Manhattan Marketing Maven

5 Savvy Ways to Start a New Job

Congratulations you are starting a new job. You’ve got a new outfit, a new attitude and a new paycheck. Be sure you start smart and savvy by being conscious of your surroundings and by managing your expectations. It’s not easy being the new guy. 

You’re psyched. They’re psyched. But nobody knows what’s really coming next. You gilded the lily and radiated energy and intention in all those interviews. They did too. Everyone was on their best behavior. Now you’ll see them in their native habitat. 

Some will maintain the façade longer than others, but soon you’ll get a glimpse or a massive dose of reality. Nobody ever really knows what he or she is getting into until they are in-place, fully present with all political and emotional sensors on high alert. 

To insure you get off to a smart, savvy and successful start, focus on these 5 factors  

Expect Differences. No two organizations do things the same. You’ll see stuff that’s cool and stuff that’s nutty. Your IT and email set-up will be different. So will time sheets, reporting, status, phones, etc. Don’t be shocked. Take it all in. Maintain an even keel. Don’t make faces. Try to understand why they do it that way. If there’s no good reason, accept it. 

You are not going to change attitudes, processes or idiosyncrasies anytime soon. So suck it up. Decide that whatever they do and however they do it will be okay. Go with the flow. Don’t make demands or comparisons to your old job. Don’t be a Diva. Your new bosses and teammates want you to fit in. Don’t disappoint them by freaking out or by telling them how outdated, silly or counter-productive their act is. 

Get the Back Story. You’ve joined a sitcom in-progress. Find out what went on before you showed up and what people think will happen next. You got hired. But you don’t really know if they think you are the Messiah or if you were 3^rd choice. Disconnect your ego and find out as much about the context of your hiring as you can.

You might think you’re there to shake things up or to add some special measure of expertise. If you are the first new guy after a hiring freeze, expectations could be unrealistically high. You might be replacing either a super star or a screwball, either of which will prompt comparisons and early judgments.

Chances are somebody there thinks you’ve arrived to be their bitch and somebody else has already lined up all the stuff they hate to do as your first assignments. The more you understand the back story; the easier the transition. 

Smile & Keep Your Mouth Shut. Smile and be happy. You have a new job. But don’t pretend you’ve joined a love cult. People work out all kinds of needs at work. You can’t effectively negotiate the currents till you understand who’s who and where they are coming from. This requires considerable restraint. Everyone is curious about the new guy. Develop a simple story punctuated with some personal details and tell it. Then shut up, watch and listen. 

Identify who likes who, who has the real power or influence. Try to figure out the tribes and cliques around you. Don’t join any group till you really know who’s in it and how they operate. You’re like a new prisoner in the yard. Don’t join or annoy the Crips or the Bloods. 

Don’t speculate about what’s going on. Stifle the urge to dissect, psychoanalyze, explain or describe your new insights to your new colleagues since you’ll invariably be wrong and piss someone off. Do not become an office gossip. It’s the kiss of death. Talk to your roommate, your partner or even your Mom, but keep mum in the office until you feel confident you have the true lay of the land. Remember, new hires can be broomed in 90-120 without much cause, so don’t make enemies unnecessarily. 

Be Straight with Your Boss. Ask for clear directions, priorities and assignments. Ask the boss what success looks like. Get agreement on your personal KPIs and understand how your work will be evaluated. Be sure to get clear direction on deadlines, reports, statuses, and how much or how little to involve him or her in each of your projects. 

Some bosses are organized, self-aware and straightforward. Others aren’t. Some are very friendly. Some are distant. You’ll know right away which your boss is so calibrate your response and figure out how to give them what they want or what you think they want. Be straight but don’t suck up. Don’t be bashful. Ask and ask again. Act on their feedback. Establishing a good, clear and productive working relationship with your immediate supervisor will determine your near term career trajectory. 

Focus on Performance. You’re there to get something done. Make sure it gets done right. The fastest way to advance is to productively deliver work on time and on budget. Put all the other attractions and blandishments of the new job to the side. 

The landscape, the departments and the process will be new and probably different. Zero-in on learning them. Make allies in other departments. Figure out the formal process and the informal workarounds. Someone is counting on you to get on the scoreboard quickly. Deliver on those expectations. Figure out who can help you and who is just in the way. Find a Sherpa to guide you through the system. Play nice. Share. Document your work. Suspend judgment. Keep your eye on the prize. When you win; don’t brag. 

