Never in everyday pursuit of corporate endeavour have so many been force fed by so few.

 

The proliferation of communication channels given the rise of social and technological media means your average employee claims to be nearing communication saturation point. But are they? I would suggest that the appetite for effective communication has never been more keen, yet effective communication is still in very short supply.

 

Lest we forget, communication is essentially an outcome, not an input. As I had to make a point of reminding a group of senior civil servants while running Team Briefing workshops recently, “success isn’t measured by volume, pace or quantity. Good communication is a product of whether the message has been received, understood and has resulted in the necessary action”.

 

For a number of years now, when I’ve conducted communication audits for clients, employees across sectors have complained about being bombarded. Despite the rather trendy discussions about the difference between internal communication and employee engagement, message management and push communication appears to be increasing.The biggest culprit is the dreaded email.

 

The Evils of email Management

 

Having just carried out an audit of internal communication channels for another public sector client currently undergoing major change, I’ve been struck, once again, by a bizarre, and frequently seen contradiction.

 

In answer to the question “How would you prefer to be informed of changes”, a whopping 76% of respondents voted for face to face communication.  Of those 76%, some 68% wanted that communication to come from their immediate line managers.

 

The second preference was for some form of internal social media allowing them the opportunity to provide feedback and debate in an interactive, real time environment.

 

However, when we looked into the Communication Department’s communication method of choice, they prioritised:

 

1. Lunch Meetings with the CEO and senior team
2. email bulletins
3. voicemail
4. publications

 

In fact, as the change programme gathered pace and brought with it “right sizing” and major structure changes, the top two methods fast became the only “official” channels.  Sadly team briefings led by line managers, once a norm, had faded to sporadic bursts.

 

It’s perhaps understandable that a number of line managers and supervisors had taken a backward step when faced with extremely difficult message management.  But in this case, it was soon very clear that abdication on this scale reflected deep-seated leadership issues.  Their CEO, in Hero Leader guise, although well intended, was clearly undermining his leaders. They had also lost faith in their communication function which, disempowered, was simply stepping aside by pressing the forward and cc buttons. 

 

But what’s the problem with push communication?

 

There clearly isn’t a single answer to this question but a glance at this famous learning effectiveness pyramid illustrates the power of face to face interaction with warm-blooded peers. 

 

The simple fact is that top down, cascade bombardments, usually delivered by email these days, are synonymous with lecturing.  They allow the originator to tick an activity box but are largely ineffective and simply reinforce one-way messaging. Cascades create a wider push communication culture as the approach is seen to be sanctioned from the very top.

 

As employee engagement requires:

-         interaction

-         involvement

-         feedback

-         opportunities to check understanding

-         emotional connection

 

by cascading swarms of messages the organisation promises one thing yet delivers another. It’s disingenuous and creates deep seated resentment.

 

Most of us learn much more effectively in interpersonal environments, when we’re involved and can interact with others. This is one of the reasons why line managers and immediate supervisors are increasingly important communicators. When they have the opportunity and take the time to commit to Facetime rather than Facebook, employees are enlightened and reassured by the example being set as well as the opportunity for face-to-face discussion, debate and reflection.

 

We all appreciate the merits of electronic communication. But despite the simple temptation of “compose, click and send” and the sophisticated charms of new-wave social media tools and techniques there really is no replacement for good, old fashioned, face to face, eyeball- to- eyeball communication. This is especially true during testing times when people lose what appetite they may have had for Foie Gras and deeply resent the fact that there’s no comfort food on the menu.

 

Ian Buckingham (ian@by2w.co.uk) is the founder of the Bring Yourself 2 Work Engagement Fellowship www.by2w.co.uk.  He is the author of Brand Engagement – How Employees Make or Break Brands  http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=281268. and Brand Champions (due Oct 2010)

 

 

Legacy is a loaded term. If you’re the glass half empty type it smacks of “ old fashioned, out of date, redundant”. If you favour the glass half full approach you’ll make associations like “firm foundations; proven track record and relationship equity” when you hear this term.

