Chapter 6: Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

Overview

The worse the news, the more effort should go into communicating it.

Andy Grove, chairman, Intel

What we've got here is a failure to communicate. actor Strother Martin in the film Cool Hand Luke

Many years ago - 1977 to be precise - a book titled Communicate ^[1] was published. It may be three decades old, but I think that book still makes a whole lot of sense, and not just because I had a role in its creation. It was possibly one of the first truly to advocate the role of communications in an organisation and to stress how important it was to get this right, especially if you expected to recruit and retain the right people. The sad part is that in those 30 years, communication - and more specifically internal communication - has not moved along very much. It is still one of the poor relations of the organisational functions in the vast majority of companies, often under- funded and poorly staffed (in many SMEs it isn't really staffed at all). But if people are the critical resource and the key to our success, surely internal communications should be one of the most important support areas in any business?

In today's world, there are three major problems with internal communications:

• No one seems sure who should be responsible for it.

• No one seems sure of the skills required to manage it.

• No one is quite sure what it is supposed to be achieving.

After observing the efforts of hundreds of firms trying to organise internal communications, I have come to the conclusion that it doesn't really matter that much where it rests inside a business provided it receives sufficient profile to be effective. Often that is where things go badly wrong. It is parked - uncomfortably - in the wrong place for all the wrong reasons. There is nothing necessarily wrong with it being in, say, the marketing department of an organisation, as long as someone actually carries out internal communications. But if the whole focus, and budget and skills of the people are on external issues, then it just doesn't belong there.

I know of one major corporation, whose marketing efforts are centred almost exclusively around Formula One auto racing, who think internal communications - for which they are also responsible - begins and end with showing their race car to the staff. In reality, this means that there is no one to champion internal communications.

Sadly, this state of affairs tends to be all too prevalent . Internal communications is parked somewhere in the organisation, because no one quite knows what to do with it. And because it usually has pretty low-level people staffing it it never develops a voice of its own. As an old colleague of mind once said only half in jest, ˜no one ever made vice- president or partner, by having responsibility for internal communications.' But that is a damning statement too. Because if we are to pay more than just lip service to the idea that our lifestyle/workstyle aspirants want open , honest, intelligent communication, then surely internal communications has a major role to play in keeping people informed and consequently engaged.

^[1] NORTHCOTE PARKINSON, C. and ROWE, NIGEL (1977) Communicate: Parkinson's Law for Business Survival . Prentice Hall.