Month: April 2010

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Look Out, It’s The Media! Run! Basic Mistakes/Assumptions People Make 1.0

Woman talking to the media

In my PR career, I’ve heard some unbelievable things people have said about “The Media.” Things that made “The Media” out to be some kind of monolithic machine, the political equivalent of the Teabagger viewpoint about “The Government” (as if “The Government” were one entity. Seriously, are they mad at the Department of Agriculture, or The Business Transformation Office over at the Department of Defense?!)

Still, the big bad “Media” is there to report news and if you have bad news, it generally will be reported in some fashion. There are ways, however, to diffuse the fear or anxiety of dealing with “The Media.” Some of these true examples hopefully underscore my point:

1) “Are they going to look for skeletons?” asked one worried small business owner who was going to be profiled. If the business desk is assigning an Investigative Reporter to your story, yes. However General Assignment reporters are not there to dig up the dirt and look for bones, they simply want your story. They don’t have another agenda. Having a good media kit and key messages in place to hand off to someone in the media puts up guardrails to help focus your business or issues on what’s important and positive.

2) “Can I review the story before it’s written?” Hardly ever, although sometimes the rare reporter who gets really want to get it right, or is challenged by a complex issue about something your company does, or something you did, will let you review for accuracy but not content changes. That’s why media training in advance of interviews with “The Media” to stay on message is a good thing to do.

3) “I have an event on Friday night that I would love to get some coverage of before that, can it happen?” asked someone once in a cold call two days before the event. Unless you’ve got the president of the US or Leonardo DiCaprio at your shindig — or have truly invented a whizbang device that no one has ever seen before — chances are almost nil.

Even with a news cycle that turns over 10 times a day or more on the internet, sufficient lead times are important to adhere to. Give yourself — or your PR person a few weeks in advance of when you want your story “out there” to contact the right person in “The Media” (Note: Magazines are often working 4-6 months ahead of real time.) Breaking News is one thing that gets instant coverage, but that is usually a tragedy of some sort unfolding or a national or international incident (although these days, a celebrity marriage break up or drug bust, or even a car chase in Oklahoma, unfortunately qualify). Investor Relations is a whole other universe, and we won’t go there today.

4) “The Media” will make my company famous. Well, it could. Overall, a few stories well placed will increase your visibility, hopefully help drive sales and/or achieve some of the objectives you set forth once you engaged a PR company or put your PR strategy into motion.

But let’s be realistic. Most overnight success stories I know of took 10 years of hard work. PR — as a wise friend once described it — is like drip irrigation in the desert: Droplets of water falling on the plant eventually produce a bloom, and if you’re lucky, fruit.

5) “Can I get the photo/video/radio interview The Media?” Generally no. It becomes the intellectual property of the paper, television or radio station. You can get back copies or links of the paper you need for a price. And there are services to obtain DVD copies or links to something that ran on TV, or a radio interview. Usually all such copies come with legal guidelines about how the material may or may not be used. Always have your own photos on hand (sometimes “The Media” will request it — and maybe even your own b-roll — footage that tells your story in images as background, if appropriate).

Remember, dealing with “The Media” is like dealing with other human beings. Sure, people working in the profession hold a power to magnify what you do. But the last time I checked, those doing it were like you and me, 90% water.

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How Crisis Management Can Enhance the Due Diligence Process

A successful crisis management session

DUE DILIGENCE: “The process of investigation, performed by investors, into the details of a potential investment, such as an examination of operations and management and the verification of material facts.” (Source: InvestorWords.com)

The title of this article may surprise some readers. What possible role, you might ask, can crisis management play in the complex interaction between potential investors or buyers and the organizations that are the focus of their due diligence investigations?

In my experience, those who are in “acquisition mode” — be they venture capitalists, expanding companies, individual or group investors — do not garner certain types of information that could be critical to making and protecting their investment or purchase. For this article, I’m referring to buyers, those who are actually acquiring a business, and investors making significant investments.

The traditional due diligence process usually involves some formal background checking, discussions with references, and probably a thorough Internet search. What it often doesn’t give buyers/investors is information critical to (a) the reputations of all involved in the potential transaction and (b) the potential acquisition/investment target’s ability to prevent and survive crises. EVERY organization is going to have crises; if they can prevent some, and get through others quickly and effectively, then the acquisition/investment will be far better protected.

