what you expect?
Learn a lesson from Steve Jobs. Focus. He took a multitude of ideas and focused his team on one great idea. Channel your team’s creative energy into one specific task and goal.
Accountability. You can have all the energy and focus in the world, but if your employees don’t know what they’re supposed to do, your team will either do redundant work or give up because they’re not sure of what you want.
In meetings, everyone should also know what you expect of them coming into and going out of a meeting. It’s not enough to talk and dream, you also have to do. Bring crystal clarity to your team and follow up.
Want to change your company culture? Start today by working on your meeting culture.
You alone can consciously take the personal leadership steps in strengthening and managing relationships, including those with a boss. The often used phrase for this is“managing upward.” While the phrase describes aspects of managing relationships with bosses, the dynamics are deeper.
From my personal experiences and observations, here are 16 ideas to consider in creating a stronger working relationship with your boss. (BTW, I alternated “he” and “she” as personal pronouns throughout the list.)
16 Ideas for Managing Upward
- Understand your boss as a teammate and a client because both roles are relevant.
- Ask and learn how your boss likes to communicate? Deliver communications that work for him, with the “right” amount & type of information.
- What are the strengths & weaknesses of your boss? Complement both of themin your working relationship.
- What’s her decision making style? Propose recommendations in ways that fit how she evaluates & decides on things.
- Hone your skills to anticipate what he needs and see things coming before they actually happen.
- Demonstrate complete trustworthiness. Display the highest integrity. Don’t break confidences; safeguard the “vault.”
- Be networked – know who knows things and be able to share relevant information your boss might not be privy to in her relationship circles.
- Have a great working relationship with your boss’ assistant and the other key people around him.
- Be a strong negotiator.
- Ask questions – help her think through issues and get to stronger points of view based on your contributions.
The challenge for business leaders, then, is making sure that all of their managers stay on track and on task. Here are 10 rules that can help.
1. If it’s not on the calendar, it won’t happen. Using a shared team calendar allows you to make deadlines clear, schedule in updates to monitor progress, and let your team know when you want to see them. Setting several dates in a row can help you to force the pace of progress.
2. Focus on the follow-through. Big programs are often broken into smaller, more manageable chunks, each run by separate team leaders. As the person with overall responsibility for delivery, it is essential to make sure that each of these project leaders is executing as required. Do not allow unresolved issues to drop, and to be prepared to offer feedback as necessary.
3. No project owner means no progress. A great idea is a fragile thing: even the best ideas die fast unless someone takes responsibility for putting them into action. This project owner should have the time, resources, autonomy and talent required to succeed.
4. Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. Few people enjoy the luxury of having all the time that they need to get things done; most of us spend our days constantly balancing priorities and choosing between options. The key to successful execution is choosing the important tasks – those which will have the biggest impact on whether or not you can achieve your objective – rather than the urgent tasks, which can often be left to wait. The other critical tool here is delegation: if you do not have to do a task personally, assign it to someone else.
5. Initiate: it gains time. Initiation means using your resources to get a project started, even if you do not have the time to get involved in it at that moment. This means that others in your team can get the ball rolling, for example by finding and analyzing relevant data, so that when you are free to get on board you do not need to waste time on any of this preliminary work.
Read all 10 at the Jakarta Post
Question #1 – What is the employees’ perspective?
Front-line employees deal regularly with customers and observe first-hand the issues, challenges, and successes of those they serve. The IT department sees advances in technology before the rest of the organization has adapted to the last update. Professionals throughout the company attend association meetings and have access to experts in their field. Your organization has hired the best and the brightest – and your task is to tap their expertise, points of view, and concerns. The first question to ask is: “What do employees think?”
Question #2 – Did you “set the stage” for change?
The best time to discuss the forces of change is well in advance of an organization’s response to them. Everyone in the organization needs a realistic appreciation of the precursors of change and transformation – the impact of globalization, market fluctuations, technological innovations, societal and demographic changes in the customer base, new products/services of competitors, new government and regulatory decisions. And here technology can be a great asset. Although it certainly shouldn’t be the only medium, the intranet can be a timely vehicle for competitive and industry information.
