Chris Brennan (00:04)
Welcome to Modern Coms, the podcast series designed to help communication leaders navigate today's hyper speed demands and move forward with clarity, confidence, and impact. This podcast is brought to you by Co Fenster, the creators of AI video agents built specifically for comms professionals. Our agents empower your teams to deliver high impact on brand video without needing any prior video experience. So for today's episode, we're gonna be talking about ClearComs

better outcomes, and why it's time to drop the corporate speak. And joining me for this conversation is Steve and Cindy Cresenzo from Cresenzo Communications. Steve, Cindy, welcome to the show.

Steve (00:45)
Wow, thanks for having us! it's excited to be here, we are excited, very excited to get this started.

Chris Brennan (00:51)
me too, and I'm super interested in this topic. But I think before we begin on this topic, could you give us a quick overview of what your work is like and what you're focused on right now?

Steve (01:02)
Yeah, sure. So I started work like, what's our work like? Our work is a living hell, Chris. If you want to know the bottom truth. No, this is going to be an interesting one. Our work is doing well. We're just busy. We're just busy. And that's always a good thing when you work for yourself. I started Crescent Communications 28 years ago. I immediately ran myself into debt with the IRS and other places. And Plucked Cindy was working for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the time as a director of marketing.

So we were dating, we were living together, we were not married. The same year she came to work for us, for work together, we got married 20 years ago. It's crazy. So it's kind of a success story there, Chris. A family who's old all in one year. Not too many people are willing to work with me and live with me and be married to me. Somehow she did. But what we do is we have, for 20 years now together, we've gone all over the world, companies like McDonald's and Lockheed Martin and Target and...

overseas Roche Novartis, ⁓ the Merce shipping. ⁓ We go in and we do one of usually three things. We go in as consultants, look at a streamline their processes, figure out basically we two models of crescent communications. One is we help our clients do less and do it better. Everyone's got channel overload, everyone's doing too much, everyone's communicating too much, nobody says no to anything, nobody prioritizes anything, we're just.

Everybody's private publishers, you're just churning stuff out all the time and nobody's paying attention to it. So we go in there with measurement, with research, with polls, surveys, interviews, channel analysis, vehicle analysis, content analysis, and look at what you're doing and how come you could do less and do it better. And the other half is we go in as consultants and coaches and trainers and we do training, customized trainings, where our motto there is, our job is to make the important interesting.

Employee Communications has all these important topics like safety and wellness and new initiatives and products and product launches and brand and all this stuff. Crazy important to the success of the organization but also mind-numbingly boring a lot of it. So we've got to be able to tell those stories associated with those topics. We've got to be able to bring them to life and make the important interesting. So been doing that for 28 years and

are doing it now. Anything to add there? I did pretty good. You did great. I mean, it's an awesome thing to be a part of. think it's funny when you talk to people who aren't in corporate communications world and you tell them, yeah, we're an employee communications. They're like, What? does that mean? Are you HR? You're HR. Yeah, we get associated with HR a lot. But I think the most amazing thing is knowing the effect that you can have on a culture, an organization.

what people think and believe as far as what they do every single day. It's an incredibly rewarding thing to be a part of and just to see the effects of our work on different organizations. It's a very cool feeling.

Chris Brennan (03:59)
I absolutely love that. And Sydney, for you, what was it like moving from marketing and going into the employee communication space?

Steve (04:07)
Yeah, that's such a great question. There's so many things I brought in initially from my marketing background into employee communications. Again, dating myself, it's about 20 some years ago that I made the jump. And at the time, honestly, when I would go on client meetings with Steve and go to client projects, my question always was to communicators, well,

What's your segmentation plan? Like how do you talk to different employees differently? Does it matter? Are you using different channels for different people? And again, at the time, most organizations were lucky to even have an intranet, let alone, hey, we're actually thinking about new employees versus people who've been here for 10 years or frontline employees versus people who sit behind a computer. People looked at me like I had two heads and was like, that's insane.

We have our communications and we publish them like that. That was the thing So the light bulb at that point went on for me as to this is how I can truly make a difference because from my marketing background I know that if you know your audience and you target your audience good things happen Same thing internally, right? We've got to really understand the people we're talking to in order for our Messages to land in order for them to truly appreciate good communication

So that was kind of fun to bring that to the table and it was just a mind shift, eye opening to me that that was something that most people at the time didn't even consider. Gosh, yeah, we have to think of our internal audiences as segments. Like who do we talk to and how does it change the way we communicate? And to that point too, I also got ⁓ Communications 101 writing from Steve, one of the best people you can get it from in the industry, but really helping me.

kind of lose my marketing edge a little bit when it comes to crafting communications. Immediately I'm thinking call to action. We've got to have a call to action. It's like, Sin, you've got to remember you're not marketing. In order for things to come across transparent and authentic, we've got to have more of a personal voice. So there was definitely a learning curve there as well. Is there a way to bookmark that or highlight it that you said something nice about me? ⁓

Chris Brennan (06:06)
Right.

Steve (06:30)
What did say?

Chris Brennan (06:30)
You're absolutely right.

Steve (06:33)
You learned from the best or something? She said something important there. I'm not gonna say it again. I refuse.

Chris Brennan (06:38)
So what I can do is afterward, I can actually clip that out and that'll be the lead video when we share it on LinkedIn. On loop, if you'd like. No, actually, but that really resonates with me because my background has been marketing as well. When I came into this space, I had a similar concept, but I also think now more than ever, comms teams are really learning that they need to learn from marketing about how to communicate.

Steve (06:42)
Hahaha!

There you go. Perfect. Thank you. you can make it your ringtone. Thank you. That's great. Appreciate that.

Chris Brennan (07:07)
and the different channels and the segmentation. So just from us, especially being an AI video platform built for a comm specialist, it's like they're starting to embrace the techniques and mechanisms and the strategies of marketing, but for internal use. So like I can really resonate with that myself. I think it's no better time than now to start looking and experimenting because the entire landscape has shifted so seismically that the best thing you can do now

Steve (07:16)
Right?

that

Yeah? Yeah.