Categories of Information

Here are some of the categories of information that can be provided via a combination of techniques generally associated with (a) a crisis management vulnerability audit and (b) investigative journalism.

  • What reputation does the acquisition/investment target have with all its stakeholders, internal and external? How does that compare with what the company says about itself? Stakeholders would include everyone from employees to customers, from board members to journalists.
  • For acquisitions, what reputation does the acquirer have with its stakeholders and with the stakeholders of the acquisition target? That reputation will very much impact the reaction of all stakeholders to news of a possible or actual acquisition.
  • How are all stakeholders affected by the acquisition or major investment going to react to it? Positively? Negatively? What can be done in advance — understanding that news of the such transactions cannot be released until appropriate — to optimize all stakeholders’ response to the news?
  • Has the acquisition/investment target done any crisis preparedness — vulnerability assessment, planning and training — that would allow it to better survive inevitable crises? Not just its ability to manage any distress caused by the initial business transaction, but the business’ ability to survive all crises to which it is vulnerable? If any reader has not previously received a copy of my free “Crisis Preparedness Checklist,” request it by email to jonathan@bernsteincrisismanagement.com. It will prove useful for a quick preliminary evaluation of any organization’s readiness for crises.

To the extent the situation permits, in an often-sensitive pre-acquisition/investment environment, stakeholders are contacted directly. But there are also many indirect sources of published/public record information that can be identified through comprehensive, Internet-based research (requiring a high level of expertise, not simply a “Google search”), as well as indirect sources of information on the opinions and beliefs of stakeholders. Collected and analyzed, they can provide investors with a sometimes eye-opening glimpse at challenges and opportunities they would not capture through traditional due diligence examinations.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with attorney Mike Lappin, a partner at Quarles & Brady LLP specializing in mergers and acquisitions, on a couple of transactions of this type. We both found that combining legal and crisis management capabilities has brought substantial added value to the entire transaction, from due diligence to “done deal.” Mike had this to say about due diligence:

“Due diligence investigations often focus on financial and legal matters as a buyer attempts to rather quickly understand the target’s business and evaluate the possible risks and rewards from the transaction. However, other factors, such as how the buyer is perceived by the target’s employees or how prepared the target is to deal with unexpected events, can have a significant effect on whether a transaction is a success, and these factors often do not receive the same attention in the due diligence process.”

In the new world of corporate governance regulations and general distrust of investment-related wheeling and dealing, buyers and investors can’t afford to be without all possible critical intelligence. Using crisis management tactics pre-investment or pre-acquisition can provide that information.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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Goldman Sachs – Trust, Corporate Culture and Societal Expectations

An office building

The issues surrounding Goldman Sachs highlight many of challenges facing the business ethics industry. There has been a public furor over the integrity of certain industries, such as finance, even though the leaders of those companies can state categorically that they acted legally, and ethically, within the guidelines they have worked within for some time.

However, our common sense notions of what is ethical and what is fair are determined by social norms. What then are the responsibilities of leaders in firms, and in industries whose ethics have been challenged, to acknowledge changes in how our society perceives them? Is it better to batten down the hatches and wait out the storm, or to develop the means to engage in an effective dialogue with these external stakeholders to maintain trust?

Much of the furor over Goldman Sachs rests in our collective ambivalence over Wall Street itself. Is there something inherently unethical about the entire trading industry?

The Senate hearings highlighted a mismatch in how Wall Street sees itself and how it is seen. Goldman’s witnesses said a market maker—someone who matches buyers and sellers—has an obligation to describe accurately the product being traded, but needn’t disclose his own position. Are we surprised that a trader can take the stand and simply say that we were doing what we’ve always been doing?

Maybe they have, and it’s us that are changing our expectations?

Does the nature of the federal bail-out change our definition of what is ethical?

While it may sound trite at first, this gets to the heart of the perceptions of trust and the commitments that were broken. Big boys on Wall Street can do what they have been doing for 200 years. Caveat Emptor.

But when Wall Street is financed by Main Street, new relationships are formed. Firms now have new sets of stakeholders, and they are required, if not by law, then by social convention, to maintain a relationship based on trust.

