Talking Internal Communication...

Communication competencies – a great new framework

This week I finally got around to having a proper look at the work Liam FitzPatrick and Sue Dewhurst of Competent Communicators have done around competencies for internal communicators.

I worked with Liam and Sue and a handful of other people a few years back on developing the InterComm matrix, the predecessor to the new framework (here's an article I wrote on it for www.simply-communicate.com), so I was really keen to see what they’d done to build on that foundation.

The good news is that the new framework is a rock solid piece of work and a very worthy successor. Where the original InterComm matrix was the product of a handful of experienced (but arguably biased!) practitioners, the new framework is based upon a robust piece of research – responses to more than 700 questionnaires, focus groups on both sides of the Atlantic and dozens of interviews.

Knowing Liam and Sue, I have no doubt this work was carried out with real integrity and that the findings are, therefore, about as close to scientific as you can get.

The new framework differs from the InterComm matrix in other ways too. Our original approach was based around four arbitrary career levels which assumed a natural progression from level one (new starter) up to level four (experienced professional). The real world is, of course, very different to that. People enter our profession at various levels –and it’s not unusual for someone to move sideways into a senior role from another function altogether.

What’s more, not everyone wants to be a highly paid director of communications. Many practitioners are keen to carve out a niche for themselves as ‘tactical’ specialists, be it writer, intranet guru or events supremo. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that and Liam and Sue’s framework reflects this.

This is a great tool for planning your own or your team’s development, for benchmarking, for building role profiles and descriptions and for recruitment. 

At the heart of the framework are 12 core competencies for communicators (I’ve added the words in brackets):

1. Building effective relationships 
2. Business focus (understanding the business and using communication to solve business problems)
3. Consulting and coaching (being an advisor)
4. Cross functional awareness (understanding and working with other disciplines)
5. Developing other communicators
6. Innovation and creativity
7. Listening (inc conducting research and gathering feedback)
8. Making it happen (turning plans into actions)
9. Planning
10. Specialist (sector and subject-specific experience)
11. Vision and Standards (consistently high professional standards)
12. Craft (practical abilities – e.g. writing and design)

This isn’t the place to go into them in great detail, but if you’re interested you can download a white paper here and also a free article on the framework from SCM magazine. If you’re really keen, you should invest in the Melcrum report that accompanies this research (you can get a £100 discount if you go along to an event Liam is running for IABC later this month – see the Talking IC calendar above).

To carry out a quick self assessment, select which of the 12 competencies you need in order to perform in your role at an outstanding level. You obviously don’t need to be advanced on all of these, but you do need to excel at those that are most relevant to your role and organization.

 

Once you’ve identified these, decide how much time you should be spending in each area – high, medium or low.  This should then tell you whether your job is focused more towards tactics and delivery, or towards consulting and coaching.  Assuming you know where you want to get to, you can then identify your development gaps and put in place a plan to plug them.

The model is much more than a simple development planning tool though – if you want to progress in internal comms, I recommend you take a much closer look…. 

CiB launches IC strategy awards

Those of you who like a bit of public recognition (and, let's face it, who doesn't) might like to know that Communicators in Business (CiB) has just launched its new Communication Strategy Awards.

With a new name, new categories and a fresh new look, the Strategy Awards - formerly the Communication Excellence Awards - make clear CiB's commitment to recognising outstanding strategic communication by the teams and individuals responsible for delivery. They also demonstrate that the organisation is gradually moving away from its industrial editor roots and becoming a more rounded professional body for communicators. If you thought CiB was only about print channels, it's time to look again.

The 14 awards cover mixed media campaigns - mainly for employee-focused activity, but with one or two external categories. The categories cover many of things we do - from internal events, employee engagement and training, to global comms, change programmes and storytelling. 

To find out more about the awards and to download an entry pack click here.

You've got over a month to get your entry together - the deadline 23 July 2007. 

Two new social media sites for internal communicators

Great minds think alike....

Last week saw US-based IC specialist Ragan Communications launch www.myragan.com, a new social networking site just for communicators. And within a few days Melcrum had announced its own community, dubbed The Communicator's Network, which will launch in June. You can read all about it over at the Melcrum Blog.

