This blog is about 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.
External communication
The black hole & the employer brand
Human resource departments talk a lot about the employer brand; the ultimate reflection of the employee experience of the brand. And given the growing challenge of getting the best people, it’s something that all business leaders are beginning to worry about.
So, imagine my surprise to read that “nearly 30 percent of executives surveyed by search firm Korn/Ferry International said job applicants aren’t being treated respectfully by potential employers”! These executives report the following experiences:
- No confirmation that their application arrived
- Interviews that turn out to have been set up for other candidates
- Interviews that have been set up for the wrong job
- Interviewers who are under prepared
- No follow-up after interviews
- No answers to e-mails or phone messages
- A big black hole.
This isn’t any old recruitment. This is executive recruitment. Presumably people who have more money and influence than most. Makes you pretty sure that it’s a lot worse for your average job seeker.
We know bad news travels faster than good news. We know the value of the brand experience as an employee or as a customer. It’s pure gold. And the erosion of the brand experience a business killer. So, how could we be going so wrong in what seems like such a simple matter – basic courtesy?
Could it be because of overworked employees? Sucky values? Bad training? Too many files? Too few hours? Not the right tools to do the job? Or all of the above?
I don’t know, but as communicators we’re all about helping our organizations [and their employees] build strong positive relationships with all our stakeholders, so I think it’s something worth looking into and taking action on. The employer brand starts here.
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Humanizing cold hard facts
Yesterday, my cousin’s wife [thanks Star], sent me a link to Lightening in a Jar.
It’s a slide show. It has no special effects. The photography is mediocre. The graphics bland. It’s got the sappiest music ever. There’s no action. No voiceover. It’s just a series of pretty dry facts.
I’ve seen it before. It struck me then as it did now. It’s so cheesy and still so very compelling. Why?
The genius is that it brings the humanity back to something that is otherwise just conceptual – the population of the world [can anyone picture billions], the number of people who wake up hungry [can anyone picture a %?]. They take what is otherwise incomprehensible and sometimes overwhelming data and translate it into something very human; something we can all picture – a small village of 100 people. It’s a simple idea, not all that well implemented, and the result is brilliant.
There’s something for every manager and communicator to learn here. Conceptual cold hard facts can tell stories that are relevant, meaningful and emotionally powerful! Now for that simple idea.
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It’s about the system. It’s about balance.
Today’s inspiration comes from C-Notes. The question posed was [and I’m paraphrasing]: As you design the customer experience do you think about it from a system point of view? Do you think about the balance?
I don’t think we do. And, we do even less of this kind of thinking when we start talking about the employee experience. We don’t seem to have/or take the time to really understand these relationships, the kind of experience we want them to have and the implications that would have on what and how we do things.
It’s the kind of process that takes up front thinking. It takes time. And it can challenge all kinds of preconceived notions and assumptions. This kind of thoughtful and intentional orientation to organizational change is much more like walking a labyrinth – all be it one on steroids – than any linear change model would ever suggest.
And in my experience, very few organizations have the will to really think it through; to back up and understand what they are trying to do and the implications that has on their organization and the communities around them. But when they do what happens next is amazing. Teams gain deeper understanding. Decisions that were written in stone are reversed or adjusted. Opportunities open up that had never existed or been explored. Barriers disappear. Things change for the better; for employees, for customers and for investors.
Has your organization got what it takes for this kind of conversation?
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Great idea # 3: Building pride – The Hudson Bay Company story
An occasional post on a really great idea for employee communications
– simple and high impact.
For those of you who don’t know, The Bay was incorporated “…by British royal charter in 1670 as The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay” making it “… the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world.” [source] I grew up knowing it as The Hudson Bay Company. Somewhere along the line it became HBC and The Bay.
And somewhere along the line the adventure was over. The Bay had become a tired and dowdy department store owned by venture capitalists. You couldn’t even find a Hudson Bay Company Point Blanket anywhere in the store.
And somewhere along the line over 70,000 employees and millions of customers had lost the spirit. Products were uninteresting. And the service was nonexistent or surly.
Enter Bonnie Brooks, Chief Adventurer (aka President and CEO), The Bay, Hudson’s Bay Company. The store, here in Montreal, looks the same from the outside. But inside there’s a lot going on and it’s all good.
