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“Delve is an insight engine that transforms how brands understand their world.”
With every story, thread and meme battling for our attention, what do we focus on and care about? Communications pros Sean Garrett and Allison Braley—trusted by Twitter, Amazon, Meta, Slack, Bain Capital Ventures, and more—talk with those shifting the future of communications and who pays attention to what.
Sean 00:01
Welcome to Attention Shift. We unpack where communication and communications is headed. I'm Sean Garrett, and we’re supported by Delve with the top-level context engine for comms. My co-host, Allison Braley, and I talk to industry experts about how we show up and get our message across in an era of limited time and shortened attention spans. Let's dive in.
Sean 00:28
Hey, Allison, what's up?
Allison 00:30
Hey, Sean, how are you? It’s the end of summer.
Sean 00:34
Is it? I mean, I guess my kids are… I know exactly. Our kids are so ready, furiously running around, getting ready, getting their classes, and generally being annoying. But I'm stoked for today's conversation.
Allison 00:47
We are going to talk all things internal comms with the master himself.
Sean 00:51
Is it internal comms or is it employee comms?
Allison 00:53
There is employee advocacy, Sean.
Sean 00:56
I don't know. Like, no people are saying… well, this, I suppose we can get into this today. Employee comms. Is that more elevated than internal comms? I don't know. Do I care? Let's find out. I do know people do care. And what I do know also is that employee/internal comms is an area that we'll get into with our guest, Andrew Blotky. The reason why we had Andrew on is because, one, it's news to no one that this role has become more important, more essential, over the last decade, especially since the dawn of Covid. It's gone from being a role that I think maybe was about sending out compliance emails from HR or signing up for your new benefits to being a role that I think is deeply strategic and deeply influential on a communications team. And I think Andrew is a great person to represent that because he is someone who has worked in politics. He's worked in Congress and the White House. He's a Stanford-trained lawyer. He's the author of a book called Honestly Speaking. He's a certified leadership coach, but he also, importantly to ground things, was the person who started a small function within a small company called Facebook, which started the internal comms role there, and then grew it in a major way to a place where by the time he left, Facebook was in 80 different countries before they became Meta. And then he had a job at another small little company called Johnson & Johnson, where he had a big internal comms role there as well. So Andrew is a really thoughtful guy that I've gotten to know probably over the last eight years or so, who I think approaches this role in a very holistic, interesting way, and I think we'll let that conversation speak for itself. But Allison, what's your internal comms hot takes these days?
Allison 02:53
I think it's for a long time such a disrespected function. Way early in my career, it was sort of like, oh, send this email, you know, post this thing to the intranet. God, remember, we had those? It felt very formulaic. And as anyone here, as I have, who's ever been part of a fast-growing startup knows, it's actually a really hard job. I mean, preparing for the all-hands. And you know, you know, there's that one person who's going to ask that one question that you don't want to answer, and making sure you understand how employees are feeling and what they're thinking at any given moment. So a whole bunch of listening skills are involved. And you know, knowing when to make decisions that are going to be unpopular with some portion of the company, and that's just necessary.
Sean 03:36
You work with a lot of startups that are growing their comms functions. When do you recommend that they hire?
Allison 03:43
These things break around 100 people, and at that point, you can start having somebody on the team really thinking about it more. Maybe even 80. Like when you stop knowing everybody by name, you absolutely don't know what people are thinking. And so at that point, you need to have somebody whose job it is to do that for you. It can be part of someone's job at that point. But then I think once you're at like, three, four hundred people, it kind of starts to need to be a full-time job. Because especially in situations where I work for a company, a couple of them now that had a distributed workforce with like sales people scattered around the country, and those people don't feel connected to the to the mothership very well and but they're a really important part of of your company and your culture and thinking about really thoughtful ways to make them feel a part of things. And every company has its own cousin of that challenge, whatever that looks like for your company, but do that badly, and your best people believe, and that's a huge problem.
Sean 04:35
Yeah, I think the distributed thing is a really important point, because obviously so many more companies are distributed today, and I think a company that's 200 people, where everyone shows up to the same office every day, in a company that's 200 people, and those 200 people are spread out around the world or around the country, that's a… two completely different dynamics in terms of internal communications, right?
Allison 05:00
Yeah, totally. And, I mean, I think also then it starts to develop into sort of, like, team-based factions. And once you start to feel that happening, like, you know, there's no connective tissue anymore between the engineering team and the sales team and the operations team, and once you start to feel that happening, you know, you have a problem and you need to solve it, and so you'd like to get ahead of it before that happens.
