If you are interested in the topic ‘Strategy and PR’, my master’s was published by Heinemann SA as a reader titled ‘Corporate Communication Strategy’, available in the bookshop on the campus of the University of Pretoria. Also, I can email you my chapter in the ‘Future of Excellence in PR and Communication Management’ on this topic, as well as some articles.

You can write to me at b.steyn@lantic.net or call me at 021 856 3005. I don’t live in Pretoria anymore, but moved to the Western Cape 6 years ago where I developed the web-based master’s in PR Management at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. There has been a few people from Eskom in this master’s over the years.

Regards

I am just to know if you are still with the university of petoria? My name is Lindiwe Maboa, I was hosted your final year students at Correctional Services Communication Department to do their research work.

I would like to meet with you and have a chat with you as there are a few things that I would like you your advise on.

I am with Eskom at the moment as a Communication Manager in one of the business units.

Regards

Lindi

Maybe I should mention why I got involved in this topic in the first place (in case Fraser thinks that I dreamt it up in my ivory tower). Also, why I find it an important concept, worth while exploring. When I started my new position as a lecturer at the Dept of Marketing and Communication Management at the University of Pretoria in 1996 (after spending 16 years as a practitioner), the first telephone call I received was from a desperate PR manager who wanted a model for developing PR strategy (requested by her CEO). I didn’t know of such a model (and thought to myself that I was a failure as a lecturer before I even started!). Then, within a week, there was another request and then another. By now I had scanned the PR literature worldwide but to no avail. All I could find were frameworks/ models/ guidelines for PR plans, but nothing that remotely represented PR ‘strategy’ in the sense that I understood the word.

Having just left practice, I then called on my many friends in industry to send me their models or examples of PR strategies. What I received were lists of activities or PR/ communication plans. I then realized that research was very much needed on this topic in South Africa since there seemed to be a need for it. It came as no surprise when, in a subsequent quantitative study that I conducted amongst CEOs, their highest expectation for senior PR/ communication practitioners was to develop ‘corporate communication strategy that supports the corporate strategy’. (And they were not talking about communication PLANS! I made very sure of that in the interviews following the quantitative research). Based on these findings, I put my PR roles research aside for a while and started exploring the concept of corporate communication strategy.

To address some of the comments made above, I do not see a PR strategy meaning the same as a plan or even planning. I see it as strategic thinking that takes place before planning starts, and long before plans are developed. It is synthesis, putting the pieces of the puzzle together—decisions on why communication is necessary, who needs to be communicated to, and what needs to be communicated ABOUT follows. It is not about identifying specific target publics and specific messages (which belongs in the plan and is a process of analysis), but rather thinking through how communication can be used to solve organizational problems or capitalize on opportunities. (One strategy could be not to communicate at all). It includes thinking through whether the societal/stakeholder problem or issue or risk or opportunity, etc. is an ‘organizational’ issue (and if so, whether the PR function can indeed make a contribution in solving it) or whether it is a ‘communication’ issue (where the PR function definitely can make a big difference). This kind of thinking with regards to the PR/communication function is currently not taking place. There are very few senior managers who have the knowledge to do so. And there are senior managers in South Africa saying that they expect their senior PR/ communication people to provide direction in this regard.

Leaving South Africa for the moment: When I recently signed into Melcrum’s Strategic Communication group, the first post was by a communication manager of a global company who wanted to know how to write a communication strategy. Her senior management wanted a communication ‘strategy’, not a communication ‘PLAN’. She expressly said so. Furthermore, at the top of Tom Watson’s recent list of most important research topics for the future is “Public relations’ contribution to strategic decision-making, strategy development ….” Also, the study by Zerfass et al that has just been introduced at the recent Euprera conference in Denmark, identified “Linking business strategy and communication” as the most important issue for public relations by every second PR professional in Europe. (Another finding was that “integrated communication has to be re-conceptualized as a strategic assignment, transcending the instrumental level”).

