Let me tell you a story

Storytelling (though it's best not to describe it thus to your left brain CEO) is a technique increasingly being used to give more meaning, context and authenticity to the conversations taking place in some businesses. I have used this approach in a few places - careful to describe it to senior leaders as a way to better bring the business strategy to life and not something involving Janet and John or anything to do with Harry Potter. Google it and you will find plenty of references and case studies. I would also encourage you to check out people like Sparknow , Tony Quinlan and The Storytellers .
Here's another good link - the Harvard Business Review's interview with Peter Guber. Couldn't have put it better myself!
http://tinyurl.com/5sub8pf

Making a point with PowerPoint

I have found myself explaining to a senior leader how 168 PowerPoint slides does not an engaging and dynamic business strategy make. I have also asked various executives whether they did a PowerPoint round up for their spouses when asked about their day or engaged in some good old fashioned conversation - the kind of communication employees often prefer. While I still think PowerPoint when used correctly is a useful aide memoire, you can imagine my horror at a story my friend told me recently. It seems the HR director at her work came home from a hard day at the office to tell his wife he was leaving her as she had failed to fulfill Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs for him for the past 20 years. And yes, you've guessed it, he used a PowerPoint diagram to spell out why he was off to live with his mistress. If you need to use PowerPoint (for business!), this is a good link: http://tinyurl.com/lonz5w
If you are leaving the love-of-your-life, can I suggest Relate?

More on Maslow and employee engagement at:
http://tinyurl.com/3qqqubs

Remember you're a Wobbler

Talking to a colleague yesterday we agreed the need for comms practitioners to have a goodly amount of  'resilience' to get their job done and to try and make a difference. It reminded me of a great quote (can't remember its origins): 'Corporate culture is like a giant jelly: unless you shake it hard, it wobbles back to its original position.'
I must confess that as a young reporter I thought 'corporate culture' was the stuff lurking in the unwashed mugs in my old newsroom. I am still not sure it's an entity in itself. What I am sure of is that organisations are the sum of their parts in terms of people, processes, how things have always been done and are done. That makes some of them very tough to work in and for. But how very satisfying when you  'wobble' them to improve communications and it works!

Take a peep at the people

You wouldn’t run an advertising or marketing campaign without real insight into the people you were trying to persuade. Yet how much internal comms activity takes into consideration that most of us (with some exceptions) don’t leave our real selves at the office door but come to work as individuals and with all our wonderful human characteristics intact?
We are not one passive ‘audience’. You have members of the public working for you. If you want to take people along as your organisation transforms, you need to understand who they are, what they think and feel, what turns them on and off and what might just convince them to give a little bit extra. And what’s more your CEO or MD will expect you to know this stuff.
There is plenty of research you can do yourself or that already exists in organisations. Indeed you probably have a starter for 10 from measurement and feedback processes. But you may need to enrich it with further qualitative info and this is one of those occasions when you should prioritise your budget – however big, small or non-existent – and call in the experts to mine that valuable insight and help you get the basics in place. 

Puzzling stuff

I was once asked by a senior leader that we need 'to try harder' with engagement. He had a solution, he told me, and suggested our managers engage their teams in the UK around a new company vision using nothing more than a jigsaw puzzle covered in a global mantra. He was planning to send us this magical jigsaw, which had allegedly worked its spell in other countries, and was aghast when I explained it might take just a tad more than that to do it. I did put it to him that culturally the Brits are a questioning kind of people and spookily may want to understand how the business was planning to achieve its vision, what was their role, what was in it for them and so on, and a balsa wood puzzle was not going to do this - however jazzy!

But this story is a reminder that while there are plenty of organisations well ahead in the engagement stakes, there are still too many who want to tick a great big box on it. They seem happy to spend a small fortune on glorious comms gimmicks, sheep dip their employees each and every one of them in some kind of one-off comms activity that promises to miraculously transform them Stepford-wives’-style into 'engaged' beings, and wonder why nothing changes.

PS We never used the jigsaw puzzles.

The ex PM, her veg and cultural comms

Are you a tough battler, friendly helper or a logical thinker? Do you feel threatened when someone points a finger at you or makes eye contact for longer than what you think is polite?

What's good for you – 12 inches or 3ft (personal space, that is) - and are you intimidated by anyone invading it? Does fear of divine retribution mean you refuse to shake hands with a member of the opposite sex?

Crossing the cultural divide when you are communicating globally needs careful consideration.

I was once told by an international comms guru that at birth we are all 'a ball of pure potential'. It's what happens in the following years which shapes a person's view of the world.