There's nothing like a bit of healthy competition to spark innovation. These sites, which take their lead from mainstream services like FaceBook and LinkedIn, are great news for internal communicators. They are both free (at least as far as basic access goes) and offer access to a wealth of resources, tools, content and contacts. Most importantly though, they enable you to participate in a conversation with communicators from around the world. I'd encourage you to register for both of them now. 

MyRagan signed up more than 1000 people in its first week alone and Melcrum is hoping that many of its 25,000 customers globally will sign up for The Communicator's Network.  Between them they will help bring together a globally community of like-minded professionals - stimulating debate, generating discussion, sharing best practice and generally moving internal comms forward. 

When I've got a bit more time on my hands I will review both sites. In the meantime, see you in the virtual corridors of power...

Celebrating at the Waldorf

I spent most of Friday afternoon eating, drinking and chatting at the rather grand Waldorf Hotel in London, home to this year’s CiB Communicator of the Year and Communication Excellence awards. It was, I have to say, a very civilized way to spend the day.

As well as seeing some very deserving peers pick up accolades, the event was an opportunity to hear Justin King, CEO of retail giant Sainsbury’s, speak about his approach to communication (he was named Communicator of the Year for 2006 by CiB).

King is a believer. He understands the value good employee comms can bring to an organization and he claims it has played an instrumental role in turning around the business in recent years. He also counts his internal comms chief as part of his inner circle.   

He devotes every Friday – effectively 20% of his time – to visiting Sainsbury’s stores around the country and talking to staff. And he’s committed to responding personally (well almost, he does have a team of four PAs helping him) to every letter he receives from a Sainsbury's customer or colleague. 

If only every CEO was so dedicated to stakeholder dialog.

In addition to acknowledging Justin King’s achievements, the event showcased some of the best in internal communications in the UK.

As a member of the CiB awards committee, I was closely involved in the programme this year and was, for the most part, very impressed by standard of entry. Amongst the 11 winners are some superb examples of effective communication strategies, global campaigns, change programmes, training, tactics, teaming and individual skills.

I was particularly impressed by the standard from the public sector (Westminster City Council and Stockport Borough Council both picked up multiple awards for their excellent work).

Overall, it's great to see so much quality work - a sure sign that our profession is finally coming of age.

If you’re interested in learning from the winners, we have produced a useful PDF summary of the winning entries and the judge’s critiques. 

The growing pains of a profession

I recently led a discussion group on strategic internal communication as part of the CIPR’s Perfecting PR Strategy conference. The group comprised about 25 communicators, of which roughly half were from the private sector and half public. Most of them were leading small teams and were responsible for aspects of both internal and external comms.

Before the event I asked delegates to complete a short on-line questionnaire. The results may not be representative of the profession, but they are nevertheless quite telling:

• Delegates were divided in their view of practitioners – the majority (40%) saw IC people primarily as ‘tacticians’, 33% as ‘strategists’ and a sizeable number (27%) couldn’t decide between the two.
• 65% of delegates said their CEOs see internal comms as ‘critically important’ or ‘quite important’, though a worrying 35% said IC was a low priority for their leader.
• Most organisations saw the links between internal and external comms as ‘strong’ or ‘quite strong’ (47% and 20% respectively). The remainder, however, pointed towards a major disconnect between the two. 
• IC was located within a larger corporate comms department for the majority (54%), followed by marketing (20%) and HR (14%). It was a stand alone function for just under 7%. The remaining delegates were from agencies.
• The quality of IC was typically rated ‘average’ (40%) or ‘below par’ (27%).
• Electronic and print channels were identified as strengths, with planning, measurement and face-to-face flagged as weaknesses.

So what does all this tell us about the current state of internal comms in the UK ?

What it captures for me are some of the growing pains we’re experiencing as our profession struggles through its puberty.

Many practitioners -and clients - remain confused about the purpose of IC (are we strategists or tacticians; facilitators or deliverers?) Some CEOs get it, while others think it’s a total waste of money. We’re not sure how we should be structured, where we should sit and what sort of relationship should we have with our PR, marketing and HR colleagues. And we’re not totally sure what we’re good at and what we should be good at (producing stuff or coaching leaders?)

