What role shall we play today?

The post-downsizing era is ushering in opportunities for communicators who understand what's going on.

Some communicators in the toughest circumstances are not just surviving, but thriving. What's needed is an attitude transplant.

In September 1986, Bill Hamilton, ABC, was one of of 22 communication professionals in the corporate information department at Owens Corning's Toledo, Ohio headquarters. A month later, Hamilton was the entire corporate information department. While his is perhaps an extreme example of the change that has swept organizations and their communication departments in the past decade, it is by no means unusual.

Staffs have been replaced by technology. A flattened organization with fewer managers has created a critical need for interdepartmental or "horizontal" communication. Teams have sprung up to tackle tasks aimed at achieving organizational goals, particularly quality and customer service. Outsourcing has become a way of surviving the demands to do more with less.

As the downsizing smoke clears, senior managers are assessing the damage, and part of that damage can be fixed by communicators -- communicators who are strategically plugged into the problem-solving loop. What has resulted from the downsizing is communication chaos, exacerbated by the advent of E-mail. Communication consultant Roger D'Aprix, ABC, calls E-mail the "mechanization of the grapevine," and he says it has resulted in lots of information without much context -- no means for employees to really understand the big picture.

If this sounds like an opportunity for communicators, it is, at least for those with a big picture view of things. Regrettably, that's not most of us, according to communication consultants we talked with for this article. What we need more than anything, they say, is an attitude transplant -- to change our focus from newsletters and videos and communication products, to helping senior managers grapple with the problems they face, such as making employees understand the market forces that shape the tough and often unpopular decisions these top managers must make.

Welcome to the new reality

The new communication reality is growing out of the new economic reality Walter Kiechel II writes about in the April 4, '94 issue of Fortune. In "A Manager's Career in the New Economy," he outlines these certainties:

* It will be a service economy.

* We'll need to know technology.

* Task-oriented teams will get things done.

* We'll have fewer managers.

* Lifetime employment no longer exists.

* Lifelong learning is required.

Kiechel also lists some possibilities:

* De-jobbing (see May '94 CW). Job descriptions disappear, replaced by employees or consultants (on-staff or outsourced) with skills to accomplish a specific task.

* It will be an economy largely made up of one-person organizations.

* Hyperspecialization will flourish since technologically a hyperspecialist can serve a worldwide market as easily as a local market.

* No pay premium for managers will exist since teams won't have to be "managed" in the sense we formerly knew it.

The new breed -- adapting and loving it

While some communicators haven't yet tuned into the big picture, others, like Marcel Auclair at Alcan in Montreal clearly have. He is a senior consultant in the public relations department and provides communication services to Alcan plants and divisions all over North America.

His department was downsized by half over the last two years and as a result he has made changes in the way he approaches his job.

"I may go to Vancouver, Cleveland or Toronto for a half day's consulting assignment, or a month -- it depends," he says.

"One week I might facilitate a committee to develop performance indicators, and the next week help work out the details of announcing a plant closure," Auclair adds. "It's never the same, and it's never dull."

Key to success in this new communication environment is a broad set of skills and the ability to quickly size up and work with all types of people. Auclair says he knew he lacked skills in some areas and sought out training in consulting, meeting facilitation, media relations, negotiating and social styles (models for recognizing personalities and work styles of various individuals).

"If you can write, you can think in an organized way," Auclair says, "and that is a great foundation upon which to build these other skills." Communicators, he says, have a chance to help executives if they'll build their skills so they can conduct interviews with employees, define issues, identify obstacles, then use the same kind of organizational skills to map out solutions.

"It's funny, we're called communicators, but when I first started consulting within the company, I didn't have a clue about interpersonal communication -- solving conflicts, listening -- the things that the division managers really needed help with.

"Our head auditor called me once and said, 'I don't need another newsletter; I need to be able to conduct more effective meetings.' And, he asked if I could help. I facilitated some meetings and did some team-building, and it worked, even though it was my first attempt. Now about 80 percent of my work comes from people calling me for help."

His suggestion for building your value as an in-house consultant: "Say yes: Then get help."

Part of Auclair's in-house success owes to his familiarity with the company culture. "We are allergic to the word 'program.' Most of what I do involves 'no money, just your brain.'" He was involved in a number of plant closings during the company's restructuring, and after participating in several, he was asked to prepare "Downsizing Guidelines," a document to help managers facing the restructuring task.

