Inaugural South African summit success

By Nicci Columbine, independent consultant, Columbine Communications, and producer of Melcrum's inaugural Corporate Communication Management Summit

The inaugural Melcrum Corporate Communication Management Summit held in Johannesburg last week was a benchmark event for the corporate communications community in South Africa.

The three day conference of workshops, presentations and discussions provided a much needed forum for practitioners, academics and consultants to share ideas on every aspect of internal communications. Delegates from across South Africa and the continent - as far as Egypt, Ghana, and Nigeria - attended to listen and learn how leading companies including Standard Bank, Liberty Group, MultiChoice, Pick n Pay, Murray and Roberts, Sappi Limited, Mercedes-Benz, and MTN are successfully managing communication within their often diverse and transforming organisational and business environments.

Case study presentations by senior communication practitioners shared insights into how best practice communication and employee engagement is assisting these businesses to enhance their corporate social responsibility commitments, embed safety compliance and a code of ethics, transform employee culture, create unity within a diverse workforce, manage business change, and add value to the working environment.

Keynote speaker Darren Briggs, of UK-based Flametree Communication, spoke about the central role  senior communicators have in assisting business leaders to enhance their influence among a new generation of employees. Specialist internal communication consultancy Actuate, demonstrated how organisations can maximize internal marketing to engage and inspire employees to deliver greater value for businesses.

Briefing sessions on communication measurement, social media and workshops on change management and leadership engagement offered useful information and practical learning, while round table discussions on topics ranging from strategy and planning to building internal brand loyalty, provided communicators with a platform for stimulating dialogue and engagement on prevalent issues and challenges facing corporate communicators in the region.

The summit also afforded an unprecedented opportunity for interaction and networking in South Africa, with many delegates expressing their interest to further their learning through on-going engagement and best practice sharing with peers.

Based on the positive feedback received, the South African summit has set a precedent for the further development of corporate and particularly internal communication in South Africa and on the African continent.

On the (nearly) first day of Christmas Melcrum gave to me...

By Mandy Thatcher, Head of Content, Melcrum

We're listening to Christmas songs on the radio, consuming vast quantities of Quality Street chocolate and generally trying to look like we're using the quiet time to "catch up on admin" – but the truth is we're winding for Christmas. Although that doesn't mean we're not thinking ahead to what you might need from us in January 2009 – a new year most of us are approaching with a little trepidation after a somewhat rocky second half of 2008. With both belts and budgets set to tighten after the Christmas break we thought this was an appropriate time to dust off our special report on Doing More With Less – a mantra we'll no doubt hear more of over the coming months. In the meantime...I hope your festive holiday celebrations are the exact opposite of a downturn – jolly, excessive and lots of fun. Happy holidays from everyone at Melcrum and see you in the New Year!

Sanitary check – the antidote to financial gloom?

By Mandy Thatcher, Head of Content, Melcrum

In these worrying times of financial crisis and economic downturn, it’s pleasantly diverting to have a communication conundrum of slightly less epic proportions to worry about. So I think the Melcrum crew were probably secretly pleased (or maybe that was just me?) to receive a posting on our email discussion forum entitled “Sensitive sanitary issues”. Here goes:

“I’ve been approached by our Office Services team to address the state of our gents loo's (after a number of complaints from others have been received). I'm aware this is a sensitive issue and wondered if anyone had any advice they could offer in terms of how to best address this? Apart from the obvious 'polite' notices on the back of each cubicle door and such like, we've not been able to agree on what would be considered an appropriate manner of dealing with this. Has anyone come across this type of communication challenge?”

Earth shattering? Perhaps not. But a dilemma nonetheless. It’s easy to smirk, but I think this definitely qualifies as a “difficult message” driven by a real need for behaviour change. Measurable behaviour change at that.

Fellow networkers were undaunted by the challenge and just in case you’re ever tasked with a similar communication initiative, the general consensus is “use humour” – e.g. humurous posters and messages. One networker suggested linking to culture and values: “Our company core values are an accepted part of life here; respect is one of our values and how you leave the toilet for your colleagues is a matter of respect, so we would have a clear way of making the point.”

At a more practical level, another piece of advice was to make sure employees had access to whatever “basic materials” they needed to keep the toilets in a more pristine condition.

On a more serious note, there was some concern that a communication professional was being asked to deal with this kind of thing in the first place: “Please forgive me for seeing an opportunity to use this as a great example about the need for business (communication) people to establish firm priorities about what they will and won't do based on the value added to the business.”

What’s your view? Do you think it’s inappropriate that communicators have “projects” like this dumped on them? What’s the most embarrassing message you’ve ever had to communicate?

Is your communication cascade leaking meaning?

By Mandy Thatcher, Head of Content, Melcrum

In this week's issue of The Source, I shared some top tips from Bill Quirke, Managing Director of Synopsis Communication Consulting, on how to fix a "leaky" communication cascade.

According to Bill "It's often the cascade from senior management that's most to blame for poor line manager communication," he says. "Cascades are leaky things, with meaning seeping out at every stage. Their message might have made sense in the boardroom, but by the time it gets down to a team briefing, no one understands why they’re being told it any more."

