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

Recently, we ran a one-question survey through our CEC Employee Discussion Forum to gauge members’ interest in using mobile technology (text messaging, mobile apps, etc.) for internal communication. More than 80% of respondents reported already using or considering the use of mobile technology.

However, as we spoke to members, we found that although there is keen interest, there isn’t clarity on how to best leverage this emerging technology.

To drive home my point, let me first ask you if the following statements sound familiar?

• “We need a mobile app for…”
• “We should redesign our intranet to make it accessible on mobile devices…”
• “We should record videos of our executives to…”

Do you notice a trend in these statements? The technology is being put ahead of the objective. Often, communicators and business partners put more focus on what the solution should look like, whether it is an app or intranet redesign or a video content, than on the desired goal that the solution should achieve. While it’s smart to think about technology, falling into a “technology trap”—using technology just for its novelty—isn’t a great idea. After all, the approach is not without pitfalls:

• Limited goal achievement: Many organizations consider redesigning their intranets to cater to the rising number of mobile employees. However, mobile employees have limited time, attention span, and needs different from desktop users. So, while the desired objective might be to improve their productivity, a mere replication of desktop solutions to mobile platforms may not serve the purpose.
• Wasteful resource expenditure: “There’s an app for everything” phenomenon seems to be fast catching up and giving corporate IT teams sleepless nights. You might have often heard IT complain about being bombarded with requests for creating apps from various business groups that often when probed are unable to justify the rationale for the app. This is not to say that apps are unnecessary, in fact, they are extremely effective in interactive communication. However, it’s a waste of organizational resources if the same outcome can be achieved without an app, by using other less resource-intensive mobile device capabilities, for example text messaging or MMS.

So, what’s a better approach? Think goal first, technology second. Before you begin planning for employee communication initiatives using mobile technology, answer these three questions: Read More »

In our last post, we talked about scenarios where mobile technology can be useful for internal communications. Today, we bring some examples of how you can employ various mobile device capabilities for different communication objectives.

#1. INFORM stakeholders about key events and developments

While employees expect company executives to help them understand the “big picture,” it’s practically difficult for executives, especially in large-sized global organizations, to connect with them on a frequent basis. Telstra, with its 46,000+ staff, found themselves in a similar situation. So, they started sending short 30-second MMS (videos, images and text) blasts from the CEO to employees’ mobile phones. These blasts are used to promote the company’s financial results and significant announcements relating to brand and retail strategy. Similarly, the CEO and other executives at Kraft create audio messages (“Kraft Casts”) that employees can listen to on their iPhones and keep current on the latest corporate strategies and branding initiatives. Another organization, in order to promote a flexible benefits scheme, put QR code posters in the staff rooms. The employees didn’t have computer access during work hours but had smartphones using which they could scan the code and taken to a specially created smartphone website promoting the scheme.

#2. ALERT stakeholders about an urgent call-to-action

What’s the quickest way to reach someone in an urgent situation? Simple! Pick up the phone and call up the person (Learn how you can use other traditional and virtual channels for communicating with non-wired staff ). That’s exactly what Southwest Airlines used to do when a pilot was unable to attend his scheduled flight and it needed to be re-assigned to another pilot. Howsoever simple it may sound, with hundreds of manual phone calls and the requirement to follow a call sequence starting with the most senior pilots, it was a lengthy and inefficient way of scheduling. But, not anymore! Southwest now uses automated text messaging to alert pilots (in order of seniority) of open flights, who can respond back instantly on their phone using a two-way text messaging capability to notify their interest. This new solution helps the company to assign flights faster and also improve the overall productivity by eliminating the need to make those laborious calls.

#3. EDUCATE stakeholders to help enhance their knowledge and skills

We’re heading towards a world where education doesn’t require a classroom or the physical presence of a trainer. Digital technologies have completely changed the way education is imparted or consumed. It’s now more engaging, social, and fun. Many organizations are also embracing the trend of “gamification” of education to teach new skills to their employees. In order to educate clinicians about the physiologic implications of blood transfusion and discourage them from overdoing transfusions, Mayo Clinic developed an interactive scenario-based app “TransFuse” for the iPad. The user is presented with different clinical scenarios and receives points for making the best transfusion decision. The user also accumulates points for acquiring medical history and interacting with the app’s computerized clinicians.

#4. ENGAGE stakeholders in a two-way dialogue

Imagine you’re in a conference and want to network with other attendees, or as an event organizer you want to get instant feedback from the attendees. One of the member organizations that I recently spoke to is building a mobile app just to do that, to help their top leaders network better.

Verizon has an “Ideas” section on its intranet that lets employees make suggestions on how to improve the business, and also vote for or comment on other people’s ideas. The field employees can submit ideas through a mobile version of the site.