"We all underestimate our capacity to think on our feet and come up with answers," Auclair adds. He says we'd rather rely on our notes and computer screens in a secure environment. "It's kind of scary at first, but at some point, you get used to it."

Two new communication opportunities -- you can be a hero

The new economy and the new communication reality have fostered two areas of opportunity that communicators can apply their skills to: improving horizontal (lateral) communication within the organization, and providing a context for the information chaos that pervades most large organizations.

"As part of our biennial Work USA survey of employees, we asked the question: Is lateral communication working?" says Paul Sanchez, director of communication consulting at The Wyatt Company, San Diego. "The positive responses to that question dropped from 47 percent two years ago, to 43 percent now. The reason for the drop is that employees have realized the importance of lateral communication in accomplishing organizational initiatives such as customer service and quality. Their expectations have increased faster than the communication processes growing up to serve the needs," Sanchez says.

Consultant Roger D'Aprix asks: "Where's the accountability for lateral communication?" And answers: "There's never been any. There's no precedent for it, and we have no experience in it. Our biggest problem is that we're performing vertical communication in a horizontal organization."

D'Aprix brings up the other opportunity for communicators: "We've got lots of information overload and not much context for this information. This fragmented communication creates a chaotic sense of the work place for employees. The opportunity for communicators is to provide the context, the big picture that will clarify the issues and priorities for employees.

Interviewed in the June 6, 1994 issue of Forbes ASAP, Tom Steding, VP, strategic marketing at 3Com Corp., Santa Clara, Calif., says: "At least 80 percent of the E-mail I get is a waste of time to even open. ... The volume of E-mail is so high, it's become devalued. Sending E-mail is no longer sufficient to ensure communication. You've got to see them nose-to-nose. It's like the old way, except back then you didn't have to send E-mail first. We're going backwards."

All that wasted time and energy is costing business major bucks. What's needed is a communication solution -- not a computer solution. Communicators who come up with cost-saving, productivity-enhancing answers are assured of a place not only in heaven, but on staff and maybe even in the boardroom.

Adding value at Motorola and Federal Express

Commenting on the value that he sees the internal communication function adding at Motorola, Director Steve Biedermann says: "We can help employees understand the business, and we can help them know what they can do to help the business accomplish its goals."

That approach resulted in his staffs growth from three to 15 in the last 18 months. At Motorola, internal communication has always been part of human resources, but recently, Biedermann assumed a dotted-line reporting relationship to corporate communication.

"Senior management has acknowledged the importance of placing communicators at the right hand of operating management," says Biedermann. Consequently, Motorola is pushing the communication function downward from the corporate level into its seven "core businesses" as well as to its regions in Europe, Asia/Pacific, Japan and the Americas. Biedermann has counterparts -- either professional communicators or senior HR people -- who help push and pull messages through the system. He uses a monthly newsletter to these counterparts for information and skills-building.

To facilitate horizontal communication, Biedermann designed a management journal about five years ago for executives and professionals to comment on how to support Motorola's major initiatives: quality, empowerment, cycle time, and profitability.

Under serious consideration at the moment is start up of a new company-wide magazine, the kind so many organizations have recently scrapped. "The value added of such a publication is that we would have a vehicle that can provide an upward and downward message flow to employees worldwide, in a varied, multifaceted organization," Biedermann says. "It would answer the question: 'What do all you folks have in common?'" And, it would provide the communication context that Roger D'Aprix says is missing in today's chaotic work place.

Reliance on company-wide publications also exists at Federal Express in Memphis. Ed Robertson, manager of management and quality communication, says, "On the print side, we've come to the realization that it's never going to go away. These publications are highly important in influencing the way employees perceive the company. But they must be very well defined, and you must know what you want from them."

Federal Express recently improved two company-wide publications: Managers Pak and Worldwide Update. Both were upgraded to four-color with beefed-up graphics and a USA Today feel. "We want these to be an enjoyable reading experience and to portray the drama of our work place," Robertson adds.

Print is not intended to impart timely information, Robertson says, rather they rely on E-mail for that. The company conducts an annual company-wide audit, and for the first time, E-mail preference was included as an audit question. "Employees said it was their number-one preferred source of information," Robertson says. "This finding underscored the important distinction between information and communication. It's an excellent source of information, but not necessarily communication."

