Tag: employee engagement

Internal Communication Strategy

Four dimensions of internal influence: ambassadors, influencers, advocates and followers

mikeklein

One of the enduring memories of my undergraduate education at the University of Wisconsin is a comment made by an otherwise forgotten Statistics professor: “There are two kinds of people in this world – those who think there are two kinds of people, and those who don’t.”

When it comes to organizations and their social dynamics, I tend to think there are four main kinds of people, each of which has distinct roles and needs to be addressed in distinct, yet integrated ways:

  • Ambassadors: formal representatives of the organization or specific initiatives.
  • Influencers: employees/members of the community informally sought for advice, knowledge or support
  • Advocates: individuals who voluntarily share opinions or facilitate initiatives or courses of action
  • Followers: those who have to be asked to take part in initiatives, activities or courses of action

Ambassadors

In recent years, organizations have become more and more aware of the role of social dynamics in driving the success of initiatives and overall performance. For the most part, they have focused, with few exceptions, on intensifying the ambassadorial dimension in the form of line manager training and incentives, and in organizing and orchestrating “ambassador” and “champions” programs where employees below manager level are formally designated as initiative representatives or behavioral role models.

Rarely, however, has the ambassadorial role been integrated with an explicit appreciation of the role of informal influence in driving the success of initiatives and behavioral change, likewise the role of influencers in shaping and circulating knowledge and opinion.

In some cases, the selection of ambassadors is even intended to usurp the influencer role – to the point where an organization would call its representatives “influencers” without any evidence that their opinion carried any organizational weight.

Implicit in the focus on ambassadorship is a focus on control. Executing a formal organizational role, as a manager or a champion, requires the individual to stick to official channels, messages and interpretations in promoting the agenda.

Influencers

Recognizing the limitations of hierarchy and control in driving change and performance, some organizations have invested in research to identify “influencers,” the group which research has identified as “the three percent of employees who drive 90% of the conversations” in a given organization. Through methods like organizational network analysis (ONA) and snowball sampling, it becomes possible to identify the credible individuals who are sought out by their colleagues for knowledge, advice and support.

According to Innovisor, the Copenhagen-based market leader in ONA for large organizations, there is a massive disconnect between those whom managers see as influential and those who employees actually seek out. “When as part of our research, we ask managers to identify whom they see as influencers, there is never much overlap between the manager view and the employee reality.”

It is rare that organizations actively find ways to integrate a real understanding of organizational influence when they adopt an ambassadorial approach to driving messages and initiatives. Much depends on finding appropriate ways for ambassadors and influencers to interact with each other – depending on influencer attitudes towards an initiative or the extent to which they are willing to be exposed publicly.

Advocates

So far, a third group, advocates, has been given little attention as drivers of organizational change and performance.  Ambassadors are selected by the organization and influencers by their peers and colleagues, whereas advocates are self-selected. Some choose to engage out of a commitment to organizational well-being, and others out of sense of opportunity, while those who advocate contrarian positions may do so out of a sense of grievance.

Even though their credibility and levels of authority may be lower than those of key influencers and ambassadors, advocates are nonetheless a critical and often underrated piece of the organizational puzzle, particularly if they are passionate, committed or acting independently. If they can be recruited to participate in the most appropriate ways, the effort involved in identifying them and channeling their activities can be highly beneficial – integrating their energy and enthusiasm and enabling them to be focused in positive, constructive, and efficient ways.

Followers

In most organizations, the percentage of ambassadors, influencers and advocates is dwarfed by a mass of employees who are none of the above – followers.

Followers are a huge percentage of most workforces. But mass mobilization of followers, especially relying solely on ambassadors or on direct internal communication, is often ineffective and generally inefficient.

In part, this has been because the prevailing approach to employee engagement treats all employees as equal, failing to distinguish and legitimize the normal role of a follower – which, simply put, is to amicably accept ABC and to execute XYZ.  Good followership is valuable in ways that are entirely compatible with good ambassadorship, influence sharing and advocacy. But the ways in which internal communication and employee engagement are generally managed and incentivized often leave followers inundated with irrelevant information and bewildered by calls for greater commitment and attention to matters outside of their immediate work scope.

