One degree of (doggy) separation

Absolutely nothing to do with communications today, but a great example of how small the world really is. I was up at the off lead dog park with my 2yo lab Holly the other morning before work when another Labrador, 1yo Molly, and owner arrived.

Molly (L) and Holly (R) playing like long lost sisters...

I'd not met either before and started chatting to the owner while our dogs started playing like crazy with each other, chasing each other, wrestling, jumping around, all in all having a great time.

Any way, the other guy (Nick) asked me where I'd got my dog from and it turns out we both got our labs from the same breeder. Not only was that in itself enough, after some further discussion and testing of the memory banks, we realised they had the same mum and dad - Holly and Molly were in fact sisters, albeit Holly was 15 months older!

Sisterly love: Holly and Molly hugging/wrestling

They had a lot of the same mannerisms and both had the defining gold 'racing stripe' down the back. Holly had a little bit of excess baggage but insists she is just big boned...

It just goes to show how small the world is. Needless to say Holly and Molly have now got regular play dates scheduled.

JH

How can middle managers improve all user emails?

It's common knowledge that for internal communications to be successful you need the buy in from the CEO and executive and have them willing to share information.

But what about the middle managers and their role in disseminating messages from above? They either receive information direct and may want to keep the knowledge as power, or they receive it the same time as everyone else in an 'all user email' and feel undermined and as if they have no need to take ownership of the message.

 

Middle managers are the crucial link to ensure all user emails have any hope of success

For all user emails from the CEO to have any hope of real success though, it is the line managers and direct supervisors of employees who are the crucial link. If managers don't take the time to read the email themselves and interpret what it might mean for their team or department, then the email from the CEO might as well as been sky writing for the impact it will have with the individual employees. 

 

If you look at just about any employee satisfaction or internal communication survey the source that employees trust the most for delivering a key message is their direct manager, often in face to face communication. If the CEO has sent an all user email, the impact of that communication is already diminished by the sheer fact that, if your organisation is any larger than say 100 people, there is no way the CEO will be able to talk to every one directly and know their personal situations. 

 

Only middle managers can interpret that information, assess what it means for their team and check with higher management if necessary. Middle managers are the lynch-pin to ensuring that all user emails are able to become specific enough to be relevant for each team or department.

 

So should all user emails come with instructions for employees to ask their manager what this means for you? And do middle managers need to be instructed to interpret this information and say 'this is what we know, and this is what I think it means for us...'? 

As communicators and managers, do people grasp too strongly to the belief that 'knowledge is power' and something not to be shared lightly? It's as if knowledge is a physical entity and if I give my knowledge to you, it might mean I am left with nothing. Sadly knowledge isn't something commonly viewed as improved by sharing. 

 

JH

Internal comms in a real disaster

Photo Credit: Salvatore Vuono

Sitting here in the relative comfort of Melbourne it's hard to imagine the devastation flowing through Queensland following the record floods. With a surface area flooded the size of France and Germany combined, more than 40 towns isolated or flooded, a rising death toll and an estimated $5 billion damage bill, it is a crisis of mammoth proportions.

For the agencies involved in responding to the emergency, it is easy to get caught up in the here and now and overlook the menial yet important tasks - like internal communications.

Without been there I can't speak for what exactly is unfolding in Queensland, but from my experience in major emergencies there are a number of internal communication challenges:

• Staff are spread over diverse location, making face to face communication to large numbers hard
• Employees spend the majority of their time in the field, nowhere near a computer making electronic communications (intranet, email, etc) essentially useless
• Staff are not only responding to the crisis and dealing with the emergency workload, but it is highly likely that they will be directly affected themselves, either with personal loss or property damage, or that of friends or family. The need for communications to also act as a support network becomes vital and to remind staff that it is okay to feel affected emotionally and personally. 
• A crisis like the floods has lasted for three weeks so far. It becomes very hard to sustain the necessary communication staffing levels and overcome the associated fatigue and burnout for such a prolonged period of time.

I've found that in a crisis more than ever for internal communications it is all about getting it back to basics. Find out where staff are going to be, how can you improve information flow to them and how you can make their lives easier.

In the past, like during the 2009 Victorian heatwave and Black Saturday bush fires, I set up 24hour phone hot lines for staff to ask any questions or to make requests for welfare, sent managers out to wait in hospital emergency bays with bottles of water because it was the one spot I knew paramedics would go and used external media to communicate essentially internal messages because every one was listening in for radio updates. It requires innovation and a rethink on standard communications, but it is the least that can be done when dealing with a crisis.

As I say, I don't know what is happening in Queensland yet, but I'm certainly thinking of them at this time and hoping that the crisis passes soon and their communication systems are working seamlessly.

JH

Lesson #1: All about me

Hi, and welcome to my blog. Another blog I hear you say, what do I have to offer you that's so different from everyone else out there? What can I say that hasn't been said, done, plagiarized and shot down the fibre to disperse across the little thing called the internet?

Well, at this stage I don't know - but I am determined to find out and if you want to join the journey with me then I'd be stoked. Hopefully along the way we can both learn something.

First thing for you to learn is very self indulgent of me - lesson one is all about me! I'm currently a second year MBA student working in corporate communications for an ambulance service. My blogs will share my learnings, experiences and thoughts on internal communications, social media, issues management and strategic communications.

Thanks for coming this far, I promise to you now that the next posts will be less about me and more about the world we communicate in.

JH