Internal communications - it's not rocket science

Bulletin board buffoons

Most newspapers do it these days.

They invite a reader to share a dilemma and then ask readers to share their advice.  I suppose if you think about it as entertainment it is harmless enough but sometimes it does feel a bit wrong.  

I'm sitting here looking at an article where someone is getting well intentioned but bonkers advice about her teenage daughter.  Recently I saw some potentially disastrous advice given to a man with a suicidal wife and still shudder at the insensitivity dished out to the man who was coming to terms with his father's homosexuality.

The problem is that anyone can comment and, let's face it, many of our fellow human beings should be encouraged to keep their bizarre or ill-formed opinions to themselves (I know this is dangerous ground for someone who writes a blog...).

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but why do we think that they all deserve a platform to express their views?

For internal communicators this is a real issue.  I used to manage an internal bulletin or discussion board for a company at which I used to work.  I firmly believed that it was good for the company to give people a space to ask challenging questions.

For a couple of years I used up endless personal credit with senior leaders defending the right of some quite obnoxious people to be rude to the executives.  

And did it do any good?  Probably not.  The miserable gits moved on, little actually changed and the company went broke anyway.

Now I have reached the view that quite a few Linked-in fora are probably not worth the time of day.

My blood pressure probably can not cope with the aggressive tone of some contributors or the fatuos observations of others.  In fact the spam postings make a couple of the sites just about bearable.

What surprises me is that the fora from which I have un-subscribed are run for the benefit of communicators.  Somehow I'd expect my fellow professionals to be better quality posters.

As comms professionals we regularly get called upon to manage all sorts of infantile debates in workplaces.  Childish behaviour is often cited as one of the fears that prevents organisations experimenting with social media internally.  But give IC people a platform and we're as bad as anyone else.

Having said that, Charlie Norblum's Communicative Leadership group on Linked-in seems to be attracting a higher class of contributions than many such fora.

So, for the time being I'm cleaning up my social media subscriptions.  And I'm left with the question - is the sum of human happiness or workplace engagement enhanced just by letting any buffoon expose their ramblings to the rest of us?

Liam

PS - I do appreciate the irony in a blogger saying this!

What's internal comms got to do with PR?

At long last I'm a properly published author.  One day my grandchildren will talk in awe about my epic contribution to the landmark 4th edition of the The Publc Relations Handbook.

It's available on Amazon in case you're interested....

I mention this because I have been listening to some interesting debates recently about PR and what it involves.

Once upon a time I was firmly of the belief that Internal Communications was an important sub-discipline of PR.  As a argument this works if you believe that PR is about more than media relations and that 'spin' is a dirty word (neither of which can be taken for granted).

Although I snigger at the academics who, Canute-like, do violence to our language by insisting that PR students talk about  'Public' rather than audiences, I believe that they are right in the underlying point that they make.

A strong reputation depends on a level of mutual understanding and awareness.  This is a truth that has always been impossible to ignore in IC (which is why so many of us prance around pretending to have some sort of special insight and magical powers). This principle of mutual appreciation is ever more important in the digital world.

And once you embrace the idea that you have to have a rich appreciation of the views of stakeholders, it is only a short step to realising that they don't live in insulated compartments.  They all talk to each other and influence each other - independently of attempts to control them.

Communicators probably think this is self-evident.

The news is that many of our clients (interbla and external) are coming around to that that way of thinking.

It's the central theme in a book about to be published written my my colleague Kevin Murray.  He interviewed over 60 CEO's from all types of organisation for his book The Language of Leaders and highlighted that bosses don't see clear boundaries between the conversations they have with one group of people and another in the way that communications professionals tend to do.

So, for what its worth...shouldn't we stop living in fragments?

Liam

 

So I got myself elected - why did I go and do that?

I did it - or rather 372 other people did it.  I have been elected as a Council Member of the UK's CIPR.  Thank you to everyone who put an X next to my name!

To be honest, I was a little surprised - when the ballot paper came out along with the manifestos from the other candidates, I didn't think anyone would vote for me.  There were some very distinguished people standing.

However, I stood for two reasons.  Firstly, I want to support the CIPR's educational work and secondly, I feel that my specialism is important enough to warrant a stronger voice at the heart of our profession.

With regard to the first reason my track record (of should that be 'sad obsession') of pushing skills development is well known.  Ten years ago I started arguing with Sue Dewhurst about it - anv argument that spawned first the InterComm Matrix, then the Black Belt training programme and finally the Competency Model for internal communicators.  And it's all based on the belief that recognition as a professional is dependent on the ability to think and act like a professional.  

If you wonder why you're not taken seriously as a communicator, it could be because you're not capable of being taken seriously - get the skills, knowledge and experience and see if the situation changes.

And with regard to the second point I've long felt that PR is seen as being about long lunches and media relations.  When in fact, it's a very broad church.

If I look at my own agency we have people practising every shade of media relations, public affairs, research, CSR, financial comms, public diplomacy and brand development.  I think the CIPR has to reflect the range of specialisms within the profession.

So now, thanks to 372 people the CIPR has a representative - but not just one.  Pamela Mounter - the author of a book on the subject also got elected and the Chair of CIPR Inside, the special interest group is already co-opted.

Maybe internal communications is taking over the asylum.

