Cultivate Your Employees’ “Extreme Trust”

In a 2001 feature story about him in Fortune magazine, Southwest Airline’s founder and former CEO Herb Kelleher said, “You have to treat your employees like customers. When you treat them right, then they will treat your outside customers right. That has been a powerful competitive weapon for us.”

      I’ve never forgotten that quote and have used it on many occasions because it cuts to the heart of the purpose of effective employee communications. Yet it amazes me how many organizations don’t follow that guidance, some even going the opposite direction by taking their employees for granted.

      A recent article about customer relations in Fast Company caught my eye because it provides an apt parallel with respect to the internal environment. “If Your Customers Are Poised For Revolt, It’s Time For Extreme Trust” makes the case that today’s more open environment created by social media has opened businesses up for closer scrutiny by their customers.

      No longer can businesses operate in secret, expecting that their customers will follow along in blind loyalty. The author, Don Peppers, explains that, “It used to be that a business could generate substantial profits by keeping its customers in the dark. Entire business models are based on charging customers fees they shouldn’t have to pay, or selling them products they don’t really need.”

Proactively Trustworthy

Peppers makes the case for “extreme trust,” which he explains as being “proactively trustworthy, not just by providing a reliable product and competent service, but also by understanding and proactively watching out for your customer’s own interest.”

      The case he makes is valid and worthy of consideration by people focusing on their customers. But I contend that the same case can be made for focusing on one’s own employees in a parallel fashion, actively seeking to gain their extreme trust.

      To help the reader – presumably a businessperson with customers – adjust and respond appropriately by checking her/his own company, Peppers provides a few self-assessment questions. I’ve taken most of Peppers’ questions and substituted the word “employees” wherever he uses the word “customers” – as well as a couple other tweaks so it makes sense.

      See for yourself. How would you answer these questions about your own internal environment and your relationship with your employees?

• Is your company's financial success generally aligned with what's good for your employees? 
• Have you identified conflicts between how your firm succeeds, financially, and how it does what’s good for your employees, individually?
• Overall, would your company make more money with uninformed, unknowledgeable employees, or from well-informed, knowledgeable ones?
• If an employee is well-informed, knowledgeable, and paying attention, would he choose to remain with your company or would he be more likely to leave?
• Do your employees proactively prompt one another to avoid errors or oversights? Whether your answer is yes or no: Is this part of their training? Is it part of your company's culture?
• If your business were a government, would your employees be trying to overthrow you?

Last question (my own): Are you keeping your employees in the dark, whether deliberately or through your own neglect?

      Remember what Herb Kelleher said and take it to heart. If you focus on keeping employees engaged in the business and happy, your customers are the ultimate beneficiaries. And when your customers are happy, they’re loyal, which will show up on your bottom line.

Virtual Communications for Virtual Employees

The time we spend working during our productive years represent the bulk of our waking hours. Consequently, the people we work for and with often become our friends, people we know the best.
     This was especially so in the traditional 9-to-5, Monday-through-Friday office routine that, along with lifetime employment that was prevalent in the post-World War 2 years in America, is now a thing of the past. While it lasted, it helped establish numerous deeply embedded corporate cultures based on the relationships that people developed working together day in and day out.
     That’s all changed. Slowly, at first, technological advances made it possible to work away from the office. First came the fax machine and FedEx overnight delivery of important documents. The speed of change ratcheted up considerably in the past 10 to 15 years with the advent and then widespread adoption of the Internet by businesses and its penetration into so much of what we do.
     By the way, it was a mere 12 years ago that corporate leaders like GE’s Jack Welch “discovered” the Internet and urged their peers to do likewise or risk being left behind. And don’t forget that Microsoft was late to the party with its Internet Explorer web browser, long after Netscape was the default Internet browser.

Tech Evolution
The Internet and its myriad technologies, the hardware and software, have now enabled us to be effective workers no matter where we are. First, it was email. Most recently it’s Skype, iChat and website services like GoToMeeting.com where people can work together in real time no matter where they are.
     Twenty or 30 years ago, working from home one or two days a week – if not all the time – would have been unthinkable. Today, it’s what we’re used to it. In fact, it’s expected and often part of the job.
     But paralleling that evolution, we’ve seen the deconstruction of the conventional office routine, where your boss is down the hall in the corner office. I recently consulted for a large multinational firm with headquarters in the Boston area. Its North American sales manager – a member of the senior management team, by the way – worked out of his home in Boulder, CO.
     I asked him whether it impeded his ability to be an effective manager. “Not at all,” he said. “I’m on the road most of the time anyway, so it doesn’t matter where I set up my office. If I’m needed at headquarters, I can be there tomorrow morning.”
     A friend of mine works for an international bank. Due to increased state taxes, the company recently relocated its headquarters across the border to an adjacent state. He had been accustomed to a half-hour commute by train, but it expanded to more than 90 miles by car – one-way. He told me he now works from home three days a week and spends 12 to 14 hours a day in the office the other two days.

