Back to School

Next week I'll walk into a classroom at NYU to start my 11th year as a faculty member of the School of Professional Studies Master’s in Public Relations and Corporate Communication program. Every semester is like coming home again.

Nearly 35 years ago, I graduated from NYU with an undergraduate degree in political science and communications. “Phew, I’m done with school!” I thought to myself with a sense of excitement and maybe a little bit of exhaustion, too. Boy was I wrong. Staying relevant in public relations requires constant learning – not just for the skills you need to do your job, but also the insights that will help you truly understand the business of your clients. And those are the insights that will allow you to speak to a CFO or CEO just as readily as you would a chief marketing or communications officer.

When I donned my cap and gown all those years ago, I had no idea I might need to know how to read a financial statement or how to frame strategies to deal with NGOs or shareholder activists or give on the spot communications counsel when a regulatory agency had questions about a client’s business operations. Those are just three of the many challenges I’ve faced in my career where I had to quickly learn on the job.

Earning your “seat at the table.”

For virtually every profession, a commitment to ongoing learning is a requirement. To maintain their license to operate, every year lawyers, accountants, financial advisors and more need to prove that they’re continuing to sharpen their skills as they seek to master the latest developments in their industry. Professional associations track their progress, and a failure to learn is not an option.

Unfortunately, that’s not true in public relations. Yes, the Public Relations Society of America – through its APR accreditation program – requires submitted proof of ongoing learning , but practitioners who can place the letters APR after their name (much like an accountant would write CPA) are relatively few and far between. I received my accreditation in 1998 and more people have asked why I did that than have congratulated me.

This may explain why an ongoing lament in the profession has been, “we don’t have a seat at the table.” It’s rare that public relations reports to the C-Suite. And the reason may be that the typical practitioner has never been taught how to speak “the language of business.” When that happens, it’s easy to be seen as an order taker, vendor or worse “overhead.”

Time to go back to school.

Over 60 years ago the “father of public relations,” Ed Bernays, outlined what he thought were the ideal characteristics of the public relations professional. Among those skills was possessing an intellectual curiosity. Bernays, who was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, viewed the practice of public relations as a social science that required a learned skill and an intricate understanding of human behavior. He was also a faculty member at NYU and taught the very first class in public relations at the university’s business school back in 1923.

Bernays spent much of his life fighting to make public relations a licensed profession, where only the best and brightest were able to counsel clients. He never succeeded. But if we don’t have licensing, we must have ongoing learning, just like virtually every other profession. If we don't the profession could become irrelevant.

School is in session. Let the learning (and the ensuing relevance) commence.

Reacting is Much Easier than Reflecting

It seems like every other day another company is walking away from their DEI&B programs.

In the beginning most were quietly responding to legal risks stemming from the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action programs. ?Nobody wants to get sued. But they were also responding from a place of fear. Fear stemming from threats from conservative activists calling for boycotts and more. History tells us that when we give in to fear good rarely prevails.

Enter Robby Starbuck .

Mr. Starbuck is a former music video director turned “political commentator” (thank you social media for destroying truth and rational political discourse). He has been the leading voice that targeted Tractor Supply , John Deere and several others for their diversity policies. As a result, these companies are shutting down their programs in shocking ways, including no longer submitting data on employee diversity to the Human Rights Campaign .

The importance of diversity in business has been talked about for decades. Former Unilever chair Paul Polman made it a focal point for decades, and a big study by McKinsey in 2015 got everyone’s attention when the firm found a correlation between profits and diversity in executive leadership. But in the last few weeks even that study is under attack .

The decisions by these companies are getting a lot of media coverage. Any student of journalism knows that when a dog bites a man it's not news. News is when a man bites a dog. And, metaphorically, that's what these companies are doing by walking away from their commitments. It will take a while to quantify the damage to each company's reputation – and to be sure there will be some who applaud their decisions, but reactionary policy shifts, especially in response to threats from a music video director (regardless of his social following), are like giving your lunch money to the school bully. Intimidation doesn’t stop until you kick the bully in the balls and put your lunch money back in your pocket.

When your values are under attack it's time to reflect on how you are engaging with stakeholders - ensuring that those values are a true reflection of who you are and what stakeholders expect from you.

There are a lot of acronyms out there - from DEI to ESG and everything in between. At times it can seem like alphabet soup. Like noise. Like a distraction.

But at the end of the day reputations are measured by this simple question: Did you do the right thing? The answer to that question is at the heart of stakeholder primacy. And it's not easily defined by any one acronym. It's about being relevant.

Pseudo-activists like Mr. Starbuck will have a hard time putting pressure on a company because it did the right thing, but rest assured they will try. So for now, focus on what matters to your people, to your customers, to your communities and - yes - to your investors. Focus on what's truly relevant to them. And don't be surprised if what they care about is not at all what the people calling for boycotts are screaming about.

Stay relevant everyone.

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