Today’s breakfast briefing hosted by the Council of Public Relations Firms on “Strategy, Leadership and Communications” went well. Following a brief presentation of the research findings, we had a lively debate about the role of communications in strategy formation and execution. The research finding that generated the most discussion was that CEOs favor a more active role for communicators in the strategy formation process, but that communicators themselves hold a narrower view of their role, preferring to define it in terms of providing a “sounding board” rather than fully-fledged participation in strategy development.
It helped that the organizers had put together a diverse panel of communicators and strategists from different industries – Chris Atkins (Standard & Poor’s), Ray Jordan (Johnson & Johnson), Herb Muktarian (BAE Systems), Ana Maria Delgado (Organizacion Corona), Emily Yoo (Tokio Marine) and yours truly. The diversity certainly led to a richness of perspective on the various issues.
I personally was heartened by the extremely articulate views that Herb and Chris expressed about the importance of communicators to define what specific skills/perspectives they were bringing to the top table, and the circumstances under which good communications were most valuable. Their point was that it was a mistake to believe that the value of communications was intuitively obvious to senior management.
It was nice to hear the Vulcan/Earthling conundrum articulated by others!
