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.
Disciplined approach
Scale & proportion in communications
"The Fisherman," Saul Steinberg, from The Labyrinth
I think internal communications design at its best is compositional. So, that takes me to the arts to see if there are things I can learn there.
Scale and proportion are two important considerations for the artist or architect. Should they be considerations for those of us who design communications plans? Scale refers to the size of the work. Proportion refers to how we see elements within the work in relationship to each other.
It’s easy in the heat of the moment or the “big” announcement to lose sight of what really matters to our colleagues in different functions and at different levels across our organizations. Not all decisions and announcements are created equal from the point of view of those we’re trying to reach and engage. Not everything is as big to “them” as it is to us.
Designing a communication approach that is the right proportion and scale for the news we’re sharing is as important as any other aspect of communication plan we’re building. Overdoing something that isn’t all that relevant to employees or failing to communicate something that is will lead to equally bad outcomes: Confusion and erosion of trust.
Thinking about the scale and proportion of the communication from the receiver’s point of view helps.
- Scale – the number and variety of communication channels, the frequency and duration of the communication, the effort level to engage people in a conversation
- Proportion – how evident we want to make the communication in context of everything else that is going on organizationally at any point in time and over time, and within the communication itself what is most relevant/important for different employees to ‘get’.
Next time you’re about to communicate a ‘big’ new corporate decision, business strategy, human resources policy, technology change, acquisition, or quarterly financial results, think about what this news really means for the people you’re communicating it to. What impact – direct or indirect – will it have on them? What do you want them to know, feel or do as a result of your communicating with them?
And once you have the answers to these questions, think a little bit more like an artist, design a communication that is right in terms of scale and proportion.
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Do we know what we’re doing?
I’m just back after an “official” training run. Those of you who know me, know I am passionate about chiwalking and running. Though a “late in life” runner I came to believe what my trainer told me, that running is “perfect freedom”. It took three years to find any level of enjoyment, but I did and was getting quite confident and competent.
Last June due to unrelated injuries Michael and I stopped running. It started as a short break. We continued to chiwalk regularly and at a pretty fast pace – racking in many kilometres up, over and around Mont Royal during the fall, winter and spring. In fact our winter chiwalks made the winter quite wonderful no matter what the conditions – rain, snow, sleet, sunny, cloudy, -10C, -30C. They are all about focus and alignment two of my favourite things.
Now, almost a year later we realize that even though our chiwalks have no doubt kept us relatively fit, they aren’t giving us the same results as chirunning. Over the spring we’ve integrated a few short 20 minute runs, but without any real discipline [and to be honest mostly downhill – small cheat]. This morning was different. We followed lesson 1 of Danny Dreyer’s training guide for beginners, a 12-week program to prepare for a 10K. We went for a relatively flat [not my favourite, since I like the variation of trail running] 5 minutes on and 1 minute off chirun repeated 6 times.
Big lesson: If you want to build and maintain capacity then there’s only one way to do it and that’s with discipline and practice.
You’ll not be surprised to hear that this experience has made me think about whether and how we can achieve an adequate level of communication mastery in our organizations?
Relationships are fundamental to organizations. Organizations exist based on the assumption that working together we can do something we can’t do alone. Given that human relationships without communication are impossible to imagine then communication mastery, must be a critical factor for success of any organization. But do we think about communication in that way?
I don’t think we do. We may make the odd nod to individual development, but institutionally I think we make the assumption that since virtually all employees can speak, write and hear then as an institution you’re communicating. This of course is simply not true. Any more than making the assumption if you can walk, you can run is true. [Or if you can walk you’re walking in an aligned and efficient way that will protect your body [that’s another story].] It takes training, discipline and practice to build and maintain adequate levels of skill and capacity.
So, what would communication mastery look like? Not just for your employees or managers but for your institution as a whole? What are the institutional benefits of achieving that level of mastery? Where are you today in relationship to that level of mastery? What actions would you need to put in place to get there? And, how do you create the right conditions for achieving it?
