Minding Gaps

Welcome!

 

Welcome to our blog on business leadership, its communication and credibility, and workplace engagement around change and breakthrough performance. To begin reading our posts right away, just scroll down a few inches past the Announcements.

A little blog with big ideas, Minding Gaps strives to build strategic engagement by enhancing the way that corporations and other organizations think and talk about their purpose, situation, vision, values, direction, progress, priorities, goals, expectations and identity.

The more clarity, credibility, and community you can bring to these matters, the more engagement you will see. We will unpack and work through this challenge with you. You'll like the result: change and breakthrough performance that are simple, natural, foolproof, and almost inevitable.

 

 

 

Borrowed from the public-address warning in the London Underground, our use of "minding the gaps" refers to the need for leaders to close the myriad gaps that compromise the credibility of leaders and leadership. These are gaps between aspirations and reality, between rhetoric and fact, between expectations and experience, between visions and achievement, between official truth and ground truth, and most of all between leaders and followers. Unless and until leaders close these gaps, they cannot lead people to a better, brighter future.

We invite you to browse, read, and learn; we ask only that you respect our copyrights and give us full credit for anything printed here. You can reach us whenever you wish by calling +1-847-247-2241 or by writing to info@arceil.com. We would like very much to hear from you.

(Note: We reserve the right to revise, refine, and republish prior posts. Corrections submitted to us and verified will be incorporated in a revised post. Otherwise, we anticipate anything posted here to remain here indefinitely.)

Thank you, and we hope you will check back often.

Announcements

University of California Online Course in Communication / Engagement

Thomas Lee will teach a six-week online course in internal communication and employee engagement for credit this winter for the University of California—Irvine.

Because the course is asynchronous—that is, all the lectures are either written or taped and available online, and the class discussions are in a threaded forum—you can participate at whatever time of the day you wish. Thus, anyone in the world can take the course. (The course is taught in English only, however.)

If you're interested, write to Tom at tom@arceil.com and he will send you a link to register. Tuition is $600, and the course will take approximately three to four hours per week of your time. It runs from February 1 to March 15, 2010.

New Best-Practice Studies by Sector on Social Media

We're launching four new best-practice studies on social media, specific to particular industries, in the first quarter of 2010. One will look at social media for service companies such as law firms, medical practices, airlines, engineering and construction companies, consulting firms, and hospitals. Another will examine social media for the retail sector. Still another study will explore social media for manufacturing companies. Finally, another study will delve into social media for non-profit organizations.   

We’re enrolling corporatations and organizations as co-sponsors of these four best-practice studies now. To inquire, just send us a note (to info@arceil.com) with your name and telephone number or call us (at +1.847.247.2241), and we will follow up.

These studies will produce real-world answers for real-world questions in each of the four sectors. They will find real-world solutions for real-world problems. Each study will be broad enough to provide guidance on general strategies and policies but specific enough to be appropriate and relevant to its sector.

Each co-sponsor will help design and customize the research, so the studies will reflect every co-sponsor’s own concerns and interests. They will result in relevant findings and actionable recommendations. Best of all, because several companies will join together to sponsor it, each company's share of the total cost will be moderate.

For further details, call us or scroll down to the December 1, 2009 post.

Webinar on Employee Engagement: Noon EST on Friday, December 18

Set aside 90 minutes, from noon to 1:30 pm Eastern Time (9 am to 10:30 am Pacific Time) for a powerful webinar on the GearBox model for employee engagement.

The GearBox is a simple but compelling model illustrating five progressive levels of employee engagement around business strategy, from active disengagement (the worst), to passive disengagement, to passive engagement, to active engagement, and finally to creative engagement (the best).

Enrollment is just $79 per person or $295 for four or more. Reserve your place by calling us at +1.847.247.2241.

Holiday Break: December 19, 2009, to January 4, 2010

Minding Gaps is taking two weeks off for the Christmas and New Year's holidays. Our last post prior to the holiday break will be Friday, December 18, 2009. We will return on Monday, January 4, 2010.

 

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By the Numbers: U.S. Financial Companies Inspire Little Trust

By the Numbers is a weekly feature presenting business data that is noteworthy, alarming, widely misunderstood or misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion. It usually appears on Monday.

Thus far, By the Numbers has explored issues of quality, job satisfaction, information overload, employee engagement, trust in business, nonverbal communication, and fear in the workplace, among others.

Returning today from Thanksgiving break, we take a look at levels of trust among Americans in various industries.

U.S.-based financial institutions are apparently not inspiring a great deal of trust. Research by Harris Interactive looked at trust in banks, accounting firms, life-insurance companies, financial planning firms, health-insurance companies, investment firms, mortgage companies, Wall Street, and credit-card companies.

Across all generations and income levels, 58 percent of Americans said none of these industries were “generally honest and trustworthy.”

Distrust was greatest among Generation X respondents (64 percent) and households with income of less than $35,000 (64 percent).

Distrust was least among Generation Y respondents, (also known as Millennials, 52 percent) and households with income between $50,000 and $75,000 (48 percent), but even they showed substantial levels of distrust. (Generation X consists of people born from 1965 to 1976. Generation Y consists of people born from 1977 to 1991).

Plainly the turbulence in the economy and especially in the financial sector accounts for much of the distrust. Still, one can reasonably ask other questions of consequence:

• What is the toll on society and business from such an erosion of trust?

• In your own business, do you see fallout from the erosion of trust in the financial sector?

• If not, are you looking hard enough? Who might have a divergent opinion, and are you talking to them?

• If so, how are you attempting to restore trust? Do you have a plan, and are you executing it?

Translate Your Strategy to Specific, Day-to-Day Behaviors

 

One of the biggest mistakes you can make as you adopt a new strategy, roll out a new initiative, or bring about any change is to neglect interpreting or translating the grand strategy to specific, day-to-day tasks and responsibilities for employees.

By and large, people want to do the right thing on the job. Often, however, they don’t know what the right thing is, and they guess wrong. Instead they do what they have always done, and they do it the same way. They do what their peers do. They do what they assume customers want. They think they understand the new strategy, but they don’t. And so on.

To successfully introduce a new strategy or roll out a new initiative, management must go from the big picture to the little picture. This is employee communication writ small. It is a necessary step for any management team introducing change. It requires serious thought and the involvement of front-line managers, because an employee’s boss is in a position to determine what gets done and how.

Here is an example. A new seafood restaurant is opening next spring on Long Island. The owner is focusing not only on the menu and the ambience but also on the dining experience; he wants to change the way restaurants treat customers. He wants to make sure that customers return to his restaurant in part because they receive unparalleled service from waiters.

Now it’s one thing to simply tell waiters to put a special emphasis on each and every guest and to make all guests feel comfortable. That’s fine as far as it goes. It just doesn’t go far enough. It doesn’t get specific.

To go from the big picture to the small picture, management must interpret the broad idea to actions and behaviors as customers would experience them. Ideally, it should be a collaborative effort by everyone from top to bottom, including front-line employees and conceivably even customers themselves.

Bruce Buschel, the new restaurant owner, has done something like this. Writing in The New York Times, he lists 100 things he wants waiters in his new restaurant to do or not do. It’s a lengthy list of dos and don'ts. After reading it, you can only wish that every restaurant would post it in the kitchen and require every waiter to memorize it.

