Nasty questions

One of the games we play on the Black Belt course is to ask delegates to imagine they are evil consultants who have been charged with the task of proving that the IC team in a fictional company are poor performers and should be closed down.  The challenge is to come up with a list of killer questions that every IC manager would dread being asked.

I thought I'd share with you some of the recent suggestions - they are quite chilling...

• What measurements do you have to show how you add value?
• Why do we need an internal communication team when we can just buy in a toolkit and some training for our managers to be communicators?
• Can you actually prove that you’re contributing to business revenues?
• How does your communication plan fit into the business strategy?
• Why do we need an in-house team?
• If I chose a member of staff at random and asked them last year’s revenue figures, would they know?
• How much money do you spend on internal communication?
• How can you justify the cost? What’s your return on investment (ROI)?

And my favourite...

• What would happen to the company if we shut down the internal communications department? Would anyone notice?

Nice.

Liam

Comments

[Jeroen Vanstiphout]

I drew a cartoon about this once.

Some big shot boss with a cigar in his mouth enters the Internal Comms office, and with a big evil grin on his face he says:
"Sooo, Internal Communications eh? How much PROFIT do you guys make?"
And the IC guy replies: "Don't know. How much do you sell without communicating?"

Cuts both ways.