Category: Entrepreneurship

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Communication Crisis Communication LinkedIn

An Elementary Primer for Your Crisis Communication Efforts

The article was first published on LinkedIn here.

If you accept on the day prior to embarking on your entrepreneurial journey that you will be facing  a range of crisis along the journey, tiding over which would lead you to success, you would be creating a healthy foundation for an effective response to any future crisis.

The acceptance happens at the subconscious level. But it still is a communication – with your own self. Believe it or not, that is the first crisis communication exercise that you undertake.

That, luckily, is also the first lesson in crisis communication: ANTICIPATION of crisis and being proactive about it is the absolute key towards executing a successful – read ‘easy to understand and effective’ – crisis communication.

The real advantage lies not only in the fact that you would be better prepared to address the crisis situation but also in the possibility that you – by means of pre-empting it – might even be able to prevent the crisis from raising its head in the first place. That would be a magnificent example of crisis management by means of having an early crisis communication within the core team of any organisation.

That core team may or may not have communication experts. If not, then it is imperative to make sure that the designated communication team members – or at least the communication leadership – is made a part of all the (anticipatory) crisis management team meetings.

A complete involvement in and UNDERSTANDING of the issue and the approach towards managing the crisis – whether anticipated or existing  – would allow the communication team to be better equipped while DEVISING the crisis communication message, while also TRAINING better the eventual external or public/partners facing spokespersons.

From there on, it is a matter of ESTABLISHING systems for notifying the message (‘communication’) to the desired stakeholders – and for MONITORING the effectiveness of the notifications. The monitoring would involve gauging responses to the communication and, after interpreting the responses, making adjustments to both the message and the delivery methods and modes for greater efficacy of crisis communication.

Sometimes, the crisis does not blow up into something massive. It is always beneficial to, therefore, study the nature of the crisis carefully, as it unfolds. That period, when things are in a flux, is generally called ‘The Critical Hour’. The ‘hour’ demands that the crisis communication team does not go overboard with their messages – but develop and release, what is called, ‘holding statements’.

The beautiful thing about holding statements is that they can be devised right at the first (‘anticipation’) stage itself. Further, they are also common sense statements. Here are a couple of examples:

“The situation is evolving, and we will keep everyone updated via our website and social media networks as we receive more information.”

“We are both investigating the incident and cooperating with the authorities.”

Not too difficult, eh? And yet, so many – just so many – organizations don’t do even this bit.

Talking of simple things, well, it goes without saying that holding statements have a life. A minute longer than the ideal (decided, unfortunately, entirely by the recipients) can open up another battlefront for the team – that of public ire about the team’s ‘professionalism’ etc.

Unlike the holding statements, actual crisis communication cannot be developed in advance. No one can ever predict completely what turn a crisis might take the next hour. Therefore it is mandatory for the entire crisis management team to be at the top of the awareness about the developing crisis situation and keep monitoring, enhancing crisis communication efforts.

Unless absolutely impossible (undesirable), transparency and continuous notifications is the key. There haven’t been too many instances in the history of the human race of people complaining of too much communication about a developing crisis.

Finally, all of the above would be futile if the team doesn’t learn from the crisis – and its management. POST-CRISIS ANALYSIS would reveal that there is no such thing as ‘it won’t happen to me’ or ‘I’ve got everything covered’. No, you can’t have everything covered at all times, and yes, it could happen to you.

The key takeaways of the analysis should be the performance of the crisis communication strategy both from the concept and execution aspect, and the performance of the crisis management team. A good appraisal should be good for an immediate reward for the personnel. A bad one should work as a good lesson in crisis communication management.

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Change Communication Communication LinkedIn

How Good are You at Communicating Change?

The article was first published here.

In another reflection of changing times in India, a lawmaker of the current Indian government has put emphasis on something that is generally discussed at progressive corporate organisations – change communication.

Speaking at the valedictory function of Mid Career Training Programme for Senior Indian Information Service officers (IIS) at Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, India’s Minister of Information & Broadcasting, Urban Development, Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Shri M Venkaiah Naidu said that the Narendra Modi government places ‘communication as a critical cog in the wheel of change‘.

He said three very interesting things at the function:

“To bring about a change always creates a dissonance in the governance process.”

“The (current federal) government in the past two years has embarked on a program of communication innovation-adopting methods, seeking spaces to ensure last mile connectivity to the people.”

“The objective is to plug the gaps in the government’s communication approach in areas of content design, social marketing, branding, impact assessment and weaving technologies in the digital age.”

This is a refreshingly different approach from a government in India, after decades of top-down monologue-oriented official communiqués. Those, of course, work(ed) brilliantly in a bureaucracy led system that cherishes status quo. But rarely, if ever, in heralding a change.

