Larry D. Lauer

Last week I had the pleasure of helping to welcome the new president of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) to Washington. CASE is the largest and most international of all education associations and it serves those who handle marketing, communication, fund-raising, alumni relations, and government affairs. She comes to her new responsibility from Melbourne, Australia. But she also has years of experience in the UK, Europe, and most of the rest of the world.

Reflecting on the future of education and what it will take to adapt to the challenges of a revolution in technology, major changes in government support, and the unavoidable forces of globalization, I became acutely aware that communication and media savvy leadership will be essential for every organization, not just CASE.

I also realized that for some time now I actually have already been writing about all this from the perspective of leaders, or more precisely what leaders need to know about why communication always breaks down and how media revolutions really do change everything.  Whether I was writing about governments and foreign policy, or about universities and globalization, I was always focusing on implications for leaders.

So I was able to welcome the new CASE president by telling her she is the right person at the right time. But I also suggested that all CASE members will need to assume new leadership roles because competition will become global, student markets will change, new money will have to be found, and everyone will have to be kept informed.

Realizing all this, I decided to adjust the theme and content of my blog site and posts to reflect the perspective that was already evolving… what leaders in all types of institutions need to know about communication and media.

Not only do leaders need to know why communication always breaks down and how to respond, but they need to know why brand identity is so important and how to use it. They need to know how internal communication becomes external, and how to deal with challenging political realities inside and out. They need to know how to run really productive  meetings, and build forward-looking innovative teams. And they need to know how to deal with the increasingly aggressive 24/7 news environment, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of various social media platforms.

Leadership is a much written about topic, to say the least. But not enough is written about its many complex and challenging communication and media dimensions. This blog will set out to fix that.