150 | Mastering the Readiness Gap | Scott McInnes, Sadhbh O’Flaherty & Maddison Grigsby

We tend to communicate in a way that is comprehensive at the expense of being comprehensible. So in an attempt to tell everything, everyone everything, we actually say too much and we're getting anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 messages every day as humans from internal, external, just noise that we end up misinterpreting.

At Inspiring Change, we help our clients build work cultures that bring out the best in their people. We created this podcast to share real stories and insights from those who are shaping better workplaces every day. So, grab a cuppa and pop in your earbuds wherever you are. You're very welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast. We're excited to have you with us. Hello there, and welcome to this bizarrely very special episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. It is our 150th episode, and who'd have thought? That's mental. Like, as I was just saying to our guest today, I think it's just my, uh, just complete lack of willingness to give things up. Or maybe my wife might call that pigheadedness, perhaps. Um, but it's lovely to have you. Thank you for being here, and thank you for being here for hopefully many or all of the other 149 episodes. Somebody did say to me recently, If you don't look back on your early episodes and you're not horrified, it means you're not working hard enough to make them better. And I can pretty much guarantee if you go back and listen to Mary back in episode 1, who at the time was the CEO of Special Olympics Worldwide, you will see that we are indeed making quite the effort to get better because it was horrible. It was really, really horrible. You could hear me eating biscuits, which was never a good thing for a podcast. So it's lovely to have you. Thank you for being here. And I'm really, really excited to get going on this. Actually out-of-course episode because we thought let's separate out the 150th episode by doing a little, let's call it a feature-length gig with today's guest. I'm also joined by Saeve O'Flaherty, my colleague from Inspiring Change, who isn't a stranger to those of you who've listened before because Saeve has actually been in the questioning seat with me about 6 or 7 episodes ago. So we're delighted to be joined today by Madison Grigsby, who is a US communications consultant in the communication consulting practice in Gallagher over in the US. Now, whilst many of you might not know who Gallagher is, those of you who work in the world of internal comms will certainly probably recognize the idea of the State of the Sector report, which is a report that's been going on for about 18 years, um, this year, um, basically exploring through the eyes of internal comms pros around the world what the state of the communications sector is globally. Before I get to Madison, I wanted to pull out a few stats from this year's report. Which is entitled Changing Lives with World-Class Employee Communications, and a real focus this year on the readiness gap, on helping organizations to be ready for what's coming up. And I want to pull out a few stats which, if you're looking at the report, are near the beginning, page 6. Clarity and direction: 73% of organizations saying they want to be strategic, but only 18% 18% of employees saying that those organizations actually achieve that. 61% is, you know, change is the number one desired skill, yet 61% have no formal change comms approach. A bit more on that later on from Saive. When it comes to EVP, or employee value proposition, only 15% of organizations have active, socialized EVPs, and more worryingly, 37% have no EVP at all. So no ability to create advocates out of the people in their organizations, no ability to necessarily go out and attract the best talent in a market which is really, really hot at the moment. When it comes to personalization, fewer than 1 in 5 organizations are satisfied with their ability to personalize content through their existing channels. When it comes to AI, 3/4 of functions remain stalled in early stage discussions or just ad hoc AI experimentation, and only 36% of those people who responded feel AI ready. This is an issue that we're seeing in Inspiring Change with clients that we work with, that there is just so much stuff going out there. So, a stat in the human-centric communication section of the report, that organizations with high volumes of communication experienced 30% jump in seeing leadership trust as a significant risk. So, the more you're telling us, kind of weirdly, the less we trust you. And something that has been in this report, and we're definitely going to be getting into this, Madison, something that has been in this report year on year on year on year, for as long as I've been seeing this report, 87% say that manager communications capability is a risk in organizations. Yet only 21% of organizations provide toolkits to leaders. Now, that stat has been there for years, and it's always been around about those numbers. So I'll be interested to dive into that. We will put the link in the show notes below. If you want to type it in, it's ajg.com/employeeexperience/state-of-the-sector. That was a bit of a mouthful. Madison, how are you getting on?

Hello, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Love kind of hearing the stats again from the report. One thing you said earlier was your earlier episodes and how you hated to listen to them or how you've gotten so much better. I actually got to the communications consulting world via the music industry. I tried to make it as a singer-songwriter, and I heard somewhere that you have, I think, 100 bad songs in you before you get good ones. So just get them out there. So you must be well on the 50th Good episode if the numbers are the same. But I'm sure they aren't as bad as you thought they were.

Let's hope so. Let's hope so. All we have, we just have to look back at the stats and see. So Kameer, thank you for being here today. Thank you for bringing us through this. There is a huge amount of detail in this report. But I guess what I wanted to do was just start off with that theme of the readiness gap. Tell me, tell me about that at a high level.

