The corporate communicator's job is complex with responsibilities for assisting the CEO and board with strategic messaging while also coordinating messaging across different departments. Secondary messages from departments often diverge over time from the primary strategic message, potentially damaging the organization. The corporate communicator helps ensure messages are aligned and the strategic vision is maintained, but faces challenges as their role is not clearly defined and they have limited authority over other departments.
Tackling complex problems, fostering creativity, and nurturing collaborative solutions is universal in business today.
The terms cooperation, coordination, and collaboration are often used interchangeably. However, collaboration refers to a higher level of joint working and the glue that binds collaborative teams together is communication.
Here we look in detail at how to facilitate effective team collaboration and the communication channels that will support it.
The “Course Topics” series from Manage Train Learn and Slide Topics is a collection of over 4000 slides that will help you master a wide range of management and personal development skills. The 202 PowerPoints in this series offer you a complete and in-depth study of each topic. This presentation is on "Communication Networks".
A communication channel refers either to a physical transmission medium such as a wire, or to a logical connection over a multiplexed medium such as a radio channel in telecommunications and computer networking..
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhil-nkady/
https://www.slideshare.net/NikhilKadam66
Embrace the Power of Organizational Networks to Improve PerformanceSteve Radick
Today’s highest performing organizations have realized that they must be connected and collaborative within their own ranks, as well as with their stakeholders and partners. By understanding and empowering connections among employees, customers, and partners, connected organizations are better able to rapidly collect, analyze, and share business and mission intelligence while outperforming and outlasting organizations that remain stovepiped and bureaucratically compartmentalized.
Communication in organizations encompasses all the means, both formal and informal, by which information is passed up, down, and across the network of managers and employees in a business.
www.ilinkbd.com
C t:J A_P I E 8
OCC Dimension 6:
Communication
Systems
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
- George Bernard Shaw
Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
1. COMMUNICATION CHALLENGES IN MODERN ORGANIZATIONS
All communication involves the transmission of a message from a sender to a re ceiver. Communication is central to organizational effectiveness and survival be cause the essence of organizations is cooperation, and no cooperation is possible without effective communication.(ll While communicating effectively has never been easy to do in organizations, there are some special challenges to communica tion in today's organizations.
l.l Information Overload
Every organization must solve the problem of what pattern of communication shall be instituted, and what information shall be directed to what offices. One issue in establishing such a pattern is information overload. There are limits to the amount of communication that can be received, coded, and effectively handled by any one individual.( 2]
John Kotter has an interesting anecdote that illustrates this problem. He asserts that the typical employee receives approximately 2,300,000 words or numbers com municated to him or her in a 3-month period. He estimates that the typical com munication of a change vision over 3 months is one 30-minute speech, one hour long meeting, one 600-word article in the firm's newspaper, and one 2,000-word memo, which amounts to about 13,400 words. Consequently, roughly one-half of one percent of all the words or facts that an employee receives over 3 months will
(
PRlNTED
BY:
.
Printing
is
for
personal,
private
use
only.
No
part
of
thi
s
book
may
be
reproduced
or
transmitted
without
publisher's
prior
permission.
Violators
will
be
prosecuted.
)
76 FOCUSING ON ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
be focused on the change visionYl Clearly, routine information can easily over
whelm change messages.
1.2 Sterility of Electronic Communication Technologies
We live in a time of disruptive electronic technologies, some of which have led to new and powerful information and communication technologies. Data-based re porting systems, e-mail, voice mail, intranets, bulletin boards, Websites, and video conferencing are cost effectively breaking down large distances and providing in formation to huge numbers of people in relatively inexpensive but fast ways. Unfor tunately, these mediums of communication are rather sterile and impersonal, and not as powerful or meaningful to people as more personal modes of communication.
Because change initiatives can arouse strong and passionate emotions within
an organization, these marvelous information and commun ...
Tackling complex problems, fostering creativity, and nurturing collaborative solutions is universal in business today.
The terms cooperation, coordination, and collaboration are often used interchangeably. However, collaboration refers to a higher level of joint working and the glue that binds collaborative teams together is communication.