Question #3 – How will you track employee perceptions?
Employee interaction and feedback loops help communicators track the level of workforce comprehension. Whether you supply an email box or a phone number for individuals to ask questions about the change, use online surveys to query a sampling of the workforce, or create Communication Advisory Teams to represent their fellow workers, the greatest advantages come when organizational feedback is gathered immediately after the delivery of an important message.
Question #4 – Do you have honest answers to tough questions?
Not only can employees tolerate honest disclosure, they are increasingly demanding it. And when it comes to change, employees want straight answers to these tough questions:
* Will I keep my job?
* How will pay and benefits be affected?
* How will this affect my opportunities for advancement?
* Will I have a new boss?
* What new skills will I need?
* What will be expected of me?
* How will I be trained/supported for the new challenges?
* How will I be measured?
* What are the rewards or consequences?
Question #5 – Can you answer the most important question: What’s in it for them?
There are personal advantages to be found in almost every change, but people may need help discovering what the advantages are. Sometimes employees just need to be guided through a few questions: What are your career goals? What are the skills you would like to learn? What job-related experiences would you like have? In what ways might this change help you to fulfill some of your personal objectives?
Organizations send two concurrent sets of messages about change. Formal communication is what companies “say” to employees about the organization and its goals. Informal communication is what the company “does” in terms of rewards, compensation, training, leadership behavior, organizational structure, etc. to demonstrate and support what it says. For today’s skeptical employee audiences, rhetoric without action quickly disintegrates into empty slogans and company propaganda.
Question #7- Who’s vision is it?
Effective communicators understand the power of vision to imbue people with a sense of purpose, direction and energy. But if the vision belongs only to top management, it will never be an effective force for transformation. In the end, people have to feel that the vision belongs to them. The power of a vision comes truly into play only when the employees themselves have had some part in its creation. So the communicator’s role moves from crafting executive speeches to facilitating interactive events.Question #8 – Can you paint the big-little picture?
Vision is the big picture, and it is crucial to the success of the enterprise. But along with the big picture, people also need the little picture so they know where their contribution fits into the corporate strategy. And here’s where first-line supervisors can be the most effective communicators. In face-to-face discussions with their team members, supervisors become a vital link in turning the organizational vision into practical and meaningful actions.
Question #9 – Are you emotionally literate?
People have to understand the rationale for change – the business case, the marketplace reality. But change is more than just the logic behind it. Large-scale organizational change almost invariably triggers the same sequence of emotional reactions — denial, negativity, a choice point, acceptance, and commitment. Communicators who track this emotional process design strategies that help people accept and move through the various stages.
Question #10 – Are you telling stories?
Good stories are more powerful than plain facts. This is not to reject the value in facts, of course, but simply to recognize their limits in influencing people. People make decisions based on what facts mean to them, not on the facts themselves. Stories give facts meaning. Stories resonate with adults in ways that can bring them back to a childlike open-mindedness – and make them less resistant to experimentation and change.
Question #11 – Do you know how change really gets communicated?
Town hall meetings in which senior leaders speak openly about change, great stories that embody the spirit of change, well-designed intranets filled with pertinent information about the forces and progress of change, interactive “transformation sessions” in which a cross-section of the organization co-creates a vision and develops the strategy, online employee surveys that query and monitor a work force as it deals with the nuances of change, icons and symbols and signage that visually reinforce change, and (especially) first-line supervisors who are trained and prepared to engage their direct reports in a dialogue about what change means to them – these are (and will remain) vital tools for communicators. But, as powerful as they are, these are formal communication channels operating within the organizational hierarchy. And a single informal channel, the company grapevine, can undermine them all.In the hallways, around the water cooler or coffee pot, over the telephone, as part of a blog, in rouge web sites, and through e-mail messages, news is exchanged and candid opinions are offered. It is during these “off-line” exchanges and daily conversations that people decide whether or not to support change. Want to dramatically improve the effectiveness of your change communication? Then find ways to identify, involve, and enlist your organization’s social networks and informal opinion leaders.
