A Conversation With: Jeff Carr

Jeff Carr has been the Director of Communications and Public Relations for United Space Alliance since 1998. Reporting directly to the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), he is responsible for company reputation management through strategic communications, including media relations, employee communications, community relations, customer relations, state and local government relations, marketing communications and advertising. In this issue of the USA Update, Carr discusses USA’s employee communications and marketing efforts.

UPDATE: What is USA’s biggest communication challenge?

CARR: The 2007 Employee Survey told us that employees want more/better communication. More specifically, they want to know what is going on in the industry, with the programs and within our company that could affect them. Their clear preference is to get that information directly from their line of management, but they also want to hear frequently from the senior leadership. Their message was loud and clear – don’t keep us in the dark, tell us what you can and stay in touch even if there is nothing new to talk about.

We are extremely fortunate to have a senior leadership group that places a high priority on communication, and they take this responsibility – and this feedback – very seriously.

So when NASA released its preliminary Workforce Transition Report, and a number of employees were genuinely surprised to learn that a significant number of jobs would be eliminated with Shuttle retirement, we took that as a wakeup call. If employees were surprised by this, after we had been communicating it for over a year, something, somewhere, was not working. And so we’ve focused a great deal of energy on making the system work better.

UPDATE: What is being done to improve our employee communications?

CARR: The thing about communication is that it is never finished, it is never enough and it is everyone’s responsibility. Our job (Communications and Public Relations) is to provide the tools and processes that empower the individual – employee and manager alike – to inform and be informed. That boils down to clear messages, access to information, verifying understanding by gathering feedback and then employing that feedback to clarify the message and further improve the process.

We have a number of tools and processes that are designed to do that. But we’ve learned that the system isn’t working as effectively as it should, so we’re working on changing and improving a number of things, starting with improving access to leadership.

UPDATE: What are the improvements?

CARR: With the elimination of Executive VSP (Vision Support Plan) Board visits, we are going to expand a program that is already underway called Cross Talks, which, to this point, has only involved our CEO and COO (Chief Operating Officer). Cross Talks are no-holds-barred open discussions between senior executives and cross-sectional groups of employees. The topics of discussion are entirely up to the group. We will be significantly expanding the number of these discussions across the company and the number of senior executives participating starting in June.

Also in June, we will be activating a new, online sound-off forum on the internal Web that will allow employees to register their concerns, ideas and recommendations on a wide variety of subjects. We will also be conducting quarterly awareness surveys to ensure that employees are getting the information that they need.

These are new important aspects of our feedback process to find out what employees know or don’t know, better understand what they are concerned about and address what they want and need to know.

We have established a new CEO weblog called USA Mission Update, which is intended to respond directly to that feedback, addressing specific issues that employees are concerned about from the executive point of view. We’ve had some debate over what constitutes a blog or not, but what it boils down to is there is no one right or wrong approach to blogging. The important thing is that it addresses issues of relevance to the readers and responds to their needs. We could never manage an interactive online dialogue with Dick (Covey, USA President and CEO) and expect him to ever accomplish another thing. So, we look at all the feedback indicators to determine what he and his colleagues need to address and put the questions to them.

UPDATE: You said previously that communications is everyone’s responsibility. What’s management’s role in the process?

CARR: Probably more so than the senior leadership team, I think the real important players in this process are the first-line managers. With the shift in emphasis toward the use of VSP Reviews for internal organization communication and work tracking, the expectations of our first-line managers to have information and answers is going to be high. They’ll need the information, the understanding and the clear authority to communicate on issues important to our workforce. We know that we need to better equip and inform them to do that job.

We generate, each month, a USA Communicator, which is a one-page compilation of information and messages that is provided to managers to share with their teams in staff meetings and VSP reviews. We are expanding that product to address news and information in four categories – New Business, Programs Status, Transition Status and Being Competitive.

In order to ensure that we are providing our managers with the tools they need to be informed and to keep their teams informed, we also are going to revitalize the Manager’s Forum online so that we can get management feedback on the effectiveness of our communication efforts.

UPDATE: What’s the employee’s role?

CARR: There are several things that employees can do to enhance the process. The main thing though is to engage. Listen, read, evaluate what is being provided and feed back your questions and/or concerns. Talk directly to your management; make a thoughtful, constructive posting to the new Employee Forum; respond to a survey; and take advantage of the opportunity to participate in a Cross Talk when it arises. It is also important to be open to the communication and to understand that the changes we’re going through aren’t motivated by the desire to take things away but just the opposite. Change is motivated by the desire to preserve jobs and secure our position in the market.

UPDATE: What function do you see employee communications playing over the next few years?

CARR: Communications is always important to the productivity and morale of a team but even more so in a period of intense change and uncertainty. We all want answers to questions that boil down to “how and when will this affect me?”

Ultimately, we want to know that every employee has the information and understanding of issues needed to make smart, well-informed decisions about their lives and careers as we work with NASA to chart a new course for space operations. As hard as we try, we may not always have the answers as early as we’d like. But that doesn’t mean we can’t talk.

UPDATE: Marketing communications and advocacy also fall in your organization. What kinds of activities are underway to market USA for new business?

CARR: This has been an area of rapid growth and challenge for us. In the past, as long as our customers have been happy with our performance, we’ve been good. So our marketing and promotional efforts were focused on reinforcing customer satisfaction. We’re not publicly traded, nor do we sell commercial products or goods, so there has not been a real value in doing a lot of advertising and business-to-business marketing. Now that we’re faced with competing in a more open market to win work with new customers, that has changed. We work on a daily basis with our business development team to position our company brand in the right place at the right time with the right message to reach our potential customers. That comes in the form of advertising, exhibits and promotions at conferences and trade shows and a more strategic approach to media marketing. But you won’t see us advertising in the New York Times so much as the aerospace trade publications that are read by our potential customers and industry partners.

UPDATE: From your vantage point, what’s your view of the future?

CARR: A little fuzzy, I have to admit, just because we still have so many questions that can’t be answered. But I am very optimistic for our future in space exploration. Nobody can do what NASA needs to have done, in terms of space operations, as well as United Space Alliance. We are the people they need, and we are working extremely hard to be in a position to deliver. We just need to take a deep breath every now and keep doing the things we do best. Oh, yeah, and communicate, communicate, communicate.

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