Hello and welcome to Cut Through! How to communicate with clarity in a noisy world.

I’m Simon Baugh. I used to be the Chief Executive of UK Government Communications and now I write, speak, and advise companies on communications leadership, strategy and capability.

Cut Through is a new blog and podcast for anyone who relies on communications to drive performance and build trust. It is focussed on the essential skills communicators need to thrive in a world of disruption and change.

Every episode will be a written article, a podcast and a video so that you can read, listen or watch. Whichever suits you best.

In this first episode I want to set out why I’m writing Cut Through!

Communications leadership is at a crossroads.

For many, it feels like a crisis.

Internally, employees expect clarity, transparency and authenticity on everything from company strategy to global political events.

Externally, customers, stakeholders and the media operate at hyper-speed. A single reputational crisis, even one based on false information, can destroy trust, sink share prices or end careers instantly.

Just when you understand the latest tech, it’s outdated. Budgets are tight. Expectations are rising. Trust is low. And through it all, you’re being asked to do more, say more, and react faster.

Leaders today are beset by noise and inundated with information. Unless we rethink how we lead communication, we risk being overwhelmed.

But we should be optimistic about our ability to change to meet this challenge. After all, our profession has been changing rapidly for the last 25 years.

It wasn’t always like this.

At the start of my career the world moved more slowly and the job was more straightforward.

On my first day in PR, my predecessor lent me his most prized asset: a Black and Red A6 notebook containing the handwritten phone numbers of all his media contacts. His handover was a single sentence: “become best friends with everyone in this book”.

As I canvassed views from others in public relations, it seemed pretty straightforward. Yes, it required creativity, relationship skills, and the ability to think on your feet. But, fundamentally, if you stuck to a few simple rules you should be okay: never lie to a journalist; always make sure you have a story; and, most importantly, always pay for lunch.

Unless you were in marketing there was only really one way to get your message to the public. Convince a journalist to write or broadcast your story. Most people only had access to five TV channels. There was no social media.

When I purchased my first mobile phone my flatmates were incredulous. Why did I need one? Who could I possibly need to speak to so urgently that it couldn’t wait until I got to the office?

If you wanted advance sight of a newspaper story then you picked up an early print edition of the Sunday papers that were sold at tube stations on a Saturday night. Media monitoring was done by reading the papers, cutting out the relevant articles, and then photocopying them for the boss.

Internal comms consisted mainly of posters pinned to a company noticeboard. We had recently been given access to the internet, but there was still a debate as to whether people should be permitted to use it during working hours.

The job wasn’t without excitement. I got a buzz from seeing a story I’d briefed, or an article I’d written, in print the next day. But it was steady and predictable.

Fast forward 25 years…

Well… you know how it is.

You’re still expected to be across every BBC bulletin and newspaper editorial. But now there are 500 TV channels and a million citizen journalists.

If that wasn’t enough, you need a view on every social media platform, podcast, digital video channel, and peer to peer messaging app. Your CEO wants to know how she can “go viral”. Your team wants you to partner with an influencer you’ve never heard of but who has more followers than Taylor Swift. You know you should be basing your comms on data, but you have so much data you can’t find any insight. You have only just started getting to grips with generative AI, but apparently you need to talk “agentic AI” if you don’t want to look like you’re stuck in 2024. Oh, and your staff board would like to know why you haven’t put out a statement on Gaza.

“Our comms hasn’t been good enough…”

The world of communications has changed and how we lead must change too. As Chief Executive of the Government Communication Service, I was the most senior communications adviser to the UK Government, leading more than 6,000 communications and marketing professionals.

I advised Ministers in the most high pressure situations, including COBR emergency response meetings, and I led the country’s official communications during the COVID-19 pandemic, the death of HM Queen Elizabeth II, and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

I was privileged to work with some of the best in the business. Number 10 Downing Street political advisers of all parties were among the brightest, hardest working people I’ve known. Yet after six months, all faced criticism. Not because they lacked ability, but because they were in an impossible job.

