Creating a thirst for communication measurement

Mike Berry, Head of Content, Melcrum

The December / January issue of Strategic Communication Management journal is packed full of content that will help you in your day-today role, as well as giving you plenty to mull over during the festive break.

Fiona MacAllan, winner of the SCM Award for Leader of the Year, explains how she has put a performance measurement structure in place at Nationwide, creating a thirst for communication evaluation across the organization. It’s an impressive case study (sub) and certainly some of the best work on measurement we at Melcrum have seen.

Continuing the measurement theme, the article on measurement and storytelling (sub) gives some sound advice on how to make the most of your data and get leaders’ attention.

World-renowned management guru Jim Shaffer graces the pages of SCM, writing exclusively on the role of communication during Lean transformations (sub). To make the performance improvements gained from Lean stick, an integrated cultural-technical approach is required – and communication is critical to that, he argues.

The issue also has articles on visual thinking and how some organizations have successfully used maps, story walls and graphics to great effect, as well a guide to strategic planning. Our profile interview this month is with Katharina Auer, head of internal communications at Rio Tinto.

If you don't see a regular copy of SCM journal, visit Melcrum's subscription page to find out the benefits.

Focus on measurement at Melcrum's Member Event

by Luke Dodd, Features Editor, Melcrum

Hi everyone,

Our latest UK Member Event was held at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel & Conference Centre in London on 23rd November and focused on the ever-relevant topic of measurement.

The event, exclusive to members as part of their annual membership, featured delegates from various top companies such as Aviva, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Diageo and Unilever.

Melcrum's head of content, Mike Berry, opened proceedings with an introduction to the day and overview of the agenda. Ann McDonagh, head of employee communications and Robert Fox, HR comms manager, Heineken UK (SCM Awards winner – Business Impact) then took to the stage. The presentation: "How the IC team at Heineken UK used engaging, proactive and measurable communication to radically transform a much valued employee benefit", looked at the stages the beer business took to ensure that a planned change to its pension scheme went smoothly. Before they began a program to communicate the proposed plans to the workforce, McDonagh said that internal communication had to analyze and consider several different points such as audience groupings (segmentation), likely audience impacts, key pension concepts to be communicated, likely understanding issues, likely decision paths and viable delivery channels. The duo then presented a plot graph to the assembled delegates that showed how they performed their channel selection analysis. After detailing how they communicated the new pensions, they presented some strong metrics. They had targeted 60% of employees to join the new pension scheme, in reality they hit 94% - a resounding hit!

Following Heineken UK, Melcrum hosted an interactive session facilitated by Sona Hathi, research analyst. During the slot, each table of delegates had to come up with two questions to be included in their "perfect" employee engagement survey. All these questions were collated and delegates could vote on their favourites during the breaks.

After a short coffee break, we all gathered back in the conference for Top Banana's presentation: "Using measurement to focus the attention of business leaders". Nick Terry, managing director - commercial and Richard Bridge, managing director - operations, jointly discussed how to to become your company's trusted advisor, referencing our very own Nishwa Ashraf's article: "The Trusted Advisor: How to become your company's hero". During an interactive session with the delegates, they rated the qualities that were needed to be a trusted advisor. These included being knowledgeable, leading by example and being impartial. Terry and Bridge also provided tips on how to use metrics to focus event design and how to use research as a tool to help improve ROI.

Following lunch, Andrew Hillary, communication consultant, Speakeasy, provided a colourful address referencing his own past as an aspiring rock star (with photographic evidence supplied!) to highlight how beliefs contribute to employee behavior and that it should also be measured alongside opinion and attitude. "Going beyond the standard measure of staff performance" also emphasized the point that we interpret reality through the lens of our beliefs, so understanding employees belief systems is key to getting deeper insight.

