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Measurement.  For many years, measurement has been a source of frustration when it comes to internal communication and organizational alignment.

Now, internal communication platforms and email tools offer a variety of embedded analytics and the ability to measure certain predetermined activities: clicks, open rates and adoption being the most obvious.

Embedded analytics can be helpful in adding numbers to the internal communication story. But using them without strategic intent and thought makes them a potential trap for internal communication pros.

It’s a trap that can actually limit the power and impact of internal communication measurement activity by emphasizing what’s easier to measure over what’s meaningful to measure. 

To avoid this trap, here are four measurement tips that will help your objectives and ambitions drive the process, rather than have it be driven by what’s easier to measure.

• Drive the measurement agenda – choose what gets measured.

• Don’t benchmark, baseline. • There’s another trap that a lot of organizations fall into – the desire to benchmark performance and attitudes relative to “similar” companies – sector competitors, other large companies based in the same country being popular targets. A real pitfall of benchmarking is the need to use common questions (or, even acommon research vendor) rather than to ask questions that are specific to an organization’s own reality and context. • Baselining is far more important – asking a given question before the organization or its communicators starts take action to address the issue being examined.  Good baselining and tracking allows the ability to measure the impact of your involvement over time – and also the impact of specific one-off interventions.

• Use different types of questions and measures • There are a lot of different data sources available to an enterprising communicator.  Aside from embedded analytics, one can use surveys to address different types of questions: open-ended questions (where participants are given limited guidance about answers), open-ended lists (where participants are asked to supply several different answers), closed-ended questions where participants select the “right” answer, and ranked lists which test alignment in direct way. 

• One approach not to use: don’t ask people what they think they know • Earlier in my career, when I was working on organizational change programs with certain (nameless) large consultancies, I was stunned by the surveys they used.  They would ask questions like “Have you heard about the change?” and my personal favorite: “Do you understand the change?: • Aside from being non-specific about what “change” they were asking about, these questions asked participants to out themselves as ignorant, stupid or both. Don’t do this. Better to ask another type of question and see how close people are to the official explanation of what they are being asked about.

Measurement is an activity that has tremendous potential to support internal communicators in delivering more effectively, and help them prove their value more convincingly to senior leadership and management. 

But to do that successfully, communication pros need to avoid the “measurement trap” that easily accessed data with limited relevance can set.   By following these four steps, IC pros can raise their game – and have the words and numbers at hand that demonstrate their impact.

If you want to navigate and find opportunities in the worlds of measurement, strategy, content or messaging in internal communication, let’s talk.  Schedule a conversation with Mike Klein.

I’m sure it won’t surprise you that I spend quite a bit of time on LinkedIn. 

And on the pages of LinkedIn, I see a powerful discussion brewing among communication professionals: is our role to facilitate the journey to “the new normal” of organizational life – or – to lead the charge into “a new ballgame” where communication emerges at the core of the organization’s renewed experience.

Given the structural nature of the COVID world: social distancing, remote working, tight economics, restricted travel and sharp changes in the workforce, the “New Normal” and the “New Ballgame” might look similar in practice.

But the contexts are sharply and fundamentally different.

At the core is whether we are having to try to make “the best of a bad situation” or if we seeking to make “the most of an historic opportunity.” 

Bubbling below the core is the question of our fundamental role.

Are communicators a support function existing to deliver the preferences of management while minimizing disruption?

Or are communication professionals finally becoming critical players – at a time when  platforms and practices are becoming differentiators internally and externally? 

Are we simple orchestrators of activities and suppliers of content?

Or do we have a fundamental role in shaping the organizational context and environment?

All of the answers to these questions are correct – to a certain degree. But which should we choose to be?

I’m all-in for the New Ballgame. 

I see this as our moment to seize the initiative in an environment where strategic communication can shape organizations, offerings and experiences – indeed, to shape enterprises themselves.