Yeah, I mean, I think everyone's feeling it. And this report just gives language to what we're experiencing in the workplace. The readiness gap is really this idea that where technology should enable us to be and where leadership is expecting us to be and where kind of our future is going so quickly doesn't necessarily add up to, or that's not what employees are experiencing, right? There's this tension between like where we should be, could be, want to be, and where we are right now. And there's all these risks that are impacting our ability to get there. And those risks and that kind of distance between where we want to be and where we are going in the future and where we currently are and the infrastructure that we have to make us, to enable us to get there is that readiness gap that we're talking about.

What is the gap? Is it because we've actually been doing, and in fact, we're doing a bit of research at the moment ourselves in Inspiring Change on connection or disconnection, actually, as we're kind of pitching it in terms of what's getting in the way of employees feeling connected. So, for me, this kind of sits quite close to that. So, from your perspective, when you look at the research and the people that you spoke to, is this a gap in clarity? Is it a gap in shared understanding? Is it a gap between people and strategy? Is it all of the above? Is it none of the above?

Yeah. So, we actually identified 6 kind of key risks that are contributing to this gap. The first is audience burnout. So, we're getting so much communication all the time, and a lot of it is not relevant. And so, that burnout is going to actually ironically cause— the overcommunication is ironically causing people to not listen, right? And I think we've all been there where it's just too much and we tune out. Budget constraints are a risk to get us where we need to go. Obviously, with internal communications, it is sometimes viewed as a nice-to-have. But the reality is communications is a business imperative to create true business outcomes and to create healthy work environments for the people within them. The third risk that we identified is line manager effectiveness. So, exactly what you said. There's this huge ask and expectation on our managers to be good communicators. Employees are asking for it. And the responsibility of the manager is becoming greater and greater, but their skills in communicating and their levels of training and, and sort of preparedness in how to communicate all that information and that greater responsibility is not matching up to what they're being asked to do. The fourth one is information overload. That kind of goes back to that, that audience burnout. There is— we're in a bit of a catch-22 because there's about 97% of organizations that are going through some sort of transformation and change right now. So there's, It's everywhere. And a lot of organizations are going through more than one at a time. Yet we're seeing sort of this lack of success of those changes. And part of that is due to everyone needing to communicate the change because it's happening. But then because you're communicating it and there's so much change going on, that leads to overload. And then again, people kind of tune out and then the change is not successful because it's it hinges on people adopting and being aware and, and kind of adapting to these changes. So that information overload is a real risk for those changes to be successful for then kind of that future state that we were looking to go to. The fifth is internal communicators are often not included in key decisions. And they're the ones who are kind of building some of the strategy, socializing the strategy. But if they don't have a voice at the table, then that's a real It's a real deficit for the organization. And then the sixth one is lack of direction. Because there's so much going on, there's so much information coming down. People thrive when they know where they're going and they're actually able to sort of accept change and, you know, adopt the change more when they understand and they're part of that journey. But when there's so many different directions, there's so many different changes, it's hard to kind of focus on one strategy. Hard for people to get bought into that. So, that's really kind of— that was a lot, but those are kind of the six key risks that we're seeing in this readiness gap that are, that's impacting organizations' ability to get to where they need to be?

Let me pick up on a point you just made there. People thrive when they know where they're going. And for me, that's all about strategy understanding and strategy alignment, making sure that we are all pulling in the same direction because we only have, you know, a certain amount of money, a certain amount of time, a certain amount of engagement, a certain amount of everything that we need to get, we need to get people aligned. And pulling the same direction to make sure we get the strategy delivered. So, one of the jump-out areas for me in the stats that I called out earlier on, and you mentioned there, is this idea of strategy versus shared understanding. That 73% of organizations say they want to be strategic and really, really align people behind that strategy, but only 18% feel that they actually are aligned. Strategy exists, but it's not understood, which is a huge challenge. So what is it in your mind and from the research and your experience that actually makes strategy usable for people?

I think it starts at the top. It's clear vision on where the leaders are going. And so oftentimes, that can live in someone's head and they, or a group of people's minds, and they assume that it's understood. And I'm in a manager role, and I've realized, oh, I'm not intentionally not telling people about it. I just assume that they know because I know and we've talked, you know, peripherally about it. But so it needs to be clear in the lead— in the leader's minds, and then it really needs to be super clearly communicated more than one time. So we see generally for someone to start understanding information, you need interaction with it around 5 to 7 times, right? You see something once, you might remember it the next day, probably not, but over the course of 5 to 7 times, you start to actually remember it digest it and live it. So, that strategy needs to be really, really clear, really, really simple. And it needs to be communicated over the course of time. That doesn't mean this is our strategy XYZ, but that does mean that in any communications that are going out to your employees, that strategy and that direction is woven in. And so, it's reinforced even if sort of subtly that that's the direction you're going in. The last thing I would say is that humans are generally focused on what's in it for me when they're looking at communication. So, there can be this grand strategy, this grand trajectory, but at the end of the day, we are living, breathing beings who are, have real fears, real anxieties, real hopes, real dreams. And so, we want to know, great, what does that mean for me? What does that mean for my family? What does that mean for my future? So, the impetus really then becomes on the leadership and very often goes back to that manager role to to say, okay, this is where we're going. This is how you will be impacted. This is how you're going to come alongside us and how we can support you in your future. So be as clear as possible, both with empathy and with honesty about the direction and how it's going to impact people.