Sophie Sheppard, European research and training delivery manager, Melcrum outlined the importance of measurement stating that it was a basis for improvement, a driver of engagement and helped to educate the business. Focusing on change communication, she said that, to measure it, you need to analyze each stage of implementation thoroughly. She added that communicators need to keep their measurement focused on desired outcomes and also to be consistent in their measures. The need to balance hard metrics with soft metrics was also mentioned.

The final presentation of the day was a joint case study provided by Charlotte Kensett, senior channel manager for internal and change communications, Nationwide Building Society and Gareth Dearden, director of customer success EMEA, Kontiki. "Measuring video success at Nationwide Building Society" looked at how they worked with Kontiki to deploy a new video platform. Kensett said that the hurdles to the desktop streaming project included cost, technology reservations, bandwidth and getting the subject on the agenda. However it proved a success, with the internal communication team uploading three to four videos a week with 15,000 unique viewers for each video. In conclusion, she believed that in the future Nationwide needs to look at mobile usage when it comes to its videos.

Melcrum plans to hold more exclusive events in 2012, which are free to attend for practitioners that are members. For more details on the benefits of membership, visit www.melcrum.com/membership_levels/membership-uk.html

Until next time,

Luke

 

 

 

 

Ten reasons why you can’t afford to miss our 10th anniversary!

By Tanya Batra, Melcrum

The 10th Annual Strategic Communication Management Summit takes place in just two weeks! And for those of you who haven’t booked your place yet - here’s ten reasons why you really can’t afford to miss out...

1. Future foresight - be in the know
We all want to know what’s around the corner. And while predicting the future is a challenging and unenviable task, having that foresight means we can plan ahead and make provisions to not just meet future challenges, but to successfully overcome them. This year our focus is on the future for internal comms, and the Summit is set around four key trends set to shape the business world over the next 3-5 years.
 
2. SCM Summit legends pack
As well as lots of new inspiring ideas, you’ll also receive an SCM Summit Legends Pack, containing a handpicked selection of case studies and opinion pieces from past Summit speakers - available exclusively for delegates.
 
3. SCM Awards
The SCM awards dinner takes place on 12 October, the evening of the first day of the Summit, so after a day of inspiring case studies, relax and enjoy a drink with fellow delegates at the champagne reception before sitting down to a three-course meal and an evening of surprises and entertainment, as we announce the winning entries. 

4. All bases covered
Our programme leaves no stone unturned. It covers up-to-the-minute issues facing communicators across industry, as well as fresh, cutting-edge approaches to recurring challenges: line manager comms, the digital workplace, measurement, employee value proposition (EVP), agile working, communicating with a global workforce, CEO comms, ROI and cost efficiency, culture and behaviour, employee engagement and intranets.

5. Trusted by many
Benefit from over 15 years of Melcrum’s research with Fortune 500 companies to share examples of best practice and emerging trends set to shape our industry. We’re the trusted source of advice for senior level communicators at Global Fortune 100 and FTSE 100 largest organisations, so you can be sure you’ll be in expert hands.  

6. Unrivalled benchmarking and networking opportunities
with fellow IC professionals from across industry facing the same challenges as you, in a practitioner-focused environment. Delegates already registered include those from RBS, Rolls Royce, Nationwide Building Society, Essex County Council, HSBC, GE Capital, Centrica, Adidas, BP, Orange and Shell, and many more. 

7. Expert-led panel discussion on “The Digital Workplace”
with senior reps from Yammer Inc., Microsoft UK and the Intranet Benchmarking Forum (IBF) who will address your questions and key challenges around the digital workplace, it’s evolution and role in IC strategy. 

8. Macleod and Clarke
As IC rises to the top of the national agenda, we’re keeping you at the forefront. David MacLeod and Nita Clarke, two names truly synonymous with the words employee engagement after their hugely influential report to government in 2009, will present a keynote session on day one, providing exclusive first-hand insight to their next steps, the launch of a new government sponsored employee engagement taskforce.

9. Diverse, refreshing and inspiring 30+ speaker line-up
With over 30 speakers, this year features our largest speaker line-up to date. Over just two days, you’ll hear from top-level communicators from a broad range of organisations who’ll provide in-depth insight into the work they’re doing. You’ll hear case studies from senior leaders at Nationwide Building Society, Ericsson, NHS Blood and Transplant, eBay Europe, first direct, Harrods, TUI UK & Ireland, Tata Global Beverages, Chartered Management Institute and many more.

10. And our final reason?
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the UK Strategic Communication Management Summit, and to celebrate, we’ve gone all out to make this event as exciting, inspiring and valuable as possible. It’s more than just a conference, it’s an annual meeting of the best minds and leaders in IC - make sure you don’t miss out. 
 
Full programme and booking information available at:
http://melcrum.com/scmsummit_2011/index.html

When you're asked what you're worth, what do you say?

By Tanya Batra, Melcrum

You may have seen the LinkedIn debate between measurement experts, Angela Sinickas, ABC and president of Sinickas Communications and Kevin Ruck, co-founder of PR Academy, about the value of measuring the return on investment (ROI) of internal comms initiatives. For those that didn’t, it went something like this:

Ruck -

"Drop the mythical maths and focus on educating senior managers along the way instead of using defective measurement practices to keep the bean counters happy. It’s enough to know ourselves that our approach of focusing our energies on raising levels of employees feeling well-informed and having a say in what goes on, leads to higher levels of engagement that correlate with higher performance and customer service…IC is an extremely complex activity and ROI is a flawed approach for measuring it."

Sinickas - 

"The math is not all mythical - one client for whom we calculated ROI saw their budget tripled. Feel free to “do what you think is right” without proving to management that it matters or makes any difference…but we must be able to take the right amount of credit for a successful company initiative, and we need techniques for talking with leaders at their level. I hear story after story of communicators who have used this measurement mindset and how their jobs were not cut during an economic downturn, while other staff positions were, because their leadership teams had seen the financial results the communicators had been contributing".

You can download the full article using the link at the end of this post.

What’s your take on it?

In last week’s poll, we put the same question to you:

"What’s your take on measuring the ROI of internal communication initiatives?"

Results revealed that the majority of you share the same view as Sinickas, however a surprisingly high number - just under 40 percent - believe that ROI is fundamentally flawed for measuring the effectiveness of IC.

While both arguments make valid points, in the current business environment and in light of recent announcements, for the sake of survival and to be viewed as a function that’s equally deserving of a seat at the strategic table, metrics are a must, and as put well by Sinickas, "ROI is very real money".

Mere mention of the word "measurement" can be enough to raise the alarm levels in even the most fearless communicator - and with good reason too - the all-encompassing and multi-faceted nature of the function combined with the fact that many IC initiatives do not instigate immediate financial results means the correlation can be extremely complicated to quantify, and having limited resources only adds to the struggle.

But if IC wants a seat at the top table, then as with every other business function, metrics must be used to communicate to senior leaders that the contribution made by IC impacts the bottom line, resulting in higher profitability and better commercial outcomes.

Never a more vital time to put a figure on your function 

Recent announcements from leading global organisations and figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONO) which revealed that the unemployment level in the UK rose by 80,000 to 2.51 million in the three months to July 2011, the largest increase in nearly two years with the jobless rate now standing at 7.9%, worryingly indicate that "the global economy appears to be losing momentum in its recovery", (Stuart Gulliver, HSBC group chief exec, August 2011).

Commenting on these figures, Nigel Meager, director at the Institute for Employment Studies, said:

"Rather than entering a recovery stage…all the figures are moving in the wrong direction. It’s now three and a half years since the onset of recession At the same point following each of the two last recessions in the 1980s and 1990s, GDP was back above its pre-recession level, while at this time national output is still languishing about four points below that level".

- June, 2011: Lloyds Banking Group unveil a new cost- saving programme scheme that involves eliminating 15,000 jobs over a two and a half year period.

- August, 2011: HSBC announce plans to axe 25,000 jobs by 2013 and exit operations in 20 countries in addition to an earlier announcement to slash 5000 jobs, taking the total to 30,000.

