the only constant
2/2009

Index


They say change is the only constant: this past year has once more proven this to be true, with new challenges for communications professionals to face. They have to keep up with an ever-growing and accelerating spread of information from all around the globe while at the same time being confronted with an increasing amount of misinformation about their company or client. This new state of affairs complicates the process of communicating organisational change, a task which is hard enough at the best of times; the best-laid plans are vulnerable to forces beyond the control of even the most globally-established corporation, which makes maintaining a clear and consistent communications strategy a tougher task than normal. Furthermore, the different stakeholders must be kept onside during each step of the change process, and that means persuading, explaining, reassuring - in short, every last part of the communicator's arsenal. Employee engagement, mergers and even the way we work are all aspects of change covered in this issue's pages. Among our authors, Professor Alan Zaremba from the US' Northeastern University writes that to communicate is to engage in an organic process that alters and transforms the relationship between communicator and audience as well as the organisation around them. Terry McKenzie and Sheira Ariel describe the challenges faced by Sun Microsystems in communicating difficult decisions. And Tamás Szucs from the European Commission explains new ways that the EU will communicate its evolving state to the rest of the world. Whenever change affects your organisation in the future, we hope that you will draw inspiration from this issue and feel better prepared to deal with it!

Marc-Oliver Voigt
Editor-in-Chief
m.voigt@communication-director.eu