865 1500 word + chart

Welcome to CMN6100!

In this lecture, I’ll provide an overview of the course – be sure to review the syllabus carefully as well – and reviewing the first week’s topics.

1

CMN6100 is one of the core courses in the Masters in Corporate and Organizational Communication program.

The course weaves together several major themes:

•The linkage between communication practices and organizational performance

•The importance of crafting messages that resonate with target audiences

•The delivery of these messages through three major communication networks – ti l h i t l d t lvertical, horizontal, and external

•And the selection of communication tactics and activities that will have the greatest impact on the attitudes and behaviors of our target audiences

2

To help us achieve these learning outcomes, we will imagine that the class is a communication department of a hypothetical organization.

You will gain an understanding of the conceptual themes through our readings and case study analysis.

You will also gain experience in actually composing strategic messages, using the approach described in Beyond the Babble.

Along the way you will weave together the themes in a team and individual projectAlong the way, you will weave together the themes in a team and individual project where you will integrate the themes into a communication strategy.

The first four weeks introduce the concepts – the last two weeks focus on the translation of those concepts into real-world communication solutions.

3

Let’s begin with this question: Does communication really matter?

The degree of impact that communication has on organizational performance is a subject of controversy. There are some, mostly academic, observers who argue that communication has little impact on employee behavior – that it is essentially a tool used to manipulate.

Historically, the communication function within organizations has often been viewed as a staff role, peripheral to the decision-making process.

To some extent, communicators have reinforced this perception by focusing too narrowly on communication tacitcs. By this I mean, they’ve spent most of their energy on the quality or quantity of the communication activity rather than the outcomes of that activity. They’ve focused on the number of publications or the features and functionality of a website, rather than the impact on attitudes and behaviors that they hope to achieve with those tactical activities.

Research, however, demonstrates that communication can have a strong influence – both positive and negative – on the attitudes and behaviors of both internal and external stakeholders.

Here’s my underlying premise: communication is essentially all about building and cultivating relationships. And relationships, we know, affect organizational performance – and relationships can be assessed and measured.

4

This chart shows some of these linkages between communication and performance.

(Consider, by the way, what would be different… and the same if this chart depicted a not-for-profit organization.)

The chart shows (at the top) internal communication activities – which we know can affect employee engagement in any number of ways. Morale, commitment, productivity, job satisfaction. These dimensions of employee engagement, in turn, drive productivity and turnover levels which directly impact organizational performance and ultimately profitability.

We can see a similar set of linkages with respect to relationships with customers -- and other external stakeholders.

It’s important not to compartmentalize the internal and external categories of communication – I’ve asked you to listed to a brief Towers Watson video moderatedcommunication I ve asked you to listed to a brief Towers Watson video moderated by Kathryn Yates, who is a member of our advisory panel, which underscores the need to link internal and external messaging.

Over the next 6 weeks, we’ll be exploring how these boxes and arrows fit together and influence each other.

5

In their first chapter, Matha & Boehm make the case for the importance of what and how leaders communicate with their organizations.

They cite the EMPA study which compares different communication profiles, from Open (information moves up, down, and across the organization) to Command (top down, tell-and-respond style) and how these relate to organizational performance.

Then they make four statements – that later in the book will be translated into specific steps.

Communication, they argue, is the face and voice of leadership. Communication can drive collective action, it can enable people to contribute to overall organizational performance, it can motivate people to take action.

I use the word ‘can,’ because, of course, only effective communication and effective leadership will have this kind of impact. As Matha & Boehm note, “Communication doesn’t make a seriously flawed strategy brilliant, though it may make it sound a lot y gy g y better.”

This all sounds good – but can we prove it!

Over the past decade, the global consulting firm Towers Watson has conducted a series of studies to determine whether effective communication practices are indeed related to superior performance.

Towers Watson found that effective communication practices are correlated with a number of indicators of organizational performance, including:

•Higher levels of employee engagement – a key driver of productivity

•Lower turnover rates – which often falls right to the bottom line since recruitingLower turnover rates which often falls right to the bottom line since recruiting and training new employees is a major expense.

