(MENAFN- PRovoke)
In the first of a series of podcasts for and featuring chief communications officers, PRovoke media founder discussed the various roles that CCOs play in supporting their executive leadership team at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Lenovo's Charlotte West discusses her experience at Davos earlier this year, while former WEF communications chief Adrian Monck drew on his vast experience helping to manage the gathering.
Five Key Takeaways
A growing number of CCOs accompany their CEOs to Davis-about a third of the top 100 companies have CCOs present-and they can add more value in both planning and telling the company's story.
“Check your ego at the door,” and approach Davos as a“dialogue,” not a“soapbox.”
A key part of the CCOs role is to keep the CEO informed:“What is going on in the world? What are the insights? What companies have made big announcements at Davos?”
Take sturdy shoes and plenty of protein bars, because you can never get enough to eat.
And finally, don't miss out on the“serendipity of standing next to somebody really important” or interesting.
You can listen to the full podcast discussion here, or you can read a transcript (lightly edited for length and clarity) below.
Paul Holmes : I am very fortunate to be joined for the first podcast in this series by Lenovo CCO Charlotte West and by Adrian Monck, who is a veteran of the World Economic Forum and is now an independent consultant.
It's Adrian's experience with Davos and the WEF that brings him here today, because we're going to be having a conversation about the things that CCOs need to know as they accompany their business leaders to the Forum next year. Adrian, tell us a little about your background and your role with the WEF over the last few years.
Adrian Monck : I first went to Davos, I think, in 2007, when I was a professor. I was running a journalism school in London, and it was a fascinating experience to go and see the world that the WEF had created in this little Swiss ski resort. A couple of years later, there was an opportunity to join the forum and I joined to run all of their media communications and some of their communities.
So, I spent about 13 or 14 years doing that and left a year or so ago. It's a fascinating organization and it does a lot of fascinating things, not just Davos but a lot more besides. But Davos is probably what it's best known for.
PH : You must have seen the event evolve quite a bit over those 13 or 14 years. In the last few years, it's become sort of ubiquitous in the media and the political landscape and the business realm.
AM : Well, that was one of my jobs, was to make it ubiquitous and put it in that kind of place. It has changed a great deal. It's gone from being a cozy, slightly Bilderberg-esque kind of meeting to being really a kind of global forum up there with the COP meetings and the IMF and World Bank meetings.
It's changed in ways that I think the forum has tried to shape, and also in ways that reflect some of the other things about it, which is that the town itself has a kind of life and a kind of organic sense that comes comes alive during the meeting.
PH : And Charlotte, you're a relative neophyte, certainly by comparison to Adrian. This year was your first time at Davos, which still puts you one ahead of me. But tell me a little bit about sort of your background, first of all, and what your experience was like.
Charlotte West : So my background is I've spent half my career in PR agencies and half my career in-house, more or less, primarily working for big technology companies but most recently my role is head of corporate communications at Lenovo.
Davos is something that we had attended over the years. We'd had executives go at various points in time. Sometimes more went, sometimes fewer went. I'd always supported from afar, because as everyone knows, it's not a cheap place to go. And it's pretty complex to navigate it from an attendance point of view. But this year, that was my first event.
I think I probably had a bit of a pejorative view of Davos that many people have. I remember somebody posting online just before Davos last year something like, I can't wait for all of the PR people to start posting about how amazing Davos is. And it made me think I was probably a bit cynical about it as well, until I went and experienced it.
And I think that the sort of three biggest takeaways for me were it was this incredibly efficient moment in time, place, space, the number of people you get to meet for our CEO in particular, the sheer number of business meetings he could get through in three or four days was like nowhere else in the world, or no other point in time. So it's incredibly efficient.
I was actually surprised about how equitable it felt as an environment. I think, again, this was a perception sitting on the outside never having been there, that it was super elite. It is, of course, there's lots of very, very, important people there. I remember getting stuck on the promenade because Zelensky was on the move. And all the snipers were out on the rooftops. And we had to all detour around a different route to get to the places we needed to be. So there are some very, very important people there.
But everybody still has to stand in the same security queue to get into the Belvedere Hotel. You could be somebody's executive assistant, or you could be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. You're all standing in the same security queue. So there was this sort of surprising feeling to me of it being quite equitable.
And then I think the third thing was it was actually really enjoyable. I didn't think I would enjoy it as much as I did. I think it was a beautiful place. And I was sort of soaking it all in. And because of the timing in the calendar year, it's like a really energetic way to kind of kick off the year. It certainly was for me anyway, for my first experience.
