by Roger D’Aprix

A fascinating dialogue took place online a few weeks ago. The subject was the proper role of internal communication professionals in their respective organizations. It’s a subject that badly needs airing in a time when increasingly I believe that internal communication practitioners are losing their way.

The people that were engaged in the online dialogue are all veteran communication pros with years of experience in the trenches. The dialogue was triggered by an innocent query from another participant who asked if and how electronic kiosks made sense in a decentralized manufacturing environment. One of the first responses said that the issue was not electronic kiosks; that the question should be whether and how kiosks might improve the company’s performance at that facility. He went on to say that the real need was to look at the barriers to performance in that organization and to address those barriers with appropriate strategy. His position was that essentially all that matters is serving the needs of the customers and the shareholders of that company for quality products and services. He asked pointedly whether kiosks truly serve that overriding need and whether the absence of kiosks was truly affecting company performance.

His position soon motivated a very different response from an equally passionate participant, who said—in effect—that people don’t live by bread alone. Here’s his verbatim question: “Does the whole worth of employee communication consist in solving specific business problems?…I’m troubled by the implication that if you…haven’t got your whole program focused on troubleshooting performance issues, you are functioning at some primitive level of the craft. Let’s not forget that just plugging away at the creation and maintenance of an essential climate for success can be pretty darned strategic, if you’re good at it.”

A third participant chimed in with his view that after years of studying the issue of role, he had concluded that there were at least five roles that a communication professional could play. These were: communicator; educator; change agent; small c consultant; strategist. He added, “The first corresponds with an infrastructure/channels/vehicles/content aggregation/dissemination role. The second is the training/coaching role, making others good communicators (CEOs; supervisors). The third refers to the role we play with corporate strategy execution, in particular with resulting change management programs and required large-scale culture/climate/behavioral change. The fourth is what I would call small c communication change built around specific operational process improvements. Finally the fifth, which I have labeled as strategist, focuses on being a player in the organization’s overarching strategic management process…”

Aside from the quality of this discussion is the largely ignored debate that underlies it and that needs to be engaged by more than these three veteran communication pros. What I read mostly these days about our profession is related to technology and the need to introduce more social media into our organizations. In my opinion that conversation badly misses the mark. Worse, it’s a distraction from the really important questions facing our profession and the need to debate what would constitute our value-added role in organizations in the midst of chaotic and revolutionary change. That’s a monumental question that begs to be answered in these bewildering times if we are truly going to help our organizations succeed.

I have been working on a new book entitled “The Credible Company: Communicating with Today’s Skeptical Workforce.” It’s scheduled for publication by Jossey-Bass Publishers in October of this year. After outlining what I believe is a proper communication prescription for today’s skeptical audience, I conclude that ours is a profession at a crossroads. We can sink deeper into craft, continuing the tendency to apply newer and newer technology as an end in itself with slight regard to human needs in the workplace—in the process making ourselves more and more irrelevant to our leaderships and our audiences. Or we can wake up to the complexities of getting through to a skeptical workforce with a sound strategy that addresses their needs and views.

It’s high time we began to look seriously at this issue and to put aside the narrow view that is now clouding our collective vision of the proper role of communication in the workplace.