Leaders say they want more strategic communication support as well as change communication help. Yet they and others still have high expectations for tactics. Plus, communication team members also are often more comfortable delivering on the tactics.
How do you deliver both the strategic and the tactical?
If you’re like most of Connect’s clients, you’re already drowning in work. Yet, you’re concerned that you’re working extraordinarily hard yet getting ordinary results. All too often, you’re getting sucked into fixing the trivial many instead of focusing on the vital few.
It’s time to step back and re-examine what you’re doing and how you’re doing it in a systematic, methodical and strategic way.
You definitely need to focus on the strategic without deserting the tactical.
You also need to adopt a work system that helps you deliver reliable, consistent and high quality strategic and tactical communication services and products.
And, you certainly need to be easy to work with, supporting leaders in dealing with ambiguous situations that test their candor, credibility and trust.
However, you can’t just wave a wand and transform yourself into a strategic leadership communication role. You need to figure out how you’ll address these challenges:
- How to achieve more consistent, predictable, measurable results that are directly linked to and support your organization’s results.
- How to identify and mitigate operation and reputational risks that can hurt your organization’s results and reputation.
- How to streamline your tactical work so you can free up time and resources to focus on actions that drive more value for the organization.
By addressing these challenges though, you can reap these key benefits:
- Close the gap between what you’re doing each day and what your executives are looking for in terms of support. For example, these days, many executives are wanting more opportunities to:
- Explain to employees about the business challenges facing the company and enroll employees to help them come up with solutions
- Engage in direct dialogue with employees to collaborate on solutions and build greater trust
- Develop their informal and formal communication skills without filters.
- Become a trusted, valued business advisory group within your organization that leaders view as indispensable and turn to for critical, creative support and advice.
- Improve the performance of your communication function so that you’re adding value, achieving measurable results and making an impact on the success of the organization.
How do you get to this state?
To become a high-performing communication team, you need to be committed to providing value to your customers—primarily but not exclusively, the leaders who fund your budget.
You also need to view your work as a system that includes repeatable sets of steps, action and tools. By working smarter not harder, you can provide quality results with predictable outcomes. You also can work more effectively and efficiently, making continuous improvements that eliminate waste and optimize resources.
Connect can help you make the transformation. We have a proven, award-winning track record working with communication functions and departments to help them tackle the three “P’”s: purpose, process and people.
This includes:
- Defining your purpose to add the most value.
- Revising or setting up processes so you can work more effectively and efficiently. (This also involves finding and eliminating non-value add work that sucks time, energy and other resources from you and your staff.)
- Determining what capabilities you need in your people and how to develop them.
We work with communication leaders and their staffs to examine the structure, operations and staffing of their communication departments to maximize the value they provide. We also help you determine the best way to deliver on your current commitments while making changes as well as preparing your staff to get ready for the new work and challenges they face, including adopting new mindsets.
We help you get the will and skills to get over the hill to become more valuable and trusted.
If you are ready to take the next step, contact us for a complimentary strategy session. During this session, we will explore your current situation, challenges and opportunities.
We also will determine if we’re the right fit for you. After the conversation, you’ll have a clearer picture of what you need to do to become a stronger, more strategic communication function.
The conversation will take approximately one hour and can be done by phone.
Email us at info@connectconsultinggroup.com. We look forward to speaking with you!
Also, for external recognition about Connect’s work in this area, see PR Goes All Marketing in Reconnecting Employees of IT Giant HP with Human Resources Communications, PRNewsOnline.com, August 15, 2011, and Leading and learning by example , CW Magazine, IABC, July/August 2011.
To learn more about us, you can look at our other services, read about how we work, review our case studies that show how we’ve helped our clients achieve results, or find out more.