I also know that we have the tools and resources in our community to deliver the required level of excellence if we win the argument and have to immediately execute. Either by selecting the best possible tools for the challenge at hand – or, if we have to – by making the most of the tools that are made available to us.

Does that mean we have to die on the hill if we lose the argument or are blocked from the conversation in the first place?

No. We just need to rise to a slightly different challenge – to meet the client/boss’s short term requirements in a way that doesn’t slam the door on their best mid and long term outcomes. 

We only win when our clients win.

We are not a self-sufficient tribe of artists and advocates. 

But neither are we mere support staff.

Moving up the value chain will require us to be more ambitious than conscientious – but conscientiousness might be the ticket that gets us into the New Ballgame.

The New Ballgame will also require much better scorekeeping – we need to make sure that what gets measured lines up with what organizations want and need to achieve, as opposed to what makes them feel comfortable (h/t to those pushing â€œalignment” over “engagement.”)

At any rate, I’m putting my money where my mouth is – doubling down on building a remote consulting practice by moving with my family to my wife’s home town of Reykjavik, Iceland. 

This is a time of great difficulty in the world.

We can either try to adjust to it, or we can overcome it. 

Take orders? Or lead the charge.

It’s time for ambition. It’s time for a New Ballgame.

Mike Klein is Principal of Changing The Terms,  an internal communication consultancy based in Northern Europe.  Mike is concurrently Senior Advisor for Strategic Services with Smarp and is a Past Chair of IABC’s Europe-Middle East North Africa.  An MBA graduate of London Business School, Mike was an occasional goalkeeper for the School’s Handball team in his school days.

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by Mike Klein and Dr. Anita Zbieg, PhD

Following nine months of all-remote working across their business, Head of Comms Owen Newell Anderson met with Chief H.R. Officer Hayley Rodriguez to discuss one of his major agenda items – his desire to conduct an Organizational Network Analysis of the entire enterprise to better understand the way internal influence works in a time of major change.. 

Let’s listen in.

ONA: Thank you for inviting me today.

HR: You’re very welcome, Owen. Believe it or not, I’ve always thought Organizational Network Analysis was interesting. Under these circumstances, where cost-reduction and remote working have obviously changed a lot of our internal dynamics, I think it is now worth a serious look.

ONA: I’m glad we’re on the same page. Working outside of our physical structures, new social structures have undoubtedly formed, and it would be very interesting to know more about them, and about who is driving them.

HR: Agreed. As you can imagine, even though we have social distancing until the vaccine comes out, we will be taking some steps to get us ready to grow again.

ONA: New hires? Perhaps an acquisition?

HR: Both in the realm of possibility

ONA: Well, the most valuable things ONA can do in those cases is give us a better sense not only of the assets we still have on board and where they fit together, but how we can accelerate the effectiveness of new hires and how to best start the integration process for a new acquisition.

HR: Remote onboarding is tough, and the toughest part I’ve seen is that it’s very difficult to connect new remote hires socially with the right people who have the right knowledge about how things actually work. I see ONA as a potential precision tool for getting the understanding we need.

ONA: The main thing that ONA does, as you say, is map out all of the relationships in the enterprise. Knowing about how people actually work and actually communicate won’t just help us with onboarding, but can help us take out a lot of the noise in the organization.  

HR: Communication has improved since the crisis began in the sense that employees are happier about it, but the quantity seems to have ballooned. I’d be interested in seeing how ONA could help.

ONA: ONA exercises tend to be seen and presented, rightly, as exercises to improve communication, and that’s something most employees tend to want. 

HR: There may be some resistance, but there also seems the opportunity for a potential payoff.

ONA: I think it has the potential to be transformative, both from a communication perspective and from having genuinely deep organizational knowledge. The main thing is that we will know who really drives communication in the business: not me and not the theory of a line manager cascade, but the actual 3% of the people who drive 90% of the conversations.

