No Longer in the Driving Seat

It’s old news that comms doesn’t “own” stakeholder relationships anymore. Maybe we never did own them all – it makes complete sense for folks across the business to manage relevant relationships. For instance, your teams on the ground at your manufacturing site will certainly be better equipped to discuss the intricacies of their emissions with environmental NGOs than your average communicator!

The Challenge: Stakeholders View Corporations as Single Entities… But it Can be Hard to Act Like One!

The challenge comes, though, when the team who manage your supply chain, and the folks from Sustainability/CSR are all in dialogue with the same bunch of NGOs. How do you ensure consistency of messaging when, in some cases, folks don’t even know that their colleagues are engaging the same external stakeholders as they are?!

This can be particularly tough when the internal stakeholders don’t sit in the same office, or work for the same business unit, or even in the same country. As organizations become increasingly complex and siloed, it becomes ever more difficult for the right hand to know what the left hand is doing – one organization even told tale of business partners bumping into each other at the Capitol on their way to meet the same congressmen!

Enabling internal collaboration

In an ideal world, we’d have perfect visibility into every corner of our own companies. Business partners would share detailed notes of every stakeholder interaction they had, so that their cross-functional colleagues could be perfectly aligned and on-message while engaging the same external groups. For many of us, though, this level of integration would most likely occur in some parallel universe in which annual budgets were doubled, and the working week ended on a Wednesday! Business partners are busy, and often disinclined to take time out to share information across silos.

The Solutions

1. Narrow the scope of participation: Don’t demand an integrated approach for every stakeholder relationship. Leading communicators identify a finite number of their most important stakeholders, and limit the demand for intensive cross-functional collaboration to those to those relationships.

• CEC members, use this framework to determine the extent to which internal collaboration is required at your organization.

2. Don’t overinvest in technology: Going out and buying a CRM system for stakeholder management isn’t a solution for every company. Assess the complexity of your relationships – if your relationships are relatively simple (ie. requiring little internal collaboration) then don’t overinvest – email exchange, word documents, and even simple conversations can go a long way. If your relationships are more complex, across a wider range of internal touch points, then consider a more dynamic solutions (CRM systems, wikis, and the like).

• CEC members, use this framework to determine your technology requirements

3. Enable peer-to-peer collaboration: Leading communicators understand people’s personal motivations for sharing information. Namely, looking cool/knowledgeable/intelligent!

• C EC members, check these principles for enabling peer collaboration

Related Resources

• Stakeholder Mapping Toolkit
• Stakeholder Mapping: 5 FAQs
• Ideas From Your Peers: Stakeholder Mapping

What’s the coolest thing about working at the CEC? Without a doubt, it’s the opportunity to speak to a lot of communicators at different companies, in different industries, with different business models, and get a cross-industry perspective of their various approaches to shared challenges. So, when a member asks us a question, often we have the opportunity to provide insight into how someone else at another company tackled the same problem.

Recently, I’ve been working on a project on stakeholder mapping, and I’ve been keeping track of some of the challenges that members face, and the questions that they’ve asked. Below are some of the more interesting questions, matched up to some of the cooler approaches that we’ve been able to glean from other communicators in the network. This is an ongoing dialogue, so if there’s anything cool that you’re doing at your company, feel free to share it below!

Challenge #1

“We keep a running list of all of our stakeholder relationships, but it’s become pretty unwieldy – it’s currently about 1,000 strong! It doesn’t really help us make decisions about who to engage and who not to – how can we make it more action-orientated?”

“It would be way too difficult for us to think about every stakeholder that can have any influence over our company – there’d be too many of them. So, narrow it down a bit. We use our material issues as our starting point – we take the five strategic outcomes that’ve been identified by our executive team, and identify the stakeholders who will have the potential influence those outcomes. This helps us to be pretty targeted in our engagement – I wouldn’t recommend wasting time mapping every stakeholder who’s tangentially related to your company.” Read More »

When it comes to knowing where to spend your time and energy on proactive outreach towards external stakeholders, are you finding it increasingly difficult to work out who is most worthy of your attention? If so, you’re not alone! One member told me recently:

“I only have so much time to create content for journalists, bloggers, and thought leaders – and it’s sometimes hard to know if the most important people are getting enough TLC! There’ve been plenty of instances over the last year or so when we’ve underestimated the impact that an individual could have, and haven’t paid them enough attention as a result – and it’s come back to haunt us later!”

Sound at all familiar?

