Hill & Knowlton

There is something weirdly nostalgic about the British seaside (a mood captured quite neatly here actually). Decaying piers. Plastic buckets and spades, archaic amusement arcades, fish and chips in newspaper wrappers. Rubbish weather.

It should be a terrible experience. But I have just spent a long weekend down in East Sussex. We had great food, friendly service (generally) and lots of fun. It helps when you are watching your 18 month old daughter charging hysterically along the rolling dunes of Camber Sands.

As ever we were typically under-prepared for a spontaneous trip to the seaside. Sarah and I were having to think about how we were going to get Erin dry with no towel as we watched her dive head first from one sandy pool in to another…

Another blissful experience was having the chance to read the weekend papers over our outstanding Sunday brunch at the Ship Inn in Rye.

Many of you may have noticed this piece on employee engagement in The Observer. Good to see the issue has hit the mainstream. If we can call The Observer the mainstream that is…

I think Ruth Sunderland over-states the point about organisations being driven by their legal duty. That’s not been my experience talking to clients over the last 4 years. I would certainly love to see their detailed research on this point and indeed their other findings.

Having said that, I would agree with her central premise that organisations are putting a “strain on the relationship” with employees . Especially at a time when they are generally asking their people to do more for less.

Our experience here at H&K (and a lot of research) tells me that engaged employees are more likely to be productive. Engaged employees are more likely to enhance your brand / reputation. Engaged employees are more likely to improve your bottom line.

We know what works. And it’s not paying lip-service.

My clients and colleagues know that I can get quite passionate about what we do…

Last week’s data from the CIPD’s quarterly survey sparked a not untypical response from me. The survey revealed that 32% of organisations are expecting to make redundancies this year. Now that’s a big number (although perhaps not as big as we might have expected?)…

Nonetheless, that equates to 1 in 3 organisations laying people off. This year.

Do we have confidence that all of those organisations know how to handle redundancies well?

Will they treat their employees with respect? Will they be open and honest where possible?

Will they engage Unions and employee forums in a constructive way?

I’m afraid we still see too many examples where the answers to these questions is still no. Communications practitioners can play a major role in changing this.

One client recently described it as being both the “ears and the conscience of the organisation”. I love that sentiment. And our experience here at H&K tells us that we communicators can play a positive role.

We can ensure that people going through the hellish period of a consultation process are treated humanely. We can partner positively with our colleagues from across the organisation like  HR and Legal to balance the business needs with those of employees. We can ensure leaders don’t hide behind oblique management-speak.  

That should be enough to get us out of bed in the morning. That should be enough to make us passionate. In fact, that should be enough to want us to give our very, very best.

I don’t think I’m alone in not being able to work out the current business environment.

Our experience this year has actually been pretty positive. We’ve been lucky enough to meet lots of new clients and to grow the business quite aggressively. Which has been great.

Understandably clients are rightly being cautious with their diminishing budgets. They are looking for value. They are engaging us on specific (often very challenging) projects. Which is exciting.

But these short-term assignments often make it difficult to predict the future – even in our small part of the business world.

So imagine what it’s like if you’re the Governor of the Bank of England who is trying to look at the macro-economic picture. He has had to revise (downwards) the forecasts he was making just a few months ago.

As  a communicator I both admired and was slightly alarmed by his description of “choppy waters” ahead. In the US talk has intensified of a “double-dip” recession. And in China factory production is grinding to a halt.

All of which leads to greater uncertainty. And a lack of confidence making it difficult to take a longer-term view.

The challenge for business leaders and communicators is to actually deal with this ambiguity – not ignore it. We have to actively navigate our way through these choppy waters.

We can do it by developing a compelling strategic narrative. And by being clear and consistent when we refer back to it. And by encouraging our leaders and line managers to put it into local context in a relevant and meaningful way.

We can’t predict the future. But we can smooth out the bumps along the way.

Many of the organisations we’re now working with have a major challenge reaching workers who simply do not sit an office all day. Whether it’s factory workers in Heavy Industrials, Lab workers at a Healthcare company or a remote salesforce in Financial Services.

We internal comms practitioners have had to recognise the challenge of communicating with a workforce that is composed of remote workers either as a minority or majority.  At H&K we have delivered communications campaigns and change programmes in organisations where remote workers have been part of the mix, and have found successful ways to get around the issue.  Below is a summary of key issues we’ve identified.

