CEC Insider

Managers are your most effective communications tools.  In fact, Comms teams that focus on improving their line managers’ ability to lead dialogue with employees can benefit from a 12% increase in employee mobilization.  (For those unfamiliar with CEC’s term, “mobilization,” it’s a combination of discretionary effort and active alignment…essentially, mobilization = employees working hard on the right things.  CEC members: you can learn more about mobilization here.)

So, if effective managers are Communications’ best tools, what is the best tool for communicators to use to equip managers with the information and skills they need?

One of the best tools is manager dialogue training. CEC members: you can access our full-blown Dialogue Training and Workshops AND learn more about how training managers to “dialogue” is very different than training them to “cascade.”

Of course, with thin training budgets and dispersed workforces, dialogue training may not be a feasible option for your communications team.  In that case, your intranet may be the best way to help boost your managers’ communications confidence.  I took a look at a recent discussion thread in the CEC Employee Communications Forum to pull out some smart ways your peers are taking advantage of their intranets to boost the impact of line manager communications:

• Toolboxes

Quick-tips, key talking points, worksheets to plan for a dialogue — intranet toolboxes that are easily accessible by managers help them confidently share information with their employees.

“I set up a Manager’s Toolkit site where there is a discussion board and a document library where they can pick up talking points as developed for key messaging.  I want to ‘teach them to fish’ so that they become better at communication and can deliver messages as leadership would hope for them to be delivered.”
Communications Consultant, Financial Services Read More »

Raise your hand if…you would say that instead of “putting the customer first,” your company actually puts the customer second or even third (behind such goals as chasing profits, serving internal interests and responding to the capricious whims of your executives.)

(SFX:  The sound of zero hands being raised)

Of course, every company in the known universe says “…oh, yes, we are definitely and proudly customer-centric.  Always have been!”  And I’m sure every company sincerely believes they are.

But let’s challenge the truth behind that belief.

Take the following three-question quiz and see if you have to honestly answer YES to any of the questions:

1) Are there a lot of rules and regulations in your customer contracts (fine print, legalese, clearly-spelled-out exceptions for things like “force majure“)?
Whose interests are being served by this tortured language?  Your legal department?  Finance?

Does your company have any clauses to ensure the customer always gets the best end of the bargain, even if it means the company has to take a hit?  (If so, I’m gonna stop blogging immediately, and run over there to sign up!)

2) Does your company measure “net promoter score” (NPS)?
NPS is based on a customer’s willingness to recommend your company, and many companies use this system to measure the overall loyalty of their customers.  Every company wants loyal customers, right?

But has any customer ever said, “I hope that after my transaction with this company, I’ll be willing to recommend them!”?  Companies want loyalty and recommendations.  Customers just want what they want, an interaction that benefits them in some way. Read More »

My Food Revolution is about bringing people together who care about the future of their children, about their right to good health and a proper diet.  I know there are millions of people across America who care about these things and I’ve seen how, with a little confidence and basic knowledge, people quickly change the way they eat.”

So says Jaime Oliver, British celebrity chef and host of the Emmy award-winning reality TV show Food Revolution.

Here is how I interpret Jaime’s quote.  Revolution is about:

1) Bringing people together

2) Caring

3) Confidence and knowledge.

These are the ingredients (pun intended!) of change.

Growing up in a family of foodies, I’ve certainly had my share of conversations about foie gras vs. nachos and El Bulli vs. McDonald’s.  But when I watched a few episodes of “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” on YouTube for the first time last weekend, I had behavior change on my mind more than I did cooking or obesity. Read More »

During my recent viewing of Inception, I noticed a change in my movie-going experience. Instead of the typical announcement urging us not to chat or talk on our phones during the movie (i.e. “don’t spoil the movie by adding your own soundtrack”), there was a request for viewers not to text or use their phones to stop the glare from distracting other moviegoers.

Despite the warning, the laps of many moviegoers were lit up. Many may have been coordinating dinner plans for after the movie, but the more social media-savvy viewers may very well have been tweeting their favorite lines or in-the-moment reactions to the film.

My daily Twitter feed is full of links to articles people are reading, updates from events they’re attending, or their random thoughts based on the experiences of their day. (Did you know Twitter now sees an average of 600 tweets per second?) As communicators, we’re constantly sharing information and messages with our stakeholders and hoping the right messages will make it onto those Twitter feeds.

What if there was something we could do to prompt stakeholders to tweet about us? And even more than that, what if we could influence what they say? Read More »

Companies are struggling with talent issues across the board — high disengagement among employees and decreasing intent to stay year on year (latest figures from our sister HR program show an 8.7% drop relative to Q2 2009).  However, heads of Communications face their own talent challenge.  As the function becomes more of a strategic business partner – enabling communication between stakeholders to drive greater productivity and execution against company goals – the competencies of the professional communicator are also changing.

