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Another reason employee communication is changing for good

A recent blog post by agent provocateur Penelope Trunk is headlined "The Internet Has Created a Generation of Great Writers."

Says Trunk: "The best writers in the history of the world are graduating from college, right now."

She points to Stanford University research that shows today's students are writing much more than previous generations, and in a profoundly different way. Consider these findings:

• An amazing 62 percent of student writing is outside of school. That's a giant paradigm shift from the pre-Internet age, when almost all writing was for the classroom.
• Not only are students writing more, they're writing things they truly care about and want others to read.
• And they're writing in a lively, competitive and very public marketplace (text messaging, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) that hones their rhetorical skills and teaches them how to influence their audience.

Trunk's loveably brazen conclusion: "So everyone can just shut up about how no one can write anymore."

My further conclusion, drawn from her insightful observations, is that internal communication is going to be part of this giant paradigm shift. Companies that put the policies and tools in place that allow employees to use their powerful new communication skills at work will ride this wave to a more humane and productive workplace -- and a more profitable business model that builds value through collaboration and community-building.

Imagine that. In the future, the most successful companies will be the ones who attract the best writers.

What communicators must do next

A recent article by Jennifer Robison in the latest Gallup Management Journal recognizes the consuming challenges facing corporate leaders these days, but reminds them of the need to stay focused on employee engagement. Gallup is in the employee engagement business, so the article is, of course, designed to prompt existing clients and prospects to pick up the phone and get some help. But I don't mind self-serving pieces like this when they ring true and have useful information and advice, and this one certainly does.

Here's a taste:

If businesses are to survive, leaders can't overlook opportunities to boost productivity and profitability -- and that means employee engagement is more critical than ever. "There's a tendency right now to freeze -- to avoid doing new things for fear of doing the wrong thing," says Denise McLain, Gallup principal. "Freezing is a mistake. You can always change tactics later if you need to and adapt when more information comes in. But the worst mistake is to overlook engaging your employees. When times are tough, leaders need all the engaged people they can get."

Gallup has a giant pile of data from years of surveying employees that shows a direct connection between high engagement and business success. Companies with engaged employees have more loyal customers, better productivity and higher profits than those who don't. And the flip side is also true. "bottom quartile" companies with highly disengaged employees "have 51% more inventory shrinkage, 31% to 51% more employee turnover, and 62% more accidents than business units in the top quartile."

So how do leaders get employees engaged, and keep them that way? Here's a summary of Gallop's advice:

• Remind everyone they're all in it together. This means communicating what's happening and why - and showing some empathy.

• Ask for employee input. People are more engaged when they know their employer cares about their opinion and responds to comments and suggestions.

• Create a focus. Having a common purpose brings a team together. This means getting out of "reaction mode" and communicating a long-term vision.

• Share the news -- good and bad -- with employees first. "No matter how bad the news is, people will always think of something worse unless they have accurate information from leadership." 

• Don't abandon front line managers, your primary conduit to employees. "They need support like never before because they may be feeling as uncertain about the future as the employees they manage."

• Demonstrate optimism by paying attention to people. "A good way to prove your optimism is to double down on people and products....show your people today that you believe in the future of the company--and that you're ready to meet it when it arrives."

This stuff all sounds like common sense, and you've heard most of this before. But in a time of crisis, common sense can be one of the first casualties. The Gallup article is directed at business leaders, but it might as well be a manifesto for corporate communicators. Here's how it ends:

Preserving or augmenting engagement isn't easy. It takes commitment from the top. But the return on engagement almost always outweighs the investment. "Worldwide, the best companies realize they can't afford to ignore employee engagement," says [Tom Rath, Gallup global practice leader and coauthor with Conchie of Strengths Based Leadership.] "But then, the best companies never did."

Communicators, take heed. If you're not currently giving your senior leaders advice like this, get on it.

Common sense does not always prevail on its own. What are YOU going to do next?

I’m worried

I have the honour of sitting on a panel of IABC Master Communicators today to discuss the future of our profession. The discussion will be led by one of Canada's leading communicators, Jacqui d’Eon, Deloitte Canada’s Chief Communications Officer and IABC's 2008 Master Communicator.

The theme is "Are Communicators Still Relevant -- Or Have We Become Disposable?"

