Usually, when Jim’s phone rings, our future client on the other end wants to do something quick: to launch a new publication, or an intranet, or a CEO blog, or a video series, or an all-employee meeting to support some initiative.

The classic mistake for communicators is precisely that: to leap to tactics, especially when there’s some urgency from an internal sponsor. But all successful communication begins with one act, the same act: listening. Do what Jim does: Ask your internal client these four simple questions (with follow-up), and the vehicles will be even better.

1. What’s the business case? What goals are you trying to meet: cost reduction, innovative products, employee retention, profitable growth? In this economy - in any economy - knowing what business goals you’re supporting is the only way to align your work with the CEO’s agenda to prove your worth and get the resources you need.

2. What sorts of information do the employees want? What do they need to understand about this? How will they know what they’re supposed to do, to change the way they work? What’s in it for them? What motivates them? Where’s the pain or fear?

3. Are you sure you know what vehicles your internal audiences prefer – and which messages go in which vehicles? Are you sure? Have you asked them – both qualitatively, in focus groups, and quantitatively, in surveys? Do you know which vehicles different demographic groups want? You want a Sharepoint site – do they? Your CEO wants to blog, but will anyone read it and respond? You want to kill print? Not so fast, Johnson. Print is back, but in a new role; that’s in response to employee demand.

4. How will you know if your communications are working? What does “working” mean? How will you measure? When? What will you measure? Outputs – or outcomes?

If you can put the answers to those questions in a plan and execute it, you’ll be on your way to creating real value for your internal clients and your organization. These conversations take Jim and me only about an hour; the relationships that result can last years.

Listen: Try it.

I travel a lot as a consultant, so people tend to ask me where I’m off to next.
Over the last two years, my answer more often than not would have been one word:

Topeka.

That typically brought one of two reactions:

1. “Oh. Um. Sorry. That’s too bad.”

2. “Topeka? What is that, like, Kansas?”

Let me come clean: When we first got this gig, I thought exactly the same thing. Kansas? Isn’t that a flyover state? Topeka? It’s not exactly Paris. It’s not even the Paris of the Plains.

But as it turned out, Topeka was a pretty nice place to be—and to work. At least in this case, familiarity did not breed contempt. It bred, well, familiarity. And friendship. And now that we’ve finished our work in Kansas, I’m actually going to miss it. A lot.

Cindy Crescenzo and I spent nearly two years working with the Kansas Department of Labor. We were hired to provide communications support for the agency’s big IT overhaul, designed to improve the way Kansas delivered unemployment insurance benefits and other services.

That was the first problem. Cindy and I didn’t speak IT. We didn’t know an Operational Level Process from a Business Transformation Project.

Scarily, we do now.

Problem No. 2 was that the agency had taken on this massive remaking of itself and its processes with very little in the way of internal communications. No intranet to speak of. No print pub. No organized way of conveying information and understanding through leaders and managers.

That turned out to be the good part. Working for the Kansas Department of Labor allowed us to showcase what communications can really do to help an organization meet its goals.

And that’s what we did: We listened to employees, managers and leaders. We wrote a communications strategy where none existed. We built a SharePoint site that is evolving into the agency’s employee intranet, and we launched a print publication to explain the complexities of the project. We developed road shows and other tools to assist executive and manager communication. We introduced blogs, podcasts and online video to try to connect with as many people as possible. And we measured it all to see what was working and what wasn’t.

Lest you think it was communications nirvana, it wasn’t. At times it was hard and difficult and frustrating, just like any other communications endeavor.

But here’s what I really won’t miss about going to Topeka:
• The 4:20 a.m. wakeup to make the 6 a.m. departure on Southwest.
• The one hour and 15 minute drive between the KC airport and Topeka.
• The basement dungeon at 1309 SW Topeka Blvd., where we were first assigned.
• The Statement of Work. (I read it. I just couldn’t fathom it.)
• The Amerisuites hotel, which thankfully upgraded to a Hyatt Place about halfway through our tenure. Wine bar!

What I will miss:
• Dinners and cocktails with Cindy at “Johnny Carino’s.”
• The “Indian place” for lunch.
• Janna at the Alamo counter at the KC Airport.
• KCMO, 94.9, playing Kansas City’s Greatest Hits.
• KU vs. KState. (The Kansas version of Sox or Cubs.)

And, of course, I’ll miss the communicators: Beth Martino, who hired us and went on to become Deputy Secretary of Labor and then press secretary to the Kansas governor; Annie Patterson (now Flachsbarth), the pride of Washburn University, who was a newbie out of school when we first met her and is now a communicator par excellence.

Megan Ingmire, who took over as communications director at a critical point in the project, and who may be the only person I know who can make a podcast about an IT project sound like something that should come in a plain brown wrapper.

Kathy Toelkes, the new communications director: calm, smart, funny—and ready for anything. Sue Henke, who somehow knew everyone at the agency and knew all that was going on, without ever leaving her desk. And the designers, Connie Hammond and Linda McAndrew, who as it turns out, has a nickname (Throat Dog). And yes, there’s a story there.

Two years. Dozens of plane rides. Thousands of hours. On our last day in Topeka, Cindy and I finally did what we had talked about doing since we arrived in the summer of 2007: We went to the Brown v. Board of Education museum.

That’s right. The very school that led to the historic 1954 Supreme Court decision to end racial segregation in public schools is right there, in Topeka, not far from that basement full of IT people.

The museum was really well done, and quite moving. And when we finished our tour, Cindy and I climbed into our rental car, turned KCMO up high and drove to the Kansas City airport one last time.