For Your Approval

Faith, doubt and aesthetics

I just read an article in the New Yorker -- a remembrance by a writer of an experience in a church that would change his friend's life. It's a great read, but it also has insights that are relevant to our role as communicators. Tell me what it means to you.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Every month a couple of editor friends and I get together at a favorite diner in downtown Vancouver and trade stories of our family and working lives.

This morning one of my friends reported on what she's doing lately for a longtime client. She helps out with employee communications, and I was heartened to hear that she's working with the company to revamp its communication vehicles, including starting up a new quarterly employee publication.

"Wow. That's great!" I said. "It's so good to hear someone's paying attention to improving employee communications. So is it a magazine? A maga-paper?"

"No, it's being put out as a .pdf so they can tell managers to print and distribute it at the different work sites," she said, cringing.

"AAAARGH! WHAT A LOAD OF HORSE SHIT! I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS! YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THEY'RE GOING THROUGH ALL THE TROUBLE OF DEVELOPING A NEW PUBLICATION AND THEY'RE NOT GOING TO BOTHER TO HAVE IT PROPERLY PRINTED AND DISTRIBUTED?" My rant went on for at least a couple of minutes along these lines. I have no objection to online tools. But they are part of a balanced mix -- a mix that still should include print -- at least in companies who have front line workers who don't have computers or who are over 25 years old.

"I know, I know. It's crazy," she replied, with more than a touch of resignation in her voice. "I'm just the contractor and I can't do anything about it. That's what they want to do."

This company has several different industrial work sites, and most employees don't have access to computers. Senior leaders think using online tools is modern and progressive. Plus they don't want to deal with the cost of printing and the trouble of distributing. So they leave it up to the line managers who, of course, care deeply about distributing information that comes from head office. Not!

My goodness, when will this madness end? I honestly can't believe how stupid big companies can be -- how they can consciously disenfranchise their own employees by not doing the simple, time-honoured task of printing an attractive, readable publication and putting it in everyone's hands.

I wish a pox on these companies. I hope they have the low morale, high attrition rates, nasty labour relations and poor productivity they deserve.

Who do you trust?

It's an old saw in the internal communications business that front line employees don't trust senior management and the most credible source of information for them is their immediate supervisor. UK site HR Zone recently reported on a self-serving study by HR consultancy BlessingWhite that confirms this workplace truth.  BlessingWhite's study found that, while about three quarters of workers trust their direct supervisors, less than half have the same confidence in senior management.

On top of that, the study revealed that half of middle managers are planning or seriously considering leaving their current thankless jobs this year. HR Zone quotes Tom Barry of BlessingWhite:

"Our research has revealed that many senior managers appear to be issuing strategies from an ivory tower. Their direction can't filter through middle managers that don't trust them....Business leaders must give middle managers the structure and tools they need to help staff establish a strong connection with, and commitment to, their work....But they must also find a genuine, authentic leadership voice themselves - one that inspires trust. The most successful companies make employee engagement an ongoing priority, not a once-a-year event. Without trust, engagement initiatives can seem hollow."

For most employee communicators reading that quote, the response would be "Well, duh." We all know that. We live with it every day. The big question is why a new paradigm isn't emerging in business today that turns this unfortunate reality into regrettable history.

The good news of the study: a much higher percentage (59%) of Millennials -- the folks born in the 80s who are relatively new to the workforce -- trust senior management. This means there's hope, but the window isn't going to be open forever. The story of Generation Y could turn into Generation Sigh: how business leaders missed an opportunity of a lifetime to engage the next wave of workers.

The solution is not rocket surgery. What's required is for corporate leaders to reach out to their employees and connect with them in ways that earn trust. Right now a lot of hopeful effort is being put into social media as a way of using technology to renew that broken connection and close the gap. But positive change won't happen unless CEOs take the problem seriously and devote the right amount of attention to it. And it's up to us to give them the business case, the right advice, and the right strategies to make it happen.

To hell in a handbasket

I've written quite a bit about the changing values of the workforce and how employers, and communicators, need to pay attention to generational differences as their organizations try to attract new people and retain the ones they've got. And it's clear that Generation Y has unique qualities that set it apart. The incoming generation has a different character. It also has a disproportionate amount of power because of the growing shortage of skilled workers as the Baby Boomers retire in droves.

