Category: Insights

Seasonality is a bit subjective here in Reykjavik. It’s more a function of the number of hours of daylight than the air or particularly the water temperature. 

Indeed, 66 North, the country’s prestige sportswear brand (think “Izod for Icelanders”), has the longstanding slogan “Waiting for Summer since 1926.” 

But the calendar and the cold are beginning to converge.  Winter is coming – and not just to the places here which were sets for Game of Thrones.  

ONBOARDING REMOTELY

Moving to a city 1500 km from the nearest capital is certainly an all-in bet on the future of remote working.  Having noted the difference between working with old clients and new clients remotely over recent months, I teamed up with Canada’s Andrea Greenhous to produce this piece on Remote Onboarding for the collective at IC Beyond.  

THE CONTINUING PANDEMIC

I’m sure I’m not the only person these days who says this, but I generally don’t believe Donald Trump.  And I particularly don’t believe him when he says that a COVID-19 vaccine is coming imminently.

My sense, and my advice for internal communication pros, is to plan for a long haul. That means working with your organizations to develop communication and cultural principles that will embed the kind of resilience both to survive the pandemic and seize the opportunities it may bring.

I wrote a piece on the latest wave of COVID and its implications with Jill Leake, a UK-based comms and change consultant.  The main advice – organizations need to show much more consistency between their “talk” and their “walk” as the pandemic continues.

(The piece was written as a “Podtext” – a written online dialogue. Here is my article from last week on Podtexting.)

CONNECTING WITH THE ICELANDERS

As an internal communications professional who has mainly worked with large companies, I must admit it is different to be in a place where, on the one hand, “large” companies are those with more than 500 employees. More interesting: communication in the entire country often looks to me like “internal communication” does in 100,000 employee-enterprises.  (I wrote a piece on this before the pandemic.)

I’ve only started making the rounds of communication and change professionals here in Iceland, but a few things stand out:

• They’ve been genuinely happy to meet
• They’ve been equally willing to share their insights both about local issues and about professional issues more globally
• They ask excellent questions

If anyone is looking for an Icelandic angle for your podcasts and panel discussions, let me know. I have some great guests for you. For example, Vidir Ragnarsson is a global leader in the pay equity and diversity & inclusion arenas.  

TEAM SMARP

One of the things about the way I approach my work and my network is that there is much that I like doing as an independent. But I also think I can accomplish as part of larger teams and communities.  So while I continue to pursue new projects and opportunities on my own, I’m also working with a number of specialist firms and with a top-rated internal communication platform, Smarp.

Smarp is my most ambitious partnership – where I’ve teamed up with longtime internal communications leader and IABC Fellow/legend Brad Whitworth as Senior Advisors to deliver strategic services (think planning, research and training) for Smarp’s growing base of clients.

The commercial side of this is in its early stages, but our marketing and thought leadership efforts are in full swing.  Brad and I each have at least one five-or-so minute “Comms Shift” podcast per week, and Smarp recently published my guide to “What a CEO should know about Internal Communication.”

AWESOME PARTNERS

In addition to Smarp, my other active partners include:

Mirror Mirror: an innovative set of tools and processes looking at organizational alignment at the team or enterprise level.  Mirror Mirror founder Lindsay Uittenbogaard is a long-time “partner in crime” of mine, having worked together in varying capacities since 2007.  What I like about Mirror Mirror is that it takes a lot of the personalization (ok, a lot of the “BS”) out of the analysis of organizational gaps and, by doing so, put teams and organizations on the track to alignment.

Corporate Diplomat: created as “an end-to-end” M&A communication team, Corporate Diplomat is a firm that takes a holistic approach to advisory in an M&A market where the rational and numerical tend to overwhelm the pivotal human side of the equation. I’m a Senior Advisor with a focus on internal communication, building on my experience working with M&A in the telecoms, airline, packaging and materials industries. 

Open: a leading change communication and transformation agency offering a unique mix of strategic advisory and creative execution skills, including a wide range of digital capabilities.

ReputationInc: an international management consultancy with a strong record of integrating internal communication and change within the larger corporate picture.

Innovisor: the world leader in organizational network analysis for business. 

As all of my partners are Europe-based, I’m particularly interested in finding strong and interesting US and Asia/Pac partners to work with and cross-promote.  

CLOSING THE “TRIANGLES”

I’m passionate about my network – not only about what it can do for me, but also about how I can help people in my network. 

It’s not just been true in times like these, but it’s been a big part of my practice since I started in 2016.  

Each year, I set out with a goal of connecting a minimum of people with new connections, based on the calendar year (17 in ‘17, 20 in ‘20). I’ve also given numerous sessions with NL-based networking expert Lin McDevitt-Pugh to embolden participants to proactively introduce people within their communities.  

This week, network expert Valdis Krebs took the practice to a new level with a post he called “Network Weaving 101” – putting a name to this practice of proactive connection, and illustrating how it is both easy and impactful.  

SOMETHING FOR YOU

With the holiday season soon approaching, I’d like to offer the first two in my series of free self-assessment tools: Grapevine Communication and Remote Onboarding.

Each assessment tool involves a look at the issue through a short set of questions, a self-assessed rating, and the identification of key challenges in the way of moving each issue forward.

The tools can either be used to focus your own thinking on a key issue, or as the basis of a conversation with me about your challenges.

To order the guides, please email me at mike.klein@changingtheterms.com.

Thank you for reading – and I look forward to hearing from you. To schedule a conversation, visit https://calendly.com/changingtheterms/30min.

PR legend Stephen Waddington put it succinctly in his latest blog when he said “the next four months are likely to be as chaotic as the previous eight.”

I say “succinctly” in that while I agree with him about the Autumn to come, I also am fully respectful of the tumult, disruption, dislocation and opportunity that has already arisen this year. Still, I recognize that the US Elections, final-stage Brexit negotiations, hurricanes, tropical storms, the potential for cancellation of highly anticipated sports seasons and a much-anticipated spate of M&A activity can produce their own brands of mighty havoc.

It’s been one hell of a ride so far. In my world, COVID-19 did what I thought would be impossible at this stage of my life – create the circumstances where “I could work from anywhere.” At the same time, it also created the circumstances where that “anywhere” would end up being my wife’s home town of Reykjavik, Iceland.

Reykjavik is indeed a bit of a “physically distant” place – with a metro population around 200,000, and where the nearest capital city is Dublin, Ireland – 1400 km/900mi away.

In today’s world, there are a number of things that can give physical proximity a run for its money.  Having cultivated a substantial, global professional network over the last years, the time has come for me to combine a practice built around customized strategy, research and content with a commitment to connect my peers with people and firms which I believe offer exceptional support and insights for their 2020-and-beyond situations.

I’m delighted to be working with Smarp, a leading internal communication technology vendor; Corporate Diplomat, a specialist communication consultancy with strong ambitions in the M&A space; Mirror Mirror, which has some excellent software and processes for addressing enterprise and team alignment issues, Open, an enlightened internal communication agency with deep insights into the digital and physical spaces, and Reputation Inc, one of Europe’s leading reputation and communication strategy firms.

I’ll also continue blogging and writing – about internal communication and the overall scene, and about what it’s like to land in Reykjavik as a Chicago boy who has lived in five other European countries. Perhaps, more interestingly, about what the world’s comms folk can learn from a country that, with 350,000 people, is at the same kind of size as a top global corporation – and has a very advanced way of integrating internal and external communication.

For now, I am happy to be here – thanks in no small part to my ability to connect and communicate with my friends, peers, colleagues and fellow combatants around the world.  Things are cool, pleasant, well organized and as safe here as anywhere on the planet.  The people have been nothing but lovely so far, and it’s quite convenient to be situated between North America and Western Europe when it comes to work day overlap and humanely organizing Zoom calls.

While there are times when I’d prefer to be somewhere where the drinks are colder than the beach, I know there are no barriers here for me to make a difference and continue to have an impact in the worlds of internal and strategic communication.

More to come.

One of the most prevalent themes in my conversations with professionals about internal communication these days is about “listening.” 

Indeed, every conversation I have about organizational listening involves some sort of complaint – that “we don’t listen enough”, “we don’t listen well”, or “we don’t follow up on the feedback we get and people are sick of it,”  

A recent conversation I had with Dr. Kevin Ruck, who demurred when I referred to him as “The King of Employee Voice,” had a somewhat different tone.  Kevin has been following listening and feedback issues for years. And we stumbled onto a topic that’s gotten little focus  – how to surface high quality feedback that adds value both to organizations and employees when it is acted upon.

“It’s all about employees believing the processes are authentic, and that leaders will act when appropriate,” Kevin says.

That’s easy when it’s face-to-face, Kevin adds.  “They can see it in the mannerisms and in the tone of voice when it’s in a conversation, but it can be much more difficult in an online process.”

In many cases, the process of surfacing, collecting, harvesting, evaluating and acting on feedback has tended to be a  slow process that generates huge amounts of “terrestrial” input.

“The process generates a lot of low-level issues and concerns.  Partially because a lot of that stuff is what’s nagging – showers that don’t work, crap food in the canteen, for instance.  But it’s also part of a trust-building process.In some cultures, people aren’t likely to open up about the real issues until they start to see good will and action on the basics.  People want to start small and appear non-threatening,” continues Kevin.

If organizations want better feedback and input, it’s not enough simply to ask for it.  It’s also not enough to act on it. It requires an approach where processes are clear and credible. Expectations are also decisive – if companies expect employees to aim higher with their contributions, they need to respond with speed, seriousness and an appropriate level of sensitivity.

“The maturity of the process drives the value of the input,” explains Kevin. “Smart organizations won’t just be mature and adult and forthcoming about responding to feedback, they will also be shrewd and strategic about how they analyze it. They will look for trends – assess demographics, and look for the impact of how resolving problems in certain ways affect the trends.”

“People need to realize that listening isn’t about casework. It’s about understanding the fundamentals of what is going on in the business. By being smart about collecting, acting on, and addressing feedback, listening can go from a seeming burden to a spark and catalyst.” 

Kevin will be exploring this further with Howard Krais and Michael Pounsford – with a full report and suggestions for good listening practice coming out later in 2019.

Mike Klein is Principal of Changing The Terms and an experienced internal communication strategist, writer and advocate. To schedule a free consultation, please click here.

One of the major challenges at the heart of organizational communication involves how best to define the relationship between employers and employees.

To a large extent, organizations have come to treat their employee relationships as transactional. This is not only true in North America where the hire-and-fire culture and reliance on workplace-provided benefits can lead to an undercurrent of expendability in the relationship, but outside the US where organizations often speak of employees as “internal customers.”

While it may be prevalent to treat workforce relationships as transactional, doing so belies some basic realities of what being in the workforce involves:

• Agency

Within the framework of established rules, priorities and processes, members of the workforce have the right and opportunity to make their own decisions, particularly when they are working away from detailed supervision

• Commitment

Employees with long-term ambitions within an organization generally are committed to its long-term success, and have often staked their own personal commitments on the pursuit of a mutually beneficial relationship. Even contract and temporary employees tend to have a desire to perform well, leave a good impression, and perhaps be invited back.

• Connection

The workplace isn’t simply a place where most of its members go, perform individual transactional tasks, and leave. For many participants, work is where many of the most significant activities and conversations in one’s life take place and where many fundamental relationships form

• Visibility

Where companies have high visibility, either through wide public brand awareness or because of prominence as a local employer, employees willingly or unwillingly act as representatives of the organization and its brand in the larger community. In that capacity, they engage in conversations about product and service quality, organizational values and the extent to which positions in the organization would be desirable to potential job-seekers.

Given that people in the workforce have considerable discretion over the extent to which they invest their agency, commitment, connection and visibility on the company’s behalf, a one-dimensional transactional model does not neatly apply.

But what is there to replace it?

Citizenship.

The role of an employee within an organization bears much greater resemblance to citizenship than customership because it accounts for agency, commitment, connection and visibility.

Workforce “citizenship” also accounts for the level of “skin-in-the-game” for employees who bet their careers, familial stability and personal reputations on their choice of employer, and because it is sufficiently two-way to balance those factors against organizational objectives, rules, values and governance processes.

A workforce citizenship model doesn’t need to devolve all decision-making to employees.

But it can benefit from acknowledging and addressing the discretion employees do have in executing organizational decisions. Ideally, it can also incorporate the expertise, experience and aspirations of employees as key decisions get formulated.

When I first wrote on this subject nearly ten years ago, both internal and external social media were in their infancy and employee advocacy was anticipated but not yet widely embraced. Indeed, the slower-than-anticipated spread of internal social media and employee advocacy appears to align with organizations’ hesitancy to move beyond traditional and transactional thinking about the broader organizational and social roles of their employees.

At the same time, a shift in thinking combined with access to appropriate communication platforms and tools – tools which allow employees to share ideas, content and opinions appropriately in an organizational context – has the potential to help align internal communication with the lived employee experience, and create platforms where employees can be effective citizens inside and outside workplace walls.

MIKE KLEIN is Principal of Changing The Terms, a Netherlands-based communication consultancy focused on internal and change communication. The 2018-2019 Chair of IABC’s Europe-Middle East-North Africa region, Mike is the author of the research series on the Present and Future of Internal Communication for Happeo.

“I see the world kind of black-and-white”

So says Greta Thunberg, the sixteen-year-old climate change activist. Thunberg has become a global media sensation by sharing a direct if alarming message with politicians, business leaders and the media about what will be required to meet the climate change challenge.

Whether one agrees with the conclusions Greta is pushing or finds them acceptable from a social and economic perspective, Greta’s rapid emergence on the global scene highlights a trend of high relevance to communicators – a desire for clarity and specificity that has largely become absent from business communication in recent years. 

Part of this, from my experience, is that business communicators largely find ourselves trading in “gray”: in ambiguity.

Organizations take months or years to finalize changes even when the direction of travel is obvious to employees and other stakeholders. Leaders seek not to alarm, and employees often demand certainty when little can be offered before the required facts are blessed by the lawyers, shareholders and, where applicable, governments, are in place.

To a certain extent, business communicators add value to organizations by helping them and their people navigate through ambiguity. Ironically, we actually generate a fair amount of that ambiguity in an effort to avoid alarming stakeholders about decisions that some may expect but which have not yet been taken. Moreover, much of the difference between communication disciplines like internal comms, public relations and public affairs comes down to the distinct ways each positions ambiguous issues with its core stakeholders.

Greta’s rapid and precocious emergence on the scene speaks to an appetite for “straight talk” from a public that is tired of ambiguous, nuanced conversation from its business and political leaders. It also derives from her deeply held convictions about where things are headed if her pleas are unheeded. 

Do I believe business communicators should “be like Greta”? No. I think the worlds we operate in are too nuanced and ambiguous themselves, and we can’t provide definitive answers all the time. But I do think we should “be more like Greta” and not nurture ambiguity for ambiguity’s sake.

People want clarity and specificity from their leaders. They want leaders to speak with conviction. When it becomes possible for them to do so, they can benefit from being as direct, forthright and above all, as speedy as possible.

Are you vulnerable to employee activism? To find our more, email me at Mike.Klein@changingtheterms.com for my new Changing The Terms Guide to Employee and Corporate Activism.