This final quarter of the year often brings a familiar set of pressures. Leadership teams are reviewing performance, setting budgets, assessing risks, and deciding where attention and resources should go next. For communications leaders, this period presents an important opportunity to demonstrate the value of the function beyond its visible outputs.
The ICCO World PR Report 2025–2026 findings identify strategic consulting as the leading area of investment for PR firms globally, while corporate reputation has emerged as a leading growth area. The report also highlights the growing influence of AI, misinformation and the need for stronger strategic counsel.
For communications leaders, these developments raise practical questions about what communications should prioritise, how it should operate and what it must demonstrate before the year ends.
Here are five questions worth putting on the agenda this quarter.
1. What business priority is communications helping to advance?
Communication activity should begin with an understanding of what the organisation needs to achieve. That may involve entering a new market, strengthening customer relationships, managing regulatory change, supporting organisational transformation or maintaining confidence during a difficult period. Whatever the priority, communications should have a clear connection to it.
This requires more than translating business objectives into campaign messages. It means understanding the commercial and operational context behind those objectives, identifying the stakeholders who can influence their success and determining what communication can realistically change. For example, if an organisation is entering a new market, the communications challenge may not simply be to increase awareness. The organisation may first need to understand local expectations, establish credibility with relevant stakeholders, and address concerns about its products, conduct or intentions.
The question for leaders this quarter is whether their communications priorities reflect the organisation's actual needs or simply continue activities established earlier in the year.
What to review: Revisit your communications objectives alongside the organisation's business priorities. Identify where communications can influence an outcome, where it can provide valuable insight and where the current plan needs to change.
2. Where are stakeholders forming their opinions about us?
An organisation's reputation is not shaped only by its official statements, media coverage or public social media conversations.
Stakeholders form opinions through their experiences, professional networks, community discussions, industry sources, employees, customers and the information environments they use to make decisions. These influences differ across markets, sectors and stakeholder groups.
For organisations operating across Africa and Asia, this is particularly important. A message that resonates with one audience may not address the concerns or expectations of another. Cultural context, market conditions, regulatory environments and access to information can all influence how an organisation is understood. So, communications leaders therefore need to look beyond the channels they manage and develop a clearer picture of the environments in which stakeholder perceptions take shape.
This requires listening as well as publishing: Stakeholder interviews, employee feedback, customer research, media analysis, community engagement and social listening can help identify emerging concerns and gaps between what an organisation intends to communicate and what people actually understand. The objective is not to monitor every conversation; rather, it is to identify the sources of influence that matter most to the organisation and understand what those conversations reveal about stakeholder expectations.
What to review: Identify the stakeholder groups most important to your organisation. Consider what they currently believe, where they obtain information, which concerns remain unresolved, and what evidence supports your understanding.
3. Can we demonstrate the impact of our communications?
We often have no shortage of activity to report. From the number of press releases distributed, media placements secured, events delivered, content published and people reached, these measures can be useful, but they do not automatically demonstrate whether communications have made a meaningful difference.
The more important question is what changed as a result of the work.
Did stakeholders understand a new policy more clearly? Did employees become better informed about an organisational change? Did the organisation strengthen relationships with an important audience? Did communications help leadership identify an emerging risk earlier or respond more effectively to a crisis? All these answers depend on the objectives established before the work began.
This is not to say that every communication outcome can be attributed to one activity, but credible evaluation acknowledges the complexity of reputation, trust and stakeholder behaviour, which are influenced by multiple factors, while still examining the contribution communications have made.
What to review: Select a small number of priority activities and assess them against their original objectives. Separate what the team produced from what audiences understood, how they responded, and what changed for the organisation. Use those findings to inform the next planning cycle.
4. Who is accountable for the organisation's use of AI in communications?
Artificial intelligence is changing how communications teams conduct research, develop content, analyse information and support planning. These tools can improve efficiency, but their use also introduces questions about accuracy, confidentiality, bias, transparency and professional judgement. The issue is no longer simply whether teams use AI; it is whether that use is appropriate, governed and accountable.
A communications team may use AI to draft a statement, summarise stakeholder feedback or generate campaign ideas. Each application requires decisions about the information being shared, the accuracy of the output, the level of human review required and who approves the final communication. That’s why in June 2026 the Chartered Institute of Public Relations published guidance on the responsible use of AI in PR. The guidance addresses practical considerations including tool assessment, data handling, output review and the responsibilities involved in deploying AI systems, which provides a useful starting point for reviewing internal practices.
What to review: Examine the tools your team uses, the information entered into them, the checks applied to their outputs, and the people accountable for approval. If these responsibilities are unclear, this quarter is an opportunity to establish them.
5. Are we prepared for the issues that could change our priorities overnight?
Communications plans are built around anticipated objectives, audiences and activities. However, political developments, regulatory changes, operational failures, leadership decisions, misinformation and unexpected stakeholder reactions can quickly change what an organisation needs to address; Which requires relationships with colleagues across leadership, legal, risk, human resources, operations and other relevant functions.
The World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report 2026 highlights geopolitical confrontation, societal polarisation and misinformation among the risks shaping the current environment. Although not every global risk will directly affect every organisation, the report offers useful context for reviewing assumptions about stability and preparedness. The purpose of preparation is not to predict every possible event; it is to reduce avoidable uncertainty and improve the organisation's ability to make sound decisions under pressure.
What to review: Identify the three developments most likely to disrupt your communications priorities before the year ends. For each, clarify the early warning signs, decision-makers, escalation route, stakeholder implications and first steps required.
The value of these questions lies not in producing another strategy document, but in making better decisions about what deserves attention, what needs to change, and where communications can contribute more meaningfully.
Sources: https://www.mynewsdesk.com/iccopr/pressreleases/icco-launches-world-pr-report-2025-2026-3450099, https://newsroom.cipr.co.uk/cipr-publishes-new-best-practice-guide-on-responsible-ai-use-in-pr/,
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