I think these are fundamental institutional questions. Shouldn’t we be thinking about getting this conversation going? Are you ready?
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Can we use video to reinvent … internal communications?
In a recent post, Mitch Joel introduced me to Salman Khan.
At about minute 7, Salman got my attention when he talked about how teachers used his YouTube videos as homework and changed the nature of their time with students in the classroom. Now, instead of classroom time being “one-size fits all lectures to 30 kids fingers on their lips and blank faces, looking slightly antagonistic”, the time is spent in the classroom is on working together with their peers on problems that advance their learning. This way, the students learn are able to pause, repeat and watch the video ‘lectures’ in their own way and time to build to mastery. By minute 15, I was sitting up as he described how the teachers have used technology to humanize the classroom.
The potential link between what Salman describes and the way we orient employees and build their institutional competence is clear. And, using this approach to inspire the creation of powerful leadership development programs pretty obvious.
But, can we use technology to humanize the workplace? Think about your corporate internal communications? How much employee to human time are your employees getting – with peers, with direct reports, with their supervisors and executives? And how can we make that time together more valuable – to the employee and the institution – by making it more human? And, can technology help? [more soon]
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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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“Leadership makes all the difference”
Robert Fritz’s work on Structural Dynamics began over 20 years ago after he observed something pretty odd: “Success does not succeed in organizations” and asked “Why not?”
As those of you who follow this blog know, I studied with Robert Fritz for over 8 years. The principles of Structural Dynamics remain the foundation for the work I do in communications and change management. Last month, he and the other founding members of Innovation Associates – Peter Senge, Charlie Kiefer, and Peter Stroh – were invited by the Pegasus Systems Thinking in Action Conference to talk about the work that originally inspired them. Robert’s talk – “The Structural Dynamics of Leadership” – is a great primer to the work that has inspired me for years. So, for those of you who are interested, here are some highlights from the talk that may provoke some thinking and questions:
- Leadership is critical
- Leaders are subject to the structures they are in. Structures are created by elements in relation to each other and lead to specific behaviours – oscillating [structural conflict] or resolving [structural tension]
- Without a change in underlying structure change efforts will be reversed [i.e., where the structure is an oscillating one]
- Structural conflicts that drive oscillation can be addressed through hierarchy. The hierarchy is a leadership decision. [i.e., Where there are competing systems there needs to be a decision about what is primary]
- Structural tension can be designed in
- Shared vision is good. Shared structural tension is even better
- Structural tension as an object gives direction and coordination. Working with structural tension can take the complexity and organize it very simply to a unified and aligned direction while providing for all the freedom in the world to express your talents, creativity and imagination
- Leaders need to think in terms of outcomes not problems
- Workload to capacity is one of the key issues of leaders today. Leaders need to build capacity for the future.
- Leaders are pressured into short-term thinking. Short-term thinking without a sense of vision will hurt the organization
- The purpose of a company is not shareholder return on investment. Maximizing profits undermines the company’s ability to grow and better compete in the marketplace
- Business strategy is about generating wealth. The key to business strategy is making an offer that can’t be refused
- Composing the organization aligns resources and systems to a common direction
- The senior person needs to have an executive team that is aligned and masterful at implementing strategies. Too often the executive team is the first to undermine the alignment
- Where senior people are doing their jobs then dissemination, multiplication, amplification of leadership becomes available to the organization. That is golden.
And here’s the full talk [80+mins]. It has lots more provocative thinking including some thoughts about the difference between command and control, self-organizing and compositional organizations that are very convincing and worth a listen just for that.
http://www.robertfritz.com/tsd_of_leadership.mp3
Does success lead to success in your organization? If not, why not? I’d love to hear what you think.
