We're not here to colour in

Fresh from graduating with an Executive MBA, our founder argues that commerciality means fluency in the whole business, from strategy and operations to the numbers, and that comms and marketing people give far better advice once they have it. 

Last Friday I graduated with an Executive MBA from Warwick Business School. Standing there in the gown, I kept thinking about a much younger version of me: "the comms girl". Lovely to have around. Great with words. Wheeled in at the end to make things pretty. 

Comms did not sit on the board when I started. We were represented by HR, or the MD, or perhaps sales. For some organisations that has changed. But for many, it has not. 

Yet, the ability to influence what people think of you, and how they behave as a result, is one of the most fundamental skills in business. I'd argue that it should be an organisational capability, not a rare individual talent. 

The commerciality gap 

However, if we want comms and marketing people brought into business conversations earlier, we need to instil real commerciality in them. 

And commerciality is about far more than money. It is fluency in the whole operation of a business: strategy in the fullest sense, not just comms and marketing strategy, but how an organisation chooses to compete. Innovation, and the process that takes an idea to something people will buy. Operations. Financial reporting. Measurement and evaluation, so you know what is working and can prove it. That is what an MBA covers, and it is what the one awarded to me courtesy of Heropreneurs really gave me. 

I always wanted to create more value from comms, and I can honestly say I was hugely limited until I started Canny and did that degree. A limitation I did not fully see until then. 

I was seemingly pretty good at delivering with one hand tied behind my back. But I am far better now that I know what it feels like to run a business: the cash flow, the trade-offs, the sleepless nights and emotional rollercoasters, and how every function must pull in the same direction. 

Business owner or not, those with agency experience have a head start here, because we must be commercial to survive. If our campaigns do not deliver for clients, they cannot afford to work with us again. It is also why the right agency is such a powerful supplement to an in-house team: you are borrowing commerciality that has been earned the hard way, from people whose aim is to grow your team's capability, not replace it. 

And if you work in government, this is not about profit. Commerciality means understanding budgets, outcomes and value for public money, and how the whole machine, from policy to delivery, fits together. A comms team that grasps where the money comes from, and what it must achieve, gives fundamentally better advice. 

What this looks like in practice 

Inside Canny, I brief my own team every month on our financials, our strategy and our progress against it. Every detail. How else can I expect them to have the authority to make good decisions? We also train comms people beyond the narrow mainstream syllabus, through our Reputation Labs programme, tying the learning to drive commercial outcomes. 

If you are that comms person reading this: ask for the numbers, the strategy, the operational picture. You are more ready for them than you think, and better advice starts the day you see them. 

A call to leadership teams 

Build a communications capability, not just outputs. Bring your comms people fully into the business: the commercials, the strategy, the operations, the measures of success. Give them the exposure and the training to do a blooming awesome job, and you will be amazed at how much better the advice gets, and how much waste is avoided. 

As the comms girl who graduated, I was never here to just colour in. None of my team are. 

We have just made working with us simpler too: a clear journey that starts with strategy or a campaign, builds towards a long-term partnership, and grows your own people through training along the way. If you would like to see it, get in touch. I would love to talk.