Transcript
Speaker: Made on Zencastr. The all-in-one podcasting platform, which really does make making content so easy. Visit Zencastr.com. All the details are in the description.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abyssaida and people who think outside the box about how work works, with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
Speaker: I am your host, Michael Middleward. Today, i will be learning about resolving conflicts between different parts of the same organization from Rajini Joshua, a communications specialist at silvetelegram.com.
Speaker: Margini is based in Hawaii, USA. I have been to Hawaii. If I go again, i will be making my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club, which gives me access to trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, and package holidays, as well as lots of other travel related purchases.
Speaker: You can do the same if you remember. So I've organized a link in the description. Now that I've paid some bills, It is time to make an episode of the independent minds that will be well worth listening to liking, downloading and subscribing to as with every episode of the independent minds. We won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Speaker: Hello, Rajini. Hi, Michael. Nice to talk to you. We're going to be talking about when different parts of the same organization, not just individuals within organizations, but different parts of organizations have different perspectives and different opinions and they get a little bit out of hand. But before we start that, please could you explain your career and the sort of work that you do nowadays at Silver Telegram?
Speaker: Absolutely. yes So I have been in the PR, public relations industry, for the last 20 years. I've been primarily focused in the technology space. I started in mobile and wireless technology. I've done you know networking technology, deep tech, hardware, video games, virtual worlds, a little bit of everything, really. In 2011, I started Silver Telegram as an agency that focused on those smaller companies that want big agency results. so smaller companies you can't basically afford, $10,000 month,
Speaker: to be spending on PR, we took up some really great, fun, innovative, smaller clients that um were in the emerging space of startups and and Silicon Valley at at the kind of height of when startups were really coming out and becoming something. um We worked on a lot of crowdfunding and Kickstarter campaigns and helped promote those. So a lot of consumer goods. So primarily our business is about 50% B2B and 50% B2C public relations programs that focus on earning media And communications and messaging. So we help brands develop can consistent messaging and then also get into the media with that messaging and make sure that everyone's kind of saying staying on the same page and saying the right things. And my my team is virtual, so we're located all across North America. And yeah, that's and I ended up in Hawaii because why not?
Speaker: is You can't argue with the logic of why not go to Hawaii. Exactly. It's a fantastic place. Very diverse place as well, I think. It is.
Speaker: It is more than more now than it was before, I think. i mean, i COVID did a lot of things to people. So people moved around, went to wherever they wanted to go. And you'll see a lot of people who come here, though. It's an island.
Speaker: So a lot of people who come here and don't realize there is some... it's It's different to live on an island than to live in the mainland where you can get things more easily. And so some people make it and some people don't. It's just it's a thing out here. Yeah.
Speaker: the conflicts between the people that have always lived in Hawaii and the people who have arrived in Hawaii must be interesting to witness as well as people adapt to new cultures. Yes. It's all about respecting the land. so There's a whole um way of life and way of thinking, a away about a way of thinking about life that's associated with Hawaii, which is is quite different to other places. But...
Speaker: What we are saying though is if you haven't been, it is well worth a visit. It takes over a day to get there from from the United Kingdom.
Speaker: You've got cross the Atlantic, cross the United States, and then cross a big part of the Pacific as well. But it is well worth it when you get there. that And of course, you can do it at a lot lower price so if you're with the Ultimate Travel Club. So thank you very much for the opportunity to talk about Hawaii and put in another another plug for the Ultimate Travel Club. But by it sounds as if your work PR is also linked to this interest in conflict within organizations.
Speaker: Yes. How has it all come about? Yeah, so i mean i've even I've been championing this idea of really creating consistent communications between departments over the last, I would say, decade. Because when I started doing PR for myself and working with these startups, especially people who are quite nascent or at the beginning of their organization, you see that everybody's doing their own thing.
Speaker: They all have their own agenda and they're not talking to each other enough. And I think that's a global phenomenon. Communication issues in inside organizations is pretty much happens everywhere. But I think one thing that's really interesting is that public relations is the public facing messaging that companies need to have.
Speaker: to look like they're wrapped up, to create a reputation and to build that kind of credibility. And when the different counterparts, which actually includes sales, marketing, public relations, and then, of course, your executive team, if if you're not all on the same page delivering the same kind of messages,
Speaker: then it does create a little bit of conflict in your reputation. And I've seen this happen when we've had crisis situations or somebody goes off and says something that's not that's off brand for the particular company, thinking that they're just an an individual saying something. um So I think it's very important for people to get this right early. And there's it's no time no early time is too early for whether it's a startup. and And there's actually no time where it's late. You can always fix and of course correct your reputation if you're seeing that, okay, the guys that are going to these events are saying one thing, but then when we're writing a press release, we're saying something else. And then when we're writing an email, we're saying something else.
