As communicators we pride ourselves with understanding and empathizing with diverse audiences.  As employees we know that, despite our best efforts, there are always a few people with whom we find it difficult to work.  Karen Combs, a researcher with our sister program, the Market Research Executive Board, recently shared her take-aways from an HBR blog outlining tips for working with people you hate.  Here a few of the actionable recommendations to think about.

1. Manage yourself first: don’t think of how they behave, think of how you react.

• CEC Members – Take our “Dialogue Style” Assessment Tool to see how your personality style impacts others.

2. Don’t involve others: resist the urge to “commiserate” with others, being negative can hurt your own reputation.

• CEC Members – Explore the topic center on improving Employee-to-Employee Communication.

3. Work with them more: spending more time with the person may actually help you understand him or her better and develop a better sense of empathy.

• CEC Members – Check out our classic CEC case explaining the Principles of Driving Peer Participation. Read More »

On Feb 15th, 2012, CEC hosted a webinar entitled “Proactive PR in a Networked Environment”. Mark Hannah, veteran of political communications and agency PR, joined to discuss the implications for PR teams of changes to the communications environment.  Here are some fo the highlights from the session.

CEC: Mark, what’s the biggest change you’ve observed in the PR space in the last 5-10 years?

Mark: Well, there’s been so many! I think the biggest is the model of communication between companies and the people they interact with. Where once we had a one-way, static, command-and-control environment, it’s now multi-directional, dynamic, and conversational. Where once companies had traditional media to act as a filter to a passive audience, increasingly, companies are expected to bypass mass media and communicate directly with stakeholders.

CEC: What’s the best way to influence stakeholders in thisenvironment?

Mark: It’s vital to recognize that push campaigns don’t carry the weight that they once did. No matter how much money a company spends on a campaign, it all pales into insignificance compared to the power of your neighbor down the street telling you about his new car, for instance, and endorsing your product like that. Social media represents the online equivalent of this – you want to reach a point where the content you create gets people sharing your news for you – so it has a ripple effect, and a really rich afterlife.

And yet, when I worked on the agency side, the worst question anyone could ask was ‘how can we make a viral video about x, y, or z?’. Viral isn’t a strategy, it’s an outcome.

• CEC members: learn how stakeholders receive and consume information in a networked environment. Read More »

You may or may not have noticed, but we upgraded the CEC member web site last week.  In addition to some aesthetic enhancements, this upgrade adds three cool functionalities that I encourage all our members to check out:

 1)     Recommended for you.  An earlier upgrade added a reminder of recently viewed content.  Now, that viewing history lets us populate a “top 3” section based on what else your peers who also viewed that content are reading.  It’s not unlike the collaborative filtering tools now used by many consumer web sites, such as eBay and Amazon.

2)     Member spotlight.  One of the coolest aspects of the Council is the incredible network of over 9,000 communications professionals at CEC member companies.  Now, we’ve added a “member spotlight” section on the right margin to showcase some of innovators among this group and share what they are up to.  Read More »

Do you work in PR? If so, chances are you’ve experienced some pretty significant changes in the last 5 years. PR teams report that the ongoing progression of social media has created an environment in which stakeholders expect more direct interaction than ever before – no longer is it enough to rely on traditional media outlets to tell your company’s news. The implications for PR teams have been significant, as they come to terms with new means of monitoring stakeholders, and creating new types of content.

What Changes do PR Teams Need to Make?  

Even 10 years on from the emergence of Social Media, many

Click to Enlarge Image

PR teams remain optimized largely for success with traditional media (see Figure 1). The CEC has spent time recently identifying the changes that leading PR teams are making in order to succeed in a networked stakeholder environment. What is needed from an individual PR professional? What new skills are required? What’s the profile of the perfect PR hire in this digital age?

From Specialists to Generalists

It’s no secret that journalists have been forced to diversify their skill sets. We’ve seen a similar shift in the profile of new hires on corporate PR teams as well. Members that we’ve spoken to have told us that the new breed of PR professional is a generalist, rather than a specialist; for instance, where once you could probably get away with being ‘just’ a great writer, now you need to be able to do much more. One member told me that they’ve just replaced the person who managed their photo archive (narrow scope) with someone who can simultaneously manage all things visual – video, PPT, images, and so on (broad scope).

Skills Required for PR Success

The skills required of new-to-role PR professionals have broadened, and diversified:

Perhaps the greatest difference between “old world” and “new world” that we’ve noticed is the importance attached to media monitoring. The new breed of PR generalist (who has used their web-savvy to self-teach critical skills) takes full advantage of the opportunities presented by social forms of media, using data to inform all of their outreach, and to bring their other skills to bear.

Metrics

Most of the companies we’ve seen measure performance according to the volume of messaging – the number of news releases distributed, the number of Facebook likes, or the number of Twitter followers. The CEC hopes to see a marked shift in the MBOs used by PR teams, to reflect the impact created by proactive outreach, rather than its volume. Instead of measuring the quantity of content distributed, why not measure the number of stakeholders who act on that communication? This could be as simple as the number of stakeholders who re-tweet your messaging, or as concrete as the number of people who buy whatever product you promoted – either way, it’s the number of stakeholders that do something based on your outreach, rather than simply the number of people that hear/read/see it.

