Tony Sharp gets political Tony has an interesting take on IC - his blog doesn't just talk about good practice - there's an underlying political edge. I don't agree with everything he says but it makes me think (sometimes!).
The Chime Blog Thoughts from my colleagues across the Chime Group
Competent Communicator The work that Sue Dewhurst and I did to define competencies for communicators
Ages ago I remember hearing someone from the BBC say that even the best read articles on their news pages are viewed for an average of seven seconds. I have assumed that similar laws of attention span apply to web and to intranet viewing.
It always seemed intuitively correct to me to people don't spend ages pouring over the wisdom of the CEO on the front page of the intranet. Whenever I look at survey results asking employees where they hear about complex things like the business strategy, electronic channels don't tend to rate that highly. And everyone I've ever mentioned it to seemed to think it made sense as well. After all, just think about your own browsing habits....
Then, a few weeks back Sue Matzen at Novo Nordisk challenged me about it. She wasn't doubting the truth of it- she wanted hard evidence.
So my trusted colleague Susie Hunt set to work tracking down the facts behind my waffle.
She's had an interesting few days as it's one of those 'facts' that seems so plausible that no one bothers to ask where it came from.
The good news is that Susie dug up a wealth of stuff.
In particular, she looked at the work of usability guru Jakob Nielsen. The hard message is that if you're posting articles of over 100 words you'd better have a pretty exciting reason for people to read it. On average users read about 20% of the text on a page.
Which is a difficult message to get over to internal colleagues sometimes - showing them Jakob's work might help.
In particular, the annual government budget was unveiled with an astonishing degree of ineptitude. The Finance minister managed to announce a small cut in tax rates for the richest people in the same speech as he adjusted tax thresholds for pensions.
But, as you start to wonder how such an obvious mistake could be made, you just have to think of some of the dafter things we've all found ourselves announcing inside organisations.
My worst moment was announcing a hike in the price for vending machine coffee in the week the CEO's salary package leaked out. You don't need much of an imagination to picture the resulting mess!
I think the problem comes most often because of a lack of co-ordination and attention at the highest level.
A blog posting from former minister Damien McBride provides a useful insight into how it used to work at the Treasury under Labour and is worth a read. What I find interesting is the process by which details in a major announcement are turned over again and again in the drive to spot political elephant traps.
Too often, change announcements are made with insufficient scrutiny - a decision gets agreed somewhere and begins an inexorable march to publication. Because employees are not an electorate that can vote out a management team, there is less pressure to challenge and debate the impact that changes can have on morale or engagement.
It is possible to get leaders to make time for preparation - great attention and care is routinely paid to decisions that have to be announced to financial audiences for example.
Last year we got an excellent result on some internal comms when we invited an audience to witness a rehearsal for a CEO roadshow. My clients had been trying to highlight the weakness of the messages they were working with and the lack of detail in the change story. The test audience were very effective in making these points and spotting areas of disunity among the executive team. The roadshow programme was cancelled and the comms team got licence to start work on a more compelling narrative.
I am wondering if we, as internal communicators push hard enough to get rehersal time and message testing built into our announcements? And if we though a little more like political communicators we'd avoid some of the pitfalls that regularly trap us.
Liam
PS I see that the government is trying to divert attention by increasing the minimum price of a unit of alcohol. They'd win me over if they introduced a law that made it impossible to use a computer when you're drunk! Binge drink might be the curse of British town centres on a Friday night but the late night email/Ebay bid is the downfall of the on-line classes....
That brings the licence to say things which can be passed off as the ramblings of a grumpy old man (normally that is).
And it brings the curse of thinking I’ve heard it all before.
One discussion that ranged when I was starting out in communications, back in the days of quill pens and a working day that finished at 5 pm, was about the independence of the house newspaper.
I remember the fiercely even-handed approach of Rail News (back in the day when the trains worked). BA News was nicknamed ‘The Friday Firelighter’ by managers who were regularly wrong-footed by its news reporting. And I’m still smarting from the telling off I got from the editor of the BP internal magazine when I tried to sneak in some outrageous puff about the achievements of the IT department.
Companies placed great store by the credibility of the paper or the magazine to tell it how it was and to defend their audience from an avalanche of turgid internal propaganda.
After all, what’s the point of shelling out a small fortune on fancy writers and posh typesetting if no one believes a word of what’s printed there?