Sean 05:19
I think, yeah, which leads to, like, what I think is one of the most interesting dynamics about internal communications, which, you know, honestly, is something that we found along the way in the work that I did a a consultancy, Pramana Collective, that I helped co-found, is that, you know, we would get called into all sorts of different well known organizations to say, oh, we need to take comms to the next level. We need to take this brand to the next level. We need to do all this stuff, like, kind of, like, whoever's doing that is not doing the job they want. And so we would go in, and we would have this mindset, okay, we're… we've all worked in-house. We know the language of the… how companies operate or don't operate. And so we're going to ask a bunch of questions, kind of typical of brand discovery work, but with a little bit of an edge. And, long story short, 90% of the time that someone would call, call us in and say, you know, there's some problem with our message, like we don't understand why it's not resonating. It was because there was some form of misalignment internally. And that misalignment, quite often, was within the broader company, with the executives, but oftentimes it was also even just within the executive team. And so we would expose that, and we would show that, and then it became all about, well, before we can do all this fancy stuff and this big strategy and big change, like, we have to get on the same page here internally. And so, you know, one thing I've talked about is, like, the comms role, and specifically internal comms, like, almost becoming like a chief alignment officer for an organization. And that alignment is, it sounds like really obvious, but like, who is driving alignment at your company? Like, look around, is there one person?
Allison 07:06
And it’s not like people say they're not, like, I'm not aligned. Yeah, they just don't do the thing that you and everyone else want them to. Did they just say, okay, you've decided that, but I don't agree, and I'm just gonna go do it my own way, or say this other thing to people or to customers or to whatever? And so it's also like sussing out what, where is that misalignment, like, where is it broken, and what's motivating it?
Sean 07:26
And then what, and what, what, what would motivate you to make… to get you aligned? It's not just a bunch of words, right? It's not like, let's just go redo our North Star again. There has to be so much more than that. Yeah. Where's a place where you've had, like, a really strong culture slash internal communication, where everyone felt good and aligned?
Allison 07:47
I worked for a startup at one point that had values, and for so many companies, values are bad, and the reason they're bad is because they are something any company would say, and the employees don't feel any pressure to live by them, because there's no consequence or whatever. It's just sort of like… You splashed on the wall, and you hope for the best. The company I worked for would put them in the conference rooms and all of that, and did all of that. But they also did awards at the end of the year for people who kind of live the values. And you were able to win an argument in a meeting by saying, Hey, you know that's not customer-first or whatever. The value is that, to me, like having teeth is really important, and there were a number of values in there that kind of went against the grain of what, you know, what's popular within companies. And you know, another company that sticks out to me is Conde Nast. When I worked there, they have a famously difficult culture. It's called Conde Nasty for a reason. People are not going to be nice always; they're going to be sharp-elbowed. But it was a place that valued creativity, valued hierarchy, and had a bunch of those types of values built in that you really felt.
Sean 08:51
I was obviously at Twitter very early, and from like 70 employees up to 700, and everyone made fun of Twitter about the fail well at the time, and all the different drama with their founders. And you know, all… our lack of ability to create a successful business model, and yada yada yada. Meanwhile, like, usage went up, and everything went up to the right. But honestly, the one thing that kept that company together was the people and the humans that worked with each other, and kind of that, you know, shared cultural value. And I almost think, like, you know, cultures felt, not described. And I think it's probably the same at Conde Nast, just there was a vibe, and there was a vibe at Twitter. It's just who you are. And I think one underrated way to create a good culture and strong internal communication is to hire good humans. And I mean, that's like a pretty important thing to do. I think it's underrated. You should hire good humans who speak well and who talk well, who have empathy, and who understand other humans. I think it usually works out well. And, at Twitter, early on, we over-indexed on that type of person.
Allison 10:05
Yeah, I love that. And it felt like everyone was aligned, which is great. I mean, I think, you know, you can have a different kind of culture, too. I think you can have a competitive, sharp-elbowed culture, if you want, but just be, again, be intentional about it feels really key. And being really clear in the way that you're hiring that that's the type of person you're indexing towards. So you don't, you know, you don't have teamwork on the wall, while at the same time, your culture actually doesn't reflect teamwork. It's something totally different. That's the trap I think a lot of companies fall into, is put a really nice set of values on the wall, but live by something totally different.
Sean 10:37
Fake purpose. Or purpose for where, as Nina Montgomery of Makes a Member famously said, predatory purpose. And predatory purpose is when you basically say, like, you know, take on the purpose of this company that may not be real, but basically put yourself into this, almost like a religion. And I just see that like, almost every time that doesn't turn out well. And I think, like, you know, more modern organizations have to find a space where human beings that work for them find their own purpose, and then they have the thing they do at work. But if you get all your purpose out of your job, you're going to end up being disappointed quite often. And I think that could work for a period of time, maybe you'll see some shareholder value in the process. Well, hey, that's what it's all got. Allison, right. Well, speaking of shareholder value, we should talk to Andrew Blotky.
Allison 11:28
We should. Let's hear from him.
Sean 11:31
Hey, Andrew.
Andrew 11:32
Hey. How are you? It's nice to be with you.
