CEC Insider » Managing the Communications Function

4 Steps for Conducting Surveys

Saurav Das — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:00:55 +0000

Communicators often need to use numbers to narrate a story. However, for people who love playing with words, it can be a “scary” prospect to conduct quantitative surveys. The challenge lies in asking the right set of questions, gathering information that meets the desired objectives, and analyzing the data to build your story. The question then becomes, “What is the best way to gather the information required to fulfill my desired objectives?”

When researching on best ways to conduct quantitative surveys, we discovered that launching a quant survey is much more than pressing a launch button that sends out a questionnaire. Communicators need to focus their efforts on building a solid hypothesis to test and developing clear objectives for the survey.

The four steps below will help you get the most out of your survey efforts:

Build a Plan – Communicators should think about why they are doing a survey and how they plan to use the results. This involves creating a hypothesis of what you want to show with the study, understanding the central problem, and identifying the variables that influence it. Learn how to integrate the problem and its causes into a description of reality.
Spend Time Designing – Once you have the built a survey model, you need to do much more than make a list of questions. Designing the survey involves developing and testing hypotheses as well as thinking about whether you will want to track results over time or not. Read more on survey design to understand how to select your target audience, data collection tools, and the survey parameters.
Maximize Participation – Getting a high number of responses on surveys can be a frustrating process. You need to convince a large number of people to take 15-30 minutes out of their schedule to respond. Find out how you can maximize survey participation by creating a launch and promotion plan before even making the survey.
Conduct In-Depth Analysis – Sorting through vast amounts of survey data can be daunting. Start cleaning your data by looking for outliers (high or low responses), which can really skew the validity of your results. Look at how you can analyze surveys and build correlations to tell a story with the data.

CEC Members: Download the complete tool for How to Conduct Quantitative Surveys. This is one of the accompanying tools to Step 4 in Building an Outcome-Focused Communication Plan.

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Focus on Business Goals, Not Just Comms Goals

Jeff Schott — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:30:54 +0000

As we close the book on 2011, most of us are probably drafting our plans for how we intend to achieve our 2012 objectives. If you’re like many of the communicators who I have spoken with recently, you are eager to structure your communication plans so as to demonstrate the value that Communications can create for rest of the business. Perhaps you’re even using the CEC’s recently published toolkit on building an outcome-focused communication planand starting off the planning process by gaining a deep understanding of your Comms objective and target stakeholder audience. After all, how can you begin to think about creating an action plan if you don’t first fully appreciate the communications goal?

While this advice might seem intuitive, communicators often lose sight of or altogether fail to consider the specific Comms outcome that they are hoping to achieve through their efforts. But even more important than asking ourselves “What is the Communications objective that we hoping to achieve?” is another intuitive, yet critically important question — “What is the business outcome that we’re hoping to achieve?”

Reverse Engineer Your Comms Plans

More and more, Heads of Communications tell us that their CEO’s are starting to throw traditional Comms metrics out the window (e.g., message delivery, tone of coverage, reputation score) in favor of metrics aligned to business goals. For example, their teams will now be measured on whether or not the business hits its targeted revenue and subscription numbers. As a result, Communications’ activities set and resource allocation across those activities are starting to shift. Additionally, communicators are beginning to ask themselves a different sequence of questions. Here are some business outcome-focused questions to help you adapt your approach:

What is the business outcome? – Start by deeply understanding the business goal, whether it be to increase sales in a particular business unit or improve employee engagement. Put yourself in the shoes of your business partnerand consider what she and her team are trying to achieve as a whole, not just what the Comms angle is.
Which outcomes are Comms best positioned to influence? – Once you understand the business outcome, think about the stakeholder behaviors that can be influenced through communication. For example, you might want to increase customer referrals from a particular stakeholder section and think that Communications could play a strategic role in influencing this group.
What audience attitudes need to be shaped?– In order to achieve your desired Comms outcome, think about the stakeholder perceptions that the communication will be targeting. What exactly is it that your company wants stakeholders to know, think, or feel?
What communication tactics will achieve this? – Only after working systematically back from the business outcome can you arrive at the activities, channels, and communications support. These tactics might be very similar to those used in the past; however your reasoning for using them now has a much more solid foundation.

If your team has shifted its approach to become more outcome-focused, we’d love to schedule a research call with you to learn about your experience.