I do wonder to what extent this tradition carries through to the news pages of most intranets?
Clearly no organisation wants communications to look like they have been outsourced to the North Korean information ministry. But (irony alert), what’s the point of shelling out a minimum of resources for an instantly alterable noticeboard if you don’t control the exact wording of what goes up there?
Some time back I watched and cheered from the side-lines as a communicator defended the intranet from dull, self promoting nonsense produced by an internal department. “We’ve worked hard to build a readership – I’m not having it scared away by this crap” I heard him say.
But it’s a tough challenge for many communicators.
On the one hand leaders need channels that are respected and valued by staff. Whilst at the same time, many leaders want their own version of Pravda to publish air-brushed hagiographies.
Standing your ground is a valuable skill that in-house practitioners need to learn at an early stage. But I think the trick is to be smart about who gets told to bog off and who gets coached to try better.
So who is teaching that apart from the school of hard knocks?
Often people ask us to help them with internal videos. These can be anything from the CEO talking to short animations explaining a business strategy (no prizes for guessing which are the most fun to make).
Often it's hard to make them interesting but a recurrent problem is the length - especially with a talking head video.
Once a senior manager warms to their theme its very hard to shut them up. Nothing can possibly be simplified and examples absolutely have to be given that reference every major division of the company. To my shame, I recently was implicated in the production of an eight minute talk by a senior manager.
I'm not saying it was bad, but eight minutes is beyond human endurance.
If you look at news items on the TV they are often around 45 seconds. They might stretch to 90 seconds if there's a bit of studio discussion.
Watching stuff on a PC at work is tough when the film is more than a minute. Distractions abound - if you don't land the message instantly you're probaly wasting your time.
I'd argue that's the standard internal video should aspire to. And if it's over 90 seconds - it's probably a second video.
The difficulty is that compressing down a video script is not a skill that many of us acquire.
There are some good resources on the web such as this and this. I'm actively looking for a short course to get my skills upto date.
But I think film making poses a really useful test to the communicator. How well can you distill a core message down into the basics?
I was running a course the other day at the CIPR and dug out my old slide on the five reasons for IC. The more I think about it, the more convinced that the model still works.
My main point is that there's a lot of BS talked about IC and its magical powers. Internal Comms can't make people walk over cliffs or persuade employees that corrupt or venial managers are somehow worthy of esteem and loyalty.
But if you can't say why you do have an IC function it's hard to say if its delivering any value.
The five reasons, in my opinion, are:
The first reason is to make your people stay – and not run off at the first opportunity to another employer.It costs a lot to recruit, build knowledge and skills.And when staff disappear, the result is disrupted work, over-worked colleagues and another bill for replacing them.
Making them feel valued and proud of their employer will go a long way to making them stick around.Knowing that they have a career path, and that they will be looked after are solid reasons for spending a little effort on communication.
Secondly, once you get them to stay you want them to work hard - on the right things.Instead of starting the day by logging on to Facebook or planning the fantasy football league, communications has a lot of influence over whether people are excited about their work, can see how they make a difference and the satisfaction they get from a job well done.
The idea that most people only want to do their basic time, collect their pay and go home is, thankfully, dying out.But if you don’t explain why they should care, frankly all you’ll get is an empty car park at clocking out time.
And we can do a lot to make sure that new instructions, projects or challenges are explained in ways that focus people’s efforts.If you don’t show people what they are meant to be doing you can’t complain when they make it up for themselves.
The next reason is that you want your staff to say nice things about you outside work.Research by MORI a couple of years ago said the most powerful individual influence on an organisation’s reputation was whether people knew someone who worked there.Apparently knowing an employee will outweigh anything said in the media or even a direct experience of the product or service provided by the organisation.
In short, a reputation as a great employer will see you through some pretty tough times.
I still love things like the Deloitte Film Festival:
or the Strongenoughtocare blog - examples of how eloquent employees can be as advocates of your organisation.
And almost finally, communications helps organisations change. Communications’ mission is to make sense of the what, the why and the how - together with supporting emotional commitment.
And that’s about it.Beyond that you lapse into the realms of alchemy, soothsaying and probably crystal healing.
There, I said it.Great employee communications are about getting people to stay, strive, advocate and change.You can debate how effective different approaches are at achieving these goals but if you’re not supporting at least one of them you’re in trouble.
