internal comms

Weeknote 2025/25

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
Me at Intranet Italia this week (photo: Sam Marshall)

It’s midsummer. The days are long, the sun’s out, and Amsterdam is at its absolute best—golden light, lazy canal shadows, the whole city leaning into the heat. The world might feel heavy right now, but coming home to this place is something I never take for granted.

Especially this week, as Amsterdam marks its 750th birthday—with a giant street party on the ring road, naturally. Because what better way to celebrate than dancing on a motorway in full sunshine, in a city that knows exactly how to have fun without taking itself too seriously?

This week at work

My big focus was a trip to Milan for Intranet Italia Day—a brilliant chance to connect with Italy’s intranet community and reflect on how the field is evolving.

My highlights:

  • Giacomo Mason reminded us how intranets are evolving into integration hubs — one example had 40 services connected! He nailed the pace of change in intranet roles: “I used to be an internal communicator, now I’m digitalising parking spots.”
  • Sam Marshall explored what intranets are really for. We’ve gone from the comms-and-info hub, to the everything-platform, to what he calls the Minimalist Intranet—a layer that helps make sense of everything else. He unpacked four key trends from ClearBox’s annual review: the push for employee experience, renewed focus on frontline workers, better comms ‘air traffic control’, and (of course) AI.
  • Stefano Besana from Deloitte shared compelling thoughts on AI and the future of work. AI can boost team performance—but may flatten creativity. 94% of leaders say it’s essential; only 7% think their organisation is doing it well. A telling gap.
  • Anna Kravets delivered a great talk on design on a budget. “It looked good in Figma” got a laugh, but her advice (avoid unnecessary customisation and use out-of-the-box widgets to sidestep maintenance nightmares) was spot on.

My own keynote wrapped up the day. I argued that it’s time for a new Renaissance for the intranet. We’ve built digital workplaces overflowing with content, yet employees still struggle to find what they need. The problem isn’t a lack of information—it’s the volume, and the lack of structure or purpose.

I shared the SEFE story: a client with four legacy intranets and just 100 days to build something better. We didn’t throw AI at it. We focused on clarity, consistency, and content that served a purpose, using content design to deliver value, not volume.

An intranet should be a workshop, not a dumping ground. A place of deliberate creation, not digital clutter. Like the Renaissance masters, we need to lead with standards, intent, and a commitment to quality.

Back in Amsterdam, Jon and I have been cracking on with the book. The first section—on definitions, discovery, business cases, and the platform ecosystem—is finally starting to take shape.

Also this week

My friend Lauren and I went to Science & Cocktails, a monthly lecture series with smoky drinks and surprisingly solid live bands. The theme was Power and Countervailing Power in the 21st Century, delivered by WRR researcher Haroon Sheikh.

His argument: power today isn’t just about armies or treaties. It’s embedded in chips, supply chains, social networks, even the strategic use of migration. We’re living in an age of ambient power projection, where influence is diffuse, deniable, and increasingly hard to regulate.

Democracy’s old guard isn’t built for this kind of fight. Sheikh made a compelling case for fresh thinking and new tools to counterbalance power that no longer wears a uniform or waves a flag.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

A new study confirms what many suspected: relying on ChatGPT to write your essays doesn’t just affect the output—it rewires your brain.  People who used an LLM to write essays showed weaker brain activity, worse memory, and couldn’t even recall what they’d “written” a few hours later. When asked to go back to writing without help, they struggled.

In short: using ChatGPT might make the task easier, but it makes you less mentally engaged. Like GPS for your brain—convenient, but at the cost of knowing where you are.

It’s made me reflect on thoughlessly turning to AI to speed up a task, and being more deliberate about stepping back and doing it slowly but more intentionally.

📺 Watching

I watched Grenfell: Uncovered this week, and it’s stayed with me in that way only something truly harrowing can. The series is devastating—not just in its depiction of what happened that night, but in the slow, avoidable build-up that made it inevitable. It’s forensic, unflinching, and absolutely damning.

What hit hardest, though, was the familiarity. I grew up nearby. My primary school was (literally) in the shadow of the tower and my classmates lived there. Some still did when the fire struck. The estate, the streets—they’re not anonymous cityscape, they’re places I used to walk through daily. Seeing your childhood backdrop become the site of a national tragedy is surreal. But that’s the point, really: Grenfell isn’t some abstract failure. It’s what happens when systems designed to protect people decide some lives just don’t count as much.

When I tell people I’m from Notting Hill, the reaction is often the same: ooh, fancy. People forget that Notting Hill, like much of London, is a neighbourhood of sharp contrasts and deep inequality. Gentrification didn’t replace the community; it happened around it, and not always with it. The Notting Hill I come from is the one in Grenfell, not the one in the Hugh Grant film.

I read One Kensington last year, which explores the same dynamic in meticulous, painful detail—the wilful neglect of the borough’s poorer, northern half by a council that would rather pretend it doesn’t exist.

