Contextual Challenges

Sometime back when BBC started rehearsing the announcement of Queen’s demise, in case of an eventuality, it was seen as a proactive measure and also an attempt of to rectify the past, when one of their announcers goofed-upon big time during the death of another royal. Recently, however when they started rehearsing the possible death of the former British PM Tony Blair, many eyebrows were raised. Tony Blair is pretty young and is hale & hearty except for a minor heart scare in the past. He has three kids, with the youngest one born in the year 2000, when he was in-term. The BBC reportedly came in for a lot of flak when they started recording obituaries from the ex-colleagues of Tony. Too many steps forward or from being proactive to hyperactive! The next you know they may start recording advance obituaries for all their celebs & dignitaries and may be even for the English cricket team. Just to be future-safe, you see!
The ability to interpret contexts correctly and take suitable decisions has a lot of importance. At time certain contexts may appear similar, however they may only be so on the surface. The underlying dynamics may be completely different. As in the case of BBC, they made the mistake of looking at possible demise of Queen who is in her late eighties and that of Tony Blair, who although has a high degree of importance considering he has been the British head of state but his age & stage of life has no indication of similar eventuality in the near future, in the same light. Context is different from a situation. Context comes in a flash and disappears equally fast. However for the time that it lasts it has profound impact and hence reading and knowing how to deal with the same correctly is important. The worst thing that someone can do is to try and engineer a context, in the similar way that BBC tried to do in the case of Tony Blair.

Leaders have similar challenges confronting them. Reading and dealing with the contextual challenges goes a long way in deciding the future of organizations and engagement of its constituent stakeholders.

Contextual Communication

Recently in a column E. Balaji, MD & CEO, Ma Foi Randstad said that "I am convinced that businesses need to act like organised ‘engagement exchanges' that promote, mentor and align employees' engagement with other internal and external stakeholders. Employers will have to host the conversations, networking activities and collaborations between employees and external stakeholders."

That brings to the point, once again, the importance of communication and networking in engaging employees. Having said that, the importance of communicating the right message at the right time is even more important. Yesterday, out of the many commercials that I am forced to see on the television, two stayed in the mind for different reasons. The one was of Toshiba laptops which had Sachin Tendulkar sprinting across a 'digitized pitch' amassing more & more runs and of course glory. A commentary in the background further eulogized the 'performance' of Sachin and drawing the same parallel to Toshiba's product performance. The other one was that of Birla Sun Life Insurance which featured Yuvraj Singh. The ad made him say in hindi which when translated meant that '...until the time one is performing, scoring runs, everything seems to be alright and everything follows you. but one day, when the runs dry-up, then things change overnight and you do not seem to be in-demand anymore.'

Going by India's miserable performance in England in the on-going test series, the first ad is definitely ill-timed. The audience (cricket-crazy fanatics) is generally furious over India's test debacle and losing the number one test position so meekly. At such a juncture, Toshiba's ad is sure to add salt to the seething fresh wounds of the fans. The communication is ill-timed and is a sure disaster for the brand. On the other hand, Birla's ad is sure to generate some sympathy and empathy for the protagonist and shall gel very well with the element of ‘uncertainty’ and 'risk-coverage' highlighted in the advertisement. The latter ad-communication is much more appealing and engaging.

The same is true when communicating with employees. organization must wisely choose the messgae and the timing keeping in mind the context. I call it 'contextual communication'. The importance of judging the context before choosing the message and time of delivery is key. Otherwise no matter how well the message has been crafted, it shall fail to achieve what it set-out for in the first place; worst it shall boomerang.