In fact, you run the risk of simply being a random noise generator.And why would an organisation employ someone to do that?
Oh - I nearly forgot - there's the law. A great deal of what is said at work is the result of legislation. Health and Safety, privacy, diversity and employment rights are just a few of the areas where an employer is required to say quite specific things to their staff.
There is a load of rubbish talked about IC - how an amazing new tool is going to improve performance or why reducing the volume of email in an organisation will bring wold peace.
The question is - can we claim that we are adding value to an organisation by meeting one of the above five objectives for internal communication. Without a clear reason we're just making noise and no one should be paying for that.
I've been reading a lot about change recently. And I'm struck by how complicated people like to make it.
Surely change communications is about getting a few things right.
Over the years I have developed a template - which borrows heavily from Bill Quirke - that suggests that you just need to focus on five stages.
Step one - Awareness
Have you told people the simple stuff about change? What is the basic awareness that they need?
I read somewhere that people have to be told things multiple times before it penetrates and one of the challenges facing an IC manager is in convincing senior leaders that they need to repeat stuff endlessly. When you're top manager you have probably spent months planning a development and by the time its ready for unveiling you're totally bored with it.
As a result it's tough for higher managers to appreciate exactly how ignorant everyone else is.
Comms helps when it is repetitive; find several different ways of reporting proposals on the intranet, think about posters or anything you can just to announce that the circus is in town.
Step two - understanding
Just because you have told people endlessly, it doesn't mean that they actually understand what they have been told. Most comms managers have had the experience at the end of long town hall meeting, announcing something momentous, of a question that suggests that no one was listening.
I remember when I was at Marconi, and we were rapidly goiong bust, that most weeks we would get a question submitted to the CEO's Q&A box along the lines of "Why do saute potatos cost more than chips in the canteen?" of "What date will we be announcing the christmas bonus this year?..."
This is where you have to introduce an element of face to face and start depending heavily on local leaders to put things into context.
One friend of mine says that unitil employees have been told about what happens on monday morning, how their jobs change or where they have to part their cars they just can't be expected to understand. And one of the most effective ways of getting this level of detail is to empower line managers to translate the big message.
Step three - Belief
Despite what some people think - understanding does not equate to commitment. The awful reality is that show two people the same evidence and you can have three interpretations.
This is where you have to get emotional - why should I care about this amazing change that you're about to inflict upon me?
The task here is to tell a story about the mission that you want them to sign up for. Take a look at some of the stuff that Tony Quinlan has written on the subject - I always find it inspiring.
And don't be fooled into thinking tha its just a question of holding a cheque over people's ideas. All the evidence on motivation seems to suggest that material benefits are poor positive motivators. My prejudice is that we all need to believe that we're making a difference - even if it is putting one over on the competition or selling the best hamburger on the high street.
You can't profess to be a change communications expert unless you have a pretty good idea of what those hot buttons are.
Step four - can they actuall do it?
The reason you can't spin employees is that they have concrete evidence to contradict any BS you want to inflict on them. They'll tell you pretty quickly that your rhetoric about customer service is hollow because they don't have the tools to deliver great service. They'll point out why the rubbish IT system is an obstacle to quality products.
In short, the change communicator has to ask what practical steps have been put in place to enable staff to actually make the changes you are talking about.
The best people I have worked with are potent BS spotters and adept at telling senior leaders when they are living in the fantasy world.
Step five - is it business as usual?
When the change is all embedded how do you celebrate the new order of things. Some writers talk about refreezing the organisation after change (particularly in the context of culture change), others talk about finding a point when change can be marked.
The crucial thing in to find some way of saying to people "look how far we have come..."
Recently I've seem some neat ways of doing this through internal photo competitions and story-telling.
Some time ago I made some notes to accompany a course that I developed on change - email me and I'll send you a copy.
All communications begin with the message. So why does it matter, what are the core elements and why does this medium make a difference?
Why does it all matter?
The central abiding challenge of strategic internal communication is understanding how we influence behaviour in the workplace. The aim of great internal communication is to get people to act in the ways that the organisation needs them to do in order to support its core objectives.
That can be as simple as delivering the right customer experience or being a productive member of the workplace community. Or it can demand that employees act as external advocates or embrace fundamental change.
Whatever behaviour you need, your success depends on people being persuaded that the actions you are proposing are the right ones. Some people might argue that compliance is not dependent on consent.
There is still a school of thought that believes it is possible to command employees to follow certain procedures and practices. And it is undoubtedly true that the fear of dismissal, reprimand or punishment will shape some behaviours on the job. Safety or security rules are commonly enforced without any attempt to explain why they must be obeyed.
However, increasingly there is evidence that without persuasion, compliance to enforced behaviours is temporary or weak. Studies into discretionary behaviour highlight that employees will only observe minimum standards, and will do as little as they need to avoid trouble.
The real value comes when people at work see the point of doing something, and are ready to invest effort above what is demanded of them.
Recent studies by consultants such as Blessing White have continued to promote this view and are well worth reading if you want to catch up on engagement.
What do we mean by ‘messaging’?
When we talk about messages in employee communication, I find that people very quickly start confusing what and how.
I am mainly focused on the idea that a message is a shared meaning or concept. I am not discussing the significant issue of who a message is crafted.
Anyone who has worked in communication will have experienced what I call the ‘challenging’ debate. I’ve called it that after a particularly maddening three-week long discussion I had with a colleague once about whether the CEO’s speech should refer to the coming year as being ‘challenging’ or ‘tough’. To this day I don’t understand the nice point that my colleague was trying to address but I do remember Russell Grossman saying “the messages you craft the most, you use the least” – in other words don’t get hung up about the words until you’ve got the central idea down.
Which isn’t to say that the how doesn’t influence the what. Obviously sending out redundancy notices by SMS message will undermine your messages about caring and concern for departing employees. But if your channel or media is decided before the message, you may be putting the cart before the horse.
Trees falling in the forest
Essentially communication is a social process. If there is no one to share a meaning with all you are doing is shouting.
As a result, it simply isn’t possible to consider a message without considering the audience.
I know that could seem to be a banal point but I am afraid that my experience of many workplaces is that communications all too often seem to be despatched with scant regard for the reaction of the recipients. In fact, communication is commonly said to have happened when an intranet story is posted or an email sent. The fact that no one read them or understood what they said doesn’t seem to bother some people.
The truth is that one of the key skills of the communicator is to understand how a particular concept can be shared with an audience group. Through experience or analysis, we should be able to show other professionals how persuasion works in their workplace and explain how they’ll always get superior results when they try to convince people rather than just shouting at them.
Central to this is the communicator’s need to understand audiences. If we don’t have a reliable and current insight into what our colleagues think, believe and understand we cannot advise our fellow managers. If our insights lack analysis and objectivity we are not likely to add significant value.
The theory bit
There is a considerable body of theory around the issue of how people are persuaded to act in one way or another. It’s a field that has fascinated academics and practitioners from many different disciplines including psychologists, political scientists, marketers and almost anyone who has ever had to mount a campaign of one sort or another.
The literature on the subject of persuasion is full of attempts to address questions such as why people continue to smoke tobacco in the face of overwhelming evidence of the harm it causes or why so many people are willing to deny the facts of climate change despite the scientific consensus of its reality.
Communicators who want a deeper theoretical underpinning on the processes of persuasion should probably spend a little time looking into:
• Social Judgement theory (Sherif) from the 1960’s which first developed the idea that we have fixed views or prejudices which limit the range of topics on which we are open to persuasion
• Elaboration-Likelihood Model (Petty) from the 1980’s which suggests that we can either be convinced by strong rational arguments (as long as we’re motivated to listen and can understand what’s being said) or we can be swayed by emotional triggers
• Cognitive Dissonance theory (Festinger) which argues that we’ll seek out a course of action that conflicts least with our beliefs or values. There is also a strong school of thought that suggests that humans are not as generally as rational as we like to think. The ‘Narrative’ approach argues that we individually create meaning from our experiences and communication – a process in which we decide which facts to ignore, discount, forget or emphasise. This approach argues that it is the role of the communicator to create a meaningful narrative or story around a course of action.
The core elements
There are probably very few perfect messages in employee communications. Eventhe simplest and seemingly most compelling actually don’t penetrate very easily – next time the fire alarm goes off in your office spot the number of people who stay at their desks! However what follows is a checklist of some areas where you can test the impact of a proposed set of messages – the idea is that the stronger you score in each area the more impactful your message will be.
