People who know me know how much I loathe all the hot air around internal comms, engagement, call it what you will. It's usually coming from the sort of people who have never actually got their hands dirty and wouldn't be tempted out of bed for less than £2k a day.
Still I guess you gotta earn a living. Yesterday, in my bid to make my office a clutter-free zone, I found a copy of an article I'd written in an industry mag which connected with some of the comments I have seen on Linked In and Twitter recently from new IC people looking for tips and advice on the job.
I wrote the article for Melcrum last year with the key points I felt were worth sharing with other comms practitioners about the role of internal comms and the people helping to make it effective.
They asked me to write it (and no, sadly it didn't involve chocolate or cash incentives) because I have been doing this stuff for a wee while and happened to have a particularly challenging role at the time heading internal communications for Royal Mail in the UK.
What was interesting about the exercise was having to hone down what I felt were the most relevant points bearing in mind the job has changed so much in recent years as have business leaders' expectations. And, naturally, I had a bit to say.
Thank goodness for all those years as a journo and the invention of the bullet point. Yes, the resulting piece had a bit of an 'IC manifesto' look about it, but it is a true reflection of what I believe are the key ingredients for good IC and great IC people.
For this post, there are a couple of points from my 'Ban the fluff in your function' IC manifesto (!!) which I always keep top of mind. Please feel free to have a look at the full post and add your own.
- Don’t be afraid to say what you are thinking and challenge the status quo. Big organisations have a tendency to say they tried your suggestion in August 1985 and it didn’t work.
- Get back to basics – don’t overlook simple ways of communicating for something fancy with bells on it. Conversation is best so do what you can with that in mind.
- Prioritise your priorities or you will soon find there are not enough hours in the day. If you match your comms strategy to business priorities that’s a good start.
Love the list! Absolutely agree with soeaking up and not being afraid to challenge, healthy organisations learn loads from this simple approach.
ReplyDeleteConversation rocks - it's at the heart of making work better and I use loosely facilitated conversations to make stuff happen all the time.
How about, GEMO - good enough, move on. All the extra time taken to polish your message to a high lustre is often a waste. Just get it to a nice shine and get it out there.
And - Proceed Until Apprehended. Often folks in big organisations don't do stuff, because they mistakenly believe it's "against the rules". Usually it ain't - so if you've got a good idea that would benefit your colleagues and customers, guess what? Yep - chances are it is just that - a good idea. And good ideas aren't worth anything until they become action. So get on with it.
Cheers - Doug
PS - any chance you can add the name/url option to your "post comment as:" options please :)