Lost in translation

Katrina Andrews, Director, Melcrum Asia-Pacific

This week's news around David Cameron's "snub of China over poppies" is a great example of how easily even the smallest of symbols can be misinterpreted in different cultures. Of course in Britain,  the poppy is a symbol of remembrance of World War 1, in China it has an entirely different meaning, that of Opium Wars.

As we all know Asia is a region experiencing a rapidly growing economy – quite a unique challenge compared to the rest of the world, where talk of "double dip" is still looming. As a prelude to Melcrum's opening of our new Asian office, I've been fortunate to interview some practitioners across the region to gather a better understanding of their different challenges compared to those faced in the UK, US and Australia. I've come away absolutely fascinated and invigorated at the depth of these and how little understood they often are by communicators operating at the global centre elsewhere.

Before you put pen to paper (or more likely finger to keyboard) to communicate with a global workforce, here are just some examples of the culture differences I’ve stumbled across in my conversations:

Political sensitivity: one communicator I interviewed described the need to steer away from using maps in her communications e.g. the controversy regarding the political status of Taiwan (as independent or part of China).

Colours: another communicator described a very classic mistake of Corporate sending out a global message in red, which in China is generally regarded as a sign of happiness – this particular global announcement was regarding possible redundancies.

Culture: depending on your regional coverage you could be communicating with up to 15-20 different cultures and corresponding cultural values. Plus, of course, there are language issues to consider as well...

One of the most fascinating challenges I came across in many of the organisations I spoke to, was that of culture change and how to move a very traditional cascade approach to communication, to one that was more interactive and involved two-way dialogue. This is a common challenge in the West too, but when faced with a fairly hierarchical culture – the depth of this challenge is multiplied.

Many spoke of the (mainly) western concept of CEO roadshows and how when delivered in Asia it’s highly unlikely that employees would even consider asking questions as this goes against inherent cultural values. In some Asian organisations this means that a large proportion of senior leaders are still working on a 'need to know' basis when it comes to internal communication. Putting this into context it was only 10-15 years ago that in Japan a large proportion of the nation had the same job for their entire adult life so – as local practitioners pointed out to me – there's still a residual attitude of "they turn up every day and do their job so why do I need to tell them what I'm doing?" in many senior leaders from that era.

Communicators in the region are certainly rising to these cultural challenges. For example, one practitioner I spoke to, after witnessing yet another CEO roadshow where employee “plants” were primed to ask questions – championed to do away with these seemingly pointless events and instead launch smaller, more intimate meetings with the senior leadership team and line mangers to help break down some of the cultural barriers preventing dialogue.

When we talk about “dialogue” this also extends to online discussion and collaboration but in Asia the use of social media is still held back somewhat – by the infrastructure itself rather than a lack of interest. Communicators spoke of their passion for using new tools and technology, but there are some channels that Asia isn't regionally able to support yet – for example, sending text message announcements to remote manufacturing plants in the Philippines. That said there are also some shining examples of how social media has been harnessed to initiate culture change – the folks at BASF (Hong Kong) are a great example on using wikis and other platforms including Facebook to enable collaboration throughout BASF Asia.

Given both the communication challenges – and innovations – emerging from this part of the world Melcrum’s plans to expand its operations to provide more tailored support to internal communication professionals in Asia couldn’t be happening at a more exciting time. If you'd like to get in touch to find out more about our activities in this area please contact me on: katrina.andrews@melcrum.com.

Highlights from Melcrum's SCM Summit Australia

Katrina Andrews, Director, Melcrum Asia-Pacific

This year’s 7th Annual Strategic Communication Management Summit in Sydney, drew together a crowd of over 120 communicators, based throughout Australia and Asia, including Japan and China. Compared to last year, in the midst of the global financial crisis, there was an air of optimism in the room. If I was to sum up in one sentence the general attitude of the audience it would be: "We’re through the worst of it. Let’s reignite, reinvent and most importantly re-engage."

There were case studies of communication triumph against adversity, with Andrew Huckel, group internal communications manager, Bankwest, coaching us through the internal comms challenges faced when a parent company collapses (HBOS) and a subsequent acquisition takes place (by Commonwealth Bank of Australia).

