Back in lockdown

Thinking tonight of all those small businesses back in lockdown and many restricted again to providing takeaway services.

I can’t imagine the challenge they are facing the second time around, having only just started to emerge from the first. 

Arguably the rest of us are on a knife’s edge of being in a similar position; just one more thing 2020 is throwing at us. 

To the friends and family locked in alongside the small businesses, this will not be an easy time. 

Before, we were apparently all in it together. 

This time is different; it’s like they’ll be looking out at the world still doing its thing, still different but absolutely freer.

Sending love ❤️

Back in lockdown

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What’s been your biggest challenge as a communicator through COVID19?

There are few communication colleagues I can think of who would not have been impacted in some way in their roles, and in what they have been called upon to communicate, during what is a public health emergency with a global impact and a massively local reach.

The most challenging for me has been communicating about an emergency while in an emergency.

It’s hard to believe that a ten year background in emergency management has not prepared me for this. In previous roles I’ve analysed, considered, empathised, coordinated and managed issues from the sidelines. Even when I’ve been working with impacted communities, at some stage I’ve been able to move through and on to the next emergency.

This one. Nope.

For a while, I was an interested spectator, enjoying the challenge and novelty of moving home, then a frightened and locked down participant, a furious judge, a cautious but hopeful we could open, small business owner. All the while I was also communicator and a manager.

Last week like many I listened in agony as both my home municipality and work municipality were named as a coronavirus hotspot, with details of what that meant to me – to us – as a person and as a communicator still to come.

This week has been a high of anticipation waiting for the what if and where.

Today, with my home municipality not currently identified for lockdown, I heaved a sigh of relief along with recognising a continued underlying unease and trepidation because it could still be us/me.

But the work municipality is being split, a literal and perhaps figurative split for a further challenging four weeks. Past the adrenalin rush, the need to communicate externally and internally is doubling down with a new challenge that continues to stretch experience, knowledge, innovation and resilience.

Buckle in.

What’s been your biggest challenge as a communicator through COVID19?

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The behaviour beast

Behaviour change is an interesting beast.

Like many I’ve watched the increase in coronavirus-positive numbers climb the past few days, alongside the increase in relaxed community behaviour towards physical distancing and hygiene practices.

Many people are desperate for real connections and a bit of normality to real life.

Pulling back on some of the planned restriction-lifting today, the Victorian Premier laid the blame on families and individuals ‘not doing the right thing’ and essentially making a choice that wasn’t theirs to make.

When something doesn’t resonate, is not understood, doesn’t work logically, is new and inconvenient and has not been experienced or does not seem likely/real, it takes time and effort to make it stick.

Time – and a strong understanding of the coronavirus pandemic and the community behaviour required – is not a luxury we’ve had.

For me, fear works.  Threatening to ‘lockdown’ the separate suburbs I live and work in if numbers don’t improve is good enough for me.

However, I bet asking people to stop hanging out with close family and friends when they should be isolating, from a virus that for many is as invisible as it is insidious in other countries, will continue to be a challenge for Victorians.

The behaviour beast

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Buckle in. Change is the only constant

What’s been your biggest challenge as a communicator through COVID19?

There are few communication colleagues I can think of who would not have been impacted in some way in their roles, and in what they have been called upon to communicate, during what is a public health emergency with a global impact and a massively local reach.

The most challenging for me has been communicating about an emergency while in an emergency.

It’s hard to believe that a ten year background in emergency management has not prepared me for this. In previous roles I’ve analysed, considered, empathised, coordinated and managed issues from the sidelines. Even when I’ve been working with impacted communities, at some stage I’ve been able to move through and on to the next emergency.

This one. Nope. 

For a while, I was an interested spectator, enjoying the challenge and novelty of moving home, then a frightened and locked down participant, a furious judge, a cautious but hopeful we could open, small business owner. All the while I was also communicator and a manager. 

Last week like many I listened in agony as both my home municipality and work municipality were named as a coronavirus hotspot, with details of what that meant to me – to us – as a person and as a communicator still to come.

This week has been a high of anticipation waiting for the what if and where.

Today, with my home municipality not currently identified for lockdown, I heaved a sigh of relief along with recognising a continued underlying unease and trepidation because it could still be us/me.

But the work municipality is being split, a literal and perhaps figurative split for a further challenging four weeks. Past the adrenalin rush, the need to communicate externally and internally is doubling down with a new challenge that continues to stretch experience, knowledge, innovation and resilience. 

