Deconstructing Larkin

Dedicated to posts addressing Dr. TJ Larkin's comments at the IABC international conference and his premise that CEO communication to employees is fundamentally worthless.

Saturday, August 27, 2005

Leadership’s role in change communication

Finally, I find myself with a few minutes to begin my response to Dr. Larkin’s rebuttal of my original criticism of his talk at the IABC international conference. This is just the first entry; there’s more to come, although I hope it won’t be as long as this one. I welcome your comments.

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In his own words, here is one of the chief arguments Dr. TJ Larkin made in his rebuttal:

“Our book is about communicating major change to employee groups who are putting up serious resistance.” In other words, various communication channels other than the immediate supervisor may be appropriate in other circumstances, but the immediate supervisor is the only source of real value when the organization is undergoing serious change.”

I recently completed a round of focus groups with both managers/supervisors and front-line employees at a company going through about as dramatic a change as possible, an acquisition by one company of another of equal size. I conducted some focus groups in the acquiring company and some in the acquired company. It is clear that, in both companies, there is a lot of confusion and a lot of resistance.

Without biasing the outcome of the question, I asked where employees want to get information about the merger. The answers were consistent and strongly felt. They want to hear from their immediate supervisors about how the changes impact them in their jobs. But, just as much, they want to hear from the top leaders of the organization. When I asked why (and I tried to look confounded when I asked, just so it didn’t seem that I was gratified by the answer), I got the following reasons, among others (and these are direct quotes):

“I want to know where they’re planning to take this company. What are the plans for the next six months?”

“When I read in the (newspaper) that the merger was a mistake, it’s important for me to hear from the leaders. I want to hear them say that they don’t care what the newspaper says, that as a result of this merger we’re going to kick butt.”

“If this merger is part of a strategy, it helps to realize there really is a strategy, that somebody is thinking about it.”

“I want our leaders to be focused on the big picture and I want to know what that big picture is. I want to hear it from them.”

“When you don’t know what the future holds, you don’t feel secure. These guys are the ones deciding what the future holds.”

“I’m busting my butt for these guys. I want to hear the vision, mission, and goals from the people at the top.”

“At a (departmental) conference, all the leaders from both companies got up and spoke. It was just what I needed at that point. Things became more clear.”

Remember, these are all front-line workers and their immediate first-line supervisors.

The problem is reconciling this very clear belief that leader communication is critical during organizational change with Dr. Larkin’s asseretion that it is not. Rather than simply reiterate my previous points, I turned to my colleague, Tudor Williams, whose expertise lies in communication measurement. Here’s what Tudor had to say:

(Dr. Larkin had) almost total dependence upon studies that are not referenced in terms of who did what and in what context. I guess they are in an appendix but I would like to see whose findings support the specific assertions he makes. I can find 256 studies from which I can extract what I want to support the proposition I am pushing. At no point does he cite any expert in our business let alone an IABC study or expert opinion. The problem with many of these studies is that they study a very small variable, test it to exhaustion and then draw hypotheses as to cause and effect. The problem with many academics is that they bounce off the trees in the forest and rarely ask what forest are they in. I find Larkin’s views are examples of academic arrogance and isolation without the professional practitioner’s skills and experience.

Larkin has a very narrow view of what can influence employee attitudes in managing change. The supervisor is but one player in the picture and supervisors play a critical role in the day-to-day, immediate job situations. The supervisor is not the critical influencer of attitudes about and understanding of the strategic issues in organizations - leaders are. It is up to the leaders to set the directions in which the company needs to go and to mould the tone and values of the corporation that will influence culture and behavior. The third factor is the satisfaction employees gain by becoming knowledgeable and keeping abreast of current information about the organization on the macro as well as the micro scale. That is the role employee communication vehicles, including the intranet, play. These vehicles are critical support mechanisms for what supervisors and leaders communicate. The Larkins continue to pursue this narrow exclusionary view of what really happens in organizations without acknowledging the importance in the communication process of my boss’s boss, my leadership team and my information sources in the context of the working relationships I have with my supervisor and my colleagues.

