Moving from Tactical to Strategic Communication

Last week, our class watched a video that dealt with the issue of moving from tactical to strategic communication. Afterwards, we had an online discussion about the video in our Webct bulletin board.

Are Communication Professionals More Valued Than in the Past?
First of all, we addressed the question whether today’s communication professionals are more valued than they were in the past. All of us were of the opinion that they are more valued. Organizations have developed an understanding of how important effective internal and external communication really is. In today’s fast changing business environment, the quick but also accurate exchange of information becomes increasingly important. Communication professionals are experts in managing the effective and efficient exchange of information. This information management can help to improve a company’s bottom line results and increase its productivity. Thus, good organizational communication has gotten an important tool to improves a corporation’s competitiveness in the though, rapidly changing business environment. Another significant reason why communication professional are more valued than in the past is that today’s organizations are capable of measuring the positive effect of good communication on significant business results. These measurement opportunities help to strengthen the awareness of the value that can be added by professional communication.

The Changing Role of Communication in the Workplace
After having answered the first question, we discussed the changing role of communication in the workplace. In the past, workplace communication was linear and top-down. Managers made decisions what their subordinates should do to add value to the company. Today, communication has become a circular process. Feedback is valued because companies understand that employees are closest to a company’s operation process and therefore are able to develop good ideas how to improve these processes. Thus, the former “subordinates” are now active participants in a company’s planning process. The upper management creates systems and mechanisms to initiate dialogs with their employees and to encourage them to articulate their valuable ideas.

Major Differences Between Tactical and Strategic Communication
Afterwards, we addressed the major differences between tactical and strategic communication and came to the conclusion that a significant difference is that strategic communication is related to a company’s long term goals while tactical communication refers to the execution of a company’s strategy. In the area of tactical communication, the focus is on short-term goals which are derived from the given long-term goals. Strategic communication is much more effective to improve business results than tactical communication. Therefore, it is profitable for an organization to focus on improvements of the corporate strategic communication. However, an important point to keep in mind is that tactical communication cannot be replaced by strategic communication. Both are necessary and important. Tactical work means executing strategic goals.

How to Improve Strategic Communication?
I already mentioned that it is profitable for an organization to improve its strategic communication skills. But, how it is possible to improve this area of communication? One answer is that it is important to thoroughly develop communication strategies to achieve business objectives. These communication (media or PR) strategies should be proactive rather than reactive. To be capable of creating successful communication strategies, employees should have a clear idea of business objectives. A company’s management should ensure that the employees are aligned with the business strategy. After business and communication objectives have been determined and communicated to internal constituencies, managers can collect data to evaluate where the company is against the desired state. The analysis of this data provides information about what processes need to be improved to align the role of communications more strategically. Because this analysis should be repeated regularly, it is helpful to develop metrics to measure the impact of the communication department’s work on the company’s objectives. These metrics can give information about the value that the communication department creates. Another significant tool to establish a more strategic communication is training. Consulting with and coaching executives and managers will improve strategic communication skills of these employees.

Crossfunctional, Upward, and Downward Communication
Another measure that supports the concept of strategic communication is to increase crossfunctional, upward, and downward communication. In order to achieve this, a company’s management should design an appropriate communication infrastructure. Certain mechanism and systems should be created to support effective communication across the organization. In addition, the management should develop formal systems to ensure that the voice of the employee is heard. Because employees work close to a company’s operation processes, they often have good ideas how to improve them. Formal systems that encourage employees to articulate their ideas help to make a company’s operations more efficient and effective. It is important that employees can rely on the mentioned formal systems and mechanisms because otherwise they will not use them. Therefore, these systems should be consistent. Leaders are especially important to improve crossfunctional, upward, and downward communication because their behavior has an impact on the whole organization. Therefore, a special training on the importance of two-way communication could be helpful, to improve the crossfunctional communication skills of a company’s leaders.

My opinion about bulletin board communication
Although our online discussion was interesting and brought up some really good ideas, I think that the communication via the bulletin board was quite cumbersome. It was very time-consuming to write answers to all questions and to read the responses of my classmates. I think a lot of text in the bulletin board was duplicative because a class cannot provide more than 20 substantially different answers to all questions.

Examples
Examples of tactical communication include Tactical among others writing memos, having meetings, and communicating with the media. Examples of strategic communication are the creation of organizational communication systems, mechanisms, and action plans to achieve long-term goals.
I already mentioned the importance of creating systems that initiate dialogs with employees and foster crossfuntional, upward and downward communication. An example of such a system is an internal website on which each employee can easily ask his questions and can quickly get answers. A company discussed in the video implemented such a Web site. The Web site was a great success because it helped to start a dialog between management and employees.

Links:

http://www.gse.harvard.edu/hfrp/eval/issue16/sparks.html

http://www.rasky.com/pdfs/RaskyBaerlein.pdf

http://www.carlisle.army.mil/USAWC/parameters/07autumn/halloran.pdf