Four communication challenges to overcome in 2008
If you're going to be credible with your peers and senior communications professionals, ensure you've done your communications theory homework. These examples from Owens Corning and ConAgra Foods should inspire you to knuckle down.
by Jim Shaffer, leader the Jim Shaffer Group
I've been asked numerous times recently about the biggest challenges for organizational communication management and for people in the communication discipline as we enter a new year. I've suggested four things.
Challenge #1: Go back to basics
Today's communication professionals are being tempted by new tools and toys frequently referred to as social media (wikis, podcasts and blogs). The rise of so-called web 2.0 has been heralded in books, articles, seminars and workshops as the next-best-thing for improving communication.
Historically, next-best-things haven't helped us solve the most important organizational communication problems, or we wouldn't continue to face them.
Wikis, podcasts and blogs have roles, to be sure, but they don't help the warehouse guy who's trying to load a trailer without damaging a pallet. They don't help a retail store clerk get passionate about selling this month's special. Yet, this is the stuff of business.
Improving organizational performance is about efficiently moving human energy in the right direction – dictated by the customer. It means engaging people to deliver the quality, service and value that customers require. The role of communication management is to help ensure people
- a. understand how they influence goals;
- b. are involved in the performance improvement process;
- c. have the information they need when they need it to make the right decisions; and
- d. know there's something in it for them and their organization when they win.
We shouldn't let the latest idea or fad distract us from this – no matter what. I don't know of one instance where a podcast or blog measurably improved quality, service, cost, speed, safety or productivity where it mattered to the financial health of the business, yet this is what our business should be about.
Where do some find the time to put the business on hold while they play with the latest toys at the customers' expense?
Challenge #2: Engagement needs to be a mindset
Engagement is often misunderstood. Engagement is not a program. Programs, traditionally, only create momentary "sugar-buzzes". To create acceptable and sustainable returns, engagement needs to be a mindset and a process – a way to lead. Most organizations claim they're doing it but most aren't, according to much of the current data.
The communication business today is still about distributing information. The primary difference is that now the work they do has become digitized.
Engaged people also perform better on hard, measurable issues such as quality, service, costs, speed and productivity than those who aren't engaged. Enabling people to create loyal customers represents a by-product of increasing engagement.
In his new book on engagement, UK-based communication consultant, John Smythe, argues that employee communication as it's practiced in most companies was born out of external marketing, which is coercive and top-down – a tool of the command-and-control leadership style," he says.
It's a discipline that uses internal communication or internal marketing to get messages, visions and strategies across to 'audiences' using the tools of mass communication. It focuses on communicating 'at them'," Smythe says.
Focus investments on the highest returns
In 2008, all communication management professionals should be resolute about eliminating this "at them", top-down approach and focus on building their organization's communication capability so that moving knowledge and information becomes a serious source of strategic competitive advantage.
Building communication as a strategic capability requires knowing what we need to do especially well to win and then applying the communication capability there.
Organizations are fickle by design. Some functions, processes or business units influence overall performance more than others. So it makes sense to focus investments with laser-like precision on creating higher engagement levels, for instance, where they will pay off the most. If $1 will increase engagement and operating returns by $1,000 in Department A but by only $100 in Department B, it makes more sense to start with Department A.
Challenge #3: Increase the function's value to the enterprise
Nearly every discipline, process and function within the modern corporation has been reinvented in the past 25 years – except the communication function.
People in communications tend to be relatively conservative (I don't mean politically), risk-averse and among the slowest to embrace change, which is rather ironic because their role should include encouraging change.
Yet the communication business today is still about distributing news and information, just as it was 50 years ago. The primary difference between then and now is that the work they do has become digitized.
Take a fresh approach
As we enter 2008, we should be examining the functions business from the customer's perspective – if you're a customer-driven organization, everything you do, every expense you make, every process you nurture should ultimately be to better meet customer requirements.
Where do communication deficiencies exist in our company that if filled would improve our ability to efficiently move human energy in the right direction – as dictated by our customers?
This requires inspecting the business with a blank sheet of paper – from the customer's perspective. If we view it from our personal or sentimental viewpoint, we may have a tendency to view it narrowly, probably with an eye on self-preservation.
There are implications, however, to changing the business model. It may require buying or building new capabilities and competencies, changing work processes, measuring results differently, establishing difference accountabilities and helping business leaders see that the communication discipline can create rather than drain value.
ConAgra Foods' communication shift
More than a year ago, Teresa Paulsen, vice president of corporate communication at US-based ConAgra Foods, initiated the transition from a corporate function focused on more traditional communication activities to a communication function focused on business results. Bob Kula, ConAgra's senior director of corporate communication, has helped lead the change.
The idea behind Kula's first project was to shift the focus from productivity to a balanced focus on safety, quality and productivity using goals, measurement, incentives, scoreboarding, huddling, training, recruiting and business literacy in a significant system reorganization.
It helped create at one of ConAgra's plants:
- a 35% reduction in accidents; and
- a 27% reduction in turnover.
That led to a supply chain project attacking warehouse damage. In 5 months, his work helped a major US distribution center reduce damage by 61%, and improve inventory adjustments by 63% and productivity by 7%. Turnover is also now on track to drop by 24% by the end of the company's fiscal year.
Challenge #4: Continuously learn about the past and the future
It's impossible to be respected as a professional peer when you don't know your own profession. Too many people lack understanding of the literature and theory that serves as the foundation for this discipline....
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