Crafting and executing communication strategies when entering a new market is hard. This is especially true if the cultural DNA of the country in question differs widely from home markets.  So, it’s not surprising that we get a lot of questions from our US and UK members about communicating effectively in Brazil –  an intensely multi-cultural society that is also one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

If you are tasked with steering your company’s communication efforts in Brazil, one of the first thing you will need to do is understand communication technology trends. Appreciating ground realities will help you leverage technology effectively across key activities such as PR, CSR, and employee and consumer communication.

Here are three key trends that you should know about technology in Brazil.

1. Mobile phones are ubiquitous: Although only the well-to-do can afford “luxuries” like landlines, mobile phones are commonplace – Brazil has 116 mobile phones per 100 inhabitants. While text messaging is extremely popular in Brazil, mobile internet usage is also increasing with 29% of Brazil’s internet users browsing through their mobile phones. In fact Brazil’s middle-class, spends most of their 3-4 hour long commutes consuming digital content.
2. Internet penetration is low, but rising fast: Unlike mobile phones which are extremely popular, Internet is not widely available to the masses. While currently 22% of the population have access to the Internet, this number is expected to up sharply by 2015. Mobile phones are expected to break the digital divide and drive the growth of internet penetration in the coming years. Another thing to keep in mind is that Portuguese is the most popular online language, not English.
3.  Sociable Brazil leads social media usage: Brazilian culture is equally social online as it is in real life with 91% of Brazil’s online population using social media. In fact, Brazilians carefully craft their online persona – activities such as posting messages or joining communities help Brazilians reflect their desired image. Moreover, while social media is synonymous with Facebook in many countries, it’s Google’s Orkut which has traditionally been the most popular in Brazil. Facebook though has seen a whirlwind growth in 2011 with its user base tripling in a year.

CEC Members: Check out our full Communicator’s Guide to Brazil for recommendations on how to leverage these technology trends as well as to navigate PR, CSR, and employee and consumer communications in Brazil.

What challenges have you experienced steering your communication activities in Brazil? How are you dealing with these challenges?

CEC Related Resources:

• Building a Global Mindset: A Communicator’s Guide to Brazil
• Building a Global Mindset: An Overview of Cultural Values That Shape Interpersonal Communications
• Global Perspective/Cultural Awareness Resource Center
• Managing Communications Across Global and/or Virtual Teams

CEC Related Blogs

• Employee Communications in China
• Lost In Translation: How Cultural Values Shape Your Communications

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

CEC research identified 18 competencies that are critical for any modern communicator to succeed. Based on how communicators’ key strengths around these competencies group together, communicators can be categorized into four distinct skill profiles:

• The Presenter—Knows What to Say and How to Say It
• The Influencer—Builds Relationships Across the Organization
• The Consultant—Solves Business Problems
• The Coach—Helps Others to Communicate

In our last post, we introduced the Presenter; today, we’re back with the second profile—the Influencer. Read on to learn how to use your core Influencer skills while making a plan to address development opportunities for continuous growth.

The Influencer
The Influencer is skilled at building relationships with stakeholders across and beyond the organization. She is capable of handling conflicts and disagreements constructively by understanding business partners’ views and finding “win-win” solutions. This quality makes the Influencer a sought-after person for senior leaders and business partners who seek to understand the communication implications of their decisions. Further, she is a skilled communicator and presenter, capable of delivering compelling verbal communication—even on contentious issues—with confidence and sensitivity.

While the Influencer excels in building relationships with stakeholders, she is less skilled at understanding their motivations and preferences. She tends to rely on instinct or precedent to understand stakeholder groups, instead of using tools, technology or agencies to build awareness.

Being less adept at employing tools and metrics, she lags behind other communicators in monitoring and measuring the effectiveness of communication tactics. Moreover, while she herself may be a skilled orator, she is less adept at coaching managers and senior leaders to help them communicate more effectively with their respective stakeholders.

The Influencer in a Nutshell

The Influencer is a communicator who:

• Seeks first to understand before being understood
• Relishes conflict and disagreement but always looking for solutions
• Is viewed as a trusted advisor by company leaders, business partners, and colleagues

The Influencer’s Key Strengths

These are the key areas the Influencer is strongest at, and should continue strengthening and using these core skills to her advantage:

• Interpersonal Influence
• Negotiation
• Oral Presentation/Professional Posture

The Influencer’s Development Areas

These are the key areas the Influencer is weakest in, and should focus on building competency to enable higher performance:

• Audience Understanding
• Communications Coaching & Teaching
• Communications Measurement

Sounds like you? If yes, use Individual Development Pack: The Influencer to create an individual development plan tailored to your needs as an influencer. If not, do watch out for the other communicator skill profiles we’re going to cover in the coming posts.