Here we look in detail at how to facilitate effective team collaboration and the communication channels that will support it.
The “Course Topics” series from Manage Train Learn and Slide Topics is a collection of over 4000 slides that will help you master a wide range of management and personal development skills. The 202 PowerPoints in this series offer you a complete and in-depth study of each topic. This presentation is on "Communication Networks".
A communication channel refers either to a physical transmission medium such as a wire, or to a logical connection over a multiplexed medium such as a radio channel in telecommunications and computer networking..
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhil-nkady/
https://www.slideshare.net/NikhilKadam66
Embrace the Power of Organizational Networks to Improve PerformanceSteve Radick
Today’s highest performing organizations have realized that they must be connected and collaborative within their own ranks, as well as with their stakeholders and partners. By understanding and empowering connections among employees, customers, and partners, connected organizations are better able to rapidly collect, analyze, and share business and mission intelligence while outperforming and outlasting organizations that remain stovepiped and bureaucratically compartmentalized.
Communication in organizations encompasses all the means, both formal and informal, by which information is passed up, down, and across the network of managers and employees in a business.
www.ilinkbd.com
C t:J A_P I E 8
OCC Dimension 6:
Communication
Systems
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
- George Bernard Shaw
Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
1. COMMUNICATION CHALLENGES IN MODERN ORGANIZATIONS
All communication involves the transmission of a message from a sender to a re ceiver. Communication is central to organizational effectiveness and survival be cause the essence of organizations is cooperation, and no cooperation is possible without effective communication.(ll While communicating effectively has never been easy to do in organizations, there are some special challenges to communica tion in today's organizations.
l.l Information Overload
Every organization must solve the problem of what pattern of communication shall be instituted, and what information shall be directed to what offices. One issue in establishing such a pattern is information overload. There are limits to the amount of communication that can be received, coded, and effectively handled by any one individual.( 2]
John Kotter has an interesting anecdote that illustrates this problem. He asserts that the typical employee receives approximately 2,300,000 words or numbers com municated to him or her in a 3-month period. He estimates that the typical com munication of a change vision over 3 months is one 30-minute speech, one hour long meeting, one 600-word article in the firm's newspaper, and one 2,000-word memo, which amounts to about 13,400 words. Consequently, roughly one-half of one percent of all the words or facts that an employee receives over 3 months will
(
PRlNTED
BY:
.
Printing
is
for
personal,
private
use
only.
No
part
of
thi
s
book
may
be
reproduced
or
transmitted
without
publisher's
prior
permission.
Violators
will
be
prosecuted.
)
76 FOCUSING ON ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
be focused on the change visionYl Clearly, routine information can easily over
whelm change messages.
1.2 Sterility of Electronic Communication Technologies
We live in a time of disruptive electronic technologies, some of which have led to new and powerful information and communication technologies. Data-based re porting systems, e-mail, voice mail, intranets, bulletin boards, Websites, and video conferencing are cost effectively breaking down large distances and providing in formation to huge numbers of people in relatively inexpensive but fast ways. Unfor tunately, these mediums of communication are rather sterile and impersonal, and not as powerful or meaningful to people as more personal modes of communication.
Because change initiatives can arouse strong and passionate emotions within
an organization, these marvelous information and commun ...
Project communication breakdown - APM Project ArticleDonnie MacNicol
Communication can be a dangerous word – seemingly positive and action-orientated, but potentially laden with misunderstanding if used without thinking, writes Donnie MacNicol.
Complete the following in your postReflect on the communicatiLynellBull52
Complete the following in your post:
Reflect on the communication failures you have witnessed in organizational change efforts, and answer the following:
· What was communication failure?
· What communication needs were not met?
· What was the result of these failures in communication?
· What needed to be done to correct this problem?
Submission:
Answer each question. Ensure you post the questions and then respond under the questions. (Copy questions and discussion item into your response and make each a header)
ADDITIONAL READING:
Getting the Vision Right
Much has been written about the importance of vision in leadership and specifically in organizational change efforts (Kotter, 2012), the idea being that clarity of this vision will become an aligning and galvanizing force, driving efforts and resources toward the needed change. There is some truth to this, but it is an incomplete truth.
