Engaging the English?

Four years after publication I've finally found the time to read Kate Fox's "Watching the English." It's a bit embarrassing that it's taken me that long, since it is all about "English culture" but I'm glad I finally did so. If you haven't read it, it is rich with insights into the "English character" and how these manifest in daily life. Kate Fox is a serious anthropologist and doesn't over-generalise too much, but at the same time has managed to write a witty and insightful book that is easy to read.

It's been widely reviewed, so I won't dwell much on the content, except to say that if you ever find yourself watching an English ritual (ordering at the pub, for instance) and wondering "what on earth is going on?" then this is a good book to read. The rules of "pub life" have also been put on the web at the SIRC site. (SIRC is the research centre where Fox works.)

However, the essential characteristics she laid out really got me thinking about the culture clash within a lot of "employee engagement" programs, especially within multinational firms.

A stereotypical example (to avoid identifying anyone!): a large US firm has an engagement program, with pieces implemented by HR and Internal Comms. Within the UK office, this is put in place by local workers.

Picking out three characteristics from Kate Fox's list, moderation/balance, humour, and finally a taboo against earnestness we can begin to see some problems. The program may well be sold locally with a good dose of humour by the local workers, despite the earnestness present in the original descriptions written in Michigan. However, the underlying aims of "employee engagement" as defined at the US HQ might well conflict with local cultural norms about "not being too earnest" or "moderation/balance in work and play."

Now in the case of a small division, this isn't fatal, because culture is a broad assessment and every country contains a range of personalities. You can fill out a single department with people who fit well with the originating culture (in this case the USA) but as your employment requirements grow it will become ever harder to find candidates who aren't typical of the culture.

In time then, we will need to develop different sets of philosophical ideas of employee engagement that can fit with the cultures of different employees. That requires not only an assessment of the culture but also a real sense of "engagement" beyond the stereotypical notion of a hypermotivated, hyperactive, workaholic team.

 

Technorati Tags: corporate communicators,cultural translation,culture,engagement,English culture

Wars for talent?

This post is part inspired by Kevin Keohane's recent post on restructuring comms departments, which I commented on yesterday. However, the thought process was also stimulated by Charles Gancel's presentation at IABC Eurocomm 2008 and the recent post at Cognitive Edge; "Whither the MBA?"

Audrey Scarff highlighted one of Charles Gancel's major points over at the Eurocomm blog:

Charles Gancel says there’s more head hunting going on today because of retiring baby boomers and consequently a senior management shortage. This brings up the need for even better knowledge management, and retention of talent.

Kevin noted:

1.  Take the existing functions and force them to work together holistically, probably by making them report to a single person who gets the “holistic” nature of communications.  The problem is, I think these people are pretty rare; most “Heads of Corporate Communications” tend to stick to their functional (or even sometimes channel management) heritage.

Charles Gancel was talking in the context of managers who run departments outside (or spanning beyond) their home country. That kind of internationalism requires a greater flexibility of perspective than a typical management position. He contends that such candidates have never been thick on the ground, but demographics are making them much more difficult to find.

Likewise, Kevin feels that an ideal "Head of Corporate Comms" has a holistic view which is not common amongst candidates who rise through one communication track (e.g. Investor Relations.)

I expressed the view on the day at Eurocomm that this situation is not at all an accident. It seems clear to me that the hiring, training and development of staff concentrates very much on identifying and creating functional experts and ignores the need for flexibility of perspective.

I was reminded to blog about this by the post at Cognitive Edge about the MBA:

Further than an MBA is this day and age seems to be taught content, rather than a masters programme involving a degree of independent thinking.  Mind you PhD's also seem these days to be more taught, with a narrow focus using various survey and other type instruments whose validity I and others have challenged.  The Mediaeval model why which you engaged in discourse, attended lectures and then presented your ideas to examination by your peers seems to have got lost somewhere along the way in the journey to commoditisation of learning in general.  Originality is punished in favour of conformity.

Having done an MBA myself, I have a whole host of observations on them, but that's for another post. However, I think the point "originality is punished in favour of conformity" is the key to understanding why we find ourselves lacking appropriate candidates across a number of sectors. It starts in the hiring processes, where all too often candidates with a true diversity of interests are screened out. Training and development is often focused on a narrow range of technical skills and an interest in wider issues is not encouraged.

