VMA GROUP’s Advisory Board is a great place for communications leaders to get together and ‘think tank’ ideas, discuss challenges, discover new trends, debate hot topics and generally let off a bit of steam with their peers in a safe environment.

In case you were wondering, these Boards (also run out of the UK and the Netherlands) were established by the VMA GROUP leadership to provide valuable guidance and potentially serve as an ally to the business in its pursuit for continued excellence in the market.  The Advisory Board is also a bit of an exclusive club aimed at encouraging greater involvement and enhancing the status of members, thereby bringing them closer to the business.

As a communications professional, now recently working in the executive search field (and loving it by the way), I found the recent event in Brussels hosted by the VMA GROUP Belgium team fascinating. There I was, sitting around the table with some of the best Communications Directors Belgium has to offer, soaking up their insights into some of the major challenges they are currently facing. I was captivated by the lively discussions and debates.

Having Julia Meighan, VMA GROUP CEO, present and share her vast knowledge and experience, gave people insight into some key topics such as internal communications and its true value today and in the future. Julia highlighted that there are lots of opportunities for internal communications which are driven by business needs such as change management, crisis communications and transformation management. However they require certain skills and investment in people to meet these changing requirements.

This led to one of the first challenges discussed - agile teams with a 360 degree approach. With limited resources, time constraints, and increasingly blurry lines defining internal and external, communications professionals need to be more agile in keeping the balance and moving forward in a pragmatic way.

Aligning the business is not a new challenge but an importa