The complexity of getting the right information to the right people at the right time.
Like many organizations, InterVarsity’s internal communications is complex.
After a tough COVID season, our executives were interested in restoring hope and reinforcing clarity of the mission, impact, and vision. One way to do that? Adjust our internal communications.
Discover
To create a set of recommendations that serve the organization and its needs, we needed to learn more about how communications were flowing and what communications were valuable.
Through staff voice surveys, interviewing a wide range of role types across the movement, and listening sessions, we found some significant insights.
The ‘Listeners’
InterVarsity staff paradoxically said that they were overwhelmed with information and yet survey responses indicated they wanted more information.
Between a mix of information overload and long paragraph-laden emails from their supervisors, they were struggling to figure out what was important.
Communication Platforms
Across the movement we discovered there were around 13 different technology platforms used for communications.
Additionally, listeners were most interested in improving the mechanics of ‘search and ‘pull’ of communications - they were seeing it just fine the first time it was sent out, but finding it later among all their emails was not working.
Not all listeners wanted change - there was a pretty clear divide in those who wanted to use traditional communication channels (Email / Phone) and those who wanted to use newer technologies.
Restoring hope
We also learned that while the project had originally been taken on because our executives wanted to restore hope, most staff felt that the already existing attempts to boost morale showed that the executives didn’t know what was happening ‘on the ground’ and created dissonance.
“I have to be really extra and ask for clarification all the time because it’s poorly written.”
“I would love to hear what the execs are working on and know more. Like – what is even happening with the strat plan? ”
“(Microsoft) Teams is a hot topic, some hate it and prefer text, but we have really popped off and organized with channels for MPD, Conference, it’s changed my life.” ”
The Communicators
It’s tempting to think about Internal Communications as being just about those who receive information, but to build a comprehensive recommendation we also needed to weigh what was being experienced by those who were doing the communicating.
Who are the communicators?
It’s probably no surprise that it’s not the Communications team that are the primary communicators - it’s staff directors.
They’re the ones who are filtering what staff hear, are creating their own communication chains, and vary in communication competency.
What are they struggling with?
They are the best equipped to surface the right resources, communicate deadlines, but to do it well they must know everything.
What are their communication practices?
We found that they were highly accommodating for their staff, catering to individual preferences.
After filtering, they would create custom communications and then call some of their staff, text others, and often make repeated follow-ups for communications that were task related.
“Teams has been a game-changer. We’ve used it to direct and instruct, provide accountability, and make sure people have access to the info they need, when they need it. ”
“I have a google doc with info that my staff team needs to know. It’s very challenging to get a sense of camaraderie. We are facing tension between gen z and non-gen z staff.”
“I think my staff need to hear that other staff care about the mission as much as them and are working as hard as they are.“”
Define
So what was the problem?
While many strategists disagree, in large enough systems there is rarely one singular problem at play. In our internal communications, there were 3 major themes at play.
all leading to fragmented, disconnected, disorganized, and confusing communications that don’t help staff do their jobs.
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The bulk of communications were ‘internal advertising’ - useful, but not widely relevant to most of the organization and not aligned to ministry priorities.
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The majority of communicators had no formal training in communications resulting in staff struggling to parse out what they needed to know.
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The channels and platforms that staff were paying attention to were not the ones in use by national teams, and suffered from poor search capabilities.
Design
There was no shortage of ideas.
But, it can be hard to make ideas cohesive. One tactic I’ve been using is ideating through story (an ‘experience vision’ as Jared Spool calls it. Basically, I just start writing and see what happens.
“A new campus staff has recently started and is learning the organization and her job. During her orientation from her supervisor, she’s shown a couple key things she needs: she’ll find internal communications in Teams and there is an all-movement virtual call three times a year, fall, spring, and summer.
She downloads Teams and makes sure she has access to the Regional team, the Area team, and the National team. In each, are a document to describe the purpose of different channels and how to manage her notifications.
At the all-movement virtual call, she hears from the ELT what is going on in the 4-year big picture and what progress they intend to make over the next trimester. She also gets to hear from other staff about what they’re experiencing this semester – it’s hopeful and honest.”
and so on!
Pulling ideas out of experience visions
As I wrote, not only did I take the ideas that were percolating and place them in ‘real life’, I also started to have some details pop out about the ideas - for example, making sure its documented how to manage notifications.
