In this week's newsletter

• Why you don’t necessarily need more meetings to get your message to stick
• A framework to weave your strategy into every meeting
• Warm-up and check-out questions you can use today
• Your weekly bird break

It is hard enough to mobilize people to row in the same direction when they know where they’re going. When they don’t understand or internalize the destination, that’s the recipe for a whole lot of inefficiency. I have worked for and with many organizations where you could ask five different people about the strategic priorities and get five different answers. One culprit? Not repeating our messages enough.

Many of us know we need to keep repeating the message long after we think we’ve done enough if we want it to stick, but who has the time to create more change communications and hold more meetings about a change when calendars are full and we have so much else to do?

Here’s an approach that has worked for me: weave change communication into the meetings and presentations you already have on your calendar.

What does this look like?

At one organization, I was building a new team from the ground up, which meant I was responsible for building awareness and understanding of this new function’s strategic role in the organization while also actually doing the work.

For 18 months, every presentation I gave in that organization started with the same slides: a recap of the team’s strategic priorities, why they mattered, and an updated implementation timeline.

In smaller meetings, I would share those same slides with even less info and quiz teams to fill in the blanks.

In 1:1s, I used a running agenda template organized with headers for each strategic priority. The goal was to explicitly connect the dots between individual work and where we were headed.

Instead of holding standalone meetings about the team’s strategy, I used every other meeting as an opportunity to reiterate this message.

Before your next meeting, ask yourself

Read on for how to put this into practice.

Meeting Minute

​Warm-up question​

This is a positive entry point that gets people talking about strategy without it feeling like a test. It also gives you a quick read on how well the team understands the direction and their connection to it. If answers are vague or all over the map, that's useful data. If they're specific and excited, you know the message is landing.

​Check-out question​

Zero means not at all, five means completely. This is a quick pulse check to do periodically to spot opportunities to bring more clarity. Hopefully you see positive changes over time.

Deep Dive: Your "First Five Slides"

A former colleague taught me this practice. The idea is simple: create a short set of slides that ground people in your strategic direction and tack them onto the beginning of every presentation you give. Not a special presentation. Every presentation.

Here’s how to get started:

Step 1: Before your meetings, build your “first five slides”

You don’t always need all of these, and the order is flexible. Pick the ones that serve the strategy you’re leading.

1. Why this work matters (for clients, employees, mission, not just the bottom line)
2. Where we’ve been, where we are, where we want to be (the arc of change)
3. What is not changing (celebrate what’s working well)
4. What this change is and what it is not (proactively address fears and misinterpretation)
5. A timeline with a “we are here” indicator (update this one often to manage expectations and celebrate momentum)

(Optional) Key terms people need to talk about this confidently in rooms you’re not in

It's worth taking time to design them well since you'll use them a lot!

Step 2: During your meetings, adapt the practice to every meeting type

• All-hands or large presentations: Open with your slides every time. New audience or repeat audience, it doesn’t matter. “As a quick reminder, I want to ground us in where we’re heading and why it matters…”
• Cross-functional meetings: Bring your slides and say, “As we all know, our org priority is X. We are here, and what I’m covering today is a critical driver of Y.” Use some or all of your first five slides no matter the topic. Carry the narrative into rooms where it might not otherwise show up consistently.
• Smaller team meetings: Share a condensed version of your slides and have the team fill in the blanks. Say, "You all have seen a more detailed version of these before, let's see if I've been repeating myself enough." This is a good-humored way to reinforce the message again while giving you a quick read on what's sticking and what's not.
• 1:1s: Ask direct reports to organize their 1:1 agendas into buckets based on the strategic direction of the organization. This pushes them to think of their work in the context of the bigger picture and gives you the opportunity to ask questions and correct misunderstandings.

With these format adaptations, the message stays consistent and you reinforce the same story through every meeting type on your calendar.

Step 3: After your meetings, pay attention to whether the message is landing

• Notice whether your team starts using the language back to you without being prompted.
• Ask a team member to explain the context to a new teammate and see how aligned you are.
• Remember to use this week’s check-out question periodically as you close your meetings!

Finally, set the expectation that your team uses the same slides in their presentations to other teams, too, explaining why this repetition matters for org alignment. Teaching others is one of the fastest ways to solidify your team’s understanding, and it extends the message into rooms you’re not in.

Instead of adding more meetings and emails to communicate strategy, your first five slides can infuse this messaging into the ones you already have scheduled.

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