Lost Camaraderie
The jarring aspect of this new arrangement, he said, is the radical change it has imposed on his unit’s unique culture and cohesiveness. The office space where the transferred employees now work is vacant of much of the staff most of the time, he said. The camaraderie that he had known for years is now gone. He rarely sees his colleagues face-to-face any more – though they do converse on the phone regularly. But it’s not the same.
     Assuming this is the norm today, we can infer that the dispersion of employees from central offices will likely continue and their nomadic numbers will increase. What effect does this new paradigm have on employee communications and one’s ability to manage people effectively?
     In a nutshell, it means managers and leaders have to work even harder to establish and sustain solid communication links with their employees. Certainly the best communication is face-to-face. And we can assume that the manager-employee relationship is initially established with a face-to-face meeting, supplemented with periodic personal visits.
     But over the long term, it behooves managers and leaders to maintain those critical relationships with a regular flow of two-way information through any and all possible and practical means: email, text messages, telephone, voice mails, Intranet chat rooms, and every other tried-and-true method that works in a given organization.
     Sure, you may miss the opportunities to participate in office betting pools on “March Madness.” And you may miss the chance encounters at the water cooler to catch up on personal news with your employees, and to see photos of their kids growing up.
     Unfortunately, these aspects of our work lives that add meaning to our personal sides are being lost to the surge of technology and the push for greater efficiencies. But we can’t afford to let it also sacrifice the effective working relationships and communications that drive the business and its success.

Navigating Toward Your North Star

Leaders know the critical importance of a vision to guide them and their company to success. They expend enormous resources developing and acting on that vision within their management teams and driving their organization forward.

     The most successful leaders are also adept at sharing, communicating, and constantly nurturing that vision with their employees, ensuring that the entire company is focused on that same ideal, navigating always toward the same destination – in the direction of their “North Star,” if you will.

     An insightful blog, “What Wise Leaders Always Follow,” posted on the HBR (Harvard Business Review) Insight Center, provides practicable guidance to business leaders about identifying their own North Star and how to follow it.

     Author Prasad Kaipa, a senior fellow in the Center for Leadership, Innovation and Change at the Indian School of Business (Hyderabad, India), says that wise leaders “root themselves in a noble purpose, align it with a compelling vision, and then take action… That noble purpose becomes a North Star, giving direction when the path ahead is hazy, humility when arrogance announces false victory, and inspiration when the outlook seems bleak.”

Simplifying One’s Choices

Indeed, as Kaipa points out, “Though it is not always simple to find one’s North Star, once it appears, its guidance helps simplify one’s choices… It becomes their calling, and they service that calling willingly, happily, and infectiously.”

     The key word in that last sentence is “infectiously,” because in order to be compelling, a North Star must be infectious in its conciseness, while the leader that communicates it must endow it with real world meaning and enthusiasm.

     Employees and line managers sense their leader's passion, and it spreads in the same way that a political cause can suddenly catch fire when a politician succinctly verbalizes a guiding principle that people immediately understand, identify with and latch onto.

     Pres. John Kennedy’s admonition that “we choose to go to the moon” conveyed a common desire and, ultimately, a destiny. He gave the nation an ideal to aim for, something that the people could visualize and strive for. Everyone directly and indirectly involved in the space program instinctively sensed his or her role in reaching for Kennedy’s North Star – a destiny that, in fact, out-lived Kennedy. The nation rose to the challenge and succeeded. The citizenry was universally enthused and supportive.

     In the case of a business, the North Star is not a fixed, finite point in time or space, or a specific end in itself. Kaipa illustrates his essay by discussing at length the Aravind Eye Care System and the North Star that its founder, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswammy fixed on to start the company: “To eliminate needless blindness by providing appropriate, compassionate, high-quality eye care for all.”

     Kaipa says it was a “seemingly impossible dream.” To support it, the founder developed a simple set of principles:

• Turn no one away regardless of ability to pay
• Give everyone the same high quality care
• Don’t be dependent on outside funding sources

Though he doesn’t say it outright, we can infer that Dr. Venkataswammy’s North Star and guiding principles inspired not only his employees, but also everyone it touched. There’s something powerful and empowering about being associated with a cause whose North Star is like that. Your North Star needn’t be so lofty or altruistic, but it should match your desires, affinities, abilities, and reach, including those of your employees.

