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The role of communications has changed. The expectations are higher. The margin for error is smaller.
Earning Your Seat is a podcast for communications leaders operating under changed expectations without a clear playbook.
Hosted by Dino Delic, Stephanie Lerdall, and Genevieve Brammall, the show places the hosts inside an experience many communicators recognize. Smart, capable leaders learning in real time how influence is earned, tested, and sustained.
Each episode features candid conversations with leaders across communications, data, media, and technology. Alongside those conversations, the hosts test ideas in real time, question what they have been taught, and confront where common advice breaks down under organizational pressure.
This is not aspirational thought leadership. It is a practical look at growth as it happens. How communicators earn trust, collaborate across functions, and lead with authority in a world moving faster than the role itself.
Pull up a chair. The work begins now.
Dino Delic (00:00):
This is Powered by Meltwater. Hi, I'm Dino Delic, and in the studio with me is Genevieve Brammall and Stephanie Lerdall.
Genevieve Brammall (00:22):
I'm Gen and I'm the head of PR in News Corp Australia.
Stephanie Lerdall (00:26):
Hey, I'm Stephanie Lerdall. I lead comms for Morningstar, which is an investment research firm.
Dino Delic (00:31):
For a bit of context, I've asked Genevieve and Stephanie to join me as my co-hosts. They're two communications professionals at different stages of their career, and I know they're going to learn a lot about themselves from these industry experts I'm putting in front of them, because I have an underlying motive. This is part podcast, part experiment, and part comms bootcamp. This is Earning Your Seat. When it comes to strategic communications, we reckon there are only a handful of people who know more than Becky Edwards. Becky held not just one, not just two, but five CCO positions in the past. Currently, she's a Page Society board member and an in- demand consultant, among other things. When I first met Becky, I was taken aback by how easygoing she was. She was all ears and smiles, offering solid feedback and meaningful advice. Her story is uncommon. She started in foreign service, then shifted to the corporate world.
(01:31):
Her diplomatic traits, particularly her curiosity and empathy, proved to be superpowers that propelled her to the top of the executive ladder. I knew right away I had to invite her to the podcast. What we learned from Becky was illuminating. She talked a lot about trust, for one.
Becky Edwards (01:49):
Your value and your worth is in understanding what it takes to execute, but relying on people who will do it very well.
Dino Delic (01:59):
And initiative for another.
Becky Edwards (02:01):
Think about how you can occupy that space and solve the issue for the company, because that's going to yield a reputational benefit. There's going to be a story in it. You're going to have opportunities to communicate about it.
Dino Delic (02:17):
Unfortunately, the person I wanted to hear Becky's advice the most, Stephanie, she couldn't join us for this episode. But as always, Gen shares her years long wisdom with us to make what I think is a rich and fascinating conversation about how comms leaders can make their way to the top. There are so many things that somebody has to get good at to become a comms leader to the point where you're in the C-suite. There's one question that we ask consistently. If you were advising someone, if you were in the ear of someone who is trying to be a chief comms officer, it's the one piece of advice you would give them. You've been a five-time CCO and being able to advise people. And so that means you're a trusted advisor. And so you have the ability to make the role scientific, but also I'm sure you rely on creativity and strategy and hunches and those sorts of things.
Becky Edwards (03:09):
I believe that some people, when they are aspiring to a role, think they have to be completely cooked. They have to have every aspect of what they perceive that person needs to be excellent at. They've got to check every single box. I would advise that people think about their strengths and what they know they're good at and how that is connected to the brand of how people see them when they enter a room or when they collaborate with them, and then be clear on what they need to surround themselves with to be successful. Because often making the leap from being a senior communications person to being the senior most communications person means leaving the doing behind. And that is a tough transition for a lot of people because they feel like their value and their worth is an execution. And the step change is that your value and your worth is in understanding what it takes to execute, but relying on people who will do it very well.
Dino Delic (04:27):
So in order to be ... I'm now being very cute with this, but in order to be a trusted advisor and make it to the top, you have to trust a lot of people beneath you.
Becky Edwards (04:35):
You do. And you have to let go. You have to be willing to not sit in judgment and say, oh, well, when I was doing the chief media job, I would've done it like this. Or if I was doing internal comms, here's how I would've done it. It's like, nope, be clear on what the objective is. Give the person the space and the coaching if they need it, but don't expect mini yous to be running around you like a posse, and that's what's going to make you successful. So Dino, maybe the way I showed up with your colleague and when you first met me was a factor of me being comfortable with like, "I know I'm good at things. I know I'm good at things. That's not what we're here to discuss. We're here to discuss how I can be better by working with you.
