This blog offers tips on strengthening relationships between organizations and their stakeholders through actions and more persuasive messages. These activities lead to a better reputation for the organization. To do these things, practitioners need solid information about the organizations for which they work and those organizations' stakeholders. Consequently they need to do research. The blog includes tips and ideas on this topic as well.
You may remember my post "Reputation is Built on Behavior" in which I argued that communications has very little to do with reputation, but the way an organization behaves does.
I just read an article on the MIT Sloan Management Review website in which Michael S. Hopkins interviews Marvin Odum, president of Shell Oil Co. The interview is to me very exciting, because it appears to be an excellent explanation of how an organization needs to manage itself to manage relationships with stakeholders (and I would say its reputation).
Among his points:
The technical side of a proposal is only "half of the equation. The other half is about communities and stakeholders."
He calls this a shift from organizations saying "Trust me. I'm going to do it the right way" to stakeholders demanding "'Show me and involve me. Make me part of this. I’m going to be part of these decisions going forward.'”
He further notes that this "... changes everything. It changes the way we think as a company. It raises our performance. And it changes the timeline of these projects."
Not anticipating "nontechnical" risks and opportunities adds time and, consequently, money to projects. Thus, anticipating them is good for the bottom line.
He goes on to say:
"If we can get our people thinking sufficiently from that point of view, not just working with stakeholders and listening to what they say but actually anticipating their needs, anticipating these 'nontechnical' risks and opportunities — and if we can get more people skilled in that way — then the more successful we’ll be, the shorter these project timelines will be, the more trust in Shell there will be."
Mr. Odum is talking about changing how people in the organization think about issues and how to manage them. This is change management. One of the concerns I shared about British Petroleum (BP) in the wake of the Gulf disaster (in the blog I mentioned above) was that aside from hand wringing and replacing the CEO, there were no signs that BP was doing anything to change a culture that has led to an absolutely dismal environmental record.
Mr. Odum also believes this approach leads to better performance:
"As you get better companywide at exploring, understanding and addressing those nontechnical risks, it drives innovation. Because mitigating those risks often drives you right back into the technology loop — back into asking how can you solve novel problems in novel ways, and how can you do it at affordable costs?"
Another point in the article I find to be genuinely thrilling, is Mr. Odum says Shell does scenario planning:
"We’ll look a half a century into the future, and we ask ourselves, 'Where is the world going to go?' We’re not looking to define a definitive answer; we’re looking to define the spread of options that the world has, that governments have, how priorities will change and how things will be implemented. And then we’re looking to understand how we would perform in each of those possible worlds. Then we bring it all the way back to today to see now what we need to do to drive toward being successful in that spread of potential outcomes."
That's what I call a solid approach to environmental management and a firm foundation for reputation management.
And getting more directly at the role communications plays in reputation management, Mr. Odum says:
"... the first thing that comes to my mind in that respect is the word “transparency.” The only way to approach the situation that we’re in is for a company like Shell to be a complete open book in terms of what we do, how we do it. And we have to be able to stand up to the criticism as well as reap the benefits that we get from being that transparent."
One key role communications can play in all of this is monitoring issues and anticipating the nontechnical risks and opportunities Mr. Odum cites by having a thorough understanding of stakeholder wants, needs and expectations.
While I've drawn some fairly long quotes from the article, there is in it much more of great value. I highly recommend you read it. That address again is: http://tinyurl.com/4lskbyn.
I've done a number of projects for CEOs who go to their heads of communications and say "We're tripping over our messages."In doing these projects, I've discovered most organizations are tripping over their policies as well.
The Challenge of Division of Labor
This happens because as organizations grow, no one person can do all the work required to maintain good working relationships with all the different stakeholder groups that become critical to the success of the organization.
These groups include:
Shareholders
Customers
Employees
Communities
Regulatory and legislative organizations
Vendors
Others
So, organizations have people in charge of:
Finance and investor relations
Marketing and customers
HR and employees
Community affairs
Regulatory and legislative affairs
Purchasing departments
Others
This makes great sense, because then these executives can devote their full attention to understanding and satisfying the needs of the group for which they are responsible.
Conflict Between Stakeholder Goals
But this is where the problem arises.In some ways, the needs and desires of each group conflict with those of the others. For example, shareholders want a solid return on their investment and employees want good pay and benefits.So revenue the organization generates must be allocated in a way that makes investors feel they are getting a good return and employees are getting their due for their work and engagement.
