One Mouth. Two Ears. Talk Less. Listen More
How often do you enter a room full of PR people and are deafened by the noise? It is hard to imagine a more dynamic group, bubbling over with ideas and energy, and all wanting to be heard?
But, too often, if you take the time to sit back and observe the room, it is quickly apparent that only a few are truly listening, both to what is being said and, as importantly, why. Indeed, the more cynical might observe that some just don’t know how to listen full stop.
“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
Epictetus, Greek philosopher (55-135 AD)
According to Wikipedia public relations is the practice of managing the flow of information between an organisation and its publics. We disagree.
This is half of the battle, but experience has convinced us that there is a greater purpose. The value of the best public relations professionals is just as much in the information they can bring into the organisation, especially in a world experiencing sudden change and discontinuity.
Chief executives, by definition, sit at the top of huge reporting machines, with a myriad of financial, HR, customer and other reporting functions producing and presenting data to inform the Board’s decision making. However, these tools too often are numbers based and fail to capture sentiment both within a company and amongst its external stakeholders.
The highest service a communications professional can provide a senior management team is to give honest intelligence and feedback on how the world perceives his or her business, and what issues are on the horizon. These matters can offer both opportunity and threat to a corporate reputation, and an active “corporate listening” strategy must be at the heart of any communications programme.
Internally, communications teams sit in an incredibly powerful position. Few, if any other, corporate functions have a remit that covers the business from top to bottom and side to side.
From briefing the Board ahead of a results presentation and visiting the far-flung outposts of a corporate empire to dealing with people and issues on the ground everyday across the whole organisation – it can be a hugely influential role.
As communicators, we must seek to create a ‘real’ picture of sentiment within the business, of concerns, impending issues and frustrations. There are few direct ways for this sort of feedback to reach the top of an organisation as management reporting structures dilute and disguise, preventing anyone being able to tackle issues which may seen small in one outpost, but if systemic may be a critical threat.
The same is true when companies turn outwards to understanding and engaging with their stakeholders – customers, investors, partners and regulators. We know from experience that, with the astonishing shocks across the business world in the last few months, many companies have struggled to hold onto a cohesive picture of their world. They know things have changed, and that they must change too, but their existing information gathering and analysis tools and models have not been up to the task.
Madano’s largest area of growth both with existing and new clients in 2009 has been in research related consultancy. We have seen, at a corporate and project level, clients looking to better map, understand and then track the views, motivations and actions of important stakeholder organisations and individuals. Stakeholder research projects, competitor analysis, digital dashboards, shareholder and analyst feedback, customer surveys and political mapping are now, more than ever, vital parts of any corporate communications strategy.
Seeking understanding before taking action has always been at the heart of Madano’s approach to communications. It has puzzled us that some were so sure of their world view that this first step would sometimes be overlooked. The world has changed, and we see more change on the horizon in the UK as we head towards an election, discover whether stock markets are recovering or it’s really a ‘dead cat bounce’, and we begin to understand the new economic fundamentals.
It is clear to us that organisations of all shapes and sizes need to keep all of their corporate listening channels actively open, especially now. As Ernest Hemmingway said, ‘When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.’
