Creating the right attitude
No process works well unless people ‘own’ it. There is a Chinese saying:
Tell me and I forget
Show me and I remember
Involve me and I understand
and BP Oil involved management in the process.
The dialogue had already started with upward feedback by staff to management and regular staff appraisals, all part of BP’s culture change. Next step for BP Oil was to hold a communication workshop for its most senior managers. This was not, it has to be said, an immediate and unqualified success.
The workshop had one simple aim: to enable management to accept that communication is part of leadership. At a time when they were having to make very difficult cost-cutting decisions they knew would involve the pain of making many people redundant, this was the last thing they wanted to hear. Yet the preliminary research before the workshop into how communication was rated by staff in their areas, the vigorous debate during the workshop sessions and the incontrovertible truth of the basic leadership message, did in the end help management recognize that communication is an issue they must manage because it affects the bottom line.
Its importance had been symbolized by moving communication from what had been seen as a ‘soft issues’ department to strategy and planning and hence directly to management.
The expertise of BP Oil’s professional communicators was then harnessed to help managers deliver communication in a way that they could own for themselves. While head office provided the framework, the umbrella, they, the local line managers were doing the communication, not head office. Here are some of the methods that helped.
1 The right attitude (see Figure 2.2)
The European division investigated what made a good communicator. Using the results of the global attitude survey they identified the ‘good’ management communicators, asked them – and as a reality check their staff – what made them effective. They found that good communication is all about attitude. Natural talent is heavily outweighed by technique and attitude, and technique can’t be taught. So a full 80 per cent – attitude plus technique – is within an individual manager’s control. This was a reassuring message for managers who were not comfortable with communicating with their staff and thought you had to be born with the ability to do it.
Upward feedback and appraisal
OPEN thinking
PRT and 1:2:5
Communication network
Global communication network
Head office communication forum
European task force identifies best practice
BP Oil US president spends 50% time with staff
Communication is part of leadership
Figure 2.2 Creating the right attitude
Attitude Technique Talent
2 The communication road map
The Far Eastern division carried out a ‘mapping’ survey to see who did what, and where. It did not matter that the communication process varied from country to country. The fact that questions were being asked about the process helped focus minds on making it happen.