Use fresh communication strategies to connect people to your vision

“The Leadership Solution”
by Jim Shaffer
McGraw-Hill, 2000


The book is frank and direct about one observed fact: “Communication functions in many companies are not really communications. They devote most of their time to formal media and channels.” What?! Can you say that again?

This is the shocking observation of Jim Shaffer, one of the world’s leading communication and change management consultants, in his book, “The Leadership Solution.”

You may think that, at first glance, the author is making an outrageous conclusion – not founded on facts. But, when you read on about what he calls “connecting the dots,” you will conclude that he truly knows whereof he speaks – and he has, as social scientists will say, “empirical evidence” to back his statement.

How many times have we asked CEOs if they have a communication program, and they invariably say: “Oh, yes, we have a media department and we have a pool of writers that crank out news materials everyday.” Or, this confident answer: “We have a hotshot PR man or broadcaster, recently retired from a well-known media institution, and he takes care of our communications needs.” Or, for internal communications, one CEO would say: “Well, we have this glossy newsmagazine that has even garnered an industry award as the best employee publication hereabouts.”

With such answers, what else can you say? The well-staffed department, the hotshot retiree, or the multi-awarded publication seem to be the end-all and be-all for the communication requirements of an organization. But, somehow you feel with your gut (and with some familiarity with corporate strategy) that there must be more that is required than a team of wordsmiths, a maverick media creature, or a glossy glitzy piece of literature that, yes, has managed to be beautiful and elegant year in and year out. No objections to these, actually.

But, the book says, we have to have real communication. We must match what we say with what we do. This is nothing new really, except that the book has shown tables that are excellent for planning the verbal and the non-verbal elements in a communication plan.

Actually, the book comes fresh – not because of such obvious communication elements – but because it gives us fresh ideas on audience analysis (example: we must treat our employees as volunteers, as we inspire them to “buy into our vision”). The book also forces us to think through a new communication policy dealing with the natural tension in a “communication continuum” – and how we balance the “need-to-know” policy to a “full disclosure” mindset.

The author does not endorse the military notion that only those who need to know should be informed. And he believes in one manager who has made it a policy to inform his employees first – “because they will soon know about it anyway.”

The book introduces ways to connect people to strategy, and introduces the concept of “line of sight.” It is actually a situation when people can see a direct line between the organization’s goals and what they do.

Is the book’s title misleading? No, because the book has put together a package of insights, findings and research data that proves that real effective leadership has to master the science and art of communication – and thus appropriately quoting Larry Bossidy, chairman of Allied Signal, who said: “Communication isn’t separate from the business; it’s the way we do business.”

This is a persuasive work that underscores the strategic value of communication to make your firm competitive. Listen: “We are not going to win because of our technology… We’re not going to win on technique … Instead we must create organizations that are, as the name implies, organic: comfortable with change and embracing an ethos of changing, manifesting the life force that resides only in our people – free moral agents, not cogs, in a machine” (John Guaspari, “Across the Board”).

Jack Welch is also quoted to prove the value of communication to effective leadership: “Leadership means more vision, more communication. We like people who are passionate about what they are doing … who have a vision about where they want to go … and can communicate that vision to the people they want to get there with.”

Leaders must communicate beyond words. The book concludes with this suggestion: “Top management must think of themselves as actors in a silent movie. No one can hear a word you’re saying. You have to communicate completely through your actions. You have no words, only behavior with which to communicate.