As a business tends to be external-focused, it is easy to forget that we need our talents to align with business goals in order to optimise our overall efforts. Here are some recommendations to include into the strategic communications plan on channelling talent to drive business goals.
An easily overlooked area is that of talent management in a business. It’s also important that business owners and management recognise that employees are passé. If we want to optimise for effectiveness, we must start by recognising that the people we work with are talent.
Talent are not only employees. Instead, they are individuals with skillsets and capabilities that are invested in and share the beliefs and motivations of the business and want the business to succeed.
The strategic communications approach involves building a plan, against a timeline, aligned with business goals and growth outcomes. It involves not only deciding the external approach, but critically, how to deploy resources (money, time, talent etc) in achieving our goals.
This is exactly where talents enter the stage. Our talents have skills in specific areas. By aligning our talents with the overall strategic communications master plan, we are better placed to decide on timeline, resourcing, placement, and outcomes.
Involving talent in our planning and bringing them onboard early is crucial to success
Recent developments in the workplace around remote and hybrid working and its subsequent adoption in a pandemic recovery environment point towards the demise of silo-ed management and planning. If your business talents are spread across locations and timelines, it is important that they are brought to the planning table early. Whether your business rules by decree or democracy, getting alignment early is a competitive edge. It saves time, and therefore resources and can become a multiplier since an aligned team moves quicker towards objectives.
The old practice of top-down management and sharing of information results in a slower diffusion through the business. It also results in clarifications and objections occurring asynchronously and therefore slowing execution further.
Now why would your business prize a top management’s preference for old-fashioned protocol over the benefits that business-talent alignment brings?
We can help you fix and problem solve for many growth and revenue scenarios such as market entry, market expansion, product/service launches through a strategic communications approach.
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We are Brand Utility is a business consultancy. Our principal consultant is a registered management consultant, certified and recognised by the Institute of Management Consultants Singapore.
We work with brands in the corporate, professional services, retail, travel and technology spaces.
How can we achieve this alignment amongst our talents?
We have to recognise that our talents in the business are another stakeholder audience. As with any target audience, we must cater for them within our strategic communications master plan.
Post-recognition, we must develop activities and engagements with our talent audience with specific narratives and messaging for them. This will likely be different from external audiences and might have to be more detailed in terms of sharing timelines, stages, shifts in strategy mid-campaign and so on.
There should also be specific use of our talents outlined in the plan. These usage scenarios should be clear which aspect of their skillsets or capabilities are being called upon. We suggest allowing talent to have some flexibility at this step to expand on or to modify their execution, in support of the overall objectives or measurements. After all, they are talents and skilled in their areas of expertise.
Channelling our talents towards a business goal
Here are some steps to consider or modify in the talent management portion of the strategic communications master plan.
Break down big goals into smaller goal-oriented stages
Walk-through in detail the master plan, and where talents are involved as well as the expectations or measurements of success
Explain how the measurements are derived and the systems used to measure so talents are clear on what the metric is; make sure to avoid showboating and vanity metrics
Build an organisation-wide support system for talent to tap on while executing on their areas of the master plan
Stay flexible and remind talents to be flexible and open to customisation or localisation in their execution
Keep the eye on the prize, that is, the business goal or growth outcome
Do not change goals partway through execution. It can be tempting to ‘roll-up’ existing plans into yet-another bigger plan. All this does is create confusion and demoralises talent. Instead, call for an early conclusion to the current plan, analyse data for insights and learning before creating the next plan and secure alignment again. The process is laborious for business owners and management in order to discourage frequent changes and impacting performance consistency.
Celebrate successes with your talents, regardless of whether it is step one of the final step. Positivity creates momentum and contributes to efficiency and productivity.
We are Brand Utility is a business consultancy. We work with brands in the corporate, professional services, retail, travel and technology spaces.
We offer strategy and tactics to support growth outcomes - revenue, scale, regional expansion and market entry – for our clients.
Areas of support include:
Strategic communications: Approach to market, brand concept and map, positioning, messaging, story and narrative, thought leadership
Marketing: Campaign/programme planning, story-based marketing execution, digital marketing, community amplification, content planning and production, go-to-market execution
Lead generation and growth marketing: Digital advertising, social media advertising, social commerce, e-commerce
Integration of marketing with business operations: We plan and execute as a marketing and/or PR lead for your brand
Discover more about our services at our website.
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