As the world’s most populous country, fastest growing economy, and stereotypically hard working culture, it’s no wonder that so many companies are focused on expanding their footprint within China. That said, it can be a great challenge for multinational companies to effectively recruit top Chinese talent and build engagement with their current employees.  This is due to paradoxes in the Chinese culture including values of traditionalist versus advanced practices, material success versus relationship-driven business exchanges, and socialism versus capitalism.

This environment leads communicators to ask questions like “will our internal social media investments be effective with our Chinese employees?” “How should we prepare leaders and managers to drive dialogue in an environment where employees may naturally be inclined to let their boss do the talking?” “What values matter most to potential employees in this market?”

We would love to hear your experience with employee communications in China and thoughts on these questions (comment below.)

In the meantime, based on conversations with numerous MNCs and working closely with our peers in the HR space, we’re tracking some of the key trends in employee communication specific to working in China, including:

3 Trends about Employee Communications in China:

1. Chinese Employees Increasingly Choose Chinese Firms over MNCs:
While a higher number of Chinese work for multi-national corporations, in the past 4 years there has been a 19% increase in employees’ preferences to work for Chinese firms. For many, this stems from a fear that recession-hit Western companies lack growth opportunities and have a glass ceiling.

2. Compensation, and the opportunity for increases in future compensation, matter most:
The average Chinese employee rates compensation as the number 1 attribute in the EVP—nearly double any other attribute. Development opportunities and future career opportunities are critical retention drivers for Chinese employees.

3. Top-Down Is Not Dead:
In general, hierarchical business relationships are expected and accepted. Employees look to senior leaders for direction and are accustomed to certain levels of formality.

Implications for Communications:

• Emphasize your companies’ stability and long-term commitment to expanding in China
• Promote local development opportunities and career paths (limit requirements to be relocated abroad to advance)
• Deploy senior staff members to make general announcements to employees in China, but emphasize team dialogue and the ability to speak up to drive employee ownership of strategy

CEC Members: Check out A Communicator’s Guide to China for additional recommendations on how to manage your employee communications, as well as PR, CSR, and consumer communications in China.

CEC Related Resources:

• Building a Global Mindset: A Communicator’s Guide to China
• Building a Global Mindset: An Overview of Cultural Values That Shape Interpersonal Communications
• Global Perspective/Cultural Awareness Resource Center
• Managing Communications Across Global and/or Virtual Teams

CEC Related Blogs:

• 3 PR Trends in China
• Lost In Translation: How Cultural Values Shape Your Communications
• Managing a Truly GLOBAL Communications Function
• Posts from the Road: China

CEOs are gearing up to share their 2012 strategy with employees through live and virtual town halls, blog posts, and Q&A sessions. While no one underestimates the importance of company leaders’ plan for the year ahead, employees often leave strategy sessions unsure of what, exactly, they should do with the insight and how they will be expected to contribute.

One of the best tools to think about engaging employees in strategy conversations is your employment value proposition (EVP). Your EVP is the set of attributes that employees value about working at a company. Attributes like compensation, future career and development opportunities, and work-life balance are usually at the top of the list. Understanding what employees value and feeding these insights into leadership communications and business unit discussions about the implications of company strategy.

EVP, or employment brand, is usually the purview of Human Resources because of its importance in recruiting and retaining employees. But Communications can play an important role by supporting HR in crafting and communicating about the EVP, and taking the lead on driving employee engagement through organizational alignment with the EVP.

Learn how you can support HR in creating a successful EVP and engage employees through your EVP. By breaking the EVP realignment process into two stages, it’s easy to see just how big a role Communications can play:

1. Defining and Differentiating Your Company’s Unique EVP

A winning EVP depends on employee voice and feedback for authenticity. Communications can support HR in:

• Getting direct input from employees on their values though focus groups or other listening methods

• Conducting employee engagement surveys that test for the most important EVP attributes

2. Engaging Employees Through Your EVP

Communications can take a leading role in bringing the EVP to life through organizational alignment by:

• Helping leaders align their actions to the EVP

• Tailoring EVP communications to specific stakeholder segments

• Enabling employees to represent your EVP externally

The insights provided by a deep understanding of what employees care about have important and diverse implications, from strategy meetings and leadership communications to employment branding and recruiting. Check out our full set of resources and tools on EVP for more guidance on Communications role in EVP creation and application.

