measurement Archives - Changing the Terms

Measurement.

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

Embedded analytics and easy online survey questions 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 some 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

Doing that is simple – choose what gets measured, or at least make sure that some of the things that get measured are actionable, and show a direct relationship between your contribution and the organization’s results.

• 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 a common 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. Add in the ability to monitor enterprise search terms on an ongoing basis – a potent source of information that can be tapped into silently but powerfully.

What to not do.

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, start with my measurement masterclass.

Or, if you’d like to talk, send me a note at mike.klein@changingtheterms.com.

Insights, Internal Communication Strategy

Making measurement your most effective internal communication tool right now: it’s easier than you think.

July 29, 2023August 23, 2023 mikeklein

It’s time – right now – for internal communication pros to look beyond the embedded analytic tools they may have access to — and step beyond basing their measurement approach on such readings as “click rates” and “open rates.”

Instead, there is a golden opportunity to collect, analyze, and present measures that are actually aligned to business performance — providing data that will mean something to business leaders, potentially even prompting them to act.

Start by assessing the actual gaps

The most important thing to do — if you can get permission — is to ask the two questions which can yield the most complete picture of an organization’s situation in the simplest possible way:

What are the three biggest priorities facing your organization?
What are the three most important things you are working on at the moment in your job?

The power of these questions is not in the number of responses but in the richness of the open responses.

Because participants aren’t being guided toward specific answers, it becomes possible to analyze both what’s said and what’s not said. The ways in which things are said also become crucial findings that can be shared powerfully with senior management.

By counting and categorizing the words that are used, words can thus be transformed into strikingly powerful numbers.

Putting Do-Know-Feel-Say at the heart of your measurement approach

Once you’ve used the “Two Questions” to assess your messaging gap, the effort moves to what needs to be done to close that gap, and how to measure the extent to which communication can demonstrate its impact on closing that gap.

Fortunately, there is an all-purpose approach that anyone could use to drive this analysis — as it can be used for driving the strategy for addressing it.

It’s called Do-Know-Feel-Say.

As a communication leader, you need to focus this measurement narrative on those things which communication can impact: what people do, what they know, how they feel, and what they say — and the extent those things can influence the objective you are supporting.

Then, you use or develop measures that can illustrate the relationship between those objectives and your influence.

Say, for instance, if your objective is to influence something tangible — say the daily use of hand sanitizer in your offices.

Your main focus is on monitoring the use of hand sanitizer, and tracking whether there are any changes in sanitizer use in relation to the communication activity that promotes the use of hand sanitizer.

The story is not one of: “do people use hand sanitizer” but “how has internal communication influenced the increase in hand sanitizer use and why it’s a good investment.”

Baselining beats benchmarking

Making this kind of story work requires baselining rather than benchmarking.

There’s an obsession in the business world about “benchmarking” — trying to compare how we are doing against performance on similar measures by other organizations, usually those we compete against or admire

But benchmarked comparisons are often difficult or even contrived, when you factor in differences as basic as location and compensation and deeper issues like corporate and national culture, workplace strategy and the mechanical and logistical differences between the businesses.

Baselining, which is the process of tracking the impact of changes in activity on the organization itself, suffers no such ambiguities.

Baselining gives you the ability to measure progress over time. It also allows you to pinpoint the relationship between specific communication activities and the actions and opinions being monitored, producing data that will bring the narrative of your impact to life.

Baselining is not to be confused with benchmarking.

Where do embedded analytics fall into all this?

There’s nothing wrong with using embedded analytic tools. The problem emerges when the embedded measures are presented as important without being connected with what the organization is actually trying to achieve.

It’s like measuring the progress of an airplane using the speedometer, but without looking at the fuel gauge, the direction, the altitude and above all, the actual destination.

Once you’ve done the work and the thinking about which Do-Know-Feel-Say outcomes you are out to achieve, looking at the embedded analytics to assess the impact of specific interventions makes far more sense than using those analytics outside of an outcome-driven context.

