Skills and Capabilities of the Modern CCO
Mark Bain, W. Timothy Coombs, and Bob Feldman
The nature and practice of all work continually evolves.
Today, for example, many products are designed in three dimensions on sophisticated software, rather than in two dimensions on paper draped over a large drafting table. These products are manufactured by precise robots in highly automated factories, with smaller numbers of less efficient and consistent humans playing more of a secondary role. Many of these products are then marketed and purchased online, with overnight delivery enabled by private carriers whose enormous fleets operate in a complex, closely synchronized ballet of logistics.
The nature and practice of communication has changed dramatically in recent years, as well. New technology tools, more globally integrated markets, and other factors have altered much of what communicators do and how we do it. The scale and pace of some change in our field has been profound.
Not so long ago, enterprises practiced mostly one-way, top-down communication. To inform and persuade masses of stakeholders, the CCO’s tools included news releases, advertisements, brochures, newsletters, and the like. Although these tools are still in use, they have taken on different forms and often are distributed in different ways. News releases are now primarily digital and distributed instantly across social and digital platforms, both shared and owned. Online ads target specific stakeholders based on their uniquely individual interests and preferences, and brochures and newsletters are increasingly shared in digital, not printed, form via e-mail, Internet, or intranet.
Contemporary social and digital platforms have allowed for more two-way, interactive and real-time exchanges between the enterprise and its diverse stakeholder constituencies (see Chapters 5 and 8). This has gone well beyond mere awareness to building greater engagement, belief, confidence, trust, and advocacy.
At the same time, dramatic changes in communication tools and processes have led to changing expectations of when, how, and where an enterprise and its stakeholders will engage. And new tools have required communicators, including CCOs, to develop broader and more balanced skill sets.
With communication becoming more of a management function with C-Suite status, CCOs are expected to be proficient in more than just communication. Legacy skills, including writing and presenting, remain fundamentally important. At the same time, CCOs are expected to have the right sets of interpersonal skills to collaborate with colleagues and engage both friendly and hostile stakeholders, while being adroit at managing and leading teams that are often dispersed and virtual. The CCO is expected to have the business acumen and operational and organizational savvy to move work forward, even in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, changing, and ambiguous) environment.
Most of all, CCOs (and the expert consultants who advise and support them) are expected to deliver tangible, measurable, and sustainable business value to the enterprise, not just bigger and better communication results.
With this and prior chapters as a backdrop, and as part of the Arthur W. Page Society’s New CCO (Arthur W. Page Society 2016) research, a working group of Page members identified three broad sets of skills and capabilities required for the new CCO:
1. Communication skills, which involve mastery of written and oral communication skill coupled with metrics that provide feedback and actionable insights;
2. Interpersonal skills, which reflect the growing emphasis on collaboration along with the emotional intelligence required for working effectively with others inside and outside the enterprise; and
3. Management and leadership skills, which align and marshal in-house and external communication resources to perform at ever-higher levels and deliver greater business value.
These three sets of skills and capabilities are the key points to be addressed in this chapter. After each has been addressed, a case study demonstrates how the three skill sets were used when a new CCO took the reins of the enterprise’s communication function.
Communication Skills
Writing and presenting effectively are still fundamental to effective communication (Daft and Marcic 2013). An elevated ability to clearly and persuasively express a point of view, either orally or in writing, is essential for communicators at every level, including the CCO, who often is expected to create mission-critical talking points, position papers, statements, CEO memos, speeches, presentations, and the like. A CCO must also have a keen understanding of how to communicate across different cultures and media, from 140-character tweets to lengthy speeches on major policy positions.
CCOs must have strong skills around metrics and reporting. As with any enterprise corporate function, communication must prove its worth with relevant metrics, ideally correlated to business outcomes, not just communication processes. Perhaps more important, with data generated by social and digital media (see Chapter 8), CCOs and their teams have powerful tools to get visibility and insight into the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of key stakeholders. In fact, the granularity of data today allows CCOs to focus on audience segments, or even down to the individual, in a retroactive, real-time, or prospective manner. Social media are often noted as a source for early indication of potential issues; mining those conversations, filtering the signal from the noise, interpreting the impact, and anticipating a broader issue are hallmarks of the modern communication function. This ability underscores the need for CCOs to have competency with data analytics.
