Exploring Internal Communication: the fifth edition arrives

We’ve just celebrated the launch of fifth edition of Exploring Internal Communication at the wonderful October Gallery in London.

What a journey it has been.

When I started work in a dedicated internal comms role in BT 26 years ago there were no books that I could refer to.

And there was little, if any, academic research being done.

How things have changed.

Bill Quirke’s Making the Connections, published in 2008, is the first book most people remember about IC. It was ground-breaking and it is so good that we still use it today on our Internal Communication Certificate course.

The first edition of Exploring Internal Communication was published shortly after in 2009. It was intended to be a course book for the new CIPR Internal Communication qualifications that I developed.

But in this period, we experienced so much change in internal comms that each edition had to be fairly rapidly revised.

And in the years since the 4^th edition was published in 2020 that change has just accelerated.

In a world that now moves so fast, writing a book is a very slow process.

Martin Flegg and I started on the project in November 2024.

One thing that we took time to develop was the structure and flow. We wanted to adopt an approach where theory is applied to good practice throughout and, at the same time, take readers on a process that enables strategy and planning to really make a difference.

So, the book is now really more of a handbook than ever before. Something to dip in and out of whenever you get a bit stuck on how to tackle a comms issue.

We each took the lead on separate chapters and then reviewed each other’s drafts.

One of the reasons why it takes so much time to write a book like this is the vast amount of information that is now out there. Our job was to prioritise key research and condense it into accessible language and make it all applicable to real-world practice.

PURCHASE EIC5 FROM ROUTLEDGE

Another part of the work that took some time was the cover design.

We wanted this edition to look different, mainly because it is virtually a complete re-write.

We were lucky to work with Mark Terry at Neo Position, because we gave him quite a tricky brief. But like all great creatives, he rose to the challenge!

In the end, we were a bit torn between a dystopian office image – you have to understand that this was at the time that Severence was on – and the image you see today.

The central theme of breaking through the cover represents the breakthroughs that we hope readers will discover in the book that help them to think a bit differently.

The listening ear emphasises the increasing role of listening to employees as part of IC today.

The EIC⁵ formula acronym signifies that what is in the book is the ‘scientific formula’ – using data and research to inform practice.

 

I’d like to thank Katie Macaulay at AB Comms for providing great feedback on the first draft.

I’d also like to thank everyone who kindly provided an endorsement.

And a final thank you to our students, so much of the learning has come from you and we hope we’ve done that justice in the book.

Over to Martin for his reflections on writing the book and the launch

Almost everything we do these days in IC – town halls, Q&A sessions, workshops and meetings are conducted in a hybrid way, and digital communication and platforms now dominate and drive everything we do.

Over the last few years, we’ve had to adapt to that increasing complexity and learn to practice IC in very different ways and that is one of the main reasons why I wanted to collaborate with Kevin on the fifth edition of Exploring Internal Communication and share some of that first-hand experience of working with and overcoming those challenges.

PURCHASE EIC5 FROM ROUTLEDGE

About 17 years ago, after working in communication roles for a while, I decided that it was time to ‘get professional’ if I was going to make a career out of this sort of work.

At the time I didn’t really know what ‘getting professional’ looked like, but it seemed like a good idea to get started by studying for a qualification in internal communication. That’s where I met Kevin and Ann, and encountered the first edition of Exploring Internal Communication, the rest, as they say, is history!

Since studying for that qualification, I’ve done things in the world of internal communication that I never thought I ever would.

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I’ve been a committee member and chair for CIPR Inside, written countless blogs about IC, appeared on podcasts, spoken at events, got chartered (and even more qualified!), organised national conferences, judged awards, become a course leader and tutor and now a co-author for a book about internal communication that I’ve admired, used and respected for years.

Finally, we’d like to say a word or two about the wonderful venue and artwork

The October Gallery was founded in 1979 and is supported by sales of art, rental of facilities including training rooms, grants, and the support of friends from around the world.

It was one of the first galleries in the UK to introduce contemporary art from around the world, promoting artists from a multitude of cultures – decades before this became common practice.

The artist, Kenji Yoshida, was conscripted at the age of 19, in 1943, and immediately assigned to a kamikaze squadron in Japan in the second world war. The traumatic experiences of this left him profoundly conscious of the fragility of life – an awareness that permeates all the work that followed.

The exhibition is titled the Meaning of Life and the works here date mainly to the 1960s and 70s. Yoshida moved to Paris in the 60s and these pieces combine traditional Japanese and European modernist styles.