- Barclays follow suit and announce a plan to make further job cuts this year taking the total to 3,000 when combined with 1,400 having been cut earlier this year.

- September 2011: Bank of America announce their plans to slash 30,000 jobs over the next few years, a mass chop which hits an already shrinking force given that the corporation announced only last month that it was shedding 3,500 jobs in the third quarter on top of 2,500 reductions earlier in the year.

And just today, it was reported that the International Monetary Fund have claimed  Britain's recovery appears to be struggling, slashing their predictions for growth this year by a third, from the 1.7 percent forecast in April down to just 1.1 percent. They warned that the global economy has entered "a dangerous new phase", words echoed also by business secretary, Vince Cable, who said there were "grey skies" hanging over Britain.

In light of all the above, surely placing a value on your function now, regardless of what side of the fence you’re on in the great ROI debate, seems vital?

If you want to hear a winning real-life example of IC measurement at its best - the internal comms team at Nationwide Building Society serve as powerful proof that this is possible. At this year's Strategic Communication Management Summit in London, Fiona MacAllan, head of internal & change communication will share how her team have successfully brought Nationwide’s business strategy to life by hard wiring the measurement of value adding internal communication. She will explain how they’ve built a measurement framework that includes KPIs and are showcasing results via a monthy reporting pack for key stakeholders.

The SCM Summit takes place on 12 – 13 October in London and you can view the full programme online. You can also download an abridged version of the debate between Ruck and Sinickas as published in our SCM Journal earlier this year.

 

Get the recognition you deserve by entering the SCM Awards 2011

Mike Berry, Head of Content, Melcrum

Has your team achieved something special this year? Have you made a positive impact on the business and feel you deserve recognition? Do you think your boss is an influential leader or is someone in your team a rising star?

Melcrum is proud to announce the launch of the Strategic Communication Management Awards 2011, in association with Towers Watson. The SCM Awards are for individuals, teams and organizations that have positively impacted business results through strategic internal communication.

Against a backdrop of ongoing economic turmoil, the explosion of mass communication and an increasingly diverse and global workforce, the past decade has seen a number of unprecedented challenges thrown at internal communicators.

But despite this, the IC function has emerged more robust than ever before.

Judged by a panel of communication experts, and backed by Melcrum’s 15 years experience and research in the IC sector, these awards represent a powerful voice for the communication profession.

So why enter?
•    Receive recognition from your industry and peers.
•    Reward your team by demonstrating how proud you are of their work.
•    Benchmark your comms initiatives with the best of the best.
•    Analyze what's going well and evaluate the impact of your comms efforts.
•    Elevate the status of the internal comms function within your organization.
•    Boost your CV with an industry-recognized award.

Categories for entry are: Business Impact, Team of the Year, Excellence in Technology, Excellence in Employee Engagement, Rising Star and SCM Lifetime Achievement.

The shortlist will not only identify your team as at the top of their game, but help drive best practice in the sector as a whole. The winners will be revealed at an awards ceremony in London on 12 October.

So enter and put yourself forward for this prestigious European award today!

For more information and entry details, please visit: www.melcrum.com/scmawards

 

Top measurement tips from Angela Sinickas

by Luke Dodd, Features Editor, Melcrum

Held on March 10, 2011, at Prospero House in London, the Measurement Matters workshop was run by Angela Sinickas, a global expert in measuring effective communications and president of Sinickas Communications consultancy.

At the workshop, attendees learnt how to plan their communications in a measurable, behavior-based way, and how to measure messages, channels, outcomes and return on investment (ROI).

If within your role, your measurement procedures and methods have become a bit rusty, here are six tips taken from the workshop to get you back into the swing of things.

1. Make sure you know what you want to measure
You can increase the value of your measurement results by simply being more specific. For example, measuring employee satisfaction isn’t always important to management: they want to find out how your comms strategy has reduced their costs/increased profits.

