With the fading US economy likely to put pressure on the budgets and opportunities available to organisational communicators this year, 2008 could well be a time that the industry addresses some formidable challenges. Here are some of the things I’ll be paying attention to in CommsOffensive as the coming months unfold:
1) Toppling the Face-to-face Idol
One of the most sacred “truths” of the organisational communication profession is that because people have a preference for “face-to-face communication with their line manager that tells the whole story”, the purpose of the profession should be to emphasise and prioritisation to the maximum extent possible. Indeed, until very recently, it has been considered something between heresy and lunacy to challenge that emphasis because research has shown such a strong preference for this “coalface communication.”
But thanks to the free-flowing debate among practitioners on sites like Ragan.com, a counter-insurgency is forming on the issue. They challenge the basic research behind the idolization of "line manager face-to-face", claiming that if one were to ask employees how they’d like their breakfasts, a substantial percentage would say “steak and eggs, silver service, served in bed, without calories.” And they challenge the organisational impact the emphasis on "line manager face-to-face" is having in terms of reinforcing hierarchy and delivering dumbed-down, one-size-fits-all messaging in organisations that actually work along networked lines. Watch for more on this as the year unfolds.
2) Engagement vs. Democracy “Democracy” scares the hell out of managers. But the application of proven principles of understanding and influencing democratic communities may hold more promise than the current prevailing prism which sees “engagement” as by-product of “enlightened” senior management and “happy” employees.
3) Internalising “External” Communications
4) Associations, Networks and Purposes
5) Proving our worth Challenging the prevailing views of the internal/external communication divide, the definition and underlying perception of how "employee engagement" actually works, the primacy of face to face communication, the role of professional associations and what measurement process emphasizes will not be easy. But successful challenges on all of these fronts may be what our profession requires for a successful 2008. It won't be an easy year, but it could prove pivotal.
While there will continue to be much talk about promoting and delivering “improved employee engagement” in the coming year, some practitioners will come to grips with the idea that increasing staff involvement in decision-making, harnessing discretionary effort, and facilitating the proactive sharing of information are more reflective of values and behaviours connected with “democracy” than the more nebulously defined term “engagement”.
While discredited approaches to internal communication like “internal marketing” appear to be making a comeback, there appears continued resistance to the idea of considering key suppliers, customers and employees as an coherent whole, to be dealt with in a transparent and connective way.
But the stakes are rising. As organisations outsource core functions to suppliers, and encourage customers to take greater responsibility for the design and delivery of the products and services they purchase, the need for communication that allows them to fulfil their responsibility for the organisation’s outcomes intensifies substantially. The sell-speak of traditional marketing and the ultra-economical vagaries of investor communication are not going to be sufficient to best facilitate the internal responsibilities that are being shifted to external participants. Astute application of the better principles of internal communication, on the other hand, could make these shifts considerably more successful.
The prospect of a tougher economy will pose some real challenges to the established professional associations, such as IABC, CCM and PRSA, which are highly exposed to the US market. Where associations and chapters have been focused on their own self-perpetuation, they will likely be challenged either to prove they deliver return on member dues, or that they make a measurable difference to the operating conditions in which their members operate locally, regionally or globally.
As a local and regional IABC board member and as a rare CCM member based outside the US, I’ll have a ringside seat on developments in this space. This could get interesting.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, communicators will continue the ongoing quest to either demonstrate, in minute detail, the direct connection between their activities and corporate profits; or to create such ironclad relationships with senior leaders that they can be seen as exempt from the pursuit of definitive measures of ROI.
What will be most interesting will be whether this discussion moves from its current question of “whether to measure” vs. “how to measure” and towards more emphasis on “what to measure”. Online tools now make large-scale qualitative research possible (allowing for much clearer measurement of observable behaviours and disconnects between central and local understanding of key messages) but there remains considerable reliance on outdated quantitative “employee satisfaction” measures, particularly as demonstrations of “engagement”. In my view, such measures offer as much navigational help as pre-Columbian maps of the Atlantic Ocean.
