In PR Today, It’s Adapt Or Die. Or Else.

Considering the speed at which we get information today, it’s really no surprise that there's added emphasis on the “adapt or die” adage – regardless of which industry you’re in. In the case of PR, it’s adapt or die, and do it at warp speed – or else.

PR depends on being incredibly up-to-date, knowing what’s happening in our clients’ industries (sometimes before they do), knowing who is covering what – or not - and managing these developments in a way that benefit clients, media, and just about everyone linked to them. It's sink-or-swim, without a doubt, and in the maturing digital age, it doesn't take very long to sink to the bottom.

As an industry, we can’t get out of this by looking the other direction or playing thumbsies – that's the whole point of “adapt or die.” So where to start? Here are a few ideas worth trying.

1) Refining information received – Information is being hurled at us every few seconds, demanding to be processed and shared, so it is critical that we sift through the noise, clutter and nonsense. Successful companies are able to study – and toss – information as it's ranked according to usability, quality and value. Think beyond the inbox!

2) Managing and managing some more – We need to study our competitors and how they are impacting our clients’ mindshare. (Hint – these may not always be PR firms).

3) Playing the field without floundering – Successful adapters aren't afraid to make some mistakes to reach another level. Failure can be good, otherwise we would never learn. These adapters are able to predict and plan for both losses and successes that come along with experimentation and a bit of risk.

4) Learning and retaining new decision-making skills – While we need to move at an increasingly rapid and demanding pace, we also need to retain those decision-making tactics that don’t always happen immediately. Think, juggle, balance, rinse and repeat.

And then, of course, are our clients. How do we convince them to adapt along with us? We can finesse changes using statistics and case studies to support our decisions, eking things out for those who aren't comfortable with a big change. Creating an actionable plan of little tweaks can get our plan moving, and once positive results are seen, things can happen more quickly. Piece by piece, we can show our clients that altering how we do things won't result in a collapse or their demise. Think baby steps here.

Adaptation isn't easy, but if we know how to do anything well in PR, it is scoping out situations and managing them accordingly. We know how to smooth, rework, and recreate, and so adapting should be second nature to us.

We just need to carve out some non-billable hours to see where our efforts currently stand, and where to go from here. Are you guilty of not taking the time to create an “adaptation plan,” or are you already working on it?

A Life Before Email? Does Not Compute

Our tablets, phones, and laptops of 2011 chug away in harmony, not unlike J.C.R. Licklider’s 1960 vision of human-computer symbiosis. Licklider—a veteran of Harvard and MIT computing-based endeavors—maintained that the human-computer connection would allow machines to address mundane, time-consuming tasks in a highly efficient manner. For the field, his work was outstanding; for a trained psychologist, his contributions were absolutely incredible.

Licklider saw computers as tools with tremendous capability, even convincing his employers to purchase a $25,000 computer in 1957. Imagine? He imagined future work desks as command stations tethered to the wall, with the essential “umbilical cords” completing a “telecommunication-telecomputation system.” Much like his conceptual sketches of electronic libraries and information retrieval (hello eBooks!), Licklider was years ahead of his time.

In fact, Licklider's ideas were accurate enough that they seem basic to us today. Using a computer for essential tasks? Sure. Plugging in at work for the ultimate human-machine team? Done. We use our “machines” to handle the mundane and necessary, and that includes email, which originated with two geeks leaving “Read Me” notes on disk files in the '60s. They wanted electronic mail for practicality's sake, and we still do today – despite the naysaysers who claim that email is dead. But were we productive back when we weren't answering emails every few minutes? We were, but just not as concerned with hearing back from someone a few seconds later. Others argue that we're getting worse in the productivity department: according to a recent study, American office workers spend up to three hours daily on tasks that aren't work-related (44 percent of that time “playing” on the internet), with lost productivity cost employers an estimate of $750 billion last year.

It's also about expectations—and memory retention. Once we know what our machines can do, it's easy to decrease acceptable communication waiting time, permanently. But while Grandma still says that handwritten thank-you notes are more considerate (and, of course, human), there's another reason to turn to paper occasionally: permanence. If you don't want your words to be edited, muddled, or misconstrued in the digital age, making hard copies wouldn't be the worst idea—this New York Times piece says it all. Plus, with new studies showing a 15 percent to 20 percent increase of memory retention in 3D digital media, we're in for a wild ride in advertising.

And I don’t care what anyone says, email is definitely not dead.