7

This simple charts underscores the correlation between higher employee engagement and superior financial performance.

In other words, we may not be able to claim that our communication activities are directly responsible for sales or financial results. But we can make the case that they have contributed to factors – like employee engagement – that affect the bottom line.

We know that high employee turnover is an extremely costly proposition – to the extent that communication can help employees understand the value of their relationship with the organization, it can contribute to higher retention rates.

The same goes for productivity. If employees believe that their work contributes to the strategic performance of their organization, they will feel more committed and more likely to generate innovative ideas and practices.

8

What communication practices have these positive affects on organizational performance. John Finney’s article summarizes the Towers Watson research findings.

Here I’ll simply mention the six key areas.

First, effective communication practices focus employee attention on customers – or said another way, they bring the voice of the customer into the organization.

Second, they promote two-way communication between leaders and employees – later in the course, we’ll refer to this phenomenon as a strong vertical network.

Third organizations with effective communication practices recognize the key role managers andThird, organizations with effective communication practices recognize the key role managers and front-line supervisors plays in reinforcing messages and gathering feedback. Numerous studies show that the strongest communication in an organization is between an employee and their supervisor. We’ll revisit the ways we can leverage this key link in the coming weeks.

We know that change is a constant in today’s business environment – savvy organizations use communication to explain and support change initiatives.

Later in the lecture we’ll talk about the importance of measuring the effectiveness of ourLater in the lecture we ll talk about the importance of measuring the effectiveness of our communication activities – this is Finney’s fifth secret of top performance.

And finally, effective communication helps establish a compelling employer brand and the perceived value of an employee’s relationship with the organization.

You’ll note that all of these practices involve building, nurturing, and measuring relationships.

9

Let’s drill down briefly into each one of these “secrets” of top performance.

What does focus on the customer mean?

It’s very natural for employees to become inwardly focused on their specific job functions and responsibilities – and conversely, for those functions like sales and marketing to jealously limit access to information about customer preferences and behaviors.

A major challenge for any organization is to share this customer information – the ‘voice of the customer’ -- across the organization and to help all employees understand how their actions affect the customer experience. Because the reality is that even functions that are not customer-facing have a real impact on a customer’s experience with the organization, directly or indirectly.

We’ll talk later in the course about the external communication networks thatWe ll talk later in the course about the external communication networks that facilitate this focus on the customer.

10

There is a great deal of talk in organizations about employee empowerment. Too often the term empowerment is simply an example of the corporate babble that Matha & Boehm discuss.

Too often organizations conduct employee surveys and do nothing with the results – this is a communication practices that reduces employee engagement!

If instead, the organization takes employee input seriously – if the organization’s culture and leadership is open to that sort of input, then the results can be amazing.

Matha & Boehm make a strong case for strategic communication efforts that are more like a dialogue than a one-way, top-down stream of words.

We’ll describe the role of vertical communication networks – which is where we capture and transmit employee feedback – later in the course.

11

In other communication courses, we underscore the importance of supervisors and managers in organizational communication.

Research studies prove conclusively that middle management is the most credible, trusted communication link with employees.

So it should come as no surprise that effective communication practices are grounded in leveraging this vital link.

Communication is not a natural skill for many managers – training recognitionCommunication is not a natural skill for many managers training, recognition, rewards – all can help strengthen managerial communication skills and can help focus attention on the importance of communication.

As we consider the delivery of strategic messages to our targeted audiences, we need to leverage the communication role of middle management.

12

Some of you may already have delved into the role of communication in organizational culture and the change process.

Mergers and acquisition, downsizing, management changes, competitive pressures – these have become the norm in 21st century organizational life.

Helping employees understand why change is necessary and what it means to them – that is the critical role that communication can playthat is the critical role that communication can play.

Most strategic initiatives involve some kind of change – and we’ll focus on how communication practices and tactics can facilitate the change process.

13

You may have heard the expression ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.’ This applies in every functional area and we’ve come to realize that it applies to communication as well.

