If you’ve been in the business a while, then you’re well aware that PR people are paid to take care of things for which no one is really responsible. I mean, who else handles everything from vague requests to “cooperate” that aren’t addressed to anyone in particular, to cryptic customer complaints based on mystical facts and figures, to that yearly yet fateful question so delightfully chock-full of pitfalls: How should we design our Christmas card? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. As communicators, our very job description includes assuming responsibility for things for which no one person could possibly be personally responsible. Who seriously believes that an organization’s reputation hinges on one individual or, for that matter, that it can be casually shaped from an Archimedean point provided by the communications department.

Continue reading “Why communications isn’t a bullshit job” →

Life is not a math problem. You can’t solve for X and find one correct answer. The human experience is an incessant interaction with a rather unpredictable world. Mother nature does what she pleases while the people we meet follow their own passions and desires. Surprises are inevitable. French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre used what was for him a rather unusual example to explain this phenomenon: “In a football match, everything is complicated by the presence of the other team.”

Continue reading “Practice, practice, practice…and then forget it all! – how jazz can inspire agile communications management” →