Economic Realities in the Workplace

This blog has expended a lot of words on the importance of bringing knowledge and awareness of the outside world into organizations. The struggling economy we’ve been experiencing for the past 27 months (or more) has put a variety of strains on business, adding a new imperative in this regard.

Companies struggle to maintain profitability (or even stay in business) amid feeble market conditions, never mind trying to grow the business. Meanwhile, it's difficult for their employees to be at their best when they worry about the potential loss of their jobs (or those of co-workers) in the context of a 10 percent unemployment rate.

This particular period in our history has been made all the more difficult for businesses by the additional burdens and uncertainties spawned largely in the political arena around issues like:

• The possibility of increased business and personal taxes at federal, state and local levels;
• A growing thicket of federal and state regulations and red tape;
• The rising cost of health care insurance; and
• Looming energy policy changes (various efforts to “regulate carbon emissions” and/or reduce the use of fossil fuels).

Individually and collectively, these add to the cost, complexity and challenge of doing business, both today and in the future, putting further constraints on businesses’ ability to focus on what they do best and to expand by hiring and retaining qualified people, buying new equipment, and building new facilities.

As Congress, state legislatures and other political leaders debate whether to increase taxes or to impose new taxes and regulations, business leaders and owners hesitate, paralyzed by the uncertainties of additional costs that could arise in the coming months and years. They know it's dangerous to spend money they may not have a year from now. That translates into postponement of hiring new people – since additional employees represent long-term investments – or incurring debt to build plants that may not run at capacity in a weak economy.

Instead, businesses hoard cash against the possibility that they will have to spend it later on things like elevated taxes, higher energy costs and/or increased health care premiums.

Unfortunately, employees are too often divorced from these external economic realities. Within many companies, certain myths tend to persist: that the company is immune to natural economic forces; that it has infinitely deep pockets with which to pay ever-rising wages and benefits; that company management is over-stating the impact of external forces on the business; and that they can always raise prices to maintain profitability.

Though tempting, the answer does not lie in passing along increased costs in the form of higher prices. While some price increases might be possible, this route is never the only solution. Besides, customers can find less expensive sources, postpone their purchases, or to do without altogether.

Employees need to have a solid understanding of things like revenues, cash flow, and profits. They must appreciate that increased expenses – whether in the form of taxes, energy costs or health care premiums – impede the company’s ability to earn a profit, and that profits assure that an organization can continue to operate well into the future.

Put another way, a business’ future is contingent on whether it can update plants and equipment, maintain those plants and that equipment, recruit new talent, and improve and update its employees’ talents and skills – all of which are impossible in the absence of profits. A stagnant organization – one unable (or unwilling) to reinvest in itself and its people – is an organization in its early death throes.

Those harsh economic realities and the uncertainties of our times must be part of the ongoing internal dialogue. This imperative to bring outside realities inside bears repeating now as 2010 comes to a close and we look forward to (and hope for) an improving economy in the New Year.

All employees need to understand that the environment in which their employer operates has a direct impact on its ability to continue to employ them, pay them what they deserve, allow them to pursue self-improvement and personal career goals within the organization, and to make the capital investments that will help maintain productive, cost-effective operations.

To do otherwise, to keep employees in the dark to guess and make assumptions, is dangerous on many levels. But at base, it isn’t fair or honest. Have a conversation with your employees about these simple facts:

• Higher corporate taxes and increased energy costs mean less money to invest in our people and plants.
• These same increased costs also affect our suppliers, which means the price of the goods and services we buy from them will likely go up, too.
• Higher taxes and energy costs also impede our customers’ ability or willingness to buy our products.
• More regulations mean a further shifting of resources away from productive investments in our people, plants and equipment.
• Higher health care costs will necessitate some reduction of benefits and/or increased co-pays.
• There is no deep, infinite well of money for salary and benefit increases, or for structural investments and capital improvements. It all comes from a business’ ability to turn a profit on revenues after expenses. And if expenses like taxes, health care and energy go up, profits decline.

It’s your responsibility as a business leader and manager of people to make sure employees appreciate the direct links between public policy decisions by our elected representatives and a business’ ability to prosper, as well as the people that that business employs.

“Because it’s there”

Knowing my love of adventure, a friend recently sent me a newspaper article about a twenty-nine-year-old family friend named Eli Andersen who had circumnavigated Graham Island standing atop and paddling a large surfboard. I’d never heard of Graham Island, but thanks to Google maps, I found out, and I was even more impressed by the feat.

      Graham comprises about half of the landmass of the Queen Charlotte Islands, BC, north of Vancouver Island, south of the Alaskan panhandle. It took Eli six weeks to paddle around Graham.

