Talking Internal Communication...

CIPR exclusive: an audience with Bill Quirke - London, Tuesday 4 November

You've heard the positive things I've had to say about Bill Quirke's recent speaking engagements (see my report below from the recent Melcrum SCM Summit) - now it's time to make up your own mind... 

Next Tuesday - for one night only - Bill will be leading an exclusive CIPR Inside event exploring how internal communicators can raise their game and respond to the demands of our fast-changing profession and working environment.

Drawing on his work for the new edition of his classic text “Making the Connections – using internal communication to turn strategy into action” Bill will use a wealth of practical experience with a wide range of international organisations, to identify how to meet the challenges of the changing role of the internal communicator.

His timing is impeccable. As the recession begins to bite internal communicators will be under increasing pressure to demonstrate their worth and prove to management that they have something genuinely useful to contribute. In what is bound to be an entertaining and eye-opening session, Bill will explain not just how to add value, but how to be seen to be adding value.

If you're around next Tuesday, have two hours to spare after work and can afford the recession-busting ticket price of £25 for CIPR members/£25 for non-members (plus VAT), then I can't recommend this one highly enough.  To reserve your place email ciprinside@ntlworld.com now.

The event will take place from 1800-2000 at the CIPR PR Centre, St James's Square, London.

See you there!

L

Views from the SCM Summit - day two, final instalment

Following Bill Quirke's inspiring talk on recession-proofing the internal comms function we chose specific conference tracks and broke into smaller groups for much of the remainder of the day.

More insights from Bill

First off I chose to join Bill again for a more intimate 'clinic' on leadership and line manager communication - a broad, meandering conversation from which a wide range of Bill's views, practical tips and ideas emerged. Key points for me were:

• Our role as communicators is to join the dots - to drive consistencies - at Board level. Senior executives have a habit of conveying conflicting messages - the FD shouts 'let's cut costs' from the rooftops whilst the HRD continues to say 'we want to become a world class employer and provide the best development in the business'. The two messages clash. We need to find the commonality amongst Board members regardless of their functional responsibility- and ensure that the top team is setting the right tone in the right way. To help do this Bill suggested mapping out key messages and, next to each message, highlighting the leadership behaviour that will help reinforce (or, indeed, undermine it).
• When working with senior leaders it's important to create a safe environment - where leaders can make their views and feelings known without undermining their functional responsibilities or being seen to lose face at the top table. A powerful technique we can use is to capture what I call the 'bastard questions' - all those difficult, irritating, explosive questions everyone thinks but no one is brave enough to ask. Posing these questions - as an independent internal communicator who is also the 'voice of the organisation' can help you really cut to the chase.  
• We need to work with leaders' existing skills, characters and personalities - rather than trying to shape them into something they're not. Not everyone can be a Richard Branson. Make it your business to understand what makes them tick. Find out what they're passionate about (horse racing, formula 1, soccer?) and use a metaphor they are comfortable with to help them bring their subject to life.  

Sandwell Community Caring Trust - the power of simple manager-led communication

Next up was Geoff Walker, CEO of Sandwell Community Caring Trust. This was a really interesting session from the boss of a West Midlands-based charitable trust which was recently ranked second in the annual Best Companies to Work For study. Not only was it great to hear another regional accent, but it was genuinely enlightening to hear Geoff's simple recipe for value-adding internal communication.  What he did so well was demonstrate many of the tangible, measurable benefits of an increased investment in face-to-face communication and improved employee engagement. Over a relatively short period SCCT has reduced absence levels from 37 days per year to just 0.3, cut staff turnover from 22 per cent to four per cent, slashed management/admin costs from 24 per cent to six per cent and increased the proportion of spend being used to enhance frontline services from 63 per cent to 87 per cent. Impressive results which would make any CEO or FD sit up and listen. He put much of this success down to freeing up managers and leaders to spend more 'quality time' with staff. 

