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The field of internal communication is a rich one to write about because of its potential to influence and change. But that’s not to detract from the vitally important job of communicating to external stakeholders. Effective B2B public relations requires thought, planning and imagination.

Research shows that journalists turn first to the internet for all things press and media for their clients. After all most media types are going to be gen X-rs or gen Y-rs. They are online, wired, actively seek technological interaction and are becoming seamlessly connected through technology.  

Clients are often not doing enough to meet the communication needs of the press and media. They think that a list of latest press releases posted on their customer facing site is enough. But they are missing a trick, or twenty, and not getting a fair share of voice.

We recently conducted some informal research with journalists, specifically in the B2B sector (though the same will apply to B2C) and they pleaded with us to have more press resources online.

This is precisely why we are introducing an online media centre. With a dedicated url, easily referenced by journos and indexed by individual client, this will contain press releases as searchable html pages and dedicated RSS feeds. It will host all podcasts, blog feeds and videocasts that we use to supplement client communication as well as a searchable image library.

Of course none of this matters unless the journalists trust the source and this means spending much time and effort in building relationships. It goes without saying that face to face communication is still critical in building relationships, with 45% of journalists in the Keynote survey agreeing this was actually their preferred method. Telephone contact (15%) and events/ conferences (13%) also have a place, but fall a way behind the internet and face to face channels.

This is part of our vision to take B2B PR into the 21st century and to continue to drive value for clients. Find out more about our services at Changeworks Communications.

We believe in using copy as an effective tool to influence, persuade and have an effect on behavioural change. However to write for this purpose requires planning and preparation.  At Changeworks we write for impact. This involves a creative briefing and planning process that is designed for maximum impact and highest value.

A key part of this process is a unique creative brief.  Not only do we consider the usual objectives, target audience, core proposition etc etc.  But we make sure that we build in the 4-Mat system, the 6-step motivator and other techniques drawn from NLP and other behavioural change programmes.  This ensures that our copy is not just plain speaking and impactful but that it has influence too.

We also believe in storyboarding and mindmapping our creative process. Say, for example, I am writing copy for a brochure, I will always storyboard this first.  This helps to ensure that I cover the representational systems and have a finished piece that catches the eye as well as the imagination.

My employees use the same process and my suppliers and associates follow this too, which ensures consistency in our delivery.

Changeworks combines an understanding of the cognitive-behavioural aspects of communication in its copywriting and media work, which helps make our work more impactful.

We are taught about (and I lecture on) the cultural web and this model certainly has relevance when we talk of organisational culture but one thing is missing.  What is the evidence of culture? What is the real tangible measure of culture? It has to be behaviour. 

Behaviour is the outcome from the inputs of those elements of the cultural web, such as symbols, structures, rituals, values.  And when we talk about cultural change we are really meaning behavioural change anyway.

I went to the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s Annual Conference in Birmingham on 11th November and was inspired by some of the speakers there.  Evan Davis was fantastic as the Chair of the event. And several of the key speakers alluded to using employees as champions of cultural and strategic change. John Smythe, founder of Engage for Change, talked about sharing power and adopting a ‘co-creation’ approach to engagement where employees are involved in decision making and building the strategy (the ‘how are we going to get there’ element). I loved what John had to say because it takes the approach of employees as champions of change, perhaps seeing employees as directors of strategic and cultural change from the ground floor.

John listed five routes to engaging for change:

1. Engage the leaders (them as role models)
2. Interventions
3. Transforming communication
4. Build capability
5. Identify measures and drivers

Rather like in the hero’s journey (from Joseph Campbell’s amazing book ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’), they need a strong ’call to adventure’ to get them bought in to this process. I can see the hero’s journey applying to organisational change where the hero’s journey starts in the ordinary corporate world, and the employee receives a call (a challenge) to enter an unusual world of strange events.

Glenn Manoff from O2 told us the about the O2 story – a massive employee engagement exercise culminating in the opening of the O2 arena.  And this gave me some ideas for how to get this call to adventure across.  Using an almost trance-like process (akin to Anthony robbins!), a manager cleverly used ‘appreciate inquiry’ as a tool to help people visualise, imagine and connect to a future that is different and more successful than the present.  This is exactly like the ‘Imagine If’ sessions in Viral change.  It helps people step out of their current frame and put on a new, exciting frame that opens them up to possibility. From here we can use facilitated sessions to elicit ideas and connect to a new reality.

“If you can imagine it,You can achieve it. If you can dream it,You can become it.”
William A. Ward

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”  Einstein

Internal segmentation of employees is sometimes needed to help target different audiences by attitudes, values and potential behaviour around change. It can be useful in a collaborative change programme. We need to consider the outcome and use this as the basis for the segmentation, otherwise it is meaningless. But as part of this process, which doesn’t have to be onerous, we can ask employees where they can add value and what the likely blocks to success will be.  And this is just the start of the co-creation process.

Comment on this article or email me (sue@changeworkscom.co.uk) with your thoughts.  Changeworks Communications helps organisations achieve behavioural and cultural change.

I am in the middle of a Viral Change project for a large organisation and, as part of this process, I am talking to employees. I prefer to call these ‘thinking workshops’ rather than focus groups, because I think that the latter term has become cliched. And without encouragement, people perhaps may not think deeply enough about what we ask them.

On that point, I would highly recommend a book that I am reading: ‘Marketing Metaphoria’ by Gerald and Lindsay Zaltman uncovers the deeper metaphors that work behind our deeper thinking.  Zaltman has developed an innovative process for depth interviews and focus groups to elicit people’s unconscious layers of thinking.  You can watch a video of Zaltman talking about this process, with a live example at HBR’s site.  There is also a ‘mock’ written case study to illustrate Zaltman’s point about the risks of failing to think deeply about what consumers are saying.

