As soon clock struck midnight a few weeks ago on January 1^st, many of us vowed to change ourselves for the better. We thought, “Ah January, a fresh start to a brand spankin’ new year. 2011 is out and 2012 is IN BABY!”  We vowed to lose weight, eat healthier, and take that trip we’ve been talking about for years. We made a COMMITMENT to self-improvement otherwise known as a New Year’s Resolution.

Yet as WeightWatchers programs and gym memberships increase this month, we all know how this story ends. Right about now, we start to forget our resolutions and revert back to our old habits. “Better luck next year, thanks for comin’ out.” Usually, I’m as guilty as the next guy — but NOT this year. This year is different. This year, I’m taking a new approach starting with these steps:

1. Define the goal – It’s tough to accomplish any goal if you don’t know what it really is. For example, instead of trying to “lose weight,” chose a definitive amount you want to lose.

2. Be realistic – Baby steps, guys. Most people become discouraged and ditch their resolutions because they set the bar way too high. Set realistic acheivable goals.

3. Create an action plan – Once you know what you want to achieve you need to consider how you will get there. You need to understand the actions necessary to accomplish your goal.

4. Write it down – This is the most important step of all. Putting goals on paper makes a resolution more tangible, more real. When you physically see a goal your chances of staying the course improve.

In my experience, resolutions don’t stop at improving our personal lives. We also want to improve professionally. If you’re reading this blog post, chances are you want to improve as a communicator. As we know, simply saying, “I’m going to improve,” won’t get you anywhere. Use the system that works with personal resolutions and apply it to your professional life. Take your personal development one step further and use CEC’s Individual Development Plan. 

Now is the time to set clear expectations for your career and discuss a direct approach to improvement with your manager. Here are a few resources you can use to create a solid IDP:

• Skill Development Grid - Use grid to define your goals - Where do you want to go with your career? What are you trying to accomplish? You can think big with longer-term goals. But understand that it takes a series of short-term, realistic goals to get there. Use our to set CLEAR expectations for different levels of skill development.

• Skills Maturity Assessment - Not sure what skills you need to improve? Use this assessment to find your development areas.

Mangers – if you want individuals on your team to improve, use this IDP to set concrete expectations and a plan of attack. Communicators – if you want that promotion, use this IDP to go get it. Trust me, defining your goals, understanding what it takes to get there, and writing it down will get you there. To see what this looks like in practice, take a look at these four examples:

Individual Development Plan: The Presenter

Individual Development Plan: The Influencer

Individual Development Plan: The Consultant

Individual Development Plan: The Coach

Related CEC Resources

Skills and Roles Topic Center

Modern Communicator’s Skill Set webinar

How to Guide Your Career in Communications

Own Your Professional Development

By now, you’ve probably caught on to our theme for the year: Change. When asking the question, “has your company gone through change recently?”, there isn’t a single CEC member who has said, “Nope. Everything is the same as it’s always been.” I think we all agree that Communications is paramount in times of change. In fact, if you take a look at CEB’s Executive Guidance for 2012, the number one priority for a company’s success is having a clear and consistent communications language. We’ve also learned from our study “Building a Change-Ready organization” exactly what drives employees during times of change and what Communications can do about it.

But how do we measure our impact in times of change? How can we prove, without a doubt, that Communications is driving the bottom line in an ever changing environment? Take a look at the following scenario: Read More »

My Profile Page on Handshake

Last week Google launched Google+, a social networking site, designed to compete—and beat—rival Facebook. Google+ aims to make “connecting with people on the web more like connecting with them in the real world.” Initial reviews have been positive.  I haven’t attempted to use Google’s new toy myself, but as a 7+ year- user of Facebook, I admit that I’ve grown tired of the site…or maybe just the people I connect with on it. My friends’ status updates used to make me laugh, but now they depress and make me feel like a voyeur.

I feel the need to break away from my Facebook-tethered past and Google+ may help me to discover alternative ways to connect, share, and create. While Google+ may not rival Facebook anytime soon, this battle has serious implications for the sharing and connecting that goes on within your organization.

Basically, it puts even more pressure on your organization to employ or develop tools akin to top social networking sites if you want to enable your employees to connect and create value. We at CEC see many companies wasting tons of time and money on employee-sharing platforms that simply can’t compete with employees’ personal options.

Fortunately, there is one company that we think has a solution to rival its Facebook “competition.” The MITRE Corporation. Read More »

Measurement has always been a pain point for communications. We have struggled to educate our colleagues about the meaning of metrics and we try our hardest to create direct links between communications activities and business outcomes. For some, measurement is so frustrating and difficult that we don’t even try in the first place. For example, I recently came across an article showing that even though more than 80 percent of companies use social media, less than half actually measure their efforts. But as lord Kelvin stated, “if you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” With the increasing pressure to demonstrate our impact as communicators, we need a better approach. Here are three things to consider:

1. Make measurement part of planning.

Too often, we see companies think about measuring success of a project after they have already started. Wouldn’t it be easier prove value when you already know what success looks like from the start?  Once you’ve determine an outcome you want to achieve, ask yourself, “why is the outcome not already happening?” Gain a firm understanding of the drivers behind that outcome, and use that information to select the right metrics and shape your measurement strategy during the planning process. Read More »

You’ve made it to the end of Q2—congrats! Was the journey a bit bumpy? Did you ever sigh aloud, “If only there were a template for that, it would make my life so much easier!”?