It is too easy for a leader to run into a “blind spot” with his or her own vision alone. The vast majority of leaders are better served engaging their upper-level and mid-level teams for the feedback needed to avoid that type of “blind spot” problem. Vision is only as good as the problems it effectively addresses and the future it can bring to the organization. It is only as good as the future positioning that it creates for the organization to maximize its strengths, minimize its weaknesses, take advantage of opportunities that arise from this new position, and alleviate threats to organizational survival and success.
In a real sense, vision is about belief in a targeted future. So how do leaders miraculously attain this perfect vision? The answer is they do not, at least they do not do it effectively alone, although many leaders mistakenly act alone. Good vision gets built over time. It includes understanding the need and pain in the current organizational environment, coupled with monitoring the external environment for trends, new technologies, new processes, new markets, customer need, new opportunities, an expected future with clarity about the organization’s role in that future, and so forth. The list is large and growing every day, so good leaders must be prudent in developing accurate feedback loops to stay informed in order to have the knowledge base needed to develop an effective vision. In addition to this knowledge base, the vision cannot be created in a vacuum, meaning the leader develops the vision and everyone else implements it. A good vision will need to stand up to intense and difficult critical scrutiny from knowledgeable individuals in multiple areas, and good leaders will want this scrutiny and not avoid it or use their power to keep it from occurring, because this critical reflection and scrutiny of the vision coupled with the dialogue of knowledgeable individuals from various areas covers “blind spots” and ensures that the vision developed and the strategy to get there are evidence-based, and not wishful thinking.
The bottom line ...
1
Vergiliu Mihai
Communication Skills
Vergiliu Mihai
2
Vergiliu Mihai
Table of Contents
The process of communication (AC 1.1) ............................................................................... 3
Why communication within organisations is sometimes not effective (AC1.3) ...................... 4
Outline modes of communication used at for various purposes. Please support this with an
assessment of what other organisations do and examples of that could apply to SHDE (AC
1.2). ...................................................................................................................................... 6
How organisations portray themselves through their communication. What image does SHDE
Holdings currently have? Give an assessment of other organisations and the images they
portray through their communications (AC 2.3). ................................................................... 7
Explain formal communications systems that should be used to communicate with customers.
Please evaluate different systems. (AC 2.1) ........................................................................... 8
Conduct an analysis of the effectiveness of social media to communicate with customers.
Please use current examples (AC 2.2) .................................................................................... 9
An assessment of the impact of personal relationships on communications (AC 3.1) ............. 9
An assessment of impact of non-verbal communication on oral communications (AC 3.2) .. 12
Assess the effectiveness of your oral presentation skills (AC 4.4) ........................................ 12
Review your written communication (AC 5.4) including the conventions you have used (AC
3.4) ..................................................................................................................................... 13
Assess the impact of technology on oral and written communication (3.3) .......................... 14
Following our discussions I wish you to produce written documentation from this meeting
(AC 5.2) .............................................................................................................................. 15
3
Vergiliu Mihai
The process of communication (AC 1.1)
Communication is a process conveying intended meanings to a desired person. An effective
communication comprises of four crucial elements, which include sender, receiver, media
and message. The Sender is a person who has an idea that he or she plans conveying to other
person. The receiver is the person who is intended to receive the message which was sent by
the sender. The media refer to the channel that transfers message from the sender to receiver.
Finally, message refers to the information or idea that the sender wants to convey. Once the
receiver gets the message, he or she immediately gets back to sender through the same media ...
This document was prepared by Corporate Excellence – Centre for Reputation Leadership, and among other sources, contains references to the 6th edition of Corporate Communication, a book written by Professor Paul A. Argenti from the Tuck Business School of Dartmouth University, New Hampshire (USA) and published by McGraw Hill in 2013.
