Views from the SCM Summit - reporting on day one

I missed out on most of the proceedings today, so much of the following report comes courtesy of my Gatehouse colleague Howard Krais...

Melcrum's annual SCM Summit opened with a buzz in the room. The large audience (maybe suggesting that training budgets are not being radically cut just yet) were eagerly awaiting one of the 'gurus' of internal communications, Roger D'Aprix, who the IABC named in 1998 as one of the most influential thinkers in the communication profession in the last 25 years.

With a new book "Communicating with a Sceptical Workforce" due out shortly, and without the aid of Powerpoint, D'Aprix provided a fascinating overview of what is happening within the internal communications profession, describing how the profession is at a crossroads and how it needs to adapt if it is to be meaningful in what he described as the new information economy.

Interestingly Roger described the way he feels about social media as being akin to being "an agnostic at a prayer meeting" warning that communicators needed to be very clear that social media really will add value to current channels. He also explained that whilst the big picture (mission, vision and strategy etc) remains important more emphasis needs to be given to the little picture, in other words helping people perceive their contributions in terms of their personal worth through proper support of line manager/supervisor communications

And get this, he quoted a recent Henley survey which claimed that people spend an average of 2 hours a day on email, equating to 10 years of your life. And given approximately a third of all emails are considered unnecessary that means that 3 years of your life is wasted on unproductive emails.

After a break, the folk from Involve, one of the Conference sponsors, ran a session aimed at getting attendees to experience real involvement and at the same time think about some of the key issues behind defending resources and budgets - something that might be useful in the coming months!

Using the format of a trial, an actor playing the role of CEO of telecommunications company 'Lemon' was accused of cutting budgets and acting against his company's value. The audience was split down the middle as either being defence or prosecution counsel.

It was a good exercise in researching evidence and drawing out facts, looking at both sides of a story and working out in advance how to counter certain entrenched views, and it was good fun. Ultimately the CEO was found not guilty and was left to enjoy his imaginary sponsorship of West Ham United.

The final session in the morning was delivered by Greg Sage, who outlined how the internal communications team at Tesco communicate with a huge, and highly diverse - yet passionate - audience. A core theme centred on the constant challenge of getting news to people internally before they read it or hear about it in the external media - no easy thing given there are in excess of 300,000 staff based in over 2,200 locations, many of whom do not have PC access.

Greg explained how the internal communication team makes use of a wide range of channels, with a hugely successful face-to-face programme called Team 5 and a recently relaunched fortnightly newspaper called 'The One' at its heart, although these are just two of a portfolio of channels available.

Hearing from the man who heads up internal communications at such an iconic brand as Tesco was guaranteed to keep the audience enraptured - meaning that there were far more questions than could be dealt with, whether from those in the room, or those through the impressive Live Interactive voting technology placed on each table.

The afternoon featured speakers from GE Healthcare Life Sciences (a case study on post-acquisition integration) and from Nokia and the Edge Picture Company (what looked like a fascinating session on the teleco's video-based storytelling platform which I understand encourages employees to contribute content). Unfortunately we missed both sessions :-(

In the closing session Mary Lynn Carver, of pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, used her own experience of refocusing the AZ global communication function to underline the need for greater alignment between internal and external communications. "There's only room for one communicator at the top table" she argued before explaining why the interface between these two sometimes disconnected functions is becoming increasingly critical.

The first day wrapped up with an evening drinks reception courtesy of events company Jack Morton. There was a great band on hand, a caricaturist (who somehow made me look like Robbie Coltrane), good company, and the drinks were flowing. What more can one ask for?

I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

Lee Smith on Oct 16 2008

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