Comms 2.0 for Business 4.0: Shifting From Firefighting to Futuring
October 28, 2020 4:15 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Session Type: Leadership & Management
Answer this question honestly: How much of your time — each day, each week, each year — do you spend on each part of this spectrum? FIREFIGHTING ------------>> MANAGING ----------->> TRANSFORMING. If you’re not spending at least two-thirds of your time and resources on the far right, you are part of a going-out-of-business strategy that should be a wake-up call. And it’s time to change.
In this presentation, we will discuss the future of communications. Not pie-in-the-sky theories, but real evidence about how people will consume information three to five years from now and what that means to us as comms and PR leaders to ensure we’re not only competitive, but leading the way. We will discuss the reality that future success in communications will be defined in four key ways: being digital, mobile, measurable and engaging.
And this changes everything:
OUR PROFESSION
• Understanding human behavior including why communications caused the panic during the coronavirus versus other health scares.
• Understanding stakeholder engagement including activist employees and click-incentivized news media.
• Understanding new technology including how AI will change each of our jobs, our roles and our companies.
OUR PEOPLE
• Leading them to constant upskilling to address the fact that the half-life of a skill today is three to five years.
• Growing critical competencies, especially storytelling and research-and-insights capability.
• Retaining and recruiting including getting serious about diversity and making diverse leaders successful in our companies.
OUR PRIORITIES
• Changing how we spend our time including forcing ourselves out of our comfort zone, which is firefighting.
• Focusing on the future in everything we do, moving from seat-of-the-pants PR to acting as futurists who see around corners and steer our companies and our teams to arriving there.
This presentation will be experiential and example-based — with practical advice each participant can take back and apply immediately.
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
• Define strategic communications modeling and planning.
• Evaluate organization design and people development.
• Determine the art of story creation versus storytelling — and the balance between the two.
• Apply vision over execution — especially over firefighting.
In this presentation, we will discuss the future of communications. Not pie-in-the-sky theories, but real evidence about how people will consume information three to five years from now and what that means to us as comms and PR leaders to ensure we’re not only competitive, but leading the way. We will discuss the reality that future success in communications will be defined in four key ways: being digital, mobile, measurable and engaging.
And this changes everything:
OUR PROFESSION
• Understanding human behavior including why communications caused the panic during the coronavirus versus other health scares.
• Understanding stakeholder engagement including activist employees and click-incentivized news media.
• Understanding new technology including how AI will change each of our jobs, our roles and our companies.
OUR PEOPLE
• Leading them to constant upskilling to address the fact that the half-life of a skill today is three to five years.
• Growing critical competencies, especially storytelling and research-and-insights capability.
• Retaining and recruiting including getting serious about diversity and making diverse leaders successful in our companies.
OUR PRIORITIES
• Changing how we spend our time including forcing ourselves out of our comfort zone, which is firefighting.
• Focusing on the future in everything we do, moving from seat-of-the-pants PR to acting as futurists who see around corners and steer our companies and our teams to arriving there.
This presentation will be experiential and example-based — with practical advice each participant can take back and apply immediately.
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
• Define strategic communications modeling and planning.
• Evaluate organization design and people development.
• Determine the art of story creation versus storytelling — and the balance between the two.
• Apply vision over execution — especially over firefighting.