How to rectify this? I'll be posting some thoughts about that soon...

 

Technorati Tags: corporate communicators,corporate culture,international managers,war for talent

 

Audiences and the structure of comms depts

In a similar vein to my post on The Law of Leaky Communications (but focusing on corporate functions, rather than international culture) Kevin Keohane notes that the distinctions between different audiences in corporate communications are breaking down. He moves on to ask what this means for the organisational structure of the communications function:

I think most organisations still aren’t structured to deal with this - I suspect most still structure their communications functions around internal, marketing, corporate, human resources, etc. 

So what’s the solution? 

1.  Take the existing functions and force them to work together holistically, probably by making them report to a single person who gets the “holistic” nature of communications.  The problem is, I think these people are pretty rare; most “Heads of Corporate Communications” tend to stick to their functional (or even sometimes channel management) heritage.

2.  Get functions to cooperate and share accountability for delivering a core agenda across the piece.  Probably works better in some situations than others based on politics and the strength of senior management to make it work.

3.  Restructure the function.  But how? seems to be the burning question.  Is the answer to restructure by audience?  Probably something along those lines.  But then, these conversations can come full circle, since while internal-external lines and indeed audiences are overlapping and blurring, there is still a perceived need to control marketing communications, brand communications, HR etc. etc.

 

Observations:

1) They may be rare, but I'm not sure you can work it out without them. I think any restructuring is going to bring at least some of the communication functions together and they will need a leader. Perhaps we should all be asking "Does this organisation actually train/develop people to be more than just another product of their functional silo?" If not why not? (I'll be coming back to this issue in my next post, too.)

2) "I'd like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony..." Yes, it sounds Utopian, but it can work, in the right organisation, at the right time. Sometimes there are just a good bunch of people around and they make special things happen.

3) I don't think you can easily restructure by audience. The post-modern trend is towards overlapping, shifting audiences. You might need to restructure every week. Functions are also not completely defunct. [sic] Whilst we undertake "task-based communications" then they will still fit quite well into the functional structure, at least in terms of expertise needed.

What's my solution? Long term, there has to be more effort put into developing individuals who can manage communications holistically.

In the short term, I'd be looking at a variant of the techniques Enoptron uses for building greater co-operation between branches on different sides of the world.:

- Establish formal awareness (lists, etc.) of the remit of each group and the concerns they have about the actions of the others.

- Get the groups talking, informally where possible.

- Establish formal channels for them to get help/consult each other when they have an "overlap situation" on hand.

- Organise to remove barriers to teamwork in the performance management and other structures.

Obviously, this still hinges on building some notion that "co-operation is a good thing" which will need backing up from senior management along with careful fostering on the ground. That's why in the long term I don't think you can get away from the need for a leader with a holistic view.

 

Technorati Tags: corporate communicators,cultural translation,future of internal communications,law of leaky communications

Business Texting?

Over at IABC Cafe, Todd Hattori made a sort of odd post about an interesting subject: the use of text messages in business in Asia.

He starts off quite normally describing how he came across the phenomenon at an IABC event in the Philippines, his amazement at the fact of it and the explanations given to him about it by local colleagues.

His "amazement" rather rubbed me up the wrong way, along with his final two paragraphs:

So, I’m curious … I’m a fairly vocal critic of e-mail because very few people use it correctly … shouldn’t we be defining proper use rules for texting before it, like e-mail, gets out of control?

I fear the day when I have to manage the hundreds of e-mails that I receive each day AND endless, intrusive text messages. To add to my fear, my company is getting ready to implement instant messaging. Short of turning off my phone and computer, have any best practices emerged?

Fortunately, I didn't have time to comment or blog about it until now and Kristen Sukalac (who blogs at PR Conversations) weighed in with a great comment, covering some of the reasons why the text message is a useful medium (even if it hasn't caught on in the US thanks to the behaviour of the phone companies there) and I would urge you to go and read the comment in full.

What I would add is three things:

1)  All the downsides that Todd seems to see with texting are already in force for a lot of people outside Asia through the medium of the "Crackberry." Push email is largely just text messages with a few extra bells and whistles. This isn't a new problem and we're not at some 'tipping point' where we can stem the tide of rudeness and time wasting from this medium before it gets started. We're already living in the middle of it.

