EPISODE 169 | Guest: Alejandra Ramirez, founder of Ready Cultures
Many organizations mistake communications tactics for a cohesive strategy. They focus on pushing out messages without a clear vision of the behavior they want to influence or the business objectives they aim to achieve. This approach often leads to disconnected efforts, confused employees and a failure to build a strong, unified corporate culture.
We explore how to move beyond simple message delivery to create a truly strategic internal communications process. Get insight into frameworks and philosophies that turn communication from a reactive tool into a proactive, culture-shaping force and critical driver of your bottom line. And learn how to ensure your communications are designed to elicit specific, measurable actions that move your entire organization forward.
- Discover the crucial difference between communication tactics and strategy.
- Understand how communication drives employee behavior, belonging and alignment with company goals.
- Learn the 3H framework (Head, Heart, Hands) to make messages more meaningful and actionable.
- Explore how to align leadership behavior and incentives with your communication strategy.
- Get a framework for communicating complex news with clarity and purpose.
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Transcript
Derek DeWitt: Internal communications is actually a rather complicated field, and there are a lot of ins and a lot of outs and a lot of balls to keep in the air. One of the things that modern communications professionals are having some difficulties with is juggling the difference between internal communications strategy and internal communications tactics. And, too often, I believe the latter is focused on instead of the former.
So, today I will be speaking with Alejandra Ramirez. She is the founder of Ready Cultures, an internal communications consultancy firm, which is all about how to turn that strategy into practical actions. Thank you for talking to me today, Ms. Ramirez.
Alejandra Ramirez: Hello. Thank you for having me. Excited to talk about my favorite subject.
Derek DeWitt: Excellent, excellent. Not too often do I find somebody who’s like, this is what I do, I do internal communications stuff.
Alejandra Ramirez: Yeah, it’s, you know, it’s a very often overlooked and misunderstood discipline. I think if you don’t know the work internal comms is doing, it’s because it’s been done well, and so often it gets overlooked.
Derek DeWitt: Yes, this is true. It’s not flashy, but it is essential. I’d like to thank Ms. Ramirez for coming on this episode of Digital Signage Done Right. Of course, I thank all of you for listening. I remind you, you can like, subscribe, review, all that junk, and you can follow along with a transcript on the Visix website with helpful links as well.
So, Ms. Ramirez, on the Ready Cultures website, you say “we believe that a better culture begins with better comms, and we’re here to help you achieve both.” I think that’s true, but what do you mean when you say culture? Because it’s one of those terms that’s been floating around out there now for a few years in the business world that people say it, but I don’t know if everyone’s defining it the same way.
Alejandra Ramirez: I am so glad you asked this question because I actually have a bone to pick with the current definition of culture. Culture, as most people define it, is this idea of a common set of ways of doing things. You know, the guiding principles, shared values, shared beliefs, shared norms, and to me that’s not very actionable. I like to think of culture from the perspective of science.
So, in science, when you culture something, you are creating conditions under which you want things to thrive, right? So you think the petri dish, you have the agar, and then you, you know, put whatever it is you’re putting in there to see how it grows. And to me, that same idea applies in the corporate world and at jobs, because what you want is to create culture, and to do that, you create conditions under which things thrive.
And so that to me is the nuance. And that helps with helping others understand why it’s so important and why it’s not just this static thing, but instead of living, breathing way of running a business.
Derek DeWitt: Right. So your culture is much more like yogurt than it is, say, France.
Alejandra Ramirez: There you go! That’s a great… I love that. I might have to borrow that one.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, take it. Steal it, steal it, by all means.
I think sometimes in the comms world, when we’re using more abstracted, especially newer, more abstracted terms like culture, because there’s nothing really concrete for people to hold onto, they tend to kind of go, oh, well, yeah, it’s I don’t know, like you said, a series of processes maybe, or, hey, we have shared beliefs, or, you know, probably the most famous modern example of “a corporate culture” was, Google’s “Don’t be evil”, which is literally a negative. It implies all actions will not be evil, but then how do we define evil and all that? And then they stopped, they said, that’s no longer our culture. So then you think, so does that mean that you now will be evil? You know? So, it’s all, it’s all this kind of abstracted thing.