Several other technical skills reflect specific applications of strategic communication: corporate positioning, issues/crisis management, strategic media relations, and internal communication.
Corporate positioning emphasizes the need for enterprises to differentiate themselves by identifying and conveying the distinctiveness of the enterprise.
Issues and crisis management help the enterprise to identify and manage risks in a highly networked and volatile world. We will see the application of issues management in a case study looking at Andeavor (formerly Tesoro), a Texas-based Fortune 100 enterprise through the engagement of external stakeholders (also known as environmental scanning).
Strategic media relations moves past basic publicity to an understanding of how media relations can be used to achieve enterprise goals. In a crisis, for instance, strategic media relations can help an enterprise disseminate information, advance its position, protect its reputation, and retain stakeholder trust through a small number of timely, well-placed stories.
Internal communication has grown in importance as significant percentages of employees in all industries and regions have become disengaged in enterprise corporate strategic priorities (c.f., Men and Bowen 2017). Effective internal communication can enhance strategy implementation, increase retention of top talent, and serve as a valuable asset during a crisis.
A significant body of research has developed around the idea of corporate positioning. Of particular note is the evolving way that CCOs are leading their enterprises to think about corporate social responsibility (CSR). Early CSR programs were sometimes tactical in nature, involving checkbook philanthropy and one-off programs to generate vague levels of goodwill, perhaps to offset certain negative elements of the business (Becker-Olsen, Cudmore, and Hill 2006; Srinaruewan, Binney, and Higgins 2015). More recently, CSR has evolved into a fuller communication and business strategy built around the enterprise’s “social purpose”—the value that it delivers to society and all stakeholders, beyond its customer or shareholder value (Srinaruewan et al. 2015). Social purpose is a powerful driver of stakeholder engagement.
As noted in Chapter 4, in the Page Model, social purpose is central to corporate character—the vision, mission, values, and beliefs that comprise the foundation of any enterprise (Arthur W. Page Society 2012a). Clear purpose allows a CCO to forge shared belief with stakeholders, foster confidence, move them to action, and earn their trust and advocacy. The key is for COOs to help identify, articulate, and align purpose across business and communication. Here, skills in strategic planning, partnership building, and persuasion—ideally built on insightful data—are complementary.
Crisis management is a skill that both professionals and academics recognize as increasing in importance over the past decade. More specifically, both groups recognize the value of effective crisis communication to an enterprise. Research has shown the value of effective crisis communication for protecting institutional assets such reputation and purchase intention. The choice of crisis response strategies has a demonstrable effect on stakeholder perceptions of the enterprise’s reputation, likelihood to engage in negative word-of-mouth, and purchase intentions (Coombs and Holladay 2002, 2005). One interesting finding is that enterprises suffer less reputation damage when it is the first source to report the existence of a crisis (Arpan and Pompper 2003; Claeys and Cauberghe 2012). Moreover, research has defined how effective responses can vary from crisis to crisis. Demonstrating concern for stakeholders affected by the crisis as part of the crisis response is an enduring element of effective crisis communication (e.g., Coombs 2007).
Interpersonal Skills
In addition to mastery of technical communication skills, effective and well-rounded CCOs have a varying set of interpersonal skills that enable them to connect with others, gain support, and move work forward.
Sometimes referred to as “soft” skills, interpersonal skills are anything but soft in their importance to the modern enterprise. The Page working group identified nine complementary skills and capabilities in this area divided into three groups: (1) core skills, (2) change-related skills, and (3) other-focused skills. These three groups reflect different challenges communicators face in seeking to be enterprise leaders.
The core skill sets are comprised of listening, collaborating, and relating with senior management.
Listening is like air and water—essential in any position and especially in leadership roles (Harrison and Mülhberg 2014). Listening takes place throughout our daily interactions. Leaders must understand the thoughts and feelings of those inside and outside the enterprise. Without such understanding, it will be virtually impossible to find common ground, build trust, elevate engagement, and activate advocacy (Matin, Jandaghi, Karimi, and Hamidizadeh 2010).
