For Your Approval

The future of employee communications

One of my favorite podcasts is For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report, a twice-weekly show that covers what co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz call "the intersection between technology and organizational communications."

For Immediate Release (F.I.R.) is  "listener-driven," which means the content of the show is based on comments and questions sent in by listeners. It's a pretty simple format: two plugged-in guys talking about what's on their mind, and responding to input from listeners. It's sort of the internet equivalent of a call-in radio talk show.

I enjoy For Immediate Release because it's my connection into this strange new world of "social networking" -- a world in which new media like blogs, vlogs, podcasts and wickis are changing the way people communicate. The traditional one-way, broadcast model where information providers spew content at docile audiences is giving way to a new communication paradigm in which everyone is interconnected and communication is all about dialogue.

How this will affect employee communications remains to be seen, but it's clear that these new media are making their way into the corporate world and that employee communicators need to pay attention. Internal blogs and podcasts are just starting to be adopted by some companies. I wonder if, as this trend progresses, we'll come up with a new name for it -- just as the Intranet is the internal version of the Internet, what will be the internal version of the blogosphere?

The Intrasphere? Corpcasting?

Or are the lines between internal and external communciation blurring so much that social media cannot be contained inside the firewalls of big organizations? Perhaps, rather than appropriating these new channels for internal use in the usual controlling way, corporations will be forced to recognize that the blogosphere has no walls, no boundaries, and that they might as well voluntarily join the Age of Transparency rather than getting exposed against their will.

As with all paradigm shifts, some will lead, some will be dragged kicking and screaming, and some will be left behind alltogether. Listening to podcasts like F.I.R. helps ensure you won't be part of the latter.

- for a related post, visit the IABC Employee Communications Commons blog.

Postscript

When the article, "The Myth of the 'Strategic Communicator'" (see the previous three posts)  first ran in the Journal of Employee Communications Management a couple of years ago, it struck a chord with readers, generating several letters.

Some were supportive of my thesis: "While my manager often touts the "seat at the table" as the holy grail, I always had a feeling in my gut that I really did not want to be there," one reader wrote. "Now I know why!"

Another spoke of her personal journey: "A little over a year ago, I switched from marketing communications to internal communications and at first thought I wanted, and needed, a seat at the table. Not too much later, I realized I didn't want a seat. Then about 10 months later I realized I didn't need a seat. It was a bit of a journey, but I found I can be just as effective and actually more autonomous."

One relieved communicator wrote, "You have saved me from many sessions -- possibly over a several-year time period -- with my therapist discussing my inability to gain an invitation to the table to eat brie with the other big cheeses . . . It was a very nice surprise to read an article that said it's okay be just a communicator and that I don't need to strive for that Vice President of Strategic Thinking and Communications position. With that pressure off, maybe I can actually do my job."

One reader passionately disagreed with me. "Shewchuk apparently has been burned in his experience as a corporate communicator." he wrote. "It’s sad to see a professional colleague so disillusioned with his lot in life . . . If I had followed Shewchuk's advice 15 years ago, I would have missed out on one of the most satisfying phases of my career. I was a lowly communicator working for a $2 billion business and learning what strategic communication was all about. I shared what I learned with the managing committee of the business, including the chief operating officer. The executives didn’t ask me for my input; I just shared it. By the time I left the position eight years later, I was in fact at the table – not as a decision maker, but as an influencer of the decision makers. They cared what the "lowly communicator" had to say on strategic matters."

It's true. I have been burned by some of my experiences in corporate communciations. But I've also worked with, and successfully given advice to, several smart CEOs who appreciated me.  I still believe that the 'strategic table' isn't for everyone, and that it's not nearly as important as it's cut out to be.

Readers, where do you sit on this issue?

The Myth of the "Strategic Communicator" Part III

This is the third of a series of three posts, based on an article that first appeared in the Journal of Employee Communications Management.

