I love going to the movies. There’s something about walking into a dimly lit theater, jumbo popcorn in hand, and sinking deep into the chair for two hours of pure entertainment. Back in college, there was a fantastic old movie theater in town that charged practically nothing if you had a student ID. Needless to say, my roommate (who now lives in LA working in the film industry) and I would see any movie under the sun. Seriously…any movie. We didn’t care if the film was up for best picture or if we knew the movie would be comically terrible. We went anyway.

Since relocating after school, the ticket prices are slightly more than what they once were. By the time I’ve bought my movie ticket, jumbo popcorn, candy, and 3D glasses (since it seems that every movie is shot in 3D now), I feel like I should have walked over to the bank and applied for a loan before handing the cashier my credit card. So, my love for movies hasn’t changed, but my willingness to pony up the dough and actually go to the theater has. Now, when I see a movie trailer, I find myself more frequently asking the question “Is this worth seeing in the theater or should I wait until the DVD release?” And now that we are in the thick of March Madness and NHL and NBA playoffs right around the corner, there are more and more reasons to wait a few months until the DVD releases. So what does influence me to go to the theater? What other, non-official sources say. Read More »

Senior executives who are effective at talent management generate up to 7% more revenue than their less dedicated peers.  Unfortunately, more than 80% of executives are either uncommitted to talent management, ineffective at it, or worse—both.

Talent management, though, is not a matter of skill (most executives have the business skills necessary) or time (effective executives and ineffective executives spend roughly the same amount of time on talent management): the issue is focus.  Executives should approach talent management strategically—managing key talent like a corporate asset that is developed and deployed in support of business objectives.

Becoming a Talent Champion outlines five key activities executives should focus on in place of day-to-day staff management, including building the high potential bench, holding the senior team accountable for talent outcomes, and owning the organization’s talent strategy.  To learn more, download a complimentary copy of this new publication or order the eBook.

CEC Members, check out our best talent management tools and insights:

Organizational Talent Management

• Mobilizing the Workforce

Functional Comms Talent Management

• The Modern Communicator’s Skill Set
• Manage My Staff’s Performance

Traditionally, printed newsletters, bulletins, and corporate magazines have been the main vehicles for internal communications outreach.  However, with shrinking budgets and increasing demands on the communicator’s role, as well as greater IT reliance, many CEC members are rethinking their newsletter’s frequency and content and questioning its overall usefulness.  Some companies are going as far as phasing out their physical publications completely and relying on intranet and email to achieve the traditional newsletter’s role of engaging employees and keeping them atop latest news and company strategies.

A recent question regarding the newsletter’s role sparked a lively debate on our CEC Employee Communications Forum.  Here are some interesting points made by our members regarding the frequency and optimal distribution channels for corporate newsletters.

1. Let the content determine its own frequency.

While it makes sense to share long-term, strategy focused company-wide announcements in quarterly publications, distributing news, event details, and other time-sensitive content on a quarterly (or even bi-monthly) basis often makes the content irrelevant  by the time it reaches your audience.  A longer publishing timeframe also makes it a struggle to get employees to share their own news and stories – by the time they get published, the information stops being relevant.  Some members address this issue by publishing corporate and local news items on the intranet, and retain their quarterly newsletter for the sole purpose of sharing company-wide, longer term, strategy-focused organizational communication. Read More »

I’ve never been in the military.  That’s a good thing. For me…for America…for mankind.  If World War III ever breaks out, I hope they need a decent bugle player — ’cause that’s the only vaguely Army-ish thing I can do that wouldn’t result in some kind of horrible friendly-fire tragedy.

But one thing I remember hearing from my Dad, my uncles, and other true patriots who are better-suited for cammo and ammo than I — is a lesson some progressive Comms practitioners are beginning to realize:

No battle plan ever survived the first shot.

