The 21st Century (Business) Communicator
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
0 likes•577 views
What are the challenges ahead for internal communications professionals? This presentation, given by invitation to EMC's internal communications Hub community, covers the impact of both recent technologies and changing leader expectations for internal communications professionals and the IC profession as a whole.
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (20)
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (20)
Similar to The 21st Century (Business) Communicator
Similar to The 21st Century (Business) Communicator (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
The 21st Century (Business) Communicator
- 1. THE 21ST CENTURY COMMUNICATOR A presentation for EMC’s IC Hub, 1 June 2016 Jeff Zwier, Communications and Change Management Consultant www.artscicomms.com ✦ jeff@zwier.net ✦ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffzwier (cc) 2016 Jeff Zwier, some rights reserved under Creative Commons
- 3. THREE QUESTIONS THAT PERMANENTLY CHANGED MY CAREER • Which of our business objectives is this communication going to help us achieve? • What specific behavior or behaviors do you expect from recipients / readers as a result of this communication? • What specific progress will we see towards that objective if this communication is successful?
- 5. QUESTIONS? What do you think of what you’ve heard so far?
- 6. ACHIEVER ✦ BUSINESS PERSON ✦ CONNECTOR
- 8. THE ACHIEVEMENT FOCUS Business outcomes are the primary way you will be evaluated on your work.
- 10. ACHIEVER ✦ BUSINESS PERSON ✦ CONNECTOR
- 12. THE BUSINESS FOCUSED COMMUNICATOR CHECKLIST • Who are your competitors? • What distinguishes your company from its competitors? • Where is your industry in its life cycle? • How your business makes money. • Your company’s business model. • What contributes most to operating costs and profits. • What your customers say about your products and services? • Know how your internal partners work and get to know people on their teams: • Marketing • Human Resources • Information Technology • Finance
- 13. ACHIEVER ✦ BUSINESS PERSON ✦ CONNECTOR
- 15. TRENDS What’s next for the 21st Century Communicator?
- 16. THE TRENDS YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO IGNORE • The permeable enterprise (IC as the new PR) • The post-writing era for organizational communications (GIFs, memes, 360 and action video, VR and AR, holopresence) • Self-service and decentralized communications (shadow comms, communities, chatbots and AIs, and the gig economy)
- 17. 21ST CENTURY BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS SKILLS • Integrated communications • Visual communications • Business skills & negotiation • Project-based mindset (the ‘intrapreneur’)
- 18. QUESTIONS?
- 19. THE 21ST CENTURY COMMUNICATOR A presentation for EMC’s IC Hub, 1 June 2016 Jeff Zwier, Communications and Change Management Consultant www.artscicomms.com ✦ jeff@zwier.net ✦ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffzwier Twitter: @jzwier (cc) 2016 Jeff Zwier, some rights reserved under Creative Commons Thank You!
Editor's Notes
- Jeff Zwier is a communications and change leader and consultant helping leaders accelerate change, lead internal communications teams and drive integrated communications across the enterprise for more than 20 years. Author of several articles on IC for Melcrum Communications (Including the ABCs series that you received as part of the webinar) and currently an independent change management consultant helping leaders prepare for and lead employees through a merger of two technology companies. He also publishes regularly on LinkedIn and his blog, The Art and Science of Business Communications, at www.artscicomms.com. These materials (cc by-sa) 2016 under Creative Commons: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode
- “Bring the comms guy to Amsterdam.” In 2005, I was a tactical communicator, supporting an IT group in an international bank. Then a Group Senior VP with an agenda and a vision for the future asked my boss to bring me along on a business trip. On that trip, whenever I was given a task, I started to ask three questions to help structure our conversations about key communications. Those questions changed my career.
- Asking these three questions directly connected what we were doing to business results, and took the concept of informative (rather than behavior-changing) communications off the table. It also guaranteed that every communication we developed had a clear call to action. Finally, asking these questions assured strategic alignment, as we could identify and report on metrics (behaviors we could observe) that linked strategy in the C-suite to execution across the organization. I didn’t know it at the time, but these questions are at the heart of being a trusted business advisor, tied communications to change management, and transformed my career.