Over the course of the last month, I’ve been speaking with members about how they prioritize the various influencers they deal with every day – and it seems that it’s become increasingly difficult! The ease with which content can now be created online means that there are more influencers than ever before, and as stakeholders dip their toes in and out of various sources, the identity and tactics of the most important influencers can be difficult to keep track of.

So how do you know who to prioritize and who to de-prioritize? That’s exactly what CEC has been asking members. Below are some of the most common answers we’ve heard, along with a few small twists that seemed different, innovative, and smart.

Criteria #1: Reach

Of course, it makes sense to focus your energies on those influencers with a wide reach – if no one is reading a particular newspaper, or blog, then there’s no point in communicating with them!

• What we’ve heard –prioritize according to activity stimulated: There’s a big difference between an influencer with a large but passive readership, and a highly engaged readership that engages in discussion, forwards content to their peers, and comments freely. Focus your energies on the latter influencers, who stimulate activity amongst stakeholders!

Criteria #2: Credibility

Many communicators I spoke with said that it’s important to focus their energies on influencers who are credible and well respected.

• What we’ve heard – prioritize according to originality: Again, this is a baseline requirement – one communicator in particular told me that his team spends a lot of time and effort with thought leaders and gurus who shape opinion.

Criteria #3: Perception of company

It’s common to seek to change the minds of people who’ve criticized your company in the past – or at least to bring them up to a level where they’re not going to drag your organization’s name through the mud too much!

• What we’ve heard – prioritize according to receptivity: One idea that a member mentioned to me was that not everyone’s mind can be changed – some people are more receptive to new ideas than others. This member organization makes a point of focusing their communications towards those influencers they know to be open minded and ‘persuadable’, rather than waste their energies on those who aren’t.

Criteria #4 – Level of vested interest: It’s obvious to some extent that you want to focus your outreach towards influencers and stakeholders with a specific interest in the subject matter that your company is interested in.  

• What we’ve heard – prioritize according to personal attachment: it’s been mentioned to me that influencers such as NGOs with an emotional and personal attachment to an issue will be more vociferous when discussing that issue than a trade magazine discussing the same topic with a rational attachment. This seems like a really fascinating distinction – I’d be curious to hear if anyone else is thinking along these lines.

Direct our research:

• Do you ever overlook the importance of individual stakeholders or influencers?
• How do you prioritize influencers?
• Have you tried any of the ‘new’ approaches that we’ve called out above?

We’d love to hear from you, and get your company’s input into this project. Please respond to Daniel O’Keeffe O’Donovan to get involved!

Related content

• A Better Approach to Prioritizing Your Stakeholders
• Network Hot-Spot Screen (Southwest Airlines)
• Issue Prioritization Framework (BBVA)

Have you observed much of a change in the growth bets that your company has been making in recent years? I’d be surprised if you haven’t! As opportunities for significant growth remain restricted in developed markets, we’re hearing increasingly that companies are being forced to find new areas for growth – they’re diversifying their product offerings, they’re entering new markets, and they’re sourcing new (cheaper) suppliers. Indeed, executives recently reported that they expect nearly 50% of growth to come from either new product lines, entry into new markets, or some combination of the two.

Of course, whilst the golden carrot dangling in China, India, or Brazil is an obvious temptation to corporate strategists, these types of change represent significant challenges to the rest of the business! I’ll leave it to other writers to discuss the implications for HR, product development, procurement, sales and the rest. For us communicators, the challenges are significant enough to be getting on with!

Challenge For Communicators: Stakeholder Prioritization

Those I’ve spoken with have mentioned that it’s difficult enough to identify and prioritize the whole host of key influencers and stakeholders they’ll need to interact with to play their part in whatever business initiative it is you’re supporting. Knowledge that we usually take for granted – the name of this influential blogger, the phone number of that thought leader, and so on – needs to be obtained by hook or by crook.

Even more difficult, though, is knowing where to prioritize your efforts and where not to. Which outlet is most widely read? Whose opinions carry more weight amongst regulators? Which blog is taken more seriously by your discerning new target customer base?

It seems that many communicators lack a formal process for prioritizing new audiences, preferring to simply work the new audiences and influencers out on the job. I guess that this isn’t surprising, for a couple of reasons:

• communicators are naturally pretty intuitive types, who have traditionally relied on instinct to get the job done
• the pressures of supporting an important new product, or trying to get a foothold in a new market are such that it probably seems easier to simply communicate with everyone, and work out what works best along the way

In your experience, is this the best approach? Or, does an informal approach to stakeholder prioritization lessen the bang that you get for your buck?

