I had a great conversation the other day with a communication consultant about Digital Transformation. The consultant argued that the company needed to: "Put all the various digital initiatives into one perspective to increase understanding." The consultant pitched a campaign idea that does provide common ground for the digital initiatives.
The central theme was 'Doing the right things, right!' I liked the campaign. It plays with the two sides of Digital. Making choices that drive the business and keep the (IT) machinery going. Good stuff, if you focus on all the Digital things that are going on. So in itself I liked the campaign.
But...
I have a more fundamental problem with using internal communication for a specific part of the business. In this case Digital. I think internal communications should always be holistic and mostly start with the vision (why) to help people join the conversation about strategy (how) and what needs to be done in the short run.
Keep the overview If you do this you can still emphasize Digital. Just as you can emphasize the role of People or Customers or Processes. The thing is: you need holistic communications to enable meaningful conversations about how the company turns its vision into reality. Or how reality changes the company vision :-)
Communication is to some extend the by-product of the core business in every company. Whether you want it or not, organisations and its employees always communicate. The challenge is to connect the conversations in a meaningful way. Fit for the purpose: employees engaged around strategy, objectives, key results and the challanges of achieving those.
Communication from a single departmental or functional perspective always has the danger of isolated conversations. Only capturing a part of the compelling story. Like Digital Transformation.
So if you want to communicate about Digital in a holistic way you would have a narrative that goes something like this:
There is only one picture and that is the bigger picture. So we transform our company using the exponential force of Digital. We transform the company to sustain life on this planet. To increase value for our customers. To create a great place to work to attract the best people. If we do this successfully we believe that profit will follow.