So a year ago we were asking ourselves the same question: what are the top things on a communicators’ wish list. It’s been a year full of hard work but for many communicators, the wish list in 2010 looks pretty similar to the one today—check it out! As technology has gotten smarter, and our stakeholders’ expectations have changed, there are a few things I would add:

1)      Internal Collaboration Vendors: Technology has moved us beyond discussion forums or internal “Facebook”-like sites and enabled our intranets to act as business collaboration tools with social activity streams that put relevant content and people in front of our employees.

• Check out this best practice from MITRE and explore vendors with collaboration capabilities

2)      Message Planning Support: Now, the dream gift for most communicators and marketers would be access to NeuroFocus—access to neurological research which maps the emotional connections and associations that stakeholders have with certain products, messages, or experience to scientifically plan messages and campaigns. Teams like Frito-Lay have seen the monetary returns on this type of information.

For those communicators who are unable to strap an EEG to your stakeholders’ heads, the CEC has developed a close second—a new Writing for Impact Workshop. This half day session digs into tactics for deep stakeholder understanding to help you reflect stakeholders’ interest, values, and language as well as how to prompt action through the way we write or package messages. Really, it’s a gift for the whole team.

• Learn more of schedule a session for your team here.

3)      SEO Optimization Tools: Get the messages you spend so much time crafting actually seen by the readers we care about online. Fine tune text for the web by using online tools which improve optimization.

• Click here to review the top 50 search engine optimization companies

4)      Vocal translator: Overcome writers block and quickly capture your thoughts to get more done faster with a vocal translator that turns spoken words into simple emails or documents.

• Check out Dragon Naturally Speaking speech recognition software

5)      Pocket Camera: Save thousands of dollars on high-end video footage with a simple, portable cameras which can provide engaging, cutting-room-floor content to share with

• Create your own unique design on a flip camera

6)      Coffee: Keep the energy up for what will be a busy and exciting 2012!

• Recommendations from my hometown of San Francisco (known for our epic coffee house rivalries): Blue Bottle Coffee and Four Barrel Coffee

Wishing you a happy holidays from the CEC!

The real problems arise when we start to rely on similar tactics for making more important decisions, like internal communication channel selection. Rather than ask yourself, “What is the best way for employees to be informed about this leadership change?” it’s easier to jump to, “I’ll just write a quick post on the intranet.”

Falling into bad habits like this prevent you from strategically selecting channels to make your communication more effective. Luckily, we have a cheat sheet to help you stay out of a channel selection rut.

This channel selection guide will help you choose the optimal channel based on what you want to achieve with your target audience. By considering what information is most effectively communicated through different channels and weighing the pros and cons of each, you’ll be able to quickly choose the best channel for your objective.Here is a set-by-step example of how you could use the tool to work through the best way to communicate company strategy to employees:

1. Think through what you want to achieve with your target audience.

• We want to motivate and energize employees around our new strategy.

2. Consider where audience naturally go for information.

• Employees rely on their direct managers and peers for information. They also check our intranet homepage at least once per week.

3. Select the most appropriate channel(s).

• We’ll open a discussion forum on our intranet for employees to comment on the strategy and how they expect to contribute to it in their role because we know that social media participation boosts engagement. We’ll also have our CEO run town halls with small groups of our employees to demonstrate the credibility of the message.

4. Determine the right level of Communications support.

• We’ll monitor discussion conversations and deliver Intel back to executives. We’ll help our CEO build a presentation that shares the strategy in a compelling way.

While there isn’t one perfect channel for every message, it’s much easier to make an informed, strategic decision when the options are clearly laid out. CEC members, check out the full Channel Selection Tool.

CEC Related Resources:

• Channel Selection Tool
• Building an Outcome-Focused Communication Plan
• Non-Wired Communications Channel Selection Guide

CEC Related Blog Posts:

• Redefining Leadership Communication
• Engaging Frontline Employees in Safety Dialogue
• Comms & HR: Partners in Employee Engagement

When I think about what’s become of the news business, I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or go out on the front lawn and start eating grass (isn’t that what animals do when they think they’re about to barf?).

