Chewing on Crescenzo’s nuggets

I’ve spent the last two days at the Steve Crescenzo Masterclass at London’s Kensington Close Hotel. Organised by Simply Communicate, the event saw one of our profession’s leading voices visit London for the first time. And what a debut it was.

No stranger to our peers across the pond, Steve has spent the last 15 years working with Ragan Communications in the US. During that time he’s seen, read and digested more internal publications than anyone else on the face of the planet. But he’s much more than a print guy. Through his consulting practice he’s worked with some of the biggest brands in the States. And he’s a prolific and respected blogger and conference speaker.

This guy knows what he’s talking about and his seminar was rammed full of practical examples of what’s currently working (and, hilariously, what’s driving employees nuts) in the US. Over two days he took us on a whirlwind tour of traditional channels and the new social media. We covered print, face-to-face, e-newsletters, blogs, wikis and podcasting, to name a few. There were so many nuggets of wisdom I’ll be chewing over them for weeks (I’ll regurgitate some of them here over the next three or four days).

Steve is not like most internal communicators you’ll come across; at least not here in the UK. While there’s no doubting he’s a savvy ‘strategic’ thinker, he doesn’t waffle on like a wannabe Harvard professor and, refreshingly, didn’t once present a four box matrix. Instead, he focuses on sharing dozens of practical ideas which you can take back to base and implement. I like that. I’ve been to too many dull and worthy communication sermons recently.

His style is very different to those who frequent the UK conference circuit. Where they often appear to run on low voltage, Steve sends sparks flying. He’s passionate, opinionated and very funny. If he wasn’t in internal comms he’d probably be a stand up comedian or a celebrity chef. But this straight-talking, no bullshit, son of a Chicago homicide detective is a real breath of fresh air for our profession. He's also a really nice guy.

For my part, the event was a wake up call. Fed on a diet of ‘strategic’ case studies, white papers, reports and articles over the last few years, I’d started to believe that tactics were the dirty end of internal comms, best left to junior team members and those who just can’t ‘do‘ strategy. That’s crap. Done right, channels and tactics can revolutionise organisations. It took Steve to remind me of that.

If you get the chance you should go see Steve speak, particularly if you're feeling a little jaded about channels and tactics. Thanks to Simply and Ragan, he'll be back in the UK in May (I'll post details on the calendar as soon as they're finalised). If you can't make that they at least sign up for his blog and forthcoming podcast.

Comments

[Kelly Kass]

Lee,

Good meeting you at the masterclass this week.

I look forward to working with you.

Best,

Kelly

[Sue Dewhurst]

Hi Lee, it's a good point about strategy/tactics and I think we have to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I've worked with at least two organisations where new structures have been introduced positioning IC practitioners as 'strategists and relationship buiders, not doers' ... at which point the business has got all huffy about 'these people that are going to swan around talking about strategy but they won't DO anything to help me!'.

I think 'strategy' is one of those words that can get over/mis-used. 'Strategic' internal comms to me just means making sure we communicate as a means to an end (to achieve a business goal) rather than as an end in itself (put out loads of newsletters because ... well ... just because ... and anyway, the graphics look fantastic).

You can slave for ages over a comms strategy, but mess up the tactics and all your strategising has been a wasted effort. (How many of us have spent hours arguing over out of date/mis managed mass e-mail distribution lists ... and for good reason!).

Sue Dewhurst

[Steve C.]

Hey, Lee!

It was great meeting you this past week in London . . . and I love this blog!

Can I send this write-up of my class to my mom? I think she still thinks I'm just a borderline alcoholic screw-up. It would be nice to have a third party recommendation.

Seriously, though: Thanks for coming to the class, and I look forward to seeing you when we come back in May.

Steve C.

[Nicholas Ranken]

Hi Lee,

I really enjoyed reading this post and what you had to say about strategy compared to "practical ideas" (tactics and channels).

For me, I find it a balancing act: one can not go without the other. But I do find that, as consultants in particular, it can be easy to over-privilege the relative security provided by theories and strategies, especially when presenting ourselves to clients or colleagues.

I was given a humbling reminder of this at an internal presentation that I was recently asked to give with a colleague. The brief was to explain the value of change management and in particular my recent work on communications in large-scale IT deployments, to a hall of approx. 300 experienced IT consultants and engineers.

For a while we considered using the usual stock of graphs and matrices that describe emotional reaction to change and possible change and communication strategies to address this. However, my colleague and I both felt that this approach just didn't sit right with us. Instead we decided to take a risk and try something different. We started our presentation with a practical exercise where we made the audience interact and experience a real change so that they could relate to how stakeholders would feel when we came and changed their "ordered universe". We then went on to illustrate the kind of practical tools and tactics that, from our experience, could be used to communicate and facilitate this change.

We were completely stunned by the round of applause that we received at the end of our presentation (very rare in our department meetings!). After the presentation, I was even more surprised by the reaction of my colleagues: for many it was the first time that they had understood the value of what we did in concrete, practical terms.

For me, it was a reminder that even though theory and strategies underpinned our work, it is the tools, channels, tactics and ultimately the results that we are judged by. What we had put in place, and what had appealed to our audience could not be implemented without any understanding of the theories and strategy behind it. The two go hand-in-hand.

Just a couple of thoughts on the subject, I look forward to further discussions.

Nicholas