This whitepaper will demonstrate the importance of having an effective Cross-Functional Leader, someone who can bring clarity, strategy, organization and a collaborative approach to any company. Unfortunately too few companies have either brought in someone or identified personnel that have Cross-Functional Leadership skill set, which has caused one of the most insidious problems in corporate America…. “Welcome to the wonderful world of AMBIGUITY”
Employee engagement ideas and employee alignment best practicesJack Morton Worldwide
We live in a marketing world of explosive change: new channels, newly empowered consumers and a new commitment by brands to re-write old rules. So why is it so much still hasn’t changed about how brands engage their own employees?
But isn’t it all one brand? And isn’t it all dependent on creating a distinctive and great experience—with employees at the core? We think so. It’s time for new words to describe employee engagement—words that speak to a new approach to the field. Instead of employee engagement, how about Brand Experience Alignment?
Organizational Communication (Key Distinctions)Mira Magnaye
Presentation covers the directions of the communication, comparison between internal and external communications, and their significance in the organization.
Can social media become the final frontier in customer experience management? This research paper was published in Nirma International Conference on Management, 5th Jan 2012. ISBN 93-81361-68-1
10 things that i learnt about social media marketing in the past 100 days. Digital marketing tips that i would like to share with my friends, students and colleagues. Based on my personal experiences over the last 3 months. Packed into a nutshell.
A book review of "The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" by Randy Pausch.
Faced with a diagnosis that said Prof. Pausch had just 6 months of 'good health left'.. the 47 year old dynamo of enthusiasm delivers his 'last lecture' at Carnegie Mellon University (where he taught)... which actually becomes his legacy.
You can also watch his lecture at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo
What's the big fuss about FDI in Indian Retail Industry? Single brand and multi brand retailing being opened up in India. What are the pros and cons of FDI..?
Synthetic Fiber Construction in lab .pptxPavel ( NSTU)
Synthetic fiber production is a fascinating and complex field that blends chemistry, engineering, and environmental science. By understanding these aspects, students can gain a comprehensive view of synthetic fiber production, its impact on society and the environment, and the potential for future innovations. Synthetic fibers play a crucial role in modern society, impacting various aspects of daily life, industry, and the environment. ynthetic fibers are integral to modern life, offering a range of benefits from cost-effectiveness and versatility to innovative applications and performance characteristics. While they pose environmental challenges, ongoing research and development aim to create more sustainable and eco-friendly alternatives. Understanding the importance of synthetic fibers helps in appreciating their role in the economy, industry, and daily life, while also emphasizing the need for sustainable practices and innovation.
June 3, 2024 Anti-Semitism Letter Sent to MIT President Kornbluth and MIT Cor...Levi Shapiro
Letter from the Congress of the United States regarding Anti-Semitism sent June 3rd to MIT President Sally Kornbluth, MIT Corp Chair, Mark Gorenberg
Dear Dr. Kornbluth and Mr. Gorenberg,
The US House of Representatives is deeply concerned by ongoing and pervasive acts of antisemitic
harassment and intimidation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Failing to act decisively to ensure a safe learning environment for all students would be a grave dereliction of your responsibilities as President of MIT and Chair of the MIT Corporation.
This Congress will not stand idly by and allow an environment hostile to Jewish students to persist. The House believes that your institution is in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and the inability or
unwillingness to rectify this violation through action requires accountability.
Postsecondary education is a unique opportunity for students to learn and have their ideas and beliefs challenged. However, universities receiving hundreds of millions of federal funds annually have denied
students that opportunity and have been hijacked to become venues for the promotion of terrorism, antisemitic harassment and intimidation, unlawful encampments, and in some cases, assaults and riots.
The House of Representatives will not countenance the use of federal funds to indoctrinate students into hateful, antisemitic, anti-American supporters of terrorism. Investigations into campus antisemitism by the Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Committee on Ways and Means have been expanded into a Congress-wide probe across all relevant jurisdictions to address this national crisis. The undersigned Committees will conduct oversight into the use of federal funds at MIT and its learning environment under authorities granted to each Committee.
• The Committee on Education and the Workforce has been investigating your institution since December 7, 2023. The Committee has broad jurisdiction over postsecondary education, including its compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, campus safety concerns over disruptions to the learning environment, and the awarding of federal student aid under the Higher Education Act.