2) The "disbelief" that a particular technology can be used for business communication was prompted in this case by travelling to another continent. However, one can see similar reactions to new technologies used by younger generations right at home. Social networking springs to mind. Not to pick on Todd, but it worries me quite often how few "professional communicators" are open-minded about different ways to get a message across.

3) Most importantly, Kristen makes a key cultural point at the end of her comment:

Text messaging has another appeal: its simplified, pidgeon version of English is much easier to master and to use across diverse groups of non-native English speakers.

This is to my mind, a key point. There's a clear level of discomfort in "professional communicators" with "text speak" and the varied informal ways people type out emails and IMs. This preference for clarity, formality and well, beauty in language is certainly admirable and just about justifiable amongst a homogenous set of native speakers.

However, as soon as you're communicating in English with a set of people for whom it is their second language, you're not talking to people who have any investment in the ways you have been taught to make things clear, to be formal or even well expressed. It should not surprise then if they find a simplified, constrained version of the language more useful. And it's worth remembering that not only when you read (as Todd was doing) some of their communications between themselves, but also when you sit down to communicate with them too.

Technorati Tags: corporate communicators,cultural translation,text speak

Corporate Communicators, BA and BAA

 

It feels like a long time now (is a week a long time in blogging?) that I wrote about how some high-level Corporate Communicators have slipped into chasing the message cycle under pressure. [In fact it is only about 7 months.] I thought that was a bit worrying.

The customer service and PR mess at Terminal 5 however, seems to have been characterised by another reaction. Everyone in top management (including any communicators) spent the first few hours in hiding!

Eventually BA wheeled out the top man, Chief Executive, Willie Walsh to take a considerable amount of flak. That is, in PR terms at least, a positive communication step. BAA? Still nowhere to be seen overall. Of course, given the service we've been putting up with from them for years at airports around the country perhaps they felt they had no reputation to defend. Still, it seems that thanks to the fact that BA is the sole occupant at T5 it seems BAA has ducked the media storm and for them at least, lying low is working out.

 

Technorati Tags: corporate communicators

Organisation of communication functions

In a comment to this post about Mike Klein's ideas about how Internal Communications and Knowledge Management overlap, Kevin Keohane notes:

Indy, I posted on Mike's blog as well. I've almost taken it for granted that there are connections between IC, engagement and KM. I keep coming back to the way organisations manage and structure themselves... a world where the head of KM "owns" knowledge management, the head of IC "owns" internal communication, the head of HR "owns" the people development agenda, and the head of marketing "owns" the brand.
How stupid is that, yet how many organisations do it that way?

Which cuts to the heart of the issue in a lot of ways. It's not that the future will bring totally new things, but that the way we arrange things at the moment will look rather backward.

 

Shel Holtz broaches similar terrain recently, while questioning the specifics of having a "social media manager" in a company:

I have heard calls for companies to create a C-suite position called “Chief Conversation Officer,” someone to manage the various online social channels that produce conversation. Again, that misses the point. What companies need is a Chief Reputation Officer to ensure all communication with core publics is coordinated in the company’s best interests.

...

A social media manager is a fine idea, but if he says, “Our product is shipping late because of manufacturing issues” while a media relations manager tells a Wall Street Journal reporter, “Our product is shipping late because we’ve had to redesign a part,” that inconsistency will spread through the cycle-less media space—online and off—like wildfire. Whether it’s conversation or a traditional press release, the communication channel must be used to communicate honest, transparent, accurate information.

Few organizations have anybody in a position like this. [My emphasis - Indy]. Even if there’s a senior-level public affairs person, Human Resources and employee communications often don’t report to him, and both communicate to vital publics (employees and prospective employees). Community relations often reports elsewhere, as does investor relations and government relations. And all those employees with their individual blogs? Who’s providing them with the resources they need to represent the company accurately and fairly?

 

Technology is pushing a number of communication domains together and one important result will be a rearrangement of working practices to create an integrated response to those domains. Since actions speak as loud as words, this will doubtless take in some functions that involve more than communication (notably HR) and in my opinion, likely the technical side of communication as currently embodied by IT.