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Here are my top tips on how to make a difference as a communicator without a seat at the strategic table:
    1. Find the real leaders in your workplace and build positive relationships with them. They could be anyone – the IT director who is trying desperately to streamline and modernize your systems. The HR executive who wants to build a culture where employees take more accountability for business success. The corporate environmentalist who wants the company to do the right things. Or the marketing VP who wants to get front line service people excited about delivering great experiences to customers. These are the people who know how to make positive change happen, and you should throw all your support behind them as they pursue their largely thankless tasks. They think strategically. Some of them even have a seat at the coveted table. But they are often so harried that they don’t have time or energy to think about communications. Write a plan for them and help them implement it. You have the knowledge, the talent and the skills to build a strong internal “brand” for their change agenda that will prevent it from fading away.
    2. Do superb tactical work.  Have fun building great publications, creating sexy, interesting and useful Intranet sites, producing heart-stopping videos and organizing face-to-face meetings between management and the front line. These are the things that, over time, help to build a strong, positive culture in your organization--and you can accomplish most of them without even talking to a senior executive. When you win awards for your work, you will make your CEO proud, and he will be less likely to cut your budget.
    3. Fight for communications that are clear, timely and honest. Let others make the strategic decisions. If you communicate those decisions--why they were made, what they are meant to accomplish, and what it means to individual employees--and do it with journalistic integrity, you have won a major battle for the good. The best way to fight for sound communications practices is to do it in peacetime, not when a crisis is unfolding and people head for the bunker. Take some time one summer to come up with a few common sense communications principles, values and guidelines that even your CEO can agree to. When the next crisis happens and executives want to misbehave, you can remind them of the rules they signed off on.
    4. Actively listen to people whose voices your CEO doesn’t hear. This is a fantastic way to exercise influence without authority. Readership surveys and focus groups produce information that demands positive action, and you can direct those actions simply by asking the right questions. It’s a way that you can show your CEO how he or she can avoid embarrassment by responding to employee concerns before they become big festering issues. The best communicators make regular measurement an institution, generating numbers executives look forward to seeing.
    5. Get some training in how to sell things. Take a course in negotiation, or sales techniques, or anything that will give you some tools to make you better able to give advice that gets listened to. We complain that executives don’t get it. At least half the time, that’s because we did a bad job of selling the concept in the first place.  It’s easy to forget that it takes more than one exposure to a new idea to change someone’s mind. You’re not at the strategic table, but you report to someone who reports to someone who is. Convincing your own boss of a great idea and giving him or her ammunition to sell it up the line can work.
    6.  And, finally, have pity on your CEO. He or she may make a zillion and have lots of power.  But being an effective leader in a big company, with a bunch of dodderheads for a board of directors, and a bunch of greedheads for investors, and a bunch of pothead environmentalists and knotheaded union leaders and dickhead journalists breathing down your neck, is the hardest job in the world. And if you can possibly understand the kind of extreme pressure they’re under, and find a way to sympathize with them, and dig deep and help make their life easier -- and maybe help them make a better decision or two -- you won’t need to sit at that strategic table. You will be content to serve, and maybe clear the dirty dishes once in a while.
    Content, and if you are lucky, appreciated as well.

The Myth of the "Strategic Communicator" Part II

This is the second of a series of three posts, based on an article that first appeared in the Journal of Employee Communications Management.

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We communicators are always saying, “They just don’t get it.” And we’re right. They just don’t, and most of them won’t. Ever. And the main reason they don’t, and they won’t, is that senior executives often make communications decisions not based on what’s best for their organization and its people, but because they want to avoid embarrassment and preserve their pride.
    Ah, good old pride, the great motivator. Go deep enough into the labyrinth of an executive mind, and you will find it, lurking behind most bad communications decisions.
    Why admit you’re a polluter with serious environmental impacts? Because you think that you’ll play into the hands of your critics and look like you have no control of your company. Unfortunately, downplaying your problems only makes the environmentalists mock you louder. But you do it anyway, because you don’t want to embarrass yourself. 
    Why stick your neck out and show leadership on a thorny issue? Because you might become a lightning rod for critics and reveal that you don’t have all the answers, or worse yet, your competitors might get mad at you at the next Chamber of Commerce meeting. Yet staying in the middle of the pack only hastens the decay of your business. But, yes, you keep your head down anyway, because you’d hate your legacy to be tinged by controversy.
    And so it goes.
A friend of mine who is a high-priced management consultant told me once that if shareholders knew how much company executives did out of pride and self-preservation, they would fire 90 percent of them tomorrow.
    And we want to sit at the same table as these people? I don’t think we do.
    When communicators actually do reach the executive suite, for some reason they end up spending a lot of their time running interference to help the CEO protect his or her pride, crafting messages that preserve the status quo and giving advice that is exactly what the executive wants to hear. Have you ever seen one who looks happy?
    So, what should we be aspiring to do with ourselves in this crazy world full of psychopaths and pride mongers? Where can we find true fulfillment and make a difference, without compromising our fragile integrity…and make a decent living at the same time?
    The answer, my friend, is to be yourself. Follow your communications (and not your executive) instincts because, whether the folks in the top of the house realize it or not, that’s why they hired you in the first place.

