Predictions and advice for the communication profession
Check out the 10 communication issues raised most often (according to several major organizational communication studies) and some advice for handling them from IABC’s best-selling manual The IABC Handbook of Organizational Communication.
Excerpt from the fourth edition of The IABC Handbook of Organizational Communication, available at the IABC Knowledge Centre. Member price: US$80, non-member price: US$85
By Katherine Woodall
During the past few years, the communication profession seems to have achieved the goal of previous generations: it has a seat at the table and now needs to ensure that its observations, advice, and support can contribute to business success. The future of organizational communication will rest on greater levels of alignment with business goals and measurement to demonstrate tangible results.
According to several major organizational communication studies, the following are the issues raised most often and some advice for handling them:
1. Chief communication officer. Communication professionals need to become gurus of technology themselves or at minimum form effective alliances with their information technology organizations. A trend seems to be emerging of blending communication, marketing, organizational development and information technology.
2. New media — Blogs, instantaneous messaging, direct to consumer. Every new technology presents added complexity of the media we must master and maintain. The emergence of blogs suggests another avenue for employees, customers, and various segments of your organization and its many constituencies to communicate.
3. Measurement/ROI. There is an increased focus on and acceptance of the importance of measurement for the function. I predict and hope that the next phase of measurement will provide even more concrete connections to business results. If communication professionals want to be in the executive sessions, then they will need to justify their budgets as rigorously as any line leaders and as effectively as any CFO.
4. Call to action. Think like a CEO, know the numbers like a CFO, be as informed about new technology as the CIO. I predict that the renaissance of the past will reemerge for communication professionals and that there will be a demand for leaders in communication who can think even more broadly about their roles and their work.
5. Add value. Know your audiences, and do not be afraid to tell leaders what employees and other constituencies are really thinking, feeling, saying and predicting how they may act (on such matters as turnover, strikes and brand ambassadors).
Part of the advisory nature of our roles will require us to deliver good and bad news effectively and on a regular basis to our peers in leadership. With the blurring of the lines of our work with that of other functions and internal communication overlapping increasingly external information, we will need to be able to use measurement and other trend data at our disposal to predict behavior of all constituencies.
6. Shake it up. Do not be afraid of change. This includes embracing and learning new skills ourselves and being willing and able to rotate our own teams to build their skills, knowledge, ability, experience, expertise and capability for growth.
7. Know yourself and your organization. This is a good time to assess ourselves, our communication programs and our organizations, and to be willing to recommend bold new changes if what we find does not serve us well. This may include retooling ourselves.
8. Listen and keep listening. Communication professionals must listen effectively to the organization to anticipate employee opinions, reactions and challenges on the horizon. In effect, we are the eyes and ears of our organizations and may be in the rare positions of sharing information with other executives that they cannot or do not receive candidly from other sources, but which they need to lead effectively.
Major studies predict there will be gaps in skilled knowledge workers in the future. Employees will remember how they were treated when times were tough as they consider where they wish to work during other phases of their careers.
9. Teach your staff; transfer those skills. We will all be more successful by devoting portions of our time to teaching the skills we learn. This includes internal development of our own staff and running effective communication training sessions for our organizations.
10. A brave new world. No one really knows what the future holds. I am optimistic that times will be positive for those who are broad-minded about change, are willing to change and learn new skills themselves, and can teach others.