Strategic Communications Starts at the Top

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In today’s world, limited resources force everyone to work smarter and focus on impact, outcomes and results. It doesn’t matter if you are a nonprofit CEO, a business executive, or a leader in government or philanthropy: you are working with less and you have to achieve more.

Strategic communications is a valuable tool that should be on your “mandatory” list. Do you have a Chief Communications Officer (CCO), like Apple or Google or the Gates Foundation? Do you realize the cost benefits when you align marketing, public relations and corporate social responsibility? Do you fully leverage your development and fundraising activities by connecting all the dots to tell a holistic story about who you are and what you do?

When it comes to measuring brand impact, increasing transparency, improving services, demonstrating value, recruiting employees, building partnerships and ensuring that programs are successfully integrated, funded and leveraged, strategic communications is the glue that can connect those dots.

It’s about connecting ALL the dots

So what is strategic communications? It’s a way of connecting your marketing and communications planning to organization strategy and business goals. It’s a way of thoughtfully, methodically shaping consistent messages and tactics to reach your key audiences—internally and out in the world. It’s a way to plan, execute and drive a conversation about who you are in order to efficiently achieve results and maximize your return on communications investment (ROCI).

Strategic communications is the meta thinking behind the “stuff” you create

A logo? A tagline? A brochure? All good. But they are not strategic unless they are part of a larger vision for the organization, one that is integrated across all types of traditional and interpersonal communications channels and dedicated to achieving measurable outcomes.

Why is this so important? Because in today’s world everyone is a communicator with the power to instantly reach millions of others 24/7. Without strategic communications, organizations risk having attitudes and perceptions about their products, brands or issues driven by those who know the least about them.

Strategic communications doesn’t just happen

Strategic communications happens when communications strategy is respected in the C-suite and throughout the organization. Early in the process and at the highest level, goals are set, success metrics are determined, target audiences are identified, messages are developed and communications channels are selected. And not just for external audiences. Employee communication has moved from a perfunctory component of human resources to a means of supporting organizational objectives and strategies. Collaboration and partnership opportunities are also stronger with strategic communications at the helm. That happens at the vision level, not the implementation level.

Fireside Tweets?

Learn from the best: the Obama administration has established a rapid-response media team to strategically coordinate social media messages in real time for citizens and stakeholders worldwide. For example, they immediately tweeted a picture of the President in his chair in the Oval Office during Clint Eastwood’s “empty chair” speech at the GOP convention.

Investing in strategic communications for grantees

A foundation can demonstrate understanding of a grantee’s needs and the communications challenges for an issue by identifying integrated strategic communications as an initiative requirement before the program is launched. No matter the size of the foundation or the issue at hand, strategic communications can be a hub for enhanced coordination among grantees.

As the Annie E. Casey Foundation has shared with child welfare agencies that are grantees of its Family to Family initiative: “The best media relations are neither automatic nor accidental but result from planned, targeted, and continuous attention from every agency employee. Agency leaders need to plan in advance, with full staff involvement, for dealing with the media during an agency crisis. By cultivating personal relationships with interested reporters, an agency can use the media to advance many of its own goals—public awareness of the need for foster/adoptive parents and support for the agency’s work and policy initiatives.”

Where do you start? At the top

Successful companies that recognize the value of strategic communications increasingly have a Chief Communications Officer (CCO) in the C-suite. When technology became a must-have core competency, technology leaders migrated to the C-suite and the Chief Information Officer (CIO) became the norm. Like technology, strategic communications is cross-disciplinary and integrated across traditional silos.

An organization’s CCO develops a program to communicate a vision of the organization and its objectives. With communications staff, an external and internal plan is developed and implemented.

The importance of strategic communications cannot be underestimated. In changing environments, people have questions. Their level of understanding, trust and action will vary based on how many versions of the message they hear from different sources. Control the message by communicating consistently with a predetermined and honest message.

Here are four important steps you can take immediately to ready your organization for strategic communications:

1. Assess where you are now

Use consultants or internal resources for a formal assessment. Who is saying what to whom and how often? Do all of your silos (PR, marketing, advertising, sales) collaborate? Is communications strategy embedded in your grant making? Does communications include development? Whatever sector, establish where you are and, more importantly, are not connecting the dots.

2. Determine required skill sets and assess leadership

Unless you’re already connecting all the dots, you need to look at who is leading. The CCO often takes responsibility for social media, community relations, corporate social responsibility and corporate philanthropy. Do your senior people in communications roles have these diverse skill sets? Do they have the skills and leadership necessary to bring these historically disconnected teams together?

3. Create an implementation plan

This will likely involve organizational development, restructuring roles and reporting chains. Building robust, fully functioning communications capacity takes skills. And you need to budget accordingly.

4. Read the survey of COOs

Talent management solution provider Korn/Ferry conducted a survey of COOs and their challenges in 2012 entitled “The Chief Communications Officer.” Read about everything from the evolving job description to salary and compensation packages.