No one is quite sure what is supposed to be achieved


First, you just have to keep it simple. Too many initiatives at once not only confuse people but make it impossible to track and measure success. I always advocate maintaining day-to-day information processes and then picking one or two big projects for each year to add some sparkle to the process.

At Alstom, being very specific, setting two or three main programmes, and using teams made up of communication professionals from around the group , we quickly built a pooled form of co-ordination, which became a very powerful weapon in pushing out across the globe the top management message of all working as one. So we knew exactly what we were trying to achieve - collectively - and how we would go about it. The simple point is, if you want to change people, make sure you change the messengers first. If they accept and sign up for the change you have won at least half the battle. Of course we still faced stubborn groups of hostile , ˜dinosaur,' plant managers who didn't want to see a Paris-driven message in their factory. But with all the internal communications employees ˜on message' it wasn't long before that petered out.

This method is both simple and cost-effective and modern technology means that it can be set up and operated for very little funding. The only additional cost was travel to meetings, but that was largely off-set by the savings made by pooling skills and resources. This, in fact, was probably the best part, and I would urge anyone else faced with creating a group internal communications process to do as we did. Once you know who can do what (and you'll be surprised how much hidden expertise you will discover) write it down and catalogue it and make sure everyone has access to this information on their intranet. Then keep it updated as new skills come on to the market. Everything was sent from the units to the co-ordinator, who then edited input and ideas and distributed it to the units, creating a constant two-way flow. They also ˜policed' materials for quality and adherence to brand and design guidelines.

What we had done by the end - when it was running smoothly - was take a group of unhappy , cut-off, poorly trained employees and turned them into a multi-talented, multinational team with real curiosity and flair. They became powerful advocates and ambassadors of the change process we were trying to implement.




The New Rules of Engagement(c) Life-Work Balance and Employee Commitment
Performance Tuning for Linux(R) Servers
ISBN: N/A
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 131

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