 

 

 

9 Ad Tactics for Internal Communications

Internal communications has a huge task but is usually heavily undervalued in large organizations. Staffed mostly by PR people, these guys are the house propagandists, touting everything from new benefits to major changes in strategy. But like other PR people, they often don’t look across the hall to use tactics from advertising to make their messages more effective and their media more efficient.

 

If you are charged with internal communications and genuinely expect to impact an organization’s culture or operational practice, you cannot ignore the “best practices” developed in political and consumer advertising.

 

Getting an organization to act differently internally and externally – requires a nuanced set of communications skills that leverage employees real life experiences and account for corporate schizophrenia – a common condition under which employees want to believe and are supremely skeptical at the same time. Face it; nobody comes to work wanting to hate it. Instead an awful lot of people work with really smart and nice people who are caught up in mind numbing bureaucracies doing repetitive and sometimes stupid things.

 

Organizational change is hard to do and even harder to frame up and communicate. You must account for inertia, habit and anxiety and make your case in a very tough employee marketplace of ideas and opinions. Consider adapting these nine ad tactics in shaping corporate communications programs.

  

Create a Party Line. Articulate a clear, concise policy line and demand active adherence from all levels in the organization. The existence of a clear point of view – well articulated short and long term goals will direct and orient the organization. The slogan should be a double entendre and should be able to stand up to frequent use and frequent snickering.

 

Focus on Frequency. Communicating big concepts to large, often skeptical employee audiences requires a shorthand that is universally and instantly understood and frequently repeated. Bombard the rank and file with short punchy slogans until they are unavoidable, unforgettable and firmly drilled into everyone’s consciousness. You will tire of it long before employees will. Plan for extensions and alternate uses to keep the ideas fresh and forward.

 

Segment Your Audience.  One size never fits all. The lifer thinks and feels differently from the newly hired. The professional or executive employee filters messages differently than the newbies or the admins. The sales guys are always a wild card.   Headquarters workers feel and process information differently than employees in remote locations. Think about segmentation by age, gender, location, tenure, education, function or customer responsibility. Craft distinct messages for each segment and orchestrate them through channels credible to each segment in order to be genuinely heard.

 

Use Informal Channels. The jungle drums trump the official word in every situation. Enroll informal influence networks to generate buzz and add credibility and persuasion to your messages. Embrace the tools that can help identify early adopters, key influencers and change leaders at each level. You’ll need them to mobilize and motivate a large scale organization.  Employees want to believe and want to contribute, but you need to create a cadre of people they know to help, encourage and validate that instinct. Only by connecting with people they know, trust and believe will your agenda really penetrate into the guts of the organization.  Peer acceptance and advocacy is the critical success variable for message credibility and acceptance. Finding the right peers and internal advocates is worthy of significant investment.

 

Create UGC Buzz. Seed the clouds with advocates and use both formal and informal channels to get the word out. People do what others are doing and often comply with widely held common expectations. Many firms have a well accepted way of doing things or a general sensibility that most employees understand and share. Reinforced by the use of tangible experiences and common symbols to consistently reinforce the message, peer recommendations are critical since change is a viral process that builds on itself. Allow for early adopters to express their support in their own words. Encourage employee-generated content as part of your campaign.

 

Model Behavior. People need to understand what is expected of them. By catching employees doing things right and calling out this model behavior or celebrating these model workers, you hold up the desired behavior. By showing the end result, you drive behavioral change by showing the path forward and illuminating the desired end result. By continually pointing out the desired results, you encourage greater understanding and greater performance. Just make sure you focus carefully and don’t make overblown claims.

 

Celebrate Every Victory. The corollary to modeling behavior is celebrating every win. Change is an incremental process where success builds upon itself and small victories can be compounded, packaged and merchandized to yield increasingly bigger victories. People want to join a winning team and perceived momentum is an effective recruiting device. Without stretching the truth, find little wins and disseminate them widely. Point out and publicize the contributing factors that brought about the win. But don’t overdo it. Employees have a keen filter for hype.

 

Provide a Feedback Loop.  Genuine attitudinal change is incremental and evolutionary. By creating ways to solicit ideas, participation and express dissent or frustration, you keep the effort on track, adapt the plan to changing circumstances, account for anomalies and absorb the best ideas for moving forward.  You also acknowledge that nothing is perfect and that everyone can contribute to making things better.

