Strategic communications

Recently I attended the joint Australian Government and Australian National University workshop focused on ‘Strategic Communications and National Security’ at the National Security College, ANU 13-14 June 2012. The workshop participants came from a broad range of government agencies that work with matters of national security.

There was a solid introduction into the definition of strategic communications (strat comms), which stressed the following principles:

• Integrity and Truth
• Persistent and consistent
• Independent of media and electoral cycles

From here, participants were walked through the key components of strategic communications. These included:

• Determine communication objectives
• Environment Scan
• Audience and Influencers
• Emotional intelligence
• Key messages
• Delivery
• Timetable
• Evaluation

What was very interesting to note from this presentation, was the strong preference for using an environment scan rather than a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses/Limitations, Opportunities, and Threats). The argument for using this approach was that often a SWOT analysis is too ‘mechanical’ in nature and…