Example 1
I worked with a publicly held organization that did environmentally sensitive work. They asked us to develop an environmental positioning statement the company could use to communicate with all its stakeholder groups. When we did internal management interviews, the operating managers were unanimous in wanting to be as environmentally positive as possible. But the finance and accounting staff said "but it's not [the operating managers’] money." Their point was that investors might see being “environmentally friendly” as capital intensive and thus taking away from either their earnings per share or capital that could be reinvested to increase the value of their equity.
Responsive Communications Become Policy
The natural inclination of many executives would be to try to get the best return or benefit for the stakeholder group that executive represents.Each of these senior executives probably is responsible for communicating with his or her stakeholder group and may well embellish the communication to respond to what that group wants to hear. Before long, the communications going to one stakeholder group can openly conflict with those going to another.And once communications go out, staff, quite fairly, see them as representing what the organization believes, and what is in the communications becomes de facto policy.
Employees may well be shareholders.So they will get communications intended for employees and those intended for shareholders.In addition, investors and investment analysts make it a practice to read communications to as many stakeholder groups as they can in an effort to better understand the viability of the organization as an investment.Customers might be investors as well.And with the Internet and social media, it is getting easier and easier to examine what an organization communicates through different channels.
The CEO’s Role
In this context, the CEO's job is to balance the needs of all these stakeholders against each other and create a winning proposition for all.This is why it generally is the CEO who gets concerned when she or he sees conflicting communications to different stakeholder groups. This also is why it is critical to the success of many organizations to have a central communications platform and consistent policies.
Return to Example 1
In the example I related above, the CEO told me that he wanted the organization to be as environmentally positive as possible, but that he also wanted to be able to demonstrate to investors that this path was best for their investment.
Alignment
It also is important that these policies and communications be in line with the expectations of stakeholders.The CEO and management team need to know what stakeholders do expect (through interaction or research), and this should be one of the stars against which the CEO and management team steer the organization.
The other star should be the vision for the organization.In the best of all worlds, management’s vision of what the organization does matches what stakeholders want.
If this is the case, alignment usually is a matter of defining management’s vision by stakeholder group, determining how the stakeholder group thinks about its expectations of the organization and developing a set of consistent messages that state management’s intentions in language that is persuasive and accessible to the stakeholders. This also is the time to make sure the messages to each stakeholder group are consistent with each other.
This sounds simple, but in practice it may not be. Executives frequently interpret the organization's vision in a way that favors the stakeholder group for which they are responsible. (This is not necessarily a bad thing, because these executives become advocates for their stakeholder group within the organization.) However, coming to a set of messages and policies that are consistent across stakeholder groups often requires facilitation.
Lack of Alignment
If management vision and stakeholder expectations are not aligned, the organization needs to rethink its vision or find stakeholders that do align with their vision.
Example 2
An example of this situation might be an organization, for which I did an audit, that wanted to communicate to its customers that it was very customer-oriented. The research they themselves had done with their customers indicated customers did not believe this to be the case, and research we did with the organization’s employees indicated employees did not believe this to be the case. We suggested the organization change the communication to being aspirational. They could say they knew they had a problem with customer responsiveness and were working to improve it. They could even do reports on their progress. But to say they were customer-oriented, when their customers and employees knew otherwise, most likely would have damaged what credibility this organization had with these two stakeholder groups.
We've seen a number of reputation crises in the past few years.
COMMUNICATIONS
Much of the discussion around these crises in the communications community focuses on how well the organization communicated in response to the crisis. Were they forthright and forthcoming. Did they get the best information they had to the media quickly?
Sometimes, we see discussions of whether PR had a "seat at the table." Was the senior communications executive involved in the initial decisions that led to the crisis? Did he or she see the potential for damage to the organization's reputation and counsel against certain actions to help preserve the reputation. How did management respond?
This is all well and good. It's the kind of thing communications people think about and discuss. It's what we think we do. But communication is really only the very tip of the reputation iceberg.
THE REAL BASIS FOR REPUTATION
Reputation is based far more on actions -- the way an organization behaves. In this area, PR matters if it has a seat at the table, insight into the expectations stakeholders have for the organization's behavior and the ability to influence others around the table.
