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Making the
Connections
‘As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another’
(Proverbs 27:17)

This book is for my Three Graces:

Roanna, Francesca and Olivia.
Making the
Connections
Using Internal Communication
to Turn Strategy into Action

second edition

Bill quirke
© Bill Quirke 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission
of the publisher.

Published by
Gower Publishing Limited
Gower House
Croft Road
Aldershot
Hampshire
GU11 3HR
England

Gower Publishing Company

Suite 420
101 Cherry Street
Burlington
VT 05401-4405
USA

Bill Quirke has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Quirke, Bill, 1954–
Making the connections : using internal communication to
turn strategy into action
1. Communication in management 2. Communication in
organizations 3. Information resources management
4. Organizational change
I. Title
658.4'5

ISBN-13: 9780566087806 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 9781409405160 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007931876

Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.
 Contents

List of Figures and Tables vii 

Acknowledgements ix
Preface xi

PART I TURNING COMMUNICATION TO ADVANTAGE

Chapter 1 Getting More Value From Internal Communication 3

Chapter 2 Turning Strategy into Action 31
Chapter 3 Going Global and Restructuring 65

PART II LEADING CHANGE

Chapter 4 Leading Engagement 101

Chapter 5 Making Change Happen 137
Chapter 6 Engaging Employees Face-to-Face 169
Chapter 7 Communication Initiatives and Projects 209

PART III PULLING IT TOGETHER

Chapter 8 Planning and Managing Communication 253

Chapter 9 Repositioning the Role of the Internal Communication
Function 289
Chapter 10 Measuring Impact 327

Index 355
This page has been left blank intentionally
 List of Figures and Tables

Figure 1.1 The different degrees of employees clarity and willingness 11 vii
Figure 1.2 Seven links of communication 22
Figure 2.1 Moments of truth: points of contact with an organization’s
stakeholders 36
Figure 2.2 Better communication means higher profit 39
Figure 2.3 Converting awareness into action 41
Figure 2.4 Adding value to the core product 44
Figure 2.5 Developing internal communication strategy 55
Figure 3.1 The balance between brand structure and business structure
in different companies 80
Figure 3.2 Moving for value 83
Figure 5.1 Communication Escalator 158
Figure 6.1 Four step process of conversation 177
Table 7.1 Connecting assertions, evidence and implications 235
Figure 7.1 How different audiences will be affected by restructuring 221
Figure 7.2 Communication Escalator 236
Table 8.1 Channel Guide 281
Figure 9.1 The Activity Grid 303
Figure 9.2 The variety of roles to be mastered by professional
communicators 305
Figure 9.3 How companies balance structure and identity 308
Figure 9.4 Different options for managing internal communication 310
Figure 10.1 Measuring foundations and value 334
Figure 10.2 Using communication means to get to business ends 335
Figure 10.3 Stages of the communication process 337
Figure 10.4 Example of a communication scorecard 345
Figure 10.5 Typical steps in a questionnaire survey 346
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people for their help and contributions
towards this book: Richard Bloomfield, Josef Goetz, James Greathouse,
Sabine Jaccaud, Alex Kalombaris, Charlotte Knight, Jane Lebeau, Helena
ix

Norman, David Norton, Paul Santamaria, Jane Sparrow, Jacqueline Wallach,

Dominic Walters, Mark Watkins, Elli Xuereb, Per Zetterquist.
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Preface

T his new edition reflects a number of changes that have happened over the xi
last 5 years.

Internal communication has gone further up chief executives’ agendas. They

know that it is important, and understand that engaging their people is all
the more crucial, and more difficult to achieve, in a world of joint ventures,
outsourcing and partnering.

Perhaps as a result, chief executives are demanding greater professionalism

from internal communicators, with tougher questioning on what value they
add. A Deloitte and Touche Human Capital Survey asked which HR issues
were very important to the success of an organization. The good news is that
95 per cent of chief executives said ‘effective internal communication’. The
bad news is that only 22 per cent thought it was being delivered effectively.

Internal communication has been driven up the agenda by external

forces such as greater regulation and the need for compliance with
financial regulations. Just when it seems harder to keep secrets and respect
confidentiality, regulations like Sarbanes Oxley are changing what you can
tell people, and when. Chief executives have to balance when and how they
will share market sensitive information so that they can meet their regulatory
duties, and ensure they bring their employees into the picture as quickly as
possible.

Organizations want to be employers of choice, to tap into emotional

commitment and discretionary overtime by creating more engaged
employees.

The impact of poor industrial relations, the rise of employee representative

forums and the complexities of different national labour laws means
organizations know they need to take greater care over their communication.
Making the Connections

Globalization means that organizations are playing on a global chessboard,

to take advantage of their scope and scale. This means they face greater
complexity of cultural differences, need international collaboration and have
to balance global and local communication.

The blurring of boundaries between what’s inside and outside an

organization, where outsourced employees disappear off the organization
chart but stay in the same office, means that ‘internal’ communication has
to cover more than those who are inside. Outsourced partners, offshore call
centres, joint ventures and supply chain partnerships are increasingly within
the remit of internal communicators who aim to harmonize the different
voices customers hear from an organization, and protect the values of its
brand.

xii Integration and interdependency

Organizations are increasingly sensitive to the importance of their reputation
and their vulnerability to their own employees’ behaviour. They understand
both the risk of not communicating with their people, and the need for
communicating well.

As reputation becomes important to maintaining a ‘licence to operate’, and

the vulnerability of that reputation increases, organizations are having to take
an integrated approach to communicating with all their stakeholders. It is no
longer possible to box off audiences and keep them hermetically sealed from
each other.

There is no longer such a thing as a local story. A story happening, say, in

Hong Kong, can be accessible online. For example, British newspaper The
Guardian has as many online readers as print readers, with a great deal of
those on the West Coast of the US. Now what happens in one part of the
globe is rapidly communicated in another.

People are our voice

More industries are finding that their licence to operate is being challenged.
Companies are expected to deliver more by a broader range of stakeholders,
who are more likely to blame businesses for problems. One example of
this is the riots in India, provoked by India’s health ministry’s rejection of
the findings of an environmental group which had reported high levels of
pesticides in Coca Cola and Pepsi.

It is all the more important then for employees to act as advocates for their
organization, to tell its story and argue its case, especially since employees are
so influential.
 Preface
The Edelman Annual Trust Barometer tracks 2000 opinion leaders’ trust of
institutions, companies and information source’s credibility. Opinion leaders
consider rank-and-file employees more credible spokespersons than corporate
CEOs, and information conveyed by regular company employees have
the same credibility as articles in newspapers (2007 Annual Edelman Trust
Barometer).

As employees become more influential, they may also become less

cooperative. Employees’ deference to institutions has decreased, and their
trust in management has eroded. The promise of a stable career ladder, in
exchange for following the rules and being a good corporate citizen, has all
but disappeared. Organizations ask their people to give their engagement,
enthusiasm and passion, while simultaneously reminding them that they’re
responsible for their own employability, and that there are no jobs for life.
xiii
Impact of technology
The rise of open networking is increasing the power of employees to inform
themselves and network directly with each other. At the time of writing there
are 20 million blogs worldwide, 75 000 new blogs every day and 11 000 blog
updates per hour. MySpace is adding 250 000 users a day.

This means organizations will realize they don’t have a captive audience, that
they are competing for time and attention and may not be very competitive.

A 2006 study of 119 chief information officers (CIOs) in mid size and larger
US companies by Forrester Research, indicated that Web 2.0 developments
are being widely introduced into companies, with 90 per cent of respondents
having adopted at least one of six prominent Web 2.0 tools – blogs, wikis,
podcasts, RSS, social networking and content tagging – with over a third
already using all six of them. CIOs saw ‘relatively high business value’ in RSS
(the syndication systems used in the blogging world), wikis (user-editable
websites) and tagging, but relatively low value in social networking and
blogging.

A 2007 McKinsey survey of 2800 executives looked at six Web 2.0 tools and
found that social networking was the most popular, with 19 per cent of
companies having invested in it (John Naughton, The Observer, Sunday 1st
April 2007).