One issue I have with Dr. Larkin’s view is that he lumps “resistance” into a single category without identifyng what causes resistance. In fact, there can be several sources of employee resistance to change, including the following:

• Fear of the unknown
• Self-interest
• Conscientious objection or differing opinions
• Suspicion
• Conservatism

Certainly the immediate supervisor is an important player in addressing some of these…but not all of them. A well-constructed change management plan includes an assessment of why employees are resisting so appropriate communication channels can be employed to address the resistance. Without such an assessment, you could wind up focusing your efforts on the immediate supervisor when the primary source of resistance is the belief that the change is wrong for the company as a whole, something better addressed at the leadership levels.

John Kotter, who has studied change extensively and written many books about it, has stated that “Successful change is 70% leadeship and 30% management but the average company goes about it the other way and tries to drive change 70% with a managerial process. It doesn’t work very well.” Leadership can come from immediate supervisors, to be sure, but it also comes from leaders; it’s no coincidence that “leader” is part of both words. Piping a bunch of resources to immediate supervisors sounds a lot like process to me. Not every supervisor is also a leader, after all; some have been promoted simply because there is no other way to reward them for good work as a front-line employee and nothing you do will make them effective communicators.

At this point, it’s important to debunk something Dr. Larkin wrote in his rebuttal: “We think Mr. Holtz believes sources and channels are basically equal. Mr. Holtz thinks that what accounts for differences in effect is simply the quality of the execution…Mr. Holtz is likely to reply that professional communicators should do a little of everything.”

This, of course, is nonsense. Channels vary in their importance depending upon the outcome desired and the circumstances driving the communication. Communication is one organizational approach to influencing an audience. (Reward is another, for example.) Channels should be employed based on their strengths under each unique circumstance. Quality of execution is important; after all, lousy execution will produce lousy results. But I choose my channels based on the goals I’m trying to achieve. If you start with strategy, you’ll identify those issues best addressed by immediate supervisors and those best addressed by company leaders, as well as the means by which they will be woven together.

I also dispute Dr. Larkin’s assertion that “A professional communicator with limited time, staff, and money needs to know the likelihood of success associated with different types of communication campaigns.” Most of us have worked in circumstances where we had limited time, staff, and money, but were still able to take a strategic approach to our communication, tapping channels that would produce the desired results. As Tudor notes, dismissing necessary channels in order to save time and money means that you fail to meet employee needs for strategic clarity and currency of news and information. Achieving only one-third of your goals means you meet with two-thirds failure to affect change. Imagine putting only gasoline in your car but no oil in the crankcase, no water in the radiator, no air in the tires. But gosh, if you only have so much money, shouldn’t you spend it on the stuff that makes the car go? Not if it means the car will break down in five miles.

To summarize, then, there are multiple elements in driving change through communication. Immediate supervisors play a critical part, but they almost never play the only part. Managing a change communication effort requires an upfront understanding of the unique circumstances driving resistance in your organization and plotting communication to erode that resistance. Different channels play different roles, each of which is important for specific reasons. You ignore the leadership dimension of change at your peril.

Monday, August 15, 2005

TJ Larkin’s response to my response

Warning: Long post follows

You may remember, during IABC’s international conference in June, I posted an item reacting to a talk given by Dr. TJ Larkin at the IABC Research Foundation luncheon. I re-ran the piece as part of an email newsletter I produce for Ragan Communications. The folks at Ragan (with my permission) sent the article to Dr. Larkin for his reaction. Dr. Larkin has graciously given me permission to reproduce that response here (note the typos are copied directly from the original copy I received). I’ll be commenting on this in several shorter posts to follow over the next few days, as time allows.

I’m creating a new category, “Deconstructing Larkin,” for all of these posts.

As always, your comments are appreciated and valued.

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Shel Holtz critiques our work in his Communication + Technology Insider July 2005.

Mr. Holtz found nothing of value in our book, Communication Change, or in my Research Foundation Presentation at the IABC Conference in Washington, D.C. 