HR: That’s the “three percent rule” you’ve told me about a few times

ONA: Precisely, Hayley.. But it’s more than just the knowledge, it’s what that knowledge would allow us to do. It would help us reduce the noise and irrelevance that hits people in this business. It would get rid of the constant pressure to dumb things down so that people who have nothing fo with content won’t be bewildered by it. We will be able to target better. We’ll also be able to listen better.

HR: Better listening? Tell me more.

ONA: We’ll have a better idea of whom to listen to. The influencers for sure, but also the people who are less connected, particularly if they are new arrivals. We need to know what moves them, and why certain things don’t move them. The insights about individual intensity of connection will add immeasurably to the way we collect feedback and listen.

ONA: But it’s not only that. ONA can make our organization more resilient. 

HR: How is that possible? 

ONA: Resilience demands “distributed control with centralized coordination,” not “centralized control with distributed execution” and that’s exactly how a real-time Organizational Network Analysis can have you covered. Knowing how the work is done will help your company become more resilient by providing employees with high quality real-time collaboration data & visualizations. 

HR: Does it mean that ONA can help guide me through the continuous process of change? 

ONA: Yes, by showing real-time how people and teams work in your company. Day-to-day company-wide change may bring chaos. Every single team and employee is having to learn how to get work done in a new way. What if they knew how actual collaboration looks like? Know the actual and proven work practices? 

HR: Tell me more about ONA’s ability to enable company-wide change.

ONA: With ONA, it becomes possible to:

– learn quickly about where to act and who should be involved,  

– know which people are driving value in your company, 

– set up new processes, roles, and practices based on actual work practices and relationships,

– support your managers by knowing what’s going on – and using that knowledge to make them more confident and effective

– develop insights into key individual relationships

HR: You told me that collaboration can be measured real-time. How is that possible? 

ONA: Along with surveys, ONA tools can bring data about digital traces of interactions from tools your company uses (e.g. MS Office, G-suite, GitHub, Asana). 

HR: Insights about “key individual relationships”? Are you sure we wouldn’t be too intrusive?

ONA: This isn’t a “search and destroy” mission. It’s more of an x-ray to get a picture of our organizational reality and be able to work within it consciously, for the first time. I sense a question about “what do we do with negative influencers.” You have to remember that we only give privileged information to managers, and everyone else is either informed by their managers or gets a common set of corporate internal messages. So, what that means is that there are a lot of influential people getting very limited information. These people either put one and one together and share their conclusions, or they outright make up rumors and fake news.

HR: Rumors and fake news?

ONA: Yes, And many don’t realize that’s what they are doing. Employees go to them to close the gaps in what we provide them, and they close the gaps with the limited information and insight they can add.

HR: So, by identifying influencers, we can make sure they are better informed?

ONA: Absolutely, Even the biggest rumor monger can’t overcome a set of actual facts. Having well informed influencers will by definition reduce the scope for rumor and misinformation.

HR: I think it’s time to do this. We’re at an important juncture, and we owe it to ourselves to learn as much as we can about where we are now, to set the stage for our next bout of growth.

Mike Klein is Principal of Changing The Terms and has been a longtime advocate for the use of Organizational Network Analysis as a key communication strategy tool.To order his guide to Internal Influence, email him at mike.klein@changingtheterms.com

Anita is co-founder of Network Perspective, software that brings collaboration to the company org chart, to improve organizational culture. She holds a PhD from Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny we WrocÅ‚awiu and her latest article on ONA can he be found here.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/4-tips-when-organizing-company-around-teams-anita-zbieg-phd-/?trackingId=L9%2B6F%2BU7lgXmkQYUKjttiA%3D%3D

Most of the time, it’s difficult to predict the future, especially when you are in the middle of a crisis of epic and unprecedented proportions.

But one differentiator sticks out in the case of the COVID-19 coronavirus situation: the social distancing required to minimize infection rates..

Social distancing will likely stay around in some form until a vaccine is found and takes hold. And that will have massive impact on the workplace as well as on the lives and lifestyles of citizens throughout the world – impact that could last well beyond the vaccine’s arrival.

