An interview with Monique Zytnik
In this conversation, Monique Zytnik shares her unique journey from being a physiotherapist to a public relations expert, discussing her experiences in Berlin and the inspiration behind her book on internal communication in the age of AI. She emphasizes the importance of understanding communication models, stakeholder mapping, and the impact of AI on communication strategies. Monique also addresses the challenges of measuring communication effectiveness and the relationship between employee engagement and experience, advocating for a more holistic approach to communication in organizations.
Do check out the episode with Lindsay Uitenbogaard we well and other episodes here.
Takeaways (AI generated with Riverside.fm)
- Monique’s career path is non-linear, showcasing diverse experiences.
- PR is fundamentally about motivation and influence.
- Effective communication requires understanding your audience.
- Stakeholder mapping is crucial for successful communication strategies.
- AI can enhance communication processes but must be used wisely.
- Employee engagement metrics can be misleading and should be complemented with other measures.
- Communication should focus on achieving specific outcomes.
- Immersive communication is essential in a content-saturated world.
- Building relationships is key to effective internal communication.
- Policies and processes must support communication efforts.
Summary (AI generated with Riverside.fm)
Ana (00:02.936)
So Monique, welcome to the show.
Monique Zytnik (00:05.852)
Thank you so much, Anna.
Ana (00:07.916)
We’ve been working hard at making this happen. It worked and it didn’t for a few times, but here we are. In every other podcast, the opening question to all our guests was, how did you end up in PR? So we’re not going to move away from that question, but rather ask you the same. How did you end up in PR?
Monique Zytnik (00:32.432)
Well, Anna, I’ve got a hugely squiggly career because originally I was a physiotherapist. So I was working in hospitals, treating patients. I actually did a stint in a physio clinic, running the practice, which was also super interesting. And I realized that I could…
start to tell the day that my patients decided to get better. And I was particularly good at those really complex patients. And I kind of worked out that there was more to it than just the science part of how many angles or how many degrees your knee was moving or what kind of electro therapy. So that’ll come back, I’m sure, in our conversation, but I quite enjoyed all of the technology that we got to play with. But
It was more than what electrotherapy one used or what types of treatment you implemented. There was this whole aspect of motivation, of understanding your patient, understanding your client and working out how could you help them want to be better in the right way. And that might be a sports person who you’re trying to encourage them to rest.
sports people and very motivated people want to keep going and doing damage to their body, but getting them to rest or maybe people who needed to be motivated to get out and about and start to trust their knee or their ankle once again in order for them to get better. So I went through a period of reflection and I worked in a bar for a little bit, which I loved.
because yeah, it was really fun and a very different environment. But I decided I wanted to do PR because that’s all about motivation. It’s all about influence. It was all of these things that I’d started to learn about, but they don’t really talk about in physio at university. So.
Monique Zytnik (02:46.736)
That’s how I ended up and I applied and I went to RMIT University to do my postgraduate in public relations communications and then went on to do a masters.
Ana (02:57.976)
Do you still see your clients as patients?
You
Monique Zytnik (03:03.768)
Well, I was very much, typically in the hospital environment, it’s very much that in the hospital they are patients and then once you get to the outpatients, they’re called clients. So I see the people I work with as clients. I’m there to help.
Ana (03:25.582)
So they’ve been out of hospital, right? They’ve been fixed in a sense. Forgive the going out of a tangent. Clients are… That’s right. It’s interesting, right? So working in PR to see your clients, if you work as a consultant or as an agency to see as people on the road to recovery. think that should give people a little bit to think. But you started in Australia.
Monique Zytnik (03:31.098)
But they’re on the road, hopefully on the road to recovery. Nothing so seriously broken.
Ana (03:54.398)
Yet you’re not in Australia anymore, are you?
