Chapter 40: Prompting and enabling

The Head Office of Unicorp was everything Tobi had imagined.? Officially, she had a study day today.? But as Graham had invited her to lunch, and she was due for another catch up with Darren, she’d agreed to join them at their workplace.? So it was with surprise that she saw Janelle had come to collect her from reception.

“Graham thinks it would be useful to have all four of us together again, to brainstorm this IC Practice Governance Model.? Not that he needs a business pretext to see you any more, so I understand.”? She gave her guest a knowing look before proceeding. ?“But I for one am really happy you’re pitching in.? Maybe you should be charging us a consultancy fee or something.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.? It’s a pleasure.? I’ve got so much out of my conversations with Darren these past months.? And as for Graham…”? She caught Janelle’s eye and smiled.? “You’re right.? No need for any excuses to spend time together.”

As the escalator carried them up to the restaurant, she was able to take in the impressive architecture: the vast atrium, huge windows; the gantries connecting both sides of the building at a variety of eccentrically asymmetric angles.? She wondered how much of it was truly functional, and how much the result of the architect’s whimsy and the client’s vanity.?

Arrived at the first floor, Darren and Graham were stepping out of the lift; both smiling at their guest for different reasons.? She and Graham exchanged a brief peck and a knowing look; Darren went straight for the hug, and apologised for their tardiness.

“Sorry.? We were delayed.? Siobhan, my replacement, is still finding her feet a bit.”?

Tobi couldn’t help a twinge of pride at the thought of how her surrogate younger brother was moving up.

Five minutes later, with all four of them seated away from the main body of the restaurant, they began tucking into their lunches and the next step in Darren and Janelle’s recipe for success.

Darren kicked things off.? “So, we’ve agreed the purpose of IC Practice Governance is ‘To prompt and enable the business’s line managers to consistently fulfil the purpose of IC when they communicate’.? And I guess the question is: what’s it going to take to get there?? What are your thoughts, guys?”

That Janelle had already been giving the challenge attention was evidenced by the way she wagged her fork as she spoke.? “The thing is, every time I think about this, I keep being reminded of Strawberry Systems.”

Graham screwed his face up at the uncomfortable memory. “Ah.”

“Strawberry Systems?”? The name was ringing a bell in Tobi’s mind, but her companions’ shared inside knowledge had taken her out of her depth.? “Sorry folks, you’ll have to enlighten me.”

Graham did the honours.?

“You may have heard of them as a rising star in the AI arena.? There was quite a bit in the news when we acquired them three years ago.? And there was, unsurprisingly, a lot of Internal Communication going on in relation to the takeover.? The trouble was that the IC Team involved received a ton of flak whenever something didn’t go right which, with this acquisition, happened a lot.? It became a bit of an in-house joke.? ‘Artificial Idiocy’, they called it.? But when people looked into what was going wrong, much of that criticism turned out to be unjust.”

“This is hardly rare.” added Janelle.? “Internal Communication frequently comes out badly in employee surveys.”?

She shared a look with the COO.? “It’s like Malcolm Monroe, our HR Director, keeps pointing out...”

Graham took his cue.? Glad of the opportunity to do a little showing off, he dropped into his renowned impression of his colleague’s cultured Edinburgh intonations. ?“It’s easier for people to say ‘There’s a problem with communication’ than it is for them to say ‘My boss is a git’.”?

Knowing all this was new to Tobi, he added footnotes.? “Malcolm’s view is that many folk feel safer blaming ‘communication’ rather than any specific communicator.? That way everyone is absolved.”

“Oh, that’s interesting,” responded Tobi.? “But if everyone’s absolved, does that not make it likely that nothing gets resolved, because the real problem may lie elsewhere?”?

As usual, she’d divined the nub of the issue.? “It’s like people thinking a bit of Polyfilla will take care of a wall’s cracked plaster, when in fact the whole building is suffering from subsidence.”?

She exchanged glances with Janelle and Darren.? “So for IC Practice Governance to work, you need to identify those ‘elsewheres’.? Would that be right?”

The Unicorp contingent were happy to let Tobi continue thinking out loud; posing questions to check her understanding.? “...because during that Strawberry Systems acquisition it would have been other resources – beyond the communications – which employees were missing out on?? It wasn’t that the communications weren’t good enough in themselves; they just weren’t always enough on their own?? It’s like if I tell one of my foremen that I need the drainage pipes laid by the end of the week.? The fact that he understands me, and wants to make it happen, won’t make any difference if the pipes themselves don’t turn up.”?

