Keep close to the thinking – not just the decision-making

Communicating in difficult and uncertain times was the challenge that Maersk’s Anne Eriksen shared with the CIPR Inside conference.  Being close to where change is planned is key to moving from being simply a process owner to becoming a true business partner said the Global Head of IC at the world’s biggest shipping company.

In response to a 2006 trading loss – the first in the company’s 80 year history – Maersk Line had decided to take a hard look at its business.  The response was a radical restructuring in a drive to make the business leaner and more responsive to changing customer needs. 

Everyone in the company had been directly touched by the restructuring – around 3,000 jobs were lost and every remaining job changed in some way or another.  Because of the complexity of international labour law and the need to redesign the business; this process took had taken three months.

When the dust had settled, Anne’s communication team was keen to move quickly to restate the philosophy and objectives of the business’ new direction to the 22,000 employees in the new structure.  Importantly, continual research was highlighting demand for more detail on the changes that individuals needed to make in their behaviours and thinking at a personal level.

Anne had a distinct advantage in this challenge: being close not necessarily to the operation of the business but to where the key discussions were taking place.

“From the start of our journey, we had had a clear direction but the fine details were evolving – often on a day to day basis.  Because we were sat in the middle of the planning team we could influence decisions continually – sometimes almost literally standing around the coffee machine” she explains.  “That proved to be a powerful position for us”.

Rather than being handed completed decisions to communicate, her small team of four was able to provide insights that shaped timing and challenged thinking.  She was then able to co-ordinate a global network of volunteers to make sure that messages reached front-line staff.

Following soon after the reorganisation process, the company launched a programme of workshops where local managers were asked to sit down and discuss with their teams how they felt about recent changes and debate the transformations that were still to come.

“We needed to focus attention on the role of local leaders,” adds Anne, “so it was important to provide encouragement and tools to help them deal with some of the uncertainty that our new direction was creating.”

The programme was supported with a story map and a detailed manual containing suggestions on how to run a meeting, ideas on exercises to get discussion flowing and templates for recording short-term actions.

At the same time the team launched a global award and recognition programme – the Blue Ribbon awards - to highlight the right behaviours and an interactive web tool to show how different parts of the business were delivering against new targets.

“Our aim was to provide examples of the behaviours and aims that the company wanted to promote,” she explains.

“We also took the view that our news coverage on the intranet should become much more personal.  So we focused on stories about real people being realistic about the challenges they were facing.  We managed to be quite candid and show that the company understood the efforts that people were making”, says Anne.

Throughout all this work the team used a simple monthly pulse survey to track whether messages were landing.  “We learnt that were doing a good job at building knowledge and understanding but that it takes time before people really feel that the changes they are experiencing are making a difference to our customers and to them.  The real challenge for communicators in this situation is to keep up the momentum – but we’re confident that we’ve established the basis on which to drive real change.”

“But most of all, being part of the thinking is where we feel we’ve made a real difference.  Often it is in the small steps - the chats in the corridors or the debates in planning workshops - that communicators can have a massive impact with other leaders in the business.”