(c) Copyright 2000 Arceil Leadership Ltd. All rights reserved.
This interview was first published in the British journal Internal Communication in January 2000.
Thomas J. Lee is founder and president of Arceil Leadership, Ltd. A member of the editorial board of Internal Communication, he is the developer of the popular “Rainbow” model of integrated leadership communication. He has benchmarked communication processes in two dozen major corporations, and he has pioneered new methods of communication planning, measurement, and culture mapping. He speaks and writes frequently on issues related to leadership communication.
Tell us a little about your background.
In one capacity or another I have been in communication and leadership my entire career. Most of my career has brought me into very close contact with senior leaders of business and government. So I have had a lot of experience down in the trenches as well as considerable exposure to high-visibility, high-level leadership. For more than a decade I was a newspaper journalist and columnist, mainly assigned to politics. I interviewed and developed working relationships with prominent officials at all levels—from U.S. presidents to governors, senators, congressmen, and mayors. After taking time to earn an advanced degree, I went to work for a major corporation with extensive international operations. In short order I was writing speeches and sensitive correspondence for the CEO and chairman of the board. It was a time of intense change for the company, and I was at the heart of it. A few years ago I established Arceil Leadership Ltd., a niche consulting firm working at the crossroads of leadership, communication, and business strategy.
What important trends have you seen in organizational communication?
Senior executives are taking communication much more seriously than they were just a few years ago. They realize that they have no choice. Far-sighted communication practitioners are getting ahead of the game. Measurement has moved from a mantra to a methodology, focusing not on proving the value of communication but on documenting the impact of communication on the business’s success. There’s far more concern now with strategy than with tactics. On the other hand, I still see companies whose communication functions are locked in a holding pattern of public relations and publicity. Especially at this point in the game, that is cause for regret.
How does organizational communication fit into the big picture?
That’s a very important question, but the answer is surprisingly clear. In spite of all the economic prosperity of the 1990s—in the United States especially, but also elsewhere—there’s no telling how much greater the success might be with better leadership communication. Certainly the track record on mergers and acquisitions is abysmal; 65 to 70 percent of these consolidations fail to fulfill their promised benefits to shareholders. That’s two out of every three!
And you would argue that poor communication is a major factor in those failures?
Yes. Too often communication in those situations is an afterthought, or it is regarded as an inconsequential means of glibly building morale—as if employees can simply be told to smile and be happy. But communication is actually the path to employee commitment. Its absence or its poor management is a huge obstacle to employee buy-in and also a considerable barrier to the integration of merging companies.
How do you make that case?
Managers actually make the case for themselves. I simply let them talk. Just ask a manager to describe a situation that would have had a superior outcome with more and better communication. They don’t need much prompting. For my part, I present communication as a four-stage process with a toolbox of competencies and capabilities that support it. Engineers and technical people relate to that kind of structure.
Tell us about those four stages.
The first stage is awareness. This is a relatively simple matter of gaining the attention and focus of employees. The next stage is understanding. It is the work of translating corporate goals and strategy to day-to-day work priorities—in other words, making sense of things. The third stage is acceptance. It is largely a matter of integrity, of mutual respect, honor, and trust. The fourth stage is commitment, where employees exercise a proprietary kind of concern and initiative for the company’s success.
It sounds as if communication is a lot more than words to you.
It most certainly is. But not just to me. Ordinary working people have told us the same thing over and over. They think of everything they see, as well as everything they hear, as communication. So it behooves leaders to think of it all as communication, too.
You talk a lot about formal, semi-formal, and informal “voices.”
Yes, I do. Every organization speaks with all three voices. In most organizations they are a loud cacophony—a Tower of Babel, and of babble!
What exactly does each “voice” consist of?
Formal communication is mainly rhetorical and verbal, but it is also graphical and it can be numerical. It functions as the traditional “megaphone” of organizations. It speaks as one to vast numbers of people. In the Digital Age, it can communicate with the speed of electrons around the world. Semi-formal communication is official and institutional. It is the totality of management tools, viewed by employees for the messages it sends. It brings policies, programs, processes, and procedures to bear on business strategy. Informal communication is interpersonal and behavioral. It is the nature and thrust of relationships between a leader and a follower. It consists of purposeful dialogue, routine conversation, and the countless decisions, behaviors, choices, and attitudes by a leader that so often “speak louder than words.”
It sounds perfectly unmanageable.
Too often it is unmanaged, but it’s never unmanageable. With a well-designed program that addresses the inconsistencies among those three voices, and with a targeted intervention, all three voices can be brought together. That’s really the hard work of strategic communication.
You regard communication not just as a publication or event, then, but as a process.
