Nigeria Content Online

Forget the glamour.
It is a hard knock life for the corporate communications department.
Crisis communications, reputation management, 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 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 and where does the blame lie?

The past 20 months
should have been a glorious era 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. 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.

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 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. 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 the corporate communications department must learn to speak
that language. Until then, its place at the head table remains
‘Reserved’.