"Piano lessons for 1,000-pound gorillas: how to help your managers tap internal communication's bottom-line value"
Presented by:
Roland L. Draughon
Consultant - Internal Communication
Gavin-Hodges Associates
at The International Association of Business Communicators' (IABC) Annual Convention

New York -
Speaker introduction by: Dennis P. Dahill, Internal Communication Specialist, FleetBoston Financial, Boston, Massachusetts. 

Roland Draughon:
"This is session #204: 'Piano lessons for 1,000-pound gorillas: how to help your managers tap internal communication's bottom-line value.' 

There's a very old joke about two tourists who have become lost in New York City. 

They see this saxophone player on a street corner jamming away on his horn. They go up to him and say, 'Excuse us sir. Can you tell us how to get to Carnegie Hall?'

Decked out in dark sunglasses and a black beret, the saxman replies: 'Practice baby, practice!'

That's also how you move your managers from viewing internal communication as media, to valuing internal communication as management process. It takes 'practice baby, practice.' 

I need a volunteer.
Our volunteer is Sharon Nease, Director of Communications, Bell World, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She will be our Overhead Projection Assistant for this session. 

As all of you heard during Dennis' introduction, among the things that I do is lead professional development seminars. 

In particular, there's a two-day strategic communication planning workshop that I lead called Planning Communications to Support Organizational Objectives. The first thing that I do, in the first few minutes of the first morning of that workshop, is to give the group a heads-up warning. 

I say: 'Ladies and gentlemen, this workshop is a thinking session. If you stop thinking over the next two days, I'll catch you at it. I'll still love you, but I'll catch you not thinking.'

When you go to the Gavin-Hodges web site, look at the page called Saidwhat? to see what people who have experienced the workshop say about it. You'll find several quotes from people who mention the session's requirement to 'keep thinking.' 

One person said something on the order of: 'That first day (and the requirement to keep thinking) is intense!' Wonder what that person usually does on the job? 

Our organizations pay us to think and act. Our organizations can find all kinds of people in the street who do not think! I urge all of you to consider yourselves as having now been warned this morning. Let's keep thinking over the next 75 minutes? 

(Roland Draughon then explained the specially labeled stack of bananas displayed next to the podium at the front of the meeting room.)

These are magic bananas. They hold special powers over 1,000-pound gorillas. Some lucky recipients, in this session, will receive one of these magic bananas. And after they have eaten their magic banana, they will forever and ever and ever hold much power over their own 1,000-pound, organizational gorillas! 

My most worthy Overhead Projection Assistant is the first recipient of a magic banana. In addition, she will be able to attend any, or all, seminars that Gavin-Hodges offers in Philadelphia during the first week in December 2001. 

I need another volunteer to answer a question for me. Here's the question: What do 1,000-pound gorillas do for fun? 

(An audience volunteer answers, "Anything that they want to do!") The audience volunteer received a magic banana.

I need another volunteer for another question. The question is: Do you have any 1,000-pound gorillas in your organization? No names, please! 

And how do you know that they're a 1,000-pound gorilla? And who created your 1,000-pound gorillas? The audience volunteer received a magic banana.

More often than not, ladies and gentlemen, we create our own 1,000-pound gorillas. Let's talk about why and how we do that. ^Top

The Third-Eye Theory
There's something called The Theory of the Third Eye. Essentially it asks each of us to answer this question: 'If you had a third eye in the back of your head, what would you see yourself do on the job, on a daily basis?' 

Taking the Theory further, what would you see yourself do as you work with your organizational managers? Would you see yourself thinking and then acting? Or, would you see only a busy, little pair of hands? 

What would your organizational leaders say that they see you doing that helps them to do their jobs? Would your leaders say (in a whisper) 'We see dead people?'

Do your managers know that what you do is directly connected to what they do? Do your managers know that communication is not an add-on? 

Do your managers know that nothing happens--as documented in their Business Plan--unless they manage internal communication's influence on their organization? And, if your leaders don't know those things, wonder whose fault that is? 

Communication in the Organizational system
Let's talk about Communication in the organizational system. 

Each of us has to, personally, be really clear on who we are, what we do, why we do it and how it adds value to our organizations, before we can comfortably help our organizational leaders value the communication management process. 