Trust requires a whole set of expectations that run counter to the caveat emptor trader culture: predictability, looking out for the other person’s interest, etc. It’s when these values clash with our independence and freedom values that drive our entrepreneurial trader side that we see the fireworks.

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Social Enterprise Summit + World Forum Opens Tomorrow

A man presenting at a social enterprise summit

Tomorrow is the first day of the Social Enterprise Alliance’s annual Summit, a national conference that features a wide variety of presentations, workshops and networking in this field. This year’s Summit is being held in San Francisco. More information is available at www.se-alliance.org.

If you can make it to the conference, great, I know you won’t regret it. I might see you there. Incidentally, I’ll be co-presenting a workshop on Thursday morning on business planning for established social enterprises. My case study will be on the Greyston Foundation, operator of the Greyston Bakery, which is a social enterprise in Yonkers, New York that supplies all the brownies that go into Ben & Jerry’s ice creams. My colleague, Tamra Ryan, will be talking about the Women’s Bean Project, and in particular their recent nascent jewelry venture.

But if you can’t make it, you can still connect via the wonders of social media. Here’s one way to do it. SEA’s two Huffington Post contest winners will blog live from the conference. You can either follow the SEA blog or subscribe to SEA’s RSS feed to read their daily posts. Check them out at: http://www.sea-alliance.blogspot.com/

Even though I’ll be attending the conference, I plan to read them just to see how their observations differ from mine.

Alternatively, if you’re Twitter-inclined, check out TWITTER #socent10 at http://twitter.com/socent10. Or Facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Social-Enterprise-Alliance/59580246388?ref=ts

Frankly, I have no idea if these postings will be entertaining, informative or, well, something else, although I expect to find the blogs from the conference quite interesting. I would recommend connecting at least a couple times during the next few days to see if there’s some stuff there you can use in your own social enterprise work. We’ll see whether social media brings some value to those who cannot attend in person. I hope so.

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Overcoming the Myth of the Paper Trail #2

Two-ladies-having-a-conversation-in-an-office

As mentioned previously, overcoming the myth of the “paper trail” requires building a performance culture. In my last post, I discussed some first steps in creating the culture. Setting the stage requires involving employees by engaging in two-way communication and involving them in achieving company and department goals. Another step in creating this culture is by providing constant feedback to employees while encouraging them to share ideas and engage actively in this process as well.

Below are some suggestions for providing feedback. Organizations that have successfully created a performance culture easily communicate and provide feedback. These organizations are also usually very open to the feedback of their employees. Further, they typically focus on the individual development of their employees.

What other ideas can you add?

Ongoing Performance Management

Give Feedback Often

  • Hold periodic update meetings to discuss performance. This can be in the form of weekly, bi-weekly or monthly touch base meetings. (Be sure to document these discussions)
  • Provide positive feedback and developmental feedback.
  • Have a two-way conversation with the employee. Ask them for ideas on improving areas of opportunity and development areas.
  • Seek out the employee’s career goals. Incorporate those into their personal development plan.
  • Address performance as it happens. Give the feedback that explains both the facts of the situation and the results achieved whether negative or positive. Record this feedback on the appropriate company form and keep a copy to use for the formal review meeting
  • Keep a log or journal of each feedback
  • Focus on behaviors (Instead of saying, “you’ve been lazy lately. Say “You’ve missed the last two deadlines.”)
  • Don’t jump to conclusions about poor performance. Examine facts and engage the employee in questions. Ask their input on correcting issues. For example, instead of saying, “I can’t accept any more reports with errors.” Ask, “What steps are you going to take to ensure your work is free of errors?”
  • Feedback should be specific and sincere
  • Avoid overwhelming the employee with too much feedback. Focus on the most relevant and important observations
  • Keep your emotions in check
  • Clearly identify the payoff of the positive behavior change (even if this is developmental or positive feedback).

Your comments are always encouraged!

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For more resources, See the Human Resources library.

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Sheri Mazurek is a training and human resource professional with over 16 years of management experience, and is skilled in all areas of employee management and human resource functions, with a specialty in learning and development. She is currently employed as the Human Resource Manager at EmployeeScreenIQ, a global leader in pre-employment background screening.

