You would think it impossible to forget those people at the very top of the food chain when it comes to communications in our corporate organizations. After all, who needs the best and latest information more than those who make so many critical decisions? But more often than not we see all the internal communications aimed at mid-level management and below, ignoring senior leadership. I guess the thinking is that we’re communicating what the leaders want, so why bother communicating it back up the chain to them.

Based on experience, that’s not the best strategy.

Internal communicators often assume that senior leadership share amongst themselves and know what’s going on in their companies. They’re together often enough, it just stands to reason that they report to one another. But experience tells us that they don’t, or that what is communicated is too often misunderstood or too soon forgotten.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Let’s face it, our leaders are busy bees. They have a tremendous amount on their plates and too many voices buzzing at them every day. Frankly, I’m amazed that they catch, understand and retain as much as they do. But wouldn’t it be great if we could pull together a solution that puts the most accurate and latest information at their fingertips, literally?

The answer may begin with how we communicate, not what we communicate.

The Challenge

In short, what we need is a secure channel that can deliver facts, figures, outlines, initiatives, details, calendars, personal communications and probably more. It needs to be easy for the leader to carry around, easy for them to use and easy for us to update. To be effective, the Leader Comm device must allow our senior manager to skim the info, or delve deeper if the time and inclination is there. This new piece of the communications puzzle must not be one more burdensome addition to the variety of comm channels pointed at the leader, but should consolidate several channels into one.

Daunting? Maybe, Maybe Not

As daunting as this challenge may seem, it’s not. The task is really to meld all that paper-based information that comes at our leaders into one simple, digital device. See where I’m going? Yep, focus on a device. A smart phone or iPad. I opt for the iPad because it’s much easier for my older eyes to read and just as easy to use as any smart phone and we can secure both ends of the communications channel.

The first question to ask our leaders is if they think they could use such a device. So far all who have been asked that question have said yes.

Second – and this is the tricky part – is to determine if the leaders can be shifted to use a device that we can make secure while it accesses this mountain of information. Not as easy to do as it is easy to say. Even President Obama stubbornly held onto his trusty Blackberry and our government had to spend a lot to make it safe and secure.

Leader’s Intranet

The information we need is usually sitting in data form someplace in the organization already. Somebody, somewhere had to get it onto a piece of paper, so if we can tap into that source and divert it to a digital repository then we can secure it and make it available to our leader. I guess this is just a specialized Leader’s Intranet.

Think of it — if you can build and perfect a device-centric comm channel for leaders, you can do the same for all managers in the company. And in six months to a year, you can expand that channel to include social communications — systems for sharing and conversing, person-to-person or group-to-group.

Given where we were just a few short years ago with employee communications, this is an amazing dream.

Thanks for listening,
steve