Published 12th Nov 2026
Speaker Lisa Collin, Founder of Proscenium Strategies
Reported on by Empower Mentee Mridula Benjamin, Director International Communications, Target, India
Having a seat at the table is no longer a point of debate for corporate communications professionals. But what do you do once you earn this seat?
Last month I had the opportunity to hear from Lisa Collin, Founder, Proscenium Strategies at the GWPR masterclass series talking about how communications professionals can drive value, impact and influence, moving from being messengers of the corporate voice to trusted counsellors in an organisation.
The communications function is at a unique vantage point, bringing a lateral perspective across the organisation, and perspectives from the industry and beyond. Lisa compares this to almost being a Central Nervous System for the organisation, gathering insights and drawing connections across multiple stakeholders. In an increasingly interconnected world, this viewpoint is extremely important – it brings about the ability to anticipate risks and maximise opportunity.
Making the shift from execution excellence to strategic advisory and widening one’s breadth of influence needs to be intentional. Lisa outlines a framework that professionals can use to guide every project or initiative.
Bring context and clarity
Rather than work in the realm of silos and transactional requests, professionals can start by asking: What are we really trying to achieve? This is the stage where putting on the communications hat means making sense of the business and stakeholder environment, uncovering the insights beneath the data, connecting siloed requests to the broader context and prioritising the big bets. The aim here should be to prioritise impact over activity. Bringing context and clarity is equally about building solid relationships – something that should be done months before the project, meeting with people regularly and staying connected with the business.
Build alignment and belief
Alignment matters for any strategic initiative. Teams should work towards a strategic purpose to drive successful outcomes. HBR research suggests 71% of executives see misalignment as the main cause of failed strategic initiatives.
Lack of alignment, Lisa says, doesn’t really mean everyone has to agree on everything all the time. It is about ensuring that different perspectives are sufficiently explored through discussion, so that you can get enough consensus on a strategy or a direction in a way that helps fully realise its potential. The lateral perspective that I spoke of earlier gives communications professionals the opportunity to build a shared understanding – by connecting people, navigating what change means for them, resolving concerns and friction, and building belief through evidence.
Create momentum and understanding
Plans are great, but bringing them to life and sustaining progress till goals are met is equally important. The ‘Rule of Seven’ reminds us that understanding typically takes five to seven exposures for information to move from short-term memory to long-term memory – further emphasising the need to sustain progress once the initial momentum has been set-off. Here professionals have the opportunity to bring plans to life through relevant and engaging communications, while also tracking progress and deriving insights and bringing them to the fore in a timely manner to drive action.
Communications professionals today are helping shape key decisions, driving organisational initiatives and building reputation in a world where it can be shaken so easily. Communications is more than a function, channel or discipline. It is how organisations move forward.
The choices that organisations make on how information flows around and about an organisation help it get ahead. The opportunity for communications professionals, then, is to move beyond influencing the narrative to influencing the decisions that shape it. That is where the function’s true strategic value lies.
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This piece is drawn from the fifth masterclass in the Global Women in PR 2026 Mentorship Series.