      The notion of a wild adventure like that appeals to something deep in me and I was fascinated. I think that this young man touched on what appealed to me when he said, “I like to lie down in my sleeping bag at night after I have made camp. I congratulate myself on a long paddle, or finding the ideal campsite, or had made good decisions. I pat myself on the back and say 'good job Eli, you did it.' I enjoy that feeling.”

      I know that feeling, too. It's an ineffable sense of accomplishment. It’s reaching well beyond what you believe you are capable of doing and then doing it. It's deep fatigue, that feeling of tired, aching muscles telling you how difficult it was, and the comforting knowledge that you did it, a truth that no one can take away, proven by the fact of where you are at that moment.

      It’s crazy, isn’t it, to engage in such dangerous ventures as paddling solo around an island in the northern Pacific Ocean. Why do we do it? As a college kid, much to my mother's horror, I hitchhiked and freight-hopped my way from Salem, OR, to the Grand Canyon, a distance of about 1,500 miles. And when I got there, I hiked to the bottom of the canyon.

      Over the years, I’ve camped out under the stars in a remote corner of the Isle of Skye in Scotland; trained for and run six marathons; climbed Mt. Hood; nearly drowned while canoeing the St. Croix River in Maine overflowing its banks due to spring floods; climbed vertical rock walls; and hiked into the High Sierras numerous times. They were all tough, physically trying and sometimes-dangerous experiences, some more so than others. But, as we press to the edge of our own abilities and strengths, we gain confidence and a better understanding of our personal limits.

      Why do I do it? In the case of the High Sierras, it’s because when you can camp out at 11,000 feet, you get unbroken vistas of a hundred miles; a night sky full of trillions of bright stars; cold glacial melt water to drink; crisp, clean air to breathe; complete silence, save any wind; utter solitude; and the harsh beauty of sheer granite cliffs and high altitude, aquamarine lakes. You congratulate yourself in the knowledge of your accomplishment, how hard you worked to be able to see and experience it all, knowing that you are among the few people up to it.

Photo: Bill LeMenager

      Mountaineers always respond to the “Why?” question by saying, “Because it's there.” Seems as good a reason as any. In fact, what that answer says is that they can imagine themselves atop a particular mountain, just as Eli could imagine himself circumnavigating Graham Island alone. To picture one’s self doing something is tantamount to doing it. It’s throwing down the gauntlet and daring one’s self to do it. Failing is one thing, but failing to try is not acceptable.

      That’s the nub. Not trying is unacceptable.

      Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, himself an avid and fearless adventurer, understood this truth. He once said:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Another president, John F. Kennedy, challenged the nation to go to the moon, at the time a tremendously and unthinkably difficult test. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade,” he said, “not because [it is] easy, but because [it is] hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win. . ."

      That statement, in a nutshell, defined for an era who we were as a nation, what our goals were; that we were fully aware of the risks of the mission, in the context of our confidence in our ability to do it. But to fail to try was not acceptable to the American spirit, and the nation as one eagerly rose to the president’s challenge.

      One's mountain needn't be a moon mission or an Alpine peak to conquer, or an island to paddle around. It can be something as close to home as a painting to conceive of and finish, a gourmet meal to plan, cook and serve, or a book to write and publish. And, it might be overcoming a job-related challenge.

      Tales of adventures are merely internal human struggles writ large, and literally played out on a real life canvas. Edward Whymper, a late-nineteenth century English mountaineer and explorer, answered the “Why?” question with remarkable clarity:

“We who go mountain-scrambling have constantly set before us the superiority of fixed purposes or perseverance to brute force. . . [W]e know where there's a will there's a way; and we come back to our daily occupations better fitted to fight the battle of life, and to overcome the impediments which obstruct our paths, strengthened and cheered by the recollection of past labours, and by the memories of victories gained in other fields.”

In the overly formal language of the Victorian era, those words neatly sum up what I’ve long struggled to verbalize succinctly. After those exertions spent overcoming uniquely difficult obstacles, after stressing our bodies to the limit, after testing our will against the challenges we put before ourselves, we return to “fight the battle” of everyday life. The barriers and difficulties we confront there can seem so paltry in comparison as we recall our “past labours.” We can picture ourselves similarly overcoming our everyday battles.

      We are well prepared for life’s daily tests, because we know ourselves so much better than had we not confronted the “superiority of fixed purposes, or the perseverance of brute force.”

Why Passion Equals Success

What kinds of people do we most envy? I'm not talking about envy in the negative, covetous sense of desiring someone else’s luxurious car or palatial home. This isn’t about yearning for material wealth. This is a more positive envy, about admiring the people who are doing what they want, whose profession is their passion.