The first step towards success

To bring success back into focus, the first step is to recognize that every organization is comprised of ambassadors, influencers, advocates and followers in varying degrees. Accepting that reality, the next step involves questioning the authoritarianism of ambassador-only interventions and the laziness of one-size-fits-all approaches to communication and engagement. Then, replacing these with an approach which respects the natural roles of employees and harnesses their interest, energy and leadership.  Doing so will maximize the value of organizational influence by integrating its different forms, and create a pathway toward real, systemic and sustainable organizational engagement.

4 Dimensions ICK

Courtesy of IC Kollectif

FREE BOOK OFFER: For deeper insight into the social dynamics of organizations and communities, download, From Lincoln to LinkedIn.  Invoking ancient principles of political communication articulated by Abraham Lincoln in 1840, I look at how identifying, connecting and mobilizing informal leaders can drive social and business communication and results. For a free download, click here.

Uncategorized

The rise of the angry voter: observations and questions for business (UPDATED)

mikeklein

2016 continues to shape up as a year of the “angry voter” in the West, as evidenced by such phenomena as Donald Trump’s unexpectedly high poll numbers at this late stage of the U.S presidential campaign, the narrow victory of the “Brexit” referendum to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union, and strong electoral showings and polling numbers for anti-establishment political parties elsewhere in Europe.

With very little academic or practitioner research on the current situation, it’s difficult to tell directly what the current trend towards voter anger means for businesses and for business communicators.  But it’s worth looking at the question – to what extent does a person’s political anger spill into his or her behavior as an employee or customer?

Here are some observations:

  • Angry voters are angry because they are insecure

Fears and dissatisfaction about economic standing and social status have long been recognized as drivers of voter anger, and that insecurity will almost certainly manifest itself in customer and employee behavior.

  • Not every voter is an angry voter

Even with the surge in popularity for anti-establishment and anti-immigrant parties and candidates in the West, they are not the majority.  Even support for Brexit was barely over 50%.  So voter anger is a strong trend but not the whole picture. It’s something to account for, but not something that is yet overwhelming .

Some practical questions:

1)   Should you adjust your tone?

Brand voice and internal leadership tone often reflect a one-way flow of power in the relationship, but employees and customers who are challenging the establishment at the voting booth may well bristle at being talked at, or in the case of the use of the “corporate We,” spoken for without their explicit consent.

2)    Is there any shared dissatisfaction that can be used to build common ground?

Although angry voters have been presented as being driven by such factors as racism and xenophobia, there may be issues of common dissatisfaction where businesses can tap into and get ahead of voter and employee anger and be seen as making a tangible contribution to address matters of common interest

3) Is this a time for organizations to be brave and challenge misconceptions?

The idea of diversity in societies and organizations is implicitly being challenged by the tone of the current political climate.  But studies show that diversity benefits organizations even when feared by some employees. Could this be the right time to make that case in a fact-based and emotionally resonant way?

4) Is it time to change the messengers?

At a time when mainstream corporate leaders as well as political leaders are being viewed with increasing suspicion, could this be a good time to think about making better use of mid-level employees and trusted peers as advocates of organizational messages? This year’s version of the Edelman Trust survey has some interesting insights in this regard (see slide 21).

OPPORTUNITIES

Recognizing that the dissatisfaction among voters has the potential to color their relationships as customers and employees is a step that can help safeguard organizational credibility in volatile times. At the same time, the current political climate presents an opportunity for organizations to address pressing issues that could strengthen their relationships, and draw more heavily on the credibility of line employees as channels and advocates. Organizations should not ignore the changes in the political environment, and there may be opportunities to seize by looking at the broader picture.

Uncategorized

Taking aim at conventional “employee engagement” thinking on ICology podcast

mikeklein

My “six forms*” of engagement approach, challenging traditional employee engagement thinking, takes center stage with my first ever podcast interview.  The interview, part of the popular ICology podcast interview series hosted by Chuck Gose, can be found on the Podbean service here. It is also available via iTunes and other popular download points.