Mr. Holtz describes our book as “Crap!” and “Bullshit!” and says reading the book caused him to react as if inflicted with Tourette’s Syndrome.

Mr. Holtz thinks that our book says that any communication that does not come face to face from the immediate supervisor is a waste.  In other words, employees should never receive anything on paper, never see a Web page, and never receive an email.

A more cautious critic would have wondered why such a ridiculous claim was written by a Ph.D. in communication, published by McGraw-Hill, grew into a McGraw-Hill bookstore best seller, published again in the Harvard Business Review, and today is cited or recommended on more than 200 Web sites (Google search: TJ Larkin and communication).  Either Mr. Holtz misunderstands the context of the book or the world is full of fools.

Every book has a context.  Our book, written by myself and my business partner and wife, Sandar Larkin, is called, Communicating Change: Winning Employee Support for New Business Goals.  The book, as explained in the Preface, is about changing employee behavior.  The book is intended for senior executives trying to communicate a big change against serious employee opposition. 

In this context, the book concludes that the type of communication most likely to change employee behavior: targets frontline supervisors, relies on face-to-face communication, and deals with issues relevant to the future of the local work area.  Our book supports this conclusion with a review of 254 studies. 

Our book, Communicating Change, is inspired by a more important book, Diffusion of Innovation, by Professor Everett Rogers.  Roger’s is the world’s most recognized expert in diffusion.  Diffusion is the study of using communication to change the behavior of large groups.  A central theme in Roger’s work is that groups are more likely to change when the communication comes from local “opinion leaders” compared with more distant sources (e.g. politicians or technical experts).  Rogers supports his conclusion with a review of more than 5,000 studies.

This conclusion is not “crap” or “bullshit” but one of the most respected and verified findings in all the social sciences.

It is, of course, true that different sources and channels may be better for different kinds of communication tasks.  Yes, a Web page may be best for a pregnant employee wondering what benefits are included in her company health plan.  Our book, as is plainly evident even in the title, simply isn’t about that.  Our book is about communicating major change to employee groups who are putting up serious resistance.

Our reading of Mr. Holtz criticism reveals a more fundamental disagreement between us.

To some degree, Mr. Holtz denies that generalizations can be made about employee communication.  We think Mr. Holtz believes sources and channels are basically equal.  Mr. Holtz thinks that what accounts for differences in effect is simply the quality of the execution.  For example, some communicators know how to do CEO communication—others don’t.

This, we think, is what Mr. Holtz means when he says: “Bad Web sites are bad.  Bad hyperlinks are bad.  Bad communication is bad.”  In other words the channels themselves have little or no effects, everything depends on well the communicator does it. 

Mr. Holtz’s belief is reasonable if there are only a small number of studies.  But as the number of studies increase, one assumes that the quality of execution is spread somewhat evenly across the communication in the many studies.  If Mr. Holtz is correct, and sources and channels are basically equal, there should be no significant differences in observed effects (for example, changes in employee behavior).

BUT there are significant differences in the amount of behavior change associated with different sources (CEO vs. supervisors) and channels (face to face vs. print).  The research shows large significant differences— meaning that some sources or some channels are intrinsically better than others at particular tasks.

For Mr. Holtz to be correct, he needs to assert that across all these studies, researchers consistently selected mostly poorly-executed instances of CEO communication and then compared these to mostly excellent-executed instances of supervisor communication. As the number of studies becomes large, this assertion becomes implausible.

As further proof that generalizations are impossible, Mr. Holtz goes on to cite instances of good CEO communication, for example Lee Iacocca at Chrysler. 

Of course, there are good instances of CEO communication (despite my sometimes exaggerated claims otherwise) but statistically, over a large number of studies, CEO communication is less likely to produce employee behavior change than communication from a supervisor.

A professional communicator with limited time, staff, and money needs to know the likelihood of success associated with different types of communication campaigns.  The communicator could, of course, decide to invest resources in a Lee Iacocca style CEO-driven communication campaign.  However, no rational person could look at the abundance of communication studies and argue that this was the path most likely to produce the greatest amount of employee change.