• The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating the sources of funding and other support flowing to groups espousing pro-Hamas propaganda and engaged in antisemitic harassment and intimidation of students. The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is the principal oversight committee of the US House of Representatives and has broad authority to investigate “any matter” at “any time” under House Rule X.
• The Committee on Ways and Means has been investigating several universities since November 15, 2023, when the Committee held a hearing entitled From Ivory Towers to Dark Corners: Investigating the Nexus Between Antisemitism, Tax-Exempt Universities, and Terror Financing. The Committee followed the hearing with letters to those institutions on January 10, 202
How to Make a Field invisible in Odoo 17Celine George
It is possible to hide or invisible some fields in odoo. Commonly using “invisible” attribute in the field definition to invisible the fields. This slide will show how to make a field invisible in odoo 17.
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Prepare a presentation or a paper using research, basic comparative analysis, data organization and application of economic information. You will make an informed assessment of an economic climate outside of the United States to accomplish an entertainment industry objective.
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http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/iateflwebinar2024
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Knowledge and skills frameworks, generally called competency frameworks, for ELT teachers, trainers and managers have existed for a few years now. However, until I created one for my MA dissertation, there wasn’t one drawing together what we need to know and do to be able to effectively produce language learning materials.
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1. The Corporate Communicator’s Lot
Is Not an Easy One
James L. Horton
What does corporate communications do? That responsible for assisting the CEO and Board with
seems to be a dumb question, but it isn’t. Not the primary strategic message but indirectly
really. The job is a jumble of responsibilities and responsible for other key audiences.
coordination that does not fit easily into an
organization chart. In fact, the job is not easy to
This creates a problem. The primary message is
understand, even within a matrix of translated into secondary messages needed to
responsibilities. implement strategy. The secondary messages are
what target audiences see most. While the
Corporate communications is a staff function that corporate communicator has firm responsibility for
melds message creation with media responsibility, the primary message, other corporate
coordination of message and media and media departments control secondary messages.
production. But how it does that varies by
company and CEO. Executives in charge of corporate departments are
the primary communicators to their discrete
The communications matrix (p. 6ff) shows audiences. The Corporate Communicator advises
audience communications responsibility in a them and only sometimes has direct responsibility
typical company. The CEO and Board have for communicating to customers, employees,
overall responsibility for strategy and shareholders, etc.
communications of strategy. Senior executives
reporting to the CEO implement strategy with Unfortunately, in most organizations, secondary
internal and external audiences essential to the messages tend to veer over time from the
survival and success of the organization. The strategic message. They blur the strategic
head of corporate communications is directly message or make it implicit.
Copyright, 2004, James L. Horton 1
2. radiate across an organization in many ways.
In corporate communications, the strategic Sometimes they flow down the chain of command
message, an organization’s reason for existence, smoothly from CEO to clerk. But they also rise
is either implicit or explicit. Executives and vertically to the CEO with no reference to adjacent
employees are supposed to know why they do departments, or they spill horizontally to adjacent
what they do, and the CEO reminds them lest they departments and never rise to the top, or they
forget and veer from the mission. Unfortunately, it flood in all different directions. In the process, the
is easy to veer off course. All organizations suffer meaning of a message can be distorted or lost.
from entropy, a loss of energy tending to disorder
and chaos. For example, a business opportunity is
disassembled as it moves through the
In most organizations, message blurring does not organization. One department looks at numbers
produce immediate impact. Messages are close while another examines concepts, a third
enough that an organization and audience examines the audience, a fourth the logistics, a
understand what a business is about. And, the fifth, the regulatory aspects and so one. The
strategic message is often integrated with the nature of disassembly is such that an opportunity
product and service. can lose importance and value while an
organization digests it. Communications facilitate
Damage occurs when an organization needs to evaluation of an opportunity, remind individuals of
adapt, when messages sent by each department a need for speed and maintain a holistic view of an
are no longer apt for audiences and when an opportunity that lies in pieces around a company.
