Why external comms can’t succeed without internal alignment

A company making an announcement may have clear talking points and a great spokesperson, but if employees don’t understand it, the external comms can get messy quickly.

This is why internal and external communicators can’t operate on separate tracks, said Nancy Johnson, director of brand journalism and storytelling for the College of American Pathologists, during Ragan’s Future of Communications Conference.

“If you’re doing internal communications, you need to be in the room with the people who are doing the external communications,” she said.

If employees don’t understand why a restructuring, leadership change or other major move is happening, the organization risks creating a gap between its public story and employees’ experience, Johnson said.

Visit Ragan Training to hear Johnson explain more here.

“The worst thing that can happen is that there’s one message that is conveyed externally and your staff members don’t know what that message is and don’t understand it,” she said. “Because they’re going to have to be the ones living it.”