📚 Reading

I had a sneak peek at Lisa Riemers and Matisse Hamel-Nelis’s upcoming book Accessible Communications. I’m halfway through and it’s packed with useful, practical advice on what accessibility means and how to get it right. Highly recommend.

Also knee-deep in book research. This week’s pick: Introduction to Employee Experience Platforms by Shailesh Kumar Shivakumar. It raises questions we’ve been circling for a while: what is an EXP, really? Is it different from a digital workplace or intranet—or just new branding for the same old problems.

🎧 Listening

Been deep in a Sparks rabbit hole ahead of seeing them live this week. If you don’t know them: imagine if Gilbert & George made synth-pop, or if Wes Anderson formed a band with your eccentric uncle. Still going strong after 50 years. Deadpan, operatic, and completely unbothered by what’s fashionable.

Connections

Milan was a chance to catch up with familiar faces from the intranet world—Sam Marshall, Anna Kravets—and finally meet others I’d only spoken to online.

Also squeezed in an impromptu Aperol catch-up with my old StanChart colleague Stefan Chojnicki, who I’d forgotten had moved to Milan. We hadn’t seen each other in over a decade.

Impromptu catch-ups are great. Impromptu catch-ups with Aperol in the sunshine: even better.

Travel

Just a short trip back to London this week for an event. More on that next week.

This week in photos

Science and Cocktails
My street at night
Amsterdam summers
Over the Alps
Sam Marshall at Intranet Italia
Solo lunch in Milan
Working from Aethos Milan
Milangram
Milan Aperol with Stefan
Londoning
Prinsengracht
Why cycle one bike when you can do two?

Weeknote 2025/24

/ Sharon O'Dea / 1 Comment
A red barge on the Prinsengracht canal in Amsterdam. It's a clear sunny day.
Amsterdam summers are something else (Photo: me)

Middle age has arrived, not with a crisis but with a calendar reminder. The quiet realisation that I’m now older than most start-up founders, Olympic athletes, and several government ministers. Which, frankly, explains a lot.

Between birthday reflections and packing for yet another work trip, it’s been a week of wrangling conference decks, academic papers, and coming to terms with the fact that my knees now make a noise when I stand up too fast.

This week at work

A week of contrasts. Juggling wildly different projects, which I tell myself is what keeps it interesting.

  • Finalised my slides for Intranet Italia Day next week, with a few solid practice runs
  • Helped a client plan how their leadership can actually show up on the social intranet — plus wrote quick-start guides for low-effort, high-impact engagement
  • Sat through a couple of intranet/employee experience vendor demos. One looked genuinely startled when I asked about things like functionality gaps, governance, or how this would work in an organisation with more than one type of employee. As if complexity were some kind of curveball, not the baseline most IC folks are dealing with.
  • Followed up on a series of workshops with a long-term client — great to see momentum building
  • Supporting our brilliant 300 Seconds speakers as they prep for Camp Digital (less than three weeks to go!)

Meanwhile, quietly ramping up a(nother) secret side project. More on that soon.

Also this week

Turned 45 this week. Officially middle-aged — not in crisis, just doing the maths. It’s the age where you realise that you’ve probably had more than you’re getting. Strangely, that’s a relief. Less to prove. More clarity. Fewer big swings. And the slow, inevitable expansion of the midsection.

A box of donuts with different icing and toppings
In the Netherlands, you bring cakes inn for everyone else for your birthday
A woman (me)with brown hair, holding a glass on Mimosa
Mimosa-based birthday breakfast
Presents, wrapped, and flowers
I was spoiled rotten

Because no one asked, here’s 45 lessons I’ve learned in 45 spins round the sun:

  1. You don’t need to finish the book
  2. Or the bottle
  3. Lifting heavy weights makes you feel superhuman
  4. If someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time
  5. Good lighting fixes many things
  6. No one is thinking about you as much as you think they are
  7. If you need to ask whether it’s worth the drama, it’s not
  8. A well-timed “hmm” can save you hours
  9. Good sleep beats any wellness trend.
  10. You’ll never feel like going for a walk. Go anyway.
  11. Pay attention to how people treat waitstaff
  12. The hotel iron will ruin your top. Pack something that doesn’t crease.
  13. Always look up. You’ll notice stuff and be glad you did.
  14. Walk away. From the app. From the thread. From the man with a podcast.
  15. Airports are emotional purgatories. Don’t make big decisions there.
  16. Drink water, then decide if you’re really hungry
  17. It’s OK to be the person who leaves early.
  18. Wear the good outfit.
  19. Cheap shoes are a false economy
  20. You will regret trying to save money with a flight that leaves before 7am
  21. A single “lol” can prevent a workplace argument.
  22. It can also cause one.
  23. Just because it’s urgent to them doesn’t mean it’s important to you (with thanks to the late David Pearson for the line “your bad planning is not my emergency”)
  24. If you’ve packed contact lenses and your credit cards, everything you’ve forgotten is fixable
  25. Never trust someone who says “I don’t do drama.” They are the drama.
  26. Boundaries aren’t mean.
  27. You don’t owe everyone an explanation. Most people aren’t even listening.
  28. Sometimes the bravest thing is not replying.
  29. There’s no award for most burnt out.
  30. You can outgrow people without hating them.
  31. Getting older is a win. Plenty of people don’t get the chance.
  32. The red flag is never that subtle.
  33. Skincare is mostly pseudo-science, except for good sunscreen. Factor 50 FTW.
  34. Everything feels worse when you’re hungry.
  35. You will never regret leaving a bad job.
  36. But you will regret not standing up for yourself in it.
  37. If a company says it’s a family, run.
  38. You don’t owe anyone on the internet your attention
  39. It’s OK to only give it 70% once in a while.
  40. Confidence doesn’t come before doing the thing. It comes from doing it.
  41. You can’t change people. Only your expectations of them.
  42. Not everything has to be #content.
  43. You’re not behind. You’re on your own route.
  44. Compare your life to a LinkedIn post and you deserve the existential crisis that follows.
  45. You can always make money. You can never make time.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