However, there are occasionally cases in which organizations simply behave badly. There frequently are potentially ameliorating circumstances for bad behavior. Did the whole organization behave badly, or just one or two individuals? Was this behavior condoned by management? Was the behavior intentional or a mistake? If the bad behavior was an aberration, then good behavior and communications probably can right the organization's reputation in time.
I believe that most organizations are run by honest people who want to treat their stakeholders and the community in which they operate fairly. I would put almost every CEO I've worked with in this category.
What troubles me are the organizations like Enron, that apparently are genuinely corrupt at the top and intentionally try to game the system. Or those in which corporate greed is really that, and outweighs sensible precautions to protect the community that gives it license to operate and the environment in which that community lives.
AL GOLIN'S "TRUST BANK"
Al Golin coined the phrase "Trust Bank" years ago when trying to explain the following concept to McDonald's. The idea is that if you build trust by making deposits in the "Trust Bank" (doing good) your stakeholders will let you make withdrawals in times of need, that is, they will give you the benefit of a doubt when things go against you.
I think Toyota has benefited from a "Trust Bank" effect. It has seen a rough patch or two lately, but through the years it has acted like a responsible corporate citizen, produced high-quality cars and built a loyal customer base.
THE BP CASE
BP, on the other hand, seems to have dug itself into a hole. According to a well referenced and corroborated entry in Wikipedia:
In September 1999, one of BP’s US subsidiaries, BP Exploration Alaska (BPXA), agreed to resolve charges related to the illegal dumping of hazardous wastes on the Alaska North Slope, for $22 million.
In August 2006, BP shut down oil operations in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, due to corrosion in pipelines leading up to the Alaska Pipeline. .... BP had spilled over one million litres of oil in Alaska's North Slope.
On 16 October 2007 Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation officials reported a toxic spill of methanol (methyl alcohol) at the Prudhoe Bay oil field managed by BP PLC. Nearly 2,000 gallons of mostly methanol, mixed with some crude oil and water, spilled onto a frozen tundra pond as well as a gravel pad from a pipeline.
Two weeks prior to the Deepwater Horizon explosion BP admitted that malfunctioning equipment lead to the release of over 530,000 lbs of chemicals into the air of Texas City and surrounding areas from April 6 to May 16 [2010]. The leak included 17,000 pounds of benzene (a known carcinogen), 37,000 pounds of nitrogen oxides (which contribute to respiratory problems), and 186,000 pounds of carbon monoxide.
These citations relate to BPs environmental record before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, and we all know about that disaster. The Wikipedia article also includes references to numerous safety, political and price manipulation offenses by BP.
MANAGEMENT->POLICIES->CULTURE->BEHAVIOR
According to an article in The Seattle Times, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, told BP executives in a September, 2006, hearing: "BP's policies are as rusty as its pipelines. I'm even more concerned about BP's corporate culture of seeming indifference to safety and environmental issues."
I believe Representative Barton's concern is well founded. A consistent history, such as BPs, suggests a consistent culture from which that history has sprung.
REBUILDING REPUTATION
BP has a new CEO, who seems to be making changes. But will he be able to change a culture that has led to the consistent problems we've seen?
Despite BP's green advertising and green investments, I think we all would agree it does not have a green reputation today. Moreover, because it has communicated that it is green, while demonstrating that it is not, it has not presented itself as authentic; it says one thing and does another. This is not the way to build trust.
I would argue BP's reputation is a shambles not because of poor communication but because of poor behavior.
And no matter how good BP's PR team is, it cannot repair this reputation on the outside. This reputation must be repaired from within.
The last time I reviewed the tracking data on my website, I found one person had reached it searching this question: What effect has the recession had on relationships between organizations and their stakeholders?
Unfortunately, my site disappointed this web searcher, and I'd like to correct that here.
Though I have theories about this, I don't know the answer. So, I asked the question on Linkedin and got some great responses.
Two themes emerge:
The importance of the basic brand and reputation assets
The importance of stakeholders
Brand and Reputation Assets
Don Stacks, professor of public relations at University of Miami and my colleague on IPR's Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation wrote:
Public relations now has the task of establishing CONFIDENCE in an organization ... . The recession showed flaws in advertising and marketing, which operate through paid placement and not the third party endorsement of opinion leaders. Hence, due to the recession, PR has a new tool in its toolbox and a new message strategy that can increase or decrease stakeholder perceptions of an organization's credibility, relationships, reputation, and trust.