But I've never really considered how much this new generation of "Millennials" is perceived as a bunch of lazy, selfish, brattish punks who share a mind-boggling sense of entitlement. At a cocktail party last night I met a gentleman -- a Gen X-er -- who actually left a job because part of his responsibilities was to conduct job interviews with Millennial candidates. He was sickened by what he saw as their complete lack of a decent work ethic and their expectation that the employer should be pandering to their every need. When he spoke of them, his disgust was palpable. And I know of at least one CEO who feels the same way.

What an interesting dynamic that's emerging! You've got the generation that's now coming into management roles -- the hardened, cynical Gen X-ers who entered the workforce when there were no jobs and had to bootstrap their way to success -- having to manage a generation whose members have never had to worry about getting a job, don't respect authority and are willing to jump ship and go work for the competition at the drop of a hat.

So what does this mean for communicators? I wonder if these generational differences are going to create an even greater gap between workers and management than exists today.  I worry that the Gen-Xers won't be able to easily figure out how to manage  Millennials and the work environment in many companies will become even more dysfunctional than it is today.

How will communicators help connect these two insanely disparate generations? Social media might be part of the answer. But can you imagine a Gen-X manager blogging, and having to deal with all the smarmy comments from the Gen-Ys? Social media might help connect people and build online communities, but it could also create lots of problems for management because it gives people such a powerful venue for whining and complaining.

Big organizations removed coffee rooms decades ago to save money and reduce office chatter, which is now relegated to the outdoor smoking areas. But social media creates the world's biggest water cooler.

Traditional corporate communication is all about controlling information. In a Gen-Y world where information (and people) are becoming impossible to control, is there a role for communicators at all?

A business leader's take on the communicator's role

We employee communicators are constantly trying to bridge the gap between ourselves and our CEOs. But we tend to drink our own bathwater, mainly looking at the problem from the communicator’s point of view. So it’s wonderful to get a fresh perspective on the subject, especially from a respected business leader.

I’m lucky to know Roger Martin, former management consultant, current Dean of Toronto’s Rottman School of Business, author and frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review. I sent him a copy of my recent JECM article, which is an entreaty of sorts to CEOs to change the way they think about internal communication.

Roger has kindly agreed to let me share our short e-mail conversation about the article with FYA readers:

_________________________________________________________________________________

Ron:

Good article. I like the advice.  There is one thing that I would encourage further thinking about.

It is the following:  All of the functions want the CEO to involve them earlier in whatever process you are talking about – IT, legal, marketing, design, HR, etc., etc.  So you may think your call for earlier involvement is unique but it is not.  And if you told that to the CEO, he/she would probably roll his/her eyes.  The key is how can the communications team earn the right to have a voice earlier in the process. The answer?  By making the CEO’s job easier not harder; and that means solving the CEO’s toughest problem with respect to the task at hand, not telling him/her that what he/she is about to do is problematic for this, that or the other reason. If they do that, guess what, they will always be at the table. If they don’t, they will find out later and be asked to do the best they can to minimize whatever downsides there are.

Cheers.

R.

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Roger,

You make an important point, and it’s a longstanding belief in the field of communications that the only way to earn that seat a the strategic table is to provide advice and deliver communications that directly support the business goals of the organization.

But I see how you might think my article is aimed at making CEOs’ lives harder by throwing a bunch of requirements and considerations in his or her path. But here’s the problem: too often corporate executives fall prey to short-term thinking that puts expediency ahead of investing in their relationship with employees. The challenge for communicators (and, as you note, IT, legal, design, HR, etc. etc.) is to find ways to elbow our way into the conversation before the decision takes place, and give the kind of advice that delivers results. From my point of view, that means having a conversation with CEOs during peacetime that sets the stage for better decision making, which in turn leads to the kind of positive outcomes that build trust and inclusion.

I’m optimistic that more of those kinds of conversations are going to take place in the coming years as corporate leaders come to the realization that if they don’t engage their employees, the best ones will go somewhere else.

Ron

_________________________________________________________________________________

Ron:

Agreed.  I think both have to bend toward the middle.  CEOs have to understand the importance of communications folks getting involved earlier AND communications folks have to be better integrative problem solvers.  Then it will all work.