Think of it another way. What are the qualities of your ideal manager, someone you’d be eager to work for and with?

A friend of mine, who I'll call Tim, is such a person, someone I’ve long admired. Early in his career, he aimed high. He chose his path, the business he wanted to be in, and identified the appropriate milestones he needed to hit along the way to reach his goal. It was never easy. He built his company from scratch, putting in long hours for many years, while taking a lot of risks along the way to achieve it. But he has arrived.

The business Tim owns is thriving today. Over the years, he hired and cultivated competent managers, which ultimately freed him from much of the day-to-day hassles of running the business, while giving him more free time. He has assumed a senior advisory role in his company, which allows him time to travel extensively and play lots of golf. Once, I asked him what exactly it is that he does, now that he has achieved his intended goal.

“I manage the life of Tim,” he replied.

What a perfect reply. While on its face it seems self-centered, in fact, it says in six simple words what we all crave at our core… the sense of “I’m in control of my life.”

In the end, that's what we envy most about the people we deem worthy of our respect: they are in control of their lives. How they spend their time and what they choose to do with it is not dictated every day by the ebb and flow of the business, or by the whims of the marketplace. They worked hard to lift themselves above the daily fray. They were able to do so because they were (and still are) driven by their passions to be their best and achieve their goals.

Consider a different example. Think about certain sports stars in the limelight, those whose energy and dedication to excellence are so intense that it fairly oozes from their pores. The one that pops into my head is Dustin Pedroia, the Boston Red Sox’s All-Star second baseman. Pedroia is so plugged into the game, so excited to play baseball, it seems as though he would play for no salary.

Sidelined for much of the 2010 season with a broken foot, he nevertheless was in the dugout for every game, on crutches. You could sense his frustration at being sidelined, yet you could also see on his face the same eagerness and engagement that he has when he’s on the field. He was champing at the bit to be back playing the game he loves and excels at, the game for which he won Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player awards in consecutive years (2007 and 2008, respectively).

What goes into that attitude? What shapes that approach to our chosen field? What makes people like Dustin Pedroia and Tim excel while another guy in the same field just plugs along, not deriving a lot of joy from his workaday life? The core driver may seem ineffable. But I think it’s essentially a positive attitude toward life, an innate optimism, and a passion at one’s core that makes it unthinkable to do anything halfway.

Ian Bostridge, the English tenor, opera star, and lieder singer, perhaps said it best when explaining to an interviewer how he approaches his art: “You can't stand there singing prettily. You have to seize the audience and not let go until you leave the stage. You have to burn. If you don't, it's a waste of time. Why bother?”

Exactly.

What kind of people do you want to associate with? What kind of people do you want to work for, to have on your team? Don’t you want a guy like Dustin Pedroia, Ian Bostridge or my friend Tim? Absolutely.

You do because you connect to and want to share in their passion, enthusiasm, and optimism. And frankly, that enthusiasm, that passion for doing what they love, and their optimism are contagious. Imagine being part of a team led by a guy like one of them, aiming for perfection in everything they do.

They don’t strive for perfection for its own sake, but rather because they know they’re always capable of doing something better – with perfection as the ultimate aim. They go all out for that new level of excellence the next time they try. So even when they fall short in their own eyes, you know the result is going to be pretty damn good.

Does Pedroia bat 1.000? No. Does he ever make an error in the infield? Sure he does. Does Bostridge ever miss a note or fail to satisfy himself with a given performance? Of course. But the energy each expends in striving for his own version of perfection is, for them, a reward in itself.

It’s also a beacon for their future journeys toward perfection, a baseline on which to build their next quest for success. Fueling that effort, always, is their optimism, their enthusiasm, and their passion for doing what they love. I say, God bless them.

Modern Day Pen Pals

As a member of Miss Beyers’ sixth grade class at Proctor Terrace Elementary School in Santa Rosa, Calif., I became part of a project in which she engaged the class in a pen pal effort to connect us all with kids our age from around the world.

My pen pal was a girl from Adelaide, Australia. I’ve forgotten her name but remember the thrust of our correspondence: comparing and contrasting our schoolwork, what we were studying, how we spent our free time, what it was like living in Santa Rosa versus Adelaide, what we aspired to, and the like. We exchanged photos of one another and wrote about our pets and friends. I eagerly looked forward to each of her letters and enjoyed the correspondence, as long it lasted – about a year – tailing off when we’d exhausted our troves of cultural idiosyncrasies from our respective countries.

This recollection came back to me recently when I found myself engaged in an online discussion on the topic of the relative differences between internal and external communications. In such instances, I “converse” with strangers around the world – like modern day pen pals.

