As independents we've been hearing the drums from not too far away about the importance of thought leadership.  Virtually, every speaker at the AIP (Alliance of Independent Pracitioners) monthly seminars has proclaimed that 'thought leaders" should be able to offer and disperse a range of advice on every topic imaginable, from buidling trusted relationships to marketing strategic advice.  In the blogsphere, we see daily the emergence of writer's, PR practitioners, social marketers and marketing communications professionals, declaring  his or her own thought leadership platform.

Back to basics

Independent communicators should know that deep knowledge and experience accumulated through every project is the most strategic weapon they have.  Their personal brand is also honed from personal experience and is becoming important in the age of peer to peer communications.

Knowledge and personal experience go hand in hand, have influence over one another and can be a powerful combination.

Tookit

The use of glossy marketing in opening the door to potential clients is not longer the way to go.  Getting in the door is now about making this powerful combination of professional experience, personal brand and knowledge into a toolkit .  It's one way to optimize thought leadership towards influencing both knowledge and relationships with the ultimate goal of generating business.

As a professional communicator you probably spend a lot of time building context within organizations.  Thought leadership leverages this actiivity by generating even more knowledge, which adds to the pool of resources Directors and Managers can pull from when driving solutions.  When carried out well, thought leadership will help you navigate within an organization and across lines of business. 

Summary

Nowadays positioning thought leadership as an attribute to your brand is essential. More and more companies are using PR to position advisors and marketing communications to measure results.

There may be a lot of noise out there, but good thought leadership never develops in a vacuum, rather it creates a community of interest. 

Push A Pencil speaks not only to what we do, but also to who we are.
It’s a simple way to express a key value we bring: Effective Strategy. Persuasive Messages. Achieving a Presence. Creating channels, experiences and platforms, establishing a unique identity and remembering a message so that your target audience is responsive and motivated.

The challenges to improving business performance are many and diverse: limited resources, deadly deadlines, market competition, budget restrictions -- to name a few. Keeping your target the focus without losing out to the realities of competing priorities is often the biggest challenge.

And what works? Getting the big picture, a thorough understanding of your business, markets, products, values and culture so that you 're not driven by tactics alone. With comprehensive problem solving, the right tools, and the steady conscientious guidance of the right strategy, we deliver quality and an ROI on the money you invest in communications.

And that’s an ultimate result of the work we do at Push A Pencil. It’s a key reason why Push A Pencil is the choice of businesses for content.  Companies such as; CIBC, Molson, Toronto Dominion Bank, Harlequin Enterprises, CBC, Kids Help Phone, Canadian Cancer Society and Toronto Police Service trust us, because delivering your message to your customers, your employees, and your stakeholders is critical to delivering results.

We provide writing, editing and consulting services from front end to delivery for:
•    Corporate Communications
•    Employee Communications
•    Marketing & Customer Communications
•    Public Relations
•    Video Scripts and Production
•    Intranet & Web Content Strategies & Writing

Contact us to discuss your next project.

Contact Us

Telephone: 416-935-0707

Web: www.pushapencil.com

Email: froberts@pushapencil.com

I've developed strategic communications within three very large, complex IT implementation projects over the last 10 years.  I'd like to share some learning I've acquired about the success factors in communications planning within a large scale, complex IT implementation.

• It’s about change. Change is always in air and is the constant within all product and program areas.  Therefore, using internal communications to leverage change management that keeps employees up to date on changes and keeping them motivated and rewarded is really important.
• Manage upwards.   Keep the management team in the loop with ongoing strategic communication planning guidance and support.  This keeps everyone on message.
• Become a partner.  Have a seat at team and product meetings. Listen to their plans and client-side activities. Provide recommendations for communications to partners in the form of target messages with options for tactics and action plan for implementation.  Be prepared to give them a heads up if the strategic direction of corporate positioning changes or a particular issue has come to the forefront. 
• Avoid technical jargon.  You're working around some very smart people, so it's tempting to want to sound like a boffin, but this approach misfires with almost every stakeholder out there.  Be ready to inform and educate your stakeholders using plain language.  Emphasize value and benefits in generic terms.
• Avoid a PR headache. Orient team members on the issues commonly associated with these large scale IT implementations.  The issues are waste, mismanagement and going massively over budget – just think of the federal governments Gun Registry boondoggle! Even if the investor is the Canadian taxpayer, there’s no excuse to be made if you’re asleep at the wheel when the various advocacy groups begin to make noise.  So stay on top of it.
• Privacy is privacy is privacy.  This issue will never go away no matter how much brainpower, ingenuity and corporate messaging is thrown at it. That’s because it’s much more than a technical or public relations activity.  Privacy is an emotional issue and so it needs a patient and steady response that is like a good parent – be reasonable, consistent and honest in all your communications.
• Stop them at the pass.  With so many channels – email, web, phone, mail - open to customers and stakeholders to reach you with their questions and comments, it’s important to develop and Q & A that can be used. Be aware of the tenacity of some customers and stakeholders who will likely use more than one channel to reach you.  With a Q & A, your message will be consistent across all channels. 
• Don’t be a hero.  The temptation for going it alone by becoming a hero who “saves the day” at the last minute will only earn you a burn-out or a pink slip.  Don't ever go it alone. No matter how difficult getting your ideas across to a team may be, make that your mantra.  Find another way to be a hero with your family and children, or in your volunteer work. 

