Many organizations plan state of the organization presentations for the early part of the year. These are a great opportunity to share high level information with all-staff audiences — but don’t overlook that the greatest value is in the dialogue, and the follow up.

Especially in the current economic environment, we need to unbutton the formality and actively seek out conversation, input, and sharing. This is usually the opposite of what most executives expect, and are comfortable with.

More tips on this topic:

• From Melcrum, How Not to Conduct a Town Hall Meeting
• My November enews - Communicating in Hard Times (you might also want to read September and October 2007 articles in the newsletter archive)

When it comes to social media, there seems to be two distinct camps: those who embrace it, and those who dismiss it entirely.  For those of you who fall into the category that think it’s a time waster,  and for college kids and teens, here are some facts that might get your attention.

• Facebook is the 4th most trafficked website in the world
• It is the largest photo sharing platform in the world
• Facebook has 125 million users now and is predicted to reach 500 million by 2011
• The average age of Facebook users is 35 yrs old, and the demographic is mature, university educated people with higher income.

Another little known fact: you can collect email addresses from Facebook friends, as you would on your own organization’s web page. Simply install the application called Profile HTML and then paste the optin code from your website into your Facebook page.

You could use this for a promotion, for an alumni or employee club or association, or to offer information about your organization to potential customers or staff.

99.9% of the time, the reason I am brought in to an organization to help solve a communications challenge is related to change of some fashion. In about half of these cases, it seems that a problem originated after a poor decision was made  and the other times, because a supremely proactive organization wants to ensure it is done as well as possible.

Here’s the first few points from my September enewsletter on this topic which offers a checklist for the critical success factors of change. If you want to read the full article click here or better yet, sign up, so you get future issues delivered straight to your in box.

How does your organization measure up:

Business case - there has to be a strong business reason to make the change. Without this rationale, and senior management and board support, it will simply not happen. Trying to push through a change alone is like rolling a granite boulder up a very steep hill.

Guiding principles or rules to live by - taking the business case a step further, begin with a critical dialogue. Formal or not, the process should include a frank discussion about how the work will get done, how difficult decisions will be made, and where the inevitable lines will be drawn in the sand. This could be three simple statements, or ten, but it is the process that counts the most.

Schedule and time commitment - change doesn’t miraculously happen, at least, not well! A commitment to a realistic timeline is critical and tells everyone involved that this is a serious project that is happening, with or without them!

Big picture thinking - while it can feel to the people involved that the change is all important and the only critical thing happening in the organization, this is almost never true. It’s important to recognize where this change fits into the larger context. To not do so is to risk errors and to miss opportunities.

Want to read the rest? Click here.

Nancy Schwartz at the Getting Attention blog is on a mission to help nonprofit organizations create better taglines in 2008. Having created or rewritten more than a few in my lifetime, I have a great collection of the good, bad, ugly as well as completely nonsensical. Hint: your tagline, the "slogan" that goes with you wherever you dare to go in your communications journey, is not your mission statement. Help Nancy by completing the survey and you’ll receive a copy of her report and tips.

Borrow a page from the retail industry. If you really want to view your organization from a donor’s eyes, be one. I call with a general inquiry, join or donate to an organization and sign up on the mailing list when I do a communications audit for an organization. There’s no more basic and telling way to check out the donor experience and see how close or far you are from living up to your mission and values statement in your day-to-day operations. You may also find some missed opportunities and mixed messages in your materials and interactions along the way.