After telling the editor of the sophisticated, slick corporate magazine how unsatisfying his articles are (see yesterday's post), Bill Sweetland attempted a diagnosis:
Perhaps the problem lies in the summary of the publication that you provided to us at Ragan when you sent your entry in. In that statement, you spoke of one of your editorial goals:
“Managing word counts (e/g., so pages do not become overcrowded)."
Mr. R., in your case this natural part of an editor’s duties has become a hampering obsession. I can’t tell you how strongly I disagree with your “philosophy.” You should give every story the exact number of words it needs, no more and no less. The second you decide to relegate the meaning and significance of a story to a place behind the look of the pages of your publication, you lose any chance of truly reaching and changing employees’ minds, to say nothing of inspiring them to think differently about their work.
And this story, “Looking to the Future,” exemplifies this unfortunate editorial bias in favor of the spare, elegant, minimalist corporate look as against going on at length for the sake of explaining complex ideas fully. Despite what you may think, Mr. R., your goal as editor should NOT be to raise readership to 90% for every issue of the publication. No!
Your goal ought to be to appeal to the minds of the 15 to 20% of employees who read, think, and lead the non-reading, non-reflecting other 80-85% of the workforce. Your articles ought to make this minority of doers and leaders think and reflect more about their jobs and the direction of the company. Almost every article ought to make the People Who Count at the Company think wider, deeper, and farther afield about the business you’re in.
Get rid of the Biz-Lite reporting approach you favor now in the comparatively few articles you write about what employees do at work, and substitute full, detailed, frank, idea-filled reporting about complex business issues and problems, written through the eyes of one or two interesting employee personalities. Make your articles much longer, and don’t worry so obsessively about “Managing word counts.” If it is a boss of yours who believes he or she has editorial insight superior to yours in this matter, tell him or her that Bill Sweetland at Ragan KNOWS better and brought you to book convincingly on this very point.
Meet me back here tomorrow, when we'll learn how Mrs. Lincoln enjoyed the decor at Ford's Theatre.
“Your goal ought to be to appeal to the minds of the 15 to 20% of employees who read, think, and lead the non-reading, non-reflecting other 80-85% of the workforce.”
Yowzers. He really believes this? Has he ever worked at a corporation? Does he believe a corporation reflects a theoretical university where a professor with upturned nose is valuable?
I also wonder about the 10-15 vs 80-85 goal.
Seems like it has been a long time since Bill has worked in corporate America.
I would enjoying learning about his experience as a corporate communicator before I can weigh the value of his comments.
Just because someone has worked at Ragan doesn’t mean they are qualified to judge corporate communications. I like to learn from communicators that have actually worked in corporate America, not just for a consulting company or as a reporter.
I’ll let Bill address these specific points, but I’ll repeat the first sentence of yesterday’s post:
“It’s not that Bill Sweetland is totally out of his mind. It’s that he’s totally in his mind, and not constantly aware of what’s in your mind, my mind, the public’s mind, the corporate mind.”
Mike, I agree with you that much can be learned from grizzled corporate veterans. But we ought to listen occasionally to outsiders, who dream things that never were, and ask why not.
Eh?
David, dreaming things that never were and asking why not is a whole sight different from making baseless claims that 80-85% of a workforce doesn’t read or reflect.
I worked for corporations for 12 years and have worked inside them as an independent practitioner for another 10. While communicators always will face the challenge of engaging employees on issues of importance to their companies, my experience has been that most employees want to do well and want their employers to do well and they will read and reflect on information they find valuable. It’s incumbent on us communicators to make that information interesting and appealing.
I disagree that numbers aren’t important. They tell a significant story about the quality of the work we do.
David, I was following your lead in following his thoughts through the previous posts and this one, until I hit that sentence and paragraph. An elitist of that caliber is valuable, but not for internal communication. It destroys the entire well-constructed argument. Why would he assume that 90% of the company wouldn’t enjoy a well-written, long, complex article?
