This episode features an interview with Elizabeth Baskin, CEO of Tribe, Inc., an internal communications boutique working with global brands. Before launching Tribe, she was the CEO of consumer branding agency MATCH, and held management and creative positions at several other ad agencies. In this episode, Shawn sits down with Elizabeth to discuss the effectiveness of editorial boards and content training for global communications, strategies for maintaining employee engagement and motivation, and the need for honest communications during times of change and uncertainty.
This episode features an interview with Elizabeth Baskin, CEO of Tribe, Inc., an internal communications boutique working with global brands. Before launching Tribe, she was the CEO of consumer branding agency MATCH, and held management and creative positions at several other ad agencies.
In this episode, Shawn sits down with Elizabeth to discuss the effectiveness of editorial boards and content training for global communications, strategies for maintaining employee engagement and motivation, and the need for honest communications during times of change and uncertainty.
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“The very most important best practice for internal comms is to recognize that employees do not have to read, watch, listen to anything you do. They don't have to. There's this expectation that they will read it because they're an employee and you're talking for corporate. No. You're competing with Instagram and Hulu and whatever else. You can't write a 700 word wall of text and email it and think everybody's going to find that call to action somewhere in the 17th paragraph. You have to realize that you are not talking to employees in a vacuum. You're talking to them in this world of distractions and media onslaught.” – Elizabeth Baskin
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Episode Timestamps:
*(02:39): Rapid fire questions
*(06:42): Elizabeth dives into Tribe, Inc.
*(16:04): The challenges of communicating with a deskless workforce
*(27:44): How comms can affect culture
*(32:07): The importance of honest communications
*(41:44): Future internal communications trends
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Links:
Connect with Elizabeth on LinkedIn
Connect with Shawn on LinkedIn
Shawn Pfunder: Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Cohesion podcast. Today I'm joined by Elizabeth Baskin. She's the CEO and Executive Creative Director of Tribe Inc. She is a recognized thought leader in the internal communications industry and stresses the power of creating human connections through communications.
Shawn Pfunder: Elizabeth has been featured in publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal to Fast Company, and she is the author of five books. And I'm super excited to get to know her better. Welcome to the show, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Baskin: Thanks, Shawn. So nice to be here.
Shawn Pfunder: There's going to be a lot of fun. I've been, we both know this from all the research on internal communications, employee experience, like trust is huge and building trust is huge.
Shawn Pfunder: And one of the easiest ways to do that is to get to know a person and demand that they be vulnerable in front of you.
Shawn Pfunder: So I have, I have some introductory questions for you to get to know you a little bit better.
Elizabeth Baskin: Great.
Shawn Pfunder: Right on. Well, the first one is what is your golden rule for work?
Elizabeth Baskin: Be kind.
Shawn Pfunder: I love that it's straightforward and not like the long do unto others.
Elizabeth Baskin: Just be nice.
Shawn Pfunder: Just be nice. What's an insult you've received that you're proud of?
Elizabeth Baskin: You're shorter in person.
Elizabeth Baskin: People don't realize and you may think I'm 5'2 Who knows?
Elizabeth Baskin: But then in person, I'm not.
Shawn Pfunder: I love that that's the, it's a compliment.
Elizabeth Baskin: Well, it's an insult, but.
Shawn Pfunder: But you're proud of it. You're proud of it. You know who you are. And what are the top five most opened apps on your phone right now?
Elizabeth Baskin: If I go through the day, it is New York Times, Duolingo, Starbucks, Peloton, and Find My Friends.
Elizabeth Baskin: I like to know everybody in the family is where they should be before I go to sleep. Ha ha ha.
Shawn Pfunder: That is so great. That says so much about you. Like so often it's.
Elizabeth Baskin: Oh no. What does that say?
Shawn Pfunder: Well, no, in a wonderful way. Like so often it's email, Twitter, New York Times camera app or whatever, but you've got Peloton.
Shawn Pfunder: Find my friends Star Starbucks in there as well. Yeah,
Elizabeth Baskin: Starbucks definitely.
Shawn Pfunder: No, it's perfect. What was the one actually right after New York Times? That was the one that I love the most. I can't remember. Duolingo. Duolingo. What are you, what are you studying?
Elizabeth Baskin: I'm doing French this year. I did Latin for a year and that was maybe not as useful as I hoped it would be.
Shawn Pfunder: Why, why Latin? Why did you pick Latin?
Elizabeth Baskin: I always wish I had taken Latin at school and I didn't. I, I didn't. Transferred out of it into something else, like karate or something, so, because it was hard, but I don't know, I thought, you know, so much of our language is based, I thought it'd be very useful. I don't really use it day to day as much as I thought.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, not a lot of people. Well, because you're a writer, you work with language a lot. Did you find some of that? Useful at all, or is it pretty much, I already knew this stuff?