In this particular discussion, I am arguing a point with a fellow from Mumbai, India, about a topic started by a woman in Moscow, who works for a company headquartered in Norwich, UK. Others involved in the discussion include people from Ottawa and Rochester, UK. So far, I’m the only American.

And all this is done in real time. What would Miss Beyers think? It’s not like my pen pal days when letters would take up to two weeks to traverse the Pacific. These are instantaneous communications. (Does anyone even have “pen pals” anymore? I guess that’s what Facebook is for.)

How far we’ve come – in just my lifetime. It makes me wonder what’s next. What further technological advancements can we expect in communications? And, more important, what will be their impact on our ability to expand our knowledge, to engage other people in topics of interest to ourselves? What will be their impact on improving cross-cultural understanding?

Meanwhile, my college-age son has made lasting friendships via real-time, on-line video games with people from around the world: France, Germany, Israel, Japan, and Russia, as well as Massachusetts. No doubt he has learned far more about those people’s personalities and interests than I did in the entire year of my pen pal correspondence.

In making my point with the gentleman from Mumbai, I was able to look him up on Linked Up and learn that he is head of corporate communications with a software company there. So I was able to make my comments more relevant than they might otherwise have been.

These new social media are having profound effects on the way we do business today, both inside and outside our companies. The wiser companies are tapping into “the conversation” that is occurring out there about them. An Oct. 26, 2010 article in The Wall Street Journal told how Delta Air Lines has begun eavesdropping on Twitter conversations when the topic is Delta. 

The effort has proved fruitful and enabled the company to short-circuit a number of negative discussions, and correct gross inaccuracies about Delta. At the same time, Delta has developed greater loyalty and understanding among its customers by responding directly and promptly to their very real complaints about service.

At the annual “Best Practices in Change and Employee Engagement Summit” last month, co-sponsors Edelman Change & Employee Engagement, and Edelman Digital brought together a number of senior communications professionals in their New York City offices to discuss both the implications of social media like Twitter and Facebook on corporate communications, and their potential. In addition to the 100 guests present in New York, some 1000 people participated via webcast.

One of the 10 speakers, the former head of communications for Comcast, explained how the company successfully put the web site “ComcastMustDie.com” out of business by responding proactively to contributors’ actual complaints about shoddy service.

According to the Edelman web site, “While a number of valuable experiences and lessons came from the 10 presenters, the over-arching and recurring theme centered on the opportunities that lie in mining and translating the rich information embedded in various social media into organizational knowledge, action, innovation and development.”

I would urge you to take the time to visit the Summit web pages. In addition to a full report, it includes complete videos of each of the presentations.

Venues such as Edelman’s Summit web pages magnify the capabilities of the worldwide web, which today is limitless. I would expect ever-greater synergies and spread of advanced ideas about social media to continue in that manner as people leverage such events and web sites to share and spread new ideas and new thinking on a range of topics. 

You, too, can become part of that conversation, or any conversation, if you wish, no matter where you are: New York, Mumbai, Ottawa, Santa Rosa or Adelaide.

Reaching Employees Where They Are

Much of my work involves helping clients better understand and appreciate how people within their organizations communicate, and how they prefer to get information. Insights into that is the first step towards developing a communications model that effectively reaches the internal audiences.

There is no single solution, not even within one individual company. The legwork must be done, preferably by getting out and talking directly to the employees at all levels. One of my first lines of inquiry when talking with employees in that context is to determine their reading habits and how they get the information they want and need, both for personal and business purposes. (In fact, their personal habits likely echo their preferences within the business environment, which is why I ask.)

Where do they go to get their news? When there’s a big breaking news story, to what source do they turn first? Which sources do they trust most (and least), and how do they stay informed about the issues that concern them? How does that parallel the ways they get the information they need on the job – or does it? How would they prefer to get the kind of on-the-job information that helps them perform their jobs?

Establishing a pattern among a particular employee audience is critical in developing a communications strategy that reaches them in a timely fashion to assure that important management messages are getting through, and that those messages are relevant to them and their world.

But what are we to make of the growing reality that the general population is apparently becoming reading- and information-averse? Not only that, but the sharp audience declines experienced by various print and broadcast news media seem to indicate a growing distaste for conventional news sources. So where are people going now for their news? Or do they even care?

Of course, the answer largely depends on which demographic you’re talking about. Gauging by the types of advertising that predominate the evening network newscasts – geriatric medications, mobility devices, and such  – it’s safe to conclude that the older demographic is tuning in. I don’t need to point out why the evening newscasts’ audience continues to shrink.

