Internal comms - are you talking to me?

As every marketer worth their salt will tell you, you have a limited number of windows each week to email promotional material, the top one being Thursday afternoon. Even then, most recipients will immediately press the delete button.

What they don't tell you is, the same pretty much applies to internal communications.

Internal communications is generally the most misguided of corporate comms activities, for the simple reason that few chief executives are willing to admit that their employees may not actually like them, and even fewer comms executives are willing to contradict the chief executive. The result is generally a deluge of intranet newsflashes on the latest raft of senior management promotions, corporate jollies, and initiatives dreamed up by head office. Unsurprisingly, hardly anyone reads this stuff.

How to fix the problem? The main answer lies in approach.

Put simply, you need to work out who your audience is, what they're interested in, and how they want to find out about it. You wouldn't dream of producing external communications without knowing the answers to these questions, so why should it be acceptable to do this for an internal audience?

Write with your most cynical audience in mind. Most senior managers think that the majority of employees are satisfied with their jobs, and with the way the company is run. Conversations around the water cooler in offices around the world demonstrate this is simply not true. Information on a new initiative is likely to be better received if you explain in concrete terms why you are introducing it - perhaps because a competitor is increasing sales in a specific product line, or because you think it will help you attract a new type of customer. Reach for a string of clichés and abstractions and employees will switch off - or worse still, roll their eyes.

   

Recognise that your employees are your number one external communications channel- and really believe it. Acknowledging that bad communications with employees leads to lost sales tends to focus the mind. No one has "reading the intranet" as part of their job description, so when you publish news, you're competing with a whole host of other distractions, not least the employee's work! This means you need to bring the same level of imagination and rigour to the production of internal comms as you bring to external comms. It really isn't the poor relation of communications- it's the most important part.

Employees need to feel internal comms supports their ability to do their jobs. They need to be able to find the information they need, quickly, and connect with the people they need to move projects forward. This takes internal comms to a strategic crossroads of comms, HR, knowledge management and, increasingly, IT: collaborative portals that help people work better. It's a far cry from programming emails for a Thursday afternoon.

The Garbageometer

I have a new gadget. It’s entertaining and can be used in most situations. It’s in my head, but I’m working on a physical prototype. Ladies and gentlemen I bring you: the Garbageometer^TM

It’s simple to operate. Basically you open the lid and stuff in whatever material you want to analyse – comments by Government ministers, a memo from your boss on why bonuses have gone down, other companies’ results announcements – and press the button. The Garbageometer^TM  will generate a score based on a complex algorithm designed to evaluate level of style over substance, before going on to index it against similar garbage produced in the past 12 months. In this way, you can compare the garbage level of, say, your children’s assurance that they don’t have any homework on the sunniest day of the year, with a major bank’s corporate responsibility report.

It works a treat, but it has one major flaw: it needs a new button for international settings. Because there is a stark fact: while a lot of garbage is produced in English, the tolerance level on the Garbageometer^TM is set pretty low. English does not like abstraction. It thrives on concrete examples that prove something specific.

In French, by contrast, you can just about get away with having nothing to say as long as you say it elegantly. I wouldn’t dare to criticise 60 million people, so I haven’t put any original French texts through the Garbageometer^TM , only translations of French text into English. That said, many of them ended up in the top quartile.

Incidentally, this is not a gratuitous whinge about the floweriness of the French language. If I ended up here, it’s in part because I like the fact that mundane features of life such as the weather forecast, or a patisserie counter, can be made poetic.

But it does have big implications for French companies trying to communicate in anything other than French. Put simply: they need to think what the final Garbageometer^TM score in English is likely to be before finalising the French. Take the following sentence, straight from the HR section in a well-known corporate’s CR report:

“Qu’il s’agisse de recruter, de développer les talents, de fidéliser les collaborateurs ou de faire partager à tous les salariés le projet industriel et social du Groupe, les démarches mises en œuvre par X témoignent d’une volonté constante de dialogue, de progrès continu, de partage des meilleures pratiques et d’adaptation à un environnement en constante évolution. “

Pretty, yes. But at nearly 60 words, the reader finishes gasping for breath. Not only that, but what does it actually say? Garbageometer^TM score: around 90.

