Consider the position: you run the company that teaches everyone else how to communicate, and then the ground shifts so fast that nobody knows what to say anymore. Not your customers. Not the executives paying your customers to find the words. Not you.

That's roughly the seat Diane Schwartz took in 2019 as the new leader of Ragan Communications. What followed was a pandemic, an industry rewrite, an AI wave still cresting, and seven straight years of growth anyway.

But this episode of The Disruption Lab isn't really about communications. It's about what you do when you inherit something that already works. Every new leader faces the same fork: break the wrong thing and you destroy the reason people showed up; protect the wrong thing and you end up curating a museum. Diane had to decide, fast, and she'll tell you what she chose to blow up and what she refused to touch.

We get into the launch that scared her most, why she calls AI "a career accelerant for communicators, but only if the right levers are pulled," and where she watches teams freeze instead of pull them. We also get into the part nobody puts in the press release: what seven years of continuous change costs the people living through it, and how a leader knows when they've pushed too far. Whether you run a company, a function, or a team of three, there's something here for you.

And she started as a journalist, which means she answers questions the way she used to ask them. When I asked what belief about leadership she's had to throw out, she didn't reach for something flattering. See if you'd have the nerve to give her an answer about your own career.

You'll leave knowing what to protect, what to break, and one move to make this week if disruption feels like it's happening to you instead of for you. The mic is on.

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Learn more about Diane at

Website - www.ragan.com

Socials - Diane Schwartz | LinkedIn

Patrick Leddin PhD

Website - https://patrickleddin.com

Speaking - https://patrickleddin.com/speaking/

Newsletter - https://patrickleddin.kit.com/disrupt

Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc

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