A big thank you to the 100+ Heads of Communications and staff who responded to our 2010 quick-poll, sharing their current strategies for external stakeholder engagement.  Were the responses interesting? Yes.  Did they make me feel warm and fuzzy about the state of Communications? Not especially.

Let me explain why. On the one side, it’s great that communicators are focused on proactively engaging stakeholders in the current climate—not just attempting to manage negativity. It’s more of their approach that worries me.  Here are some of the poll highlights:

I’ll add some quick thoughts on a few of the data points that stood out for me:

• Communicators are on the offensive—49% of communicators say that differentiating their company is their primary objective for 2010, and 39% are focused on directly supporting sales and marketing efforts.  This strikes me as Communications taking positive steps to help their companies get ahead in the ever-aggressive battle for stakeholder support and market share.  We’ve heard a lot of our members facing real pressure to get closer to the bottom line as budget and scrutiny tightens, which seems to be playing out here.

• Held back by internal coordination—The two biggest hurdles communicators face can be found within their company’s own four walls.  Over half of respondents cite their top issue as coordinating multiple voices internally to “stay on message”—which honestly feels a little “old world” to me. It’s one thing to want to make sure we are true to the point, but Communications must let go of an obsession with consistency in the current environment, accept a little more variation, and achieve a lot more spread.  The second biggest hurdle cited was developing a clear message in the first place (44% of respondents)—which seems fair, given the importance of simplicity/clarity in getting stakeholders to digest as well as share your message with others.

• Adding more, cutting nothing—Despite the fact that the average Comms budgets has dropped 10% in the last year, Communications continue to add new channels and activities. What we haven’t seen is any evidence that communications are doing LESS of anything (particularly traditional media outreach).  This is hardly a sustainable way of adapting to a fast-changing communications environment, yet we keep pushing ourselves to the brink of insanity with the mantra of “do more with less.”  How many of us are really stepping back to think about the right ways to adapt to all this change? A good place to start is to make sure you have the right skills on your team—not simply jumping on the hottest new channel.
• Old tricks in a new world—From the newsroom enhancements we’ve made to the areas where we feel most effective (see the Opportunity Framework on slide 9), all still feels heavily characterized by information “push.”  I’m not saying that these methods are dead, but with channels and noise growing exponentially, we are never going to keep up with this approach. Instead, Communications needs to focus on tapping into naturally occurring information flows to achieve the scale and reach we need in this environment.

• Opportunity to enable others—Communicators cite a sense of ownership for helping their leaders communicate more effectively online and for arming employees to be better at discussing company issues, but (per the Opportunity Framework) both of these are self-professed areas of weakness.  These are clear opportunities for communications to leverage their skills to broaden the “surface area” of the company’s ability to talk effectively to stakeholders.

Have your say—do you feel concerned about your team’s ability to change in line with the communication environment today? Are you consciously waiting/avoiding making shifts?  We welcome everyone to take the survey online to benchmark your own company’s approach.

At our 2010 meeting series, members will hear all about how the best companies are adapting their strategies, and teams, to a networked environment.  CEC members—click here to register.