I heard a really great word the other day at the SharePoint user group I attend monthly. It’s “folksonomy”. If taxonomy is communication from the top down, folksonomy is communication from the bottom up. At the bottom is generally where you will find your Millennials, just because of where we’re at in life right now. Gen Y has a lot of social power currently but that’s about it; a LOT of this can be attributed to social media. We’ve formed ourselves into formidable members of the collective consciousness via the web; contributing and taking from it what we need in a way that is just as second nature to us as breathing.
Since we’re slotted to outnumber the Baby Boomers this year this says to me that the way the world is set to communicate is set to change drastically. Being knowledgeable on the topic of how GenY communicates is something a lot of marketers seem to be interested in lately. There are brands chomping at the bit to get some of the Millennial purchasing power, especially now that some of us are getting older, becoming early careerists, getting jobs and finally having disposable income.
From my perspective, Gen Y is the most social and interconnected generation in history.
One communication vehicle used by the ‘folks’ is the back channel. The Back Channel is gossip in it’s simplest form but it’s also so much more, especially if you’re a business. It provides a host of benefits, IF you are able to harness it.
The “back channel,” in a business capacity, is a term attributed to the communication happening off of corporate channels. In fact, the back channel functions in almost exactly the opposite way traditional communication does. Gen Y is all over the back channel. It’s the way we get things done: we band together to form a coalition. Ever heard of FaceBook? Of course you have and that’s a prime example.
Understanding and speaking/contributing to the back channel means understanding and speaking to Millennials effectively.
The biggest pitfall the back channel creates for organizations is leadership vulnerability at the levels which have been effectively bypassed. It’s not much of a stretch to understand how a coalition of younger employees bypassing leadership altogether to get things done can result in massive organizational strife.
So, how do you harness it if you need to communicate to the ‘folks’ using this style of communication?
Let’s start with a story.
The IT department of Company X wants to release a new tool to their internationally located end-user population but struggles with communicating that the tool being rolled out will positively impact the way the end-user engages with Company X’s systems(something that can be quantified if needed). In the past the IT department has always used the (proven to be ineffective) standard “trickle down” communication style and has found itself completely isolated in an organizational silo. The message is not being quickly adopted, has little resonance with the end-users and change management is an ongoing struggle.
So, what is the IT department to do? Here are my suggestions, take them how you will:
1. Come to grips with the fact that your Gen Y employees might be communicating with a group larger than your entire department, or maybe even larger than the entire company’s population, every single day. – Just because your employees are younger doesn’t mean they don’t know a thing or two about how to communicate to their peers. I know I personally communicate to a group at least quadruple the size of my entire global department at work on a daily basis.
2. Incorporate contributing to the back channel in all communications plans. – Just like everything, having any plan is better than having no plan. Any intentions to contribute to the back channel need to be incorporated into the formal communications plan. You know what they say about the road to hell being paved with the best intentions! If you are going to do it, do it on purpose and with an idea of why you are doing it. Build processes to support engagement with the back channel.
3. With a well-informed, well empowered, and well-placed evangelist to speak to the back channel (hint: it is NOT anyone in management), the message is augmented exponentially. It is important to equip those who speak to the back channel with the proper message to convey, obviously. It is equally as important to empower them with the knowledge that you trust them to get your message out there in a way that will build relationships and not veer from the intended outcome of the message in a damaging way. It’s extremely important that this function is not micro-managed. You can never, ever control the back channel, only contribute to and monitor/respond to it.
4. Listen. Because of the highly responsive and fast rate of return on feedback the back channel provides, just putting a message out there isn’t enough – Listening to AND taking into account the feedback offered will prove beneficial. The IT department mentioned should put processes in place that give guidance on how to respond to a number of potential back channel feedback situations and follow this, not completely re-work the message so it re-fits back into the (ineffective) model “everyone is used to”.
5. Make language accessible and not so full of ‘corporate speak’. – The back channel operates in such a way that is void of most corporate mumbo-jumbo and really uses a communication style that encourages camaraderie and discussion. It’s extremely important that this function is not micro-managed as well. If IT’s end-users have to have a degree in corporate linguistics to decipher what the benefits are of this new tool, 100% of their message is absolutely going to be lost. Another way to debilitate a message is to over-simplify it, removing ‘extraneous’ words in hopes of making it accessible but instead making it sterile. People chit-chat and the back channel is really just the gossip channel. The trick is to focus in on the actionable and ‘tune out’ the chit-chat that also occupies the back channel’s space. Your message shouldn’t stand out as anything different than the daily chit-chat but with a helpful message. Think billboards vs. tweets. Which one is going to give you the most real-time feedback?
Example:
Traditional channel, posted on the intranet: MEMO: New tool XYZ available via the company portal will require less concurrent applications running.
Back channel, via email: “Have you seen IT’s new tool yet? It’s so much easier! I don’t have to have anything installed on my computer. Everything is online!”
6. The back channel provides the ideal type two-way communication many companies salivate over. - Yes, it’s ideal and novel to think that a feedback form is considered two-way communication, but really it’s more of a practice in getting people to adopt a survey, not the message behind it. I’m not saying surveys aren’t effective but relying on it as the primary mode of “two-way communication” is simple naïveté and is wholly ineffective standing alone.
7. Blend the traditional corporate message with the informal dialogue-style speech the back channel is accustomed to. There’s an appropriate place for a carefully crafted, hyper-formal communication to employees. Where these kinds of communications are NOT appropriate is on the back channel. The back channel isn’t about YOU. It’s about THEM. If the IT department wants their message to resonate, it’s important that, at least on the back channel, their messages are pro-user and NOT pro-corporate IT.
So, there you have it. If you want to tap into the knowledge base of your collective intelligence junkies known as Millennials/Gen Y generation, good luck! I’d love to hear what works and what doesn’t in the comments!