I’m not sure who’s the most frustrated: CEO’s who can’t get their communication people to help improve business results, or communication people who want to add value but don’t have what it takes to do so. Most internal communication people play the role of town crier rather than business problem solver. They’re focused on distributing… Read more
Adding Value
Ask These Five Questions and Get Started.
The question I most often get from communication professionals who want to make the shift from the current town crier role to one that’s more aligned with improving business results is, “How do I get started? How can I make a difference in our organization’s outcomes?” I recommend beginning by asking five questions. Here they… Read more
Facebook Fail: Internal Communications Strategy
Surely Facebook didn’t intend to put the internal communication discipline back 20 years, but they did a mighty fine job focusing on outdated tactics. The headline on a recent “Workplace by Facebook” piece was: “A 9-Step Strategy for Connected Communications,” which certainly perked up my ears. Alas, the piece focused more on improving internal communication… Read more
The Purest Form of Organizational Communication
Last month, I spoke at the Gathering of the Games, the world’s largest conference on open book management. Hundreds of open book leaders and communication practitioners from around the world were in attendance to learn, share and celebrate the principles and practice of open book management. Open book management is a leadership philosophy that’s grounded… Read more
Pilot Projects Create Big Successes
Want to produce results fast, minimize risk of failure, perfect a concept and create demand for more? Pick a pilot, improve results and replicate. Increasingly, organizations are adopting surgical approaches to improving performance, focusing on targeted segments (a branch office, manufacturing plant, laboratory, sales territory, or distribution center), making significant shifts quickly, creating stories around… Read more
Cracking the Metrics Code
For years, I’ve heard communication practitioners talk about the importance of measuring everything that mattered EXCEPT financial or operating performance. Measures such as tweets, re-tweets, page views, content consumption, readability, channel usage, word count, timing of content delivery and a ton of other irrelevant measures. Communication measures and broad business measures should be the same… Read more
When Adding Value Is Real
“What gets measured, gets managed.” This phrase, most often attributed to management guru Peter Drucker, is widely quoted in business circles. The easiest way to understand it is by invoking its inverse. “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” This Thursday, I’ll join three of my fellow International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Fellows to discuss the importance of… Read more
Resolve to Form a New Habit
It’s a new year. Time for testing those personal improvement resolutions that we set for ourselves. Sometimes they are easy, sometimes more challenging, and sometimes we write a list of things we never intend to follow through anyway. But what about professional resolutions? What can you resolve to improve in your career during 2019? CEOs… Read more
It’s Getting Harder to Hide
Although there’s a group of business-savvy communication practitioners out there who understand the importance of adding value, there’s a huge contingent of practitioners who hang on to the traditional communication role—that of in-house reporters of news and information—all at a cost to the business. Why do they hang on to old ways? Some don’t know… Read more
Open for Business
Is your business an open book? Open book management is a leadership philosophy that’s grounded in the notion of creating businesses of business people where everyone in the organization thinks and acts like business owners. I’ve been taking clients to open book management pioneer SRC Corporation in Springfield, Missouri for more than 25 years. For… Read more