Most interesting was to hear how their senior leadership played an integral part in keeping their employees informed and internal brand consistent. Huckel told the audience that in the midst of the crisis, he was having twice daily meetings with the MD.

Olivia Wirth, head of corporate communications, Qantas, delivered an outstanding presentation on how she and her team harnessed and learned from Qantas' 13 individual unions – a communication prospect that would make most of us shudder.

Communicating within such an iconic Australian brand like Qantas brought up a whole set of challenges, including the mainstream media being named the primary source for organizational information for employees. Quite simply, Qantas “hadn’t invested in internal communication” -  a challenge both Wirth and the executive team set out to change by introducing "we will tell you first" –  a new governing internal communication principle.

Spurred on by the belief that if you haven’t got your top 100 engaged, you're not going to get the rest of the business engaged, the team set out to develop a new senior leadership communication project. Plus, executed a brand review process targeting individual staff across the organization with a set of questions focused on:

• What do you think our values are?
• How do you think that relates to your behavior?
• And reflecting the nature of the Qantas brand: What is the "Australian way"?

At the completion of Olivia’s presentation, I really was left convinced that this was a company  on its way to delivering world-class communications.

Some of the other key takeaways from the Summit included

• Melcrum’s Rebecca Richmond’s presentation on moving from a cascade to a dialogue approach to communication. When thinking about manager communication, help them to set the scene i.e. create the infrastructure. Bill Quirke’s model for structuring a meeting is a great tool to help manager’s foster dialogue within your organization
  
  
• Athena Wiliams-Atwood, AMP New Zealand, encouraged all communicators to adapt a sales approach to convince senior leaders of the importance of engagement, perhaps by reading Spin Selling – a book on how to pitch your ideas, or – even more radical – attending a sales training course!
  
  
• Insights and learnings from one of the year's biggest stories: the multiple outages that hit Telecom's XT mobile network. Also, a great example of how to harness a charismatic CEO can be seen through their use of video.
  

Plus, great further presentations from Ericsson, IBM & ABT, Luxottica, Raytheon, AMP Australia and Integral Energy. All up, great speakers with great networking – I’m already looking forward to 2011!

Best viral campaign in the world?

With a viral campaign that spawned around 200,000 blogs, more than 40,000 news stories and more than $200 million worth of global publicity, Tourism Queensland was responsible for one of the most successful and talked-about media/viral campaigns in recent history - The Best Job In The World. And they’ve got the awards to prove it – they scored two Grand Prixs at this weeks Cannes Lions Festival – the ad world’s equivalent of the Oscars.

Last week, whilst chairing the Strategic Communication Research Forum groups quarterly meeting (Shangri-La, Sydney) I got a behind-the-scenes look into the campaign’s highs and lows.

Danielle Koopman, General Manager Corporate and Government Relations shared some key findings from this campaign including:
* Expect controversy. As you’re always one step removed – it’s really out of your hands and with social media (especially blogs), the campaign will always have a mind of it’s own
* Always be prepared to be honest and admit your mistakes. Faced with some unusual applications (spoof Osama bin Laden entrant) and a web/communication malfunction which saw the winner’s name uploaded onto the web before the official announcement – Tourism QLD didn’t try to make excuses but honestly fessed up to their blunders
* Double-check your resources. Due to overwhelming applications their website shut down and wouldn’t accept any more (it had reached the unknown cut-off quota of 30,000) causing a mild panic for the team.

Another example of a great recent viral campaign was the Deloitte Film Festival, check it out if you’re yet to view.

Thanks again to all our members for your input into this meeting, there were some really great benchmarking discussions and case studies around viral comms. See you all in September when we tackle senior leadership with our special guest expert – Bill Quirke!

Katrina

P.S. Don’t forget Danielle Koopman is keynoting day two of our upcoming Strategic Communication Management Summit, Sydney. A great opportunity to hear this story, plus 14 others! See you all there.

Part One: Presentations from last week’s Change Communication Conference

70 communicators in surprisingly sunny Melbourne joined us last week for our Change Communication Conference. It was a great group, with some great discussions taking place.