CEC Related Resources

• Rebuilding the Employment Value Proposition
• Audience Listening Guide
• Best Buy’s Employee Listening System

CEC Related Blogs

• Comms & HR: Partners in Employee Engagement
• A Winning Employee Value Proposition—Recruiting Needs Your Help
• Peeking Down the Hallway – What’s HR Doing?

Today’s the day that CEC has been counting down to all year… No, it’s not the renewal date of your CEC membership – it’s our Christmas party (at least, it is in our European HQ, where I’m based). I must say, I’m looking forward to it, and most of the CEC crew assures me that they are as well. However, in speaking to several of my friends from other companies, I’ve been struck by their negativity, cynicism, and trepidation at the prospect of navigating an event that one of them described to me as “the most socially awkward of the year”.

Of course, for CEC’s audience of loquacious communicators, “social awkwardness” isn’t an issue – we’re good socially! But remember – not everyone else is. What happens at one of these parties when you’re stuck between the weird lady from the IT help desk who’s pushed past you at the coffee machine all year, the social recluse  from Finance who prefers spreadsheets to his own family, and the spotty graduate whose name no one can remember, but is irritatingly keen to impress?

This, of course, leaves you with two options. One is to politely excuse yourself and head for the bathroom, the bar, or – if things have got really bad – home. The other is to use your skills as a communicator to enable some social interaction between your colleagues.

Building Social Connections

And funnily enough, this is something that CEC can really help with. One of the things we often get asked is how communicators can encourage peer sharing among employees. As companies become more complex, organizational barriers increasingly prevent employees from connecting, sharing and learning with each other. And, interestingly, the same principles that will help a couple of socially inept guys from IT to open up at a Christmas party will also apply to creating an organization in which peers open up and share their expertise with each other.

1. Base Conversation in People’s Personal Interests

The problem: One of the most trying aspects of a work function is that a lot of people just end up talking about work! Funnily enough, this isn’t what helps build connections.

The Solution: Search for people’s personal interests. Try asking Sue, the lady from the coffee machine with the sharp elbows, a personal question:

“Sue, didn’t you go on holiday to Tanzania last year? Tell us about it…”

Sue will be so much more likely to open up and chat than if you ask her how her week at work was – CEC members, check how Sabre Holdings got more than 69% of their workforce actively participating on their internal networking site by humanizing virtual interactions and basing connections in staff’s personal interests.

2. Tap Social Motivators for Sharing

The Problem: So you’re all standing around – Sue’s chewed your ear off about as much as you can bear about Tanzania, and the talk is falling into another lull. You notice that Horatio, the spreadsheet fan from finance, hasn’t had much opportunity to share during the conversation.

The solution: People always want to look cool or feel smart. Tee people up to discuss things they’re proud of and watch them roll! Ask Horatio:

“Horatio, I’m thinking of running the London Marathon next year. I heard you ran it recently, and got a great time. Do you have any tips?”

Gently massage his ego, and, sucking in his gut to show all the weight he lost in training, he’s good to go for another five minutes. Mitre do something similar – they filter connections so that staff are only pinged with requests for peer sharing if they’re amongst the most knowledgeable in the whole company on a specific topic. So, if their staff get asked for help, it’s not  burdensome – it’s a compliment to their knowledge of a topic, and an opportunity to demonstrate their expertise.

3. Create a Safe Space

The problem: How many times have you seen awkward conversation between senior staff and their direct reports? No one’s comfortable – the team members don’t open up fully, fearful of saying the wrong thing and getting a black mark against their name, and the senior staffer looks awkwardly as if they’d rather be anywhere but there.

The solution: Lose the hierarchy. If you’re a part of a stunted conversation across different levels of seniority, why not break the ice by getting the senior staffer to open up – thus setting the tone for others to chip in.