2. Low or no cost approaches are effective!
Sometimes the most basic types of measurement are the most useful. For example, you can measure if your messages are being pinned up in the staff room by simply going and having a look! Additionally, casual surveys can provide some useful information and can be performed by a quick walk around the office or by telephone.

3. Using the right method – survey, interview or focus group?
Each of these measurement methods suits different situations, so be careful which you choose. Make sure you are aware of what kind of data you would like to achieve – anecdotal or statistical.

4. Take care in website measurement
Web metrics may tell you what web pages of your company site employees have visited, but not how effective that page was in changing behavior. However, placing an action within that page (i.e. a survey or ‘action’ button) has the potential to reveal that information.

5. Make a negative a positive
When implementing a communication initiative across several branches of your company, you may find some sites fail to implement what you have set out. Do not despair as those sites are helping you perform a pilot test: providing a raw sample to compare with when measuring the effectiveness your campaign had at the branches that did implement your strategy.

6. Don’t overstate credit, but do overstate costs
Be conservative in taking credit for ROI and, in turn, overstate the project costs. This way, when outlining how effective a comms strategy has been to your leader, no holes can be picked in your case.

On a final note, as Angela pointed out during the workshop, measurement can get you a higher budget and more resources, so it does matter!

Guess who's back...

By Tanya Batra, Melcrum
  
In 2008, Bill Quirke received the highest-ever speaker score to date
(4.7 out of 5) and unanimously positive feedback from delegates.

For this reason, we’re pleased that Bill is back for our 9th Annual SCM Summit!

No matter how big or small your organisation, leaders must be able to effectively communicate with employees in order to retain talented and engaged staff. But before leaders can achieve that, they themselves must first be engaged.

This year, Bill will lead an interactive workshop around the key topic of leadership communication, with a specific focus on four key areas where leaders need to raise their game, and the practical tools and resources which communicators can use to help them do so.

Continuing the leadership communication theme into day one is Brian Bannister, Director of Communications and James Chalmers, Head of Strategy & Talent, both from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, who will co-present What leaders want and value from internal communication: an insight into a successful collaboration. They’ll discuss exactly what senior leaders want from the internal communication function, and how both teams can collaborate to share vision and strategy more effectively with employees to build a robust culture of engagement.

Rosie Mowatt, Head of Internal Communication at RWE npower, will also discuss how, through working with senior leaders, a new level of communication leadership has been introduced into the organisation.

With the arrival of a new CEO in January 2010, Rosie led her team on a mission that seized this as an opportunity to increase leadership visibility for employees, achieve CEO buy-in for their internal comms efforts and raise the profile of the communication function.

It's going to be a great few days. See you next week!

Quad aims for slice of collaboration software market

By James Bennett, Head of Content, Melcrum

Bringing social networking into the enterprise, as technology suppliers so often like to call it, has long been the Holy Grail of companies such as Microsoft, particularly with its widely used SharePoint collaboration platform.

In the last five years SharePoint has become the de facto software platform of choice. In the case of internal communications, however, this hasn’t always been a question of choice. As many of you will know, and some of you may have experienced first hand, SharePoint has often been foisted upon the function by those pesky geeks in IT . The geeks have either come to some sort of partnership agreement with Microsoft or simply gone behind everyone's backs, signed on the dotted line and gone with the only brand they know. Funnily enough, the general feedback I get from the large majority communicators is how difficult SharePoint is to deploy, use and customise.

Help or rather choice, however, appears to be on the horizon with Google’s collaboration and communications tool, Wave, now being slowly taken up by a small number of companies. But another player has recently joined the game. The latest vendor to attempt to capitalise on the desire of many organizations for secure, internal, corporate social networking, or “enterprise collaboration”, is Cisco with its new platform Quad.

One analyst called Cisco’s approach to bringing social networking into the enterprise “interesting and different” and "more than just having an internal Facebook-like mechanism”.

