By Evelyn Ostrovsky
Did you know that Celine Dion is the youngest of 14 children?
Did you know that Justin Bieber likes white toast more than wheat?
Did you know your stakeholders don’t care about the same things you do?
If the CEC had a MTV Diary episode (motto: “You think you know…but you have no idea”), you’d probably be surprised by the look inside our yearly quantitative findings.
As most of you are aware of by now (being loyal readers of the CEC Insider), we’re in the middle of our biggest research initiative of the year, taking a look at how some the smartest communicators are Influencing Stakeholders in a Networked Environment. Alongside our 100s of conversations with CEC members, industry experts, academics, journalists, and vendors, we’re also analyzing hard data about what drives stakeholder support of companies.
First, it won’t come as a surprise to Comms that people are more likely to support organizations that seem to share their interests and values. And on that front, most communicators are confident that they know what their stakeholders care about—a belief that doesn’t seem all that far-fetched. (I mean, that’s our job, right?)
Well, in CEC’s general public survey panel of nearly 1,000 individuals, only 17% agreed that they identify with the company in question (29% of employees, 14% of customers), and just 15% agreed that the company cares about the same things they do (22% of employees, 12% of customers). We ran this over and over again, with companies in different industries, different geographies, different reputations, and different levels of stakeholder support. The results are the same: You think you know what stakeholders care about, but something’s just not translating.
We suspect that this disconnect is occurring (in large part) because communicators 1) aren’t making their monitoring count and 2) are relying on assumptions about what makes for a compelling message. Indeed, it’s far more common for Comms teams to go on “gut feel” than to rigorously listen to stakeholders and use what they hear to increase their message relevance.
This is a huge missed opportunity, in that the data are pointing to content relevance as the #1 determinant of whether someone will actively support (i.e., recommend, defend, be loyal to, speak positively about) your company.
CEC members, stay tuned for more in-depth analysis of our findings and concrete guidance on evolving your approach to external stakeholder engagement.
on 15 April 2010
Respond
Your findings do not surprise me at all. It is very easy for communicators to fall into the trap of thinking we know what our stakeholders want and need, especially when we have been with a company for some time. As a technical communicator, I spend a good deal of time trying to understand stakeholder and user goals, thinking, and focus. I need to remind myself not to assume, but to take the time to apply listening, questioning, and the other techniques of my profession to draw out what really matters to my stakeholders. Only then can I craft a message that not only communicates, but connects.
on 15 April 2010
Respond
I think you hit the nail on the head, Meg. Monitoring stakeholder sentiment can only go so far. The key to success is USE the listening that you do — seems simple enough but there’s a lot of interpretation and analytics that are needed to truly understand our stakeholders (not always skills that communicators are fond of). We’re going to be looking further into not only how to take your listening skills up a notch, but also take advantage of a networked environment to create content that doesn’t just resonate but gets shared further than our individual reach.