Chris Brennan (07:36)
is just start experimenting, seeing what people react to, what people prefer. So it's actually, it's a scary side for some people, but what we love to focus on is the positive about like, yeah, but it's exciting too, because there's a lot of new technologies that you can become an expert in in your field. You just need to embrace it.

Steve (07:39)
Exactly Chris. ⁓

is, it is.

Yep.

Yeah, I agree. I'm 59, Chris, but if I was 30 when I started the company or 31, I would be I would love to come into this. I love it now. Even at 59, there's you can't stand still, though. The days of just getting a job and churning out your channels and checking boxes is done. It's over. You better be willing to do things differently. You better will embrace new technologies. You better be willing to embrace new cultures and new situations.

Chris Brennan (08:07)
No.

Steve (08:20)
hybrid work, mean all that stuff is just flipping everything, new tools, new channels, everything.

Chris Brennan (08:25)
Yeah, and with that being said, that leads me to my next question, which is as we head into 2026 and deepening, we're deep into the first quarter and we're going beyond that. What's one big theme or issue you think comms teams need to be thinking about more seriously right now?

Steve (08:41)
I think the knee-jerk reaction is AI, obviously. ⁓ If you're not using AI yet, you're already behind. If you're not mastering it fairly soon, we're teaching workshops on it every week. We're doing our best to get people up to speed on it. It is a game changer with content, with planning, with how you run your editorial system, with everything, really. But it cannot take the place of human beings. So I'm not going to say AI is the biggest thing.

I'm going to say we need to, and I think we're starting to, and know Crescential Communications is making a big leap in this area, reaching out directly to managers and helping them communicate, helping them carry the water, because they are such a critical part of every organization's communication ecosystem, for lack of a better word. ⁓ And they're lost. They're adrift. They're either not getting information from above, they're getting mixed messages from above. No one's trained them on how to run a meeting. Just because you're a manager,

doesn't mean you can take a strategic objective and explain it clearly and succinctly to people and tie them back to the work the company. That doesn't come in their school. They're engineers, they're accountants, they're nurses, they do their job and they were good at it so they got promoted to manager and all of a sudden now they got all these communication needs and nobody's training them. They're stuck in the middle and this idea that we can just give them talking points to cascade down, forget it. That has never worked to be honest.

And nowadays with social media and on the electronic workforce and everybody information flying around every which way, giving managers talking points just doesn't make any sense. We've got to get them to, to sit and have conversations with their people. Yeah. That's what that's, go ahead. No, I was just going to add to that just for the longest time, you know, our world looks so different where everybody came to one place during set business hours. And you know, we, as communicators could have a little bit more control.

over when people see stuff, what they see, where they see it. Now it's all over the place. And like Steve said, the responsibility has landed inadvertently on leaders, whether you're a director or a manager, whatever, it's on your shoulders to connect your team. Make sure they know what they need to do. Meet them where they are. You guys figure out your own time issues and your own remote circumstances. And so much responsibility has been piled on that manager.

to almost run their own tiny little business within this organization. And yet we don't change the way that we provide support to those managers to give them the communication skills and confidence that they need to really do it successfully.

Chris Brennan (11:20)
That's super fascinating because I've been looking a lot into hard skills versus soft skills recently. And what it sounds like is, and I think it's actually accurate, the hard skills got these managers to their position, but nobody gave them the soft skills to actually evolve into doing that role correctly or appropriately because they're not really being taught how to communicate. And what you'll find from the people below them are I message them and I get these one letter, one word replies.

Steve (11:32)
Exactly.

Chris Brennan (11:49)
K instead of okay. It's like, wow. Like the idea, I think what we're missing from management is trying to ensure that the idea has been solidified enough in your head to then pass it on. Because I think what happens a lot of times is that the managers in question haven't really figured out what they're trying to say, but they're hoping that the recipient of the message.

Steve (11:50)
Yeah, all right, Totally.

Chris Brennan (12:18)
will fill in the blanks for them. And that's where a lot of misunderstandings are actually occurring.

Steve (12:23)
Exactly.

Absolutely. Exactly. Yeah, you we are, one of the things we love to do is when we, when we over redo manager newsletters, we always try to break it down into the format of here's what you need to know. Manager is eyes only. Here's what need you to share with your employees and here's stuff we need you to do. And we've been told that just even that kind of categorization of information helps them. When Cindy does focus groups, she does a hundred focus groups of managers every year. First thing they say is I don't have time to communicate.

Chris Brennan (12:44)
Right.

Steve (12:50)
But then as she drills down, she's like, plenty of time. They're meeting with their employees all the time. They don't know what to say. And half the time they're leading through chaos, some sort of reorg change. They're leading through chaos. They're leading when they need to make the decision and it's an unpopular decision. So what do they do? Do you throw the leaders under the bus and say, hey, listen, this is coming from corporate. I think it sucks too. That's human nature to do that. But that just makes you look bad to your team, like you have no power. Credibility. Yeah. credibility. It's a tricky, tricky game these days.

Chris Brennan (12:55)
Right.

Steve (13:19)
Then you'd help and we're really expanding into that area. We're working with PG &E, working with Compere, we're working with Great River Energy, the Mayo Clinic. We're doing a training class for all the Mayo Clinic nurse leaders, 900 of them. 40 classes on everything from writing an effective email to writing an effective meeting to leading through chaos to all the stuff we're talking Accepting feedback, giving feedback. Giving feedback, accepting bad feedback. All those soft skills, Chris, that you just.

All the things that really are the functions of a well-oiled company that we've been ignoring forever. Because I mean, we've been talking about engagement as long as I've been alive in this industry. And the dirty secret is without managers communicating effectively, there is no engagement. You the old saw, the old saying, you don't quit companies, you quit a manager. That's so true, and yet we've ignored them for years. Yep.

Chris Brennan (13:47)
Yeah.

That

is true. And I think when you talk about effective communication, it kind of brings us to the topic of today, which is why it's time to drop the corporate speak, which my first question is, what's actually wrong with the corporate speak and why is it important for organizations to move towards more of a human, plain spoken communication style?

