Building from the bottom up

I’m doing a piece of consultancy work currently that has thrown up an interesting challenge. It’s a challenge about scope. Now normally I don’t do things like how to manage meetings and teleconferences. For me, these are day-to-day communications and I try to avoid bringing them into what I’m doing as there is usually quite enough to get on with without straying into how effective (or not) these are. Leave that to Training folk, say I. 

However, in doing the research into the ‘as-is’ I’ve got some interesting results. This is probably because I’m working with one department and they don’t have anybody responsible for internal communications. It just happens… And it’s an educated workforce – they are all of degree level with a fair few PhDs in the mix. They are experts, know what they’re doing and communicate when they have to. They are all articulate and know how to express themselves, but scholarly writing is not necessarily a good grounding for good business communication.

Yet the research gave me food for thought. They send a lot of emails – on average 15 a day. They spend a lot of time on teleconferences and in meetings – works out on average at a couple of hours a day. So not surprisingly their main wish is to improve in these areas – that will save them time and their tempers. And, just as importantly, their stakeholders have said the same thing.

Of course there are some other things they need to look at too. They have no intranet (unless you regard a raggedy hotch-potch of SharePoint Teamspaces as an intranet, which I don’t). They also have no leadership channels – they have a great Leadership Team but their comms are ad hoc. Their people are unsure of the bigger picture (such as the strategy) and their place in it. They are not as yet completely sold on the idea that they do need to know this, but I can show ‘em that at the right time.

So I asked them what would make things better, they told me and I’m now working with them on improving the simple channels first. It’s a global organisation with regionally based training so my first point of call for consistency in these areas isn’t there. And do you know what, it’s really interesting and perhaps too much overlooked.

We spend much time thinking about all the great things like internal social media but my guys want fewer emails, shorter and more targeted. They want an agenda for their teleconferences and meetings, with pre-reading and follow-up emails. They want to know who’s doing what and when, they want things to start on time, finish on time and decisions to be made. They want to know how to plan their comms and some of them want to know how to manage their stakeholders better. So I’m giving them a bunch of checklists, templates, guidelines and tools. It’s back to basics but that’s looking like a good thing. Tall buildings need strong foundations; the towers and spires come later.