Challenges of the Communications Explosion; P. Lesly

But while billions have been spent exploring outer space,· the invisi ble virus and the ocean bottom, little perceptive study has been given to what that communica tions explosion has meant to the institutions that are the living tissues of civilization. Almost all the premises and practices for dealing with the hu man climate have been trans formed in the past few years. So it seems pertinent to ask, What are some of the new patterns in our human climate that challenge our stability and progress? • Our population is now seg mented in many ways. It is diPhilip Lesly, president of The Philip Lesly Company, Chicago, is a leading public relations counsel and an authority on public relations and public affairs. Outstanding among his sev eral publications is Lesly's Public Relations Handbook (Prentice Hall, 1971). 598 vided almost evenly between those who have been trained through written media and those who are visually oriented. It is fragmented by the growing specialization in all career fields. It is split be tween those who seek achievement and those who seek escape. It is segmented between white and col ored, between the affluent and the poor, between the educated effete and the hard hat ethnics, and, yes, between men and women.

• Rather than finding conflict an occasional aberration to be overcome, now antagonisms are built into our society and are permanent. • Almost unnoticed, the liberal ethic that insists on maintaining the innocence of any individual until he has been proven guilty is also insisting that every organiza tion must be presumed guilty un1973 CHALLENGES OF THE COMMUNICATIONS EXPLOSION 599 til it has proved its innocence. • We have a whole mosaic of new life styles, new values, diver gent morals and a wide spectrum of viewpoints on all questions. Where one or two elements in our equation used to be changing at any Hme, now virtually all thQ factors are changing at the same time and affecting each other even as they change. Where our concept of purpose used to be one-dimensional, we now must recognize that nothing can succeed except through the systems approach of coordinating many simultaneous factors.

The old wisdom that when we seek to communicate with the pub lic we must try to lead our target becomes banal when it is not only difficult to tell the course of the target but even what the target will be the next time we look. We must see the full mosaic of the world we must cope with ... recognize that events follow a chain reaction ... and realize that the important move - the one that will really determine the results of our communications efforts is the move after the move after this one. As in chess, the amateur sees one move at a time; the master is planning many moves ahead. • Our people have come to take for granted the massive multipli cation of results made possible by computers and automation in rou tine paper work and factories. Now they have transferred these expectations of mass results to fields where hum,an factors, that cannot be multiplied, are involved, such as in education and h~~lth care.

• We now have a majority of ~ our population that has not developed an immunity to frustra tion, as all previous generations did, by having to face severe re strictions on its dreams and aspi rations almost from birth. Millions grow to adulthood before they en counter the frustrating reality of a world that, until a generation ago, contained far more frustra tions of desires than fulfillments. So when they faced restrictions on their urges and dreams of Utopia, they lashed out at what ever symbol seemed to stand in their way - parents, college presi dents, the government, or "the es tablishment." It is not a coinci dence that the cooling off of the violence and anarchism coincided with the recent recession, as well as with the winding down of the war in Vietnam. For the first time the reality of limits imposed by the world became clear to millions of people. But the conditions that created the aggressiveness are still 600 THE FREEMAN October present and could break out in some new direction at any time.

• Millions of people have now been educated to think they should have a special role in our society. Colleges have been holding out de grees as the key to freedom from routine roles in life and as the marks of leadership ... even while they propound the doctrine of equality for everyone. Only a few can find the kind of influence that they were led to expect, and are disillusioned when the world does not bow to their wisdom. Those who have been led to ex pect great things then seek to justify themselves. They have the time, the inclination and the op portunity to attack the structure they feel is unfair to them. It is ironic that the increased leisure and affluence that the system makes available enables them to increase their attacks on the system. • As a result, we are creating ... as a by-product of the develop ment of our people far more rap idly than the society can absorb their expectations ... a many pronged assault on our social structure. We now have many groups whose primary outlook on life is to force major changes.