The list is so long it is in two parts. Here is a link to the first fifty things, and here is a link to the other fifty. As you can see, Mr. Buschel gets specific. Readers weigh in with their own suggestions, just as customers might.

Now my question for you: In your business, is the larger strategy translated to specific, day-to-day behaviors in this manner? If so, give yourself a pat on the back. If not, you have some real work cut out for you. 

 

 

 

Strategic Focus Is the Foundational Work of Leadership

Lou Gerstner, who was so successful in turning around IBM in the 1990s, often remarked that nothing in business is more important than focus.

A company's focus must be sharp. It must be true. It must be sustained. It must be robust and relevant. Above all, it must be shared and widely embraced.

Sadly, few companies have such a focus, even in their senior management. What passes for a vision is typically nothing more than a grandiose dream devoid of meaning and value. Most visions that I've seen lack substance and specificity. Moreover, they are unaccompanied by real-world priorities, roles, metrics, resources, accountability—the very watchwords that are universally acknowledged as essential to business success.

That's a real failure of leadership. Think about it: Without a common focus, a company can have no real sense of direction. Without direction, there can be no progress. Without progress, there can be no achievement. And without achievement, there can be no success.

To build a common focus, the leadership team must first have one. The strategic focus must be a clear and sharp. After all, you can't share what you don't have.

Establishing and occasionally refining the strategic focus is the foundational work of leadership. It is absolutely imperative. In the absence of a focus, a company lacks a core, and it tends to jump from fad to fad. Its leaders often carry a long laundry list of initiatives and priorities—those programs of the month that everyone reviles—few or none of which have the earnest, sustainable commitment of leadership.

People see right through those programs; they inevitably become their own mockery. Each successive program, to quote Shakespeare, betrays itself as another "poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more."

Creating or refining a strategic focus requires first determining your unique selling proposition, the essence of your brand. What is it that truly sets you apart? What do your competitors envy about you? Why do your customers choose you over your competitors? You must get to the beating heart of your distinctiveness.

From the beginning, it's important to keep the end in mind. The end is naturally a high level of employee commitment toward executing the strategy, so that the leader's focus becomes everyone's focus. Thus a focus must have the potential to resonate with your people. Therefore it must have roots in the legitimate, authentic values and in the noble self-identity of your organization.

While the strategic focus is yours to create, the organization's values and self-identity are already there. In the short term, they can only be discovered, not imposed from on high. Over time, with inspiring leadership and supportive stewardship, they can grow to something better and greater, just as a houseplant leans toward sunlight. But that takes time and leadership.

The Single Most Powerful Means of Communication You Have

A kind and generous mentor once taught a salient lesson about communication in business. I have never forgotten it.

It is just this.

The single most powerful means of communication you have—far and away more commanding than any words you speak or write—is the decision.

Yes, that decision.

You make dozens of decisions every day. Many of these decisions are inconsequential. Others have lasting implications. Some decisions are deliberate. Others are impetuous. Some are wise, others foolish. Some are collaborative, the product of discussion and debate. Others are yours alone.

In the next few hours, you may decide whether to take a young employee to lunch, whether to challenge a bureaucratic policy, whether to visit a client, whether to accept a proposal, whether to ask for assistance, or even whether to make a decision about something you have been putting off.

More to the point, you may decide whether to cut corners on a project, whether to promote a technically competent manager who is short with her people, whether to ship a product that meets a deadline but misses a standard, whether to laugh at offensive humor, whether to pick up litter on the sidewalk, whether to tell a little white lie.

By all these decisions and many more, you will reveal yourself and your character to others. Your will show the truth of your priorities and your values. You will declare to the world what is important in your eyes.

Your words may be eloquent. Your baritone may fill an auditorium. You may have a gift for saying just the right thing. But if your decisions stand apart from your words, you will invariably lose control of your message, and ultimately of yourself.

So always remember and never forget: Day in and day out, far and away the single most powerful means of communication you have is the decision. Your decision. This decision, now.

Why Change Fails

Unfortunately little has changed in the years since the Harvard Business Review published an incisive analysis by John P. Kotter on failures in corporate transformation. In it Kotter listed a handful of reasons why change efforts founder. One major reason was inadequate, slow, unclear, dodge-the-bullet communication.

“Transformation is impossible unless hundreds or thousands of people are willing to help, often to the point of making short-term sacrifices,” Kotter wrote. “Employees will not make sacrifices, even if they are unhappy with the status quo, unless they believe that useful change is possible. Without credible communication, and a lot of it, the hearts and minds of the troops are never captured.”

Kotter, a professor at Harvard Business School, went on to suggest that companies undergoing transformation typically devote only a minuscule share of their formal internal communication—newsletters, brochures, Intranet sites—to their new vision. His estimates ranged from just .0001 percent to .0005 percent. In a subsequent book, Leading Change, he generously calculated it at .58 percent, still leaving 99.42 percent of a company’s formal in-house communication to non-strategic matters.

Quibble about decimal points, if you will. Kotter’s essential point is still on target. The messages that an organization’s leadership presumably considers the most important—messages which can make the difference for the company between profit and loss, between innovation and catch-up, between growth and stagnation—are typically lost in the din of minutia and noise.

The bottom line: Transformations fail in large part because of the absence, for all intents and purposes, of clear, compelling, credible, constructive communication. You cannot expect employees who lack awareness, understanding, and acceptance of a strategy to become enthusiastically committed to carrying out the strategy.

We can take Kotter’s argument a step or two further, by addressing another critical fault line in strategic communication. For even the organization that carefully orchestrates its formal media in support of transformation still faces long odds against success—unless and until it brings its non-formal communication in line with its strategic intent.

Not only is the overwhelming share of formal communication usually given over to non-strategic matters, the overwhelming majority of all communication within an organization stands quite apart from strategic messages in those formal media.

Most workplace communication by far is semi-formal or informal. Unfortunately, many line managers (and even some communication professionals) mistakenly fail to regard semi-formal and informal communication as real communication at all. But it most certainly is, and average employees most certainly realize it.

To Communicate a Focus, You Must First Have a Focus

Here are a half-dozen short, breezy, familiar catchphrases, each of which supports a corporate brand identity:

• Just do it!
• When you absolutely, positively need it overnight.
• We love to fly, and it shows.
• Nothing runs like a Deere.
• We pick you up.
• The few. The proud.

What do they have in common? They're all splendid examples of successful marketing initiatives, quite obviously. Each takes you only an instant to associate with its sponsor.

But they have something else in common. They're all statements of strategic focus. For all six organizations, these catchphrases succinctly state what their people must know, do, believe, and ultimately be in order to live out the organization's mission and purpose. Think of them as the verbal foundation of engagement.

For Nike, it's initiative and action. For FedEx, it's reliability and speed. For Delta Air Lines, it's enthusiasm for flight. For John Deere, it's unparalleled mechanical performance. For Enterprise Rent-a-Car, it's service and optimism. For the United States Marine Corps, it's duty and honor.

In each case, distilled to a few well-chosen words, the catchphrase captures the essence of the organization's legacy, identity and competitive advantage.

Externally, these familiar words convey an image designed to enhance the organization's public persona. Internally, they establish a cultural norm that sets a high bar for work expectations.

Both externally and internally, all six statements operationalize a strategy. That is why they work so well as statements of shared strategic focus.

