So, you’re the Prime Minister. Your chief advisor is under attack for ignoring travel restrictions during a global pandemic. Thousands are calling for a resignation to prove there is not one set of rules for the powerful, and another set for the rest. What do you do?

Hold a news conference, express your continued support for your advisor and push ahead with a controversial plan to re-open schools in a matter of days.

Change the channel, turn up the volume.

This is my new website. You can come here for random musings on matters that I have found interesting through-out my eclectic career. This includes politics, journalism, communications, message development, speech-writing and crisis communications.

I’m called on at times to deliver media training workshops and sessions on writing in government. You can find notes from these sessions in the Presentations section.

All views are my own.

Ian

If there’s one thing a global pandemic can teach you is the need for good, clear messaging. This past week, Boris Johnson’s UK government ran into criticism when some of its messaging on what they wanted people to do was less than precise. Here’s the original government messaging:

The initial public messaging was exceptionally clear. People knew exactly what to do: nothing. Stay at home. Then came the desire to loosen restrictions on activity and get some parts of the British economy back in business.

The message was changed to something that was arguably far less clear.

It always strikes me as odd that some of the world’s most brilliant people are also some of the most tone deaf when it comes to dealing with the world. I’m sure they understand there are rules. I suspect they don’t think those rules apply to them.

A source close to Dominic Cummings confirms he travelled from London to Durham to self-isolate with coronavirus symptons.

Source: Coronavirus: Dominic Cummings visited parents’ home while he had symptoms – BBC News

Back in January 2020 (which seems like many years ago) I made a presentation to a conference on corporate governance. They asked for a “tactical toolkit” to help board members navigate through difficult times of transition.

Here’s what I came up with:

One of the most useful books I’ve read on the subject of corporate communications is Sidney Dekker’s Drift Into Failure (CRC Press, 2011). The book explores how large corporations responsible for managing complex systems frequently fail in the same, predictable ways. One of Dekker’s central conclusions is that often, these organizations are victims of their own success.

“Success narrows perceptions, changes attitudes, reinforces a single way of doing business, breeds overconfidence in the adequacy of current practices and reduces the acceptance of opposing points of view.”

Dekker, Drift Into Failure, Pg. 96.

Dekker digs deep into organizational failures, like the Challenger and Columbia accidents at NASA. He believes a lack of deference to expertise contributes to a certain organizational brittleness.

He says organizational systems which don’t embrace diversity of opinion and expertise will cease to explore new things and learn new things.

To avoid the brittleness that comes with success, I suggest the following:

• Listen more than you talk;
• Break down complex tasks into simple parts;
• Promote autonomy;
• Adopt a non-hierarchical structure–allow anyone to stop the assembly line;
• Always be a teacher and a student.

I’ve spent over 20 years in public and private broadcasting, then over a decade in Executive Council, Government of Saskatchewan. I’ve served as a communications director, a speech writer and a Special Advisor in Cabinet Planning. I provide a course to the Saskatchewan Public Service Commission on preparing for media interviews. I’ve also done presentations on writing and crisis communications to various audiences in and out of government.