Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

IABC: WTF?

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I want the IABC story to go away. Just for awhile, so I can do other stuff, and then maybe come back to it later. But it won't.

I wrote on Dec. 18 that the International Association of Business Communicators is being radically changed by two people who know little and care less about its culture.

After that post and one more in January, I thought I’d give the association a few months to get its shit together. I figured some of the more wizened board members would come to the rescue of the flailing volunteer chairman Kerby Meyers and uncommunicative paid executive director Chris Sorek.

They would apologize for their early missteps, explain the rationale for the changes they're making, and by the time the World Conference rolled around in New York in June, I could interview them about how they turned the thing around—I was even thinking of pitching The New York Times on the story—and then everyone would live happily ever after.

That's not just what I hoped would happen, it's what I assumed would happen. Too many people in this association know too much about communication and culture change for someone not to step up and knock the proper heads together and start making the place make sense. Don't they?

For a moment, that's how it seemed to be playing out.

In a post on IABC’s LinkedIn forum last month titled, “I’m here. And I’ve been listening,” Meyers started making the right sorts of sounds. “I feel a little like the kid who steps outside expecting to play and is bombarded with snowballs from all directions instead,” he wrote. “There’s nowhere to hide. And no idea where to throw his first snowball in response. In this case, your snowballs have been well-deserved, and most of them are on target.”

He went on to admit that IABC had “done a miserable job of communicating these changes and reaching out to you and all of our members. You shouldn’t have to learn about this through the grapevine or social media. I’m embarrassed by our failure to lead by example—with timely, candid communication—and I’m determined to make this episode a catalyst for turning a bad start into a success story.”

That’s what I’m talking about!

For the first time, Meyers also made explicit the bleeding business need for all this change. Basically, member retention sucks; the attrition rate is 25 percent, meaning IABC has to replace a quarter of its membership every year, which makes it hard to grow. Also, fewer people were entering the once-lucrative Gold Quill Awards, and IABC was having a hard time finding volunteers to administer its labor-intensive accreditation program. So it needed to rethink some of those activities and outsource a bunch of operations.

So far, so good.

Except, Meyers didn’t address members’ actual beefs about how they were going about making those changes. The most controversial issue is the wholesale overhaul he and Sorek are proposing to make to the accreditation program, but there are others.

And so on the IABC LinkedIn forum, the association continues to be hammered—squarely and fairly—by some of the heaviest hitters in the business: Roger D’Aprix, Moses Kanhai, Angela Sinickas, Shel Holtz, Jim Shaffer, Liz Guthridge and Mike Klein just to name a few. 

And though one game board member, director Kristen Sukalak, has attempted to defend the changes IABC is making, and Accreditation Chair Gloria Walker has been an active, if beleaguered, participant in the conversation—most of the rest of the board remained embarrassingly silent.

As has, most conspicuously, the paid executive director of the association, Chris Sorek.

"Kerby, Kirsten, et al, you remind me of staff functionaries who have to face the criticisms of the news media while those who are getting paid to lead are hiding in the backroom in a fetal position," wrote Shaffer. "Whatever happened to the guy who was hired to lead the place? Is he still around? Has he ever led a business through significant change? What's he being held accountable for?"

And then yesterday, Meyers wrote a post titled, “You’re right. It’s time for Chris Sorek to speak up.”

Over the past few weeks, a number of posts have referred to the absence of Executive Director Chris Sorek from IABC discussions here and elsewhere. Many have explained that his insights would be valuable during this time of change.

All who posted have been right. His perspectives are important. The thing is, he was focused on doing the job the board and I were asking him to do—lead the implementation of IABC’s strategic direction.  

At the same time, the board was so focused as a leadership body on getting Chris to work on implementation and improvements, we didn’t handle the communication side of it well. As the leader of the board, I take the blame for that. I'm sorry. I believe we've taken some positive steps, but as has been pointed out, there are still some gaps.

We now realize that request from the board was unfair—to both Chris and IABC members. You deserve to hear from him directly, and he deserves to have his own voice in the conversation.

Going forward, Chris will have a voice, and you will begin to see and hear more from him in the very near future.  

I called IABC headquarters to see if I could hear Sorek’s own voice for myself—I haven't spoken with him since the Friday night back in November when the shocking word began to spread that IABC had sacked half its headquarters staff—but I got the automated switchboard and when I punched in Sorek’s name it didn’t send me to his extension.

Presumably Sorek will address a 90-minute town hall meeting scheduled for this Friday on “IABC’s Strategic Direction” at IABC’s Leadership Institute meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Writing Boots will have reliable ears in the room, and as soon as I get my report, I’ll give you yours.

And we'll hope to answer the question on everyone's mind: "WTF?"

IABC update: Goodbye, Mr. Abick. Hello, Mr. Chips.

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Jack O’Dwyer reports today on a 10-day-old proposal to change IABC’s Accredited Business Communicator credential (ABC) to a Certified Communications Professional “certification” (CCP).

Unlike the ABCs, holders of the CCP would have to renew their certification every three years by undergoing a process “that will emphasize professional development activities, including formal continuing education and other options, such as teaching, writing, research and acceptable volunteer activities. There will be either an annual maintenance fee or a single, multi-year renewal fee.”

The CCP test itself will be less labor-intensive for IABC staffers than the ABC process, whose portfolios and in-person exams reportedly cost many person-hours. The new test will be online.

