Working in head office...

What's the difference between working at Head Office versus working in an operating division or subsidiary?  Why are some people so desperate to work at the very top of an organisation?

I only ask because I've been chatting to a couple of people recently where it has struck me that there isn't a hierarchy of importance and in fact there can be much more fun to be had out in a division than trying to make sense of things at the centre - particularly in a complex conglomerate.

Think about this.

At the Centre, many of the things you are working on don't have relevance to many people on the front line.  The concerns of a corporate centre are often about governance or controls, the agenda is often driven by the reporting cycle and messages are often difficult to distill out of dry strategic statements of intent.

If you are lucky there might be a HQ HSE function or maybe something semi-operational to get your teeth into.

The result is that comms from the centre is often about 'Tell' - all the asking, involving or debate may well happen out in the divisions.

And you have the added problem that the politics are more complicated.  You don't just have to work with the senior guys - there are the divisional directors to convince.  And they have 101 reasons why your plan won't work for them or why your clever strategy could upset their key customers/stakeholders/local management team.

By contrast, in a division you own the audience, you know what they are thinking, you have a daily impact on how the business works.  Of course you have corporate guidelines to subvert and maybe get stopped doing something because it clashes with some corporate announcement.  And you own the network of local contacts...

Best of all you probably control the channels that matter - group centre often has to come crawling to get you to cover something.

Clearly every organisation is very different.  Size, complexity and the diversity of the business portfolio play a part in deciding the rules of engagement.

So what's a Group Head of IC to do?

Well for a start there's the essential delivery challenge to meet.  If you are running a decent news and information operation it's a start.  Managing a few essential channels well not only buys you space, it builds your credibility.

Then you need to decide which audiences you own - how about the top 100 leaders for starters?  Because that speaks to your role as a coordinator across the business.

But what do you need to do to fulfill your role as an enabler?

I'd say that there is real scope for Centre people to be the driver of better skills out in the business.  Helping define the competencies and organise the training that no one else can afford individually (yes yes I do have an interest there!) and providing a forum for best practice sharing are all things that represent incredible value.

I've also been impressed by people who manage a team of 'consultants' who can help with trouble-shooting or heavy lifting when its needed.  You don't need to dish out budget, but being on hand to help when colleagues out in the business need it also ensures that the businesses are better enabled to do what they do best - deliver for the group.

There are quite a few things more that people do - but how much of this post can you bear to read?

Essentially, my point is that the 'senior' job isn't necessarily senior - but it does require a different set of skills to running a division's comms.  Seeing the relationship as hierarchical doesn't give much of a clue to what really is needed.

Liam

Comments

[Adam Hibbert]

My guess is that the "right" way to look at this depends on which stage in the lifecycle of your conglomerate you find yourself in.

After bouts of rationalisation, the centre always has to butt out to some extent, to let the divisions/units get on with the real work. But once that's happened for a time, the centre has to reassert its role, to bring matters arising back into alignment.

For iComms (as for most things, I guess) there are those of us who'll always want to be making the running, or directly involved with those doing so ... so it makes good sense to have a role out in the field most of the time.

But then there are still the times the centre is ascendant, and we'll also want to be in there ...

[Liam FitzPatrick]

I think you're right - there is a natural cycle to these things. Everyone must be familiar with the tendency to fix things that aren't broke!

Ages ago I also saw a bit of research that linked the cycle to events in corporate development - something along the lines of ... companies that had experienced a real crisis were more likely to have a proper central IC team whilst those that had been involved in major M&A work might have stronger HR-based teams etc...

I wish I'd kept a copy at the time!

Liam