Cisco’s aim is to integrate enterprise applications into the internal communications mix, effectively melding various tools into one platform to give social networking more business functionality. There are already plenty of platforms that do this but it has some interesting features, while commentators online suggest it is very simple to use.

For example, Quad is designed to let users microblog within the platform, with posts going out to colleagues who follow them, while in-house microblogs can also be posted on Twitter effectively crossing the dreaded internal/external divide – something that may scare some communicators off. But there's no need to panic. For those of you who have recurring nightmares of employees posting updates about certain topics outside the firewall, Quad also enables you to set rules that limit users’ ability to post externally on certain topics or even on certain days.

Quad also includes a calendar application, along with voicemail integration, a “Facebook-like” feed of updates from colleagues that users have "befriended", work group communities, and a place where documents can be stored and made available for collaborative purposes. The platform also includes live video, recorded video storage, instant messaging and e-mail.

The home screen for Quad is the first thing employees see when they start work in the morning, the place they go to find out what’s happening in their company as well as their business tasks for the day, month or year. The top of the screen might show a companywide video message from the CEO, for example, while the side columns might highlight the status of the employee's key contacts and links to their communities within the organization, and a lower part of the screen might be taken up by an interface to the major applications they use.

With many companies being forced to do more with less and, at the same time, increase productivity and profits, implementing an enterprise social networking platform is becoming increasingly popular and has already proven a success in several organisations. Employees now not only demand rich (social media) communication in their own personal lives but equally in their everyday working lives and careers. Harnessing this demand to improve organizational productivity is a logical step.

For some great examples, advice, information, research and best practice case studies, register your interest for Melcrum’s social media report 2010 available soon.

Happy 40th IABC! 40 things I learned at World Congress 2010

By James Bennett, Head of Content, Melcrum

1. The breakdown of trust in leaders is at its lowest ever point and will deteriorate further. But now’s the time to swap dancing partners. Research has shown that middle and line managers are the most trusted people within organizations and it up to us to get on their side and work with them as effectively as possible to leverage that trust.
2. Social media was discussed in almost every conversation and session I had and attended. But talking simply isn’t enough. The feeling from the profession is that communicators are using the tools, but they don’t seem to be using them to reach a constructive end goal and with the overall company strategy in mind.
3. Employee volunteering works. Fact. It improves communication, morale and motivation, personal fulfillment and those companies that actively engage in volunteering are more profitable, experience reduced absenteeism and are winning the war for talent. Two-thirds of Gen Y employees at Deloitte, for example, said they would rather work for a company that encourages volunteering.
4. In the post-recession age we live and work in, always plan for the unthinkable.
5. Communication is a company’s most powerful ally in a crisis… just ask BP.
6. Empower your employees by allowing them to become product ambassadors. Let them get their hands dirty.
7. Accept the risks of allowing employees to express themselves freely and instead focus on the end goal and the rewards.
8. Have courage part one – don’t be afraid to get fired.
9. Have courage part two – don’t be afraid to tell the CEO he’s a terrible presenter and he “lip smacks” when on video.
10. Leaders are like tofu: clearly part of the meal, perhaps even the main source of nutrition, but the spice is provided by everyone around them.
11. Make it a habit – make engagement part of employees' everyday routines for it to pay dividends.
12. Follow the example of the Me to We philosophy and movement and create a culture of empathy, community, meaning and legacy.
13. Memorise and use this quote: “We can do no great things; only small things with great love.”
    Mother Theresa
14. Content in context is king and data is his queen.
15. Successful leaders should always lead with their ace and play the communication card.
16. Every leader has his blind spot – and it’s up to you to spot them.
17. All communicators are sales people.
18. Information is useless – your audience wants knowledge.
19. Get stuck in traffic – find opportunities to do nothing and when you do, do nothing but think.
20. Read your writing aloud – strive to thrill yourself with what you write.
21. Writing is like a window – it should allow your readers to see what would otherwise be invisible.
22. Make your writing transparent – help your readers see your ideas, not your words.
23. Outsource the gaps in your skill set.
24. Communication can release the best potent asset, the human asset.
25. Communication is the path to survival, recovery and growth and a company’s constant companion.
26. Communication is a leader’s lifeline to results.
27. Communicate the future – write a fake news article showing your employees what the future looks like and how you can all work together to achieve greatness.
28. Only 19% of global employees are looking to leave their current roles, but the engagement gap is widening – Towers Watson 2010 Workforce Study.
29. Employees don’t know where to turn in 2010. In a global study when Towers Watson asked people whether they would like a job for life with one company, follow their opportunities as they come along or only work for two or three employers during their careers, the data was split exactly three ways.
30. Employees are reliant on their managers and leaders but not confident in what they are doing for them.
31. Embrace uncertainty.
32. The recession has ended the “deal” between employer and employee.
33. The “new deal” is about knowing and enabling your workforce, customising their experience and planning for the future.
34. The “new deal” will take courage, innovation and discipline – leaders will play a vital role.
35. The Art of Innovation – Polarize people over issues they care about.
36. Never stop learning and continuously seek knowledge.
37. Act like an agency – make your "clients", a.k.a your employees, the stars.
38. Always seek to add value.
39. As a conference organizer always provide a reliable Wi-Fi connection… although IABC never fear, even Steve Jobs had issues at the launch of the iPhone 4.
40. Canadians say “eh”. Rather a lot.