How well the current administration is able to walk the talk of a comprehensive communication roadmap remains to be seen. But going by – probably the best in the world – responses on Twitter by, for example, India’s Minister for External Affairs, Smt. Sushma Swaraj, and Minister for Railways, Shri Suresh Prabhu, the start has been good.

It would take another couple of terms of successive governments for the system to finally institutionalize good communication – especially that related to change – in Indian polity.

But it should take a much smaller period for you to implement the ‘Change Communication Good Practises‘, so to speak, in your corporate organisation.

Here, we are talking about ‘change’ in general – from the perspective of general communication requirements of internal, corporate, and marketing communication, among all other.

The principal facilitator of good change communication is the ability of the team behind it to understand how people (employees, partners, clients, consumers) perceive and respond to change. Our collective experiences over the years tell us that most people are reluctant for change because they see change as a force that disrupts their cosy corner of the world.

Hence, it is imperative for the change communication team to have the intellectual and emotional proficiency to appreciate and segregate the resistance to change, its sources, and silos – and devise communication answers (read ‘strategy’) for the response and/or resistance to change or the anticipation of change.

The first step towards achieving that is understanding the roles and responsibilities of the leaders, communicators, and people-facing personnel during the execution of change – whether in an intra-organisation sphere or those related to the markets.

Though it sounds elementary, it takes some effort and practice to ensure that the entire team consistently remains on the same page with regards tactics, channels, and techniques that are to be used for communicating change.

At the same time, and this is extremely crucial, the team has to realise that no can have a complete handle over the entire curve of the impending change.

This realisation has to be compassionately passed on to the recipients – while making sure that the team itself realises that it is communicating amid an open-ended, unpredictable change, which would require them to be ever flexible about the nature and frequency of their communication.

Some changes, for many, unfortunately, are not open-ended and unpredictable – and are precisely the kind of changes that makes people fear change in general. In other words, sometimes, change indeed stands for a bad news that has to be communicated.

Like most things in life, there is no one correct way of communicating bad news. But personally, I believe that we could learn from the fraternity that lives with the prospect of delivering bad news on any given day – the doctors.

As someone who belongs to a ‘cancer family’ and has interacted with doctors exhaustively in the context of my late father’s cancer diagnosis and treatment (in vain, the second time), I believe there is no communication as nerve-wracking as that between a terminally ill patient – or his/her caregiver – and the doctor in charge.

Identifying the significance of the subject, the American Medical Association (AMA) first included principles related to the delivery of bad news in its code of conduct almost 150 years ago.

American doctors Michael W. Rabow and Stephen J. McPhee developed a model in 1999 about ‘Techniques for Delivery Bad News Well’ that is represented by a simple mnemonic ABCDE.

ABCDE stands for  ‘Advance Preparation‘, ‘Building a Therapeutic Relationship‘, ‘Communicating Well‘, ‘Dealing with Patient and Family Reactions‘, and ‘Encouraging/Validating Emotions‘.

It is obvious what ‘bad news’ the medical fraternity refers to.

In our case, we can define bad news as any news that either proposes to bring about or is perceived as bringing about far-reaching and/or negative change in the current circumstances of the recipient of the news. In other words, the universe might be different, but the underlining principles of ABCDE work just as well in public policy and corporate governance communications.

Eventually, what really matters is your attitude and approach towards the recipients of your communication (if not actually being that, you should at least come across as being compassionate towards the people who stand to be affected by an impending change), the clarity of your communication, the safeguarding of privacy (related to issues like internal appraisal reports, if not the non-disclosure in public of the ‘pink slip’ itself), and the freedom for the recipient of change communication to question you, and get answers to his/her questions.

It’s not hard really but really needs heart.

How good are you at communicating change?

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Corporate Communication Entrepreneurship Featured LinkedIn

Dummies Guide to Internal Communications

internal_communication

At the absolute basic level, the solitary purpose of ‘internal communication’ is to make sure that everyone in the team remains ‘on the same’ page at all times.

From the organizational perspective, it helps unity of purpose and action – leading to a unified goal of success for everyone. The employees, on the other hand, consider themselves a worthy part of the narrative when they hear company news much before the world hears it – just as, and more importantly, when they feel that their communication with the organisation is a dialogue and not a directive.

Fortunately, the prerequisites for that overall agreement are just as uncomplicated:

  • Clarity of (purpose of the) message in either or every (vertical + lateral) direction;
  • Catalytic medium for a clear message (some mediums are more suited for some purposes);
  • Correct consumption of message (precise understanding of and action upon the message by the staff);
    and most importantly,
  • Command structure walking the message (if the CEO is messy, no amount of communication can extract discipline from the subordinates)

In other words, Internal communications ought to facilitate decision making at the top via quality ‘floor feedback’ and encourage employee participation and output via clear and compassionate responsibility delegation – leading to overall benefit of the organization, the management and the employees.