Monique Zytnik (03:58.5)
No, so I’m in Berlin. I have a bit, and my family has a bit of a love affair with Berlin. We, I was finishing my masters and we thought, you know, let’s go to Berlin, not too expensive. Monique can do the study and then we’ll move on to London. And of course I, we ended up staying for six years that time. And I eventually got to London with work and it was just,
busy. think I had too much of an experience trying to get the tube from the airport or something like that. It wasn’t my thing. And then we sort of popped back and forth from Australia to Berlin. We were actually in lockdown here in Berlin and then couldn’t get back to Australia because the borders closed and then eventually decided to move to Berlin for good just over a year ago, so a year and a half in June 20.
23.
Ana (05:01.774)
Look at that, so you’re a Berliner now and not only that you’re a Berliner, you can’t sit still. As far as I know, you wrote a book, a very intriguing and incredibly useful book called Internal Communication in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. What inspired you to write the book?
Monique Zytnik (05:23.226)
So I’d been in Europe and working with clients such as DHL on 3D environments and sort of like a metaverse environment which requires a different way of thinking and started to talk about immersive communication at different conferences including the IABC World Conference. And to me there was this real need
to build on the existing theories and models that we have to allow us to explain the ways of communicating for the future, to think of it in a holistic way without just throwing out what we’ve had in the past, but building on it. And also a simple overarching model because of all of the complexity of nowadays, we need things that are simple. Simple model that we can also use to explain
to leaders how effective communication at scale works. There are so many books, Anna, for leaders on interpersonal communication, how to communicate with their team or how to be a charismatic leader. But they’re really, in fact, I believe my book’s the first one. There aren’t any books that help them understand how to communicate at scale.
with their people. It’s something that they usually learn on the job. And it’s an ongoing frustration with communication professionals when they need to get something done a certain way and their leader is the one with the power, with the budget and the decision-making ability. And they don’t get the need to be strategic. They don’t get the need to move beyond just simple tactics and actually build things together in
a sensible, comprehensive way that is actually going to get results. And that’s what my book does. It explains a simple way of not only communicating this between the communications practitioner and the leader, but also for the leader to understand how the tactics built out into an effective strategy that’s going to get business results.
Ana (07:43.768)
So in a way, your book is not at all for communicators. It’s demystifying coms to those who run businesses or own businesses and run teams, and they think they know how this is done.
Monique Zytnik (07:58.662)
But quite often they know that they don’t, they just haven’t had time to learn how to do it. And quite often they’re going on gut feeling as well. But a good communicator will often work with their leader and upskill them. But you’re absolutely correct, It is a book for communication professionals more broadly and also business leaders. So you’re head of HR, head of IT, and it’s to help
explain how internal communication works in our age of artificial intelligence because things are just so much more busier, so much crazier, so much more change that the only way to be effective is to be strategic.
Ana (08:42.508)
Now, let’s take it one step at a time. Now, I know you’re recording your book right now. So for those of, you know, our listeners and everybody else who is not bothered to read it, though I highly recommend reading it. You’re going to read it to them. But while we’re waiting for you to finish, let’s go a little bit deeper. So in your book, you have a beautiful but very useful three layered model.
where you talk about having a foundation, then network and immersive, and you sort of explain how this model, so again, going from foundation to network and immersive, places employees at the center of com strategies. Could you explain a little bit more? These are your concepts. It would be silly if I did and I…
most likely have the chance of messing it up. you know, here it is from the author. There’s no, you know, with no doubt this is the correct interpretation of the model.
Monique Zytnik (09:41.842)
you
Monique Zytnik (09:46.744)
okay.
Monique Zytnik (09:51.022)
and award-winning author Anna. That was the wonderful news that I woke up to this morning. The model is, think of it like a layer, layers of cake, but there’s a bottom layer that needs to be fulfilled. And that’s based on David Berlow’s sender receiver model that everybody knows. It’s the, let’s,
Ana (09:53.964)
Yay!
Monique Zytnik (10:20.58)
Let me send you a message, you receive it and send something back. And that’s now considered the dialogue model. Some people talk about push and pull, which I absolutely hate. And that’s another thing to talk about. But the basic of this, basic focus of this is that you have to know your audience. That’s first and foremost. And it’s the modern version of David Berlow’s model. So just this absolute focus on knowing your audience.