Elizabeth Baskin: No, well, a lot of what it was, we, the word for fish sauce was very prevalent. And, I mean, it was not stuff that literature is based on.
Elizabeth Baskin: It was garum, and the French is much more fun to me.
Shawn Pfunder: Garum. What is a common myth? about your expertise about internal communications and employee experience?
Elizabeth Baskin: The one that bugs me the most is that it's okay to set a lower bar for internal communications creatively. That it's okay to use less talented writers and designers than you would on your brand advertising.
Elizabeth Baskin: For some reason, there is this myth that it's, it doesn't matter if it's internal comms. That's not our approach.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. I mean, that's true. They get like, what I've seen is great writers, great communicators and internal comms and a big company are ripe for getting picked or poached into marketing, into,
Elizabeth Baskin: Yeah, and brand, external brand.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, like that's pretty. Yeah, that is pretty common.
Elizabeth Baskin: My husband and I both started our careers in ad agencies, and it took me a while to come around to pivoting to an internal comms focus at Tribe. Because when I was coming up in the agency business, if you were really, really talented, you were in LA shooting the television commercial.
Elizabeth Baskin: And if you were not as talented, you were writing that commercial. Company newsletter over there, you know, but that was a long time ago and I think internal comms agencies and creatives, the bar is so much higher now than it used to be. Thank goodness.
Shawn Pfunder: I want to talk about Tribe for sure. I love your website.
Shawn Pfunder: I love what you're doing. We're peas in a pod, so to speak, on our philosophy on doing comms. But before I do, like you mentioned that you started ad agency. So you started the external facing, the sort of the I want to call it flashy or sexy and that's not necessarily what it's like all the time. But why then the switch over to internal comms?
Elizabeth Baskin: That is a longer story, but essentially Tribe was founded as a creative branding boutique and we grew very quickly primarily because of one large flooring brand with really lovely people. And we started doing actually. Magazine and television for them. And it grew and it grew and it became 70 percent of our business.
Elizabeth Baskin: And our other clients were either, you know, Atlanta brands or UPS, Home Depot, Porsche, and we were doing internal comms for those big brands. And during the housing crash, our flooring brand couldn't pay their retainer anymore. So suddenly we couldn't afford this staff we had Staffed up to bid. So, it gave me a chance, really.
Elizabeth Baskin: It was a disaster. It was awful. I had to lose a lot of people. I had to fire my personal trainer. I was late for a massage. I mean, it was, it was really awful. Um, mostly because of the people that we lost, who fortunately all went on to do bigger and better things. But, it gave me a chance to really, Reinvent and think what is the most interesting and also most profitable work we were doing.
Elizabeth Baskin: And it was internal branding for those larger global companies. So, we made the commitment to, and this is very hard if you are the owner of a small business and payroll is looming and cash flow is, So, we made the decision to commit ourselves solely to internal comms and to turn down any work that was not.
Elizabeth Baskin: And so, if somebody called us for some sort of external branding or marketing strategy or anything that didn't focus on the employee audience, we would politely decline and usually refer them to a friend who we knew would do a good job.
Elizabeth Baskin: But what that enabled us to do in the Good fortune of having a much diminished staff is that you, it gives you a little room to, to be lean.
Elizabeth Baskin: So it was okay. It was hard to turn out this is what we did. And that meant that we really were able to develop deep understanding of this then very small niche of internal comms. Yeah. So we would see the same kind of challenges. It's the same change management challenges, or the same engagement challenges, or the same internet challenges across industries, across cultures.
Elizabeth Baskin: And here we are. We did that maybe 15 years ago, we shifted to exclusively internal.
Shawn Pfunder: That is a big deal. At that time. I mean, it existed. I was working internal comms 15 years ago, but we definitely weren't talking. Alright, I mean, trying to pound the drum, but you're right from what you said earlier on your, the myth is there's not as, not as much emphasis, you're not measuring the same way you do in marketing, you're not measuring the same way you do in advertisement, you're not thinking, hey, how can I say this in five words instead of 25 words?
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah.
Elizabeth Baskin: Yes, yes.
Shawn Pfunder: Was the name of your company originally also Tribe?
Elizabeth Baskin: It was.
Shawn Pfunder: That is so cool.
Elizabeth Baskin: It is weird, isn't it? But you know, you want to know the real story of why it's funny? Yeah,
Elizabeth Baskin: I had sold the agency I had started before, and I was freelancing a little bit. And my corporate lawyer said, incorporate because you're going to end up building a company.
