By Thomas J. Lee
Short of an exhaustive audit, there's really no quick and simple means of objectively evaluating a company's business-strategy communication for employees. Still, it's important to try.
So just how can you take a rough measure of a company's clarity, credibility, and coherence of communication around business strategy and priorities?
One way is to look for signs of dysfunction. It isn't pretty, but it tells you what you need to know.
Here are 15 alarms to keep an eye out for. Each is a flashing red light. If you see any of them in your organization, you have work to do. If you see more than a few, you have lots of work to do. If you see most or all of them, you may want to run for the hills.
Alarm No. 1: The terms "leadership" and "management" are used interchangeably. We have discussed this distinction often here at Minding Gaps (just scroll down), so we won't belabor it again. Less understood is the fact that the difference between management and leadership bears heavily on communication in terms of its purpose, content, style, and tone. Use the wrong one and you get the wrong result.
Management concerns itself with meeting the pre-determined expectations of stakeholders. It seeks the alignment of work with strategy and priorities. It is all about complying with standards. Control and authority are paramount; deadlines and budgets are common metrics. Communication for the sake of management is thus specific, directive, and narrow.
Leadership, on the other hand, is about inspiring change or breakthrough performance through the discretionary efforts of people. It seeks the engagement of people in rising to a big challenge. While framework and direction are important, the real leverage for change is the focus, curiosity, passion and courage of the troops. It follows that good communication for leadership is enlightening, inspiring, and empowering.
Because the distinction is so often overlooked, companies commonly default to directive, commanding communication that can undercut or even stymie innovation and change. That's a loud siren of its own.
Alarm No. 2: Communication is regarded as verbal messages and data only. Everyone knows that "actions speak louder than words" and that "the facts speak for themselves." Yet few companies regard communication with employees as anything beyond words and numbers. Do they honestly think employees are wearing blinders?
A company's internal-communication process should concern itself not just with the "official truth" (verbal messages, as articulated by leadership) but also with "ground truth" (the perceived reality as expressed by policy decisions, visible behaviors of executives and senior managers, cultural forces, the organization's evident purpose, etc.). Otherwise, the company's credibility with its own people will be highly questionable.
Alarm No. 3: There's a tendency for positive spin on negative news. Let's leave spin to the politicians and their handlers. In business, we are who we are. More than anyone else, our employees know it. That's the simple truth. When bad things happen to good companies, good companies acknowledge it. They own up to their own responsibilities, and they get busy. They don't try to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. That's why good companies are good companies—and it's also one reason why good companies are good places to work.
Alarm No. 4: Upward information is stifled and choked. Remember what your mother told you. You have two ears and one mouth for a reason: to listen twice as much as you talk. Why then do we continue to think of communication as the dissemination of information and ideas, not as listening? Why then do we think of good communication skills as the ability to persuade, not the inclination to listen? When was the last time your senior leadership team fanned out on a "Listen and Learn" tour of your facilities? Face it, ground-level personnel usually have a wealth of information about production difficulties, customer preferences, and their own frustrations. Ignore it at your peril.
Alarm No. 5: Your executives and senior managers think they know everything they need to know about communication. In my experience, few do, and the exceptions prove the rule. Most executives and senior managers would do well to undergo advanced training in organizational and leadership communication and then see to it that all managers and supervisors have a similar experience. The time and money invested will pay for itself within weeks and then for months and years afterward, many times over.
Alarm No. 6: Communication is an afterthought, not a forethought. Stephen Covey taught you to begin with the end in mind, remember? In business, that means crafting a strategy with an eye on its execution. That in turn means preplanning the communication of any strategy or strategic initiative. Never leave communication to an afterthought. Incorporate an integrated, strategic communication plan within your overall strategic plan. Devote the resources (time, money, attention) to it at the front end, and you will have fewer emergencies at the back end.
Alarm No. 7: Little or no effort is made to educate employees on the industry and competition. We know from focus groups and surveys that employees everywhere want to contribute more to their company's success. To do so intelligently, they need more information about the industry and the competition. Why not share it? Doing so has a couple of side benefits: It reflects confidence and trust in people, and it creates more readiness for change. All around, it's a win-win.