I’ve also had fun with link labels on websites. So phrases like “A l’écoute de ses collaborateurs” and “L’humain au cœur des préoccupations du Groupe” have gone through the Garbageometer^TM, with scores hovering predictably around the 80-mark.

I need to stop there. Otherwise I’ll damage my own score. But my new aim is finding a way of stopping the garbage production in its tracks. If you have a short idea, preferably involving a  concrete example, please let me know.

"Looking forward with confidence" or how to write a results announcement

A former boss once told me that I shouldn’t sweat blood and tears over producing a resounding quote for the annual results announcement: it should always end with the words, “I look forward with confidence to the future”.

This might sound lazy, but is in fact genius. Just won a pile of new contracts? Try: “We grew our business significantly in 2012, earning major contracts and improving profitability. I look forward with confidence to the future”. Ta-dah! Cue applause.

Alternatively, your sales and profits have sky-dived and you’ve had to fire half your staff: “Following a year marked by difficult conditions in our principal markets, we have put in place a restructuring plan designed to improve profitability. As such, I look forward with confidence to the future”. In other words, things can only get better.

It doesn’t end there. A spot survey of 2012 results announcements from the FTSE shows you could conceivably write a results announcement from a pre-defined list of words and phrases, simply swapping in the words “bank” or “mining company” depending on who you’re writing for.

2012 wasn’t a great year for most companies, so there was a lot about “foundations” (Barclays, BP) and “building” (the latter featuring particularly heavily at Rio Tinto, which was building on strengths as well as building focus – that’s quite a lot of building work for a company whose underlying earnings were down 40%). “Solid” was probably the most overused adjective: Aviva made “solid progress”, despite losing £3 billion, and BP even managed to lay a “solid foundation for growth in the long-term” (unlike the short-term, which is about “delivering operational milestones”). There were lots of “difficult economic backdrops” and “challenging economic conditions”, although most companies were “well-positioned to deliver future growth”.

No-one’s seen an “outstanding” progress since the heady days of 2007, although Unilever, which seemed almost embarrassed at producing some decent results amid a sea of FTSE red, ventured a “good”. “Substantial progress”, by contrast, seems to be reserved for companies that were doing particularly badly before, or who are hated by the general public because they pay their employees too much (i.e. banks).

What to take out of this? I can’t really criticise: not only have I written endless announcements where my company is looking forward with confidence to the future, but when I’ve tried to write anything else, it’s generally been changed by the chairman or one of his myriad advisors. In fact, originality is perhaps best left out of results announcements, if Barclays’ attempt this year is anything to go by. Its Chief Executive ended his statement by explaining the bank had a common purpose, which would be delivered by embedding five core values, and that by building this culture (bear with me) he is confident that Barclays “will become the ‘Go-To’ bank for all our stakeholders”. I sincerely hope that next year, it will have made substantial progress.

Carry on corporate filming

"Do you think that factory looks industrial enough? It needs to look more industrial. There isn't any smoke coming out of the top".

Welcome to the world of corporate films, where the obligation to cover everything you do in under two minutes leads you inevitably in the direction of shameless cliché.

This particular shameless cliché was damp and cold. I mean, really, truly, eyewateringly cold. We'd planned to go to Marseilles and shoot a few grim industrial scenes in bright sunshine for a nice gritty contrast, until we realised it would double the budget. So here we were on a freezing February afternoon in Le Havre- me, the producer, the runner and the cameraman. We had two days to film a factory, some container ships, a wind farm, some "happy colleagues having lunch", a petrol station, someone receiving a text message while walking down a beach - as you do in your average lunch hour- and a toy shop. (We'd wanted a child, but it was too expensive to hire one, so we'd settled for a text message picture of the producer's child and a teddy bear bought in the shop.)