But then that’s extracted across the other layers. So the network layer is understanding your communities and how the networks work together, how people are influencing each other. And I’ve just finished Seth Godden’s book on strategy and he talks a lot about networks. So that fits all in there. And then that’s taken even further to immersive communication where
not only is it about knowing your audience and knowing how they interact with other people and how that influence works, but then putting them in the centre of the experience and it’s experience based communication. giving them choice, giving them agency in how they consume content, how they interact with it, and how they’re affected by it. So it’s…
also a little bit subliminal. So moving slightly into the dark arts where those topics of ethics that I know that you’ve been speaking about with your other guests come into play, particularly at this more nuanced and sophisticated way of communicating. And it’s the way for the future as well, if you look at our content overloaded world.
Ana (12:15.576)
But in this model, so you said we have a cake, we need to understand first how individuals connect with one another, but it’s never dual relationships, right? So this is what you’re saying. Basically in the network level, we need to understand that we are part of multiple communities at the same time, groups, and they don’t work in the same way, right? And so then the top of that, as you said, this immersive element is how
how we talk about effective communication. But in this every level though, this means that you would have different tactics, right? Different tactics to connect with different issues and people that would help you move forward or identify common interests or share values. So how, what are these tactics and how do they help
organizations first and then I have another question about how they might not help.
Monique Zytnik (13:20.24)
Yeah. So, an easy way to think about it is maybe not a cake, but maybe a toolbox where you’ve got these different tactics or tools in each level. And you know, those beautiful toolboxes that you see at the hardware store or that you might have in your shed where you open it out and you’ve got these like three different layers and you can select what you need from each layer. And if we look at the network layer,
Ana (13:46.414)
Mm-hmm.
Monique Zytnik (13:50.426)
You might have a massive campaign, but you might think about, okay, we want to spread this campaign across different branches in the organization, across silos. And then you could look at how do you form champions? So a champion network would be a perfect example of a strategic part of the network layer.
And things that you might use as tactics would be to have your identified champions or influencers within your organisation, set up meetings with them regularly to get that consistency, share with them new, say if you’re announcing a technology project or a change project, share with them early and get their feedback and work with that network.
to get them to give you ideas and insights. And then when they’re happy and ready on board, activating them and working with them for them to spread it beyond your network, beyond the champion network through to employees. So you get that peer to peer communication. So these, and that’s where you’d equip them with say appropriate.
Ana (15:06.572)
Mm.
Monique Zytnik (15:17.392)
gifts, gifts, not gifts, but gifts, assets, maybe hot kind of news that they get. They’re the first ones to announce it. You’re not announcing it from the CEO. It’s a peer to peer announcement of, did you hear, or guess what? This is the new feature. So you, so you, they’re the tactics that fit in with this bigger part of the strategy.
And the reason why this is so important is that a lot of people or a lot of practitioners will hear from senior leaders, we need a video. But how do they explain all the other bits and pieces that need to go around that to make it effective and the different focus areas that they need? Like a video could be anything.
But if you’re equipping your champion network to share maybe their own videos of their own experience with a particular product or a particular technology that they’re promoting through their network, then it’s a very different experience and outcome than if you’re creating a CEO formal video. So that’s how it works. It’s really to help with the thinking and put things into…
easy to use toolbox where you can get the tools that you need without getting lost in the process.
Ana (16:48.92)
But you also mentioned, I mean, your book reviews and then integrates a lot of the science and the models that have been published in the past. One of the things you keep on coming back to, at times quite explicitly, is the importance of stakeholder mapping and engagement. And you and I have had the opportunity to speak about this on multiple occasions in the past.
But in practices and you know my pet peeve that in practice, individuals often focus on broad groups. This is what some of the models out there are suggesting to you, you know, that everybody needs to stand big and then go smaller and smaller. But for at least my experience is that, you know, we don’t go smaller and smaller. We just get fed up with it. Then we leave it with groups or we don’t have time for it. For internal comms in particular, groups are completely not helpful.