“Boss, did you know that Clive here shares your passion for stamp collecting / tiddlywinks / ultimate frisbee?”

Watch your boss and Clive the timid graduate hit it off, forgetting the hierarchical divide to discuss their shared interest. Leading communicators understand that hierarchy stifles peer connectivity, and ensure that social interactions occur on a level playing field. Check CEC’s Principles for Enabling Peer Sharing and Learning, and think about how best to leverage existing employee interactions for peer sharing.

Related CEC Resources

-          Principles for Peer Sharing and Learning

-          Principles to Drive Participation (Sabre, Sprint, Aviva, TD Bank)

-          Peer Learning Platform (The MITRE Corporation)

The real problems arise when we start to rely on similar tactics for making more important decisions, like internal communication channel selection. Rather than ask yourself, “What is the best way for employees to be informed about this leadership change?” it’s easier to jump to, “I’ll just write a quick post on the intranet.”

Falling into bad habits like this prevent you from strategically selecting channels to make your communication more effective. Luckily, we have a cheat sheet to help you stay out of a channel selection rut.

This channel selection guide will help you choose the optimal channel based on what you want to achieve with your target audience. By considering what information is most effectively communicated through different channels and weighing the pros and cons of each, you’ll be able to quickly choose the best channel for your objective.Here is a set-by-step example of how you could use the tool to work through the best way to communicate company strategy to employees:

1. Think through what you want to achieve with your target audience.

• We want to motivate and energize employees around our new strategy.

2. Consider where audience naturally go for information.

• Employees rely on their direct managers and peers for information. They also check our intranet homepage at least once per week.

3. Select the most appropriate channel(s).

• We’ll open a discussion forum on our intranet for employees to comment on the strategy and how they expect to contribute to it in their role because we know that social media participation boosts engagement. We’ll also have our CEO run town halls with small groups of our employees to demonstrate the credibility of the message.

4. Determine the right level of Communications support.

• We’ll monitor discussion conversations and deliver Intel back to executives. We’ll help our CEO build a presentation that shares the strategy in a compelling way.

While there isn’t one perfect channel for every message, it’s much easier to make an informed, strategic decision when the options are clearly laid out. CEC members, check out the full Channel Selection Tool.

CEC Related Resources:

• Channel Selection Tool
• Building an Outcome-Focused Communication Plan
• Non-Wired Communications Channel Selection Guide

CEC Related Blog Posts:

• Redefining Leadership Communication
• Engaging Frontline Employees in Safety Dialogue
• Comms & HR: Partners in Employee Engagement

• Be transparent?  Insufficient.
• Build buy-in?  Misses the mark in a high-change environment. 
• Give clear direction?  May actually do more harm than good.

But this doesn’t mean that leaders don’t matter or can’t communicate in ways that motivate employees and boost their productivity.  It’s just that we need leaders to play a different role – to empower:

• Seek employee feedback and input.  I don’t mean a “suggestion box,” which puts the burden to act back onto the leader.  Empowering leaders ask employees questions that they can answer to take action within the scope of their day-to-day work.
• Coach, don’t tell.  Empowering leaders – when possible – guide staff to figure out what to do rather than tell them what to do.
• Provide opportunities to experiment. Empowering leaders point out learning opportunities and help staff seize them and other employees share in what is learned.
• Connect employees to helpful people and tools.  Empowering leaders’ broad reach within the organization lets them make staff more productive by making smarter connections. 

This sounds great on paper – to most leaders, too – but is easier said than done.  Leaders may fear losing control (confusing empowerment with delegation) or not appearing to lead (confusing leadership with commanding).  We’ve seen progressive communicators partner with HR to surface these objections and help leaders overcome them.  For an example, see what GlaxoSmithKline did.

