Executive Summary 3: Credibly defining Internal Communication

By now, Darren was used to fizzing with excitement after a conversation with Tobi.? But he knew he needed to force himself to calm down enough to pull together the last few weeks of insights into a coherent argument for the C-Suite.

'For any IC practice to be Transparently Fit for Valid Purposes, you need to define the purposes for which it needs to be fit.

Each practice (eg Language Standards, Briefing Process etc) will need its own discrete purpose.? And people will be able to have justifiable confidence that those purposes are valid only if they can see how they support the overall purpose of Internal Communication itself.

We therefore need a Transparently Valid Purpose for Internal Communication.? And to come up with that purpose, you need first to define Internal Communication.? After all, it’s impossible to define the purpose of any given ‘thing’ without first defining the thing which needs to have that purpose.? And the evidence – from decades of industry publications and years of online discussion boards – suggests many people (including IC Specialists) are working with divergent, even conflicting, definitions of Internal Communication.

But that divergence can also be said to apply to the word Communication.?

So we need to start by defining that.?

Communication

We are defining communication as:

‘The exchange of information between two or more people’

The key word here is ‘exchange’ because, with internal comms, many people seem to think communication means ‘the transmission and receipt of messages’.? They like to tell themselves they’ve communicated with employees when they’ve merely delivered information.?

But communicating is a two-way process.? It does, after all, come from the same roots as the noun ‘community’ and the verb ‘to commune’.? When the activity is only one way: transmission and receipt, it’s called ‘broadcasting’.?

Dropping the ‘s’

It’s vital to think of, and talk about Internal Communication Specialists as Internal Communication Specialists, and never as Internal Communications Specialists.

This is a subtle but vital distinction, and one of the reasons why many people think they can handle IC as well as an IC Specialist.? Internal Communications are outputs: emails, intranet pages, town halls etc.? Internal Communication is the business discipline.? If the organisation’s IC practices are going to be TFVP, they need to be overseen by the specialists in that discipline.?

That ‘s’ on the end of any IC Specialists’ job or department titles, is inviting other people (albeit subliminally) to think that the job of those Specialists begins and ends with the production of outputs.? But in fact IC Specialists need to the folk who are incrementally turning IC into a TFVP discipline for the organisation as a whole, and then keeping it that way.

Internal Communication

Currently, defining IC is uniquely problematic.

For decades, many IC Specialists have been defining it by means of a flawed syllogism:

a)???? My team does Internal Communication

b)???? Therefore, Internal Communication is what my team does

c)???? Therefore, if my team doesn’t do it, it isn’t internal communication.”

While this may seem nuts, there is a certain logic to it.? After all, to have a more holistic definition could put those specialists at risk of having to carry the can for other people’s communication miss-steps, which they can’t control.

But it also means their definition of IC is not only incomplete, but is also being determined by the non-IC Specialists who may or may not decide to make use of the IC Team’s services.

And if that definition can change, moment to moment, on the whim of a non-specialist, it can never be stable enough to have a stable purpose.? We therefore need to start with a holistic definition:

All communicating that goes on inside an organisation, or working party, which has the purpose of directly or indirectly enabling that organisation/working party to fulfil its reason for existing.

This definition:

• allows internal communication to cover groups that come together from different organisations to work on specific projects
• includes all business-related internal communicating, but explicitly excludes social chit-chat
• includes communications which don’t directly relate to people’s jobs, but do indirectly support the organisation’s raison d’etre, by facilitating the relationship between employer and employee (eg how to claim expenses, book holidays, report a broken office chair etc).

But it still leaves the question of how IC Specialists are to avoid getting it in the neck for other people’s internal communicating.

The Finance Playbook

Millions of line managers can handle budgets perfectly well, even though they’re not qualified accountants.? They’re supported in doing this by their organisation’s Finance Specialists, who:

• Set the practice standards those budget holders need to meet
• Provide instructions for those budget holders to follow
• Monitor their performance (through monthly or quarterly returns)
• Step in with additional hand-holding on an as-needed basis.

With some appropriate modifications, the IC Specialists could perform a similar role: progressively supporting ever-more line managers to fulfil their internal communication responsibilities.

With TFVP practices to back everybody up, we can progressively remove the possibility of line managers ever again having a duty to fulfil an unreasonable expectation.? We can make that expectation forever reasonable, and forever retire that possible source of Impostor Syndrome from their careers (which would likely have benefits for their productivity, well-being and value-adding potential).? The next big question, then, is: how can we achieve this?'

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.