‘Innovation Is a Loaded Word.’ An Interview With Ellen Thornton of Cisco.

Insider Comms for internal comms

Ellen Thornton, storyteller. (Photo: Paul Sargeant / sargeantcreative.com)

Ellen Thornton is a Senior Manager of Employee Communications at Cisco, a title that does nothing to convey the depth and breadth of her experience, to say nothing of her passion for storytelling. I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with Ellen many times over the past 15 months or so and I enjoy every minute of our talks, every thoughtful or snarky email exchange. We could talk shop for hours…so I thought, why not capture some of what I’ve learned in a bottle and send it to the best internal comms audience in the world. (That’s you.)

• Connect with Ellen on Twitter and LinkedIn.

• See previous interviews with IC pros at McDonald’s, IKEA, Tapestry, Spotify, and GoDaddy.

In this interview, Ellen: 

• Describes the makeup of her team and her role

• Shares how her team is innovating at internal comms

• Shows screenshots and graphics used by internal comms at Cisco (whaaa!)

• Reveals how her team works (cadence, tools, etc.)

• Explains Cisco’s editorial strategy

• Opens up about her connection to Conan O’Brien

Describe your team.

We’re called Employee Comms. There are two sub-teams: Editorial, which is the one I lead, and Events. The Events team manages all-hands—what we call check-ins—and works with our in-house TV studio. Employee Comms rolls up to Global Communications. Our CCO reports to the CEO.

The Editorial team creates global storytelling for the intranet, which is called Cisco Employee Connection (CEC). There are eight of us on the Editorial team. A few are based in San Jose, where Cisco is headquartered, and the rest (including me) are spread across the U.S. and the U.K. We’re fully remote at the moment and may stay that way, because Cisco empowers teams to decide what works best.

Six folks on my team are communications managers and the seventh manages the editorial calendar and publishing workflow. The comms managers own the stakeholder relationship within business units. For example, one person is responsible for innovation storytelling, so she works with the Emerging Tech and Incubation group at Cisco. When they have a program, hackathon, etc., she works with them on the strategy, writes and produces the content, and helps promote it once it’s published.

We have a few people outside the team whom I don’t manage, including our editor. But she’s an integral part of the Editorial and Events teams. She approaches everything she touches with an eye for global comprehension, inclusivity, and accessibility.

What exactly do YOU do?

My title is Senior Manager, Employee Comms. I support our director on the fiscal year strategy, which includes special projects and enhancements for our channels. For example, in a few weeks, we’re adding a curated social feed on our intranet to highlight tweets, Instagram posts, and TikTok videos from the company’s channels. We’re using a tool called TINT.

Another example is our newsletter. Last year, during our focus groups, employees told us overwhelmingly that there were too much comms thrown at them from every angle. So this year, we want to offer choices to employees on how they consume content and fine-tune our push/pull comms. It sounds counterintuitive, but as a result, we started a biweekly newsletter—using Eloqua—one that gives employees the option to unsubscribe. We're also doubling down on promoting an opt-in bot we use to send company news headlines into our Webex app, which employees use for messaging and chat.

I also ensure we are complementing and aligning our efforts with the Global Comms groups. For example, for an event like WebexOne, Cisco’s global flagship event for Webex, the PR team may lead comms around product announcements. We would plug into that with an interview with the executive that manages Webex on what to expect, strategy, focus areas, etc.

The first word in your LinkedIn profile is “storyteller.” What does that word mean to you?

In college, I was an English major but recently, in 2020, I completed an M.A. in communications. In grad school, I learned about Narrative Paradigm Theory, which says storytelling and stories are what make us human. When I came across that, I thought, holy crap, this is an exciting thing to chew on. I believe everyone is a storyteller. But what does it mean if everyone is a storyteller? What is the role of the storyteller?

A storyteller has the ability to listen as people are expressing themselves and pick up on the thing they don’t see as the dramatic tension. My “gift” is to help spot that, to help create the story that they are living in and sharing.

How are you innovating Internal Comms at Cisco?

Innovation is a loaded word. It can mean using things like augmented reality, but we’re not there. In terms of technology, we’re surprisingly traditional. We don’t have an app, for example. We have our intranet, a Webex channel, and a newsletter. And, of course, our biggest channel is our all-hands.

But we are innovative in three interesting ways: