93 | Breaking Language and Cultural Barriers: Strategies for Effective Global Internal Communications | Ray Walsh

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

I think we have to, from the very beginning, build a mindset for global-ready content. That global readiness should be built into, I believe, almost everything that we produce.

Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. Happy New Year. It is 2022, which is insane. I just cannot believe how quickly last year flew. It was unbelievable and insane Q4, insanely busy Q4. So the Christmas and New Year break was very, very, very well received. I hope you had a great break. All of you. Thanks for listening. We're going to have some amazing guests this year. We're kicking off with a goodie in this episode, the first of the year. Before we get to our guests, my usual thank you to our partner and our sponsor, Workvivo. If you're kind of thinking about what you are going to be doing with your internal comms plans this year, if you're going through that planning phase at the moment, if you're thinking about and looking at channels, if you're concerned about hybrid working and actually what we're going to be talking about today, perhaps localization and getting your message out to broader audiences, then Workvivo's online employee engagement channel is well worth a look. It's platform agnostic, works on phones, works on laptops, works on tablets. So it's kind of a wherever your employees are, the platform is. So workvivo.com for a bit more there, and you'll hear a little bit more from them later. Now on to today's guest, who is Ray Walsh. Ray is a Prague-based internal comms and localization consultant. And it's particularly, he and I had a very long chat, a couple of times actually we've spoken about this. We met on an event, an online event run by Mike Klein, and we got into a little Zoom room and we were talking about localization and how it was so important. And we had a chat after, and I said, well, listen, come on the podcast and let's have a chat about that. 'Cause I think it's something that organizations really struggle with when it comes to internal comms, when it comes to getting messages out there. And that's something that hopefully we'll unravel a bit today. And, you know, as, as we always do on the pod, come up with some really practical just advice and thoughts and things that you can do as you head perhaps into 2022. So, uh, Ray, good morning.

Good morning to you.

How are you getting on?

I'm fine, thanks. Thanks for having me today.

Yeah, my pleasure, my pleasure. Listen, we always kick this off and I keep saying I'll change it and I haven't changed it, but I will change it at some point, but just not today. Um, Let's kick off by maybe you telling us a little bit about you, your background, and what you do today.

Sure. I won't go over the resume because I find that pretty dull myself, but I've been in corporate comms for more than 20 years. I recently saw a tweet though that got me thinking I may have been in it much longer than I thought. They said a lot of us got started on our high school newspaper. That was me. And so I did start at an early age. I also was early on a radio journalist. And when I was listening to recordings of my interviews, I realized I was asking these long-winded rambling questions. And that really taught me to shut up and let others do the talking. And that over the years has been a very useful skill. And then another bit of background that I think is important for this topic today is that many years ago, I moved to what was then Czechoslovakia to be an English teacher. And in the classroom, when you're, you know, interacting with students, you can actually see in their eyes whether or not they're getting it, or at least you have some idea of it. You can see what— who understands, who thinks they got it but actually misunderstood, and those who just really can't be bothered, really don't care at all. And that kind of lesson stuck with me. I returned to Europe 14 years ago, but by this time I was in corporate comms, and I found that there are many companies using English as a global language, not just from the US and the UK and the rest of the Anglosphere, but, you know, my clients in Switzerland, Germany, Czech Republic, Belgium, Netherlands, they typically use English as a kind of corporate separate language. And yet, from the perspective of these European conference rooms in person, I'm reminded often of that look in the eye that I got from those classrooms. You know, sometimes, you know, some people get it, some people think they do, but they misunderstood, some just don't care. And I think in, you know, from this perspective in these regional offices here in Europe, I see physically that we have gaps, gaps in understanding, gaps in motivation, business conditions, culture. And I think more of us who work in the home offices need to know that we have these gaps. And that's what I'm working to address.

Brilliant, brilliant. I love that thought about long rambling questions and then giving guests time to say what they need to say, because I'm sure nobody's ever said that about me on the podcast. I'm sure they haven't. I'm sure they haven't. If I do need to shut up more, please write in and let me know, scott@inspiringchange.ie. Thanks for that, Ray. Let's start with a big question. Let's start, because I like to start big and then perhaps we can then focus down a wee bit. What do you think are some of the big ticket challenges of really effective global communications? And I guess when I think about global communications, it's global with a big G as in global global, but also I think global can have a small g as well where you're thinking about an organization that's maybe a national organization, but perhaps still has that need to localize their content down to staff all around the country through some kind of chain of command. So I wonder, I wonder what some of the big challenges of that are.

Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. I think even within the US companies that I worked for in the past, it was a great deal of differences from region to region, just in terms of the maturity of the business unit or what have you. And then when it turns, you know, it comes into, you know, real international work, I think most professionals realize that there are differences in language and culture, but then it's an awareness of that is growing, which is a good thing. But I think we often don't really know what to do about that. So, you know, I think it's good to have conversations with colleagues in marketing, and one of the things that they'll tell us is that if they're working globally, they'll tell us that people prefer to buy from websites that are in their language, and then they're working, and that there's a lot of work to make that happen effectively. Well, in my opinion, we in internal comms, we're also selling, but very often people aren't buying. When they see content in English or from that global level, they know that it's from a distant corporate office. It self-identifies and it's often ignorable. It's not necessary for their immediate tasks. And people are busy and reading and listening in a foreign language, it takes additional effort. And I think people are more likely to act on content that speaks to them. Now, obviously, I was talking about just language and culture just now, but I think that's true too, if, you know, if it's just a different region within the same country and it's talking about some global priorities, when in fact they're focused on a specific industry. Again, it self-identifies as something like, "Well, it's not from my boss. I don't really need to pay attention to this." Yet, from our perspective in the central headquarters office, global campaigns, multiple versions, multiple languages, that's really hard. It adds a level of complexity, and most of us just don't have time to manage that. Maybe a couple of times a year, we'll do some multilingual campaigns, but when we do, it's usually some kind of centralized exercise where we have a translation vendor and we're managing all the versions ourselves. We may more often say, here's a campaign, here's some content, adapt this as needed, meaning we're giving them some flexibility. But I think we are underestimating what kind of support they need to do that very well, especially if we're asking people from outside the communications field to make that content relevant. If it's a concept that sounds foreign, that team leader may not know how to translate it literally or figuratively. They may not even realize that they have license to translate it. So we can help them understand their part in the communications chain.

Yeah, it's that. I mean, it boils down to that will and skill, doesn't it? They might have the will to want to do it, but if they don't have the skill to do it, or the other way around, they might have the skill to do it but not have the will because, sure, what's in it for me? Then that's a huge challenge. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Interesting. So, that whole idea, that's not from my boss, therefore I'm not going to do it. That's so powerful. And I think what that tells us is something that we've spoken about a lot on this podcast is the power of leaders, the power of people leaders. And as you just said there, they often don't have the skills. So, I wonder, I think often when we think about, for example, Lots of organizations now will be thinking about their 2022 strategy communications. What are we doing this year? And of course, there'll be the suggestion, well, let's do the Cascade because the Cascade's brilliant because what that allows is the CEO to give the overall corporate picture, the divisional heads to give the divisional picture, and then the leaders within each of those divisions to give their team picture to create that red thread all the way back to the top of the organization. Now, I'm not going to poison your mind with my thoughts on the cascade. I'd love to hear what your thoughts on the cascade are. Is it good? Is it not good? How do we make it better?

Right. I think there's a lot to be said here, and I think we have to rely on it to a great extent. And in fact, I think we should. Unfortunately, as someone pointed out to me, information isn't water. It doesn't flow naturally like a cascade. So it has its problems. Just to look specifically at some of the international challenges for cascades. First, when we're asking management across functions to cascade, and we don't provide them any kind of, you know, a different language set, individuals may in fact decide, oh, we need this in local language, so they translate it. And now you've got lots of people translating content on their own, and that's a big duplication of effort. It has costs. So it's not only inefficient, but it may actually, for some industries, some contexts, it may be actually high risk for error or inconsistency. So that's one thing we need to think about. Internationally, I think managers are more inclined to just hit play. Here's a video, corporate wants you to watch this, watch this. And they don't fully realize that they can and should provide some local context, discuss how it impacts local work. And I think we, in the end, we need to show them how to do that and give them assets to do it.

And whose responsibility is that? Whose responsibility is it to give them the green light that we've given you a pass? Which is 60% there, you've got to join the dots to make up the other 40% for your team. You've got to translate figuratively and literally. You've got to translate and contextualize this content, this idea, this direction, these strategic objectives for your team. If they're not doing that, why are they not doing it? And whose job is it to help them do that?

I think it's both a short and long-term proposition. In the short term, I think if we simply provide them examples of where to work in some of those local contexts, I think that might be a good prompt for those who are inclined to do it. Others, it might be more of a longer-term, let's get this into their development plan. Let's actually work with our L&D organization, for example, to help refine how they're going about communications. But I don't think we can simply put out our campaign and say, cascade this and just assume that they're going to do it fully effectively and in a fully engaged way.

And I wonder, I've been guilty, if you like, as many of us have who work in internal comms of creating previous lives, of creating a team talk kit, a PowerPoint deck with some speaker notes for the leader to run through. But to your point earlier, you know, you will get some leaders who just sit down and push play on the video and watch this, or they just put the slides up and read the speaker notes. And I've always struggled with whether or not we should give really, really detailed speaker notes that they could literally read, because obviously in doing so, we make sure that we get the message out there. However, in doing so, we also make sure that we completely remove any responsibility from that leader to do anything more than just actually read those notes out to their teams. So where's the balance?

Yeah, right. I think it's a really tough balance to strike. And I think one way to think about it is there's a concept of content operations that I've been getting increasingly interested in. I believe it comes from more of the technical fields. They're putting out multiple versions of software releases in multiple different languages. But I think we can learn from them as well. They may have fancier tools than we have. We may be working with spreadsheets. But I think we should think about what are the assets, what are the components of this presentation or this campaign. So maybe we're talking about individual images and JPEGs that they can assemble into their own flow or key messages. I think we often keep those in the vault and we don't actually share that. It's like, these are the messages we want you to get across, use your own words. I think we definitely need to underline, we need these exact words for, I don't know, legal or safety reasons, but for the rest of this, we really want you to flesh it out. So maybe, I think maybe a better approach is more like, you know, key messages, desired outcomes, you know, how we're measuring. And here's a sample flow of how it might work. And to really give them the idea that, you know, this is a recommendation and not a requirement.

And I guess the pushback you'll always get with that approach, which I think is the right one, by the way, the pushback you'll always get is, well, we haven't got time to do that because we're too busy doing the day job.

That's right.

And that, of course, and that, of course, brings back, brings us back to the whole, you know, and we don't have time to talk about it today, but the whole This is the day job, that this leadership stuff, this alignment stuff, this strategy stuff, communications. As a leader, that is your day job. The day job isn't the day job. The communications work, the leadership work, that's your day job. So, I think we always get pushback there. At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. Let's roll back up the cascade for a little minute because I I always think that you do need to have— I mean, communications has to start at the top, right? I think we probably both agree that, but we need to make sure that we have a consistent message at the top of the organization that flows down, whether it's through internal comms, direct to employees, whether it's through Cascade, whether it's through some other initiative or project, we need to make sure we've got a single message that flows down through the organization. But in trying to create a single message that's relevant to to everyone, do we not run the risk of creating a single message which isn't relevant to anybody because it's too vague? How do we take away that vagueness? Or is that even possible, do you think? How have you seen it work?

I don't believe we can take away the vagueness. Hopefully, we're not too vague, we're not too lofty. But I think what I'm asking organizations to do is to aspire for co-creation. And maybe if I— translation would be, word for word translation. And I think we've all seen or heard of examples of taglines that are translated into various languages exactly word for word, and they tend to have some unfortunate sexual connotation or something else that's laughable. So, you know, co-creation would be to work with an agency, for example, and explain to them, this is what we want in this market. This is what we want people to take away. Now, can you go and take that and express it in a way that's more accurate for this culture? So that would be co-creation. You're actually trusting them on on some level to put something out that may look a little bit different than yours, but in the end, it arrives at the same place for that culture. So, and again, I realize this is not— it's not going to be practical in all your markets right away if you're a large organization. So I would emphasize aspire for co-creation and really think about what that looks like over time, because it will change over time. People come and go, you know, new acquisitions or what have you, they can change the whole environment. So When it comes to co-creation, I would recommend starting with your largest or your most important markets, you know, where maybe the ones where growth is most important to you, but those places where you have people who are at least partially dedicated to communications work.

Hmm.

And if those people are motivated and if they're clear on purpose, they can take your universal initiatives and they can add the nuance that give it more local appeal. Uh, so So in order to co-create, you're going to have to give them a brief, and in that brief you need to cover who's the audience, what's the desired outcome, is there anything that needs to be measured, and why are you doing that? And I would also recommend taking it a step further and create specific briefings for those markets that co-create, those that translate, and those who just cascade as is. They're just gonna take it in English and push it out. And that's not as much work as it sounds. You are tailoring the briefings, But these briefings will have many of the same elements. It's just that if you go into too much detail, you're really underestimating what your more mature communicators can do for you. And if you don't give enough detail, then you're really encouraging a kind of just, corporate wants you to read this and they're flipping it forward.