Many among the younger demographic – the fastest growing demographic and the one that increasingly comprises your company’s internal audience – get much of their news from faux news programs, such as Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” as well as the late night talk show hosts’ opening monologues. That helps explain the scramble among politicians to be guests on those shows: that’s where their target audience is.

I raise the subject because I just read a “rant” by prolific blogger and marketer Seth Godin on the subject. It led me to do a little online research. It’s troubling to me, an inveterate book reader and newspaper consumer, to learn that the average person spends about 70 seconds each day reading the news online; that an Associated Press poll found that one-in-four people did not read a single book in 2006.

According to an August 21, 2007 article in the Washington Post, that number has been declining for more than a decade. It’s probably safe to assume that, four years later, we are likely approaching a one-in-three ratio. That’s scary stuff, and a real danger to our republican form of government.

These facts depress me, knowing that people are less well informed, apparently deliberately ignorant of current affairs. At the same time, these facts tell us that we need to adjust our approach to internal communications vehicles if we are to reach our employees with any regularity, if we are to make sure they get the information we want them to have. We must delve deeply to learn their reading habits (or lack thereof) and strive to be ever more creative in our selection and use of communications channels and tools available to us, as well as how we craft our messages.

No longer can we assume that printed newsletters, mass distribution of emails, or even “town hall meetings” are the best (or only) way to reach the broad employee audience with our critical messages. (I cringe at the recollection of a client for whom the only means of reaching its worldwide employee audience was through emails. We actually discovered that a number of employees used their spam filters to sift out the frequent emails from their CEO.)

Instead, we must tailor our communications approach to accommodate our reading-averse audience, to meet our people on territory that is familiar and comfortable to them, but that may not be for us, the communicators. Simply put, we need to connect with them where they actually are, not where we think they are or where we want them to be.

That may mean overcoming our discomfort with and lack of trust in the social media where many of our younger employees spend so much time: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the like. If we want to have an on-going dialogue with them about what’s important to the business, that’s where we need to engage them.

The Senior Partner's Question

It has been said that youth is overrated. That’s probably because, in the eyes of their elders, younger people seem always to attach themselves to the latest technology as though they had discovered the ultimate, and all previous iterations become instant antiques.

While there may be some truth to that youthful view, think back to a particular technology that, at the time, was written about in every news medium, talked about every where you went. Where is that technology today and how is it affecting our ability to communicate and do our jobs better?

Sometimes, it’s a false start. Apple’s Newton, while innovative for its time, was ultimately a failure. Yet it hinted at a technological breakthrough. Future approaches – in the form of PDAs like the Palm Pilot and, later, smartphones like the iPhone – fixed its shortcomings and realized the full benefits that Newton’s developers had hoped for.

Reminiscing recently with a friend I used to work with, I recalled a shared experience that still gives me pause regarding our attitudes toward modern communications tools and the judgment of our elders.

Some 24 years ago – a generation ago – I was an account supervisor for a small public relations agency in New York. Mind you, this was 1986 when office computers were not yet common in the office. Sure, they were making in-roads, particularly in larger organizations. The IBM PC was well on its way to displacing the established Wang systems.

A hugely successful company of the same name made the “Wang,” the first common office automation system. Wang would soon cease to exist because it failed to take PCs seriously and adapt. At the time, my firm used a mix of IBM Selectric and Smith Corona typewriters. (Yes, I know. I’m really dating myself here – straight out of Mad Men.)

Two co-workers and I thought it was time to bring computers into our operation. The three (considerably older) partners who owned the firm were skeptical. But they agreed to let us do our homework and develop a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis – which we did after much legwork and number crunching.

The day we presented our findings, the three partners gathered in the agency conference room, each bearing dubious looks, as we walked them through our findings and recommendations, detailing the efficiency improvements computers would allow us.

After thanking us for our after-hours work and acknowledging the persuasiveness of our arguments, they decided against modernizing. It wasn’t for lack of funds. It was their deep-seated skepticism of new technology. I will never forget the dismissive response of the senior partner as he paused from puffing on his pipe. (That’s back when people smoked in offices.)

“Will these computers help the account executives write any better? I doubt it.”

…which, frankly, was completely beside the point. But never mind. The discussion was over.

About a year later, I left that firm for another in Boston (which, by the way, used Honeywell computers – again, I date myself). At the time of my departure, my former firm still hadn’t computerized. In fact, the senior partner was still writing out everything in long-hand on a legal pad, which his secretary duly typed for him.

I remind myself of those long-ago words sometimes when I’m skeptical of a new technology, particularly one that might favorably impact communications and our ability to do business more efficiently. I’m wary of becoming like my old boss.

