Who do you serve? (a trick question)

It sounds like one of those hackneyed job-interview questions (let me know if you've encountered it in an actual interview), but it's a crucial part of optimizing governance so you can apply The Good Stuff in internal communications: Who should you primarily serve — your bosses and similar stakeholders, or your audience?

It's a trick question and a false dichotomy, suitable only for testing your courage. You can simplify the equation this way: Are you more likely to make a lasting, beneficial difference by serving your bosses superficially — by taking orders and granting wishes like some communications genie — or by serving them authentically?

Authentic service isn't easy, because it seems like a paradox: To meet the needs that underlie your bosses' wishes, you must look out for your audience. If you fail to give the audience something it can use, you won't "move the needle" and you won't fulfill the underlying need.

An example — hypothetical, of course

As a result of alarming customer-service data, your bosses might wish to send front-line employees an inspirational message about the strategic importance of developing a customer-service mindset in everything they do — perhaps even specifying inclusion of "going the extra mile," "giving 110 percent," and similar vague chestnuts.

But you know a one-time message will accomplish next to nothing, especially if it fails to relate to employees' everyday experience of how their jobs get done. Instead, you offer to focus content in a weekly series with each installment offering a concrete example of how to apply a customer-service mindset in one aspect of the job. This might include fielding a customer phone call or chat request, responding to a customer email or social-media post, and meeting a customer face-to-face — including that tricky but crucial "not my department" interaction when a customer approaches an employee out of position. In the best case, you could promote the ongoing customer-interaction training your organization offers — and you could give advance notice to front-line managers that they might see an uptick in requests from their folks to attend such training.

In a superficial, short-term sense, this is not in your bosses' interest. Specific information will lead to specific criticism from employees about, for instance, policies and procedures (especially those unwritten but widely perceived) that contradict or preclude a customer-service mindset. Your bosses must then pay the opportunity cost and endure the pain of ironing out policy conflicts and dismantling procedural road blocks. Yet it's just such discovery and resolution that could enable real change and authentically fulfill the need that underlies your bosses' wish.

Pick your poison/panacea

If you don't feel you have the circumstances to advocate for your audience, that's understandable. But to the extent that you serve your bosses superficially, don't expect to effect lasting, beneficial change. Over the long run, that lack of results could make you at least as expendable anyway. But an authentic claim on results could lead to your next opportunity.