Speaker: if If you notice that kind of desperation between your company and your departments, it's it's best to fix it as soon as possible because consistent messaging builds trust. And I think That's one thing that's very important for any business person to know. And I'm sure we do know it oftentimes, but sometimes with having different departments and as your company grows, all these different things get siloed and and people kind of forget to check in with each other. I wondered how long it would be before we got the silo word in. into this conversation, because that that is what it what it's about, isn't it? It's like, what you're identified, i suppose, is a real commercial consequence of people not being on the same team within, whether the departments are one person or 100 people, doesn't really matter.
Speaker: If you have got different parts of the organization thinking, acting, and saying different things, there is a real commercial consequence of that in terms of the conflicts in messages leaving the organization.
Speaker: and that creating confusion in the media, which then creates confusion with potential customers, whether they are human beings or corporations, whether you're B2B or B2C. The lack of consistency because organisation parts different parts of the organization are not talking to one another and not agreeing to follow the same message actually has a real commercial consequence. As well, have to say with my HR hat on, it also has the same impact on people who are working in the organization as well. Yeah, I mean i was actually going to i was going to bring that up as well. like yeah I've seen, ah being at conferences often, I've seen the team that's at the booth that's talking about the technology is maybe an engineering team or something else, and they're just talking about it from a technical standpoint. where you see the marketing team is trying to sell it from a sales kind of marketing standpoint, but they're actually saying different things. And nobody nobody decided to get together and say, hey, this is actually what we're going to say about this. We're not going to talk about this. We're going to talk about this. Let's make the say sales channel a lot more fluid.
Speaker: Even though you're part of the engineering team, you should be talking about our technology like this so that that that people can see how innovative it is. And, you know, they don't want it they don't want to hear about this detail or they want don't want to hear about that detail. So it is, it's very important that internally people are not confused about what messages are approved and not approved. And I know that sounds so corporate, but it's true. It just is, it keeps everything just more smooth. Customers, partners, and internal people all on the same page with a very clear idea of of the communication strategy. And the simpler you can make it
Speaker: the better. I know people love to use big and sophisticated words, but actually you're supposed to be keeping these messages at like a very high school or, you know, secondary school level of, you know, very clear, but direct messaging.
Speaker: Yeah. When we talk about communications, not working in a coherent way across the same, across the whole board, Part of me starts to think, well, this is because you've got one part of the organization that thinks it's better than the other parts. And what they want to have happen is what should happen. And the best way to make it happen is to do it publicly so whether everybody else has to follow.
Speaker: But then the other part of me the more of the peacemaker side of me says, well, actually, it isn't necessarily something that is the consequence of people wanting to be better than others or having some sort of evil motivation to to up themselves. It sounds as if the issue could actually be one of communication between different parts of the organization. We're missing out on telling people. So your engineer is really excited about your new product and the bit that they contributed towards its development and they know it inside out. So when they have an opportunity to talk about it, they will talk about the bit that they know. The salesperson has gone through the sales briefing and in those meetings, very little about the technology, but knows what the business benefits would be to the customer. So that's what they want to talk about. If we don't get people together and talk about everything and agree across the board, what we will talk about in particular environments to particular types of people and learn how to change those when we're presented with a different type of person,
Speaker: then then we are going to have conflicts in the messages that we hand out. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a really dynamic situation, but the larger your organization grows, the more important it is for you to be aligned with each other. And I think that takes a very strong and organized leadership team to make sure that that happens.
Speaker: So it starts right at the top. If the senior leadership team give the impression that they're not talking the same message all the time, then other people in the organization won't feel the need to do that either.
Speaker: Absolutely. Absolutely. um And they'll be like, they they will have to choose, you know, they'll have to choose sides. Like, who am I going to go with? um So that's another thing. And usually people go with their direct supervisor, right? Their person who's hired them or the person that they report to. The person who decides how much they're going to be paid. Exactly. Yeah. He who pays the piper calls the tune, as they say.
Speaker: and So, I mean, that that's an issue. But i think, you know, as an employee, even to get a clarification on that, I feel like that's part of your job.
Speaker: And maybe not something that people communicate well, is that like, hey, you need to know what our messages are, what our vision is. people get so wrapped up in the minutia of their actual role, their actual job is that they don't really take a step back and no one's helping them take a step back. So, I mean, it's an organizational thing that you really need to make these messages important throughout. And I think that's, I feel like I've learned this in like an HR course somewhere where, you know, when you're onboarding new people that you really make sure that you deliver the vision and the mission of the company so that they can,
Speaker: One feel like they're a part of the team, but also, also deliver that message and vision through what they're doing in their work. Yes. ah that You probably did get that from an HR course at some point when you've got somebody who's new into an organization, you look like this, you only have one chance to make a good first impression. Right. That good first impression is the one I think where you, You have to make, make may be too strong a word, but you have to provide the information in an engaging way that enables the person to say, I made the decision to apply for this job. I made the decision to say, yes, I want this job. I made the decision to start and everything that you've given them confirms that they made the right choices at each stage of that recruitment and selection process.
