The letters ifm stand for information flow management, madison’s take on how communications should work in large organisations.
To refer to internal messaging as communications is too simplistic and does not take into account the importance of the global network effect, of the influence of matrixed layers of management or of the power of collaboration.
Strategic internal communications relies on the above factors for its success – simply developing communications collateral and sending them out does not achieve the desired effects.
Information flow management in this context focuses on understanding stakeholders, listening for feedback and using techniques other than conventional communications collateral. The name is not copyrighted to Madison and is commonly used by management consultants for process engineering, but as far as I know, attaching the concept to internal communications in this manner is unique to how we operate.
