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Built with insights from behavioral scientists worldwide. Practical learning for leaders responsible for communication and trust
Comms is often the conduit to ideas, concerns & solutions from adjacent departments like Finance, ESG, R&D and Operations. Yet would you believe complex CCO challenges can be solved in similar fashion?
The modern Chief Communications Officer (CCO) must innovate, utilize critical thinking and problem solving skills to inform strategies, and develop heuristics & SOPs to gain a competitive advantage in the market. Speed, clarity, and wisdom underscore ones ability to navigate the current dynamic business environment. The stakes couldn't be higher, and Executive Committee confidence is fickle.
Amongst heightened uncertainty, risk, and volatility, it's unsurprising why so few global CCOs exist in the first place. Many Comms SVPs cannot effectively prove their impact under prolonged CEO scrutiny, justify their budgets under CFO pressure, and consistently earn their coveted seat among the C-suite. comms leaders have struggled to earn trust at the top. The AI Age has stifled lateral career-pathing, instead bolstering the dystopian narrative: "In the near-term, AI will handle communications related organizational responsibilities."
The solutions to these systemic challenges are tethered to the skills required for CCOs to thrive in the future of work; uniquely human, irreplaceable by AI, and if applied wisely by systemization, the impacts are astonishing. Mastering these skills means incorporating a range of frameworks, methodologies, tools, and advanced assessment techniques—from adjacent industries. They are: Decision Quality & Judgement.
Correlation ≠ causation. It's a term you've certainly heard, but did you know how profoundly it impacts CCOs? It's one of many fallacies that fly "under the radar" in boardrooms, strategy sessions, and performance reporting.
After combined decades of our founder's experience in measurement & evaluation, working with Fortune 500 C-Suite leadership, multinationals, NGOs, associations, and agencies across virtually every industry—iconic, beloved brands—we were confronted by an ugly truth plaguing Marketing, PR, Corporate Affairs & Communications leadership: Enormous, capital-intensive decisions are being made on assumptions, bias, misconceptions, myths, and indefensible logic-gaps. Breakdowns in the very laws of business physics.
It was so unbelievable that we invested in a multi-year, six-figure, truth-finding mission to test our hypothesis and curate solutions. As survivors of witnessing this jarring truth up close, we couldn't be more excited to have packaged the only solution to these worsening conditions of risk and eroded confidence—the likes of which our mentors, colleagues, scholars & academics warn is putting our professional standing at risk.
Our dread turned to angst when we observed that due to cognitive limitations, our solutions fell on "deaf ears" as fear, uncertainty & doubt gripped colleagues. So we've fixed our sights at the nexus of power: the C-suite. We've packaged our workshops for CCOs who've welcomed us as partners building much-needed capacity for critical skills tied to growth.
In an era where execution happens at the speed of AI, carefully considering direction matters more than speed. But to master both is the highest level of global communications performance.
It's really simple. We do workshops. "Workshops?! That's it?!" —YES. After exploring the best format for CCOs to have their minds blown with the level of intelligence capacity we build, and after proudly facilitating some "Aha!" & "Eureka!" moments. It's abundantly clear that the familiar model has proven fertile ground to build neural connections, and drive meaningful change. Some even call them "anti-workshops", throwing the "rule-book" out, and replacing it with decision architecture for CCOs.
Here's 3 reasons why CCOs choose to work with us, repeatedly:
• 🔭The real power of questions is experienced when you answer questions nobody asked.
• 🧠 No hypotheticals. We work on your actual context, modelling real business decisions.
• 🧩Keep it all. That's right—incorporate what you learn into your own IP & "secret sauce".
Don't get us wrong, it's no walk in the park. CCOs navigate increasingly complex dynamics. There are a few things you'll need to bring to the table: a growth mindset, intellectual humility, and some sort of real decision. It could be a problem, challenge, or obstacle which must be overcome. A mandate, a scenario, campaign or initiative. We simply work on real-world problems because they come with real-world stakes. The higher, the better. Maybe it's simply a goal, like building trust within your executive committee, or proving the impact of comms efforts on the business. Whatever it is, you should foresee that overcoming the challenge has an impact on your career-pathing, your remuneration, or that of your team. It's also a great way to learn your story, your situation, and frame our interventions in a flattering light.