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May Day! May Day! Attack of the Killer PR Themes

May calender

What do the month of May, the 50th anniversary of the Pill and a pending big bill for rental tuxedos and pretty dresses have in common?

If you guessed the Prom, you’re about half right — and, some would say, maybe a little morally jaded. But if you have a news announcement that can somehow be pegged to the season, or an event in history like The Pill after five decades, you have got a solid news hook to exploit. Maybe you have a similar birth control issue, or a clinic or hospital that does reproductive research of some kind. Maybe you work with an organization or individual that is against the Pill and has published something, or lectured about it.

In any event, the media loves to hang stories on anniversary dates, seasonal occasions and headline trends. The coming month of May is traditionally a big month for weddings. Got a new type of wedding gift or gadget, or maybe you’ve reinvented the perfect wedding ceremony? This is a good month to go to your local media, or if it’s a really hot story, national newspapers and broadcast. The big national magazines that cover this stuff will have already done their wedding and wedding-related stories a few months ago so that these magazines are on newsstands right at the end of April, staring out at you like forlorn single people in search of the perfect mate. But you could see if any of their writers are blogging.

Find your killer PR theme in the procession of seasons and in traditional month-based occasions like The Prom, weddings, and, of course, Mother’s Day. Your chances of coverage will improve greatly. Which reminds me, the bill for my kids’ rental of tuxes and dresses are due about the same time as Mother’s Day, since they’re all in our former babysitter’s big fat wedding. It’s the price one has to pay for the ties that bind.

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Estimation time when starting a training program

A-female-trainer-with-her-student-in-a-glass-framed-office

Everyone has or should have a general idea of how much time it takes to develop a new training program. In the research I’ve done times are all over the place 10:1 all the way up to 40:1 the later being very generous. I think if you had a 40:1 ratio you’d never find a position or that you are really re-inventing the wheel.

As a grad student I designed (with the awesome help of my mentor) a program that covered the entire HPT process. I think since I was starting from scratch and including everything from how to do a needs assessment, task analysis, how to conduct interviews and design them and design and process surveys and evaluation including ROI I probably spent the 40:1 ratio. But I had to research every aspect of the processes. I even included the brain teasers I used. The manual ended up being 208 pages!

Folks this is or was – the exception to the rule. I believe a comprehensive training program could be done at a 20:1 ratio. This of course depends on how fast research can be done and how focused you can be. Using DACUM studies, books that you have on hand and looking at what is already available and in place helps. (This is why having a well organized library is very important)….

It is however very important to try and estimate the time and perhaps give a higher estimate maybe by 5 so you can always meet your deadline. As a “new-bee” in the field I’d probably estimate at 30:1 and try and come in at 20:1 but I’d give myself the 10 just in case I’d underestimated something. I think it’s very important to come in on deadline and under if possible.

As always happy training and comments, concerns are always welcome!

Leigh

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For more resources about training, see the Training library.

– Looking for an expert in training and development or human performance technology?
– Contact me: Leigh Dudley – Linkedin – 248-349-2881
– Read my blog: Training and Development

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Thought Leaders Then and Now – Ogilvy on Direct Response Marketing

Is Direct Response Marketing still a powerful concept in the digital age?

David Ogilvy, a Thought Leader in the advertising industry for over 50 years, established a leading worldwide agency on the power of creative branding. He declared Direct Response Marketing his “love” and “secret weapon”.

So, the answer is a resounding “YES!” In fact, the Ogilvy agency establish a division, Neo@Ogilvy, based on new media tools that support the company’s brand marketing strengths. And the basis of successful online marketing tactics? DIRECT RESPONSE!

According to Neo@Ogilvy: The future of marketing is digital.

“At the start of the 21st century, marketing faces a critical challenge. Digital marketing is taking over around the world. People are spending more and more time with digital media – they are easier to reach, but harder to find. But it is more than just increasingly fragmented media consumption that requires new marketing concepts. Marketing in the digital world is also a race for the most current information, the best technology, and the fastest implementation.”

