You make your choice and take the consequences

I'm a tad gutted that I've had to turn down Sean Trainor's offer to speak in one of the CIPR Inside's Engage Inside Expo sessions in London on May 5. It would have been a chance to share the research I worked on at the tail end of last year - and look forward to how it may move on this year.

But, the way I choose to operate my business has meant I've had to give up the opportunity to share a platform with the MacLeod 2 team and other practitioners with some skin in the engagement game. While the Expo will be in full swing, I'll be a dozen miles west in Uxbridge on day two of my university's annual research student event. It's just about the only compulsory event for researchers all year, but if I'm not there (and I missed it last year while stuck under a volcanic ash cloud), my chances of advancing to my next year of PhD research will be slimmer than a pre-pregnancy Victoria Beckham.

Back in 2007, I took the conscious decision to ease back on work and complete an MA in International Relations. It meant about a day and a half a week onsite at University from late September - April - with a frantic drive to over-index on work from late April to early September. The MA went really well and by 2010 had segued into PhD research (NOT part of the plan in 2007). That was easy to fit in when times were tough and I wasn't picking up work. However, the past year has been a less easy balance.

Long-term (post PhD) I plan to do more in academic research and, if there's any left by then, academic teaching. To that end, I've been balancing up comms work with part-time lecturing and support for some of the full-time staff (essay marking, running seminars etc). At times there's a really interesting synergy between the academic work and the organisational comms stuff but at other times there are some tectonic crashes as my two worlds collide. The Expo is one of those occasions.

Still, last week I had the pleasure of sharing a roundtable event with MacLeod 2's Nita Clark (of course it should  be Clark/MacLeod ) during the kick-off phase of Adecco's 'Unlocking Britain's Potential' .  The theme of this first roundtable was engagement - and while there was probably still too much time spent attempting to define what engagement is, there was consensus that no successful organisation can afford either to ignore it or to place it in a 'task' box. I'm going to be working with Adecco and the research team Loudhouse on the research outcomes/plan of action report later in the year. Perhaps it's another tip in the balance from organisational comms consultancy into research into the outcomes of such consultancy? It's not a leap I want to take totally yet, but the applied end of research is an area I find fascinating.

Apathy rules!

Let's Go CiB!........Or not.

A couple of months ago I wrote a piece in CiB's monthly journal - Communicators - on the Catch 22 facing the organisation. We have around 1200 members, though fewer than 5% or truly active in the sense of doing something to move the organisation forward.

We need to move the organisation on to a platform where it is the first stop in the UK for all issues related to internal communications. To do that, CiB needs to be seen as the leader in continuing professional development (not just for IC pros, but for all managers with a foot in IC). We also need to be seen as a credible home for leading edge research - whether that's as a research sponsor or publisher.

But with only about 60 proactive members - and most of those in agencies where involvement comes with a tacit aspect of business development (and I'm very much in that space) it's hard to get anything moving. So I put out a plea or a challenge or even a request for more people to get involved. The response? A very big, fat nothing. Well, almost nothing. One person has sent me some information on membership recruitment and retention. But that's it.

Then last week, I found out I'd been elected by my peers for another year on council. Out of the successful candidates, I polled about in the middle. So far so good until you realise that i got 46 votes. Out of an electorate of 1200, 79 people voted. That's pathetic by any standard.

I don't know what it will take to light the fire for CiB, but for whatever reason, it's not happening at present. Too many people seem happy to sit and wait for professional accreditation and high class research to land in their laps without putting anything other than their membership fee back in.

without putting more in, CiB will not grow. And if it doesn't grow it will not be able to deliver what communicators want or need. If that's the case, someone else will fill that gap and CiB as an organisation will be redundant. That's rather depressing.