1. If you want a communicator, don’t hire a writer. Organizations have a wide range of needs for communication professionals. Unfortunately, many who have less experience with communicators assume that a writer/editor will meet all of their needs. Or a journalist. Or a video editor. If you need a strong generalist, a strategic advisor, a leader, or a team manager, look for candidates with a background to match. It’s true that being a strong writer is a cornerstone skill for any communicator – but it’s not the end of the story.
2. Hire to your mandate. What do you want your communications function to accomplish? Some companies need strong business to business relationships. Others need to drive communications within a specific business function that requires familiarity with industry or professional trends and issues. Rather than concentrating on your immediate need (such as to create an online community or web site), look for candidates who can describe how to apply communications competencies to reaching your objectives.
3. Insist on communications AND business acumen. You’ll find good communicators in every industry, and in many cases, these professionals cross industry boundaries well. The ability to communicate clearly, systematically assess needs and deliver a strategically-useful communications plan should be a part of any senior communicator’s portfolio of skills. So should a clear understanding of return on investment, the time value of money, and basic project management concepts. When you interview for a communications professional, ask yourself: Does the person I am interviewing understand the fundamentals of business. Seek out candidates who understand how your business makes money. Senior communicators should be able to look beyond knowing the regulations behind communicating in the banking industry or telling employees about benefit plans to seeing the opportunities to improve your bottom line with their skills.
4. Raise your expectations. I am amazed at how many high-level communications positions still advertise for a BA/BS degree in English or journalism (preferred) with five to seven years of experience. Professional degrees such as master’s level studies in communications or business (MBA) and credentials such as IABC’s Accredited Business Communicator (ABC) provide objective evidence that your candidate brings more to the table than exceptional proofreading skills. These candidates may cost more in terms of salary, but also bring more value in both the near and long term.
5. If you can only afford a ‘one person show,’ hire a star. Tight budgets – especially today – are a reality. So are small departments where everyone wears multiple hats. If you are looking to make a real impact on your company through strategic communications, look for generalists with a little more experience who are still ready to roll up their sleeves. In this job market, there are some exceptional professionals ready to show you what your extra salary dollars can buy.
6. There’s more to communications than PR and social media. What kind of communications professional do you need? Like many other professions, there are several disciplines in organizational communications that can add value to your team. Do the research to determine what kind of communicator is the best fit for your needs.
7. Listen to your recruiting professionals. Your Human Resources staff and ‘headhunters’ will reinforce those basic hiring practices that get you better employees in every specialization. Test for knowledge. Use behavior-based interviews. Your strategic communicator is out there ready to make a big difference in your organization. It’s up to you to hold candidates to a higher standard to find the right match for your company.

Searching for the best way to engage employees? Look below the surface to find motivators specific to your company. Image © 2009 photosbymaureen.com

If you’ve been in communications for a little while or are an experienced leader, you likely already already know a bit about employee engagement. (If you don’t, you might want to check out an article defining employee engagement, or this recent brief article in Business Week). What you might not know is exactly what drives employee engagement in your company. Now is a great time to find out.

Employee engagement is a great focal point for a leader communications strategy in difficult times. Now more than ever, higher levels of engagement might just be critical to your company’s survival.

When employee engagement works, the results can be dramatic. Studies by Gallup, Towers Perrin, The Conference Board and others have reported revenue gains in highly engaged companies of forty percent or more. Engagement starts with effective leadership, is fostered by authentic communication, and is maintained in environments where employees feel that managers can be trusted to ‘walk the talk’ when it comes to mission, vision, and valuing employees’ contributions.

Those are the basics. how does employee engagement work in your company? Let’s look below the surface…

As a communications professional, you (hopefully) have valuable information about your company’s culture stashed between your ears. Now is the time to pull that information out of your brain and document it for your leadership team. To get to the bottom of what makes (or can make) employee engagement work at your company, ask yourself:

• What behaviors does our company culture reward? Are we innovators, cost cutters, revenue seekers, or risk reducers?
• What behaviors does our industry reward? In other words, what are the most successful companies in your industry doing right now that is helping them survive?
• What rewards are valued by employees? Are there internal awards programs, training or networking opportunities seen as a path to management approval or career success?
• How can we draw connections between all of these in a cost effective way?

