PR: Focus on What Matters!Written by Robert A. Kelly
Please feel free to publish this article and resource box in your ezine, newsletter, offline publication or website. A copy would be appreciated at bobkelly@TNI.net. Word count is 1025 including guidelines and resource box. Robert A. Kelly © 2004. PR: Focus on What Matters! Sure, as a manager, you have a talented member of PR team assigned to your department, division or subsidiary, or housed at your agency, and s/he is darn good at placing product and service plugs on radio and in newspaper. Which may be all you want. And that’s fine. Unfortunately, when your PR folks concentrate primarily on tactical fixes like publicity placements, at least be aware of what you are NOT getting. You don’t get a comprehensive effort that persuades those important outside folks to your way of thinking, then moves them to take actions that help your department, division or subsidiary succeed. You don’t get use of high-impact, fundamental premise of public relations to deliver external stakeholder behavior change – kind that leads directly to achieving your managerial objectives. And you don’t get creative potential of your assigned PR team needed to positively impact behaviors of very outside audiences that MOST affect your business, non-profit or association. That’s a fair amount NOT to be getting! It certainly doesn’t sound like best use of your public relations resources, but it’s fixable. In which case, you might begin to see results such as prospects starting to do business with you; fresh proposals for strategic alliances and joint ventures; membership applications on rise; customers starting to make repeat purchases; capital givers or specifying sources starting to look your way, community leaders beginning to seek you out; welcome bounces in show room visits; politicians and legislators starting to view you as a key member of business, non-profit or association communities, and even higher employee retention rates. From Day 1, you have to get public relations people assigned to your unit on board. Make certain they all accept realities that it’s vitally important to know how your outside audiences perceive your operations, products or services. And that perceptions almost always lead to behaviors that can hurt your unit. Get your team involved in plans for monitoring and gathering perceptions by questioning members of your most important outside audiences. Questions like these: how much do you know about our organization? Have you had prior contact with us and were you pleased with interchange? How much do you know about our services or products and employees? Have you experienced problems with our people or procedures? After all, your PR people are in perception and behavior business to begin with, so they can be of real use for this opinion monitoring project. Professional survey firms are always available, but that can be very expensive. But whether it’s your people or a survey firm who asks questions, your objective is to identify untruths, false assumptions, unfounded rumors, inaccuracies, and misconceptions .
| | Three Foundation Stones for Building Organizational IntegrityWritten by Dr. Freddy Davis
When stock market crashed in 1929, there were a lot of people who lost everything they had. You would think that result of that event would be complete and utter despair. And, in fact, there were those who reacted that way. There were numerous cases of people who committed suicide because they lost their life savings on that fateful day. They simply went into a depression and just couldn’t bring themselves to go on with life. But there was another group of people who reacted differently. These, too, lost everything and there is no doubt that they were just as devastated at their loss as were others. It is just that they seemed to have better coping mechanisms. These folks were, somehow, able to take it in stride. Many of those went on to create another fortune. What was difference? Both lost everything. Why did they react so differently? The answer is that they placed their values in different places. As a result, path they chose was also entirely different. The ones who committed suicide saw money as an end in itself. When it was gone there was nothing left to live for so they ended their lives. Those who started over placed their values more in process of living life. They valued relationships and personal growth over money. They realized that money comes and goes, but life goes on. They chose to value things that give life meaning whether there is money or not. This is but one example of many ways this plays out in our lives. We all constantly deal with trials and disappointments. Whether it is with finances, business opportunities, relationships, sports competition, academics or whatever, we all face those times when we don’t have outcome we want. The choices we make at those moments do not just happen. While we may, sometimes, feel limited in our possibilities, fact is quite different. At any moment we have way more possibilities than we imagine. One of major choices we make is our value system, and decisions we make in life are based on those values. While all too many people simply fall into their value system without due consideration, it should not, and need not, be that way. In "era of Enron" and “MCI” with it's focus on bottom line above all else, it is time to refocus on where true value lies in enterprise of business. Let's face it, money is everywhere. It is in good places and in bad places. It is used for good things and for bad things. The question is not, "Will we have money at our disposal?" It is, "What will we do with what we earn?" We have to assume that our business will be making money - no profit no business. Money, in and of itself, is a neutral commodity. Rather, it is values we establish about business and its resources that define outcome. We are not born with values - either as individuals or as a business entity. We absorb them from our environment (family, teachers, colleagues, etc.) and we craft them from our life experiences (what we read, who we listen to, desires and dreams). But values have to be based on something. American culture emerged out of a way of thinking that was based on an objective value system which emphasized personal responsibility. The thinking was, “If something was bad or wrong with my business, it was my responsibility to make it right.” It included a very strong objective sense of what was right and wrong. The result of that value system is powerful economic engine that United States has become in world today. In recent years, though, there has been a significant shift in thinking. Rather than a system which emphasizes personal responsibility, it is now very much one which places responsibility on everything else but self, with right and wrong being a matter of personal preference. This system cannot help but develop an Enron mentality. There are a lot of different ways that we can get at right and wrong in business dealings. Every business has to structure its efforts according to its own line of business, personalities of its people and corporate culture. But there are three basic principals that must be underlying foundation for all of them if that business wishes to progress to higher and higher levels of value.
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