So for the time being, until any of you can come up with another concept to tie the disjointed PR function to organizational strategy formulation, I am not budging from the need for the concept of ‘PR/corporate communication strategy’. I am not saying it has to remain the way it is now. The very reason I am in this conversation is to see how it could be improved or to develop something to replace it. But let us not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

I realise that the labels ‘deliberate’ and ‘emergent’ PR strategy might not have all the characteristics that strategic management scholars intended with the concepts originally. Does it matter? I do however see these two concepts for PR as broadly referring to ‘formulated’ and ‘formed’ strategy. Is that not close enough? If these labels have been ‘borrowed’ from strategic management and ‘reconceptualised’ to make them applicable to the PR function, is the important thing not whether they assist those PR practitioners with little knowledge of strategy to better understand PR’s contribution to organizational strategy formulation. (If it is found that they don’t, I will be the first to discard them). Is it not worth a try? What do we have to loose? Which concepts are they competing with?

In South Africa, we have been teaching the concept of corporate communication strategy for 10 years, not only to masters students but also to undergraduates (final year). I remember Lauri Grunig saying in 2000 (while she evaluated our courses at Univ of Pretoria) that undergraduate PR students in the US would not be able to cope with such a complex concept as corporate communication strategy. I told her that our students had no problem with it. We concluded that the difference was that our students were management students. They all encountered strategy in Business Management, and also in Marketing and in HR Management. As a matter of fact, where students had difficulty distinguishing between communication plans and marketing communication plans taught in their first and second year, they much better understood the difference between PR/corporate communication and Marketing in their third year when introduced to corporate communication (and marketing) strategy. Because here the focus differed considerably. Or so they said.

It needs to be mentioned that the first masters in strategic communication started at the Univ of Pretoria already in 1995. After being exposed to the concept of corporate communication strategy, many Masters students (often senior practitioners) remarked that for the first time they understood what it is that they are about in the bigger scope of things, besides developing communication plans. If the concept makes even a small contribution in helping to let the lights go on with regards to PR’s contribution to strategy formulation, what harm is done? In the end I judge the value of the concept from the perspective of the PR function and not from top management. I don’t think senior or top managers care which instruments we use to teach or what labels we use. What is important to them is what results are achieved and whether the PR/ communication function helps them to solve critical organizational problems.

With regards to Heather’s remark above, I see PR/ corporate communication strategy as a mechanism for the PR function to be pro-active rather than wait around reactively until senior managers experience/ cause a crisis and then expect reactive communication plans to be developed at a dizzy speed. Of course an optimal corporate communication strategy will be developed if there is a practitioner functioning at senior organizational levels (in the role of the PR strategist, as I call it or a Leader, as Fraser calls it). But I have seen the strategies developed by junior practitioners where no direction has been provided by any senior person and that has given me a lot of hope! (Do you know how often practitioners say that there is NO strategic planning process in their organizations — to say nothing of a strategic thinking process)!

In conclusion: Many valuable remarks have been made in previous comments that I still want to touch upon but this is getting too long for now. So another episode will follow! (This reminds me of a soap opera). Also, there is quite a number of topics that have been raised that I think can become posts by themselves, rather than being discussed in this PR strategy post. One of these is Craig’s comment on whether PR can be a strategic management function. The other is PR roles. I agree with Fraser that we can hardly discuss strategy without discussing PR roles and think that a discussion on the latter will be beneficial before delving further into the ‘PR strategy’ issue. (The PR and strategy post was not a planned conversation, but the depth that has quickly been reached necessitates some shared assumptions and background knowledge to make it easier to talk to each other). Auf wedersehen!

I have one last thought, before I too must work for a living. (The next piece of work on my plate is a benchmarking study of management and leadership practices of about 30 heads of PR/C. Delicious!)

The folks who perform employee/internal/organizational PR/Communication are perhaps the least studied of all subfunctions. Yet, if there has been an explosion in growth over the past fifteen years in PR/C, it has been in this subfunction (at least in NA and the UK).

IABC, Council of Communication Management, two or three separate groups in the UK including an umbrella group, the Ragan empire, the Melcrum empire, trade conference providers with annual internal comms conferences, ETC. In fact, the greatest trade story yet untold is the head-to-head Ragan and Melcrum slugfest. (Actually, it seems – though I’m not close to the real action – there is more than enough pie to go around and both are prospering.)

I posted the following (edited) in another discussion, and feel it furthers my whine-less thought process above:

____________________
“For a conference presentation two years ago (The Institute for PR’s annual Measurement Conference held in the fall in New Hampshire US), I conducted a content analysis of various internal comms vehicles (publications; conference programs; forums; webcasts; training offerings etc. from IABC; Ragan; CCM, Melcrum). I was looking at how internal/organizational communication professionals saw and enacted their their roles.

