This blog is about improving the relationship between organizations and the people who work for them. And, it’s dedicated to the millions of people around the world who go to work every day wanting to do a great job.
All categories
Houston. We have a problem!
“E-mails and Intranet Are Top Communication Methods Used to Engage Employees”. So reads the headline on an IABC News article. What?
Recently, I spoke about Gary Hamel’s call to reinvent management. In the webcast I refer to there, Gary talks about a global study of 90,000 employees around the world that was conducted by Towers Perrin and that showed that less than 20% of employees are engaged. And, I think this IABC News headline may tell us why. Or at least part of the why.
It seems that even though we keep saying communications isn’t about pushing messages, we continue to rely heavily on push technology and message sending.
In the world Gary describes. A world where “obedience, diligence and intellect” aren’t enough to create a competitive advantage, organizations need employees to bring “initiative, creativity and compassion” to their work. And, that isn’t going to happen because of e-mails and intranet.
How are we creating inspiring places to work? Places where people want to bring more of themselves.
Random Posts:
Innovation culture & internal communications
There’s been a lot of talk about the need for organizations to innovate. But, since organizations don’t innovate, people do, there’s also been a lot of talk about building “innovation cultures”. My friends at CommScrum have taken the discussion further and begun a conversation about innovation and what the drive to an “innovation culture” means for Internal Communications. Here’s how I’m thinking about it. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
“Innovation culture” seems to me a lot like the next generation “leadership culture”. Then everyone had to be a leader. [how that was possible I have no idea.] Now everyone has to be an innovator? [makes about as much sense as everyone’s a leader.]
So, the challenge for Internal Communicators is not to get caught up in the organizational hype and feel pressured into delivering on demand tools and tactics [sound familiar]. Instead, we need get the answers to these fundamental questions.
What needs to be innovated? Products? Services? Systems? Decision taking? Codes of Conduct? Accounting procedures? Pay policies? You get my point. Some things really benefit from continuous innovation. And some things just don’t. In fact getting too innovative would be detrimental and perhaps even illegal.
Why? To improve our employee experience? To improve our customer experience? To make it easier for the CEO to brag on the golf course? To get a headline? Understanding what’s motivating the drive for innovation will tell us how important it really is to the organization’s strategy.
Who will be most impacted? And what will the implications be for what they do and how they do it? No matter how wide or deep the drive for innovation goes, not all employees [I include execs in here too] will be affected equally [see What? above]. As communicators if we assume anything different we may find ourselves creators or amplifiers of mixed messages.
What? When? and How? It’s important to get an adequate take on what’s already being planned/done to create an “innovation culture”? And to understand how those changes will support employee innovation. New processes? New reward systems? Training? Supporting tools and tactics? For an interesting take on what needs to change, check out Jon Katzenbach and Zia Khan’s book, “Leading outside the lines”, p.177. This should give us a clear idea of how seriously the leadership is taking the change and where their priorities are. It should also help us discover where, when and how we can be most helpful.
What do you think? Will the drive for ‘innovative cultures’ change the role of Internal Communications? And, if so, how?
Random Posts:
Getting grassroots
This week I’ve spent a lot of time with people who are part of grassroots movements of one sort or another. And, I started to think about whether there was anything we can learn from grassroots movements like these that are making important and fundamental societal and environmental change?
It started last Friday with a fabulous evening – the Equitas host family dinner – spent with 3 of the 130 Human Rights educators who are here in Montreal for the International Human Rights Training Program. A Cambodian working on a peace and reconciliation program in a world where some citizens fear reprisals in the wake of Khmer Rouge convictions. A Brazilian Human Rights lawyer who devotes time to an NGO working on local Human Rights issues. And a children’s rights activist from The Gambia. Each of them committed to changing their society from the bottom-up. They come here to learn. They will go home to share and act. And they will change their world one action, one person at a time.
Then, because I have a crazy idea of building a rooftop garden – my field of dreams – on our Church hall, I’ve started meeting local people in the community who are working on related projects. They are working on food security, urban farming, creating a sustainable university campus and greening the downtown. They are students at Concordia who are piloting a sustainable business growing herbal tea to supply a student run and operated tea shop at the Loyola campus. They are professionals working with local action groups to green some of the most debilitated parts of the downtown. There’s one young man who went to jail for an action he took to change a regulation in The Plateau. And guess what they did. And, they are profs and grad students working on urban farming projects. It’s amazing. They are changing our urban landscape one planter at a time. It is amazing what’s going on just outside our door.
What do these movements have in common?
- They are “natural and spontaneous” movements
- They are driven by passion for the ‘cause’.
- They operate outside of “traditional power structures”
- They use “traditional power structures” to raise awareness and funds.
- They rely on informal networks to share information and resources.
- Their projects start small and local but with the clear intention of leading to big and sustainable change.
- They pilot and learn and share and pilot again.
- They build pride in the work and the community.
What do you think? Is there anything we can learn from grassroots movements that we can apply to institutional change initiatives?