The Communications Executive Council hosted 17 heads of Communications at CEB’s headquarters near Washington last week to discuss Building a Change-Ready Organization.  My colleague Rick DeLisi moderated (as he always does) a lively, engaging, and interactive discussion.  Members can find our latest updates on this work here.

At the end of the day, we asked these leaders for their top takeaways from the meeting. I personally find their responses incredibly insightful in terms of where the communications profession needs to go next.  Drum roll, please!

Top Takeaways

5. Better communications = quantifiable impact on the bottom line. There is a measurable – and large! – link between (a) what communications can do to drive employees’ agility and (b) company performance. For the average large organization, a 10% improvement in three aspects of the communication environment drives over $16 million in incremental profit per $1 billion in revenue. A 10% improvement isn’t unreasonable: it’s essentially moving up one quartile in relative performance from wherever you are today.

4. How to use your seat at the table. The key to creating this measurable value lies not so much in better writing or other traditional communication skills, but in enabling more effective communication within the organization.  What are the new skills and how can you get them?  Check out the Council’s resources here. Read More »

By Rebecca Canan

Do you have a solid understanding of your skill strengths?  Or in what areas you have the most room to develop and grow?

Most communicators have a decent idea of how they’re performing on basic technical skills (e.g., does my writing need edits?) and overall leadership competencies (e.g., do I work well on teams?), but don’t know how well they’re doing on some of the most critical skills for success in Communications.

If you’re the leader of a team in Communications, this should be a startling realization. When you’re not specifically defining or measuring what success looks like for each of the necessary skills, your team members will struggle to know what it takes to move up to the next level. Furthermore, it’s hard for you to know whether you’re providing them with the right training and coaching when you don’t have a good sense of what skills you should be targeting.

To help communicators identify skill strengths and development areas among their teams, we’ve recently created an Online Skills Assessment. The results will help you steward the professional growth of team members, prioritize L&D investments, and clarify expectations for success in Communications.  Below is a sample page from the report: Read More »

Change is the new normal

With the average employee experiencing 3-4 different types of organizational change over the last two years, CEC is updating our work on how leading organizations manage these events. Coming soon are toolkits to help you with the communications challenges surrounding specific change events ranging from M&A to changes in organizational strategic planning.

Communications challenges

We’ve observed two different types of challenge facing communicators during change:

Read More »

By Laura Newman

As I get ready to leave London and head State-side (Duke School of Business here I come!), my to-do list gets longer by the day. That said, as a foodie, I did have one thing sorted a while ago – dinner reservations at my favorite restaurants. As I reviewed the list, it struck me how difficult many were to categorize. If a restaurant blends Indian flavors, French cooking techniques, and tapas-sized portions in a British colonial environment, what style is it? (Londoners, check-out Colony in Marylebone if you’re curious to experience the result.)

At a restaurant, we may refer to this kind of blending as fusion. What if we consider the equivalent in the workplace?  In today’s global, complex businesses our environments are just as diverse. But are we collaborating effectively? Are employees blending approaches and processes to develop new ideas? In other words, are we using collaboration and knowledge exchange as inspiration for innovation; to achieve outcomes? Read More »

You might recall that I blogged about the complexities of managing a global comms function a few weeks ago. I have spent the past several weeks speaking with our members who either work across global and dispersed teams, or manage communications for a specific country unit of a large international company, to better understand what kinds of challenges they face in their respective roles and what tools would be helpful to their jobs easier. These interviews, as well as a recent survey of the CEC membership, indicate three top of mind challenges for global communicators:

1. Message consistency: balancing consistency in what we say with local relevance
2. Governance and process: creating the right organizational structure, processes, and roles
3. Coordination and collaboration: idea-sharing among communicators around the world

Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

It’s no surprise that companies feel like their image is being pulled in many different directions. Between tougher competition and increasingly demanding customers—just to name a couple—brand values must evolve to keep up with changing business environments.

But after examining and redefining their brand values…many companies are asking themselves, How do we get our employees to really live the brand?

After facing their own corporate identity crisis, Standard Chartered recognized that a key to getting their employees to “live” the new brand values was tapping into the power of their line managers.

Debbie Whitaker, Head of Organizational Change at Standard Chartered, spoke with us about how they execute change by selecting an influential group of managers and providing them with tools and a support system to navigate the process.