The response to every political or policy failure was “we failed to get our message across”, “people don’t understand our story” or “the comms hasn’t been good enough.” In four years, I ended up working with eleven political No.10 Directors of Communication.

Anyone trying to engage with the whole of today’s media environment is bound to be overwhelmed - caught in a tidal wave of information and misinformation. The media landscape is more diverse and fragmented than ever. Yet you’re expected to be across everything. Isn’t that your job, after all?

No. It’s not.

Your job is to use communication to achieve your organisation’s objectives. Everything, everywhere, all at once is a movie title not a communications strategy. If you try to do everything then you will fail to do anything. It is time to push back on unrealistic expectations. It’s time to be more strategic. To make some choices. To lead with greater clarity.

Towards a new operating manual

When I started my career there were two books that gave me insight into politics and communication. The first, by US broadcaster Chris Matthews, was called Hardball: How Politics is Played by One Who Knows the Game. The second was the marketing classic Ogilvy on Advertising: The art of selling from the most successful ad man of all time. I read them repeatedly. I felt as if I’d been given the secret recipes for success by the ultimate insiders.

25 years on it feels like the right moment to try to write my own version. The world of communications has changed beyond recognition. But I want to explore precisely what has changed, what hasn’t, and why it matters.

More importantly, I want to examine the winning strategies and the essential skills for this changed world and articulate a new operating model for communications.

I hope I have learned enough to be able to pass on some of what works, what doesn’t, and why. But I definitely don’t have all the answers. That’s why I hope Cut Through! can become a community. Somewhere where other people comment and contribute their learning and ideas too.

I hope it is useful. And even more, I hope you enjoy reading it.

Simon

Thanks for reading Cut Through! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

In today's episode I reveal five common communication strategy mistakes to avoid:

1. The everything, everywhere, all at once strategy.

2. The self-justification strategy

3. The platitudinous truisms strategy

4. The shooting for the moon without a rocket strategy.

5. The Christmas tree strategy.

My new blog, Cut Through!, aims to define a new model for modern communications leadership. In other words, to identify the essential skills needed to deliver great communications today.

Before I dive into the detail, I want to share some early thoughts on what we might cover.

I have identified seven thematic areas that I think matter most in a world of disruption and change. In fact, the faster things change, the more important they become.

I would love to have your feedback on these themes and to know what would be most useful to you:

1. Understanding what’s changed and what hasn’t

The digital and technological breakthroughs of the last thirty years have turned communication upside down. Communicators today navigate a fragmented landscape, where attention is scarce, trust is low, and relevance is hard-won. But how did we get here?

To respond effectively we need to understand the root causes. What caused the big leaps forward in the way we consume information and what are the consequences for communicators?

Just as importantly, we need to remember what hasn’t changed - the fundamentals of human behaviour that are hard-wired into our DNA.

While our tools have changed rapidly, our brains are still wired the same way they were tens of thousands of years ago. We haven’t had a firmware update. So we shouldn’t abandon communication techniques which are rooted in how human beings think, feel and act.

The future of communications belongs to those who can adapt to what has changed, while recognising what hasn’t - and I want to explore both in Cut Through and draw out the lessons for communicators.

2. Designing new strategies for this changed world

What are the winning strategies in this new media landscape? When trust in politicians, business and the media is at historic lows, how do you cut through? I want to examine the strategies that organisations are pursuing successfully.

For example, the Government’s New Media Unit is seeking to earn trust through authentic, relevant, and hyper-local stories of delivery; brands are increasingly borrowing trust, by working with content creators who already enjoy high trust from their audiences; and Trump has created the playbook for how to position yourself as an outsider and ride a wave of distrust.

3. Not losing sight of the timeless fundamentals

There are some building blocks of great communication that are as relevant today as they have ever been - strategy, storytelling, behaviour change, evaluation.

Strategy is the foundation of effective communication. To drive real outcomes, communicators must be able to prioritise, allocate and align resources behind clear, measurable objectives. Yet too often, I see meaningless truisms masquerading as genuine strategic choices, such as “we will develop a clear and robust plan”.

By utilising behavioural science, communications can influence behaviour and drive business outcomes, not just build awareness. Yet, compared to marketeers, not many PR professionals spend time on social psychology or behavioural economics.