WATCH THE NEXT POST FOR THE THIRD AND FINAL INSTALLMENT OF 'THE MYTH OF THE STRATEGIC COMMUNICATOR'

The Myth of the "Strategic Communicator" Part I

This is the first of a series of posts, based on an article that first appeared in the Journal of Employee Communications Management.

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It’s the Holy Grail, the career pinnacle, the place where we are all supposed to want to be: sitting proudly, confidently (and perhaps with just a slight smirk of self-satisfaction) at the so-called strategic table. That’s the place in any big organization where the real decisions are made, the long-term direction is set, the moment-by-moment tactics are hashed out in the heat of crisis. A place that smells of leather and cigar smoke with a panoramic view, where food comes out on shiny trolleys just when you’re feeling peckish, and the coffee pot is always full.
    And it’s a table on which, in nine out of 10 businesses, non-profits, associations or government departments, there is no seat for a communicator. Not even a place setting. Not even a friggin’ kids table in the next room.
    For years and years I have joined my fellow communicators in bemoaning this fact, and I have sat in keynote conference sessions listening to respected senior communicators give inspiring motivational speeches telling us how we can earn those executive washroom keys.
    It’s hard work, we’re told, but the path is clear: What we have to do is make sure everything we do is aligned with the goals of our organization. We need to prove that our work has a measurable impact on the bottom line. We must build detailed plans, and pitch those plans to executives using the language of business. And then we must execute those plans with the precision of a CFO, the crazed energy of a sharp-toothed operations executive, and all the bullheaded stick-to-it-iveness of a marketing VP. In other words, if we act like business people, we will be treated like business people.
    If we don’t, the party line goes, we will all be relegated to mere “tacticians”----lowly “order-takers” who get the sausage factory jobs of communicating the latest changes to the pension plan, how we’re working together to make a safer workplace, and how management is “operationalizing” its long term strategic vision to the benefit of all stakeholders. And other forms of finely pureed B.S.
    Interesting. My spell checker puts a red line under operationalizing, and Microsoft suggests I replace it with “operational zing.” Zing indeed. Like white-shirted, laptop-wielding cheerleaders, we non-strategic types are expected to put some well-choreographed zing into our sad sack workforce with saccharine, controversy-free prose that warms executives’ cold hearts and prompts violent eye-rolling among everyone else.
    Well, I’m here today to tell you that I’ve been a temporary dinner guest at that strategic table more than a few times in my long and sordid career. And I’m ready to share a little secret: most of the time the guests are insane and the food is undercooked, overcooked, rotten or poisoned. Very few decisions actually ever get made. Long-term direction is often nothing more than the path of least resistance, or whatever your cranky investors are insisting you do next. And battle tactics are devised in a very deep, cushy bunker in which the primary goal is not victory, but self-preservation.    
Want to have the ear of your CEO? Fat chance. So few chief executives actually listen to anyone, let alone a lowly communicator, that you might as well just forget it.
    Want to be seen as a “go-getter” and turbo-charge your flagging career? All you have to do is commit philosophical suicide, throw away your values and submit to the Tyranny of the Positive – that weird weather system that moved into the corporate world about 20 years ago in which there are no problems (just challenges) no stupid situations (just opportunities for positive change), and no bad decisions (just difficult situations that occurred because of “unanticipated market conditions”).
    The simple fact that the strategic table, as it is postulated by our profession, is not the right place for us, and we should not aspire to sit at it. We just don’t belong there.
    Communicators, after all, have many qualities that do not suit them to an executive role. We are compassionate. We are sensitive to the needs of others and we can almost always see an argument from both sides. We are drawn to conflict and crisis, not because we need to breath the fresh air of victory, but because we are compelled to fight for peace, reconciliation, renewal, and hope. In the world of big organizations, we are the closest thing there is to a shaman or witchdoctor, a mystic who heals with spells, metaphors and symbolic actions. Or, to put it in more modern and mundane terms, we are corporate social workers who gently intervene in the family battle and say things that help everyone make nice with each other.
    If that’s how we’re wired, then why in heaven’s name should we want to behave like executives … or like business people?
    I heard recently that some academics are studying how the characteristics of textbook psychopaths are ideally suited to the role of today’s CEO--a lack of conscience, an extremely high opinion of oneself verging on narcissism, an ability to manipulate any situation in one’s favor, a wildly attractive combination of charisma and cruelty that inspires unquestioning devotion as well as blind, fearful servitude. And the potential to inflict severe and lasting damage on organizations and the people who inhabit them.
    Don’t get me wrong. Not all CEOs are psychopaths. Some are great engineers who progressed up the ladder until they finally got a job they aren’t suited to. Others are business geniuses who are just kind of retarded when it comes to dealing with people. And still others are nice, well-intentioned, smart, ambitious folks who get caught up in the trappings of executive power and lose their ability to communicate effectively with anyone but their fellow executives. The common thread is today’s executives live in a world that is very far away from the working stiff. A world where it makes a big difference whether you earn two million or four million a year, and where profile, prestige and power are the drugs of choice.