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Demonstrate Your Value to the Business

Marika Krausova — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:45:12 +0000

For many of our members (and for CEC as well), January is the month when the annual performance review process kicks off. The review process is a great way to evaluate what you did well in the last year, but also to focus on your key areas of development. For most of us, the review process ends at the individual level, but it is equally important for the Communications function as whole (and for the team members who together constitute “the function”) to take thorough stock of its achievements and future objectives.

Based on our research and partnership with hundreds of companies over many years, we have identified the 20 key attributes of business value-focused communications function and compiled them into a compact Anatomy Game board . The Anatomy showcases the best practice for each attribute to help our members achieve functional excellence in each of the functional responsibilities. We found that a truly business value-focused communications functions focus their efforts in 4 key areas:

1. Sense Opportunities for Creating Value

Truly valued communicators don’t just fulfill clients’ requests, but proactively identify opportunities to meet stakeholder needs, address areas of potential reputation exposure and surface internal business partners’ communications needs and priorities.

2. Optimize Resources to Highest-Value Work

Many communications’ teams reported stagnating budgets in 2011, with only slightly more optimistic forecast for 2012. Scarce resources place lots of pressure on allocating them in the most efficient and impactful manner. Most successful members create a strategic high-value activities focused plan, and optimize their most important resource – their staff.

3. Extend “Reach” by Enabling Others to Communicate on Your Behalf

Most of our members have 1 to 5 communicators per 1,000 employees. This ratio makes it virtually impossible for the communications team to really connect and touch every employee and stakeholder out there. Top communications teams successfully leverage their stakeholders by getting managers, leaders, employees and external stakeholders to advocate on their behalf.

4. Create Value by Crafting and Disseminating Messages

Almost every communications team out there is focused on creating and disseminating message. However, what distinguishes the truly best communications teams from all the rest is their ability to not only have their message heard, but to actually motivate their audience to take action and to actually change stakeholders’ behavior in way that has a concrete and measurable impact on company’s business objectives.

Why don’t you take a look at our newly updated Anatomy and let us know how your function stacks up?

Recommended Resources

The Anatomy of a Business Value-Focused Communications Function

Managing the Function Topic Center

Skills and Roles of Modern Communicator

The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Ethnography

Saurav Das — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 14:30:11 +0000

Listening to audiences is important to any communicator. But how often do you sense that what people say is different from the way they actually behave? Nod your head if you agree that there is a need to observe audience behaviour firsthand, understand their reasons for irrational behaviour, and do this in the most efficient way possible.

While ethnography has traditionally been used by marketers for understanding consumer behaviours and more recently by companies like Intel to inform strategy and planning, communicators can use ethnography to uncover the underlying behaviours and values of their audiences.

Thinking about how to apply ethnography? While it may sound like a daunting academic exercise, anyone can do some version of an ethnographic study without necessarily needing to use outside resources. In the CEC ethnography tool, we propose that you consider a combination of participation, observation, and interviewing to find out more about your audience.

Here are three key steps to help you become a better ethnographer:

1. Design Ethnographic Study – Select the location, audience, duration, and observers.

2. Prepare Field Observation Guide – Develop questions and focus areas of investigation.

3. Conduct Post-study Debrief and Analysis – Analyze, and interpret the information gathered.

Sound complicated? Use our Ethnography Toolkit to learn how to navigate each step.

Case in Point: How Southwest Airlines Uses Ethnography for Stakeholder Listening

Communicators at one of our members, Southwest Airlines, used ethnographic techniques to understand their stakeholders and advise changes to the business model. Communications collaborated with Marketing to use ethnographic techniques to uncover consumer behaviours and “in the moment” reaction to messages, i.e., Southwest Airlines shifted the messaging of a price hike from an ‘apologetic’ tone to a ‘rational’ tone, based on the insight that customers are comfortable with fee hikes as long as the explanation is upfront and clear.

How have you used ethnography to understand stakeholder behaviors? What did you learn from your experiences? What might you do differently? We’d love to hear your ideas!

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Top 3 Insights from Communication Gurus in 2011

Kayleigh O’Keefe — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 11:00:06 +0000

We sit at the center of a global network of over 350 Heads of Communications and their teams. This privileged position gives us a unique vantage point into the shared challenges and priorities of executives who, regardless of industry or company size, all aim to boost the function’s performance in a wildly complex business and communications environment. Our daily conversations, executive retreats, workshops, and Q&A session on webinars, have yielded tremendous insight into the future of the function, but none quite like these!

