Skill and luck in Public Affairs - pt II

Hard to prove results = creeping determinism = lack of legitimacy = spiral of death... Public Affairs is a tough industry to work in

When an activity is largely skill-based you can quite easily get feedback on your performance e.g. in music or in certain types of sports. But when you get in to fields that are characterized more by randomness or luck, then it is more difficult.

Public Affairs Professionals (PAPs) find themselves in a field where it is very difficult to dissect what precisely lead to a certain outcome. This topic is both interesting on a more philosophical level but more importantly relevant as this is probably the #1 challenge in PA currently, as it directly influences the legitimacy - both for the individual PAP in their daily lives inside organizations as for our discipline in general.

If you cannot show the value of what you do all day, then why should PA even be on the org.chart?

Legitimacy is the #1 currency for PAPs

I’ve been pondering a bit about why PAPs often seem to lack legitimacy in organizations. Lack of legitimacy for a PA function is poison, so this is why its quite important for us to get a better understanding of what causes this.

After talking to just short of 100 PAPs from across Europe in October/November last year about the problem, I think I have a slightly better understanding of why it occurs and what to do about (or at least what not to do).

And the short answer is to optimize for process, not outcomes. Because a single outcome can be caused by luck, good or bad.

Let me first provide an example to illustrate.

Case: A typical crisis in PA leading to

A company in the financial industry experienced a heated public debate sparked by a consumer movement about possible new legislation, which could actually lead to an improved position in the market for the company. During the process the company internally had a lot of discussions about different scenarios and outcomes, lead by the head of Public Affairs. They had experienced similar situations before, so this influenced the recommendations from the PA head. After a couple of months with this debate in media and among politicians, the responsible minister proposed new legislation that would actually lead to worse conditions for the company in the market.

So internally afterwards, there is a small evaluation of why this outcome occurred. The head of Public Affairs outlines what the outcome entails and concludes it basically couldn’t have happened in any other way due to the circumstances.

Nothing to see here, right?

The outcome was inevitable…

This case is a good example of the term “creeping determinism”, a form of hindsight bias, in which the perception of an event is seen as fairly determined or maybe even inevitable (I believe the term was coined by Nestler & Blank, but not sure). So now, in the case from above - which is a real example by the way - the CEO is left with the impression that they did all that was in their power to avoid this legislation, but in the end the outcome was inevitable.

But that was not the feeling he got, when the head of Public Affairs lead the discussions and actions along the way. But they are now only evaluating the outcome.

This phenomenon is of course not unique to Public Affairs, but e.g. happens quite often in all types of organizations (probably even in your own household). It occurs especially when individuals think they have experienced something before in their work/life, and therefore concludes it is going to happen again. This all sounds logically, but what happens if the outcome they expect don’t happen? “I said it was going to happen” someone might say afterwards, even though no one during the conversation was sure of anything.

Suddenly a bias of retrospective thought appears - especially when the outcome is negative, and responsibility has to be placed.

Are you optimizing for skill or luck?

So, to segway back to Public Affairs, if you optimize for outcomes you are not learning anything. And that is what most PAPs do. And then you end up in what I sometime describe as “The spiral of death in PA”.

Instead of assessing whether you had systematic, solid PA process and structures in place, most are only assessing if the outcome was good or bad. And try and think this through. If you are optimizing for outcomes only, you will end up in the spiral above at some point. I see it over, and over again.

So to conclude, the reaction should be to focus as much as possible on the process - that is the only way to logically handle the element of luck in Public Affairs.