Carley St. Clair Madsen

As eloquently put by Eleanor Hawkins in Axios Communicators, there's a recalibration happening as executives navigate how and when to address socio-political issues in the era of Trump 2.0. For corporate communicators, decisions about if, and how, to respond are going to be taking up a lot more of our time over the next four years, if past experience is any indication. Check out the full article at https://lnkd.in/eZCnfVNQ

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My early takeaway from PRSA Oregon #CommCon2024 is that the public is facing a real trust issue when it comes to innovations like AI and other emerging tech (and in general). Which raises the question: how do we address the trust crisis in a way that is both authentic and effective? #communications #publicrelations

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CALIFORNIA

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"Can we chat about internal communications?" When Shareen Pathak asked me if I could chat with her about internal comms, I jumped at the opportunity. Internal communications—or, employee communications, as I prefer to call it— is the underappreciated backbone of the comms and marketing team. I'm so glad to see more attention paid to this topic and this vital role. Employee communications can't be an afterthought. It's not a "nice to have" (though it's almost always treated as such, especially in smaller organizations), and it's incredibly strategic. Shout out to my internal communicators! I see you, I know your importance, and I will keep singing your praises as long as I have breath in my lungs. Check out this Toolkits.com article for more.👇 ## Does your company have a dedicated employee comms team, or is it part of another role (aka an afterthought)?

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I love a good book recommendation, so for my #comms peers (and broader network) looking for a great read, I highly recommend getting your hands on:  'Breaking Through: Communicating to Open Minds, Move Hearts, and Change the World', by Sally Susman, Pfizer’s Chief Communications Officer. Even against the gorgeous Positano backdrop on my recent travels, I couldn’t put it down. Sally offers an authentic and raw insight into her #corporateaffairs leadership journey, especially during the pandemic and vaccine rollout. Her experiences resonated with my time at CSL during COVID. Like Pfizer, the media, government, and public interest in CSL exploded, almost overnight. We had to find new ways to listen, educate and be heard to cut through the noise amidst rampant misinformation. It was an extraordinary time for anyone working in #corporatecommunications and required clarity, humility, compassion and perseverance — qualities Sally highlights as essential for breakthrough communicators. Here’s a summary of Sally Susman’s top ‘breakthrough' career lessons: 💡 Communicate with clear intention – Avoid bureaucratic language. Ask yourself, what am I really trying to say? 💡 Have courage and candour – Speak from the heart vs relying on overly rehearsed notes. 💡 Stay curious and listen mindfully – Uncover your company's true character to drive creativity and become memorable 💡 Engage with humility and humour – Lighten up. Move hearts with emotion, not just facts. 💡 Own your mistakes and find truth tellers – If you aren't regularly failing, you aren't trying hard enough. Seek friends who will give you tough love. 💡 Understand your legacy to build trust and add perspective – Company culture and history matter. 💡 Seek harmony amid discord – Always a worthy pursuit. Any other comms/career lessons you’d add? I’d love to hear of any other great books you've read recently too!

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The Corporate Communications team at Maximus is awesome and award-winning. How do I know? I'm a member of the team (😉) and we recently won THREE awards for our generative AI case study: an IABC Gold Quill Award and two Annual Communicator Awards. Our study used a comparative use-case analysis and an employee survey to determine the effect of AI writing assistants on business communications. Our results supported the idea that AI writing assistants can increase efficiency by offering time savings, reduced word counts, and lower levels of effort when used in collaboration with human expertise and review. In short, it's about synergy, not rivalry. Check out the full report: https://lnkd.in/er9EYgDE #AI #InternalCommunications #MaximusInsights

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Good read from Andy Kessler on the importance of supporting basic research for innovation: "It’s easy to fall off or be pushed off the leading edge. Faster productivity doesn’t just happen. Government shouldn’t pick winners and losers. Instead, productivity takes tireless scientists and engineers to experiment constantly with tiny improvements until the rest of us see what feels like huge gains in what we can do... Basic research of all types should be encouraged. Let many ideas flourish as industrial policy doesn’t work. Instead, success is like throwing spaghetti against the wall, seeing what sticks. In technology, this often takes place inside big companies. In pharma, it’s often government grants that drive basic research. Don’t DOGE it. We need both." https://lnkd.in/eVEjiVZf

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Many excellent presentation tips here from two pros I admire, SAS CMO Jennifer Chase and presentation coach Karin Reed. Jenn notes that knowing her topic isn't the same as knowing how to communicate it. Preparation is critical, and she invests the time to deliver her message in a compelling way.