Internal/external alignment

In the afternoon I ran a small discussion group on the alignment of internal and external communications. My group was passionate about the need for a joined-up approach and all felt that internal comms should be part of an integrated comms function, rather than sitting elsewhere (e.g. HR, Marketing).  They flagged the danger of handy labels like "employee engagement" (step up HR) and "internal brand" (step up Marketing) and the risk of departmental in-fighting in these areas.  To help improve internal/external alignment they suggested more combined roles (generalists rather than specialists in either internal or external), getting iC people to buddy-up with members of the press office, creating virtual teams around key projects and ensuring a joined-up approach to planning.

IKEA UK - the BIG 2008 Retail Seminar

Phil Rogers and Lois Blenkinsop of IKEA UK then jointly ran a session "coaching managers to be more effective leaders at IKEA". A nice example of thinking big, differently and taking risks, this case study revolved around the annual retail seminar which had in the past involved a group of 36 senior managers. Against a backdrop of economic uncertainty, falling visitor numbers, increased competition from the likes of Tesco and an internal reorganisation, the IKEA team wanted to find a way to involve greater numbers of managers, to identify the potential leaders of tomorrow and to spark real behaviour change. The result was a brave and ambitious retail seminar entitled 'Big 2008' which involved 14 UK stores, 576 direct participants, a further 576 'shadow managers' who back-filled for the permanent managers, 60 retail coaches and 40 content specialists. The programme was run over a period of eight weeks, with a week spent learning about operating an efficient IKEA store, the product range and commerciality, the market and consumer and culture, management and leadership, and a further four weeks spent on the frontline putting that learning into action. It was both a major management development exercise (colleagues voted for shadow leaders) and a giant back-to-the-floor for senior leaders (who spent time shifting product, on the tills, etc). The supporting comms campaign was effective and involved the usual suspects -teaser posters, magazine articles, and intranet content. Anecdotally at least, the results were impressive - the initiative sent a strong and clear signal to the organisation about its ethos/culture/brand, the importance of people and the scope to grow and develop. However, when someone from the audience asked what hard results they had seen, the IKEA duo confessed that, to date, there had been no corresponding increase in sales and minimal impact on employee engagement.

The decline of corporate reputation

Peter Jones, Corporate Communications Director at Bupa, wrapped up the conference by exploring the current state of corporate reputations. With references to a number of recent research studies, he painted a fairly grim picture and suggested that communicators could be doing more to protect and enhance the reputation of big business. He proposed a back to basics approach to communication planning - making sure we identify the right stakeholders, be clear about their current and desired perceptions of the organisation, clarify key messages and measure, measure, measure. I'm all for that. He then scrutinised the communication profession more closely and suggested that in many way we're at fault due to our fragmentation as a profession, a lack of talent, limited learning and development opportunities and poor resource allocation.  Peter went on to criticise some communicators for creating 'do me' departments - largely reactive functions which merely jump to the turn of managers and do what is asked of them, when it is asked of them. By way of a solution he proposed an 'IC Code' for practitioners to follow, which I will repeat in full here:

Our internal communications will be:  

• a primary consideration in any situation affecting the business, its people or its sector
• accurate, honest, contemporaneous, concise and free of jargon
• address all relevant issues
• confidentiality will never be used as an excuse not to communicate
• two-way - we will encourage you to speak up
• will go first to those who need it most

I've created similar charters or codes in the past, but I quite like Peter's version - a good set of guidelines to bear in mind as we go about our day jobs.

And with that the Melcrum SCM Summit for 2008 closed - all in all a good, insightful, thought-provoking and nicely varied event. I look forward to next year. You can read more in the special conference edition of Strategic Communication Management, which is now available from Melcrum. 

L

Views from the SCM Summit - day two, part one

Another good, thought provoking day in Kensington today... Day two of Melcrum's SCM Summit was an interesting journey through the world of employee comms and engagement. During the nine hours between 0800 and 1700 we covered a host of hot topics, including communicating outsourcing, recession-proofing the iC function, line manager and leadership communications, working in partnership with HR, alignment of internal and external comms, and corporate reputation. It was one of those days where there are just so many ideas, theories, concepts and case studies that you come away with your head hurting (or maybe that's just because of my limited brain space?!)

