Newspeak is alive and well

Have you ever noticed how meaningless or even duplicitous words and phrases are constantly creeping into  our language? Stealthily, like plague infested fleas on a rat’s back, they arrive unnoticed until one day we wake up to find half the population is infected.

I have lots of personal pet hates but here is one of my most detested:

“We are committed to…”

Everyone seems to be committed to something now. The government is committed to improving the NHS; the retailer is committed to lower prices; the oil giant is committed to the environment and the bank is committed to not calling its customers ‘muppets’. But what do they really mean?

When my train journey is delayed yet again because of the wrong sort of snow, leaves, rain or sunshine on the tracks, or because some hoodies have made off with a horde of overhead cables, my mood is not improved when the cheery voice comes over the tannoy and tells me that the company is ‘committed to improving punctuality’. 

Either you are going to improve punctuality or you are not. I am not interested in your commitments I want to know what you are actually going to do! 

Of course what everyone means when they say “we are committed” is this: 

“We realise this is a problem but we also know there is not a snowflake’s chance in hell of us doing anything about it. But our comms and marketing people tell us we have to sound concerned. We won’t actually lie and tell you will do something about it but we won’t tell you the brutal truth either.”

Now having got that off my chest I can commit to not kicking the cat any more.

Simon MacDowall

We are all global now

“We are all global now” — or so the saying goes.

I was thinking how true this is as I prepared for a trip to Stockholm to work with a Swedish company that operates in English in several countries. 

Even when I look at my own family, it is quite astounding just how much the globe has shrunk. I was 10 years old when I first went abroad. My children are multi-lingual and have lived in 4 countries. Who knows what the world will be like by the time the next generation comes of age.

The one thing I can be certain of is that the world will be even smaller. Those individuals who learn other languages and are comfortable working in other cultures will have the advantage. And the same is true for organisations. 

Communicating across cultures will become increasingly important for success. It may be that an organisation uses English as the working language (it may be Mandarin in a generation) but even if people use the same language, cultural differences will remain. This brings additional challenges when designing a communications or engagement programme for a global organisation. The problems of distance and scale can relatively easily be overcome with technology but I believe that successful communications needs to start with awareness and understanding of the component cultures.

Engaged employees have never been a more important part of your marketing strategy…

In the current economic landscape new customers are few and far on the ground. Delivering a high return on your marketing investment is a bigger challenge - those customers with money to spend are probably looking to squeeze existing suppliers or undercut them with a provider willing to deliver at cost until the market turns. 

If you have customers who are still happy to keep paying you then the best thing you can do is to deliver excellent customer service - and we all know the best way to do that is through highly engaged employees. 

A customer who feels valued and feels they have an emotional connection to a company (or individual in that company) is less likely to stray in search of a cheaper unknown supplier. Retaining customers is a good strategy in the good times and an essential strategy when the markets are tough. 

Do your employees know this? When was the last time they were asked what else your organisation could do for it’s customers (rather than being told what to do). Are your line managers explaining the correlation between the job that their reports are doing and the current performance of the company? Do your employees know what is expected of them in the current economic climate? Or has the focus been on surviving the necessary rounds of restructuring? 

You don’t need to be a genius to know that your employees have the potential to be your biggest advocates - but very few organisations seem to know how to achieve this apparently simple goal. 

So if you are in a strategic role and employee engagement isn’t on your KPI’s you may want to re-think your priorities. 

The right channel mix

In this digital age is it time to finally bury that old standard of 20th century communications - the staff magazine?

Only a decade ago it was not unusual for the publication of newsletters and magazines to be the main job of the internal communications team. How times have changed! 

Now, if we are good at our job, we are far more sophisticated. We segment and target our audiences using electronic channels that are tailored and immediate. We run innovating face to face events to get real involvement and input from employees and quite often our Chief Executive and senior managers will have their own blog. Employees interact with each other using social media, sharing ideas and information in a way that could barely be imagined only a few years ago. If there is important news we can immediately flash it over the intranet or send it to people’s mobile devices. No need to worry about lengthy lead times and the cost of printing! 

So clearly there is not room any more for the staff magazine — or is there?

In large and complex organisations you need a mix of channels to reach a wide range of people doing a variety of jobs. Not everyone works at a computer and those that do sometimes enjoy a break from the screen.  

Printed communications can never have the immediacy of electronic and they cannot have the impact of face to face, but they can help build a sense of shared identity and purpose. People love the recognition when they see a story and photographs about their achievements and there is something about seeing it in print that makes it special. 

