✅ What does high performance look like in corporate communications and public relations?
We’ve spent decades arguing for public relations to be recognised as a strategic function. My PhD research brings us closer to understanding what excellence really looks like.
After four years of PhD research at Leeds Business School, I’m getting closer to answering a question that has shaped my career: What does high performance look like in corporate communications and public relations?
Over the summer, more than 500 UK-based in-house practitioners took part in a survey exploring how their work aligns with management. That dataset of more than 35,000 datapoints has provided one of the clearest pictures yet of how communication functions perform against management expectations.
Management thinking has long defined what high performance looks like. In Search of Excellence, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman celebrated closeness to customers and productivity through people. Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, in Built to Last, pointed to enduring purpose, values and stakeholder orientation.
These are precisely the areas where public relations should thrive.
James Grunig and colleagues, including my friend and long-time mentor Jon White, made this argument in the 1990s through the Excellence Study. It was the first serious attempt to define what excellence in public relations practice looks like.
Key findings included the importance of strategic management, direct reporting to senior leadership, two-way communication and practitioners occupying managerial rather than purely technical roles. It remains an important foundation, though its snapshot approach and focus on large organisations left gaps.
But while management science has continued to evolve and embed excellence into organisational norms, public relations has lacked an equivalent language of effectiveness. That’s where newer research fills the gap.
The European Communication Monitor (ECM) and the Communicative Excellence Framework gives us a rigorous, research-based view of what high performance in communication looks like today.
What the data shows
The Communicative Excellence Framework identifies six dimensions of high performance:
Talent - Practitioners with communication and commercial expertise
Alignment - Close structural access to senior leadership
Collaboration - Effective cross-functional working across departments
Listening - Intelligence-gathering from stakeholders and the external environment
Measurement - Demonstrating value in ways the organisation understands
Communication strategy - Shaping the overall direction of the organisation
My work shows that less than one in five UK communication functions meets the bar across all six characteristics. Collaboration, listening and alignment score relatively well. Talent and strategy are more mixed. But measurement is the single biggest weakness.
The next phase of research
Until December, I worked on the dataset blind with no knowledge of who the practitioners or organisations were. That kept the analysis clean and free from bias.
Now I’ve identified those teams scoring 5/6 or 6/6, I’m in the process of pitching for interviews with both the practitioners and their managers. The goal is simple: to uncover how these organisations got there and what lessons they can offer the rest of the industry.
Already, there’s a noticeable quality to the organisations in the high-performing cohort. These are teams embedded in decision-making, structurally aligned with leadership and delivering real strategic value.
This phase of the research is about codifying that success and turning insight into a practical playbook. I hope I’ll also meet the standard to be awarded a PhD.
Why this matters
This research is a direct attempt to bridge a long-standing gap between communication practice and management thinking. It builds on the work of the ECM team and aims to give practitioners and their leaders a practical roadmap for performance.
We’ve talked for years about wanting a seat at the management table. This work is about showing what it takes to earn it.
The Communicative Excellence Framework deserves a wider audience. So too does the ECM’s decades of research. I hope this project plays a small part in making that happen and that it brings practical value to practitioners and management teams alike.
I’ll be sharing more in the months ahead as the interviews unfold. If your organisation is part of this story, thank you. If not, I hope the insights still help move the industry and your work forward.
Thanks for your support. Have a great week ahead.
Communications management and leadership (full-day, online course)
The communications and public relations function is being pulled upstream into management work at exactly the moment when organisations are becoming harder to govern, harder to predict and harder to legitimise.
The familiar reference points of practice (channels, campaigns, media relations, even stakeholder engagement as it has traditionally been understood) are no longer sufficient to explain what high-performing functions are doing, or why others are struggling.
I’m hosting a series of one-day online courses on communication management and leadership for a maximum of eight senior communicators. February is sold out but we’ve added dates in March, April and May. Please follow this link for further details.
Industry
🚫 FAKE EXPERTS: The CIPR and PRCA have launched a joint campaign urging journalists to reject fake or AI-generated sources after a Press Gazette probe uncovered over 1,000 media stories linked to non-existent experts. The initiative aims to restore trust by promoting accredited registers and calling out rogue operators who damage the credibility of both journalism and public relations. Source: Press Gazette.
💥 INDEPENDENT POWER: The Independent Impact 50 returns to champion freelancers and solo practitioners, a vital yet often overlooked force within the public relations industry. With a streamlined entry process and growing support from the industry, the 2026 awards aim to highlight meaningful impact. If you’re an independent practitioner enter by 20 February. Source: Socially Mobile.
Technology and platforms
🔍 SEARCH CONTROLS: Google has responded to the UK Competition and Markets Authority’s consultation by signalling plans to give publishers more control over how their content appears in Search AI features. The tech giant says it’s working on scalable opt-out tools to protect both user experience and publisher choice, while avoiding fragmentation of the Search ecosystem. Source: Google.
🧠 ALGORITHM NATION: Fraser Nelson lifts the lid on how Elon Musk’s X algorithm rewards rage and polarises public discourse, giving far-right figures a direct path to influence and power. With reply-driven outrage scoring 150 times higher than a like, social platforms have become political amplifiers creating a self-fuelling “rage economy” that mainstream politics can no longer ignore. Source: The Times.
Media
📉 PAGE SLIDE: Regional newsbrands across the UK saw a 27% year-on-year fall in page views this December, with big titles like the Manchester Evening News and Birmingham Mail hit hardest. While total audiences dipped only slightly, engagement became the new battleground with smaller outlets such as the News & Star and Dorset Echo leading on time spent per visit. Source: Hold the Front Page.
The Wadds Inc. newsletter is read by more than 5,000 communications and public relations practitioners twice a week. We distil news, research and industry developments twice a week into actionable briefings to help you at work.
Thanks to Catherine Frankpitt, Alan Morrison and everyone who shares and debates the newsletter stories in our Facebook and LinkedIn communities.
The newsletter takes four to five hours each week to produce. It is free to read (knowledge should travel freely), but I’d be grateful if you’d consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support my PhD research and writing.