A few weeks ago, Mark Carney did something that would have been unthinkable in Canadian politics a decade ago.
He sat down in front of a camera and talked to Canadians for ten minutes. No press gallery. No scrum. No carefully managed media availability. Just the Prime Minister, in a chair (without his customary tie), explaining what his government is doing on trade with the United States, why, and what he doesn’t yet know.
He called it Forward Guidance, borrowing a term from his old life as a central banker. The video racked up over half a million views in days, and his team has signalled this won’t be a one-off.
Predictably, the move sparked debate. The Globe and Mail called for less guidance and more accountability. Pierre Poilievre dismissed it as showboating. The criticisms aren’t unfair, and a video is no substitute for results. But the instinct? The instinct is exactly right.
And it’s the same instinct every executive leading change should be paying attention to right now.
The era of intermediaries is ending
We are operating in the lowest-trust era in recorded history. Edelman’s trust barometer keeps setting off alarms. Abacus Data describes the Canadian public mood as deeply unsettled. Trust in institutions, in leaders, and in the intermediaries who once spoke for them has cratered.
In this environment, the old playbook of pushing messages through layers of filters — media releases, communications cascades, town halls scripted to within an inch of their lives — doesn’t just feel anachronistic. It actively erodes credibility. What people are looking for now is authenticity: the unmistakable sense that a real human being is speaking to them, in their own voice, about things that matter.
Silicon Valley PR strategist Lulu Cheng Meservey captured the broader shift in her Go Direct Manifesto, written for tech founders. Her argument: traditional gatekeepers are losing their grip, and the leaders who matter are the ones willing to own their narratives, build their own platforms, and speak to the people who matter without an intermediary in between.
The Manifesto was written for founders, but the underlying truth travels well beyond Silicon Valley. In any context where trust is the scarce resource — and right now, every context is — the leaders who go direct will outperform the ones who hide behind layers of polish and process.
What going direct actually means for executives
Let’s be clear about what this is and isn’t.
Going direct does not mean firing off more all-staff emails (no email, no matter how carefully crafted, is ever going to save you from your change problem). It does not mean bypassing the people whose job it is to sharpen your signal. It does not mean confusing volume with presence.
Going direct means four things, and each is a discipline:
Sponsors own the meaning, not the memo.
The most expensive mistake I see executives make is delegating the meaning of a change to a communications cascade. No email is ever, ever going to do this work for you. Sense-making — explaining what is changing, why, what you don’t yet know, and what you stand for — is the leader’s job. It cannot be outsourced.
Conversation is the smallest unit of change.
Going direct doesn’t mean broadcasting harder. It means showing up in town halls, walk-throughs and round tables, where you can be seen working through the change in real time. People aren’t asking for a five-step framework. They’re asking whether the person at the front is steady.
In a time of high uncertainty, establish certainty of communication.
When everything else feels in flux, the predictable drumbeat of leadership communication becomes a stabilizing force in itself. A regular cadence — weekly, monthly, whatever fits — signals steadiness more powerfully than any single message. Carney’s commitment to a recurring video isn’t incidental to the strategy. It is the strategy.
Your communications team is your strategic partner, not your ghostwriter.
Going direct doesn’t happen without communications expertise behind it — it happens because of it. The smartest move executives can make is to bring their communications leaders in early, at the front end, where they can shape the approach, pressure-test the message, advise on cadence, channel and tone, and design the architecture of how a leader shows up. That’s almost certainly what happened with Forward Guidance: a team of seasoned communicators helped design a strategy that put Carney directly in front of Canadians, in his own voice, with the production values and discipline to make it land. Going direct is a partnership between a sponsor willing to step forward and a comms team strategic enough to know that’s exactly where they belong.
What Carney’s instinct gets right
Strip away the politics for a moment and look at Forward Guidance as a piece of leadership communication.
He sat in the chair himself — didn’t send a deputy, didn’t issue a release.
He named what he didn’t know. He told Canadians he wouldn’t sugar-coat the challenges and committed to being honest about what’s working and what isn’t. That’s information plus respect — the equation at the heart of trust.
He treated the audience like adults. No spin, no platitudes, no pixie dust. Just a clear-eyed walk-through of where things stand.
These moves — show up, name what you don’t know, respect your audience — are available to every executive leading change, in every sector, every day. The medium doesn’t have to be a YouTube video. It might be a stand-up, a fireside, a video memo, a regular all-hands.
The form is less important than the discipline. Because here’s what’s actually at stake: protecting and building trust isn’t part of the game — it is the game.
The invitation
In an age where trust is the scarcest currency, the leaders who will be trusted are the ones willing to sit in the chair themselves — not because they have all the answers, but because they’re willing to be seen working through them.
That’s what sturdy leadership looks like in practice. Not bravado. Not certainty theatre. Just the steady, slightly uncomfortable work of being the signal — and empowering the team that helps you sharpen it.
Go direct.
But don’t go alone.
For a deeper dive, check out this recent podcast episode on change leadership on Michael Bungay Stanier’s Change Signal
For more on leading communications in turbulent times, explore this brief assessment tool to evaluate your communications team’s positioning, or the More Signal, Less Noise program designed to help executive teams cut through organizational overwhelm.