"THE MYTH OF THE 'STRATEGIC COMMUNICATOR" CONTINUES IN THE NEXT POST.

Wal-Mart CEO's Internal Web site Exposed

Big story in the New York Times this morning about Lee's Garage, Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr.'s internal Web site. "While Mr. Scott's postings are usually written in a careful, even guarded manner, they can often be revealing," writes the Times. The postings show "a defensiveness and testiness with critics that Mr. Scott normally keeps under wraps."

The site was made public by Wal-Mart Watch, an activist group trying to get Wal-Mart to improve its wages and benefits. The Times article provides an overview of responses by Scott to managers' questions and concerns about all kinds of issues.  There are no smoking guns in the answers, which pretty much reflect what Scott has said in public speeches, but, the article points out, "in these confidential e-mail messages to managers, he delivers far blunter insights in much greater detail."

We also learn how Scott's responses are generated. A company spokesperson explained that a public relations assistant screened the questions and Mr. Scott dictated responses to an aide. Which means the responses aren't drafted by a ghost writer, but instead they represent the actual words coming out of the actual CEO's mouth.

Whatever you think of Wal-Mart, it sounds like good executive communications to me.

My alter ego

I love employee communications.

I also love southern-style barbecue.

In fact, I have a whole other career going. As my alter ego, Rockin' Ronnie Shewchuk, I'm an international barbecue champion and author of the bestselling cookbook Barbecue Secrets.

I mention this because, this summer, my two pursuits will come together when I host a pre-conference workshop at the IABC 2006 Intenational Conference in Vancouver. In this session (which sold out last month), entitled Everything I know about communication, I learned from my barbecue, I will share some organizational communications wisdom as I deliver a backyard cooking class peppered with barbecue secrets.

If the June session goes well, I may take it on the road, or at least turn it into an annual Vancouver event. Dialogue in the Desert, meet Smokin' on the Coast.

Barbecue is a great metaphor for communication. Food and information have a lot in common. Both require planning and preparation, both are best when delivered with impact, integrity and style, and both can be terrible when not done right.

Championship barbecue also relates to corporate teamwork. I recently launched Barbecue Academy, an all-day corporate teambuilding workshop in which participants learn the secrets of competitive barbecue. The first session, held in November for a Calgary-based oil company, was a great event. We split the group of 40 managers into teams of three or four, with each team cooking ribs and chicken. At the end of the day, entries were judged according to Kansas City Barbecue Society rules, and trophies were awarded to the winners.

