A business is launched on a core vision, a driving purpose – likely the brainchild of its founder. Initial success comes with the founder’s ability to activate that vision.
As the business grows and adds employees, its continued success and growth is dependent on how well the founder is able to impart his/her vision to the new people so that they, too, share that founding vision and are able to act on it through effective implementation of the company’s strategy.
Regardless of whether the business is 10 years old, like Google, or is more than 100 years old, like General Electric, the same holds true: the continued success of that company is dependent on employees comprehending and acting on that vision.
Visions evolve and adapt to changing circumstances, such as recessionary economies, changing or expanding markets, shifts in customer needs and tastes, etc. And so, too, must the company help employees evolve and adapt. Even the 100-year-old company can stay as fresh, focused and competitive as the new start-up if it keeps its people engaged in the evolving vision.
This is a round-about way of getting to my point: the importance of also engaging employee communications consultants in the business’ core vision, as well as its strategy, the needs and desires of its customers, and the changing dynamics of its markets.
A consultant comes into an organization for a discrete period of time, provides advice and counsel, and then leaves. The ideal is where the outsider is able to be immersed fully in the business, gaining understanding of and a full appreciation for its products and services, markets, customers, and unique challenges.
From the perspective of a communications consultant, those are the best assignments, in terms of enjoying and gaining personal satisfaction from the work, and in terms of our ability to provide helpful counsel.
Regardless of the product or service a client company sells, the ability to appreciate the circumstances in which that company operates brings with it valuable insights into the struggles and challenges, risks, victories and mistakes that comprise the daily experience of employees. Our communications counsel is far more insightful and meaningful when we know that experience intimately as opposed to those cases where we do not have that advantage.
Kept at arms' length from the business and given little opportunity to immerse ourselves, the communications counsel provided is necessarily superficial. Most of the work in these cases tends to be rote, tactical and reactive. Further, there is little pleasure in the assignment. It's more of a struggle, where we’re not allowed to do our best work.
There’s often no way of knowing ahead of time into which category a new client will fall. But there might be some early tip-offs. When the new client talks about the need to “catch a speeding train,” employs a similar metaphor, or says there’s no time “for the luxury” of immersing ourselves in the business, it’s likely it will be a tactically intensive assignment with little chance to connect personally, or provide insightful strategic counsel.
Conversely, the client open to the notion of allowing the consultant a full engagement in the business, to talk with employees prior to commencing the assignment is going to get full value for the investment because the outside consultant will gain important awareness and understanding of the employees’ environment, challenges and personal connection to the business.
Most companies of any size employ full-time communications managers. Outside communications consultants are brought in not to replicate or supplement their work but rather to provide the outsider’s perspective that the insider cannot possibly have. That’s where the full value comes in: being able to understand fully the business’ vision, mission, strategy, challenges, markets, and customer demands, and then translate that into meaningful communications strategies and messages to keep employees engaged in the business.
In other words, the deeper, first-hand appreciation for the personal investments that each employee makes in the job is the key to engaging the employees in dialogue and discussion, and being better equipped to shape the right messages to assure that employees are getting the right information, insights and knowledge at the right time, through the right media for maximum effect.
And if that’s what the client is paying for, why erect barriers?
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