This week’s descent into the rabbit hole: the Pentagon Pizza theory. Credit to the FT’s data editor, who noticed a spike in pizza orders near the Pentagon just before Israel’s recent strikes on Iran. Turns out: when staff start pulling long hours ahead of global mayhem, the local Domino’s gets busy. Forget Bloomberg terminals — the true indicator of looming geopolitical chaos is a pepperoni surge in Arlington.

📺 Watching

Caught Titan on Netflix — the docuseries that unpacks the doomed OceanGate submersible and the spectacular hubris that powered it. What starts as a story about billionaire adventurers quickly becomes a cautionary tale about ignoring experts, side-stepping safety protocols, and brushing off internal dissent.

If there’s a workplace moral here, it’s this: when someone raises a hand to say “this seems dangerous,” don’t label them difficult — listen. Whistleblowers aren’t the problem; they’re the last line of defence before disaster.

📚 Reading

This week’s book-writing milestone: a shiny new library card for the University of Amsterdam. Great social sciences collection, and a Proustian flashback to my dissertation days in Senate House. I’m loving getting stuck back into the communication theory I studied two decades ago — proof, perhaps, that a media degree is more useful than its “Mickey Mouse” reputation suggests.

A had with shiny pink nails holds a University of Amsterdam library card

This week’s highlight reel of academic page-turners included:

🎧 Listening

Caught the Happy Mondays at the Paradiso, and it was brilliant. I’ve seen them twice in recent years, both times in bigger venues, but there was something magic about seeing them up close in a packed, sweaty room. Bez was fully Bezzing, limbs everywhere, powering the crowd with vibes alone. Shaun Ryder barked out lyrics like a man reading a gas bill under protest. It was chaotic, feral, and all the better for it. No polish, no pretence — just joy at full volume.

Bez from the Happy Mondays, on stage with maracas
Pulp's 'More' album on blue vinyl

I’ve also been spinning the new Pulp album (in delicious blue vinyl). It’s gloriously familiar; simultaneously novel and like pulling on an old, comfortable jumper that somehow still fits perfectly. Jarvis sounds as sharp and sideways as ever, and the whole thing hums with that unmistakable mix of kitchen-sink melancholy and disco sleaze.

Connections

No one this week. Honestly, was people-d out after last week.

Travel

This week the wheelie bag and I are off to Milan, then London. I have a little spare time in both so shout if you’ve got time for wine.

This week in photos

Sanctum exercise in an atmospheric candlelit church
It’s iced coffee weather
And ‘pootling about on a boat’ weather
The first Amsterdam Vinyl Club was a huge success
Crate digging at Amsterdam Vinyl Club
The Dutch tradition of hanging a school bag from a flagpole to mark school graduation
Buying flowers at the market, again
This town 🥰
One of four spin classes this week

Weeknote 2025/23

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
On stage at LumApps Bright Paris (Photo: Andrew Hesselden)

It’s been 13 days since my last weeknote and, somehow, I’ve crammed in a month’s worth of work, two cross-border events, several metric tonnes of confetti, and a minor brush with academic despair. I’ve danced under a disco ball in a museum, communed with inflatable robots in a laser fog, and read so many journal articles on “organisational sensemaking” that I briefly lost the will to live, then found it again in a footnote citing Habermas.

I’ve had days where I felt like a confident grown-up delivering keynotes and running strategy workshops, and others where I stared at a blank slide titled “Relevance at Scale” for so long I started to question whether anything in this life is ever truly relevant, let alone scalable.

Anyway. Here’s what else I’ve been up to while trying to outrun both burnout and late capitalism with a portable ring light and a decent day rate.

This week at work

It’s been a blur of conferences, client sessions, and the slow, creeping suspicion that time is folding in on itself. Conference season is in full swing, which means I’ve been knee-deep in decks, speaker notes, and trying not to visibly malfunction when someone asks me to “slow down a bit” — a request I find almost physically impossible once I’m excited and mid-flow.