Here are three top insights from CEC members that portend a very different posture for Communications in 2012 and beyond.

1. Communications as Business Partner, not Trusted Advisor

“A trusted advisor is someone who might know media relations or the Communications business cold, but they don’t necessarily know the business cold. A business partner is someone who really understands the organization’s business, reason for being, and goals and objectives.”

–Teresa Paulsen, Vice President, Corporate Communication, ConAgra, The Modern Communicator’s Skill Set webinar.

We would agree that it’s no longer enough to be an expert communicator; business partnership skills are paramount. This is mostly due to the dramatic shift we’ve witnessed as the function moves from acting as a message creator to an enabler of business outcomes. Yet despite many communicators’ desire to be a consultative partner with a “seat at the table,” seniormosts of the function lament that their teams lack the confidence and skills to meet business partners’ heightened expectations.

In 2012, we’ll look to help the CEC network build their confidence in consultation and business partnership through resources and training opportunities on critical thinking, being outcomes-focused, and business acumen.

2. Communications as Roadblock Remover for Leadership Communication

“Leaders are talented and intelligent people who would perform communications perfectly competently if the organization didn’t push them in a different direction. Beyond a basic “leadership means good communication” guidance booklet, our focus has been to look at what’s getting in the way of them having normal relationships with their people and sharing what they know.”

–Communications Consultant, Financial Services, CEC Employee Communications Forum

We love this idea. How can Communications use its expertise in audience understanding and active listening to understand why information is not shared between leaders and employees? Where are there perception or expectation gaps? One team at ITT has already moved in this direction. They conducted a variety of listening techniques to help redesign communications processes at plant where miscommunication was preventing the team from hitting their performance goals. The impact of their efforts? A decrease in rework and an increase in on-time delivery—two metrics not often attributed to the Communications function!

To get started you can follow this 3-step process to conduct short focus groups with leaders and employees to identify potential barriers to quality communication.

3. Communications as a Real-Time Information Interpreter

“Communication is not about sharing information. It’s about locally interpreting messages in a timely manner.”

–SVP Corporate Communications, Financial Services, CEC Thought Leaders Meeting at Johnson & Johnson

What if you spent more time on fewer messages that are more locally relevant than spending less time on more messages that are less locally relevant? Information shared is only as good as information heard…and then acted upon. In 2012 we’ll be exploring how the function can provide “just in time” information to stakeholders during key decision points.

It’s hard, of course, to be both consistent and relevant. But, that’s really not the issue—it’s about alignment. Your company needs to have both a strong central position and the flexibility to enable local communicators to adjust the message for local stakeholder interests. Follow these 3 tips for customizing global messages.

It’s a fascinating time to be in Corporate Communications. As executives increasingly begin to see the value of effective communication to drive performance at their organizations, the Communications function has a huge opportunity ahead of itself. It’s the collective goal of the CEC team to help you seize this opportunity in 2012.

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3 Steps to Be a Better Listener

Saurav Das — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:00:15 +0000

As communicators, we like to think that we’re good at listening. But, how often do you see messaging and communications strategies that don’t really resonate with audiences? We’ve discussed how the Outcome-Focused Communication Plan can help to improve your performance. Now, let’s talk about how you plan to listen to your audiences in a timely and productive manner. One effective way is through a focus group discussion aimed at gaining in-depth knowledge, insights and multiple viewpoints on a situation or initiative.

According to Wharton’s Americus Reed: “A focus group is like a chainsaw. If you know what you are doing, it’s very useful and effective. If you don’t, you could lose a limb.” While our market research colleagues are experts at running focus groups, we as communicators probably feel like we’ve been handed a chainsaw with no instruction manual if we were asked to run one. CEC has created a quick guide to help you make the process easier.

Here’s how you can use a focus group to better listen to your audiences:

Select the type of focus group you will run based on your objective for listening: The right type of focus group choice depends on your resources, team capabilities, and what you’re aiming to learn. Focus groups vary widely based on your objectives. They differ based on the people moderating it, the type of interaction that occurs and the kind of conclusions produced. Understanding that communicators operate under various restraints, select the group most appropriate for your situation.
CEC Tool: Look at some tips on how to find a moderator within your comms team.
Moderate the discussion effectively: It’s relatively easy to get people in a room together. It’s much harder to facilitate an effective, result oriented discussion among them. Create a comprehensive discussion guide with the right set of questions to ask as well as follow-ups, and prompts that may be useful during the discussion.
CEC Tool: Here are some suggestions that help with issues like dominating or disruptive participants.
Analyze the findings: Interpreting the results from a discussion can be confusing. In order to develop a compelling story, consult with business partners and interpret the quotes, phrases, and keywords from the discussion that relate to your objectives.
CEC Tool: Read some of our guidelines to develop the key takeaways from the discussion into a report.