Whether we are planning internal or external communication, marketing principles apply. However, most marketing practice is based on outdated or incomplete knowledge of how the mind works.  By studying disciplines such as cognitive and behavioural science we can augment and enhance our marketing tools significantly and far apace of our competitors.  But more importantly we can add significant value to our clients in our change communication with them.

I love Zaltman’s book because it is about understanding the deeper structure and meaning behind the words that customers use, and using this to produce deeper level and higher quality managerial thinking. As a coach, I am fully aware of the importance and significance of metaphor in the change process.  For me this book gives me lots of ideas as to take this approach overtly into focus groups and depth interviews as part of a research process for internal change.

Whilst the book relates the concepts to brands and brand development, but there is plenty of application in developing internal communication programmes and certainly in change management.

But remember, deep thinking is hard work: have you got the courage to face the deep?

If strategy is to be successfully executed, and bring effective turnaround in business performance, we need to communicate what it is that we want employees to do.  In other words how to behave.  This is obvious. But organisations often find this hard to implement in practical ways. Perhaps this is because communication is, by definition, open to interpretation.  Encoding and decoding, rather like the raft of confusing codex in any multimedia environment, is a fluid process and open to errors of configuration.

behavioural influencers

The Viral Change approach to organisational change is refreshing in its ‘bottom up’ approach: what will strategic excellence look like for us as an organisation and what will people be doing?  What are the 5 or 6 or so, critical behaviours that are going to achieve this for us? Sounds easy perhaps. But this needs careful attention and consideration (worthy of separate post).

Then as part of this ‘viral’ spread of change, we need to find those people who are already demonstrating this behaviour, for this is ‘excellence’ based on our future strategic needs.  Strategy is, after all, about where we want to be, and behaviour is about how we are going to get there.

So, given that we want to spread a certain set of behaviours, those that are deemed as excellent or noteworthy – those worth copying – modelling is one of the fundamental ways of ‘communicating’ that behaviour. Of course, I am talking from an NLP modelling perspective here and whilst this might present a rather lengthy process in its full programme, there are certainly useful learnings in change to be drawn from the formal modelling process.

The two elements to consider in modelling skills and behaviour are the observable, externally presented behaviour and also the internal mechanisms and strategies that individuals have developed (often subconsciously), or ‘what makes people tick’. 

The individual’s external behaviour is influenced by the higher logical levels of learning and change, such as capabilities and beliefs/values (see earlier posts on this topic), so it is to these that we must look for the deeper strategies for change.  The first step in the modelling process is usually implicit modelling; through that state of ‘not knowing’ an observer models the externally presented behaviour of the subject to gain insight (through the feeling mind) into state, thought processes, beliefs and attitudes. 

Then explicit modelling – the formal, interview type structure – is used to build on this model. Viral Change is focused on influencing external behaviour; external behaviour is observable and we can describe it accurately through language. However, if a successful behavioural change agent’s most important capabilities are internal (ie. thinking and feeling processes) – and often unknown to them – it is probably important to spend some attention in this area too.

Most people today accept that their ability to behave effectively is influenced by their feelings, way of thinking, beliefs, values and sense of identity. It therefore becomes crucial to identify thinking strategies and other ‘intangibles’ that are so important in ensuring these ‘change agents’ have the resources to maintain the momentum that the struggling organisation needs.  The problem is that often people are not conscious of what is going on for them – they are ‘unconsciously competent’ at the behaviour and have never picked apart what it is they do.

Here, a process of ‘macro modelling’ can be useful to help the individual understand what it is they do, and therefore facilitate transference of this behaviour overtly to others (through viral and other communication channels) but also to help the individual being modelled to demonstrate those strengths more of the time, especially when under duress or when facing difficulties.

For example if a required behaviour is ‘keeping customer promises’, macro modelling is undertaken in the following way:

1. Locate a time and space representing the context in which the person manifests ‘delivering on

macro modelling

promises’.   Find the beliefs and values which guide him in this context.

2. Locate another space for a context in which the person is not able to manifest ‘delivering on promises’.  Find the beliefs and values which are different in this context.

3. Establish a new location for a third position in which the person can view both the effective and the ineffective contexts.  From this perspective evaluate the similarities and differences between 1st and 2nd contexts with respect to beliefs, values and anticipated consequences.

4. Have the person return to each of these positions and from each one, move to action, or see the next steps he or she would take, as well as consequences related to those actions or steps.  This helps them to consider the ‘larger system’ in which they demonstrate this behaviour.

5. Add a 4th perspective, from which to consider all three.  From here, evaluate the presuppositions, assumptions, skills and capabilities operating in the evaluations that were made in the 3rd position space.  Are they appropriate? How did you select what constituted ‘delivering on promises’? What did you presuppose about values and beliefs in those contexts?  etc

This process helps to build up the model of how that person ‘does’ this behaviour both in terms of actual behaviour as well as mental processes.  And the simpler this model is, the more effective it will be in application.  The understanding gained (through this and other tools), can of course, be used to develop a profile by which to ’recruit’ similar behavioural change champions for the programme. 

Whilst a formal modelling process is not required for a Viral Change programme, an understanding of the tools and benefits of modelling is very helpful in ensuring the programme’s success.  Changeworks Communications undertakes regular modelling and viral change programmes for large and medium sized organisations.  Contact Sue (sue@changeworkscom.co.uk) for more information.