It’s not the whole story
Because this is about one imagined experience, we needed to do more work to figure out more the system around internal communications.
For example, in the vision we realized that to give our imagined campus staff curated information, some governing body needs to do the curation.
Experience visions are not the only way - sometimes I’ve used journey maps, storyboards, or other diagramming methods to help design a new experience - it’s whatever helps you communicate best!
So what will we do?
In order to push the right information, at the right time, to the right audience, in the right platforms with improved search mechanisms we will:
Address what’s communicated: Establish an Internal Communications Board to assess incoming communication requests and curate each month.
Address who is communicating: We will host 3 annual ‘All Staff Gatherings’ directly from executive leaders to share about goals for that season and answer questions sent in by staff.
Address where we are communicating: We will move the organization to Teams for National curated communications and create a structure to publish those curated communications and optional topical channels that staff can opt into. Existing regional communication structures can remain, but we will strongly encourage supervisors to consider moving to Teams to avoid fragmentation for their staff.
(I do wish that my idea to roll out corporate communication training to all staff directors was taken on, but maybe one day 🙂)
Investigate it further
It all sounds pretty great, but we wanted to head into project planning with our eyes wide open.
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We could purchase a platform specifically for internal communications like Axios HQ ← this was out of budget.
We also thought about hiring an internal communications dedicated staff and allow them to develop and execute solutions ← this was also out of budget.
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Many comments about internal communications were also about our websites where resources were found, but resourcing websites were firmly out of scope.
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Some regions and areas tried to make the move to Teams and abandoned. We will need to help them want to try again.
Curation will be difficult and could cause politicking/frustration. We are hopeful that topical channels will still allow helpful ‘internal advertising’ while not putting that information in the mainstream.
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We need our executive team to be able to set aside time to participation on the internal communications board.
We need to be able to monitor the relevancy of communications.
We need training developed to help people use Teams, discover relevant topical channels, and manage their notifications.
We need to document regions using Teams successfully as models for regions moving.
We need to assess production capacity for All Staff Gatherings.
We need to set up temporarily dedicated change liaisons to help Regions transition.
Deliver
(sadly, after this was green-lit I took a 3-month sabbatical so my colleagues did an amazing job keeping it moving!)
All Staff Gathering
At this point we’ve hosted 2 All Staff Gatherings and have a 60% join rate of InterVarsity staff - for an event that is not required, that’s pretty good!
All Staff Team
Just before leaving for sabbatical I did write out the architecure and moderation rules for implementation by our IT team. It’s been fun to see jump in! It was soft launched this summer and will be fully launched in January 2025.
Internal Communications Board
Directed by our DIrector of Corporate Communications, we now have a governing body that sets the communications against ministry priorities!
Weekly note from President
Optional call for Filipino staff this Friday at 3pm!
Come join the Church resource team and invite your pastor to ‘Election season with college students’
New InterVarsity Press book has been launched! Get it with your staff discount.
Have you seen the new hoodies in the store?
Comings and goings of staff
Check out this webinar for MBA students.
National communications look less like:
Doing Campus Ministry: Get your building community resources and navigating election season in ministry.
Employees: Urbana 25 is coming soon – join the Urbana 25 staff information call on October 11th..
Discipleship: New Retreat Guide focused on navigating family and friendships in an election season. Use it yourself or with students!
Fundraising: Share with your ministry partners our new ‘Day in the Life of Staff’ video to help them see into your ministry.
For all other announcements, see the Bulletin Board!
and more like:
Tips for writing enterprise-scale strategies
💡 Balance desired outcome + rate of change
To be honest, I wanted more for our internal communications like training supervisors in better communication practices.
But, we had to think through the amount of change we were asking of our staff directors. Managing moving their staff to Teams was enough without adding on training requirements.
💡 Balance desired outcome + capacity of other departments
There was an additional project we had in our strategy for re-working our staff site, but with the technology team already busy with other priorities, including the All Staff Gathering and All Staff Team, we had to place that on hold and are still working the future of that.
💡 Balance others’ ideas of how to achieve goals
Remember we originally started this project because of an executive desire to restore hope and clarify mission in our internal communications. We certainly worked towards to clarifying communications but our research showed that an overly strong ‘ra-ra!’ tone and messaging would cause more dissonance rather than achieving their goal.