Poor or ineffective communication is one of the key barriers to change in organisations.
At one stage or another, every company experiences this.
In my role as Global Partner Program Manager at HubSpot, I've recently taken on a new challenge - to run the internal communication for our Partner Program.
I come from a PR background so communications is nothing new, however, during that time I dealt with external stakeholders not internal.
So to step up my game for my new work focus, I've been reading quite a few books on the topic of internal communication (IC) and I also spent a full day in training on Strategic Communications: Making Strategy Happen with the Institute of Internal Communication in London last week.
As always, I want to share my learnings from the course with you - today, we'll cover key principles and the link between strategy and communications; next week, we'll talk about how to create a strategic international communication strategy.
Before I move on to today's topic, I want to first list out my key learnings from the day:
People have different definitions of strategy so you need to know what people mean by it for themselves.
Strategy refers to the large game plan to lead not just the battle but the whole war. With an evolving strategy you avoid the risk of becoming stale.
Strategy is about deciding what to do based on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to find how the business is going to compete through a deliberate plan of action that will develop a company's sustainable, strategic competitive advantage and compound it.
Strategy is about being different in delivering a unique mix of value. But it's important to bring in the world within this vision not just ourselves - strategy needs to be valued by internal and external stakeholders. Simply being different is not good enough - it needs to deliver value to customers.
Strategy needs to be simple as a process to use to achieve success for the organisation. A 200-300 page document is not strategic in its thinking, it's too complex.
Strategy also puts boundaries on the business. It's equally important to know what we're not going to do not just what we're going to focus on.
Strategy offers the opportunity to reinvent and do the right things correctly.
It should be based around VUCA - volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity - and it must reflect the environment you work in.
A company's strategy represents the vision and broad route to achieving it but it will only succeed if it's properly presented and supported by continuous, effective communication.
Particularly in times of change, communication is essential - both externally and internally.
Strategy is about three things: planning, execution and communication.
However, communication is often left undone or underdone in contrast to the other two. But communications must show what's different and what's important. You can have a strategy and it can be excellent, but if it's not communicable, then it's not a strategy because strategy is essentially a communication of certain group's vision on what the organisation is going to do in the future. If I can't get the strategy from one head into another, then it's not a true strategy and it doesn't have any inherent value.
They are very closely aligned. Strategy needs good insights that inform it and communication has a huge role before strategy formulation because the info that you take in, the knowledge that you acquire about customers, employees and other stakeholders and their needs helps formulate the strategy because otherwise you can't develop a strategy that truly is based on those needs. It becomes a mismatch. And it's up to the comms person to say "No, this strategy is not going to work; it's mismatched."
Strategy frames a vision that those working in the organisation can support and those outside can believe.
Communications must match strategic intent and what the strategy means.
Two important areas: comms in forming the strategy and maybe shaping it, and comms in actually turning the strategy into something that you can communicate.
Internally, to get your staff to believe in the strategy, you have to have high-quality internal comms with quality standards internally just as externally. The value you want you to expose outside needs to be aligned with the value inside and also organisations need to walk to the talk internally - how you operate with clients must mirror how you operate with your staff.
Looking at the above image, all the arrows are communications that turn strategy into something meaningful and aligned, however, the vectors shouldn't drift off in their own direction at any point.
So what are strategic communications?
Strategic communications drive as well as give information and insight (knowledge from data) to the strategic process.
Strategic IC give out your strategy in such a way through your systems and comms so that people begin to believe that that's the world that they live in and how it functions. Strategy becomes ingrained.
Stategic communications aim to put a communications system in place that supports the organisation's strategic aims.
Two components/levels of strategic comms:
What isn't strategic communication?
Internal communication strategy is not a linear process and it involves:
More on communication strategy next week.
Leadership often undervalues the importance of communication both in formalising the strategy and also in helping making it happen. Failed leadership through poor communication becomes a key barrier to change and progress in organisations.
But leaders must learn to lead communications:
The necessary key ingredient that holds an organisation together is its culture. And culture is created through intercommunication.
Communications strategy often aims to develop or sustain an organisation's culture. Culture is about the way we do things around here. It has two elements: national cultures and organisational cultures (with subcultures).
Culture determines communication's success.
A question to ask is What is the overarching culture that we want to have?
But you first need to understand what your current culture is. You should analyse it and ideally survey it.
Here are some things you want to find out about your organisational culture:
If you have strong organisational culture, that will supercede the national one.
Key strategic messages must be culturally translated. They must deliver consistent meaning in all contexts and you need to listen to how they are being received because culture hangs on. It seeks out remnants of old culture and has ceremonial burial. It gives honour to a system that has served well but must now change.
People won't change unless they are convinced the change will result in an improvement (often for themselves). Different stakeholders may need the vision communicated in different ways to match their special needs. Strategic communication enables this because it turns the vision into something understandable, something that staff can believe, internalise and eventually live. And that's the essence of change and changing behaviour.
Effective communication ensures that consistent, credible and continuous information flows through the organisation. When such information is shared, employees develop a common understanding of the business's ends and means. Communication, therefore, helps to overcome resistance to change.
Measurement demonstrates effectiveness; it shows a level of penetration; it clarifies where difficulties are arising; it shows what adjustments are needed; it shows how change has worked or hasn't. Use measurement to keep your own unit and organisation on track and also as a way to communicate to others what it is that you are doing and how the org is responding to it.
A key thing you must measure is the level of trust between key stakeholders - between management and staff as in the degree to which staff believes that management will act upon what they're saying.
However, the only true measure of your internal communication and its effectiveness is impact - what's the value that you're delivering?
Communications must listen all the time and do a communications gap analysis:
Everything has to be measured.
The comms plan must have clear objectives aligned with the strategy and tactics that fit the why so that you can measure whether you've achieved the objectives. This is how you will support the strategy and these are the measures that you will use to say that comms is effective.
Strategy must be made explicit:
Internal communication must have 5 key competencies in place:
What organisations need to succeed:
Next week we'll cover creating an internal communication strategy.
What are your principles for internal communication?