Creating stability in uncertain times

Written by katie test davis

News breaks.

Funding is cancelled.

New legislation is enacted.

How do communicators like you find steady ground while everything feels like an earthquake?

We get it. It’s a lot.

Yet charting a stable course on unsteady ground is something we’re pretty darn good at here at Forthright. (In fact, we have data to prove it. We heard from our clients in our 2025 client happiness survey that we’re a shelter in the storm.)

Here are the questions we hear most from our clients:

How Do I Identify What is in My Control?

We direct our energy (and our client’s energy) toward our actual sphere of influence. Because our brains are biologically wired to focus on bad news, mapping out our resources and immediate audience needs helps us regain control. Tackling the tasks right in front of us cures anxiety.

When working with clients, we map out our resources and our immediate audience needs.

Tackling the tasks right in front of us cures anxiety.

We also focus our work on low-hanging fruit, and ensure that we’re doing work that will have the biggest impact, the soonest.

How Can I Create Clear Rapid Response Protocols?

You know what will burn your people out the quickest? Reinventing the wheel every time. The CDC highlights that improving workplace protocols is one of the best ways to prevent burnout. We help our clients build specific workflows for breaking news to keep everyone aligned.

Our guidance ensures that our clients know exactly who drafts the messaging, who approves it and when to hit publish. Clear roles give everyone the confidence to act swiftly and strategically.

Should I Celebrate Every Small Win?

Heavy news can make progress feel invisible. I encourage you to intentionally highlight your victories – even the small ones! For example, at Forthright, we start every weekly team meeting with shout outs. Each person compliments another teammate for things that went well, like a great piece of coverage, a successful social post or a helpful partner conversation.

Psst: here are other ways we share the happy!

How Can I Prioritize Deep Focus Time?

Constantly monitoring the news cycle drains our energy. In fact, researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill note that endless scrolling leads directly to news fatigue. which can severely impact our mental health. Even checking your email multiple times an hour pulls your focus away and blocks creativity.

Our team carves out specific time on our calendars called ‘work blocks’ where we go into a deep focus hole. This means we:

close Slack,
X out of our email,
and even try to close out distracting tabs in our browsers.

We do, though, leave our phone on a setting that allows calls from each other to break through Do Not Disturb – that way if a true emergency strikes we’re available.

Dedicated quiet time allows folks to write thoughtful campaigns, draft messaging and build strategy documents.

Y'all are doing incredible work in a really chaotic landscape. It is hard to keep a communications team grounded when the news cycle spins out of control.

We see the heavy lifting you do for kids, families and communities every single day.

You deserve stability, and we promise it is possible, even in 2026.

PS - One very important way to establish stability for your communications work that I didn’t touch on today is to decide if you’re going to be a front-line responder/firefighter on breaking news. You need to decide between focusing on the short-term and the long-term. We’ll be issuing (a lot) more guidance and advising on this in the coming weeks in a new report. Stay tuned!