IABC/Washington honored Chris Doherty, vice president of internal communications at Sprint Nextel, with the first annual Pinnacle Award over breakfast at the Willard Inter-Continental Hotel on April 5.
The IABC/Washington Pinnacle Award was designed to honor a senior-level business communicator in the Greater Washington-Baltimore region with a record of achieving exceptional results in linking his or her organization's communications efforts with the organization's overall goals, strategies, and objectives. Mount Vernon Printing (www.mvprint.com) provided valuable sponsorship support, with post-event publicity provided by PR News (www.prnewsonline.com).
Doherty orchestrated the internal communications effort for the 2005 merger of the two telecommunications giants. In his remarks, Doherty explained that they “really had a perfect storm,” with three factors that were critical to the success of their efforts. First, communications was brought into the merger discussions right away, before anyone else even knew about the possible union. Second, executives of both firms were very committed to leveraging internal communications to smooth the transition for employees. And third, this was a merger of two strong companies who were doing very well in their respective industry niches.
Doherty discussed their approach and strategies around the successful internal communications effort, including several innovative tactics such as:
- “Connecting to Our Future” an intranet site where employees could submit rumors and questions anonymously and get straightforward answers from company executives.
- A leadership summit bringing together the 150 top named executives of the new firm in the days immediately before the merger occurred.
- An employee celebration held the day after the merger closed in six locations via satellite and Webcast to Sprint Nextel employees.
The results speak for themselves. An employee survey immediately after the merger showed that ratings were up more than 35% in six key areas, including “caring for the customer” and “working as a team.” After the first 100 days, CEO Gary Forsee said that efforts by employees had put the integration of the two companies six to nine months ahead of schedule – with phase one completed in just 21 days. Finally, the merger created more shared efficiencies than originally expected, so Sprint Nextel raised synergy targets 20%, to $14.5 billion on a net present value basis.
In the end, Doherty said the biggest thing he would change about the process was integrating the two firm's intranets on day one of the new company. While they made sure both sites had identical content, he feels creating one intranet site is still an important milestone the company needs to achieve in the months ahead.
Tracy Needham
Portfolio Director – Member Communications, IABC/Washington