Good evaluation, embedded from the start, is critical for learning what works, improving over time, and demonstrating impact. And yet, I have seen more self-justification dressed up as evaluation rather than appetite for genuine learning.

4. Navigating a modern crisis

How should you communicate when the pressure is highest and the stakes matter most? We should begin with an often overlooked truth: the single biggest determinant of success in a crisis is how well prepared the organisation is beforehand. That means exploring proactive brand and reputation management, as well as how to identify risks early and judge which issues could escalate.

I’ll also look at what a great crisis plan looks like in action, drawing on real-world examples to explore the importance of grip and leadership, message discipline, and anticipating how a story will evolve.

Finally, I’d like to look at the latest techniques for building resilience to mis and disinformation, such as inoculation theory or ‘pre-bunking’.

5. Engaging employees and shaping the voice of leaders

Employees feel overloaded and seem to expect employers to have a view not only on company strategy but on global politics.

Great internal communication creates clarity, builds trust and drives performance. So why do so many internal communicators feel they’re treated as a notice board rather than a driver of organisational success? How can internal communicators complete the journey from broadcasting messages to fostering engagement and driving performance?

I’d also like to explore the evolving role of the CEO, not just as an internal leader, but as a visible public figure. CEOs are expected to be storytellers and presenters as well as strategists, and this doesn’t always come easy. Communicators need to help their principals find their voice, acting as both counsel and co-creator.

6. Leading and managing your own resilience

Leading communication functions in this complex, changing environment requires Four C’s: Clarity, Capability, Confidence, and Continuous Improvement.

Clarity means having a clear plan and ensuring everyone understands their role in delivering it. Capability is about the skills, structures and resources needed now and in the future. Confidence means creating the conditions where people feel empowered, supported and motivated to perform at their best. And Continuous Improvement is the mindset that asks not just “what worked?”, but “how can we do it better next week?” Together, these four pillars create the conditions for a high-performing communications function and I will explore each of them.

I’ll also be expanding on my recent LinkedIn series on how communications leaders can manage their own resilience and wellbeing under pressure and how you can get a seat at the top table in the first place.

7. Fostering innovation

Finally, we need a blueprint for a new AI-driven communications operating model. Traditional models have become obsolete almost overnight and leaders must respond. That doesn’t just involve “adopting AI” but reimagining the entire operating model for comms. We will look at how fostering a culture of innovation, experimentation and improvement has become a defining part of the communications leader’s role.

Drawing on my own experience developing the UK’s first cross-government GenAI tool, I want to make the case for a human-led approach to adopting new tools: one that starts with user needs, builds trust through transparency, and actively mitigates the ‘hidden risks’ that emerge when decisions are outsourced to opaque systems.

I believe the result can be a roadmap for embedding innovation as a safe and strategic collaborator.

What else?…

What would you add? Which of these seven skills feels most urgent in your world? What’s missing? Leave a comment below and I’ll prioritise the most-mentioned topics.

So, let’s get into it properly next week! I’m going to start with strategy and, more specifically, five common mistakes that add up to bad communications strategy.

Until then thanks for watching, reading or listening.

Please subscribe if you haven’t done so already and please share with other communicators who want to lead with clarity and cut through the noise.

Simon

Thanks for reading Cut Through! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

How prepared are you for a crisis? I have led the communications response to plane crashes, terrorist attacks, bankruptcies, riots and wars. Yet every time a crisis hits, I still get a sinking feeling in my stomach and a taste of adrenaline in my mouth. However prepared you think you are, you know that this is the moment when communication matters most and your skills are going to be tested to the limit.

In this episode, I explore five steps for an off-the-shelf crisis plan.

We like to think of ourselves as rational beings. Being "emotional" can even be a term of abuse, but the truth is human beings do not make decisions by weighing up the pros and cons of each option. We rely on mental shortcuts known as heuristics which let us make decisions quickly but also introduce predictable biases.  

In a high-speed media market, the competition for attention is being won by communicators who know how to harness these dynamics.