The panelists were asked to contribute two or three minutes of commentary to help kick off the discussion. Here are my notes:

I believe there is a crisis of confidence in our profession, at least on the internal side.

We’ve been through a very dark time over the last decade, a time in which employee engagement has declined and digital communication tools have proved to be far less effective than expected.

This is a time of great change and opportunity for employee communicators, but I worry that we might not be not up to the challenge.

I worry that many of us are trapped in our roles as technical/tactical specialists -- constantly posting, posting, posting to intranets that don’t get read and don’t get measured. 

I worry that we’ve forgotten how to offer strategic advice, or how to effectively say no to stupid instructions from our leaders (and offer them thoughtful alternatives).

I worry that, at time that calls for leadership and action, we are so paralyzed by our habits, stifled by the bureaucracies in which we work, and fearful about the security of our own jobs, that we are doing nothing where we should be doing something.

I worry that we’ve forgotten about the basics of the old RACE formula (research, analysis, communication, evaluation) and we’ve become entrenched in our role as order-takers and crisis responders.

And I worry that the new social media tools, which reduce the need for intermediaries like us, could speed the erosion of our strategic importance.

I always say the more you worry about something, the less likely it is to happen. So in the end I’m optimistic about the future of employee communication, and here's why:

We’ve got powerful new tools that have uses we haven’t even begun to explore.

There’s growing interest and attention by corporate leaders in improving engagement, because there’s hard evidence linking engagement to bottom line business performance.
 
Put Web 2.0 technology together with the burning need to improve engagement, and you have a big opportunity to rebuild a new kind of loyalty -- a new kind of corporate culture based on the creation and support of strong internal communities.

There has never been a better time to make the business case for improving internal communication.

A once-in-a-generation opportunity is right in front of us and we must seize it now.

Why most transformations fail...and what it takes for them to succeed

A recent article in the McKinsey Quarterly, Corporate Transformation Under Pressure,  starts out reminding us that the success rate of major corporate transformation programs is less than 40 per cent.

That's not new. We know it's extremely hard to change a big organization. What's interesting is that "defensive transformations" -- those initiated to get a company out of trouble -- are less successful than "progressive" ones launched to generate growth or improve already good performance.

So much for the burning platform! It turns out that waiting until you have a crisis doesn't work as well as having a positive vision and seizing an opportunity to change things for the better.

The McKinsey article, based on a recent survey of executives around the world, also found that "companies under pressure do not make use of proven tactics for implementing change. Instead, they tend toward secrecy and may have small groups of troubleshooters plan the transformation rather than involve the whole organization and set clear, widely communicated aspirations and targets."

The good news is that companies that use proven tactics have a far higher success rate of 80 per cent.

The authors lay out those tactics, in all their elegant simplicity:

• Set clear aspirations and targets;
• Exercise strong leadership from the top;
• Create an unambiguous structure for the transformation; and
• Maintain energy and involvement throughout the organization.

Are you seeing what I'm seeing?

Every one of those tactics can be executed well, or screwed up badly, based on how well an organization communicates.

Communication makes a difference, especially when the stakes are high. And what's more, as the authors observe in their conclusion, "Taking shortcuts -- for instance, putting insufficient effort into communicating or focusing on small, short-term changes -- only deepens the problems."

There has never been a better time to make a business case for better internal communication.

The Corporate Village

In a recent blog post, techno pundit Robert X. Cringely uses Susan Boyle's stunning performance on Britain's Got Talent (sitting at 37 million views as I'm writing this) to illustrate the power of the Internet to create shared experiences.

"Marshall McLuhan, who seems smarter every day, called it The Global Village. He said communication technology would link us together in ways we couldn’t imagine and those ways would lead to common experiences and shared values. McLuhan didn’t know about the Internet when he wrote that and he sure as Hell didn’t know about Twitter. But his prediction came true.....[And] every time our Global Village comes together in this way, it’s because of a shared delight that makes us feel more alike and less apart. We could all use more of that."

Are today's communicators helping create meaningful shared experiences in the workplace? Or are we too busy shoveling information onto intranets that no one wants to read?

Sadly, the only true shared experience in many big organizations is the frustration of dealing with bureaucracy.

It's time for a change. Time to build the Corporate Village.