In the old world of ‘command and control’ and ‘information is power’,

information was held at the top by the leadership and was cascaded
sparingly. In a world where it is now hard to control where information may
emerge, and the means of sharing it are so widespread, the balance between
information ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ shifts dramatically. This means leaders
have to rethink what they should tell their people, and when.
Making the Connections

Consumers are no longer passive receivers of

information
The impact of new media means employees can bypass censorship and are
less easy to control. Individuals can generate their own news content. News
pictures are now regularly provided by members of the public on telephones
and digital cameras. This means that an employee can easily become a
journalist. There are 12 million bloggers in the US, and 4 million of those
describe themselves as journalists.

People are becoming more selective, using search engines to filter and select
the kind of content they want, subscribing to the information they want and
stripping out stuff they see as irrelevant. News is becoming a consumer item,
and people will increasingly select what news they want, how they want it
and when they want it.
xiv

Employees are more media literate, more active and less passive. This means
damaging allegations and bad news – such as Coca Cola in India, Apple’s
battery problems and McDonalds Super Size Me – travel faster and hit you
quicker.

In the old days, organizations had to worry about the threat of the news crew
at the factory gates. As employees emerged, and were quizzed by reporters,
what would they say? This drove the need for effective communication, if
only to reduce the chance of a bad quote. Now with access to a camera phone
and an Internet connection, employees can become journalists themselves
and what employees used to write as graffiti, they can now post to the web.

Making the connections

Companies know that communication with their people is important.
They know that the energies and the enthusiasm of their employees need
to point in the same direction. However, in the enthusiastic rush to plug
together different components of communication best practice, many
organizations are short-circuiting their own efforts. There is no shortage of
good intentions and no shortfall in professionalism and good ideas. However,
the road to incoherence is paved with good communications. Often, internal
communication is less than the sum of its parts, because those parts do not fit
together effectively. Organizations concentrate on getting the right individual
parts and then merely cobble them together – the recipe for Frankenstein’s
monster.

What’s the problem?

Too often, those on the front line report that there are fatal disconnects
between the business strategy and the communication strategy. There is no
clear link between information that is sent to employees and what they are
supposed to understand from it. The small detail, carefully crafted in the
 Preface
boardroom, makes no sense when it is divorced from its context. Meanwhile,
companies are keen to find new technological approaches to communication,
which, in fact, only exacerbate the problem.

Life is moving too fast to rely on the inadequate way we currently

communicate in organizations. Today’s best practice hero too easily becomes
tomorrow’s financial zero. Employees who thought their company was doing
well and their future was secure can suddenly discover that events on the
other side of the globe can put them out of a job.

In a world of tighter interdependencies, where fortunes are so closely

linked, people need a better understanding of the connections. Internal
communication has absorbed too well the lesson that the medium is the
message. The message is often failing to get through because the medium eats
the message. Never has so much been communicated by so many, and meant xv
so little. We need to move from the message and media business to that of
creating meaning and understanding.

What needs to change?

In an information age, internal communication is what enables businesses to
engage their people’s intellectual and creative assets to produce value. Despite
the increasing complexity of the world, people still want to know some
simple truths about what is going on, and they want to be treated as if they
matter.

We have to make two changes simultaneously – identify what is the intended

business value in communicating and design a better process to deliver that
value. We have to shift from seeing internal communication as a process of
distribution, to using it as a process of conversion. Just as an assembly line
worker converts, or adds value to, a component he receives from up the line,
so we have to convert information we receive into meaning in order to help
employees make the right decisions.

The role of internal communication is to illuminate the connections

between different pieces of information, to shine a light on the web of
interdependencies and to show the links between one area and another.
Its job is to provide employees with the information they need to do their
work, and to paint the bigger picture and tell the fuller story that puts that
information into context.

How this book will help

This book looks at what a successful business needs from its people, what gets
in the way and the role of communication in helping to bridge the gap. It is
designed to help companies link together the disparate components of their
internal communication for a more effective result. It describes the why, the
what and the how of internal communication – why business needs better
Making the Connections

communication to achieve its objectives, what internal communication

needs to deliver to add value and how organizations need to manage their
communication for best results.

Its aims are fivefold:

• to focus communication on creating business value;

• to make the connection between business strategy and communication

strategy;

• to alert leaders to their impact, influence and responsibility;

• to show how better internal communication engages employees;

• to show how to integrate communication for greater coherence.

xvi The book is organized into three parts. Part I, ‘Turning Communication to
Advantage’, shows how organizations need better communication to deliver
results and how the management and practice of internal communication
need to be improved in order to meet business needs.

It examines how good communication can produce greater value by

addressing key issues at the top of business agendas. It focuses on the
key concerns of chief executives – creating competitive differentiation,
developing new markets and products, reducing cost, streamlining processes,
and restructuring. It highlights how internal communication can help
organizations achieve their strategic objectives enabling employees to deliver
a brand promise to customers; making restructuring work, or increasing cross-
business collaboration and innovation.

Change is a significant feature of today’s business world and Part II, ‘Leading
Change’, looks at how to use communication to make more effective change
and how to create greater responsiveness and agility within the organization.
It gives specific recommendations for communicating change, driving change
initiatives and projects, promoting internal campaigns and sustaining greater
responsiveness.

In terms of their internal communication, organizations first have to do

the right thing by connecting communication strategy to their business
strategy and, second, do things right – have efficient and effective processes.
Part III, ‘Pulling it Together’, shows how to structure and manage internal
communication to deliver the business agenda and closely details the links in
the communication chain.

Satellite broadcasts alienate the middle managers they were designed to

inspire, e-mail clutters and voicemail frustrates instead of helping. Face-to-face
meetings force managers to undermine their own credibility by presenting
irrelevant and tedious corporate information. Then, after all the effort and
 Preface
the investment involved in communicating, the finance director asks the
inevitable questions about how much this will all cost, and if it is worthwhile.

As the quantity of information increases, the quality decreases. Although

employees are sent more and more pieces of the jigsaw, they are unable to put
them together to form a coherent picture. Organizations indulge in ‘flat pack
communication’ – sending out the components of the picture and relying
on the recipient to assemble them, with the inevitable result that the end-
product has a few screws loose or missing.

None of this is inevitable. Some simple links and connections can be made
to ensure that communication helps, rather than hinders, the business.
This book is about making those connections. It explains how businesses
can use better internal communication to achieve differentiation from their
competition, to improve their quality, customer service and innovation, and xvii
to manage change more effectively. It shows how organizations need to use
their best ‘joined up’ communication if they want to be successful.

References
Deloitte and Touche (2003), Human Capital Survey, Personnel Today, January.
Edelman (2007), Edelman Trust Baromoter.
Forrester Research (2006), Q4 CIO Confidence Poll.
Naughton, J. (2007), McKinsey Survey, The Observer, 1 April.
This page has been left blank intentionally
I Turning
Communication
to Advantage

This page has been left blank intentionally
1 Getting More Value From
Internal Communication

B usiness today faces a torrent of changes that redefines what is required of

employees. Organizations are quickly discovering that they need more
than simple compliance from their staff: they need – now more than ever – to


engage their minds, creativity, energy and commitment. A business can only
achieve its best when everyone’s energies point in the same direction.

This changes not only the assumptions on which internal communication

is based, but also the job it is intended to do. Traditionally, internal
communication has focused on the announcement of management
conclusions and the packaging of management thinking into messages for
mass distribution to the ‘troops’. However, its real place is at the leading
edge of change. The value that it can add is immense – faster change, more
flexibility and innovation, better quality decisions, better knowledge sharing
and a more motivated workforce. Although, as a whole, leaders believe in the
power of communication, even leading companies fail to harness that power
to deliver the necessary results. Internal communication is vital to success and
when done well can provide strategic advantage through aligning employee
efforts, sharing knowledge and engaging their passion.

The purpose of this chapter is to lay the foundations for the remainder of the
book. It highlights the urgent need to improve communication, the business
pay-off for doing so and the gap that needs to be closed between aspirations
and day-to-day practice. It also makes the connection between the business
issues that senior management see as priorities and the importance of good
communication in achieving them. It describes how successful organizations
see the value of internal communication and highlights those areas in which
outdated approaches have created toxic complexity.

