When a survey reported last week that Canadian CEOs spend half their time on internal and external communications (PRN, Sept. 25), the next question was, what exactly
are they doing?
Suzie Boland, president of Tampa-based RFB Communications Group, first heard the Canadian statistic and thought to herself, "Wow, that's high. Then I thought, wow, that isn't."
As an advisor to CEOs in companies big and small,she expects the leaders of larger businesses spend as much as 80% of their time on communications. "Apart from strategy
development and some fairly minimal operational things, almost everything they do is related to communications," she says.
John Hamill, chairman and CEO, Sovereign Bank of New England, offers testimony to both the importance and time-consuming nature of his communications role. He now leads the
third-largest financial institution in the region - but less than a year ago it didn't even exist. The bank came about when Fleet Financial acquired BankBoston. To appease
regulators, FleetBoston agreed to divest itself of branches in New England; Sovereign Bancorp, at that point serving just Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey, acquired the
branches and set up a new bank. The bank went from zero to 280+ branches, spread over three states, over the course of four months, switching about 1.5 million accounts in the
process.
"We had so many different constituencies we needed to reach. There were internal constituents - we went from a handful of people in January to over 4,000 employees," Hamill
says. "We wanted to make sure they felt comfortable with Sovereign. And then there were external stakeholders.
During the conversion, Hamill held a conference call every morning, including hundreds of people on 50 or 60 phone lines. Because of the complicated nature of the changes, he
went on the road, meeting editorial boards in the the bank's new service areas, and speaking to business and citizens' groups about the coming changes. He met with the employees
at each branch to introduce himself.
On a day when Sovereign took over about 80 branches in the greater Boston area, the bank worked with the regional transit agency to give riders free trips to work in the
morning, and free trips in the afternoon to a Red Sox game. Hamill got up that morning and worked the crowds at the subway stations like a political campaign veteran.
Learning The PR Ropes
AlthoughCEOs are not typically professional communicators, PR has become a huge part of their jobs. But in many cases, particularly in high-tech start-ups , CEOs don't even
know what PR is.
John Koles, president and senior partner of the high-tech PR firm HighGround Inc., says entrepreneurs usually have good speaking skills, but are used to winging it, and, as
such, tend to deliver inconsistent messages. And while they may hire PR firms, frequently "it's because the investment community says to the company, 'Go hire a PR firm,'" he
says. To help client CEOs get past their ignorance, Koles brings in communications professors to run a half-day course. "It helps to have a third party [preach consistency]" he
says. "The CEOs hear somebody singing from the same book [we are]."
Another big issue is the use of language that's audience-appropriate. Chris Karkenny, CEO of Santa Monica-based Netcatalyst, for example, described his company to PR
NEWS as "a global liquidity engineer." After several failed attempts to translate, he got across that they prepare companies for sale to prospective buyers. Karkenny talks to
the press a lot.
Boland points out that in small companies, the CEO may have to juggle communications and operations responsibilities - a balancing act in which most favor ops. To strengthen
their commitment to PR, she advises CEOs to come to terms with the media. "Avoid the bunker mentality, the them-vs.-us mentality; no one benefits," she says. "Second is not to let
their egos get in the way. It blinds you to what the issue may really be. It keeps you from looking at your own operations with a fresh eye."
(Boland, 813/259-0345; Hamill, 877/768-2265; Koles, 781/246-5522; Karkenny, 310/260-2877)