Shelley Thomas.

• Position: Brief Article

It's not surprising that Shelley Thomas would assert that effective communication should be the No.1 concern of Utah businesses. She covered Utah news as a reporter and anchor for KSL Television for 13 years. She worked six years as vice president of public affairs for Smith's Food and Drug Centers Inc., one of Utah's largest, publicly traded companies. As senior vice president of public affairs for SLOC, she ran interference during the darkest days of Utah's most visible special interest scandal. Now, having done a complete 180 degrees, she handles public relations for the Huntsman Cancer Institute.

"It's all about communications," she says. "What I learned over the years from KSL, Smith's, SLOC and now the Huntsman Cancer Institute is this: the public perception of business in Utah has changed. Information technology has left the business world wide open for scrutiny. The consequences and/or the rewards of learning how to execute communications in the corporate world are astonishing. The bottom line of good professional communications is about doing the right thing; fixing a problem; taking the right action; and preventing crises."

It used to be that corporate officials thought of communications as sort of a stepchild in the organizational structure. "No longer," says Thomas. "Now good CEOs know that communication is as important as accounting or budget control."

Why? "Because the public has become educated and demanding about what it will and won't accept from organizations. People read and watch and decide pretty quickly if they're hearing the truth."

What does Thomas see for Utah's future? "I'm not an economist, but we've lost a lot of headquartered companies here. That hurts." Thomas sees Utah's low unemployment rate as a problem. "People are scrambling to...