19 June 2007

Volvo Group benchmarking event identifies key comms themes

Practitioners gather for energetic discussion session.

Internal communicators from across Europe came together for two days last week to benchmark and pick up new ideas at transport solutions provider, Volvo Group's, headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Volvo Group's head of strategic internal communication, Charlie Nordblom, invited benchmarking partner companies to present individual case studies on six topics:

1. Change in an international organization.
2. Developing communicative leaders.
3. Values to build internal culture.
4. Communicating strategy and objectives.
5. Auditing the cascading process.
6. Building employee engagement.

A further 10 Scandinavian companies were invited, together with members of Volvo Group's global communications network, to take part in discussions about each of the six topics and share their own experiences, successes and learning points.

Three learning points
Sue Dewhurst (right), one of the Hub's new editorial board, was on hand as associate director of Melcrum's strategic research forum, to draw out common themes and learning points at the end of each day. Three themes came out repeatedly during the presentations and workshops.

1. Enabling others to make things happen
Participants were working on putting the right framework in place to help leaders be better communicators. Summing up the ideas exchanged and questions raised, Dewhurst posed five questions to the group:

• Do your leaders know communication is their job? And do they know what you mean by "communication"? Have you clarified expectations and set out standards through competency frameworks and performance management?
• Who’s communicating to the leaders? Are they comfortable enough with the message themselves to communicate with others?
• Have you trained them?
• Do they have the right tools? Do your toolkits, materials and processes make communication easier? Or do you sometimes actually make life more difficult for them?
• Are you measuring the results?

2. Creating line of sight
Every presenter explained how they were using communication to make a fundamental difference to business performance, whether through building the right culture, supporting major change or helping companies to reduce costs and increase revenues.   

The clear message was that we can only succeed if employees understand the company's strategy and their own part in delivering it. Even the most motivated employees won't help the organization if they're directing their energies in the wrong place.

As one participant said, "It can take the leadership team a year to put together a strategy, and it can take employees just one minute to misunderstand it." Questions reflected back to the group were:

• Does your strategy actually work? Do any parts of it contradict each other? If something's wrong, who’s going to tell the senior team?
• Is the senior team on board with it and speaking with one voice?
• Have you translated it into a clear and simple message everyone will understand?
• Have you made it meaningful for people at a local level? Can they see what's in it for them?
• How are you testing your approach to strategy communication, and how are you getting feedback about the results?

3. Being clear about our own role
The group debated whether communicators should ideally be focused on outcome – supporting business performance, creating a framework to help leaders communicate. Or on output – developing messages and creating materials. The conclusion? We need to do both. One organization explained how their internal customers now expect to talk to them about both channels and messages AND helping managers build the right communication skills to enable their programs to succeed.

Our efforts have to be aimed at helping businesses to achieve objectives – that’s why they employ us. And a thousand leaders engaging their teams in productive conversation must surely be more powerful than a single communication team pushing out messages. 

Less head, more heart
Nordblom shared research from Gothenburg University that people learn best through storytelling and visuals, and presenters showed powerful examples of how their communications teams had used both these techniques to connect with people emotionally – "less head, more heart", as one person put it.

Participants talked about the importance of being clear about the role of internal communications in their organization, having competencies for internal communications professionals that set out the behaviors needed to fulfill those roles, and investing in development to make sure people have the right knowledge, skills and experience.

Taking action
Amongst the action points Nordblom himself will be taking away from the event:

• Creating a "white book" of change communications best practice for Volvo Group.
• Identifying mandatory communication competencies for new managers.
• Investing in structured training for leaders and the communications team.
• Investigating storytelling as a means of supporting the company culture.
• Introducing an employee engagement index.

Summing up, he gave his definition of the difference between "benchmarking" and "sharing best practice". At conferences and in publications, we generally see organizations sharing best practice – successful case studies and ideas that have worked. In a more informal benchmarking environment like this, people are more comfortable to share mistakes and learning points too.  

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