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I love quarterly planning. It's so easy to get caught in the daily minutiae of tasks that having time on the calendar to pick your head up, celebrate, and reflect is a gift. I talked to Julia McClellan about making space for reflection in quarterly planning, and some questions we ask ourselves to make sure we're growing our programs in the right direction (one that is aligned with where your company is going and where you want to go). And if you want more, here's a quarterly planning process and template that uses these questions to build team alignment and camaraderie: https://lnkd.in/gFNe4gWD

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I threw myself into work was burnt out: Here’s how I’m slowing down for more impact in May 1. Pausing new 1:1 clients 2. Reusing my existing writing 3. Finding ways to automate 4. Make better use of what I already have 5. New offers must use my existing assets 6. Concentrating on Career Pivot Pro cohorts 7. Exploring helping people in shorter group offerings (1-2 months) I’ve looked at the stuff that is giving the most reward - the good old 80:20 rule. Sometimes lots of activity feels great but lacks focus. You can spend lots of time on stuff that doesn’t give great return. When you create space you can have a better overview and make better decisions. Back to number 5. I realised I had written my Ultimate DIY Career Pivot Blueprint to share with a friend a few months ago. But I’d not done anything with it. So I wrote it up and tested it out. 21 clear steps to help people to think and take action like an entrepreneur to build the career they want and create opportunities. JA loved it and got back to me. They sent a screen shot of how they’d used the Blueprint to help them plan what they want a successful career looks like for them. For the next 6 days it’s in a special offer bundle with the Ultimate DIY Career Pivot Checklist a you can easily tick off your progress. There’s a video in the link where I show you what you are getting if you are interested. Link in comments. 👇🏾 ———————————/———— Embrace freedom. Hi I’m Iesha I’m a comms professional with a side hustle I help you build your career like an entrepreneur . Engineer → Assistant headteacher →Head of Comms + Business owner ———

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NEW RESEARCH: Developed in partnership with Dayforce, today JUST Capital published new research that shows the state of paid leave among America’s largest companies. Their results show continued gains for paid parental leave, parental leave parity, sick leave, and PTO, among other insights. Out of the Russell 1000 companies that disclose such information: ● They provide an average of 11 weeks of paid parental leave to primary caregivers and 8 weeks to secondary caregivers. ● Parental leave parity has risen from just over 11% in 2020 to 30% today. ● They most frequently offer between 15 and 19 days of PTO as well as 10 days of paid sick leave. ● The number of companies that offer unlimited PTO increased by 58% since 2020 and by 67% for unlimited sick leave. Strong paid leave policies have been shown to help organizations improve talent recruitment and retention, productivity, morale, and reduce absenteeism. Investments in them are the right thing to do for workers and the smart thing to do for businesses. JUST’s new toolkit also highlights industry-specific insights and trends as well as leading paid leave practices with guidance on how companies can best implement them. At Dayforce, we believe that every worker deserves the opportunity to realize their potential and enjoy happy, healthy, and productive lives. This toolkit is the second report in our new WorkWell research series, which is designed to deliver meaningful insights to organizations seeking to be high-road employers for their people. It’s being developed through internal Dayforce analysis, expertise from leading third parties, and surveys of the American public. The first report in the series was our inaugural Living Wage Index that was developed in partnership with the Living Wage Institute and was published last week. Huge shout-out to Aleksandra Radeva and her team at JUST for all of the time, talent, and energy that went into making this toolkit a reality. Please be on the lookout in September for new research from Riya Patil and Matthew Bahl at the Financial Health Network on innovative new practices to improve retirement security among low- and middle-income workers.

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Recent industry research shared by Eleanor Hawkins at Axios shows that 66% of Fortune 500 Chief Communications Officers are women, a demographic variance not yet seen in other C-suite roles. Diverse perspectives are essential to effectively lead, listen to and engage the many different groups and audiences that can dictate a company’s success and I look forward to similar progress in inclusion across other leadership roles and industries.  https://lnkd.in/e7c-5fS7

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So proud of this team. Did you know 76% of high-performing women get negative feedback on their work? And only 2% of men?! Maybe you've already heard that stat bouncing around the internet. I keep seeing the stat pop up on LinkedIn and Instagram. Sometimes the authors are cited. Sometimes they're not. But either way it's a *conversation* that's happening. First and foremost I'm happy the conversation is happening. But let's be clear. The Textio team made this conversation happen. And it's SO overdue. Five or six months ago, Rachel Fukaya sat down with Kieran Snyder to start planning this research report. (I was in the room, but they're the masterminds.) An entire team of data scientists and marketers worked their butts off for *months* to source and analyze data, write, design, publish, and pitch this report. It went live 2.5 weeks ago. Since then, at least 8 major publications have covered our team's research, with more to come. Millions of people have seen this data now, without exaggeration. I see our stats showing up in all my social media channels, spontaneously, from accounts I don't even follow. ❤️ This right here is why I love my job ❤️ You can't manage what you don't measure. Garbage feedback and shifting goal posts and "personality fit" biases have been the norm in workplaces for way way way too long. We can change it. We're going to. I'm grateful to get to be part of a team uncovering these patterns and pushing the conversation forward. And not just that, we're inventing new products and new approaches that make performance management better and less messed up. Two thoughts: 💌 If you're having this conversation with your friends and colleagues, if you're sharing it with your networks, THANK YOU!!! You rock. 📌 Just don't forget to mention the authors It's just too ironic if the people who put in the work to quantify these unfair performance standards don't get credit for their work.