Remembrance of stings past

The tough times we're in remind me of the old days.

Many years ago, a company I worked for was going through yet another in what seemed like an endless string of "downsizings." The acronym BOHICA was in active use by a jaded workforce.

Back then, our corporate comms team got very good at communicating job losses because we had lots of practice. When the latest round of cuts would come out of HR (which was nicknamed Human Remains) we would produce a printed communication detailing the organizational changes and documenting the staff reductions, and face-to-face meetings with affected groups would be organized. At those meetings company leaders would do a presentation about why the cuts were necessary, what was happening and where the business was going. Then they would take some time to answer employee questions.

At one such meeting, which I happened to attend, the CFO was asked a pointed question by an understandably grouchy employee.

"When will this company start putting people ahead of profits?" he said, with a kind of grim desperation in his quavering, angry voice.

You could have heard a bean drop as the CFO paused before his reply.

"Never," he said.

His needlessly blunt point, of course, was that if the company were to take its eye off the bottom line and give something like preserving jobs a higher priority, there would be no profits...which would mean there would be no money to pay salaries...which would mean that, before long, there would be no people left to put ahead of anything.

Although there's an appealing simplicity to it, we all know that this old-school, one-dimensional business imperative is flawed, and putting profit above all else is not the way to build a healthy, sustainable company. Recent events in the global financial industry remind us that too sharp a focus on profits -- especially short-term profits -- can be bad for business, and for society.

The circumstances related to the current downturn are new, but the massive job losses and severe corporate austerity programs that accompany each trough in the economic cycle are not new at all -- nor is the need to communicate with beleaguered employees. 

It's ironic that when times are toughest, our role as communicators is most valued and we experience some of the most meaningful and fulfilling times in our careers.

Fulfilling, sometimes even exciting, but often not very much fun. One of the hardest things I've found about communicating at times like this is the big disconnect between the negative impact of job cuts on employees and the positive effect they have on a company's share price. We spend so much time and effort preparing to give employees the bad news with all the sensitivity and respect they deserve. The same information, packaged in a media release, invariably ends up being excellent news to the market, which rewards the ugly short-term actions with a proportionately beautiful spike in the share price.

Some of us have been around long enough to know that the short term gain of downsizing is often followed by long-term suffering, especially when it is accompanied by poor leadership. The lack of trust, bad morale, high turnaround, low engagement and poor attitude to customers that characterize todays' workplace can be traced back to the short-sighted brutality of the downsizings and reorganizations that have ravaged much of the corporate world over the past 20 years.

This is not to say the impact of that brutality goes unnoticed when it occurs. As one of my favorite bloggers, Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross, pointed out in a recent post, the elimination of 40,000 jobs at AT&T in 1996 led to an huge and instant increase in the company's market capitalization, but it also sparked widespread public fury and even prompted the U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich to leap onto the dogpile:

“Does a company have obligations and responsibilities beyond the bottom line?  Does a company owe anything to its workers, its workers’ families, the communities in which it does business?  Managers who balk at executing the judgments of the market may fear with some reason that they will quickly face their own day of reckoning.  And yet, I want to suggest to you that this restricted vision of stewardship may be ultimately disastrous for this country. And it may ultimately harm American business.”

Prophetic words, and we're all living with the outcome today. 

The big question is, will the current crisis be resolved in a way that will lead to permanent and positive changes in the way leaders lead and companies operate? Will our society find a way to return some balance and humanity to the business imperative?

I believe these changing times will change business for good. And business communicators have an opportunity to play a strategic role as we go through this once-in-a-lifetime paradigm shift.

Communicating in Hard Times

On April 20th I'll be delivering a luncheon talk at Vancouver's Steamworks Brewing Company on Communicating With Employees in Hard Times. It's part of the Vancouver Sun/IABC Speaker Series and the idea is to share some lessons I've learned from past downturns and "show how old-school tactics can be paired with new age tools to help organizations get through the recession and emerge with a workforce that's stronger and more committed than ever."

I've got my own war stories, at least one of which I'll be telling in an upcoming blog post, but I invite you to share yours in the comments below.

I'm also looking for examples of how companies are using social media tools to help employees participate in cost-cutting and efficiency improvement efforts -- or simply to help maintain morale as we go through the big downturn. What are internal communicators doing these days other than fighting for their own survival?