I’ve experienced some of these concerns first hand.  At an earlier stage in my career, for example, I was a consultant counseling clients through post-merger integration.  Employees of both companies wanted answers to questions like whether there would be layoffs, consolidation of facilities, changes to IT systems, and changes to job responsibilities.  Following supposed change management best practice, I helped client executives be transparent about what they knew and how they were going to figure out – and communicate – what they didn’t yet know.  In retrospect, even better would have been to create opportunities for staff to learn about the other company: understand where their counterparts work, what they do, and how they do it.  This may have prompted earlier adoption of “best of both” solutions, and at a minimum would have provided better context for the changes to come. 

I’d be very interested in hearing your reflections – either examples where you’ve helped leaders take a more empowering approach or situations you now realize could have been handled better. 

CEC members can access our updated topic center on coaching senior leaders here:

CEC Related Resources:

• Leadership Coaching Topic Center
• Webinar: Leadership Communication that Empowers: GSK CPSE’s Empowerment Workshop for Leaders
• Line Manager Communications Topic Center
• Dialogue Workshop for Leaders

CEC Related Blog Posts:

• Why Your Leadership Communications Support Misses the Mark
• Coaching Leaders: 10 Tips for Effective Presenations
• Harness the Power of EmPOWERment

As with learning any new skill, it might sound impossibly daunting at first. But then I’ll show you how to kick like your legs are stuck together and use your arms to pull in tandem. We’ll put it together in a full-body rhythm that will probably feel like you’re trying to do the snake in Jell-O — except less graceful. And that will be it. A little practice, some gentle reminders to breathe when it’s most natural to the stroke and you’re done. You can swim butterfly.

Learning most things is a matter of willingness, aptitude, and finding a competent teacher. As we talk about the importance of Communicators as enablers, it’s clear that this coaching function is more of a ‘when’ than an ‘if’.

Breaking down a communications strategy to make it more accessible is the first step in teaching a new communications skill to noncommunicators. The soft skills — a.k.a. interpersonal skills — that communicators deal in can be intimidating because they aren’t often thought of as something that can be taught. More often than not, people have developed a static perception of their own soft skills and will get anxious if they think they are being pushed beyond their comfort zone. If Communicators are going to help them improve, the first step is to convince them that it’s easy.

Professional communicators can help demystify these skills by breaking them down into easily actionable components. Though basic guidelines may seem overly simple to the pros, they can overcome the greatest hurdle for many to unlocking their soft skills — the perception that they can’t improve.

Take a look at how Continental Airlines broke storytelling into four simple steps to train managers to use stories to emotionally engage with employees:

1. Design a Story
2. Tell the Story and Receive Feedback
3. Tailor the Story for Specific Audiences
4. Tailor the Story for Specific Objectives

The airline got such positive feedback and had such success with their first storytelling practice sessions that they rolled it out to all of their managers. For more information on helping managers overcome their fear of communicating and telling stories, CEC members can learn how to equip your managers with story telling skills.

CEC Related Resources

• Equip Your Manager with Storytelling Skills
• Driving Engagement with Corporate Strategy
• Storytelling Workshops (Continental Airlines)

CEC Related Blog Posts

• Whose Story Is It, Anyway?
• Stories are Gifts – Share Them

Today, as priorities shift frequently and employees are overwhelmed with information, it’s harder than ever to not only communicate the company strategy, but fully enable it to be implemented through good communication.

If you really want your strategy to stick, we think that you need to create a forum for conversation with and among employees that focuses on what’s behind the strategy; that is, the market context and assumptions that underpin it. After all, employee understanding of this important, but little discussed information is a top-three driver of employee agility.

To consider the difference, let’s explore two alternative communication approaches to strategy kickoffs—a common vehicle used to “share strategy”. In the first, the strategy is communicated at a large town hall. In the second, the assumptions or influences on the strategy are used to generate conversation among employees and enable them to make decisions daily in line with strategy.

The Straightforward Approach

At Company A, the Communications team organizes a major strategy kickoff session at the beginning of each year. Employees at headquarters crowd into an auditorium while those at regional offices dial-in to listen to the standard hour-long teleconference. The CEO and his cadre of senior leaders run through the company’s top four or five priorities for the year. In sparse PowerPoint slides, they explain the “why” behind the strategy and paint a picture of what success will look like. Bold, energizing statements like “In five years, we will be the number one retailer of socks in Brazil!” flow freely.

