Authored by : Hardik Desai Sr. Vice President, Adfactors PR
“We don’t have the bandwidth.”It is one of the most familiar statements in the communications profession. I have heard it throughout my career, and I have said it myself. There are, of course, moments when it is entirely justified. The pace of communication has accelerated; expectations have expanded and the demands on PR professionals have never been greater.But after nearly two decades in the profession, I have started to question whether bandwidth is always a capacity problem.Sometimes, I suspect, it is a focus problem.There is a useful concept in energy management called Phantom Load. An appliance can appear to be switched off and still consume electricity while remaining connected to the power supply. One device makes little difference. Multiply it across a household and the invisible consumption becomes significant.I believe communication has its own Phantom Load.It is the time, attention and intellectual energy consumed by activity that may be legitimate but does not necessarily create proportionate value.And this is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable.Our profession has become exceptionally good at counting activity. We count coverage, impressions, reach, media interactions, campaigns, deliverables and hit ratios. These metrics have a role. They help us understand performance.But there is a danger when what is easiest to count becomes what we value most.A high volume of coverage does not necessarily mean we influenced the conversation that mattered.A strong hit ratio does not necessarily mean we focused on the most consequential opportunities.And a large team working on an account does not necessarily mean the client is receiving better counsel.I have been in meetings with eight or ten people where, in hindsight, two or three could have had the conversation and reached the same outcome. There is nothing inherently wrong with a large meeting. Sometimes multiple perspectives are essential.But ten people spending an hour in a room is ten hours of organisational capacity.The question is simple: what did those additional hours create?The same question applies to seniority.There are important meetings, critical discussions, crisis situations, business opportunities etc. where the presence of a senior communication professional can materially change the quality of the engagement. There are senior editor engagement programmes where relationships are strengthened precisely because senior people invest their time.But there are also occasions when a senior person is present simply because seniority is expected to be visible.That distinction matters.A senior professional spending half a day at a press conference or two days at a media FAM is not merely spending few hours or days. They are making a choice about where their experience, judgement and relationships are best deployed.Perhaps that time could have been spent advising a CEO, understanding a client's business challenge, developing a younger professional, building a strategic relationship or identifying a reputation risk before it became a problem.This is not an argument against activity. It is an argument for proportionality.The same applies to measurement.For years, the industry has been under pressure to demonstrate value, yet we often continue to present the most visible outputs as evidence of impact. The conversation is slowly changing, with growing emphasis on connecting communication measurement to business objectives and outcomes.The more important question is therefore not how much did we do?It is:What changed because we did it?That is a very different question.It requires us to think beyond volume and towards relevance. Beyond activity and towards influence. Beyond reporting what happened and towards understanding what it meant.I believe this matters particularly for the next generation of PR professionals.Young professionals entering the industry today will work in an environment where AI can increasingly automate production, reporting and routine execution. Their advantage will not come from simply being able to do more work.It will come from knowing which work deserves to be done.That requires judgement.And judgement develops when people have the space to think, question, understand context and engage with the business behind the communication challenge.It also places a responsibility on senior professionals.As we become more experienced, our value should not be measured by how many meetings we attend or how many pieces of work we personally review. It should increasingly be measured by the quality of the decisions we influence and the capability we build around us.I have not always got this right myself. There have been meetings I did not need to attend, work I could have delegated and operational issues I could have stepped away from. Experience teaches you that being involved can feel like being useful.They are not always the same thing.Leadership is ultimately about leverage.This is why I think the Phantom Load of PR deserves a wider conversation—not as a criticism of how our industry operates, but as a question about how we want the profession to evolve.For HR leaders, it raises questions about how jobs are designed and whether talented people have enough space for meaningful and developmental work.For senior practitioners, it raises questions about where experience creates the greatest value.For younger professionals, it offers an important lesson: being busy is not the same as being valuable.And for all of us, it raises a more fundamental question about what we choose to reward.Do we reward volume or relevance?Participation or contribution?Activity or impact?More people or the right people?More work or better thinking?After nearly 20 years in communication, I have become convinced that our most valuable resource is not simply time.It is focused attention.So perhaps the next time we say, “We don’t have the bandwidth,” the first question should not be “Who else do we need?”It should be:“Where is our bandwidth going?”And then the question that matters even more:“Is that where it creates the most value?”Because the future of communication will not be defined by how much activity we can generate.It will be defined by the quality of attention we bring to the things that matter.And perhaps the most strategic thing we can do with our bandwidth is not to find more of it.It is to stop wasting the bandwidth we already have.DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and theprpost.com does not necessarily subscribe to it.
