Socially Responsible and Collaborative Communication Leadership in the Age of Disruption

My youngest sons, Rayden and Reuben, offer each other hints to a math puzzle. These two thinkers already realize two brains are better than one.

Working together.

We struggle to reinvent our own personal lives, children’s education, and businesses. Articles abound describing corporate pivots.

Yet we can simplify. Collaboration is key to strategies most likely to create great value and impact in today’s world.

Alternate approaches suffer serious drawbacks:

Many join one side in our great culture wars. Pro-life or Pro-choice. Gun rights or Gun-control. Teammates and a shared enemy are clear. Rhetoric on one side stirs up animosity, and each side digs in their heals. Yet progress is measured in inches, like a WW I bunker battle with massive casualties and fleeting success.

I care about these issues. But my COVID-19 life leaves me too emotionally exhausted to align my business in a winnerless fray.

Offering Superficial Compassion only masks pain. I enjoy the comfort food for which demand is growing. Yet potential health implications are dire in a nation where 72% of adults are already unhealthily overweight, and life expectancy is shortest in the developed world.

And other pain masks are worse. Opiate relapses and rising overdoses follow the stresses of our corona-virus lives. Suicide risk is increasing, and it appears child and spouse abuse are expanding as adults desire to hide from their own pain.

Collaboration, on the other hand, invites success. Healing today’s pain will create value — which is the goal of investors as well as society. And finding common ground, complementary skills, and comprehended needs is critical for today’s solutions.

It’s not that collaboration is always better than competition. Almost every strategy plays a critical role in human endeavor.

Paramount is the nature of today’s society and the approaches already employed. We face our COVID pandemic, social fractures, and personal exhaustion in a digital technology-driven world. Current solutions under-utilize collaboration and its corresponding toolbox, meaningful communication.

Save the date, September 24, for a fireside chat at the intersection of #ArtificialIntelligence, #CorporateResponsibility, and #CorporateCommunication.

Rethink the role of business communication in your organization. Ensure you uncover indispensable insight.

#RickAlcantaraMA will interview me for the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Philadelphia.

See you there.

Safeguard your future today, while positioning yourself to thrive for our children tomorrow.

Rod