Trapped in a time warp

The problem is very simple – although success depends on a new approach
to internal communication, organizations are spending all their time and
Making the Connections

effort on an outdated one. Failure to change in organizations is due to the

disconnect between the communication that the business needs and the
communication it receives. In other words, internal communication is
trapped in a time warp. ‘If cars had improved at the same rate as computers,’
says Bill Gates, ‘we’d have $25 cars achieving 1000 miles to the gallon.’ But if
cars had improved at the same rate as internal communication, we’d still be
walking in front of them with a red flag!

The way in which organizations have traditionally approached

communication has been based on applying outdated rules – with
disappointing and frustrating results. Companies are falling into a
vicious circle. By failing to make a strong enough connection between
business strategy and internal communication, they fail to plan and
monitor progress appropriately. They then become increasingly frustrated
 by the failure of communication to deliver results. Organizations are
short-changing themselves by not seeing communication through to
the end – converting awareness into action. The real value of internal
communication is to help deliver business ends by enabling employees to
turn strategy into action. However, getting there means draining a swamp
of communication confusion and complexity to create a path of coherence
and consistency.

What is changing?
The job which internal communication has to do has changed because
organizations are facing unprecedented pressures to deliver in a rapidly
changing environment. Research consistently shows that senior managers
have five principal concerns:

• creating competitive differentiation;

• developing new markets and products;

• reducing cost and streamlining processes;

• restructuring, integrating an acquisition, making a merger work or

divesting a non-core business;

• redefining the roles of the corporate centre and the divisions.

Organizations are discovering that business challenges like these can all be
affected by the clear targeting and management of internal communication.

However, a ‘one size fits all’ approach will not work. Internal communication
needs to be aligned specifically with the organization’s individual business
strategy. Discussed below are four examples of how different strategies
demand different internal communication approaches and how successful
companies take the role of internal communication seriously.
 More Value From Internal Communication
Using internal communication to create competitive
differentiation
Tesco, the UK supermarket chain, aims to create greater loyalty among its
customers and to increase the average size of their shopping basket. One
enjoyable personal contact with staff per trip, their research shows, can earn
lifetime loyalty from a customer.

Tesco employs 150 000 staff in 560 stores who need to deliver this experience
to its customers. Since personal contact plays such a key role in customer
retention, employees must understand Tesco’s brand promise. The job of
internal communication is to create a deeper understanding of the brand
promise among employees, and to help them translate it into specific actions
for customers – opening up checkouts when queues get long, packing bags,
helping shoppers take their shopping out to the car park and even providing

jump leads when their car batteries go flat. Internal communication’s value
lies in helping differentiate Tesco from its competitors and creating higher
customer loyalty for higher profitability.

In the world of professional services, the big accountancy and consulting

firms are federations which share a name and a culture. Now they want to
build distinctive brands. Ernst & Young, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers
and Accenture are spending significantly on building global brands. Their
investment is aimed at differentiating themselves and reassuring their clients
worldwide, who feel branding is increasingly important in helping them
choose from whom to buy a service.

These firms sell a diverse set of sophisticated services worldwide, but global
clients expect consistent delivery throughout the world, wherever offices are
located. Global branding carries with it the promise of global consistency.

Professional service firms have to develop a portfolio of standard processes

differentiated by strong brand values, thought leadership and the ability
to develop solutions for clients. These ambitions demand not only better
management of the knowledge and learning within the firm, but also greater
collaboration between employees. Creating value therefore demands that
employees have an external focus, since it is knowledge of their clients’
industry issues which demonstrates a real familiarity with the business and
helps win contracts. The challenge is for employees to combine knowledge
and understanding of the client’s problems with the knowledge of the
consultancy’s worldwide capabilities that could help solve them.

Ernst & Young, for example, uses internal communication to help them
do just that. Its role is to help create an organization which is increasingly
comfortable with continuous change, has higher levels of staff retention,
increased project efficiency and knowledge management, and thus greater
client value.
Making the Connections

Using internal communication to develop new

products and markets
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is a successful company in a very successful sector,
with spectacular growth figures. Within the consumer healthcare organization,
internal communication is clearly linked to creating shareholder value.

The company’s strategy is to exploit its portfolio of brands as effectively as

possible. To do that, GSK applies global processes with a local face in individual
markets. The aim is to drive greater innovation and creativity across the
business, to reduce costs and to reduce duplication by sharing services. They
also aim to standardize processes where possible, because it makes it easier to
improve them and focuses time and effort on innovation in new areas, rather
than on reinventing wheels that exist elsewhere in the business.


To GSK the importance of internal communication lies in helping develop a
global business in which managers from each country understand and support
a global approach and have stronger local ownership of global processes.

Using internal communication to reduce cost and

streamline processes
Unipart manufactures and distributes auto parts to car manufacturers and
a large supply chain for the replacement market. In terms of quality and
productivity it is now a world leader. It has three key objectives – remove cost
and waste, improve productivity and deliver outstanding customer service.

Unipart’s aim is for its 4000 employees to help achieve those objectives, as
well as pursuing its core crusade of achieving 50 per cent more for 50 per cent
less cost. Its key to achieving this is to target the supply chain.

The organization recognizes that there is a close interdependence between

the suppliers in the chain. If there are inefficiencies, duplication and waste in
the supplier at the bottom of the chain, these are inevitably passed upwards.
Waste is then multiplied at each successive link, saddling the ultimate
customer with disproportionately high costs. Beating the competition
therefore requires a much tighter management of the supply chain.

Unipart has developed its own approach to supply chain management which
involves working in project teams with suppliers to identify the hidden cost
of transactions which benefit nobody and eliminate them, thereby reducing
cost and inconvenience to both parties. This approach is in stark contrast
to the traditional one of using purchasing power to browbeat suppliers into
offering better deals.

However, to make this partnership approach work, attitudes and behaviours

needed to shift within the Unipart workforce; they had to understand and
buy into the ethos of partnership and let go of the browbeating approach.
 More Value From Internal Communication
For Unipart the importance of internal communication lies in providing
employees with the knowledge to do the job, the will to identify and make
change, and the licence and permission to get on and do it.

All these organizations have adopted a similar approach to internal

communication. They have approached it as a means to an end, rather than
an end in itself, and they have:

• clearly identified their strategy;

• made the connection between the strategy and the specific attitudes
and behaviours they need from their people;

• focused their communication on helping achieve those attitudes and

behaviours.

Using internal communication to gain

people’s support for the business strategy
Organizations are keen for their employees to understand the business
strategy but, more importantly, they want their people to help turn this
strategy into reality by providing excellent customer service, continuous
improvement and innovation.

A company thrives by offering customers something different and more

valuable than its competitors can. It then has to ensure that its employees
deliver on the promise it makes to customers and that employee values,
loyalty and behaviour are all connected. Building an internal culture that
creates unity and pride among employees acts as a competitive edge that is
difficult for competitors to copy.

Indifference, however, can kill differentiation. Customers’ satisfaction

is affected by their experience of the entire organization’s performance,
so employee attitudes and behaviour are critical to retaining them. The
Journal of Marketing cites the main reasons for customer defection as being
employee-related. While only 9 per cent of customers are lured away by
the competition, 68 per cent are turned away by an employee’s indifferent
attitude.

Providing a quality service or product to the customer and good

communication are inextricably linked. Research shows that good internal
communication fosters increased employee satisfaction. Better satisfaction
reduces staff turnover, and higher staff retention is linked with higher
customer satisfaction. Research carried out by the management consultancy,
Bain and Co, reveals that satisfied customers are more likely to stay loyal, and
that higher customer retention leads to higher profitability.
Making the Connections

Organizations are eager to make the customer’s voice heard within the
organization, to challenge internal viewpoints, create a greater sense of
commercialism and re-educate employees about customers’ priorities. Yet,
too often, the way in which they manage communication does not fit these
aspirations but, instead, causes resistance and misunderstanding.

In one organization, senior management were frustrated at the failure of

production workers to appreciate the true level of market competitiveness. While
only 25 per cent of the board believed that customers were satisfied, nearly 50
per cent of first-line supervisors believed that they were satisfying customers.
Worse, supervisors then reassured their team members that everything was fine
– defeating the board’s efforts to sound a wake-up call to the workforce.