Just to come in on that, you know, because one of the stats that really stood out for me, you know, being somebody who works in change and change comms, which was part of the report that really I kind of delved into, one of the big things was that, you know, 61% don't have a formal change approach. And a lot of what you've spoken about, would sit within, you know, the very clear kind of change frameworks that we do and we use all the time, you know. Why do you think that is so high and why, you know, do you believe this is something that is actually actively shifting? I mean, I've seen it with some of my clients who are trying to introduce that professional, professionalized change management approach within their people. So are you seeing that? Is that something, you know, what's your thoughts around that side? Of us.

Yeah, I'm hearing more and more of sort of a change, um, change management role. So someone leading the change management project. But I think it's really important to delineate change management and then change communication. Like, those are two different things, and you really need both of them in a, in a, um, very significant way to make a change successful. So yes, there's the processes, there's the, um, you know, sort of the frameworks that we see with change management, But whatever it is that's changing, think of that as almost like living in a vacuum. So, that thing is changing. But for the success of that thing to actually build momentum and take shape, that requires that change to be socialized, to be adopted, to be really understood by the people in the organization who are expected to change, right? And I always, I always say people, we have what's called a status quo bias. We have a cognitive bias as human beings to resist change, even if it is, um, even if it's the alternative is better. Because of how we, how we've evolved, we see change as a threat. And so you have to go beyond just this is what's changing. You have to explain the why, and you have to really kind of, um, uh, I guess help support or at least consider the human emotion behind it. Emotion seems like such a sort of soft thing, right? But with change, it is such a significant driver. We're very often making our decisions based on emotion. And employees who are being asked to change when they're already change-averse because they're humans are likely going to have an emotional response. And communication is really going to be the thing that helps mitigate or, or support that employee. I think right now we are in, in such a change, um, a workplace sort of economy of change. Like change, we said in the report, change is business as usual now. Yeah, before it was like, great, changes, you know, we have— this is a change coming out. Change is the norm and change is the expectation. And so with that, we have to adapt our organizations and our structures to be able to support that. So that's a change management role, that's a change communications role. Because that change communication isn't always there, there's no, no one's, if no one's assigned to it, no one's proactively thinking about it. The communication becomes reactive. And I would say 99 times out of 100 communication is sort of the, oh, it's a nice, nice to have. We, and so we'll do it if we can get to it. But that is frankly, if you do that, you're going to be way behind and your change is not going to be successful. So you've got to have someone who's thinking about it proactively, strategically, and not just sort of responsively as the changes are coming in.

Yeah. And do you think, like, when you're thinking about internal communications as a discipline and change comms as a discipline, where do you see the crossover? Or do you feel that the skill set that goes with being a change comms person nearly needs to form part of an internal communicator's toolkit, I suppose?

Yeah. So we definitely see that change communication is, I think it was the top skill or one of the very top skills that internal comms teams are looking for. So, I think there is a sort of a general understanding of change and change communication and really kind of almost human psychology that a communicator should have, like how humans react, respond. But I do think there is a place for change communications role, or at least a focus. There needs to be someone who is thinking about how this change is going to impact other people and, and be proactive in building a strategy for that because the broader internal comms teams are generally pulled into corporate communications, leadership communications. There are a million and one things that they're working on. So then to add change to their plate when it's such a specific and difficult task, you just run out of capacity where we only have, you know, a certain amount of margin and, um, comms teams tend to run really lean and without as much budget as they need. And so, um, I would fight for that comms role, that change comms role every time.

Me too. I'm with you on that one.

And when you look back, one word you said there, Madison, that I picked up on was psychology. And I wonder if we do believe that kind of change is the new norm, if you like, that I think that it's not a case of going along, change, back to normal, change, back to normal as it used to be. It's this continuous line of change going on. How much onus is there on people that work in organizations to get themselves into a better psychological place to just go, "Okay, if this is what's going to be, then this is what it's going to be, and I'll just roll with that." How much responsibility? Because we can spend a lot of time talking about internal comms teams and them putting out the comms, but how much of an onus is there on people, the employees in an organization to go, "Okay, if this is the landscape, this is the landscape. Let's get on with it." Yep, absolutely.