 

Technorati Tags: corporate communicators,future of internal communications,internal communications,organisation of the firm

Earthquakes and information travel

So here in the north of England we felt some small earth tremors last night at about 1am. One man down the road from here actually had his chimney land on him. Fortunately, we seem to have escaped any real damage. It was an exciting few moments feeling the whole building shake around me, but after a quick check around the house (5 mins or so) I hit the net to see what I could find out. The British Geological Society website and the earthquake page at Edinburgh were both so overloaded that I couldn't even view the page. Any thoughts that this was a purely local event disappeared at that moment.

It reminded me of a couple of things:

1) If you weren't sure it was an earthquake (and I wasn't because we have a history of subsidence problems here) then the actions of the crowd alone, hammering these geological websites could tell you, well before the BBC reported it on their news pages. Score one for trend watching/wisdom of crowds approaches I suppose.

2) This is the speed that information spreads at in a modern, computer-filled organisation. So if you're in corporate/internal comms and there's an earthquake on the way - a statement to investors about job losses, perhaps - then you better have some quick response plans, because word will travel around your organisation quicker than you ever expect.

 

Technorati Tags: corporate communicators,earthquake,internal communications,quick response

Belated Eurocomm Blogging

Due to my work travel commitments I'm only just back at blog station central. (And yes, I can blog from the road, but it's been busy.)

Eurocomm was a great experience. Good speakers and a small but informed and thinking audience. Great opportunities to meet interesting people and have interesting discussions.

Jennifer Lewis reviews it on the Eurocomm blog, as does Audrey Scarff. It also makes an appearance on the FIR podcast. There's a collation of a few other blog posts about it here.

Of those, Kevin Keohane's is the most lyrical.

Most riveting speaker for me was (predictably) Ramon Olle Jr. Not only is he an effective and energetic presenter, who highlighted some local features of branding in Spain, but he also referenced "The Bull" in the tradition of an exhibition item I saw at MACBA later in the week:

ASPEN; Multimedia Magazine in a Box

The McLuhan Issue (Vol 1, No.4, Section 9)

If an ad has become so environmental as to be unperceived, that's when it's really doing its work. - Marshall McLuhan

I'd place the award for "most philsophical approach" as a tie between Kevin Keohane's piece on the fictional construct that is "the audience" and the presentation on "Values and Communication" by Josep Maria Esquirol (which I hope to have time to blog about a bit later.)

Best discussion fodder? Definitely the plenary on Social Media, which was also one of the best group presentations I've seen at a conference in a while. Credit to Yang-May Ooi; Mark Wright and Giles Colbourne.

Of course, all of the above were of great intellectual interest for me, but not the reason I was there: Presentations on cross-cultural issues by Charles Gancel (Inter Cultural Management Associates) and another by Hanna Kalla and Sam Berrisford (Hill and Knowlton).

Sam and Hanna concentrated on an overview of the field, which targeted the general listener but still had plenty of tidbits for those of us for whom it is the main event.

Charles put things into a bit more perspective, linking to issues around the knowledge economy and the coming "war for talent," concentrating on the development of culturally aware leaders.

Overall, a great conference, a real tonic for practitioners in the field, intellectually stimulating and a great body of peers to interact with.

 

Technorati Tags: corporate communicators,EuroComm,IABC,internal communications,review

IABC Event

Well I'm in London today, so I'll be off to the IABC event this evening. Liam from Black Belt Dojo will be lecturing us on their work on generic competencies for internal communicators.

You can download a PDF summary here. I'm blogging this in advance to force myself to read their summary in advance. Having done so I have to say it's a very thorough piece of work and very valuable to anyone having to define the competencies for IC roles in their organisation (and of course the training and dev. work that needs to be done too.)

You can also download a summary article about the work that appeared in Strategic Communication Management magazine. That's also interesting, but when it moves on to organisational roles I think that's where you have to really stop and think about how IC operates in your firm.

I'm looking forward to the talk and meeting up with some communicators to chat. My work being consulting I don't get to talk shop very often and the IABC events are great for me from that point of view.

Addition 03/12/07:

Been busy, but I wanted to update this post because we had a great discussion on the evening and it's very clear that Liam is fully aware of the diversity of roles in IC and when he talks it's clear that he's put a lot of thought into how the competency framework adjusts around the different situations out there.

Technorati Tags: competencies , corporate communicators , IABC , internal communications

Melcrum Blog: Is I.C merely a cog in the propaganda wheel?