Conversants on IABC’s LinkedIn group are pretty upset. People who have earned their ABC accreditation naturally doubt the association’s assurances that their designation will continue to be honored long after the process has been mothballed. They also doubt its rigor. “A Multiple. Choice. Test. Online. Sweet biscuits, is this a joke?” wrote Tim Hicks, a “lapsed ABC.” “This in place of a portfolio review and a grueling 4.5-hour exam with an oral component? … They might as well print the certifications on soft, perforated paper so they will at least be good for something.”

Michael Sponhour, the ABC who originally shared an email that ABC holders received with broader readership at the LinkedIn group, objects in the strongest terms: “I am strongly opposed to this entire direction which looks like a way for IABC to make money and goad people into attending events and working for chapters. I already pay my hefty annual dues out of my own pocket and there is absolutely no way I am going to pay more money to obtain a certification that certainly looks less rigorous than what we have today.”

And finally,  Shawn Cass, ABC, objected to the timing of accreditation chair Gloria Walker’s Friday-afternoon announcement. Why, she asked, “must all important IABC communication come at the close of the work week?”

Walker responded on LinkedIn that the program is up for discussion. She says the old one isn’t sustainable, mainly because there aren’t enough volunteers to run it the old way, “which is griding a halt due to the increase in candidates and the amount of time it takes for them to complete it and the number of volunteer hours required.”

I’ll keep an ear on the conversation, but it’ll be a casual ear. Accreditation was always a way for communicators who feel the need for official legitimacy—a tin badge, a notarization seal, or as O’Dwyer pointed out in an email to me, Scarecrow’s diplomas—and, ABC or CCP, it always will be.

While accredited communicators did bond over having mutually passed what most of them considered to be a rigorous test—and their war stories about studying and exam-taking were part of IABC’s culture—nobody who wasn’t accredited ever seemed too terribly impressed with the ABC initials.

Communicator and humorist Dan Danbom got his ABC long ago. The only difference it made in his career, he said years later, was that sometimes farsighted conference attendees would squint at the accreditation designation on his nametag and call him “Mr. Abick.”

Good to meet you, Mr. Chips.

Even the blarney business can’t keep a straight face

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I always laughed at IABC and PRSA's accreditation programs, with their secret tests purporting to prove passers proficient to practice … public relations. It was amusing, listening to "Accredited Business Communicators" gas on about how much they learned about themselves from the process of studying for the test, and so forth.

But now that PRSA's APR program seems on the wane and IABC has suspended its ABC accreditation program altogether, I suddenly see the value in having some common standard of excellence—even if the "common" part of that phrase is more important than the "excellence."

In an industry as nebulous as communication, it's crucial to have, if not common tests, at least common texts. Communicators used to subscribe to trade publications, and have some regular reading in common. I worked for some of those publications, at Ragan Communications.

When I started at Ragan—a few years before anyone heard of the Internet—we published two kinds of newsletters:

1. Trade publications for PR people—The Ragan Report, Speechwriters Newsletter, Editor's Workshop Newsletter, Corporate Annual Report Newsletter and even a desperately dreary one called Techniques for the Benefits Communicator.

These weekly or monthly eight- and 12-pagers were filled with interviews with leaders in the business, case studies about successful communication campaigns, essays by top practitioners and survey stories that asked various communicators to weigh in on important issues and problems in the business. The editors of these publications were serious about their work, and performed to the accepted standards of journalistic integrity. And if people canceled their subscriptions or complained to our publisher about our critical coverage, it was tough shit for them, because this was serious business. It had to be, to command hundreds of dollars for a subscription, as these newsletters did.

2. "Tips newsletters" full of cleverly written commonsense ideas for middle manager types. With names like Manager's Intelligence Report and The Working Communicator, these publications offered bulleted lists of tips, like: "At a cocktail party, hold your drink in your left hand so that when you meet someone your shaking-hand is warm and dry." To a one, the publisher, the marketer and the editor of every one of these publications were cynical about the purpose and contemptuous of the audience, which they saw as faceless masses of fools who believed that wisdom and competence could be achieved by merely compiling tips from sharpers like us.

Within a decade, the Internet had all but eliminated those cheap, silly tips newsletters.

And within 15 years, it eliminated the expensive, serious trade newsletters, too.

And what's left? A limp combination of both. A website that purports to offer "news and ideas for communicators," but really only offers generic tips that sound much like The Working Communicator (and worse). One day this month, here were the headlines at Ragan.com:

"The Winnie-the-Pooh guide to social media"

"6 secrets to create a powerful LinkedIn summary"

"8 foods that PR people should avoid"

"What communicators can learn from farmers"

"5 ways to make your brand sound human online"

"12 quotes about readers to inspire writers"

"The craziest excuses employees use to call in sick"

And so on. The only article approaching a case study was a thing on how a pizza chain "deftly" responded when a nude photo of a woman was uploaded to its Facebook contest for children. And what was this "deft" response? They immediately pulled the photo down and issued a corporate apology: "We were disappointed last night to see a shocking photo in our Mini Monsters contest …."

We don't need a trade publisher to tell us to do that any more than companies need to hire a professional communicator to do that.

I'm not criticizing Ragan; I'm assuming Ragan.com editors are watching traffic patterns and serving their readers what their readers like to eat.

But here's the question that tortures my afternoon naps: When everything is bullshit, who will pay the bullshitters?