From what those involved with internal comms write about, from what they speak about at conferences, from what they discuss on-line, there appear to be four roles:

Communicator
(content; delivery; technology; audience; etc.)

Change Agent
(cuture; internal branding; engagement; change management
communication programs; etc.)

Head Trainer
(improving C-suite and middle manager communication capabilities)

Performance Consultant (operation performance improved through work level communication)

These are very rough percentages, but I’d say those in
internal/organization communication see Communicator as 75% of their role; Change Agent as 15%; Head Trainer as 7%; and Performance Consultant as 3%.

Very, very seldom could I find reference to these roles linked to the strategic management process of an organization. That is, the most common worldview seems to be: you get on with the thinking; we’ll get on with the doing. We’ll help you: disseminate information (mostly top down); try to persuade people to behave differently; become a better communicator yourself; and help those on the front line sort out all the conflicting messages they receive daily.

Therefore, having a “full business understanding” would be seen as being able to write a more “in context” message than to actually participate in the business thinking/management of the organization.

I’ve asked myself this question: Are these four the only roles – because that’s how management sees us – or because that’s how we see ourselves?”
_____________________________

Particularly with regard to strategy execution, this is a subfunction that requires considerable more attention. Bled will be looking at the old PR and Marketing canard next July, therefore the place and role of the Marketing PR/Communications subfunction. Well and good. I hope in the future that the academics will also examine PR and HR/Change Management and internal comms.

Benita, I’m looking forward to your next sabbatical and your next post to see how your views have moved – or not – from those on page 158 of The Future of Excellence in Public Relations and Communications Management.

As I said, it has been a great and continuing learning experience for me to have read and digested what you all have written over the years.

and I’ll have a glass of SA shiraz now …

Fraser

thank you fraser for ‘outing’.
I seem to agree with everything you write and much of it new to me… so, as for Benita, I will need some time to ruminate and eventually come back.
Only one point: you say quote
PR ’s role is not relationship building itself (except our stakeholder, the media, I guess) but relationship management’s horizontal management combined with a role in collective and business unit change management
unquote.
My Italian colleague prof. Emanuele Invernizzi (to be fair, he is a true full professor while I am only an adjunct, but we have been long time friends and the best part of our relationship is debating specifically on the reputation/relationship schools as we amicably divide on that although recognising that both are relevant..chicken and egg?), based on studies he has been conducting over the last twenty some years says that there are ‘core competencies’ and ‘extended competencies’.
Media relations is obviously amongts the first while, for example, employee or investor or marketing relations are amongst the latter.
But also public affairs, crisis management, organization of events, community relations, public diplomacy are amongst the first.
The fact that public relators are usually in charge of developing relationships directly with journalists, public policy decision makers, local communities and other stakeholder groups of an organization… is one of the (not the only, admittedly, but certainly the most evident) variables which stand behind the legitimacy and sense of organizational leadership assigning to the public relator the horizontal responsibility of ensuring a coherent and possibly comparable system of listening to expectations of all stakeholder groups (if pr does this for three/four constituencies, which is more than any other function -so goes the argument- they must have learned how to do this properly.. so let’s give them the task to extend their listening competencies also to other stakeholder groups which ‘belong’ to other functions like employees, suppliers, distributors, customers, investors and analysts…).
Of course the listening phase(segmented in recording, understanding and interpreting) needs to be performed by, or at the minimum in full accordance with, the related internal function.
And, as I see we all agree, this is where the two truly strategic functions of public relations in an organizations appear: reflective and educational (don’t really like this term…other options?).

About twenty years ago, I had written about the need for communicators to practice 1) change, 2) issue and 3) stakeholder management, as well as the ethical bases contained within what was called corporate social responsibility, now called corporate social responsiveness or rectitude or one of those variants. I always taught those approaches to my students in my Master of Public Affairs (MPA) or MBA courses/subjects, and continue to see them as being the foundations of proactive, well-rounded, and (dare I say it) strategic communication practice.

Thank you Fraser for recognizing the key difference between planning and strategy. Plans absolutely do not equal strategy. Planning does not equal strategy either. Strategy is supported by those things, but no less than also by experience, insight, knowledge, leadership, management, observation, and recognition, among other things.

