What’s the matter with IABC?

June 6th, 2013

It’s happened to a lot of organizations.  Business shifting under their feet, departure of key exec, search for new leader, struggle to change without losing customer base, new leader leaves sooner than expected after difficult tenure.

It shouldn’t, however, happen to a membership organization comprised of professional communicators.

The drama over Chris Sorek’s departure after less than a year at the helm of the International Association of Business Communicators has to have been avoidable.  We counsel our execs and clients about this. Books are written, conference presentations, academic papers all say the same thing: “Tell the truth, tell it first and tell it all,” according to Bruce Hennes of Hennes/Paynter, the crisis management firm based in Cleveland.

The tragicomic saga opens when Sorek takes over, succeeding Julie Freeman.  Julie, who held the post for 10 years, communicated quite effectively, in my book. She was visible, involved, supportive. Sorek was a little invisible, a little remote, seemingly more comfortable out of the spotlight in his 11 months. That’s fine; not every leader is an ENFP.

But as the changes began, including massive staff layoffs and restructuring, I believe the numbers were 15 of the 32 employees, Sorek still hung in the background. The always excellent David Murray had a good summary and analysis, as did Ragan.com, all without a word from the executive director.  In corporate life, we often call that, “insulating the CEO” from delivering bad news. But hey, this ain’t a corporation, its our bloody (and bloodied) association.

On IABC’s web feature, “IABC in the news” Sorek hasn’t been present since an interview in August 2012.  Freeman often took to the IABC Cafe, the blog platform. Sorek never did.

Who was that masked man?

Meanwhile, IABC’s LinkedIn group is full of members and nonmembers asking about what was happening at our association (I’ve been a member near continuously since, well, a long time ago). The International Executive Board (IEB), a volunteer leadership group, did its best to fill the void, but the paid head of our association was strangely reticent, leaving the spokes duties to our IEB chair.

I am wondering whether I need IABC anymore. I’m active in other groups — PRSA’s Employee Communication Section for one, the Institute for PR Commission on Research, Measurement and Evaluation, for another, and have a strong community of outreach via social media.  Add to that the desire to speak and write less for my communication family and more for senior execs in industries that might need my professional help, and we’re coming to an inflection point.

In the end, I’ve opted to stay in IABC, at least for 2013. I have a few personal frustrations — despite a long history of chapter leadership and good experiences with the Heritage Region Conference, the International has been a tough speaking nut to crack. As a small business guy, I need to make good decisions about how I spend my time and money.

This latest imbroglio, including a request from our IEB chair to “stick to the speaking points” was a real tale of the cobbler’s children. Seriously?  IABC tried to tell it first, but the technology didn’t cooperate. It didn’t tell it all because of privacy concerns (and a desire to avoid feeding voyeurism, according to one comment).  That made it seem like IABC wasn’t telling the truth — the failure to explain reasons behind decisions makes people believe they’re being deceived, as Joe Williams teaches.

Now, the search for an executive director begins all over again. The question is, who wants that job?  It better be someone who knows how to connect with membership from the very start, who will do a good job of listening to membership and who can exude confidence about the plans for the future.

 

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Posted in Crisis Communications, Media Relations, News Analysis, Public Relations, Reputation, Strategy | 6 Comments »

I miss blogging

May 8th, 2013

OK, I’m kind of lying. I don’t miss the blogging I did four years ago. You know, the blogging I did because I didn’t have a job or clients and needed to do something productive.

I talk to people “in transition” frequently. I try to say “yes” as much as possible, because I remember what it’s like. Communication AMMO still has just one employee, and it only now seems like it’s going to allow me to earn a living for a while. But it’s a darn site better than the waiting many of our colleagues have gone through for the past few years.

Blogging is a little bit of an ego trip, so obviously, I’m not doing it right. The frequency of posting is way down, and so to is the number of people reading my fevered musings. I’m not feeling very fascinating these days. I’m putting most of my energy into work for clients, work for classes taught and work for volunteer opportunities.

I DO feel like I still have something to say. So, don’t be too surprised if I’m a little more visible than in recent months in this space.

In the meantime, if you are in position to hire people, don’t turn your back on folks who’ve been out of the game for a while. If you can use an extra hand, reach out to a colleague working on launching their own gig. Be generous as you can be, even if only with your time, your support, and your coffee.