Question #12 – Are you positioning change as an event or a corporate mindset?
With his team, Saku Tuominen, founder and creative director at the Idealist Group in Finland, interviewed and followed 1,500 workers at Finnish and global firms to study how people feel and respond to issues in the workplace. Tuominen’s findings are easy to understand — 40 percent of those surveyed said their inboxes are out of control, 60 percent noted that they attend too many meetings, and 70 percent don’t plan their weeks in advance. Overall, employees said they lacked a sense of meaning, control, and achievement in the workplace. Sound familiar?
Based on the study and the insights of Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, Tuominen recommends new approaches to changing our work processes that all tap into our unconscious:
- Think about one question/idea that needs insight and keep this thought in your subconscious mind.
- Clear your conscious mind by using this two-step system: move your thought(s) from your mind to a list and then clear your list when you have a short break (if your meeting is canceled, for instance, or your flight is delayed).
- Plan your week and month by listing three priorities you would like to accomplish.
- Make certain you have at least four consecutive, uninterrupted hours a day dedicated to the three priorities you identified.
This last point is key. Tuominen deduced that if you can schedule four hours with continuous flow and concentration, you could accomplish a lot and improve the quality of your thinking. As Tuominen aptly states, “you can’t manage people if you can’t manage yourself.”
How much planning has your organization dedicated in enhancing (or, God forbid, establishing) a creative corporate culture?
First, let’s get a grip on the “creative” in creative corporate culture. Creativity isn’t just for design firms, art studios and elementary craft projects. Creativity and creative thought is necessary for all agencies and communication professionals who seek innovative strategies for their clients. Consider your organization’s best and brightest idea—was there not a light bulb of creativity that popped on (even flickered) that lead you down the path of project righteousness?
It’s also important to recognize that culture comes from the people—it is the people. Think about the individuals within your organization—what are their personalities like? Who are they outside of work? What tickles their fancy? All of these things lend to the culture of your organization, and ultimately your agency’s product. Once we begin tapping into these quirks, culture begins to form.
As daunting as the idea of a creative corporate culture may seem, fear not my fellow PR and marcom professionals. If you are one of the bold and daring to take on the challenge of building said culture in the New Year, here are a few tips for your right brain to digest:
1. Get a desk tchotchke, already. Culture is built by sharing parts of our personality with those around us—what better place for that than your workspace? If your personality could be personified by something small that fits on your desk, what would it be? Find that thing, embrace it and share it!
2. Build a community space. Forget the archaic days of water cooler chats. People like to hang in hip spaces—gather ‘round a Wii, create a community bulletin board or have a reading nook filled with industry related publications. As the saying goes, “if you build it, culture will come.”
3. Play games and buy toys. Incorporate games (and yes, even toys) into traditional office activities. Play a round of Apples to Apples before a staff meeting, or leave baskets of building blocks around the office. Using different parts of the brain is important to creativity and improving the overall quality of our ideas.
4. Find a platform and give back. A surefire way to build corporate culture is engaging team members in charitable activities—it feels good to give back, and when you do it as a group it creates unique bonds and fun memories. Find a kooky charitable activity in your town and make a day of it!
5. Eat, drink and be creative. The easiest way to enhance an organization’s culture is eating together. Consider a monthly potluck where staff can bring their favorite fares for teammates to enjoy. Encourage exotic recipes and fanciful presentations—these always create a buzz around the office.
(When the General Counsel realized that one of his staff members and several of his fellow executive committee members would be thrown out, the top lawyer reluctantly changed his mind. Others, including me, were delighted that employees were shouting out such great affirmations about the company to their peers inside and outside the organization. Talk about powerful–and free-PR!)