Sadly, most companies lack such a sharp, shared focus. It isn't so much a failure of marketing as of leadership. To communicate a shared focus, you must first have a clear, well-honed strategic focus. You can't communicate what you don't have.

Establishing and occasionally refining the strategic focus is the foundational work of leadership. It is absolutely imperative. Without focus, a company lacks a core, and it tends to jump from fad to fad. Its leaders often carry a long laundry list of initiatives and priorities—programs of the month—few or none of which have their earnest commitment.

Those programs become their own mockery;  people see right through them. To borrow from the Bard, each successive new program soon reveals itself as another "poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more."

Creating or refining a strategic focus requires first determining your unique selling proposition, the essence of your brand. What is it that truly sets you apart? What do your competitors envy about you? You must get to the beating heart of your distinctiveness.

From the beginning, it's important to keep the end in mind. The end is naturally a high level of employee commitment, so that the leader's focus becomes everyone's focus. Thus the prospective focus must have the potential to resonate with your people. Therefore it must have roots in the legitimate, authentic values and in the noble self-identity of your organization.

While the strategic focus is yours to create, the values and self-identity are already there. In the short term, they can only be discovered, not imposed from on high. Over time, with inspiring leadership and supportive stewardship, they can grow to something better and greater, just as a plant leans toward sunlight. But that takes time and leadership.

Once a values-driven strategic focus is in place, the challenge shifts to the hard work of translating the broad theme to particular behaviors: ways of thinking and acting so that the focus can take root and thrive.

On one level, that can be expressed in a concise, memorable phrase, as we have seen at Nike, FedEx, and the Marine Corps. On another level, it must also become specific to each individual job. This process will ultimately require the intimate involvement of all managers.

Then it's a matter of repetition, reiteration, and redundancy. Saying it once is tantamount to never saying it at all. You must say it over and over and over. When you think you have it said too many times, you're just getting started.

Quote / Unquote: John Quincy Adams on Inspirational Leadership

Quote / Unquote is a feature that appears irregularly but frequently. It offers a simple, noteworthy quotation on some aspect of leadership, communication, or business. In most cases we also provide context, comment, or questions to stir discussion.

John Quincy Adams, the first son of a U.S. president to follow in his father’s footsteps, is not particularly known for his leadership. His single term as president, from 1825 to 1829, ended in electoral defeat at the hands of Andrew Jackson, and Adams had little to show for his tenure in office.

Nevertheless, he was a scholarly and deeply reflective gentleman. For more than half a century, he kept a daily diary of his observations and thoughts. He wrestled with big issues, and his insights shine on nearly two centuries later.

Here is a quotation attributed to John Quincy Adams that emphasizes the inspirational component of leadership. Too often, it seems to me, leaders settle for merely influencing others. That is a good start, but it is a small kind of leadership—necessary in exigencies, to be sure, but significantly less than the legacy of historic leaders: Churchill or Mandela or Lincoln, for example. 

Adams declared:

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more,
do more, and become more, you are a leader.

As you reflect on these words, you may wish to ask yourself:

• What does a leader’s influence look like? What does a leader’s inspiration look like? How are they similar? In what important ways are they different?

• Are there certain behaviors more amendable to simple influence? Do others require inspiration to take hold?

• How have you been influenced but not inspired by leaders? How have you been inspired as well as influenced? How did the difference feel?

• To the extent anyone has remarked on your leadership, directly to you or indirectly about you, has the remark zeroed in on influence or inspiration particularly?

• What are some elementary ways to influence someone? When you list these, do they strike you as the mettle of leadership?

• In what ways are words adequate to the task of influence? In what ways does inspiration require the example of your own decisions, behavior, and dedication?

• How will you adjust your leadership style accordingly?

Beware the Metamessage

We don’t coin many words around Minding Gaps, but there’s a real need for this one: the metamessage.

Actually, we coined it years ago. Those of you who have participated in our workshops on leadership communication should remember the term.

Anyone in management or its strategic support functions is familiar with messages. These are the statements of what matters to a company, of where the organization is headed, of how products and services need to be improved, of just what lies ahead.

Messages are plainly important, but focusing on them exclusively as they’re stated plays a nasty trick on management. It is too easy, altogether too easy, for management to believe that a message as stated is a message if and as received, if and as understood, if and as believed, and if and as applied—when, in fact, it may not be any of those other things.

The natural inclination is to assume that because you said something, other people got the message. Unhappily, as we know from extensive research, that is often just not the case. Focus groups repeatedly tell of messages that come across as happy talk, fast talk, sweet talk, or even double talk—or as just incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo.

The trouble is, no one tells management, because no one knows what the intended message was.

It’s a real hornet’s nest.

The solution to this problem is to focus on messages not as they are stated but rather as they are heard. The truth is, messages are rarely heard as they are stated.

In business, employees commonly filter messages through their own lenses. Each employee’s lens is unique. So the “rays” of a message bend this way for one employee and that way for another employee.

The message as bent is the metamessage. Meta, as a prefix, means changed or changing, beyond, transcending, over and above. The metamessage, then, is a message that has undergone some change that takes it away from its intended meaning. It's a kind of parallel universe of communication. We ignore it at our peril. 

In my mind’s eye, I envision a glass prism. A message is a beam of light headed into the prism. The prism consists of the environment of the organization, the experiences of employees on similar and related messages, and the expectations of employees as to management’s integrity and intent. All those things refract the message to render it somewhat different.

If the firm’s environment is stable and prosperous, a particular message will have one meaning. If the environment is unstable and uncertain, the same message may have a dramatically different reading. The same is true of experiences and expectations. Each bends the message.

The beam of light as refracted through the prism is the metamessage: the message as heard or not, as understood or not, as believed or not, as applied or not. Unless you are acknowledging the metamessage, you are not communicating as you intended to.

It’s the metamessage that counts. Beware the metamessage.

Three Causes of Poor Communication in Companies

In my years of consulting on organizational communication in mid-size and larger companies, I have seen all too many problems boil down to three broad categories of miscommunication: mixed messages, muddled messages, and mute messages.

Let's look at each of them.

Mixed messages are those where the explicit and the implicit communication are at odds with each other. The company has said something is important, but its actions say otherwise. For example, perhaps it has said that safety in the workplace is important, but front-line supervisors commonly overlook hazards. Or perhaps it has said that customer service is important, but telephone bank operators have rigid quotas of 20 calls per hour. Or perhaps it has said that product quality is important, but the choice is always to ship a deficient product rather than send it back for rework.

These mixed messages compromise the credibility of the company. That, in turn, undermines the integrity of leaders and their leadership. No chief executive should stand for it.

Muddled messages are those beset by confusion. Some are explained poorly. Some are fickle, changing daily with the breeze. Some are lost in a fusillade of communication around too many initiatives, and people just cannot keep them all straight. Some are the victims of so many acronyms and so much jargon that even long-time employees scratch their head at times. Some are the unhappy result of cascading, which succeeds only at feeding the rumor mill.

These muddled messages are a lost opportunity. They prevent an organization’s leadership from creating a keen strategic focus. Without that focus, employees cannot possibly engage themselves in the work of the organization or the satisfaction of its patrons.