9 Change Management Tactics from Chairman Mao

If you are charged with changing an organization’s culture, you can not ignore the biggest sustained case study in change management over the last 60 years – the transformation of the Peoples’ Republic of China under the guidance of Mao Zedong.

 

And while Chairman Mao and his successors’ philosophy, approach and policies might be abhorrent politically and while no one can ever condone or minimize the butchery or the massive scale of human suffering brought on by successive campaigns, decisions or regimes, the actions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) offer the greatest number of lessons in how to transform a country from abject poverty to modernity and from political chaos and internecine warfare to stability and participation in the world political system.

 

Facing a smaller task – changing how a company can change its culture and act differently internally and externally – there seem to be several clear change management concepts that can be extracted from Chairman Mao.

 

Don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating any of the CCP methods. But I am suggesting that the CCP understood underlying and possibly universal motivational and communications principles which can be extracted, humanized, tempered, democratized and applied in organizational settings to achieve scalable change.

 

Involve Top Leadership. From Mao thru Wen Jiaboa every Chinese leader has been an active front man and spokesperson for change. Routine and regular appearances to underscore the effort and tout the party line are key expectations of top leaders.

 

Create a Party Line. The CCP plans their work and works their plan. They articulate a clear, concise policy line and demand active adherence from all cadres. They use party discipline to enforce every zig and zag in the party line. But the existence of a clear point of view and articulated short and long term goals direct and orient the organization. Just don’t expect consistency or historical continuity.

 

Use Simple Slogans Frequently. While the CCP will never win any creative awards, they understood early on that communicating big concepts to the masses required shorthand that is universally and instantly understood and frequently repeated. Like Mad Men they crated short punchy slogans and bombarded the masses with them until they were unavoidable, unforgettable and firmly drilled into everyone’s consciousness.

 

Influence Every Unit. By identifying early adopters, purging dissenters and designating change leaders at each level of society, the CCP mobilized and motivated millions of “change agents” to accomplish their mission. Every house, block, factory, military unit and sector of society had party member and trained cadres tasked with instigating and sustaining change. Change requires worker bees at every important level of the organization.

 

Model Behavior. People need to understand what is expected of them. By calling out model citizens, model work brigades and model collective farms, the CCP held up the desired behavior and then dissected and disseminated the operative elements of the behavior they sought to encourage. By showing the end result, often entirely fabricated, they were able to drive behavioral change by showing the path forward and illuminating the desired end result.

 

Celebrate Every Victory. The corollary to modeling behavior is celebrating every win. In the case of the CCP many were entirely bogus, nonetheless they understood that change is an incremental process where success builds upon itself and small victories can be compounded, packaged and merchandized to yield increasingly bigger victories. They also understood the need for people to join a winning team and the attractiveness of perceived momentum as a recruiting and validating device.

 

Marshall Peer Pressure. People do what others are doing and often comply with widely held expectations. We and they are monkey-see; monkey-do cultures. The CCP set the bar and used every form of peer pressure and coercion to attain conformity. Their methods, while odious and brutal, built a culture where the cadre reinforced and policed its own behavior. This was further reinforced by the use of tangible experiences, music, operas and common symbols (e.g. The Little Red Book, Mao pins) to consistently reinforce the message. Accepting and implementing change is a viral process that builds on itself and needs to reach a critical mass.

 

Manage Self-Interest. It was always more important and better to be “red” rather than “expert”. Toeing the line determined everything from housing and work assignments to personal freedom. The CCP aggressively used the “performance review process” backed by secret police and Gestapo tactics to help people act in their own best interests. Baking expected behavior into key performance indicators and into personal objectives yields uptake and traction.

 

Provide a Feedback

Loop

.  Genuine attitudinal change is incremental and evolutionary and without admitting it the CCP was realistic in changing the tactics necessary to achieve its objectives. By creating ways to solicit ideas, participation and express dissent or frustration, the party kept the effort on track, adapted the plan to changing circumstances, accounted for anomalies and absorbed the best ideas for moving forward, unfortunately often over the dead bodies of dissenters.