Sean 11:34
Great to have you. I want to dive right into internal communication/employee communication/employee advocacy, all these different terms have risen in prominence for a lot of good reasons in the last 15 years, and especially since the dawn of Covid. And I appreciate you being on because I've always thought that you were one of the… not only a great practitioner, but also a deep thinker when it comes to these topics. And I think also, interestingly, you've had the time to be able to spend working inside and then coming out from, you know, crazy deep, hard situations and fun situations, to be able to reflect. So thank you for being here. I guess, like, I want to start with how you got into doing quote/unquote, internal comms in the first place. How did you find yourself at Facebook so many years ago?
Andrew 12:33
I love this podcast, and I love what you guys are doing, and so I'm really grateful to be here and to have a conversation. So thanks for including me. When I think about how I ended up at Facebook back when it was still called Facebook, it's sort of a perfect example of like, networking when you're not actively networking. I ended up at Facebook because of a former colleague of mine from when I worked on Capitol Hill. He and I were both, you know, young press secretaries working for two different senators from the same state, both from opposite parties, back when people actually, you know, got along across the aisle in Washington. And we, you know, we worked really well together. And he ended up running corporate PR at Facebook, and I was sort of in the place of wanting to figure out just how to make a transition. And he was like, I’ve got a job for you. Will you come talk to me? And so it was somebody that, you know, we had just done really good work together. I respected him, and he just, you know, we sort of made an introduction, and very quickly it sort of happened. What they were looking for at that time, and I think this goes to the point of evolution in the discipline, is somebody who hadn't just done the same thing everywhere else. And so they actively had been seeking somebody, at least as it was explained to me, that had like… done communications and had thought about business and leadership in a different way. And so I had spent my entire career working in politics up until that time. And so I think that that teaches you a few different things, like how to work for an organization or someone who's under a lot of scrutiny, a lot of time, and, you know, in the spotlight. But also somebody who's able to sort of think about it, not as sort of a traditional, sort of one-way communication thing, but is in politics. All politics is relational. And so how can you view the discipline as a little bit more relational? So that'll get, I'm sure, to a point that, you know, we can talk about later, but that's sort of what they were looking for, and how I was sort of networked, about actively networking.
Sean 14:27
And when, you know, just for the youngs who listen to our podcast, thank you for… thank you for listening, by the way. What did internal communications mostly look like way back then?
Andrew 14:38
You know, I think it was a lot of emails. And I think it was sort of like what the CEO or what the head of the team would sort of say, and then there was a little bit, you know, of sort of maybe some fun, maybe there was an event or two that people would put together. And I think it was largely, maybe even like, take the press release that we send out to the media. Which, I guess, people still send press releases. And just like share it afterward as an afterthought. But importantly, it was also, for most leaders, an afterthought. And so I think that they didn't see employees as both a key business driver or as a core communications constituency.
Allison 15:18
Yeah, and Facebook during that period when you joined, I worked on the team at Outcast that worked with them for a while, so I'm especially sensitive to this, but it was a period of intense turmoil for the company. And so how did that inform their decision to hire someone with your experience to run, quote/unquote, internal comms?
Andrew 15:38
Well, I mean, you know, have to ask, you know, Elliot or Cheryl, or whoever else that, you know, we want to talk to. But I think it influenced them because they wanted somebody who was going to be creative and think about things in a different way, and somebody who is going to be comfortable in a space with sort of senior leaders. So I had come from, you know, working pretty closely with the Obama administration before then, worked with senior people in the White House. When I was at the Center for American Progress, I had worked on the Hill for pretty senior senators. So through my whole life, I've felt very comfortable. I hadn't... I think they probably knew Andrew's not gonna have a problem standing in a room with Mark Zuckerberg every week from, you know, the first week here. And so I say that because it goes again to this point about this being a relational discipline, and I think how you relate to the leaders and how you connect to them is really important. And I also sort of think that they probably were looking for somebody who could see across different disciplines. So a lot of politics is around putting puzzle pieces together and a narrative that sort of fits, that captures hearts and minds, right? And so you want somebody who isn't solely interested in just the business aspect or just the engineering and product aspect, but somebody who's able to look across the whole of the company and sort of try to put some pieces together. It's one of the things that I love about this work and this discipline is that you really get to learn and have to know how the business operates. How does the science or the technology, or the product offering work? How do you understand your customers? And the employee population is sort of obviously an important part of that.
Allison 17:07
Can you give us an example of a time when you had to connect a bunch of those dots, like, you know, what's a proud accomplishment for you in terms of, you know, bringing those complex messages to the employee base in a thoughtful way?
