Hey Reader,

We talk a lot about strategic communication in this newsletter, and I get lots of emails from people who want to become more strategic and operate in a more strategic way. So today why don't we try to figure out we all are right now on the scale of very strategic to totally tactical.

Let's try to do this by answering this question: What separates strategic internal communications from tactical communicators?

This topic is top of mind for me because this past week I’ve been grading a whole bunch of student assignments from a course I run with a communications institute here in Ireland. While I was reading the assignments, I began to notice that the difference between a truly strategic communicator and a tactical communicator is not about budget, tools, writing skills, years of experience or a fancy job title. The difference comes down to one critical distinction:

So let's talk about that and what it looks like, to help you identify which areas may be a weakness for you and how you can improve.

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Demonstrating business value

The assignments I graded instructed the students to write an internal comms strategy aligned to business goals for the organisation they work in. I set this assignment to try to shift people away from what happens so often: what we call "communication strategies" are often just communication plans or nicely presented improvement plans, but they fail to demonstrate real business value.

For example, if your strategy has one of its main goals as “increase employee engagement through better newsletters and town halls” then I fear you are down in the weeds focusing on communications activity rather than how that activity will deliver value for the business. It's too tactical and too vague. Or say you focus on something like “improve information flow and reduce email overload in the organisation" which is a worthy goal but doesn't link to the bigger picture or answer the crucial question: So what?

What happens if we improve information flow and reduce email overload? What business goal does this serve and how? What do your leaders care about and how does your communication activity link to that?

Let's say for example, you are doing internal comms in a pharma company and you know that patient safety is the top priority for your leadership team this year. Instead of generic engagement metrics or output-level communication metrics, you could connect something like a communications campaign for compliance training to patient safety outcomes. In this example, your comms objective wasn’t just to achieve 100% training completion, but rather it focuses on ensuring that employees were well equipped to uphold safety standards that protect patients.

Do you see how that links directly to a business priority? Do you also see how leaders will immediately give you more attention, respect and support if they understand how your communication activity impacts their priorities?

Asking for a tool vs solving a business problem

Let's look at another example. Let's say you work in a company that has a very outdated Sharepoint intranet that has been a pain in your side since the day you took the job. You want your leaders to care enough about this problem to give you the money and resources you need to implement a solution. So you look at your leaders' priorities and realise that one of their top goals for the next 3 years is to increase efficiency in the company. You can absolutely frame your intranet conversation around efficiency. Maybe you have data that shows 85% of employees are wasting at least one hour per week searching for information on Sharepoint, which is the equivalent to 25,000 lost hours every year. That doesn't sound terribly efficient, does it? So you can frame your ask around that. Rather than asking for a new intranet right up front, you frame your discussion around solving an efficiency blocker: you want to increase efficiency in the business by reducing how many employee hours are lost each week searching for information, enabling more time delivering value to customers.

Again do you see how that will get your leaders attention? It moves communication from a nice-to-have function that centres around assets and activities into a mission-critical function that can impact how efficient the company is.

So here's what I want you to think about: try to get beyond your activity and your campaigns and your tasks. What is the business impact you are trying to make? What are you doing that would get your leaders attention and make them care?

Your next strategy review is an opportunity to make this change. Start with business priorities, work backwards to communications objectives and always answer this question: “How does this help the business win?”

That’s what separates strategic internal communicators from tactical internal communicators.

Where do you sit on the scale of strategic to tactical? If this is the year you finally want to take action and become more strategic in your role, then this is your sign to come join me in The Curious Tribe. You can use this letter to convince your boss to cover the membership fee.

Thanks for reading and stay curious,

Joanna

Find me on YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn and check out my book​

Want to work together?

• Join The Curious Tribe. This is my membership community for ambitious, curious communicators who want to achieve more in their roles and have fun at the same time. Membership allows you to work directly with me for 12 months, make deep connections with other communication pros who 'get it' and improve your skills through training and learning. More info here.
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