Proximity
If you’re asking people to believe in something that is so far from their own beliefs or experience, you’re in for a hard time. Communications which go against the grain of opinion or experience are less likely to be persuasive than messages which are supported by existing attitudes. For example, sales people who are used to being paid commission might be more amenable than colleagues in the finance department to a new performance related pay scheme. Telling people that the IT department is committed to customer service might not ring true in a workplace where computers take ages to repair.
Where possible a communicator should look for ways of connecting a message to existing beliefs or values. Interestingly, when people think that an idea or plan is broadly in line with their existing views, they will tend to minimise the differences between what they want and what is being suggested.
Rational
How well does your argument stack-up? People expect their employer to present a strong case in support of proposed course of action and will want to challenge it when they sense a plan hasn’t been thought through.
It is often at the moment of communication that the flaws in a plan become apparent and it may fall to the communicator to point out why a crucial factor has been missed. Commonly people will work on a plan in isolation and the communicator is the first person to see an argument in its entirety.
Obviously, as indicated earlier, we do not all judge facts and data in the same way. Our valuations will be skewed by our prejudices and our personal experiences or values will cause us to apply subjective weightings to different factors.
But, a communicator will want to assess an argument for themselves and not take the slides from the strategy consultants at face value. And they will want to ensure that the advantages of a proposed course of action are both plentiful and compelling.
Motivation
People can confuse the concept of ‘what’s in it for me’ with the need to make sure people are motivated to think about the issue at stake in the first place.
The more interested people are in an issue, the more likely they are to respond to rational argument in favour of a course of action. Take the example of a new employee appraisal system – you’re more likely to get the attentions of someone who supervises a large team than you are to excite a student who’s only working with you for the summer.
The crucial point is that many subjects that need communicating do not automatically excite or interest people at work. A communicator has to find ways of capturing the attention of an audience group and keeping them interested long enough to digest the arguments you are presenting.
The added complication is that senior managers are often deeply fascinated by the topics they want to share with the workforce. And they can’t understand why anyone else wouldn’t be every bit as excited as they are. A communicator must understand their audiences well enough to spot when a leader’s enthusiasm for a particular subject won’t automatically be reciprocated by the rest of the organisation.
Delivery stability
It is essential that arguments are seen to be consistent and there is a continuity of delivery. Communications which are fragmented or episodic are rarely convincing – a failing of many messages about organisational change.
Messages have to be part of a common conversation – employees will listen to an argument in the workplace and will test it against other communications or experiences. For example I once ran a cost-savings campaign that floundered when employees saw the Sales Director continue to arrive at work in a chauffeur driven car.
The communicator’s role is to look for the incongruity in the overall conversation. In this context, Bill Quirke talks about the importance of Air Traffic Control – the orchestration of different channels and messages into a coherent theme.
And the flow of communication should be uninterrupted.
At its most basic, we are more likely to understand an idea or an argument if we can absorb it in a single sitting without interruption or confusion. Imagine teaching a complicated concept to a class of students and having to contend with a fire alarm or a disruptive pupil. The same is true of workplace communications.
Where possible a message or argument should be presented in a complete form – stringing it out over several instalments is rarely a recipe for comprehension or support.
Emotional triggers
People are not entirely rational. If we are not motivated to listen or a message is just too complicated to understand we will fall back on non-rational cues to help us decide what to do. A communicator should ask whether any of the following triggers are in place:
• Source liking – perhaps unsurprisingly, people are more prone to listen to someone they like or admire. That’s why advertisers or campaigners use popular celebrities – they hope that if we like Roger Federer we’ll buy the razor he’s promoting. Likewise that’s why some senior leaders make great performers at town halls (and why some should never be let out in public!)
• Limited opportunity – Implied scarcity is used to sell everything from Harry Potter books to diamonds and ten minutes watching a TV shopping channel will include multiple appeals based on a limited supply. In the workplace this is used to encourage sign-ups for voluntary severance programmes or to promote participation in training schemes. Clearly there are ethical considerations connected to being untruthful or to falsely denying access to a benefit or service, but where a limitation does exist it is a powerful addition to a message.
