I promise to keep this short. I've just attended a two-day Melcrum marathon, their strategic communications summit, and came away stimulated, excited, frustrated and exhausted. An excellent presentation by the CEO and head of comms of Production Services Network, and oil and gas engineering company based in Aberdeen, had me leaping up and down in my seat with joy. A company with really strong values, fantastic corporate responsibility, a great attitude and a super-engaged CEO. Oh, and really successful, beautiful growth pattern, and able to turn down work it thought was too dangerous or simply politically a bit off. Wow!
Then they showed their values collateral, and described their comms model, and it was all so simple and do-able, nothing flash, just good solid stuff. But here's the killer - tiny budget, and no agency involvement to speak of! They did most of it themselves. Hence my frustration. Here was a living example of a 'perfect client' - really strong belief in communication, good people, good product - except for one tiny flaw: they don't need us. Or maybe they do ... In some ways, making something that's already good even better is a more exciting potential challenge than taking the bad and making it good.
Interesting stuff, too, about CEOs: great story from Stephen Martin, CEO of the Clugston Group, a construction firm, who was one of only two UK CEOs brave enough to go and mingle with his workforce for a couple of weeks for Channel 4's 'Undercover Boss'. New to the job, it was fairly unlikely that builders on site would know what he looked like, and in the spirit of great television, they told him everything he didn't really want to hear - but then did. A great story, and a great way for a boss to learn what really goes on in an organisation. Give the man even more credit, once he came clean, he then started to make all kinds of changes in the company to make it stronger.
There was all sorts of other stuff too - some of it technical, some practical, some just fun. But Russell Grossman, director of comms at the Dept of Business, Skills & Innovation, left me with something in particular to think about: communicators need to take risks. The time of being simple conduits of information is over. People in comms are influencers and persuaders; if they're worth their salt, they are the people convincing their bosses, the CEOs, to be more open, transparent, interactive and all the rest. In other words, they're encouraging very senior people to start working and acting in quite a different way. It takes courage.
15 October 2009
Strategic communication - the summit
I promise to keep this short. I've just attended a two-day Melcrum marathon, their strategic communications summit, and came away stimulated, excited, frustrated and exhausted. An excellent presentation by the CEO and head of comms of Production Services Network, and oil and gas engineering company based in Aberdeen, had me leaping up and down in my seat with joy. A company with really strong values, fantastic corporate responsibility, a great attitude and a super-engaged CEO. Oh, and really successful, beautiful growth pattern, and able to turn down work it thought was too dangerous or simply politically a bit off. Wow!
Then they showed their values collateral, and described their comms model, and it was all so simple and do-able, nothing flash, just good solid stuff. But here's the killer - tiny budget, and no agency involvement to speak of! They did most of it themselves. Hence my frustration. Here was a living example of a 'perfect client' - really strong belief in communication, good people, good product - except for one tiny flaw: they don't need us. Or maybe they do ... In some ways, making something that's already good even better is a more exciting potential challenge than taking the bad and making it good.
Interesting stuff, too, about CEOs: great story from Stephen Martin, CEO of the Clugston Group, a construction firm, who was one of only two UK CEOs brave enough to go and mingle with his workforce for a couple of weeks for Channel 4's 'Undercover Boss'. New to the job, it was fairly unlikely that builders on site would know what he looked like, and in the spirit of great television, they told him everything he didn't really want to hear - but then did. A great story, and a great way for a boss to learn what really goes on in an organisation. Give the man even more credit, once he came clean, he then started to make all kinds of changes in the company to make it stronger.
There was all sorts of other stuff too - some of it technical, some practical, some just fun. But Russell Grossman, director of comms at the Dept of Business, Skills & Innovation, left me with something in particular to think about: communicators need to take risks. The time of being simple conduits of information is over. People in comms are influencers and persuaders; if they're worth their salt, they are the people convincing their bosses, the CEOs, to be more open, transparent, interactive and all the rest. In other words, they're encouraging very senior people to start working and acting in quite a different way. It takes courage.
So let's hear it for courage.
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