Though few practitioners voice them in public, these are dilemmas we’re all facing and will need to address before our profession can really come of age.

What the session also reinforced for me was that, wherever we sit and whatever environment we operate in, many of us face the exact same issues and challenges. For those in the room these appeared to be:

• Improving line/middle manager communication – how do you get managers communicating effectively? How do you stop them absorbing information and get them sharing it?  What skills should you teach them? How do you hold them accountable?
• Tackling leadership cynicism towards IC - how do you get the sceptical CEO to buy-into your plans? Why won’t top executives invest in and support your proposals? Why is internal comms amongst the first ‘overheads’ to be cut?
• Conducting proper research and evaluation – how do you do it? How can you prove the value you’re adding? How do you link your activities to business objectives? How do you get beyond the once-a-year staff survey? What are the most cost effective techniques?

The great thing about internal comms is that it’s relatively easy to find someone who’s been there and done it- most practitioners are very willing to talk about their work and share their thinking. As well as the excellent subscription services like Simply Communicate and Melcrum’s Hub, communicators benefit from an active calendar of events (check out my listing above). Failing that, just pick up the phone…

Learning from the best

Awards season is upon us and, with it, a golden opportunity to learn from the best our industry has to offer. 

I've always found it incredibly useful to review the entries and winners from the main industry award programmes each year. Whether you're primarily interested in IC strategy or specific tactics, there's always something to learn from the awards programmes run by the CIPR, CiB, IABC, Melcrum and Ragan.

That's why I like to get involved (I judged the IC category of the CIPR Excellence Awards last year and I'm sitting on the CiB awards committee this year). For me there's no better opportunity to get to see what internal communicators from a wide variety of sectors are up to in terms of their strategies, measurement, channels, campaigns and other tactics.

If you don't have the opportunity, time or inclination to get that involved, it's well worth taking the time to read the resulting case studies or, better still, to go along to one of the 'showcase' events (the IABC are running a Gold Quill showcase in London on 7 September - see my calendar).  You could even consider approaching winners direct (internal communicators are usually very happy to discuss their programmes and campaigns in great depth).

Here are some useful links to get you started:

• The team at Ragan in the US actually include PDF examples of the magazines, newsletters and intranets that receive accolades in its annual Ragan Recognition Awards. Good on you Ragan!
• A summary of Melcrum's 2005 SCM Award winners (you can buy a detailed report for £60 which I think is pretty good value.)
• A list of winners from the 2006 CiB Awards and 2005 CiB Excellence Awards
• Casestudies and judge's comments from the 2006 CIPR Excellence Awards
• A list of winners from the IABC's 2006 Gold Quill Awards

It's a shame more of these organisations don't follow Ragan's lead and publish examples of the winning work or more detailed case studies. For most of them you'll need to do a fair bit of detective work to get to the real nuggets of wisdom...

An SOS from Dilbert

This Dilbert strip made me smile...and then cringe. 

It captures really well the painful relationship some internal communicators still have with their CEOs. Pigeonholed as lightweight tacticians, they're always last in a very long line of advisors (somewhere behind Finance, IT, Marketing and HR) and constantly battling for time, attention and organisational resources.

Most of us have experienced this sort of thing at some point in our careers (I've been in environments in the distant past where four and a half minutes with the Chief Exec would have been a distinct luxury). Whilst we may now be lucky enough to work with the increasing numbers of clients and bosses who really value internal comms, let's not forget that many of our comrades are still struggling to carve out a meaningful role for themselves.

