(What the heck is he talking about now? Excuse me, where is the emergency exit!) I would venture a guess that maybe one to two percent of the subscribers to ERE have ever even heard of SMEAC. Those that have, let me assure you, had a wry smile and a pleasant memory recalling this simple and yet effective communications and decision-making tool and where and when they learned it. The good news for the rest is that SMEAC is compatible with all PCs and Macs, interfaces with all releases of all software, does not require special hardware or drivers or external devices, can be uploaded, downloaded, used in your office, remotely, or on the road, is totally hands free, uses no power, and requires no technical ability and minimal training. But best of all, it is free! What is so important about decision-making and communications in an HR/Staffing column? Why not just focus on those issues that pertain exclusively to HR/Staffing? Why not just discuss job board position descriptions, HRIS, and automated pre-screening? Well, because we work for and support people who are not just HR/Staffing focus or involved. We are responsible for making decisions that affect those people’s professional and, to some extent, personal lives. Communication is the core of our existence, it is the reason for our being, it is how we tell superiors, subordinates, peers, candidates, clients, hiring managers and vendors what we are going to do and how we are going to do it and why we decided to do it in the first place! However, if you were to ask people, inside and outside HR/Staffing, what the greatest difficulties they face in day-to-day business operations are, they would most likely mention disseminating, accurately, those decisions, practices and policies they manage and over-see to those whom they work for or support. Put more simply, “Getting the word out, correctly.” Well, nowhere is ” getting the word right” more important than in the armed services in general and the Marine Corps in particular. If you fail to communicate properly, if people fail to listen properly, even in peacetime training, people can die. So insuring accurate and timely two-way communications is a critical issue. Hence the creation of SMEAC. The Marines faced a conflict in how, on the one hand, to unify the decision making, communication, and dissemination process without, on the other hand, discouraging each person involved from using their own unique leadership and communication style. The Marines, unlike many civilian corporate cultures, actually encourages and recognizes the need and advantages of allowing their junior leaders to use their personal leadership style. (Surprised? Not me. I honestly felt that while I was in the USMC I had more personal leverage as a junior officer than I ever had in the corporate world as a manager.) Therein lies one of the governing principles of SMEAC: allow freedom of interpretation, solutions planning, and expression without allowing someone to go off the “deep end” and confuse their audience with disjointed and disconnected rambling. SMEAC assumes that truly effective communications, no matter how well structured and well though out in the “transmission,” fail if not “received” correctly and accurately by the intended audience. Effective communications requires, as a prerequisite, a planned transmission based on the way the audience has been trained to expect to receive information. Think of the time you bought a new printer, and lost the CD with the driver downloads. The printer was “talking” intelligently, and the computer was “listening” intelligently, but since neither understood how each other was “structuring the moment,” no communications occurred. SMEAC structures not only how you reason out a problem, it also structures how you communicate it and it also structures how your subordinates or audience listens and how they in turn will repeat the process themselves with those whom they communicate with. It is, in essence, a universal driver. (I’ll “drop the shoe” in a minute and explain SMEAC, but a little more justification first.) How often have you ended a meeting issuing new instructions or information, knowing that:
Try SMEAC (here it is, finally explained):
So that’s SMEAC. Yeah, I know, so what! It is just a simple five-part process; it is too simple to be useful, right? Wrong! Who taught you that effective means complicated, or useful mean expensive? Nothing we do will ever reach its full capacity if we continue to fail to effectively make decisions, and communicate them evenly. No automated tool can ever elevate us above our own effectiveness: Gaffey’s Law of Effectiveness: If you are 80% effective as a communicator and use a 90% effective automated process tool, your maximum obtainable over-all effectiveness is never greater than 72%. In other words, your best effort is doomed to a C-. During a project for a client, based on my observations of the team’s interactions, one of my recommendations to the VP of Human Resources was to consider using the concept of SMEAC within her group and their respective teams to improve the daily processing of information and disseminating of information. An idea that was not too well received, I am sorry to report. I was told that something as simple as SMEAC was hardly a solution to such a complex issue as effective communications. It was also difficult for this VP to believe that in a world of four-, five-, and six-digit solutions, that anything offered for free could not possibly work. (Especially from a consultant!) Finally, I was reminded that this particular “high tech” corporation was not the “Marines,” and college-educated business professionals did not need something that was designed for people with lesser educations. (I did not bother to mention that 95% of all company grade officers have a bachelor’s degree, that 50% of all field grade officers have their masters and a higher percentage of general officers have their PhDs than their civilian business community counterparts.) The next week I attended the routine staff meeting and heard the request that all HR/Staffing representatives go to their respective groups to insure that the various line managers had “emergency contact” files for all employees and that these files were up to date. In addition, due to the concern for employees’ spouses and families, HR was to verify accuracy and then maintain copies as backup. The reason for this effort was the result of an employee who was suddenly taken ill at work and significant time was lost informing the spouse due to bad data poorly maintained by the employee’s line manager. I waited a week and went into “the trenches” to quiz employees on their understanding of the task as explained to them by the VP’s HR/Staffing team, its importance, its motivation. Some of the feedback I got was:
I then reintroduced implementing SMEAC with the vice president of human resources. Based on the “quotes” I gave her, and the daily dose of questions and inquiries and complaints she was receiving, it was obvious that the effort was a failure, that this rather routine request was not being handled effectively. The concern now was, if the team was messing up a task as simple as telling employees, “We care about you and want to protect you and your loved ones in case of an emergency,” what kind of trouble were they in disseminating and communicating important and more complicated issues? We used the same issue and introduced the SMEAC process. The following week “the trenches” had responded via the chain of command and were universally impressed that HR/Staffing was taking charge of an issue that could impact their loved ones piece of mind. (Well, to tell the truth, minus the usual 10% that hates everything. SMEAC is a tool, not a magic wand!) The only difference was everyone in the process had a unified view based on a well throughout communication process. In the news business they refer to the “Five Ws” all stories must contain;
That’s Clark Kent’s version of SMEAC. Plus, SMEAC is a great training tool for senior managers to “drill” their staff on thinking on their feet in difficult situations. (Next article will be some of those drills.) At staff meetings, outline a problem in SMEAC format, give your team 10 minutes to respond to your problem simulation using the SMEAC format to communicate it to the team. Sit in on your team’s meeting with their subordinates and listen to their SMEAC version of your SMEAC. It will serve to teach you not only their effectiveness as a communicator, but your strengths and weaknesses as well. We often confuse “communications” with “speaking while other people listen.” The general consensus is, “If what I said made sense (to me), then nobody should have trouble understanding what I meant.” What we do not realize is not that we all do not speak in the same manner or style, we also do not listen in the same manner. We unknowingly create panic in those we try and teach and elevate. Panic is not fear; rather, it is a natural, normal, and rational response to a situation or set of circumstances for which the person or persons involved is neither pre-warned nor predisposed to understand or deal with effectively. Panic can manifest itself not only as agitated action, but also as apathy, inaction, or inappropriate response. Do not panic your team when you communicate with them. Use SMEAC to create a uniform sense of urgency, purpose, dissemination, and positive direction in your team. Teach them to use SMEAC to do the same for the people with which they communicate, control, or support. Imagine, the comment you made in a meeting Monday is heard, through two, three, or even four layers of dissemination, two days later, to the last person, in the last office, on the bottom floor, behind the boiler, exactly how you meant it to be heard with your sense of importance still intact. Amazing, truly effective communications in the 21st century, which has eluded us despite all the software and hardware tools available to us, finally becomes a reality using an early 20th century tool. Plus, it’s free! Besides, if it is good enough for the Marines… Have a great day recruiting!