For management purposes, yes, it is a process. But we should think of it as even more than that. Communication is actually a matter of culture as much as anything else. Some companies have terrific cultures that promote rapid and information-rich communication. These companies use and benefit from leadership communication the most. Further, like a society, a company of any considerable size is likely to have a patchwork quilt of subcultures. The subcultures reflect the values, beliefs, and attitudes of business units, operating regions, professional disciplines and training, and, in this era of mergers and acquisitions, original corporate entities. For the people in a particular subculture, it matters as much as the whole culture. And together they all have an enormous impact on communication within the company.
Which companies have leadership communication that you especially admire?
That’s a difficult question, but I’ll tackle it. Let me emphasize, first, that I have yet to discover any quote-unquote best-practice company, a paragon of perfection. There are some real best practices out there, but every company has room to grow. And all good companies are the first to admit their challenges.
So, the envelope please?
The companies I most admire take due pride in what they’re doing right but recognize their potential to improve. I think highly of Harley-Davidson Motor Company, which has some very progressive, far-sighted managers and a cutting-edge intranet that is tailored to every employee individually. United Airlines has a widely replicated program that teaches flight-deck personnel how to communicate among themselves. Starbucks Coffee Company both recognizes the message-sending power of its human-resources programs and provides a highly effective communication template to its thousands of front-line sales personnel. Weyerhaeuser Company has a top-flight employee-communication program around public-policy issues. Federal Express does a splendid job of nurturing upward communication, and 3M thoroughly grasps the importance of employees’ collective identity. The old Amoco Corporation, since acquired by British Petroleum, developed a powerful program on workplace safety largely through a broadly integrated communication plan. I like Motorola’s approach to measurement. Eastman Chemical’s leadership team and Hewlett-Packard’s CEO both rely heavily on their professional communication counsel. Nordstrom’s and the Ritz-Carlton hotels do extraordinary things, too.
Any others?
There are too many to list. But even more important, many senior-level, mid-level, and front-line managers at all kinds of companies are blazing new trails in leadership communication. Just a few weeks ago, I was visiting the headquarters of John Deere & Company, the global manufacturer of tractors and heavy construction equipment. I heard Deere’s youthful new CEO talk to employees, and he was highly engaging and impressive. He has a clear vision for the future. He filled his talk with spontaneous stories and apt analogies. Afterward, instead of rushing out, he stuck around and mingled for two hours. He was very, very effective.
Who are your heroes in the profession?
More than anyone else, John Onoda, now at Visa International, shaped my thinking about organizational communication. Barb Perkins at 3M and Ed Robertson at FedEx were also influential. So were Jim Shaffer, formerly of Towers Perrin, and Roger D’Aprix. Several of my graduate-school professors at the University of Chicago gave me a solid conceptual foundation of leadership philosophy and organizational dynamics. But more than all these first-rate people, the managers and leaders out there on the front lines of many, many companies taught me the gritty, day-to-day reality of strategic communication. They are my real heroes.
What do most business managers fail to understand about communication?
It’s tough to generalize. I will say that too few managers seem to appreciate the important distinctions between management and leadership, the communication-related obligations of leadership, the need for broadly integrated communication, and the necessity of developing and sustaining a live-wire connection between themselves and their followers.
Would you discuss the roles and responsibilities of managers in a fully developed communication process?
Gladly. This goes back to the point I made earlier about a culture of communication, and it raises an implicit qualm I have about the term “communicator.” If we truly believe that communication is a two-way process, then everyone in the company is properly a “communicator.” Some of us have more expertise than others, and we are compensated specifically for that expertise. But everyone communicates, and active communication is a part of everyone’s job. Now one of the ways that those of us with expertise—let’s call ourselves strategic communication consultants or something similar—can help is to design communication systems that provide for particular roles and responsibilities in communication for people at different levels and stations throughout the company. Accountabilities need to be put in place, too.
I can hear communicators—allow me to use the term—protesting that they don’t have the power for this.
No, they don’t. But no single person, apart from the CEO, does. To get things done, people in a company work with other people to shape judgments and policies. To my dismay, I have found that communication professionals are often shy about asserting themselves and overcoming those silos around departments. They are their own worst enemy. They actually have great insight, and they need to step forward.
We always like to ask some personal questions in these profiles.
Go ahead, ask.
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Lots of things. Every little boy wants to be a firefighter and, here in America, a quarterback. For a little while I also wanted to be a lion tamer, then an architect, then a clergyman, then a forest ranger, and then a crusading journalist. Finally, on graduating from college in the midst of an economic recession, I just wanted a job.
How do you relax?
I don’t often get to relax. I am a father, and I’m writing a book. My pastimes tend to be extremely active. I run 25 to 35 miles a week and also swim and bicycle quite a bit. Other passions include the theater, music (mainly jazz and classical but also good ol’ rock and roll), and lots of reading. I’ll try almost any new restaurant once. I also enjoy adventure travel. This year I went on an African safari. Next year I’m hoping to climb two mountains out West.
Sounds good. Can we join you—for dinner at those new restaurants, that is?
Of course, as my guest!