Key issues:

• Geography
• Language
• Lack of PC access
• “us and them” culture between HQ and remote workers

And so we learnt the following:

• The need to be consultative to help overcome resistance
• Need to build a strong network as well as identifying and getting buy-in from the right people (influencers and opinion formers)
• One size does not fit all
• Need to develop separate approaches and messages for distinct audiences
• Use what already works (i.e. in terms of channels)

And just to be helpful we would recommend the following options:

• Use of face-to-face (roadshows, townhalls, toolbox talks – for shift workers, etc)
• Highly impactful, visual comms well placed (e.g. posters near fax machines)
• Newsletters can work but only if they are distributed properly and involve local managers in contextualising the messages
• Messages in payslips and other perosnalised comms
• The use of audio channels where appropriate / available – e.g.  recorded voicemail messages, company radio-station, webcasts, etc

I’d be happy to talk about our experiences at some of the companies we’ve worked with. You can email me on scott.mckenzie@hillandknowlton.com

Consultants have a pretty bad reputation (probably well-earned) for adding jargon to the common vocabulary. Whether it’s terms like “matrix management”, or “line of sight”, or “C-suite”.

Usually these terms start with exactly the right intentions. To take a specific, complex situation and make it that bit simpler for the audience to understand.

The problem is that other people then take these well-intended phrases and use them out of context. The phrases then take on a life of their own. Often a long way from the intended meaning.

I think there’s a similar risk beginning to arise with the term “distributed leadership”. The CIPD have invested quite a bit of time testing and promoting the concept. They see it as one of the six key factors which drive business success.

They define distributed leadership as  when ”Senior leaders set a clear strategy, but also empower and motivate managers to innovate to deliver it”. Not much wrong with that..

I do wonder though, whether they would be wise to look at some of the other  ideas which also challenge the traditional orthodoxies of hierarchical organisations, like viral change .

I certainly endorse the idea of taking some of the power away from the top and devolving it into the organisation. I also see the attraction of developing a culture where everyone feels that they are making a valuable contribution.

In some recent conversations I have heard distributed leadership being explained away as “everyone” being a leader. In essence, “we are all leaders now”.

Do people need to feel like they are leaders to be engaged? I’m not sure that they do. In my view employees want to feel that they have been listened to. That their work has meaning and that they are part of something bigger than themselves.

That is a path which is more likely to lead to discretionary effort. Which ulimately has a positive impact on the bottom line…

But maybe I am now in danger of taking us away from the original definition of “distributed leadership”…!

P.S. – I’m reallyenjoying the debate around the recent Stockholm Accords – which set out to define the principles of good communications practice. You can follow the debate via the CIPR blog.

I was recently asked by Donna a former colleague to give my perspective on family-run organisations. How different is it working with them as opposed to PLCs?

I’ve worked with a few family-run organisations in my time with H&K (and indeed my Dad ran one before his retirement).

Frankly,  I have had a fairly varied experience. One of the common factors has been a high-level of engagement. And in one case almost fanatical loyalty to the organisation and indeed the family.  (Reading that back makes it sound like I’m talking about an episode of the The Sopranos).

I have also experienced a crushing culture of fear. And occasionally in-fighting. This has often been compounded by a lack of clear governance. And some senior people feeling that they were not on the “inside”.

I put this to a colleague I met recently who works at Smollan – a family-run company who are a recent addition to the WPP family. He certainly recognised the emotional engagement bit but disputed the issue around governance. His view was that family-run organisations had to compete in the same market as PLCs so they simply had to be well run.

Indeed, you only have to look at the banking crisis to realise that governance isn’t always at its best at large, global PLCs either.

So maybe it’s not that different after all.

I have just got my feet back under the desk after over two weeks out of the office. It was a surreal mix of my Stag weekend, a week with the in-laws and then week of WPP Training. I came back home utterly exhausted. But with perhaps a bit more insight about my strengths and weaknesses. And that was just fromthe in-laws!

Seriously, I felt very fortunate that H&K was prepared to allow me a week away from the fray on our fantastic Maestro course.

I took a lot from the week but one of my biggest reflections was on the  power of great feedback. People often talk about feedback being a “gift”. That may be the case but it has taken me a long time to recognise the value of this particular “gift”! And on Maestro you receive lots of gifts. It’s relentless…

That is has taken me so long to see its value may well be down to my own hang-ups or limitations. But I think it also reflects a broader viewpoint.

I know many clients, colleagues and friends who have been on the receiving end of really poor feedback. It feels critical, it is nebulous, it has no practical use. Essentially it serves only to undermine confidence.

It highlights the importance of giving leaders and line managers training on how to give and receive it.

Thankfully I was fortunate enough to receive some really constructive and useful feedback before, during and after the course (which was incredibly well facilitated by our friends at exetor). 

