Are You Living in Fear of Falling Short? Take My Ski Instructor’s Advice.

Yes, that’s me on the left, circa 1986, soaking up some rays before hitting the slopes at Solitude in Utah. The pic on the right was an attempt to recreate that pose during a trip to Whistler, British Columbia, in 2017.

I’m sharing these images because they remind me of some simple advice I received from a ski instructor, which turned out to be a profound lesson for success in business and in life.

I taught myself to ski while trying to keep up with high-school buddies on icy mountains in the Adirondacks. (Anyone been to Oak Mountain or Gore?) Wanting to improve my technique, I took my first skiing lesson when I was 24, at Ski Liberty in Pennsylvania. I did a few short runs to show the instructor my level of skill, and then he said those magic words:

“There's nothing wrong with what you’re doing. You just need to relax and be more aggressive!”

As soon as I took his advice, I found myself whizzing a little faster and gaining more confidence. I started tackling more challenging runs on bigger mountains and having much more fun.

And that’s why those words often come to me when I am feeling uncertain about what to do in a business or personal situation. “There's nothing wrong with what you’re doing. Just relax and be more aggressive!” This is great advice in so many situations!

Take a minute and reassure yourself: You know how to do this. You’re doing all the right things. You just need to go at it a little harder. You’ll be amazed at what you can do, and how much more fun it is!

MEANWHILE, do you know what it's like to live in fear because your company or association lacks influence in Washington? Or perhaps your small internal team is struggling to keep up, and your important initiatives are falling behind.

Most DC policy professionals I speak with admit to having insecurities about their organization's content and communications outreach. They have no strong writers on staff; or they lack messaging and materials that are effective for advocacy; or they have no process for doing outreach to the media; or they don’t do much with their website or social accounts.

These poor folks live in fear of the costly impacts on their industries and companies that could result from a lack of influence in Washington. They may even fear losing their jobs because of weak efforts in advocacy and PR.

Here are a few tips for facing down and overcoming that fear.

Focus on the consequences of inaction.

It’s easy to become paralyzed and do nothing when you’re faced with a difficult challenge that requires changing your behavior and/or influencing your colleagues’ behavior. But consider the costs of inaction, especially if they carry a financial cost. Changing internal processes to produce more content and communications outreach may be uncomfortable, but ultimately not as uncomfortable as losing influence compared to rivals and competitors.

Get help.

You’ve heard the old advice about asking for help rather than struggling in silence. That goes for content and communications as well. Let your boss know your concerns about not having the right talent in-house and explore sources for help. From the low end to the high end, your solution could come in the form of talented interns, new part-time or full-time hires, or consultants who specialize in filling your specific needs.

Step back and strategize.

Your content and communications tactics should be driven by a well-thought-out strategy. When we help clients develop their comms strategies, our starting point is to analyze all aspects of the current context, including what’s working and what’s not. We also discuss the client’s objectives and key audiences. From this “who, what, when and where” information, we derive one to three high-level strategies, which are “how” statements about the smartest ways to match the content and comms outreach to the key audiences.

For example, for an industry client whose lobbying effort was failing to win over even pro-business members of Congress, one strategy was to reorient the messaging away from the business benefits of what the industry wanted; that approach simply wasn’t working. Instead, we adopted messaging that stressed the benefits of the desired policy change to average voters, in words that resonated emotionally. The reaction to our messaging went from head scratching to head nodding.

Another strategy in that campaign was to recruit sympathetic “grasstops” community leaders to deliver the message personally to their elected officials, reinforcing other channels of PR aimed at these leaders.

Be systematic and persistent.

The antidote to the perennial problem of not having enough staff to do PR well is starting small and being persistent and systematic. Choose just one or two tactics and do it consistently. A simple program might include producing more email newsletters and social media posts, supported with taking more photos. Commit to a schedule and create a content calendar to make sure you cover all your key issues over the coming months.

Then repeat, repeat, repeat. Get the writing and editing help you need to produce high-quality, engaging content; then keep being systematic and persistent; and you will begin to break through the clutter and have an impact.

These are just a few of my secrets for overcoming fear and all the obstacles to effective Washington advocacy. Have you discovered any tactics that worked well for you?

Here's My Sept. 11 Story -- What's Yours?

On the morning of 9/11/01, I arrived at about 8:50 am for a 9:00 meeting at DC’s Union Station, in the office of Amtrak President George Warrington. As we and about 5-6 others arrived, people were chatting in front of the office TV, curious about the apparent crash of a plane or helicopter into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. Moments later, our group watched in real time on The Today Show as the second plane suddenly appeared and crashed into the second tower. Along with millions of people across America, our jaws dropped, and our stomachs knotted. What the hell was happening? This wasn’t an accident.

Almost immediately, every phone line in the suite started ringing. Warrington bellowed, “Get me [the head of Amtrak Security], NOW! Stop all the trains on the Northeast Corridor!!” My boss said, “We’re outta here,” and we non-Amtrak employees hustled out. The stairwell was full, and this was not a drill. In front of Union Station, people were streaming out into the taxi lanes, intensifying the usual traffic jam there. I decided to walk home, which was about 20 long blocks away up Massachusetts Avenue. Along the way, someone shouted something about a bomb having gone off at the State Department, which turned out not to have been true. But minutes later there was a plume of smoke in the southern sky, which was the Pentagon crash.

Like millions of others, I spent the rest of the day at home, in shock, watching on TV all that was unfolding and becoming apparent. The audacity of the attacks. The fall of the two towers. The loss of so many lives, including hundreds of brave first responders. The initial confusion involving the president. That huge plume of smoke over in Virginia. I took a walk in the late afternoon. It was a gorgeous September day, and the sidewalks were crowded, but it was unnaturally still with people speaking in hushed voices and no sound of aircraft going into or out of nearby National Airport.

In the weeks to come, I spent many hours back at Amtrak, helping to craft the messaging and PR campaign to persuade Congress to invest billions in security upgrades throughout America’s very open and unsecured passenger rail system. I recall that Joe Biden was our champion in the Senate, and we did win some additional funding that year, but far less than what was needed. I’m quite sure the system still needs major upgrades today, because we as a nation consistently fail to prioritize passenger rail, unlike every other major developed country. I hope that the infrastructure bill currently pending in Congress will be enacted and make possible more Amtrak upgrades.  

What was your professional experience like on or after 9/11/01?