So you’re talking about how the stakeholder mapping and analysis is quite important to help you to find those peers. Do you have any recommendations of how do you get a nuanced understanding without sticking to groups, the department so and the other departments so? mean, departments don’t decide things. It’s the people in the departments with the relationships in the departments that decide things. So what do you recommend?
Monique Zytnik (18:17.432)
Absolutely, Ana. It’s one of communication is about relationships. And we just had a fantastic event recently with the IABC here in Berlin with key leaders from Meta, Coca-Cola and Fraser name medical. And it comes down to the relationships and relationships quite often are on that one to one level.
So my recommendation when looking at your stakeholder mapping is to first, I mean, the very simple one is you can use, look at who is going to, who needs to be, it’s the racy model, you can either use the racy model, but you need to really sit there and look at who’s going to promote as in individual people.
who is going to be on board and promote what I’m doing, who’s going to disadvantage from this project, who’s got a pet peeve, and who might be sitting on the fence that I need to influence and get on board for it to be successful. Because I haven’t been a part of any major or even a minor comms change campaign.
without needing to have the right stakeholders on board from the start and have it. It’s like aligning your troops, going into battle. You’re not going to be successful if it’s all big and fluffy. And one of my managers, it was a long time ago, I think in my first internal comms job, gave me the advice, never walk into a room hoping to influence without…
knowing the opinions, the views and the positioning of every single person in that room beforehand.
Ana (20:22.05)
So you go back to research in that sense. Let me park that question about research in a moment because I do know that’s also an important part in your book. But since you speak about influencing, you speak about relationships, the bright side of comms is that it can persuade.
Monique Zytnik (20:31.014)
Mm-hmm.
Ana (20:45.826)
That the dark side of coms is that it can persuade rights and and particularly in organizational context. Everything that we’ve seen so far, not everything, but a big area of research is focused with organizational strategy and therefore in plain English is getting organizations their way, right? They get what they want and they get to tell other people what is the right thing to do.
However, there’s this other area of research that is way more concerned with comms dividing. So you spoke about knowing and going into a meeting knowing where people are sitting on any particular issues, what their preferences are, because that can help you both in the process of alignment. You spoke about identifying peers because that can foster in-group cohesion. But, but, you know, you spoke about relationships, people have preferences. So that might also mean that identifying peers, identifying opinion leaders, if you if you want, you might also end up suppressing dissent or concealing wrongdoing. One example, and allow me to put this just a little bit more into context. A few years ago, if you might recall,
When we started talking about diversity and inclusion, as well as about toxic environments at work, Google had a big walkout, if you recall, because one of the things that Google did, and it was by the book, is have internal structures that would allow, not quite whistleblowing, but would allow one to report cases of abuse, toxic relationships. However, within the American context, it turned out that if those issues were addressed internally, they couldn’t be turned into legal cases later on, should the people wanted that, right? So the same desire to do something right by some people meant quieting it down and suppressing it for others. How can we, how can you encourage
Ana (23:09.666)
This is my question, how can we encourage dialogue and transparency without that, without the dark, you know, and the negative effects of basically quieting down and ostracizing those that might not align perfectly with what the organization wants or might not respond in the same lines as the peers that we found to help us promote these causes? Long question, I know, but loads of context too, right?
Monique Zytnik (23:37.444)
good. I’ll do my best. There are two things. There’s the policy and the culture and what you’re trying to achieve from what you’ve written down and you’ve worked out. And then there’s the communication, which brings it to life, which helps communicate it, helps encourage people to exhibit the right behaviors, encourages people to be aware of…things like what the policies are, helps people be aware of as a manager what I can and can’t do. And then there’s the learning and development component that quite often crosses over with the communication in terms of the training. And in this particular case, like a lot of communicators also find the problem that
The senior leaders want communications to fix everything. And you can’t, I’m sorry, you can’t fix a shit sandwich. If you’ve got a really crappy policy and they haven’t thought out if we do this or if we have this internal whistle blowing and we don’t put these other guard rails in place, if your policy’s not right, then you can communicate all you want. You can engage people all you want. You can…teach people about it all you want, but you still have a crappy policy.