As the hour draws to a close, the CEO asks employees if they have any questions. Rare, however, is the organization where an employee questions and challenges a strategy in a room with peers and her manager. And so, the strategy effectively communicated, employees race back to their desks and full Outlook inboxes, and pick up where they left off, the new strategy already a vague memory.

The Scenario Planning Approach

At Company B, the Communications team asks Robert, the CEO, when they should schedule the annual strategy kickoff. Robert shakes his head and laments, “Not this year, guys. The environment’s too uncertain. Our strategy could—and probably should—change tomorrow. Let’s just skip it this year.”

Sensing Robert’s despair, one savvy communicator, Linda, suggests a radical idea. “Wait a minute. It sounds like this is the perfect time to get our employees together and have a conversation about our company strategy.”

Robert is quick to reject the idea, “I can’t expect our employees to create our company strategy! That’s what they pay me to do.”

Linda clarifies her plan, “I agree with you, but what I am suggesting is a bit different. What if instead of presenting our 4-pronged company strategy, we shared all of the inputs that you, as the CEO, consider when you set the strategy? Maybe if employees knew what you were basing decisions on, they’d make better decisions themselves?”

Robert furrows his brow for a moment, and then raises his eyebrows in consideration. “Okay, okay. I could see how this might work. What I’m not sure about is what, exactly, I should share with employees. Any ideas?”

“Let’s use something that you’re familiar with, the basic 2×2 scenario plan,” Linda suggests.

“Easy enough! I know our Strategy team already has a future scenario plan mapped out,” Robert remarks as he pulls up the 2×2 on his computer screen.

On the screen is a sharp, easy-to read 2×2 scenario plan. It’s the product of the Strategy team wondering which factors will have the most influence on corporate strategy. Economic, demographic, technological, competitive, regulatory, and organizational factors have all been considered; however, just regulatory and competitive influences will be the most critical for the company to base its decisions on.

Linda and Robert get to work preparing for a conversation unlike he’s ever had with employees. Instead of preparing talking points, the pair brainstorm potential questions to ask employees as well as prepare for those likely to be asked by employees.

At the strategy kickoff, Robert and his team present a slimmed down version of the 2×2 scenario planning exercise. They delve into the cause and effects of relationships in the company’s value chain. They ponder aloud potential trends in each area and their implications. They never say “This is exactly where we are headed.” Instead they openly share what information is being monitored and considered as they make adjustments.

“Now you know what we know,” Robert says to signal the close of the session. “We expect you to surface anything you see that contradicts or supports the trends that we’ve shared here. To those of you who are managers, I want you to have conversations with your team about these strategy assumptions. We’re all responsible for guiding this company forward.”

How You Can Engage Employees in Strategy through Scenario Planning

Do you see the difference? Company B has equipped its entire employee population with the information necessary to not only make better decisions, but also to contribute relevant feedback back to the organization. Company A has simply convened an assembly that most employees tune out; they’re unable to see why they should care.

CEC members, you can be the savvy communicator at Company B, and we can help:

• Walk through an example of a real-life scenario planning exercise conducted by Eli Lilly.
• Help your leaders share these assumptions in dialogue sessions by using Saudi Aramco’s method for making the “big picture” relevant to employees.

CEC Related Resources

• Engage Employees in Strategy through Scenario Planning
• Strategy Assumptions Matrix (Lilly)
• Arm Employees with Information to Solve Problems
• Information Needs Assessment Process (ConAgra Foods)
• Information Personalization Session (Saudi Aramco Downstream)

CEC Related Blog Posts

• Questions to Surface Employee Information Needs
• Communicating the Right Information to Drive Change
• Make the “Big-Picture” Relevant to Employees
• Take a Cue from Obama: Share Context in Your Communication

Through my conversations with communicators who’ve recently worked on safety campaigns, I’ve found that their first step is often to build awareness of safety policies and procedures.  In the more effective campaigns, communicators help employees to build personal, often emotional, connections to safety issues.  For example, several companies have seen significant reductions in accidents by helping employees consider how an injury could affect their families and friends, often through victim storytelling and subsequent dialogue sessions.