The book 1001 Ways to Reward Employees by Bob Nelson is all about inexpensive ways to encourage employees and help them feel valued. If you are starting from scratch, that’s a great source for some ideas. But remember, it’s leadership and valuing employees’ contributions plus knowing what makes your corporate culture tick that will make an employee engagement program effective. One size of recognition, reward or incentive definitely does not fit all companies. Combining your knowledge of company culture with engagement best practices may be just the right formula for keeping your organization productive in these challenging times.

Communicators and IT. Oil and water, right? Maybe not.

There has been a lot of historic tension between these two parts of large organizations. Communicators want more collaboration and free flow of information, and get frustrated with restrictive IT policies – even to the point of taking the issue to the web. In return, IT has its own axe to grind with communicators, from recent very public disdain for PR practices by IT luminaries to constant battles with the technologies of Web 2.0 being introduced by non-IT practitioners, bypassing careful controls and adding to support, maintenance and ongoing management headaches.

Wherever you stand on the issues found at the links above, I would think few would disagree that there is value to a closer, more collaborative relationship between communications and information technology functions. The technology analyst firms certainly believe there is value in stronger MarComm / IT connections.

Here are some of my suggestions based upon my experience working at the interface between technology and communications on how communicators can contribute to a closer, more collaborative relationship.

Take some time to learn about IT’s headaches. Every IT group is different, but they do have some pain points in common. Google the terms “Technology Populism,” “offshoring,” and “Software as a Service” and you’ll see that your technology team has as many crises around demonstrating their value as you do. Thanks to technology populism, many in your company may be (fairly or not) questioning the value of your IT teams and their relatively expensive solutions, compared to the freebies and low-cost solutions now available on the web. Some may think your IT group’s expensive applications and employees can be replaced quickly, cheaply and easily by Google Docs, Open Office, Yammer and an Indian workforce. They’re probably the same people who think that anyone can write and that two administrative assistants and a college intern can run your intranet. Same you-know-what, different department.

Honor your IT group’s mission. The role of your CIO is to provide a secure, cost-efficient way for everyone in your company to leverage a set to tools that boost productivity and serve your customers. That role may slanted towards being a service provider, builder, or broker of third party services. Whatever the slant, the secure part of that role description always applies. Are they blocking that Web 2.0 application site because the IT team thinks you are wasting time connecting with others in the industry? Maybe, but probably not. Their motivation, first and foremost, when blocking active web applications is to keep the bad stuff out (malware, hackers) and the good stuff in (proprietary knowledge, legally protected information). Prepare for win-win conversations with IT by first understanding their constraints, then presenting your case. If you keep those in mind, you just might find a solution that satisfies everyone that they had not considered.

Remember, in the end it’s about money: Provide the right kind of data supporting your needs. If you want to get to a solution to your needs – such as providing a Facebook-style application for employees – and IT is digging in its heels, bring them the financial data that supports your agenda. What is the bottom-line, monetary benefit to making this happen? Where are the success stories in your industry? And where’s the win for IT? (remember the “What’s in it for Me” principle still applies to techies) In addition to overcoming a skeptical management team, the problem IT might have with your proposal is that providing what you want costs more money than you think. The CIO may not have the political capital to increase her budget to cover the expense. Together, you might find a way to pay for what you want to implement with a more robust, unified business case.

Offer communications support. Your CIO is concerned about selling the value of IT to his or her leaders and to other parts of the organization. But your IT team may not know how to tackle that challenge or have the budget to bring in the talent needed to help them manage their perception and image in your company. Technology groups are often underserved by communications departments. We assume there’s no need because IT has that “seat at the table,” and IT may not reach out to you because they don’t understand how to realize a benefit from your services. People in roles like mine who are “account managers” for communications services focused on IT are few and far between. Take a look at your IT group not only as a potential partner, but a potential customer for your internal communications services. You may be surprised at what you can accomplish together.

