Helping your CEO listen...

Despite – or maybe even because of – the increase in social media in the workplace there is a need for organisations to demonstrate leadership. The notion of cascaded information going in a nice sequence from top to bottom with feedback going bottom to top is at best outdated and arguably was always a misconception.  Nowadays information of all sorts zaps about the place in all directions, like a million pinballs in play at the same time. We need to introduce some structure to it in order to help our people make sense of it, to separate the important stuff from the general noise.

There are a number of ways to achieve this but here I thought I’d concentrate on one – leadership demonstrated by listening and reacting to feedback.

I read an article in the McKinsey Quarterly from Amgen CEO Kevin Sharer (and what a good name for a communicator, by the way!) – it’s a really good article and shows how an enlightened leader can have a hugely positive effect both culturally and operationally through ‘proper’ listening.

Mr Sharer listens on a personal basis and has his own method of gathering information but not all of us work with CEOs who have the same outlook. So what can we do to help?

Firstly, to state the obvious, CEOs need to take the broadest overview of the whole organisation and even they have some limit to the amount of information they can absorb, however clever they are.  I think of this like a piano keyboard – there is a wide range of notes that they should be hearing, not just the few in the middle, even though those are the ones probably played loudest (usually the financials). Other notes can resonate just as much but they need to be played to CEOs if they are not able or willing to do it themselves.

So in internal comms we should look to drive or facilitate this as appropriate. First, analyse what your CEO already does, how well s/he does it and where the gaps are. Maybe they read a few reports but do little face-to-face, or maybe it’s the other way around. Have a look at the table below for some ideas – and add your own…

Unfortunately, some CEOs may do little or nothing, in which case you might want consider a phased program where they will see the benefits build up rather than looking for too big a change in one go.

Whatever you want to do, you’ll need the CEO to want to do it too and that means selling the benefits. CEOs are always busy and if they feel they don’t have time to do any more you’ll need to persuade them otherwise. Enlist the help of others if necessary – you might need a Board Member or two to help out or even sponsor the program on your behalf (the HR Director might be supportive if you don’t have a Comms Director).

From the employees’ perspective, it’s not just the CEO being seen to listen; the key is that people know something has happened as a result of this listening. We all want our voice to be heard, our opinions to be valued. So make sure you find effective ways of communicating this too.

Here’s an idea for a high-level plan of action:

• Analyse current position – what happens, when, how, why and where
• Define the desired future position
• Look at the gap – analyse how big a change is required
• Prioritise what needs to happen
• Write a (private) engagement plan for what needs to happen – whom do you need to consult, who can help you, who may be unenthusiastic about it and what will you do to change their minds – most importantly, how will you show the value of the activities to the CEO?
• Write a delivery plan – assuming your engagement plan is successful how will you deliver the activities? This will be your public plan so include the key tasks from your engagement plan
• Write a comms plan – how will you communicate the new activities to your people? How will you let them know what has happened as a result of the CEO listening? Include a review within this, where you look at how things have gone and what needs to be changed as a result. I’m a real fan of doing pilots – low risk, simple positioning and much easier to sell to the CEO than a big, high-profile program of action
• Implement, review, revise as necessary

 Any thoughts?