I recently finished reading Atomic Habits by James Clear – huge thanks to Gini Dietrich for the recommendation. In the book, Clear provided what I thought was a really profound idea about the human mind. He said, “The human mind wants to win whatever game is being played.”
Now I’m a competitive person to begin with, but this really hit home for me. I want to win, like all the time. For myself, for my clients, for my friends and family.
In fact, everything I do in my career is to drive some goal toward success.
Then I started thinking, so is everyone else.
Everyone wants to win, whether or not they are aligned with me doesn’t matter. They are doing what they can to win, because the human mind wants to win whatever game is being played.
When you realize this, it forces to look at the situation a bit differently. It isn’t just about what you do, it’s about what you do in relation to what everyone else is doing.
During my time doing corporate communications and reputation management at SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, I used to say, my job is to be smarter than the communicators fighting against us.
Sometimes I won, and some days I didn’t.
But, that approach is a great example of this philosophy to strategic communications.
Whether you’re talking about consumers, clients, competitors or activists, they wall want to win the game that’s being played.
That means you need to think about your audiences, all of them, and how they impact what you’re trying to achieve.
And I mean all of them, not just the customers or potential consumers, but your competitors or even those whose idea of success means you not succeeding.
Sometimes you’ll need your audiences to act to achieve success. Sometimes you’ll need to predict what your audiences will do to be a step ahead of them.
But either way, think about what success looks like to each of your audiences. Then think about your role in that success.
How do you leverage that in best case scenarios for a win-win approach? Or, how do you ensure other efforts won’t have an impact on your success.
By identifying your audiences, what success looks like for them and understanding that they are hardwired to win and will, even subconsciously, push at all costs to get there, you can better plan how you can use that for success in your campaigns.
In the meantime, I’ve also been discussing how you can find success following the Coronavirus crisis through the RADD approach, which is Recognize, Adapt, Develop, and Deploy. Check out our previous posts to see how you can succeed with the RADD process:
– Get RADD And Plan For Success Following Coronavirus Crisis
– Prepare for Success and Get RADD, Part 1: Recognize
– Finding Success By Getting RADD, Part 2: Adapt
– Get RADD, Part 3: Develop Plans For Success
– Deploying Your RADD Communications Plan
Here are some additional resources for your crisis planning efforts as you adapt to your new worlds:
– There’s Still Time To Communicate During the Coronavirus Crisis
– Isolation Is Actually Connecting Us In Meaningful Ways
– Is Pitching Media A Good Idea During COVID-19?
– Internal Communications During A Crisis
– A Meaningful Message, Or Pandering Without Purpose
And here are some additional blogs to help with your strategic communications planning:
– Pitching Media Like The Pros
– 7 Tips for Successful Media Interviews
– Don’t Let Perfect Be The Enemy Of Effective
– Wake Up. Kick Ass. Repeat.
– How to Create Content That Engages Audiences and Builds Brand Trust Quickly
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