 

As usual, I'm late on reading my RSS feeds, so I'm a few days behind the zeitgeist in noticing this post over at The Melcrum Blog:

Is I.C merely a cog in the propaganda wheel?

 

Key quote:

“People will always see the internal communication function as an internal propaganda machine”. This was a comment made at the recent CIPR Inside event held at Hill & Knowlton in London.

...

This point alone could no doubt have stimulated enough discussion for a whole other event. It certainly prompted me to think about the role of the internal comms function and the struggle that practitioners often face in getting employees to fully understand and appreciate the point of their existence beyond the cliché of arranging parties and writing newsletters. But is there any truth in what Katharina’s ex-colleague said? Is the struggle for authenticity ultimately futile? And is the internal comms department the place where truth can be sought or is it better to listen to news as it materializes on the company grapevine? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

 

My reaction:

Obviously, it depends. Generalising about the perception of the IC function in "a company" is like generalising about the culture of "a company" - there's so much variation there will always be counter-examples.

However, it does dovetail with some of the questions I've been asking on this blog and I think the quote points at a kernel of truth which needs thinking about.

The kernel of truth is that many IC professionals have made it their "business case" to "deliver employee engagement"; interpreted to be moving employees to a finer appreciation of the strategies, tactics and requirements of top management.

If you analyse such an undertaking from the point of view of an employee whose interests do not match perfectly with those of top management, it's hard not to see those aims as having some element of propaganda attached. Throw in the way that many corporate exercises seem to be much better at sending information out to employees than gathering it in and it should be easy to see how employees can feel harangued. Add the way that the legal department gets the last word over what may be revealed about an awful lot of important issues affecting people on the ground and you can see how IC starts to look like the "Ministry of Truth."

So, is authenticity doomed?

I'd say there is still hope on the horizon:

1) Talented communicators manage to bridge these and many other gaps, wherever they work. There may be contradictions inside corporate life, but personal integrity and honesty about the times when you're in a difficult position can help people's view of IC a lot.

2) In some organisations, company culture is better than this and where it isn't IC can be a hugely positive influence in working towards a better state of affairs. Trust might be in short supply at times in the transition period, but if communicators set out to be reliable, honest and committed to improving communication in both directions within the organisation, success will bring trust.

3) As I've been posting here, I do think that there are spaces for the IC function to position themselves in which do not rest so closely on "engagement" which to my mind is where the "propaganda feeling" starts to creep in. One possibility is to explore a focus on more process related communication questions, along with coaching people to communicate better, rather than being a "motivation unit." If your role in communication is to "do it better" rather than "do it with the aim of improving X Y Z" you've more chance of being trusted and are less likely to be asked to spin.

Of course, in all of these outlined situations, if company culture is not by nature transparent, then it has to be admitted that the grapevine will probably let employees know about "secrets" long before IC is allowed to do. If IC in turn bows to pressure from management to "massage" the news, then the battle is truly lost. However, where truthfulness is maintained, then accuracy at least will put you one step over the grapevine.

Is all this dilemma filled? Unfortunately yes, which is why I'm seeking to create a case for IC that doesn't make performance rest on the kind of metrics that propaganda was designed to address. It's the only sustainable way forward...

 

Technorati Tags: alternative ways of thinking , business case , commad and control , communication , corporate communicators , culture , engagement , internal communications , lateral communications , trust

Measurement

It's a little while ago now, but Liam from Black Belt Dojo asked Who really is measuring? He particularly wonders if "whether there is a silent majority out there that is in denial about the need to measure at all."

I would suggest that there is of course, a (sometimes) silent minority who are in denial about the need to measure. After all, communications is classically one of the fields where you can be comfortable if you don't like numbers (as opposed to engineering or finance, for example). Thus, we've all been part of conversations in the field where someone's visceral dislike of numbers shows through into a disdain of measurement.

However, I don't see this as a majority per se. What forms the majority is a coalition of these people with those who are wary of measurement for some other reasons, which in my view often stem from the fact that (if you'll allow the mangling of von Clausewitz):

Measurement is often a continuation of politics by other means.