Some key-highlights for me include:

Peter Bush, CEO, McDonald’s Australia –McDonald’s were facing extreme ridicule in the press and because they didn’t respond, they were assumed guilty through their silence. Their external communications plan actively set out to address these myths by:
1)    Being available! McDonald’s wanted to always be able to respond to the media – so they made at least one representative available to journalists at all times
2)    Designed an active response team to answer false media stories
3)    Built relationships with government, the media, dieticians and GP’s
4)    Conducted one-on-one sessions with opinion leaders in the government
5)    Played a key role in obesity and dietician forums
6)    Told the McDonald’s story

However despite all their efforts they did still receive backlash from the press. When Peter joined the board of the Dietitians Association of NSW, one SMH heading said “It’s like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank” -  a comment that was later retracted on page 234!

McDonald’s internal communications plan included:
1)    Road shows to include company employees, licensees, store employees and suppliers - which is no mean feat considering there are over 6,500 store employees alone
2)    Meetings – who attends, make sure the right people are in the right meetings
3)    Developing internal newsletters: Bush Telegraph (from Peter) and No-Bull (from Katriona Noble)
4)    Designed NABIT (nuts and bolts implementation): 20-page booklet. Inspiration for designing this was that they collected all the emails that were sent to a manager over one week, which equalled five boxes! So now they receive NABIT.
5)    Bathroom media! As Peter quite rightly stated – you’ve got a captive audience, with posters and information sheets attached to toilet doors.

All round – great presentation, thanks Peter.

Melinda Craig, Internal Communications Manager, Energex – delivered a really engaging presentation on changing employee behaviour in line with corporate values. Energex as a business has experienced quite a bit of change over the last 5 years – with 5 Chief Executives and with more than 70% of the Executive Management Team new. So in a rapidly changing environment, Melinda outlined how they communicated their new set of values to the business:
1)    Use existing communication channels (forums, team meetings etc)
2)    Visible and sustained support from leaders
3)    Cascade the new values from one level of management to the other (credibility of source)
4)    Make the rollout interactive – involve staff
5)    Make the materials relevant and real
6)    Stage the rollout – avoid the ‘big bang’ approach
7)    Create understanding and engagement through ongoing dialogue / conversations
Staging the rollout:
Preliminary stage - involved stakeholders in developing values and behaviours
Rollout
•Stage 1 - inform managers/supervisors
- Officially launch values at Leaders’ Forum (bulletin board message, values screen saver, intranet site, corporate brief)
•Stage 2 – inform and engage staff
- Initial team information sessions (Leaders’ information sheet, fact sheet, FAQs and feedback mechanisms)
•Stage 3 – create ongoing focus on values
-Values workshops (facilitators’ guides, values booklet, posters, ‘Turn on to our Values’ competition, values award program, measure our success).
•Stage 4 – embed the values
- Build values into leadership development
- Embed values and desired behaviours into your systems e.g. selection and recruitment, performance management, rewards and recognition
- Ensure policies reflect and reinforce new values
- Build values into conversations and communications
- Measure and report on success

That’s only two of the eleven sessions – great couple of days.  Thanks to everyone who attended!

Katrina

P.S. Here’s a round up from the Maintaining Engagement through Change interactive session:
http://www.blackbeltdojo.co.uk/australia/

P.P.S. Part two of this conference summary on it's way! Next up: video's of our presenters outlining their key take-aways...

Australian members share intranet top tips…

By Katrina Andrews, Director for Asia-Pacific, Melcrum

How can you use your intranet to better connect a diverse group of employees? This question was addressed at Melcrum’s first-ever Australian member event held in Sydney last week.

Over lunch 65 internal communicators gathered to hear presentations from Telstra, NSW Department of Primary Industries and Railcorp, all discussing how they get the most from their intranets. 

Here’s a glimpse of what was covered:
Railcorp: They have created employee intranet person as to help understand a diverse workforce. One problem: One intranet – 2,900 job descriptions! Jane Floyd, Railcorp's web channels manager for its Communications Group kindly let us share her slides publicly, so feel free to download them to see how it used these personas to establish the needs of the greater workforce when redesigning its intranet.

New South Wales Department of Primary Industries (NSW DPI): Focused on how to maximise your virtual research. With zero budget available to bring together the intranet reference team, 
Kate Needham (pictured onstage, left), internal communications manager at NSW DPI used various “virtual” research methods to gather the necessary information needed to relaunch its intranet. Kate has also kindly volunteered her slides so you can view her suggestions.



