The under-funded and forgotten parts of your organization know the Public Affairs Office is an internal, free-of-charge way to highlight their potential, and publicly lobby your commander and higher headquarters for more cash and attention.
Like everything, this may be part of your job, but be careful. You’re communicating to teach and clarify your organization’s top priorities to a wide audience. Don’t get caught out-of-balance, only tying yourself, and your organization’s public image, to back-seat programs.
Lucky for you, the end of our fiscal year is coming up, and it’s spend plan season for senior leaders. Your organization is going to spend its money, time and effort on it’s most important priorities. Follow this process closely, and build a plan where those priorities guide next year’s communication budget of stories and topics. Spend the year communicating, through command information and media engagements, the “why” behind top-budget items.
In other words, put your mouth where your money is.
Examples: Equipment upgrades because your soldiers must be a capable, lethal force. Big exercises because joint, realistic training prepares your units for combat. Specialty training and engagements for signal or intelligence technical experts who need to keep up with a changing, modern world. Major construction and renovation projects because your team values world-class training facilities and a professional culture. Deployments, because you protect America.
Your commander puts resources against their most important focus areas. Make yourself one of those resources.
(Photo by Airman 1st Class Savannah L. Waters, DVIDS)
