Is it an internal or external communication? In the age of the internet, stakeholders and audiences are indivisible. Customers are shareholders. Employees are married to journalists. Legislators and regulators are customers. If you are still running separate internal and external communications organizations, there is risk to strong integrated communications. No organization model is completely foolproof, however. If you have communicators who are not natural integrators, a divided internal and external communications model can fail you. Strong risk management models recognize that communications and communicators across the spectrum-customer, employee, shareholder, regulatory, legislative and community- must be highly integrated. It may not feasible to combine all these disciplines in one organization, but you can ensure you have the best integrators in each of these seats. You can instill processes and mindsets to make sure every communication has comprehended all potential stakeholders, well before it is launched. Strong integrators and great processes recognize that no message to any one stakeholder group is complete without considering implications for all stakeholders. This is not just true during a crisis when command and control requirements normally anoint one communications lead, integration is necessary across all messengers, every minute of every day.
Ancient Communications Org Models
Read Article on LinkedIn
Back to Our View
You can find most all of these thought leadership pieces on LinkedIn, where we actively publish points of view to influence communicators and executives on critical issues. You will get a strong sense of the way we think. We also participate in various trade magazines and will find our views published in American Banker and O’Dwyer’s.