PR’s place in decision making

Many years ago, I read an amazing issue of the Harvard Business Review on decision making. One of the things that has stuck with me since reading that issue is the question: Who has the “D”? “D” stands for decision.

It’s a very important question when it comes to decision making because eventually someone has to make the call or you’ll remain in meetings for the next 40 years, especially if things are decided based on consensus. As a PR pro, I know how important it is to make that decision quickly, especially in times of crises. But I also know how important it is that every decision be made with PR in mind.

Yes, that’s right – every decision should be made with PR in mind. Not in the sense that it should be made with the intent to promote it. Rather with the understanding that the decision will negatively or positively impact a public if not many different publics. The public could be employees, customers, investors, interest groups, other organizations, all of the above or any combination of them.  

When you don’t consider the potential impact on any one of the publics, you’re asking for either a crisis or a missed opportunity. I’ve experienced the impact of this hundreds of times in my career. You might call it job security for crisis management pros.

But PR is more than just a reaction-to-pushback machine. It’s meant to be your intuitive ambassador with the public, which is diverse and ever changing. It’s hard for a full-time c-suite executive to keep up with the changes. PR pros can help.

Contact Jakel Communications, a Denver PR agency, if you need help in this area.  

Public relations is a science … and an art

It’s kind of a trend, but not really. Today, communications and PR departments everywhere are being expected (not just asked) to measure their public relations activities and prove their value. I’m not sure it was ever cool to say you don’t know what your activities are worth, but I hear from the more experienced that there was a day when they didn’t have to prove their value.

Of course they didn’t. It was obvious to a person who could see the forest from the trees that public relations had value. PR was the group that really understood what was going on in the world and what could impact the organization in a negative way.

Good public relations practitioners have a feel for the risks the company is taking and how to fix the company’s activities to prevent disaster, as well as how to use what the company is doing right to generate a positive vibe. That is value.

That’s changed today because of big data. Big data, rightfully so, is constantly asking you to “prove it.” Prove that you are generating value by finding the correlation between your activities and the company’s success in meeting its goals. Unfortunately, the softer disciplines, like PR, have a hard time doing that without creating marketing-like activities to generate the numbers. PR professionals can do that because we understand the public and know what will resonate with them, but it begins to look a lot more like marketing than PR.

Yes, big data is important and proving your value as a PR practitioner is as well. But I have to admit that I’m not always on board with big data approaches to public relations or marketing. Sometimes, you can’t draw a direct correlation because you’re looking at too many trees. Sometimes, you have to take a step back and see that the forest works together as a whole to create the ideal ecosystem for life.

The same is true in business. It’s not the individual trees that have made you successful. It’s the ecosystem, or culture, that created the success. Public relations helps foster that internal culture and make adjustments as society changes. Public relations understands the softer side of business and the importance of the one thing that can make or break your organization – culture.

This might be a little strong for many of you reading this blog, but culture is the one thing you have to get right, and it has to show in everything you do. If you get it wrong or you fail to build it into your organization in a manner that shines through to your publics, you will either eventually fail or be relegated to second place for a lifetime.

Ignoring the importance of public relations (I use this interchangeably with corporate communications because they should be one in the same, but that’s for another blog post.) is a big mistake. Public relations/corporate communications should be responsible for internal communications as well as external communications, because your culture should be aligned in certain respects with your publics. 

When you get it right, the culture is magnetic. People choose you over the competition because of it. Take a moment to think about the iconic brands in the world. Apple, Southwest Airlines, Nordstrom and Starbucks have more than just good products. They have distinct, magnetic cultures internally that show to the public. That’s what superior public relations working with marketing can help you create.

That’s value that you can’t put a big data number on. That’s the art of public relations, and it’s worth more than a number in a spreadsheet.

If you need help building that kind of culturally relevant brand, contact Jakel Communications. We can help.