 

Historians and political philosophers will debate the legacy of Chairman Mao for centuries. Arguably the greatest cynical tyrant and mass murderer of all time, the average Chinese today enjoys a quality of life unimaginable just 60 years ago. Within this massive sustained transformation, with all its flaws, evil and inconsistencies are lessons in change management worthy of observing and extracting for more benign and productive uses.

7 Secrets for a Successful Second Marriage

It is surprising that after so many millennia of marriages and in spite of our national obsession with “how-to” and “self-help” why there isn’t a simple formula or 5 proven steps to achieve marital bliss.

And while Samuel Johnson sees a second marriage as the triumph of hope over experience, I can tell you as a survivor of a 12 year second marriage that your future is bright and that intensity and the happiness you feel today is sustainable, renewable and much more flexible and resilient that you imagine.

Given our sophistication in psychology, behavioral science and statistics, its remarkable that a team from Harvard, MIT or Stanford hasn’t produced a sure-fire algorithm for marital success that accounts for and weights all the relevant and contingent variables.

But until we can read about these breakthroughs, allow me to offer 7 pieces of advice or my personal Sheva Brachot …

1. Create Time Together. Your lives are crazy. Create time to decompress. Just hang out together. Allow yourselves the sacred time and sacred space to talk, to cuddle to let ideas, data and feelings dribble out at their own pace with or without context. Don’t limit yourselves to routine hocking, venting, whining, physical complaints or lists of chores or bills. And don’t be afraid to express yourselves using new or inventive combinations of pet-names, expletives, barnyard sounds, familiar or obscure Yiddish words or the codex of Italian hand gestures

2. Create more, frequent physical intimacy. Studies have shown it’s good for body and soul. And its fun too!

3. Create Joint Parenting Strategies. Create an ego-free zone where you can divorce your ego from your kids’ actions and your kids’ behaviors. Kids are amazing fabulous and brilliant. They are also annoying, needy and exasperating. Strive to teach them, guide them, enjoy them and discipline together. Aim for a point of view that sees only “our” children. Do everything you can to avoid becoming a persistent critic of each other’s parenting style or each other’s kids.

4. Create Focus on Stuff That Matters. We are inundated with stimuli, information and interruptions.  It’s easy to become either overwhelmed or manic or both. There are a handful of things that really matter. There are core values and beliefs that are genuinely worth fighting for. Life is short and too precious to waste time on things that are either optional or distracting. Figure out what these things are for you. Then focus on them. Slough the rest.

5. Create Openness. As we age we get more conservative, more set in our ways, more unwilling to see new things, recognize new facets of old things or adapt to changing realities. Fight these urges. Even Einstein – the man who kicked over the cosmic applecart – went to his grave defending outmoded theories. Fight the urge to default to your parent’s postures and positions. Stake out your own and be willing to abandon them as your kids or those around you show you new things and open up new options and possibilities.  As Chairman Mao said --- always be prepared to storm the headquarters.

6. Create Humor. We have 2 choices in most situations – laughing or crying. Laughing is better, it releases more, better and different chemicals in the body and it allows us to see and feel the absurdity of life on this planet. Two people can participate in humor easier than crying and because there are so many flavors of humor – and we Jews are particularly adept at many of them -- in the end humor leaves you more able to cope with whatever you are facing.

7. Create Forgiveness. We transgress against each other in ways big and small everyday. We communicate in loud, staccato purple prose and in soft mumbled asides. We also develop a vocabulary of looks, glances and gestures that can cut each other to the quick. We step on each others toes. We disappoint each other. We trump and double trump each other. We get all bollixed up and we get all untangled. We make each other crazy and push each others’ buttons consciously and unconsciously. Sometimes you need to “stifle yourself” in Archie Bunker’s terms in service to the genuine dialog that comes immediately after you’ve acted out or lived fully in the moment.

7 Secrets for a Successful Second Marriage

It is surprising that after so many millennia of marriages and in spite of our national obsession with “how-to” and “self-help” why there isn’t a simple formula or 5 proven steps to achieve marital bliss.

And while Samuel Johnson sees a second marriage as the triumph of hope over experience, I can tell you as a survivor of a 12 year second marriage that your future is bright and that intensity and the happiness you feel today is sustainable, renewable and much more flexible and resilient that you imagine.

Given our sophistication in psychology, behavioral science and statistics, its remarkable that a team from Harvard, MIT or Stanford hasn’t produced a sure-fire algorithm for marital success that accounts for and weights all the relevant and contingent variables.

