The problem with all these trend posts is so many of them are clickbait—noise, not signal, where the “bold take” replaces what we are looking for, which is a signal that is only found from intelligent thought.

It’s already hard enough to predict the future—which I wrote about last week.

A good source of clicky predictions concerns the changes brought to our society—our consumers, our co-workers, our communities, our stakeholders, and their networks—since the pandemic began.

You can find a million posts about it and you’d be forgiven if you asked if they were really, actually true.

Or, you can read this, from a global study by Accenture and an accompanying article in Chief Executive Magazine and get a really good look at what’s happening now.

Here’s the idea: the pandemic changed people. Only 17% of 25,000 people surveyed worldwide said they were unchanged. Over half of consumers have re-evaluated what matters to them since the pandemic. They are now expecting companies to promote “healthy practices” and practice “sustainability.”

Our previous understanding of consumer values was focused on the transaction—price, quality and value. With this large and (the study says) growing segment of consumers, that is no longer true.

We see this elsewhere. “The Great Resignation” has shown that employment is more than a pay-work transaction.

Will it hold? No way to know.

But on the ground today, the war for consumers will go to people who, in Chief Executive’s words, “future fit” their approach to commerce, and (me speaking now) the war for talent we go to people who adapt to this current reality, not cling to the past.

Chief Executive has three specific prescriptions for CEOs—become a listening organization, “take your people with you” and “recognize that your company is one big experience.”

These ideas are things I have been talking about here for some time and are the music behind the Resilient5 program to position your company for an uncertain future.

So the magazine had advice for the CEO…what is the advice for the CCO or CMO?

Tear down those walls

There’s probably no such thing as internal communications, executive communications, vendor communications, or customer communications anymore. The same stories you tell to demonstrate a sense of purpose to recruit and retain employees will resonate with consumers. Similarly, your ESG communications are important to everyone in your ecosystem. There are a million examples, but the company should only have one story to tell and should tell it more, better, and broadly.

Tell stories about actions, not platitudes

Every year we see trust come down. If your organization sees this as an opportunity for inspiring prose (“building palaces out of paragraphs”—Hamilton) then you are on the wrong track. Being out of step is bad. Being a hypocrite is an order of magnitude worse. You want to highlight actions taken—verifiable, accountable actions. You can tell compelling stories—and you should—but they should be about putting your values into action, not about re-stating the values. No boat posters.

Teach the organization how to handle falling short

This might be the biggest challenge of all. Consumers have a high bar and low tolerance for failure. And look, your organization is going to fall short. It’s a human experience and one that people are willing to understand if you handle it correctly. First, operationally, such events have to be rare. When they do happen, a fulsome reckoning is required and it has to happen quickly. You don’t want to look like you had to think about whether you are wrong. What we are looking for here is more than an apology. It’s an acknowledgment of the mistake and how it went against the company’s values in specific terms. It’s also an accounting of how people might have been harmed—facing that fact. And, of course, a believable and trackable pledge to do better.

Conclusion…..you are almost done

The world has changed. Will it go back to the way it was before? Maybe. Or it might change even more in the direction we are seeing now. Rather than predict the future, you have to build your organization on what you see today and rely on trust and understanding to sustain you through the future changes.