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Life After the Recession
Roger D’Aprix
VP and Senior Advisor
ROI Communication
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Dilemma:
What’s Our Role?
• Are we primarily internal media experts
playing the role of
tacticians/implementers?
OR
• Are we communication experts/internal
consultants/advocates strategizing and
facilitating all the complexities of internal
communication from leadership
communication to (most recently) social
media?
The Credible Company
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How Do We See Ourselves?
• Both camps suffer from a sense of superiority:
– The ‘implementers’ tend to identify with the external media—production,
projects and programs as solutions
– The internal consultants tend to see communication as ongoing process
that creates measurable outcomes and influences behavior, opinion and
company cultures
• But a third camp is fast emerging:
– Internal communication’s role as that of a ‘free press’ of internal journalists
– The facilitators of an ongoing social dialogue among the members of nonhierarchical, transparent organizations where every voice counts in a quasi
democracy
| The Credible Company
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Is It Either/Or?
Communication professionals will
always be multi-taskers, but our
assumptions and beliefs about
mission profoundly affect how
we approach our work
In which role are you most
competent (and comfortable?)
The task is to know where you
and your leadership stand…
Are you both focused on the
real needs of your audience?
Do you know what they are?
Is your leadership on board?
| The Credible Company
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But it’s Not Actually that Simple…Other Forces
• The worst recession since World War II and an
uncertain economic future
• Declining trust of senior leaders and their motives
and competence
• The saturation of companies with ever-changing
communication technology and increasingly
savvy users of that technology
• The explosion of social media in the larger
society (from Facebook to LinkedIn to
Twitter, etc.)
• The ‘corporate permeable membrane’
| The Credible Company
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Further Complications…
• The introduction of these tools into the internal communication process as a
means of creating greater openness and employee dialogue
• The natural desire to exploit the advantages of greater technological literacy
• The accompanying decline of print (both outside and) inside organizations
• And the usual unintended consequences, including:
– Some erosion of face-to-face communication
– Greater information overload
– Declining business literacy
| The Credible Company
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Outcomes for Communication
Professionals…
• Further confusion about our proper role
• Uncertainty about how to communicate
change and its impact on our organizations
• An increasingly skeptical internal audience
• Concern over loss of leadership credibility
and trust
• Need to understand social media and
their potential applications and value
The solution: Write another book to try to make sense of it all…
| The Credible Company
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By the Numbers:
A Distressing Report Card
• The Stephen Covey Study:
– Only 37% of employees understand what
their organization is trying to achieve
– 20% are enthusiastic about their team and
organizational goals
– 20% have a clear line of sight from their
contribution to company goals
– 15% feel they are empowered to execute
key goals
– Only 20% trust their leadership
| The Credible Company
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Life After the Recession:
Other Voices
Time Magazine, in a May 25 story on
“The Way We’ll Work,” cites the way work
will change in the future:
• Job selection based on aptitude
• Leaders held accountable for their behavior
• Erosion of benefits
• Continued outsourcing
• Increase in retirement age
• More collaborative work environment
• Regulated, ethical capitalism
| The Credible Company
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Life After the Recession:
Other Voices
Opinions from ~50 respected colleagues:
• Senior leadership communication is likely to be more candid, more truthful
to counter today’s mistrust and skepticism
• But leadership communication is likely to become less relevant to people
in a radically changed workplace
• ‘The team’ will be more the focus of communication in a flexible workplace
where people are more likely to be free agents in attitude and fact
• Nurturing, leading and retaining human talent will become a significant
priority for company leadership
| The Credible Company
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Life After the Recession:
Other Voices
• Openness and transparency will increase to repair shattered trust and to
improve performance generally; spin is a bankrupt strategy
• Social media is a double-edged sword—as threat to corporate reputations
and security; and as exciting opportunity for dialogue
• Insightful communication professionals are needed to advise and facilitate
the communication process and advise senior leadership
• There is an opportunity for the profession to take a great leap forward in
meeting these challenges, but there is doubt as to whether most practitioners
are up to the challenges
| The Credible Company
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A Sense of Perspective
• The world is changing at warp speed
• We need to be diligent students of that change and how it’s affecting our
audiences both in the short and long term
• Also to be mindful that communication is intended above all to be an
instrument of understanding and clarity and not simply a random collection
of channels and programs
• And let’s remember that our fundamental responsibility is to serve the
business needs and success of our organizations as well as meet the
information needs of our audiences
| The Credible Company
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What’s the ‘Aha’?
• In an increasingly high tech environment, we need an equal focus on
– high touch—on the humanity and meaning of work;
– the clarity of corporate goals and intentions;
– a sense of what the marketplace is demanding.
• To the extent we dive deeper into craft and tactics, we risk becoming
more distant from the needs of our leadership and our audience.
• We need a new prescription for our work in a future environment that will
require adaptability, imagination and greater relevance to its demands.
• Sustainability of this profession will depend on how well we craft that
prescription.
| The Credible Company
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Summing Up: As a Profession
We Are at a Crossroads
• We are at risk of losing our focus on what kind of
communication the workforce really needs
• Those needs come down to meaning, clarity and
understanding
• Our fascination with technology as the ultimate
communication tool tends to focus us more on craft
and less on strategy and communication process
• We need an exquisite balance between craft and
strategy
• To repeat: we need a new prescription for what
effective communication really looks and feels like
in the coming corporate organization
| The Credible Company
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