Context should be the constant when communicating through change

In the early days of the pandemic, I was advising a retail property asset manager on communicating a trading update.  

Their concern? Pretty much every performance indicator was down year-on-year. Which, when you factored in that the previous year was pre-pandemic, wasn’t surprising. It was also completely understandable to me as a third-party observer who is not as embedded -- emotionally or logically - in their operations.  

My response was broadly along the lines of yes, footfall is down – but given we are in the early days of recovery, footfall is relatively strong and, frankly, you don’t want similar levels of footfall because it suggests you’re not managing social distancing well and it could cause alarm with shoppers. And yes, trading performance is down – but only slightly and, given the circumstances, the figures actually show an exceptional recovery. 

I was reminded of this following several conversations over the past week with clients who are muddling through the impacts of the war in Iran (which has followed years of economic uncertainty in which the real estate investment industry has felt like it’s wading through treacle).  

Some organisations’ instinct is to keep quiet. If you don’t have anything positive to say, don’t say anything at all. Some have the instinct to reach for spin. How can we find (or create) a silver lining in this thunderstorm? 

The latter is never the right answer. The former can be but is rarely a recipe for anything other than standing still and fading away.  

The answer is often much simpler – but can feel like failing to see the wood for the trees.  

The ability to interpret context tends to be the communicator’s superpower. That is the ability to see the details at-hand, the big picture, and then how each part fits into the whole. 

If positioned well, your stakeholders will almost always prefer authentic communication over an eerie silence that serves as an information vacuum. If your news is positioned within the wider context, audiences - who will be seeing others in your position - will understand it accordingly.

So, it doesn’t matter if your performance is down year-on-year if the entire market is down. All that matters is what you’re doing about it, why you’re doing it, and what comes next. In an uncertain world in which your licence to operate is continually tested, your challenges are morphing and your communications approach needs to move with it.