When I walk into a room to lead a workshop for a communications team, the feeling I pick up is usually nervous energy, with a twinge of frustration.
The vibe is: we’re up to our eyeballs in work, we have fires to put out, so why are we here? And, perhaps more subtly: What if this facilitator uncovers the real reasons things are chronically off-kilter?
The good news is that the energy in the room usually shifts quickly, once people feel a real sense of connection, of being seen, of sharing a few laughs and forging a path toward realistic improvement.
The feeling of anxiety and frustration I see across most communications teams comes from a very legitimate source: the team is not set up to succeed. Let’s face it, many communications teams were built for a world that doesn’t exist anymore (this is especially true in the public sector). The concerns that surface as top of mind, namely the lack of resources, unclear direction and lack of access to leaders can be traced to a fundamental mismatch between what’s expected of the function and how it’s set up. This produces a familiar frustration trap that I’ve seen hundreds of times: the communicators are unhappy, their clients are dissatisfied and their audiences are underserved.
Here are the top signs that your communications team is in trouble:
- Absence of a North Star: The vast majority of communications teams I’ve worked with over the last twenty-five years have no clear, shared understanding of their North Star. There’s no definition of what success looks like, and usually no communications strategy at all. When a strategy does exist, it was often built as a box-checking exercise that does nothing to guide decisions, messaging, execution or evaluation. Sometimes, it was a generic, boilerplate strategy created by external consultants that never gained traction internally. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve asked a team: “Do you have a communications strategy?” and gotten a different answer from people on the same team, I’d be a wealthy woman. Some say yes. Most say no. Many say “sort of”. This should worry you. It’s like walking onto a construction site, asking to see the architectural plans, and watching the crew shrug.
- Weak governance: The scope of authority and responsibility for communications tends to be very fuzzy, and that’s dangerous. By its nature the function bumps up against several related functions like marketing, HR and operations. As a result, when things go well it’s someone else’s win, and when they go poorly, it must be a communications problem. In the absence of governance, communications teams are often crushed by outrageous approval processes that are exactly in tension with what leaders say they want (“be nimble and agile … and here are 27 sign-offs required for every social post”). The sense of being dispirited, disempowered and deflated is palpable. Teams also tend to reinvent the wheel, operating with no standard processes, templates or systems. I’m still stunned to see large teams running with no project management or tracking system at all. In that environment, talent and time get burned on the mechanics, leaving only shreds of “time confetti” for the real creative and impactful work of our profession. (Now here’s a compelling use case for AI – to help automate the operationally intensive work of communications, rather than supplanting our quintessentially human craft).
- Gaps in capabilities: There’s often a massive gap in the level of expertise and experience between the head of communications and the next level down. This leaves leaders overwhelmed and doing too much themselves, while the rest of the team nurses a low-grade fever of resentment about micromanagement and views the boss as a bottleneck. Because communicators move around so much, they’re also frequently assigned to roles they haven’t been trained for, especially in strategic planning, issue management, storytelling and evaluation. Here’s what I find fascinating: across thousands of hours coaching individual communicators and teams, the number one issue they want to work on is a lack of confidence. It’s pervasive, and I’m convinced the causes are systemic.
- Tactical tunnel vision: I often work with superstars creating genuinely excellent products and campaigns. The problem is that this brilliant work is rarely integrated with the other brilliant work coming out of the same team. The result is chronic dissatisfaction with the impact and outcomes of communications because increasingly teams are working in a siloed, tactical and reactive way. What they hunger for is the delicious satisfaction that only comes from what I call a “symphonic” approach: the magic of all the instruments coming together in harmony.
- Dependence on consultants: Too many teams outsource strategic thinking and issue management counsel because they lack critical mass in-house. To be frank, I’ve often been that consultant, the one who swoops in and quietly irritates the team by taking over high-level work they rightly know should be theirs. (That’s exactly why I stopped consulting, and instead work to build sustainable capability through workshops backed by the Results Map® System).
The good news is that these patterns are as solvable as they are common. My best advice lives in this Communications Director’s Handbook, a field guide I offer at no charge as part of my mission to ensure that communicators are set up to succeed.
In solidarity,
To find out how your communications team stacks up, take this five-minute Communications Function Assessment Quiz. It’s free, and no email sign-up is required.
If you’re a leader looking to develop the strategic capability and influence of high-potential team members, check out the Leadership Development Program for Communicators. This is the only open enrollment program I teach. Offered entirely online through the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute, it leads to a Certificate in Communications Leadership.
