PR Where it Matters Most

What’s more crucial to success of a business, non-profit or association than its most important outside audiences and stakeholders?

Nothing.

Those stakeholder behaviors directly impact virtually every management and operating activity of organization. From retail patronage, recruiting, civic activity, contributions, and strategic alliances to membership, program participation, plain old sales, and just about everything else.

Which means, if you are such a manager, you may have a real opportunity to do something positive about behaviors of those important outside audiences of yours that most affect YOUR operation.

In other words, you can create kind of external stakeholder behavior changes that lead directly to achieving your own managerial objectives.

You can do so by persuading those key outside folks to your way of thinking, then help move them to take actions that allow your department, division or subsidiary to succeed.

When you decide to move your managerial public relations to a whole new level, here’s some real help for you.

It’s called fundamental premise of public relations and it goes like this: people act on their own perception of facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired- action very people whose behaviors affect organization most, public relations mission is accomplished.

But it won’t be of much use unless PR team members assigned to your unit understand that blueprint and commit themselves to its implementation, starting with key audience perception monitoring. Truth is, your PR people are already in perception and behavior business, so they will be of real use for this initial opinion assessment project.

But pause here. You must reassure yourself that your public relations people truly understand just WHY it’s so important to know how your most important outside audiences perceive your operations, products or services. Be certain they accept reality that perceptions almost always lead to behaviors that can help or hurt your unit.

Why not take some time to review with them your plan 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? Are you familiar with our services or products and employees? Have you experienced problems with our people or procedures?

Yes, survey specialists can always be brought in to do opinion monitoring work, and they also can run up your costs. But, no matter who asks questions, objective remains same: identify untruths, false assumptions, unfounded rumors, inaccuracies, misconceptions and any other negative perception that might translate into hurtful behaviors.

We will discuss following success models.

•Geshe Roach’s experiences in a Wall Street diamond company as recounted in Diamond Cutter. •ezboard.com, a customizable Web-based communities developed in 1998 by Vanchau Nguyen, Founder and Chief Executive Officer. •Hewlett-Packard Company.

Two of these models were started by Buddhists. Hewlett-Packard, seed company of Silicon Valley, even though it was not started by Buddhists, has been, in past, noted for its generous and benevolent treatment of employees, “Hewlett-Packard Way.” All these success models reinforce concept that seed of success and must be watered with more generosity along way.

Success Models: Geshe Michael Roach and Diamond Cutter

Geshe Michael Roach is a Princeton graduate and a Buddhist monk. After graduation, he spent seven years studying wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism. At suggestion of his teacher, he joined a fledgling diamond business in New York to test his ideals in real life. He stayed with business as a member of core management team for seventeen years. The company grew from a start-up with two owners and two employees to $100 million in sales and five hundred employees in offices around world. The Diamond Cutter. The Buddha on Strategies for Managing Your Business and Your Life tells story of how Geshe Michael Roach built diamond division of this company, using principles culled from ancient Tibetan Buddhism as driving force behind his decision making.

Some of many insights in The Diamond Cutter are as follows:

•A business should be successful; it should make money. There is no conflict between spirituality and success in business. Successful business people have resources to do more good in world than those people without same resources do. In addition, very people who are attracted to business are same people who have strength to grasp and carry out deeper practices of spirit. •Money should be made honestly and with absolute integrity. How we make money matters more than anything else does. It determines our ability to keep making money as nobody can indefinitely run a business built on dishonesty or deception. It also significantly affects our ability to enjoy money we make. •Nothing is good or bad in and of itself; everything has a hidden potential. This is what Buddhists call emptiness. What is bad news for you may be good news for someone else, and vice versa. We must not leap to conclusions about events, but must stop to consider what potential they really have for us. Even competitors can be seen as fairy godmothers challenging us to find correct path to greater accomplishment. It is a matter of perception. With right state of mind, we can turn our problems into opportunities. •We should look ahead to inevitable end of our days in business, and put ourselves in a position where we can honestly say our years in business had some meaning. The idea here is to anticipate our future, and move in a direction that will allow us to look back on our past with total joy and satisfaction. Success Model: ezboard.com

San Francisco, Calif. -- August 1, 2002 -- ezboard, Inc., a subscriber-based online community based in San Mateo and founded in 1998 by Vanchau Nguyen, announced that it recently surpassed 10 million registered user level. At present, ezboard.com has over 400,000 active communities, covering everything and 40,000 communities are being added a month! In a 2000 interview about start of website Vanchau describes planting seeds of success and watching them grow.

How did you go about promoting your web site? Mostly by planting some seeds about ezboard in existing online gathering places and then watching them grow by word-of-mouth. Most of our new users are referred by an existing user, which is best way to attract loyal customers and a great testimonial about value and fun offered by ezboard.

His vision, even in beginning, was of expotential growth promised by Korwa cycle. In a 2001 interview with Judy Vorfield of Web Builder ezine(, Vanchu noted that