How to improve understanding and empathy with an organisation communication plan

How often is something 'important' communicated once and never heard about again? To achieve change you must be intentional with your communication.

Photo by Jackson Hendry on Unsplash

It can be easy to fall into the trap of doing something, communicating it once and then mentally crossing off ‘communication’ from your mental checklist for that bit of work. The trouble is, this is almost never enough communication. I often observe people at all levels of an organisation struggling with lack of support and alignment that are the result of lack of communication. Ask them about it and they may tell you ‘they don’t have time’ to do more. And yet they struggle, wasting weeks and months or longer because there is resistance or apathy to get the support needed to make progress.

What does it take for a message to be understood and paid attention?

It's important to empathise and put yourself in the shoes of your audience. How often did you read an email newsletter or attend an all-hands meeting and truly comprehend and digest everything that was communicated?

My experience over my career - to communicate well: Repetition of a message 5 times in a variety of channels over a period of time will successfully convey its meaning to 80% of the audience.

Why is this?

First, for transparency, the choice of ‘5 times’ is arbitrary — although from experience more than that appears to have diminishing returns, and less often is inadequate — my reasoning for choosing 5 was also to support repeating multiple times in a primary channel (the primary channel being whatever channel was best fit for that message - I share examples of channels and what sorts of messages they best suit further down) and a few more times in other channels that might reach people who responded better to different formats of receiving information. Some people prefer aural, others to read etc.

In addition this approach supports repetition, people hearing the same message at different points of time in different contexts. Repetition can aide the level of comprehension as well as support its legitimacy. If we hear about something once we naturally wonder if this is something that has true backing and momentum or is just something someone said and may shrivel on the vine starved by its own inertia.

Why only 80% of the audience? Well in addition to being a bit of a punchline - that we’d do all that effort and it only reach 80% of the people! But in reality, in modern organisations where there is a lot of communication channels and a lot of communication the proportion of messages that reach the relevant audience and are understood by that audience in a way that inspires action is often far less. In part it goes to how people’s attention naturally works. People assess and filter information based on relevance and perceived legitimacy to avoid being overwhelmed by the noise.

You can read more on why this may be here:

What you need to know… about The Curve of Forgetting
What is it?medium.com

Another strength of repetition is that it aids legitimacy. The belief that something is concrete and reflects a change that could affect people positively or negatively is influenced by how real people deem something to be.

Unfortunately, it's too common in organisations for people to hear about something with grand claims only for it to fall short of expectations or to be never heard of again! If you are making a significant investment in an effort to make a positive change then match this with a significant investment in communication.

But how can everyone understand my message if, even with repetition, I can’t reach all?

I think it's helpful to acknowledge the complexity of communication and acknowledge comprehension is never a true facsimile. This can inform how you approach communications. Understanding is complex and is influenced by what each individual brings to the table. This is particularly true at the point of communication, even when repeating a key message, but there is always a point where further repetition in the near term may not be worth the effort because of diminishing returns.

There, of course, maybe cause to repeat a message further in the future as important information slips from the forefront of the group’s thinking. Not all is lost though, it's likely if you reached most of the group that the message does land with the remainder over time via their peers as ideas become action and through their own repetition.

A tool to support this approach - Communication planning

An approach I used, which helped ensure I was making an investment in communications which was adequate for wide understanding was multi-fold:

1. Ensure the organisation has a communication structure which makes it easier for everyone who was responsible for making a change to communicate that change successfully.

2. Ensure that each change communication I am responsible for is clear, thoughtful and repeated in multiple channels.

3. Ensure those responsible for leading change know about the communication structure and communicate with discipline.