Chief Communications Officer, huh?

I think in the days to come, the CIO, CKO or CLO must give way to the CCO, Chief Communication Officer.

In times past, information is treated separately and differently from learning content. I am amongst the advocates who feel strongly that entertainment has to be strategically used and sparingly [if it not strategic].

With the proliferation of New Media or should I say users of New Media, an interesting challenge is brewing – fairly significantly.

With the New Media generation, information, outcome driven learning and entertainment are one and the same. By the time these talents enter the workforce, they would expect any learning interventions to be new media driven.

That puts an interesting fault line in the Learning and Talent Development functions due to different tectonic [age] plates in an organisation.

Many of today’s young entering the workforce are, after all, voters who put a singer at top spot or send a singer packing [the Idol competition]. They do make decisions based on ‘I like’ or ‘I don’t like’.

So who decides for who and who decides the effectiveness of learning experience. Would Kirkpatrick’s 4 levels of evaluation still be a relevant measurement? Would level 1, the smiley face rating be ignored because there would be many upset ones? Or in fact, would level 1 be more important because of the freedom of expression based on emotion?

So moving forward, I think most organisations have to have a clear communication policy ie whether staff can use social media while at work eg. can staff do chat while attending training?; what kind of social media; degree of empowerment; the type of ICT; issue of IP rights; and the strategic use of social media to create, collect and build organisational knowledge.

I therefore feel that the role of a Chief Communications Officer is a job in the making…Of course, the breadth of competencies required for such a post might not be found in one person.

But there are many potentials out there!