That is to say, in the corporate setting, measurement is often as much about legitimation as real feedback. Measurement of communication is an exercise of putting numbers on human behaviours. That's not impossible, but there are a number of pitfalls. How well do your numbers represent a good summary of the behaviours in question? How well does your model of interpretation turn those numbers into meaningful conclusions?

This is of course not unique to communications, similar questions apply in process engineering too. But, the margins of error are clearly greater in communications and the body of knowledge is just a bit less developed. A lot of survey based techniques have flaws that we're all aware of (particularly in conditions where "organisational silence" is playing a part) but we don't discuss a lot. That's not to send us down a postmodernist rabbit hole about "objective reality" but if people don't believe that the measurement really works, then they won't be comfortable with it. I think that's also a big point for development in the profession as it plays into unease with identity that's already present.

One rule of politics is that you don't ask questions that you don't already know the answer to. As such I see a lot of reluctance to take on measurement of communications because communicators don't have confidence in the measurement process. If you don't think it's going to help your case, it's sometimes felt to be wise not to generate the numbers. If you generate the numbers it can be particularly hard to discuss their accuracy. Especially when that then puts you on the turf of arguing about numbers with the Finance Director. I also wonder in the light of my previous post if there isn't an identity based reluctance to seeing oneself in that role for a lot of communicators.

Likewise, if you don't feel that the measurement system is provably reliable, how wise is it to use as a feedback tool for improving your actions? We've all seen multiple cases where using numbers as feedback improves the numbers month on month, but doesn't actually get the job done. My work around the NHS has reminded me of that to a great degree.

Does all this amount to being "in denial about the need to measure at all"? I'm not sure. I think these subtle problems are real ones that are yet to be fully solved across the field and that is both disappointing and an opportunity to make some real improvements.

 

Technorati Tags: corporate communicators , identity , internal communications , measurement

More on Identity

Over at Shades of Gray, David Murray has an post about a new film, Helvetica which has started an interesting discussion in the comments about the craft of communication and the relationship of various commenters to "management" and "strategy." It's a great conversation because you can see some of the tensions in identity that a move into management puts creative people through, right there in people's comments.

There's also an interesting tangent in the comments about "measurement" which I will talk about more in my next post.

 

 

Technorati Tags: business case , corporate communicators , identity , management , narrative , training

Corporate Communicators, Management and Identity

As part of my travels this week I was privileged to get a small insight into a recent (not yet published study) of corporate communications managers that examined their actions in unexpected crisis situations. I won't identify any people or situations too closely because it would be unfair to preempt the study too much, but it did include managers at the top of the corporate communications tree in a number of prominent businesses, many in the FTSE100.

The fascinating part for me was a pattern of "regression under fire" where people who are very definitely managers, whose position is far above "copywriter" or "PR representative" slipped away from strategic thinking into what might be termed "chasing the message cycle." Of course, the message cycle shouldn't be ignored in a crisis, but presumably these people have whole departments to help them with that. Surely, their role is to think in a strategic manner and help the board look for opportunities to address the underlying issues, rather than engage unduly with day by day press and communications tasks.

I don't say this as a criticism, I think we've all turned in bad performances in a crisis at some point. If you haven't, then you probably haven't been in that many crises or you're failing to admit that someone else saved your bacon at one point. Rather, I see is as saying something about the state of the corporate and internal communications field. There's a deep seated insecurity about the value of the discipline and it seems to me that combines with the relative newness of these professions to leave some uncertainty of identity. In a crisis, we have a tendency to fall back on "what we're good at" which is, reasonably enough for people from that background the basics of crafting and disseminating a message.

However, these people are at the top of a management tree, they have been managers for a long time. Is it really appropriate that they react as craftsmen and craftswomen? And what does it say about "management" in the field?

It's perhaps unfair to overgeneralise from an unpublished study, but I think there are some important issues here. One is the question of how well communicators are relating to strategic, rather than tactical concerns. There are narratives of "communications strategy" alive and well within the profession, but it seems that we don't really have full confidence in them as yet. Another issue is the question of management. Communications is very definitely "knowledge work" and as such doesn't fit easily into the industrial traditions that shape a lot of "managment." All the same, it sometimes feels that there isn't a clear sense of what it means to be a manager in a communications function and certainly I think there are opportunities to improve the training and development of people who ascend into these communications management positions.

 

Technorati Tags: business case , corporate communicators , identity , management , narrative , training