Early bird delegates like me were greeted with a pre-conference session on communicating an IT outsourcing deal - not standard breakfast fodder granted, but interesting nevertheless. While we tucked into our bacon butties, Michael Nord showcased a change communication programme Fifth Business had developed to support the outsourcing of a client's data centre organisation to T-Systems. It was a nice example of how to design and orchestrate a complex, international, multi-channel change comms programme.

There are one or two communication practitioners who have an almost innate ability to cut through the bullshit and get straight to the heart of the matter. US practitioner-commentator Steve Crescenzo is one. Our very own Bill Quirke is another. And this session didn't disappoint. In his usual enigmatic yet straight-talking way Bill suggested how internal communicators might want to respond to the gathering economic storm clouds.

His premise was simple - if we don't hold a mirror up to ourselves pretty damn soon, someone else will do it for us - and we probably won't like what they find. He was talking about the dreaded cost and efficiency review or, worse still, the unilateral cost cutting that often accompanies increasing use of the "R" word. 

Paraphrasing John Lennon, he suggested that for many communicators "life is what happens when you're too busy planning - or looking at best practice". His remedy is to take action to ensure internal communication is focused on delivering the right business outcomes. Activity and value are not, he suggested, the same thing - you can be pumping out bucket loads of award winning content, but not making a blind bit of difference to the stuff that matters to the CEO. Sensible, compelling stuff  - it was a much needed wake-up call.

For those brave enough to glance in the mirror he suggested reviewing your iC function in four key areas - customers, channels, capability and capacity. The starting point is to identify the burning priorities of the business - just what is keeping the CEO awake at night?  Force the top team to be really selective about this - a potentially painful process as adding real value is likely to mean sacrificing some of those pet projects. Once agreed, align behind them and de-prioritise everything else. Decide who is important - who you're there to serve (CEO, COO, HRD, Facilities Manager, Chair of the Social Committee?)  Understand where your time and effort currently goes and then ensure you channel it in the right direction - in supporting and enabling the business priorities. Consider outsourcing the lower value activities. Define your offering - your value proposition - and ensure your internal clients understand what you do and don't do. Review channels for effectiveness. Up skill or, if they don't have the right competencies, replace team members. 

All this was music to my ears. Too many comms functions remain disconnected from the business of business - focused instead on what AstraZeneca's  Mary Lynn Carver described as 'vanity PR' the day before. Too many practitioners get seduced by fluffy and potentially ambiguous concepts like culture and engagement, forgetting that we exist for one reason - to drive the organisation forward and help deliver its vision.  Let's be honest, the sort of robust, comprehensive 'roots and branch' analysis Bill describes is long overdue for many iC functions.

More observations to follow tomorrow....

L

Technorati Tags: internal communication employee communication

Views from the SCM Summit - reporting on day one

I missed out on most of the proceedings today, so much of the following report comes courtesy of my Gatehouse colleague Howard Krais... 

Melcrum's annual SCM Summit opened with a buzz in the room. The large audience (maybe suggesting that training budgets are not being radically cut just yet) were eagerly awaiting one of the ‘gurus’ of internal communications, Roger D’Aprix, who the IABC named in 1998 as one of the most influential thinkers in the communication profession in the last 25 years.

With a new book “Communicating with a Sceptical Workforce” due out shortly, and without the aid of Powerpoint, D’Aprix provided a fascinating overview of what is happening within the internal communications profession, describing how the profession is at a crossroads and how it needs to adapt if it is to be meaningful in what he described as the new information economy.

Interestingly Roger described the way he feels about social media as being akin to being “an agnostic at a prayer meeting” warning that communicators needed to be very clear that social media really will add value to current channels. He also explained that whilst the big picture (mission, vision and strategy etc) remains important more emphasis needs to be given to the little picture, in other words helping people perceive their contributions in terms of their personal worth through proper support of line manager/supervisor communications

And get this, he quoted a recent Henley survey which claimed that people spend an average of 2 hours a day on email, equating to 10 years of your life. And given approximately a third of all emails are considered unnecessary that means that 3 years of your life is wasted on unproductive emails.