Among the media, in our colleges, among social workers, many government agencies and other groups, it is presumed that the member's worth will be measured by how much he can poke holes in the way things have been. In these areas, one often is assumed to be a failure if he or she merely con tributes to the stability of 'Our system. ,Another strong trend arISIng out of the widespread free time and affluence now available is the sharp and varied changes in life styles. It is another irony that one of the great charges against our system is that it reduces each person's ability to fulfill himself as an individual ... and yet al most everyone now has far more choices for what he does with his life and how he spends a maj or part of his time than most people have ever had. The great diversity of life styles - ranging from de vout fundamentalist religion to pure Communism in remote living centers - further fragments the purposefulness and cohesion of our society.

The impetus for most· of the changing currents has come from our youth. Although we cannot predict what the new pressures of youth will be, we can be reason ably sure they will not be the same as they are today or have been. The focus of youth agitation has shifted approximately every two years since 1960: From activ1973 CHALLENGES OF THE COMMUNICATIONS EXPLOSION 601 ism for Negroes to freedom from authority to the Vietnam war to "the system" to ecology to the "Jesus revolution" and now to personal fulfillment. Every thrust of the youth culture is vitiated as soon as it is "in" long enough to be identified with one age group. About the only sure thing about the thrust of youth activism is that it will be different in a couple of years. • Every message directed to every audience is unique in its time and impact. The individual is different from the frame of mind he was in when some previ ous message was aimed at him.

And the importance to him of each message is a vital factor. So it is not possible to predict the response to any message on the basis of what the response has been to any previous message. A notable example was the reaction to President Nixon's announce ment of his trip to China. There was no possibility of predicting the response by looking at opinion polls of previous responses of the public on even somewhat related matters. • For communication to take place, the audience must be in what can be called a "posture of receptivity." This receptivity com bines the background and heritage of the individual with his predis position toward the source. That means that when an organization's actions and statements have de veloped a high degree of good will, every other message from that source will receive much more ac ceptability. • There is a "threshold of con sciousness" that must be passed before an idea becomes a factor in any attitude. Every idea or image of a person or organization that does "arrive" in the public con sciousness has passed through the massive barriers that people have erected.

• In today's highly complex and diverse world, it is necessary to use a "multiple-channel approach" in projecting an idea to the public. There is no one or a few media that can achieve this penetration. It is necessary to surround the audience with the concept to make it become part of its mental framework. The more closely a communica tion is beamed to a specific audi ence, the more likely it is to be received and accepted. The early reaction to events or communications may disguise their actual effects. Great pub licity and furor may seem to create public opinion because of their immediacy, visibility and force.

602 THE FREEMAN October But often there is a reaction against that furor that becomes the permanent effect. Much of the public desire to cool off the racial issues has been due to reaction against the trumpeted violence of the Black Panthers a couple of years a.go. More and more, as our organ izations become bigger and more diversified, they are politically hamstrung internally, sometimes to the point of immobilization. Yet the problems of the human climate are external and must be ap proached forthrightly. The prevalent feeling is that the period of multiple assaults on our institutions is a phase we are go ing through. Actually, there is reason to feel that it is building up inevi tably and will continue to grow. Our society, by holding out the magic that a college education is supposed to bestow, is mass pro ducing dissidents. And even when they attain any of their objec tives, they are not likely to fade away but will go on to seek new and more demanding causes.

The multiplicity of causes is al ready bringing militants into con flict with each other. The gross overexpectations that have been built up are often aimed at oppos ing goals such as providing aU needs and comforts for everyone at low cost and d~voting massive resources to environment, employing the unqualified at high cost and other expensive goals. The position of many organiza tional leaders today is anomalous. The managers of American insti tutions and enterprises are ad mired all over the world as mag nificently trained and disciplined for .operating complex organiza tions. An executive train·ed at a good graduate school has, by his original personality and the dis ciplined training he has received, been indoctrinated with the im portance of the. facts, the tangi bles, the measurable. He is told that it is fuzzy minded to con sider what can't be included in the equation, that can't be computer ized or brought down to the bot tom line. The managers of America are masterful in coping with the tangibles of their opera tions - budgets, personnel require ments, materials, facilities and so on.