Strategic-level governance is about business alignment and staying honest to your value proposition. Few communication organizations have taken this step, but I think there is benefit for everyone. This is not easy work – IT organizations recognized the need for governance some time ago, and are still struggling to make good IT governance work.

If you find yourself trying to guess what your business leaders want, are worried about what your leaders are going to ‘do to’ your budget, or otherwise feel disconnected from the powers that be, you would probably benefit from some kind of governance system. A governance structure can keep you on track with strategy, improve your relationship with key stakeholders, and constantly reinforce your relevance to your organization.

At it simplest, governance can take the form of a small steering committee that meets with you quarterly and gives you feedback on your team’s contributions to the organization. Having this feedback (especially from a few highly-placed leaders) can be invaluable just to improve your team’s day to day work. At a strategic level, your steering committee can also approve your charter, mission or vision, help you establish a clear mandate, and be there with compelling evidence of your worth at budget time.

If your curious about governance systems and how they might work for you, reach out to your technology leaders. Odds are good that they have been down this road, and might have some valuable insights on what works in your organization to share.

Seth’s brief plea for authenticity had an unexpected impact on me – It reminded me of my father.

My father worked in the advertising industry throughout the 1960′s and 1970′s – yes, he was one of the original ‘Mad Men,’ of that era – in a humble way, hanging on by his fingernails to various production, layout and traffic management roles. He saw the behavior of the times, and the very earliest advice I ever remember hearing from him was, “Don’t go into advertising.” Dad wasn’t a perfect man, but he valued honesty.

Advertising practitioners’ image as purveyors of raw deception and manipulation has been around for a very long time, reinforced

The future 'Mad Man' Ted Zwier and his wife Palmyra at a company function shortly after he started work in advertising, late 1961.

by mass entertainment like the aforementioned television show. Plus very real bad manners by real practitioners in advertising, direct marketing and public relations.

A quote I found online from the TV show – never seen more than a couple minutes of it myself, just know it by (ha) its advertising:

Beatnik: “You’re in advertising… How do you sleep at night?”
Don Draper: “On a bed made of money.”

Dad slept well, but not on a bed of money. We lived modestly, and looking at the work he left behind from his stint at  J. Walter Thompson, Abelson Frankel and other companies, I don’t see the big spin. (Though thanks to his A-F years, I did get to see some of the very first Happy Meal boxes when I was a kid before they were released, which was pretty cool).

Companies who practice this kind of ‘sugar coating’ are stuck in the ‘Mad Men’ era. For some reason, they believe in that old school swanky razzle-dazzle designed to wrap you in a fuzzy warm glow of corporate magnanimity. I don’t think everyone bought it in the 1960′s, but more did so then than now. To borrow from Stephen King’s description of the past in his Dark Tower series, “the world has moved on.” We craft the brand together in the open-source workshop enabled by instant communication called the World Wide Web. Authenticity isn’t a captivating new way to engage customers, it’s a survival skill. With billions of eyes looking, if you BS you will eventually be found out.

So that’s what I think of Seth’s post. Authenticity scales, as Mr. Godin states. And I think my dad would be happy with that. Sooner or later, success in advertising, marketing, and branding will depend on plain talk. Maybe not yet, but someday soon.

And when it does, maybe fathers won’t advise their kids to stay out of that career.

I agree that the State Services action does not seem like a good idea. I have no idea how well their PR professionals performed, but the choice of language (“spin doctors”) that made its way to the media was not exactly complementary. (Without better knowledge of their situation who can say if the firings were justified or not?) What I disagree with is that communicators should just be “speaking up” for their profession. That’s not enough.

We should be stepping up.

We need to do what Barbara Gibson suggests and make our voices heard to raise awareness of our role and value. But I would argue that we also need to step up our collective game and demonstrate our value more clearly and effectively within our organizations. We haven’t marketed ourselves very well. Communicators are often collectively thought of by the uninformed as ‘spin doctors,’ mentioned in the same breath as those who make the news with their pushiness, unprofessional conduct or outright lies. We’re often portrayed in popular media and even in our organizations by the uninformed as either slimy manipulators or oblivious, grammar-obsessed writers.

