For Your Approval

No and yes

I was reminded the other day of the importance of the words "no" and "yes" in internal communications, and the even greater importance of knowing how, and when, to say them.

Here are some nos I'd like the hear more often:

No, we can't include that 200-word sentence in the story because it doesn't make sense.
No, we shouldn't keep that critical fact from employees because they already know it.
No, we'd better not paint too positive a picture because employees can smell bullshit a mile away.
No, the company shouldn't impose that new policy without consulting with employees.
No, I won't put a picture of your damned cat in the employee newsletter.

And so on. You gotta draw the line. The problem is, the more we say no, the more managers think employee communicators are not much more than bureaucratic obstacles to communicating. We're often seen to have these weird highfalutin standards that show we don't understand the business or the true culture of the organization.   

And so, to avoid being viewed as stonewalling bureaucrats, we get in the habit of saying yes to things we shouldn't, like,

Yes, I'll publish that insanely cold, jargony, meaningless message to employees.
Yes, it's just fine that you didn't consult me before you made that stupid, morale-destroying decision.
Yes, I'll do exactly what you tell me, and I really don't mind being told what to do.
Yes, we don't have to do any meaningful follow-up on those lousy employee survey results.
Yes, it's just fine to eliminate our flagship print publication.

You get the idea.

Of course, there are effective ways to say no that don't include the word no and don't necessarily make a bad impression. In the end, the key to being an effective communicator isn't whether you say yes or no, but rather whether you approach your job with integrity -- and whether you help solve an organization's problems in a way that earns you trust, confidence and respect.

Going to Australia

I'm delighted to report that I'm going to Australia next month! First stop will be Melbourne, to deliver a conference session and an all-day employee communications workshop at the 2nd Annual Public Relations Summit, organized by Frocomm Australia. At the Summit I'll also be hauling out my Rockin' Ronnie persona and firing up the grill to put on my trademark Communication Cookout for local IABC chapter members (except I'll be grilling pumpkin and lamb instead of asparagus and Alberta beef).

It will be an action-packed week. I'll also be speaking to the students at Deakin University School of Communication Arts. Deakin Lecturer Ross Monaghan is the kind soul who put my book on the  reading list of his course, PR Writing and Tactics, and connected me with the good folks at Frocomm. 

After Melbourne it's off to Sydney, where I'll be doing a luncheon speech for the local IABC chapter.

I'm so excited! I've never been to Australia but I know it's got lots great communicators, including one of my favorite new media commentators, Lee Hopkins.

Any readers of this blog from Australia?

Anybody planning to come to the conference?

Any advice on where to eat in Melbourne and Sydney?

It's awards season

Call me an aging communication nerd. I passed up watching the Oscars last Sunday to judge the Intranet feature and internal blog categories for the Ragan Recognition Awards.

I also spent a couple of evenings last week helping judge the publications category of IABC’s Gold Quill Awards. (It's heartening to note that the publications category still draws the most entries -- our group in Vancouver had over 120 publications to judge.)

I always jump at the chance to be a judge in communication award competitions. It’s a rare chance to take a close look at the work of other communicators – to see the kinds of challenges they’re facing and the solutions they come up with. I always learn something from my experience, and this awards season is no exception.  So here, in no particular order, are some observations:

1. When it comes to internal blogging, we’re still very much in the early days. Ragan received only two entries in the new category. They were both impressive and engaging, but also rudimentary and experimental. The communicators who put them together knew they would be learning as they went, and the blogs they initiated, although rough around the edges, reflected a positive, pioneering spirit. One of the measures of a good blog is whether it generates lots of comments, and by that measure the ones I judged were great, if somewhat clunky, successes. Interestingly, both blogs were written by communication staff members and not rank and file employees or executives. Both were quite transparent attempts to simply start a conversation by putting issues on the table and then inviting readers to comment. And comment they did, with some posts attracting close to 100 comments. Some good lessons for anyone considering starting an internal blog:

• Initially at least, expect a flurry of comments that don’t necessarily stay on the subject being discussed.
• You may also get a certain amount of bitching and complaining as people take advantage of having a new internal forum to voice their irritations with their employer and their workplace.
• Allowing anonymous postings tends to encourage comments, but here’s a good rule – if you’re allowing a mix of attributed and anonymous comments, allow immediate, unedited posts for those willing to identify themselves, and moderated posts for anonymous contributors.
• The blogs I saw had effective self-regulation. Comments that are out of line (rude, unreasonable, confusing) get shouted down, with different degrees of politeness, by other readers.
• Set out clear, sensible guidelines when you start the blog so everyone knows what to expect, and what’s expected of them one of the blogs I judged did a great job of laying out the ground rules.

2. There’s a lot of great writing on Intranets, but how much of it is being read? I was amazed by how much some of the writers could get done in a short Intranet feature. At this point Intranets are relatively mature channel and the entries I saw were quite effective in telling interesting and relevant stories. My biggest concern is that so much good work gets done on these things, and no one is reading them. If you’re trying to keep your Intranet content “fresh,” that means you’re highlighting articles on your portal for only a day or two, or sometimes a week, before they’re buried by other content and then relegated to some kind of archive. Readers of this blog know I’m passionate about this: it’s a crying shame that so many companies have abandoned the extremely effective print medium, which is still one of the best ways of sharing information with employees and creating a sense of community at work.

3. You don’t have to look good to be good. I’m big on using great design and compelling photos to help get information across to employees. And I know there’s a disheartening amount of really crappy looking publications out there, with tiny photos, bad typography, amateurish writing and so on. But one of the publications that I judged looked about as bad as a desktop published newsletter can look – but it succeeded because it had clear communication goals and delivered on them. On a shoestring budget, an editor who had to do triple duty as writer, photographer and layout person managed to strike a chord with readers and influence bottom-line results.

4. Anecdotes and quotes are perhaps the two most powerful things in written communication. Stories that have them, sing. Those that don’t, sink. I was reminded of this with every item I judged. There’s really no better way to make an article come alive than to focus on an individual who is experiencing change first hand. Tell that personal story, using the subject’s own words, and you will be a better communicator.

Crescenzo Unplugged

My old friend Steve Crescenzo likes to call himself the Winston Churchill of employee communications. Like Churchill, he's a blowhard, has a rapier wit, enjoys a drink and a cigar now and then, and likes going to war once in a while. And, of course, he's also a great speaker.

I imagine many of the readers of this blog have attended Steve's conference sessions and read his blog. But if you haven't heard Steve speak, here's a chance to get a taste of the man in action (that didn't come out right, but anyway....).

Visit a link to Steve's interview with Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz at In Session, the IABC conference blog or, if you have iTunes, search the podcast section for "In Session" and you can download it from there.

Steve's commonsense approach to employee communication is refreshing and enlightening, and his energy, enthusiasm and humor are enough to give even the most burnt-out, cynical communicators some inspiration and hope.

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.