"The end result is that, because no one can frame it for them, staff get annoyed. They don't see why they're being fed this corporate nonsense. The phrase we've used for so many years – 'What's in it for me?' – is suddenly less pertinent for staff in briefing sessions than: 'What the hell is it?'"

Bill goes on to share some tips on how to improve the cascade process.

But according to one reader's response, cascades just don't work, full stop. She says: "Quirke only covers part of the problem with cascades, which is a broken comms model. I try to steer my internal clients away from it, arguing that the minute it leaves your hands, you've lost complete control. You've no control over when the cascade will transpire, if at all, as well as over the context or spin that it might be couched in. Because some constituents will receive it earlier than others, you run the risk of others hearing it through the grapevine rather than from its original intended source."

"In short, the cascade's a mess. Doesn't work. Never will. Full stop."

Is this your experience of trying to manage a communication cascade? Is it worth trying to fix the process or better to try a new approach altogether?

Did you just say strategy is overrated?

By Mandy Thatcher, Head of Content, Melcrum

In an article published in the latest issue of SCM, recently retired senior VP of corporate comms for Royal Bank of Canada David Moorcroft makes a controversial statement: "Strategy is overrated".

Given the huge amounts of emphasis communicators generally place on the need to be more "strategic", this almost sounds like heresy!

But David's comments and rationale behind his observation ring true: I’ve spent many years developing, refining, using and writing about a process for producing a clear and easy-to-use communication strategy that ensures resources are used in a focused and productive fashion. But I’ve come to the conclusion that we’ve put too much emphasis on strategy and not enough on implementation."

"Going forward, I think we need far less management consultant speak and marketing rhetoric in our strategies and more hands-on, practical ideas on how we can achieve our goals. When we’re hiring and building teams, we need to ensure we have people who can implement our grand scheme because that’s where the money is made."

Is this your experience? Do these words resonate with you?

Read the full article, published in The Source for Communicators, for this and other observations on the profession including:

• Branding has replaced reputation
• The PR profession is undervalued
• Social media needs more thought

Common themes emerge at Melcrum's London Summit

By Mandy Thatcher, Head of Content, Melcrum

I was delighted to identify a few common themes at Melcrum's SCM Summit in London last week – as chair person you're always looking for themes to emerge, thus enabling a vaguely articulate "summary" at the end of the event! But there was so much great content covered over the two days and it was all quite diverse: internal branding, change, leadership, managers, professional development, etc.

Last year was slightly different as the social media frenzy was truly upon us. The strong theme was clear: What does this new world of social media mean for internal communicators?

Social media and its significance for organisational communication hasn't gone away. But as Melcrum's CEO Victoria Mellor pointed out in her welcome speech on day one of the Summit "Let's get the basics right before we introduce new tools to the mix."

For me personally, I felt there were two important themes that many of the presentations seemed to link to:

Involvement
How do you encourage your employees to feel involved in the business? Perhaps this is the same thing as "engagement" but the general consensus was that this term is in grave danger of being over-used to the point of becoming meaningless.

In his presentation on "Having conversations that matter" Jonathan Scott, group head of internal comms at Royal & Sun Alliance said the company never talks about launching an "engagement" campaign as this is likely to cause instant scepticism. But with the use of World Cafes they've still succeeded in making employees feel part of the company, encouraging them to put their ideas forward for changing and improving the business. And they're seeing results.

Nokia has also used the appreciative inquiry technique behind the World Cafe approach, which they shared in their presentation about communicating a new business strategy at Nokia. They're successfully using this to involve their 45,000-strong workforce in helping the company shift from a mobile technology company to an internet-based organisation.

Other presentations linking to this theme of involvement included B&Q (together with The Edge Picture Company) who did a great presentation on a comms campaign called "Stock Idol" built to help implement a new stock-management system. The subject matter (stock control) may have been dry, but their approach – an internal version of the popular reality TV program Pop Idol – was anything but.

Partnerships
Another strong theme in my opinion was the importance of developing good internal partnerships. Whether it's getting to understand the CEO better, working with managers to improve their leadership capabilities, or setting up a strategic partnership with organisational development, it was clear from many of the presentations that relationships such as these help communicators to gain influence and get things done.

In fact, some very pragmatic advice came from one speaker who urged internal communicators to work more closely with the marketing team when looking to develop the internal brand. Not only do marketers have great creative ideas, pointed out the speaker, they also tend to have loads of budget!

Smart practice indeed...

Simplification is a big theme at IABC Africa

By Mandy Thatcher, Head of Content, Melcrum

Keeping communication simple and declaring war on information overload and unnecessary business jargon are strong themes emerging at the IABC Africa conference in Johannesburg this week.

A number of speakers have expressed exasperation at the tendency we all have to lapse into using terms like "strategic solutions" and "leveraging" as soon as we talk about anything business related. I was interested to hear that this is as big a problem in South Africa as anywhere else – being South African myself I know how direct and forthright South Africans can be when they want to!

Louise Marsland, editor of bizcommunity.com delivered a good back-to-basics presentation on writing simply and effectively for electronic channels, although her tips and advice could just as easily be applied to most other forms of communication.