Touching External Audiences

A compelling North Star and its infectiousness can also serve as an effective recruiting tool, attracting exactly the kinds of people who are inspired by it and thus eager to apply their skills and energies to help the organization attain it. Equally important, it attracts customers and builds brand loyalty.

     Communicating your North Star becomes an all-encompassing affair, reaching not just the internal audience but also customers, venders, and investors. People feel more connected to a business when they sense its guiding spirit and want to invest in it themselves, either by buying its products or stocks, or joining the effort as an employee.

     Perhaps Apple is the best contemporary example of a company that has identified its North Star and effectively communicated it to its internal and external audiences. Steve Jobs famously said he wanted to “put a dent in the universe” – a new age way of saying that he wanted Apple truly to change the way people lived their lives.

     I contend that Apple became successful because it – more especially, Steve Jobs – created and effectively communicated its North Star. More important, Apple established a pattern of breakthrough products and services that repeatedly validated its North Star. Each time it did so, it reinforced its core principles while increasing employee and customer loyalty – which is about as good it gets for a business.

A Military View of Communications

In the context of combat, far from home base with all hell breaking loose, there is nothing more critical than good communications. Well, that and lots of ammunition. But even so, without reliable, consistent communications, you’ll never have enough ammo.

      The parallel in business is that you may be able to throw a lot of money and people at challenges or a crisis, but without effective communications, it won’t make a lot of difference. That’s why the words of wisdom from retired four-star General Stanley McChrystal ring so true in a terrific interview* in Inc. magazine.

      Gen. McChrystal was commander of the Joint Special Operations Command in Afghanistan during its peak period of engagement. He is also a third-generation West Point graduate – a soldier’s soldier, as the expression goes.

      My naïve image of such a man is one of rigid hierarchy, someone who lives and breathes “chain of command,” with little patience for the softer part of operations – i.e., the people side of the equation. So I was pleasantly surprised to read in this brief interview his strong belief in the importance in building relationships as a precursor to establishing effective communications before a crisis hits.

Relationships at the Core

He talked about the value of the physical communications links – telephones and the Internet, for instance – but said that relationships are most important, which he explains as “having people you know and trust that you can communicate effectively with so you can get a clear understanding of the situation and you can begin to craft a credible response.”

      In other words, the cultivation and maintenance of relationships is the key to effective communications, which in turn is central to being able to successfully respond to the challenges everyone faces, in both war and everyday business.

      Not only is it unwise to await the crisis to begin the effort to build relationships and establish firm communications links, but to wait is to guarantee failure. Especially in the context of a crisis – be it on the battlefield or in the office – the lack of a foundation of established relationships and the trust they embody means that communications will be chaotic and worthless.

      As I’ve pointed out here numerous times, a guiding vision or mission is the single most effective way to build those relationships in an organization, to unite people around a shared sense of purpose, everyone striving for the same ultimate result. The same is true in a military context.

“Commander’s Intent”

Gen. McChrystal shares that philosophy, though he uses a different term. “We develop something called ‘commander’s intent’ to put in clear words what it is we really mean … designed to explain, in the commander’s own voice, what it is we were going to do, why we thought that was important, how it fit in to the bigger context of what we were trying to do, and then what might be successful.”

      I’ve rarely read a better, more succinct description and purpose of “vision” than that.

      As though reading my mind, he went on to say that, in business, “commander’s intent … might be ‘vision’… It would explain to people, here’s what we’re trying to do, and if things aren’t exactly as you expected them to be, this is still the end result. If you empower each employee with that kind of context and understanding, they get what we call ‘shared consciousness and purpose.’ They suddenly understand what it is they are trying to do in what environment, and what the organization is trying to accomplish.”

      Beautifully said. 

      People within a business who fully understand and work toward a vision will always encounter stumbles and barriers along the way. The strategy they so carefully worked out may not unfold exactly as they had planned. But they still keep their eyes on the desired end results, as laid out in the vision.

      There’s an old expression about war strategy and planning: as soon as the fighting breaks out, the first thing to get tossed aside is the battle plan. Chaos rules, but the end goal remains unchanged.

      When people are working toward a common vision, the way they communicate and the words they use to communicate come more naturally. There is less guessing as to another person’s meaning and intent since they all know where they’re going and their communications are built on the trust inherent in established relationships.