The first cell phone I ever used (rented for a trade show) was about the size of a large shoe, though it weighed considerably more. At the time, I didn’t regard it as a business tool, even though it proved helpful at the trade show. It seemed more like an attention-getting novelty – which if you’ll remember, most early cell phone users got a lot of: attention.

But as the cell phone shrunk in size and weight, as its cost came down and the quality of the connection improved, and as more people had them, the role of the cell phone as a business tool was set. Today, we can’t imagine being without them. The list goes on: PDAs, laptops, smartphones, etc.

As you know, with each new technology, there is an adaptation curve, where the early adapters pay a premium price for an okay version with limited capabilities so that we late adapters can climb aboard when it is more ubiquitous and mass production has brought the price down.

Ubiquity also means the availability of more capabilities, more users with whom to share the common platforms, etc. So late adapters get more use from the devices because there are more people out there with whom we can communicate via ever more modes.

So let’s come back to today and consider the iPhone 4 with its “FaceTime” video calling feature. While it’s a nice feature and the advertising promoting it is compelling, before video calling on smartphones becomes a common means of communication, there needs to be a lot more capable devices on the market and in the hands of a lot more consumers. According to an October 12 report on Yahoo News:

“Jupiter Research on Tuesday said that Apple's latest generation iPhone will spur adoption of video calls but the trend is stymied because different devices don't talk to one another. Juniper predicted that … the percentage of smartphone users making video calls will remain below 10 percent by the year 2015.”

As we contemplate new means of communications like video calling and other ways that improve the ability to connect with people round the clock, round the world, are we better off for it? To rephrase the question my former boss asked, will these things make us better communicators?

Tools like these are terrific and provide us a wider range of options to connect to more people in more places and times. They increase our availability to the people with whom we need to communicate.

But in the end, the importance of our willingness and ability to listen, to digest what we hear, and to respond appropriately doesn’t change. That is the heart of effective communications, not the latest and greatest technology, whether it’s an IBM Selectric, email, Twitter, Skype, a smartphone – or just an old-fashioned face-to-face meeting over a cup of coffee.

Blogging and Tweeting in Search of a Purpose

The previous blog entry here stimulated a number of private emails to me. It felt like a lot of people were nodding in agreement. Clearly, it struck a nerve. An editor friend shared with me a parallel experience she's having at work.

Her company publishes a series of specialized ink-on-paper trade magazines for niche subscriber bases – old-time media, in other words. The powers-that-be in her company are trying to stay ahead of the curve, as well they should. For some time now, they have been alert to the impact of the Internet on their products and audiences.

To that end, they were early in launching web versions of their half-dozen magazines, available to subscribers for no additional cost, where readers can find supplemental and updated information about topics covered in the magazines. That’s a smart model and one that a number of other print publications have been following – to their benefit.

But now, her managers are latching onto the buzz of social media as the next new thing. Her boss said that if they don’t get into social media, they’ll be left behind.

Perhaps. But, as she wisely noted, the meeting at which this idea was launched was devoid of any discussion of readers’ media preferences or habits. There was also no dialogue about the appropriateness of tools like Twitter and blogs to carry their messages and information to their target audiences, or what specific type of information would be offered in these new media.

Instead, the discussion centered largely on how social media works, who should do what, and when the effort will be launched. In the end, as my friend sighed, it will mean more work for the editors and writers.

This kind of discussion should really be about the interaction between a content provider and its audience. On the one hand, the audience’s preferences must guide the choice of media. But on the other hand, the disseminator of information has the opportunity – some might say the responsibility – to move its audience along the curve of technological innovation. It’s a delicate balancing act between what the audience will accept versus the content provider’s desire to advance its business model.

Innovation is like that. After all, where would we be today if Steve Jobs had dismissed the idea of the iPod 10 years ago because people didn’t listen to music and manage their music collections that way? What if Steve Jobs saw the music business through the narrow lens of the Tower Records model? (Remember Tower Records?) After all, it could have turned into a major flop. Fortunately for Jobs and Apple, it didn’t. His target customers “got it.” And they got on board pretty quickly.

To cite a metaphor, suppose I had approached last weekend with the good intention of doing some long-postponed household chores. What if the first thing I did was to open my toolbox and grab three random tools: a hammer, a screwdriver, and a socket wrench. Then I went to do my household tasks. What’s wrong with that picture? Obviously, I selected tools before assessing the nature of the chore. So I had a wrench, a screwdriver and a hammer in search of the appropriate job where they might be useful.

Sounds silly. No one would operate that way. But isn’t that, in fact, what a lot of people do when they seek to communicate to a discrete audience by pre-selecting a given medium without thinking through the needs and desires of the audience? It’s exactly what my friend’s company is doing.