Neo@Ogilvy, a fully integrated division of OgilvyOne Worldwide, provides its clients with comprehensive marketing services for the digital age. They develop marketing concepts that cover the entire customer journey – from the initial advertising contact to activating websites to newsletters and CRM. They create measurable success and maximum added value for customers.

Neo@Ogilvy claims their competitive advantage in these terms:

  • intelligent media strategies
  • innovative technologies, and
  • creative ideas

Further, Neo@Ogilvy’s David Rittenhouse emphasizes that brands must be careful that the messages they post to the internet add to the value of the message and brand, not just create impressions! That is a waste of precious time and money – and could actually hurt the brand. Direct response is the ultimate success.

For more information on David’s thoughts on new media marketing and branding, see the videos posted by Lisa Chapman at iBrandMasters.

Ogilvy remains one of the most famous names in advertising and one of the handful of thinkers (Raymond Rubicam, Leo Burnett, William Bernbach, Ted Bates) who shaped the business after the 1920s.

In subsequent posts, I will explore these other Thought Leaders and their core value-add principles.

For more social media “Marketing” tips and tactics, search these phrases:

  • Direct response marketing
  • Direct response technologies
  • Ogilvy on direct reponse

Happy “Marketing” hunting!

What traditional Marketing concepts, and their relevancy to new media, are you interested in exploring?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

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With offices in Nashville Tennessee, but working virtually with international clients, Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. As a Founder of iBrand Masters, a social media consulting firm, Lisa Chapman assists clients in establishing and enhancing their online brand, attracting their target market, engaging in meaningful social media conversations, and converting online traffic into revenues. Email Lisa @ LisaChapman.com

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Leadership: The Board’s Mythunderstood Role in Fundraising

a-NPO-board-of-directors

MYTH: Every Board Member must make an “example-setting” major gift.

REALITY: Every Board Member must set an example by giving to the best of his/her ability. Even a dollar (if that’s all s/he can afford) will help demonstrate, to other potential (individual and institutional) funders, that every Board Member has “supported” their organization. Keep in mind that other funders would have less reason/motivation to give, if they see that an organization does not have 100%, wholehearted, Board Member participation.

MYTH: The Board is responsible, in some way, for the networking, cultivating and soliciting of 80-90% of a NPO’s charitable income.

REALITY: The Board is responsible for providing a mechanism to fund any budget that they approve. Board Members could assume actual responsibility for giving and getting; They could vote to authorize creation of a volunteer group, the members of which would accept responsibility for giving and getting; and/or, They could authorize the creation of one-or-more staff positions that would be responsible for generating income — not necessarily limited to charitable gifts.

MYTH: Hiring a staff “fundraiser” or creating a separate volunteer fundraising body means that the Board doesn’t have to have a role in the fundraising process.

REALITY: Everything that a Board does can impact the organization’s ability to do fundraising. Board Members may not all be major donors, and may not all be involved in the identification, cultivation and solicitation of donors, but all Board Members do have to be involved. Their level of involvement makes a statement to others as to their level of commitment…. Sometimes, what they don’t do also makes a statement.

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Have a question about starting or expanding your fundraising? Email me at AskDCA@Major-Capital-Giving.com. With over 30 years of counselling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, we’ll work to answer your question.

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Who Needs A Business Plan? (You Do)

A question mark drawn on a black board

The benefits of having a business plan include:

  • Helping you to clarify your vision and deciding whether or not to forge ahead with the idea.
  • Determining if your product and/or service has a sufficient market to support it and whether or not it will be profitable.
  • Providing an estimate of your start-up costs and how much you’ll need to invest or finance.
  • Convincing investors and lenders to fund your business.
  • Defining your target market (who your customers are or will be) and how to best reach them through strategic marketing actions or expanding market coverage or reach.
  • Establishing or reevaluating your competitive position within the marketplace, by conducting a thorough analysis of the competition (finding out where your competitor’s weaknesses are and how you can take advantage of them).
  • Defining corporate objectives and programs to achieve those objectives.
  • Helping your business make money from the start by developing effective operational strategies.
  • Understanding the risks involved and anticipating potential problems so you that can solve them before they become disasters.
  • Setting a value on a business for sale or for legal purposes.

[Source: Wikipedia]

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For more resources, see our Library topic Business Planning.