"Build executable communication strategies
How do you do that?
Well, first you need to start out by defining what you want your internal communication process to look like, walk like, talk like, smell like.
I worked with a client who defined their ideal employee communication management process. Let me share it with you. My client said that the ideal employee communication management process:
• Establishes senior managers as accountable
• Anchors to business objectives and fits with human resource initiatives
• Provides routine two-way information flows
• Requires each manager/supervisor to bear individual responsibility for employee communication
• Results in a yearly employee communication road map for influencing employees' behaviors about current operating priorities.
So...how does one get that done?
A communication strategy is supposed to be an engine...not a three-humped horse-camel designed by a committee that has no commitment to the end product.
A communication strategy can not be a list of media to be produced. A communication strategy starts with the operating plan, has desired outcomes around operating targets, anticipates potential adverse consequences of communication message exchanges and includes monitoring and measurement yardsticks
I'm going to tell you a story about "green uniforms" in a minute, but first let me tell you this story about the alleged flow of communications through an organization.
Question: How would an ideal employee communication process be implemented? How does communication flow in YOUR organization? Top down? Middle down? Top to middle only? Bottom to Middle?
There is a theory called "The Black Hole of Organizational Communication" that we discuss in detail during my two-day workshop Planning Communications to Support Organizational Objectives.
Assuming an organizational structure designed as a pyramid, the essence of the theory is that 'no communications get through an organization from the top to the bottom, nor from the bottom to the top, because all communications just disappear into a big black hole guarded by the organization's middle managers.'
That won't happen if the communication strategy is owned and managed by operating management--and not the communication department. Messages also won't get lost if senior organization management puts teeth vs. gums into what managers and supervisors are required to do about communication strategies in their daily work responsibilities.
Green Uniforms for all?
Question: Wanna know how you can tell when a communication strategy around an operating plan is working?
I usually tell this story to participants in in the seminar that I lead with operating managers: Communication Skills & Techniques for Managers.
"One Monday morning, the chief executive officer of a manufacturing organization based in Cleveland, Ohio met with his direct reports and announced: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen: The color this week is green.'
"That same week, on Friday afternoon at 4 p.m., the chief executive arrived at a company manufacturing site in San Diego, California. He walked onto the plant floor, spotted a maintenance worker beginning his shift, walked over to the maintenance worker and said, ‘Tell me. What's the color this week?' The maintenance worker piped right up and said: "The color this week is green!'
One time, at the end of my story--and without missing a beat--an operating manager piped up: "Well Roland, in our company the maintenance man probably would have said: ‘I don't know what the color is this week, but I heard that some SOB at headquarters now wants us all to wear green uniforms!'"
Question: What is the communication process flow in your organization? Does everybody wear 'green uniforms?' ^Top
Criteria for building executable strategies
There also are some Golden Rule criteria for building executable internal communication strategies.
Caveat: Some of the following depends upon where you work in an organization. This is presented as if you were at HQ. If you're in a unit and not at HQ, sometimes you have to do some of these things to get HQ off the dime.
The criteria:
An executable internal communication strategy:
emanates from the corporate/organizational operating plan and engulfs critical activities within divisions, units, and line operations
I ask people in my seminars this question: 'If I work in a line unit within your organization, can I find myself, my unit, the work that we do and understand it within the corporate operating strategy. Do I understand why I do what I do every day?' The answer usually is, "I doubt it."
does not replace individual divisions or operating unit communication strategies--rather it sets the umbrella organizational behaviors and messages with which subunits are to be aligned.
eliminates message believability issues by insuring that messages are accurate, messages are structured for the targeted audience, messages are timely, message media are appropriate.
That means, if I am employee who works in a sub-unit of an organization and I hear a message from the corporate level about x-subject, I can expect to hear about x-subject in more detail from within my work unit. And, there will be no clash or believability issues about x-subject.
insures that messages are exchanged--not delivered--meaning that there are opportunities for feedback from recipients.
covers both formal and informal channels of communication and media (face-to-face is the well-known weakness among the channels). It does not cover external communications from the organization--except to the degree that external communications should match and track with internal communications. There are issues about when certain information can be communicated internally but not whether it should be communicated.
Last fall, a communication high-mucky-muck in a federal organization was asked why the internal communication staff could not communicate the results of an internal investigation of possible anthrax contamination throughout their offices: "Let them (employees) read the results in the newspapers like everybody else!," he said.
Institutionalize executable strategies
To institutionalize the development of executable communication strategies, as a routine management process, requires the following:
• Leaders/managers must be provided with the skills training they need in order to be able to develop and execute internal communication strategies as part of managing their operating units;
• Developing and maintaining an executable internal communication strategy (anchored to the organizational operating strategy) should not be an option for any organizational leader/manager:
• Real feedback systems should be available to employees with real leader/manager consequences for feedback system breakdowns;
• Leaders/managers should be held accountable in their promotion/salary review for the level of internal communication achievements. ^Top
Critical elements of a strategy
I almost never tell participants what format their communication strategy document should have. I tell them that the format should be one that their key actors are used to seeing. However, chances are very good that if you've never developed a communication strategy to wrap around the operating plan, you will either have to explain what you're doing or you will have to explain what to do to your subordinates. Either way, here are some critical elements in developing and explaining an executable strategy. (See in-session handout.)
Measurement & Evaluation
Measuring seems to have turned into a CYA exercise. If you're adding value to your organization with strategic communication management, you don't have anybody breathing down your neck about "prove to me that you should keep your job." People who are running around in circles screaming like Chicken Little, "I need to prove my worth! I need to prove my worth!" probably really aren't worth much. Yes, let's measure and evaluate communications so that we can make them better and more effective. But please, let's stop trying to make ‘communication measurement' our job security savior.
Clever contracting clout
Remember our Bill from 'the murder of anti-champions?' Our Bill was the one with the potential to be (zoom-zoom) 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 from them. When all else fails in getting a communication strategy developed for the operating plan, resort to our Bill and his brethren/sisters.
Don't accept from our Bill, the statement: "That's just the way things are here..." Tell him how you can help him identify desired employee behaviors in his operating plan. Work with Bill to develop communication strategies. Hand-hold him through each one. Generate the old "me-too" syndrome among his peers. Help to make our Bill the internal communication management star in the organization. Use him to outshine the anti-champions who're still sitting on the organizational fence nay-saying.
In addition, look for other buttons that you can push with your anti-champions. Sometimes deftly deployed statements will work for you.
Try this one:
"I understand that a communication strategy would be a new venture for you. However, I really hate to see (his/her unit's name) become ‘competitively disadvantaged' because you have not tapped into your employee resources and maximized..."
Or try this one:
"As I understand it, (his/her unit's name) has some very ambitious (numbers, challenges, projects, etc.) to meet this year. I think that your employees are an untapped resource that you can use to...
Summary Points
• Communication management means targeting the communication process to influence behaviors.
• There can be no viable operating strategy without a targeted communication strategy wrapped around it.
• Nothing happens (as intended) in an operating plan until somebody defines the desired and needed employee behaviors.
• The developers of the operating plan also are the owners of the communication strategy that goes with it.
• Leader/managers must be provided with communication management skills training and then held accountable in salary and performance reviews for achievements.
• The only way to institutionalize the development and management of executable communication strategies is by contracting the 'murder' of anti-champions.
Q&A Session
Question for you: What will be the hard part for you in doing what we've talked about this morning?
Go in peace. -RLD ^Top
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