Dino Delic (05:26):
" I got to say, I love Becky's reminder here. Sometimes when we're so fixated on something like earning trust, we think about ourselves and we obsess about what we have to do to earn trust and the reminder that trust is also something you give. And really the true role of leader is to set a very clear objective and create a vision for the team. And so leadership becomes a lot easier when you can create a clear vision and then give a little bit of trust to others so that they can figure out how to color between the lines. I felt like you gave us grace. Most people that we speak to that are in that role and no offense to them, but they have to act like that person. They have to be tough and strong and smart, know everything because they're trying to make sure that they're not overspending $200,000 with us.
(06:15):
You didn't come across that way. And again, I always appreciate, maybe it goes back to the first thing you said about why you went into the foreign service because you need curiosity. Curious people tend to use data differently than other people. If you're not curious, then data to you is validation. If you're curious, data to you is information, information that makes you more powerful. It doesn't matter if it says green or red, you're like,
Stephanie Lerdall (06:37):
Okay,
Dino Delic (06:38):
I know how to calibrate now. And that's again, what I appreciate about Gen. This is why I really wanted you to meet Stephanie because this whole project started because I kind of felt like Stephanie's the kind of person who she just needs a really good mentor. And you could tell she's putting herself out there. She joined Paige. She put herself out there and got on the PR week 40 under 40. Stephanie brought me in to do workshops with her team and I was like, "What are we trying to achieve? I don't get what is the metric that's meant to improve." But she wanted me to keep coming in and helping. But then I realized, oh, she doesn't want to say it in front of her subordinate, but she really wants that title change. She wants to prove to herself that she can take on more responsibility, that she can do this because she's already doing.
(07:17):
She's already reporting to the CEO of Morningstar. So I thought I love people like that. I love people who, she's humble. She's struggling with putting herself out there, but she's done stuff like that. And I thought she deserves that success. And so I was like the most impressive person that I've met so far through this process of someone who just knows how to blend the art and the science is Gen. So I called Gen. I said, "Hey, Gen, I know we've never really met, but would you be willing to mentor this lady?" She's like, "Shoop."
Genevieve Brammall (07:44):
Wow.
Dino Delic (07:45):
And so that's how we connected. And so you've done this five times. How would you advise someone who's been told by their boss, "I love everything that you're doing. Take more risks." For a financial services company who doesn't like risk. Well, they probably like risk, but only if they can reap the rewards.
Becky Edwards (08:00):
Maybe this is the secret difference between being a senior communicator and being the chief communications officer. You're no longer ... Doing the job of communications is table stakes. Every person that has reported to me in every single one of those organizations that you mentioned could probably be the leading communications person. The next step is doing all of that, relying on your team to make sure they're doing that, and then occupying white space. And that is scary because there's no one telling you, "That thing has to be done or we will not survive." You need to develop a crisis management, a crisis comms plan for this potential eventuality. That's all stuff you have to do and no one should have to tell you that. But the organization is struggling to onboard skilled laborers in machining or some other complicated skillset that you know nothing about. Know that there's an issue and think about how you can occupy that space and solve the issue for the company because that's going to yield a reputational benefit.
(09:23):
There's going to be a story in it. You're going to have opportunities to communicate about it, but it demonstrates that you're seeing the white space that serves the organization and you're willing to step into that space even though it's not like on the comms JD.
Dino Delic (09:40):
I love the angle that you put on it because again, going back to the playbook, chapter one, business strategy, sell newspapers, declining market, we got to sell more newspapers. So becoming a chief communications officer isn't just a promotion, it's a fundamental shift in mindset. It takes grace to let go and guts to solve problems that are not your own. If Steph and anyone else out there wanted to make the move into leadership, they'd have to be comfortable with letting go and start finding solutions for white spaces, as Becky calls them. So what does that leadership actually look like in practice? In this next part, we talk about Becky's leadership philosophy and how curiosity, experimentation, and a whole lot of trust can empower communications teams to do their best work. It's one thing to be a senior communicator because then there's someone above you giving you communications orders.
