In the latest “PR’s Top Pros Talk” video interview, G&S Business Communications president and CEO Luke Lambert tells Doug Simon that keeping one eye on the rear-view mirror is actually a good way to build success on the road ahead.

"Resist the urge that I know we all have right now to turn the page on 2020 so fast that we neglect to note the most important lessons that we learned in what has been an extremely challenging year,” Lambert says.

“It’s during difficult times like we’ve had where you see your team’s best leadership qualities really rise to the top,” he adds.

In the past year, “we all had to change the way we collaborated, the way we shared, the way we communicated and the way we truly joined together.” The result was “the most collaborative cross agency leadership dynamic I’ve ever led or been part of.”

Lambert also addresses the challenges presented by the new focus on diversity and inclusion. He says that 2020 “showed me that there’s so much bigger opportunity to not only change the culture of inclusion within our agency, but also to start making a positive impact in changing our communities.”

At G&S, he tells Simon, part of the response was to build a diverse task force “assembled to ensure that we developed a program where all employees had a voice.”

For the coming year, he advises communicators to “take a different, more proactive approach or even an analytical approach to issues,” whether it’s ESG or racial injustice.

But he also finds a lot to look forward to. “We should feel really fortunate as commnicators,” he says. “We represent innovative companies and brands that are taking meaningful positions today to make the world a better place.”

View all of the interviews in the “PR's Top Pros Talk” series. Subscribe to get notified when new episodes are available.

Interested in taking part? Contact Doug Simon at [email protected]

D S Simon Media helps clients get their stories on television through satellite media tours and by producing and distributing content to the media. The company also produces live social media events.