Steve (14:29)
Well, that's a terrible question, Everyone always says that's a great question. Corporate speak socks. mean, if you're talking about empowering and facilitating and optimizing and re-engineering our core competencies so we can synergize with the blah, blah, blah, it's just so god awful. Yeah, what does it mean? You look at all these words. And here's the thing. There is corporate jargon, EBITDA, stuff like that, financial terms and...

Stuff that our job as communicators is to explain that essential corporate jargon, the language of business. Optimize, maximize, leverage, facilitate, facilitate. We are pleased to announce the implementation of a thing, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's not business speak, that's corporate speak, and it's just lazy. It's lazy. People will stick words in there because they're, I mean, they have no specificity. Think about it, you can facilitate the implementation of something.

Chris Brennan (15:03)
Yeah.

Steve (15:25)
You could implement the facilitation of something. can, I mean, you can just switch these words around. They're all worthless. They're all like some words like synergy. Synergy was a good word at one time. It was raised properly. It was a good little word. And then we just beat it up and it turned into beat the hell out of it. We overused it. Synergy became a thing for layoffs. Somehow we have synergies, meaning we have people doing the same things. We need to lay off those people. Implementation, facilitate, optimize, all these bad verbs.

know, verbs are the engine of good writing and we have 8 million verbs to choose from and we choose optimize and leverage and facilitate and implement and all these other bad stuff. And it just, the real downside is that it causes confusion. Nobody, it's human nature again. Nobody wants to stand up and say, I don't understand what he means when he says we're going to level the playing field by leveraging our core competencies. ⁓ I don't know what that means really. What does it mean? Well, means we're going to

You know, we're a little behind in the market here, but guess what? We're going to figure out a couple of things that we do better than everybody else. And we're to focus on that and we're going to make up some ground. If people talk like that, leaders can get it. Supervisors can repeat it. Managers can repeat it. We can talk like human beings. and I always say, and we do a lot of coaching with executives and I always say, John, Sarah, whatever your name is, use your weekend words at work. Use your weekend words. Would you go home and empower your children to clean the room? Would you go home and optimize?

your sex life? Would you facilitate a better sex life? What do think about the sex life analogy? How's that going? Weird. Definitely creepy. Good. I tell you, it's going good. You don't really talk like that. We're going off. We're staying in this lane. Okay. No, we're going to get out of that lane. That's the problem. It confuses rather than clarifies. And we have enough complicated topics to try to communicate anyway when it comes to business initiatives and things like that.

Chris Brennan (17:00)
Hahaha

It worked the first time, then you doubled down and I was like, ⁓ we're staying in this lane.

Steve (17:23)
the more plain spoken you could be. I've nicknamed my AI writing companion Ernie, after Ernest Hemingway. Short sentences, declarative sentences. You don't want to write like William Faulkner. You don't want to write wordy, showy, big words when small words will do. It's just ineffective writing these days. adds to the word count. Corporate speak adds to the word count. It adds to the reading level, because it's usually lot of bigger words. And it's just...

I'll turn it over to Cindy, but it just abdicates where it should be clarifying as a problem. Well, to me, it's all. I know, right? To me, it's all about reading the room, you know, you just really need to understand the environment that all of us are in, and I don't think I need to tell anybody we're living in some insane times these days, right? ⁓ People care about where they work, who they work for.

Chris Brennan (17:56)
Really interested to see where this analogy comes from.

Steve (18:20)
who they work with, they care about what they do, what they contribute to, they care about all of these connections to their everyday job. It's no longer thought about, yeah, I just gotta find a nine to five thing. People really put a lot of thoughts and purpose behind what they do. So you can't marriage that to words that are empty, that mean nothing, that.

Really, I think it become a security blanket for a lot of people to substitute it for business acumen. They don't really know what they're talking about, right? If you truly know your business, you can talk about that inside and out using plain language, period. ⁓ So we've got to know that that's the expectation that people have out there. So we've got to communicate accordingly. ⁓ Newer workforce coming in, they ⁓ expect to be part of a conversation.

They've been raised in a social world where you can comment whenever you comment. You can share your opinion whenever you want to share your opinion. It's out there and it's easy and it's literally at a click of a button that you can do that. Texting super quick, easy, get it out there. Just want to do this very fast and make it accessible. So you can't then put in this archaic old school mentality of using all these clunky words that mean absolutely nothing.

And again, from doing focus groups with employees and managers all over the place, that totally translates to mistrust. Nobody trusts any kind of language like corporate speak. Nobody trusts it. They're like, what are they trying to hide is always the first thing I hear in focus groups. How do they live their world in the real world? Then they go to work and everyone's using different words. Yeah. And they're bigger words and they're more complicated words.

Why don't they just say what they mean? What are they trying to hide? I don't understand. That's what we get in focus groups all the time, Chris. Why don't they say what they mean? Why do they use words like they use? Why can't they talk to me like my neighbor talks to me? Why is it so different at work?

Chris Brennan (20:29)
Why do you think they so often default to these buzzwords and these kind of jargony terminology whenever they're speaking internally? Because I can even understand how a corporation in a public ⁓ press release might want to downplay negativity by using that kind of terminology. But like, why does it so often default internally as well? Why do you think that?

Steve (20:54)
I think it comes down to the famous statement that you hear over and over. That's just the way we've always done it before. So pick it up and do it again. Pick it up and do it again. I think that mold is finally has a giant crack in it. Like people are challenging it, you know, again, from the new workforce to people who just are reading the room and understanding, hey, we're communicating a different time here. This, just isn't going to fly. So.

It's thankful that people are overcoming it, but I feel that's the number one cause of this happening over and over. It's just, that's the way we've always done. It's what I'm comfortable with. And until kind of like just newer generations start to lead organizations, it, that determines how long that old habit in place. would add one word insecurity, or maybe lack of confidence would even be better. You know, these words have been around forever. Everyone uses them, you know,

Chris Brennan (21:45)
Right.

Okay.

