Cultural Resolution

Today (well, by now it’s yesterday, but I’m still awake) at the 2009 IABC Annual General Meeting, I gave my final speech as 2008-09 Chair of IABC.  It’s been an amazing year, a great World Conference, and an emotional day.  Here is the script from my remarks, which I intentionally tried to keep light to avoid crying (which almost worked):

I really believe that everything you encounter in life, every person you meet, every experience or challenge, is given to you by the universe as an opportunity – that you either have something to learn or something to teach, or both.

So as my year as chair of IABC draws to a close, I’ve been reflecting on the lessons.  I’m going to steal from our 2009 IABC EXCEL Award winner’s Top 10 List idea, and share my top 10 lessons from the past year.

10.   Authentic communication is the new requirement, a paradigm shift has already happened, and most companies and communicators haven’t made the shift.  I learned this from my participation in social media, and it’s why I’ve become passionate about pulling other communicators along with me on my journey.  You can’t understand this from the outside, and you can’t afford to wait until your company is ready, and then hire in the expertise.  I’m really proud of how IABC has moved into a leadership role in this area, and how our use of social media is enhancing and expanding the wonderful sense of community that has always been a part of IABC.

9.  Double-check when you’re tweeting a direct message that includes your mobile phone number – especially if you’ve got 20,000 followers.

8.  If your brand tag line is BE HEARD, you have to learn to listen, and to be willing to hear things you don’t like. 

7.  That said, there is a difference between BEING HEARD and BEING OBEYED.

6.  Look very closely at any travel itinerary put together by Adrian Cropley – He forgets to schedule time for sleep.

5.  Todd Hattori is a tough act to follow – especially from a fashion sense.  Seriously, though, Todd has been a wonderful mentor and partner, and he’s been a dedicated leader, serving on the international executive board for the many years.  Please join me in thanking him for all he has given to IABC.

4.  Asia Pacific is REALLY big. Every place you need to go is a very long flight away from everyplace else there.

3.  Texas is also really big, and it is not a good idea to schedule 3 events in 3 different chapters in one day – and even worse idea to make me drive there (wrong side of the road, plus I’m a bad driver to begin with).

2.  It is way more fun to stay with IABC members than in hotels.  I’ve gotten to know Wilma Mathews’ cat Shadow, I’ve made cookies with Alice Brink, I’ve had a girlie slumber party with the Queensland chapter’s board after we spent a day developing their chapter’s first strategic plan. 

1.  IABC is about the people.  It’s our members that make this association what it is.   So thank you all for what you do for IABC, and for the opportunity to learn from you over the past year.

With just under six weeks to go until the IABC World Conference kicks off in San Francisco, some people may still be trying to convince their bosses to find the budget, or looking at their own bank balance to see if they can swing it.  As someone who hasn’t missed a conference in many years, and paid for most of them out of my own pocket, I know that I’ve always gotten enough value to more than pay for the cost of attending. So I thought I’d share some of the ways you can make the conference pay for itself:

1.  Get material for a year’s worth of in-house professional development sessions for your whole team.  Go through the conference program in advance and select sessions that meet your department’s training needs.  Attend the sessions, take copious notes, download the slides, and then share what you’ve learned with members of your team in a series of free in-house sessions.

2.  Gain knowledge you’d otherwise have to pay a consultant for.   A day or two of consulting time would more than cover your conference costs.  So what expertise does your company need that you could gain by attending?  Never written a crisis communication plan? There are at least a half-dozen sessions that would help you build that expertise. Need to develop a social media strategy for your organization, and know how to sell it to your executive team? You could walk away from this conference with not only the knowledge, but also personal contacts with top experts.

3.  Research best practices.  With 1500 communicators from all over the world attending, you have some of the best minds in our industry, representing many of the top companies.  With a notepad or tape recorder and a list of questions, you could easily conduct research to find out how others have solved problems you’re facing.  In fact, why not offer to do this for another department and get them to help fund your trip from their research budget? Wouldn’t your HR directer like to know how Sony, IBM and Cisco improve productivity via internal communication programs?

4.   Expand your global network & knowledge.  Is your company trying to do business in China and encountering barriers? Looking for market intelligence in India? Or finding its internal culture isn’t consistent outside its home country?  You can learn from experts in cross-cultural communication, and meet professionals leading communication for top companies around the globe.  As anyone doing business across borders knows, in most parts of the world, it takes personal relationships to create business opportunities.

