I'm a bit worried.
Apparently there's a war being waged that I missed. Ok, maybe the recent coverage of the US elections and the Ross/Brand dirty phone calls distracted me.
But it seems that HR have been battling with unseen evil forces to snatch control of Internal Comms and despatches from the front line suggest that the tide is turning in their favour.
This great news comes to us courtesy of Ian Buckingham and his blog on The Change Board
I suggest you take time to read it (well at least half way down).
His point is that HR is wresting control of IC from other less worthy people. The problem is that IC seems to be run by a bunch of unprofessional hooligans who don't know better than to write everything down.
Where has this man been living? Maybe he's been hanging out with John McCain on the Iraq-Pakistan border. But his picture of IC professionals is completely alien to me.
And apparently "face to face communication via line managers is proven, time and again, to be the most effective communication"- which could go down in the 'attacking Panzers with cavalry' book of outdated tactics...
Of course face to face is valuable, but anyone with any experience knows three facts:
1) It isn't proven to be very much
2) It is only effective when it works - which isn't often
3) ...and it only applies to subjects in which the manager is expected to be the expert - for other issues employees are happy to hear from other people (which might be by paper).
Ian rambles on a bit more and (to my embarassment) repeats a few of my personal prejudices about big bang engagement programmes - but with him leading us into battle internal communicators should be going AWOL as fast as they can.
Liam
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