Cheers.

R.

Book review: The Chief Engagement Officer

Last year I got a review copy of The CEO - Chief Engagement Officer: Turning Hierarchy Upside Down to Drive Performance. I had heard an interview with author John Smythe on FIR and I was excited about the book. Smythe came across as a passionate and eloquent advocate for a modern, more inclusive style of leadership that recognizes employees' need to be more involved in decisionmaking.

I'm of two minds on the book, which has received high praise. On the one hand, although it's only 212 pages, it's an incredibly tough slog and took me about six months to get through on my bus commute. I'm sure Mr. Smythe is a great consultant, but a great writer he ain't. Here's a particularly troublesom example:

"Selling to the many what has been decided by the few may be a rational choice in conditions similar to those where a tell mode is suitable but where the employee group is likely to be resistant to instruction and needs persuading to motivate and engergize them."

Whaaa? There are far too many passages like that. I often found myself shutting the book and taking out my iPod.

And it's less of a business book than an expansion of every powerpoint presentation the author has ever made. Lots of figures with little arrows pointing everywhere and boxes with words in them like "cultural drivers," "workplace drivers" and "instrumental drivers." A very, very corporate feel. Yuck.

But get past the corporatespeak (most of which could have been fixed by a good editor) and this book is a real treasure, with some great insights on employee engagement and organizational communication.

I honestly think it should be in every employee communicator's library, and I encourage you to order a copy. In the meantime, here are some of the key points:

• For Smythe (and his former colleagues at McKinsey) engagement is “a process by which people become personally implicated in the success of a strategy, change, transformation or everyday operational decision,” and “communication is essential to set the context for engagement and provide people with a sense of journey.”

• Engagement needs to be considered as part of an organization’s decision-making process – not something that takes place after the fact: “No operational decisions or grand plan can be said to be complete until the decision makers or sponsors have thought through how to engage those who are implicated in the decision/change.” Amen.

• Here’s an interesting observation: “Turbulence wakes people and allows them to see the repetitive patterns which they are either voluntarily or involuntarily ensnared by. It provides them with a moment of clarity in which they can make personal choices about breaking the pattern or going with the flow…”

• And here’s another: “Too often …the novelty of the original thinking is undermined by the way those are directing the change or decision engage those who are key to the execution. The danger is that the engagement and communication processes appear to be repetitions of past practices which dilute the novelty and freshness of the underlying strategy, change or decision.” In other words, avoid the SSDD (same shit, different day) syndrome.

• The move from a hierarchical, management-by-decree approach to one that is more inclusive and engaging doesn’t happen overnight: “…you cannot suddenly go from an autocratic top-down model to one in which you expect people to respond to a more inclusive approach. There will be distrust and a lack of collective skills. It will take experimentation.”

• Smythe is a strong proponent of what he calls “engagement interventions” – experiences in which participants are invited to contribute ideas, solve problems, or seize opportunities that “would normally be tackled by the higher levels of the hierarchy.” At the same time, though, he warns against imposed, programmatic change programs because they can alienate people and “often become unstuck during implementation.” How many times have you seen that in the corporate world?

• For Smythe, communication is an important component of engagement that needs to start early in the process. “The sad truth is that most leadership teams do not keep people in the dark deliberately. Some do not see the need for it, but most want to wait until things are looking better and they feel more confident. But the later they leave it, the harder they have to work to instill confidence in their people; an invisible plan inspires no one.” That's a great passage that helps redeem Smythe's writing. And, for communicators, it's our inconvenient truth.

• Of course, it’s not all about communication, but rather it should entail “Action not words: whilst creating a shared story with a higher purpose is critical, if it stops there as a marketing or communication process it will have been a waste of time and the sponsor will lose credibility. The prime outcome is action which will deliver the stated aims of the vision, and that action must be driven at all levels.” Amen, brother.

Despite the difficult read, I found the book to have lots of inspiring stuff and I hope some day to have a drink with Mr. Smythe. If you're as deep into the employee engagement business as he is, he must have lots of hair-raising stories to tell.

A side benefit: if you're ever in need of fodder for a powerpoint presentation about communicating change, there's lots of good material to draw on.