Get in touch

We’d love to hear from you:

• How have the requirements of new PR staff changed?
• How have the skill sets on your team changed?
• Most importantly, where have these changes been driven from? Are they coming from the PR function itself, or are they being driven by external pressures?

Resources from the CEC

• Role Profile: Media and Press Relations Specialist
• Proactive PR in a Networked Environment
• News Releases in a Networked Environment
• How to Build a Leading Online Newsroom

When was the last time you were excited about a new product? Maybe you heard about it on Twitter and then read some reviews online. You compared prices and made the purchase.

It feels almost quaint to think product launch communications used to be all about press releases and media contacts. We’ve grown used to being empowered consumers and we aren’t looking back.

With new channels giving companies more ways to reach stakeholders, increased access to information and the ability to compare products, and social media getting stakeholders heard in large numbers, companies are feeling a loss of power to stakeholders that has big implications for product launch communications.

As we’ve been talking to members and thinking about communicators’ role in product launch, we’ve identified three primary stages. To help us think about what guidance CEC can provide to best support our members, we’ve broken down the resource level, activities, and challenges at each phase.

Stages of Product Launch Communication

1. Concept

• Proportion of Comms Involvement: 10%
• Key Activities: At this stage, Communications role is mostly to soak it all in to get a good picture of what you’re going to be working with down the road. Your goal is to build understanding of product positioning, challenges, risks, and tangential stories that will influence the way you talk about the product later.
• Challenge: Knowing what to pay attention to and question in planning meetings, and understanding how it will influence communication about the product later on.
• Question for You: What’s hard about getting business partners to involve you at this stage?

2. Pre-Launch

• Proportion of Comms Involvement: 65%
• Key Activities: This is when the bulk of Comms’ work happens. You review market trends, media lists, influencers, and stakeholder groups to prepare launch communications (i.e. press releases, social media campaigns, blog posts, internal announcements). Depending on the specific product, you may also start to build buzz about the launch toward the end of this stage.
• Challenge: Figuring out how to differentiate the product, getting the right timing of market seeding, and coping with uncertainty about launch timing.
• Question for You: How do you embed uncertainty about timing into your launch plans?

3. Launch

• Proportion of Comms Involvement: 25%
• Key Activities: At this stage, you’re hitting the proverbial or literal ‘send’ button on everything you prepared during pre-launch. You reach out directly to top media sources and hold launch events. You track feedback from key stakeholder groups on an ongoing basis and respond as appropriate.
• Challenge: Knowing which stakeholder feedback to pay attention to and engage with after the launch.
• Question for You: How do you feed insights from stakeholder feedback to business partners?

So, what do you think? Does this sound like the right distributions of activities? How are you dealing with these (or other) challenges? We’d love to get your perspective! Leave a comment or e-mail me at jwohlmuth@executiveboard.com.

CEC Related Resources

• Product Launch Specialist Profile
• Corporate Brand Management
• Differentiate Your Corporate Brand

CEC Related Blogs

• Make Stakeholders the Stars of Your News Release
• Why is Cross-Function Collaboration SO Hard???
• Super Bowl XLVI: 3 Trends, 1 Winner

As the Republican primaries continue to usurp much of the media in the United States it is becoming clear that, whether or not there is a change of power in Washington, come November 7^th, 2012, there is sure to be a new set of agendas on the Hill. And in turn, companies with US interests are left with challenges in forming new relationships, lobbying new coalitions, and tracking the direction of regulatory changes. With elections in France, Germany, and India and changes in power around the world, there is little chance that even the best resourced public affairs teams would be able to keep up with these changes on their own.

Aligning to the overall trend in communications today, public/government affairs teams are actively engaging stakeholders in dialogue and enabling others to communicate on behalf of the company. Where is a better place to start than with your own employees? Your employees’ voice is more credible than the corporate center. And, if we’ve built the right kind of personal connection to the goals and needs of the company, they tend to be the easiest to leverage on our behalf.

The agricultural giant, Monsanto, has been a leader in empowering their employees to keep a pulse on, and respond to public opinion shaping government debate. Their three-pronged approach helps employees better understand and articulate the company’s perspective on key issues.

What they Do:

1. Connect Employees to the Public and Their Issues: A public policy blog allows employees to share opinions on issues related to agriculture and biotechnology. Read More »

Who on your team teaches others to communicate effectively with stakeholders? Who pitches in with his deep stakeholder expertise to guide development of an audience-centric communication? I’m sure there’s at least one person who fits the bill.

That person might be “The Coach”—the communications counselor, and also one of the four distinct skill profiles that emerged from CEC research’s 18 competencies of the modern communicator.