Christine Nelson, Communications/PR Consultant at Ingenuity Marketing Group, St. Paul, added:
We've had to remind ourselves that it's not just about how smart we are or how good our products are, but also if our stakeholders trust us and think highly of us. Reputation and integrity will continue to be critical as consumers control the market.
The Importance of Stakeholders
Mark R. Phillips, APR, v
ice president, corporate communications for the USO and another IPR Commission colleague commented:
As our donors' and volunteers' personal and corporate resources got tighter during the recession, we assumed they would appreciate knowing exactly how their contributions were helping. This necessitates increased transparency and clear, ongoing communication, which we have tried to provide.
Christine Nelson wrote along similar lines:
Commercial organizations are paying greater attention to loyal and longtime external stakeholders, because the recession has painfully reminded them of who pays their bills. Competition is coming from organizations larger and smaller, and there is no guarantee of when new business will come in the door.
We have to return to the basics of: increased and prompt communication to ensure customer satisfaction ... .
I'm sure the recession has had many more effects on relationships between organizations and their stakeholders than we see here. So, please feel free to add to the discussion by commenting.
In past articles I've suggested that we, as communications and business people, should question our assumptions rather than blindly building programs and campaigns based on common knowledge or our gut feel.
However, I do not mean to suggest these necessarily are wrong, only that we should test them.
The last few months have provided two very high-profile examples of brand reputation crises: Toyota and Tiger Woods. For those of us in the public relations and communications profession, common knowledge is to get out in front of the media as soon as possible to tell them what you know and what you do not know and to apologize for any potential wrong doing and then to keep the media updated as new information becomes available. For those in the legal profession, common knowledge might be closer to "say as little as possible to avoid liability."
Kellogg Insight, an eZine published by the Kellogg School of Management, recently ran an article (http://tinyurl.com/yzatvsu)based on research that tested these two assumptions. The research was conducted by Eric Luis Uhlman, George E. Newman, Victoria L. Brescoll, Adam D. Galinsky and Daniel Diermeir.
They ran five experiments. Three examined a range of responses to crises and two explored how a crisis affected perceptions of a corporate logo and water product usage. The following is from the Kellogg Insight article:
Participants in all studies reacted more positively when the company involved in the crisis gave an engaged response. When the company involved in the sexual harassment case firmly stated that inappropriate behavior was not tolerated and that allegations would be taken seriously, participants thought better of the company, drank more of their water, and said it tasted better than when the company gave a defensive or “no comment” response. In the harmful food additive case, the results were strikingly similar. ....
.... Executives believe a “no comment” statement will inspire the public to reserve judgment until all the facts are made public, Diermeier thinks. .... But “the moment you say something as a company, the level of trust you have is much lower than if you say it as an individual,” he adds. “Companies are really not trusted a lot.” ....
... Many legal departments will advise executives to stick with “no comment” to limit their company’s liability. But by giving such a statement, executives may lose far more in brand value than they could gain in minimizing legal risks, Diermeier says.
“There is a clear sense that a crisis strategy that’s engaged and reaching out works better than one that is self-justifying,” Diermeier says. “And most important is that saying nothing, being quiet in these cases has basically the same effect as if you are confrontational.”
Now, PR and other communications professionals have some real data to present to their CEOs when the lawyers are saying to keep mum. And, in this case, our assumptions, based in large part on a body of professional experience, appear to have been right.
Yesterday was Sunday, and I could no longer stand the clutter in my office. So, I sorted and filed. Inevitably, I came across a number of items that called for some kind of action. One of these was the December, 2009, issue of Public Relations Tactics from PRSA
It had an article on Bob Garfield's November 11, 2009, speech at the the PRSA 2009 International Conference in San Diego. Garfield is an Advertising Age columnist and author of The Chaos Scenario. He made numerous great points, but the one that resonates most with me is:
Every institution that has formerly dictated from the top down must begin treating its constituencies not as the anonymous hoi polloi, but as genuine stakeholders and partners. ... In a connected world, they have far more sway over you than you have over them.