Let's take a quick look at the organizational system in diagram form. We need to understand the foundation pieces of our organizations if we are to convince our leaders to stop "telling" and begin "influencing" employees.     The Socio-Technical System

I don't have time to show you all of the branches of the organizational system diagram, but hang with me a few minutes on the basics. 

An organization is a socio-technical system. Basically, that means that our organizations are made up of people and machines. People and machines in the organizational system work together to transform inputs into the system--into outputs of the system--so that the organization meets its core mission and meets the expectations of its stakeholders. 

The folks charged with leading this socio-technical system are our organizational managers. But there's an historical hitch in how our organizational managers do the leading. 

Many organizational leaders like to "tell" the troops what the organization's goals are. There's this wrong-headed belief that if I "tell" you what we have to get done, you--the employee--will somehow, magically know how to make it happen. Not true! 

Employee behavior is the key to the success of the entire organizational system. The employee communication management process in the organizational system is supposed to be about helping our managers influence employee behaviors. 

In my years of working with organizational managers and organizational communicators, inevitably they tell me that their communication plan focuses on messages about the organization's objectives. 

No! Strategic employee communication plans must focus on desired employee behaviors.

There are no messages to be exchanged until we know what we're trying to get done, have identified who needs to do it, and have identified how we want those groups to behave to get whatever it is done. 

From time to time, organizational managers from the level of first-line supervisors to the CEO, all become 1,000-pound gorillas--in varying degrees. They do whatever they want to do, no matter what anybody else counsels! 

I discovered a long time ago, that many organizational managers don't operate with organizational operating objectives. Yes, they do put undecipherable "operating objectives" on paper--because somebody requires them to do it. But if you pay attention to what they really do, more often than not, they voice their work as tasks to be completed for which they will be rewarded. 

Too many organizational managers still believe that internal communication is all about "getting publicity" for completing their tasks. They're more concerned with impressing their superiors than with influencing employee behaviors. 

The sad part is, that too often we, the organizational communicators, collude with them and provide the "publicity." Why do we collude with them? We do that because we want them to "love" us. We're just so glad that they want our help--to do anything--that we'll produce all manner of non-thinking, non-strategic, non-value-adding media for them. ^Top 

The next time that you're asked for media, when your organizational leader really needs a strategic plan for influencing behavior, mentally climb down The Behavior Pyramid and remind yourself of what your real job is. 

When I worked on a corporate staff, I used to share this Pyramid with my group to help us stay on track with what we were supposed to be doing. Now I try to remember to share it with the participants in my strategic communication planning workshop. 

I need another volunteer. The question is: Where do you, personally, usually operate in this Behavior Pyramid? (An audience volunteer responds, "At the activities level, I think."

Next question: Where do you let your internal clients operate in this Pyramid? (The audience volunteer responds, "At the activities level."

Why do you do that and allow that? (Another audience volunteer responds, "Because there's no structure in place, in our organization, to make it safe for us to do anything but communication activities.") Each of the audience volunteers received a magic banana.

The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, if you're always forced into communication activities, you have two choices. Either you go along with it or you find yourself another organization in which to work. 

This Behavior Pyramid is your model for explaining to your internal clients what you can do to help them achieve whatever it is that they need to get done. This Pyramid is the beginning point of how you get organizational leaders to stop "telling" and begin "influencing" employee behaviors. 

The key to your success with launching the elements of our entire discussion this morning depends on how good you are at developing strategic communication plans--both annual plans and project plans. 

Here's the question for another volunteer: Do you have a strategic communication plan? How did you put it together? (An audience volunteer responds, "I used our business plan and I talked to the people who put our business plan together.") The audience volunteer received a magic banana.

Excellent. The strategic communication plan is the key to your success. 

Another question: Do you always offer a communication strategy to your managers or do you just provide whatever media they request? (An audience volunteer responds, "They don't like it when I offer a strategy. They say that it takes too long to do that, just give me media.")

(Another audience volunteer responds, "The first time that you offer a strategy before media, you need to build some credibility before they will listen to you.") Both volunteers received a magic banana.

Exactly. You have to win one, win some, before they begin to trust you. 

Remember, your strategic communication plan is the way you let your leaders own the communication process as a natural part of managing their operations. 

