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.
Innovation
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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Starting with nothing
OK it’s late summer and I’m dreaming and I thought you might like to dream along with me.
Imagine you’ve been asked to help create a Corporate Internal Communications approach starting from nothing. Let’s imagine this is a service business that has grown by acquisition. It’s in a highly competitive market about to launch a new business model. Cross-functional and cross-business collaboration will be critical.
The individual business units have relatively well developed Internal Communications. But, until now global communications have been limited to the odd e-mail and quarterly conference calls. There’s no global intranet. There’s no global newsletter. There’s no global employee survey. There’s pretty much nothing at the global level – no systems, processes, tools or tactics.
You’ve got carte blanche. What’s in and what’s out? I’d love to hear from you.
Update [August 20, 2010]: Thanks to the gang at CommScrum LinkedIn for your great contribution to this question.
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Management innovation = Communication innovation
Another wake up call.
I just tuned in to Gary Hamel’s recent webinar [ironically - given the closing line to last week's post - called]: Lighting the Fires of Management Innovation.[1] In it he describes how Management innovation was once the source of significant competitive advantage. But, most management innovation took place in the very late 19th and very early 20th century.
So, if we are going to effectively tackle the urgent challenges of today, we need a fundamental reinvention of underlying management principles and practices. And, we need to create this ‘management advantage’ at a time when the pace of change – political, economic, social, and technological – is increasing.
How? Well according to Hamel it will take courage. The courage to:
- Take on big and noble problems
- Question dogma
- Learn from positive deviance [he refers specifically to the ethos of the web and the values that he believes must infiltrate management]
- Start small – we need to be able to be both revolutionary and evolutionary at the same time.
[echos of Grassroots thinking]
Innovation in communication – the communications function and the communications themselves – will be absolutely fundamental to the reinvention of management.
As communicators it’s sometimes easy to be a little complacent around the idea of communication innovation. After all the past decade has brought significant and important innovation to how we do communications. The number and kinds of navigation tools, distribution channels, communication tools and tactics that are available grows exponentially.
But the kind of innovation that Hamel is calling for asks us to fundamentally rethink what we do. Are we taking on or encouraging our organizations to take on big and noble ideas? Do we question dogma – ours and others? Are we learning from positive deviance? Do we start small or are we caught up in one system wide campaign after another?
Are we ready to take this challenge on? As a profession? As executives and managers? As advisors to leadership? As employees and as voices for employees and other key stakeholders?
I’d love to hear what you think. [the conversation continues]
[1] You need to be registered on the Management Innovation Exchange to access it, but it’s well worth it.
Random Posts:
“Where everybody knows your name”
There are very few of us who would associate the place we work with the Cheers theme song.
In fact that was the point of the song. Cheers is the place where we can escape our worries. A place where we’re understood and appreciated.
You’d think that a place where we spend 50% to 60% of our waking hours getting to and working in would be a place “where everybody knows your name”. But it’s generally not. Instead, it’s a place where:
- An EVPs executive assistant for over 5 years told me that her boss didn’t know she had children until she had to stay home one day with a sick child.
- A manager reported that he’d never met his Director face-to-face even though he’d been working for him for over a year.
- [fill in the blank]
What is it about organizations? After all we’re all there working toward the same organizational mission, vision and values.
What is it about these places that:
- Isolate rather than integrate?
- Create internal competition rather than collaboration?
- Dehumanize rather than humanize?
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that colleagues at work need to be your best friend. Or that a weekly beer with people you don’t really even like is a solution? I’m not really a fan of the drive for employee engagement [what's really being measured?, implication that employees need to give more?, etc]. But, I do think that organizations can be places that encourage courtesy and respect. And it starts by knowing some basic things about the people you work with. Who are they? What matters to them?
Is your organization doing anything to humanize the work environment? Is there anything you can do in your corner of the workplace?
“Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got.
Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.
Wouldn’t you like to get away?
Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
and they’re always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name.”
With thanks to Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo
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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?
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Random Posts:
Your washroom. Your culture.
In an all but forgotten corner of every office is the washroom. And, in the places I’ve worked they have been the most sterile, cold and soulless places in the office. And that’s saying something given some of the spaces I’ve worked in.
Kate Rutter believes ‘office bathrooms are key indicators of team culture’ because they should “…signal what’s important to the team…” On May 8th DNTO’s Tori Allen took this insight to CBCs workplace washrooms. The episode is fun.
Years ago one of my brothers-in-law, Richard, who at the time owned a gas station in Toronto, replied when I complained about the state of station toilets – “A dirty station is a busy station”. Enough said.
And it got me thinking. If workplace washrooms are key indicators of culture then they must be a key lever of change. And, maybe washrooms are something we should be paying more attention to.
I’m serious. It doesn’t need to take much. In the DNTO episode they added a plant [a cactus to be exact], some 3-ply toilet paper, tic tacs, gum, dental floss and post it notes. These small changes humanized the space and created an almost immediate uplifting affect within the team.
While we’re busy trying to create collaborative and innovative cultures how much effort is being put into designing spaces [including washrooms] that humanize the workplace and encourage employees to interact, share ideas, and create together.
Funny since our work spaces are the most visible reflection of our organizations with employees and other key stakeholders. You’d think it would be the first we’d place to start.
What do you think? Should we start in the workplace washroom?
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From conversation to joint creation
This just arrived thanks to the Ideas Project.
John Hagel, author and business strategist, builds on the main idea presented in my last post by making a powerful argument for why social media need to be part of internal strategies. Social media are no longer just about conversation. They are tools for helping institutions set the conditions for collaboration and joint creation.
If you’re a professional communicator what if anything does this mean for you and what you do?
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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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