This disconnect between top management and those at the sharp end was due
 to a breakdown in the management chain and a failure to educate employees.
This company is not alone: 80 per cent of companies reviewed by continuous
improvement consultancy Peter Chadwick in the UK, France and Germany
monitored customer satisfaction, but only 20 per cent made the information
available below middle management. Information about customers and what
they value is typically only circulated to 35 per cent of staff. Without such
knowledge, how can those dealing with customers be expected to understand
them and add value?

Innovation is crucial to strategy

Research by KPMG suggests that most of the UK’s largest businesses believe
innovation to be crucial in creating an enduring and successful strategy.
Management seems convinced that successfully introducing new products
and ideas can help even mature companies revive their fortunes. This is borne
out by a PricewaterhouseCoopers study of 800 large companies. The most
innovative 20 per cent had generated 75 per cent of their turnover from new
products and services in the previous 5 years. The least effective 20 per cent
gained only 10 per cent of their turnover in that way.

Today’s pace of technological advance means that any gain in superior

performance will be brief. Points of competitive differentiation – such as price,
quality and distribution – are soon matched. No single innovation will yield a
sustainable competitive advantage. The competitive advantage of companies
such as General Electric grows out of the company’s culture – a climate that
fosters continual innovations and keeps searching for competitive advantage.
The question marks that have appeared over Marks and Spencer would have
been unthinkable at almost any previous point in the company’s history and
show that no competitive advantage can be taken for granted. However, if
you get the culture right, sustainable competitive advantage by innovation
and other means can follow. Good internal communication is key to getting
the culture right.
 More Value From Internal Communication
Continuous improvement
A KPMG study of a cross-section of 135 manufacturers worldwide over a 15-
year period highlighted lack of quality as the single most important source
of weakness in Western industry. It concluded that the most significant
cost reductions are realized by improved cooperation and communication
between the marketing and research and development departments. This
approach leads to the reduction of waste through better process control,
reduced engineering changes and improved product design. Creating this sort
of continuous improvement culture requires better communication, for well
informed and more widely educated employees.

Lack of attention to communication and involvement has undermined

improvement programmes. Western manufacturing still lags behind due to
the very limited success of its improvement programmes, most of which start 
with a bang, become bogged down and finally fizzle out. They fail principally
because project leaders take too narrow a view and do not communicate with,
and involve, enough other disciplines and departments – particularly the
shopfloor.

All the changes described make great demands on employees. They have to
understand what’s happening, deal with change, form new relationships, play
by new rules and make new decisions faster and in cooperation with colleagues,
all with one end in mind – creating greater value. Creating that value depends
upon giving them internal communication which is itself valuable.

How can communication create value?

The first step to realizing the value of internal communication is to expect it
to have some.

Competition has forced companies to compete more fiercely and prompted

consumers to ask for more for their money. To compete through greater
innovation, better quality, cost-effectiveness and customer service,
organizations need motivated and committed employees.

As things now stand, organizations are unlikely to achieve the objectives of

engaging and informing their employees. There are two reasons for this. First,
communication strategies are too often based on keeping people informed
in a stable, ‘jobs-for-life’ hierarchical organization with a dominant market
position. These are useless in a fast-changing, insecure organization fighting
for market share and trying to innovate and develop new products. Second,
organizations are not applying the lessons which they have learned in other
areas of the business – that value is created through careful management of
assets, efficiencies in supply chain management, applying a customer focus
and continuous process improvement.
Making the Connections

Communication is vital to creating value. Its importance lies in turning

strategy into action. For strategies to succeed people need to understand
what the strategy is, the context to the strategy and the rationale behind it.
They need to know their own role and the specific actions they should take.
Unfortunately, organizations often do not treat communication as a value-
adding business discipline but as a branch of welfare, and, when necessary, a
means of management propaganda.

Internal communication is so critical to business success that it cannot be

approached as a cottage industry, or left to ‘gifted amateurs’.

Helping manage complexity

Flatter structures are devolving decision making to lower levels in the
10
organization, creating the need for more information to ensure high-quality
decisions. Employees expect to be treated as adults and want to know the ‘why’
as well as the ‘what’ behind management decisions. All this means a geometric
increase in the amount and complexity of information being circulated.

Change now means being in a state of almost constant flux. Winning

organizations are those which are most fluid, anticipate change and adapt
quickly. Businesses which are able to make constant changes quickly and
effectively are more competitive. This means that agility, learning and
adaptation are key to competitive advantage. Speed of implementation
is more important than brilliance of strategy. However, speeding up the
change process is a tall order; in effect, organizations have to change the
gearbox while keeping the car on the road. They have to win the support and
participation of their employees, manage change while maintaining normal
activities and ensure that the changes they introduce stay in place. Effective
internal communication facilitates change. Handled correctly, it makes
implementation easier and faster, reduces resistance to change and provides
clearer leadership.

Toxic communication
Although internal communication can provide greater value for
organizations, there are some improvements which have to be made first.

Business leaders are failing to convey their objectives to their staff. Trust
inside organizations is low, and some employees are happy to be ignorant of
what is going on around them. While change is constant, it is communicated
poorly, and the volume of information overloads limited employee ‘brain
space’. Finally, organizations are confusing volume and value, and producing
‘toxic communication’ which consumes employees’ time while creating
confusion.
 More Value From Internal Communication
Research among employees over the last 10 years shows the impact of the
disconnect between the thinking of the leaders and the attitudes of the led.
Understanding what leads to success creates the motivation to achieve it; 84 per
cent of employees who understand what makes their business successful want to
help create that success, whereas only 46 per cent of those who don’t understand
share that feeling. When employees understand their overall role in the business,
91 per cent will work towards that success, but the number plummets to 23 per
cent if they don’t. The message is clear – employees who understand the big
picture are more likely to play their part to help their company succeed.

To succeed, companies need employees who are clear about the overall
direction and the part they need to play. They also need their employees to be
willing to follow the lead and play their part.

When it comes to being clear and willing, employees fall into four categories 11
(see Figure 1.1):

Unclear what the strategy is, but willing to help

Fifty per cent of employees typically do not know what the strategy is and
only 25 per cent ever get feedback on progress. This 25 per cent tends to be
positioned near the top of the organization, so those on the front line, with
customer contact, have the least idea. Willing, but unclear about direction,
they are ‘unguided missiles’. These represent the greatest opportunity for
organizations. They have good will towards the organization, and usually a
desire for greater involvement. If people are a company’s greatest asset, these
people represent assets which are seriously underperforming.

Figure 1.1 The different degrees of employees clarity and willingness

Making the Connections

Employees rarely operate in a ‘strategy vacuum’. Even when they are

completely misguided or out-of-date, they usually believe that they have some
idea of what’s going on in the business and fill in the vacuum for themselves.
In other words, a lack of direction from the leadership leaves these people
to find their own way. At best, this robs the company of their true efforts; at
worst, it turns them into ‘unguided missiles’.

When organizations are shifting strategy – responding to change in markets

and among competitors, and looking for new ways of adding value – they are
very likely to leave their employees behind. These employees will continue
to pursue a vague notion of a strategy based on past glories and outdated
definitions of value and service.

Employees who insist on providing Rolls Royce solutions to Mini-sized

12 problems are often working from a keen sense of heritage and pride based
on their past product leadership. Their enthusiasm creates unnecessary cost,
complexity and confusion.

Clear and willing

These employees know the company’s direction, understand the broader
context, know their part, and get feedback on both the company’s progress and
on their own performance. They are the ‘hot shots’, warming to the company’s
aspirations and fired up to help achieve them.

Unclear and unwilling

These employees are the ‘slow burners’ who are not sure where the
company is heading, but drag their feet anyway. They are usually
characterized as not knowing and not caring. However, they are in fact a
mixture of sheep and goats – those who feel unmotivated because they lack
a sense of direction and those who are happy to continue going their own
way.

Companies tend to become fixated both with this group – because they are
perceived not to care – and with the next group, the ‘refuseniks’, because
they seem actively to oppose change. However, their real focus should be
on the ‘unguided missiles’, who represent huge untapped potential, and on
providing them with clear goals and direction. Similarly, clearer direction will
raise the motivation and desire to contribute of significant numbers of ‘the
slow burners’.

