Macnamara's Measurement Handbook: Five Lessons Comms Teams Can Use Now

By Amara Osei

Distinguished Professor Jim Macnamara's new "Handbook for Planning and Evaluating Communication" (Archipelago Press, 2026) offers no magic metric and no proprietary silver bullet — and that restraint is precisely the pitch. Johna Burke, CEO and global managing director of AMEC (the Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication), read the handbook before publication and extracted five lessons he urges every communication team to apply.

Burke's framing is blunt about the industry's gap: advice telling communication professionals to be more strategic and demonstrate value is plentiful; practical guidance on delivery is not. Macnamara, a Member of the Order of Australia, supplies that practical guidance, drawn from decades of research rather than a fashionable formula. Burke also discloses that Macnamara is a contributor to AMEC — a relationship he says he discloses "proudly, without compromising my professional judgment." Readers may weigh that endorsement accordingly.

What does the handbook tell teams to stop doing?

The first lesson: stop planning before understanding the problem. A communication plan is not the starting point; understanding the problem is. Macnamara challenges the tendency to jump into tactics before examining organizational objectives, stakeholder needs and the evidence behind assumptions. As Burke puts it, a beautifully executed campaign solving the wrong problem is still a failure.

Before approving a plan, teams should answer three questions:

• What organizational objective are we supporting?
• What do we know about stakeholders, and how do we know it?
• What evidence supports our approach?

If the answers are assumptions dressed as insights, do the research.

Why does evaluation belong at the beginning?

Too many teams consider evaluation when the final report is due — by which point the chance to learn, adapt and improve has passed. Macnamara structures evaluation around formative research, process evaluation and summative evaluation, making it part of managing communication rather than documenting it. Burke recommends three checkpoints: set baselines, objectives and intended outcomes before; monitor progress and adjust during; evaluate outcomes, contribution and lessons learned after.

Can you explain why your activities should work?

Theory of change — the logic connecting activities to outcomes — sounds academic, but its central question is simple: why should our activities create the change we want? Coverage, content and engagement do not automatically produce awareness, trust or behavior change. Macnamara also distinguishes contribution from attribution; claiming exclusive credit for every positive outcome undermines credibility rather than building it.

His suggested test: complete the statement "We believe [activity] will contribute to [outcome] because [evidence]," then stress-test the assumptions. If the connection cannot be explained, Burke warns, you may have a list of activities rather than a strategy.

What is the difference between measurement and evaluation?

Measurement tells us what happened; evaluation tells us what it means; learning turns understanding into better decisions. Macnamara advocates combining the three as MEL (measurement, evaluation and learning) — a discipline Burke suggests recalling whenever another impressive dashboard lands in your inbox. Every report should answer what happened, why it matters and what should be done differently. Reporting that ends with numbers rather than insights is unfinished work.

What should leadership actually receive?

The fifth lesson: recommendations, not just reports. Macnamara argues communication professionals should help organizations understand risks, identify opportunities and make better decisions — and AI raises the stakes. As Burke notes, reports can now be generated faster than ever, but speed does not guarantee accuracy, insight or sound judgment. Leadership reports should close with the evidence, the implication and a concrete recommendation.

Burke's takeaway: measurement and evaluation are not specialist activities alongside communication; they are fundamental to doing communication well. His closing instruction to teams is short — buy the handbook, discuss it, challenge existing practices, and use it.