The Myth of the "Strategic Communicator" Part III

This is the third of a series of three posts, based on an article that first appeared in the Journal of Employee Communications Management.

****

Here are my top tips on how to make a difference as a communicator without a seat at the strategic table:
    1. Find the real leaders in your workplace and build positive relationships with them. They could be anyone – the IT director who is trying desperately to streamline and modernize your systems. The HR executive who wants to build a culture where employees take more accountability for business success. The corporate environmentalist who wants the company to do the right things. Or the marketing VP who wants to get front line service people excited about delivering great experiences to customers. These are the people who know how to make positive change happen, and you should throw all your support behind them as they pursue their largely thankless tasks. They think strategically. Some of them even have a seat at the coveted table. But they are often so harried that they don’t have time or energy to think about communications. Write a plan for them and help them implement it. You have the knowledge, the talent and the skills to build a strong internal “brand” for their change agenda that will prevent it from fading away.
    2. Do superb tactical work.  Have fun building great publications, creating sexy, interesting and useful Intranet sites, producing heart-stopping videos and organizing face-to-face meetings between management and the front line. These are the things that, over time, help to build a strong, positive culture in your organization--and you can accomplish most of them without even talking to a senior executive. When you win awards for your work, you will make your CEO proud, and he will be less likely to cut your budget.
    3. Fight for communications that are clear, timely and honest. Let others make the strategic decisions. If you communicate those decisions--why they were made, what they are meant to accomplish, and what it means to individual employees--and do it with journalistic integrity, you have won a major battle for the good. The best way to fight for sound communications practices is to do it in peacetime, not when a crisis is unfolding and people head for the bunker. Take some time one summer to come up with a few common sense communications principles, values and guidelines that even your CEO can agree to. When the next crisis happens and executives want to misbehave, you can remind them of the rules they signed off on.
    4. Actively listen to people whose voices your CEO doesn’t hear. This is a fantastic way to exercise influence without authority. Readership surveys and focus groups produce information that demands positive action, and you can direct those actions simply by asking the right questions. It’s a way that you can show your CEO how he or she can avoid embarrassment by responding to employee concerns before they become big festering issues. The best communicators make regular measurement an institution, generating numbers executives look forward to seeing.
    5. Get some training in how to sell things. Take a course in negotiation, or sales techniques, or anything that will give you some tools to make you better able to give advice that gets listened to. We complain that executives don’t get it. At least half the time, that’s because we did a bad job of selling the concept in the first place.  It’s easy to forget that it takes more than one exposure to a new idea to change someone’s mind. You’re not at the strategic table, but you report to someone who reports to someone who is. Convincing your own boss of a great idea and giving him or her ammunition to sell it up the line can work.
    6.  And, finally, have pity on your CEO. He or she may make a zillion and have lots of power.  But being an effective leader in a big company, with a bunch of dodderheads for a board of directors, and a bunch of greedheads for investors, and a bunch of pothead environmentalists and knotheaded union leaders and dickhead journalists breathing down your neck, is the hardest job in the world. And if you can possibly understand the kind of extreme pressure they’re under, and find a way to sympathize with them, and dig deep and help make their life easier -- and maybe help them make a better decision or two -- you won’t need to sit at that strategic table. You will be content to serve, and maybe clear the dirty dishes once in a while.
    Content, and if you are lucky, appreciated as well.

Comments

[John Wagner]

Ron:

Excellent series with great advice for communicators. We've been beaten over the head for so long that tactics are for beginners that we've lost track of what actually constitutes communication. In the end, someone has to produce something or facilitate something that enables messages to be shared and understood.

One of the best bosses I ever had was unique in that she knew strategy and tactics were tied together ... one without the other was useless. She also knew that the way to create positive change was to produce excellent communication materials that made a difference and earned senior management's trust.

In other words, it was the skill and work product of her and her team that earned respect ... not the ability to sit in on meetings or have a big title.