Elizabeth Baskin: And I was like, okay, fine. And I made a list of names, and my former agency was named Match. And I like nouns for names. I had a book called Match. Packaging company called Airplane. I like, and I made this list of names and I went to a designer friend who I worked with all the time, he's just one of the best designers in Atlanta still, and said, which one of these can you do me a free logo for?
Elizabeth Baskin: And. He went through that list with such disdain, you know what I mean, it was like, gazelle, oh my god. And he finally got to tribe, and he said, all right, I'll do tribe, but it's not going to be Native American. I was like, please, no, I'm not Native American, that's not what we know. Yeah, I don't, please. And so, the logo originally is, when we were concepting together, and I would scribble down what we were talking about, and if I liked an idea, I would do an asterisk and circle it.
Elizabeth Baskin: So, the original logo was that. And then it's evolved to something a little bit more. Standardized, and so I should tell a better story about why it's called Tribe, but that's the honest one.
Shawn Pfunder: I love that the logo came from you circling things and putting an asterisk next to it.
Elizabeth Baskin: Because that meant it was good, it was a good idea.
Shawn Pfunder: And now it's an asterisk, I mean, that's what I'm seeing on there. No, I love it. Well, like, I can see, or I'm sure the listeners can see like, okay, why would I name an external agency tribe? That makes sense. Cause we would talk about influencers. We talk about these pockets of people that kind of do the same thing.
Shawn Pfunder: And I don't know, the runners, creative people, whatever, but.
Elizabeth Baskin: It fits so well with what we do, doesn't it?
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, it does. Yeah. And what you try to accomplish with your clients and the stuff you put together. So with that, because I mean, I've been lurking around on your website, but tell us what makes Tribe so unique in this space.
Shawn Pfunder: I think you're already unique that you're an agency that does internal comps, because so much of that is just, we hire a person, but we're like, Hey, great, you got a liberal arts degree. We'll give you a job. Lucky you, but you do it outside. What makes you unique in that regard? Having an internal communications focused.
Shawn Pfunder: Company, what brings, I guess, the tribe into it? Why hire you over just hiring a person to come on?
Elizabeth Baskin: I think a lot of that has to do with our background in the agency world and consumer branding specifically, because we apply those standards of strategic thinking and creative work. So we, We grew up good branding, and we try to do good branding, but I think also it's, we talk about being a tiny global agency.
Elizabeth Baskin: We're a small group, we're very agile, with sub clients, we're just their internal comms department, almost. I think we're, it's ease of use, we're a convenient size, we try to make it easy for our clients.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, you have on your website this list of like best practices like I like I hit the page and there's beautiful art that you have all the way down it's you're doing exactly what you say you're doing like you could say like though we're really good we think about ad agency and then you go to the website or you start to look at their brand and
Shawn Pfunder: You're like, Oh, that's great. You're not
Shawn Pfunder: quite there, but it's gorgeous. And the language is spot on as far as simple, clear, direct, funny, all the way through. And you've got like employment brand, employer brand, bad content, global employees, humanizing the CEO, tone of voice. Like every single one of these you hit, send this to an internal communications person, like, Oh yeah, no, that's my life.
Shawn Pfunder: All the way through. By the way, for the listeners as well, I'm telling you this, and I know some of you are thinking, this is going to be gated. Like, this is going to be a PDF that I have to download and give them my birthday and everything that comes through. It's not at all. It's really great content, really easy to understand, not really long.
Shawn Pfunder: It's just, it's wonderful, Elizabeth. Like, I love it.
Elizabeth Baskin: Well, thank you so much.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, I love it. Out of all of that though, like that you've seen, let's say in the past year or in the past two years. What are the best practices or that you've seen that have been making the biggest impact within internal communications?
Shawn Pfunder: And I know that that's broader. We say internal communications, but it's bigger than that. But what would you give somebody advice if they had to focus on one thing to make the, or three things to make the biggest impact?
Elizabeth Baskin: I think it's one thing, actually, and I think the very most important best practice for internal comms is to recognize that employees do not have to read, watch, listen to anything you do.
Elizabeth Baskin: They don't have to. There's this expectation that they will read it. Because they're an employee and you're talking for corporate. No, you're competing with Instagram and Hulu and, you know, whatever else. So you can't write a 700 word wall of text and email it and think everybody's going to find that call to action somewhere in the 17th paragraph.
Elizabeth Baskin: It just, you have to realize that. That you are not talking to employees in a vacuum, you're talking to them in this world of distractions and media onslaught.
Shawn Pfunder: I love that. You just, you keep coming back to it, which is perfect. You operate like an ad, like know what your competition for attention is. And your competition for attention isn't the other email that's going out, or the other Slack message that's going out.