A recipe for reputation renewal

Yesterday I blogged about the perception that internal communications can be more credible and trustworthy than external PR. Does that mean CEOs can salvage their damaged reputations by communicating better with employees? That's what Weber Shandwick's Chief Reputation Strategist Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross says today on ReputationXchange.com in an excellent post that gives advice for "reputation repairers looking to mend the good names of companies and CEOs."

"... as companies continue to announce layoffs, reputations will be built and destroyed on how well job losses are communicated and how fairly the process is handled. In recent years, corporate responsibility had come to mean how workers in emerging markets are treated in the production of company goods and services. In the months ahead, reputations will be built on how transparent and fair leaders are in treating their employees and particularly now, in communicating workforce reductions."

Pointing to evidence that word-of-mouth is the primary shaper of corporate reputations, she also predicts that "companies that listen to and engage employees and customers online will be tomorrow's reputation kings and queens" and states the painfully obvious fact that CEOs are "woefully stuck at the Web 1.0 leve and need to embrace Web 2.0 social media tools to spread their company's merits far and wide."

Her conclusion: "Reputation experts like me have their work cut out for them."

The same goes for internal communicators.

Can you believe what a giant opportunity is sitting in front of us?

Best. Oscars. Ever. (And a lesson about the power of public recognition.)

I haven't yet read the reviews of last night's Oscars, but I think it was the best award show ever. Not just because of Hugh Jackman's perfectly charming, recession-friendly intro number with its cardboard and duct tape sets. And not just because of James Franco and Seth Rogan's hilarious tribute to comedy as their Pineapple Express characters. What clinched it for me was the show's innovative new approach to awarding the best actress and actor awards.

Hollywood took a page right out of reality TV by showcasing the moment each contestant was judged. One by one, five former best actor/actress award winners addressed each Oscar nominee, face to face, telling them how great their performances were as, American-Idol-style, we watched their reactions. 

As I looked at the beautiful Ann Hathaway, alternatively beaming with pride and sobbing with joy as movie veteran Shirley MacLaine praised her performance, I was reminded of the amazing power of public recognition -- not just for the person being recognized, but for everyone watching the accolades being given. It's validating. It's inspiring. It shows us that the giver of praise cares about the person being recognized.

As an internal communications geek, I was also reminded of how important recognition is in the workplace. If employers did more of the stuff we saw last night, maybe we wouldn't have the kind of employee engagement crisis we're in right now.

Those Oscar moments also illustrate the huge power of video as a medium that can create an emotional connection with the viewer.

Communicators take heed. Look for new ways to recognize employee accomplishments - maybe even using online video, which is now within everyone's reach - and you'll be worthy of some public praise yourselves.

McKinsey's Six Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work

Out in the blogosphere techies are reporting that use of the term Web 2.0 is fading. But, for corporate types, it's still a useful catch-all for the newly rebuilt, juiced-up Internet with its fancy social networks and podcasts and wikis and such. In fact, as the geek community is getting sick of the Web 2.0 label, the social media trend is only starting to hit the corporate mainstream. All signs are telling me that the new tools will be in a period of broad adoption inside big organizations over the next couple of years.

With that in mind, you've gotta admire the folks over at McKinsey & Company, who have an incredible knack for putting self-serving (but extremely relevant) consultant reports in front of business executives just as an emerging issue is starting to get their attention. It reminds me of an old cartoon in Advertising Age, showing a bear coming out of hibernation. As he's yawning and stretching outside of his den, he sees a big billboard with the word HONEY on it.

So it is with an article in this month's McKinsey Quarterly, which summarizes what the firm has learned about the successful use of Web 2.0 tools from studying more than 50 early adopters.

Interestingly, about half of those companies who were first to jump on the bandwagon have been dissatisfied with their experience.

"We have found that, unless a number of success factors are present, Web 2.0 efforts often fail to launch or to reach expected heights of usage," say the report's authors, Michael Chui, Andy Miller and Roger P. Robers. "Executives who are suspicious or uncomfortable with perceived changes or risks often call off these efforts. Others fail because managers simply don’t know how to encourage the type of participation that will produce meaningful results."

