COMMUNICATION

“Today, the chance to meet soaring demand in a sustainable way by transforming how companies and societies prosper represents nothing less than the biggest business opportunity in one hundred years. The combination of information technology, nanoscale materials, and biotech with traditional industrial technology can unleash a step change in resource productivity and generate enormous new profit pools. However, capturing these business opportunities will require an entirely new approach to management.” S. Heck, M. Rogers, McKinsey and Company; Resource Revolution: How to Capture the Biggest Opportunity in a Century; New Harvest 2014._

Part of this new approach to management will include how we communicate. Because if we’ve learned nothing else from the last few years, we need to always remember the good, the bad and the ugly that can come from leaders and managers at all levels. As such, carefully strategizing and planning a new approach to manage whole portfolios, programs or projects is just as important for success as the way we approach communication to managing any initiative.

The following is a high-level view of how the VITAE communication management approach to leverage the best opportunities or synergies, while avoiding unnecessary challenges and preventing trade-offs.

URGENCY LEVEL	APPROACH
CRITICAL Performance Support	Pull Communications At a time of extreme disruption, due to COVID 19; climate, policy, and countless other changes introduced on an ever shorter timescale, sharing accurate and reliable critical information is an important public service we can all participate in, and one that VITAE can provide. Pull communication, however, requires stakeholders/communication receivers to be proactive to retrieve the information, and share it. Therefore, it is cost-efficient, and accessible to all. To that effect, we can and should continuously ensure that it is aligned with the DRIVERS section of the web site.
HIGH Mass Distribution	Push Communications / Broadcasting Like pull communications, push communications or broadcasting is also essential. It can be, however, more challenging in terms of effectiveness and efficiency to communicate important time-sensitive information or make announcements, as it targets key stakeholders or groups. Course mass distribution is just one way to provide products/services we can assist in. Therefore along with Automated Learning Corporation we now provide online courses for learners to discover, develop, and deliver better expertise, infrastructure, and resources, change the lens, or bridge critical gaps. See our SERVICES for readily available courses.
ELEVATED Partnerships	Consultation Both communication and consultation are key to improve safety, well-being, environment, and health. Consultation, however, is more limited/limiting as it hinges on the scope, time, costs and risks that either exist, or is perceived about having a two-way engagement, where one asks questions and the other answers. The key often is in the quality or the relevance of the questions.
INTEGRATIVE Education	Participation Integrative education, “cuts across subject-matter lines, bringing together various aspects of a curriculum into a meaningful association to focus upon broad areas of study.” (Betty Jean Eklund Shoemaker 1989) It reflects the interdependent real world, and involves the learner’s body, thoughts, feelings, senses, and intuition in learning experiences that unify knowledge and “provide a greater understanding than that which could be obtained by examining the parts separately”. This is key at a time when creative leadership is essential, for a fast-changing world. You can read more on the importance of integrative education here, but as you will see, it hinges heavily on participation or two-way engagement within limited roles and responsibilities.
GUARDED Innovation	Partnership Two-way engagement joint learning, decision making and actions Innovation in any industry at any time is important, especially to start or grow a business, regardless of the sector. However, it requires real partnership with two-way engagement in joint learning, decision-making, and actions to manage the risks and rewards effectively and efficiently. Because Innovation is a complex process with many different stages and inherent risks (operational, commercial, financial, etc.). Moreover, good scalable innovation requires time and money investments before any positive effects become visible. Therefore, while innovation may actually be urgently required, they should be guarded to prevent unintended consequences.