The River Thames: muddy thouroughfare or crystal clear stream?

Sarah Poulter:

The River Thames is one of the most famous landmarks in London. It carves the city in half, attracts tourists to wander along its banks, and operates as an aquatic motorway for traffic wanting to move around the capital. The water is a murky shade of brown and so recognisable that a cocktail has been named after it. It sounds gross but is quite delicious. This is the River Thames that springs to mind for most people.

But for me, something else entirely springs to mind. I see the little stream I saw at the bottom of the garden of a house I went to view when leaving London five years ago. I rocked up with visions of paddleboarding from my own back garden, which rapidly disappeared when I saw the metre wide, 30cm deep trickle that was full of reeds and ducks. Absolutely lovely in its own way, but utterly useless for paddleboarding.

Stay with me here…

The same default picture happens for Internal Communications (or strategic or organisational communications depending on which definition we use on any given day). Everyone is focussed on the giant muddy shipping lane downstream of a crisp clear bucolic stream.

The majority of discourse about internal comms, both from IC practitioners and senior leaders, is, in my opinion, focussed on the wrong thing. The engagement metrics, whether people are happy at work, the success of various awareness campaigns. The noise generated at the end of the river that feels disjointed, loud, and contradictory.

All of this noise sits in front of a backdrop of increasing focus on efficiency, on using AI to automate, and on reducing headcount. On the machine trumping humans.

It feels muddy. And it feels misguided. Because when the organisational language is efficiency, execution, growth and streamlining, if communicators’ answers are human connection, empathy, warmth and fuzziness, there’s a CFO with a red pen coming for you quicker than you can blink.

Looking at things from a different angle

When I picture the Thames, it’s clear. It’s that upstream reed bed with ducks. It’s one simple thing that if we all turned our attention to properly would probably eliminate a lot of the downstream noise. (Not much I can do about the actual pollution of the Thames, that is a completely different story.)

In comms, it’s understanding the business strategy wherever you sit in an organisation.

According to Harvard Business Review, 95% of employees can’t connect their work to the business strategy they are helping to deliver. That’s wild to me.

Being clear on how your role connects to the delivery of business strategy is table stakes. It sits upstream of everything else; the engagement survey, the weekly newsletters, the All Hands productions, the jazz hands to improve morale. And yet, most of the communicators I see espousing their views on LinkedIn aren’t talking about connection to strategy. They’re still focussed on what’s happening downstream.

This gap, this 95% of employees who can’t connect their work to the strategy, is the ONLY thing we should be focussed on. Comms leaders and business leaders alike. Because if you have a workforce that doesn’t see how what they do connects to your business strategy, who is delivering your growth? Santa’s little helpers?

Comms professionals shouldn’t be arguing for seats at the table. Or worrying about whether they look strategic. Or how to say no to low value work. All of this is downstream of the work they should actually be prioritising.

C-suite shouldn’t be worrying about engagement metrics. Or performative campaigns. In a world where efficiency is crucial, the focus should be on making sure your employees are doing the exact things you need them to do to sustain and grow your business. Make sure you’ve spent the time connecting them to your business strategy, even past the point where you’re bored of hearing yourself speak. That is the only way they will achieve clarity and alignment on their priorities. That decision Bob in Product makes on a Tuesday afternoon about his team’s priorities is way more important to your business success than whether people attended the Benefits lunch and learn (sorry Benefits, you’re an easy target for this one, I know you’re still needed).

Contrarian? Or future focussed?

So why aren’t we all focussed upstream? It’s a question I’ve asked myself repeatedly during the past few months, particularly as the noise around AI stealing comms’ lunch gets louder.

Because weirdly, unlike other disciplines (take Finance as an example), we’ve never built the infrastructure that sets the foundations before we build the rest of the house. We’ve never looked at the mechanisms, repeatability, systems and processes that need to uniformly underpin how we connect people to strategy day in, day out, until it becomes the bedrock on which everything else can stabilise.

So I decided to build the system. I’ve created the workflows, the processes, the repeatability. There’s no jazz hands, but there is consistency, and repeated check-ins to align shifting context with what it means for Bob in Product. It’s early days, but I’m proud of what I’ve done. And I’ll never again argue for a seat at the table, because I built my own house instead.

Nb. Thames Water is a non-alcoholic cocktail made of equal measures of Orange juice and Coke. Pretty good, especially if you’ve had one too many the night before. Trust me.

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Sarah Poulter is a UK-based communication consultant, interim and fractional leader who works with CEOs and executive teams to close the gap between strategic intent and organisational execution in businesses where things are moving quickly and the usual interventions aren’t working.