First-Rate Communication Skills

Fundamental change is necessary in state government, said 90 percent of state executives surveyed at the California Performance Review (CPR) Statewide Strategic Leadership Summit held in November 2004. However, only nine percent of those surveyed were highly confident of their ability to make those fundamental changes. In his opening remarks at the Public Sector CIO Academy last week, California's CIO Clark Kelso called the state's information technology community the "change agents" that will help achieve the recommendations envisioned by the CPR. And effective communication is an essential tool for any change agent.

"Communication is a factor in every problem you have," said Bob Austin, interim director of the Health and Human Services Data Center. For example, elected officials have little tolerance of technology, yet they make technology budget decisions.

Austin quoted Madeline Albright from a recent interview she gave on the importance of communication in her negotiations as Secretary of State. Communication has got to be two-way, said Austin, with an emphasis on knowing your objective for the meeting and putting yourself in the other person's shoes.

Elements of Effective Communication
According to Austin, there are four key elements to effective communication:

• simplifying your message
• becoming audience-oriented
• creating credibility, and
• seeking a response from your audience.

The first is simplification. Can you deliver your vision of what you are doing in a three- to six-floor elevator ride? "The great communicators are the great simplifiers," he said. Simplifying your message and eliminating technical language can bring groups and program administrators on board so they will forward the value of technology to elected officials. Austin said when he was first appointed a CIO he gave a technical explanation of the system. His audience was frustrated. All they wanted to know was if the expense was justified based on what it would return in terms of services. Simplification allows for CIOs and agency information officers (AIO) to focus on the business needs of their audiences, he said.

Next, a CIO or AIO has to establish credibility in him or herself, Austin said, urging audience members to be the experts, since program directors will look to them for guidance on technology. It is better to be wrong sometimes than be in doubt, he said.

The final element to an effective communication plan is to seek a response, Austin said. The goal of communication is action, so communicate with a purpose. What do you want attendees at the meeting to do as a result? Then, follow up important communication in writing. This will remind people that they agreed to certain things and it's easier to enforce the agreement if what was talked about is put in writing.

All of the above is important when conducting meetings, explained Austin. In addition, leaders need to develop plans for how they are going practice what he called "three dimensional communication" -- upward to senior management, downward to staff and outward to program directors. Information officers should determine how often they need to meet with each of these three groups and what these meetings must contain in order to be effective.

For example, when Austin was a newly appointed CIO, he met monthly with program directors. Later, he and the program directors decided it would be more efficient to meet bimonthly.

Conducting Meetings
What should an effective meeting agenda contain? First of all, have a specific objective for that meeting. Austin asks his staff to provide a four-to-six item summary of every project and whether it is ahead or behind schedule and if any problems have come up.

He leaves maintenance or project-specific issues to his staff. Project challenges, finance, personnel or cross-agency questions are taken up in "workload meetings."

Communicating Value
Simplification sells technology. Elected officials have little tolerance of the complexities of technology, Austin said. If you can communicate the business case for new technology well and communicate its value to the Department of Finance, Finance can help sell a project to legislators.