TheBigYak: my first communications unconference

Ok, so what is an unconference? It's a meetup with like minded people who turn up at a given time in a given place. Together you create the agenda for the day, then and there, based on the topics top of mind for you. These are grouped and allocated time slots and rooms. You go to the sessions you're interested in, sit in the round and share challenges, why you're interested in the topic, ideas, thoughts and views. You take from it what you and everyone puts in.

You can connect with people of interest later on to continue the conversation. Oh, and if the conversation isn't of interest, just get up and walk to a different session. No one should take you leaving personally. It's pretty cool. Tiring, but cool. Here's a good run down about an unconference.

Now for my thoughts and takeaways from the internal communications unconference on a sunny Saturday in June in London run by the fabulous @theICCrowd, called The Big Yak - aka therapy for internal communicators!

Why have you given up your Saturday to be here?

The first question asked of the 160 communicators who came from across the UK and beyond was to jot down on post-its, topics of interest to you that you'd love to discuss. These were brought to the front where the organisers had the tricky job of real-time grouping to allocate across time slots and rooms. They did a fantastic job and we ended up with an amazing timetable. These are the common topics of interest for 160 internal comms people.

As an internal communicator, there was plenty to topics to dive into. If you had written on a post-it one for one of the topics you then attend, then you were responsible to start or be part of the conversation. It's not a time to be shy, because we'd all given up our Saturday with family and friends to be here, so it was time to get stuck in.

I chose Engaging people who resist engagement, Reviving intranets and Office 365, IC's role in innovation, Storytelling, Connecting people to purpose, and Newsletters: do they still hold value?

Engaging people who resist engagement

This session opened with the context of the latest Edelman Trust barometer research:

The 2018 Edelman TRUST BAROMETER reveals a world of seemingly stagnant distrust. People’s trust in business, government, NGOs and media remained largely unchanged from 2017 — 20 of 28 markets surveyed now lie in distruster territory, up one from last year. Yet dramatic shifts are taking place at the market level and within the institution of media.

In the words of Prince, "Trust, who do ya?" - internal communicators have a big part to play to help shape and connect people to trusted comms to improve engagement. So who are we talking about here, the 'disengaged'? Is it people who don't regularly open stuff? Is it people without a voice? It's all of the above, but as any good comms person will testify, know your audience - classify the disengaged. Once you can do that, look to help give them a voice to connect. Otherwise, they'll continue to be detractors. Sometimes, the disengaged can be quite toxic in some spaces. A good way to connect is through segmenting, followed by focus groups to help you create personas which become your reference points to help you shape your tailored comms to these groups.

It's also important to understand who are your influencers. Do the same activity to give you more insight. These personas can help you develop relevant content that considers lots of points such as regional location, type of role, what are they interested in, what are the drivers behind their engagement, what are their preferences - how do they like to be communicated with?, etc.

Developing a comms pipeline of a real blend of people stories across your business can also help support your overall narrative. Don't just give a voice to the usual suspects. Spotlight the disengaged where possible and where it's relevant to your comms strategy.

Doing the above, means you move away from the classic, send to everyone/broadcast to all list. Engage with the influencers to help make your key messages come alive to the right people.

Trust is also about helping the people in your business cut through the noise and get to the real content that matters to them. Not an easy task.

I'm starting to develop my ideas and plans around the concept priority filters of

• Me (content that impacts me);
• We (content that impacts my team); and
• All (content from across the organisation).

Looking at things through these lenses, can guide you to challenge your current channels to move toward a way of employee self-service of content that's filtered to their interests of engagement and how content should be prioritised.

External before internal

Our discussions went on to the internal vs external news challenge, where employees are hearing about internal news externally before hearing about it internally first. A challenge which connects nicely back to the trust point - who do I trust to deliver comms of interest to me? Can internal communicators be more on the front-foot and develop breaking news from a unique perspective that's different from external sources? Be relevant and tailor your comms to your different audiences to build up trust and resonate.

We then moved onto where do we focus our attention in connecting with our people. Is it solely on the leader's shoulders to always be the delivery channel of trust? We came to the conclusion that it's all down to personality. Pick and spotlight the right influencers in your business who people trust and are good at delivering messages. Not every leader is a great communicator. Those people who are trusted also show a mix of vulnerability and resilience.