Get Involved in our Work

CEC has begun a new project, examining how leading communicators prioritize outreach to key stakeholders or influencers when faced with new scenarios, issues or outcomes. If you’ve recently encountered a change in how your business operates (diversification of product offerings, entry into new geographies, significant changes in regulation) and have been forced to identify and prioritize new stakeholders and influencers, we’d love to hear from you! Get in touch with Daniel O’Keeffe O’Donovan to help direct our work in this space.

Related Content

Rethinking Product Launch Communications

Managing a Global Communications Function

Network Hot-Spot Screen (Southwest)

On Feb 15th, 2012, CEC hosted a webinar entitled “Proactive PR in a Networked Environment”. Mark Hannah, veteran of political communications and agency PR, joined to discuss the implications for PR teams of changes to the communications environment.  Here are some fo the highlights from the session.

CEC: Mark, what’s the biggest change you’ve observed in the PR space in the last 5-10 years?

Mark: Well, there’s been so many! I think the biggest is the model of communication between companies and the people they interact with. Where once we had a one-way, static, command-and-control environment, it’s now multi-directional, dynamic, and conversational. Where once companies had traditional media to act as a filter to a passive audience, increasingly, companies are expected to bypass mass media and communicate directly with stakeholders.

CEC: What’s the best way to influence stakeholders in thisenvironment?

Mark: It’s vital to recognize that push campaigns don’t carry the weight that they once did. No matter how much money a company spends on a campaign, it all pales into insignificance compared to the power of your neighbor down the street telling you about his new car, for instance, and endorsing your product like that. Social media represents the online equivalent of this – you want to reach a point where the content you create gets people sharing your news for you – so it has a ripple effect, and a really rich afterlife.

And yet, when I worked on the agency side, the worst question anyone could ask was ‘how can we make a viral video about x, y, or z?’. Viral isn’t a strategy, it’s an outcome.

• CEC members: learn how stakeholders receive and consume information in a networked environment. Read More »

Do you work in PR? If so, chances are you’ve experienced some pretty significant changes in the last 5 years. PR teams report that the ongoing progression of social media has created an environment in which stakeholders expect more direct interaction than ever before – no longer is it enough to rely on traditional media outlets to tell your company’s news. The implications for PR teams have been significant, as they come to terms with new means of monitoring stakeholders, and creating new types of content.

What Changes do PR Teams Need to Make?  

Even 10 years on from the emergence of Social Media, many

Click to Enlarge Image

PR teams remain optimized largely for success with traditional media (see Figure 1). The CEC has spent time recently identifying the changes that leading PR teams are making in order to succeed in a networked stakeholder environment. What is needed from an individual PR professional? What new skills are required? What’s the profile of the perfect PR hire in this digital age?

From Specialists to Generalists

It’s no secret that journalists have been forced to diversify their skill sets. We’ve seen a similar shift in the profile of new hires on corporate PR teams as well. Members that we’ve spoken to have told us that the new breed of PR professional is a generalist, rather than a specialist; for instance, where once you could probably get away with being ‘just’ a great writer, now you need to be able to do much more. One member told me that they’ve just replaced the person who managed their photo archive (narrow scope) with someone who can simultaneously manage all things visual – video, PPT, images, and so on (broad scope).

Skills Required for PR Success

The skills required of new-to-role PR professionals have broadened, and diversified:

Perhaps the greatest difference between “old world” and “new world” that we’ve noticed is the importance attached to media monitoring. The new breed of PR generalist (who has used their web-savvy to self-teach critical skills) takes full advantage of the opportunities presented by social forms of media, using data to inform all of their outreach, and to bring their other skills to bear.

Metrics

Most of the companies we’ve seen measure performance according to the volume of messaging – the number of news releases distributed, the number of Facebook likes, or the number of Twitter followers. The CEC hopes to see a marked shift in the MBOs used by PR teams, to reflect the impact created by proactive outreach, rather than its volume. Instead of measuring the quantity of content distributed, why not measure the number of stakeholders who act on that communication? This could be as simple as the number of stakeholders who re-tweet your messaging, or as concrete as the number of people who buy whatever product you promoted – either way, it’s the number of stakeholders that do something based on your outreach, rather than simply the number of people that hear/read/see it.

Get in touch

We’d love to hear from you:

• How have the requirements of new PR staff changed?
• How have the skill sets on your team changed?
• Most importantly, where have these changes been driven from? Are they coming from the PR function itself, or are they being driven by external pressures?