This paradigm shift takes me back to textbook public relations and the function's role in border spanning. As I read it in my early textbooks, border spanning meant knowing and understanding how external stakeholders felt about issues pertaining to the organization and preparing the organization to address these issues. Sometimes this was to happen through adapting or changing policy, but more often, through one-way communications.
As time went on, my professional work as a communicator and my MBA emphasis on management policy led me to believe the real role of border spanning is to align the organization with the wants and needs of its stakeholders. On behalf of those first texts I read and those that have come since, they probably meant what I came to understand. But in practice, which I saw working in PR agencies, there was much more communicating in an attempt to align outside stakeholders with what management already thought and wanted to do than there was policy change to adapt the organization to the wants and needs of its stakeholders.
I believe that in the organizations that have been lauded as having excellent PR functions, the latter happens at least as often as the former. But with the proper management mindset, one which seeks to understand the wants and needs of stakeholders in the first place, and orient the organization to meet those wants and needs, border spanning becomes keeping up with stakeholder wants and needs rather than discovering them. And with the organization oriented correctly in the first place, adapting becomes a less extreme activity. The right management mindset is what it is all about.
What I believe Mr. Garfield is saying is social media is creating a world where non-alignment not only is a disadvantage but ultimately is a prelude to failure.
I have spent 30 years in the PR business listening to senior managers say "What we really want is good press coverage" from PR. Now, the press is an increasingly smaller part of what we think of as media. Social media, which is becoming an increasingly larger and more influential part of this media, requires a conversation. A civil conversation requires respect and understanding between participants, and, since one of the participants is an organization and the other a stakeholder, organizations need to understand and listen to these stakeholders if they want good media, good relationships and, in the end, good business.
The best self-help book I ever read is Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. In his chapter on how to be a good conversationalist, Mr. Carnegie says its simple. Just be a good listener. Since conversations seem to be the best way to manage social media, organizations need to become good (and I will add "responsive") listeners if they wish to succeed in the brave new ever-more transparent world.
On January 11, the Associated Press released a story by Ashley Heher about Domino's new ad campaign, in which it shares Tweets and what appears to be actual focus group footage of people saying less than kind things about Domino's pizza -- cardboard crust, sauce that tastes like ketchup, flavorless cheese and the like.
We then hear from Domino's President Patrick Doyle that Domino's has heard what its customers are saying and doing something about it by reformulating their pizza.
Ms. Heher's article goes on to quote marketing experts, some of whom offer cautionary tales regarding this kind of advertising and how it might cause confusion among otherwise loyal customers.
I don't know whether these marketing gurus are right (and in fairness, they do not purport to know either, they only cite examples), but I applaud what Domino's is doing.
In social media these days, people talk about brands whether brand management likes it or not. If customers do not like a brand they frequently will say so. So, Domino's cannot keep people's evaluations of its pizza a secret.
How might Domino's manage against this? How might it maintain or grow revenues, when its customers say its product is sub-par?
Traditionally, Domino's strength has been its fast, hot delivery, not the quality of the actual pizza. According to a news segment I watched, Domino's still rates number one in delivery and service. But it is about sixth in pizza quality. Moreover, for the first three quarters of 2009, its U.S. year-over-year same-store sales are down. Fast, hot delivery may not be enough.
Apparently, Domino's management thinks not. So they've let customers know they are listening by sharing with customers what Domino's heard through its monitoring and research. And they have come up with a new and improved product.
I can't tell you whether it really is better. That's for Domino's customers to judge. Whether Domino's is successful in reversing its sales declines remains to be seen. But they deserve credit for listening to their customer’s complaints, publicly acknowledging them and then changing the product in an attempt to fix it rather than just turning up the volume on their advertising. I would like to think that, rather than just a clever ad campaign, this is an example of the kind of transparency I'd like to see from all organizations.
So, I applaud the gesture.
For as most of us who help organizations communicate know, more often than not, the problems they face are not the result of poor communication but of poor products and services. Bravo to Domino's for addressing the core problem rather than the window dressing and for being transparent about it.
A colleague on LinkedIn asked "how social media sites could benefit a B2B corporation, and could putting your B2B organization out there also open up potential for damaging info?"
One commenter asked that the poster "describe what you mean by 'potential for damaging info.'" In addition, I would ask: What are your business goals? Without the answer to these questions, social media becomes a tactic in search of a strategy. Practitioners will have no way to determine whether the social media program is doing what they want it to do, because they have not articulated what they want it to do. Social media programs should be designed with an end in sight and knowledge of the stakeholder group's social media habits to determine which techniques, if any, are likely to succeed.
As Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff note in their book "Groundswell," social media can enhance engagement and magnify the influence of advocates in a company's customer base.
Many companies created product or service user groups long before social media was available. I worked with a company that sponsored annual user-group meetings as a service to customers and to learn how they could improve the company's product. What would happen naturally in those face-to-face meetings now happens virtually via social media. Users can share applications and solutions to challenges, and those who are extremely positive (and prone to blogging and commenting) can become very real assets to the company. Moreover, it gives the company the opportunity to enlist its users in the design process, which can lead to better products and higher user engagement and advocacy. However, this only works if your company listens and responds.
Is there a potential for damaging info? Probably. Social media is not a controlled medium.
Then the question becomes: Do you have something to hide? If your organization is authentic and transparent, then chances are good you will be okay. If not, you should encourage management to guide your organization to authenticity and transparency, because with the world as it is today, the transparency likely will come, whether you like it or not, especially if you are publicly held. When the opaque wall turns transparent, you want your house to be in order.
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Thanks very much for reading. If you have questions you'd like me to address, or other topics you'd like me to write about, please let me know.
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I work with organizations going through a change in strategic direction (merger, acquisition, building program, new product launch, change program, etc.) and that are concerned about what will happen with their relationships with key stakeholders (customers, employees, investors) if they send out the wrong, or confusing, messages. After working with me, my clients have a clear understanding of what their messages should be. I also provide them recommendations on other actions they can take to enhance their relationships with stakeholders.
I also work as a PR and communications research director for hire for agencies and other organizations.
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The Institute for Public Relations, (IPR) is dedicated to the "science beneath the art" of PR. It focuses on PR research and education. If you are interested in the topics I write about, you will almost certainly be interested in IPR. You can find it at http://www.instituteforpr.org/. While you're there, check out the Essential Knowledge Project at http://www.instituteforpr.org/essential_knowledge/.
Best wishes,
Forrest
Forrest W. Anderson Founding Member Institute for Public Relations Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation
For those of you who don't know, I have been in communications more than 30 years, and doing research to support communications planning and evaluation for more than 20 years. It recently occurred to me that through my time in this field, we've seen a major shift in the communications model.
One- or Two-Way Communication When I started, we would hear about two-way communications models at universities and in seminars, but in most corporate and not-for-profit organizations, corporate and communications managers talked about sending out their messages -- pushing what they wanted to say one way.
In the academic and seminar settings, presenters described communications as understanding the business goals of the organization, but also doing research with target audiences to understand how they felt about the potential topics of communication. Part of your supposed job as a communications professional was border spanning. You were supposed to bring information from outside into the organization. You were supposed to help be the voice of the external target audience inside the organization. (I use the words "target audience" rather than stakeholder, because this, too, is indicative of the way communications were thirty years ago.)
Cost Gets in the Way In those days, one of the challenges to the two-way communication model was the expense of finding out about target audiences. Relatively speaking, focus groups were no more expensive than they are today, but most surveys cost much more then. Surveys were conducted through face-to-face, telephone or mail interviews.
The least expensive way to do a survey usually was by mail, assuming you had mailing addresses for your target audience. However, you might have to wait a month or more for the responses to come back, and to remind people to respond, you needed to mail out additional questionnaires. Telephone surveying was quicker, but more expensive, and required the phone numbers of your target audience. And in those days, not everyone had a telephone, so that could skew your sample. Face-to-face interviews took the longest time and the most money, and, again you had to have the addresses.
Once you had the questionnaires filled out, someone had to code and tabulate the data. This meant entering all the responses adding them up and making tables out of them. Before computers, this was a very time consuming and laborious process. Moreover, until we could store data in computers, manipulating the data was virtually impossible. You had to lay out your tables (rows and columns) ahead of time. If you wanted to change the way you looked at the data (your tables) later, there was a significant additional charge.
Now, Cost Less an Issue Today, we do most surveys on line and the data tabulates as it comes in. We can manipulate the data with a few key strokes. So most survey research is much less expensive than it used to be, and cost is less an issue.