That’s why I will emphasize a planning and assessment mentality in the way we look at communication. For every message that we want to convey to an audience, we should be conscious of this: what is our communication objective, how do we want to influence attitudes and behaviors of our audiences? Once we’ve defined our

bj i ’ h i i i l h i i i diobjectives, we’re then in a position to select the communication tactic or medium that will be most effective in helping us achieve the objectives.

We will also be able to measure the impact on attitudes and behaviors so that we can answer the question: did it work?

14

The notion of an employer brand is something of a buzz word among communication professionals.

The idea is that just as an organization has a brand identity in the minds of its external constituencies – it also has an internal employer brand.

And these brand identities can be strong or weak, positive or negative.

A key role of communication is to strengthen the employer brand – an employee’s understanding of the value of his or her relationship with the organization Not justunderstanding of the value of his or her relationship with the organization. Not just compensation. Not just a benefit package. But also a sense of group identity, a commitment to the organization’s mission and culture.

The stronger this employer brand, the stronger the impact on engagement, productivity, and loyalty – all drivers of organizational performance.

15

These six communication practices contribute to organizational performance.

But they don’t take place within a vacuum.

The great value of the book Groundswell by Bernoff and Li is that it highlights some forces that, in my opinion, make it even more imperative for organizations to strengthen their communication practices.

One force is the desire of people to connect with each other informally and outside the constraints of institutional influencethe constraints of institutional influence.

The second force is the explosion in communication technologies that have enabled people to connect more easily, more quickly, more three dimensionally. You can think of numerous examples across the globe where people are connecting with each other – the popular uprising in Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria are the most dramatic examples.

The third force is that many economic activities are now driven by peopleThe third force is that many economic activities are now driven by people connecting using digital technologies.

Taken together, these forces mean that organizations need to re-examine the way they communicate with both internal and external audiences. The balance has shifted. You can’t jam a message down your audience’s figurative throat.

16

The revolution in communication technologies has also contributed to greater demands for transparency in communication, both internally and externally – another leverage point for receivers!

We’ve seen how various stakeholders, often connected in social networks, are in a much better position to penetrate opaque organizational communication. Every so often, for example, the Wall Street Journal will publish a top-level ‘confidential’ memo from some corporate executive that has been leaked. And we can certainly

h f l k f i h i i l i Tsee the consequences of a lack of transparency in the recent crises involving Toyota, British Petroleum, and the Fukashima nuclear disaster.

Many organizations are also subject to regulatory environments that require increased levels of transparency, disclosure, and measures to limit conflict of interest.

What does all this mean? That more than ever, we have to understand our audiences, h d l i i k d di isharpen our messages, and leverage communication networks and media in new

ways, in more interactive ways, in ways that will engage and promote dialogue with our target audiences.

17

To do this effectively, to demonstrate the connection between a communication activity and the impact it has on organizational performanc,e we need to adopt what I call the planning and assessment mindset.

And here I’m drawing on the work of Katie Delahaye Paine, one of the leading experts on communication assessment.

18

Looking back at my years as a communications professional and manager, I have to admit that we did very little planning and even less assessment and measurement. Our excuse was that we had too little time, we were always playing catch-up and putting out fires. Judgments about whether a communication activity worked -- or not -- typically were based on after-the-fact anecdotes and opinions. Which may well have been totally incorrect!

In today’s environment, with tight budgets and constant change, these excuses won’t hwash.

When we consciously plan communication activities that support organizational objectives and then measure the results, the benefits are enormous:

This mindset, this discipline requires us to think strategically about why we are doing what we are doing – how it fits into the overall scheme of things.

Only by assessing results can we really learn what works and what doesn’t work and y y g y therefore how to improve our communication practices.

Planning and assessment can also provide us with a more solid basis for allocating our communication resources.

And finally, when we assess the linkage between communication activities and organizational performance, we’re really speaking the language of whatever business we’re in – this is how communicators can gain influence with leaders and g decision-makers.

