Put change front and center when you communicate

Every email, announcement, blog post, recognition event, video or podcast should motivate some type of change.

Ideally, if read an email or watch a video, I don’t just learn something I didn’t know before. I change my behavior because of the communication, and I’m now able to do my job better.

That’s the real purpose of internal communications, right?

Internal communications should be designed to change behavior. Otherwise we shouldn’t be wasting employees’ time with yet another email, blog post or article. What’s the point of asking someone to spend time reading an article or watching a video if it’s not meant to change behavior or help employees do their jobs more effectively?

This adds complexity to our already challenging jobs as communicators, but our success hinges on reaching colleagues with compelling messaging.

To develop effective change communications, we must know three things:

If I read an article in my organization’s newsletter or magazine, it should be more than just an interesting read. The article should educate me on what’s going on around the organization and perhaps offer insights on things that I could be doing to help achieve business goals.