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It’s all about communication

March 20th, 2013

Regardless of what field of public relations/corporate communications/ marketing/ social media you are in, your ability to communicate effectively and to use the tools of communication effectively are what make you different from other business people.  Yep, we are all business people — it doesn’t matter if we’re in-house, agency, researcher, academic, not-for-profit, or what.

Sometimes we forget that, and sometimes we forget that we are communicators.

Reading the New York Times’ Corner Office feature on the second page of the business section every Sunday reveals that 99% (not a real number – just, well, a lot of them) of the leaders featured say that their own effectiveness depends on communication. They value good communicators, succinct, cogent, thoughtful, planful. But it’s often not about the “telling” part of communication.

The apogee of my career came when Dennis Long, then the head of retail banking for KeyBank of Washington, told me that my communication style was going to be career-limiting. He said, “there’s a line between confidence and arrogance, and you’re crossing it.”  He told me to make fewer statements and ask more questions, to realize that I didn’t have much of a base of experience on which to demand people take heed.

This echoed my boss, Rob Gill, who told me, “You are a talented guy, but you don’t have enough experience…” Rob told me to start learning how to listen and ask good questions.

This took me aback – I’d heard from pretty much everyone how terrific I was since joining Key on the teller line, moving up quickly and eventually into the management training program.  We didn’t cover asking questions, listening or really anything else but effective presenting in that program. I thought it was about positioning myself as an expert, making pithy, amusing, but still important comments based on my experience not only at Key, but also in my years elsewhere.

Communicating, to me then, was about me — not about other people. Now, I see it quite differently.  It’s about our audiences, the receivers of our communication, certainly — but they also are human beings deserving of respect as sources of wisdom.

In many communication professions, we scorn our publics — they’re too stupid to understand our brilliant campaign, they’re clueless about how our business works, or merely disdainful of business in general. They’re ignoramuses who don’t understand the Very Important Work our not-for-profit does in the world!

As a part-time educator, I’ve learned the hard way to respect the students – not merely as the vessels into which I pour wisdom, but as participants in an almost sacred ritual: Communication.  We don’t have it without them, without the circle, never ending or completing; always open at some end.

I’m so grateful to Dennis Long and Rob Gill.

It takes commitment to be a business person who uses communication, who is a communicator. It takes courage and a desire to do right. It’s my calling.

Is it yours?

 

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Crisis demands understanding, says expert Hennes

February 21st, 2013

IABC Cleveland is no stranger to Bruce Hennes. He’s the 2011 communicator of the year and his firm, Hennes/Paynter, is the local champion of effective crisis management through communication. At the 21 Feb. lunch, a small but lively crowd ate up his pithy prescriptions for communicating in very bad times.

I’ve seen Bruce speak many times, first at a luncheon for the Legal Marketing Association, then at an IABC lunch in 2011, and now today, and he always impresses me. As a speaker, he’s an unassuming guy, not given to theatrics, but his content is peerless and his delivery always excellent. Many speakers could learn from him how to hold an audience’s attention through sheer strength of story.

Hennes uses catchy terms — the 3 Tells, 3 V’s, F’up, Fess-up, Fix-up  –  and demonstrates through example what he means. The first of these is the command that supercedes all others — you have to tell the truth, tell it first and tell it all. The 3 V’s are the frame that the media places around stories. Everyone involved is one of these: Victim, Villain, or Vindicator. Care to guess where business (especially executives), education administrators and other “powerful” people find themselves?  The goal for most organizations in the midst of a crisis is to move from villain to vindicator, he says. When you, ahem, Mess up, you need to fess up and describe what you’re doing to make sure it never happens again.

The media brings its own filter to the proceedings, and they’re on the lookout for you to reinforce the role they want you to play. That’s why “no comment” or its usual cousins are so bad — what does “no comment” mean to you? Guilty!  Hennes insists that the media’s job isn’t to inform or educate, it’s to tell stories — the triumph of the Little Guy over the Establishment being a fairly common one — Victim, Villain, Vindicator.

The good thing is that when we know that, we can take action.  Hennes tells a story about an embezzlement scandal at a governmental organization. Hennes/Paynter brought the executive director straight to a reporter and gave them the story in exquisite detail, without violating privacy dicta, and when the very big story broke, its headline put the organization in very positive light, instead of the reverse. The reporter told Hennes later, that if the organization had not brought the story in, the paper would have socked it to the organization big time.

