62/365 Spot the Difference Uploaded by AlicePalice on 7 Sep 08, 7.29PM GMT.
I’ve seen it in a lot of companies and I have sadly also seen it in a lot of government departments (albeit not in the UK).
Policy and Public Relations are not the same thing and I find it annoying when they are being misconstrued as being identical.
I can see how it can be confusing. Since Policy is increasingly using high levels of stakeholder engagement one might be forgiven for thinking that Policy professionals are now into Public Relations. They are not (trust me I am one of the former).
In Policy we would ask “How can we design a policy that will work optimally?” whereas in Public Relations we would ask “How can we communicate that our policy is the best?”
See, I would call that pretty fundamentally different.
Both functions are certainly valid (and valuable). However, by confusing the two you end up with either policies that don’t work or with policies that cannot be communicated.
How come this is so hard to grasp?