Steve (21:52)
It's it's shocking though how when you get a ceo or even just a high level vp That's doing a piece of communication and we had a ceo named corey shaw at ⁓ uc health in cincinnati We met him when he was at nebraska health. We did an audit for them He just got it man. He was just one of these guys who spoke like a human being told real stories He never used the buzzwords He would do 30 seconds selfie videos like this just talking to employees and then send it out for updates for important updates

And that trickled down, you saw less and less jargon, but if it's coming at the top, it takes a lot of balls, pardon the expression, for a VP or a senior VP or a director to suddenly start communicating differently and more effectively. And then the communicators have, you communicators are the most insecure people in the world. We are, we are always feeling left out of stuff. We don't get a seat at the table, blah, blah, blah, you know, all the normal bitches that you hear at all the conferences. We know seat at the table. They bring me in too late. They don't take me seriously.

And then you wonder why it's because they're just mimicking what the rest of the organization is doing instead of being the the voice of truth and saying no Let's write and talk like human beings great writing is talking edited Let's talk like human beings instead of doing this awful town hall with 85 PowerPoint slides that nobody's gonna read and you're gonna read off them How about we introduce a concept at the town hall and then talk about it? Let's talk about it. That's what people want. That's it. He said that's what the audience wants. We have re

design town halls for our clients. We don't do PowerPoint. We do 30 minutes of ⁓ presentation, conversation between leaders in a panel usually, and then 30 seconds of Q &A. And that format is working out so well for us. Yeah, it's a matter of really thinking, again, as communications as a strategic arm of the organization rather than a publisher, right? And it's retraining our internal clients that

I can literally help us succeed in whatever goal it is. it's about thinking about the behaviors we're trying to influence throughout the organization with communications. What are we trying to do? If we're communicating bad news at the end of the day, what are we, what behaviors are we trying to influence? We're likely trying to help employees embrace change or embrace a new way of doing things to adapt, right? We've got to evolve. We've got to adapt. Well,

Chris Brennan (24:06)
Right.

Steve (24:12)
Talking in corporate speak where no one understands literally what you're saying is never going to bring you that behavior. What's going to bring that behavior is very clear, simple, plain language where people know what to do next. Again, here comes the marketing part. What is the call to action at the end of the day? What do you want people to do with whatever you're communicating? when you get people thinking that differently about what corporate communications is, it results in

embracing the new way of communicating, which is exciting to see when it happens.

Chris Brennan (24:44)
I can see

that with even firsthand experience where I've been in those bigger sessions and they're trying to deliver some negative change communication and the call ends. And then I reach out to the leadership. like, I think nobody understood that. And what's going to happen is everybody's going to interpret it differently, which is going to result in gossip and rumors. I was like, we need to get, we need to get back on and you need to actually clarify what that was.

Steve (24:53)
Yeah.

you

Yep, absolutely.

Good

for you.

Chris Brennan (25:12)
because

you were avoiding stating outright what the negative.

part was, so everyone's going to assume a different version of what that is. And as human beings do, they're going to think about how it affects them. So they're only going to pinpoint something they heard and went, I guess that means that I'm losing a job or my department. I was like, you get back on and just honestly, just tell them, let's just tell them it's going to be way worse if the longer you go with this kind of jargon conversation. So I completely embrace that 100 % as a marketer myself, like it is about trying to simple.

Steve (25:30)
Yeah. Right?

Yeah.

Chris Brennan (25:48)
the message in the smallest amount of space because a lot of times you're just trying to fit that on a page or trying to get the caption not to blow up. So you're like, I need to simplify this and just get the point across.

Steve (25:48)
Yep, that's what we That's exactly right.

You know, it got hard.

Our format, Chris, and it's real simple, and we've taught it for years, and hundreds and thousands of people have used it, fall back on what, so what, now what. What do you want employees to know? But you gotta do it right, though. What do you want them to know? And if it's bad, don't sugarcoat it. I mean, it's bad, employees can handle bad news. They can't handle the void, right? The rumors. There's no such thing as a good rumor. And I'm just going, you know what, I didn't understand what just happened in there, but we have a new location, and I think I'm probably gonna get a promotion.

Chris Brennan (26:10)
Nice.

Right.

Steve (26:29)
It's

like, they're going to want me to move desks. They're wanting me to, I got to go into work more, whatever it is. But if you just master what, so what, now what, what is it you need them to know? So what, why should they care? Why is it important to them? What's the benefit? And now what? What do want them to do? Behavior change. You can get a lot done in a couple of really strong paragraphs if you don't load it with the crap.

Chris Brennan (26:34)
Right.

Can I tell you a brief story that happened in my last job where we were supposed to film this investor video, but I couldn't actually make it there to film it and direct them. So I had to hire a freelancer and I was telling that freelancer in advance, like you've got to keep on top of them because they're just going to start mumbling and talking and talking. And whenever I have to edit that is going to be very difficult. So I got the footage back and it was like 10 minute nonstop verbal diarrhea. I was like, I was like,

Steve (27:22)
god. ⁓

Chris Brennan (27:23)
Like

I can barely even find the pauses, but I spent hours restructuring sentences and then taking footage to overlay so nobody would see the cuts. And I rebuilt sentences.

And then I sent it off and I never told the person they didn't say this. So they felt so proud of themselves for how articulate they were. And I was like, I actually built an entire new statement from 10 minutes of footage.

Steve (27:42)
God, look how good I did!

Awesome, I love to hear that. you

know, that's the hill you want to die on. think that is the hill you want to die on. We go into so many companies where it's a smart leader who gets it, but they're still doing 12 minute videos, 15 minute talking head videos, hostage videos, you know, where they're talking directly into the screen. It looks like somebody's holding a machete to the back of their head and they're we are going to empower our greatest assets, employ our greatest assets. And it's like nobody, nobody's watching that, dude. Nobody is watching that. We got to do things differently, he says. For sure.

