Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Companies just don’t get better at this, do they?

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Oh no he didn't, oh yes he did. Speechwriter Vinca LaFleur quotes a Chrysler senior executive's way of explaining this terrible day in the history of a company, of a city and of a car culture that thought of itself for a whole century as a civilization:

“It is with a deep sense of sadness that we must take steps to
end some of our Sales and Service Dealer Agreements,” said Steven
Landry, Chrysler’s executive vice president for North American Sales
and Marketing, Global Service and Parts. “The decision, though
difficult, was based on a data-driven matrix that assessed a number of
key metrics."

Police aren't identifying the name of the Chrysler communicator over whose dead body this statement no doubt went out.

Just for grins

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It's Friday, and I've got no special beef against the world, no cockamamie ideas, no over-serious personal reflections, no boobs to mock, no technology to moan about nor communication crimes to groan about.

I'm not sure this has ever happened to me before.

So I thought I'd do what I do when I'm driving in the car with my friends and we pause long enough to hear the air conditioning blow.

I'll play my favorite Woody Guthrie song, "Mean Talkin' Blues." If you've never heard it, I bet you'll like it. If you have heard it, you'll thank me for reminding you to give it another listen.

Have a good weekend, all.

How might we start an effective employee communication program? And when?

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Bookcover In my series on Sharing Information with Employees, the first and best book ever written on employee communication, I've covered (and we've discussed): the purpose of employee communication for organizations, employees and society … what attitudes executives ought to have about communicating with employees … how to make sure what management has to say matches what employees want to hear.
    In this installment, we get down to brass tacks. "How?" asks Heron. In his answer, he describes the character of a solid employee communication program and discusses when and how one might be launched. —DM

Like communication consultants today, Heron distinguishes between communication vehicles and a communication program. Unlike communication consultants today, he does not talk glibly of "behavior change" as the end-all, be-all of employee communication.

"Our objective is a lasting and continuing attitude, not an early and conclusive action. We are not seeking to persuade employees to buy something or to do something specific. We are not even interested in causing them to know some particular fact or to think any specific thought."

Long before employees can be reached on that level, an understanding must be reached, Heron writes.

The first element in the understanding which we should be trying to create is the understanding by employees that facts about the enterprise are not being concealed from them. The knowledge that they can get the information they want is more important than any actual information that can be given to them. Incidentally, in too many enterprises, this knowledge that he can get such information would be just about the most startling information which could be given to the average employee!

Actually, it's not "incidental" at all when one is considering launching or dramatically retooling an employee communications operation. Heron goes on to ask and answer the question, "How can [management] avoid shocking employees and at the same lead them to recognize that they can know the facts about the enterprise which is a part of their lives?"

[Are you listening, Rueben?]

Answer: "There is no sudden way. There is no channel which can instantly make employees conscious of the new possibilities. Any pressing for sudden results, for sudden interest, greater confidence and general acceptance of information by employees is hopeless. The first rule must be that the process of sharing information with employees is a gradual one."

Heron goes on to describe the employee communication program in more detail:

The program must be a continuous one, a method of conduct rather than a campaign. It must be an expanding one, permitting the delivery of ever more information as employees ask for it. It must be forever incidental to the actual conduct and management of the enterprise; that is, it must not become an institution apart from the actual work or operation of the enterprise, nor separated from the management, nor important in any way which overshadows the daily task of getting the work done.

It almost sounds as if Heron is banning communication vehicles and employee communication practitioners. Not quite. "Fully recognizing the popularity of many of these methods, and the fact that tens of millions of dollars are being spent every year on their use, I confess a prejudice against any or all of them as a complete program. I recognize immense value in some of them, an undeniable need for most of them. [But] the proposition to which I hope to lead is that the best of them, selected to fit the exact conditions of a single company, will do the most that they can do when they have invited the flow of information through the natural, functional line organization, the supervisory personnel of that company."

All right, Heron—employee communication practitioners and our programs have to be broad-minded, patient and unobtrusive.

When can we start?

Not now.

"When our employees want to know whether the plant will run full after Christmas, it is almost certain that they will not 'receive' our bulletin-board 'propaganda' about the burden of our social security taxes for the year."

Employees are deeply suspicious of organizations that,

after years of silence, secretiveness, concealment of 'confidential' facts, and grudging release of information under pressure … approached us with a sudden change of front …. If during the days of good business he had considered us incapable of understanding the facts of business life, he could hardly expect us to listen to the hard-luck stories when they prevail. …

The mind of the average American is a naturally sensitive receiving instrument. Through the years of growth of mass employment, the instrument has not been invited to "tune in" on basic information from which understanding of the free-enterprise system can grow. It has not been invited to "tune in" on facts about industry and business, particularly about the business in which it is engaged.

So companies who have seen the light about the need to communicate aggressively with employees must wait for the current recession to recede the way Depression was doing by the beginning of U.S. involvement in WW II, in 1942. "While they are worried about curtailed and unstable earnings, employees are not willing to 'tune in' on messages about anything else."

But just afterward—that's when they will.

Minds which a year ago would 'tune in' only on subjects such as wages, rents, movies, baseball, and more wages are ready today for a whole new range of information. Military and industrial needs for men, chances for new jobs, increased living costs, taxes reaching lower incomes than ever, strikes in defense industries, curtailment of whole enterprises because of [wartime] priorities—these and a hundred new topics have caught these minds. It is a day when enlightened employers can share information with employees more acceptably than ever before. The employee will 'tune in' today.

Will we, in the next phase of U.S. economic history, be ready for the moment?