I was just talking to a colleague last week about simply accepting what is happening and the acceptance of, wow, this is really— feels very chaotic, or it feels like too much change at once. There's a levity that comes with that because you're able to say, OK, if I'm— if I don't have expectation or this is my expectation, I'm able to then just operate within it. And it is the norm. I would say, I would encourage employees, yes, like if you can get to that space, if you can learn to accept the change as norm, you personally will have a less stressful experience. You personally will be able to thrive a bit more and be a bit more adaptable. I have heard, and I don't have— this isn't in our report, so it's a bit just from recollection, which is scary. But I have heard that adaptability is the single most kind of common factor in people who are successful. And so, for the employee, I would say the more adaptable you can be, the better. That's easier said than done. And I think the employer— sure, sure, I would say employees, yes, be adaptable, expect the change. But the employer can't control whether or not that individual employee is going to be doing that. And so, it behooves the employer to support that employee if assuming that they're not going to just be expecting to change and assuming that the status quo bias is going to prevail. So that's where the employer will really benefit coming in and saying, this is what's changing. This is what you can expect. I tell a story once of being on an airplane and I think there was a, you know, a mechanical issue and I was, we were ready to take off. We were about to take off. There was a mechanical issue. So it was a 10-minute delay. Well, then 10 minutes later, the pilot came on and it was a 20-minute delay. And then 20 minutes later, the pilot came on and it was another 30-minute delay. And over the course of time, it added up to, I think, 4.5 hours. So we were sitting on the plane for 4.5 hours. Wow.

Wow.

And I, I actually wrote a LinkedIn post on it because I realized I actually wasn't as agitated or, or upset as I would have assumed. Assumed. I wanted to get home. I was not comfortable, right? Like, you're on an airplane, no one wants to sit on an airplane that's not moving. But the consistent communication about what was going on at every step and the empathy and the clarity and the transparency, I felt like I knew what was going on at all points in time. And so I was able to receive that information a little bit more easily and without as much sort of frustration or anger or emotional response. And I think that's how it is in the workplace. We don't always even know where we're going to be, what's going to be shifting and changing. And a lot of times, people who are in leadership roles are also— they're managing up and managing down. And so they're, they're getting information and grappling with it and then trying to lead people with that new information when they themselves are also experiencing that change. So, at the very top, as much as we can be clear and bring people along, even when that message is difficult, it will help people accept the change a little bit more because at the end of the day, they want to know that they are like psychologically, we want to know that we're safe. We want to know that we belong. We want to know that we matter. And so, being involved in that, knowing those messages early on and as often as they're coming in, you know, as the changes are coming in, being told and being kept up to date, that's going to mitigate a lot of that fear, which leads to lack of productivity, lack of engagement. So, that was a long-winded answer to your question. But no, it's spot on.

Yeah. And I agree with everything you've said. And it actually reminds me of a line, which I think it was Peter Senge, the American systems Systems Thinker said, which was people don't mind change, they just don't like being changed. And that talks exactly to that point of helping to explain the why, what's in it for me, all that stuff that we need to do to bring people on a journey of change. And of course, a lot of the work that Saif does with our clients in inspiring change is exactly that. How do we position that? And I think what's really interesting is that that sits for me, kind of cheeked by Joel alongside that challenge of the volume. Because as you said, quite rightly, you said 6 or 7 times we have to tell people. I thought the number was 8, so we'll settle on 7 and call it quits. But if we're telling people something—

I like your number.

You do know that 93% of stats are made up, right?

I know.

Well, that's what I'm saying. Again, I heard this at some point. It's not from our study, so don't quote me on it. But Generally read it somewhere.

Point being, we have to tell people things loads of times before they actually get it into their heads. And whether it's 6 or 7 or 8, it's lots of times. And when you think about there being lots of times we have to tell people things, if we then apply the "what's in it for me," that means that potentially as a line manager, you're sitting down with people to tell them, to tell Saeve or tell Scott or Jimmy or John or Bob or Sarah, well, what does this mean for you now? Loads of times. There's loads of comms. There's loads of volume. Yet people are saying, well, I want to be, you know, I'm not being told enough. And it's hilarious that any internal comms survey I've ever seen, people say there's not enough communications. Yet, here we are talking about the fact that the volume of communication is resulting in lower trust, higher burnout, more confusion, So, how do you square that circle?

I would argue that there are not enough communications that are relevant to me is perhaps the response that I'm hearing. The personalized communication where it actually matters and it's something that I can pick up and know the impact. We see— so, there's this overcommunication, again, because of the pervasiveness of change, people are needing to communicate more. There's not always the technology or the framework or the tools to personalize that communication. And so, what you're seeing is more communication, but perhaps less relevant to specific groups. So, it feels like more communication, but it doesn't feel relevant for employees. And so, It's the irony of overcommunication about irrelevant information that feels like it's actually not enough communication for me.

This episode is brought to you by Inspiring Change. We work with senior teams to help them be clear and intentional about the culture they need to be successful, to communicate change in a more human way, and to give their leaders the skills, tools, and confidence to be amazing catalysts for change. To learn more about our work, and who we do it for, just pop along to inspiringchange.ie. But what's interesting is that in the study, 36% of the respondents were in organizations that were small. So actually being able to personalize information in a small organization shouldn't be that hard, even if you have to do it with a spreadsheet and do a mail merge. So what is it now that's driving that? Is it just the sheer volume of work that we've got to just churn out the comms and churn out the comms and geez, we're 2 comms behind already? What is it that's actually getting in the— I mean, you know, as cited in the report, sometimes the channels don't allow it. But actually, is it just the sheer volume that doesn't allow it as well? Is that a contributing factor? Yeah.

