3 The good communicator
The US chief executive, faced with the need to cut his workforce by 25 per cent, took the decision to spend a full 50 per cent of his time communicating with his staff. One technique he uses is ‘brown bag lunches’. He sits down with a small cross-section of staff over a sandwich lunch to find out what is on their minds. It is their chance to talk, not his. The result is that the most draconian cost-cutting programme ever carried out by BP in America went more smoothly than anyone could have imagined, such was the trust between him and his staff. And he personally was held in high esteem by them all. They might not have liked what was happening but they knew the reasons why.
4 The head office communication forum
Out of sheer need, the BP Oil communication manager invited a small group of key middle managers to meet on an informal basis, to help her by discussing communication issues. This evolved into a formal monthly meeting because the managers themselves wanted it. They were the first to appreciate the chance to be together and catch up on what was going on outside their immediate areas. Useful spin-offs included head office tech-ins, head office get-togethers and – stealing from the US – head office brown bag lunches. And, most satisfyingly, management in head office owned its own communication.
Then BP Oil brought its main communication professionals together to develop the next stage in helping line management communicate. One of the outputs of that meeting was a redefinition of the role of the professional communicator:
To facilitate an open, timely and balanced two-way communication process in which messages about BP, and its objectives, enhance BP Oil’s ability to perform.
Points worth noting in this statement are the words ‘facilitate’, and ‘perform’. The former is a clear indication that communication professionals are there to help management; they cannot do the communication task for them. The latter is the recognition by the communication professionals that, for many managers, ‘communication’ is still a soft issue. If you talk to managers about communication the chances are they will switch off. If you talk to them about performance you have a better chance of getting their attention.
The virtuous circle
Figure 2.3 The communication process
Agree/own
the message
Feedback 50% of communication Target
is
listening Tailor
Test
Deliver
Primary tools (Face-to-face)
Secondary tools (Paper, videos etc)
BP Oil developed, in consultation between management and the communication professionals, a virtuous communication circle. This is shown in Figure 2.3.
At the top is the word ‘own’. That is a strong message to management to be consistent so that they speak as one voice. Next is the imperative to target the message, tailor it to the appropriate audience and (this is after all an oil company) ‘road test’ it with a sample audience to see if it works or needs tweaking.
Then comes the delivery. BP Oil emphasized the importance of face-to-face delivery of a crucial message, citing this as the primary communication tool as the attitude survey revealed. All other tools are secondary, to be used to back up the primary communication by management.
Like many companies BP Oil uses a variety of communication tools. These include meetings where management tells a large audience of employees what is going on to the smaller, more intimate, ‘brown bag’ lunches. Local ‘teach-ins’ on various aspects of the business help employees learn about aspects of their business outside their immediate areas. Regular meetings of senior managers from around the world provide them with the main management messages they need to cascade, in their own style and to their own timing.
The secondary tools used to complement and reinforce them include local house journals, video and audio programmes. House journal editors have the option to carry a centrally produced feature on, say, the results. They tend to use these features because first they are relevant, second they are simply written and therefore easy to translate and tailor to local audiences, and third because they do not have to: it is their choice. Video and audio-tapes are made on specific business issues and, increasingly, are used by team leaders to set the scene for a discussion on an issue of the day. Then there are award schemes, to focus people on ways of improving performance. These include the chairman’s awards for excellence in health, safety and environment activities.
One successful example of a consistent and coherent piece of communication was the delivery of the ‘performance’ message. It was the subject of local team briefings, a scene-setting video, an audio-tape, house journal articles on the results and feedback survey.
Feedback is the final link in the communication loop and arguably the most powerful. The need for feedback was perhaps the hardest concept for line management to take on board. For some it sounded too much like policing, back to the bad old days of second guessing, with head office checking up on local management to trip them up and see if they really were doing what they had said they would do. These were the managers empowered to operate with a high degree of autonomy.
Yet while senior management was reasonably relaxed about providing the umbrella, the framework for communication and then casting its bread on the waters, it did need to know three things.
Is the message getting across?
What do staff think of it?
What is concerning staff right now?
The feedback process was put in place. What helped was the assurance that no results would go to the top management team until they had been seen and discussed locally, by local management with their staff. A further help was the agreement to limit the feedback surveys so that actions arising from one were identified and carried out before the next survey. Staff, just as much as management, dislike being over-surveyed. And management, just as much as staff, can find it frightening to open up and listen to what their staff are saying, and saying about them.