Embrace the Chaos

By Clark S. Judge, managing director.

Not long ago, a major business school asked me to participate in a discussion among senior communications leaders from the corporate, political, academic, journalistic, and consulting worlds. Each had involvement in at least two of those arenas; I in all.

Listening brought to mind a major difference between commercial marketing and politics -- control. “Control the message” is a marketing term that has slipped, misleadingly, into politics. Misleading because marketers often -- even usually -- have an asset available to them that political communicators do not: time.

Marketers can be extraordinarily painstaking in pace and practices -- endless message testing, minute preparations stretching out months and more. With millions, sometimes billions at stake, glacial deliberation is understandable and can produce stunningly outstanding results.

But in circumstances that are more aggressively adversarial and in which others control the pace of events, such circumspection can become self-defeating.

In our little academically sponsored group, I offered that, rather than controlling the message, there are times when it is better, even essential, to embrace the chaos.

“Embrace the chaos,” one of the marketers present repeated. “That’s a big idea.” Big or not, under the right circumstances, in the right place, is it essential.