audience’s embedded expectation must change in
face of facts. Then, secondary messages that blur The role of the Corporate Communicator is to help
the strategic message or use it implicitly become the CEO project the holistic view throughout the
traps that bog organizations and slow execution. company, to keep executives focused on strategy
lest they get sidetracked into irrelevant or
CEOs place high value on execution and speed. unprofitable activity. The corporate communicator
They want flexible, adaptable organizations that helps make the implicit explicit through connecting
move quickly to capitalize on opportunities before dots between secondary and primary messages.
competitors do. They rely on their formal and The corporate communicator is part of the CEO’s
informal communications networks to guide the communication machinery to guide employees,
organization into new directions. But customers, shareholders, regulators and others
communications are not simple and messages into a proper view of the company and its mission.
Copyright, 2004, James L. Horton 2
3. But this is not all that corporate communications integration of messages then suffer the torment of
does. watching advice being ignored.
Corporate communications serves the CEO and The matrix shows why this is so. The corporate
senior executives in various ways. Sometimes the communicator is in a third or fourth position on the
department drives a message, sometimes it chart except in dealing with media. Hence, it is
coordinates, sometimes it facilitates in developing easy for executives to dispatch the corporate
and executing media and sometimes it is a communicator as a media relations person who
feedback point for target audiences. Corporate provides production support, if executives choose
communications does not have a function like a to use it. It is easier still to subordinate the
factory in which components enter at one end and corporate communicator just to one role among
autos leave at the other. It is closer to grease that several the communicator should be performing –
keeps machinery work smoothly or regulators to for example, working with business media. It is
prevent machines from stamping parts out of endemic that corporate communication’s function
tolerance. But it is focused on the strategic is fractioned with departments taking a portion of
message, the why of the organization’s existence the job and cutting it from corporate
and it supports message execution through its communications – e.g., marketing controls
production facilities, if it has them. Consistent with marketing publicity and Investor Relations controls
its amorphous function, corporate communications shareholder communications while Information
also serves as the primary contact for some Technology controls the Web page. Further, the
audiences, such as reporters and editors who corporate communications leader is often at a
broadcast the company’s intents, successes and lower rank than heads of other departments and
failures. open to treatment as a subordinate of multiple
bosses, all of whom want their needs served now.
The job of a corporate communications executive,
then, is equally unclear. Department executives The result over time is what a CEO should not
are justified in asking what a corporation want – dilution of the primary message in favor of
communications leader is doing at their meetings. secondary messages. Marketing focuses on
Moreover, when a CEO fails to support the selling and ignores shareholders. Investor
corporate communications leader, the job is well relations focuses on shareholders and forgets
nigh impossible. There is nothing a corporate operations. Operations focuses on manufacturing
communications leader can do but plead for and logistics and pays no attention to Human
Resources.
Copyright, 2004, James L. Horton 3
4. Corporate communications is only as strong as a happens, the corporate communicator is more of a
CEO allows it to be, and the corporate barrier than facilitator internally. Other executives
communications leader gains strength in direct are left to fend for themselves and their
proportion to personal credibility the leader has communications needs.
with the CEO.
There are more ways for corporate
If the CEO has high regard for the head of communications to be misapplied than used
corporate communications, the leader can become correctly. And, that, in my experience is the case.
a communications adviser and counselor across Alternate uses of corporate communications are
the organization. Departmental and division more the rule than exception. Because of this,
executives dare not ignore the head of corporate one should ask whether corporate
communications and more likely, they welcome communications should be dispensed with as a
the leader because he or she provides insight into function. Would it not be better to establish a
how messages are likely to be received internally communications structure that accounts more for
and externally. the reality of an organization than the desire of
corporate communications leadership? This
If a CEO has little regard for the head of corporate appears to be have been done in some
communications, the leader has no place at organizations, but there are ramifications in
meetings in which the future of the organization changing structure.
and its opportunities are decided. The corporate
communicator becomes little more than a media For one, the CEO works harder to maintain the
relations person and functionary who supports strategic vision throughout the organization. The
departmental requests for writing, media burden is on the CEO to review what divisions and
placement, events, promotions and multimedia departments are communicating and to rein them
production. in. Secondly, there is diminution of the strategic
message over time by comparison to secondary
The same thing happens if a CEO considers the messages in which departments have vested
corporate communications leader to be a personal interest. The CEO works harder to fight entropy.
