Led, Not Leased
Fixing the Marcomms Governance Gap in Qatar’s Landscape
I’ve been working for over 20 years in Qatar and I’ve witnessed the marketing and communications landscape evolve at an incredible pace. Government communication has become sharper, mandates have grown larger, and institutions now play an increasingly strategic role in shaping the nation’s reputation on the global stage.
Yet, beneath the progress, a critical area keeps moving backward.
The Lease Cycle
Many institutions today continue to rely heavily on external and embedded teams.
Instead of partnering with agencies for their expertise, strategy, and added value, they have turned them into resource pipelines, extensions of HR rather than strategic partners. It has become the default shortcut to bypass recruitment challenges, fill ad hoc requirements, and meet nationalization targets without adding to official headcount. Because outsourced staff are treated as operational expenses, they do not appear in the institution’s official headcount, they simply appear as a line item, not a person. On top of all that, embedded teams also offer operational comfort. They stay neutral to internal politics and are easier to manage within complex hierarchies.
All stakeholders involved know this, yet it continues, a silent understanding that keeps the system moving but not improving.
Outsourcing is a strong business practice across the world, particularly for support services. But in the case of marketing and communications, it doesn’t work that way.
The marketing and communication function is not a support service. It is one of the most complex and cross functional domains within any organization. It sits at the intersection of leadership, operations, culture, and public perception, requiring strategic depth, creative insight, analytical skill, and cross departmental collaboration all at once. Yet in many organizations, and even from a government national skilling perspective, it continues to be treated as a generalized resource management function. While this approach may solve short term problems, it carries a long term cost: eroding institutional capability, weakening governance, and creating a culture of dependency.
This is where the problem moves inward > The over reliance on external support did not just shape how organizations operate, it reshaped what is inside them.
What Happened on the Inside
The real issue is not just outsourcing, it is what happened internally. Core Marcomms teams in many institutions have become increasingly thin, with generalized roles, limited specialization, and minimal strategic ownership. Internal teams often take on coordination roles rather than leadership ones, acting as bridges between the agency and the institution instead of driving direction and governance.
This structure weakens internal systems.
It creates an over dependence on external support while eroding institutional memory and accountability. When internal teams are built to coordinate rather than lead, communication loses its sense of direction. The result is a cycle of short term fixes over long term plans, campaigns instead of continuity, activity instead of strategy.
The Agency Dilemma
And the challenge doesn’t end inside institutions, it extends to the agency world. Many strong marcom agencies are increasingly dependent on these embedded team contracts for their revenue. And in doing so, they are drifting away from their original purpose, strategy, creativity, and innovation. Instead of setting trends, leading campaigns, and driving creative disruption, agencies are being pulled into a staffing model that turns them into recruitment houses. The result is an ecosystem where the entities that once fueled innovation are now trapped in administrative contracts, managing manpower instead of building ideas.
This shift hurts both sides. Institutions lose creative momentum, and agencies lose their core mandate.
The Governance Gap
Effective governance in communication isn’t about more control or bureaucracy. It’s about creating clarity, structure, and accountability, a system that connects strategy, people, and execution. Governance ensures that every message, campaign, and initiative aligns with institutional objectives. It gives leadership visibility, enables measurement, and embeds institutional learning that lasts beyond individuals or vendors. Without governance, communication becomes fragmented.
Different departments run their own initiatives, external partners pull in different directions, and leadership loses the ability to see, let alone steer, the full picture.
From Dependency to Direction
This is where transformation begins.
I’ve been working with institutions across Qatar to help them reimagine how their communication departments operate, not as administrative units but as strategic systems.
Through this work, three foundational governance blueprints have emerged.
Each provides a different path depending on the organization’s structure, maturity, and objectives.
Acquisition Model for organizations focused on growth and expansion. Communication acts as a commercial engine that drives measurable results and supports business development.
Reputation Driven Model: For institutions where credibility and stakeholder trust are the true currency. Communication focuses on transparency, consistency, and building long term confidence.
Transformation Model: For complex organizations balancing both commercial and institutional priorities. It integrates acquisition and reputation objectives under one unified communication framework.
These are foundational blueprints, not fixed templates. They must be tailored to each organization’s objectives, leadership style, and maturity level. What works for a bank will differ from what a public agency or foundation requires.
Building from Within
The ultimate goal of governance is not to replace agencies or consultants, it’s to ensure that they operate within a system that is led, not leased. External talent will always play a role, especially in markets where specialized skills are still developing. But that talent should be integrated as part of an institutional growth model, one that transfers knowledge, builds structure, and strengthens internal capability over time.
Real progress happens when organizations invest in the inside, in leadership, clarity, and systems that sustain consistency beyond any one project or consultant.
The Way Forward
The conversation around communication in Qatar is shifting. Institutions are realizing that sustainable impact doesn’t come from campaigns, it comes from systems. The next phase of evolution won’t be defined by how governed, empowered, and capable the communication function becomes.
It’s time to move from dependency to direction,
from coordination to leadership.