Dealing with Intangibles Now these managers are faced increasingly with problems that are intangible - mostly based on human attitudes and not on the measurable, the predictable, the factors that can be included in computerized evaluations. The problems deal with the attitudes of youth, contributors, activist groups, employees, potential em ployees, minority organizations, 1973 CHALLENGES OF THE COMMUNICATIONS EXPLOSION 603 government agencies, legislators and others. There are a number of emerg ing conditions that confront those who need to communicate with the American public: 1. This is an age of action and visibility, requiring that we deal with problems in depth and yet immediately. 2. Organization and corporate leaders who are accustomed to de termining events are now faced most of the time with coping with events. Many of them are· not pre pared for such a diametrical shift. They want to impose their dis ciplined methods on the human climate. They expect predictabil ity and measurability from com munications efforts; just as they do in finance, production, pur chasing, bookkeeping and other areas.

3. Those people who are trained to withhold judgment until the facts are in ... to give prece dence to reason over passion . . . to base their case on merits rather than on emotions, are the most vulnerable to activist dissent. A high level of professionalism leads professors, lawyers, physicians, clergymen and others to abhor public combat. In an age of activism and visibility, the profession with high standards, that deplores aggres sive appeal for support and pre fers to work in dignified silence, is a sitting duck. Academicians, la.wyers and doctors, who scorn efforts to capture favorable at tention, face being swept into sub jugation by the nature of our times. 4. The explosion of instant and visible communication has not only made a now society, but has made visibility the factor that determines what occurs in it. Re peatedly we find th~t it is not the facts of a situation but what it seems to people that becomes the real reality. When the television screen shows police using force on milling youth, the public concludes that the police attacked the crowd.

When millions see only disheveled and obscene youth marching on campuses, it concludes that the whole young generation is like that. 5. People have seen massive ad vances made in those aspects of our system where technology is the key. Automation, using elec tronic techniques, has multipled the output of our industrial cornu copia. Computers handle masses of information and records that would inundate human capacities. But people expect the same multi604 THE FREEMAN October plications of capabilities where human capacities are still the key. The process of teaching cannot be revolutionized by installing auto mated equipment. Health care cannot be turned over to great programmed machines, but still depends on the skills and dedica tion of highly trained people. How often we have heard, "If we can put it man on the moon, we can solve our problems here on earth by applying the same effort and dedication." But our scientists knew exactly where the moon would be on July 20, 1969. All factors could be fed into their considerations with a certainty they had a fixed target. But all human problems are in a constant state of change and of interaction with each other. The only cer tainty is that conditions ten years hence will not be just as we visu alize them when we set our targets.

6. All the currents of passion and emotion and illogic, as well as reason, make it vital for every group to cope with the climate of attitudes. Yet almost every group is still concentrating on its tra ditional concerns. Business de votes most of its attention to pro duction, finance and marketing while its existence is being under mined on the issues of consumer ism, minority hiring, preservation of the environment, invasion of management functions by lahar and government, the reluctance of bright young people to work in large companies, and other forces that are all in the minds of men. Doctors continue to focus on car ing for patients - while groups and government clamor for "re structuring" the health care sys tem, drafting doctors for areas that lack them, and other issues that are forces in the minds of men. The colleges, despite their traumatic tumult of recent years, are still essentially concerned with courses, faculty and research while student groups and govern ment assault them to revolution ize not only their structures and functions but their very reasons for being.

