Why your message is not cutting through.

You see it. The opportunities, the risks. You passionately believe in the direction. You have presented to teams and produced multiple newsletters on the changes we need to be leading to successfully transition in this rapidly changing industry.?

Yet it feels like the organisation just isn’t listening.?

This is a discussion I have had with increasing numbers of Executives as they lift their focus to beyond the week to week responsiveness to the Covid Pandemic.?

Here’s the rub -

They are listening – both to you + to the thousands of other messages directed towards them, both at work and life.

Your messages are blended into all the blah blah blah, check this, look here, look there!

Think about your own day for a moment. The phone is always with you. The social media channels, the news, the weather, the work email, the family chat group, your friends chat group. The radio in the car. Better check the socials again - it looks like there are notifications. A text message from one of the kids - better check that. Whoa, the inbox has exploded since I last looked. Can check those voicemails after work. Ah, might do some mindless scrolling of the preferred social media when I sit down for a break.??

In the book ‘Originals,’ Adam Grant cites research that?change agents ‘typically under communicated their visions by a factor of ten.’

It is lost in all that is going on.

On average, they spoke about the direction of the change ten times less often than their stakeholders needed to hear it. Ten times less often.

Exposure to new ideas increases our ability to process the idea?– it takes us more effort to process something that’s unfamiliar. The more we hear the new messages, the more familiar and less threatening they are, the more we can incorporate them into our modus operandi.

Grant suggests that ‘exposures are more effective when they’re short and mixed in with other ideas, to help maintain the audience’s curiosity’. Putting a time delay between first presenting an idea and then asking people to evaluate or adopt it, gives them time for processing.

Originals: How Non-conformists Change the World - Grant, Adam. (2016).?

I have also found Cal Newport’s ‘Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World’ useful for raising awareness of self-management in this distracted environment of the connected world.

“Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction.”

~ Cal Newport

Your message is important.?It’s time to step up the game to cut through.

I am passionate about seeing more successful transitions this decade and less people caught suffering disruption.

Bernie

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Bernie is known for building capability and confidence in leaders who need to transform organisations that are continually reshaping to survive and thrive.

From first-hand experience as an executive leading through major transitions and over 10,000 hours in facilitation and training for organisational transformation, Bernie sets leadership teams to build change-fitness to deliver what matters.

Bernie welcomes connecting with and talking to leaders tackling the challenges of organisational transition.

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