Corporate Communications

Culture and the approach of integrated communications

„Focus, focus, focus“ was the recurring theme of a Managing Director at the Swiss site of a pharmaceutical company. This was the attitude he required so that in all areas of business, including communications, we were careful to focus on the essentials at any moment.

And now comes the crucial point. It is the values lived that ultimately determine how a company behaves. That's why the tasks for change within an organization are particularly challenging in change management processes. And they need time. Because it is a long-term issue until new values become part of the corporate culture. And it is a conscious and active leadership task that must be taken on hand at all levels. This makes it clear that the manner of communications is an expression of the corporate culture and that corporate culture, in turn, can be changed through communications.

The decisive factor

That is why my first question in defining the corporate objective for communications will always be that of corporate culture. Rather, the structural form of communications itself is a matter of discipline. The approach to Corporate Communications is by integrated communications. While this is not a new approach, it remains a decisive factor for success!

And that brings us back to focus. With the variety of business topics, the technical possibilities for conveying messages and the tendency to address specific topics up to individual exchange, the concentration on strategically defined topics, main target groups and the choice of primary communication channels is crucial. And all of this must be coordinated in terms of content and time.

The integration and coordination of all business-relevant communication activities simultaneously complies with efficient resource management and makes sense for very practical reasons: from a personnel, financial, and time-wise point of view.  The time aspect in particular increases the potential to remain focused or at least more focused – and applies to employees as well as towards external stakeholder groups.