One of the biggest problems I have always observed relative to PR/CC taking on more meaningful roles is that the top management teams of organizations seldom have an appreciation, experience with, or understanding of HOW PR/CC can be a critical element of the organization’s success. Read or listen to the many so-called “best practice” case studies or award-winning PR programmes that are touted at our conferences, meetings or in our publications and look at how the language, tone and character differs so greatly from the same items presented by our colleagues in other organizational areas. We are almost always “on the defensive,” trying to demonstrate (our practitioner and sometimes even our academic colleagues often say “prove,” but any knowing social scientist would view this skeptically) our worth retroactively. Ex post facto demonstrations of value are nearly always flawed from the start, and if others don’t inherently see our worth or value in organizational activities, than what does that say about our ability to get, or retain, a valued place at the key decision making tables of our organizations?

Then again, a place at the table over a nice wine has its pleasant ambiance, in any case…

Thank you for this. I will recommend this thread to all my Diploma students who struggle with the concept(s) of strategy.

Fraser’s point on PR’s role as “issue management arising from change management (leading)” is magnificent.

I am so tired of those in PR being reactive to issues rather than proactive – and not realising the need to lead rather than follow (often mopping up) behind organisational decisions.

I can’t wait for Benita’s further development – although her concept of debating this over South African wine is much more appealing…

I can see endless conversations on Saturdays, as one of the PRConversations sub-committees meet (on a different winefarm each week, of course–we don’t want to become stale). As we stare at the rugged mountains all around us, we can contemplate how/if the PR function can/should overcome the strategy barrier–aided by visions of Boer pioneers who crossed these mountains in their flimsy wagons (prodded by Zulu spears in their backs) until they arrived in the Promised Land (I am sure Craig will be present to celebrate this day of arrival with us, should it ever be reached).

The idea of flipcharts (rather than laptops) during these meetings is an excellent one (and don’t forget the candles). While we have good wine and food in the Cape, we don’t always have electricity. (This is due to a small oversight on the part of the new government when they took over. They went into execution right away, forgetting to plan for the expansion of our industries and the prosperity that followed in the New South Africa).

I’m sorry, old chap, but you are going to have to re-FRASE it many times before we see the light. You are also going to have to wait a little for a response so that I can request a sabbatical (in typical academic style) so as to have enough time to make a list of all my questions. That is, unless Toni advertises a position for a full-time blogger. Or maybe I should forget about strategic PR when I get fired (which is immiment) and rather start my own company, teaching a course titled: ‘How to write Books on Blogs’.

But watch this space–I will be back with the next chapter (eventually).

BS

There’s so much to comment on from the past half dozen of so posts by you Benita, Toni and Craig. I’ve taken the past two hours to try and compose my thoughts, based on the previous comments. Blogs have their advantages – but I’d rather have this exchange in front of a bunch of old fashioned flip charts, with excellent wine and beer to dribble down my chin and rich slurpy food to eat.

I too am interested in organizational strategic management and a public relations/communication function role there within. I have a couple of SCM articles and two International Public Relations Research conference presentations. The focus of my research has been to examine PR/C’s role not from a planning premise but from both a structural and a Head leader role enactment premise. For the former, see my presentation at the World Festival in Trieste in 2004 and an article in SCM in June 2005. For the latter, see a paper on the IPRRC web site under the 2004 proceedings. I am not an academic, though I have been an adjunct at both the under and grad levels, and thus what I write is geared to a practitioner audience (if there is one!).

My views come from both a reading of the scholars (Mintzberg; Grunig; Steyn; Fleisher; etc. – and not too many non-scholars can say they have read most everything Steyn and Fleisher have published!) and also from working in the trenches for the past 20 years, as a management consultant specializing in the PR/C function: many engagements regarding function vision; mission; organization; resourcing; capabilities and capacity; strategic management; roles and responsibilities; performance management and measurement; leadership.

First, let me say what is influencing me the most now:

- Harold Burson’s (see Burson-Marsteller site) stages of management’s recognition of PR:
1. tell us how to say it;
2. tell us what to say; and
3. tell us what to do.

- management scholars saying that only 10% of deliberate strategies get implemented as formulated, and the current importance placed on execution at the expense of development

- internal communication professionals difficulty with change management and engagement (see the Melcrum, Ragan, Council of Communication Management vehicles).

Summing up these points above, I believe that in 2007 strategy execution is more important than strategy development, that strategy execution is about behavioural change, and when asked (if asked) we can’t help them with the do. The most we can bring to the table is the ability to table some faint environmental signals, to communicate the strategy downwards, and (once you decided what needs to change) to develop a communication programme to communicate a particular change programme.