Clear but disagree

People resist doing anything which violates their sense of professionalism.
They may try to continue with an old strategy because they believe that it
makes better sense. Where they disagree with the direction of the company,
these ‘refuseniks’ may actively resist or undermine it.
 More Value From Internal Communication
Communication as a way of making
connections
If companies want high performance, leaders must demonstrate the connection
between the company’s success and that of its employees. There has to be a link
between the leader, who can see what needs to be done, and the doers, who
have their hands on the levers of change but who may not see the big picture.
Communication should provide that link, connecting those who know what
needs to change to those who have the power to make change happen.

Making the connection means providing everyone with a shared

understanding of the organization’s strategic business issues and ensuring
that they understand the ‘whys’ as well as the ‘whats’. As reasonable as this
sounds, that connection is not being made strongly or consistently enough.
13
A survey by Albert Karr of the chief executives of 164 large companies showed
that most of them believed that personal communication increases workers’ job
satisfaction and commitment and results in improved earnings. However, most
of the chief executives questioned also said that, because of other demands,
they couldn’t afford to give more time to communicating with their people.

A survey carried out by Forum Corporation found that 82 per cent of Fortune
50 executives believed that their corporate strategy is understood by ‘everyone
who needs to know’. This suggests that there is a limited number of people
who need to know, and that the majority of employees are not among that
number. A Louis Harris study concludes that, ‘less than a third of employees
say management provides clear goals and direction’, pointing to a large gap
between perception and reality. Further evidence comes from Professor Robert
Kelley of Carnegie Mellon University who found that nearly 70 per cent
of the 400 corporate executives he asked believed that business leaders fail
adequately to communicate their goals to employees.

Trust is low
Employee attitude surveys typically show that most of the information
employees receive is via the grapevine, and they have a healthy scepticism
about the information they receive through formal channels. Often they believe
management has a hidden agenda, and feel that saying what they really think
would be a career-limiting move. At the same time, managers think that they
are good at communicating, are cynical about their leadership’s ability, and are
overloaded with information they can make little sense of, but still won’t share.

Ignorance is bliss
Employee research consistently shows that only 50 per cent of employees
know where their companies are going or what they are trying to achieve.
Making the Connections

Despite this level of ignorance, managers think they are doing a good job in
communicating. The lower you go down the organization – that is, closer to
the customer – the less clear the business’s objectives become. Where people
do know the objectives, they rarely get feedback on progress, making the
business’s objectives academic and detached from day-to-day work.

Almost 100 per cent of employees are convinced that they themselves
are already doing a good job; they are helping their company reach its
destination even when they don’t know what that destination is. Where
understanding of business strategy is restricted to a few senior managers,
implementing that strategy successfully will be all the more unlikely.

The role of leadership in communication

14
Senior business leaders are under pressure. The stakes are high, both for
the business and for them personally – between 35–50 per cent of CEOs are
replaced within 5 years.

In today’s turbulent environment, business needs leadership from managers

– people who don’t just execute the rules but understand the principle behind
them, so they can deal with the changing demands of the business. Jack
Welch, former CEO of General Electric, recognized this:

‘...yesterday’s idea of the boss, who became the boss because he or she knew
one more fact than the person working for them, is yesterday’s manager.
Tomorrow’s person leads through a vision, a shared set of values, a shared
objective.’

Within organizations, structures are flatter, staff are more mobile and power
and authority are vested in the person, not in the position. It is the job of
leaders to navigate the inevitable turbulence of change. In today’s world,
business is driven by knowledge, networks and relationships.

A key issue for internal communicators is building stronger relationships

between management and staff, especially at times of change, when the staff’s
trust in senior management usually declines. This needs the commitment
from senior management to invest time in face-to-face communication,
despite apparently always having more urgent things to do.

Communication is not the responsibility of a single charismatic leader, but

of all managers. Peter Drucker estimated that ‘60 per cent of all management
problems result from faulty communication’. Creating a customer- and
quality-focused culture requires strong and clear leadership from a committed
senior management, because lack of commitment is transparent and readily
detected.
 More Value From Internal Communication
Poor communication of change
Employees report that they want to perform well at work, but are often
prevented from doing so by a limited understanding of what is required. This
is compounded by communication with unclear meaning and which does not
specify what, if any, action is required, and by information which is poorly
presented and difficult to use.

Management credibility and trust are assets under attack from confused and
poorly integrated communication. Such complexity and confusion is being
driven by competing communicators within the organization, by a proliferation
of messages and a multiplicity of channels. A report by Synopsis which examined
practice in internal communication within 123 organizations in the UK, Europe
and North America found that well intentioned communication is generating
more heat than light. It is raising both senior management and employee 15
frustrations and wasting the considerable investment that organizations make in
communication. Senior management’s frustration at the slow pace of change is
matched by employees’ frustration at information overload and the continuous
waves of change initiatives. Employees’ horizons and tolerance thresholds are
sinking and their willingness to listen and engage is diminishing.

The speed of organizational change is hindered by:

• initiative indigestion – the number of initiatives exceed people's

ability to digest change;

• change initiatives that confuse employees and clamour for their time
and attention;

• dissonance between the strategic thinking of senior leaders and the

perceptions of those at the sharp end;

• a disconnect between the leaders and the change strategists and the
professional communicators whose function is to facilitate change
within the rest of the organization.

This failure to make communication clear and simple is creating resistance

and contributing to the high failure rate of initiatives. The growing volume
of information competing for employees' attention is confusing rather than
helpful, and frustration with how communication is managed is rising. A
survey by Pitney Bowes (2000) revealed that, ‘Communication tools are being
adopted by Fortune 1000 companies at a stunning pace, with little sensitivity
to cost or the overall effect of the communications glut upon workers’.

Employee overload
Organizations are beginning to realize that information overkill is consuming
precious time, creating mixed messages and exacerbating the media onslaught
Making the Connections

on the individual. However, people in organizations do not passively swallow

all the information they receive. Because they only have a limited capacity,
they develop coping strategies to deal with information overload – deleting
e-mails unread, waiting until messages are sent many times as a test of their
urgency or assuming that anything really important will be repeated around
the coffee machine.

The limit to communication is not the number of trees left standing

from which to make newsletters, but the extent to which people have the
inclination, time and goodwill to engage with the communicator.

Employees’ ‘brain space’ – the time and attention they are willing to give
to messages aimed at them – is shrinking. Their capacity to process the
information they receive is also under attack. With more work being done
16 by fewer people, there is less time for chatting and for the social interactions
that used to diffuse communication around organizations. An international
engineering company that reduced its headcount and closed the staff
restaurant to save costs discovered that its employees’ understanding of the
business direction plummeted.

As companies outsource, use flexible workforces, use third party telephone

call centres and mix and match full- and part-timers, this erosion of
understanding threatens to get worse. Part-timers may see the job as
only a part of their lives and as something that has to fit in with other
commitments. They will be working short and irregular hours, and may rarely
come together in one place as a group. Yet they will increasingly come to
represent their company to the customer, and the impression they give will
depend on the communication they get.

Confusing volume and value

Organizations are crippling themselves by distributing large amounts of
meaningless information, and technology is exacerbating existing bad habits.
The information flow inside the typical company is increasing at about 2 per
cent per month, yet a recent survey showed that 75 per cent of people were
not getting the relevant information that they needed. Just over half said
that technology had increased the quantity, but not the quality, of internal
communication.

As organizations distribute more, but lower-quality, information, raw

information that is not refined into meaning threatens to become
deadweight. One company, for example, issued frequent newsletters
describing, in great detail, the workings of the distribution process. It used
words suitable for a graduate-level reading ability – despite the fact that the
average reading level among employees was that of a 9-year-old.
 More Value From Internal Communication
People who do not understand what’s happening do not feel in control
of their own destiny. Failure to make communication simpler increases
resistance to change initiatives. These can range from business process re-
engineering, with a failure rate of around 70 per cent, to the 70 per cent of
mergers which do not realize their promise due to human resource issues.

In a world of constant change, demanding quantum leaps in performance,

communication can be a powerful means of making change happen. To
do that it must be well managed. Continuing as it is, undisciplined and
unmanaged, it will clutter the organization, spreading greater complexity and
confusion. Poorly disciplined communication will prove a roadblock to the
very change that’s needed.