Which leads me beautifully onto my next point, I guess my next question or thought, which is that whole idea. And we hear it all the time and I've heard it and you've heard it and we hear it often in clients as well. Oh, central comms will look after that. That's something that the comms people, they do that. The communications around strategy, oh yeah, they do that. So I think it was your words actually when we spoke the last time, Ray, that leaders can very easily become passive bystanders when it comes to the whole communications thing. Maybe not just because they're not very good at it, but because they're too busy, because they're too senior, because they don't see this as a key part of their role, whatever the reason is. But it's very easy to say, oh, listen, somebody else will look after that. Central comms will put something on the intranet or they'll send out an email or there'll be a town hall or or some other thing. How do we make leaders more responsible for doing that? How do we make them more accountable for making sure that they pass that on? Is it a matter of putting something into KPIs? Do they need to have objectives set around communications in terms of how they communicate or leadership, what their role is as leaders? How do we make sure that they feel empowered, but also that we make them accountable?

Right. It's such a strong tendency. And the answer is easy to say, but it's so much harder to do. I think there's such a strong tendency, you know, in our business culture globally that communications is a specialty, you know, like accounting or finance, and they'll take care of that. And I think that, yes, it is really important wherever possible to connect these communications initiatives to their desired local outcomes. That's tough to do. Now, you know, connecting to their local KPIs. So a couple of examples, let's say employee retention. For the last few years, Prague has been at a, you know, nearly 0% on unemployment, very tight labor market here, keeping people is a big deal. So it may be that, you know, shared service centers here in Prague, of which there are many, they may have an emphasis on employee experience, employee retention. Or maybe in other markets they might have, you know, maybe the rest of the country has a really good safety record, but theirs has been declining lately, and that's something that their leadership really wants to focus on. So, you know, there's a, there's a lot of diversity here, you know, in terms of like the business units have different priorities depending on what their situation is. So it's much easier to do where you have local partners, people who can really tailor things, who, you know, boots on the ground. Uh, and in order to enable those various perspectives, you know, in terms of, you know, the universal stuff that we're putting out, I think you can accomplish a lot by grouping your markets, even in your own mind, into tiers. Those markets where you have active co-creators, or, you know, people who are capable of that. And again, that's probably just going to be a few of your largest markets, people you're probably already working with, but collaborate with them and co-create. A second tier would be those that want to translate. They just, you know, they just want to take your work and translate it word for word and push it on. But they really feel like, well, to reach people, it needs to be in local language. And then a third tier, you know, perhaps the smallest markets where they just want to pass your content on as is. And as I said before, I would recommend in each of those tiers to prepare a specific— prepare a specific brief and also moreover, make that briefing a collaborative process.. So before you send these briefings out, you know, cascade this, you know, before you set up a cascade, you want to work with those who you are most engaged with to get advice from them to make it practical and useful for the people downstream who are likely to deploy these things.

God forbid we ask people on the ground what would be most helpful to them. Good grief. That's insane, Ray. I thought you'd come on here with good ideas. That's insane.

Well, I mean, practically speaking, often we're so pressed for time, we don't have time. We're pushing out a campaign in the 11th hour and now we're getting very good feedback from a country and it just blows up the whole thing. So we're pushed to say, well, just do your best.

Yeah, and I think that, I mean, back to my point at the top about global communications with a big G or a small g, that advice of tiering how you do that is as relevant in a country context, whether that be Ireland or the UK or Czech Republic or the US, it's still as relevant. Think about. And I guess, as you said at the top, your marketing colleagues do it every day. The whole idea of target marketing is something that's been around for eons in the marketing world, the external marketing world. So should we be perhaps doing a little bit more of that internally as well when it comes to comms? Because it's not one size fits all. Yes.

And if I could just jump in there, I think that that can change over time within your organization. Your biggest market in Europe may have this really old-school-minded communicator who's just really stubborn and manages a newsletter, and that's the way it's going to be, has always been, and you may not be able to get much co-creation going there. But then again, you might have a small market, I don't know, say Romania, and it's not one of your strategic markets, it's not one of your largest markets, but you've got a, a, a comms intern there who's really enthusiastic about social media or something. Well, now maybe it makes sense to give them in your co-creator's brief because they're really actively engaged in content.

Yeah, for sure. And actually even get those two to hook up, use those two people, the old school person and the newbie keenie person to get together and talk about, well, how's this working in my world and how could it work in your world and how could it make you look better and help you to achieve your objectives? I think that whole idea of mentoring and partnering up people is really powerful.

Yeah, yeah. I think it's a huge opportunity also to motivate and keep those younger ones that are often so prime.

Yeah, definitely.

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Let's talk a little bit about storytelling, because I think that when it comes to, when it comes to really effective communications, we know, and you know, look, it wouldn't be an internal comms podcast without using the word storytelling at least once. So, you know, we talk about that a lot. We espouse storytelling, we talk about the power of it, we talk about how brilliantly effective it can be, particularly around, around strategy comms and bringing that to life. For people, but I think most leaders still don't really know what it is. And I think that's probably compounded when you look at that on a global basis where you are going across countries. In plain language, what do you think storytelling is and why is it important?

Well, I was attending Toastmasters for a couple of years here in Prague. And we proclaim that stories are good and we proclaim that they're more emotional, they're more motivating, yada yada yada. We go, we all know that's true. Um, but I think for, you know, I listen to a lot of Toastmasters speeches, people— and by the way, uh, the topic of Toastmasters was often use storytelling, use storytelling, use storytelling. But what they actually come up with in their speeches— these are people from various, uh, business functions, professionals, you know, uh, aspiring professionals, uh, and I don't think they really have an idea of what, what we mean by that. Um, and I think, I think for a lot of people, when they hear storytelling, they think it's— it sounds a bit intimidating, like it's show business or, you know, a fancy TED Talk. And they think, well, you know, that's not me, that's not my style. And it can also be badly understood, you know, like the advice of, like, whenever you give a speech, start with a joke.

Um, maybe if you can pull it off, if you're funny, if you're funny, start with a joke.

So I think the same thing applies to storytelling. Some people just do it really naturally, and some people it's, it's, uh, it's It's just poorly understood. So what I want business people to realize is that we are relying on them to make topics relatable and understandable. You know, our comms are kind of like an advertising campaign that provides air cover, but we're relying on them to actually deliver it. And I think anything that connects abstract global concepts to local examples, we could consider a story. Anything that grounds lofty concepts into the specifics of the workday. And so I encourage those kinds of examples. And even if I'm not using the word story, I say, please provide examples here. Well, when they provide examples, they have to be explained. They have to tell you who was doing it, where did it happen, what was the result. And even if it's just a couple of lines, that's a kind of story. And we can help them, I believe, by showing them where they can inject some of these details, where they can inject their own stories, however brief they are. So, you know, for example, a global campaign might be around, you know, a culture initiative. And maybe we're asking them to have some discussion about how we value, innovation. That's a very lofty topic, and I'm sure as all communicators know, it can be hard to generate discussion around something like that. So as you already mentioned earlier, in that kind of global script, maybe it's good to provide them very briefly, very generally about what we want them to say. Maybe that's organized more like key messages, maybe it's more of a script. But in there, I think it would be helpful to point out specific areas to talk to. You know, maybe it's even worded like a school assignment. And when we talked off mic, I liked your example of, you know, insert here, Tell them a story about a time when you failed and what you took away from that. I think those kinds of prompts get them thinking. And even if they don't follow it, at least it reminds them that personally adapting this kind of company content is highly recommended.

Yeah, I think we can demystify storytelling because I do think it's a bit mysterious to people. You know, just give an example. I think that's a brilliant way to put it. Give an example because you are going to bring in the characters, the storyline, the what the problem was, the how it got fixed. The what you did, the what the outcome was. Bingo, there's your story. And they've just done storytelling without even thinking about it because we do it all the time naturally. But of course, when you put it down on paper, you know, when you start talking about storytelling, that starts to scare people. And actually they're doing it all the time very naturally anyway. So I guess it's just how do we get them doing it in a work context? I think that's the big question.

I agree.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit, and we could have talked about this earlier on when you were chatting about localization and translation, and you actually touched upon this at the very top of the conversation. Actually, this whole English is our global business language.

Right.

Yeah. Now, when I think about DEI or EDI, I can never remember which one it is now, it doesn't feel particularly diverse. It doesn't feel very inclusive. It doesn't feel very equitable that somebody somewhere has decided English is going to be our global language. Well, why is it not French or German or Swiss or Spanish or whatever it might be? No, it's going to be English. That's the business language of the world. What impact does that have? It certainly levels the playing field, but does it level it in a good way, do you think?