In my view the beauty of great feedback is in the delivery. It has to come from a good place (i.e. designed to help rather than hurt). It has to be specific – something the recipient can really get to grips with. And it has to have a practical suggestion attached. There really is no point giving the feedback if you don’t have any alternatives for the person receiving it…

So, I have plenty to work on over the coming weeks and months.  I’d like to start by thanking the peers, clients and colleagues who took time to give me the 360 degree feedback. I’ve spoken to most of you about it now so you should broadly know what I’m focussing on.

Finally just to mention the great group of people I worked so closely with on the Maestro course: Nathalie, Zsofia, Chris, Carmen and Kate. Thanks for all your help and remember I’m only a phone call away if I can help you in any way.

Okay… I’m about to have a bit of a rant…I think there is a bit of a misconception among some comms practitioners around the term “consistency”.

I sometimes hear practitioners encourage their leadership to be more aligned or consistent. Even sometimes to speak with “one voice”… and to be honest when I hear that I cringe slightly.

After all we are not living in some kind of Orwellian dictatorship where it’s a ”thought-crime” for a leader to go “off message”…

I’m not knocking the use of messaging frameworks (here at H&K we have a  tried and trusted methodology for them). I am certain that they have their place… as… well frameworks. They are guidance notes for the organisation – and indeed the individuals who use them – around what the compelling narrative around a particular issue, topic or strategy should be.

They should never be seen as verbatim scripts that our leaders read directly from… (you laugh – I’ve seen it done…).

We should encourage individual leaders and stakeholders to put things into their own words. After all we want them to put the message into some kind of context so that their colleagues see it as relevant and meaningful… Ultimately it’s the general thrust of the argument we want them to put across. And it’s going to sound much more authentic if they’re given the space to use words that they might actually use on an everyday basis!

Funnily enough this very topic came up when I met Dominic Walters who chairs the newly-coined Institute of Internal Communications last week. As you know I chair the CIPR Inside group and so it felt like a timely meeting.

We agreed that we had in many instances a shared agenda. And that some of our colleagues should meet to understand where our “red lines” of differentiation were.

More importantly we agreed that there needed to be plural voices arguing for our agenda.

As you can imagine I’m all for that…

It’s been an intriguing couple of weeks in the UK. Our new coalition Government seems to have caught the imagination of the media… and maybe the public at large.

It’s been really fascinating observing the way political commentators have responded to this “new” politics. The instinct has always been I suppose to look for division and conflict. That’s what makes a good story right?

Putting my own politics to one side I actually feel a sense of optimism around this bold move. The politics in this country has long been defined by the rough and tumble, “Punch and Judy” charade that is PMQs.

The tone of the debate is unnecessarily gladiatorial. It’s outdated, outmoded and out of touch. No wonder trust in UK politicians is at an all time low.

The slightly adolescent point-scoring is just not something you see very often in most of the big organisations we work with here at H&K. Our clients tend to show a bit more respect to their colleagues.

And we’ve seen clients going through mergers, integrations, redundancies. Often we see people sitting around a table with people who have only very recently been bitter rivals and competitors. And now they are focussed on addressing major changes affecting the livelihoods of real people. It’s just too important to be treated as a game.

Maybe that’s something our politicians are finally learning.

P.S. – Please check out my review of this weeks fascinating CIPR Inside event on how social media can help your career here.

Some of you may have noticed that H&K London has just announced our own restructure. So we get to be the participants going through change for once. Rather than the consultants… We get to practise what we preach!

So what are the changes? My boss Richard Millar has outlined a structure which is going to be centred around 9 sector areas. It will mean that we have even greater emphasis on our clients needs with people deeply embedded on the unique challenges in the sector. Clearly this is the right thing to be doing.

Those of you who have heard me repeatedly bang the drum for an “integrationist” approach to communications will not be surprised to hear me say that. Clients rarely have a problem which just has an external or internal dimension. Integrating specialist areas with sector expertise clearly has significant benefits.

And the reaction to our changes has been broadly positive. Both from clients and the market.

From a purely parochial point of view I do want to clarify the ongoing role of the Change & Internal Communications team here at H&K. One commentator talked about internal comms being “swept away” at H&K. That’s simply not the case.

Yes we are going to be much more integrated with our colleagues in the sector areas. However, for the foreseeable future Change & Internal Communications will continue to be a specialist Practice area.  In fact I’m proud to say that we are one of the fastest – growing Practice areas within the agency.

The most important aspect of our new structure is that it presents even greater opportunities to provide our clients with outstanding consultancy, creativity and delivery.