If you find yourself in this rather unfortunately position there are a few things you can do:

1. Think long and hard about what it is you actually do. How do you spend your time? Are you really adding value to the organisation? How exactly are you helping the organisation achieve its objectives? Despite great advances in professionalism over the last few years, there are still far too many of us practicing 'SOS communication' (Sending Out Stuff).
2. Get to know the CEO and his or her inner circle (notice the powerful gatekeeper in the Dilbert strip). What is keeping them awake at night? What initiatives and change programmes are coming up?  Where is the business struggling? How can you help?  Be proactive.
3. Stop talking like and artist or craftsperson and start talking the language of management. The CEO is more likely to be bothered about employee retention and product quality than the font used in your new magazine.
4. Invest in measurement - set clear objectives for your comms and regularly report against them (don't wait to be asked to justify your existence). And benchmark your activity against similar organisations.
5. Become the workforce guru - make it your business to know everything there is to know about your employees - who they are, where they are, how they think,etc.
6. Invest in your own professional development. Sign up for Continuing Professional Development (the CIPR runs a good programme) and get yourself a recognisable communication qualification (though there aren't many good ones out there).
7. Quit! The sad truth is that some CEOs and some organisations are simply beyond help.

There are lots of other things you can do, but this short list isn't a bad starting place.

The F Word

Liam FitzPatrick is right (see his comment on my last post), poor internal communication is partly to blame for creating dull, dreary and downright uninspiring places to work.

As a profession we need to do much more to recognise and celebrate internal communicators who use their talents to create exciting, fun and genuinely engaging workplace environments and cultures (note my choice of words - there is both a physical/environmental and a cultural/psychological side to this).

Although we love to be seen as strategists, engagement gurus and change experts, we must recognise that FUN is not a dirty word. We must learn lessons from the mass media and popular culture about what makes people sit up and listen and keep coming back for more. We must pay attention to how we communicate (the style, language, visual treatment, etc) as well as what we communicate. We must recognise that our roles are as much about culture and climate as relaying messages.

I'd also like to see an industry award that recognises this important aspect of internal comms.

Who’s got the X factor?

Here’s a pet theory of mine - great internal communicators are great entertainers. I don’t mean jugglers or clowns (though I’ve come across both) but that it’s a core part of our remit to inject energy and pizzazz into our organisations.

You’ve got to admit it, a lot of the stuff we produce is dull and uninspiring. I’ve judged a number of industry awards over the years and even then, amongst the best of the best, you discover dry and dreary content and mediocre thinking. I’ve seen magazines and intranets that bore me silly. And who hasn’t been in a team meeting that has put them to sleep?

It doesn’t have to be this way. The very best communicators see themselves as entertainers- they have an innate sense for what will bring alive a particular message, what metaphor will hook their audience and what ideas to borrow from popular culture. They know that how you say something is sometimes more important than what you say. They know that that communication is both rational and emotional. And they know that they operate in a competitive environment – it’s becoming harder and harder to gain audience attention.

There’s been a bit of talk in the past about the CEO being the Chief Entertainment Officer. I like that. There’s no doubt that great leaders are engaging storytellers, highly skilled in the art of framing and able to appeal to the heats and minds of employees. Those are skills communicators need to develop and be able to nurture in others.

A well known industry player recently pointed out to me the absence of any real ‘star’ communicators on the UK scene. In the US there are people, like Steve Crescenzo and Shel Holtz, who attract big crowds and bring a real spark to our profession. There really isn’t anyone like that here. Why is that? Where’s the Jonathan Ross, Ricky Gervais or Ant & Dec of internal communication? Where’s our Gordon Ramsey? (The C Word – now there’s an idea!)

I’m rambling a little now, but what I’m trying to say is that great communication is entertaining. It engages you and pulls you in. It makes you want to read it, watch it or participate in it. It grabs you by the balls. It demands a response. Likewise, great communicators have that all important X factor.

Is IC coming of age?

I have just stumbled upon yet more evidence that internal communication is coming of age.

This week's issue of PR Week features the results of a survey of communication directors and heads the magazine has undertaken with Brands2Life.

Internal communication was ranked third in a long list of responsibilities, just behind corporate reputation management (1st) and news management (2nd). It was also way ahead of CSR and investor relations (7th and 8th respectively). Unfortunately respondents also said that media relations and corporate communications (whatever that means) take up more of their time than internal comms.

This ties with the results of another study undertaken recently by Leeds Metropolitan University, which also showed IC to be ranked highly.

It seems to me that, whilst media relations is still the lead discipline, communicators are at last waking up to the importance of internal comms.

I'm predicting that we'll see IC at the very top of the table within five to ten years.