Getting the message across

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So you’ve defined your values, you know your company’s purpose and you’ve captured it all in a mission statement. What happens next? Maybe you’ll print some posters and perform some presentations. Maybe the audience will be attentive and no one will be rolling their eyes, maybe the posters will be inspiring and won’t fade into the background décor of the office.

This is the next big challenge as a leader, you have to bring the message to life; make it real and dynamic.

Too often, business communication and messages like this become fixed in place and time. The enthusiasm for them stays in the conference room where they were defined, never making it out into the real world. An event in which values were defined becomes a single point in time; a distant memory as employees return to the office and everyday work takes over

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What communicating the right culture can do

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If you know the core values, you’ve set the strategy and defined goals, why would you need to worry if your communication is effective?

Your values let people know what to do when they’re not being told what to do; the more you create a common value system, the less energy is needed in setting policies and guidelines – people just know what to do.

Patty McCord and Reed Hastings famously released a presentation describing the culture at Netflix; a presentation that has been described as the most important document to come out of Silicone Valley, has been viewed more than 5 million time and is the subject of an HBR paper written by McCord. There are many brilliant concepts in there, but one of the statements that resonates is that if you have a well-functioning culture, 97% of employees know what’s right and what’s wrong – HR departments expend massive amounts of time and energy writing and enforcing policies for the other 3%. Their expense policy is five words long “Act in Netflix’s best interests”.

If you know what the right people look like when they walk in and they know what is important to the company, what more do you need? If they have already have a sense of shared purpose and goals, employee engagement and satisfaction will follow and retention will be easy.

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Tipping point communication

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The theory of tipping points, which has its roots in epidemiology, is well known; it hinges on the insight that in any organization, once the beliefs and energies of a critical mass of people are engaged, conversion to a new idea will spread like an epidemic, bringing about fundamental change very quickly. There’s a really good article about this in the Harvard Business Review in which four key hurdles are described: Cognitive, resource, motivational and political.

The cognitive and resource hurdles represent barriers to having communication that resonates with employees, motivational and political hurdles represent those that slow down or dilute communication.

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Cognitive Hurdles

It is possible that not everyone agrees on what the current challenges are that the company faces. Messages that rely on numbers and data very rarely describe the core communication effectively. These messages must be delivered in a more engaging, interactive manner. Assuming you have a clear understanding of your company’s ‘why’ which has been derived from within the teams, you should be able to find examples and messages that can be descriptive and delivered directly to the employees.

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Resource Hurdles

You may find that teams accept and register the initiatives being presented but do not believe that they have the resources or time to enact the changes. This is clearly a predictable response and is often based in fact. In any planning activity you will need to have ensured that there are sufficient resources and you must ensure that your communication makes it clear that you have included this in your planning and should clearly describe why it is achievable.

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Political Hurdles

Any change can be perceived as a threat to established power structures within an organisation; anyone who believes they are destined to suffer loss as a result of an initiative will endeavour to undermine and halt any changes. You should consider this ahead of time, giving attention to how to bring everyone on-side, often by ensuring that any perceived loss can be re-structured as an exchange that will ideally allow the individual to achieve a net gain and will incentivise them to becoming a champion for the changes.

If this is impossible and there will be individuals or groups that stand to lose out after any changes in a way that cannot be mitigated, you will need to plan for how to minimise or silence their objections and ensure that they cannot derail your message.

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Motivational Hurdles

Clearly it is much preferred to have everyone engaged and believing in the changes. We describe methods of messaging below, but it is important to understand who the key influencers are in an organisation; there will be an informal network of communication that runs parallel to official line reporting and is quite often not related to seniority in the hierarchy.

If you can spend time with these influencers ahead of the main messaging and develop their buy-in by giving them a chance a raise their questions, and to prepare them with response to the questions you would expect them to see that may not appear in official sessions, they can be very effective champions for your communication.

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Communication types

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You now know where to deploy your communication and the challenges, the next step is to consider the type of communication you can employ to effectively bring about changes. (Article coming soon!)

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