Hey, sure…you can do all the planning, plotting and strategizing you want — if it makes you feel better. But if you seriously think that anything prepared at the beginning of the year will carry your Comms strategy all the way through the next 12 months, then perhaps you’ve been standing a little too close to the bomb range (as my Uncle Benny might say).

Some of the smartest Heads of Communications I know are asking themselves, “What if — instead of working so hard to create the perfect Comms annual plan — we honestly admit that the most strategic thing we could do is to work WITHOUT a formalized plan?”

Now that’s radical. Read More »

By Rebecca Canan

Think back to when you interviewed for your job.  You probably had to submit a writing sample; your oral presentation skills were assessed during the interview; and perhaps you were asked to respond to a hypothetical media situation. To ace those challenges, you definitely needed a degree of maturity, poise, and proven communication skills.  However, did those activities test for the higher-level skills and aptitudes you need to succeed in your role?  My guess…“no.”

As I’ve been conducting research on communications competencies, I’ve noticed that not only are communicators’ skill sets often outdated, but the job descriptions and interview methods used to hire new communicators are also in dire need of a refresh.  To thrive in today’s demanding corporate environment, communicators (and aspiring corporate communicators) need to center their value proposition around the following two things:

• Proficiency in both communication creation AND, increasingly important, communication enablement
• Strength in business acumen / consultative skills

In a previous blog post, I talked about how these value props are reflected in the individual skill sets of a modern communicator.  Now, let’s take a look at hiring – how do we screen for these capabilities? And…(a scary thought) would we pass that screen?  Below the jump are a couple interview methods and suggested improvements for how we can know good talent when we see it. Read More »

Kathleen Ryan Mufson, Director, Corporate Citizenship at Pitney Bowes

(Special thanks to our guest blogger, Kathleen Ryan Mufson, Director, Corporate Citizenship & Philanthropy at Pitney Bowes, who attended the CEC’s recent CSR meeting. Coming out of the meeting, Kathleen shared the following thoughts and takeaways. This post originally appeared on the Pitney Bowes Corporate blog.)

Quick! What comes to mind when you hear the terms Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Responsibility, Sustainability, Corporate Citizenship, and, my new favorite, Corporate Social Intelligence?  Did you answer environmental stewardship? Perhaps philanthropy and volunteerism sounded right.  Governance? Diversity?  Ethics?  Maybe you thought about all of these and more.   When it comes to nomenclature, this is an area with many evolving terms, but given its dynamic role in driving value for companies and communities that’s probably a good thing.

On Tuesday, I participated in an engaging roundtable discussion on “Driving a Strategic CSR Agenda.”  The event, sponsored by the Communications Executive Council of the Corporate Executive Board was hosted by Chevron Corporation in their Washington, D.C. offices.    The other participants and I were eager to learn new approaches to aligning CSR with business strategy and objectives.  The forum did not disappoint.

The discussion was thought provoking, challenging companies to focus on strategic innovations, employee engagement and strong alignment to the business.  Other takeaways drove home the importance of structured stakeholder engagement and staying true to your company’s culture.

One thing is clear: Companies who embrace, embed and nurture this strategic business function are on the right path for competitive differentiation and success in the 21^st century business environment.

At Pitney Bowes, we’ve been leading in CSR since before the first term was coined.  We understand its value to our business, our strategy, our employees, and our relationships with customers and community partners.  More important, we continually look for ways to further advance our results and drive positive change in our communities.

For the latest on Pitney Bowes’ CSR efforts go to www.pb.com/responsibility, and feel free to share what your organization is doing to drive positive change in the community.

Note from the CEC: We will be hosting our next CSR meeting on 30 March in London. CEC members, register here!

Outside of access to hiking, skiing, amazing food, and CEC’s awesome West coast members, one of my favorite aspects of my new home in SF is the presence and energy of the cutting-edge Tech world. I spent this past weekend face-timing, checking out the iPad 2, and getting caught up on the buzz from South by Southwest by friends who work at Facebook, Linked In, Google, and the MLC.

