Building a credible communications function
Whether you are a ‘one person show’ or lead a small army of communication specialists, you’ve probably felt some frustrations with the perceived value of your services from time to time. Are you looking for more credibility with the C-suite to get that strategic ’seat at the table?’ Take your communication function to the next level by developing a mandate, strategy and governance structure for your team.
Mandate. Why are you here, and how does your company or organization leverage communication competencies to achieve its objectives? Mandates are reasons for being that go deeper than listing the handful of channels you manage or which job titles belong in your corner of the organizational chart. A mandate can be expressed in the form of a mission statement, as a charter, or even just a concise table that describes what activities are in and out of scope for your department. I’ve seen the latter employed successfully within IT organizations to set boundaries (thus avoiding turf wars) and by communications teams at several companies. A mandate will keep your team focused on what’s important and remind your leaders of where your agreed priorities support the overall business strategy.
Strategy. How will you achieve your mandate? Strategy is one of those business terms that has a thousand meanings (several hundred thousand if you also involve management consultants). If you have the time and political capital to do it, nothing beats a Stephen Covey-esque deep dive into creating a compelling vision and mission statement. This activity, completed over the course of months, captures your mandate and the fundamentals of how you will go about your daily business though hard work and close collaboration with your business partners. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the combination of time, money and political capital to make that happen. However, even creating a simple objective statement supported by guiding principles can help your organization become much more effective in a short period of time. More on that in a future post.
Governance. Who is your conscience? As part of my work with IT organizations, I have had a lot of experience with governance teams that ensure technology investments actually translate into business value. A governance body should include representatives from your senior business leadership team, primary stakeholder communities, and organizational influencers. Invite them to sign off on your mandate. Engage deeply with them when you set your budget. And most importantly, listen to them and make a commitment to collaborate with them as business conditions change.
These are not new ideas for other parts of our companies. Information technology groups, for example, have gained a lot of ground in recent years from this approach. CIOs who adopt these practices get less questions at budget time, can defend their business cases more effectively, and without fail have that ’seat at the table’ that many senior communicators have told me they wish that they had. My personal thought on that? Before you can get a seat at the table, you need a floor to put that seat on. A mandate, strategy and governance structure can give you that floor, and I’ll talk about my thoughts on implementing all of them within organizational communications teams in future posts.
March 29th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
One thing that is working for me in my current position is to have the clear focus on the value and purpose for my team that you describe in your post. A mission, mandate and strategy won’t necessarily alter the perception of others within your organization–until you bring them into the equation.
A former boss asked each of the team managers within our group to develop team mission statements. We posted those mission statements on the wall, and pointed them out to everyone who made the mistake of walking into our group’s work area.
Words on a wall didn’t change things. The relationships I have been nurturing and the quality service I provide HAVE positively changed people’s perception of the Communications Team. By reaching out, understanding the needs of my internal customers, and then taking the time to explain how communications would help them, I became a walking mission statement. That walking mission statement has to prove itself daily, not with cleverly written prose pasted on a wall, but with a true desire and ability to help others.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:55 pm
I agree Tom. Writing is not enough. My concern is that not enough of us have invested in the deep, meaningful work of building that mandate. As you mention here, that work has to be done with your customers. And you have to live, breathe and carry that work with you every day. Change it as needed, use it to empower action in your team, inform your strategy and tactics to deliver value. I am not a huge fan of writing team mission statements unless it is done right – which takes more time than most managers want to take. But I do believe in doing some hard thinking about what we are supposed to be doing – and why – and keeping that top of mind every day.
April 7th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
[...] approaches to demonstrating your value. If you’re like my colleague Tom (see comments to my previous post), you have seen the value of turning yourself into a “walking mission statement.” And [...]