Shawn Pfunder: It's the world. That's competing for the attention on there. Let's shift gears just a little bit. U. S. jobs report came out, but it's showing trends that are happening around the world, and unemployment rate has dropped. We've added a ton of jobs, but if you look closer at it, that ton of jobs is not full time jobs sitting in an office, look at your intranet jobs, like that, that is globally, it's people that have two deskless part time jobs, folks that are only doing part time, or a lot of people that are doing contract work now, and you wrote recently, in Forbes about sort of avoiding this US centric communications.
Shawn Pfunder: But you've also talked about the deskless workforce and what I'm wondering, because this is selfish on my part, because I've only done comms for Like, the Slack organizations, the Teams organizations, the ones where, I mean, still Playful still act like an ad agency, but I get them a little bit more captive in front of a computer and making these things happen.
Elizabeth Baskin: Yeah, I was going to say, they're more of a captive audience.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, so what are, I guess it's two sided, because you can still get a captive audience globally, but, I guess, tell us more about how, and you said this, like, it's a mistake to just do it the same way across the board and to not focus on sort of a world centric view of things.
Shawn Pfunder: So, what do we do, let's say again, selfish, what do I do, what do I do to, to shift that, because that's hard for me to think about that differently, like, what are the ways that we shift? That, or we should shift our thinking in the way that we do work to do a better job at that.
Elizabeth Baskin: Globally or to non desk folks?
Shawn Pfunder: Globally first.
Elizabeth Baskin: Okay, globally. Well, we have seen this over and over and over, less so now than, a little less so now than 10 or, 10 or 15 years ago, but it's very difficult if you have a global workforce. But all your communications folks are, are in the U. S., it's, it's really difficult to not have your communications be U.S. centric.
Elizabeth Baskin: Because you just don't have a sight line into what's going on. Yeah. NDR or Germany or whatever. So we've over the years developed a couple of different approaches that we've used with clients ranging from Jeppesen that's part of Boeing to a locomotive manufacturer to a global cosmetics company.
Elizabeth Baskin: And that is to form an editorial board of people in all of those global locations and not communicators necessarily. A lot of times they're frontline people or admins or a junior level manager. But forming this board, this kind of team, and we usually will do a call monthly or quarterly that lasts 10 minutes, 12 minutes.
Elizabeth Baskin: And if we have, for instance, uh, the theme of this month's publication is innovation, then we ask people on this call, are there, can you think of examples in your location of teams or individuals who were great examples of this? And they know everybody. So they come up, I would never know that. Pretty in the, in the Chennai office, you just can't see it.
Elizabeth Baskin: So you need people who are on the ground. And those people really seem to enjoy it. They love connecting and sharing and making their teams visible. That is a, that is like a little secret weapon. And we can, and we develop relationships with them. So if somebody drops out of something, we need somebody to, Oh, we need somebody, one more person for this video.
Elizabeth Baskin: You can reach out to Priti and Shania or whoever. And the other thing that I think is, is harder to do, but it doesn't require an agency or communications people to write and edit and shoot video and all that is to train content managers or content creators. And we've done this with a big apparel brand and with a unnamed gaming company.
Elizabeth Baskin: So the, we train people who are usually communicators in all these locations to Train them on some, just in case they're not professional communicators, on some basics of how to create an article or a video, and then also how to post it on the internet. So, that relieves the load on the internal comms team because there are all these other creators, and, you know, you could set up a system where it has to be.
Elizabeth Baskin: Reviewed. They're people creating content all over the world then, and they are reporting what's going on in their team. So those two, between those two, I think you can go a long way. One is more, requires more agency help or more internal comm staffing, and one requires more trust.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you are, you're capitalizing on capitalizing.
Shawn Pfunder: You're doing what ours is already happening publicly, where it used to be like reporter, reporter, reporter. And now, like, everybody's a content creator. Everybody's making things. Everybody, everybody a writer.
Elizabeth Baskin: And that's so much easier. The content creating piece is so much easier now than it was 10 years ago.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Yeah. One thing that you mentioned about getting sort of together the, The editorial board, and you said you only meet with them for like 10 to 12 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes?
Elizabeth Baskin: It's, it is so efficient. And partly it's because we'll, ahead of time, say, this publication is themed around something or we're looking for, we need a day in the life person in, Chicago office or the Paris office.
Elizabeth Baskin: And so they know ahead of time and they come with some ideas. And then if people are, are, you know, you've got to deal with time zones, people in India may not show up. But I think we come very prepared and the people have had a chance to think about it. And it is just beautiful. Super fast.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Any chance you get like creating an editorial board.