And the point I’m getting at is that the fundamental truth that a company, or any organization (could be a hospital, could be a, a nonprofit, could be a school), it’s made up of people. It’s not a bunch of concepts interacting with one another. It’s people who have their own thoughts, their own opinions, their own preferences, and then somehow blending all this together with the company. And legally in the United States, corporations are legal people, so they kind of come together to create this larger sort of, you know, Transformer-type creature that’s made up of a multiplicity. And somehow everyone is helping drive this thing forward.
Your metaphor, sort of the Petri dish kind of reminds us, I think, that this is a living system because even though it’s abstract in principle, in practice, it is made up of living beings.
Alejandra Ramirez: Absolutely. And I think when you start to think of that with the people in mind, it really changes how you approach anything you do as regards culture and as regards running your business.
Derek DeWitt: So, I think one of the things that very often we see with internal communications, I know we were speaking before the recording started that, you know, it kinda gets lost. Like you said, if it’s, you’re doing it right, people kind of don’t even notice it. And I think very often the dictates from on high are basically just like, just push out some messages. Just, just get ‘em out there. Even the early days of digital signage, it was all push, push, push, because, you know, that was how that technology was also. It was basically just an extension of email, which is always a push system.
But now we have, in the digital signage realm, we have interactive screens, we’ve got QR codes, which finally have started taking off in the United States in a big way, and so people are starting to utilize those. In the computer world, it’s not just emails, which are just one directional, it’s Teams and chats and all this. So, we’re getting more of this back and forth. So, it kind of turns people more into co-communicators instead of just passive recipients and consumers of the message.
Alejandra Ramirez: That’s exactly it. I think so often, because it’s such a misunderstood role, it’s a lot of tactical that happens. And what I mean by that is people will say, hey, I have a message. When should we post it? When can I put it on a screen? Or when can I put it on the intranet? Or when can I send it? And sure, that is certainly part of the role, you need to know what’s happening, when. But it’s not the main part of the role. And to me, to be strategic in internal communications, you need to really be thinking about what business objective you’re trying to advance and how can communications shape those behaviors to meet that goal.
So, for example, there’s a merger, right? And mergers always result in a lot of uncertainty and a lot of confusion, and it’s a lot of change. And so rather than just saying, okay, I’m gonna send a message to people, or I’m gonna send a series of messages that explain what’s happening, okay, great, but are you measuring that? Are you measuring whether they understood how it’s impacting them? Are you measuring whether it’s something that maybe three months ago was less clear than it is today? And that’s where a lot of people often forget that just sending a message is not enough to understand that bigger picture and how it’s aligning with whatever your goals are gonna be throughout whatever it is the campaign or topic that you’re working on might be.
Derek DeWitt: The measurement issue is interesting because one of the truisms I’ve learned with business writing and doing this podcast is that, counterintuitively, we care about what we measure, not the other way around. So, however we define winning, that’s all we care about. Nothing else seems to matter.
And so how would you go about, are you talking about like surveys and polls or asking questions or like, how are you gonna make sure that your people understand, hey, this merger is… For example, this one department, let’s just say for example, you are not going to be affected at all by this merger. It’s just that your email domain name is gonna change, and God forbid if you’re still using stationary, the letterhead will change, and other than that, and your business cards will change. But other than that, you’re gonna be doing the same old thing. Like how would you check to make sure that they got that?
Alejandra Ramirez: So, surveys is a great way of doing it. So, you can do what’s called a pulse survey where you send, you know, a one-question survey and get a response. I’ve worked with clients where when they send a message, they’ll include at the very bottom the question and say, was this message helpful, yes or no? And it immediately does it within whatever that message is. If it’s a written email, for example. There are other ways to measure this.
I’ll give you another example, tactical versus strategic, right? So let’s say you work at a manufacturing company. A tactical person would just say, okay, let me post the safety tip of the week on some screens in the hallways or in the break room, right? Sure, employees see the tip, but you’re not tracking whether they read it or changing their behavior. And at the end of the day, internal communications is about changing behavior, eliciting behavior.