Without so much as a simple poll of readers, this organization is going to force its editors and writers to start tweeting and blogging. Why? “Because everyone else is doing it and if we don’t start now, we’ll be left behind.”

I’ve seen similar thinking inside other business organizations, where communications professionals (who should know better) think that it would be nifty if their CEO started tweeting to employees, or began writing an internal blog. Perhaps it was the boss’ idea to start with and the communications pro felt powerless to resist. Consider Dilbert’s “pointy-haired” boss, who torments Tina, the tech writer:

Certainly there are cases where a CEO has plenty to say to his/her employee audience, where blogging or tweeting makes perfect sense because they are the quickest, easiest and cheapest ways to have on-going dialogues with that internal audience. But beware of the initial excitement that often peters out after a few weeks, as the CEO loses interest and/or enthusiasm.

As noted in my previous blog, I’ve seen these kinds of ventures start out great guns, only to fade away because the CEO runs out of things to write about, or finds he/she doesn’t have the time. At that point, as often happens, someone in the communications department starts writing it for the CEO, thereby defeating the whole purpose of the exercise.

No matter the technology, no matter how sexy and exciting it may feel to be tweeting or blogging in 2010, if your audience is not in a position or desirous of following your tweets and blogs, you’re wasting your time and money, while risking losing the trust and interest of your audience.

Instead, do your homework. Find out more about your target audience: who they are; how they like to get the kind of information you’re providing; whether they are comfortable with social media; why they come to you in the first place for that information; and the specific type of information they want and expect to find on blogs or tweets, to what level of detail. Until you probe for the answers to those kinds of questions, save your time and money and put the blog and Twitter on the back burner.

Employee Communications vs. the Employee Newsletter

At one time or another, you’ve undoubtedly found yourself having to explain what you do for a living to someone completely unfamiliar with your discipline. If your field is employee communications, as mine is, and someone at, say, a neighborhood party asks, you’re eager to slip into your rote 30-second elevator speech (if you have one) before he can say, “Oh, employee communications. I know, you write newsletters.”

Sometimes, I’m tempted instead just to say that “I work for the federal government, but I can’t talk about it,” give a conspiratorial wink, and leave it at that – better that than the alternative of explaining why “employee communications does not equal employee newsletters” to someone who won’t care to understand the difference and will quickly lose interest in your refutation.

Amazingly, I ran into a variation of this absurdity earlier this year when invited to pursue an assignment to help improve the internal communications of a local company. The business employs nearly 10,000 people at several sites around the U.S. and Canada. The head of Human Resources had sought outside support for the employee communications team that reported to him.

His “team” consisted of three hard-working, dedicated and intelligent (though very junior-level) people. I quickly sensed they were overwhelmed and poorly directed, and that they were looking for shortcuts to get things done – “things” being that which they sensed their boss wanted done or what he told them to do.

With respect to communications, their types of shortcuts aren’t always good things. I’ve seen companies grow too comfortable with their established modes of communicating. These tools become part of the fabric of the organization, even after they’ve lost any meaning or value to their audience. Unfortunately, I got the impression this was the case here.

I soon concluded that their desire to “improve internal communications” really came down to wanting an outsider’s fresh approach in order to improve the quality of the monthly employee newsletter: i.e., better-written and more interesting stories, and more appealing layouts and graphics. Roughly half of the employees did not have access to computers, so the tried-and-true printed newsletter was how they learned about their company – if they were interested enough to read it.

But had anyone gone to the trouble to determine whether in fact this tool was the most effective way of reaching the employee audience? Was it bringing them the information they wanted and needed? Were people actually reading the newsletter? Was it relevant to them? Was it opening employees’ minds to new ideas and new ways of doing their jobs? Were they connecting its messages to where the company needed to go? What were they doing or expected to do with the information gleaned from its pages? Or were copies of the newsletter just filling mailroom trashcans?

As I began to ask those questions, I sensed they were not being well received – nor would I likely get cogent or informed answers.

When I asked for examples of other internal communications, I was shown a series of sporadic emails from the CEO and his management team on a range of minor and major topics. There was also an “inter-active” on-line “CEO’s Forum,” its most recent entry more than two months old. The inter-active component was not apparent. It was all one-way. An occasional “Letter from the CEO” appeared in the newsletter.

One person said that the CEO and/or his team held infrequent “town hall meetings” to make important announcements, though she couldn’t remember the last one or its core message. For that matter, she couldn't tell me the last time she had spoken to any of the senior people or seen them on site.

The problem at this company and, no doubt, others today really boils down to this: It has become too easy for leaders and managers to let technology do their communicating. In fact, executives are not communicating effectively when their communications are simply emails, newsletters, and on-line postings, where the medium becomes more important than the message. Media, no matter how sophisticated, do not engage employees in the business and its vision.