In the two years since she was named, Bonnie Brooks has managed to transform this dying department store. And she’s done it by going back to basics: Building pride in the founding spirit of adventure and discovery. The things that connect the business to this incredible 400 year history that had been lost. And, she’s managed to take mostly hourly minimum-wage employees with her by building their pride – in the institution, in leadership and in the work they do for customers every day. Genius.
She’s “invited employees on a mission”. A mission to engage with the business and their customers. And they are. Their pride in the company and what they are doing is palpable.
She’s managed in a very short time to reignite pride in the institution and the heritage and tradition of the past. She’s changed the employee experience. And in doing so she’s changed the customer experience.
A simple idea. Incredibly well executed. Good for employees. Good for customers. And good for The Bay.
Congratulations Bonnie!
PS: The iconic blanket stripes are now trademark protected and you can now find the Hudson Bay Company Point blankets, pillows and other gift items that reflect the traditional bay colours and spirit in their in-store boutiques.
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Uhura or Deanna Troi?
Maybe it’s due to the Time Warped posts, but I’ve been thinking about … yes, you guessed it Star Trek. And I discovered something pretty interesting. Somewhere between Star Trek and Star Trek: The next generation the communication officer disappeared. What happened?
Remember Uhura, she was the communication officer on Star Trek. She was a major character in this early version of the show. Communication was a technical challenge and seemed pretty transactional. I always felt the character was barely hanging on getting her ‘phone’ to work. Uhura seemed like a female Scotty – “Captain, the dilithium crystal is overheating. We’re going to blow up.”
By Star Trek the next generation the communication officer is gone [or at least not a main character] to be replaced instead by Deanna Troi, the empath. She’s just there. No big drama. No big “oh my god can she do it? Can she get us out of this mess?” She’s just present and adding value by helping the Captain navigate the different creatures and cultures they encounter. She’s all about relationships. And, technology serves only in as much as it supports the relationship.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather see our profession evolve in the direction of Diana Troi. More empath than technician. What will it take? [check out the Commscrum discussion on LinkedIn: Building communication mastery in a cross-disciplinary inside/out world and here]
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The power of acronyms
I’ve always thought that once we moved from typing on machines the days of the acronym would be over. Why do we need them? We don’t need to push keys up and down to type in the same words over and over. We can search and replace in one stroke.
I was so wrong. Acronyms are alive and thriving in every organization I work with.
Acronyms are short form. They’re code. They’re kind of cool – you can make them spell catchy words like DEVIL [development in logistics – thanks to my dad who loved creating sticky acronyms for projects he led]. They’re the part of the language that proves you’re part of the ‘in’ group – the ones that know what the acronyms mean. Until you don’t.
I remember joining a large global company about a decade ago. Engineering was key to this business and so were engineers. And engineers love acronyms [an unproven theory]. Anyway, I went to meeting after meeting in those early days just trying to wade through the acronyms.
There was one meeting that stands out. Somewhere about 5 minutes into the meeting someone referred to “XMNP” [acronym disguised to protect the innocent]. The discussion got incredibly animated and built to a crescendo when about an hour in I realized that there were two groups in the room. They both used “XMNP” acronym. And they both used it in different ways. They were fighting about different things. No one had really thought about what the initials meant since they’d made them up and except for the new person in the room who asked they might not have.
And that’s when I realized the real power of acronyms is to obscure and confuse. If you’re not in favour of obscuring and confusing then I think you know what you have to do.
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The challenge – Change the profession!
We’ve heard it all before. The traditional approach to corporate communications – tightly “scripted messages delivered by the chief executive, first to investors, then to other opinion-formers, and only later to the mass audiences of employees and consumers“ has got to go.
And it needs to be replaced by vibrant “peer-to-peer and horizontal discussion across stakeholders. [Where] the employee is the new credible source for information about a company, giving insight from the front lines. [And], the consumer has become a co-creator, demanding transparency on decisions from sourcing to new-product positioning.” [Ref for these quotes]
And yet, even as Web and Intranet 2.0 are about to become 3.0 we’re still working through 1.0 [ok maybe 1.5]. And if you have any doubt, just pop into CommScrum to check out the animated discussion going on there over what and how our main professional association IABC is or isn’t serving the needs of our profession in this new world.
