Blame it on the PR
The latest issue of PR week states that Haringey Council’s PR team knew about Baby P months ago. Apparently, they should have better prepared the council’s response and the comms chief shouldn’t have distracted himself with organising a CIPR conference.
Now, not being an insider I can only speculate on how prepared the team were and how much attention was paid to them. But I had to agree with one comment in the article relating to comms officers being excluded from the ‘top table’ being part of the problem.
Whether its true in this case or not, all too often public sector communicators are kept at arms-length by their Board or executive team. They are not always asked to offer advice and requests for further resource are usually denied. It is only at a time of crisis do public sector organisations realise the worth of good communications and decide after the event to invest – when it’s too late!
I know many colleagues working in very small teams or single-handedly, who have been bitten in this way. Some in fact, hope there is a crisis so that they can be taken more seriously. This probably has something to do with the reputation of PR, particularly in a sector involving the public purse.
On a similar theme, at our latest MSc module this week we discussed the power of the consultant – often being brought in by public sector chiefs to lead on comms projects. How often does the Board pay attention to them, because they pay out lots of money, when in fact they are only saying what the in-house comms team had been highlighting all along!
Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Tags: communications resource, consultants, Haringey Council, reputation
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Authors
onewomanandherblog
The consultant point is well made.
I’ve been consulting (mainly on IC) for years and I’m always depressed by the look on the client’s face when I recommend something they’ve been championing for years – but I get listened to.
I do wonder if it’s the money thing, but I don’t think it is. I suspect it’s simple habituation – a fresh voice actually penetrates a bit further (and doesn’t come with baggage).
One thing I believeis that in-house people tend to have better political skills than life-long consultants. When we go in most people are motivated to ensure that we’re sucessful – meetings don’t get cancelled, people share information etc. By contrast, the in-house specialist has to slog away to get things done. Consultants tend to be good sprinters – in-house people are better marathon runners!
Liam