Six days away from largest gathering of internal communicators in Europe!

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

We’re now less than a week away from the largest gathering of internal communicators in Europe. A huge turn out of 187 of your peers, colleagues and competitors will be attending the Melcrum SCM Summit in London between 13th and 15th October 2009 listening to and debating with some of the brightest minds in the profession including Best Companies Partnership’s Wayne Clarke, Channel 4’s Undercover Boss Stephen Martin and a host of senior practitioners from some of Britain’s largest and most important companies, organisations and bodies such as HSBC, Vodafone and the Department for Business Innovation and Skills.

If you're not convinced listen to our exclusive pre-summit interviews with some of the events biggest names.

Despite the workshops on 13th October selling out faster than ever before, we have managed to persuade The Tower Hotel to increase its capacity to more than the 150 cap, so if you or one of the team still want to come along, all you need to call us now. You won’t be sorry.

Discussing how to rebuild trust, re-engage employees and increase performance has never been more important than today – an era where both budgets and resources have been slashed in greater quantity and numbers than ever before. And it is you, the internal communications profession, that has the responsibility to change that downwards spiral and bring the UK and the rest of the business world back ito prosperity once again. Never has your role been greater.

As our keynote speaker Wayne Clarke says: “Fifteen of the top 100 companies doubled their turnover and tripled their profit in five years.” And what seems to be consistent among these high-performing organisations? “They all make effective use of line managers to translate and communicate core company objectives, achieve high levels of employee engagement, and ultimately, impact the bottom line,” adds Clarke.

We look forward to seeing you next week. Don’t miss out, be there!

When it comes to social media, trust is everything

I was presenting Melcrum’s social media research to a group of internal communicators this week. It was one of those meetings where the range of experience went from “extremely knowledgeable” to “non-existent” with a band of dissenters in between. The first question I asked was “Do you think you’re culturally ready to adopt social media tools internally?” When you see eyes rolling at this question, you know you’re in for a rough ride!

The reality for this company is that employees are already using social media tools – 6,500 had already established a group on LinkedIn, despite their firewalls blocking access to the site in work time. Getting over IT hurdles is one thing, shifting attitudes among managers is quite another. For organizations like this one, still practising command and control, top-down management, it’s going to be difficult coming to terms with a more democratic style of communication. As Philippe Borremans of IBM fame says: "The first step in building a social media strategy is to recognize that it’s not for every company or every employee.”

Do we need a new model for change communication?

Just back from Melcrum’s Research Forum meeting. The Forum is a membership group of senior communication practitioners who meet quarterly to discuss the findings from our research into communication best practices and to set us fresh research challenges. Think of it as the communication equivalent of the Monetary Policy Committee (and yes, they can be just as tough!).

Fuelled by a delicious Turkish meze lunch, the business of the afternoon was to ask whether the current models for change communication (the Change curve etc.) are fit for purpose in a world where change is a constant rather than something that happens as discrete events.

One of our conclusions was that, as a profession, we tend to be too insular and prone to “navel gazing.” Are we being too reluctant to challenge leaders in our organisations to tell us what they want from internal communication when it comes to change?

We’ll be back in the New Year with some of the answers.

As I sign off, I can’t resist sharing an amusing anecdote from everyone’s favourite communicator Greg Dyke who spoke recently at The London Business Forum  on Leadership and Change Communication. There’s no denying that when he took over at the BBC he faced some tough challenges: petty politics, low morale and widespread incompetence. But no leader expects to discover that his predecessor would “book a lift in advance to make sure he didn’t have to speak to anybody.” Beat that for role model behaviour. Any other leadership shockers to share?

Victoria Mellor

Are you tough enough to give the 360 degree treatment?

Why is it that so many communicators shy away from giving their leaders the honest feedback they need on their communication styles? Maybe because it’s a job best left to the experts.

I spent an interesting couple of hours this week as the subject in a communication feedback session typically given to CEOs. Two utterly charming ex-BBC producers (the experts) set up a mock up studio and led me through a number of exercises designed to reveal where I was going right (and wrong) with my communication style. The outcome of this session is to help you come up with a simple and engaging “stump” speech that you can adapt to any number of occasions.

Despite me thinking that I had a direct style (everyone thinks they are better communicators that they actually are), the feedback I got was that I come over as too “mumsy” (ahhhh!) and that everything I do comes about by some happy accident. Tony Blair and I also have a lot in common in that we like to use the Karate chop hand gesture when we speak. Worse was that I have “deep set eyes” yeewww– a real problem on camera apparently – need to rush out and get a makeover, oh and botox suddenly seems like a good idea too).

Bottom line? Need to work on clarity, authority and sitting up straight. Less Judy Finnigan, more Anne Robinson.

Thanks to Martin and Louisa from The Company Agency who did an excellent job of delivering those uncomfortable truths.

Victoria