IABC 2010: Meet the Anti Social Media Guy

By James Bennett, Head of Content, Melcrum

It’s Sunday afternoon in Toronto and the unseasonal rain has given way to bright sunshine. The brightest spot of my day at the IABC’s World Congress so far, however has been meeting a beaming David Grossman of the Grossman Group, friend of Melcrum, leading consultant, and speaker and author and one of America’s foremost authorities on communication inside organizations. Not only is he celebrating the birth of his first child (David – many congrats from everyone at Melcrum) but he’s also here to deliver one of the main presentations at the annual Congress and sign copies of his book, You Can’t Not Communicate, now, according to his website, in its second printing due to popular demand.

David, and his dozen strong team, consult and coach some of the world’s largest organizations and their leaders including Heinz, Lockheed Martin and McDonald’s so his session is arguably one of the highlights of an action-packed program. He gave me an exclusive insight into tomorrow’s session entitled “The communication leader as a coach”.

“I’ll be sharing with delegates what we need to be thinking about as leaders because many of us forget we’re in fact leaders ourselves. Many of us are not trained in leadership or even as communicators [because of our varied backgrounds and training] so this is crucial. I’ll also be sharing best practice on strategy and influence,” he said.

“There is an increase in the number of cross functional teams so having influence and great influencing skills is possible the most important skill a communicator can have today,” he added.

David will also explore how we as communicators can be more purposeful in how we communicate and therefore be more effective as well as the issue of self-awareness and that to be more influential we need to know ourselves more.

Rather interestingly, however, when I mention the fact we’ve both been tweeting in the last 24 hours using the hashtag #IABC, he tells me he likes to call himself the “Anti social media guy”.

“I believe face-to-face communication is on life support and that so many companies are simply attracted to social media because it’s new and shiny,” he said as I lowered my iPhone, put my Flip camera back into my bag and shut down my MacBook. “Too many companies are using social media as an ‘it’ and not as an ‘and’. It’s not the be-all and end-all shiny solution we all think it is, it’s an added extra that companies can use.”

He believes the majority of the world’s largest businesses are using social media with little thought as to how it can contribute to the organization’s overall strategy and that its use is destroying the integrity of face-to-face conversations and replacing it with “hidden conversations”. This is arguably true to some extent with many companies confused as to the role it should play inside the corporate framework. There are, however some successes. He cites IBM and Cisco Systems as two obvious examples. If you’re struggling with social media why not read Melcrum’s new 150-page report that will be on sale next week. Email me your details and I’ll be sure to send you more information.

In the meantime I think I’ll tweet this blog.