But I gotta say — although you may already be getting a little queased-out from the relentless coverage of this Joe Paterno/Penn State story — for once, this ain’t hype.  This really is the biggest scandal in sports history. More than just another ringing bell for the Pavlov’s Dogs of Media to salivate over, this is a cautionary tale for EVERYONE in a position of authority at any big organization in the world.

Here’s a strong recommendation from your friends and colleagues at CEC: Use this moment as an opportunity to have an important discussion with your CEO.  Particularly if he (90+% chance it’s a he) is a football fan (gut guess on my part = there’s a 75+% chance he at least likes football).

All you have to do is ask him, “So, uhhhh, whadda ya think about the whole Paterno mess?”, then sit back and let him spew. Whatever he says next will enlighten both of you about his understanding of “the way things work” in today’s media environment.

Chances are you’ll get one of three responses:

• What’s happening to Joe Paterno is so unfair.
  This might be an indication that your CEO isn’t fully aware of how easy it is to get caught up in a scandal — even when you didn’t think you were personally doing anything wrong. Hey, right and wrong don’t seem to matter to the media anymore — proximity-to-something-bad may be enough to bring you down. And it IS unfair. So, let’s talk about how your Comms team can help you prevent getting caught up in some unfair future situation.
• Paterno is an idiot. How could anyone be so irresponsible?
  This might be an indication that your CEO doesn’t realize how easy it is to lose one’s perspective within the insular inner-circle of big organizational power. Joe Paterno may be an 84-year old geezer, but he’s no idiot. So why did he think that merely reporting the first incident of child sex-abuse to his boss would absolve everyone of responsibility? Because sometimes that’s the way people in power think. So, let’s talk about how your Comms team can help you see the way the world looks at big companies — let’s make sure you have some true outside perspective.
• This whole mess is gonna be a field day for the lawyers.
  This might be an indication that your CEO believes that in the event of a scandal or reputational crisis, as long as your General Counsel and Legal department are able to win lawsuits, mitigate financial damage and keep the company from going out of business, everything will be OK. So, let’s talk about how Comms can help you avoid crises in the first place — cause what we can do will be much easier on your stomach lining, and SO much cheaper.

My Dad used to say, “Son, there are two ways to learn the big lessons in life — the hard way and the easy way.” In his mind, the hard way is learning from your own mistakes. The easy way is learning from things that happen to other people.

The Joe Paterno situation is an opportunity for your CEO to learn a hard lesson the easy way.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?  What do you (and more importantly) your CEO think about this scandal?

But there are some instances where we just have to say “enough,” and one of them is company-wide communications. The cumulative impact of multiple functions across a firm sending company-wide messages can quickly swamp employees and managers. Rather than take time away from their primary responsibilities individuals turn to the simplest solution, the delete button. This presents a serious threat when truly important messages are lost in the noise.

So how can Communications help curb the runaway messaging problem? It can be hard to tame functional groups across the organization because they have little incentive to curb their output, which only makes up one slice of the prolifically messaging pie. Policing company messaging systems is often too resource-intensive for Communications to take on single handedly and wouldn’t solve the root cause of the issue.

Case in Point: Home Depot

Home Depot recognized these challenges and decided to create a multifunctional messaging gatekeeper team. The team reviews requests submitted via a standard form, makes a yes-or-no decision and sorts approved messages by channel.

But the real value in this approach isn’t creating a gatekeeper team.

The Communications team went to the source of the problem to enable noncommunicators to internalize what really matters to the organization. The request form forces a moment of reflection and extra effort on the part of would-be message senders. Additionally, the gatekeeper team members gain a solid understanding of which messages truly matter, which they carry back to their functions.

CEC members can learn more about how Home Depot drastically reduced company-wide messages.

CEC Related Resources

• Shield Employees from Message Overload
• Message Gatekeeper Team (Home Depot)
• Driving Engagement with Corporate Strategy: Engineering Strategy Dialogues with Key Stakeholders

CEC Related Blog Posts

• Tool to Prioritize Local Messages
• Who Will Translate Your Company’s Messages?
• Writing for Action: One Key Engagement Idea

As companies become more and more international, communicators experience increased difficulties when crafting messages for their diverse global audiences.  I often hear members say things like “we want to make sure we act and sound as ‘one company’ and convey a consistent image, but we also want to sound sensitive to the local culture” or “we think we are being culturally aware in our messaging, but we’re still perceived as too American” [or too Swiss, Japanese, etc.].