And so firstly, to be strategic, you need to think about what it is you’re solving for. In this case, you’re solving for changed behavior to reduce the number of potential incidents that, you know, might be not ideal for the company or for the person. The goal in that case, you wanna think about, okay, let’s reduce the reportable safety incidents by 20% this quarter, right? Let’s say you’re at whatever number, let’s, easy math, 100, you wanna reduce it by about 20%. How do you measure that?
That’s where the comm strategy comes in. So, ideally you wanna map each safety tip to one of the top three incident types, for example. Let’s say there’s different incident types, and you’re thinking, okay, what are the different tips for each of the different incidents that you want to solve for? Okay, that’s one. Then rather than just, again, putting a safety tip of the week on some signage, you can launch a scavenger hunt where teams can scan QR codes to register hazard observations in real time because it starts to show that they care, that they’re keeping an eye out, that they’re trying to reduce that. And you can tie participation to a department leaderboard where it kind of fosters some friendly competition.
And the outcome metrics there would be, you know, how many hazard reports were submitted, what was the incident rate per department, compare it against maybe some broader data that the company has. And you’re also looking for engagement on the screens, right? So, because it’s calling for action, that action is going to result in measurable information that you can then use.
Now, you’re not gonna do that just one time, because then you have nothing to measure against. And this is an ongoing effort and an ongoing, we can call it a campaign if you want. And so by having ongoing touchpoints and ongoing reminders that you can then use to measure and compare to each other, you’re getting more information that helps better adjust or continue to do what it is you’re doing and result in the outcome that you’re trying get as a result of this.
Derek DeWitt: Gamification I think is always a good idea. It’s actually easy. And yeah, throw in a prize. It doesn’t have to be a nice price. You’re not, I’m not talking about a car here, but, you know, yeah, $20 Amex gift card. It costs you nothing. It gives people like, I won, you know, wow, I got it! And yeah, it’s 20 bucks. I mean, who cares? But it feels like a big win for them. Plus bragging rights, you know? Hey, who doesn’t like to brag when they win? I always think that’s a great way, because here’s the thing, if people are participating in your gamification solution, they’re clearly engaged ’cause they’re doing it.
I think sometimes there’s just this vague idea of, you know, like you said, safety, we should have more and go make it happen, person. And they’re like, oh, okay, I guess I’ll do this one. Whereas the way you’re describing it, because there’s a strategy in place with a concrete goal, it already does half that job for you. It helps you winnow all the possibilities to, well, these are the top three things that occur in this warehouse or this manufacturing facility, so let’s focus on those first. ’cause that would give us the biggest wins.
Alejandra Ramirez: And I love the example you said about, you know, this amorphous idea of safety. Because, you know, if you ever think about, if you’ve ever been in a conversation with someone, whether it’s at work or in your personal life, and you know, you’re sitting there explaining something, and then that person is like, got it, let me repeat that back to you. And it’s a completely different understanding, right? It happens. It’s natural for that to happen.
And so, where internal communications tries to solve that is it tries to define what these things mean so that everyone is clearly working in a way that you want them to work. So, if you say safety’s important, please be safe. Safe to one person might mean, let me put my hair up. To another person it might mean, oh, I don’t wear sandals. But then separately, that person who puts their hair up may be wearing sandals, right?
And so, you need to define what safety means and safety looks like, and those are the types of things you can put on screens and send in emails and hand out to people and do trainings and say, here is what safety looks like. It looks like wearing this outfit, wearing these types of shoes, wearing this type of thing. And this is how you report any scenarios where maybe it’s not being done correctly.
And that is internal communication. It’s about clarifying and defining and providing the action that you want as an outcome for your business.
Derek DeWitt: Just little things. ‘Cause a generic, hey, be safe, and I’m working on the warehouse, and yet if I’ve seen specific things, for example, like, hey, make sure that ladder has four points of contact on the floor before you step on it. It might not have occurred to me. I have this general notion in my head, be safe, be safe. Hey, my hair’s up. Hey, I have, you know, good shoes, with the laces double knotted, everything’s good, but I forgot about ladders. And so yeah, it turns out my ladder is a little wobbly and now I’m up there and now I’m maybe not safe. And it didn’t even occur to me, the ladder thing, because there are a lot of factors. So to have those specific things to keep in mind I think is quite nice. I mean, here’s the thing. It certainly can’t hurt.
