As a Pawn As Communications

?Mazuba Mwiinga

“Are #Communications and #Public Relations spaces, #pawns in an #organisation?” That was a question, a career seeking friend asked me recently, for guidance, as though I am an authority on the matter.

First things first. PAWN: “a person or organization that does not have any real power but is used by others to achieve something.” Sounds crude. Probably quintessential, I guess. Nevertheless, a very interesting inquiry. ?

What tickles my skin though is the irony between the usage of the word pawn, from a linguistic perspective, and the real usage of a pawn on a chess board. The excess I know of a pawn on the chess board is that; unlike its negative denotation of having ‘no real power,’ from the linguist’s point of view, I am made to suggest that it is in fact the most crucial piece in the game of chess from the existential outlook.

A pawn, so it is said by chess masters, controls the centre of the chess board to help control key central squares. Its movements, restrict an opponent's pieces, by limiting the movement of his pieces. The pawn further creates pathways for one’s own pieces. If properly structured, so they teach us, the pawn allows one’s other pieces to operate effectively. This sounds like a whole new understanding of a pawn.

All things being equal, one would therefore intimate that, if a pawn equals to communications and public relations, in as far as language use of the word is concerned, then there must be ironical hyperbole that leaves wide craters of investigation to be done. This is so, if one turns their head to the position of a King on the chess board.

We all revere the word, #King. Right? It is a symbol of grandeur and unbreakable authority, though we all know that Kings too die just like common men. Well, in the game of chess, the King is the most vulnerable piece on the chess board. I know this is too unbelievable to even think of it, I guess. But it’s how it is. An attack against one’s King, the chess masters opine, could force you to give up all your plans and allocate all your resources to defend your King.

While this may be true, the king is also often considered the most resilient piece. While it moves only one square at a time, its importance and ability to evade capture make it uniquely resilient. That’s the reason, the game of chess revolves around protecting the king, making his survival crucial to the game’s outcome.

Is this where the connotation of the pawn’s ‘powerlessness’ comes in? To protect the King, come what may? And end up being sacrificed for the King’s survival?

That’s, the game of chess. But what if we replace the pawns with communications and public relations. And we substitute the King with an Organisation or say, management? Would this still be an enabler for writing home about? Probably no.

However, if we have to look back without anger, we will realise that the public relations function, which was tactical in most companies, largely consisted of communication with the press. When other #stakeholders, #internal and #external to the company, started to demand more information from the company, practitioners subsequently started to look at communication as being more than just public relations. A gap that needed filling up was wide.

This new realisation needed to quench a whole range of specialized disciplines, including corporate design, corporate advertising, internal communication to employees, issues and crisis management, media relations, investor relations, change communication and public affairs. You mention it.

An important characteristic of the new desire was that it focused on the organization as a whole and on the important task of how an organization presented itself to all its key stakeholders, both internal and external.

Instead of looking at #specialized fields or stakeholder groups separately, this #desire started from the #perspective of the ‘bodily’ organization as a whole when #communicating with internal and external stakeholders. Like a human body, it realised that every part of the body played a critical role in defending the King from #vulnerability. #Systems #thinking was inherently in place.

At the core of this realisation, was a communications controller and protector. A pawn that needed to know the workings of all the parts of the body, for it to be able to strategically show the desired outcomes of the King to the world.

The question then would be - has recent perspective corrected #ancient perception? Where the pawn should be part of the agenda setting of the chess board? so as to effectively control the centre of the chess board and help control key central #squares? Where its movements strategically limit the movement of the opponent's pieces because it knows exactly what the King needs to be achieved? In effect creating #pathways for the other pieces to strike home #winnings.

If the pawn would thus be properly structured, and be part of the agenda setting, it would then surely be efficient in allowing other pieces to operate effectively, and in the long run, make the King, a never checkmated piece ever on the squares.

Communications and Public Relations are therefore pawns in the right sense and usage of the word of the game of #chess. For they too, operate like a game of chess. They are strategic professions and those who practice them, are to be part of the organization’s #jigsaw puzzle solvers, if their #usefulness will have to turn #entities into desired #trajectories.

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