(10:33):
"I need X, Y, Z. I'll give you autonomy with designing the campaign, but we need a campaign for this. "But when you're at the top top, well now you've got to design comms that serves the business, not campaigns that serve communications. I think that's a big leap for people to make, or at least it's not that well talked about. I don't know what happens in the room at Page. I've not been there. But what I see, at least from my vantage point, is that communicators struggle because once you get to that top, you realize that there's just a lot of curriculum that's missing. And so then it's like, " Well, are you going to listen to podcasts? "You really have to put a lot of effort into learning these things and not every leader grooms their people the right way along the way. You'd imagine that there's a good succession plan.
(11:18):
And maybe that was a ... I mean, let's talk about how you got to where you got to.
Genevieve Brammall (11:22):
Can I just add in, I was talking to someone just this week who has taken on a new role as a CCO and she was saying to me, " I've been here two weeks and I'm just trying to get my head around the organization, who's who in the zoo? And I'm trying to work out where and how I add value. "And I said to her," You're going to add value by being amazing at what you do. And I'm imagining because you're a CCO, you've got all the communications tools in your toolkit. That's not an issue. That's not why you're here. You are here to connect the dots at the highest level and you can't connect the dots at the highest level when you've been in an organization for two weeks. So stop, take the pressure off yourself, take a deep breath, take a little bit of time to just
(12:11):
Assess the landscape and very quickly and find out who your trusted advisors can be down the line and through the business, find out who's going to help you get the information you need so you can connect the dots. You can see the white space that we're talking about and spot the opportunity because she knows she's not there to do the business of comps. That's what her team is for. She's got to work out whether or not the people she's inherited at the right people and the right roles, et cetera, et cetera. So it could be a little bit of reshaping to do, but ultimately she hasn't been hired to do that work. She's been hired to spot the opportunity to take the company forward, to see the growth and how she's going to drive the business forward in that direction. And I think the smile on her face was palpable.
(13:01):
She was like, "You're so right. That is my core strength and that is why I'm here. It's great to have someone like you to just reinforce that for me. " Because I think too often people chase a job title and they get there and they think, "Oh, here I am now. I've landed the big time. This is fantastic. I've got this great job." And then they're like, "Well, now what? " And I'm like, if you back yourself, if you know from the get- go that you're not chasing the title, but you're chasing the experience of what it's like, what it feels like to solve a problem that no one else even really articulated as quite the problem that required solving. But you enter the room and through all the information by being a great communicator, not only can you read and interpret information, but you have a way to sell it back to the business, to reframe it, to be able to explain how you're perceiving
Stephanie Lerdall (13:55):
The
Genevieve Brammall (13:55):
Status and be able to say, "And here's how I would potentially solve that challenge from a communications perspective." And it doesn't mean you're solving the whole business problem. You're not doing the job of 10,000 other people. You are actually able to stay within the confines of what you are expert at, but be able to see how that might influence and impact other parts of the business who can then stay in their lane and do their job and we'll all work towards the same goal. And I heard you talking about what one piece of advice you'd give aspiring CCOs. What I heard was empowerment, that you would empower others to do the job they've been hired for and not try to continue to do everyone else's role, understand what your is, empower your team. But also taking the leaf from the curiosity book, you talked about a willingness to learn.
(14:49):
And when Dino's team came to you, you said to them, "I want to talk to you. I want to do business with you to understand how I can be better by working with you. " And that to me is a hallmark of a great leader, not just a great communicator, but a great leader, someone who is willing to be vulnerable and realize they don't know everything and is open to continuous learning no matter how far up the chain they are. And that's what makes an inspiring leader. So it doesn't surprise me that you've been a CCO five times over. How
Dino Delic (15:22):
Does that resonate with you?
Becky Edwards (15:23):
I know it resonated with the group of 30 people I was just with. And now that you put it back to me though, I'm realizing I probably have another piece of advice, which is when you take the initiative to run those experiments because you're not waiting for permission and you're not waiting for an invitation, self-fund, be smart about your budget and be smart about your colleagues' budgets so that you can know how you can finance those experiments because it's likely to be extra work. I'm remembering when we brought Meltwater in at the ACLU, so I brought Meltwater in in a couple of different of those roles, but each time I've had to think about it differently because it's not a rounding year. So when I was at the ACLU, I think I need the help from IT. I knew there was a little bit of budget there I could tap into, but I also knew what they would get out of it.
(16:22):
Marketing, I didn't ask the affiliates to pay initially, but I said, "Okay, if we meet these goals after year two, here's how I want to bring you in. " So I wasn't passing the hat to fund my big ideas. I was saying, "Okay, here's how I'm going to fund, and then I may need your financial support if we meet this milestone."