      In a military context, say in Afghanistan, if the commander’s intent is secure the Helmand province for the local citizens desirous of peace, then the strategy and component tactics toward that end make sense. The officers within the chain of command continually reemphasize that desired end result, making it relevant for better understanding among their troops. As they then move forward as a unit, securing one town at a time battling the local Taliban forces, in the face of chaos and mayhem of battle force their plans change on the fly.

      We face our own Taliban every day in business – albeit, not mortally dangerous. When we’re able to stay focused on the vision that drives our organization, we’re able to communicate our intents clearly to our teammates to surmount the daily struggles and setbacks, better able to help meet the ultimate goals of the organization.

*Thanks and a tip of the hat to Mary Schaefer for bringing the Gen. McChrystal interview to my attention.

Communications as a Competitive Advantage

 Like all economic recessions before it, this one, too, will eventually come to an end. Corporate revenues, profitability and stock prices will rise. The rate of GDP increase will go up. Unemployment rolls will decrease and hiring will resume. And when that happens, employees’ behavior will change.

      Specifically, the behavior to which I’m alluding concerns those latent desires to roam, to find a new job. Put another way, just because employee attrition rates are low now doesn’t mean that everyone wants to stay where they are. It has a lot more to do with high unemployment rates than happiness on the job.

      For the time being, for the sake of job security and a steady paycheck, people are tamping down their dormant desire to leave and find a new job, often putting up with otherwise untenable situations. But when the economy improves enough to resume its usual competition for talent, they will likely be on the prowl and jump at the first promising opportunity that comes along.

      By the way, the first ones to leave will probably be among companies’ best, most valuable people.

Investing Twice

Regardless of the state of the economy, employee turnover is an expensive proposition on at least two levels. The monetary costs associated with finding, hiring, paying, training and retaining people are not insignificant.

      Organizations that experience high attrition rates are wasting a lot of invested capital, an investment that will have to be made all over again to replace the lost personnel. In other words, at companies with a high turnover rate, hiring costs are at least double what they need to be.

      Secondly, and perhaps more important, retaining and building on the institutional memory and knowledge of your most valuable people is a reward that keeps on giving.

      So, being adept at hanging onto your best people is a distinct competitive advantage, more so when this recessionary period concludes.

      Money that would have to be spent replacing lost employees is put to better use – such as on raises and bonuses to incentivize our best people, thereby creating a cycle that repeats itself.

      But why do some companies experience high employee turnover while others don’t, particularly in that critical transitional period coming out of a bad economy?

      Answer: Probably because of poor internal communications.

      Effective, ongoing employee communications and transparency are a critical means to preventing this loss of talent. The best managers and corporate leaders are skilled communicators, engaging their employees regularly, providing them timely and relevant information about the state of the company, while demonstrating their appreciation of their people. They listen closely and learn from their employees.

      PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi characterizes her company’s attitude toward its employees with one word: “Cherish.” In her 2007 annual letter to stockholders, she wrote that it’s one of her personal performance goals: “…cherishing our employees, what we call talent sustainability.”

Employees Notice

Being appreciated, having their views and insights heard and responded to is something that people treasure. They pay attention to supervisors, managers and leaders who communicate consistently and honestly. A symbiotic relationship is established: when people are listened to, they in turn listen closely; and when they are provided timely, relevant information, they in turn provide information.

      Communication inside an organization is its oxygen. Stifle people, put them in a box and restrict or inhibit the two-way flow of information, and they whither. Conversely, they thrive in a communication-rich environment.

      Employees who are flourishing within an organization are engaged: engaged in its vision and the specific strategies that will attain it. Engaged employees are more likely to stick around when the economy improves. Why would they want to leave a company that treats them with the respect and dignity they rightly deserve?

      Invest in the future success of your organization by investing in employee communications and engagement now, before the economy improves, and you will reap untold dividends for years to come.

Nine Tenets of Employee Communications

In my years in employee communications, it still amazes me the number of senior level managers who don’t understand what internal communications really are, nor the central role they play in a business’ success.

