Concreteness

The fifth and final post over at Powell’s — if you can only read one post from the week, read this one. I’d love to get some communal thinking going on this issue. If you have thoughts, please email me or post a comment.

Today’s post on Powell’s asks the question that’s been on the lips of so many people, for so long: What do you do when your giant inflatable rat just doesn’t inspire the same feelings of revulsion that it used to?

Our guest-blog post over at Powell’s books today asks the question: Can a billboard be too scary?

We also discuss sticky & non-sticky terror-preparation tips. Hope you enjoy.

The answer to this question, and more, at the Powell’s site where we’re guest-blogging this week.

I was pleased to be able to include this sentence in today’s entry: “A study on toads found the creatures mostly used their right legs when removing a plastic balloon that researchers had wrapped around their heads.”

Our friends at ChangeThis just published our manifesto, Talking Strategy: Three Straightforward Ways to Make Your Strategy Stick. Chip and I believe that most organizations do a lousy job communicating their strategies internally. Most execs seem to believe that formulating a strategy is 90% of the battle. If you’re a sole proprietor, that’s true. In a larger organization, though, the test of a strategy is how effectively it guides the specific actions of specific people. And that is fundamentally a communications challenge.

Once you realize that, the action plan becomes clear. You’ve got to translate the strategy into concrete terms that your folks can understand (not “maximize shareholder value”). You’ve got to make sure the strategy is specific enough to be useful to your employees (i.e., it helps them make decisions better). And perhaps most importantly, you’ve got to establish a language that makes it easier for the front-line people to talk back to the boardroom people in terms that both understand. If you do these things, you can avoid the 3 nasty barriers that impede strong strategic communication.

To learn about the full nastiness of those 3 barriers–and to see whether your own organization suffers from them–go check out the manifesto. And tell us what you think of it.