Dino Delic (16:44):
What was the role or project that taught you that? Or was it a leader that you had this-
Becky Edwards (16:51):
I think it was two things. I think it was getting my MBA, and I'm not saying that everyone has to get their MBA. I think you can just make friends with someone who's in finance and they'll help you to figure out how to do this. But going to GE is like getting a second MBA, frankly. The rigor of all the operations means that you just have so many smart people who are like, oh, and they're curious and they're generous with their time because they're pursuing excellence. So there's a spirit of like, "Okay, come sit by me and I'll tell you how to get this done." I'm not about bringing someone home baked goods if they'll teach me how to get a budget pass. You know what your budget is, but often that's a big mistake people make like, "Oh, well, I can only do this if I get X more dollars." And it's like non-starter because you're not showing your peers that you respect the pressures because no matter what organization you're with, how big or small, there will always be pressures.
(17:54):
Genevieve, you're talking about existing in multiple configurations of the same organization. I'm sure you've seen scarcity mode and you've seen large S mode. In none of those scenarios is it successful to be like, "Well, I need this much
Dino Delic (18:10):
Money." Here's the thing you need to know about Becky. I've had many chats with her and she is far from a measurement guru, and I don't think she would be upset at me saying that. She's not a forward thinking measurement innovator, but she is data-driven. And I've always said, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, "I want to be a data-driven communicator." But they do wake up in the morning saying that they want to be good at their job and they want to wake up in the morning knowing that their work is connected to a higher purpose, thus a trusted advisor. And every time I've heard Becky in all of her roles step in, some of her first activities are to analyze how data is being used, yet she's not necessarily a measurement guru, which is interesting to me. It's a reminder that even those who are not the scientists who operate based on gut assumption, experience and intuition, they need the data.
(19:09):
And that's what's interesting to me about Becky is that she's not your traditional measurement expert who parades around on different podcasts talking about the best KPIs. She naturally lands and the first port of call is data and measurement, but then she has this advice about experimentation that it doesn't necessarily need to be this massive overhaul of how the measurement is being done. It's a look at what are the goals of the communications department, how are things being done and how can data help us and give little nudges and make improvements to what we do. I think that's so refreshing to hear someone who is clearly accomplished and successful and her approach to data is so light and refreshing. It's not so heavy and exhaustive.
Genevieve Brammall (19:53):
It's funny because I call it inverse marketing where the marketers have all the money and they go out and someone says, "You've got $200,000 or a million dollars for a campaign, whatever it is. " So they go out and spend that amount of money and there's accountabilities on that and marketing is more of an exact science so they can prove the value of that investment. But from my perspective, we are often given zero budget, but they come to us and they say, "Can you come up with an idea that's good? And if we think your idea is good enough, we'll fund it. " And so to me, this is the inverse theory of investment. So I say to my team, "That's not a negative, that's a positive." And there's never, never been a time where we have said, "We should do X." And someone has said to us, "Yeah, no, we're not going to fund that.
(20:45):
" Your idea's harebrained, your idea's ridiculous, your idea doesn't match the brief. Sometimes they'll have to reign us in because the idea's too expensive or what have you. But generally speaking, they say, "Oh my God, I would never have thought about solving the problem like that. That's fantastic. Let's do that thing, whatever that thing is. " And so I love the challenge of actually having very little money spending someone else's and convincing them to move budget from a pretty typical marketing execution into a publicity activation or a stunt or a moment or whatever it is. I've recently had cause to start to have to think about that self-funding my experiments. Meltwater is no longer an experiment for me. It's actually now a must-have. It's part of my ability to do my job, but in a cost-conscious environment, it's really hard to, or it's necessary to continually justify
(21:46):
Any expenditure that is a big investment. And so I realized that the lone voice of publicity was probably going to end up being quietened over the journey if no one else saw the value in the way that I did of that level of investment. So everyone loves the output, no problem. Everyone loves me telling them about the output, but I don't think people were really quite as bolted on to how the technology has been helpful in strategic thinking and really showcasing the outcomes of our work, et cetera. So I started to go around the business trying to work out who else might benefit. And of course, I'm on a retainer. So for the next six months, there's no additional cost to anyone else accessing this tech, but I'm going around and getting everyone else to use it and see the benefit of it so that next time someone tries to cut the budget, there's more voices, louder voices, people who are in commercial roles, people who are in marketing roles, events and experiences roles, other parts of our business saying, "This is so worthy.
