Communications strategy can avoid common pitfalls

by Charles W. Hucker

for the Business Journal

In recent years, the pre-eminent position of Peter Drucker as management guru to American business may be under challenge from the cartoon strip "Dilbert."

One of my favorite "Dilbert" cartoons captures the common pitfalls of corporate communications predictable, clich?d, reactive and too tactical.

In this cartoon, a corporate executive is meeting with a small group of employees:

Corporate executive: "Companies must learn to embrace change."

Employees (thinking to themselves): "Uh-oh. It's another management fad. Will it pass quickly, or will it linger like the stench of a dead woodchuck under the porch?"

Corporate executive: "I think we should do a 'change' newsletter."

Employees (straight-faced, thinking to themselves): "Woodchuck."

"Dilbert" satirizes the all too-common tendency of management to underestimate the intelligence of its employees. And, too often, management reacts in knee-jerk fashion to any development that requires communications by calling for an article in the company newsletter or creating a new newsletter.

That reaction fails to address three questions that a company's leaders should ask themselves.

?What is the objective?

?What is the message?

?Who is the audience and what information will help the audience?

Only after these strategic questions are answered carefully can an organization pick the tactics that will ensure the achievement of its communications objectives and reach its business goals.

Unfortunately, the word strategy has been cited in various newspaper columns as a buzzword a label that is intended to be pejorative. But the reality is that successful organizations always have employed strategies, whether they were called that or not.

So, if a well-developed communications strategy is beneficial, is it logical to assume that most major American companies have such a document? No!

A recent survey conducted for the International Association of Business Communicators found that only one-third of the companies interviewed based their communications on a well-defined communications strategy. The IABC survey found that high-performing organizations were far more likely than all other companies to have a formal communications strategy.

An example of this correlation is Hallmark Cards Inc., which has had a company-wide communications strategy for more than a decade. That document, which was drawn up by the company's senior executives and its professional communications staff, has guided successfully the company's evolving communications activities.

What are the results of a successful corporate communications strategy?

?Linkage of communications programs to the organization's overall business goals.

?A proactive inclination, rather than a reactive stance.

?Thoughtful and considered activities in contrast to impulsive responses.

?The avoidance of random results.

?Communications efforts that are interconnected rather than disjointed.

The communications strategy becomes the platform for guiding all types of business communications media relations, employee communications, shareholder relations, public affairs and crisis communications.

Likewise, the strategy leads to the appropriate communications tactics. The IABC study cites the need for "a thoughtful mix of communications methods and tools." Most successful companies use some combination of mass and targeted print materials, meetings for face-to-face and two-way communication, video, telephone, e-mail, intranet, the World Wide Web and other electronic vehicles.

(Charles W. Hucker, a retired vice president at Hallmark Cards Inc. and adjunct professor of business communications at the Bloch Business School at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, operates a management consulting firm. His company is a member of the Springfield Chamber of Commerce.)

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