Shawn Pfunder: And I think I've talked to other communication specialists, people that do this and they're like, why can't I get buy in? Why can't I get people to do it? Why can't I get my CEO to do this? Why can't I? And half the time. My recommendation is you're asking way too much of them, like way too much time, way too much effort.
Shawn Pfunder: And what is it that you really want? And the minute you said 10 to 12 minutes, like, well, yeah, of course, of course they'll join. They want to have a voice.
Elizabeth Baskin: We do the same thing with CEOs. When we are interviewing them or typing them, we'll schedule it for maybe 20 minutes and try to get done before that.
Elizabeth Baskin: So you just have to be prepared, focus, and then make it as easy as possible for them. Because they've got other things going on.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, the same question outside of the sort of the global side, what do we do? Because it's not just that it's a desk-less workforce, like there's a lot of There's a lot of stress, a lot of competition for time across the board within the industry.
Shawn Pfunder: People that have two part time jobs and they're deskless. How do you get to those folks that aren't going to be sitting in a computer, that they're not captivated? They probably never hear from the CEO outside of maybe an email that comes out.
Elizabeth Baskin: That they don't get because they don't have the company email.
Shawn Pfunder: That's right. You're absolutely right. I mean, you've got the contractors. I guess not only how do we communicate with them or what are sort of the best practices with that, but. How do we affect, and this is kind of where we're going to be headed next, which I'm really excited about, but how do we, how do we keep them motivated?
Shawn Pfunder: How do we keep them inspired? How do we, like, or is that not our job? It's like, Hey, listen, find it deep down in your soul, find out what the meaning in your life is, and then you do it. Or is there something that we can do as communicators and creators to affect that?
Elizabeth Baskin: I think you can, you can help with that.
Elizabeth Baskin: I think we've interviewed employees of deskless, non desks. Technology, manufacturing, beauty, all across. What comes up to me over and over again is that what is really engaging for somebody is if they love the work they do. If they are doing something that's exciting to them, with people they enjoy, if they love the work.
Elizabeth Baskin: And energy drinks in the break room or Unlimited vacation or even a really fantastic culture can't make up for, do they like their work? I think that we can help with the culture piece and to a lesser extent, the energy drinks, but, um, But I think part of, there's no magic way to engage people if they're, not doing something that they're excited about.
Elizabeth Baskin: You can make it more meaningful maybe by showing how their role contributes to the success of the whole or, or helps make the world a better place. You can help them see the career path for themselves. There's just nothing that outweighs hearing an engineer talk about how much they love solving problems or somebody in a manufacturing cell talk about how working this team and making this thing, this chair or Train or whatever is just so like,
Elizabeth Baskin: we work with the locomotive manufacturer to hear people around the globe on the floor talking about how They like what they do.
Elizabeth Baskin: They like that But they also like knowing that they are helping move goods all over the world because these I mean There's a lot to be said for feeling that you contribute to something larger.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Yeah. Do you think Maybe this is even more of a personal question, but probably one that you run into professionally.
Shawn Pfunder: Do you think that that can happen regardless of the work? So if I'm at a fast food restaurant and I'm sort of like dipping fries back and forth, do you think that's also possible? Or have you talked to people that also are like, no, I like, there's meaning in this, there's purpose in this, like, I like doing this work because of what comes with it.
Elizabeth Baskin: Yeah, I mean, there's the classic NASA story of somebody asking a janitor at NASA, what, so what do you do here? And he said, I'm helping to put a man on the moon while he's sweeping up paper. But yeah, sure. And also there's something to be said for, One of my first jobs was at Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips, which I don't think is in business anymore.
Elizabeth Baskin: And I loved it, not so much because I was feeding fried fish to people, but because we had a great, that team feeling, and how much we laughed. But I think the work itself, tying it to something larger, and then really enjoying your team, are big, big pieces.
Shawn Pfunder: You remind me, I'm talking about the Fish and Chips place.
Shawn Pfunder: It's just going into different types of coffee shops, and you can go into the, you can go into the one where you can kind of tell, like, people aren't super happy, they're not engaged, they're like, oh, man, this is a job, probably they have a bad, I mean, we know from our work, they probably have a bad boss or owner or somebody that sort of like drills them.
Shawn Pfunder: And then you go into another one, and it's a small party in there, and they're smiling, and you feel like a family member, even though you've never been in there before.
Elizabeth Baskin: My son was telling me about a coffee shop in Brooklyn where you go in and there's a guy in the corner who will ask you something like, so do you believe in aliens.