“That’s exactly my worry,” said Janelle.? “So, when it comes to IC Practice Governance, guys, if it’s going to succeed, we need to identify all the resources line managers are going to need in order to be effective communicators.”

Her assertion seemed so reasonable that both Darren and Graham were taken aback by Tobi’s response.? “Are you sure?”

A decade steeped in logistics had given her a sixth sense when it came to planning projects.? So often she’d seen suppliers come up short thanks to a lack of foresight.? And her intuition was warning her something was amiss.? But that “Are you sure?” had floored her companions. ?It felt as bonkers as someone asking the captain of the Titanic: “Are you sure you want to miss that iceberg?” Her new beau put his puzzlement into words.

“Are we sure we need to identify what line managers are going to need?? What do you mean hon, er, Tob…?”? He quickly cast a sideways glance at his colleagues, who had evidently enjoyed his linguistic slip.?

“Oh, c’mon guys, gimme a break.? Can we keep this professional?”? He felt Tobi patting the back of his hand.

“I’m sure they can if you can.? Hon.? And to answer your question, I’m thinking that – unless I’ve misunderstood something – we’ve just agreed..." She paused momentarily to marshal her thoughts.

"Yeah, OK, this is it. Even though we know Internal Communication has to prompt and enable employee behaviours, it often isn’t enough to do that on its own.? So my question is: do you want your line managers just to be better at communicating, or better at delivering business results?”?

Graham was still getting used to his new lady’s remorseless intellectual rigour, and loving it.? He smiled ruefully.? “Delivering business results, obviously.”

“OK, so you remember what you were saying a few weeks ago, Darren, about communicating being a two-way process?”

“Uhuh.”

“In that case, surely ICPG needs not only to prompt and enable line managers’ communications to meet the TRACELACE criteria.? It also needs those managers to be getting feedback which can tell them immediately if their people have what it takes to deliver those outcomes.”?

“Yep.? We know that.? We’ve already included the feedback systems in our model.”

“But what’s the point of them getting that feedback if they have no way of doing anything with it?? That would be like me ordering a load of materials on site, and then not having a crane to move them into place.? If your HR Director is right – you know, about that ‘my boss is a git’ thing – it sounds like your feedback systems might not be up to the job.”

As uncomfortable as it was for them to acknowledge it, Janelle and Darren could only concur.

“Ohhhhh, bollocks!” said Darren, wondering just how many more square ones they’d have to go back to.? He looked at his engineering buddy, hoping her capacity for seamless logic might have already constructed a path forward, and was encouraged by the look on her face.

“You’ve already sussed it, haven’t you,” he said.

“Not sure.? Well, not everything by any means.? But it seems pretty straightforward to me.? You’ve got two things that need to happen.? First off, the feedback system needs to enable employees to explicitly spell out those ‘elsewheres’ that kept cropping up with your Strawberry Systems merger – only no one knew what they were until it was evidently too late.? In other words, it needs to tell the line managers what the specific additional resources are, which the employees need in order for them to want, and be able, to do what’s being asked of them.? Does that make sense?”

She checked with her fellow diners.? Everyone was nodding.? It was, as she’d said, pretty straightforward.

“And second, you need protocols in place which will then enable the line managers to secure those resources for their people, in time for the behaviours to happen when they need to.”? She looked impishly at Graham.? “Wouldn’t you agree, honey?”

The COO tried to keep his expression impassive.? “Are you sure there’s no chance I could hire you?”

But Tobi was already rummaging in her bag for her trusty tablet and stylus.

“And we all know the devil’s in the detail.? So…?? Brainstorm time!”? She declared.? “What – or where – are the elsewheres: what kinds of resources might an employee need to be able to ask for, if a manager is going to be justifiably confident his or her people will deliver a desired behaviour off the back of an internal communication?”

About the author

We are Russell+Olivia Brooklands (ROB) - and we've been working in the field of Internal Communication for over 25 years.?We specialise in enabling IC Teams to get everything they want, to do the job exactly the way they want to do it – for good.? If you're an IC Manager we can help you secure all the:

• influence
• time
• confidence
• opportunities, and
• budget...

…you desire (and may not yet have).

Some people don't dare to dream this is doable.? But in fact it's all within your grasp.? And imagine what a difference it could make to your day-to-day working life, and your long-term career, if you had it all. We’ll be delighted to explain how you can make it happen.? Message us if you’d like to have a chat.