Be Open to Change

I’ve learned so much in the past nine weeks that has continued to open my eyes and my understanding to the field of strategic communication. Strategic communicators have a hand in nearly all aspects of communication, and it is their responsibility to make sure they stay abreast of the current and emerging changes and trends in communications. If not, they risk alienating both the entities they represent and their target audiences. So, to be effective strategic communicators, we must be open to changes, no matter how out the box they are.

One way we can be open to change is by fully understanding Roger Everett’s diffusion of innovations theory. Once we understand how this theory operates in communications, we can champion several obstacles communication brings, namely in influencing the late majorities and the laggards of our society, because we will be able to reach the opinion leaders, who then influence the decisions of the rest of society. These opinion leaders aren’t our parents and grandparents any longer, but they are the members of the Millennial generation, those who were born in and after 1981. These opinion leaders are those who have continued to usher our society into the digital age through different digital media formats and technologies like social networking sites, videos, blogs, smartphones and watches, etc. Medicine, believe or not, happens to be one of the areas in which the Millennial generation has also played a major role.

My instructor gave us three TED Videos to view this week, and the one that stood out the most to me was Daniel Kraft’s talk, “Medicine's future? There's an app for that.” I encourage you to take twenty minutes and just watch this video. I promise you’ll be amazed when you watch it. I was blown away by how far medical technology has come over the years. Although I should have, I didn’t realize that medical innovators had and have created devices that can work with our smartphones to make healthcare faster, cheaper, and better. In his talk, Kraft highlighted several technological advances in the medical field, including robotic surgery and prostheses. Can you imagine talking to your doctor through a robot, or, being able to run, jump, and walk better than the average person? How about being able to check yourself for STDs using your smartphone? Just think of how one day sickle cell patients will be able to have red blood cells engineered to replace their failing ones. The opportunities for advances like these are endless.

It’s awesome how far we’ve come since the dawn of modern medicine. These technological feats and others Kraft mentioned seem out of this world, but we’re at the point now where we can have basically anything we can imagine because of innovators like Kraft. Now, how do strategic communicators fit in with these advances? They are the ones who create the effective communications needed to promote these innovative ideas to the general public. Without the strategic communicators in place to communicate to the masses the benefits (and the risks) of these new ideas and inventions, many of these medical innovations wouldn’t have come to fruition. So, it’s important for strategic communicators to be hyperaware of their audiences, especially those made of the dissenters who believe that we’re moving too fast or who believe that these things just simply can’t be done. Without these communicators, we’d still be stuck in the era of ether as anesthesia and rotary phones for communication.

Well, I’ve come to the end of this school term (January 6-March 10), and once again, I must say ‘bye, but I want to you keep strategic communication in the front of your minds. It’s not just for those who actually hold positions with this title, but strategic communication is also something that we all must do well to reach our target audiences, whether it’s our employers, instructors, significant others, children, etc. While I don’t have any more classes until later this summer, I’ll still post occasionally to keep us (yes, me too!) thinking about the importance of effective, strategic communication. Without it, we’ll all be lost. Until next time, readers!