Alejandra Ramirez: Right! There’s no downside to it because then if someone’s not doing what you’ve told them, that’s a whole other conversation and not a comms issue. That becomes an HR issue or whatever you wanna call it. But having the definitions and the clarity and the detail is what internal comms is there to do. It’s helping provide information that helps elicit behavior, that helps with, essentially, your bottom line.
I mean, yes, you’re right. Companies are made of people. They have their lives outside of work, they have their lives in work, and ideally you don’t want them to be miserable. And internal comms helps with that because it gives them guidance on what’s expected of them, and it gives them a sense of understanding how and where they belong at the company. And by the way, in some cases people might feel like, you know what, this isn’t for me, and they may leave and that’s okay. But the people you don’t want leaving are the people who are the high performers, who are the ones who are ideally a good fit for you, but maybe are frustrated because you’re not communicating things in a clear fashion or doing things in a way that should be done.
Derek DeWitt: And again, it all bleeds out into specificity, which is quite nice, ’cause specific things become actions. Like I’m thinking of, I think a lot of companies some years ago were like, well, I guess we have to come up with something environmental to shut these youngsters up. Hey, let’s do a recycling program. And then that’s it. We have a recycling program, but we don’t check, we don’t pay attention.
You know, maybe there’s one person in the office who’s like, man, people do not seem to understand that this is for paper, this is for plastic, this is for cans, and this is for general garbage. And it’s kind of driving me nuts. And if the company says that they care, but then there’s no messaging about this is how you do it. And by the way, we’re also measuring it, not to check up on you, but like, hey, guess what? When we started this, we were recycling X amount. Now six months later, a year later, three years later, we’re recycling 85 times that amount. How fantastic is that? Give yourselves a pat on the back.
Alejandra Ramirez: Right. And this goes back to this definition of culture I mentioned, because by giving these very actionable guidelines and very actionable information, you are creating conditions that are expected of people. You are saying, here is what I am telling you needs doing. People will ideally do that. That will start to create the culture that you want. A culture that is excellent and, you know, high excellence in safety standards, let’s say.
Or let’s say you are a company that values collaboration, and you say it all the time, but what does that look like, right? So if you’re saying that you’re all about collaboration, then your internal communication and your actions need to relay that. And you need to be promoting the things that resulted as a result of collaboration. You aren’t trying to spotlight the one individual who hoards all the work, and then everyone else is rolling their eyes because they’re like, well, this person’s no fun to work with.
And by the way, something that I think people misunderstand about internal communication is that internal communication isn’t just words, it’s actions, too. When you think about communication, saying nothing communicates a lot as well. Silence sometimes speaks louder than words, right? And so, the idea is that when you’re thinking about internal communication, you can’t just think about the words you’re saying. You also need to think about the actions that are being created by leadership and the actions that you as a leader are doing to match those words that you want people to then also replicate and do themselves.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, I do think, you know, sort of habits of leadership, and yeah, I’m gonna pick on older people for a second because, you know, you get older, you get used to doing things, you’re like, by God, I’ve risen up from the bottom all the way up to the position, I am now third banana in the company or what have you, and so I have my way of doing things. And yeah, I’ll pay lip service to, you know, concept A, B and C, that’s the flavor of the month. But I’ve seen dozens of these come and go over the years. For a while it was Sigma Six, and you know, now we’re, we’re talking about all this other stuff. I don’t care. I’m gonna continue to do things the way I do things.
And I think that that maybe worked for a while, but I do think that today it’s not working so well. And they’re discovering that this kind of disconnect, instead of thoughtfulness, thoughtlessness almost, on the part of leadership is leading to bad actions, because the communications that would foster those actions are incomplete or sometimes are at opposite ends to what the goals are.
Alejandra Ramirez: I think people also think of that, or at least historically have thought of that as like, well, I don’t need to really care about communication. That’s a soft skill. That’s not really something I need to worry about. A soft skill is still a skill! And you need to be able to communicate as a leader to really drive results.
And what I mean by results, I also mean the bottom line. Some people are like, well, you know, I know it’s important because then it helps with turnover. Sure, yes, that is important, but why it’s important is because it costs a lot of money to replace people. That’s money you’re spending that is not necessary. If you are doing a good job at communicating, your turnover is likely not gonna be as high. That’s less money you’re spending on replacing people and money that you could be investing elsewhere. And so, the bottom line is very directly affected by how communication is. It’s led at a company.
