The Centre for Strategic Communication Excellence (CSCE) has announced a new partnership with Mirror Mirror™ Alignment, bringing a powerful team alignment methodology to communication professionals and the organisations they support.
The partnership builds on recent collaboration between the CSCE and Mirror Mirror™ founder and CEO Lindsay Uittenbogaard, including the webinar You Can’t Communicate Your Way Out of Misalignment, which explored a problem many communication professionals know well.
They are asked to communicate a strategy, support a change or improve engagement. The communication may be clear. The channels may be right. People may have received exactly the same information. And yet different teams or individuals can walk away with very different understandings of the priorities, responsibilities, dependencies or what needs to happen next.
At that point, more communication isn’t necessarily the answer.
Mirror Mirror™ uses diagnostic data and structured dialogue to identify differences in how people understand their work. It helps teams see where they have common ground, where their interpretations differ and what needs to be addressed so they can make better decisions and coordinate their work more effectively.
For CSCE co-founder Sia Papageorgiou FRSA, FCSCE, FIABC, SCMP, the partnership is about helping communication leaders recognise when the brief they’ve been given is masking a deeper organisational issue.
“Communication leaders need to stop accepting responsibility for outcomes they can’t influence through communication alone. Sometimes the most valuable thing we can do is recognise that the problem sits elsewhere in the organisation and make that visible. Our credibility depends on being clear about what communication can and can’t solve. This partnership gives our profession the evidence to make that case.”
Mirror Mirror™ was founded by Uittenbogaard in 2016 after her own experience in employee communication led her to examine the hidden costs of misalignment. Its methodology was developed with input from Delft University of Technology and Rotterdam School of Management and is now used by teams and practitioners internationally.
Uittenbogaard said the partnership connects strategic communication with the practice of team alignment.
“Communication professionals are often among the first people to see the symptoms of misalignment. They work across teams, functions and leadership groups and hear where priorities are being interpreted differently or where people are unclear about ownership and expectations. The opportunity is to go beyond recognising those symptoms. Mirror Mirror™ gives professionals a structured way to make those differences visible and help teams work through them. I’m delighted to be partnering with the CSCE to bring that capability to more communication professionals.”
The methodology focuses not on forcing people to agree, but on creating enough shared understanding for people to make informed decisions and take coordinated action. The process can also be repeated to measure what has changed and, across multiple teams, identify broader patterns and barriers within an organisation.
CSCE co-founder Adrian Cropley OAM, FRSA, FCSCE, FIABC, SCMP, said the partnership reflects the CSCE’s long-standing focus on helping communication professionals contribute directly to organisational performance.
“Strategic communication is about much more than producing communication. It’s about understanding what is preventing people and organisations from achieving what they need to achieve and helping leaders do something about it. This partnership gives communication professionals another way to bring insight and practical solutions into those conversations. That’s where our profession can add real business value.”
Through the partnership, the CSCE and Mirror Mirror™ will develop learning opportunities for communication professionals as well as opportunities for organisations and teams to experience the alignment methodology in practice.
Want to learn more?
If you’d like to learn more about Mirror Mirror™ and how it can support your team or organisation, contact us.
About Mirror Mirror™ Alignment
Mirror Mirror™ is a diagnostic and facilitated alignment methodology designed to identify areas where people with shared goals understand their work differently. It helps teams explore those differences, develop a clearer shared understanding of their situation and agree explicit next steps.
About the Centre for Strategic Communication Excellence
The Centre for Strategic Communication Excellence helps communication professionals and business leaders build the capability to use communication strategically, demonstrate value and improve organisational performance.