Entertaining, educational and excellent all the way around.

Note: I’m still having no luck uploading photos for the blog since it changed URLs. Help? 

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PRSA’s Corbett: ‘You’d think that companies would learn from history. But they don’t’

February 7th, 2013

Gerry Corbett has surely seen it all in some forty years of communicating. But social media is what has him worked up these days, and not the way you might think.

Corbett, the immediate past chair of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), sees social not as the end of corporate communication, but as the catalyst for the discipline’s reinvention.  At a joint luncheon of the Cleveland chapters of PRSA and the National Investor Relations Institute, Corbett said that both public relations and investor relations (and for that matter, marketing and employee communications) were properly part of a single activity: communicating with and building relationships between organizations and various stakeholders.

“Investor relations and public relations are likely to merge,” Corbett said, “because both are communicating and advocating for organizations, whether to employees, customers, media, investors or analysts.”

He remarked that only a consolidated communication executive can solve the trouble that ensues when messaging among these many publics becomes inconsistent and disjointed, especially in an age when just about anyone can seize the attention of companies. “With social media, anyone has a podium and can have their way.”

Corbett drove home the point by saying that communicators are the only ones who can properly educate the C-Suite on social media, and that with social media use rising in every aspect of corporate communication, the coordinated approach is the only alternative, as is reporting to the CEO.

The CFO is worried about funding the business, not about messaging, and if the CEO isn’t paying attention, he or she is failing to assert full responsibility as only that position can, he said.  The advent of social media is only the latest innovation that companies may be failing to embrace. “You’d think that companies would learn from history. But they don’t,” Corbett said.

My take

It was a good talk, but the big value for me was the Q and A following. Corbett’s best in dialogue and response, and unlike many sessions where one struggles to get the participants to open their mouths other than to devour the ubiquitous chicken, there were good, strategic questions, including a lulu from Melanie Eyerman of thunder::tech — how do you convince reluctant CEOs who don’t understand social media or its importance?

Corbett offered that building relationships at that level, becoming a Consigliere to leadership, a trusted advisor, even taking the CFO out for drinks, are all valid strategies. I’m not sure about the last one — it’s pretty hard to break past the gatekeepers at that level unless you’re already at the table.

That question intrigues me, though I suppose you do so the same things to sell any idea at the top of the house: figure out the communication style of the leader and present your case in that form; research thoroughly and articulate both benefits and risks, etc.  It’s the research angle (duhhh) that I think is most valid, unless the person you’re trying to convince has categorical short-attention-span disease. I want to explore that concept further, perhaps at a happy hour.

A number of other ideas circled around my weary synapses — place social in the category of issues management (however laughable the idea of managing issues might be in the age of social…) — write a white paper called “making sense of social media” and don’t use any “social media gurus” as sources — focus more on broad communication outcomes than on narrow marketing ones when it comes to social — dig hard for social case studies within specific industries, and don’t use Dell or Comcast unless you’re a) selling online, or b) making a case for communication to take  over customer service.

Definitely worth the luncheon. Besides, I got to hang out with Ann-Marie Halal, Rick Batyko, Laurie Mitchell, Tom O’Konowitz , Dave Meeker, and Jim Roop!

 

Note: I’m having a devil of a time posting images to this blog ever since it changed URLs last year. I’m open to suggestions!

 

 

 

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Be the Gordon Ramsay of communications assessment (without the profanity)

January 22nd, 2013

Watch any Gordon Ramsay show and you’ll hear a lot of screaming and profanity. Chef Ramsay screams because successful restaurateurs know there is no fool-proof recipe for success in that business. The same can be said about communications measurement.

A restaurant’s success is the combination of the ingredients used, the positive reviews secured and the way winning was defined. By combining data from activities, awareness and behavior, communicators can produce evaluations that that are accurate, actionable and vulgarity-free.

Select the ingredients: farm fresh and locally sourced
For communicators, we examine qualitative and qualitative activities — number of emails sent, press releases issued, or the introduction of new branding. Many measurement programs begin and end by counting effort, but fast food proves that ingredients are only one component of overall success.