While effective in some situations, this tactic is best used when the safety challenge can be solved by awareness alone.  A common challenge cited by communicators is complacency.  In these situations it’s often not that employees don’t know how to work safely, but rather that they’ve performed the same tasks over and over, without incident, and have developed bad habits or have lost appreciation for the dangers of cutting corners.

But what if there is a more complicated challenge to address – say, between productivity and safety — where an awareness campaign alone won’t work?  Here are a couple communications tactics that will help:

(1) Help managers be better listeners to the frontline.

Let’s give our frontline employees some credit.  After all, these individuals are in the best position to know what it’s like to work in dangerous environments.  Doesn’t it seem reasonable that they would have some promising safety ideas?

One thing that communicators can do is to help managers shift away from a one-way, top-down communication approach to a two-way, engaging conversation.  What if instead of saying, ““Be safe, wear your hard hat!”, managers asked, “Where do you see the next accident occurring in our facility?” A question like this is much more likely to spark productive dialogue and can easily be embedded into safety walks, team meetings, and other manager/employee conversations.  At the very least, it will get people talking about the barriers that they face when trying to improve safety.

(2) Celebrate the successes and “almost successes.”

Many communicators use internal communication channels to celebrate instances where employees speak up to prevent an accident.  While I’d agree that this practice sends a message that the organization wants employees to speak up if they know something is unsafe, some companies take it a step further.  What if an employee is unsure, but thinks something might be unsafe?  As a way of empowering employees to stop the line and voice concerns, some companies communicate examples of these types of situations, even if the concern turns out to be a false alarm.

Interested in learning more about safety communications? Join us for our upcoming webinar.

CEC Related Resources:

• Crisis Management: Our Latest Observations
• Avoiding Crises: How to Build a Preventative Safety Culture
• Building a Crisis Communication System

CEC Related Blog Posts

• What’s Worse than a Crisis?
• A Culture of Safety
• Communicating Before and After Crises

Kathy Gersch, CMO at Kotter International

Last week our post, Where Kotter’s 8 Steps Gets it Wrong, generated lots of great discussion in the comments section about leading change at organizations. In this post we interview Kathy Gersch, the Chief Marketing Officer at Kotter International, Dr. John Kotter’s change company that seeks to build leaders’ capability to drive transformation in their organizations.

Change Management v. Change Communication v. Change Leadership

The CEC (Kayleigh): People often conflate “change management” with “change communication”. What is the difference between these two concepts and what is the danger of combining them?

Kathy Gersch, CMO Kotter International: I think it’s important to first differentiate between “change management,” which is what almost everyone thinks of when they think of organizational change, and “change leadership,” which is what Dr. Kotter advocates and what we do at Kotter International.

• Change management is often focused on incremental improvements with a goal of minimizing the impact a change has on an organization.
• Change leadership is disruptive by design. It gives people the freedom to change in a way that propels an organization forward in leaps and bounds.
• Change communication is too often focused on the communication about the change that has already been determined by leadership or a small committee.

Communication plays an essential role in any change process, but the quality of leadership is what determines success. Relegating communication to a reporting function (which is generally the case in change management) is problematic because it does not drive engagement.  The concepts of “leading” and “communicating” are much more complementary, as the act of leading (establishing direction, aligning people, motivating and inspiring) is inherently centered on good communication.

CEC Members: Help build “change leadership” at your company with an empowerment workshop by GlaxoSmithKline’s CPSE.

Determining What’s Urgent

The CEC: At some organizations Kotter’s first step, “Create a Sense of Urgency,” is taken too seriously, that is, every initiative is thought of as urgent! In today’s environment of constant change, it’s impossible for employees to contribute to the number of “urgent changes” required by the business. What can a communicator do to diagnose and push back against “false urgency” created by the business?