Speaker: Right, exactly. And when they've done that, then they can become advocates and ambassadors for you but their employer, for your brand. They will talk talk it up to anyone and everyone. But if you haven't set the right foundations, you're not going to be able to then...
Speaker: get people on board with a new message um as things change or even a revised message when a message that has been used turns out to be ineffective.
Speaker: Exactly. There's all sorts of crossovers between the PR part of an organization and the HR part of an organization, because although the people that we talk to are different, one is a customer, PR people talk to customers, talk to the media, HR people talk to employees and potential employees, but you're still communicating the same on-brand messages about the employer, its products and services. Yeah.
Speaker: Exactly. Yeah, you got it. You got it. Listen, I learn every day is a school day. But what type of things have you seen done in organizations where this isn't working as it should? What have you seen done successfully to change the situation around and what sort of contributions has PR ah played and played in that?
Speaker: Yeah, so actually right now I'm doing something with an organization that is very well established. They've been in the industry for 20 And we're just doing a messaging workshop. This is because the team, and I think it was the marketing team specifically was like, Hey, we have this piece of paper that says this, and this piece of marketing material that says this, and they don't all sound the same. Um, and we're saying different things everywhere. How can we align this? So the first thing that we're doing with them is a messaging workshop where
Speaker: One, the first part is like a dump. Okay, what is the mission and vision and goals? The current, the most current one. So we're course correcting. What is the most current version of what you want to do as a brand or a company, how you want to represent yourself. And what we do is we establish who their key audiences are and then what the key message is to each of those audiences. Because typically it's a little bit different. Like someone that's going to be a partner has a different message that's going to be a potential customer or a different message to an employee. So we'll go through all of their key target ah our audiences. And usually it's about anywhere from one to five maybe audiences. And then we will go through and create messages that are specific to those particular audiences. And we kind of just start with that brainstorm, that larger brainstorm of, okay, what's mission vision? You're getting everything out on the table. Yeah, just putting everything out.
Speaker: So that you're discovering... what the real message is and then what what old messages or their own messages people have created for themselves are. And until you get them out on the table, I suppose you you don't know what they are, where they are, what damage they could do.
Speaker: Right, exactly. And what typically happens from that, that brain dump, I like to call it, is that you'll find that there's a few messages that stand out as consistent.
Speaker: There always is something, something that stands out as consistent. And we'll pull those out to make them a little bit stronger, more consistent and aligned with the mission and vision and create those final kind of tidbits from the things that people are already saying, because the hardest thing to do is introduce new ideas to people who've never heard them before. The easiest things to do is to modify what's already being said into a just a maybe a little bit more formal factor, like to make it more consistent. But it's easier to manipulate things and ideas that people are already feeling and saying than it is to introduce something completely brand new. That sounds really important yeah in that you have people who have existing ideas and what you're saying is you mustn't dismiss those. Right.
Speaker: Right. You mustn't try and replace those by dismissing them and doing away with them. You are more likely to be successful in getting customers to change their behavior, potential customers to change their behavior and employees to change their behavior if you tweak the message, if you change it slightly. Just slightly. Rather than if you do a radical change. Because you want it to be familiar.
Speaker: You know, you don't want it to be, if you take a departure, people, the trust also goes with that. It is there is an issue there. Unless you're doing like a brand refresh and a change, and that's a choice also. But most of the time, that's not really what's happening. Yeah.
Speaker: you're getting the right messages going out in a consistent way. So that I think one of the words that I've heard you use and seen on your website is the concept of the one destination. And my understanding is that that's, it's it's not so much the journey as everybody agreeing where they want to get to is the same place.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that's, that's also another Another part of this piece that's often overlooked is we say a lot of words and words have a lot of meaning and power behind them, but we're not sending them anywhere. what What do we want these people to do? At the end of the day, we're asking them something. And I think that's also something that people forget. In PR, it's very common that, you know, our clients are like, oh, I want to get into the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker: And I want to get into the New York times and I want to get into Forbes. Okay. Well, once we get there, what exactly are we asking people to do and how are we being compelling for that audience? Because it's one thing to put that on your wishlist, but we also need to, it is a two way communication. When you do PR, we need to serve them and they need to serve us. And so we need to also create a destination, a call to action, and then they'll have a destination and call to action for us. So it's a conversation. And the more you can create a two-way conversation, the more you'll find that people will remember your brand as well. It's a branding tactic so that, you know, it makes sense. It needs to make sense at the end of the day. Anything can be a novel idea, but if it doesn't connect with you or hit home in some kind of way, or give you something to do, a task, people love to have a task list. Even though we probably won't admit it, everybody likes to check off things on their task list. So I think it's important to kind of tap into the human condition and how people perceive and accept and respond to things to create that messaging as well.