Well, I would argue that probably in a small organization, there's less focus on communication, a communications role, right? So, there's probably less of— they're running leaner in that area. They might not have a dedicated communications role. And so, the maturity of being able to personalize or kind of even think in those terms might not be there because it's somewhat added to someone's plate as part of their role. So that would be my thinking there. Yeah, I think there's a— again, internal comms teams tend to run really lean. And so while it seems like personalization should be easy, there is a level of maturity that teams need to have and a level of capacity that teams need to have. And what we see is that these communications teams who would be personalizing it are often being asked to do things across the organization. So again, whether it's those corporate comms or maybe they're working on external reports or maybe it's a leadership communication or a leadership video or whatever it is, the change piece is probably just another thing that they're working on. And very often, unfortunately, the leaders are asking for what we call vanity metrics. They're asking for how many people did it get to? How many people downloaded the report? How many people viewed that video? And so, there's not even sort of a leadership ask on the outcome of the communication. It's more the reach of the communication. And so, when you're time poor and that's not one thing you're being measured on, you're, you're de-incentivized to really focus on it.

Yeah, and it's interesting because I know the report speaks about the manager group and this group being the most influential group and the most important communication channel, but yet organisations don't invest in tooling up these or skilling up this group or using that process of cascading so that they can make sense. Because we know from org behaviour that people listen to their direct managers more than they listen to anything, more than they read anything. That is the most influential channel that that you can use to deliver a message. So, I guess, you know, when you think about that, you know, what do you think it is that's stopping these organizations from investing in this particular channel, especially when they see it as such a critical challenge within the organization?

And before you answer that question, can I ask, why is it not bloody changed for 18 years?

Yeah, that's true.

Right. Yeah.

It's literally beyond me.

Yep, 1000%. That's a great question. And I can do my best to speculate. Again, this is not necessarily showing in the data exactly. But the— right where we are now in the world is very unpredictable. We are living in a, you know, market volatility, lot of kind of unknowns as far as what's going on in the geopolitical world. A lot that's led to a lot of organizations having significant budget constraints as they try to kind of navigate the seas of change. So what I've, what I have seen is that at every level, there's, there's sort of a tension and an expectation and a level of kind of of keeping up. And so, when you're living in a world of reactivity, starting with even more senior-most levels of the organization, then you're keeping up. You're making sure that you're living in a bit of a state of survival. And unfortunately, communications and sort of upskilling and supporting managers in how to build trust with communications, how to level up, that, that feels again like a— sometimes it feels discretionary or like a nice-to-have. It is not. But it is one of those things that if it's on the back burner, things can still in theory move forward and you can still meet that deadline or make that change or whatever. But, but the people suffer. And when the people suffer, the organization suffers, it's just harder to kind of specifically tie it back to that thing. So I would say that that is, that is one thing that I've noticed. And when you're in a, in a market volatility, people are more nervous to invest in things that are not business imperatives.

Yeah.

And again, unfortunately, what is business imperative as viewed from perhaps the finance team? And what is business imperative viewed from my seat and what I'm seeing and what the data is saying is different. And manager upskilling training, those things are sometimes seen as kind of nice-to-haves, and we'll get to it when we can. And it is, we're just getting to the point where we can't do that.

Yeah.

But I just wonder from the perspective of, like, it can be really simple. Like, when we talk about, you know, manager communication, upskilling, well, that sounds very expensive. That's a program. We have to bring people in. We have to this, that, and the other. Actually, it's potentially the comms person doing a series of 3 little videos to camera, as we are doing now, talking about the top 3 things you need to do in your team meeting. And by the way, here's a pack of 3 slides written in English that meet people where they are. Have a chat about this and ask people how they're feeling. That's all it needs to be sometimes.

Yep. Yeah, I mean, you're right. You're completely right. What the data is showing is, I think, 87% said that managers effectiveness is a risk. Yet, only 21% are using any sort of toolkit. So, that's like 1 in 5 organizations are empowering their managers in those simple ways. So, one, I think it goes back and I don't mean to sound like a broken record. But I think it goes back to the capacity of the team. The internal comms teams tend to be run very lean and to have multiple priorities. And their priorities are, you know, shifting, especially if they're not given a seat at the table. Sometimes they're receiving their priorities as opposed to advising on the priorities. And that's not how it should be. The second one is— so, so that's often why they're not being created. The second piece is perhaps they're being created. But given the large volume of communications in the workplace, they are getting missed. So, you think about like, prioritization in an organization, then you think about prioritization of a manager. They're going through in the midst of constant change. Their inboxes are full. They're being called into meetings. Employees are having crises, and then they need an hour to watch this training. They're also time-poor and having to prioritize. And it could be something that they end up missing. What we see is that face-to-face or video, kind of that live in-person communication is still super impactful and perhaps the most impactful that you can, you can do. So, it takes pausing and it takes making it personal to, I think, really make an impact to ensure that people are getting the support and the sort of time that they need. But that requires both the manager and leadership and the employee or the employee that is the manager to create time and space for that. And that is a culture shift that needs to happen.