It goes without saying, however, that though elementary, the aforementioned, quite like preparation of a project report, takes planning, practice and passion. The only favourable difference is that preparation of ‘internal communication’ blueprint is principally a process of adapting a singular message to its finite modes of delivery – within the finite realm of an organisation:

| A | Formal Face-to-Face Meetings | – |

Unless we are talking of a really small organization (< 50 personnel), face-to-face meetings don’t actually mean one-on-one between the management and individual staffers. The exercise can be split into the usual brackets as follows:

  • Management Meeting (@ CEOs, group heads, division heads et al)
  • Select-Group Cross-Divisional Meeting (@ lateral and vertical core representatives of divisions)
  • Workgroup or Divisional Meeting (@ intra division / group meetings of stake holders)
    and finally, the
  • Entire Organisation ‘Mission & Vision’ Meeting (@ entire strength of the organization)

| B | Informal Face-to-Face Meetings | – |

Anything informal is – or at least ought to be – much lighter. It holds true for informal face-to-face office meetings too. It is difficult to pin down ‘informality’, but here are some of the more obvious ones:

  • Drop-ins (mostly top brass visiting ‘the floor’ but can also be about select few invited for a (non classified) management brainstorming)
  • The Water Cooler Meeting (rarely between the absolute top and the ground level, but fairly effective for levels just about similar or thereabouts)
  • Lunch / Breakfast / Coffee Meetings (between a convener and a small group of stake holders)

| C | Electronic | – |

  • Voice (Phone-in and phone-out @ both the leadership and the staff)
  • Social Media (an internal social network site or a closed group on platforms like Facebook etc)
  • E-mail, including mass group mailers
  • Intranet, including sharing domains like Google Drive, Wikis etc
  • E-newsletters
  • Podcasts (as in an organization wide radio talk, Q&A etc by a designated person every week)
  • Videos (either for the above purpose or to share motivational, educational films @ company objective and targets)

| D | Print and Display | – |

  • Continuous Vision and Mission Docs (explaining new targets and changes @ original vision)
  • Newsletter (preferably with ample – if not majority – space for employee voices)
  • Bulletin Board (especially about forthcoming events, targets and, most importantly, changes)
  • Anonymous Suggestion Box

These are just the broad boxes that you need to tick for effective internal communications. You don’t have to subscribe the exact forms. The form would eventually be decided by the nature of your organisation and the purpose of the activity. Remember, the idea is to facilitate precise, coherent and well-timed flow of information across the hierarchy.

Finally, let’s end this concise guide with one last basic bit of truth:

None of the aforementioned internal communications activities sit in a box; they are all eternal processes – like an invigorating fresh water stream.

This tutorial was published on LinkedIn here

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Entrepreneurship Startup Diaries

Human Care Central Startup Diaries – 3

Can a personal experience be a universal story?

In my previous post, I had written:

Human Care Central is a child of immense pain, which did not stop to think about getting organised first before hitting the road. The idea was to immediately get going with the task of helping at least one person somewhere avoid the pain that we went through.

While the statement stays true from the perspective of the initiation of the enterprise, it is rather elementary that even if a person has no shoes, he has to choose a direction – unless it involves an escape against time.

So did we; we chose a direction that we believe could perhaps be a good path for others to walk too. A path that cares for the traveller in the widest manner possible.

The Genesis:

The birth of the idea was just a simple – and single – experience of mobility denial  to a critically ill elderly person by the current state of infrastructure around us. But the idea now stands for every single unique need of daily living.

Simply because during our study of the ‘human needs universe’ around us, from real life, mind you, we became increasingly aware of a truth that stares our world right in the face – and yet is largely invisible:

You may be perfectly healthy but still find it challenging to carry out a particular activity of daily living, right?

And therein lies the evolved expanse of the original idea.

We understand how an unwell, unfit or under-blessed person can find daily living a taxing exercise. And they form the ‘immediate and emergency recipients’ of our proposed universe of solutions. But that is an obvious response, isn’t it? The real idea of care is to reach up to a person who might not look to be needing acute care.

That, dear friends, is one of the most complete forms of the idea. And that has evolved from a single, personal experience.

Thanks for reading the EveryCare Diaries. I would be indebted if you support further evolution of the idea us on other platforms too.

Sincerely,
Anshuman

[The series shares with you the ‘behind the scenes’ world of #humancarecentral and shall continue till the launch day]

[These are personal notes and hence may not always pass through stringent linguistic quality checks that our business adheres to]

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Entrepreneurship Startup Diaries

Human Care Central Startup Diaries – 2

We put our eventual course ahead of the immediate cost.