Elizabeth Baskin: And then the customer will say, well, you know, yes and no, and then somebody else chimes in. It becomes this big conversation about aliens or black holes or whatever. But I think that's part of it. It's that atmosphere. It's that culture.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, that would, I mean, in that particular case, it is possible then, so like, moving into culture and talking about culture and how comps can affect that, is culture more of this top down, um, This is who we are.
Shawn Pfunder: Please behave appropriately. That sounds horrible. That's like a leading question. You know what my opinion is now. Or is it more of a bottom up or somewhere in the middle?
Elizabeth Baskin: I think it's all. I mean, it, it certainly helps to have leadership, a CEO or somebody else at the very top level be very intentional about the culture.
Elizabeth Baskin: That they want to see, but a lot of times that C level and just below, they're all in the same meetings. They're hearing themselves talk. They hear, it's like they hear this radio station that nobody else hears. So, the further away an employee is from the C suite, What we find, generally, is that they have, they will have some clue, a little clue, zero, zero awareness of what these white guys in neckties are saying up here.
Elizabeth Baskin: And that, I mean, a huge part of our work is figuring out what that gap is between what leadership's hope culture is and what employee's reality is, and then what has to happen to close that gap, to narrow it a little bit.
Shawn Pfunder: I love the radio analogy. It's like if you can just amplify the signal, or rebroadcast, or syndicate it, or something.
Elizabeth Baskin: Or have a podcast where they're talking.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh yeah, yeah, that you can go, like, sort of get the message out all the way through.
Elizabeth Baskin: It is, the frontline people and the people in the rank and file have so much intel that C suite doesn't know. They create the customer experience, they see what the issues are, they're building the products, they see what the issues are, and there's just often not a real easy way for employees to share those opinions or ideas or concerns.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, and there's so much evidence that this diversity of thought and background makes a company more money. So if it's just the white guys with neckties, also the first time I've heard that before, oftentimes they can be Out of touch is if a company makes more money based on diversity of thought, opinion, knowing who your customers are, there's a lot of evidence that if those white guys in neckties have conversations, like he goes both ways.
Shawn Pfunder: I guess sort of a follow up question related to internal communications with this is you get a mandate from a new CEO or somebody coming in and they're like, I want to be, I want to have a startup culture and we have 30, 000 employees, or I want to be a culture of feedback or like whatever it is. Is it possible to implement that?
Shawn Pfunder: And I think it ends up being oftentimes, at least internal communications is spearheading that. How do we do that? Is there something we can do to affect that or to try to implement something like that? Or is it a, is it a lost cause? Because a company has a culture anyways.
Elizabeth Baskin: It does have a culture. I don't think it's a lost cause, but I don't think it happens as quickly as people would like it to.
Elizabeth Baskin: Or as that CEO maybe would like it to. Yeah, yeah. I think we talk a lot about the eye roll test. Like, like if you say that, well, employees roll their eyes.
Elizabeth Baskin: Like if you, if you have a place that, you know, everybody works 60 hours a week and you say, Hey, we've got great life balance, then, you know, employees are going to roll their eyes.
Elizabeth Baskin: But if you said here, you have challenging work that will accelerate your career. That is a little closer. But when a new CEO comes in and has a vision like that, and that happens all the time, one of the first things we would want to do is talk to him and other, or her, ah, I can't wait to do that, talk to her and her stakeholders, other leaders, and see what they mean by that.
Elizabeth Baskin: And then talk to employees in all sorts of functions and locations and seniority and see, How that meshes with their reality or doesn't, and what would have to happen for you, employees, for that to be true? And a lot of times, the things that would close that gap are not internal communications, they're operational, and we can't, we can't help with that.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, come on, we know that we do. We wag the dog. A little bit.
Elizabeth Baskin: Yeah, I know. I mean, I think we can, we can have an impact, but we can't successfully communicate something that's not authentic.
Shawn Pfunder: That's right. That's right. Well, you've mentioned that and you use these keywords a little bit, but the like truth being one of these, or even the IRL test, it sounds like it's a, Employees don't want to be lied to, and that's a way, kind of, to do it.
Shawn Pfunder: If you say something like that, they're like, come on. Like, that's not 60 hours a week, and they're like, great, AI's here, do more with less. It's like, I don't know.
Shawn Pfunder: That kind of thing that happens. Yeah, that's super interesting. I just, I know from a lot of conversations, just don't lie to me. I'm an adult, just tell me the truth, instead of trying to make something up.
Elizabeth Baskin: Yeah, and that is, change management is where that really, really, comes into play. We've done a bit of research with employees on how change is handled in their companies. And a lot of the research is dated, but I think it still holds. Employees want to know the truth. As quickly as I can, especially if it's bad news, I mean, if it's bad news, tell me sooner.