Buckle in.

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I’m an issues detective

‘Great detective work’.

‘You’re a good nosey parker.’

Two same but different, ummm, compliments…..

This ‘high praise’ was given unprompted because of information I’d been able to collect, analyse and sort in a complex life admin situation.

But it made me consider what’s valuable here.

In any complex issue, it’s important to :

  • ask the right questions
  • gather and document information
  • analyse (take a problem apart)
  • strategise (put it back together)
  • facilitate an agreed outcome (get a plan in place)
  • implement
  • evaluate

It seems I’m tackling a life admin issue the same way I tackle a media or reputation issue, or a brand building, proactive social media plan and I like it

I’m an issues detective

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Managing remotely when the world is not even remotely normal

This is not business as usual.

And neither is the management space in which we find ourselves. 

Working remotely is different – regardless of whether you do it normally or not.

It requires a different connection, a different rhythm, and a different productivity push.

I was asked – by my own team members – to write about my experience managing a remote team.

Honestly, I should have asked them. And I will.

But my comms team has been amazing during this time – using all the buzz words, team members have been pivoting, embracing innovation, jumping in head first and doing change on the run.

Being busy gives purpose and structure but it has its downside also through email overload and exploding inboxes.

We miss the people aspect and the chocolate sharing (or is that just me?) 

It’s important to always keep in mind that people are dealing with remote life as well as remote work and everyone has a different way of dealing with that.

We have a daily work from home team catch up over Zoom. There’s not always an agenda and sometimes there are games. Pets and children are encouraged as they lighten it up. Hats and glittering backgrounds also welcome. 

In our team Whatsapp group we mainly gossip, share pics or complain about internet connection. 

And the team is keeping themselves connected and organised – smaller team meetings are more regular and work being divided daily.

Considerations for managing remotely:

  • Adapt your leadership style if you need to (more will be required of you)
  • Set clear priorities. And where you can’t (because everything is urgent!), ask for the help of your team to work that through
  • Ask questions but don’t micro-manage (set and let them go)
  • Regular contact (let team members help determine what that looks like)
  • Let your natural leaders shine. If they are volunteering to do things they don’t normally, let it happen
  • Wear hats/sparkles/pjs/costumes on your Zoom call – basically whatever your team want, do it
  • Encourage pets/children/cartoon character involvement in Zoom meetings
  • Invite your team to throw in a bit of innovation or behaviour change before someone notices:
  1. a) challenge the ‘we don’t do that’ attitude, because you do now!
  2. b) let the team show you what they’ve got/try and fail if you need.
  • Evaluate the work – and report to show it. Change if you need.
  • Brief up on what the team is doing because those you’re responsible to can’t see you 
  • Give positive, genuine, truthful and authentic feedback 
  • Be open. Let team members learn about you and learn about them (vulnerability is not a failure, sometimes stuff is hard)

The world is becoming less strange. Slightly.

But as it opens up again, it offers opportunities we’ll take forward with us as a team, as I will as a manager.

Remote Working

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It shouldn’t be a blame game in the community

Our main storytellers have not been compelling this far into the COVID-19 crisis.

It has become a standard criticism that the messages being delivered – or that we have been hearing – are confusing, not strong enough, contradictory, not cutting through, not logical, based on economics and not health.

This has no doubt contributed to uncertainty, the fear, the “she’ll be right” attitude of some.

In the past five days it feels like there’s been a shift.  “If you can stay home, you must” in Victoria is coming in a little stronger in social media and the media, with those who flaunt it being shamed or penalised.

It shouldn’t be a blame game in the community, but that lack of initial clarity and the fear will continue to drive it.

An emergency management pal of mine mentioned the outcomes of Victoria’s last pandemic – H1n1 in April 2009, which was before my time in emergency communications. She indicated there wasn’t as much panic then despite deaths.

What’s different from then to now? Social media and ‘community’ experts.

In the past five weeks, the amount of times we saw people running out of toilet paper was funny at first. But I bet all of us followed that up with the thought “maybe I should go get some”.

The Victorian Chief Health Officer hit a home run yesterday with his tweet calling the behaviour of those congregating at the beach as “crap”. Better yet, he went on to explain why that was a problem and the consequences (deaths).