Derek DeWitt: Now in our initial emails back and forth, you’d mentioned that one of the common barriers to aligning content strategy or communication strategy with the actual messaging could be misaligned incentives. What do you mean by that?
Alejandra Ramirez: So, what misaligned incentives means, at least by my definition, is stakeholders, whether that’s leaders, managers, whoever the stakeholder is in said scenario, are rewarded for one set of behaviors or outputs. But the goals, or strategic goals, in communications require a different set of behaviors.
So, for example, what misaligned incentives look like, rewards focus on activity rather than impact. So, let’s say departmental KPIs are clashing with shared goals. So sales leaders maybe get bonuses for hitting quarterly targets, so they hoard product updates rather than sharing them with service teams. The consequence, right, customer support reps lack the latest talking points leading to inconsistent messaging or frustrated customers, right? And so, you need to be able to think beyond just, here’s this one activity, you need to think what’s the bigger impact, right?
So, I’ll give you another example. Executives are applauded for maybe high facetime and town halls rather than for how well they engage in two-way dialogue or drive follow-up actions. Town halls become monologues as opposed to conversations. And so, those are some examples of misaligned incentives, and they matter because when the incentives don’t reward the behaviors you need, people will naturally fall back on what is rewarded.
And this goes back to that definition of culture. If you are building a culture, you’re building it by creating conditions under what you want things to thrive. If you want certain things to thrive, you reward those things. If you don’t reward those things, then clearly that’s not a culture that you want. And you either need to change your strategic internal comms goals or change what your ideal behaviors are that you’re trying to incentivize.
Derek DeWitt: It’s interesting you say town halls. I know town halls are something that a lot of companies and organizations of all types do on a regular basis. I mean, it’s purely internal comms. I mean, that’s really the essence of internal comms. And like you said, it’s very often some kind of a monologue usually from the big dog.
But I know a couple of organizations where the boss, who’s basically running that town hall meeting, they think it’s important to throw out financials. Here’s how we’re doing, here’s how we’re doing compared to last year, here’s the money that we thought was gonna come in from this, but it didn’t. And then they just leave it. They just, they pushed out the message, here are the financials, and then they just leave it. And invariably what happens is that the employees or whoever listening to this begin to fret.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard through the grapevine at organization A or B after the boss got done with the financials with no, nothing, there’s nothing for people to do except go, oh, okay. And so they, the question that now is floating around the next day is, are any of us gonna lose our jobs? And they get nervous about it, you know?
So, I wonder, so how, for example, could that be averted? What would be the action point for a company that wants to, we want to be transparent with our employees? I mean, one piece of advice is just don’t do that. But is there a way to do it and still not freak people out or to create good actions that further the overall strategy?
Alejandra Ramirez: Absolutely, there is. So, at a minimum, when you think about anything you’re communicating, and I mean anything, a framework I use called the 3H framework, which stands for head, heart, and hands. So, when you are communicating something, you don’t just wanna give the head, which is the facts. You also wanna give the heart, which is the why, and the hands, which is the what or the how, so to speak.
You know, turning to this town hall example, you wanna think about, okay, sure, here are the financials, great, that’s the head, those are the facts. Why does that matter? Frame it. Frame what it means. So, you know, instead of revenue is down 8%, let’s lead with here’s why the market shifted, what it means for our strategy and how every team can help, right? That then gives people a sense of, okay, got it. The market shifted. It seems like now we’re gonna focus our efforts on this specific product line, and here’s what I can do to help. So, if you tie it to this idea of how you can help, it just makes a really big difference because it maps to tangible actions.
So, for example, our margin was squeezed by X, right? Here’s how your department can identify cost savings opportunities this quarter. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, list those out. You also wanna build in interactive Q & As if you can, right? You may not know what people are thinking, so don’t assume and ask the question.
A big part of communication begins with listening. It goes back to this idea of feedback. So, you can either open up Q&A in the moment, or you can then after the fact use signs and a mobile app, if your company uses a mobile app or whatever it is you use, to surface questions.
