A killer PR strategy is vital for many growing companies. Knowing when to turn to the press, and when to shy away, can help pump up interest in your product, make your employees excited and even draw in investors. Cision helps companies manage their PR campaigns, marketing efforts and media relations with software and insights.
Cision CEO Kevin Akeroyd has been in the digital, social and mobile marketing world for more than 25 years, working in leadership roles at companies large and small. In that time, he’s learned a few lessons about the importance of defining success and building a strong culture.
How do you define success for your company?
First, I think that there’s an important piece in the question itself. Success should be defined. It should be clearly defined, then it should have measurements, metrics and milestones on regular, consistent basis to track against that success. And that should be visible to the audiences. As much transparency as humanly possible for the employees should be the rule of thumb. And what success means for your customers should be transparent, and published, and openly discussed with your customers. Same with partners, investors and other major stakeholders. The trust, credibility, and collaboration that results become competitive advantages for the company itself. Finally, I believe you have the overarching measures of success that are simple and clear and easily understood at the highest level, but you should have granular measures for each department and for each audience. Success isn’t a simple thing — it should have a simple summary, but it takes a lot of intricacy and sophistication, so your definitions and measurements should reflect that.
What's a major challenge you've faced as a leader, and what did you learn from it?
Probably the single biggest challenge that has been consistent, and amongst the toughest, if not the toughest, is change/cultural management. I’ve spent half my career doing early-stage tech startups. By their very definition, change is a constant. And culture is either something to be formed into a great strength for your company or will ultimately be a great inhibitor. The other half [of my career] has been running large business units inside large Fortune 500 companies. And in all cases, those have had a heavy dose of M&A. So not only are you trying to create a distinct but connected culture for your business unit, you’re welcoming in acquired companies with completely different, well-established, often cherished cultures themselves. I have learned to never, ever underestimate the impact change has on culture. And never, ever underestimate the impact culture has on your ultimate success as a company. These need metrics, resources, people, measurement, executive sponsorship, formalization and operationalization so they get baked into the company's fabric. And when going through intense changes like hyper-growth or M&A, the challenges — and the upside — go up an order of magnitude, so you simply must focus on doing these right and investing in them accordingly.
What are you big plans and expectations for 2017?
We have a big 2017. We’re in that last large line of business called communications that hasn’t gone through the data, technology, measurement transformation the way the paid advertising, commerce, owned media, sales, service and the rest of the front office lines of business have already been through. It’s critical as this function must transform from a necessary expense to a true business results driver in the corporation. We are the tech and strategy and best practices and data provider that is going to sit side by side with them and help them through the transformation. I went through this exact transformation for the paid and owned folks when I led Oracle Marketing Cloud, so I know what’s in store, and it’s gonna be big, and high impact, and well, yeah, transformational. And the tech and data are driving it all. Exciting times!
What's your favorite part of the Chicago tech community?
Its potential. We should be 10 times bigger already. As experience, and talent, and some successes, continue to creep in, I can sense the tide rising here. And I can tell we’re not even close to the peak we’re going to ultimately attain.
Image via Cision. Some answers have been edited for length and or clarity.
What other CEOs do you want to know? Let us know with a tip or a tweet @BuiltInChicago