CEC Related Resources:

• How to Guide Your Career in Communications
• Plan Your Development
• Individual Development Pack: The Influencer
• Practice Communication Skills

CEC Related Blog Posts:

• The Communicators’ Guide to Professional Development: Part I
• The One Person You Want on Your Comms Team
• Strongest and Weakest Skills for the Communications Profession

1. Stakeholders have (even more) power.

The age of individual control over what, when, and how to consume information continues in 2012.  New devices, like the Kindle Fire, new services, like Spotify, and new mobile apps, like Zite, that took off in 2011 will further enable people to act in ways natural to them. Chances are, reading/viewing/listening to dry corporate messages isn’t something most people like to do naturally! As a result, Communications’ approach to everything it creates must be stakeholder-centric, not company-centric.

Smart teams will kickoff the year by asking themselves, “Do we know where our key stakeholder groups go for information?” Determine how your stakeholders consume information with CEC’s audience listening guide, and then use that information to develop a stakeholder-centric communication plan.

2. Communicators look to build their business partnership skills.

In 2012, the Corporate Communications function grows up. Once just the PR-engine for the company, Communications is now expected to impact business results in a much different way by coaching leaders to communicate more effectively, developing internal communication systems for employees to connect with one another, and feeding stakeholder insight to business leaders, to name a few roles.

A new set of skills is required for communicators to live up to these new expectations. Clear writing and a solid understanding of channels won’t cut it, but a focus on business partnership skills such as critical thinking and negotiation will enable communicators to grow into the position of consultative business partner.

CEC members, we can help you: See how your skills stack up compared to peers; develop a plan for your skill development in 2012; and equip yourself with smart tools to build skills in the moment.

3. A global mindset pervades the function.

Communications execs are asking two things of their teams this year: 1.) partner with colleagues in remote locations and 2.) customize messages for local audiences in other countries. At the root of this global focus in the function is the simple fact that emerging markets are key for corporate growth. Communication teams that spend time in 2012 building an awareness of cultural differences of local audiences will discover new solutions to age-old collaboration challenges (e.g., Why does no one use our intranet portal to share information?) and deliver messages that are more resonant.

Visit our Global Management Topic Center to take the stress out of collaboration or download communicator’s guides to India and China to get up to speed on cultural trends that impact the function’s communication efforts.

4. Blanket trust-building to strengthen corporate reputation is called into question.

Tight budgets over the last few years have forced communicators to think hard about where they place their investments, and dollars spent tracking high-level reputation measures are being scrutinized more than ever before. One communicator sums it up nicely: “We have done reputation measurement for several years and I have not taken any radical, meaningful decisions as a result of any of the data we’ve got.”

In 2012, we expect to see leading communicators focus reputation efforts not on building an even bigger bank of goodwill through high-level reputation tracking, but instead on sharing information that influences a small set of targeted stakeholder decisions that drive business outcomes. Contribute to our 2012 research on Building an Outcome-Focused Reputation.

5. Agile workforces meet the challenges of uncertain environments through strong communication and a focus on learning.

Much remains uncertain and unsolved in 2012. And yet, the show must go on. Companies will attempt to grow. The smart ones know that employees who proactively adapt, seek to learn from peers, and feel a personal connection to the company are excited by and contribute to these fast-moving companies.

Communications, then, must support the development of an agile organization by helping leaders to share key market context that helps employees to make decisions in line with strategy, partnering with HR to connect employees to one another, and supporting a culture that empower employees.

CEC Related Resources

• 2012 Strategic Priorities for Communicators
• 2011 Communications Budget Benchmarks
• What’s in the Works from CEC in 2012

CEC Related Blog Posts

• 4 Comms Execs Priorities in 20123 Stakeholder Trends to Watch in 2012
• Top 3 Insights from Communication Gurus in 2011
• Top 5 CEC Blogs of 2011

So it’s no wonder that the 850+ participants in the CEC Skills Maturity Assessment have indicated a real interest in improving their ability to create engaging content and – as a necessary precursor – to listen to audiences and learn what they care about.

There are many ways to learn about your target audience, all featured in a new CEC member resource center dedicated to developing this skill.  I want to call attention to a tool we’re adding to the mix, thanks to a partnership between CEC and Iconoculture, the leading syndicated provider of up-to-the-minute, segment-level insights into consumer values and trends: audience understanding in less than five minutes.  This series of one-page outlooks – grouped by industry, demographic segment, and geography – gets you quickly up to speed on key values, trends, and language.

