One of my favorite Dilbert cartoons depicts several executives cackling over a strategic plan they purloined from one of their competitors. “Ooh! Look!” one guffaws. “They’re planning to ‘utilize synergy.’ We’re in trouble now!”

If Scott Adams had published that strip this morning, the executive might have been hooting, “Then, they’re going to drive customer satisfaction!”

When, exactly, did “drive” become the latest way to avoid speaking clearly? We drive traffic to the intranet. We drive employee engagement. We drive sales. We drive profitability. We drive everything except cars, cattle and Miss Daisy. And, frankly, it’s driving me crazy!

It’s time for a campaign to drive “drive” out of our communications. Let’s encourage. Let’s create. Let’s promote. Let’s do anything except employ a flaccid verb that fails to create a vivid mental image.

Then maybe we’ll drive some understanding.

Smart organizations know there’s a lot to learn from people who leave. With their shackles broken and the pursuit of other interests ahead, exiting employees have nothing to lose. It’s a great opportunity to get some fresh insights into obvious topics like what made them leave in the first place, what’s going on that might prompt others to leave, and what the departing employee really thinks of the company’s culture, work practices, policies, vision, business direction, and so on.

It’s good to know, for example, if one particular manager or executive is literally driving people out of the company. Or if a specific business practice is chewing up people and spitting them out. Or, in more jargony terms, whether the working environment could use some proactive retooling to help bolster retention levels ; )

Many companies don’t conduct exit interviews (I’ve left one or two where I would have liked an opportunity to provide some, uh, constructive feedback to management), and those who do often consider it an uncomfortable ritual, like changing a dirty diaper, that’s not particularly easy on the exit interviewer’s, or the company’s, self-esteem.

One way around it is the online exit poll, a tactic that I learned about from my old friends Tudor and Ryan Williams, whose company, TWI Surveys, does this kind of thing for its corporate clients. The idea is to institute a mandatory, web-based poll that becomes part of the standardized paperwork that an exiting employee has to complete to fulfil the terms of his or her severance. The poll can ask all the same questions as a real human, but with far less chance of hurt feelings and perhaps even a better chance of full candor. Plus, the results not only generate written comments, but also produce benchmarkable numbers that can pinpoint gaps and indicate trends.

I think this is a great idea, and it’s a tactic that communicators should be recommending to their counterparts in HR and organizational development. Or, if exit interviews or polls are already done, it’s time for communicators to tie in to a practice that could provide a motherlode of information to help inform and shape internal communications planning.

Exit communications. Something to think about, very seriously, in a world where the “war on talent” seems to be intensifying every day and the cost of replacing employees is far higher than the price of keeping them. Finding out why one person leaves might just prevent the next ones from following. It might also help prove our worth as communicators.

It’s getting harder and harder for communicators (and TV networks) to deliver true communal experiences.

In the entertainment world, it used to be that most North Americans would watch Ed Sullivan on Sunday nights, and the next day everyone would talk about whatever had been on. And in the old days of employee communications, when an edition of your corporate magazine or newsletter went out, you could pretty much rest assured that almost every single employee would have at least held it in their hands and given it a quick browse.

Sunday’s Academy Awards managed to deliver the kind of mass event that does more than give us water cooler fodder – it helps to focus and define our culture, creating a sense of community that otherwise might otherwise not exist. Every Oscar night has at least one or two moments that bring us global villagers together. George Clooney’s acceptance speech did that on Sunday night, when he paid tribute to Hollywood for often being on the leading edge of social issues.

In today’s digitally networked corporate world, we assume that being so wired and easily connected to our peers automatically makes us a community. Sadly, the opposite is true. With so many communication options, and with such diverse and far-flung workforces, it’s harder than ever to create a real community in a large company.

What are you doing to build a sense of community in your organization? What’s the closest thing we employee communicators can do today to create the sense of belonging that we all crave, but seldom get, from a common experience?