Speaker: Yes. When you said that clients may say, I want to be in the Wall Street Journal, I want to be in the New York Times, and then people want to be in Forbes, I thought to myself, I've read the Wall Street Journal and I've read the New York Times when I've been in America.
Speaker: And sometimes you get the feeling with a newspaper, regardless of which newspaper it is, wherever it is in the world, what what they're interested in is the the bad news and very much.
Speaker: They're reporting on problems and solutions, I suppose, or someone who's done something wrong. Whereas when you're looking at a magazine, they tend to be much more about the good side, the good story.
Speaker: Yeah. right And being in being in somewhere, being in, being perceived in a different way, how you communicate with with people internally or externally is like, I suppose what getting to is it's like,
Speaker: It's how are you going to communicate in a way that gets the message across in that consistent way, which then takes other people to the one destination that you have decided as a group is where you all want to be. So you're taking people with you rather than dragging them with you, I suppose.
Speaker: Yeah. Right. Yeah, no, that's a that's a really interesting concept and idea that you've brought up because it's true when we're in mainstream media, like like the ones I mentioned earlier, it's more of a commentary. It's more of a commentary on news and what's happening today when we're in publications that are industry focused or innovation focused. They are more proactive, more forward thinking, they're more storytelling and they kind of have a positive light on them. Either way, each each each thing has its own purpose and call to action. So when you're commentating in stories like in the New York Times and things like that, it's more about reputation of, hey, this person has a reputation of being able to be an expert in this field. And then when you're in a journal,
Speaker: or a magazine, it's more like, hey, these guys are leading the conversation. and And the other you know interesting dynamic that you're bringing up is how are those two messages actually connecting? And so you do have to have those messages connecting as well.
Speaker: So the the look and feel of those messages really, or guess the sound and feel of those messages really have to be similar in the way they're delivered and the way they're written and the way they're communicated so that there's some kind of consistency because we all find comfort in that consistency. I see what you mean. And with my HR hat on, I'm sort relating what you just said back to The internal market that I have more experience of, I'm thinking it's how and where people find out the official information indicates the type of information it is, whether it's a notice board, an intranet, a a town meeting, a one-to-one meetings with managers.
Speaker: all sorts of various different ways in which information can be communicated so that it doesn't come across as criticism. It can be commentary on what the current situation is, but you don't want it to come across as criticism of anyone because what you're looking to achieve is a change in behavior.
Speaker: Well, those are those are different fine lines and different, and I found that different executives and and experts have their comfort level with with those, right? some Some people are okay with being political and a little bit more jarring, a little bit more sharp with what they what they say. And then some people are a little more conservative on the conservative side, so not to affect the brand too much. You'll find this in public companies often. I mean, obviously, people have this criticism of PR being staged commentary, but It's it's really necessary because it's we should all be planning what we talk about. doesn't matter if you're talking to the press or you're talking to your partner or your friend. I feel like i feel like all of us can use a little bit of you know organization and censorship in what we say.
Speaker: You're possibly very right there. I won't disagree with you at all. But I have to say, it's all been very interesting. I'm always fascinated by the connections between the work that I do in HR and the work that people in PR and marketing do as well. the way in which the same sort of concepts come together to show that customers and employees are very, very similar in lots of ways. The way in which we treat a customer, the way in which we treat an employee,
Speaker: There's so much synergy. It's really interesting. And I do appreciate you exploring that sort of aspect of this whole resolution of conflict type ah area with me. Thank you very much. I really have enjoyed and learned a lot in this conversation. Thank you. Of course. Thank you.
Speaker: I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind Rajini Joshua from silvetelegram.com. You can find out more about both of us at abasida.co.uk. There is a link in the description.
Speaker: I must remember to thank the team at matchmaker.fm for introducing me to Rajini. If you are a podcaster looking for interesting guests, or if like Rajini, you have something interesting to say, matchmaker.fm is where great hosts and even greater guests are matched.
Speaker: The Zencastr system has, as always, been very effective today. But if you're listening to the independent minds on your smartphone and experience technical issues, you may like to know that 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data. So listening on 3.0 means you can wave goodbye to buffering.
Speaker: There's a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code. That description is well worth reading.
Speaker: I'm sure you will have liked this episode of The Independent Minds as much as we enjoyed making it. So please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe.
Speaker: Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think. Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.