- The next few months completely changed the way that I look at internal communications, and led me to the conclusion that in the 21st century, the rules around what we do as communications professionals would change so much, we needed a new term for it. We are no longer simply “internal communicators.” There are some universal truths to business, no matter what culture or organization you are in. They transcend borders. They are timeless in the face of technology. But they are also highly influenced by culture, technology and organization. I’m going to try to put this in context as a global context against which we do our jobs. You may or may not agree with what I am suggesting here, but I am hoping you will agree that the context in which IC professionals operate is fundamentally transforming. It is, in that very Dickensian sense, “The best of times and the worst of times.” We are business communicators – not “internal communicators,” not ”employee communicators. With that new title comes a new set of expectations.
- The new expectations come down to some ABCs… Achiever. Can you not only measure who receives your communications, but also actually change what employees do as a result? Business leaders expect tangible, near-term changes in employee behavior, and are looking to you for real results. Business person. Communications is no longer merely the realm of the writer, safe from the spreadsheets and analysis that drive the rest of your company. And we are not a breed apart. We are all part of ‘the business’, and need to deeply integrate into its workings in every way. Connector. As one of the few roles in large organizations likely to have a line- of-sight across functions and at least some access to the C-suite, communicators are being asked to step up as individual change agents, cross-functional team leaders, and to leverage their networks across the entire organization to get their jobs done. I break these down in detail in the blog posts that I did for Melcrum Publishing in 2015, which you can find here: Introduction: https://www.melcrum.com/blog/new-abcs-internal-communication-how-our-role-changing Part 1: https://www.melcrum.com/blog/new-abcs-ic-three-steps-achievement Part 2: https://www.melcrum.com/blog/new-abcs-internal-communication-3-steps-becoming-business-communicator Part 3: https://www.melcrum.com/blog/new-abcs-internal-communication-connecting-across-and-beyond-organization
- So, what do each of these areas look like in practice? What’s really changing, and what’s up next for our jobs as internal, or business communicators? We are in strange times for the role of IC in the modern enterprise Not all of these new behaviors are expected today, but the outcomes increasingly are. You may need to model or explicitly raise to your leaders the behaviors you need supported as part of your performance review. Lots of non-communicators are in the mix – more than ever before – thanks to social and and electronic publishing technologies that are ever cheaper and easier to learn and use. You simply cannot make a career out of being a gatekeeper to an enabling technology anymore. Any and every technology, from intranet publishing to social media, to chatbots and VR are beginning as sophisticated IT implementations and rapidly evolving into ‘no coding required’ solutions. The bottom line is that what the IC function is doing may not be changing much in your eyes, but there are fundamental changes starting at all levels of the organization: Many companies are starting to compress and combine communications functions into smaller teams, with senior leaders being expected to have both strategic and tactical skills in new areas. The skills you need to meet these expectations are part mindset, part technical, and all motivated by the need to expand your definition of what internal communications is and does. We are now in the post-writing era of organizational communications. More on that soon.
- Change your focus. In short, moving from tactical in focus to strategic. Communications as the means to the end of raising the game of the whole organization and helping to get its work done. Achieving the objectives that show up on leaders’ performance plans, in terms of tangible business results. Contributing to these projects requires we change our mindset. No longer are we that ‘sage on the stage’ playing a starring role from the communications office, but instead a ‘guide on the side’ working with every part of the organization. Rather than asking leaders to submit stories for the intranet, look for opportunities to coach executives and managers on how to leverage your expertise to accelerate their initiatives. It’s a less prominent role than our historic ‘chief broadcaster and editor’ position, but arguably a far more influential one. It’s time to go out into the enterprise and find out how and where you can use communications to directly drive performance and help improve tangible business results.
