Wanting more confidence in your value-add

Likely impact

…on you and your team

It’s worth thinking about how this could affect your whole team. It’s pretty much bound to knock people’s confidence, and possibly even their motivation (why bother if it’s not going to make a difference?).

…on your organisation

Even more insidiously, perhaps, it may also hold you back from asking for more resources which would enable you to add more value.

Likely causes

  1. This issue may stem from a lack of credible measurement
  2. Alternatively, it could come from the attitudes of the people employing you. Possibly they don’t really understand what an effective IC Function could do for your organisation. Some of this attitude may come from employee surveys in which (rightly or wrongly) IC so often comes off badly.

Potential solutions

There are a couple of different ways of approaching the measurement issue:

One is to look at the value ‎you’re not yet adding, but which your team could add, given the opportunity. In short, measuring your untapped potential.

A second option is to look at your feedback systems, which may not yet be enabling you to demonstrate the value your work is adding. But with a few tweaks you could be able to start doing so.

As far as the attitude issue is concerned, inevitably the measurement issue should help with this. But it may be that some people aren’t even clear about what they mean when they use the term Internal Communication (this is more common than you might think). Or they’ve never really thought about the purposes of IC. So have no way of knowing what the fulfilling of that purpose is would be worth to your organisation, nor whether it’s being met. So you may find it useful to share these insights with appropriate members of your leadership team.

Things to consider for your wish list

The role of training

Being able to demonstrate your untapped potential will likely be a crucial step to solving this issue, but it will have value only if your team can fulfil that potential. That likely means adopting at least some new working practices; not just your team, but of course everyone you work with. The appropriate training can teach your team a series of DFVP:

  1. ‘minimum hygiene’ language standards which could be rolled out across the organisation.
  2. processes for:

 

Beyond training, you’ll also need

  1. A credible measure of your currently unfulfilled potential, which you can re-measure year-on-year to demonstrate the value of IC Leadership.
  2. Enough time for everyone in the team to practise their learning, so they can maximise its ROI.
  3. A mandate to use their learning in every circumstance.

Where those solutions could take you

When you and your leadership team know the IC Team’s value-add, you should have all the influence, time and other resources you need to do the job as it needs doing.

And you and your team will be able to add ever more value, which will be recognised by the people at the top and (although this can’t be absolutely guaranteed) appreciated more widely across your organisation.

Likely business benefits…

…for you

In broad-brush terms, you and your team should get a working life that’s a joy: operating in ways that add maximum value, with minimum frustration

…for your employer

Your organisation will likely save itself squillions, and significantly increase its employee performance and retention, and its brand value.