*Nominations have come in for two additional engagement forms–employees who focus on being part of a workplace community, and those focus on creating community in the workplace.  Others may surface – but in the meantime, the willingness to challenge the idea of employee engagement as a linear, one-size-fits-all and numeric concept is highly appreciated.

 

 

 

 

Uncategorized

Six Forms of Engagement now on Ragan.com

mikeklein

Ragan.com, the popular site for communicators of a variety of professional persuasions, has picked up the latest version of my piece on “Six Forms” of employee engagement.

In challenging the notion that employee engagement is a single, all-encompassing, one-size-fits-all measure of employee positivity, proactivity,  anticipated longevity and other associated virtues, the Six Forms of Engagement offer the opportunity to tap into the different ways people engage with their organizations and work to get better outcomes.

The article can be found here, at the Ragan.com site in the USA.

Uncategorized

The State of the Sector: are internal communicators missing something big?

mikeklein

Not long ago, London-based internal communication consultancy Gatehouse published its eighth annual “State of the Sector” survey looking at how internal comms practitioners are experiencing their roles and how they use their time, money and energy.

Having spent the last four years in an in-house comms role, none of the conclusions particularly surprised me. Practitioners these days are focused on “digital,” channel management and event management, in pursuit of informing people about corporate strategy and, to a lesser extent, supporting the ongoing push for “employee engagement,” whatever that might exactly be.

They are worried about their budget levels and dabbling with a range of measurement tools in order to have some facts that can justify sustaining at least part of those budgets. But what the Gatehouse survey does not touch is any effort to sharpen the impact of internal communication by identifying and focusing on high-value and high-impact individuals and audiences within their organizations.

Whether this is a simple omission in the Gatehouse methodology or a major gap in current practice is a question I will leave open for now. But when at 28% of survey respondents anticipate taking a budget hit this year, the question of whether one can drive more impact with fewer dollars, euros or pounds is one that ought to be on most communicators’ radar screens.

Now, to answer that question, a few other questions are worth asking:

  • Does the 80-20 rule have an equivalent in internal communication?

According to Innovisor, a Copenhagen-based niche consultancy specializing in identifying and mapping the relationships between formal and informal leaders in organizations, the internal comms equivalent actually reflects a 3%-90% rule, where three percent of a company’s population has the ability to drive and influence conversations reaching 90% of employees.

These three percent are not merely senior leaders at the top of the pyramid, but the internal experts, role models and social networkers who combine high connectivity with high credibility to move and validate messages, official and otherwise.

  • Isn’t it more difficult or expensive to find the right people than to just focus on everyone?

The process of identifying an organization’s most influential employees and, if desired, mapping out their connections and their spheres of influence, is a task that requires actual work, either through a survey where employees identify their key personal and professional contacts in the workplace, or, less precisely, through a combination of interviews, desk research and management input.

Once found, the list of influencers and their maps of connections and influence have to be updated in a manner reflecting the level of change, turnover and organizational momentum. But even factoring the degree of work involved in developing definitive lists and maps, the opportunity for saving money, reducing noise and increasing impact is immense.

  • Isn’t this a function of management and not internal communication?

A sharpened focus on high impact employees and audiences isn’t the same thing as a focus on high-status employees. Top-down communication may remain the gold standard for delivering authoritative pronouncements, but employees look to select peers and experts to define, sanity check and contextualize those messages. This is an approach that combines management with management in a powerful, integrated way.

  • Has anyone actually done this successfully?

Selective engagement, which focuses on identifying, connecting and mobilizing key individuals, whether through Innovisor’s approach to social mapping, or Leandro Herrero’s Viral Change approach, is an increasingly popular and efficient way of making things happen in organizations and communities.

In doing such an excellent job of identifying what internal comms leaders and practitioners are doing and focusing on, Gatehouse does a massive service to the IC community.

And in highlighting such a gap in the arena of audience focus, Gatehouse, perhaps inadvertently, has created an opportunity for internal comms pros – and those who employ us – to look at how they can engage more selectively, and in so doing, increase their impact while making better use of money and organizational bandwidth.

