At long last I'm a properly published author. One day my grandchildren will talk in awe about my epic contribution to the landmark 4th edition of the The Publc Relations Handbook.
It's available on Amazon in case you're interested....
I mention this because I have been listening to some interesting debates recently about PR and what it involves.
Once upon a time I was firmly of the belief that Internal Communications was an important sub-discipline of PR. As a argument this works if you believe that PR is about more than media relations and that 'spin' is a dirty word (neither of which can be taken for granted).
Although I snigger at the academics who, Canute-like, do violence to our language by insisting that PR students talk about 'Public' rather than audiences, I believe that they are right in the underlying point that they make.
A strong reputation depends on a level of mutual understanding and awareness. This is a truth that has always been impossible to ignore in IC (which is why so many of us prance around pretending to have some sort of special insight and magical powers). This principle of mutual appreciation is ever more important in the digital world.
And once you embrace the idea that you have to have a rich appreciation of the views of stakeholders, it is only a short step to realising that they don't live in insulated compartments. They all talk to each other and influence each other - independently of attempts to control them.
Communicators probably think this is self-evident.
The news is that many of our clients (interbla and external) are coming around to that that way of thinking.
It's the central theme in a book about to be published written my my colleague Kevin Murray. He interviewed over 60 CEO's from all types of organisation for his book The Language of Leaders and highlighted that bosses don't see clear boundaries between the conversations they have with one group of people and another in the way that communications professionals tend to do.
So, for what its worth...shouldn't we stop living in fragments?
Liam