In addition, there are numerous companies that maintain panels of respondents that enable researchers to reach audiences that formerly were very challenging. (Not long ago, I did a survey of men suffering from a condition that affects less than one-half of one percent of men. Using a panel, we were able to find more than 350 qualified respondents.)
Management Attitudes Cost was only one of the issues. The other major issue, in my experience, was senior communications and corporate managers frequently did not believe they needed research to communicate effectively with target audiences or to achieve their business goals. So, even if they had the money, they frequently did not do research. And frequently, even if you had input regarding target audience perceptions and understanding of germane issues, managers didn't want to hear them. They preferred to stick with their own beliefs.
They worked in organizations that had a great deal of control over the information that became public. It was very difficult for interested individuals -- media, business analysts, and even shareholders -- to look into the operations and activities of the organizations. They were not very transparent.
As a result, these managers were less interested in being in tune with the stakeholders on whom they depended for capital, labor, resources and permission to operate than organizations are forced to be today. As a result, they were not nearly as worried about actually doing all the things they said they were doing and acting in the way they said they were acting (being authentic). That is, they felt that if they made a mistake, they could most likely hide it, communicate positively (even if "bending" the truth) about what had happened and get away with it.
And, unfortunately, many times they did.
Today, that seems a long time ago. As we all know, computers, multiple television channels, the Internet, digital radio and social media have completely transformed the world in which business is done. Virtually all organizations, even those privately held, are more transparent today than in the past, and this is forcing them to be authentic as well.
Management Attitudes Have Changed Managers understand this. More seem to understand the importance of the reputation of their organizations and that reputation is something that resides in the minds of their stakeholders. They recognize they need to have two-way conversations with their stakeholders. And now they are "stakeholders," not "target audiences."
New Ways to Listen to Stakeholders And now we have ways to learn what some of our stakeholders are thinking without spending any more money than it takes to listen. Stakeholders talk about companies, issues they care about and their wants and needs in social media, such as blogs, Facebook, Myspace, etc.
After an IABC presentation on inter-generational communication in the workplace, I spoke with Eric Hansen, Specialist, New Media and Social Technology, Dulye & Co.Another of his titles is Adjunct Professor, School of Information Studies, SyracuseUniversity.Eric impressed me as having a solid understanding of where social media and communications technology are going and what these changes are making possible.
I was hypothesizing that social media could enhance two-way communication between organizations and their stakeholders, if we could somehow gather and analyze all the information stakeholders themselves were making available through social media. But I was having trouble figuring out how this might work.
Eric suggested the trick to using social media this way would be to go on the Internet where stakeholders go and listen to what they are saying. He said the mistake most organizations make is they try to create some kind of social media vehicle and herd stakeholders toward it.According to Eric, this rarely works.Instead, researchers trying to understand how stakeholders feel about issues that are common to both stakeholders and organizations should go where stakeholders talk about these issues.And then listen.
I like the idea of listening.
This approach reminds me of the research cultural anthropologists do.But, instead of visiting a village in New Guinea and observing how the inhabitants relate to each other and otherwise live their lives, we would be going to villages in what might be the remote reaches of MySpace and the Blogosphere.
Much Less than a Panacea Certainly, listening in on public Internet conversations is no replacement for formal research. The people who express themselves on the Internet are not a representative sample of any specific stakeholder group. However, there is a good chance that those speaking out on the Internet influence the group as a whole.
So, why not start listening and trying to make sense of what we hear?
Work in Process I just started thinking about this a few weeks ago and would very much like to hear any ideas or experiences you might have with gathering information on groups of people using social media.
If you are receiving this through my e-Zine mailing list, you can reply or make comments on my blog (http://forrestwanderson.blogspot.com/), where this article also is published.
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I work with organizations that are going through a change in strategic direction (merger, acquisition, building program, new product launch, change program) and are concerned about what will happen with their relationships with key stakeholders (customers, employees, investors) if they send out confusing or conflicting messages. After working with me, they have a clear understanding of what their message strategy should be. They also have recommendations on other actions they can take to enhance their relationships with stakeholders.
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The Institute for Public Relations (IPR) is dedicated to the “science beneath the art” of PR. It focuses on PR research and education. If you are interested in the topics I write about, you will almost certainly be interested in IPR. You can find it at http://www.instituteforpr.org/. While you’re there, check out the Essential Knowledge Project at http://www.instituteforpr.org/essential_knowledge/.