Uncategorized

From “engagement” to performance: KPMG decision gives a historic break to business communicators

mikeklein

For the last ten-plus years, the God called “employee engagement” has reigned supreme over all of the so-called “people fields” and, for the most part, swept up internal communication in its wake.

This week’s news that KPMG has not only abandoned its employee survey but repudiated the notion of “employee engagement” as having any causal relationship with performance, represents a historical opening for practitioners and businesses alike.  It is a golden chance to shift the focus away from driving “engagement” numbers and towards how effective business communication can directly improve performance.

The logic is obvious

At a basic level the logic is obvious. Effective, strategic internal communication can reduce ambiguity and increase clarity.

Good internal comms can align definitions of processes and objectives, and illustrate examples of good and bad practice. It can inject external perspectives while driving internal consistency. It can help identify people who have added impact as informal leaders and institutional lynchpins. Less obviously, it can be a vehicle for catalyzing consensus and even for the development of projects and products that are easier to execute or sell because of communicator involvement.  These are things that can move the needle in a business, even if they don’t line up with some “engagement” survey.

KPMG’s decision represents a historic opportunity, to begin the long-overdue uncoupling of the business communication profession from the engagement industry. Seizing that opportunity will change the terms.

Uncategorized

Unpacking the Pravda Principle, looking beyond “engagement”

mikeklein

Last week, I published my first internal communications blog post in quite a while, The Pravda Principle.

It was a kind of shoot-from-the-hip exercise, based on an idea that had been rolling around my head for years—the paradox of why Pravda, long mocked and despised by Westerners as the epitome of propaganda and falsehood was, in essence, a highly successful internal communication channel and one from which today’s practitioners can learn.

Part of my reason for invoking Pravda as a positive example is that I see internal comms as being a stuck discipline, focused excessively on the nebulous goal of “increasing employee engagement (however it may be defined),” and seeing “the answer” in the adoption of increasingly visual and technically intricate channels.

But is the production of infotainment to drive employee happiness numbers really the only viable or legitimate use of a set of skills, thinking and tactics which are capable of driving other, more tangible organizational objectives? Or are we off track?

Some questions to ponder:

  • Is it all about attractiveness?

The pressure on communicators today is to produce stuff that is attractive and digestible to the least committed stakeholder. But Pravda wasn’t attractive, visual or digital.  It’s appeal was that it was authoritative: it reliably provided useful information.  Is there space left for internal comms vehicles that are authoritative in style and tone, helping stakeholders who need real information to get and understand the information they need? Are “all employees” really equally important?

  • Are “all employees” really equally important?

In large organizations, there may be certain things, particularly like brand promises, that have to be internalized by all employees.  But the extent to which individual employees can influence the definition of strategy and the leverage each has to impact its success varies profoundly. Given the relatively limited sums corporations spend on internal comms, shouldn’t its priorities lean towards helping smaller numbers of higher-value employees have more quantifiable impact, rather than try to move engagement survey numbers?

  • Isn’t sender-focused communication useful sometimes?

In today’s internal comms, there’s an assumption that the only purpose of publishing content is to entertain or “engage” large numbers of readers and that the needs of the “sender” must be secondary.  But if one can get three massive stakeholders to agree a cohesive story about how they will align their objectives and how they intend to work together, and publish it to the organization; the value of reduced friction, ambiguity and delay could more than justify a communicator’s salary even if no one outside the stakeholder teams reads the story.

While there is nothing wrong, in my opinion, with the idea of “engaged,” happy employees, I sense that the pursuit of “engagement über alles” has dominated the field to such an extent that other approaches and objectives are seen as secondary – or in some cases, even as not being worth offering to otherwise deserving stakeholders.

Recognizing and championing alternative approaches and objectives could profoundly change the terms.

 

Insights

Do-Know-Feel: Relevance Trumps Awareness

mikeklein

Having built my communication career mainly on the learnings I have obtained on the job, first as a political consultant and then as an internal communicator,  I have largely been spared a lot of the models and paradigms delivered through formal communication training. 

So, about 11 years ago,  while I was managing the internal communication for an airline merger,  I was a bit taken aback when my client, having recently completed some internal comms ninja-training course, cited a long-standing model and wanted me to apply it in my work.