First up was a thought leadership webinar for Cerkl on personalising comms at scale. Conveniently, it ties into a chapter of the book — distribution, personalisation, targeting, and relevance — so I got to test-drive some of our thinking in the wild.

Then came the European leg of LumApps Bright, where I gave the extended ‘director’s cut’ of my Chicago keynote — same themes, more depth, this time with added self-depreciation about my bad French. I also ran a roundtable on understanding employee needs, which turned into one of those lovely sessions where people are honest, energised, and insightful. DEEx and comms folks continue to impress me with their blend of grit, grace and spreadsheets.

There was also a UK client workshop — part of a series — and pleasingly, we can actually see momentum building between sessions. Progress. Real, tangible, post-it-note-covered progress.

I asked Copilot to edit this to remove the text on post-its, for client confidentiality. It did, but also edited Jon to be a completely different person. Go figure.

And with Camp Digital just around the corner, I’ve had prep calls with our brilliant first-time speakers. I can’t wait to see them in action — and to be the overly proud backstage goblin cheering them on.

Also this week

Went to Vincent op Vrijdag, the Van Gogh Museum’s monthly late-night opening — this time a joint venture with the Stedelijk, letting you do a cultural double-header with drinks. I saw the Anselm Kiefer show across both venues (big, bleak, brilliant), then stayed for the part where you dance under museum lighting and feel like a very sophisticated art heist is about to unfold.

Caught the Flaming Lips in Utrecht performing Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots in full — a retina-searing, glitter-drenched fever dream of lasers, confetti, and inflatable robots. Wayne Coyne, framed by a giant inflatable rainbow, looked like a man who’d seen the future and decided it needed more sequins. Utterly bonkers. Utterly wonderful.

We won’t let the robots defeat us.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

I know nothing about private equity — truly, nothing — but I adored this explainer on what Taylor Swift’s masterstroke of reclaiming her catalogue can teach the buyout bros. Equal parts fangirl essay and forensic takedown, it’s a reminder that you underestimate a billionaire pop star and her army of emotionally over-invested fans at your peril.

On the other hand, I do know quite a bit about writing. Just not this well. Lauren Razavi’s piece on AI authorship is one of the most thoughtful, lyrical takes I’ve seen — part essay, part live DJ set, and all signal, no noise. Read it. Then reread it. Then make peace with the fact she’s probably written your next best idea, too.

📺 Watching

Gingerly stepped into the final season of The Handmaid’s Tale, watching in careful, rationed doses — partly because it’s harrowing, partly because it now feels like market research. Gilead is no longer dystopian fiction; it’s starting to look like a standard Wednesday in some parts of the world.

📚 Reading

In my last weeknote I worried that reading for fun would get pushed aside by reading for the book. Reader, it has. The International Journal of Strategic Communication now haunts my dreams.

🎧 Listening

Discovered British-Dutch electro-pop-punksters Crgclt at a party in a barn somewhere outside Leiden. Their set was a glorious mess of synths and snark — like Chvrches got drunk with Le Tigre in a tulip field. I will be seeing them again.

Connections

The last fortnight’s seen me people-ing at Olympic levels.

Caught up with Cargill’s Paul Thomas for a proper chinwag about hybrid work, generational gaps, and the quirks of Dutch corporate comms.

Money 2020 brought the finance glitterati to town — which meant finally meeting Jas Shah IRL, hanging out with Theodora Lau, and catching up with my old Standard Chartered pal Natalie Pereira, a full decade after our last night out in Kuala Lumpur.

Bright Paris also reunited me with DWG’s Paul Miller and internal comms veteran Andrew Hesselden, and gave me the joy of finally meeting some long-time online pals in person. The best bit of any event’s still the coffee-break conspiracies.

Travel

On Tuesday I managed breakfast in Amsterdam, lunch in London, and dinner in Paris — which sounds terribly glamorous until you realise breakfast was a sad airport lounge croissant, lunch was mystery beige from a meeting venue canteen, and dinner was a lukewarm M&S salad eaten on a hotel bed at 10pm.

Staying put this week. Thank god. Milan and London await next.

This week in photos

Dutch summer
Knee deep in decks at the hairdressers
My pal’s 40th on a sunny day in Amsterdam
Bonjour Paris
Crgclt at JoFest in Koudekerk aan den Rijn

Weeknote 2025/21

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
Quintessentially Berlin (Photo: me)

Some weeks you feel on top of things. Other weeks, you’re writing a book, delivering workshops, prepping talks, flying to Berlin, crying in a photo exhibition and accidentally going to two punk gigs at opposite ends of the country.

No idea what kind of week this was, but it definitely happened.

This week at work

I didn’t realise how jam-packed this week was until I sat down to write this. No wonder I’m tired.

First, the big news I’ve been hinting at: the cat’s out of the bag. I’m writing a book with my colleague and longtime co-conspirator Jonathan Phillips.

Digital Communications at Work: Designing Channels for Employee Engagement and Experience is a practical guide for comms professionals handed responsibility for digital channels. It’ll be published by Kogan Page in 2026 and is packed with case studies, real-world advice, and the kind of tips we wish someone had given us when we were in-house.

