What Happened
A growing chorus of business analysts is making the case that communications should be treated as a core C-Suite function, not a support role tucked beneath marketing or human resources. The argument is simple: companies that elevate communications leadership make better decisions, move faster in a crisis, and build more durable reputations. The organizations still treating comms as a press release factory are falling behind.
The Communication Angle
Let's start with what this debate is really about. It is not about job titles. It is about where decisions get made and who is in the room when they get made. For decades, communications professionals have been handed a finished decision and told to "message it." That is not communications. That is gift wrapping. And the audience always notices when the box inside is empty.
The companies that get this right do one thing differently: they bring the communications lens into the strategy conversation before the strategy is locked. Why does that matter? Because the way a decision will land publicly is not a cosmetic concern. It is a strategic one. If your CEO cannot explain the merger to an employee in plain language, the merger has a problem. Not a communications problem. A strategy problem. Good communications leadership catches that early.
Look at the companies that have survived genuine crises in the last decade without losing their reputation entirely. Johnson and Johnson. Tylenol. Old story, but it still holds up. The reason it worked was not that they had a great PR team. It was that leadership communicated with the public as if the public's trust was the actual product. That is a values decision, not a messaging decision. And it had to come from the top.
Contrast that with the organizations that have fumbled obvious crises. The pattern is always the same. Communications is reactive, not proactive. The spokesperson does not know what the CEO decided or why. The internal message contradicts the external one. Employees find out about layoffs from the news. These are not accidents. They are the direct result of treating communications as an afterthought.
Elevating communications to the C-Suite fixes the structural problem. A Chief Communications Officer who reports directly to the CEO, sits in on strategic planning, and has a seat at the table during crisis response is not a luxury. It is architecture. You are building a company that can actually explain itself, and that is a competitive advantage.
This is exactly the kind of scenario I break down in Say It Right Every Time. The chapter on strategic clarity gives you a framework for separating what you want to say from what your audience actually needs to hear, and those two things are almost never the same. When communications sits outside the decision-making process, that gap widens until it becomes a chasm. The chapter shows you how to close it before the message ever leaves the room.
Never Be Lost
for Words Again
Get word‑for‑word scripts for the conversations that shape your life, from job interviews and negotiations to difficult talks with family and partners, so you always know exactly what to say and how to say it.
Never Be Lost
for Words Again
Get word‑for‑word scripts for the conversations that shape your life, from job interviews and negotiations to difficult talks with family and partners, so you always know exactly what to say and how to say it.
Key Takeaway
Before your next major internal announcement, run it through this one test: send your draft to someone who has no context on the decision, and ask them to tell you what they think it means and how it will make people feel. If their answer surprises you, rewrite before you send. This is the simplest version of what a communications leader does every day. You do not need a title to start doing it.
