Risky question of the title, right? Because if most of you answer "nothing!", I go down the blind and dedicate myself to doing something else that I like, like writing plays.
But if, on the contrary, most of you yell "everything!", I go to a phone booth, put on the Superman suit and go flying around Buenos Aires.
Extremes, as is known, are bad, and everything and nothing, being so absolute, become exclusive concepts: if we say that communication is good for everything, it is also possible to affirm exactly the opposite. Therefore, the previous two answers are detrimental to developing a realistic internal communication plan.
What to do? Find a middle ground? Say that communication is useful a little, a little a lot, something? I consider that there are two parameters that clearly frame the expectations and demands that can be placed on internal communication and have to do with understanding it as:
- A tool that allows you to prevent and solve problems. A tool that allows you to achieve objectives.
Problems, utopias and realism
There are those who say that at their deepest root all problems stem from a communication problem. The postulate is foolish because following this logic the solution to all problems would have to come, presumably, from the hand of communication. This look, (linked to the current of "communication utopia" maintained by some technophiles such as Marshall Mc Luhan and Nicolás Negroponte), is a look that is deeply anchored in the social imaginary and that therefore touches the work of companies.
Take for example the Internet. We were promised that from the Internet the conflicts in the world would diminish because the peoples would be able to know each other, discover each other, communicate freely. Even today, advertising spews out phrases like "Internet erases borders" or flirts with the tricky metaphor of the "Global Village." Well, I think it goes without saying that there are more and more wars going on and to go despite the fact that the Earth is coiled by thousands of kilometers of fiber optic cables.
Now let's think about the organizational field and replace the word "Internet" in the previous case by " Intranet ", "internal magazine", "billboard", "work breakfasts", "outdoor events", etc., and deposit in these actions or communication tools the hope of solving all kinds of internal problems such as "lack of motivation", "low sense of belonging", "loss of time and energy" or "bad work environment". What do you think the result will be? Yes, you got it right: negative. Because communication is not done from the tools but from the culture, from the strategic scaffolding that frames and directs the actions at the organizational level.
I am going to be more direct: if a company drags vices such as spreading contradictory messages, providing little information, abusing double discourse or not being consistent between what it says and what it does, it will be of little use that those same "addicted messages" published on the intranet, however beautiful, interactive and well designed it may be. In this case, the solution to the problem would be contaminated by the same problem that it is intended to solve.
In short, communication by itself cannot solve any problem if it is not accompanied and supported by the culture of the company, by the commitment of its directors and staff.
However, there are many, many problems that actually originate from poor communication. What to do with these problems, how to use actions or communication tools to solve us? There are no universal recipes but, as a first step, I will tell you what questions I ask myself before facing a diagnosis:
- What does the company understand by "communication problem"? Could it be that I "see" problems where they don't see them and vice versa? Does my definition of "problem" apply to all cultures, companies, industries? Is what I consider to be a communication problem really, or is it just an effect of an earlier and deeper cause? (Let us remember that in social sciences the definition of the object constructs the object and that is why proposing a theoretical framework is unavoidable.) How can I detect this problem? By direct, participant observation, through what certain people tell me, with interviews, surveys? (Remember that the tool with which I observe or collect data also builds the object of study).How do I determine that miscommunication was responsible for causing this particular problem? How do I delimit or measure liability for other factors? How do I establish the famous principium causalitatis or principle of cause and effect? How do I isolate the variables and determine what is cause and what effect?
With these questions, I invite you to question our common sense, our petrified certainties… doing so is necessary when we navigate the choppy waters of social sciences and when we discover that a communication problem is not an apple crate that everyone can see and touch, but a object that is built, interpreted and only later is it tried -with more or less luck- to solve or prevent.
Goals, omnipotence and action
Let's put the problems aside and move on to the second field of analysis. It is said that communication can help meet any goal. It sounds a bit omnipotent, doesn't it? But I ask you to put yourself a bit in our place, in the place of the organizational communicators. For years and years, internal communication was not taken into account by companies, so now that luckily we have found a space we are happy and sometimes, because of healthy enthusiasm, we exaggerate a bit and say:
"Do you want to increase your billing? Communication can help you. Do you want your staff to be happy? We can do it. Do you want to open a branch in China? We can collaborate… "
In fact, if you visit my website, you will see that it begins by listing the objectives that communication can help meet. Does this mean I'm overkill? Wait, before answering let me give you my point of view.
Communication can help achieve objectives, it serves for all the things that I listed before. But it can also be completely useless:
"Do you want to sell more? Ok, with an internal and external communication plan we can help you, but beware, everything will be in vain if your products do not reach the point of sale. Do you want your staff to feel more committed to the company? We can do something, but if you force them to work 18 hours a day and don't let them go to the bathroom, it's going to be difficult. Do you want to open a branch in China? We can put together something to lay a good foundation in the region and with the community, but everything will fall apart if you don't have money to invest. "
So communication is not a magic wand that alone can achieve something. As in life, individualism does not allow building in the long term, and less in the systemic world of organizations. Therefore, before making any promises, it is important to know that a communication plan may be perfect but that the success or failure in reaching the objectives does not depend exclusively on its correct implementation. (Yes, of course, this ties in with what we saw earlier about the company's political and cultural commitment).