I’ve mined these for three trends to watch in 2012, as they cut across many countries and demographic groups:

1)      Idealistic youth + social networking technologies = higher standards.Young adults expect institutions (both government and private) to do good, not just seek profit or power.  Most – especially in Asia – remain quite optimistic, despite macroeconomic challenges.  And all are quite ready to mobilize.  In many ways, this isn’t brand new – earlier generations of young people have felt the same way.  But modern social networking technology let them share information and ideas faster and wider than previous generations (think “Arab Spring”).  This means that unflattering information about your organization will be discovered in the blink of an eye and that “social responsibility” initiatives had better be more than lip service.  

2)      Health: from access to accountability. Concerns over health status are rising, and not just in the developed world.  In the past, these concerns translated into demands for greater access to affordable health care, both services and medicines.  The new trend to watch is consumer interest in accountability as well – expecting their peers to do more to keep themselves healthy and expecting institutions to help.  One manifestation: a Danish surtax on fatty foods.  Others may be on the way, and Communicators should watch out for changing public expectations.

3)      Control freaks. Economic volatility has for many families exposed an insecurity and vulnerability they had not felt in more than a decade.  Empowered consumers’ response?  Focus on what they can control.  This can translate into activism (e.g., the recent “Occupy” movements in various cities).  But it also shows up in consumer shopping behaviors, as consumers rush to options that give them flexibility, convenience, and price: JC Penney’s Findmore kiosks, free Wi-Fi at Tesco, or Monoprix’s shopping app.  And it shows up in personal saving and borrowing behavior.

That’s what struck me.  Browse these yourself (access available here – and bookmark the page so you can catch updates as they are posted) and tell me what trend you are going to watch!

CEC Related Resources:

• Audience Understanding Overview
• Stakeholder Engagement Topic Center
• Tools to Help Others Engage Stakeholders

CEC Related Blogs:

• CEC’s Top 4 External Communications Tools
• 3 Tips for Customizing Global Messages
• Can You Trust Managers with Stakeholder Relations?

But, as a communications professional, I will attempt to fulfill the mission as assigned by the stern taskmistress who runs the show here at the Insider…starting with:

#3: The Governor of Texas Can’t Count to 3
Gaffe: During a November GOP debate in Washington, DC, Rick Perry (the ever-so-momentarily leading contender to challenge President Obama) stated in no uncertain terms that when HE becomes president, his first order of business will be to eradicate three federal agencies: Commerce, Education, and…uhhhhhhh…the, uhhhh….

Lesson: (eesh, where to start?) If you’re gonna be specific, you’d better be…well…specific. If you’re gonna make inflammatory, controversial statements, you’d better be able to back them up. If you’re gonna prove that you’re smart enough to be the next President of the United States, you’d better be able to count past two.

#2: Companies Using Serious News Events as a “Hook” For Selling Stuff
Gaffe 2A: Shortly after British singer Amy Winehouse passed away, the Microsoft UK PR account suggested that purchasing her music through their Zune service would be a good way to remember the fallen star.

Gaffe 2B: In the midst of the Arab Spring uprisings and the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek, some marketing/PR genius at Kenneth Cole tweeted the following: “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online.”

Lesson: That brand of snappy, snarky wise-assery that sounds oh-so-edgy at your agency’s late-night brainstorming session just comes across as crass, commercial and crude to the rest of us.

And…this year’s winner…

#1: If Your Name Is Anthony WEINER, For Goodness Sake…
Gaffe:  What was worse — taking a picture of…(let’s just go with) yourself…and using Twitter to send it to a young female admirer – or…lying about it with the now-classic “Somebody musta hacked my account!”?

Lesson A: In the history of mankind, no one’s dog ever actually ate their homework. And, therefore, no one’s ever gonna believe that YOU didn’t send that tweet. So, don’t even think about steering toward that exit ramp, in an attempt to leave the freeway of your own stupidity.

Lesson B: If any part of your name sounds like a word that vaguely describes any part of the human anatomy, you’ve just gotta know you’re playing with fire. (That’s why so many grade school science teachers are so deliberate in pronouncing the name of the seventh planet from the Sun as “YUR-a-niss.”)

Lesson C: Don’t ever send anything to anyone that you wouldn’t want…your grandmother…a priest…your CEO…CNN…to see.

FINAL CONCLUSION: Hey, we’re all communicators here. Every day we all write and say stuff that others will hear, analyze and criticize. Sometimes the things that come out of our mouths (or keyboards) (or smartphones) aren’t as well thought-out as they oughta be. So…as 2012 dawns, and the whiteboard of the past year is erased clean…then, between us, we should all remind ourselves…let’s be careful out there.