As early as 2007, Arthur W Pages’ publication, the Authentic Enterprise in 2007, presented recommendations for transforming “our profession, open[ing] up new and meaningful kinds of responsibility and learning, and creat[ing] exciting new career paths for communications professionals. If you haven’t read it, it’s a great starting point for thinking about the revolution of our profession.
And, in June, after months of online consultation, The Stockholm Accords were published. Their aim “… is to articulate and establish the role of public relations in the “communicative organization” within a fast-evolving digital and value-network society.” [I think the authors would do well to refer back to the Authentic Enterprise].
We know what we need to do, so what’s stopping us?
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Social media are rocking our world
Social media are changing what we do and how we do it. With our families. With our friends. With strangers. With our colleagues. At play. At work. Social media haven’t even come of age and they are already rocking our world.
Nowhere will these changes be more profound than in our workplaces. Social media are changing basic assumptions about how we organize to get things done.
| Was | Will be [if it's not already] |
| Centralization | Decentralization |
| Formal hierarchy | Informal networks |
| Chain of command | Collaboration |
| Central planning | Collective learning |
| Bureaucracy | Community |
| Departments | Tribes |
| High control | High accountability |
| Machine models | Complex adaptive systems |
I don’t for one second think that it’s as clear cut as this conversation makes it out.
I don’t believe institutions of the future will operate fully one way or the other. They will need to find the right balance – their right balance – given the nature of the work.
And, social media create institution-wide opportunities for connecting that simply didn’t exist for large organizations before. Social media are already driving changes in behaviour, attitudes and expectations. They are already having a profound effect on our institutions and the role of the managers who run them.
What is certain is that the function of management is changing. The days when power and authority based on hierarchy alone is gone. Instead, managers will need to be influencers. Facilitators. Consensus-builders.
And, it is certain that this will change the function of institutional communications especially internal communications. In a world where managers are influencers, what is the role of internal communications? In a world where employees will have access to what they need, when and how they need it [thanks Bill Jensen, Work 2.0], will the internal communications function even need to exist?
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On being authentic
The first time I ever heard the term authentic used in an organizational setting was only a few years ago and it might have been the last time it made any sense.
I was doing a small project for Nike’s Marketing team at their head office in Portland, Oregon. They often referred to authentic Nike. At first I thought it was some meaningless corporate jargon [there’s generally a lot of that going around at HQs wherever they are]. It took me a while, but I finally realized that for them a product was authentic Nike only if it had been designed with a world class athlete to improve their personal performance. Now, that’s authentic.
Three years ago, The Authentic Enterprise concluded that “…authenticity will be the coin of the realm for successful corporations and for those who lead them.” And, that “Communicators are uniquely positioned to become experts on the new art and science of organizational trust.” Now, I need to say up front that I generally find this whitepaper interesting and compelling. And not surprisingly I’m pretty keen about their conclusions for communicators.
The problem I have is that this paper and the discussion that has followed is based on two flawed assumptions:
- Institutions can be other than authentic
- Being authentic is always going to be good.
I don’t believe either of these assumptions are true.
First, how could an institution be anything other than authentic. They are what they are. They do what they do. Their behaviours and actions, the decisions they take or don’t take reflect their underlying beliefs and values. And, whether you like them or not they are a totally authentic.
Second, authenticity has lost its meaning. For Nike it was real and good. The challenge for many institutions today is that what is authentic is not that good. What’s real is not good. Think of British Petroleum or the Vatican. Their behaviours and actions tells us much about their authentic institution and it’s not good.
Importantly, though authentic and transparent are often talked about in the same breath, you don’t have to be transparent for anyone to get who you really are and what you stand for. Here’s an example:
A young friend of mine, a recent MBA grad, got a job offer from a fortune 100 global high-tech company early this summer. He was told that his candidacy had to go through the CEO. He stopped his job search – he’d received and accepted a formal offer [reflects his values]. It’s been weeks and still no word. This one act tells us a lot about this organization. And, perhaps more than my young friend would like to know. First, even though one of their 5 values is respect they have put a young debt-ridden new grad in this position. Second I believe my friend can be confident that control will be one of the most important underlying values – not innovation or accountability. Two other values that are listed on their site.
On being authentic. That’s easy. Now how to make institutions authentic and forces for good?
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Recent posts
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