Month: January 2010

On being relevant

A recent post by Andy Shaindlin on his Alumni Futures blog got me thinking about relevance. Andy’s post — about issues facing alumni relations in the year ahead — really struck a chord, especially the part about the relevance of alumni relations organizations in this era of budget reductions.

Andy wrote:

I’m concerned about “mattering.”

Senior administrators are questioning the relevance of alumni relations in the face of external and internal changes (i.e., competition for scarce resources). Will alumni organizations matter?

It’s an important question, and not just for alumni organizations. From my perspective as a communications director, the issue of relevance matters on several levels:

  • Mission. How relevant is our department’s mission to the institution’s? How about to our stakeholders? (Does our department even have a mission? And if so, do we al know what it is?) Then there’s the institution’s mission. How relevant is that to stakeholders and audiences? An organization’s communications and marketing staff ought to be conveying the institution’s mission to various stakeholders, right? So the relevance of institutional mission should set the tone for the institution’s messages, and thereby set the agenda for the communications/marketing office. Which leads to the next issue…
  • Messaging. How relevant are our organization’s messages to constituents? Are they connecting? Are the messages we (communications people) transmit in step with the organization’s mission? How well are we serving as the spokespeople for our organizations?
  • Delivery. What about the ways in which we transmit the messages? How relevant are our delivery systems? To reach our stakeholders, do we rely mostly — or even solely — on traditional vehicles, such as press releases, alumni magazines, newsletters and direct mail? Are those the best approaches? Should we consider mixing it up a bit — or even eliminating some old vehicles that our stakeholders no longer pay attention to?
  • Organization. Then there’s the ultimate relevance question we must ask ourselves: If your (my) organization were to suddenly cease to exist, would the institution still function as well as it does now? Would it matter? Answer that question honestly, and you should get a good idea of whether — and how much — your department or organization matters.

Lots of questions, I know. I hope you’re asking yourself some of them.

How do you plan to remain (or become) relevant in the changing world of 2010?

Achieving liftoff

It takes a lot of power to escape the gravitational pull of all the stuff that tries to hold us back.

It takes a lot to break free of the urgent issues that suck up our time and energy.

It takes a lot to push beyond traditional tactical roles in an effort to move into a position of strategic importance.

It takes velocity to escape the bonds of the urgent and travel to the lofty heights of the important.

It’s hard to help clients rethink their approaches to marketing — to think beyond brochures and websites and press releases, to think in terms of audience and message and outcomes.

It’s tough to say no to people who are used to getting their way.

It’s tough to be both a service provider and a strategic partner within an institution.

It’s hard to set priorities.

These are just a few realities that have set in this week as the newness of 2010 begins to fade into the past. These are lessons I thought I’d learned before. But I’m re-learning them. Some days, I re-learn them several times.

But if I’m going to move myself and the organization I lead from the tactical to the strategic, then I must learn to do the hard stuff and to reach that escape velocity needed to soar.

Postscript, Jan. 23, 2010: This morning I read a quote in John C. Maxwell’s book Make Today Count that succinctly captures everything I tried to express in this post. It comes from Mike Abrashoff, author of the book It’s Your Ship:

Up is not an easy direction. It defies gravity, both cultural and magnetic.

Photo courtesy of NASA.