Any random article on magazines/portals like Forbes or Inc., thesis papers by IIM-A, Stanford or Harvard university and advice by consultancy firms like Boston Consultancy Group and McKinsey & Company would guide you to (some form of) these steps for startups prior to product/business launch:

  • Have an ‘A’ team (because you need to have many experts to be able to execute an idea)
  • Have an ‘A’ business plan (especially including fancy financial projections)
  • Identify the product (in terms of the ‘customer pain’ that it solves)
  • Know your market (who is going to buy your product – age, gender, class etc)
  • Shore up your plan and budget

Frankly, while it would only be natural for us to be doing some, many or all of those – which again are some or many of many more – we did NOT start working on our idea with those guidelines.

Human Care Central is a child of immense pain, which did not stop to think about getting organised first before hitting the road towards helping if only one, just one, person somewhere avoid the pain that we went through. It was a pain of watching and being part of moving around of a critically ill elderly man. It was a pain of not having enough solutions around, despite having, perhaps, enough means. It was a pain of not having realised earlier that many around us and millions across the globe go through it every day – without having the luxury or purpose of speaking out.

No, we couldn’t have waited to ‘validate the idea’ from the perspective of finding out the profitability prospects of the idea. No, we can’t be worried about that enough to abandon the pursuit in the event of unfavourable business advice.

Does that mean that we disregard the need for those steps?

No, it just means that we would give our best to incorporate that wisdom to reach our already defined destination.

It just means that sometimes some things need to be done irrespective of conventional wisdom or order. People who recognise that come up early in the idea lifecycle to support you, while others would wait for the idea to get some business ‘traction’ before coming forward to join hands. Fair enough: Venture funding is not charity.

Though, I do believe that the phrase ‘angel investor’ shouldn’t be applied to hard-nosed, bottom-line-driven bankers. An angel should be someone who has more courage than other investors – and backs an idea even if it is risky. It is not an angel investor’s ‘duty’. It is just that many of the best communities were formed after one single person took a journey, and was soon joined by many, one pair of feet at a time.

You are witnessing the birth of that journey right here on the Facebook page of #everycare, India’s first #humancaremarketplace. We could have had fake visitor posts on the page, but we waited to have one by a genuine supporter of the idea who is not attached with us. And we had it today, many weeks after we first formed this page.

I would be indebted if you support us on those platforms too.

Sincerely,
Anshuman

[The series shares with you the ‘behind the scenes’ world of #humancarecentral and shall continue untill the launch day]

[These are personal notes and hence may not always pass through stringent linguistic quality checks that our business adheres to]

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Entrepreneurship Startup Diaries

Human Care Central Startup Diaries – 1

We appreciate your patience!

Even as we continue with, what often feels like an almost insurmountable mountain, there are always voices of encouragement that work as a massive shot in the arm. Every founder of a startup will tell you that every minute shot of that nature is worth its weight in gold.

Yesterday, I had a rather satisfactory conversation with a senior professional working with India’s biggest software company – both in terms of the sheer employee size and the revenue generated. He was quite emphatic in his approval of our idea, and the venture as a whole. He, without any shred of make-believe, told me that our forthcoming human care marketplace does indeed solve a critical customer problem and is a promising business too. Over the period of conversation, we seemed to agree on many points about the venture in particular and the process of launching a new venture in general.

One of the easy agreements, unfortunately, was about the need to not divulge too much of the idea of a new venture to ‘outsiders’.

There are two things that stand out for me in that agreement: First, I have had the misfortune of experiencing the ‘folly’ of sharing or discussing an evolving idea – actually the complete blueprint of the idea – with ‘leading lights’ of that particular idea’s domain. Twice; I’ve experienced twice – in different domains – the pain of an idea being hijacked by strangers with whom I had discussed the ideas about new ventures. So, there is absolutely no doubt why I would agree to be extremely wary – if not suspicious – of my idea changing clothes.

Second, I still believe there’s no other way out! How can you, just one individual, sit tight with an idea sans resources? Eventually, as the old Hindi saying goes ‘Jungle Mein Mor Naacha Kisne Dekha’ (What’s the worth of an idea not seen/heard/known by people outside its home).

Hence, and displaying faith in fellow professionals again, every startup founder goes out and meets hundreds of people to discuss his/her idea. I do that too. And so do my worthy team members – many of who have seen more life than me.

But it takes time. It takes time to identify the most appropriate people to validate your idea. It takes time to identify the most honourable – out of those appropriate – people to validate your idea. And when those guiding souls, who can be anyone, from an old uncle to a college drop-out business wiz in early 20s, the idea finally starts taking a better shape.

Sometimes, the idea continues to evolve to a point where it becomes (ever so) slightly different from the original idea. And then, the cycle repeats.

In other words, again, it takes time. We wish to give a good idea to you. We hope you’ll be patient with us. #everycare, the #humancaremarketplace, eventually, is about both of us.

Sincerely,
Anshuman

[The series shares with you the ‘behind the scenes’ world of #humancarecentral and shall continue till the launch day]