Make it Make Sense: Why Strategic Communications is Critical in a Volatile World
By Victoria Crockford
12 January 2026
I started my career working in risk management for TV productions, looking to head to far-flung places with political unrest, extreme weather or toothy animals to entertain the masses.
The setup was usually well-rehearsed, but there were memorable moments of totally unexpected interactions and outcomes that brought home the importance of “planning for the plan” (including but not limited to tense – and armed - interactions at rebel roadblocks and medevacs).
With the whiplash change happening in global politics, I sometimes feel like I’m back in that job, attempting to predict all the potential outcomes of a televised drama but with very real-world implications. Amid the current global shakeup, the ability to manage risk and reputation is a core leadership skill – and a skill that is at the heart of strategic communications.
Yet many organisations still treat communications as tactical message delivery, and many communications teams are defined by outputs rather than being leveraged as an “intelligence” function. In a world that is experiencing generational volatility, leaders who work with their communications teams to anticipate risk and understand how publics will behave are the ones who will gain the true value of communications.
For communications teams, this is the difference between being operationally useful and strategically necessary.
Geopolitical literacy as a baseline communications skill
Understanding how geopolitical tensions are shaping the information environment should be considered a baseline capability for communications teams in 2026.
Trade policy shifts reshape narratives that stakeholders use to assess credibility. Regulatory changes cascade into reputational risk. And, perhaps most importantly for small countries and economies like New Zealand, international conflicts influence trust in institutions.
For our clients and others working in New Zealand’s energy sector, this plays out specifically. Global supply chain disruptions affect our entire fuel security. International climate commitments shape domestic policy debates. Geopolitical tensions around critical minerals influence renewable infrastructure costs. And in an election year, energy policy becomes a political football where technical infrastructure decisions get contested in public discourse before you've had the chance to explain the tradeoffs.
And where to explain the tradeoffs has gotten more complicated. Social media has overtaken traditional news as the primary information source for many. Younger generations have "flatter" trust patterns with less hierarchy of validation. Personality-driven channels blend news, opinion, and entertainment, making provenance harder to trace. These aren't just communications trends; they're risk factors determining whether your messages land or go to the great doom scroll in the sky.
As I wrote about energy infrastructure in a previous article, "too complicated" has become the enemy of influence. Even when it’s difficult, organisations must become literate about these changes. If you don't understand the information environment your stakeholders operate within, you cannot anticipate their behaviour. And if you cannot anticipate behaviour, you cannot manage risk.
From outputs to intelligence
Strategic communications as a risk function means environmental scanning that flags tensions before they become crises — systematic analysis of signals that may be faint or nuanced, not just media monitoring that counts mentions.
It means stakeholder mapping that tracks information sources and trust networks, not just org charts.
It requires narrative stress-testing against scenarios. How does your messaging hold up if trade tensions escalate? Or if regulatory frameworks shift?
It also requires cross-functional integration with risk, strategy, and operations teams to interpret what emerging patterns mean for strategic objectives.
In contested environments, provenance and verification become competitive advantages. Organisations need to demonstrate how they know what they claim to know — not just fact sheets, but institutional credibility when audiences are skeptical of all institutions.
In Aotearoa's interconnected landscape, this becomes critical as reputational risk travels faster and social license, once eroded, is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild.
Building capability for uncertainty
Organisations cannot eliminate volatility, but they can build the capability to navigate it. Strategic communications functions as resilience infrastructure by reducing uncertainty through systematic “sensemaking”.
This sensemaking asks questions like:
Does your communications function reduce uncertainty or just produce content?
Can it interpret signals before they become full-blown crises?
Does it understand stakeholder information environments well enough to anticipate behaviour?
In an election year, with contested policy positions and global volatility reshaping supply chains and investment contexts, this capability becomes even more critical.
With our global experience and senior team, Heft can plug in as your risk and reputation weathervanes, helping you to answer these questions and create organisational resilience in what is going to be an era of sustained volatility.
References:
Newman, N. et al. (2025). Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025
Waddington, S. (2025, December 1). What a year of writing has taught me about the future of communications. Management and Public Relations on Substack.