52 Weeks, 52 Words: Week 52 - Opportunity

Looks like we made it! And for any of you who have stuck with me over the course of the year, I am eternally grateful…though not always confident I delivered against my goal, auspicious or ambitious as it was. To be honest, after spanning a year of weekly words through the lens of our lexicon in medical communications and considering the magnitude of our charge as agencies beholden to scientific discourse, I find myself second guessing myself.

At the outset I posited that our station in the agency-vendor dynamic was underappreciated or overlooked, or possibly both. Reflecting back over the year, I am not as certain about its under-appreciation or that it is “too casually dismissed and/or arrogantly relegated to the sidelines” as much as I know believe that it is not as often as full-bodied and rounded as other agency constructs leading to it being poorly understood.

Perhaps that misunderstanding is less the responsibility of those with whom we interact and more the responsibility of each of us to better inform and explain. Within that responsibility, then, lies opportunity.

I maintain, now, a full year removed from the modest proposal I offered in January that the import of our medical communications has never been more meaningful and assert that the necessity of our striking a chord through relevance more prominently will reverberate if we endeavor or to make it so.

If. 

And that is a mighty big if. An if that we each have to shoulder with far more than one word a week if we intend for the strides made in 2020 to have any permanence. I started with one word and, in the end, I added at least 35,000 more to my syllabus in pursuit of a greater stature for our industry.

So, what did I (or possibly you) learn along the way?

Well, for one, I learned that I watch a lot of television (probably too much) and that pop culture is simply hard to avoid or escape. It has a certain gravitational pull that requires even a tacit genuflection and is the coded language of our modern existence whether we like it or not.

I learned that the weekly inspiration for my essays co-mingled my family and personal life in a way that I didn’t expect but in a way that made me more human and familiar to others, even perfect strangers that shared life experiences that I did. I recognized that the idiosyncrasies that make me me are, and should be, woven more richly into the fabric of the everyday interactions I have with my colleagues and my clients.

After all, we are note automatons coldly producing our med comm deliverables in a vacuum. And our clients are far more than their titles and job functions. In fact, I would argue it is those odds and ends about all of us that could be casually considered ephemera are what yields the widest variety of inspired thinking to guide the novel development of the work we create. Which is so important when our meaningful engagements have been constricted to a picture-in-picture, webcam-enabled repetitive digital milieu made up of micro-moments punctuated by static, poor internet connections and the realization that someone is on mute.

To that end, I learned that both “Zoom fatigue” and “Covid fatigue” are very real and I often spun my wheels to find anything, literally anything, that didn’t force me to confront or accept that our 2020 reality had changed almost inextricably and in ways it is even as likely, permanently. Each week I had to either lean in and embrace that aspect of the zeitgeist or I had to force my mind to wander toward an alternative starting point that clanged hollowly in a na?ve and potentially tone-deaf way or, as was more habitual, sported a blithe dismissal of the pandemic moment altogether in favor of something more capricious or extraneous, then force myself to deliver a clever connective tissue that made sense in both worlds.

And I learned, coming full circle, through taking this opportunity to share my thoughts that perhaps my initial premise was flawed.

There is an opportunity for us to create a catalyst for medical communications but it’s not impetus is not external. The responsibility is on each of us in this field to elevate the understanding and drive greater

In an agency construct we become too deferential to other agencies with bigger budgets or with more ostentatious personalities.

Our opportunity – our collective opportunity – resides in our daily urgency to foist ourselves into the conversation, wiggle our way to the front of the class, fervently raise our hands, and, because we absolutely must, insist that we are partners.

When we don’t take that opportunity and remain obsequious or passive, the true value of our contributions gets minimized and marginalized.

This year I thought I was advancing the cause of our charge. Each week gave me an opportunity to expose that the vernacular of thought partnership is universal and infinite. Within those infinite possibilities each of us must fan the flames that fuel the desire for purpose at a microscopic level. In this way the change we seek will re-code the DNA that constitutes our agency-level genetic profile and offer sustainable advances. At the end of this year, I have come to recognize that the word we most need to reclaim that can span all 52 weeks-worth of words I examined is thought partnership (leave it to me to take 2 words!).

By taking the opportunity to breathe life into our engagements, apply thought and walk hand in hand with our constituents, we will ensure our voice is heard and our words have value.

I urge you to take that opportunity as your careers unfold and as we proceed into 2021. Take the opportunity to elevate the dialogue and find the reasons and rationale to say what may have been unsaid.

I realized, too, that I have much more to say. While I won’t commit to a weekly article narrowly riffing on a word or theme (or even a weekly cadence, that on occasion proved to become cumbersome to accomplish), I do have a point of view and opinions that have captivated some audience and I want to continue the dialogue…

 I said it at the very beginning: we occupy a tremendously valuable position at the crossroads of so many touchstones in healthcare provider-patient-industry interactions. Our opportunity has never been as palpable.

Gazing into 2021 and across a horizon where clear, crisp, activated science can be that clarion signal, I thank you for reading along with me and urge you to take the opportunity in front of you. Seize it and use it for good.

I know for certain that this process has changed me – a change for good. And hopefully a change for good.

Happy New Year!

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