Change Communications

Source: Melcrum Publishing – The Source for Communicators

Brian Humphreys, former director general of communication and public affairs for the Australian Department of Defense, suggests that communicators should focus on five key areas:

1. Understand and respond to business priorities

Organizations communicate to meet business goals. It’s vital you understand the goals of your organization and its leadership. When you understand organization priorities you are more likely to provide useful advice and to deliver products that contribute to core business priorities. Read the minutes of board meetings, annual reports and the corporate plan so you understand the organization’s goals. Or better still, ask for a role in planning meetings.

2. Build credibility through business acumen

Is your communication unit’s bottom line healthy? A mistake many communicators make is that they fail to effectively manage their unit’s resources. Your advice to business leaders will lack
credibility if your unit’s budget is in the red. Conversely, your credibility will grow if you manage your finances and people professionally. You are more likely to be free to deliver programs without undue restraints if you can be relied upon to do so within budget. It’s surprising the amount of credibility you build by delivering on a well-constructed business plan.

3. Understand management trends

Leaders rely upon their networks and business publications to follow the latest management thinking – and so should you. As a communication adviser you need to keep pace with emerging management trends so you can provide advice on their communication aspects. Concepts such as knowledge, risk, reputation and crisis management – to name just a few – all rely heavily upon communication. Understanding how communication helps such organizational initiatives
is another way of increasing your value to leadership.

4. Be a reliable problem solver

The key to reliability is structural capital. Investing in structural capital is as simple as building systems and processes. When you do something well, write it down, so you can do it again. Being a problem solver is all about how you handle challenges. It’s easy to see why something won’t work but it’s more valuable to suggest what will. This doesn’t mean becoming a “yes” man or woman, rather, you should be the one proposing solutions or alternatives. If those recommendations are sensible, before long you will have the aura of someone who can be counted on.

5. Get your communication priorities right

Remember the Pereto principle. Pereto was an 18th century Italian scholar who said that a minority of causes or efforts account for a majority of results. In other words, a small number of actions will mean the difference between success and failure. For example, the best crisis communication plan will fail if you don’t get media management right. The challenge is to identify those things you must do well – typically they’re the things that mean the most to
leadership – and concentrate on them first. Once those are covered you can concentrate on delivering the less tangible, but often no less important, things.

This article was originally published in Strategic Communication Management, Vol. 8, Iss. 5 (August/September 2004). To find out more about SCM visit: http://www.melcrum.com/link/scm