The Centre for Strategic Communication Excellence proudly features an excerpt from Internal Communication: A Cultural Challenge written by Alejandro Formanchuk, President of the Argentinian Association of Internal Communication and the CEO of Formanchuk and Associates. Alejandro is the producer and host of Conversaciones TV, an online show about corporate communication, and has been a playwright since the age of 20.
1. Starting to Think and to Rethink
Today many companies use 2.0 tools to manage both their internal and external communications. Is this a revolutionary practice?
Wait a minute. Don’t answer right now.
Let me tell you that many European monarchies as well as the Vatican and dozens of ultraconservative political parties around the world use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, WordPress and Flickr. What’s your opinion now?
First conclusion: Any organization which is a little bit less formal than the British Crown should dare to be present in the social media. After all, if a queen or the Pope sign up on Twitter or create a blog, why should the director of a company be afraid to do so?
Now I pose a new question which is a little bit more challenging: Why are these traditional institutions ready to use something which is supposedly so innovative?
The answer is simple: because the fact of having “2.0 tools” doesn’t make them “2.0 organizations”. To put it in a proverb:
The suit does not make the man.
Therefore, organizations may use social media (that is to say, they may use technology) both for internal and external communications without having to modify their culture. Is this any good? Not so much. Cosmetic changes are only superficial. Where shall we start, then? By what is central to organizations: their culture.
2. Organizational Culture 2.0
I want to talk to you about what I know, about my work experience and about what I have found out (and I find out every day), about rights and wrongs. Companies from Latin America have been hiring us for years to strengthen their internal communication and to help them to design “internal communication 2.0” strategies.
But what does this mean? What do they really want when they ask for “internal communication 2.0”? Basically what they want is “technological tools”.
I’ll be honest with you. Those are the easiest things to sell. But those are the things I never sell (or at least I never sell them at the beginning). Because, to me, the universe 2.0 is the following:
A cultural platform rather than a collection of technologies in “perpetual beta”