The traditional approach to internal communication is that of the production

line. The most efficient communication is that at the lowest unit cost, exposing 17
the greatest number of eyeballs, in the largest sized groups, to the greatest
number of slides in the shortest amount of time. This may be efficient, but it
certainly is not effective. While some organizations continue to view internal
communication as the dissemination of information or messages, others are
starting to use it as a key means of engaging and directing their people.

Having laid out all the problems, we are forced to ask, ‘Where’s the solution?’.
The rest of this chapter lays out a model for the way forward, which
subsequent chapters unpack in detail.

Improving internal communication

In the restless quest for value, organizations will turn out every cupboard
in the business to find underperforming assets which they can turn to
their advantage. Increased competition, rapid product development cycles,
faster innovation, more sophisticated supply partners and more demanding
customers can mean that sustainable advantage cannot depend on product,
brands and services alone. Companies must use all their assets, business
processes and relationships to compete successfully.

In our information age, an organization’s assets include the knowledge and

interrelationships of its people. Businesses take the input of information,
and use the creative and intellectual assets of their people to produce value.
Internal communication is one of the core processes by which business
can create value. Managing communication as a core process requires the
adoption of some established business principles.

This section describes an integrated approach which will turn communication

to business advantage. It highlights the typical flaws in traditional
approaches to communication and identifies some of the key elements of
succesful internal communication. It argues that to gain the greatest value
Making the Connections

from communication, the process must be better managed, and provides a

framework for integrating communication more effectively. Finally, it shows
how to reconnect broken communication links to form a virtuous circle.

As organizations reorganize around greater customer focus, supply chain

management and key processes, functional departments have reinvented
themselves to redefine how they can be valuable to the business. Traditional
business functions have transformed themselves as they sought to
demonstrate the relevance of their role. Manufacturing has been reborn as
logistics, order fulfillment and supply chain management. Purchasing has
become the more strategic-sounding ‘procurement and supplier partnership’.
Born-again finance departments have transformed themselves from accounts
and spreadsheet producers to ‘decision supporters’, providing management
with information, interpretation and strategic options.
18
These functions have focused on creating value, reducing duplication,
increasing cooperation and managing end-to-end processes. Their reinvention
has been driven by the need to create greater customer and shareholder value.

Internal communication has joined the party as a function which is trying to

apply the same principles. This is being driven by companies demanding a
better return from their investment in communication, and a realization that
internal communication has a more significant task in the business.

For an organization’s communication to be a strategic tool, it must be able to

help employees share knowledge and information, extract meaning from them
and make decisions that add value. This demands internal communication that
helps people convert information into action in a four-step process:

1. Providing content – providing people with data, information, ideas

and concepts.

2. Putting it in context – people need to be able to process that

information, and to make it relevant to their situation. They need to
be able to put it into a context – to add a new piece to the jigsaw of
what they already know.

Putting information in context is important because meaning

depends on shared context. Seeing the bigger picture also helps
people navigate through information sources and communication
channels. After all, if you know where you are trying to get to, and
you know where you are, reading the map is easier.

3. Having conversations – people need to explore, test and understand

the implications of what they are doing. This is best done through
conversation – a process that enables them to develop a shared
understanding through sharing views and perceptions.

4. Gathering feedback – ensuring that communication has been

understood as intended, to see what has been added to it and what
has resulted from it.
 More Value From Internal Communication
The problem is that organizations typically concentrate on the first element
of this four-step process – delivering content and creating awareness. Their
first step should be to shift from seeing communication as providing input,
to seeing it also as producing outcome. Without checking the outcome of
communication – that the information has been received, that it has been
understood correctly, how it has been interpreted and whether it has been
translated into action – there is no true communication, just the distribution
of information and the broadcasting of messages.

Managing communication as a cycle

While it is politically correct among senior managers to say that internal
communication is important, several problems typically accompany such a
claim. Business leaders do not give communications priority, and it is not seen 19
as a key part of leadership. A vicious circle therefore turns into a downward
spiral. For example, a lack of time invested in communicating strategy leads
to a lack of understanding at all levels of the organization.

Behaviours do not change, so actions do not match the strategy, so frustration

sets in and less time is invested in communication. Business priorities
continue to squeeze out communication time and local management do not
make communication a priority. The communication function is inadequately
resourced, and there is insufficient business support for skills development.
Finally, regular measurement and accountability are avoided, so there is no
evidence of change or return on investment.

Meanwhile, those who are keen to improve internal communication

inside the organization become increasingly concerned. They want to link
communication to the business strategy, but may have managers or internal
clients who perceive communication as being largely about distributing
newsletters. Communicators – that is those whose primary job is to support
communication within the organization – will see senior management
commitment as crucial to building stronger relationships between the leaders
and employees. They want senior managers to participate actively in internal
communication, but managers may already feel they are committed enough.

Communicators understand that forward planning is critical to avoiding

information overload, to making the best use of communication channels and
to targeting the information to the right people. However, simply getting the
communication infrastructure in place to get the right information, to the right
people, at the right time is often enough of a challenge. Whether they can
become involved in planning will depend on the organization’s perception and
role of the internal communication department, and of them personally.

Almost all of them will want to develop a vibrant two-way communication

process that adds value to the business. In this they will be hampered by a
Making the Connections

lack of time and by the apparent reluctance of senior management to buy in

to two-way communication on matters which are important to staff.

Finally, they will yearn for valid measurement of internal communication, to

help accelerate the rate of improvement, demonstrate the value they add, and
to defend their budgets in lean times. They will understand that the true cost
of communication lies in the line manager and employee time it takes up, not
only in their production budgets.

While they are there to support the line managers in fulfilling their duty
to communicate, they will know that the best way to achieve a return on
investment is to make managers accountable, and to measure them regularly.
However, it may be only the communication department, not the managers
who are held to account.
20
Communicators will be all the more frustrated, seeing how internal
communication can add value, while the rest of the business seems blind to
the possibilities.

Many organizations have already improved their communication in a

first phase of greater professionalism, better standards and consistency of
presentation. This has taken them some distance toward their goals.

Now they need to move to the second phase – using internal communication
to create understanding that can be turned into valuable action. This requires
better communication integration and management, and greater employee
involvement and dialogue.

While no company gets everything right, there are some simple reasons
why some get it so wrong. At the heart of their failure is a series of broken
connections in the communication circuit. Communication strategy is
not connected to business strategy; measurement is not connected to
business outcomes; face-to-face communication is not connected to creating
understanding and engagement.

In most organizations different responsibilities are placed in different

departments – planning in Strategy, internal communication in Corporate
Affairs, measurement in Human Resources – and are not integrated or
connected to each other. This is like setting different builders to work on
different parts of a house, with different plans and hoping the individual
parts will come together harmoniously.

Organizations therefore first need to make the connections between

departments that own parts of internal communication and then make the
connections between the separate elements of internal communication that
each department owns. The key is to view communication as a process and
to manage it as a cycle. Based on work with leading companies over the last
 More Value From Internal Communication
15 years, and drawing on Synopsis’ research into best practice in over 120
UK and US organizations, outlined below is a framework for integrating
communication more effectively.

Integrating communication effectively

Many organizations are doing good things in individual parts of their internal
communication processes, but lose the benefit by not linking them together.
Problems in one part of the corporate body show up as symptoms in a different
area, in the same way that referred pain in the leg can point to a problem in the
back. For example, the team meeting process in an organization may constantly
be reviewed in the face of continual complaints from employees. Yet despite
continually retraining managers and team leaders to improve their interpersonal
skills, they still fail to turn the sow’s ear of poorly produced and irrelevant 21
information into the silk purse of enthused and engaged employees. The root
problem may simply be that the corporate information supplied is so boring and
irrelevant that it discourages local managers from holding meetings at all. The
fact that the information is so poor may be due to the lack of forward planning,
resulting in a last minute scramble for content, whatever its relevance.

