designing communication strategies that steer
organizational direction

---

Contracting a murder
of anti-champions

(JENKINTOWN, Pa.)--The "Summary Notes" below are from "Contracting a murder of anti-champions" in Washington, DC. The two-hour session was a part of "Energizing Your Workforce Through Effective Communication," a two-day Conference sponsored by The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) and Aon Consulting. 

WASHINGTON, D.C.
Presenter:
Roland L. Draughon
Consultant - Internal Communication
Gavin-Hodges Associates
Jenkintown, Pennsylvania 

Part 1 of 2

"When we talk about fruits, we may refer to...
a bunch of grapes, or
a bunch of bananas!

When we talk about animals we may refer to...
a herd of buffalo, or
a litter of puppies, or
a gaggle of geese!

But there's another group...
There are clever, scheming, plunderers of the orderly curbsides of our lives that make up a feathered nemesis known as "a murder."

A murder
I refer, ladies and gentlemen to "crows." Did you know that crows are not a flock? When you see several crows together--doing what crows do--fouling your neatly tended lawn on trash collection day...ladies and gentlemen, you're looking at a murder of crows.

Don't believe me? Look it up on the worldwide web. There's a false folk tale that says crows form tribunals to judge and punish the non-conforming behavior of members of their group. The tale says that if the verdict goes against a defendant, the crows kill (murder) the convicted bird.

Anti-champions
While I don't believe that one can be taught to be a consultant, I do believe that one can be taught consulting skills. Among the things that I do in the course of a year is lead a seminar with organizational communicators on how to be seen and used by organizational operating managers as an internal communication consultant.

Years ago, in a session of that particular seminar, a participant piped up and said: "Roland, the most difficult challenge of going back home and using the skills learned in this internal communication consulting seminar is overcoming the bias of operating managers who know us as a producer of media--a pair of hands--an editor or writer.

"To succeed," he expanded, "we need a champion--somebody in our organization who will back us and reinforce with the key managers in our organizations that we can add value with strategic communication management.

"But what we're left to deal with on our own more often," he said, "are managers who don't want us to change what we do. They don't want us to provide strategic communication counsel and advice. What we have to deal with," he concluded, "are these anti-champions!"

We devote considerable time in that seminar, and in the others that I lead, on preparing for the inevitable clash with "anti-champions."

In fact, I always think of organizational anti-champions as being very much like crows. I see them as "a murder of anti-champions." They sit on your organizational fence, ready to foul whatever new or different ideas come into the organization. Dealing with these anti-champions will require a well-thought out "contract."

Who are these organizational anti-champions?? Wanna see what a typical murder of anti-champions looks like??? Fear not. I don't know the names of anybody in your organization. And if any anti-champion that I'm about to describe sounds familiar, it's because they're a common "type" in most organizations.

Question: What are anti-champions like? How do you recognize them? What are the defining characteristics of anti-champions? Consider the following as 'typical' characteristics:
   Anti-champions are the reactionaries in your work lives. They want everything to stay the way it was.
   Anti-champions are the folks who do not know that the communication process begins with identifying a desired behavior--not with developing a message.
   Anti-champions are the folks--and you can name them in your workplace--who do not make any connection between achieving operating objectives, strategic communication and influencing employee behaviors.
   Anti-champions do not view communication as a management process that is their responsibility as a part of achieving their business plans.
   Anti-champions are the folks who view communication as a nice-to-have. ^Top

'A murder of anti-champions'
Let me show you the composition of a typical "murder of anti-champions."

First, there's a Mr. Big.
Mr. Big--usually not the CEO--but an officer who heads a unit/division that either produces a lot of revenue or heads a unit/division that otherwise is highly valued by the organization (Legal is a good example of a non-revenue producing unit that has clout.)

But Mr. Big still believes that his job is to communicate "to" people what he wants done--not communicate "with" people about what his organization needs to get done. There is no exchange of information between Mr. Big and employees --even when he pretends to listen during his version of a town-hall meeting. For him, its an opportunity to sit and present a benevolent smile upon his "worker children."

Nevertheless, Mr. Big reports to his boss--the CEO--that his "communications with employees" for the year are coming along just fine. Mr. Big leads the parade of managers who talk-the-organizational talk but never really walk-the-organizational walk. But worse, other organizational managers follow his style.

And then, there's always a Rosemarie.
Our Rose has been with the organization since before McDonald's had an arch! She may even tell you about the days when the Pony Express used to drop the mail by the front door! She will always tell you about the early days "when we all used all to work in one room and we didn't have to e-mail people," she'll add. "Employees were told what we needed them to know. And I'll tell you another thing," she'll continue, "there was no such thing as staying home a couple of days because you had the flu. You just took a couple of aspirin and got on in here!"

