Chapter 6: So what?

For the umpteenth time in his career, Jason Murray was reminded that he’d never made up his mind about whether or not he liked the distinctive pungency of marker pens.?This latest one was assailing his nostrils with characteristic gusto while he added more notes to the whiteboard.?As Darren Michelson’s Graphic Designer, he’d been given the job of scribe in this brainstorming session.?Darren had felt that Jason’s natural eye would enable him to bring order to the multitude of ideas which would surely emerge, with the help of his Copywriter, Sangita, Account Manager Siobhan, and Beate: the Events Manager.?

Together they were setting out to identify all the business consequences of that list of challenges they’d come up with in their previous meeting.?And within minutes, Jason – ever the team grouch – wasn’t happy.?“For crying out loud, Darren, this could take forever.”

His boss sympathised; already the tendrils of just one of their eight challenges were heading off in multiple directions.?If the whiteboard didn’t end up looking like a London Underground map by the time they were done, he’d be mighty surprised.?From the start he had been careful to explain why they needed to do this work: the prize of being able to end their ‘forever frustrations’ had got everyone excited.?But, as he’d suspected, mapping those consequences was proving to be a bit like trying to untangle the contents of a box filled with a dozen strings of Christmas lights.?

They’d begun with the issue of clients who waited ‘til the last minute before bringing them in.?This had seemed a logical place to start, because they’d already specified a couple of consequences:

1.????not having enough time to do the job properly, or

2.????having to work silly hours just to hit the deadlines.

But what were the “So whats?” of which Tobi had spoken: the risks to which these consequences could give rise??Darren had turned to Sangita.

“OK, let’s just look at this ‘not having enough time’ thing.?Let’s imagine we’re dealing with a cynical client, who doesn’t get it.?We tell him he hasn’t given us enough time to do the job, and he says ‘So what’??What are the ‘So whats’, for you, for him, for his audience and for Unicorp??We’re all in the same boat here: I’ve never done this exercise before either, which means this will be as new to me as it is to you.?So we need to get it all out there.”????

As the team copywriter, Sangita knew this territory better than she’d like to.?

“OK, to begin with, not having enough time means I sometimes feel I have to rush.?Actually that’s not quite true.?I don’t just feel it, I do have to rush.”

Jason put ‘Rushing’ up on the whiteboard, as Darren kept pressing.?“OK, so let’s imagine you tell the client this, and again they say ‘So what?’?What’s problematic about you sometimes having to rush?”

But Jason was having none of this.?“Oh, come on Darren, do we really have to spell it out??Everyone knows it’s stressful.”

“Stressful.?Good point, so let’s document that.”

?

Grudgingly, ‘Stress’ went up on the whiteboard.

“And it means we’re more likely to make mistakes,” added Sangita.?“Which makes us look bad.?So our reputation suffers, and it’s all the harder to be taken seriously next time.?It’s a vicious circle.”

Finally, Jason was cottoning on to this being an opportunity for a no-holds-barred whinge-fest.?It was with a growing relish that he got into the swing of documenting the team’s woes, as Darren brought the others into the discussion.

“OK, this is good stuff.?Or, rather, it’s crappy stuff, but it’s good that we’re getting it out in the open.?So let’s look at it more broadly.?What are the wider business consequences of these mistakes??Siobhan??Beate? What’s your take on this?”

The Events Manager was equally familiar with this particular landscape. “Obviously there’s a risk of increased costs, if you have to do things more than once, or you need to get suppliers to deliver at the last minute.”

As Jason wrote up ‘Wasted budget’ Darren noticed the last of his team was shaking her head.?

“Don’t you agree, Siobhan?”

“Oh, no, it’s not that.?I was just thinking about what happens when the deadlines get missed, and the communications show up late.?Or they have incomplete or incorrect information.”?

Jason added these to the growing mind map, before pausing: his marker hovering by the whiteboard.?He called out over his shoulder.

“I know that, strictly speaking, we’re drifting into that other issue – of people not putting aside enough time to brief us properly – but if you’re having to rush the briefing process, Siobhan, we may not be clear about who the audience needs to be.?So some people may be getting comms they don’t need, and others risk being left out.”?

Beate wasn’t so sure.?Her association with Jason these last couple of years had left her wondering if he might have been spawned by Marvin the Paranoid Android.?To her, this latest observation of his sounded like more doom-mongering for its own sake.?

“In theory, perhaps, Jason,” she challenged.?“But does that really happen in practice?”

“Maybe not often,” Darren conceded.?“But maybe that’s just coz you’re all so brilliant, or perhaps we’ve just got lucky.”

“Yeah, but not everyone is always lucky,” Jason reminded him.?“Remember that debacle over the company car scheme last year?”

Everyone recalled that event.?The Fleet Admin people had decided to handle the internal communications themselves.?It had been as successful as an England penalty shoot-out, and had done Darren’s reputation a power of good when his team had steamed in and minimised the damage within a fortnight.?But the cost of employee time in the intervening days had been substantial, and the strained relationships with several suppliers had taken months to smooth over.???

“Oh, and don’t forget the compensation payouts,” chimed in Siobhan.?

It all got added onto the whiteboard.

Sangita was giggling now.?“Jheez, yeah.?You know, I never realised we were worth so much to this company.”

Her boss agreed.?This was what he’d been searching for all these months.?“I don’t think any of us really have, until now.?And I don’t think the Board realise it either.?That’s clearly what we need to change.?And not just for us, and not just for them, but for everyone who works at Unicorp, and everyone the business serves.?This is important stuff, guys.?I know this task is forcing us to think in new ways, but I’m beginning to understand how important it is that we crack on.?Who’s with me?”

There were no dissenters.?Not even Jason.

As they continued, their Marvin-esque Graphic Designer was able to trace every one of their original issues, no matter its initial consequences, to the same three places.?And seeing the pattern emerging, Darren felt his confidence and excitement starting to grow.

“I think we need to call these out as Pivotal Risks,” he said, while Jason wrote them up again on their second whiteboard:

1. wasting communication budget
2. employees being left with less time to do their other work
3. employees having to work without all the information they need.

They spent the rest of the day mapping out the knock-on consequences of those pivotal risks, which Jason was able to turn into a flow-chart.?The emerging truth was inescapable.?One way or another, every time an IC Specialist was unable to do their job properly, it risked either hurting the corporate Brand, or increasing operating costs.?Or both.?

Darren was buzzing by the time they’d finished, and was tempted to send their work straight to Graham, but decided first to run it by Tobi.?He urged everyone else to hold fire too.?Instinctively he felt there could be aspects of IC’s Wil-o-the-wispiness that might yet be eluding them.?

It was all very well being able to point the finger at those external factors which were compromising the IC Team’s ability to do the job as it needed doing.?But what of the internal factors: vulnerabilities within the IC Team itself??And what else might he and his team need to think about to make the picture complete?

About the author

We are Russell+Olivia Brooklands (ROB) - and we've been working in the field of Internal Communication for over 25 years.?Through our consultancy work and training programmes we've helped IC Specialists to up their game on four continents, in blue chip companies like GSK and Airbus, and major national and international bodies, including the European Central Bank and the UN. We were one of the founding Directors of the Institute of Internal Communication.?And we're leading the IC Practice Governance initiative, to help IC Teams better support line managers in becoming increasingly effective communicators.

You can find out more about our work, and how we can help you to easily make your working life easier, more full of confidence, and more fulfilling, at commgame.co.uk