As we gear up for an August 1st launch of what’s currently being called our Quarterly, we’ve been revisiting a 2023 webcast hosted by MUFG Capital Analytics’ Scott Ramsey: MUFG Webcast, Episode 3.
Why now? Because the themes — trust, technology, and crisis — feel even more relevant today. And not just in banking and finance. They extend across industries, including healthcare, and critically, into marketing and communications.
A Systems Problem, Not a Workforce Problem
Nearly 40% of clinicians already describe their workload as structurally unsustainable. As organizations lean further into algorithmic scheduling and cost controls, the margin for human error continues to shrink.
This goes beyond a workforce issue. It suggests a breakdown of system flows and a lack of systems thinking.
When people are exhausted and unheard, mistakes happen. In healthcare, those mistakes carry profound consequences — clinical, legal, and human.
And marketers should pay attention. In fact, if you read our Definers Monthly newsletter, you will have noted that journalists are tracking this.
The Emergence of Marketing Paralysis
Inside organizations experiencing this kind of strain, marketing is often asked to do more, faster. More messaging, more campaigns, more positioning — precisely when clarity is at its lowest. The result is what we are calling marketing paralysis. Everyone has a point, every stakeholder is partially right, and the system floods itself with conflicting inputs.
Instead of clarity, you get noise. Instead of action, you get stalled execution.
Lessons from the 2023 Banking Crisis
Coming back to MUFG Capital Analytics’ webcast, we saw similar dynamics in the 2023 banking crisis.
While public attention focused on interest rates and balance sheets, the reported structural failures at Silicon Valley Bank and within supervisory systems were also human. Between 2019 and 2021, SVB’s assets more than doubled — from roughly $71 billion to over $211 billion. Human systems didn’t scale with that growth.
Employees were overwhelmed by micro-compliance, endless assessments, and administrative noise. Risk professionals were buried in daily processing, missing macro-level threats — like unhedged long-term bond exposure.
At the same time, internal cohesion eroded. Hybrid structures fractured communication, reduced productivity, and weakened institutional alignment.
Marketing organizations today are experiencing a version of that same problem: too many signals, not enough synthesis. Too much motion, not enough direction. Everyone is “right,” which makes it nearly impossible to move.
Deliberate Calm: A Better Way
There is a better way, but it requires slowing down. And that’s hard — if you read our upcoming post on bot-sitting.
At the same time as the banking crisis, leaders began applying what McKinsey called “deliberate calm” — structured, paced decision-making that creates clarity without sacrificing responsiveness.
That idea matters just as much for marketing as it does for operations or risk. In moments of overload and fragmentation, effective marketing is not about increasing output. It is about restoring coherence, sequencing, and market contact:
- Clear narrative over constant messaging
- Defined decision rights over endless consensus loops
- Structured cadence over reactive bursts
- Frontline insight over top-down broadcasting
In the banking crisis, organizations that applied this approach contained damage. They created stability at the top while empowering judgment at the front lines.
The lesson translates directly to today’s workplace — and again to marketing specifically:
- Speed without structure creates fragility
- Control without agency creates disengagement
- Marketing without systems thinking amplifies confusion instead of reducing it
What Leaders Should Do Now
This summer is not just a seasonal slowdown (and for many, there may be no slowdown) — it is a stress test. And marketing is at the center of it, whether organizations realize it or not.
Leaders can ask:
- Are our scheduling and resourcing systems creating predictability, or chaos?
- Do our people understand how decisions are made — including marketing and public relations decisions — and where they have agency?
- Are we aligning around a clear narrative, or reacting to every internal voice and external signal?
- Are we solving problems systemically, or layering on more messaging to compensate for deeper misalignment?
- Are we listening to how teams interpret our mission, or broadcasting in ways that risk contradiction and loss of trust?
Because when public relations and marketing becomes reactive inside a strained system, it exposes fractures. Mixed signals, inconsistent positioning, and overproduction don’t just confuse markets — they erode trust internally and externally.
Maybe the consequences don’t show up immediately. But when they show up later, they look like:
- Declining credibility
- Disengaged teams
- Missed risks
- Reputational and legal exposure (follow us on LinkedIn for more on NAVEX’s findings)
Trust Is Built Through Clarity, Not Volume
Across industries — from healthcare to finance to technology — the pattern is the same.
Trust is not rebuilt through volume. Rather, it’s clarity, consistency, and systems that actually support the people inside them.
And above all, leaders must establish visible, transparent patterns of integrity — operational, cultural, and narrative — that give people agency, and that they and we can actually trust.
