[Com-mu'-ni-ca'-tion] So what's new?

Communication World, Dec, 1997 by David B. Freeland

You work for the number one company in your industry, a company whose products are so strong they place first through seventh, ninth, and tenth among the top sellers in the field.

The marketplace is now saturated with eager competitors, straining at the bit to overtake your leadership position. Sales are falling. Your company reorganized for strength last year, but the sale force was shattered by the restructuring.

Morale has plummeted to a depressing low. Senior and best-and-brightest middle-level managers are leaving the company for greener pastures. "What do they know that I don't?" is whispered in the hallways of headquarters.

The situation calls for swift action, buoyed by creative leaders and bolstered by contemporary communication techniques.

Unfortunately (and incredibly), your company enjoys none of those attributes. Management is slow to take action, leaders are scurrying for cover and your firms has succeeded for decades with no communication infrastructure at all. This company succeeds on entrepreneurialism, on reactive decision-making and on control by political pressure.

What would you do to fix this situation?

This company really exists - with more than 15,000 hard-working employees - and the situation described has not been embellished one iota. A lot of folks are working to fix the situation, but history and time are not on their side.

Impatience, especially with "the numbers," rules here, and no-nonsense strategies are the only ones that receive attention.

It's also obvious from my own company's research, the Watson Wyatt WorkUSA study, that this client is not unique. There must be many companies out there where workers would measure up statistically equal to, or worse than, our client firm.

WorkUSA reported in August 1997 that 83 percent of working Americans (9,144 took the survey) understand their company's goals and 87 percent understand their own responsibilities, but only 43 percent are given the skills and 38 percent the information needed to achieve those goals.

The study, our fifth similar survey since 1987, demonstrates shifts in worker attitudes, many now as a result of a bewildering fusillade of restructurings, downsizings, re-engineerings and cost-shiftings that has created a degree of skepticism unparalleled since the invention of the sundial.

When we surveyed employee beliefs in our client company, we found widespread cynicism of senior management, a paucity of effective job-related communication and a buttoned-up style of information delivery that matches communication practices of the 1970s better than practices of the 1990s.

Drafting the Communication Model

But this company needs a communication model for the 21st century, not the 1990s. Where should it begin?

Here in a nutshell is what we have recommended:

* Identification of the company's core values - those fundamental beliefs that do not change over time regardless of business conditions and marketplace realities. This forms the foundation for understanding how the firm operates and how it must change.

* Endorsement at the senior-most management level of a positioning statement for internal communication. The one we recommended was audience bias; yes a loaded term, but one that seems necessary to ensure that cliches such as "open and honest," "people-oriented" and "receiver-based" - all too soft to stir the inner juices of management - don't creep in to weaken what must be done.

* A significant process to assess the human capital value chain and how aligning people practices, including contemporary communication techniques, can create value for the company just as financial capital does. (Can you imagine the reactions of the CEO and CFO when we took the concept of human capital to the front row alongside tried-and-true concepts of financial capital?)

* The use of discovery/invention/delivery as a building block to make the human capital value chain a reality instead of a wall hanging. (This firm has the usual complement of mission and vision statements adorning the walls of conference rooms and lobbies.)

* A more structured communication plan that ensures action on promises. Included are models to improve horizontal communication, new processes for vertical communication in two directions, training in communication skills for managers and rank-and-file workers alike, and a full accountability/measurement system for managerial communication.

The jury is still out on whether or not this model will fly.

What's Not Included

Notice some practices we have not mentioned in this model:

* No mention is made of information-delivery vehicles such as newsletters or an intranet. In fact, the company magazine would be converted down the road from a news-and-recognition vehicle to an interpretive vehicle more oriented to business strategies and objectives. And an intranet is in the works in the spirit of "news now, interpretation to follow" that simply must replace the "dot the i's, cross the t's" style of mediated communication that has ruled our profession for decades.