The transition from "a pair of hands" to strategist-technician

IABC International Conference
Chicago, Illinois

Presenter:
Roland L. Draughon
Consultant - Internal Communication
Gavin-Hodges Associates

Draughon ranked #1
among IABC Chicago Conference speakers

Part 2 of 3

Continued from: Communicationmonster

Finally, a lady in the front row hoisted her hand and said: (not an exact quote, but close): "For me, the starting point of what I communicate is a feeling. I get a feeling for what needs to be communicated."

I thought, "Okay. We're about to get going."

I said to her, "What do you base your feelings on?" She said (not an exact quote again, but close): "I just know what people probably want to know."

I then said: "Okay. What do you do with the feeling?"

She said: "I tell the senior management what I think we should communicate about various subjects and they say it's okay with them."

I said, "okay" and moved to another person who wanted to answer the question. Only three people in that room gave versions of the answer that I wanted and expected.

I finally went back to the first lady with the "feeling" and asked her if her starting point works for her. She replied, "I guess not."

Wanna know the answer to the question that I asked?

I'll award these specially hexed Burp your Monster! buttons to the first three people today who give me an acceptable answer to the question that stumped the D.C. group.

But first, let me tell you about these "magic" Burp your Monster! buttons.

Think of this button as a "hex" sign. Do believe that it will ward off bad luck on the job. Make it your good luck charm. Wear it. Put it on your desk. Hang it on the back of your office door or the wall of your cubicle. But every time that you see it, be reminded that you are NOT a pair of hands. Remind yourself that how well you burp your three-legged monster determines: (1) what value you add to your organization and (2) how your value (or lack of value) is viewed by the powers that be in your organization. We'll talk some more, in a little bit, about 'burping your monster.'

Here's the D.C. question again:

The D.C. Answer
All I wanted in D.C. was for somebody to say something like: 'My starting point is the organizational business plan or operating plan. I first find out what my organization's priorities are--what we need to get done as an organization. Then I figure out what communication process, activities and programs that I'll need to put in place to facilitate information exchanges that will hopefully influence target audience attitudes, influence desired behaviors and inspire the taking of desired actions so that my organization achieves its priorities.'

Geez! I thought that was an easy question for senior communicators. My bad!

Let me show you, what I showed the D.C. group after our eye-opening discussion about their "communication starting point." I showed them this:

Ladies and gentlemen, I say to you, as I said to the D.C. group, this is the job that we're supposed to be doing. If you're not doing this job, what are you doing and who asked you to do it?

Names and titles and alphabets
Ladies and gentlemen, we can strut our stuff at Conference, if we like, and try to impress each other. We can showoff a string of alphabets after our names, if we like. But believe me, if we can't do what The Behavior Pyramid says, we're just sound and fury, signifying nothing, adding no organizational value.

Why was it so hard for me to get the answer to such a soft-pitched professional question? These were senior people in communication from across the nation. Is our whine a valid one when we moan that 'we get no respect from our organizational managers'? Is our whine valid when we moan that, 'we're treated as a pair of hands'?

If it walks like "a pair of hands"
and talks like "a pair of hands"...
The definition of insane, I've heard, is when "one keeps doing the same thing, the same way, over and over, while expecting a different outcome." We can't keep behaving as "a pair of hands" and expect a different outcome. Thats truly nuts!

Walk-the-walk, talk-the-talk
How well do you walk-the-walk and talk-the-talk of communication management fluency? The Behavior Pyramid is something that I doodled up for a corporate staff of mine a lot of years ago to keep us focused on what our real responsibility was to our organization. The Pyramid is the key to how we all learn to build our own personal communication management fluency. Communication process fluency will allow us to walk-the-walk and talk-the-talk with our organizational managers--who need, but rarely know that they need, our help to achieve their challenges.

The Behavior Pyramid assumes some things. It assumes that the communicator clearly understand what the organization needs to get done. It also assumes that the communicator knows that he or she is not going to be asked for help by organizational managers--certainly not early on during your first ventures into 'burping your monster.'

Walk-talk basics
So, how do we learn to walk-the-walk and talk-the-talk of communication management with our organizational managers? Here are some basics:

(1) Know your organization's (or internal clients' or departments') operating priorities and operating challenges.