Liam

CIPR IC Diploma - worth a look

Thank goodness the CIPR is taking IC seriously and at long last there is a decent qualification for senior IC professionals who want membership of a Chartered professional body.  The new CIPR Diploma has to be a welcome addition to the courses that are available, and because it is properly assessed it should bring ever greater weight to our profession.

Liam

Internal Communications - it's a people thing

A couple of people have asked me to share my slides from last week's presentation to the CIPR so you can it here: Download For blog

In case you're wondering about why Alexandr appears on the slides it's a cheap plug for our sister agency VCCP who created the campaign.

Liam

Internal communication cascades and team meetings are rubbish

I don't think regular cascades work very well.  My experience is that the process of passing information from one level of an organisation to the next rarely works properly, is prone to collapse and frankly is a poor excuse for blaming middle managers for the communication sins of more senior leaders.

I was speaking last night at a CIPR event in Slough hosted by Ferrari (it was the poshest garage I've ever been in and frankly I'm disappointed that the local Chair - Paul Davison didn't wangle me a car as a thank you!).  And the issue of cascades came up.

I've long been of the opinion that cascade systems are normally either broken or breaking.  Even ones that have just been set up.

In fact the only ones that seem to work are in the military or the catholic church.  It seems you have to offer the prospect of death or eternal damnation in order to make them function.

The reality in most places is that line managers get stuff dumped on them, zero support and no time to debate the issues at hand with anyone.  Then they have to suffer the twin humiliation of being seen as 'the problem' by senior managers frustrated that their message isn't filtering down and the prospect of looking like a twit in front of the people they manage.

It starts to go wrong usually by the second cycle.  By then senior leaders are bored with the prospect of having to say something two months running and managers are starting to suspect that their bosses aren't that interested in the feedback they are gathering.

Getting it right shouldn't be difficult.  But I think it works best when it's a one-off exercise where senior leaders are motivated to invest the right amount of effort...

Liam 

How far do things need to trickle down?

I was running a course yesterday at the CIPR on line manager communications - as always these are really enjoyable.  Not least because we had a great mix of people there with shed loads of experience to share.

One thing that did come out particularly struck me.

We were talking about the amount of effort that senior teams seem willing to put into briefing the highest managers about new developments and general unwillingness to invest the same energy with lower level leaders.

Several people talked about fantastic programmes for the top people in their organisations which just didn't really cascade onwards.  It's almost as if the CEO and the executive team expend all of their energy thinking about the session for the inner circle and then run out of steam or budget to push the message into the deep of tissue of management.

My view is that there are five essential steps to great line management communication but that you get a real impact if you make sure that managers really understand the message that you are trying to share.  If you can do only one thing I would say concentrate on briefing managers - get them on-side and educated and you're half-way home.

But we seem to be missing the point.  Instead we often fail to develop an onward flow of information and get left wondering why junior leaders don't think communication is a priority...

Liam

Preparing courses

I sometimes think I'm a frustrated academic.  I love locking myself away and researching new courses.

I've spent the last couple of weeks updating a session for a banking client in Switzerland and I'm in the middle of refreshing a course I do for the CIPR on line manager communications.  

Because I'm one of those people who are stimulated by new ideas I can easily get lost in a stack of books.  For people like me Google is a bit of a curse...I can sit in my cosy office browsing into the night.

But it's easy to forget that a classroom doesn't work for a large number of people and I can't remember where I found this image but it suggests that deep learning also needs an element of experience and practice.  And it happens over a long period of time.

That's not to say that a workshop is of limited use.  Sitting with other learners is a very efficient way of downloading a chunk of knowledge and checking understanding.

But, the challenge for me is always to find ways to get people to go out and try new stuff...

So, the thing I'm looking for today is a stack of practical homework tests I can cook up.

All suggestions most welcome - as long as they are neither illegal or deemed immoral by more than 10% of the population.

Liam

What's wrong with PR?

For some time I've had a gnawing worry.

The problem is that I've been a member of the Chartered Institute of PR for some time and I mainly work on internal communication issues.  Over the years close friends and colleagues have said to me things like "I don't see myself as working in PR" or they have objected violently when they have heard employee comms referred to as 'Internal PR'.

For a long time I have sort of understood where these people are coming from.  IC uses different disciplines and calls for somewhat different perspectives.  The practices of media relations have little in common with those of IC.

But I've also picked up more than a whiff of superiority.  IC people are more sophisticated than their colleagues in other branches of communications...and there is a definite distaste towards PR people. The implication is that PRO's are disreputable spin-doctors who are dedicated to lying and dissembling.

A conversation with someone last week has pushed me over the edge.  A long-standing peer rather sneerily told me that she didn't want to be associated with PR people because she thought that they had an unfortunate reputation.  She clearly didn't see herself as responsible in any way for blackening that reputation or realise that, as a Fellow of the CIPR, I might have taken offence at the implication that I was professionally dishonourable.

So, I've had enough.  

I've decided that from now on I'm telling people that I work in PR.  If they're interested I'll tell them about my special area.  If we spend all our time attacking the good name of our colleagues then we can't expect anyone to respect our professionalism either!

Liam

On tour again...

I've just signed up to speak at the CIPR conference on Internal Communications on 14 September - its a pretty good line-up (with the exception of me!!!)

Liam