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When you want to stop your messages becoming diluted
When leaders ask me to improve communication cascades within their company, I always ask two questions:
This unearths two big problems:
- Answer 1 is, when you think about it, ridiculous. If your team enhances your message, it makes sense to cascade through them. If they don’t, what’s the point of going through them? Why not just skip the middle-man and communicate directly with their teams? But the fact that they actually dilute them – in other words, make them worse – makes this a terrible idea.
- Answer 2 raises an interesting point. In effect, people are saying “I choose to cascade my messages in a way I know dilutes them and makes things worse. And it’s everyone else’s fault but mine”.
When people cascade your messages, it’s your responsibility to help
I recently watched a TV programme where British Airways asked celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal to improve their in-flight food. He found that BA cooked food on land (where he said it tasted great), then transported it to the airplane, where the in-flight crew heated and served it (where he said it wasn’t as nice).
He then said something I really liked: a chef’s responsibility ends when the food arrives on the customer’s table, not when it leaves the kitchen.
It’s the same with cascading: it’s your responsibility that your teams hear the right message to cascade. Your responsibility can’t end when you create the cascade pack, add a covering email and press “send”.
This means it’s your responsibility to:
- Communicate your messages to them, in the same way you want them to cascade the messages onwards. So, you’re going to have to make your communication interesting, probably verbal, face to face if possible, interactive, personalized to them, and so on. If you don’t, but expect them to, it’s like a parent with a mouth full of food telling their child “don’t speak with food in your mouth”.
- Give them very clear, very few messages that are easy to cascade. If you don’t, it’s too hard for them to do it well.
- Ensure they have the necessary skills, motivation and confidence to cascade. For example, you could train them, ask how you can help make it easy, suggest they read the next chapter “When you want to stop diluting other people’s messages”.
- Set clear expectations about cascading. For instance, I imagine you don’t want them to forward your messages “FYI” (but I bet some do).
- Ask for – and be open to – their feedback about cascades and how to improve them.
- Ask for – and be open to – their teams’ feedback on how it feels to receive these cascaded messages.
- Vary your communications: sometimes PowerPoint, sometimes a document or conference call; change the agenda; when appropriate, skip a hierarchy level and communicate directly with everyone (this also helps your team see how you want it done).
You’ll notice I used the words “your responsibility” a lot. That’s because it is. A chef can’t delegate responsibility for the quality of his customer’s experience. And neither can you.
