Strictly Boardroom attended a full-day corporate strategy “love-in” last week and has another one in the diary for coming week too.
Whoever the manufacturers are of butcher paper will be doing very nicely thank you as a result of such gatherings.
The makers of marker pens should have a liking for regular strategy sessions too.
The strategy event last week proved a timely reminder of the power and also the challenges of good communication within an organisation.
Inevitably, after such events people feel happier, if for no other reasons than such get-togethers give everyone a chance to be heard – but also the opportunity to listen and to learn exactly where the company is at in terms of the competitive landscape.
This brings me around to the subject of this week’s column – internal communication.
In over 25 years of such corporate naval-gazing events, “communication” always comes up as an area that could be improved when the inevitable question as to what we can do better is posed.
In fact, never once in more than 100 of such events has the word communication not appeared at least once on butcher paper at some point during the day: there should be a prize for the first person to mention it.
The focus upon improved communication is not misplaced. Internal communication is critical to both morale and to the business effectiveness of organisations.
So how can it be improved then?
The answer, you will be pleased to hear, is not simply to schedule more frequent corporate get-togethers – pressing work commitments and the tyranny of distance usually defeat that potential solution to improving the effectiveness of communication.
In Strictly Boardroom’ experience the satisfaction level regarding internal communications at a company can be materially improved with just one email per week.
That is not bad return when the daily email count can reach more than 100 a day for staff.
So how can just one email each week make such a difference?
The answer is that the email comes directly from the boss to all staff – speaking to the issues of his or her choice that week.
A regular weekly message from the boss helps staff a great deal in building engagement with an organisation.
If heartfelt and sincere then such an email can have a near-infinite return on investment.
For example, it can energise people towards key short-term deliverables critical to making budget; it can celebrate the collective and individual achievements of staff in the many varied outposts of a multi-site company or business unit; and it can even cut short staff grumbles about the latest economy class corporate travel policy.
Why does such a simple communication tool achieve so much in just a few lines?
A regular weekly email from the top sends out an important message between the lines: indeed the between-the-lines message may be even more important than the email content itself.
Between the lines, regular communication says that the boss considers keeping the staff informed as critically important.
It also says that people do matter to the organisation – and are far more than economists would label “units of labour”
Elvis Presley’s call for “a little less conversation, a little more action please” may have been off the mark.
A little more conversation please (from the top) can result in a lot more action.
Good hunting.
Allan Trench is a professor at Curtin Graduate School of Business and Research, professor (value and risk) at the Centre for Exploration Targeting, University of Western Australia, a non-executive director of several resource sector companies and the Perth representative for CRU Consulting, a division of independent metals and mining advisory CRU Group (allan.trench@crugroup.com).