Influencers. Gaming. Digital Wallets. The Cloud. What does the interactive nature of communications really bring for us all? In marketing and external communications we’re looking at immediacy, relevancy, and accessibility. Our employees demand these things in their external lives. In their professional lives they are quietly (or not so quietly) demanding these things as well—they want access to the tools they need when they need them.

To achieve this, Communicators in many high tech companies are expanding to mobile access to their intranets. Today’s intranets house company news, directories, business applications, internal discussion forums, business applications, or even the menus to the onsite cafeteria. Whether your staff spends its time on the road, puts in a few work hours in their evenings, or spends the majority of the day in meetings away from their desks, adapting internal channels to provide “always on” access is a critical step to making this channel as user centric as possible. Read More »

A couple of months ago, as a part of our ongoing project around Corporate Social Responsibility, CEC launched its CSR Management Diagnostic, designed to help members identify the areas upon which they should be focusing their CSR energies.

Members were asked to assess the importance that they attached to a given activity versus how effective they were at performing that activity. For example, if cross-functional collaboration is seen as important, but the participating company isn’t very good at generating such collaboration, that would be flagged as an area of focus. We also included some benchmarking questions, allowing participants to check their operation versus their peers.

With about 30 participating organizations thus far, it seemed like a good time to pull up and examine the trends that have begun to emerge. Three areas popped off the page:

1. Executive Buy-In is the Biggest Challenge Facing CSR Teams.

Members listed exec support as the single most important component of a successful CSR program, giving it an average rating of 4.5/5. However, it also had the biggest performance gap, with participants giving themselves an average effectiveness score of 3.14/5.

2. Business Partners Don’t See CSR as a ‘Value-Add’ Activity.

Perhaps this is WHY execs aren’t bought in? Only 8% of participants believe that their CSR program is perceived to be adding a ‘high’ amount of value to business outcomes. If this is the case, then I guess it’s no surprise that execs aren’t bought in.  In many cases, they actually see CSR as costing them money.

Read More »

(This is a guest post from Anna Bird of the Marketing Leadership Council, our sister program for marketing professionals)

As marketing becomes more about customer participation and experiences, “launch and leave” campaign-oriented sites are becoming a thing of the past. One SxSW panel (with speakers from Skype and two agencies) offered tips for moving towards “always on” marketing.  Here are the biggest takeaways for platform creation and community management:

If you don’t have a community, don’t build a site. “Community building is wrong,” said Peter Parkes, Skype’s social media director. This is about supporting existing communities.  If people are already doing something online, there will be opportunities to facilitate that activity. If not, ask why not – and beware of creating something with no value. Kingsmill Confessions, a site for confessing bread-related secrets, came under fire from the panel for missing this point. It doesn’t serve any community or meet any need. Read More »

In the last 6 months, 82% of employees experienced significant change at their organization. What’s more is that 66% of employees anticipate additional change in the next six months, including layoffs of team members, significant organizational restructuring, and changes in one or more senior leaders (CLC Building Engagement Capital, 2010).

From the CEO’s perch these disruptive changes are viewed as necessary for the long-term growth and sustainability of the company. From an employee’s perspective, however, these changes are exhausting, nerve-wracking, and productivity-sapping.  In fact in Q4 2010 discretionary effort was 11.6% lower compared to the same period in 2009 (CLC)! This environment of change and uncertainty is hindering your employees’ ability to focus, make good decisions, and solve problems, as depicted in the graphic below, Implications of Change and Uncertainty on Employee Behavior.

How can Communications spot the symptoms of change fatigue?

Don’t wait for your annual employee engagement survey to spot the signs of change fatigue. Walk around your building, ask employees how they’re feeling, think about the requests that you are triaging from leaders and internal clients. Not sure what you’re looking for? I’ve brainstormed a quick list of things to keep an eye out for. What would you add? Which symptoms are most prevalent at your company? Read More »