I read an interesting article on the CBC website today on internet piracy - Tougher Laws Won't Stop Internet Piracy - and it's what spurred this post. Essentially the article says what most people already know, that piracy is more a function of economic issues than moral issues. Pirating emerges in response to prohibitive cost-to-consumer models and lack of competition in the market which allows inflated costs to arise.
What I liked about the article is that it addressed the topic of pirating the way any and all news articles on any subject should do, which is from the perspective of cause and effect.
One of the greatest things about the modern-day education system is that at its core it is essentially a study of cause and effect. Whether it's finance, engineering, science, psychology, public relations, medicine, etc. - every academic area focuses on imparting students with an understanding of causes and effects. The result being that they can go out and help change the world (hopefully for the better) with this understanding.
Personally I have a degree in psychology and a diploma in public relations. I shutter to think what my approach to PR would be if I hadn't had a degree in psychology. I don't know how you can message and communicate effectively if you don't have an understanding of psychological principles such as the halo effect, cognitive dissonance, group think, and dozens of other variables that factor in to how humans process information.
The importance of cause and effect cannot be understated. The financial crisis of 2008 was the result of failing to understand the effects (recession) that would come about as a result of various causes (deregulation, CDOs, predatory lending, etc.).
Every business or empire that falls, at some point along the way, failed to grasp and react to the causal variables that surrounded it. In psychology we would call this optimism bias or self-deception - the point being that often the causal chain of events are predictable, but ignored. History is littered with examples of countries and individuals failing to understand cause and effect, simply read The March Of Folly for such examples.
Often our failure to heed the importance of cause and effect is the result of risk versus reward. Our view of cause and effect is always moderated by risk versus reward.
In the financial crisis, allowing for predatory loans was a risk (because people could ultimately end up defaulting on those loans) but the reward (a booming housing bubble that fueled economic growth) made that risk acceptable. Put differently, greed (emotion) and reason (executive functioning) often struggle to regulate the actions we take.
In PR it's essential to understand cause and effect. Whether consciously or unconsciously, all good PR people know this. It is the reason they have an insatiable curiosity regarding all facets of the organizations they work for. The more they understand all facets of an organization the better the odds are that they will be able to communicate effectively. It's also one of the reasons PR is such a high-stress job, because one must absorb, process and retain a tremendous amount of information, because everything you communicate is done within a context of past communications activities, industry trends and stakeholder opinions.
When creating public relations plans or communicating internally or externally always start with asking yourself "What cause and effect relationships are at play here?" Doing so will almost always prevent you from making some big mistakes which at the time might seem like very wise choices.
Charlie Sheen is a good example of what happens when you ignore cause and effect or fail to understanding it properly. Yes, he is garnering attention, but it's the wrong type of attention. It is attention that ultimately will damage his brand equity with stakeholders. Similarly, many companies will communicate based on short-term strategies that they think will appease stakeholders, only in the long-run to lose credibility with such stakeholders when what they said fails to pan out.
It's easy for PR people to ignore cause and effect by telling themselves that such considerations are above their pay grade. They just do what they are tasked with doing.
But this is a tremendous mistake. Most executives that I've worked for are more than open to listening to suggestions about how their organization should proceed. However, I've also noticed that they only remain receptive when advice is given within context to cause and effect. We should do x over y, because x will cause this to happen and y will cause that to happen.
Coming up with good ideas or suggesting one course of action over another isn't enough to garner the type of influence PR needs to be effective within organizations. You have to be able to demonstrate that you understand the causal implications of such decisions.
Get good at doing that and you can achieve amazing things. Simply try to please your boss and you are almost always guaranteed to failed in the long run.
What I liked about the article is that it addressed the topic of pirating the way any and all news articles on any subject should do, which is from the perspective of cause and effect.
One of the greatest things about the modern-day education system is that at its core it is essentially a study of cause and effect. Whether it's finance, engineering, science, psychology, public relations, medicine, etc. - every academic area focuses on imparting students with an understanding of causes and effects. The result being that they can go out and help change the world (hopefully for the better) with this understanding.
Personally I have a degree in psychology and a diploma in public relations. I shutter to think what my approach to PR would be if I hadn't had a degree in psychology. I don't know how you can message and communicate effectively if you don't have an understanding of psychological principles such as the halo effect, cognitive dissonance, group think, and dozens of other variables that factor in to how humans process information.
The importance of cause and effect cannot be understated. The financial crisis of 2008 was the result of failing to understand the effects (recession) that would come about as a result of various causes (deregulation, CDOs, predatory lending, etc.).
Every business or empire that falls, at some point along the way, failed to grasp and react to the causal variables that surrounded it. In psychology we would call this optimism bias or self-deception - the point being that often the causal chain of events are predictable, but ignored. History is littered with examples of countries and individuals failing to understand cause and effect, simply read The March Of Folly for such examples.
Often our failure to heed the importance of cause and effect is the result of risk versus reward. Our view of cause and effect is always moderated by risk versus reward.
In the financial crisis, allowing for predatory loans was a risk (because people could ultimately end up defaulting on those loans) but the reward (a booming housing bubble that fueled economic growth) made that risk acceptable. Put differently, greed (emotion) and reason (executive functioning) often struggle to regulate the actions we take.
In PR it's essential to understand cause and effect. Whether consciously or unconsciously, all good PR people know this. It is the reason they have an insatiable curiosity regarding all facets of the organizations they work for. The more they understand all facets of an organization the better the odds are that they will be able to communicate effectively. It's also one of the reasons PR is such a high-stress job, because one must absorb, process and retain a tremendous amount of information, because everything you communicate is done within a context of past communications activities, industry trends and stakeholder opinions.
When creating public relations plans or communicating internally or externally always start with asking yourself "What cause and effect relationships are at play here?" Doing so will almost always prevent you from making some big mistakes which at the time might seem like very wise choices.
Charlie Sheen is a good example of what happens when you ignore cause and effect or fail to understanding it properly. Yes, he is garnering attention, but it's the wrong type of attention. It is attention that ultimately will damage his brand equity with stakeholders. Similarly, many companies will communicate based on short-term strategies that they think will appease stakeholders, only in the long-run to lose credibility with such stakeholders when what they said fails to pan out.
It's easy for PR people to ignore cause and effect by telling themselves that such considerations are above their pay grade. They just do what they are tasked with doing.
But this is a tremendous mistake. Most executives that I've worked for are more than open to listening to suggestions about how their organization should proceed. However, I've also noticed that they only remain receptive when advice is given within context to cause and effect. We should do x over y, because x will cause this to happen and y will cause that to happen.
Coming up with good ideas or suggesting one course of action over another isn't enough to garner the type of influence PR needs to be effective within organizations. You have to be able to demonstrate that you understand the causal implications of such decisions.
Get good at doing that and you can achieve amazing things. Simply try to please your boss and you are almost always guaranteed to failed in the long run.
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