Chris Brennan (28:04)
Yeah

Which actually brings up a really good point and like we can turn it to the positive. Like what are some practical ways that these leaders can kind of cut that jargon and get to the point beyond just telling them to get to the point, but like have you found ways to kind of activate them or to get them onto the side of going, yes, I should be speaking straight, direct and clear ⁓ because it benefits me. But like what were some practical ways to help them get to that conclusion?

Steve (28:45)
⁓ Coaching I mean, I think that's the number one role of you know, helping managers communicate Embracing AI and then being the speaking truth to power with leaders you'd be surprised Chris How many people when we're talking to them and coaching them they're like I can say that like that's I don't have to say like Please do announce that I can just say that I mean Chris That's what they're breaking their bet. Your employees are begging you for that And then you show them good examples. We have lots of CEOs of VPs that we've coached

Chris Brennan (29:06)
Right.

Steve (29:15)
That's guy Corey Shaw. I'll show him the videos that he used to do. I'll show him other great CEO columns, lack of a better blogs. We've got examples. And when they see the good stuff, you can see the scales come off their eyes. It's like, wow, I can be myself here. Not only can you be yourself, they want you to be yourself. They want authenticity. More than just slick and polished. They don't care how professional the video looks. They care about what you're saying, how it's going to affect.

Chris Brennan (29:40)
Let the ⁓

stay.

Steve (29:41)
Yeah, exactly.

ums stay. Yeah. Let the ums stay. Let all that stay. And the other one is when it comes to writing, we go in there early and we establish editorial rules with our clients and say, it's got to be eighth grade or lower. That's the level that we're writing. That's what the newspapers write at. It's not dumbing anything down. That's one thing we'll say right away. Well, I don't want to dumb anything down. Our employees are smart. But yeah, they're smart, but they're not trained in marketing, engineering, accounting, ⁓ construction, whatever we do for money.

Chris Brennan (29:54)
Okay.

Steve (30:09)
They're good at what they do and they understand their niche. They need to understand what the organization does. It's gotta be plain language and you can check it on Microsoft. You know, when you do spell, editor, it'll tell you your reading grade level and what's called your flesh, what's it called? Flesh Kinkade score. We, our guidelines call for a sort Flesh Kinkade score of 60 or above and a reading grade level of eighth grade or lower. And when you start putting implement in there and facilitate and optimize and core competencies and synergize.

You will go up to a 13th grade reading level and your ⁓ flesh-concave score, which is how readable your stuff is, will go way down. And when they see that, our job has to be to convince our leaders. And this goes for our subject matter experts as well. They love their jargon too. They love to sound smart. They love to say, I interviewed a marketer once and she started talking about...

Chris Brennan (30:48)
Right.

Steve (31:03)
We're gonna penetrate the vertical market and when we penetrate the vertical market the horizontal market is gonna up We're gonna penetrate the horizontal market. I'm like, will you stop talking about penetrating things because you're making me feel weird and I don't know what you're talking about I'm not a marketer Yeah, right, yeah, that's gonna be a problem So you just got to break these people down and let them know that no you you got to make sure everybody it's not dumbing it down Best example was I was working at Siemens one of my first clients before Cindy even joined me

Chris Brennan (31:15)
And then your analogies are gonna come servicing back up Steve.

Steve (31:33)
And I did interview that marketer who I just said was penetrating everything. And ⁓ finally, I said, I said, Marcy, just what happened was they were going into an industry where they were not known. And this is Siemens, they buy everything, right? So they bought up a company that did this business. It was alarm security for buildings. And they were not well known, had no brand recognition in that market, but they succeeded. So they wanted me to do a story on it. And I was the freelance consulting editor for the Time newspaper, believe it or not.

And so I went and interviewed Marcy and I 45 minutes, I tried every trick, Chris. tried pretend like I'm an idiot. Talk to me like I'm your seven year old. I tried every trick to get her to just come down with her. Finally, she got kind of frustrated. She know what Steve, here's why we were succeeding. Nobody knows who we are in that industry right now, but we figured out a couple of things that we do better than everybody else. And we're focusing on those things and that we're getting noticed. I got up, I hugged her.

I said, we're done here. I can paraphrase everything else. I just wanted that one good quote. can figure it out myself. That became part of my lead. It became my pull quote. She crossed it off in the quote unquote approval process where all good communication goes to die. ⁓ Crossed off my quote and said, we level the playing field by proactively leveraging our core competencies. Which is saying the same thing in corporate speak as, hey, we figured out something we did better than them. We're focused on that. We're kicking ass basically.

Chris Brennan (32:49)
No.

Right.

Steve (32:57)
I crossed hers out, put her sticking with original, she crossed mine out. We had to have a sit down, like a mafia meeting with my boss, the VP of comms, her and her boss, and I won that one, believe it or not. But I don't win all of them, but I never stopped fighting.

Chris Brennan (32:57)
Right.

Nice.

Steve (33:12)
Yeah.

Chris Brennan (33:12)
That

actually reminds me of whenever as a side ⁓ project, I teach marketing to screenwriters and filmmakers. And one of the things they do is I go into classes. So yeah, yeah, that's it. Well, my background started in filmmaking and screenwriting and then I got into marketing, but I've never kind of left.

Steve (33:20)
⁓ that's a cool side hustle.

Chris Brennan (33:30)
the creatives behind. In fact, I just wanted to come back and go, I can teach you guys how to communicate professionally and more succinctly. And that comes into play with how they pitch. And what you said reminded me so much of what I usually tell them, which is like, you're going to pitch your project for the love of God. Don't just do the plot from beginning to end.

Steve (33:50)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Brennan (33:50)
go and then they

go open and scene and they do the plot from beginning to end. And I'm sitting there going, I have not not been paying attention. I forgot. I don't know who Jameson is. I don't know. But they always get to the end and then they go, yeah, so basically it's a story. It kind of came up with about my mother back home. And I was like, that's it. Like once you're once you're done boring me with the plot, you kind of have to feel like you wrap it up. So you go. So basically it's about this. I'm like, that's the pitch.

Steve (33:59)
You

Bingo!

Yeah.