 

As a brand and engagement specialist, I’m acutely aware that one of the strongest but often most underappreciated assets many Old World brands have is their legacy. In times of crisis and change it can be comforting to employees to know that this organisation has withstood worse in the past.

 

As individuals, we seem to be increasingly interested in notions of legacy, family heritage – where we come from. The Haka, the famous tribal dance of the feared New Zealand rugby team literally attempts to summon up the spirits of the ancestors of the combatants to provide strength and courage as they face a new challenge. Perhaps this was what organisations like Walmart have tried to replicate with their company songs or may explain the communal song and dance rituals at employee conferences?

 

Now this overt attempt to conjure up corporate spirit isn’t to everyone’s taste. It illustrates the point that employee engagement has to be fit for purpose within local employee markets. But by mentioning what some may consider to be “naff” engagement initiatives that are puzzlingly powerful mutu for others does beg the question “what are you doing to engage your employees during the downturn”?

 

It comes as little surprise to me that I’ve seen a rise in the number of complaints from employees across sectors about the availability of their line managers.  There has also been a decline in face to face communication like Team Briefings and a rise in what I term e-mail management. When they can’t come up with answers to tricky issues many line managers are choosing to lie low.

 

In these dark days, leaders need to call upon all of their resources to speed up the recovery process. If your brand has a legacy, what initiatives are you undertaking to make the most of that heritage to provide confidence, assurance and a sense of stability?  Most importantly, how are your most important communicators, your line managers, being recognised and utilised as the eyes, ears and voice of the business?

 

 

 

As the Lloyds/TSB/HBOS shareholders attest, massive change is upon us.  And there’s nothing quite like the threat of change to test the metal of your leaders.  If leadership is partly about inspiring a community of individuals to undertake a collective endeavour, then stories are essential to articulate that vision. Noel Tichy in his book The Leadership Engine remarks that

 

“the best way to get humans to venture into unknown terrain is to make that terrain familiar and desirable by taking them there first in their imagination”

 

And Antoine de Saint Exupéry remarked that

 

“if you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea”

 

When a leader inspires, he or she breathes life and energy into their followers. When we reflect on the extraordinarily motivating speeches Churchill made, it’s clear that no amount of PowerPoint (had it existed) and no amount of consultancy or accountancy models would ever have had the effect of his well chosen words. And Martin Luther King had a dream, he didn’t have a change goal and wasn’t at a critical point of inflection. Or was he?

 

The results of a study at the London Business School show how much of the message we retain depending on the vehicle of communication.

 

• Statistics = 5-10%
• Statistics and Story = 25-30%
• Story = 65-70%

 

And the moral of this story is that if you are delivering the ‘Who we are’ (Brand Identity), ‘this is where we’re going’ (Mission/vision), and ‘this is how we’re going to get there’ (strategy)’ piece, then don’t rely too much on statistics alone to land the message.

Business, emotion and non-sensory language (or why so many business speakers are frighteningly uninspiring)

Change may be scary but there’s nothing more terrifying than uncertainty and vagueness.

Do you remember the strapline to the ‘80’s movie ‘Alien’? ‘In space no one can hear you scream’. These few words create an image (space), a sound (screaming) and a feeling (not a very nice feeling). Compare it with ‘dedicated management capability’ or ‘randomised user-orientated response’ – These are non-sensory words, and they abound in the corporate world. Now, if you put enough of these non-sensory words together you will trip something in the listener’s brain and a film and a fog will appear before their eyes as they fall asleep or escape into daydream. These non-sensory words are the vocabulary of science, borrowed in business to give a veneer of credibility (‘it must be true, it sounds scientific’) Somehow we are not reassured by too much feeling or emotion in business. After all, the language of love, romance, of the emotional life is the language of metaphor (‘shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?…). This language excites the imagination; it creates feelings, images, sounds, smells. Remember your first kiss? The first record you bought? The smell of coffee roasting? The visual imagery of being surrounded by your loved ones? Often we believe that these feeling, these emotions, cloud and corrupt the experiment and enterprise we call business. Yet if you want to tell me about values, like trust and integrity, don’t give me the science or the text-book definition, give me the metaphor, give me comparisons to help me understand, give me examples, tell me the story.

