Communicating Strategically

The topic stresses on the imperative use of communicating strategically and its importance in effective business communication. Communication plays a important role in all the business applications, its proper use is not only essential to the top management, but also to the low-level management. With organization expanding rapidly on global terms it becomes even more important for organizations to be particular in their corporate communications skills and its value should be adopted uniformly throughout the organization. Organizations should be very precise in the message they intend to communicate and the constituents whom the message is targeting at. The proper communication of messages depends on the channels, and the structure of the message. The message then reaches the constituencies. Constituencies can be primary, which include the employees, customers etc. as well as secondary which includes media, legal and government bodies etc. It’s very important to note that the attitude of these constituencies towards the corporation is very important as it has impact on the constituency responses. Constituency responses give a feedback to the corporation whether the constituency responded the way they had anticipated or should they modify the message. Finally, its job of the corporation to see whether the communication was successful, what it wants each constituency to do, and what is the corporation’s reputation. By linking corporate strategy to corporate communication, managers can mitigate the potential loss in reputation.

Author Paul A. Argenti (http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2005/spring/15/), says that both internal and external factors are responsible for an increasing necessity towards strategic communications. He also stresses on the point that constituencies plays an important role in deciding the reputation of the corporation. He conducted a research, and reached to the conclusion that messages should be delivered through proper communication channels, and targeting proper constituencies.

From my internship at JJMI, in which I did a project on “Employer Branding”, I learnt how to communicate, what to communicate, through what channels and to whom. It taught me how to communicate in an organization.