If you're an employee communications professional, you know that measuring isn't always what it seems to be. And, one of the reasons is that you may be a willing (or unwilling) participant in what we call, Measurement Theatre.
In this episode of the Swear Jar, we tackle this topic which is almost never talked about but can have drastic implications for any communications professional who wants to measure communications in a meaningful way.
If you're an employee communications professional, you know that measuring isn't always what it seems to be. And, one of the reasons is that you may be a willing (or unwilling) participant in what we call, Measurement Theatre.
In this episode of the Swear Jar, we tackle this topic which is almost never talked about but can have drastic implications for any communications professional who wants to measure communications in a meaningful way.
Hi everyone. And welcome to The Swear Jar. The official podcast at the Academy of Business Communications. Where are we tell it like it is about corporate and employee communications and occasionally use colorful language to raise money for worthy causes.
I’m Elizabeth Williams and I'm Andrew Brown.
[00:00:46] - Introduction
And today we're going to tackle one of those insidious things that can have per the effective effectiveness of communications professionals in any organization, regardless of shape size, industry or geographic location.
And I'm speaking specifically about something that we call Measurement Theater. Today, we will define it, talk about why communications professionals should care, how you can identify if you're a subject to its unpleasant pull and tactics for avoiding it.
What is Measurement Theatre
When we talk about it, we're really talking about two things: 1) When we become more concerned with being seen to be gathering, analyzing, and reporting on are important employee related metrics, whether or not we're actually doing it or when we are doing it.
And, when the data that we're gathering, isn't actually particularly useful in terms of supporting organizational goals or actually anything at all.
True. You and I have shared with our clients and in our blogs and other episodes of The Swear Jar about the importance of being seen to gather, analyze report on key employee communications metrics.
And that's certainly something where employee communications professionals often play a key role. And, it sends important messages, right…Such as employees are indeed valued. And they play an important role in shaping organization-wide policies, measuring employee sentiment, opinions and behaviors.
It also demonstrates that employees are in fact being heard. And we know that being heard is critical for employees. In fact, just as an aside, listening was a topic of a recent episode of the swear jar called Shut up and Listen. And, it's so critical to employ communication success that we will be launching a 90-minute workshop on how to help communications profession listen, productively and systematically.
Back to the point, as you say, Measurement Theater occurs when the scale tilts to where being seen to do things takes precedence over genuinely learning from measuring and taking concrete actions.
[00:03:26]
Let's talk a little bit about some of the reasons that communicators end up doing Measurement Theatre.
I think there is the general theater in most organizations that we can only manage what we can measure, which I think is complete horseshit and something for another podcast and other day. And nowhere is that message more loudly heard than before, during, and after the dreaded employee engagement survey.
And before we dive into that steaming pile, let's look at the other reason, communicators end up dressing up as statisticians. And that's because their boss says they have to. You know, you report into marketing or HR teams and they justify their existence once a month with a bunch of metrics that get escalated.
Then they ask the Comms team to put a few numbers together.
But the excellent point that should be made is that budgets are determined by ROI. That's a reality. So, they've got to put something on a dashboard and then they are escalated up to their supervisors. And I can tell you that I am guilty as charged. I have done that on more than a few occasions. And I learned, and in bigger organizations, that it didn't matter so much what I measured, but that I showed improvement month-over-month, as long as I could make that damn line go up into the right everybody was happy and they leave me alone.
And so I would grab a bunch of metrics like the open rates on emails or the sentiment feedback on the last town hall, or this was a favorite of mine, the number of people who had user IDs on our intranet -- which has basically every new in employee. And, so as long as things were moving up into the right, I could have been populating that thing with batting averages from the Red Sox, the price of cashews or UFO settings on full moons, nobody cared and it was total theater.
And no one ever said a word, no one ever asked me what the metrics meant or even why or how I measured them. It was ridiculous. And you know, why and how the metrics are gathered and how they're portrayed are essential questions, right? It comes down to what's being valued within an organization.
Let's use that as an example, also of how measurement theater plays out in an organization. Oh, my blood pressure just went up 10 points. As soon as you said engagement survey. I immediately, I have this visceral response to those two words from far too many years of living under their shadow.
And I think the biggest theater around an engagement survey is that it's meaningful at all, but we know that executive bonuses are often tied to these 20-year old surveys. So, let's dive into that one.
I have a story: I remember sitting in on the readout for a particularly poor engagement survey in one company where I worked, and the leadership team mostly just sat staring at the very dismal numbers on the screen.