How can communicators stay consistent in what they’re saying across markets to convey a unified company image, but at the same time be relevant? And even before thinking about content, how do you even prioritize communications for each market so that you’re not communicating too much and having your messages ignored?

Rather than aiming for consistency at the expense of local relevance, we believe that you should aim for message alignment. This means that you should have some basic guidelines/a clearly stated position on issues, but then build flexibility around when, where, and how to customize approaches and messages for local market relevance. How to do that? Here are some tips and tools:

3 Tips for Customizing Local Messaging in Line with Central Position:

1. Build local understanding of the central company view on key issues: this seems like an obvious one, but as issues evolve, often it’s not clear what the key company position is or where to easily find it. To help local communicators, give easy access to company views on key issues and be explicit on where and how to add local context to those views.

CEC Tools:

• Novo Nordisk creates an online news repository as a permanent feature of its Communicators Network, so that it becomes easy to find in the place where local communicators already are networking.
• Be explicit in your news announcement templates about which pieces of information can be shared and with whom.

2. Make Content More Relevant: Tailor tone and language based on local culture values and norms. Simple tweaks to the same story will boost relevance of the message in various markets and get your audience’s attention.

CEC Tool: Toyota uses a set of Messaging Customization Principles to tweak versions of the same message accordingly by local audience values.

3. Adjust Timing and Message Mix: reduce message overload by timing important messages to when your audience is most receptive. And, don’t hesitate to be choosy about which messages you do cascade locally – not all messages are need-to-know for everyone in the organization.

CEC Tools:

• Use these message prioritization principles to figure out timing of messages.
• Consider something like a message gatekeeper team to filter out nice-to-know messages.

 What other things have you tried to customize messaging at the local level, particularly for countries and cultures much different to your home culture? What have you found to be the most and least successful strategies?

CEC Related Resources:

Managing Communications Across Global and Virtual Teams

Drive Message Alignment

Message Management Resource Center

CEC Related Blogs:

4 Ways to Improve Central vs Local Communications

Tool to Prioritize Local Messages

How to Cascade Sensitive Information

Want Excellent Global Communications? Give Local Communicators a Say

But (for reasons which still elude me), we once had it professionally tuned. Now, I’d seen pianos being tuned before. It’s done electronically with a device that analyzes each note and indicates whether it’s flat or sharp. But the guy who tuned our piano had no device — cause he was totally blind.

Think about it. A blind piano tuner (watch the video). Born without sight, this guy’s hearing was so super-sensitive, he could immediately detect the slightest imperfection in each note, and adjust it back to pitch-perfect just by listening.

To him, an out-of-tune note is like a physical discomfort, and he’s the doctor who relieves patients of their pain.

In some ways, that’s what we communicators do. Only not with musical notes, but rather, with words. When we hear something that’s not right — we just know. It gets under our skin, and makes us uncomfortable. In some cases, it triggers our gag reflex and makes us wanna lose our lunch. And we’ve gotta fix it.

We came across a posting on the Harvard Business Review website recently where a noted wordsmith ranted on about speakers and presenters who use the phrase, “Does that make sense?” as a way to faux-interact with their audience. He also invoked Strunk and White’s axiom “Always use definite, specific concrete language” in railing against the overuse of qualifiers like “pretty much,” “actually,” and “basically.”

I have a few hurl-inducers (and I bet you do, too!):

• The complete and utter dependency on tired, overused hack phrases. When I hear: “at the end of the day,” “getting my (whatever) on,”  and the syrup-of-ipecac-like “thinking outside the box” it makes me feel like I’m on the Tilt-A-Whirl right after slamming three funnel cakes. (FYI: The satirical newspaper The Onion burns these cliches the way diesel engines consume sweet Texas crude.)
• Over-acronyzation. Every industry and every company has ‘em. I come from the airline business, and I could go on all day about PAWOBs and AOG and FOD.  But if I did, before I got to my point you’d already be DOA. Which means I’d be SOL.
• Improper pronunciation of the word “the.” Such a simple word (the most common in the English language) and yet, so frequently mispronounced. There’s a huge difference between “thuh” and “thee.”  When the next word starts with a vowel-sound you’ve gotta say “thee” instead of “thuh.” Learn it. Know it. Live it. I recently listened to a woman (who I know to be really smart) who got “thuh” and “thee” wrong about 50 times.  She said, “We need to appeal to thuh end user.”  And, “When you put the shoe (said correctly) on thuh other foot (said incorrectly).” She then said she’d take questions, “…at thuh end of the presentation.” Here’s my question: “Where’s thuh barf-bag?”