You can usually find a Rose in the HR department. Her power--and it's real--is that Mr. Big listens to her about "what our people do and do not need to know." Our Rose doesn't believe in saying very much to employees, but she does tell Mr. Big on a regular basis that employees think that it's nice that the ‘house organ' comes out on Fridays with employees birthdays and a recipe-of-the week. Our Rose also doesn't think much of electronic newsletters. She still prefers ‘the paper' on paper. It was a Rose who invented the phrase: "That's just not the X-company way." (You fill you the company name.)

And always, just to the left of Mr. Big, is a Ron.
Ron is a kiss-up. All our Ron really wants is for Mr. Big to think that he's always on top of everything and indispensable to the unit. Actually what our Ron really wants is for Mr. Big to be so impressed with his work that Mr. Big will turn to him and say, "Dude, I'm getting you a Dell!"

Coming from the same orbit as Ron is our Dottie.
Dot wants our Rose's job some day. So Dot just agrees with, and amens everything that Rose says. Dot caters both to Mr. Big and Ron. Our Dot is not always found in HR. Sometimes she's found in marketing or customer service. But she wants to run HR one day. She plays nice-nice with Ron because he might get to be a Mr. Big when she gets to be a Rose.

Low person on the totem pole is a Mack.
Our Mack basically sleepwalks through his job. He stumbles through his day more or less mumbling, "It's time to make the doughnuts. It's time to make the doughnuts." His unit/division is an important one but his second in command runs the show and gets little credit. Our Mack is not a problem away from the ‘murder' but has no convictions of his own when he's perched alongside the others.

And finally, there's always a Bill (or two).
Our Bill has the potential to be ("Zoom-Zoom"--like in the Mazda TV commercial?) what you'd get if an operating manager were raised by an organizational communicator. Our Bill is wedged in among the anti-champions because he doesn't know how to break away, or he's new to the organization. Find the Bills in your organization. Make them your targets. They're more likely to be open to trying a communication strategy with their operating plan strategy. But you have to protect and hand-hold them through small communication strategy success steps to larger steps. But that's jumping ahead to Plan B.

Not about 'putting the hit on'
If you came to this session today thinking that you would learn how to "put the hit" on the folks at your office who make you crazy about communication, this is not the session. As you've heard, we're not talking about that kind of ‘murder.' This session is about: (1) why there should never be an operating plan without a communication strategy wrapped around it; (2) why a communication strategy is useless until it is anchored to the operating plan; (3) why a communication strategy can not take the place of an operating plan; and (4) what the critical elements are in a communication strategy. ^Top

Roles & responsibilities
Let start this morning with a discussion of organizational communication management and today's built-in roles and responsibilities.

Question: Somebody please, tell me your definition of what the organizational communication process is, why organizations do it and how we can tell when it's working in ways that add organizational value?

Question: So that's what communication is--the process? Then, what is targeted communication management?

Question: Would you buy then, the statement that organizational communication management means learning to target communications?

Question: What is your definition of the targeted communication process?

Try this definition:

The Targeted Communication Process
can be viewed
as happening and succeeding
when
the message sent is
the message received,
the message responded to
(feedback from receivers),
and
the target audience
has been influenced
and
is exhibiting
the desired behavior(s)
and taking
desired action(s).

Question: If you buy that definition, then what are the key indicators of communication targeting success?
Answer: The behaviors of your target audience and the feedback that you get from your target audience.

Question: How does that process and definition differ from what you arrived here with in your head about communication strategies??

Let's move on...
Question: So what is the Fit and function of an organizational communication strategy? Where does it fit in the organizational strategy?

Once the organizational operating plan is done and announced to the workforce...and the little pocket cards handed out with the mission/vision/values on it...isn't that enough? Isn't that all that senior organizational management is responsible for doing? Not quite!

There is an incorrect assumptions by some senior organizational leaders that 'If I tell you what is in the operating plan, you (employees) will know how to make it happen.'

Fit & Function
There can be no viable operating strategy without a communication strategy wrapped around it.

The Fit of the communication strategy with the operating strategy is that nothing gets done the way it's supposed to be done (in the operating plan) until somebody tells somebody how to behave to make the operating strategy happen.

It's a driver of the operating plan strategy. It's the blueprint--the game plan--for how to influence the specific desired behaviors among specific organizational stakeholders if the operating plan is to be achieved. Note that I say "a" driver--not the only driver--of the operating plan. Communication alone does not achieve the operating plan.