Allow me to comment on some of the points made in the past few posts:

Benita on the abuse of the term strategy:
Could not agree more. I now get physically ill when a client uses strategic and messaging in the same sentence.

Benita on the difference betweem communications strategy and PR/CC Strategy:
The first exists in my experience (it’s the two examples in my paragragh above: Summing up … The second does not exist, as described. I have seen many annual Strategic Communication Plans. Most are a combination of a Mission/Value Statement, menu of service offerings and an attempt at context (poor environmental scanning and analysis used to “position” the function with certain issues/stakeholders and thus with certain internal clients). There is nothing strategic about them, in that they are divorced from the corporate strategy process. Oh, they may tie messaging to corporate goals, but that’s it. My point really is that there is no need for them. The need to be integrated in the organizational strategic management process can be achieved organizationally.

Benita on deliberate and emergent PR strategy:
In both cases, the description reads “using communication.” I interpret this as PR providing a communication plan, programme and activities. Communication, therefore, in my mind, is a tactic – for someone else’s strategy. Thus PR strategy as described is tactical. I agree with what Toni has said, “the whole communication aspect becomes inevitably tactical …” Toni also said that our strategic role is assisting leadership with changing behaviours.

Benita on deliberate & emergent:
As you have later, I try to add formulated and formed or just use these terms alone. I think formulated and formed are better descriptors of a process than deliberate and emergent. Much of the discussion has been on PR role in organizational strategy formulation, not on strategy formation or on formulated and formed strategy execution. I don’t think your description of deliberate and emergent PR strategy really is a description of or substitute for PR’s role in organizational strategy formulation and formation. In both cases, I believe the onion has to be peeled further, particularly for PR’s role in stakeholder relationship management and change management – in particular where they interact. Surely, being strategic, means more than environmental scanning and communication programmes. Remember, strategy execution is not happening well. Is it because our communication programmes are poor? Or, is it because managers do not know how to make organizational or stakeholder change happen – and we aren’t capable of offering advice and direction and of running a change managment activity. Most change involves us changing, or at least us changing before we ask them to change.

Benita on stakeholders, environmental scanning and boundary scanning:
Most of the PR literature suggests that PR should scan, build the relationship with stakeholders and span the external boundary. I would argue that other functions are closer to particular stakeholders and it is our role to support their scanning and relationship building – with our most important role being boundary spanning internally (rolling up scans; rolling up stakeholder relationship intelligence; rolling up change management status; getting internal silos working together; etc.) Toni seems to support this in his b above: “… assist other functions govern their relationships …”

Our role should not be with issue management arising from stakeholder relations (lagging) but with issue management arising from change management (leading).

Toni on PR being strategic:
Toni said that “PR is strategic when it consciously helps improve the quality of organization decisions…” This is the same as Jim and Laurie Grunig’s Model of Strategic Management of PR (p. 145 Effective Public Relations and Excellent Organizations). I would suggest again that the onion needs further peeling. Decisions can or can not lead to action. It’s the action, behaviour change that should be the defining factor.

Benita on Anne Gregory:
Anne got it right I believe when she talks about listening as both internal and external and providing support on what they should DO.

Craig on “functions have boundaries”:
The analogy I’d use is that of a legendary many headed and brained hydra. If PR is organized as such then it can contribute to organizational strategic management. If not, it can’t. Structured this way, it can span internally and can SEE stakeholder and change management being operationalized. We are the only operational function that can see across an organization and down each silo. We can see the state of the execution of formulated strategy (corporate and business unit), the state of stakeholder relation management, the state of change management, the emerging of formed strategy, the new state of stakeholder relation management, the new state of change management. Kaplan and Norton of Balanced Scorecard fame are trying to do this with their Office of Strategic Management. I believe that this Office is at too high a level to really see into the trenches. PR is in the trenches, or should be.

This is where I’d compare your definitions of strategy, Craig, to Mintzberg’s five: strategy as a plan; as a pattern; as a position; as a persepctive; and as a ploy. Unfortunately, in my mind, PR focuses too much on strategy as a plan, or a planning process.

By the way, see Alan Kelly’s book The Elements of Influence for … strategy as a ploy.

