Setting the tone at the top: A conversation with Monique Zytnik

PERSPECTIVES

On the sidelines of the 2024 International Association for Business Communications conference in Chicago, I met with well-regarded comms expert Monique Zytnik to discuss her new book, Internal Communication in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Released in May, the book stands out among recent internal comms books for its focus on business leaders and its practical look at AI innovations.

Monique and I discussed the unique elements of her book, her view on key internal comms topics, and what the profession will look like in the years ahead. Here are some highlights of our conversation (edited for length and clarity).

A lot of IC practitioners find the profession by encounter or chance. Why do you think that is, and how did you find your way to internal comms?

When I was studying, there wasn't even really a degree for internal communications. I wasn't even aware of it until I'd been working as a physiotherapist for some time and made a move into PR. Around 2007, I discovered that internal communication existed as a profession when a friend who was head of internal comms for a large Australian bank told me about it.

I think it's an emerging profession because, at the end of the day, we live in a capitalist society, and areas like marketing have a clear, tangible result linked to sales and the bottom line. So, it's taken a long time for leaders and business people to open their eyes to the results that internal communication can bring.

But then on top of that, I think – and I'm going to be controversial here – there is so much research out there on the efficacy of internal communication, but as communication professionals, we don't share it. We talk with each other, but we don't do what we need to do, which is educate the leaders around us and speak to our leaders in a way that they understand our value in business terms. We don’t manage up.

That could relate to your book. Why write this book? Why now?

My book is the first strategic internal communication business book for leaders. It's not a textbook for practitioners. It's to help leaders understand how to be more strategic with internal communication, what questions to ask, and how to spend their time, money and resources wisely.

Every time I'm in an airport, I check out the bookstore. I love books. Recently, I was in the Berlin airport bookstore, and there were so many books about how to be a good communicator as a leader. They talk about storytelling, listening skills, and interpersonal communication, which are all very well and good for one-on-one communication. However, once you communicate at scale, leaders need to understand the value of being strategic with communication. It is more than just being great with interpersonal communication.

This strategy bit is missing from all those communication books that talk about how to give great presentations. Yes, it’s about being charismatic, storytelling, brand positioning, and listening. But being strategic is also about being clear on the change you want to make with your communication and planning the right steps and the right sequence of communication experiences that align with where your audience is at to get there. The basics also involve measurement, keeping an eye on how effective you’re being and of course evaluation to see how you can do things better in the future. Organizational listening is also often forgotten, and we don’t link communication with the experience enough or align employees with corporate strategy in an ongoing way.

In your book's preface, you say, “I’m tired of decision-makers who unthinkingly accept familiar strategies from past campaigns without considering changed circumstances or understanding the underlying strategy.” Why do you think leaders do this?

I think it's because they don't understand the strategy. Again, they're relying on what they might have learned in the past but don’t consider that the environment or circumstances have changed. They may not have evaluated how their last efforts went and are simply making the same mistakes again.

Some people also don’t appreciate that change adoption happens over time, especially with technology adoption. There’s a little bit of, "Oh, I've got a shiny new car. Everyone's going to want to drive it." But you need at least six months for an adoption campaign. An expensive car, such as a new piece of technology, is worthless if it stays in the garage if no one uses it. You need to help people with the change. This is particularly the case with AI where there is also an element of fear of the unknown and job replacement.

Another challenge I often encounter is leaders and communicators who want to create additional content rather than stop and ask: What does our reward and recognition program look like? How can this be integrated? What kind of L&D programs do we have? Do we need extra training for our new starters on this particular tool or technology? They don't think beyond that foundational level when it's a more complex problem and needs more layers.

AI is bringing about the death of content marketing simply because we’re bordering on content overload. Employees don’t want to be bombarded or the content equivalent of shouted at. They want us to be the sense makers and give them a clear and good experience while removing noise.

You're not in favor of the traditional communication cascade. Why is that?

In my mind, a cascade is like a slinky going down the stairs—so much can go wrong. It has to be perfectly aligned, and you've got to rely on the process and each step to work. Unfortunately, organizations and people are imperfect. At any step of the cascade, a leader might not know how to take the information and tailor it to their audience, or they might not care.

I've also seen leaders who like to have their fiefdom, so they actively build their own following. This can cause a lot of harm to the organization. They'll deliberately not share. So, the idea that a leader or a manager will always share content in a timely way and give the right context because they're asked to is ridiculous in most cases…who will police it?

The alternative is for the communications team to work at all levels. So, directly work with the frontline manager and ask questions like, "What do we need? How can we tailor this for your team?" and maybe “Let me give you the information directly.” I also like to work with the middle level and then the C-suite. Obviously, you need to time it so that the C-suite doesn't get it right before everyone else, but you're still preventing the breakage of the cascade linking. This way you can also make sure you’re collecting feedback at all levels.

In the book, you talk about people confusing employee surveys for actual listening. Why do you think this happens, and what is internal comms’ role in securing quality employee perspectives?

We forget there are many ways to listen to our organization, from HR data (turnover, exit interviews) to what is being discussed on our enterprise social networks.

Then there are surveys. Surveys set expectations that you’ll actually do something about a problem or topic. Organizations still forget to communicate the results and follow up. This involves holding leaders accountable for implementation and reporting back to your people.

Sometimes, team or branch leaders might have the feedback from the survey, and they have every intention of implementing it or sharing the results. But it just gets put at the bottom of the pile and doesn't happen. Our role is to emphasize the importance of this and make sure we communicate what has changed.

Getting feedback can feel quite threatening unless you've got a really good feedback culture, and I think a lot of leaders also take it quite personally. The challenge is that sometimes, they don't want to hear bad news and don't know how to deal with it. It's our role to help them have difficult conversations with their employees.

If we can help our leaders have difficult conversations, they will earn the respect of their people.

What are the key things internal communications professionals should focus on?

I think the two key things that we need to focus on as professionals are upskilling our leaders to understand the value of communication strategy and bringing in clear return-on-investment conversations.

You've got to look at the actual cost of what you're doing, the cost of confusing messages or too much information for staff. That includes the time employees take to read or view the content, not just the content production time. It is about finding the right metrics that resonate with the leaders who you want to influence and demonstrate our value.

On top of that, we also need to be better at business ourselves so that we're speaking the right language. As communicators, we need to be able to have these conversations with our leaders because that's where our value is going to be in the future. Not as the AI prompt engineer…if you want to be a prompt engineer, that's fine; I'm very happy. But if you want to be a strategic internal communication professional, then you need to be able to have the hard discussions, ask the hard questions, understand business, and show a return on investment.