      In the interests of keeping things basic, following are my core principles of internal communications toward helping improve understanding... each of which at some time or other have been addressed in this blog:

1. Face-to-face. Communication is, at its core, the face-to-face exchange of information, ideas and insights between and among leaders, managers and employees.  On the other hand, contrary to conventional understanding, communications vehicles like newsletters, email, blogs, intranet sites, and all the rest exist only to support and supplement that communication, not as substitutes.
2. Broken communications. Organizational communication is “broken” when management perceives communications vehicles and their content as “communication.”  This is a corollary to the previous tenet.  Similarly, communications are broken when leaders and managers perceive “communications” as someone else’s job, not theirs.
3. Two-way communications. Internal Communications is at its best when it fosters two-way communications between and among leadership, management and employees.  Effective communications occur in an environment where dialogue, discussion and debate are encouraged; in fact, where that is the default position.  People should feel free to engage in constructive disagreement with their managers/supervisors and peers.  It is through such dialogue, discussion and debate that excellence is created and success achieved.
4. Listening. And, by the way, listening is as important as talking, especially for leaders and managers for whom it can prove particularly valuable.
5. Supervisors are most credible. The most credible communication is between managers or supervisors and their direct reports.  These day-in and day-out relationships should be nurtured so that employees see their immediate supervisor as the best and most reliable source of relevant and timely information about the business. This truism works its way up the chain of command, by the way, so that each person’s direct manager is the best and most reliable source of timely, relevant information.
6. Actions speak louder. Leadership and management actions communicate as much as, if not more than, their words.  People are always on the lookout to be sure that management actions match their words.  When they are out of synch or when their actions don’t underline and enhance their verbal and written communications, they will lose credibility and all future communications will be suspect.
7. Employees are intelligent, able to connect the dots and draw their own conclusions based on what they see and hear.  Leaders and managers assume otherwise at their own risk.
8. “They” vs. “We.” Ultimately, internal communications should transform employees’ notion of their company from “they” to “we” – a strong indicator of whether employees are engaged in the organization’s vision and mission.  In other words, when employees speak of their company impersonally in an arm’s length third person voice, rather than the personal, inclusive first person plural, they are detached and disengaged from the company’s mission and vision. Effective communications, over time, will change that “they” to “we.”
9. External linkages. Internal Communications must be linked with external communication and kept in synch, both in terms of messages and timing. External information sources – whether local or national news coverage – are often employees’ primary and re-affirming source of information about the company. In fact, selective use of external media can reach employees in a more credible way, in an environment they normally trust and understand.

Playing to Your Audience

Last night, I finished Walter Isaacson’s excellent biography of Steve Jobs. And though it contains a wealth of material to blog about, I was particularly struck by the tale of the development of the Apple Stores, for a reason that cuts to the core of communications and marketing: knowing your audience.
       Ron Johnson oversaw the development and rollout of the ultimately successful Apple Stores – and they have indeed proven to be a huge retail success, by the way. Just to put it in perspective, consider the following citation from the book: “In July 2011, a decade after the first [stores] opened, there were 326 Apple Stores… The average annual revenue per store was $34 million, and the total sales in fiscal 2010 were $9.8 billion.”
       What intrigued me about this story within a biography was how Johnson revolutionized the stores’ concept with a last-minute change in approach to the stores’ layout, a brainstorm he had in the middle of the night shortly before the prototype was to be introduced to Apple’s Board of Directors.

Prototyping
Like all Apple products, a prototype of the Apple Store was built in 2000 – in a warehouse near the Apple campus in Cupertino. It was furnished completely, and then the design team hung out there, tweaking and adjusting it until they felt comfortable with the concept and its many components. Johnson led the effort for Apple, and Jobs would stop by about once a week to monitor progress and make suggestions for improvement.
       After fiddling with nearly every aspect of the prototype repeatedly, Jobs and Johnson felt they were ready to invite the Board to see it. But Johnson woke in the middle of the night with a bad feeling:

“…they had gotten something fundamentally wrong. They were organizing the store around each of Apple’s main product lines… But Jobs had begun developing a new concept: the computer as a hub for all your digital activity. In other words, your computer might handle video and pictures from your cameras, and perhaps someday your music player and songs, or your books and magazines. Johnson’s predawn brainstorm was that the stores should organize displays not just around the company’s four lines of computers, but also around things that people might want to do.”

Confronting Steve Jobs with bad news was always dangerous, but Johnson felt strongly about it and urged him to start the design process all over again. After exploding in anger, Jobs sat silently in the car and thought about what Johnson had recommended on their way to visit the model.
       Jobs then presented it to the design group with these words: “Ron thinks we’ve got it all wrong. He thinks it should be organized not around products but instead around what people do.” [long pause] “And you know, he’s right… We’ve got only one chance to get it right.”

