The anonymous blogger Cassandra has a new blog entry at MyRagan.com in which she hatches a whereby employee communication people charge a few dollars for every all-employee e-mail they're asked to send out, and they "earn enough money to deliver a gift-wrapped video iPod to each employee and hire the cast of 60 Minutes to do daily news broadcasts for you. You could even throw in a full-color, employee annual report written by John Updike and photographed by Annie Liebovitz."
Her satire makes me think about what I'd do with an unlimited budget for communicating with employees. The possibilities are dizzying, but I'd start by spending at least one week per month my first year, one week per quarter every year after that buried in an important part of the organization. (Some of which, I'd hope, would be in far flung locales.)
I'd come away scads of great print and online and video stories, important and deep contacts, and a real understanding of how the organization works, and how its various people think.
The more I think of it, the less that seems like a pie-in-the-sky idea, the more it seems like the bare minimum orientation process for an employee communicator.
What would you do with a million-dollar budget?