Chris Brennan (34:17)
So basically it's about, I'm like, everybody does it. I was like, just start with that. Just cut the rest of that out and just go with the real talk about why it mattered to you and why it matters to other people. The plot will come later. Like, I'll get there, we'll get there, but talk to me like a human first. So yeah, it just resonated with me.

Steve (34:17)
Definitely. Yeah, that's good. It's cold. Yeah.

Exactly.

Yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there. Yep. And you know what? The corporate, the

corporate equivalent of that is starting out with three paragraphs of nonsense, the corporate throat clearing and an ongoing effort to be the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We are seriously committed to our, you know, a lot of adjectives. And then finally you get to the third paragraph. It's like, oh, here's what's happening. Okay. Yeah. You get rid of all that background, move it, it around. learned from that CEO that Steve just mentioned, he would start every single thing. like you were talking.

Chris Brennan (34:43)
Right.

Yeah.

Steve (35:02)
a year and a half of change communications that were pretty rough. Like they were not in a good place back then and had to reorganize a lot within the organization. He would start every, every communication with some sort of personal story, with some sort of human connection, just like you said, Chris, like, you know, he explained, so this is the situation, you know, you're meeting with your family about your family budget.

You find out that for every dollar you make, you're spending a dollar and 10 cents. What are you going to keep doing? Are you going to keep buying movie tickets? Are you going to keep buying junk food? you going to know you have to pick places to cut back because you can't, that's not sustainable. You'll, you'll fail. Right? So just putting it in this human perspective rather than, guys, we're in the red financially. Here's what it may, you know,

Chris Brennan (35:59)
Yeah.

Steve (35:59)
He

just really made it very personal. And that's what it was. were, pre-COVID, this hospital was, for every dollar they brought in, they spent 96 cents. Yep. So they could invest four cents into machinery, technology, people, whatever. After COVID, for every dollar they brought in, they were spending $1.06. And he said it. And he said it like that. You could see scales come off. Everybody's had that problem of sitting around the kitchen table. We can either get a second job or we can cut back. Yep.

Chris Brennan (36:27)
Right.

Steve (36:28)
And he said, we're doing both. We're looking into ways of making more money, being efficient, and we need to cut back. And people lost their jobs. And morale stayed at a peak level throughout that reorg. When we got there, it was called the journey to better. Employees were, of course, calling it, what do you think, Chris? What do think they were calling the journey to better? The journey to hell. Yeah, journey to hell. exactly. Right. The journey towards blazing hell.

Chris Brennan (36:47)
The journey to the unemployment line. ⁓

Steve (36:53)
⁓ But this guy was so strong and that flowed down into his team. When we first got there and said we're not doing power, they weren't doing any town halls. We introduced the concept of the town hall to them. But in their mind it was PowerPoint, PowerPoint, PowerPoint, maybe a couple questions. We took their PowerPoint and they weren't happy at first but with a little tiny bit of coaching they all turned out to be great. These are human beings. These are people you meet on the weekends. know, communicators tend to have this very odd look or

Chris Brennan (36:54)
Right.

Right.

Steve (37:22)
about executives if they're untouchable. Well, these are just regular people. I interview dozens of them every year. They're smart. Don't get me wrong, Chris, they are smart. They didn't get to where they are by being dumb, but they want to be good communicators. want, you know, when a company doesn't communicate well, it's rarely done out of malice or because they want to cause chaos. Or they think they're well. Nobody's speaking truth to power. That's it, Chris, right there.

Chris Brennan (37:40)
Or they may think they're good communicators, but nobody has told them otherwise.

I ran

it, I ran the ⁓ all hands. I asked if there's any questions. There were no questions. So I guess I got my point across. They forgetting the human quality of people just don't want to be the first to ask a question. So nobody asks, but from their vantage point, I crushed that. And they go back to their day to day. They go back to their day, you know?

Steve (37:55)
Yeah.

Totally. Exactly.

It's totally an goes back to that age old quote that nobody knows who said it. And that is the biggest danger to communication is the illusion that it happened. ⁓ And that's what it is. Just because we've been trained to think if we hit send on an email, we've communicated. Well, if they didn't get it, they didn't open it, they didn't understand it, if they didn't act on it, you've done nothing. And a lot of executives are doing nothing other than adding to the noise. And you know what? Communicators too. We're not free to blame from this.

Chris Brennan (38:18)
Right.

You

Steve (38:38)
A lot of us, too many of us, just go along with the flow, take the corporate speak, funnel it into a channel, check a box, get it through the, we are so worried about getting it through the approval process that we write for the approvers and not the readers. That's

Chris Brennan (38:52)
Interesting.

It reminds me what I say to my son. He's nine years old and he's very talkative. And I actually am trying to help him with that. So I'll always, keep telling him, do you want to speak? I go, I go, do you want to speak or do you want to be heard?

Steve (39:02)
my god, can you work with my wife? Work with my wife?

Chris Brennan (39:09)
Which one is your objective? Because if you're speaking, you're succeeding at that, but nobody can hear you. I'm out of the room and you're still talking. Like you started talking from a different floor or you've just started speaking while I'm speaking. So it's like, but what is your goal? And he's like, do you want me to hear it? He goes, I want you to hear it. Well, how you're doing it now isn't going to help you. Like you've got to make sure that you've got my attention first.

Steve (39:29)
Love that.

Chris Brennan (39:33)
And now I want to hear everything you have to say. And I've been trying to like coach him with that. And I think maybe it's working, but...

Steve (39:35)
Exactly.

I love that. I'm sure. Chris, I just wrote that

down and I'm gonna write about that. That's a great, I should say the same thing to leaders. Do you wanna speak or do you wanna be heard? That's great.

Chris Brennan (39:47)
Yeah, exactly. It's

a really simplified, again, eighth grade level, but I'm talking about eight euro.

Steve (39:54)
You know what? I'll

be saying that ⁓ to 60 year old executives by next week. You want speak or you want to be heard?

