It goes like this: an organisation faces, or is hit with, major transformational change. In some cases this is unexpected (hello, COVID); in others, there are known milestones, challenges or opportunities ahead. Think venture capital raising; an organisational restructure; or massive inflow of government funding for a major project.
The execs or founders leading these organisations FEEL prepared, and often have a strategy in mind or in place. They are super-keen to tell the world their exciting story of transformation, growth or innovation … or to explain to stakeholders how they’re managing the current challenge. They often think that their communications and engagement strategies aren’t fit-for-purpose as they look to engage with the world, or their teams, about change. They might think they need extra resourcing, campaigns, upskilling of spokespeople, or at the very least, to review the existing comms strategy.
We are usually brought in at this point, where they want a review of and redevelopment of their communications strategy. But we also know a sound organisational or core strategy when we see one - and more importantly, we can see immediately when it’s missing critical elements. We understand the dynamics between core strategy and successful comms or visibility strategies, and that when one is below-par it will undermine the other.
A mediocre core strategy is the biggest risk to an organisation’s communications strategy and resulting reputation. Using communications to put bandaids on or shine up core strategies that are weak or inauthentic is as much of a reputational risk as the underlying problems you are trying to solve.
Equally, putting huge weight behind a core strategy, and not investing in a communications strategy that translates it for those invested and affected, is one of the primary reasons strategies fail to be successfully executed, resulting in a tragic waste of time and resources, and ultimately undermines overall potential impact. It also means that some of the best potential success stories about the organisation and its people never get told.
A big part of what we do is helping leaders understand this special relationship and do something about it, quickly, ideally before the coming change is upon them or opportunity has passed them by.
When we say “core strategy” this could be anything from:
There are five common elements that we see make or break the relationship between organisational and communications strategy. In addition to the critical importance of them cross-pollinating one another, the other element that’s most commonly overlooked is the lack of skill within executives as ambassadors for both the strategy and communications: AKA executive visibility strategies.
We’re in the midst of an ideal version of this three-pronged process - organisational strategy and comms strategy redevelopment and a concurrent executive visibility program - with a large health institution, so thought we’d capture why it’s going so well and share the key lessons.
We bring more than 40 years of combined experience in organisational and communications strategy, and have developed a unique process for concurrently upskilling execs through our exec visibility programs. Get in touch if you’d like to share your own strategic challenges or would like to know more.