Words matter. They send signals (conscious and subconscious, emotional AND physical) that have a huge bearing on your company’s ability to succeed. They are our mileau, our weapons, our tools. Guard them with your life.

HOW ABOUT YOU?  What words or phrases get under YOUR skin?

Every message isn’t relevant to every market, and when audiences continuously receive communications that don’t resonate with them, they stop listening and end up missing out on important, applicable messages in the mix.

You can help communicators overcome this by equipping them with tools to enable them to customize messages to resonate locally.

We’ve recently learned about one tool in particular that can help companies figure out which messages they want to prioritize, by timing their delivery based on the target audience’s receptivity. Communications teams can use a set of questions applying to the following steps to guard against over-communication:

• Step 1: Auditing your existing message mix
• Step 2: Assessing your message mix
• Step 3: Understanding local priorities
• Step 4: Adjusting your message mix

CEC members, access the complete set of questions to help you time your messages to maximize audience receptivity.

CEC Related Resources:

• Timing Messages to Audience Receptivity
• Strategy Message Alignment Review (Toyota)
• Message Management

Good writing, however, is no longer about perfect grammar or storytelling—good writing today is about prompting audience action.

As the CEC looks to support its members’ continued development across the core 16 communications competencies, we have explored what proficiency in writing looks like in today’s environment. Last week, we had the opportunity to preview a new Writing for Impact Workshop with the Communications team at W.W. Grainger. Our session focused on clarifying the one key engagement idea that solidifies for readers why they should care and would want to take action.

Our peers in Marketing believe that a simple, memorable advertising slogan can drive a campaign’s success. In Communications, however, a simple, catchy, and consistent message won’t do the trick–we aren’t typically talking about the coolest new consumer product. Our aim then must be to create messages that emphasize our shared values with our audience and clarify the desired action of our audiences.

We know we have an effective engagement idea if 1) it centers on what audiences care most about in regards to this issue; 2) it reveals differentiation from other companies or messages on other issues from your company; and 3) it clarifies why someone would want to take action.

Steps for developing a key engagement idea:

Understand the audience:

• Ensure a comprehensive understanding of audience motivators
• Identify an audience-centric rational for the message

Breakdown key messages:

• List all of the key messages as individual components
• Answer why the audience will care about each motivation

Identify common thread:

• Look for common elements among the individual rationales
• Articulate a single, common motivating thread

Center message on engagement ideas:

• Lead your writing with a concerted articulation of that common thread
• Consider how the “one key engagement idea” can inform the channel and style for your writing

Examples of Key Engagement Ideas:

• Staples was looking to expand their offering to small businesses and understands how busy this audience is. They worked to break down their key messages such as selection, simple ordering, low price, and ease of delivery to identify one common thread to motivate stakeholder action—“that was easy.” This simple idea was the center of press releases, corporate communications and spilled over into marketing and other channels (e.g., The Staples Button)
• In a recent webinar focused on how communications can drive a culture of safety, communicators in the energy/utility/manufacturing space described the various channels and campaigns they have used to get employee alignment with organizational safety goals. Southern California Edison shared how they simplified and centered their message based on an understanding that employees we more motivated by the safety of those they most deeply care about. Where they landed—“safe enough for our families.”

Where have you seen examples of “one key engagement idea” be successful in simplifying a message and prompting action?

Related CEC Resources:

• Write in a More Engaging Way Topic Center
• Dialogue Provoking Message Tool
• Create Content for Flow
• 7 Freshest Ways to Engage your Audience
• Available Soon: Writing for Impact Workshop. Email me if you’re interested.

This is the second in a two-part series about corporate translation services.  This post offers insight into how communicators are assessing translation vendors to ensure a good fit with company needs. The first post outlined the primary options for translation services (e.g., in-house, free lancer, vendor, etc).