Use our Focus Groups Toolkit to learn more about how to run a focus group as an audience listening method. And don’t forget to look at the following resources.

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Communications Is Changing Rapidly–And So Is The CEC

Rick DeLisi — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 15:59:37 +0000

It’s the old 80/20 rule come to life once again. I’ve been in communications for the past two decades (scary to think!) and in my opinion, 80% of the change in our business has come in the last 20% of that time.

In just the past 3-4 years, the communications function is SO different. There are some obvious on-the-surface reasons why this is the case (the ever-more “socially-mediated” information environment, the rise of mobile communication, our daily/hourly/minutely dependence on the internet).

But there are also some below-the-surface sociological/psychological reasons as well (increasing scientific evidence that people are learning, thinking, and making decisions differently than just a few years ago).

Which is why it’s both rewarding–and essential–that CEC (Communications Executive Council) is also very different than it was just a few years ago. Former CEC member companies who’ve been away for the past 3-4 years are amazed to see that instead of just “producing data, authoring research papers and conducting networking meetings” the program is so much more personalized, customized and immediately impactful than ever before.

Communicators who are part of the 2012 CEC network now have access to a much wider variety of resources:

Dedicated Executive Advisors who are available on-call as thought partners and navigational “tour guides” through the CEC canon
Benchmarking data about Communications budgets, staffing, social media practices and organizational structures that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world
Hard data to present to your executives that makes it easy to support or build the business case for Comms initiatives
Diagnostics that allow Communications to discover areas of strengths and opportunities within your own team–with specific guidance on how to build a world-class Comms function (in ways that are faster and easier than you would imagine)
Custom data gathering that pinpoints precise strategic opportunities throughout your company that the Comms team can target and achieve

If you think you know CEC because you were introduced to the program a few years ago–it’s time to refresh your understanding. We’re excited to share the successes of companies that are already part of the CEC network, and look forward to welcoming you (or, welcoming you back!).

The time is now. Things are changing too quickly for you to miss out on what 350+ of your fellow Comms executives already know.

How to Fight Back against Low-Value Requests

Kayleigh O’Keefe — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 14:00:46 +0000

Tiered Communications Service

Can you relate to the following statements?

My team has a difficult time saying “no” to routine or low-impact partner requests.
My team spends too much time supporting tactical projects and too little time on high-value initiatives.
My team is concerned about allowing non-communicators to “self-serve” their communications needs.

If you nodded in agreement to any of these statements, it might be time to reevaluate (or create!) your existing service level agreements. The truth is all of us in Communications have felt exasperated at times when business partners ask us to complete low-value work. In recent years, this frustration has been compounded as Communications budgets remain flat while business partner requests increase.

Of course, you likely already have some tacit agreements in place with business partners or have agreements tucked in a dusty file cabinet somewhere. In theory these SLAs are great, in practice they are harder to implement because it’s hard to: a.) assign value to individual activities, b.) shift partner perceptions of what Comms can do, and c.) ensure consistency and quality of communications pushed back to the line.

When we explored this challenge, ING Insurance Americas tiered service-level framework stood out. What made it better than your typical SLA? Three things:

It was co-created with partners to prioritize their business needs and the related communications support most critical to those needs.
It clearly defines and articulates Communications’ responsibility in different service levels.
It provides guidance and guardrails to enable partners to take responsibility for routine or lower-value communications projects.

In short, deliberately skewing resources to activities with the highest economic impact is a foundational part of any support function’s positioning as a business partner as opposed to a service center. If you’ve conducted this exercise informally, by yourself without input from the business, or just a few years ago, it’s time to develop a new agreement to guarantee that the work you’ll do in 2012 will be your most impactful yet!

CEC members, see ING Insurance Americas’ tiered service-level framework and follow their process to collaborate with business partners in its development.

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3 Ways to Think Big When You’re Small

Dana Clifford — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:00:38 +0000

“Honestly, Dana, we’re such a small team. There aren’t even 10 of us so:

…we can barely keep up with the requests that come from our business partners.

… demonstrating our impact comes more from getting stuff done than specific measurement strategies.

