Policy Without Communications Is a Crisis in Waiting
Executives often see policy as a legal formality — a document created to meet regulatory requirements or reduce liability. But once a policy touches the outside world, it stops functioning as paperwork. It becomes a signal. It tells stakeholders what your company values, how it thinks, and how seriously it takes its responsibilities. If communications isn’t shaping that signal from the start, you’re leaving your reputation exposed.
I saw this years ago working at Websense (a web security company now known as Forcepoint). The company faced recurring accusations that its technology was enabling foreign governments to censor the internet. The claims weren’t accurate, but they had a way of resurfacing. Legal could deny them. Leadership could rebut them. Yet without a clear, public policy that reflected what the company stood for, the allegations kept finding oxygen.
Once we created and published the company’s Anti-Censorship Policy — along with a holding statement and consistent external language — everything shifted. Reporters began referencing the policy directly. Stakeholders had a definitive source to point to. What had been a lingering vulnerability became a point of strength. It’s a useful reminder that policy, when done well, can close narrative gaps that no amount of reactive PR can fix.
Policy Has Become a Public Narrative
Every external-facing policy now has an audience far beyond lawyers and regulators. It’s read by reporters, analysts, employees, partners, and even AI systems that distill a company’s identity for anyone who asks. The language becomes part of the company’s public footprint, often long before a leader ever talks to the press.
This is why the Websense situation is so instructive. The absence of a clear policy didn’t just create confusion; it created space for others to define the story. Once the company published its Anti-Censorship Policy, the conversation changed because the company itself had finally defined the terms. Policy became narrative — and narrative became protection.
The Problem With Writing Policy in a Silo
Many companies still treat policy development as a legal or technical process. A policy gets drafted, reviewed, approved, and posted quietly. Internally, it makes sense. Externally, it can be incomplete, tone-deaf, or easy to misinterpret.
That was the trap Websense kept falling into before its anti-censorship policy existed. Every accusation led to a one-off response because nothing in the public domain reflected the company’s actual position. Without shared language or a consistent reference point, the company was always starting from zero.
The issue usually isn’t factual accuracy. It’s ambiguity. When a policy leaves space for interpretation, people fill that space with their own assumptions — and that’s where reputation risk shows up.
Where Communications Changes the Outcome
Communications brings an essential perspective: not just what the policy says, but how it will be read. How it will sound when quoted. How it will hold up when a reporter pulls one line out of context. How it will surface in search or appear in an AI summary years from now.
When we built the Anti-Censorship Policy at Websense, the real value wasn’t only the document — it was the clarity around it. The plain-language framing. The consistent explanation for executives. The holding statement reporters could rely on. In other words, the communications work made the policy functional in the real world.
That is the part leaders often underestimate. Policies don’t simply exist; they perform. And without communications guidance, they rarely perform well.
What Executives Need to Do Differently
Three shifts change everything:
Bring communications in early, before the language is locked.
Build the explanatory layer — the summary, the talking points, the context that shapes how the policy is understood.
Pressure-test the policy externally by asking, “If this were quoted tomorrow, would it reflect who we say we are?”
These steps aren’t cosmetic. They are reputational risk management.
Policy is no longer a back-office function. It’s a public expression of how a company operates, and people are reading it whether you intend them to or not. When communications shapes that language early, policies become clearer, stronger, and far more resilient under scrutiny. And in a world where perception moves fast, that clarity is one of the most effective forms of risk management a leadership team has.
If your organization is developing or updating external-facing policies, I help leaders pressure-test the language, anticipate reactions, and build the communications structure around it as a Fractional Chief Communications Officer.