Chris Brennan (39:58)
I think, I think that's

that thing. really connects with them too. Like they don't realize what their objective is. They're saying it and they're moving on. It's like, but did anybody hear it? I don't think you really considered that your audience to go back to the CTA and the marketing approach. Like who's your audience? I don't know. Maybe we should figure it out. So.

Steve (40:06)
Totally.

That's absolutely right. Yeah, I know, I'm just saying this. ⁓

Chris Brennan (40:19)
We've been talking a lot about like the perspective and the words themselves, but I'd love to actually get a little bit about the formats. Are you seeing any new formats or any more creative approaches that are helping teams switch to real talk? Like things like short form video, internal podcasts, or maybe even interactive content. Are you seeing anything from your vantage point or are you ⁓ bringing these to other people's attentions on it's not just what you say, but the channels, the formats?

and the techniques of how to say it.

Steve (40:51)
Yeah, know Chris, the unfortunate thing is I think we're slogging uphill right now. Because all these channels came out, It became very easy to video and video your leaders. And we did it and very easy to turn on a switch and have ⁓ Viva Engage where everybody can collaborate out there and have two-way communications. The problem is we clicked on all these new channels, right? It could be a podcast. I just heard a podcast a week ago, internal, awful.

Chris Brennan (40:55)
Okay.

Steve (41:21)
Awful, was painful to listen to. It was obviously somebody reading a question and somebody reading an answer. Somebody reading a question and somebody reading an answer. And that went out there and that's just gonna add to the shag pile, the slag heap of crap out there, the corporate sludge. we're turning on new channels but we're not changing fundamentally how we communicate. We're not asking questions, we're not looking for conversation. These 30 second videos are fantastic. We're using them with all of our leaders that we work with but it can't be this.

Chris Brennan (41:34)
Right.

Steve (41:51)
Good afternoon. In an effort to keep our employees always informed in everything that we do, we are pleased to announce that you can't, you gotta be like Cory, be like, hey everyone, I'm sitting out here in front of this facility. They're doing some pretty cool things. Let me take you in and show you. ⁓ We're seeing when people get the channel right and the content right, that's when you see magic. But usually for the longest time we didn't have the channels and our content sucked. Now we have the channels, but our content still sucks.

We got basically what we're seeing is there's a lot more suckage out there. There's just more places to put it. And whoever said, know, you're a marketing guy, Chris. So tell me the truth. You know, you might be part of the problem. You marketing advertising types. One of you said, I like Don Draper era back in Mad Men. One of you said something you got to say something seven times before somebody will before it'll stick with somebody. And that's still repeated to this day. And I've had clients say it to me and I'm like, you are so wrong.

Chris Brennan (42:20)
Right.

Yeah.

Right.

Steve (42:50)
If you have to send the same email seven times, the problem is not your audience, it's the email. It's your messaging, it's your words. You shouldn't have to repeat something seven, but everyone's doing that. They're saying the same message on SharePoint Engage. They're doing it in an email newsletter. They're doing it in a management newsletter. They don't talk about it at the town hall. And they're thinking, we just gotta keep hyping this and keep hitting it, hitting it and hitting it. But they're not doing it in different ways. They're just saying the same thing over and over again. And after a while it becomes white noise.

So yeah, we are seeing some new tools and some cool internal podcasts. Not hard to do. Do it properly. We know people that are doing it right, have cool guests on that are customers, internal people that are doing it right and having a conversation like we're doing now. And then we're having people do the corporate style where it's scripted, approved. Every word is written by committee. And wait, if the CEO is going to talk on a podcast, somebody's got to vet his words. And they vet his words by sucking all the life out of it. It's safe.

And we make the deadline and we make it through the approval process and nobody listens to it or watches it or reads it. Yeah, I think it definitely comes to the point where you have to really understand how to layer your information. ⁓ People expect shorter these days. The intention spans are smaller. So, you know, we might put a post on the Internet or we might post something in Teams.

⁓ You know use your link strategically link here for to see a video interview link here for the full information just Really understanding where people are when they're gonna get your message and then using that format to its strongest ability Instead of what like Steve just went through where you know you take one thing copy and paste the exact same thing in eight different areas Well, maybe one place is great for video and so you link them to that point and have your audience make the choice of

which types the formats resonate the most with them. I think that is crucial these days. And again, the expectation of what the modern audience expects on how to consume content. Give me the choice. I will do it my way on my device on my own time. So you have to have that mentality in your head and just be able to layer information correctly because of it.

Chris Brennan (45:04)
That's actually what we're seeing too. So it isn't the seven ways. We're kind of getting back into the three ways, three times, three different ways. it's like, first one is direct. in person or online, I direct, you've told it to them, that person. It could be in a group setting, but you've said it them. It's in text, but then it's also in video. And video can be a variety of different ways. So for... ⁓

Steve (45:14)
That's right, that's cool, that's cool.

Yep. Thanks.

Chris Brennan (45:33)
Co-fenster, we have an AI video agent, Theo, which takes static text and converts it into dynamic video. So you can get a point across in like 30 seconds with the highlight bits of it, or you can cut out a piece of a long form piece of video from like, let's say a town hall and only give that to the people that it actually relates to. And our AI editor will actually choose that and select it for you. ⁓ But that's what the way we're seeing it is like, because there's

Steve (45:40)
Very cool.

Wow.

Yeah.

Chris Brennan (46:03)
different various generations working in the same company that some people do want that internet with long form text to really understand. Then there's some people who go, just give me the highlights. And as you say, even frontline workers going, I don't have the time. I'm like in a factory or I'm driving a truck. You expect me to read all of that? Well, no, you can listen to the audio version of it.

Steve (46:10)
Absolutely.

Sure. Yeah.

Exactly. Exactly. Right. Exactly

right. You gotta understand the audience. We've had clients that would spend tens of thousands of dollars on videos, put them on the internet and assume that they were getting the point across and they were well done. most of their employees are call center employees. They don't go on the internet. They're on the phone all Literally not allowed. Every day. They're not allowed. So it's like again it comes on to that segmentation. What's right for one person is not right for the other one. And that can shift from topic to topic too. So it's just...

Chris Brennan (46:42)
Right.