But until we can read about these breakthroughs, allow me to offer 7 pieces of advice or my personal Sheva Brachot …

1. Create Time Together. Your lives are crazy. Create time to decompress. Just hang out together. Allow yourselves the sacred time and sacred space to talk, to cuddle to let ideas, data and feelings dribble out at their own pace with or without context. Don’t limit yourselves to routine hocking, venting, whining, physical complaints or lists of chores or bills. And don’t be afraid to express yourselves using new or inventive combinations of pet-names, expletives, barnyard sounds, familiar or obscure Yiddish words or the codex of Italian hand gestures

2. Create more, frequent physical intimacy. Studies have shown it’s good for body and soul. And its fun too!

3. Create Joint Parenting Strategies. Create an ego-free zone where you can divorce your ego from your kids’ actions and your kids’ behaviors. Kids are amazing fabulous and brilliant. They are also annoying, needy and exasperating. Strive to teach them, guide them, enjoy them and discipline together. Aim for a point of view that sees only “our” children. Do everything you can to avoid becoming a persistent critic of each other’s parenting style or each other’s kids.

4. Create Focus on Stuff That Matters. We are inundated with stimuli, information and interruptions.  It’s easy to become either overwhelmed or manic or both. There are a handful of things that really matter. There are core values and beliefs that are genuinely worth fighting for. Life is short and too precious to waste time on things that are either optional or distracting. Figure out what these things are for you. Then focus on them. Slough the rest.

5. Create Openness. As we age we get more conservative, more set in our ways, more unwilling to see new things, recognize new facets of old things or adapt to changing realities. Fight these urges. Even Einstein – the man who kicked over the cosmic applecart – went to his grave defending outmoded theories. Fight the urge to default to your parent’s postures and positions. Stake out your own and be willing to abandon them as your kids or those around you show you new things and open up new options and possibilities.  As Chairman Mao said --- always be prepared to storm the headquarters.

6. Create Humor. We have 2 choices in most situations – laughing or crying. Laughing is better, it releases more, better and different chemicals in the body and it allows us to see and feel the absurdity of life on this planet. Two people can participate in humor easier than crying and because there are so many flavors of humor – and we Jews are particularly adept at many of them -- in the end humor leaves you more able to cope with whatever you are facing.

7. Create Forgiveness. We transgress against each other in ways big and small everyday. We communicate in loud, staccato purple prose and in soft mumbled asides. We also develop a vocabulary of looks, glances and gestures that can cut each other to the quick. We step on each others toes. We disappoint each other. We trump and double trump each other. We get all bollixed up and we get all untangled. We make each other crazy and push each others’ buttons consciously and unconsciously. Sometimes you need to “stifle yourself” in Archie Bunker’s terms in service to the genuine dialog that comes immediately after you’ve acted out or lived fully in the moment.

And if we truly take to heart the Jewish notion that your wedding day is like Yom Kippur – we can add the full confessional – we lie, we cheat, we steal, we are jealous, we covet – and on and on. You have in your hearts today a great wealth of love and forgiveness. Continuously make deposits into these accounts. Give each other wide latitude to make withdrawals as necessary or as needed. 

Year-End Management Lessons

People ruin every brilliant or elegant system. And people make the world go round. Here's what I learned this year working with, managing and coaching people in business.

Ignorance Ain't Bliss. Everyone needs to know the game plan, the sequence of events and what their specific role in things is. The days of operating as if there was one brain and many arms and legs is long over. Even the newest or the dimmest member of your team needs to have a sense of the big picture and where he or she fits in the team, the company and the plan to succeed. You must orient your people and show them how to follow the map. You probably cannot over communicate anything. Forget about the notion of secrets. There are none.

Clarity Counts. Whenever you think its crystal clear; it isn't. You must explicitly lay out what you want done and how you want it done. It a world ruled by fear and anxiety, managers must lay out a clear path, set definable expectations and give regular feedback. If you can't confront people you cannot be a manager. If you don't stay close and make regular communication and course corrections your people will default to inertia and hide out waiting for you. In a world of personal accountability, its your job to lay out what you expect, how it will be measured and valued and then actually measure and value it.

