Modern communicator share the craft! (Easy to learn).

If the boss calls you a goose, take it as a compliment. When geese fly in formation, they travel 71 percent farther than if flying solo. Geese also make the most of group travel by taking turns leading. In our customer-focused business climate, communicators should heed the teamwork lesson geese teach. Communicators need to stop doing all the "flying" in the communication arena, instead teaching others and letting them lead.

"When customers read your brochures or your ads, that's fine," says Anders Gronstedt, Ph.D., author of "The Customer Century - Lessons from World Class Companies in Integrated Marketing and Communications." "But when you analyze the brand contact points from the customer's point of view, you realize that most of them do nor involve professional communicators. They involve what I call 'part-time communicators,' the people in the front lines: the person answering the phone, or delivering the product, or manufacturing it."

Today's customers are informed, price conscious and demanding of quality, service, customization, convenience and speed. And, according to Gronstedt, communication that consistently reinforces a company's message at every contact and creates a strong brand identity is the only way to build the customer and stakeholder relationships that grow a business.

"As communicators, we are oriented toward doing the communication. Now, we have to shift to helping others do it," he explains.

Beyond marketing communication

Integrated communication is Gronstedt's model for success. This is not to be confused with integrated marketing communication, which he says focuses on creating a uniform appearance and message for a company's traditional communication vehicles, such as advertising and product literature.

"Most companies have this part down," he says. "Companies now need to go further and look at all the contact points they have with customers and stakeholders, the ones that really matter. These typically are the personal interactions and the actual performance of the product or service.

For integrated communication to work, it must occur on three levels, Gronstedt says. It must he vertical, creating an open channel from top management to those with the heaviest external audience contact. It must be horizontal, crossing departments, functions and business lines within an organization. And it must reach out to customers and stakeholders.

Gronstedt, who is president of the Gronstedt Group, a communication training firm that develops e-learning programs for global clients, cites the problems Intel Corp. had some years ago with its Pentium chip as an example of how lack of this three-tiered communication created a serious problem for the company.

"Months before the issues with the Pentium chip became known, a mathematics professor was talking about them in an online discussion group. Eventually it spread to some 20 such groups. Several Intel employees knew of this, but it never reached the higher echelons," he says. "Even the CEO was not aware until CNN was literally knocking on the door."

Getting top brass to play

Integrated communication is a holistic approach that requires management commitment to helping everyone in the organization learn how to articulate a company's value to the customer. "Integrated communication is a view of how the business should be run, and it involves everyone," Gronstedt says. "It doesn't involve just communicators, but rather the entire organization. So it has to be a top-management responsibility."

How can you convince the front office to make improved communication a company-wide endeavor? There are sound business reasons. Good communication creates relationships that retain loyal customers and employees, which in turn save money and create the foundation for solid growth.

Gronstedt's book details the success that integrated communication has brought to such well-known market-segment giants as Hewlett-Packard, Saturn, Motorola, Ericsson and Federal Express.

If this is too theoretical an argument for management, communicators might do some rudimentary research within the organization and present the results. Gronstedt advises playing a "mystery shopper" role. Call your customer service department and ask questions about a product or service. Take notes. Can your representatives explain the benefits and features of your service, or why your product can solve the problem better than a competitor's? "You want to see if they can reiterate your brand promise," Gronstedt explains. "You're likely to discover as many different answers as the number of people you speak to."

He also advises doing brief interviews with a cross-section of senior managers. "Ask some of the basic questions about what the brand and the company stand for. You're likely to find again a variety of answers," he says. "If senior management can't agree on the brand promise, then how are employees supposed to?"

Internal communication obviously plays a critical role in helping others learn to communicate your company's value, but the role of the communicator shifts from producing traditional vehicles, such as an employee publication, to helping managers communicate with their subordinates.

"Every employee survey that's ever been done shows that employees want company information from their immediate supervisor in an environment in which they can ask questions about how this will affect their work situation. So managers are the primary internal communicators," he says. "We must focus less on editing the employee magazine and putting together communication materials, and spend more. of our time training and supporting managers to become better communicators."