“It’s about ‘know, feel, do’, Mike,” she said.  “What people should know, how they should feel, and then, what they should do.”

For some reason, that never sat well with me.  It still doesn’t, and when I heard someone say “it’s not ‘know, feel, do,’ but ‘do, know, feel,'”* it made perfect sense to me.

(* I apologize for forgetting the individual who shared this insight–please feel free to claim credit if you are reading this)

Do-know-feel is actually the basis for selective engagement and the kind of internal communication based on social analysis–where messaging and message volumes are channelled on the basis of driving relevance, action and performance rather than increasing awareness and approval for the sake of awareness and approval.

“DO”

The first step is to determine what the various individuals in the audience or organization actually need to do: what tasks they need to accomplish, what roles they need to fulfill.  

Such roles can range from:

Sponsor

Change Leader

Project Manager

Someone whose day job will incorporate related activities

Someone who will not be directly involved but will need to accommodate related activities

Someone who will be affected by a change but will otherwise not participate in its implementation

Total bystander

“KNOW”

The next step:  assess the factual content required to allow these individuals to fulfill their roles.

Having already assessed the “do” for each individual, it becomes much easier to ensure that the right people get the right level of detailed information, and that people who are less involved don’t get inundated with information that they are likely to find excessive, irrelevant and, often, irritating.  

While that may sound obvious,  such an approach often faces opposition from senior managers who insist that everyone must know everything about their “top priority” initiative because it is their  top priority, even when it clearly is not each employee’s top priority.  

While I once successfully challenged a CEO when he demanded a specified frequency of articles on his top project when the content relevance and ripeness did not warrant it, documenting that communication approach is based on relevance rather than awareness makes such a challenge easier to deliver.

“FEEL”

Aside from the general inability of internal communicators to successfully and sustainably dictate employee emotions,  another reason for making emotion the third level of the do-know-feel approach is that the desired emotional response is different for people with different tasks.

It may be sufficient for a total bystander to get a robust sense of the context and rationale for change,  but people who are more directly involved with specfic responsibilities and impacts will face a broader range of triggers for their emotional reactions.  

For instance,  where there are personnel changes, the senior managers deciding the scope of the changes, the managers and HR staff implementing the changes, the employees whose roles would disappear and those whose roles would face reconfiguration will all have different emotional needs and require highly distinct messaging and support. 

NOT JUST SEGMENTATION

Some may look at do-know-feel and just see an alternative approach to audience segmentation.  But I would argue that there is more to it.  Do-know-feel is also a clear basis for driving more selective, efficient and effective approaches to internal communication, employee engagement, and change communication, based on relevance rather than driving awareness.  It not only offers a means for driving communication focus on those who can have the most impact, but also on reducing the sense of overload and over-prioritization felt by employees who actually have better things to do.  By doing so, do-know-feel changes the terms.

Insights

Time for a “War” on “Employee Engagement”

mikeklein

In one of Leandro Herrero’s Daily Messages he sends to his readers and fans, he said in reference to the “War on Talent” that “If it is time for a war, let it be a war on Employee Engagement.”

Indeed. It is about time.

And let this be both a war of words, and a war on words.

Employee Engagement has dozens of definitions.

Many of them directly conflict with each other.

Some spark unreasonable expectations of benefit in the minds of stakeholders. Many create undue burdens on the employees, leaders, managers and consultants who are expected to deliver to them within vague or overly restrictive parameters.

And when anyone attempts to drive Employee Engagement while operating to inconsistent definitions, it’s hard to calculate positive odds for success.