Elizabeth Baskin: And I think ironically, you can build trust and leadership by being straight about the bad news. I mean, by all means, share what will be good about it, share anything that will be a positive outcome. Yeah. But. People need to prepare themselves emotionally, logistically, and I think there's a lot of times we see leadership having kind of a head in the sand mentality that if we don't talk about it, employees won't notice it.
Shawn Pfunder: Doesn't exist. Yeah, they won't.
Elizabeth Baskin: If there's some major change afoot, they're probably picking up on it ahead of time, and they certainly will know eventually. Yeah. Um, and what happens if you're not communicating is that There's this vacuum that the rumor mill will fill. And if you don't communicate, you're losing the chance to be part of that conversation.
Elizabeth Baskin: And 99.9% of the time, the rumor mill is worse than what the truth is. So just tell the damn truth. Just let them know what's going on. People don't like uncertainty. They want answers. Just tell the truth. Give them the answers and share what will be better after, but don't misdirect them about what's hard, the hard news.
Shawn Pfunder: Is it worth it? It's kind of a common question with mergers, acquisitions, layoffs, things like that, where people can smell it. That's the truth. A fart in a closet. Like they just have to see the CEO talk about earnings or talk about something and they can kind of tell that something's coming. And so a common sort of debate, head in the sand, and oftentimes they'll say head in the sand because I can't say anything.
Shawn Pfunder: So, head in the sand for legal reasons,
Shawn Pfunder: I can't talk about X, or for legal reasons, I can't talk about Y. Is it worth it just to say that? Hey, listen, yeah, something's going on, I can't talk about it.
Elizabeth Baskin: I can't give you details, I will when I can. Or, further down the Organization. Yes, there is a change in our organization or how we're doing something or we're looking at, there's something I don't know enough yet to tell you.
Elizabeth Baskin: When I do, I will.
Shawn Pfunder: That's still transparent.
Elizabeth Baskin: It's, well, I think there are a lot of times you can't be transparent for business reasons, but you can be honest. And there's a difference. You can be straight with people, at least to say, I can't let you know right now, but I will.
Shawn Pfunder: Or even acknowledge what's actually happening.
Elizabeth Baskin: Yeah, and that's another thing we come back to a lot, is just treat employees like the intelligent adults that they are. You're not a school teacher talking to children, who are also intelligent people, by the way, but just speak to them person to person, and that's, that's really important. Something we preach a lot in terms of tone of voice for internal economists.
Elizabeth Baskin: Don't be corporation talking to employee. Just talk to them like you would talk to the guy you run into at the coffee machine.
Shawn Pfunder: That's right, the one that's going to ask me about aliens.
Elizabeth Baskin: Right!
Shawn Pfunder: Or, or, or, or black, or be that, or be that person that asks people about aliens and black holes. Yeah, why not? Yeah.
Shawn Pfunder: At least kind of to, to, to. The final thing that I want to talk about, and you've got a lot of experience with this, you know, we talked even before we got on the show, AI has been this super hyped thing and everybody's talking AI, AI, AI, but you and I, when we chatted, We didn't go into details about it at all.
Shawn Pfunder: It was, that's great. How do we connect with people at scale? This is the hard part. Human to human, because there's just so much evidence, there's so many studies that have come out. Like if you want to build, if you want to build trust, if you want to build trust to the point that when the CEO has to say, I want to tell you, I can't, that they still trust.
Shawn Pfunder: The CEO, they still trust their boss. They still trust the directors. How do we create that human to human connection at, and I say at scale, cause we know we can do it on our teams with only three or four people. But how do you do that in an organization where you create it and people feel like everybody, I guess, respects me as a human or cares about me as a human, not just a machine in the cog?
Elizabeth Baskin: I think technology is really the answer. To being able to create human connections that don't depend on being in the same room. And that's something we have to do at scale now, on a global scale. You have to, it's not just silos of who's in this building or that building, it's silos of who's in Asia, who's in Europe.
Elizabeth Baskin: I think part of it is as simple as showing the faces and hearing the voices of people in all these different locations. And hearing them, um, It might be a video about company mission, or it might be a day in the life. Here's what I wore to work. Here's what the weather's like here. Here's my doll. Being able to make those human connections so that you feel like the world is populated with people that you can relate to, like your global company is.
Elizabeth Baskin: A smaller world, and we have to depend on technology to do that, usually.
Shawn Pfunder: This reminds me, almost every platform, uh, really great intranet, Simpplr, a really great intranet, more than that, actually, and, or Slack, you know, I have to talk to people that are just like Slack first, or Teams first, as far as communications.