#5. ENABLE stakeholders to manage their day-to-day tasks, helping them become more productive

Organizations have so much existing intellectual knowledge residing with their employees. However, without peer collaboration and information sharing , the knowledge remains siloed. When I first heard about Siri, I thought it was some gimmick. But I still felt the idea of having someone readily available to answer all sorts of trivial/non-trivial questions was extremely cool. Mayo Clinic’s AskMayoExpert application does exactly that. Mayo physicians share their most up-to-date medical knowledge on diseases, treatments, and trial information on an electronic database that other physicians can readily access on their mobile phones. If the answer to his question is not available in the database, the physician can use the app to find the right physician to consult.

While technology has great potential, it’s important not to fall for the “technology trap.” Always think about the business needs first and use technology as an “enabler.” Watch out for this space as we bring more findings from our latest research study on mobile comms.

CEC Related Resources:

• Non-Wired Communications Channel Selection Guide
• Deepen Your Stakeholder Understanding
• Message Management

CEC Related Blogs:

• CEC’s Top 4 Internal Communications Tools
• Communicating with Hard-to-Reach Employees
• Next Step Tech—The Mobile Intranet
• User Profiles: The Cure for an Unloved Intranet

It’s an exciting time to be a communicator! That is, of course, you get excited, and not overwhelmed, by the frantic pace and swift shifts of focus characteristic of today’s complex, unforgiving, and uncertain business climate. In these “exciting” times, how are Communications functions responding to increased demand from business partners? Early results from 50 respondents to our survey on Unlocking Communications’ Potential for Business Impact (add your two cents here) tell a foreboding tale of incremental improvements that may leave communicators doing ever more work, while feeling ever less connected to the bottom line.

Let’s start with the good news—Communications’ support is in high demand. Business partners’ growth ambitions coupled with a deepening appreciation for the importance of communication has increased the demand for Communications’ services. In fact, 78% of communicators surveyed report significant increases in the number and type of requests from business partners over the past two years. Even more telling of this demand is the fact that 52% of respondents say that business partners proactively come to the function for support on strategic business initiatives such as increasing sales or driving up recruitment. In short, demand for Communications’ services is up.

In response to this heightened demand, Communications teams are adding capacity and capabilities to their teams while simultaneously focusing on driving greater efficiency. Here’s what communicators are telling us:

• 22% of respondents have added capacity to their teams. Though budget growth slowed in 2011, communicators shifted their dollars to increase staff sizes and insource previously outsourced activities. View a list of the most common roles that Communications teams have been hiring for to boost capacity.
• 22% say they’ve increased the efficiency of their teams. Whether streamlining decision-making between central and local communicators or creating online communication networks, Communications teams are finding ways to keep up with the speed of information flows.
• 20% have responded to new pressures on the function by adding capabilities to their teams. Capacity without real capability doesn’t get you much. That’s why many teams are focused on training their teams and embedding a learning posture among communicators. Many within the CEC network have already adopted the 18 Communications Competencies of the Modern Communicator and begun practicing different-in-kind business partnership skills such as critical thinking and active listening.
• Perhaps not so surprisingly, exactly 0% of survey respondents have stopped any communication activities!

And now, the not-so-good news—Despite growing demand for Communications’ support, the function is still deemed a “nice to have” by the business. Read More »

Consultative skills — really important for the modern communicator, really difficult to practice. From critical thinking and business acumen to interpersonal influence and active listening, it can feel like we’re expected to learn through osmosis or come with innate abilities.

After hearing a lot of members struggle to identify competencies and develop resources in this area, we’ve identified and defined nine skills that lead to better business partnerships. Our newest resource will help you master active listening techniques to get a better understanding of business partners, gain their trust, and foster open, communicative relationships.

Active listening is characterized by listening with empathy and seeking to understand the intent and assumptions behind colleagues’ and business partners’ communications. To take that from conceptual to concrete, we’ve broken it down into three tactics you can learn and practice to become a master of active listening: Read More »

Is it the carpenter or the tool that creates quality work?  Undoubtedly it’s a combination of both, but at the same time a master craftsman knows exactly what tools he needs to create his work of art.  The same holds true for us communicators – we have many tools to choose from in our tool-box, but figuring out which one to select and for which situation is sometimes a difficult task. 

Well worry no more, the CEC Research team is here to help guide you and your team towards improving your audience understanding expertise.

The CEC Research team has identified six different methods to help you master your audience understanding.   We’ll take a brief look at our list and focus on the strengths and weaknesses of each method as it’s important to understand the limitations.

1. Focus Groups

• One obvious strength of this tool is that it gives you an in-depth understanding of your audience, but at the same time, because this method provides a holistic view, it can be very time intensive.  CEC’s resource to help balance these trade-offs:  How to Conduct Focus Groups

2. Observation/Ethnography

• This method is similar to Focus Groups in terms of the pros and cons. However, this method tends to be even more time intensive and may even require the assistance of a vendor.  How to Conduct Ethnographic Research Read More »

If your Communications team is like most in the CEC network, you’re being asked to stretch  your team’s resources more than ever.  In fact, we know from CEC’s latest Resource Allocation Benchmarking Survey that more communications activities are being in-sourced while FTE resourcing remain flat.  This emerging trend leaves communicators in a tough spot – if your plate was already full and now even more is being added to it, how do you know what to work on?

