What you want to say about your business?

Lisa-Ann Joseph, managing director, Reputation Management Caribbean

“Aye Myrtle, can you get the new PR officer to write a release on the product we going with for the season coming, and let him send it out directly to the media. I expect we shall get some good reaction so the launch of this product will be successful,” said the CEO to his personal assistant.

“I shall do it immediately Mr Smith; but are you sure you don’t want to have the release checked before it goes out?”

“No, that young fella is bright; and that is why I hired him. It’s an important release but it’s not a complicated matter so let him go ahead and we will see if he was worth our hiring with all his academic papers he showed us at the interview,” replied the CEO.

As could have been expected Mr Smith’s message was given to the new PR officer by his assistant. In keeping with the instructions given, the release was written, sent and carried by the major media outlets.

The only problem was that the young officer had got the information on the product all wrong and so too the intention of the company to market and sell the product in a specified time frame; which incidentally was not given to the new recruit.

At his desk the following morning the CEO was screaming for his assistant “to get his executive team together for a meeting and get that foolish PR officer up here one time.”

At the assembled meeting, the CEO was beside himself assigning blame everywhere and damning the young officer recently hired. He ultimately gave instructions to the human resources manager to immediately send the young recruit home without hesitation. His executive team also got a blasting from their boss; lord knows for what as the team had nothing to do with the preparation and sending of the message without proper vetting.

Undoubtedly the young officer was bright; his qualifications, if not experience, indicated that. That fact, though, was buried in the faulty process for issuing the release. The reality is that no process existed and the young officer was left alone to do what was required without specific instructions.

But even before the release could have flowed through a supervised process, the company did not have an institutional framework through which the information on the matter could have been generated, developed, checked and verified before it reached the stage of being made available to the media.

As unsophisticated as Mr Smith was in issuing the instructions for the release to be written and released, the problem was even bigger than easily seen on the surface.

The problem emerged from the failure of the organisation to understand, as unbelievable as it sounds, the importance of information and communication which emanates from the company to different audiences.

Successful organisational communication, whatever the size, success and sophistication of the company, is built on an advanced structure of communication. The structure must support and advance internal as well as external messaging with the company’s critical audiences.

But putting such a framework in place is only the start of what is required. Information, even the seemingly innocuous form of messaging, is always open to misinterpretation, whether intentional or not. On occasion, meaning hangs on a word, a phrase; a single word can make a vital and very costly misinterpretation of the communications. Therefore, the system must be established to function as required of the company’s business communications.

As experienced in the above fictional example of an unprofessional approach to communication with the media and public, company messaging cannot be left up to one individual, whatever his experience and understanding of what the company wants to send to its audiences.

It is necessary to have company decision-making at the highest levels, fortified by executive overview and a structured process of checking and double checking the information before its ready to be released through a very structured process.

By doing this the framework not only allows for top down communication, but down-up and side-to-side open dialogue, giving it a 360-degree approach. How does a company achieve such an objective? By establishing a robust communication framework to ensure that all touchpoints are examined. Doing so will allow for the various senders and receivers of messages down the chain of command to understand their roles and responsibilities in the communication process.

The above are not mistakes made by highly organised and structured companies whether they be large, medium-sized and even small efficient companies.

Such companies usually have in place sophisticated communication systems. Because such companies operate on the principle that communications only seem simple. In reality there is science and good organisational structure to successfully and efficiently communicate with the publics, internal and external.

One piece of advice is, if companies do not have the internal structure and or do not want to go through the requirement and expense of putting the appropriate systems in place, then outsourcing the public relations expertise is a viable option.

Reputation Management Caribbean is a public relations and crisis communications agency. Recently, Joseph launched a training division, Institute for Reputation Management. Any questions and comments, connect with her at lisaann@rmcaribbean.net