Dare to Dream - Part Three: Making your dream irresistible to leaders.

Part 3: Making it irresistible

You may be in a situation where your key decision-makers are very open to change, by virtue of their natural disposition, and the business dynamics in play at present.?Perhaps they recognise there are communication problems they simply can’t ignore any longer, or maybe they’re looking for new opportunities to take advantage of.

At the other end of the scale, you may be in a situation where it’s never a good time to discuss changes.?“We’re too busy; we have too much on our plate; we don’t have the time or the money or the bandwidth to think about this now.?Maybe next year.”?(Only next year it’s the same story.)

Or perhaps you’re somewhere on the continuum between these extremes.?

Whatever scenario you face, unexpected ‘stuff’ can come out of nowhere which might scupper your plans unless you can make your dream such a total no-brainer that nothing can deflect you.?Your key decision-makers will find a way to make it happen – because it’s in everyone’s best interests, including their own.

This is where the engine of your dream comes to life.

Chapter 9: Looking beyond ‘Best Practice’

Best practice is a thing we’ve all inherited from those who came before us.?It’s the default, ‘go-to’ phrase employed by business folk from all disciplines when discussing the most efficient and/or effective way of carrying out a particular business activity.?

There’s just one small problem with it.?Paradoxically, perhaps, ‘best practice’ isn’t good enough.?We appreciate that may sound nuts.?What could be better than best??By definition nothing could – but that’s not the point.?The question arises when we dare to question why some (often unknown) person or group has decided to stick that label on their latest way of doing things.?

What was the method by which they came up with this ‘best practice’??How rigorous was it??Can you see it??Can you interrogate it??Or are you expected simply to take their word for it, because they’ve taken it upon themselves to label it ‘best practice’?

And if they want you to follow this latest best practice, what was wrong with the old best practice??If that old best practice really was best, how come it’s now been bettered??Clearly it never was as good as it could have been, so why should anyone believe this latest best is best, and won’t be bettered in its turn??Is it any wonder many people don’t take ‘best practice’ that seriously??Why should they?

A tangible improvement

These concerns nagged away at us for years until, in 2015, we finally created a new concept which eats best practice for breakfast.?It answers all the problems of best practice, and gives you a way of talking about IC, and your dream, such that no one can reasonably argue with.?(OK, of course they can argue with it, but - as will become evident - it’s an argument they will never be able to win.)

This concept doesn’t have a very sexy name; in fact it may strike you as a little clunky when you first read it.?But it’s the silver bullet; it’s your golden ticket to everything you want.?It is ‘DFVP’ (told you it wasn’t sexy).

If you were to have DFVP working practices it would mean they were Demonstrably Fit for Valid Purposes.?That probably still doesn’t get your pulse racing - quite the opposite, perhaps.?But wait ‘til you see what it can do for you.?

Better than Best Practice

First of all, let’s look at what makes DFVP practice different from ‘best practice’.?Then we’ll explore how it can make your dream irresistible.

To qualify as DFVP, your IC practices (eg, your language standards, briefing process, approvals process, feedback systems etc) must fulfil three criteria:

1.????They have clearly defined purposes

This may sometimes happen with best practice, but it’s not an explicit requirement.?And even if the purpose of any best practice is defined when it’s being developed, that purpose is rarely shared with all the folk who are expected to follow it.

When it comes to the design of Internal Communication practices, there are two purposes that need defining:

1. The purpose of IC itself
2. The purpose of the specific practice in question (eg the approvals process)

2.????Validate those purposes

In the first episode of the British comedy show ‘Yes Minister’, one of the characters observed “Dispose of the difficult bit in the title.?It does less harm there than in the text.” This can be so true.?Just because someone uses the word ‘purpose’ there’s no guarantee that what they’re describing actually is one.?

For example, imagine asking a client “What is the purpose of this communication?”?

They might say something along the lines of:

“The purpose of this communication is to inform employees about the product launch.”

So, they’ve used the word ‘purpose’, but is it valid??Whenever people talk about purposes, we always find it useful to ask ourselves if we can answer the following: “What’s the purpose of that purpose?”?

In this instance: “What’s the purpose of informing the employees about the product launch?”?

At this stage, who knows??The client hasn't told you. And if you don’t know that, how can you know what information will be relevant – or which employees need to know it??Evidently, then, this so-called ‘purpose’ isn’t telling you what you need to know.?It is not yet valid.

And if you pursue an invalid purpose – if you follow ‘best practice’ to deliver that purpose – you may be using the most efficient and effective ways of delivering the wrong result. Clearly, then, you need to build an extra layer of discipline into this process, which enables you to know the purposes of your IC activities are valid.

3.????Show your ‘workings out’

If your dream is going to happen, it’s not only you who needs to know the purposes of your practices are valid.?So too do the people you expect to go along with your new way of working.?In other words you need to demonstrate two key aspects of your dream to anyone who might decide they don’t want to play (or don’t want to let you play the game your way).?

1. What makes the purposes of your practices valid?
2. What makes your way of doing things – and getting other people to do things – fit for those demonstrably valid purposes.

(We’ll look at how to do this in a little more detail shortly.)

Why does this matter?

What’s the big deal here??After all, this DFVP thing looks like a lot of faffing about.?And while some folk might choose to describe it in those terms, you could just as easily call it due diligence (we prefer the latter).?But even then you may come across folk moaning that “It looks like undue diligence to me”.?So why is it necessary??What’s in it for you??

In a word: everything.

The reason we described DFVP as your silver bullet; your golden ticket to living the dream, is because it creates a new paradigm in which only four possibilities can exist.

Think of any IC practice you like: your briefing process, perhaps; maybe the language standards; or your feedback systems. Now, if its purpose isn’t valid it must, by default, be invalid.?Similarly, if the designs of those practices - the procedural nuts and bolts of what you're doing - are not demonstrably fit for that purpose they must, by default, be demonstrably unfit.?Therefore, anyone who would try to stop you using practices which are DFVP must – be default – demand that you do things in a way which is either:

• Demonstrably Unfit for Valid Purposes
• Demonstrably Fit only for Invalid Purposes, or
• Demonstrably Unfit for Invalid Purposes.

No other possibilities exist.

And given the impact internal communication has on employee performance and well-being, what kind of lunatic business leader would demand one of these alternatives? They're logically indefensible.?Or are they?

Matters of degree

As neat as this model looks at first glance, in the real world things aren’t quite that simple.?Neither validity nor fitness are necessarily black and white issues.?It can often be possible to see different degrees of validity.?In the example we looked at, where the client was saying “The purpose of this communication is to inform the employees about the product launch” it’s certainly incomplete; it needs more detail.?But it’s surely not as invalid as saying “The purpose of this communication is to inform the employees that I’m having a bad day.”

Similarly, there can be different degrees of fitness for purpose of different practices.?How fit for purpose are they??How much fitter could they be??

That’s why our little graphic has arrows at the end of the axes, to show that we’re discussing two continuums.?So the questions are:

• how much more valid could the purposes of your practices be??(Eg, the purpose of your briefing process, language standards, channel mix etc.)
• how much more fit for those purposes could the design (the nuts and bolts procedures) of those practices be??

DFVP sets a logically inescapable direction of travel for your dream – which no one can reasonably argue against.

This is how you start to make the dream irresistible.?And if you or anyone on your team needs an antidote to Imposter Syndrome, it’s unquestionably useful to be able to show the designs of all your working practices are DFVP.?But doing so is just a beginning, because it raises the inevitable question of how to go about doing that validating and demonstrating. so that's where we need to go next.

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]