Unfortunately, you’ll make no headway at all without right strategy to tell you how to proceed. But keep in mind that there are just three strategic options available when it comes to doing something about perception and opinion. Change existing perception, create perception where there may be none, or reinforce it. The wrong strategy pick will taste like bleu cheese dressing on your liver and onions, so be sure your new strategy fits well with your new public relations goal. You wouldn’t want to select “change” when facts dictate a “reinforce” strategy.

The challenge now is to prepare a nicely put together message and direct it to members of your target audience. It’s always a problem to create an actionable message that will help persuade an audience to your way of thinking.

Obviously, you need your best scribes for this one because s/he must build some very special, corrective language. Words that are not merely compelling, persuasive and believable, but clear and factual if they are to shift perception/opinion towards your point of view and lead to behaviors you have in mind.

Once your PR team has vetted work product, it’s on to next selection process -- communications tactics most likely to carry your message to attention of your target audience. There are tons available. From speeches, facility tours, emails and brochures to consumer briefings, media interviews, newsletters, personal meetings and many others. But you must be certain that tactics you pick are known to reach folks like your audience members,

By way, you may wish to avoid distributing such a corrective message from rooftops, and unveil your message before smaller meetings and presentations rather than using higher-profile news releases Reason is, credibility of any message is fragile and always at stake.

You’ll soon hear calls for progress reports which will tell you and your PR team to get busy on a second perception monitoring session with members of your external audience. You’ll also want to use many of same questions used in first benchmark session. Big difference this time is that you will be on constant alert for signs that bad news perception is being altered in your direction.

I’ve always thought it fortunate that such matters usually can be accelerated simply by adding more communications tactics as well as increasing their frequencies.

At end of day, what you want your new PR plan to do is persuade your most important outside stakeholders to your way of thinking, then move them to behave in a way that leads to success of your department, division or subsidiary.

Your biggest success secret will be when your “target publics” -- those all important outside stakeholder audiences – actually act upon their perceptions of facts they hear about you and your operation. Which means you really have little choice but to deal promptly and effectively with those perceptions by doing what is necessary to reach and move those key external audiences of yours to actions you desire.

end

Bob Kelly counsels, writes and speaks to managers about using the fundamental premise of public relations to achieve their operating objectives. He has been DPR, Pepsi-Cola Co.; AGM-PR, Texaco Inc.; VP-PR, Olin Corp.; VP-PR, Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.; director of communications, U.S. Department of the Interior, and deputy assistant press secretary, The White House. mailto:bobkelly@TNI.net Visit:http://www.prcommentary.com

Ultimately, key to ezboard.com’s abiding success and exponential growth in a highly competitive field is its focus on community-building as its most important value above everything.

Success Model: Hewlett-Packard Co.

In beginning of company's history, founders did not focus on growth per se, but focused instead on manufacturing quality products. As HP grows, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard create a management style that forms basis of HP's famously open corporate culture and influences how scores of later technology companies will do business. Dave practices a management technique — eventually dubbed "management by walking around" —, which is marked by personal involvement, good listening skills, and recognition that "everyone in an organization wants to do a good job.” As managers, Bill and Dave run company according to principle later called management by objective — communicating overall objectives clearly and giving employees flexibility to work toward those goals in ways that they determine are best for their own areas of responsibility. HP also establishes its open door policy — open cubicles and executive offices without doors — to create an atmosphere of trust and mutual understanding. The open door policy encourages employees to discuss problems with a manager without reprisals or adverse consequences. Bill and Dave make other important management decisions: providing catastrophic medical insurance, using first names to address employees (including themselves), and throwing regular employee parties and picnics. .In 1957, these guidelines became encapsulated within a vision statement known as 'Hewlett Packard Vision'. As part of vision statement, values statement HP Way focused on a 'belief in our people’, which incorporated Confidence in and respect for our people as opposed to depending upon extensive rules, procedures and so on; which depends upon people to do their job right (individual freedom) without constant directives. ('The HP Way') Over years, HP Way has taken on image of Apostles' Creed: a shared statement of beliefs, but one that can be interpreted in many different ways in a broad, catholic sense. It is almost as though its shared symbolic image is more important than living it as a shared reality. One senior manager called it an 'an assumed culture'. This perhaps is its strength: as a corporate ideology, it allows for different interpretations of its words. On May 3, 2002, HP and Compaq officially merged, beginning operations as one unified company. The new HP serves more than one billion customers across 162 countries, and is a leading global provider of products, technologies, solutions, and services to consumers and businesses. The company’s offerings span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing. In this age where large corporations are coming under increasing moral scrutiny, HP has come out relatively clean. The Packard Foundation is world’ largest corporate foundation with grant awards totalled approximately $230 million in 2002. Carly Fiorina, its CEO, is respected in world of business, it is respected abroad, and it has no antitrust suits against it. As Ms. Fiorina remarked, “Our bodyguards carry no Uzis.”

Bio: Janet K. Ilacqua is a freelance writer based in Tracy, California. She specializes in academic writing and ghostwriting of books and manuals for individuals and small businesses. For more information about her services, check her website at http://www.writeupondemand.com.