Indeed, there are so many definitions of Employee Engagement that there are multiple categories of them. These include:

OUTCOMES

Shared meaning that is valuable to the future of the organization:

* More cohesive community / internal cooperation

* Increased feedback

* More employee attentiveness to customer concerns or other issues

* Improved design of work plans through co-creation

* Improved retention

PROCESSES

* A more participative approach to negotiations, processes or innovation

ATTITUDES

* Improved employee morale and satisfaction

* Raised levels of commitment to company values and objectives or to a specific project

* Increased motivation and feeling of belonging

OUTPUTS

* Increased attendance and participation levels for events / meetings / online platforms

* Co-created plans

* Employee feedback

MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES

* Involving employees in strategic decision-making

MANAGEMENT BEHAVIOURS

* Listening to employees and taking their suggestions on board

* Recognition

*Conducting employee surveys

MEASUREMENT

* Any measurement measuring any one of more of the above items

The Most Egregious Practice

The most egregious practice in the of the Employee Engagement definition mess is the extent to which many of their authors treat their own definition as “the answer,” and then cite survey research about Employee Engagement which aligns with completely different definitions and methodologies.

This approach makes, inadvertently, naively or cynically, a claim that adopting the author’s approach will address the researcher’s question, when there may be no direct connection between the two. At best, that muddies the waters. At worst, that’s bait and switch.

Winning the war on Employee Engagement

If there is going to be a war on Employee Engagement the first step to victory would be to establish some linguistic integrity in this space.

When an author talks about “increasing discretionary effort” and calls it Employee Engagement, practitioners need to say, “NO, you are talking about increasing discretionary effort.”

When a respected consultant says the answer is to selectively involve employees in governance and strategic decisions and calls it Employee Engagement, we need to say “NO, you are talking about selectively involving employees in governance and strategic decision making.”

When a manager talks about organising a town hall meeting and calls it an Employee Engagement, one needs to say politely “No, this is better described as a town hall meeting because nearly everything these days is called Employee Engagement.

The Fruits of Victory

This is not to say these activities are without benefit, or that they won’t improve Employee Engagement by the standard of one or more definitions.

But one thing that could really improve employee engagement is a more robust vocabulary that would allow us to compare different approaches and their impact on improving specific attitudes, behaviours and bottom-line financials.

Doing so would give organisations more powerful choices in how to assess their needs, select appropriate, efficient and outcome-specific approaches, and execute them effectively.

It is much easier to compare the impact of democratic governance with free employee lunches with amped-up employer branding activities than it is to compare Employee Engagement with Employee Engagement with Employee Engagement.

It is time for a war on Employee Engagement. And that war, ultimately, will be won by changing the terms.

Uncategorized

Cover Story: IABC’s Communication World

mikeklein

Am delighted and excited to announce the publication of my article, “Focus Your Engagement Where it Matters Most,” as the cover story of IABC‘s revamped Communication World magazine.

It is my first-ever full article for CW. Its publication on the eve of IABC’s World Conference in Toronto next week marks a nice opportunity to sharpen the conversation about “employee engagement”, its relationship with internal communication, and the extent to which strategic internal communication can make the energy and expenditure dedicated to “employee engagement” more effective.

The article can be found here: http://bit.ly/cwcoverstory

Many thanks to IABC’s Natasha Nicholson, and also to my sources Dan Gray, Jeppe Vilstrup Hansgaard, Jim Shaffer, Muriel Pineau, Darryl Mead, Gunther Mittmann-Gano, Joy Niemerg and Kellie Cummings for their input.

Uncategorized

“Taken Aback” meets “Shel-shocked”: Debating Selective Engagement

mikeklein

In my return to the blogging ranks after some dormant months, I have noticed how interconnected people in the internal communication space have become, and also how many places there are where professional discussions and debates take place.  So, it came as a surprise when a friend of mine in London sent me a link to a Google-plus share from a leading professional in San Antonio endorsing my Selective Engagement piece I posted some days ago.

Normally, I would have left it at that, but I landed on the share again and clicked onto the comments, and found the following reply from Shel Holtz.

“I was a little taken aback by the post. I’ve never heard anybody suggest that everybody should be treated equally with employee communications. Some companies that don’t approach it strategically may embrace the idea of mass media, which results in everybody getting exactly the same information. But every text, every workshop, every lecture, every article on internal communications talks about audience segmentation, message interpretation to make information meaningful at the level where work people do real work, and addressing differences in employee populations (demographic, hierarchical, etc.). Is this idea of egalitarianism something you’ve actually encountered?”

To be honest, to see this comment about being “taken aback” left me, in turn, a little “Shel-shocked.”