5.  Find a new job.  If you’re between positions at the moment, this might be the best investment you could ever make in yourself.  Not only because of the incredible networking opportunity, but also because you’ll come away energized and full of confidence, something that job-hunting tends to beat out of you.  Forget sitting at home sending out hundreds of resumes or answering classified ads, the best jobs are usually found through networking.  And I know for a fact that there are always a few headhunters in attendance (smart people, since they know that IABC conferences attract top talent).  Here’s a personal offer of support:  if you’re job hunting and attending this year’s conference, let me know in advance and I’ll help with introductions.

I could go on, but the truth is, for me it’s usually one small thing –one kernel of an idea sparked by surrounding myself with so many great minds — that ends up making me leave the conference sure that it’s more than paid for itself.   That’s why I’ve always found a way to get there, whether it meant sharing a room with three other people (actually, that year was really fun), or scrimping on something else for the next six months.  There aren’t that many things in my life that have consistently returned so much value for money, but I wouldn’t miss an IABC conference.

Last stop on my 18-day Western US tour is Denver, and the IABC Southern Region Conference kicked off yesterday afternoon with my new favourite IABC speaker, networking guru Karen Susman, who got everybody charged up. 

Next was a unique and fun opening reception, which featured Wii games, an oxygen bar and the chance to get your photo taken on a virtual ski slope.

The energy here is great, and I’m looking forward to the sessions today, and the Dine-around tonight. 

I’ve finally nailed down all the itinerary details for my first big trip as IABC Chair, and it’s a killer.   If I’m counting right, here are the stats:

• 18 days
• 3 US states
• 7 flights (2 of them long-haul)
• 1 train trip 
• 7 chapter events (including 1 live webinar)
• 1 Region conference
• 3 chapter leader development sessions
• 2 student events
• 1 meeting w/ university comms faculty
• 1 two-day meeting of the International Executive Board

That’s a lot to pack for, especially considering the new excess baggage rules.

Anyway, here’s the actual schedule of chapter events, with links to the websites for more info, in case you can join us:

Mon, Sept 15 – IABC Las Vegas

Tues, Sept 16 – IABC Los Angeles - South Bay (lunchtime)

Tues, Sept 16 – IABC Los Angeles - Pasadena (evening)

Wed, Sept 17 – IABC Los Angeles – Live Webinar (noon to 1pm)

Thurs, Sept 18 – IABC San Diego

Tues, Sept 23 – IABC Orange County

Wed, Sept 24 – Student meetings at Cal State Fullerton

Thurs, Sept 25 – IABC San Francisco

Sun-Tue, Sept 28-30 – IABC Southern Region Conference in Denver

Aside from the logistical and packing challenges, and the long flights, I’m very excited about the trip.  Have already heard from a couple of my virtual-world contacts that are going to be at events in their cities, so my real and virtual networks will collide.  Will try to capture lots of the people and experiences and learnings of the trip and share them here and via Twitter.

Wish me luck for on-time flights (because otherwise you’ll see lots of whiney tweets).

The UK chapter had a brilliant event last night, graciously hosted by Redhouse Lane Communications in London.  The theme was a recap of some of the highlights of the IABC Conference held in New York last month.  Several members who had attended, some of whom were conference speakers, shared their top 3 learnings from the event.  I don’t know how anyone could have come away from the meeting without resolving to attend next year’s conference in San Francisco.  The enthusiasm of the speakers was contagious.  Marc Wright of simplycommunicate shared several video snippets (which you can find on his website).  Russell Grossman, director of communication for the UK Department of Business and Enterprise, always one of the top-rated conference speakers (and always one of my favourites), talked about the value of the whole conference experience — beyond the sessions.  Russell, by the way, brings his laptop into sessions and takes amazingly detailed notes, then shares them with his staff to get even more professional development value.  Brand new member Sabine Jaccaud (who attended conference first, then joined), Olivia Gadd, Susan Walker, ABC, and chapter president Ellen Coomber also shared top tips they picked up.  It was great for me, because my schedule at conference was so crazed that I missed many of the sessions that I really wanted to see.  And as several people pointed out, there are always several going on at once that you want to attend.  So an event like this one provides real value, to both those who attended and those who couldn’t.

How about you?  Tell me what your favourite session was, or the big idea you came away with.  Who was the best speaker you heard?  And do you plan to be in San Francisco next June?

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. 

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.