CEC members, check out our new online resource, which illustrates how Standard Chartered uses front line managers to drive brand values among employees.  You’ll also hear firsthand from Debbie Whitaker  and read excerpts from our conversation with her.

Related CEC Resources:

• Corporate Brand Management Topic Center
• Implementation Pack for Standard Chartered’s Brand Values Activation

How to best structure the communication function is a question that arises quite a bit here at the CEC. “Where does Internal Communications sit?” “What are common reporting lines?” “How do global companies structure their communications teams?”….the list goes on.

Recently, there has been a lot of chatter in our Employee Communications Forum around organizational structure, and in particular, the structure and reporting lines of internal communications. Take a look at the original question here. You’ll see that despite a few common answers, there are a wide range of responses. So with so many different possibilities, which structure is the best?

One member expressed that their internal communications team sits within the Finance group. They also added the caveat that their structure is “admittedly unusual, but it works very well for us given the culture of the organization.” AHA! That’s it!

No, I’m not suggesting that everyone house their internal communications team within Finance or restructure their communications function to mimic this particular member. It’s the second part of the answer that should be noted. Different structures work for different companies. Often, companies see a problem and quickly jump to reorganize. But when the dust settles, they realize that a lot of the same problems that drove them to reorganize persist. Why? Because more often than not, issues are embedded in process, not structure. So, before you jump the gun on reorganizing, here are a couple of questions and resources to consider first: Read More »

One of the most unique advantages of CEC membership is the ability to participate in the Resource Allocation Benchmarking survey. The annual survey allows members, who fill out the survey, to take a peek into hard-to-find budget allocation data of their peers and see how their budget stacks up compared to similarly structured and sized corporate communication departments of their industry and even geography.

In the past, our members successfully used the information harnessed from their participation to:

• Defend their budget
• Identify specific areas for reallocation
• Refine the scope and type of their communications’ activities
• See how their department’s organizational and reporting structures compared to their peers

This week, CEC is launching the seventh annual round of the Resource Allocation Benchmarking Survey. We strongly encourage all our members to participate. Each participant receives a customized report that enables you to compare your budget and staff resources and allocation to your peers. CEC also provides you with a walk-through of your results and guidance on how to consider reallocating resources. In addition, you get access to the 2011 benchmarking insight report and to the online benchmarking tool (CEC members can access last year’s version here).  This tool allows participants to custom benchmark themselves against other companies’ data by industry, geography, business model, and many more! Read More »

Despite the “DO NOT RUN” sign on the pool deck, every kid at the pool ran until being whistled at by the lifeguard, being yelled at by Mom, or experiencing their first good scrape from the cement. And how many times were we reminded to put on a helmet, wear our seat belts, make sure our laces were tied tightly, or stop running with scissors? While we often test the limits, safety has been instilled in us all from a young age.

That said, safety often comes at the cost of efficiency (and sometimes a little bit of fun). In parts of our lives there is still someone there to demand a certain level of safety from us—be it a traffic cop, a TSA security guard, or a Mom (yep–she’s still around!). But at work, even if it is a small part of a manager’s role description, no one can be a full-time “safety cop.”

Many companies, particularly those in the energy/utility, manufacturing, and other heavy industries have been asking us about how to increase awareness of safety goals within their organizations. What is most critical for communicators, however, is to understand our role in helping employees align their everyday behavior to these safety goals—independent of a manager being there to remind them to use the handrail, drive more carefully, wear a helmet, etc. Read More »

The other night I caught a highlight from President Obama’s recent appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show.  There was one particular part of the conversation that, all politics aside, was pretty interesting and relevant to our recent research on Building a Change-Ready Organization.

The President was asked to critique his first 2½ years in office.  After some reflection, he said that during his campaign he believed he did a good job of communicating with the public about a vision for the future.  He had gone to great lengths to be in a “collective conversation” about what was important and why.  However, once in office he found himself faced with a myriad of changes and challenges such as the crisis in the finance markets.  He and his team got caught up in fighting fires and simply focused on getting things done.  Though all of the issues and decisions made sense in his mind, he forgot to be in a conversation with the country and, as a result, found that there was a lack of public understanding.

Most of us can probably relate to the President’s comments.  It is easy to get caught up in day-to-day fire fighting and lose track of a decision’s relevance to others around us.  At times it is simply easier to tell people what to do rather than to help them understand and decide for themselves. Unfortunately, when it comes to the improving a company’s change readiness, simply telling employees what to do will not produce the desired results. Read More »