And that’s one of our jobs is to help our leaders understand what communication and what influence can help with and where they just need to go back to the drawing board. I was speaking with a very senior leader before who was, it was a couple of months ago now, who was very, very frustrated because the DE &I team wanted to communicate about DE &I. And he was like,
Monique Zytnik (25:39.952)
But we don’t have any policies. Like, what are the policies? Like, what’s the foundational framework and structure in where we sit on all of this? This needs to be worked out first and then we can communicate.
Ana (25:53.132)
It’s funny because I think you’re becoming a German now. You speak about processes and policies before you talk about communicating, which is a very German cultural trait. mean, aside, Germans are a big on process and procedure. So well noted. Welcome to Germany, we’ll say.
Monique Zytnik (26:12.27)
It’s not just that, I’ve worked in startups and I’ve worked in government. I’ve worked in places where the process and the policy has held back communication and held back advancement because the process was too cumbersome. But I’ve also worked in organizations where there was no policy and the confusion that comes when nobody’s really sure what the rules are because they’re not written down and not explicit, then there’s too much room for movement and too much room for misunderstanding because there’s not that common agreed upon position.
Ana (27:02.008)
So something is important to be written, right? The essence, doesn’t need to be much, but there needs to be something so that teams and more teams together can work both towards as well as upon. I think they can build upon. Something to remember.
Monique Zytnik (27:21.466)
And that’s why we write down communication plans. It’s fine if you’re working on a project by yourself, you can keep it in your head, but the moment that you want to be collaborating with people and potentially a large number of people, it helps to even have a one-pager with your thinking down on paper, the proverbial paper in our digital world, but that’s why we write communication plans. That’s why we…spend the time to do it. And that’s why we email it or put it in a shared drive or send it to someone on Slack. But it’s for that common understanding.
Ana (28:03.446)
Now, one of the other things that you’ve mentioned in your book and we’ve already touched upon is measurement. mean, even even this act of writing things down is essential if you want to set up measurement. Right. It’s your benchmark in a sense. And every every sort of project, as long as it’s organized, would have to have a beginning and a reference. Right. And if these things aren’t written, then it’s challenging. But in your book, you talk quite a little bit about communication measurement, but you try to steer your readers away from employee engagement metrics. Which, by the way, I’m very happy to see we’ve had these conversations, but you’re not here because of my approval or because of my agreement with what you wrote. But I wonder if you would have other, I don’t
Monique Zytnik (28:49.798)
Thank you, thank you.
Ana (29:02.752)
alternative areas that internal comms should focus on and if there are any specific metrics that you would recommend so that you would have a more holistic view of comms and then we stop looking at vanity metrics you know so many clicks so many hearts so many likes so much reach because you know the the pet of the person was there and so it’s not two eyes but it’s four and the tail. So how do we move away from these engagement easy metrics that platforms would usually provide to us to something that is more meaning?
Monique Zytnik (29:43.792)
And this is the question that I get from a lot of practitioners is what should my dashboard look like? And my answer is, what are you trying to measure? What are your goals? I can’t tell you what needs to be on your dashboard unless I actually know what you’re trying to achieve. And you’re absolutely right about the vanity metrics, Anna, and about the employee. So employee engagement.
Ana (29:55.214)
you
Monique Zytnik (30:13.78)
measurement measures what your key performance indicators are. So you need to know what your key performance, what’s key performance for you. And engagement measures the amount of effort or, so there’s a circular sort of link with employee engagement, employee alignment and understanding and some, sorry, it’s just popped out of my head. Employee engagement, employee alignment and gosh. And are you going to have to cut that bit out? Cause it’s, I’ve got a mental blank here.
Ana (31:05.358)
You can look for it. me make a note of the time.
Monique Zytnik (31:09.124)
Hang on. Just make him a note of the time. I’ll just grab it. One second.