Culture, status, wealth, religion, tradition – even the weather - can all affect how we behave and interact with others. It can be tough negotiating the global multi cultural minefield. When researching this a few years ago I discovered that US companies were at that time losing $2 billion a year because they didn't spend enough time or money preparing their people for foreign assignments. Over 30% of all mergers and acquisitions were failing because of cultural chasms. The same guru outlined some interesting personality traits about different nationalities. Apologies if anyone feels they are an exception! Her view was the Brits can be quite uptight and introspective, the Americans like to be in charge and the French are quite hierarchical and business titles and kudos matter enormously.

Then there are the distinct personality traits – the battlers, thinkers and helpers I have previously mentioned. These idiosyncracies transcend all cultures, but being aware they exist and knowing how to deal with them can make business communication far more effective.

Tough battlers move fast, are very ambitious, like to be in charge but rarely possess many people skills. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is a shining example. The following anecdote from a Conservative Party dinner is true...on my dog's life:

Waiter: "Madame, how would you like your steak cooked."

Mrs T: "I'll have it rare."

Waiter: "And the vegetables?"

Mrs T: "They'll have the same as me."

Logical thinkers, on the other hand, love detail, research and won't make any decisions until they have plenty of back-up. Friendly helpers are great listeners, team players and want people to be involved and happy.

Today's communicators have a great deal to think about when faced with the cultural divide. The challenge is to acknowledge the differences between personalities, cultures and countries and work with that insight, not against it.

Business better by smiles

They speak for themselves. Enjoy!

Ban the 'fluff' in your function

As a pragmatist I am not overly impressed with too much theory or hypothetical nonsense about the business of improving internal communication.

In that spirit, and in no particular order, here are some thoughts:

• A comms plan is not a business strategy but sometimes in lieu of the latter (and yes it does happen!) you can pull together a framework for communicating what the business should be sharing and start the dialogue.
• Strategy schmategy. I don’t believe people who say they are only strategic and don’t roll their sleeves up and get tactical. It’s a balance of both depending on business need.
• Don't feel you are only half a comms practitioner if you don’t have every single latest way to communicate in your comms approach. I once overheard someone say they needed to ‘engage’ their staff because everyone else is doing ‘staff engagement’.
• Remember your CEO will come to you wanting to know what people are thinking and feeling in the organisation. Keep a finger on the pulse – that’s your job.
• Talk the language of business and ban the fluff in your function. How can you and your team show real value in the work you do? Perhaps link your activities with your own scorecards and measures or add it to others’ key performance indicators?
• Who, what, why, when, where and how are good to have top of mind most days.
• Stalking could get you in trouble, networking is a great alternative so find those people in the business you need to help you get things done. Organisations never look nice, neat and hierarchical like those organagrams on the intranet. They are structured more like a mad ‘splitting the atom’ diagram from a science book. It’s not what you know but who.
• You don’t need to spend the GDP of a small Caribbean island to support a business with great comms activity.
• Communication is more than one, two or three ways.
• Employees are the public and usually – particularly in the UK – have their own opinions. They don’t do being spoon fed information and spookily often want to have their say or get involved in change.
• 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.
• Listening is good and should feature in your approach to stakeholders and with employees. 
• What do you want people to think, feel or do as a result of communication? If you or the business person who has come to you for help can’t answer that it probably doesn’t need to happen.
• Leadership visibility – be very afraid of encouraging or increasing this if the leader in question hasn’t learned any social skills. It’s fine to be more visible and build a better relationship with your employees but not if your leader is a psycho standing three inches from said employee and asking them if they enjoy their job.
• Benchmark – people are people with a few variations whatever the business they work for. You can learn a lot from your peers’ experiences of supporting similar challenges in other organisations.
• 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.
• And lastly…banned from the Board meeting? Your unofficial network gone on holiday? Don’t discount the treasures you can find or pick up at the photocopier, fax machine, water cooler, paper shredder and on all those social communication sites.

Making sense of it

And on the search for commonsense around employee engagement here's one of the clearest discussions on the subject that I have heard for a long time.

http://ciprinside.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/is-there-a-future-for-video-in-employee-comms-and-engagement/

Darth Vadar spreads a little employee love

What’s Darth Vadar got to do with it? I am going to what looks a very promising event in London next week on a theme that continues to tangle up a lot of internal communications professionals and obsesses their CEOs. Staff engagement – a buzzword doing the business bingo rounds  – has a plethora of definitions and I am sure I’m not alone in trying to find some clarity to what I suspect is just age old common sense got lost in the corporate quagmire: treat your people well and you might get a successful business. As it’s top of mind I post up here some lighthearted relief on the subject c/o Lego's Darth Vadar and chums: