Missing the point

One of our blog's readers recently shared with me an internal message from the CEO of a large, global organization (identity protected), which caused some concern. Here's the gist:

Know Our Strategy
Listening to feedback from our all-employee survey last year, we have directed leaders across our businesses to make a concerted effort to present our strategy. Starting with me and my keynote presentation at our leadership conference, we have designated more than 100 Strategy Ambassadors, who have been conducting town halls and roundtable discussions with front-line managers and their teams.

Recognizing the majority of our organization works remotely, leadership has taken the added step to ensure materials tied to the strategy campaign are directly available to individual team members unable to join group sessions.

The overarching goal of our team is to ensure all employees have invested time, preferably with managers and colleagues, to gain a full understanding of the business direction and how each of us contributes to fulfilling its potential. At a minimum, every employee should review the strategy materials, including the video, before the end of this month. To document the coverage we have achieved across our team, I also call upon all managers to complete a survey after they conclude their strategy discussions with their respective teams.

Achieving a broad understanding of our strategy, which clearly differentiates us in our market, will be a critical driver of our shared success. Jump in, and make sure you and your fellow employees understand the strategy and are fully prepared and committed to contribute to its success.

So what’s wrong with this message? It commits the six deadly sins of strategy deployment:

1. Strategy as mantra: Business strategy is becoming a co-creation within many organizations, allowing for enterprise-wide discussion and input. This note suggests that there has been no input outside of a select few at the top, implying that the company is “selling” the strategy through an orchestrated internal campaign.
2. Strategy as inert: The message's tone and content indicates that the strategy is already completed and closed. Therefore, there is no opportunity for discussion, dialogue or debate. Thus, the message to employees is: we don’t really want to hear from you!
3. Communication as tactics: Sadly, communication has been reduced to series of town hall meetings and the like.
4. Managers as parrots: It would appear that leaders and managers are being placed out in the field to repeat talking points, rather than to educate, involve, and listen to employees.
5. Employees as captive audience: They are not…actually your workforce is a public constituency, one that you have to fight for their attention, given all the distractions and noise that now consume our day.
6. CEO as process spokesperson: The biggest failure in all this is having the CEO use valuable real estate (messaging) to discuss “process” instead of content (idea, insight, challenge, etc.)

There’s a lot going on in one simple message…what do you think?

Consultative Approach to Communications

Increasingly, communicators are expected to be more strategic and consultative in their thinking and way of working. But what does “consultative” mean? How can we incorporate a consultative mindset to be more effective business partners? My team recently conducted a workshop on this topic at a client’s global communications team meeting. Surveys revealed that despite ongoing communications, employees could not articulate the company’s strategy, and many did not understand their role in supporting it. Our workshop aimed to help communicators adopt a consultative approach to understand the business and clients’ needs better. In turn, they can align communications more closely to strategy and help employees understand business priorities and expected behaviors. Here are five key takeaways:

• Don’t be afraid to ask – A consultative approach means asking the right questions rather than providing the answers. The questions you ask should push the client’s thinking and your understanding to help develop a strategic framework, not elicit a tactical answer. We recently helped a client who wanted recommendations to engage employees at an organization they acquired. We realized that to really engage them, we needed to first understand their needs, including what they think, how they act and what’s important to them. We compiled a series of questions focused on uncovering acquired employees’ most important needs and concerns. This additional information helped us customize our communications materials and approach to ensure they were credible and relevant, which led to higher engagement levels than if we had reached out to employees with “off the shelf” recommendations.

• Shift from being an order taker to a strategic thinker – It’s not sufficient to faithfully execute the plan as the client requested. Instead, a consultative client-centric approach analyzes the client’s requirements, probes underlying needs and provides strategic solutions. A client rolling out a new initiative wanted a communication plan and written materials to support managers in cascading the strategy to employees. Subsequent conversations with the client revealed what they needed was not a top-down communication approach, but a two-way dialog so that they could gather and incorporate employee feedback to refine the initiative. Asking probing questions and thinking critically about the client’s responses and situation helped us identify the root cause of their challenge, redirect their way of thinking and revamp their initial rollout strategy.

• Understand the client’s situation and needs to develop a compelling perspective – Learn your client’s business and situation, including how they generate revenue, what distinguishes them from competitors, changes in the industry, changes with their customers and employees, the problem to be solved and your client’s objectives. Then, synthesize this baseline information to develop a convincing point of view that includes initial recommendations to advance your client’s position and be better in what they do.

• Align decisions and actions to business goals – A consultative approach shapes and informs the decision-making process so that actions and decisions are linked more closely to the business need and goals. Consultative communicators speak and think in business terms. Instead of measuring success in terms of the number of employee comments on a blog, or media hits, focus on the metrics your client cares about – cutting costs, retaining top talent, improving sales, etc.

• Perception matters – How we define our roles, see and present ourselves is critical. If we think of ourselves as business partners, behave as trusted advisors and hold ourselves by these standards, clients too will see us as valuable business partners. Conversely, if we present ourselves as order takers who never deviate from the client’s wishes regardless how impractical or irrelevant they might be, then clients will continue treating us as just that – service providers for tactical, implementation tasks, after they have discussed and finalized all key decisions. We want to be a part of the decision-making process, but we first need to earn our seat at the table. At a financial services company, the head of corporate communications shares a quarterly report with the senior management team that includes results and analysis of key communications initiatives and highlights trends and issues that might affect the business. These reports reinforce the value and unique insights that communications provides and help position communications as important thought partners in business decisions.

Ultimately, adopting a consultative approach increases your value to clients, elevates the purpose of communications and makes initiatives more likely to succeed. How do you see yourself and your role? How are you evolving the way you work to become a counselor and trusted advisor?

Posted by Shook Yee Teh

Is anybody out there?

“Is anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone home?”

Ironically, the Pink Floyd lyrics cited above come from a classic titled, “Comfortably Numb,” a fitting moniker for the collective reaction – or non-reaction – to many of today’s organizational communications.

As purveyors of communications, we are always challenged to create compelling, relevant and strategic content.

But, all of that only really matters if it actually reaches the right people and is framed in a manner that reflects and respects perspectives. That is, if engagement takes place; if we educate, elicit feedback, create conversation and reinforce acceptance and buy-in of organizational goals and positioning. Further, if the stated conversation also educates, elicits feedback and improves the organization’s knowledge of key audiences.

But Pink Floyd’s haunting question remains – “Is anybody out there?”

In an era of new techniques, new tools and organizational imperatives that can shift without notice, we may lose sight of the fact that the audiences or people we once thought we knew have also changed. While understanding social media and the dynamics of real-time conversation is important, unless we understand our consumers, workforce, customers, influencers, etc., organizations will not achieve desired goals.

Over the last several months, an interesting reality has come to light with regard to organizational clarity. Do we really know our employees’ worldview?

• What is their comprehension of relevant issues?
• How do they find information? What do they do with it?
• Where do they interact with others on subjects of interest?
• What do they find compelling…or bland, off-focus and weak?
• Do we know we’re engaging employees…or only suspect we are?
• How new are employees to the workforce?
• What are their interests?

The answers force us as communicators to recalibrate our approach, content, context, cadence and channels based on the composite view of who and what comprise our workforce today.

We’ve long known that one-size-fits-all communications don’t work because our employees, like our customers, are not a homogeneous group. That’s why we can’t speak the same way to engineers as salespeople.

The question of whether anyone is “out there” absorbing and acting on our communications is perennial.

What’s different today is the need to pay as much attention to the rise of the new workforce as we do to the variety of tools and techniques at our disposal to address it.

What do you think?

Posted by Gary