Yeah, definitely. And there is no doubt. And look, any managers listening and blowing a gasket because you think that I'm suggesting that you're sitting on your hands, you know, eating sweets and having a laugh and reading the paper, we know that's not the case. We know you're really, really, really stretched, and we know that you're getting it from beneath, you're getting it from up above, but just wondering what more organizations can do to help you be more effective. And I guess that's where my thinking came from.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, as far as kind of tips and tricks, so Gallagher also has a leadership kind of practice. And I've had the opportunity to work with one of our leaders, Steve Dion, and thinking about how to— a key thing about empowering managers is building, having managers know how to communicate to build trust. And so, he actually kind of gave some pretty good frameworks around when to, when to do written communication, when to do verbal communication. And the verbal communication should be the manager doing it, right? And I just pulled up the list as we were talking. So managers should be communicating when it's complicated information, when there's no record of the message that's needed, like no formal documentation, when it's time-sensitive, when immediate feedback is needed, when you're conveying concepts, direction, or high-level information. And when concerns are higher and bring emotions, feelings, and sensitivity. And so thinking about, I love kind of those simple sort of, this is when you need to be the one communicating. And I loved that kind of just like, it's a, it's a list, this and that. You can do an email if it's these 6 types of information. But it's just like a very practical way to, to start thinking about how you're communicating. And it's just, you're coming into the daily jobs of the managers and saying, if this is the information, you need a call. If this is the information, you need an email. So those simple frameworks are great kind of starting points.

Yeah, what we'll actually do, Madison, is we'll build a page out on our website and stick up any materials you want to pop over, including the reports. We'll pop that up at inspiringchange.ie/stateofthesector, all one word.

It's really interesting talking about the kind of, and I guess it's all around that human centric communication, which I completely agree with you on the emotional side of work that, you know, we're all bringing a lot with us before we even walk through the door into work that we're trying to manage and wrap our heads around. So coming into work, what we really, what we're really looking for is that simplicity, you know, real humanity in the way we're communicated with, you know, keeping it really clear, what's my role in it? Because I've got so much going on in my head. I just need to be, I just need to know the really clear details, you know, and I think they're the things that are really going to help organizations to meet these challenges and to help those managers, you know, because it is such a hard, and I mean, you know, you talk a lot about the direct impact of the high volume, you know, with burnout and overload and the lack of trust, which I know Scott has mentioned as well. And I suppose, you know, when we're thinking about like that and talking about human-centered communication, like for people who don't really fully understand what that means, you know, what does that look like? What does that look like day to day?

So a couple of things. One, I think I mentioned to you all in another conversation, a colleague of mine talks about how we have become, we tend to communicate in a way that is comprehensive at the expense of being comprehensible. So, in an attempt to tell everything, everyone everything, we actually say too much. And we're getting anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 messages every day as humans from internal, external, just noise that we end up missing the boat, right? So, human-centric communication is really thinking about the human at the center of it. And consumer-grade brand communications have really figured this out. You think about the best brands in the world and they are simple. If you use any of their digital, you know, if you shop online or you use their app, it's super intuitive. It's empowering. You can help yourself. Very often it's not even about the product when you're watching an advertisement, it's about the story and somehow you're crying at this commercial and you don't even know why because actually you're buying a pair of shoes. So, it's like thinking about the, yeah, that human at the center. So, when we think about communications internally, what that looks like is storytelling. So, thinking about key messages in narrative, not just facts. People want to do work that matters. They want to have a purpose. And if you can tell your or you can communicate in a way that showcases your values, your mission, your organization's purpose, and tell that story and that narrative throughout all communications, it's going to connect with kind of that, that heart of the employee. I've got 8 nieces and nephews, going on 9 come June, and they love stories. They're ages 3 to 9. And consistently, if I'm babysitting or if I go visit, they'll say, tell me, tell me a story with a problem. They love stories with a problem and they will have me tell them the same story 8 times. But at 3, they are just showcasing what at 33 or 103, we as humans connect to and that is story. We are hardwired to connect to story because as we hear someone tell a story, our brain actually clicks into the experience as if we were experiencing that same thing and we have those same kind of almost like reflected emotions. And so then it's more memorable and it's more impactful. So as much as organizations can tell stories or narratives, if it's not, you know, it may not be necessarily a story about something, but it's sort of this narrative about where you're going, that's really impactful. Another thing that we see is kind of human-centric channels. And what I mean by that is that it's simple and it's digestible for the humans. For the humans, us humans. So we've, we see that humans tend to have an attention span of around 8 seconds, just short of a goldfish. If Time Magazine was right in 2015, 8 seconds is not a lot of time. So think about outputs that can be just kind of clicked through like that. So we see like infographics or scannable emails or short-form video. Everyone's getting their information in, you know, from Instagram or TikTok or whatever. And those are bite-sized nuggets. So, try to create those same bite-sized short-form pieces of information in the workplace. And then, the last thing that we see is human-centric communication means kind of more of a human tone of voice in the workplace. And this is, this is certainly an evolution from what we've seen in the past. We've seen traditionally more sort of formal or sort of corporate tones of voice because that's what's expected in the workplace. So, if communication is coming out from the organizations, it has to look and feel a certain way and, you know, kind of be all buttoned up. And of course, there's work-appropriate communications. We certainly want that. But as we think about kind of tone of voice and how you're connecting with employees, we see that a human tone of voice, so perhaps using humor or a bit more informality, that really deep authenticity where, you know, it's coming from a human to a human, that's actually moving the needle on connecting with employees. And that actually mitigates some of the risk we're seeing with employee burnout or that overload because there's a sense of being heard and connected with. So, that tone of voice is another way that we can kind of show human centricity in our communications.