Mute messages, the silent killers of business, are the issues and challenges that management either ignores altogether or simply chooses not to talk about. Often, this is a deliberate choice not to invest time and resources in communication on anything at all. There are managers who genuinely believe they can run the business and even grow it without engaging employees in the brand promise and strategic direction of the company. With luck, and for a short time, they may be able to. Sooner or later, they pay the piper.

These mute messages leave well-meaning and eager employees without a sense of strategic priorities and direction. They don’t know which thing is more important than which other thing. They must rely on their own intuition and guesswork. That may work for a while. Ultimately, the lack of communication will lead to a conflict in expectations, and that will mark a profound failure.

Smart companies don't settle for any of this. Alas, many companies out there aren't so smart as they think.

By the Numbers: The Information Glut

Two months ago we introduced a weekly feature, By the Numbers, which leads off each week (or most weeks, anyway) with a relevant statistic that is noteworthy, alarming, misunderstood or misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion.

Thus far the data appearing in this feature have explored the role of front-line supervisors in building strategic engagement, the degree of trust that Americans hold in business, the extent of candor and honesty in supervisory communication, the economic impact of employee disengagement in U.S.-based companies, the degree of disengagement in the workplace, the frequency of projects that fail, the link between employee disengagement and absenteeism, the myths around the impact of nonverbal communication, and the fear of recrimination in the workplace.

Today we examine the phenomenal increase of data itself in the business environment.

According to Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut by David Shenk, more than 3,000 discrete messages descend on each of us every day. A single message may be anything from an item in the news to a television or radio commercial to an email to a newspaper editorial to a whispered intimacy by that special someone.

These messages account for more than 1,000,000 words—the equivalent of twelve to fifteen book-length novels—per week.

Most alarming of all, Data Smog was published in 1997, before the explosion of email and spam!

As you reflect on this data, ask yourself:

• What does this deluge of data mean for executing a business strategy?

• What does it mean for creating relationships of mutual trust, dignity, respect, and interdependence?

• How does such a "fire hose" of data affect a quest for greater focus in the workplace?

• What, if anything, can you do to mitigate its effects?

• How, if at all, can you use it to your advantage?

17 Questions to Ask About Your Culture of Communication

Everyone is familiar with corporate culture. But you may be surprised to learn that, less than a generation ago, it was unheard of. Indeed, the concept was initially controversial. Companies resisted the notion they were about anything more than their numbers.

Terrence Deal and Allan Kennedy introduced the term in their trailblazing 1982 book, Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life. Since then, companies have come to compete on culture as much as on goods and services. You see it whenever a company touts its ranking on the Best Places to Work list.

Sociologists define culture as the totality of attitudes and behaviors that distinguish one group of people from another. In business, culture is commonly regarded as "the way we do things around here."

There are profound cultural differences between Google and Microsoft, between Toyota and General Motors, between Southwest Airlines and Delta Air Lines, between Nordstrom and Macy's, between Bank of America and Chase Bank. The list could go on.

Now just as cultures vary from company to company, so do cultures vary within a single company. Each corporate culture consists of many smaller subcultures. The closer you look at subcultures, the more variability you see.

For example, in any one company, you may notice cultural differences between headquarters personnel and field representatives, between the engineering geeks and the marketing mavens, between salaried staff and hourly workers, between the day shift and the night shift, between manufacturing and sales, and so forth.

All these fault lines reflect the priorities and sensitivities of various perspectives, owing to the divergent circumstances, backgrounds, and values of people.

Another kind of subculture, equally important, gets too little attention. It reflects particular processes, such as quality or planning. Of special importance to me is the culture around communication of business issues and information.

By culture of communication, I mean the tendency of people throughout a company to share information, ideas and their intuition on business matters in a particular way. It is less about the flow of official information and more about the countless decentralized eddies of information converging and diverging throughout a company.

Ideally, any company's culture of communication would have as its hallmarks eight descriptors that just coincidentally begin with the same letter: clear, credible, compelling, constructive, continuous, collaborative, civil, and concise. That's a tall order, but it's mightily important to a company's success.

You can easily think of examples, for better and for worse. A worst-case scenario might involve the proverbial Mushroom Theory, keeping employees in the dark and feeding them--well, you get the idea. A best-case scenario would embrace employees as intellectual partners in the enterprise, whose thinking is integral to the company's success. You can see just how critical communication is to performance.

Here are 17 diagnostic questions that a company's leadership should ask itself to get a quick fix on its communication culture:

By the Numbers: Trust and Distrust in Business

Two months ago we introduced a weekly feature, By the Numbers, which leads off each week (or most weeks, anyway). It presents a statistic that is noteworthy, alarming, misunderstood or misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion.

To date we have explored the lack of candor and honesty in supervisory communication (scroll down to last week’s post on September 28), the economic impact of employee disengagement in U.S.-based companies (see September 21), the extent of disengagement in the workplace (September 14), the frequency of projects that fail (August 31), the link between employee disengagement and absenteeism (August 24), the myths around the impact of nonverbal communication (August 17), and the fear of recrimination in the workplace (August 10).

Today we explore the degree of trust that Americans hold in business.

According to research by Abt SRBI Public Affairs and published in Time magazine, 49 percent of Americans agree that businesses will make socially responsible decisions without the government telling them what to do. A slightly smaller share, 42 percent, believe the opposite, that businesses cannot be trusted to make socially responsible decisions, and that it’s up to the government to tell them what to do. The remainder were undecided or chose not to answer the question.

Here are some questions to consider:

• Do these figures surprise you? How do you interpret them?

• Do you believe they represent entrenched social, economic, and political perspectives? Can they be changed?

• What accounts for the distrust in business?

• Can you recall any well-publicized cases in which business decisions reinforced the perception of trust?

• Can you recall any well-publicized cases in which business decisions reinforced the perception of distrust?

• Do you think certain industries are to blame for distrust in business? Are other industries comparatively angelic?

• How does distrust affect your business?

• What do you think are the costs of distrust in business? Can you put a dollar figure on it?

• What can good companies do to move the needle in a favorable direction?

Feel free to respond to these questions by leaving a comment. Comments are subject to review by the blog’s editor, who may edit them for grammar and clarity and may leave a response of his own. Comments with abusive, promotional, or profane language will not be published.

By the Numbers: Front-Line Supervisors Fail to Communicate

About a month ago we introduced a weekly feature, By the Numbers. We start off each week (or most weeks, anyway) with a statistic that is noteworthy, alarming, misunderstood or misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion.

To date we have explored the economic impact of employee disengagement in U.S.-based companies (scroll down to the September 21 post), the extent of disengagement in the workplace (September 14), the frequency of projects that fail (August 31), the link between employee disengagement and absenteeism (August 24), the myths around the impact of nonverbal communication (August 17), and the fear of recrimination in the workplace (August 10).

Today we explore the lack of candor and honesty in supervisory communication.

Probably most companies still rely on the front-line manager or supervisor as their mouthpiece in the workplace. In those companies, the supervisor is supposed to convey key strategic information and messages to employees who do the work.

We will return to the question of whether that is the most appropriate role for front-line supervisors in the 21st century, with the ubiquity of communication by BlackBerry, text, Twitter, and good old-fashioned email. Today, far more and far faster than in the 1990s and before, electronic communication reaches everyone in an organization by leak and by rumor. (Those of you who participated in my webinar last Thursday know that I have a perspective on this issue. We’ll come back to it here in Minding Gaps in a few days.)

