The Six Principles Of Internal Communication

It is a cliché to point out that just as any chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so any organisation is only as strong as the motivation and skills of its entire range of employees.

So in smart organisations today, executives are not appointed to “rule the roost”, but to guide and advise those around them – looking both up and down the corporate ladder - making decisions and taking actions, in effect, as “ruling delegates” of the company’s entire staff - on their behalf, in pursuit of greater harmony, efficiency and productivity.

If one accepts that this is a healthy and effective model of modern corporate leadership, then it follows that staff have an innate right to know of the activities of the executive, and in detail if desired.

The Principle Of Transparency

To achieve this, executives must thoroughly adopt a mindset that a matter is available to all to know, unless there are strong reasons of legality or personal confidence why that should not be so.

This inevitably produces a markedly different result to the alternative mindset, which is, of course, that everything is innately confidential unless an argument is made that it should be public.

This extends to matters that appear that they should be confidential, but in reality need not be.

Many matters are held tightly to the chest when in reality good things would result from them being made public at an early stage, and more thoroughly. The free flow of ideas, suggestions, warnings and information is enhanced by a reduction in confidentiality.

That is why democracies, for all their faults, operate more efficiently that totalitarian states, and are inevitably more stable in the long term.

But the mindset that no-one else really has any right to know what “we” are doing is usually entrenched and often difficult to over-turn.

Confidentiality is a cancer. It grows inside our organisations, eating away at our vitals, until we reach the oft-quoted situation that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. In the resulting confusion, people are often unwittingly working against each other, duplicating effort at best, and stymieing each other at worst.

In fact, confidentiality can become such a corporate habit, that the left hand sometimes doesn’t even know that the right hand exists.

Confidentiality is also a drug. It entices and bewitches those who have it within their grasp to conceal matters.

To hold confidential information is to be of the inner circle. To be “in the know”. And whether or not knowledge really is power (which it undoubtedly sometimes is) it is certainly a heady brew for many.

The solution is simply to reverse the paradigm.

We should make people argue on a case-by-case basis that people should not know something, with the highest possible requirement for any such argument to be very convincing, rather than requiring people to prove that others should know before information is routinely made public.

Just as one example of this style of thinking: why should any meeting be routinely “closed” to “non-members” of the team who are having the meeting?

Why, indeed, should it not be actively advertised, with all those who feel they have useful input invited to attend?

Already one can feel busy executives shuddering at the thought of endlessly extended meetings (as if we don’t all have enough of those already) enthusiastically infested by the eternal committee-sitters that are so easily identifiable in any organisation.

But restricting meetings to an elite few is not the solution to that problem.

The solution that that problem is to have meetings that have clear and concise agendas, chaired by people who are skilled at controlling wafflers and time wasters. Better to have one waffling air-bag punctured in public than to have one staff member who actually has the answer to a problem excluded from contributing because no-one thought to ask them along to the meeting.

Here again, the democratic principle is a useful guide: Councils and Parliaments, for example, all have “Stranger’s Galleries”, and the most stringent conditions have to be met for those galleries to be cleared and for the body to go into secret session.

And needless to say, on those occasions when a cabal or clique is seeking to do the wrong thing, then corporate governance is enhanced when more people know what’s going on.

Which leads us neatly to:

The Principle Of Pro-Activity

In order to give meaning to the first principle, (instead of merely adopting it as a high-minded ideal that means very little in practice), there should be an assumption that a company’s bodies will make every effort to disseminate information pro-actively, straining every sinew to ensure that information reaches the further possible point of the corporate family in a timely and easily-understood manner.

The leaders of organisations should critique their efforts in this regard, constantly testing to see whether such pro-activity is genuine, thoughtful, enthusiastic and effective.

Where this requires extra effort or expenditure, such burdens should be managed with equanimity, secure in the knowledge that what is being done is vital to the health and growth of the organisation, rather than a tiresome annoyance.

The goal should be to seek out the gifts of the widest possible audience as early as possible in any decision-making process, content that the best advice is frequently commonsense, and that commonsense frequently appears from the least-expected quarter.

