Cultural Resolution

Just learned last night that international executive board member Paulo Soares, who is based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has achieved his ABC accreditation. The first of many more, I am sure, as IABC grows in South America.

Congrats to Paulo! And thank you for your leadership. Accreditation will help us to elevate the communication profession, but to have that influence requires that more senior communicators step up.

Anybody else inspired to take the ABC Challenge?

This month’s podcast is all about Accreditation.  Anybody else ready to take the Accreditation Challenge? 

Breaking news:  IABC has ten new Accredited Business Communicators — in Shanghai, China.  You can get the whole story on the IABC News Centre , but I’d like to be among the first to congratulate our newest ABCs:

Doreen Cheung, ABC

Shirley King, ABC

Lucia Wang, ABC

David Shoval Wong, ABC

Xu Jun, ABC

Zhou Xu, ABC

Juliana Zhu, ABC

Ling Wang, ABC

Vivian Fung, ABC

Liu jie min, ABC

This is a huge accomplishment, both for the successful candidates, and for the Accreditation volunteers who made it possible.  It’s the result of more than a year of work.  So I’d also like to thank those who played a part to help establish Accreditation in China,  including traveling to Shanghai to provide mentoring, grading portfolios, proctoring exams, grading exams, and probably much more. 

 Volunteers and their roles:

1^st group of mentors who traveled to Shanghai in October 2007:

Eric Bergman, ABC

Mark Estes, ABC

Warren Bickford, ABC 

Practice Exam Graders:

Linnea Maxwell, ABC

Ned Lundquist, ABC

Wilma Mathews, ABC

Tamara Gillis, ABC

Claire Watson, ABC

Nick Durutta, ABC

Brent Carey, ABC

Alice Brink, ABC

Mary Hills, ABC

Shelley Aylesworth-Spink, ABC

Connie Eckard, ABC

David Himme, ABC

Meryl David, ABC

Jo Langham, ABC

Carmelle Boston, ABC

Mary Ann McCauley, ABC

Sandra Beatie, ABC

Jacqui d’Eon, ABC 

Exam proctors (for March 2008 exam):

Nick Durutta, ABC

Wilma Mathews, ABC 

Exam Graders:

Bill Murphy, ABC

Brent Carey, ABC

Connie Eckard, ABC

Donn C. Richardson, ABC

Jacqui d’Eon, ABC

Jennifer Wah, ABC

Joy Lovejoy, ABC

Kim Zitny, ABC

Nance Harris, ABC

Shelley Aylesworth-Spink, ABC

Tamara Gillis, ABC

Mary Ann McCauley, ABC

Claire Watson, ABC

Meryl B. David, ABC

Update:  Additional credits are due to Accreditation Council Chair Anna Willey, ABC, and Glenda Holmes, ABC, who both put in a great deal of time making this all come together, as well as to the entire Accreditation Council.  Thanks to you all, and sorry for the oversight in the original message. 

Congratulations to you all!  It would be great to hear from Warren, who was in the lead throughout the last year, and from any of the others who took part in this inaugural program, about what you learned from the experience, so feel free to comment here or provide links to your own blogs.

Please join me in congratulating our newest Accredited Business Communicators.  Those of us who’ve been through it all know the anxiety of waiting for the exam results, and the excitement when the envelope arrived with the letters ABC after our names on the label. 

Well done ladies!

June ABCs:
-    Shannon Holms, ABC from IABC / BC
-    Annette Tait, ABC from IABC / Great Plains
-    Cynthia Schmieg, ABC from IABC / Minnesota

July ABC:
-    Elizabeth Simon, ABC from IABC / San Francisco

Was just scanning around IABC eXchange for interesting sites and came across an all-time first — Camille Krug (http://camille.x.iabc.com/) has set up a site to post her Accreditation portfolio.  It’s especially interesting to me in light of the discussions we’re having, examining all aspects of the program.  It’s always seemed a bit don’t-look-behind-the-curtain, and here’s someone gutsy enough to throw back the curtains, publishing her best work for all to see.  Wow!

Camille is also really enthusiastic about this new IABC offering, and the opportunity to experiment with eXchange.  The more I play with it, the more I share that enthusiasm.  If you’re experimenting too, tell me about it.  I think this can only get better, and we can learn from each other.   How can we make this a really powerful extension of the association.  Are there problems it could help solve, opportunities it could open up?  I sense that we’ve only just scratched the surface, and that we’re going to find this is one of the best member offerings we’ve done in awhile. 

Congrats, Camille, on going for your ABC!  Let us know if we can help.

I’ve heard from a number of members, mostly via private emails, about their personal reasons for not yet going for their accreditation, and I think there would be a lot of value in bringing the discussion into a more public venue.  A new task force is looking at ways to improve all aspects of the program, and we’re starting with a SWOTs analysis — identifying the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats — of our current approach to accreditation (which includes all aspects, from the process itself to the marketing, and encompasses volunteer, staff and leadership functions). 

