Everything is connected

The soul of successful internal communications may be a culture of communications, but realizing it requires a robust, flexible and scalable network to bring colleagues together, and a sense of community to get them talking.

In a lot of ways, the network is the easy part – after all, it’s just technology. Most existing tool choices can deliver acceptable results, though choosing the optimal tool requires close collaboration with the IT team and representatives of all levels of the company’s structure. Careful consulting of all stakeholders is vital to success, because for the second key component – community – to thrive, the network platform(s) must be chosen to reflect their needs and wants, not just cost and technical viability.

Community building is a more delicate task, requiring an understanding of the organizational dynamics, the elements of corporate culture, and how to maintain the optimal balance of top-down communication and grassroots collaboration across the corporate channels. In many ways, the suite of internal communications channels is no different from any other medium – there is content the channel wants consumed, and then there is what the consumer wants. These are rarely congruent.

As my background is from print, I like to explain this apparent dichotomy through the analogy of the advertising in magazines:

• Publishers (senior management) see the magazine as a vehicle for advertising (required communication types).
• Readers (employees) tolerate a level of advertising in exchange for entertainment or useful information.
• Editors work to establish a balance between these two factors.

If the balance is off, the magazine will fail – either through lack of advertising, or lack of readership.

To use another analogy, a well balanced channel is like a pill: the corporate messaging is the active ingredient, and the engaging content is the sugar coating. Take the former away, it’s meaningless fluff. Remove the latter, it becomes hard to swallow.

The technology and the community must be bound together by a clear set of governance structures, operating procedures and information flow hierarchies, supported by an empowered communications team. This, unfortunately, defies an easy analogy. Each company requires different governance structures, and a great deal of tailored documentation to support it. However, with due care a successful internal communications structure can be built on the synergies of infrastructure and community, sustainably managed by an effective governance structure developed in consultation with the community it should serve.

Many millions, and much employee goodwill has been lost by assuming that the technology made communication effective, instead of served effective communication.