Public Affairs, You Confuse Me.
Calling all communicators in the business of Public Affairs—what makes you stand out from the rest of your peers in Communications?
- Do you have key legislators and lobbyists on your BBM contacts?
- Are you the sole owner of CSR and community relations initiatives?
- Are you the policy guru, spotting nefarious legislation and getting your company ahead the messaging curve?
- Do you spend countless hours grooming your CEO and other executives for government testimony?
Read no further if you have an answer and wouldn’t mind sharing it with me. Continue on if you think I’m a confused Millennial.
I ask because I’m at a research crossroads and need your help understanding, well, you. From what I gather, you may do one of one hundred different activities. You may manage issues, build relationships with stakeholders, steward community affairs, sponsor employee advocacy groups, develop corporate public policies, train executives, and manage the company’s reputation. But what really binds you together as a community of practice?
To get to sleep at night, I tell myself that my confusion is justified. After all, we’ve spent a lot of time on this blog pondering the blurred lines of communications. As my colleague Jon wrote in “Lobbying and PR: Where’s the Line“, “With the ever-evolving role of new media, new technologies, and new techniques for reaching and influencing audiences, it’s tough to really categorize what we do these days.”
Amen.
A while back, I tried to tackle this question from a different angle: What should Public Affairs stop doing? Primarily, it seems that the function’s legacy focus on reacting to and influencing a confined set of stakeholders (namely, legislators, lobbyists, policymakers, and regulators) is becoming less impactful by the day. The mingling interests of business, society, and government call for a much broader stakeholder lens—not to mention far more proactivity in shaping the public debate. (CEC members can visit our website to read more about Leading Public Dialogue on Key Issues.)
Now, I’m starting to think I made things too confusing in that initial analysis. I’m wondering if, in fact, the real thing that makes public affairs communicators different IS your knowledge of that “confined” set of stakeholders. You are the owners of those audiences, open to a variety of new tools and techniques to ultimately engage and influence them.
But I leave it to you, the public affairs communicator, to tell me what makes your job different from that of other external communicators. I think we both know that your role continues to increase in importance, so please: help me help you. What’s keeping YOU up at night these days?
on 30 June 2010
Respond
You are not alone Ms. O’Keefe! This question has bothered a lot many of us who are trying (succesfully or not so successfully) to plant a foot in the C-suite door and realizing that Corporate Affairs continues to be smugly present there all along – in spite of some of its obvious (no-need-to-elaborate) shortcomings. But first let us give them the credit for being more responsive to business needs (well, short-term at least) than those of us lesser mortals who wear only the communication hat.
Having said that, I think the blurry lines start becoming clearer when I contrast and compare my two-bit experience in the developed world with my experience of the developing world where things are more “manageable” when it comes to dealing with policy makers and politicians of all hues than what you may have seen closer home. The corporate affairs professional is a hard-nosed negotiator who believes in meeting his targets by all means and does not suffer from fashionable qualms. For him, business is like love and war, and he must get the results in his organization’s favor. He has clear mandates, and he is trusted by the management.
Alas, it may take a while before the communications person can win that kind of trust – no, not in the near future!
on 6 July 2010
Respond
As the field, and the world, changes, it’s natural to question what value we contribute today. We can no longer claim to “manage” communication (as if we ever could) when millions of people within and outside of our organizations now have the tools and the access to share their voice with billions more. Few trust the organizational communication we (used to) so carefully craft and distribute anyway.
We can, however, help our organizations build and “manage” real relationships with a multitude of stakeholders (not just the “confined” set mentioned above). Public Affairs professionals ask the tough questions and listen to a uniquely broad range of stakeholders and seek to understand them (this is knowledge factor you mentioned). We engage them, influence them and, by all means, ensure that the relationship is genuine, authentic and transparent so that we build and win the trust our organizations need in order to succeed.