If you’ve ever been given the intranet keys, told to “sort out comms,” or been stuck between IT and HR, this one’s for you.

Over the coming months, these weeknotes will chart our progress — and my slow descent into madness — as we try to write a whole book in our spare time.

(There’s another exciting cat in another bag, but that one stays put for now)

Jon and I also popped over to Berlin to see our client SEFE, the German energy company. Late last year we delivered them a new intranet — config, IA, content, training, the whole shebang — in just 100 days. They’re thrilled with it, and so are we. This week we finally met the team in person to celebrate and look ahead to what’s next.

We also went to Flip Forward, a sharp one-day event from employee app vendor Flip, focused on what the digital workplace really means for the frontline. A few standout themes:

  • AI is now the infrastructure, not just a feature. Flip (like everyone else) is “AI first,” but the most useful applications weren’t flashy — they helped people quickly access the info they actually need. Like when’s my next shift?
  • Flip’s Marian Finkbeiner said: “Interview people on the shop floor and solve from there.” I’d add: also observe and triangulate. What people say and what they need aren’t always the same.
  • Martina Merz delivered a brilliant keynote on AI, trust and dialogue. Her warning: don’t simulate listening with AI and call it connection. Real trust comes from real dialogue, not a chatbot pretending to care.
Flip Forward in Berlin.

That idea — making sure people are genuinely heard — came up again in a series of workshops we’ve been designing for another client. We’re building ways for people to contribute before, during, and after sessions. Not just once, but as an ongoing habit.

Camp Digital is now less than two months away, so prep is ramping up. I had a great call with one of our first-time speakers, and I’m already excited for what’s shaping up to be a brilliant programme.

But first: a few more speaking commitments.

In a couple of weeks I’ll be in Paris, giving the extended version of the employee experience keynote I did in Chicago at the European leg of LumApps Bright. I’ve been reflecting on what landed, what didn’t, and where more clarity or examples might help.

I’ve also been prepping for a webinar I’m doing with Cerkl, as part of their IC Thought Leader series. I’ll be talking about why internal comms needs to move past volume and focus on relevance: using data to deliver useful, usable messages in the moments that matter. Sign up here. It’s free to attend — or sign up and get the recording later if you can’t make it.

Also this week

I went to this year’s World Press Photo exhibition at De Nieuwe Kerk. As ever: devastating and essential. The 2025 edition features powerful photojournalism capturing war, displacement, climate crisis, and human resilience. The winning image — a young boy in Gaza who lost both arms in an airstrike — was particularly hard to take.

Other standout stories: the drought-stricken Amazon, the aftermath of the Turkey–Syria earthquakes, and several photo sets showing the disproportionate impact of conflict on women. Sexual violence as a weapon of war in Tigray. Women trying to protect their families in Gaza and Ukraine. Women stripped of all rights in Afghanistan.

The memorial to journalists killed in the line of duty was horrifyingly long. 2024’s total matched that of 2020, 2021, and 2022 combined, almost all of them in Gaza.

I cried twice. But I go every year, because bearing witness still matters.

The World Press Photo exhibition inside the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam
A series of blue banners with a long list of names of journalists killed in th line of their work
People's wishes written on square white pieces of paper, pinned to a board

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

I read this Eventbrite piece on “Fourth Spaces” — their term for the way digital communities now spill into physical gatherings. It’s based on research into Gen Z and millennials, who want to connect around shared interests formed online.

It’s a helpful way to think about modern community-building: not just passive audiences, but people looking to co-create, belong and participate. If you’re in events, engagement or comms, it’s worth a look.

📺 Watching

I watched Fred and Rose West: A British Horror Story on Netflix. I knew a lot from the news at the time, and from All Killa No Filla, but seeing the victims’ families speak was utterly heartbreaking. It’s a grim but important reminder of the need to listen, to believe, and to keep asking uncomfortable questions.

📚 Reading

Nothing this week, unless you count background reading for the book (I fear reading for pleasure may be the first casualty of this writing project)

🎧 Listening

A two-gig week. Went to Den Haag on a whim to catch Japanese garage rockers Electric Eel Shock. Then saw UK punk duo Soft Play (formerly Slaves) — a ferocious, sweaty wall of sound. Two blokes. One guitar. One drum kit. Absolute carnage.

Connections

Berlin was a good excuse to catch up with internal comms legend Tony Stewart — someone who understands the power of community both on and offline. I hope we get him on a Lithos project soon.

Also caught up with Michael Nottingham, another of our Lithos collaborators, over an Ethopian meal in Kreuzberg. We talked content, govtech, politics, and the challenge of restaurants meals eaten without cutlery.

Travel

Back from Berlin. One full week at home before heading to London and Paris. I will not waste it.