Monique Zytnik (31:23.024)
So if we talk about employee engagement, employee engagement is a certain measure. It’s not a measure of everything. It doesn’t measure how happy an employee is. It doesn’t measure how likely they are to stay with the company. And it doesn’t measure how productive they are. can be, well, one of my… One of my friends says, they’re like, they can be like free range chickens. They can be running around super engaged and super busy, but not actually being productive and working on what the company needs them to work on it. And this is why it is a false friend. It’s an important measurement, but it’s not the only and the right measurement. And you and I both, very much enjoy Jim McNamara’s work because he encourages a range of measurement points. There is everything from what you’re actually doing. You have to do something for something to change. So you’ve got to measure what you’re doing. And that’s still a valid point. We sent out five emails. That’s fantastic. You did five emails.
But then what next? So we look at things like clicks and open rates. Yeah, clicks and open rates or social media posts. So we put out five social media posts and we have this many likes. So that’s the vanity metrics. And then it goes further. Like what did that achieve? How many shares did we get? How many later on changes or is there anything that you can measure?
Ana (32:50.68)
who opened them, right?
Monique Zytnik (33:17.67)
that shows the outcomes of what you’ve done. So we sent out five emails and all of them opened by 50 % of the staff. And there was an increase in the number of people who signed up to Anna’s podcast. Because it’s the best podcast, obviously. But then what’s the impact? Then what’s the impact?
Ana (33:35.854)
Mm.
Ana (33:39.842)
debatable, but thank you. That’s right.
Monique Zytnik (33:45.392)
So we take it even further. What’s the impact? Has Ana got plenty of new subscribers? And does that mean that she’s competing against with Stephen Bartlett for sponsorship money and all of the rest? Like what’s the business outcome at the end that we’re getting to? And if I can just go back to…the employee engagement.
Ana (34:18.936)
She says flipping through her own book just so that you know what’s going on in the background. But while you look for that impact, because you gave the example of the podcast, impact would be either in knowledge or preference or behavior, right? It depends what we’re working on. But for the podcast, impact could be, I have learned something and therefore I have changed my mind about public relations, right, from servant to strategist or to responsible persuader. The other might be I will do something else, I will change my practice as a result or I will buy Monique’s book, right, so that impact goes beyond the immediate and the immediate result. within that channel, right? Because we were talking about the podcast. And then one of the other things would be value. What does that mean to me, you know, emotionally? And it might mean that I feel less alone in mopping about, know, moaning about the things that work or don’t work in cons. Or I feel more empowered in raising my voice in the future. But you found your stuff in your book. So going back to employee engagement
Monique Zytnik (35:46.964)
But first, I also wanted to point out that you might have low vanity metrics, but you might be reaching your impact. And that’s essentially what counts. The impact is what you’ve set out to do with your comms, whether it’s impact on the business, whether it’s impact on you as a person, whether it’s an impact on other people and their views. it’s you.
if you stick to vanity metrics, you’re potentially shooting yourself in the foot and feeling sad about some vanity metrics you haven’t met yet, you’re still reaching that impact level. But the thing I wanted to…
Ana (36:26.946)
That’s, but while you go back, it’s just we had the Digital Communication Awards recently a case when someone came and presented really fantastic organization, but you wouldn’t necessarily think of an organization in that field, right? Someone who goes through the seas and ships stuff, right? And their metrics, when we saw them, were rather low. I mean, funnel and everything.
Monique Zytnik (36:34.917)
Mm-hmm.
Ana (36:57.122)
The first thing that you have associated with metrics and with comms is that big numbers are good, right? Because from big numbers, then you can go to smaller numbers and smaller numbers and smaller numbers. But then we had the pitches at the Digital Communication Awards and the person who was representing the organization came and explained they didn’t need to reach that many people, but they needed to reach the very good people. And one person converted meant millions.
in return for this organization. And so that’s exactly what you’re saying. Sometimes you really do not need those big numbers and we’re fooled by this story of big numbers are good, but rather, you know, the impact that conversion, what it means that what it brings and return is what matters. But I’ve interrupted you three times over. Now I’ll keep it to myself.