HOW ABOUT YOU?  What memorable communication gaffes would you add to the list?

CEC Related Resources:

• Twitter Strategy Builder
• Stakeholder Engagement Topic Center
• How to Communicate About Challenging Issues

CEC Related Blogs:

• How Not to Waste Your Time on Twitter
• The One Question You Need to Ask Your CEO
• Reputation Management: 3 Tips to Cope with New Threats

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.

CEC Related Resources:

• Building an Outcome-Focused Reputation
• Identifying Communication Roadblocks to Cultural Realignment (ITT)
• The Modern Communicator’s Skill Set

CEC Related Blogs:

• 3 Tips for Customizing Global Messages
• 3 Leadership Communication Hurdles
• The One Person You Want on Your Comms Team

Bear with me a second, but that whole process kind of reminds me of a desperate Corporate Communications team retreat.  We know we’ve gotten fat on low-value requests, we haven’t had time to work out our skills, and the direction of our function is starting to feel a bit aimless.  So, the thinking goes, if we just lock ourselves in a conference room for three days to plan, train, and strategize, we’ll be good to go for another twelve months.

But we all know the benefits of many retreats don’t last longer than those cleansing diets, and our needy business partners can throw us off track like a Bears Mug Beer Sunday Beer Special (a Chicago football tradition).  So as a solution, let me introduce CEC’s 100 day plan for lasting improvement to your communications function.   It’s not an instant cure, but we think the benefits are far greater and more lasting. 

Day 1-25: Setting Strategic Priorities
The first step in the diet is figuring out what we actually should be working on.  Now, a cleansing diet will have you a brainstorm a big list, narrow it down, refine some language and send you packing with nothing tied to business value to keep you on track.  The CEC plan requires a bit more upfront research with business partners, but if you complete our Anatomy of a Business Value Focused Communications Function, you will come away with a data-driven set of priorities that maximize value to the business based on urgency and current state.  You can even use the data push back on business partners and revisit your work to ensure ongoing alignment.   

Day 26-50: Assess Team Capabilities
The next step is to practice your skills.  Now, a cleansing diet may offer a couple training opportunities during your retreat, but it’s after you’ve been drinking only apple cider vinegar for a week, so your capacity for retention is not exactly high.  The truth is there’s no real substitute for a sustained exercise plan in maintaining health, so the CEC cure includes a customized skills assessment (think of it like a personal trainer), monthly online learning opportunities, and communication skills workshops (because it’s always easier to workout with someone else).

Day 51-75: Create Action Plans
Here’s really where the CEC plan excels: how many times have you left a retreat feeling great but unclear on exactly what the next steps are?  That’s why the second half of the CEC plan begins with our Outcomes Focused Communication Tactic Planner to establish an ongoing worksheet for linking activities to business value and an ROI Workbook to ensure we’re exiting the least valuable activities (basically, it helps you realize that Chipotle just isn’t really that good for you).   

Day 76-100: Establish the Right Org Structure
The last element is all about balance in your function.  If we set the right structure we can balance between centralized and centralized needs, corporate and business unit requests, and audience/channel versus strategic focus while keeping everyone focused on business value.  Sometimes, we just need to add more coordinating mechanisms whereas other times we are going to establish a new structure for the future, but ensuring that we have the organization to support the plans, skills, and tactics previously identified will prevent the inevitable slide back following the retreat. 

So, when you get back from the holidays ready to make a fresh start rather than a dramatic cleanse at your next retreat, consider the CEC’s 100 Day Plan for a New Communications Function, and you will find that lasting change requires no miracle cure at all.

As 2011 draws to a close we look back more than 200 blogs published by CEC Insider during the calendar year.  The posts featured below were our top 5, having been downloaded by more CEC Insider readers than any others.  They address five communications topics that, while all different, are sure to remain of interest to communicators in the new year.  

3 Skills to Improve Your Job Security

• Job security does not exist. One of the most effective ways to ensure your future employment is to develop new skills continuously.   Since launching the CEC’s overhauled competency framework in the spring, nearly 1,000 communications have already taken the Skill Maturity Assessment to indentify and address the skill gaps of themselves and their team. In this blog, we examine the three weakest skills of most communicators.

               Additional Resource: CEC’s Communications Skill Maturity Assessment and Diagnostic

  Spot the Symptoms of Change Fatigue

• Don’t wait for your annual employee engagement survey to address change fatigue in your organization.  After all, with 82% of employees experiencing at least one major change in the past 6 months, odds are that the negative effects of a high-change environment are being felt throughout your employee ranks.  See what we communicators can do spot the symptoms and protect your business’ bottom line. 

