KILL the Messenger!

Reincarnation for Business Communicators

The bloodletting may never completely stop, as communication and public relations departments continue to be lopped off the organizational charts of "lean and mean" corporations around the globe. Yet reports on the demise of our profession remain premature.

Universally, management gurus are trumpeting the importance of communication, not as the province of a department on the periphery, but as a core competency of today's agile business organizations. The performance measures that success demands - increased return on capital, faster new product cycle times, better decision making and more responsive customer service - simply cannot be achieved without effective communicators distributed throughout the organization.

The Messengers Are Dead - Long Live the Communicators!

With threats and opportunities both moving at the speed of the Internet, business organizations no longer have the luxury of crafting their messages through months of executive presentations, high volume editorial meetings and endless corporate wordsmithing. In the knowledge economy, information is the new raw material from which successful companies must create value in the form of goods and services, then bring that value to market faster than the competition. The advantage belongs to organizations that can locate, retrieve, digest, decipher and leverage information rapidly for maximum economic gain. In this business environment, the corporation's most relevant messages are not those found in newsletters and employee magazines, but in voice mail and e-mail.

Don't lament the demise of the corporate messengers, for now we are reborn... as change agents, organizational consultants, business strategists, discipline experts, information architects, knowledge managers and more!

The skill sets we have relied on to churn out our company newsletters, executive reports, corporate videos and other traditional forms of business communication are now exponentially more valuable to our organizations. The ability to run down a lead, locate credible sources, distill the essence of a complex story, translate dense technical jargon: These are the critical skills that, when re-purposed, can help organizations fight information overload, empower their employees and succeed in the marketplace.

Life Beyond the Boundaries

The traditional "us/them" antagonism between communication departments and the rest of the line organization is another luxury whose time has passed. To improve communication and information flow, rigid departmental silos are breaking down, giving way to a seamless, "integrated" organization. Within this structure, multi-discipline teams are the preferred model for effective work groups. They bring together a broad spectrum of expertise from all walks of corporate life - engineers, statisticians, accountants, project managers and others - to combine their critical professional skill sets for better decision making. Reincarnated business communicators are pulling their seats up to the same tables, facilitating the exchange of ideas, distilling essential information and building consensus from alternate points of view. Part translator, part diplomat, part tribal scribe, business communicators foster clarity and maintain vital links across their organizations.

The wisdom of teams is also a key to developing integrated communication solutions. Reincarnated corporate writers and editors now join forces with graphic designers, web-site developers, public relations practitioners, instructional designers, trainers and organizational development specialists. Drawing on brand strategies, marketing best practices and change management principles, these professionals work collaboratively to deliver bottom-line results for their businesses.

From Cost Center to Cost-Cutter

Perhaps the primary reason that communicators have been considered an endangered species is the fact that the profession has struggled to quantify its contributions to the business. Even with the advent of performance measures for communication programs, many senior management teams consider communicators to be strictly "overhead" and have remained skeptical of the need for our counsel and services. For those decision makers, the reincarnated communicator offers a compelling three-word response: Cost of Confusion.

The auditors won't find it in the accounting system, the shareholders won't find it on the balance sheet, but the Cost of Confusion drains value from the organization's bottom line every minute of every day. Think about it:

* thousands of hours in lost productivity when complex organizational changes and technology initiatives are not fully understood, accepted and implemented by employees

* millions of dollars in lost sales for organizations that fail to present potential customers with clear and compelling reasons for buying the company's technologies, products and services

* diminished shareholder value from mergers and acquisitions that fall short in integrating cultures, values, processes, knowledge and people to achieve genuine operational synergy and significant return on investment.

By calculating the Cost of Confusion, the reincarnated business communicator has something tangible to offer - the ability to cut costs and to help deliver significant return on investment.

NEW RULES, NEW TOOLS

The tool set for business communicators today expands well beyond the fundamentals of good writing and editing to something much more comprehensive. The requirements call for abilities to distill and package information in ways that add meaning for employees and add value for shareholders and customers. Here's a thumbnail look at the leading edge of business communication:

Foundations, Frameworks, Pathways, Handles. Information architects bring structure and context to enable learning organizations to deal with seemingly amorphous and complex intellectual information. The most effective solutions incorporate modular designs packaged in a variety of integrated media, including print, video and web-based materials. With easy, intuitive access to complex information, employees readily learn to share knowledge for increased financial performance.

What do we know - what do we do with what we know - and what do we do it with?

Knowledge Management (KM) examines how effectively an organization captures, stores, shares, applies and adds to the collective wisdom of its employees, competitors and customers. As knowledge managers, communicators package critical information and deliver it to the right people at the right time in precisely the types, amounts and levels of detail needed to improve business performance.

It takes minds and hearts, fully engaged, to create a world-class business organization. People need not only the know-what and the know-how, but also the know-why. Only when individuals understand their roles in the organization, the difference their contributions make and the reasons behind difficult changes can they become part of the solution. Communicators who can connect people to purpose hold the key to building a competitive advantage for their organizations.

RELATED ARTICLE: CALCULATING THE COST OF CONFUSION

Mark Johnson, president of The Understanding Business, tells the story of a bank that was forced to create a 15-person call center to handle repeated questions about its latest employee benefits program. In a free-wheeling discussion with senior management, Johnson led the group in calculating that the company had spent almost U.S. $1 million staffing, equipping and supporting this department over two years. As an "information architect," Johnson had already identified the company's core problem: a poorly designed and executed benefits communication program. Johnson asked for $100,000 to design a new communication package that, when completed, would allow the client to eliminate the call center and collect $900,000 in savings!

Many Paths to Enlightenment - And Job Security

If employee newsletters and double-spaced memos from the CEO will take your organization where it really needs to go, live long and prosper. If, however, the communication department in your company hangs by a thread from the organizational chart, don't fear The Reaper. In the 21st-century knowledge economy, no other professional is better positioned than today's business communicator. If you've been following the trends, networking faithfully and pursuing development opportunities, chances are you have all you need to begin a new life as a change agent in a high-performing team environment.

Get started by looking for a trail of confusion. Follow it to its source, calculating the cost of confusion all along the way. Use this information to develop and present your first proposal for leveraging communication to cut costs and improve the business. Include your plans to implement the solution with a multi-discipline team representing critical areas of the line organization, not just the communication department. With these elements in place, you and your organization are on your way to developing high-performance communication as a core competency.

The future for our profession lies in aligning people to performance objectives - defining new business concepts - fostering understanding of value-adding processes and tools...and nurturing the spark in people that inspires them to superb customer service and productivity. These are the critical opportunities that spell the end for messengers and mark a new beginning for business communicators.

Richard Layton is principal of Transform Communications, Portland, Ore. Contact him at [e-mail] or [phone]