So if you have an opinion, an experience, a perception, a complaint, a compliment, or an idea to add, please chime in here.   I’d especially like to hear from people who in general would like to be accredited, but for whatever reason are not.  Is the process too cumbersome, are the pre-requisites relevant to today’s communication market, is the exam relevant to communication practises outside North America?  What could or should our professional accreditation be?  What would it take to make it truly influencial in our profession?

Two ground rules: 

1. Please keep comments constructive (or if you can’t, email them to me instead)
2. And for those of us with lots of emotion and time invested in the current program, don’t take the feedback personally or get defensive.  The point here is to let people “Be Heard” and for us to listen and learn.

I love it when things that other people do (completely independently of me) align with something I believe in.  I’ve been talking about our responsibility, both as an association and as individuals, to influence our profession and the world.  And up pops a member who took it upon herself to do just that, and made a difference.

Lana Collins, ABC, a member of the Newfoundland & Labrador chapter in Canada, was surfing a government employment website, and noticed that under the “communication” category there were options to indicate membership in or accreditation by other organizations, but IABC and the ABC were not mentioned.  So Lana contacted the responsible Canadian government agency to point out the oversight and get IABC added.   A small action, that has had a positive impact for IABC, raising our visibility with the Canadian government as well as with job-seekers, and elevating the importance of the ABC accreditation. 

It’s the kind of small opportunity for influencing that we each come across regularly.  And it’s easy to say, “IABC should do something about that,” and continue on our way, or even be critical of the fact that “they” haven’t done anything before now.  But as a long-time member and volunteer, Lana knows that “they” is really “we,” so she took the initiative.   Great going, Lana!  That proves at least two of the I’s in one fell swoop.

I’ve received some feedback on my speech from the conference that one portion of my remarks gave offense to some people in the audience, so I’d like to turn this into a conversation. 

First, let me begin with an apology to anyone I offended.  I’ll explain my thinking, so that you can understand where I was coming from, but I also want to learn from this. 

Here’s an excerpt from Peggy Berndt’s conference evaluation (shared here with her permission):

“I was really liking the lady from IABC that spoke about accreditation until she said ‘shame on you’.  At this point she lost me and others I talked with following the conference.  No one can shame me into anything.  Engage me…  inspire me… but don’t shame me.”

While I did not intend to actually offend or shame anyone, I certainly knew my message would provoke some strong reactions, both positive and negative, and my intent was to push us as an association to debate it openly and deal with what I see as a major failure to achieve real influence.  Obviously I missed the mark with this member and possibly others (and again, I’m sorry to have turned anyone off so completely), but I’m hoping the very fact that I’ve sparked a reaction will help us find a way to move the association and the profession forward.   

So with thanks to Peggy for kicking this off, I’d like to open the gates for more reaction, negative or positive.  We’ll live the brand here, and give everyone a chance to be heard. 

In my remarks as incoming IABC Chair to the 2008 AGM, I threw out a big challenge to senior communicators who aren’t yet accredited, to step up and make this your year to get your ABC.  I’ll pledge to do anything I can to help.  And my first big tip is to go on record with your goal, because it helps keep you focused.  The year I was president of the Central Florida chapter (in the early ’90s) I wrote my New Year’s resolution to become accredited in the January chapter newsletter.  With such a public declaration, I couldn’t turn back.  So I took the exam at the international conference that June, and by August I’d fulfilled my pledge.  

So here’s your chance.  Go on record here pledging that this is the year that you’ll finally go for your ABC.  Just post a comment to this post stating your goal for all the world (or at least all of IABC) to see.

A couple of people have asked for a copy of the text of my remarks at the AGM, where I introduced my Four I’s (by the way, I know that an apostrophe isn’t correct there, I just don’t know how to write it without it looking like the word “is”).  Anyway, here it is…

I’d like to share my thoughts with you today about what IABC means to me, and what I believe IABC should mean to the profession and the world. My theme today, and my focus for the coming year, can be summed up in four letters – better than that, in one letter, used four ways.  Because I want to talk about the I in IABC – or more accurately, the 4 I’s in IABC.

The first, and most obvious, is for International.  I say obvious, because it’s actually the first letter of our proper name.  And yet, while our global membership base is one of our strongest competitive differentiators, IABC is still far from being truly global.  Our membership distribution is still about 89% in North America.  And while we have chapters in 26 countries and members in 46 more, we’ve barely begun to reach the total audience of communication professionals worldwide. 

We’ve made great strides in the past few years, for which I’d like to recognize both staff and board.   This year’s incoming board is the most internationally diverse we’ve had, and the same can be said of the Research Foundation trustees.  We also have strong global representation at the committee level, as anyone who has participated in a committee conference call in the wee hours of the night can attest.  But we have so much more to do before we can honestly say we are truly international. 

