Todd Rubenson: Six Sigma for speechwriters: Apply process-improvement techniques to executive communications

Speechwriting is an art, not a science. Can the processes embedded in executive communications work can be analyzed, improved and measured? That’s what 13-year tenured Bank of America Executive Communications Director Todd Rubenson and his 6-person team of internal and external communications professionals set out to discover by applying Six Sigma quality methodology to their executive communications work. Their results were mixed—but their bold effort had a lasting impact on how they practice the craft.

Todd Rubenson is senior vice president and director of executive communications at Bank of America, where there’s a nice archive of executive speeches. He supports CEO Ken Lewis who focuses on business minutia in contrast to Hugh McCall the more flamboyant prior CEO. There’s now an executive communications team in place to support a range of executives, not just one rock-star. McCall drove growth through M&A. Lewis’s primary strategy is to grow organically.

By centralizing an Exec Comms team Todd found a better level of integration of messaging across the company as well as focusing Exec Comms expertise within the company.

Six Sigma and Process Excellence

CEO Lewis is process driven. BofA aggressively adopted Six Sigma. It’s in place across the whole company, so to the degree it makes sense it’s been applied to Executive Communications. The Exec Comms struggled with strategic priorities around:

1. Planning and metrics – where to accept speeches and measure effects
2. Venue and calendar management – how to ensure executives are working as a team when they accept speaking engagements.
3. Presentation skills and effectiveness
4. Publishing – best way to re-purpose content in Op-Eds

Tools used:

Metric Baselines are compared to Targets and the Actual performance measured as a rate of ‘sigma’ deviance from goal in terms of sigma DMAIC.

Primary metrics they aim move include:

1. Planning and metrics:
  - Percent of the 12 executives they support with a communications plan in place
  - The percent of the speechwriters following a plan
2. Venue and Calendar:
  - % of external speeches proactively places
3. Effectiveness scores
4. Increase in number of publications

These were undertaken with the understanding that implementing them would not piss the executive off. Numbers were tracked for items like speeches accepted by executive. Attempts to quantify the opportunity in dollar terms were seen as a waste of time. Exec Comms is much ‘softer’ in terms of putting dollar costs on improvements compared to the shop floor processes where Six Sigma originated.

Todd admires the Executive Communications team at Cisco who survey each speech by every executive and scores are posted openly inside company.

BofA tracked the complexities of existing process for getting an article published. Fishbone diagrams mapped aspects of a process affecting final outcome. A Cause and Effect Matrix and Failure Modes and Effect Analysis weighs which processes had most dire effect on final outcomes.

The analysis showed they should focus on:

They developed an Annual Communications Plan for each executive. It documents the areas they are passionate about; where this intersects with business interests and how this maps to speaking opportunities for the year. They look at what each speech does for the company business goals. The CEO ’s Plan runs to over 50 pages. Five linked Excel spreadsheets track and report metrics. It is not just a laundry list, it’s a way to quantify where efforts are spent. Simple Shared Outlook Calendars let people aggregate speaking engagements and make sure that there are not, say, five speeches in Miami where no-one has spoken in Seattle for two years.

A 1-page checklist for each speech is stapled to the inside of the working file.