For those of us who have actually sat in a newsroom within a TV station or newspaper, we know that the decisions about what runs in the newshour or daily edition can and do change with almost every hour.  The news is in constant flux which means staying on top of shifting priorites and facts is the occupational hazard of any writer or journalist. That's what makes working in the news addictive.  Well, in my case it was an addiction to coffee, such is the adrenaline high that everyone is working on!

Now picture this.  A committee of earnest, good people are sitting around a boardroom table  discussing how to get a worthy cause into the headlines.  As consumers of news they naturally assume they know their story is destined to be picked up and played to audiences around their city, province or country.  They also assume that good work should be rewarded with publicity and because they are perpetually fundraising, this publicity should be offered freely.  As well, they have a spokesperson with some profile who has assured the directors the cache of their name will almost certainly ensure media pick-up. 

Enter the marketing or media staffer.  Addressing these high expectations takes a lot of tact and diplomacy if one is really doing one's job, which is to keep it real. Added to this, the dread that having worked in a newsroom, one is going to be asked to use one's network of contacts to get the story into the news.  In major metropolitan media markets this is, of course, impossible.  The stories that get into the media are the hard stories of wars, corruption, political scandals, natural disasters and so on.  The softer stories about a campaign to clean up rivers or about a walk to raise funds for a hospice are destined to run in local papers and if there's any luck, maybe on a local television channel.  This means that those issues that many find uncomfortable, such as high suicide rates among young native men, or the personal cost of Alzheimer disease upon caregivers, or the erosion of the environment by human actions, don't really get into public consciousness. 

Why is this?  Back in the 1970s I left broadcasting to work in alternative media where we wrote about what was really happening in Latin and South America.  I interviewed one of the Mothers of May Square whose grandchild has been abducted and another woman imprisoned and tortured in Argentina for union activity in the factory where she worked.  I also saw photos of nun's being tortured in the Phillipines.  Back then this news rarely, if ever, made it to the networks or newspapers.  These days, of course, we see and learn about these atrocities on the nightly news, newspapers and the Internet.  I suppose we can thank the  journalism schools for turning out journalists who are interested in covering these painful stories.

What is a charity to do?  I think being a little less "pinkies in the air" about approaching the media is appropriate.  After all, it's these people who are the experts.  Surely, those on the front lines deserve more profile than a short blurb in a local paper? They need to find  their voices.  These issues shake us out of our apathy and make us appreciate what we have to offer others less fortunate through no fault of their own. 

Today on the 65th anniversary of the Dambusters, I watched archival footage of the Dambusters trials. The image of the round bomb bouncing across the surface of the water like a huge skipping stone had a ripple effect on my memory as my father’s stories about his involvement in this project came back to me. He was a young RAF photographer assigned to film the trials at Lake Derwent in Derbyshire, England.

I once asked him what it was like working on the Dambusters' team. His answer told me a lot about teamwork and the work ethic of his generation. The entire team as so closely knit together that even with the class system and hierarchy of rank and file, everyone pitched in to problem-solve the many engineering and logistical issues.

For example, the RAF photographers were all stills man. My father had trained at Kodak before the war in portraiture and like his colleagues had never operated a movie camera or learned how to print a film negative. At first they used still cameras positioned 10 feet apart along the entire length of the flight path. These photographs yielded the first sequence of images of the bomb in motion. The technique was based up the work of the 19th century photographer, Eadveard Muybridge who, commissioned by a wealthy horse owner, was the first to photograph in sequence, a horse in motion.

My father now goes into schools to tell his Dambusters' story to eager teenagers and schoolchildren. He gets very emotional when talking about his war experiences. After all, he was only twenty-one at the time of the Dambuster raids on the Rhur Valley’s dams that destroyed the Nazi war machine producing factories.

It’s because of the efforts and teamwork of these photographers that can see images of these trials, today. Their dedication and creativity was the hallmark of their teamwork. The story also speaks to the perpetuity of the truism that “the camera never lies.” Today we talk a lot about innovation and excellence in marketing products and services, but this story reminds us that hype and spin will never triumph over authenticity.