However, the response varied between agreement and the strong opinion that people shouldn’t be blamed when there has been such confusion across governments in the advice being provided.

It’s no doubt true that integration of communication is somewhat easier to do when it’s one State – harder to do across the nation and the world in differing timeframes and circumstances.

We’ve seen the disastrous effect of that not occurring in the past few weeks and the impact on the opinion of the community about those in leadership.

  • Without integrated communications, any sniff of contradictory info and you start to lose it.
  • When the messages are different from people’s lived experiences, any good messages you’re pushing out are undermined.
  • When emotion drives the thinking, logic doesn’t work. Traumatised people don’t take in information and won’t believe it.

There’s a lot that can be said on communicating during a crisis and a number of people who do it extremely well. It’s not just a talent; it takes hard work and experience.

I spoke last week to The Mandarin on communicating in crisis, and my main points were around leadership, communication, innovation and opportunity.

Leadership and communication

In an emergency, leaders aren’t permitted to fail because the community (and Twitter) have very little tolerance for failure.

  • Talk. Listen. Be visible. Be real (authentic) and don’t smirk.
  • Show you’re listening by acting.
  • Know your stuff. But stay in your lane when you need to.
  • Be consistent. Give consistency.
  • Don’t assume the named leader is the best and only communicator (relevant for communicators here).
  • Build your champions and use your stakeholders and community leaders to get messages out. Listen to them and support them.
  • Don’t get impatient. In many cases, the media will ask and continue to ask the questions that community want to know the answer to (barring any particular bias or affiliation media have).
  • Respond to those who matter – the community and your stakeholders. But work to manage those who can do you damage. Bring them into the tent.
  • Respond to what is causing the fear, as well as addressing the fear itself.

Communicators are only as good as the information they have. Comms 101. They should be in early. Leaders need to listen and respond to their communication people.

Good communication practitioners will reflect the community concern and response and positioning required to address same.

And to do that communicators need to continually check whether the crisis communications are actually getting through to the community (social distancing/physical distancing…).

In the case of COVID-19, it’s abundantly clear that the messages – to this point – weren’t/aren’t.

Innovation and Opportunity

Easier said than done, I know. But pick up the phone to community, innovators, partners, corporates.  Make them all your partners.

The system/product/new procedure you know would take months to get going in normal times can happen incredibly in a crisis-timeframe.

Communicators don’t always get this opportunity. In times of emergencies you get the permission to do things differently.

Or get the wheels going and ask for forgiveness later……

Any organisation can wear an accusation of over-reacting. It is very, very difficult to come back from an accusation of under reacting and having a catastrophic outcome.

Can’t help but wonder if we’re on the cusp of that.

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Dazed and confused in an era of fear, I want more than toilet paper

I consider myself pretty well informed. I read the news, I watch the press conferences, I sift through the commentators, I absorb the community feeling. I know how the emergency management arrangements generally work, I know the systems in place that can be used to talk to people and I know the pros and cons.

And yet, I am in the dark.

I’ve observed the panic buying, I’ve navigated the changing advice and rules, I’ve tried to watch dispassionately like an outer body experience or as an interested outsider the increasing fear, criticism, confusion and dissonance from people’s lived experiences and the messaging being provided by our leaders and spokespeople.

And this week I am angry.

I make no comment on whether some of the Australian States fracturing from the Federal approach is the right thing to do or not.

But the ‘how’ it’s being done has got me stuffed.   If the idea of Victoria, NSW and QLD is at least to be responding to the gut filling anxiety some in the community are experiencing, the weekend announcements did not reduce it.

The Victorian Premier’s statement of a ‘shutdown’ of all non-essential services was strong. It was ahead of the national cabinet. It said more details to come on Monday…..

‘LOCKDOWN’ screamed the media.    My local small businesses started announcing their closures because of Covid-19 on Instagram. Cafes, restaurants, hairdressers.  I called my more vulnerable friends to check in, my locally travelling dad, disconnected from the social media world, to say he should head home to the farm the next day and the parents decided they would sit tight and lock the doors against the world.

I whatsapped my entire team, telling them to still proceed with their working plans Monday and we would reassess with more information when we knew exactly who and what was affected. Each conversation, I put a caveat on it that while media was saying it was going to be a ‘lockdown’, what that meant wasn’t entirely clear yet.

The PM’s defensive and late press conference on Sunday night provided some specific details about what would close and when, but did not answer all the questions.