When a company’s definition and understanding of “employee communications” is a newsletter or email, or when information is expected to “cascade” (I hate that term) down into the organization as if by magic, it’s likely indicative of a deeper, more harmful problem. It means that little consideration is being given to the real communications that should be occurring within and across the organization – the daily face-to-face exchange of ideas, insights and information between and among leaders, managers and employees; communications in which leadership engages the organization in the company’s mission and vision.

And when that’s the case, when leadership is trying to take the company one way while the employees are going in the opposite direction because they’re misinformed or uninformed, the problems multiply and fester, resulting in poor financial results and weak long-term growth prospects.

Because the decision-maker in this case, the head of HR, seemed so set on fixing and improving the newsletter as the solution – without fully appreciating or even being interested in delving into the company’s deeper issues and challenges – I took a pass on the opportunity. This company’s problems were far more than a boring newsletter. They were, in fact, far worse than its HR director knew or could have imagined. No sense beating my head against that wall.

What's Your Story?

Organizations going through significant change risk the imminent danger of people losing focus on the central mission, lacking a full appreciation for and understanding of the change, its impact on the company and, most important, their role in the transformational process.

That kind of result is understandable since organizational change often encompasses new ways of doing things, and the discarding of outmoded practices. People can easily become disoriented.

A clearly delineated story about your company, its purpose and where it’s going will help you focus your organization’s best talents on the things that matter most to drive meaningful results.

Organizational change typically results from a merger or acquisition, external shifts in the markets in which the company operates, or response to a new competitive threat. Similarly, it can come about when there is change in the top leadership, when a new CEO brings with him/her a new strategic direction.

Whenever internal or external forces impose abrupt transformation on an organization, it is critical that employees quickly gain a clear understanding of the change and get their bearings so that their talents, energies and thinking are focused on the right things. The alternative is a lot of wasted energy focused on mundane matters of little or no consequence to the company’s new mandate. Worse, companies’ most talented and valuable people can often become disillusioned and disconnected, focusing their energies instead on finding new employment elsewhere.

The best and quickest route to keep people on board, moving proactively toward the new challenges, is through the development and deployment of a narrative that tells the new story clearly and succinctly, and then making sure it’s used consistently across the organization.

The narrative is a distillation of the appropriate words and descriptors of the change: the rationale behind it; the external and/or internal forces that mandate the change; how the organization must adapt; where the change will likely take the company; and the facts that support the change in direction.

Narratives, executed effectively, enable managers at all levels to gain quick employee understanding of what exactly has to change in the company and their jobs. The narrative helps managers interpret the change for their own particular unit in terms of what people need to do differently, appropriate to where the company as a whole needs to go. To borrow a tired cliché, it gets everyone rowing in the same direction.

The narrative is reached through consensus of the company’s leadership and communications professionals. It provides them and all managers with consistent language to help them talk about the change and its impact on and importance to the entire organization, as well as the individual operational and functional units, and employees.

Individual employees, then, more readily connect their role and responsibility to the larger picture, able to draw a direct line of sight between what they do and where the organization now needs to go, and then how they need to change what they do to support that.

An apt metaphor for an organization going through such change is an aircraft carrier. There are hundreds of unique jobs on a typical carrier, all toward the common mission of delivering a navy’s forward strike capabilities.

The carrier’s mission changes often. There may be a new attack target, or the carrier might be directed to a new port. If an attack is called for, the carrier must get itself as near to the action as possible, as quickly as possible, then position itself into the wind to assure that the fighter jets achieve maximum lift for take-off. Just to do that demands precise execution by countless officers and sailors assigned to a range of jobs.

So when the carrier’s mission changes, everyone must take the new mission into account in how and what he or she must do, and when it must be done. The commander’s job is to delegate to his officers the task of making the mission’s story relevant to their respective crews so that each crew performs its tasks appropriately, precisely and in a coordinated manner.

As often as an aircraft carrier’s mission may change, it is not hyperbolic to compare its rate of change to that of a business organization. In this age, amidst the current economic turmoil and uncertainties, companies must remain nimble, able to tack and change course constantly.

So what’s your story? As your company’s mission changes to accommodate market fluctuations, a new acquisition, or a new strategic direction, that change will similarly impact what people do, how they do it, and when.

Your ability to tell a clear, coherent story will prove to be an invaluable tool, assuring that managers across operations and functions are well informed and plugged into the organization’s new direction. And well-informed managers, with a clear narrative at hand can make that new mission relevant and meaningful to their teams, helping them stay on course.