Absolutes on absolutes

In communications, like other job functions, the to do list doesn’t go away. There are always projects, new requests, new priorities, and fires to put out.

I’ve spent a decent portion of my career leading teams, and a large part of coaching people is helping them understand what is important and how they should spend their time. I love a good urgent/important matrix as a rough guideline.

The matrix above is helpful in a vacuum. The reality is that communications has a lot of stakeholders across different lines of business within an organization — from sales, to marketing, to biz dev, to the executive team. It’s a blessing and a curse.

A cross-functional role like communications is one that can make a meaningful impact across the whole company. Many roles are siloed. On the other hand (and understandably), every stakeholder thinks their thing is the most important thing.

Definitionally, that is not true. 

If everything is of equal importance, nothing is important.

At some point, you have to choose — choose what to prioritize, choose how to allocate your time, choose what not to do. 

Stand for something

I thought about this idea — if everything is important, nothing is — as it relates to communications in two ways.

The first is talking with press. I do a lot of media training as part of my day to day, and a lot of executives are inclined to try to get every key message or make every point in every answer. Like prioritizing, if every answer to every question tries to say everything at once, odds are, you’re not really saying anything at all. And that does not make for a great interview.

The other is brand. I’m not quite a Lulu Cheng Meservey in that you need to be controversial to succeed (though obviously, she knows what she’s talking about), but I do firmly believe that if your brand tries to be everything to everyone you are ostensibly nothing to no one. 

You have to choose. What does your company do? Based on your work, what do you stand for? Why should people care about what you’re building? There will always be critics who are unwilling to engage in any sort of intellectually honest debate (Hi Twitter and politics!) — trying to satiate those people or accommodate them in your brand messaging is a fool’s errand. They will never agree with you. They will never listen to you. They will never engage in good faith.

So don’t worry about them.

I do think listening and internalizing criticism is healthy (if levied in good faith, which is increasingly rare in The Discourse) and necessary for a functioning communications program. It’s important to know where you might get hit so you can proactively guard against it, but that doesn’t mean bending the core of your brand to please everyone.

No company is everything to everyone. Those who try to do so end up communicating nothing at all.