Schools were contentious but some certainty at least in Victoria – and I heard from the PM that hairdressers didn’t have to close after all and cafes could still do takeaways (which many already were) so their Instagram and Facebook pages expressed more confusion. Did they really need to close just yet ? Should they for their own health and business good anyway?

And me : so closures and not lockdown then, I asked Twitter? Was I wrong in what I understood? Did I miss something? Twitter simply shrugged its shoulders at me with a palms up emoji.

With a continuing caveat, I whatsapped my team, because the Premier would still have more to say Monday morning.

Waking early, wondering and tired, I was confused and cranky. Looking again for the missing clarity in planning and in communicating that planning and the best community steps.

As a communicator and community member I have an opinion, like many with similar backgrounds.   It’s not about throwing stones in a rapidly changing and evolving situation because I get it. This situation is a case study for crazy and as recovery community engagement specialist Anne Leadbetter observed to me separately, this situation will fill the future of PHDs and research for years to come in community behaviour change, fear and communication strategy.

But as a human being with family members, friends and team members I’m afraid to touch or breathe on, I’m needy.

The logical part of me says what I need is a more strategic plan or idea of the potential next stages, an idea of the consequences and the escalation points. What I want is rock solid, consistent, empathetic, well planned and executed, visible, responsive, coordinated response that responds to my fear and my need to control what I can in the actions I can take.

The Premier today reiterated the actions as individuals we should take, must take. But the gravity of his words are belied by the fact our shopping centres are open. Again, a dissonance, and a cacophony of other decisions being made by other States – and other countries.  Tonight, I saw the first of a Victorian ad about the stage one restrictions.

New Zealand late last week implemented and communicated a four stage alert level. It appeals to my emergency management heart, and gives some comfort to me that there is an escalation point.

As our country grapples separately with decisions and NZ reaches stage three and four, my parents in a small country town are separately also holing up.

Without any more information about what’s next, they are staying home, so hopefully they won’t die.

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Leadership in a time of fear

Is there anything more challenging than leadership in a time of fear?

A leader is only as good as the information and intelligence they are provided; but the way it is conveyed is just as important in building community confidence.

There’s been a lot of talk over the summer of the calm, steady voice of the NSW RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons when he spoke about fire. He knows what he’s talking about and he’s done this for years. About fire, weather, people and NSW. He hasn’t always been so polished in his delivery; he’s worked on his media output, but his authenticity and knowledge has been his staple.

In the face of COVID-19 who is our leader? Who is the voice of reason amongst world leaders, world doctors, national leaders and national doctors, state leaders and state doctors?

As the community variously disintegrates and rallies around itself, the questions they pose are detailed and logical, fear driven, sometimes ridiculous but never able to be ridiculed. If the community does not understand or gets the information from sources that are not as authoritative as they should be, there is a breakdown in our leadership and in the spokespeople we have before us.

Being a good media spokesperson is vital in these times.  You can be a great operational leader but if you fail to communicate it in a way the community and your stakeholders can understand, you have failed in your leadership.

This is a hard truth but in times where media conferences are live streamed, filmed and repeated, cut down for news, run through social media and TV, picked up as news grabs on radio and in print, involve life or death information and an auslan interpreter, this is a key skill.

I’ve seen it done well and supported leaders who get the information they need while making difficult decisions, and convey those decisions and information to community in away that is authentic and clear.

(And answers the actual questions being asked. In this, there is no hiding. )

I’ve seen it done badly, knowing that sometimes as a media adviser there is little other option, and you support and drill as best you can, knowing it’s always too late in the moment; the ability to speak to the community through media needs to be practiced and drilled and practiced again.

Right now as the coronavirus pandemic increases and changes rapidly, with the overwhelming sentiment being confusion and fear, that becomes both a leadership failure and a question of community resilience.

The Australian Chief Medical Officer is being criticised for not being a steady and credible media performer, which in turn possibly unfairly throws doubt on his advice; the Victorian Chief Health Officer is trying to be as open and forward thinking as he can be but is having to operate within a national platform and a voracious community.

In a connected world, we know who else is saying what across the world and the nation, and where there are any discrepancies, people pounce. It’s well known in emergency communications that people will hear a piece of advice, and check with a secondary source – their family, a neighbour, Twitter!