To add insult to budget injury, the whole thing had to be "generically European" as my boss had vetoed anything French, so we'd already spent several miserable hours arguing with car hire companies to give us anything other than a Renault, and avoiding the hundreds of boulangeries and signs plastered in French, including one particularly tricky Total petrol station that greeted us with a cheerful "bonjour" in giant neon letters above the pumps. We had finished the previous day's filming at 1am.

This being a "subjective view" film, the cameraman was also the actor, wearing a suit, and a strange contraption involving a film camera strapped to a motorcycle helmet with thick black sticky tape.  This being the provinces, everyone wanted to know what we were doing.

"Why is he wearing that weird hat?

-We're making a film.

-Right. He looks weird. Are you from Paris?"

We were at the final scene of the two days, where the main character is on his way home with the teddy bear he's bought for the child, and "drives past a factory belching out smoke". Unfortunately, the factory, which had been obligingly polluting the sky with toxic fumes when we'd driven past it in the morning was now the smug embodiment of corporate citizenship, with not a wisp emerging from the chimney.

"Could we maybe change the scene? Like, thanks to your company, the factory doesn't belch out smoke any more?

-That kind of changes the concept of the film. Can't you add in some smoke in post-production?"

-Couldn't we do a nuclear power station instead?

-They look too clean. It needs to look dirty."

And just at that moment, against the dark grey sky, with a small slat of sunlight shooting a ray of winter warmth on the steel of the factory, a miracle happened. Smoke started to curl from the top of the chimney.

A word from the Executive Vice-President of Word-Processing Initiatives

I sometimes have fantasies about what the killer title to have on my business card would be. Most of us do this, usually in the context of imagining bumping into an odious former boss, or the girl who used to pick on us on the school bus when we were five. "How am I doing? Oh, fine, here's my card, we must have lunch together".... and with a samurai flash of card displaying a title that left no room for doubt as to your importance and wealth, you would completely destroy their self-worth.

The problem is that very few titles actually pass muster. There is something rather laughable about being Chairman and Founder of a company that only includes yourself. And at the opposite end of the spectrum, I met someone yesterday who introduced himself as Vice-President of Strategic Initiatives for the Industry Business Line.

He had recently been promoted and was clearly extremely pleased with himself. I didn't like to point out that:

1) Vice-President of Strategic Initiatives implies there is likely to be a president, a senior vice-president or even an executive vice-president also in charge of strategic initiatives. That sounds like a lot of people in charge of some initiatives.

2) What are strategic initiatives anyway? They sound pretty lame. A strategy has oomph. A programme at least sounds concrete. Initiatives sound like lots of people sitting around in a room talking about whether or not something is a good idea, which, let's face it, if there are three vice-presidents in charge of the same thing is likely to be true.

The golden rule is that no title should be longer than three words, otherwise it isn't a proper job. Chief Executive - only two words. Chairman - even better, only one. (Marketing & Communications Director is just about ok, but only if you cheat and don't count the ampersand).

Of course this is heresy to most senior company executives, or indeed Americans, who are all senior vice-president of something. There is also a theory that in a recession, companies can't give people pay rises so they try fobbing them off with fancy titles instead. My advice is, don't fall for the trick. Demand the extra cash.

And if you do want to argue a title change, go simple. My absolute favourite is the head of the National Theatre. He's simply called The Director. What else do you need?

How to speak estate agent

I haven’t written for a while because I’m buying an apartment. I say “buying”. I actually mean shopping. The inner fishwife in me loves looking around other people’s apartments. Sometimes, you get good design ideas: the rest of the time you can gasp at their terrible taste.

