Where does your value live?
Mark your current practice on each of the five continuums. Star where you create the greatest value today. Circle where you see the greatest opportunity to grow.
What would help you move one step further?
A workshop with Andrew P. Robinson
We Have Outgrown the Communications Office
Our value begins before the message.
For school communicators ready to bring listening, judgment and audience insight into the decisions that shape their communities.
Beyond the request to “send a message”
The work has expanded.
The role needs to catch up.
Posts, newsletters and talking points are part of the work. So are understanding family impact, identifying a risk early and resolving conflicting information. Some of our highest-value work leaves no public-facing artifact.
This presentation explores how communications can enter earlier, help shape decisions and strengthen the organization’s ability to listen and respond.
Five shifts
Where does your value live?
These are shifts in practice, not job titles. Teams move across them depending on the issue, capacity and organizational context.
- 01
From producer
To strategist
Help define the goal, audience and approach before a product is chosen.
- 02
From messenger
To sensemaker
Connect patterns and help leaders understand what the information means.
- 03
From spokesperson
To listener
Build listening loops that bring audience experience back into decisions.
- 04
From responder
To anticipator
Surface likely questions, risks and expectations before a rollout.
- 05
From department
To organizational capability
Build standards, tools and confidence so the whole organization communicates better.
Make your own snapshot.
Move each marker to reflect where you operate most often today. Choose one continuum where you bring the greatest value and one where you see an opportunity. Both ends have a place in the work.
Your responses stay on this page and are not submitted. Download your reflection before leaving.
Greatest value: Choose a continuum above.
Growth opportunity: Choose a continuum above.
Download a text copy to keep your notes or discuss them with your team.
The guide is a snapshot, not a scorecard. Start with where you operate most often today.
Every decision communicates
Give community experience a route back to leadership.
Policies and service experiences send messages of their own. Audience insight belongs in the decision-making process, where it can help clarify expectations, reveal risks and improve the outcome.
Put it into practice
Two pages. One useful next move.
Use the companion guide during the presentation, on your own or in a conversation with your team.
Move one thing upstream.
Choose a recurring project, process or relationship. Mark where communications enters now and where it could add the most value. Name your contribution, the barrier and your first conversation.
What can you stop, simplify, standardize or share to make room?
Start with one change
“I will move communications upstream by…”
Choose the right work to enter earlier. Identify who you need to talk with, when you will begin and how you will know it is working.
Expansion without subtraction is not strategy. It is burnout.
Presentation
Keep the conversation going.
Explore the complete 25-slide presentation from Andrew’s CHESPRA session. Pair it with the companion guide and the interactive reflection above to choose one change to move upstream.
25 slides · PDFWe Have Outgrown the Communications Office