I was having a conversation earlier today about "Employees as a Channel to the Market."  in fact, I was presenting on the topic.

Like a lot of things, until I started to think it through I didn't realise how passionately I feel about it.

I like to talk about 'people' being the next big thing that business faddists will turn their attention to... Now that we have taken all the costs out of the production line, reduced our supplier costs, maximised our real eatate... etc.  Chief executives will be asking how they can use people more effectively.

Which is not to say cutting them.  But getting more out of them.

However, I shudder at the thought of calling that "channel optimisation".

People are not only a route to market. For most organisations they are THE only route to market.  We are not making products so much anymore, and even when we are, it's people that sell them.

So when you ask what you can do to improve the ability of people to deliver in the market, it s almost an open-ended question.

What is your business trying to do? Are you offering the best product? Best cost? Customer intimacy? And therefore what do people need to know?  If they are answering phones in a call centre, they probably don't need to know about the company's capital position, or it's new research capabilities. They need to know what their targets and how they can help deliver.  They need to build teams, not compete against each other. They need to focus on system improvement, not managing external factors.

And so it goes. There are very logical routes to market through employees. But it's not in the data. It's not about employee marketing campaigns. It's about creating and sustaining certain behaviours that help shift more widgets.  Change and internal communications does that.

/df