How well does your social media policy reflect your corporate values?
The area of cascading can be a very perilous area for communicators at the moment.
Many of us in the internal comms business see both the fallacies behind reliance on cascading, and the power, ease and flexibility of replacements which supplement hierarchical communication with social communication.
But many of the people we report to, be they clients or bosses, aren’t particularly switched-on to current theories discrediting cascades, and some simply aren’t interested.
Cascading continues to have a seductive appeal. Many management-types believe it offers seamless and consistent delivery of important corporate messages. Far more importantly in some cultures, cascading reinforces and strengthens perceptions of hierarchical power.
What does that mean? It means cascades are not yet going away.
But because of the problems that can happen with their delivery, cascades represent a huge risk for the internal communicator–not surprising the likelihood of delivery gaps feeding rumor mills, feedback influenced by implicit or explicit intimidation, or managers improvising and injecting own messages (even with letter-perfect delivery, a manager using “air quotes” can completely undermine the intent of a cascade). While cascades give the appearance of total control, for the most part they are impossible to control.
Nevertheless, you’ll probably be on the hook for some soon. So, I’ll propose some guidelines to keep you from being called on the carpet:
1) Strive to do no harm. Cascades are not places for shock and awe.
2) Never force the manager to speak with the “corporate voice”–structure so he/she can deliver in her own voice instead of the “corporate we”
3) Focus on underscoring, reinforcing and contextualizing already-delivered messages and policies, and absolutely minimize delivery of new information.
4) Give a fixed (and short) time period for delivery and ensure delivery is reported back immediately to allow real-time tracking
5) Offer multiple confidential and open feedback channels, and encourage their use in the structure of the cascade, and after it’s completed across the business.
If you’re in doubt, seek help. Communicator credibility is inordinately tied to the success or failure of cascade processes in many organizations. A record of successful delivery using these principles may be just what you need to get the permission to use more modern social and conversational techniques to drive the real communication.
Mike Klein is a Brussels-based communications pro focusing on networked approaches to organizational communication. He can be reached through http://intersectionblog.wordpress.com
Despite the shock both to the economy and unleashed by the Great Recession and the Great Outsourcing before it—leaving a population of grizzled survivors clinging to their cubicles–the conventional wisdom in the internal communication industry is pounding the drum for…yet more focus on “employee engagement.”
Indeed, IABC’s Communication World intones in its introduction to the current edition, “all of the research points to the fact that engaged and motivated employees help build a successful organization. But what does this really mean? And what role should leadership play in making this happen? There is an answer, but it’s not one that everyone understands. You must inspire people.”
YOU MUST INSPIRE PEOPLE. Such is the Word as preached by San Francisco. And “LEADERSHIP” is the folks to be doing the inspiring, perhaps with the aid of the usual internal comms industry heavyweights who’ve been appearing at the last nine consecutive Internationales (or whatever IABC calls their annual hoedowns these days).
I’m not so sure.
Here’s why:
1) Surviving employees are that—survivors. Sometimes, as filmmaker George Romero said of the survivors in his “…of the Dead” films, sometimes the survivors envy the dead. Others may still most preoccupied with the deteriorated conditions of their lives—underwater mortgages and spousal unemployment. Whether they are necessarily the folks to be tasked with the organization’s revival is still likely open to question.
2) As for “Leadership”—are they really leaders in a genuinely inspirational leadership sense—or simply the toughest, technically smartest managers who’ve moved up the ranks? Are you really telling me that putting a very accomplished accountant in front of an auditorium filled with punch-drunk customer service staff is invariably going to produce enough electricity to be worth anyone’s time?
3) There’s a good sense that neither staff nor management really yet has a clue about the current environment, and when or whether the fundamental changes that have been predicted are about to take place—making it difficult for managers to make any kind of meaningful assurances about the future that constitute what most employees really want to hear.
