It’s a game where a bunch of kids stand in line. The first one comes up with a short phrase and whispers it into the ear of the kid next to it. 🤫 Whatever that kid understood, it had to whisper into the ear of the next. And so on, until the end of the line. The last kid then had to say out loud, what it believed to have heard. Usually, the surprise in all the kids faces made them laugh because the term had changed various times through handing it forward from one kid to another. And when the first kid revealed the original phrase, the laughter was even harder because it was many times so far off from what was understood at the end of the line.
It is funny that we know this ever since being kids and yet, we believe this does not happen in real life.🤔
Bringing this scene to a corporate environment, it looks somewhat like this: Someone on top management level works out a brilliant strategy for the company.💎 The strategy is introduced enthusiastically to the peers and everybody is inspired to follow this new direction as they understand the impact and the benefit of it. There is agreement to roll it out. 🔥
At some point a slide deck is prepared to inform the next level of managers. All information is available on the slide deck, as the originator does not want that information is lost or misunderstood.
So far, so good, lessons learned from Chinese Whisper, right?
But can the next kid in line also transport the inspirational aspect of the original voice? 🎆
Let’s move down to the last kid in line, which in the organizational setting would probably be the team leader. Depending on the number of levels the message has passed, do you think that they can spark the same kind of fire that the originator did when presenting their idea for the first time? 🧯
❌I believe that even the best slide deck cannot transport that on its own.
✅We live in 2022. Why can’t we take a video from that first moment, where the originator passionately explains their strategy and send that out to inspire every level directly to the last kid in line? Making sure that nothing is lost, especially the spark! ❤️🔥
Wouldn’t that be worth trying?
How do you make sure that inspiration is transported through your chain of communication in large companies?
(source: Adobe Stock)