The results were horrible. But the consultant who did it, went into the details. There had been thousands and thousands of comments and they had pulled out some of the meatier ones. And as soon as those comments came up, The whole room got into this very spirited discussion, not about what the comments said, nor what they could do about them, but trying to figure out who had said them or which team had contributed them. And never mind that the comments were all about a toxic environment, bullies and racists. These executives were so much more interested in trying to figure out who among their 3000 plus employees were saying such horrible, hurtful things in the engagement survey. And so of course the first outcome was that all this important information was ignored and the overall validity of the survey was completely negated.
The problem is that as soon as you ask people, what they think, you set up an expectation that you will act on it. And we call that not “Survey fatigue” but “Bullshit Fatigue”. Because so often there is no action taken.
That's when you know that measurement theater is in play.
[00:09:08]: Implications
And I suspect all of our listeners are going. “Yeah, I've been there”. They may be asking themselves. “Okay. so what? What if the folks organizing and promoting employee communications related measurements, initiatives, like the employment engagement survey are unwilling or Ill-equipped to measure what's important, or in your, case report?”
Elizabeth, what would you say to our Fearless Communicators that are going, you know, it happens, so what?
Well, unfortunately, despite it happening and despite the incredibly poor, a role model that I am on that front, I can tell you from personal experience, there were some pretty negative consequences of that.
And the truth is that employee communications folks can be hurt by any or all of them. For instance, we have the erosion of trust in the measurement processes, and that means that employees are much more reluctant to share genuine thoughts and insights, and that in turn helps drive disengagement further into the toilet.
I would add the communications used become seen as BS, which they basically are. And then further the people managing the communications are seen as BS perpetuators, which is not good news. And then of course, the leaders, both in HR and right across the organization, their trust begins to erode.
And so bottom line on Measurement Theater is that it can really be a bit of a gut punch to whatever trust you've managed to build up across the organization.
Yeah, that's sadly true. We've always held that building and sustaining trust throughout organization should be a primary objective of any communications professional. And just as an aside, that's why we are offering customized training on this critical issue for those organizations who are seeing signs that there is a trust gap.
But you know what? I'm always blown away by how quickly well-intentioned efforts to measure can completely devolve into Measurement Theater, where trust in people doing the measurements, the measuring process, the communications about measuring, as you say, and the outcomes of the measuring is ultimately undermined.
[00:10:53] And let's not forget that the measurement, whether you're doing an employee engagement survey or any other initiative, it is really, really expensive and takes a ton of time. So, we really need to be focusing on preventing Measurement Theater.
Preventing Measurement Theatre/Identifying the Signs
And that I think that requires us to be able to recognize when the curtains are beginning to rise on it. So, I asked you, Andrew, what have you found to be the most obvious signs of the curtains creeping upward on some measurement theater?
Ah, you know, there are several, but here are a few of the things that I've seen as being fairly common symptoms or signs:
Employee communications that are gathered, take absolutely forever before they filtered to those who were actually involved in collecting them or who will use them. And that's because the metrics have come back with results, people don't like, and someone is using the findings to protect their reputation within your organization or their departments or pet projects.
If budgets used to collect meaningful employee communication metrics are slashed without an explanation, that's another key indication.
Related to that: when data is being used as a weapon, kick someone or some department or some project to the side, chances are you are you're in the midst of Measurement Theatre. Or, if more emphasis is placed on minor or incremental findings in consequences rather than on issues or policies that make a real difference, that's a sign that the curtains are up on Measurement Theater.
Or, if gathering employee insights is seen as a tick box exercise so the leadership can claim, “We're listening”, when that happens, you're participating Measurement Theater.
So those are the ones that I've seen. If I missed any signs that, that you've seen, where the curtain is on Measurement Theater?
A couple, I would just add to your comment about, you know, the budgets and people and processes that collect communications metrics are just whacked without explanation. And I think that that comes yeah.
Why Measurement Theatre Takes Place in Organizations
[00:15:03]
What gives birth to this? What are your thoughts on that?
Hmm, what the, an underpinning of course is the thing we're always talking about, which is communications in many organizations, just isn't viewed as a strategic thing. They view it as a tactical thing, but more specifically, I think it's, it's, it's a bit more difficult than that to nail down.