              Additional Resource: CEC’s study on Building a Change-Ready Organization

 Coaching Leaders: 10 Tips for Effective Presentations

• CEOs may be experts at setting strategy and managing a leading organization, but unfortunately not all of them can walk up to a podium with confidence and truly engage their employees, investors, or stakeholder audience.  That’s where Communications can shine.  These 10 presentation tips are sure to effectively prepare your senior leaders for their next speaking engagement.

              Additional Resource: Communications Leadership Coaching Overview

 5 Questions That Will Change the Content of Your Next Message

• Stop assuming that your stakeholder audience knows what you know and start giving more consideration to their vantage point.  Consider these five questions when crafting your next message and you’ll find that the content reflects

              Additional Resource: Tips for Improving the Content of Your Messages

 The 7 Freshest Ways to Engage Your Audience

• What happens when someone zones out of a conversation? Their nods of agreement go on auto-pilot. Their eyes glaze over. Their mind wanders. Why? Because they’re not engaged in the discussion. They’re being talked to, not with.  Here are 7 ways to ensure audience engagement as you look to 2012.

              Additional Resource: Stakeholder Engagement Topic Center

Deciding how to prioritize our efforts in a way that best supports our business partners has always been challenging. Expectations have evolved and it’s time to break perceptions of communications as merely a service provider. Through our research into the communications skills set needed by the ‘modern communicator’, it’s clear that you and your team must not only excel at the classic communication skills but also non-traditional competencies such as business acumen and building consultative partnerships.

Over the past few months, hundreds of communicators have been reevaluating the critical skills they consider essential to effective performance in this environment. And many teams have improved planning templates, invested in development workshops, and hopefully dug into the CEC resources to identify skills gaps and improve their effectiveness in these areas.

We know only too well how difficult it is for central communications teams to carve out time for their own personal development. So think how hard it must be for colleagues in local offices or dispersed business units, who are ‘out there on their own’ and are often forced to wear a number of different hats. With this in mind, better visibility into the skills of local communicators and improved collaboration between corporate and affiliate Communications has never been so important, and it really is in our best interest to invest in our local affiliates’ development.

When the CEC was putting together its work around Managing Communications in Global and Dispersed Organizations, a notable approach we came across in improving this central-local partnership comes from fellow CEC member Novo Nordisk, one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies. Novo Nordisk has implemented a simple yet highly effective 3 step process, leveraging what they refer to as a Communications Effectiveness Reviews (CER). They use this as a dialogue-provoking and development tool, which identifies skills gaps of local communicators so they can better align their activities with business needs.

To summarize these 3 steps:

1. Prepare for Affiliate Review:

Set groundwork for communication review session through a set of prep activities with local affiliates. Here central Comms identifies key people in the review process and gathers information on current local practices.

2. Conduct Affiliate Review:

A 3 day process where central Comms assess affiliate effectiveness through conversations with local communicators and employees, addressing gaps and agreeing on a forward action plan with local Comms lead and country GM.

3. Follow Up and Next Steps:

Findings, next steps and recommendations with local communicator and country managers are shared. Here local communicators give a formal commitment to central Comms and regular check-ins are scheduled to track progress on the action plan.

We hear that local communicators at Novo Nordisk are embracing the reviews – one local communicator even invited a peer from another country to observe and learn from their process! But what are some of the things you’re doing within your company to drive better central-local partnership? Have you tried anything similar to Novo Nordisk? If you’re a local communicator, what are the biggest frustrations you are facing when trying to partner with the central team? I would love to hear from you.

Related CEC Resources:

• Use CEC’s Competency Framework to identify skill gaps of your local communicators
• Consult the Skill Development Grid and support resources to help local communicators improve their communication competencies
• Take CEC’s Skill Maturity Assessment to assess skill gaps of your communicators and team
• Use Communications Effectiveness Assessment processes as a development tool to identify skills gaps of local communicators
• Leverage Novo Nordisk’s Communications Effectiveness Reviews Toolkit
• Assess whether you have the skills you need in each country through Standard Chartered’s In-Country Risk and Reputation Management process | Create your own risk exposure and capability scorecards by using our templates

Related CEC Insider Posts:

• Adding Value Where it Counts
• Lost in Translation: How Cultural Values Shape Your Communications
• 4 Ways to Improve Central vs. Local Communications
• What Makes Novo Nordisk’s Global Collaboration Effective
• 3 Skills to Ensure Your Job Security