Swarming With Customers
And boy, did they get it right. Have you ever been to an Apple Store when it wasn’t crowded? Me neither. While the other mall stores near it may be quiet, the Apple Store is noisy, aswarm with customers and browsers. It never ceases to amaze me.
       This demonstrates a core tenet of successful marketing and, in the same sense, successful communications. Reach people on their turf, respond to how they live their lives and communicate, not how you want them to, and you’re guaranteed to get their attention.
        It is something I learned early in my career, a lesson that has never failed me. When I was a suburban beat reporter for a daily newspaper, once while struggling with a particularly complicated story about a town commission’s meeting, I grew frustrated at finding the right narrative.
       Knowing that I was facing a fast-approaching deadline, my editor pulled me aside to help me get focused. He posed a series of questions that cut to the core of my dilemma. His questions weren’t about the point of the story or its details, but rather about my readers.
       Who were my readers? What was their likely interest in the story and the decisions of this particularly commission? How would the commission’s actions and decisions affect my readers? So what would they likely want to know?
       As the effect of his questions began to sink in, I fairly jumped out of my seat to return to my writing. The light bulb had gone on and I whipped out the story easily and quickly.
       What I had been missing was a clear understanding of focus and purpose. Without either, writing is an exercise in a vacuum to no end. The same is true in corporate communications and marketing.
       When you expend the necessary upfront effort to appreciate your audience, to understand what truly drives them and what they want and need from you, you are well past the halfway point in your journey to connect with them successfully. Will the result always be on par with the Apple Store? Maybe not, but you don’t stand a prayer for any success without that crucial first step.
       The germ of the idea about the customers’ world that disturbed Ron Johnson’s sleep more than ten years ago made all the difference.

Social Media Behind the Firewall, part 2

The previous entry here explored reasons for instituting an active social media program as part of an employee communications strategy. But it barely scratched the surface on the subject of the potential barriers to that effort.

            What are the challenges you’re likely to encounter as you launch your own social media behind the firewall? Certainly, as noted previously here, the legal and IT departments might have confidentiality and security concerns. Is there any danger of employees sharing information that should not escape the confines of the company?

            Again, I’m not a tech guy but I’ve been reassured by friends who are that software, firewall protections, and passwords provide the necessary security today.

Built-in Resistance

So assuming you’ve solved the security issue, the biggest and most difficult barrier to overcome in launching an effective social media system is the same barrier that stymies most other corporate initiatives: time; i.e., no one has enough of it. People are already overwhelmed by email and meetings, to say nothing of the time needed to do their jobs.

            Who has time to monitor social media? Who has time to build a profile page for a LinkedIn type platform?

            The answer lies in getting people to use it. The more a person uses such platforms, the more comfortable they get with it, and the more they realize that it improves their awareness and understanding of the business while adding to their own worth to the organization.

            To build use, leadership and managers must set the example. If it’s important to leadership, it is important. Because of that alone, people will investigate at first, and then start using it, becoming regular participants.

            A couple years ago, Computerworld profiled three early adopters of internal social media. Deloitte, for instance, found that early adoption was slow. The company started with only a portion of the organization.

            Patricia Romeo, who led the effort, said, “People aren’t going to go in as readily when the well is 75% empty. But with the encouragement of leadership, more people got involved and were soon demanding access to the rest of the organization.”

            Romeo’s advice is to continue to build leadership support, even after the early-stage buy-in. “Make sure support is there throughout the organization,” she says. Once the platform begins filling with valuable content, “it’s really about viral adoption.” I would add that leadership support must be in the form of setting the example – i.e., using it themselves by becoming active participants.

            As to the second point, it’s likely that nearly everyone in your organization will have a LinkedIn profile. Rather than ask them to replicate their profiles, make it easy by using LinkedIn’s API to transfer profile data.

The Threat of the New

A new way of communicating, for many in the organization, will represent change. And for most people, change is threatening. Don’t burn the boats. Rather, sustain the conventional lines of communications. As younger employees build traffic on the internal social media network, their more senior peers will come to realize that a lot of business is being conducted there without them, and will soon join in out of necessity.

            Keep in mind that resistance will be greatest among older employees unaccustomed to social media, still more comfortable with their accustomed modes of communication. Again, if the senior managers and company leadership are actively involved, they will have to get involved out of fear of being left behind, or perceived as out of the loop.

            IBM, another company profiled in the Computerworld piece, was one of the first major companies to bring social media behind the firewall. Jeff Schick, VP of social software, says that poor adoption is rarely because users don’t know how, but because they didn’t see the “why.” Help them answer that question.

The Whys of Social Networking

The Computerworld article included a sidebar that's worth excerpting here. According to Amy Shuen, author of Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide, employees tend to have at least one of four goals for why they use social networks.

1.  Quick access to knowledge, know-how and “know-who.” In their profiles, people can list skills, expertise and experience, as well as previous employers and people they know. As with LinkedIn, this helps simplify the job of locating people with the knowledge they need. This is particularly useful inside multidivisional, multi-site, and multinational organizations.

2.   Expansion of social connections and broadening of affiliations. This is the Facebook model, in which the goal is to get to know people better online by interacting with them and keeping up with their personal information.

3.   Self-branding and expression of a personal digital identity and reputation. Before long, people get creative with their profiles and begin to think about how they want to be known in the company.

4.   Referrals/testimonials/benchmarking/RSS updating. On social networks, the viral distribution of knowledge becomes important. For instance, people want to know how many of their “friends” have recommended a video or have joined a community and, in turn, if they discover something cool they want to spread the word.

I close with a variation on an admonishment that has appeared many times in this blog: Social media behind the firewall, at the end of the day, is just another communication medium. Don’t confuse the tool with the task, which in this case is communications: the interaction between people and their exchange of information, ideas and insights.

            If social media helps people be more effective communicators, then it may be something you want to consider for your own organization. But don’t fall into the trap of adopting social media because it’s the latest trend. Do it because it makes sense, satisfies your organization’s communication needs, and adds value.

Social Media Behind the Firewall, part 1

Something new is bubbling up in the world of organizational communications. While most corporate communications managers weren’t noticing, a growing proportion of their internal audience has been bringing new habits of communication to the workplace.

            This younger contingent, the so-called “millennials,” mostly born in the 1980s, has never known a world without cell phones, computers and the Internet. From their early years through college graduation, their primary means of connecting with their friends has been through social media: texting, instant messaging (IM), Facebook, Twitter, and online role-playing games (RPG).

            Upon graduating college, many entered the business world. But their companies’ senior managers were communicating to them with blast emails and webcasts – i.e., those that were “modern” and “up-to-date.” Some still sent out paper memos and print newsletters.

            The internal company website, if there was one, just sat there inertly, with occasional news updates about the company. Maybe there was a blog, but without an interactive feature, a blog that hadn’t been updated for several months. How passé. How very boring. How inefficient.

Dipping Toes in the Water

Fortunately, some companies are addressing this shortcoming, dipping their toes in the water of social media internally. Yes, it’s a scary concept, particularly to legal departments and some IT folks.

            Last month, I attended a peer conference of employee communications managers where “social media behind the firewall” emerged as the hot topic of the morning’s discussion.

            Of the companies represented at the table, more than half had initiated internal social media to some degree. But none had yet gone whole hog. One company had opened a chat function on its internal network, but only for a fraction of its employees.

            In each case, the slow, deliberate pace of rolling it out was a means of proving its value and safety to skeptical legal and IT departments, as well as to work out the bugs and learn what does and doesn’t work. The employee communications managers were pleased with the experiment and eager to let it grow.

            So, what exactly is social media behind the firewall and why should communicators be interested?

            Social media has transformed the Internet into a place where people meet, learn, act, and react in real time. The kinds of activities that take place on conventional social media – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. – are essentially people exchanging news, information and ideas electronically.

            But aren’t those the same kinds of activities that occur naturally within an organization over phone lines, in conference rooms, or spontaneously at water coolers? Yet there is widespread resistance to bringing that capability electronically into organizations, even if it does mean improved communications for multi-site organizations. The primary barrier, it seems, are IT and legal departments that fear hackers, or the spreading of confidential information.

Behind the Firewall

I’m no techie, but from what I’ve learned at social media conferences and read in various sources, embedding social media on a company’s own in-house server, behind the firewall, assures the security that companies need. Numerous vendors provide secure software, including IBM, which offers “Connections” – a suite of products to build internal social media.

            So, assuming we can clear that security hurdle, what kinds of social media should we use internally? The answer depends on a company’s culture, its size, the nature of its business, the number of employees, the number of locations, and the diversity of its internal audience.

            But wait: Let’s remember that social media is just another communications tool and should never be seen as a substitute for the real communicating that goes on between people: personal exchanges of information, ideas and insights.

            So your chosen social media tools should satisfy one core objective: to enhance and facilitate communications among and between employees, managers and leadership. That said, consider three possibilities…

            A LinkedIn style platform for multi-site companies would enable people to connect across departmental and national boundaries to discovery one another and their respective capabilities and talents. Individuals could readily find people of similar backgrounds and areas of specialty, and participate in relevant discussion boards where those in similar fields would discuss common challenges – just like the real world LinkedIn.