Telstra’s manager of Corporate Employee Communications, Anthia Galanis, spoke on the difficulties of having to compete with a lot of other internal information channels. One successful approach it has adopted is video messaging with Telstra employees, who now all carry mobile phones. She shared one example where the comms team (or internal news bureau as they consider themselves) found out that their CEO was being interviewed on CNN at the World Economic Forum in Dallas. They managed to get a video message out to the employees that very same day…pretty impressive. Readers of Melcrum's Source for Communicators enewsletter will hear more about Telstra's story in this week's forthcoming issue.

We’re currently planning the next event and I’d love to hear what topics you’re interested in at the moment, or which speakers you’d like to hear from. Feel free to drop me an email with any suggestions you have so I can make sure we create another relevant and successful event. I’m all ears….

Big Easy or bust...

Our hotel is booked, bags are packed and the company jet is gassed up (argh maybe not…) But the Melcrum contingent is ready to head out to New Orleans to attend this year’s IABC International Conference.

There’s a great line-up this year and there’s a couple of sessions I’m looking forward to hearing, particularly Darren Briggs at The Company Agency's presentation on CEO and branding, building a communication function driven by business strategy by Virginia Mackin at Wachovia and the change management track that Melcrum’s sponsoring.

We’ll be blogging from the conference, so keep checking in for the latest updates and interesting take-aways. As usual we’ll have an exhibitor booth at the conference, so drop by to pick up some latest copies of our journals and research findings or even enter our iPod competition.

Let us know if you’re heading out also and perhaps we can catch-up for some Big Easy favourites - catfish, jambalaya, gumbo…

Employee engagement – are we making progress?

Last night a colleague and I attended IABC’s networking drinks at the BBC Media Centre in London.

It was attended by a mixture of approximately 80 practitioners and consultants including Roche, GlaxoSmithKline, Shell, Echo Research, Hill & Knowlton, BBC, Accenture, Yellow, HMRC, Watson Wyatt and BP.

John Smythe, Engage for Change, spoke about the importance of employee engagement and got us all to discuss one time in our careers that we’d felt particularly engaged. Naturally there was a mixture of responses. For me, as a publisher, it was the launch of The Hub, for Nigel Lewis, Echo Research, it was developing new initiatives for overcoming language barriers and for others it was simply getting a new computer!

John went on to discuss his views on the evolution of internal comms, stating, “Marketing is the original DNA of internal communications. So employees are still viewed as customers and we’re still selling to them.”

John’s findings are that when most people consider engagement they focus on the outcome i.e. employees becoming brand ambassadors, productivity and retention increasing…the list goes on. But instead of just saying “here’s the song sheet, sing it” – it’s important to recognise what your organisation’s key driver is.

According to John, the number one key employee engagement driver is…sharing of power, in other words, involving employees in the decision-making process. He believes this is possible, at any stage, either for a short time for contribution/creativity or everyday strategy and planning.

Is this possible? Have we come the full circle, where we’re no longer “selling” to employees but actually involving them in the decision-making process? It’s an interesting ideal, but can it work in practice – I’d be interested to hear your feedback.

Katrina Andrews

Mulled wine, an Angel and CiB

Well it wasn't quite an angel, but I was out in Angel, London last night for CiB's annual Christmas Party.

There was mulled wine, canapés and even the odd communicator.

Both me and my partner in crime, Mandy Thatcher, editor of Strategic Communication Management, thoroughly enjoyed ourselves catching up with old friends and making new ones.

Who was there? A mixture of about 45 communicators, writers and consultants.

We caught up with David Orford, who was telling us about his new communication role. He faces the tough challenge of communicating to a 1,500-strong workforce based in the Republic of Congo. His first challenge is getting over the side effects of travel injections!

Peter Erftemeijer, CiB London Executive, shared his insights into where the CiB is heading in 2007. This prompted the inevitable discussion around the various industry associations available to communicators based in the UK – how they differ, what sort of membership each one attracts, etc. There’s been arguments in the past about the industry not really being big enough for too many different associations, especially if their USP isn’t clear. I’m not sure how fellow UK practitioners feel about which industry association best suits their needs?

I guess as long as you’re getting regular opportunities to network with peers, enjoy some professional development and tuck into tasty canapés and mulled wine, it’s all good.

Katrina Andrews

The Hub for internal communicators