In Part 1, I shared the story of Tanmay the Internal Communicator who engaged Anita in a discussion on a newsletter and wasn’t able to provide tangible direction. I loved the feedback to help Tanmay make definite progress. Thank you Mark, Adam, Sushma and Advita for taking time to raise the conversation to a new high.
For example, Adam provided a great perspective on supporting the client’s understanding of the channels and options available from the Internal Communications team. Also, by ‘partnering’ with the client the chances of improving the newsletter and owning the intranet are much better. Sushma’s idea to have an IT Customer Day is excellent considering it helps get the team face-to-face with clients and in their environment. Mark suggested developing a communication plan and giving the IT team opportunities to share their updates. Also to provide proof of how effective the channels were. Advita’s recommended taking a mock-up of the intranet and considering the employees’ feedback to help change perceptions and to stakeholders aligned.
Here are thoughts to approach the issue and get Anita to appreciate what works for her team.
To begin, Tanmay needs to understand from where Anita is approaching this issue.
In the recent past has Anita got feedback that her team’s work isn’t valued or known across the organization?
The decision to start a newsletter isn’t for Anita to take up. The Internal Communication team is expected to provide guidance on the channels and how to best optimize resources for communicating effectively. Also, if there is already an online social media community then the IT team can form a community, own their content and share updates real-time.
To establish a team’s reputation requires lot of work. By sharing a newsletter doesn’t automatically qualify reach and visibility. Instead, Tanmay needs to coach Anita on steps to share the basics – what does the team stand for, what does it do, how does it make a difference to the organization, what are the current projects and the impact it hopes to make and what support does it need from staff. This content needs to go up on their community page and all IT team members should be actively engaged on the community.
That means, Anita needs to involve the group in coming up with possible content for the community so that they feel included. To add content that appeals to the community Anita needs to identify owners for each section so that content is periodically updated.
She is expected to lead by example and share the team’s great news/wins/go-lives via articles on the community. Furthermore, she can incentivize contributions on the community by recognizing the most active members. She should blog and use the social media tool herself since it helps to connect Gen Y especially.
Tanmay should be better prepared for such conversations with facts and trends to show how Spark is faring and refute any critical perspectives, if they aren’t right. Also, creating a newsletter to drive traffic to the online platform isn’t the best use of peoples’ time.
He also needs to set expectations on his team’s role in supporting internal communication. That means, the team isn’t expected to be managing her newsletter but can provide solutions for the spotlight to be trained on her team and other groups in a systematic manner. There is a perception he has to manage – of his team only supporting ‘leadership’ and not others. While this may be true, Tanmay has to qualify why some stakeholders get more ‘high touch’ that others.
Tanmay needs to demonstrate cases where teams which have great work to showcase do get the relevant ‘visibility’ via the company intranet or other channels available. He can also recommend that Anita present her team’s work to leaders at designated forums so that she can highlight her initiatives and take their support.
Lastly, it is for Tanmay to clarify that a newsletter is a great channel to have but sustaining a newsletter takes time and effort – something which Anita may not have the bandwidth to do with her critical role.
So, it is best left to the experts – in this case, the internal communications team to think of suitable solutions for her team. Will the IT team appreciate if the internal communication teams prescribe the IT roadmap for an organization? Then, why must IT recommend what the best approach is for internal communications?