(22:55):
We now need it too."
Dino Delic (22:57):
So what do you do when you're already on top? I think Gen hit the nail right on the head when she said, "It's about connecting the dots. Leave the gritty work to your team. You're here to imagine bigger things." Becky was also right to say, "Experiment. Even when you don't have the budget for it, take initiatives, solve and experiment." But after all that tinkering and testing, how do you actually measure success in communications? In the next part of our conversation, Becky shares her perspective on why traditional PR metrics often fall short and how communications teams can build a smarter, more meaningful approach to measurement. Jan, you just said it like, "Well, we don't get given a budget." Well, no, every department has a budget and it just so happens, and this is my outsider's perspective, comms doesn't think to set aside a budget for measurement, whereas advertising and marketing, they tend to.
(23:52):
I've heard lots of other people, a couple other guests on this podcast have said, "Measurement should not be an afterthought. You don't need to think about the data just after you've done the campaign. You got to think about it beforehand." And that doesn't mean think about data. That means put some money aside because you're going to need to do measurement. There just isn't, at least in my opinion, that kind of workflow because we often find at least anecdotally that clients will come to us and they'll say, "We need something more robust," but they want to measure something that already happened. They're not really thinking about, "Well, next year we're going to do this thing." As the leader, could you refute that? Is that a fair summation of your profession that communicators don't think about measurement until after the fact?
Becky Edwards (24:36):
Oh, I don't know if that's true. I think what happens is it's in the container of the campaign, and often that's in partnership with an agency. So probably there isn't a measurement budget, but there's definitely measurement happening. My rationale for wanting to have measurement embedded in my operating budget was that I didn't want the agencies to be grading their own homework.
(25:04):
So oftentimes how you achieve that measurement is by building it into the budget of the agency you're partnering with to execute the campaign. But the methods are pretty similar. Although to be fair, oftentimes they're measuring activity, which is one of my first signs that a team needs to maybe come into the 21st century. And the type of measurement you can do when you bring it in- house and you have people looking across executions and sort of thinking, what do we need to know on a daily basis? What do we need to know if we initiate this campaign? What do we need to know if we start to engage a new audience? That's a more proactive posture and you need to be familiar with the tool or a set of tools in order to think about what you can know.
Dino Delic (25:54):
Let's say someone's becoming a CCO tomorrow and they ask you, all right, what's my data nutrition plan? Meaning if data is nutrition sustenance for the sporting activity, what's the list? If you're saying you absolutely need this, not tools, but this is the kind of information you need for this purpose, what would that list look like off the top of your head?
Becky Edwards (26:18):
Oh my gosh. I don't know if I have a list off the top of my head, but I would say if someone's stepping into the CCO role, oftentimes you're coming up with the 100-day plan. And in order to come up with that 100-day plan, you're asking your team what they already do or what they're counted on for doing. So there's probably measurement associated with that, finding out if there's harmony in those tools or if they're sharing of that measurement across the team is a good first start. And then simultaneously, you're probably interviewing the peers on the executive team to find out what they think they need to depend on comms to do. And so asking them, well, what does good look like? What would be the impact that you would expect to see so that you can deconstruct what that measurement would be that would indicate that contribution from comms.
(27:11):
And then figuring out if the tools you have already can generate that measurement or if you need new tools.
Dino Delic (27:19):
This little portion of the conversation actually brings up a lot more questions than answers, but I do think it's interesting that Becky's talking about, and we've heard this phrase many times before, agencies measuring or grading their own homework. I think agencies do great work. Some of the things that I've learned in this industry the most are from some great agencies who have dedicated experts who conduct measurement and have the best practices and teach other people their approaches. Can everybody afford to have an agency doing the strategy and the execution and then another agency doing the measurement? I don't think so. I think I see why people tend to sort of verticalize that and have the agency do it. I think you can get the best results if you are using an agency to do the measurement, just guide them away from measuring their own activity.
(28:03):
But I have also seen agencies struggle with the same thing that we at Meltwater have struggled with. When we talk about this concept of inputs, outputs, outcomes, we often just get deployed on measuring inputs and outputs and there is no data and there is no discussion around outcomes. And that's because sometimes clients forget, and I use this as an opportunity to remind everyone, if you are deploying Meltwater and getting onboarded to a new instance of the tool and you're busily hiring back to try to get it stood up so that you can look at last quarter's performance, is that going to be as powerful as using the data to look at the campaigns that you have coming up in the next quarter? That's how you can see that you're caught in the trap of grading your own homework is by producing data and reports that just look back on what you've already accomplished.