Finally, there's an unexpected treat that's worth the price of the book. The last chapter, by consultant, author and academic Johanna Fawkes, is a thorough overview of recent research on employee engagement, documenting the various different definitions, approaches, measurement techniques and lots more.  For all the engagement fatigue that's out there, it's clear from the research that this is a field that's in its early days, with lots of fine-tuning to come.

Dear CEO

It’s time for corporate leaders to change the way they communicate with employees.

In an article in the current edition of the Journal of Employee Communication Management, I outline nine ways today’s CEOs can improve their vital connection with the people who make their businesses run. I’ve structured the piece as an open letter to CEOs.

When I first got this assignment, I invited readers of this blog to weigh in with their thoughts, which I incorporated into the article. Thanks, Mark, Steve, Robin and Kristen! Thanks also to my wise colleagues at Longview for their insights.

Here’s a link to the entire article, in .pdf format. Download ron_jecm_article_feb_08.pdf  

And here’s a blog-friendly summary of my advice to corporate leaders:

1. Think about communication as you’re making business decisions – not after the fact. Good business decisions can go bad in a hurry because communication implications aren’t considered as part of the decision-making process.

2. Involve your communications team much earlier than you do now. Your communicators can act as a proxy for employees who do not otherwise have a voice.

3. Recognize that today’s employees don’t necessarily share your values. Baby boomer CEOs have a different work ethic, a different set of priorities, a different idea of what a successful career looks like, and a different way of communicating. If you communicate as if all employees think just like you, you risk alienating and further disengaging your workforce.

4. Understand what your employees are thinking. Quickie employee polls, readership surveys and small focus groups can give you timely and useful information. Be sure to show that you’ve listened, and that you’re responding to employee concerns, and you’ll earn their trust.

5. Start a real conversation with your employees.  One of the easiest ways to increase engagement is to have a conversation with employees about the future of your company. Get ahead of the curve now and start experimenting with social media like blogs and podcasts. In the meantime, get out there and talk with people face to face.

6. For goodness’ sake, stop blocking the Internet! There are security and productivity issues, but they can be resolved. Severely limiting internet access is not the answer because it inhibits employee engagement. Open access to information invites involvement, breeds innovation and inspires commitment.

7. Improve day-to-day communication with your direct reports. The way to make the biggest impact is to model the right behavior with your own immediate team.

8. Don’t be reluctant to tell the whole truth. If you don’t talk frankly and openly about what everyone knows already, you lose credibility – and the next time you have really positive news to talk about, employees won’t buy that, either.

9. And, finally, and perhaps most importantly, speak plain English with employees. The language you may speak in the boardroom, or with your bankers and lawyers, may be truthful but it’s incomprehensible to most employees.

To communicators, all this stuff is as obvious as the nose on our faces. But many corporate execs don’t think in these terms, and their leadership suffers as a result. Part of our job should be to give them this kind of advice, and I don't think we do it often enough.

Guru Ronnie on the year behind, and the year ahead

2007 was one of those seminal years in which technological changes, economic trends, generational shifts and business realities made employee communications people more nervous than usual about our place in the world.

We watched as the foofarah over social media came to a bubbly head, prompting those who were "in" to feel trendy and superior, and those who were "not in yet" to soften their skepticism and wonder if it's time to jump onto the bandwagon -- before it sinks, wheels spinning, into the mud of reality.

We worried that the continued globalization of the world economy would outsource all our jobs to Bangalore. (They can update Intranet sites from there, can't they?)

We felt puzzled and threatened by all those millennial kids coming into the workforce, with their goody-two-shoes Gen Y values and their canny ability to communicate with each other without the help of wizened, cynical intermediaries like us.

And we wondered how much longer we would be communicating about "employee engagement" before it gets replaced by another jargony term for the same vain attempts of large organizations to cope with the existential morass that is the modern workplace.

Well, it's pretty clear 2008 is going to be more of the same.

Woo hoo!

I say "Woo hoo!" because these anxiety-inducing trends are such gigantic, interesting challenges that there's truly no better time to be in internal communications. Never has what we do mattered so much. 

