What Makes Communications Strategic?

Strategic Communication is the field of professional practise that enables businesses, brands, organizations, insitutions and entities to achieve their desired objectives through a purposeful use of communication. It is important to note that Communications is a professional field and even though there exists a widely held view that everyone communicates and therefore can do communications – the ability to handle communications on behalf of an organization, business, entity or professional institution or association requires theoretical knowledge, specific skills and competencies along with knowledge, experience and expertise.

Communications Self-Assessment

There are many ways in which a Communications Team can self assess to determine if they are operating on a strategic level or tactical. These are a few ways to know:

• Intentional: A core element of strategic communication is the intentionality. Nothing is left to chance. There is a step by step approach to communication that starts off from determing what the end game is and why; who needs to be targeted and why’ what is the best way to achieve the desired results and why; before it  begins to determine the how, what, where and when.

• Outcome-focused and not activity-driven: Communication is strategic when it is focused on results and not activities. Focusing solely on the activity or event and not necessarily the outcome or post-event impact in overall goal/objective terms is a clear sign of tactical communications. Strategic Communications always focuses on the outcomes and plans tasks and activites in that regard.

• Starts from the Why: Why is the first question in any conversation about strategic communications. It is the ground zero of any conversation aimed at leveraging on communications to enable brand visibility or manage an issue, address stakeholder concerns etc. Every activity, event, campaign, intervention or initiative starts with a clear understanding of why. On the other hand, a tactical communications approach starts the conversation from What, Who, Where and How.

The challenge with this is that you rush to implement without having a full understanding of the external context or internal drivers – and there may be some avoidable mistakes made along the way.

Before and After: A strategic communication approach ensures that the before and after of any situation is very clear and measurable. The approach focuses on addressing issues that communications can impact – and does not take on challenges outside of its control. Eg if a product is bad – a strategic communicator will advise the business to resolve the defects before launching a campaign on it. A tactical communicator would just proceed to develop and launch the campaign without asking any questions about the product, its credibility, market test results etc. Strategic Communications leaves no room for error.

Key Differences

The key difference between tactical and strategic communications is that the latter focuses on determining the problems that communications can resolve. It does ont take on challenges that are outside of its control and even if and when it is compelled to based on leadership decisions – will explain the limitations of the approach – so that expectations are managed well beforehand.

The strategic communicator is also more likely to conduct and rely on research, data and insights gathered from within and outside the organization to guide their thinking on the best approach to take for managing communications on behalf of an organization or an institution. With the result that they are likely to be better at managing communications risks or be more prepared for issues that could arise in the process of external or internal communication.

In today’s world, corporate and institutional communications needs to be much more strategic than ever because the stakes are very high. Communications risk is real and managing reputation has become a critical success factor for many businesses. Strategic Communications prepares you better for managing this risk because you take nothing for granted; you ask all the questions that need to be asked; and you gather as much information as possible about your audiences and stakeholders to ensure that all relevant information is factored into the communications strategy and plan.

Sola Abulu & Associates (SA&A) is a strategy and communications consulting and training firm focused on enabling businesses, brands and organizations to achieve their desired objectives through strategic communications, organizational effectiveness and reputation risk management. Learn with us 24/7 from anywhere in the world: take one of our accredited online courses on learn.solaabuluassociates.com