Collaboration has become more important as enterprises have grown larger, more complex, and more diverse. Even simple communication work—a news release, for example—can require the review and approval of multiple functions, including legal (CLO or general counsel), finance (CFO), marketing (CMO), human resources (CHRO), information technology (CIO), and, often, the CEO. A larger, multifaceted change management initiative could enlist heavy ongoing engagement across the C-Suite. In the global enterprise, collaboration takes on an added geographic dimension on top of the functional element. Most large international enterprises now operate in a highly matrixed manner, so CCOs and their team members must work productively with others.
To optimize collaboration, CCOs must be especially adept at relating with senior management. Listening and compassion are aspects of this ability to relate to others, as are understanding how senior leaders think and how the business works. On occasion, CCOs will be required to “speak truth to power,” sharing unwelcome information and/or advocating an approach that challenges existing positions but may ultimately be in the best interests of the enterprise. An ability to effectively persuade the CEO and other business leaders in a constructive manner can cement the CCO’s role as a trusted adviser and integral part of the senior leadership team.
The change-related skills reflect the rapidly changing enterprise environment. The change-related skills include: (1) dealing with ambiguity, (2) change management, and (3) drive for results (Matos Marques Simoes and Esposito 2014).
Turbulent environments create ambiguity and uncertainty, wherein it becomes harder to predict how stakeholders will behave, what competitors might do, and how regulators might act. Communication leaders can add business value by bringing clarity to the ambiguity that surrounds it while participating in managing the change that results from disruption and other factors.
Communicators are increasingly involved in change management not only because communication itself is an intrinsically important element, but also because CCOs are expanding their capabilities to include change management theory, principles, and practices.
A drive for results is another trait that matters more in a time when agile start-ups are disrupting industries and stealing share from slower enterprise behemoths. CEOs are under pressure from impatient boards, shareholders, and other stakeholders to drive growth and deliver profits. One-hundred-day plans are now the norm for new leaders to show tangible progress—or else. In this environment, CCOs must be more nimble, agile, and progressive—or else.
This same Page working group cited three other-focused skills as central: (1) compassion, (2) mentor and coach, and (3) inspiring and motivating others.
Communication leaders must be sensitive to all enterprise stakeholders. Frequently, CCOs interact with people who challenge their employer’s positions and actions. Compassion, in combination with effective listening, enhances understanding, facilitates resolution, and converts adversaries into advocates for the mutual benefit of all parties.
Mentoring and coaching prepares the next generation of leaders and fulfills individual needs for growth by improving skills. As boards and CEOs expect more from all of their functions, including communication, CCOs will need to attract and retain high-performing talent to deliver value. Mentoring and coaching talent within their teams will help CCOs achieve that goal (Sanchez-Cortes, Aran, Jayagopi, Mast, and Gatica-Perez 2013).
Inspiring and motivating others goes hand-in-hand with mentoring and coaching. There is truth to the adage that people work for leaders, not for enterprises. A weak leader in a great enterprise might initially attract top talent, but will have a difficult time retaining them. An inspiring and motivating CCO who brings out the best in everyone will keep top performers and attract other strong talent, elevating the value she or he brings to the enterprise.
Management/Leadership Skills
The Page working group on the New CCO (2016) identified seven management/leadership skills that seem especially relevant in the current environment: business acumen, strategic business thinking, problem solving, managing character, running effective teams, courageous counsel, and taking leadership.
Business acumen. From literature and commentary, there appears to be growing support that a strong understanding of how the business works is just as important, if not more important, than other communication and interpersonal skills. At a minimum, communication skills are described as table stakes—the price of entry (Korn Ferry Institute 2015). There is more to business acumen than understanding a financial balance sheet. CCOs must have a thorough understanding of how the enterprise generates revenues, manages costs, and produces profits. In addition, CCOs must understand how their enterprise develops, makes, prices, and distributes its products; how it applies responsible practices across the enterprise and throughout the supply chain; how it treats all stakeholders, including policies and practices for union and nonunion employees; how technology enables the business and how personal privacy and data security are preserved; how legislators and regulators view the enterprise’s industry; how competitors differ; and more. A promising communication program that does not conform with the financial and operating realities of the enterprise will remain just that—promising.
