The Grand D’Aprix (Part 1)

In the 1970s Roger D’Aprix, a founding father of corporate communications, pulled off the astonishing feat of writing three communications books in four years (on top of a day job!). His timeless explorations and insights are must-reads for anyone working in comms today. Here are six key ideas I’ve distilled from their 600+ pages. Part 2 will follow next week and feature 5 additional insights to help fine-tune your approach to communications.

1. Organisation are living breathing organisms: an organisation is not its org chart or its 5-year plan. It’s made up of individuals trying to navigate all manner of variables, including the churn of people themselves. In order to change the organisation, one must first observe and understand how its people behave. That means finding out where power lies, who holds it (tip: it’s not necessarily the ones with the big titles) and how you can influence it. Lesson: communicators should identify and leverage the power of influencers to shape the culture of their organisations.

2. Purpose is a force multiplier: organisations motivated only by profit can lead to anti-community and alienation. Organisations should see themselves as society in miniature, “a real community of concerned and aware contributors” where people can dedicate themselves towards a shared cause. “Real freedom,” says D’Aprix, “is not doing what we like but responding to a something we believe in”. Lesson: communicators should make meaning a running thread through their work, celebrating employee and customer stories behind the product or service.

3. Dissent is creativity seeking to be heard: traditionally, organisations felt a right to deal with their employees’ concerns by ignoring them, repressing them or responding with veiled threats. The result is “unspoken mutiny,” in which employees will comply on the surface but find creative ways to dissent. Modern organisations should feel accountable to their employees and treat them not as inventory but as whole selves. Far from repressing dissent, they should channel it as a free and endless font of creativity and improvement. Lesson: communicators should champion the art of constructive dissent.

4. Communication is its own worth: communications should not be reduced to projecting ‘key messages’ to a ‘target audience’ any more than an individual should communicate with one of their ‘target’ relatives or friends. As in all other aspects of life, genuine communication should be considered integral to good health, with the principal underlying message always being “we care”. Lesson: leadership will be judged (and should judge themselves) by what they say and do over time, and the degree of coherence between them.?

5. Effective communications is about encouraging change: as organisations grow they tend to become ever-more focused on their structures and processes, forgetting the reason they were created in the first place. Left unchecked, this can become dehumanising and overwhelming. Lesson: communicators should see themselves as change agents with an aim to persuade the individual how much the organisation needs their contribution.

6. Communications is leadership in action: communications is too often relegated to “wordsmithing”, a craft associated with the practice of misleading, misdirecting and manipulating through words. In contrast, effective communications should be about the positive activity of relaying and stimulating change. Lesson: communicators should recognise that they are in the business of leadership: “Communication is the means and leadership is the end”.

*Summarised from the following three books by Roger D’Aprix:

? The Struggle for Identity: The silent revolution against corporate conformity Dow Jones-Irwin (1972)

? In Search of a Corporate Soul. Amacon (1976)

? The Believeable Corporation. Amacon (1977)