Making Internal Communications Work

When a client asks two different people in your firm the same question – and is given two different and conflicting answers, then you might get the idea that maybe the concept of internal communications is more than just a management clichZ. When an instruction from the managing partner is completely diluted as it goes down the line, then how can we dismiss internal communication as inconsequential? Why is it so often taken for granted? Why does internal communication rarely work to anybody's satisfaction?

In fact, internal communication rarely works when it's random and disorganized. It inevitably fails when it focuses on mechanics rather than content. It does work, though, when there's a clearly defined plan and a program, realistic objectives, and meticulous methodology ' all based on content management. If there's no clearly defined internal communication plan, the most urgent direction, no matter how clear or simple, gets garbled and distorted as it goes down the management line to the people who have to act on it.

The foundation for an effective program resides in realizing that everybody in a firm has to know something, but not everybody has to know everything about everything. Not every one has to know the same things. There is a difference between an internal communications program that works, and one that just spins wheels, and leaves the firm vulnerable to inefficiency and chronic misinformation.

There are compelling reasons to sustain a high level of internal communications, in even the smallest company:

• If everybody who shows up for work every morning has a different view of why he or she is there, then there's no cohesive motivation. Motivational programs don't help here. Communication does.
• The most effective marketing promise you make to clients or customers is useless if the people who have to make the promise a reality don't understand and accept it.
• Firms function on several levels – the management, the professionals, the administrative staff, and so forth. Without a defined program, without common understanding, information conflicts and there's chaos. With a good program, there's increased productivity.
• Most companies today, regardless of size, are dynamic. People move around a lot. They go to clients and customers, to the offices of other firms, to other cities. A good program brings them together.
• The nature of business today requires that a great many people within a company be in touch with a great many people outside the company. It's crucial, then, that as many people as possible in the firm be appropriately informed and knowledgeable.
• There's always the double-edged sword of e-mail, which communicates faster, but also spreads rumors and misinformation faster. With today's technology, misinformation flies around the world at lightening speed.
• And don't forget the vital function of feedback, from the bottom up.

While the experienced communicator will find nothing radically new in the mechanics of an internal communications program, we now find that the key to successful internal communication lies not in the mechanics, but in the content. Shaping the content depends upon the program's objectives.

The Objectives

The objectives are predicated on a basic question ' what do we want people to know, think, or feel as a result of our internal communications efforts, and why? Some possibilities:

• The firm's goals (eg, share of market, level of professionalism, leadership, value to clients, increased productivity, and so forth). Keeping people on all levels informed and involved adds a new dimension to firm management. If you have a clearly defined marketing position, for example, you'd better explain it to the people who have to make that position a reality, and breathe life into it.
• Firm business. Pension and health benefits, holiday schedules, expense rules, and other housekeeping information, rules of confidentiality, software piracy regulations, and payroll deduction information.
• Technical information. To remain competitive, key people have to know the latest rules, regulations, laws, findings, results, and techniques. They also have to know how the new billing system works, company rules, how to deal with client complaints, and so forth.
• Morale factors (eg, social news, company's progress and what everybody has contributed to it, addressing adverse rumors and so forth). Specific opportunities at every level (eg, marketing incentives, regards for increased productivity, and so forth).
• Crisis control (how to handle inquiries from the press, how to handle rumors, and so forth). A prime consideration here is the concept of no surprises. People who might have to deal with others outside the firm (such as the press) should be aware of crisis information and the process for dealing with it. Crisis management, as everyone knows, is a function of anticipation and planning before the crisis. Internal information is an integral part of it.
• Client and customer information. Who the clients and customers are, who the key people are, who does what for each client or customer, matters pertaining to best serving the client or customer. Some of this may be sensitive; some may be housekeeping. The housekeeping information goes to everybody administratively responsible; the sensitive information only to those who must perform for the client or customer.

Viewed in the context of objectives, it becomes clear that, as in any marketing program, the target audiences must be defined. Obviously, not every message is for everybody on the payroll. These audiences might include the professional staff, upper echelon management, middle management, department or practice group heads, staff people within these categories, and individuals with special responsibilities.

By defining the audience, you begin to see how different messages must be tailored to fulfill the overall communications objective. What is to be communicated is a function of a policy predicated on clearly defined objectives, defined for specific audiences. With a well-delineated policy, and clear objectives, the how is relatively easy.

Communicate? But What? To Whom?

Internal communication, long a thorn in the side of management in every profession, has too often been practiced in the breach. Given its importance to successful firm management, particularly in a highly competitive environment, it's amazing that so little attention has been paid to it. To many a managing partner, internal communications is a murky forest of doom, in which information enters in one shape, and emerges at the other end as an unrecognizable blob.

