For Your Approval

Five Questions for Ann Wylie

If you don't know who Ann Wylie is, it's time you did. She's a veteran communicator who consults, teaches corporate writing and editing, and publishes a great e-zine, Wylie's Writing Tips. In past lives Ann has served as a PR pro in an agency, as a corporate communicator for Hallmark Cards Inc., as editor of a nationally acclaimed executive magazine. She's currently in charge of her own consulting firm, Wylie Communications Inc. These days, Ann handles special writing and editing projects for Saint Luke's, Reader's Digest, The Mayo Clinic and dozens of other major clients. She helps such organizations as FedEx, Sprint and Northern Trust launch or improve their publications.

I'm delighted to showcase Ann's five answers to another edition of Five Questions for . . .

Question #1: You've been an editor and writing coach for many years. Do you think the quality of writing in employee communications has changed for the worse with the emergence of online communications?

Ann: Actually, I think the reverse is true: The better you write for the Web, the better you write for everything else, too. That's because with really good online writing, you're more focused on making copy scannable, getting to the point more quickly, writing in a conversational voice and all the other things that make online writing more effective.

If the quality of writing in employee communications has changed for the worse, it probably has more to do with the fact that communicators now are charged to get more done than ever before. I think business communications would improve if business communicators said "no" more often.

Also, I think the industry's focus on strategy OVER tactics has squished a lot of writing creativity and energy right out of the business.

That said, I do see some amazing business writing. The folks over at Walgreen's still manage to cover yawners like casual dress with creative approaches that rival Men's Health or New York magazine. The PR pro's at Tellabs somehow make articles about ethernets and telecomm services both interesting and accessible. Writers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory turn out stories about photosynthesizing bacteria and fluorescent electron transfer that are so gorgeous, they make you want to weep.

Question #2: What's the biggest single obstacle to great writing in employee communications, and how can it be overcome?

Ann: Probably not valuing writing enough. If strategy is the only way up in your organization, you won't wind up with many senior writers.

Instead, recruit better writers, give them a solid career track, pay them well, train them, coach them and show off their best work. The more we value great writing, the more great writing we get.

I covered this topic in more depth in a rant called "Five ways to improve your team's writing skills."

Question #3: Are today's corporate journalists equipped with the skills and knowledge they need to serve their organizations and audiences? If not, what's the biggest gap and the best way to fill it?

Ann: Some of them are. Some of them aren't.

Probably the single biggest gap is not putting themselves in the reader's head. When you don't do that, you don't position your message in the readers' best interest; you don't ask yourself whether this is the language of the reader or the language of the organization; you don't think of ways to illustrate your points so the readers can literally see them.

So that single lack of perspective causes a lot of other bad-writing symptoms.

There are lots of little tricks you can use to put yourself in your readers' head. Warren Buffett famously writes his letter to shareholders to his sisters, who are smart and interested, but not necessarily educated about insurance floats and loss reserves. He begins each letter, "Dear Doris and Bertie ..."

Business communicators can find out how they rate as writers -- and get some tools for improving their skills here. You can also get monthly writing tips via my e-zine.

Question #4: What is your pet peeve when it comes to corporate writing? What's the worst thing you've seen?

Ann: My biggest beef is people who use the same techniques they learned when they were 19 and in Journalism 101 and don't feel any curiosity about how to get better, what's changed, how to keep improving. I really get energized by people who like to learn and grow, and, conversely, I find myself getting bored and irritated by those who don't. There's so much information about how to write better out there, you almost have to go out of your way not to slam into it.

Question #5: From your point of view, what's the future of employee communications, and where do writers fit in to that future?

Ann: Alas, predicting the future of employee communications is not one of my superpowers. (Ask me who'll win Dancing With the Stars this season, and we can talk.)

However it looks, though, strong writers will play an important role. Good writing reveals good thinking, after all, and there will always be a place for people who are stellar at both.

Five Questions For Petro-Canada "In Depth" Editor Kevin Heinrichs

Last year, Canadian oil and gas giant Petro-Canada launched a new employee print magazine, In Depth. Regular readers of this blog will know I'm a big supporter of print as an integral part of any big organization's internal communications mix. So I was delighted to see my old employer revisiting the form. I think the new magazine is great. Here's a sample: Download indepthfall2007.pdf.

And here's Five Questions for editor Kevin Heinrichs:

Question #1: Why did you decide to launch a new print magazine?
Kevin: The new magazine was launched for two primary reasons. An employee survey indicated that a majority of workers were interested in and would read a magazine if we published one (74% said they "definitely" or "probably" would read it). And we realized that a magazine format would allow us to write more complex stories that lend themselves to creative layout with strong photos. A bonus is that employees can take the magazine with them on their transit commute or home to their families if they want. 

Question #2: What is the content and tone, and why did you choose this approach?
Kevin: We wanted a tone with the text and layout that would appeal to younger readers, but not so edgy that it's inaccessible to older readers. We treat our magazine as though it is a newsstand magazine that just happens to cover one company. The same editing discipline and attention to layout detail apply.

Question #3: What is the format and frequency, and how did you arrive at the final design?
Kevin: In Depth is an 8.5"x11" format on matte stock, and varies from 16-24 pages, depending on the theme. We hired a local design company which brought us three different mock-ups in terms of "feel." One was too formal, but we asked for a hybrid of the other two designs, one which was definitely geared to the twenty-something crowd, and the other which had some great use of white space and typography. Then our designer, Joelle Opelik, took that basic template and created a unique look and feel for each issue's theme, but still under our signature masthead.

