Chief Communications Officer Accelerator

Coffee and mingling (light breakfast provided)

• Instructor introductions
• Overview of course objectives
• Participant introductions

• Examine the Chief Communications Officer role and its evolution
• Review findings from Medill's CCO survey and introduce the CCO Competency Model
• Assess your current capabilities against the CCO Competency Model to identify strengths and development areas

• Examine how CCOs build trusted advisor relationships and build executive presence while maintaining authenticity 
• Explore approaches for earning credibility across functions, building strategic partnerships, and influencing without authority
• Learn strategies for providing counsel to senior leaders, including how to deliver difficult messages and navigate pushback

• Examine how AI is reshaping the CCO role and what senior communications leaders need to know to guide their teams with confidence
• Explore real-world AI communications use cases through live demonstration and discussion
• Identify where your team is on the AI adoption curve and the leadership conditions that move teams from experimentation to repeatable results
• Action planning: Leave with concrete next steps for advancing your team's AI capabilities

• Framework: Age of Issues + Five Fault Lines: Economic Divide, Cultural-Political Divide, Tech Divide, Institutional Trust Divide, Information Divide

Interactive: Participants map their own organizations' vulnerabilities

• Scenario introduction: Participants receive a detailed crisis scenario 
• Frameworks: Stakeholder Risk Matrix, Social License Mapping, Selective Response Strategy (when to ignore/reinforce/correct)
• Team exercise: Map stakeholders, create communication cascade plans, and make strategic choices about messaging

• Framework: Stand Firm / Pivot / Redirect / Stay Silent decision tree
• Team exercise: Prepare the CEO statement, board brief, and employee communication under pressure
• Hostile role-play: Teams present to a simulated executive management team (CEO, CFO, General Counsel, Chief People Officer) who use aggressive challenge tactics

Professors Danielle Robinson Bell and Roy Wollen.

Close out the day with a participant reception featuring cocktails, light bites, and a fireside chat with Bradley Akubuiro on his new book, Faster. Messier. Tougher: Crisis Communication Strategies in an Era of Populism, AI, and Distrust.

Coffee and mingling (light breakfast provided)

• Recap Day 1 Learnings
• Overview of Day 2 objectives

• Framework: The New Playbook (5 strategic truths: Speed beats polish, can't be neutral, loudest voices aren't your audience, disinformation is business risk, trust built in peacetime)
• Framework: Building Resilience Against Disinformation (pre-bunking, vulnerability assessment)
• Team exercise: Develop a holding statement, full response, channel strategy, validator activation plan
• Interactive simulation: Half the room plays "the company," half plays hostile stakeholders (journalists, employees, activists, investors) in a real-time pressure test

• Live broadcast simulation: Participants rotate through roles (company executive, labor rights activist, industry analyst, employee representative, journalist/anchor)
• Format: 3 rounds with opening statements, hostile Q&A, breaking news injects, and closing statements
• Focus: Maintaining credibility under fire, message discipline when interrupted, executive presence when competing voices attack

Debrief after each round: What worked, what broke down, what would shift outcome

• Framework recap: Trace the crisis through the Five Fault Lines
• Toolkit distribution: Three take-home tools (Crisis Decision Matrix flowchart, Stakeholder Cascade Template, Selective Response Framework)
• Personal reflection: Return to the opening question about their own values/business collision moment

Hear directly from a chief executive about what they expect from their most senior communications leader and how CCOs can build lasting credibility at the top of the organization.