For now, let’s concentrate on how well front-line supervisors communicate. They appear to need some help. According to research by Towers Perrin, only 38 percent of employees of global corporations say their managers communicate openly and honestly. As for the other 62 percent, we can only speculate.

It’s hard to imagine that employers or the managers in question would agree with that perception, but communication, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. It is the listener’s judgment that counts. If the listener perceives half-truth or untruth, or if the listener perceives double talk or fast talk, then that is what it is. You have to deal with the perception, because perception is reality.

Here are some questions to frame your thinking on this challenge:

• What roles and responsibilities with respect to communicating business strategy and priorities do managers and supervisors in your organization have?

• What particular skills and competencies are necessary to carry out those roles and responsibilities?

• To what extent does the organization assume those skills and competencies are inherent in anyone with the normal and overall qualifications to work in management?

• To what extent are they, truly?

• What training in strategic communication—that is, the communication of business strategy—is provided to the new front-line manager or supervisor? How well and how often is that training upgraded and renewed?

• What does the training say about clarity and honesty?

• What is the process of support in strategic communication for the front-line manager or supervisor? In particular, how does the organization funnel strategic information to the front line?

• What accountabilities for strategic communication does the front-line manager or supervisor face?

• Does your organization have a review process, involving the people who report to the front-line manager or supervisor, to assess each manager’s and supervisor’s communication of business strategy?

Feel free to respond to these questions by leaving a comment. Comments are subject to review by the blog’s editor, who may edit them for grammar and clarity and may leave a response of his own. Comments with abusive, promotional, or profane language will not be published. 

Strategic Communication: Getting Back to the Basics

I couldn’t agree more with Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff. Every corporate CEO and every communication consultant and practitioner should think hard about Admiral Mullen’s message, too. It would do business a lot of good.

I’m referring to the admiral’s recent essay on strategic communication. Published in Joint Forces Quarterly, a military journal, the essay is a broadside on facile, fast-talking communication. Mullen is naturally concerned with communication seeking to promote American military and foreign policy in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But as you read his essay, think in terms of corporate communication. Try to distill the admiral’s thinking to your own business challenges. It will be well worth your while.

Let me pause for a note on terminology. Admiral Mullen and I define “strategic communication” differently. We have our own mental constructs for it, too, and they bear heavily on our thinking. I have long championed strategic communication as a systematic key to authenticity and credibility, whereas Mullen scorns it as so much propaganda. So we’re coming at the issue from quite different points of view, but we’re both striving for greater authenticity and credibility. That's the important thing.

Having said all that, I find the admiral’s thesis compelling. Indeed, in spite of our differences over terminology, his argument is actually in complete alignment with my own thinking.

Before proceeding any further, you should read the essay in full. It’ll take only five or ten minutes.

Now as you can see, Mullen delivers a blistering attack on the use of verbal and visual messages that are out of synch with reality on the ground, and he is critical of mass communication as a substitute for genuine, sincere relationships. He writes: “Our messages lack credibility because we haven’t invested enough in building trust and relationships, and we haven’t always delivered on promises.”

Mullen goes on to define good communication as “having the right intent up front and letting our actions speak for themselves. We shouldn’t care if people don’t like us; that isn’t the goal. The goal is credibility. And we earn that over time.”

A little further on, he writes: “Most strategic communication problems are not communication problems at all. They are policy and execution problems. Each time we fail to live up to our values or don’t follow up on a promise, we look more and more like the arrogant Americans the enemy claims we are.”

Years ago, I had a mentor who stressed that the secret to good communication was doing the right thing and getting caught at it. To me, that is strategic communication. In the admiral’s view, it’s good leadership. The semantics aren’t as important as the judgment, and Mullen’s judgment is exactly right.

It is indeed a matter of getting back to the basics. Whatever we call it, let’s get on with it.

Stop the Web 2.0, I Want to Get Off

Not really. But sometimes, I’m telling you.

For the uninitiated, Web 2.0 refers to the second generation of the Internet, a two-way street. It is what the Internet is today.

Initially, in the 1990s, the Web was a waterfall or a cataract of information, all of it cascading downward. It was static, an online catalogue and newspaper and encyclopedia: interactive only insofar as you might use it to make purchases or reservations in a secure transaction or to search for data that could help you make better decisions. In retrospect, we now refer to that as Web 1.0.

Beginning five or six years ago, the Web evolved into a riverway or a canal, with barge traffic flowing in both directions. More to the point, it became dynamic, a community and a conversation: not merely transactional but broadly participative and transformative. Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and Wikipedia, not to mention this very blog, embody the virtual public square of the Internet today. This new generation of technology is known as Web 2.0.

Now in virtually every respect, I find Web 2.0 exhilarating and energizing. It is a big part of my life, as it is of yours, for sure. Much of our work life plays out on Web 2.0.

But in one prominent respect, I find Web 2.0 most unfortunate, even at times repugnant. I speak of the comments section that often follows an essay or video or other feature posted to an Internet site, often a newspaper or a political site. Some of these comments are so revolting, so vile, so profane, that decent people can only shudder. I myself want nothing to do with them. I want to turn off the comments sections permanently.

Take a look at this fascinating series of iconic photographs, and then, if you stomach it, read the exchange of comments that follows. In particular, look at comments numbered 4, 16, 30, 53, 54. Mind you, this is relatively tame stuff. It is easy to find sites where the comments are far more vitriolic and scornful. But this is sufficient to illustrate the point I am making.

I’d like to see an option at the end of any site with comments that allows the reader or viewer to choose whether to see any comments at all. Nine times out of ten, I would choose not to.

I’d also like to see a requirement for real names to be entered with any comment, and a strict prohibition on verbal abuse and profanity. Yes, I know the argument that the Federalist Papers were anonymous, and I am not a fan of political correctness in the least.

It’s just that we’re living in an era when transparency, authenticity, and civility need to be restored to public discourse. As the comments on so many sites indicate, we’re not there yet. We’re not close to it, and we seem to be moving in the wrong direction.

Quick! Counting Your Spouse, How Many People Really Trust You?

 

What's a decent, hard-working business leader to do?

I have been in business a long time, and just about every executive I meet is decent and hard-working, and most of them will call a spade a spade. Dismiss me as a Pollyanna, but that is what I see and experience.

It is not, however, what I read in the newspapers and what I see on television. The story is always the man biting the dog, so the notorious exception gets the headline. If it isn't a rogue CEO looking out for his own pocket at the expense of investors, it's a company or even an industry that says whatever it wants so that it can do whatever it wants.

Even companies that are otherwise well-managed often have an inadvertent problem with credibility. Their key stakeholders—customers, employees, investors, regulators—don’t necessarily believe what they say or trust them to do what is right. That isn't just my opinion. We can point you to objective, confirmative research.

This is a fundamental challenge for business. The catastrophes of Enron and Tyco have faded into the mist of memory, but their ghosts are walking alongside us. Now is the time to get serious about the credibility and trust of business.

It's a tough, tough situation. It won’t be easy. But brick by brick, business can rebuild the ramparts of its credibility. It will take systematic attention to any potential perceived sleight or slight, but it can be done.

The critical first step is to recognize and remember that you are constantly communicating, even and especially when you're least aware of it. There's no getting around it.