Before I decide what will happen in 2008, let me look back at what I saw coming in 2007. At the start of last year I made a bunch of pompous predictions, most of which were vague enough to keep me off the hook, 12 months later, as I freshly prognosticate again. The only prediction that I clearly blew was the most specific: that Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson would add another 50 episodes to the vast audio bank of their podcast, For Immediate Release. The prolific duo produced twice that, and Shel and Neville continue apace.

So, here are my predictions for 2008:

1. This will be the year that every Fortune 500 company, every government, every big NGO -- pretty much every organization with more than 200 employees -- will have a social media strategy, which will include an employee component. Some will dive in, others will dabble. But this trend will touch EVERYBODY in 2008. In February 2009 the Gold Quill Awards program will be swamped with social media entries, just as it was swamped with corporate Web sites in 1997.

2. Smart communicators will use this sweeping trend as an excuse to start a meaningful conversation with their CEOs about what it will take to connect with employees and build a strong internal community. Others will blindly do stuff just because it's trendy, wasting huge amounts of money and further alienating employees with needless information delivered in new ways.

3. Facebook will launch a sister network designed for business (along the lines of Linkedin, but better) that will become extremely popular, but will prompt many companies to install clunky internal social networks in a vain attempt to keep their "walled gardens" closed to the outside world. In a related trend, employees will start bringing their own wirelessly connected personal laptops to work so they can stay hooked up to their social networks during the day. Some will get fired for this, making headlines and inspiring others to follow.

4. There will be a global shortage of internal communicators. This will be driven by the rise of social media and the increasing desperation of corporate leaders as they try to figure out how to improve employee engagement. Salaries and job positions for employee comms professionals will finally begin to approach parity with external communications.

So, 2008, bring it on! I'm ready, and so are communicators everywhere. It's going to be one hell of a year.

 

Sticky ideas

It's worth signing up to The McKinsey Quarterly to read a recent interview with Chip Heath, Professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford School of Business and co-author of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. The interview includes this bit of wisdom, along with lots of other great insights for employee communicators:

"Leaders will spend weeks or months coming up with the right idea but then spend only a few hours thinking about how to convey that message to everybody else. That’s a tragedy. It’s worth spending time making sure that the lightbulb that has gone on inside your head also goes on inside the heads of your employees or customers."

Heath says sticky ideas share six basic traits:

• They're simple. They should be short, but they also must have some depth. Think proverb, not sound bite.
• They're unexpected. You're looking for uncommon sense.
• They're concrete. The opposite of "building shareholder value." More like "We can put a man on the moon in this decade."
• They're credible. Make sure the audience will buy it by avoiding spin.
• They convey emotion. Don't try to convince people. Move them.
• They tell stories. Stories allow people to mentally rehearse an idea by imagining how it is experienced by someone else. Heath calls stories "a kind of mental flight simulator."

I love, love, LOVE how the interview ends, with Heath discounting the importance of conveying sticky ideas through sexy media. "If you have the money to produce a movie about your inspiring story of organizational renewal, that's great. If not, just find an inspiring story and put it in your newsletter."

That made my day. Read the whole interview and it will make yours.

More proof that employee communications matter

Yet another study from a big HR consulting firm came out this week. This one, from Watson Wyatt, demonstrates unequivocally that employee communications matter -- that doing it right is a measurable competitive advantage. The firm's annual Communication ROI Study outlines the six communication "secrets" of top employers in the U.S. (My favorite "secret": "Leveraging the talents of internal communicators to manage change effectively.")

A few weeks ago it was a global employee engagement study from Towers Perrin that revealed employee engagement is at an all-time low.

As self-serving as these studies are, I think they're great. Each one seems to hone in a little closer on a fundamental truth in business today: that connecting with employees is worth the trouble.

As I have said in this space before: well, duh. And yet. And yet so many organizations are losing the battle as they struggle to improve their broken relationships with their people. Part of the answer (as the self-serving news releases from the big consulting firms would like us to believe) is for companies to open up their pocketbooks and hire the good folks at WW and TP to develop and help implement big internal engagement programs. Part of it is for CEOs to wake up and take a hard look at whether they're paying enough attention to this critical part of their leadership responsibilities.

And part of the answer is in the hands of internal communicators. We need to stand up on our chairs and speak up about what really matters to us and to the organizations we serve. And, as we're wobbling and clearing our throat, having those self-serving studies in our back pocket ain't a bad thing.