Are You PR-Challenged? Yes?

You won’t be if you accept a very simple premise. Here, in just two sentences, is your pathway to effective public relations. A pathway that lets you target kind of stake- holder behavior change that leads directly to achieving your objectives.

People act on their own perception of facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action those people whose behaviors affect organization, public relations mission is accomplished.

And what behavior changes they can be. Legislators who see you as a dynamic member of their business public; prospects deciding to patronize your enterprise; customers buying from you again and again; local thoughtleaders strengthening their relations with you; employees who value their employer, and on an on.

What it boils down to, is that people in your marketing area behave like everyone else – they take actions based on their perceptions of facts they hear about you and your organization.

So, you need to deal promptly and effectively with those perceptions by doing what you need to do to reach them with right message. Your job is to persuade your stakeholders to your way of thinking and move them to take actions that lead to success of your organization.

Here’s one way to do exactly that.

Who are those important outside audiences whose behaviors have most positive OR negative impacts on your enterprise? List them in order of how negatively or positively those impacts affect you.

Working on target audience in first place on your list, let’s look at whether any of those perceptions out there are likely to morph into behaviors that can hurt your organization.

QUESTION # 1. Is there a potential catastrophic downside? If liability involved is significant, and is even marginally possible, then decision is "no, go find other options." One of leader's most important jobs is to protect organization. Exposing organization to undue risk is never wise. CEO’s generally do this well. This is how they can make such quick decisions on complicated subjects. They simply look at liability factor and if it is too great, answer is always a resounding “No.”

Action Point – Think of a significant decision you need to make. Ask yourself, “What is worst case scenario if I approve this and it goes bad?”

QUESTION # 2. What is cost/benefit ratio? Every decision is a trade-off between costs (usually company resources) and benefits (usually claims aimed at increasing company resources). Smart leaders use cost/benefit ratio to leverage growth and profitability. Good decisions are highly leveraged with low cost/high benefit. Poor decisions are high cost/low benefit. When leaders find low cost/high benefit opportunities (with minor liability of course) decision is, "Yes, let's do it."