Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Somebody set internal communication back 30 years. But it wasn’t me.

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When I was editor of the weekly communication trade publication The Ragan Report in the 1990s, all I had to do to get a raft of letters was refer to an employee publication as a "house organ."

The operative phrase was: You just set employee communication back 30 years!

Silly, I know, to think you could set a whole profession back 30 years just by using old terminology.

But I do miss the underlying assumption, that this was a profession progressing. Progressing in all sorts of ways—from top-down to interactive, from "babies and bowling scores" to strategic, from corporate platitudes and stilted language to human candor.

These days, if you were going to set the profession back 30 years, in which direction would you push?

Aussie communicator Paul Murton remarked on a blog the other day that he was talking to a colleague, and they came to a discouraging conclusion:

while the importance of ’strategic’ internal comms (linked to business strategy and engagement) started rising in management eyes (say) 5-10 years ago, it now seems it’s now more often taking a back seat to tactical communication that just keeps people informed as an afterthought. External comms, PR, investor relations, marketing comms are still where the investment goes and internal comms teams are being depleted (and paid less in less-senior positions) in companies all over the place.

Is it just two people in Sydney who think this, or is it more widespread?

Ah, yeah. It's more widespread.

In 1996 on Ragan Communicaton' behalf I launched a thing called the Journal of Employee Communication Management. In my first editor's letter, I called it "The Harvard Business Review for internal communication." It came out six times a year, and each issue contained six practitioner-written essays, of 3,000 words each. These case studies, confessions and clarion calls would generate rebuttals, spark year-long debates and serve as the bases for keynote conference sessions with titles like, "Employee Communicator's Manifesto."

Sounds like 1896, doesn't it?

The journal thrived in the first few years of publication, remained profitable for a number of years after that, and lasted until about 2008, when it died, not because the Internet made such journals obsolete (the Harvard Business Review is still coming out). Mostly, it died because there weren't enough people in the whole world who were actually thinking about employee communication to write 36 decent essays every year, let alone read them.

And now I see the former publisher of that journal promoting its 20th annual Corporate Communicators Conference by promising, "No abstractions. No pie-in-the-sky theory. Only: practical tips and strategies that you can use tomorrow."

Reminds of what my dad used to say, when the family seemed at a standstill, "Let's do something, even if it's wrong."

But he was joking.

Communicators, where are you going?

And for the love of house-organ cheesecake*, why?

* A free tube of Preparation H to the first geezer who can tell us to what I am referring here.

The only thing employees want to know

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Yesterday communication veteran Robert Holland published his list of "Things Employees Want from Communication."

Robert Holland's Opus, in a nutshell: Employees want to be treated like adults, and to be communicated with by adults, through modern communication media and also direct contact with both senior management and direct supervisors.

Rookie communicators ought to have that sentence laminated for their wallet.

But once they've got that down, the question is: What exactly do employees want to know? (Don't go asking them, because they don't know themselves.)

We'll call it Murray's Manifesto:

They want to know what kind of people they are working for.

Let me repeat: They want to know what kind of people they are working for.

That's all they want to know: What kind of people they are working for.

But that's a lot: They want to know how smart are the people they're working for. How honest. How empathetic. How interested in new ideas. How down to earth. How consistent. How careful. How generous of spirit. How forward-looking. And how committed to the welfare of the employees.

Seriously. That's all they want to know. You may want to give them other kinds of information, and they may be pleased to get it.

But if you can convince your employees that the people who run the organization are solid human beings who care about what they're doing … well, that's a team employees will find a way to help.

And if you lack the communication ability to get that across (virtuous executives not included)?

You'd better dance fast.

Friday Happy Hour Video: Why the editor thanked Bill for his attack, why you should too

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The critique we read this week wasn't the only one Bill Sweetland sent out. Some recipients of his critiques have complained about the rough treatment they received.

They have a point. He asks a lot.

And really, when people enter their publication into an awards program, they probably do not expect to be greeted with a resounding and overwhelming rebuke. But when they get over their shock, they ought to thank Bill for giving them something more useful than a perfunctory pat on the back. (And in any case, as my mother would say, "Fuck them if they can't take a joke.")

But as for the critique we've been reading this week: Months later, Bill received an e-mail from the impaled editor, who said offhandedly, "You may remember it from the critique you provided after we entered the magazine in the 2010 Ragan Recognition Awards. Your feedback was very helpful, and we’ve been addressing most of your suggestions."

Bill—who only appears not to care how the recipients of his critiques feel about them—got a big lift out of that. In fact, he sent the critique to me so I could see for myself "how I threw [the editor's] publication on the floor, shot it, and danced on its tattered remains, and he STILL pulled an act of incredible magnanimity and humility on my arrogant asshole self."

Not magnanimity, I think, but rather appreciation of not being coddled as poor a downtrodden corporate communicator with a hopeless handicap and a pathetic need for validation, but rather confronted as a real, honest-to-goodness working communicator who can bear to look at the vast distance from the real to the ideal, and set his course in the proper direction, and start flying, against the wind.