 Getting the story straight: The Hero’s Journey

The most effective and versatile storytelling tool must be The Hero’s Journey. There is no space to do justice to it here, but by way of a simple explanation, the Hero’s Journey represents the central narrative that underlies any story of growth or change regardless of cultural origin. It is a framework which allows an organisation, team or individual to examine past and present change, both personal (largely emotional) and corporate (largely rational) and to anticipate and explore future change. Applied as a change management tool it can be a hugely effective way of making sense of  and embracing change.

 

But as senior leaders tumble, where will the heroes who will lead your people through these turbulent times come from?  Well, they’re all around you.  But sometimes it needs a little external facilitation and support to help you find them.

It’s unfortunate that most of the growing army of critics weighing down the creaking

employee engagement bandwagon come from the camp of the bleeding heart.  They’re the

ones with the “staff are our greatest asset” t-shirts who trot out unsubstantiated clichés about obligations, rights and respect. Sadly they damage rather than help their cause by undermining the credibility of the people-focused functions through failing to work with the prevailing culture in order to influence that culture for the better.

 

The fact is that there’s a far more compelling case for employee engagement and culture development than empathy and magnanimousness.  Finance directors seldom liberate budgets without a compelling business case. It’s also a fact that, unlike much external investment, the majority of culture development and internal brand engagement activity is reliant upon discretionary spend. We all know how hard it is to loosen the discretionary purse strings in the good times let alone in a downturn.

 

So how do you build a business case for employee engagement? I believe it’s important to keep things as simple as possible.  David Bolchover, for example, in his book The Living Dead*, states that in the UK alone, doctor’s receive over 9 million “suspect” requests for sick notes per year (equivalent to the entire population of Sweden).  In addition one in three midweek visitors to a major theme park are pulling a sickie from work.  Do the maths for your organisation and you’ll soon have the makings of your own business case for engaging employees in the business by engaging them with the brand.

 

If this is still too abstract, you could adopt the en vogue concept of employer brand as your starting point.  Employer brand is shorthand for the brand projected to employees and recruits. It is reliant upon the close management of key people processes like recruitment, induction, performance management and internal communication. Employee engagement and employer brand are very close bedfellows and the business case for investing in either should be built on a platform that includes:

 

-          The true cost of recruitment and retention (including agency fees, salaries, advertising, induction and orientation etc)

-          The cost of non-conformance (This is the impact of failing to fulfil brand promises to employees and new recruits.  It is not just whether recruitment partners in the supply chain perform but whether your recruitment professionals are recruiting to a model based upon the desired future culture rather than fit with the existing culture. In the UK alone around approximately 365 million pounds is wasted on ineffective graduate hires**)

-          The impact of creeping brand death and deadweight (What percentage of your employees turn up but have switched off or worse still, have switched allegiance? If you have employee surveys do they role model your brand values in the way they are implemented? How do they feed back into strategy and are you even bothering to measure employee engagement properly?)

 

As Steve McKevitt illustrates in City Slackers***, spotting the brand dead is a tricky task to implement from the heady heights of the C suite. But if I tell you that a group of disengaged public sector employees recently brought down their own CEO by leaking their version of the stories their Communications Director had carefully spoonfed the press you’ll get the idea about how important it is. Now picture how long and how widely these disaffected individuals had been bad mouthing the organisation and the impact on internal morale as well as public opinion. Time to start dusting down those surveys or reprioritising that engagement research?

 

 Ian