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Asking the right questions
I got a note from someone who’d just read the IBM Global Human Resource Officer Study for 2010: “Working without borders”. He was disturbed to discover that Chief HR Officers are positioning themselves to “leverage collaboration”. His question: “How can Organizational Development lead the design of Organization 2.0?”
It’s the kind of question I hear regularly. How can function X own [insert your choice – innovation, employee communications, the brand, etc.]? How can function Y think they can lead [insert your choice again]?
But, are these the questions we should be asking? Instead, what if we asked:
- What is the collaboration for?
- How will collaboration support the business strategy?
- What impact will it have? Do we expect the impact to change over time?
- Does the level of collaboration need to be the same across the whole business – from function to function, from exec level to front line? Or is it needed only in certain pockets [product development and customer service, marketing and sales, etc.]? Will this change over time?
The conversation changes and depending on the answers, “ownership” [function, level] should be obvious. Is your organization asking the right questions? Are you asking the right questions?
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On being professional
It’s sometimes easy to think that the professions – doctors, lawyers, accountants, architects – are the only fields that have professionals.
Today, our roofers finally arrived. We’re at the top of a 4-story condo facing winter in Montreal with a 21 year old peaked roof. To say we were glad to see them is an understatement.
It’s been a couple of months since we signed our agreement. Our contact has kept us in the loop [read managed our expectations] in terms of timing and weather issues, etc. Yesterday he called to say that the team would start today at 7:30am. Hallelujah.
They arrived at 6:45 and were ready to go at 7:30. Immaculate truck. Immaculate equipment. Hard hats and safety gear in place. One guy – the yellow hard hat guy – clearly in charge. They built a scaffold up the side of the building in record time. A truck with a hoist long enough to lift the materials up to the roof in place and ready to go.
We went out for a walk – there’s not much they can do about the noise so we might as well get a little exercise in… As we left, the shingles and other materials were being delivered to the roof. By the time we’d come back, they’d created a 4-story shoot to carry all the debris down to a huge container. On the roof they’d started pulling up the old shingles and piling them in one place on the lower level [it’s got two levels]. There one guy was in place at the top of the shoot. His job to make sure it all made it down the shoot to the container.
This team is more professional than many corporate teams I’ve seen. They’re doing what they said they were going to do when they said they’d do it. It’s obvious from here that each of them has a role knows what it is and has what they need to do it. And, you get a feeling that they take pride in the work they do. They also do it with joy [and a little fun – there have been a few good laughs from up there].
And, unless I am sorely mistaken by the end of the day tomorrow we’re going to have the best roof on the street.
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Corporate Karaoke
There is no one solution for employee communications. But one thing is for sure, formal cascades are still around, and unfortunately in many organizations they are viewed as just that: The way we get information out there.
Now I’m actually a supporter of formal cascades – for the right kinds of communications, and done the right way at the right time and never as a standalone. Check out our tip sheet.
More often than not though, messages are pushed out to managers who don’t know exactly what and when they have to communicate [we've forgotten to tell them]; don’t have the skills or the time to translate them for their employees; are ill prepared to answer questions; and worse don’t have the courage to have honest conversations with their superiors about the issues and concerns they and their employees might have.
It’s like a really bad night of Karaoke. The lyrics are beautiful. The tune catchy. The voice is excruciating. The pacing painful. And, the drinks are watered down.
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Recent Posts
- Grey zones are costing your organization big time
- Saying goodbye to jargon
- Don’t leave them laughing
- A master class with Ed Sullivan
- Innovation & collaboration: Strategic priorities or not?
- The truth about the number 1 fear
- Want to know the secret to writing a great speech?
- Connecting for big business benefits
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Recent posts
- Grey zones are costing your organization big time
- Saying goodbye to jargon
- Don’t leave them laughing
- A master class with Ed Sullivan
- Innovation & collaboration: Strategic priorities or not?
- The truth about the number 1 fear
- Want to know the secret to writing a great speech?
- Connecting for big business benefits
- Staying in touch with reality
- “Just hire a Dalek”
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