Communication’s Rodney Dangerfield position in companies today is largely, I believe, of our own making – and only we will be able to do what it takes to build respect for our professions. (More thoughts about exactly how we continue to take shots at our own collective feet explored in future posts).

So my challenge to all of us: Don’t just protest – act:

• Measure communication’s impact on your organization in terms your CEO will understand.
• Do something – anything – this month that has a bottom-line impact.
• Insist on professional and ethical standards within your team. Publicize them. Live them.
• Hire staff with strong credentials (MA, MS, MBA, ABC) who know and can speak the language of your employer’s industry.
• Insist on excellence in everything that you do.

And replace “I can’t” thinking with a “Here’s what I can do” attitude. Make that pitch. Your leaders just might run with it.

Come on, folks. You’re all canny, manipulative spin doctors, remember? Use those evil powers you allegedly have on your own behalf today.

Think about your potential response for a moment. There are a lot of choices. If you’ve ever gotten into the concept of personal branding, you might have already prepared a quick ‘elevator pitch’ for just such an occasion. You could talk about your ability to deliver results, change and influence the organization, and rattle off a half dozen key communication tools that you know how to leverage on your leader’s behalf. Or take any number of other 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 that’s a good thing.

Now, let’s ask an even tougher question: “Why is your department here?”

You can go a lot of directions with that question, but the main point is, how do you define the business that you are in? If your communications department were an independent consulting firm, you would have to know:

• What customers you serve
• What services you offer
• Your position in the marketplace (are you a premium boutique or a discount store?)
• Your brand promise to your customers

Those points imply some deep thinking about your capabilities, strengths, weaknesses and what you can realistically deliver to your marketplace. Everyone knows that if you are not on target with your product mix as a company, you will eventually go out of business. I think it would help all of us as communicators if we remembered that the same thing applies to our function within organizations.

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.

Now that the social media revolution is well under way, I don’t feel especially inspired to evangelize adopting Web 2.0 in this blog. If you are here, odds are you’ve already drunk that particular Kool-aid, as my friend Bob would say. Besides, there are much better evangelists out there. You might even be one of them.

But the flurry of activity around social media and my participation in it has prompted me to start a new conversation online. Or “Comm”-versation. (Insert groan here).

I’ve seen a lot of words published about the need for social media. What I have not seen much of is candid explorations of how the communication function needs to evolve. Where is the conversation about what new practices, strategies, and competencies communicators need to have today beyond knowing how to use social media tools to be effective?  In short, how do corporate communicators remain strategic and relevant in the social media era? 

In my opinion, communication is a leadership accelerator – the most powerful contributor to the success of an organization after that first brilliant business idea and the ability to execute on your objectives. Strategic communication is about facilitating conversation and using it to engage customers, build a brand, attract talent and motivate your teams. Strategic communicators build business value and advance the organization’s agenda. We are (or should be) leaders, innovators, facilitators and partners contributing to that end goal, rather than just good writers or experts on the latest post-Twitter phenomenon. Too often, however we don’t talk about how to make that happen. We keep revisiting the old conversations – getting ‘a seat at the table’, or becoming an ‘expert’ at social media. (more on my opinion of the short lifespan of that role in future posts).

We need to start talking about shaping our futures and the future of our profession as a strategic part of organizations. It’s time for a new conversation.

This weblog will explore developing the future communications organization (or fixing the ones we have today) and how we need to re-think the communication function’s contribution to the enterprise once Web 2.0 is a mainstream part of our lives rather than a hotly-debated new phenomenon. I’ll also cover some strategies related to CIO communications and marketing the IT function – a somewhat unique subject area that I have been lucky enough to explore in my career.

Thanks in advance for reading – I hope you find what I write here interesting, engaging and thought provoking. More coming soon.