Negotiating the Communication Maze

Last week Simply, a Gallagher Company were in Prague running a workshop for 20 communications pros who worked for various well-known beer brands across Europe. Why were we there? Well this team face a problem that anyone working in a global comms function will know only too well. How do you align the comms teams in your matrix organisation when each member is fiercely loyal to their local market-leading brand?

It's a problem that will always be with us, as global behemoths acquire local brands. Head Office want the local teams to continue to focus on their native markets. But at the same time they would also like staff at all levels to understand that they come under a single umbrella - under a global brand that many have never really engaged with. And that lack of alignment is a major barrier to good corporate comms.

It's the old global versus local debate, and we communicators are stuck in the middle.

So let me suggest a metaphor that is also a game; an exercise that is also great fun, a model that you can actually touch and feel. Let me introduce you to the Communication Maze.

Enter the Maze

The Maze is a minefield - but not one that explodes. It is a carpet of 48 squares. Some of which bleep and some don't. The squares that don't bleep represent a tortuous path from one end of the maze to another. Your task is simple - to get staff from one end of the maze to the other in the shortest possible time.

You are divided into two groups: half of you are communicators and half are members of staff. There are a few rules - the harshest being that you cannot talk: all communication is done by sign language.

And of course, no one knows the route through the minefield so any progress is made through trial and error.

What happens during the exercise is a mirror image of how communications works - or doesn't - in your organisation. The world class timing for getting all staff successfully across the Maze is just over eight minutes. But most teams take at least 14. It's highly frustrating, but the lessons go straight to the heart of what it takes to be a top communicator in a matrix organisation.

In the debrief members of staff complain that:

• Messages are confusing and ambiguous as too many communicators use different hand signals at the same time
• Communicators are just not there in the right place, at the right time, to communicate essential facts
• Staff keep on making the same mistakes because information is inaccessible or just plain wrong

You learn more from failure than success

But then the exercise is repeated - but with the roles reversed. Communicators become staff and staff become communicators. But this time they put the end-user first. They organise themselves around the maze and go down on their knees so they can actually put a finger on the squares that don't bleep. The communicators all agree to own their part of the Maze and to use the same methodology as all the other communicators, no matter where they are.

The difference is striking and immediate. Although the path across the Maze has been changed, the communicators soon learn which squares don't bleep and can remember the route because they are focussed only on their few squares. And by pointing and anticipating, they are always ahead of staff - ready with information and instruction before they arrive.

In Prague the time it took to get all staff across the Maze went down from 14 minutes to just four - an amazing step change in comms effectiveness. The global team then applied the learnings to their own ways of working and agreed there and then to do things differently:

• Keep communications simple
• Put the user first
• Agree a common comms strategy across the group
• Focus on the hand over from one silo to another, where most problems happen

The Communication Maze takes around 45 minutes, but the lessons it teaches last forever. I guess it is because you feel the frustrations and the triumphs in your gut.

These photos are not taken from Prague for reasons of confidentiality, but come from our own simplyIC conference that is staged in London every June. If you want to know more about the Communication Maze just DM me or Sonya Poonian