Managers: a key to your survival

Most managers of companies, nonprofits, and associations live to tell the tale only IF they achieve their operational goals. Very little wiggle room there.

But among those managers are those who do nothing about the behaviors of those external audiences that most affect their business, nonprofit, or association.

In addition to that omission, they risk their careers by choosing to pursue their operational goals without using the fundamental premise of public relations. Therefore, they fail to produce a change in the behavior of external stakeholders that leads directly to the achievement of those same management objectives.

Then, as wonderful as it all is, they end up failing to persuade those important outsiders to their way of thinking, and ultimately failing to motivate them to take action that will help their department, division, or subsidiary succeed.

wow! Why would any clear-thinking manager operate that way? I don’t know why. What I DO know is that they can start to change things in a New York minute!

Best advice? Start with that fundamental public relations premise mentioned above, because it’s the blueprint you need to reach your goals. People act on their own perception of the facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors that can be acted upon. When we create, change, or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading, and moving toward the desired action the very people whose behaviors most affect the organization, the public relations mission is accomplished.

There is no end to the number and variety of results this process can achieve: Politicians and legislators are beginning to see you as a key member of the business, non-profit or association communities; prospects starting to do business with you; community leaders who start looking for you; fresh proposals for strategic alliances and joint ventures; growing numbers of membership applications; customers starting to make repeat purchases; a welcome jump in sales floor visits; and even capital donors or the sources they specify begin to find their way.

Recruit the public relations people assigned to your unit and spend time with them identifying external audiences whose behaviors help or hurt you in achieving your goals. Then list them according to how severely they affect your operation. To get started, select the first audience on your list.

I assume that you have very little current information on how most members of that key external audience perceive your organization. Of course, this data would be available to you if you had been regularly sampling those insights.

If the budget isn’t available to cover the cost of professional survey work, your PR team will need to monitor those perceptions by engaging with members of that external audience. Ask questions like “Have you ever had contact with anyone in our organization?” And, “Was it a satisfying experience?” And, “Are you familiar with our services or products?”

Your team should be on the lookout for negative statements, especially evasive or hesitant responses. Be alert to false assumptions, falsehoods, misconceptions, inaccuracies, and potentially damaging rumours. When you find such harmful perceptions, you will need to correct them, because experience shows that they usually lead to negative behaviors.

The trick is to do something about that negativity before it turns into harmful behavior. Which means that you now choose the specific perception that you want to modify. Not surprisingly, that becomes his PR goal.

Now the reality is that a PR goal without a strategy to show you how to get there is like a meatball without a cheesy center. That’s why you must select one of three strategies specially designed to create perception or opinion where there may be none, or change existing perception, or reinforce it. The challenge here is to ensure that the goal and your strategy match each other. You don’t want to select “change existing perception” when the current perception is correct, suggesting a “reinforce” strategy.

Good writing is required here. Someone has to craft a really compelling message carefully crafted to alter the perception of their key target audience, as required by their PR goal.

Be careful here. Pair your corrective message with another newsworthy ad for a new product, service, or employee, which can lend credibility by not overemphasizing the correction.

As you might suspect, the message must also have multiple values. For example, clarity. Additionally, your facts must be truthful and your position on inaccuracy must be persuasive, logically explained, and believable in order to capture the attention of members of that target audience, and actually move perception towards you.

Now things get more relaxing. That is, choosing the actual tactics you will use to bring your new persuasive thoughts to the attention of that external audience.

And there is no shortage of such tactics. For example, radio and newspaper interviews, personal contacts, newsletters, letters to the editor, brochures, press releases, and speeches. Or, you can settle for group briefings, special events, or facility tours, always making sure the tactics you select have a track record of reaching the same audiences as your target stakeholders.

We’re sorry, but you’ll be asked about progress and you’ll need to once again monitor perceptions among members of your target audience. And with a line of questions similar to the one used during your previous monitoring session. The difference now is that you need to be on the lookout for signs that audience perceptions are starting to move in your direction.

But this is our lucky day. We can always streamline matters and speed up the process by employing additional communication tactics AND increasing their frequencies.

My experience has been that managers of businesses, nonprofits, and associations survive very well, thanks, when they sharpen their focus on the same groups of outsiders who play an important role in how successful they will be as managers: their external key. . concerned parties.