The future of internal communications

I was talking last week to a friend and former colleague working in one of our key UK divisions. She spends probably no more than 5% of her time writing content and the rest of the time devising processes and getting sign-off.

Increasingly internal comms does not seem to be about creating content which will interest people or that they will enjoy reading. It's not even about creating a structured approach to comms as a key part of every project or programme of change. Nor is it about delivering material which will help people do their jobs. It's as if the structure has become more important than the material itself. Provided you have a plan, a flow chart, 10 sign-offs, and full integration with other functions, it doesn't matter if what you deliver is almost unreadable, uninteresting, and is superseded on the intranet homepage within a couple of hours.

Surely, this is madness. People are turning to blogs and discussion groups to find out what is really going on and to wikis to share information about working. I don't think it's true that classic corporate comms is dead yet, nor is it even dying - there'll always be a need for some comms which represents the official position of the company - but I think it is quite sick.