PH : How much were you able to enjoy it and how much was there is a really set agenda of things that my CEO wants to accomplish while he's here and it's my job to make sure that those things get accomplished.
CW : So our objective as a business for attending is business meetings. But I think other companies will have different objectives. Some might be going for networking. Some CEOs might be going for visibility and vanity reasons. Some might be going to learn. Some companies might be going to promote something or launch something. We see that quite a bit.
We do have a team of people there. So I don't have to worry about the logistics of getting our CEO from A to B. But I do have to worry about making sure he is informed ahead of those meetings, not is this a current customer, what are we doing with them? Because we work with the business team to handle that.
It's more like, OK, what is going on in the world? What are the insights? What companies have made big announcements at Davos? You know, what we see come out as the big themes from World Economic Forum itself. Because you do feel when you're there, like you're in a bit of a bubble. And then there's like everything else that is talked about Davos that you might see on the news.
So it's making sure that they stay informed from an insights perspective while you're in Davos itself so that they can walk into those meetings with something different to say. Or they can say,“Oh, I read a really interesting story” despite the fact that they're moving from meeting to meeting with very little space in between.
PH : Adrian, is that your experience too, in terms of what the expectations are of the corporate leaders attending the event?
AM : You've got to balance out who's there, okay? You've got corporate leaders, political leaders, academic leaders, Nobel Prize winners, a whole host of folks from different backgrounds. So you're bringing them together to create a meeting around a theme.
When Charlotte says you can have more meetings in one day than you can probably anywhere else in the world, 100%. But that's not the only reason to go to Davos, because if it is your only reason to go to Davos, you're going to miss out on a lot of other things. One of them is that serendipity of standing next to somebody really important.
One of them is that moment where you might be exposed to something you hadn't thought about or hadn't realized before, and that you're in a space with other people you can mobilize to do something.
When the pandemic broke, we had a quick moment to convene some really top global public health experts and a guy from a company that was doing something in mRNA called Moderna, Stéphane Bancel. We had Chinese folks in there, public health people, WHO people. And from that meeting, he left and went straight back to his labs and got to work.
Now that's the kind of thing that you can do in a place like Davos, where you're exposed to news, events, people who you can mobilize to do something fast on something important. And that, I think, gets often lost in the kind of, you know, the saga of Davos itself.
But if you go to Davos just thinking you're going to have meeting after meeting after meeting, you're really going to miss out.
CW : I agree on that. And I think that that's one of the jobs that we have to do is to counsel and coach our leaders who maybe want to overprioritize or over-index on one particular area to say, but you should take some time within the three or four days, which is quite a long time for a CEO to be in one place, take that time to go to that session at the Congress Center, because it is an opportunity to learn, and maybe CEOs don't always have the time to sort of indulge those learning moments, and it's an opportunity for all of those serendipitous conversations that you have.
Because I remember reading somewhere that somebody said there's a journalist or politician lurking around every corner at the Congress Center. What a great opportunity. And I always think that the security queues are some of the best places to have those serendipitous moments, because you're just all standing there. Like, everybody's moving at the same pace to get through this thing.
And the trick is actually, for us in comms, to make sure you're looking at everybody's badges. So like, see that person that's three ahead of you in the queue and introduce them to your CEO that you're standing with to get through security. That's a role that we can play to encourage our leaders to do that.
PH : In the conversations that I've had with other CCOs about Davos, the role is almost being the social secretary for the CEO, making sure that the schedule is always productive. But as Adrian just said, over-scheduling can be kind of a problem because it doesn't leave you time to discover and for all that serendipity. So how do you, as you're preparing for the next one, try to strike that balance?
CW : So I think that the way I look at it is this idea of connecting and convening. So we've got to help our leaders make the right connections and convene them in the right places in an environment like World Economic Forum. Business meetings is one part of it. That would tend to be driven, certainly in our case, by our CEO's office. He'll have a view of who he wants to be meeting with.
But there are so many other opportunities, as Adrian said, in Davos itself. So there will be like five dinners in an evening that a leader will get invited to. So actually, we've got to help our CEO make the decision about which one or two do they go to. And often, they will go to two. They'll do starter and main course at one, and dessert and drinks at the other one, because they've got to just split themselves and divide themselves between these different places.
