Force For Good Communications

Start thinking about the upside of the business cycle, reinvest in vital communications

As the economic recovery slowly begins to take hold, smart  business leaders will start activating their companies' recovery plans. That means going after new market opportunities aggressively. And it means starting to invest again in essentials to the business, investments that were deferred during the downturn.

And that may include communication. If your company cut its communication budget to the bone, now is the time to make the case to adequately (not extravagantly) resource smart, effective communication.

Here's an excerpt from an interview I gave to the Bulldog Reporter:

My advice is to start thinking about the upside before your competition does. Think about how the industry will look and how you will gain market share over the competition. The first people who start looking at the horizon—as opposed to at their feet—will have the advantage.

You still want to stay as lean as you can. But this idea of saying "no" to opportunities in the name of cost cutting will not serve companies well.

One thing you should look at in particular is internal communications ... extremely important in difficult times and in times of change.... Employees are worried and insecure—and they need to hear from senior management....Communicating optimism is hugely important for getting employees in the company to buy in to the strategy and work at full capacity. Management and leaders in business should be communicating frequently and candidly. That means listening as well as talking."

- Jon Harmon

Optimism inspires the confidence of a winner

I've written earlier about the power of a positive leadership message (for example, here and here).

The current issue of BusinessWeek, dedicated to "The Case for Optimism," provides a good reason to dig into this topic again. 

 Artwork: BusinessWeek

Numerous articles in the magazine cite encouraging economic statistics indicating the "green shoots" of a coming recovery. Optimism (or pessimism) can be a self-fulfilling prophecy and BusinessWeek sets out to do its part to help spur business leaders to begin to invest again in the future, and consumers to begin to spend. When we all start to accept that the worst is likely behind us, we can begin to take actions that collectively will ensure that the worst is, indeed, behind us. 

PR and HR professionals have long understood the importance of positive thinking in driving confidence among employees. As Michelle Conlin writes in BusinessWeek:

"Most human resources managers base their motivational policies on a simple psychological premise: that optimistic, engaged employees are more productive and hence can help their employees grow and make more money."

Conlin provides proof that the premise is sound: a study showing that Best Buy store locationsreport a $100,000 increase in annual sales when employee engagement scores increase by 2%.

So how can a company's communication people help drive confidence without being dismissed as vapid cheerleaders? 

• Confidence-building communication must be credible. Don't sugar-coat bad news. Be candid in assessing challenges and disappointments, then make the case for future success built on facts and sound reasoning.
• Hunt out real success stories and then tell employees about them. Personally congratulate and thank the employees behind the successes. 
• Find the compelling visuals to help tell these success stories. Nothing resonates more and sticks more than a good photo or video of a real person at a real moment. Capturing a truly compelling visual means thinking like a photojournalist. Don't stage a cliched photo, like the employee and manager shaking hands and grinning at the camera. What about the person's involvement in the improved process tells the story with authentic emotion?
• Populate your company's intranet with confidence-boosting information and anecdotes. In addition to messages from company leadership, the intranet might feature discussions from employees at all levels, positive news stories about your company, its people and its products, as well as opinions from analysts, bloggers or community leaders.
• Use communication channels to help management understand problems and to move quickly to fix them; then celebrate the fixes rather than pretending the problems never existed. Analysts are cheering news today that General Motors has scuttled plans  for a new Buick SUV soon after hearing on Twitter unfavorable comments about the SUV's design (Tweeters complained it looked too much like an old Saturn Vue and dubbed it the "Vuick") -- evidence that the "new GM" is determined to act quickly to correct mistakes and move on.

- Jon Harmon

Too much transparency can be a bad thing

When is too much of a good thing no longer good?

Transparency clearly is a communications virtue. So is reader/user participation. There is great power in providing an audience with clear insights into difficult issues, as well as in encouraging audience participation in finding solutions and in guiding content development. These actions foster audience engagement which greatly improves both acceptance of the message as well as the quality of the message itself as we tap into the collective wisdom of the audience at large.

But that doesn't mean that more transparency is always better.

The Chicago Tribune recently launched an ill-fated project to solicit responses from subscribers to sketches of stories as reporters were still fleshing out story details. The idea was to tap into the power of open-sourcing for additional leads as well as to grow reader appetite for an upcoming story or series.

But soon after the experiment was kicked off, dozens of reporters signed a letter to the Tribune's editor, Gerould Kern, urging him to pull the plug on the idea. They were concerned that teasing stories before all the facts were in might, in fact, recklessly spread ill-founded rumors.

"We stopped this," Kern was quoted in a susequent Tribune story. "To prematurely disseminate information about stories in progress compromises reporting (including) potential legal issues, fairness, accuracy and completeness."

The project also raised the specter of news judgments being made by opinion poll, an abdication of editors' responsibility. "Journalists make decisions about news play. We're not taking a marketing survey ... and saying 'OK, this goes on Page One,'" Kern said.

It's safe to say that few corporate communications functions are likely to tilt so far in favor of transparency to require a corrective reaction. Most companies could continue to benefit from far more openness in their communications. And open-sourcing for idea-generation and best-practice sharing can greatly enhance the power of company intranets. But it is also useful for us advocates of transparency to take note of the danger of going too far, too fast.

- Jon Harmon