Resources from the CEC

• Role Profile: Media and Press Relations Specialist
• Proactive PR in a Networked Environment
• News Releases in a Networked Environment
• How to Build a Leading Online Newsroom

Are you responsible for PR, Media Relations, Public Affairs, or similar? If you are, then the chances are that how you do your job will have changed significantly in the last 5-10 years.

On Wednesday 15th February, the CEC invites you to spend an hour with us looking at how PR professionals need to adapt to succeed in a stakeholder environment that has undergone significant change.

Where stakeholders once received information from a finite number of media outlets, they now get it from a huge range of sources – particularly in the online space. Where once they got news at fixed times in the day, they now get a constant stream of information through 24 hour news channels, or via their social connections on media such as Twitter. As the stakeholder environment becomes increasingly dynamic, many communicators are finding individual outreaches to have diminishing impact.

Creating content that ‘flows’

Many PR teams have responded by pushing the same old company-centric messages through a new range of channels. Instead, leading communicators are creating stakeholder-centric content, designed to flow naturally across stakeholders’ informal networks.

Join us to discuss:

• The skills required for PR success in the social age
• How to identify channels with the greatest impact
• How to create content that provokes dialogue and discussion

You can register for this webinar here – we look forward to having you on the line!

Details
Title: Proactive PR in a Networked Environment
Date: Wednesday 15th February
Time: 7am PST / 10am EST / 3pm GMT / 4pm CET

Managing a full blown corporate crisis is one of the hardest things a communicator will ever have to do. Of course, it’s always been vitally important to protect the profitability and reputation of your organization, but as scrutiny of corporate practice rises, so too does the importance attached to effective crisis management.

Failure to prevent or manage an incident can lead to a loss of your organization’s ‘license to operate’. Interestingly, your own personal brand can also be impacted by your response to a crisis – for instance, we’ve heard from several members that successfully managing a crisis instantly makes a communicator more employable, having navigated a course through heavy fire.

So, both for your organization and for you personally, a crisis raises the stakes like nothing else. With this in mind, CEC spent the last few months learning how the best organizations prevent, prepare for, and respond to major crises. CEC members can check out our new topic center for more detailed guidance, or call our advisory team to discuss your crisis planning.

1. Build a Preventative Culture

Most companies have a contingency plan of some description should something go wrong. But actually using that crisis response plan is a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted – by then, the damage is already done, and you’re playing a game of damage limitation instead of damage prevention.

What the best do: Employees often have the most practical understanding of the risks that the company faces by virtue of their day-to-day business activities.  Instead of simply telling them how to behave and what to do, try to tap into their knowledge to identify and mitigate risks. Read More »

Today’s the day that CEC has been counting down to all year… No, it’s not the renewal date of your CEC membership – it’s our Christmas party (at least, it is in our European HQ, where I’m based). I must say, I’m looking forward to it, and most of the CEC crew assures me that they are as well. However, in speaking to several of my friends from other companies, I’ve been struck by their negativity, cynicism, and trepidation at the prospect of navigating an event that one of them described to me as “the most socially awkward of the year”.

Of course, for CEC’s audience of loquacious communicators, “social awkwardness” isn’t an issue – we’re good socially! But remember – not everyone else is. What happens at one of these parties when you’re stuck between the weird lady from the IT help desk who’s pushed past you at the coffee machine all year, the social recluse from Finance who prefers spreadsheets to his own family, and the spotty graduate whose name no one can remember, but is irritatingly keen to impress?

This, of course, leaves you with two options. One is to politely excuse yourself and head for the bathroom, the bar, or – if things have got really bad – home. The other is to use your skills as a communicator to enable some social interaction between your colleagues.

Building Social Connections

And funnily enough, this is something that CEC can really help with. One of the things we often get asked is how communicators can encourage peer sharing among employees. As companies become more complex, organizational barriers increasingly prevent employees from connecting, sharing and learning with each other. And, interestingly, the same principles that will help a couple of socially inept guys from IT to open up at a Christmas party will also apply to creating an organization in which peers open up and share their expertise with each other. Read More »

Are you in Media Relations? Do you write news releases on behalf of your company? Recently, we spoke to your peers to discuss two major changes to the external environment in which we operate, and what those changes mean for how we write the traditional news release:

1. Traditional media (journalists/reporters) are busier than ever before. Their teams are smaller, their jobs are broader, and they have less time to recraft corporate stories.
2. The visibility of news means that journalists are no longer the sole audience for our releases.

Although I highly doubt that these facts will be news to many people, based on my conversations, it seems that very few media relations folks have substantially changed how they write news releases, or adapted them to reflect these changes.

Doesn’t this seem strange to you? Read More »