To get a better return from their investment in internal communication,

organizations need to use the principles of linkage and mutual reinforcement,
to form a virtuous circle of communication, with the following seven links
(see Figure 1.2):

• strategy

• leadership

• planning and prioritization

• channel management and content development

• role of the internal communication function

• face-to-face communication

• impact measurement

The first three links focus on doing the right thing, and making the
connection between the business strategy and the communication strategy.
The next four links focus on doing things right – having efficient and effective
processes. When activity in all the links is aligned, internal communication
brings a real business pay-off.

While this framework is based on experience of the best internal

communication practice in leading companies, it is not offered as a
prescription of ‘best practice’. It is good practice which has to be tailored to
an organization’s individual business needs. Organizations can make the
Making the Connections

22

Figure 1.2 Seven links of communication

mistake of ‘cherry-picking’ apparent ‘best practices’ and adopting them without

considering their unique needs – a strategy rather like taking someone else’s
medication just because it seems to have done them good

Thus, the challenge for internal communicators is twofold: to develop and

implement good practice in each of these areas, and to link them together so
they are mutually reinforcing.

Strategy
The purpose of internal communication is not just to keep employees happy.
It should be business-focused and help employees understand the business’
competitive strategy and how to deliver on it to produce profit.

There are three steps to achieving this. Organizations should clearly identify
their strategy, identify the attitudes and behaviours they need from their people
and then target their communication towards helping achieve those attitudes
and behaviours. The focus is on closing a performance gap – identifying the
roadblocks to adding value and then using communication to help remove them.

Successful companies do not start to communicate when some change is

needed, they already have the understanding of the bigger picture in place
 More Value From Internal Communication
to allow for rapid response. Succesful communicators forge strong links with
those who drive strategy and change – the strategy, planning, marketing and
IT functions.

Leadership
Leadership involves setting the agenda and then taking others with you. To
do this effectively leaders have to communicate in a way that inspires others
and builds a sense of commitment to shared goals.

Leaders may have different styles, ranging from big picture to small detail,
and from entrepreneurial to controlling. Whatever their style, communication
remains central to their leadership role, the critical success factors being:

• Consistency of message. The leadership team must be seen to be

in agreement and consistent in purpose. 23
• Clarity of purpose. The top team should define the direction of
the organization, state it clearly and simply, and then make sure it is
distilled into a few unambiguous targets.

• Clarity of principles. People should understand the way in which

their leader would apply the organization’s values, so that they can
make decisions on the ground according to these principles.

• Focus. Very few priorities should be set, and they should be

emphasized repeatedly.

Successful leaders understand the importance of good communication

and plan time to make themselves visible to their people. For example,
Jim Burke, the CEO of Johnson & Johnson, spent 40 per cent of his time
communicating the organization’s credo. The fact that the board allocates
time for communicating sends a message to leaders at all levels that they too
are expected to make such time available.

To have full impact on the organization, internal communication and

its strategy must have the full endorsement of the board. This will make
finances and resources for communication more readily available and keep
communication on the board’s agenda since they will want to see a return on
investment.

Leaders need to sponsor and review the internal communication strategy

and plan, and agree and stick to key messages. They should show the way by
having specific communication targets which are publicly measured.

Business is complex, yet strategy needs to be simplified if it is to connect to

those at the front line. Successful leadership is directly rooted in effective
communication which is kept simple. This means presenting the case
clearly, in a way that is compelling and allows people to take action. Too
Making the Connections

often, leaders create difficulties by communicating a million complicated

things rather than a few, significant ones. Organizations should therefore
be able to express plainly the business strategy in a one-page summary, with
the top five priorities clearly described. There should be clear goals linked
directly to the strategy of the business and a clear link to what the customer
wants and needs. Performance information should be communicated as
a series of simple, ‘Are we winning?’ measures, not as a raft of ratios and
percentages.

Planning and prioritization

The disconnection between leaders and their organization is reflected in the
fact that, although 55 per cent of companies surveyed in the UK have board-
level representation of internal communication, only one-third of boards
actually approve the communication strategy and plan. To make matters
24 worse, internal communicators are not being involved closely enough with
the functions which typically plan and drive change – strategy and planning,
marketing and IT.

Without planning, organizations cannot hope to manage people’s reactions

to change. Instead, they are forever ‘catching up’, so reducing the speed
with which change can be brought about. If communicators do not have
sufficient contact with those directing change in the business, they can be
forced into setting the wrong priorities and end up announcing the ‘what’
of change rather than sharing the ‘why’. Communication plans need to be
reviewed quarterly to help the business respond quickly to change. Most
communication plans tend to be set annually and are rarely revisited by
the leadership team. Small wonder then that businesses struggle to make
change happen; one of the most powerful weapons in the change armoury
– communication – is firing blanks.

For example, the objective of most mega mergers is to increase market share
while making substantial cost savings via economies of scale. This usually
involves merging functions or organizations, removing duplication and
increasing operating efficiencies. The end result is fewer employees who
then have to operate in new environments, roles and locations. Achieving
this involves the careful communication of redundancies, training, cultural
change and relocation. However, although communicating to employees
is a critical part of achieving the benefits of a merger, 75 per cent of
acquirers reviewed in one survey had given the communication plan very
little consideration before acquisition. Employees typically do not receive
information in a timely manner and become disaffected when they hear of
key decisions through the grapevine. The outcome can be a host of ‘people
problems’ that leads to poor productivity, lower employee commitment
and, ultimately, an exodus of disgruntled employees. From the leadership’s
viewpoint, therefore, failure to plan communication means failing to achieve
the full benefits of the merger.
 More Value From Internal Communication
Programmes of change are a fact of modern business life. Yet research shows
that over a quarter of those managing change initiatives do not produce
communication plans. Without these it is harder clearly to coordinate how
and when different change initiatives will affect people in the organization.
This leads to change managers competing for communication time and
resources, with the risk that change fails through initiative overload – too
many changes hitting people too quickly. This may explain why employees
keep seeing sudden, unexpected and uncoordinated changes, which
only serve to increase their anxiety and frustration. It may also reinforce
employees’ perception that the management team does not have its collective
act together.

Too few businesses involve their top team in approving the internal
communication strategy and plan. Businesses may say they want their people
to sing from the same songsheet, but they fail to ensure that the top team 25
agrees the words – small wonder, then, that the result is a cacophony of
mixed messages.

Organizations need to think ahead, show clear linkages between different

initiatives and give people the bigger picture of change. Those leading
change initiatives are risking failure by not planning communication and not
coordinating it with other initiatives.

If communicators are to help the business achieve its objectives, they must
be involved earlier in the planning process and involve senior management
in the planning. They need to ensure they focus on business objectives,
not communication objectives, and identify issues from the employees’
viewpoint, not just the organization’s. Communicators can help by being
explicit and specific about what decisions must be made, and what people
need to do differently.

Developing an annual calendar of communication events and milestones,

explicitly linked to the business plan, is a good first step. The focus should
be on educating people about the rationale for change, rather than simply
announcing conclusions. This will require involving communicators earlier in
the planning, rather than at the end when implementation looms.

Channel management and content development

Communication is about the transfer of meaning from person to person, not
simply the passing on of messages. The more chaotic, new or interconnected
change becomes, the more employees are forced to make choices and
prioritize. Helping them find their way through the maze of change depends
on making information meaningful and highlighting its point. In other
words, companies who want to create understanding need to make meaning
not messages.
Making the Connections

Employees’ mental capacity to absorb and process information should

be treated as a strategic resource. The success of the business depends on
employees being able to use information well to make good decisions. The
average professional worker receives 178 messages per day by email and
voicemail. In a world that automatically increases employees’ information load
by 2 per cent per month, communication reducers, not producers, are needed.

Communication channels need to be better managed to target information,

reduce interruptions by irrelevant messages, and liberate employees’ time and
‘brain space’. Organizations need the right mix of communication channels,
and to be able to use the right channel for the right type of information.
Equally, organizations need to target their audiences more closely and tailor
messages more relevantly to address their people’s interests and concerns.

26 Reducing information overload requires organizations to shift from the ‘oil

refinery’ model of communication, in which more messages are pumped
down communication pipelines. They need to shift instead towards a model
of ‘air traffic control’, which has an overview of communication activities and
plans and coordinates communication to avoid overload and communication
collisions. This means that organizations will have to work harder to make
communication simpler, translating ‘management-speak’ into ‘plain talking’.

