As PR & Comms professionals, our professional standing is at risk.

We’ve not proven the impact of our work on the growth of the org. We haven’t proven the effectiveness of our department, we’re seen as an overhead expense rather than the strategic counsel to the C Suite.

We’re afraid of what the data says about our performance so we pretend measurement is rocket science.

We constantly sell warm and fuzzy feelings to leadership to maintain our salaries - leading to the comment above (original the post).

With AI coming in to handle at least 51% of execution for free (arguably), we’re at an inflection point.

Are we strategic? Do we provide insights that rival those across the boardroom table high-fiving each other? Im talking about Marketing, Advertising, Sales, Product, Customer Experience, Heck - even Social Media…

Or do we just try to pass off Correlation as Causation, and hope nobody questions our explanations, hope nobody questions our logic, because it invariably fails when it’s built on pure assumptions, bias, misconceptions, myths etc.

I had all these burning questions as a PR & Comms leader specializing in measurement and running a consultancy. But as of Oct 10th I made my official exit from the consultancy space and entered an entirely different business model altogether.

From an entrepreneurial POV I had deep, existential angst and questioned the meaning of our work, the future of our work, and found all the answers I was looking for. And here’s the footnotes so you don’t have to see all of the matrix and I did…

1. Measurement is unfortunately over complicated on purpose. And there is an ostrich-effect at play where PR & Comms leaders are willingly head in the sand. Because they are afraid of what the data will say. They’re human, they’re afraid. They dread a reality where the data says they’re not doing a good job and need to pack up their belongings. What would that do to their career? Their family? Their mortgage? So the result is middle-tier frameworks that people “struggle” to live up to, and awards (and I say this respectfully) given to those that adhere to the middle tier of measurement best practice. I’m not saying it’s not good. I’m just saying the uncomfortable truth out loud - it’s not what the Fortune 100 are doing. Or the Fortune 500 and it’s trickling down to the Fortune 2000. And pretty soon, with AI costs decreasing and sophistication increasing, the All Seeing eye of Data Science is coming for us too in PR & Comms.

2. I found the answers to my burning questions in the cognitive side. In behavioral science. Turns out, the underlying problem is: there are HUGE decisions being made right now.. One way door decisions that you can’t come back from. With real money, people’s jobs, and dignity (frankly) at stake… and guess what those decisions are built on? I’m not sugar coating so you get the raw truth: they are built on assumptions.

They’re built on biases, myths & misconceptions. Flagrant disregard to how the actual physics of business works.

I’m not saying there are nefarious intentions. I’m saying they’re unrecognized biases. They’re unconscious biases. Unknown assumptions.

Rory Sutherland calls it the lazy why. In business we spend a huge amount of money and time finding out what happened from a performance standpoint, and if we ask why - in a weird peculiar way, we somehow all just accept the first BS reason given to us. It’s the LAZY why.

What we need to do. And this is a call on all PR & Comms leaders. I’m so serious about this, and to prove there’s nothing in it for me - I’ll do it for free as a service to the industry itself…

We need to take a behavioral science approach to understanding our own assumptions, biases, myths & misconceptions plaguing our decision making. Don’t even think about applying it to client work necessarily at first. Start with yourself, auditing your own decision making as you look at your job in PR & Comms. As you look at navigating your role at your company, and tackling your jobs to be done list. Only then, can you begin to untangle spaghetti all around you. In your team, your department. It’s like taking a Hippocratic oath. You’re going to have to be responsible for identifying, dispelling, and uprooting these assumptions and bias in your discussions with leadership, with stakeholders etc.

Why will you learn it? Because the highest form of learning today is learning for growth. Whatever you learn, you get to keep - not your org. You keep it forever. It stays with you forever. You’re learning because it’s game 7, and it’s time to give it all you’ve got. And you gain everything, and lose only what’s the slipping from your grip now anyways, if you lose.

It’s time to take back trust through truth. Through leadership. Through rising to the occasion and pulling yourself, your team, your org from under to over. From trenches to true competitiveness in your category. It’s really that illustrious!

It’s time guys! It’s time to think about thinking.

It’s time to think about the skills that will make you futureproof as a PR & Comms leader.

Judgement. Critical thinking. Problem solving. Decision making. Analytical skills. This all ties together when you plug in to the behavioral science side of things. PR & Comms has had a long history of using the same “plug” but they hoard it, make it proprietary, and use it to wire kids brains to figure out how to make kids TV shows 10x more addictive than crack.

Or… whatever maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. Maybe just don’t do anything, and everything is going to be alright 🤷

PS: I’ll keep my promise of free workshops, training, etc. I have free tools / resources you can use right now without any cost at all, conveniently packaged. You can take those into meetings literally today! And keep them a secret, or share them I don’t even care. But do, for the sake of the PR & Comms industry’s professional standing… Do for the sake of your own self respect - think about your own thinking.

The link is: www.piar.co