In assessing the effectiveness of communications we should always try to understand the needs of our audiences and the purpose served by each and every channel that is being used. I firmly believe that a well thought out staff magazine that celebrates success and helps develop a sense of shared identity still can have a place in the modern communications mix.

Staying focused (on Communication)

The stand-off at St Paul’s Cathedral is a prime example of how things go wrong in crisis communications if you forget to stay focused on your goals or stray from your core values. 

The Occupy London protesters have made the first error. Whatever they may be saying, their actions convey a message to the public that they have a dispute with the Church of England - this surely is not the message they want people to remember. By losing sight of their focus they risk losing the impact of their campaign.

The Church of England made the second error. No matter how reasonable it might seem to insist that uninvited guests should leave, the impression is that they are coming down on the side of the ‘money lenders’.  They may be trying to rectify that now as they stop legal action but many people will have the unpleasant perception that the Church has strayed from its core values. 

Actions speak louder than words and when you are trying to engage people either internally or externally it is vital that you stay true to your values and stay focused on your strategic objective. 

There are no winners here.

Simon MacDowall

Why do business leaders get less training than Macdonald’s employees?

Why do business leaders get less training than Macdonald’s employees?

Recently I was in sweden in a meeting with a new and potential client discussing the merits of employee engagement programmes and the role of the middle managers.

We were both in violent agreement when she told me of her cousin who, several years before, had taken a summer job at MacDonald’s. The story really brought home to me how we really do just expect our managers to be inspiring and yet we do very little to support them.

My clients cousin was given three to four weeks of training for this particular job which was to last just one season. In comparison many organisations go through a rigorous selection process, often at great expense, and then welcome the new appointed business leader into the organisation with a half day induction (often several weeks after they start).

On day one they are shown the basics (health and safety, facilities etc) and then do the beauty parade in front of the relevant people before an intensive few hours surfing the intranet! This is how we expect them to discover values, strategy, visions and very often culture.

If MacDonald’s can ensure that someone who is going to contribute to the success of the company for one season gets sufficient training then why don’t organisations put more emphasis on supporting and training managers from the beginning?

Your middle managers don’t need to be ‘permafrost’…

I took part in an interesting discussion at a recent employee engagement conference in London. The matter in question was what could be done to more effectively engage and involve middle managers?

Many large organisations, resort to using ‘communications champions’ to help the CEO and Board get their messages out to the far flung reaches of the company. These same champions can also provide valuable insight and feedback, bridging the gap between ‘head office’ and the ‘front line’ and cutting out the ‘permafrost’ of the middle management layer.

But hang on a minute… if an organisation feels its middle managers are getting in the way of good communications then bypassing them surely cannot be the right sustainable answer for the long term. Surely the answer must lie in getting the middle managers more involved in the communications process, not marginalising them and not giving them any excuses for abdicating their responsibility to communicate effectively.

I have worked most of my life in very large and complex organisations and we need to understand the pressures that many middle managers face. They are being squeezed from above and below, and often are not given the proper tools or training to be effective communicators and leaders.

Rather than bypass middle managers, the successful organisation will take the time to invest in their future, using tools like the em(ic)* world team brief to help them communicate in an effective and engaging way.

Simon MacDowall

Why knowing the impact of your internal communications is critical to your success.

There isn’t a shortage of tools to help you determine how ‘effective’ your internal communication channels are. But what do we mean by effective? How many clicks, opens or responses? Unsolicited feedback? “Thank you” from line managers and leaders? And of course the well established channel audit.

These are all contribute to ensure that you know how to get your message out and when.

What they don’t tell you is the overall impact of what you are saying and how you are saying it. They don’t always tell you if you are having an emotional response or if the call to arms you are hoping for is going to happen. They don’t tell you if your communications is genuinely creating a sense of trust and pride. Just because the CEO’s latest announcement received the greatest number of clicks doesn’t mean that employees can’t wait to read the latest missive.

So, what is the answer?

At em(IC) we don’t believe that there is necessarily one single solution to discovering the true impact of your internal communications. What is clear to us however is that the internal communications functions that take a holistic approach to discovering impact are probably the closest to finding the truth.

It’s about using every relevant tool in your toolbox. These tools include all the aforementioned as well as the traditional approach of getting out and about, talking to employees, managers and leaders (and customers?) about what they know and how it makes them feel.

We also think that in addition it’s worth investing in a high quality internal communications survey that provides a genuine benchmark of the impact you are having relevant to your industry peers.

That’s why em(IC) have developed Metr(IC). A powerful survey that enables you to determine how well you and your managers are communicating. It’s fifteen questions long and provides a single clear report on the impact that your communication and your managers communication achieves.