It’s time to stop: some guidance for #CommsPros in the current chaos

by Mike Klein, Editor-in-Chief, Strategic:

As the world moves from crisis to chaos, what can communication leaders and professionals do?  

How do we make ourselves relevant, central, and critical – even as our organizations and communities attempt to navigate a world where assumptions are rapidly going out the window?

The first thing we need to do – before we start changing things, generating things, or planning things, is to look at what we need to stop:

In my view, we need to:

1. Stop being complacent
2. Stop thinking things will go “back to normal”. 
3. Stop believing that our organizations will be immune to the changes happening in the larger political and cultural picture
4. Stop acting like we’re advocates for employees and representatives of their interests
5. Stop generating content for content’s sake – unless you really need to maintain the continuity of specific channels and activities
6. Stop seeing AI as a content machine

Why stop?  

We need a mindshift that will allow us to be agile and effective as the assumptions around us change.

The future has always been uncertain, but now things have become substantially more unpredictable.

It’s not just a Donald Trump and Elon Musk phenomenon.  It’s also Brian Chesky and Jamie Dimon, and soon many more around the world.

Business leaders worldwide are taking this chaos as an opportunity to reassert their authority and shift towards a more directive tone.

We need to recognize that this reversion towards command and control is understandable given the unpredictability we’re seeing. 

Rather than being purely a shift towards “management-by-fear”, it can also catalyze leaders and employees to mobilize together to face those fears.

We also need to recognize that a shift towards command and control doesn’t mean the end of more enlightened, agile, and participative communication approaches. 

But it does mean that we need to align those approaches with the shift of culture and context we’re currently experiencing.

We need to shift our tone as well as our tactics.

But that doesn’t mean going back to 2019…or 1919.

We can help our organizations and communities be more resilient and responsive in the face of this chaos.

We need to stand firm in the knowledge that our skills and leadership are needed more than ever.  

But the time to position ourselves is now.  

That’s why we need to take a second to stop – before we lean into some new challenges and opportunities.  This is a crucial moment for our profession.

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Mike Klein is Editor-in-Chief of Strategic, founder of #WeLeadComms, and a communication consultant specializing in strategy, research and making the most of internal influence. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Internal Communication and the Centre for Strategic Communication Excellence, and holds an MBA from London Business School.

Written by: Editor