By Lisa Schievelbein

Deep down, every communicator is a voyeur.

 How do I know?  For the last few months, Kayleigh and I have been analyzing the organizational design of CEC member teams, and let me tell you—communicators just love peeking at org charts. They have different reasons for this, but I think one is particularly powerful: a hope that some formula for success can be found in the neat boxes and lines on a PowerPoint slide.  (As you can imagine, the let-down factor is inevitable.)

Here are the coolest things we’ve learned from our research process:

• Certain principles behind org structures are definitely better than others. For example, you’re probably better off using strategic objectives as an organizing device than, say, discrete audience groups, as the latter can focus your energies on stakeholder silos at the expense of the bigger picture.  (CEC members should check out the structural evolution of Best Buy’s Employee Comms team along these lines.)
• That said, org structures themselves are rarely “transferable” across Communications teams. After all, each team is a unique snowflake in terms of headcount (from “half a person” to 50-plus), business priorities, and workflow.  Two very successful teams often look nothing like each other!  As this appreciation set in, we soon realized that CEC members needed more from us than a few giddy peeps at org charts.  (As Kayleigh likes to put it, we had bigger fish to fry.)
• We’re increasingly convinced that skills are more important than structure to the design of the best Comms teams. After all, a function can have a very forward-thinking org chart with a tight line to the CEO, but what does that matter if the communicators themselves are still playing an old-school game?  I’m actually reminded here of Jim Collins’s argument about the “talent on the bus” in his classic bestseller, Good to Great.  Collins states that great leaders focus first on “getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats” (emphasis mine).  In essence: if you’re rethinking your function’s operations, you shouldn’t focus on where people are sitting until you make sure they’re going to drive the type of performance you need.

Incidentally, Collins makes a related point that I find especially relevant for Comms today: “If you begin with ‘who,’ you can more easily adapt to a fast-changing world.”   I do think that the wild swings of the communication environment in recent years have revealed a need for a very different type of professional—a belief confirmed by members who talk with us about their ideal next hire.  In these conversations, we hear little about classically trained communicators (although good writing is still a “must-have”), and a lot about creative business people who are highly adaptable across channels, audiences, and projects.  More specifically, here are the 5 top skills that your peers are clamoring for:

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

What might this look like in practice?  Here’s a great example from USAA: their Employee Comms team recently created a new position, Director of Employee Feedback. (Bet you haven’t heard of that before!)  Our good friend Betsy Pasley uses all five of these skills in delivering on her team’s mission—to enable employees to effectively support company goals.  (CEC members can learn more about USAA’s story here.)

This is just one of many examples we’ll be sharing in an upcoming presentation about Organizational Design.  Be sure to email Kayleigh at kokeefe@executiveboard.com if you’d like to be informed when it goes live on our website.  In the meantime, feel free to challenge us on our hypotheses and share your own “Communications Skills Wish List” below.