Create Context. Nothing you do exists in a vacuum. Set goals, position those goals relative to the overall company objectives and the state of your marketplace. Keep your eye on the prize and orient your team to the rules of the game and how to get points on the board. Very few people succeed alone. Business is a team sport and without context, orientation and direction the team cannot effectively compete. Its easy to stick to your silo but rarely can you win by staying only in one lane.

Be Transparent. Tell 'em what you're gonna tell tell 'em. Tell 'em. And tell 'em what you just told 'em. Explain what you are doing and why. Be open to suggestions, ideas and cautionary advice. Share data and share your assumptions. Solicit input and aim for consensus. Very few people really know what they're doing and even fewer have a plan of attack. Don't keep yours a secret. Share it. Enroll people into it. Modify it and it will fly. It's much easier to get a movement going if you're willing to modify the plan and share credit.

Admit Mistakes. Accept Criticism. We all screw up. We all make mistakes. We all get faked or psyched out.Some more than others. Your ego will get you in trouble. The best leaders are their own toughest critics. The best managers find the flaws, identify the errors and learn from the mistakes first. Nobody expects perfection. Everybody aspires to a process of continuous improvement and learning.

Everything is Political. Meritocracy is a dream. We work in a political world. Once you get into middle management ranks its more about the game than about production or productivity. Watch. Listen. Try to keep your mouth shut. Watch the players make their moves. See how the sides line up and observe how the game is played and scored. Make enemies and allies strategically. You cannot win if you're not on the field so play business like chess and think 2 moves ahead.   

Watch with a Wide Angle Lens. We live in a convergent world. Good ideas come from everywhere. You can easily adapt something from a business or a field that seems way out of context. As we understand the natural world, our changing culture, the global landscape and the nanoworld better analogies, buzzwords and ideas change. Cast a wide net. Read, look, see, smell and taste everything you can. Think about all the ways you can do things smarter, faster and cheaper. Consider all the things you do and ask yourself how can things be streamlined, combined or skipped. Set aside time to process, reflect and think. Occasionally turn off and tune out. 

Laugh Often. We live in a funny world. Most of what we do is absurd. Our businesses, our politics and much of our cultural is nuts. Our lives are much more amusing and entertaining than the crap we watch on TV. Own the silliness. Make fun of yourself. Grasp the humor around you. Understand that the illusion of control and sanity is just that an illusion. Tap into the fun and the wonder of living.          

Making Employee Communications More Effective

Have you ever noticed how hard it is for companies to get the word out to its employees?

Talk to almost any senior executives or any HR leader and you discover that in companies of 5 or companies of 50,000 getting the right information to the right people at the right time is a persistent problem. Talking with and among ourselves is much more challenging than talking with customers, partners or investors.

And yet if you work inside a company and truly analyze the issue, you quickly discover that companies are their own worst enemies when it comes to cueing their people about everything from marketplace strategy to company holidays to the availability of flu shots.

Here’s why …

Too Many Messages

In most organizations employees get official messages almost every day. Employees are bombarded with everything from statements of strategy or policy to changing details about parking or benefit programs to IT alerts to schedule changes for blood drives and softball games. The vast majority of these messages are ignored and possibly deleted before they are read because employees see no value in them. In fact, most employees get so much e-mail that unless it’s from their boss or their immediate team members, it automatically gets less attention.

Nobody seems to be in charge of editing or prioritizing messages. There is no contact strategy in place that would dictate how many contacts are too many contacts for effective communication. Most firms don’t have a publishing calendar in place that could cue employees that C level stuff is announced on Mondays and HR announcements always come on Fridays.

One-Size-Fits All

Most corporate messages have one text and one flavor. Any given message may or may not be applicable to everyone but usually it’s easier to blast it out to the entire company than to target the message or to write variations based on relevance or receptivity. The global blast also instantly satisfies a C level query about getting the word out.

But if you ask anyone they’ll quickly tell you that finance people understand process and prefer to get their information in ways that are distinct and different from sales guys or engineers. But hardly anyone acknowledges or acts on these known differences when crafting or transmitting internal or employee messages.

Similarly even data-centric companies don’t seem to be able to sort employees on the basis of relevant facts. Most can’t just ping everyone who has a particular laptop model or quickly isolate those who have taken a certain option in the dental plan. So instead everyone gets all messages which in turn trains the cadre to ignore all messages.

No Priorities

If you look at employee communications everything is top priority. Few companies use different names or different fonts to distinguish between really important messages and routine information. As a result everything is important and nothing is important. Employees treat the corporate messenger like the kid who cried “wolf.” As a result changes in pricing or new product introductions often get the same weight and attention as birthdays, service anniversaries and bake sales.

Too Much Spin

Too many companies ignore the reservoir of goodwill, willingness to believe and need for belonging that exists among their work force. In an over-regulated, litigious and spin-doctored environment, the leadership rarely talks straight to the rank and file. Every word is processed  and the result is a transparent “party line” which is instantly discredited by the people who really know what’s going on because they show up for work each day, pay attention and care much more than you think.

No one really believes that “right sizing” and “re-engineering” benefits is good for them. Everyone already knows which products are hits and which are misses long before any official announcement. Anyone vaguely paying attention has a pretty good feel for the interplay of profits, politics and personalities within their own organizations, even in mega global ones. So why isn’t there more straight talk to and among the people who inevitably have to bear the burdens and implement the changes?

Usually the leadership feels it has to process internal messaging to protect security and to avoid any appearance or potential claim of “insider” trading. But there are very few real secrets other than intentions and timing. And most of them are usually already on the minds of employees interested in the future of their companies.

Alternative Networks

In every company there are individuals who have credibility or tenure who informally connect people to other people. These are the people who have lived through a thousand policy changes, who help you figure out how to get stuff done, who know which person can expedite your expenses and who have friends and information sources spread out all over the organization.

The “rumor mills” or “jungle drums” are informal communication networks that talk plainly, transmit faster and have more credibility than any official form of internal communication. They not only edit, filter and assess information, but they play to our need to know and our desire to have the real “skinny” on events unfolding in front of our eyes. Sometimes these neural networks are connected to each other. Often they are limited within a facility or within a team or business unit. Nonetheless they almost always trump the official employee communications system.

So what’s a forward thinking company to do?

Leverage what we’ve learned in direct and online marketing and apply it to internal communications.

Consider these steps.

1. Segment Audiences.

Separate out groups of people to get relevant messages rather than send the same message to everyone. Build separate lists to get separate messages. Write different versions of the same message aimed at presenting information in different ways to distinct personality or work group types. Establish contact strategies that govern how many messages each employee can get per month. These can be based on location, rank or work assignment, but less is definitely more.

2. Get Opt-ins & Set Preferences.

When people choose to get messages they pay more attention, open them quicker and act on them faster. Allow employees to opt-into messages and to specify either the frequency on which they are contacted or the medium used. Some people still prefer the phone or a flyer to e-mail. All the research shows that when marketers ask for opt-ins and facilitate preferences and then deliver on them, they breed strong loyalty and greater customer lifetime value. It’s a lesson easily applied to employees.

3. Use Different Formats.

We’ve learned from countless Internet retailers that different formats, headers and copy can instantly cue readers about the urgency, import or significance of a message. Eliminating frequent messages by grouping information by topics and/or establishing an easy-to-follow publication calendar will also increase awareness, attention and open rates.

4. Map the Neural Networks.

Marketers and information architects have made remarkable strides in network mapping and analysis so much so that it is possible and even easy to map the informal networks within your organization. Understanding which people are influencers and key opinion leaders gives you a high priority target audience to educate, inform or persuade about important company issues

Why Intranets Suck

Telling someone to use the company intranet is usually like telling them to “go to hell.” In most companies the operative business model seems to be to build the legendary library at

Alexandria

without a catalogue or a navigable interface.

Ironically the worst intranets are often in software companies where the shoemaker’s son syndrome is at play. But the problem of internal communications is a by-product of trying to create a comprehensive archive of stuff without a communications strategy in the face of many departments eager, and often incented,  to publish to the site. The result is usually a mish-mash of hard-to-find stuff which ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime thrown together without the benefit of skilled information architecture or interface design. Every one clains that whatever you need is "in there" and no one ever wants to use it.

This too is partly the fault of software companies who madly tout and sell portals as a tool for cutting costs, reducing cycle times and empowering employees by forcing them into self-service. The software guys hint that all the big issues have been pre-thought, pre-digested and will be solved by buying their code. The reality is usually the opposite.