Less is more

In implementing an integrated communication approach, the potential exists for giving employees, customers and stakeholders too much information and diluting its effectiveness.

"It might seem like this integrated communication approach that I espouse means we spendall our day communicating with one another," Gronsredt says. "I think we need to be spending less time doing some communication, such as traditional mass communication. Employees and customers are increasingly tuning out these mass messages.

"What we're increasingly left with is this high-tech, high-touch idea. Personal communication is going to be increasingly important, and customized electronic communication will play a dominant role. There will be less of what's been in between, communication that is neither very personal nor very high-tech."

During the past decade, communicators have become more attuned to measuring the results of their efforts. In an integrated communication setting, Gronstedt argues that the old-style methods, which rely heavily on measuring output or how many articles were placed, how many issues of a publication were distributed, arid so on, are inadequate.

The first step to measuring the effect of integrated communication involves ascertaining the value of particular, customers and stakeholders. They are not all created equal. "The measurement needs to start with how much value various stakeholders and customers are adding to the company," he notes. "That forms the basis for prioritizing who the most important customers are, who the most important people in the legislative arena are, for example, or the most influential journalists.

"With that information determined, we need to measure how we as a company are adding value to those audiences." This involves, Gronstedt says, doing things such as customer satisfaction research, not only with people who buy your product or service, but also with government officials, for example, and other opinion influencers. It may also require more qualitative research, such as in-depth interviews or an anthropological type of research where you follow a customer through the entire sales process.

Companies who make this effort, according to Gronstedt, will discover that it isn't usually the editorial quality of their publications that needs improvement, but rather the way telephone calls are answered or merchandise is delivered. "These are big, messy cross-functional issues that will have to involve the entire organization in order to be fixed," he says. "And, increasingly, the role we need to take as communicators is to work as counselors to management to make sure that people have the communications skills needed to do the job."

Leila Zogby is president of Leila Zogby Business Writer, Inc., which has been providing writing services to large and mid-size organizations since 1984. She is a member of IABC'S New York and Long Island chapters.

RELATED ARTICLE: NEW ROLE-Different Skills

Anders Gronstedt, Ph.D., author and presenter at IABC's upcoming international conference, June 24-27, New York, N.Y., believes that communicators must evolve from being producers of communication vehicles to becoming communication coaches for everyone in an organization. This new role of teacher and mentor requires different skills and expertise. Gronstedt advises communicators to improve in these areas:

EMPLOYEE TRAINING Although training is traditionally the responsibility of human resources departments, Gronstedt suggests that communicators educate themselves about this discipline so they can recommend and implement appropriate and effective programs. Knowledge of web-based training tools is important, too, particularly in a multinational setting.

DATABASE TECHNOLOGY Customer relationship management software and similar database products are affecting the traditional marketing function and have potential value for integrated communication efforts. "The smart communicators will start to apply this technology to stakeholders other than customers. They can build systematic databases of journalists, analysts, investors, activists, community leaders and others in order to manage these relationships better," Gronstedt says.

BUSINESS FUNDAMENTALS Understanding dollars-and-cents issues will make counseling much easier. "A lot of communicators haven't been to business school and, therefore, don't speak the same language as senior managers," Gronstedt points out, adding, "This affects a communicator's confidence as a counselor."

COUNSELING SKILLS In addition to the strong interpersonal skills that communicators already possess, they'll also need good research skills to excel as guides and mentors. "You'll need to present senior management with information about how things stand to help them see where things should be going."

LISTENING SKILLS Knowing how to really understand what others are saying, both in the work place and beyond, will allow a communicator to home in on the essential messages that must be disseminated. The Internet introduces a new dimension to active listening. Gronstedt advises companies to pay close attention to rogue web sites and chat rooms because of their ability to spread information about your company.

"We used to spend 95 percent of our time as communicators talking through press releases, events and things like that," he says, "In the future, we need to spend at least half our time listening in a systematic way to customers and stakeholders, and always should be on the alert so we can let senior managers know what's going on."