The Communications Executive Council offers several diagnostics to our members. The overreaching purpose of our diagnostic offerings is to help you think strategically about your function, and help you track your progress in making the shift towards becoming a consultative partner to the business (whether at the functional or individual level).
The three key diagnostics that every member should make sure to participate in are: Resource Allocation Benchmarking Survey, Anatomy of Business Value-Focused Communications Function, and the Skills Maturity Assessment. Together these three diagnostics help you see how your function stacks up compared to others in the resources, strategic direction, and competencies required to help you become a true partner to the business.
Resource Allocation Benchmarking Survey
This annual offering provides your communications team with a comprehensive analysis of your budget and staff allocation to help you defend your budget, identify specific areas for reallocation, and plan for next year. The robust benchmark allows for cuts across revenue groups, organization structure and industry-level variables and has proven invaluable for many of our members in making a successful business case within their organization for keeping or increasing their current budget levels. The deadline to participate this year is July 31, 2012!
Anatomy of Business Value-Focused Communications Function
Using 20 attributes of a business value-focused function distilled from our research and partnership with hundreds of companies, this diagnostic establishes common understanding of team objectives and development areas; especially helpful during strategic planning cycles. This diagnostic tool helps you during the beginning of agenda planning cycle, after communications leadership role changes, or as a consensus-builder for team initiatives. Heads of function find this diagnostic particularly useful when getting a buy in and support from their team for a functional strategic focus shift.
The goal of this survey is to help you diagnose skill strengths and development areas on your Communications team across 18 key competency areas. The results will assist you in stewarding the professional growth of team members, prioritizing L&D investments, and clarifying expectations for success in Communications. At this point, close to 90 of our members launched this assessment to their team resulting in a benchmark of more than 2000 communicators. This diagnostic is relevant to any manager with direct reports who would like to help his/her team growth in key competencies relevant to modern communicator.
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