(28:52):
The business already knows whether or not you've achieved your goals because they're judging you based on business outcomes. And if your reports and your data do not talk about that or do not have an element or a layer of that, then they're always going to be leaving the executives wondering, "So what and now what? " So this is a reminder, if you are looking at data, make sure that you are also combining it with business outcome data. And it doesn't mean APIs and integrations, it just means get your hand on some data that looks like sales data or something that the business cares about and tell a story with what you're doing, your inputs, what's happening out there in the real world, the outputs, and how that's translating back to business results, which are the outcomes. Do you think of it in terms of cadences like on a quarterly basis, I want to check my reputation score on a monthly basis-
Becky Edwards (29:41):
I guess I have already in my mind a kind of a diet like that. I don't think it's worth checking brand and reputation more frequently than six months or a year. What I want on a daily basis is sort of what conversation ... Things are we in associated with the topics that matter to our organization and our reputation. On a monthly or quarterly basis, I want to be reflecting on what engagement have we had with the audiences that matter. And that usually takes the form of a dashboard. And you can know sentiment, you can know volume, you can know if there are trouble spots in that association. That's the thing I want to reflect on because that will be that moment where I'm engaging with the team and saying, "Okay, what did we do to contribute to this? What were the good activities that we did that yielded this result?
(30:44):
And what are the things that maybe we didn't do that we should have because they would've moved the needle or maybe what are the things that we did that upset the apple cart and therefore they should go on the dust bin?" That moment of reflection. And I think a lot of times that conversation when people are looking at a dashboard almost feels like shame inducing. And I want it to be more of a launching point for creativity and ideas. So it's just like a take stock moment. What did we learn? If we learned something that either means we should probably etch that practice into stone or we should shed that practice or we should ideate about what the new practice is based on what the intelligence is telling us.
Dino Delic (31:32):
Measurement isn't just about tracking activity. It's about understanding impact. And when communications teams measure the right things, they're better positioned to demonstrate how their work contributes to the organization's broader goals. Gen gave us great nuggets of wisdom to chew on, but she had to step out of the conversation at this point for a meeting, which leaves me with Becky one-on-one. And I took this opportunity to go deeper with my questions and address some pressing comms matters that have been on my mind lately. A lot of people, when they look at dashboards, it's not seen as an opportunity. It's more-
Stephanie Lerdall (32:04):
Yeah.
Dino Delic (32:05):
Is that a mindset thing? Does culture need to shift or are the dashboards just shit? Because stepping on the scales is not fun because it's too simple. You know just one metric is not where you want it to be. When the number is where you want it to be, you're not thinking, oh yes, you know all the effort that you put in to get that number to be where you want it to be. Is it that dashboards just aren't good enough? Or is it that even if a dashboard does contain the stuff that you like, the mindset of the typical person who's looking at a dashboard is not where it needs to be?
Becky Edwards (32:37):
I think it's a combo. You have to think of the dashboard as enabling a practice. Just like stepping on the scale, we'll beat this metaphor to death, is the practice of checking in on how you are maintaining your health. So it's not the event of stepping on the scale.
Stephanie Lerdall (32:58):
It's that
Becky Edwards (32:58):
That is a feeder for you to have an indicator of like, oh, am I exercising as I would want? Am I eating as I would want? Am I drinking into taking in enough water? Anyway, you get my point. The dashboard, you have to have the right set of information on the dashboard to allow you to have a response that's more about the practice of checking in.
Dino Delic (33:25):
And so then I think this is the reason why I had waited so long, not that I thought we needed a playbook, but I just assumed that someone else out there was an authority that created the curriculum on what good communications looks like. And what I'm discovering more and more, and I know I'm not completely right, but what I'm discovering more and more is that with this obsession of being more data-driven, the mapping back that you said, the working backwards of, the business goal is this, so the comm strategy is going to be this because we need to move the audience. The audience, these people, their opinion shapes the behavior that we want, so we need to take their current perception and make it this, so we're going to design campaigns. And so then it's almost like, well, I'm 20 pounds overweight.
