Why your external communications are only as good as your internal conditions
There's a pattern I've seen repeat itself across twenty-five years of communications strategy, in organisations of every shape and size. A team with real capability, a brief that matters, budgets, agencies, ambition — and then, despite all of it, work that doesn't quite land. Campaigns that feel disconnected. Messages that contradict each other depending on who's talking. Momentum that stalls somewhere between strategy and execution.
The presenting problem is usually framed as an external one. The creative isn't cutting through. The narrative isn't consistent. The campaign isn't shifting perception. But when you get close enough to see what's actually happening, the real problem is almost always internal.
Three situations. The same pattern.
I worked with a large organisation navigating a significant shift in corporate purpose, moving towards more responsible marketing and innovation with genuinely lower harm to people. On paper, the strategy was clear. In practice, two teams were pulling in different directions. The marketing function held the budget, the data and the commercial pressure to perform and grow. The corporate communications team held the accountability for reputation, for making sure the organisation's behaviour actually aligned with its new commitments, and could be seen to do so. Both teams were doing their jobs properly, but without a shared north star they were optimising for different things. The marketing opportunity was real. The reputational risk was real. Neither was being fully addressed, because the two teams weren't genuinely working together. When they finally were — when the data, the creativity and the reputational thinking were in the same room — they found they could do things neither could have done alone. That's when the strategy started to work. It's also, if I'm honest, where my strapline comes from: Simplicity. Clarity. Creativity. Get the strategy right across both the risk and the opportunity, and creative confidence follows.
I worked with a charity trying to drive mass behaviour change among older men around alcohol, specifically binge drinking. It's a brief that demands an extraordinary range of expertise: behavioural psychology, social science, public health, addiction medicine, community engagement and peer-led insight, among others. The opportunity to bring all of that together is as exciting as it is necessary. But expertise doesn't automatically produce solutions. Without a format for genuine collaboration, a shared space where different disciplines could think together, challenge each other and reach decisions, what you get instead is a room full of well-informed opinions that never quite converge. The knowledge was there. The conditions for using it well weren't.
I worked with a PR agency that wanted to integrate its practice specialisms, to create client value that crossed the old boundaries between teams. The resistance was immediate and entirely human: if it isn't broken, why fix it? Each specialism had its own way of working, its own culture, its own definition of quality. What eventually brought people to the table wasn't a restructure or a mandate from above but a shared language, a common framing of what communications is actually for, centred on value: for the client, for their audiences, for the agency's own growth. Once people could see themselves in the same story, collaboration became possible. Not easy, but possible.
The connection most strategies miss
None of these are unusual situations. In fact they're closer to the norm than the exception. External communications don't happen in a vacuum. They are the output of internal systems: how decisions get made, how teams collaborate, how strategy connects to execution, how different functions understand their relationship to each other and to the work. When those systems are working well, good work gets made. When they're not, even the best strategic thinking gets lost somewhere between the brief and the output.
This isn't a people problem or a talent problem. It's a conditions problem. The structures aren't right, the relationships aren't working, the process doesn't allow for the kind of thinking and collaboration the brief actually requires. The fix isn't always complex. Sometimes it's a shared framework that gives teams a common language. Sometimes it's a working process that creates the right conditions for collaboration. Sometimes it's simply someone with enough seniority and enough distance from the internal politics to name what's actually happening and help people move past it.
Why this is where I've chosen to focus
In building Lisa Story Strategy, I kept returning to this idea, not because it's theoretically interesting, though I think it is, but because it's where I've seen the most significant difference get made. The briefs where I've added the most value have almost never been purely external. They've involved working on the story and the conditions simultaneously, and getting both right is what makes the work land.
Most communications consultants focus on the external challenge: the narrative, the campaign, the creative platform. That work matters. But if the internal conditions aren't right, even the best external strategy will underdeliver.
That's the thinking this space is built around. I'll be writing here regularly about strategy, reputation, brand and the messy, human, organisational reality of making good communications work. If any of this sounds familiar, I'd love to hear from you.