December 2, 2002
Bring Good Ideas Into Your Organization

Inspiration is all around you—in print, on the web, in the air. Check out The Wall Street Journal, amazon.com, and National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” for some good ideas that will improve your company’s communications. If you want to be viewed as a communicator who adds value and helps your organization succeed, it helps a lot if you know how to bring good ideas into your company.

Here’s some good news for communicators: learning from the best in the business is surprisingly easy, and almost free!

For example, you can:

  • Read The Wall Street Journal—chances are really good that the people who run the company you work for have read this paper by the time most employees get to work. It is, quite simply, the most respected business publication around. Here are two incentives for you to read this paper, too. 1. If you should happen to talk with someone in senior management today, or anyone you’d like to impress, you’ll have something interesting to say. 2. If the work you produce is as interesting, timely, well-written, and fun to read as most of this paper is, you’ll be a huge success as a communicator.

  • Visit amazon.com and come up with five improvements for your web site—want a textbook course on how to design an effective web site? Here’s one that’s free, easy to use, immediately available, and takes only a few minutes. Click on www.amazon.com, but be sure to come back here! (Pause.) Maybe you noticed how much information is presented on one screen, how easy it is to navigate, how many different ways you get engaged, etc., etc. Write down five things you learned that would improve your company’s web site as well as any publications you produce. Next, maybe you’d like to share what you learned with your boss. Even if it’s not your job, it shows you know how to bring good ideas into the company.

  • Listen to NPR’s “All Things Considered”—if the next face-to-face meeting you’re orchestrating has the depth of content, interest, and relevance as this radio show, you may just be another Thomas Edison-type genius! Think about it—when you listen to a good radio program like this one, you’re only listening to words, without any possibly impossible-to-read overheads projected in a dark room. And yet, these radio reporters describe difficult concepts in ways that are easy to understand and interesting. They interview different people for different perspectives. They create pictures in your brain through their excellent choice of words. They communicate like the pros they are, and you can learn from them every day, for free, as you drive in your car or wash dishes. What a deal.

These three tips are among the 73 featured in a new book appropriately titled 73 Ways to Improve Your Employee Communication Program. Written by Jane Shannon and published by Davis & Company, the premise of 73 Ways is that there are a variety of ways you can add value as a communicator and help your company succeed, and best of all, most of these steps are:

  • Relatively easy to do,
  • Low cost or no cost, and
  • Don’t require anyone’s permission—not even the boss!

If you want a good change communication model, see how this book takes one big, huge topic—improving your communication program (and your communication skills)—and breaks it down into small steps that you can take every day. The book makes it easy for you to take action, change, and succeed.

73 Ways includes suggested actions that will help communicators:

  • Build communication expertise
  • Develop techniques to produce excellent work
  • Conduct research
  • Bring good ideas into your organization
  • Measure the effectiveness of your work
  • Help your organization succeed

73 Ways to Improve Your Employee Communication Program is available for $16.95 and can be ordered online or by contacting Davis & Company at 201-445-5100.