So I think our job is to help, you know, evaluate which is the best one and why, and make the case for go to this dinner but not this dinner. And sometimes it's not easy because you might not know who else is going and there's all of those different things. You have to then go back to the objective. If the objective is business meetings or networking or visibility or whatever it is, where is the one that offers the best opportunity for that?
PH : You have experience of watching from, and presumably helping from a distance, and being on the ground now with the CEO. Should CCOs be lobbying to actually be there? Did you find that you could add more value because you were accompanying the CEO than you had been able to add from a distance?
CW : Yes. Primarily because of this idea of like this stuff that happens in Davos, and there's everything that is reported outside in the world. And I think if you're just sitting here, like I am today in my home office, you don't have the sense or the feeling of really what's going on or really what's being talked about.
I think having gone and being together with some of our leadership, you know what needs to be done. You know that they don't have much time to get from A to B. You know that they're gonna do three dinners. You know that they're gonna be really tired because their first meeting started at 7 am and their last one finished at 11.30. I think you have a much greater empathy for understanding how to get the best out of the time that they have there.
And seeing them in action you know what they get energized by and excited by, because you don't have that if you're just getting a report back from the people that are on the ground. So I think being there with them is really important, and as comms leaders, we have a role to be there in our own right, as well as being there to support our leadership.
PH : Before we come to that, Adrian, as a communications professional, how aware were you of the sort of volume of other communications pros there and how that's built over the years? I get the feeling that a decade ago it would have been pretty unusual for a CCO to be there, and now it's increasingly commonplace.
AM : I think of the 100 top global companies who are present in Davos, about a third of them bought their CCOs the last couple of years. So it's definitely becoming more part of that.
You know, they each have delegations, they choose who they're bringing, and that choice often reflects the focus the company has. But the role of communications has become so much more important in the last five years, because people are starting to see that it's really important how you tell the story and how you motivate people. And I think, you know, the role of the CCO has become more important.
But you're definitely fighting the other folks who want to be there, too. And there is only so much room in town. And if you are there, you're taking someone else's space. So you want to make sure you're adding value.
But, Charlotte's right. You can achieve an incredible amount by being present and being physically there. One of the things that we're coming back to in this very digital, very online age, is the importance of real personal, physical connection and understanding what's being talked about on the street. You know, you're creating in this tiny alpine village a kind of mini global community.
PH : What kind of resources does the WEF provide for attendees that CCOs need to be aware of and can tap into to make their experience more valuable?
AM: The big premium in Davos is always space. You know, that premium is being met to some extent now as the forum moves into providing more space for people to meet and convene. The other thing is that the Forum is in charge of the agenda for Davos. It sets the theme. This year, I think it's“Collaboration for the Intelligent Age.” And then it convenes around that theme.
People say the themes are wishy-washy or they're weak. But actually, what you're trying to do is come up with something that works as a concept for everyone from the president of Peru to the president of Patagonia to the leader of the People's Republic of China. So you're trying to put everyone into a framework that works for them.
And then if you think about not just the space, but the actual speaking opportunities that you have there, people look at them very much as a soapbox. I think that's the wrong way to look at them. What you've got in Davos is a chance to have a real dialogue with people. And if you go prepared to have that dialogue, to actually listen and contribute based on what you've heard, rather than read out your talking points, you will make 100 times the impression you would have made just telling people what you've been told to say.
I think, again, for that kind of interaction to work, it really helps to have someone with that CCO experience like Charlotte there to help brief you in person and just give you some reassurances and guidance through those kind of moments.
PH : That raises another question that I had about the experience, Charlotte, which is how much of your time are you or should you be glued to the CEO's side, making sure that he or she is maximizing the experience. And how much time do you have as CCO to meet with stakeholders, to meet with other people in your role, to get your own distinct Davos experience?
CW :
I think my first point would be it depends on the CEO that you're working with. So some will want you there with them all of the time. Others, you might interact with a few times in the day to brief them on something. And then the logistics team will handle getting them from A to B to their meetings.
From the point of view of my first experience in January this year, because it was my first year, I didn't know what I didn't know. I signed up to some things. I talked to a few people that had been before in person in similar roles to me, got some good advice, mostly about things like shoes and taking protein bars because you can never find enough to eat.
I signed up for a few things. So quite a lot of the big media houses will run breakfasts, for example. Reuters did one for CMOs and CCOs, which was a great experience to sit with people from completely different industries. Or conversely, they do dinners. There's all the after drinks and after party stuff. I did the PRovoke Breakfast, which was a real highlight. I did the Edelman Trust Barometer launch. I spoke on a couple of panels.