For an idea of what one of my cooking classes is like, check out this egullet.org report on a barbecue class I delivered at the Mission Hill Family Estate Winery on Father's Day 2005.

An easy way to integrate external and internal communications

I had the pleasure of attending last week's big 2006 Ragan Communications Speechwriter's Conference in Washington, D.C. One of the highlights was an overview of UPS' speaker's program, the most thoughtful, strategic, comprehensive and disciplined executive communications program on the planet.

During the presentation by Steve Soltis I was reminded of a simple tactic that can help organizations better integrate their external and internal communications: getting your executives to practice their external speeches on employeee audiences. The speaker gets to deliver his or her speech before a live audience that probably has some interesting and challenging questions, and the audience gets to hear about the company's position on an important issue or theme.

A great idea, but who else actually does it?

The scourge of corporate journalism

Intranets are the worst thing that ever happened to corporate journalism.

They reduce newsletter editors to blurb writers, force employees to adopt uncomfortable reading habits and hack away at the tenuous bond that companies have built with the people who work for them. And because they often replace, rather than complement, print communications, they also alienate huge numbers of employees who still don't have easy access to computers.

Don't get me wrong. Intranets are good for communicating with employees. Done well, they can give people access to useful information. These days you can sign up for your benefits online, get up-to-date production numbers and sales data, check the weather forecast and read the latest company announcement. But what happened to the human connection? What happened to corporate journalism, in the best sense of the term? Where are the real stories, well-told, that help to define a company's culture and make its employees feel like they're part of a caring community? And where is the shared experience that brings people together? I'm afraid that human warmth departed most organizations when the decision was made to scrap the company magazine to save printing costs.

Some intranets do achieve a certain degree of humanity, but mostly it's just a lot of chilly data being shoveled at employees who are snowed under with information, but starved for the warm glow of real meaning.

Part of the answer is in the emergence of "social media" like blogs, wikis and podcasts. These new channels hold the promise of re-humanizing internal communications after a long, cold, dark period of digital drek. But part of the answer is also going back to the old ways -- reestablishing the nearly dead tradition of providing employees with an interesting read, with great quotes, not made up by an editor in a hurry, but based on a real interview, and small details that perfectly capture the big picture.

An employee publication used to be something that provided a mirror, reflecting the essence of an organization back on itself. Today that mirror is badly fractured and it's up to employee communicators to repair it.

 

Welcome

Welcome to For Your Approval.

FYA is a blog for everyone who has the sometimes thankless and always challenging task of communicating with the employees of an organization.

The goal of this blog is to make your job a little easier -- or, at the very least, to give you some interesting stories, some practical tips and some food for thought, and maybe even some ideas to help you cope in the corporate world, where sometimes trying to communicate with employees can be a Kafkaesque nightmare.

Why me, and why now? I've been working in this field for over 20 years. I've spoken at conferences, written in the trade press and counselled large corporations. In January my handbook, Writing and Editing the Internal Publication: Delivering Employee Communications with Impact, Integrity and Style, was published by the International Association of Business Communicators.

So it's time for me to blog.

I follow in big footsteps. My old pal, Steve Crescenzo, has the best blog on employee communications, the hilarious and often insightful Corporate Hallucinations. No one can compete with Steve. What I hope to do is add another voice to the blogosphere, maybe sing some harmony, maybe provide a diversion while we're all waiting for Steve's next post. Sometimes, I might even pee in his beer. But no matter what I write here, he will always be there, lurking, looming, the Uncle Fester of employee communications.

While I'm at it, I should also acknowledge two other important people in my life: my favorite guru and host of the For Immediate Release podcast, Shel Holtz, who encouraged me to start up this blog, and whose pioneering work informs and inspires  everyone working in this field today, and David Murray, my longtime friend and editor, whose elegant prose is a model for anyone who aspires to be a blogger -- or a writer of any kind, for that matter.

I hope For Your Approval will be a forum in which you can ask questions, raise issues, vent, joke, laugh, cry, confess your sins and share your salvations with me and the readers of this blog. If this thing works the way I hope it will, soon you and I will be part of a new community -- an addition to the web-enabled, blog-happy, pod-savvy "social network" that is changing the way people share information.

So, let's start the conversation.

Hello. How's it going?