As an internal communicator how can you ignite change in your organisation without burning the house down and creating lots of resistance to it? This starts by adopting a particular mindset in how you think about change, before you try to communicate anything about it.
Urban dictionary: ‘A culture vulture is a person who adopts something from a different community and makes it their own.’ Is internal communication becoming a culture vulture?
It’s surprising what some people working in the internal communications profession, and organisational stakeholders, think we should have responsibility for. We should be careful what we claim ownership of, willingly or through coercion.
When it comes to diminished professional confidence, The Curse of Cassandra is potentially more damaging than Imposter Syndrome. It is very easy to be ignored or overlooked in PR and internal communication, and have your ideas and views obscured by louder, more popular or branded voices, however valid your point of view or prophecy.
What should the priorities for internal communicators really be in 2022? They should not be the point issues which routinely appear in the annual predictions for the profession. It’s time for us to take a step back and get back to basics, or to discover the basics if we don’t know what they are.
The job titles for internal communication roles are inconsistent and meaningless when it comes to seniority. This confusion puts candidates for IC job roles at a disadvantage during recruitment, creates frustration and increases the risk of mismatches between successful applicants and roles.
Internal communication recruitment sometimes feels like the lawless ‘Wild West’ with no agreed or universal standards for what an internal communicator is, or does, what we should know and if we should be even qualified or accredited. No wonder some recruiters don’t know what ‘good’ looks like.
ggelf IC has had a reinvention and is now The IC Citizen. What The IC Citizen stands for isn’t a 'stupid idea'. It’s important for all of us that work in internal communication and who are serious about doing a good job and becoming better at what we do. A compass guides the way.
When did you last inspire someone? Can’t remember, or are you just too modest to admit it? To inspire is to create the hope of a better future for internal communication, for the talent we spot and the profession as a whole. With that in mind we should all set our modesty aside and become active players in the inspiration game.
We need to develop a better internal communications ecosystem to support our profession. An ecosystem where there is a symbiosis, co-existence and more co-operation between all the actors in it, and a little less commercial competition, so we can properly harness the power of our collective.
The IC Citizen 