Strategy and the coalface in IC

So over at BBD, Liam asks "How very dare you?" leading specifically to a questioning of the concentration on all things strategy in a lot of the IC world these days.

Casey then says:

This is really just a place holder. It’s to remind me to carry on thinking about Liam’s question.

"Should you throw your hands up in horror and stalk out of the building crying “I can’t help you - you’re all doomed!”?

The answer to this, as Liam quite rightly points out, is very rarely going to be yes. But - what are the circumstances in which it might be yes?

All of which got me thinking...

In answer to Casey, the time when you walk out is where you can get a job at an equivalent salary in an organisation that actually has a strategy (preferably one that looks sound.)

Of course, that in itself tends to be fairly rare, all the more so as we appear to be hitting economically uncertain times.

I was going to suggest that if you really believe the organisation is doomed then you should walk out as well, but realistically in our society there's rarely any value to "walking out" unless you have a new job offer in hand. If you are going to move out of your job into unemployment because the company is going down, you may as well hold out for redundancy money.

The only other rationale for "walking out" is if you are genuinely a "high-flyer" with a "performance record" to maintain. Then it might be worth walking out to avoid having the stain of failure on your CV. However, as Liam is talking about "humble IC irchins" then this is not a factor.

So far, so good, I largely agree with Liam's premise.

I'd go even further in that the obsession with strategy in the glossy magazines and in the work and writing of various consultants is part of a wider trend to "worship the leaders of the organisation." This trend is driven by the commercial reality for consultants is that the people who sign the cheques to buy services are mostly those at the top. And we live in times where their role has been heavily mythologised and they have been surrounded by people and media telling them how important they are. As such, there's a lot of pressure to invest in the training, development and interests of top managers. And what is special about the managers at the top of the business? They set the strategy...

I suspect Liam, at heart, like me, wonders sometimes if this approach sets organisations up for failure, because it stunts investments in the skills and needs of the rest of the people in the organisation, who are, after all, vital to the execution of any strategy.

And when I step back to think about my time as an "umble IT manager" I have to agree all the more. Not only did some of the organisations I worked for not communicate their strategy down to my level, some didn't seem to have much strategy at all. And yes, what you do is roll up your sleeves and get on with the nuts and bolts of the job. There are things that need doing to keep things going smoothly. And when you have to take a decision that really should be guided by that nonexistent company strategy, you just make a guess as to what would be sensible and do it.

But of course, 4 months down the line, when the company elucidates a completely different strategy, it can be pretty hard to defend the spending decisions you took...

And to some degree I wonder if it's even harder for IC types. As an IT manager I could always say "well, I kept the email running and the internet access working and the accounts database online," nothing dramatic, but easily understood measures of competence.

For IC types Liam notes:

There's still a pretty good job to be done making sure people stick around, are happy to hand in great work or say nice things about you externally.

Which sounds a bit harder, because as good as you are in IC, if they are working to different priorities in HR or Operations (and remember, we're talking about a situation with a lack of overall strategy) then it might be pretty hard to do that "good job" as Liam defines it.

So, I'd like to ask Liam, if it's not commercially sensitive to blog about the parts of the Dojo where they teach people to deal with not having a strategy. That's not the skills to do "the pretty good job" that needs doing, but the skills to stay sane and cope with the ambiguity, uncertainty and negotiation of the situation.

 

 

Technorati Tags: business case,engagement,internal communications,strategy

Intranets in trouble

 

Over at a shel of my former self, Shel Holtz has a post called Intranets in Trouble which references a study by the Irish Computer Society.

As someone who concentrates on the people side of communication, I tend to be the one asking sceptical questions about technological solutions, but even so, the key results are rather disappointing:

Nearly half say they don’t use the intranet to support their everyday work

Nearly one in three say the intranet does not help with daily work

Half find their intranets’ search engines to be ineffective and 80% think both navigation and search need to be improved

35% of respondents cannot access the information they need on their company intranet

Fixing these problems won't solve all your communication problems, but if a third of workers can't get the information they need through the company intranet, then that's a serious performance issue.

