And that remains essential.
But the environment in which influence operates has changed profoundly.
Trust is fragmenting.
Information travels instantly.
Artificial Intelligence is accelerating both knowledge and misinformation.
And citizens increasingly expect not only decisions, but explanations.

In this context, I believe Public Affairs is evolving beyond advocacy alone.
Its most valuable contribution may increasingly lie in helping organisations, institutions and stakeholders make sense of complexity.

Not simply influencing decisions.
Helping create the conditions in which better decisions become possible.
Less about controlling narratives.

More about helping stakeholders understand and navigate complexity into informed action.
Less about access to power.

More about building the informed dialogue that power ultimately depends on.
This is not a retreat from influence.
It is an expansion of it.

Because in a world flooded with information, influence may become easier to achieve.
Understanding may become harder.
And therefore, more valuable.

This challenge is increasingly visible across governments, international organisations, businesses and civil society alike.

The organisations and professionals that will lead Public Affairs in the next decade may not be those with the loudest voices.

They may be those most capable of building trust, fostering understanding and translating complexity into meaningful dialogue.

Because influence without understanding can shape decisions.
But understanding is what sustains legitimacy.

So perhaps the question is no longer whether Public Affairs should influence decisions.
The question is whether influence alone is still enough.

What do you think?

In an era defined by complexity, trust and AI, should Public Affairs be measured only by its ability to influence outcomes - or also by its ability to help society understand them?

*** One additional thought:

For years, Public Affairs professionals have been asked how effectively we influence decisions.
Perhaps one of the defining questions of the next decade will be:
How effectively do we help others understand the context behind those decisions?
The two are not mutually exclusive - but the balance may be shifting.

A reflection on convergence, complexity and the next generation of organisational capability

Something is shifting in how the most effective organisations manage complexity.

It is not a technological shift - though technology is accelerating it. It is a structural one. The organisations navigating transformation most successfully are those that have quietly begun to dismantle one of the most persistent silos in modern management: the separation between operational governance and strategic communication.

For decades, these two disciplines have evolved in parallel. PMO operations developed increasingly sophisticated methodologies - RAID management, integrated planning, governance frameworks, delivery oversight. Strategic communications built its own architecture - stakeholder mapping, narrative positioning, reputation management, institutional engagement. Both disciplines matured. Both became more rigorous. And both, in doing so, became more isolated from each other.

That isolation is now a liability.

When complexity demands convergence

In highly regulated, multi-stakeholder environments -healthcare, international institutions, financial services, infrastructure, high-tech- the cost of misalignment between governance and communication is no longer abstract.

A programme can be technically on track and reputationally off course simultaneously. A governance structure can be internally coherent and externally opaque. A risk can be identified, escalated and resolved within a RAID log - and never meaningfully communicated to the stakeholders whose trust determines whether the programme survives its next review.
The gap between what organisations manage and what they communicate about what they manage is, increasingly, where transformation fails.

Not in the technology. Not in the methodology. In the space between them.

The emergence of a new leadership capability

What is emerging -slowly, unevenly, but clearly- is a new kind of organisational leadership that operates across this space. It is not a hybrid role in the traditional sense. It is not a PMO director who also writes press releases, or a communications manager who attends governance forums. It is something more fundamental: a leadership capability that treats operational governance and stakeholder communication as two expressions of the same strategic intention.

This capability requires, simultaneously:

1. The discipline to build governance structures that are transparent by design - not as a reporting obligation, but as a trust-building mechanism.
2. The judgment to translate operational complexity into narratives that decision-makers can act on - at every level of the organisation.
3. The foresight to anticipate where the gap between internal reality and external perception will widen - before it becomes a crisis.

And increasingly, the literacy to deploy AI not as an automation layer, but as a decision-support and alignment capability that makes both governance and communication more predictive, more consistent and more human.

AI as connector, not replacement

The strategic relevance of AI in this context is frequently misunderstood.

In PMO environments, AI is most valuable not when it automates task tracking, but when it enables predictive risk identification - surfacing patterns across programme data that human oversight would catch too late. In communications, AI is most valuable not when it generates content, but when it analyses stakeholder sentiment, maps influence networks and identifies reputational risk before it crystallises.

In both cases, the value of AI is not replacement. It is anticipation.

But anticipation, at organisational scale, requires something AI cannot provide on its own: a governance architecture that is ready to act on what it foresees, and a communication capability that can translate that foresight into trust.

The organisations that will lead the next decade of transformation will not be those with the most sophisticated AI. They will be those that have built the human infrastructure to use it wisely.

A closing reflection

The convergence between PMO operations and strategic communications is not a trend. It is a response to a structural reality: that in complex, high-stakes environments, operational excellence and reputational integrity are not separate objectives. They are the same objective, pursued through different but increasingly inseparable means.

The leaders who understand this -and who can operate credibly across both domains- will not simply be more effective in their current roles.

They will define what effective leadership looks like in the decade ahead.

*** Curious to hear how others are navigating this convergence in their own organisations - whether in healthcare, institutional environments, or other complex and regulated sectors.