Planning and organising an environmental dialogue
7 How to set others to work
| 7.1 | Find the right experts |
| 7.2 | Use the dialogue objective as the governing idea |
| 7.3 | Discuss the design with your experts |
If you are fortunate enough to have an information officer in the company or you can draw
on external communication experts, your task is to set them to work on designing the means
in the right way.
As the person responsible for the company's environmental dialogue, you are a bridge builder between the company's objectives and the people designing the means. If you solve this task properly, you will save yourself a lot of grief over means that do not live up to your expectations and will avoid wasting time and money.
It is a good idea to write a short brief to the people who are going to design the means of communication. Stating your wishes in writing is good preparation for the subsequent dialogue with the communication experts. Depending on the nature of the task, you can also supply the experts with draft copy or background material describing and documenting the company's way of solving the various environmental tasks.
A written brief from you to the communication experts should always include the dialogue objectives, a description of the recipients and the time horizon. You thereby provide them with precise guidelines to observe when they are designing the means of communication. The example given below is a brief for a folder to neighbours about reducing noise, but you can use the same guidelines for all means of communication. Hints 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3 explain how.
Means of communication |
Folder – short, e.g. folded A4 |
Dialogue objective |
We must inform our neighbours before March 1 that we are changing our transport system, but that this may take up to six months. |
Other means with which the means of communication is to be combined |
Article in local newspaper
|
Description of the main recipients |
The recipients are all neighbours within a radius of 600 metres, i.e. approx. 500 households. That means all kinds of people, but the folder must be addressed particularly to the people who are most dissatisfied about the noise and have complained to authorities and the local press. The folder must be written so that everyone, including those without technical knowledge, can understand it. |
Secondary recipients |
Authorities and the local newspaper |
Time horizon |
Must be received from the printers February 15 and sent out February 17. |
7.1 Find the right experts
The people who are to design the various means of communication must be good at writing and at communicating in pictures. Depending on the nature of the means, you may also need experts within layout, photography, film and similar.
It is not enough for the experts to have the necessary paper qualifications. The recipients of the company's messages are bombarded every day with a large quantity of information, much of which is designed extremely professionally and powerfully. It is thus important for the people designing the communication to be able to compete with the information noise and penetrate to the recipients.
You must get hold of people who are good at finding new ways of communicating simple, clear, credible and, most of all, interesting messages. If you do not have such people among your colleagues, you should use external experts that you trust to solve the task.
Using external experts has both advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, they can look at the communication problem with fresh eyes and see new possibilities because they are not, as company people sometimes are, thinking in grooves. On the minus side, the company's environmental aspects can be so complex that it is difficult for outsiders to decide what is important and what is not. You can judge different experts by getting examples of the environmental communication they have produced. Ask for communication of the type you want designed. If the form and content meet your expectations, you can arrange a meeting at which you can see whether the chemistry is right.
7.2 Use the dialogue objective as the governing idea
The core of the design is the dialogue objective. It is your job to formulate the dialogue objective that the communication experts are to communicate. This distribution of roles means a big responsibility for you. If the message is not precise enough, even the most creative communicators will not be able to develop it into valuable communication. Do not put the communication experts to work until you have taken a critical look at whether the message is sufficiently precise to have the desired effect. If it is not, you must go back to the beginning and formulate it again.
Stick to the dialogue objective and return to it in your discussions with the experts. If they do not understand your message you will never get a solution that meets your expectations.
7.3 Discuss the design with your experts
The people who are going to design the means do not see the company's objective in the same way as you do. It is therefore necessary to discuss the design with them. In particular, you must ensure that they get precisely the information they need about the stakeholders to communicate your message to them, and the discussion will give them a clear impression of the stakeholders' attitude to the chosen question.
The dialogue between you and your experts is a balancing act. On the one hand, you must stick to your objective and make demands. On the other, you must not hold so strictly to the written brief that you limit their scope.
You may find the following helpful hints useful in your dialogue with the experts:
 | Use your draft written brief as the agenda for meetings |
| Listen and be open to ideas you had not thought of yourself |
| Do not impose a fixed framework for the forms, e.g. formats and choice of pictures. Otherwise you risk contributing to stereotypes and losing the creative verve that is the driving force behind good communication and that is able to break down the stakeholders' defences. |