publicist for the CEO. The head of corporate Third, there is a loss of insight into what
communications becomes an aide-de-camp for departments are doing as they communicate. A
arranging speeches, coordinating interviews, corporate communicator, when used well,
writing remarks and advising the CEO how to provides eyes and ears for the CEO on
respond to crises and opportunities. When this communications matters and a warning device for
Copyright, 2004, James L. Horton 4
5. the CEO when departments stray off message. watching someone else placed between the
Fourth, there is loss of practical communications corporate communicator and the CEO. That
advice to departments, which departments need in executive is often from Human Resources or
their work. Fifth, there is loss of proportion about administration.
communications. Executives are trained in
control. They control operations, messages and Corporate communications is not a business for
media. But unfortunately, communications results the fainthearted.
are often uncontrolled because they go to
unpredictable humans who understand messages
in different ways. A corporate communicator A Note on the Matrix.
understands this well – or should.
The matrix starts with the message receiver and
In some organizations, corporate communications works down through message-sender, messages
is a place to dump communications functions no and media. Normally, a diagram would start with
one wants or knows what to do with. It is like executives, the message-senders, and work down
Human Resources, a repository for functions no to message receivers. This reversed presentation
one else wants. Because of this broad recognizes that communications get others to do
responsibility and amorphous mission, corporate something and unless they do it, there is no
communications is destined in some organizations organization. Customers must buy goods and
to live in shadows – used but not appreciated and services. Employees must make and deliver them.
dismissed when there is no perceived need for it. Owners must risk capital with an expectation of
The corporate communications practitioner suitable return. Regulators must trust a company
accepts this as a condition of the job and works to enough to permit it to exist.
show the value of what the department does.
Reversing the matrix and putting the audience at
The reward for good internal merchandising of the the top recognizes what is often forgotten in
function’s value is an increase in credibility with organizations. They do not exist for and
the CEO and senior executives. The punishment communicate to themselves. They exist for what
for failure to show what one has done lately for the they achieve outside of themselves.
CEO is dismissal from the job or the humiliation of
Copyright, 2004, James L. Horton 5
6. Communications Matrix
Audiences Overall Customers Owners
Segments Loyal Occasional Potential Former Competitors Buy-side Sell-side Individual Internal
Direct Responsibility CEO & Board Marketing/Sales CFO
Primary Message/Strategy CEO & Board CEO CEO
Secondary Messages Corp Com Marketing/Sales CFO
Message transmission Corp Com Marketing/Sales Investor Relations
Primary/2dry message
coord Corp Com Corp Com
Internal Media Support Corp Com Corp Com Corp Com
Production Production Production
Copyright, 2004, James L. Horton 6
7. Audiences Internal/Employees Govt/Regulators
Customer- Industry
CEO Board Mngrl Supervisors facing Support Retirees Federal State Local Intl Assoc
Direct Responsibility Human Resources Govt Afffairs/Legal
Primary Message/Strategy CEO CEO
Secondary Messages Human Resources Govt Afffairs/Legal
Message transmission Human Resources Govt Afffairs/Legal
Primary/2dry message
coord Corp Com Corp Com
Internal Media Support Corp Com Corp Com
Production Production
Copyright, 2004, James L. Horton 7
8. Internal
Audiences Communications Influentials
3rd-party
Network Databases Operations Media Testers
Direct Responsibility CIO Operations Corp Com Developers
Primary Message/Strategy CEO CEO CEO CEO
Corp.
Secondary Messages CIO Operations Comm Developers
Corp. Corp.
Message transmission CIO Operations Comm Comm
Corp. Corp.
Primary/2dry message coord Corp Com Corp Com Comm Comm
Internal Media Support Corp Com Corp Com Corp Com Corp Com
Production Production Production Production
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James L. Horton, founder of online-pr.com, has more than 25 years of experience in the PR business.
Copyright, 2004, James L. Horton 8