I write on this in greater detail for Smarp. 

I also will discuss this with leading IC personalities Steve Crescenzo and Jennifer Sproul on Smarp’s latest Webinar on Thursday 2 April.

To be sure, the economic and emotional toll of COVID-19 is increasingly wrenching, and that’s what most people are rightly focusing on today. However, we’ve had wars and economic crashes, and they didn’t change the fundamental nature of work and business. 

Social distancing, however, changes everything.

It changes much more than how we situate ourselves. It changes how we interact. How we transact. How we speak with each other, listen to each other, and how we make and implement decisions.

It moves organizational stories from physical space to the connections that exist between organization members in virtual space. 

It reconfigures the economics of whole industries and communities.

And it radically alters the way relationships form and continue within organizations – and between organizations and customers.

If you are interested in the implications of social distancing on your organization or practice, let’s talk.  Book a free half hour conversation here. https://calendly.com/changingtheterms/30min

Technology is changing the face of internal communication (IC), particularly so in times like these. As technology has progressed in IC, it’s also been obvious that many fundamentals remain the same – the demands for credibility, relevance and interactivity.  Technology alone can’t meet those needs – doing so requires strategy.

In that vein, I am delighted to announce my new association with Smarp to develop strategic services for its customers, and particularly, to work with its customers on the most effective ways to drive impact through its platform.

For me, this is really where IC technology is headed.

There are a lot of great platforms and vendors out there.  There are platforms who have been investing in moving the IC profession forward.  But technology functionalities are converging. What I like most about Smarp is that they see creativity and strategy in how their tool is used as being similarly important to what functionalities a tool can deliver.  And I’m thrilled that they’ve picked me to help drive them forward.

I am also excited about working with the Smarp Team.  Those of us in IABC talk a lot about “Finding Our Tribe.”  Well, in the world of IC technology, and after spending some hours in Helsinki and Stockholm speaking with members at all levels of Smarp’s team, I emerged with a sense that I’ve truly found my tribe.

My normal practice with Changing The Terms continues, and I see my work with Smarp as expanding the diversity of what I do while scaling its impact upward.  

If you want to navigate and find opportunities where communication technology and strategy connect, let’s talk. 

https://calendly.com/changingtheterms/30min

Sold-out attendance. A-list speakers, And an exhibition hall filled with vendors and buzzing with activity throughout the session. These will be some of the enduring memories of an IABC World Conference in Vancouver that was a success by all of the event’s traditional measures.

The success of World Conference follows considerable effort to consolidate the IABC’s finances and stabilize its membership base. Still, as it begins its every-three-years strategy rethink, the Association faces crucial challenges and questions as it looks to the future.

Competitive pressure

National, regional and specialist associations are competitive with IABC in its North American and Australasian core, and are thoroughly outgunning IABC outside the English-speaking world. And even in the core, the laments about the difficulty in generating and retaining members are increasingly loud and long.

At US $300 in most countries, IABC dues are not insignificant. One very hopeful sign is that they represent a decreasing share of IABC’s overall revenues. Still, at these prices, there is a perceived pull in the Association to deliver value for money on an individual basis, placing substantial demands on both its headquarters and its volunteer leaders.

But this pull for “member value” runs counter to what is really going on in the larger world.

Marches, movements and megachurches

“People aren’t joining things anymore”

That was an oft-heard lament from a number of attendees in Vancouver. Underneath that concern was a fear that the Association’s tightly-knit community of leaders and advocates would prematurely fade away.

People are still joining things. Indeed, they are joining more than ever before.

But they, and particularly younger professionals, are joining movements, marches and megachurches.

This kind of joining isn’t about getting value from one’s dues money.

It’s about being part of something bigger. It’s about being part of a cause, making a difference and connecting with a community of fellow believers.

Indeed, there is one cause that nearly everyone in IABC already believes in.

That is:

“We are a profession. We are a profession that is simultaneously facing explosive demand for our talents and pressure to justify our value and impact. Our cause is to grow our professionalism and to demonstrate our value to a world that needs us.”