Interestingly, having returned from an 11-day trip to Germany to meet with leading players in the internal communication and PR industries, the idea of “employee engagement” is largely mocked as “inspirational talk” and is not considered a genuine or legitimate focus.
I’m not sure if much conclusive research has been done looking at “employee engagement measures” in Germany relative to Britain or the US, but if you look at the general health of the German economy, its ability to relentlessly export high quality goods indicates that Germany may have a thing or two to teach us—or at least to the point where we can question some of what’s currently sacred around “engagement”.
I believe there is much that effective, strategic internal communication can do in this environment:
• to help organizations and their leaders figure out where to begin to clean up the mess that’s been made over the last five or so years, and how to create a new set of expectations as a basis for rebuilding trust
• to help organizations involve their people in defining and creating futures that are worth staying for and fighting for—and not just continuing to survive
• to work with organizations on understanding the full range of stakeholder relationships that require active re-engagement, and to help define ways employees can play a meaningful part in this re-engagement
• most of all, to identify and effectively harness the real “employee engagement”—the contribution of energy, activity, ideas, social connections and relationships—that’s taking place in all viable organizations today.
But the first step involves understanding that top-down, one-size-fits-all “inspiration” may hardly the best next step for all organizations—and that it may be best to start by focusing on what actually is working. And you don’t need to ask me—just ask the Germans.
Mike Klein is a Brussels-based communications pro, and long-time member of IABC boards at the country and regional level, and can be reached at http://intersectionblog.wordpress.com.
Are you prepared for the challenges that await corporate communicators in the not so distant future?
Much has been said about the advent of social media tools heralding the launch of a turbocharged internal communication 2.0, going beyond old-school, top-down communication tools and towards a more empowered, decentralized and fast-moving approach.
Of course, changes in technology often rapidly accelerate larger societal changes—and none are more apparent than the ones that are engulfing the realm of corporate communication:
- The accelerated take-up of social media tools has provided free and easy-to-use infrastructure for disseminating hostile messages aimed at organizations and their industries (be they factual or slanderous), and for organizing citizen movements with considerable speed and potency. These citizen movements are not only attacking specific corporations and industries directly, but are also opening governments and civic institutions to citizen pressure to an unprecedented degree.
- Due to activist pressure, corporate operational and sourcing practices are under intense scrutiny on sustainability grounds, and some organizations are seeking competitive advantage by visibly moving towards more sustainable practices
- The “Great Recession,” and the “Great Outsourcing” which preceded it, have both contributed to eroding public trust in corporations. Employees are now seen as far more credible than corporate spokespeople
In essence—corporations are now facing an unprecedented political and activist threat. Traditional, controlled methods of external communication are neither sufficiently potent nor credible to address that threat, and that one viable—and potentially powerful—alternative is to mobilize the internal workforce as an external communication channel
Citizen power, citizen responsibility
The challenges facing organizations that want or need to empower employees as external communicators appear formidable. One massive challenge involves reorienting the tone and content of internal communication and leadership messaging to recognize the “citizen power” of staff. Citizen power is the right and ability of staff to accept, reject, reinterpret and replay messages and positions in their own way, and for the most part, on their own terms, with those they choose to interact with.
A second challenge is to imbue a sense of “citizen responsibility”—identifying opportunities for mutual benefit to be derived from employee citizenship and an expanded communication role. Couple that with an understanding of the impact of messages being inaccurately perceived, inappropriately delivered, or withheld from an otherwise hostile public or political process.
Beyond this tectonic shift in orientation, another challenge involves integrating messaging, training and educational efforts capable of empowering internal participants to communicate effectively externally using approaches that have historically been geared toward improving productivity.
Productivity will be no less important in the turbulent economic times ahead, and require organizations to take stock of how exposed they are to the current political, environmental and reputational risk. Such stocktaking will lend itself well to rigorous study and analysis of internal structures, communication processes, operational practices, and threats present in the current environment.
Exposure is key
The most important element in this picture is a thorough analysis of where an organization is exposed—politically, commercially, organizationally, and operationally.