Like most business people, you probably think of communication as the totality of what you and your company say and write. It certainly is that. But it is also so much more.

The reality is that you and your company speak in three distinct modes or "voices": the formal, semi-formal, and informal voices. Building and keeping your credibility is largely a matter of avoiding conflicts or gaps among those three voices.

The formal voice is the traditional mainstay of leadership communication. It consists of information and messages expressed in a speech, an announcement, a banner on the wall, a glossy brochure, a Web site and the like. Externally, it includes advertising and public relations.

Its common uses include your vision statement, perhaps a slogan such as "We Love Our Customers," or a promise to customers. Other uses may include an ISO9002 certification, a quarterly earnings release, the "dog and pony show" around an IPO or explicit instructions for a task or responsibility. If it's expressed in words and numbers, it is usually formal communication.

The formal voice is a vital and basic component of leadership communication. However, too many firms rely on it excessively or even exclusively. If asked to do too much, formal communication can fail completely. When it comes crashing down, it can take a company and its leadership down with it. You’ve seen examples of that in the last five years.

The semi-formal voice is different. You can think of it as a steel case of management tools. Few leadership teams regard it as communication at all. That's half the trouble.

Semi-formal communication consists of all those programs, policies, processes and procedures that companies use to manage their affairs. These things truly function as communication because they do what conventional (or formal) communication does: convey information, direction and meaning to employees, establish priorities and concerns and encourage or discourage certain thinking and behavior in response.

Everyday examples of the semi-formal voice include meeting agendas, training mandates, job descriptions, standard operating procedures, Six Sigma processes, lines of authority, accountabilities, sales quotas, cubicle sizes, budgets, personnel choices, spending authorizations, organizational structure, performance evaluations and employee surveys.

Quite a lot, you'll agree. All of it must be managed as communication, because that is what it is.

The informal voice is different still. Not to be confused with body language or the grapevine, it consists of relationships between people in positions of leadership (not really leaders until they actually have followers) and people in positions of 'followership' (not really followers until their putative leaders step up to the plate).

Day-to-day examples of informal communication include presence and accessibility, responsiveness to questions, sharing strategic information, alignment of visible behaviors and ordinary courtesy and respect. Not surprisingly, all bear heavily on workplace relationships, especially those across the boss's desk.

These crucial relationships can be mutually respectful, or mutually spiteful, or anything in between. Their nature and character communicates with power and clarity—often without your knowledge, until it's too late, as when a key employee abruptly resigns or a big customer defects.

The informal voice is driven and defined by routine conversation—comments, questions, complaints, anecdotes—and by all those countless decisions, behaviors, choices, and attitudes on the part of leadership that so often "speak louder than words."

Now here’s the key point.

Only when an organization's formal, semi-formal, and informal voices are all sending much the same message, only when they are facilitating a mutually respectful dialogue with employees, only when they are honoring the nobility of an organization's values, and only when they are encouraging the alignment of behavior with strategy, can the organization reach its fullest potential.

Otherwise, all bets are off. The semi-formal and informal communication will prevail over the formal communication and employees will perceive a lack of integrity and thus a lack of leadership.

The key point to remember is that your formal (or rhetorical and official) voice can never operate in a vacuum. It must either compete with or complement your semi-formal (institutional and programmatic) and informal (individual, relational and behavioral) voices. Your credibility hangs in the balance.

If left unmanaged, the three voices will generate their own messages. Each message may contradict the last, and employees may be left in a state of confusion that sets the stage for cynicism and complacency or even contempt.

That is a recipe for disaster. We all know of companies that unwisely chose it. Some of us worked for them, and it wasn't a pleasant experience.

The alternative holds more promise—much more.

If managed well, the three voices can resonate throughout the organization to clarify and reinforce important strategic priorities, not to mention your credibility as a leader. That's a beautiful thing.

Over time, the people in your organization will hear, see, and feel a consistent and purposeful message and they will have the dignity of speaking up and being heard. You will have the benefit of followers who enthusiastically participate. That's a win-win all the way around.

(Written by Thomas J. Lee. Revised and republished from Industry Week Online, 5 November 2006.)

 

The Power of Purpose

Business leaders can derive one more lesson from the life and times of the late Senator Edward Kennedy. It is the power of purpose.

Kennedy stumbled upon his own purpose—a lifetime in the United States Senate, noble as that is—only after a disastrous campaign for the Democratic presidential campaign in 1979 and 1980. A single moment in time forced the issue.

That moment came in a nationally televised interview with CBS correspondent Roger Mudd. I’m sure you can find tapes of the interview on YouTube, but anyone who watched it can remember the moment clearly. Indeed, those who remember watching the interview know exactly what I am talking about.

Mudd asked Kennedy a simple question: Why do you want to be president? It was a slow softball pitch, the kind of question any politician hopes to be asked on national television. He should have had a quick, incisive, memorable response.

Instead, he stumbled. He hemmed and hawed. For long, silent seconds, millions of Americans watched in disbelief. He didn’t have an answer.

By the time he did begin a response, people were listening intently to see if he had anything of substance to say. It quickly became clear he did not. The meandering response eventually amounted to a litany of platitudes about the glory and blessings of America. As one, undecided voters came to the conclusion he was running for president because his older brothers had run for president.

Now, in fact, Kennedy did have a compelling cause for his candidacy. Historians tell us that President Carter, the Democratic incumbent, had promised Kennedy to pursue health care reform and had not done so. Kennedy was running to put health care back on the table.

But anyone watching the interview with Roger Mudd didn’t hear that. All that television viewers saw and heard was a politician from a family of politicians who couldn’t answer the simplest question about the purpose of his campaign against a fellow Democrat for the highest office in the land.

What does all this have to do with business? Plenty.

Every one of your stakeholders—employee, customer, investor, banker—needs to know your own unique business purpose. They need to know why you are in business. Moreover, this purpose must meet the needs of your core stakeholder: your customer. Thus, your stated purpose for being in business cannot be to make money, although everyone knows that making money is essential to any business’s survival, let alone prosperity and growth. Rather, your unique business purpose must speak to satisfying your customer.

If you are a mid-level manager or a front-line supervisor, the same thing holds true. You may not be in a position to define the purpose of the enterprise, but you are in a position to interpret and apply the purpose to the work your team does. Here again, that interpretation of purpose must go to the reason your customer walks in the front door. Never forget why the customer needs you.

Notice I use the word unique. Just as every company needs a unique selling proposition, your purpose must be unique. Most companies have a mission statement that serves as a statement of purpose. But few such statements are compelling. In fact, most sound like one another. Resorting to boilerplate rhetoric doesn’t work. A compelling purpose must capture the difference you bring to the marketplace.

Once you and your organization have defined your unique purpose, you must articulate it with clarity, cogency, and continuity. It should be simple and to the point, and it should be repeated endlessly. Your customers should associate it with your company, and your employees and investors should know it.

Then, let your purpose drive your business. Let it drive your policies, your budgeting, your staffing, your marketing, your leadership. Any decision of substance should trace back to your unique purpose.

For discussion, ask yourself:

• Telling the truth, does your mission statement sound like every other company’s?

• What exactly do you do for customers that no other business can do?

• What exactly do you do better than almost anyone else?

• Why should a customer prefer doing business with you?

