The Clearest message

An interesting quote from a US pastor on “church leadership”, Via The Leadership Now blog.

"Here's an incredibly important principle. You cannot communicate complicated information to large groups of people. As you increase the number of people, you have to decrease the complexity of the information. Congregational rule, when you're trying to make a complicated decision, works against the principle. So consequently, the guy with the microphone and the clearest message always wins. The most persuasive person in the room is going to win. Whether right or wrong."

How right he is. Recently I’ve been working with a senior exec. in a large multinational on his communications strategy for a large programme of work. When I first met him I asked him what the key messages he wanted to put over to his staff were.

After the first 10 minutes of his answer I knew that we had a way to go…

It did actually get a lot easier when I explained that his messages should be consistent course corrections rather than an explanation of the art of navigation. As with large oil tankers, you can’t steer small turns on a large programme, you have to keep things big and simple, know where you are and where you want to go.

–– Jason Bates

Tags:  "leadership+now", "church+leadership", communications, project+management

Comments

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