Getting Your Message Across

09/29/2009

In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.
Baba Dioum

"In my experience, people don't 'get' the important messages leaders try to send the first time around," writes Rosabeth Moss Kanter in Harvard Business Review On Point (Fall 2009; www.hbr.org). She explains...

"This isn't intentional, but there's too much noise and too many distraction. And leaders with a lot of ideas find that people wait to see which ones take priority, which ones will be acted on, and which ones leaders really care about....

"Even if people hear something once, they don't necessarily remember that they did. Busy people with multiple projects might forget that something has already been discussed.... Leaders cannot assume that just because it has been said it has been heard.

"So use the principle of redundancy. If the message is very important, send it through multiple media, in various forms, and view it a few times.... As for speeches, make those headlines dramatic, repeat them several times, and keep them going in the next few speeches."

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