• Reciprocation – most high value sales strategies include an element of reciprocation; persuading a prospect that you are doing them a favour is intended to create a sense of obligation. Internal communicators look for opportunities to highlight how different audiences are working together or how certain benefits can be achieved if we all work together. For example people are often persuaded to support a new HR initiative because it could lead to better training opportunities or a move to a new site could allow the company to fund a better gym or restaurant facility. Naturally care is needed to ensure that benefits are genuine.
• Authority – in some situations invoking management’s authority is sufficient to secure a desired action. “We’re in charge around here and we say it’s the right thing to do” is temporarily effective when the speaker enjoys the respect of the workforce and has a track record of being right.
• Commitment – if people are already tied to a cause or an organisation, they are more willing to support a call to action. Political campaigners have known for years about the potency of getting people to wear a button badge or display a poster in their window – such an act may not persuade a third person to support a candidate or a campaign, but it will start drawing the individual closer and closer to a cause. People who have bought into a small aspect of a campaign or cause are ready to start listening to arguments which they might have previously rejected. Internal communicators are familiar with the phenomenon of employees becoming suddenly more positive in staff surveys after many years of service. Messages which reflect on how much people have invested in time and energy in a company or a project can be more potent. Equally, finding small actions that people can take to sign up are often the opening shots in environmental or safety awareness campaigns.
Scale
One of the deciding factors in how well people respond to an argument at work is the sheer scale of the change being proposed. A complete reorganisation of the company is more likely to meet resistance than a request to recycle more paper in the office.
Whilst no one would condone hiding to a workforce a far-reaching change the perceived impact of a change can be kept to reasonable levels by ensuring: that the uncertainties about the scope and timing of the transformation are minimised. No one is helped by painting vague and unspecified doomsday scenarios. And ensuring that local implications are always spelt out keeps the focus on a human level.
Social proof
As much as we like to pretend to be independently minded, we are heavily influenced by the attitudes of our peers. Communicators should look for opportunities to show who else is supporting a proposal – perhaps by creating a forum for people to discuss their support. Equally, overemphasising the support for a countervailing view is rarely a good idea. Make sure that people get a balanced picture of who supports an argument.
Clarity
There really can be no excuse in this day and age for communications that are either so dense with obscure jargon or are so packed with complicated data that no one understands them. It may seem stunningly obvious but it is a lesson that has to be continually shared with colleagues in management. Sadly, communicators are often bullied into sending out dull rubbish or are given too little time to remedy the turgid guff that’s been dumped on them.
Memorability
The final challenge for the message is to check how memorable it is. If people just can’t recall what it was they were told or the arguments they were given, all the drafting and preparations behind the communication are likely to be a waste of time.
The simple test is to ask yourself what do we want people to remember from a particular communication and consider whether the message expresses it clearly. Some communicators advise limiting the message to a single point – advice which may be overly restrictive. However, trying to cram too much into a particular communication is asking for trouble. Proponents of ‘storytelling’ argue that creating a narrative around a message is the ideal way to embed a concept.
The message builder
This is a concept created by Sue Dewhurst, and is a simple template for defining a message. It relies on the concepts given above to make sure that we structure and plan what we’re going to say.
It’s all about knowing the audience
Communicators always need to provide their management colleagues with good advice. And when it comes to planning, developing and testing messages, the quality of that advice depends massively on our understanding of the audiences. A communicator has to understand the motivations, attitudes, experiences and values of their audiences – without these insights the role is reduced to one of minute-taking and mail delivery.
With real knowledge, we are in a position to make an enormous difference to the success of the organisations which we serve.
I've been working on a textbook for communicators - a process that has sent me back to the library to ensure that a fraction of what I say can be proven somehow. And I must admit it's been a struggle.
The problem is highlighted in something written by Mary Welch of the University of Central Lancashire in a paper she published in 2007. She talks about the limited volume of research done into the field. You can see she has a point by looking at her bibliography she lists 82 sources - of which only 38 date from 2000 or later.
When you search on Google Scholar for "Internal Communications" you only get 8,900 articles since 2000 - a fair proportion of which are either about psychiatry or IT systems. "Employee Communications" - the favoured term in the US - just throws up 1,400 results.
I'm a bit thrown by this as is anyone who gets hit by a million emails a day from Ragan or Melcrum. You'd think that there are regiments of people out there analysing our craft and publishing their thoughts. OK, Google Scholar might not be a scientific tool for doing this job, but surely it does point at something.
What is interesting is that when you search against some of the terms that have been present in recent debates about our profression the dearth becomes more apparent.