And there are things though that there are always present when Measurement Theatre is in play. And the first is a lack of willingness to act on measures. So, creating that bullshit fatigue, the lack of meaningful budget to collect, analyze, and report on measures. A survey monkey account does not constitute a robust measurement culture.
A lack of skills to recognize the need to go out and validate. So even if you've got good data, sometimes, it doesn't have meaning unless you go out into the organization and take the time and the budget to validate why it is and to validate, in fact that it's accurate. And finally, I think there in many organizations, there's just a culture where transparency is not valued.
What to do to combat Measurement Theatre
[00:16:31]
If you're a communications professional, what can they do when they find themselves a willing or unwilling participant in Measurement Theatre?
Before we get to that, let's take a minute and shamelessly shill, a few things that we think our listeners will find useful. The first and most relevant of course is we are launching: A 90- minute workshop on employee communications metrics. The purpose of this course is to arm communicators with tools and the frameworks they need to focus on the metrics that will actually prove to their overlords beyond any doubt (or any theater) that the communications are bringing real value to the organization.
And we've also launched a 90-minute workshop on corporate storytelling to help employee communications professionals really hone their storytelling skills. Oh, and we also have this awesome workshop on how to leverage online employee reviews.
And each of these workshops fast-paced 90-minute workshops is $99.
As a listener of The Swear Jar podcast, you can save 10% right off the top. So, check out these workshops at Academy of Business Communications.com and use the promo code, “SwearJar” (That's all one word when you register).
So back to Measurement Theatre. There are some really basic steps that you, as a Fearless Communicator can take to reduce its hold on how employee communications is measured, and, and how the data is collected.
I would say the first thing is go get some buy in from your supervisor on a listening strategy. And we have a great podcast, Shut up and Listen on that because when the executive team is committed to actually listening, instead of pretending to listen data becomes a lot more important.
We want to make sure as well that we're involving employee representatives like frontline managers so that they can weigh in on the reasons for, and the integrity of, the measurement initiative and how the data's being interpreted.
Because we talked about some of those BS metrics and often we're not asking the right questions or measuring the right things in frontline managers are, and employees are great places to start with that we should make sure that we are using more than one tool to ensure that the measurement findings are validated.
We really need to have a bit of rigor what we measure and how we want to make sure that there's budget so that we can actually act on the findings. And I think this goes back to the whole bullshit fatigue, which is if you're not prepared to make any kind of changes don't even ask the questions because you're simply setting up a false expectation that something will happen. And I would say that if you are in a department that's glued to Measurement Theatre, you may have to distance yourself. And that may mean giving them some communications templates so that you're not actually seen to be part of that.
What other tactics do you think are effective? There are two other things. The first one start small. You won't be able to close the curtains on Measurement Theater in one go. But what you can do is start a home one small-ish measurement process where you can ensure complete discipline and integrity, and its findings are shared appropriately understood and actually acted upon. So, start small.
And it's really, it's important to have mantra that is: only measure what you value. And, you know, thinking back about our metrics course, that entire workshop is really about helping people demonstrate the value that they bring to their organizations. And every organization may value something slightly differently.
[00:21:36] They're not the things that we would. Share widely because nobody cares. And then there's the ones that people do care about, which have to do with, you know, sentiment and messages and trust and all of that. So, another place to start would be, if you don't want to stick your neck out in front of everybody is pick a couple of metrics that you want to work on and just measure for yourself.
[00:22:14] – What’s caught our eye
So as always, why don't we review, what's caught our attention over the last little while.
What are you reading Andrew or watching or listening to were bingeing on? I've gotten a little lazy like these, so while I was spending on YouTube, I saw this great clip by Chris Voss. He's the author of Never Split the Difference. Chris was a hostage negotiator for the FBI. And he really places a huge emphasis on really understanding the people that you are negotiating with. He has curious lessons and some practical tools, particularly for high stress situations. Again, that's Chris Voss,
I've just finished reading a wonderful piece on LinkedIn by Mike Klein, who was one of my very favorite thinkers on internal communications. He's out of the UK and I think has recently we relocated to Iceland of all places. But he wrote a great piece on whether internal communications actually managed to cement a place at the strategic table during the recent, and apparently endless, COVID pandemic. And that's a topic, of course, we're going to tackle soon on this podcast. So, we will link to that and to the Chris Voss book and video in our show notes.
Oh, that's awesome.
And that's, it's for us a shout out to Peter Linseman, our editor, extraordinaire and Simon Gladstone who is our website, visionary.
That's all for now.