"Are internal communicators more virtuous, more strategically valuable or just more self-satisfied?"

David, in my case, none of the above.

I've recently come crashing down to earth, after spending four years trying unsuccessfully to build bridges and effect positive change in the company where I work, and its parent company.

It was amazing to me, when I joined the company, that it lacked an internal communication funtion. PR and Marketing provided sporatic and non-strategic support. Neither department had the vision and passion for employees that Grubbs describes.

So why did my hopes crash? The stuff that other internal communicators probably face as well: the turf wars, the egos, the dysfuntional approach to fighting fires, rather than plan and prevent them.

I'm not going to whine more in public. This is the stuff that I will bring out in my novel. Anyone outside of internal communications will think it's all fantasy anyway--might as well get paid to present it as such!

I have been where Tom has been...in companies where internal communications has been nil. No importance, etc. And it is very frustrating when after several years you realize you still can't get through to management how important internal communications is and the value it brings. Then, of course, off one goes to a new company that values all communications and you end up with turf wars, egos, etc., as Tom described. But you tell yourself at least this company "gets it".

I think in every instance an internal communicator can pick one of the three choices you list in your question. Possibly we live through all three at some point in our careers.

I like to think I'm strategically valuable (as I know I'm virtuous (maybe that is our problem?). I thrive on the challenge to make a difference. I am just impatient when trying to get people to connect the darn dots and I hate idiots on my turf!!! Why can't everyone play nicely in the sandbox?

My favorite quote is still, "We have to have an employee newsletter!" Why? Just because. Not one thought of why.

Turf wars. Your CFO has enough work for 18 accountants, but she has two vacancies. HR allows her to fill only one because communications needs a new employee communications expert. How much cooperation is that new employee communications guy gonna get from the CFO? None.

These are subtle battles that are fought behind closed doors. Ill feelings get harbored and come out at the least-expected moments.

I'm having a hard time figuring out how one can be a right-wing employee communicator. Or left-wing either, for that matter. Just put out the company's message in the most professional way possible. The world will not be a better place.

Diane, I had a boss once tell me the employee newsletter was "sort of" important, but he didn't see why it has to be pretty. A couple of photocopied pages stapled together would do just fine. Fun stuff.

Will

This discussion reminds me of one of my favorite poems, The Second Coming, by William Butler Yeats. As an employee communicator, I've always thought of myself as someone whose purpose in life is to help the falcon hear the falconer; to make the centre hold; to fight against anarchy.

But, as in Yeats' beautiful and prophetic poem, our communications -- our corporate "ceremony of innocence" -- is always at the risk of being drowned by cynicism and zealotry.

Read this poem with the eyes of an employee communicator and you'll understand why we are different, and why what we do is so important, and so fruitless, at the same time:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

"I'm having a hard time figuring out how one can be a right-wing employee communicator. Or left-wing either, for that matter. Just put out the company's message in the most professional way possible. The world will not be a better place."

FYI, Will, this sounds like a right-wing communictor, to answer your question, Will—"put out" the message (instead of the left-and-fuzzier "exchange" information). And "professional." And "the world will not be a better place." You're positively Rumsfeldian!

You want the lefterly path to the same place? Listen to Shewchuk.

Internal employee communications don't clearly help meet business targets, look good on the metrics scorecard or satisfy shareholders. So the opinion is that it's necessary but not as important as the "real" work.

Management wants employees happy and quiet and will only play along with internal communicators to help make that happen.

I don't think very many companies truly value or want what an empowered IC can accomplish. It disturbs too many people, egos as noted, and nobody seems willing to commit to it fully so that its value is delivered on.

My role as an IC is theoretically fantastic, but in the end I fight against everyone to get anything done. My strategy has been to defend employee rights and needs (HR doesn't exist anymore), which opens the door to trust and creating that relationship where they will taste the pie management wants to feed them... but the trade-off is that I get screwed every year on my performance evaluation because I don't partner will senior leaders enough.

That's the real life of an IC in today's businesses.

So to answer the question: "Are internal communicators more virtuous, more strategically valuable or just more self-satisfied?"

None, we're just screwed!

Dan Grubbs has summed up why employee communication is important -- and why so many of us have chosen it as our specialty -- better than most anyone whose views I've read on Ragan.com. Bravo to him.

Phillippe's comments trouble me, though, in part because I know so many others share his view that "employee communications don't clearly help meet business targets, look good on the metrics scorecard or satisfy shareholders."

Whenever I advocate for more alignment of employee communications to business goals and for more disciplined measurement of communication, I'm usually accused of being one of those right-wingers David fears. You know, the communicators who don't get that employee communication is more about the people and their souls than it is about the organization and its goals. Well, I just wish more communicators would realize that when we take a strategic approach to communication, and when we take the time and go through the trouble of measuring its impact on business results, we're not simply giving management what they want. We're helping ourselves!!

Wow, this is getting depressing. (And I love depressing!)

I wrote many years ago in an essay called "confessions of a retired employee communication consultant" are a formula:

Our Expectations of What We Can Actually Accomplish

+

Our Leadership's General Attitude Toward Communication

=

How We Feel About Our Contribution.

I had a hard time feeling good about much of the employee communication consulting I did, I believe, because I have massive delusions of grandeur when it comes to the potential impact of employee communication. I came buy these delusions while cheerleading for our profession all these years, and I can't seem shake them. But the comments on this blog are moving me in that direction!

Isn't there a pollyanna in the house??

Robert, I agree with you about the importance of taking a strategic approach and measuring results. I also like the point that internal communications is about both souls and goals.

In my experience, it hasn't been the internal communicator who hasn't worked toward those ends. A large part of my current discouragement is the result of a LOT of energy, time and thought that has resulted in such brisk, painful responses from management as, "No, we can't survey employees." "If we give these things (communication tools) to our employees, they will just waste time."

And yes, I've had to lead a discussion regarding why a newsletter might not be the key to making our employee engagement scores rise through the roof.

Sometimes, decisions are made by management to reduce fires and keep the waters serene on the surface, without thought to how to prevent fires in the first place—or whether a tsunami is brewing under the calm surface.

How right you are, Tom. What you describe has been my experience, too.

My experience also has been that the only way to begin chipping away at the resistance of business leaders to communicate with employees is to hit 'em where they live -- in the numbers, specifically the business goals. When we can show a correlation between what we do and the achievement of business goals, we get their attention. We keep their attention by continuing to deliver real results. The resulting moral goodness for which David pines is a significant and worthy by-product, but it is usually not what management is after.

We have to give 'em what they want in order to get what we want.

>>Internal employee communications don't clearly help meet business targets, look good on the metrics scorecard or satisfy shareholders. So the opinion is that it's necessary but not as important as the "real" work.<<

Philippe, your comment sounds almost like something that came out of Fortune magazine editor Thomas Stewart's book "Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations," based on interviews he conducted with Fortune 500 CEOs. In one part of the book he is describing four types of workers and where they would be placed in a 4-square, value box (visual used in many, if not most, strategic planning reports):

"Above them, in the upper left, go people who have learned a complicated set of ropes but don't pull the strings, such as skilled factory workers, experienced secretaries, or people who hold staff jobs such as quality assuarance, auditing or corporate communications. They may be hard to replace and doing important work, but it's not work customers care about...Those in the upper-left quadrant present a trickier management challenge: You need them, but you wish you didn't because your customers don't value them."

After more than 20 years of doing this kind of stuff I'm not a Pollyanna, but I think that it IS possible for communicators to support, facilitate, and even initiate positive change -- which means helping earn employee trust, changing executive attitudes, influencing policy, and just generally elevating the mood of an organization so it just plain works better. I've seen it happen; sometimes it's measurable, sometimes it's not. The big problem is, the majority of the time it's a huge, frustrating uphill struggle that never seems to end.

Yes, Yeats and also Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach. Talk about depressing. Two of my favorite poems, though. Is it ever thus?

Here I am trying to make a living while living in Brigadoon (Galena, IL) and suddenly I am awash in internal communications -- as a board member and Communications Committee initiator for the 4,000 or so property owners in The Galena Territory. Appreciate this discussion, though I tuned in late. Busy day.

Strikes me there's a bit of "emperor has no clothes" in all this. If the folks at the top inhibit communication, evenually you gotta give up and go elsewhere. Maybe Brigadoon?

I agree that there's a certain point where one has to give up and move on. Let someone else, someone fresh take over, and let yourself be the someone fresh who takes over somewhere else.

As one old boss of mine said, it's hard when people quit and leave, but it's worse when they quit and stay.

At one point in the very near past, I began planning to start a business that would do nothing but help businesses and orgnizations communicate better with their employees.

My motivation was that I had worked for decades in a place that didn't--a place where the internal communicators' first, last, longest, and bloodiest battles were always with management.

But as I daydreamed, wrote down ideas, organized my thoughts, and talked to some respected friends in the field, I got shot down--and they were right. My business wouldn't fly because very few companies will pay an outsider to come in and tell them how they need to change to make internal communication better. Changes in PR are usually painless; internal changes require re-imagining one's relationship with one's employees. It hurts like hell--who would pay money for THAT? And besides, if they don't like it here, there's the door.

Guess I'm not your Pollyanna either....

I think it's all about inertia. Big companies don't have to change because they can keep running based on their sheer size and momentum. That's why most major changes or cultural shakeups that require changes in communication happen at companies that are in a crisis of some kind. Otherwise there's not enough pressure to change, and things roll on and the emperor never needs new clothes.

Ahhh, internal communications is not for the faint of heart. It's not a discipline that will ever receive just rewards.

I wasn't just trying to be clever when I used the metaphor of the evangelist for what we do. It's a fitting metaphor because an evangelist doesn't do what they do for what it gains them. An evangelist has a larger objective in mind and they aren't accredited for their efforts. But, the end result is positive anyway.

I'm not saying that working for recognition or professional accolades is bad. I'm only saying it better not be your motivation if you accept an internal communications responsibility. We must take personal satisfaction for whatever small gains we can help the company make in the direction of it's stated objectives.

By the way, softball results and baby announcements ain't strategic communications.

Dan Grubbs
Internal Communications Manager
HNTB

Dan—

Thanks for starting this conversation. But please:

The last time anybody ran softball results or baby announcements was 1958. And even THEN they know it wasn't strategic communications.

Let's set this straw man ablaze, shall we?

David

David, the straw man is alive and well and even appears in Ragan's own FirstDraft resource (tech tips about online baby photos for a company newsletter?!).

I posed a question to Steve and Jim about this because I was at their Advanced Internal Communications Workshop and I ought to give you a chance to address it as well.

Is being busy an excuse for copping out and producing a supposedly bad (or non-advanced)newsletter or is it better to have no news?

Do you accept that there is a place for both "advanced" communications and "lesser" communications in a company's media mix. I wouldn't use FirstDraft, personally, but we get other pre-written stuff from our own departments and executives and it would be nice to know if we can justify using it if we're busy as long as we try and balance it with some real content (i.e. the stuff that we're busy working on).

P.S. I was a polyanna until just recently after failing yet again for my company to recognise that communicators deserve a place among their leaders and senior professionals. I've fought for years to improve communications and have awards and even executive acclamations to prove the value of my work, but yet they still think anyone can do this (and might even think FirstDraft can replace me/us). How do we win when our cheerleders pander to their misguided notions?

It's a good point, Brett. My only answer is that if you worked in Ragan offices and saw the number of goofy newsletters from tiny utility co-ops that we see, you'd probably agree that it's possible to help some needy editors (some of whom double as administrative assistants) without destroying the profession.

I also think First Draft is published with the notion that, for a good editor, the stuff is merely an idea starter, something they'll adapt to suit their own purposes.

Finally: Does First Draft really affect CEOs' attitudes about communication? Not too much, I'd think.

All that said: Do I want my obit to focus the few years my name was on First Draft's masthead as managing editor?

No.

I'd say there are still a fare number of Ward Cleavers out there publishing employee news.

But it doesn't matter, Dan. To hold them up as people who hold the profession down--that's the straw man. If you're working for IBM--or even for Akron General Hospital--a someone doing a dumb newsletter somewhere isn't what's keeping you from doing a good one.

I think internal communicators held in the same light as teachers. We all acknowledge that both are infintely valuable to society (or the workplace), and we all claim to have tremendous respect for the difference they make in society (and the workplace). But then we pay them badly and make jokes about how dumb education majors (and journalism majors/comms people) are, and how anybody smart would go into banking (or public relations).

Thanks, David.

I know some people need all the help they can get and also agree with your later comment that "someone doing a dumb newsletter somewhere isn't what's keeping you from doing a good one". I am producing a good newsletter but I still can't help noticing that sometimes the company with the bad communications is doing well and sensing that my executives are wondering whether they could also be doing well without communications.

As a case in point, when we did not have a communications department or distribute the corporate goals and objectives to all employees 90% of them still answered that they knew the company's objectives when asked on surveys. Since then we only get 75-80% despite the fact that now this information is actually communicated and made available. We have fallen victim to the "law of increasing expectations" and the more our employees actually know, the less they realise they really know.

They'll be proven wrong if they do, but I wouldn't abandon the fear that someone up there is considering returning to the glory days (by cutting us out) so that they can try and pad the employee survey results.

People pay for what they want and some execs (in control of some budgets) would rather look good than actually do good. And, as Amy pointed out, too many execs don't want to pay for communications specialists.