- If you don’t, someone else will. From IT to HR, functional departments who don’t get this kind of internal communications support are increasingly hiring ‘shadow communicators’ on their own. Of course you are better at grammar. Of course you are better at every task that these shadow communicators are doing. Your business clients don’t care, especially if your ‘shadow’ is less expensive than you are. Staying relevant is going to be about adding a level of value above and beyond anything these professionals can offer by creating a tangible connection between communications activities and business outcomes. Typos? Grammar? On message, on point, on target? It doesn’t matter. If it’s the right thing at the right time and gets a tangible result, the amateur effort will beat your professional offering every single time. I’ve held several of these specialist roles in my career, and I wasn’t accountable to the corporate communications office or even a Hub-based team…until I was asked to create one in an effort to reign in these ‘rogue’ communicators. Remember, they are not considered ’rogue’ by your business clients. They are considered relevant contributors to the business agenda, not doing some sort of “communications activity” over on the side somewhere…
- Approaching your career as a Business Person – not a “comms person” In the 21st century internal communications environment, trusted advisor status is earned not only for consultative skills, but for genuinely meeting your leaders half-way (or more!) in your knowledge of what drives your organization. To be a credible communications leader you must not only speak the language of business, but also be able to understand, assess and communicate how what you do contributes to achieving business objectives. Connect to strategy. How well do you know your organization’s strategy? Every organization has a set of top-level guiding principles, priorities or objectives. Can you connect what you do to one or more of these objectives? More importantly, as a trusted advisor, can you connect what leaders want you to do with the overall business strategy? Lead change. Once the sole domain of IT departments and human capital consultancies, change management is increasingly recognized as a critical part of every strategic leader’s skill set. And change leadership is an activity that communicators are increasingly called upon to support. Almost every large-scale project takes too long for individual employees to maintain enthusiasm, engagement and momentum. Look for opportunities to define and celebrate some near-term ‘wins’ to help employees stay on- track. Breaking up that marathon into sprints can make a significant difference to both the quality and quantity of work done. Stimulate accountability. Look for opportunities to suggest messages to your leaders with clear calls to action that stimulate accountability at all levels of the organization. Get to know your industry. Most of us have a basic understanding of our company’s industry. What’s missing is some of the background knowledge about the industry that informs the decisions your leaders are making every day.
- Case study: What do strategy connection, change management and accountability look like in practice? Let’s look at what Deloitte Global CEO Barry Salzburg did to help launch and maintain the momentum of a key global project...
- We’re not in journalism school anymore. In fact, the best preparation for today’s IC professional is likely psychology or business – or both. Do you know these facts about your business? If not, you risk not being a credible resource to your business, or a credible representative of the communications function.
- Being a Connector across (and beyond) the organization More and more communicators are being asked to step up as individual change agents and cross-functional team leaders, either for specific projects or as part of their day-to-day responsibilities. Why? Because The layer of leadership responsible for executing strategy is having great difficulty connecting with their teams in today's virtual, decentralized global organizations. Many managers are not as confident as senior executives in their communication skills, and take a much more 'heads- down' approach to leading within their function. With flatter, more specialized organizations to manage, these leaders are less connected, less skilled at communication, and less inclined to connect outside their functions than ever before.
- This represents a significant opportunity for professionals who specialize in organizational messaging. Maximize it by connecting within your team, across and beyond your organization. Connecting within your team Embrace integrated communications. Know your Chief Communications Officer (CCO) Be a communications team connector Connecting across your organization The five people who must know you. Chief Marketing, Human Resources, Operations, Technology and Financial Officers. Work the C-Suite.. Develop your stakeholder group network. Connecting beyond your workplace Get (seriously) social. Meet non-communicators. Expand your communication professionals network beyond internal communications. If there is any differentiator that I have found between successful and unsuccessful communicators, it has been their ability to make and maintain these connections.
- Wrapping up: The 21st century communicator Trends you can’t ignore The permeable enterprise (IC as the new PR) The post-writing era for organizational communications (GIFs, memes, 360 and action video, VR and AR, holopresence) Self-service and decentralized communications (shadow comms, communities, chatbots and AIs, and the gig economy) The skills you need to keep growing your career Integrated communications Visual communications Business skills and negotiation Project-based mindset (the ‘intrapreneur’)
- Read more about all of these topics on my blog, The Art and Science of Business Communications (www.artscicomms.com) or follow me on LinkedIn to read more about the latest evolution in communicator competencies.
- Jeff Zwier is a communications and change leader and consultant helping leaders accelerate change, lead internal communications teams and drive integrated communications across the enterprise for more than 20 years. Author of several articles on IC for Melcrum Communications (Including the ABCs series that you received as part of the webinar) and currently an independent change management consultant helping leaders prepare for and lead employees through a merger of two technology companies. He also publishes regularly on LinkedIn and his blog, The Art and Science of Business Communications, at www.artscicomms.com. These materials (cc by-sa) 2016 under Creative Commons: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode