The Executive That Solved Communication

Hey! Just so you know, I’m what you might call a mucky muck in a public sector organization. I am very highly placed. A bit on the indispensable side, I’d have to say.

One of my most notable successes has been in ensuring that there is absolutely no culture of communication in our organization. This is crucial. We are all very busy doing the real work and we don’t need a lot of annoying communication fluff thrust in our face when we’re trying to get things done.

[Note: the following article is satirical and not intended to represent any one particular organization. It is an attempt at humour to describe an out-of-date and ineffective approach to corporate communications that is still in wide use today. If you see all or part of your organization in this, perhaps you’d like to consider our “Strategic Communications: Building A Culture of Communication” course.]

We’ve all seen enough movies and tv shows to know that communications and public relations people are narcissistic spin doctors whose only contribution to a successful organization is keeping the public, elected officials, the media and others of the hoi-polloi away from those of us doing the work.

So, I hired Chantal. She’s young but she comes very, very highly recommended by her co-op placement coordinator. So, my plan, which was brilliantly executed I might add, was to get Chantal to make all this communications stuff go away. It worked like a charm.

First, I made sure Chantal gets nowhere near me or the senior management table. In a brilliant stroke of organizational design, I made her position report to the Manager of Policy, who reports to the Assistant Director of Policy and Partnerships, who reports to the Director of Policy, Partnerships and External Relations. It’s almost like she doesn’t even exist.

The Drive-through Window for Products

This is important because, as I mentioned, we all have some real work to get done. Now, granted, sometimes we need some communications products. In fact, we need lots of products. Usually we don’t think about that until the last minute so we jokingly refer to Chantal as working in our drive-through window for communications products.

I mean, how could you release a cyclone of products and not raise awareness? Plus, we know that awareness is the ultimate objective here.

This is why she is so good. She has to be fast, reactive and ready to deliver what everybody wants for their particular projects on a moment’s notice. Whether it is my office, the legal department, Human Resources, Programs and Policy, Information Technology or any other part of the organization, we all want good stuff produced. Stuff. Lots of stuff to make us look good.

You see, everyone here knows all about good communication, we just need someone to click the mouse and make it so. Chantal is a really good mouse clicker. She also has a bunch of contractors that she can use to get all of the products churned out. Turns out Chantal is also really good at spending lots of money on outsourcing. Small price to pay to make all that stuff go away, I say!

Actually, it is pretty funny. We demand all the stuff and then make her beg for the money. She’s a good sport though. I like to throw her a few hundred dollars at fiscal year-end for some new software to make her happy. Otherwise we would lose that money in our next year’s budget so what sounds like a waste is actually another one of my brilliant manoeuvres.

We “Just Do It”

So, as I was saying, Chantal unleashes a powerful cyclone of communications vehicles, channels, products, posts, brochures, web pages, advertisements, fact sheets, Q&A documents, media lines, news releases, magazine articles, media advisories, tent cards, fridge magnets, managers’ kits, branded pens and water bottles, public service announcements, stakeholder letters, online surveys, signage, pull-up displays, business cards, calendars, annual reports, bulletins, newsletters, info graphics, videos, PowerPoint presentations, speeches, media monitoring reports, multimedia displays and lesson plans for teachers.

This proves one thing about us. We are a practical, “just do it” and no-nonsense organization. We get things done. See? We have lots of papers to prove it.

We don’t – and brace yourself here as the “s-bomb” is about to be dropped – go for that strategy stuff. The cyclone of stuff is sufficient, thank you very much.

We are certain that cyclone is raising awareness. I mean, how could you release a cyclone of products and not raise awareness? Plus, we know that awareness is the ultimate objective here. What people do with that new awareness is of no concern to us. We don’t want behaviour, support, funding or any other kind of support. Nope. Just awareness is good enough for us and we know that we raise that awareness because of the aforementioned cyclone and papers. An iron clad argument if I ever heard one.

We get a good chuckle out of it at the senior management table. How she is able to do anything with all of those contradictory comments is really quite something.

Awareness and So Forth

But don’t worry, while we don’t go in for that strategy stuff, we have lots and lots of communications plans. I mean, Chantal does those. She’s really good because she doesn’t bother the rest of us with those plans. She does them in complete isolation and she does them quickly because she doesn’t have a lot of time (cyclone!).

That’s okay though because she has a handy template to fill out. Put in “stakeholders” and “general public” under the heading of Audiences, fill out a few other sections (don’t forget “media monitoring” under Evaluation!), and you have a communications plan. Chantal uses that checklist to keep the cyclone going. You know, for awareness and so forth.

No strategy. No overall story. And lots of checklists and stuff. But wait, there’s more!

We have this really amazing approval process. Whatever Chantal and her contractors create goes into this system. What a riot! Everybody can comment on whatever they like. Graphics, fonts, wordsmithing… whatever. It drives poor Chantal nuts but she always has the latest version of MS Word so it is easy for her to make the changes. We get a good chuckle out of it at the senior management table. How she is able to do anything with all of those contradictory comments is really quite something.

Sometimes I like to wait until it goes up and down the organizational food chain a couple of times then I swoop in at the last minute and torpedo it. But that is a rare occurrence. Mostly, I just let the system grind away and occasionally sign off on something. Except when I torpedo it.

A Brilliant Risk Aversion Strategy

This communications approach is working great. It frees me up to deal with more pressing issues. For example, most of our organizational initiatives are behind schedule and over budget. We have a high rate of project failure as well. It’s a good thing we’ve got this comms thing down or it would be even worse.

The other thing I have to deal with is making sure that we don’t take any risks. First, I don’t like to panic the public with information they don’t need to know. We don’t need people running down the street screaming like they’re in a Godzilla movie now do we?

My risk aversion strategy is pretty simple. We don’t really have anything to hide but I still prefer to keep silent on issues and let others fill the void. If we must, we issue vacuous news releases that don’t say anything of substance. Then, if the media and others are insistent, or some irrational issue develops in the public sphere, we’ll eventually put out some piece of group writing that is so dense with detail and terminology that nobody will understand it. That approval system works so well it is crazy.

Sure, people look to us for some kind of response but our critics are much better positioned to fill that void. The media only reports our critics' side anyway. So, we say nothing, get criticized and then use that criticism as further justification for not saying anything in future. Another iron clad argument if I ever heard one. Admit and deny nothing. Protect the organization and, above all else, keep our heads down and our mouths shut. Chantal keeps saying that this approach is unnecessary risk-taking behaviour. I disagree. She should just keep the cyclone going and keep the media away from me. That’s her job.

Conclusion

So, by way of conclusion and to recap:

• Mucky-muck
• Real work
• Chantal (highly recommended)
• Drive-through window
• Cyclone, awareness and papers
• Failing projects
• Risk aversion (don’t panic people please)
• Approval processes can be fun

So I have to go now. Our human resources function is not producing good results so I need to go help them ramp-up our hierarchical, command and control management style.

[Note: the preceding article is satirical and not intended to represent any one particular organization. It is an attempt at humour to describe an out-of-date and ineffective approach to corporate communications that is still in wide use today. If you see all or part of your organization in this, perhaps you’d like to consider our “Strategic Communications: Building A Culture of Communication” course.]