Just like the managers of other business functions, communicators need to measure how effective our work is. However, the metrics need to be ones that we can act on--either to keep doing what we're doing or to know what and how to change.

Ask "actionable" survey questions
To make the best use of metrics from surveys, it helps to ask the right questions with an appropriate range of responses. All too often, I see questions like the following
ones, where the response scales range from agree to disagree, with a neutral point. It's nearly impossible to guess what actions to take if most people disagree with the
following statements:
1. Communication from management is open and honest.
2. New webcasts should be available once each quarter.
3. I receive too much email from the company.

Avoid short cuts when more detail is needed
Even when the scale is more appropriate than "agree/disagree," as for the examples above, asking the wrong "short-cut" question makes it difficult to track true progress. For example, I often see surveys that ask people if they're getting too much, too little or the right amount of information about a particular subject. At first glance, it seems that if 30
percent say they want more information, giving them more information should make that initial percentage get smaller over time. However, it might not. Providing more information on a topic might fill the need for people who were already interested in the subject, but it will also make other people more interested in the topic, which will suddenly increase the percentage of people who want more than they're getting.

The more actionable way to get at this issue is to ask people two questions instead of just one: Ask how interested they are in a subject and how well informed they feel about it. By subtracting the percentage who are informed from those who are interested, you can still see the "gap" of how many want more information than they're currently getting. In addition, you can track progress in getting more people interested in subjects you want them to be engaged in, and track improvements in how many have become better informed. (Read more on how to do this and how to fix the three questions above.)        

Ten years ago, I was asked by our Communications Board to develop some kind of metrics. It was unclear what they wanted to measure, and they didn't care about how. My predecessor had failed to make HR introduce specific communications issues into the employee survey. Meanwhile local communicators had created amateurish surveys, mainly to show that some readers liked their newsletters. I couldn't find a single question there that seemed clear or relevant.

Cajsa Warg wrote the first Swedish cookbook in 1755. She frequently advised housewives to "make the best use of what you've got." This turned into a proverb across frugal Scandinavia. I first decided to re-use nine questions from the existing employee survey. I selected the items that seemed to be measuring some communicative aspect of leadership. Much later I learned that the professionals call this a "construct."

In my Internal Communications Council I had to hold off all attempts to first find a theoretical definition of communicative leadership. I didn't want to waste another minute splitting hairs. "Let's make the best use of what we've got, and get on with it." Our supplier was at the very bottom of the league and couldn't afford to hire a real statistician until 2006. Finally we then got a much wanted regression analysis. All items correlated strongly with the Communications factor, with more varied correlation to Leadership. Three new items instead correlated nicely with Goal Setting.

Over the years we had seen steady, but never spectacular, improvements. We were still struggling in the industrial system. A former plant communicator, Thierry Garnier, then said:  "The worst managers must get an ambulance, those who could survive need penicillin, and the best should be recognized." I decided to introduce a more "personalized" feedback report. This would give each manager practical advice on how to "enhance or maintain" five relative strength areas, and how to address between one and five "improvement areas."

In 2008, Volvo Group's CEO received the Communications Excellence Award from the Swedish PR Association in recognition of  "persistent and resilient work in developing the Communicative Leadership Index that has now become the industry standard." Several consultants have since built their boutiques around CLI clones. During this decade we have moved from measuring a fuzzy concept to several breakthrough insights. Today the new Communicative Leadership Index is a very robust predictor of high performance and "Employee Engagement X4."