Andrew 17:19
Well, you know, I mean, I think one of the things that we tried to do, both at my time at Facebook, and actually also, most recently, when I was at Johnson & Johnson, was to do some kind of storytelling program. And I think that, you know, again, we could get into a conversation, I think it relates to a lot of what we've had a couple of previous guests speak to as well, which is the idea that storytelling is so important as a skill and as an ability as communication. So what we tried to do is not just have the communications teams doing the storytelling, but help employees tell their own stories about what they had seen or done on Facebook that was personally meaningful to them. And it served a few purposes, because it served to sort of help make people—employees—feel like they were a part of the story, a part of the conversation, a part of the history. But also, it served to sort of help build a well of goodwill about what was happening and why it was important to the organization. Because you all know that at certain different times as time goes on, you're going to have to draw on that well of goodwill in a crisis situation, or when you make a mistake, or whatever. So waiting until there's a crisis is not a good strategy. So you want to try to build up a well of sort of people's connectedness to the mission. This is especially important as you grow as an organization, because the more people there are, the more dispersed and diffused it can start to feel, and the more likely it is that people will start to tell their own narrative about the company, or they'll have their own experience, or they'll bring their own cultural perspective. And so you want to sort of help reinforce what the company really stands for and what people believe in. And I think there's a really great, powerful way of doing that, by having the employees do that, as opposed to just sort of having the HR, the comms team do it.
Allison 19:02
Yeah. And, you know, we talked a little bit about, like, the far past of, sort of, internal communications. Like, hey, take this press release and, like, spread the gospel among the employees. And you're talking a little bit now about the more, slightly more modern version of it, that is, the employees lead, you know, lead the discussion. Really, employee advocacy. What do you think the future of this discipline looks like? How do you see this discipline changing in our world today?
Andrew 19:27
Yeah, so I think that this is something that, you know, to Sean's point, I have actually done a fair amount of thinking about. There are two things that come to mind. One is, this is a relational, not just a transactional, discipline. It's really about how you bring people along with you. And importantly, how do you make sure that people feel like you're in conversation with them? So you can announce a policy or a set of benefits, or you can even announce a layoff or something that you're going to do that's hard, but how do you make people feel like you're in conversation with them, right? So, you know, you can almost think about this as like, you're in a relationship with these employees, right? You hire them because you want them to be there and be productive and contribute and be there for a while. So I think about this as sort of like you're in a longer-term relationship. So as a leader or as a communicator, or as just a manager communicating, you want to think about, like, how can I view this as I'm in a relationship of some form with my employee or my team? And how do I think about what I want for them, what I want for us, and what I want for the other person? So I think it's really a mindset shift, and I'm sure we can talk about the AI tools, and I've got some cool ideas around that, I think. But like, really, this is the core of it. It's a relationship that's in conversation.
Sean 20:44
I think another simplification is, and I 100% agree, is you know, is basically broadcast versus listening. You know, I think even so much current-day internal comms is broadcast. It's like, we're gonna share all this information. We're gonna get it all out to you. We may over-communicate, but it really is a one-way directional conversation. It's not even a conversation. It's just one-way. And listening requires that kind of like, okay, there's that engagement, and what are you doing? And I think, like, you know, we can talk about kind of the different phases of internal comms are mapped with different phases of, like, business zeitgeist. But to the CEO, or to a leader who's saying, well, great, but I'm listening, or I'm engaging this relationship, but what's in it for me? Like, what's your response to that?
Andrew 21:38
Well, I mean, I think it's like you got to ask yourself, so, you know, this is a lot of the work I now do with leaders and coaching, and the coaching work that I do, which is, like, what's motivating that? Why are you wondering that? Like, what's the motivation? And so, you know, you want to think, anytime you're going to communicate with somebody, it's worth communicating about because you want them to know or to feel or to do something. And so you got to be kind of honest with yourself, around well, what is it that I'm trying to understand? And I think it's also important, because all of these employee populations—doesn't matter if you've got 50 people or if you've got 150,000—they're constantly changing, right? So they are not static. It's not like you kind of walk the floor once and you get an employee survey once, and you're like, Okay, got it, check. I know my employee population, what they want. The needs are constantly changing. The outside world is constantly changing, and so it's important to continually be listening. There are all sorts of tools and sophisticated ways that we can do that. But again, it's the mindset. And I also sort of think that if you just look, you know, I was looking earlier today at some interesting sort of stats where like, you know, companies that invest in internal communications and do it really well have 25% greater profitability, 12% higher shareholder returns, and at the same time, it's like 19% of employees that were polled actually trust their CEO. Right? People actually… Trust is really low. People know that we need to invest in it, and people really don't feel that engaged. So to me, there's 100% like a list of reasons to actually listen and understand and seek to deeply understand.
Sean 23:12
And one kind of tactical thing, if you're a comms leader and your internal comms is obviously part of your remit, I would love to hear about how you've you can use internal comms, obviously, as an effective way to inform your overall communications external strategy, and have it work in harmony with, like, what you do externally. And I don't mean just like, go out, and when you give the message to the external world, you also are giving it to your internal world. Theoretically, you want to basically take that kind of internal knowledge you have and then out of those relationships, and then that informs what you do externally. But that's a theoretical phrasing. How have you seen that actualized?
