‘I’m a strategist.’ But are you?

Johna Burke is CEO and global managing director at AMEC Measurement and Evaluation. 
I have started asking a question when communication professionals tell me they are strategists: Where are research, measurement and evaluation in your strategy?

Too often, the answer is, “We don’t have the budget.” I understand the constraint. I don’t accept the conclusion.

You can be an exceptional consultant with decades of experience, terrific instincts and deep knowledge of an organization or industry. All of that has value. But strategy asks something more. It requires evidence to understand where we are, deliberate choices about where we want to go and measurement and evaluation to understand what happened, why and what we should do next.

The word “strategist” creates an expectation. When a CEO or client invests in one, whether internal or external, there is a reasonable assumption that person can ask better questions, interrogate evidence, challenge assumptions and turn information into insights that improve decisions and drive outcomes.

Objectivity is part of that value. Teams can become so immersed in the work that assumptions begin to feel like facts. A strategist should challenge what others may not, including their own assumptions, and say when the evidence doesn’t support the preferred narrative.

Imagine reaching the end of a major launch with no objective way to determine whether the strategy worked. The campaign may have driven clicks and views. The creative may have won awards. But what changed in the organization because of it? Did it influence behavior, strengthen reputation, build trust, generate demand, reduce risk or advance an organizational objective? Without a baseline, an agreed definition of success and a connection to intended outcomes, those are difficult questions to answer.

Budget is a constraint, not a free pass. Not every organization can commission original research or invest in sophisticated intelligence platforms. Methodology will naturally scale with available resources. The obligation to seek evidence should not.

Most organizations already have useful evidence: website behavior, search patterns, customer inquiries, sales data, employee feedback, previous campaign performance and existing audience research. Research can also mean talking to customers, asking sales what objections they hear or asking leadership what would need to change for communication to be considered successful.

“No budget” should change how you answer the question. It shouldn’t eliminate the question.

There is also a difference between having data, having the right data and knowing what to do with it. Two professionals can look at the same dashboard and extract completely different value. One reports that coverage increased 22%, website traffic rose 14% and engagement increased 31%. A strategist asks: Why? Compared with what? Among which audiences? What else happened at the same time? What role did communication play compared with what might have happened without it? What does the evidence tell us to do next?

Strategy will always involve hypotheses and informed bets, but measurement and evaluation help determine whether we were right, wrong or simply lucky. Ask yourself: What evidence would convince us that our strategy didn’t work?

Measurement and evaluation shouldn’t exist to prove we were right. They should challenge our assumptions and make the next decision better.

So how do we strengthen the practice? Start with three things:

1. Start with the question, audience and baseline. Define the problem, understand whose behavior or perception needs to change, separate what you know from what you assume and establish where you are starting.
2. Interrogate the data. Don’t just report what moved. Ask why, what the data measures, what is missing and what else could explain the result. Look for evidence that challenges, not just confirms, your thinking.
3. Define success, then close the loop. Determine before launch what needs to change, for whom and why it matters. Then use measurement and evaluation to decide what happens next. The value isn’t the report. It’s what you do because of what you learned.

There is plenty of room in communication for experience, instinct, creativity and judgment. Great strategists bring all of them. But experience is not a substitute for evidence, a dashboard is not insight and advice doesn’t automatically become strategy because we put “strategic” in front of it.

At the recent Ragan Virtual Measurement Event, Catherine Blades emphasized the importance of communicators speaking the language of business. That means understanding what words already mean to the people running the business, not changing their meaning to accommodate our own practice.

Strategy is one of those words. It has meaning across professions, industries, cultures and borders. Communication should not dilute that meaning simply because the title has become comfortable to use.

When you say, “I’m a strategist,” mean it. Understand what strategy means to the business and make sure our practice of communication strategy aligns with that expectation. It means something to the clients, CEOs, colleagues and teams who look to us for strategic thinking, evidence, insight and accountability.

We should not ask the business to lower its expectations of strategy to accommodate communication. We should elevate our profession to meet the business standard expected of us, whether we currently recognize that expectation or not.