David - First a disclaimer: I think Steve is totally awesome, smart, funny, absolutely the best! However, the very fact that so much work exists for communication consultants demonstrates, I believe, one of the biggest hurdles corporate communicators face where executives are concerned. That is: for some reason, executives need to hear things from someone external to the organization (and feel it necessary to pay thousands of dollars) before they can believe what is being said.

In my experience many communicators very often already know the things that consultants come in and discover about the organization, and they've been trying to convince executives of the need to make certain changes for months, sometimes years by the time the consultants come on the scene. As someone who's committed to the organization on a long-term full-time basis, this is extremely frustrating and demoralizing.

Don't misunderstand, I have nothing against consultants, and many of the ones I've seen here and on the MyRagan site are obviously knowledgeable, talented people. But this penchant executives seem to have of needing an outsider to tell them the same things an internal communicator has been telling them for some time does make one wonder why they bother to keep a communicator on staff at all if they aren't going to pay any attention to the things they say.

I agree that a communicator has to have a thick skin - believe me when I tell you I got one! My biggest challenge is convincing executives that I know what I'm talking about and that the recommendations I'm making really ARE based on research, experience and knowledge of both our business and our audiences, and that they don't always need to hire someone at $500 an hour before they can take those recommendations seriously.

I'm just sayin'

How can a communicator get to know the exec's strengths and weaknesses well enough to help if the exec doesn't respect the communicator enough to let him or her "in"? My personal experience, and the experience of my communicator friends, is that execs usually want someone to "do a newsletter" and "write speeches."

Yeah, it's the age-old gripe, blah blah blah, but it hasn't changed.

How can a person get to be a seven-figure exec and yet waste so many communication "resources"? Regardless of what they know about technology or making money, most execs' grasp of communication is stuck in the 1940s.

(The one BIG exception I've found is the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. That place seems to be nirvana for communicators--and it's run by doctors! Go figure!)

Yes, this is the "if you're so smart, why are you working here" syndrome, and it's a dreadful, chronic institutional disease.

But it's got little to do with individual execs--or executives in general--and a lot to do with a general human attitude. (We often listen more closely to advice from our friends than from our spouses, do we not?)

So if Steve's perspective is influenced by his role as a hired gun, it doesn't mean he's wrong about executives, the difficulty of their jobs, etc.

Right?

Jane, I agree that execs have a low expectation of what communication can accomplish and I think they have an exaggerated anxiety level about what damage it can do.

But what do you mean when you say most executives' idea of communication is stuck in the 1940s? I think execs who want to truly have a two-way dialogue with employees have a real practical problem on their hands: a problem of logistics, time and "What do I do if I get 100 good ideas from people, and 50 bad ones?"

And what are they doing at Mayo Clinic that's so right?

For more on executives and communication, Shel Holtz's fine post, about a new study:

http://blog.holtz.com/index.php/weblog/company_leaders_lousy_internal_communicators/

David, by "stuck in the 1940s," I meant that even execs who are, by some fluke, brilliant at making money tend to behave as if the internet in all its glory had never been invented and the only way communication, news, and gossip could spread was face-to-face, in writing, or by phone. They also ignore the hundreds of studies showing what makes employees productive and happy.

And I KNOW you didn't mean that getting 50 bad ideas among 100 good ones would be a problem. It's an issue of quantity. The more incentive employees have to share ideas, the more volume you'll get, and if the volume of ideas goes up, the volume of GOOD ideas will go up.

But we're getting slightly off your topic. You asked for success and failure stories about getting to really know execs and see the world from their perspective so we can help them. It reminds me of "Absence of Malice," where Paul Newman (Guy In Trouble) says to Sally Field (dauntless reporter), "I need you to get to know me REAL FAST." If the Guy In Trouble doesn't have the brains to know that he NEEDS someone to get to know him so she can help him--if it isn't HIS idea for that to happen--what's a communicator to do?

And more to the point, why SHOULD a communicator try to make that happen if the big guy doesn't see that it should?

I'm not saying too many ideas would be a problem. I'm saying executives think it would be a problem. They've already got too many ideas--from other executives, from important customers, from their spouse--and I really think many are afraid they'll get too many from employees.

A communicator should try to help an executive--help me help you help me--until it proves to be an entirely fruitless exercise. Why? Because if the communicator is successful, he or she will get to do more interesting, more meaningful work.

I do know lots of communicators who have achieved this with one or many more executives over the course of their careers. How do they do it?

That's what I'm hoping to hear here!

David:

If executives are as intelligent as Steve thinks they are, then why do they have a childish dependence on what "experts' think? Why do they call in consultants to advise them on matters they know better, or SHOULD know better, than anyone on earth?
Why can't they think for themselves? Why are their notions of communications "stuck in the 1940s"? Why do they "ignore hundreds of studies which show what makes employees productive and happy"? Why, according to a consultant company called VitalSmarts, are 80-90% of all corporate initiatives failing?
A more pertinent question (in the face of all this evidence of paralyzing executive incompetence) than whether execs are "little boys" is: WHAT holds the American corporation together? HOW do corporations hold together? Who keeps the show running, creaking along?
Two forces hold the modern corporation together: (1) self-effacing women and (2) business habits instilled in every American in infancy. That's it.
(1) Male executives are under the illusion they are running things. Actually, their female assistants run the modern corporation, while these same assistants skillfully, with an infinite tact that would be miles beyond the capabilities of any of their bosses, allow their bosses the luxury of imagining that they, the bosses, are the linchpins of the operation.
(2) From birth, you, I, and everyone else have been raised to be on time, to do something when we say we will do it, to perform more than we have promised to do, never to lie or cheat, to be unfailingly courteous, and to sooth troubled waters by astute diplomacy. It is these business habits, learned in the cradle and imbibed with our mothers' milk, that male corporate execs rely on implicitly to anchor the company center without them lifting a finger to communicate better, or communicate at all, no matter what they say.
I never said American executives weren't intelligent. I asked: Why are they so narrow, provincial? Why are they so frightened of change that they all keep chanting 24 hours a day, "Change is good," like serried ranks of brainwashed extras in a film of Orwell's "1984"?
Why are they so frightened of everything? Why do they SEEM so brainless? Why can't they write their own speeches and columns? Why have we wasted billions of dollars on master's degrees and Ph.D.s for these clowns, only to create an enormous class of mute illiterates? Why do they treat the printed and spoken word as if these two were carriers of the Ebola virus?
What good does their intelligence do them if they don't have an ounce of intellect? If they know no history, no economics, no political science, no poetry, nothing of any branch of study that can bring air and breadth and depth to life in the modern corporation?
Why do these little men, intelligent if you please, run organizations that make the KGB look like a bastion of free speech?
Finally, what good is intelligence if it's self-baffled at every turn?

Bill Sweetland