Previous workshop participants mentioned these were their favorite takeaways:
• 🔭 Two questions that helped them spot stakeholder shifts before any surprises
• 🧠 One bias check their team ran in five minutes, while setting goals & objectives
• 🧩 A decision frame they worked out - for when legal, operations, & leadership disagreed
Focusing on the challenge at hand, but looking at it through a fresh lens can be inspirational. Especially for leaders who have to manage PR & Comms related responsibilities, even though it may not be the only thing on their job description. One recent participant who was inspired by the new way to think about their work, and after our session she created progress indicators for relationship health with her stakeholders - making growth visible and valuable to everyone involved.
Our "raison d'etré" is to increase our CCO workshop participants in the one skill no AI will ever be able to replace. It's one word, that makes CCOs irreplaceable, invaluable, and highly respected. It's "Perspicacity" (noun): the ability to demonstrate the perception and understanding of subtleties others tend to miss—ie: acuteness of discernment.
• Become astutely aware of risks & uncertainty that others miss.
• Deeply nurture your professional skepticism, and use it—wisely.
• Elevate your thinking on strategy, heuristics, and decision quality.
Self-Starter Exercise ⟶ 20 minutes (For CCOs or direct reports): Prompt your AI copilot to help you connect the dots between these behavioral science concepts, and the work you're doing right now in communications: ▫ Authority bias ▫ Confirmation bias ▫ Availability heuristic ▫ Groupthink ▫ Anchoring ▫ Recency effect ▫ Survivorship bias ▫ Framing effects ▫ Loss aversion ▫ Social proof
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Our work is quite literally a labour of love, and our brand name personifies by our unique perspective as devoted and perpetual students of our craft. Piar (pronounced "PR") is the indo-turkic word for love (پیار) and we put that four-letter-word into everything we do.
It's was merely happenstance, when we observed the narrative surrounding Artificial Intelligence, and its pronounced mission to make our industry obsolete. That we were concluding our truth-seeking mission to deeply understand the ailments experienced by our industry peers. As a defiant "last stand" of the humans in PR & Comms, we curated an encyclopedia of frameworks, methodologies, tools, and techniques, which we apply, discerningly—alongside CCO partners driven by the same values.
Part of our ethos is being epic. So we're going to reverse engineer the Top 5 desired impact we strive to have on your life as a communications leader.
**Please reach out to us after the session so we can high-five you when you experience any of the following changes:
• Better sleep during crisis periods because response patterns hold up
• Communication strategies that survive contact with reality, and thrive
• Promotions, recognition, confidence & trust both recieved and created
• Elevating the profile of PR & Comms within your organization
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Time Pressure
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Information Gaps
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Competing Priorities
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Context Changes
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Context Shifts
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Reputation Stakes
When was the last time you questioned whether a decision you were confident about might actually be wrong?
If you have a specific example in mind, can recall a moment of doubt, a post-mortem, or a time you changed course after reflection—that signals intellectual humility and openness to examining assumptions.
How do you currently defend your strategic recommendations when the CFO or CEO pushes back?
If you express a sense of frustration with the gap between correlation and causation in your evidence, mention wishing you had better frameworks, or that you rely on intuition more than you'd like—that signals awareness of the problem we can help you solve.
If we spent three hours stress-testing a real decision you're facing right now, what would you bring to the table?
If you immediately have something like a campaign launch, crisis scenario, a measurement challenge, or stakeholder conflict, and you find yourself leaning in a bit—that signals you have live challenges and want to work to solve them, not just learn theory.
The free resources found below, as well as on our "Resources" page are developed for CCOs to effectively frame the narrative with their direct reports, and select cross-functional colleagues. We recommend giving them homework like reading, research, and self-starter exercises to prepare them for an upcoming workshop. Behavioral science concepts are terrific primers, and we recommend CCOs also brush up, even if it's just for fun!
If you've got this far, we'll take it as a signal to reciprocate in kind. Fill out the form below, and we'll have our founder reach out to answer questions. Most CCOs go on to complete their first workshop within 90 days.