Further complicating the story is that the nature of requests that communicators are being asked to execute is skewing towards the non-strategic.  During a recent CEC conference, a group of Heads of Communications were asked what percentage of their team’s time was spent reacting to tactical requests.  The consensus figure was about 70% (though some said the number was more like 90%).  So, it seems pretty clear that, while we communicators talk about being more “strategic, when it comes down to it, evaluating all the possible demands and selecting the work that truly creates value is actually quite difficult.

How CEC can help:

Though this blog might  have started off by painting a grim picture, I promise that it’s not all doom and gloom — there is a silver lining to this scenario.  In fact, CEC has created some terrific resources aimed at helping Comms teams assess and select the projects that are tied to the tangible outcomes that your organization is trying to achieve.  Here’s how we can help: 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)

As technology evolves and becomes increasingly accessible, more communicators than ever are considering the use of mobile technology—text messaging, podcasts, smartphone apps, etc.—to enable communication to, from, and among employees.

While there can be numerous opportunities for using mobile for internal communications depending on organizational needs, here are three broad scenarios when launching a mobile communication channel may be more effective and beneficial.

#1: Target the “On-the-Goers”

The workforce is becoming more mobile as businesses compete in a global economy. Field technicians, sales executives, auditors, logistics personnel, etc. are always on-the-go for their work and struggle to remain updated about what’s happening back at the company office. In some cases, such employees are so disconnected that they run the risk of becoming disengaged. Thankfully, mobile employees are generally not without their mobile devices. So, wouldn’t it make sense to employ mobile technology to keep them aligned with the organizational goals, say a simple SMS update on important corporate news? Also, how about a mobile app that enables them to communicate with their office-based peers for problem solving? Learn how Chevron segmented its employee population to focus on mobile technology development for its “on the road” staff.

#2: Target the “Time-Starved”

Non-wired employees (i.e. those in production facilities, retail stores, restaurants, etc.) are not too willing to leave work in-between or use their limited break times to visit that lone intranet kiosk or read that dense information put up on the bulletin board. Even if you designed the best intranet site, put up the most visually-appealing message on the bulletin, or bombarded them with regular emails , employees may be just too time-starved to take notice, regardless of whether they are “wired” to the company network or not. Imagine a contact center employee putting down the phone to access the intranet. Sounds scary, eh? Well, now imagine a mobile communication strategy that provides easy, timely, interactive, and “at leisure” access to employees. Use CEC’s simple tool for selecting the right mix of traditional and virtual channels for communicating with non-wired staff.

#3: Target the “Information-Avoiders”

Yes, you read it correct – employees “avoid” accessing the information. But don’t get baffled. There may be absolutely nothing wrong with your communication strategy or employees’ engagement levels. Rather some cultural barriers, such as a manager expecting his subordinates to spend work hours only on productive/billable activities, may discourage employees from accessing the intranet so as not to be seen as slacking off. (You might want to share some of these simple empowerment tips with managers to help these managers cede some control to employees.) In other cases, employees may feel uncomfortable accessing information in the presence of their peers, especially on topics that are too sensitive or personal. Here, a mobile-based solution could enable a comfortable, private, and guilt-free information access to employees.

These are just a few examples among many more where mobile technology can be leveraged for improving communication effectiveness. If you have any examples about how companies are using mobile for internal communications, we would love to hear back from you. You can email me or leave a comment here.

CEC Related Resources:

• Non-Wired Communications Channel Selection Guide
• Deepen Your Stakeholder Understanding
• Message Management

CEC Related Blogs:

• CEC’s Top 4 Internal Communications Tools
• Communicating with Hard-to-Reach Employees
• Next Step Tech—The Mobile Intranet
• User Profiles: The Cure for an Unloved Intranet

This blog is part of our Building a Global Mindset series to help communicators increase their own cultural awareness and global perspective.

Brazil is one of the hottest countries in the world at the moment, not only as the host of the next World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, but particularly due its rapid growth and rise as one of the key emerging economies – Brazil just recently overtook the UK to become sixth-largest in the world. So it is not surprising that many members ask us about what it’s like to communicate with Brazilian audiences and how to message differently in this market. Brazil is not just the land of samba, football and beaches, but also a country of hard-working people, where relationships are key to successful business partnerships, and where internet and new technologies are rapidly expanding like in other emerging economies.

In our research of the Brazilian culture, wediscovered that internet usage is increasing in Brazil and that social media is extremely popular among online audiences, which means that there is an opportunity to connect with audiences through this channel (and actually 70% of Brazilian companies already use or monitor social media channels).

As communicators, what can you do to become smarter about social media usage in Brazil, and what does that mean for your work? Here are three somewhat surprising trends about social media in Brazil: Read More »