Reviving intranets and Office 365

This discussion talked about spending the time to audit this channel first with a focus on how can your intranet be put in the centre of your employee's thinking? How can it help me do my job? It's important to put in place the right intranet strategy and governance approach collaborating with the right stakeholders who can help you shape and create a future-proof digital tool that's more than just a channel of communication and engagement. Also it's great to outline roles and responsibilities as well as having a shared budget approach to keeping your intranet relevant, up to date, and constantly evolving to be modern. Involve your people in its creation will work wonders. We also talked about how comms people are moving more and more towards the curation of employee-led content rather than the comms people always writing all the stories.

IC's role in innovation

What does innovation mean? In it's simplicity is it about a way of changing or starting new processes to achieve the same output in a different more efficient way? We came to the conclusion that it means different things to different people - so define what it means in your business first. We talked about how everyone's role should really be about innovating and are people managers getting the best from their teams in giving them permission and confidence to try, fail, learn, improve, and repeat?

I heard from people who had experimented with internal 'hackatons' - bringing together people to solve its biggest businesses challenges with fresh eyes. People work in groups solidly to try and find initial solutions that could inspire prototypes and investment to add value back into the business - being innovative through crowdsourcing is a great way to engage with your people!

We're starting to see different businesses create innovation teams. For example, at Lloyd's, we've created an innovation lab called Lloyd's Lab, to fast-track new tech solutions for the global insurance market. The feedback from our discussion was that these innovation teams seem to work in silos when they are created, so the question to comms people is how can we help break down the barriers? How can we help integrate innovation as something we all should be doing and open up these teams to the whole business? Aim to build awareness about these teams and move the conversation from what do they do, to how can I get involved.

Innovation is also about learning from trying and failing. It helps to make it part of your culture that failing is 'ok' so it becomes a norm as well as teams are learning and improving to not fail from the same issues in future. The development of tactics to help and to lead with solutions to create better outcomes.

Storytelling

So what is business storytelling about? Basically, its about human relevance and the emotions behind it - can people relate to the story? Share what you care about and answer why we should care and what it means to you and others. What will people remember? What's the most important part of the story?

You can coach people to share better stories based on tone, meaning and feelings that are open, honest and authentic.

Develop the story themes that help tell the narrative of your businesses' strategy. Centre on your people, create visuals from images to videos to audio to make stories come alive. Make your stories accessible to others across different regions or who to those who have limited access to the tools to access.

Get others to tell their stories to show the wealth of rich content in every business - take people along a journey when telling business stories: the hero's journey.

Connecting people to purpose

Part of our communication role is to be facilitators - help connect people to engage with the business strategy and stories based on purpose. We talked about purpose as why you do what you do? As well as what makes your business unique to help you define a differentiated clear relevant purpose? We touched about purpose verses values and which one is more important or are they the same? We concluded that at the end it is about outcomes, what are the behaviours you want your people to exhibit?

As comms people we can help gather and share stories that highlight and reinforce the right behaviours and talk to your purpose and the bigger picture. Your purpose should help talk to your history and more importantly to your future.

Asking your people about what is the point of what you do and why do you come to work? What gets you out of bed? Develop and allow employee to generate their own content around maybe run a 'What you think our purpose is' campaign. Ask for stories.

How can you create continual dialogue and conversations around purpose? Remind through the power of stories about why we're here and how our teams contribute. If we say that our employees are the unique value of our business, how can we show it? Link that to showcase purpose.

Newsletters: do they still hold value?

I dipped into this session for the last five minutes. Here's my quick snippets: create and use a range of consistent on-brand templates that help tell different types of stories; focus on content first that is relevant and useful to your readers; writing short; support the brand and create advocates; structure smartly with mobile first in mind; seek guest editors to help give a different voice that connects with your readers.

In summary...

It was a wonderful worthwhile day hanging out with great people, who are doing amazing things to help their business and people connect, be engaged, and work together for a common purpose. It sparked my imagination, even just the unconference format. I'd highly recommend it. Thank you @theICCrowd!

Bonus share: line manager engagement takeaways!