Takeaway Tips

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As my mother is inexplicably fond of saying, by way of a tip:

Never put a cat in the washine machine or you’ll end up with a sock in the puss.

(Don’t get me started on the mushroom and fuschia jokes….)

But here are some stolen top tips or kernels of thoughts gleaned from the CIPR Conference on Monday and published here to mull over and return to:

1. Does social networking dimish the role of leadership communications?
2. What is the difference between reinforcing and duplicating messages?
3. Does comms have a role to play in sequencing change management projects?
4. Acknowledge past mistakes because you are never starting at ground zero - especially with change projects.  In fact before starting to communicate, work out where your audience is on the change curve and adapt your communications stance accordingly.
5. In crises, broadcast messages then openly and widely solicit feedback and recast the messages after at most 24 hours - to address emergent issues.  Also listen by making random phonecalls to staff to check their understanding and by monitoring intranet blogs and chat rooms.
6. Always remember to relate change to business as usual - the two things are never separate.
7. Explain where face-to-face briefings are and give them the opportunity to travel rather than assuming that you will have to make alternative arrangements for them (although do this as well!).
8. Beware the temptation to move straight to visible activity and support building before spending time on developing a strategy for creating awareness and developing understanding.
9. The biggest mistake in crises is allowing staff to become observers not partners - need to give staff a call to action - e.g. Northern Rock staff were not adequately informed or equipped to reassure customers, so they didn’t.
10. Consider setting up a standard emergency number and publicising it widely to staff so that they know where to call to listen to a recorded message in the event of an issue or emergency.
11. Is there a way of checking who is on site at each location at a certain time?
12. Map your stakeholder dependencies - e.g. staff will affect local community opinion, business partner opinion and customer opinion.  Who talks to who and how?
13. Give people a safe internal environment to blog in so that they don’t wash their dirty linen in public.
14. Don’t ignore -ve media coverage - acknowledge it and respond to it because you can be sure that staff are aware of it.
15. Avoid the threat of an organisation taking credit for an individual’s CSR activity by publicising the individual’s efforts internally and externally.
16. Put marker questions in self-selecting intranet pulse surveys to check their credibility.
17. Write profiles for your stakeholder groups.
18. Look at the dependencies of statistics, not just the statistics themselves.
19. Every piece of advice you give should be backed by evidence - never say “I think”, say “The evidence shows that…”
20. Consider creating a Facebook group for people within the network to join and then offering them a news feed.
21. Have benchmark data before starting any comms - otherwise how do you measure the change later?
22. Always use a 5 or 7 point scale on surveys - it stands up better.
23. Make sure your sample size is statistically significant otherwise it’s too easy to sweep the results aside.
24. Informal networks can help bridge silos.
25. Consider creating a rumour hotline or Q&A board.
26. Work for management but be accountable to staff.
27. Build a relationship with the individual components of the board if the board as a body is too hard to win over.
28. Have the good grace to recognise when a non-comms practitioner has had a better idea than you!
29. Remind the Emporer that he’s not wearing any clothes - in terms of reminding managers of reality - challenge people in a constructive way.
30. Organisations try to communicate rationally whereas people see things emotionally.

Finally, to quote from Men in Black:

Jay: Why the big secret? People are smart, they can handle it.
Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.

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