After a break, the folk from Involve, one of the Conference sponsors, ran a session aimed at getting attendees to experience real involvement and at the same time think about some of the key issues behind defending resources and budgets – something that might be useful in the coming months!

Using the format of a trial, an actor playing the role of CEO of telecommunications company ‘Lemon’ was accused of cutting budgets and acting against his company’s value. The audience was split down the middle as either being defence or prosecution counsel.

It was a good exercise in researching evidence and drawing out facts, looking at both sides of a story and working out in advance how to counter certain entrenched views, and it was good fun. Ultimately the CEO was found not guilty and was left to enjoy his imaginary sponsorship of West Ham United.

The final session in the morning was delivered by Greg Sage, who outlined how the internal communications team at Tesco communicate with a huge, and highly diverse – yet passionate - audience. A core theme centred on the constant challenge of getting news to people internally before they read it or hear about it in the external media – no easy thing given there are in excess of 300,000 staff based in over 2,200 locations, many of whom do not have PC access.

Greg explained how the internal communication team makes use of a wide range of channels, with a hugely successful face-to-face programme called Team 5 and a recently relaunched fortnightly newspaper called ‘The One’ at its heart, although these are just two of a portfolio of channels available.

Hearing from the man who heads up internal communications at such an iconic brand as Tesco was guaranteed to keep the audience enraptured - meaning that there were far more questions than could be dealt with, whether from those in the room, or those through the impressive Live Interactive voting technology placed on each table.

The afternoon featured speakers from GE Healthcare Life Sciences (a case study on post-acquisition integration) and from Nokia and the Edge Picture Company (what looked like a fascinating session on the teleco's video-based storytelling platform which I understand encourages employees to contribute content). Unfortunately we missed both sessions :-(  

In the closing session Mary Lynn Carver, of pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, used her own experience of refocusing the AZ global communication function to underline the need for greater alignment between internal and external communications. "There's only room for one communicator at the top table" she argued before explaining why the interface between these two sometimes disconnected functions is becoming increasingly critical.

The first day wrapped up with an evening drinks reception courtesy of events company Jack Morton. There was a great band on hand, a caricaturist (who somehow made me look like Robbie Coltrane), good company, and the drinks were flowing. What more can one ask for?  

I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

L

Conference season continues - reporting from the SCM Summit this week

I'm spending a couple of days at Melcrum's SCM Summit in London this week and will report on my experience here. 

I haven't managed to make the event for the last few years, but Melcrum always put on a good show and so I'm looking forward to it. 

The agenda is packed and there are some great speakers lined up - not least keynote Roger D'Aprix, a man sometimes referred to as 'the father of employee communication'. I'm a big fan of his simple but on-the-nose approach to line manager communication, so I can't wait to hear what he has to say. 

Other potential highlights include Greg Sage, Head of IC at Tesco; author and consultant Bill Quirke*; and breakout sessions on leadership communication, manager communication and social media. It's not all play for me though - I will also be running a discussion group at some point during the second day (topic TBC).

It should be a good conference - so watch this space for my report towards the end of the week.

L

* If you're interested in hearing Bill Quirke speak and are in London on 4 November why not come along to the next CIPR Inside event? It's a snip at £25/35 - check out the Talking IC calendar on the right of this page for details.

iC qualifications - time to get on the bus?

Internal comms qualifications - like buses, you wait and wait and wait and then two pull up at the same time!

For years now I've complained about the lack of professional qualifications and academic courses for internal communication. Unlike PR, which is now extremely well served by Britain's universities, you can count the number of courses geared towards internal communicators on one hand. It's a dismal state of affairs and does little to underline our credibility as professionals - or the sizable body of knowledge that now exists in this area.

That's why I was delighted to learn that two of the UK's leading professional bodies for communicators - Communicators in Business (CiB) and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) - have both launched new qualifications in the last few weeks. Hurrah. It still leaves a big gap at under-graduate and post-graduate level - and I'd like to see more universities getting on board - but it's a step in the right direction.

