CorpComms Magazine

Last year I attended a session at a conference that in its billing seemed to be claiming that it had found the 'Holy Grail' of delivering and measuring

communications effectiveness. Looking at what the session promised, it reminded me of one of those adverts from a few years back that would promise to teach you a special, secret new martial art. Invariably, it would promise to equip you with something like the 'Bruce Lee Death Grip' and suggest that with this you would be able to defend yourself against a mob of assailants should they ever be so foolish to attack you in the street.

Supposedly used by Special Forces in Indonesia or the Philippines, the secrets it would teach would transform you into a potent mixture of Mike Tyson, The Incredible Hulk and Bruce Lee all rolled into one.

Intrigued, though, I went along just out of pure curiosity, just in case I was missing out on a seminal moment in a new era for communications. inevitably, though, just like the martial arts hyperbole, I ended up feeling disappointed by the so-called communications equivalent. The session lasted for one hour. Of this, the speaker's first 50 minutes consisted of finding flaws with all existing methodologies, followed by five minutes stating that something better needs to be found. Alluding to what appeared to be a completely impractical working model, in the final five minutes the presenter stated that he was not necessarily here to generate answers and solutions. Instead, he felt he was on the right track with a potential 'new way' for evaluating communications' effectiveness that would put all others to shame. He left us with the message that others should now pursue his excellent line of enquiry and seek this particular Holy Grail.

After feeling I had just had an hour of my life wasted for me, and whilst understanding that the point of academic research is often to pose questions rather than find solutions, I was left with the impression that if communicators followed his advice, in real life terms it would not be long before they were visiting the communications equivalent of their local A & E department. This was not just a waste of time, but also highly dangerous.

Which brings us to the world today. Unless you have been living on a desert island for the past few years, it will not have escaped your notice that the world is changing and has already fundamentally changed.

Money is desperately tight. Swingeing cuts have been made to all sorts of budgets, not just those of communications, and will continue to be so. In this changed landscape, the private sector has suffered enormously in the economic downturn, and things are getting equally bad in the public sector too.

Road map to reality

So what is the answer? We need to focus on the practicalities - what actually works if we are to survive and even thrive as professional communicators on these new, tougher streets. We need to heed the call and focus on the things that really work in communications and highlight the important work that communicators can bring in delivering and demonstrating real business benefits. If not, as we are contemplating the world from the comfort of our cosy ivory tower, we'll soon be looking down and seeing the bulldozers down at ground level ready to demolish both the tower and us still stuck up at the top of it.

Next, any route we follow needs to be rooted in reality. Efforts to design a practical 'road map' to communicators and those measuring the effectiveness of communications are not new, of course. Our universities provide a great blend of both academic and practical teaching. Trade bodies such as the CIPR and PRCA regularly offer excellent short courses.

In this regard, one of the most significant developments in public sector communications some five years ago was the Reputation project. Devised by the Local Government Association and the Improvement and Development Association (IDeA), this piece of work focused on some basic actions communicators could undertake to boost the reputation of public sector organisations. The result was a list of 12 core actions that would help communicators to increase their own organisations' reputations.

Due to the importance of this subject to communicators nationwide, LGcommunications, the national body made up of an association of councils and public sector partners working to raise the standard of communications in local government, is currently assessing the work of the original campaign and bringing together the feedback from around the country. This will be launched at its national conference in Leeds in May.

The results are still coming in and lots of work is still underway. The feedback so far is that the original campaign would appear to have been a good one, though not necessarily great. Some things are already clear, however.

First, the original Reputation analysis conducted five years ago was a landmark piece of work in that, for the first time, it laid out some clear, workable, practical actions that would help communicators and beyond. Second, there are clear examples of organisations that have benefited from this guidance by grasping not just the core actions, but also, more importantly, the spirit of what they are aimed at achieving.

Some of this may not sound particularly glamorous, and that is fine. It will be reallife stuff - the equivalent of practical selfdefence as opposed to the notion of a Bruce Lee Death Grip!

It won't necessarily make you better looking, richer or charming. It won't make you invincible, and will make no claims to do so either. The idea is not to turn you into a spiritual, Kung Fu master. What it will provide you with, though, is a set of tools to help you to manoeuvre your way around the tough communications terrain we all face today.

The Holy Grail it will not be, but it will give those who want to grasp the nettle some really useful pointers and actions to take back to their organisation based on solid, results-based research.

So, in this time of budget cuts, forget the death kicks, mysticism and Bruce Lee, and watch out for the clear dos and don'ts of the new LGcommunications guidance.

For further information visit www.lgcomms.org.uk

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