The role of internal communications in delivering on the collaboration agenda. A presentation by Belinda Gannaway from NixonMcInnes for PR Week's Strategic Internal Communications Conference, December 2013

1. Collaboration & Internal
Communications
PRWeek Strategic Communications Conference
Belinda Gannaway
@contentqueen
December 2013

2. A connected world

3. By NASA. Photo taken by either Harrison Schmitt or Ron Evans (of the Apollo 17 crew), via Wikimedia Commons

4. “Cross-unit collaboration takes place when
people from different units work together in
cross-unit teams on a common task or
provide significant help to each other.
“It can be joint work or a one-way
collaboration where one unit provides
information to another.
“In all cases collaboration needs to
involve people. Swapping data is not
collaboration.”

5. New movements built on collaboration

6. Collaborative economy: connecting people & capacity

7. Giff Gaff
Collaborating with customers to deliver a service

8. Collaborating with the public

9. Collaborating with industry experts

10. Benefits of embracing collaboration
• Operational efficiency & agility
• More innovation
• Higher sales
• More engaged employees

11. What collaboration
looks like

12. What the research says
• Shapes organisation more than any other activity
• Drives performance more than any other activity
• Impact is twice as significant as a company’s
aggressiveness in pursuing new market opportunities
• Five times as significant as the external market
environment (market turbulence)
Source: Frost & Sullivan

13. „Global lab‟ built on ESN & face-to-face „secret weapon‟

14. Open, cross-functional process reduces duplicative work

15. 75 video collaboration studios are changing business

16. Group rewards co-ops for collaboration with others

17. Focusing collaboration efforts in one division to drive
ROI

18. Internal comms &
collaboration

19. Opportunities
Risks
Solutions
Internal communicators‟ role 1: Make it meaningful

20. Internal communicators‟ role 2: Put strategy before tech

21. A hostile culture will kill
collaboration in its tracks
• Silos
• Excessive competition
• Opaque decision-making
• Hoarding information
Internal communicators‟ role 3: culture change

22. How will you know if you‟re succeeding?

23. Collaboration has meaning

24. • Collaboration has meaning
• The tech serves the strategy

25. • Collaboration has meaning
• The tech serves the strategy
You can measure behavioural
change

26. “In the long history of humankind (and
animal kind, too) those who have learned
to collaborate and improvise most
effectively have prevailed”
Not Charles Darwin

27. Questions?
Want to stay in touch?
@contentqueen
@nixonmcinnes
2013