Shawn Pfunder: That's, they sort of start and end there, unless it's, I have to send you to a policy, then I'll send you somewhere. They all have audio video capabilities, and I love what you just said on seeing a face, hearing somebody. I rarely see people use that, just in a quick, like, message, or send an update, or just, they type the message and hit send, instead of just, like, record, yo, here's what's going on.
Shawn Pfunder: Here's the latest, talk to you tomorrow. That only takes 20 seconds. Is that something that would be effective? I mean, it is. What, why do people not do it?
Elizabeth Baskin: Well, don't you see people email somebody who sits two feet away from them or, or teenagers in a room, like texting? I mean, they can start a relationship, conduct a relationship and break up all with their thumbs.
Elizabeth Baskin: I think that it is more vulnerable. To see somebody face to face, and I think that's why a lot of us boomers had to be, I mean, before COVID, we did not do video calls. We had that polycom on the center of the table and all our clients were all over the U. S. and the world, and we, everything happened on that stupid, It took COVID to drag us boomers kicking and screaming to turn our cameras on.
Elizabeth Baskin: And we have a lot of young people in our office, but also around a lot of young people because of our boys.
Elizabeth Baskin: And I think like they FaceTime a lot if it's a relationship thing, and they text more if it's transactional.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Elizabeth Baskin: Which is efficient. I mean, I don't want somebody to FaceTime me to tell me the meeting changed from 11 to noon.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah.
Elizabeth Baskin: I don't have time for that.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, yeah. Not everything has to be a trust building exercise or a relationship building exercise.
Elizabeth Baskin: Yeah, sometimes it's just efficiency. Just share the information. Do it.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. I love that you mentioned the vulnerability on that, because I do think that that's probably a big part of that.
Shawn Pfunder: And that's hard. I mean, it's a cliche to say, yeah, Brene Brown's work, right? It showed it. Creating a really great connection with the people who work for you or the people that you work for or I say like it's a top down thing work with across the board is to be vulnerable because that allows them in turn to be vulnerable with you and then you're able to build something really strong.
Elizabeth Baskin: And you're able to collaborate, which is a huge thing for a hybrid or remote culture because it's hard to throw out ideas if you don't have a human. Connection with somebody and it's, you have to, because throwing out ideas is making yourself vulnerable. It might be a bad idea, but. I think it is harder, and it is one reason that building human connections across geography without face to face connection is so important now, not just because we're more global, but because part of making a hybrid culture successful is still being able to collaborate.
Elizabeth Baskin: Yeah. And so those human connections are kind of the foundation of that.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. Well, I guess forward thinking. What are sort of the big things on the internal communications horizon that we're going to see in the next few years, you think? Is it going to be sort of the, continue the same of what we've been talking about, or is there anything new that you're seeing coming up?
Elizabeth Baskin: Well, I think AI will be interesting. I think the main trend that What we see accelerating in our business particularly is this, the need to make the world smaller, the need to create those connections across geography and silos and business function. And if you look at our business 10 or 15 years ago, we might be hired by a company with a global footprint, but it was, Usually for the North American audience, or specifically the U.S. audience.
Shawn Pfunder: For sure.
Elizabeth Baskin: And now, almost all of our clients, with the exception, perhaps, of a bank in Philadelphia, all these other clients that we're working with, it's, what is it, a Friday? This week, we have had video conversations with People in India, Kazakhstan, Germany, Switzerland, Chicago, Philadelphia. Yeah, it's, we were routinely seeing, I mean, we're interacting on a much more global scale.
Elizabeth Baskin: And the beauty is that it is a more human to human.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, yeah. You hear that Chicago and Philadelphia, like your countries.
Elizabeth Baskin: We lumped you in there.
Shawn Pfunder: Because it does feel like that when you go to Chicago and Philadelphia. Where would you point us to find out more about Tribe, to find out more about you?
Elizabeth Baskin: Well, Tribeinc.com.
Elizabeth Baskin: We have a modest social presence. And then, personally, I'm Elizabeth Cogswell Baskin on all the socials. I just started a personal blog as sort of a palate cleanser to work, which is loosely based on a book I did 15 years ago called Hell Yes. Which is about how to say no. And so this blog is really about saying no to the things that don't light up for you, and aging well, and the importance of dogs, living well.
Shawn Pfunder: So you can say hell yes to the things that you want to do.
Elizabeth Baskin: Yes, but you have to say no to the ones that aren't meaningful so that you lose space for the hell yes.
Shawn Pfunder: No, I love it. And so if you guys want to find out more information, tribeinc.com.
Shawn Pfunder: Look for the best practices. They're amazing.
Elizabeth Baskin: Wow. So nice.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. And Elizabeth, thanks again.
Elizabeth Baskin: Well, Shawn, that was great. Thank you.