Yes and no. I think it really depends on what kind of subject matter we're talking about. And first of all, I have to say, I'm I may have implied, depends on the industry, but I may have implied that these, our colleagues don't speak English so well. In all the companies I've worked for, you see an extremely high level of proficiency working in another language on a level that I could just never imagine myself doing. But even for those Scandinavians and Dutch and people who speak English very well, working in another language, it takes cognitive effort. It's just, it can be a little bit, just a little bit more tiring to listen or to read in a foreign language. More in another language. But generally, I would say, we're talking about professionals, very specific industries. So for information that they are motivated to consume, I think English works. I think if you talk to individuals themselves, they often wouldn't even think to ask for content in their own language because they consider English to be the language of business. And I'm in the medical field, I work globally. English it is, and I think they're fine with that. It even works for, I think, key messages, because people actually want to know, how should I be talking about this topic? What are the exact words we're supposed to be saying? So I think in those places, they, you know, they really want English versions because they're a kind of consensus. But when we go to motivate them or persuade them, now that's where I think it's much more effective to speak to their gut, to use their mother tongue, to make it easy for them. And this is where having co-creators on the ground who can help help you deliver this persuasive content is so important. And I can actually make the distinction between information persuasion. I think one good example of that is training. Training could go either way. If it's an accreditation course, a skill, you know, some professional credential, they probably prefer English because it's the language of their profession and they want to be, you know, as global as everyone else. But if we're talking about a compulsory training that we want everybody in the company to take, say for example, it's on anti-corruption practices. And then we in comms end up having to nag them endlessly, "Please take the training, please." Now they may see more value and certainly more ease if it was in their own language, but certainly be faster and easier for them to do. But there may even be more benefit to the company since scenarios where bad practices regarding corruption may come up are probably gonna be in a local context. So it's probably better to be really using the terms that are likely to come up for them. Similarly, trainings in topics like diversity inclusion or harassment, these can be highly cultural. And if you want to change behavior, or more likely if you want to prevent misbehavior, trainings that are coming from us in the Anglosphere, they may not be so effective. And these are places where cultural adaptation of the content may be more productive.

I love that thinking and that idea that I think, and I agree, that if it is around kind of diversity inclusion or around anti-corruption or around something which does have a very nuanced difference locally, that delivering that to them in local language with local examples is way, way more powerful. And I think often that type of training can become very tick box for organizations, whereas now it becomes actually very, very persuasive and not tick box anymore, but actually something that really does have an impact, really does have an impact.

A lot of the trainings sitting here in Central Europe, diversity, inclusion, harassment are two big ones, you know, they just laugh at it. They just think it's an American obsession. You're so politically correct. Well, in fact, they do have a real problem here, but they need to see it before they can actually work to improve it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Listen, conscious of time, Ray, last question. And we've covered an awful lot in the conversation. So thank you, first of all, for taking the time. But first of all, last question. What's the one one big thing, if there was to be one change, you were going into a client and they said, "Just, Ray, just give us one thing, one big thing that we can do to get our communications right, to get it engaging, to get it impactful, to get it localized." What's the one big thing that company can do?

I would ask them to not think about doing it centrally, not doing it exclusively centrally. I'd ask them to identify stakeholders. Local stakeholders, consult with them often, give them time to co-create and translate if that's necessary. And then, you know, the feedback loop, use their advice as you create global versions in English for smaller countries. You know, something that you learned from your comms contact in Germany, maybe something that you could apply for the packet that's for Bulgaria. And over time, you know, you'll find opportunities for improvement as you go along, but I think we have to, from the very beginning, build a mindset for global-ready content. That global readiness should be built into, I believe, almost everything that we produce.

Okay, brilliant. And you, for those listeners who want to get a bit more of a deep dive in this, you've written a book on this. Where can people find more about that? Where can they pick it up? Where can they find out more about you?

They can read about it from the publisher XML Press, or they can go to Amazon. The book is called Localizing Employee Communications. There's a video there, there's some background, there's some reviews, and I think that can help them— they can look inside into typical Amazon experience, but then it should be available on all of the Amazons, as well as the XML Press website itself.

Brilliant stuff. And if people want to find out about you, I guess LinkedIn, Ray Walsh.

Yeah, there are many of us on LinkedIn, many Ray Walshes. If you can't find it, I think my— it's Ray Walsh in Prague. I think my LinkedIn thing is Ray Walsh Writes. I also have a website, which is on the web, raywalsh.net.

Brilliant stuff. Well, listen, thank you very much for taking the time today. The first podcast guest of 2022. It's been a pleasure chatting to you, Ray. Thanks a million. Really appreciate your time.

Oh, I very much appreciate being here. Thanks for inviting me.

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