Category: Communications

On one particular project, I worked with a man who was a true believer in Jive. Let’s call him Herbert. It didn’t bother him that the engagement numbers were low and confined to one small region, or that the tech was incompatible with the main platform.

He believed in Jive, and he was going to have it. Old Herbie fought unbelievably hard for it, and for that I give him respect – Jive was killed off twice, and each time he brought it back from the dead. Eventually, he got it included in the new deployment as a trial balloon in “social collaboration.”

The problem was, in fighting for his preferred platform, he alienated himself and fragmented the network. Users couldn’t easily find information and engagement suffered, while contributors didn’t know where to post information and so either didn’t, or had to do it twice. It was a big, multinational mess, caused by one man’s devotion to a tool.

Ironically, Herbie was shuffled off shortly after the deployment went live. He’d alienated too many people with his stubbornness. As for Jive? Technical infrastructure decisions are a little harder to change. I just heard that it’s finally being killed after the conclusion of the three-year trial Herbert fought so hard for.

After three years, how did it perform against the main platform?

• Cost: 25%
• Engagement: 1%

Not divine numbers, by any means, despite old Herbie sacrificing himself.

Like for any other task, tools should be selected according to functionality, not dogma.

One of the biggest pitfalls in any sort of communications endeavour is the publisher’s fallacy – the belief that your views and wants from your publication are the same as your readers’.

Simply illustrated, the publisher’s fallacy goes like this: the publisher of a glossy mainstream sports magazine loves curling, so she thinks “since I love curling, and want to read more about it, my readers will too. So this issue, I’ll remove the regular hockey column and do a feature on curling”

This is a very dangerous assumption, because nothing will alienate an audience quicker than a thick layer of uninteresting or unwanted content in place of what they’re expecting. In this case, the majority of the readers want the usual column (after all, that’s why they buy the magazine), and when it’s gone, they are unhappy. They lose respect for the magazine and are less likely to buy it in the future.

So how does that affect our communications? Senior management often uses internal channels as a way to broadcast the things they are proud of, but not necessarily what the reader cares about. Obviously, management is extremely concerned with quarterly results, annual reports, and exco meetings that took place at fancy hotels in exciting places.

But does the average reader care?

At best, it’s mildly interesting, and at worse, alienating. I have managed a channel which was filled with stories of the CEO and exco traveling around the world, drinking toasts and shaking hands – while at the same time, there was restructuring going on an major cost cutting exercises. Do you think the worker who just had his free soft drinks removed for cost reasons wants to see that the exco is flying around the world to have strategy meetings?

There are business rationales for all these activities, but the average reader doesn’t know them – making this use of the channel a grave misstep, and a classic example of the publisher’s fallacy.

In many ways, traditional internal communications, and the infrastructures to support them, are obsolete. Classical intranets, newsletters, magazines, posters – all of these things are unidirectional legacies in an age that expects a conversation, not a communique.

Of course, business does require that a great deal of the communication must be unidirectional – but it doesn’t need to seem like that.

The backbone of your internal communications outreach will always need to be a robust, scalable platform that allows social interaction and bidirectional information flow – but for it to truly work requires something more.

Building a culture of communication and trust is at least as important to successful internal communication within a company as platform, channels and content. Colleagues need channels for information and dialog,and most importantly they need to trust that these channels are backed by a culture of communication – meaning that what they say will be heard. Nothing lowers employee morale more than being deceived by management. In my experience, it’s even more destructive to pretend to listen to them than to not consult them at all.

Why is it so destructive? Because management so often forgets that employees talk amongst themselves anyway. Opening up official channels is a means to improve information flow and join the conversation, if the user base accepts that the intent is genuine and the platform is beneficial to them. Without that buy-in, employees will just develop a communications network themselves, out of your control and using shadow IT infrastructure such as WhatsApp rings, Facebook groups, DropBox accounts, and more – all of which compromise your ability to manage your workforce and give your data security managers grey hairs.

So what can you do to build a culture of communication in your company? The basics are pretty simple.

Join the conversation with your employees, and listen to what they say.
Have a sense of humor, and accept that the feedback you receive may not always be positive.
Understand that you will be judged on how you deal with negative feedback as much as your policies themselves.
Invest in collaborative spaces, real and virtual, that allow any group of colleagues to assemble and talk.
Ensure information cascades pass information up as well as down.
Support the technical infrastructure with a human one.
This is easily said, of course. Implementing it is a far more complex and delicate process, and will lean heavily on legacy structures – technical infrastructure, corporate culture, local languages. But don’t let that stop you. Times have changed, and you need a good internal communications – sooner, rather than later.

Colleagues talk.

This is just an eternal fact of the working world. From quasi-work related conversations in the kitchen to scurrilous gossip on the way to the train, conversation happens. And, as our workplace increasingly digitalizes, so do our channels of informal discussion.

So how do we manage this? Unfortunately, far too many companies try to suppress conversation between colleagues, using arguments ranging from “unproductive” to “disloyal.”

This is short-sighted, and ultimately counterproductive. It is demoralizing, making employees feel distrusted, and it’s not necessary. If HR is doing their job properly, everyone should be trustworthy… and by forcing your people out of the company environment to talk, you’re not stopping the conversation, you’re just pushing yourself out.

Give the conversation a home, encourage it, within lenient boundaries. You’ll show you trust your people, you’ll benefit from the goodwill, and perhaps most importantly, it gives you an ear to the ground with your employee base. Instead of a digital watercooler, look at it as a pool of internal business intelligence.