It has been my experience that few heads of PR/C are natural leaders (they manage well: defined as maintaining the status quo) but have diffuculty leading (defined as making change happen). This is apparent in their own function (acquiring resources; building capacity and expertise; developing retention and learning programs; selling capabilities; etc.), so it would come as no surprise their inability at the organizational level. There are exceptions: Toni wrote of the great heads who built value in their roles with executives. Fraser Seital wrote for years in PRSA’s PR Strategist about head leadership skills with the C-suite.

Please appreciate that it is difficult to outline a position in a limited number of words, but here is a summary of the arguments I was trying to make.

- There is one strategy (enterprise, corporate and business unit are variations).

- There is no such thing as PR Function Strategy. If you want, the PR function can have resource strategy or plan, an organizational strategy or plan; a client strategy or plan, a workload stratergy or plan; etc. It can have a vision, mission or values statement. It can have a communication philosophy and/or policy.

- There are communication plans and programmes, tactics of change management programs.

- For PR to be involved in strategic management, there are organizational structures and head leader enactment necessary. PR ’s role is not relationship building itself (except our stakeholder, the media, I guess) but relationship management’s horizontal management combined with a role in collective and business unit change management.

If you understood the above, then there no need for me to RE-FRASE it!

Submitted with all due respect.

Fraser

“Deliberate” and “emergent” strategy has been a long-held distinction within the strategy field, going back to the late 50s and the LCAG (Harvard) group, but picked up most clearly by Mintzberg and his colleagues decades later. These were both so-called “process”-focused strategy school concepts (addressing the “how” and “when”), that really never addressed the content (the “what” and “why”) of strategy. Business professors and business schools, such as the ones I work in, are accused of cycling too much to one side or the other of the process/content continuum. For decades, we worried about strategy development and the process of strategy. After that, we concerned ourselves with the content of strategy. If we (those of us studying, teaching, practicing) do our jobs well, eventually the pendulum swings back to some mystical point whereby it is in the appropriate flow or zeitgeist of the times. You can see some of the same criticisms levied at swathes of Pr/CC research if you view it using longer-range lenses — in terms of decades or historiographically.

I have long wondered about whether any function could be strategic — what I mean is that all functions are what we describe as vertical — in other words, a function has boundaries. It is only in the crossing of those boundaries where strategy genuinely takes place. Functions are components, and we can’t do without them any more than a human body can do without its legs, arms, etc. Having said that, arms or legs are not “strategic,” and the body could perform its tasks without the functions that these limbs provide. It may do so with more difficulty, but it could perform nevertheless. Could the body perform without the brain? The nervous system? I doubt it. These systems are strategic. It is interesting to me that PR always strives to be strategic, but as a function, it is rarely (or more precisely, uncommonly) practiced in a systemic manner or becomes an essential element underlying strategic planning, strategy development, or strategic decision-making.

Most definitions of strategic have always had several common elements, those being associated with: 1) cross-functional processes that percuss throughout most of the rest of the organization, 2) longer-term temporality, 3) competitive enterprise positioning (vis-a-vis industry competitors, stakeholders, audiences, issues, etc.), 4) greater allocations of critical resources (e.g., human, financial, PP&E, reputation, etc.), and 5) some degree of irreversibility in decisions/actions.

I’m not against, nor have I ever been against, PR/Corp Comms. functions, units, decision-makers, consultants, practitioners (etc.) acting in a more strategic manner. Indeed, I am a long-standing advocate for these folks pursuing that modus operandi. Whether PR could or should (two very different questions which are arguably addressed by very different answers) be a strategic function is a whole different animal.

Last but not least, I have seen many more fantastic, real-world examples of non-strategic PR (i.e., tactical or operational actions or decisions)whereby its worth and value to achieving organizational objectives was unquestioned, easy to distinguish, measurable, and appreciated by key stakeholders. Sometimes, in our quest to be “strategic,” we overlook the clear value (in its myriad of forms) that effective PR/CC operations and tactics can deliver. This was a lesson that took many years to finally get drilled into my thinking, but I’m glad it did.

I began my career in finance, then moved to HR, and then marketing, all before I eventually went back to academe and decided to become an academic in the field of strategic management. All of these functions have held similar discussion and self-reflection about being strategic just like PR/CC may be undertaking at present. Will we in the PR/CC field ever get to the point where we can eliminate the need to navel gaze about whether we are or should be strategic or not? Can you imagine a day where it is just known to be “strategic,” without need for the modifiers or the hyphenation?