Consistent with his belief that all communication is essentially equal, Mr. Holtz is likely to reply that professional communicators should do a little of everything: CEO communication, supervisor communication, print, video, Web, and face to face.  This “do everything recommendation” makes sense if you have unlimited time, staff, and money.  Go ahead, put a big chunk of your effort into a CEO-driven communication campaign.  All that research may, in fact, not apply to your company.  Your CEO may indeed be the next Lee Iococca.  But you ought to know—this is a big gamble with your chances of success.

This is the same sort of criticism that Mr. Holtz directs at our presentation for the Research Foundation at the IABC Conference in Washington D.C.  The presentation is available on DVD from the IABC.  Our presentation handout is available on our Web site: www.larkin.biz.

Our interpretation of Mr. Holtz’s remarks is that nothing, in general, can be said of communication channels.  Web, paper, face to face, are, according to Mr. Holtz, all equal, everything depends on the quality of execution.  Do you use them correctly or incorrectly.

Although there is less research on these communication channels, we believe a pattern is emerging:

• Web is best for searching (short, quick, information retrieval).
• Paper is best for comprehension (especially information that is new, long, and complex).
• Face to face is best for overcoming employee resistance to change

Our handout supports the comparison of Web vs. paper with 18 studies showing links on Web pages cause users to cognitively switch toward “navigation” and away from “comprehension.”  The end effect being paper was better for learning information that is new, long, and complex.

This research confirms the feeling many Web users experience when they need to understand difficult content on Web pages: hit print.

Mr. Holtz responds saying the research is defective.  He surmises that the researchers probably included Web pages with poorly designed links.  Therefore it was not the links themselves, but their poor application that caused the lower comprehension on the Web pages.

This is the same sort of criticism Mr. Holtz directs against the 254 studies in our book, the 5,000 studies in Professor Roger’s book, and now the 18 studies in our IABC presentation.  Here again, Mr. Holtz assumes the researchers selected especially poor instances of Web pages and compared them with especially good instances of print.  Why would 18 of the most respected professors in the field of technical communication do this?

Of course there are good examples of links and poor examples of links, but we assume that quality of execution is spread somewhat evenly across the channels, and that the significance difference in behavioral outcomes (for example, Professor Hailey’s 33% less comprehension with Web pages with links compared with the same Web pages without links) are due to factors inherent in the links themselves.  Specifically these researchers think the links draw users into navigation stealing cognitive resources needed for comprehension.  And that paper, requiring almost no navigation, therefore frees the reader for the more cognitively difficult task of comprehension.  Users hit print to free up brain power for comprehension.

As the number of studies finding this result increases (and they are increasing) it becomes harder and harder for Mr. Holtz to argue that all this research is defective.  Eventually a rational person says: hey, there is a trend here.

And, of course, this research finds some Web pages with links that outperform paper even when the information is new, long, and complex—but these instances are statistically fewer. 

And, of course, researcher should investigate these contrary cases and find out why these links did not impede comprehension.  Mr. Holtz, as a widely respected person in our field, is especially qualified to do so. 

But it’s simply strange to say that all this research is defective, and the Larkins are irresponsible for telling professional communicators about this trend. 

However, some of Mr. Holtz’s criticisms are justified.  It is possible, even easy, to pull individual lines from our book or our lectures and make us look foolish.  We try to be provocative and entertaining.  And with critics such as Mr. Holtz, we pay the price.

But we do not share Mr. Holtz condescending worries about our mutual audience.  We write and speak to professionals.  Our audience has far too much experience to think research generalizations are absolute truths. 

Mr. Holtz gives himself too much credit with his claim that he’s providing a “bucket of salt” to go with our presentation.  This audience arrived at the presentation salty through and through.

Mr. Holtz, graciously and generously, mentions that our IABC presentation received a standing ovation from the 600 communicators in the audience.  Only the second time the IABC remembers this happening (Salman Rushdie being the other).