As at most large organizations, Federal Express places a high priority on face-to-face communication. Robertson urges communicators to live up to their role as educators, particularly of upper management.

"Many of them don't understand the communication process as a two-way street. They think they do, but they could function better if they did."

When Robertson conducts communication training for managers and subordinates, he requests that the upper management people they report to also attend the sessions. "The leader must champion this effort in order for it to succeed at lower levels," he says.

How can you get onto the team?

Consultant Bill Jensen, Jensen Communication Group, New York, works with top management at many Fortune 500 organizations and says communicators have enormous potential for positive influence in organizations, but few are realizing that potential. He has some suggestions for assuming a leadership role and says that leadership is focused around three areas of change:

* understanding change readiness,

* creating the future (through mission/vision),

* performance management (how to do the job).

To reinvent yourself as a participant in this change, Jensen suggests facilitating a series of conversations between the CEO and employees.

Those conversations center on the key areas of change including: getting employees ready for change, helping create a vision for the future, and communicating what will be required to do what needs to be done.

"Communicators should stop focusing on 'deliverables,' such as newsletters, videos, and the like, and focus instead on changing employee behavior," Jensen says.

Regarding skills communicators need to help facilitate change, he suggests "acting like a sponge," asking questions and honing listening skills; focusing organizing skills on solving the problems senior managers face, such as "how do we help 10,000 employees focus on the customer?"; and then creating linkages within the organization to get the problems solved.

"We should stop longing for the good old days; instead we should invent tomorrow," he says.

WALKING THE TALK AT OWENS-CORNING

At Owens-Corning, Toledo, Ohio, one of the company's key initiatives is reducing cycle times. And, Bill Hamilton, ABC, manager of corporate communication, feels the communication department should live by the same performance dictates as the rest of the work force.

"Rather than writing an article in the company magazine about reducing cycle times, we've created overnight videos and done daily reporting of important company events" Hamilton says. He feels such demonstrations of shortened cycle times by the communication department create far more impact than an article on the topic. They also exhibit the team spirit that is driving many work forces in today's "new economy."

"We had writers on the scene during a recent global sales meeting, and using electronic mail, we published daily speech summaries and other information about the event to employees all over the world," Hamilton says.

"We had to eliminate a lot of approvals in order to do this, but in the spirit of empowerment, we felt we had to empower communication employees, too," Hamilton adds.

As the company refocused its mission after major restructuring, Hamilton says the downsized communication department looked hard at everything it did. The goal was to reduce cycle times and to eliminate anything that did not add value. One ironic advantage of being downsized almost out of existence, Hamilton says, is that there was no attempt to spread the same work around to the remaining employees. No one felt he could do the work of the former 22, so projects that didn't add value got cut.

Since the lean days of mid-'80s, they have hired a few communicators to the staff, but much of the work is done by three major agencies, one handling public relations, another photo and visual communication, and another employee communication.

FROM CHAOS TO CONTEXT: The more things change, the more they stay the same

Companywide publications, especially the glossy colorful ones, became easy targets of spending cutbacks in the '80s. They were expensive, they were perceived to be too broadly focused, and they were not timely.

Well, none of those facts has changed, but the global work world has, and a new trend toward more companywide, general-interest employee publications may be emerging from the downsizing ashes.

It was easier for Tom Peters to write about "Thriving on Chaos" than it is for employees to live it in the work place. As communication consultant Roger D'Aprix, ABC, points out, with E-mail making every employee an information producer, we now have communication chaos with no overall context for the blizzard of messages.

Oddly enough, the solution to helping employees cope with this chaos is the trustiest and most time-honored tool in the communicator's kit bag. And, in this era of passion for new solutions, the companywide, all-hands, one-size-fits-all publication might at first seem like an ironic choice.

The companywide publication of the nineties, however, will feature some changes from former incarnations. First, it will be released from any requirement to be timely; E-mail can handle that much better. Second, the focus will be tighter -- to help employees from vastly different cultures and countries understand and buy into the common mission. Third, it will be used to create a context for all the other messages employees receive through face-to-face, videos and E-mail. As you will read in the accompanying article, companywide publications at Federal Express, Motorola and Alcan are being looked at in a new light. Watch for more retooling as organizations take a new look at the basics for help with today's new communication problems.

Cliff McGoon is a senior communication consultant with offices in Palm Springs and San Francisco.