Brief encounter

"Celia, have you HEARD about the new Business Brief?"

Today we had our latest Business Brief, the monthly cascade briefing for our organisation. This one was slightly different (for the business) as it was open to anyone to attend. It was also different (for me) because I hosted it for the first time.

The Business Brief was set up last year as a replacement for the previous cascade. I wrote the business case for the change, so it’s fair to say it’s all my own fault that this afternoon I found myself broadcasted to more than 1,100 nuclear workers.
The original cascade was called Team4action (the number in the title feels quaint these days, but it did form part of a wider, but long-forgotten, change programme centred around numbers).
Team4action had the remit to “get people to talk about change and how it affected them”, but over the years, that spec had been lost and it became a standard catch-all business briefing.
At the end of the 2019, Sellafield Internal Communications wrote a report on the company cascade brief, Team4Action, with a look to change the approach.
The report identified the following:

• No checking of how messages were being cascaded;
• No availability of extra context for those interested;
• Need for training to deliver briefing;
• The cascade process is valued but is only as good as the people delivering it;
• Team4action is seen as a “one size fits all” comms solution by many.

We then had Covid-19 and lockdown, which had a direct impact on plans for the future of any cascade briefing:

• The majority of our staff, including senior leaders, were suddenly working remotely;
• There was no opportunity for large gatherings (for the initial brief)
• New channels were introduced, with the potential to ease the load on the briefing by offering other outlets;
• New technology was introduced, allowing more flexibility in the delivery of content and potential for better understanding of how it is landing with the audience.

So we felt the time was right for a change. The monthly briefing was seen as an integral and welcomed part of the Sellafield Ltd calendar, despite the issues outlined above. Our aim was to tweak the approach to ensure that it remained fit-for-purpose, utilising new technology and channels tested “in anger” during the Covid-19 crisis and found to have worked. We proposed:

Monthly briefing
Briefing rebranded as “Sellafield Business Brief” and moved onto MS Teams. The Teams approach had proved successful over summer 2020. Feedback showed that those taking part felt more involved, more willing to interact with the presenters, and that they were comfortable with the technology.
This allowed us to invite a wider section of the leadership community – looking to ensure the messages are explained to the business by people who understand the key points and the context.
Each briefing would be limited to three key themes, identified and agreed with the Executive team beforehand.

The CEO briefing would be followed by the distribution of:
A briefing sheet, sent via email to a mailing list;
A video of the CEO delivering the briefing and answering questions, to be shared on our intranet for those who could not attend
Recognising that by widening the audience for the monthly briefing we have removed an opportunity for some high-level business messaging to be discussed with our Band 2 leadership community, we proposed an additional series of quarterly business leaders sessions, also run through Teams, with a separate agenda. This is the next stage of the process and is yet to be launched.
To make this happen, we promoted the change in approach across our internal channels and the first Business Brief went ahead in October 2020.
We knew we would have to help people understand how they could attend via MS Teams – but to be fair it soon became clear we didn’t need to do too much selling.
This is the approach we drafted out and explained to the executive team, which has stayed pretty much unchanged since its inception:

• The Internal Comms team will create a rolling plan of potential themes for briefing themes.
• Each month the three suggested themes will be shared with the Executive Team at least two weeks before the briefing event, for discussion. This will take place in a special half hour extension of that week’s Executive Support Team meeting.
• An outline script will then be provided to the CEO and any guest speakers (subject matter experts). This will form the basis of the Briefing Document to be distributed following the launch.
• The launch session will be monitored by the Internal Comms team and the draft briefing document / script updated as required following the event.
• The CEO (or person leading in their absence) will be recorded as they lead the briefing. This footage will then be edited and shared via the intranet for those unable to attend.
• The briefing document will be sent out to a mailing list within 24 hours of the briefing. Initially via Outlook, ultimately by a third-party solution available soon which will allow detailed understanding of recipient activity.
• There will be an ongoing process of feedback monitoring and usage measurement to help shape and refine the approach.

Which brings us to today. The Business Brief has proved to be a successful new channel. We want to introduce some extra software which will help us identify just how effectively the emailed briefing document is, but the briefing itself gets great feedback from those who attend. Usually around 700 of them – much higher than the take-up for the old Team4action, and with a much higher level of interaction between the executive team and our leadership community.
In its previous incarnation we would find that the only people daring to ask questions were those in the meeting room with the CEO – anyone attending via video conference from our other offices felt distanced and “out of the loop”. The Teams approach brings with it a level playing field which relaxes people and makes them feel part of the entire process.
So as an experiment the April brief was opened to anyone who wished to attend. This was easy to set up – we run it as an MS Teams Event, so it is just a matter of posting the link on our intranet and allowing them to share with colleagues. There could have been 10,000 people in attendance – but we knew we wouldn’t get those kind of numbers– it’s the Easter holidays, not everyone has access to WiFi, etc. I’m happy with over 10 per cent of the workforce.
What I didn’t expect when this decision was made was that my colleague who usually does such a smooth and polished job of introducing the session and asking the questions would have the cheek to be on LEAVE this week. But in the spirit of learning a new skill, I stepped up.

Here's a couple of learning points from me:

• Be prepared – I had a couple of questions in my back pocket “just in case”. I also had a speech prepared to introduce the session.
• Double-check how it’s going to work – there was only one moment of silence, when I thought I’d see my mug appear on the live screen for the first question, but it didn’t. I realised quickly I wasn’t going to appear on-screen while asking the questions and jumped in.
• The first questions are the easiest – the tricky part of the job is aggregating the written questions and then asking them. The first ones aren’t too bad, but then you start to see a build-up underneath them.
• You need to be able to multi-task – it’s about sorting the questions into groups, ignoring the ones that have already been answered, keeping track of the new ones coming in – all the time listening to the answer to the previous question to make sure you don’t ask something that;s already been answered.
• To help me do all this, I used my trusty OneNote. I was able to keep track of what I’d done and avoid any repetition.
• Keep track of time – I had a killer question held back to finish off the session, but we hit the hour and I had to stop it there.

Quite a long post, this – if you’ve got any questions about the Business Brief, please get in touch. I’ll add a bit more info later.