If you’re like other CEC members, you opened up a phone book (or more likely, did a quick Google search) to identify a company that could translate your organization’s communications.   However, due to global expansion in new markets, you may be facing increased (and quicker) demands for translated company content.  How can you ensure that you’re partnering with the best vendor for your needs?  One of your peers recently asked a question in a CEC discussion forum, requesting advice on translation services.  Aside from assessing a vendor’s language capabilities and costs, here are other factors your peers recommend considering:

Criteria in Selecting a Translation Provider

1) Technological capabilities – Depending on the complexity of your translation needs, consider whether you need the following:

• Translation memory - Translation memory software stores and reuses the translation of certain words, expressions, and terms, resulting in faster translations, greater efficiency, and increased consistency.  Does the company offer translation memory or partner with another group who does?  Will you get to keep the stored translations if you ever discontinue your relationship with the vendor?
• Online platform - An online platform makes it easier to submit projects and enables geographically dispersed employees to access and review the translated materials.  Will you want local employees to help edit content before it’s distributed?

2) Ability to work with multiple file formats – Make sure your translation provider accepts files in a variety of formats such as html, .xls, .doc, .jpeg, flash, etc.  Also ensure they can translate the material back into a variety of formats.

3) Quality of the account manager – Get a good idea of who your day-to-day contact will be at the translation company.  Does he/she know your work?  Your expectations?  Will he/she be proactive about keeping you informed?

4) Global reach - Think through whether you want the same preferred vendor for multiple markets.  Especially if you are relying on translation memory, ask whether your provider has a presence in other regions where you want translations.

5) Training / on-boarding offerings – Does the translation vendor offer training in its online tools and processes?  Will they work with you upfront to develop a glossary of commonly used terms and a style guide?

And finally, a few translation vendor names popped up in the discussion.  Although we don’t endorse any specific firm, here are the ones used by your peers:

• Atlas
• Cartier et Lelarge
• CD Language Solutions
• Elanex
• The Geo Group
• SimulTrans LLC
• WeLocalize

Hope this helps!

Related CEC Resources:

Translation Vendor Assessment Questionnaire

Translation Vendor Non-Disclosure Agreement

Despite the complex issues and varied stakeholder needs, the key to simplified messages is identifying the one key “engagement” idea. An “oldie but goodie” best practice from our marketing communications sister program offers a potential path forward:

1. Make a comprehensive list of details behind your position – the specific rates, bills, technologies, etc.  This will include significantly more detail than you will ever communicate to most stakeholders but it will expand the sources for the ultimate engagement idea.
2. Identify the stakeholder-centric rationale for the position – in other words, what are the potential reasons different stakeholders should support your position?  Again, this list should be as expansive as possible, as reasons that might seem less important when explained in detail can increase in relevance if they have an engagement idea that resonates more clearly than other rationale.
3. Use feedback from listening mechanisms to identify a list of potentially resonant ways to represent the each rationale.  So, if you do your listening correctly, you should have an ample supply of stakeholder voice to develop “taglines” for the various rationale.  This becomes your core engagement idea.
4. The best of such engagement ideas not only reflect your position and stakeholder voice, but they also recommend either actions you want stakeholders to take (e.g., “just do it” or “don’t leave home without it”) or ways you want them to spread the message (“share the love” or “stay connected”).  It’s not a campaign, but it’s the basis around which to communicate a message simply and through a resonant set of channels.
5. Ideally, you not only simplify your messaging, but you also identify nontraditional touch-points by beginning with the engagement idea rather than a limited set of “tried and true” channels.
6. As you expand your message, follow these tactics profiled from Intuit to evolve from a single engagement idea back out to a series of bumper stickers.   Think of the bumper stickers as the “tweetable elements” of your message.
7. Finally, add “did you know” elements around each bumper sticker where you teach stakeholders ideas that they make them feel cool, smart, and helpful as they endorse your message within their own communication channels and networks.  If it’s not worth a stakeholder sharing, it probably not worth including.

So, energy/utility members:  what’s been the most complex idea you have had to communicate in your career and how did you simplify your message for different stakeholder groups?