Stop giving away our power

We have seen a recent trend across government communication functions, and honestly, it gives me rage.

Somewhere along the way, amid shrinking budgets, reduced capability and growing workloads, communications became the team that hands out communication strategy templates.

The most strategic part of our role, the part where we demonstrate our problem solving, research and creative skills, is the very thing we are templating.

I understand that communications teams are stretched thin. That resources are finite, and priorities keep growing. I know the to-do lists are long.

But for the love of all things communications, stop asking other teams to write a communication strategy for you.

Subject matter experts should absolutely help shape strategy through insight, context and operational knowledge. But asking them to develop the communications strategy itself is like asking finance teams to draft legal advice. When we ask other teams to write a communication strategy, we are not empowering them – we are disempowering ourselves. We are outsourcing our expertise and telling the organisation, “This is not a specialist discipline.”  

For us, the risk is that once strategic thinking leaves the communications function, it is very hard to get it back.

For the organisation, when every business area develops its own approach to communications, it risks fragmented messaging, duplicated channels and competing priorities. Consistency and coordination between organisational silos is one of the key functions that communications teams provide.

Five reasons this is a terrible idea

1. You undervalue our profession
   When you enable (or outright ask) another team to write a communication strategy, you send a clear signal that strategic communications is not a specialist discipline. It reinforces the misconception that our role is executional rather than strategic, and diminishes the expertise required to shape meaningful outcomes. It undermines your experience, knowledge and skills. You play directly into the preconception that anyone can do our job.
2. You weaken your strategic influence
   Strategy is what earns communications a ‘seat at the table’. When the thinking happens elsewhere and you are brought in at the end to “review” or “implement”, your team is positioned as a service function rather than a strategic partner. You need to be able to present your idea, influence messaging and delivery and protect the organisation’s reputation.
3. You compromise the quality of outcomes and relationships
   An effective communication strategy is grounded in audience insight, research, risk awareness and clear, measurable objectives that can be evaluated. Without this depth, plans often default to a tick box – channel list, timelines and messages, resulting in activity but not impact.
   
   It can also impact relationships, as you have to tell business areas that their “great idea” to set up a new Instagram account/logo/Teams channel isn’t going to happen, yet you gave them permission to get creative.
4. You create inefficiency and rework
   Plans developed without communications expertise frequently require significant revision once they get to the communications team. What appears to be a time-saving measure often leads to duplication of effort, frustration and delayed delivery.
5. You condition the organisation to bypass communications
   Each time you allow strategic thinking to sit outside your function, you normalise the idea that the communications function is optional. Over time, this erodes trust in your role as a strategic adviser and makes it harder to demonstrate your value. When you can’t demonstrate the value your team contributes to an organisation (because everyone can do it), you have less chance of keeping or increasing resources or budget.

The answer to pressure to deliver more is not to give away the most valuable part of what we do. In fact, you are doing yourself and every other communications professional that comes in after you a disservice.

Instead, focus on where you can influence what your team should be working on:

• Collect data about output and impact. Show the organisation how much time you put into developing a strategy, as well as its impact. Stop reporting on activity and start demonstrating outcomes.
• Do an audit of the low-value work. Where there are tasks you can automate (hello AI), delegate (outsource to junior staff or business areas) or stop (where it’s not value adding).
• Develop an executive-approved decision matrix to understand how you will triage incoming work for the team.
• Let go of some of the battles you have every day to create more space for genuine advisory work.

So, if you want your team to be known as the publishing house, the place where things go to be made pretty, or the gatekeeper of the intranet, keep asking other teams to write their own communication strategies.

Otherwise, consider this your sign to stop templating your expertise.