The number one rule of great communications is: know your audience. Yet most communicators still design messages for how they wish people thought, not how they actually do.

Decades of behavioural science research reveal that most human decisions are fast, emotional and unconscious - so why are so many communications campaigns still written for the slow, logical brain?

Here are ten behavioural science principles every communicator should know.

An important skill for any communications leader is presenting ideas with confidence. Yet most of us feel nervous when doing so. Maybe we even have a voice in our head telling us the audience is going to see through us.

In this episode of Cut Through!, I explore what a Spanish chicken farmer who fooled the Nazi High Command can teach us about presenting with confidence and I explain why you should be more confident than you feel.

In my final months leading UK Government Communications, people often asked me whether Keir Starmer’s communication should be more like Donald Trump’s.

So what are the lessons for government and communicators from how Donald Trump deals with the media and communicates with the American public?

Christmas isn’t Christmas until you’ve listened to at least one version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Here is my humble contribution to the genre…and a cautionary tale for communicators.

Why does communication feel so difficult today?

Our information environment has changed more quickly than our communications practice. To catch up, we need to explore what has changed and why.

Over the next four weeks, Cut Through! explores how communications has changed through the stories of four technological breakthroughs that reshaped our world: Google Search; the iPhone; the Facebook News Feed; and AI.

This is Part 1: The Wizards of Menlo Park

The central argument of Cut Through! is that our information environment has changed more quickly than our communications practice. To catch up, we need to understand what has changed and why.

Our information environment has become more democratised, fragmented, abundant, corroded and concentrated.

In this episode we look at two product launches from the 2000s - Facebook and the iPhone - and the consequences for communicators today.

The central argument of Cut Through! is that our information environment has changed more quickly than our communications practice. To catch up, we need to understand what has changed and why.

In this series I have argued that our information environment has become more: Democratised, Fragmented, Abundant, Corroded, and Concentrated.

Episode 3 looks at a change that was hardly noticed by social media users when it was introduced back in 2010, but which would fundamentally alter how we consume information, perhaps even how we perceive reality.

In this, the last of my series on how our media and information environment has changed, I look at AI and what it means for the future of communications.

Thanks for listening to Cut Through! please subscribe for free to receive new episodes and support my work.

Dario Amodei is the CEO and founder of the AI company Anthropic. When I was in Government Communications we chose Anthropic’s Claude large language model as our AI tool of choice, partly because we felt Anthropic took AI safety and security seriously.

So I was interested to read an essay Dario has just published on confronting AI safety and risks.

And having done so I want to strongly recommend it to you too. It is long, and knowing that people are time poor, I thought it might be helpful to share two short excerpts in full here. I hope they illustrate why I found the full article unsettling, even hair-raising, at times.

This episode looks at five practical AI actions communications leaders should focus on this year: How to understand what AI is saying about you, train an AI model, use AI for dialogue not output, scale AI tools successfully, and prepare for an AI deepfake crisis.

When you aren’t trusted, even your best decisions won’t cut through.

This episode looks at why trust matters, why it is eroding across government, business and media, and what the evidence tells us about how trust is built.

It also sets up a harder question: how do you build trust when almost every feature of today’s information environment works against you?

In this series, I’m looking at five ways organisations are responding to our changed information environment and modernising their communications operations to build trust.

This first episode is the Delivery Playbook.

It is a strategy built on the insight that in a world of abundant content and fragmented attention trust can be built, through local, relevant, and useful experiences.

It is transforming how UK Government is thinking about communicating with a sceptical public.

The Borrow Trust strategy.

If you want reach and credibility, then work with those who already have it. Build partnerships with credible voices who share your goals and values and command your audience’s attention and trust.

The same media fragmentation that makes it difficult to cut through with traditional channels, has also created an opening: thousands of micro-communities with trusted messengers.

By partnering with those messengers you can create great content for them, relevant messages for their audience, and increased trust, reach and attention for your brand. And that is our second Winning Strategy.

Is it the job of a communications professional to ‘persuade’ people, or is it to ‘inform’ people?

