What is it about share price?

This morning thanks to CommScrum’s Kevin Keohane, I read “Internal comms at IBM shift from creation to curation”.   It’s an interesting perspective on the changing role of the internal communications function.  And, IBMs thinking about their intranet would have made the Great Ideas posts here, but for one thing…

“You cannot remove our share price from the home page,” Ben Edwards, IBM’s vice president of digital strategy and development says, “because we believe you should pay attention to our share price.”

Why do they think employees should pay attention to share price?  I just don’t get it.

Employees don’t have any direct control over share price [who does?].  Share price doesn’t help employees do a better job.  It doesn’t give them feedback that would help them serve customers better.  Or become more efficient. Or design better products and services.

It’s another example of the pressure on short-term thinking that isn’t connected to vision.  It’s like asking watching a score board for another game while you’re playing a tennis match [or for my CommScrum friends, playing football].

Why, oh why, do organizations as smart as IBM think that it is the measure that matters for employees?

Tags: Communications, Employee communication, Tools and tactics