The trust recession: why the best communications work happens before there's something to communicate

This year, I've noticed a pattern.

On paper, the projects I've worked on have had very little in common. One involved preparing an organisation to communicate confidently in the event of a cyber incident. Another focused on helping an organisation redefine its strategic narrative during a period of significant change. Others involved supporting leaders through intense media scrutiny, strengthening stakeholder confidence and helping organisations articulate their purpose more clearly.

The deliverables were different too. Crisis communications playbooks. Strategic narratives. Key messages. Media support. Stakeholder engagement plans.

Yet despite those differences, every project eventually arrived at the same conversation: How do we build trust before it's tested?

The trust recession

For purpose-driven organisations, trust isn't simply another communications objective. It underpins the licence to operate.

Every donation, government contract, partnership, volunteer hour and media interview depends on people believing an organisation is capable, credible and acting in the public interest. Unlike businesses, whose success is ultimately measured by what they sell, purpose-driven organisations rely on relationships. Their ability to create impact depends on people choosing to believe in them.

That's always been true. What has changed is how quickly that trust can be built - or lost.

Public expectations are higher than ever. Scrutiny is constant. Social media rewards outrage over nuance. A single media story, governance issue or privacy incident can shape perceptions long before the full picture is understood. Good intentions are no longer enough; organisations are increasingly expected to demonstrate transparency, accountability and competence in everything they do.

In many ways, we're experiencing a trust recession. Not because trust has disappeared, but because organisations have to work harder than ever to earn it, maintain it and recover it when it's tested.

Looking beyond the brief

Interestingly, nobody has asked me to help them "build trust".

They ask for a communications strategy. A media response. A website refresh. Key messages. A crisis communications plan.

Those are the briefs, but they rarely tell the whole story.

One conversation in particular has stayed with me. A client had been receiving a series of difficult media enquiries. We ended up spending very little time discussing the wording of the responses. Instead, the discussion quickly shifted to a much bigger concern.

“We're not just worried about tomorrow's headline. We're worried about what our staff, partners and the people we support will think when they read it,” they said.

So, the media response was only a small part of the issue. The key concern was whether the organisation had already built enough trust that people would give it the benefit of the doubt.

I don't think that conversation was unusual. In fact, one of the things that's struck me most this year is how quickly communications conversations stop being about communications.

A discussion that begins with a media enquiry often ends up being about organisational values. A request for key messages turns into a conversation about identity. A website project becomes an opportunity to define what an organisation wants to be known for over the next decade.

The communications challenge organisations bring me is rarely the communications challenge they actually have.

Are we investing in the right work?

That observation has changed the way I think about strategic communications.

The organisations that communicate well in difficult moments rarely succeed because they've produced the perfect holding statement overnight. More often, they've invested months - or years - in building a clear organisational narrative, aligning leaders around shared messages, strengthening stakeholder relationships and creating consistency between what they say, what they do and what people experience.

Yet much of our time and energy is still consumed by the urgent. Campaigns. Media opportunities. Content calendars. Stakeholder updates.

Those things all matter. But they're often treated as the work itself, rather than the outcome of deeper strategic thinking.

The organisations I've seen navigate uncertainty most effectively have usually done the harder work first. They've invested in defining who they are before explaining what they do. They've built trust before asking people to rely on it. They've created clarity before they needed to communicate under pressure.

When those foundations are in place, everything else becomes easier. Campaigns have greater credibility. Organisational change is easier to explain. Difficult conversations become less adversarial. Stakeholders are more willing to give an organisation the benefit of the doubt because they already understand who it is and what it stands for.

Without those foundations, every communications activity works harder than it needs to.

Communications support work before you need it

If there's one lesson I'll take from this year's work, it's that the most valuable communications work rarely happens in the middle of a crisis.

It happens before one.

It happens when an organisation invests time in defining its narrative before launching a new strategy. When leaders agree on what they stand for before the difficult interview arises. When relationships with stakeholders are nurtured before tough decisions need to be made. When a crisis communications plan is developed before the phone rings.

That work can feel difficult to prioritise because the payoff isn't immediate. There will always be another campaign to launch, another media enquiry to answer or another deadline to meet.

But perhaps that's exactly why it matters.

The organisations that emerge from difficult moments with their reputation intact are rarely the ones that communicated brilliantly on the day. They're the ones that spent years building trust before they ever needed to rely on it.

That's why I think the best communications work happens before there's something to communicate.