A more cautious critic would have wondered if a standing ovation from 600 professional communicators indicates that somewhere in the presentation there was something worth considering.

Dr TJ Larkin
Larkin Communication Consulting

 

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Deconstructing Larkin

Warning: Long post follows.

T.J. Larkin is an excellent presenter. He’s entertaining, engaging, witty, and charming. At the end of his presentation at the IABC Research Foundation luncheon today, the crowd of about 500 gave him a standing ovation. His performance deserved it. The substance of his presentation? Well, that’s another thing altogether.

I first became aware of Larkin when I read “Communicating Change.” In this book, Larkin points to research conducted in the late 1980s by Towers Perrin in which employees were asked their prefeerred source of information. The answer, it should come as no surprise to anyone, was: “My immediate supervisor.” Of course, the question was asked badly, and it was the wrong question. The research was so flawed as to render it useless. The question needs to be asked multiple times about a number of business issues and topics. If asked, “What is your preferred source of information about benefits?” would employees point to their supervisors? How about this one: “What is your preferred source of information about the impact of new federal regulations on this company’s ability to compete and sustain profitabilty?” The question should also ask for the top three preferred sources in order to produce a ranking. What if the intranet falls right below the supervisor by a difference of a neglible few percentage points? Should the intranet be dismissed as a source of information?

Larkin concluded in his book that it should. He blatantly stated that any communication to front-line employees that does not come through immediate supervisors is a waste of time and resources. I was on a plane when I read the book, and my seat mate must have concluded that I suffered from Tourette’s Syndrome. Every few minutes, I’d jerk into an upright position and shout out, “Bullshit!” or “Crap!”

Today’s presentation left me feeling pretty much the same. As is the case in most of the other advice he presents, Larkin made huge leaps from questionable research to astounding conclusions. Here’s a summary of some key issues I had with his remarks and his conclusions:

Web, paper, and face-to-face

Larkin began with a brief summary of the most effective uses of the web, print, and face-to-face communication. The web, he said, is best for immediacy (the delivery of news content) and the retrieval of data and information. He made no reference to the web’s multimedia capabilities or the collaborative nature of message boards, blogs, wikis, or other social media tools. Print is best for learning long, complicated, new ideas. Face-to-face is best for motivating change.

To prove his point, Larkin referenced a study in which employees were given a benefits document on the web that contained a lot of links. Another group was given the same document in print. In processing the information, there were 33% more errors made by those who read the web document than the print document.

Why is this problematic? Larkin made no reference whatsoever to the quality of the web document. Were the links embedded in the text or in a “related links” box? Were the links clear in terms of what readers would find when they clicked them? Were they relevant to the content on the page? Were they organized in a manner to support e-learning? Or was it a print document shoveled onto the screen and littered with links? In other words, did the web document adhere to the principles of usability? We’ll never know; Larkin didn’t say.

My conclusion: Bad websites are bad. Bad hyperlinks are bad. But Larkin doesn’t suggest that one solution is to improve the site so it produces better results. His answer is simply not to use the web for this purpose at all, but rather deliver print.

Continuing with the benefits theme Larkin started, let’s assume an employee wants to learn all the benefits associated with having a baby. She could read through every element of every plan in the linear print document, or visit the “Life Events” page on the benefits site and click on “Having a Baby, where all the information relevant to the expectant mother is aggregated. Which is more likely to produce better results?

Searching isn’t thinking

Larkin also produced the results of research to support his argument that there is a vast difference between searching out content on the web and learning. The study cited was from Australia, conducted by Wendy Sutherland Smith. In the study, Smith had grade-school students go to a list of links to information about penguins, then go to a shelf with books about penguins. On the web, they clicked madly and didn’t learn much. When they went to the shelf, they picked one or perhaps two books and sat quietly reading.

But again, were the links crafted in a manner to support learning? Are all those e-learning organizations simply pulling the wool over clients’ eyes? Or have they, through research and experience, figured out how to appropriately craft online content to support learning habits? Any psychologist will tell you we learn best by playing. What about online games-based learning? It wasn’t an avenue of this issue that Larkin ever addressed. He simply leapt form the results of this and a few other research studies to conclude that learning is always best in print.

