Just a few words about my first IABC event. Everyone was very friendly and the setup was interesting, with the opportunity to take part in three of five discussion groups.
I wanted to be in all five, but ended up choosing the group on engagement run by Kevin Keohane first. It was nice to meet someone in person that I've only had "blog contact" with in the past. He had some pointed questions to ask about the alignment of the "employee brand" with the aspirations of current and potential employees, but I won't attempt to reproduce his nifty diagram here. I felt this discussion was just getting going as the hooter went to move us on to the next one. I hope we at least laid some groundwork for the next group.
Nick Grant asked us "Can internal and external communication ever be aligned?" Again, time caught up with us, but (being the IABC) there was of course some consensus that they two perspectives have to be aligned overall, otherwise the mixed messages can cause serious problems.
Alas, I cannot recall the name of the final discussion leader, but the topic of "Can change be managed?" and the notion that it rather had to be "led," than "managed" made me think today once again about our approach to internal communications.
In particular, one idea in the "change leadership" discussion was that most people are most likely to change for a direct manager who they know and trust. It's largely only someone who they work with regularly, who understands their working life who has the credibility/trust to ask someone to undertake radical working change.
For me, there was a strong parallel with how internal communications "should" work. Statements from the top, or even just far flung regions of the company are unlikely to have as much credibility or trust as those from direct supervisors and colleagues. We instinctively know this, I think, but often give up on it because it's very hard to make practical use of. Rather, many people view "middle management" as the "big sponge" that soaks up all the information, but never passes it along.
As a result, we've invested in circumventing the traditional channels of communication. That has some exciting possibilities, especially in connection with new "social media," but at the same time (hobby horse alert!) I feel it has pushed "internal communications" into a "mass communications" or "marketing/advertising" mould, where the purpose and expertise of internal communicators is to create communications strategies and implement them.
What I see is that there is an important role for "internal communications" in helping people communicate, helping "the sponge" of middle management actually pass more information along. In effect, doing less communication and spending more time on helping people communicate, both by innovating technology/processes and the hard work of teaching people extra skills. Why? Because in the end, they will tend to have credibility that a distant communicator will struggle to have. Social media allows a narrowing of that kind of distance, but even there I think that "social business communication" is going to need a lot of experience and even training to get the best out of it and existing trust relationships will continue to dominate.