My vision for strengthening the International I in IABC includes not only communicating a North-America-centric message to the world, but bringing a world of communication best practises home – wherever home is.  It includes linking people and ideas worldwide.  I dream of an IABC international conference being held in Hong Kong or Sydney or Singapore or Mexico City.  I dream of 150,000 members worldwide, not 15,000.  I yearn for a day when “international” isn’t just a catch-all for everything outside North America.  When IABC is well known among all communication professionals worldwide.  Because only then can we realize the second I on my list… Influence.

I believe that IABC should influence…we should influence the profession, the media, the business world, governments, and the public.  Over the past few years, we’ve discussed internally the need for advocacy, yet we’ve struggled to define what that means or how to have an impact – perhaps because we have seen advocacy as primarily about words, about taking a position.  But influence is about far more than just words.  It’s about harnessing the full power of our membership base, and all the tools at our disposal, to make positive changes in the world.   We should be helping set standards for things like ethical communication, not just for our members, for business and governments worldwide.  We don’t have to have all the answers, our role can be to raise the questions, spark the debates, spotlight the grey areas, highlight the gaps. 

And I’m not only speaking of the association here, because I don’t believe this kind of influence can be achieved solely by staff or a board or a committee.  I think the way we make a real impact is by motivating every one of our 15,800 members to influence their own companies, colleagues, CEOs, and communities.  Rather than struggling to take one position on behalf of our diverse membership base, we should be mobilizing all 15,800 voices to speak up.  We should be scanning for issues and utilizing this amazing network to gather and  disseminate information, lobby for change, influence decisions and behaviour.  

Perhaps our greatest opportunity for achieving influence lies in the standards exemplified by the Accreditation program.  It has the potential to serve as the gold standard of our industry worldwide, but with only 810 communicators currently holding the ABC, it has to be acknowledged that we have so far failed to achieve real influence.  That has to change, and again, it won’t happen through just the efforts of IABC staff or the Accreditation Council.  If we want to make an impact on our profession, the responsibility starts with each of us as individuals, and I think it’s time to step up.  If you’re a senior communicator and you’re not accredited, shame on you.   I don’t accept the arguments I’ve heard from many, that they don’t see any personal benefit to becoming accredited, or that the ABC is not widely enough known, that it won’t make a difference to my employer or my clients.  That’s abdicating your responsibility. 

Accreditation will only become a must-have when the majority of senior communicators – those who have already succeeded in their careers – are accredited.  Then, and only then, will we be able to influence employers to require professional accreditation.  Then and only then will it become an obvious goal for every young communicator.   Then and only then will we be truly influencing standards of professional communication worldwide.   So each of us owns a big part of this I.  If you’re already accredited, consider how you can influence colleagues, employees and fellow members to go for it.  If you’re not – and you know you should be – make this your year. 

My next I is actually one that I think IABC does very well, and for which I’m eternally grateful.  The third I stands for Inspiration.  And again, it’s each of us that has the power to inspire.  I want to take this opportunity to thank a few of the people who inspired me throughout my career.   

As a young communicator, I was inspired by many of what are today the gurus of IABC.  People like Les Potter, who first inspired me – speaking at the first international conference I ever attended – to move beyond tactical communication to strategic communication. 

When I landed my first management level job, only to realize I was in over my head and didn’t know what the heck I was doing on a fairly regular basis, I had IABC mentors like Bette Jore in my Central Florida chapter to turn to.  I owe an enormous debt to Bette, who was a longtime member and chapter and district leader.  She was always willing to talk me through a new challenge, to lend advice.  She encouraged me to take on leadership roles, and she’s the one who inspired me to earn my ABC.  She led by example, and was generous with her knowledge.  Thank you Bette. 

More recently, I’ve been inspired and learned a great deal from our outgoing Past Chair Glenda Holmes, whom I’ve had the privilege of serving under for the past three years.  I’ve learned more about leadership and strength from Glenda than I ever imagined, and I want to express my appreciation, Glenda, for all you’ve taught me, and for your friendship. 

With that, I come to the fourth I in IABC, and some of you may have guessed it by now, because it’s the common theme that runs throughout them all.  It’s the Individual members of IABC.  I am the I in IABC.  And you are, and you, and you and you. 

The true essence of IABC is not the programs and services, it’s not the staff, it’s not the board, or the chapters or regions.  It’s the individual.  It’s the 15,800 individuals, around the globe, connecting, influencing, sharing, inspiring.  You, we, are what makes IABC what it is.  So I’ll close with a final challenge.  If this association, or this profession, or this world, is not yet everything you want it to me, get involved and change it.  Be the most important I in IABC.