Later on today I’m heading to Birmingham to take part in the Institute of Internal Communication’s annual conference, the theme of which is Building Peak Performance. I’ll be doing my usual thing of wandering about finding interesting people and trying to learn something new and fun. Tomorrow afternoon I’m facilitating a conversation among the 100 or so guests. We’ve generously been given two and a half hours to have some useful fun together. What are we going to talk about? I’m not sure yet, but as a way of getting me thinking I posed a question on Facebook and Twitter yesterday. The question was:
‘You’ve been given the job of Director of Internal Communications. What things would you change to help make work better?’
I thought I’d share the responses and invite you to add your own.
Via Twitter velotester kicked us off with, ‘Tell the CEO to walk the floor and just talk to people.’
Which led to humapuk suggesting, ‘Send one email to say no-one to send emails to anyone that day and all mobiles off. Invite everyone to lunch together.’
Next up was Chutzpah84, ‘ I actually think I’d turn off email you know…..’
Julsbo said, ‘Give people a space to have ideas that are heard outside hierarchical management lines.’ I replied, ‘online? offline? both? Culture issues would be interesting to watch :)’ which in turn led to, ‘Both! Face to face is to be encouraged, but is not the only way. Ambient idea chatter has value for speakers & listeners.’
mirgray added, ‘Set a max limit of 200 words per internal email blast. If that teaser doesn’t inspire there is little point blathering on.’
The Twitter stuff was fed into the Facebook conversation so I’ll share the whole thing for completeness (with apologies for duplication).
Congratulations, you got the job! Now what would you do differently?
Kill email. Stab it, stomp on it, choke it to death. Lets talk… 😉
No…. Don’t kill it but use it when it is the best form of communication, not as a substitute for conversation …. Call me’ 🙂
Chris gets my vote on this one. 😛