CIPR Certificate

The first course I'm going to talk about - the new CIPR Certificate in Internal Communication - is a new qualification developed and delivered by the PR Academy, an established and respected provider of other CIPR qualifications.

The first iC qualification developed specifically for internal communicators and backed by a chartered institute, the new CIPR certificate is a six-month course aimed at practitioners in the first few years of their career.

Delivered via a mix of face-to-face workshops, networking opportunities, practical sessions and online resources, the CIPR course is based on part-time study - so it can fit around your day job. 

A pilot course is currently underway and the course will kick off properly in January 2009. It will run in London initially, but is expected to be rolled-out to other CIPR-approved centres across the country.  For more info, follow the link above or email qualifications@cipr.co.uk.  

I'm not involved in the course, but I have seen the course guide and it looks like an extremely well conceived and well put-together programme. And I have no doubt that with the CIPR's backing and considerable experience as an awarding body, it will be a high quality offering. 

CiB Diploma in Proficiency

CiB, meanwhile, has also unveiled a new Diploma in Proficiency in Internal Communication. I know less about this course and the team behind it, but it looks like it covers the right ground.

The organisation has also mapped-out three additional 'levels' of courses which it says will come on stream in 2010, 2011 and 2012 respectively. In addition to the Level 1 Diploma of Proficiency, CiB will be launching:

• Level 2 – an Advanced Diploma of Proficiency in Internal Communications accredited by both CiB and an outside academic body.
• Level 3 – A Bachelors degree-equivalent qualification in internal communications management featuring course input from CiB but being wholly or principally accredited by an outside academic body.
• Level 4 – A Masters degree-equivalent qualification in internal communications management featuring course input from CiB but, again, being wholly or principally accredited by an outside academic body.

Interestingly, CiB's accreditation structure for these courses is based on some cross-profession work I was involved in a few years ago which resulted in the creation of the Inter-Comm Matrix.  My own view is that, strong as it was at the time, this work has been superseded by more comprehensive competency frameworks - like the one developed last year by Competent Communicators.  Nice to see that it's still in use though.

Whatever the pros and cons of these two courses, it's great to see some activity in this area at long last. I really do hope that both go on to flourish by helping ensure new entrants to our profession - and it is a profession - are well equipped for a long and rewarding career in internal comms.

L

Podcasts & video from the CIPR conference

If you missed the big CIPR internal comms conference on Monday, you might be interested in the following...

In addition to Simply Communicate’s post-event coverage – including a video interview with Santander’s Pachi Lanzas - CIPR Inside committee member Sue Tupling of Changeworks Communications has recorded and posted two podcast interviews. 

The first is an interview with keynote speaker Leandro Herrero; the second podcast features Stephen Welch of Hay Group and Matthew Hall of GE Oil & Gas.

L

Employee communication during turbulent times - reporting from the CIPR conference

On Monday (it's been a busy old week!) I chaired the annual Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) internal communication conference in London.

Having largely designed the event and, with my CIPR Inside committee colleagues, found many of the speakers, it was a day I had been looking forward to for some time. And on the whole, it didn't disappoint.

Nearly 100 communicators came along to hear views and case studies from leading practitioners on the challenge of communicating internally during these fast changing, unpredictable and volatile times. 

When we designed the event some six months ago, we had no idea our theme would be quite as topical as it was. Indeed, one of our speakers - Pachi Lanzas of the Spanish banking giant Santander- still managed to fly into London that morning despite announcing the acquisition of a large chunk of Bradford & Bingley the evening before. Now that's dedication.

The day was split roughly in two - with the focus in the morning being on 'thought leadership' and the afternoon on practical case studies.

Keynote Dr Leandro Herrero kicked off the day by introducing delegates to his compelling concept of Viral Change. Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm a big fan of Leandro's work. And he quickly threw down the gauntlet to communicators, challenging many of the assumptions traditional approaches to change management - and change communication - have been built around.  No more big programmes - no more Powerpoint - no more broadcast messages - no more plumbing!  Stop talking and start doing, he said - real change is about much more than packaging; it's more than skin deep. It was good, passionate stuff. If you're interested in finding out more check out Leandro's online material - including the Disruptive Ideas open book and his Viral Change site.

