Let this be OUR finest hour

Now is the time to channel your inner-Churchill (more on that later) and your inner-Mockingjay.

Dear fellow leaders, marketers, sellers, communicators and all 'digital' people and fellow RELAYTERS: our careers to date have been a drill. Now is “Go Time” to connect digitally at a truly interactive & human level. And to communicate in new ways as we respond to #COVID19 and turbulent times. You/we are no longer cranking out "spammy emails, ads or lead magnets." You/we are essential in assuring the success of all citizens of the world and especially colleagues that power businesses, health, governments and keep our world running. Now is OUR time for "this was their finest hour"

Game plan: ?

1. ?Take digital workplace and ways of working to the next level - be the role model NOW. Lead / teach / innovate. Note: "hosting a webinar" or "moving more comms to slack/teams" is not transformational stuff that will help your organization survive.
2. Real-time feedback loop matters more than ever. If nobody reads, understands or acts on your important messages -- you are toast. Perfect is the enemy of fast and good-enough. ?But you need to know if your message is driving behavioral change BEFORE it's too late.
3. Be a communications master, not a disaster. You are masters of the mission-critical communications which are the lifeblood of your organizations, and the world. To succeed we must work differently and smarter - resilience, resourcefulness, creativity in re-purposing will be critical. Budget cuts are imminent. Live video shoots are impossible. You need to master the science & art of communicating on a budget.
4. Hyper-automate key communications, in a human + machine way that allows people to be distributed, engaged with ideas across all channels. E.g, If takes you more than 3 weeks, 3 days or even 3 hours to build a content microsite - you are not automating.
5. This crisis is temporary, but communications changes will be forever. History tells us that crises precipitate massive tech change and adoption. CHANGING HOW PEOPLE COMMUNICATE - WILL ALWAYS CHANGE THE WORLD. Changing how ideas spread -- changes how society functions, changes how people speak, changes how people live, changes how people fall in love, changes how important work gets done, and changes what we define as important. Go back to the source, Marshall MacLuhan
6. Shared success is essential - with peers, colleagues, competitors, ecosystem - share, collaborate, learn.
7. Prioritize your own well-being. Get some sleep. We need you. And we need to rely on each other.

Hat tip to Paul Daugherty, Chief Technology & Innovation Officer of Accenture -- who has inspired this article by setting out a "GO TIME" agenda for IT professionals and by driving their TechVision2020 embedded here

And of course to Winston Churchill, who beamed lights with words in his country's darkest hours.

The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.

Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war.

If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”