But of course, there is no point doing this unless organisations also adhere to:

The Principle Of Simplicity

Information that is convoluted, partial, or badly explained is less useful that no information at all. It will cause misunderstanding and confusion, leading to mistrust and disputation.

As a logical consequence, every effort should be made to reduce unnecessary and tortuous prolixity, the purpose of which is as much to obscure as it is to enlighten.

In other words, use fewer words.

The Principle Of Professionalism

If the foregoing principles are to succeed, then executives should seek out the most effective means possible to disseminate the information available, constantly critiquing performance in this area to check that other, more powerful mechanisms or technologies have not presented themselves.

Every communications item, whatever its medium, should be attractive and engaging, properly laid out and presented, well-written, enticing, intriguing, and informative, and avoid unnecessary legalism, conventionalism, and conservatism.

Even attempting to adhere to this principle will result in more effective internal communication!

It is staggering that we frequently invest millions or tens of millions sharing our vision with our customers, yet shy away from miniscule additional expenditure, in the scheme of things, ensuring that the people who have to deliver that vision to our customers actually understand and support it.

The Principle Of Intent And Interactivity

Despite the best efforts of some HR departments and consultants, the dominant inherent paradigms of most complex organisations are fear (of failure, of exposure, or getting the sack, of being asked to do something we either don’t feel capable of doing, or with which we disagree) and inertia (“there’s no point getting involved, they don’t understand, they don’t care, nothing will change”.)

With notable exceptions, therefore - the self-starting go-getters who, of course, promptly get promoted in a process which strips their departments of the very talents they need - people in organisations are usually somewhat backward in coming forward.

But communicating is a two way process. There’s no point shouting into space and vainly hoping that a passing ear may hear.

So executives must pause and consider what they are trying to achieve by communicating? Do they have a clear strategic objective before making the effort?
Do they have any clear idea what they want to get back?

And are they genuinely enthusiastic about the prospect of getting more information, and therefore achieving greater “buy in”, or are they merely paying lip-service to the process?

Assuming enthusiasm, what steps are they going to take to make sure that their people perceive the importance of responding to them? (Will they reward them for doing so, for example? Will they measure their responsiveness and consider it at staff reviews? Will they publicly praise them?)

And what will they do to ensure that it is easy for people to respond?

Like anything else organisations seek to achieve, creating a “communicating organisation” is a process that has to be managed. Which is why this modus operandi of corporate leadership is definitely not about abrogating responsibility and devolving it to anyone and everyone, but rather, taking responsibility for ensuring the creation of an organisation where everyone feels and is informed and enthusiastic.

The Principle Of Consistency

The last principle recognises that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Any changes organisations adopt will amount to a hill of beans, and a small hill at that, unless every decision taken is consciously subjected to the following checklist:

• The matter we are discussing – can anyone see any compelling reason why everyone shouldn’t know about this?
  
  
• How can we best let the largest number of people know about it, and as quickly as possible at that?
  
  
• What is the simplest, clearest way we can present the information?
  
  
• What will be the most effective medium for transmission?
  
  
• Do we know what we’re trying to achieve?
  
  
• Have we made it easy and effective for people to respond?

If leaders are prepared to sign up to these principles as a guide, then work can begin promptly on the changes necessary to begin implementing them in a practical way.

As a first step, these principles could be “read into the minutes” of a Board, for example, and formally adopted as the principles by which the organisation’s peak bodies operate.

The next step would be to implement a communications program to have these principles understood by all management, and, in turn, by the staff as a whole, and to decide what impact the principles have on the way communication flow happens within the organisation.

But we have to be clear about one thing.

Effective communication is not a mechanical issue. It is a state of mind.

If anyone senior in an organisation has any serious reservations about adopting this style of management, and also has the power to “white ant” the process as soon as it gets underway, then there’s simply no point worrying about the “how to”.

Because it is clear that, like most things, achieving genuine progress in internal communications requires real visionary leadership.

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