One reason for its failure, we know now, is that communicators concentrate on the mechanics of communication, rather than the nature of content.

But when the attempt is made to understand a bit of basic theory in knowledge management ' or informatics, as it's now being called – firms can readily turn data into information that goes to the bottom line.

What Is Information?

Some basic definitions help.

First we know that by definition data is not information, and information is not knowledge. Data are basic facts ' unalloyed, with little or no value outside their own existence. To say, for example, that a tree is a tree merely defines that object. It says nothing of its structure, its purpose, its value. It tells us nothing about forests or forestry, or uses of its leaves or trunk. That a tree is a tree is data, not information.

• Information is when we integrate the existence of a tree with the existence of, say, furniture. Then the facts of a tree take on a new meaning.
• Knowledge is when we take the information about the tree and the furniture and use it to inform forestry, or furniture manufacture.
• Knowledge management is when we when we codify knowledge and convert it to useful information. And that should be the objective of every internal communications system.

What Is Knowledge?

Theoretically, knowledge may be defined as information that is now, or may be in the future, useful in a specific context. Knowledge may also be abstract, with no immediate use or application, in which case it may serve as a foundation for an ultimate use. For example, when the laser was discovered in the AT&T labs a few decades ago, it was merely a scientific phenomenon, with no apparent practical use. The uses emerged and were developed much later.

In a business or firm management context, knowledge is information that can be applied for a specific and useful business purpose. For example, the demographics of a particular market area is raw data. Analyzing that data in terms of the ability to make decisions about serving that area is information. Knowing how to apply that information to make those decisions is knowledge. Knowing how to deliver knowledge to those who can use it most effectively to meet a specific objective is knowledge management.

We are concerned here with the use of knowledge in a business context ' gathering, formulating and applying knowledge to the uses of managing a company or professional firm, and using knowledge competitively.

Knowledge, in this context, has specific properties.

Knowledge is dynamic. Its value and quality change constantly. An illustration of dynamic information is my theory of an address in space.

For example, if someone asks where you live, the answer can be defined as a fixed position, say the corner of X and Y. That is a constant static point that was there yesterday, is there today, and is most likely to be there tomorrow.

But if you ask for the address of a body in outer space, the answer is, in relation to what? Objects in space are in constant motion, and are located in relation to other objects in motion. This is dynamic motion. Knowledge is, in the same way, dynamic.

Even with the common language needed for communication, we know that this dynamic must be recognized if knowledge is to be useful. Knowledge is subject to:

• Changing sources of input;
• Changing input from the samesources;
• Changes precipitated by the use of knowledge; and
• Changing needs for the same information or data.

Knowledge is cumulative. Nothing is often known by just one person – nor is it ever known in entirety. For example, what bits of knowledge of what others had learned did the Wright brothers bring together to make an airplane? Or Edison, Bell, or Morse, for their inventions?

The same knowledge can serve different purposes. For example, an area's demographics may help the marketing department define the nature of a service. That same demographic information may help the finance department determine the cost of serving that market.

People process information differently. Each person receives information through a screen of personal experience and prior knowledge. Give two people the same information about a company and its investment potential, for example, and one will choose to buy the stock and the other to sell it.

Another form of knowledge is tacit knowledge ' what we know only intuitively, but can't test pragmatically. For example, Freud's hypthosis of infant perception and psychology could only be surmised, but not tested. But if we build a system predicated on that intuition, and the system works, then we may assume that the intuition may be valid.

Merely accessing knowledge can change the nature and value of that knowledge. For example, accessing information about a company's stock can change the value of that information, both in the way it's perceived and in the way it's acted upon. Another example is in the botanical Raowolfia, whose medicinal properties were known by researchers in India and reported in Indian scientific journals, but unknown abroad. When it was discovered by drug companies in the United States, Raowolfia became the foundation for the pharmaceutical Reserpine.

The practical application of these concepts is a function of context. Knowledge of itself is one thing to a philosopher, another to a scientist, another to an artist or writer or journalist, and another to a functioning business person or professional.

How does this theory translate into day-to-day practice? Understanding the dynamics of knowledge allows a firm to develop a system that defines information is a more focused context, and then building the system in terms of the knowledge needs of those at the receiving end of internal communications. It lets recipients help define what they need to know, and helps communicators define what information is genuinely useful to those who receive it. It helps management bring knowledge to the bottom line, which is the purpose of knowledge, after all.

