IABC Be Heard Weblog

Our June luncheon speaker, Stephen Barnhill, plans to reveal some lessons he’s learned while trying to change the world. From graduate school to the glamorous world of ad agencies to serving only nonprofits and mission-minded businesses, Stephen has amassed broad experience in institutional, corporate and marketing communications. Outside of work, he has served as a director of numerous nonprofits, including Operation Rainbow, The Park People and Houston Metropolitan Ministries.

I look forward to hearing his insights from a 30-year career. It got me thinking. What have I learned during the past 30 years?

Don’t burn bridges. No matter the circumstances for leaving a job, refrain from telling the employer what you really think.

Promise a date to finish the project and deliver early. Side note–as I’ve gotten older, this has become more difficult to do, but I still try.

Keep a master to-do list. With i-technology today, this is easy to do. Although I still tend to write lists in longhand on scraps of paper that end up on my desk, in my purse, in a notebook, next to my bed, on the refrigerator…

Make friends with your clients’ assistants. They really run the show and can get you answers much quicker than the client.

Take vacations. It helps refresh creativity if you take a break once in a while.

Vent and laugh. Confide in trusted friends or therapists. I can make referrals to the latter if you need.

Volunteer. Whether it’s at your kid’s school, your church, community organization or IABC (hint, hint), it can help you develop skills, meet contacts and feel good about contributing to something worthwhile.

Exercise. I recommend polka dancing.

Show your gratitude. With email, it’s even easier these days to dash a thank you to someone. It will make you both feel good.

Pray. As much as you want to be in control of everything, you’re not. Daily guidance is needed.

What have you learned over the years? Share your thoughts here. And thanks Stephen for the cue to reflect.

Open, transparent and direct communication–the final frontier. It’s what we all strive for but like a manned trip to Mars seems far from reality. Leave it to the exploration experts at NASA to set out on a journey to find this type of communication. And I believe they have. Yes, it’s a government agency, but somehow a group of young, unjaded employees at NASA dared to create openNASA.com. ESIG members had a chance to hear about the project from the head renegade, Nick Skytland, Project Manager of the EVA Physiology Systems and Performance Project.

It was great to see his enthusiasm for his employer. He thinks the glory days of NASA aren’t over. This is NASA: The Next Generation. And he’s using a blog site to reach out to the public and tell the story through the voices of NASA employees. Wow! An engineer who has helped design space suits along with a whole list of other unworldly accomplishments he mentioned gets the importance of communication. Not just top down communication. Open, transparent and direct with an invitation to start a dialogue. While no wine was served that day at the luncheon, I think we all felt a little lightheaded at the prospect.

We also questioned, so where does Public Affairs stand on openNASA.com? Well, not exactly enthusiastic support, but not death to the rebels either. In fact, the site welcomes their contributions as authors, but out of the 37 authors listed I only saw one communicator, the head of media relations for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. But if they aren’t contributing I can guarantee they are monitoring–as they should. And I’m being open and direct when I say if this was a slam NASA site, there would be ways of dealing with the creators. I’m sure it’s in their policy manual somewhere.

Bottom line, openNASA.com is a great example of using social media to engage employees and get the public excited about what the agency does and plans to do–that is if they get funded. Would your company or client endorse such a site? Could a government agency be ahead of the curve on best practices in using social media to build an employee community that’s not afraid to communicate with the public what they actually LIKE about their jobs? And maybe get the public to change its perception of NASA as a has-been agency?

As an American and Houstonian, I left the luncheon actually feeling excited about NASA: The Next Generation. As a communicator, I felt energized and maybe a little indignant that a communicator should have been the brains behind openNASA.com. But I quickly got over that. Thanks, Nick. If the space engineering thing doesn’t work out for you, the communications world is at your command.

I was sifting through email back in April when I came across a plea for help. John Clemons, ABC, APR, a communications graduate student at Syracuse, wanted to interview senior communicators in three of IABC largest chapters–Houston, Washington D.C. and Chicago. His research would satisfy the final assignment in his Public Relations and Public Opinion Research Course while at the same time helping IABC learn what senior communicators really want. About 15 of our Houston communicators took part in the survey.

So what do senior communicators really want? Here are a couple of highlights or read the full report SU PR Research paper, IABC, 5-09. By the way, John earned an “A” on the project.

When asked how interested respondents are in preferred areas or categories of programming, several choices were listed: Skills-based/How-to, Best Practices, Communications Theory, Breaking News/Topical, and Other. Best practices and breaking news/topical received the highest responses, 76.1 percent and 61.9 percent respectively. It should be noted that skills-based/how-to category received a low 29.2 percent which indicates that timely, “in the moment” and successful examples of effective communications are preferred by respondents.

Survey participants were also given the opportunity to suggest one-to-three program ideas for senior communicators.  Two were repeatedly mentioned: social media and crisis communications, followed by ideas that leaned toward staff management and development, case studies, demonstrating the value of communications/return on investment, and a variety of other suggestions. Among them: “maintaining enthusiasm toward the end of your career, latest trends so I can keep up, and forming professional networks that last.”