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Are you a #communications professional? If so, you're an official member of the “Itty Bitty ‘Make It Pretty’ Committee.” Yes, you read that right. Comms teams are often too small for the massive impact they’re expected to deliver. Worse, they’re frequently underestimated, reduced to being press release jockeys, PowerPoint fixer-uppers, and email wordsmiths. But we are so much more than that. In reality, we play a pivotal role in shaping a company's reputation, building strong relationships with key stakeholders, and ensuring clear, consistent messaging that drives both internal alignment and external success. 💥 We’re not here just to make things pretty—we’re a 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗰 and 𝗰𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 business function. It’s about time people stop underestimating us. We are so much more than the Itty Bitty ‘Make It Pretty’ Committee. 💪 Shout out to Jillian Gregoriou for originally coining the “Make It Pretty Committee” term, which I absolutely love. The more I write about the struggles comms teams face in 2024, the more fitting it becomes. I added "itty bitty" to underscore how often comms teams are also under-resourced, underestimated, and overworked. Are you an official member of the Itty Bitty ‘Make It Pretty’ Committee? (And should we start a support group?) 🙋🏻‍♀️

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Question for the communications pros out there: Do you think the job market is finally improving? The past 24 months have been 𝘣𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘢𝘭 for comms professionals, and now I’m hearing mixed signals about where things stand. Here’s the general vibe I’m getting: 🙂 More roles are popping up for specific comms roles, especially internal comms and analyst relations. 🫠 PR, social media, and content are still facing cuts across the board (and the open roles are few and far between). 🫠  Senior-level comms positions are seriously scarce or non-existent. Is this matching what you’re seeing out there?

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To the working moms who wonder if they're doing enough: You are. I see you. The mom who’s up before the sun, balancing deadlines with daycare drop-offs, squeezing in meetings between meltdowns, and somehow still managing to keep everything running. We live in a world that often asks, “Can you do more?” But when was the last time we asked ourselves: “Am I doing enough for me?” Because here’s the truth I’ve had to learn: Being a working mom is more than a list of tasks we check off. It’s the way we show up, the small but powerful ways we nurture, love, and lead. 💖 It’s the soft “I love you” to your littles whispered before the chaos of the day begins. 💖 The bravery it takes to set boundaries at work because our time at home matters, too. 💖 The courage to say “I need help” when we’re running on empty. 💖 The quiet strength it takes to be fully present at home, even after a long day. We don’t have to be perfect to be worthy. And we definitely don’t have to prove our worth by doing it all. We already are enough—simply because we show up. So, here’s my reminder to my fellow working mamas: You are not defined by how many tasks you complete, how many emails you answer, or the meetings you lead. You’re measured by the love you pour out, the patience you summon when it feels impossible, and the grace you give yourself along the way. Take a breath—you’re doing an amazing job. You've made it through another week.

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Are you extra? I'm good with that. For even more insights on the Communications field (PR, Internal, Executive, PA, etc.) sign up for the emails I send out to the select group of Comms. pros who who want to level up as Communications professionals and leaders. If you're a fit for these exclusive insights, you probably already follow me on LinkedIn and might listen to my podcast. You most certainly love this crazy, deeply frustrating, and highly rewarding field we're in. You want to stay in the field and continue to grow your career . . . without losing your sanity or burning out in the meantime. So if this is you . . . you're "extra" and getting the Level Up: Be Extra emails might be perfect for you. We're starting with extra content on topics that we address first in the Communications Business Advisor podcast - often with additional context around it and thoughts from others in the field. Tomorrow, we're addressing Strategic Communications Planning. Sign up today if you want free access to these insights. Timeliness matters (like everything else in comms.). Level Up: Be Extra https://lnkd.in/dpAxfT3S

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A 5-minute litmus test to determine your company or protocol's North Star messaging. Ask your co-founders, CTO, CMO, etc. to dash off a three-sentence explanation of “what we do as a business what we hope to accomplish.” Ask them to give it no more than 1 minute of thought. Then, compare. The difference in answers might shock you. 

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