…it is probably less important that we have a planning template as it is easy for us all to be looped in.

…we don’t have the time or money to invest in staff development.”

Believe me, I hear you! While we all wish it weren’t so, the typical company between $1-5 Billion in revenue has only 10 communicators. We’re talking a median of only 2.1 communicators for every 1,000 company employees who need to understand their role in strategy, who needs more valuable information from the intranet, newsletters or events, and who needs a manager and senior leadership team who is comfortable communicating with them. And we can’t even quantify the number of external stakeholders we’re trying to influence!

All of that said, when you’re in a small communications team, you may actually be in a uniquely positive position. Imagine trying to coordinate the projects, channels, agency relationships or budgets of 50 or even 100 different communicators working on simultaneous activities.

No–when we’re few in number, we can be a lean, mean, and highly effective communications team. We just have to learn to think like our “big” peers and come to work every day with the same drive as a team of 3, 5, or 10!

Here are 3 ways to think and act BIG, even when you’re small:

1. Think of them as business partners—not clients. Have you heard of the A+/C- phenomenon in communications? Often communicators get an A+ in service scores and a C- when it comes to value added to the business. We have to break this perception of communications!

It is critical to view contacts in other functions as our business partners that we are working side-by-side with to achieve business goals. At times we may help our partners self-serve and at times we may own a communications activity that closely links to business goals. In either case, both parties own activities and metrics to signify progress against goals.

2. Negotiate—in their language.
Influence and negotiation stand out as two of the most critical skills in the modern communicators skill set—but they are often the skills teams look to improve upon. Can you confidently say that you “lead and stand strong to business partners, even when you do not have positional authority, to find ‘win-win’ communications solutions?”

Often business partners approach us for support only once they’ve determined the cause of a problem and the communications solution they think will solve it. To effectively negotiate we must not speak in the language of communications solutions, but in the language of business goals and their root causes. Process-oriented planning that is done with our partners together and well-documented helps get us this ‘win-win’ every time.

3. Provide the platform. Don’t fill the platform.
As you’re well familiar, the speed, noise, and opportunities to connect with others online have greatly shifted information consumption. Most importantly people are interested in hearing from people—not from BIG companies, BIG media, or BIG government.

For a small team, this is great news! It should be a more occasional night that we’re editing a long press release at midnight and an disproportionate amount of our time should go to creating opportunities for others to contribute to the company story, for peers to recognize one another, for managers to carry the message more effectively than our newsletters, for employees to carry the brand, and for employees to engage directly with our stakeholders. Even more than our ‘big’ peers, a small communications team must commit to today’s role of enabling.

What is one thing your team has done recently to act bigger than you may seem?

Top CEC Resources for Small Shop Communicators:

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The One Person You Want on Your Comms Team

Marika Krausova — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:00:14 +0000

For the past couple months, I have been working on compiling 16 different “role profiles” of some of the traditional and not-so-traditional roles that you can find on current communications teams. For each profile, I have interviewed several communicators holding this position to pick their brains on the key responsibilities and skills that their role demands. The resulting role profiles reflect not only their current responsibilities but also some of the more aspirational activities that they would love to add to the list in the near future to increase their impact and effectiveness.

However, not all communications teams have a large number of communicators which can be strategically allocated among all of these 16 (or more) different roles. A quick look at our membership shows that a quarter of the communications teams have 10 or less people and about half of them fall in the 20 and under full time staff members category. So what do you do when you have a small team that requires everyone to wear “multiple hats” to get the job done?

One of the roles that is growing in importance on communications teams (regardless of the team size!) is the communications generalist. The communications generalist is essentially a communications functions’ “mini-head”. She or he has experience in multiple aspects of communications and can be flexibly deployed across various communications activities and projects.

While all teams benefit from having communications generalists, they are particularly valuable for “small shop” teams because they allow them to focus on variety of communications tactics that more specialized roles might not be able to deliver on.

Our members who hold this role emphasized that the generalist has to be a well-rounded, capable communicator. However, there are five key competencies that they believe make a high-performing generalist stand out from the crowd:

o Strategic Agility/Judgment

o Interpersonal Influence

o Negotiation

o Project Management

o Communications Measurement

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts? Do you have generalists’ positions on your team? Do you agree with the key competencies and the responsibilities for this role? Let me know.

Relevant CEC Resources:

Generalist Role Profile

The Modern Communicator’s Skills Set

The Four Communicator Skills Profiles