• How do your internal systems (budgeting, staffing, controls) reflect your unique business purpose?

• How does your purpose ensure your growth?

Communication Is So Much More Than Communications

Just about every large company has a staff department with responsibility for communications. In many such companies this department is known as Corporate Communications.

This department has the resources and talent to produce brilliant communications. Its head is typically a vice president of communications, or, increasingly, the chief communications officer. Its staff comprises directors, managers, and specialists in communications.

All of which poses a little-noticed problem.

The little problem with corporate communications is the s.

Yes, the s. One little letter of the alphabet.

In a perfect world, it would be communication, not communications.

Now why would we ever quibble with a single little s?

Because that one letter insidiously, yet powerfully, reduces our thinking. It pushes us from big to small, from proactive to reactive, from broad to narrow, from complete to partial, from advising to providing, from behoove to behest. It pushes us southward when we should go northward. The best of us resist that push, but the push is there all the same.

In practical terms, this one little letter points our attention to the discrete things that we produce, which we conventionally regard as communications. Things like announcements, speeches, intranet sites, slogans, reports, press releases, newsletters, bulletin boards, Tweets, and the like. It takes us away from the process of strategic communication.

These deliverables are vitally important, to be sure. As a onetime corporate speechwriter myself, I am not arguing otherwise. They can set the stage for employee engagement, which in turn enables organizations to grow and perform. So these deliverables fully deserve the attention and competencies that professionals bring to them. Let me be clear: I am not suggesting abandonment or retreat from that mission, by any means.

It's just that deliverables are only the most visible and tangible artifacts of corporate communication. Although they make themselves known, seen, and heard, they are far from the whole complement of signals that carry information and messages throughout an organization. Communication, you see, is so much more than communications.

Many other communication vehicles convey information and messages just as powerfully, indeed often much more powerfully, than the announcements and speeches that Corporate Communications so carefully prepares. These other vehicles, however, are not conventionally regarded as communication, so they are not usually in the purview of communication professionals. They include such powerful "telegrams" as decisions, the decision-making process, visible behaviors by senior executives, choices, standards and exceptions to them, policies, agendas, programs, sales and production quotas, compensation, the onboarding process, a manager's presence and accessibility, questions and responsiveness—the list goes on and on.

These tools in the toolbox of management are problematic because they are difficult to regard and manage as communication. So it isn't surprising that few companies treat them as communication. That is a significant oversight. Decisions, behaviors, choices, policies and the like routinely confirm or undermine our formal messages. Thus, management is already and invariably saddled with ownership of the information and messages that implicitly flow through these instruments. I argue that management should therefore exercise some determinative control over them as communication, on the advice of communication professionals.

The reality is that communication is continuous and universal. An organization and its leadership are constantly communicating, regardless of whether they are speaking. Their action or inaction communicates. Their behavior communicates. Their silence communicates. Their presence or their absence communicates. Communication isn't so much a series of lectures as a continuing conversation.

Moreover, by dint of their decisions and behaviors and choices, companies are always communicating implicitly as well as explicitly, inadvertently as well as deliberately, haphazardly as well as carefully. Indeed, they are communicating most powerfully when they least believe they are communicating at all.

Communication is not a discrete or episodic thing. It really has no beginning, and it can have no end. Rather, it is constant. We should think of it not as an event, not as an item, not as a thing, but as a never-beginning and never-ending process that is always informing and influencing people, for better or worse.

A well-positioned Corporate Communication department should have a significant role in managing the comprehensive process of communication, not just the communications products that are its bread and butter.

So let’s drop the s—from the department's name, from job titles, from business cards, and most of all from our thinking. The sooner we do, the sooner we will take responsibility for the perceptions and messages that we already own but have yet to begin to manage. And once we drop it, we can use that seemingly insignificant change to have a significant conversation about the very significant value we can add.

Rhetoric and Political Debate

Here is a brief and fascinating discussion of the rhetoric involved in the debate (here in the United States) over health care insurance and policy.

(For the benefit of our readers outside the United States, President Obama was elected largely on public support for extensive change in health care. Since the election, however, opponents have managed to whittle away at his support by using emotionally charged phrases to describe the legislation.)

The link features Jason DeSanto, a senior lecturer in communication at Northwestern University. He appeared this evening on a Chicago public-affairs television program to discuss the rhetoric around health care—in particular, phrases like “death panels” and “socialized medicine.” The clip runs about 7 minutes.

One observation that DeSanto makes is especially intriguing.

He asserts that the “the real discussion is the rhetoric.” So important is language to our construction of reality, he maintains, the words and phrases that political rivals use in debate actually define our perception of the issues at stake. In a real sense, the policy debate isn’t so much the difference of perspective and opinion but rather the very rhetoric of communication.

The implications for business leaders are profound. If, as a leader or agent of change, you are not mastering the rhetoric around change, it will very likely master you. You cannot bring about change without the energy of communication in your sails. By further inference, if you complain that change is impossible, the real question may well be your inability to use rhetoric to energize the change you seek.

“We live in a world of words,” DeSanto argues. Language “frames our view of the world. That’s what language does.”

I recommend two books for further reading:

• Don’t Think of An Elephant by George Lakoff (a Democratic Party-affiliated consultant)

• Words That Work by Frank Luntz (a Republican Party-affiliated consultant)

Both are excellent, and business leaders can derive a great deal of insight from them.

By the Numbers: The Truth on Nonverbal Communication

Last week we introduced a new regular feature, By the Numbers, of the Minding Gaps blog. We’ll start each week (or most weeks, anyway) with a statistic that is noteworthy, alarming, misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We’ll accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion. Today, we present data on nonverbal communication that many otherwise intelligent people believe is true—but isn’t.

Over and over, in books and journals and speeches and videos and websites, some of the most well-known and widely respected experts on communication make the same error. Unintentionally, but nevertheless irresponsibly, they casually misunderstand, misinterpret, and misrepresent certain research data on nonverbal communication and body language.

They get the data correct, but they distort and exaggerate its significance. Their mistake is so common, the misstated information is all but a cliché. Even more troubling, perhaps millions of otherwise intelligent and discerning people have just accepted the mistake at face value, and they repeat it as gospel. So the error, like a viral pathogen, grows and grows into a disease of misinformation.

Everywhere you turn, you read and hear about Albert Mehrabian’s research on nonverbal communication. Mehrabian, it is said, found that only 7 percent of a message is conveyed verbally—through words. The other 93 percent is conveyed nonverbally—38 percent by tone of voice and 55 percent by body language.

Before I go any further, for the benefit of readers who only glance at the first few paragraphs of an essay like this and then move on, I must state with perfect clarity that the foregoing description of Mehrabian’s research is false. It is wrong, and anyone citing the data in such a way should stop and correct what they have previously stated. That’s a lot of experts.

It’s impossible to list all the authors and publications citing Mehrabian’s work in error. Brian Tracy, who has few peers among professional speakers, makes the error in his popular book Speak to Win. Tonya Reiman does likewise in a website on body language. So does Carol Kinsey Goman, an author and consultant, in her recent book The Nonverbal Advantage. Peter Block’s otherwise masterful Flawless Consulting cites the data in error. Daniel Goleman refers indirectly and wrongly to the study in his classic work, Emotional Intelligence. The list goes on and on, and it includes some very good company indeed.

