Communications work often looks clean on paper. In practice, it rarely is.
Reflections, lessons learned and practical guidance drawn from real communications work. These insights focus on what actually helps, what holds up under pressure and what I’ve learned working alongside leaders, public safety professionals and communications teams.
Latest insights
The media isn’t your adversary. They’re your most direct connection to the people you serve. When a wildfire burned through an area north of Two Harbors earlier this month, destroying homes and buildings and forcing hundreds of evacuations, one person …
Trust is built slowly, one small decision at a time. It can be spent in an instant. Target spent years building emotional trust with consumers — not just as a retailer, but as a company people felt reflected their values, communities and identity. Then …
Communicators are sometimes the worst at communicating. I have proof. My husband Mike is a former ski racer. I am not. When we met, I was a nervous, shaky skier who spoke to herself the entire way down a run and snowplowed where everyone else was carvi …
When crisis never stops, the way we communicate has to change. Most crisis plans assume an arc: incident → response → recovery. But for many public safety organizations and communicators today, there is no recovery phase. The next emergency arrives bef …
When a first responder is killed, how you communicate in the aftermath defines how a community heals. Line-of-duty deaths are among the most demanding communications challenges any public safety agency will face. The stakes are high, the grief is real, …
In a crisis, clear and consistent messaging isn’t a luxury. It’s the difference between a community that recovers and one that unravels. One week after an EF-4 tornado killed five people and obliterated dozens of homes in Greenfield, Iowa — a town of 2 …
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