Right now, Australia needs :

  • the right advice and more decisive action based on science and the lessons from countries who have flattened the curve
  • the right information and a central and easy to find place for it in multiple languages
  • the authenticity in our spokespeople
  • trusted third parties and champions all pulling together (including community leaders)
  • the confidence in them and ourselves
  • community planning and resilience
  • the kindness to ourselves and others.

Fear is a monster to combat, and on the back of bushfires in run down and fatigued communities across the nation, it will take a special kind of effort.

We need to know we’ve done all we could when the death tolls mount, and we need to be together during the inconveniences, the fright, the close calls and the recovery.

We’ll learn from this, as I hope, will our leaders.

 

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Where communities have suffered, and rallied before

Gippsland as a whole has had its fair share of rough trots. That’s a flippant way to say this is an area where communities have suffered and rallied, and suffered, and rallied.

I spent a lot of time supporting the communication and engagement effort in Morwell in 2014 and 2015 with the Hazelwood Mine Fire and subsequent inquiry.

A few years before that I was in Goongerah with the Fire Services Commissioner and agency chiefs responding to grave community concern after a fire response.

So East Gippsland has had fire before; has it ever not? It’s a known threat, as it is across many other communities In Victoria.

Driving through missing streets, patchy blackened trees, walking beaches with trails of broken and burned leaves and bark, it’s easy to argue this is familiar territory.

But hundreds of lost houses later, trapped tourists and townspeople, never ending smoke and the deaths of livestock, wildlife, and most importantly human lives, it’s confronting.

East Gippsland Shire Council is at the forefront. It’s been here before too. Business as usual is arguably non-existent as the Council supports its scattered communities.

The Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) has resource sharing agreements in place with Councils in need. And East Gippsland Shire Council is. The amount of resources from other councils across Victoria bounding in to pick up roles, support communities and the council officers tired on their feet after weeks of fire is gratifying.  I’m one of them. Brimbank City Council, a substantial metro council, put up its hand to help.

I can’t presume to know the communities; I can only hear and imagine what they’re going through. It’s a privilege to be able to provide a little support, a little relief to the ones who do know the communities. As a communications practitioner with emergency management experience, it’s a comfort to share knowledge and skills that may help either a council or a community.

These things are messy; early on they always are in my experience. Some communities in recovery, some still under threat. And we’re in high summer, having missed the most important part of summer for tourism and revenue raising which sustains some of the townships through the colder months.

We know this is a marathon, not a sprint, and that while the altruistic enthusiasm is strong in the early days, just like the impulse to donate and have that money spent immediately, the hard days are ahead.

The Council, and these communities have suffered though fire, and will rally again. But this is big and it is long, and it will hurt, and the way out of this firestorm must be led by them.

When the fire is out, the response services have moved on out, and Council and recovery agencies are working with communities trying to move through what’s required at different paces, that’s when we need to be there.

All of us.   I’ve already asked my friends who wants to visit and we’re in the process of planning.

It won’t be now. It will be when the heat cools just like the enthusiasm to help.

I’ll eat just as much good food, drink just as much wine and explore just as much as I can then.

And I intend to still appreciate the long journey these communities have ahead.

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I remember lazy, not hazy, summer days

When I was young, summer holidays meant camping at Warrnambool’s Surf Side 1 or 2 caravan parks with the entire extended family, getting rolled in the ocean and snorting salt water out of the way for hours a day.

Or taking trips down the Great Ocean Road with my friends, ignoring the prospect of bumper to bumper traffic to play and stay in the iconic bush/beach settings.

As I moved into emergency management, summer filled me with adrenalin and dread. What consequences would fire bring; what impact to community members and emergency services; what issues and what long hours did we have ahead in trying to plan the communication required for communities.

As I left emergency management, the summer focus was on heat health and the potential for power outages against the backdrop of fire and storms.

Right now, this minute, summer means planning around the bushfire smoke and whether we can go outside and for how long.

Sometimes, just sometimes, holed up safely in inner Melbourne, you can be forgiven for forgetting for a moment the threat that fire brings to regional areas and our metro urban fringes. In the middle of a smoke haze where the City disappears in the distance and you feel the wheeze of usually dormant asthma, it’s a stark and apt reminder of far-reaching potential consequences.

