“IRO” as a Deputy Chief Communicator

Since the profession first began in the early 1950’s, investor relations has evolved from a public relations initiative to attract retail investors, to a finance function capable of engaging a fast emerging institutional investor community. Today, IR has evolved to facilitate two-way communications between management and sophisticated investors on myriad topics ranging from past financial performance to the future strategic direction of the company; the quality of its management; and, even the health of its key executives.

In today’s world of increasing transparency requirements and ease of access to all manner of financial information, sophisticated investors are intent on understanding a company’s strategy and getting to know its management before placing a bet on its valuation. In other words, non-financials are playing a more important role in communications with investors.

For Investor Relations Officers (IROs) whose principal expertise is finance (which still accounts for a majority in the profession), here are a few tips:

1)    Exercise and expand your communications skills. Allocate a portion of your continuing education/professional development each year to the art of communicating by attending seminars offered by The Conference Board, International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) and others on strategic communications, crisis communications, and related topics. You might be the only IR person in the room but that is fine. Your communicator-classmates might conclude that they should enroll in a class on investor relations!

2)    Know more about your company’s C-level executives than your head of human resources knows about them. Interview each to learn about their accomplishments at previous companies and the challenges they successfully overcame so you can relate their current and past experiences to your company’s future direction when sharing your company’s story with existing and prospective investors.

3)    Bond with your company’s Chief Communications Officer (CCO). Ask her/him to tutor you on “story-telling” and return the favor by educating her/him some on the art of financial communications. Most importantly, forge a relationship based on respect for one another’s expertise and importance to the success of your company. Offer to mentor one of the CCO’s best up-and-coming strategic communicators by exposing her/him to the IR function and providing occasional project work in IR that will utilize their communication skills.