Dare to Dream - Chapter 16: Constructing a Technical Mandate

Whatever form your mandate takes, it needs to guarantee that you get to do your job the way it needs doing.? Not just some of the time. And not just with some of your clients. But all day, every day, with everyone. And we’ve already touched on how you can achieve this, by using the principles of risk management.?

If you follow this approach it can give you a Technical Mandate because you can use it for even the finest details of your work. ?It can support every step of every procedure, and every business policy you want to introduce.

A worked example

Let’s imagine you need to address that challenge of people not putting aside enough time to brief you properly.?You could make it a matter of business policy that, if anyone wants you or a member of your team to work for them, they have to set aside enough time to give you an effective brief.?And you can underpin that policy by demonstrating the credible risks that will be there if they don’t give you that time.

One such risk would be that, if you don’t have time to get a full brief, you would likely be working without all the information you need.

That’s fairly obvious.?But so what??This is where things get interesting because, by using risk management principles, you can start mapping out those ‘so whats’.

Working with incomplete information can have unfortunate consequences – most obvious of which is that your initial draft communication will probably be incomplete.?And that would lead to a couple of possibilities.?The client will have to invest more of their own time – and probably yours – filling in the blanks (time which has to be paid for, of course).?Or the audience will receive incomplete information.?But again, so what??Now your mandate starts to grow some real teeth.

Giving your mandate teeth

We have spent years looking in detail at the credible risks associated with those eight core IC practices we touched on in the last chapter: Language Standards, Briefing Process, etc – if those practices are Demonstrably Unfit.?We’ve mapped out dozens of consequences.?And it didn’t matter which practice we studied, nor what the initial or consequential risks were.?Every time, those risks always led to the same three places, which we call the Pivotal Risks.

1. Wasting IC budget
2. Employees having to work without all the information they need
3. Employees having less time to devote to their other work

We describe them as pivotal for two reasons.?Firstly, the initial risks inherent within every flawed IC practice will always funnel down to at least one of these Pivotal Risks.?There are no exceptions to this.?And second, once these Pivotal Risks are triggered, they set off a predictable domino effect: a chain reaction of costly Subsequent Risks.

Already you can probably see how an incomplete communication will raise the risk of employees working without all the information they need.?And, from there, one subsequent risk would be that those employees are more likely to make mistakes, are they not??

Ultimate risks

If externally-facing employees are making mistakes, this can only lead to one of the two Ultimate Risks of Demonstrably Unfit IC practice: the potential to damage the organisation’s brand.?(In the case of a public sector body, the brand may not be a big deal.?But in those situations, there’s a risk to its very purpose: its reason for existing.)

And if your leadership team aren’t concerned about brand value, they’ll surely be worried about the second Ultimate Risk.?Those employee mistakes will almost always need to be put right.?And that takes time, which costs money (as does any customer compensation).?So the second Ultimate Risk is higher operating costs.

Even if the employees aren’t dealing directly with customers, their mistakes will still cost time to correct, and may adversely affect the performance of some externally facing colleagues.

Real world complexity

What you’re looking at here is, as you no doubt appreciate, a simplistic example.?In the real world the risks are far more numerous, and often contribute to one another, creating a toxic cumulative effect: a complex web of risks and consequences. And you can use this risk model to show your workings out to anyone who would deny you your dream – or refuse to play ball once you’ve established your desired way of working.?

But it does raise a couple of important issues:

1. Mapping out all these risks, and the connections between them – for all eight of those core practices (Briefing, Message Calendar, Approvals, Feedback etc)– is surely a major, time-consuming task.?In truth, it is.?(If only someone had already done all that work for you.?Spoiler alert: we have.)
2. Even if you were to demonstrate all these risks, is it possible some folk might still dismiss them as insignificant??That risk of higher operating costs, for example.?Just how big is it really??Is it big enough to justify your dream?

In a word: absolutely. Likely as not, the needless costs to your organisation of Demonstrably Unfit IC practices are eye-wateringly massive. So that's what we'll be looking at in the next chapter…

About the author

Russell-Olivia Brooklands (ROB) has been working in the field of Internal Communication for over 25 years.?Through his consultancy work and training programmes he’s 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. He was one of the founding Directors of the Institute of Internal Communication.?And he’s leading the IC Practice Governance initiative, to help IC Teams better support line managers in becoming increasingly effective communicators.

You can find him at [email protected]