All these professions labor con scientiously in their vineyards. But the climate of attitudes that will determine whether they will be able to function at all-and on whose terms - is being developed by the outside forces that shape public attitudes in an electronic age of action and visibility. 7. The battlefield for the human climate is the communications media and no aspect of our society has changed more than the media. Only a few years ago a few magazines and a few major news papers constituted the important 1973 CHALLENGES OF THE COMMUNICATIONS EXPLOSION 605 communications network. Today we have an explosion of media hundreds of magazines, newspa pers, television, radio, books, jour naIs, newsletters, sound tapes. No subject short of a catastrophe now can claim the attention of more than a portion of the public. There is bitter competition for space in any of the media. The competition among ideas has ex panded manyfold. A new genera tion of journalists is attuned to "involvement," by which they mean changing the world instead of reporting on it. The multipli cation of media creates competi tivepressures to grasp for at tention. In this climate, the re porter who produces a sensation is rewarded; the one who comes in with a solid but unspectacular report finds it hard to be appreci ated. A media man who doesn't find a riot or crisis he can cover is tempted to wish for one.

8. The epitome of what may be the greatest of all the revolutions now facing us is that there are two electronic revolutions going on at the same time. One is the electronic revolution of TV - in stant emotion and involvement ... putting emphasis on "human feel ings" and quick solutions ... op posing the "inhumanity" of slow moving mechanisms and institu tions. The other is the electronic revolution of management of in formation and of systems - ex emplified by the computer. It stresses facts, organization, hard reality, elimination of the nui sance variables. Our youth are creatures of the TV revolution. Our institutions, with their libraries and their fruit of generations of thought and weighing of ideas, typify management by facts and data. Our institutions are based on rules and standards, like com puters; TV is based on emotion. Our institutions are based on his tory and tradition; TV on im mediacy and novelty.

Required to Affect Public Attitudes In light of the emerging prob lems and changing condi tions, what are the requirements for anyone who needs to affect public attitudes? 1. He or she must become a very broad-gauged person. He must know the best thought in the social sciences and in mass com munications by living with the best books, journals, seminars and especially the best people. 2. He must learn to see the whole picture in which his organi zation functions, including the whole scope of our society. He must kno\v and understand where the various-wheels mesh, where the trends are going, where the 606 THE FREEMAN October interrelationships between groups take effect. 3. He must think and work ahead - trying to command the future human climate rather than being swept along by it. 4. He must master the skills and kn~wledge involved in effec tive mass communication today, or hire that mastery.

Guidelines to Influence Opinion There are a number of guide lines for anyone seeking to influ ence public opinion on behalf of an organization today: 1. He should recognize that the internal politics in the organiza tion are a basic problem. They can immobilize an organization and prevent effective functioning. It is important to separate decision making and functioning in the human climate areas from the in ternal machinations of the organ ization. 2. Administrators must recog nize that in our present social climate, communication is no long er a prerogative of management; it is the essence of management. Communication determines wheth er anything really happens and what the consequences will be. 3. In our fast-moving times, any reading based on what people used to think or even what they think now is likely to be out-of date by the. time any new action or communication can take effect.

To base plans and communica tions on what has gone before, or even what is occurring now, is to base one's future on reaction rather than action. 4. Every organization must help create the climate in which it will function, rather than let that cli mate develop and then try to cope with it. Initiative in communica tion is increasingly important. 5. The publics that must be reached by communications should be clearly defined. The process of segmentation means that what will evoke a response from one group will fail with some and per haps repel others. Each communi cations activity must reach specific publics in ways that can gain their interest and motivate their support. 6. Involvement and face-to-face interchange with as many publics as possible is important for three reasons: • It is the surest way to get a feel for how they really think and how they respond to what is said. • It is demonstrable evidence of real concern for them and their needs.

• It is visible - not the visibil ity of being on television in thousands of homes at once, but still visibility that repre sents reality.

1973 CHALLENGES OF THE COMMUNICATIONS EXPLOSION 607 7. With today's suspicious pub lic, the impression of secretive ness automatically breeds distrust. If there seems to be refusal to interchange communications with the public, there is likely to be a gap in credibility and confidence. 8. Today's American has an al most arrogant sense of his own importance and interests, and re sents what seem to be efforts to use him rather than to serve him. Whatever is said must be couched in the self-interest of the audience rather than in a way that s/eeks to sell a viewpoint. 9. It is far more effective to in oculate the publics in advance against the virulence of criticism that may come - by establishing confidence and understanding than to try to overcome the rav ages of these attacks after they have occurred. 10. Of all the factors involved in sound communication that leads thought and gets things done, time is probably the most vital. Careful contemplation and long consideration are luxuries of the past. The critics live in the real-time world of the television camera and the dramatic event. In an age of instant communication, often a few minutes are critical.

