A few weeks ago I posted a link to a TED talk by Benjamin
Zander in which he talked about classical music and why everyone should love
it. One of the points he made was that, as a person gets more experienced with
music they tend focus on longer musical phrases. He stated that when you first
start you focus on every beat, then every two, then every measure, and then
every phrase and, finally, you get to the point where you start the music with
the end in mind. It is not that you focus just on the instant when you end or
the end results but you focus on the piece of music as a whole. It is the whole
adventure, the totality of your experiences from start to finish that you must
focus on. As a strategic communicator, this is also how you should measure the
success or failure of any particular campaign. The approach taken should be a
holistic approach to the change that you wished to be implemented. This means
that there cannot be a focus on just product advancement and there cannot be a
focus on culture change but all of it must be taken into account.
As I have written, I am a Youth Director at a church and
churches tend to be not much different when it comes to focusing on the bottom
line. Yes, for us we focus on how many people are “saved” or how many have
joined the church. Or we may focus on a particularly popular program because “so
many people seem to like it!” These, in and of themselves are not bad things
but I got a glimpse of what I would call a success in the fullest sense of the
word. I had put on my Facebook that I had a career opportunity and one of my
youth responded telling me that she did not want me to leave. This was not the
success but it did make me feel good. I assured her that I was not leaving but
just expanding my horizons and what she responded with made me realize that I,
to at least some degree have been a success as a youth director. She wrote “ Don't
leave me it's senior year! But
follow what God tells you to do. I'm pretty sure you taught me that he is more
important than I am anyway. Praying for your decision.
“ This student, who is a Christian, is saved, comes to most events and is in
just about every tangible way a success made me realize that there was more to
success than just those things. Somehow, as her leader, I had imparted on her a
willingness to be self-sacrificial to the will of God even if it means not
getting what she wants.
In the book, Manager’s
Guide to Excellence in Public Communication Management, in the very first
chapter there is a link between excellence at an organization and the culture
that is established. In a culture that is more open and less authoritarian,
communication tends to expand. With this come the benefits of good
communication. This includes, but is not limited to, a feeling, both internally
and externally, of inclusion. This feeling helps with feedback and feedback can
lead to an increase in the bottom line for an organization. Feedback is an
important way to be able to measure the success or failure of a communication campaign.
If you create that culture where communication is encouraged you help develop
relationships. These relationships are important for organizations. The way to
measure these relationships, according to article Organizational Blogs and the Human Voice: Relational Strategies and
Relational Outcomes there are three things to be measure as it pertains to
relationships. These are antecedents, maintenance processes, and outcomes. The
second measure, maintenance processes focuses on how organizations maintain the
relationships that they have built and this, too, helps stress the importance
of a culture that exemplifies communicational excellence. Granted, the article
is about using blogs to maintain those relationships but I think that would
just be a strong indication that a company or organization was serious about
the results they were after.
As it pertains to results, when measuring them it pays to be
careful. In his TED talk, Why we make bad
decisions, Dan Gilbert talks about our perception when it comes to making
decisions about what will make us happy and how, often we choose incorrectly.
This is pertinent because when measuring the success of a program, one must be
aware of all facets of the campaign and the actual contributions to the
organization. It is our job as strategic communicators to convince and show our
CEOs and managers the actual benefits of excellent communication. I did not
completely agree with Mr. Gilbert’s entire outlook because he was viewing happiness
as a formula that was simply if we get more out of something than we put in, we
will be happy. If you watch the video all the way to the end, someone from the
audience makes the point that happiness is not always about getting more out of
an activity. Sometimes it is just the activity that gives us pleasure. This resonated
with me but it also pointed out the fact that sometimes we have to be careful
how we judge success.
There are ways to judge success. As I pointed out, we should
really look at the “big picture.” This is because if we do not then we are
likely to miss out on a true success story for us and our organizations. Also,
it is our job to convince, not only our bosses, but everyone in the
organization that communication has to be two way. Communication has to be the
goal and the measure of that communication can be done several ways. I believe
the largest measure is in the culture of the organization but there are also
more tangible ways to measure as well. However an organization decides to
measure success it should always be on the lookout for improvements that need
to be made because, unfortunately, there are no sure fire ways to guarantee any
sort of success.
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