How to Communicate Your Strategy

How can you successfully communicate your strategy?

Video, text, images, in-person presentations…the appeal of these formats depends to a great extent on the recipient’s personal preferences, or persona. Think of it this way:

  • Some people prefer to move fast
  • Some people prefer to move slowly
  • Some people prefer to base their decisions on logic
  • Some people prefer to base their decisions on emotions or feelings

Put it all together, and you come up with four distinct personas. The population is more or less evenly distributed between these personas:

1. Fast Paced/Logical
2. Fast Paced/Emotional
3. Slower Paced/Logical
4. Slower Paced/Emotional

So, an emotionally worded long communications piece would appeal to persona #4 above, but would probably frustrate the other personae, regardless of whether you use text, images, in person presentations or videos. So here’s a way to approach these personae:

Persona #1: Provide the facts and a logical argument QUICKLY
Persona #2: Provide an emotionally laden argument QUICKLY
Persona #3: Provide the facts and a logical argument, building up your case SLOWLY
Persona #4: Provide an emotionally laden argument, building up your case SLOWLY

Each of these approaches can be deployed using text, images, in person presentations or video, though in the case of images, videos and in person presentations they are likely better mediums than plain text for supporting the emotional approaches.

You can discover which personae are predominant in your team or organization by using self-assessments such as the type found here.

Hope this helps!

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