An organizational operating strategy without a communication strategy wrapped around it is a big, fancy document locked away in somebody's desk drawer gathering dust.

Communications that exists without a direct connection to the operating strategy is a "media list" comparable to the numbers scribbled on the back of an envelope by a lottery ticket buyer. The chances of the communications hitting--influencing the organization's key stakeholder groups--the chances are about as good as somebody in this room winning this weeks DC Lottery. (Is there a DC lottery?)

Ownership and accountability
One of my favorite topics: Who owns the organizational communication strategy?
Answer: The Creators of the organizational operating plan also "own" the communication management process.

But...communication management is a "learned" skill--a "must-be-learned" skill in many cases. The operating plan creators can't own the communication management process if they don't know what communication management is. ^Top

Three critical levels
There are three critical levels of organizational communication management responsibility. Communicators and organizational leaders have involvement at all three levels.

Communicators' strategic responsibility
The communicators' strategic responsibility means that we understand that our job is to develop and carry out only the communications that we know are needed to support our organization's priorities. It means that we are responsible for knowing our organization's operating challenges and for tugging on our leaders' capes and helping them to define the desired behaviors needed to achieve the targets in the organizational operating plan.

Operating managers' strategic responsibility
The managers'/leaders' strategic responsibility means that they can translate and define exactly what the words in the operating plan mean. They can articulate how they will know when the operating plan has been achieved. It means that they can trust that their staff communicator understands the operations strategy well enough to give advice, counsel and help in developing and carrying out communication exchanges that influence critical stakeholders.

Communicators' leadership responsibility
The communicators' leadership responsibility means that we know that our job requires us to demonstrate high knowledge, high energy and a high will to keep pushing our operating managers to develop and execute a communication strategy instead of media. It means that we can convey, explain, state clearly and forcefully to our organizational managers, what the link is between internal communication and achievement of the organization's objectives. It means that we can paint a compelling picture about the relevance of a communication strategy to our organization?

Operating managers' leadership responsibility
The managers'/leaders' leadership responsibility means that as a leader/manager, he or she knows and can articulate for the people in their operating unit, how they need people to behave if the operating plan is to be achieved.

Now, here's where the rubber meets the road.

Communicators' operational responsibility
Our operational responsibility means that we take whatever personal communication action steps are needed to help our organizational leaders define the "desired state" of behaviors among employees that support achievement of the strategic operating plan.

It means that we will ‘take a risk' and tell somebody, who has more power, that: "As I understand what your strategy says, you want x-to happen. The best message exchanges to influence your stakeholders to make that happen would be...not..."

Leaders' operational responsibility
As a manager/leader, he/she comprehends that operationally, there can be no executable communication strategy for his/her operating plan until he/she:
   understands that the communication management process is his/her responsibility;
   understands that his/her critical stakeholder groups don't know how they are expected to behave unless he/she communicates with them and listens to them;
   understands that their employees will have faint faith in his/her communications with them if they seem be making-it-up as they go;
   understands that his/her staff communicators are not supposed to ‘communicate' for him/her, but are advisers and counselors who partner with them to identify the desired behaviors needed from the key stakeholders that he/she has identified in the operating plan strategy;
   understands that it is a waste of resources to consider staff communicators as "pairs of hands" who only produce media;
   understands that "happy talk" in organizational media does not "boost morale" nor fool my critical stakeholder groups into believing that he/she has communicated with them; and
   understands that it is an inescapable requirements to make sure that he/she walk-the-walk and not just talk-the-talk.

Wall Street Journal story
Did you see the page one story in The Wall Street Journal about a month ago (Feb. 19, 2002) entitled: "Managers must respond to employee concerns about honest business"

This story came in the wake the events surrounding the Enron news events. The point of the story, for me, was this statement by a person who was quoted as saying: "If you end up with employee who don't have any trust for their top leaders, you're not going to have productive, really committed employees."

I teach Gavin-Hodges' copyrighted strategic communication management process to communicators and managers. Our process is called "The Values/Communication Actions Matrix." The key point that I make with participants, from day one, is:"You would never communicate, nor cause to be communicated, anything that does not fit within your organization's value system."

That includes, I point out, not communicating with employees about things that are "sort of" or "almost" true.

That then begs the question: What is one to do when somebody with more power than you insists that you trash/ignore the established organizational values? Do you do (what your're told) or leave the organization, or something else?" ^Top Go to Murder Part 2.

Gavin-Hodges Associates
(215)839-8373  Fax (215)247-5403
Contact: Ms. S.N. Jones, Marketing Associate
snjones@gavinhodges.com
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Post Office Box 704
Jenkintown, Pennsylvania 19046-7104