In a low-trust environment, where even the appearance of self-interested persuasion can be counterproductive, this has become a false choice.

When trust in politics, the media and business has declined rapidly, the winning strategy may be to be disarmingly, demonstrably and visibly trustworthy. This is the Transparency Playbook.

Co-creating trust is not about convincing people you are right, but about giving them a seat at the table.

The principle is simple. People are more likely to trust something they have helped to create, and they’re less likely to attack something shaped by their participation.

Done well, it creates not just a more informed audience, but advocates who will defend, promote and trust your organisation.

The Harness Distrust strategy doesn’t see a lack of trust as a problem to solve, but a fuel to burn.

For insurgents and challenger brands, tapping into grievance against the status quo is becoming the archetypal communications strategy.

Rather than seeking to win over the establishment, they are promoting their own agenda by railing against it.

Any challenger brand should be thinking about whether they can use it to their advantage. And any legacy brand should be war-gaming how it might be used against them.

Most communications teams do risk management in ways that suppress candour, reward optimism and miss the things that actually bring a project down.

The pre-mortem takes a different approach. Instead of asking “What could go wrong?”, it asks: “Imagine it is 12 months from today. The project has failed badly. Why?”

This small shift in framing has a big effect on the conversation.

Leaders generally want to communicate inside-to-out. They begin with the messages they want to tell people. Then wonder why nobody seems especially interested.

A narrative is different. It is a carefully structured argument rooted in what your audience cares about. It helps people understand you and the world differently.

Here's how to build one.

At one level it's straightforward. We recently invented a technology that creates language at almost zero cost. We employ people who write for us. Therefore, the new technology will replace those workers.

I have no doubt that AI is going to profoundly change communication roles. But replace us altogether? The more I work with AI the more I doubt this will be the case. At least, not for a while yet.

Here’s why.

Writing created the modern world. But today do we overestimate the importance of writing and overuse it.

It's worth remembering the limits of writing and the extraordinary power of speech.

And it’s worth considering that in a world of abundant text, in-person persuasion may have become more valuable still.

Measles is back. Not because we lack a vaccine, but because we lack immunity to misinformation.

So how should we as communications leaders respond?

We vaccinate against measles because prevention works better than cure. We should be applying the same logic to our information environment.

Pre-bunking measurably improves people’s ability to spot misinformation and reduces their propensity to share it.

Where do Members of Parliament get their news? Which social media, news sites, and podcasts do they consume? And which AI tools do they use? A new report reveals all.

If you’re not measuring communications, you don’t know it’s working. Yet our profession has an evaluation problem: we’re counting the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

So what does good communications evaluation look like?

Why would giving a train passenger a quiz question make them more likely to accept an excess fare? And what can that teach us about how to communicate bad news more effectively?

Procedural justice is the ideas that the process - how decisions are made and how people are treated - is more important to public trust than the actual outcome.

What can a traditional Chinese painting, an Austrian psychologist, and a Roman Emperor teach communications leaders about how to manage personal resilience?

Recognising you have more power to choose your response to events than you might think can be a powerful and liberating insight that boosts personal resilience and performance.

People are REALLY ANGRY because Gemma Collins appeared in a social media clip for the Department for Education. "Bizarre”, “tone-deaf”, “sickening” and “ridiculous”, said the critics.

Communications teams spend a great deal of time asking what they should say. They spend much less time asking who should say it.

So what does this row reveal about the importance of the messenger? Is it worth working with content creators? And if so, how can you avoid a backlash?

“Germany calling. This is Germany calling.”

Throughout the Second World War those words echoed through the static of Britain’s airwaves. The clipped tones of William Joyce, better known as Lord Haw-Haw, were broadcast daily from Nazi Germany with the aim of weakening Allied morale.

But in a conflict today, would we spot enemy influence so easily? What do foreign influence operations look like in a world of algorithmic recommendations and AI mediation? And as Europe boosts its defence budgets, should we also be spending more on protecting our information environment?

Can a Japanese secret to long life help you live past 100? Probably not. But it might help you to identify what kind of communications roles are going to give you energy, be worth periods of strain and be a good fit for your skills.