Internal communications - it's not rocket science

Going global - what does an IC manager need to worry about?

We've been doing quite a lot of benchmarking work here recently on behalf of a couple of clients. And the question that keeps coming up is how should a global IC function manage itself?

There are two aspects to the question;

• what are the things that we should take into account when thinking about the shape of the function?
• what models do people use to manage the global function?

The factors that shape a global function are probably fairly obvious but are worth drawing out. The questions to ask include:

• Where should Control rest? are we an organisation that is highly centralised or is there a lot of local autonomy?  And what does that mean for how communications should be run?
• How much interpretation do our Messages need? Are we a simple business, like an FMCG brand, where no one really needs the brand explaining to them or a more complex B2B operation where local market context has to be added?
• How complicated do our Channels need to be?  Are we a simple business that can get away with just a few reliable tools or are there big differences between markets and work patterns requiring lots of customisation?
• What is the Leadership mindset - are they globally minded or is it all a bit parochial?
• What is the local Execution capability?  Do we need a central production team, or a world-wide events management operation to save costs or to ensure that things happen.

Clearly these all lie on top of fundamental questions about cultural diversity or the range of languages spoken inside the business.

So what models do people use?

In our desk research I uncovered some material we used to use when we set up the original Black belt course.  One great document identified nearly a dozen different models explaining how people managed the function -it suggested a continuum from centralised control to complete outsourcing.

I won't describe these models in detail - I'll save that to inflict on you another day.  But a few features are worth mentioning as challenges to think about:

• Where's the cost?
• Where's the value being added?
• What are the capabilities of local comms people?
• What are the capabilities of local leaders?
• Can some of the work be outsourced or centralised?
• Is there any scope for a centre of excellence or two?
• Will one size fit all (or do you need a two-speed model)?

Food for thought?

Liam

 

Hvad skal der til? - What is your team structure?

I've been travelling to Denmark for several years now and have mastered a couple of phrases.

Most of them concern beer or sausages, but one keeps coming back to me:

Hvad skal der til - what's it going to take?

It's a question to comes up time and again in our work - people ask us what should be the strategic concern of the IC function.  We are often charged with the task of defining the purpose of IC work and people want to know how they should organise to help drive change in their company.

And I keep coming back to a model that owes a lot to Kathryn Yates, Bill Quirke and Roger D'Aprix.

I first drafted it with Sue Dewhurst about 7 years ago when we were inventing the first Melcrum Black Belt programme.  We spent a lot of time looking at the models produced by various people and kept coming back to a few themes.

The first theme is that there are some core basics; like having good channels and a decent plan.  But, the cornerstones seem to be quality intelligence gathering and a clear role for line managers.  Without these the various theories suggest you are probably just generating noise.

Towers Watson - where the excellent Kathryn Yates plys her trade - actually say you can ascribe real values to the strength of these building blocks.  Their model includes a few things not shown here, but the message is compelling. Getting the basics rights doesn't really get you out of first gear.

The next level is about engaging with senior leaders.  Successful comms managers can draw the connection between their work and the corporate strategy, are recognised as the providers of reliable and actionable feedback and are concerned with the communications skills of line managers.

Finally, the last theme that keeps coming up is that communications should be owned across the business - not in the communications department, or HR or anywhere else.  Real impact comes when leaders are creating the line of sight.

When I do comms audits I keep returning to this model as my template.  What I can't get over is the fact that we tend to invest so much energy in the corner of the bottom layer - doing 'stuff' -and can loose sight of the things where we can add real value.

So få over dig selv and start thinking about how you get results from other people....

Liam

 

If you don't know why you're doing it - you're probably wasting your time

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.

 

Liam

 

What, exactly, doesn't your boss get?

Here's a common complaint.

Comms managers go on a course or attend a conference and hear about CEO/Senior leaders who are paragons of great communications.  There's a lot of it around (my colleague Kevin Murray has even published a very good book about leaders who communicate).

But they despair of ever transforming their senior leaders into someone who sees the value of communication.  Every time they put up a comms plan it gets reduced to an all staff email or another pompous intranet story.

Their life feels like they are working in the corporate equivalent of the North Korean Ministry of Information and they run the risk of public derision.

So what is the answer?

From the great comms people I know there are a few simple rules that are worth considering if you want to win over the boss.

1) Remember that it's a marathon - not a sprint

No one changed overnight - especially a successful senior leader who stays in post by doing exactly what got them there in the first place. Successful Communications Directors play a long game - they look for the small opportunities to nudge the agenda on rather than spend their lives praying for some kind of dramatic conversion at the top.

2) What's your data?

