Minnesota’s “Land of 10,000 Lakes” has an important leadership communication lesson.
Imagine this: I throw a boulder into the center of one of those lakes, which raises a wave that reaches all the shoreline. The impact of even the biggest boulder wouldn’t touch any other lake, even one separated by a few yards of land.
Your organization is like this, full of independent lakes. You’ll need to get to each lake to communicate with each effectively to create a change. You might need to shape the context of your core messaging to be effective in different kinds of lakes – depth, shape, age, clarity of water, access points to others.
A common mistake in big organizations is to pull together a team of people representing each region or department. Most of these are big enough that they have several ‘lakes’ – so one person is unlikely to be effective at reaching them all. Organize sub-team members to cascade messaging and action plans, so that each lake is reached. A significant mistake many exec leaders make is to call a big department or whole company town hall and share their message. Trust me when I say that your message didn’t reach everyone equally well. Do necessary follow-up work.
