1
Engagement Strategy
Communication, positioning and reputation-risk strategies rooted in your specific social, political, and cultural context, built on localized political-economy analysis and stakeholder intelligence.
Strategic Communications Advisory
Strategy is not
Strategy is not
the hard part.
Context is.
Practical Context is a specialized advisory practice built on a simple observation: communications strategy fails when it ignores political reality, and sound initiatives stall without politically informed communications. We advise multilateral institutions, governments, nonprofits, and enterprises on how to land good ideas in complex and high-risk environments.
What We Do
Advisory grounded in how change actually happens.
Four ways we work with leaders and teams. Every assignment is customized to the political and institutional reality you operate in. No pro-forma templates, no off-the-shelf frameworks, no generic AI-generated solutions.
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Coalitions for Policy Change
Moving reform initiatives from good intentions to durable change by helping you map the terrain, mobilize allies, anticipate resistance, respond to grievance, and stay clear-eyed about what is feasible.
3
Training & Problem-Solving
Workshops for your frontline staff and senior leaders to brainstorm live problems, sharpen political instinct, and improve stakeholder engagement skills, customized to your organization's specific ecosystem.
4
Mentoring & Coaching
Ongoing counsel for your communications and stakeholder-engagement teams, guiding them on strategy, reviewing major outputs, and helping them grow into trusted advisors for you and your institution.
Expertise
Sumir Lal
Principal
linkedin.com/in/sumir-lal
Sumir Lal advises and coaches leaders on strategic communications challenges where political complexity, stakeholder sensitivity, and institutional credibility are all in play. His distinctive specialization sits at the intersection of political economy and communications strategy, a pairing that helps identify how good ideas can survive contact with reality.
A former Director of External Affairs at the World Bank, he spent 25 years leading strategic communications across the developing world and counseling governments and institutional leadership. He began his career as an award-winning journalist in India.
Sumir has taught at the World Bank–Annenberg Summer Institute for Reform Communications at the University of Southern California and at the Indian School of Business. His publications include the much-cited Can Good Economics Ever Be Good Politics?
Good ideas do not run by themselves. The task is to find the traction that will make them move.
Practical Context Advisory Group
Contact
Let's talk.
Most of this work begins with an introduction and a conversation. If you have a challenge you'd like to think through, send a note — it comes directly to Sumir.