Face-to-face and change

Finally, Larkin suggested that change is best managed face-to-face. You’ll find no bigger advocate for face-to-face communication than me, and I agree that face-to-face engagement with an immediate supervisor will drive change effectively, especially when the supervisor has embraced the change him or herself. But you can’t tell me that Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” did not drive any change. The power of the printed word to inspire people to action is unquestioned—except, perhaps, by T.J. Larkin.

It was in this area that the research Larkin presented and his conclusions confounded me the most. For example, he presented a study in which the motivating factors driving behavioral change in employees were calculated. Change driven from articles in an employee newspaper came in at .08, while change driven by an explanation from a supervisor weighted in at .72 (where 1 is the highests). Change driven by attendance at a town hall meeting came in at .19 while a manager explaining the change came in at .72. Merger communciations from the top produced behavioral change of .00, while informal communication from supervisors came in at .53.

Larkin admitted that the combination of messages from senior leaders and interpretations from supervisors produced better results, but said it was incidental. But again, there was no reference to the quality of the higher-level communciation or the strategy under which it was executed.

My conclusion: Bad communication is bad. Should we help leaders improve their communication? Not according to Larkin. According to Larkin, there is no value to high-level communication. Employees don’t care, he said. CEO-focused articles in employee newsletters were one example of the formal, top-down communication that failed to produce significant results. Did those communications include the CEO recognizing and rewarding employees who embraced the desired behaviors? We have no clue. We only know they were newsletter articles.

CEO communication

To support his view of the worthlessness of leader communication, Larkin pointed to research from three companies—GE, Lloyd’s, and Heinz—that showed managers would spend no more than 3 minutes with printed CEO communication. He also showed a photo of Domino’s Pizza drivers watching a video of the CEO presented earnings results. That’s proof, in Larkin’s world, that communicators should abandon CEO communications and focus on supervisor communication.

Communicators who adopted this approach would abandon all business literacy efforts to connect employees to the marketplace. Understanding business strategy is pointless—only the workplace implications matter. You have to wonder what Jack Stack at Springfield Remanufacturing would make of such an argument. In this line of thinking, soldiers would pay attention only to their platoon leaders and sergeants, and dismiss General Patton as delivering just a bunch of (in Larkin’s word) shit.

In my world, employees want to be led by leaders who lead. They want to trust their leaders and know they are guiding the organization forward and not to its doom (and their own unemployment). And there are plenty of examples of leaders who communicate effectively to drive organizational change and influence employee behavior. As my friend Angela Sinckas noted, Chrysler’s turnaround was not the result of supervisor communication, but rather Lee Iacoca’s dynamic leadership communication. Need a current example? Intel CEO Paul Otellini is blogging over the intranet, sharing issues and concerns with employees and soliciting comments that inform his decisions. Employees feel listened to and engaged. Otellini makes better decisions. Trust grows. Intel wins.

And isn’t it interesting that in recent research, IBM employees preferred to get their information from the intranet more than from supervisors and colleagues combined?

The GE/Lloyd’s/Heinz research—yet again—made no reference to the quality or nature of the communication that failed…only that it failed.

Larkin said he has never seen research that supports the value of CEO communication. One wonders how hard he has looked, since the value of leader communication has been documented repeatedly.

My take: Bad leader communication is bad. But we shouldn’t abandon the leader as a force for communication. We should improve the communication from the leader to produce better results.

Well, he’s entertaining

So, there were 500 communicators on their feet, applauding Larkin after having laughed at his contempt for the examples he presented of bad communication. It is my sincere hope they were applauding his performance. (Hell, I applauded his performance.) My fear, though, is that communicators struggling with leader communications and mediocre intranets will return to their offices and advocate the abandonment of valuable communication channels and sources based on Larkin’s conclusions.

The conclusions are leaps of logic. The research is questionable. And I hope those attending take it with the bucket of salt it deserves.

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