When it comes to employee engagement, everyone is an expert - or thinks they are.  But when there's someone in the room with real data - not just the benefit of a chat with Frank in the car park - they tend to get listened to.

Time invested in getting current and good quality feedback is never wasted...and when you're the bringer of truth, there's the opportunity to suggest where improvements can be made.

3) Deliver, deliver, deliver

This one should be obvious - but it does need repeating.

People who can get things done tend to get listened to.  I know at least one Comms Director who owes his success to investing in a team member with powerpoint skills (it meant that he got to spend time with the CEO discussing the story behind the presentation) and another who manager to organise a roadshow for Directors where other, more senior, colleagues had failed.

In the past I have made the mistake myself of letting other people do important jobs - like running the leadership conference - when the Comms Department should muscle its way in on anything where the CEO is communicating.  When we make it work we get the licence to shove the envelope a bit further.

In other words, stop stressing about the clever stuff if its getting in the way of giving the boss what she wants.

4) Show - don't tell

A client and I had an unexpected break-through this year when we got a CEO and his Exec to do a dress rehearsal of a roadshow presentation in front of a live audience of regular staff.  The immediate feedback made them entirely rethink some important messages and actually revisit the whole engagement strategy.

There comes a time when a Comms Director becomes another Head Office stooge so the trick is to shift the whole conversation by bringing in another voice.

5) Prepare, prepare, prepare

Years ago I was stunned by how much effort my CEO made before he faced the Board.  He went through every paper and would call up managers across the company for answers to questions he thought might possibly come up.  This was a man who left nothing to chance.

The really effective Comms Directors who I respect continually prepare - event to the extent of anticipating meetings or encounters that haven't been scheduled.  And they never ever try to busk their way through a conversation.  They come with data, the flexibility to try out alternative ideas and solutions.

 

So what's your golden rule? Is there a maxim that you learnt years ago that has always stood you in good stead?  What do the senior communicators who your admire do?

Liam

Looks do matter...don't they?

Loved this discussion from the guys at Ragan - it asks if you have to be good looking to succeed in communications!

I hope not as I'd be stuffed if I had to rely on my looks!

Liam 

Working in head office...

What's the difference between working at Head Office versus working in an operating division or subsidiary?  Why are some people so desperate to work at the very top of an organisation?

I only ask because I've been chatting to a couple of people recently where it has struck me that there isn't a hierarchy of importance and in fact there can be much more fun to be had out in a division than trying to make sense of things at the centre - particularly in a complex conglomerate.

Think about this.

At the Centre, many of the things you are working on don't have relevance to many people on the front line.  The concerns of a corporate centre are often about governance or controls, the agenda is often driven by the reporting cycle and messages are often difficult to distill out of dry strategic statements of intent.

If you are lucky there might be a HQ HSE function or maybe something semi-operational to get your teeth into.

The result is that comms from the centre is often about 'Tell' - all the asking, involving or debate may well happen out in the divisions.

And you have the added problem that the politics are more complicated.  You don't just have to work with the senior guys - there are the divisional directors to convince.  And they have 101 reasons why your plan won't work for them or why your clever strategy could upset their key customers/stakeholders/local management team.

By contrast, in a division you own the audience, you know what they are thinking, you have a daily impact on how the business works.  Of course you have corporate guidelines to subvert and maybe get stopped doing something because it clashes with some corporate announcement.  And you own the network of local contacts...

Best of all you probably control the channels that matter - group centre often has to come crawling to get you to cover something.

Clearly every organisation is very different.  Size, complexity and the diversity of the business portfolio play a part in deciding the rules of engagement.

So what's a Group Head of IC to do?

Well for a start there's the essential delivery challenge to meet.  If you are running a decent news and information operation it's a start.  Managing a few essential channels well not only buys you space, it builds your credibility.

Then you need to decide which audiences you own - how about the top 100 leaders for starters?  Because that speaks to your role as a coordinator across the business.

But what do you need to do to fulfill your role as an enabler?

I'd say that there is real scope for Centre people to be the driver of better skills out in the business.  Helping define the competencies and organise the training that no one else can afford individually (yes yes I do have an interest there!) and providing a forum for best practice sharing are all things that represent incredible value.

I've also been impressed by people who manage a team of 'consultants' who can help with trouble-shooting or heavy lifting when its needed.  You don't need to dish out budget, but being on hand to help when colleagues out in the business need it also ensures that the businesses are better enabled to do what they do best - deliver for the group.

There are quite a few things more that people do - but how much of this post can you bear to read?

