Customs Street Advisors is a full service investor relations firm based in Lagos, Nigeria.

Seating Arrangements: Inviting Corporate Communicators to the Head Table

This week in Street Talking on NEXT I defend the important role that corporate communicators play in companies, especially during transition periods. In contrast to their contributions to organizational success, it is almost impossible to find corporate communicators on the fast track to the peak of corporate leadership. How come? I explain that until they feel comfortable talking about finance topics, it is unlikely that they will never make it to the front bench of corporate leadership soon. To do so, they need to learn the language of finance.

Forget the glamour. It is a hard knock life for the corporate communications department. Crisis communications, reputation management, stakeholder relations, community affairs, brand direction, internal communications, external affairs, sponsorships, event planning, PR, executive speech writing, corporate voice and media relations are a short list of some of the tasks literally piled on the head of corporate communications. Come to think of it, one would expect that with its long-sleeve length multi-tasking résumé, the corporate communications department would be part of the magic circle for executive management breeding and CEO selection. Perish the thought.

In the jaundiced way that all-A students were supposed to go up to university to study engineering and medicine, parents expressed their dismay when their first-class graduating wards applied for jobs in what they deemed PR-topia. If the department was not exactly the equivalent of corporate Siberia, it has not been the choice career path for apparatchiks aspiring to climb to the Soviet Central Working Committee. Should this be the case? Has corporate communications been getting the short end of the stick? I think so. But where does the blame lie?

The past twenty months should have been the era of guts and glory for the communications department. The economy was in a tailspin, the oppressive odour of executive scandal was everywhere, consumer spending was in reverse, the stock market was in panic, earnings had dropped sharply and employee morale was at its lowest point. The future looked bleak. Here was the department’s golden chance to become the in-house A-Team by crafting messages to reassure each stakeholder constituency. It was unthinkable that the department would not seize this opportunity to establish its credentials as an integral part of the corporate strategy development process.

Whatever the facts of the meltdown the issues faced by companies were fed mainly by perceptions. The public was reading ahead of the script. If the global economy was in freefall, then there was no way that the local economy would escape. If Company A’s CEO was involved in a fraud, then such practices must have been widespread among all CEOs in the sector. If Company X in its sector had downsized, then it was only a matter of time before Company Y would go under the knife too. Fears ran riot and took a life of their own. Confidence, that ephemeral quality, was fast evaporating.

The corporate rationalists scratched their heads in confusion. Excel spreadsheets, corporate finance models, risk management stress tests, and all the other numerical kitchen sinks thrown at the problem were unsuccessful at silencing the anxiety. These Cartesian wizards of numbers were unfamiliar with problem-solving that depends on the right-side of the brain. In their usual fashion, they broke the problems down to the smallest components then lined them up. Still there were no answers in sight.

All else tried, they decided it was time to invite their colleagues from the communications department to take a look at the problems. Then a funny thing happened. The communications shamans pointed out that the way to solve the problem was by shifting attention from its content to the frame. The frame is just as important as the picture. If the frame is right, then the picture becomes easier on the eye. How neat. ‘Why didn’t we think of that before?’ they said in relief.

But when it came to designing and fitting the frame, both sides, and they really are on opposites, ran into their first hitch. They had spoken different languages for so long that it was almost impossible for the number crunchers to explain the picture to the idea munchers. This cultural exchange of convenience was not producing the hoped for assimilation. In the end, a sign language of sorts was adopted. The results served but were not ideal.

This leads to the question: is the onus on these so-called ‘serious’ departments to learn the language of corporate communications or the other way round? Call me partial, but I am on the side of the ‘others’: strategy, finance, operations, etc. The only thing that unites them is their ease with the numbers. Figures are their native dialect. Without fluency in it, corporate communications will always play second fiddle, no matter how brilliant the last campaign was.

The financialization of markets makes it essential for corporate leadership everywhere to speak the lingua franca of figures.  The numbers folk are not just another tribe in the org chart. They have become das Herrenvolk (the ruling race) in the corporate species. To avoid that cruel fate of mockery of mere men by the Übermensch (overman or superman) that Friedrich Nietzsche describes in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (‘and man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment’), the corporate communications department must learn to speak that language. Until then, its place at the head table remains ‘Reserved’.

The original article may be read here on the NEXT website.

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