Alarm No. 8: Silos predominate, and they have missiles. Companies that foster or tacitly condone a kind of sibling rivalry among staff departments or line operations (such as manufacturing plants, sales regions, or service teams) are asking for trouble. Information will invariably be hoarded, and other units will deliberately be kept in the dark. Worse, an environment of hostility will take root. Customers will notice, and they won't like it.
Alarm No. 9: Acronyms and buzzwords obscure reality. Everyone knows this drill. The language of business is buzzwords. But don't be too quick to condemn all of them out-of-hand. Some are helpful as shorthand for complex programs, products or initiatives. The difficulty arises when acronyms and jargon intentionally obscure reality or even distort reality. Remember, you can't fool employees for very long, and you shouldn't ever want to. They are on your team, aren't they?
Alarm No. 10: Useful information is withheld from employees. Just as you wouldn't mislead employees, you should have no need or desire to keep them in the dark. Think of strategic information as currency for growth. Its rapid exchange increases everyone's intelligence. In turn, intelligence increases alignment, and alignment makes customers happy. One more thing: If you keep useful information from ground-level employees, you can expect them to do likewise—from you.
Alarm No. 11: People are doing lots of non-strategic work. Here's another red flag. If your business vision, strategy, and goals are well-understood and widely accepted, then virtually everyone should spend their days and weeks on strategic challenges. If people are doing lots of non-strategic work, either they don't have a full appreciation of the strategy and its attendant priorities, or their time isn't being well-managed.
Alarm No. 12: Your company relies on cascading to "get the word out." There are two things you need to remember about cascading: (1) It doesn't work in organizations of any real size, and (2) it tricks you into thinking it does work. Better to disseminate vital information and messages by group meetings, group voice mail, and group email in one or two steps. Use managers and supervisors to flesh out the implications on day-to-day work and to listen, then listen some more, and finally to really listen (did we say listen?) to rank-and-file employees.
Alarm No. 13: Employees complain about the latest "program of the month." This is a real red flag, and it's a common one. A revolving door of management programs suggests a skittish leadership, eager to jump on every bandwagon that rolls into town, and lacking strategic ballast of its own. How can any company develop intensity of strategic focus when its eyes are jumping from one thing to the next every few weeks? It can't, and without focus, it cannot achieve lasting success.
Alarm No. 14: Publications or web sites gloss over hard reality. If your company's web sites, magazine, or plant newsletter has loads of personal or marginally strategic material (bowling scores, articles on unusual hobbies, classified ads, pictures of the summer picnic, service anniversaries), you're missing a terrific strategic opportunity and reinforcing secondary concerns and priorities.
There's a place for all that stuff, but it's by pull (i.e., something that employees seek out, perhaps through a web portal or on an old-fashioned factory bulletin board), not push (i.e, something sent to everyone). Use the push media for business issues, challenges, and priorities. While you're at it, call a spade a spade. Talk openly about a competitor's strategic advantages. After all, that's how you talk to your peers in management, isn't it? Why should ground-level employees be any different?
Alarm No. 15: Managers communicate mainly by email, even to colleagues in the same office a few steps away. Email has its worthy uses, but it should never be a crutch or a substitute for routine face-to-face conversation and dialogue. Take an otherwise sane, decent human being (even an engineer!), put him behind a computer, and he can morph into a cyberpath.
The quasi-anonymity of our silicon cocoons has an effect not unlike road rage. Simple but important mitigating effects of facial expression, tone, humor, hand gestures, and eye contact disappear. Words lose their supple roundness. They become atonal and harsh. Relationships suffer. Trust, respect and dignity go out the window. Is that what you want?
All these alarms are actually dysfunctional syndromes. They exact a real toll on your organization and its prospects for breakthrough achievement.
To the extent any company tolerates these habits, it erodes its own shared vision and common purposes, it opens itself to turf wars and infighting, it becomes subject to cynicism and denial throughout the organization, and it can paralyze itself with fear. At best, people will just go through the motions, lacking any real commitment to the company's future.
How many of them is your organization tolerating? What are you doing about it?
We can help. Call us. The number is 650-464-1770.
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