Before we delve deeper into defining and identifying the Coach, here’s a quick recap—just in case you missed any of our earlier posts in the blog series—of the four skill profiles that are based on how communicators’ key strengths around the 18 competencies group together:

• The Presenter—Knows What to Say and How to Say It
• The Influencer—Builds Relationships Across the Organization
• The Consultant—Solves Business Problems
• The Coach—Helps Others to Communicate Read More »

Increased globalization, rising number and diversity of stakeholders, and faster and faster speed at which information spreads have heightened the importance of communication within our member organizations. Other functions are turning to communications to help them deal with this new, more-complex communication environment and expecting communicators to bring more “to the table” than ever before.  These expectations put pressure on communicators to deliver new, innovative ideas and products as well as demonstrate a clear impact on bottom line.

In our functional capabilities diagnostic, we have asked communicators to evaluate 20 attributes of successful, world-class communications function based on their importance and effectiveness. The 3 key things that participants found the most important were: reducing low value work, selecting work that will create value, and testing and measuring communications effectiveness. However, when asked to rate how effective they are in achieving these, reducing low value work and testing effectiveness were the two things that communicators rated themselves as being the least effective in.

However, with flat budgets, and more complex demands from the business, these are the 3 things that the communicators need to excel at, now more than ever. So what does being great look like at these and how do you get better at it?

Reducing Low Value Work

Communicators who are good at this consistently evaluate their portfolio of offered communications activities and weight each of them in terms of both their effectiveness as well as their ability to crate business value.  For example, ING has put together a great Service Level Tiering Process for stepping away from low-value activities both by co-opting partners in prioritizing Communications’ activity portfolio and supporting partners as they undertake lower-value communications activities on their own.

Selecting Work that Will Create Value

Communicators who excel at this focus on selecting work with an explicit linkage to measurable business outcomes and resist work that is unrelated to business objectives. Toyota has put together a Problem-Solving Process to help communicators diagnose the business problems underlying partners’ requests for communications support, ensuring that communications solutions target and help drive business outcomes partners truly value.

Measure Function’s Effectiveness

The best communicators evaluate the impact of their efforts by measuring and assessing actual changes in stakeholders’ behavior—tied to specific company priorities rather than focusing on transactional metrics that cannot be directly tied to business impact. CEC has put together a great Communications Measurement and Reporting Toolkit to help you do just that.

Key Resources:

Reducing Low Value Work

Selecting Work that Will Create Value

Measure Function’s Effectiveness

This post is shared by Anastasia Milgramm of our sister-program, the Customer Contact Council.

Customer interest in reducing energy consumption is higher than ever.

In fact, “80% of US households recently [invested] in some form of energy-related improvements for their home,” according to Stuart Sikes, President at international research firm Parks Associates.

Many are also interested in the potential cost savings of energy efficiency. Parks Associates research found that while “80% of customers don’t know the price they are paying for electricity, 62% strongly believe that saving energy and lowering their utility bills are desirable.”

So with national attention focused on the need to reduce energy consumption and budget-conscious consumers paying attention, what role can utilities’ organizations play in engaging consumers in energy management?

Some strategies you might consider:

• Alert customers about their energy consumption. Many customers don’t know or keep track of their energy usage. In fact, customers are likely to call utilities providers when they receive their energy bill if they perceive the bill to be unexpectedly high. Prevent these unnecessary contacts by alerting customers when their energy use exceeds a certain benchmark, even if this happens before the end of a billing period.  CEC members, ensure customers are receptive to these alerts by understanding customer values and selecting the appropriate channels.

• Educate customers about energy-saving techniques and products. Teaching customers about energy efficiency will boost engagement and encourage customers to take steps to reduce energy usage.  This can also create cross-sell opportunities, as customers opt to buy related products or services offered by utility providers.  CEC members, learn how to engage stakeholders on green-related topics. Read More »

Last week Alan Marks from Ebay and CEC hosted 16 of the smartest minds in Communications for a Thought Leaders Roundtable in San Jose.  The mission: share ideas on the changing nature of the communications profession and understand what the best companies are doing differently.

We often hear our members talking about the importance of having a seat at the table: “if we were only brought in earlier then we could have had more value.”  These communicators very much have that seat at the table and it’s no accident.  They aren’t focused on proving the value of communications activities – instead they are making sure that everything their teams does is constructive and driving business value.

There were a couple of key themes that stood out for me that felt different from most Communications teams we speak to:

1. Actively Building Business Acumen of the Team – It is not enough to have a super-savvy head of communications. If the function is to be taken seriously as a strategic partner then everything the team does and every person needs to really understand the business. Here were a couple of ideas shared on how you can build business acumen:
   • Action Learning Teams – teams of 4-6 communicators with different expertise are given a business focused project to partner together on and present a strategy and action plan for communications e.g., creating a plan for how the company can better use mobile.
   • Rotation Programs (within and outside Communications) – exposing comms team to different roles and parts of the business e.g., media specialist works in internal comms for 3 months.
   • Exposure to Other Functions/BU Thinking – bringing in experts from across the business who have a stake in a shared problem (e.g., safety) to educate communicators about the issue and facilitate an idea sharing session to come up with ways that Communications can help solve the challenge.
   • Active Listening – creating opportunities for communicators to “go native” into the business or stakeholder environment and either run focus groups, ethnography or simply ask smart questions to boost their audience understanding. Read More »