Andrew 23:54
Yeah. So, I think that this is great because it gives you an opportunity to sort of test products or test things out in the marketplace first. I've seen leaders, including my former boss's boss's boss’s at Facebook used to in Meta, probably still does, I don't know, runs open Q and A where employees are encouraged to ask really tough open questions. Partly, that's not just for Mark, but for every senior leader in the company. We used to do programs there where every leader would have to get up and share what product or service process they were working on, and then answer questions. And we encourage that, because it gives the leader an opportunity to practice answering hard questions and real questions, but also gives you some really interesting data. Test your own products, test your own services. You know, we're all, you know, employees are all consumers, just like anybody else in the world. And again, it gives people an opportunity to sort of build that well of like we're all in this together goodwill, knowing kind of what's going on. The worst case is when an employee finds out about something like that by reading it, you know, on X or Twitter. Or whatever.
Sean 25:00
Speaking of, I feel like I've read a few articles about some of those internal meetings.
25:06
Yeah, just a few. Yeah.
Allison 25:08
The internal benefits of having a great internal communications function are clear. But what about the external benefits? I mean, in the age of TikTok and social and employee advocacy, so many employees are active in those channels. And I think a lot of leaders are really scared by that. They're like, Oh no. You know, people are out there. My employees are out there doing this, that, and the other thing that may or may not be related to the company online. How should smart communicators be thinking about managing that?
Andrew 25:37
Yeah, I mean, I think the more honest and transparent you can be, the less ultimately you have to worry about. And obviously there are certain categories of things that you probably aren't going to want to speak to internally or really externally. So sensitive HR things, things having to do with sort of financial performance, things having to do with potential acquisitions, individual performance situations, those types of different categories. But I think the more open and honest and transparent you ultimately are in the abstract, the better, you know, the better it is for everybody, because then you spend less energy trying to feel like you're hiding. And I think that people also with them, that you know, that the technology people carry in their pockets now, the things that they're seeing online, people's, you know, BS meters are really high. And so we can all tell when something is like, you know, if you're sophisticated, you can tell when something's AI-created versus actually human-created. But for most of us, we can also sort of tell when someone we're trying to kind of be sort of PR’d to, versus just having, you know, an open conversation. And again, I go back to that, like, trust is sort of across so many demographics and in so many institutions, including those that used to be very high, is at an all-time low now. And so how do you build trust? It's again, about sort of being relational, being in a conversation. So I think that there's a lot of benefit for organizations to try to be more open than they want to be. It's also good practice for leaders to just get used to that. I mean, I know we've all worked with senior leaders and organizations who just, they're very sort of shy and don't want to, or they're scared. Maybe it's because of their own skill, or they need to do more, you know, as Bill McGowan talked about, you know, trainings and the like that are meaningful and useful, but I think a lot of it comes from just sort of almost an irrational fear of, like, we're all just humans. We're all here trying to sort of make the world better and get better.
Allison 27:27
Yeah, and there are a lot of examples of CEOs doing that well, like, you know, I think the McDonald's CEO does a walk and talk on LinkedIn every week where he talks about the company that week. But I'm also thinking about employees who are out there on social, sort of rank and file. Not to only use fast food examples, I feel like I do that a lot on this podcast, but like, I was thinking about the Chick-fil-A girl on TikTok who became famous when she was working at the at the checkout counter for, sort of, I can't even do the face that she makes, but she's saying, like, I can't believe people aren't ordering Chick-fil-A sauce. It's like, so delicious. And I thought that was a really nice moment for the brand that was unexpected. I'm sure it's not like they were pushing for that, but potentially some CEO somewhere is going, Oh no, this person is famous online, talking about our company, who works here. Is… how can CEOs get more comfortable with the idea that every employee probably has some sort of social presence, and their work may or may not make it into that conversation?
Andrew 28:21
Well, I mean, I think it goes a little bit to, you know, that that sort of way of operating may be great for some brands, and it may also just not work for others. So, you know, if you're in a highly regulated company that is generally very conservative, you may find that it may not work, and so it may have a little bit more of a stringent set of expectations, and what…
Allison 28:40
Like a law firm, or something.
Andrew 28:43
Like a law firm, or, you know, any, any company, I would imagine, in financial services, a lot of the healthcare related companies, any company that is in the sort of the, you know, in the, in the eyes of the of the current administration, I think people are just being very careful about it. And so I think that's totally reasonable, but have an explicit conversation, and then be in conversation with your employees around here's what you can do, here's what you can't do, and here's why. So nobody likes to be told, Hey, we're going to take this away, or you can't do this, just and then, like, that's where it ends. Have a conversation, like, I can't tell you why we're not doing this, or we can't do this, but here's why. Here's what you can do. Make it feel like you're in a conversation with them. And then for the ones that, if it matches culturally, I feel like it's like, let's actually show the business benefit to the brand, and also look at like, how cool it could be to inspire other employees to like, be talking positively about their experience working there. I mean, who doesn't want that?
Allison 29:39
Did you feel like you had that pressure at Johnson & Johnson? I mean, that's… what are they? The world's most trusted brand? Isn't that their moniker? Believe it or not, they were my literal first client out of college. I worked on Clean & Clear, the face wash and all the acne products.
Andrew 29:54
Your face is so glowing right now.
Allison 29:58
Thank you. Yeah, that's foundation, my friend. We've got, we've gotten a bit older. But yeah, like, how did you approach that challenge there? Huge workforce, very trusted and respected brand, healthcare adjacent. How do you, how do you think about that?
Andrew 30:12
Yeah, I mean, I think that, like, it's sort of a conversation among, sort of the senior leaders around, sort of, you know, again, I heard Shannon on earlier on, one of your earlier conversations on the importance of repeatedly educating leaders in an organization, and I so agree with that. You want to educate them around the value of communication and around how you communicate effectively. So I think a lot of leaders will sort of just… the easier thing is to say no, and you can't do that. And I think that what you want to do is sort of say, well, here's what it might look like if we actually open the door a little bit and hear what the guardrails are. And I also sort of think that in a highly regulated organization environment like Johnson & Johnson, right, it's like, for absolute good reason, you want to make sure that you don't have just people going off talking about anything. I mean, all of these companies have a constant threat or active litigation happening. They've got activist shareholders. They've got all sorts of reasons that it's completely reasonable. So you want to just make sure that you're sort of balancing what's the best needs for the company and for the shareholders and for the business, but also my job as an employee communications person is like, What's the best thing for our employees, and how do I improve and create a really good employee experience? How do I help people feel like they're again, part of something or in conversation? People… I want to encourage that energy. Like, if people want to go and talk about work online, awesome, like, that's good energy, we want to harness it and direct it in the right way. And I think for the more conservative, regulated type organizations, it’s just sort of a conversation around, well, here's what you can do, here's what you can't do. And again, this goes to another point I was hoping to make on this, which is, it isn't just about CEOs or senior leaders who are communicative. Every employee, every people manager, is a communicator. And so this is a little different than maybe the corporate communications or the PR, or even the marketing functions. This is something where, like every manager in the organization, is a communicator and needs to have some guardrails around how to do it well, but also the skills and the empowerment to communicate really effectively.
Allison 32:17
What do you think makes some people naturally great at that, versus people who have to work at it more? And how do you help people who want to improve?
Andrew 32:26
So it's two things. It's a mindset. So you’ve got to have a mindset of, like, wanting to do this, and I want to be in a conversation. I want to help people. I want to be in a… I want to be a good people manager. I want to, like, you know, inspire and lift people up. I want to be human. I want to connect with people. And the other is, I think it takes a lot of practice. I think this is something that I see, like the best leaders, no matter if you're a communications person or not, any part of anybody's job, right? Like, communication is a core competency for any leader. It's something that they work at, they practice, and they think about: how do I learn how to have hard conversations? This something that I'm a little bit worried about with, like AI, because it can make communication so easy in some ways, but AI is meant to, like, tell you what you want to hear, and so it may be really helpful, but it's not going to actually help you have a hard conversation when you're in conflict with somebody. Yeah, maybe it'll get better. But how can we actually help people, like, give a little bit clearer direction, give a performance conversation that matters in a more meaningful way? And so for me, it's like, how do you coach people like, help them to understand what the mindset is and help them to see what the basic skills are of transparency and good listening?
Sean 33:37
The idea of making everybody a communicator—I think it's great. And I think it's just like, it resets also how communications leaders should think and what their job is. But I think part of the trick is like, how do you actually, what's like, what's the first steps to convincing a product manager or a sales leader or whomever that like, the next time that they're like, gonna do a performance review or do a deck or interview somebody, they have to kind of, like, reset how they approach this and, like, begin to build the muscle memory? Like, how do you begin?
Andrew 34:15
I was actually just talking to a learning and development leader at a pretty big tech company a few days ago, and they were telling me that the single most commonly asked for thing around coaching is communication, and the most commonly asked for thing among bosses saying, hey, people on my team need this, they need coaching in the space—communication. And so I start there with the idea that I think that there's generally a recognition around, in many organizations, that this is something that people can all get better at. And I also sort of think that, you know, you see people, oftentimes they'll say, Oh, communication is something I need to work on. Well, what does that actually really mean? Does that mean I need to be better at listening? Does that mean that I need to, like, learn how to simplify? Is this something I could use an AI tool for, or is it something that I need to, like, do a little more reflecting on? Like, how do I motivate and inspire a team? But I think if you really dig down and ask, I think that is something that is seen by a lot of people already. I also sort of think that companies, when they think about how do I assess performance for a leader, it's very easy to sort of think about, Well, did I meet my goals and I made the ROI, but it's also like, how did I do that? And there could easily be some aspect around, hey, does the… how transparently or how supportive communication-wise, do the people on Andrew's team feel like he is? And so start to assess people in that way? I think it's putting it into the organization, rather than just sort of trying to sell to a CEO or a CHRO that like, oh, you should invest in communication. And I also sort of think that employee sentiment survey data will almost always show something around employee engagement. All of the trust data that you know, the trust barometer, and all the data that is out there will ultimately lead back to some aspect of people just needing to be better at communicating. You know? They need to sort of feel like they need to be more honest and more human. So I would start, I would start there, within the organization, with people.
