Rethinking how we communicate with people

I hold a monthly (or as often as I can) slot in our company’s canteen where people can come along and hear from guest speakers from both within the organisation and the outside world.  It’s a great way to get people at the company to hear about parts of the business with which they’re unfamiliar and to get an insight into the workings of where they work.

We’ve had famous people talking about their chosen specialised subject and senior leaders in the business giving an update on what they’re doing and why people should be interested.  The feedback is always really positive.

If I know enough about the subject matter, I chair the event, interviewing the guest speaker and controlling the Q&A session at the end.  It raises the profile not only of the speaker, but also of Internal Communications, as I send out all of the invites and post the event onto the company intranet and brand it as an Internal Comms event.

I don’t know if any of you do the same thing, but it’s a really easy way to get business messages across to colleagues around the company – if you can influence senior leaders to do it.

And that’s the real crunch.

The preparation time for getting this to happen is minimal and the costs are very low – the PA and the cameraman come to around £600 per event.  Getting people to come along isn’t difficult if the guest speaker is famous (like Boris Johnson, the mayor of London) and attendance for internal speakers is also quite straight forward as long as you talk to the right people.

But getting someone from the business to speak about their area of expertise can be tricky.  Getting some of our senior leaders to do ANYTHING is difficult!  Thankfully, I have a pretty good network of senior leaders and can influence them to give updates on the business.

If you don’t do this sort of thing at the moment, give it a try – getting someone senior, who is usually hidden away on an Executive/C-suite floor, to talk to the troops about what’s going on in the organisation and fielding questions from the assembled masses can have a really positive effect.  We all know that being involved and getting closer to the decision-making circle of a company can make people fell more valued, more motivated and, that horrible word, “engaged.”

Let me know how you get on.

Keep it short and simple: the new KISS

There are many senior managers who consider themselves to be good communicators simply because of the position they hold – I report to someone who is not a particularly great communicator.  In fact, some of his team – the HR department – think he “doesn’t make the effort” and “isn’t visible enough.”  As a member of the ExCo, he sits on a different floor so being visible is a bit of a problem for the guy.  And as for “doesn’t make the effort” to communicate, it’s all about perception, but that’s the subject for a whole other post.

When it comes to sorting out Road Show-style presentations, where the CEO and/or members of the ExCo get up in front of a large audience and give an update on the business, I’ve been running into the issue of the “more is more” mentality, instead of “less is more.”  As these sorts of business updates happen so infrequently, the mindset of my director is to squeeze as much into the presentation as possible, thereby flooding the update with multiple messages and too much information.

One of the struggles I’m having at the moment is getting these senior people to see that others around the business are not really concerned with everything going on, but want to hear from the top of the company about some key themes and to have the opportunity to ask questions or voice opinions.

I’m not saying that we need to scale everything down or only focus on one part of the business, but after speaking to some of my contacts around the business, there are some hot topics – which are also big news in our company – about which people are curious.

By combining the face-to-face presence of the CEO and the ExCo with an update on the hot topics, I feel that far more REAL information would be passed on to – and understood by – the internal audience.  If there are other areas of interest, they can be included in the monthly news bulletin or in other regular communications.

Anyone with a similar issue?