It also brings you into frequent contact with estate agents, a strange breed who, I am starting to realise, are pretty similar both sides of the Channel. Crucially, they have their own language. So in the absence of any deep insights into corporate communications, this week I’m serving up the guide to estate agent speak - in London and Paris:

Charmant	Extremely small.
Atypique	The shower is in the kitchen.
-ette	Kitchenette. Cuisinette. Studette. Whatever the language, “-ette” translates as “unliveably small”.
Bijou	London estate agent term for “charmant”.
Has potential	Start learning about plumbing, now.
Good investment	Don’t even think about trying to live there.
Coup de coeur assure!	The owners are in the middle of a messy divorce and need to sell this apartment immediately.
Vaste	Anything over 35m2*. Still considered unliveably small by anyone who has the social misfortune to live outside the Periphérique.
Sans perte de place /  bon agencement	“The number of square metres might look terrible, but this apartment really is worth the extra €20,000”.
…Village	As in, “Abbeville Village”,“Harringay Village”… Description for a small row of shops including Sainsbury’s Local and Starbuck’s used by London estate agents to play into every tired urbanite’s dream of the rural idyll where Mum and Dad live.
…Borders	Highbury Borders is Finsbury Park. Hampstead Borders is Finchley Road. If it’s bordering, it isn’t actually there.
Dans quartier en pleine restructuration	Gangland.
Recently regenerated area	Some prostitutes and drug pushers by the tube station, but a few gay interior designers have recently moved in.

*Paris estate agents – and Parisian buyers – are completely obsessed with square meterage. This is because the difference between a large apartment and a small apartment is a washing machine. Don’t even think about a dishwasher: these are for people living in the provinces.

New Year’s resolutions : cutting out the fat

A lot of people you talk to at this time of year have one big objective: to end 2013 thinner than they started it. In real life this involves a dispiriting programme of limp salad and mineral water, usually disappearing mid-February into an orgy of leftover Christmas chocolates and red wine.

But when it comes to communications, losing the flab is definitely worth doing, and with a bit of effort, it can be maintained all year.

This is on my mind particularly at the moment because I’ve been helping structure a series of presentations and plenary sessions for my company’s senior management conference in March. Inevitably, this means lots of time on Powerpoint. I have a personal hatred of Powerpoint. It’s the microwave oven equivalent of communications – in theory, you can do anything with it, but in practice, the result is usually overcooked, tasteless and flabby.

So based on the last week’s experience, here are my top tips for cooking up the perfect Powerpoint presentation:

• Think about what you want people to take away. Research shows over and over again that people can’t absorb more than four to five key messages at best, and long-term, they’ll probably retain only one. This isn’t anything to do with intelligence- many of the brainiest people are also the ones with the least time on their hands, and therefore the least likely to concentrate unless they think it’s worth their while.
• Separate what you want to say from the way you want to say it. There are three elements in a slide presentation: your message, your slide and your notes. Your slide and your notes are there to support your message, not replace it. Find a way to present the most important points graphically – can you use a picture or a chart?
• Tell a story: don’t just present information. All good stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. Start by giving an overview of the main points you plan to cover and provide a recap at the end. The ‘moral’ of your story is what you want people to take away. The need to refocus on a business line in response to a competitor’s offer is arguably less enticing than having to kiss lots of frogs before meeting a handsome prince, but the principle is the same.
• Use a checklist and cut ruthlessly: a maximum of five key points, supported by relevant examples and figures in the presentation as a whole; one slide for one idea, explained in a maximum of two minutes and no more than three bullet points per slide, with 6-10 words per bullet point.
• Finally, avoid death by Powerpoint:  People are more likely to remember ideas if they are presented in different ways. Is there anything you can use to explain your ideas other than a slide e.g. a prop, or a short video? Some of the best presenters don’t use slides at all – think Steve Jobs in his famous product launch setpieces. However, take a reality check: if you get nervous in front of an audience, or if people don’t want to sit next to you at dinner parties because they think you’re boring, don’t do it.

In fact the best Powerpoint presentation isn't like a microwave at all. It's more like a miniskirt. Long enough to cover the essentials, but short enough to be interesting.