Sean 36:13
One thing I want to make sure we cover because I think you've had this interesting journey, Andrew, is that you had lots of different kinds of, as Allison alluded to, somewhat fraught moments with the time at Facebook and Meta, and I'm sure, you know, J&J was no walk in the park. You know, when it comes to a crisis, like a lot of times, leaders, when they connect with communications, crisis comes up as one of the things that they're considering the most like, in terms of what you need to do and how you need to handle things. You know, if you're doing effective employee communication and if you're doing ineffective employee communication, what are the two different versions of a crisis?
Andrew 36:51
One of the things I learned pretty early in my career is that, especially as a good employee comms person, it's like, your job isn't always to make the decision, but sometimes your job is to get the decision to be made. And so sometimes that means that it's because of the nature of seeing across the whole organization, you have an ability that many people don't, like, pull on the right levers, draw the right people in, and sort of bring people together to have the right conversation. And so when I think about crisis, I think the best companies, whether they're small or large, it doesn't matter, have somewhat planned and sophisticated ways of anticipating crises, so that when there is one, you have a system in place to be able to move through it. And it gives you… You've thought through maybe the criteria according to which you will decide what to say, when to say it. Because in a crisis, the action that you take isn't always clear, but you know that you're going to need to say something and say multiple things, and so you want to sort of get the right people together and have a system in place, have the values or the criteria in place when you're not in a crisis, so that when you are in one, you're able to operate. And there are a bunch of different ways I've worked with a bunch of different companies on how to do this in different ways. I think I sometimes delineate between like, what's a man-made crisis versus what's like a natural disaster or a world-type crisis? And I also sort of think about like, is this like a crisis related to the company or one of its people, versus is this something that's external to the organization? And then you have to decide, am I going to speak or not? Inevitably, there will be diverse voices saying to do a whole bunch of different things. Speak out. Don't speak out. Take this action, not. And so if you've put in place a process and sort of criteria to think about it, it gives you much more grounding to stand on when you're able to say, we are not going to speak out on this issue, but we're going to make a donation in this space, or we're not going to, and here's why. Because, again, you're in conversation with your employees and you're in conversation with your consumers, your customers, your shareholders, so that you're not doing this flying blind and you're not doing it from a purely emotional space.
Allison 38:58
I think that's a really important point. People, when they think about crisis comms planning, they think about, I should predict every type of crisis that could happen. And if I've learned anything in my career, it's that you absolutely can't predict what will happen. Speaking as an investor at Astronomer, you absolutely cannot predict what will happen, but you can predict and or sort of know who you are as an organization, and what relates to you, what doesn't. But how do you deal with it when there's a particularly loud employee base? Because I've seen this happen, I want you to weigh in on a particular issue that's of importance to them personally, but it's not right for the brand. How do you… How do you make people feel heard in that situation and not feel that their concerns don't matter or that they're not being heard?
Andrew 39:42
Yeah, I mean, this is super hard, you know. And so again, I think you ultimately want to try to build a culture around helping people feel like you're in conversation with them. So when you're in a crisis situation, that's already the feeling and the trust that people have. So you don't wait until there's a moment to be like, Okay, now we're going to pull all the employees together to have an open town hall conversation about a hard issue. And I also sort of think that, you know, you have to expect that people are going to be loud and that they're going to go external, and they're going to put pressure on and all that kind of stuff. I think you want to be able to, like, stand your ground. You want to sort of say, here's why we're not going to do this. Here's how we… here's the process that we used to walk through this and what we decided. Here's why it doesn't make sense for us to talk about this particular issue right now. We hear you, we understand. Maybe there are some other ways that we can help you and your families and the people that you care about to feel supported, because ultimately, these really loud voices are not always the most representative of your employee population. So you have to keep that in mind. And you also want to make sure that people feel valued and heard. That's what this is about. It's not so much that they want their particular action to be taken necessarily, maybe they do, but usually it's about a deeper need to feel acknowledged and heard and seen by people with whom they spend most of their waking hours and who they pour, generally, their hearts and souls and their time into. That's really what it's about. So there are all sorts of tactics that we could talk about, but that's really what it comes down to.
