This week on Street Talking in NEXT, I discuss the increasingly important role of corporate communicators in organizations and the heightened expectations C-suite executives have of them.
‘There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.’ Who can forget Brutus’ stirring words to Cassius urging an attack on Marcus Antonius and Octavian’s forces in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar? Centuries later, the passion infused in his speech still lights a spark in perceptive hearts to grab opportunities before they flee away to eternal regret.
I think such an opportunity beckons to corporate communicators right now. Whether they recognize that history is offering them an invitation card to move from the tactical to the strategic is another matter entirely. Frankly, I think they have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to redefine their role in the hierarchy of corporate relevance.
A perfect analogy would be with IT professionals around the Y2K bug panic who leveraged a need for their skills to rise on the pole of corporate value. Suddenly, these guys – they were mostly male – who were seen as just geeks tinkering away in poorly lit air-conditioned rooms came to be accorded the respect of critical business infrastructure engineers.
Last year, I heard the most scalding comment ever made by a CEO on his company’s communications team. He said that they were ‘harmless data gatherers and speech writers. I only employ them because they know the press people.’ How insulting and unfair.
When I asked him if he had ever given them the opportunity to be anything more, he asked aloud ‘why should I?’ I left his office in a daze. Yet I wonder how much of this erroneous impression had been fostered by his communications people.
In spite of his dismissal, I persist in the belief that his words reflect a deep-seated frustration at the inability of that department to measure up to his expectations of what it ought to be doing to support the business goals of the company.
This week, Lamido Sanusi, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, echoed some of those views at 19th Financial Market Dealers’ Association (FMDA) Conference in Abuja. Speaking of the performance of the Central Bank’s corporate communications department, the governor recognized that:
Communication is a big problem and it is something we are working on. A lot of what we have said here should be said here should be something you click on the Central Bank website and find easily. So what we are trying to do is to source a communications adviser. I think what has happened is that a lot of corporate communications at the Central Bank has been dedicated to dealing with the press. . . Two hours after press conferences, I have to check to see if the communiqué is out because somebody who is supposed to do it automatically needs to be alerted before he goes and puts it up.’
A case in point would be waiting for the CBN’s web administrator to put up a transcript of the governor’s speech given at the Professor Sylvester Monye Foundation on July 9, 2010 two weeks after the event.
In this networked age, when news travels across the world at the blinking speed and virality of a 140-character tweet, the importance of a rapid response corporate communications function has never been more urgent. No organization, and that includes listed companies, regulatory agencies, government departments, private companies and non-profits, can afford to move at different pace in the on- and offline worlds.
In fact, to regard of the web as the ‘far and away’ and the 3-dimensional real world as the ‘here and now’ is as archaic as relics in the National Museum. The Great Cyber Divide no longer exists. In responding to customers, dealing with stakeholders, updating investors, communicating in a crisis and reaching employees it is an own goal not to synchronize the two acts.
Speaking of web-lag, First Bank, which has been in the news lately over the resignation of three executive directors on a single day, July 16, provided further evidence of the frustration described by Lamido Sanusi at the CBN.
I have cited the cases of web usage, not because the speed of updating an organization’s website makes a communications professional of great value in itself. That would be too simplistic.
Rather I used the web to illustrate that if on a simple matter, and it really is a basic issue, as logging in to a content management system (CMS) and updating information, they are found wanting, then they still have a long way to go. I cannot recall a time when the fates of organizations depended more on the competence of their communications officers. They will have no one else to blame if they do not rise to the challenge.
The original article may be read here on the NEXT website.
One cannot help noticing how Niyi Meka Olowola, Oando's Head of Corp Comms, is nodding in approval. Maybe Goldman Sachs can learn lessons.04:47:49 PM January 25, 2012from HootSuite
It's at times like these companies praise heaven for media-savvy CEOs.Among Nigerian business leaders,Wale Tinubu, is easily among the best.04:46:01 PM January 25, 2012from HootSuite
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