If he had experience as a corporate man, he could present his case studies and practical experience and we’ll forgive the ruinous elitism that comes with it. He’s asking us to trust him as an ideas man, but his ideas rot at the core.
The idea of an employee publication so compelling that it would serve as an intellectual blood bank for the smartest and most engaged 20 percent of employees–I agree, that’s probably far-fetched.
But that’s partly because of the mediocrity of most corporate editors, who aim for an even more preposterous other extreme: And so we commonly see readership surveys that claim regular readership by 80-90 percent of a workforce.
Seriously, what but the most casual kind of “readership” can that be?
If I said to you that this blog was read by 90 percent of the communication profession, you’d either call me a liar, or you’d crown me your King.
I wouldn’t bet on the latter.
The truth in Sweetland’s point–and now I really will let him make it–is that editors who are trying to appeal in some way to every employee in an organization will probably reach none in any really meaningful way.
And the question I’d ask you, Yossi, Robert and Mike, is: If it’s not designed to stimulate thinking among the most thoughtful workers, what IS the purpose of an employee publication these days?
Why can’t it be designed to stimulate thinking among all thoughtful workers, not just the most thoughtful?
Let’s put it this way: Editors who try to inform (instead of appeal to) every employee in the company will reach all at a different levels. Bill is advocating throwing out the 70%, meritocratize the company so the 20% rules the 70% in ideas as well as fact. That’s for an ideal world, although a bad idea there too. Merit often does not rise to the top in a company.
If your blog was placed in the living room of all communicators, 90% would read it.
At the very least, why not have two forums, one for the 90% and the other for the 20%?
I think that there are a certain percentage of employees that will do more with what they read, but to tailor communication and newsletters just to those few at the expenses of the masses that make-up the company ranks would be a mistake in my opinion.
How do we improve engagement among employees if we don’t communicate with them – and sometimes that means communicating with them on their level.
I use this example. If the company executive management was on a plane, and all the people who actually make the widget were on a second plane, which plane crash would prevent shipping the product tomorrow?
I just want to add that I have enjoyed the first two days, and am looking forward to the next installments.
The suggestion that a communicator should design a publication that appeals to the 10-15% most engaged employees in an organization is exactly the kind of elitist, detached thinking that too many consultants do. How about helping communicators improve the quality and effectiveness of their work so that it appeals to the great majority of employees in an organization while also delivering the kind of strategic business information that management expects?
I wrote forums, not a publication. There should be a way for people working at a certain level to bounce ideas off each other. And many companies have such forums – retreats, off-sites, internal tools such as blogging, wiki, yammer. Highly intelligent people tend to find each other as well without much help. What I was really suggesting was that if Bill was trying to be helpful, he would have suggested layered channels. Instead, he advocated top-down communication based on elitism at its worst.
Regardless, my job as communicator would at the very least be to write the stories of what these high-level circles are doing so that 90% of the company will understand it, and perhaps learn from it.
The last time I was working in internal communications (two jobs ago), I discovered that Bill’s approach worked well, with a minor modification. I was tasked with communicating the driest of information: messages from the Information Technology department. Sometimes this required convincing employees around the company to take on tedious, time-consuming tasks, like cleaning out their email folders in order to save space on the server.
I discovered that I had the best success with breaking it into two parts: What You Need to Know, and More Information For Those Interested. In the first, I outlined the steps that needed to be taken, in a bulleted summary format. In the second, I explained why it was important, and how these actions helped the company.
I was surprised to discover that most employees read the whole thing, and appreciated being respected enough to be told the business reasons for what we were asking. Participation was always high among the workforce, with one exception: management. In the case of cleaning email folders, management insisted that ALL of their emails were too important to delete.
My point is that I believe when we write as though every employee is one of those thinking, engaged people, we find more people thinking and engaged. Showing respect and providing real business information gives people a reason to read and act.
And for the record, I think Bill Sweetland is the cat’s meow.