Steve (46:51)
People gotta get lot more thought to it, I think. Yeah, I think you gotta understand your audience as the primary, you know, impetus to like, how are we going to communicate this? The worst thing you can put on any communication survey is how do you want to get your content? You're gonna get five million different answers, and one person may answer differently on Monday than they will Wednesday. It's just really understanding what does the work environment look like for your different segments, and then what makes the best fit from there.

Chris Brennan (46:51)
Yeah.

Right.

Steve (47:21)
If people want to take the extra time to do something different, layer it so they have the option to do so. But you know, you can't take the order of how do you want your content. You'll go out of your mind. You'll go Yeah, one of the things. Now they don't. Yeah.

Chris Brennan (47:33)
No. And people don't even know what they want anyway. A lot

of times they know what they don't want once they've experienced it.

Steve (47:41)
That's

exactly right. I don't like touching that hot stove with my face. You know, other thing is when Cindy goes focus, the first thing everyone says is, I hate email. Don't you dare send any more email. Then she says, well, how do you prefer your information email? It'll cancel each other out. So you learn not to ask that question. It's just crazy. It's, know, what content is important to you to really tell me what your workday is like. You know, when are you able to take a look at

Chris Brennan (47:59)
Yeah.

Steve (48:10)
communications from leaders or your local communications. Just really try to understand them. That's the best thing you can do.

Chris Brennan (48:19)
I think it makes perfect sense and it kind of ties everything back together because if you were to, if leaders were able to convey their point in a more conversational, real human style, but also.

benefit from the technology now that can help you diversify the message across various channels, then you get the best of every world possible. You've communicated, but you've actually done it in a variety of channels so that however somebody enjoys consuming it has that ability to consume it that way.

Steve (48:34)
Absolutely. Exactly. Great. Yep. It is everything. It is everything.

That's the future right there that is people are gonna be able to access information in the in the style and the channel that they is most comfortable to them for sure our son is back I was done Zach he's he's not on the call now, but he's our third partner joined a year ago this week Yeah He came into the world of play communications about five years ago when he was in college still he interned for us And he goes dad what's with these intranets you think I think anybody my age is going to an intranet?

Chris Brennan (48:58)
That is fantastic.

Okay.

Steve (49:16)
to get their news because everything's right here. Why would I do that? Like put it on Slack and I'll be on Slack or put it on Teams and I'll be on Teams but I'm not gonna go read long articles on the internet. And that's his generation man. They're not reading the long thumb sucking corporate stuff. They want a 45 second video. They want a short article. know they might link to more information if it's directly related to them but even that is kind of iffy.

Chris Brennan (49:39)
And one of

the challenges we're seeing as well with AI is you're now able for the first time ever to instantly produce competent, confident, long form text ⁓ instantly. And they go, I think it makes sense. But again, it goes back to.

Steve (49:51)
Yeah.

Chris Brennan (49:55)
Do you want to speak or do you want to be heard? Because who's reading that? it, yeah, technically it does feel like it's competent. If you go through it, you go, there's more jargon than ever before. And there's repetition than ever before. But on first glance, you go, oh, this is kind of conveying everything. And I was like, yeah, but who's reading it? Like, I'm not. What I'll probably do a lot is like, I'll just take that and dump it into a chat and go summarize this. I don't have the time.

Steve (49:57)
Exactly.

Good, well organized,

Exactly. me the bullet point. These people are coming out all these like the Edelman Trust Barometer, this and that report, it's 80 pages. Nobody's reading those pages anymore. They're feeding them all into chat GPT and saying, me the highlights.

Chris Brennan (50:35)
But we're

having then is we're AI generated long form being generated in the short form. And what we're losing is the authenticity with the message.

Steve (50:44)
Absolutely. That's absolutely

right. That's why I, know, AI, we'll probably talk about that at some point, I know we're running late, but it's great. We use it every day. We teach workshops on it. But if you don't train it right, if you don't work with it, if you don't, it's going to be garbage in garbage out. AI does not know the difference between corporate speak and real writing yet until you teach it. That's right. You've got to teach it. Like I feed bad examples into my tool all the time saying don't ever

ever use these words. I'll put a good example in there and say this is what I'm talking about. You've got to train it. ⁓ I weep for the future. I think of all these kids coming into the workforce that basically cheated their way through college with AI. They're going to come in and just they rely on it so much they can't even write an email without it. It is that brain rat which I think is real. ⁓

Chris Brennan (51:33)
It is true. Like I,

when I bring interns in, I start introducing them. Well, you can use this, but it's very clear. You have to lead the dance, but you're going to, so it's going to, it's going to take over and you're just going to like follow that, but you cannot let it lead you because it's going to turn into nonsense, competent, confident nonsense, but

Steve (51:42)
Absolutely.

So, yeah.

Yeah,

very confident.

Chris Brennan (51:56)
That's

on first view, because once you dig into it, you're like, wait, what is that? That's the same paragraph three times. But to that person who hasn't been trained first with how to communicate.

Steve (52:01)
What's the thing?

Totally.

Chris Brennan (52:09)
Well, it seems like it works. So I've always been like, just you cannot let it lead the dance, but it's going to always want to through compliments. That's a really good, that's a really good insight, Chris. And let me say this. And you're like, oh, wow, it, it complimented me and it lulled me into just doing whatever it says. And I was like, no, no.

Steve (52:15)
about that.

You It tells me what you want to hear. Yeah. You are killing it

today, Steve. I'm like, all right.

Chris Brennan (52:30)
But look, I think that is an amazing topic that we should have a conversation for in a future episode, Steve and Cindy. Like, it's an entire new topic as well, but I think it deserves its own episode. Because I'd love to get your insights on it. It's so critical right now.

Steve (52:35)
Absolutely, we'd love to. I Totally agree.

Absolutely. really does. Yeah.

Would love that. Agreed. Agreed. 100%.

Chris Brennan (52:48)
But yeah, so that's all we have time for today. So Steve, Cindy, thank you so

Steve (52:52)
Well, I wish we had three more hours,

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