My ability to communicate has never been in question. I pride myself on writing without needless decoration. I can be civil, friendly and even endearing. I can be trite, crass and sometimes blunt.
10 years of broad writing experience means sweet bugger all in corporate communications.
If you’re looking for a writing style that blends all the wonders of passive-aggression, insincerity and hubris without tacky old bugbears like meaning, honesty and relationship building then corporate comms might be your idea of a day well spent. I feel dirty, dirty like the first time you discovered porn dirty, whenever I don my ‘writing for the man’ hat.
Unfortunately corporate communications has become a stand alone language; linguistics in all its complexity is the only way to approach such a mature monster. It permeates the pores of the entire commercial machine, nobody is safe and no topic is sacred. It must, it must, it must come like a memo. They think in corporate commspeak now – it cannot change.
I don’t wonder why the ages of 22 to 42 are now a catalogue of excess and chemical debauchery for most mainline folk. I pin the blame directly on the workplace personality vacuum and its well honed sense of sameness.
Don’t be fooled – it’s costing you money
Here’s the picture in my head – you’re a boss in middle to upper management and you’re shaking your head. “We foster creativity and workplace culture here.” That’s great, I know, I worked for you once or twice (or more depending on how well you’ve paid attention to this blog.) Unfortunately you’re kidding yourself and the cardboard flavoured social club you’ve written into workplace procedures has the social creativity of an accountant in a padded cell.
- When was the last time a team member emailed you to tell you that a client was a sodding moron that couldn’t breathe without tech support?
- When was the last time you read something about your company on an employee’s blog (facebook, twitter) without cringe or suppression?
Teamwork requires honesty and honesty requires open language. Self-censorship amongst employees is costing you money in poor decision making.
Your decisions as a manager need to be based on the most appropriate feedback from front- and mid-line staff. The ethos of corporate communications that has evolved allows for meaning and fact to be obscured in censored language and pre-packaged communication. Corporate language is not required to keep intra-office communications civil – that’s what social norms and values are for.
Be open and others will equally be open. Don’t let them hide the information you need to know behind procedure and pro-forma. It costs money and slows commercial agility.
The rules as they stand
It’s not hard to see the rules of corporate comms.
- No negativity – if you have bad news, deal with it, hide it, ignore it but for God’s sake don’t tell anyone about it. don’t tell your immediate supervisor either, he might need to show your latest email to his supervisor who needs to send a folio of recent comms off to head office.
- Posting an internal email on your website is like lifting your skirt at a bikie bar. Public interest was removed from the syllabus years ago.
- Proposals don’t mean shit if they’re not pro-forma.
- Nor do ideas, updates, thoughts or warnings.
How to fix this
Keep your client-facing communications controlled – let internal emails go to hell. If the point isn’t getting across, ask if that employee was making any sense before they dropped the commspeak.
Keep your eye on employee’s public writing – let them write it anyway. If your public image spirals downward you didn’t deserve it in the first place. Behave yourself and you have nothing to fear, in fact, your employees will be your greatest PR asset.
Keep your Jargon – let employees choose not to use it. Shortening a sentence down to a single word is not the same as simplification.
Keep your reporting procedures – let yourself report the ugly side of the situation. A board of directors wants to hear what’s going on, they can get PR spin from advertising.
-fin