The strategic communication plan allows you to ask your internal clients lots of questions. In a few minutes, I'm going to give you three fail-safe questions to always ask your internal clients. 

The strategic communication plan allows you to steer your operating unit leaders into translating what events mean. The strategic communication plan helps you to insure that all of your communications are designed to influence employee behaviors. 

If you're not yet good at developing strategic communication plans, please learn how fast. Ya gotta sound like you know what you're doing! 

Pat Summit, the now legendary women's basketball coach at the University of Tennessee, talked during an interview about winning. It was pointed out that she had been a winner from her first year as head coach at Tennessee. Her comments about her first year as a young, head coach went something like this: "I was flying by the seat of my pants. But I sounded like I knew what I was doing. I told the team, 'We're going to do this and this and this. The team thought that I knew what I was doing and we went 39 and 0 that first year!"

Do you know what the consequences are of sounding like you don't know what you're doing when it comes to strategic communication? (An audience volunteer responds, "When you sound like you don't know what you're doing, you lose control of your professionalism and you have no credibility with your managers.") The audience volunteer received a magic banana.

Most of our managers are not averse to our offers of communication strategies and changing the way that we work with them. What they want is to understand how what you are proposing will have a positive impact on what they must get done! ^Top 

Here's a ground-level suggestion for managing your organizational gorillas. There are three fail-safe questions that you can use. But you must remember to use them. (Practice baby, practice!) 

Fail-Safe Questions
Fail-Safe Question #1: Always ask: "What are you trying to get done?" (This is the operating objective.) Don't assume that you know. Don't assume that they know. Ask! 

Fail-Safe Question #2:
Be explicit. Ask: "Who, exactly, can make that (thing you're trying to get done) happen?" (This is the target audience.) 

Do not accept the age-old answer that "everybody" is in the target audience. Certainly everybody in the organization needs to be communicated with about the topic but not everybody needs to be communicated with the same way as the "target audience." 

Fail-Safe Question #3:
Ask: "What exactly do you want that group (the target audience) to do to make (what you're trying to get done) happen? (This is the behavior expected of the target audience.) 

If you always remember to ask these three questions, you can be certain that any strategic communication plan that you develop will be on target and will support what your organizational leaders are trying to get done. 

Consulting success analysis
The one thing that I believe that organizational communicators do not do very much is strategic analysis. When summoned, we jump to it! 'When do you want it?' is our major concern. Instead, we need to focus on what is needed for the situation. We need to spend more time, up front, defining the problem.

Let me show you a simple framework. A framework is a logical way of defining a problem. This framework is used to understand your probability for success when consulting with your organizational leaders. This is something that I teach to the participants in my advanced seminar on internal communication consulting. 

In each consulting interaction on the job, there are three factors that you always must manage. The factors are: you, your client and the organizational climate in which you must do whatever it is. 

You can diagram, up front, how it's likely to come out--just based upon what you know at the starting point. Let me say here, you don't need pretty triangles to do this consulting success analysis. You can do all of this in your head. Personally, I'm a doodler--especially when I'm sitting on airplanes and waiting in airports. 

This is particularly effective if you're working with techie-types. They love a diagram! Sometimes, they only understand a diagram! 

When you've completed one of these frameworks, the result is supposed to tell you something. It's supposed to tell you what you need to do, at the very beginning of the project, to avoid failure. 

Use of this framework also works for you when you're in the middle of a project that seems to be stuck or is floundering. 

I need a volunteer. Here's the question: If this diagram represented your consulting success analysis, what would it tell you? (An audience volunteer responds, "I would sell the client on the benefits of the project.") The audience volunteer received a magic banana.

Exactly. You'd stress what the client gets out of doing this: the payoffs. You also want to get agreement that the client will do this and this and this, while you do that and that. 

(Question from the audience, "What do you do when (your analysis shows that) the client has a willing attitude but that's all. His readiness is 'low' and the organizational climate is 'low?'"

In that case, you must determine if you can get the client's readiness higher very fast and whether it is really worth trying to do that. Sometimes, you just have to pass and move on to clients where you can add value. 

Trust me. Consulting Success Analysis can result in some very different scenarios that require some very different actions on your part. The major point here is to always, always analyze the project before you act. What we're trying to avoid are situations like this one (below).