To get an employee portal right and get it used requires three basic steps:

1. Determine the Primary

Mission

and Create a Hierarchy of Needs

What should this portal do? Everything is NOT an acceptable answer. Do you want employees to make transactions like selecting or adjusting their benefits, sick days and vacation requests or filing expense reports? Do you want it to be a beacon for your mission statement, your vision and your corporate blab? Is it a communications channel for reaching and interacting with employees? Is it a workbook for setting MBOs, doing performance evaluations and hiring or firing? Is it a workgroup collaboration tool? Is it a delivery mechanism for added employee services and benefits? Is it a document storage system or knowledge-sharing device?

You can’t build it right if you don’t know what it should do. And even if you aspire to a multi-functional portal, you can never afford the time or money to invest in state of the art features for each element. So you must choose what it should do first and best and then rank order by priority the other functions that get built in.

2. Don’t Leave it Solely to HR

Too many bad intranets are run by HR departments alone. They rarely get the IT, marketing or communications part right because they are all about processing paperwork and keeping records. In fact the modern HR department is mostly about automating employee interactions not necessarily encouraging them.

You have to create a cross functional team and bring all the relevant disciplines to bear. And you have to start out by thinking of your employees with the same care and concern that you think about your customers. From the beginning you have to assume that personalization, preference setting and straight forward presentation are mandatory. Intranets that are the oracle for corporate big brother and those that are relentlessly rah-rah generally fail.

Also you need to decide up front on the definition of success. Is it usage? Is it the number of transactions? It is manager compliance with instructions? Is it time and money saved? Understanding that metrics motivate most corporate behavior means that what you measure is what will get done. So laying out what you want to happen will directly influence what gets built and what gets used.

3. Think in Web 2.0 Terms

The best websites and the best portals have abandoned the page-serving paradigm. Web 2.0 is about anticipating information needs and usage patterns and staging information so that it comes to the user rather than forcing the user to find whatever he/she is looking for. This requirement ratchets up the technology needs and the necessary advance thinking about information design, site architecture and interface construction. But ultimately it’s well worth it since without it your realistic chance of stimulating widespread use and any ind of ROI is severely diminished.

The Internal Communications Challenge

Communicating with employees is the bane of corporate life.Whether you have 50,000 employees or 5 insuring that the message sent is the message received is the toughest marketing challenge.

Why?

Because the workplace is so highly charged emotionally that clarity is almost impossible. Everyone filters each message through attitudes and emotions which change day-to-day and minute-by-minute. Because employers generally don’t level with the people who work for them. Because there are too many internal messages and little ability to frame, prioritize or target them. And because most internal messages are controlled by HR weenies who are usually clueless and officious.

The ability to clearly and forcefully transmit messages to the workforce is a critical factor in global competitiveness and employee satisfaction or retention. But go into any firm and you’ll find that the grapevine is a much faster and more credible network than official media that range from posters in the lunchroom to desktop flyers to elaborate e-mail chains and jam-packed intranets.

Employers chronically underestimate the amount and intensity of goodwill among employees. Most people want to make a difference, earn a living, enjoy their work and contribute to something bigger than themselves. There are very few real secrets inside any company. Employees know what’s going on in every dimension and consistently make the same competitive assessments and judgments that employers do.

As the social contract changes, the best employees will vote with their feet when they feel unloved, unfulfilled or oppressed by management. Employees constantly handicap the performance of their own companies. What they know about management plans, intentions and employee benefits are key data points that drive engagement, morale and performance.

Too many employers treat their work force like children by talking down to them, assuming they don’t understand global marketplace realities or by masking problems and intentions in the gobbledy-gook of corporate speak. The top-down command system of management has been broadly discredited, yet it seems to be the residual model for internal communications.

In a world where baby boomers leave the system, where retirement and healthcare benefits are severely reduced and where competition for fewer all-star performers is significantly more intense, poor internal communication will doom a company. The challenge for internal communications is to build a contact strategy that limits the number and quantity of internal messages sent and to install filters to insure that messages are clear and not subject to widespread or diverse interpretation.

Employees need clear, personal messages that are honest, straightforward, relevant to them and short. These messages have to be framed in friendly, savvy language that acknowledges what insiders’ know and feel. And they have to be targeted so that they go only to those who need to know or care about the contents.

Internal messages cannot be buried in an intranet or part of a relentless e-mail stream. Instead employers need to treat employee communications like prospect or client communications and ask the audience to set preferences for content, frequency and, channels. Only then will employers have a shot a truly mobilizing or motivating their workers.