There are so many things flying around my head, Madison, right now. One of them is a quote from Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century French philosopher, which I'm sure I've used on here before, that he said, I'm sorry I had to write you such a long letter, but I didn't have time to write a short one. Because being succinct is really, really, really hard. Working out what are— okay, so the CEO has sent in this 8-page missive because that's what he or she does. And I'm like, nobody is going to read that. And back to your vanity metrics, well, how many clicks did the email get? Well, none, because it's really boring. Boring. So stick in a TL;DR, you know, too long, don't read, at the top. Stick in the top 3 bullets. If you're really brave, put it in the heading. So if I read the heading and nothing more, I know. And I think back to your point about tone of voice, so fundamentally important. And probably from my time when I was working at AIB, I was so proud of that we changed how that organization spoke to not just its employees, but that then spilled over and what was an internal tone of voice became an external tone of voice where there was humor and there was stuff that customers go, "Well, that's kind of funny. Okay, they're charging me 2% more, but okay, at least they put a bit of humor behind it." And then, the third thing is story. And we do a huge amount of corporate narrative for our clients. And the difference that that makes for the people in the organization, it sums up sums up the why we're doing this. It sums up the what are the big challenges. It sums up what's our actual strategy in 100 words. That's it. 100 words. Back to Blaise Pascal. And, you know, what's the role for people and what's the future going to look like? And that's all they want. Let's get them to come on the journey with us by just giving them what they want, by meeting them where they are. Yeah, yeah.

I definitely think post-COVID, I've seen a shift too, because it's like everyone realized once we were all on each other's those virtual living rooms, um, we all realized that, oh my gosh, we're all in the human experience together. You know, we knew it cognitively, but there was something about going through that that has caused people to, I think, reprioritize, to reassess, to understand that we are all human, human beings, and we're all kind of going through similar experiences. And there was, I think, some sort of almost preconception or maybe expectation that, you know, when you get to work, you leave all that at the door and that you show up differently. But what we're seeing is you actually show up, even if you appear differently, you're showing up that same person with everything going on. And the organizations that will thrive and have that competitive advantage are embracing that. And again, of course, there's, you know, professionalism and, you know, things that are expected at work. But when we're bringing sort of our full gifts, our full talents, our full persons to work, that's a gift to the organization.

Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, I could— I'm often given out to for saying I couldn't agree more on this podcast. But I literally couldn't agree more.

I'll take it. I'll take it. You mentioned affirmation and recognition. So I'll take that.

There you go. Jez, if you're listening to this episode, you're the one that gives out to me most about saying that. So I just said it just for you on our 150th episode. And actually, it was his idea that we do the podcast. So all of this is his fault. So I'm laying the blame squarely at his door. Let's come back a little bit in kind of rounding out the conversation now, because a lot of this is about— we've talked a lot about busyness, whether that be from a stretched internal comms team whether it be from a stretched people manager, whether it be helping senior teams, that whole seat at the table thing. We're not going to get into that black hole because that's just too messy. With the advent of AI, it should be very easy. In fact, it is very easy. I do it sometimes. Here's a 25-page strategy document. Give me the 3-page TL;DR that I can give to a people leader to give to their teams. Done. In 2 seconds. Yet your report found that most people, if I'm just to summarize it, just aren't really doing it. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.