Michelle Caldeira, managing director of Blue Moon also gave a great case-study presentation on developing a major communication campaign for ACSA to help introduce a companywide Balanced Scorecard approach. Again, its success has had a lot to do with stripping out the complexity of the program and boiling it down to a few simple messages that everyone can relate to.

This links quite well with the presentation I'll be delivering tomorrow – it also focuses on simplicity and the role of managers in getting new ideas across and changing employees' behaviour.

I'm also planning to share a story about kidney-harvesting, which will only make sense if you've read Made to Stick.

Here's hoping it makes the right kind of impact...

It's Monday – avoid (deadly) conflict

Did you know that we're 33% more likely to have a heart attack on a Monday? Apparently so, according to an article in the Saturday "Work" section of the Guardian, which confirms that the Monday Blues are all part of a definite rhythm to the working week.

The article refers to research by Debbie Moskowitz, a psychologist at McGill University in Canada, who has mapped the weekly pattern of our moods. "She found that workers tend to be more demanding, aggressive and task-focused earlier in the week and more submissive and open to negotiation as the weekend approaches," reports the Guardian.

You probably won't be surprised to hear that we're not at our best on a Monday. This is peak day for calling in sick resulting in a phenomenon called Seasonal Absence Syndrome, which basically means we're short staffed and stressed out. We're more demanding and aggressive on a Monday, so it's a good day for "delegating, organising and setting goals, following your boss's direction and avoiding conflict."

Once you've got that pesky Monday morning heart-attack risk out the way, you may want to plan the rest of your week accordingly. Here's a summary of how our moods are likely fluctuate:

Tuesday: We're feeling better today – "for many this is peak day for work output and efficiency." Intellectual performance will peak between 10am and noon.

Wednesday: We're relaxing into the working week, but we're not exhausted yet. Today's the day for creative thinking, strategy and brainstorming.

Thursday: Today we're relatively more submissive and open to negotiation. Basically, we want to get our work completed by the end of the week so we're ready to compromise if needed.

Friday: Having safely made it through the medical minefield that was Monday, we're not out the woods just yet. Today, workers take more risks and have more accidents. We're likely to make riskier decisions today. And it's not a good day for meetings – we can't concentrate. Having said that, business psychologist Alastair Hamill rather cunningly points out that calling a meeting on a Friday afternoon could be a tactical advantage: "you are pretty certain to get a decision because people don't want to linger."

Sneaky.

   

Can you move beyond your tribe?

Another day of great speakers at IABC, but my favourite has to be the general session delivered by Jennifer James, an urban cultural anthropologist who works with boards and high-level executive groups on strategic planning and international problem solving.

Given Melcrum's recent research into managing successful change communication, this one really struck a chord. Jennifer was talking about the difficulty we all face trying to adapt to rapid change - an unavoidable reality of the fast-changing, technology-driven world we live in. The insights shared in this session could be applied to organizational change, personal change, cultural change - any situation where people are facing a world that changes so rapidly they can no longer identify with their environment.

She spoke about how in times of great change we become tribal, retreating into what we know and understand. But to adapt and survive we need to move beyond our "tribe" and question the cultural mythologies we hold on to. This is why visionary leadership is so important during times of change, as the natural tendency is to go backwards.

Jennifer also spoke about how trying to communicate in world of great change - organizational or otherwise - requires heroism. The heroic leaders who guide people through change will be the ones who can communicate a compelling story about the need for change. To be compelling that story must have three things: a set of ideas that fit with reality, an ability to resonate with deeply held values, and a narrator who is authentic and believable.

A really inspiring presentation that covered too much to cover in a blog, but I'll be looking for ways to share some of that thinking in future articles and research.

Is that a dead moose in the room?

After a great night of jazz and big-band music, Monday was all about finding the best sessions and speakers at IABC's 2007 conference in New Orleans. I especially wore comfortable shoes so that I could do the rounds and check out as many sessions as possible. A few stood out for me.

One was a presentation by Alison Ekizian, director of strategic change for information technology at Gap Inc., together with Barbara Fagan-Smith, CEO of ROI Communication. They were talking about a transition that Gap went through recently following a decision to outsource an element of its IT operation. As with most outsourcing transitions, the change process meant tough times for both employees affected by the change and leaders trying to manage it effectively.

In the interests of being transparent, I should mention that Melcrum sponsored the change track in which this particular session featured. But I thought their presentation was so good I asked them to share the story as a case study in a forthcoming issue of Strategic Communication Management.

The presentation focused on the communication strategy and approach taken to managing the IT transition at Gap, and the successful outcome that resulted from it. A small detail that stood out for me was their description of the "Moose Sessions" – leadership meetings introduced by the CIO where leaders were encouraged to address the "dead moose in the room" (an actual fluffy toy moose featured as a prop) and talk about the difficult issues that everyone was aware of but no one liked to mention.

The Moose Sessions were a smart way to get some of the really tricky change issues out on the table, giving everyone a chance to discuss them, decide what to do about them and move on. Simple, but apparently very effective.

Next up, the Gold Quill Awards – IABC's very own Oscars night. Watch this space for more about the big stars of the night...