Alas, you can’t change the past or recapture time lost, but you can do something about the rest of your 2011. You can make a commitment to spend more time being proactive and thoughtful in your role instead of feeling reactive and at the mercy of change—change in your team dynamics, your industry’s environment, your business partner’s expectations, or even your office coffee! And, we at CEC can help.

We took a look at the top tools and templates downloaded and used by your CEC Communications peers. These tools have helped your peers get their jobs done faster and more effectively, and they can help you do the same!

Download a tool, give it a try, and share your feedback (right here on this blog post) on how we can improve certain tools. See below the jump for the Top 5 Tools for Communicators. Read More »

Intranets – they spark joy and frustration in equal measure (often tipping in favour of frustration). Joy because we now have an easy and effective way of getting important information to our employees without bombarding them with emails. Frustration because no matter how hard we try, the feedback is still that when employees need something it’s hard to break through the maze.

It’s not like we aren’t trying. Communications teams (in partnership with IT and HR) are always looking for better and smarter ways to leverage this golden tool. What we’re all aiming for is employees who actually use the intranet, on a regular basis, to do their jobs better and faster. But how do we know that it’s really working? Most communicators keep close track of intranet metrics like clicks and views.

However, these volumetrics reveal nothing about what employees may have intended to do on the intranet, or wish they could do. Employee needs and goals are constantly changing, so how do we measure whether we are keeping pace? Read More »

It’s baseball season in Chicago and hope springs eternal on the North Side.  But as the Cubs chase the impossible dream of a World Series, communicators confront their own impossible dream – how do we measure the un-measureable: the value we create from all the stories that didn’t get written about us this year.

So it wasn’t until opening day that I realized the goal is similar to the efforts of advanced baseball statistics, which try to more completely capture a player’s value by comparing his contribution to a replacement. The only difference is that in baseball a replacement still generates some value whereas in communications the replacement actually reduces a company’s value by allowing negative coverage.  But while baseball statisticians can’t add up the hits of a replacement that doesn’t actually play any more that communicators can count the articles that were never written, they know they get pretty close by merely calculating the average or expected value of the replacement. So if communicators can focus on just an expected number of mentions, we can similarly develop a more accurate representation of our value.

Read More »

By Laura Newman

Communicators worldwide, do these comments sound familiar?

• “My CEO only cares about Rand [maybe you would say Dollars, Pounds, or Euros] and cents. If I can’t truly quantify the value of an activity or investment, he/she doesn’t bother to listen.”
• “I don’t want my team to be perceived as post-boxes, editing managers’ e-mails and updating distribution lists.” [Perhaps in your case it’s press releases, events, the intranet, or your internal publication.]
• “If I push back on requests and don’t simply do what I’m told, leadership will start asking about the purpose of our Communications team.”
• “My leadership is so ‘old school’ – they just want to count the number of articles in which they’re profiled, to build their political capital.”

This past week I’ve had the pleasure of spending time with the CEC’s South African-based members. Beyond the gorgeous Johannesburg sunshine, delicious Stellenbosch wine (the Hartenberg and Simonsig estates are my favorites), and tasty steak and venison, I led a number of conversations around business partnership, where the above quotes were surfaced.

I’ve been traveling to visit CEC members long enough now that you’d think I wouldn’t still be surprised, but on almost every trip I make, I am struck by the similarities in the challenges Communicators face worldwide.

My recent discussions have centered on defining and documenting the value of Communications, with the goal of being seen as a strategic player by business partners.

Read More »

With only 31% of communicators having a formal dashboard, many of you are reading this blog title and probably saying, “Woah, let’s start at Dashboards 1.0.  We’re just beginning to invest more in measurement.”  While we at the CEC are happy to help guide you through the building blocks of how to create (even a 1.0) dashboard…your senior leadership team likely isn’t going to hold your hand in the same way.

End of year reviews are quickly approaching for many of us, and your CEO will be asking, “Did your work this year matter to the business?” And you, communicator, are looking for the easiest way to say, “Yes! Let me show you why…”  Yet so often the communications metrics that we show to demonstrate the strategic impact of the function are things like: click/attendance rates, number of media hits, followers, etc.  While these can be impressive in their magnitude, they just don’t carry the weight we’d like them to.

Essentially, communicators often begin with transactional metrics and attempt (unconvincingly) to make a leap to translate those metrics into business outcomes.  See below:

Read More »

Raise your hand if…you would say that instead of “putting the customer first,” your company actually puts the customer second or even third (behind such goals as chasing profits, serving internal interests and responding to the capricious whims of your executives.)

(SFX:  The sound of zero hands being raised)

Of course, every company in the known universe says “…oh, yes, we are definitely and proudly customer-centric.  Always have been!”  And I’m sure every company sincerely believes they are.

But let’s challenge the truth behind that belief.

Take the following three-question quiz and see if you have to honestly answer YES to any of the questions:

1) Are there a lot of rules and regulations in your customer contracts (fine print, legalese, clearly-spelled-out exceptions for things like “force majure“)?
Whose interests are being served by this tortured language?  Your legal department?  Finance?

Does your company have any clauses to ensure the customer always gets the best end of the bargain, even if it means the company has to take a hit?  (If so, I’m gonna stop blogging immediately, and run over there to sign up!)

2) Does your company measure “net promoter score” (NPS)?
NPS is based on a customer’s willingness to recommend your company, and many companies use this system to measure the overall loyalty of their customers.  Every company wants loyal customers, right?

But has any customer ever said, “I hope that after my transaction with this company, I’ll be willing to recommend them!”?  Companies want loyalty and recommendations.  Customers just want what they want, an interaction that benefits them in some way. Read More »