I worked with a client that had a very interactive way of doing this where instead of them raising their hands and asking the questions, they could enter it on their phones through a link in the session, and then it would come up live for someone to read out the question for the CEO. And so, it created this idea of openness that, you know, people felt maybe more comfortable asking their question because it wasn’t just them raising their hand and they were able to put it into a pool of questions.
Derek DeWitt: And it becomes a live part of the meeting, also.
Alejandra Ramirez: Exactly. You also wanna humanize the storytelling, right? So, maybe open with a brief story, you know. When I visited our factory last month, I saw X, Y, Z thing, right? Because it connects the cold numbers to maybe real people and places. So maybe you weave in a clip showing someone on the frontline innovating or solving a problem tied to those financial results, or whatever it may be.
Also face and address the questions head on. Meaning, if you know that the question is, is my job safe? Address that proactively, right? So, if headcount reductions are possible, share their criteria and timeline, and what roles and functions are in scope. Now, certainly you may not know that, and you can say, look, right now, we are not expecting any reductions in workforce.
I actually, I remember I worked with a client on this. I was working with the CEO, and he was saying, you know, our numbers are down. I really don’t wanna lay people off right now, but it is a possibility. And I said, okay, so let’s talk about that. How are you gonna relay that? Because people are going to ask. And so, what we came up with was, you know, he gave his presentation, talked about all the scenarios, and he said, look, headcount reductions are a very real scenario. At this point in time, it is not something we are considering doing. If that changes, we will be very transparent about it and we will be sure to kind of give you more clarity around what the numbers might look like or what any of that might seem.
And let me tell you, people loved that. People emailed him and said, that just made me feel so much better. Even though I know that this decision may change a month from now or two months from now, just knowing that it’s not happening in the moment and knowing that you’re even considering and thinking about it, that’s really important. And that helps me just sleep better at night as an employee.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, right. I have a little breathing room.
Alejandra Ramirez: Exactly. And then lastly, you wanna close with again, these next steps and follow up. Commit to a rhythm, right? End by sharing when the next check-in will be, maybe what the data you’ll cover is, or what the progress you expect to see by the next check-in is.
And then after that town hall, within sort of ideally a 24-hour window, send out a recap of the key takeaways, right? People learn differently. Some people are audio, you know, visual learners. Some people are auditory learners; some people absorb things by reading. And so, the more ways you can relay a message, the more effective it will be at landing.
I would remind people that whenever they’re working on anything at a company, to be very clear about defining what they mean and not to assume that people have the same definition in their minds or the same idea of how something is done. So, the more clarity you can bring, the more likely better outcome you’re gonna have.
Derek DeWitt: Internal communications is a really interesting area. I know a lot of companies out there really focus about brand, brand, brand. And that’s always external focused. That’s always about pushing yourself out to the public or to the client base or to the market or even to the channel sometimes.
But internal communications are always more interesting, in my opinion, because this is the company. The company is these people. And the more that they feel… I know people get into ruts and routines, but the fact is, is that the company is always shifting and changing, ’cause the market is always shifting and changing. And so, it makes sense to allow people who make up the organization, to give them the tools to sort of go with that flow and understand, oh yeah, now we’re going this way, now we’re going this way, instead of just being sort of buffeted about by the wind.
Alejandra Ramirez: Exactly. And it’s so important because, like you said, these people are the company. If you want a strong brand, you need brand ambassadors. Those brand ambassadors are your employees. If they’re not aligned, you’re sure as heck not gonna have some strong brand externally either.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, that’s for darn sure. Well, I mean, truth is, I could talk about this stuff forever. Perhaps we’ll have you on again. I know you have many more thoughts on internal communications. But in the meantime, I would like to thank my guest for speaking with me today. She is Alejandra Ramirez. She is the founder of Ready Cultures. You’ll find a link to the website in the transcript, as well as other links to things that we talked about. The company is an internal communications consultancy that helps companies come up with a strategy that makes sense and then better align their internal comms with that strategy. It’s win, win, win for everybody.
Alejandra Ramirez: It’s been so lovely to talk today and I’m excited to hopefully continue the conversation at a later date.
Derek DeWitt: Indeed. I remind everybody that there is a transcript on the Visix website, so go check it out at visix.com/resources.