I'm, I'm, I, um, I'm glad you mentioned that because I had another thought on AI to bring up. So yeah, I think what we're seeing right now is about 75% of organizations are in sort of that experimentation, experimentation, or sort of ad hoc, um, role or, or stage right now where the opportunity is much greater, but we're just not quite there. Why is generally due to lack of infrastructure, lack of upskilling and training, lack of governance. People don't know what they're allowed to do, what they're allowed to use. And so, the organizations that are doing it the best or with the most sort of success and business impact are the ones who are really clear. Again, going back to that clarity. Yes, there's so much noise. But if you're really clear, people are more likely to hear you. So being clear on what trainings are available, how they're going to— how they're— it's going to be used, what people— how the business— what the business is trying to achieve using it, like what metrics are trying to be impacted. And what tools can we use? What are we allowed to use? What are the sort of boundaries within it? And that is going to help organizations come along on sort of that maturity model to be able to use it. Not just for drafting content, which is what a lot of people use it for. And that's, that's great. But really where we want to get to, the most impactful teams are using it to measure their success, you know, thinking about what's successful, what's not, and sort of those broader business metrics instead of just content itself. I will say, as we think about simplifying the message and the quote that you used, something that some organizations may be doing is simplifying it via AI. So putting a— if it's hard to kind of think about how to be succinct, using AI to say, simplify this message. Okay, simplify it again, simplify it one more time. And it's amazing how many times it can be simplified. And if you don't have that time to really sit down and think about how to make that message easy or simple— not easy, certainly— then that's a, that's a way that you can be using AI to create more more human-centric messaging, assuming it's within sort of the tools allowed in your organization.

Yeah, brilliant. Saeve, any last questions before we finish up and let Madison go on her way?

Yeah, I don't know. I guess, if you were to, if you were to advise one thing, so what some high-performing teams out there, what's the one thing that they might be doing that people could start quite quickly that might be a simple, simple fix?

Yep. Something we didn't talk about, but I think is really important is listening. It's the two-way feedback loop. We see that the risks we've talked about— burnout, information overload, decreased trust— some of that can be mitigated through employee two-way feedback. So yes, you're telling employees things. But if you're also asking employees for their feedback on channels on how sentiment on how they're doing, that can, that will actually decrease some of those risks. So that can look like formal engagement surveys, pulse surveys, that can look like manager questions, you know, having a manager check-in and again, making sure that manager feels prepared for that conversation. That can look like just what we call kind of water cooler feedback in a break room where you're just asking Hey, you know, how's it been? How did this land? What are your thoughts here? What can we do better? Because again, kind of going back to that human piece, at the end of the day, humans want to be heard. They want to be known, heard, cared for, supported, recognized, like all of the things. And that feeling like they're heard and that sense of sort of empathy and feeling like they're part of that journey can mitigate some of those risks. So that's something easy. You could do it today, checking in with someone and seeing how they're doing.

Yeah, just that two-way conversation. Yeah, and it is so important.

And back to closing off the loop, like, so many organizations do culture surveys, engagement surveys, staff surveys, and they get all the, they get all the results. And we've spent, you know, 10 minutes filling in the survey for them, and then nothing happens. And there is no better, there's no better way to really, really aggravate your staff and to ensure you get a lower response rate the next time than to do nothing with the results.

It's mind-boggling, really. Yeah, that's a good caveat. If you're doing a survey, share it back in some way because it's unlikely you'll be able to please everyone. You won't be able to do everything that they've asked for. But if you feedback, or again, going back to like an infographic, this is what we heard. This is what we're able to do now. And this is what we're thinking about in the next 3 years. That, um, that affirms their feedback. And they know— again, it's that 4.5-hour wait on the plane— okay, they know this is where I'm at and this is what's happening. And because I'm sort of brought into it and I'm not, um, unaware, they're more likely to, to be understanding and to, um, stay engaged.

Brilliant. Listen, we're out of time. We probably only scratched about about 10% of the surface of all the detail and all the knowledge and all the helpfulness that's in there. Whether you are an internal comms pro, whether you are somebody that just does the internal comms in an organization, as, as Madison alluded to earlier on, or you're somebody that runs an organization, it is absolutely a piece of research that you should pick up and read, not only to find out what the challenges are and perhaps to give you some solace that other people are facing similar challenges to the challenges that you're facing,, but also just to get some really clear, some really clear ideas and some thoughts on how you can mitigate some of the challenges that appear in the report. As I said at the top, this has been our 150th episode, which, as I also said at the top, is possibly more down to my bloody-mindedness than anything else. But thank you, everyone. Thank you, thank you. And thanks to everyone for listening and for keeping being here and keeping turning up and keeping having the chats and giving the feedback and all of that. I appreciate it very, very, very much. We will put up, just to reiterate, aspire2change.ie/stateofthesector, all one word. We will have to say it 5 more times anyway, so don't worry. I know, or 6, possibly. Who knows? Who knows? 74% of stats are made up anyway, as we know from earlier. Exactly. Addison, it has been a joy having you on. Thank you so much for being here. Saive, thank you for co-hosting. It's been a joy having having you here. Yeah, we'll leave it there. Thanks both. Lovely to chat, Alison. Thanks for listening. If you haven't already done so, please take 30 seconds to give us a quick rating and a review wherever you're listening. It really does help. And to hear from other leaders in our podcasts, to read our blogs, or to find out more about the work that we do, please visit inspiringchange.ie.