That's the bad news. The good news, as the article points out, is that the new tools are a powerful way to increase collaboration, which has been, in McKinseyspeak, "correlated with large differences in corporate performance." In other words, it's a bandwagon that's worth getting on. And companies are getting on it. Spending on Web 2.0 tools expected to grow steadily at a rate of 15 per cent a year over the next five years despite the tough economic times. 

The heart of the article is McKinsey's six "management imperatives" for achieving the kind of employee participation necessary to get full value out of the new technology:

1. The transformation to a bottom-up culture needs help from the top. Even though adoption of social media is often driven more by employee experimentation than management edict, successful implementation calls for active leadership. "Senior executives often become role models and lead through informal channels," says the article, pointing to a case study of Lockheed Martin, where a senior IT leader became an evangelist for the new tools, setting up his own blog and setting goals for the organization. "The result was widespread acceptance and collaboration across the company’s divisions."

2. The best uses come from users—but they require help to scale. "Efforts go awry when organizations try to dictate their preferred uses of the technologies...rather than observing what works and then scaling it up." The example here is AT&T, where front line staffers started using Web 2.0 applications to collaborate on projects. Instead of trying to replicate the early success by telling employees how to use the tools, the company launched an awareness campaign encouraging further experimentation. "Over a 12-month period, the use of the technology rose to 95 percent of employees, from 65 percent." Communicators, take heed. There's Gold Quills in them thar hills!

3. What’s in the workflow is what gets used. If employees can integrate the tools into their daily work routine, there's a far greater chance of successful adoption. If you don't do this, the novelty fades quickly and the tools become "just another 'to do' on an already crowded list of tasks." The article points to ultra-tech-savvy Google's success in making "Web tools relevant to how employees actually do their jobs."  At Google, blogs and wikis aren't cool add-ons -- they're essential to getting work done and tracking its progress.

4. Appeal to the participants’ egos and needs—not just their wallets. Traditional management incentives aren’t particularly useful for encouraging participation. Setting hard targets for increased Web 2.0 useage and tying the achievement of those goals to monetary rewards can encourage the wrong behavior. For example, if you set a goal of a 30 per cent increase in the number of wiki posts, people will meet the goal by posting a lot of useless junk just to meet the target. The article notes that good old employee recognition can make a big difference. When leaders single out and publicly praise those who are embracing the tools and finding useful ways to apply them, they inspire others to do the same.

5. The right solution comes from the right participants. "With participatory technologies [like Web 2.0 applications], it’s far from obvious which individuals will be the best participants." The article says success is more likely when companies pick the right users. McKinsey points to a great example in Best Buy, which introduced an "internal information market" that allowed employees to place bets on business outcomes like sales forecasts. By going outside of the planning department and involving people on the front line, the company was able to produce forecasts that were more accurate than what had been generated by its internal experts. Is that cool, or what?

6. Balance the top-down and self-management of risk. This is the classic conflict. On one side are nervous managers, lawyers and HR types who fear the loss of control that comes with Web 2.0's ability to give power to individuals and create self-organized communities. On the other are the Web 2.0 evangelists who argue that with increased freedom comes innovation, engagement and improved business performance. It's all about striking the right balance between freedom and control. Too much freedom and you can get burned. Not enough, and you stifle the participation needed for success. Establishing reasonable policies and basic controls are part of the answer, but the authors note that "fears are often overblown" and the communities that spring up are good at policing themselves. "Ultimately... companies must recognize that successful participation means engaging in authentic conversations with participants." And that means letting go, at least a little.

The article concludes nicely, suggesting next steps: "Acceptance of Web 2.0 technologies in business is growing. Encouraging participation calls for new approaches that break with the methods used to deploy IT in the past. Company leaders first need to survey their current practices. Once they feel comfortable with some level of controlled disruption, they can begin testing the new participatory tools. The management imperatives we have outlined should improve the likelihood of success."

One more thing worth noting. In a smart, social media savvy move, the article invites readers to "keep the conversation going on Twitter. "Use the #web2.0work hashtag to respond to this article and these questions on Twitter. We’ll be following them and responding via our McKinsey Quarterly account, @McKQuarterly." (I don't know what the hell a hashtag is, but I'm all for it.)

Thanks, McKinsey, for moving this important conversation along.