In early January, the ABC’s The Conversation ran an article by fire researcher David Bowman in which he says:

“As we contemplate a future where catastrophes like the one currently engulfing Australia becomes increasingly frequent, there’s an idea to which I keep returning: maybe it’s time to say goodbye to the typical summer Australian holiday”.

The emergency management communications specialist in me considered it. The summer holiday child in me reacted with horror.

What he actually put forward was an idea of rearranging the peak holiday period to March or April, instead of December and January. His consideration was the absurdity of the business-as-usual approach that sees thousand of holidaymakers heading directly into forests and national parks in the middle of peak bushfire season.

Watching the unfolding, days-long and frightening evacuation of Mallacoota, and of holidaymakers and communities more broadly, my mind agreed.

During summer, we always used to say that the mindset of people on holiday was different; you’re in unfamiliar areas, if you ever had a plan at home, you don’t at your new destination, you’re focussed on a day at the beach and not the fire risk if you even read a paper or listen to the radio. It’s a real risk, no doubt, and one the emergency management agencies do plan for. But still…..

In the article, researcher Bowman acknowledged his idea was a confronting one. He said the benefits of having main holidays in the cooler months as potentially less loss of life, more certainty and opportunity for businesses and holidaymakers, and potentially smoother handling of fire crises as they emerge, with less of a transient population to deal with.

I appreciated his thinking, controversial or not. I can’t come at the idea itself. My reaction to it is viscerally emotional. Even while under the heavy pall of smoke in the City, I would consider that failure, beyond adaptation to climate change, a lift instead to acceptance of failure.

But Bowman’s consideration is right; the consideration of what future life is like under changing conditions. Big picture and personally, living with what we now have; preventing it from getting worse, mitigating the consequences currently in play, and yes absolutely, adapting where we have to.

In the meantime, we have in your face hazy summer days instead of lazy summer days.

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-06/bushfire-season-holidays-converge-goodbye-typical-summer/11843312?pfmredir=sm

 

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What will fire teach us this year?

You wake up smelling bushfire. It’s on the wind, in almost inner city Melbourne. In the distance the city has disappeared under a fog of smoke that doesn’t belong to it either. It complements in a tiny, miniscule way the apocalyptic photos coming out of eastern and north east Victoria under those blood red, smoke-choked skies.

I haven’t been in a bushfire. I don’t ever want to be in a bushfire. Ten years in the sector has given me a healthy respect for it, but also a massive fear of it. I’ve been on the ground as a journalist, reported on them, skirting safely round the fiery bits. I’ve listened to the harrowing tales of some of Victoria’s most senior and experienced operational firefighters.

I’ve stood in the State Control Centre crying because I thought my parents were going to be trapped in a bushfire, listening to the air desk supervisor tell me it would be okay, they had as many water bombing aircraft on it as they could. I’ve taught my mum to use the Vic Emergency App and I do the anxious “I’m far away and they live in the country” dance each time the fire danger rating hits Extreme.

I’ve seen the beautiful before pictures as I’ve travelled Victoria. And I’ve seen the aftermath. I’ve walked the pitted land, seen the twisted wrecks of houses and the saves, smelt the death of livestock and listened to the camaraderie and grief of community members and emergency services personnel who have either seen this before or have been pushed to breaking point.

I’ve supported traumatised community members through media engagement. I’ve advised leaders through same. I’ve been privileged to work in coordinating, developing, supporting and implementing communication around new policies, procedures and education.  I’ve supported the introduction of new systems, and led new initiatives designed to better coordinate whole of government information.  I’ve learned what recovery looks like and it’s very, very long tail.

Yet so many challenges as a sector we’ve never really overcome. How to “convince” community members they need to know what they’ll do in a bushfire (will that ever happen to me?), how to convince them to leave before a fire (what does leaving before a fire even mean?), to have them understand the physical and mental capacity required to stay with a property (I can do it, I have it under control).

Greater minds than mine have been tackling this for years using research, experience, education, awareness. And yet, in a way, the current blanket media coverage is the best advertising campaign.  A horrific way to look at it, I know, and I don’t mean it as such.   But it is that reality that is so hard to convey in any messages, in any campaign, in any social media post, in any engagement activity when people are busy with life-stuff, families, paying bills, working and being.

As I watch the coverage, I won’t be alone in wondering what lessons will come out of this horror. Is there something different that could have been done? Is there something else that will be done? I know the answer will be yes, because we can never sit still, and never accept that this is the way it is now.

Can we?

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