Former Hill & Knowlton boss David Ferrabee, now MD of Able & How, then took to the stage.  David covered a lot of ground - from the context of change (economy, business sector, performance) to the importance of language and culture. Illustrating his point with a rather amusing CEO-to-spotty-teenager translation (courtesy of website www.gotateenager.org.uk) he suggested that just because people speak English, we shouldn't assume they speak the same English.  Point made exquisitely.  David also reminded us of the need to stop to think every now and again before churning out yet more content.

Alison Esse, co-founder of The Storytellers, focused on the sometimes nebulous concept of corporate storytelling. In this insightful session she highlighted how simple storytelling techniques can be used to engage employees, get beyond 'show & tell', promote peer-to-peer communication, recognise the heroes that exist inside every organisation and build a more emotional connection between an organisation and its people.

Pachi Lanzas, head of group internal comms at Santander, then gave us a rare and fascinating peek into his role as communicator-in-chief for this growing, thriving international bank. Rather than being hit by the global credit crunch, Santander appears to be going from strength-to-strength during these tough times.  You can hear what he had to say over at www.simply-communicate.com (thanks to Marc Wright and the Simply team for the video). 

Hay Group's Stephen Welch told us to pause before pressing the panic button. He argued that there are three critical areas communicators should focus on during turbulent times - clarity of direction (answering that all important 'where are we heading?' question), leadership style (helping your CEO look good naked) and reward communicators (addressing the 'what's in it for me?')

Mid afternoon saw Matthew Hall of GE Oil & Gas present an excellent case study on the change journey his organisation has been on in recent years. His session underlined many of the points made by previous speakers - the importance of face-to-face, the need to tackle the emotional as well as the rational, why audience segmentation matters, and how to listen to your people.   He showed that change doesn't happen overnight (people need time to adapt to the new world order) and that not everyone will want to join you for the ride (some employees just won't fit in a newly combined organisation).

Paul Inglefield and Ashley Wilcox of Camden Council shared their experience of introducing a new vision and values following a change in political control for the first time in 30 years. They used a variety of interesting techniques, including quirky cartoon-based visuals and a funky board gamed called 'Clued-Up Camden'.

And finally, Anne Eriksen told how the global shipping group Maersk Line approached the challenge of communicating a major change which involved the first layoffs in the company's long history. A first class case study in how to approach change communication, Anne and her team made created a strong internal network to ensure they were close to the thinking/action and used techniques like learning maps and a computer game to get their messages across. 

Top tips

So what were the big take-aways for me?  Here is my list of eight (my words - one key point or observation from each session...)

1. No longer is our role as internal communicators about maintaining the plumbing - it's about cooking the spaghetti! (a reference to the spaghetti-like networks that existing inside organisations and which are, if you buy the Viral Change approach, the key to driving real behaviour change)
2. Context is key - take time to understand the internal and external environment in which you're operating - the economy, the performance of the business, the sector you're operating in, the organisational culture.  
3. Storytelling isn't rocket science, but it can be as powerful as rocket fuel - focus on capturing simple 'real world' stories and finding a way to share them internally.
4. Don't wait until the shit hits the fan to start listening to employees - tune into the grapevine, get those feedback channels working and begin creating a genuine conversation now.
5. Don't lose sight of the basics - HR communications, in particular, become increasingly important (and increasingly scrutinised) during times of change
6. Get under the skin of your audience - understand who they are, where they are and what makes them tick; profile them; segment them; identify the influencers (or, as Leandro would say, those who can infect their colleagues with your change virus..)
7. Set clear, measurable objectives at the outset - and then you'll be able to measure your progress later on
8. Get the right support team in place - not just the core comms team, but the wider network of champions/supporters/coordinators/internal advocates - and consultants!

All in all, an interesting and thought-provoking day.

L