Essentially, my point is that the 'senior' job isn't necessarily senior - but it does require a different set of skills to running a division's comms.  Seeing the relationship as hierarchical doesn't give much of a clue to what really is needed.

Liam

Competencies - in case you missed it

One of the casualties of my alliance with Marc and the Simply guys seems to be the ability to participate in anything run by Melcrum.  I can't complain - I wouldn't allow a competitor to sign up for the Black Belt Alumni network on Linkedin nor would I give them oxygen on the Communicators' Network.

(At this point Marc will probably point out that he covers stuff from other consultants on Simply-Communicate despite my miserable protests).

The downside is that there is a debate going on the Melcrum Communicators' Network about competencies.  Someone asked for advice looking for competencies and so I posted off a reply reminding people about the work that Sue Dewhurst and I did on competencies last year (www.competentcommunicators.com will allow you to download most of the material).  I missed seeing my posting appear and am loathe to try to elbow my way in again.

Jim Shaffer pitched in to make the simple point that you need to tailor your competencies to your organisation and Monika Stafford added that she's working with headhunter VMA to develop a new model.

It feels a bit odd listening to a debate that you feel strongly about and itching to join in!

Liam

Now is a good time to be at HQ

I was emailing a chum the other day and discussing the current business situation and I asked if he was worried.

Of course not he said, there is so much happening at head office he wouldn’t want to miss it for the world.

Which takes me back to the last crash when I was working for a ‘troubled’ company. Based at Head Office life was anything but boring.  Long hours and stressful weekends went alongside being part of the action.  I still have dreams of the atmosphere as day to day we struggled to complete negotiations with the people we owed £3bn to whilst maintaining business performance in the post dotcom downturn.

And best of all was the absence of politics.

OK there were one or two people I could have cheerfully strangled, but we were all working to the same goal.  Departmental agenda and local scheming just didn’t happen.

Sometimes ‘Head Office’ can be a pretty poor posting for an internal communicator. 

The real fun is happening out in the business.  Often HQ work is all about financial calendar work or ‘special projects’ whilst divisional IC’s get their hands on pressing issues like performance or service delivery.

I know more than a few Global Heads of IC who discovered that they are not really in charge of very much and plenty of divisional IC managers who are doing much more interesting work and having loads more fun.

But right now…a crisis is one of the times when a Head Office IC role comes into its own….

Liam

Remind me what are we meant to be doing

It's been a funny old week.

Because this is the week when I officially started with Simply Good Advice I kept finding myself having to articulate again and again what we do (perhaps going to a conference is asking for trouble).

But I've been with two clients this week and talking to an old colleague about plans and I keep coming back in my mind to the question of what should employee communications people be doing.

I guess what starts it all off in my mind is the experience of meeting so many frustrated communicators who claim to be strategically minded but who are trapped producing newsletters.  I'm not talking about the sort of people who still get a buzz from opening a box that's just arrived from the printers (because that's most of us). No, I think I mean the people who month in and year out are driven mad by the stupidity of their organisations but, like a character in a Dr Suess book can't get listened to.

Yet it does work the other way around.

An old friend was telling me that he'd joined a comms team with the remit to build relationships at the highest level but was finding that everyone else in the team thought they were senior business partners as well.  He's thinking of leaving because as the new boy he's being pushed towards making sure the basics work - and there's going to be no time to do the strategic stuff.

But my feeling is that there is real opportunity for him to shine here and he shouldn't be so quick to start firing off his CV.

Like any service department (HR, legal, IT) Internal Comms can adopt one of three roles (Download three_roles.pdf ).  It can be a process manager, a business enabler or a senior partner.  I think a lot of nonsense is talked about the senior partner or consultant role - in recent years a range of people have gone out of their way to imply that anything apart from being a trusted advisor to the chief executive is an unworthy aspiration for anyone in internal communications.

The truth is that if you run a rubbish operation and/or don't know how to help other business areas achieve their goals you will never be asked your opinion on issues apart from communications. The next time you're at an internal communications conference it's worth asking one of those amazing strategists about their basic operations.  Frankly if they don't have a solid machine for producing news, gathering intellingence or handling day to day comms they are either spinning a line or have been very lucky to get away with it!

So what do I say to my old friend and ex-colleague?  Think long and hard about the operations role that he resents being pushed into.  There are certainly frustrations but there are also medals to be won here.  In many ways getting a basic machine working well is the first thing that gets apprecaited in the business - it's not the clever strategies and long beard stroking meetings that people notice. 

I'm not for a moment suggesting that clever strategy and excellent senior coaching don't matter - they're massively important.  But the day when everyone in your team wants to be a business partner and strategist is the day when you start getting into serious trouble!

Liam