So I think you have a role as a comms leader to actually be a voice and representative of the company.
I would say I should spend 20% of my time, you know, on doing stuff for me for want of a better term and then 80% with the CEO.
PH : What kind of mistakes have you seen CCOs and companies in general make at Davos, Adrian?
AM : I think there's a lot of over-scheduling. There's a lot of looking at it very transactionally. And I think that's a mistake when it comes to looking at what the potential is. If you're a CEO or C-suite leader who wants to start building a coalition or doing something beyond just the confines of the business, you know, businesses need those kind of diplomatic coalitions with governments, with other businesses to move the needle on some issues. Then it's a real opportunity.
But you've got to be willing to check your ego at the door. You know, what's not going to work is if you go in and say, I'm going to do the convening. I'm going to be the big I am. I'm going to be the person you're going to come to meet. If you go in with a little bit of corporate humility and want to work with other leaders in a very straightforward and useful way, you've got all the tools there at your disposal. You've got the people there. You've got the Forum support staff and the secretariat, who can help you.
PH : Was there anything else, Charlotte, that you wish you'd known before you got there or that you look back on and would have done differently?
CW : I think it's a very practical thing of trying to work out what to go to, when to have gaps, what you can miss or what you can convene in a different way. It is a bit overwhelming the first time because you don't know what you don't know. You kind of say yes to everything. And then inevitably, you realize when you get there that you can't quite make all of that work because you can't get from that end of town to that end of town in the time that you've got.
There's plenty of agencies that have experience doing work for clients at Davos. They can help you navigate some of this and get you on the invite list for certain things or say to you, that's not worth doing, but this is worth doing. So take insight from an agency partner and other people in jobs like you. People are very generous with their time.
So I would say do your research. That would be my biggest piece of advice.
PH : Lets wind up by talking a little bit about what we expect the conversation to be this year. There is so much going on in the world right now. There have been big elections in India, in Europe, in the UK, now in the US. The political landscape seems to have shifted quite a bit in the last 12 months. Issues like polarization and disinformation seem to have gotten worse rather than better. What what are you anticipating in terms of the big issues and the big discussion topics this year?
AM : The event that kicks off Davos outside Davos is Monday, January 20th. Donald Trump is inaugurated. Now, there will definitely be, I put money on it, members of his team in Davos started to build relationships and moving things forward. Going back to previous eras, Xi Jinping made a very, very notable speech putting China forward as being the kind of guardian of globalization in Davos.
I think you'll see some of the kind of geopolitical fault lines emerging. We're seeing increasingly Europe stuck between its relationship with the United States and its trading relationship with China. It relies on the US for its defence. It relies on China for its trade. So it's going to have to make some tough decisions. And you're going to see some senior European leaders there, I'm sure.
I think that the new Trump era will be the dominant theme. That's what I think every single business leader right now is wondering about. What does it mean for my business? What does it mean in terms of who I do business with? All of those questions are going to loom very, very large over Davos.
PH : From your perspective Charlotte, are there questions that you're looking to get answered or discussions that you're looking to start or advance next year?
CW : Adrian summed it up brilliantly around what will be hot on everyone's lips in in January 2025, particularly because of the timing of the event. But I was really surprised in 2024 that climate change wasn't really... It didn't feel very present on the agenda or on the promenade when you saw what companies were doing and how they were showing up. So I think sometimes it's what gets missed, as opposed to what is spoken about.
And also what you hear reported in the outside world based on what the keynotes are at Congress Center, versus what you see reflected in the companies that are taking over the shops on the promenade. So, for example, in 2024, there was a huge Middle East presence on the promenade and significant number of organizations from India. So you suddenly see this very specific dynamic based on who is there paying money to attend and show up and investing versus what you always hear from the keynotes, from the Congress Center
AM : The actual Congress Center is what the Forum runs. They don't control the streets of Davos because Davos is its own town and its own place.
It is always interesting to see who's trying to make a big noise, but that big noise is being made by people who are going and making deals with shop owners and the local burgers of Davos. And that does tell a certain kind of story. It tells you where the money is in the world, who's shouting loudest.
PH : Fascinating stuff. I'm sure there will be a record number of CCOs at the event this year. I suspect there will be a record number of PR agencies involved on the fringes at least. And I'm very much looking forward to and slightly intimidated by my first visit to Davos, but I hope I'll see both of you there. Thank you very much. very much.
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