This week in photos

Seven pillows. One head.
Kreuzberg sunset.
Jonathan and I at Flip.
Turkish barbecue. Basically Korean barbecue with mezze. Nothing wrong with that at all.
Berlz
My Saturday market run.
Soft Play at Melkweg
Electric Eel Shock at Sneister Fest, Den Haag
A magnet fisher tries to retrieve whatever this girl dropped in the canal opposite my house

Internal Comms Teacamp 2 – Evaluation

/ Sharon O'Dea / 1 Comment

For this second Internal Comms Teacamp we settled on the thorny topic of evaluation. With budgets being squeezed, we’re all under increasing pressure to demostrate the value of what we do, so this was a popular subject and we all had plenty to say.

With the summer holidays in full swing this was a smaller group than the first time around, but included a mix of internal communications professionals from the public, private and voluntary sectors keen to share ideas on the challenges we all face in our line of work.

Camilla West from Royal Bank of Scotland kicked things off with a short presentation on the work she’s doing to develop measurable KPIs for internal comms which link to wider business objectives. This turned out to be a common theme in the ensuing discussion; how we move away from simplistic measurement of click-throughs and measuring outputs towards a more meaningful evaluation of the impact comms has on achieving outcomes for the business.

The discussion moved on to KPIs. We all need to report our performance regularly to our management boards, but all too often this focuses on outputs (such as numbers of intranet visits) rather than outcomes (such as numbers staff who signed up to a training course). The difficulty we all seem to have is demonstrating what impact comms had on any single outcome; generally success or otherwise is determined by a number of organisational functions and variables, of which communications is just one.

While staff surveys can be useful in measuring staff engagement and objective satisfaction with communications channels, they’re far from a perfect means of measuring the performance of an organisation’s communications function. The group strongly felt these were often given far more attention than they deserve, so surveys should be followed up with additional research such as focus groups to gain a better understanding of communications effectiveness and identify points of failure.

This led nicely on to a discussion about the extent to which internal comms can be responsible for organisational objectives around staff engagement and morale. Many public sector organisations are noticing a dip in engagement scores at the moment, which is unsurprising given the headcount reductions and budget cuts so many are going through. This means that even where communications is working well, it performs badly in surveys as staff are cheesed off for myriad reasons beyond the control of comms.

Everyone in attendance emphasised the need to evaluate the effectiveness of campaigns and specific communications activities as well as employee satisfaction with communications. This needs to be an honest review of what works and what didn’t work as well, rather than simply trumpeting success stories.

In summary, it’s clear that evaluation is essential, but it’s not easy. Different methods of evaluation will be needed for different activities, and we need to combine this with regular reporting on our own performance to demonstrate the value of internal communications spend –  linked to financial performance where possible.

The next Internal Comms Teacamp will be on 21 September from 4pm-6pm. We’ll be discussing Internal Comms and Hard to Reach Audiences, so I’ll be talking about the work I’ve been doing to bring intranet content to smartphones and iPads for Members of Parliament. For more information contact me and I’ll add you to our email list.

Not sure what Internal Comms Teacamp is? Here’s an introductory blogpost.

Internal communications teacamp

/ Sharon O'Dea / 7 Comments

Contrary to popular belief, webbies aren’t always glued to their screens and hidden away in dank basements. They love to get out and about and network with their peers.

It all began with UKGovCamp, a one-day event for public sector digital types. These events – now in their third year – have no set agenda; people come with their ideas and problems and pitch sessions to the other attendees. The agenda is cobbled together on the day using post-it notes and flipchart paper. The result is an unconference far more interesting, informative and relevant than any event you’ve ever paid big bucks to attend.

This span off into Teacamp, the monthly informal get-together of Whitehall digital communicators and social media specialists. Each month 20 to 30 Whitehall webbies meet at a cafe in Westminster to share ideas, solve problems, learn something new and drink some tea. Usually someone volunteers to do a ten-minute talk on something cool they’re doing, or to gather feedback on a specific topic or project, and then it opens up to the group to ask questions, say what they think or seek solutions to their own work challenges.

It’s a fantastic model for professional networking and knowledge-sharing. One which it would be a shame to resign to the digital sector alone. If there’s one thing Internal Communicators are good at, it’s nicking good ideas from elsewhere and applying them in our own work contexts.

So with that in mind, myself and two other internal communicators are plotting the very first Internal Comms Teacamp.

We’re inviting internal communications specialists to come along to share ideas, natter about comms, and drink some tea.  It’s open to anyone who works in employee communications, not just digital types, from the public and private sectors.

We’re kicking off at Apostrophe in Market Place (near Oxford Circus) from 4-6pm on May 25th. Come along! Or give me a shout via the Contact Me form or on Twitter if you want to know more.

Silly season

/ Sharon O'Dea / 1 Comment

We’re all familiar with the concept of silly season in the media. With the World Cup well and truly over, politicians on recess, schools on holiday and the courts shut for a few weeks, the papers are left scratching around for something to fill what the Germans call sommerloch – the summer [news] hole.

And so, too for internal communicators. With so many colleagues away, decisions aren’t being made and there’s a dearth of campaigns, updates or announcements. This means publications are unfilled and intranet pages reek of last week.

But while the papers have an endless supply of celebrity trivia and the annual parade of attractive a-level students picking up their results, corporate communicators have no such luxury. So how do we deal with slow news days?

Catch up with old news. With some space and time to spare, have a look back at the past few months and think about projects or initiatives which didn’t get as much attention as they deserved at the time. Are there any updates? Can you report on progress? You might earn a few brownie points by giving them some publicity now.

Recognition. Hertzberg’s work on motivation found a significant proportion of people are motivated to work because of the recognition they get for it. With budgets tightening and under-inflation payrises talked about for many, now’s the time to focus on those non-financial rewards and motivations. By taking the opportunity to recognise the hard work our colleagues have been putting in, we can better motivate them to say, stay and strive.

Admit defeat. Silly season is an international phenomenon – one familiar in offices around the globe. With so many colleagues – especially those with children – away, making significant changes or announcements is always going to prove difficult; any important communications made now might be missed by those colleagues who are away.

Why not take some time to focus on some housekeeping tasks, to make sure your intranet is running smoothly, ready to hit the ground running in September (I’m tidying up our A-Z, which is proving more interesting than it sounds!)

How do you deal with slow news days on your intranet? Does it even bother you? Post your comments.

Organisational communication 2020

/ Sharon O'Dea / 3 Comments

This was the 50th meeting of the London Communicators and Engagement Group, an informal monthly meetup of (mostly internal) communicators. After 50 meetings you’d think organiser Matt O’Neill would be out of topics to cover – but you’d be wrong.

This time, Matt invited David Galipeau (from eighty20.org /United Nations/Academia) to deliver a mini exposition into the future of communications. In a futuristic spirit he delivered his talk – on where he sees communications of the future heading – using a Skype video link from Geneva.

David Galipeau off Red Dwarf

In practice, this gave him the disjoined, disbodied appearance of Holly from Red Dwarf. But it worked surprisingly well – so that’s another nail in the coffin for international business travel, perhaps.

As Matt said in his introduction to the event, communicators are focussing on how we can use social media tools to improve organisational communication now and in the immediate future. But are the implications for the future? ‘Is this just the start of an emerging pattern that will fundamentally change the way organisations talk internally and externally?’ asked Matt.

He’d also suggested we take a look at some of Galipeau’s work ahead of the event. Alas, I was in a rush, and when I took a look at this, I thought ‘arrgh!’ and closed my browser tab.

Galipeau’s talk was almost as difficult to digest. I know he’s an academic, but I suspect I was one of the more geeky communicators in the room, and still quite a lot of what he said went right over my head. I’m not sure whether those who weren’t digital natives really knew what he was talking about for much of the time.

For example, Galipeau talked about the implementation of IPV6. For the lay reader – that’s most of you, I suspect – our IP addresses are currently based on IPV4, but we are fast running out of numbers. IPV6, Adrian Short told me via the Twitter back channel, will give us gives 6.5 x 1023 addresses for every square metre on Earth.

The arrival IPV6 will enable an ‘Internet of Things’ in which everything down to your slippers will have its own IP address. Your TV will speak to your fridge, and your supermarket trolley to your bank.

This, he contended, means the interweb is entering a new and much darker phase, quite different to the hippy free-for-all we’ve come to know. The internet is already slowing down thanks to tens of thousands of DOS attacks taking place daily. This, he said, is an early sign totalitarian nutjobs are engaged in cyber attacks and counter hacks, and the threat of industrial and political espionage is growing.

He gave groups that protested against Scientology as an example of this – yet didn’t really elaborate what was new about this threat other than giving people the ability to self-organise.

What was odd about the talk was that the speaker achieved the rare feat of going right over people’s heads while at the same time getting some real basics completely wrong. For instance, he talked about ‘crowdsourcing’, giving the example of “bringing people together to all dance in the station at the same time”.

This isn’t crowdsourcing, it’s flashmobbing. Crowdsourcing means drawing on the wisdom of the crowd in order to inform your own decision-making. It has a purpose, and increasingly it has real value for individuals and corporations. It can be as simple as putting a shout out on Twitter to gather some lazy reasearch, or as complex as wiki-style policy formation.

Simply framing it in terms of simply bringing people together for no discernable purpose really undermined Galipeau’s credibility, and this was reflected in the Twitter stream.

Galipeau went on to argue strongly what organisations are becoming more centralised, and in particular decision-making is becoming more centralised within organisations. But as he didn’t elaborate on why he believed this to be so, or what evidence pointed in this direction, I wasn’t convinced (particualrly as it doesn’t chime with what so many of us internal communicators are working towards).

I was glad, then, of the surprise appearance of engagement guru John Smythe. His excellent book – CEO: Chief Engagement Officer – focuses on how organisations can deliver increased engagement, and improved productivity, by opening up and moving towards a culture of co-creation.

When Smythe asked the speaker to give examples of research that proved the opposite, Galipeau muttered something about unpublished research commissioned by the US military, which didn’t convince me at all.

I am far more convinced by Smythe’s thesis than Galipeau’s, not least because the latter appears to run contrary to so much of what I see going on in government and business. There are already countless examples of companies successfully democratising decision making both with employees and customers.

Smythe has challenged Galipeau to a debate on this, which he very grudgingly accepted. I really hope this happens.

My objections to Galipeau’s thesis are, I admit, partly emotional. He presented a remarkably gloomy vision of the future, in which the individual is powerless and the corporate centre is an omniscient Orwellian beast.

Nonetheless, it provided an interesting counterbalance to the the highly positive future envisaged by theorists like Clay Shirky and Charles Leadbeater. Shirky, as I’ve blogged about before, sketches out future in which technology enables public participation on a scale never before seen. He says that ‘for the first time, we have the tools to make group action truly a reality. And they’re going to change our whole world.’

So there’s a concensus that techology will radically change our relationship with organisations and the state. For me, at least, the balance of evidence would suggest Smythe and Shirky’s culture of co-creation is on the rise.

If Galipeau’s talk got you reaching for the anti-depressants, check out Us Now, a film project about the power of mass collaboration, government and the internet. It’s a rather more cheerful view of the digital future.

UKGC10 Session two: Socialising Internal Communications

/ Sharon O'Dea / 8 Comments

The second session of the day was the one I was looking forward to the most, having discussed it ahead of the event with Kim Willis and Mark Watson.

Kim took the lead on facilitating, but as it turns out the discussion managed to veer though the full swathe of internal comms issues without the need for much facilitating at all. It seemed like we covered an awful lot in under an hour, and could have talked for at least another hour.

Almost everyone agreed  social media could play a much bigger role in internal communications, but within the public sector at least there hasn’t been widespread adoption yet.

Someone described social networking as “what intranets are supposed to be” – enabling you to connect and collaborate with colleagues, share information and improve communication.

A social intranet enables the recording and sharing of organisational knowledge. But while knowledge management looks at how we manage our intellectual capital, we need also to look at how we record, share and pass on social capital too – that is, sharing that knowledge of people and processes that we all build up over time.

Shane Dillion said we rely too much on traditional, top-down methods of communication that no longer suit the way we work. To become more effective, everything we learn outside the organisation should be bought back in and shared.

By enabling colleagues to connect with one another, and by making working lives a little bit easier, good social intranets have a positive impact on employee engagement too.

Many cited middle management as a barrier to adoption of social media. In some ways this is understandable, as social internal comms reduces the middle managers role as a gatekeeper of information.

Our current organisational structures are built for command and control, not collaboration. So the success of internal social media  depends on moving management towards a culture of co-creation.

The question of culture is a very important one. Technology cannot itself create a collaborative culture; if people aren’t talking to each other already, introducing social tools isn’t going to make them.

Other common barriers include silo culture and concerns around security, particularly in relation to things like Government Connect. Platforms like Yammer are incredibly simple to use, and have some great functionality, but sitting outside the firewall are considered too risky by many.

(As an aside, while I like Yammer, I find its default email setting – which emails for every notification – begins to grate remarkably quickly and is itself a barrier to adoption).

But as I blogged about recently, the business case for internal social media is strong and growing. Carl Haggerty gave an update on the Devon County Council social networking pilot he talked about at LocalGovCamp. They branded this ‘business networking’ to counter accusations of frivolity and timewasting. This succeeded in winning hearts and minds, and in evaluation recently he found it produced considerable (but non-cashable) savings.

So what do we do to hasten the adoption of social media inside the firewall?

  • JFDI. The old adage that it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission is true to some extent, but it isn’t that simple when it’s your job on the line. But start with a small, agile pilot that can be scaled up if successful. If it works, the organisation will buy into it. If it doesn’t, you won’t have lost much.
  • If you want to promote new ways of working, switch the old ones off. Carl Haggerty said his team made a commitment to use their Business Networking tool for discussion rather than sending group emails. People like their tried and tested methods, so you need to provide incentives to change.
  • Dave Briggs said change needs to be dramatic to work – new tools have to do the same thing at least nine times better to win people over.
  • Get buy in from leadership, and encourage them to use social media internally to communicate, listen and lead.
  • Don’t focus on the negatives. Yes, some people will misuse social tools, but most will not. Posts have real names on, so are self-policed.
  • Don’t reinvent the wheel. Adapt your code of context to say how it applies in an online context rather than write a new code from scratch – that way you avoid protracted negotiations.
  • Hug your CIO. Work with ICT to reach solutions to problems like security rather than focus on barriers.
  • Demonstrate value. Budgets will be tight for many years to come, so we need to set out the business case for social tools, though improving flexibility, sharing knowledge, and improving productivity.

Internal social media sits at the intersection of culture change, innovation and knowledge management. It has the potential to deliver innovation and collaboration, but to do that we need to adapt to the cultural and technological barriers in our own organisations.

This was a vibrant and varied discussion, and we could all have talked for ages. Phil McAllister suggested an internal comms barcamp, which a few of us have begun to discuss in more detail. Watch this space.