AN OPEN LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Dear Rex,

Not so long ago, you penned a Chicago Tribune column about the issue with corporate wellness programs, the fact that fewer than 50 percent of employers formally evaluated the results.  [Courtesy of a Kaiser Family Foundation report.]

You then admonished businesses to communicate, to spell out the whys and wherefores.  And you also noted (and we quote):  “[Companies] love to take pragmatic programs like this and dress them up in peppy buzzwords and then market them to employees.”

So, Rex:  You’re wrong.  Big time.

What your opinion fails to consider:

• There’s something called ‘cognitive dissonance,” when people deliberately go out of their way to avoid information about behaviors that need to be corrected, or subjects we just don’t wanna read about/listen to.
• Factor in the phenomenon called the ADHD syndrome; each of us spends about eight seconds perusing info before we get distracted.  [And that’s the latest statistic!]
• Few of us communicators ‘market’ plans and programs and initiatives to employees.  We know better.  Usually, we look at behaviors and attitudes and the role of change within the company – and then develop a compelling, consistent, and clear plan to achieve the results needed.  Which could include training, change agents, executive consensus and sponsorship, and all the smart channels you failed to mention.

So, please Rex, do us a favor:  Check out what we do before you dismiss it as ‘peppy buzzwords.’

NO MORE SKIRTING THE ISSUE

For a while now, we’ve deliberately avoided the topic … even though we’re an MWBE company.

But when piles of recent clippings talk about communications differences between men and women, when our own body of work acknowledges the gaps, and when more academes are seriously studying gender conversations, we figured it’s time.

And despite the naysaying about John Gray’s decades-old philosophy stating that Men are from Mars, Women are From Venus, there’s much proof that he’s right.

Women talk. 

Men shy away from openness (especially in stressful times). 

Rosalind Wiseman, in her Masterminds and Wingmen, interviewed dozens and hundreds of teenaged boys, with the conclusion that as boys enter manhood, they do begin to talk less.  Even if they’re as emotionally invested in relationships as girls.

That retreat mentality should be obvious to anyone who’s worked in the business world, even when there’s no reason to dive into a cave.  Straightforward prose and (some) dialogue infuse meetings and reports when males are in charge.  Many women bosses tend towards the chatty, the ‘let’s talk’ narratives, preferring to expose all aspects of a particular issue and all its possible solutions. 

No, this delineation isn’t100 percent true.  But we see it often enough to question if there needs to be some sort of segmented communications by gender as well as by demographics.  Or, perhaps, messages that are composed and directed to specific audiences, each with the same content but different presentations.

Are we on opposing planets?  Please RSVP …

THE TYRANNY OF MESSAGING

At one point or another in our careers, we learn the importance of “messaging.”

“It’s the foundation of everything we do,” proclaim senior communicators.  “We need to ensure that we’re consistent and accurate in our statements,” insist agency brethren.  “And it’s the best way to spell out our uniqueness and differentiate us from the competition,” underscore marketers.

Sometimes the cry for re-messaging starts because of one specific event, say, an executive’s speech or a major presentation.  Other times, it’s the re-thinking of what to say about a company and its products/services, prompted by a merger, acquisition, reorg, new C-suite, and similar changes.  Or:  It’s simply time for a refresh.

Then … wordsmithing and architecting begins.  Reviewers, many of them, weigh in.  And go through many rounds until, voila!  Messaging is complete.

Not quite yet.  To us, the application of messaging often gets lost after the crafting’s done.  It’s all too easy to plonk down the messages in the middle of a blog or speech or Town Hall.   Recycle it, in other words.

But ask yourself first:  Does it ring true?  Is the leader’s quote plucked almost verbatim from the platform?   Could you imagine someone reading (or talking like) this?   Can you readily pick out key messages … simply from the exact words used and not the meaning?  How powerful, in short, is the conversation? 

One last question:  Does messaging control us – or do we control it?

GO DIRECT, YOUNG PROFESSIONALS!

There’s a corporate America practice that has us flummoxed. 

It usually doesn’t work 100 percent of the time for 100 percent of the people. 

It requires lots of preparation and cajoling. 

And it truly needs a major support system, bolstered in part by human resources, policies and procedures, and heavy-duty communications.

The culprit:  Cascading information from managers and supervisors to staff and teams.  Somehow, many times, information gets stuck in the middle.

Our solution?  Straight from a Forrester Research survey, revealing (no surprise) that 66 percent of consumers trust recommendations from people they care about, while only 18 percent trust brand information found on Facebook, Instagram, and the like. 

Instead of labeling it in the same league as the somewhat tarnished multi-level marketing, think of it as the friends and family kind of swap, using employees to ‘sell’ to other employees (in this case, to exchange data and info).  Online and social media make it incredibly easy to sell to those you know; internally, most companies host communities and affinity groups on their intranets, encouraging conversations and collaboration.  And if we plot out a well-defined influencer network and map, so much the better.

[Yes, we know the downsides:  That kind of freedom makes brand and corporate messages so much harder to control.  And timing would be, to an extent, loosey-goosey.]

Yet the power and meaningfulness of direct connections overcomes, to us, any objections.  Your take, dear readers?