‘Constant change and disruption’ are the new normal for communicators

“Constant change and disruption” are the new normal, he said in a Simply Communicate webcast from Eurocomm. “Disruption isn’t an excuse for incompetence. You can make more mistakes, but you have to learn from them.”

John Smythe, author of “The CEO: The Chief Engagement Officer” and co-founder of Engage for Change, added that communicators aren’t just responsible for convincing themselves, either. Smythe suggested that communicators have to push their colleagues—particularly executives—to step out of their comfort zones and encourage bottom-up engagement. So far, that hasn’t really happened much.

“We’ve been preaching to the converted,” he said of the speakers at the International Association of Business Communicators conference. “The moment you step into the C-suite, you get a lot of blank looks.”

Leaders should share decision-making with their employees, Smythe suggested. They should be “guides, not gods,” he said, in that they’re “the enablers of other people’s thinking.”

Enabling the ‘game changers’