If you are using your comms platform or intranet as a main platform for driving messaging to encourage behavior change, click rates, open rates and “time spent on the page” can offer a highly effective early warning system to determine whether additional efforts will be required to get specific desired results.

More interestingly, your embedded analytics can give you insights into the quality of your readership when conbined with actual qualitative data and performance metrics. When the embedded analytics numbers are low but participation in the actual outcome is high or there is high recall of the actual messages, you are actually making a case that your readers are influential and drive behavior through word-of-mouth.

Why can measurement become your most powerful strategic tool?

Your measurement narrative is critical to bringing your leaders into the story being told by your words and numbers — and also for punching up the importance of your numbers to achieving the business’ outcomes.

It’s also a defining way to help your own team and stakeholders focus on activities that can be demonstrated to have direct impact on your measures — and to deprioritize activities, initiatives and spend that don’t.

THE MEASUREMENT MASTERCLASS

To learn how to go beyond the use of embedded analytics and other legacy metrics like employee engagement scores, and measure the impact your internal communication is actually having; my Measurement Masterclass offers two hours of focused training that will give you many more options for collecting the data you need to make your case effectively.

To find out about the next public session, or to register, visit www.changingtheterms.com/masterclass.

For more information on company-specific courses, please message me at Mike.Klein@ChangingTheTerms.com.

Insights, Internal Communication Strategy

Six things #internalcomms professionals can do to raise our game

July 20, 2023August 23, 2023 mikeklein

It’s hard to be ambitious when you are trying to survive.

That’s not only true of individuals. It’s also true of fields and professions when they face the pressure of micromanagement and penny-pinching.

That’s our historical baggage as internal communicators.

But it doesn’t have to be our current reality, much less our future.

Indeed, those C-suiters I’ve spoken with who do value #internalcommunication want IC to be more confident and proactive.

The question is how quickly we can raise our game, and what moving in that direction actually looks like.

From my perspective, there are two main issues: how do we as IC professionals engage with leaders, and how do we change the way we do things, so we can operate more effectively and credibly.

How can we get our house in order? Three tasks

We need to seize control of the measurement agenda – particularly in terms of measuring impact. Click rates, views and the like isn’t enough. We need to measure changes in the words people use, the actions people take and the attitudes they incubate. Most importantly, we need to be able to measure and demonstrate the lack of impact of activities that cost unnecessary time and money so we can free up resources.

We need to make a documented case for investment in the right tools. Employees are used to consumer-grade tools and have limited tolerance for improvised and cumbersome substitutes.

We need to bring the “3-90 rule” to life: to demonstrate that 3% of employees drive 90% of conversations, so we can get support for Organizational Network Analysis and shift significant communication burdens away from the hierarchy.

How can we get leaders on board in a meaningful way? Three opportunities:

Ask leaders what a communication intervention is worth to them in real financial terms. Use those money figures to drive prioritization.

Involve leaders in communication planning and in sharing ownership of processes and outcomes

Don’t seek an invitation. If you bring a chair and bring the data to justify your place, you can elbow your way to a spot at “the table.”

The IC of the future is not a simple continuation of today’s tactics, priorities and practices. New skills, mindsets and confidence will be required as we go forward.

Recognize that the right help is available – don’t be afraid to look beyond your organizational bubble for help. Consultants and vendors have a lot of experience and insights, and can save you from spending a lot of time and money on heartache and reinvention.

Most importantly, recognize that the future of IC is in your hands.

Managers and leaders have changing demands, but only we can reshape their expectations by clearly defining the benefits of a strategic, tech-savvy and incisive approach.

We can do this.

And if you want to talk about it, send me a note at mike.klein@changingtheterms.com

Tag: measurement

How to avoid screwing up internal communication measurement

Making measurement your most effective internal communication tool right now: it’s easier than you think.

Six things #internalcomms professionals can do to raise our game

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