Supply partnerships are well established in virtually every industrial sector. To

become more valuable, internal communication has to follow the same route.
Internal communication needs to be treated as an end-to-end process, with
greater partnership and cooperation among all the different communicators
within an organization.

The role of the internal communication function

Most businesses want a great deal from their internal communication
function, ranging from the strategic to the tactical. Internal communicators
are typically overloaded and frustrated as they try to focus on the strategic,
while having to devote most of their time to dealing with the tactical.

The obstacle to internal communication departments adding value is often

a lack of access to decision makers and being trapped in their internal
customers’ perception of them as messengers. This is made worse by their
own narrow focus on internal communication objectives rather than on
business objectives.

For internal communication to deliver value it has to be located close to the

heart of the business – somewhere it can support the ways in which value is
created for customers and close to where the money is made.

Communication professionals should be of high standard, with the skills

and experience to understand business strategy. Clearly, if part of their job
 More Value From Internal Communication
is to express strategy in words that can be turned into action, it helps if they
understand it first themselves. Furthermore, clarifying the role of the internal
communications department forces the top team to clarify what it wants its
internal communication to achieve. In doing so, the top team is more likely
to realize that internal communication needs to be more than a production
department.

Face-to-face communication
By distributing information in the belief that they are communicating,
organizations are deluding themselves. They are confusing information with
communication. The distribution of information is the first, but not the last
step in the communication process. Information can travel over wires, but
communication happens between the ears.

Communication combines two strands – information and interaction. 27

Information refers to the delivery and receipt of data, concepts and messages,
and involves issues of how best to share, structure and extract meaning.
Interaction refers to how people perceive and relate to each other, and
involves issues of relationships, familiarity, credibility, trust and collaboration.
Both strands needs to be intertwined for success.

Despite the availability of technology, effective communication is as much

about interaction as information. Technology may get information to people
more quickly, but it is not a substitute for face-to-face communication.

Face-to-face contact – or ‘talking’ to use the full technical term – is still

employees’ preferred method of communication, and organizations need to
do more to exploit its full value. Time is the most limited resource in most
organizations, and better use can be made of precious face-to-face time which
is too often used for the wrong purposes – to tell people things they could
more easily read about, in meetings which are badly run and boring.

As mentioned earlier, effective face-to-face communication depends on

conversation that allows information to be put in context. The moment
of truth for communication is in conversation, which depends on how
well people relate to each other – the quality of interaction. Since local
relevance emerges from discussion with colleagues, organizations need more
opportunities for dialogue and conversation between their people. People
need to be given time to think through information, react to it and discuss it.
The more they are force-fed with information, the less they digest it.

Face-to-face communication sessions often happen in teams, so teams need to

be provided with tools and techniques to get the most value out of the time
they spend together. Those who lead sessions should be trained in facilitation
and interpersonal skills and in understanding how people relate and respond
to each other. Briefing and presentation skills are not enough.
Making the Connections

Turning information into knowledge depends on people’s ability to process

and apply it. The value of information is down to the individuals who bring
their experience and knowledge to interpreting it. This is turn depends on the
relationship between members of the team, as they pool experience and spark
ideas off each other.

Organizations are increasingly investing time in coaching their people in

how to understand and deal with each other, to increase communication,
collaboration and innovation.

Middle managers can add more value not by acting as a mere conduit for
messages, but by putting information into context and painting the bigger
picture. However, to do this, they must be given a clear understanding
themselves of what the issues and implications are likely to be for their people.
28
Actions speak louder than words, and how managers behave is the most
powerful communication. Managers need to be trained in the skills of
building relationships with people, in presenting information clearly and in
eliciting feedback to discover how they have been heard. Presentation skills
are only the starting point.

Impact measurement
The goal of any communication programme is to have impact but this can
only be established by measuring results against the original intention.
Measurement is the only way to ensure that what was planned has actually
happened, and to show a return on investment.

Businesses are not doing enough to measure and track the progress and
impact of their communication efforts, principally because they rarely
specify the intended outcome of their communication. Although many
senior managers now have specific communication targets and are measured
against them, their achievement is usually kept private. In measuring how
communication is performing, there are two options – keep the measurement
private, so that only the guilty managers know how badly they have
performed, or make it public by publishing the scores.

Embarrassment is more effective than guilt in motivating managers to change.

Good companies do regular surveys, include communication competencies in
appraisals, track managers’ performance via research and publish the results.

Communication standards make it clear what employees have a right to

expect in terms of communication, and also establish what is expected from
them. By setting standards, the boundaries of communication are less open
to interpretation, and people know what to expect. The organization needs
to establish clear principles, and then measure performance against standards
regularly.
 More Value From Internal Communication
Making meaning: the business of
understanding
The seven links in the communication chain described above are designed
to reconnect an organization’s people to its business agenda. However, this is
based not just on repairing broken links but on redefining the role of internal
communication.

Companies need to create understanding for their people, to bring clear

meaning to their information and to simplify the complex. Communication
is about creating and sharing meaning, not simply about sending messages.
It is not enough to tell employees that you have a strategy, and not enough
for them to be able to repeat the corporate values or recite the mission
statement.
29
Communication will continue to be viewed as a soft area until leaders are
harder on themselves. Unless business leaders insist on early planning,
well coordinated communication and clear and consistent messages with
specific actions, communication will fail to deliver the changed attitudes and
behaviour they need.

A one-off road show by the chief executive may give employees a temporary
awareness of the strategy, but the next day, their re-entry into the pressures of
the workplace will reduce the presentation to a distant and fuzzy memory.

Organizations therefore need to move from this traditional view of

communication – ‘telling the troops’ – towards engaging with their people
and helping them understand what change means for them. Rather than
simply adding new pieces to the jigsaw puzzle, management must explain
the picture on the box, so that staff can work out where their contribution
fits in.

To summarize, organizations must first do the right thing – connect

communication to achieving their business strategy – and second, do things
right – have efficient and effective processes. How to do both of these is
explored further in the following chapters.

References and further reading

Deloitte and Touche (1996), Information Management Survey (London: Deloitte
and Touche).
Deekeling, E. and Fiebig, N. (1999), Interne Kommunikation (Frankfurt: Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung Gabler).
Hopton, C., Bain and Co. (1994), ‘Measuring and Maximising Customer Retention’
Conference.
Making the Connections

KPMG (2002/2003), European Knowledge Management Survey.

Oliver, R. (1999), Whence consumer loyalty, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 63 No. 4.
Pitney Bowes (2000), ‘Managing Corporate Communications Study’, conducted by
the Institute for the Future (IFTF), with research from the Gallup Organization
and San Jose State University, 2 March.

30
2 Turning Strategy into Action

I nternal communication is a means to an end, not an end in itself – and part 31

of its rationale is to help turn strategy into action by engaging, informing
and directing employees. This chapter looks at developing an internal
communications strategy that is rooted in business, contributes to the
business, and makes the connection between the strategy of the organization
and its employees’ contribution. It also looks at what prevents employees
following strategy, and what causes the mismatches between organizations’
strategies and employees’ actions.

Organizations are having to pay more attention to their competitive strategies

in an attempt to differentiate themselves. This is not easy. In a quickly
changing world, what was distinctive yesterday comes as standard today.
One way of being distinctive is to build a powerful brand, even if what you
actually provide is unremarkable. Another is to increase the value of what you
provide, or to change the way you deliver a service to your customers.

Whatever the strategy for differentiation, internal communication has a key

role. The promise that the business makes to the customer – accessibility,
respect, friendliness, helpfulness – has to be reflected by its employees,
or the gap between the claim and reality will be all too clear. Unless the
culture and the promise to the customer are completely in step, neither
will be differentiating or competitive. As well as fulfilling the promise made
by marketing, employees need to understand how they can add value by
understanding the typical problems facing the customer and how they can
help solve them.

The job that communication has to do will differ according to which strategy
an organization chooses to follow. Communication must be based squarely
upon the business’s strategy or it will unknowingly work against it. It is not
enough to tell employees what the strategy is, you have to equip them to
deliver on it. Existing communication practices are usually based on the old,
implicit, strategy and will work against the new one if not realigned.
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