Question #4: How does the publication integrate with your online internal communications?
Kevin: For decades, Petro-Canada had a very effective news source in the form of a bi-weekly newsletter called In Brief. [Editor's note: In the early 1990s I worked a two-year stint as editor of In Brief - RS]  It was respected, had name recognition among employees and was relatively well read.  But when we looked at our ability to tell news that is current, the newsletter wasn't able to deliver that kind of timeliness.  We tracked about a four-week lag from the time is story is assigned to when it arrived on employees' desks, given the approvals, layout, proofing, printing and distribution involved. That’s a long time in the hourly news cycle that people are accustomed to in regular life. Shifting the In Brief newsletter content to an HTML format and putting on our company's Intranet allowed us to implement an publish-on-demand system where we can publish news to our homepage as soon as the copy is edited and approved. The writing style of the former newsletter actually lent itself quite well to this new medium as it already valued tight, concise writing. Wherever it makes sense in the print magazine, we also encourage readers to visit our Intranet for more company background on a particular article, or to any video related to the story content.

Question #5: What has the response been, from management and from employees?
Kevin: The anecdotal response after the first year has been great.  People love to be able to bring this home to their families. The recruiters have even been asking for extra copies of some of the issues to give potential hires a sense of the company culture. Mostly what we've heard is that they love the design, and that the stories tell them something new about their company. By way of improvement, readers have also told us they want more "people" stories. We'll be getting the results of a more detailed readership survey later this fall to get some more crunchy results.

Five Questions For Shel Holtz

I'm delighted to introduce what I hope will be a regular feature of this blog, "Five Questions For . . ."

The idea is to showcase leaders in the field of employee communications, as well as working practitioners, in an easy-to-read, informal setting.

What better way to kick the whole thing off than five questions for my old friend, Shel Holtz, ABC, one of the world's leading experts in the applications of online technology as it relates to business communication. Shel travels the world consulting with companies and delivering speeches and workshops. He's on a personal quest to help organizations take advantage of all the new tools and channels being spawned by the next-generation web technologies.

Shel has a rare combination of techno-geek and deeply humanist qualities. He demystifies technology and evangelizes its benefits, but is also happy to warn us of its various misuses and abuses.

Here are my five questions and Shel's answers:

Question #1: You’ve always been a big proponent of strategic employee communications. Why do you think it’s so important in today’s workplace?

Shel: The idea of being strategic doesn't mean the tactics don't count; it just means you START with strategy. It's not rocket science. Being strategic just means that your communications are designed to achieve business goals. To be strategic, then, you need to do the company's plans, its initiatives, its challenges and its issues. You communicate in order to influence employees' opinions, the extent of their commitment, their behaviors and their actions in support of the business.

I remember when I worked at Mattel (where I knew Barbie, personally), I listed the key business issues across the top of a whiteboard and a 12-month calendar along the left-hand side. Then I listed which vehicles we would use to communicate each of those issues during each month. It was a constantly evolving, fluctuating plan, but it helped keep us focused on achieving business goals rather than just communication goals.

Oh, and of course you have to measure your efforts in order to show management that internal communication IS, in fact, helping achieve business goals. With the kind of pressure business is under these days, and the number of layoffs taking place, if you can't show management that you're providing real business value, you're toast.

Question #2: Which company do you think does internal communications best, and why?

Shel: I'm reluctant to pick "the best," because there are a lot of companies whose internal communication programs I haven't seen. That said, I've always been impressed with the communications at Best Buy. It's open and candid. It promotes business literacy. It uses multiple channels. And they're always open to new ideas. Not too long ago, for instance, they introduced the Blue Shirt Nation, a social network for retail workers accessible over the World Wide Web. It has become a force of nature. Twenty percent of retail workers have created profiles. Turnover in the retail workforce is about 75%, but among those with BSN profiles, it has dropped to 8%. These are engaged employees with a solid network of colleagues they would have to abandon if they left.

Question #3: When it comes to using social media/Web 2.0 inside big organizations, what are the most exciting and most disturbing trends?

There are more exciting trends than we have time to list here. Of course, at the top of the heap is the fact that companies are employing social media -- "enterprise web 2.0" -- at all. It's a leap of faith to relinquish that control, trust employees, and open the ability for employees to network with one another. The introduction of social networks in companies -- like Blue Shirt Nation -- is terrific, as is the notion of "employee-generated content," where employees can produce videos, podcasts, blogs, and the like, and share them freely with other employees. It's also great that companies have begun releasing both hosted and installed software solutions designed for the enterprise. Just this week, for example, Yammer launched, which provides companies with a hosted platform for a Twitter-like environment.

The most disturbing trend is the resistance to these tools from IT, Legal, and management. It's a knee-jerk reaction without foundation in fact. The companies that have deployed these tools almost unanimously report positive benefits.

Question #4: What’s the most powerful argument for using these new tools in the workplace? What is the pitch or business case that is guaranteed to change a reluctant CEO’s mind?

Shel: The company will make more money. I mean, honestly, these tools improve productivity, innovation, commitment, and competitiveness. But at the end of the day, that all translates to profit, doesn't it? By the way, I've recorded a video on exactly this subject, which you can find at http://www.viddler.com/shelholtz.

Question #5: How is the role of the internal communicator changing, and what does he/she need to do to be successful in the next decade?

Shel: The role of the internal communicator is expanding. That is, the original role of the communicator is still critical in an organization. But communicators also now are becoming coordinators of communication among employees and groups of employees. A lot of departments might lay claim to ownership of enterprise web 2.0 -- IT and marketing, for example -- but it belongs in employee communications. We have to facilitate the conversations among employees so they are as relevant and productive as possible.

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You can find Shel at his blog, a shel of my former self. He also co-hosts (with fellow guru Neville Hobson) a great podcast about technology and communications called For Immediate Release.