Are you on the same page as your PR team? Or more to the point… are they on the same page as you? Are you sure?

The new year is the perfect time to check in before new year targets kick in.

So how should you have a critical conversation with your in-house team or PR agency?

It could take many forms: a planning workshop, year-in-review session or a relationship health check.

The important thing is that you walk away with more than just another coffee under your belt. Your new year health check is critical to achieve alignment on the return you want from your PR investment.

It can help to frame these conversations by checking you’re on the same page across three key levels:

• sector
• organisation
• individual

Let’s unpack this further. Think of this framework as a variation of a SWOT analysis. Your PR team should understand your sector (opportunities and threats) and your organisation’s capacity to respond (strengths and weaknesses).

At the individual level, you want to develop a healthy relationship between your PR team and executive, where trust and transparency underpin a shared understanding of performance.

Now you’re ready to have a frank and fearless conversation. Here are three critical questions you should ask your PR team at the start of this financial year.

Sector level alignment: What are the key challenges and opportunities for our sector this financial year where PR can help us respond?

• What you can bring to this conversation:
  • Environmental scans from your corporate strategy team
  • Competitor analyses from your marketing team
  • Industry research you’ve commissioned
• What your PR team can bring to this conversation:
  • Industry or government white papers or policy statements
  • Insights from peak bodies
  • Stakeholder and media analyses

Organisational alignment: How does our PR strategy align with our business objectives this year and do we have the organisational support and capacity we need to execute it?

• What you can bring to this conversation:
  • Your corporate strategy and new financial year business plan
  • Key internal stakeholder maps
  • Known barriers or skills gap, e.g. your CEO is not great with media
• What your PR team can bring to this conversation:
  • Their PR strategy
  • Resource requirements
  • Critical dependences e.g. a savvy media spokesperson

Individual alignment: How well are we working together to set our PR strategy, execute it and learn from our progress?

• What you can bring to this conversation
  • Constructive feedback on what has worked well, or not, to date
  • Honest self-reflection
  • Business performance reports
• What your PR team can bring to this conversation
  • Constructive feedback and honest self-reflection – as above!
  • PR performance reports and key lessons learned
  • Continuous improvement recommendations for the year ahead

To get the best value from these questions, don’t approach the exercise as a pop quiz. It’s not about testing if your PR team gets a pass or a fail. It’s about building a joint understanding of the strategic context in which your organisation operates so your PR team is equipped to identify high value opportunities to contribute directly to your new year goals.

And one last tip: while coffee shouldn’t be the only outcome, PR teams generally love a coffee (who doesn’t?) so feel free to include caffeine in the conversation.

Ready to ask some critical questions about your own PR? Contact us today for a chat or a coffee.