ARTICULATED

This little op-ed I wrote appears in the current issue of OutFront Colorado. It’s about one of my latest volunteerism ventures, membership on the board of directors of the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute, which shares staff with the well-known Victory Fund. The piece is my thoughts on investing in bright young leaders who happen to be openly gay and who may some day aspire to hold public office. They can be Democrat, Republican, or anywhere in between. I’m pretty passionate about this work.

A few years ago on a slow summer afternoon, I was browsing a DSW Shoes retail store when I heard and felt a deep rumble above me. When I turned my head up to the high ceiling, what I discovered was a startling example of gravity at work. The entire HVAC system directly overhead, compressor the size of a sofa and all associated ductwork, had broken free of its suspension mechanism and was on its way to the floor.

In an instant I bounded 6 feet to the right. I felt the stiff breeze as the structure, probably 30 feet long and weighing easily a ton, rocketed past me. When it crashed to the floor, it shook the strip mall to its foundation. It missed me by a millimeter.

Left in the dust were crushed shoes, destroyed shelving, various rubble, and a crew of hysterical employees. The staff ran around the store, literally screaming. (I knew instantly no one had been hurt because I had been the most likely candidate to be crushed.) The specter of it all was one of the more otherworldly things I’ve beheld in my life.

There were a number of other customers in the store, including some elderly people who had been close to striking distance. Thankfully they were not hit. But with the store’s employees in DEFCON 5 meltdown, it was clear to me that they were not remotely equipped to handle what had transpired. Had anyone been struck by the HVAC system, the situation would have been far, far worse.

I sometimes develop crisis preparedness plans for organizations, helping predict what could go wrong, craft a plan for handling it, and making sure people are ready to implement that plan. It was clear to me that no one had prepared the staff at this particular DSW Shoes for the unexpected. I hope the company learned from the experience and put such a plan in place. More importantly, I hope the company made sure that the HVAC systems in all its stores would stay where they belong.

One thing is for certain: I’ve scarcely walked into a retail store since without giving a careful inspection to what is above me.

Being a business guy at my core, I like specific goals and measurable targets. Kinkennon Communications has a fairly ambitious annual revenue goal, and that goal shapes much of my activity. I advocate for specific fundraising goals for the nonprofits I’m involved with, then do my part to meet them. When I have occasion to be involved in direct marketing, direct response, sales, and the like, specific goals are the driver.

But I don’t like promising or even suggesting the number of news articles I can generate. Media relations is an inexact science and an uncontrolled experiment. Kinkennon Communications makes recommendations with confidence that my thorough implementation of those recommendations will generate publicity. But I have far less control over the end result than I’d like. I predict good results, but I cannot guarantee them. That is because much of what affects the ultimate appearance of news articles is far from my control – unexpected breaking news, reporter layoffs, editorial quirks, and the like.

In addition, more often than not my PR counsel includes recommendations for things I’d ideally have the client do – things I can’t do as an outsider – that will create compelling content and story angles for me to offer to news writers. In new client relationships, it’s difficult for me to accurately predict how well the staff can implement such recommendations, however well intentioned the individuals involved may be.

Even in the rare instances in which I’ve agreed to set targets, those targets were entirely arbitrary. Unlike sales, in which it is easy to pinpoint a dollar amount that needs to be attained in order to sustain the business, and everyone understands why those targets are being pursued, “the number of news stories and mentions we NEED” can only be pulled out of thin air.   News coverage just doesn’t lend itself well to measurability, so target-setting fails to achieve the presumably desired effect of motivating high-performance behavior.

For the record, I think measurement of social-media engagement – which is where PR (hopefully) is going – is much easier and less arbitrary. But that’s a different post.

As a can-do guy who grabs rather than shirks accountability, I hate this topic. But I learned it from many smart PR people who’ve come before me. Am I right?

Today I found myself reflecting on the success I was part of achieving with the United Methodist Church (the global church, not this pretty building…) a little over a year ago. That success was a complex stroke of luck and inspiration. I don’t know if I could repeat it if I tried.

Our task was to attempt to shape the tone of a huge, pivotal gathering of United Methodists from around the globe by getting folks predicting that – because of reasons X, Y, and Z – the event would be a positive one. More recent previous such events had been quite negative, so this was no small endeavor. All sorts of evidence suggested that this conference really needed to inspire people, for the good of the church.  And all sorts of evidence suggested the negative trend would continue. The stakes were very high.

Of course, we didn’t KNOW that the event would be positive for X, Y and Z reason.  We were quite skeptical.  But we hoped.  Then we figured that if enough people made the same hopeful prediction, it might just come true. Sure enough, it did.

My client calls it “scripting reality” – when you do such a compelling job of positioning something that the facts fall in line. It’s a fascinating concept. I’m not always comfortable with it, certainly in an age where transparency has become the highest form of organizational existence.  (“Let’s just tell it like it is…”)  But to me, this was the perfect example of the power of communications, on rare occasion, to actually constructively shape something really important.

Along with most PR folks, I’m regularly asked by organizations what, if anything, they should be doing with social media, and why. They hope for a tidy answer, a quick something that can be implemented to check a box with minimal time investment and get back to what’s important.

But more often than not, I find myself in the awkward position of answering the rhetorical question with a recommendation that’s almost polar opposite of the narrow and tidy – a request that they rethink core aspects of their corporate philosophy, particularly their root beliefs about their employer-employee relationship.

That is big stuff. If an organization is 10, 25, or 100 years old, it obviously has established culture. And if the CEO and other leaders are opinionated about the way their employees are best led, and they most certainly are, those opinions are not easily swayed.

In the face of that, what I offer tends to go something like this:

“I can build you a sound social media strategy that will achieve goals that we identify together. It will be good.

“But just like any other corporate strategy, it’ll require investment from you, the CEO. Devising the strategy will take time out of your day.

“But there’s much more. If the strategy is to be credible … and certainly if it is to yield the sort of business results we set our sights on … you will need to commit to a whole new way of interacting with people. That’s all manner of people – customers, trade partners, members, and the like. But most of all, it’s your employees.

“Trust me.  If you allow it, and if you really want it, the social media strategy can be a sharp knife that carves openness, accessibility and transparency in your workforce culture. Done right, your people will love it, and your enterprise will cause and emanate positive brand experiences as a result.

“But know that culture shift will mean your operating silos will be strained, and your leaders will be flung out of their comfort zones. They will simultaneously be open to new feedback, be forced to loosen the reins on information, and will lose control of their message. At times, you will feel the organization is utterly exposed. This will be hard.

“And you can’t skirt that reality; it’s pretty much a requirement.  If you try to incorporate a social media strategy without accepting and embracing ALL of its complex opportunities and implications, it is likely to fall flat or fail.

“Worst of all, these heady matters can’t really be delegated. If the social media strategy is to be ideally situated to achieve whatever goals we lay out for it, people will look to you first to lead by example. It is quite possible there is no individual whose workday it will change more than the yours, the busy CEO.”

This hails straight from the text of “How to Strike Instant Fear into the Heart of Busy Executives.” I am learning it’s a great way to make a room full of smart people squirm.

Yet, despite all of that, I’m an adamant believer. Whether an organization is a five-person nonprofit or a Fortune 500 company, it is highly like that the times have changed so much that your marketing, branding, or other communications goals can be boosted – if not outright achieved – by an appropriate, smart social-media strategy. But not without all of the requirements and implications that go along with it.

And it is almost certain that your number-one asset, your people, are going to be far happier as a result. In and of itself, should likely make it worthwhile.