North Star Communications Consulting

Much has been said about “The Great Resignation” already, but the truth is, we are still coping with its effects.

The mass exodus, combined with the silver tsunami of Baby Boomers leaving the workforce, has impacted every section of the company’s talent. Marketing and communications talent, often a smaller and highly specialized part of the workforce, is especially impacted. With 44 percent of tech founders and executives reporting that “a significant number of their top performers” have left their company, the impact on engaging stakeholders through communications and marketing is particularly visible.

The function plays a vital role in a company’s growth. With every company’s pursuit of digital transformation, marketing and communications personnel—and their evolving skill sets of digital and social media—are becoming indispensable assets for companies to thrive digitally across the globe. It’s imperative that companies nurture their communications talent and give them the space needed to grow more broadly across new competencies to reap better outcomes for the function and the enterprise.

Mark Dollins, president of North Star Communications Consulting, states, “That’s where we come in. With a laser-like focus on talent management in the marketing and communications functions, we work with global and regional companies and agencies to deliver talent development and management solutions that develop world-class talent.”

The company leverages its years of experience in the talent development and management space to identify the core technical and behavioral competencies that drive greater capabilities for people and their functions’ contribution to the business, and articulate progression through those competencies.

Next, North Star Communications Consulting introduces tools to assess talent and chart courses for their development, allowing managers and their employees to have robust discussions about individual career growth.

As a result, the company is able to support both communications and marketing teams and their internal HR partners on everything from change management to established people processes.

It also bridges the skills gap by identifying unique competencies that can add novel digital maturity to the clients’ function. The company helps assess talent and provides coaching for leaders to drive clear and actionable professional growth discussions and plans. North Star Communications Consulting then provides or connects its client to training for the critical skills identified through its assessment tools.

The unique combination of the technical side of consulting on communications and its marketing competencies, along with change management expertise, has driven North Star Communications Consulting to be trusted by names such as Xerox, Visa, Toyota, Keep America Beautiful, and Mercy College.

Apart from its talent development and management services, North Star takes pride in helping organizations create their own unique marketing and communications universities and supporting leaders and their teams with everything from change management to assessing the needed change. The company delivers in-house customized training for identified competencies and employs additional trainers with customized instructional capabilities in other areas.

Imparting his knowledge, Dollins has recently co-authored a book, Engaging Employees through Strategic Communication. It provides a detailed overview of employee communications and its evolution as a tool to drive employee engagement and successful change management. The book also shares Dollins’ experience on how he has propelled North Star Communications Consulting to grow tenfold since its inception in 2011. Over the years, the company has worked in various industrial verticals, including finance, manufacturing, automotive, science, consumer packaged goods, and technology.

North Star, as the name suggests, will continue to uncover new opportunities and be a guiding light for fostering its clients’ marketing and communications talent.