Strategic business thinking. Many CCOs have a seat at table as full C-Suite members, or at least observers, on their enterprise’s senior leadership team. They are expected to demonstrate not just subject matter expertise (e.g., communication skills), but a broad understanding of the entire business so they may advise on business matters in general and crisis and reputation matters in particular (see Chapter 4; Harrison and Mülberg 2014).
Problem solving. Increasingly, CEOs turn to members of the C-Suite to solve business problems and seize opportunities anywhere in the enterprise, regardless of their functional expertise. CCOs with business acumen and a strategic mind for business problems and opportunities become indispensable to the management teams and enterprise. The CCO’s ability to think across enterprise functions and to plan strategic communication plans and responses adds an intangible value to the C-Suite. As the CEO’s primary communication strategist, the CCO can develop a close working relationships with the CEO.
Managing corporate character. Because stakeholder trust depends on what enterprises do, not just what they say, the foundations of enterprise corporate character as discussed in Chapter 4—mission, vision, values, and so forth—must be clearly understood and optimally activated to encourage stakeholder support (Men and Tsai 2015; Moore 2015). CCOs are well positioned to lead in this area because of their panoramic view of enterprise culture and interactions with stakeholders of all types.
Running effective teams. In this era of high collaboration, cross-functional and global teams are often the mechanism to develop ideas, build support, drive change, and advance corporate strategies (Wheelan 2014). The CCO and communicators at all levels should have the organizational savvy and process management skills to play leading roles on these teams. An effective team is one that takes in data, analyzes it, evaluates it, and then interprets it for C-Suite discussion. An effective communication team will be asked to participate in strategic discussions, not simply announce them.
Courageous counsel. Communication leaders must be willing to speak regardless of whether others will like what they have to say—or perhaps especially when they will not. Being courageous and speaking out are an essential element to being a trusted and valuable strategic adviser. Clearly, however, the CCO must understand enterprise culture, carefully listening and scanning the enterprise for problems and being proactive in managing them. Simply stated, the CCO is a proactive strategist, thinking both inside and outside the box.
Taking leadership. A growing number of CEOs want solutions and are agnostic about their origin. Anyone in the C-Suite is invited to pitch in on a thorny problem and drive a promising opportunity. This capability requires confidence and initiative, volunteering to assume responsibility for matters that are of the highest importance to the enterprise. To be seen as trusted advisers and valued contributors to the business, CCOs should step up and take leadership roles where their panoramic, multistakeholder perspective will add value. They must take ownership and clearly articulate their positions with hard data and a deep evaluation and clear interpretation of things inside and outside the enterprise.
Finally, CCOs must possess the skills required to design, build, and implement processes and systems. In the past, when the function’s primary rule was to provide communications services to the enterprise, this skill may have been less important. But as detailed in the Page Society paper, The CCO as Builder of Digital Engagement Systems, the CCO now has an opportunity to build and deploy systems that monitor stakeholder conversations, create and share relevant content, and engage stakeholders (Arthur W. Page Society 2016).
The following case illustrates the evolution of work and many of the skills and capabilities required of modern CCOs presented in this chapter.1
Case: Putting Skill Sets into Practice
Upgrading the Andeavor Communication Function
When Greg Goff became Andeavor’s CEO in 2010, there were concerns about the enterprise’s future. The enterprise needed to take bold steps, quickly, to improve its competitiveness and prepare for future growth.2
Goff made it an early priority to strengthen his senior leadership team [C-Suite], reasoning that higher performance required the right people to drive operational and cultural change. New senior leaders, in turn, brought additional talent into their respective functions, including Corporate Communication, a catalyst for internal and external stakeholder engagement.
Following an industry downturn, Andeavor’s communication function lacked the talent needed for a large enterprise in a highly regulated and often contentious environment. The function was also unprepared to contribute to Andeavor’s ambitious growth plans. Communication work was largely reactive, and the function’s relationships—internally with business leaders, and externally with key stakeholders—needed to deepen.
Jill Saletta was hired as Andeavor’s CCO, or formally vice president of Corporate Communication, in 2011. Reflecting Goff’s approach, she quickly developed a three-year strategy to increase external visibility and improve employee engagement. Both would lay the foundation for more robust reputation management and stakeholder engagement efforts to come.
