6 ways to measure—and boost—internal communications

Suppose you’re in internal communications, and your boss pulls you aside and says, “Congratulations, you’re really kicking butt.”

Or, more alarmingly, “We’re really getting our butt kicked.”

Don’t simply bask in the glow or rush out to update your résumé. The proper response is to stop and ask, “Excuse me; what is kicking butt?” Katie Paine of KD Paine & Partners said Monday.

If you haven’t defined success—or you have targeted so many goals it’s impossible to say whether you’re succeeding at any one of them—then you need to refocus, she said at Ragan’s Corporate Communicators Conference.

Paine offered pointers to help communicators succeed—and measure their success.

Here are a few:

Measure what matters.

Also known as “the kick-butt index,” your key performance indicators must be chosen carefully to reflect the goals of the organization, Paine said. If you’ve got 47 indicators, “you’re not going to get anything done,” she said.