To me, the results highlight a couple of things:

1) Too often, "the intranet" is purchased in the manner of a telephone system. No-one is given the responsibility (or indeed the resources) to ensure that existing content is kept up to date and that new information is chased down and documented online.

2) One oddity of the internet is that it puts cutting edge tools in our hands for free. As a result, people develop a reliance on tools like Google for navigating complex information landscapes. If you have a lot of information on your intranet, you either need to invest in replicating these tools or if you have a bespoke tool, you have to train people to use it.

Failing to address these issues simply means you won't get much out of your initial investment in the intranet. Of course, some people don't see the business value in better information and communication. It's true that if your main business is an automated widget production facility, the intranet might not be all that important. If your business relies on people working with information, collaborating with each other and keeping track of complex projects, then the quality of information exchange may be the difference between success and failure.

Technorati Tags: internal communication,intranets,lateral communications,technology

Are you a great communicator?

I'm not.

That may sound odd given my role in helping improve communication, but it's actually important on a number of levels:

1) It's glib, but we all need to be aware of our personal strengths and weaknesses. I'm working on improving my communication, are you?

After all, if it's not a priority for you, why would it be for anyone else in your organisation?

2) Communication is too vital to be just left to the people who are good at it. Communications professionals sometimes focus too much on putting messages across (as I've mentioned, it tends to be a core part of their business case) and not enough time helping others communicate.

The grey financier, the quiet and mumbling engineer, (forgive the stereotypes for a moment) all have vital information they need to communicate with others for the good of the organisation.

What can we do?

• On a personal level, if you're a good outward communicator, or your job is largely "putting messages across" you should ask yourself: "am I a good listener? Do I listen enough?"


• Sometimes I see frustrated communications professionals who just want to get hold of the hiring process and make sure only good communicators get jobs here." It's a nice idea, but we have to live in the real world. Outside of the communication function we employ people primarily for their other skills. There isn't always a good communicator amongst the candidates and we can't always attract them even if there is.


• Most vitally, we need to understand our role as helping the people who need to communicate. Part of this is offering support services, both in terms of communications training and development and acting as an "agency" for internal clients who wish to publicise larger projects etc.


• On top of this, the new approach in internal communications needs to be about finding systematic ways to help the bulk of people (i.e. not naturally great communicators) in an organisation communicate with the people they need to. This requires an understanding of processes that people work with and the problems in communication between different groups.


• Potential remedies range from programs to bridge cultural gaps, through new channels of communication to changing the incentive schemes around activities. (This is a topic I'll pick up again later.)
  

Technorati Tags: great communicator, systems, internal communication, improving communication

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Engagement and Culture

Over at Talking IC, back in June, Lee Smith commented on Sue Dewhurst's post about engagement.

Sue says:

OK, I admit it, I hate the 'e' word. It's joined 'strategic' and 'culture' as one of those wibbly terms that gets bandied about constantly whilst half the time people don't really know what it means... but they manage to have an earnest-sounding conversation about it anyway.

Lee agrees that engagement is most often used as a buzzword and too often people mean different things by it anyway. I suspect we'd all say the same about "culture" too, but as he recommends a new book (CEO - the Chief Engagement Officer by John Smythe) that is a useful application of the "engagement" concept he also highlights an important facet of what "culture" is:

If you, like me, are getting irritated by the 'e' word, then I recommend John's book as an antidote. It'll convince you that engagement - as a management philosophy - is a no-brainer and that many of our current approaches to internal communication remain essentially about coercion, command and control.

Culture is, in part, those assumptions that are so deep rooted we do not usually notice them. And possible the part of "internal communication" culture I most want to help change is the cancer of "coercion, command and control."

Why do I want to change it? Not just because I don't believe that the centre of the organisation "always knows best" but because the evidence is that internal communication that relies on coercion, command and control just doesn't work.

It is worth saying that it's a few steps of logic from that statement to the philosophy I'm building Enoptron around, but I'll talk about that more in my next post.

Technorati Tags: engagement, culture, buzzwords, internal communication

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