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| ©2008 Forrest W. Anderson |
http://forrestwanderson.blogspot.com/
The Institute for Public Relations/
The Lean Communicator/
Market Development Group
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I was working in a public relations agency and I had an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management. I needed to develop strategy for communications, but in almost all cases, there was no information on which to base the strategies. As an MBA, this was intolerable. So I started looking for ways to get good information on which to base strategic communications recommendations. This led me to positions in research and account planning in PR agencies.
While I was SVP, director, research and account planning, at GolinHarris International, CEOs of a number of companies asked us to develop sets of messages that would appeal to multiple stakeholders but not conflict with each other. Because I had information-based ways to develop persuasive messages, these projects came to me. I enjoyed working on these projects more than any others, because they are an area where communications blends with management. Developing messages that appeal to multiple stakeholders while not conflicting with each other seemed to me to be what CEOs had to do through actions. As managers, they needed to pull together different groups of people – investors, employees, customers, communities – with competing goals and through the enterprise the CEO managed create a situation in which everyone would gain.
I also found that sometimes management did not have an acceptable message (or policy) for all stakeholder groups, and in those cases, it became necessary for me to let management know that the organization was not aligned with stakeholders and needed to either change itself or choose different stakeholders.
This is a point where communications consulting becomes management consulting, and today I find it as fascinating as I did then.
The relationship work came as a result of being exposed to the ideas of Pat Jackson, University of Maryland Professor Jim Grunig and others who feel the business of public relations is managing relationships. When Jim Grunig and Linda Hon published a paper that provided a technique for measuring the strength of relationships across six factors, I was anxious to apply it. Having done work in this area now, I know we can assess the strength of relationships and manage them for the better. This, too, is something senior managers are called on daily to do.
I have worked in communications for more than 30 years and have held senior positions in communications research and account planning for nearly 20 years at organizations including GolinHarris International, Burson-Marsteller, Applied Communications and Text 100.
I have an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management in marketing and management policy, and I have been designing and managing projects to optimize multiple stakeholder messaging and to enhance relationships for more than 15 years.
Clients for which I have done this kind of work include: Bank of America; Boy Scouts of America; Dairy Management, Inc.; Disney Imagineering; IBM; Michelin, North America; Stanford Athletics; United States Ski and Snowboard Association; and Weyerhaeuser.
I am a founding member of the Institute for Public Relations Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation and have written and contributed to a number of papers on this topic.
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