When a client asks two different people in your firm the same question – and is given two different and conflicting answers, then you might get the idea that maybe the concept of internal communications is more than just a management clichZ. When an instruction from the managing partner is completely diluted as it goes down the line, then how can we dismiss internal communication as inconsequential? Why is it so often taken for granted? Why does internal communication rarely work to anybody's satisfaction?

In fact, internal communication rarely works when it's random and disorganized. It inevitably fails when it focuses on mechanics rather than content. It does work, though, when there's a clearly defined plan and a program, realistic objectives, and meticulous methodology ' all based on content management. If there's no clearly defined internal communication plan, the most urgent direction, no matter how clear or simple, gets garbled and distorted as it goes down the management line to the people who have to act on it.

The foundation for an effective program resides in realizing that everybody in a firm has to know something, but not everybody has to know everything about everything. Not every one has to know the same things. There is a difference between an internal communications program that works, and one that just spins wheels, and leaves the firm vulnerable to inefficiency and chronic misinformation.

There are compelling reasons to sustain a high level of internal communications, in even the smallest company:

• If everybody who shows up for work every morning has a different view of why he or she is there, then there's no cohesive motivation. Motivational programs don't help here. Communication does.
• The most effective marketing promise you make to clients or customers is useless if the people who have to make the promise a reality don't understand and accept it.
• Firms function on several levels – the management, the professionals, the administrative staff, and so forth. Without a defined program, without common understanding, information conflicts and there's chaos. With a good program, there's increased productivity.
• Most companies today, regardless of size, are dynamic. People move around a lot. They go to clients and customers, to the offices of other firms, to other cities. A good program brings them together.
• The nature of business today requires that a great many people within a company be in touch with a great many people outside the company. It's crucial, then, that as many people as possible in the firm be appropriately informed and knowledgeable.
• There's always the double-edged sword of e-mail, which communicates faster, but also spreads rumors and misinformation faster. With today's technology, misinformation flies around the world at lightening speed.
• And don't forget the vital function of feedback, from the bottom up.

While the experienced communicator will find nothing radically new in the mechanics of an internal communications program, we now find that the key to successful internal communication lies not in the mechanics, but in the content. Shaping the content depends upon the program's objectives.

The Objectives

The objectives are predicated on a basic question ' what do we want people to know, think, or feel as a result of our internal communications efforts, and why? Some possibilities:

• The firm's goals (eg, share of market, level of professionalism, leadership, value to clients, increased productivity, and so forth). Keeping people on all levels informed and involved adds a new dimension to firm management. If you have a clearly defined marketing position, for example, you'd better explain it to the people who have to make that position a reality, and breathe life into it.
• Firm business. Pension and health benefits, holiday schedules, expense rules, and other housekeeping information, rules of confidentiality, software piracy regulations, and payroll deduction information.
• Technical information. To remain competitive, key people have to know the latest rules, regulations, laws, findings, results, and techniques. They also have to know how the new billing system works, company rules, how to deal with client complaints, and so forth.
• Morale factors (eg, social news, company's progress and what everybody has contributed to it, addressing adverse rumors and so forth). Specific opportunities at every level (eg, marketing incentives, regards for increased productivity, and so forth).
• Crisis control (how to handle inquiries from the press, how to handle rumors, and so forth). A prime consideration here is the concept of no surprises. People who might have to deal with others outside the firm (such as the press) should be aware of crisis information and the process for dealing with it. Crisis management, as everyone knows, is a function of anticipation and planning before the crisis. Internal information is an integral part of it.
• Client and customer information. Who the clients and customers are, who the key people are, who does what for each client or customer, matters pertaining to best serving the client or customer. Some of this may be sensitive; some may be housekeeping. The housekeeping information goes to everybody administratively responsible; the sensitive information only to those who must perform for the client or customer.

Viewed in the context of objectives, it becomes clear that, as in any marketing program, the target audiences must be defined. Obviously, not every message is for everybody on the payroll. These audiences might include the professional staff, upper echelon management, middle management, department or practice group heads, staff people within these categories, and individuals with special responsibilities.

By defining the audience, you begin to see how different messages must be tailored to fulfill the overall communications objective. What is to be communicated is a function of a policy predicated on clearly defined objectives, defined for specific audiences. With a well-delineated policy, and clear objectives, the how is relatively easy.

Communicate? But What? To Whom?

Internal communication, long a thorn in the side of management in every profession, has too often been practiced in the breach. Given its importance to successful firm management, particularly in a highly competitive environment, it's amazing that so little attention has been paid to it. To many a managing partner, internal communications is a murky forest of doom, in which information enters in one shape, and emerges at the other end as an unrecognizable blob.