Analyze the reviews: professional critics and Yelp.com
Opinions voiced in surveys and straw polls, as well as superficial engagement figures such as event attendance or number of blog comments, help communicators measure changes in awareness, attitude and understanding. Lacking context, this information is as helpful as a restaurant review written by the owner’s mother.

Define the win: Michelin stars and long waits for tables
Outcomes are the deliberate result of every other decision and action that was made. Communicators measure outcomes that are defined for each communications project and aligned to the business strategy.

Taste the victory: magic for diners, profits for restaurateurs
A comprehensive picture of your communications programs will help you claim victory for the larger organizational goals or identify and correct problems.

If your program falls short, it’s understandable that some choice words will be used. Gordon Ramsay could have been speaking about public relations when he said “Swearing is industry language…You’ve got to be boisterous to get results.”

Perhaps a little profanity is OK.

Amanda Marko, president of Connected Strategy Group, connects companies with stakeholders to make the business strategy reality and goals achievable during times of change. Connect with her online at www.connectedstrategygroup.com and on Twitter @connectedstrat.

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2013 and the secret weapons

January 5th, 2013

I can’t help but mention that in addition to a rocking good batch of client work that continues apace for at least the next five weeks, and the start of a new semester and its associated teaching responsibilities, I’m again sick.

I caught some sort of dread bug back at the beginning of December. It morphed into a sinus problem, consumed the drugs that save us all from the fate of our ancestors in such matters, but now has turned into yet a different sort of plague.  If it were 1850, I, the Esteemed Spouse, and several friends and family members would be hauled out of the neighborhood ala the old man in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Ring out your dead!!!!)

It’s not fair. I’ve done my sick routine for far too long, and it’s distracted me from matters both prosaic (it’s a new year! I should write something profound about the state of measurement/internal comms/ what have you!) and more important (the US election! Congress! Taxes!)

Oh, well.

The secret weapons of 2013, actually, are found in the presentation I’m giving about online influence at the International PR Research Conference. The IPRRC is a fave, it’s academic as all get-out, fraught with Ph.D. students and their profs, and a few practitioners who get treated REALLY WELL. OK, it’s kind of a head trip to publish a paper and present to people whose material I teach in grad classes (Hazelton, Botan, and Smudde, to name a few from past conferences). But it’s also the frickin’ bleeding edge of PR research. More people in the practice should attend, if only to call BS on some of the less practical research (though there’s blessed less of that these days – everyone is pretty interested in what’s actual rather than ideal.)

I just did a lit review and came up with an idea to use qualitative research to help shed some light on online influence. There’s so much total BS out there!!!

The secret weapons aren’t just in my work – I’m an egomaniac, but only a little.  It’s on that knife-edge of research that our PR academics are honing. I still feel a bit like the 13-year old sitting at the adults table at Thanksgiving for the first time!

Spend a few bucks, come to Miami in March (a dreadful hardship for any northerner, I know), and drink from the firehose of knowledge.  And, find the secret weapons!

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Putting Management on the Nice List

December 18th, 2012

By Amanda Marko

It’s the time of year when we’re all making our lists and checking them twice. A recent stop at the rental car counter gave me a peek at what me employees have on their wish lists.

While waiting for my keys, I overhead a customer pointed out that a policy was being implemented differently at another branch. The employees didn’t argue the point; instead they were eager to comply, but also quick to lament that management hadn’t shared the information with them. From the sounds of the conversation, this wasn’t the first time management had failed to convey a policy change.

The employees seemed disappointed, frustrated and a little embarrassed. They were earnestly trying to provide excellent customer service, but they felt doomed to fall short of a standard set by the leadership.

The rental car company is far from alone. “Tell us what you’re doing, so we know what we should be doing,” is a cry from employees that doesn’t get heard at the highest levels of many organizations.

Employees want to be a part of the solution, but if they don’t know the reasons for policies, procedures and initiatives, their hands are tied when it comes to execution. Employees need to know the why so they can have confidence in their role.

Management can give employees what they really want by making a list of its own. Instead of a wish list, it’s a to-do list that will make the business strategy the guide for of every person in every corner of the organization.

• Share the rationale for the strategy – don’t shield employees from harsh realities.
• Personalize the strategy for individuals, teams, regions, business units and functional areas.
• Put measurements in place and celebrate progress.
• Tell stories of all types of employees demonstrating the model behaviors.
• Encourage employees to contribute ideas within the framework of the strategy, and then implement them.

