For years, PR professionals have bullishly attempted to sell CEOs on the idea that PR is a bottom line corporate function - with only moderate headway. CEOs just don't get it
(sniff, sniff) and they continue to slash communications budgets and staff positions first when times are tight.
Here's some insight for the downtrodden and under-appreciated: PR, to an extent, digs its own grave. "My belief is that working harder to sell [PR] as a bottom line function to
a management that doesn't believe it, is one reason we have such small corporate PR departments today," strategy guru Jim Lukaszewski told call-in participants during a recent
PRSA teleconference. "We've tried to sell it as a bottom line function, and therefore, we remain treated as a bottom line function. When the bottom line is in trouble, who is the
easiest to say goodbye to? It's us."
Staff functions, after all, are not inherently strategic. And although the word "strategy" has become indelibly imprinted in PR-speak, precious few practitioners have convinced
management of their value as strategic counselors. One reason, Lukaszewski says, is that industry veterans have a tendency to bring piles of deliverables (e.g., clips, hits and
sound bites) to the table as proof of their worth, instead of coming armed with ideas. "There is no such thing as having a strategy about the past," says Lukaszewski, "strategy is
something that provides momentum for the future"
Another reason PR practitioners often fail as strategists, according to Lukaszewski, is because PR solutions aren't necessarily a critical part of every management decision or
scenario. "Yet we often talk as if we can only solve a problem using PR. We spend time trying to teach management about public relations when they don't want to learn. They won't
be taught...that's why they hire staff people." The message is clear: suggest and apply PR principles and strategies when they can work but don't become a PR evangelist with the
CEO.
During his tele-lecture Lukaszewski pointed out the tunnel vision that many PR practitioners articulate to the top brass. "We worry out loud about how the media are treated.
Well, media concerns are rarely management's first concern. Management's interest is in the full range of business activities, and media relationships are only one facet of those
activities," he stressed.
No doubt management's purview is big picture. But it's rare for any one solution or idea to have the holistic fortitude needed to move every component of the business
forward all at once. That said, PR people have a tendency to look for "silver bullet" solutions in a world where most significant growth is logged incrementally.
"Remember that the manager is taught to approach things in an orderly, logical fashion," Lukaszewski advises. "The person who comes along with the magic answer to the problem
without any substantive support, evidence or process approaches is viewed as suspect, not credible, not serious," he said. And without credibility, there is no leverage.
It may sound counter-intuitive, but to the extent that the best company-wide solutions aren't always PR-centric, neither are the best corporate communications counselors,
Lukaszewski concluded. "Until you can look at the business from the CEO's perspective, you aren't of strategic value."
Management consultants have made successful forays onto PR turf (both in-house and agency) in recent years by using terms such as "customer/loyalty management, team building,
crisis consulting and issues/exposure management" to describe what they do. Absent in the lexicon are the words "communications" and "public relations".
Does Lukaszewski's assessment, then, signal the death of "PR" as the descriptor for subsequent generations of counselors who would be strategists? Maybe. "In my experience,
85 percent of public relations, in a business context, can be done by a competent secretary," he said. "This is not an insult; it's the truth. Somehow we've always believed that
if we produce enough stuff, even good stuff, the boss will somehow like us, invite us to the table and include us in major planning efforts. Stuff is not a ticket to the
table."
Jim Lukaszewski is chairman of The Lukaszewski Group, White Plains, NY, and a regular columnist for PR NEWS. Contact him at 914/681-0000.
Two-Minute Strategy
Drill
Hog too much of the CEO's time and you may find yourself intentionally excluded from strategy meetings. According to Lukaszewski, a valued strategist should be able to
distill the decision-making process into five steps, and deliver the goods in a two-minute verbal overview. The pieces:
1. Situation description: Briefly describe the nature of the issue, problem or situation.
2. Analysis/explanation/interpretation: Briefly describe what the situation means, its implications and how it threatens or presents opportunities for your organization.
3. Options: Develop at least three response options for the situation you presented. You can suggest more, but three is optimal for management to choose from. Make sure one
of the options is "doing nothing."
4. Recommendations: This is what you would do if you were in your boss's shoes and why.
5. Negative unintended consequences: Identify the events and problems that could arise due to the options you have suggested or by doing nothing. Also, forecast collateral
damage to be expected.
Copyright 2001, James E. Lukaszewski. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from the author.
Where's the Love?
Strategy expert Jim Lukaszewski spells out the qualities that CEOs value and appreciate in their most trusted advisers:
Ability to move at verbal speed. "Questions and issues facing management are best dealt with when they occur," although communicators all too often leave the room to
draft a plan and then return to find the parameters have shifted again. "By the time you come back, something else will have happened to change the dynamic," he says. Executives
make decisions in real time.
Hunger for competitive intelligence. "What CEOs often want to know most is how a peer company or peer executive has responded in a similar circumstance," Lukaszewski
says. Take the initiative, do the surveillance and bring it to the table.
Baby Steps. "One thing that discredits PR professionals is they have this urge to find the silver bullet or 'big idea' solution in every case, when, for many management
issues, there is no [single] big idea. Only incremental progress." Every situation is unique and warrants a fresh approach.
Pragmatism. What might happen isn't as relevant as what is happening. Think about how you can move the business closer to meeting its objectives on any given
day.
Anti-cynicism. "Until you can look at the business from the CEOs perspective, you aren't of strategic value," he says. Feeling embittered and under-appreciated is
counter-productive and will only put more distance between you and the CEO.
Option-based thinking. There's more than one way to do everything. "If we come to a meeting with only one idea, one solution or one concept, we answer two or three
questions and we're shot down immediately," he says. Strategists avoid single-bullet death by "dividing things in different ways, looking for totally new sets of assumptions, or
looking for innovative challenges to old assumptions."
Holistic thinking. "When we walk into a meeting and the first thing out of our mouths is, 'What's going to be in the press release?' that's not a strategic approach,"
he says. "The issues are broader and bigger than that. And if they're not, then maybe it's not really a strategy meeting after all, but rather a tactical meeting where the
strategy has already been decided."