One reason for its failure, we know now, is that communicators concentrate on the mechanics of communication, rather than the nature of content.

But when the attempt is made to understand a bit of basic theory in knowledge management ' or informatics, as it's now being called – firms can readily turn data into information that goes to the bottom line.

What Is Information?

Some basic definitions help.

First we know that by definition data is not information, and information is not knowledge. Data are basic facts ' unalloyed, with little or no value outside their own existence. To say, for example, that a tree is a tree merely defines that object. It says nothing of its structure, its purpose, its value. It tells us nothing about forests or forestry, or uses of its leaves or trunk. That a tree is a tree is data, not information.

• Information is when we integrate the existence of a tree with the existence of, say, furniture. Then the facts of a tree take on a new meaning.
• Knowledge is when we take the information about the tree and the furniture and use it to inform forestry, or furniture manufacture.
• Knowledge management is when we when we codify knowledge and convert it to useful information. And that should be the objective of every internal communications system.

What Is Knowledge?

Theoretically, knowledge may be defined as information that is now, or may be in the future, useful in a specific context. Knowledge may also be abstract, with no immediate use or application, in which case it may serve as a foundation for an ultimate use. For example, when the laser was discovered in the AT&T labs a few decades ago, it was merely a scientific phenomenon, with no apparent practical use. The uses emerged and were developed much later.

In a business or firm management context, knowledge is information that can be applied for a specific and useful business purpose. For example, the demographics of a particular market area is raw data. Analyzing that data in terms of the ability to make decisions about serving that area is information. Knowing how to apply that information to make those decisions is knowledge. Knowing how to deliver knowledge to those who can use it most effectively to meet a specific objective is knowledge management.

We are concerned here with the use of knowledge in a business context ' gathering, formulating and applying knowledge to the uses of managing a company or professional firm, and using knowledge competitively.

Knowledge, in this context, has specific properties.

Knowledge is dynamic. Its value and quality change constantly. An illustration of dynamic information is my theory of an address in space.

For example, if someone asks where you live, the answer can be defined as a fixed position, say the corner of X and Y. That is a constant static point that was there yesterday, is there today, and is most likely to be there tomorrow.

But if you ask for the address of a body in outer space, the answer is, in relation to what? Objects in space are in constant motion, and are located in relation to other objects in motion. This is dynamic motion. Knowledge is, in the same way, dynamic.

Even with the common language needed for communication, we know that this dynamic must be recognized if knowledge is to be useful. Knowledge is subject to:

• Changing sources of input;
• Changing input from the samesources;
• Changes precipitated by the use of knowledge; and
• Changing needs for the same information or data.

Knowledge is cumulative. Nothing is often known by just one person – nor is it ever known in entirety. For example, what bits of knowledge of what others had learned did the Wright brothers bring together to make an airplane? Or Edison, Bell, or Morse, for their inventions?

The same knowledge can serve different purposes. For example, an area's demographics may help the marketing department define the nature of a service. That same demographic information may help the finance department determine the cost of serving that market.

People process information differently. Each person receives information through a screen of personal experience and prior knowledge. Give two people the same information about a company and its investment potential, for example, and one will choose to buy the stock and the other to sell it.

Another form of knowledge is tacit knowledge ' what we know only intuitively, but can't test pragmatically. For example, Freud's hypthosis of infant perception and psychology could only be surmised, but not tested. But if we build a system predicated on that intuition, and the system works, then we may assume that the intuition may be valid.

Merely accessing knowledge can change the nature and value of that knowledge. For example, accessing information about a company's stock can change the value of that information, both in the way it's perceived and in the way it's acted upon. Another example is in the botanical Raowolfia, whose medicinal properties were known by researchers in India and reported in Indian scientific journals, but unknown abroad. When it was discovered by drug companies in the United States, Raowolfia became the foundation for the pharmaceutical Reserpine.

The practical application of these concepts is a function of context. Knowledge of itself is one thing to a philosopher, another to a scientist, another to an artist or writer or journalist, and another to a functioning business person or professional.

How does this theory translate into day-to-day practice? Understanding the dynamics of knowledge allows a firm to develop a system that defines information is a more focused context, and then building the system in terms of the knowledge needs of those at the receiving end of internal communications. It lets recipients help define what they need to know, and helps communicators define what information is genuinely useful to those who receive it. It helps management bring knowledge to the bottom line, which is the purpose of knowledge, after all.