19

The first step in adopting the planning and assessment mindset involves an accurate diagnosis of the current situation and all the variables that affect communication, such as organizational culture – we’ll be exploring these over the next few weeks.

It involves segmenting the audiences you are trying to communicate with, researching their demographic profiles understanding their attitudes and feelingsresearching their demographic profiles, understanding their attitudes and feelings, and then prioritizing them in term of impact on organizational performance and objectives.

20

Traditionally, we’ve focused on demographic characteristics of our audiences – things like gender, cultural background, language, and more intangible factors like communication style.

And age. But this is a more complicated definition of age.

Because of the groundswell, never before have we had such a diversity of communication styles and preferences across generations.

This becomes clear when you read the article by Reynolds et alThis becomes clear when you read the article by Reynolds et al.

For me, the table on page 20 of the article makes the generational communication preferences very tangible – and underlines the challenge of communicating effectively with a multi-generational audience of employees or customers.

Yes, Gen Y is tech savvy – and the article does a good job of describing the organizational changes required to integrate this huge demographic into the global workplaceworkplace.

The notion that the conventional definition of a generation – a demographic cohort sharing a range of experiences and expectations – will be modified in the future and that “the ability to adapt to generational change will be an increasingly critical organizational competency” (to quote Reynolds et al.) provides a lot of food for thought from a communication perspective.

21

Because of the groundswell, we need to broaden the conventional approach to di l iaudience analysis.

Take, for example, the attitudes and behaviors of people with respect to social media.

In Chapter 3 of Groundswell, Bernoff and Li describe the social technographic profile developed by Forrester Research. What they’re trying to understand is how and why people are motivated to participate (or not participate) – at some level in social networks.soc a etwo s.

To place this within the framework of our planning and assessment methodology, we’d include the technographic information in our audience analysis and decide on that basis whether social media would help us achieve our communication objectives with that particular audience.

I’d be interested in learning where on the social technographic ladder we all stand! Later in Groundswell, you’ll learn how various organizations have interacted with audience segments to support their business objectivesaudience segments to support their business objectives.

We know intuitively that cross-cultural factors add a level of complexity to any form of communication – and social networks are no exception. Being aware, for example, that Japanese consumers (on average) are more plugged into social media than many other societies is a critical piece of intelligence if I’m communicating with Japanese audiences.

Drilling down even further, I found the differences between the owners of two different computer brands fascinating – again, the kind of intelligence that enables one to communicate in a far more targeted and effective way with key audiences.

22

The second step in the planning and assessment mindset involves defining communication objectives that support the organization’s objectives. I’ve listed here some examples.

Let’s say our organization is launching a new sales support process for its sales force. Our communication objectives might be to ensure a high degree of understanding and adoption of the new process by the sales force.

We would then be in a position to consider a range of communication tactics or activities and decide on those that we believe will have the greatest impact in helping achieve the objectives.

The content of the next three weeks will focus on the best ways to achieve our communication objectives and it’s what you will be doing in the team project.

23

The case we’ll be using for the team project involves a major strategic initiative undertaken by dean of a major college at the fictional Sunbelt State University.

We will be playing the role of the college’s communication teams, and our task is to help the dean convey a strategic initiative – which she failed to do ‘the first time through.’ So we’ll imagine that we can start over and design a communication campaign that will truly contribute to the strength and vitality of the college.

24

To recap.

We will be revisiting the themes we’ve introduced during this first week – but here are some takeaways:

1) The explosion in communication technologies has contributed to a major shift in the traditional balance between senders and receivers of communication – receivers now rule! This trend has enormous implications both for internal and external communication practices within organizations. It also means that we must analyze and understand our audiences if we have any hope of influencing their attitudes and behaviors.

2) There is strong evidence that demonstrates the influence of communication practices on relationships with internal and external stakeholders – relationships which have a direct impact on organizational performance.

3) The planning and assessment mindset helps us understand the connections ) p g p between communication tactics and organizational performance – and also helps to build the credibility of communication as a valuable resource within organizations.

25