Shel rightly says that those who take internal communication seriously enough to pay attention to mainstream internal communication writing or training would be unlikely to hear any endorsement of a “top-down-one-size-fits-all” way of doing things.

But many of the leaders and opinion-formers who strategic internal communicators must contend with continue to buy that approach.

In my own experience, I have seen and heard this sentiment in a wide variety of settings–a US Government agency and several large companies in Europe.

Here are some of the things I have heard in my recent career that reflect this view:

* “Our engagement scores are low and we need to get everyone on the same page!”

* “Our intranet readership is too low!”

* “We need to ensure that a consistent message is delivered across the company.”

* “We need to verify that the cascades have all taken place.”

* “People need to experience the brand consistently in every encounter with the company and everyone needs to attend the same living the brand seminar.”

Granted, I have not heard these things from professional internal communicators. Instead, I have heard them from people they (or I) have reported to, and I have also heard them from managers and consultants from other disciplines and functions who see internal communication as part of their remit.

Unselective thinking about “employee engagement”, and even internal communication, remains pervasive.  It is hard-wired into employee engagement surveys and into the continuing affection managers have for cascading.  It is also, to a lesser extent, reflected in the ever-popular “provide and pray” approach to introducing social tools, launching them without regard for identifying the people whose participation would deliver the most mutual benefit.

I would posit that unselective thinking is at the root of much of what is dysfunctional about internal communication–rejection of tools, failure of initiatives, woolly measurements, and organisational misalignment.  Getting smarter about who we connect with and how we connect them could make a big difference.

 

Uncategorized

Advocacy vs. Ambassadorship (Hint…there’s a difference)

mikeklein

Advocacy vs. Ambassadorship

Those of you who know me know that I am passionate about the role of advocacy within organisations—the extent to which people collect knowledge, form opinions and share them with their colleagues.

But when I talk about advocacy in organisations, I am met with this response, “Yes, Mike, we should start an ambassadors programme.”

A lot of people collapse the definitions of ambassadorship and advocacy.  On the one hand, they address a common need:  to generate positive word of mouth.  On the other, though, they represent profoundly different approaches.

In the larger world, the word “Ambassador” means an official representative of a formal entity, in most cases, a country. That means that ambassadorships are formal and official, and ambassadorial views to represent those of the country that employs them rather than their own opinions.

In contrast, advocacy reflects the committed expression of one’s own opinion, and the taking of visible actions on behalf of one’s own views to further one’s own causes.

Why is this relevant to communications pros?

In a world where brand transparency and consumer advocacy is increasingly driving buying and business behaviour (Trip Advisor and Net Promoter Score, anyone?), employee advocacy is seen as highly desirable.

But, employee advocacy is also seen as difficult to manage, particularly by managers.  Managers often see it as too important to be left to drivers other than management.

The formal, structured approach inherent in ambassadorship makes it much more attractive because it can be managed relatively easily, but produces a product very different from authentic advocacy.

Indeed, that which makes ambassadorship easy to manage makes it difficult to generate real advocacy.  The focus on standardization, manageability and consistency of messaging can stifle the sense of ownership required for employees to want to share opinions as their own.

A distinction, a spectrum

The challenge of generating and stimulating advocacy is one that few companies, once interested, are willing to leave to chance.  But viewing formal ambassadorship and self-generated advocacy as a spectrum, a communicator can have some leverage in balancing management’s desire for speed and consistency with the marketplace’s demand for transparency and authenticity.

Some questions to consider:

Who to involve:  usual suspects identified by managers vs informal leaders identified by peers

How to message to participants: common bullet points or stories rich in context and content

Which map to use:  tracking the org chart vs. loose demographic, cultural and functional balance

What tasks for participants to do:  Distribute information vs inspire actions and collect results

How participants should engage public:  Directing to company outlets or websites or sharing the love in their own terms on their own Facebook and LinkedIn pages

Not all advocacy efforts require the same approach—factors like regulation, national cultures, and compatibility with brand philosophies should certainly be considered.  But in recognizing that advocacy and ambassadorship are distinct concepts,  communicators have much more leverage in developing an approach that genuinely unleashes advocacy.