Your business strategy is powerful. It can motivate, inspire and guide everyone in the organization. Used correctly, the strategy can help management build trust, remove barriers, and protect the brand. When employees understand the strategy, they will be empowered to set priorities and execute consistently.

What else should be on management’s to-do list to make employees’ wishes list come true?

Amanda Marko, president of Connected Strategy Group, connects companies with stakeholders to make the business strategy reality and goals achievable during times of change. Connect with her online at www.connectedstrategygroup.com and on Twitter @connectedstrat.

 

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Beware the plague

December 13th, 2012

I’m generally blessed with good health.  Being diligent about exercise, avoiding smoking, drinking red wine instead of other stuff, staying away from fried foods and trying to keep some sort of balance in my life has largely worked. The flus and colds usually pass me by. Until last week.

One unhappy consequence of good health is that I’m an overachiever when I do get sick. Such is the case at the moment. I’m in day seven of the plague, or maybe it’s Venusian Mucosia, or some other knock-Sean-on-his-butt variety no one’s ever heard of.

I’m talking forgetting about calls, five days in the house, sleeping, coughing, complaining. I’m a mess. I have no concentration, and had to break grading the final projects into three days, then go back over the previous two to make sure I made sense.  Conversations I don’t remember from Monday. Even the cats stay away.

My lesson from this is the absolute requirement for rest — I’ve usually doc’d up and powered on, grabbing the Day Quill and treating the sickness as more of a minor inconvenience. But this time, there was no choice – after an hour or two of being upright, I needed to lie down.  I’m better today, and as the sun is shining, I’d love to get out of the forest preserve for a little while, but my sensible side reasserts — stay in, stay down, and don’t be afraid to nap in a couple of hours.

Come to think of it, that’s a pretty good prescription anytime anyone gets sick!

 

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PR is NOT the Guardian of Corporate Reputation

November 16th, 2012

A guest post by James G.Savage – A few weeks ago Sean posted eloquently on the value of a firms’ reputation. Akin to the accounting concept of goodwill, there is general agreement that reputation and, hence, reputational risk is, in fact, tangible and material. In light of the wreckage of the past few years, stakeholders increasingly assume companies are on top of reputational issues, but in fact most companies still do not have any sort of proactive reputation management strategy, with no holistic approach to building reputation and mitigating risk.

Functionally, who owns corporate reputation? In the risk management world there is a fierce debate going on right now over that very point. Most corporate communicators reading this blog would probably assume PR is front and centre here, as communications is at the intersection of brand, business, stakeholders and reputation.

And they’d be dead wrong.

Reputation management remains at a very nascent stage. Like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, various internal ‘experts’ within the enterprise approach corporate reputation from their specific fields of expertise. Within companies, the C-suite assumes reputation is top-of-mind for all employees, while specific functions – enterprise risk management/GRC (governance, risk and compliance), marketing, communications, operations, product development, corporate sustainability, even IT – equally assume they “own” guardianship of the firm’s reputation. These various parties work diligently in splendid isolation from one another, often falling victim to the critical myths I outlined in an earlier white paper.

The author of KPMG’s authoritative Reputational Risk Survey, Dr. Thomas Kaiser, put it this way in a recent interview with Britain’s Risk Universe magazine:

The role of PR departments is essential for ‘clean-up’ operations following a reputational risk event, but they should not be key in its active management. Reputational risk is not a PR exercise – the underlying problems of any event need to be solved rather than actively managed after the event.

To me, that quotation epitomizes the singular failure of corporate communications to get beyond the tactical and be seen as central for business strategy and corporate reputation. Kaiser adds that “people (in the enterprise) need to define their role in reputation management.

So I’ll put it out there for this blog’s readers. Has PR missed the boat? Are we down there in the weeds thinking reputation management is merely a matter of getting rid of that nasty Facebook post or Twitter meme without taking the lead in communicating to the C-suite why the attacks on reputation are occurring? Have communicators been sidetracked by CSR into being the Pious Works department?

If PR doesn’t lead, then whom?

Jim Savage is principal of Reputation Leadership Group (www.reputationleadershipgroup.com) (RLG), of which Sean is a member of the board of advisors. They have been collaborating and co-conspiring happily for many years.

 

 

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