            A Twitter-like application might provide a venue where employees could post rapid-fire comments on everyday issues, as well as to provide links to helpful and relevant internal and external websites. Managers and leaders could use it for quick communication of important, timely messages. At the same time, it would be advantageous for employees to “follow” company leadership, as well as their operational or functional management, in addition to their fellow team members to stay atop important developments.

            An internal Facebook type app would allow cohorts to stay abreast of one another’s doings, particularly as it relates to working toward the company’s strategies and objectives. Again, leaders and managers could use the app to spotlight important news, both inside and outside the company.

            Meanwhile, leadership can eavesdrop and participate in the discussions at will, from wherever they are, whenever it’s convenient. Social media, then, can help leaders fulfill an important component of their jobs: staying abreast of what’s going on within their organizations – the “listening” part.

In part 2 of this two-part blog, I’ll explore areas for caution as well as some of the barriers that have to be overcome to assure that internal social media are effective and useful.

Company Morale Impacted by Uncertainty

In the midst of the worst economy of modern times, banks have been particularly hard-hit. Caught up in the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, banks are now getting squeezed by the new “Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act,” while their every attempt to increase a fee or two is met with howls of indignation.

            With little near-term hope of improving their bottom line, the big players like Citigroup and Bank of America are looking under every figurative and literal rock to find savings, as well as ways to improve revenues and profits.

            Apparently finding insufficient new revenue and savings, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan last week announced that overall employment levels at the bank “would be reduced by 30,000 over the next few years.”

            Pretend you’re an employee of Bank of America and you read that. Which part of that statement would bother you most? Is it the fact that 30,000 people at your company are likely going to lose their jobs, including maybe you? Or is it the implicit uncertainty as to when the axe will fall? For me, it would be the latter.

            I think sure knowledge of impending doom is preferable to uncertainty that bad news will occur at some undetermined point in the future. It’s akin to being a pre-adolescent, in trouble with Mom one afternoon for breaking a window, and then hearing her ominous threat, “Just you wait until your father gets home!” It’s a postponement of Judgment Day.

Understatement of the Year

My candidate for understatement of the year would be the lead sentence in the Sept. 19 Wall Street Journal article about the cuts: “Morale quickly turns ugly after a company warns about layoffs – even if the job cuts won’t happen for a while.” I would change that to read: “…especially if the job cuts won’t happen for a while.”

            One analyst quoted in the article says that he doesn’t know “anybody who’s not looking for another job” there. No surprise. That would be a natural reaction to such gross uncertainty.

            The trouble is, in this lousy economy, there are not 30,000 open jobs out there to which these people can jump just for the asking. So they sit. And they’re not happy. And they’re not likely feeling too loyal toward Bank of America.

            From the Journal article, we also learn that “managers have tried to send short notes to reassure employees but it seems they are nervous about their own positions.” No kidding. How can you, as a manager, encourage your employees to have confidence in and trust the institution when you don’t yourself, suffering the same uncertainty as they are?

            Look, I understand that Moynihan is as much in the dark as anyone else about the state of the economy going forward and whether the fortunes of his bank will improve next quarter or even next year. He can’t very well enact immediate job cuts, lest it make the organization non-functional and further worsen its business case.  

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

But at the same time, he has created a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom. In such circumstances, even his most talented people are not going to be at their best, focused less on the job at hand than on whether and when the axe will fall on them.

            He didn’t ask me, but if Moynihan wanted my advice, I’d have told him to hold this one closer to the vest. The Journal article quotes an analyst speculating that he made the announcement to mollify Wall Street. I sure hope not. It wouldn't have made much sense if that were his purpose. In this climate, with BAC stock stuck at historic lows, the announcement didn’t cause so much as a blip in the price.

            Better that he work through the implications of near- and long-term strategies regarding job cuts – if, in fact, he and his executive team determined that to be the wisest path. Clearly, a cut of such magnitude (representing more than 10 percent of the total workforce) implies some drastic changes in the way the bank is going to do business.

            Perhaps they’re planning to get out of some businesses, or maybe some geographic areas. That’s where his public statements ought to have been focused: on the business changes he is planning and their likely personnel impacts.

            It is near impossible for a company of its size to inform the internal audience before going public. So there should have been a concerted effort to inform the affected employees at the same time as the public announcement, while providing them with as much information as possible while answering as many questions as they had.

            A dismal internal morale already pervades Bank of America. But having the CEO operate with greater certitude and a sense of urgency is far more effective in retaining employee focus and commitment than the aura of uncertainty that Moynihan cast last week. The company is going to need as much employee focus and commitment as it can get if it’s ever going to be successful again.