A few good men: Why too small a PR team is worse than no PR team (but a proper sized one is best)

Just a very quick note to articulate a thought that has weighed heavily on me and others I work with lately.  In the field of corporate communications, a small team and be worse than no team at all, and that's no reflection on the people on that team.  A too small team for corporate comms can never get to grips with the whole brief- all the activities and actions buzz along below the radar, and only crises that rise above a threshold can be dealt with.  Note that crossing the threshold doesn't mean anything has gone wrong- just that the situation has become big enough to demand attention.  However, at that stage the team will have no background, and probably only the blast of the last crisis ringing in their ears, so they immediately pounce in a negative controlling but woefully under-informed manner upon the situation.  The reaction of first resort is to clamp down, to stifle and to kill any story.
Naturally enough the reaction from the footsloggers in the trenches who've been working on this for weeks if not months is to be upset, in fact downright pissed off.  Months of planning, weeks of effort, good relationships built without the support of 'professional PR' are dashed.  It may well be that the message has been passed up to PR over the preceding weeks, possibly in some detail, but they have been to busy to read or even note it, and actually, that's perfectly reasonable of them.
The upshot- PR deliver nightmare drivebys of negativity, broken relationships and trashed plans, and the rest of the organisation tells them less and less in the hope to keep their size nine party pooping boots at bay.  This is a situation where nobody is doing anything less than their professional best, but the organisation is built to fail.
If you work in a place where things have got to this state take a moment to recognise that the people in PR (or vice versa who work in the org where you do PR) are actually trying hard to do their jobs well.

Then find the fucktard that thought this was a sustainable way to do business and string them up by piano wire from the nearest lamp post.

Last Day at KW

After 60 years my dept is quitting it's historical, hysterical head quarters- the much vaunted, dodgily vaulted Kingswood Warren. And today is my last day on site. There's a mix of emotions here- actually rather a strong mix due to some very sad news we heard this morning, which I shan't go into here. Relating to the move though, one can't help imagining one hears snatches of Elgar's "Nimrod" echoing down the halls.



As a place to work, KW (as it's known to it's denizens) has charms and quirks a plenty. Huge spaces purpose built to shoot and show films, and converted decades ago to demonstrate television. Grand meeting suites with oak panels, and bay windows opening onto the croquet lawn. Here too was, for many years, the core of the BBC's onlne presence, built out of the sheer bloodymindedness of our now Cheif Scientist, Brandon Butterworth.



[Edit- I've just had a walk around the old site- and a grumble about the past is not the right send off]



What I won't miss about KW:

• Having no clue what's happening in the rest of the BBC ever.
• Missing lunch by 5 minutes.
• The lingering debilitating depression of the Varney/Highfield era.
• Vile tea and coffee.
• No mobile reception.
• Baking in summer, baking in winter (the central heating pipes liquid magma direct from the earths core to every single room)
• Long tedious deeply depressing conversations about previous senior management in the canteen.
• Empty offices and corridors echoing with the rattle of dismantling equipment.
  

What I will miss.

• The Ceiling in A-Block reception.
• That there's almost always a secret short cut from one place to another (it's great fun to finish a presentation to a room full of invited guests and then disappear through a hidden door!)
  
• Mullioned windows
• Flying rockets on the feild
• Deer and fauns in the morning mist.
• Seeing colleagues knocking mud from the allotments off their boots in the hall
• Long facinating deeply technical conversations about everything from linear induction motors to victorial optical intruments in the canteen.
• Always finding new rooms I never knew existed.
  
• Bowling googlies on the lawn.
• Carols in the snow.
  
• Yoga in the club hut.
• The Canteen Staff- stars one and all.
  

I know I never made the most of this place. I don't know if I could have. It seemed it had been here for ever, and we would never leave, but in an hour, I'm off.


* I joined R&D around the time of this lowest ebb, so much of this is hearsay, and in the interests of legal boilerplating, it can be read as a largely fictionalised account of the past.

CC Attribution to Rainrabbit for the mullioned window pic- one of very many lovely shots of KW from Rain.