(34:08):
A lot of people just already know how they can lose the weight because there's levers you can pull. You can exercise, you can diet or you can do some crazy stuff. And I think with comms, the levers aren't so obvious because there's so much noise because everyone's trying to sell another lever, another trick. And almost in the weight loss, I've used the weight loss analogy before, but there's so many vendors like us who call and they say, "Well, you can take this drug. You don't have to exercise. You can just buy the dashboard and the insights are right there and you're going to have it. " But no, it's still diet and exercise. It's still tool, skills, resources.
Becky Edwards (34:43):
I think to a certain extent, most other executive level professions have some sort of accreditation. You get an impromatour or you have a governing body that judges how you're doing if you're a CFO or if you're a lawyer. Comms as a profession is a pretty low barrier to entry. You don't even have to study it. I did not study communications. I mean, yes, I studied some things that lend themselves to being an effective community.
Dino Delic (35:11):
But you don't need a license or a certificate.
Becky Edwards (35:13):
Yeah. I mean, and that's why there's frustration, I think, for a lot of communicators because everyone feels like they can do our job without any kind of science or training. It's
Dino Delic (35:23):
Only gotten worse now with AI. Now everyone thinks they can do it because they can just ask AI to do it. But no, so that's where my struggle is more by trying to help communicators become more data-driven, I see that they're actually just dumping more data in the equation
(35:41):
And forgetting that, hey, no, what makes communications great. If you ask anybody, what do you love about your job and what do you hate about your job? Data's always in the hate column and storytelling and relationship building is always in the love column. And so a lot of what you've talked about today, soft power and building alliances and speaking with people, that is that sort of storytelling and relationship building and understanding the needs of the business. And you just don't happen to hate data like some other people do, but they often, maybe people who are the ones building reports, they often say what they hate about their job is then having to measure,
Becky Edwards (36:17):
Having to keep going. I think people hate the specter of shame coming from data. So if you think that dashboard is something to prove your worth or the value of your function, that is going to naturally set up sort of anxiety mode of leaning into that data. But if you think of data as making your function look so intelligent and demonstrating the rationale for the decisions you're making, that's a pretty powerful tool.
Dino Delic (36:52):
It's a storytelling tool. Again, we land on the subject of AI. Communicators can get so obsessed with data and information that they sometimes lose track of what we can do and how we can shape our craft. Yes, there is a little bit of art and science to what we do, but that doesn't make it less complex than anything else out there. This last bit of the interview gets pretty interesting. When push comes to shove, I ask Becky, how do you prove your worth? Sit tight. Here's what you need. So let's talk about how you prove your worth. What are the metrics or mechanisms for when push comes to shove and you have to prove your worth, you have to defend your budget and you have to demonstrate business impact. What are the things that you tend to lean on in doing so? Was there a metric that you were always obsessed about?
(37:42):
Was there some method you had to say to the CFO, for example, this is the business impact that my team has had?
Becky Edwards (37:49):
I had a pretty simple rubric. I was always about there are awareness outcomes and there are specific measures that can be toggle to that. They're understanding metrics and then there are outcome metrics. And so the awareness, most communicators have those. And so you know sort of-
Dino Delic (38:10):
Reach impressions.
Becky Edwards (38:11):
Where you want to be and that kind of stuff. The understanding takes a little more back and forth conversation based on your organization and what is meaningful to them. At the ACLU, it's more of like what's going to motivate activism or donations. Whereas being a GE, it's more about B2B engagement with customers so that they buy jet engines or blowout preventers. It's a totally different rubric for figuring out what goes in that understanding. Even the audiences are different, but that's the key of figuring out which audiences and always, always, always start with employees. And then the last, the outcomes is making sure that you are clued into if you just had to take a three-point index into the executive room with you, what would be in that three-point index? Is it going to be favorability with customers and sort of all of the positive sentiment that you could show on a scatter chart that showed we are in all the conversations with all the customers and all of the influencing media or all of the influencing events, whatever it is.
(39:27):
Is that going to be the same? So I think it depends on the organization, but I would always organize it in awareness, understanding, and outcomes.
Dino Delic (39:34):
The chief marketing officer at Accenture and the chief legal counsel at Accenture, we're good friends. And I had him come in and do a fireside interview with, I think we had a hundred people at Meltwater, and I was like, I'm going to bring in C-suite executives, not the communications people, not the people that use the tool. We're just going to hear what do they actually need?