Now common sense tells you the data cannot be true as described. If true, you would have no trouble communicating in a foreign land without knowing the local language, for 93 percent of the intended meaning would be clear. You could watch television without the sound. You wouldn’t bother listening to talk radio or a podcast. A game of charades would be over in seconds.

You would dare not sign a contract, as only 7 percent of the mutual commitments would be on paper. Historic documents and speeches like the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, and the Gettysburg Address would be almost meaningless. Laws would be unenforceable. Email? You certainly wouldn’t go there. And why would you ever read a blog like this or surf the Internet? Why, indeed, would you bother reading anything? Mehrabian's research itself, which he published in two books, would be unintelligible!

The fact is that words account for much, much more than 7 percent of a message. While tone of voice and body language undeniably carry some meaning, they rarely account for nearly as much impact as words. Indeed, many other aspects of nonverbal communication—such as punctuality, patience, courtesies, logic, attentiveness, inquiry, creativity, relevance, authority, accuracy, wisdom, sincerity, depth, research, etiquette, dignity, and interpersonal regard—are vastly more important than posture and a handshake.

The research itself was legitimate. Albert Mehrabian, now retired, was a professor at UCLA when he conducted two studies in the 1960s. The studies were quite modest, and their scope was very narrow. He found that, in personal relationships, a message of emotional commitment could easily be confused by conflictive vocal tone and facial expression. That’s the extent of his findings. Period. End of story.

In the decades since, his findings have been repeatedly construed more broadly. Today his name is virtually synonymous with the urban myth that words generally convey only a tiny fraction of meaning. Mehrabian himself has been frustrated by the misrepresentations, and also by the extrapolated meaning. He counts those two studies as a minor part of his decades of academic research, and he is quick to point out their narrow scope.

Just last week, in an interview on BBC Radio 4, “More or Less” host Tim Harford asked Mehrabian whether words accounted for only 7 percent of meaning. “Absolutely not!” Mehrabian replied emphatically. “Whenever I hear that misquote or misrepresentation, I cringe. . . . It should be so obvious to anybody who would use any amount of common sense that that’s not a correct statement.”

Mehrabian cited an everyday example of giving directions. “If I were to tell you that the pencil you are looking for is upstairs in the desk drawer of the bedroom, three drawers down, I couldn’t do that nonverbally,” he told Harford. “I mean, I could try to point, but that would hardly locate the pencil, whereas I could do that very precisely with words.”

He concluded: “There’s no question you can’t extrapolate my findings to communication in general.”

So there. Have we cleared things up? I certainly hope so.

Memo to "experts": Stop saying this!

 

NetFlix Gets It Right (Really, Really Right)

There’s only one reason you shouldn’t take 30 minutes to view this slide presentation on the NetFlix corporate culture.

It is not because you have better ways to spend 30 minutes. You probably do not.

It is because you will immediately want to quit your job and go to work for NetFlix.

Click on the link below. It will take you to a slide presentation (intended to be read) on the NetFlix culture. Then come back here for a discussion.

NetFlix's Corporate Culture

When you’re finished, think about these questions:

• How different is the NetFlix culture from your own?

• In what ways is it better?

• In any respect is it not so good, as near as you can tell?

• What do you think of the vacation policy for salaried people?

• What do you think of the “generous severance package” hint?

• What do you think of the emphasis on curiosity?

• What do you think of the statement about Enron's values?

• In what ways can you adopt insights from NetFlix to your own culture?

Feel free to leave a comment. Just click on Comments below or on the headline above.

Companies Need Leadership Up, Down, and Across Their Hierarchy

Most of the spotlight and most of the credit for business performance go to the top of the organization: the chief executive officer and other C-suite executives. In recent years, the CEO has increasingly been held to account by shareholders, hostile takeover suitors, and boards of directors, as well.

As crucial as leadership at the top plainly is, however, no senior management team can do it all. Especially in large, far-flung organizations, vast numbers of aligned and engaged people are necessary to bring about performance and change.

One position is commonly overlooked and yet absolutely critical to that fine-tuned engine. It is not the chief executive. It is not the division head. It is not even the plant manager, store manager, or site manager. It is the front-line supervisor.

When the front-line supervisor is not an agent of performance and change, the people on his or her team have no sense of direction, no confidence in the organization's leadership, no predilection for high performance, no energy for constructive change.

When the front-line supervisor is an agent of performance and change, the organization at least has a clear shot at improving its performance and changing its culture and priorities to meet the challenges ahead.

Moreover, the front-line supervisor plays a pivotal role in translating the big-picture strategies to day-to-day operating objectives and activities. Enterprise and division leaders cannot do that; it is the retail work of performance and change, and it must take place at the retail level.

Change has been a watchword of business for fifteen to twenty years. From quality circles and management by objective to lean manufacturing and personal coaching, the only thing constant has been change itself. But how much of it actually works?

Not very much. According to John Kotter, professor at Harvard Business School and author of Leading Change and other bestsellers, 80 percent of all change initiatives fail to meet their goals and objectives. Another study reveals that 57 percent of all mergers return less than the average for their industries. In other words, on learning of a new merger, you are better off investing in a stock index fund for that industry than in the newly merged entity. Still other studies reinforce and document this unfortunate arc.

In focus groups across the United States, we have found that front-line supervisors are often abjectly misaligned with larger strategies, and I have heard many front-line supervisors confess to a sad cynicism over what they perceive as the insincerity and ignobility of senior leadership. They are the forgotten middle, and it is no wonder that so many efforts at high performance and dramatic change yield such disappointing results.

Organizations that are serious about their performance and change will invest in a systematic approach to involve front-line supervisors in their overall management process.

At a minimum, that includes educating front-line supervisors on the dynamics of the industry, its markets, and its customer expectations; nurturing and maintaining a dialogue with front-line supervisors about operational changes from the supervisor's point of view as much as senior management's; teaching front-line supervisors the differences between managing and leading and the style and substance of communication that drives each; and giving supervisors the competencies, time, and clear-cut expectations as to their roles and responsibilities.

Anything less is tantamount to tacitly accepting mediocre performance and lackluster progress on change. The question every company and every senior management team must ask itself is: What kind of future do we want, and what are we willing to do to achieve it?

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Words as Tripwires in a Minefield

The impact of words on thinking, and of thinking on leadership and followership, is a frequent theme of this blog. So is the need to appeal to potential stakeholders regardless of their demographic, social, or political profile. Leadership is, above all, a connection, and every follower counts.

I want to believe that the words I use are respectful of all people. However, I have to confess that I had never thought of several common phrases as insulting or denigrating to gays and lesbians.

A simple phrase such as or “sexual preference” or “alternative lifestyle,” for example, while innocuous to straight people, can be very demeaning for gays and lesbians. After all, sexual orientation is anything but a preference or a lifestyle.

In a blog post this week, Ben Finzel, senior vice president at the global public relations firm of Fleishman-Hillard, and the founding co-chair its gay and lesbian communication practice, offers eight words and phrases to avoid in leadership and organizational communication on sexual orientation.

For years, I have used several of these words and phrases unthinkingly. No more.

Even if you regard yourself as progressive and sensitive—especially if you regard yourself as progressive and sensitive—you should familiarize yourself with these words and phrases and then assiduously avoid them.