Aligning the Team and Business
Early on, Saletta saw that her function was not aligned with the business, in part because her group did not possess the skills to perform as trusted counselors and valued business partners. In line with her three-year strategy, Saletta brought on generalists with strong writing and relationship-building skills. These generalists were able to straddle internal and external communication, flexing focus whenever demand shifted. She also drove alignment within her team through new or improved processes, such as a Monday morning production meeting to set priorities and allocate work.
Creating a Shared Vision
With the right talent in place, Saletta then turned to developing a more cohesive and aligned team.
First, she invited all of her team members to collaborate in crafting a shared vision for the function (see Chapter 4). The resulting vision statement, which all had a hand in writing, clarified the team’s primary role (“build and protect corporate reputation”), explained how it worked (“trusted advisers and valued partners”), and set forth what it aspired to become (“leading team”).
To achieve this vision, the group developed a set of 18 initial values unique to the function and complementary to the enterprise’s values. These values defined the behaviors expected from communication team members at every level. Examples of their values included:
Specifying Skill Sets and Competencies
Finally, the group selected specific skills and competencies needed to better serve the business. It settled upon 19 critical skills in three broad clusters—communication skills, interpersonal skills, and management/leadership skills. These were incorporated into the enterprise’s standardized performance management process and the function’s professional development planning to monitor and measure progress.
“Aspire”
The vision, values, and competencies were captured and expressed in a unique “operating system” the team called Aspire. This system brought the values and competencies to life through a collective set of commitments for how Andeavor’s Corporate Communication function would develop team members and manage, measure, and reward performance. The system was shared with existing team members as an interactive PDF, and is now given to new hires when they join.
Summary
Saletta says these efforts have helped her team increase its capabilities and expand its capacity. As the team has mastered several of its initial 19 skills, it has started to look at new ones to add. The initial 18 values have been instrumental in setting and managing expectations for behaviors, and the vision statement will soon be updated as the Corporate Communication role expands.
More important, these efforts have elevated the team’s performance and, with it, its stature in the enterprise. Several internal clients now see Corporate Communication as one of the enterprise’s high-performing teams. Demand for communicators to have regular involvement in the business has risen dramatically, and some communication team members have even been borrowed (full-time, in some instances) by enterprisewide teams working on major corporate initiatives.
This comprehensive and disciplined approach to clarifying direction and setting ever-higher performance standards has helped the Andeavor Corporate Communication team shift from a reactive to proactive stance, with growing expertise not just in executing communication tactics but, increasingly, in providing advice and solutions for critical business matters.
(Note Andeavor’s name was changed from Tesoro following an acquisition effective August 1, 2017).
Bringing It All Together
It is critical for CCOs to be multidimensional, well rounded, and balanced in all three of these skill sets. A CCO who is a strong communicator but less proficient in other areas will enjoy less influence in the C-Suite. Likewise, a CCO who is not a strong manager and leader will struggle to attract and retain the top talent needed to drive optimal business value, lessening her/his impact on the business.
For many years, some communicators were elevated into the CCO role largely based on their expertise in all forms of communication. Looking ahead, communication skills alone will be insufficient to drive the business outcomes CEOs want and expect from the enterprise Corporate Communication function.
1 This case was prepared by Mark Bain with the help of Jill M. Saletta, vice president for Corporate Communication at Andeavor.
2 Tesoro Corporation (NYSE: TSO aka: “Tesoro Petroleum,” or simply as “Tesoro”) is a Fortune 100[5] and a Fortune Global 500 company headquartered in Texas at San Antonio, with 2013 annual revenues of $37 billion, and over 5,700 employees worldwide. Tesoro is an independent refiner and marketer of petroleum products, operating seven refineries in the Western United States with a combined rated crude oil capacity of approximately 845,000 barrels (134,300 m3) per day. Tesoro’s retail-marketing system includes over 2,264 branded retail gas stations, of which more than 595 are company-operated under its own Tesoro brand name, as well as Shell, ExxonMobil, ARCO, and USA Gasoline brands.