Hamilton dos Santos Takes Part in Arthur Page Society’s Seminar

Hamilton dos Santos, Director General of Aberje – Brazilian Association for Business Communication, represented the entity in the latest meeting of the Arthur Page Society, the 31st Spring Seminar, that took place in New York City, USA, on April 7th and 8th. “As a guest for the first time, I really enjoyed it and learned a great deal”, says dos Santos. “The experience has certainly reinforced my desire to become a member of the Arthur Page Society.”

According to dos Santos, two issues dominated the discussions and call the attention of the 300 CCOs who attended the meeting. “The first one is that in order to be successful, CCOs need urgently to understand the impact that millennials are having so their organizations can effectively engage them in a way that drives business outcomes. It means that the CCOs are required to redefining the comunnication plataforms of their companies and in doing that redefinition they have to be concerned with the fact that the millennials don’t expect companies to be flawless, just transparent and real, they expect honesty and they also expect for companies to own up to their mistakes”, says dos Santos. “Another huge theme that was very present in the Spring Seminar was the New CCO Report. In particular, many of the discussions were focused on the CCO as an Integrator.

One issue that created much debate and controversy was the belief that the CCO can be more valuable to the company by operating in cross-functional collaboration across the c-Suite. Some of the questions asked in the workshops were such these: why should it be the CCO and not the HR Director or any other c-Level the one who performs the role of integrator. Also, are the CCOs prepared to be CEOs? Would that be a legitimate aspiration for them?”, concluded dos Santos.