Take 'ROI' for example. You get just nine hits - including Kathryn Yates' influential thoughts - but most of the Google results are not relevant.
The problem seems to be that whilst lots of us are rushing around spouting our incredibly insightful thoughts on the subject (Mary Welch even gives me a name check!), few of us are doing it in a way that allows our assumptions and claims to be tested or challenged.
Consultants have good reason to be cagey about revealing their commercially valuable intellectual property but we should perhaps be a bit more willing to challenge some of the wilder assertions made by people like me.
Which is why I hold Angela Sinickas in such high regard - she's made a career out of asking awkward questions about where people get their facts from; a lesson that many practitioners could learn from. By being more sceptical about the half-baked rumours presented as truth by colleagues and being more obsessive about quality data we can all make our lives a bit easier - and move our craft away from some of the snake oil salesmanship that passes for professional know-how in parts of our business.
A quick look at blogs and websites recently has got me thinking.
Are internal communicators different in the US to the rest of the world?
What got me thinking was the reaction to a recent post I made about writing skills. My comments about the relative unimportance of writing upset a few people - most of whom were in North America.
The comments I received from this side of the pond were generally complementary and supportive.
So I've been taking a bit of a look at blogs recently and, on a wholly unscientific basis, have started to wonder if there is somethng in this point of difference.
For a start they don't call it 'internal' comms - it's 'Employee Comms' over there.
And there is a preoccupation with writing and tactics - elsewhere it's all about giving CEO counsel, supporting business strategy and producing really scary powerpoint charts.
Compare Ragan.com and Melcrum.com to see what I mean. The former is dominated by technical content, whilst the latter likes to position itself as the forum for senior people (albeit with a few money-spinning diversions into Sharepoint courses!).
And look at the blog of comms doyen Shel Holtz. Here is a posting about the need for comms people to explain who customers are to staff - is there something significant in the fact that someone so highly regarded in the business in the US is blogging about something many people elsewhere would see as comms 101? (No prizes for pointing out that I often rattle on about basics).
This isn't one of those 'Isn't the US rubbish' posts. Why? Because I think the US has been at IC longer than the rest of us - the sheer distances involved in running corporations in a mono-lingual market mean that Americans got a head start on the rest of us. They've been doing newsletters and IC while we were still sending messages around by butler and cleft stick.
I also don't think that the issue boils down to "we're startegists and they're tacticians" as there are plenty of both sorts over here in Europe.
I have no real basis for saying this, but I suspect it's something to do with different employment traditions on either side of the Atlantic. The European approach to workplace relations is a funny mix of obligation to protect labour from the excesses of capital and a view that people work harder when they are loved. I doubt many US CEO's would be happily signing up for an EU style employment framework.
My conclusion? I think Brits can forget that the US is a foreign country, with foreign traditions and an alien culture. When it comes to comparing professional practice in the field of communications it's wrong to apply similar standards
For years I've banged on about the need to have your hands on decent data if you want to be influential in communications.
But I had a conversation this week that has made me groan inside. Why do people treat data like some sort of tally or report card? Why can't they think of intelligence as a tool or guide to help shape communications programmes?
The discussion arose when a friend told me that her organisation was debating the costs of their grand annual employee opinion survey. Like many organisations at the moment this one is wondering if it needs to run the poll this year. Apparently, because times have been tough the bosses know that the 'scores' are going to be lousy - what's the point giving people another forum for moaning.
Things are not helped by the fact that the results from this organisation are published in a league table (yep it's in the public sector).
You'd think that the world had moved on from the days when having an organised listening exercise was seen as weird fad. You'd have hoped that managers had learnt that like any management process the availability of sound data and information would lead to better decision-making and greater effectivness.
But no, by linking bonuses to 'Engagement Survey Scores' or by turning the process into a once a year ritual we've let employers miss the point. The tables of responses have become for many organisations an end in themselves - it is sufficient to gather the board every 12 months to inspect the HR Director's PowerPoint deck and congratulate each other that a survey is run.
If the annual staff survey is losing what little credibility it ever had, perhaps there is a real opportunity for communications managers. It is my belief that senior leaders listen to the advisor who brings both insight and knowledge. If the staff survey has failed to deliver intelligence, maybe it's time for comms leaders to put themselves forward.l opportunity.