(2) Learn to explain, state clearly and forcefully to your organizational managers what the behavior link is between internal/external communication and achievement of their goals.

(3) Know how to help your organization or internal client, define the desired behaviors in their operating plans. Take a risk and tell somebody with more power than you that 'The best way to make your operating plan happen is this way, not that way.'

(4) Pick your clients and communication management battles carefully. Learn which internal clients to use to build your own credibility about the value that the communication management process can add.

(5) Establish yourself as the resident expert on internal/external communication. You do that when you don't just roll over and salute when operating managers tell you to do 'this' and you know what's needed is 'that.' Otherwise, you abdicate your professionalism and infer that you do, indeed, need to be told what to do. ("a pair of hands!")

(6) Use the "can't do that but can do this" gambit when asked to produce non-strategic communication messages. (Remember to smile while you're saying this phrase.) What you're saying to the requester is that you can't do the non-strategic communication because your work must be aligned with operating priorities, but that you can produce communication support to help him/her with their operating priorities. (This infers that you know, or can find out, what their operating priorities are!)

Wanna see what the career monster looks like in too many of our professional lives?

Our smile is upside down! We"re hiding in our invisible box and we"re not happy!

Burping your monster means letting the air out of that invisible box of safety that you've created around yourself at the axis of your monster. Let the air out of the box so that it's very uncomfortable to be in that box!

Burping your monster means demonstrating that you only take or recommend communication actions after you have conceived a strategy.

The level of your thoughts always must reflect that you are organizationally savvy about what needs to be communicated to achieve current priorities.

Burping your monster means growing and institutionalizing a personal, professional behavior that has organizational purpose.

Your usual behavior on the job must reflect that you 'think and act, not react'. Your professional behavior must consistently reflect that you never, never 'just do what you're told' and that you always first determining the "what-are-we-trying-to get done" reason for what you're being asked to communicate.

'Burping your monster' also means shifting out of mental 'automatic.' Burping your monster means stretching yourself to offer creative solutions to communication needs.

Consider this observation from one wiser than I: "The initial creative thoughts that we have, become automatic unless we continually apply mental energy to maintain our thinking capability."

Where are your thoughts on the job (usually)? At a leadership or operational (action) level?

What is your behavior on the job (usually)? Are you usually reactive or purposeful?

What is your mental energy on the job (usually)? Are you usually on automatic or creative?

If you take a Burp your Monster! button home with you, keep it where you can see it. It can be really tempting to scurry back into "the box" when organizational situations get hot and we're in the line of fire.

Let me say it again:
Whether your job is internal or external communication, get passionate about doing it or please do something else. It's an important job. It can add organizational value.

People who stay in the box--and live their professional careers "kissing box"--are playing it safe, following marching orders and creating corporate gorillas who wreak havoc on the rest of us.

The transition from technician
Let me take you through a Transition Process Model.

Can somebody tell me what a management framework is and what it's used for?

If we are to 'burp our monster' and shift out of being "a pair-of-hands", we must undergo a transition from technician to strategist-technician.

Definition:
A management framework is a logical and disciplined way of thinking that focuses on getting to a desired end product. It can be used to think through any number of work or personal situations. Frameworks provide a clearer understanding of what results are expected.

Frameworks can help us (in a career assessment) clearly define: where we are (our current state); where we want to be (our desired state); and what we need to do to reach our desired state (the necessary shifts, changes or transformations we'll need to make).

If we were to put this into a linear diagram, it could look like this:

See the doubled-ended arrows on the right? I tossed those in because during transitions, some days you don't know if you're going, coming, shifting or standing still. The musical notes indicate that on some days you'll have a song in your heart and other days you feel like you're getting bounced around. But the transition trip is worth the effort.

Keep that diagram in mind. Let's look at the same Framework in a more traditional display:
Transition Process Model

A. Describe your current state.
    (What do you now do?)

B. Describe your desired state.
    (What do you want to do and how do you want to be viewed by your organizational management?)

C. List the specific shifts that you need to make.

As you might have guessed, the devil is in the detail in item "C.". The challenge is in figuring out how to move yourself from State A" to "State B."

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Continued at: Monster3

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