11. The new media-activist pat tern is the "smart bomb" of hu man affairs. It seeks out targets that were formerly hidden or operated with a low profile. In this era of activism, visibility and pervasive media, the institution that seeks to sit things out with its head down is likely to be a sitting duck. 12. The visible and the active should be stressed. Ideas and facts are important, but it is how they are packaged that determines their effectiveness. Today the overwhelming force for influenc ing attitudes is the visible media: dramatic events, television, mo tion pictures, audio-visual tech niques, and face·,to-face inter changes. 13. It is more vital than ever that only the best possible skills in communication be relied on for sensing the climate of atti tudes, for planning and for execu tion. With the overwhelming com plexity and severity of the chal lenges, the standard skills are most likely to fail and only the extraordinary skills to succeed.

The challenges of the communi cations explosion and the multiple revolutions in our society create heightened needs for persons dis ciplined in the skills of responsible public relations. There is growing awareness among administrators that the real problems of all institutions are in the attitudes of people the human climate in \vhich the institution must function. Many 608 THE FREEMAN October thoughtful managers recognize that they have not been trained to be sensitive enough to the human climate or to have the expertness to deal with it unaided. The hu man patterns are becoming more complicated rapidly. They are harder to understand and deal with. They demand greater ex pertness and experience. Com munications sense and skills, which have always been vital and have always been scarce, are be coming more vital and scarcer still. At its best, public relations is a bridge to change. It is a means to adjust to new attitudes that have been caused by change. It is Look to the People a means of stimulating attitudes in order to create change.

It helps an organization see the whole of our society together, rather than from one intensified viewpoint. It provides judgment, creativity and skills in accommo dating groups to each other, based on wide and diverse experien<;e. Like all other great changes, the shifts in our human climate and the pattern of commun,ica tions that shapes it present great challenges to those who strive for a wholesome and productive so ciety. Understanding the new dy namics and utilizing the best knowledge and skills, however, can help master these challenges like all others. , IDEAS ON LIBERTY WHEN THE PEOPLE rise enmass in behalf of the Union and the liberties of this country, truly may it be said, "The gates of hell cannot prevail against them." In all trying positions in which I shall be placed, my reliance will be upon you and the people of the United States; and I wish you to remember, now and forever, that it is your business and not mine; that if the union of these states and the liberties of this people shall be lost, it is but little to any one man of fifty-two years of age, but a great deal to the thirty millions of people who inhabit these United States, and to their posterity in all coming time. It is your business to rise up and pre serve the Union and liberty for yourselves, and not for me. I ap peal to you again to constantly bear in mind that not with poli ticians, not with Presidents, not with office seekers, but with you, is the question: Shall the Union and shall the liberties of this country be preserved to the latest generations?

ABRAHAM LINCOLN February 11, 1861 Appealto the Intellect LEONARD E. READ Every man she" uses its lamps, that '6$ shining, and learn their{w'ay'~' THERE ARE a thousand and one faults responsible for the sorry lack of moral and intellectual prog ress we decry; even more serious are the evils which cause the dev olutionary plunge so apparent to any discerning eye. No one will ever spot all the errors; but let each one that is spotted be held to the light that others may recognize it. Here is an error that has been bothering me, at once enormous and malicious, a fault so common that it appears, on the surface, to be a virtue. What might this be? It is the tendency to appeal not to the potential intelligence of others but, rather, to play upon, to take advantage of, their weaknesses. The fact that one's potential-the undeveloped capacity in each of us - is incomparably greater than his intelligence may explain the deplorable tendency here in ques tion. For, unless one acts as wise ly and conscientiously as he can, the road of least resistance must lead to decadence.