Organizations that are most exposed will face the greatest urgency to integrate their workforces as advocates in the marketplace, the “twittosphere,” and, where advisable, with the media and political systems. They will need to develop new, interactive veins of internal communication that complement and sharpen the current productivity-focused streams, and allow for some degree of management of the networks of conversation surrounding each organization.
Those less exposed have a bit more breathing space, but will also need to recognize that they aren’t immune from the current trends. Corporate leaders will need to become increasingly adept at weaving the organization’s key brand messages, sustainability messages, corporate strategy points and organizational values into their formal and informal conversations. Above all, corporate cultures will need to start recognizing the “citizen” role of those who work therein.
Why this is good for internal communicators
Of course, the role of employee as advocate/citizen/spokesperson is not new, but dates back to the earliest forms of prehistoric employment. But as it was difficult to track and manage informal conversations and networks, organizations embraced what was then an easier-to-manage top-down approach that has proven largely unidirectional in flow and paternal in tone.
While the culture change facing internal communication as this transition plays out will be considerable, internal communicators have much to gain.
As was seen with the failure of internal marketing, merely applying external strategies and tools on internal audiences has the potential to be fiercely counterproductive. The understanding that internal communicators have of the sensitivity, behaviour, structure and passions of internal people—and the depth of their relationships with their organizations—will require that they play a lead role.
Political, environmental, and external communicators will bring a lot to the party, but the integration of the workforce as a structural component of the corporate communication architecture represents a revolution, and a transformation, for internal communication.
Welcome to internal communication 3.0—workforce citizenship.
Mike Klein is a Brussels-based communications pro, and long-time member of IABC boards at the country and regional level, and can be reached athttp://intersectionblog.wordpress.com.
A serious pleasure of living in Brussels is the company of experts from across Europe who are pursuing interesting and progressive thinking in a wide variety of endeavors.
One such expert, Briton Cheryl Cooper, is an innovative knowledge management expert with whom I shared a recent dinner, discussing among other things, how best to integrate what’s considered “knowledge management” with the various streams of activity and messaging that’s increasingly being called “enterprise communication.”
With benefit of a well-prepared meal and a modest amount of Cremant de Loire, we distinguished four distinct streams of information flowing through organizations at the same time:
Positioning: The organization’s core promises and behavioral boundaries—embodied in the organizational brand, along with its values and ongoing practices. This flows through the organization’s external communications, is generally embedded in the in the tone and content of the news and direction it circulates, and is often reinforced by peer behavior.
News/Direction: The information that tells people what to do and when. This flows mainly through formal internal communication and line management channels, and incorporates official definitions of the impacts of external news.
Opinion: This information is designed to influence the recipient and how he or she acts. It mainly comes informally from peers and colleagues but may also come from external stakeholders, or as embedded justification in official news and direction.
Knowledge: Knowledge is the information that tells an individual how to act effectively on the news and direction he/she receives. It is again generally found from peers and colleagues, though it can come as embedded instructions or can be harvested from intranets, databases and case studies.
What is significant here—indeed, what opens up the possibility of an integrated communication model that takes both the formal and informal flows of information into account, while differentiating it into its factual, instructional and attitudinal components—is that this model recognizes the legitimacy and importance of peer opinion and influence as a behavior and performance driver within organizations.
Moreover, news/direction, opinion, and knowledge do not flow in isolation. In fact, the flow often requires conscious effort to differentiate, and the spread of social media inside and outside the enterprise boundary will only accelerate the flow of unofficial information, be it what normally constitutes ‘communication’, ‘knowledge’ or intertwined information.
In my view, recognizing the role of the peer as a core channel of communication and knowledge holds the key to developing a durable information system in the face of radical changes in organizational shape, and in communication technologies.
Mike Klein is a Brussels-based communications pro, and long-time member of IABC boards at the country and regional level, and can be reached athttp://intersectionblog.wordpress.com.