[Reading Log -134] The Power to Pose Questions
What is PR?
Now, when you hear the term "PR (Public Relations)", what kind of work comes to mind?
Someone who writes press releases.
Someone who manages social media.
Someone in charge of advertising or media relations...
I had that image too.
The title of this book is"The Power to Pose Questions".
And the subtitle is,
-Thinking together about the optimal solutions for the world-
-Co-creating new 'norms' through social design thinking-
Although "Public Relations" is written on the cover in a very thin olive green font, I don't think a PR professional would pick it up at a glance. ...Actually, I think I reached for this book precisely because I am not a PR professional.
Designing relationships and co-creating "value"
In this book, PR is defined as "an organization, such as a company, building and maintaining good relationships with society".
In other words, PR is not about disseminating information.
It is the practice of designing relationships between companies and society and creating value together.
In recent years, we have moved past the era where companies are evaluated solely on their profits. That is precisely why the redefinition of PR in this book is significant.
The authors of this book, "The Power to Pose Questions," Sawako Kugibayashi and Naoki Hayashi, are PR practitioners at OZMA Inc. The company supports public relations for a wide range of organizations, including corporations, government agencies, and non-profit organizations, and operates under the philosophy of "posing questions to society and creating new norms."
In this book, the authors organizethe characteristics of PRinto the following four points.
Public: Targeting society as a whole
Relations: Building relationships between companies and society
Bidirectionality: Engaging in dialogue rather than one-way communication
Continuity: Accumulating long-term trust
In short,PR is the work of building "relationships".
The authors list five backgrounds for why these relationships have become so important.
Expansion of ESG investment
Spread of SDGs
Focus on human capital management
Changes in information dissemination power due to social media
Rising expectations for companies regarding social issues
Due to these changes in the world, companies are no longer evaluated solely on the 'economic value' they have provided in the past.
While generating profit is certainly important, it is because 'social value'—such as environmental consideration, contribution to local communities, how employees are treated, and empathy for corporate philosophy—has come to be evaluated as corporate value more than ever before.
Companies need the 'power to pose questions'.
This book explains PR through the following four processes.
Question: Posing new questions to society
Advocacy: Presenting the company's perspective
Engagement: Involving diverse people
Evocation: Leading to behavioral change across society
Yes, companies don't have the answers from the start.
They co-create optimal solutions while engaging in dialogue with society, starting with questions. That is the PR envisioned by this book.
A camera captures what it focuses on clearly.
In exchange, what is out of focus becomes blurred.
Perhaps that is exactly what this book wanted to say.
What is visible, what is invisible
In this book, the author argues that we should shift our perspective from complying with hard law to complying with soft law. Companies need to think not only about 'obeying the law' but also about 'how they are perceived by society'.
・Hard law: Rules such as laws and ordinances that carry penalties if violated
・Soft law: Rules that have no legal binding force but significantly impact corporate evaluation, such as ESG, human capital disclosure, various guidelines, and social norms
Furthermore, the author touches upon the difference between sympathy and empathy.
・Sympathy: Compassion, resonance, the emotion of trying to get close to someone who has a similar background or opinion to one's own
・Empathy: Empathy, emotional immersion, compassion, the ability to stand in another's shoes and imagine and understand the feelings of people with values different from one's own
It is about where you focus.
It is not about which is right or which is wrong.
It is not about which is superior or which is inferior.
Companies focus on corporate logic.
Society focuses on social values.
It is not that one is correct.
It is just that they are focusing on different places.
What is required is not to take one side or the other.
Executives, sales, public relations, and frontline staff. Each focuses on a different area.What each sees is different. Therefore, what they do not see must also be different.
PR is not a job of eliminating those differences.
It is a job of moving between different focuses and connecting the worlds that each sees.
That is likely why companies are required to have the "power to formulate questions" rather than the "power to have answers."
Reference Links
・Amazon "The Power to Formulate Questions" Book Introduction Page
・Ozma Inc. PR: Homepage