Now, paragraphs ago I pointed out that we should not be exaggerated with the objectives that we propose to achieve… perfect, then the question we have to ask ourselves is: what objectives can internal communication achieve?
Again I will tell you what my methodology is, not because I consider it to be the best, but because it is effective for me and perhaps it is also effective for you. First of all, I ask the company to tell me all the goals it wants to achieve. Then I realistically analyze which ones I can help meet through communication. (For example, if the company aims to increase salaries, you should not go to the department or the person in charge of internal communication to achieve it, you should go to the finance department to see how they get the resources. But the communication director can help communicate this salary increase in the best way).
Second, I classify the objectives of the communication plan into the following categories:
- Operational: In this area of intervention, we design internal communication actions that aim for the staff to know how to do their homework; know the operational aspects of the organization and your position; receive information in a timely manner; understand the role of each one and can coordinate actions. In short: it seeks to feed day-to-day work with information.
- Strategic: Here, communication actions no longer aim to explain to staff what to do but why to do it. In this sense, we work so that they know the strategy, direction, values, objectives, vision and mission of the company. Do you remember that famous story of the three men who are laying bricks? When they ask each one what they are doing, they respond: a) laying a brick, b) building a wall, c) building a cathedral. The difference between the three responses arises, precisely, from the strategic communication that each one received from their leader.Motivational - Integrative: Working on the motivational implies designing communication actions that are aimed at integrating the entire organization and strengthening belonging and motivation;enhance the involvement and participation of staff to achieve the proposed objectives; achieve consensus on corporate goals; and strengthen leadership and team building.
At this point, I invite you to think about what actions, tools, and internal communication messages you are implementing in your organizations and in which areas of those described you could include them. In this way, they will be able to diagnose if, for example, they are very focused on providing information about the task but little about the strategy, or if they are very good motivationally but bad in another area.
Remember that for a task to be accomplished, people must:
- KNOWING TO DO IT (Operational Area) KNOWING WHY YOU SHOULD DO IT (Strategic Area) WANTING TO DO IT (Motivational Area)
Wait a minute, don't go. There is one more objective that allows us to achieve internal communication and that is linked to the Perceptual area. Internal communication certainly does not build the reality of the organization (this corresponds to the Directorate) but it does build the perception of that reality. Therefore, through good internal communication, we can ensure that people better receive changes, practices and decisions that are made.
This last objective is very important and that is why I allow myself to extend myself and tell you the following anecdote. Some time ago a company hired me to make an internal communication plan and I came across this situation. At Christmas the company bought toys for the children of all the staff (balls, board games, dolls, etc.). This action was positive but was nevertheless perceived as negative. Why? Because the person in charge of distributing the approximately one hundred toys was a manager's secretary whose office was filled with boxes that day, everything disorganized and forced to carry out a task that she disliked. Then she, very annoyed, sent an email to the staff saying more or less the following:
“For Christmas the company bought toys. So everyone who has children come and pick them up today at my office and as soon as possible because I am full of boxes and I cannot work. Tomorrow these boxes go the other way, so if they don't come today, don't come later to ask me for anything ”.
The message was terrible! And in this way, a positive action (to which a considerable budget was allocated) generated an adverse reaction and was communicated in a bad way. Result: many said: "Thank you ma'am, but I can buy my son his own toys."
Of course, you can tell me that there are events that are negative in themselves, such as a reduction in wages, and that communication cannot transform them into something positive. True, you can't turn black into white, but you can at least look for gray. When it was my turn to advise on this issue, I recommended to the head of the company that he gather all the staff, show his face and explain why this measure should be taken, display the balance sheet, show that there is no other alternative or that this it is better than laying off people, and invite everyone to come up with a plan to reduce operating costs.
Obviously this communication action can only make sense if it is true, because if I am an employee and they tell me that the company numbers are wrong, they lower my salary, but later I find out that they are organizing a party for the managers on a cruise ship, the thing does not work, it makes noise.
For this reason, I think that the great challenge of communication does not go so much through the quality of the message (whether the content is positive or negative) but through the sincerity and coherence between:
- What is said and what it does The message and how to communicate it What is intended to be communicated and what is actually communicated What is communicated outward and inward.
By way of closing
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (can you pronounce the surname?) Says something very interesting in her book "Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention":
Each domain welcomes any idea that holds the promise of expanding its dominance over social resources. The American Psychological Association would be happy if every school, every business, and every family had its own permanent psychologist. "
My intention, and I think that is why I proposed to share these ideas with you, is that the field of communication finds, gains and maintains more and more genuine spaces in organizations, which do not lead it to overstate its promises or underestimate its immense power of action and transformation. Balance, in this moving world, is always a good option.