Gersch: You have to make sure people aren’t pushed to become urgent about the wrong things. Before an organization begins the 8 Steps, we spend a few days helping its senior leadership team get aligned around what we call a “big opportunity.” This is not just a revenue goal or a progress bar or a growth target. The big opportunity is a picture of what an organization can possibly achieve in relationship to the world around it – something so compelling that people want to make it happen. For example, a medical device company might use “we will deliver superior products and increase market value while helping to revolutionize patient care in the United States” as their big opportunity. That’s something people can get excited about. It’s harder to feel energized about something like “grow sales by X%”–it’s too one-dimensional.

Initiatives aligned around this kind of opportunity focus “truly urgent” behaviors and lead to positive change because people want to do them as a way to help the organization attain that opportunity. Activities that don’t align with the big opportunity in some way are the ones that create false urgency and anxiety-driven busy work because people feel they have to do them.

We offer a few helpful questions on our website that can help you spot false urgency red flags.

CEC Members: Help your business partners determine when their initiatives are truly urgent.

Course Correcting in the Midst of a Change

The CEC: One of the problems we hear from Communications executives is that it’s difficult to course correct in the midst of a change initiative. They often lack the tools and resources to spot where change is being stalled and uncovering why that might be. What would be your advice for these executives?

Gersch: This is a great question, and the answer lies with the guiding coalition, which is a large group of respected, trustworthy leaders from across the organization who each volunteers to lead the overall change initiative. One of this group’s greatest strengths is that it includes people from all levels, top to bottom, and every business unit and functional area, so it collectively sees and hears what’s going on across the company. This makes it a lot easier for these leaders to identify areas where changes are stalling and remove those barriers. If one individual spots something going on in their part of the organization, they can work with people to figure out why it’s happening and then talk with the whole guiding coalition to come up with ideas on how to course correct.

We’ve seen members of the guiding coalition do this at NetApp, one of our clients. As one member put it, “There are always obstacles, and before when we experienced them, we would usually stop.  Now when we hit an obstacle, we learned how to help one another, and take on the barrier.  I learned real teamwork and that I just need to know when to ask for help.”

CEC Members: See how the U.S. Navy used message quick polls to identify strategy absorption problems to guide midcourse message adjustments.

CEC Related Resources

• Change Management Topic Center
• Building a Change-Ready Organization
• Empowerment Workshop for Leaders (GSK CPSE)
• Message Progress Quick Poll

CEC Related Blog Posts

• Where Kotter’s 8 Steps Gets it Wrong
• Effective Leadership in Times of Change
• 10 Ways to Help Leaders Give Up Control

By Kirsten Robinson

If you often feel like a “one man island”—you’re not alone. Communications teams dispersed globally often struggle to interact, share information, and collaborate across time zones and geographic locations.

One way that CEC member Novo Nordisk has overcome this challenge is by launching a simple, yet sophisticated suite of online networking tools to facilitate communicator-to-communicator peer learning across their global team.  It may seem obvious, but the reality is that despite the amount of effort that we in Communications put into creating communications tools for other departments in the company, we ourselves aren’t always the best users of this technology.

Of course, just because internal collaboration tools exist, doesn’t mean that they are in use or make life easier! However, there are some fundamental pieces of advice to consider to make an online network work for your team. We had the chance to speak with Tanya Wymer, Strategy Director at Novo Nordisk, who shared the secrets behind the company’s corporate communicator network. Elements of their network include tools that:

• Help communicators find peers in other countries with shared challenges or projects
• Facilitate discussion boards that help communicators get quick help on specific questions
• Formalize peer collaboration through structured mentoring programs

CEC members, learn how Novo Nordisk implemented tools to improve peer collaboration among their global communicators and see screen shots of the network.

CEC Related Resources:

• Novo Nordisk’s Online Communications Collaboration Space
• How to Get Employees to Want to Use Internal Social Media Tools
• Select the Right Channel for Dispersed Groups of Employees to Communicate
  

CEC Related Blog Posts:

• The Pharma Communicator’s Essential Reading List
• Changes in Pharma Prescribe New Actions for Comms
• How MITRE Measures the Impact of its Internal Social Network