Monique Zytnik (37:48.602)
No, no, no, no, no, no. I just want to be indulgent and pick up on this one, indulgent for myself, pick up on this one, Anna, because people often forget that comms is trying to reach a goal and you have a clear goal or outcome and you need to be focused on that and measuring that outcome. And then everything that you do, to get there is fantastic and great, but unless you’re actually reaching that outcome, what was the point of all your blood, sweat and tears or your energy or the time, money and resources? So I love the example that you just gave of the comms strategy, which reached that outcome and it didn’t need all the vanity metrics in the middle because that’s not what they were setting out to do.
And that’s what I would like when everyone talks about their dashboard, I would like everyone to stop and think, what are the outcomes and what are the actual different steps along to McNamara’s model that they would expect to see to reach that out.
But the bit about employee engagement that I found really interesting and actually learned through doing my book, because I had a lot of conversations with a lot of exceptional practitioners, including Belinda Ganaway. And we came up with a model because we were having an oustage, as you say in journey, a big discussion about where this fits in the employee engagement.
And we worked out that there is this really clear relationship between employee alignment, employee experience and employee engagement. And these components fit together and it’s yet another reason why just focusing on one isn’t the solution. It’s not the solution in terms of looking at all of the measurement and metrics, but it’s also not the solution in terms of
Monique Zytnik (39:59.578)
getting holistic outcomes. So it’s about the employee experience, which is how employees feel about their experience across all elements and their interactions with the organization, its people and the work. And it’s quite often those employee lifecycle moments. So that’s the employee experience. And we all know about the EVP and those different components. Then there’s the employee experience feeds into employee engagement. So if they’re having a good experience, they’re more likely to be engaged. And this is the level of commitment, the enthusiasm, the dedication that they have towards the company. And in my cynical mind, companies love this because it means more over time. It means more that our human minds and bodies are putting into the organization potentially for free. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing because quite often people find that fulfilling, but we need to be clear and recognize that. And sometimes it can also be elements of fear. So I’ve worked with organizations where people will work stupidly long hours because they’re fearful. Because they’re almost to a point where it’s detrimental to their health. They are fearful for either how they will be societally treated within their team. So some of those behaviors, they could be fearful of losing their job. They could be fearful of, yeah, not having promotion opportunities, a number of things, but it’s not necessarily a good thing.
And again, they might not be productive. They might be working on the wrong projects. And then the last bit is the employee alignment, which is about working on the right projects. describes the understanding and acceptance that employees have of the company’s goals, purpose, mission, and strategy. And it’s also the extent to which they translate the understanding of this into the daily decisions and actions.
Monique Zytnik (42:26.534)
that they make. So this is why all of these elements fit together because employee engagement without employee alignment is not beneficial necessarily to the organization because they might be very engaged but working on the wrong projects. And then employee alignment feeds into the employee experience again because they feel that they’re contributing and they’re making a positive impact within their organisation.
Ana (43:03.022)
So this is how you end up with the dashboard in a sense, right? You work backwards from the change that you want to see or the image of what successful is and you work yourself backwards through the channels, through the messages, obviously through the stakeholders and their interactions to get there. But you mentioned fear. And so I’m going to jump to your next sort of level of the book.
You speak a lot more in your book about immersive communication, although, you know, this is this is a book that is supposed to tackle and is tackling to a degree. Internal comes in the age of AI. When I think of AI, there’s been quite a bit of fear when large language models last year in particular made this this considerable leap from being gibberish and just fun to play with to
Monique Zytnik (45:06.396)
Sure. I’m just a humble person. So I don’t think I can make AI go away. And I don’t think anyone else can. So it’s here to stay. We can either understand it and use it in the best way possible to help our lives be easier. And understanding also means understanding the pitfalls, understanding where our human rights might be impacted. understanding what we can do to protect ourselves. So that’s my positioning is it’s a technology, it’s an element of technology. And quite often nowadays, I think we use different parts of AI without even realizing it. And it’s about, it’s about making sure that it’s working for us and that we’re being some art and that we’re protecting ourselves and as well.