Stephanie Lerdall (39:54):
What
Dino Delic (39:55):
I loved was that at one point I put my foot in it because he's my buddy. And I said to Joel, I asked a question about the company's strategy and the CMO, Jill, threw it to Joel and goes, Joel, you go. And I go, "What's chief legal counsel doing talking about that? " He goes, "Well, I might be a lawyer, but I'm a business person." I was like, "Oh, that is so true." And I put my foot in it. But you realize what you said, when people get to that top, you're not just the quintessential communicator. If you're the chief communications officer, you are the domain expert, yes, but you are now one of the business people that's taking care of the business interest.
Stephanie Lerdall (40:32):
You
Dino Delic (40:32):
Just happen to know how to wrangle the comms org. And so perhaps that's the biggest leap for people is that as you climb the ladder and get better at communications, are they really preparing themselves to get better at business? Maybe because you had an MBA, maybe because you worked at GE,
Becky Edwards (40:48):
That's not really
Dino Delic (40:49):
What people are doing.
Becky Edwards (40:50):
But you know what? So it was honed by those experiences, but now you're making me realize what allows you to occupy that seat with gravitas.
(41:01):
Exactly. Almost every single organization that I've been a CCO, and I think this has been a comment that has been made to me by someone. Becky, we feel great having you in the room because we know that you are going to help us kick the tires or think about how this is going to land with the people who aren't in the room. Because if you think about it, yes, that relies on my domain expertise. I'm tuned in. I've got all those instruments telling me what we need to know about our different stakeholder groups and I'm engaging with them through the benefit of my team's activities. But when I'm sitting in that executive room, that's what they're relying on me for. So oftentimes when I was coming out as a professional, I remember people saying, "Oh, you're so sensitive," whatever. I'm like, "Yep, that's my superpower." I have to feel, I have to feel deeply because I have to tap into that empathy when I'm sitting there and there's a decision being made about workforce, impacting workforce or going into a new area product-wise or geographically, what's our brand and how is that going to be perceived?
(42:09):
We may have the greatest confidence in our products and services, and we may be able to manufacture them and market them and distribute them in that market, but what is going to be the reception of the people we depend on to give a warm embrace if we decide to grow in that direction?
Dino Delic (42:28):
I think people are throwing themselves in a tailspin of like, "Oh, now comms is going to get into the LLMs." No, the SEO team's going to get into the LLMs, but they're going to tell the comms team, "I need you to create some of this stuff." And I think a lot of comms is just so overwhelmed from over the years taking over social media, taking over influencers, and now having to take over LLMs, AI strategy, they're not ready for that. They're just not equipped.
Becky Edwards (42:52):
Although it is part of the core competencies, as you said, even, I don't know what brought this up the other day, but I was looking back at this trip my family had taken to Pompeii and we had a private tour because my kids hated doing historical stuff for museums. And so I figured out the way to keep them engaged is to get someone who is going to be entirely focused on us. And I told her that I work in comms and marketing. And so she teased out some of the branding around the artifacts in Pompeii where a breadmaker had their logo and she would talk to us about how advertising appeared in Pompeii. And I was like, "My God, how old is this practice?" I mean, yes, you're right. There's new shiny things all the time, but it really comes down to humanity and behavior and what motivates us.
Dino Delic (43:55):
I think this is a perfect place to end the episode, but before you press stop, let me give you a little more. Becky Edwards, a five-time CCO, gave us a lot to think about regarding comms leadership. First, it's important to shift the mindset. Being a comms leader won't be the same as being a comms executive. You have to learn to let go and trust the people around you. The goal isn't to make mini mes of yourself, but to make the very best version of your team. CCOs connect the dots and reveal the bigger picture for everyone to see. Second, strong comms leaders stay curious. Being open to new ideas, learning from others, and embracing experimentation can help teams adapt and grow in a rapidly changing landscape. Third, measurement matters. Comms teams need to move beyond tracking activity and instead focus on metrics that demonstrate real impact on awareness and understanding and business outcomes.
(44:52):
And finally, while new technologies and tools continue to emerge, the fundamentals of communications remain the same, understanding human behavior, building trust, and telling stories that resonate. Look, data and storytelling don't have to be mutually exclusive. In this field, you can love and master both, and we hope our conversation with Becky is a testament to that.
(45:19):
Earning Your Seat isn't about passively absorbing. It's about executing. Take a moment and reflect and think about how you can use what you've just learned in this episode to grow, recalibrate, and improve. Thanks for listening. I'm Dino Delic. We'll see you next time on the next episode of Earning Your Seat.