Strategic Communication: Getting Back to the Basics

I couldn’t agree more with Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff. Every corporate CEO and every communication consultant and practitioner should think hard about Admiral Mullen’s message, too. It would do business a lot of good.

I’m referring to the admiral’s recent essay on strategic communication. Published in Joint Forces Quarterly, a military journal, the essay is a broadside on facile, fast-talking communication. Mullen is naturally concerned with communication seeking to promote American military and foreign policy in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But as you read his essay, think in terms of corporate communication. Try to distill the admiral’s thinking to your own business challenges. It will be well worth your while.

Let me pause for a note on terminology. Admiral Mullen and I define “strategic communication” differently. We have our own mental constructs for it, too, and they bear heavily on our thinking. I have long championed strategic communication as a systematic key to authenticity and credibility, whereas Mullen scorns it as so much propaganda. So we’re coming at the issue from quite different points of view, but we’re both striving for greater authenticity and credibility. That's the important thing.

Having said all that, I find the admiral’s thesis compelling. Indeed, in spite of our differences over terminology, his argument is actually in complete alignment with my own thinking.

Before proceeding any further, you should read the essay in full. It’ll take only five or ten minutes.

Now as you can see, Mullen delivers a blistering attack on the use of verbal and visual messages that are out of synch with reality on the ground, and he is critical of mass communication as a substitute for genuine, sincere relationships. He writes: “Our messages lack credibility because we haven’t invested enough in building trust and relationships, and we haven’t always delivered on promises.”

Mullen goes on to define good communication as “having the right intent up front and letting our actions speak for themselves. We shouldn’t care if people don’t like us; that isn’t the goal. The goal is credibility. And we earn that over time.”

A little further on, he writes: “Most strategic communication problems are not communication problems at all. They are policy and execution problems. Each time we fail to live up to our values or don’t follow up on a promise, we look more and more like the arrogant Americans the enemy claims we are.”

Years ago, I had a mentor who stressed that the secret to good communication was doing the right thing and getting caught at it. To me, that is strategic communication. In the admiral’s view, it’s good leadership. The semantics aren’t as important as the judgment, and Mullen’s judgment is exactly right.

It is indeed a matter of getting back to the basics. Whatever we call it, let’s get on with it.