So more broadly, I can see there are a lot of opportunities and a lot of ways that people are already using AI in the comms space. And it would be silly for us to ignore that. It would be silly for us to say, I’ve got a vacuum cleaner, but I’m going to leave it in the cupboard and I’ll just get out my little dust pan and broom and just try and somehow keep the house clean just. with that. mean, the technology is there to help us. so that’s why I encourage communication teams, and I’ve got a section in my book, sort of an overarching way that you can do this. But to again, look at what is their positioning and their function in the organization? What processes do they have? And where can AI make things easier for them? It might be
Let me give you an example. I remember not that long ago, well, it was a while ago maybe. I had a job writing, it was one of my first comms jobs in the Premier’s media unit in Victoria. And it was in this media unit with these ex-journalists. We had to be careful because I’d throw the footy across the room and you had to duck in time, otherwise it might hit you on the head.
Monique Zytnik (47:30.362)
And they’d sometimes get out the cricket game and play cricket. This is in the government department. It was really lovely. They were super smart, very confident journalists that we were working with. And I had this role to take the tapes from the doorstop. So the premier’s doorstop and out of the little cassette recorder and put it in this machine that had a foot pedal. And I’d press the foot pedal. and listen to what he was saying and try and type it out. So type out the transcripts for this audio recording. Now fast forward to now. I can take a digital file, upload it into my Microsoft Word. It’s not even a fancy program. It’s a basic office product and have a transcript that’s pretty good in just a matter of seconds. Now, am I going to be
Monique Zytnik (48:32.317)
Am I going to be insisting that I have my little dictaphone audio tape, let’s say analog audio tape, those little tiny ones, and be sitting there with a pedal machine trying to listen as a football game is going on across my head? And this is not like soccer, this is Australian rules football with a big red oval ball flying across your head. Am I going to be doing that or am I going to take the quick and easy option? and just have a digital file uploaded into the transcript option in Microsoft Word and get on with the other stuff I need to do.
Monique Zytnik (49:22.644)
I was crap, Ana. I was crap. I’m sorry. was a temp job. was honored to be in such a privileged part of the organization, but it was crap. I learned a lot. got to speak with the premier’s speech writer and things like this. And I was just starting out my career, but I was crap at typing out stuff from an audio thing that I couldn’t quite hear anyway. I’m glad for the improvements.
Well, I would like practitioners and also emerging professionals, so students, to think about in our content glut world that is only getting worse at the moment because AI can write stuff super quick. It’s never a question about having enough content now. How are you going to engage with your key stakeholders or target audience in a meaningful way that makes an impact and gets results that you want. And so, so this is where in my book, I propose this immersive communication mindset, which is looking at more at a really personalized and also experienced based approach to communication. So having that mindset, and rethinking how you do things instead of saying, let’s do a content marketing campaign. It’s like, well, that might’ve been effective a couple of years ago, but I don’t know unless you pull some fancy strings and have a great following, if that’s going to get you the results that you want now. And then the people might even have forgotten by tomorrow. So think about the time and energy that you’re spending and rethink about how you can get. to your end goal, to the outcome that you’re trying to achieve in a better way. And I think that’s why we’re seeing a lot more of an appetite for in-person, a lot more of an appetite of people getting together and less of a desire for the online events. And it’s because people want that experience. People want… the sights, the sounds, the smells, the hugs, the…more than just what’s on a screen. And it was really interesting at the event the other day, was Sigrid Ustereith, from Metta, director of communication for Central Europe, who said that our new role is like a spider, a spider web bringing the relationships toget and focusing on repetition, consistency, those types of things, rather than, and that we need to, again, go back to that knowing your stakeholders, knowing them really well and pre-briefing, understanding them, preparing them for things and working closely together.
Thank you, Ana. So it’s the Goody Business Book Award that focuses on business books that give a social impact. And that’s something right up my alley. And the award that I was a winner for was the Technology Game Changer. And I also won a, is it a follow-up or a finalist, I think is the word, award for marketing, communication and PR for that category. And for an internal comms book to be globally up against all of the marketing PR comms books available and to be recognized in the category as a finalist is something that definitely put a smile on my face and a little warmth in my voice, I think.
Monique Zytnik (56:35.216)
Thank you so much, Ana. It’s been an absolute pleasure. I love your show.