Sean 41:11
One question we ask every time, which is, you know, what's keeping your attention these days? But we also ask a question, it seems like, on every episode, which is the AI question, right? Yeah, the AI of it all. And, I mean, and I think, like, you know, I'm really curious in terms of, like, scalability of employee communications, all this listening that you're talking about, this relationship building, all the data, the sentiment, and all that. I mean, it really feels like there's, like, some awesome, excellent use cases, you know, especially in the private environments.
Allison 41:39
And here are some, like bad ones too, right? Like, I feel like we can all spot when somebody's written their like, Slack message in AI on some hard topic, and you're like, I feel like you're communicating as a robot, and I don't like it.
Sean 41:53
But Andrew is, just as someone who's tapped in and looking at what people are doing here, what are you seeing as, like, the bad and the good right now?
Andrew 42:03
So I think that the really good thing is actually trying to understand your employee population in a more sophisticated way. And so that means both more continual, always-on, employee listening. And there are all sorts of ways that you can do that, right? So, tools and survey analyses and analysis of people's verbatim written comments on all sorts of channels. But there's also, you know, an ability to sort of like, be more, sort of like, in tune with what people are sort of seeing and feeling by sort of trying to like, understand where they are, right? So you want to understand, hey, you know, how many of my employees, what tenure are they in, what job function are they in? And then you sort of get a little more granular. Why that, to me, is so important is because then it gives you an opportunity to personalize at scale. So one of the great challenges of every employee communications person is the volume of information that employees are trying to get, and they're missing the forest for the trees, and you’ve got to speak louder or break through. I think AI really is going to allow us to personalize at scale the information that the company shares with its employees based on where they are located, their stage in life, their job function, what they need to know, and what actions they've already taken. There are all sorts of interesting kinds of promises there that I think will help us do away with some of the things that people dread, like newsletters and the like. And I also sort of think that, like, it'll help leaders to be a little more sophisticated in terms of segmenting their audience. So, like, how do I actually… and then employees aren't a monolith, and how do I want to try to segment and reach people a little bit more effectively. And the last thing is, I think it'll also really help employees to find information, right? So there's a lot of information on intranets and all sorts of places. There's probably already some great examples of chatbots that are out there that actually help just pull information to people, like, hey, I need X, Y and Z information on this benefit at this time, in this moment. Just make it really easy for people to get that sort of care, and in conversation, sort of ethos that works. When I think it's not working well, is exactly as Allison called out, which is like the communication just seems very generic and bland and sort of robotic. I think AI can help get you started, but I think that it will always require having a human involved and in the middle. And it goes to what I was saying earlier, and I know others have shared before, which is that, like, this is best when it's a human—human connection. I think a hard conversation. I don't want to just make somebody happy or give me the answer that I want them to hear. But like, how do I want to deliver some hard feedback? Or, how do I want to disagree with somebody, like, how do I want them to know something that they don't want to hear? Like, that's human. And how do you understand your audience so that you can do that? That's all the stuff that AI can help with, but it is not replaced by a human.
Allison 44:54
Because this is Attention Shift, we must end the podcast the same way every time. What is capturing your attention? Right now, Andrew, and it can be anything we've heard, everything from hot tubs to, you know, the inner workings of AI. Remember? Kevin Ruse? I'm not making this up. Yeah.
Sean 45:12
Block that out.
Andrew 45:15
I'm gonna let that sit there. Honestly, what's capturing my attention right now, to the point of going the opposite of AI, is nature and the world that we're in. I've talked to so many people in the last couple of months who are just like, life is… I need it to just be like, simpler. I'm thinking about the things that bring me joy in my life and the things that I can control in a world that feels very much about change and sort of out of control. And so for me, where do I find my sense of grounding, and where do I find my attention drawn? It's sort of just like I need to go on a hike, or I need to be out at the beach, or I need to, like, be outside. That's the thing that I'm spending more of my time on.
Allison 45:56
Are you literally… you're gonna go touch grass? That's what… that's sometimes what I need to do, too. I need to touch grass.
Andrew 46:01
I need to go hug a tree. Yeah, gotta put my feet in the ocean, at some point. It’s summertime, that's what we're gonna do. But that's kind of what I'm, you know.
Allison 46:09
But I love when people on the internet like, when somebody says and they disagree with, they go, go touch grass, like it's a punishment. I'm going, I would love to.
Andrew 46:15
I know.. see me. That's like, so nice. So that sounds great. Put your toes in the grass.
Allison 46:17
Yeah, you and me, when? Why don't we go?
Andrew 46:20
Let's do it. I hope, I hope, well.
Allison 46:26
I love that. That's a beautiful way to end. Thank you so much, Andrew. Awesome to have you.
Sean 46:31
Andrew, thank you so much.
Allison 46:36
Thank you for joining us today for Attention Shift for today's deep dive on communication strategy. Check out our sponsors, Delve, at delve.news and Mike Worldwide at mww.com. Please like and subscribe to Attention Shift on Apple, Spotify or your podcast platform of choice, and we'll see you in a couple of weeks for our next episode.