The Council believes that there are 5 core skills required of this new communicator role:

1. Listening: to learn about our stakeholders across many different channels
2. Analytics: to derive insights from the stakeholder data we collect
3. Project Management: to manage to key outcomes, yet be nimble about getting there
4. Training and Coaching: to make others more effective at communicating directly with stakeholders
5. Social Media Aptitude: to capitalize on new communication tools and behaviors in building stakeholder relationships Read More »

Did you have a chance to attend our webinar last week on social media monitoring?  During the webinar, we invited CEC members to join a discussion with Scott Stevener from Monsanto, Linda Locke from Reputare Consulting (formerly SVP at MasterCard), and Karin Kane from evolve24.  You may have recently seen guest blog posts from Scott and Linda on the CEC Insider.  Below, get the quick scoop from our third panelist, Karin, who manages client engagements at evolve24, a reputation management and monitoring firm.  And CEC Members: if you missed the webinar, you can access the replay here!

Rebecca (CEC): In brief, can you describe how your media monitoring is different from what most communicators use/receive?

Karin: We recognize that communicators can provide tremendous value across an organization when they measure, and share, the insights they can uncover from media.  Because of that, we focus on providing those insights.  We offer the widest selection of social media content, and provide very advanced analytics that allow our clients to measure social media in very distinct ways.  Along with the standard share of voice and sentiment metrics, we measure influence, credibility, reputation, emotion, and risk. These measurements make media monitoring relevant for communications and marketing teams, customer experience and customer service teams, HR, sales, operations and risk management. Read More »

Question: What happens when you ask too many of the right questions?

Answer: You end up with your average, boring company blog.

That probably wasn’t the answer you were expecting.  In a world where we are working harder to provide more consultative support to our business partners and gain better information to make more effective decisions, we are taught that success comes from asking smarter questions.

Taking that advice, communicators have asked our team what would often be considered the “right” questions in relation to social media, and blogging in particular.  I.e., you’ve been looking for help on things like segmentation, search engine optimization, demonstrating return on investment, engaging detractors, and techniques for aligning your blog to your company strategy.

The good news is that these are all things our CEO would be thrilled to hear and that we should keep in mind.  With more data available and still-tight budgets, we have to maintain some level of perspective to respond to rising scrutiny from senior leadership.

But the catch-22 to this upside is that these are also the questions that cause us to focus too much on business outcomes, not enough on truly reaching our stakeholders; and can turn us into *shudder* corporate blah-gers. Read More »

Within the span of a week, two incidents caught the world’s attention…so today’s question for us as communications professionals is:  Are these two stories (analyzed at a root cause level) connected?  You decide.

Story A is the disgruntled employee at a beer distributor in Manchester, CT, who, on the day he chose as his last day of employment, comes to work with a big bag full of guns, kills eight co-workers, and finally ends the incident by killing himself.

Story B is the exasperated jetBlue flight attendant, who, on the day he chose as his last day of employment, comes to work with a head full of rage, shouts foul language to passengers over the PA system as his flight lands at JFK airport, deploys the plane’s emergency slide, and finally ends the incident by killing his career.

Is there a connection between these two stories, which occurred just 100 miles apart, but ended so differently? And do communications professionals have a role in preventing, as well as handling, these kinds of situations? Read More »

Scott Stevener (Corporate Research Team Lead, Monsanto)

Have you ever taken a Myers-Briggs personality test?  (If not, here’s a link to a free mini-version)  What personality type are you?

A couple years ago, we looked at various personality types and which are suited to which type of profession.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the combinations who were likely drawn to Communications included:

• ESFP (Extroverted Sensing, Aided by Feeling)
• ENFP (Extroverted Intuitive, Aided by Feeling)

One great excerpt about ESFPs: “ [Do] not generally enjoy the world of business, especially the corporate world…they often enjoy public relations.”  Or this one about ENFPs: “ Conventional business world is usually not appealing to ENFPs because they dislike excessive rules, regulations, or standard operating procedures.”

Hmm, sound at all familiar?  Maybe like you or your team members?

Now, this isn’t to say that we can’t come up with processes, rules, and data-driven approaches…it’s just not what we prefer to do.  It’s more natural to go on instinct, gut feel, or our inherent creativity.   That said, many of our business partners demand more data and analytics when it comes to our Communications activities and our value to the organization.  Wouldn’t it be great if someone could teach us how to apply data in a smarter way within Communications?  And tell us a story about how it’s actually worked?

Please join us on August 12th for a conversation with Scott Stevener, Corporate Research Team Lead at Monsanto.  Read More »

Lemme ask you… what if you knew that 30-40% of the stakeholders you’re working so hard to reach just aren’t interested in ANYTHING your company has to say?  Not one bit.  How would you feel about THAT?

Frustrated?  Make ya wanna pull your hair out? (not an option for me)

I’ll confess that I, too, used to think that the most frustrating moments of our jobs as communicators are those times when we fail in all our attempts to SOMEHOW reach the people we want to reach.

We just keep trying.  Using every ounce of our creativity, our extraordinary ability to develop compelling messages, our brilliant wordsmithery (including our skill in inventing words that don’t actually exist) to come up with a million new and different ways to connect with people who still seem totally resistant, no matter what we do.

Turns out there is a better way.  Stop trying. Read More »