As a cross-disciplinary and international association knit together with passionate personal as well as professional ties, IABC is uniquely positioned to champion this cause on a global basis. To lead the movement.

Moving from “association” to “movement” requires significant changes in membership, governance, operational and organizational structure.

At this key point, IABC needs to look seriously at  the implications of a radical shift in strategy – whether it would drive growth and scale its impact, and how it would impact the quality of the relationships that drive the passion of many IABC leaders and members.

A world to win

But IABC, and particularly it’s leadership “family”, has a world to win.

IABC has knowledge assets that are the envy of nearly every national and regional association, and can potentially use them to galvanize and connect the comms organizational world in service of a broader movement.

And in broadening its reach to communication professionals worldwide to the cause of the worth and value of professional communication, IABC’s tight-knit community of leaders would be staring at a double-decked prize: generational sustainability combined with global scalability, creating connection with other like-minded folks who lead IABC in every corner of the world.

A formidable journey

IABC cannot morph into the global movement for professional communication overnight.

Moving in this direction would require deft and sensitive management.

Most importantly, adjustments to the value proposition could require considerable forebearance – particularly if new-style “members” come in at lower dues levels to boost numbers and geographic spread.

Additionally, IABC needs to look deeply at its approach to collaboration with national associations and international groupings (ideally by returning to the Global Alliance), and embrace its members who are industry advocates more closely.  

Most importantly, in my view, it needs to robustly challenge the assumptions at the root of its own dues structure, and find ways to broaden and share ownership of the GCCC certification program so that it can still take advantage of its significant global potential.

Indeed, IABC’s global leadership is starting to show a willingness to do so.

Some may think it’s not worth the risk. But it is certainly worth a conscious discussion.

The prize is substantial: A global profession of sustained professionalism and unquestioned worth.

Is IABC willing to take the leap?  My hunch is that IABC members and leaders will find it a worthy challenge once an open and wide ranging discussion begins.

Let it begin now.

On 30 April, I’ll have the distinct pleasure of moderating a webinar about a unique internal communication competition – a competition which, rather than seeking approval for “best practice,” aims instead to break new ground – The Gorilla Games.

Working with Contact Monkey, the innovative Toronto-based email analytics company, we put out the call for entries that weren’t out to rewrite the record book but rewrite the rule book. By focusing not on what they’ve been allowed to do, but what they would do with the brakes off and the gloves thrown on the floor, entrants came up with strong, bold ideas that offer new insights into how internal comms pros can raise our collective game.

In addressing a scenario where internal communicators were facing a 25% across-the-board budget cut, but in turn were offered complete control over the remaining budget, Stephen Welch’s Gold-winning entry focused on developing an IC approach that employees, quite literally, would need to be willing to pay for themselves.

“Yes that’s right, we’re going to start charging employees to receive their internal communication” was indeed the “money quote” from Stephen’s entry, which took the form of a memo from the head of IC to his team at “BigCo.”

Of course, the idea of making employees pay money for IC is ridiculous.  But we all have been in the business of trying to get employees to pay attention to it for decades. Stephen’s approach doesn’t simply focus on getting employees to put their money where their minds are, it also signals an approach to measurement that’s based on how much content is valued as opposed to whether or not it is clicked or viewed.

Along with discussing the Silver and Bronze winning entries with contest participants (which are included in this White Paper from Contact Monkey along with Stephen’s), the 30^th April Webcast will involve members of a judging panel which included industry all-stars Jason Anthoine, Priya Bates, Silke Brittain, Ashli Davis and Neil Jenkins and discuss prospects for growing the competition.

Award competitions are great for recognizing good work after the fact. In the Gorilla Games, we now have a mechanism for rewarding great thinking and innovation before the fact.   

To register for the Gorilla Games Webinar, click here. The Gorilla Games are a joint initiative of Contact Monkey and Changing The Terms.